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finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Brothers Karamazov/section_9_part_4.txt

The Brothers Karamazov.book 7.chapter 4

book 7, chapter 4

{"name": "book 7, Chapter 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section10/", "summary": "Cana of Galilee Alyosha returns to the monastery and goes to Zosima's cell. There, listening to another monk reading from the Bible, he falls asleep and dreams that he is with Christ at the wedding in Cana. Zosima is also there, and he tells Alyosha to be happy. He says that Alyosha has helped to redeem Grushenka and that the young woman will now find her salvation. Alyosha wakes with a deep joy welling in his heart. He goes outside, falls to his knees, and begins to kiss the earth. He feels as though he has come to a deeper understanding of life, faith, and God.", "analysis": "Book VII: Alyosha, Chapters 1-4 The panic in the monastery over the stench exuded by Zosima's corpse is less bizarre than it may first appear. For modern readers, the idea of a corpse emitting a bad smell as it begins to decay is only natural. But in the lore of ancient monasteries, as in ancient medicine, odor was considered an extremely important and revealing quality. The Renaissance physician Paul Zacchias, whose 1557 work Quaestiones medico-legales was at the cutting edge of medical knowledge for its time, wrote that poison, infection, and disease were all transmittable through smell: \"We have a thousand and one examples of living beings that have been infected by olfaction alone. We see many people every day who fall into a serious or very serious state because of good or bad odors. The way something smelled, then, was deeply revealing of its inner quality. A bad smell could be proof that something was internally diseased or corrupted. The importance of smell explains why Zosima's enemies within the monastery go into such a frenzy when Zosima's corpse begins to stink. They take the stench itself as proof of an inner unworthiness on Zosima's part, so that the smell of his corpse threatens to invalidate the wisdom of his teaching. Additionally, the stench drives many of Zosima's followers into despair, especially those who consider him nearly a saint. In monastic legend, from the medieval era through at least the eighteenth century, the smell of a corpse is often connected to the saintliness of the soul that inhabited it so that a corpse that does not stink is a miraculous sign of the authenticity and goodness of the recently deceased person. The Jesuit historian Michel de Certeau wrote, \"In innumerable stories from the convents, you can tell whether the object seen in a vision is authentic by the smell it gives off, or whether a deceased religious is a saint by the good odor surrounding her. The Brothers Karamazov is set in an era far removed, in some respects, from the medieval superstitions that underlie these legends--Ivan, for instance, would certainly scoff at them. But within the monastery, in a cloister in a small town in a remote part of Russia, it seems that the legends are more enduring. The high hopes that most of Zosima's followers have for a miracle following his death are dashed by the smell of his corpse, which, because of the monks' superstitions about odor, implies not only that Zosima was not a saint, but that he may not even have been a good man. In the Grand Inquisitor chapter, we see how Christ rejects the Devil's temptation to throw himself off the pinnacle, seek salvation from the angels, and show the people below a miracle that would restore their faith. The Grand Inquisitor's insistence that Christ made a mistake in refusing to show the people a miracle is based on his emphatic belief that free will is not enough for most people to find salvation through faith: the monks illustrate this general principle that people need to witness miracles, because they are too weak to hold onto their faith without them. Everyone, even Alyosha, is optimistic about the possibility of a miracle after Zosima's death, and the speedy putrefaction of Zosima's corpse is an unpleasant reminder that, in the real world, there are no dazzling miracles, and faith is something that must be achieved without evidence. In these chapters, Dostoevsky creates a powerful and disturbing symbol of the problem of free will in religious belief. Without the security of miracles, people are left to their own devices, to choose either faith or doubt. The choice to doubt or disbelieve can be based on a model of rational evidence, but the choice to believe must be more mystical, based on a positive feeling of meaning and profundity that is often at odds with the world as we usually experience it. Zosima's corpse represents a worldly impediment to faith. The physical reality of the world stubbornly works against the claims of faith, giving believers no validation for their belief. Even Alyosha, whose veneration of Zosima continually strengthens and protects his own faith, is driven to doubt by the events surrounding Zosima's death. The anger that he feels toward God is similar to the cold, intellectual fury that underlies Ivan's entire project of doubt. Both men are angry about God's injustice: Alyosha because God permits the posthumous humiliation of his beloved Zosima, and Ivan because God permits the suffering of children. Rakitin and Grushenka first conspire to bring Alyosha to Grushenka's because they are threatened by his apparently unshakable purity. Their mistrust and self-doubt are manifest in Rakitin's smirking cynicism and Grushenka's angry pride. They want to upset, frighten, or corrupt Alyosha so that his own faith no longer threatens their shared belief that the world is corrupt, painful, and ugly. When the opposite happens, and Alyosha's troubled goodness elicits a chord of feeling and sympathy in Grushenka, the two young people each find unexpected salvation in their sudden understanding of one another. For Grushenka, finding a man who cares about her renews her faith in the world. Alyosha's experience with Grushenka, on the other hand, reminds him that the validation of faith lies not in miracles, but in good deeds. He believes that faith is not invalidated simply because a corpse develops a stench, but that it can be validated by active love of mankind. Alyosha's dream of Zosima demonstrates that Zosima's legacy has not died with his body, but lives on in Alyosha's good deeds, in the forgiveness and love that are the cornerstones of his faith. Alyosha's kissing of the earth after he wakes up is a turning point for him. A deliberate echo of Zosima's final act before dying, it signifies that Alyosha has stepped into Zosima's shoes and is now fully committed to leaving the monastery and doing good in the world"}

Chapter IV. Cana Of Galilee It was very late, according to the monastery ideas, when Alyosha returned to the hermitage; the door-keeper let him in by a special entrance. It had struck nine o'clock--the hour of rest and repose after a day of such agitation for all. Alyosha timidly opened the door and went into the elder's cell where his coffin was now standing. There was no one in the cell but Father Paissy, reading the Gospel in solitude over the coffin, and the young novice Porfiry, who, exhausted by the previous night's conversation and the disturbing incidents of the day, was sleeping the deep sound sleep of youth on the floor of the other room. Though Father Paissy heard Alyosha come in, he did not even look in his direction. Alyosha turned to the right from the door to the corner, fell on his knees and began to pray. His soul was overflowing but with mingled feelings; no single sensation stood out distinctly; on the contrary, one drove out another in a slow, continual rotation. But there was a sweetness in his heart and, strange to say, Alyosha was not surprised at it. Again he saw that coffin before him, the hidden dead figure so precious to him, but the weeping and poignant grief of the morning was no longer aching in his soul. As soon as he came in, he fell down before the coffin as before a holy shrine, but joy, joy was glowing in his mind and in his heart. The one window of the cell was open, the air was fresh and cool. "So the smell must have become stronger, if they opened the window," thought Alyosha. But even this thought of the smell of corruption, which had seemed to him so awful and humiliating a few hours before, no longer made him feel miserable or indignant. He began quietly praying, but he soon felt that he was praying almost mechanically. Fragments of thought floated through his soul, flashed like stars and went out again at once, to be succeeded by others. But yet there was reigning in his soul a sense of the wholeness of things--something steadfast and comforting--and he was aware of it himself. Sometimes he began praying ardently, he longed to pour out his thankfulness and love.... But when he had begun to pray, he passed suddenly to something else, and sank into thought, forgetting both the prayer and what had interrupted it. He began listening to what Father Paissy was reading, but worn out with exhaustion he gradually began to doze. "_And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee;_" read Father Paissy. "_And the mother of Jesus was there; And both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the marriage._" "Marriage? What's that?... A marriage!" floated whirling through Alyosha's mind. "There is happiness for her, too.... She has gone to the feast.... No, she has not taken the knife.... That was only a tragic phrase.... Well ... tragic phrases should be forgiven, they must be. Tragic phrases comfort the heart.... Without them, sorrow would be too heavy for men to bear. Rakitin has gone off to the back alley. As long as Rakitin broods over his wrongs, he will always go off to the back alley.... But the high road ... The road is wide and straight and bright as crystal, and the sun is at the end of it.... Ah!... What's being read?"... "_And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine_" ... Alyosha heard. "Ah, yes, I was missing that, and I didn't want to miss it, I love that passage: it's Cana of Galilee, the first miracle.... Ah, that miracle! Ah, that sweet miracle! It was not men's grief, but their joy Christ visited, He worked His first miracle to help men's gladness.... 'He who loves men loves their gladness, too' ... He was always repeating that, it was one of his leading ideas.... 'There's no living without joy,' Mitya says.... Yes, Mitya.... 'Everything that is true and good is always full of forgiveness,' he used to say that, too" ... "_Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what has it to do with thee or me? Mine hour is not yet come._ "_His mother saith unto the servants, Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it_" ... "Do it.... Gladness, the gladness of some poor, very poor, people.... Of course they were poor, since they hadn't wine enough even at a wedding.... The historians write that, in those days, the people living about the Lake of Gennesaret were the poorest that can possibly be imagined ... and another great heart, that other great being, His Mother, knew that He had come not only to make His great terrible sacrifice. She knew that His heart was open even to the simple, artless merrymaking of some obscure and unlearned people, who had warmly bidden Him to their poor wedding. 'Mine hour is not yet come,' He said, with a soft smile (He must have smiled gently to her). And, indeed, was it to make wine abundant at poor weddings He had come down to earth? And yet He went and did as she asked Him.... Ah, he is reading again".... "_Jesus saith unto them, Fill the waterpots with water. And they filled them up to the brim._ "_And he saith unto them, Draw out now and bear unto the governor of the feast. And they bare it._ "_When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and knew not whence it was; (but the servants which drew the water knew;) the governor of the feast called the bridegroom,_ "_And saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, that which is worse; but thou hast kept the good wine until now._" "But what's this, what's this? Why is the room growing wider?... Ah, yes ... It's the marriage, the wedding ... yes, of course. Here are the guests, here are the young couple sitting, and the merry crowd and ... Where is the wise governor of the feast? But who is this? Who? Again the walls are receding.... Who is getting up there from the great table? What!... He here, too? But he's in the coffin ... but he's here, too. He has stood up, he sees me, he is coming here.... God!"... Yes, he came up to him, to him, he, the little, thin old man, with tiny wrinkles on his face, joyful and laughing softly. There was no coffin now, and he was in the same dress as he had worn yesterday sitting with them, when the visitors had gathered about him. His face was uncovered, his eyes were shining. How was this, then? He, too, had been called to the feast. He, too, at the marriage of Cana in Galilee.... "Yes, my dear, I am called, too, called and bidden," he heard a soft voice saying over him. "Why have you hidden yourself here, out of sight? You come and join us too." It was his voice, the voice of Father Zossima. And it must be he, since he called him! The elder raised Alyosha by the hand and he rose from his knees. "We are rejoicing," the little, thin old man went on. "We are drinking the new wine, the wine of new, great gladness; do you see how many guests? Here are the bride and bridegroom, here is the wise governor of the feast, he is tasting the new wine. Why do you wonder at me? I gave an onion to a beggar, so I, too, am here. And many here have given only an onion each--only one little onion.... What are all our deeds? And you, my gentle one, you, my kind boy, you too have known how to give a famished woman an onion to-day. Begin your work, dear one, begin it, gentle one!... Do you see our Sun, do you see Him?" "I am afraid ... I dare not look," whispered Alyosha. "Do not fear Him. He is terrible in His greatness, awful in His sublimity, but infinitely merciful. He has made Himself like unto us from love and rejoices with us. He is changing the water into wine that the gladness of the guests may not be cut short. He is expecting new guests, He is calling new ones unceasingly for ever and ever.... There they are bringing new wine. Do you see they are bringing the vessels...." Something glowed in Alyosha's heart, something filled it till it ached, tears of rapture rose from his soul.... He stretched out his hands, uttered a cry and waked up. Again the coffin, the open window, and the soft, solemn, distinct reading of the Gospel. But Alyosha did not listen to the reading. It was strange, he had fallen asleep on his knees, but now he was on his feet, and suddenly, as though thrown forward, with three firm rapid steps he went right up to the coffin. His shoulder brushed against Father Paissy without his noticing it. Father Paissy raised his eyes for an instant from his book, but looked away again at once, seeing that something strange was happening to the boy. Alyosha gazed for half a minute at the coffin, at the covered, motionless dead man that lay in the coffin, with the ikon on his breast and the peaked cap with the octangular cross, on his head. He had only just been hearing his voice, and that voice was still ringing in his ears. He was listening, still expecting other words, but suddenly he turned sharply and went out of the cell. He did not stop on the steps either, but went quickly down; his soul, overflowing with rapture, yearned for freedom, space, openness. The vault of heaven, full of soft, shining stars, stretched vast and fathomless above him. The Milky Way ran in two pale streams from the zenith to the horizon. The fresh, motionless, still night enfolded the earth. The white towers and golden domes of the cathedral gleamed out against the sapphire sky. The gorgeous autumn flowers, in the beds round the house, were slumbering till morning. The silence of earth seemed to melt into the silence of the heavens. The mystery of earth was one with the mystery of the stars.... Alyosha stood, gazed, and suddenly threw himself down on the earth. He did not know why he embraced it. He could not have told why he longed so irresistibly to kiss it, to kiss it all. But he kissed it weeping, sobbing and watering it with his tears, and vowed passionately to love it, to love it for ever and ever. "Water the earth with the tears of your joy and love those tears," echoed in his soul. What was he weeping over? Oh! in his rapture he was weeping even over those stars, which were shining to him from the abyss of space, and "he was not ashamed of that ecstasy." There seemed to be threads from all those innumerable worlds of God, linking his soul to them, and it was trembling all over "in contact with other worlds." He longed to forgive every one and for everything, and to beg forgiveness. Oh, not for himself, but for all men, for all and for everything. "And others are praying for me too," echoed again in his soul. But with every instant he felt clearly and, as it were, tangibly, that something firm and unshakable as that vault of heaven had entered into his soul. It was as though some idea had seized the sovereignty of his mind--and it was for all his life and for ever and ever. He had fallen on the earth a weak boy, but he rose up a resolute champion, and he knew and felt it suddenly at the very moment of his ecstasy. And never, never, all his life long, could Alyosha forget that minute. "Some one visited my soul in that hour," he used to say afterwards, with implicit faith in his words. Within three days he left the monastery in accordance with the words of his elder, who had bidden him "sojourn in the world."

book 7, Chapter 4

https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section10/

Cana of Galilee Alyosha returns to the monastery and goes to Zosima's cell. There, listening to another monk reading from the Bible, he falls asleep and dreams that he is with Christ at the wedding in Cana. Zosima is also there, and he tells Alyosha to be happy. He says that Alyosha has helped to redeem Grushenka and that the young woman will now find her salvation. Alyosha wakes with a deep joy welling in his heart. He goes outside, falls to his knees, and begins to kiss the earth. He feels as though he has come to a deeper understanding of life, faith, and God.

Book VII: Alyosha, Chapters 1-4 The panic in the monastery over the stench exuded by Zosima's corpse is less bizarre than it may first appear. For modern readers, the idea of a corpse emitting a bad smell as it begins to decay is only natural. But in the lore of ancient monasteries, as in ancient medicine, odor was considered an extremely important and revealing quality. The Renaissance physician Paul Zacchias, whose 1557 work Quaestiones medico-legales was at the cutting edge of medical knowledge for its time, wrote that poison, infection, and disease were all transmittable through smell: "We have a thousand and one examples of living beings that have been infected by olfaction alone. We see many people every day who fall into a serious or very serious state because of good or bad odors. The way something smelled, then, was deeply revealing of its inner quality. A bad smell could be proof that something was internally diseased or corrupted. The importance of smell explains why Zosima's enemies within the monastery go into such a frenzy when Zosima's corpse begins to stink. They take the stench itself as proof of an inner unworthiness on Zosima's part, so that the smell of his corpse threatens to invalidate the wisdom of his teaching. Additionally, the stench drives many of Zosima's followers into despair, especially those who consider him nearly a saint. In monastic legend, from the medieval era through at least the eighteenth century, the smell of a corpse is often connected to the saintliness of the soul that inhabited it so that a corpse that does not stink is a miraculous sign of the authenticity and goodness of the recently deceased person. The Jesuit historian Michel de Certeau wrote, "In innumerable stories from the convents, you can tell whether the object seen in a vision is authentic by the smell it gives off, or whether a deceased religious is a saint by the good odor surrounding her. The Brothers Karamazov is set in an era far removed, in some respects, from the medieval superstitions that underlie these legends--Ivan, for instance, would certainly scoff at them. But within the monastery, in a cloister in a small town in a remote part of Russia, it seems that the legends are more enduring. The high hopes that most of Zosima's followers have for a miracle following his death are dashed by the smell of his corpse, which, because of the monks' superstitions about odor, implies not only that Zosima was not a saint, but that he may not even have been a good man. In the Grand Inquisitor chapter, we see how Christ rejects the Devil's temptation to throw himself off the pinnacle, seek salvation from the angels, and show the people below a miracle that would restore their faith. The Grand Inquisitor's insistence that Christ made a mistake in refusing to show the people a miracle is based on his emphatic belief that free will is not enough for most people to find salvation through faith: the monks illustrate this general principle that people need to witness miracles, because they are too weak to hold onto their faith without them. Everyone, even Alyosha, is optimistic about the possibility of a miracle after Zosima's death, and the speedy putrefaction of Zosima's corpse is an unpleasant reminder that, in the real world, there are no dazzling miracles, and faith is something that must be achieved without evidence. In these chapters, Dostoevsky creates a powerful and disturbing symbol of the problem of free will in religious belief. Without the security of miracles, people are left to their own devices, to choose either faith or doubt. The choice to doubt or disbelieve can be based on a model of rational evidence, but the choice to believe must be more mystical, based on a positive feeling of meaning and profundity that is often at odds with the world as we usually experience it. Zosima's corpse represents a worldly impediment to faith. The physical reality of the world stubbornly works against the claims of faith, giving believers no validation for their belief. Even Alyosha, whose veneration of Zosima continually strengthens and protects his own faith, is driven to doubt by the events surrounding Zosima's death. The anger that he feels toward God is similar to the cold, intellectual fury that underlies Ivan's entire project of doubt. Both men are angry about God's injustice: Alyosha because God permits the posthumous humiliation of his beloved Zosima, and Ivan because God permits the suffering of children. Rakitin and Grushenka first conspire to bring Alyosha to Grushenka's because they are threatened by his apparently unshakable purity. Their mistrust and self-doubt are manifest in Rakitin's smirking cynicism and Grushenka's angry pride. They want to upset, frighten, or corrupt Alyosha so that his own faith no longer threatens their shared belief that the world is corrupt, painful, and ugly. When the opposite happens, and Alyosha's troubled goodness elicits a chord of feeling and sympathy in Grushenka, the two young people each find unexpected salvation in their sudden understanding of one another. For Grushenka, finding a man who cares about her renews her faith in the world. Alyosha's experience with Grushenka, on the other hand, reminds him that the validation of faith lies not in miracles, but in good deeds. He believes that faith is not invalidated simply because a corpse develops a stench, but that it can be validated by active love of mankind. Alyosha's dream of Zosima demonstrates that Zosima's legacy has not died with his body, but lives on in Alyosha's good deeds, in the forgiveness and love that are the cornerstones of his faith. Alyosha's kissing of the earth after he wakes up is a turning point for him. A deliberate echo of Zosima's final act before dying, it signifies that Alyosha has stepped into Zosima's shoes and is now fully committed to leaving the monastery and doing good in the world

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/44747-chapters/36.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_35_part_0.txt

The Red and the Black.part 2.chapter 6

part 2, chapter 6

{"name": "Part 2, Chapter 6", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-2-chapter-6", "summary": "One day at a cafe, Julien stares off into space while thinking about his boring life. He catches the eyes of another young man, whom he realizes is staring right back at him. The staring contest eventually turns into an argument, and the young man insults Julien so much that Julien demands a duel. The young man throws a card into Julien's face. The card has the man's name and address on it. Julien shows up at the guy's house the next day, bringing Count Norbert as his backup. When they meet the master of the house, they encounter a polite young man who is definitely not the dude Julien met in the cafe the day before. While leaving, Julien recognizes one of the man's servants as the guy from the cafe and lays a beat-down on him. Two servants try to help their friend, but Julien fires a gun at them and they run off. The master of the house decides that there is now good reason for a duel, since Julien has attacked one of his servants. The two of them drive out to a dueling ground and the guy shoots Julien in the arm. It's not a major wound, and the guy even drives Julien home in his carriage. The master is shocked to learn that Julien is only a servant. It's bad form for a nobleman to fight with someone of such lower class. He decides to keep the whole thing hush hush in order to avoid any damage to his reputation. The two of them start hanging out and going to the opera together. The master decides to make up a story about Julien being the son of one of the Marquis de La Moles' wealthy relatives in order to put them on a similar social footing. Word spread across town until the Marquis finds out. He's not mad, and decides to let the rumor stand. The condition is that Julien has to study all the rich folks at the opera and learn to carry himself like a rich person.", "analysis": ""}

CHAPTER XXXVI PRONUNCIATION If fatuity is pardonable it is in one's first youth, for it is then the exaggeration of an amiable thing. It needs an air of love, gaiety, nonchalance. But fatuity coupled with self-importance; fatuity with a solemn and self-sufficient manner! This extravagance of stupidity was reserved for the XIXth century. Such are the persons who want to unchain the _hydra of revolutions_!--LE JOHANNISBURG, _Pamphlet_. Considering that he was a new arrival who was too disdainful to put any questions, Julien did not fall into unduly great mistakes. One day when he was forced into a cafe in the Rue St. Honore by a sudden shower, a big man in a beaver coat, surprised by his gloomy look, looked at him in return just as mademoiselle Amanda's lover had done before at Besancon. Julien had reproached himself too often for having endured the other insult to put up with this stare. He asked for an explanation. The man in the tail-coat immediately addressed him in the lowest and most insulting language. All the people in the cafe surrounded them. The passers-by stopped before the door. Julien always carried some little pistols as a matter of precaution. His hand was grasping them nervously in his pocket. Nevertheless he behaved wisely and confined himself to repeating to his man "Monsieur, your address, I despise you." The persistency in which he kept repeating these six words eventually impressed the crowd. "By Jove, the other who's talking all to himself ought to give him his address," they exclaimed. The man in the tail-coat hearing this repeated several times, flung five or six cards in Julien's face. Fortunately none of them hit him in the face; he had mentally resolved not to use his pistols except in the event of his being hit. The man went away, though not without turning round from time to time to shake his fist and hurl insults at him. Julien was bathed in sweat. "So," he said angrily to himself, "the meanest of mankind has it in his power to affect me as much as this. How am I to kill so humiliating a sensitiveness?" Where was he to find a second? He did not have a single friend. He had several acquaintances, but they all regularly left him after six weeks of social intercourse. "I am unsociable," he thought, and "I am now cruelly punished for it." Finally it occurred to him to rout out an old lieutenant of the 96th, named Lievin, a poor devil with whom he often used to fence. Julien was frank with him. "I am quite willing to be your second," said Lievin, "but on one condition. If you fail to wound your man you will fight with me straight away." "Agreed," said Julien quite delighted; and they went to find M. de Beauvoisis at the address indicated on his card at the end of the Faubourg Saint Germain. It was seven o'clock in the morning. It was only when he was being ushered in, that Julien thought that it might quite well be the young relation of Madame de Renal, who had once been employed at the Rome or Naples Embassy, and who had given the singer Geronimo a letter of introduction. Julien gave one of the cards which had been flung at him the previous evening together with one of his own to a tall valet. He and his second were kept waiting for a good three-quarters of an hour. Eventually they were ushered in to a elegantly furnished apartment. They found there a tall young man who was dressed like a doll. His features presented the perfection and the lack of expression of Greek beauty. His head, which was remarkably straight, had the finest blonde hair. It was dressed with great care and not a single hair was out of place. "It was to have his hair done like this, that is why this damned fop has kept us waiting," thought the lieutenant of the 96th. The variegated dressing gown, the morning trousers, everything down to the embroidered slippers was correct. He was marvellously well-groomed. His blank and aristocratic physiognomy betokened rare and orthodox ideas; the ideal of a Metternichian diplomatist. Napoleon as well did not like to have in his entourage officers who thought. Julien, to whom his lieutenant of the 96th had explained, that keeping him waiting was an additional insult after having thrown his card so rudely in his face, entered brusquely M. de Beauvoisis' room. He intended to be insolent, but at the same time to exhibit good form. Julien was so astonished by the niceness of M. de Beauvoisis' manners and by the combination of formality, self-importance, and self-satisfaction in his demeanour, by the admirable elegance of everything that surrounded him, that he abandoned immediately all idea of being insolent. It was not his man of the day before. His astonishment was so great at meeting so distinguished a person, instead of the rude creature whom he was looking for, that he could not find a single word to say. He presented one of the cards which had been thrown at him. "That's my name," said the young diplomat, not at all impressed by Julien's black suit at seven o'clock in the morning, "but I do not understand the honour." His manner of pronouncing these last words revived a little of Julien's bad temper. "I have come to fight you, monsieur," and he explained in a few words the whole matter. M. Charles de Beauvoisis, after mature reflection, was fairly satisfied with the cut of Julien's black suit. "It comes from Staub, that's clear," he said to himself, as he heard him speak. "That waistcoat is in good taste. Those boots are all right, but on the other hand just think of wearing a black suit in the early morning! It must be to have a better chance of not being hit," said the chevalier de Beauvoisis to himself. After he had given himself this explanation he became again perfectly polite to Julien, and almost treated him as an equal. The conversation was fairly lengthy, for the matter was a delicate one, but eventually Julien could not refuse to acknowledge the actual facts. The perfectly mannered young man before him did not bear any resemblance to the vulgar fellow who had insulted him the previous day. Julien felt an invincible repugnance towards him. He noted the self-sufficiency of the chevalier de Beauvoisis, for that was the name by which he had referred to himself, shocked as he was when Julien called him simply "Monsieur." He admired his gravity which, though tinged with a certain modest fatuity, he never abandoned for a single moment. He was astonished at his singular manner of moving his tongue as he pronounced his words, but after all, this did not present the slightest excuse for picking a quarrel. The young diplomatist very graciously offered to fight, but the ex-lieutenant of the 96th, who had been sitting down for an hour with his legs wide apart, his hands on his thigh, and his elbows stuck out, decided that his friend, monsieur de Sorel, was not the kind to go and pick a quarrel with a man because someone else had stolen that man's visiting cards. Julien went out in a very bad temper. The chevalier de Beauvoisis' carriage was waiting for him in the courtyard before the steps. By chance Julien raised his eyes and recognised in the coachman his man of the day before. Seeing him, catching hold of him by his big jacket, tumbling him down from his seat, and horse-whipping him thoroughly took scarcely a moment. Two lackeys tried to defend their comrade. Julien received some blows from their fists. At the same moment, he cocked one of his little pistols and fired on them. They took to flight. All this took about a minute. The chevalier de Beauvoisis descended the staircase with the most pleasing gravity, repeating with his lordly pronunciation, "What is this, what is this." He was manifestly very curious, but his diplomatic importance would not allow him to evince any greater interest. When he knew what it was all about, a certain haughtiness tried to assert itself in that expression of slightly playful nonchalance which should never leave a diplomatist's face. The lieutenant of the 96th began to realise that M. de Beauvoisis was anxious to fight. He was also diplomatic enough to wish to reserve for his friend the advantage of taking the initiative. "This time," he exclaimed, "there is ground for duel." "I think there's enough," answered the diplomat. "Turn that rascal out," he said to his lackeys. "Let someone else get up." The door of the carriage was open. The chevalier insisted on doing the honours to Julien and his friend. They sent for a friend of M. de Beauvoisis, who chose them a quiet place. The conversation on their way went as a matter of fact very well indeed. The only extraordinary feature was the diplomatist in a dressing-gown. "These gentlemen, although very noble, are by no means as boring," thought Julien, "as the people who come and dine at M. de la Mole's, and I can see why," he added a moment afterwards. "They allow themselves to be indecent." They talked about the dancers that the public had distinguished with its favour at the ballet presented the night before. The two gentlemen alluded to some spicy anecdotes of which Julien and his second, the lieutenant of the 96th, were absolutely ignorant. Julien was not stupid enough to pretend to know them. He confessed his ignorance with a good grace. This frankness pleased the chevalier's friend. He told him these stories with the greatest detail and extremely well. One thing astonished Julien inordinately. The carriage was pulled up for a moment by an altar which was being built in the middle of the street for the procession of Corpus Christi Day. The two gentlemen indulged in the luxury of several jests. According to them, the cure was the son of an archbishop. Such a joke would never have been heard in the house of M. de la Mole, who was trying to be made a duke. The duel was over in a minute. Julien got a ball in his arm. They bandaged it with handkerchiefs which they wetted with brandy, and the chevalier de Beauvoisis requested Julien with great politeness to allow him to take him home in the same carriage that had brought him. When Julien gave the name of M. de la Mole's hotel, the young diplomat and his friend exchanged looks. Julien's fiacre was here, but they found these gentlemen's conversation more entertaining than that of the good lieutenant of the 96th. "By Jove, so a duel is only that," thought Julien. "What luck I found that coachman again. How unhappy I should have been if I had had to put up with that insult as well." The amusing conversation had scarcely been interrupted. Julien realised that the affectation of diplomatists is good for something. "So ennui," he said himself, "is not a necessary incident of conversation among well-born people. These gentlemen make fun of the Corpus Christi procession and dare to tell extremely obscene anecdotes, and what is more, with picturesque details. The only thing they really lack is the ability to discuss politics logically, and that lack is more than compensated by their graceful tone, and the perfect aptness of their expressions." Julien experienced a lively inclination for them. "How happy I should be to see them often." They had scarcely taken leave of each other before the chevalier de Beauvoisis had enquiries made. They were not brilliant. He was very curious to know his man. Could he decently pay a call on him? The little information he had succeeded in obtaining from him was not of an encouraging character. "Oh, this is awful," he said to his second. "I can't possibly own up to having fought a duel with a mere secretary of M. de la Mole, simply because my coachman stole my visiting cards." "There is no doubt that all this may make you look ridiculous." That very evening the chevalier de Beauvoisis and his friend said everywhere that this M. Sorel who was, moreover, quite a charming young man, was a natural son of an intimate friend of the marquis de la Mole. This statement was readily accepted. Once it was established, the young diplomatist and friend deigned to call several times on Julien during the fortnight. Julien owned to them that he had only been to the Opera once in his life. "That is awful," said one, "that is the only place one does go to. Your first visit must be when they are playing the '_Comte Ory_.'" The chevalier de Beauvoisis introduced him at the opera to the famous singer Geronimo, who was then enjoying an immense success. Julien almost paid court to the chevalier. His mixture of self-respect, mysterious self-importance, and fatuous youthfulness fascinated him. The chevalier, for example, would stammer a little, simply because he had the honour of seeing frequently a very noble lord who had this defect. Julien had never before found combined in one and the same person the drollery which amuses, and those perfect manners which should be the object of a poor provincial's imitation. He was seen at the opera with the chevalier de Beauvoisis. This association got him talked about. "Well," said M. de la Mole to him one day, "so here you are, the natural son of a rich gentleman of Franche-Comte, an intimate friend of mine." The marquis cut Julien short as he started to protest that he had not in any way contributed to obtaining any credence for this rumour. "M. de Beauvoisis did not fancy having fought a duel with the son of a carpenter." "I know it, I know it," said M. de la Mole. "It is my business now to give some consistency to this story which rather suits me. But I have one favour to ask of you, which will only cost you a bare half-hour of your time. Go and watch every opera day at half-past eleven all the people in society coming out in the vestibule. I still see you have certain provincial mannerisms. You must rid yourself of them. Besides it would do no harm to know, at any rate by sight, some of the great personages to whom I may one day send you on a commission. Call in at the box office to get identified. Admission has been secured for you."

Part 2, Chapter 6

https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-2-chapter-6

One day at a cafe, Julien stares off into space while thinking about his boring life. He catches the eyes of another young man, whom he realizes is staring right back at him. The staring contest eventually turns into an argument, and the young man insults Julien so much that Julien demands a duel. The young man throws a card into Julien's face. The card has the man's name and address on it. Julien shows up at the guy's house the next day, bringing Count Norbert as his backup. When they meet the master of the house, they encounter a polite young man who is definitely not the dude Julien met in the cafe the day before. While leaving, Julien recognizes one of the man's servants as the guy from the cafe and lays a beat-down on him. Two servants try to help their friend, but Julien fires a gun at them and they run off. The master of the house decides that there is now good reason for a duel, since Julien has attacked one of his servants. The two of them drive out to a dueling ground and the guy shoots Julien in the arm. It's not a major wound, and the guy even drives Julien home in his carriage. The master is shocked to learn that Julien is only a servant. It's bad form for a nobleman to fight with someone of such lower class. He decides to keep the whole thing hush hush in order to avoid any damage to his reputation. The two of them start hanging out and going to the opera together. The master decides to make up a story about Julien being the son of one of the Marquis de La Moles' wealthy relatives in order to put them on a similar social footing. Word spread across town until the Marquis finds out. He's not mad, and decides to let the rumor stand. The condition is that Julien has to study all the rich folks at the opera and learn to carry himself like a rich person.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/44747-chapters/31.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_30_part_0.txt

The Red and the Black.part 2.chapter 1

part 2, chapter 1

{"name": "Part 2, Chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-2-chapter-1", "summary": "Julien hops a coach heading to Paris. On the coach, he listens to two guys talk about how great Napoleon Bonaparte was and he smiles to himself. When he arrives in Paris, he spends an evening seeing some of the sights before heading to where he was instructed. He meets Father Pirard, who tells him that he'll head back to the seminary if he doesn't make himself useful. Pirard also warns him that people in the house, especially de La Mole's son, will act snooty toward him at first. Julien thanks Pirard for his help.", "analysis": ""}

CHAPTER XXXI THE PLEASURES OF THE COUNTRY O rus quando ego te aspiciam?--_Horace_ "You've no doubt come to wait for the Paris mail, Monsieur," said the host of an inn where he had stopped to breakfast. "To-day or to-morrow, it matters little," said Julien. The mail arrived while he was still posing as indifferent. There were two free places. "Why! it's you my poor Falcoz," said the traveller who was coming from the Geneva side to the one who was getting in at the same time as Julien. "I thought you were settled in the outskirts of Lyons," said Falcoz, "in a delicious valley near the Rhone." "Nicely settled! I am running away." "What! you are running away? you Saint Giraud! Have you, who look so virtuous, committed some crime?" said Falcoz with a smile. "On my faith it comes to the same thing. I am running away from the abominable life which one leads in the provinces. I like the freshness of the woods and the country tranquillity, as you know. You have often accused me of being romantic. I don't want to hear politics talked as long as I live, and politics are hounding me out." "But what party do you belong to?" "To none and that's what ruins me. That's all there is to be said about my political life--I like music and painting. A good book is an event for me. I am going to be forty-four. How much longer have I got to live? Fifteen--twenty--thirty years at the outside. Well, I want the ministers in thirty years' time to be a little cleverer than those of to-day but quite as honest. The history of England serves as a mirror for our own future. There will always be a king who will try to increase his prerogative. The ambition of becoming a deputy, the fame of Mirabeau and the hundreds of thousand francs which he won for himself will always prevent the rich people in the province from going to sleep: they will call that being Liberal and loving the people. The desire of becoming a peer or a gentleman of the chamber will always win over the ultras. On the ship of state every one is anxious to take over the steering because it is well paid. Will there be never a poor little place for the simple passenger?" "Is it the last elections which are forcing you out of the province?" "My misfortune goes further back. Four years ago I was forty and possessed 500,000 francs. I am four years older to-day and probably 50,000 francs to the bad, as I shall lose that sum on the sale of my chateau of Monfleury in a superb position near the Rhone. "At Paris I was tired of that perpetual comedy which is rendered obligatory by what you call nineteenth-century civilisation. I thirsted for good nature and simplicity. I bought an estate in the mountains near the Rhine, there was no more beautiful place under the heavens. "The village clergyman and the gentry of the locality pay me court for six months; I invite them to dinner; I have left Paris, I tell them, so as to avoid talking politics or hearing politics talked for the rest of my life. As you know I do not subscribe to any paper, the less letters the postman brought me the happier I was. "That did not suit the vicar's book. I was soon the victim of a thousand unreasonable requests, annoyances, etc. I wished to give two or three hundred francs a year to the poor, I was asked to give it to the Paris associations, that of Saint Joseph, that of the Virgin, etc. I refused. I was then insulted in a hundred ways. I was foolish enough to be upset by it. I could not go out in the morning to enjoy the beauty of our mountain without finding some annoyance which distracted me from my reveries and recalled unpleasantly both men and their wickedness. On the Rogation processions, for instance whose chanting I enjoy (it is probably a Greek melody) they will not bless my fields because, says the clergyman, they belong to an infidel. A cow dies belonging to a devout old peasant woman. She says the reason is the neighbourhood of a pond which belongs to my infidel self, a philosopher coming from Paris, and eight days afterwards I find my fish in agonies poisoned by lime. Intrigue in all its forms envelops me. The justice of the peace, who is an honest man, but frightened of losing his place, always decides against me. The peace of the country proved a hell for me. Once they saw that I was abandoned by the vicar, the head of the village congregation, and that I was not supported by the retired captain who was the head of the Liberals they all fell upon me, down to the mason whom I had supported for a year, down to the very wheel-wright who wanted to cheat me with impunity over the repairing of my ploughs. "In order to find some support, and to win at any rate some of my law suits I became a Liberal, but, as you say, those damned elections come along. They asked me for my vote." "For an unknown man?" "Not at all, for a man whom I knew only too well. I refused. It was terribly imprudent. From that moment I had the Liberals on my hands as well, and my position became intolerable. I believe that if the vicar had got it into his head to accuse me of assassinating my servant, there would be twenty witnesses of the two parties who would swear that they had seen me committing the crime." "You mean to say you want to live in the country without pandering to the passions of your neighbours, without even listening to their gossip. What a mistake!" "It is rectified at last. Monfleury is for sale. I will lose 50,000 francs if necessary, but I am over-joyed I am leaving that hell of hypocrisy and annoyance. I am going to look for solitude and rustic peace in the only place where those things are to be found in France, on a fourth storey looking on to the Champs-Elysees; and, moreover, I am actually deliberating if I shall not commence my political career by giving consecrated bread to the parish in the Roule quarter." "All this would not have happened under Bonaparte," said Falcoz with eyes shining with rage and sorrow. "Very good, but why didn't your Bonaparte manage to keep his position? Everything which I suffer to-day is his work." At this point Julien's attention was redoubled. He had realised from the first word that the Bonapartist Falcoz was the old boyhood friend of M. de Renal, who had been repudiated by him in 1816, and that the philosopher Saint-Giraud must be the brother of that chief of the prefecture of----who managed to get the houses of the municipality knocked down to him at a cheap price. "And all this is the work of your Bonaparte. An honest man, aged forty, and possessed of five hundred thousand francs however inoffensive he is, cannot settle in the provinces and find peace there; those priests and nobles of his will turn him out." "Oh don't talk evil of him," exclaimed Falcoz. "France was never so high in the esteem of the nations as during the thirteen years of his reign; then every single act was great." "Your emperor, devil take him," replied the man of forty-four, "was only great on his battle fields and when he reorganised the finances about 1802. What is the meaning of all his conduct since then? What with his chamberlains, his pomp, and his receptions in the Tuileries, he has simply provided a new edition of all the monarchical tomfoolery. It was a revised edition and might possibly have lasted for a century or two. The nobles and the priests wish to go back to the old one, but they did not have the iron hand necessary to impose it on the public." "Yes, that's just how an old printer would talk." "Who has turned me out of my estate?" continued the printer, angrily. "The priests, whom Napoleon called back by his Concordat instead of treating them like the State treats doctors, barristers, and astronomers, simply seeing in them ordinary citizens, and not bothering about the particular calling by which they are trying to earn their livelihood. Should we be saddled with these insolent gentlemen today, if your Bonaparte had not created barons and counts? No, they were out of fashion. Next to the priests, it's the little country nobility who have annoyed me the most, and compelled me to become a Liberal." The conversation was endless. The theme will occupy France for another half-century. As Saint-Giraud kept always repeating that it was impossible to live in the provinces, Julien timidly suggested the case of M. de Renal. "Zounds, young man, you're a nice one," exclaimed Falcoz. "He turned spider so as not to be fly, and a terrible spider into the bargain. But I see that he is beaten by that man Valenod. Do you know that scoundrel? He's the villain of the piece. What will your M. de Renal say if he sees himself turned out one of these fine days, and Valenod put in his place?" "He will be left to brood over his crimes," said Saint-Giraud. "Do you know Verrieres, young man? Well, Bonaparte, heaven confound him! Bonaparte and his monarchical tomfoolery rendered possible the reign of the Renals and the Chelans, which brought about the reign of the Valenods and the Maslons." This conversation, with its gloomy politics, astonished Julien and distracted him from his delicious reveries. He appreciated but little the first sight of Paris as perceived in the distance. The castles in the air he had built about his future had to struggle with the still present memory of the twenty-four hours that he had just passed in Verrieres. He vowed that he would never abandon his mistress's children, and that he would leave everything in order to protect them, if the impertinence of the priests brought about a republic and the persecution of the nobles. What would have happened on the night of his arrival in Verrieres if, at the moment when he had leant his ladder against the casement of Madame de Renal's bedroom he had found that room occupied by a stranger or by M. de Renal? But how delicious, too, had been those first two hours when his sweetheart had been sincerely anxious to send him away and he had pleaded his cause, sitting down by her in the darkness! A soul like Julien's is haunted by such memories for a lifetime. The rest of the interview was already becoming merged in the first period of their love, fourteen months previous. Julien was awakened from his deep meditation by the stopping of the coach. They had just entered the courtyard of the Post in the Rue Rousseau. "I want to go to La Malmaison," he said to a cabriolet which approached. "At this time, Monsieur--what for?" "What's that got to do with you? Get on." Every real passion only thinks about itself. That is why, in my view, passions are ridiculous at Paris, where one's neighbour always insists on one's considering him a great deal. I shall refrain from recounting Julien's ecstasy at La Malmaison. He wept. What! in spite of those wretched white walls, built this very year, which cut the path up into bits? Yes, monsieur, for Julien, as for posterity, there was nothing to choose between Arcole, Saint Helena, and La Malmaison. In the evening, Julien hesitated a great deal before going to the theatre. He had strange ideas about that place of perdition. A deep distrust prevented him from admiring actual Paris. He was only affected by the monuments left behind by his hero. "So here I am in the centre of intrigue and hypocrisy. Here reign the protectors of the abbe de Frilair." On the evening of the third day his curiosity got the better of his plan of seeing everything before presenting himself to the abbe Pirard. The abbe explained to him coldly the kind of life which he was to expect at M. de la Mole's. "If you do not prove useful to him at the end of some months you will go back to the seminary, but not in disgrace. You will live in the house of the marquis, who is one of the greatest seigneurs of France. You will wear black, but like a man who is in mourning, and not like an ecclesiastic. I insist on your following your theological studies three days a week in a seminary where I will introduce you. Every day at twelve o'clock you will establish yourself in the marquis's library; he counts on making use of you in drafting letters concerning his lawsuits and other matters. The marquis will scribble on the margin of each letter he gets the kind of answer which is required. I have assured him that at the end of three months you will be so competent to draft the answers, that out of every dozen you hand to the marquis for signature, he will be able to sign eight or nine. In the evening, at eight o'clock, you will tidy up his bureau, and at ten you will be free. "It may be," continued the abbe Pirard, "that some old lady or some smooth-voiced man will hint at immense advantages, or will crudely offer you gold, to show him the letters which the marquis has received." "Ah, monsieur," exclaimed Julien, blushing. "It is singular," said the abbe with a bitter smile, "that poor as you are, and after a year at a seminary, you still have any of this virtuous indignation left. You must have been very blind." "Can it be that blood will tell," muttered the abbe in a whisper, as though speaking to himself. "The singular thing is," he added, looking at Julien, "that the marquis knows you--I don't know how. He will give you a salary of a hundred louis to commence with. He is a man who only acts by his whim. That is his weakness. He will quarrel with you about the most childish matters. If he is satisfied, your wages may rise in consequence up to eight thousand francs. "But you realise," went on the abbe, sourly, "that he is not giving you all this money simply on account of your personal charm. The thing is to prove yourself useful. If I were in your place I would talk very little, and I would never talk about what I know nothing about. "Oh, yes," said the abbe, "I have made some enquiries for you. I was forgetting M. de la Mole's family. He has two children--a daughter and a son of nineteen, eminently elegant--the kind of madman who never knows to-day what he will do to-morrow. He has spirit and valour; he has been through the Spanish war. The marquis hopes, I don't know why, that you will become a friend of the young count Norbert. I told him that you were a great classic, and possibly he reckons on your teaching his son some ready-made phrases about Cicero and Virgil. "If I were you, I should never allow that handsome young man to make fun of me, and before I accepted his advances, which you will find perfectly polite but a little ironical, I would make him repeat them more than once. "I will not hide from you the fact that the young count de La Mole is bound to despise you at first, because you are nothing more than a little bourgeois. His grandfather belonged to the court, and had the honour of having his head cut off in the Place de Greve on the 26th April, 1574, on account of a political intrigue. "As for you, you are the son of a carpenter of Verrieres, and what is more, in receipt of his father's wages. Ponder well over these differences, and look up the family history in Moreri. All the flatterers who dine at their house make from time to time what they call delicate allusions to it. "Be careful of how you answer the pleasantries of M. the count de La Mole, chief of a squadron of hussars, and a future peer of France, and don't come and complain to me later on." "It seems to me," said Julien, blushing violently, "that I ought not even to answer a man who despises me." "You have no idea of his contempt. It will only manifest itself by inflated compliments. If you were a fool, you might be taken in by it. If you want to make your fortune, you ought to let yourself be taken in by it." "Shall I be looked upon as ungrateful," said Julien, "if I return to my little cell Number 108 when I find that all this no longer suits me?" "All the toadies of the house will no doubt calumniate you," said the abbe, "but I myself will come to the rescue. Adsum qui feci. I will say that I am responsible for that resolution." Julien was overwhelmed by the bitter and almost vindictive tone which he noticed in M. Pirard; that tone completely infected his last answer. The fact is that the abbe had a conscientious scruple about loving Julien, and it was with a kind of religious fear that he took so direct a part in another's life. "You will also see," he added with the same bad grace, as though accomplishing a painful duty, "you also will see Madame the marquise de La Mole. She is a big blonde woman about forty, devout, perfectly polite, and even more insignificant. She is the daughter of the old Duke de Chaulnes so well known for his aristocratic prejudices. This great lady is a kind of synopsis in high relief of all the fundamental characteristics of women of her rank. She does not conceal for her own part that the possession of ancestors who went through the crusades is the sole advantage which she respects. Money only comes a long way afterwards. Does that astonish you? We are no longer in the provinces, my friend. "You will see many great lords in her salon talk about our princes in a tone of singular flippancy. As for Madame de la Mole, she lowers her voice out of respect every time she mentions the name of a Prince, and above all the name of a Princess. I would not advise you to say in her hearing that Philip II. or Henry VII. were monsters. They were kings, a fact which gives them indisputable rights to the respect of creatures without birth like you and me. Nevertheless," added M. Pirard, "we are priests, for she will take you for one; that being our capacity, she considers us as spiritual valets necessary for her salvation." "Monsieur," said Julien, "I do not think I shall be long at Paris." "Good, but remember that no man of our class can make his fortune except through the great lords. With that indefinable element in your character, at any rate I think it is, you will be persecuted if you do not make your fortune. There is no middle course for you, make no mistake about it; people see that they do not give you pleasure when they speak to you; in a social country like this you are condemned to unhappiness if you do not succeed in winning respect." "What would have become of you at Besancon without this whim of the marquis de la Mole? One day you will realise the extraordinary extent of what he has done for you, and if you are not a monster you will be eternally grateful to him and his family. How many poor abbes more learned than you have lived years at Paris on the fifteen sous they got for their mass and their ten sous they got for their dissertations in the Sorbonne. Remember what I told you last winter about the first years of that bad man Cardinal Dubois. Are you proud enough by chance to think yourself more talented than he was? "Take, for instance, a quiet and average man like myself; I reckoned on dying in my seminary. I was childish enough to get attached to it. Well I was on the point of being turned out, when I handed in my resignation. You know what my fortune consisted of. I had five hundred and twenty francs capital neither more nor less, not a friend, scarcely two or three acquaintances. M. de la Mole, whom I had never seen, extricated me from that quandary. He only had to say the word and I was given a living where the parishioners are well-to-do people above all crude vices, and where the income puts me to shame, it is so disproportionate to my work. I refrained from talking to you all this time simply to enable you to find your level a bit. "One word more, I have the misfortune to be irritable. It is possible that you and I will cease to be on speaking terms. "If the airs of the marquise or the spiteful pleasantries of her son make the house absolutely intolerable for you I advise you to finish your studies in some seminary thirty leagues from Paris and rather north than south. There is more civilisation in the north, and, he added lowering his voice, I must admit that the nearness of the Paris papers puts fear into our petty tyrants. "If we continue to find pleasure in each other's society and if the marquis's house does not suit you, I will offer you the post of my curate, and will go equal shares with you in what I get from the living. I owe you that and even more, he added interrupting Julien's thanks, for the extraordinary offer which you made me at Besancon. If instead of having five hundred and twenty francs I had had nothing you would have saved me." The abbe's voice had lost its tone of cruelty, Julien was ashamed to feel tears in his eyes. He was desperately anxious to throw himself into his friend's arms. He could not help saying to him in the most manly manner he could assume: "I was hated by my father from the cradle; it was one of my great misfortunes, but I shall no longer complain of my luck, I have found another father in you, monsieur." "That is good, that is good," said the embarrassed abbe, then suddenly remembering quite appropriately a seminary platitude "you must never say luck, my child, always say providence." The fiacre stopped. The coachman lifted up the bronze knocker of an immense door. It was the Hotel de la Mole, and to prevent the passers by having any doubt on the subject these words could be read in black marble over the door. This affectation displeased Julien. "They are so frightened of the Jacobins. They see a Robespierre and his tumbril behind every head. Their panic is often gloriously grotesque and they advertise their house like this so that in the event of a rising the rabble can recognise it and loot it." He communicated his thought to the abbe Pirard. "Yes, poor child, you will soon be my curate. What a dreadful idea you have got into your head." "Nothing could be simpler," said Julien. The gravity of the porter, and above all, the cleanness of the the court, struck him with admiration. It was fine sunshine. "What magnificent architecture," he said to his friend. The hotel in question was one of those buildings of the Faubourg Saint-Germain with a flat facade built about the time of Voltaire's death. At no other period had fashion and beauty been so far from one another.

Part 2, Chapter 1

https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-2-chapter-1

Julien hops a coach heading to Paris. On the coach, he listens to two guys talk about how great Napoleon Bonaparte was and he smiles to himself. When he arrives in Paris, he spends an evening seeing some of the sights before heading to where he was instructed. He meets Father Pirard, who tells him that he'll head back to the seminary if he doesn't make himself useful. Pirard also warns him that people in the house, especially de La Mole's son, will act snooty toward him at first. Julien thanks Pirard for his help.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/174-chapters/chapters_12_to_13.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/The Picture of Dorian Gray/section_12_part_0.txt

The Picture of Dorian Gray.chapters 12-13

chapters 12-13

{"name": "Chapters 12-13", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219150422/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/p/the-picture-of-dorian-gray/summary-and-analysis/chapters-1213", "summary": "It is the evening before Dorian's thirty-eighth birthday, and he has dined with Lord Henry. Around eleven o'clock, wrapped in furs against the cold, he walks through the heavy fog toward home. Basil passes him on the street from the opposite direction. Dorian, not eager to encounter the old friend, continues toward his house; Basil, however, turns and quickly catches up. Basil plans to leave for Paris, catching a night train to the English Channel. He feels fortunate to find Dorian since he must talk with him and has been waiting for him at Dorian's home. Dorian and Basil go to Dorian's home. Basil, discussing Dorian's reputation, notes that horrible things are being said about his young friend. Dorian's friendship seems destructive or even fatal to very young men: One committed suicide; another was forced to leave England with a \"tarnished name\"; a third found a \"dreadful end\"; a fourth lost his career; a fifth lost his social standing. Dorian responds with contempt. He is interested only in the scandals of others; his own so-called scandals lack \"the charm of novelty.\" He answers that he is not responsible for the flaws of his acquaintances. Basil persists. Dorian's effect on his friends speaks for itself. He has \"filled them with a madness for pleasure.\" Then there is Lady Gwendolyn, Lord Henry's sister. Prior to knowing Dorian, \"not a breath of scandal had ever touched her.\" Now, no decent lady will even drive in the park with her. The list goes on. Dorian has been seen sneaking out of \"dreadful houses\" and visiting \"the foulest dens\" in London. Basil wants to hear Dorian deny the accusations against him. Basil says that he can't believe the rumors when he sees Dorian's innocent and pure face. However, he needs to know the truth, to see Dorian's soul; but, as Basil says, only God can do that. Dorian laughs bitterly at Basil's preaching. He agrees to allow Basil to see his soul -- the portrait. Mad with pride, he tells Basil that no one will believe it if Basil should tell them what he sees, or they will simply admire Dorian the more. He leads Basil up the stairs to see the portrait. In the attic schoolroom, Dorian challenges Basil: \"So you think it is only God who sees the soul, Basil? Draw the curtain back, and you will see mine.\" Basil hesitates, and Dorian tears the curtain from its rod and flings it to the floor. Basil is horrified to see the hideous face in the painting with its evil grin. The face is recognizable as Dorian's, but it is aged and corrupt. Basil is overcome by \"disgust and loathing\" and asks Dorian to explain what the image in the portrait means. Dorian recalls the wish that he made that fateful day in Basil's studio, and Basil is horrified and incredulous. Basil tries to rationalize the change in the portrait: Mildew has transformed the portrait, or perhaps the paints were fouled. Besides, Dorian had told him that he destroyed the painting. Dorian corrects him: \"I was wrong. It has destroyed me.\" He bitterly asks if Basil can still see his \"ideal\" in the portrait. It is, after all, the face of Dorian's soul. Basil is overcome with the ugliness of the portrait and collapses in a chair. He implores Dorian to pray, pointing out that if Dorian's previous prayer of pride was answered, surely his prayer of repentance will be, too. Dorian's eyes fill with tears, and he is momentarily filled with despair. \"It is too late, Basil,\" he answers. Basil pleads that it is never too late. They must repent; he, too, is guilty, but they can still be forgiven. At that moment, Dorian looks at the portrait, and it seems to send him a command. An \"uncontrollable feeling of hatred for Basil Hallward\" overwhelms him. He grabs a knife lying on a nearby chest and plunges it into a large vein behind Basil's ear. He stabs his old friend repeatedly, and after a brief struggle, Basil is dead. Quietly Dorian returns to the library and hides Basil's bag and coat in a secret closet where he keeps his disguises. Collecting his thoughts, he realizes that many men are hanged for what he has just done. However, there is little evidence against him. Basil had the odd habit of disappearing without telling people where he was going, and people will think he has gone to Paris. Feeling no remorse, Dorian quickly thinks of a plan to disguise his actions. Carefully he leaves the house, taking care to avoid the notice of a policeman on the street. Then he turns and rings his own doorbell. It takes nearly five minutes for Francis, the valet, to answer. Dorian establishes an alibi by checking the time with Francis: ten past two in the morning. He asks if anyone visited in his absence. Francis says that Mr. Hallward stayed until eleven, when he left to catch his train. Dorian asks to be wakened at nine in the morning, and Francis shuffles back to bed. Dorian reflects on the situation in the library. The chapter ends as Dorian takes down a directory and locates a name and address: Alan Campbell, 152, Hertford Street, Mayfair.", "analysis": "Ever the playwright, Wilde divides this climactic action into two chapters in order to create a dramatic pause before the men ascend the staircase to view the portrait. Chapter 12 serves only to bring the two characters together and set up the critical events in Chapter 13. The three key events in Chapter 13 build to a dramatic climax just as they might on the stage. The first event is the shocking unveiling of the portrait. Unlike Lord Henry -- and now -- Dorian, Basil is a relatively unassuming, decent man. He has come to see Dorian because he is genuinely concerned about his young friend who has built quite a chilling reputation for himself in the past eighteen years. Basil wants to be told that the rumors about Dorian are wrong; his motivations for confronting Dorian are entirely selfless and honest. When he sees the painting, the sin it reveals leaves Basil shaken. The second key event in Chapter 13 -- Basil's asking Dorian to absolve his sins -- is an essential ingredient in the Faust theme. Realizing what has taken place with the portrait and Dorian's life, and feeling some guilt for his own involvement, Basil pleads with Dorian to let go of his pride and pray for absolution. His concern for Dorian's corrupted soul can be seen as the only truly good and pure act in the novel, and it provides a striking and tragic contrast to Dorian's response: \"It is too late, Basil,\" and \"Those words mean nothing to me now.\" Typically, the central figure in the Faust legend indulges in despair, feeling that his sin is so great that he no longer can be saved. He cannot be saved because the combination of pride and despair keep him from seeking forgiveness. Dorian's problem is essentially this, his unwillingness to ask for forgiveness. In addition, there is the question of whether Dorian even wants to change his life. He states that he does not know whether he regrets the wish that evidently made the contract. At this point, the third important event of the chapter occurs. Dorian seems to receive some sort of message from the image on the canvas and is driven to murder his old friend. Basil's death conveniently removes the most immediate and serious threat to Dorian's way of life and his pact with the forces of evil. After the murder, he feels oddly calm and goes about the business of removing evidence and establishing an alibi. In the coolness of Dorian's actions after he kills Basil, the reader sees that Dorian has spoken at least a few truthful words during his corrupt life -- his admission that it is too late to save his soul. Dorian kills the only real friend he has, and with that, he kills the only chance he has to redeem his soul. Glossary ulster a long, loose overcoat made of heavy, strong fabric; originally made in Ulster, Ireland. Gladstone bag light hand luggage consisting of two hinged compartments. Anglomanie a combination of New Latin and French, the term indicates a mania for things English. hock a white Rhine wine; wine from Hochheim in Germany. profligate a person given over to excessive devotion to pleasure. curate a clergyman in charge of a parish or one who assists a rector. cassone Italian, \"large cabinet.\" wainscoting paneling; finishing the lower part of an interior wall with materials different from the upper part. parody a mocking imitation of a literary or an artistic work. Moorish regarding the Moslems of mixed Berber and Arab descent living mostly in northern Africa."}

It was on the ninth of November, the eve of his own thirty-eighth birthday, as he often remembered afterwards. He was walking home about eleven o'clock from Lord Henry's, where he had been dining, and was wrapped in heavy furs, as the night was cold and foggy. At the corner of Grosvenor Square and South Audley Street, a man passed him in the mist, walking very fast and with the collar of his grey ulster turned up. He had a bag in his hand. Dorian recognized him. It was Basil Hallward. A strange sense of fear, for which he could not account, came over him. He made no sign of recognition and went on quickly in the direction of his own house. But Hallward had seen him. Dorian heard him first stopping on the pavement and then hurrying after him. In a few moments, his hand was on his arm. "Dorian! What an extraordinary piece of luck! I have been waiting for you in your library ever since nine o'clock. Finally I took pity on your tired servant and told him to go to bed, as he let me out. I am off to Paris by the midnight train, and I particularly wanted to see you before I left. I thought it was you, or rather your fur coat, as you passed me. But I wasn't quite sure. Didn't you recognize me?" "In this fog, my dear Basil? Why, I can't even recognize Grosvenor Square. I believe my house is somewhere about here, but I don't feel at all certain about it. I am sorry you are going away, as I have not seen you for ages. But I suppose you will be back soon?" "No: I am going to be out of England for six months. I intend to take a studio in Paris and shut myself up till I have finished a great picture I have in my head. However, it wasn't about myself I wanted to talk. Here we are at your door. Let me come in for a moment. I have something to say to you." "I shall be charmed. But won't you miss your train?" said Dorian Gray languidly as he passed up the steps and opened the door with his latch-key. The lamplight struggled out through the fog, and Hallward looked at his watch. "I have heaps of time," he answered. "The train doesn't go till twelve-fifteen, and it is only just eleven. In fact, I was on my way to the club to look for you, when I met you. You see, I shan't have any delay about luggage, as I have sent on my heavy things. All I have with me is in this bag, and I can easily get to Victoria in twenty minutes." Dorian looked at him and smiled. "What a way for a fashionable painter to travel! A Gladstone bag and an ulster! Come in, or the fog will get into the house. And mind you don't talk about anything serious. Nothing is serious nowadays. At least nothing should be." Hallward shook his head, as he entered, and followed Dorian into the library. There was a bright wood fire blazing in the large open hearth. The lamps were lit, and an open Dutch silver spirit-case stood, with some siphons of soda-water and large cut-glass tumblers, on a little marqueterie table. "You see your servant made me quite at home, Dorian. He gave me everything I wanted, including your best gold-tipped cigarettes. He is a most hospitable creature. I like him much better than the Frenchman you used to have. What has become of the Frenchman, by the bye?" Dorian shrugged his shoulders. "I believe he married Lady Radley's maid, and has established her in Paris as an English dressmaker. Anglomania is very fashionable over there now, I hear. It seems silly of the French, doesn't it? But--do you know?--he was not at all a bad servant. I never liked him, but I had nothing to complain about. One often imagines things that are quite absurd. He was really very devoted to me and seemed quite sorry when he went away. Have another brandy-and-soda? Or would you like hock-and-seltzer? I always take hock-and-seltzer myself. There is sure to be some in the next room." "Thanks, I won't have anything more," said the painter, taking his cap and coat off and throwing them on the bag that he had placed in the corner. "And now, my dear fellow, I want to speak to you seriously. Don't frown like that. You make it so much more difficult for me." "What is it all about?" cried Dorian in his petulant way, flinging himself down on the sofa. "I hope it is not about myself. I am tired of myself to-night. I should like to be somebody else." "It is about yourself," answered Hallward in his grave deep voice, "and I must say it to you. I shall only keep you half an hour." Dorian sighed and lit a cigarette. "Half an hour!" he murmured. "It is not much to ask of you, Dorian, and it is entirely for your own sake that I am speaking. I think it right that you should know that the most dreadful things are being said against you in London." "I don't wish to know anything about them. I love scandals about other people, but scandals about myself don't interest me. They have not got the charm of novelty." "They must interest you, Dorian. Every gentleman is interested in his good name. You don't want people to talk of you as something vile and degraded. Of course, you have your position, and your wealth, and all that kind of thing. But position and wealth are not everything. Mind you, I don't believe these rumours at all. At least, I can't believe them when I see you. Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face. It cannot be concealed. People talk sometimes of secret vices. There are no such things. If a wretched man has a vice, it shows itself in the lines of his mouth, the droop of his eyelids, the moulding of his hands even. Somebody--I won't mention his name, but you know him--came to me last year to have his portrait done. I had never seen him before, and had never heard anything about him at the time, though I have heard a good deal since. He offered an extravagant price. I refused him. There was something in the shape of his fingers that I hated. I know now that I was quite right in what I fancied about him. His life is dreadful. But you, Dorian, with your pure, bright, innocent face, and your marvellous untroubled youth--I can't believe anything against you. And yet I see you very seldom, and you never come down to the studio now, and when I am away from you, and I hear all these hideous things that people are whispering about you, I don't know what to say. Why is it, Dorian, that a man like the Duke of Berwick leaves the room of a club when you enter it? Why is it that so many gentlemen in London will neither go to your house or invite you to theirs? You used to be a friend of Lord Staveley. I met him at dinner last week. Your name happened to come up in conversation, in connection with the miniatures you have lent to the exhibition at the Dudley. Staveley curled his lip and said that you might have the most artistic tastes, but that you were a man whom no pure-minded girl should be allowed to know, and whom no chaste woman should sit in the same room with. I reminded him that I was a friend of yours, and asked him what he meant. He told me. He told me right out before everybody. It was horrible! Why is your friendship so fatal to young men? There was that wretched boy in the Guards who committed suicide. You were his great friend. There was Sir Henry Ashton, who had to leave England with a tarnished name. You and he were inseparable. What about Adrian Singleton and his dreadful end? What about Lord Kent's only son and his career? I met his father yesterday in St. James's Street. He seemed broken with shame and sorrow. What about the young Duke of Perth? What sort of life has he got now? What gentleman would associate with him?" "Stop, Basil. You are talking about things of which you know nothing," said Dorian Gray, biting his lip, and with a note of infinite contempt in his voice. "You ask me why Berwick leaves a room when I enter it. It is because I know everything about his life, not because he knows anything about mine. With such blood as he has in his veins, how could his record be clean? You ask me about Henry Ashton and young Perth. Did I teach the one his vices, and the other his debauchery? If Kent's silly son takes his wife from the streets, what is that to me? If Adrian Singleton writes his friend's name across a bill, am I his keeper? I know how people chatter in England. The middle classes air their moral prejudices over their gross dinner-tables, and whisper about what they call the profligacies of their betters in order to try and pretend that they are in smart society and on intimate terms with the people they slander. In this country, it is enough for a man to have distinction and brains for every common tongue to wag against him. And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite." "Dorian," cried Hallward, "that is not the question. England is bad enough I know, and English society is all wrong. That is the reason why I want you to be fine. You have not been fine. One has a right to judge of a man by the effect he has over his friends. Yours seem to lose all sense of honour, of goodness, of purity. You have filled them with a madness for pleasure. They have gone down into the depths. You led them there. Yes: you led them there, and yet you can smile, as you are smiling now. And there is worse behind. I know you and Harry are inseparable. Surely for that reason, if for none other, you should not have made his sister's name a by-word." "Take care, Basil. You go too far." "I must speak, and you must listen. You shall listen. When you met Lady Gwendolen, not a breath of scandal had ever touched her. Is there a single decent woman in London now who would drive with her in the park? Why, even her children are not allowed to live with her. Then there are other stories--stories that you have been seen creeping at dawn out of dreadful houses and slinking in disguise into the foulest dens in London. Are they true? Can they be true? When I first heard them, I laughed. I hear them now, and they make me shudder. What about your country-house and the life that is led there? Dorian, you don't know what is said about you. I won't tell you that I don't want to preach to you. I remember Harry saying once that every man who turned himself into an amateur curate for the moment always began by saying that, and then proceeded to break his word. I do want to preach to you. I want you to lead such a life as will make the world respect you. I want you to have a clean name and a fair record. I want you to get rid of the dreadful people you associate with. Don't shrug your shoulders like that. Don't be so indifferent. You have a wonderful influence. Let it be for good, not for evil. They say that you corrupt every one with whom you become intimate, and that it is quite sufficient for you to enter a house for shame of some kind to follow after. I don't know whether it is so or not. How should I know? But it is said of you. I am told things that it seems impossible to doubt. Lord Gloucester was one of my greatest friends at Oxford. He showed me a letter that his wife had written to him when she was dying alone in her villa at Mentone. Your name was implicated in the most terrible confession I ever read. I told him that it was absurd--that I knew you thoroughly and that you were incapable of anything of the kind. Know you? I wonder do I know you? Before I could answer that, I should have to see your soul." "To see my soul!" muttered Dorian Gray, starting up from the sofa and turning almost white from fear. "Yes," answered Hallward gravely, and with deep-toned sorrow in his voice, "to see your soul. But only God can do that." A bitter laugh of mockery broke from the lips of the younger man. "You shall see it yourself, to-night!" he cried, seizing a lamp from the table. "Come: it is your own handiwork. Why shouldn't you look at it? You can tell the world all about it afterwards, if you choose. Nobody would believe you. If they did believe you, they would like me all the better for it. I know the age better than you do, though you will prate about it so tediously. Come, I tell you. You have chattered enough about corruption. Now you shall look on it face to face." There was the madness of pride in every word he uttered. He stamped his foot upon the ground in his boyish insolent manner. He felt a terrible joy at the thought that some one else was to share his secret, and that the man who had painted the portrait that was the origin of all his shame was to be burdened for the rest of his life with the hideous memory of what he had done. "Yes," he continued, coming closer to him and looking steadfastly into his stern eyes, "I shall show you my soul. You shall see the thing that you fancy only God can see." Hallward started back. "This is blasphemy, Dorian!" he cried. "You must not say things like that. They are horrible, and they don't mean anything." "You think so?" He laughed again. "I know so. As for what I said to you to-night, I said it for your good. You know I have been always a stanch friend to you." "Don't touch me. Finish what you have to say." A twisted flash of pain shot across the painter's face. He paused for a moment, and a wild feeling of pity came over him. After all, what right had he to pry into the life of Dorian Gray? If he had done a tithe of what was rumoured about him, how much he must have suffered! Then he straightened himself up, and walked over to the fire-place, and stood there, looking at the burning logs with their frostlike ashes and their throbbing cores of flame. "I am waiting, Basil," said the young man in a hard clear voice. He turned round. "What I have to say is this," he cried. "You must give me some answer to these horrible charges that are made against you. If you tell me that they are absolutely untrue from beginning to end, I shall believe you. Deny them, Dorian, deny them! Can't you see what I am going through? My God! don't tell me that you are bad, and corrupt, and shameful." Dorian Gray smiled. There was a curl of contempt in his lips. "Come upstairs, Basil," he said quietly. "I keep a diary of my life from day to day, and it never leaves the room in which it is written. I shall show it to you if you come with me." "I shall come with you, Dorian, if you wish it. I see I have missed my train. That makes no matter. I can go to-morrow. But don't ask me to read anything to-night. All I want is a plain answer to my question." "That shall be given to you upstairs. I could not give it here. You will not have to read long." He passed out of the room and began the ascent, Basil Hallward following close behind. They walked softly, as men do instinctively at night. The lamp cast fantastic shadows on the wall and staircase. A rising wind made some of the windows rattle. When they reached the top landing, Dorian set the lamp down on the floor, and taking out the key, turned it in the lock. "You insist on knowing, Basil?" he asked in a low voice. "Yes." "I am delighted," he answered, smiling. Then he added, somewhat harshly, "You are the one man in the world who is entitled to know everything about me. You have had more to do with my life than you think"; and, taking up the lamp, he opened the door and went in. A cold current of air passed them, and the light shot up for a moment in a flame of murky orange. He shuddered. "Shut the door behind you," he whispered, as he placed the lamp on the table. Hallward glanced round him with a puzzled expression. The room looked as if it had not been lived in for years. A faded Flemish tapestry, a curtained picture, an old Italian _cassone_, and an almost empty book-case--that was all that it seemed to contain, besides a chair and a table. As Dorian Gray was lighting a half-burned candle that was standing on the mantelshelf, he saw that the whole place was covered with dust and that the carpet was in holes. A mouse ran scuffling behind the wainscoting. There was a damp odour of mildew. "So you think that it is only God who sees the soul, Basil? Draw that curtain back, and you will see mine." The voice that spoke was cold and cruel. "You are mad, Dorian, or playing a part," muttered Hallward, frowning. "You won't? Then I must do it myself," said the young man, and he tore the curtain from its rod and flung it on the ground. An exclamation of horror broke from the painter's lips as he saw in the dim light the hideous face on the canvas grinning at him. There was something in its expression that filled him with disgust and loathing. Good heavens! it was Dorian Gray's own face that he was looking at! The horror, whatever it was, had not yet entirely spoiled that marvellous beauty. There was still some gold in the thinning hair and some scarlet on the sensual mouth. The sodden eyes had kept something of the loveliness of their blue, the noble curves had not yet completely passed away from chiselled nostrils and from plastic throat. Yes, it was Dorian himself. But who had done it? He seemed to recognize his own brushwork, and the frame was his own design. The idea was monstrous, yet he felt afraid. He seized the lighted candle, and held it to the picture. In the left-hand corner was his own name, traced in long letters of bright vermilion. It was some foul parody, some infamous ignoble satire. He had never done that. Still, it was his own picture. He knew it, and he felt as if his blood had changed in a moment from fire to sluggish ice. His own picture! What did it mean? Why had it altered? He turned and looked at Dorian Gray with the eyes of a sick man. His mouth twitched, and his parched tongue seemed unable to articulate. He passed his hand across his forehead. It was dank with clammy sweat. The young man was leaning against the mantelshelf, watching him with that strange expression that one sees on the faces of those who are absorbed in a play when some great artist is acting. There was neither real sorrow in it nor real joy. There was simply the passion of the spectator, with perhaps a flicker of triumph in his eyes. He had taken the flower out of his coat, and was smelling it, or pretending to do so. "What does this mean?" cried Hallward, at last. His own voice sounded shrill and curious in his ears. "Years ago, when I was a boy," said Dorian Gray, crushing the flower in his hand, "you met me, flattered me, and taught me to be vain of my good looks. One day you introduced me to a friend of yours, who explained to me the wonder of youth, and you finished a portrait of me that revealed to me the wonder of beauty. In a mad moment that, even now, I don't know whether I regret or not, I made a wish, perhaps you would call it a prayer...." "I remember it! Oh, how well I remember it! No! the thing is impossible. The room is damp. Mildew has got into the canvas. The paints I used had some wretched mineral poison in them. I tell you the thing is impossible." "Ah, what is impossible?" murmured the young man, going over to the window and leaning his forehead against the cold, mist-stained glass. "You told me you had destroyed it." "I was wrong. It has destroyed me." "I don't believe it is my picture." "Can't you see your ideal in it?" said Dorian bitterly. "My ideal, as you call it..." "As you called it." "There was nothing evil in it, nothing shameful. You were to me such an ideal as I shall never meet again. This is the face of a satyr." "It is the face of my soul." "Christ! what a thing I must have worshipped! It has the eyes of a devil." "Each of us has heaven and hell in him, Basil," cried Dorian with a wild gesture of despair. Hallward turned again to the portrait and gazed at it. "My God! If it is true," he exclaimed, "and this is what you have done with your life, why, you must be worse even than those who talk against you fancy you to be!" He held the light up again to the canvas and examined it. The surface seemed to be quite undisturbed and as he had left it. It was from within, apparently, that the foulness and horror had come. Through some strange quickening of inner life the leprosies of sin were slowly eating the thing away. The rotting of a corpse in a watery grave was not so fearful. His hand shook, and the candle fell from its socket on the floor and lay there sputtering. He placed his foot on it and put it out. Then he flung himself into the rickety chair that was standing by the table and buried his face in his hands. "Good God, Dorian, what a lesson! What an awful lesson!" There was no answer, but he could hear the young man sobbing at the window. "Pray, Dorian, pray," he murmured. "What is it that one was taught to say in one's boyhood? 'Lead us not into temptation. Forgive us our sins. Wash away our iniquities.' Let us say that together. The prayer of your pride has been answered. The prayer of your repentance will be answered also. I worshipped you too much. I am punished for it. You worshipped yourself too much. We are both punished." Dorian Gray turned slowly around and looked at him with tear-dimmed eyes. "It is too late, Basil," he faltered. "It is never too late, Dorian. Let us kneel down and try if we cannot remember a prayer. Isn't there a verse somewhere, 'Though your sins be as scarlet, yet I will make them as white as snow'?" "Those words mean nothing to me now." "Hush! Don't say that. You have done enough evil in your life. My God! Don't you see that accursed thing leering at us?" Dorian Gray glanced at the picture, and suddenly an uncontrollable feeling of hatred for Basil Hallward came over him, as though it had been suggested to him by the image on the canvas, whispered into his ear by those grinning lips. The mad passions of a hunted animal stirred within him, and he loathed the man who was seated at the table, more than in his whole life he had ever loathed anything. He glanced wildly around. Something glimmered on the top of the painted chest that faced him. His eye fell on it. He knew what it was. It was a knife that he had brought up, some days before, to cut a piece of cord, and had forgotten to take away with him. He moved slowly towards it, passing Hallward as he did so. As soon as he got behind him, he seized it and turned round. Hallward stirred in his chair as if he was going to rise. He rushed at him and dug the knife into the great vein that is behind the ear, crushing the man's head down on the table and stabbing again and again. There was a stifled groan and the horrible sound of some one choking with blood. Three times the outstretched arms shot up convulsively, waving grotesque, stiff-fingered hands in the air. He stabbed him twice more, but the man did not move. Something began to trickle on the floor. He waited for a moment, still pressing the head down. Then he threw the knife on the table, and listened. He could hear nothing, but the drip, drip on the threadbare carpet. He opened the door and went out on the landing. The house was absolutely quiet. No one was about. For a few seconds he stood bending over the balustrade and peering down into the black seething well of darkness. Then he took out the key and returned to the room, locking himself in as he did so. The thing was still seated in the chair, straining over the table with bowed head, and humped back, and long fantastic arms. Had it not been for the red jagged tear in the neck and the clotted black pool that was slowly widening on the table, one would have said that the man was simply asleep. How quickly it had all been done! He felt strangely calm, and walking over to the window, opened it and stepped out on the balcony. The wind had blown the fog away, and the sky was like a monstrous peacock's tail, starred with myriads of golden eyes. He looked down and saw the policeman going his rounds and flashing the long beam of his lantern on the doors of the silent houses. The crimson spot of a prowling hansom gleamed at the corner and then vanished. A woman in a fluttering shawl was creeping slowly by the railings, staggering as she went. Now and then she stopped and peered back. Once, she began to sing in a hoarse voice. The policeman strolled over and said something to her. She stumbled away, laughing. A bitter blast swept across the square. The gas-lamps flickered and became blue, and the leafless trees shook their black iron branches to and fro. He shivered and went back, closing the window behind him. Having reached the door, he turned the key and opened it. He did not even glance at the murdered man. He felt that the secret of the whole thing was not to realize the situation. The friend who had painted the fatal portrait to which all his misery had been due had gone out of his life. That was enough. Then he remembered the lamp. It was a rather curious one of Moorish workmanship, made of dull silver inlaid with arabesques of burnished steel, and studded with coarse turquoises. Perhaps it might be missed by his servant, and questions would be asked. He hesitated for a moment, then he turned back and took it from the table. He could not help seeing the dead thing. How still it was! How horribly white the long hands looked! It was like a dreadful wax image. Having locked the door behind him, he crept quietly downstairs. The woodwork creaked and seemed to cry out as if in pain. He stopped several times and waited. No: everything was still. It was merely the sound of his own footsteps. When he reached the library, he saw the bag and coat in the corner. They must be hidden away somewhere. He unlocked a secret press that was in the wainscoting, a press in which he kept his own curious disguises, and put them into it. He could easily burn them afterwards. Then he pulled out his watch. It was twenty minutes to two. He sat down and began to think. Every year--every month, almost--men were strangled in England for what he had done. There had been a madness of murder in the air. Some red star had come too close to the earth.... And yet, what evidence was there against him? Basil Hallward had left the house at eleven. No one had seen him come in again. Most of the servants were at Selby Royal. His valet had gone to bed.... Paris! Yes. It was to Paris that Basil had gone, and by the midnight train, as he had intended. With his curious reserved habits, it would be months before any suspicions would be roused. Months! Everything could be destroyed long before then. A sudden thought struck him. He put on his fur coat and hat and went out into the hall. There he paused, hearing the slow heavy tread of the policeman on the pavement outside and seeing the flash of the bull's-eye reflected in the window. He waited and held his breath. After a few moments he drew back the latch and slipped out, shutting the door very gently behind him. Then he began ringing the bell. In about five minutes his valet appeared, half-dressed and looking very drowsy. "I am sorry to have had to wake you up, Francis," he said, stepping in; "but I had forgotten my latch-key. What time is it?" "Ten minutes past two, sir," answered the man, looking at the clock and blinking. "Ten minutes past two? How horribly late! You must wake me at nine to-morrow. I have some work to do." "All right, sir." "Did any one call this evening?" "Mr. Hallward, sir. He stayed here till eleven, and then he went away to catch his train." "Oh! I am sorry I didn't see him. Did he leave any message?" "No, sir, except that he would write to you from Paris, if he did not find you at the club." "That will do, Francis. Don't forget to call me at nine to-morrow." "No, sir." The man shambled down the passage in his slippers. Dorian Gray threw his hat and coat upon the table and passed into the library. For a quarter of an hour he walked up and down the room, biting his lip and thinking. Then he took down the Blue Book from one of the shelves and began to turn over the leaves. "Alan Campbell, 152, Hertford Street, Mayfair." Yes; that was the man he wanted.

Chapters 12-13

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219150422/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/p/the-picture-of-dorian-gray/summary-and-analysis/chapters-1213

It is the evening before Dorian's thirty-eighth birthday, and he has dined with Lord Henry. Around eleven o'clock, wrapped in furs against the cold, he walks through the heavy fog toward home. Basil passes him on the street from the opposite direction. Dorian, not eager to encounter the old friend, continues toward his house; Basil, however, turns and quickly catches up. Basil plans to leave for Paris, catching a night train to the English Channel. He feels fortunate to find Dorian since he must talk with him and has been waiting for him at Dorian's home. Dorian and Basil go to Dorian's home. Basil, discussing Dorian's reputation, notes that horrible things are being said about his young friend. Dorian's friendship seems destructive or even fatal to very young men: One committed suicide; another was forced to leave England with a "tarnished name"; a third found a "dreadful end"; a fourth lost his career; a fifth lost his social standing. Dorian responds with contempt. He is interested only in the scandals of others; his own so-called scandals lack "the charm of novelty." He answers that he is not responsible for the flaws of his acquaintances. Basil persists. Dorian's effect on his friends speaks for itself. He has "filled them with a madness for pleasure." Then there is Lady Gwendolyn, Lord Henry's sister. Prior to knowing Dorian, "not a breath of scandal had ever touched her." Now, no decent lady will even drive in the park with her. The list goes on. Dorian has been seen sneaking out of "dreadful houses" and visiting "the foulest dens" in London. Basil wants to hear Dorian deny the accusations against him. Basil says that he can't believe the rumors when he sees Dorian's innocent and pure face. However, he needs to know the truth, to see Dorian's soul; but, as Basil says, only God can do that. Dorian laughs bitterly at Basil's preaching. He agrees to allow Basil to see his soul -- the portrait. Mad with pride, he tells Basil that no one will believe it if Basil should tell them what he sees, or they will simply admire Dorian the more. He leads Basil up the stairs to see the portrait. In the attic schoolroom, Dorian challenges Basil: "So you think it is only God who sees the soul, Basil? Draw the curtain back, and you will see mine." Basil hesitates, and Dorian tears the curtain from its rod and flings it to the floor. Basil is horrified to see the hideous face in the painting with its evil grin. The face is recognizable as Dorian's, but it is aged and corrupt. Basil is overcome by "disgust and loathing" and asks Dorian to explain what the image in the portrait means. Dorian recalls the wish that he made that fateful day in Basil's studio, and Basil is horrified and incredulous. Basil tries to rationalize the change in the portrait: Mildew has transformed the portrait, or perhaps the paints were fouled. Besides, Dorian had told him that he destroyed the painting. Dorian corrects him: "I was wrong. It has destroyed me." He bitterly asks if Basil can still see his "ideal" in the portrait. It is, after all, the face of Dorian's soul. Basil is overcome with the ugliness of the portrait and collapses in a chair. He implores Dorian to pray, pointing out that if Dorian's previous prayer of pride was answered, surely his prayer of repentance will be, too. Dorian's eyes fill with tears, and he is momentarily filled with despair. "It is too late, Basil," he answers. Basil pleads that it is never too late. They must repent; he, too, is guilty, but they can still be forgiven. At that moment, Dorian looks at the portrait, and it seems to send him a command. An "uncontrollable feeling of hatred for Basil Hallward" overwhelms him. He grabs a knife lying on a nearby chest and plunges it into a large vein behind Basil's ear. He stabs his old friend repeatedly, and after a brief struggle, Basil is dead. Quietly Dorian returns to the library and hides Basil's bag and coat in a secret closet where he keeps his disguises. Collecting his thoughts, he realizes that many men are hanged for what he has just done. However, there is little evidence against him. Basil had the odd habit of disappearing without telling people where he was going, and people will think he has gone to Paris. Feeling no remorse, Dorian quickly thinks of a plan to disguise his actions. Carefully he leaves the house, taking care to avoid the notice of a policeman on the street. Then he turns and rings his own doorbell. It takes nearly five minutes for Francis, the valet, to answer. Dorian establishes an alibi by checking the time with Francis: ten past two in the morning. He asks if anyone visited in his absence. Francis says that Mr. Hallward stayed until eleven, when he left to catch his train. Dorian asks to be wakened at nine in the morning, and Francis shuffles back to bed. Dorian reflects on the situation in the library. The chapter ends as Dorian takes down a directory and locates a name and address: Alan Campbell, 152, Hertford Street, Mayfair.

Ever the playwright, Wilde divides this climactic action into two chapters in order to create a dramatic pause before the men ascend the staircase to view the portrait. Chapter 12 serves only to bring the two characters together and set up the critical events in Chapter 13. The three key events in Chapter 13 build to a dramatic climax just as they might on the stage. The first event is the shocking unveiling of the portrait. Unlike Lord Henry -- and now -- Dorian, Basil is a relatively unassuming, decent man. He has come to see Dorian because he is genuinely concerned about his young friend who has built quite a chilling reputation for himself in the past eighteen years. Basil wants to be told that the rumors about Dorian are wrong; his motivations for confronting Dorian are entirely selfless and honest. When he sees the painting, the sin it reveals leaves Basil shaken. The second key event in Chapter 13 -- Basil's asking Dorian to absolve his sins -- is an essential ingredient in the Faust theme. Realizing what has taken place with the portrait and Dorian's life, and feeling some guilt for his own involvement, Basil pleads with Dorian to let go of his pride and pray for absolution. His concern for Dorian's corrupted soul can be seen as the only truly good and pure act in the novel, and it provides a striking and tragic contrast to Dorian's response: "It is too late, Basil," and "Those words mean nothing to me now." Typically, the central figure in the Faust legend indulges in despair, feeling that his sin is so great that he no longer can be saved. He cannot be saved because the combination of pride and despair keep him from seeking forgiveness. Dorian's problem is essentially this, his unwillingness to ask for forgiveness. In addition, there is the question of whether Dorian even wants to change his life. He states that he does not know whether he regrets the wish that evidently made the contract. At this point, the third important event of the chapter occurs. Dorian seems to receive some sort of message from the image on the canvas and is driven to murder his old friend. Basil's death conveniently removes the most immediate and serious threat to Dorian's way of life and his pact with the forces of evil. After the murder, he feels oddly calm and goes about the business of removing evidence and establishing an alibi. In the coolness of Dorian's actions after he kills Basil, the reader sees that Dorian has spoken at least a few truthful words during his corrupt life -- his admission that it is too late to save his soul. Dorian kills the only real friend he has, and with that, he kills the only chance he has to redeem his soul. Glossary ulster a long, loose overcoat made of heavy, strong fabric; originally made in Ulster, Ireland. Gladstone bag light hand luggage consisting of two hinged compartments. Anglomanie a combination of New Latin and French, the term indicates a mania for things English. hock a white Rhine wine; wine from Hochheim in Germany. profligate a person given over to excessive devotion to pleasure. curate a clergyman in charge of a parish or one who assists a rector. cassone Italian, "large cabinet." wainscoting paneling; finishing the lower part of an interior wall with materials different from the upper part. parody a mocking imitation of a literary or an artistic work. Moorish regarding the Moslems of mixed Berber and Arab descent living mostly in northern Africa.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/30.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Brothers Karamazov/section_29_part_0.txt

The Brothers Karamazov.book 4.chapter 6

book 4, chapter 6

{"name": "Book 4, Chapter 6", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-4-chapter-6", "summary": "Alyosha heads off for Snegiryov's, but, as he has to pass his brother Dmitri's house on the way, he decides to stop and see if he's around. Dmitri's landlord insists he's not around, so Alyosha continues on his way. At Snegiryov's, Alyosha hesitates to introduce himself, but Snegiryov invites him to make himself at home in his humble cottage. Crowded into the room is the rest of Snegiryov's family, including his ill wife and two daughters. When Alyosha mentions the incident with Dmitri, the young boy who bit him earlier emerges from behind a curtain in the corner. Alyosha denies that that's what his visit is about, but Snegiryov offers to whip the boy, which appalls Alyosha. Bust as suddenly, Snegiryov refuses and even yells angrily at Alyosha. Alyosha tries to calm Snegiryov down by reassuring him that Dmitri will apologize and make amends if necessary. Snegiryov seems calmer and introduces Alyosha to his wife. But his behavior - and his wife's - annoy his children, so Snegiryov recommends that Alyosha follow him outside.", "analysis": ""}

Chapter VI. A Laceration In The Cottage He certainly was really grieved in a way he had seldom been before. He had rushed in like a fool, and meddled in what? In a love-affair. "But what do I know about it? What can I tell about such things?" he repeated to himself for the hundredth time, flushing crimson. "Oh, being ashamed would be nothing; shame is only the punishment I deserve. The trouble is I shall certainly have caused more unhappiness.... And Father Zossima sent me to reconcile and bring them together. Is this the way to bring them together?" Then he suddenly remembered how he had tried to join their hands, and he felt fearfully ashamed again. "Though I acted quite sincerely, I must be more sensible in the future," he concluded suddenly, and did not even smile at his conclusion. Katerina Ivanovna's commission took him to Lake Street, and his brother Dmitri lived close by, in a turning out of Lake Street. Alyosha decided to go to him in any case before going to the captain, though he had a presentiment that he would not find his brother. He suspected that he would intentionally keep out of his way now, but he must find him anyhow. Time was passing: the thought of his dying elder had not left Alyosha for one minute from the time he set off from the monastery. There was one point which interested him particularly about Katerina Ivanovna's commission; when she had mentioned the captain's son, the little schoolboy who had run beside his father crying, the idea had at once struck Alyosha that this must be the schoolboy who had bitten his finger when he, Alyosha, asked him what he had done to hurt him. Now Alyosha felt practically certain of this, though he could not have said why. Thinking of another subject was a relief, and he resolved to think no more about the "mischief" he had done, and not to torture himself with remorse, but to do what he had to do, let come what would. At that thought he was completely comforted. Turning to the street where Dmitri lodged, he felt hungry, and taking out of his pocket the roll he had brought from his father's, he ate it. It made him feel stronger. Dmitri was not at home. The people of the house, an old cabinet-maker, his son, and his old wife, looked with positive suspicion at Alyosha. "He hasn't slept here for the last three nights. Maybe he has gone away," the old man said in answer to Alyosha's persistent inquiries. Alyosha saw that he was answering in accordance with instructions. When he asked whether he were not at Grushenka's or in hiding at Foma's (Alyosha spoke so freely on purpose), all three looked at him in alarm. "They are fond of him, they are doing their best for him," thought Alyosha. "That's good." At last he found the house in Lake Street. It was a decrepit little house, sunk on one side, with three windows looking into the street, and with a muddy yard, in the middle of which stood a solitary cow. He crossed the yard and found the door opening into the passage. On the left of the passage lived the old woman of the house with her old daughter. Both seemed to be deaf. In answer to his repeated inquiry for the captain, one of them at last understood that he was asking for their lodgers, and pointed to a door across the passage. The captain's lodging turned out to be a simple cottage room. Alyosha had his hand on the iron latch to open the door, when he was struck by the strange hush within. Yet he knew from Katerina Ivanovna's words that the man had a family. "Either they are all asleep or perhaps they have heard me coming and are waiting for me to open the door. I'd better knock first," and he knocked. An answer came, but not at once, after an interval of perhaps ten seconds. "Who's there?" shouted some one in a loud and very angry voice. Then Alyosha opened the door and crossed the threshold. He found himself in a regular peasant's room. Though it was large, it was cumbered up with domestic belongings of all sorts, and there were several people in it. On the left was a large Russian stove. From the stove to the window on the left was a string running across the room, and on it there were rags hanging. There was a bedstead against the wall on each side, right and left, covered with knitted quilts. On the one on the left was a pyramid of four print-covered pillows, each smaller than the one beneath. On the other there was only one very small pillow. The opposite corner was screened off by a curtain or a sheet hung on a string. Behind this curtain could be seen a bed made up on a bench and a chair. The rough square table of plain wood had been moved into the middle window. The three windows, which consisted each of four tiny greenish mildewy panes, gave little light, and were close shut, so that the room was not very light and rather stuffy. On the table was a frying-pan with the remains of some fried eggs, a half-eaten piece of bread, and a small bottle with a few drops of vodka. A woman of genteel appearance, wearing a cotton gown, was sitting on a chair by the bed on the left. Her face was thin and yellow, and her sunken cheeks betrayed at the first glance that she was ill. But what struck Alyosha most was the expression in the poor woman's eyes--a look of surprised inquiry and yet of haughty pride. And while he was talking to her husband, her big brown eyes moved from one speaker to the other with the same haughty and questioning expression. Beside her at the window stood a young girl, rather plain, with scanty reddish hair, poorly but very neatly dressed. She looked disdainfully at Alyosha as he came in. Beside the other bed was sitting another female figure. She was a very sad sight, a young girl of about twenty, but hunchback and crippled "with withered legs," as Alyosha was told afterwards. Her crutches stood in the corner close by. The strikingly beautiful and gentle eyes of this poor girl looked with mild serenity at Alyosha. A man of forty-five was sitting at the table, finishing the fried eggs. He was spare, small and weakly built. He had reddish hair and a scanty light-colored beard, very much like a wisp of tow (this comparison and the phrase "a wisp of tow" flashed at once into Alyosha's mind for some reason, he remembered it afterwards). It was obviously this gentleman who had shouted to him, as there was no other man in the room. But when Alyosha went in, he leapt up from the bench on which he was sitting, and, hastily wiping his mouth with a ragged napkin, darted up to Alyosha. "It's a monk come to beg for the monastery. A nice place to come to!" the girl standing in the left corner said aloud. The man spun round instantly towards her and answered her in an excited and breaking voice: "No, Varvara, you are wrong. Allow me to ask," he turned again to Alyosha, "what has brought you to--our retreat?" Alyosha looked attentively at him. It was the first time he had seen him. There was something angular, flurried and irritable about him. Though he had obviously just been drinking, he was not drunk. There was extraordinary impudence in his expression, and yet, strange to say, at the same time there was fear. He looked like a man who had long been kept in subjection and had submitted to it, and now had suddenly turned and was trying to assert himself. Or, better still, like a man who wants dreadfully to hit you but is horribly afraid you will hit him. In his words and in the intonation of his shrill voice there was a sort of crazy humor, at times spiteful and at times cringing, and continually shifting from one tone to another. The question about "our retreat" he had asked as it were quivering all over, rolling his eyes, and skipping up so close to Alyosha that he instinctively drew back a step. He was dressed in a very shabby dark cotton coat, patched and spotted. He wore checked trousers of an extremely light color, long out of fashion, and of very thin material. They were so crumpled and so short that he looked as though he had grown out of them like a boy. "I am Alexey Karamazov," Alyosha began in reply. "I quite understand that, sir," the gentleman snapped out at once to assure him that he knew who he was already. "I am Captain Snegiryov, sir, but I am still desirous to know precisely what has led you--" "Oh, I've come for nothing special. I wanted to have a word with you--if only you allow me." "In that case, here is a chair, sir; kindly be seated. That's what they used to say in the old comedies, 'kindly be seated,' " and with a rapid gesture he seized an empty chair (it was a rough wooden chair, not upholstered) and set it for him almost in the middle of the room; then, taking another similar chair for himself, he sat down facing Alyosha, so close to him that their knees almost touched. "Nikolay Ilyitch Snegiryov, sir, formerly a captain in the Russian infantry, put to shame for his vices, but still a captain. Though I might not be one now for the way I talk; for the last half of my life I've learnt to say 'sir.' It's a word you use when you've come down in the world." "That's very true," smiled Alyosha. "But is it used involuntarily or on purpose?" "As God's above, it's involuntary, and I usen't to use it! I didn't use the word 'sir' all my life, but as soon as I sank into low water I began to say 'sir.' It's the work of a higher power. I see you are interested in contemporary questions, but how can I have excited your curiosity, living as I do in surroundings impossible for the exercise of hospitality?" "I've come--about that business." "About what business?" the captain interrupted impatiently. "About your meeting with my brother Dmitri Fyodorovitch," Alyosha blurted out awkwardly. "What meeting, sir? You don't mean that meeting? About my 'wisp of tow,' then?" He moved closer so that his knees positively knocked against Alyosha. His lips were strangely compressed like a thread. "What wisp of tow?" muttered Alyosha. "He is come to complain of me, father!" cried a voice familiar to Alyosha--the voice of the schoolboy--from behind the curtain. "I bit his finger just now." The curtain was pulled, and Alyosha saw his assailant lying on a little bed made up on the bench and the chair in the corner under the ikons. The boy lay covered by his coat and an old wadded quilt. He was evidently unwell, and, judging by his glittering eyes, he was in a fever. He looked at Alyosha without fear, as though he felt he was at home and could not be touched. "What! Did he bite your finger?" The captain jumped up from his chair. "Was it your finger he bit?" "Yes. He was throwing stones with other schoolboys. There were six of them against him alone. I went up to him, and he threw a stone at me and then another at my head. I asked him what I had done to him. And then he rushed at me and bit my finger badly, I don't know why." "I'll thrash him, sir, at once--this minute!" The captain jumped up from his seat. "But I am not complaining at all, I am simply telling you ... I don't want him to be thrashed. Besides, he seems to be ill." "And do you suppose I'd thrash him? That I'd take my Ilusha and thrash him before you for your satisfaction? Would you like it done at once, sir?" said the captain, suddenly turning to Alyosha, as though he were going to attack him. "I am sorry about your finger, sir; but instead of thrashing Ilusha, would you like me to chop off my four fingers with this knife here before your eyes to satisfy your just wrath? I should think four fingers would be enough to satisfy your thirst for vengeance. You won't ask for the fifth one too?" He stopped short with a catch in his throat. Every feature in his face was twitching and working; he looked extremely defiant. He was in a sort of frenzy. "I think I understand it all now," said Alyosha gently and sorrowfully, still keeping his seat. "So your boy is a good boy, he loves his father, and he attacked me as the brother of your assailant.... Now I understand it," he repeated thoughtfully. "But my brother Dmitri Fyodorovitch regrets his action, I know that, and if only it is possible for him to come to you, or better still, to meet you in that same place, he will ask your forgiveness before every one--if you wish it." "After pulling out my beard, you mean, he will ask my forgiveness? And he thinks that will be a satisfactory finish, doesn't he?" "Oh, no! On the contrary, he will do anything you like and in any way you like." "So if I were to ask his highness to go down on his knees before me in that very tavern--'The Metropolis' it's called--or in the market-place, he would do it?" "Yes, he would even go down on his knees." "You've pierced me to the heart, sir. Touched me to tears and pierced me to the heart! I am only too sensible of your brother's generosity. Allow me to introduce my family, my two daughters and my son--my litter. If I die, who will care for them, and while I live who but they will care for a wretch like me? That's a great thing the Lord has ordained for every man of my sort, sir. For there must be some one able to love even a man like me." "Ah, that's perfectly true!" exclaimed Alyosha. "Oh, do leave off playing the fool! Some idiot comes in, and you put us to shame!" cried the girl by the window, suddenly turning to her father with a disdainful and contemptuous air. "Wait a little, Varvara!" cried her father, speaking peremptorily but looking at her quite approvingly. "That's her character," he said, addressing Alyosha again. "And in all nature there was naught That could find favor in his eyes-- or rather in the feminine: that could find favor in her eyes. But now let me present you to my wife, Arina Petrovna. She is crippled, she is forty- three; she can move, but very little. She is of humble origin. Arina Petrovna, compose your countenance. This is Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov. Get up, Alexey Fyodorovitch." He took him by the hand and with unexpected force pulled him up. "You must stand up to be introduced to a lady. It's not the Karamazov, mamma, who ... h'm ... etcetera, but his brother, radiant with modest virtues. Come, Arina Petrovna, come, mamma, first your hand to be kissed." And he kissed his wife's hand respectfully and even tenderly. The girl at the window turned her back indignantly on the scene; an expression of extraordinary cordiality came over the haughtily inquiring face of the woman. "Good morning! Sit down, Mr. Tchernomazov," she said. "Karamazov, mamma, Karamazov. We are of humble origin," he whispered again. "Well, Karamazov, or whatever it is, but I always think of Tchernomazov.... Sit down. Why has he pulled you up? He calls me crippled, but I am not, only my legs are swollen like barrels, and I am shriveled up myself. Once I used to be so fat, but now it's as though I had swallowed a needle." "We are of humble origin," the captain muttered again. "Oh, father, father!" the hunchback girl, who had till then been silent on her chair, said suddenly, and she hid her eyes in her handkerchief. "Buffoon!" blurted out the girl at the window. "Have you heard our news?" said the mother, pointing at her daughters. "It's like clouds coming over; the clouds pass and we have music again. When we were with the army, we used to have many such guests. I don't mean to make any comparisons; every one to their taste. The deacon's wife used to come then and say, 'Alexandr Alexandrovitch is a man of the noblest heart, but Nastasya Petrovna,' she would say, 'is of the brood of hell.' 'Well,' I said, 'that's a matter of taste; but you are a little spitfire.' 'And you want keeping in your place,' says she. 'You black sword,' said I, 'who asked you to teach me?' 'But my breath,' says she, 'is clean, and yours is unclean.' 'You ask all the officers whether my breath is unclean.' And ever since then I had it in my mind. Not long ago I was sitting here as I am now, when I saw that very general come in who came here for Easter, and I asked him: 'Your Excellency,' said I, 'can a lady's breath be unpleasant?' 'Yes,' he answered; 'you ought to open a window- pane or open the door, for the air is not fresh here.' And they all go on like that! And what is my breath to them? The dead smell worse still! 'I won't spoil the air,' said I, 'I'll order some slippers and go away.' My darlings, don't blame your own mother! Nikolay Ilyitch, how is it I can't please you? There's only Ilusha who comes home from school and loves me. Yesterday he brought me an apple. Forgive your own mother--forgive a poor lonely creature! Why has my breath become unpleasant to you?" And the poor mad woman broke into sobs, and tears streamed down her cheeks. The captain rushed up to her. "Mamma, mamma, my dear, give over! You are not lonely. Every one loves you, every one adores you." He began kissing both her hands again and tenderly stroking her face; taking the dinner-napkin, he began wiping away her tears. Alyosha fancied that he too had tears in his eyes. "There, you see, you hear?" he turned with a sort of fury to Alyosha, pointing to the poor imbecile. "I see and hear," muttered Alyosha. "Father, father, how can you--with him! Let him alone!" cried the boy, sitting up in his bed and gazing at his father with glowing eyes. "Do give over fooling, showing off your silly antics which never lead to anything!" shouted Varvara, stamping her foot with passion. "Your anger is quite just this time, Varvara, and I'll make haste to satisfy you. Come, put on your cap, Alexey Fyodorovitch, and I'll put on mine. We will go out. I have a word to say to you in earnest, but not within these walls. This girl sitting here is my daughter Nina; I forgot to introduce her to you. She is a heavenly angel incarnate ... who has flown down to us mortals,... if you can understand." "There he is shaking all over, as though he is in convulsions!" Varvara went on indignantly. "And she there stamping her foot at me and calling me a fool just now, she is a heavenly angel incarnate too, and she has good reason to call me so. Come along, Alexey Fyodorovitch, we must make an end." And, snatching Alyosha's hand, he drew him out of the room into the street.

Book 4, Chapter 6

https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-4-chapter-6

Alyosha heads off for Snegiryov's, but, as he has to pass his brother Dmitri's house on the way, he decides to stop and see if he's around. Dmitri's landlord insists he's not around, so Alyosha continues on his way. At Snegiryov's, Alyosha hesitates to introduce himself, but Snegiryov invites him to make himself at home in his humble cottage. Crowded into the room is the rest of Snegiryov's family, including his ill wife and two daughters. When Alyosha mentions the incident with Dmitri, the young boy who bit him earlier emerges from behind a curtain in the corner. Alyosha denies that that's what his visit is about, but Snegiryov offers to whip the boy, which appalls Alyosha. Bust as suddenly, Snegiryov refuses and even yells angrily at Alyosha. Alyosha tries to calm Snegiryov down by reassuring him that Dmitri will apologize and make amends if necessary. Snegiryov seems calmer and introduces Alyosha to his wife. But his behavior - and his wife's - annoy his children, so Snegiryov recommends that Alyosha follow him outside.

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The Brothers Karamazov.book 8.chapter 7

book 8, chapter 7

{"name": "Book 8, Chapter 7", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-8-chapter-7", "summary": "Dmitri tells everyone not to be afraid - he just wants to hang out with Grushenka. Grushenka calms down and Maximov entertains everyone with a couple stories about his own stupidity. Grushenka gets increasingly irritated with the Poles, who keep speaking to her in Polish. At an awkward moment, Dmitri proposes a toast to Russia, to which everyone drinks except the Poles, who then cheer Poland. This irritates Grushenka even more. Then Maximov proposes a game of cards. Dmitri is losing a lot of money - so much so that Kalganov intervenes and stops him from playing. Then Dmitri has a brilliant idea. He invites the Poles to another room, where he proposes to give them 3,000 roubles to leave Grushenka. The Poles seem interested, until Dmitri reveals that he doesn't have all the money on him. Suddenly they stomp out of the room indignantly and denounce Dmitri's behavior. Grushenka has had it with the Poles and tells them off. As if on cue, some peasant women begin to sing a dance tune, and the innkeeper himself walks in and tells the Poles to shut up. The innkeeper reveals that the Poles have been cheating at cards all night. Still indignant, the Poles lock themselves up in a room.", "analysis": ""}

Chapter VII. The First And Rightful Lover With his long, rapid strides, Mitya walked straight up to the table. "Gentlemen," he said in a loud voice, almost shouting, yet stammering at every word, "I ... I'm all right! Don't be afraid!" he exclaimed, "I--there's nothing the matter," he turned suddenly to Grushenka, who had shrunk back in her chair towards Kalganov, and clasped his hand tightly. "I ... I'm coming, too. I'm here till morning. Gentlemen, may I stay with you till morning? Only till morning, for the last time, in this same room?" So he finished, turning to the fat little man, with the pipe, sitting on the sofa. The latter removed his pipe from his lips with dignity and observed severely: "_Panie_, we're here in private. There are other rooms." "Why, it's you, Dmitri Fyodorovitch! What do you mean?" answered Kalganov suddenly. "Sit down with us. How are you?" "Delighted to see you, dear ... and precious fellow, I always thought a lot of you." Mitya responded, joyfully and eagerly, at once holding out his hand across the table. "Aie! How tight you squeeze! You've quite broken my fingers," laughed Kalganov. "He always squeezes like that, always," Grushenka put in gayly, with a timid smile, seeming suddenly convinced from Mitya's face that he was not going to make a scene. She was watching him with intense curiosity and still some uneasiness. She was impressed by something about him, and indeed the last thing she expected of him was that he would come in and speak like this at such a moment. "Good evening," Maximov ventured blandly on the left. Mitya rushed up to him, too. "Good evening. You're here, too! How glad I am to find you here, too! Gentlemen, gentlemen, I--" (He addressed the Polish gentleman with the pipe again, evidently taking him for the most important person present.) "I flew here.... I wanted to spend my last day, my last hour in this room, in this very room ... where I, too, adored ... my queen.... Forgive me, _panie_," he cried wildly, "I flew here and vowed-- Oh, don't be afraid, it's my last night! Let's drink to our good understanding. They'll bring the wine at once.... I brought this with me." (Something made him pull out his bundle of notes.) "Allow me, _panie_! I want to have music, singing, a revel, as we had before. But the worm, the unnecessary worm, will crawl away, and there'll be no more of him. I will commemorate my day of joy on my last night." He was almost choking. There was so much, so much he wanted to say, but strange exclamations were all that came from his lips. The Pole gazed fixedly at him, at the bundle of notes in his hand; looked at Grushenka, and was in evident perplexity. "If my suverin lady is permitting--" he was beginning. "What does 'suverin' mean? 'Sovereign,' I suppose?" interrupted Grushenka. "I can't help laughing at you, the way you talk. Sit down, Mitya, what are you talking about? Don't frighten us, please. You won't frighten us, will you? If you won't, I am glad to see you ..." "Me, me frighten you?" cried Mitya, flinging up his hands. "Oh, pass me by, go your way, I won't hinder you!..." And suddenly he surprised them all, and no doubt himself as well, by flinging himself on a chair, and bursting into tears, turning his head away to the opposite wall, while his arms clasped the back of the chair tight, as though embracing it. "Come, come, what a fellow you are!" cried Grushenka reproachfully. "That's just how he comes to see me--he begins talking, and I can't make out what he means. He cried like that once before, and now he's crying again! It's shameful! Why are you crying? _As though you had anything to cry for!_" she added enigmatically, emphasizing each word with some irritability. "I ... I'm not crying.... Well, good evening!" He instantly turned round in his chair, and suddenly laughed, not his abrupt wooden laugh, but a long, quivering, inaudible nervous laugh. "Well, there you are again.... Come, cheer up, cheer up!" Grushenka said to him persuasively. "I'm very glad you've come, very glad, Mitya, do you hear, I'm very glad! I want him to stay here with us," she said peremptorily, addressing the whole company, though her words were obviously meant for the man sitting on the sofa. "I wish it, I wish it! And if he goes away I shall go, too!" she added with flashing eyes. "What my queen commands is law!" pronounced the Pole, gallantly kissing Grushenka's hand. "I beg you, _panie_, to join our company," he added politely, addressing Mitya. Mitya was jumping up with the obvious intention of delivering another tirade, but the words did not come. "Let's drink, _panie_," he blurted out instead of making a speech. Every one laughed. "Good heavens! I thought he was going to begin again!" Grushenka exclaimed nervously. "Do you hear, Mitya," she went on insistently, "don't prance about, but it's nice you've brought the champagne. I want some myself, and I can't bear liqueurs. And best of all, you've come yourself. We were fearfully dull here.... You've come for a spree again, I suppose? But put your money in your pocket. Where did you get such a lot?" Mitya had been, all this time, holding in his hand the crumpled bundle of notes on which the eyes of all, especially of the Poles, were fixed. In confusion he thrust them hurriedly into his pocket. He flushed. At that moment the innkeeper brought in an uncorked bottle of champagne, and glasses on a tray. Mitya snatched up the bottle, but he was so bewildered that he did not know what to do with it. Kalganov took it from him and poured out the champagne. "Another! Another bottle!" Mitya cried to the innkeeper, and, forgetting to clink glasses with the Pole whom he had so solemnly invited to drink to their good understanding, he drank off his glass without waiting for any one else. His whole countenance suddenly changed. The solemn and tragic expression with which he had entered vanished completely, and a look of something childlike came into his face. He seemed to have become suddenly gentle and subdued. He looked shyly and happily at every one, with a continual nervous little laugh, and the blissful expression of a dog who has done wrong, been punished, and forgiven. He seemed to have forgotten everything, and was looking round at every one with a childlike smile of delight. He looked at Grushenka, laughing continually, and bringing his chair close up to her. By degrees he had gained some idea of the two Poles, though he had formed no definite conception of them yet. The Pole on the sofa struck him by his dignified demeanor and his Polish accent; and, above all, by his pipe. "Well, what of it? It's a good thing he's smoking a pipe," he reflected. The Pole's puffy, middle-aged face, with its tiny nose and two very thin, pointed, dyed and impudent-looking mustaches, had not so far roused the faintest doubts in Mitya. He was not even particularly struck by the Pole's absurd wig made in Siberia, with love-locks foolishly combed forward over the temples. "I suppose it's all right since he wears a wig," he went on, musing blissfully. The other, younger Pole, who was staring insolently and defiantly at the company and listening to the conversation with silent contempt, still only impressed Mitya by his great height, which was in striking contrast to the Pole on the sofa. "If he stood up he'd be six foot three." The thought flitted through Mitya's mind. It occurred to him, too, that this Pole must be the friend of the other, as it were, a "bodyguard," and no doubt the big Pole was at the disposal of the little Pole with the pipe. But this all seemed to Mitya perfectly right and not to be questioned. In his mood of doglike submissiveness all feeling of rivalry had died away. Grushenka's mood and the enigmatic tone of some of her words he completely failed to grasp. All he understood, with thrilling heart, was that she was kind to him, that she had forgiven him, and made him sit by her. He was beside himself with delight, watching her sip her glass of champagne. The silence of the company seemed somehow to strike him, however, and he looked round at every one with expectant eyes. "Why are we sitting here though, gentlemen? Why don't you begin doing something?" his smiling eyes seemed to ask. "He keeps talking nonsense, and we were all laughing," Kalganov began suddenly, as though divining his thought, and pointing to Maximov. Mitya immediately stared at Kalganov and then at Maximov. "He's talking nonsense?" he laughed, his short, wooden laugh, seeming suddenly delighted at something--"ha ha!" "Yes. Would you believe it, he will have it that all our cavalry officers in the twenties married Polish women. That's awful rot, isn't it?" "Polish women?" repeated Mitya, perfectly ecstatic. Kalganov was well aware of Mitya's attitude to Grushenka, and he guessed about the Pole, too, but that did not so much interest him, perhaps did not interest him at all; what he was interested in was Maximov. He had come here with Maximov by chance, and he met the Poles here at the inn for the first time in his life. Grushenka he knew before, and had once been with some one to see her; but she had not taken to him. But here she looked at him very affectionately: before Mitya's arrival, she had been making much of him, but he seemed somehow to be unmoved by it. He was a boy, not over twenty, dressed like a dandy, with a very charming fair- skinned face, and splendid thick, fair hair. From his fair face looked out beautiful pale blue eyes, with an intelligent and sometimes even deep expression, beyond his age indeed, although the young man sometimes looked and talked quite like a child, and was not at all ashamed of it, even when he was aware of it himself. As a rule he was very willful, even capricious, though always friendly. Sometimes there was something fixed and obstinate in his expression. He would look at you and listen, seeming all the while to be persistently dreaming over something else. Often he was listless and lazy, at other times he would grow excited, sometimes, apparently, over the most trivial matters. "Only imagine, I've been taking him about with me for the last four days," he went on, indolently drawling his words, quite naturally though, without the slightest affectation. "Ever since your brother, do you remember, shoved him off the carriage and sent him flying. That made me take an interest in him at the time, and I took him into the country, but he keeps talking such rot I'm ashamed to be with him. I'm taking him back." "The gentleman has not seen Polish ladies, and says what is impossible," the Pole with the pipe observed to Maximov. He spoke Russian fairly well, much better, anyway, than he pretended. If he used Russian words, he always distorted them into a Polish form. "But I was married to a Polish lady myself," tittered Maximov. "But did you serve in the cavalry? You were talking about the cavalry. Were you a cavalry officer?" put in Kalganov at once. "Was he a cavalry officer indeed? Ha ha!" cried Mitya, listening eagerly, and turning his inquiring eyes to each as he spoke, as though there were no knowing what he might hear from each. "No, you see," Maximov turned to him. "What I mean is that those pretty Polish ladies ... when they danced the mazurka with our Uhlans ... when one of them dances a mazurka with a Uhlan she jumps on his knee like a kitten ... a little white one ... and the _pan_-father and _pan_-mother look on and allow it.... They allow it ... and next day the Uhlan comes and offers her his hand.... That's how it is ... offers her his hand, he he!" Maximov ended, tittering. "The _pan_ is a _lajdak_!" the tall Pole on the chair growled suddenly and crossed one leg over the other. Mitya's eye was caught by his huge greased boot, with its thick, dirty sole. The dress of both the Poles looked rather greasy. "Well, now it's _lajdak_! What's he scolding about?" said Grushenka, suddenly vexed. "_Pani_ Agrippina, what the gentleman saw in Poland were servant girls, and not ladies of good birth," the Pole with the pipe observed to Grushenka. "You can reckon on that," the tall Pole snapped contemptuously. "What next! Let him talk! People talk, why hinder them? It makes it cheerful," Grushenka said crossly. "I'm not hindering them, _pani_," said the Pole in the wig, with a long look at Grushenka, and relapsing into dignified silence he sucked his pipe again. "No, no. The Polish gentleman spoke the truth." Kalganov got excited again, as though it were a question of vast import. "He's never been in Poland, so how can he talk about it? I suppose you weren't married in Poland, were you?" "No, in the Province of Smolensk. Only, a Uhlan had brought her to Russia before that, my future wife, with her mamma and her aunt, and another female relation with a grown-up son. He brought her straight from Poland and gave her up to me. He was a lieutenant in our regiment, a very nice young man. At first he meant to marry her himself. But he didn't marry her, because she turned out to be lame." "So you married a lame woman?" cried Kalganov. "Yes. They both deceived me a little bit at the time, and concealed it. I thought she was hopping; she kept hopping.... I thought it was for fun." "So pleased she was going to marry you!" yelled Kalganov, in a ringing, childish voice. "Yes, so pleased. But it turned out to be quite a different cause. Afterwards, when we were married, after the wedding, that very evening, she confessed, and very touchingly asked forgiveness. 'I once jumped over a puddle when I was a child,' she said, 'and injured my leg.' He he!" Kalganov went off into the most childish laughter, almost falling on the sofa. Grushenka, too, laughed. Mitya was at the pinnacle of happiness. "Do you know, that's the truth, he's not lying now," exclaimed Kalganov, turning to Mitya; "and do you know, he's been married twice; it's his first wife he's talking about. But his second wife, do you know, ran away, and is alive now." "Is it possible?" said Mitya, turning quickly to Maximov with an expression of the utmost astonishment. "Yes. She did run away. I've had that unpleasant experience," Maximov modestly assented, "with a _monsieur_. And what was worse, she'd had all my little property transferred to her beforehand. 'You're an educated man,' she said to me. 'You can always get your living.' She settled my business with that. A venerable bishop once said to me: 'One of your wives was lame, but the other was too light-footed.' He he!" "Listen, listen!" cried Kalganov, bubbling over, "if he's telling lies--and he often is--he's only doing it to amuse us all. There's no harm in that, is there? You know, I sometimes like him. He's awfully low, but it's natural to him, eh? Don't you think so? Some people are low from self- interest, but he's simply so, from nature. Only fancy, he claims (he was arguing about it all the way yesterday) that Gogol wrote _Dead Souls_ about him. Do you remember, there's a landowner called Maximov in it, whom Nozdryov thrashed. He was charged, do you remember, 'for inflicting bodily injury with rods on the landowner Maximov in a drunken condition.' Would you believe it, he claims that he was that Maximov and that he was beaten! Now can it be so? Tchitchikov made his journey, at the very latest, at the beginning of the twenties, so that the dates don't fit. He couldn't have been thrashed then, he couldn't, could he?" It was difficult to imagine what Kalganov was excited about, but his excitement was genuine. Mitya followed his lead without protest. "Well, but if they did thrash him!" he cried, laughing. "It's not that they thrashed me exactly, but what I mean is--" put in Maximov. "What do you mean? Either they thrashed you or they didn't." "What o'clock is it, _panie_?" the Pole, with the pipe, asked his tall friend, with a bored expression. The other shrugged his shoulders in reply. Neither of them had a watch. "Why not talk? Let other people talk. Mustn't other people talk because you're bored?" Grushenka flew at him with evident intention of finding fault. Something seemed for the first time to flash upon Mitya's mind. This time the Pole answered with unmistakable irritability. "_Pani_, I didn't oppose it. I didn't say anything." "All right then. Come, tell us your story," Grushenka cried to Maximov. "Why are you all silent?" "There's nothing to tell, it's all so foolish," answered Maximov at once, with evident satisfaction, mincing a little. "Besides, all that's by way of allegory in Gogol, for he's made all the names have a meaning. Nozdryov was really called Nosov, and Kuvshinikov had quite a different name, he was called Shkvornev. Fenardi really was called Fenardi, only he wasn't an Italian but a Russian, and Mamsel Fenardi was a pretty girl with her pretty little legs in tights, and she had a little short skirt with spangles, and she kept turning round and round, only not for four hours but for four minutes only, and she bewitched every one..." "But what were you beaten for?" cried Kalganov. "For Piron!" answered Maximov. "What Piron?" cried Mitya. "The famous French writer, Piron. We were all drinking then, a big party of us, in a tavern at that very fair. They'd invited me, and first of all I began quoting epigrams. 'Is that you, Boileau? What a funny get-up!' and Boileau answers that he's going to a masquerade, that is to the baths, he he! And they took it to themselves, so I made haste to repeat another, very sarcastic, well known to all educated people: Yes, Sappho and Phaon are we! But one grief is weighing on me. You don't know your way to the sea! They were still more offended and began abusing me in the most unseemly way for it. And as ill-luck would have it, to set things right, I began telling a very cultivated anecdote about Piron, how he was not accepted into the French Academy, and to revenge himself wrote his own epitaph: Ci-git Piron qui ne fut rien, Pas meme academicien. They seized me and thrashed me." "But what for? What for?" "For my education. People can thrash a man for anything," Maximov concluded, briefly and sententiously. "Eh, that's enough! That's all stupid, I don't want to listen. I thought it would be amusing," Grushenka cut them short, suddenly. Mitya started, and at once left off laughing. The tall Pole rose upon his feet, and with the haughty air of a man, bored and out of his element, began pacing from corner to corner of the room, his hands behind his back. "Ah, he can't sit still," said Grushenka, looking at him contemptuously. Mitya began to feel anxious. He noticed besides, that the Pole on the sofa was looking at him with an irritable expression. "_Panie!_" cried Mitya, "let's drink! and the other _pan_, too! Let us drink." In a flash he had pulled three glasses towards him, and filled them with champagne. "To Poland, _panovie_, I drink to your Poland!" cried Mitya. "I shall be delighted, _panie_," said the Pole on the sofa, with dignity and affable condescension, and he took his glass. "And the other _pan_, what's his name? Drink, most illustrious, take your glass!" Mitya urged. "Pan Vrublevsky," put in the Pole on the sofa. Pan Vrublevsky came up to the table, swaying as he walked. "To Poland, _panovie!_" cried Mitya, raising his glass. "Hurrah!" All three drank. Mitya seized the bottle and again poured out three glasses. "Now to Russia, _panovie_, and let us be brothers!" "Pour out some for us," said Grushenka; "I'll drink to Russia, too!" "So will I," said Kalganov. "And I would, too ... to Russia, the old grandmother!" tittered Maximov. "All! All!" cried Mitya. "Trifon Borissovitch, some more bottles!" The other three bottles Mitya had brought with him were put on the table. Mitya filled the glasses. "To Russia! Hurrah!" he shouted again. All drank the toast except the Poles, and Grushenka tossed off her whole glass at once. The Poles did not touch theirs. "How's this, _panovie_?" cried Mitya, "won't you drink it?" Pan Vrublevsky took the glass, raised it and said with a resonant voice: "To Russia as she was before 1772." "Come, that's better!" cried the other Pole, and they both emptied their glasses at once. "You're fools, you _panovie_," broke suddenly from Mitya. "_Panie!_" shouted both the Poles, menacingly, setting on Mitya like a couple of cocks. Pan Vrublevsky was specially furious. "Can one help loving one's own country?" he shouted. "Be silent! Don't quarrel! I won't have any quarreling!" cried Grushenka imperiously, and she stamped her foot on the floor. Her face glowed, her eyes were shining. The effects of the glass she had just drunk were apparent. Mitya was terribly alarmed. "_Panovie_, forgive me! It was my fault, I'm sorry. Vrublevsky, _panie_ Vrublevsky, I'm sorry." "Hold your tongue, you, anyway! Sit down, you stupid!" Grushenka scolded with angry annoyance. Every one sat down, all were silent, looking at one another. "Gentlemen, I was the cause of it all," Mitya began again, unable to make anything of Grushenka's words. "Come, why are we sitting here? What shall we do ... to amuse ourselves again?" "Ach, it's certainly anything but amusing!" Kalganov mumbled lazily. "Let's play faro again, as we did just now," Maximov tittered suddenly. "Faro? Splendid!" cried Mitya. "If only the _panovie_--" "It's lite, _panovie_," the Pole on the sofa responded, as it were unwillingly. "That's true," assented Pan Vrublevsky. "Lite? What do you mean by 'lite'?" asked Grushenka. "Late, _pani_! 'a late hour' I mean," the Pole on the sofa explained. "It's always late with them. They can never do anything!" Grushenka almost shrieked in her anger. "They're dull themselves, so they want others to be dull. Before you came, Mitya, they were just as silent and kept turning up their noses at me." "My goddess!" cried the Pole on the sofa, "I see you're not well-disposed to me, that's why I'm gloomy. I'm ready, _panie_," added he, addressing Mitya. "Begin, _panie_," Mitya assented, pulling his notes out of his pocket, and laying two hundred-rouble notes on the table. "I want to lose a lot to you. Take your cards. Make the bank." "We'll have cards from the landlord, _panie_," said the little Pole, gravely and emphatically. "That's much the best way," chimed in Pan Vrublevsky. "From the landlord? Very good, I understand, let's get them from him. Cards!" Mitya shouted to the landlord. The landlord brought in a new, unopened pack, and informed Mitya that the girls were getting ready, and that the Jews with the cymbals would most likely be here soon; but the cart with the provisions had not yet arrived. Mitya jumped up from the table and ran into the next room to give orders, but only three girls had arrived, and Marya was not there yet. And he did not know himself what orders to give and why he had run out. He only told them to take out of the box the presents for the girls, the sweets, the toffee and the fondants. "And vodka for Andrey, vodka for Andrey!" he cried in haste. "I was rude to Andrey!" Suddenly Maximov, who had followed him out, touched him on the shoulder. "Give me five roubles," he whispered to Mitya. "I'll stake something at faro, too, he he!" "Capital! Splendid! Take ten, here!" Again he took all the notes out of his pocket and picked out one for ten roubles. "And if you lose that, come again, come again." "Very good," Maximov whispered joyfully, and he ran back again. Mitya, too, returned, apologizing for having kept them waiting. The Poles had already sat down, and opened the pack. They looked much more amiable, almost cordial. The Pole on the sofa had lighted another pipe and was preparing to throw. He wore an air of solemnity. "To your places, gentlemen," cried Pan Vrublevsky. "No, I'm not going to play any more," observed Kalganov, "I've lost fifty roubles to them just now." "The _pan_ had no luck, perhaps he'll be lucky this time," the Pole on the sofa observed in his direction. "How much in the bank? To correspond?" asked Mitya. "That's according, _panie_, maybe a hundred, maybe two hundred, as much as you will stake." "A million!" laughed Mitya. "The Pan Captain has heard of Pan Podvysotsky, perhaps?" "What Podvysotsky?" "In Warsaw there was a bank and any one comes and stakes against it. Podvysotsky comes, sees a thousand gold pieces, stakes against the bank. The banker says, '_Panie_ Podvysotsky, are you laying down the gold, or must we trust to your honor?' 'To my honor, _panie_,' says Podvysotsky. 'So much the better.' The banker throws the dice. Podvysotsky wins. 'Take it, _panie_,' says the banker, and pulling out the drawer he gives him a million. 'Take it, _panie_, this is your gain.' There was a million in the bank. 'I didn't know that,' says Podvysotsky. '_Panie_ Podvysotsky,' said the banker, 'you pledged your honor and we pledged ours.' Podvysotsky took the million." "That's not true," said Kalganov. "_Panie_ Kalganov, in gentlemanly society one doesn't say such things." "As if a Polish gambler would give away a million!" cried Mitya, but checked himself at once. "Forgive me, _panie_, it's my fault again, he would, he would give away a million, for honor, for Polish honor. You see how I talk Polish, ha ha! Here, I stake ten roubles, the knave leads." "And I put a rouble on the queen, the queen of hearts, the pretty little _panienotchka_, he he!" laughed Maximov, pulling out his queen, and, as though trying to conceal it from every one, he moved right up and crossed himself hurriedly under the table. Mitya won. The rouble won, too. "A corner!" cried Mitya. "I'll bet another rouble, a 'single' stake," Maximov muttered gleefully, hugely delighted at having won a rouble. "Lost!" shouted Mitya. "A 'double' on the seven!" The seven too was trumped. "Stop!" cried Kalganov suddenly. "Double! Double!" Mitya doubled his stakes, and each time he doubled the stake, the card he doubled was trumped by the Poles. The rouble stakes kept winning. "On the double!" shouted Mitya furiously. "You've lost two hundred, _panie_. Will you stake another hundred?" the Pole on the sofa inquired. "What? Lost two hundred already? Then another two hundred! All doubles!" And pulling his money out of his pocket, Mitya was about to fling two hundred roubles on the queen, but Kalganov covered it with his hand. "That's enough!" he shouted in his ringing voice. "What's the matter?" Mitya stared at him. "That's enough! I don't want you to play any more. Don't!" "Why?" "Because I don't. Hang it, come away. That's why. I won't let you go on playing." Mitya gazed at him in astonishment. "Give it up, Mitya. He may be right. You've lost a lot as it is," said Grushenka, with a curious note in her voice. Both the Poles rose from their seats with a deeply offended air. "Are you joking, _panie_?" said the short man, looking severely at Kalganov. "How dare you!" Pan Vrublevsky, too, growled at Kalganov. "Don't dare to shout like that," cried Grushenka. "Ah, you turkey-cocks!" Mitya looked at each of them in turn. But something in Grushenka's face suddenly struck him, and at the same instant something new flashed into his mind--a strange new thought! "_Pani_ Agrippina," the little Pole was beginning, crimson with anger, when Mitya suddenly went up to him and slapped him on the shoulder. "Most illustrious, two words with you." "What do you want?" "In the next room, I've two words to say to you, something pleasant, very pleasant. You'll be glad to hear it." The little _pan_ was taken aback and looked apprehensively at Mitya. He agreed at once, however, on condition that Pan Vrublevsky went with them. "The bodyguard? Let him come, and I want him, too. I must have him!" cried Mitya. "March, _panovie_!" "Where are you going?" asked Grushenka, anxiously. "We'll be back in one moment," answered Mitya. There was a sort of boldness, a sudden confidence shining in his eyes. His face had looked very different when he entered the room an hour before. He led the Poles, not into the large room where the chorus of girls was assembling and the table was being laid, but into the bedroom on the right, where the trunks and packages were kept, and there were two large beds, with pyramids of cotton pillows on each. There was a lighted candle on a small deal table in the corner. The small man and Mitya sat down to this table, facing each other, while the huge Vrublevsky stood beside them, his hands behind his back. The Poles looked severe but were evidently inquisitive. "What can I do for you, _panie_?" lisped the little Pole. "Well, look here, _panie_, I won't keep you long. There's money for you," he pulled out his notes. "Would you like three thousand? Take it and go your way." The Pole gazed open-eyed at Mitya, with a searching look. "Three thousand, _panie_?" He exchanged glances with Vrublevsky. "Three, _panovie_, three! Listen, _panie_, I see you're a sensible man. Take three thousand and go to the devil, and Vrublevsky with you--d'you hear? But, at once, this very minute, and for ever. You understand that, _panie_, for ever. Here's the door, you go out of it. What have you got there, a great-coat, a fur coat? I'll bring it out to you. They'll get the horses out directly, and then--good-by, _panie_!" Mitya awaited an answer with assurance. He had no doubts. An expression of extraordinary resolution passed over the Pole's face. "And the money, _panie_?" "The money, _panie_? Five hundred roubles I'll give you this moment for the journey, and as a first installment, and two thousand five hundred to- morrow, in the town--I swear on my honor, I'll get it, I'll get it at any cost!" cried Mitya. The Poles exchanged glances again. The short man's face looked more forbidding. "Seven hundred, seven hundred, not five hundred, at once, this minute, cash down!" Mitya added, feeling something wrong. "What's the matter, _panie_? Don't you trust me? I can't give you the whole three thousand straight off. If I give it, you may come back to her to-morrow.... Besides, I haven't the three thousand with me. I've got it at home in the town," faltered Mitya, his spirit sinking at every word he uttered. "Upon my word, the money's there, hidden." In an instant an extraordinary sense of personal dignity showed itself in the little man's face. "What next?" he asked ironically. "For shame!" and he spat on the floor. Pan Vrublevsky spat too. "You do that, _panie_," said Mitya, recognizing with despair that all was over, "because you hope to make more out of Grushenka? You're a couple of capons, that's what you are!" "This is a mortal insult!" The little Pole turned as red as a crab, and he went out of the room, briskly, as though unwilling to hear another word. Vrublevsky swung out after him, and Mitya followed, confused and crestfallen. He was afraid of Grushenka, afraid that the _pan_ would at once raise an outcry. And so indeed he did. The Pole walked into the room and threw himself in a theatrical attitude before Grushenka. "_Pani_ Agrippina, I have received a mortal insult!" he exclaimed. But Grushenka suddenly lost all patience, as though they had wounded her in the tenderest spot. "Speak Russian! Speak Russian!" she cried, "not another word of Polish! You used to talk Russian. You can't have forgotten it in five years." She was red with passion. "_Pani_ Agrippina--" "My name's Agrafena, Grushenka, speak Russian or I won't listen!" The Pole gasped with offended dignity, and quickly and pompously delivered himself in broken Russian: "_Pani_ Agrafena, I came here to forget the past and forgive it, to forget all that has happened till to-day--" "Forgive? Came here to forgive me?" Grushenka cut him short, jumping up from her seat. "Just so, _pani_, I'm not pusillanimous, I'm magnanimous. But I was astounded when I saw your lovers. Pan Mitya offered me three thousand, in the other room to depart. I spat in the _pan's_ face." "What? He offered you money for me?" cried Grushenka, hysterically. "Is it true, Mitya? How dare you? Am I for sale?" "_Panie, panie!_" yelled Mitya, "she's pure and shining, and I have never been her lover! That's a lie...." "How dare you defend me to him?" shrieked Grushenka. "It wasn't virtue kept me pure, and it wasn't that I was afraid of Kuzma, but that I might hold up my head when I met him, and tell him he's a scoundrel. And he did actually refuse the money?" "He took it! He took it!" cried Mitya; "only he wanted to get the whole three thousand at once, and I could only give him seven hundred straight off." "I see: he heard I had money, and came here to marry me!" "_Pani_ Agrippina!" cried the little Pole. "I'm--a knight, I'm--a nobleman, and not a _lajdak_. I came here to make you my wife and I find you a different woman, perverse and shameless." "Oh, go back where you came from! I'll tell them to turn you out and you'll be turned out," cried Grushenka, furious. "I've been a fool, a fool, to have been miserable these five years! And it wasn't for his sake, it was my anger made me miserable. And this isn't he at all! Was he like this? It might be his father! Where did you get your wig from? He was a falcon, but this is a gander. He used to laugh and sing to me.... And I've been crying for five years, damned fool, abject, shameless I was!" She sank back in her low chair and hid her face in her hands. At that instant the chorus of Mokroe began singing in the room on the left--a rollicking dance song. "A regular Sodom!" Vrublevsky roared suddenly. "Landlord, send the shameless hussies away!" The landlord, who had been for some time past inquisitively peeping in at the door, hearing shouts and guessing that his guests were quarreling, at once entered the room. "What are you shouting for? D'you want to split your throat?" he said, addressing Vrublevsky, with surprising rudeness. "Animal!" bellowed Pan Vrublevsky. "Animal? And what sort of cards were you playing with just now? I gave you a pack and you hid it. You played with marked cards! I could send you to Siberia for playing with false cards, d'you know that, for it's just the same as false banknotes...." And going up to the sofa he thrust his fingers between the sofa back and the cushion, and pulled out an unopened pack of cards. "Here's my pack unopened!" He held it up and showed it to all in the room. "From where I stood I saw him slip my pack away, and put his in place of it--you're a cheat and not a gentleman!" "And I twice saw the _pan_ change a card!" cried Kalganov. "How shameful! How shameful!" exclaimed Grushenka, clasping her hands, and blushing for genuine shame. "Good Lord, he's come to that!" "I thought so, too!" said Mitya. But before he had uttered the words, Vrublevsky, with a confused and infuriated face, shook his fist at Grushenka, shouting: "You low harlot!" Mitya flew at him at once, clutched him in both hands, lifted him in the air, and in one instant had carried him into the room on the right, from which they had just come. "I've laid him on the floor, there," he announced, returning at once, gasping with excitement. "He's struggling, the scoundrel! But he won't come back, no fear of that!..." He closed one half of the folding doors, and holding the other ajar called out to the little Pole: "Most illustrious, will you be pleased to retire as well?" "My dear Dmitri Fyodorovitch," said Trifon Borissovitch, "make them give you back the money you lost. It's as good as stolen from you." "I don't want my fifty roubles back," Kalganov declared suddenly. "I don't want my two hundred, either," cried Mitya, "I wouldn't take it for anything! Let him keep it as a consolation." "Bravo, Mitya! You're a trump, Mitya!" cried Grushenka, and there was a note of fierce anger in the exclamation. The little _pan_, crimson with fury but still mindful of his dignity, was making for the door, but he stopped short and said suddenly, addressing Grushenka: "_Pani_, if you want to come with me, come. If not, good-by." And swelling with indignation and importance he went to the door. This was a man of character: he had so good an opinion of himself that after all that had passed, he still expected that she would marry him. Mitya slammed the door after him. "Lock it," said Kalganov. But the key clicked on the other side, they had locked it from within. "That's capital!" exclaimed Grushenka relentlessly. "Serve them right!"

Book 8, Chapter 7

https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-8-chapter-7

Dmitri tells everyone not to be afraid - he just wants to hang out with Grushenka. Grushenka calms down and Maximov entertains everyone with a couple stories about his own stupidity. Grushenka gets increasingly irritated with the Poles, who keep speaking to her in Polish. At an awkward moment, Dmitri proposes a toast to Russia, to which everyone drinks except the Poles, who then cheer Poland. This irritates Grushenka even more. Then Maximov proposes a game of cards. Dmitri is losing a lot of money - so much so that Kalganov intervenes and stops him from playing. Then Dmitri has a brilliant idea. He invites the Poles to another room, where he proposes to give them 3,000 roubles to leave Grushenka. The Poles seem interested, until Dmitri reveals that he doesn't have all the money on him. Suddenly they stomp out of the room indignantly and denounce Dmitri's behavior. Grushenka has had it with the Poles and tells them off. As if on cue, some peasant women begin to sing a dance tune, and the innkeeper himself walks in and tells the Poles to shut up. The innkeeper reveals that the Poles have been cheating at cards all night. Still indignant, the Poles lock themselves up in a room.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/chapters_25_to_26.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Sense and Sensibility/section_17_part_0.txt

Sense and Sensibility.chapters 25-26

chapters 25-26

{"name": "Chapters 25-26", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101060302/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/s/sense-and-sensibility/summary-and-analysis/chapters-2526", "summary": "When Mrs. Jennings invited Elinor and Marianne to stay with her in London, Elinor at first refused, but Marianne was so eager to go, hoping to see Willoughby, that Elinor finally assented. Their departure took place in the first week of January. During the three-day journey, Marianne \"sat in silence . . . wrapt in her own meditations.\" However, Elinor made up for this rudeness by treating Mrs. Jennings with much solicitude, and the woman was kind and attentive to them in turn. As soon as they arrived, Elinor found Marianne writing to someone, and when she saw a large \"W\" on the envelope, she was sure it was to Willoughby. Elinor concluded from this that they must be engaged. When a visitor arrived, Marianne jumped up, certain it was her love. But it turned out to be Colonel Brandon, who had heard of their arrival through the Palmers. For Marianne, this \"was too much of a shock to be borne with calmness,\" and she ran out of the room in tears, much to the Colonel's surprise. On the next day, Marianne was in high spirits again, obviously expecting a visit from Willoughby. Charlotte Palmer called and they all went out shopping. When they returned, Marianne was greatly upset to find that Willoughby had neither called nor written to her. \"How very odd,\" she murmured. Elinor, observing her sister's behavior, was very uneasy. She determined that \"if appearances continued many days longer as unpleasant as they now were she would represent in the strongest manner to her mother the necessity of some serious inquiry into the affair.\"", "analysis": "Sense and Sensibility, though it is Austen's only \"London\" novel, does not give any insight into the life of the city at that period. The setting is purely social; the ladies shop, visit, and enjoy evening parties. Long visits were common in those days, one reason being the difficulty of travel; a visit of only a few days would not be worth the discomfort involved. Another reason was the fact that the now customary annual summer vacation did not exist. A family seldom moved from their home to rooms in an inn. Visits to the sea, or to inland watering places, were made less for enjoyment than for reasons of health. Note that in this chapter, Elinor's extremely good manners are again in strong contrast to Marianne's impoliteness. She makes herself attentive to her hostess and, during Colonel Brandon's visit, tries in every way to excuse her sister."}

Though Mrs. Jennings was in the habit of spending a large portion of the year at the houses of her children and friends, she was not without a settled habitation of her own. Since the death of her husband, who had traded with success in a less elegant part of the town, she had resided every winter in a house in one of the streets near Portman Square. Towards this home, she began on the approach of January to turn her thoughts, and thither she one day abruptly, and very unexpectedly by them, asked the elder Misses Dashwood to accompany her. Elinor, without observing the varying complexion of her sister, and the animated look which spoke no indifference to the plan, immediately gave a grateful but absolute denial for both, in which she believed herself to be speaking their united inclinations. The reason alleged was their determined resolution of not leaving their mother at that time of the year. Mrs. Jennings received the refusal with some surprise, and repeated her invitation immediately. "Oh, Lord! I am sure your mother can spare you very well, and I DO beg you will favour me with your company, for I've quite set my heart upon it. Don't fancy that you will be any inconvenience to me, for I shan't put myself at all out of my way for you. It will only be sending Betty by the coach, and I hope I can afford THAT. We three shall be able to go very well in my chaise; and when we are in town, if you do not like to go wherever I do, well and good, you may always go with one of my daughters. I am sure your mother will not object to it; for I have had such good luck in getting my own children off my hands that she will think me a very fit person to have the charge of you; and if I don't get one of you at least well married before I have done with you, it shall not be my fault. I shall speak a good word for you to all the young men, you may depend upon it." "I have a notion," said Sir John, "that Miss Marianne would not object to such a scheme, if her elder sister would come into it. It is very hard indeed that she should not have a little pleasure, because Miss Dashwood does not wish it. So I would advise you two, to set off for town, when you are tired of Barton, without saying a word to Miss Dashwood about it." "Nay," cried Mrs. Jennings, "I am sure I shall be monstrous glad of Miss Marianne's company, whether Miss Dashwood will go or not, only the more the merrier say I, and I thought it would be more comfortable for them to be together; because, if they got tired of me, they might talk to one another, and laugh at my old ways behind my back. But one or the other, if not both of them, I must have. Lord bless me! how do you think I can live poking by myself, I who have been always used till this winter to have Charlotte with me. Come, Miss Marianne, let us strike hands upon the bargain, and if Miss Dashwood will change her mind by and bye, why so much the better." "I thank you, ma'am, sincerely thank you," said Marianne, with warmth: "your invitation has insured my gratitude for ever, and it would give me such happiness, yes, almost the greatest happiness I am capable of, to be able to accept it. But my mother, my dearest, kindest mother,--I feel the justice of what Elinor has urged, and if she were to be made less happy, less comfortable by our absence--Oh! no, nothing should tempt me to leave her. It should not, must not be a struggle." Mrs. Jennings repeated her assurance that Mrs. Dashwood could spare them perfectly well; and Elinor, who now understood her sister, and saw to what indifference to almost every thing else she was carried by her eagerness to be with Willoughby again, made no farther direct opposition to the plan, and merely referred it to her mother's decision, from whom however she scarcely expected to receive any support in her endeavour to prevent a visit, which she could not approve of for Marianne, and which on her own account she had particular reasons to avoid. Whatever Marianne was desirous of, her mother would be eager to promote--she could not expect to influence the latter to cautiousness of conduct in an affair respecting which she had never been able to inspire her with distrust; and she dared not explain the motive of her own disinclination for going to London. That Marianne, fastidious as she was, thoroughly acquainted with Mrs. Jennings' manners, and invariably disgusted by them, should overlook every inconvenience of that kind, should disregard whatever must be most wounding to her irritable feelings, in her pursuit of one object, was such a proof, so strong, so full, of the importance of that object to her, as Elinor, in spite of all that had passed, was not prepared to witness. On being informed of the invitation, Mrs. Dashwood, persuaded that such an excursion would be productive of much amusement to both her daughters, and perceiving through all her affectionate attention to herself, how much the heart of Marianne was in it, would not hear of their declining the offer upon HER account; insisted on their both accepting it directly; and then began to foresee, with her usual cheerfulness, a variety of advantages that would accrue to them all, from this separation. "I am delighted with the plan," she cried, "it is exactly what I could wish. Margaret and I shall be as much benefited by it as yourselves. When you and the Middletons are gone, we shall go on so quietly and happily together with our books and our music! You will find Margaret so improved when you come back again! I have a little plan of alteration for your bedrooms too, which may now be performed without any inconvenience to any one. It is very right that you SHOULD go to town; I would have every young woman of your condition in life acquainted with the manners and amusements of London. You will be under the care of a motherly good sort of woman, of whose kindness to you I can have no doubt. And in all probability you will see your brother, and whatever may be his faults, or the faults of his wife, when I consider whose son he is, I cannot bear to have you so wholly estranged from each other." "Though with your usual anxiety for our happiness," said Elinor, "you have been obviating every impediment to the present scheme which occurred to you, there is still one objection which, in my opinion, cannot be so easily removed." Marianne's countenance sunk. "And what," said Mrs. Dashwood, "is my dear prudent Elinor going to suggest? What formidable obstacle is she now to bring forward? Do let me hear a word about the expense of it." "My objection is this; though I think very well of Mrs. Jennings's heart, she is not a woman whose society can afford us pleasure, or whose protection will give us consequence." "That is very true," replied her mother, "but of her society, separately from that of other people, you will scarcely have any thing at all, and you will almost always appear in public with Lady Middleton." "If Elinor is frightened away by her dislike of Mrs. Jennings," said Marianne, "at least it need not prevent MY accepting her invitation. I have no such scruples, and I am sure I could put up with every unpleasantness of that kind with very little effort." Elinor could not help smiling at this display of indifference towards the manners of a person, to whom she had often had difficulty in persuading Marianne to behave with tolerable politeness; and resolved within herself, that if her sister persisted in going, she would go likewise, as she did not think it proper that Marianne should be left to the sole guidance of her own judgment, or that Mrs. Jennings should be abandoned to the mercy of Marianne for all the comfort of her domestic hours. To this determination she was the more easily reconciled, by recollecting that Edward Ferrars, by Lucy's account, was not to be in town before February; and that their visit, without any unreasonable abridgement, might be previously finished. "I will have you BOTH go," said Mrs. Dashwood; "these objections are nonsensical. You will have much pleasure in being in London, and especially in being together; and if Elinor would ever condescend to anticipate enjoyment, she would foresee it there from a variety of sources; she would, perhaps, expect some from improving her acquaintance with her sister-in-law's family." Elinor had often wished for an opportunity of attempting to weaken her mother's dependence on the attachment of Edward and herself, that the shock might be less when the whole truth were revealed, and now on this attack, though almost hopeless of success, she forced herself to begin her design by saying, as calmly as she could, "I like Edward Ferrars very much, and shall always be glad to see him; but as to the rest of the family, it is a matter of perfect indifference to me, whether I am ever known to them or not." Mrs. Dashwood smiled, and said nothing. Marianne lifted up her eyes in astonishment, and Elinor conjectured that she might as well have held her tongue. After very little farther discourse, it was finally settled that the invitation should be fully accepted. Mrs. Jennings received the information with a great deal of joy, and many assurances of kindness and care; nor was it a matter of pleasure merely to her. Sir John was delighted; for to a man, whose prevailing anxiety was the dread of being alone, the acquisition of two, to the number of inhabitants in London, was something. Even Lady Middleton took the trouble of being delighted, which was putting herself rather out of her way; and as for the Miss Steeles, especially Lucy, they had never been so happy in their lives as this intelligence made them. Elinor submitted to the arrangement which counteracted her wishes with less reluctance than she had expected to feel. With regard to herself, it was now a matter of unconcern whether she went to town or not, and when she saw her mother so thoroughly pleased with the plan, and her sister exhilarated by it in look, voice, and manner, restored to all her usual animation, and elevated to more than her usual gaiety, she could not be dissatisfied with the cause, and would hardly allow herself to distrust the consequence. Marianne's joy was almost a degree beyond happiness, so great was the perturbation of her spirits and her impatience to be gone. Her unwillingness to quit her mother was her only restorative to calmness; and at the moment of parting her grief on that score was excessive. Her mother's affliction was hardly less, and Elinor was the only one of the three, who seemed to consider the separation as any thing short of eternal. Their departure took place in the first week in January. The Middletons were to follow in about a week. The Miss Steeles kept their station at the park, and were to quit it only with the rest of the family. Elinor could not find herself in the carriage with Mrs. Jennings, and beginning a journey to London under her protection, and as her guest, without wondering at her own situation, so short had their acquaintance with that lady been, so wholly unsuited were they in age and disposition, and so many had been her objections against such a measure only a few days before! But these objections had all, with that happy ardour of youth which Marianne and her mother equally shared, been overcome or overlooked; and Elinor, in spite of every occasional doubt of Willoughby's constancy, could not witness the rapture of delightful expectation which filled the whole soul and beamed in the eyes of Marianne, without feeling how blank was her own prospect, how cheerless her own state of mind in the comparison, and how gladly she would engage in the solicitude of Marianne's situation to have the same animating object in view, the same possibility of hope. A short, a very short time however must now decide what Willoughby's intentions were; in all probability he was already in town. Marianne's eagerness to be gone declared her dependence on finding him there; and Elinor was resolved not only upon gaining every new light as to his character which her own observation or the intelligence of others could give her, but likewise upon watching his behaviour to her sister with such zealous attention, as to ascertain what he was and what he meant, before many meetings had taken place. Should the result of her observations be unfavourable, she was determined at all events to open the eyes of her sister; should it be otherwise, her exertions would be of a different nature--she must then learn to avoid every selfish comparison, and banish every regret which might lessen her satisfaction in the happiness of Marianne. They were three days on their journey, and Marianne's behaviour as they travelled was a happy specimen of what future complaisance and companionableness to Mrs. Jennings might be expected to be. She sat in silence almost all the way, wrapt in her own meditations, and scarcely ever voluntarily speaking, except when any object of picturesque beauty within their view drew from her an exclamation of delight exclusively addressed to her sister. To atone for this conduct therefore, Elinor took immediate possession of the post of civility which she had assigned herself, behaved with the greatest attention to Mrs. Jennings, talked with her, laughed with her, and listened to her whenever she could; and Mrs. Jennings on her side treated them both with all possible kindness, was solicitous on every occasion for their ease and enjoyment, and only disturbed that she could not make them choose their own dinners at the inn, nor extort a confession of their preferring salmon to cod, or boiled fowls to veal cutlets. They reached town by three o'clock the third day, glad to be released, after such a journey, from the confinement of a carriage, and ready to enjoy all the luxury of a good fire. The house was handsome, and handsomely fitted up, and the young ladies were immediately put in possession of a very comfortable apartment. It had formerly been Charlotte's, and over the mantelpiece still hung a landscape in coloured silks of her performance, in proof of her having spent seven years at a great school in town to some effect. As dinner was not to be ready in less than two hours from their arrival, Elinor determined to employ the interval in writing to her mother, and sat down for that purpose. In a few moments Marianne did the same. "I am writing home, Marianne," said Elinor; "had not you better defer your letter for a day or two?" "I am NOT going to write to my mother," replied Marianne, hastily, and as if wishing to avoid any farther inquiry. Elinor said no more; it immediately struck her that she must then be writing to Willoughby; and the conclusion which as instantly followed was, that, however mysteriously they might wish to conduct the affair, they must be engaged. This conviction, though not entirely satisfactory, gave her pleasure, and she continued her letter with greater alacrity. Marianne's was finished in a very few minutes; in length it could be no more than a note; it was then folded up, sealed, and directed with eager rapidity. Elinor thought she could distinguish a large W in the direction; and no sooner was it complete than Marianne, ringing the bell, requested the footman who answered it to get that letter conveyed for her to the two-penny post. This decided the matter at once. Her spirits still continued very high; but there was a flutter in them which prevented their giving much pleasure to her sister, and this agitation increased as the evening drew on. She could scarcely eat any dinner, and when they afterwards returned to the drawing room, seemed anxiously listening to the sound of every carriage. It was a great satisfaction to Elinor that Mrs. Jennings, by being much engaged in her own room, could see little of what was passing. The tea things were brought in, and already had Marianne been disappointed more than once by a rap at a neighbouring door, when a loud one was suddenly heard which could not be mistaken for one at any other house, Elinor felt secure of its announcing Willoughby's approach, and Marianne, starting up, moved towards the door. Every thing was silent; this could not be borne many seconds; she opened the door, advanced a few steps towards the stairs, and after listening half a minute, returned into the room in all the agitation which a conviction of having heard him would naturally produce; in the ecstasy of her feelings at that instant she could not help exclaiming, "Oh, Elinor, it is Willoughby, indeed it is!" and seemed almost ready to throw herself into his arms, when Colonel Brandon appeared. It was too great a shock to be borne with calmness, and she immediately left the room. Elinor was disappointed too; but at the same time her regard for Colonel Brandon ensured his welcome with her; and she felt particularly hurt that a man so partial to her sister should perceive that she experienced nothing but grief and disappointment in seeing him. She instantly saw that it was not unnoticed by him, that he even observed Marianne as she quitted the room, with such astonishment and concern, as hardly left him the recollection of what civility demanded towards herself. "Is your sister ill?" said he. Elinor answered in some distress that she was, and then talked of head-aches, low spirits, and over fatigues; and of every thing to which she could decently attribute her sister's behaviour. He heard her with the most earnest attention, but seeming to recollect himself, said no more on the subject, and began directly to speak of his pleasure at seeing them in London, making the usual inquiries about their journey, and the friends they had left behind. In this calm kind of way, with very little interest on either side, they continued to talk, both of them out of spirits, and the thoughts of both engaged elsewhere. Elinor wished very much to ask whether Willoughby were then in town, but she was afraid of giving him pain by any enquiry after his rival; and at length, by way of saying something, she asked if he had been in London ever since she had seen him last. "Yes," he replied, with some embarrassment, "almost ever since; I have been once or twice at Delaford for a few days, but it has never been in my power to return to Barton." This, and the manner in which it was said, immediately brought back to her remembrance all the circumstances of his quitting that place, with the uneasiness and suspicions they had caused to Mrs. Jennings, and she was fearful that her question had implied much more curiosity on the subject than she had ever felt. Mrs. Jennings soon came in. "Oh! Colonel," said she, with her usual noisy cheerfulness, "I am monstrous glad to see you--sorry I could not come before--beg your pardon, but I have been forced to look about me a little, and settle my matters; for it is a long while since I have been at home, and you know one has always a world of little odd things to do after one has been away for any time; and then I have had Cartwright to settle with-- Lord, I have been as busy as a bee ever since dinner! But pray, Colonel, how came you to conjure out that I should be in town today?" "I had the pleasure of hearing it at Mr. Palmer's, where I have been dining." "Oh, you did; well, and how do they all do at their house? How does Charlotte do? I warrant you she is a fine size by this time." "Mrs. Palmer appeared quite well, and I am commissioned to tell you, that you will certainly see her to-morrow." "Ay, to be sure, I thought as much. Well, Colonel, I have brought two young ladies with me, you see--that is, you see but one of them now, but there is another somewhere. Your friend, Miss Marianne, too--which you will not be sorry to hear. I do not know what you and Mr. Willoughby will do between you about her. Ay, it is a fine thing to be young and handsome. Well! I was young once, but I never was very handsome--worse luck for me. However, I got a very good husband, and I don't know what the greatest beauty can do more. Ah! poor man! he has been dead these eight years and better. But Colonel, where have you been to since we parted? And how does your business go on? Come, come, let's have no secrets among friends." He replied with his accustomary mildness to all her inquiries, but without satisfying her in any. Elinor now began to make the tea, and Marianne was obliged to appear again. After her entrance, Colonel Brandon became more thoughtful and silent than he had been before, and Mrs. Jennings could not prevail on him to stay long. No other visitor appeared that evening, and the ladies were unanimous in agreeing to go early to bed. Marianne rose the next morning with recovered spirits and happy looks. The disappointment of the evening before seemed forgotten in the expectation of what was to happen that day. They had not long finished their breakfast before Mrs. Palmer's barouche stopped at the door, and in a few minutes she came laughing into the room: so delighted to see them all, that it was hard to say whether she received most pleasure from meeting her mother or the Miss Dashwoods again. So surprised at their coming to town, though it was what she had rather expected all along; so angry at their accepting her mother's invitation after having declined her own, though at the same time she would never have forgiven them if they had not come! "Mr. Palmer will be so happy to see you," said she; "What do you think he said when he heard of your coming with Mama? I forget what it was now, but it was something so droll!" After an hour or two spent in what her mother called comfortable chat, or in other words, in every variety of inquiry concerning all their acquaintance on Mrs. Jennings's side, and in laughter without cause on Mrs. Palmer's, it was proposed by the latter that they should all accompany her to some shops where she had business that morning, to which Mrs. Jennings and Elinor readily consented, as having likewise some purchases to make themselves; and Marianne, though declining it at first was induced to go likewise. Wherever they went, she was evidently always on the watch. In Bond Street especially, where much of their business lay, her eyes were in constant inquiry; and in whatever shop the party were engaged, her mind was equally abstracted from every thing actually before them, from all that interested and occupied the others. Restless and dissatisfied every where, her sister could never obtain her opinion of any article of purchase, however it might equally concern them both: she received no pleasure from anything; was only impatient to be at home again, and could with difficulty govern her vexation at the tediousness of Mrs. Palmer, whose eye was caught by every thing pretty, expensive, or new; who was wild to buy all, could determine on none, and dawdled away her time in rapture and indecision. It was late in the morning before they returned home; and no sooner had they entered the house than Marianne flew eagerly up stairs, and when Elinor followed, she found her turning from the table with a sorrowful countenance, which declared that no Willoughby had been there. "Has no letter been left here for me since we went out?" said she to the footman who then entered with the parcels. She was answered in the negative. "Are you quite sure of it?" she replied. "Are you certain that no servant, no porter has left any letter or note?" The man replied that none had. "How very odd!" said she, in a low and disappointed voice, as she turned away to the window. "How odd, indeed!" repeated Elinor within herself, regarding her sister with uneasiness. "If she had not known him to be in town she would not have written to him, as she did; she would have written to Combe Magna; and if he is in town, how odd that he should neither come nor write! Oh! my dear mother, you must be wrong in permitting an engagement between a daughter so young, a man so little known, to be carried on in so doubtful, so mysterious a manner! I long to inquire; and how will MY interference be borne." She determined, after some consideration, that if appearances continued many days longer as unpleasant as they now were, she would represent in the strongest manner to her mother the necessity of some serious enquiry into the affair. Mrs. Palmer and two elderly ladies of Mrs. Jennings's intimate acquaintance, whom she had met and invited in the morning, dined with them. The former left them soon after tea to fulfill her evening engagements; and Elinor was obliged to assist in making a whist table for the others. Marianne was of no use on these occasions, as she would never learn the game; but though her time was therefore at her own disposal, the evening was by no means more productive of pleasure to her than to Elinor, for it was spent in all the anxiety of expectation and the pain of disappointment. She sometimes endeavoured for a few minutes to read; but the book was soon thrown aside, and she returned to the more interesting employment of walking backwards and forwards across the room, pausing for a moment whenever she came to the window, in hopes of distinguishing the long-expected rap.

Chapters 25-26

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101060302/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/s/sense-and-sensibility/summary-and-analysis/chapters-2526

When Mrs. Jennings invited Elinor and Marianne to stay with her in London, Elinor at first refused, but Marianne was so eager to go, hoping to see Willoughby, that Elinor finally assented. Their departure took place in the first week of January. During the three-day journey, Marianne "sat in silence . . . wrapt in her own meditations." However, Elinor made up for this rudeness by treating Mrs. Jennings with much solicitude, and the woman was kind and attentive to them in turn. As soon as they arrived, Elinor found Marianne writing to someone, and when she saw a large "W" on the envelope, she was sure it was to Willoughby. Elinor concluded from this that they must be engaged. When a visitor arrived, Marianne jumped up, certain it was her love. But it turned out to be Colonel Brandon, who had heard of their arrival through the Palmers. For Marianne, this "was too much of a shock to be borne with calmness," and she ran out of the room in tears, much to the Colonel's surprise. On the next day, Marianne was in high spirits again, obviously expecting a visit from Willoughby. Charlotte Palmer called and they all went out shopping. When they returned, Marianne was greatly upset to find that Willoughby had neither called nor written to her. "How very odd," she murmured. Elinor, observing her sister's behavior, was very uneasy. She determined that "if appearances continued many days longer as unpleasant as they now were she would represent in the strongest manner to her mother the necessity of some serious inquiry into the affair."

Sense and Sensibility, though it is Austen's only "London" novel, does not give any insight into the life of the city at that period. The setting is purely social; the ladies shop, visit, and enjoy evening parties. Long visits were common in those days, one reason being the difficulty of travel; a visit of only a few days would not be worth the discomfort involved. Another reason was the fact that the now customary annual summer vacation did not exist. A family seldom moved from their home to rooms in an inn. Visits to the sea, or to inland watering places, were made less for enjoyment than for reasons of health. Note that in this chapter, Elinor's extremely good manners are again in strong contrast to Marianne's impoliteness. She makes herself attentive to her hostess and, during Colonel Brandon's visit, tries in every way to excuse her sister.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/27.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Sense and Sensibility/section_2_part_7.txt

Sense and Sensibility.chapter 27

chapter 27

{"name": "Chapter 27", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210419170735/https://www.gradesaver.com/sense-and-sensibility/study-guide/summary-chapters-21-30", "summary": "Sir John and Lady Middleton are expected in town in just a short time; Marianne continues to look forward to seeing Willoughby, and Elinor finds her greatest enjoyment in Colonel Brandon's daily visits. They return one day to find Willoughby's card, which gives Marianne great pleasure that he is in town and managed to drop by. Elinor still has not managed to find out if Marianne and Willoughby are engaged; she is much disturbed when Colonel Brandon approaches her and tells her that their engagement is widely known throughout town, though Elinor does not know of it. Elinor says that she is sure of their mutual affections, but when Colonel Brandon says that Willoughby should try to deserve Marianne, Elinor's doubts about Willoughby's character and intentions resurface.", "analysis": "Marianne makes a very pointed remark that again highlights the contrast between the characters of the two sisters. Marianne says they have nothing to tell each other because Marianne \"conceal nothing\" and Elinor \"communicate. Marianne's statement may be too harsh in its appraisal of Elinor's character, however the two girls are distinctly different in how they express themselves and in the amount of discretion with which they govern their behavior. Perhaps it is ironic that Elinor is trying to \"press for greater openness in Marianne\" at this point; indeed, Marianne may communicate nearly everything, except for the crucial information regarding her and Willoughby's relationship. Prudence becomes a theme of most importance, as rumors of Marianne and Willoughby's engagement could be very damaging if such an engagement is not real. Marianne will be exposed as flighty and subjected to even more damaging gossip, and her reputation could be at stake merely because she chooses to be open concerning her affections. Colonel Brandon shows himself to be a dramatic foil of Willoughby, in his concerns for prudence and reputation; his inquiry also foreshadows unpleasant realizations about Willoughby's character and intentions"}

"If this open weather holds much longer," said Mrs. Jennings, when they met at breakfast the following morning, "Sir John will not like leaving Barton next week; 'tis a sad thing for sportsmen to lose a day's pleasure. Poor souls! I always pity them when they do; they seem to take it so much to heart." "That is true," cried Marianne, in a cheerful voice, and walking to the window as she spoke, to examine the day. "I had not thought of that. This weather will keep many sportsmen in the country." It was a lucky recollection, all her good spirits were restored by it. "It is charming weather for THEM indeed," she continued, as she sat down to the breakfast table with a happy countenance. "How much they must enjoy it! But" (with a little return of anxiety) "it cannot be expected to last long. At this time of the year, and after such a series of rain, we shall certainly have very little more of it. Frosts will soon set in, and in all probability with severity. In another day or two perhaps; this extreme mildness can hardly last longer--nay, perhaps it may freeze tonight!" "At any rate," said Elinor, wishing to prevent Mrs. Jennings from seeing her sister's thoughts as clearly as she did, "I dare say we shall have Sir John and Lady Middleton in town by the end of next week." "Ay, my dear, I'll warrant you we do. Mary always has her own way." "And now," silently conjectured Elinor, "she will write to Combe by this day's post." But if she DID, the letter was written and sent away with a privacy which eluded all her watchfulness to ascertain the fact. Whatever the truth of it might be, and far as Elinor was from feeling thorough contentment about it, yet while she saw Marianne in spirits, she could not be very uncomfortable herself. And Marianne was in spirits; happy in the mildness of the weather, and still happier in her expectation of a frost. The morning was chiefly spent in leaving cards at the houses of Mrs. Jennings's acquaintance to inform them of her being in town; and Marianne was all the time busy in observing the direction of the wind, watching the variations of the sky and imagining an alteration in the air. "Don't you find it colder than it was in the morning, Elinor? There seems to me a very decided difference. I can hardly keep my hands warm even in my muff. It was not so yesterday, I think. The clouds seem parting too, the sun will be out in a moment, and we shall have a clear afternoon." Elinor was alternately diverted and pained; but Marianne persevered, and saw every night in the brightness of the fire, and every morning in the appearance of the atmosphere, the certain symptoms of approaching frost. The Miss Dashwoods had no greater reason to be dissatisfied with Mrs. Jennings's style of living, and set of acquaintance, than with her behaviour to themselves, which was invariably kind. Every thing in her household arrangements was conducted on the most liberal plan, and excepting a few old city friends, whom, to Lady Middleton's regret, she had never dropped, she visited no one to whom an introduction could at all discompose the feelings of her young companions. Pleased to find herself more comfortably situated in that particular than she had expected, Elinor was very willing to compound for the want of much real enjoyment from any of their evening parties, which, whether at home or abroad, formed only for cards, could have little to amuse her. Colonel Brandon, who had a general invitation to the house, was with them almost every day; he came to look at Marianne and talk to Elinor, who often derived more satisfaction from conversing with him than from any other daily occurrence, but who saw at the same time with much concern his continued regard for her sister. She feared it was a strengthening regard. It grieved her to see the earnestness with which he often watched Marianne, and his spirits were certainly worse than when at Barton. About a week after their arrival, it became certain that Willoughby was also arrived. His card was on the table when they came in from the morning's drive. "Good God!" cried Marianne, "he has been here while we were out." Elinor, rejoiced to be assured of his being in London, now ventured to say, "Depend upon it, he will call again tomorrow." But Marianne seemed hardly to hear her, and on Mrs. Jennings's entrance, escaped with the precious card. This event, while it raised the spirits of Elinor, restored to those of her sister all, and more than all, their former agitation. From this moment her mind was never quiet; the expectation of seeing him every hour of the day, made her unfit for any thing. She insisted on being left behind, the next morning, when the others went out. Elinor's thoughts were full of what might be passing in Berkeley Street during their absence; but a moment's glance at her sister when they returned was enough to inform her, that Willoughby had paid no second visit there. A note was just then brought in, and laid on the table. "For me!" cried Marianne, stepping hastily forward. "No, ma'am, for my mistress." But Marianne, not convinced, took it instantly up. "It is indeed for Mrs. Jennings; how provoking!" "You are expecting a letter, then?" said Elinor, unable to be longer silent. "Yes, a little--not much." After a short pause. "You have no confidence in me, Marianne." "Nay, Elinor, this reproach from YOU--you who have confidence in no one!" "Me!" returned Elinor in some confusion; "indeed, Marianne, I have nothing to tell." "Nor I," answered Marianne with energy, "our situations then are alike. We have neither of us any thing to tell; you, because you do not communicate, and I, because I conceal nothing." Elinor, distressed by this charge of reserve in herself, which she was not at liberty to do away, knew not how, under such circumstances, to press for greater openness in Marianne. Mrs. Jennings soon appeared, and the note being given her, she read it aloud. It was from Lady Middleton, announcing their arrival in Conduit Street the night before, and requesting the company of her mother and cousins the following evening. Business on Sir John's part, and a violent cold on her own, prevented their calling in Berkeley Street. The invitation was accepted; but when the hour of appointment drew near, necessary as it was in common civility to Mrs. Jennings, that they should both attend her on such a visit, Elinor had some difficulty in persuading her sister to go, for still she had seen nothing of Willoughby; and therefore was not more indisposed for amusement abroad, than unwilling to run the risk of his calling again in her absence. Elinor found, when the evening was over, that disposition is not materially altered by a change of abode, for although scarcely settled in town, Sir John had contrived to collect around him, nearly twenty young people, and to amuse them with a ball. This was an affair, however, of which Lady Middleton did not approve. In the country, an unpremeditated dance was very allowable; but in London, where the reputation of elegance was more important and less easily attained, it was risking too much for the gratification of a few girls, to have it known that Lady Middleton had given a small dance of eight or nine couple, with two violins, and a mere side-board collation. Mr. and Mrs. Palmer were of the party; from the former, whom they had not seen before since their arrival in town, as he was careful to avoid the appearance of any attention to his mother-in-law, and therefore never came near her, they received no mark of recognition on their entrance. He looked at them slightly, without seeming to know who they were, and merely nodded to Mrs. Jennings from the other side of the room. Marianne gave one glance round the apartment as she entered: it was enough--HE was not there--and she sat down, equally ill-disposed to receive or communicate pleasure. After they had been assembled about an hour, Mr. Palmer sauntered towards the Miss Dashwoods to express his surprise on seeing them in town, though Colonel Brandon had been first informed of their arrival at his house, and he had himself said something very droll on hearing that they were to come. "I thought you were both in Devonshire," said he. "Did you?" replied Elinor. "When do you go back again?" "I do not know." And thus ended their discourse. Never had Marianne been so unwilling to dance in her life, as she was that evening, and never so much fatigued by the exercise. She complained of it as they returned to Berkeley Street. "Aye, aye," said Mrs. Jennings, "we know the reason of all that very well; if a certain person who shall be nameless, had been there, you would not have been a bit tired: and to say the truth it was not very pretty of him not to give you the meeting when he was invited." "Invited!" cried Marianne. "So my daughter Middleton told me, for it seems Sir John met him somewhere in the street this morning." Marianne said no more, but looked exceedingly hurt. Impatient in this situation to be doing something that might lead to her sister's relief, Elinor resolved to write the next morning to her mother, and hoped by awakening her fears for the health of Marianne, to procure those inquiries which had been so long delayed; and she was still more eagerly bent on this measure by perceiving after breakfast on the morrow, that Marianne was again writing to Willoughby, for she could not suppose it to be to any other person. About the middle of the day, Mrs. Jennings went out by herself on business, and Elinor began her letter directly, while Marianne, too restless for employment, too anxious for conversation, walked from one window to the other, or sat down by the fire in melancholy meditation. Elinor was very earnest in her application to her mother, relating all that had passed, her suspicions of Willoughby's inconstancy, urging her by every plea of duty and affection to demand from Marianne an account of her real situation with respect to him. Her letter was scarcely finished, when a rap foretold a visitor, and Colonel Brandon was announced. Marianne, who had seen him from the window, and who hated company of any kind, left the room before he entered it. He looked more than usually grave, and though expressing satisfaction at finding Miss Dashwood alone, as if he had somewhat in particular to tell her, sat for some time without saying a word. Elinor, persuaded that he had some communication to make in which her sister was concerned, impatiently expected its opening. It was not the first time of her feeling the same kind of conviction; for, more than once before, beginning with the observation of "your sister looks unwell to-day," or "your sister seems out of spirits," he had appeared on the point, either of disclosing, or of inquiring, something particular about her. After a pause of several minutes, their silence was broken, by his asking her in a voice of some agitation, when he was to congratulate her on the acquisition of a brother? Elinor was not prepared for such a question, and having no answer ready, was obliged to adopt the simple and common expedient, of asking what he meant? He tried to smile as he replied, "your sister's engagement to Mr. Willoughby is very generally known." "It cannot be generally known," returned Elinor, "for her own family do not know it." He looked surprised and said, "I beg your pardon, I am afraid my inquiry has been impertinent; but I had not supposed any secrecy intended, as they openly correspond, and their marriage is universally talked of." "How can that be? By whom can you have heard it mentioned?" "By many--by some of whom you know nothing, by others with whom you are most intimate, Mrs. Jennings, Mrs. Palmer, and the Middletons. But still I might not have believed it, for where the mind is perhaps rather unwilling to be convinced, it will always find something to support its doubts, if I had not, when the servant let me in today, accidentally seen a letter in his hand, directed to Mr. Willoughby in your sister's writing. I came to inquire, but I was convinced before I could ask the question. Is every thing finally settled? Is it impossible to-? But I have no right, and I could have no chance of succeeding. Excuse me, Miss Dashwood. I believe I have been wrong in saying so much, but I hardly know what to do, and on your prudence I have the strongest dependence. Tell me that it is all absolutely resolved on, that any attempt, that in short concealment, if concealment be possible, is all that remains." These words, which conveyed to Elinor a direct avowal of his love for her sister, affected her very much. She was not immediately able to say anything, and even when her spirits were recovered, she debated for a short time, on the answer it would be most proper to give. The real state of things between Willoughby and her sister was so little known to herself, that in endeavouring to explain it, she might be as liable to say too much as too little. Yet as she was convinced that Marianne's affection for Willoughby, could leave no hope of Colonel Brandon's success, whatever the event of that affection might be, and at the same time wished to shield her conduct from censure, she thought it most prudent and kind, after some consideration, to say more than she really knew or believed. She acknowledged, therefore, that though she had never been informed by themselves of the terms on which they stood with each other, of their mutual affection she had no doubt, and of their correspondence she was not astonished to hear. He listened to her with silent attention, and on her ceasing to speak, rose directly from his seat, and after saying in a voice of emotion, "to your sister I wish all imaginable happiness; to Willoughby that he may endeavour to deserve her,"--took leave, and went away. Elinor derived no comfortable feelings from this conversation, to lessen the uneasiness of her mind on other points; she was left, on the contrary, with a melancholy impression of Colonel Brandon's unhappiness, and was prevented even from wishing it removed, by her anxiety for the very event that must confirm it.

Chapter 27

https://web.archive.org/web/20210419170735/https://www.gradesaver.com/sense-and-sensibility/study-guide/summary-chapters-21-30

Sir John and Lady Middleton are expected in town in just a short time; Marianne continues to look forward to seeing Willoughby, and Elinor finds her greatest enjoyment in Colonel Brandon's daily visits. They return one day to find Willoughby's card, which gives Marianne great pleasure that he is in town and managed to drop by. Elinor still has not managed to find out if Marianne and Willoughby are engaged; she is much disturbed when Colonel Brandon approaches her and tells her that their engagement is widely known throughout town, though Elinor does not know of it. Elinor says that she is sure of their mutual affections, but when Colonel Brandon says that Willoughby should try to deserve Marianne, Elinor's doubts about Willoughby's character and intentions resurface.

Marianne makes a very pointed remark that again highlights the contrast between the characters of the two sisters. Marianne says they have nothing to tell each other because Marianne "conceal nothing" and Elinor "communicate. Marianne's statement may be too harsh in its appraisal of Elinor's character, however the two girls are distinctly different in how they express themselves and in the amount of discretion with which they govern their behavior. Perhaps it is ironic that Elinor is trying to "press for greater openness in Marianne" at this point; indeed, Marianne may communicate nearly everything, except for the crucial information regarding her and Willoughby's relationship. Prudence becomes a theme of most importance, as rumors of Marianne and Willoughby's engagement could be very damaging if such an engagement is not real. Marianne will be exposed as flighty and subjected to even more damaging gossip, and her reputation could be at stake merely because she chooses to be open concerning her affections. Colonel Brandon shows himself to be a dramatic foil of Willoughby, in his concerns for prudence and reputation; his inquiry also foreshadows unpleasant realizations about Willoughby's character and intentions

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/40.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_4_part_5.txt

Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 39

chapter 39

{"name": "Chapter 39", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410060617/https://www.gradesaver.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/study-guide/summary-phase-5-chapters-35-44", "summary": "Three weeks after the marriage, Angel returns to his father's parsonage. His recent conduct has been desultory, and his mood became one of dogged indifference. He wonders if he had treated Tess unfairly, and returns to Emminster to disclose his plan to his parents and to best explain why he has arrived without Tess without revealing the actual cause of their separation. Angel tells his parents that he has decided to go to Brazil. They regret that they could not have met his wife and that they did not attend the wedding. Mrs. Clare questions Angel about Tess, asking if he was her first love, and if she is pure and virtuous without question. He answers that she is. The Clares read a chapter in Proverbs in praise of a virtuous wife. After reading the chapter, Mrs. Clare thinks about how the passage so well describes the woman Angel has chosen. Angel can no longer bear this, and goes to his chamber. Mrs. Clare follows him, thinking that something is wrong. He admits to his mother that he and his wife have had a difference. Mrs. Clare senses that Tess is a young woman whose history will bear investigation, but he replies that she is spotless. Angel perceives his own limitations, knowing that he is a slave to custom and conventionality. In considering what Tess was not, he had overlooked what she was.", "analysis": "Angel Clare begins to break down his reservations against Tess, yet this process is slow and by no means reaches a conclusion by the end of the chapter. The most significant step that Angel takes during this chapter is admitting that he may have treated Tess harshly, but at this point he does nothing to make reparations. Rather, he admits his own faults without yet taking steps to amend them. However, just as Tess's guilt over her failure to tell Angel about her past accumulated before her wedding, Angel's guilt over his treatment of Tess builds throughout this chapter. Hardy constructs this as an interesting parallel; in both cases, their respective guilt becomes their sole preoccupation and every tangential detail relates to it. In this case, the passage from Proverbs and the Clares' questions about Tess serve as a constant reminder of the actions Angel wishes to forget"}

It was three weeks after the marriage that Clare found himself descending the hill which led to the well-known parsonage of his father. With his downward course the tower of the church rose into the evening sky in a manner of inquiry as to why he had come; and no living person in the twilighted town seemed to notice him, still less to expect him. He was arriving like a ghost, and the sound of his own footsteps was almost an encumbrance to be got rid of. The picture of life had changed for him. Before this time he had known it but speculatively; now he thought he knew it as a practical man; though perhaps he did not, even yet. Nevertheless humanity stood before him no longer in the pensive sweetness of Italian art, but in the staring and ghastly attitudes of a Wiertz Museum, and with the leer of a study by Van Beers. His conduct during these first weeks had been desultory beyond description. After mechanically attempting to pursue his agricultural plans as though nothing unusual had happened, in the manner recommended by the great and wise men of all ages, he concluded that very few of those great and wise men had ever gone so far outside themselves as to test the feasibility of their counsel. "This is the chief thing: be not perturbed," said the Pagan moralist. That was just Clare's own opinion. But he was perturbed. "Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid," said the Nazarene. Clare chimed in cordially; but his heart was troubled all the same. How he would have liked to confront those two great thinkers, and earnestly appeal to them as fellow-man to fellow-men, and ask them to tell him their method! His mood transmuted itself into a dogged indifference till at length he fancied he was looking on his own existence with the passive interest of an outsider. He was embittered by the conviction that all this desolation had been brought about by the accident of her being a d'Urberville. When he found that Tess came of that exhausted ancient line, and was not of the new tribes from below, as he had fondly dreamed, why had he not stoically abandoned her in fidelity to his principles? This was what he had got by apostasy, and his punishment was deserved. Then he became weary and anxious, and his anxiety increased. He wondered if he had treated her unfairly. He ate without knowing that he ate, and drank without tasting. As the hours dropped past, as the motive of each act in the long series of bygone days presented itself to his view, he perceived how intimately the notion of having Tess as a dear possession was mixed up with all his schemes and words and ways. In going hither and thither he observed in the outskirts of a small town a red-and-blue placard setting forth the great advantages of the Empire of Brazil as a field for the emigrating agriculturist. Land was offered there on exceptionally advantageous terms. Brazil somewhat attracted him as a new idea. Tess could eventually join him there, and perhaps in that country of contrasting scenes and notions and habits the conventions would not be so operative which made life with her seem impracticable to him here. In brief he was strongly inclined to try Brazil, especially as the season for going thither was just at hand. With this view he was returning to Emminster to disclose his plan to his parents, and to make the best explanation he could make of arriving without Tess, short of revealing what had actually separated them. As he reached the door the new moon shone upon his face, just as the old one had done in the small hours of that morning when he had carried his wife in his arms across the river to the graveyard of the monks; but his face was thinner now. Clare had given his parents no warning of his visit, and his arrival stirred the atmosphere of the Vicarage as the dive of the kingfisher stirs a quiet pool. His father and mother were both in the drawing-room, but neither of his brothers was now at home. Angel entered, and closed the door quietly behind him. "But--where's your wife, dear Angel?" cried his mother. "How you surprise us!" "She is at her mother's--temporarily. I have come home rather in a hurry because I've decided to go to Brazil." "Brazil! Why they are all Roman Catholics there surely!" "Are they? I hadn't thought of that." But even the novelty and painfulness of his going to a Papistical land could not displace for long Mr and Mrs Clare's natural interest in their son's marriage. "We had your brief note three weeks ago announcing that it had taken place," said Mrs Clare, "and your father sent your godmother's gift to her, as you know. Of course it was best that none of us should be present, especially as you preferred to marry her from the dairy, and not at her home, wherever that may be. It would have embarrassed you, and given us no pleasure. Your bothers felt that very strongly. Now it is done we do not complain, particularly if she suits you for the business you have chosen to follow instead of the ministry of the Gospel. ... Yet I wish I could have seen her first, Angel, or have known a little more about her. We sent her no present of our own, not knowing what would best give her pleasure, but you must suppose it only delayed. Angel, there is no irritation in my mind or your father's against you for this marriage; but we have thought it much better to reserve our liking for your wife till we could see her. And now you have not brought her. It seems strange. What has happened?" He replied that it had been thought best by them that she should to go her parents' home for the present, whilst he came there. "I don't mind telling you, dear mother," he said, "that I always meant to keep her away from this house till I should feel she could come with credit to you. But this idea of Brazil is quite a recent one. If I do go it will be unadvisable for me to take her on this my first journey. She will remain at her mother's till I come back." "And I shall not see her before you start?" He was afraid they would not. His original plan had been, as he had said, to refrain from bringing her there for some little while--not to wound their prejudices--feelings--in any way; and for other reasons he had adhered to it. He would have to visit home in the course of a year, if he went out at once; and it would be possible for them to see her before he started a second time--with her. A hastily prepared supper was brought in, and Clare made further exposition of his plans. His mother's disappointment at not seeing the bride still remained with her. Clare's late enthusiasm for Tess had infected her through her maternal sympathies, till she had almost fancied that a good thing could come out of Nazareth--a charming woman out of Talbothays Dairy. She watched her son as he ate. "Cannot you describe her? I am sure she is very pretty, Angel." "Of that there can be no question!" he said, with a zest which covered its bitterness. "And that she is pure and virtuous goes without question?" "Pure and virtuous, of course, she is." "I can see her quite distinctly. You said the other day that she was fine in figure; roundly built; had deep red lips like Cupid's bow; dark eyelashes and brows, an immense rope of hair like a ship's cable; and large eyes violety-bluey-blackish." "I did, mother." "I quite see her. And living in such seclusion she naturally had scarce ever seen any young man from the world without till she saw you." "Scarcely." "You were her first love?" "Of course." "There are worse wives than these simple, rosy-mouthed, robust girls of the farm. Certainly I could have wished--well, since my son is to be an agriculturist, it is perhaps but proper that his wife should have been accustomed to an outdoor life." His father was less inquisitive; but when the time came for the chapter from the Bible which was always read before evening prayers, the Vicar observed to Mrs Clare-- "I think, since Angel has come, that it will be more appropriate to read the thirty-first of Proverbs than the chapter which we should have had in the usual course of our reading?" "Yes, certainly," said Mrs Clare. "The words of King Lemuel" (she could cite chapter and verse as well as her husband). "My dear son, your father has decided to read us the chapter in Proverbs in praise of a virtuous wife. We shall not need to be reminded to apply the words to the absent one. May Heaven shield her in all her ways!" A lump rose in Clare's throat. The portable lectern was taken out from the corner and set in the middle of the fireplace, the two old servants came in, and Angel's father began to read at the tenth verse of the aforesaid chapter-- "Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies. She riseth while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household. She girdeth her loins with strength and strengtheneth her arms. She perceiveth that her merchandise is good; her candle goeth not out by night. She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness. Her children arise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her. Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all." When prayers were over, his mother said-- "I could not help thinking how very aptly that chapter your dear father read applied, in some of its particulars, to the woman you have chosen. The perfect woman, you see, was a working woman; not an idler; not a fine lady; but one who used her hands and her head and her heart for the good of others. 'Her children arise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her. Many daughters have done virtuously, but she excelleth them all.' Well, I wish I could have seen her, Angel. Since she is pure and chaste, she would have been refined enough for me." Clare could bear this no longer. His eyes were full of tears, which seemed like drops of molten lead. He bade a quick good night to these sincere and simple souls whom he loved so well; who knew neither the world, the flesh, nor the devil in their own hearts, only as something vague and external to themselves. He went to his own chamber. His mother followed him, and tapped at his door. Clare opened it to discover her standing without, with anxious eyes. "Angel," she asked, "is there something wrong that you go away so soon? I am quite sure you are not yourself." "I am not, quite, mother," said he. "About her? Now, my son, I know it is that--I know it is about her! Have you quarrelled in these three weeks?" "We have not exactly quarrelled," he said. "But we have had a difference--" "Angel--is she a young woman whose history will bear investigation?" With a mother's instinct Mrs Clare had put her finger on the kind of trouble that would cause such a disquiet as seemed to agitate her son. "She is spotless!" he replied; and felt that if it had sent him to eternal hell there and then he would have told that lie. "Then never mind the rest. After all, there are few purer things in nature then an unsullied country maid. Any crudeness of manner which may offend your more educated sense at first, will, I am sure, disappear under the influence or your companionship and tuition." Such terrible sarcasm of blind magnanimity brought home to Clare the secondary perception that he had utterly wrecked his career by this marriage, which had not been among his early thoughts after the disclosure. True, on his own account he cared very little about his career; but he had wished to make it at least a respectable one on account of his parents and brothers. And now as he looked into the candle its flame dumbly expressed to him that it was made to shine on sensible people, and that it abhorred lighting the face of a dupe and a failure. When his agitation had cooled he would be at moments incensed with his poor wife for causing a situation in which he was obliged to practise deception on his parents. He almost talked to her in his anger, as if she had been in the room. And then her cooing voice, plaintive in expostulation, disturbed the darkness, the velvet touch of her lips passed over his brow, and he could distinguish in the air the warmth of her breath. This night the woman of his belittling deprecations was thinking how great and good her husband was. But over them both there hung a deeper shade than the shade which Angel Clare perceived, namely, the shade of his own limitations. With all his attempted independence of judgement this advanced and well-meaning young man, a sample product of the last five-and-twenty years, was yet the slave to custom and conventionality when surprised back into his early teachings. No prophet had told him, and he was not prophet enough to tell himself, that essentially this young wife of his was as deserving of the praise of King Lemuel as any other woman endowed with the same dislike of evil, her moral value having to be reckoned not by achievement but by tendency. Moreover, the figure near at hand suffers on such occasion, because it shows up its sorriness without shade; while vague figures afar off are honoured, in that their distance makes artistic virtues of their stains. In considering what Tess was not, he overlooked what she was, and forgot that the defective can be more than the entire.

Chapter 39

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

Three weeks after the marriage, Angel returns to his father's parsonage. His recent conduct has been desultory, and his mood became one of dogged indifference. He wonders if he had treated Tess unfairly, and returns to Emminster to disclose his plan to his parents and to best explain why he has arrived without Tess without revealing the actual cause of their separation. Angel tells his parents that he has decided to go to Brazil. They regret that they could not have met his wife and that they did not attend the wedding. Mrs. Clare questions Angel about Tess, asking if he was her first love, and if she is pure and virtuous without question. He answers that she is. The Clares read a chapter in Proverbs in praise of a virtuous wife. After reading the chapter, Mrs. Clare thinks about how the passage so well describes the woman Angel has chosen. Angel can no longer bear this, and goes to his chamber. Mrs. Clare follows him, thinking that something is wrong. He admits to his mother that he and his wife have had a difference. Mrs. Clare senses that Tess is a young woman whose history will bear investigation, but he replies that she is spotless. Angel perceives his own limitations, knowing that he is a slave to custom and conventionality. In considering what Tess was not, he had overlooked what she was.

Angel Clare begins to break down his reservations against Tess, yet this process is slow and by no means reaches a conclusion by the end of the chapter. The most significant step that Angel takes during this chapter is admitting that he may have treated Tess harshly, but at this point he does nothing to make reparations. Rather, he admits his own faults without yet taking steps to amend them. However, just as Tess's guilt over her failure to tell Angel about her past accumulated before her wedding, Angel's guilt over his treatment of Tess builds throughout this chapter. Hardy constructs this as an interesting parallel; in both cases, their respective guilt becomes their sole preoccupation and every tangential detail relates to it. In this case, the passage from Proverbs and the Clares' questions about Tess serve as a constant reminder of the actions Angel wishes to forget

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/chapters_28_to_33.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/Lord Jim/section_7_part_0.txt

Lord Jim.chapters 28-33

chapters 28 -33

{"name": "Chapters 28 -33", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210126121516/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/lordjim/section8/", "summary": "Following the defeat of Sherif Ali, Jim becomes the virtual ruler of Patusan. Marlow notes that there seems to be little that Jim cannot do. Marlow recounts an interview with Doramin and his wife, in which Doramin confesses to Marlow that he wishes to see his son, Dain Waris, ruler of Patusan. Doramin is also concerned that Jim's rise to power, while beneficial to the Bugis, will attract the attention of white men to Patusan. Doramin's wife, meanwhile, interrogates Marlow about Jim's past. She wants to know why he left the civilization with which he was familiar to come to a tiny backwater. Marlow can't really answer her, and Doramin is obviously concerned by this. Pondering \"the unanswerable why of Jim's fate\" brings Marlow to tell of Jim's \"love.\" Jim has fallen in love, it seems, with the daughter of the Dutch-Malay woman. Until now, this daughter has eked out a meager existence in the home of her stepfather, Cornelius. Marlow describes her as beautiful, and, more importantly, as, like her mother, \"lacking the saving dullness\" necessary to accept her situation. Jim calls her Jewel. Marlow is struck by the atmosphere of both domestic happiness and high romance surrounding the pair. He recalls visiting a nearby region and encountering a corrupt colonial official, who has heard of Jim and Jewel and has misinterpreted what Jewel actually is. The official tells Marlow that he has heard of a white man who possesses an enormous emerald, which he keeps concealed on the body of a woman, young and pure, who stays with him at all times. The official asks Marlow to let Jim know that he has friends who would be interested in buying the emerald. Marlow recalls that he has seen very little of Jewel, but that she seems unusually anxious about Jim. Tamb'Itam, too, seems to be overly protective. Marlow notes that Cornelius is always skulking about Jim rather ominously, and he reflects that Jim has been generous in giving the man his freedom, and perhaps rather reckless in not taking proper precautions to protect himself. Jim stayed with Cornelius upon his initial escape from Rajah Allang, and his mistreatment of Jewel has led Jim to be very careful toward the man, lest he inadvertently make her situation worse. Cornelius is apparently quite bitter at having married Jewel's mother and being sent to such a backwater. He considers it his right to abuse the girl and to steal from the stock of goods consigned to him by Stein. Soon after his escape from the Rajah, Jim begins to hear rumors that plans are being made to assassinate him. Cornelius offers to smuggle him out of the country for eighty dollars. Jewel offers her help as an advisor. Finally, things come to a head. Jim wakes up one night to find Jewel at his side, his revolver in her hand. She leads him to a shed in the yard, where he discovers men lying in wait for him. Pleased at finally encountering \"real danger,\" he shoots one of them and forces the others to leap into the river. As he is telling Marlow the story of that night, Jim points out his own valor, then once again challenges Marlow's evaluation of his worthiness, noting that no one in Patusan would believe the story of the Patna. Jim speaks of his desire to remain always in Patusan. Marlow leaves Jim and goes up through the dark courtyard to the house. He is confronted by Jewel, who seems to have something to say to him but is unable to speak. Finally, Marlow is made to understand that she thinks he has come to take Jim away. He tells her that this is not the case. She tells him that she does not want to \"die weeping,\" as her mother did. Jewel recalls the night of her mother's death, the woman breathing her last while Jewel barred the door with her body against a raging Cornelius. She tells Marlow that Jim has sworn never to leave her, but that she is unable to believe him entirely, since her father and other men have made and broken the same promise. She demands that Marlow tell her what the thing is to which Jim often refers, the thing that made him afraid and that he can never forget. Searching for the proper phrase, Marlow finally tells her that it is the fact that he is \"not good enough\" that Jim can never forget. In a rage, Jewel calls Marlow a liar, informing him that Jim said the same thing. Marlow tries sheepishly to backtrack, saying that no one is good enough. She refuses to listen, though, and the conversation breaks off as footsteps approach.", "analysis": "Commentary This section fills in the events that occur after Jim's defeat of Sherif Ali. More importantly, though, it offers the chance for Jim to develop himself as a romantic hero. Much of the action and almost all of the conversations in these chapters take place at night. The picturesque aspects of Patusan are emphasized: the full moon rising over the hills, the stars twinkling, torches burning in the dark. Patusan has clearly become something of a paradise for Jim. He wants to remain there forever, and he finally feels as if he has been freed from the taint of the Patna incident, through his own valor and noble intentions. He even tells Marlow that the people of Patusan wouldn't believe the story of the Patna, so convinced are they of his essential character. But, just as the darkness of the night hides some of the essential squalor of Patusan--the ramshackle buildings, the fetid mud--so too does the overlay of romance hide the fundamental problem with Jim. He may have the love of a remarkable woman and the trust of an entire people, but he still feels compelled to justify himself and confront Marlow over Marlow's faith in his character ou wouldn't like to have me aboard your own ship--hey?\"). Marlow's presence in Patusan is contaminating in some way, since he can testify to Jim's previous failure, yet it is also essential, for Marlow is still the one who must preserve Jim's story. The narrative remains distant from Jim. Marlow gathers information through conversations with other people and by making assumptions based on observations; why, for instance, is Tamb'Itam always lurking just outside Marlow's room? Jim is trapped in a horrible paradox. He is somehow \"too good\" for Patusan; therefore, his presence there must indicate a dark secret that makes it impossible for him to live in the outside world. Those closest to him suspect a problem, and demand answers of Marlow. Once again, too, a problem arises concerning language and knowledge. Marlow notes that \"three hundred miles beyond the end of telegraph cables and mail-boat lines, the haggard utilitarian lies of our civilization wither and die, to be replaced by pure exercises of imagination.\" Although he has become a man of public action, Jim is still an inscrutable figure. Those around him wonder about his past, while spectacular rumors circulate outside of Patusan. The corrupt official Marlow encounters has taken the name \"Jewel\" literally, assuming that Jim is in possession of a large gemstone rather than a loving companion. Again, as with the \"cur\" and \"water\" incidents much earlier in the text, language--a single word--is subjected to interpretation. The interpreter, in this case the official, makes the same mistake Jim has made previously: he projects his own interests and his own view of the world onto another's language, and in the process language preserves and asserts its own essential inscrutability. Separated from those who give it life, language becomes subject to \"pure exercises of imagination.\" The narrative's distance from Jim, combined with increasingly frequent glimpses of Marlow retelling this story at a much later date, calls into question whether any \"truth\" lies behind this story. The claim that \"omance ha singled Jim for its own\" suggests that there is something fundamentally obscure and fictionalized about the account being given to us."}

'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."' 'He told me further that he didn't know what made him hang on--but of course we may guess. He sympathised deeply with the defenceless girl, at the mercy of that "mean, cowardly scoundrel." It appears Cornelius led her an awful life, stopping only short of actual ill-usage, for which he had not the pluck, I suppose. He insisted upon her calling him father--"and with respect, too--with respect," he would scream, shaking a little yellow fist in her face. "I am a respectable man, and what are you? Tell me--what are you? You think I am going to bring up somebody else's child and not be treated with respect? You ought to be glad I let you. Come--say Yes, father. . . . No? . . . You wait a bit." Thereupon he would begin to abuse the dead woman, till the girl would run off with her hands to her head. He pursued her, dashing in and out and round the house and amongst the sheds, would drive her into some corner, where she would fall on her knees stopping her ears, and then he would stand at a distance and declaim filthy denunciations at her back for half an hour at a stretch. "Your mother was a devil, a deceitful devil--and you too are a devil," he would shriek in a final outburst, pick up a bit of dry earth or a handful of mud (there was plenty of mud around the house), and fling it into her hair. Sometimes, though, she would hold out full of scorn, confronting him in silence, her face sombre and contracted, and only now and then uttering a word or two that would make the other jump and writhe with the sting. Jim told me these scenes were terrible. It was indeed a strange thing to come upon in a wilderness. The endlessness of such a subtly cruel situation was appalling--if you think of it. The respectable Cornelius (Inchi 'Nelyus the Malays called him, with a grimace that meant many things) was a much-disappointed man. I don't know what he had expected would be done for him in consideration of his marriage; but evidently the liberty to steal, and embezzle, and appropriate to himself for many years and in any way that suited him best, the goods of Stein's Trading Company (Stein kept the supply up unfalteringly as long as he could get his skippers to take it there) did not seem to him a fair equivalent for the sacrifice of his honourable name. Jim would have enjoyed exceedingly thrashing Cornelius within an inch of his life; on the other hand, the scenes were of so painful a character, so abominable, that his impulse would be to get out of earshot, in order to spare the girl's feelings. They left her agitated, speechless, clutching her bosom now and then with a stony, desperate face, and then Jim would lounge up and say unhappily, "Now--come--really--what's the use--you must try to eat a bit," or give some such mark of sympathy. Cornelius would keep on slinking through the doorways, across the verandah and back again, as mute as a fish, and with malevolent, mistrustful, underhand glances. "I can stop his game," Jim said to her once. "Just say the word." And do you know what she answered? She said--Jim told me impressively--that if she had not been sure he was intensely wretched himself, she would have found the courage to kill him with her own hands. "Just fancy that! The poor devil of a girl, almost a child, being driven to talk like that," he exclaimed in horror. It seemed impossible to save her not only from that mean rascal but even from herself! It wasn't that he pitied her so much, he affirmed; it was more than pity; it was as if he had something on his conscience, while that life went on. To leave the house would have appeared a base desertion. He had understood at last that there was nothing to expect from a longer stay, neither accounts nor money, nor truth of any sort, but he stayed on, exasperating Cornelius to the verge, I won't say of insanity, but almost of courage. Meantime he felt all sorts of dangers gathering obscurely about him. Doramin had sent over twice a trusty servant to tell him seriously that he could do nothing for his safety unless he would recross the river again and live amongst the Bugis as at first. People of every condition used to call, often in the dead of night, in order to disclose to him plots for his assassination. He was to be poisoned. He was to be stabbed in the bath-house. Arrangements were being made to have him shot from a boat on the river. Each of these informants professed himself to be his very good friend. It was enough--he told me--to spoil a fellow's rest for ever. Something of the kind was extremely possible--nay, probable--but the lying warnings gave him only the sense of deadly scheming going on all around him, on all sides, in the dark. Nothing more calculated to shake the best of nerve. Finally, one night, Cornelius himself, with a great apparatus of alarm and secrecy, unfolded in solemn wheedling tones a little plan wherein for one hundred dollars--or even for eighty; let's say eighty--he, Cornelius, would procure a trustworthy man to smuggle Jim out of the river, all safe. There was nothing else for it now--if Jim cared a pin for his life. What's eighty dollars? A trifle. An insignificant sum. While he, Cornelius, who had to remain behind, was absolutely courting death by this proof of devotion to Mr. Stein's young friend. The sight of his abject grimacing was--Jim told me--very hard to bear: he clutched at his hair, beat his breast, rocked himself to and fro with his hands pressed to his stomach, and actually pretended to shed tears. "Your blood be on your own head," he squeaked at last, and rushed out. It is a curious question how far Cornelius was sincere in that performance. Jim confessed to me that he did not sleep a wink after the fellow had gone. He lay on his back on a thin mat spread over the bamboo flooring, trying idly to make out the bare rafters, and listening to the rustlings in the torn thatch. A star suddenly twinkled through a hole in the roof. His brain was in a whirl; but, nevertheless, it was on that very night that he matured his plan for overcoming Sherif Ali. It had been the thought of all the moments he could spare from the hopeless investigation into Stein's affairs, but the notion--he says--came to him then all at once. He could see, as it were, the guns mounted on the top of the hill. He got very hot and excited lying there; sleep was out of the question more than ever. He jumped up, and went out barefooted on the verandah. Walking silently, he came upon the girl, motionless against the wall, as if on the watch. In his then state of mind it did not surprise him to see her up, nor yet to hear her ask in an anxious whisper where Cornelius could be. He simply said he did not know. She moaned a little, and peered into the campong. Everything was very quiet. He was possessed by his new idea, and so full of it that he could not help telling the girl all about it at once. She listened, clapped her hands lightly, whispered softly her admiration, but was evidently on the alert all the time. It seems he had been used to make a confidant of her all along--and that she on her part could and did give him a lot of useful hints as to Patusan affairs there is no doubt. He assured me more than once that he had never found himself the worse for her advice. At any rate, he was proceeding to explain his plan fully to her there and then, when she pressed his arm once, and vanished from his side. Then Cornelius appeared from somewhere, and, perceiving Jim, ducked sideways, as though he had been shot at, and afterwards stood very still in the dusk. At last he came forward prudently, like a suspicious cat. "There were some fishermen there--with fish," he said in a shaky voice. "To sell fish--you understand." . . . It must have been then two o'clock in the morning--a likely time for anybody to hawk fish about! 'Jim, however, let the statement pass, and did not give it a single thought. Other matters occupied his mind, and besides he had neither seen nor heard anything. He contented himself by saying, "Oh!" absently, got a drink of water out of a pitcher standing there, and leaving Cornelius a prey to some inexplicable emotion--that made him embrace with both arms the worm-eaten rail of the verandah as if his legs had failed--went in again and lay down on his mat to think. By-and-by he heard stealthy footsteps. They stopped. A voice whispered tremulously through the wall, "Are you asleep?" "No! What is it?" he answered briskly, and there was an abrupt movement outside, and then all was still, as if the whisperer had been startled. Extremely annoyed at this, Jim came out impetuously, and Cornelius with a faint shriek fled along the verandah as far as the steps, where he hung on to the broken banister. Very puzzled, Jim called out to him from the distance to know what the devil he meant. "Have you given your consideration to what I spoke to you about?" asked Cornelius, pronouncing the words with difficulty, like a man in the cold fit of a fever. "No!" shouted Jim in a passion. "I have not, and I don't intend to. I am going to live here, in Patusan." "You shall d-d-die h-h-here," answered Cornelius, still shaking violently, and in a sort of expiring voice. The whole performance was so absurd and provoking that Jim didn't know whether he ought to be amused or angry. "Not till I have seen you tucked away, you bet," he called out, exasperated yet ready to laugh. Half seriously (being excited with his own thoughts, you know) he went on shouting, "Nothing can touch me! You can do your damnedest." Somehow the shadowy Cornelius far off there seemed to be the hateful embodiment of all the annoyances and difficulties he had found in his path. He let himself go--his nerves had been over-wrought for days--and called him many pretty names,--swindler, liar, sorry rascal: in fact, carried on in an extraordinary way. He admits he passed all bounds, that he was quite beside himself--defied all Patusan to scare him away--declared he would make them all dance to his own tune yet, and so on, in a menacing, boasting strain. Perfectly bombastic and ridiculous, he said. His ears burned at the bare recollection. Must have been off his chump in some way. . . . The girl, who was sitting with us, nodded her little head at me quickly, frowned faintly, and said, "I heard him," with child-like solemnity. He laughed and blushed. What stopped him at last, he said, was the silence, the complete deathlike silence, of the indistinct figure far over there, that seemed to hang collapsed, doubled over the rail in a weird immobility. He came to his senses, and ceasing suddenly, wondered greatly at himself. He watched for a while. Not a stir, not a sound. "Exactly as if the chap had died while I had been making all that noise," he said. He was so ashamed of himself that he went indoors in a hurry without another word, and flung himself down again. The row seemed to have done him good though, because he went to sleep for the rest of the night like a baby. Hadn't slept like that for weeks. "But _I_ didn't sleep," struck in the girl, one elbow on the table and nursing her cheek. "I watched." Her big eyes flashed, rolling a little, and then she fixed them on my face intently.' 'You may imagine with what interest I listened. All these details were perceived to have some significance twenty-four hours later. In the morning Cornelius made no allusion to the events of the night. "I suppose you will come back to my poor house," he muttered, surlily, slinking up just as Jim was entering the canoe to go over to Doramin's campong. Jim only nodded, without looking at him. "You find it good fun, no doubt," muttered the other in a sour tone. Jim spent the day with the old nakhoda, preaching the necessity of vigorous action to the principal men of the Bugis community, who had been summoned for a big talk. He remembered with pleasure how very eloquent and persuasive he had been. "I managed to put some backbone into them that time, and no mistake," he said. Sherif Ali's last raid had swept the outskirts of the settlement, and some women belonging to the town had been carried off to the stockade. Sherif Ali's emissaries had been seen in the market-place the day before, strutting about haughtily in white cloaks, and boasting of the Rajah's friendship for their master. One of them stood forward in the shade of a tree, and, leaning on the long barrel of a rifle, exhorted the people to prayer and repentance, advising them to kill all the strangers in their midst, some of whom, he said, were infidels and others even worse--children of Satan in the guise of Moslems. It was reported that several of the Rajah's people amongst the listeners had loudly expressed their approbation. The terror amongst the common people was intense. Jim, immensely pleased with his day's work, crossed the river again before sunset. 'As he had got the Bugis irretrievably committed to action and had made himself responsible for success on his own head, he was so elated that in the lightness of his heart he absolutely tried to be civil with Cornelius. But Cornelius became wildly jovial in response, and it was almost more than he could stand, he says, to hear his little squeaks of false laughter, to see him wriggle and blink, and suddenly catch hold of his chin and crouch low over the table with a distracted stare. The girl did not show herself, and Jim retired early. When he rose to say good-night, Cornelius jumped up, knocking his chair over, and ducked out of sight as if to pick up something he had dropped. His good-night came huskily from under the table. Jim was amazed to see him emerge with a dropping jaw, and staring, stupidly frightened eyes. He clutched the edge of the table. "What's the matter? Are you unwell?" asked Jim. "Yes, yes, yes. A great colic in my stomach," says the other; and it is Jim's opinion that it was perfectly true. If so, it was, in view of his contemplated action, an abject sign of a still imperfect callousness for which he must be given all due credit. 'Be it as it may, Jim's slumbers were disturbed by a dream of heavens like brass resounding with a great voice, which called upon him to Awake! Awake! so loud that, notwithstanding his desperate determination to sleep on, he did wake up in reality. The glare of a red spluttering conflagration going on in mid-air fell on his eyes. Coils of black thick smoke curved round the head of some apparition, some unearthly being, all in white, with a severe, drawn, anxious face. After a second or so he recognised the girl. She was holding a dammar torch at arm's-length aloft, and in a persistent, urgent monotone she was repeating, "Get up! Get up! Get up!" 'Suddenly he leaped to his feet; at once she put into his hand a revolver, his own revolver, which had been hanging on a nail, but loaded this time. He gripped it in silence, bewildered, blinking in the light. He wondered what he could do for her. 'She asked rapidly and very low, "Can you face four men with this?" He laughed while narrating this part at the recollection of his polite alacrity. It seems he made a great display of it. "Certainly--of course--certainly--command me." He was not properly awake, and had a notion of being very civil in these extraordinary circumstances, of showing his unquestioning, devoted readiness. She left the room, and he followed her; in the passage they disturbed an old hag who did the casual cooking of the household, though she was so decrepit as to be hardly able to understand human speech. She got up and hobbled behind them, mumbling toothlessly. On the verandah a hammock of sail-cloth, belonging to Cornelius, swayed lightly to the touch of Jim's elbow. It was empty. 'The Patusan establishment, like all the posts of Stein's Trading Company, had originally consisted of four buildings. Two of them were represented by two heaps of sticks, broken bamboos, rotten thatch, over which the four corner-posts of hardwood leaned sadly at different angles: the principal storeroom, however, stood yet, facing the agent's house. It was an oblong hut, built of mud and clay; it had at one end a wide door of stout planking, which so far had not come off the hinges, and in one of the side walls there was a square aperture, a sort of window, with three wooden bars. Before descending the few steps the girl turned her face over her shoulder and said quickly, "You were to be set upon while you slept." Jim tells me he experienced a sense of deception. It was the old story. He was weary of these attempts upon his life. He had had his fill of these alarms. He was sick of them. He assured me he was angry with the girl for deceiving him. He had followed her under the impression that it was she who wanted his help, and now he had half a mind to turn on his heel and go back in disgust. "Do you know," he commented profoundly, "I rather think I was not quite myself for whole weeks on end about that time." "Oh yes. You were though," I couldn't help contradicting. 'But she moved on swiftly, and he followed her into the courtyard. All its fences had fallen in a long time ago; the neighbours' buffaloes would pace in the morning across the open space, snorting profoundly, without haste; the very jungle was invading it already. Jim and the girl stopped in the rank grass. The light in which they stood made a dense blackness all round, and only above their heads there was an opulent glitter of stars. He told me it was a beautiful night--quite cool, with a little stir of breeze from the river. It seems he noticed its friendly beauty. Remember this is a love story I am telling you now. A lovely night seemed to breathe on them a soft caress. The flame of the torch streamed now and then with a fluttering noise like a flag, and for a time this was the only sound. "They are in the storeroom waiting," whispered the girl; "they are waiting for the signal." "Who's to give it?" he asked. She shook the torch, which blazed up after a shower of sparks. "Only you have been sleeping so restlessly," she continued in a murmur; "I watched your sleep, too." "You!" he exclaimed, craning his neck to look about him. "You think I watched on this night only!" she said, with a sort of despairing indignation. 'He says it was as if he had received a blow on the chest. He gasped. He thought he had been an awful brute somehow, and he felt remorseful, touched, happy, elated. This, let me remind you again, is a love story; you can see it by the imbecility, not a repulsive imbecility, the exalted imbecility of these proceedings, this station in torchlight, as if they had come there on purpose to have it out for the edification of concealed murderers. If Sherif Ali's emissaries had been possessed--as Jim remarked--of a pennyworth of spunk, this was the time to make a rush. His heart was thumping--not with fear--but he seemed to hear the grass rustle, and he stepped smartly out of the light. Something dark, imperfectly seen, flitted rapidly out of sight. He called out in a strong voice, "Cornelius! O Cornelius!" A profound silence succeeded: his voice did not seem to have carried twenty feet. Again the girl was by his side. "Fly!" she said. The old woman was coming up; her broken figure hovered in crippled little jumps on the edge of the light; they heard her mumbling, and a light, moaning sigh. "Fly!" repeated the girl excitedly. "They are frightened now--this light--the voices. They know you are awake now--they know you are big, strong, fearless . . ." "If I am all that," he began; but she interrupted him: "Yes--to-night! But what of to-morrow night? Of the next night? Of the night after--of all the many, many nights? Can I be always watching?" A sobbing catch of her breath affected him beyond the power of words. 'He told me that he had never felt so small, so powerless--and as to courage, what was the good of it? he thought. He was so helpless that even flight seemed of no use; and though she kept on whispering, "Go to Doramin, go to Doramin," with feverish insistence, he realised that for him there was no refuge from that loneliness which centupled all his dangers except--in her. "I thought," he said to me, "that if I went away from her it would be the end of everything somehow." Only as they couldn't stop there for ever in the middle of that courtyard, he made up his mind to go and look into the storehouse. He let her follow him without thinking of any protest, as if they had been indissolubly united. "I am fearless--am I?" he muttered through his teeth. She restrained his arm. "Wait till you hear my voice," she said, and, torch in hand, ran lightly round the corner. He remained alone in the darkness, his face to the door: not a sound, not a breath came from the other side. The old hag let out a dreary groan somewhere behind his back. He heard a high-pitched almost screaming call from the girl. "Now! Push!" He pushed violently; the door swung with a creak and a clatter, disclosing to his intense astonishment the low dungeon-like interior illuminated by a lurid, wavering glare. A turmoil of smoke eddied down upon an empty wooden crate in the middle of the floor, a litter of rags and straw tried to soar, but only stirred feebly in the draught. She had thrust the light through the bars of the window. He saw her bare round arm extended and rigid, holding up the torch with the steadiness of an iron bracket. A conical ragged heap of old mats cumbered a distant corner almost to the ceiling, and that was all. 'He explained to me that he was bitterly disappointed at this. His fortitude had been tried by so many warnings, he had been for weeks surrounded by so many hints of danger, that he wanted the relief of some reality, of something tangible that he could meet. "It would have cleared the air for a couple of hours at least, if you know what I mean," he said to me. "Jove! I had been living for days with a stone on my chest." Now at last he had thought he would get hold of something, and--nothing! Not a trace, not a sign of anybody. He had raised his weapon as the door flew open, but now his arm fell. "Fire! Defend yourself," the girl outside cried in an agonising voice. She, being in the dark and with her arm thrust in to the shoulder through the small hole, couldn't see what was going on, and she dared not withdraw the torch now to run round. "There's nobody here!" yelled Jim contemptuously, but his impulse to burst into a resentful exasperated laugh died without a sound: he had perceived in the very act of turning away that he was exchanging glances with a pair of eyes in the heap of mats. He saw a shifting gleam of whites. "Come out!" he cried in a fury, a little doubtful, and a dark-faced head, a head without a body, shaped itself in the rubbish, a strangely detached head, that looked at him with a steady scowl. Next moment the whole mound stirred, and with a low grunt a man emerged swiftly, and bounded towards Jim. Behind him the mats as it were jumped and flew, his right arm was raised with a crooked elbow, and the dull blade of a kriss protruded from his fist held off, a little above his head. A cloth wound tight round his loins seemed dazzlingly white on his bronze skin; his naked body glistened as if wet. 'Jim noted all this. He told me he was experiencing a feeling of unutterable relief, of vengeful elation. He held his shot, he says, deliberately. He held it for the tenth part of a second, for three strides of the man--an unconscionable time. He held it for the pleasure of saying to himself, That's a dead man! He was absolutely positive and certain. He let him come on because it did not matter. A dead man, anyhow. He noticed the dilated nostrils, the wide eyes, the intent, eager stillness of the face, and then he fired. 'The explosion in that confined space was stunning. He stepped back a pace. He saw the man jerk his head up, fling his arms forward, and drop the kriss. He ascertained afterwards that he had shot him through the mouth, a little upwards, the bullet coming out high at the back of the skull. With the impetus of his rush the man drove straight on, his face suddenly gaping disfigured, with his hands open before him gropingly, as though blinded, and landed with terrific violence on his forehead, just short of Jim's bare toes. Jim says he didn't lose the smallest detail of all this. He found himself calm, appeased, without rancour, without uneasiness, as if the death of that man had atoned for everything. The place was getting very full of sooty smoke from the torch, in which the unswaying flame burned blood-red without a flicker. He walked in resolutely, striding over the dead body, and covered with his revolver another naked figure outlined vaguely at the other end. As he was about to pull the trigger, the man threw away with force a short heavy spear, and squatted submissively on his hams, his back to the wall and his clasped hands between his legs. "You want your life?" Jim said. The other made no sound. "How many more of you?" asked Jim again. "Two more, Tuan," said the man very softly, looking with big fascinated eyes into the muzzle of the revolver. Accordingly two more crawled from under the mats, holding out ostentatiously their empty hands.''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.' 'I was immensely touched: her youth, her ignorance, her pretty beauty, which had the simple charm and the delicate vigour of a wild-flower, her pathetic pleading, her helplessness, appealed to me with almost the strength of her own unreasonable and natural fear. She feared the unknown as we all do, and her ignorance made the unknown infinitely vast. I stood for it, for myself, for you fellows, for all the world that neither cared for Jim nor needed him in the least. I would have been ready enough to answer for the indifference of the teeming earth but for the reflection that he too belonged to this mysterious unknown of her fears, and that, however much I stood for, I did not stand for him. This made me hesitate. A murmur of hopeless pain unsealed my lips. I began by protesting that I at least had come with no intention to take Jim away. 'Why did I come, then? After a slight movement she was as still as a marble statue in the night. I tried to explain briefly: friendship, business; if I had any wish in the matter it was rather to see him stay. . . . "They always leave us," she murmured. The breath of sad wisdom from the grave which her piety wreathed with flowers seemed to pass in a faint sigh. . . . Nothing, I said, could separate Jim from her. 'It is my firm conviction now; it was my conviction at the time; it was the only possible conclusion from the facts of the case. It was not made more certain by her whispering in a tone in which one speaks to oneself, "He swore this to me." "Did you ask him?" I said. 'She made a step nearer. "No. Never!" She had asked him only to go away. It was that night on the river-bank, after he had killed the man--after she had flung the torch in the water because he was looking at her so. There was too much light, and the danger was over then--for a little time--for a little time. He said then he would not abandon her to Cornelius. She had insisted. She wanted him to leave her. He said that he could not--that it was impossible. He trembled while he said this. She had felt him tremble. . . . One does not require much imagination to see the scene, almost to hear their whispers. She was afraid for him too. I believe that then she saw in him only a predestined victim of dangers which she understood better than himself. Though by nothing but his mere presence he had mastered her heart, had filled all her thoughts, and had possessed himself of all her affections, she underestimated his chances of success. It is obvious that at about that time everybody was inclined to underestimate his chances. Strictly speaking he didn't seem to have any. I know this was Cornelius's view. He confessed that much to me in extenuation of the shady part he had played in Sherif Ali's plot to do away with the infidel. Even Sherif Ali himself, as it seems certain now, had nothing but contempt for the white man. Jim was to be murdered mainly on religious grounds, I believe. A simple act of piety (and so far infinitely meritorious), but otherwise without much importance. In the last part of this opinion Cornelius concurred. "Honourable sir," he argued abjectly on the only occasion he managed to have me to himself--"honourable sir, how was I to know? Who was he? What could he do to make people believe him? What did Mr. Stein mean sending a boy like that to talk big to an old servant? I was ready to save him for eighty dollars. Only eighty dollars. Why didn't the fool go? Was I to get stabbed myself for the sake of a stranger?" He grovelled in spirit before me, with his body doubled up insinuatingly and his hands hovering about my knees, as though he were ready to embrace my legs. "What's eighty dollars? An insignificant sum to give to a defenceless old man ruined for life by a deceased she-devil." Here he wept. But I anticipate. I didn't that night chance upon Cornelius till I had had it out with the girl. 'She was unselfish when she urged Jim to leave her, and even to leave the country. It was his danger that was foremost in her thoughts--even if she wanted to save herself too--perhaps unconsciously: but then look at the warning she had, look at the lesson that could be drawn from every moment of the recently ended life in which all her memories were centred. She fell at his feet--she told me so--there by the river, in the discreet light of stars which showed nothing except great masses of silent shadows, indefinite open spaces, and trembling faintly upon the broad stream made it appear as wide as the sea. He had lifted her up. He lifted her up, and then she would struggle no more. Of course not. Strong arms, a tender voice, a stalwart shoulder to rest her poor lonely little head upon. The need--the infinite need--of all this for the aching heart, for the bewildered mind;--the promptings of youth--the necessity of the moment. What would you have? One understands--unless one is incapable of understanding anything under the sun. And so she was content to be lifted up--and held. "You know--Jove! this is serious--no nonsense in it!" as Jim had whispered hurriedly with a troubled concerned face on the threshold of his house. I don't know so much about nonsense, but there was nothing light-hearted in their romance: they came together under the shadow of a life's disaster, like knight and maiden meeting to exchange vows amongst haunted ruins. The starlight was good enough for that story, a light so faint and remote that it cannot resolve shadows into shapes, and show the other shore of a stream. I did look upon the stream that night and from the very place; it rolled silent and as black as Styx: the next day I went away, but I am not likely to forget what it was she wanted to be saved from when she entreated him to leave her while there was time. She told me what it was, calmed--she was now too passionately interested for mere excitement--in a voice as quiet in the obscurity as her white half-lost figure. She told me, "I didn't want to die weeping." I thought I had not heard aright. '"You did not want to die weeping?" I repeated after her. "Like my mother," she added readily. The outlines of her white shape did not stir in the least. "My mother had wept bitterly before she died," she explained. An inconceivable calmness seemed to have risen from the ground around us, imperceptibly, like the still rise of a flood in the night, obliterating the familiar landmarks of emotions. There came upon me, as though I had felt myself losing my footing in the midst of waters, a sudden dread, the dread of the unknown depths. She went on explaining that, during the last moments, being alone with her mother, she had to leave the side of the couch to go and set her back against the door, in order to keep Cornelius out. He desired to get in, and kept on drumming with both fists, only desisting now and again to shout huskily, "Let me in! Let me in! Let me in!" In a far corner upon a few mats the moribund woman, already speechless and unable to lift her arm, rolled her head over, and with a feeble movement of her hand seemed to command--"No! No!" and the obedient daughter, setting her shoulders with all her strength against the door, was looking on. "The tears fell from her eyes--and then she died," concluded the girl in an imperturbable monotone, which more than anything else, more than the white statuesque immobility of her person, more than mere words could do, troubled my mind profoundly with the passive, irremediable horror of the scene. It had the power to drive me out of my conception of existence, out of that shelter each of us makes for himself to creep under in moments of danger, as a tortoise withdraws within its shell. For a moment I had a view of a world that seemed to wear a vast and dismal aspect of disorder, while, in truth, thanks to our unwearied efforts, it is as sunny an arrangement of small conveniences as the mind of man can conceive. But still--it was only a moment: I went back into my shell directly. One _must_--don't you know?--though I seemed to have lost all my words in the chaos of dark thoughts I had contemplated for a second or two beyond the pale. These came back, too, very soon, for words also belong to the sheltering conception of light and order which is our refuge. I had them ready at my disposal before she whispered softly, "He swore he would never leave me, when we stood there alone! He swore to me!". . . "And it is possible that you--you! do not believe him?" I asked, sincerely reproachful, genuinely shocked. Why couldn't she believe? Wherefore this craving for incertitude, this clinging to fear, as if incertitude and fear had been the safeguards of her love. It was monstrous. She should have made for herself a shelter of inexpugnable peace out of that honest affection. She had not the knowledge--not the skill perhaps. The night had come on apace; it had grown pitch-dark where we were, so that without stirring she had faded like the intangible form of a wistful and perverse spirit. And suddenly I heard her quiet whisper again, "Other men had sworn the same thing." It was like a meditative comment on some thoughts full of sadness, of awe. And she added, still lower if possible, "My father did." She paused the time to draw an inaudible breath. "Her father too." . . . These were the things she knew! At once I said, "Ah! but he is not like that." This, it seemed, she did not intend to dispute; but after a time the strange still whisper wandering dreamily in the air stole into my ears. "Why is he different? Is he better? Is he . . ." "Upon my word of honour," I broke in, "I believe he is." We subdued our tones to a mysterious pitch. Amongst the huts of Jim's workmen (they were mostly liberated slaves from the Sherif's stockade) somebody started a shrill, drawling song. Across the river a big fire (at Doramin's, I think) made a glowing ball, completely isolated in the night. "Is he more true?" she murmured. "Yes," I said. "More true than any other man," she repeated in lingering accents. "Nobody here," I said, "would dream of doubting his word--nobody would dare--except you." 'I think she made a movement at this. "More brave," she went on in a changed tone. "Fear will never drive him away from you," I said a little nervously. The song stopped short on a shrill note, and was succeeded by several voices talking in the distance. Jim's voice too. I was struck by her silence. "What has he been telling you? He has been telling you something?" I asked. There was no answer. "What is it he told you?" I insisted. '"Do you think I can tell you? How am I to know? How am I to understand?" she cried at last. There was a stir. I believe she was wringing her hands. "There is something he can never forget." '"So much the better for you," I said gloomily. '"What is it? What is it?" She put an extraordinary force of appeal into her supplicating tone. "He says he had been afraid. How can I believe this? Am I a mad woman to believe this? You all remember something! You all go back to it. What is it? You tell me! What is this thing? Is it alive?--is it dead? I hate it. It is cruel. Has it got a face and a voice--this calamity? Will he see it--will he hear it? In his sleep perhaps when he cannot see me--and then arise and go. Ah! I shall never forgive him. My mother had forgiven--but I, never! Will it be a sign--a call?" 'It was a wonderful experience. She mistrusted his very slumbers--and she seemed to think I could tell her why! Thus a poor mortal seduced by the charm of an apparition might have tried to wring from another ghost the tremendous secret of the claim the other world holds over a disembodied soul astray amongst the passions of this earth. The very ground on which I stood seemed to melt under my feet. And it was so simple too; but if the spirits evoked by our fears and our unrest have ever to vouch for each other's constancy before the forlorn magicians that we are, then I--I alone of us dwellers in the flesh--have shuddered in the hopeless chill of such a task. A sign, a call! How telling in its expression was her ignorance. A few words! How she came to know them, how she came to pronounce them, I can't imagine. Women find their inspiration in the stress of moments that for us are merely awful, absurd, or futile. To discover that she had a voice at all was enough to strike awe into the heart. Had a spurned stone cried out in pain it could not have appeared a greater and more pitiful miracle. These few sounds wandering in the dark had made their two benighted lives tragic to my mind. It was impossible to make her understand. I chafed silently at my impotence. And Jim, too--poor devil! Who would need him? Who would remember him? He had what he wanted. His very existence probably had been forgotten by this time. They had mastered their fates. They were tragic. 'Her immobility before me was clearly expectant, and my part was to speak for my brother from the realm of forgetful shade. I was deeply moved at my responsibility and at her distress. I would have given anything for the power to soothe her frail soul, tormenting itself in its invincible ignorance like a small bird beating about the cruel wires of a cage. Nothing easier than to say, Have no fear! Nothing more difficult. How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a spectre through the heart, slash off its spectral head, take it by its spectral throat? It is an enterprise you rush into while you dream, and are glad to make your escape with wet hair and every limb shaking. The bullet is not run, the blade not forged, the man not born; even the winged words of truth drop at your feet like lumps of lead. You require for such a desperate encounter an enchanted and poisoned shaft dipped in a lie too subtle to be found on earth. An enterprise for a dream, my masters! 'I began my exorcism with a heavy heart, with a sort of sullen anger in it too. Jim's voice, suddenly raised with a stern intonation, carried across the courtyard, reproving the carelessness of some dumb sinner by the river-side. Nothing--I said, speaking in a distinct murmur--there could be nothing, in that unknown world she fancied so eager to rob her of her happiness, there was nothing, neither living nor dead, there was no face, no voice, no power, that could tear Jim from her side. I drew breath and she whispered softly, "He told me so." "He told you the truth," I said. "Nothing," she sighed out, and abruptly turned upon me with a barely audible intensity of tone: "Why did you come to us from out there? He speaks of you too often. You make me afraid. Do you--do you want him?" A sort of stealthy fierceness had crept into our hurried mutters. "I shall never come again," I said bitterly. "And I don't want him. No one wants him." "No one," she repeated in a tone of doubt. "No one," I affirmed, feeling myself swayed by some strange excitement. "You think him strong, wise, courageous, great--why not believe him to be true too? I shall go to-morrow--and that is the end. You shall never be troubled by a voice from there again. This world you don't know is too big to miss him. You understand? Too big. You've got his heart in your hand. You must feel that. You must know that." "Yes, I know that," she breathed out, hard and still, as a statue might whisper. 'I felt I had done nothing. And what is it that I had wished to do? I am not sure now. At the time I was animated by an inexplicable ardour, as if before some great and necessary task--the influence of the moment upon my mental and emotional state. There are in all our lives such moments, such influences, coming from the outside, as it were, irresistible, incomprehensible--as if brought about by the mysterious conjunctions of the planets. She owned, as I had put it to her, his heart. She had that and everything else--if she could only believe it. What I had to tell her was that in the whole world there was no one who ever would need his heart, his mind, his hand. It was a common fate, and yet it seemed an awful thing to say of any man. She listened without a word, and her stillness now was like the protest of an invincible unbelief. What need she care for the world beyond the forests? I asked. From all the multitudes that peopled the vastness of that unknown there would come, I assured her, as long as he lived, neither a call nor a sign for him. Never. I was carried away. Never! Never! I remember with wonder the sort of dogged fierceness I displayed. I had the illusion of having got the spectre by the throat at last. Indeed the whole real thing has left behind the detailed and amazing impression of a dream. Why should she fear? She knew him to be strong, true, wise, brave. He was all that. Certainly. He was more. He was great--invincible--and the world did not want him, it had forgotten him, it would not even know him. 'I stopped; the silence over Patusan was profound, and the feeble dry sound of a paddle striking the side of a canoe somewhere in the middle of the river seemed to make it infinite. "Why?" she murmured. I felt that sort of rage one feels during a hard tussle. The spectre was trying to slip out of my grasp. "Why?" she repeated louder; "tell me!" And as I remained confounded, she stamped with her foot like a spoilt child. "Why? Speak." "You want to know?" I asked in a fury. "Yes!" she cried. "Because he is not good enough," I said brutally. During the moment's pause I noticed the fire on the other shore blaze up, dilating the circle of its glow like an amazed stare, and contract suddenly to a red pin-point. I only knew how close to me she had been when I felt the clutch of her fingers on my forearm. Without raising her voice, she threw into it an infinity of scathing contempt, bitterness, and despair. '"This is the very thing he said. . . . You lie!" 'The last two words she cried at me in the native dialect. "Hear me out!" I entreated; she caught her breath tremulously, flung my arm away. "Nobody, nobody is good enough," I began with the greatest earnestness. I could hear the sobbing labour of her breath frightfully quickened. I hung my head. What was the use? Footsteps were approaching; I slipped away without another word. . . .'

Chapters 28 -33

https://web.archive.org/web/20210126121516/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/lordjim/section8/

Following the defeat of Sherif Ali, Jim becomes the virtual ruler of Patusan. Marlow notes that there seems to be little that Jim cannot do. Marlow recounts an interview with Doramin and his wife, in which Doramin confesses to Marlow that he wishes to see his son, Dain Waris, ruler of Patusan. Doramin is also concerned that Jim's rise to power, while beneficial to the Bugis, will attract the attention of white men to Patusan. Doramin's wife, meanwhile, interrogates Marlow about Jim's past. She wants to know why he left the civilization with which he was familiar to come to a tiny backwater. Marlow can't really answer her, and Doramin is obviously concerned by this. Pondering "the unanswerable why of Jim's fate" brings Marlow to tell of Jim's "love." Jim has fallen in love, it seems, with the daughter of the Dutch-Malay woman. Until now, this daughter has eked out a meager existence in the home of her stepfather, Cornelius. Marlow describes her as beautiful, and, more importantly, as, like her mother, "lacking the saving dullness" necessary to accept her situation. Jim calls her Jewel. Marlow is struck by the atmosphere of both domestic happiness and high romance surrounding the pair. He recalls visiting a nearby region and encountering a corrupt colonial official, who has heard of Jim and Jewel and has misinterpreted what Jewel actually is. The official tells Marlow that he has heard of a white man who possesses an enormous emerald, which he keeps concealed on the body of a woman, young and pure, who stays with him at all times. The official asks Marlow to let Jim know that he has friends who would be interested in buying the emerald. Marlow recalls that he has seen very little of Jewel, but that she seems unusually anxious about Jim. Tamb'Itam, too, seems to be overly protective. Marlow notes that Cornelius is always skulking about Jim rather ominously, and he reflects that Jim has been generous in giving the man his freedom, and perhaps rather reckless in not taking proper precautions to protect himself. Jim stayed with Cornelius upon his initial escape from Rajah Allang, and his mistreatment of Jewel has led Jim to be very careful toward the man, lest he inadvertently make her situation worse. Cornelius is apparently quite bitter at having married Jewel's mother and being sent to such a backwater. He considers it his right to abuse the girl and to steal from the stock of goods consigned to him by Stein. Soon after his escape from the Rajah, Jim begins to hear rumors that plans are being made to assassinate him. Cornelius offers to smuggle him out of the country for eighty dollars. Jewel offers her help as an advisor. Finally, things come to a head. Jim wakes up one night to find Jewel at his side, his revolver in her hand. She leads him to a shed in the yard, where he discovers men lying in wait for him. Pleased at finally encountering "real danger," he shoots one of them and forces the others to leap into the river. As he is telling Marlow the story of that night, Jim points out his own valor, then once again challenges Marlow's evaluation of his worthiness, noting that no one in Patusan would believe the story of the Patna. Jim speaks of his desire to remain always in Patusan. Marlow leaves Jim and goes up through the dark courtyard to the house. He is confronted by Jewel, who seems to have something to say to him but is unable to speak. Finally, Marlow is made to understand that she thinks he has come to take Jim away. He tells her that this is not the case. She tells him that she does not want to "die weeping," as her mother did. Jewel recalls the night of her mother's death, the woman breathing her last while Jewel barred the door with her body against a raging Cornelius. She tells Marlow that Jim has sworn never to leave her, but that she is unable to believe him entirely, since her father and other men have made and broken the same promise. She demands that Marlow tell her what the thing is to which Jim often refers, the thing that made him afraid and that he can never forget. Searching for the proper phrase, Marlow finally tells her that it is the fact that he is "not good enough" that Jim can never forget. In a rage, Jewel calls Marlow a liar, informing him that Jim said the same thing. Marlow tries sheepishly to backtrack, saying that no one is good enough. She refuses to listen, though, and the conversation breaks off as footsteps approach.

Commentary This section fills in the events that occur after Jim's defeat of Sherif Ali. More importantly, though, it offers the chance for Jim to develop himself as a romantic hero. Much of the action and almost all of the conversations in these chapters take place at night. The picturesque aspects of Patusan are emphasized: the full moon rising over the hills, the stars twinkling, torches burning in the dark. Patusan has clearly become something of a paradise for Jim. He wants to remain there forever, and he finally feels as if he has been freed from the taint of the Patna incident, through his own valor and noble intentions. He even tells Marlow that the people of Patusan wouldn't believe the story of the Patna, so convinced are they of his essential character. But, just as the darkness of the night hides some of the essential squalor of Patusan--the ramshackle buildings, the fetid mud--so too does the overlay of romance hide the fundamental problem with Jim. He may have the love of a remarkable woman and the trust of an entire people, but he still feels compelled to justify himself and confront Marlow over Marlow's faith in his character ou wouldn't like to have me aboard your own ship--hey?"). Marlow's presence in Patusan is contaminating in some way, since he can testify to Jim's previous failure, yet it is also essential, for Marlow is still the one who must preserve Jim's story. The narrative remains distant from Jim. Marlow gathers information through conversations with other people and by making assumptions based on observations; why, for instance, is Tamb'Itam always lurking just outside Marlow's room? Jim is trapped in a horrible paradox. He is somehow "too good" for Patusan; therefore, his presence there must indicate a dark secret that makes it impossible for him to live in the outside world. Those closest to him suspect a problem, and demand answers of Marlow. Once again, too, a problem arises concerning language and knowledge. Marlow notes that "three hundred miles beyond the end of telegraph cables and mail-boat lines, the haggard utilitarian lies of our civilization wither and die, to be replaced by pure exercises of imagination." Although he has become a man of public action, Jim is still an inscrutable figure. Those around him wonder about his past, while spectacular rumors circulate outside of Patusan. The corrupt official Marlow encounters has taken the name "Jewel" literally, assuming that Jim is in possession of a large gemstone rather than a loving companion. Again, as with the "cur" and "water" incidents much earlier in the text, language--a single word--is subjected to interpretation. The interpreter, in this case the official, makes the same mistake Jim has made previously: he projects his own interests and his own view of the world onto another's language, and in the process language preserves and asserts its own essential inscrutability. Separated from those who give it life, language becomes subject to "pure exercises of imagination." The narrative's distance from Jim, combined with increasingly frequent glimpses of Marlow retelling this story at a much later date, calls into question whether any "truth" lies behind this story. The claim that "omance ha singled Jim for its own" suggests that there is something fundamentally obscure and fictionalized about the account being given to us.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/09.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Sense and Sensibility/section_0_part_9.txt

Sense and Sensibility.chapter 9

chapter 9

{"name": "Chapter 9", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210419170735/https://www.gradesaver.com/sense-and-sensibility/study-guide/summary-chapters-1-10", "summary": "The family is now settled at Barton Cottage, and much happier there than they were at Norland after Mr. Dashwood's death. The Dashwoods keep busy and are usually about the cottage, though Sir John visits often and offers them the use of his carriage to make social calls. The girls especially like to go walking about the beautiful countryside, and one day Marianne and Margaret decide to go walking despite the threat of rainy weather. When it does start to rain heavily, they begin to run back toward home; however, Marianne stumbles and twists an ankle and cannot walk. A man who sees the accident comes to their rescue, and carries Marianne home while Margaret follows. Elinor and Mrs. Dashwood are startled by his sudden appearance, but he is charming and handsome and quickly wins them over. Mrs. Dashwood thanks him, and despite her invitation to stay, he insists he must leave; he says his name is Willoughby, is staying at the nearby estate of Allenham, and will call the next day to inquire after Marianne's condition. Sir John visits and is told of the incident and of Willoughby; he can tell them little of his personality, but informs them that he is staying with his aunt at Allenham and is set to inherit the whole estate. Sir John assures them that he is a good man and well worth \"catching,\" despite Marianne's assertions that she isn't trying to catch anyone. Still, Sir John is sorry for his friend the Colonel, since he deserves a good wife like one of the Dashwood girls, and already he is being ignored as a suitor.", "analysis": "At this point, Willoughby is little more than the stock \"romantic stranger\" character thrown into some novels; he appears conveniently, and nothing is known about him. But, the fact that Willoughby appears to be the perfect romantic figure also foreshadows that he will of course have failings; he has to be too good to be true, or else he cannot be a realistic character at all. Mrs. Dashwood's insistence that her daughters are not out to \"catch\" their husbands is disingenuous and somewhat ironic, given that finding husbands is truly their greatest concern. The appearance of Willoughby highlights the theme of marriage in the work; it is an economic and social imperative that Elinor and Marianne get married in the near future, and that each eligible man in the novel so far is discussed in terms of suitability as a marriage prospect highlights the necessity and urgency of this concern. Elinor and Marianne must be on a constant lookout for a suitable husband, lest they end up impoverished and unattached later in life. Sir John's comments about Col. Brandon are foreshadowing here; the fact that he is thoroughly decent and worthy means that he will probably be better regarded in the long run as a desirable suitor"}

The Dashwoods were now settled at Barton with tolerable comfort to themselves. The house and the garden, with all the objects surrounding them, were now become familiar, and the ordinary pursuits which had given to Norland half its charms were engaged in again with far greater enjoyment than Norland had been able to afford, since the loss of their father. Sir John Middleton, who called on them every day for the first fortnight, and who was not in the habit of seeing much occupation at home, could not conceal his amazement on finding them always employed. Their visitors, except those from Barton Park, were not many; for, in spite of Sir John's urgent entreaties that they would mix more in the neighbourhood, and repeated assurances of his carriage being always at their service, the independence of Mrs. Dashwood's spirit overcame the wish of society for her children; and she was resolute in declining to visit any family beyond the distance of a walk. There were but few who could be so classed; and it was not all of them that were attainable. About a mile and a half from the cottage, along the narrow winding valley of Allenham, which issued from that of Barton, as formerly described, the girls had, in one of their earliest walks, discovered an ancient respectable looking mansion which, by reminding them a little of Norland, interested their imagination and made them wish to be better acquainted with it. But they learnt, on enquiry, that its possessor, an elderly lady of very good character, was unfortunately too infirm to mix with the world, and never stirred from home. The whole country about them abounded in beautiful walks. The high downs which invited them from almost every window of the cottage to seek the exquisite enjoyment of air on their summits, were a happy alternative when the dirt of the valleys beneath shut up their superior beauties; and towards one of these hills did Marianne and Margaret one memorable morning direct their steps, attracted by the partial sunshine of a showery sky, and unable longer to bear the confinement which the settled rain of the two preceding days had occasioned. The weather was not tempting enough to draw the two others from their pencil and their book, in spite of Marianne's declaration that the day would be lastingly fair, and that every threatening cloud would be drawn off from their hills; and the two girls set off together. They gaily ascended the downs, rejoicing in their own penetration at every glimpse of blue sky; and when they caught in their faces the animating gales of a high south-westerly wind, they pitied the fears which had prevented their mother and Elinor from sharing such delightful sensations. "Is there a felicity in the world," said Marianne, "superior to this?--Margaret, we will walk here at least two hours." Margaret agreed, and they pursued their way against the wind, resisting it with laughing delight for about twenty minutes longer, when suddenly the clouds united over their heads, and a driving rain set full in their face.-- Chagrined and surprised, they were obliged, though unwillingly, to turn back, for no shelter was nearer than their own house. One consolation however remained for them, to which the exigence of the moment gave more than usual propriety; it was that of running with all possible speed down the steep side of the hill which led immediately to their garden gate. They set off. Marianne had at first the advantage, but a false step brought her suddenly to the ground; and Margaret, unable to stop herself to assist her, was involuntarily hurried along, and reached the bottom in safety. A gentleman carrying a gun, with two pointers playing round him, was passing up the hill and within a few yards of Marianne, when her accident happened. He put down his gun and ran to her assistance. She had raised herself from the ground, but her foot had been twisted in her fall, and she was scarcely able to stand. The gentleman offered his services; and perceiving that her modesty declined what her situation rendered necessary, took her up in his arms without farther delay, and carried her down the hill. Then passing through the garden, the gate of which had been left open by Margaret, he bore her directly into the house, whither Margaret was just arrived, and quitted not his hold till he had seated her in a chair in the parlour. Elinor and her mother rose up in amazement at their entrance, and while the eyes of both were fixed on him with an evident wonder and a secret admiration which equally sprung from his appearance, he apologized for his intrusion by relating its cause, in a manner so frank and so graceful that his person, which was uncommonly handsome, received additional charms from his voice and expression. Had he been even old, ugly, and vulgar, the gratitude and kindness of Mrs. Dashwood would have been secured by any act of attention to her child; but the influence of youth, beauty, and elegance, gave an interest to the action which came home to her feelings. She thanked him again and again; and, with a sweetness of address which always attended her, invited him to be seated. But this he declined, as he was dirty and wet. Mrs. Dashwood then begged to know to whom she was obliged. His name, he replied, was Willoughby, and his present home was at Allenham, from whence he hoped she would allow him the honour of calling tomorrow to enquire after Miss Dashwood. The honour was readily granted, and he then departed, to make himself still more interesting, in the midst of a heavy rain. His manly beauty and more than common gracefulness were instantly the theme of general admiration, and the laugh which his gallantry raised against Marianne received particular spirit from his exterior attractions.-- Marianne herself had seen less of his Mama the rest, for the confusion which crimsoned over her face, on his lifting her up, had robbed her of the power of regarding him after their entering the house. But she had seen enough of him to join in all the admiration of the others, and with an energy which always adorned her praise. His person and air were equal to what her fancy had ever drawn for the hero of a favourite story; and in his carrying her into the house with so little previous formality, there was a rapidity of thought which particularly recommended the action to her. Every circumstance belonging to him was interesting. His name was good, his residence was in their favourite village, and she soon found out that of all manly dresses a shooting-jacket was the most becoming. Her imagination was busy, her reflections were pleasant, and the pain of a sprained ankle was disregarded. Sir John called on them as soon as the next interval of fair weather that morning allowed him to get out of doors; and Marianne's accident being related to him, he was eagerly asked whether he knew any gentleman of the name of Willoughby at Allenham. "Willoughby!" cried Sir John; "what, is HE in the country? That is good news however; I will ride over tomorrow, and ask him to dinner on Thursday." "You know him then," said Mrs. Dashwood. "Know him! to be sure I do. Why, he is down here every year." "And what sort of a young man is he?" "As good a kind of fellow as ever lived, I assure you. A very decent shot, and there is not a bolder rider in England." "And is that all you can say for him?" cried Marianne, indignantly. "But what are his manners on more intimate acquaintance? What his pursuits, his talents, and genius?" Sir John was rather puzzled. "Upon my soul," said he, "I do not know much about him as to all THAT. But he is a pleasant, good humoured fellow, and has got the nicest little black bitch of a pointer I ever saw. Was she out with him today?" But Marianne could no more satisfy him as to the colour of Mr. Willoughby's pointer, than he could describe to her the shades of his mind. "But who is he?" said Elinor. "Where does he come from? Has he a house at Allenham?" On this point Sir John could give more certain intelligence; and he told them that Mr. Willoughby had no property of his own in the country; that he resided there only while he was visiting the old lady at Allenham Court, to whom he was related, and whose possessions he was to inherit; adding, "Yes, yes, he is very well worth catching I can tell you, Miss Dashwood; he has a pretty little estate of his own in Somersetshire besides; and if I were you, I would not give him up to my younger sister, in spite of all this tumbling down hills. Miss Marianne must not expect to have all the men to herself. Brandon will be jealous, if she does not take care." "I do not believe," said Mrs. Dashwood, with a good humoured smile, "that Mr. Willoughby will be incommoded by the attempts of either of MY daughters towards what you call CATCHING him. It is not an employment to which they have been brought up. Men are very safe with us, let them be ever so rich. I am glad to find, however, from what you say, that he is a respectable young man, and one whose acquaintance will not be ineligible." "He is as good a sort of fellow, I believe, as ever lived," repeated Sir John. "I remember last Christmas at a little hop at the park, he danced from eight o'clock till four, without once sitting down." "Did he indeed?" cried Marianne with sparkling eyes, "and with elegance, with spirit?" "Yes; and he was up again at eight to ride to covert." "That is what I like; that is what a young man ought to be. Whatever be his pursuits, his eagerness in them should know no moderation, and leave him no sense of fatigue." "Aye, aye, I see how it will be," said Sir John, "I see how it will be. You will be setting your cap at him now, and never think of poor Brandon." "That is an expression, Sir John," said Marianne, warmly, "which I particularly dislike. I abhor every common-place phrase by which wit is intended; and 'setting one's cap at a man,' or 'making a conquest,' are the most odious of all. Their tendency is gross and illiberal; and if their construction could ever be deemed clever, time has long ago destroyed all its ingenuity." Sir John did not much understand this reproof; but he laughed as heartily as if he did, and then replied, "Ay, you will make conquests enough, I dare say, one way or other. Poor Brandon! he is quite smitten already, and he is very well worth setting your cap at, I can tell you, in spite of all this tumbling about and spraining of ankles."

Chapter 9

https://web.archive.org/web/20210419170735/https://www.gradesaver.com/sense-and-sensibility/study-guide/summary-chapters-1-10

The family is now settled at Barton Cottage, and much happier there than they were at Norland after Mr. Dashwood's death. The Dashwoods keep busy and are usually about the cottage, though Sir John visits often and offers them the use of his carriage to make social calls. The girls especially like to go walking about the beautiful countryside, and one day Marianne and Margaret decide to go walking despite the threat of rainy weather. When it does start to rain heavily, they begin to run back toward home; however, Marianne stumbles and twists an ankle and cannot walk. A man who sees the accident comes to their rescue, and carries Marianne home while Margaret follows. Elinor and Mrs. Dashwood are startled by his sudden appearance, but he is charming and handsome and quickly wins them over. Mrs. Dashwood thanks him, and despite her invitation to stay, he insists he must leave; he says his name is Willoughby, is staying at the nearby estate of Allenham, and will call the next day to inquire after Marianne's condition. Sir John visits and is told of the incident and of Willoughby; he can tell them little of his personality, but informs them that he is staying with his aunt at Allenham and is set to inherit the whole estate. Sir John assures them that he is a good man and well worth "catching," despite Marianne's assertions that she isn't trying to catch anyone. Still, Sir John is sorry for his friend the Colonel, since he deserves a good wife like one of the Dashwood girls, and already he is being ignored as a suitor.

At this point, Willoughby is little more than the stock "romantic stranger" character thrown into some novels; he appears conveniently, and nothing is known about him. But, the fact that Willoughby appears to be the perfect romantic figure also foreshadows that he will of course have failings; he has to be too good to be true, or else he cannot be a realistic character at all. Mrs. Dashwood's insistence that her daughters are not out to "catch" their husbands is disingenuous and somewhat ironic, given that finding husbands is truly their greatest concern. The appearance of Willoughby highlights the theme of marriage in the work; it is an economic and social imperative that Elinor and Marianne get married in the near future, and that each eligible man in the novel so far is discussed in terms of suitability as a marriage prospect highlights the necessity and urgency of this concern. Elinor and Marianne must be on a constant lookout for a suitable husband, lest they end up impoverished and unattached later in life. Sir John's comments about Col. Brandon are foreshadowing here; the fact that he is thoroughly decent and worthy means that he will probably be better regarded in the long run as a desirable suitor

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1756-chapters/act_2.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Uncle Vanya/section_1_part_0.txt

Uncle Vanya.act 2

act 2

{"name": "Act 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200714032621/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/uncle-vanya/summary/act-2", "summary": "In the evening, in the dining room, Serebryakov and Yelena sit dozing. He complains about his pain, and she tries to comfort him. Serebryakov picks a fight with Yelena for being young while he is old and disgusting. Because that's a great thing to fight about. Sonya comes in and scolds her father for sending for the doctor and then refusing to see him. Vanya comes in and offers to stay up with Serebryakov so that Yelena and Sonya can go to sleep. In the end, it's Marina who takes care of Serebryakov , and she and Sonya take him off to bed. Vanya, who is drunk, lingers with Yelena and tells her that he loves her. She leaves, and he laments the fact that he could have fallen in love with her ten years before, but didn't. Astrov shows up, also drunk, along with Telegin, and Astrov tries to start a party. Astrov teases Vanya for his feelings for Yelena, and makes Telegin play his guitar, even though everyone else is trying to sleep. Sonya comes in and asks everyone to stop drinking so much. Someone forgot to tell her she's in a Russian play. Sonya and Astrov have a midnight snack together, and he takes the opportunity to criticize everyone in her family and complain about his life. Sonya makes Astrov promise not to drink anymore so that he won't destroy himself. Sonya hints that she loves Astrov, but he doesn't take the bait. He says he doesn't love anyone. Astrov leaves, and Yelena comes in. She and Sonya, who haven't gotten along well up until this point, decide to make friends and drink some wine together. At least it's not vodka. Sonya starts opening up and reveals that she is in love with Astrov. Yelena reveals that she is very unhappy in her life and marriage. Sonya and Yelena want to play the piano, so Sonya goes to ask her father if he minds. Yelena is happy to play, but Sonya comes back with the answer: no.", "analysis": ""}

ACT II The dining-room of SEREBRAKOFF'S house. It is night. The tapping of the WATCHMAN'S rattle is heard in the garden. SEREBRAKOFF is dozing in an arm-chair by an open window and HELENA is sitting beside him, also half asleep. SEREBRAKOFF. [Rousing himself] Who is here? Is it you, Sonia? HELENA. It is I. SEREBRAKOFF. Oh, it is you, Nelly. This pain is intolerable. HELENA. Your shawl has slipped down. [She wraps up his legs in the shawl] Let me shut the window. SEREBRAKOFF. No, leave it open; I am suffocating. I dreamt just now that my left leg belonged to some one else, and it hurt so that I woke. I don't believe this is gout, it is more like rheumatism. What time is it? HELENA. Half past twelve. [A pause.] SEREBRAKOFF. I want you to look for Batushka's works in the library to-morrow. I think we have him. HELENA. What is that? SEREBRAKOFF. Look for Batushka to-morrow morning; we used to have him, I remember. Why do I find it so hard to breathe? HELENA. You are tired; this is the second night you have had no sleep. SEREBRAKOFF. They say that Turgenieff got angina of the heart from gout. I am afraid I am getting angina too. Oh, damn this horrible, accursed old age! Ever since I have been old I have been hateful to myself, and I am sure, hateful to you all as well. HELENA. You speak as if we were to blame for your being old. SEREBRAKOFF. I am more hateful to you than to any one. HELENA gets up and walks away from him, sitting down at a distance. SEREBRAKOFF. You are quite right, of course. I am not an idiot; I can understand you. You are young and healthy and beautiful, and longing for life, and I am an old dotard, almost a dead man already. Don't I know it? Of course I see that it is foolish for me to live so long, but wait! I shall soon set you all free. My life cannot drag on much longer. HELENA. You are overtaxing my powers of endurance. Be quiet, for God's sake! SEREBRAKOFF. It appears that, thanks to me, everybody's power of endurance is being overtaxed; everybody is miserable, only I am blissfully triumphant. Oh, yes, of course! HELENA. Be quiet! You are torturing me. SEREBRAKOFF. I torture everybody. Of course. HELENA. [Weeping] This is unbearable! Tell me, what is it you want me to do? SEREBRAKOFF. Nothing. HELENA. Then be quiet, please. SEREBRAKOFF. It is funny that everybody listens to Ivan and his old idiot of a mother, but the moment I open my lips you all begin to feel ill-treated. You can't even stand the sound of my voice. Even if I am hateful, even if I am a selfish tyrant, haven't I the right to be one at my age? Haven't I deserved it? Haven't I, I ask you, the right to be respected, now that I am old? HELENA. No one is disputing your rights. [The window slams in the wind] The wind is rising, I must shut the window. [She shuts it] We shall have rain in a moment. Your rights have never been questioned by anybody. The WATCHMAN in the garden sounds his rattle. SEREBRAKOFF. I have spent my life working in the interests of learning. I am used to my library and the lecture hall and to the esteem and admiration of my colleagues. Now I suddenly find myself plunged in this wilderness, condemned to see the same stupid people from morning till night and listen to their futile conversation. I want to live; I long for success and fame and the stir of the world, and here I am in exile! Oh, it is dreadful to spend every moment grieving for the lost past, to see the success of others and sit here with nothing to do but to fear death. I cannot stand it! It is more than I can bear. And you will not even forgive me for being old! HELENA. Wait, have patience; I shall be old myself in four or five years. SONIA comes in. SONIA. Father, you sent for Dr. Astroff, and now when he comes you refuse to see him. It is not nice to give a man so much trouble for nothing. SEREBRAKOFF. What do I care about your Astroff? He understands medicine about as well as I understand astronomy. SONIA. We can't send for the whole medical faculty, can we, to treat your gout? SEREBRAKOFF. I won't talk to that madman! SONIA. Do as you please. It's all the same to me. [She sits down.] SEREBRAKOFF. What time is it? HELENA. One o'clock. SEREBRAKOFF. It is stifling in here. Sonia, hand me that bottle on the table. SONIA. Here it is. [She hands him a bottle of medicine.] SEREBRAKOFF. [Crossly] No, not that one! Can't you understand me? Can't I ask you to do a thing? SONIA. Please don't be captious with me. Some people may like it, but you must spare me, if you please, because I don't. Besides, I haven't the time; we are cutting the hay to-morrow and I must get up early. VOITSKI comes in dressed in a long gown and carrying a candle. VOITSKI. A thunderstorm is coming up. [The lightning flashes] There it is! Go to bed, Helena and Sonia. I have come to take your place. SEREBRAKOFF. [Frightened] No, n-o, no! Don't leave me alone with him! Oh, don't. He will begin to lecture me. VOITSKI. But you must give them a little rest. They have not slept for two nights. SEREBRAKOFF. Then let them go to bed, but you go away too! Thank you. I implore you to go. For the sake of our former friendship do not protest against going. We will talk some other time---- VOITSKI. Our former friendship! Our former---- SONIA. Hush, Uncle Vanya! SEREBRAKOFF. [To his wife] My darling, don't leave me alone with him. He will begin to lecture me. VOITSKI. This is ridiculous. MARINA comes in carrying a candle. SONIA. You must go to bed, nurse, it is late. MARINA. I haven't cleared away the tea things. Can't go to bed yet. SEREBRAKOFF. No one can go to bed. They are all worn out, only I enjoy perfect happiness. MARINA. [Goes up to SEREBRAKOFF and speaks tenderly] What's the matter, master? Does it hurt? My own legs are aching too, oh, so badly. [Arranges his shawl about his legs] You have had this illness such a long time. Sonia's dead mother used to stay awake with you too, and wear herself out for you. She loved you dearly. [A pause] Old people want to be pitied as much as young ones, but nobody cares about them somehow. [She kisses SEREBRAKOFF'S shoulder] Come, master, let me give you some linden-tea and warm your poor feet for you. I shall pray to God for you. SEREBRAKOFF. [Touched] Let us go, Marina. MARINA. My own feet are aching so badly, oh, so badly! [She and SONIA lead SEREBRAKOFF out] Sonia's mother used to wear herself out with sorrow and weeping. You were still little and foolish then, Sonia. Come, come, master. SEREBRAKOFF, SONIA and MARINA go out. HELENA. I am absolutely exhausted by him, and can hardly stand. VOITSKI. You are exhausted by him, and I am exhausted by my own self. I have not slept for three nights. HELENA. Something is wrong in this house. Your mother hates everything but her pamphlets and the professor; the professor is vexed, he won't trust me, and fears you; Sonia is angry with her father, and with me, and hasn't spoken to me for two weeks; I am at the end of my strength, and have come near bursting into tears at least twenty times to-day. Something is wrong in this house. VOITSKI. Leave speculating alone. HELENA. You are cultured and intelligent, Ivan, and you surely understand that the world is not destroyed by villains and conflagrations, but by hate and malice and all this spiteful tattling. It is your duty to make peace, and not to growl at everything. VOITSKI. Help me first to make peace with myself. My darling! [Seizes her hand.] HELENA. Let go! [She drags her hand away] Go away! VOITSKI. Soon the rain will be over, and all nature will sigh and awake refreshed. Only I am not refreshed by the storm. Day and night the thought haunts me like a fiend, that my life is lost for ever. My past does not count, because I frittered it away on trifles, and the present has so terribly miscarried! What shall I do with my life and my love? What is to become of them? This wonderful feeling of mine will be wasted and lost as a ray of sunlight is lost that falls into a dark chasm, and my life will go with it. HELENA. I am as it were benumbed when you speak to me of your love, and I don't know how to answer you. Forgive me, I have nothing to say to you. [She tries to go out] Good-night! VOITSKI. [Barring the way] If you only knew how I am tortured by the thought that beside me in this house is another life that is being lost forever--it is yours! What are you waiting for? What accursed philosophy stands in your way? Oh, understand, understand---- HELENA. [Looking at him intently] Ivan, you are drunk! VOITSKI. Perhaps. Perhaps. HELENA. Where is the doctor? VOITSKI. In there, spending the night with me. Perhaps I am drunk, perhaps I am; nothing is impossible. HELENA. Have you just been drinking together? Why do you do that? VOITSKI. Because in that way I get a taste of life. Let me do it, Helena! HELENA. You never used to drink, and you never used to talk so much. Go to bed, I am tired of you. VOITSKI. [Falling on his knees before her] My sweetheart, my beautiful one---- HELENA. [Angrily] Leave me alone! Really, this has become too disagreeable. HELENA goes out. A pause. VOITSKI [Alone] She is gone! I met her first ten years ago, at her sister's house, when she was seventeen and I was thirty-seven. Why did I not fall in love with her then and propose to her? It would have been so easy! And now she would have been my wife. Yes, we would both have been waked to-night by the thunderstorm, and she would have been frightened, but I would have held her in my arms and whispered: "Don't be afraid! I am here." Oh, enchanting dream, so sweet that I laugh to think of it. [He laughs] But my God! My head reels! Why am I so old? Why won't she understand me? I hate all that rhetoric of hers, that morality of indolence, that absurd talk about the destruction of the world----[A pause] Oh, how I have been deceived! For years I have worshipped that miserable gout-ridden professor. Sonia and I have squeezed this estate dry for his sake. We have bartered our butter and curds and peas like misers, and have never kept a morsel for ourselves, so that we could scrape enough pennies together to send to him. I was proud of him and of his learning; I received all his words and writings as inspired, and now? Now he has retired, and what is the total of his life? A blank! He is absolutely unknown, and his fame has burst like a soap-bubble. I have been deceived; I see that now, basely deceived. ASTROFF comes in. He has his coat on, but is without his waistcoat or collar, and is slightly drunk. TELEGIN follows him, carrying a guitar. ASTROFF. Play! TELEGIN. But every one is asleep. ASTROFF. Play! TELEGIN begins to play softly. ASTROFF. Are you alone here? No women about? [Sings with his arms akimbo.] "The hut is cold, the fire is dead; Where shall the master lay his head?" The thunderstorm woke me. It was a heavy shower. What time is it? VOITSKI. The devil only knows. ASTROFF. I thought I heard Helena's voice. VOITSKI. She was here a moment ago. ASTROFF. What a beautiful woman! [Looking at the medicine bottles on the table] Medicine, is it? What a variety we have; prescriptions from Moscow, from Kharkoff, from Tula! Why, he has been pestering all the towns of Russia with his gout! Is he ill, or simply shamming? VOITSKI. He is really ill. ASTROFF. What is the matter with you to-night? You seem sad. Is it because you are sorry for the professor? VOITSKI. Leave me alone. ASTROFF. Or in love with the professor's wife? VOITSKI. She is my friend. ASTROFF. Already? VOITSKI. What do you mean by "already"? ASTROFF. A woman can only become a man's friend after having first been his acquaintance and then his beloved--then she becomes his friend. VOITSKI. What vulgar philosophy! ASTROFF. What do you mean? Yes, I must confess I am getting vulgar, but then, you see, I am drunk. I usually only drink like this once a month. At such times my audacity and temerity know no bounds. I feel capable of anything. I attempt the most difficult operations and do them magnificently. The most brilliant plans for the future take shape in my head. I am no longer a poor fool of a doctor, but mankind's greatest benefactor. I evolve my own system of philosophy and all of you seem to crawl at my feet like so many insects or microbes. [To TELEGIN] Play, Waffles! TELEGIN. My dear boy, I would with all my heart, but do listen to reason; everybody in the house is asleep. ASTROFF. Play! TELEGIN plays softly. ASTROFF. I want a drink. Come, we still have some brandy left. And then, as soon as it is day, you will come home with me. [He sees SONIA, who comes in at that moment.] ASTROFF. I beg your pardon, I have no collar on. [He goes out quickly, followed by TELEGIN.] SONIA. Uncle Vanya, you and the doctor have been drinking! The good fellows have been getting together! It is all very well for him, he has always done it, but why do you follow his example? It looks dreadfully at your age. VOITSKI. Age has nothing to do with it. When real life is wanting one must create an illusion. It is better than nothing. SONIA. Our hay is all cut and rotting in these daily rains, and here you are busy creating illusions! You have given up the farm altogether. I have done all the work alone until I am at the end of my strength--[Frightened] Uncle! Your eyes are full of tears! VOITSKI. Tears? Nonsense, there are no tears in my eyes. You looked at me then just as your dead mother used to, my darling--[He eagerly kisses her face and hands] My sister, my dearest sister, where are you now? Ah, if you only knew, if you only knew! SONIA. If she only knew what, Uncle? VOITSKI. My heart is bursting. It is awful. No matter, though. I must go. [He goes out.] SONIA. [Knocks at the door] Dr. Astroff! Are you awake? Please come here for a minute. ASTROFF. [Behind the door] In a moment. He appears in a few seconds. He has put on his collar and waistcoat. ASTROFF. What do you want? SONIA. Drink as much as you please yourself if you don't find it revolting, but I implore you not to let my uncle do it. It is bad for him. ASTROFF. Very well; we won't drink any more. I am going home at once. That is settled. It will be dawn by the time the horses are harnessed. SONIA. It is still raining; wait till morning. ASTROFF. The storm is blowing over. This is only the edge of it. I must go. And please don't ask me to come and see your father any more. I tell him he has gout, and he says it is rheumatism. I tell him to lie down, and he sits up. To-day he refused to see me at all. SONIA. He has been spoilt. [She looks in the sideboard] Won't you have a bite to eat? ASTROFF. Yes, please. I believe I will. SONIA. I love to eat at night. I am sure we shall find something in here. They say that he has made a great many conquests in his life, and that the women have spoiled him. Here is some cheese for you. [They stand eating by the sideboard.] ASTROFF. I haven't eaten anything to-day. Your father has a very difficult nature. [He takes a bottle out of the sideboard] May I? [He pours himself a glass of vodka] We are alone here, and I can speak frankly. Do you know, I could not stand living in this house for even a month? This atmosphere would stifle me. There is your father, entirely absorbed in his books, and his gout; there is your Uncle Vanya with his hypochondria, your grandmother, and finally, your step-mother-- SONIA. What about her? ASTROFF. A human being should be entirely beautiful: the face, the clothes, the mind, the thoughts. Your step-mother is, of course, beautiful to look at, but don't you see? She does nothing but sleep and eat and walk and bewitch us, and that is all. She has no responsibilities, everything is done for her--am I not right? And an idle life can never be a pure one. [A pause] However, I may be judging her too severely. Like your Uncle Vanya, I am discontented, and so we are both grumblers. SONIA. Aren't you satisfied with life? ASTROFF. I like life as life, but I hate and despise it in a little Russian country village, and as far as my own personal life goes, by heaven! there is absolutely no redeeming feature about it. Haven't you noticed if you are riding through a dark wood at night and see a little light shining ahead, how you forget your fatigue and the darkness and the sharp twigs that whip your face? I work, that you know--as no one else in the country works. Fate beats me on without rest; at times I suffer unendurably and I see no light ahead. I have no hope; I do not like people. It is long since I have loved any one. SONIA. You love no one? ASTROFF. Not a soul. I only feel a sort of tenderness for your old nurse for old-times' sake. The peasants are all alike; they are stupid and live in dirt, and the educated people are hard to get along with. One gets tired of them. All our good friends are petty and shallow and see no farther than their own noses; in one word, they are dull. Those that have brains are hysterical, devoured with a mania for self-analysis. They whine, they hate, they pick faults everywhere with unhealthy sharpness. They sneak up to me sideways, look at me out of a corner of the eye, and say: "That man is a lunatic," "That man is a wind-bag." Or, if they don't know what else to label me with, they say I am strange. I like the woods; that is strange. I don't eat meat; that is strange, too. Simple, natural relations between man and man or man and nature do not exist. [He tries to go out; SONIA prevents him.] SONIA. I beg you, I implore you, not to drink any more! ASTROFF. Why not? SONIA. It is so unworthy of you. You are well-bred, your voice is sweet, you are even--more than any one I know--handsome. Why do you want to resemble the common people that drink and play cards? Oh, don't, I beg you! You always say that people do not create anything, but only destroy what heaven has given them. Why, oh, why, do you destroy yourself? Oh, don't, I implore you not to! I entreat you! ASTROFF. [Gives her his hand] I won't drink any more. SONIA. Promise me. ASTROFF. I give you my word of honour. SONIA. [Squeezing his hand] Thank you. ASTROFF. I have done with it. You see, I am perfectly sober again, and so I shall stay till the end of my life. [He looks his watch] But, as I was saying, life holds nothing for me; my race is run. I am old, I am tired, I am trivial; my sensibilities are dead. I could never attach myself to any one again. I love no one, and never shall! Beauty alone has the power to touch me still. I am deeply moved by it. Helena could turn my head in a day if she wanted to, but that is not love, that is not affection-- [He shudders and covers his face with his hands.] SONIA. What is it? ASTROFF. Nothing. During Lent one of my patients died under chloroform. SONIA. It is time to forget that. [A pause] Tell me, doctor, if I had a friend or a younger sister, and if you knew that she, well--loved you, what would you do? ASTROFF. [Shrugging his shoulders] I don't know. I don't think I should do anything. I should make her understand that I could not return her love--however, my mind is not bothered about those things now. I must start at once if I am ever to get off. Good-bye, my dear girl. At this rate we shall stand here talking till morning. [He shakes hands with her] I shall go out through the sitting-room, because I am afraid your uncle might detain me. [He goes out.] SONIA. [Alone] Not a word! His heart and soul are still locked from me, and yet for some reason I am strangely happy. I wonder why? [She laughs with pleasure] I told him that he was well-bred and handsome and that his voice was sweet. Was that a mistake? I can still feel his voice vibrating in the air; it caresses me. [Wringing her hands] Oh! how terrible it is to be plain! I am plain, I know it. As I came out of church last Sunday I overheard a woman say, "She is a dear, noble girl, but what a pity she is so ugly!" So ugly! HELENA comes in and throws open the window. HELENA. The storm is over. What delicious air! [A pause] Where is the doctor? SONIA. He has gone. [A pause.] HELENA. Sonia! SONIA. Yes? HELENA. How much longer are you going to sulk at me? We have not hurt each other. Why not be friends? We have had enough of this. SONIA. I myself--[She embraces HELENA] Let us make peace. HELENA. With all my heart. [They are both moved.] SONIA. Has papa gone to bed? HELENA. No, he is sitting up in the drawing-room. Heaven knows what reason you and I had for not speaking to each other for weeks. [Sees the open sideboard] Who left the sideboard open? SONIA. Dr. Astroff has just had supper. HELENA. There is some wine. Let us seal our friendship. SONIA. Yes, let us. HELENA. Out of one glass. [She fills a wine-glass] So, we are friends, are we? SONIA. Yes. [They drink and kiss each other] I have long wanted to make friends, but somehow, I was ashamed to. [She weeps.] HELENA. Why are you crying? SONIA. I don't know. It is nothing. HELENA. There, there, don't cry. [She weeps] Silly! Now I am crying too. [A pause] You are angry with me because I seem to have married your father for his money, but don't believe the gossip you hear. I swear to you I married him for love. I was fascinated by his fame and learning. I know now that it was not real love, but it seemed real at the time. I am innocent, and yet your clever, suspicious eyes have been punishing me for an imaginary crime ever since my marriage. SONIA. Peace, peace! Let us forget the past. HELENA. You must not look so at people. It is not becoming to you. You must trust people, or life becomes impossible. SONIA. Tell me truly, as a friend, are you happy? HELENA. Truly, no. SONIA. I knew it. One more question: do you wish your husband were young? HELENA. What a child you are! Of course I do. Go on, ask something else. SONIA. Do you like the doctor? HELENA. Yes, very much indeed. SONIA. [Laughing] I have a stupid face, haven't I? He has just gone out, and his voice is still in my ears; I hear his step; I see his face in the dark window. Let me say all I have in my heart! But no, I cannot speak of it so loudly. I am ashamed. Come to my room and let me tell you there. I seem foolish to you, don't I? Talk to me of him. HELENA. What can I say? SONIA. He is clever. He can do everything. He can cure the sick, and plant woods. HELENA. It is not a question of medicine and woods, my dear, he is a man of genius. Do you know what that means? It means he is brave, profound, and of clear insight. He plants a tree and his mind travels a thousand years into the future, and he sees visions of the happiness of the human race. People like him are rare and should be loved. What if he does drink and act roughly at times? A man of genius cannot be a saint in Russia. There he lives, cut off from the world by cold and storm and endless roads of bottomless mud, surrounded by a rough people who are crushed by poverty and disease, his life one continuous struggle, with never a day's respite; how can a man live like that for forty years and keep himself sober and unspotted? [Kissing SONIA] I wish you happiness with all my heart; you deserve it. [She gets up] As for me, I am a worthless, futile woman. I have always been futile; in music, in love, in my husband's house--in a word, in everything. When you come to think of it, Sonia, I am really very, very unhappy. [Walks excitedly up and down] Happiness can never exist for me in this world. Never. Why do you laugh? SONIA. [Laughing and covering her face with her hands] I am so happy, so happy! HELENA. I want to hear music. I might play a little. SONIA. Oh, do, do! [She embraces her] I could not possibly go to sleep now. Do play! HELENA. Yes, I will. Your father is still awake. Music irritates him when he is ill, but if he says I may, then I shall play a little. Go, Sonia, and ask him. SONIA. Very well. [She goes out. The WATCHMAN'S rattle is heard in the garden.] HELENA. It is long since I have heard music. And now, I shall sit and play, and weep like a fool. [Speaking out of the window] Is that you rattling out there, Ephim? VOICE OF THE WATCHMAN. It is I. HELENA. Don't make such a noise. Your master is ill. VOICE OF THE WATCHMAN. I am going away this minute. [Whistles a tune.] SONIA. [Comes back] He says, no. The curtain falls.

Act 2

https://web.archive.org/web/20200714032621/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/uncle-vanya/summary/act-2

In the evening, in the dining room, Serebryakov and Yelena sit dozing. He complains about his pain, and she tries to comfort him. Serebryakov picks a fight with Yelena for being young while he is old and disgusting. Because that's a great thing to fight about. Sonya comes in and scolds her father for sending for the doctor and then refusing to see him. Vanya comes in and offers to stay up with Serebryakov so that Yelena and Sonya can go to sleep. In the end, it's Marina who takes care of Serebryakov , and she and Sonya take him off to bed. Vanya, who is drunk, lingers with Yelena and tells her that he loves her. She leaves, and he laments the fact that he could have fallen in love with her ten years before, but didn't. Astrov shows up, also drunk, along with Telegin, and Astrov tries to start a party. Astrov teases Vanya for his feelings for Yelena, and makes Telegin play his guitar, even though everyone else is trying to sleep. Sonya comes in and asks everyone to stop drinking so much. Someone forgot to tell her she's in a Russian play. Sonya and Astrov have a midnight snack together, and he takes the opportunity to criticize everyone in her family and complain about his life. Sonya makes Astrov promise not to drink anymore so that he won't destroy himself. Sonya hints that she loves Astrov, but he doesn't take the bait. He says he doesn't love anyone. Astrov leaves, and Yelena comes in. She and Sonya, who haven't gotten along well up until this point, decide to make friends and drink some wine together. At least it's not vodka. Sonya starts opening up and reveals that she is in love with Astrov. Yelena reveals that she is very unhappy in her life and marriage. Sonya and Yelena want to play the piano, so Sonya goes to ask her father if he minds. Yelena is happy to play, but Sonya comes back with the answer: no.

shmoop

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finished_summaries/shmoop/The Brothers Karamazov/section_22_part_0.txt

The Brothers Karamazov.book 3.chapter 10

book 3, chapter 10

{"name": "Book 3, Chapter 10", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-3-chapter-10", "summary": "Troubled by what has just transpired at his father's home, Alyosha heads off to Katerina's, but it's already dusk. When he arrives there is some commotion in the drawing room before he is at last shown in. The room is empty, with a tea service set for two, and Alyosha realizes he must have interrupted some company. Katerina comes in and greets him warmly. Alyosha gives her Dmitri's message, which Katerina doesn't take as a rejection. Instead, she tells Alyosha that she's convinced that she can save Dmitri from himself by showing what a true friend she can be, even forgiving him for stealing the money that was meant for her sister and spending it on his mistress, Grushenka. For who should be visiting Katerina at that moment but...Grushenka! She walks in to the room and greets Alyosha. Katerina gushes that Grushenka is an angel, takes her hand and kisses it. Katerina informs Alyosha that Grushenka has agreed to break it off with Dmitri. Grushenka denies that she ever promised any such thing. Katerina is confused, but seems reassured when Grushenka takes her hand to return her kisses. But, laughing, Grushenka changes her mind and refuses to kiss Katerina's hand. Realizing that Grushenka has just been toying with her, Katerina almost attacks her but is restrained by Alyosha. She begs Alyosha to leave, and as he does, the maid hands him a note from Madame Khokhlakov.", "analysis": ""}

Chapter X. Both Together Alyosha left his father's house feeling even more exhausted and dejected in spirit than when he had entered it. His mind too seemed shattered and unhinged, while he felt that he was afraid to put together the disjointed fragments and form a general idea from all the agonizing and conflicting experiences of the day. He felt something bordering upon despair, which he had never known till then. Towering like a mountain above all the rest stood the fatal, insoluble question: How would things end between his father and his brother Dmitri with this terrible woman? Now he had himself been a witness of it, he had been present and seen them face to face. Yet only his brother Dmitri could be made unhappy, terribly, completely unhappy: there was trouble awaiting him. It appeared too that there were other people concerned, far more so than Alyosha could have supposed before. There was something positively mysterious in it, too. Ivan had made a step towards him, which was what Alyosha had been long desiring. Yet now he felt for some reason that he was frightened at it. And these women? Strange to say, that morning he had set out for Katerina Ivanovna's in the greatest embarrassment; now he felt nothing of the kind. On the contrary, he was hastening there as though expecting to find guidance from her. Yet to give her this message was obviously more difficult than before. The matter of the three thousand was decided irrevocably, and Dmitri, feeling himself dishonored and losing his last hope, might sink to any depth. He had, moreover, told him to describe to Katerina Ivanovna the scene which had just taken place with his father. It was by now seven o'clock, and it was getting dark as Alyosha entered the very spacious and convenient house in the High Street occupied by Katerina Ivanovna. Alyosha knew that she lived with two aunts. One of them, a woman of little education, was that aunt of her half-sister Agafya Ivanovna who had looked after her in her father's house when she came from boarding-school. The other aunt was a Moscow lady of style and consequence, though in straitened circumstances. It was said that they both gave way in everything to Katerina Ivanovna, and that she only kept them with her as chaperons. Katerina Ivanovna herself gave way to no one but her benefactress, the general's widow, who had been kept by illness in Moscow, and to whom she was obliged to write twice a week a full account of all her doings. When Alyosha entered the hall and asked the maid who opened the door to him to take his name up, it was evident that they were already aware of his arrival. Possibly he had been noticed from the window. At least, Alyosha heard a noise, caught the sound of flying footsteps and rustling skirts. Two or three women, perhaps, had run out of the room. Alyosha thought it strange that his arrival should cause such excitement. He was conducted however to the drawing-room at once. It was a large room, elegantly and amply furnished, not at all in provincial style. There were many sofas, lounges, settees, big and little tables. There were pictures on the walls, vases and lamps on the tables, masses of flowers, and even an aquarium in the window. It was twilight and rather dark. Alyosha made out a silk mantle thrown down on the sofa, where people had evidently just been sitting; and on a table in front of the sofa were two unfinished cups of chocolate, cakes, a glass saucer with blue raisins, and another with sweetmeats. Alyosha saw that he had interrupted visitors, and frowned. But at that instant the portiere was raised, and with rapid, hurrying footsteps Katerina Ivanovna came in, holding out both hands to Alyosha with a radiant smile of delight. At the same instant a servant brought in two lighted candles and set them on the table. "Thank God! At last you have come too! I've been simply praying for you all day! Sit down." Alyosha had been struck by Katerina Ivanovna's beauty when, three weeks before, Dmitri had first brought him, at Katerina Ivanovna's special request, to be introduced to her. There had been no conversation between them at that interview, however. Supposing Alyosha to be very shy, Katerina Ivanovna had talked all the time to Dmitri to spare him. Alyosha had been silent, but he had seen a great deal very clearly. He was struck by the imperiousness, proud ease, and self-confidence of the haughty girl. And all that was certain, Alyosha felt that he was not exaggerating it. He thought her great glowing black eyes were very fine, especially with her pale, even rather sallow, longish face. But in those eyes and in the lines of her exquisite lips there was something with which his brother might well be passionately in love, but which perhaps could not be loved for long. He expressed this thought almost plainly to Dmitri when, after the visit, his brother besought and insisted that he should not conceal his impressions on seeing his betrothed. "You'll be happy with her, but perhaps--not tranquilly happy." "Quite so, brother. Such people remain always the same. They don't yield to fate. So you think I shan't love her for ever." "No; perhaps you will love her for ever. But perhaps you won't always be happy with her." Alyosha had given his opinion at the time, blushing, and angry with himself for having yielded to his brother's entreaties and put such "foolish" ideas into words. For his opinion had struck him as awfully foolish immediately after he had uttered it. He felt ashamed too of having given so confident an opinion about a woman. It was with the more amazement that he felt now, at the first glance at Katerina Ivanovna as she ran in to him, that he had perhaps been utterly mistaken. This time her face was beaming with spontaneous good-natured kindliness, and direct warm-hearted sincerity. The "pride and haughtiness," which had struck Alyosha so much before, was only betrayed now in a frank, generous energy and a sort of bright, strong faith in herself. Alyosha realized at the first glance, at the first word, that all the tragedy of her position in relation to the man she loved so dearly was no secret to her; that she perhaps already knew everything, positively everything. And yet, in spite of that, there was such brightness in her face, such faith in the future. Alyosha felt at once that he had gravely wronged her in his thoughts. He was conquered and captivated immediately. Besides all this, he noticed at her first words that she was in great excitement, an excitement perhaps quite exceptional and almost approaching ecstasy. "I was so eager to see you, because I can learn from you the whole truth--from you and no one else." "I have come," muttered Alyosha confusedly, "I--he sent me." "Ah, he sent you! I foresaw that. Now I know everything--everything!" cried Katerina Ivanovna, her eyes flashing. "Wait a moment, Alexey Fyodorovitch, I'll tell you why I've been so longing to see you. You see, I know perhaps far more than you do yourself, and there's no need for you to tell me anything. I'll tell you what I want from you. I want to know your own last impression of him. I want you to tell me most directly, plainly, coarsely even (oh, as coarsely as you like!), what you thought of him just now and of his position after your meeting with him to-day. That will perhaps be better than if I had a personal explanation with him, as he does not want to come to me. Do you understand what I want from you? Now, tell me simply, tell me every word of the message he sent you with (I knew he would send you)." "He told me to give you his compliments--and to say that he would never come again--but to give you his compliments." "His compliments? Was that what he said--his own expression?" "Yes." "Accidentally perhaps he made a mistake in the word, perhaps he did not use the right word?" "No; he told me precisely to repeat that word. He begged me two or three times not to forget to say so." Katerina Ivanovna flushed hotly. "Help me now, Alexey Fyodorovitch. Now I really need your help. I'll tell you what I think, and you must simply say whether it's right or not. Listen! If he had sent me his compliments in passing, without insisting on your repeating the words, without emphasizing them, that would be the end of everything! But if he particularly insisted on those words, if he particularly told you not to forget to repeat them to me, then perhaps he was in excitement, beside himself. He had made his decision and was frightened at it. He wasn't walking away from me with a resolute step, but leaping headlong. The emphasis on that phrase may have been simply bravado." "Yes, yes!" cried Alyosha warmly. "I believe that is it." "And, if so, he's not altogether lost. I can still save him. Stay! Did he not tell you anything about money--about three thousand roubles?" "He did speak about it, and it's that more than anything that's crushing him. He said he had lost his honor and that nothing matters now," Alyosha answered warmly, feeling a rush of hope in his heart and believing that there really might be a way of escape and salvation for his brother. "But do you know about the money?" he added, and suddenly broke off. "I've known of it a long time; I telegraphed to Moscow to inquire, and heard long ago that the money had not arrived. He hadn't sent the money, but I said nothing. Last week I learnt that he was still in need of money. My only object in all this was that he should know to whom to turn, and who was his true friend. No, he won't recognize that I am his truest friend; he won't know me, and looks on me merely as a woman. I've been tormented all the week, trying to think how to prevent him from being ashamed to face me because he spent that three thousand. Let him feel ashamed of himself, let him be ashamed of other people's knowing, but not of my knowing. He can tell God everything without shame. Why is it he still does not understand how much I am ready to bear for his sake? Why, why doesn't he know me? How dare he not know me after all that has happened? I want to save him for ever. Let him forget me as his betrothed. And here he fears that he is dishonored in my eyes. Why, he wasn't afraid to be open with you, Alexey Fyodorovitch. How is it that I don't deserve the same?" The last words she uttered in tears. Tears gushed from her eyes. "I must tell you," Alyosha began, his voice trembling too, "what happened just now between him and my father." And he described the whole scene, how Dmitri had sent him to get the money, how he had broken in, knocked his father down, and after that had again specially and emphatically begged him to take his compliments and farewell. "He went to that woman," Alyosha added softly. "And do you suppose that I can't put up with that woman? Does he think I can't? But he won't marry her," she suddenly laughed nervously. "Could such a passion last for ever in a Karamazov? It's passion, not love. He won't marry her because she won't marry him." Again Katerina Ivanovna laughed strangely. "He may marry her," said Alyosha mournfully, looking down. "He won't marry her, I tell you. That girl is an angel. Do you know that? Do you know that?" Katerina Ivanovna exclaimed suddenly with extraordinary warmth. "She is one of the most fantastic of fantastic creatures. I know how bewitching she is, but I know too that she is kind, firm and noble. Why do you look at me like that, Alexey Fyodorovitch? Perhaps you are wondering at my words, perhaps you don't believe me? Agrafena Alexandrovna, my angel!" she cried suddenly to some one, peeping into the next room, "come in to us. This is a friend. This is Alyosha. He knows all about our affairs. Show yourself to him." "I've only been waiting behind the curtain for you to call me," said a soft, one might even say sugary, feminine voice. The portiere was raised and Grushenka herself, smiling and beaming, came up to the table. A violent revulsion passed over Alyosha. He fixed his eyes on her and could not take them off. Here she was, that awful woman, the "beast," as Ivan had called her half an hour before. And yet one would have thought the creature standing before him most simple and ordinary, a good-natured, kind woman, handsome certainly, but so like other handsome ordinary women! It is true she was very, very good-looking with that Russian beauty so passionately loved by many men. She was a rather tall woman, though a little shorter than Katerina Ivanovna, who was exceptionally tall. She had a full figure, with soft, as it were, noiseless, movements, softened to a peculiar over-sweetness, like her voice. She moved, not like Katerina Ivanovna, with a vigorous, bold step, but noiselessly. Her feet made absolutely no sound on the floor. She sank softly into a low chair, softly rustling her sumptuous black silk dress, and delicately nestling her milk-white neck and broad shoulders in a costly cashmere shawl. She was twenty-two years old, and her face looked exactly that age. She was very white in the face, with a pale pink tint on her cheeks. The modeling of her face might be said to be too broad, and the lower jaw was set a trifle forward. Her upper lip was thin, but the slightly prominent lower lip was at least twice as full, and looked pouting. But her magnificent, abundant dark brown hair, her sable-colored eyebrows and charming gray-blue eyes with their long lashes would have made the most indifferent person, meeting her casually in a crowd in the street, stop at the sight of her face and remember it long after. What struck Alyosha most in that face was its expression of childlike good nature. There was a childlike look in her eyes, a look of childish delight. She came up to the table, beaming with delight and seeming to expect something with childish, impatient, and confiding curiosity. The light in her eyes gladdened the soul--Alyosha felt that. There was something else in her which he could not understand, or would not have been able to define, and which yet perhaps unconsciously affected him. It was that softness, that voluptuousness of her bodily movements, that catlike noiselessness. Yet it was a vigorous, ample body. Under the shawl could be seen full broad shoulders, a high, still quite girlish bosom. Her figure suggested the lines of the Venus of Milo, though already in somewhat exaggerated proportions. That could be divined. Connoisseurs of Russian beauty could have foretold with certainty that this fresh, still youthful beauty would lose its harmony by the age of thirty, would "spread"; that the face would become puffy, and that wrinkles would very soon appear upon her forehead and round the eyes; the complexion would grow coarse and red perhaps--in fact, that it was the beauty of the moment, the fleeting beauty which is so often met with in Russian women. Alyosha, of course, did not think of this; but though he was fascinated, yet he wondered with an unpleasant sensation, and as it were regretfully, why she drawled in that way and could not speak naturally. She did so evidently feeling there was a charm in the exaggerated, honeyed modulation of the syllables. It was, of course, only a bad, underbred habit that showed bad education and a false idea of good manners. And yet this intonation and manner of speaking impressed Alyosha as almost incredibly incongruous with the childishly simple and happy expression of her face, the soft, babyish joy in her eyes. Katerina Ivanovna at once made her sit down in an arm- chair facing Alyosha, and ecstatically kissed her several times on her smiling lips. She seemed quite in love with her. "This is the first time we've met, Alexey Fyodorovitch," she said rapturously. "I wanted to know her, to see her. I wanted to go to her, but I'd no sooner expressed the wish than she came to me. I knew we should settle everything together--everything. My heart told me so--I was begged not to take the step, but I foresaw it would be a way out of the difficulty, and I was not mistaken. Grushenka has explained everything to me, told me all she means to do. She flew here like an angel of goodness and brought us peace and joy." "You did not disdain me, sweet, excellent young lady," drawled Grushenka in her sing-song voice, still with the same charming smile of delight. "Don't dare to speak to me like that, you sorceress, you witch! Disdain you! Here, I must kiss your lower lip once more. It looks as though it were swollen, and now it will be more so, and more and more. Look how she laughs, Alexey Fyodorovitch! It does one's heart good to see the angel." Alyosha flushed, and faint, imperceptible shivers kept running down him. "You make so much of me, dear young lady, and perhaps I am not at all worthy of your kindness." "Not worthy! She's not worthy of it!" Katerina Ivanovna cried again with the same warmth. "You know, Alexey Fyodorovitch, we're fanciful, we're self-willed, but proudest of the proud in our little heart. We're noble, we're generous, Alexey Fyodorovitch, let me tell you. We have only been unfortunate. We were too ready to make every sacrifice for an unworthy, perhaps, or fickle man. There was one man--one, an officer too, we loved him, we sacrificed everything to him. That was long ago, five years ago, and he has forgotten us, he has married. Now he is a widower, he has written, he is coming here, and, do you know, we've loved him, none but him, all this time, and we've loved him all our life! He will come, and Grushenka will be happy again. For the last five years she's been wretched. But who can reproach her, who can boast of her favor? Only that bedridden old merchant, but he is more like her father, her friend, her protector. He found her then in despair, in agony, deserted by the man she loved. She was ready to drown herself then, but the old merchant saved her--saved her!" "You defend me very kindly, dear young lady. You are in a great hurry about everything," Grushenka drawled again. "Defend you! Is it for me to defend you? Should I dare to defend you? Grushenka, angel, give me your hand. Look at that charming soft little hand, Alexey Fyodorovitch! Look at it! It has brought me happiness and has lifted me up, and I'm going to kiss it, outside and inside, here, here, here!" And three times she kissed the certainly charming, though rather fat, hand of Grushenka in a sort of rapture. She held out her hand with a charming musical, nervous little laugh, watched the "sweet young lady," and obviously liked having her hand kissed. "Perhaps there's rather too much rapture," thought Alyosha. He blushed. He felt a peculiar uneasiness at heart the whole time. "You won't make me blush, dear young lady, kissing my hand like this before Alexey Fyodorovitch." "Do you think I meant to make you blush?" said Katerina Ivanovna, somewhat surprised. "Ah, my dear, how little you understand me!" "Yes, and you too perhaps quite misunderstand me, dear young lady. Maybe I'm not so good as I seem to you. I've a bad heart; I will have my own way. I fascinated poor Dmitri Fyodorovitch that day simply for fun." "But now you'll save him. You've given me your word. You'll explain it all to him. You'll break to him that you have long loved another man, who is now offering you his hand." "Oh, no! I didn't give you my word to do that. It was you kept talking about that. I didn't give you my word." "Then I didn't quite understand you," said Katerina Ivanovna slowly, turning a little pale. "You promised--" "Oh, no, angel lady, I've promised nothing," Grushenka interrupted softly and evenly, still with the same gay and simple expression. "You see at once, dear young lady, what a willful wretch I am compared with you. If I want to do a thing I do it. I may have made you some promise just now. But now again I'm thinking: I may take to Mitya again. I liked him very much once--liked him for almost a whole hour. Now maybe I shall go and tell him to stay with me from this day forward. You see, I'm so changeable." "Just now you said--something quite different," Katerina Ivanovna whispered faintly. "Ah, just now! But, you know. I'm such a soft-hearted, silly creature. Only think what he's gone through on my account! What if when I go home I feel sorry for him? What then?" "I never expected--" "Ah, young lady, how good and generous you are compared with me! Now perhaps you won't care for a silly creature like me, now you know my character. Give me your sweet little hand, angelic lady," she said tenderly, and with a sort of reverence took Katerina Ivanovna's hand. "Here, dear young lady, I'll take your hand and kiss it as you did mine. You kissed mine three times, but I ought to kiss yours three hundred times to be even with you. Well, but let that pass. And then it shall be as God wills. Perhaps I shall be your slave entirely and want to do your bidding like a slave. Let it be as God wills, without any agreements and promises. What a sweet hand--what a sweet hand you have! You sweet young lady, you incredible beauty!" She slowly raised the hands to her lips, with the strange object indeed of "being even" with her in kisses. Katerina Ivanovna did not take her hand away. She listened with timid hope to the last words, though Grushenka's promise to do her bidding like a slave was very strangely expressed. She looked intently into her eyes; she still saw in those eyes the same simple-hearted, confiding expression, the same bright gayety. "She's perhaps too naive," thought Katerina Ivanovna, with a gleam of hope. Grushenka meanwhile seemed enthusiastic over the "sweet hand." She raised it deliberately to her lips. But she held it for two or three minutes near her lips, as though reconsidering something. "Do you know, angel lady," she suddenly drawled in an even more soft and sugary voice, "do you know, after all, I think I won't kiss your hand?" And she laughed a little merry laugh. "As you please. What's the matter with you?" said Katerina Ivanovna, starting suddenly. "So that you may be left to remember that you kissed my hand, but I didn't kiss yours." There was a sudden gleam in her eyes. She looked with awful intentness at Katerina Ivanovna. "Insolent creature!" cried Katerina Ivanovna, as though suddenly grasping something. She flushed all over and leapt up from her seat. Grushenka too got up, but without haste. "So I shall tell Mitya how you kissed my hand, but I didn't kiss yours at all. And how he will laugh!" "Vile slut! Go away!" "Ah, for shame, young lady! Ah, for shame! That's unbecoming for you, dear young lady, a word like that." "Go away! You're a creature for sale!" screamed Katerina Ivanovna. Every feature was working in her utterly distorted face. "For sale indeed! You used to visit gentlemen in the dusk for money once; you brought your beauty for sale. You see, I know." Katerina Ivanovna shrieked, and would have rushed at her, but Alyosha held her with all his strength. "Not a step, not a word! Don't speak, don't answer her. She'll go away--she'll go at once." At that instant Katerina Ivanovna's two aunts ran in at her cry, and with them a maid-servant. All hurried to her. "I will go away," said Grushenka, taking up her mantle from the sofa. "Alyosha, darling, see me home!" "Go away--go away, make haste!" cried Alyosha, clasping his hands imploringly. "Dear little Alyosha, see me home! I've got a pretty little story to tell you on the way. I got up this scene for your benefit, Alyosha. See me home, dear, you'll be glad of it afterwards." Alyosha turned away, wringing his hands. Grushenka ran out of the house, laughing musically. Katerina Ivanovna went into a fit of hysterics. She sobbed, and was shaken with convulsions. Every one fussed round her. "I warned you," said the elder of her aunts. "I tried to prevent your doing this. You're too impulsive. How could you do such a thing? You don't know these creatures, and they say she's worse than any of them. You are too self-willed." "She's a tigress!" yelled Katerina Ivanovna. "Why did you hold me, Alexey Fyodorovitch? I'd have beaten her--beaten her!" She could not control herself before Alyosha; perhaps she did not care to, indeed. "She ought to be flogged in public on a scaffold!" Alyosha withdrew towards the door. "But, my God!" cried Katerina Ivanovna, clasping her hands. "He! He! He could be so dishonorable, so inhuman! Why, he told that creature what happened on that fatal, accursed day! 'You brought your beauty for sale, dear young lady.' She knows it! Your brother's a scoundrel, Alexey Fyodorovitch." Alyosha wanted to say something, but he couldn't find a word. His heart ached. "Go away, Alexey Fyodorovitch! It's shameful, it's awful for me! To- morrow, I beg you on my knees, come to-morrow. Don't condemn me. Forgive me. I don't know what I shall do with myself now!" Alyosha walked out into the street reeling. He could have wept as she did. Suddenly he was overtaken by the maid. "The young lady forgot to give you this letter from Madame Hohlakov; it's been left with us since dinner-time." Alyosha took the little pink envelope mechanically and put it, almost unconsciously, into his pocket.

Book 3, Chapter 10

https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-3-chapter-10

Troubled by what has just transpired at his father's home, Alyosha heads off to Katerina's, but it's already dusk. When he arrives there is some commotion in the drawing room before he is at last shown in. The room is empty, with a tea service set for two, and Alyosha realizes he must have interrupted some company. Katerina comes in and greets him warmly. Alyosha gives her Dmitri's message, which Katerina doesn't take as a rejection. Instead, she tells Alyosha that she's convinced that she can save Dmitri from himself by showing what a true friend she can be, even forgiving him for stealing the money that was meant for her sister and spending it on his mistress, Grushenka. For who should be visiting Katerina at that moment but...Grushenka! She walks in to the room and greets Alyosha. Katerina gushes that Grushenka is an angel, takes her hand and kisses it. Katerina informs Alyosha that Grushenka has agreed to break it off with Dmitri. Grushenka denies that she ever promised any such thing. Katerina is confused, but seems reassured when Grushenka takes her hand to return her kisses. But, laughing, Grushenka changes her mind and refuses to kiss Katerina's hand. Realizing that Grushenka has just been toying with her, Katerina almost attacks her but is restrained by Alyosha. She begs Alyosha to leave, and as he does, the maid hands him a note from Madame Khokhlakov.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/chapters_40_to_45.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Lord Jim/section_11_part_0.txt

Lord Jim.chapters 40-45

chapters 40-45

{"name": "Chapters 40-45", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422054542/https://www.gradesaver.com/lord-jim/study-guide/summary-chapters-40-45", "summary": "As Brown tells his story to Marlow, Marlow writes that he is struck by his impression of \"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\" . In the battle, Brown was almost paralyzed by fear. The numbers were 200 to one. Fear among the people, however, had also begun to unravel the social fabric. One of Brown's men is shot down, so Brown shoots one of the Bugis three times in the stomach. Then, sounds of joy lift in the air. Cornelius tells Brown that Jim has returned, not afraid of anything. When Brown sees Jim, he sees a man in European clothes, all in white, with a helmet. The two meet near the very spot where Jim had taken \"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\" . Brown hates Jim on sight--for his youth and his assurance, his self-possession, his power and neatness. They converse, and Brown yells to him that it was hunger that had driven him to Patusan. Why had Jim come? The conversation strikes Marlow as a duel, and as if Brown, like a great man, had discovered Jim's weakest spot. He says, \"if it came to saving one's life in the dark, one didn't care who else went--three, thirty, three hundred people\" . Jim says nothing in response, and he is struck by \"their common blood, an assumption of common experience; a sickening suggestion of common guilt, of secret knowledge that was like a bond of their minds and of their hearts\" . With that, Jim turns away, telling Brown he will have a clear road or a clear fight . The story now continues from Tamb' Itam's point of view. He describes the shock of Jim insisting that Dain Waris lead. Tamb' Itam is given the duty of sending word to Dain Waris to let Brown and his men pass. Jim includes Stein's silver ring as a sign of good faith and, at the same time, he sends Brown a note with Cornelius as messenger. The note says, \"You get the clear road\" . But, upon delivering the note, Cornelius remains with Brown and tells him that Dain Waris's party is downriver and lying in wait to lay ambush on him as they pass. Brown feels betrayed yet, strangely enough, he doesn't seem to believe it. To be safe, he takes the creek he had noticed upon his first arrival. Through the fog, he takes Cornelius with him in the longboat. After Tamb' Itam approaches Dain Waris's camp and delivers the message with the ring, saying that all is well and that the trouble has passed, Dain Waris slips the ring onto the forefinger of his right hand. Brown's men land nearby and, though Cornelius tries to get away, force him to lead the way to the camp. No one had imagined that the white men would know of the creek. Fourteen shots ring out, and Dain Waris jumps up, running to the open shore. There, Tamb' Itam sees a bullet hit Darin Waris's forehead, and a great fear falls upon him. The white men disappear. Tamb' Itam sees Cornelius and shoots him twice, watching him die. He then hurries back to the town, knowing that it is important that he be the first bearer of the news. When he arrives, the town is festive. He seeks out the girl and reports what has happened. They go to find Jim, and he tells Jim that it is not safe for him to go out amongst the people. This is when Jim understands that it is all over: \"the work of his own hands, had fallen in ruins upon his head\" . Marlow believes it was then that Jim had tried to write to someone. He says to Jewel, \"I have no life\" . The girl insists that either he should fight, or they should run away. But he ignores her. Dain Waris's body is brought to Doramin, and as Doramin sees the wound in the forehead and then the ring on his son's forefinger, he begins to cry in fury. Jim walks to meet him: \"There is nothing to fight for\" . He tells Doramin that he has come ready and unarmed, and that is when Doramin shoots him through the chest. Jim, with a proud and unflinching look, falls dead. The story concludes with Jewel in Stein's home, \"leading a sort of soundless, inert life\" . Stein has grown old and sorrowful. He feels himself preparing to leave \"all this,\" and he \"waves his hand sadly at his butterflies\" .", "analysis": "When Brown and Jim finally meet, Brown expresses hatred. This hatred is, on some level, understandable. He hates the world for never having given him the opportunity or the \"clean slate\" that Jim had been given. When Brown and Jim face each other, each sees in the other a vision of what might have been. The moment is one of recognition. Brown, the reader can surmise from subtle hints in the narrative, is a quick man. He is charismatic enough to be a leader, albeit of an outcast group. Still, his eye sees the hidden creek and, in the way that a great man senses another man's greatest weakness, Brown hits Jim in his weak spot. He rouses in their interaction a sense of challenge. Jim, now the embodiment of a mythical romantic ideal, begins to collapse. The reason is less from a worry that Brown knows who Jim than the realization that Jim will never be able to escape his moment of weakness on the Patna: his choice is part of his character, and his history is an integral part of his personality. This history is not knowledge that is external to him, but something that has become deeply seated in his being. Brown is a personification of that hidden and rejected self-knowledge. Jim likewise recognizes that Brown is a man who has potential or \"Ability in the abstract.\" In an attempt to pass along to him an opportunity in the same generous spirit with which Stein and Marlow had aided him, Jim gives Brown \"the clear road\"--not quite a clean slate, but a chance to achieve his goals. This is an opportunity for Brown, though it is not nearly of the same quality as the one that had been given to Jim, because the clear road does not promise a realization of the romantic ideal, the achievement of the dreams of a life of glory and honor. Instead, it is an opportunity for Brown to persist in his merely Darwinian-style struggle to survive. The lesser opportunity here, however, is perhaps not so much a result of individual potential and character as it is a product of fortune or chance. The tragic conclusion ensues in a fog of mistrust. Cornelius presses Brown to see the possibility of betrayal, though there is something in Brown that recognizes \"that there could be no treachery intended\" . Brown is an astute judge of character. Still, in the end, he acts mistrustful all the same, choosing to be retaliatory and violent. These actions do more to reveal the true nature of his character. Up the creek, and in secret, he wreaks havoc and death among Dain Waris's camp, and then escapes quickly. We again meet fairly clear evidence of Brown's character, should the story be true, that he is found at sea in a lifeboat telling the same story that the Patna crew had told their rescuers: the ship had sunk beneath their feet. The irony in this tale, however, is that Jim had been one of them, as well as \"one of us.\" Can Jim exorcise from himself the negative spirit that persists in Brown? The ambiguity of character suggests that all men are mixtures of potential characters: the romantic, the hopeless, the corrupt, and the cowardly. \"One of us\" can refer to being one more such complex being within the company of all men. As for Jim's fate, Dain Waris's death extinguishes the flame that had charmed the life of Patusan. This parallel to Stein's best friend being assassinated is obvious, though in Jim's case, the death comes out of a failure of judgment on his part. The ring, signifying the promise of good will from Stein to Doramin, becomes a symbol of betrayal. Additionally, the death causes Jim's reputation and secure place in Patusan society to begin to crumble. He has no place in the world beyond, and now that his work in Patusan is finished, there is nowhere for him to go, except to be extinguished himself. Therefore, as the reader recalls the vision of Stein blowing out a flaming match with the idea that all life is fleeting, Jim is compelled to do what is logically demanded at this climax. He cannot fight in the way Brown had--struggling for his life--because to do so would liken him further to Brown. Instead, he leaps in the direction of his fate. He does not fight it. Jewel, representing the love that the community had felt for Jim and the delight of opportunity he had known, is discarded. His final atonement requires a clean break. Jim goes to meet Doramin with a calm face, in the same way that he had arrived, in the face of possible assault. Here, the assault is certain, and Jim dies in a manner that atones for his past failure at sea. This time, he goes down with the iron ship as it sinks. He does not run. He refuses to leap for a lifeboat to share with Jewel and Tamb' Itam. Instead he remains--as George had remained--aboard, to die. The native audience looks at Jim's body, as the Muslim pilgrims had looked upon George's, with curiosity and fascination. The mystery man of Patusan is brought to an end. Jim is, after all, a man who dies, in spite of the myths of his immortality. Nevertheless, in true Conradian fashion and poetic tradition, Jim lives on through his show of action. He remains committed to his ideal and takes responsibility for what he has done and, in this way, Marlow finishes his story. This man's story is worth finishing. The inquiry into Jim's soul has been mysterious but it also has been fruitful, revelatory, and illustrative of what is human. The novel concludes with a final view of an aging Stein and a broken, mute Jewel. The ring has been lost, and there is no one to inherit what Stein has built . For Stein, the romantic tradition comes to an end. As his hands wave at the butterflies beneath the glass, we sense that Stein, Jewel, the butterflies, everyone, all etherized in their places, will soon disintegrate into dust."}

'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!"''I don't think he could do more than perhaps look upon that straight path. He seemed to have been puzzled by what he saw, for he interrupted himself in his narrative more than once to exclaim, "He nearly slipped from me there. I could not make him out. Who was he?" And after glaring at me wildly he would go on, jubilating and sneering. To me the conversation of these two across the creek appears now as the deadliest kind of duel on which Fate looked on with her cold-eyed knowledge of the end. No, he didn't turn Jim's soul inside out, but I am much mistaken if the spirit so utterly out of his reach had not been made to taste to the full the bitterness of that contest. These were the emissaries with whom the world he had renounced was pursuing him in his retreat--white men from "out there" where he did not think himself good enough to live. This was all that came to him--a menace, a shock, a danger to his work. I suppose it is this sad, half-resentful, half-resigned feeling, piercing through the few words Jim said now and then, that puzzled Brown so much in the reading of his character. Some great men owe most of their greatness to the ability of detecting in those they destine for their tools the exact quality of strength that matters for their work; and Brown, as though he had been really great, had a satanic gift of finding out the best and the weakest spot in his victims. He admitted to me that Jim wasn't of the sort that can be got over by truckling, and accordingly he took care to show himself as a man confronting without dismay ill-luck, censure, and disaster. The smuggling of a few guns was no great crime, he pointed out. As to coming to Patusan, who had the right to say he hadn't come to beg? The infernal people here let loose at him from both banks without staying to ask questions. He made the point brazenly, for, in truth, Dain Waris's energetic action had prevented the greatest calamities; because Brown told me distinctly that, perceiving the size of the place, he had resolved instantly in his mind that as soon as he had gained a footing he would set fire right and left, and begin by shooting down everything living in sight, in order to cow and terrify the population. The disproportion of forces was so great that this was the only way giving him the slightest chance of attaining his ends--he argued in a fit of coughing. But he didn't tell Jim this. As to the hardships and starvation they had gone through, these had been very real; it was enough to look at his band. He made, at the sound of a shrill whistle, all his men appear standing in a row on the logs in full view, so that Jim could see them. For the killing of the man, it had been done--well, it had--but was not this war, bloody war--in a corner? and the fellow had been killed cleanly, shot through the chest, not like that poor devil of his lying now in the creek. They had to listen to him dying for six hours, with his entrails torn with slugs. At any rate this was a life for a life. . . . And all this was said with the weariness, with the recklessness of a man spurred on and on by ill-luck till he cares not where he runs. When he asked Jim, with a sort of brusque despairing frankness, whether he himself--straight now--didn't understand that when "it came to saving one's life in the dark, one didn't care who else went--three, thirty, three hundred people"--it was as if a demon had been whispering advice in his ear. "I made him wince," boasted Brown to me. "He very soon left off coming the righteous over me. He just stood there with nothing to say, and looking as black as thunder--not at me--on the ground." He asked Jim whether he had nothing fishy in his life to remember that he was so damnedly hard upon a man trying to get out of a deadly hole by the first means that came to hand--and so on, and so on. And there ran through the rough talk a vein of subtle reference to their common blood, an assumption of common experience; a sickening suggestion of common guilt, of secret knowledge that was like a bond of their minds and of their hearts. 'At last Brown threw himself down full length and watched Jim out of the corners of his eyes. Jim on his side of the creek stood thinking and switching his leg. The houses in view were silent, as if a pestilence had swept them clean of every breath of life; but many invisible eyes were turned, from within, upon the two men with the creek between them, a stranded white boat, and the body of the third man half sunk in the mud. On the river canoes were moving again, for Patusan was recovering its belief in the stability of earthly institutions since the return of the white lord. The right bank, the platforms of the houses, the rafts moored along the shores, even the roofs of bathing-huts, were covered with people that, far away out of earshot and almost out of sight, were straining their eyes towards the knoll beyond the Rajah's stockade. Within the wide irregular ring of forests, broken in two places by the sheen of the river, there was a silence. "Will you promise to leave the coast?" Jim asked. Brown lifted and let fall his hand, giving everything up as it were--accepting the inevitable. "And surrender your arms?" Jim went on. Brown sat up and glared across. "Surrender our arms! Not till you come to take them out of our stiff hands. You think I am gone crazy with funk? Oh no! That and the rags I stand in is all I have got in the world, besides a few more breechloaders on board; and I expect to sell the lot in Madagascar, if I ever get so far--begging my way from ship to ship." 'Jim said nothing to this. At last, throwing away the switch he held in his hand, he said, as if speaking to himself, "I don't know whether I have the power." . . . "You don't know! And you wanted me just now to give up my arms! That's good, too," cried Brown; "Suppose they say one thing to you, and do the other thing to me." He calmed down markedly. "I dare say you have the power, or what's the meaning of all this talk?" he continued. "What did you come down here for? To pass the time of day?" '"Very well," said Jim, lifting his head suddenly after a long silence. "You shall have a clear road or else a clear fight." He turned on his heel and walked away. 'Brown got up at once, but he did not go up the hill till he had seen Jim disappear between the first houses. He never set his eyes on him again. On his way back he met Cornelius slouching down with his head between his shoulders. He stopped before Brown. "Why didn't you kill him?" he demanded in a sour, discontented voice. "Because I could do better than that," Brown said with an amused smile. "Never! never!" protested Cornelius with energy. "Couldn't. I have lived here for many years." Brown looked up at him curiously. There were many sides to the life of that place in arms against him; things he would never find out. Cornelius slunk past dejectedly in the direction of the river. He was now leaving his new friends; he accepted the disappointing course of events with a sulky obstinacy which seemed to draw more together his little yellow old face; and as he went down he glanced askant here and there, never giving up his fixed idea. 'Henceforth events move fast without a check, flowing from the very hearts of men like a stream from a dark source, and we see Jim amongst them, mostly through Tamb' Itam's eyes. The girl's eyes had watched him too, but her life is too much entwined with his: there is her passion, her wonder, her anger, and, above all, her fear and her unforgiving love. Of the faithful servant, uncomprehending as the rest of them, it is the fidelity alone that comes into play; a fidelity and a belief in his lord so strong that even amazement is subdued to a sort of saddened acceptance of a mysterious failure. He has eyes only for one figure, and through all the mazes of bewilderment he preserves his air of guardianship, of obedience, of care. 'His master came back from his talk with the white men, walking slowly towards the stockade in the street. Everybody was rejoiced to see him return, for while he was away every man had been afraid not only of him being killed, but also of what would come after. Jim went into one of the houses, where old Doramin had retired, and remained alone for a long time with the head of the Bugis settlers. No doubt he discussed the course to follow with him then, but no man was present at the conversation. Only Tamb' Itam, keeping as close to the door as he could, heard his master say, "Yes. I shall let all the people know that such is my wish; but I spoke to you, O Doramin, before all the others, and alone; for you know my heart as well as I know yours and its greatest desire. And you know well also that I have no thought but for the people's good." Then his master, lifting the sheeting in the doorway, went out, and he, Tamb' Itam, had a glimpse of old Doramin within, sitting in the chair with his hands on his knees, and looking between his feet. Afterwards he followed his master to the fort, where all the principal Bugis and Patusan inhabitants had been summoned for a talk. Tamb' Itam himself hoped there would be some fighting. "What was it but the taking of another hill?" he exclaimed regretfully. However, in the town many hoped that the rapacious strangers would be induced, by the sight of so many brave men making ready to fight, to go away. It would be a good thing if they went away. Since Jim's arrival had been made known before daylight by the gun fired from the fort and the beating of the big drum there, the fear that had hung over Patusan had broken and subsided like a wave on a rock, leaving the seething foam of excitement, curiosity, and endless speculation. Half of the population had been ousted out of their homes for purposes of defence, and were living in the street on the left side of the river, crowding round the fort, and in momentary expectation of seeing their abandoned dwellings on the threatened bank burst into flames. The general anxiety was to see the matter settled quickly. Food, through Jewel's care, had been served out to the refugees. Nobody knew what their white man would do. Some remarked that it was worse than in Sherif Ali's war. Then many people did not care; now everybody had something to lose. The movements of canoes passing to and fro between the two parts of the town were watched with interest. A couple of Bugis war-boats lay anchored in the middle of the stream to protect the river, and a thread of smoke stood at the bow of each; the men in them were cooking their midday rice when Jim, after his interviews with Brown and Doramin, crossed the river and entered by the water-gate of his fort. The people inside crowded round him, so that he could hardly make his way to the house. They had not seen him before, because on his arrival during the night he had only exchanged a few words with the girl, who had come down to the landing-stage for the purpose, and had then gone on at once to join the chiefs and the fighting men on the other bank. People shouted greetings after him. One old woman raised a laugh by pushing her way to the front madly and enjoining him in a scolding voice to see to it that her two sons, who were with Doramin, did not come to harm at the hands of the robbers. Several of the bystanders tried to pull her away, but she struggled and cried, "Let me go. What is this, O Muslims? This laughter is unseemly. Are they not cruel, bloodthirsty robbers bent on killing?" "Let her be," said Jim, and as a silence fell suddenly, he said slowly, "Everybody shall be safe." He entered the house before the great sigh, and the loud murmurs of satisfaction, had died out. 'There's no doubt his mind was made up that Brown should have his way clear back to the sea. His fate, revolted, was forcing his hand. He had for the first time to affirm his will in the face of outspoken opposition. "There was much talk, and at first my master was silent," Tamb' Itam said. "Darkness came, and then I lit the candles on the long table. The chiefs sat on each side, and the lady remained by my master's right hand." 'When he began to speak, the unaccustomed difficulty seemed only to fix his resolve more immovably. The white men were now waiting for his answer on the hill. Their chief had spoken to him in the language of his own people, making clear many things difficult to explain in any other speech. They were erring men whom suffering had made blind to right and wrong. It is true that lives had been lost already, but why lose more? He declared to his hearers, the assembled heads of the people, that their welfare was his welfare, their losses his losses, their mourning his mourning. He looked round at the grave listening faces and told them to remember that they had fought and worked side by side. They knew his courage . . . Here a murmur interrupted him . . . And that he had never deceived them. For many years they had dwelt together. He loved the land and the people living in it with a very great love. He was ready to answer with his life for any harm that should come to them if the white men with beards were allowed to retire. They were evil-doers, but their destiny had been evil, too. Had he ever advised them ill? Had his words ever brought suffering to the people? he asked. He believed that it would be best to let these whites and their followers go with their lives. It would be a small gift. "I whom you have tried and found always true ask you to let them go." He turned to Doramin. The old nakhoda made no movement. "Then," said Jim, "call in Dain Waris, your son, my friend, for in this business I shall not lead."' '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.' 'I don't think they spoke together again. The boat entered a narrow by-channel, where it was pushed by the oar-blades set into crumbling banks, and there was a gloom as if enormous black wings had been outspread above the mist that filled its depth to the summits of the trees. The branches overhead showered big drops through the gloomy fog. At a mutter from Cornelius, Brown ordered his men to load. "I'll give you a chance to get even with them before we're done, you dismal cripples, you," he said to his gang. "Mind you don't throw it away--you hounds." Low growls answered that speech. Cornelius showed much fussy concern for the safety of his canoe. 'Meantime Tamb' Itam had reached the end of his journey. The fog had delayed him a little, but he had paddled steadily, keeping in touch with the south bank. By-and-by daylight came like a glow in a ground glass globe. The shores made on each side of the river a dark smudge, in which one could detect hints of columnar forms and shadows of twisted branches high up. The mist was still thick on the water, but a good watch was being kept, for as Iamb' Itam approached the camp the figures of two men emerged out of the white vapour, and voices spoke to him boisterously. He answered, and presently a canoe lay alongside, and he exchanged news with the paddlers. All was well. The trouble was over. Then the men in the canoe let go their grip on the side of his dug-out and incontinently fell out of sight. He pursued his way till he heard voices coming to him quietly over the water, and saw, under the now lifting, swirling mist, the glow of many little fires burning on a sandy stretch, backed by lofty thin timber and bushes. There again a look-out was kept, for he was challenged. He shouted his name as the two last sweeps of his paddle ran his canoe up on the strand. It was a big camp. Men crouched in many little knots under a subdued murmur of early morning talk. Many thin threads of smoke curled slowly on the white mist. Little shelters, elevated above the ground, had been built for the chiefs. Muskets were stacked in small pyramids, and long spears were stuck singly into the sand near the fires. 'Tamb' Itam, assuming an air of importance, demanded to be led to Dain Waris. He found the friend of his white lord lying on a raised couch made of bamboo, and sheltered by a sort of shed of sticks covered with mats. Dain Waris was awake, and a bright fire was burning before his sleeping-place, which resembled a rude shrine. The only son of nakhoda Doramin answered his greeting kindly. Tamb' Itam began by handing him the ring which vouched for the truth of the messenger's words. Dain Waris, reclining on his elbow, bade him speak and tell all the news. Beginning with the consecrated formula, "The news is good," Tamb' Itam delivered Jim's own words. The white men, deputing with the consent of all the chiefs, were to be allowed to pass down the river. In answer to a question or two Tamb' Itam then reported the proceedings of the last council. Dain Waris listened attentively to the end, toying with the ring which ultimately he slipped on the forefinger of his right hand. After hearing all he had to say he dismissed Tamb' Itam to have food and rest. Orders for the return in the afternoon were given immediately. Afterwards Dain Waris lay down again, open-eyed, while his personal attendants were preparing his food at the fire, by which Tamb' Itam also sat talking to the men who lounged up to hear the latest intelligence from the town. The sun was eating up the mist. A good watch was kept upon the reach of the main stream where the boat of the whites was expected to appear every moment. 'It was then that Brown took his revenge upon the world which, after twenty years of contemptuous and reckless bullying, refused him the tribute of a common robber's success. It was an act of cold-blooded ferocity, and it consoled him on his deathbed like a memory of an indomitable defiance. Stealthily he landed his men on the other side of the island opposite to the Bugis camp, and led them across. After a short but quite silent scuffle, Cornelius, who had tried to slink away at the moment of landing, resigned himself to show the way where the undergrowth was most sparse. Brown held both his skinny hands together behind his back in the grip of one vast fist, and now and then impelled him forward with a fierce push. Cornelius remained as mute as a fish, abject but faithful to his purpose, whose accomplishment loomed before him dimly. At the edge of the patch of forest Brown's men spread themselves out in cover and waited. The camp was plain from end to end before their eyes, and no one looked their way. Nobody even dreamed that the white men could have any knowledge of the narrow channel at the back of the island. When he judged the moment come, Brown yelled, "Let them have it," and fourteen shots rang out like one. 'Tamb' Itam told me the surprise was so great that, except for those who fell dead or wounded, not a soul of them moved for quite an appreciable time after the first discharge. Then a man screamed, and after that scream a great yell of amazement and fear went up from all the throats. A blind panic drove these men in a surging swaying mob to and fro along the shore like a herd of cattle afraid of the water. Some few jumped into the river then, but most of them did so only after the last discharge. Three times Brown's men fired into the ruck, Brown, the only one in view, cursing and yelling, "Aim low! aim low!" 'Tamb' Itam says that, as for him, he understood at the first volley what had happened. Though untouched he fell down and lay as if dead, but with his eyes open. At the sound of the first shots Dain Waris, reclining on the couch, jumped up and ran out upon the open shore, just in time to receive a bullet in his forehead at the second discharge. Tamb' Itam saw him fling his arms wide open before he fell. Then, he says, a great fear came upon him--not before. The white men retired as they had come--unseen. 'Thus Brown balanced his account with the evil fortune. Notice that even in this awful outbreak there is a superiority as of a man who carries right--the abstract thing--within the envelope of his common desires. It was not a vulgar and treacherous massacre; it was a lesson, a retribution--a demonstration of some obscure and awful attribute of our nature which, I am afraid, is not so very far under the surface as we like to think. 'Afterwards the whites depart unseen by Tamb' Itam, and seem to vanish from before men's eyes altogether; and the schooner, too, vanishes after the manner of stolen goods. But a story is told of a white long-boat picked up a month later in the Indian Ocean by a cargo steamer. Two parched, yellow, glassy-eyed, whispering skeletons in her recognised the authority of a third, who declared that his name was Brown. His schooner, he reported, bound south with a cargo of Java sugar, had sprung a bad leak and sank under his feet. He and his companions were the survivors of a crew of six. The two died on board the steamer which rescued them. Brown lived to be seen by me, and I can testify that he had played his part to the last. 'It seems, however, that in going away they had neglected to cast off Cornelius's canoe. Cornelius himself Brown had let go at the beginning of the shooting, with a kick for a parting benediction. Tamb' Itam, after arising from amongst the dead, saw the Nazarene running up and down the shore amongst the corpses and the expiring fires. He uttered little cries. Suddenly he rushed to the water, and made frantic efforts to get one of the Bugis boats into the water. "Afterwards, till he had seen me," related Tamb' Itam, "he stood looking at the heavy canoe and scratching his head." "What became of him?" I asked. Tamb' Itam, staring hard at me, made an expressive gesture with his right arm. "Twice I struck, Tuan," he said. "When he beheld me approaching he cast himself violently on the ground and made a great outcry, kicking. He screeched like a frightened hen till he felt the point; then he was still, and lay staring at me while his life went out of his eyes." 'This done, Tamb' Itam did not tarry. He understood the importance of being the first with the awful news at the fort. There were, of course, many survivors of Dain Waris's party; but in the extremity of panic some had swum across the river, others had bolted into the bush. The fact is that they did not know really who struck that blow--whether more white robbers were not coming, whether they had not already got hold of the whole land. They imagined themselves to be the victims of a vast treachery, and utterly doomed to destruction. It is said that some small parties did not come in till three days afterwards. However, a few tried to make their way back to Patusan at once, and one of the canoes that were patrolling the river that morning was in sight of the camp at the very moment of the attack. It is true that at first the men in her leaped overboard and swam to the opposite bank, but afterwards they returned to their boat and started fearfully up-stream. Of these Tamb' Itam had an hour's advance.''When Tamb' Itam, paddling madly, came into the town-reach, the women, thronging the platforms before the houses, were looking out for the return of Dain Waris's little fleet of boats. The town had a festive air; here and there men, still with spears or guns in their hands, could be seen moving or standing on the shore in groups. Chinamen's shops had been opened early; but the market-place was empty, and a sentry, still posted at the corner of the fort, made out Tamb' Itam, and shouted to those within. The gate was wide open. Tamb' Itam jumped ashore and ran in headlong. The first person he met was the girl coming down from the house. 'Tamb' Itam, disordered, panting, with trembling lips and wild eyes, stood for a time before her as if a sudden spell had been laid on him. Then he broke out very quickly: "They have killed Dain Waris and many more." She clapped her hands, and her first words were, "Shut the gates." Most of the fortmen had gone back to their houses, but Tamb' Itam hurried on the few who remained for their turn of duty within. The girl stood in the middle of the courtyard while the others ran about. "Doramin," she cried despairingly, as Tamb' Itam passed her. Next time he went by he answered her thought rapidly, "Yes. But we have all the powder in Patusan." She caught him by the arm, and, pointing at the house, "Call him out," she whispered, trembling. 'Tamb' Itam ran up the steps. His master was sleeping. "It is I, Tamb' Itam," he cried at the door, "with tidings that cannot wait." He saw Jim turn over on the pillow and open his eyes, and he burst out at once. "This, Tuan, is a day of evil, an accursed day." His master raised himself on his elbow to listen--just as Dain Waris had done. And then Tamb' Itam began his tale, trying to relate the story in order, calling Dain Waris Panglima, and saying: "The Panglima then called out to the chief of his own boatmen, 'Give Tamb' Itam something to eat'"--when his master put his feet to the ground and looked at him with such a discomposed face that the words remained in his throat. '"Speak out," said Jim. "Is he dead?" "May you live long," cried Tamb' Itam. "It was a most cruel treachery. He ran out at the first shots and fell." . . . His master walked to the window and with his fist struck at the shutter. The room was made light; and then in a steady voice, but speaking fast, he began to give him orders to assemble a fleet of boats for immediate pursuit, go to this man, to the other--send messengers; and as he talked he sat down on the bed, stooping to lace his boots hurriedly, and suddenly looked up. "Why do you stand here?" he asked very red-faced. "Waste no time." Tamb' Itam did not move. "Forgive me, Tuan, but . . . but," he began to stammer. "What?" cried his master aloud, looking terrible, leaning forward with his hands gripping the edge of the bed. "It is not safe for thy servant to go out amongst the people," said Tamb' Itam, after hesitating a moment. 'Then Jim understood. He had retreated from one world, for a small matter of an impulsive jump, and now the other, the work of his own hands, had fallen in ruins upon his head. It was not safe for his servant to go out amongst his own people! I believe that in that very moment he had decided to defy the disaster in the only way it occurred to him such a disaster could be defied; but all I know is that, without a word, he came out of his room and sat before the long table, at the head of which he was accustomed to regulate the affairs of his world, proclaiming daily the truth that surely lived in his heart. The dark powers should not rob him twice of his peace. He sat like a stone figure. Tamb' Itam, deferential, hinted at preparations for defence. The girl he loved came in and spoke to him, but he made a sign with his hand, and she was awed by the dumb appeal for silence in it. She went out on the verandah and sat on the threshold, as if to guard him with her body from dangers outside. 'What thoughts passed through his head--what memories? Who can tell? Everything was gone, and he who had been once unfaithful to his trust had lost again all men's confidence. It was then, I believe, he tried to write--to somebody--and gave it up. Loneliness was closing on him. People had trusted him with their lives--only for that; and yet they could never, as he had said, never be made to understand him. Those without did not hear him make a sound. Later, towards the evening, he came to the door and called for Tamb' Itam. "Well?" he asked. "There is much weeping. Much anger too," said Tamb' Itam. Jim looked up at him. "You know," he murmured. "Yes, Tuan," said Tamb' Itam. "Thy servant does know, and the gates are closed. We shall have to fight." "Fight! What for?" he asked. "For our lives." "I have no life," he said. Tamb' Itam heard a cry from the girl at the door. "Who knows?" said Tamb' Itam. "By audacity and cunning we may even escape. There is much fear in men's hearts too." He went out, thinking vaguely of boats and of open sea, leaving Jim and the girl together. 'I haven't the heart to set down here such glimpses as she had given me of the hour or more she passed in there wrestling with him for the possession of her happiness. Whether he had any hope--what he expected, what he imagined--it is impossible to say. He was inflexible, and with the growing loneliness of his obstinacy his spirit seemed to rise above the ruins of his existence. She cried "Fight!" into his ear. She could not understand. There was nothing to fight for. He was going to prove his power in another way and conquer the fatal destiny itself. He came out into the courtyard, and behind him, with streaming hair, wild of face, breathless, she staggered out and leaned on the side of the doorway. "Open the gates," he ordered. Afterwards, turning to those of his men who were inside, he gave them leave to depart to their homes. "For how long, Tuan?" asked one of them timidly. "For all life," he said, in a sombre tone. 'A hush had fallen upon the town after the outburst of wailing and lamentation that had swept over the river, like a gust of wind from the opened abode of sorrow. But rumours flew in whispers, filling the hearts with consternation and horrible doubts. The robbers were coming back, bringing many others with them, in a great ship, and there would be no refuge in the land for any one. A sense of utter insecurity as during an earthquake pervaded the minds of men, who whispered their suspicions, looking at each other as if in the presence of some awful portent. 'The sun was sinking towards the forests when Dain Waris's body was brought into Doramin's campong. Four men carried it in, covered decently with a white sheet which the old mother had sent out down to the gate to meet her son on his return. They laid him at Doramin's feet, and the old man sat still for a long time, one hand on each knee, looking down. The fronds of palms swayed gently, and the foliage of fruit trees stirred above his head. Every single man of his people was there, fully armed, when the old nakhoda at last raised his eyes. He moved them slowly over the crowd, as if seeking for a missing face. Again his chin sank on his breast. The whispers of many men mingled with the slight rustling of the leaves. 'The Malay who had brought Tamb' Itam and the girl to Samarang was there too. "Not so angry as many," he said to me, but struck with a great awe and wonder at the "suddenness of men's fate, which hangs over their heads like a cloud charged with thunder." He told me that when Dain Waris's body was uncovered at a sign of Doramin's, he whom they often called the white lord's friend was disclosed lying unchanged with his eyelids a little open as if about to wake. Doramin leaned forward a little more, like one looking for something fallen on the ground. His eyes searched the body from its feet to its head, for the wound maybe. It was in the forehead and small; and there was no word spoken while one of the by-standers, stooping, took off the silver ring from the cold stiff hand. In silence he held it up before Doramin. A murmur of dismay and horror ran through the crowd at the sight of that familiar token. The old nakhoda stared at it, and suddenly let out one great fierce cry, deep from the chest, a roar of pain and fury, as mighty as the bellow of a wounded bull, bringing great fear into men's hearts, by the magnitude of his anger and his sorrow that could be plainly discerned without words. There was a great stillness afterwards for a space, while the body was being borne aside by four men. They laid it down under a tree, and on the instant, with one long shriek, all the women of the household began to wail together; they mourned with shrill cries; the sun was setting, and in the intervals of screamed lamentations the high sing-song voices of two old men intoning the Koran chanted alone. 'About this time Jim, leaning on a gun-carriage, looked at the river, and turned his back on the house; and the girl, in the doorway, panting as if she had run herself to a standstill, was looking at him across the yard. Tamb' Itam stood not far from his master, waiting patiently for what might happen. All at once Jim, who seemed to be lost in quiet thought, turned to him and said, "Time to finish this." '"Tuan?" said Tamb' Itam, advancing with alacrity. He did not know what his master meant, but as soon as Jim made a movement the girl started too and walked down into the open space. It seems that no one else of the people of the house was in sight. She tottered slightly, and about half-way down called out to Jim, who had apparently resumed his peaceful contemplation of the river. He turned round, setting his back against the gun. "Will you fight?" she cried. "There is nothing to fight for," he said; "nothing is lost." Saying this he made a step towards her. "Will you fly?" she cried again. "There is no escape," he said, stopping short, and she stood still also, silent, devouring him with her eyes. "And you shall go?" she said slowly. He bent his head. "Ah!" she exclaimed, peering at him as it were, "you are mad or false. Do you remember the night I prayed you to leave me, and you said that you could not? That it was impossible! Impossible! Do you remember you said you would never leave me? Why? I asked you for no promise. You promised unasked--remember." "Enough, poor girl," he said. "I should not be worth having." 'Tamb' Itam said that while they were talking she would laugh loud and senselessly like one under the visitation of God. His master put his hands to his head. He was fully dressed as for every day, but without a hat. She stopped laughing suddenly. "For the last time," she cried menacingly, "will you defend yourself?" "Nothing can touch me," he said in a last flicker of superb egoism. Tamb' Itam saw her lean forward where she stood, open her arms, and run at him swiftly. She flung herself upon his breast and clasped him round the neck. '"Ah! but I shall hold thee thus," she cried. . . . "Thou art mine!" 'She sobbed on his shoulder. The sky over Patusan was blood-red, immense, streaming like an open vein. An enormous sun nestled crimson amongst the tree-tops, and the forest below had a black and forbidding face. 'Tamb' Itam tells me that on that evening the aspect of the heavens was angry and frightful. I may well believe it, for I know that on that very day a cyclone passed within sixty miles of the coast, though there was hardly more than a languid stir of air in the place. 'Suddenly Tamb' Itam saw Jim catch her arms, trying to unclasp her hands. She hung on them with her head fallen back; her hair touched the ground. "Come here!" his master called, and Tamb' Itam helped to ease her down. It was difficult to separate her fingers. Jim, bending over her, looked earnestly upon her face, and all at once ran to the landing-stage. Tamb' Itam followed him, but turning his head, he saw that she had struggled up to her feet. She ran after them a few steps, then fell down heavily on her knees. "Tuan! Tuan!" called Tamb' Itam, "look back;" but Jim was already in a canoe, standing up paddle in hand. He did not look back. Tamb' Itam had just time to scramble in after him when the canoe floated clear. The girl was then on her knees, with clasped hands, at the water-gate. She remained thus for a time in a supplicating attitude before she sprang up. "You are false!" she screamed out after Jim. "Forgive me," he cried. "Never! Never!" she called back. 'Tamb' Itam took the paddle from Jim's hands, it being unseemly that he should sit while his lord paddled. When they reached the other shore his master forbade him to come any farther; but Tamb' Itam did follow him at a distance, walking up the slope to Doramin's campong. 'It was beginning to grow dark. Torches twinkled here and there. Those they met seemed awestruck, and stood aside hastily to let Jim pass. The wailing of women came from above. The courtyard was full of armed Bugis with their followers, and of Patusan people. 'I do not know what this gathering really meant. Were these preparations for war, or for vengeance, or to repulse a threatened invasion? Many days elapsed before the people had ceased to look out, quaking, for the return of the white men with long beards and in rags, whose exact relation to their own white man they could never understand. Even for those simple minds poor Jim remains under a cloud. 'Doramin, alone! immense and desolate, sat in his arm-chair with the pair of flintlock pistols on his knees, faced by a armed throng. When Jim appeared, at somebody's exclamation, all the heads turned round together, and then the mass opened right and left, and he walked up a lane of averted glances. Whispers followed him; murmurs: "He has worked all the evil." "He hath a charm." . . . He heard them--perhaps! 'When he came up into the light of torches the wailing of the women ceased suddenly. Doramin did not lift his head, and Jim stood silent before him for a time. Then he looked to the left, and moved in that direction with measured steps. Dain Waris's mother crouched at the head of the body, and the grey dishevelled hair concealed her face. Jim came up slowly, looked at his dead friend, lifting the sheet, than dropped it without a word. Slowly he walked back. '"He came! He came!" was running from lip to lip, making a murmur to which he moved. "He hath taken it upon his own head," a voice said aloud. He heard this and turned to the crowd. "Yes. Upon my head." A few people recoiled. Jim waited awhile before Doramin, and then said gently, "I am come in sorrow." He waited again. "I am come ready and unarmed," he repeated. 'The unwieldy old man, lowering his big forehead like an ox under a yoke, made an effort to rise, clutching at the flintlock pistols on his knees. From his throat came gurgling, choking, inhuman sounds, and his two attendants helped him from behind. People remarked that the ring which he had dropped on his lap fell and rolled against the foot of the white man, and that poor Jim glanced down at the talisman that had opened for him the door of fame, love, and success within the wall of forests fringed with white foam, within the coast that under the western sun looks like the very stronghold of the night. Doramin, struggling to keep his feet, made with his two supporters a swaying, tottering group; his little eyes stared with an expression of mad pain, of rage, with a ferocious glitter, which the bystanders noticed; and then, while Jim stood stiffened and with bared head in the light of torches, looking him straight in the face, he clung heavily with his left arm round the neck of a bowed youth, and lifting deliberately his right, shot his son's friend through the chest. 'The crowd, which had fallen apart behind Jim as soon as Doramin had raised his hand, rushed tumultuously forward after the shot. They say that the white man sent right and left at all those faces a proud and unflinching glance. Then with his hand over his lips he fell forward, dead. 'And that's the end. He passes away under a cloud, inscrutable at heart, forgotten, unforgiven, and excessively romantic. Not in the wildest days of his boyish visions could he have seen the alluring shape of such an extraordinary success! For it may very well be that in the short moment of his last proud and unflinching glance, he had beheld the face of that opportunity which, like an Eastern bride, had come veiled to his side. 'But we can see him, an obscure conqueror of fame, tearing himself out of the arms of a jealous love at the sign, at the call of his exalted egoism. He goes away from a living woman to celebrate his pitiless wedding with a shadowy ideal of conduct. Is he satisfied--quite, now, I wonder? We ought to know. He is one of us--and have I not stood up once, like an evoked ghost, to answer for his eternal constancy? Was I so very wrong after all? Now he is no more, there are days when the reality of his existence comes to me with an immense, with an overwhelming force; and yet upon my honour there are moments, too when he passes from my eyes like a disembodied spirit astray amongst the passions of this earth, ready to surrender himself faithfully to the claim of his own world of shades. 'Who knows? He is gone, inscrutable at heart, and the poor girl is leading a sort of soundless, inert life in Stein's house. Stein has aged greatly of late. He feels it himself, and says often that he is "preparing to leave all this; preparing to leave . . ." while he waves his hand sadly at his butterflies.'

Chapters 40-45

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422054542/https://www.gradesaver.com/lord-jim/study-guide/summary-chapters-40-45

As Brown tells his story to Marlow, Marlow writes that he is struck by his impression of "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" . In the battle, Brown was almost paralyzed by fear. The numbers were 200 to one. Fear among the people, however, had also begun to unravel the social fabric. One of Brown's men is shot down, so Brown shoots one of the Bugis three times in the stomach. Then, sounds of joy lift in the air. Cornelius tells Brown that Jim has returned, not afraid of anything. When Brown sees Jim, he sees a man in European clothes, all in white, with a helmet. The two meet near the very spot where Jim had taken "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" . Brown hates Jim on sight--for his youth and his assurance, his self-possession, his power and neatness. They converse, and Brown yells to him that it was hunger that had driven him to Patusan. Why had Jim come? The conversation strikes Marlow as a duel, and as if Brown, like a great man, had discovered Jim's weakest spot. He says, "if it came to saving one's life in the dark, one didn't care who else went--three, thirty, three hundred people" . Jim says nothing in response, and he is struck by "their common blood, an assumption of common experience; a sickening suggestion of common guilt, of secret knowledge that was like a bond of their minds and of their hearts" . With that, Jim turns away, telling Brown he will have a clear road or a clear fight . The story now continues from Tamb' Itam's point of view. He describes the shock of Jim insisting that Dain Waris lead. Tamb' Itam is given the duty of sending word to Dain Waris to let Brown and his men pass. Jim includes Stein's silver ring as a sign of good faith and, at the same time, he sends Brown a note with Cornelius as messenger. The note says, "You get the clear road" . But, upon delivering the note, Cornelius remains with Brown and tells him that Dain Waris's party is downriver and lying in wait to lay ambush on him as they pass. Brown feels betrayed yet, strangely enough, he doesn't seem to believe it. To be safe, he takes the creek he had noticed upon his first arrival. Through the fog, he takes Cornelius with him in the longboat. After Tamb' Itam approaches Dain Waris's camp and delivers the message with the ring, saying that all is well and that the trouble has passed, Dain Waris slips the ring onto the forefinger of his right hand. Brown's men land nearby and, though Cornelius tries to get away, force him to lead the way to the camp. No one had imagined that the white men would know of the creek. Fourteen shots ring out, and Dain Waris jumps up, running to the open shore. There, Tamb' Itam sees a bullet hit Darin Waris's forehead, and a great fear falls upon him. The white men disappear. Tamb' Itam sees Cornelius and shoots him twice, watching him die. He then hurries back to the town, knowing that it is important that he be the first bearer of the news. When he arrives, the town is festive. He seeks out the girl and reports what has happened. They go to find Jim, and he tells Jim that it is not safe for him to go out amongst the people. This is when Jim understands that it is all over: "the work of his own hands, had fallen in ruins upon his head" . Marlow believes it was then that Jim had tried to write to someone. He says to Jewel, "I have no life" . The girl insists that either he should fight, or they should run away. But he ignores her. Dain Waris's body is brought to Doramin, and as Doramin sees the wound in the forehead and then the ring on his son's forefinger, he begins to cry in fury. Jim walks to meet him: "There is nothing to fight for" . He tells Doramin that he has come ready and unarmed, and that is when Doramin shoots him through the chest. Jim, with a proud and unflinching look, falls dead. The story concludes with Jewel in Stein's home, "leading a sort of soundless, inert life" . Stein has grown old and sorrowful. He feels himself preparing to leave "all this," and he "waves his hand sadly at his butterflies" .

When Brown and Jim finally meet, Brown expresses hatred. This hatred is, on some level, understandable. He hates the world for never having given him the opportunity or the "clean slate" that Jim had been given. When Brown and Jim face each other, each sees in the other a vision of what might have been. The moment is one of recognition. Brown, the reader can surmise from subtle hints in the narrative, is a quick man. He is charismatic enough to be a leader, albeit of an outcast group. Still, his eye sees the hidden creek and, in the way that a great man senses another man's greatest weakness, Brown hits Jim in his weak spot. He rouses in their interaction a sense of challenge. Jim, now the embodiment of a mythical romantic ideal, begins to collapse. The reason is less from a worry that Brown knows who Jim than the realization that Jim will never be able to escape his moment of weakness on the Patna: his choice is part of his character, and his history is an integral part of his personality. This history is not knowledge that is external to him, but something that has become deeply seated in his being. Brown is a personification of that hidden and rejected self-knowledge. Jim likewise recognizes that Brown is a man who has potential or "Ability in the abstract." In an attempt to pass along to him an opportunity in the same generous spirit with which Stein and Marlow had aided him, Jim gives Brown "the clear road"--not quite a clean slate, but a chance to achieve his goals. This is an opportunity for Brown, though it is not nearly of the same quality as the one that had been given to Jim, because the clear road does not promise a realization of the romantic ideal, the achievement of the dreams of a life of glory and honor. Instead, it is an opportunity for Brown to persist in his merely Darwinian-style struggle to survive. The lesser opportunity here, however, is perhaps not so much a result of individual potential and character as it is a product of fortune or chance. The tragic conclusion ensues in a fog of mistrust. Cornelius presses Brown to see the possibility of betrayal, though there is something in Brown that recognizes "that there could be no treachery intended" . Brown is an astute judge of character. Still, in the end, he acts mistrustful all the same, choosing to be retaliatory and violent. These actions do more to reveal the true nature of his character. Up the creek, and in secret, he wreaks havoc and death among Dain Waris's camp, and then escapes quickly. We again meet fairly clear evidence of Brown's character, should the story be true, that he is found at sea in a lifeboat telling the same story that the Patna crew had told their rescuers: the ship had sunk beneath their feet. The irony in this tale, however, is that Jim had been one of them, as well as "one of us." Can Jim exorcise from himself the negative spirit that persists in Brown? The ambiguity of character suggests that all men are mixtures of potential characters: the romantic, the hopeless, the corrupt, and the cowardly. "One of us" can refer to being one more such complex being within the company of all men. As for Jim's fate, Dain Waris's death extinguishes the flame that had charmed the life of Patusan. This parallel to Stein's best friend being assassinated is obvious, though in Jim's case, the death comes out of a failure of judgment on his part. The ring, signifying the promise of good will from Stein to Doramin, becomes a symbol of betrayal. Additionally, the death causes Jim's reputation and secure place in Patusan society to begin to crumble. He has no place in the world beyond, and now that his work in Patusan is finished, there is nowhere for him to go, except to be extinguished himself. Therefore, as the reader recalls the vision of Stein blowing out a flaming match with the idea that all life is fleeting, Jim is compelled to do what is logically demanded at this climax. He cannot fight in the way Brown had--struggling for his life--because to do so would liken him further to Brown. Instead, he leaps in the direction of his fate. He does not fight it. Jewel, representing the love that the community had felt for Jim and the delight of opportunity he had known, is discarded. His final atonement requires a clean break. Jim goes to meet Doramin with a calm face, in the same way that he had arrived, in the face of possible assault. Here, the assault is certain, and Jim dies in a manner that atones for his past failure at sea. This time, he goes down with the iron ship as it sinks. He does not run. He refuses to leap for a lifeboat to share with Jewel and Tamb' Itam. Instead he remains--as George had remained--aboard, to die. The native audience looks at Jim's body, as the Muslim pilgrims had looked upon George's, with curiosity and fascination. The mystery man of Patusan is brought to an end. Jim is, after all, a man who dies, in spite of the myths of his immortality. Nevertheless, in true Conradian fashion and poetic tradition, Jim lives on through his show of action. He remains committed to his ideal and takes responsibility for what he has done and, in this way, Marlow finishes his story. This man's story is worth finishing. The inquiry into Jim's soul has been mysterious but it also has been fruitful, revelatory, and illustrative of what is human. The novel concludes with a final view of an aging Stein and a broken, mute Jewel. The ring has been lost, and there is no one to inherit what Stein has built . For Stein, the romantic tradition comes to an end. As his hands wave at the butterflies beneath the glass, we sense that Stein, Jewel, the butterflies, everyone, all etherized in their places, will soon disintegrate into dust.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/44747-chapters/18.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_17_part_0.txt

The Red and the Black.part 1.chapter 18

part 1, chapter 18

{"name": "Part 1, Chapter 18", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-1-chapter-18", "summary": "Word spreads through Verrieres that a foreign king is going to visit the city in a week. The town decides to assemble a group of its best and brightest to be the king's official \"Honor Guard.\" The mayor chooses a political ally to be the leader of the guard, even though the man can't ride a horse properly. Decorators start pouring into the de Renal house in preparation to host the king. Julien is sad to see that Madame de Renal becomes too obsessed with decorating to think about their affair. The mayor has to crawl back to Father Chelan to ask him to participate in the visit. He does this because Chelan has a powerful friend in Paris named Marquis de La Mole who will redirect the king's visit to Father Chelan's house if the mayor doesn't include the old priest. When the day of the king's visit arrives, peasants pour into Verrieres from the surrounding mountains. When the Honor Guard rides through town, people are outraged to see Julien Sorel, a carpenter's son, riding among them. He's just a peasant, and there are lots of qualified high society folks who didn't make it into the Honor Guard. This was the mayor's decision, though. Julien feels like a hero in Napoleon's army as he rides around on his horse. The king's parade reaches a church where the king wishes to visit a holy statue. Julien runs inside, throws on some priestly robes, and joins Father Chelan in welcoming the man. The bishop is late in entering the church, so Julien zigzags through a bunch of doorways until he finds the dude. The reason the guy is so late is because he's really young and doesn't quite know what he's supposed to say at the religious ceremony he's about to lead. Julien is impressed by the authority wielded by the bishop at such a young age. He starts thinking about joining the clergy again instead of the military. Julien follows the king's procession into an inner chapel, where a statue of Saint Clement is housed. That night, the Marquis de La Mole distributes ten thousand bottles of wine among the peasants of the area to mark the festivities.", "analysis": ""}

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.

Part 1, Chapter 18

https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-1-chapter-18

Word spreads through Verrieres that a foreign king is going to visit the city in a week. The town decides to assemble a group of its best and brightest to be the king's official "Honor Guard." The mayor chooses a political ally to be the leader of the guard, even though the man can't ride a horse properly. Decorators start pouring into the de Renal house in preparation to host the king. Julien is sad to see that Madame de Renal becomes too obsessed with decorating to think about their affair. The mayor has to crawl back to Father Chelan to ask him to participate in the visit. He does this because Chelan has a powerful friend in Paris named Marquis de La Mole who will redirect the king's visit to Father Chelan's house if the mayor doesn't include the old priest. When the day of the king's visit arrives, peasants pour into Verrieres from the surrounding mountains. When the Honor Guard rides through town, people are outraged to see Julien Sorel, a carpenter's son, riding among them. He's just a peasant, and there are lots of qualified high society folks who didn't make it into the Honor Guard. This was the mayor's decision, though. Julien feels like a hero in Napoleon's army as he rides around on his horse. The king's parade reaches a church where the king wishes to visit a holy statue. Julien runs inside, throws on some priestly robes, and joins Father Chelan in welcoming the man. The bishop is late in entering the church, so Julien zigzags through a bunch of doorways until he finds the dude. The reason the guy is so late is because he's really young and doesn't quite know what he's supposed to say at the religious ceremony he's about to lead. Julien is impressed by the authority wielded by the bishop at such a young age. He starts thinking about joining the clergy again instead of the military. Julien follows the king's procession into an inner chapel, where a statue of Saint Clement is housed. That night, the Marquis de La Mole distributes ten thousand bottles of wine among the peasants of the area to mark the festivities.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/44.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Brothers Karamazov/section_43_part_0.txt

The Brothers Karamazov.book 7.chapter 3

book 7, chapter 3

{"name": "Book 7, Chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-7-chapter-3", "summary": "When Alyosha and Rakitin arrive at Grushenka's, they find that she's all dressed up and in a state of excitement, as if she were expecting someone. She tells them she told Dmitri that she was going to spend all day doing accounting with her \"old man,\" Samsonov, but in fact she's waiting around for a very special message. She's so excited that she invites herself to sit on Alyosha's lap. Instead of feeling terrified, as he usually is with women, Alyosha finds himself just plain curious. Grushenka announces that her \"officer\" is in town. This officer had left her when she was just 17 and married another woman. It seems that now his wife has died and he wants to get back together with Grushenka. Grushenka admits that she had thought of seducing Alyosha before because he just seemed so good and made her feel ashamed, but she announces that she just loves him. Rakitin remarks that Alyosha is grieving over Zosima's death, and Grushenka jumps off Alyosha's lap in dismay. Alyosha reads this action as her \"saving\" him from lusty thoughts and proof that there is some goodness within her. Grushenka tells Alyosha a fable about an old woman whose sole kind deed in life was to give an onion to a beggar woman. Upon her death, the devils threw her into a lake of fire, but her guardian angel appeals to God. God tells the angel that if the old woman did one act of kindness, he would spare her. The angel mentions the onion. God says OK, you can extend an onion to her, and she can hold onto the onion, and you can pull her out of the lake with the onion. But if the onion breaks, she's stuck in the lake of fire. So the angel offers the woman the onion, the woman grabs hold, and the angel pulls. But everyone else in the lake of fire grabs onto the woman. When she tries to shake them off, the onion breaks and she is back in the lake of fire. Grushenka tells Alyosha that her non-seduction of him is her one \"onion,\" her one kind act. In fact, she had even offered Rakitin 25 roubles to bring Alyosha to her for just this purpose. She throws Rakitin the money, which Rakitin accepts, although shamefacedly. Grushenka is still exploding with emotion, torn between joy that her officer is returning to her and anger that he rejected her in the first place. She even considers bringing a knife to her meeting with him. The message from her officer finally arrives: he would like to meet her at Mokroye. Alyosha and Rakitin leave Grushenka's. Rakitin is still annoyed with Alyosha for being so angelic and leaves him. Alyosha walks alone to the monastery.", "analysis": ""}

Chapter III. An Onion Grushenka lived in the busiest part of the town, near the cathedral square, in a small wooden lodge in the courtyard belonging to the house of the widow Morozov. The house was a large stone building of two stories, old and very ugly. The widow led a secluded life with her two unmarried nieces, who were also elderly women. She had no need to let her lodge, but every one knew that she had taken in Grushenka as a lodger, four years before, solely to please her kinsman, the merchant Samsonov, who was known to be the girl's protector. It was said that the jealous old man's object in placing his "favorite" with the widow Morozov was that the old woman should keep a sharp eye on her new lodger's conduct. But this sharp eye soon proved to be unnecessary, and in the end the widow Morozov seldom met Grushenka and did not worry her by looking after her in any way. It is true that four years had passed since the old man had brought the slim, delicate, shy, timid, dreamy, and sad girl of eighteen from the chief town of the province, and much had happened since then. Little was known of the girl's history in the town and that little was vague. Nothing more had been learnt during the last four years, even after many persons had become interested in the beautiful young woman into whom Agrafena Alexandrovna had meanwhile developed. There were rumors that she had been at seventeen betrayed by some one, some sort of officer, and immediately afterwards abandoned by him. The officer had gone away and afterwards married, while Grushenka had been left in poverty and disgrace. It was said, however, that though Grushenka had been raised from destitution by the old man, Samsonov, she came of a respectable family belonging to the clerical class, that she was the daughter of a deacon or something of the sort. And now after four years the sensitive, injured and pathetic little orphan had become a plump, rosy beauty of the Russian type, a woman of bold and determined character, proud and insolent. She had a good head for business, was acquisitive, saving and careful, and by fair means or foul had succeeded, it was said, in amassing a little fortune. There was only one point on which all were agreed. Grushenka was not easily to be approached and except her aged protector there had not been one man who could boast of her favors during those four years. It was a positive fact, for there had been a good many, especially during the last two years, who had attempted to obtain those favors. But all their efforts had been in vain and some of these suitors had been forced to beat an undignified and even comic retreat, owing to the firm and ironical resistance they met from the strong-willed young person. It was known, too, that the young person had, especially of late, been given to what is called "speculation," and that she had shown marked abilities in that direction, so that many people began to say that she was no better than a Jew. It was not that she lent money on interest, but it was known, for instance, that she had for some time past, in partnership with old Karamazov, actually invested in the purchase of bad debts for a trifle, a tenth of their nominal value, and afterwards had made out of them ten times their value. The old widower Samsonov, a man of large fortune, was stingy and merciless. He tyrannized over his grown-up sons, but, for the last year during which he had been ill and lost the use of his swollen legs, he had fallen greatly under the influence of his protegee, whom he had at first kept strictly and in humble surroundings, "on Lenten fare," as the wits said at the time. But Grushenka had succeeded in emancipating herself, while she established in him a boundless belief in her fidelity. The old man, now long since dead, had had a large business in his day and was also a noteworthy character, miserly and hard as flint. Though Grushenka's hold upon him was so strong that he could not live without her (it had been so especially for the last two years), he did not settle any considerable fortune on her and would not have been moved to do so, if she had threatened to leave him. But he had presented her with a small sum, and even that was a surprise to every one when it became known. "You are a wench with brains," he said to her, when he gave her eight thousand roubles, "and you must look after yourself, but let me tell you that except your yearly allowance as before, you'll get nothing more from me to the day of my death, and I'll leave you nothing in my will either." And he kept his word; he died and left everything to his sons, whom, with their wives and children, he had treated all his life as servants. Grushenka was not even mentioned in his will. All this became known afterwards. He helped Grushenka with his advice to increase her capital and put business in her way. When Fyodor Pavlovitch, who first came into contact with Grushenka over a piece of speculation, ended to his own surprise by falling madly in love with her, old Samsonov, gravely ill as he was, was immensely amused. It is remarkable that throughout their whole acquaintance Grushenka was absolutely and spontaneously open with the old man, and he seems to have been the only person in the world with whom she was so. Of late, when Dmitri too had come on the scene with his love, the old man left off laughing. On the contrary, he once gave Grushenka a stern and earnest piece of advice. "If you have to choose between the two, father or son, you'd better choose the old man, if only you make sure the old scoundrel will marry you and settle some fortune on you beforehand. But don't keep on with the captain, you'll get no good out of that." These were the very words of the old profligate, who felt already that his death was not far off and who actually died five months later. I will note, too, in passing, that although many in our town knew of the grotesque and monstrous rivalry of the Karamazovs, father and son, the object of which was Grushenka, scarcely any one understood what really underlay her attitude to both of them. Even Grushenka's two servants (after the catastrophe of which we will speak later) testified in court that she received Dmitri Fyodorovitch simply from fear because "he threatened to murder her." These servants were an old cook, invalidish and almost deaf, who came from Grushenka's old home, and her granddaughter, a smart young girl of twenty, who performed the duties of a maid. Grushenka lived very economically and her surroundings were anything but luxurious. Her lodge consisted of three rooms furnished with mahogany furniture in the fashion of 1820, belonging to her landlady. It was quite dark when Rakitin and Alyosha entered her rooms, yet they were not lighted up. Grushenka was lying down in her drawing-room on the big, hard, clumsy sofa, with a mahogany back. The sofa was covered with shabby and ragged leather. Under her head she had two white down pillows taken from her bed. She was lying stretched out motionless on her back with her hands behind her head. She was dressed as though expecting some one, in a black silk dress, with a dainty lace fichu on her head, which was very becoming. Over her shoulders was thrown a lace shawl pinned with a massive gold brooch. She certainly was expecting some one. She lay as though impatient and weary, her face rather pale and her lips and eyes hot, restlessly tapping the arm of the sofa with the tip of her right foot. The appearance of Rakitin and Alyosha caused a slight excitement. From the hall they could hear Grushenka leap up from the sofa and cry out in a frightened voice, "Who's there?" But the maid met the visitors and at once called back to her mistress. "It's not he, it's nothing, only other visitors." "What can be the matter?" muttered Rakitin, leading Alyosha into the drawing-room. Grushenka was standing by the sofa as though still alarmed. A thick coil of her dark brown hair escaped from its lace covering and fell on her right shoulder, but she did not notice it and did not put it back till she had gazed at her visitors and recognized them. "Ah, it's you, Rakitin? You quite frightened me. Whom have you brought? Who is this with you? Good heavens, you have brought him!" she exclaimed, recognizing Alyosha. "Do send for candles!" said Rakitin, with the free-and-easy air of a most intimate friend, who is privileged to give orders in the house. "Candles ... of course, candles.... Fenya, fetch him a candle.... Well, you have chosen a moment to bring him!" she exclaimed again, nodding towards Alyosha, and turning to the looking-glass she began quickly fastening up her hair with both hands. She seemed displeased. "Haven't I managed to please you?" asked Rakitin, instantly almost offended. "You frightened me, Rakitin, that's what it is." Grushenka turned with a smile to Alyosha. "Don't be afraid of me, my dear Alyosha, you cannot think how glad I am to see you, my unexpected visitor. But you frightened me, Rakitin, I thought it was Mitya breaking in. You see, I deceived him just now, I made him promise to believe me and I told him a lie. I told him that I was going to spend the evening with my old man, Kuzma Kuzmitch, and should be there till late counting up his money. I always spend one whole evening a week with him making up his accounts. We lock ourselves in and he counts on the reckoning beads while I sit and put things down in the book. I am the only person he trusts. Mitya believes that I am there, but I came back and have been sitting locked in here, expecting some news. How was it Fenya let you in? Fenya, Fenya, run out to the gate, open it and look about whether the captain is to be seen! Perhaps he is hiding and spying, I am dreadfully frightened." "There's no one there, Agrafena Alexandrovna, I've just looked out, I keep running to peep through the crack, I am in fear and trembling myself." "Are the shutters fastened, Fenya? And we must draw the curtains--that's better!" She drew the heavy curtains herself. "He'd rush in at once if he saw a light. I am afraid of your brother Mitya to-day, Alyosha." Grushenka spoke aloud, and, though she was alarmed, she seemed very happy about something. "Why are you so afraid of Mitya to-day?" inquired Rakitin. "I should have thought you were not timid with him, you'd twist him round your little finger." "I tell you, I am expecting news, priceless news, so I don't want Mitya at all. And he didn't believe, I feel he didn't, that I should stay at Kuzma Kuzmitch's. He must be in his ambush now, behind Fyodor Pavlovitch's, in the garden, watching for me. And if he's there, he won't come here, so much the better! But I really have been to Kuzma Kuzmitch's, Mitya escorted me there. I told him I should stay there till midnight, and I asked him to be sure to come at midnight to fetch me home. He went away and I sat ten minutes with Kuzma Kuzmitch and came back here again. Ugh, I was afraid, I ran for fear of meeting him." "And why are you so dressed up? What a curious cap you've got on!" "How curious you are yourself, Rakitin! I tell you, I am expecting a message. If the message comes, I shall fly, I shall gallop away and you will see no more of me. That's why I am dressed up, so as to be ready." "And where are you flying to?" "If you know too much, you'll get old too soon." "Upon my word! You are highly delighted ... I've never seen you like this before. You are dressed up as if you were going to a ball." Rakitin looked her up and down. "Much you know about balls." "And do you know much about them?" "I have seen a ball. The year before last, Kuzma Kuzmitch's son was married and I looked on from the gallery. Do you suppose I want to be talking to you, Rakitin, while a prince like this is standing here. Such a visitor! Alyosha, my dear boy, I gaze at you and can't believe my eyes. Good heavens, can you have come here to see me! To tell you the truth, I never had a thought of seeing you and I didn't think that you would ever come and see me. Though this is not the moment now, I am awfully glad to see you. Sit down on the sofa, here, that's right, my bright young moon. I really can't take it in even now.... Eh, Rakitin, if only you had brought him yesterday or the day before! But I am glad as it is! Perhaps it's better he has come now, at such a moment, and not the day before yesterday." She gayly sat down beside Alyosha on the sofa, looking at him with positive delight. And she really was glad, she was not lying when she said so. Her eyes glowed, her lips laughed, but it was a good-hearted merry laugh. Alyosha had not expected to see such a kind expression in her face.... He had hardly met her till the day before, he had formed an alarming idea of her, and had been horribly distressed the day before by the spiteful and treacherous trick she had played on Katerina Ivanovna. He was greatly surprised to find her now altogether different from what he had expected. And, crushed as he was by his own sorrow, his eyes involuntarily rested on her with attention. Her whole manner seemed changed for the better since yesterday, there was scarcely any trace of that mawkish sweetness in her speech, of that voluptuous softness in her movements. Everything was simple and good-natured, her gestures were rapid, direct, confiding, but she was greatly excited. "Dear me, how everything comes together to-day!" she chattered on again. "And why I am so glad to see you, Alyosha, I couldn't say myself! If you ask me, I couldn't tell you." "Come, don't you know why you're glad?" said Rakitin, grinning. "You used to be always pestering me to bring him, you'd some object, I suppose." "I had a different object once, but now that's over, this is not the moment. I say, I want you to have something nice. I am so good-natured now. You sit down, too, Rakitin; why are you standing? You've sat down already? There's no fear of Rakitin's forgetting to look after himself. Look, Alyosha, he's sitting there opposite us, so offended that I didn't ask him to sit down before you. Ugh, Rakitin is such a one to take offense!" laughed Grushenka. "Don't be angry, Rakitin, I'm kind to-day. Why are you so depressed, Alyosha? Are you afraid of me?" She peeped into his eyes with merry mockery" "He's sad. The promotion has not been given," boomed Rakitin. "What promotion?" "His elder stinks." "What? You are talking some nonsense, you want to say something nasty. Be quiet, you stupid! Let me sit on your knee, Alyosha, like this." She suddenly skipped forward and jumped, laughing, on his knee, like a nestling kitten, with her right arm about his neck. "I'll cheer you up, my pious boy. Yes, really, will you let me sit on your knee? You won't be angry? If you tell me, I'll get off?" Alyosha did not speak. He sat afraid to move, he heard her words, "If you tell me, I'll get off," but he did not answer. But there was nothing in his heart such as Rakitin, for instance, watching him malignantly from his corner, might have expected or fancied. The great grief in his heart swallowed up every sensation that might have been aroused, and, if only he could have thought clearly at that moment, he would have realized that he had now the strongest armor to protect him from every lust and temptation. Yet in spite of the vague irresponsiveness of his spiritual condition and the sorrow that overwhelmed him, he could not help wondering at a new and strange sensation in his heart. This woman, this "dreadful" woman, had no terror for him now, none of that terror that had stirred in his soul at any passing thought of woman. On the contrary, this woman, dreaded above all women, sitting now on his knee, holding him in her arms, aroused in him now a quite different, unexpected, peculiar feeling, a feeling of the intensest and purest interest without a trace of fear, of his former terror. That was what instinctively surprised him. "You've talked nonsense enough," cried Rakitin, "you'd much better give us some champagne. You owe it me, you know you do!" "Yes, I really do. Do you know, Alyosha, I promised him champagne on the top of everything, if he'd bring you? I'll have some too! Fenya, Fenya, bring us the bottle Mitya left! Look sharp! Though I am so stingy, I'll stand a bottle, not for you, Rakitin, you're a toadstool, but he is a falcon! And though my heart is full of something very different, so be it, I'll drink with you. I long for some dissipation." "But what is the matter with you? And what is this message, may I ask, or is it a secret?" Rakitin put in inquisitively, doing his best to pretend not to notice the snubs that were being continually aimed at him. "Ech, it's not a secret, and you know it, too," Grushenka said, in a voice suddenly anxious, turning her head towards Rakitin, and drawing a little away from Alyosha, though she still sat on his knee with her arm round his neck. "My officer is coming, Rakitin, my officer is coming." "I heard he was coming, but is he so near?" "He is at Mokroe now; he'll send a messenger from there, so he wrote; I got a letter from him to-day. I am expecting the messenger every minute." "You don't say so! Why at Mokroe?" "That's a long story, I've told you enough." "Mitya'll be up to something now--I say! Does he know or doesn't he?" "He know! Of course he doesn't. If he knew, there would be murder. But I am not afraid of that now, I am not afraid of his knife. Be quiet, Rakitin, don't remind me of Dmitri Fyodorovitch, he has bruised my heart. And I don't want to think of that at this moment. I can think of Alyosha here, I can look at Alyosha ... smile at me, dear, cheer up, smile at my foolishness, at my pleasure.... Ah, he's smiling, he's smiling! How kindly he looks at me! And you know, Alyosha, I've been thinking all this time you were angry with me, because of the day before yesterday, because of that young lady. I was a cur, that's the truth.... But it's a good thing it happened so. It was a horrid thing, but a good thing too." Grushenka smiled dreamily and a little cruel line showed in her smile. "Mitya told me that she screamed out that I 'ought to be flogged.' I did insult her dreadfully. She sent for me, she wanted to make a conquest of me, to win me over with her chocolate.... No, it's a good thing it did end like that." She smiled again. "But I am still afraid of your being angry." "Yes, that's really true," Rakitin put in suddenly with genuine surprise. "Alyosha, she is really afraid of a chicken like you." "He is a chicken to you, Rakitin ... because you've no conscience, that's what it is! You see, I love him with all my soul, that's how it is! Alyosha, do you believe I love you with all my soul?" "Ah, you shameless woman! She is making you a declaration, Alexey!" "Well, what of it, I love him!" "And what about your officer? And the priceless message from Mokroe?" "That is quite different." "That's a woman's way of looking at it!" "Don't you make me angry, Rakitin." Grushenka caught him up hotly. "This is quite different. I love Alyosha in a different way. It's true, Alyosha, I had sly designs on you before. For I am a horrid, violent creature. But at other times I've looked upon you, Alyosha, as my conscience. I've kept thinking 'how any one like that must despise a nasty thing like me.' I thought that the day before yesterday, as I ran home from the young lady's. I have thought of you a long time in that way, Alyosha, and Mitya knows, I've talked to him about it. Mitya understands. Would you believe it, I sometimes look at you and feel ashamed, utterly ashamed of myself.... And how, and since when, I began to think about you like that, I can't say, I don't remember...." Fenya came in and put a tray with an uncorked bottle and three glasses of champagne on the table. "Here's the champagne!" cried Rakitin. "You're excited, Agrafena Alexandrovna, and not yourself. When you've had a glass of champagne, you'll be ready to dance. Eh, they can't even do that properly," he added, looking at the bottle. "The old woman's poured it out in the kitchen and the bottle's been brought in warm and without a cork. Well, let me have some, anyway." He went up to the table, took a glass, emptied it at one gulp and poured himself out another. "One doesn't often stumble upon champagne," he said, licking his lips. "Now, Alyosha, take a glass, show what you can do! What shall we drink to? The gates of paradise? Take a glass, Grushenka, you drink to the gates of paradise, too." "What gates of paradise?" She took a glass, Alyosha took his, tasted it and put it back. "No, I'd better not," he smiled gently. "And you bragged!" cried Rakitin. "Well, if so, I won't either," chimed in Grushenka, "I really don't want any. You can drink the whole bottle alone, Rakitin. If Alyosha has some, I will." "What touching sentimentality!" said Rakitin tauntingly; "and she's sitting on his knee, too! He's got something to grieve over, but what's the matter with you? He is rebelling against his God and ready to eat sausage...." "How so?" "His elder died to-day, Father Zossima, the saint." "So Father Zossima is dead," cried Grushenka. "Good God, I did not know!" She crossed herself devoutly. "Goodness, what have I been doing, sitting on his knee like this at such a moment!" She started up as though in dismay, instantly slipped off his knee and sat down on the sofa. Alyosha bent a long wondering look upon her and a light seemed to dawn in his face. "Rakitin," he said suddenly, in a firm and loud voice; "don't taunt me with having rebelled against God. I don't want to feel angry with you, so you must be kinder, too, I've lost a treasure such as you have never had, and you cannot judge me now. You had much better look at her--do you see how she has pity on me? I came here to find a wicked soul--I felt drawn to evil because I was base and evil myself, and I've found a true sister, I have found a treasure--a loving heart. She had pity on me just now.... Agrafena Alexandrovna, I am speaking of you. You've raised my soul from the depths." Alyosha's lips were quivering and he caught his breath. "She has saved you, it seems," laughed Rakitin spitefully. "And she meant to get you in her clutches, do you realize that?" "Stay, Rakitin." Grushenka jumped up. "Hush, both of you. Now I'll tell you all about it. Hush, Alyosha, your words make me ashamed, for I am bad and not good--that's what I am. And you hush, Rakitin, because you are telling lies. I had the low idea of trying to get him in my clutches, but now you are lying, now it's all different. And don't let me hear anything more from you, Rakitin." All this Grushenka said with extreme emotion. "They are both crazy," said Rakitin, looking at them with amazement. "I feel as though I were in a madhouse. They're both getting so feeble they'll begin crying in a minute." "I shall begin to cry, I shall," repeated Grushenka. "He called me his sister and I shall never forget that. Only let me tell you, Rakitin, though I am bad, I did give away an onion." "An onion? Hang it all, you really are crazy." Rakitin wondered at their enthusiasm. He was aggrieved and annoyed, though he might have reflected that each of them was just passing through a spiritual crisis such as does not come often in a lifetime. But though Rakitin was very sensitive about everything that concerned himself, he was very obtuse as regards the feelings and sensations of others--partly from his youth and inexperience, partly from his intense egoism. "You see, Alyosha," Grushenka turned to him with a nervous laugh. "I was boasting when I told Rakitin I had given away an onion, but it's not to boast I tell you about it. It's only a story, but it's a nice story. I used to hear it when I was a child from Matryona, my cook, who is still with me. It's like this. Once upon a time there was a peasant woman and a very wicked woman she was. And she died and did not leave a single good deed behind. The devils caught her and plunged her into the lake of fire. So her guardian angel stood and wondered what good deed of hers he could remember to tell to God; 'She once pulled up an onion in her garden,' said he, 'and gave it to a beggar woman.' And God answered: 'You take that onion then, hold it out to her in the lake, and let her take hold and be pulled out. And if you can pull her out of the lake, let her come to Paradise, but if the onion breaks, then the woman must stay where she is.' The angel ran to the woman and held out the onion to her. 'Come,' said he, 'catch hold and I'll pull you out.' And he began cautiously pulling her out. He had just pulled her right out, when the other sinners in the lake, seeing how she was being drawn out, began catching hold of her so as to be pulled out with her. But she was a very wicked woman and she began kicking them. 'I'm to be pulled out, not you. It's my onion, not yours.' As soon as she said that, the onion broke. And the woman fell into the lake and she is burning there to this day. So the angel wept and went away. So that's the story, Alyosha; I know it by heart, for I am that wicked woman myself. I boasted to Rakitin that I had given away an onion, but to you I'll say: 'I've done nothing but give away one onion all my life, that's the only good deed I've done.' So don't praise me, Alyosha, don't think me good, I am bad, I am a wicked woman and you make me ashamed if you praise me. Eh, I must confess everything. Listen, Alyosha. I was so anxious to get hold of you that I promised Rakitin twenty-five roubles if he would bring you to me. Stay, Rakitin, wait!" She went with rapid steps to the table, opened a drawer, pulled out a purse and took from it a twenty-five rouble note. "What nonsense! What nonsense!" cried Rakitin, disconcerted. "Take it. Rakitin, I owe it you, there's no fear of your refusing it, you asked for it yourself." And she threw the note to him. "Likely I should refuse it," boomed Rakitin, obviously abashed, but carrying off his confusion with a swagger. "That will come in very handy; fools are made for wise men's profit." "And now hold your tongue, Rakitin, what I am going to say now is not for your ears. Sit down in that corner and keep quiet. You don't like us, so hold your tongue." "What should I like you for?" Rakitin snarled, not concealing his ill- humor. He put the twenty-five rouble note in his pocket and he felt ashamed at Alyosha's seeing it. He had reckoned on receiving his payment later, without Alyosha's knowing of it, and now, feeling ashamed, he lost his temper. Till that moment he had thought it discreet not to contradict Grushenka too flatly in spite of her snubbing, since he had something to get out of her. But now he, too, was angry: "One loves people for some reason, but what have either of you done for me?" "You should love people without a reason, as Alyosha does." "How does he love you? How has he shown it, that you make such a fuss about it?" Grushenka was standing in the middle of the room; she spoke with heat and there were hysterical notes in her voice. "Hush, Rakitin, you know nothing about us! And don't dare to speak to me like that again. How dare you be so familiar! Sit in that corner and be quiet, as though you were my footman! And now, Alyosha, I'll tell you the whole truth, that you may see what a wretch I am! I am not talking to Rakitin, but to you. I wanted to ruin you, Alyosha, that's the holy truth; I quite meant to. I wanted to so much, that I bribed Rakitin to bring you. And why did I want to do such a thing? You knew nothing about it, Alyosha, you turned away from me; if you passed me, you dropped your eyes. And I've looked at you a hundred times before to-day; I began asking every one about you. Your face haunted my heart. 'He despises me,' I thought; 'he won't even look at me.' And I felt it so much at last that I wondered at myself for being so frightened of a boy. I'll get him in my clutches and laugh at him. I was full of spite and anger. Would you believe it, nobody here dares talk or think of coming to Agrafena Alexandrovna with any evil purpose. Old Kuzma is the only man I have anything to do with here; I was bound and sold to him; Satan brought us together, but there has been no one else. But looking at you, I thought, I'll get him in my clutches and laugh at him. You see what a spiteful cur I am, and you called me your sister! And now that man who wronged me has come; I sit here waiting for a message from him. And do you know what that man has been to me? Five years ago, when Kuzma brought me here, I used to shut myself up, that no one might have sight or sound of me. I was a silly slip of a girl; I used to sit here sobbing; I used to lie awake all night, thinking: 'Where is he now, the man who wronged me? He is laughing at me with another woman, most likely. If only I could see him, if I could meet him again, I'd pay him out, I'd pay him out!' At night I used to lie sobbing into my pillow in the dark, and I used to brood over it; I used to tear my heart on purpose and gloat over my anger. 'I'll pay him out, I'll pay him out!' That's what I used to cry out in the dark. And when I suddenly thought that I should really do nothing to him, and that he was laughing at me then, or perhaps had utterly forgotten me, I would fling myself on the floor, melt into helpless tears, and lie there shaking till dawn. In the morning I would get up more spiteful than a dog, ready to tear the whole world to pieces. And then what do you think? I began saving money, I became hard-hearted, grew stout--grew wiser, would you say? No, no one in the whole world sees it, no one knows it, but when night comes on, I sometimes lie as I did five years ago, when I was a silly girl, clenching my teeth and crying all night, thinking, 'I'll pay him out, I'll pay him out!' Do you hear? Well then, now you understand me. A month ago a letter came to me--he was coming, he was a widower, he wanted to see me. It took my breath away; then I suddenly thought: 'If he comes and whistles to call me, I shall creep back to him like a beaten dog.' I couldn't believe myself. Am I so abject? Shall I run to him or not? And I've been in such a rage with myself all this month that I am worse than I was five years ago. Do you see now, Alyosha, what a violent, vindictive creature I am? I have shown you the whole truth! I played with Mitya to keep me from running to that other. Hush, Rakitin, it's not for you to judge me, I am not speaking to you. Before you came in, I was lying here waiting, brooding, deciding my whole future life, and you can never know what was in my heart. Yes, Alyosha, tell your young lady not to be angry with me for what happened the day before yesterday.... Nobody in the whole world knows what I am going through now, and no one ever can know.... For perhaps I shall take a knife with me to-day, I can't make up my mind ..." And at this "tragic" phrase Grushenka broke down, hid her face in her hands, flung herself on the sofa pillows, and sobbed like a little child. Alyosha got up and went to Rakitin. "Misha," he said, "don't be angry. She wounded you, but don't be angry. You heard what she said just now? You mustn't ask too much of human endurance, one must be merciful." Alyosha said this at the instinctive prompting of his heart. He felt obliged to speak and he turned to Rakitin. If Rakitin had not been there, he would have spoken to the air. But Rakitin looked at him ironically and Alyosha stopped short. "You were so primed up with your elder's teaching last night that now you have to let it off on me, Alexey, man of God!" said Rakitin, with a smile of hatred. "Don't laugh, Rakitin, don't smile, don't talk of the dead--he was better than any one in the world!" cried Alyosha, with tears in his voice. "I didn't speak to you as a judge but as the lowest of the judged. What am I beside her? I came here seeking my ruin, and said to myself, 'What does it matter?' in my cowardliness, but she, after five years in torment, as soon as any one says a word from the heart to her--it makes her forget everything, forgive everything, in her tears! The man who has wronged her has come back, he sends for her and she forgives him everything, and hastens joyfully to meet him and she won't take a knife with her. She won't! No, I am not like that. I don't know whether you are, Misha, but I am not like that. It's a lesson to me.... She is more loving than we.... Have you heard her speak before of what she has just told us? No, you haven't; if you had, you'd have understood her long ago ... and the person insulted the day before yesterday must forgive her, too! She will, when she knows ... and she shall know.... This soul is not yet at peace with itself, one must be tender with it ... there may be a treasure in that soul...." Alyosha stopped, because he caught his breath. In spite of his ill-humor Rakitin looked at him with astonishment. He had never expected such a tirade from the gentle Alyosha. "She's found some one to plead her cause! Why, are you in love with her? Agrafena Alexandrovna, our monk's really in love with you, you've made a conquest!" he cried, with a coarse laugh. Grushenka lifted her head from the pillow and looked at Alyosha with a tender smile shining on her tear-stained face. "Let him alone, Alyosha, my cherub; you see what he is, he is not a person for you to speak to. Mihail Osipovitch," she turned to Rakitin, "I meant to beg your pardon for being rude to you, but now I don't want to. Alyosha, come to me, sit down here." She beckoned to him with a happy smile. "That's right, sit here. Tell me," she shook him by the hand and peeped into his face, smiling, "tell me, do I love that man or not? the man who wronged me, do I love him or not? Before you came, I lay here in the dark, asking my heart whether I loved him. Decide for me, Alyosha, the time has come, it shall be as you say. Am I to forgive him or not?" "But you have forgiven him already," said Alyosha, smiling. "Yes, I really have forgiven him," Grushenka murmured thoughtfully. "What an abject heart! To my abject heart!" She snatched up a glass from the table, emptied it at a gulp, lifted it in the air and flung it on the floor. The glass broke with a crash. A little cruel line came into her smile. "Perhaps I haven't forgiven him, though," she said, with a sort of menace in her voice, and she dropped her eyes to the ground as though she were talking to herself. "Perhaps my heart is only getting ready to forgive. I shall struggle with my heart. You see, Alyosha, I've grown to love my tears in these five years.... Perhaps I only love my resentment, not him ..." "Well, I shouldn't care to be in his shoes," hissed Rakitin. "Well, you won't be, Rakitin, you'll never be in his shoes. You shall black my shoes, Rakitin, that's the place you are fit for. You'll never get a woman like me ... and he won't either, perhaps ..." "Won't he? Then why are you dressed up like that?" said Rakitin, with a venomous sneer. "Don't taunt me with dressing up, Rakitin, you don't know all that is in my heart! If I choose to tear off my finery, I'll tear it off at once, this minute," she cried in a resonant voice. "You don't know what that finery is for, Rakitin! Perhaps I shall see him and say: 'Have you ever seen me look like this before?' He left me a thin, consumptive cry-baby of seventeen. I'll sit by him, fascinate him and work him up. 'Do you see what I am like now?' I'll say to him; 'well, and that's enough for you, my dear sir, there's many a slip twixt the cup and the lip!' That may be what the finery is for, Rakitin." Grushenka finished with a malicious laugh. "I'm violent and resentful, Alyosha, I'll tear off my finery, I'll destroy my beauty, I'll scorch my face, slash it with a knife, and turn beggar. If I choose, I won't go anywhere now to see any one. If I choose, I'll send Kuzma back all he has ever given me, to-morrow, and all his money and I'll go out charing for the rest of my life. You think I wouldn't do it, Rakitin, that I would not dare to do it? I would, I would, I could do it directly, only don't exasperate me ... and I'll send him about his business, I'll snap my fingers in his face, he shall never see me again!" She uttered the last words in an hysterical scream, but broke down again, hid her face in her hands, buried it in the pillow and shook with sobs. Rakitin got up. "It's time we were off," he said, "it's late, we shall be shut out of the monastery." Grushenka leapt up from her place. "Surely you don't want to go, Alyosha!" she cried, in mournful surprise. "What are you doing to me? You've stirred up my feeling, tortured me, and now you'll leave me to face this night alone!" "He can hardly spend the night with you! Though if he wants to, let him! I'll go alone," Rakitin scoffed jeeringly. "Hush, evil tongue!" Grushenka cried angrily at him; "you never said such words to me as he has come to say." "What has he said to you so special?" asked Rakitin irritably. "I can't say, I don't know. I don't know what he said to me, it went straight to my heart; he has wrung my heart.... He is the first, the only one who has pitied me, that's what it is. Why did you not come before, you angel?" She fell on her knees before him as though in a sudden frenzy. "I've been waiting all my life for some one like you, I knew that some one like you would come and forgive me. I believed that, nasty as I am, some one would really love me, not only with a shameful love!" "What have I done to you?" answered Alyosha, bending over her with a tender smile, and gently taking her by the hands; "I only gave you an onion, nothing but a tiny little onion, that was all!" He was moved to tears himself as he said it. At that moment there was a sudden noise in the passage, some one came into the hall. Grushenka jumped up, seeming greatly alarmed. Fenya ran noisily into the room, crying out: "Mistress, mistress darling, a messenger has galloped up," she cried, breathless and joyful. "A carriage from Mokroe for you, Timofey the driver, with three horses, they are just putting in fresh horses.... A letter, here's the letter, mistress." A letter was in her hand and she waved it in the air all the while she talked. Grushenka snatched the letter from her and carried it to the candle. It was only a note, a few lines. She read it in one instant. "He has sent for me," she cried, her face white and distorted, with a wan smile; "he whistles! Crawl back, little dog!" But only for one instant she stood as though hesitating; suddenly the blood rushed to her head and sent a glow to her cheeks. "I will go," she cried; "five years of my life! Good-by! Good-by, Alyosha, my fate is sealed. Go, go, leave me all of you, don't let me see you again! Grushenka is flying to a new life.... Don't you remember evil against me either, Rakitin. I may be going to my death! Ugh! I feel as though I were drunk!" She suddenly left them and ran into her bedroom. "Well, she has no thoughts for us now!" grumbled Rakitin. "Let's go, or we may hear that feminine shriek again. I am sick of all these tears and cries." Alyosha mechanically let himself be led out. In the yard stood a covered cart. Horses were being taken out of the shafts, men were running to and fro with a lantern. Three fresh horses were being led in at the open gate. But when Alyosha and Rakitin reached the bottom of the steps, Grushenka's bedroom window was suddenly opened and she called in a ringing voice after Alyosha: "Alyosha, give my greetings to your brother Mitya and tell him not to remember evil against me, though I have brought him misery. And tell him, too, in my words: 'Grushenka has fallen to a scoundrel, and not to you, noble heart.' And add, too, that Grushenka loved him only one hour, only one short hour she loved him--so let him remember that hour all his life--say, 'Grushenka tells you to!' " She ended in a voice full of sobs. The window was shut with a slam. "H'm, h'm!" growled Rakitin, laughing, "she murders your brother Mitya and then tells him to remember it all his life! What ferocity!" Alyosha made no reply, he seemed not to have heard. He walked fast beside Rakitin as though in a terrible hurry. He was lost in thought and moved mechanically. Rakitin felt a sudden twinge as though he had been touched on an open wound. He had expected something quite different by bringing Grushenka and Alyosha together. Something very different from what he had hoped for had happened. "He is a Pole, that officer of hers," he began again, restraining himself; "and indeed he is not an officer at all now. He served in the customs in Siberia, somewhere on the Chinese frontier, some puny little beggar of a Pole, I expect. Lost his job, they say. He's heard now that Grushenka's saved a little money, so he's turned up again--that's the explanation of the mystery." Again Alyosha seemed not to hear. Rakitin could not control himself. "Well, so you've saved the sinner?" he laughed spitefully. "Have you turned the Magdalene into the true path? Driven out the seven devils, eh? So you see the miracles you were looking out for just now have come to pass!" "Hush, Rakitin," Alyosha answered with an aching heart. "So you despise me now for those twenty-five roubles? I've sold my friend, you think. But you are not Christ, you know, and I am not Judas." "Oh, Rakitin, I assure you I'd forgotten about it," cried Alyosha, "you remind me of it yourself...." But this was the last straw for Rakitin. "Damnation take you all and each of you!" he cried suddenly, "why the devil did I take you up? I don't want to know you from this time forward. Go alone, there's your road!" And he turned abruptly into another street, leaving Alyosha alone in the dark. Alyosha came out of the town and walked across the fields to the monastery.

Book 7, Chapter 3

https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-7-chapter-3

When Alyosha and Rakitin arrive at Grushenka's, they find that she's all dressed up and in a state of excitement, as if she were expecting someone. She tells them she told Dmitri that she was going to spend all day doing accounting with her "old man," Samsonov, but in fact she's waiting around for a very special message. She's so excited that she invites herself to sit on Alyosha's lap. Instead of feeling terrified, as he usually is with women, Alyosha finds himself just plain curious. Grushenka announces that her "officer" is in town. This officer had left her when she was just 17 and married another woman. It seems that now his wife has died and he wants to get back together with Grushenka. Grushenka admits that she had thought of seducing Alyosha before because he just seemed so good and made her feel ashamed, but she announces that she just loves him. Rakitin remarks that Alyosha is grieving over Zosima's death, and Grushenka jumps off Alyosha's lap in dismay. Alyosha reads this action as her "saving" him from lusty thoughts and proof that there is some goodness within her. Grushenka tells Alyosha a fable about an old woman whose sole kind deed in life was to give an onion to a beggar woman. Upon her death, the devils threw her into a lake of fire, but her guardian angel appeals to God. God tells the angel that if the old woman did one act of kindness, he would spare her. The angel mentions the onion. God says OK, you can extend an onion to her, and she can hold onto the onion, and you can pull her out of the lake with the onion. But if the onion breaks, she's stuck in the lake of fire. So the angel offers the woman the onion, the woman grabs hold, and the angel pulls. But everyone else in the lake of fire grabs onto the woman. When she tries to shake them off, the onion breaks and she is back in the lake of fire. Grushenka tells Alyosha that her non-seduction of him is her one "onion," her one kind act. In fact, she had even offered Rakitin 25 roubles to bring Alyosha to her for just this purpose. She throws Rakitin the money, which Rakitin accepts, although shamefacedly. Grushenka is still exploding with emotion, torn between joy that her officer is returning to her and anger that he rejected her in the first place. She even considers bringing a knife to her meeting with him. The message from her officer finally arrives: he would like to meet her at Mokroye. Alyosha and Rakitin leave Grushenka's. Rakitin is still annoyed with Alyosha for being so angelic and leaves him. Alyosha walks alone to the monastery.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/107-chapters/31.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Far From the Madding Crowd/section_30_part_0.txt

Far From the Madding Crowd.chapter 31

chapter 31

{"name": "Chapter 31", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-31", "summary": "The night after writing Boldwood, Bathsheba decides to travel with Liddy to her sister's house. This is to make sure she won't be around when Boldwood comes knocking and demanding an explanation. Unfortunately, she runs into Boldwood while leaving. This book is full of awkward moments. Boldwood goes on a big rant about how Bathsheba has been leading him on and giving him hope where there was none. He even resorts to asking her to marry him out of pity. Yikes. Eventually, Boldwood lands on the idea that someone else must have caught Bathsheba's eye while he was out of town. He then also realizes that it must be Sergeant Troy, since he has heard the talk around town just as much as anyone else. Boldwood starts shouting about how Troy is a thief for stealing his fiancee, even though Bathsheba never actually agreed to marry him. Finally, he essentially stamps his feet in a huff and tells Bathsheba to go ahead and marry Troy. It turns out that Troy hasn't actually left town with his regiment, but had only left for a day or two to meet someone in the nearby town of Bath. Bathsheba worries that if Troy comes back and runs into Boldwood, there'll be a fight.", "analysis": ""}

BLAME--FURY The next evening Bathsheba, with the idea of getting out of the way of Mr. Boldwood in the event of his returning to answer her note in person, proceeded to fulfil an engagement made with Liddy some few hours earlier. Bathsheba's companion, as a gauge of their reconciliation, had been granted a week's holiday to visit her sister, who was married to a thriving hurdler and cattle-crib-maker living in a delightful labyrinth of hazel copse not far beyond Yalbury. The arrangement was that Miss Everdene should honour them by coming there for a day or two to inspect some ingenious contrivances which this man of the woods had introduced into his wares. Leaving her instructions with Gabriel and Maryann, that they were to see everything carefully locked up for the night, she went out of the house just at the close of a timely thunder-shower, which had refined the air, and daintily bathed the coat of the land, though all beneath was dry as ever. Freshness was exhaled in an essence from the varied contours of bank and hollow, as if the earth breathed maiden breath; and the pleased birds were hymning to the scene. Before her, among the clouds, there was a contrast in the shape of lairs of fierce light which showed themselves in the neighbourhood of a hidden sun, lingering on to the farthest north-west corner of the heavens that this midsummer season allowed. She had walked nearly two miles of her journey, watching how the day was retreating, and thinking how the time of deeds was quietly melting into the time of thought, to give place in its turn to the time of prayer and sleep, when she beheld advancing over Yalbury hill the very man she sought so anxiously to elude. Boldwood was stepping on, not with that quiet tread of reserved strength which was his customary gait, in which he always seemed to be balancing two thoughts. His manner was stunned and sluggish now. Boldwood had for the first time been awakened to woman's privileges in tergiversation even when it involves another person's possible blight. That Bathsheba was a firm and positive girl, far less inconsequent than her fellows, had been the very lung of his hope; for he had held that these qualities would lead her to adhere to a straight course for consistency's sake, and accept him, though her fancy might not flood him with the iridescent hues of uncritical love. But the argument now came back as sorry gleams from a broken mirror. The discovery was no less a scourge than a surprise. He came on looking upon the ground, and did not see Bathsheba till they were less than a stone's throw apart. He looked up at the sound of her pit-pat, and his changed appearance sufficiently denoted to her the depth and strength of the feelings paralyzed by her letter. "Oh; is it you, Mr. Boldwood?" she faltered, a guilty warmth pulsing in her face. Those who have the power of reproaching in silence may find it a means more effective than words. There are accents in the eye which are not on the tongue, and more tales come from pale lips than can enter an ear. It is both the grandeur and the pain of the remoter moods that they avoid the pathway of sound. Boldwood's look was unanswerable. Seeing she turned a little aside, he said, "What, are you afraid of me?" "Why should you say that?" said Bathsheba. "I fancied you looked so," said he. "And it is most strange, because of its contrast with my feeling for you." She regained self-possession, fixed her eyes calmly, and waited. "You know what that feeling is," continued Boldwood, deliberately. "A thing strong as death. No dismissal by a hasty letter affects that." "I wish you did not feel so strongly about me," she murmured. "It is generous of you, and more than I deserve, but I must not hear it now." "Hear it? What do you think I have to say, then? I am not to marry you, and that's enough. Your letter was excellently plain. I want you to hear nothing--not I." Bathsheba was unable to direct her will into any definite groove for freeing herself from this fearfully awkward position. She confusedly said, "Good evening," and was moving on. Boldwood walked up to her heavily and dully. "Bathsheba--darling--is it final indeed?" "Indeed it is." "Oh, Bathsheba--have pity upon me!" Boldwood burst out. "God's sake, yes--I am come to that low, lowest stage--to ask a woman for pity! Still, she is you--she is you." Bathsheba commanded herself well. But she could hardly get a clear voice for what came instinctively to her lips: "There is little honour to the woman in that speech." It was only whispered, for something unutterably mournful no less than distressing in this spectacle of a man showing himself to be so entirely the vane of a passion enervated the feminine instinct for punctilios. "I am beyond myself about this, and am mad," he said. "I am no stoic at all to be supplicating here; but I do supplicate to you. I wish you knew what is in me of devotion to you; but it is impossible, that. In bare human mercy to a lonely man, don't throw me off now!" "I don't throw you off--indeed, how can I? I never had you." In her noon-clear sense that she had never loved him she forgot for a moment her thoughtless angle on that day in February. "But there was a time when you turned to me, before I thought of you! I don't reproach you, for even now I feel that the ignorant and cold darkness that I should have lived in if you had not attracted me by that letter--valentine you call it--would have been worse than my knowledge of you, though it has brought this misery. But, I say, there was a time when I knew nothing of you, and cared nothing for you, and yet you drew me on. And if you say you gave me no encouragement, I cannot but contradict you." "What you call encouragement was the childish game of an idle minute. I have bitterly repented of it--ay, bitterly, and in tears. Can you still go on reminding me?" "I don't accuse you of it--I deplore it. I took for earnest what you insist was jest, and now this that I pray to be jest you say is awful, wretched earnest. Our moods meet at wrong places. I wish your feeling was more like mine, or my feeling more like yours! Oh, could I but have foreseen the torture that trifling trick was going to lead me into, how I should have cursed you; but only having been able to see it since, I cannot do that, for I love you too well! But it is weak, idle drivelling to go on like this.... Bathsheba, you are the first woman of any shade or nature that I have ever looked at to love, and it is the having been so near claiming you for my own that makes this denial so hard to bear. How nearly you promised me! But I don't speak now to move your heart, and make you grieve because of my pain; it is no use, that. I must bear it; my pain would get no less by paining you." "But I do pity you--deeply--O, so deeply!" she earnestly said. "Do no such thing--do no such thing. Your dear love, Bathsheba, is such a vast thing beside your pity, that the loss of your pity as well as your love is no great addition to my sorrow, nor does the gain of your pity make it sensibly less. O sweet--how dearly you spoke to me behind the spear-bed at the washing-pool, and in the barn at the shearing, and that dearest last time in the evening at your home! Where are your pleasant words all gone--your earnest hope to be able to love me? Where is your firm conviction that you would get to care for me very much? Really forgotten?--really?" She checked emotion, looked him quietly and clearly in the face, and said in her low, firm voice, "Mr. Boldwood, I promised you nothing. Would you have had me a woman of clay when you paid me that furthest, highest compliment a man can pay a woman--telling her he loves her? I was bound to show some feeling, if I would not be a graceless shrew. Yet each of those pleasures was just for the day--the day just for the pleasure. How was I to know that what is a pastime to all other men was death to you? Have reason, do, and think more kindly of me!" "Well, never mind arguing--never mind. One thing is sure: you were all but mine, and now you are not nearly mine. Everything is changed, and that by you alone, remember. You were nothing to me once, and I was contented; you are now nothing to me again, and how different the second nothing is from the first! Would to God you had never taken me up, since it was only to throw me down!" Bathsheba, in spite of her mettle, began to feel unmistakable signs that she was inherently the weaker vessel. She strove miserably against this femininity which would insist upon supplying unbidden emotions in stronger and stronger current. She had tried to elude agitation by fixing her mind on the trees, sky, any trivial object before her eyes, whilst his reproaches fell, but ingenuity could not save her now. "I did not take you up--surely I did not!" she answered as heroically as she could. "But don't be in this mood with me. I can endure being told I am in the wrong, if you will only tell it me gently! O sir, will you not kindly forgive me, and look at it cheerfully?" "Cheerfully! Can a man fooled to utter heart-burning find a reason for being merry? If I have lost, how can I be as if I had won? Heavens you must be heartless quite! Had I known what a fearfully bitter sweet this was to be, how I would have avoided you, and never seen you, and been deaf of you. I tell you all this, but what do you care! You don't care." She returned silent and weak denials to his charges, and swayed her head desperately, as if to thrust away the words as they came showering about her ears from the lips of the trembling man in the climax of life, with his bronzed Roman face and fine frame. "Dearest, dearest, I am wavering even now between the two opposites of recklessly renouncing you, and labouring humbly for you again. Forget that you have said No, and let it be as it was! Say, Bathsheba, that you only wrote that refusal to me in fun--come, say it to me!" "It would be untrue, and painful to both of us. You overrate my capacity for love. I don't possess half the warmth of nature you believe me to have. An unprotected childhood in a cold world has beaten gentleness out of me." He immediately said with more resentment: "That may be true, somewhat; but ah, Miss Everdene, it won't do as a reason! You are not the cold woman you would have me believe. No, no! It isn't because you have no feeling in you that you don't love me. You naturally would have me think so--you would hide from me that you have a burning heart like mine. You have love enough, but it is turned into a new channel. I know where." The swift music of her heart became hubbub now, and she throbbed to extremity. He was coming to Troy. He did then know what had occurred! And the name fell from his lips the next moment. "Why did Troy not leave my treasure alone?" he asked, fiercely. "When I had no thought of injuring him, why did he force himself upon your notice! Before he worried you your inclination was to have me; when next I should have come to you your answer would have been Yes. Can you deny it--I ask, can you deny it?" She delayed the reply, but was too honest to withhold it. "I cannot," she whispered. "I know you cannot. But he stole in in my absence and robbed me. Why didn't he win you away before, when nobody would have been grieved?--when nobody would have been set tale-bearing. Now the people sneer at me--the very hills and sky seem to laugh at me till I blush shamefully for my folly. I have lost my respect, my good name, my standing--lost it, never to get it again. Go and marry your man--go on!" "Oh sir--Mr. Boldwood!" "You may as well. I have no further claim upon you. As for me, I had better go somewhere alone, and hide--and pray. I loved a woman once. I am now ashamed. When I am dead they'll say, miserable love-sick man that he was. Heaven--heaven--if I had got jilted secretly, and the dishonour not known, and my position kept! But no matter, it is gone, and the woman not gained. Shame upon him--shame!" His unreasonable anger terrified her, and she glided from him, without obviously moving, as she said, "I am only a girl--do not speak to me so!" "All the time you knew--how very well you knew--that your new freak was my misery. Dazzled by brass and scarlet--Oh, Bathsheba--this is woman's folly indeed!" She fired up at once. "You are taking too much upon yourself!" she said, vehemently. "Everybody is upon me--everybody. It is unmanly to attack a woman so! I have nobody in the world to fight my battles for me; but no mercy is shown. Yet if a thousand of you sneer and say things against me, I WILL NOT be put down!" "You'll chatter with him doubtless about me. Say to him, 'Boldwood would have died for me.' Yes, and you have given way to him, knowing him to be not the man for you. He has kissed you--claimed you as his. Do you hear--he has kissed you. Deny it!" The most tragic woman is cowed by a tragic man, and although Boldwood was, in vehemence and glow, nearly her own self rendered into another sex, Bathsheba's cheek quivered. She gasped, "Leave me, sir--leave me! I am nothing to you. Let me go on!" "Deny that he has kissed you." "I shall not." "Ha--then he has!" came hoarsely from the farmer. "He has," she said, slowly, and, in spite of her fear, defiantly. "I am not ashamed to speak the truth." "Then curse him; and curse him!" said Boldwood, breaking into a whispered fury. "Whilst I would have given worlds to touch your hand, you have let a rake come in without right or ceremony and--kiss you! Heaven's mercy--kiss you! ... Ah, a time of his life shall come when he will have to repent, and think wretchedly of the pain he has caused another man; and then may he ache, and wish, and curse, and yearn--as I do now!" "Don't, don't, oh, don't pray down evil upon him!" she implored in a miserable cry. "Anything but that--anything. Oh, be kind to him, sir, for I love him true!" Boldwood's ideas had reached that point of fusion at which outline and consistency entirely disappear. The impending night appeared to concentrate in his eye. He did not hear her at all now. "I'll punish him--by my soul, that will I! I'll meet him, soldier or no, and I'll horsewhip the untimely stripling for this reckless theft of my one delight. If he were a hundred men I'd horsewhip him--" He dropped his voice suddenly and unnaturally. "Bathsheba, sweet, lost coquette, pardon me! I've been blaming you, threatening you, behaving like a churl to you, when he's the greatest sinner. He stole your dear heart away with his unfathomable lies! ... It is a fortunate thing for him that he's gone back to his regiment--that he's away up the country, and not here! I hope he may not return here just yet. I pray God he may not come into my sight, for I may be tempted beyond myself. Oh, Bathsheba, keep him away--yes, keep him away from me!" For a moment Boldwood stood so inertly after this that his soul seemed to have been entirely exhaled with the breath of his passionate words. He turned his face away, and withdrew, and his form was soon covered over by the twilight as his footsteps mixed in with the low hiss of the leafy trees. Bathsheba, who had been standing motionless as a model all this latter time, flung her hands to her face, and wildly attempted to ponder on the exhibition which had just passed away. Such astounding wells of fevered feeling in a still man like Mr. Boldwood were incomprehensible, dreadful. Instead of being a man trained to repression he was--what she had seen him. The force of the farmer's threats lay in their relation to a circumstance known at present only to herself: her lover was coming back to Weatherbury in the course of the very next day or two. Troy had not returned to his distant barracks as Boldwood and others supposed, but had merely gone to visit some acquaintance in Bath, and had yet a week or more remaining to his furlough. She felt wretchedly certain that if he revisited her just at this nick of time, and came into contact with Boldwood, a fierce quarrel would be the consequence. She panted with solicitude when she thought of possible injury to Troy. The least spark would kindle the farmer's swift feelings of rage and jealousy; he would lose his self-mastery as he had this evening; Troy's blitheness might become aggressive; it might take the direction of derision, and Boldwood's anger might then take the direction of revenge. With almost a morbid dread of being thought a gushing girl, this guileless woman too well concealed from the world under a manner of carelessness the warm depths of her strong emotions. But now there was no reserve. In her distraction, instead of advancing further she walked up and down, beating the air with her fingers, pressing on her brow, and sobbing brokenly to herself. Then she sat down on a heap of stones by the wayside to think. There she remained long. Above the dark margin of the earth appeared foreshores and promontories of coppery cloud, bounding a green and pellucid expanse in the western sky. Amaranthine glosses came over them then, and the unresting world wheeled her round to a contrasting prospect eastward, in the shape of indecisive and palpitating stars. She gazed upon their silent throes amid the shades of space, but realised none at all. Her troubled spirit was far away with Troy.

Chapter 31

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-31

The night after writing Boldwood, Bathsheba decides to travel with Liddy to her sister's house. This is to make sure she won't be around when Boldwood comes knocking and demanding an explanation. Unfortunately, she runs into Boldwood while leaving. This book is full of awkward moments. Boldwood goes on a big rant about how Bathsheba has been leading him on and giving him hope where there was none. He even resorts to asking her to marry him out of pity. Yikes. Eventually, Boldwood lands on the idea that someone else must have caught Bathsheba's eye while he was out of town. He then also realizes that it must be Sergeant Troy, since he has heard the talk around town just as much as anyone else. Boldwood starts shouting about how Troy is a thief for stealing his fiancee, even though Bathsheba never actually agreed to marry him. Finally, he essentially stamps his feet in a huff and tells Bathsheba to go ahead and marry Troy. It turns out that Troy hasn't actually left town with his regiment, but had only left for a day or two to meet someone in the nearby town of Bath. Bathsheba worries that if Troy comes back and runs into Boldwood, there'll be a fight.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/14328-chapters/book_iv.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Consolation of Philosophy/section_8_part_0.txt

Consolation of Philosophy.book iv

book iv

{"name": "Summary of Book IV Part I-IV", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210212221439/https://www.novelguide.com/consolation-of-philosophy/summaries/book4-parti-iv", "summary": "of Parts I and II Since the existence of evil was the stumbling block for Boethius at the end of the last book, it is examined more closely now. Boethius comments that he likes the sweet songs of Philosophy, but he has not yet forgotten his sorrow. He challenges her that even though good ultimately rules the world, evil still exists and goes unpunished. What is worse, when wickedness is in charge, it not only does not reward the good, it actively punishes the good. It is a mystery how this can happen in a world ruled by an omnipotent God. Philosophy corrects his ideas, saying that the good are always strong, and the wicked always weak. Sin is always punished and virtue always rewarded. She tells him she will show him the path to bring him home, and she will give his mind wings. Then she recites a poem about the ascent of the soul to God where the soul says, \"I remember\" . Boethius says he is anxious for her to keep her promise to give his mind wings. All human activity depends on will and power, she says. The instinctive direction of the human will is towards happiness, which is the same as the good. Both good men and bad men strive for the same thing--the good. The good men become good because they are already by nature virtuous. If the bad men obtain the good, they are no longer bad. The power of good men is therefore stronger in the pursuit of good, and the bad are weaker and have to put forth more effort. Because they do not know how to gain the good, the bad are ignorant and weak through lack of self-control. If the ignorant turn to vice on purpose, they not only cease to be powerful, they cease to exist at all, because existence and life derive from the good. Whatever \"power\" the evil have, therefore, comes from weakness, not strength. Since God has the supreme power, and that supreme power is goodness, evil cannot be counted as a form of power. The wise achieve their desire, while the wicked only get pleasure without the good.", "analysis": "Commentary on Parts I and II The poem about the ascent of the soul to God includes a vision of Neoplatonic cosmology in which God, not earth, is the center of the universe. The reason humans like Boethius have trouble sorting out the truth is because earth is far from God, near the edge of darkness. The soul must traverse many spheres to get closer to the light. Philosophy says that this journey towards the light is possible for human beings. Philosophy continues her argument that there is only one power in the universe . God rules the universe by Providence. The wicked may appear to have power, but they are sunk in ignorance and have no idea how to obtain the good, which is the same as life. Goodness gives strength, and doing evil only makes people weak. They suffer the consequences, for sin is always punished, a sort of natural cause and effect. For instance, a person who pursues only bodily appetites will become sick and unbalanced. Those who try to control others through violence unleash a force by which they themselves are destroyed. In the long run, therefore, the wicked perish by their own evil acts. The good become happier the closer they rise to the light, the source of life. Summary of Part III Philosophy points out that the goal of every action is its own reward. Goodness itself is the common reward of human activity, for all people desire it and act to obtain it. The goodness gained from good actions cannot be removed from those who are good. The good man's reward is his forever. The wicked cannot take goodness from them, for they must earn their own good. Goodness is happiness, so virtue is its own reward. The happy thus have access to the divine. Similarly, the punishment of the wicked is wickedness itself. Evil is like an infection or sickness. Another way to see this is that everything that exists is naturally good. Anything that turns away from goodness ceases to exist. Someone lost in evil has sunk to the level of an animal. The evil diminish themselves by destroying their own nature. They lose their souls and end up as mere physical bodies. They are human in appearance only. On the other hand, goodness raises people above the human level so they participate in divinity. Commentary on Part III Philosophy's definition of the human seems a bit radical, but it follows the lofty Platonic strain of these arguments, in which the human is made in the image of God and can participate directly in divinity through being good. This view of human nature as essentially good is opposed to the Christian doctrine of original sin that sees human nature as fundamentally corrupt. Christianity generally posits the necessity for divine intervention to save human nature from its own evil tendencies. Boethius was a Christian, but he represents the line of philosophers who were Christian Platonists, combining certain concepts from Christianity with Platonic concepts. Boethius thus prefers to see humans as capable of perfection through their own efforts. Philosophy argues that humans have free will and the ability to choose whether to rise to the level of the divine by exercising their inherent goodness, or to fall to the level of beasts by becoming evil. She ends the section with a poem about the adventures of the Greek hero, Odysseus, as an example. When Odysseus and his men landed on the island ruled by Circe the witch, she enticed the men with food and drink, and through their gluttony they turned into animals, with only their minds left to mourn their fate. This symbolizes what happens to those who fall prey to outer temptations; they cease to exist as humans and become bestial. Summary of Part IV Boethius agrees that evil people are like beasts, but he still laments that they are free to bring destruction to good people. Philosophy objects that it is not a matter of freedom. The evil are not free, for if they achieve their desire to do evil, they suffer. Evil men often suffer violent and unexpected ends, imposing a limit on how much evil they can do. Commentary on Part IV Philosophy has been trying to get Boethius to let go of his resentment towards the injustice done him by wicked men. This sense of resentment makes him miserable. She tries to convince him, based on the definitions they have already laid down about true happiness, that the evil suffer and the wise do not. She concludes, \"wickedness is a disease of the mind\" . How can Boethius despise someone who is mentally ill while he is healthy? What the wicked do is \"suicidal,\" so one should \"love the good, show pity for the bad\" . Boethius replies to Philosophy that this all makes sense, but the opinions of ordinary men on the subject would deny what she has said. She replies that one cannot heed the blind. According to \"everlasting law,\" if one turns the mind to higher things, there is no need of an outer reward, for the mind enjoys its own high state. Similarly, if one turns the mind to lower things, there is no need for outer punishment, for that low state of mind is itself a form of suffering. The one who commits a crime is therefore more wretched than the one the crime was committed against. Consequently, there is no point in hating the wicked. Book IV of Parts I and II Since the existence of evil was the stumbling block for Boethius at the end of the last book, it is examined more closely now. Boethius comments that he likes the sweet songs of Philosophy, but he has not yet forgotten his sorrow. He challenges her that even though good ultimately rules the world, evil still exists and goes unpunished. What is worse, when wickedness is in charge, it not only does not reward the good, it actively punishes the good. It is a mystery how this can happen in a world ruled by an omnipotent God. Philosophy corrects his ideas, saying that the good are always strong, and the wicked always weak. Sin is always punished and virtue always rewarded. She tells him she will show him the path to bring him home, and she will give his mind wings. Then she recites a poem about the ascent of the soul to God where the soul says, \"I remember\" . Boethius says he is anxious for her to keep her promise to give his mind wings. All human activity depends on will and power, she says. The instinctive direction of the human will is towards happiness, which is the same as the good. Both good men and bad men strive for the same thing--the good. The good men become good because they are already by nature virtuous. If the bad men obtain the good, they are no longer bad. The power of good men is therefore stronger in the pursuit of good, and the bad are weaker and have to put forth more effort. Because they do not know how to gain the good, the bad are ignorant and weak through lack of self-control. If the ignorant turn to vice on purpose, they not only cease to be powerful, they cease to exist at all, because existence and life derive from the good. Whatever \"power\" the evil have, therefore, comes from weakness, not strength. Since God has the supreme power, and that supreme power is goodness, evil cannot be counted as a form of power. The wise achieve their desire, while the wicked only get pleasure without the good. Commentary on Parts I and II Commentary on Parts I and II The poem about the ascent of the soul to God includes a vision of Neoplatonic cosmology in which God, not earth, is the center of the universe. The reason humans like Boethius have trouble sorting out the truth is because earth is far from God, near the edge of darkness. The soul must traverse many spheres to get closer to the light. Philosophy says that this journey towards the light is possible for human beings. Philosophy continues her argument that there is only one power in the universe . God rules the universe by Providence. The wicked may appear to have power, but they are sunk in ignorance and have no idea how to obtain the good, which is the same as life. Goodness gives strength, and doing evil only makes people weak. They suffer the consequences, for sin is always punished, a sort of natural cause and effect. For instance, a person who pursues only bodily appetites will become sick and unbalanced. Those who try to control others through violence unleash a force by which they themselves are destroyed. In the long run, therefore, the wicked perish by their own evil acts. The good become happier the closer they rise to the light, the source of life. of Part III Philosophy points out that the goal of every action is its own reward. Goodness itself is the common reward of human activity, for all people desire it and act to obtain it. The goodness gained from good actions cannot be removed from those who are good. The good man's reward is his forever. The wicked cannot take goodness from them, for they must earn their own good. Goodness is happiness, so virtue is its own reward. The happy thus have access to the divine. Similarly, the punishment of the wicked is wickedness itself. Evil is like an infection or sickness. Another way to see this is that everything that exists is naturally good. Anything that turns away from goodness ceases to exist. Someone lost in evil has sunk to the level of an animal. The evil diminish themselves by destroying their own nature. They lose their souls and end up as mere physical bodies. They are human in appearance only. On the other hand, goodness raises people above the human level so they participate in divinity. Commentary on Part III Commentary on Part III Philosophy's definition of the human seems a bit radical, but it follows the lofty Platonic strain of these arguments, in which the human is made in the image of God and can participate directly in divinity through being good. This view of human nature as essentially good is opposed to the Christian doctrine of original sin that sees human nature as fundamentally corrupt. Christianity generally posits the necessity for divine intervention to save human nature from its own evil tendencies. Boethius was a Christian, but he represents the line of philosophers who were Christian Platonists, combining certain concepts from Christianity with Platonic concepts. Boethius thus prefers to see humans as capable of perfection through their own efforts. Philosophy argues that humans have free will and the ability to choose whether to rise to the level of the divine by exercising their inherent goodness, or to fall to the level of beasts by becoming evil. She ends the section with a poem about the adventures of the Greek hero, Odysseus, as an example. When Odysseus and his men landed on the island ruled by Circe the witch, she enticed the men with food and drink, and through their gluttony they turned into animals, with only their minds left to mourn their fate. This symbolizes what happens to those who fall prey to outer temptations; they cease to exist as humans and become bestial. of Part IV Boethius agrees that evil people are like beasts, but he still laments that they are free to bring destruction to good people. Philosophy objects that it is not a matter of freedom. The evil are not free, for if they achieve their desire to do evil, they suffer. Evil men often suffer violent and unexpected ends, imposing a limit on how much evil they can do. Commentary on Part IV Philosophy has been trying to get Boethius to let go of his resentment towards the injustice done him by wicked men. This sense of resentment makes him miserable. She tries to convince him, based on the definitions they have already laid down about true happiness, that the evil suffer and the wise do not. She concludes, \"wickedness is a disease of the mind\" . How can Boethius despise someone who is mentally ill while he is healthy? What the wicked do is \"suicidal,\" so one should \"love the good, show pity for the bad\" . Commentary on Part IV Philosophy has been trying to get Boethius to let go of his resentment towards the injustice done him by wicked men. This sense of resentment makes him miserable. She tries to convince him, based on the definitions they have already laid down about true happiness, that the evil suffer and the wise do not. She concludes, \"wickedness is a disease of the mind\" . How can Boethius despise someone who is mentally ill while he is healthy? What the wicked do is \"suicidal,\" so one should \"love the good, show pity for the bad\" . Commentary on Part IV Commentary on Part IV Philosophy has been trying to get Boethius to let go of his resentment towards the injustice done him by wicked men. This sense of resentment makes him miserable. She tries to convince him, based on the definitions they have already laid down about true happiness, that the evil suffer and the wise do not. She concludes, \"wickedness is a disease of the mind\" . How can Boethius despise someone who is mentally ill while he is healthy? What the wicked do is \"suicidal,\" so one should \"love the good, show pity for the bad\" . Boethius replies to Philosophy that this all makes sense, but the opinions of ordinary men on the subject would deny what she has said. She replies that one cannot heed the blind. According to \"everlasting law,\" if one turns the mind to higher things, there is no need of an outer reward, for the mind enjoys its own high state. Similarly, if one turns the mind to lower things, there is no need for outer punishment, for that low state of mind is itself a form of suffering. The one who commits a crime is therefore more wretched than the one the crime was committed against. Consequently, there is no point in hating the wicked. Novel Author Boethius Novel Author Boethius"}

<CHAPTER> BOOK IV. I. Softly and sweetly Philosophy sang these verses to the end without losing aught of the dignity of her expression or the seriousness of her tones; then, forasmuch as I was as yet unable to forget my deeply-seated sorrow, just as she was about to say something further, I broke in and cried: 'O thou guide into the way of true light, all that thy voice hath uttered from the beginning even unto now has manifestly seemed to me at once divine contemplated in itself, and by the force of thy arguments placed beyond the possibility of overthrow. Moreover, these truths have not been altogether unfamiliar to me heretofore, though because of indignation at my wrongs they have for a time been forgotten. But, lo! herein is the very chiefest cause of my grief--that, while there exists a good ruler of the universe, it is possible that evil should be at all, still more that it should go unpunished. Surely thou must see how deservedly this of itself provokes astonishment. But a yet greater marvel follows: While wickedness reigns and flourishes, virtue not only lacks its reward, but is even thrust down and trampled under the feet of the wicked, and suffers punishment in the place of crime. That this should happen under the rule of a God who knows all things and can do all things, but wills only the good, cannot be sufficiently wondered at nor sufficiently lamented.' Then said she: 'It would indeed be infinitely astounding, and of all monstrous things most horrible, if, as thou esteemest, in the well-ordered home of so great a householder, the base vessels should be held in honour, the precious left to neglect. But it is not so. For if we hold unshaken those conclusions which we lately reached, thou shall learn that, by the will of Him of whose realm we are speaking, the good are always strong, the bad always weak and impotent; that vices never go unpunished, nor virtues unrewarded; that good fortune ever befalls the good, and ill fortune the bad, and much more of the sort, which shall hush thy murmurings, and stablish thee in the strong assurance of conviction. And since by my late instructions thou hast seen the form of happiness, hast learnt, too, the seat where it is to be found, all due preliminaries being discharged, I will now show thee the road which will lead thee home. Wings, also, will I fasten to thy mind wherewith thou mayst soar aloft, that so, all disturbing doubts removed, thou mayst return safe to thy country, under my guidance, in the path I will show thee, and by the means which I furnish.' SONG I. THE SOUL'S FLIGHT. Wings are mine; above the pole Far aloft I soar. Clothed with these, my nimble soul Scorns earth's hated shore, Cleaves the skies upon the wind, Sees the clouds left far behind. Soon the glowing point she nears, Where the heavens rotate, Follows through the starry spheres Phoebus' course, or straight Takes for comrade 'mid the stars Saturn cold or glittering Mars; Thus each circling orb explores Through Night's stole that peers; Then, when all are numbered, soars Far beyond the spheres, Mounting heaven's supremest height To the very Fount of light. There the Sovereign of the world His calm sway maintains; As the globe is onward whirled Guides the chariot reins, And in splendour glittering Reigns the universal King. Hither if thy wandering feet Find at last a way, Here thy long-lost home thou'lt greet: 'Dear lost land,' thou'lt say, 'Though from thee I've wandered wide, Hence I came, here will abide.' Yet if ever thou art fain Visitant to be Of earth's gloomy night again, Surely thou wilt see Tyrants whom the nations fear Dwell in hapless exile here. II. Then said I: 'Verily, wondrous great are thy promises; yet I do not doubt but thou canst make them good: only keep me not in suspense after raising such hopes.' 'Learn, then, first,' said she, 'how that power ever waits upon the good, while the bad are left wholly destitute of strength.[K] Of these truths the one proves the other; for since good and evil are contraries, if it is made plain that good is power, the feebleness of evil is clearly seen, and, conversely, if the frail nature of evil is made manifest, the strength of good is thereby known. However, to win ampler credence for my conclusion, I will pursue both paths, and draw confirmation for my statements first in one way and then in the other. 'The carrying out of any human action depends upon two things--to wit, will and power; if either be wanting, nothing can be accomplished. For if the will be lacking, no attempt at all is made to do what is not willed; whereas if there be no power, the will is all in vain. And so, if thou seest any man wishing to attain some end, yet utterly failing to attain it, thou canst not doubt that he lacked the power of getting what he wished for.' 'Why, certainly not; there is no denying it.' 'Canst thou, then, doubt that he whom thou seest to have accomplished what he willed had also the power to accomplish it?' 'Of course not.' 'Then, in respect of what he can accomplish a man is to be reckoned strong, in respect of what he cannot accomplish weak?' 'Granted,' said I. 'Then, dost thou remember that, by our former reasonings, it was concluded that the whole aim of man's will, though the means of pursuit vary, is set intently upon happiness?' 'I do remember that this, too, was proved.' 'Dost thou also call to mind how happiness is absolute good, and therefore that, when happiness is sought, it is good which is in all cases the object of desire?' 'Nay, I do not so much call to mind as keep it fixed in my memory.' 'Then, all men, good and bad alike, with one indistinguishable purpose strive to reach good?' 'Yes, that follows.' 'But it is certain that by the attainment of good men become good?' 'It is.' 'Then, do the good attain their object?' 'It seems so.' 'But if the bad were to attain the good which is _their_ object, they could not be bad?' 'No.' 'Then, since both seek good, but while the one sort attain it, the other attain it not, is there any doubt that the good are endued with power, while they who are bad are weak?' 'If any doubt it, he is incapable of reflecting on the nature of things, or the consequences involved in reasoning.' 'Again, supposing there are two things to which the same function is prescribed in the course of nature, and one of these successfully accomplishes the function by natural action, the other is altogether incapable of that natural action, instead of which, in a way other than is agreeable to its nature, it--I will not say fulfils its function, but feigns to fulfil it: which of these two would in thy view be the stronger?' 'I guess thy meaning, but I pray thee let me hear thee more at large.' 'Walking is man's natural motion, is it not?' 'Certainly.' 'Thou dost not doubt, I suppose, that it is natural for the feet to discharge this function?' 'No; surely I do not.' 'Now, if one man who is able to use his feet walks, and another to whom the natural use of his feet is wanting tries to walk on his hands, which of the two wouldst thou rightly esteem the stronger?' 'Go on,' said I; 'no one can question but that he who has the natural capacity has more strength than he who has it not.' 'Now, the supreme good is set up as the end alike for the bad and for the good; but the good seek it through the natural action of the virtues, whereas the bad try to attain this same good through all manner of concupiscence, which is not the natural way of attaining good. Or dost thou think otherwise?' 'Nay; rather, one further consequence is clear to me: for from my admissions it must needs follow that the good have power, and the bad are impotent.' 'Thou anticipatest rightly, and that as physicians reckon is a sign that nature is set working, and is throwing off the disease. But, since I see thee so ready at understanding, I will heap proof on proof. Look how manifest is the extremity of vicious men's weakness; they cannot even reach that goal to which the aim of nature leads and almost constrains them. What if they were left without this mighty, this well-nigh irresistible help of nature's guidance! Consider also how momentous is the powerlessness which incapacitates the wicked. Not light or trivial[L] are the prizes which they contend for, but which they cannot win or hold; nay, their failure concerns the very sum and crown of things. Poor wretches! they fail to compass even that for which they toil day and night. Herein also the strength of the good conspicuously appears. For just as thou wouldst judge him to be the strongest walker whose legs could carry him to a point beyond which no further advance was possible, so must thou needs account him strong in power who so attains the end of his desires that nothing further to be desired lies beyond. Whence follows the obvious conclusion that they who are wicked are seen likewise to be wholly destitute of strength. For why do they forsake virtue and follow vice? Is it from ignorance of what is good? Well, what is more weak and feeble than the blindness of ignorance? Do they know what they ought to follow, but lust drives them aside out of the way? If it be so, they are still frail by reason of their incontinence, for they cannot fight against vice. Or do they knowingly and wilfully forsake the good and turn aside to vice? Why, at this rate, they not only cease to have power, but cease to be at all. For they who forsake the common end of all things that are, they likewise also cease to be at all. Now, to some it may seem strange that we should assert that the bad, who form the greater part of mankind, do not exist. But the fact is so. I do not, indeed, deny that they who are bad are bad, but that they _are_ in an unqualified and absolute sense I deny. Just as we call a corpse a dead man, but cannot call it simply "man," so I would allow the vicious to be bad, but that they _are_ in an absolute sense I cannot allow. That only _is_ which maintains its place and keeps its nature; whatever falls away from this forsakes the existence which is essential to its nature. "But," thou wilt say, "the bad have an ability." Nor do I wish to deny it; only this ability of theirs comes not from strength, but from impotence. For their ability is to do evil, which would have had no efficacy at all if they could have continued in the performance of good. So this ability of theirs proves them still more plainly to have no power. For if, as we concluded just now, evil is nothing, 'tis clear that the wicked can effect nothing, since they are only able to do evil.' ''Tis evident.' 'And that thou mayst understand what is the precise force of this power, we determined, did we not, awhile back, that nothing has more power than supreme good?' 'We did,' said I. 'But that same highest good cannot do evil?' 'Certainly not.' 'Is there anyone, then, who thinks that men are able to do all things?' 'None but a madman.' 'Yet they are able to do evil?' 'Ay; would they could not!' 'Since, then, he who can do only good is omnipotent, while they who can do evil also are not omnipotent, it is manifest that they who can do evil have less power. There is this also: we have shown that all power is to be reckoned among things desirable, and that all desirable things are referred to good as to a kind of consummation of their nature. But the ability to commit crime cannot be referred to the good; therefore it is not a thing to be desired. And yet all power is desirable; it is clear, then, that ability to do evil is not power. From all which considerations appeareth the power of the good, and the indubitable weakness of the bad, and it is clear that Plato's judgment was true; the wise alone are able to do what they would, while the wicked follow their own hearts' lust, but can _not_ accomplish what they would. For they go on in their wilfulness fancying they will attain what they wish for in the paths of delight; but they are very far from its attainment, since shameful deeds lead not to happiness.' FOOTNOTES: [K] The paradoxes in this chapter and chapter iv. are taken from Plato's 'Gorgias.' See Jowett, vol. ii., pp. 348-366, and also pp. 400, 401 ('Gorgias,' 466-479, and 508, 509). [L] 'No trivial game is here; the strife Is waged for Turnus' own dear life.' _Conington_. See Virgil, AEneid,' xii. 764, 745: _cf_. 'Iliad,' xxii. 159-162. SONG II. THE BONDAGE OF PASSION. When high-enthroned the monarch sits, resplendent in the pride Of purple robes, while flashing steel guards him on every side; When baleful terrors on his brow with frowning menace lower, And Passion shakes his labouring breast--how dreadful seems his power! But if the vesture of his state from such a one thou tear, Thou'lt see what load of secret bonds this lord of earth doth wear. Lust's poison rankles; o'er his mind rage sweeps in tempest rude; Sorrow his spirit vexes sore, and empty hopes delude. Then thou'lt confess: one hapless wretch, whom many lords oppress, Does never what he would, but lives in thraldom's helplessness. III. 'Thou seest, then, in what foulness unrighteous deeds are sunk, with what splendour righteousness shines. Whereby it is manifest that goodness never lacks its reward, nor crime its punishment. For, verily, in all manner of transactions that for the sake of which the particular action is done may justly be accounted the reward of that action, even as the wreath for the sake of which the race is run is the reward offered for running. Now, we have shown happiness to be that very good for the sake of which all things are done. Absolute good, then, is offered as the common prize, as it were, of all human actions. But, truly, this is a reward from which it is impossible to separate the good man, for one who is without good cannot properly be called good at all; wherefore righteous dealing never misses its reward. Rage the wicked, then, never so violently, the crown shall not fall from the head of the wise, nor wither. Verily, other men's unrighteousness cannot pluck from righteous souls their proper glory. Were the reward in which the soul of the righteous delighteth received from without, then might it be taken away by him who gave it, or some other; but since it is conferred by his own righteousness, then only will he lose his prize when he has ceased to be righteous. Lastly, since every prize is desired because it is believed to be good, who can account him who possesses good to be without reward? And what a prize, the fairest and grandest of all! For remember the corollary which I chiefly insisted on a little while back, and reason thus: Since absolute good is happiness, 'tis clear that all the good must be happy for the very reason that they are good. But it was agreed that those who are happy are gods. So, then, the prize of the good is one which no time may impair, no man's power lessen, no man's unrighteousness tarnish; 'tis very Godship. And this being so, the wise man cannot doubt that punishment is inseparable from the bad. For since good and bad, and likewise reward and punishment, are contraries, it necessarily follows that, corresponding to all that we see accrue as reward of the good, there is some penalty attached as punishment of evil. As, then, righteousness itself is the reward of the righteous, so wickedness itself is the punishment of the unrighteous. Now, no one who is visited with punishment doubts that he is visited with evil. Accordingly, if they were but willing to weigh their own case, could _they_ think themselves free from punishment whom wickedness, worst of all evils, has not only touched, but deeply tainted? 'See, also, from the opposite standpoint--the standpoint of the good--what a penalty attends upon the wicked. Thou didst learn a little since that whatever is is one, and that unity itself is good. Accordingly, by this way of reckoning, whatever falls away from goodness ceases to be; whence it comes to pass that the bad cease to be what they were, while only the outward aspect is still left to show they have been men. Wherefore, by their perversion to badness, they have lost their true human nature. Further, since righteousness alone can raise men above the level of humanity, it must needs be that unrighteousness degrades below man's level those whom it has cast out of man's estate. It results, then, that thou canst not consider him human whom thou seest transformed by vice. The violent despoiler of other men's goods, enflamed with covetousness, surely resembles a wolf. A bold and restless spirit, ever wrangling in law-courts, is like some yelping cur. The secret schemer, taking pleasure in fraud and stealth, is own brother to the fox. The passionate man, phrenzied with rage, we might believe to be animated with the soul of a lion. The coward and runaway, afraid where no fear is, may be likened to the timid deer. He who is sunk in ignorance and stupidity lives like a dull ass. He who is light and inconstant, never holding long to one thing, is for all the world like a bird. He who wallows in foul and unclean lusts is sunk in the pleasures of a filthy hog. So it comes to pass that he who by forsaking righteousness ceases to be a man cannot pass into a Godlike condition, but actually turns into a brute beast.' SONG III. CIRCE'S CUP. Th' Ithacan discreet, And all his storm-tossed fleet, Far o'er the ocean wave The winds of heaven drave-- Drave to the mystic isle, Where dwelleth in her guile That fair and faithless one, The daughter of the Sun. There for the stranger crew With cunning spells she knew To mix th' enchanted cup. For whoso drinks it up, Must suffer hideous change To monstrous shapes and strange. One like a boar appears; This his huge form uprears, Mighty in bulk and limb-- An Afric lion--grim With claw and fang. Confessed A wolf, this, sore distressed When he would weep, doth howl; And, strangely tame, these prowl The Indian tiger's mates. And though in such sore straits, The pity of the god Who bears the mystic rod Had power the chieftain brave From her fell arts to save; His comrades, unrestrained, The fatal goblet drained. All now with low-bent head, Like swine, on acorns fed; Man's speech and form were reft, No human feature left; But steadfast still, the mind, Unaltered, unresigned, The monstrous change bewailed. How little, then, availed The potencies of ill! These herbs, this baneful skill, May change each outward part, But cannot touch the heart. In its true home, deep-set, Man's spirit liveth yet. _Those_ poisons are more fell, More potent to expel Man from his high estate, Which subtly penetrate, And leave the body whole, But deep infect the soul. IV. Then said I: 'This is very true. I see that the vicious, though they keep the outward form of man, are rightly said to be changed into beasts in respect of their spiritual nature; but, inasmuch as their cruel and polluted minds vent their rage in the destruction of the good, I would this license were not permitted to them.' 'Nor is it,' said she, 'as shall be shown in the fitting place. Yet if that license which thou believest to be permitted to them were taken away, the punishment of the wicked would be in great part remitted. For verily, incredible as it may seem to some, it needs must be that the bad are more unfortunate when they have accomplished their desires than if they are unable to get them fulfilled. If it is wretched to will evil, to have been able to accomplish evil is more wretched; for without the power the wretched will would fail of effect. Accordingly, those whom thou seest to will, to be able to accomplish, and to accomplish crime, must needs be the victims of a threefold wretchedness, since each one of these states has its own measure of wretchedness.' 'Yes,' said I; 'yet I earnestly wish they might speedily be quit of this misfortune by losing the ability to accomplish crime.' 'They will lose it,' said she, 'sooner than perchance thou wishest, or they themselves think likely; since, verily, within the narrow bounds of our brief life there is nothing so late in coming that anyone, least of all an immortal spirit, should deem it long to wait for. Their great expectations, the lofty fabric of their crimes, is oft overthrown by a sudden and unlooked-for ending, and this but sets a limit to their misery. For if wickedness makes men wretched, he is necessarily more wretched who is wicked for a longer time; and were it not that death, at all events, puts an end to the evil doings of the wicked, I should account them wretched to the last degree. Indeed, if we have formed true conclusions about the ill fortune of wickedness, that wretchedness is plainly infinite which is doomed to be eternal.' Then said I: 'A wonderful inference, and difficult to grant; but I see that it agrees entirely with our previous conclusions.' 'Thou art right,' said she; 'but if anyone finds it hard to admit the conclusion, he ought in fairness either to prove some falsity in the premises, or to show that the combination of propositions does not adequately enforce the necessity of the conclusion; otherwise, if the premises be granted, nothing whatever can be said against the inference of the conclusion. And here is another statement which seems not less wonderful, but on the premises assumed is equally necessary.' 'What is that?' 'The wicked are happier in undergoing punishment than if no penalty of justice chasten them. And I am not now meaning what might occur to anyone--that bad character is amended by retribution, and is brought into the right path by the terror of punishment, or that it serves as an example to warn others to avoid transgression; but I believe that in another way the wicked are more unfortunate when they go unpunished, even though no account be taken of amendment, and no regard be paid to example.' 'Why, what other way is there beside these?' said I. Then said she: 'Have we not agreed that the good are happy, and the evil wretched?' 'Yes,' said I. 'Now, if,' said she, 'to one in affliction there be given along with his misery some good thing, is he not happier than one whose misery is misery pure and simple without admixture of any good?' 'It would seem so.' 'But if to one thus wretched, one destitute of all good, some further evil be added besides those which make him wretched, is he not to be judged far more unhappy than he whose ill fortune is alleviated by some share of good?' 'It could scarcely be otherwise.' 'Surely, then, the wicked, when they are punished, have a good thing added to them--to wit, the punishment which by the law of justice is good; and likewise, when they escape punishment, a new evil attaches to them in that very freedom from punishment which thou hast rightly acknowledged to be an evil in the case of the unrighteous.' 'I cannot deny it.' 'Then, the wicked are far more unhappy when indulged with an unjust freedom from punishment than when punished by a just retribution. Now, it is manifest that it is just for the wicked to be punished, and for them to escape unpunished is unjust.' 'Why, who would venture to deny it?' 'This, too, no one can possibly deny--that all which is just is good, and, conversely, all which is unjust is bad.' Then I answered: 'These inferences do indeed follow from what we lately concluded; but tell me,' said I, 'dost thou take no account of the punishment of the soul after the death of the body?' 'Nay, truly,' said she, 'great are these penalties, some of them inflicted, I imagine, in the severity of retribution, others in the mercy of purification. But it is not my present purpose to speak of these. So far, my aim hath been to make thee recognise that the power of the bad which shocked thee so exceedingly is no power; to make thee see that those of whose freedom from punishment thou didst complain are never without the proper penalties of their unrighteousness; to teach thee that the license which thou prayedst might soon come to an end is not long-enduring; that it would be more unhappy if it lasted longer, most unhappy of all if it lasted for ever; thereafter that the unrighteous are more wretched if unjustly let go without punishment than if punished by a just retribution--from which point of view it follows that the wicked are afflicted with more severe penalties just when they are supposed to escape punishment.' Then said I: 'While I follow thy reasonings, I am deeply impressed with their truth; but if I turn to the common convictions of men, I find few who will even listen to such arguments, let alone admit them to be credible.' 'True,' said she; 'they cannot lift eyes accustomed to darkness to the light of clear truth, and are like those birds whose vision night illumines and day blinds; for while they regard, not the order of the universe, but their own dispositions of mind, they think the license to commit crime, and the escape from punishment, to be fortunate. But mark the ordinance of eternal law. Hast thou fashioned thy soul to the likeness of the better, thou hast no need of a judge to award the prize--by thine own act hast thou raised thyself in the scale of excellence; hast thou perverted thy affections to baser things, look not for punishment from one without thee--thine own act hath degraded thee, and thrust thee down. Even so, if alternately thou turn thy gaze upon the vile earth and upon the heavens, though all without thee stand still, by the mere laws of sight thou seemest now sunk in the mire, now soaring among the stars. But the common herd regards not these things. What, then? Shall we go over to those whom we have shown to be like brute beasts? Why, suppose, now, one who had quite lost his sight should likewise forget that he had ever possessed the faculty of vision, and should imagine that nothing was wanting in him to human perfection, should we deem those who saw as well as ever blind? Why, they will not even assent to this, either--that they who do wrong are more wretched than those who suffer wrong, though the proof of this rests on grounds of reason no less strong.' 'Let me hear these same reasons,' said I. 'Wouldst thou deny that every wicked man deserves punishment?' 'I would not, certainly.' 'And that those who are wicked are unhappy is clear in manifold ways?' 'Yes,' I replied. 'Thou dost not doubt, then, that those who deserve punishment are wretched?' 'Agreed,' said I. 'So, then, if thou wert sitting in judgment, on whom wouldst thou decree the infliction of punishment--on him who had done the wrong, or on him who had suffered it?' 'Without doubt, I would compensate the sufferer at the cost of the doer of the wrong.' 'Then, the injurer would seem more wretched than the injured?' 'Yes; it follows. And so for this and other reasons resting on the same ground, inasmuch as baseness of its own nature makes men wretched, it is plain that a wrong involves the misery of the doer, not of the sufferer.' 'And yet,' says she, 'the practice of the law-courts is just the opposite: advocates try to arouse the commiseration of the judges for those who have endured some grievous and cruel wrong; whereas pity is rather due to the criminal, who ought to be brought to the judgment-seat by his accusers in a spirit not of anger, but of compassion and kindness, as a sick man to the physician, to have the ulcer of his fault cut away by punishment. Whereby the business of the advocate would either wholly come to a standstill, or, did men prefer to make it serviceable to mankind, would be restricted to the practice of accusation. The wicked themselves also, if through some chink or cranny they were permitted to behold the virtue they have forsaken, and were to see that by the pains of punishment they would rid themselves of the uncleanness of their vices, and win in exchange the recompense of righteousness, they would no longer think these sufferings pains; they would refuse the help of advocates, and would commit themselves wholly into the hands of their accusers and judges. Whence it comes to pass that for the wise no place is left for hatred; only the most foolish would hate the good, and to hate the bad is unreasonable. For if vicious propensity is, as it were, a disease of the soul like bodily sickness, even as we account the sick in body by no means deserving of hate, but rather of pity, so, and much more, should they be pitied whose minds are assailed by wickedness, which is more frightful than any sickness.' SONG IV. THE UNREASONABLENESS OF HATRED. Why all this furious strife? Oh, why With rash and wilful hand provoke death's destined day? If death ye seek--lo! Death is nigh, Not of their master's will those coursers swift delay! The wild beasts vent on man their rage, Yet 'gainst their brothers' lives men point the murderous steel; Unjust and cruel wars they wage, And haste with flying darts the death to meet or deal. No right nor reason can they show; 'Tis but because their lands and laws are not the same. Wouldst _thou_ give each his due; then know Thy love the good must have, the bad thy pity claim. V. On this I said: 'I see how there is a happiness and misery founded on the actual deserts of the righteous and the wicked. Nevertheless, I wonder in myself whether there is not some good and evil in fortune as the vulgar understand it. Surely, no sensible man would rather be exiled, poor and disgraced, than dwell prosperously in his own country, powerful, wealthy, and high in honour. Indeed, the work of wisdom is more clear and manifest in its operation when the happiness of rulers is somehow passed on to the people around them, especially considering that the prison, the law, and the other pains of legal punishment are properly due only to mischievous citizens on whose account they were originally instituted. Accordingly, I do exceedingly marvel why all this is completely reversed--why the good are harassed with the penalties due to crime, and the bad carry off the rewards of virtue; and I long to hear from thee what reason may be found for so unjust a state of disorder. For assuredly I should wonder less if I could believe that all things are the confused result of chance. But now my belief in God's governance doth add amazement to amazement. For, seeing that He sometimes assigns fair fortune to the good and harsh fortune to the bad, and then again deals harshly with the good, and grants to the bad their hearts' desire, how does this differ from chance, unless some reason is discovered for it all?' 'Nay; it is not wonderful,' said she, 'if all should be thought random and confused when the principle of order is not known. And though thou knowest not the causes on which this great system depends, yet forasmuch as a good ruler governs the world, doubt not for thy part that all is rightly done.' SONG V. WONDER AND IGNORANCE. Who knoweth not how near the pole Bootes' course doth go, Must marvel by what heavenly law He moves his Wain so slow; Why late he plunges 'neath the main, And swiftly lights his beams again. When the full-orbed moon grows pale In the mid course of night, And suddenly the stars shine forth That languished in her light, Th' astonied nations stand at gaze, And beat the air in wild amaze.[M] None marvels why upon the shore The storm-lashed breakers beat, Nor why the frost-bound glaciers melt At summer's fervent heat; For here the cause seems plain and clear, Only what's dark and hid we fear. Weak-minded folly magnifies All that is rare and strange, And the dull herd's o'erwhelmed with awe At unexpected change. But wonder leaves enlightened minds, When ignorance no longer blinds. FOOTNOTES: [M] To frighten away the monster swallowing the moon. The superstition was once common. See Tylor's 'Primitive Culture,' pp. 296-302. VI. 'True,' said I; 'but, since it is thy office to unfold the hidden cause of things, and explain principles veiled in darkness, inform me, I pray thee, of thine own conclusions in this matter, since the marvel of it is what more than aught else disturbs my mind.' A smile played one moment upon her lips as she replied: 'Thou callest me to the greatest of all subjects of inquiry, a task for which the most exhaustive treatment barely suffices. Such is its nature that, as fast as one doubt is cut away, innumerable others spring up like Hydra's heads, nor could we set any limit to their renewal did we not apply the mind's living fire to suppress them. For there come within its scope the questions of the essential simplicity of providence, of the order of fate, of unforeseen chance, of the Divine knowledge and predestination, and of the freedom of the will. How heavy is the weight of all this thou canst judge for thyself. But, inasmuch as to know these things also is part of the treatment of thy malady, we will try to give them some consideration, despite the restrictions of the narrow limits of our time. Moreover, thou must for a time dispense with the pleasures of music and song, if so be that thou findest any delight therein, whilst I weave together the connected train of reasons in proper order.' 'As thou wilt,' said I. Then, as if making a new beginning, she thus discoursed: 'The coming into being of all things, the whole course of development in things that change, every sort of thing that moves in any wise, receives its due cause, order, and form from the steadfastness of the Divine mind. This mind, calm in the citadel of its own essential simplicity, has decreed that the method of its rule shall be manifold. Viewed in the very purity of the Divine intelligence, this method is called _providence_; but viewed in regard to those things which it moves and disposes, it is what the ancients called _fate_. That these two are different will easily be clear to anyone who passes in review their respective efficacies. Providence is the Divine reason itself, seated in the Supreme Being, which disposes all things; fate is the disposition inherent in all things which move, through which providence joins all things in their proper order. Providence embraces all things, however different, however infinite; fate sets in motion separately individual things, and assigns to them severally their position, form, and time. 'So the unfolding of this temporal order unified into the foreview of the Divine mind is providence, while the same unity broken up and unfolded in time is fate. And although these are different, yet is there a dependence between them; for the order of destiny issues from the essential simplicity of providence. For as the artificer, forming in his mind beforehand the idea of the thing to be made, carries out his design, and develops from moment to moment what he had before seen in a single instant as a whole, so God in His providence ordains all things as parts of a single unchanging whole, but carries out these very ordinances by fate in a time of manifold unity. So whether fate is accomplished by Divine spirits as the ministers of providence, or by a soul, or by the service of all nature--whether by the celestial motion of the stars, by the efficacy of angels, or by the many-sided cunning of demons--whether by all or by some of these the destined series is woven, this, at least, is manifest: that providence is the fixed and simple form of destined events, fate their shifting series in order of time, as by the disposal of the Divine simplicity they are to take place. Whereby it is that all things which are under fate are subjected also to providence, on which fate itself is dependent; whereas certain things which are set under providence are above the chain of fate--viz., those things which by their nearness to the primal Divinity are steadfastly fixed, and lie outside the order of fate's movements. For as the innermost of several circles revolving round the same centre approaches the simplicity of the midmost point, and is, as it were, a pivot round which the exterior circles turn, while the outermost, whirled in ampler orbit, takes in a wider and wider sweep of space in proportion to its departure from the indivisible unity of the centre--while, further, whatever joins and allies itself to the centre is narrowed to a like simplicity, and no longer expands vaguely into space--even so whatsoever departs widely from primal mind is involved more deeply in the meshes of fate, and things are free from fate in proportion as they seek to come nearer to that central pivot; while if aught cleaves close to supreme mind in its absolute fixity, this, too, being free from movement, rises above fate's necessity. Therefore, as is reasoning to pure intelligence, as that which is generated to that which is, time to eternity, a circle to its centre, so is the shifting series of fate to the steadfastness and simplicity of providence. 'It is this causal series which moves heaven and the stars, attempers the elements to mutual accord, and again in turn transforms them into new combinations; _this_ which renews the series of all things that are born and die through like successions of germ and birth; it is _its_ operation which binds the destinies of men by an indissoluble nexus of causality, and, since it issues in the beginning from unalterable providence, these destinies also must of necessity be immutable. Accordingly, the world is ruled for the best if this unity abiding in the Divine mind puts forth an inflexible order of causes. And this order, by its intrinsic immutability, restricts things mutable which otherwise would ebb and flow at random. And so it happens that, although to you, who are not altogether capable of understanding this order, all things seem confused and disordered, nevertheless there is everywhere an appointed limit which guides all things to good. Verily, nothing can be done for the sake of evil even by the wicked themselves; for, as we abundantly proved, they seek good, but are drawn out of the way by perverse error; far less can this order which sets out from the supreme centre of good turn aside anywhither from the way in which it began. '"Yet what confusion," thou wilt say, "can be more unrighteous than that prosperity and adversity should indifferently befall the good, what they like and what they loathe come alternately to the bad!" Yes; but have men in real life such soundness of mind that their judgments of righteousness and wickedness must necessarily correspond with facts? Why, on this very point their verdicts conflict, and those whom some deem worthy of reward, others deem worthy of punishment. Yet granted there were one who could rightly distinguish the good and bad, yet would he be able to look into the soul's inmost constitution, as it were, if we may borrow an expression used of the body? The marvel here is not unlike that which astonishes one who does not know why in health sweet things suit some constitutions, and bitter others, or why some sick men are best alleviated by mild remedies, others by severe. But the physician who distinguishes the precise conditions and characteristics of health and sickness does not marvel. Now, the health of the soul is nothing but righteousness, and vice is its sickness. God, the guide and physician of the mind, it is who preserves the good and banishes the bad. And He looks forth from the lofty watch-tower of His providence, perceives what is suited to each, and assigns what He knows to be suitable. 'This, then, is what that extraordinary mystery of the order of destiny comes to--that something is done by one who knows, whereat the ignorant are astonished. But let us consider a few instances whereby appears what is the competency of human reason to fathom the Divine unsearchableness. Here is one whom thou deemest the perfection of justice and scrupulous integrity; to all-knowing Providence it seems far otherwise. We all know our Lucan's admonition that it was the winning cause that found favour with the gods, the beaten cause with Cato. So, shouldst thou see anything in this world happening differently from thy expectation, doubt not but events are rightly ordered; it is in thy judgment that there is perverse confusion. 'Grant, however, there be somewhere found one of so happy a character that God and man alike agree in their judgments about him; yet is he somewhat infirm in strength of mind. It may be, if he fall into adversity, he will cease to practise that innocency which has failed to secure his fortune. Therefore, God's wise dispensation spares him whom adversity might make worse, will not let him suffer who is ill fitted for endurance. Another there is perfect in all virtue, so holy and nigh to God that providence judges it unlawful that aught untoward should befall him; nay, doth not even permit him to be afflicted with bodily disease. As one more excellent than I[N] hath said: '"The very body of the holy saint Is built of purest ether." Often it happens that the governance is given to the good that a restraint may be put upon superfluity of wickedness. To others providence assigns some mixed lot suited to their spiritual nature; some it will plague lest they grow rank through long prosperity; others it will suffer to be vexed with sore afflictions to confirm their virtues by the exercise and practice of patience. Some fear overmuch what they have strength to bear; others despise overmuch that to which their strength is unequal. All these it brings to the test of their true self through misfortune. Some also have bought a name revered to future ages at the price of a glorious death; some by invincible constancy under their sufferings have afforded an example to others that virtue cannot be overcome by calamity--all which things, without doubt, come to pass rightly and in due order, and to the benefit of those to whom they are seen to happen. 'As to the other side of the marvel, that the bad now meet with affliction, now get their hearts' desire, this, too, springs from the same causes. As to the afflictions, of course no one marvels, because all hold the wicked to be ill deserving. The truth is, their punishments both frighten others from crime, and amend those on whom they are inflicted; while their prosperity is a powerful sermon to the good, what judgments they ought to pass on good fortune of this kind, which often attends the wicked so assiduously. 'There is another object which may, I believe, be attained in such cases: there is one, perhaps, whose nature is so reckless and violent that poverty would drive him more desperately into crime. _His_ disorder providence relieves by allowing him to amass money. Such a one, in the uneasiness of a conscience stained with guilt, while he contrasts his character with his fortune, perchance grows alarmed lest he should come to mourn the loss of that whose possession is so pleasant to him. He will, then, reform his ways, and through the fear of losing his fortune he forsakes his iniquity. Some, through a prosperity unworthily borne, have been hurled headlong to ruin; to some the power of the sword has been committed, to the end that the good may be tried by discipline, and the bad punished. For while there can be no peace between the righteous and the wicked, neither can the wicked agree among themselves. How should they, when each is at variance with himself, because his vices rend his conscience, and ofttimes they do things which, when they are done, they judge ought not to have been done. Hence it is that this supreme providence brings to pass this notable marvel--that the bad make the bad good. For some, when they see the injustice which they themselves suffer at the hands of evil-doers, are inflamed with detestation of the offenders, and, in the endeavour to be unlike those whom they hate, return to the ways of virtue. It is the Divine power alone to which things evil are also good, in that, by putting them to suitable use, it bringeth them in the end to some good issue. For order in some way or other embraceth all things, so that even that which has departed from the appointed laws of the order, nevertheless falleth within _an_ order, though _another_ order, that nothing in the realm of providence may be left to haphazard. But '"Hard were the task, as a god, to recount all, nothing omitting." Nor, truly, is it lawful for man to compass in thought all the mechanism of the Divine work, or set it forth in speech. Let us be content to have apprehended this only--that God, the creator of universal nature, likewise disposeth all things, and guides them to good; and while He studies to preserve in likeness to Himself all that He has created, He banishes all evil from the borders of His commonweal through the links of fatal necessity. Whereby it comes to pass that, if thou look to disposing providence, thou wilt nowhere find the evils which are believed so to abound on earth. 'But I see thou hast long been burdened with the weight of the subject, and fatigued with the prolixity of the argument, and now lookest for some refreshment of sweet poesy. Listen, then, and may the draught so restore thee that thou wilt bend thy mind more resolutely to what remains.' FOOTNOTES: [N] Parmenides. Boethius seems to forget for the moment that Philosophy is speaking. SONG VI. THE UNIVERSAL AIM. Wouldst thou with unclouded mind View the laws by God designed, Lift thy steadfast gaze on high To the starry canopy; See in rightful league of love All the constellations move. Fiery Sol, in full career, Ne'er obstructs cold Phoebe's sphere; When the Bear, at heaven's height, Wheels his coursers' rapid flight, Though he sees the starry train Sinking in the western main, He repines not, nor desires In the flood to quench his fires. In true sequence, as decreed, Daily morn and eve succeed; Vesper brings the shades of night, Lucifer the morning light. Love, in alternation due, Still the cycle doth renew, And discordant strife is driven From the starry realm of heaven. Thus, in wondrous amity, Warring elements agree; Hot and cold, and moist and dry, Lay their ancient quarrel by; High the flickering flame ascends, Downward earth for ever tends. So the year in spring's mild hours Loads the air with scent of flowers; Summer paints the golden grain; Then, when autumn comes again, Bright with fruit the orchards glow; Winter brings the rain and snow. Thus the seasons' fixed progression, Tempered in a due succession, Nourishes and brings to birth All that lives and breathes on earth. Then, soon run life's little day, All it brought it takes away. But One sits and guides the reins, He who made and all sustains; King and Lord and Fountain-head, Judge most holy, Law most dread; Now impels and now keeps back, Holds each waverer in the track. Else, were once the power withheld That the circling spheres compelled In their orbits to revolve, This world's order would dissolve, And th' harmonious whole would all In one hideous ruin fall. But through this connected frame Runs one universal aim; Towards the Good do all things tend, Many paths, but one the end. For naught lasts, unless it turns Backward in its course, and yearns To that Source to flow again Whence its being first was ta'en. VII. 'Dost thou, then, see the consequence of all that we have said?' 'Nay; what consequence?' 'That absolutely every fortune is good fortune.' 'And how can that be?' said I. 'Attend,' said she. 'Since every fortune, welcome and unwelcome alike, has for its object the reward or trial of the good, and the punishing or amending of the bad, every fortune must be good, since it is either just or useful.' 'The reasoning is exceeding true,' said I, 'the conclusion, so long as I reflect upon the providence and fate of which thou hast taught me, based on a strong foundation. Yet, with thy leave, we will count it among those which just now thou didst set down as paradoxical.' 'And why so?' said she. 'Because ordinary speech is apt to assert, and that frequently, that some men's fortune is bad.' 'Shall we, then, for awhile approach more nearly to the language of the vulgar, that we may not seem to have departed too far from the usages of men?' 'At thy good pleasure,' said I. 'That which advantageth thou callest good, dost thou not?' 'Certainly.' 'And that which either tries or amends advantageth?' 'Granted.' 'Is good, then?' 'Of course.' 'Well, this is _their_ case who have attained virtue and wage war with adversity, or turn from vice and lay hold on the path of virtue.' 'I cannot deny it.' 'What of the good fortune which is given as reward of the good--do the vulgar adjudge it bad?' 'Anything but that; they deem it to be the best, as indeed it is.' 'What, then, of that which remains, which, though it is harsh, puts the restraint of just punishment on the bad--does popular opinion deem it good?' 'Nay; of all that can be imagined, it is accounted the most miserable.' 'Observe, then, if, in following popular opinion, we have not ended in a conclusion quite paradoxical.' 'How so?' said I. 'Why, it results from our admissions that of all who have attained, or are advancing in, or are aiming at virtue, the fortune is in every case good, while for those who remain in their wickedness fortune is always utterly bad.' 'It is true,' said I; 'yet no one dare acknowledge it.' 'Wherefore,' said she, 'the wise man ought not to take it ill, if ever he is involved in one of fortune's conflicts, any more than it becomes a brave soldier to be offended when at any time the trumpet sounds for battle. The time of trial is the express opportunity for the one to win glory, for the other to perfect his wisdom. Hence, indeed, virtue gets its name, because, relying on its own efficacy, it yieldeth not to adversity. And ye who have taken your stand on virtue's steep ascent, it is not for you to be dissolved in delights or enfeebled by pleasure; ye close in conflict--yea, in conflict most sharp--with all fortune's vicissitudes, lest ye suffer foul fortune to overwhelm or fair fortune to corrupt you. Hold the mean with all your strength. Whatever falls short of this, or goes beyond, is fraught with scorn of happiness, and misses the reward of toil. It rests with you to make your fortune what you will. Verily, every harsh-seeming fortune, unless it either disciplines or amends, is punishment.' SONG VII. THE HERO'S PATH. Ten years a tedious warfare raged, Ere Ilium's smoking ruins paid For wedlock stained and faith betrayed, And great Atrides' wrath assuaged. But when heaven's anger asked a life, And baffling winds his course withstood, The king put off his fatherhood, And slew his child with priestly knife. When by the cavern's glimmering light His comrades dear Odysseus saw In the huge Cyclops' hideous maw Engulfed, he wept the piteous sight. But blinded soon, and wild with pain-- In bitter tears and sore annoy-- For that foul feast's unholy joy Grim Polyphemus paid again. His labours for Alcides win A name of glory far and wide; He tamed the Centaur's haughty pride, And from the lion reft his skin. The foul birds with sure darts he slew; The golden fruit he stole--in vain The dragon's watch; with triple chain From hell's depths Cerberus he drew. With their fierce lord's own flesh he fed The wild steeds; Hydra overcame With fire. 'Neath his own waves in shame Maimed Achelous hid his head. Huge Cacus for his crimes was slain; On Libya's sands Antaeus hurled; The shoulders that upheld the world The great boar's dribbled spume did stain. Last toil of all--his might sustained The ball of heaven, nor did he bend Beneath; this toil, his labour's end, The prize of heaven's high glory gained. Brave hearts, press on! Lo, heavenward lead These bright examples! From the fight Turn not your backs in coward flight; Earth's conflict won, the stars your meed! </CHAPTER> BOOK V. FREE WILL AND GOD'S FOREKNOWLEDGE. SUMMARY. CH. I. Boethius asks if there is really any such thing as chance. Philosophy answers, in conformity with Aristotle's definition (Phys., II. iv.), that chance is merely relative to human purpose, and that what seems fortuitous really depends on a more subtle form of causation.--CH. II. Has man, then, any freedom, if the reign of law is thus absolute? Freedom of choice, replies Philosophy, is a necessary attribute of reason. Man has a measure of freedom, though a less perfect freedom than divine natures.--CH. III. But how can man's freedom be reconciled with God's absolute foreknowledge? If God's foreknowledge be certain, it seems to exclude the possibility of man's free will. But if man has no freedom of choice, it follows that rewards and punishments are unjust as well as useless; that merit and demerit are mere names; that God is the cause of men's wickednesses; that prayer is meaningless.--CH. IV. The explanation is that man's reasoning faculties are not adequate to the apprehension of the ways of God's foreknowledge. If we could know, as He knows, all that is most perplexing in this problem would be made plain. For knowledge depends not on the nature of the thing known, but on the faculty of the knower.--CH. V. Now, where our senses conflict with our reason, we defer the judgment of the lower faculty to the judgment of the higher. Our present perplexity arises from our viewing God's foreknowledge from the standpoint of human reason. We must try and rise to the higher standpoint of God's immediate intuition.--CH. VI. To understand this higher form of cognition, we must consider God's nature. God is eternal. Eternity is more than mere everlasting duration. Accordingly, His knowledge surveys past and future in the timelessness of an eternal present. His foreseeing is seeing. Yet this foreseeing does not in itself impose necessity, any more than our seeing things happen makes their happening necessary. We may, however, if we please, distinguish two necessities--one absolute, the other conditional on knowledge. In this conditional sense alone do the things which God foresees necessarily come to pass. But this kind of necessity affects not the nature of things. It leaves the reality of free will unimpaired, and the evils feared do not ensue. Our responsibility is great, since all that we do is done in the sight of all-seeing Providence. </CHAPTER>

Summary of Book IV Part I-IV

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of Parts I and II Since the existence of evil was the stumbling block for Boethius at the end of the last book, it is examined more closely now. Boethius comments that he likes the sweet songs of Philosophy, but he has not yet forgotten his sorrow. He challenges her that even though good ultimately rules the world, evil still exists and goes unpunished. What is worse, when wickedness is in charge, it not only does not reward the good, it actively punishes the good. It is a mystery how this can happen in a world ruled by an omnipotent God. Philosophy corrects his ideas, saying that the good are always strong, and the wicked always weak. Sin is always punished and virtue always rewarded. She tells him she will show him the path to bring him home, and she will give his mind wings. Then she recites a poem about the ascent of the soul to God where the soul says, "I remember" . Boethius says he is anxious for her to keep her promise to give his mind wings. All human activity depends on will and power, she says. The instinctive direction of the human will is towards happiness, which is the same as the good. Both good men and bad men strive for the same thing--the good. The good men become good because they are already by nature virtuous. If the bad men obtain the good, they are no longer bad. The power of good men is therefore stronger in the pursuit of good, and the bad are weaker and have to put forth more effort. Because they do not know how to gain the good, the bad are ignorant and weak through lack of self-control. If the ignorant turn to vice on purpose, they not only cease to be powerful, they cease to exist at all, because existence and life derive from the good. Whatever "power" the evil have, therefore, comes from weakness, not strength. Since God has the supreme power, and that supreme power is goodness, evil cannot be counted as a form of power. The wise achieve their desire, while the wicked only get pleasure without the good.

Commentary on Parts I and II The poem about the ascent of the soul to God includes a vision of Neoplatonic cosmology in which God, not earth, is the center of the universe. The reason humans like Boethius have trouble sorting out the truth is because earth is far from God, near the edge of darkness. The soul must traverse many spheres to get closer to the light. Philosophy says that this journey towards the light is possible for human beings. Philosophy continues her argument that there is only one power in the universe . God rules the universe by Providence. The wicked may appear to have power, but they are sunk in ignorance and have no idea how to obtain the good, which is the same as life. Goodness gives strength, and doing evil only makes people weak. They suffer the consequences, for sin is always punished, a sort of natural cause and effect. For instance, a person who pursues only bodily appetites will become sick and unbalanced. Those who try to control others through violence unleash a force by which they themselves are destroyed. In the long run, therefore, the wicked perish by their own evil acts. The good become happier the closer they rise to the light, the source of life. Summary of Part III Philosophy points out that the goal of every action is its own reward. Goodness itself is the common reward of human activity, for all people desire it and act to obtain it. The goodness gained from good actions cannot be removed from those who are good. The good man's reward is his forever. The wicked cannot take goodness from them, for they must earn their own good. Goodness is happiness, so virtue is its own reward. The happy thus have access to the divine. Similarly, the punishment of the wicked is wickedness itself. Evil is like an infection or sickness. Another way to see this is that everything that exists is naturally good. Anything that turns away from goodness ceases to exist. Someone lost in evil has sunk to the level of an animal. The evil diminish themselves by destroying their own nature. They lose their souls and end up as mere physical bodies. They are human in appearance only. On the other hand, goodness raises people above the human level so they participate in divinity. Commentary on Part III Philosophy's definition of the human seems a bit radical, but it follows the lofty Platonic strain of these arguments, in which the human is made in the image of God and can participate directly in divinity through being good. This view of human nature as essentially good is opposed to the Christian doctrine of original sin that sees human nature as fundamentally corrupt. Christianity generally posits the necessity for divine intervention to save human nature from its own evil tendencies. Boethius was a Christian, but he represents the line of philosophers who were Christian Platonists, combining certain concepts from Christianity with Platonic concepts. Boethius thus prefers to see humans as capable of perfection through their own efforts. Philosophy argues that humans have free will and the ability to choose whether to rise to the level of the divine by exercising their inherent goodness, or to fall to the level of beasts by becoming evil. She ends the section with a poem about the adventures of the Greek hero, Odysseus, as an example. When Odysseus and his men landed on the island ruled by Circe the witch, she enticed the men with food and drink, and through their gluttony they turned into animals, with only their minds left to mourn their fate. This symbolizes what happens to those who fall prey to outer temptations; they cease to exist as humans and become bestial. Summary of Part IV Boethius agrees that evil people are like beasts, but he still laments that they are free to bring destruction to good people. Philosophy objects that it is not a matter of freedom. The evil are not free, for if they achieve their desire to do evil, they suffer. Evil men often suffer violent and unexpected ends, imposing a limit on how much evil they can do. Commentary on Part IV Philosophy has been trying to get Boethius to let go of his resentment towards the injustice done him by wicked men. This sense of resentment makes him miserable. She tries to convince him, based on the definitions they have already laid down about true happiness, that the evil suffer and the wise do not. She concludes, "wickedness is a disease of the mind" . How can Boethius despise someone who is mentally ill while he is healthy? What the wicked do is "suicidal," so one should "love the good, show pity for the bad" . Boethius replies to Philosophy that this all makes sense, but the opinions of ordinary men on the subject would deny what she has said. She replies that one cannot heed the blind. According to "everlasting law," if one turns the mind to higher things, there is no need of an outer reward, for the mind enjoys its own high state. Similarly, if one turns the mind to lower things, there is no need for outer punishment, for that low state of mind is itself a form of suffering. The one who commits a crime is therefore more wretched than the one the crime was committed against. Consequently, there is no point in hating the wicked. Book IV of Parts I and II Since the existence of evil was the stumbling block for Boethius at the end of the last book, it is examined more closely now. Boethius comments that he likes the sweet songs of Philosophy, but he has not yet forgotten his sorrow. He challenges her that even though good ultimately rules the world, evil still exists and goes unpunished. What is worse, when wickedness is in charge, it not only does not reward the good, it actively punishes the good. It is a mystery how this can happen in a world ruled by an omnipotent God. Philosophy corrects his ideas, saying that the good are always strong, and the wicked always weak. Sin is always punished and virtue always rewarded. She tells him she will show him the path to bring him home, and she will give his mind wings. Then she recites a poem about the ascent of the soul to God where the soul says, "I remember" . Boethius says he is anxious for her to keep her promise to give his mind wings. All human activity depends on will and power, she says. The instinctive direction of the human will is towards happiness, which is the same as the good. Both good men and bad men strive for the same thing--the good. The good men become good because they are already by nature virtuous. If the bad men obtain the good, they are no longer bad. The power of good men is therefore stronger in the pursuit of good, and the bad are weaker and have to put forth more effort. Because they do not know how to gain the good, the bad are ignorant and weak through lack of self-control. If the ignorant turn to vice on purpose, they not only cease to be powerful, they cease to exist at all, because existence and life derive from the good. Whatever "power" the evil have, therefore, comes from weakness, not strength. Since God has the supreme power, and that supreme power is goodness, evil cannot be counted as a form of power. The wise achieve their desire, while the wicked only get pleasure without the good. Commentary on Parts I and II Commentary on Parts I and II The poem about the ascent of the soul to God includes a vision of Neoplatonic cosmology in which God, not earth, is the center of the universe. The reason humans like Boethius have trouble sorting out the truth is because earth is far from God, near the edge of darkness. The soul must traverse many spheres to get closer to the light. Philosophy says that this journey towards the light is possible for human beings. Philosophy continues her argument that there is only one power in the universe . God rules the universe by Providence. The wicked may appear to have power, but they are sunk in ignorance and have no idea how to obtain the good, which is the same as life. Goodness gives strength, and doing evil only makes people weak. They suffer the consequences, for sin is always punished, a sort of natural cause and effect. For instance, a person who pursues only bodily appetites will become sick and unbalanced. Those who try to control others through violence unleash a force by which they themselves are destroyed. In the long run, therefore, the wicked perish by their own evil acts. The good become happier the closer they rise to the light, the source of life. of Part III Philosophy points out that the goal of every action is its own reward. Goodness itself is the common reward of human activity, for all people desire it and act to obtain it. The goodness gained from good actions cannot be removed from those who are good. The good man's reward is his forever. The wicked cannot take goodness from them, for they must earn their own good. Goodness is happiness, so virtue is its own reward. The happy thus have access to the divine. Similarly, the punishment of the wicked is wickedness itself. Evil is like an infection or sickness. Another way to see this is that everything that exists is naturally good. Anything that turns away from goodness ceases to exist. Someone lost in evil has sunk to the level of an animal. The evil diminish themselves by destroying their own nature. They lose their souls and end up as mere physical bodies. They are human in appearance only. On the other hand, goodness raises people above the human level so they participate in divinity. Commentary on Part III Commentary on Part III Philosophy's definition of the human seems a bit radical, but it follows the lofty Platonic strain of these arguments, in which the human is made in the image of God and can participate directly in divinity through being good. This view of human nature as essentially good is opposed to the Christian doctrine of original sin that sees human nature as fundamentally corrupt. Christianity generally posits the necessity for divine intervention to save human nature from its own evil tendencies. Boethius was a Christian, but he represents the line of philosophers who were Christian Platonists, combining certain concepts from Christianity with Platonic concepts. Boethius thus prefers to see humans as capable of perfection through their own efforts. Philosophy argues that humans have free will and the ability to choose whether to rise to the level of the divine by exercising their inherent goodness, or to fall to the level of beasts by becoming evil. She ends the section with a poem about the adventures of the Greek hero, Odysseus, as an example. When Odysseus and his men landed on the island ruled by Circe the witch, she enticed the men with food and drink, and through their gluttony they turned into animals, with only their minds left to mourn their fate. This symbolizes what happens to those who fall prey to outer temptations; they cease to exist as humans and become bestial. of Part IV Boethius agrees that evil people are like beasts, but he still laments that they are free to bring destruction to good people. Philosophy objects that it is not a matter of freedom. The evil are not free, for if they achieve their desire to do evil, they suffer. Evil men often suffer violent and unexpected ends, imposing a limit on how much evil they can do. Commentary on Part IV Philosophy has been trying to get Boethius to let go of his resentment towards the injustice done him by wicked men. This sense of resentment makes him miserable. She tries to convince him, based on the definitions they have already laid down about true happiness, that the evil suffer and the wise do not. She concludes, "wickedness is a disease of the mind" . How can Boethius despise someone who is mentally ill while he is healthy? What the wicked do is "suicidal," so one should "love the good, show pity for the bad" . Commentary on Part IV Philosophy has been trying to get Boethius to let go of his resentment towards the injustice done him by wicked men. This sense of resentment makes him miserable. She tries to convince him, based on the definitions they have already laid down about true happiness, that the evil suffer and the wise do not. She concludes, "wickedness is a disease of the mind" . How can Boethius despise someone who is mentally ill while he is healthy? What the wicked do is "suicidal," so one should "love the good, show pity for the bad" . Commentary on Part IV Commentary on Part IV Philosophy has been trying to get Boethius to let go of his resentment towards the injustice done him by wicked men. This sense of resentment makes him miserable. She tries to convince him, based on the definitions they have already laid down about true happiness, that the evil suffer and the wise do not. She concludes, "wickedness is a disease of the mind" . How can Boethius despise someone who is mentally ill while he is healthy? What the wicked do is "suicidal," so one should "love the good, show pity for the bad" . Boethius replies to Philosophy that this all makes sense, but the opinions of ordinary men on the subject would deny what she has said. She replies that one cannot heed the blind. According to "everlasting law," if one turns the mind to higher things, there is no need of an outer reward, for the mind enjoys its own high state. Similarly, if one turns the mind to lower things, there is no need for outer punishment, for that low state of mind is itself a form of suffering. The one who commits a crime is therefore more wretched than the one the crime was committed against. Consequently, there is no point in hating the wicked. Novel Author Boethius Novel Author Boethius

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/44747-chapters/61.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_60_part_0.txt

The Red and the Black.part 2.chapter 31

part 2, chapter 31

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CHAPTER LXI FRIGHTEN HER So this is the fine miracle of your civilisation; you have turned love into an ordinary business.--_Barnave_. Julien rushed into madame de la Mole's box. His eyes first met the tearful eyes of Mathilde; she was crying without reserve. There were only insignificant personages present, the friend who had leant her box, and some men whom she knew. Mathilde placed her hand on Julien's; she seemed to have forgotten all fear of her mother. Almost stifled as she was by her tears, she said nothing but this one word: "Guarantees!" "So long as I don't speak to her," said Julien to himself. He was himself very moved, and concealed his eyes with his hand as best he could under the pretext of avoiding the dazzling light of the third tier of boxes. "If I speak she may suspect the excess of my emotion, the sound of my voice will betray me. All may yet be lost." His struggles were more painful than they had been in the morning, his soul had had the time to become moved. He had been frightened at seeing Mathilde piqued with vanity. Intoxicated as he was with love and pleasure he resolved not to speak. In my view this is one of the finest traits in his character, an individual capable of such an effort of self-control may go far si _fata sinant_. Mademoiselle de la Mole insisted on taking Julien back to the hotel. Luckily it was raining a great deal, but the marquise had him placed opposite her, talked to him incessantly, and prevented him saying a single word to her daughter. One might have thought that the marquise was nursing Julien's happiness for him; no longer fearing to lose everything through his excessive emotion, he madly abandoned himself to his happiness. Shall I dare to say that when he went back to his room Julien fell on his knees and covered with kisses the love letters which prince Korasoff had given him. "How much I owe you, great man," he exclaimed in his madness. Little by little he regained his self-possession. He compared himself to a general who had just won a great battle. "My advantage is definite and immense," he said to himself, "but what will happen to-morrow? One instant may ruin everything." With a passionate gesture he opened the _Memoirs_ which Napoleon had dictated at St. Helena and for two long hours forced himself to read them. Only his eyes read; no matter, he made himself do it. During this singular reading his head and his heart rose to the most exalted level and worked unconsciously. "Her heart is very different from madame de Renal's," he said to himself, but he did not go further. "Frighten her!" he suddenly exclaimed, hurling away the book. "The enemy will only obey me in so far as I frighten him, but then he will not dare to show contempt for me." Intoxicated with joy he walked up and down his little room. In point of fact his happiness was based rather on pride than on love. "Frighten her!" he repeated proudly, and he had cause to be proud. "Madame de Renal always doubted even in her happiest moments if my love was equal to her own. In this case I have to subjugate a demon, consequently I must subjugate her." He knew quite well that Mathilde would be in the library at eight o'clock in the morning of the following day. He did not appear before nine o'clock. He was burning with love, but his head dominated his heart. Scarcely a single minute passed without his repeating to himself. "Keep her obsessed by this great doubt. Does he love me?" Her own brilliant position, together with the flattery of all who speak to her, tend a little too much to make her reassure herself. He found her sitting on the divan pale and calm, but apparently completely incapable of making a single movement. She held out her hand, "Dear one, it is true I have offended you, perhaps you are angry with me." Julien had not been expecting this simple tone. He was on the point of betraying himself. "You want guarantees, my dear, she added after a silence which she had hoped would be broken. Take me away, let us leave for London. I shall be ruined, dishonoured for ever." She had the courage to take her hand away from Julien to cover her eyes with it. All her feelings of reserve and feminine virtue had come back into her soul. "Well, dishonour me," she said at last with a sigh, "that will be a guarantee." "I was happy yesterday, because I had the courage to be severe with myself," thought Julien. After a short silence he had sufficient control over his heart to say in an icy tone, "Once we are on the road to London, once you are dishonoured, to employ your own expression, who will answer that you will still love me? that my very presence in the post-chaise will not seem importunate? I am not a monster; to have ruined your reputation will only make me still more unhappy. It is not your position in society which is the obstacle, it is unfortunately your own character. Can you yourself guarantee that you will love me for eight days?" "Ah! let her love me for eight days, just eight days," whispered Julien to himself, "and I will die of happiness. What do I care for the future, what do I care for life? And yet if I wish that divine happiness can commence this very minute, it only depends on me." Mathilde saw that he was pensive. "So I am completely unworthy of you," she said to him, taking his hand. Julien kissed her, but at the same time the iron hand of duty gripped his heart. If she sees how much I adore her I shall lose her. And before leaving her arms, he had reassumed all that dignity which is proper to a man. He managed on this and the following days to conceal his inordinate happiness. There were moments when he even refused himself the pleasure of clasping her in his arms. At other times the delirium of happiness prevailed over all the counsels of prudence. He had been accustomed to station himself near a bower of honeysuckle in the garden arranged in such a way so as to conceal the ladder when he had looked up at Mathilde's blind in the distance, and lamented her inconstancy. A very big oak tree was quite near, and the trunk of that tree prevented him from being seen by the indiscreet. As he passed with Mathilde over this very place which recalled his excessive unhappiness so vividly, the contrast between his former despair and his present happiness proved too much for his character. Tears inundated his eyes, and he carried his sweetheart's hand to his lips: "It was here I used to live in my thoughts of you, it was from here that I used to look at that blind, and waited whole hours for the happy moment when I would see that hand open it." His weakness was unreserved. He portrayed the extremity of his former despair in genuine colours which could not possibly have been invented. Short interjections testified to that present happiness which had put an end to that awful agony. "My God, what am I doing?" thought Julien, suddenly recovering himself. "I am ruining myself." In his excessive alarm he thought that he already detected a diminution of the love in mademoiselle de la Mole's eyes. It was an illusion, but Julien's face suddenly changed its expression and became overspread by a mortal pallor. His eyes lost their fire, and an expression of haughtiness touched with malice soon succeeded to his look of the most genuine and unreserved love. "But what is the matter with you, my dear," said Mathilde to him, both tenderly and anxiously. "I am lying," said Julien irritably, "and I am lying to you. I am reproaching myself for it, and yet God knows that I respect you sufficiently not to lie to you. You love me, you are devoted to me, and I have no need of praises in order to please you." "Great heavens! are all the charming things you have been telling me for the last two minutes mere phrases?" "And I reproach myself for it keenly, dear one. I once made them up for a woman who loved me, and bored me--it is the weakness of my character. I denounce myself to you, forgive me." Bitter tears streamed over Mathilde's cheeks. "As soon as some trifle offends me and throws me back on my meditation," continued Julien, "my abominable memory, which I curse at this very minute, offers me a resource, and I abuse it." "So I must have slipped, without knowing it, into some action which has displeased you," said Mathilde with a charming simplicity. "I remember one day that when you passed near this honeysuckle you picked a flower, M. de Luz took it from you and you let him keep it. I was two paces away." "M. de Luz? It is impossible," replied Mathilde with all her natural haughtiness. "I do not do things like that." "I am sure of it," Julien replied sharply. "Well, my dear, it is true," said Mathilde, as she sadly lowered her eyes. She knew positively that many months had elapsed since she had allowed M. de Luz to do such a thing. Julien looked at her with ineffable tenderness, "No," he said to himself, "she does not love me less." In the evening she rallied him with a laugh on his fancy for madame de Fervaques. "Think of a bourgeois loving a parvenu, those are perhaps the only type of hearts that my Julien cannot make mad with love. She has made you into a real dandy," she said playing with his hair. During the period when he thought himself scorned by Mathilde, Julien had become one of the best dressed men in Paris. He had, moreover, a further advantage over other dandies, in as much as once he had finished dressing he never gave a further thought to his appearance. One thing still piqued Mathilde, Julien continued to copy out the Russian letters and send them to the marechale.

Part 2, Chapter 31

https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-2-chapter-31

Julien checks Mathilde's box at the opera and sees her crying. He finds it more difficult than ever to tell her he loves her. The next day, he finds Mathilde sitting on a couch in the library. She says she's willing to offer him proof of her commitment. She offers to run away with him to London. The scandal this would cause would mean they basically have to get married. Julien wants to accept this offer, but he's still skeptical about her fickleness. One day, he can't take it anymore and kisses Mathilde's hand while they're walking in the garden. He says he totally can't live without her. Then he takes it all back and leaves Mathilde feeling crushed. By the end of their conversation, Mathilde thinks that Julien's heart might be swinging her way again. But she's irritated by the way he keeps sending letters to Madame de Fervaques.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/chapters_28_to_33.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Lord Jim/section_8_part_0.txt

Lord Jim.chapters 28-33

chapters 28-33

{"name": "Chapters 28-33", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422054542/https://www.gradesaver.com/lord-jim/study-guide/summary-chapters-28-33", "summary": "Past events are now referred to in passing. Sherif Ali, one of Doramin's competitors and an ally of the Rajah, was defeated and then fled. Old scores were settled. The Rajah reacted with fear. All felt confidence in Jim's wisdom. Marlow then describes how Doramin and his wife begin to ask him questions about Jim. Doramin is anxious; in his opinion, and perhaps thinking about Stein, white men have a tendency to come and go. Doramin's wife asks Marlow about Jim's past: is there anyone for him to return to, perhaps a mother who yearns to see him? This query brings Marlow, in his narration, to the story of Jim's love. Cornelius's deceased wife had left a daughter . The mother had not been an ordinary woman; her white father was a high official. Jim and the woman's daughter come to share mutual intimacy; Jim refers to her as \"Jewel.\" This name leads Marlow to comment on how he pieced a puzzle together, recalling how, 230 miles south of Patusan, he had heard a rumor of how a young man in Patusan had discovered an extraordinarily priceless emerald that could only be concealed on a woman who was young and insensible to the seductions of love. Jewel's mother had taught her English and, according to Marlow, she spoke it having absorbed Jim's own manner of speaking. He observes that Jim was \"jealously loved\" . Marlow then reports seeing Cornelius for the first time. Tamb' Itam points him out, and Marlow notes that he is a slinking, dark, unsavory type, like a \"repulsive beetle\" . His presence seemed the one blemish on Jim's charmed life. Jim had discovered that Cornelius had embezzled from Stein's company, kept poor records, and left the house is disrepair, all the while blaming his dead wife for the failures. Jim felt deep sympathy for the girl whose mother had died and who had to suffer Cornelius's insults. The girl had said she would have killed him with her own hands, if she hadn't seen how wretched he was. This statement, for Jim, hinted at a complexity in her character that impressed him. Cornelius, eager to be rid of Jim, offered to smuggle him out of the area for a price, since it was widely known that the Rajah wanted him killed. Jim didn't respond. Later that very night, however, he arrived at a plan for overcoming Sherif Ali, and the girl proved useful in providing the necessary background information about Patusan affairs. When Cornelius again offered to help him out of Patusan, Jim stated his intention to remain. Cornelius responded that, then, Jim would die here. Jim gives a speech in favor of \"vigorous action\" to the principal men of the community where Jim had been persuasive and eloquent, stirring the passions roused by Sherif Ali's last raid . That night, Jim had a dream, a great voice from the heavens commanding that he \"Awake!\" He did wake and see the flame of a torch and the girl holding it, in a white gown, with her long black hair. Jewel insisted that he get up, that there was a plan in place for his murder that night. Marlow reminds his audience then that this is a love story, and Jim admits to the strength of his emotion at the time: \"that if I went away from her it would be the end of everything somehow\" . Jim then sensed that his assassins were near and, in the end, killed a man. The three others surrendered. The conclusion of this story is that Jim ordered the three would-be assassins to jump into the water. Jim then turns to Marlow and says that he loves the girl. The fact that his existence was necessary for another person provided a wonderful feeling. The community believed he was brave, true, and just. He was happy. Marlow then tells Jim that he will always be a mystery amongst them; he will never be fully known. This is almost a warning, but Jim replies that this situation is exactly what he wants. Later in the night, Jewel approaches Marlow and seems to ask for an assurance from him that Jim will never leave her. She tells Marlow that her mother had warned her of such things before she died. Marlow was, himself, a signal of that Unknown from which Jim had come, so she hoped to learn something of it from him. Marlow, touched by the girl's delicate charm, tells her that it is not his intention to ask Jim to leave, and that Jim wouldn't leave anyway. Jewel says that she does not want to die weeping like her mother. She senses a strong feeling of dread, and Marlow is then strangely brutal to her. He tells her that Jim will never leave Patusan because he is \"not good enough\" for the world outside. The girl says that Jim said the same thing, and she protests, sobbing. She claims that Marlow is lying, and Marlow, regretful, says, \"nobody is good enough.\" She exits.", "analysis": "As the political situation in Patusan is elaborated, Jim's integral role in the defeat of Sherif Ali and his trustworthiness bring him the acclaim and status he has always sought. The intelligence of the plan proves his good judgment, and its execution proves his ability and loyalty. In the end, Dain Waris saves Jim's life, in the same way that Stein had saved Dain Waris's father's life. This parallelism does not exclude the possibility that a kind of reversal could take place: though Jim and Stein share a characteristic romanticism, events may work in the reverse for Jim compared to how they worked for Stein. At this point, however, Marlow observes the success Jim has made out of his opportunity. The character Cornelius is more intensely drawn through Marlow's eyes, who sees him immediately as a \"blemish.\" This corrupt presence in the midst of Jim's romantic life yields a sense of instability for the reader in that Cornelius, with his bitter loss of standing, as well as his general decrepit state, promises ill will for future events. Jim, however, like Jewel, considers him to be a sad wretch, not really worth worrying over or expending the energy to punish. This proves later to be a mistake of judgment on Jim's part. While so many aspects of his life in Patusan have been exquisitely assessed and judged and then acted upon, Jim's assessment of Cornelius becomes a mistake that will unravel his life with disastrous consequences. When Jim's love story is introduced, the reader recalls the mysterious reference made by Stein to a Malay-Dutch woman who had died. The daughter of this woman is the one who becomes Jim's lover. The two share, among other things, in having isolated positions in the community. It is unclear whether Jewel is her real name or merely the name that Jim gives her. In any case, the allusion to Adam's naming of Eve is made clear. It is fitting that Jewel, in this romantic setting, completes Jim's fair picture of the charmed life with a beautiful girl. The girl herself attains the status of myth, like Jim. Jim protects the fabulous, enormous emerald he has found; she is his precious jewel. Thus Jewel represents what women in the novel symbolize generally. Women tend to function as symbols of opportunity, in the sense that romantic Western men seek to wed their dreams to the reality of the Eastern landscape. Hence, a relationship with a girl from the East symbolizes the realization of the man's dreams. Stein had accomplished this wedding in actually having married a Malay princess. The suggestion here is that Jim will do the same with Jewel. Her mother's tragic end in life, however, foreshadows the sorrows that will fall over Jewel. The East-West romance, once realized, does not promise to be sustainable. It is, more often than not, untenable. Jewel's love for Jim, in Marlow's observation, is a \"jealous\" love, not unlike the way he has described the community's love for Jim. Jim has become such an integral part of the community, as well as of Jewel's life, that the fear of being without him implies overdependence. They absorb him, in the way that Jewel absorbs even Jim's manner of speech. During the private conversation between Marlow and Jewel, Marlow seems jealous himself--of Jim's youth, of his success, and of this girl. This jealousy may explain why he brutally shares with Jewel the idea that Jim isn't good enough for the world beyond Patusan. Regretfully, however, Marlow then revises his statement, showing that what was an initial passion of judgment can also be equally applied to all men: that \"nobody is good enough.\" In other words, the romantic ideals of honor and manhood are not really possible for anyone, in view of man's countless imperfections. This reflection suggests, on the one hand, a general solidarity between Jim and the rest of the world and, on the other hand, Jim's distinct choice to go to a special place where he might possibly be able to achieve the ideal after all."}

'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."' 'He told me further that he didn't know what made him hang on--but of course we may guess. He sympathised deeply with the defenceless girl, at the mercy of that "mean, cowardly scoundrel." It appears Cornelius led her an awful life, stopping only short of actual ill-usage, for which he had not the pluck, I suppose. He insisted upon her calling him father--"and with respect, too--with respect," he would scream, shaking a little yellow fist in her face. "I am a respectable man, and what are you? Tell me--what are you? You think I am going to bring up somebody else's child and not be treated with respect? You ought to be glad I let you. Come--say Yes, father. . . . No? . . . You wait a bit." Thereupon he would begin to abuse the dead woman, till the girl would run off with her hands to her head. He pursued her, dashing in and out and round the house and amongst the sheds, would drive her into some corner, where she would fall on her knees stopping her ears, and then he would stand at a distance and declaim filthy denunciations at her back for half an hour at a stretch. "Your mother was a devil, a deceitful devil--and you too are a devil," he would shriek in a final outburst, pick up a bit of dry earth or a handful of mud (there was plenty of mud around the house), and fling it into her hair. Sometimes, though, she would hold out full of scorn, confronting him in silence, her face sombre and contracted, and only now and then uttering a word or two that would make the other jump and writhe with the sting. Jim told me these scenes were terrible. It was indeed a strange thing to come upon in a wilderness. The endlessness of such a subtly cruel situation was appalling--if you think of it. The respectable Cornelius (Inchi 'Nelyus the Malays called him, with a grimace that meant many things) was a much-disappointed man. I don't know what he had expected would be done for him in consideration of his marriage; but evidently the liberty to steal, and embezzle, and appropriate to himself for many years and in any way that suited him best, the goods of Stein's Trading Company (Stein kept the supply up unfalteringly as long as he could get his skippers to take it there) did not seem to him a fair equivalent for the sacrifice of his honourable name. Jim would have enjoyed exceedingly thrashing Cornelius within an inch of his life; on the other hand, the scenes were of so painful a character, so abominable, that his impulse would be to get out of earshot, in order to spare the girl's feelings. They left her agitated, speechless, clutching her bosom now and then with a stony, desperate face, and then Jim would lounge up and say unhappily, "Now--come--really--what's the use--you must try to eat a bit," or give some such mark of sympathy. Cornelius would keep on slinking through the doorways, across the verandah and back again, as mute as a fish, and with malevolent, mistrustful, underhand glances. "I can stop his game," Jim said to her once. "Just say the word." And do you know what she answered? She said--Jim told me impressively--that if she had not been sure he was intensely wretched himself, she would have found the courage to kill him with her own hands. "Just fancy that! The poor devil of a girl, almost a child, being driven to talk like that," he exclaimed in horror. It seemed impossible to save her not only from that mean rascal but even from herself! It wasn't that he pitied her so much, he affirmed; it was more than pity; it was as if he had something on his conscience, while that life went on. To leave the house would have appeared a base desertion. He had understood at last that there was nothing to expect from a longer stay, neither accounts nor money, nor truth of any sort, but he stayed on, exasperating Cornelius to the verge, I won't say of insanity, but almost of courage. Meantime he felt all sorts of dangers gathering obscurely about him. Doramin had sent over twice a trusty servant to tell him seriously that he could do nothing for his safety unless he would recross the river again and live amongst the Bugis as at first. People of every condition used to call, often in the dead of night, in order to disclose to him plots for his assassination. He was to be poisoned. He was to be stabbed in the bath-house. Arrangements were being made to have him shot from a boat on the river. Each of these informants professed himself to be his very good friend. It was enough--he told me--to spoil a fellow's rest for ever. Something of the kind was extremely possible--nay, probable--but the lying warnings gave him only the sense of deadly scheming going on all around him, on all sides, in the dark. Nothing more calculated to shake the best of nerve. Finally, one night, Cornelius himself, with a great apparatus of alarm and secrecy, unfolded in solemn wheedling tones a little plan wherein for one hundred dollars--or even for eighty; let's say eighty--he, Cornelius, would procure a trustworthy man to smuggle Jim out of the river, all safe. There was nothing else for it now--if Jim cared a pin for his life. What's eighty dollars? A trifle. An insignificant sum. While he, Cornelius, who had to remain behind, was absolutely courting death by this proof of devotion to Mr. Stein's young friend. The sight of his abject grimacing was--Jim told me--very hard to bear: he clutched at his hair, beat his breast, rocked himself to and fro with his hands pressed to his stomach, and actually pretended to shed tears. "Your blood be on your own head," he squeaked at last, and rushed out. It is a curious question how far Cornelius was sincere in that performance. Jim confessed to me that he did not sleep a wink after the fellow had gone. He lay on his back on a thin mat spread over the bamboo flooring, trying idly to make out the bare rafters, and listening to the rustlings in the torn thatch. A star suddenly twinkled through a hole in the roof. His brain was in a whirl; but, nevertheless, it was on that very night that he matured his plan for overcoming Sherif Ali. It had been the thought of all the moments he could spare from the hopeless investigation into Stein's affairs, but the notion--he says--came to him then all at once. He could see, as it were, the guns mounted on the top of the hill. He got very hot and excited lying there; sleep was out of the question more than ever. He jumped up, and went out barefooted on the verandah. Walking silently, he came upon the girl, motionless against the wall, as if on the watch. In his then state of mind it did not surprise him to see her up, nor yet to hear her ask in an anxious whisper where Cornelius could be. He simply said he did not know. She moaned a little, and peered into the campong. Everything was very quiet. He was possessed by his new idea, and so full of it that he could not help telling the girl all about it at once. She listened, clapped her hands lightly, whispered softly her admiration, but was evidently on the alert all the time. It seems he had been used to make a confidant of her all along--and that she on her part could and did give him a lot of useful hints as to Patusan affairs there is no doubt. He assured me more than once that he had never found himself the worse for her advice. At any rate, he was proceeding to explain his plan fully to her there and then, when she pressed his arm once, and vanished from his side. Then Cornelius appeared from somewhere, and, perceiving Jim, ducked sideways, as though he had been shot at, and afterwards stood very still in the dusk. At last he came forward prudently, like a suspicious cat. "There were some fishermen there--with fish," he said in a shaky voice. "To sell fish--you understand." . . . It must have been then two o'clock in the morning--a likely time for anybody to hawk fish about! 'Jim, however, let the statement pass, and did not give it a single thought. Other matters occupied his mind, and besides he had neither seen nor heard anything. He contented himself by saying, "Oh!" absently, got a drink of water out of a pitcher standing there, and leaving Cornelius a prey to some inexplicable emotion--that made him embrace with both arms the worm-eaten rail of the verandah as if his legs had failed--went in again and lay down on his mat to think. By-and-by he heard stealthy footsteps. They stopped. A voice whispered tremulously through the wall, "Are you asleep?" "No! What is it?" he answered briskly, and there was an abrupt movement outside, and then all was still, as if the whisperer had been startled. Extremely annoyed at this, Jim came out impetuously, and Cornelius with a faint shriek fled along the verandah as far as the steps, where he hung on to the broken banister. Very puzzled, Jim called out to him from the distance to know what the devil he meant. "Have you given your consideration to what I spoke to you about?" asked Cornelius, pronouncing the words with difficulty, like a man in the cold fit of a fever. "No!" shouted Jim in a passion. "I have not, and I don't intend to. I am going to live here, in Patusan." "You shall d-d-die h-h-here," answered Cornelius, still shaking violently, and in a sort of expiring voice. The whole performance was so absurd and provoking that Jim didn't know whether he ought to be amused or angry. "Not till I have seen you tucked away, you bet," he called out, exasperated yet ready to laugh. Half seriously (being excited with his own thoughts, you know) he went on shouting, "Nothing can touch me! You can do your damnedest." Somehow the shadowy Cornelius far off there seemed to be the hateful embodiment of all the annoyances and difficulties he had found in his path. He let himself go--his nerves had been over-wrought for days--and called him many pretty names,--swindler, liar, sorry rascal: in fact, carried on in an extraordinary way. He admits he passed all bounds, that he was quite beside himself--defied all Patusan to scare him away--declared he would make them all dance to his own tune yet, and so on, in a menacing, boasting strain. Perfectly bombastic and ridiculous, he said. His ears burned at the bare recollection. Must have been off his chump in some way. . . . The girl, who was sitting with us, nodded her little head at me quickly, frowned faintly, and said, "I heard him," with child-like solemnity. He laughed and blushed. What stopped him at last, he said, was the silence, the complete deathlike silence, of the indistinct figure far over there, that seemed to hang collapsed, doubled over the rail in a weird immobility. He came to his senses, and ceasing suddenly, wondered greatly at himself. He watched for a while. Not a stir, not a sound. "Exactly as if the chap had died while I had been making all that noise," he said. He was so ashamed of himself that he went indoors in a hurry without another word, and flung himself down again. The row seemed to have done him good though, because he went to sleep for the rest of the night like a baby. Hadn't slept like that for weeks. "But _I_ didn't sleep," struck in the girl, one elbow on the table and nursing her cheek. "I watched." Her big eyes flashed, rolling a little, and then she fixed them on my face intently.' 'You may imagine with what interest I listened. All these details were perceived to have some significance twenty-four hours later. In the morning Cornelius made no allusion to the events of the night. "I suppose you will come back to my poor house," he muttered, surlily, slinking up just as Jim was entering the canoe to go over to Doramin's campong. Jim only nodded, without looking at him. "You find it good fun, no doubt," muttered the other in a sour tone. Jim spent the day with the old nakhoda, preaching the necessity of vigorous action to the principal men of the Bugis community, who had been summoned for a big talk. He remembered with pleasure how very eloquent and persuasive he had been. "I managed to put some backbone into them that time, and no mistake," he said. Sherif Ali's last raid had swept the outskirts of the settlement, and some women belonging to the town had been carried off to the stockade. Sherif Ali's emissaries had been seen in the market-place the day before, strutting about haughtily in white cloaks, and boasting of the Rajah's friendship for their master. One of them stood forward in the shade of a tree, and, leaning on the long barrel of a rifle, exhorted the people to prayer and repentance, advising them to kill all the strangers in their midst, some of whom, he said, were infidels and others even worse--children of Satan in the guise of Moslems. It was reported that several of the Rajah's people amongst the listeners had loudly expressed their approbation. The terror amongst the common people was intense. Jim, immensely pleased with his day's work, crossed the river again before sunset. 'As he had got the Bugis irretrievably committed to action and had made himself responsible for success on his own head, he was so elated that in the lightness of his heart he absolutely tried to be civil with Cornelius. But Cornelius became wildly jovial in response, and it was almost more than he could stand, he says, to hear his little squeaks of false laughter, to see him wriggle and blink, and suddenly catch hold of his chin and crouch low over the table with a distracted stare. The girl did not show herself, and Jim retired early. When he rose to say good-night, Cornelius jumped up, knocking his chair over, and ducked out of sight as if to pick up something he had dropped. His good-night came huskily from under the table. Jim was amazed to see him emerge with a dropping jaw, and staring, stupidly frightened eyes. He clutched the edge of the table. "What's the matter? Are you unwell?" asked Jim. "Yes, yes, yes. A great colic in my stomach," says the other; and it is Jim's opinion that it was perfectly true. If so, it was, in view of his contemplated action, an abject sign of a still imperfect callousness for which he must be given all due credit. 'Be it as it may, Jim's slumbers were disturbed by a dream of heavens like brass resounding with a great voice, which called upon him to Awake! Awake! so loud that, notwithstanding his desperate determination to sleep on, he did wake up in reality. The glare of a red spluttering conflagration going on in mid-air fell on his eyes. Coils of black thick smoke curved round the head of some apparition, some unearthly being, all in white, with a severe, drawn, anxious face. After a second or so he recognised the girl. She was holding a dammar torch at arm's-length aloft, and in a persistent, urgent monotone she was repeating, "Get up! Get up! Get up!" 'Suddenly he leaped to his feet; at once she put into his hand a revolver, his own revolver, which had been hanging on a nail, but loaded this time. He gripped it in silence, bewildered, blinking in the light. He wondered what he could do for her. 'She asked rapidly and very low, "Can you face four men with this?" He laughed while narrating this part at the recollection of his polite alacrity. It seems he made a great display of it. "Certainly--of course--certainly--command me." He was not properly awake, and had a notion of being very civil in these extraordinary circumstances, of showing his unquestioning, devoted readiness. She left the room, and he followed her; in the passage they disturbed an old hag who did the casual cooking of the household, though she was so decrepit as to be hardly able to understand human speech. She got up and hobbled behind them, mumbling toothlessly. On the verandah a hammock of sail-cloth, belonging to Cornelius, swayed lightly to the touch of Jim's elbow. It was empty. 'The Patusan establishment, like all the posts of Stein's Trading Company, had originally consisted of four buildings. Two of them were represented by two heaps of sticks, broken bamboos, rotten thatch, over which the four corner-posts of hardwood leaned sadly at different angles: the principal storeroom, however, stood yet, facing the agent's house. It was an oblong hut, built of mud and clay; it had at one end a wide door of stout planking, which so far had not come off the hinges, and in one of the side walls there was a square aperture, a sort of window, with three wooden bars. Before descending the few steps the girl turned her face over her shoulder and said quickly, "You were to be set upon while you slept." Jim tells me he experienced a sense of deception. It was the old story. He was weary of these attempts upon his life. He had had his fill of these alarms. He was sick of them. He assured me he was angry with the girl for deceiving him. He had followed her under the impression that it was she who wanted his help, and now he had half a mind to turn on his heel and go back in disgust. "Do you know," he commented profoundly, "I rather think I was not quite myself for whole weeks on end about that time." "Oh yes. You were though," I couldn't help contradicting. 'But she moved on swiftly, and he followed her into the courtyard. All its fences had fallen in a long time ago; the neighbours' buffaloes would pace in the morning across the open space, snorting profoundly, without haste; the very jungle was invading it already. Jim and the girl stopped in the rank grass. The light in which they stood made a dense blackness all round, and only above their heads there was an opulent glitter of stars. He told me it was a beautiful night--quite cool, with a little stir of breeze from the river. It seems he noticed its friendly beauty. Remember this is a love story I am telling you now. A lovely night seemed to breathe on them a soft caress. The flame of the torch streamed now and then with a fluttering noise like a flag, and for a time this was the only sound. "They are in the storeroom waiting," whispered the girl; "they are waiting for the signal." "Who's to give it?" he asked. She shook the torch, which blazed up after a shower of sparks. "Only you have been sleeping so restlessly," she continued in a murmur; "I watched your sleep, too." "You!" he exclaimed, craning his neck to look about him. "You think I watched on this night only!" she said, with a sort of despairing indignation. 'He says it was as if he had received a blow on the chest. He gasped. He thought he had been an awful brute somehow, and he felt remorseful, touched, happy, elated. This, let me remind you again, is a love story; you can see it by the imbecility, not a repulsive imbecility, the exalted imbecility of these proceedings, this station in torchlight, as if they had come there on purpose to have it out for the edification of concealed murderers. If Sherif Ali's emissaries had been possessed--as Jim remarked--of a pennyworth of spunk, this was the time to make a rush. His heart was thumping--not with fear--but he seemed to hear the grass rustle, and he stepped smartly out of the light. Something dark, imperfectly seen, flitted rapidly out of sight. He called out in a strong voice, "Cornelius! O Cornelius!" A profound silence succeeded: his voice did not seem to have carried twenty feet. Again the girl was by his side. "Fly!" she said. The old woman was coming up; her broken figure hovered in crippled little jumps on the edge of the light; they heard her mumbling, and a light, moaning sigh. "Fly!" repeated the girl excitedly. "They are frightened now--this light--the voices. They know you are awake now--they know you are big, strong, fearless . . ." "If I am all that," he began; but she interrupted him: "Yes--to-night! But what of to-morrow night? Of the next night? Of the night after--of all the many, many nights? Can I be always watching?" A sobbing catch of her breath affected him beyond the power of words. 'He told me that he had never felt so small, so powerless--and as to courage, what was the good of it? he thought. He was so helpless that even flight seemed of no use; and though she kept on whispering, "Go to Doramin, go to Doramin," with feverish insistence, he realised that for him there was no refuge from that loneliness which centupled all his dangers except--in her. "I thought," he said to me, "that if I went away from her it would be the end of everything somehow." Only as they couldn't stop there for ever in the middle of that courtyard, he made up his mind to go and look into the storehouse. He let her follow him without thinking of any protest, as if they had been indissolubly united. "I am fearless--am I?" he muttered through his teeth. She restrained his arm. "Wait till you hear my voice," she said, and, torch in hand, ran lightly round the corner. He remained alone in the darkness, his face to the door: not a sound, not a breath came from the other side. The old hag let out a dreary groan somewhere behind his back. He heard a high-pitched almost screaming call from the girl. "Now! Push!" He pushed violently; the door swung with a creak and a clatter, disclosing to his intense astonishment the low dungeon-like interior illuminated by a lurid, wavering glare. A turmoil of smoke eddied down upon an empty wooden crate in the middle of the floor, a litter of rags and straw tried to soar, but only stirred feebly in the draught. She had thrust the light through the bars of the window. He saw her bare round arm extended and rigid, holding up the torch with the steadiness of an iron bracket. A conical ragged heap of old mats cumbered a distant corner almost to the ceiling, and that was all. 'He explained to me that he was bitterly disappointed at this. His fortitude had been tried by so many warnings, he had been for weeks surrounded by so many hints of danger, that he wanted the relief of some reality, of something tangible that he could meet. "It would have cleared the air for a couple of hours at least, if you know what I mean," he said to me. "Jove! I had been living for days with a stone on my chest." Now at last he had thought he would get hold of something, and--nothing! Not a trace, not a sign of anybody. He had raised his weapon as the door flew open, but now his arm fell. "Fire! Defend yourself," the girl outside cried in an agonising voice. She, being in the dark and with her arm thrust in to the shoulder through the small hole, couldn't see what was going on, and she dared not withdraw the torch now to run round. "There's nobody here!" yelled Jim contemptuously, but his impulse to burst into a resentful exasperated laugh died without a sound: he had perceived in the very act of turning away that he was exchanging glances with a pair of eyes in the heap of mats. He saw a shifting gleam of whites. "Come out!" he cried in a fury, a little doubtful, and a dark-faced head, a head without a body, shaped itself in the rubbish, a strangely detached head, that looked at him with a steady scowl. Next moment the whole mound stirred, and with a low grunt a man emerged swiftly, and bounded towards Jim. Behind him the mats as it were jumped and flew, his right arm was raised with a crooked elbow, and the dull blade of a kriss protruded from his fist held off, a little above his head. A cloth wound tight round his loins seemed dazzlingly white on his bronze skin; his naked body glistened as if wet. 'Jim noted all this. He told me he was experiencing a feeling of unutterable relief, of vengeful elation. He held his shot, he says, deliberately. He held it for the tenth part of a second, for three strides of the man--an unconscionable time. He held it for the pleasure of saying to himself, That's a dead man! He was absolutely positive and certain. He let him come on because it did not matter. A dead man, anyhow. He noticed the dilated nostrils, the wide eyes, the intent, eager stillness of the face, and then he fired. 'The explosion in that confined space was stunning. He stepped back a pace. He saw the man jerk his head up, fling his arms forward, and drop the kriss. He ascertained afterwards that he had shot him through the mouth, a little upwards, the bullet coming out high at the back of the skull. With the impetus of his rush the man drove straight on, his face suddenly gaping disfigured, with his hands open before him gropingly, as though blinded, and landed with terrific violence on his forehead, just short of Jim's bare toes. Jim says he didn't lose the smallest detail of all this. He found himself calm, appeased, without rancour, without uneasiness, as if the death of that man had atoned for everything. The place was getting very full of sooty smoke from the torch, in which the unswaying flame burned blood-red without a flicker. He walked in resolutely, striding over the dead body, and covered with his revolver another naked figure outlined vaguely at the other end. As he was about to pull the trigger, the man threw away with force a short heavy spear, and squatted submissively on his hams, his back to the wall and his clasped hands between his legs. "You want your life?" Jim said. The other made no sound. "How many more of you?" asked Jim again. "Two more, Tuan," said the man very softly, looking with big fascinated eyes into the muzzle of the revolver. Accordingly two more crawled from under the mats, holding out ostentatiously their empty hands.''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.' 'I was immensely touched: her youth, her ignorance, her pretty beauty, which had the simple charm and the delicate vigour of a wild-flower, her pathetic pleading, her helplessness, appealed to me with almost the strength of her own unreasonable and natural fear. She feared the unknown as we all do, and her ignorance made the unknown infinitely vast. I stood for it, for myself, for you fellows, for all the world that neither cared for Jim nor needed him in the least. I would have been ready enough to answer for the indifference of the teeming earth but for the reflection that he too belonged to this mysterious unknown of her fears, and that, however much I stood for, I did not stand for him. This made me hesitate. A murmur of hopeless pain unsealed my lips. I began by protesting that I at least had come with no intention to take Jim away. 'Why did I come, then? After a slight movement she was as still as a marble statue in the night. I tried to explain briefly: friendship, business; if I had any wish in the matter it was rather to see him stay. . . . "They always leave us," she murmured. The breath of sad wisdom from the grave which her piety wreathed with flowers seemed to pass in a faint sigh. . . . Nothing, I said, could separate Jim from her. 'It is my firm conviction now; it was my conviction at the time; it was the only possible conclusion from the facts of the case. It was not made more certain by her whispering in a tone in which one speaks to oneself, "He swore this to me." "Did you ask him?" I said. 'She made a step nearer. "No. Never!" She had asked him only to go away. It was that night on the river-bank, after he had killed the man--after she had flung the torch in the water because he was looking at her so. There was too much light, and the danger was over then--for a little time--for a little time. He said then he would not abandon her to Cornelius. She had insisted. She wanted him to leave her. He said that he could not--that it was impossible. He trembled while he said this. She had felt him tremble. . . . One does not require much imagination to see the scene, almost to hear their whispers. She was afraid for him too. I believe that then she saw in him only a predestined victim of dangers which she understood better than himself. Though by nothing but his mere presence he had mastered her heart, had filled all her thoughts, and had possessed himself of all her affections, she underestimated his chances of success. It is obvious that at about that time everybody was inclined to underestimate his chances. Strictly speaking he didn't seem to have any. I know this was Cornelius's view. He confessed that much to me in extenuation of the shady part he had played in Sherif Ali's plot to do away with the infidel. Even Sherif Ali himself, as it seems certain now, had nothing but contempt for the white man. Jim was to be murdered mainly on religious grounds, I believe. A simple act of piety (and so far infinitely meritorious), but otherwise without much importance. In the last part of this opinion Cornelius concurred. "Honourable sir," he argued abjectly on the only occasion he managed to have me to himself--"honourable sir, how was I to know? Who was he? What could he do to make people believe him? What did Mr. Stein mean sending a boy like that to talk big to an old servant? I was ready to save him for eighty dollars. Only eighty dollars. Why didn't the fool go? Was I to get stabbed myself for the sake of a stranger?" He grovelled in spirit before me, with his body doubled up insinuatingly and his hands hovering about my knees, as though he were ready to embrace my legs. "What's eighty dollars? An insignificant sum to give to a defenceless old man ruined for life by a deceased she-devil." Here he wept. But I anticipate. I didn't that night chance upon Cornelius till I had had it out with the girl. 'She was unselfish when she urged Jim to leave her, and even to leave the country. It was his danger that was foremost in her thoughts--even if she wanted to save herself too--perhaps unconsciously: but then look at the warning she had, look at the lesson that could be drawn from every moment of the recently ended life in which all her memories were centred. She fell at his feet--she told me so--there by the river, in the discreet light of stars which showed nothing except great masses of silent shadows, indefinite open spaces, and trembling faintly upon the broad stream made it appear as wide as the sea. He had lifted her up. He lifted her up, and then she would struggle no more. Of course not. Strong arms, a tender voice, a stalwart shoulder to rest her poor lonely little head upon. The need--the infinite need--of all this for the aching heart, for the bewildered mind;--the promptings of youth--the necessity of the moment. What would you have? One understands--unless one is incapable of understanding anything under the sun. And so she was content to be lifted up--and held. "You know--Jove! this is serious--no nonsense in it!" as Jim had whispered hurriedly with a troubled concerned face on the threshold of his house. I don't know so much about nonsense, but there was nothing light-hearted in their romance: they came together under the shadow of a life's disaster, like knight and maiden meeting to exchange vows amongst haunted ruins. The starlight was good enough for that story, a light so faint and remote that it cannot resolve shadows into shapes, and show the other shore of a stream. I did look upon the stream that night and from the very place; it rolled silent and as black as Styx: the next day I went away, but I am not likely to forget what it was she wanted to be saved from when she entreated him to leave her while there was time. She told me what it was, calmed--she was now too passionately interested for mere excitement--in a voice as quiet in the obscurity as her white half-lost figure. She told me, "I didn't want to die weeping." I thought I had not heard aright. '"You did not want to die weeping?" I repeated after her. "Like my mother," she added readily. The outlines of her white shape did not stir in the least. "My mother had wept bitterly before she died," she explained. An inconceivable calmness seemed to have risen from the ground around us, imperceptibly, like the still rise of a flood in the night, obliterating the familiar landmarks of emotions. There came upon me, as though I had felt myself losing my footing in the midst of waters, a sudden dread, the dread of the unknown depths. She went on explaining that, during the last moments, being alone with her mother, she had to leave the side of the couch to go and set her back against the door, in order to keep Cornelius out. He desired to get in, and kept on drumming with both fists, only desisting now and again to shout huskily, "Let me in! Let me in! Let me in!" In a far corner upon a few mats the moribund woman, already speechless and unable to lift her arm, rolled her head over, and with a feeble movement of her hand seemed to command--"No! No!" and the obedient daughter, setting her shoulders with all her strength against the door, was looking on. "The tears fell from her eyes--and then she died," concluded the girl in an imperturbable monotone, which more than anything else, more than the white statuesque immobility of her person, more than mere words could do, troubled my mind profoundly with the passive, irremediable horror of the scene. It had the power to drive me out of my conception of existence, out of that shelter each of us makes for himself to creep under in moments of danger, as a tortoise withdraws within its shell. For a moment I had a view of a world that seemed to wear a vast and dismal aspect of disorder, while, in truth, thanks to our unwearied efforts, it is as sunny an arrangement of small conveniences as the mind of man can conceive. But still--it was only a moment: I went back into my shell directly. One _must_--don't you know?--though I seemed to have lost all my words in the chaos of dark thoughts I had contemplated for a second or two beyond the pale. These came back, too, very soon, for words also belong to the sheltering conception of light and order which is our refuge. I had them ready at my disposal before she whispered softly, "He swore he would never leave me, when we stood there alone! He swore to me!". . . "And it is possible that you--you! do not believe him?" I asked, sincerely reproachful, genuinely shocked. Why couldn't she believe? Wherefore this craving for incertitude, this clinging to fear, as if incertitude and fear had been the safeguards of her love. It was monstrous. She should have made for herself a shelter of inexpugnable peace out of that honest affection. She had not the knowledge--not the skill perhaps. The night had come on apace; it had grown pitch-dark where we were, so that without stirring she had faded like the intangible form of a wistful and perverse spirit. And suddenly I heard her quiet whisper again, "Other men had sworn the same thing." It was like a meditative comment on some thoughts full of sadness, of awe. And she added, still lower if possible, "My father did." She paused the time to draw an inaudible breath. "Her father too." . . . These were the things she knew! At once I said, "Ah! but he is not like that." This, it seemed, she did not intend to dispute; but after a time the strange still whisper wandering dreamily in the air stole into my ears. "Why is he different? Is he better? Is he . . ." "Upon my word of honour," I broke in, "I believe he is." We subdued our tones to a mysterious pitch. Amongst the huts of Jim's workmen (they were mostly liberated slaves from the Sherif's stockade) somebody started a shrill, drawling song. Across the river a big fire (at Doramin's, I think) made a glowing ball, completely isolated in the night. "Is he more true?" she murmured. "Yes," I said. "More true than any other man," she repeated in lingering accents. "Nobody here," I said, "would dream of doubting his word--nobody would dare--except you." 'I think she made a movement at this. "More brave," she went on in a changed tone. "Fear will never drive him away from you," I said a little nervously. The song stopped short on a shrill note, and was succeeded by several voices talking in the distance. Jim's voice too. I was struck by her silence. "What has he been telling you? He has been telling you something?" I asked. There was no answer. "What is it he told you?" I insisted. '"Do you think I can tell you? How am I to know? How am I to understand?" she cried at last. There was a stir. I believe she was wringing her hands. "There is something he can never forget." '"So much the better for you," I said gloomily. '"What is it? What is it?" She put an extraordinary force of appeal into her supplicating tone. "He says he had been afraid. How can I believe this? Am I a mad woman to believe this? You all remember something! You all go back to it. What is it? You tell me! What is this thing? Is it alive?--is it dead? I hate it. It is cruel. Has it got a face and a voice--this calamity? Will he see it--will he hear it? In his sleep perhaps when he cannot see me--and then arise and go. Ah! I shall never forgive him. My mother had forgiven--but I, never! Will it be a sign--a call?" 'It was a wonderful experience. She mistrusted his very slumbers--and she seemed to think I could tell her why! Thus a poor mortal seduced by the charm of an apparition might have tried to wring from another ghost the tremendous secret of the claim the other world holds over a disembodied soul astray amongst the passions of this earth. The very ground on which I stood seemed to melt under my feet. And it was so simple too; but if the spirits evoked by our fears and our unrest have ever to vouch for each other's constancy before the forlorn magicians that we are, then I--I alone of us dwellers in the flesh--have shuddered in the hopeless chill of such a task. A sign, a call! How telling in its expression was her ignorance. A few words! How she came to know them, how she came to pronounce them, I can't imagine. Women find their inspiration in the stress of moments that for us are merely awful, absurd, or futile. To discover that she had a voice at all was enough to strike awe into the heart. Had a spurned stone cried out in pain it could not have appeared a greater and more pitiful miracle. These few sounds wandering in the dark had made their two benighted lives tragic to my mind. It was impossible to make her understand. I chafed silently at my impotence. And Jim, too--poor devil! Who would need him? Who would remember him? He had what he wanted. His very existence probably had been forgotten by this time. They had mastered their fates. They were tragic. 'Her immobility before me was clearly expectant, and my part was to speak for my brother from the realm of forgetful shade. I was deeply moved at my responsibility and at her distress. I would have given anything for the power to soothe her frail soul, tormenting itself in its invincible ignorance like a small bird beating about the cruel wires of a cage. Nothing easier than to say, Have no fear! Nothing more difficult. How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a spectre through the heart, slash off its spectral head, take it by its spectral throat? It is an enterprise you rush into while you dream, and are glad to make your escape with wet hair and every limb shaking. The bullet is not run, the blade not forged, the man not born; even the winged words of truth drop at your feet like lumps of lead. You require for such a desperate encounter an enchanted and poisoned shaft dipped in a lie too subtle to be found on earth. An enterprise for a dream, my masters! 'I began my exorcism with a heavy heart, with a sort of sullen anger in it too. Jim's voice, suddenly raised with a stern intonation, carried across the courtyard, reproving the carelessness of some dumb sinner by the river-side. Nothing--I said, speaking in a distinct murmur--there could be nothing, in that unknown world she fancied so eager to rob her of her happiness, there was nothing, neither living nor dead, there was no face, no voice, no power, that could tear Jim from her side. I drew breath and she whispered softly, "He told me so." "He told you the truth," I said. "Nothing," she sighed out, and abruptly turned upon me with a barely audible intensity of tone: "Why did you come to us from out there? He speaks of you too often. You make me afraid. Do you--do you want him?" A sort of stealthy fierceness had crept into our hurried mutters. "I shall never come again," I said bitterly. "And I don't want him. No one wants him." "No one," she repeated in a tone of doubt. "No one," I affirmed, feeling myself swayed by some strange excitement. "You think him strong, wise, courageous, great--why not believe him to be true too? I shall go to-morrow--and that is the end. You shall never be troubled by a voice from there again. This world you don't know is too big to miss him. You understand? Too big. You've got his heart in your hand. You must feel that. You must know that." "Yes, I know that," she breathed out, hard and still, as a statue might whisper. 'I felt I had done nothing. And what is it that I had wished to do? I am not sure now. At the time I was animated by an inexplicable ardour, as if before some great and necessary task--the influence of the moment upon my mental and emotional state. There are in all our lives such moments, such influences, coming from the outside, as it were, irresistible, incomprehensible--as if brought about by the mysterious conjunctions of the planets. She owned, as I had put it to her, his heart. She had that and everything else--if she could only believe it. What I had to tell her was that in the whole world there was no one who ever would need his heart, his mind, his hand. It was a common fate, and yet it seemed an awful thing to say of any man. She listened without a word, and her stillness now was like the protest of an invincible unbelief. What need she care for the world beyond the forests? I asked. From all the multitudes that peopled the vastness of that unknown there would come, I assured her, as long as he lived, neither a call nor a sign for him. Never. I was carried away. Never! Never! I remember with wonder the sort of dogged fierceness I displayed. I had the illusion of having got the spectre by the throat at last. Indeed the whole real thing has left behind the detailed and amazing impression of a dream. Why should she fear? She knew him to be strong, true, wise, brave. He was all that. Certainly. He was more. He was great--invincible--and the world did not want him, it had forgotten him, it would not even know him. 'I stopped; the silence over Patusan was profound, and the feeble dry sound of a paddle striking the side of a canoe somewhere in the middle of the river seemed to make it infinite. "Why?" she murmured. I felt that sort of rage one feels during a hard tussle. The spectre was trying to slip out of my grasp. "Why?" she repeated louder; "tell me!" And as I remained confounded, she stamped with her foot like a spoilt child. "Why? Speak." "You want to know?" I asked in a fury. "Yes!" she cried. "Because he is not good enough," I said brutally. During the moment's pause I noticed the fire on the other shore blaze up, dilating the circle of its glow like an amazed stare, and contract suddenly to a red pin-point. I only knew how close to me she had been when I felt the clutch of her fingers on my forearm. Without raising her voice, she threw into it an infinity of scathing contempt, bitterness, and despair. '"This is the very thing he said. . . . You lie!" 'The last two words she cried at me in the native dialect. "Hear me out!" I entreated; she caught her breath tremulously, flung my arm away. "Nobody, nobody is good enough," I began with the greatest earnestness. I could hear the sobbing labour of her breath frightfully quickened. I hung my head. What was the use? Footsteps were approaching; I slipped away without another word. . . .'

Chapters 28-33

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Past events are now referred to in passing. Sherif Ali, one of Doramin's competitors and an ally of the Rajah, was defeated and then fled. Old scores were settled. The Rajah reacted with fear. All felt confidence in Jim's wisdom. Marlow then describes how Doramin and his wife begin to ask him questions about Jim. Doramin is anxious; in his opinion, and perhaps thinking about Stein, white men have a tendency to come and go. Doramin's wife asks Marlow about Jim's past: is there anyone for him to return to, perhaps a mother who yearns to see him? This query brings Marlow, in his narration, to the story of Jim's love. Cornelius's deceased wife had left a daughter . The mother had not been an ordinary woman; her white father was a high official. Jim and the woman's daughter come to share mutual intimacy; Jim refers to her as "Jewel." This name leads Marlow to comment on how he pieced a puzzle together, recalling how, 230 miles south of Patusan, he had heard a rumor of how a young man in Patusan had discovered an extraordinarily priceless emerald that could only be concealed on a woman who was young and insensible to the seductions of love. Jewel's mother had taught her English and, according to Marlow, she spoke it having absorbed Jim's own manner of speaking. He observes that Jim was "jealously loved" . Marlow then reports seeing Cornelius for the first time. Tamb' Itam points him out, and Marlow notes that he is a slinking, dark, unsavory type, like a "repulsive beetle" . His presence seemed the one blemish on Jim's charmed life. Jim had discovered that Cornelius had embezzled from Stein's company, kept poor records, and left the house is disrepair, all the while blaming his dead wife for the failures. Jim felt deep sympathy for the girl whose mother had died and who had to suffer Cornelius's insults. The girl had said she would have killed him with her own hands, if she hadn't seen how wretched he was. This statement, for Jim, hinted at a complexity in her character that impressed him. Cornelius, eager to be rid of Jim, offered to smuggle him out of the area for a price, since it was widely known that the Rajah wanted him killed. Jim didn't respond. Later that very night, however, he arrived at a plan for overcoming Sherif Ali, and the girl proved useful in providing the necessary background information about Patusan affairs. When Cornelius again offered to help him out of Patusan, Jim stated his intention to remain. Cornelius responded that, then, Jim would die here. Jim gives a speech in favor of "vigorous action" to the principal men of the community where Jim had been persuasive and eloquent, stirring the passions roused by Sherif Ali's last raid . That night, Jim had a dream, a great voice from the heavens commanding that he "Awake!" He did wake and see the flame of a torch and the girl holding it, in a white gown, with her long black hair. Jewel insisted that he get up, that there was a plan in place for his murder that night. Marlow reminds his audience then that this is a love story, and Jim admits to the strength of his emotion at the time: "that if I went away from her it would be the end of everything somehow" . Jim then sensed that his assassins were near and, in the end, killed a man. The three others surrendered. The conclusion of this story is that Jim ordered the three would-be assassins to jump into the water. Jim then turns to Marlow and says that he loves the girl. The fact that his existence was necessary for another person provided a wonderful feeling. The community believed he was brave, true, and just. He was happy. Marlow then tells Jim that he will always be a mystery amongst them; he will never be fully known. This is almost a warning, but Jim replies that this situation is exactly what he wants. Later in the night, Jewel approaches Marlow and seems to ask for an assurance from him that Jim will never leave her. She tells Marlow that her mother had warned her of such things before she died. Marlow was, himself, a signal of that Unknown from which Jim had come, so she hoped to learn something of it from him. Marlow, touched by the girl's delicate charm, tells her that it is not his intention to ask Jim to leave, and that Jim wouldn't leave anyway. Jewel says that she does not want to die weeping like her mother. She senses a strong feeling of dread, and Marlow is then strangely brutal to her. He tells her that Jim will never leave Patusan because he is "not good enough" for the world outside. The girl says that Jim said the same thing, and she protests, sobbing. She claims that Marlow is lying, and Marlow, regretful, says, "nobody is good enough." She exits.

As the political situation in Patusan is elaborated, Jim's integral role in the defeat of Sherif Ali and his trustworthiness bring him the acclaim and status he has always sought. The intelligence of the plan proves his good judgment, and its execution proves his ability and loyalty. In the end, Dain Waris saves Jim's life, in the same way that Stein had saved Dain Waris's father's life. This parallelism does not exclude the possibility that a kind of reversal could take place: though Jim and Stein share a characteristic romanticism, events may work in the reverse for Jim compared to how they worked for Stein. At this point, however, Marlow observes the success Jim has made out of his opportunity. The character Cornelius is more intensely drawn through Marlow's eyes, who sees him immediately as a "blemish." This corrupt presence in the midst of Jim's romantic life yields a sense of instability for the reader in that Cornelius, with his bitter loss of standing, as well as his general decrepit state, promises ill will for future events. Jim, however, like Jewel, considers him to be a sad wretch, not really worth worrying over or expending the energy to punish. This proves later to be a mistake of judgment on Jim's part. While so many aspects of his life in Patusan have been exquisitely assessed and judged and then acted upon, Jim's assessment of Cornelius becomes a mistake that will unravel his life with disastrous consequences. When Jim's love story is introduced, the reader recalls the mysterious reference made by Stein to a Malay-Dutch woman who had died. The daughter of this woman is the one who becomes Jim's lover. The two share, among other things, in having isolated positions in the community. It is unclear whether Jewel is her real name or merely the name that Jim gives her. In any case, the allusion to Adam's naming of Eve is made clear. It is fitting that Jewel, in this romantic setting, completes Jim's fair picture of the charmed life with a beautiful girl. The girl herself attains the status of myth, like Jim. Jim protects the fabulous, enormous emerald he has found; she is his precious jewel. Thus Jewel represents what women in the novel symbolize generally. Women tend to function as symbols of opportunity, in the sense that romantic Western men seek to wed their dreams to the reality of the Eastern landscape. Hence, a relationship with a girl from the East symbolizes the realization of the man's dreams. Stein had accomplished this wedding in actually having married a Malay princess. The suggestion here is that Jim will do the same with Jewel. Her mother's tragic end in life, however, foreshadows the sorrows that will fall over Jewel. The East-West romance, once realized, does not promise to be sustainable. It is, more often than not, untenable. Jewel's love for Jim, in Marlow's observation, is a "jealous" love, not unlike the way he has described the community's love for Jim. Jim has become such an integral part of the community, as well as of Jewel's life, that the fear of being without him implies overdependence. They absorb him, in the way that Jewel absorbs even Jim's manner of speech. During the private conversation between Marlow and Jewel, Marlow seems jealous himself--of Jim's youth, of his success, and of this girl. This jealousy may explain why he brutally shares with Jewel the idea that Jim isn't good enough for the world beyond Patusan. Regretfully, however, Marlow then revises his statement, showing that what was an initial passion of judgment can also be equally applied to all men: that "nobody is good enough." In other words, the romantic ideals of honor and manhood are not really possible for anyone, in view of man's countless imperfections. This reflection suggests, on the one hand, a general solidarity between Jim and the rest of the world and, on the other hand, Jim's distinct choice to go to a special place where he might possibly be able to achieve the ideal after all.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/13.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Tess of the d'Urbervilles/section_2_part_2.txt

Tess of the d'Urbervilles.chapter xiii

chapter xiii

{"name": "Chapter XIII", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210213065711/https://www.novelguide.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summaries/phase2-chapter12-15", "summary": "Tess's friends visit under the impression that she is to marry a rich gentleman. Tess is happy to be in their lively company and her depression over what seems like her hopeless life lets up only to return in full force. At church she sits with the old people in the back but \"she knew what their whispers were about, grew sick at heart, and felt that she could come to church no more\". Feeling herself to be a figure of shame, she leaves the house under cover of dark", "analysis": ""}

The event of Tess Durbeyfield's return from the manor of her bogus kinsfolk was rumoured abroad, if rumour be not too large a word for a space of a square mile. In the afternoon several young girls of Marlott, former schoolfellows and acquaintances of Tess, called to see her, arriving dressed in their best starched and ironed, as became visitors to a person who had made a transcendent conquest (as they supposed), and sat round the room looking at her with great curiosity. For the fact that it was this said thirty-first cousin, Mr d'Urberville, who had fallen in love with her, a gentleman not altogether local, whose reputation as a reckless gallant and heartbreaker was beginning to spread beyond the immediate boundaries of Trantridge, lent Tess's supposed position, by its fearsomeness, a far higher fascination that it would have exercised if unhazardous. Their interest was so deep that the younger ones whispered when her back was turned-- "How pretty she is; and how that best frock do set her off! I believe it cost an immense deal, and that it was a gift from him." Tess, who was reaching up to get the tea-things from the corner-cupboard, did not hear these commentaries. If she had heard them, she might soon have set her friends right on the matter. But her mother heard, and Joan's simple vanity, having been denied the hope of a dashing marriage, fed itself as well as it could upon the sensation of a dashing flirtation. Upon the whole she felt gratified, even though such a limited and evanescent triumph should involve her daughter's reputation; it might end in marriage yet, and in the warmth of her responsiveness to their admiration she invited her visitors to stay to tea. Their chatter, their laughter, their good-humoured innuendoes, above all, their flashes and flickerings of envy, revived Tess's spirits also; and, as the evening wore on, she caught the infection of their excitement, and grew almost gay. The marble hardness left her face, she moved with something of her old bounding step, and flushed in all her young beauty. At moments, in spite of thought, she would reply to their inquiries with a manner of superiority, as if recognizing that her experiences in the field of courtship had, indeed, been slightly enviable. But so far was she from being, in the words of Robert South, "in love with her own ruin," that the illusion was transient as lightning; cold reason came back to mock her spasmodic weakness; the ghastliness of her momentary pride would convict her, and recall her to reserved listlessness again. And the despondency of the next morning's dawn, when it was no longer Sunday, but Monday; and no best clothes; and the laughing visitors were gone, and she awoke alone in her old bed, the innocent younger children breathing softly around her. In place of the excitement of her return, and the interest it had inspired, she saw before her a long and stony highway which she had to tread, without aid, and with little sympathy. Her depression was then terrible, and she could have hidden herself in a tomb. In the course of a few weeks Tess revived sufficiently to show herself so far as was necessary to get to church one Sunday morning. She liked to hear the chanting--such as it was--and the old Psalms, and to join in the Morning Hymn. That innate love of melody, which she had inherited from her ballad-singing mother, gave the simplest music a power over her which could well-nigh drag her heart out of her bosom at times. To be as much out of observation as possible for reasons of her own, and to escape the gallantries of the young men, she set out before the chiming began, and took a back seat under the gallery, close to the lumber, where only old men and women came, and where the bier stood on end among the churchyard tools. Parishioners dropped in by twos and threes, deposited themselves in rows before her, rested three-quarters of a minute on their foreheads as if they were praying, though they were not; then sat up, and looked around. When the chants came on, one of her favourites happened to be chosen among the rest--the old double chant "Langdon"--but she did not know what it was called, though she would much have liked to know. She thought, without exactly wording the thought, how strange and god-like was a composer's power, who from the grave could lead through sequences of emotion, which he alone had felt at first, a girl like her who had never heard of his name, and never would have a clue to his personality. The people who had turned their heads turned them again as the service proceeded; and at last observing her, they whispered to each other. She knew what their whispers were about, grew sick at heart, and felt that she could come to church no more. The bedroom which she shared with some of the children formed her retreat more continually than ever. Here, under her few square yards of thatch, she watched winds, and snows, and rains, gorgeous sunsets, and successive moons at their full. So close kept she that at length almost everybody thought she had gone away. The only exercise that Tess took at this time was after dark; and it was then, when out in the woods, that she seemed least solitary. She knew how to hit to a hair's-breadth that moment of evening when the light and the darkness are so evenly balanced that the constraint of day and the suspense of night neutralize each other, leaving absolute mental liberty. It is then that the plight of being alive becomes attenuated to its least possible dimensions. She had no fear of the shadows; her sole idea seemed to be to shun mankind--or rather that cold accretion called the world, which, so terrible in the mass, is so unformidable, even pitiable, in its units. On these lonely hills and dales her quiescent glide was of a piece with the element she moved in. Her flexuous and stealthy figure became an integral part of the scene. At times her whimsical fancy would intensify natural processes around her till they seemed a part of her own story. Rather they became a part of it; for the world is only a psychological phenomenon, and what they seemed they were. The midnight airs and gusts, moaning amongst the tightly-wrapped buds and bark of the winter twigs, were formulae of bitter reproach. A wet day was the expression of irremediable grief at her weakness in the mind of some vague ethical being whom she could not class definitely as the God of her childhood, and could not comprehend as any other. But this encompassment of her own characterization, based on shreds of convention, peopled by phantoms and voices antipathetic to her, was a sorry and mistaken creation of Tess's fancy--a cloud of moral hobgoblins by which she was terrified without reason. It was they that were out of harmony with the actual world, not she. Walking among the sleeping birds in the hedges, watching the skipping rabbits on a moonlit warren, or standing under a pheasant-laden bough, she looked upon herself as a figure of Guilt intruding into the haunts of Innocence. But all the while she was making a distinction where there was no difference. Feeling herself in antagonism, she was quite in accord. She had been made to break an accepted social law, but no law known to the environment in which she fancied herself such an anomaly.

Chapter XIII

https://web.archive.org/web/20210213065711/https://www.novelguide.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summaries/phase2-chapter12-15

Tess's friends visit under the impression that she is to marry a rich gentleman. Tess is happy to be in their lively company and her depression over what seems like her hopeless life lets up only to return in full force. At church she sits with the old people in the back but "she knew what their whispers were about, grew sick at heart, and felt that she could come to church no more". Feeling herself to be a figure of shame, she leaves the house under cover of dark

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/book_i.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/The Brothers Karamazov/section_0_part_0.txt

The Brothers Karamazov.book i.chapter i-chapter v

book i

{"name": "Book I", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219142226/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/b/the-brothers-karamazov/summary-and-analysis/part-1-book-i", "summary": "Karamazov: the name is well-known in Russia; it carries a taste of violence and dark Slavic passion. And there is much truth in the rumors and whispered tales told of Fyodor Karamazov. In his youth he was a loud profligate. His drinking and high living were notorious; he seemed insatiate. And marriage did not tame him. His marriage, true to form, was scandalous. But initially it was not scandalous because of its melodramatic elements -- that was to be expected; life with Karamazov could not be otherwise. Initially, Karamazov's marriage was scandalous because it was romantic: he was penniless yet he wooed and married an heiress. Adelaida Ivanovna believed in her young rebel-husband. Perhaps his spirit was bold and irrepressible, but he was the new breed of liberal Russian manhood. She believed it firmly. She tried to believe it for a long time. Then she was forced to face the ugly reality that instead of a rich-blooded idealist she had married an opportunist who was physically cruel and usually drunk. She also was forced to face another unpleasant truth: she was pregnant. She bore the baby, a son -- Dmitri, or Mitya as she often called him -- and when she could no longer endure her husband's viciousness, she abandoned both her son and husband and eloped with a young student. Karamazov, ostensibly, was staggered by her rejection and, still the overly dramatic sort, like a loud tragedian he spent many of his days driving through the country, lamenting over his wife's desertion. But even that pose grew wearisome and soon he returned to his life of debauchery. When he received the news of Adelaida's death he was in the midst of a drunken orgy. Young Dmitri was neglected and finally taken in by a cousin and when the cousin tired of him the child was given to other relatives; thus the baby grew up with a variety of families. But he was always told about his real father, that the man still lived, and that he held a rather large piece of Adelaida's property that was rightfully Dmitri's. The boy never forgot these tales of land and money and when he reached maturity, he visited his father and asked about the inheritance. He was unable, of course, to get any information from the old man but he began receiving small sums of money and, convinced that the property did exist, he revisited his father. Again the old man evaded his son's questions. But if Karamazov was able to evade Dmitri, he could not evade other matters so successfully -- the problems of his other sons, for example. For after the four-year-old Dmitri was taken away, Karamazov married a second time. This wife, Sofya Ivanovna, was remarkably beautiful and her loveliness and her innocence attracted the lustful Karamazov. He convinced her to elope with him against her guardian's wishes and quickly took advantage of her meekness. He began having loose women in the house and even carried on orgies of debauchery in her presence. During Karamazov's years of cruelty and depravity, Sofya Ivanovna gave birth to two sons, Ivan and Alyosha. But she was not well and did not feel loved despite the attentions of old Grigory, the servant who did his best to comfort her and protect her from Karamazov. In spite of his care, she soon fell ill and died. When her former guardian heard about her death, she came and took the two boys, Ivan and Alyosha, with her and upon her own death she left a thousand rubles to each boy for his education. Ivan Karamazov developed into a brilliant student who helped support himself by writing for journals. He slowly began to make a name for himself in literary circles. One of his articles, for instance, dealt with the function of the ecclesiastical courts; it attracted widespread interest and even the monastery in his native town spoke of it. Alyosha, the youngest Karamazov, developed into a devoutly religious person, his faith based on reality and untinged by mysticism or fanaticism. He was universally well liked, never criticized anyone, and seemed to love everyone. As the action of the novel begins, Alyosha returns to his father's house and meets his brothers. He and Dmitri rapidly become good friends, but he feels puzzled by Ivan's reserve and intellectuality. As for his father, Alyosha openly loves him; he has never criticized or condemned his father's way of life. Alyosha has always been generous and forgiving, thus it was that Karamazov was not surprised when Alyosha first told him that he wanted to become a monk, the disciple of the renowned elder, Zossima. In those days, incidentally, an elder was often controversial. \"An elder,\" it was said, \"was one who took your soul, your will, into his soul and his will.\" But elder, by also setting exemplary models of holiness in their own lives, often attracted large numbers of followers. The Karamazovs are reunited, and the reason for their reunion deeply concerns Alyosha. The discord between Dmitri and his father has reached such a point that one of them, apparently the father, has suggested a meeting in Father Zossima's cell, where they can discuss differences under the conciliating influence of the elder. Alyosha, who understands his brothers and his father better than most people think, greatly fears the meeting.", "analysis": "The Brothers Karamazov is often considered one of the world's most complex novels. Dostoevsky examines many different facets of life, investigates many problems of lasting importance, and is able to do so successfully in this novel because the mere size and bulk of the book allows him to proceed with deliberate slowness in introducing and developing his ideas. Attempting in these Commentaries, however, to isolate some of the main ideas and to analyze them destroys the essential unity of the novel. Part of its greatness is the manner in which Dostoevsky is able to integrate all the divergent elements into one unified whole. Each idea borders upon another and is somewhat vitiated when isolated from the remainder of the novel. In the complex spirit of the novel and in the leisurely nineteenth-century fashion of giving the intricate background of the main characters, Dostoevsky begins his book, then immediately establishes its tone. He first announces the element of mystery in the novel -- the \"gloomy and tragic death\" of Karamazov -- and then begins defining the elements of tragedy -- especially the Karamazov tragedy. The older Karamazov is depicted as base, vulgar, ill-natured, and completely degraded, and his \"tragic\" death will be revealed to be tragic only because his sons are implicated in the death -- not because Karamazov himself arouses tragic emotion. In fact, in the trial scene later in the book, it is pointed out that the murder is not a parricide in the truest sense because Fyodor Karamazov never functioned as a proper father. To support this idea, Dostoevsky begins at the very outset of the novel to show the blackness and vulgarity of the man who is to be murdered. To emphasize the monster within Karamazov, Dostoevsky illustrates the lack of paternal instincts. Karamazov did not discard his children from hatred or malice; he simply forgot about their existence. Furthermore, he was pleased each time that strangers came and took the children and therefore released him from responsibility; this allowed him to devote all his energy to his various orgies. One of Dostoevsky's ideas, prominent throughout the novel, then, concerns the place of the child in society. This theme receives its first expression in the chapter dealing with Fyodor Karamazov's treatment of his children. In Chapter 2, Dostoevsky tells us that Dmitri \"was the only one of Fyodor Pavlovitch's three sons who grew up in the belief that he had property and that he would be independent on coming of age.\" This idea is established early in the novel because it becomes the source of the antagonism existing between father and son. Dostoevsky carefully avoids making a direct statement about the full extent to which the father has cheated his son, but by the manner in which he arranges his descriptions of the father, we can assume that Fyodor has indeed cheated Dmitri out of a major portion of the inheritance. It is also noteworthy that, of the three sons, Dmitri is the only one whom the father intensely dislikes. This is easily explained: the other two sons make no financial demands upon the father; only Dmitri insists upon having his inheritance. Following his thorough characterization of the older Karamazov, Dostoevsky devotes the next several chapters to the offspring -- the brothers Karamazov, as different from one another as can be imagined. Dmitri, throughout the novel, develops into the extreme sensualist, the emotional son. He did not complete his education; instead, he worked his way up through the military ranks to become an officer. He lacked discipline, however, and soon became involved in a duel and was demoted. Later he gained promotion again. But his deeds and emotions are fluid and fluctuating. He has, for instance, an instinctive dislike for his father but forms an immediate friendship with his brother Alyosha. He is the fiery-hearted, fierce, and emotional person who is easily swayed by his feelings. Ivan, on the other hand, is the cold intellectual. At an early age, he developed his propensity for study and his unusual aptitude for learning. He is the very proud son, always conscious that his early training was at someone else's expense. He began, therefore, as soon as possible, to write reviews in order to support himself, and before arriving in his native town, he has published a widely read, widely discussed article about the ecclesiastical courts. This article is the subject of a conversation in the next book between the monks and Ivan. In contrast to his two brothers, Alyosha has none of Ivan's pride, nor is he as fiery as Dmitri. He is \"simply an early lover of humanity,\" one who always tries to see the best side of everyone. He possesses an implicit trust in all people and, in all his relationships, he never judges others. Beneath his modest exterior, however, is a penetrating and understanding mind that detects many subtleties and distinctions. Alyosha is of course deeply religious but he is not the fanatical sort who bases his faith upon miracles. He is the complete realist who arrived at his beliefs concerning immortality and God through reasoning. While presenting the characteristics of the three Karamazov sons, Dostoevsky introduces another principal theme -- the conflict between faith and disbelief. Alyosha and Ivan represent the two opposite poles of acceptance, and it is only natural that they do not become intimate friends at first. Alyosha, however, is perceptive enough to understand Ivan's problem. He knows that \"Ivan was absorbed in something -- something inward and important that he was striving toward, some goal, perhaps very hard to attain and that was why he had no thought for him.\" Looking forward, we realize that Ivan will forever struggle with the idea of belief and immortality and that this struggle will form one of the most dramatic sections of the novel. In contrast, Dmitri will slowly become a person of faith. He and Alyosha, consequently, become intimate friends from the very beginning. In all his writing, Dostoevsky was interested in the psychology of actions. He was particularly interested in the nature of contradictory actions. Many of his characters therefore perform actions that do not seem consistent with their personalities. Dostoevsky often investigates this idea in an attempt to understand why a person who acts in a certain manner will often perform an action that seemingly contradicts his nature. In the character of the father, for example, he shows Fyodor visiting the grave of his first wife and being so touched by her memory that he gives a thousand rubles to the monastery for requiems. For a man usually so miserly with money and not professing a belief in God, this action is strange and contradictory. Dostoevsky comments that \"strange impulses of sudden feeling and sudden thought are common in such types.\" Later he also writes that Fyodor \"was wicked and sentimental,\" and, even though the question of contradictory actions is never solved by Dostoevsky, it does occupy portions of the novel, and the reader should be aware of the investigation. The introduction of Zossima concludes the first book, the brief introduction being a transitional device. Zossima, one should be aware, will hold center stage in the following section. His role is important because he is antithetical to all but one of the vigorous Karamazov clan. He is a passive sort, yet he influences the decisive actions of Alyosha and thus influences the course of the novel. Dostoevsky attempts, in the character of the elder, to present the almost perfect person, and his characterization is convincing. So convincing, in fact, is it to Alyosha that his beliefs are shaken at Zossima's death. He has convinced himself that after the elder's death, Zossima would bring extraordinary glory to the monastery. Death is rarely that simple. The fact that Zossima decomposes so rapidly weighs heavily on Alyosha, and he is therefore tempted to question the validity of God's justice."}

PART I Book I. The History Of A Family Chapter I. Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, a land owner well known in our district in his own day, and still remembered among us owing to his gloomy and tragic death, which happened thirteen years ago, and which I shall describe in its proper place. For the present I will only say that this "landowner"--for so we used to call him, although he hardly spent a day of his life on his own estate--was a strange type, yet one pretty frequently to be met with, a type abject and vicious and at the same time senseless. But he was one of those senseless persons who are very well capable of looking after their worldly affairs, and, apparently, after nothing else. Fyodor Pavlovitch, for instance, began with next to nothing; his estate was of the smallest; he ran to dine at other men's tables, and fastened on them as a toady, yet at his death it appeared that he had a hundred thousand roubles in hard cash. At the same time, he was all his life one of the most senseless, fantastical fellows in the whole district. I repeat, it was not stupidity--the majority of these fantastical fellows are shrewd and intelligent enough--but just senselessness, and a peculiar national form of it. He was married twice, and had three sons, the eldest, Dmitri, by his first wife, and two, Ivan and Alexey, by his second. Fyodor Pavlovitch's first wife, Adelaida Ivanovna, belonged to a fairly rich and distinguished noble family, also landowners in our district, the Miuesovs. How it came to pass that an heiress, who was also a beauty, and moreover one of those vigorous, intelligent girls, so common in this generation, but sometimes also to be found in the last, could have married such a worthless, puny weakling, as we all called him, I won't attempt to explain. I knew a young lady of the last "romantic" generation who after some years of an enigmatic passion for a gentleman, whom she might quite easily have married at any moment, invented insuperable obstacles to their union, and ended by throwing herself one stormy night into a rather deep and rapid river from a high bank, almost a precipice, and so perished, entirely to satisfy her own caprice, and to be like Shakespeare's Ophelia. Indeed, if this precipice, a chosen and favorite spot of hers, had been less picturesque, if there had been a prosaic flat bank in its place, most likely the suicide would never have taken place. This is a fact, and probably there have been not a few similar instances in the last two or three generations. Adelaida Ivanovna Miuesov's action was similarly, no doubt, an echo of other people's ideas, and was due to the irritation caused by lack of mental freedom. She wanted, perhaps, to show her feminine independence, to override class distinctions and the despotism of her family. And a pliable imagination persuaded her, we must suppose, for a brief moment, that Fyodor Pavlovitch, in spite of his parasitic position, was one of the bold and ironical spirits of that progressive epoch, though he was, in fact, an ill-natured buffoon and nothing more. What gave the marriage piquancy was that it was preceded by an elopement, and this greatly captivated Adelaida Ivanovna's fancy. Fyodor Pavlovitch's position at the time made him specially eager for any such enterprise, for he was passionately anxious to make a career in one way or another. To attach himself to a good family and obtain a dowry was an alluring prospect. As for mutual love it did not exist apparently, either in the bride or in him, in spite of Adelaida Ivanovna's beauty. This was, perhaps, a unique case of the kind in the life of Fyodor Pavlovitch, who was always of a voluptuous temper, and ready to run after any petticoat on the slightest encouragement. She seems to have been the only woman who made no particular appeal to his senses. Immediately after the elopement Adelaida Ivanovna discerned in a flash that she had no feeling for her husband but contempt. The marriage accordingly showed itself in its true colors with extraordinary rapidity. Although the family accepted the event pretty quickly and apportioned the runaway bride her dowry, the husband and wife began to lead a most disorderly life, and there were everlasting scenes between them. It was said that the young wife showed incomparably more generosity and dignity than Fyodor Pavlovitch, who, as is now known, got hold of all her money up to twenty-five thousand roubles as soon as she received it, so that those thousands were lost to her for ever. The little village and the rather fine town house which formed part of her dowry he did his utmost for a long time to transfer to his name, by means of some deed of conveyance. He would probably have succeeded, merely from her moral fatigue and desire to get rid of him, and from the contempt and loathing he aroused by his persistent and shameless importunity. But, fortunately, Adelaida Ivanovna's family intervened and circumvented his greediness. It is known for a fact that frequent fights took place between the husband and wife, but rumor had it that Fyodor Pavlovitch did not beat his wife but was beaten by her, for she was a hot-tempered, bold, dark-browed, impatient woman, possessed of remarkable physical strength. Finally, she left the house and ran away from Fyodor Pavlovitch with a destitute divinity student, leaving Mitya, a child of three years old, in her husband's hands. Immediately Fyodor Pavlovitch introduced a regular harem into the house, and abandoned himself to orgies of drunkenness. In the intervals he used to drive all over the province, complaining tearfully to each and all of Adelaida Ivanovna's having left him, going into details too disgraceful for a husband to mention in regard to his own married life. What seemed to gratify him and flatter his self-love most was to play the ridiculous part of the injured husband, and to parade his woes with embellishments. "One would think that you'd got a promotion, Fyodor Pavlovitch, you seem so pleased in spite of your sorrow," scoffers said to him. Many even added that he was glad of a new comic part in which to play the buffoon, and that it was simply to make it funnier that he pretended to be unaware of his ludicrous position. But, who knows, it may have been simplicity. At last he succeeded in getting on the track of his runaway wife. The poor woman turned out to be in Petersburg, where she had gone with her divinity student, and where she had thrown herself into a life of complete emancipation. Fyodor Pavlovitch at once began bustling about, making preparations to go to Petersburg, with what object he could not himself have said. He would perhaps have really gone; but having determined to do so he felt at once entitled to fortify himself for the journey by another bout of reckless drinking. And just at that time his wife's family received the news of her death in Petersburg. She had died quite suddenly in a garret, according to one story, of typhus, or as another version had it, of starvation. Fyodor Pavlovitch was drunk when he heard of his wife's death, and the story is that he ran out into the street and began shouting with joy, raising his hands to Heaven: "Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace," but others say he wept without restraint like a little child, so much so that people were sorry for him, in spite of the repulsion he inspired. It is quite possible that both versions were true, that he rejoiced at his release, and at the same time wept for her who released him. As a general rule, people, even the wicked, are much more naive and simple-hearted than we suppose. And we ourselves are, too. Chapter II. He Gets Rid Of His Eldest Son You can easily imagine what a father such a man could be and how he would bring up his children. His behavior as a father was exactly what might be expected. He completely abandoned the child of his marriage with Adelaida Ivanovna, not from malice, nor because of his matrimonial grievances, but simply because he forgot him. While he was wearying every one with his tears and complaints, and turning his house into a sink of debauchery, a faithful servant of the family, Grigory, took the three-year-old Mitya into his care. If he hadn't looked after him there would have been no one even to change the baby's little shirt. It happened moreover that the child's relations on his mother's side forgot him too at first. His grandfather was no longer living, his widow, Mitya's grandmother, had moved to Moscow, and was seriously ill, while his daughters were married, so that Mitya remained for almost a whole year in old Grigory's charge and lived with him in the servant's cottage. But if his father had remembered him (he could not, indeed, have been altogether unaware of his existence) he would have sent him back to the cottage, as the child would only have been in the way of his debaucheries. But a cousin of Mitya's mother, Pyotr Alexandrovitch Miuesov, happened to return from Paris. He lived for many years afterwards abroad, but was at that time quite a young man, and distinguished among the Miuesovs as a man of enlightened ideas and of European culture, who had been in the capitals and abroad. Towards the end of his life he became a Liberal of the type common in the forties and fifties. In the course of his career he had come into contact with many of the most Liberal men of his epoch, both in Russia and abroad. He had known Proudhon and Bakunin personally, and in his declining years was very fond of describing the three days of the Paris Revolution of February 1848, hinting that he himself had almost taken part in the fighting on the barricades. This was one of the most grateful recollections of his youth. He had an independent property of about a thousand souls, to reckon in the old style. His splendid estate lay on the outskirts of our little town and bordered on the lands of our famous monastery, with which Pyotr Alexandrovitch began an endless lawsuit, almost as soon as he came into the estate, concerning the rights of fishing in the river or wood-cutting in the forest, I don't know exactly which. He regarded it as his duty as a citizen and a man of culture to open an attack upon the "clericals." Hearing all about Adelaida Ivanovna, whom he, of course, remembered, and in whom he had at one time been interested, and learning of the existence of Mitya, he intervened, in spite of all his youthful indignation and contempt for Fyodor Pavlovitch. He made the latter's acquaintance for the first time, and told him directly that he wished to undertake the child's education. He used long afterwards to tell as a characteristic touch, that when he began to speak of Mitya, Fyodor Pavlovitch looked for some time as though he did not understand what child he was talking about, and even as though he was surprised to hear that he had a little son in the house. The story may have been exaggerated, yet it must have been something like the truth. Fyodor Pavlovitch was all his life fond of acting, of suddenly playing an unexpected part, sometimes without any motive for doing so, and even to his own direct disadvantage, as, for instance, in the present case. This habit, however, is characteristic of a very great number of people, some of them very clever ones, not like Fyodor Pavlovitch. Pyotr Alexandrovitch carried the business through vigorously, and was appointed, with Fyodor Pavlovitch, joint guardian of the child, who had a small property, a house and land, left him by his mother. Mitya did, in fact, pass into this cousin's keeping, but as the latter had no family of his own, and after securing the revenues of his estates was in haste to return at once to Paris, he left the boy in charge of one of his cousins, a lady living in Moscow. It came to pass that, settling permanently in Paris he, too, forgot the child, especially when the Revolution of February broke out, making an impression on his mind that he remembered all the rest of his life. The Moscow lady died, and Mitya passed into the care of one of her married daughters. I believe he changed his home a fourth time later on. I won't enlarge upon that now, as I shall have much to tell later of Fyodor Pavlovitch's firstborn, and must confine myself now to the most essential facts about him, without which I could not begin my story. In the first place, this Mitya, or rather Dmitri Fyodorovitch, was the only one of Fyodor Pavlovitch's three sons who grew up in the belief that he had property, and that he would be independent on coming of age. He spent an irregular boyhood and youth. He did not finish his studies at the gymnasium, he got into a military school, then went to the Caucasus, was promoted, fought a duel, and was degraded to the ranks, earned promotion again, led a wild life, and spent a good deal of money. He did not begin to receive any income from Fyodor Pavlovitch until he came of age, and until then got into debt. He saw and knew his father, Fyodor Pavlovitch, for the first time on coming of age, when he visited our neighborhood on purpose to settle with him about his property. He seems not to have liked his father. He did not stay long with him, and made haste to get away, having only succeeded in obtaining a sum of money, and entering into an agreement for future payments from the estate, of the revenues and value of which he was unable (a fact worthy of note), upon this occasion, to get a statement from his father. Fyodor Pavlovitch remarked for the first time then (this, too, should be noted) that Mitya had a vague and exaggerated idea of his property. Fyodor Pavlovitch was very well satisfied with this, as it fell in with his own designs. He gathered only that the young man was frivolous, unruly, of violent passions, impatient, and dissipated, and that if he could only obtain ready money he would be satisfied, although only, of course, for a short time. So Fyodor Pavlovitch began to take advantage of this fact, sending him from time to time small doles, installments. In the end, when four years later, Mitya, losing patience, came a second time to our little town to settle up once for all with his father, it turned out to his amazement that he had nothing, that it was difficult to get an account even, that he had received the whole value of his property in sums of money from Fyodor Pavlovitch, and was perhaps even in debt to him, that by various agreements into which he had, of his own desire, entered at various previous dates, he had no right to expect anything more, and so on, and so on. The young man was overwhelmed, suspected deceit and cheating, and was almost beside himself. And, indeed, this circumstance led to the catastrophe, the account of which forms the subject of my first introductory story, or rather the external side of it. But before I pass to that story I must say a little of Fyodor Pavlovitch's other two sons, and of their origin. Chapter III. The Second Marriage And The Second Family Very shortly after getting his four-year-old Mitya off his hands Fyodor Pavlovitch married a second time. His second marriage lasted eight years. He took this second wife, Sofya Ivanovna, also a very young girl, from another province, where he had gone upon some small piece of business in company with a Jew. Though Fyodor Pavlovitch was a drunkard and a vicious debauchee he never neglected investing his capital, and managed his business affairs very successfully, though, no doubt, not over- scrupulously. Sofya Ivanovna was the daughter of an obscure deacon, and was left from childhood an orphan without relations. She grew up in the house of a general's widow, a wealthy old lady of good position, who was at once her benefactress and tormentor. I do not know the details, but I have only heard that the orphan girl, a meek and gentle creature, was once cut down from a halter in which she was hanging from a nail in the loft, so terrible were her sufferings from the caprice and everlasting nagging of this old woman, who was apparently not bad-hearted but had become an insufferable tyrant through idleness. Fyodor Pavlovitch made her an offer; inquiries were made about him and he was refused. But again, as in his first marriage, he proposed an elopement to the orphan girl. There is very little doubt that she would not on any account have married him if she had known a little more about him in time. But she lived in another province; besides, what could a little girl of sixteen know about it, except that she would be better at the bottom of the river than remaining with her benefactress. So the poor child exchanged a benefactress for a benefactor. Fyodor Pavlovitch did not get a penny this time, for the general's widow was furious. She gave them nothing and cursed them both. But he had not reckoned on a dowry; what allured him was the remarkable beauty of the innocent girl, above all her innocent appearance, which had a peculiar attraction for a vicious profligate, who had hitherto admired only the coarser types of feminine beauty. "Those innocent eyes slit my soul up like a razor," he used to say afterwards, with his loathsome snigger. In a man so depraved this might, of course, mean no more than sensual attraction. As he had received no dowry with his wife, and had, so to speak, taken her "from the halter," he did not stand on ceremony with her. Making her feel that she had "wronged" him, he took advantage of her phenomenal meekness and submissiveness to trample on the elementary decencies of marriage. He gathered loose women into his house, and carried on orgies of debauchery in his wife's presence. To show what a pass things had come to, I may mention that Grigory, the gloomy, stupid, obstinate, argumentative servant, who had always hated his first mistress, Adelaida Ivanovna, took the side of his new mistress. He championed her cause, abusing Fyodor Pavlovitch in a manner little befitting a servant, and on one occasion broke up the revels and drove all the disorderly women out of the house. In the end this unhappy young woman, kept in terror from her childhood, fell into that kind of nervous disease which is most frequently found in peasant women who are said to be "possessed by devils." At times after terrible fits of hysterics she even lost her reason. Yet she bore Fyodor Pavlovitch two sons, Ivan and Alexey, the eldest in the first year of marriage and the second three years later. When she died, little Alexey was in his fourth year, and, strange as it seems, I know that he remembered his mother all his life, like a dream, of course. At her death almost exactly the same thing happened to the two little boys as to their elder brother, Mitya. They were completely forgotten and abandoned by their father. They were looked after by the same Grigory and lived in his cottage, where they were found by the tyrannical old lady who had brought up their mother. She was still alive, and had not, all those eight years, forgotten the insult done her. All that time she was obtaining exact information as to her Sofya's manner of life, and hearing of her illness and hideous surroundings she declared aloud two or three times to her retainers: "It serves her right. God has punished her for her ingratitude." Exactly three months after Sofya Ivanovna's death the general's widow suddenly appeared in our town, and went straight to Fyodor Pavlovitch's house. She spent only half an hour in the town but she did a great deal. It was evening. Fyodor Pavlovitch, whom she had not seen for those eight years, came in to her drunk. The story is that instantly upon seeing him, without any sort of explanation, she gave him two good, resounding slaps on the face, seized him by a tuft of hair, and shook him three times up and down. Then, without a word, she went straight to the cottage to the two boys. Seeing, at the first glance, that they were unwashed and in dirty linen, she promptly gave Grigory, too, a box on the ear, and announcing that she would carry off both the children she wrapped them just as they were in a rug, put them in the carriage, and drove off to her own town. Grigory accepted the blow like a devoted slave, without a word, and when he escorted the old lady to her carriage he made her a low bow and pronounced impressively that, "God would repay her for the orphans." "You are a blockhead all the same," the old lady shouted to him as she drove away. Fyodor Pavlovitch, thinking it over, decided that it was a good thing, and did not refuse the general's widow his formal consent to any proposition in regard to his children's education. As for the slaps she had given him, he drove all over the town telling the story. It happened that the old lady died soon after this, but she left the boys in her will a thousand roubles each "for their instruction, and so that all be spent on them exclusively, with the condition that it be so portioned out as to last till they are twenty-one, for it is more than adequate provision for such children. If other people think fit to throw away their money, let them." I have not read the will myself, but I heard there was something queer of the sort, very whimsically expressed. The principal heir, Yefim Petrovitch Polenov, the Marshal of Nobility of the province, turned out, however, to be an honest man. Writing to Fyodor Pavlovitch, and discerning at once that he could extract nothing from him for his children's education (though the latter never directly refused but only procrastinated as he always did in such cases, and was, indeed, at times effusively sentimental), Yefim Petrovitch took a personal interest in the orphans. He became especially fond of the younger, Alexey, who lived for a long while as one of his family. I beg the reader to note this from the beginning. And to Yefim Petrovitch, a man of a generosity and humanity rarely to be met with, the young people were more indebted for their education and bringing up than to any one. He kept the two thousand roubles left to them by the general's widow intact, so that by the time they came of age their portions had been doubled by the accumulation of interest. He educated them both at his own expense, and certainly spent far more than a thousand roubles upon each of them. I won't enter into a detailed account of their boyhood and youth, but will only mention a few of the most important events. Of the elder, Ivan, I will only say that he grew into a somewhat morose and reserved, though far from timid boy. At ten years old he had realized that they were living not in their own home but on other people's charity, and that their father was a man of whom it was disgraceful to speak. This boy began very early, almost in his infancy (so they say at least), to show a brilliant and unusual aptitude for learning. I don't know precisely why, but he left the family of Yefim Petrovitch when he was hardly thirteen, entering a Moscow gymnasium, and boarding with an experienced and celebrated teacher, an old friend of Yefim Petrovitch. Ivan used to declare afterwards that this was all due to the "ardor for good works" of Yefim Petrovitch, who was captivated by the idea that the boy's genius should be trained by a teacher of genius. But neither Yefim Petrovitch nor this teacher was living when the young man finished at the gymnasium and entered the university. As Yefim Petrovitch had made no provision for the payment of the tyrannical old lady's legacy, which had grown from one thousand to two, it was delayed, owing to formalities inevitable in Russia, and the young man was in great straits for the first two years at the university, as he was forced to keep himself all the time he was studying. It must be noted that he did not even attempt to communicate with his father, perhaps from pride, from contempt for him, or perhaps from his cool common sense, which told him that from such a father he would get no real assistance. However that may have been, the young man was by no means despondent and succeeded in getting work, at first giving sixpenny lessons and afterwards getting paragraphs on street incidents into the newspapers under the signature of "Eye-Witness." These paragraphs, it was said, were so interesting and piquant that they were soon taken. This alone showed the young man's practical and intellectual superiority over the masses of needy and unfortunate students of both sexes who hang about the offices of the newspapers and journals, unable to think of anything better than everlasting entreaties for copying and translations from the French. Having once got into touch with the editors Ivan Fyodorovitch always kept up his connection with them, and in his latter years at the university he published brilliant reviews of books upon various special subjects, so that he became well known in literary circles. But only in his last year he suddenly succeeded in attracting the attention of a far wider circle of readers, so that a great many people noticed and remembered him. It was rather a curious incident. When he had just left the university and was preparing to go abroad upon his two thousand roubles, Ivan Fyodorovitch published in one of the more important journals a strange article, which attracted general notice, on a subject of which he might have been supposed to know nothing, as he was a student of natural science. The article dealt with a subject which was being debated everywhere at the time--the position of the ecclesiastical courts. After discussing several opinions on the subject he went on to explain his own view. What was most striking about the article was its tone, and its unexpected conclusion. Many of the Church party regarded him unquestioningly as on their side. And yet not only the secularists but even atheists joined them in their applause. Finally some sagacious persons opined that the article was nothing but an impudent satirical burlesque. I mention this incident particularly because this article penetrated into the famous monastery in our neighborhood, where the inmates, being particularly interested in the question of the ecclesiastical courts, were completely bewildered by it. Learning the author's name, they were interested in his being a native of the town and the son of "that Fyodor Pavlovitch." And just then it was that the author himself made his appearance among us. Why Ivan Fyodorovitch had come amongst us I remember asking myself at the time with a certain uneasiness. This fateful visit, which was the first step leading to so many consequences, I never fully explained to myself. It seemed strange on the face of it that a young man so learned, so proud, and apparently so cautious, should suddenly visit such an infamous house and a father who had ignored him all his life, hardly knew him, never thought of him, and would not under any circumstances have given him money, though he was always afraid that his sons Ivan and Alexey would also come to ask him for it. And here the young man was staying in the house of such a father, had been living with him for two months, and they were on the best possible terms. This last fact was a special cause of wonder to many others as well as to me. Pyotr Alexandrovitch Miuesov, of whom we have spoken already, the cousin of Fyodor Pavlovitch's first wife, happened to be in the neighborhood again on a visit to his estate. He had come from Paris, which was his permanent home. I remember that he was more surprised than any one when he made the acquaintance of the young man, who interested him extremely, and with whom he sometimes argued and not without an inner pang compared himself in acquirements. "He is proud," he used to say, "he will never be in want of pence; he has got money enough to go abroad now. What does he want here? Every one can see that he hasn't come for money, for his father would never give him any. He has no taste for drink and dissipation, and yet his father can't do without him. They get on so well together!" That was the truth; the young man had an unmistakable influence over his father, who positively appeared to be behaving more decently and even seemed at times ready to obey his son, though often extremely and even spitefully perverse. It was only later that we learned that Ivan had come partly at the request of, and in the interests of, his elder brother, Dmitri, whom he saw for the first time on this very visit, though he had before leaving Moscow been in correspondence with him about an important matter of more concern to Dmitri than himself. What that business was the reader will learn fully in due time. Yet even when I did know of this special circumstance I still felt Ivan Fyodorovitch to be an enigmatic figure, and thought his visit rather mysterious. I may add that Ivan appeared at the time in the light of a mediator between his father and his elder brother Dmitri, who was in open quarrel with his father and even planning to bring an action against him. The family, I repeat, was now united for the first time, and some of its members met for the first time in their lives. The younger brother, Alexey, had been a year already among us, having been the first of the three to arrive. It is of that brother Alexey I find it most difficult to speak in this introduction. Yet I must give some preliminary account of him, if only to explain one queer fact, which is that I have to introduce my hero to the reader wearing the cassock of a novice. Yes, he had been for the last year in our monastery, and seemed willing to be cloistered there for the rest of his life. Chapter IV. The Third Son, Alyosha He was only twenty, his brother Ivan was in his twenty-fourth year at the time, while their elder brother Dmitri was twenty-seven. First of all, I must explain that this young man, Alyosha, was not a fanatic, and, in my opinion at least, was not even a mystic. I may as well give my full opinion from the beginning. He was simply an early lover of humanity, and that he adopted the monastic life was simply because at that time it struck him, so to say, as the ideal escape for his soul struggling from the darkness of worldly wickedness to the light of love. And the reason this life struck him in this way was that he found in it at that time, as he thought, an extraordinary being, our celebrated elder, Zossima, to whom he became attached with all the warm first love of his ardent heart. But I do not dispute that he was very strange even at that time, and had been so indeed from his cradle. I have mentioned already, by the way, that though he lost his mother in his fourth year he remembered her all his life--her face, her caresses, "as though she stood living before me." Such memories may persist, as every one knows, from an even earlier age, even from two years old, but scarcely standing out through a whole lifetime like spots of light out of darkness, like a corner torn out of a huge picture, which has all faded and disappeared except that fragment. That is how it was with him. He remembered one still summer evening, an open window, the slanting rays of the setting sun (that he recalled most vividly of all); in a corner of the room the holy image, before it a lighted lamp, and on her knees before the image his mother, sobbing hysterically with cries and moans, snatching him up in both arms, squeezing him close till it hurt, and praying for him to the Mother of God, holding him out in both arms to the image as though to put him under the Mother's protection ... and suddenly a nurse runs in and snatches him from her in terror. That was the picture! And Alyosha remembered his mother's face at that minute. He used to say that it was frenzied but beautiful as he remembered. But he rarely cared to speak of this memory to any one. In his childhood and youth he was by no means expansive, and talked little indeed, but not from shyness or a sullen unsociability; quite the contrary, from something different, from a sort of inner preoccupation entirely personal and unconcerned with other people, but so important to him that he seemed, as it were, to forget others on account of it. But he was fond of people: he seemed throughout his life to put implicit trust in people: yet no one ever looked on him as a simpleton or naive person. There was something about him which made one feel at once (and it was so all his life afterwards) that he did not care to be a judge of others--that he would never take it upon himself to criticize and would never condemn any one for anything. He seemed, indeed, to accept everything without the least condemnation though often grieving bitterly: and this was so much so that no one could surprise or frighten him even in his earliest youth. Coming at twenty to his father's house, which was a very sink of filthy debauchery, he, chaste and pure as he was, simply withdrew in silence when to look on was unbearable, but without the slightest sign of contempt or condemnation. His father, who had once been in a dependent position, and so was sensitive and ready to take offense, met him at first with distrust and sullenness. "He does not say much," he used to say, "and thinks the more." But soon, within a fortnight indeed, he took to embracing him and kissing him terribly often, with drunken tears, with sottish sentimentality, yet he evidently felt a real and deep affection for him, such as he had never been capable of feeling for any one before. Every one, indeed, loved this young man wherever he went, and it was so from his earliest childhood. When he entered the household of his patron and benefactor, Yefim Petrovitch Polenov, he gained the hearts of all the family, so that they looked on him quite as their own child. Yet he entered the house at such a tender age that he could not have acted from design nor artfulness in winning affection. So that the gift of making himself loved directly and unconsciously was inherent in him, in his very nature, so to speak. It was the same at school, though he seemed to be just one of those children who are distrusted, sometimes ridiculed, and even disliked by their schoolfellows. He was dreamy, for instance, and rather solitary. From his earliest childhood he was fond of creeping into a corner to read, and yet he was a general favorite all the while he was at school. He was rarely playful or merry, but any one could see at the first glance that this was not from any sullenness. On the contrary he was bright and good-tempered. He never tried to show off among his schoolfellows. Perhaps because of this, he was never afraid of any one, yet the boys immediately understood that he was not proud of his fearlessness and seemed to be unaware that he was bold and courageous. He never resented an insult. It would happen that an hour after the offense he would address the offender or answer some question with as trustful and candid an expression as though nothing had happened between them. And it was not that he seemed to have forgotten or intentionally forgiven the affront, but simply that he did not regard it as an affront, and this completely conquered and captivated the boys. He had one characteristic which made all his schoolfellows from the bottom class to the top want to mock at him, not from malice but because it amused them. This characteristic was a wild fanatical modesty and chastity. He could not bear to hear certain words and certain conversations about women. There are "certain" words and conversations unhappily impossible to eradicate in schools. Boys pure in mind and heart, almost children, are fond of talking in school among themselves, and even aloud, of things, pictures, and images of which even soldiers would sometimes hesitate to speak. More than that, much that soldiers have no knowledge or conception of is familiar to quite young children of our intellectual and higher classes. There is no moral depravity, no real corrupt inner cynicism in it, but there is the appearance of it, and it is often looked upon among them as something refined, subtle, daring, and worthy of imitation. Seeing that Alyosha Karamazov put his fingers in his ears when they talked of "that," they used sometimes to crowd round him, pull his hands away, and shout nastiness into both ears, while he struggled, slipped to the floor, tried to hide himself without uttering one word of abuse, enduring their insults in silence. But at last they left him alone and gave up taunting him with being a "regular girl," and what's more they looked upon it with compassion as a weakness. He was always one of the best in the class but was never first. At the time of Yefim Petrovitch's death Alyosha had two more years to complete at the provincial gymnasium. The inconsolable widow went almost immediately after his death for a long visit to Italy with her whole family, which consisted only of women and girls. Alyosha went to live in the house of two distant relations of Yefim Petrovitch, ladies whom he had never seen before. On what terms he lived with them he did not know himself. It was very characteristic of him, indeed, that he never cared at whose expense he was living. In that respect he was a striking contrast to his elder brother Ivan, who struggled with poverty for his first two years in the university, maintained himself by his own efforts, and had from childhood been bitterly conscious of living at the expense of his benefactor. But this strange trait in Alyosha's character must not, I think, be criticized too severely, for at the slightest acquaintance with him any one would have perceived that Alyosha was one of those youths, almost of the type of religious enthusiast, who, if they were suddenly to come into possession of a large fortune, would not hesitate to give it away for the asking, either for good works or perhaps to a clever rogue. In general he seemed scarcely to know the value of money, not, of course, in a literal sense. When he was given pocket-money, which he never asked for, he was either terribly careless of it so that it was gone in a moment, or he kept it for weeks together, not knowing what to do with it. In later years Pyotr Alexandrovitch Miuesov, a man very sensitive on the score of money and bourgeois honesty, pronounced the following judgment, after getting to know Alyosha: "Here is perhaps the one man in the world whom you might leave alone without a penny, in the center of an unknown town of a million inhabitants, and he would not come to harm, he would not die of cold and hunger, for he would be fed and sheltered at once; and if he were not, he would find a shelter for himself, and it would cost him no effort or humiliation. And to shelter him would be no burden, but, on the contrary, would probably be looked on as a pleasure." He did not finish his studies at the gymnasium. A year before the end of the course he suddenly announced to the ladies that he was going to see his father about a plan which had occurred to him. They were sorry and unwilling to let him go. The journey was not an expensive one, and the ladies would not let him pawn his watch, a parting present from his benefactor's family. They provided him liberally with money and even fitted him out with new clothes and linen. But he returned half the money they gave him, saying that he intended to go third class. On his arrival in the town he made no answer to his father's first inquiry why he had come before completing his studies, and seemed, so they say, unusually thoughtful. It soon became apparent that he was looking for his mother's tomb. He practically acknowledged at the time that that was the only object of his visit. But it can hardly have been the whole reason of it. It is more probable that he himself did not understand and could not explain what had suddenly arisen in his soul, and drawn him irresistibly into a new, unknown, but inevitable path. Fyodor Pavlovitch could not show him where his second wife was buried, for he had never visited her grave since he had thrown earth upon her coffin, and in the course of years had entirely forgotten where she was buried. Fyodor Pavlovitch, by the way, had for some time previously not been living in our town. Three or four years after his wife's death he had gone to the south of Russia and finally turned up in Odessa, where he spent several years. He made the acquaintance at first, in his own words, "of a lot of low Jews, Jewesses, and Jewkins," and ended by being received by "Jews high and low alike." It may be presumed that at this period he developed a peculiar faculty for making and hoarding money. He finally returned to our town only three years before Alyosha's arrival. His former acquaintances found him looking terribly aged, although he was by no means an old man. He behaved not exactly with more dignity but with more effrontery. The former buffoon showed an insolent propensity for making buffoons of others. His depravity with women was not simply what it used to be, but even more revolting. In a short time he opened a great number of new taverns in the district. It was evident that he had perhaps a hundred thousand roubles or not much less. Many of the inhabitants of the town and district were soon in his debt, and, of course, had given good security. Of late, too, he looked somehow bloated and seemed more irresponsible, more uneven, had sunk into a sort of incoherence, used to begin one thing and go on with another, as though he were letting himself go altogether. He was more and more frequently drunk. And, if it had not been for the same servant Grigory, who by that time had aged considerably too, and used to look after him sometimes almost like a tutor, Fyodor Pavlovitch might have got into terrible scrapes. Alyosha's arrival seemed to affect even his moral side, as though something had awakened in this prematurely old man which had long been dead in his soul. "Do you know," he used often to say, looking at Alyosha, "that you are like her, 'the crazy woman' "--that was what he used to call his dead wife, Alyosha's mother. Grigory it was who pointed out the "crazy woman's" grave to Alyosha. He took him to our town cemetery and showed him in a remote corner a cast-iron tombstone, cheap but decently kept, on which were inscribed the name and age of the deceased and the date of her death, and below a four-lined verse, such as are commonly used on old-fashioned middle-class tombs. To Alyosha's amazement this tomb turned out to be Grigory's doing. He had put it up on the poor "crazy woman's" grave at his own expense, after Fyodor Pavlovitch, whom he had often pestered about the grave, had gone to Odessa, abandoning the grave and all his memories. Alyosha showed no particular emotion at the sight of his mother's grave. He only listened to Grigory's minute and solemn account of the erection of the tomb; he stood with bowed head and walked away without uttering a word. It was perhaps a year before he visited the cemetery again. But this little episode was not without an influence upon Fyodor Pavlovitch--and a very original one. He suddenly took a thousand roubles to our monastery to pay for requiems for the soul of his wife; but not for the second, Alyosha's mother, the "crazy woman," but for the first, Adelaida Ivanovna, who used to thrash him. In the evening of the same day he got drunk and abused the monks to Alyosha. He himself was far from being religious; he had probably never put a penny candle before the image of a saint. Strange impulses of sudden feeling and sudden thought are common in such types. I have mentioned already that he looked bloated. His countenance at this time bore traces of something that testified unmistakably to the life he had led. Besides the long fleshy bags under his little, always insolent, suspicious, and ironical eyes; besides the multitude of deep wrinkles in his little fat face, the Adam's apple hung below his sharp chin like a great, fleshy goiter, which gave him a peculiar, repulsive, sensual appearance; add to that a long rapacious mouth with full lips, between which could be seen little stumps of black decayed teeth. He slobbered every time he began to speak. He was fond indeed of making fun of his own face, though, I believe, he was well satisfied with it. He used particularly to point to his nose, which was not very large, but very delicate and conspicuously aquiline. "A regular Roman nose," he used to say, "with my goiter I've quite the countenance of an ancient Roman patrician of the decadent period." He seemed proud of it. Not long after visiting his mother's grave Alyosha suddenly announced that he wanted to enter the monastery, and that the monks were willing to receive him as a novice. He explained that this was his strong desire, and that he was solemnly asking his consent as his father. The old man knew that the elder Zossima, who was living in the monastery hermitage, had made a special impression upon his "gentle boy." "That is the most honest monk among them, of course," he observed, after listening in thoughtful silence to Alyosha, and seeming scarcely surprised at his request. "H'm!... So that's where you want to be, my gentle boy?" He was half drunk, and suddenly he grinned his slow half-drunken grin, which was not without a certain cunning and tipsy slyness. "H'm!... I had a presentiment that you would end in something like this. Would you believe it? You were making straight for it. Well, to be sure you have your own two thousand. That's a dowry for you. And I'll never desert you, my angel. And I'll pay what's wanted for you there, if they ask for it. But, of course, if they don't ask, why should we worry them? What do you say? You know, you spend money like a canary, two grains a week. H'm!... Do you know that near one monastery there's a place outside the town where every baby knows there are none but 'the monks' wives' living, as they are called. Thirty women, I believe. I have been there myself. You know, it's interesting in its own way, of course, as a variety. The worst of it is it's awfully Russian. There are no French women there. Of course they could get them fast enough, they have plenty of money. If they get to hear of it they'll come along. Well, there's nothing of that sort here, no 'monks' wives,' and two hundred monks. They're honest. They keep the fasts. I admit it.... H'm.... So you want to be a monk? And do you know I'm sorry to lose you, Alyosha; would you believe it, I've really grown fond of you? Well, it's a good opportunity. You'll pray for us sinners; we have sinned too much here. I've always been thinking who would pray for me, and whether there's any one in the world to do it. My dear boy, I'm awfully stupid about that. You wouldn't believe it. Awfully. You see, however stupid I am about it, I keep thinking, I keep thinking--from time to time, of course, not all the while. It's impossible, I think, for the devils to forget to drag me down to hell with their hooks when I die. Then I wonder--hooks? Where would they get them? What of? Iron hooks? Where do they forge them? Have they a foundry there of some sort? The monks in the monastery probably believe that there's a ceiling in hell, for instance. Now I'm ready to believe in hell, but without a ceiling. It makes it more refined, more enlightened, more Lutheran that is. And, after all, what does it matter whether it has a ceiling or hasn't? But, do you know, there's a damnable question involved in it? If there's no ceiling there can be no hooks, and if there are no hooks it all breaks down, which is unlikely again, for then there would be none to drag me down to hell, and if they don't drag me down what justice is there in the world? _Il faudrait les inventer_, those hooks, on purpose for me alone, for, if you only knew, Alyosha, what a blackguard I am." "But there are no hooks there," said Alyosha, looking gently and seriously at his father. "Yes, yes, only the shadows of hooks, I know, I know. That's how a Frenchman described hell: '_J'ai bu l'ombre d'un cocher qui avec l'ombre d'une brosse frottait l'ombre d'une carrosse._' How do you know there are no hooks, darling? When you've lived with the monks you'll sing a different tune. But go and get at the truth there, and then come and tell me. Anyway it's easier going to the other world if one knows what there is there. Besides, it will be more seemly for you with the monks than here with me, with a drunken old man and young harlots ... though you're like an angel, nothing touches you. And I dare say nothing will touch you there. That's why I let you go, because I hope for that. You've got all your wits about you. You will burn and you will burn out; you will be healed and come back again. And I will wait for you. I feel that you're the only creature in the world who has not condemned me. My dear boy, I feel it, you know. I can't help feeling it." And he even began blubbering. He was sentimental. He was wicked and sentimental. 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 I

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Karamazov: the name is well-known in Russia; it carries a taste of violence and dark Slavic passion. And there is much truth in the rumors and whispered tales told of Fyodor Karamazov. In his youth he was a loud profligate. His drinking and high living were notorious; he seemed insatiate. And marriage did not tame him. His marriage, true to form, was scandalous. But initially it was not scandalous because of its melodramatic elements -- that was to be expected; life with Karamazov could not be otherwise. Initially, Karamazov's marriage was scandalous because it was romantic: he was penniless yet he wooed and married an heiress. Adelaida Ivanovna believed in her young rebel-husband. Perhaps his spirit was bold and irrepressible, but he was the new breed of liberal Russian manhood. She believed it firmly. She tried to believe it for a long time. Then she was forced to face the ugly reality that instead of a rich-blooded idealist she had married an opportunist who was physically cruel and usually drunk. She also was forced to face another unpleasant truth: she was pregnant. She bore the baby, a son -- Dmitri, or Mitya as she often called him -- and when she could no longer endure her husband's viciousness, she abandoned both her son and husband and eloped with a young student. Karamazov, ostensibly, was staggered by her rejection and, still the overly dramatic sort, like a loud tragedian he spent many of his days driving through the country, lamenting over his wife's desertion. But even that pose grew wearisome and soon he returned to his life of debauchery. When he received the news of Adelaida's death he was in the midst of a drunken orgy. Young Dmitri was neglected and finally taken in by a cousin and when the cousin tired of him the child was given to other relatives; thus the baby grew up with a variety of families. But he was always told about his real father, that the man still lived, and that he held a rather large piece of Adelaida's property that was rightfully Dmitri's. The boy never forgot these tales of land and money and when he reached maturity, he visited his father and asked about the inheritance. He was unable, of course, to get any information from the old man but he began receiving small sums of money and, convinced that the property did exist, he revisited his father. Again the old man evaded his son's questions. But if Karamazov was able to evade Dmitri, he could not evade other matters so successfully -- the problems of his other sons, for example. For after the four-year-old Dmitri was taken away, Karamazov married a second time. This wife, Sofya Ivanovna, was remarkably beautiful and her loveliness and her innocence attracted the lustful Karamazov. He convinced her to elope with him against her guardian's wishes and quickly took advantage of her meekness. He began having loose women in the house and even carried on orgies of debauchery in her presence. During Karamazov's years of cruelty and depravity, Sofya Ivanovna gave birth to two sons, Ivan and Alyosha. But she was not well and did not feel loved despite the attentions of old Grigory, the servant who did his best to comfort her and protect her from Karamazov. In spite of his care, she soon fell ill and died. When her former guardian heard about her death, she came and took the two boys, Ivan and Alyosha, with her and upon her own death she left a thousand rubles to each boy for his education. Ivan Karamazov developed into a brilliant student who helped support himself by writing for journals. He slowly began to make a name for himself in literary circles. One of his articles, for instance, dealt with the function of the ecclesiastical courts; it attracted widespread interest and even the monastery in his native town spoke of it. Alyosha, the youngest Karamazov, developed into a devoutly religious person, his faith based on reality and untinged by mysticism or fanaticism. He was universally well liked, never criticized anyone, and seemed to love everyone. As the action of the novel begins, Alyosha returns to his father's house and meets his brothers. He and Dmitri rapidly become good friends, but he feels puzzled by Ivan's reserve and intellectuality. As for his father, Alyosha openly loves him; he has never criticized or condemned his father's way of life. Alyosha has always been generous and forgiving, thus it was that Karamazov was not surprised when Alyosha first told him that he wanted to become a monk, the disciple of the renowned elder, Zossima. In those days, incidentally, an elder was often controversial. "An elder," it was said, "was one who took your soul, your will, into his soul and his will." But elder, by also setting exemplary models of holiness in their own lives, often attracted large numbers of followers. The Karamazovs are reunited, and the reason for their reunion deeply concerns Alyosha. The discord between Dmitri and his father has reached such a point that one of them, apparently the father, has suggested a meeting in Father Zossima's cell, where they can discuss differences under the conciliating influence of the elder. Alyosha, who understands his brothers and his father better than most people think, greatly fears the meeting.

The Brothers Karamazov is often considered one of the world's most complex novels. Dostoevsky examines many different facets of life, investigates many problems of lasting importance, and is able to do so successfully in this novel because the mere size and bulk of the book allows him to proceed with deliberate slowness in introducing and developing his ideas. Attempting in these Commentaries, however, to isolate some of the main ideas and to analyze them destroys the essential unity of the novel. Part of its greatness is the manner in which Dostoevsky is able to integrate all the divergent elements into one unified whole. Each idea borders upon another and is somewhat vitiated when isolated from the remainder of the novel. In the complex spirit of the novel and in the leisurely nineteenth-century fashion of giving the intricate background of the main characters, Dostoevsky begins his book, then immediately establishes its tone. He first announces the element of mystery in the novel -- the "gloomy and tragic death" of Karamazov -- and then begins defining the elements of tragedy -- especially the Karamazov tragedy. The older Karamazov is depicted as base, vulgar, ill-natured, and completely degraded, and his "tragic" death will be revealed to be tragic only because his sons are implicated in the death -- not because Karamazov himself arouses tragic emotion. In fact, in the trial scene later in the book, it is pointed out that the murder is not a parricide in the truest sense because Fyodor Karamazov never functioned as a proper father. To support this idea, Dostoevsky begins at the very outset of the novel to show the blackness and vulgarity of the man who is to be murdered. To emphasize the monster within Karamazov, Dostoevsky illustrates the lack of paternal instincts. Karamazov did not discard his children from hatred or malice; he simply forgot about their existence. Furthermore, he was pleased each time that strangers came and took the children and therefore released him from responsibility; this allowed him to devote all his energy to his various orgies. One of Dostoevsky's ideas, prominent throughout the novel, then, concerns the place of the child in society. This theme receives its first expression in the chapter dealing with Fyodor Karamazov's treatment of his children. In Chapter 2, Dostoevsky tells us that Dmitri "was the only one of Fyodor Pavlovitch's three sons who grew up in the belief that he had property and that he would be independent on coming of age." This idea is established early in the novel because it becomes the source of the antagonism existing between father and son. Dostoevsky carefully avoids making a direct statement about the full extent to which the father has cheated his son, but by the manner in which he arranges his descriptions of the father, we can assume that Fyodor has indeed cheated Dmitri out of a major portion of the inheritance. It is also noteworthy that, of the three sons, Dmitri is the only one whom the father intensely dislikes. This is easily explained: the other two sons make no financial demands upon the father; only Dmitri insists upon having his inheritance. Following his thorough characterization of the older Karamazov, Dostoevsky devotes the next several chapters to the offspring -- the brothers Karamazov, as different from one another as can be imagined. Dmitri, throughout the novel, develops into the extreme sensualist, the emotional son. He did not complete his education; instead, he worked his way up through the military ranks to become an officer. He lacked discipline, however, and soon became involved in a duel and was demoted. Later he gained promotion again. But his deeds and emotions are fluid and fluctuating. He has, for instance, an instinctive dislike for his father but forms an immediate friendship with his brother Alyosha. He is the fiery-hearted, fierce, and emotional person who is easily swayed by his feelings. Ivan, on the other hand, is the cold intellectual. At an early age, he developed his propensity for study and his unusual aptitude for learning. He is the very proud son, always conscious that his early training was at someone else's expense. He began, therefore, as soon as possible, to write reviews in order to support himself, and before arriving in his native town, he has published a widely read, widely discussed article about the ecclesiastical courts. This article is the subject of a conversation in the next book between the monks and Ivan. In contrast to his two brothers, Alyosha has none of Ivan's pride, nor is he as fiery as Dmitri. He is "simply an early lover of humanity," one who always tries to see the best side of everyone. He possesses an implicit trust in all people and, in all his relationships, he never judges others. Beneath his modest exterior, however, is a penetrating and understanding mind that detects many subtleties and distinctions. Alyosha is of course deeply religious but he is not the fanatical sort who bases his faith upon miracles. He is the complete realist who arrived at his beliefs concerning immortality and God through reasoning. While presenting the characteristics of the three Karamazov sons, Dostoevsky introduces another principal theme -- the conflict between faith and disbelief. Alyosha and Ivan represent the two opposite poles of acceptance, and it is only natural that they do not become intimate friends at first. Alyosha, however, is perceptive enough to understand Ivan's problem. He knows that "Ivan was absorbed in something -- something inward and important that he was striving toward, some goal, perhaps very hard to attain and that was why he had no thought for him." Looking forward, we realize that Ivan will forever struggle with the idea of belief and immortality and that this struggle will form one of the most dramatic sections of the novel. In contrast, Dmitri will slowly become a person of faith. He and Alyosha, consequently, become intimate friends from the very beginning. In all his writing, Dostoevsky was interested in the psychology of actions. He was particularly interested in the nature of contradictory actions. Many of his characters therefore perform actions that do not seem consistent with their personalities. Dostoevsky often investigates this idea in an attempt to understand why a person who acts in a certain manner will often perform an action that seemingly contradicts his nature. In the character of the father, for example, he shows Fyodor visiting the grave of his first wife and being so touched by her memory that he gives a thousand rubles to the monastery for requiems. For a man usually so miserly with money and not professing a belief in God, this action is strange and contradictory. Dostoevsky comments that "strange impulses of sudden feeling and sudden thought are common in such types." Later he also writes that Fyodor "was wicked and sentimental," and, even though the question of contradictory actions is never solved by Dostoevsky, it does occupy portions of the novel, and the reader should be aware of the investigation. The introduction of Zossima concludes the first book, the brief introduction being a transitional device. Zossima, one should be aware, will hold center stage in the following section. His role is important because he is antithetical to all but one of the vigorous Karamazov clan. He is a passive sort, yet he influences the decisive actions of Alyosha and thus influences the course of the novel. Dostoevsky attempts, in the character of the elder, to present the almost perfect person, and his characterization is convincing. So convincing, in fact, is it to Alyosha that his beliefs are shaken at Zossima's death. He has convinced himself that after the elder's death, Zossima would bring extraordinary glory to the monastery. Death is rarely that simple. The fact that Zossima decomposes so rapidly weighs heavily on Alyosha, and he is therefore tempted to question the validity of God's justice.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/174-chapters/10.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Picture of Dorian Gray/section_9_part_0.txt

The Picture of Dorian Gray.chapter 10

chapter 10

{"name": "Chapter 10", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210304030722/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/picture-dorian-gray/summary/chapter-10", "summary": "Dorian decides to hide the portrait in his house's old schoolroom. He calls for the key, and wraps up the dreadful portrait with an ornate, funereal coverlet. While Dorian is taking care of business, he wonders why he didn't tell Basil the truth about the painting; he knows that Basil could have helped him resist Lord Henry's malignant influence, but decides that it's too late. Dorian looks at the canvas one more time before sending it away--it looks more hateful than before to him. Dorian's servant almost walks in on him contemplating the incriminating portrait, and he hastily writes a note to Henry, asking him for something new to read, and reminding him that they have a date later. He sends the servant to deliver the note. In a moment, Mr. Hubbard, a famous frame-maker, arrives with his helper. He tries to sell Dorian a new frame, but Dorian cuts him off brusquely, saying that he just wants a heavy picture moved to another room today. Mr. Hubbard and his assistant move the picture to the schoolroom for Dorian. The schoolroom has been empty ever since Dorian grew up; nobody's been in it for four years. The room, where he spend much of his childhood, away from his unloving grandfather, reminds Dorian of his innocent youth, and it occurs to him that it might be wrong to keep the proof of his corrupt soul there. However, there's nowhere else that's safe to keep it. Dorian has a brief moment of regret --maybe he can salvage the portrait by being a better person? He ignores this impulse, realizing that the portrait will grow old anyway. He locks it in the schoolroom and rushes Mr. Hubbard out. When Dorian returns to the library, he finds that Lord Henry has complied and sent him a rather worn book. It's covered with yellow paper, and looks well-read. Along with it, Henry has sent a short note and a newspaper, in which he's circled a brief paragraph about Sibyl Vane. To distract himself from this unpleasant item, Dorian starts to read Lord Henry's yellow book. It completely absorbs him--it's beautiful and \"poisonous,\" and he can't stop reading it. Dorian loses track of time, and is late for his meeting with Lord Henry. When he gets there, he apologizes, saying that he was wrapped up in the book, which fascinates him--however, he can't say that he exactly likes it.", "analysis": ""}

When his servant entered, he looked at him steadfastly and wondered if he had thought of peering behind the screen. The man was quite impassive and waited for his orders. Dorian lit a cigarette and walked over to the glass and glanced into it. He could see the reflection of Victor's face perfectly. It was like a placid mask of servility. There was nothing to be afraid of, there. Yet he thought it best to be on his guard. Speaking very slowly, he told him to tell the house-keeper that he wanted to see her, and then to go to the frame-maker and ask him to send two of his men round at once. It seemed to him that as the man left the room his eyes wandered in the direction of the screen. Or was that merely his own fancy? After a few moments, in her black silk dress, with old-fashioned thread mittens on her wrinkled hands, Mrs. Leaf bustled into the library. He asked her for the key of the schoolroom. "The old schoolroom, Mr. Dorian?" she exclaimed. "Why, it is full of dust. I must get it arranged and put straight before you go into it. It is not fit for you to see, sir. It is not, indeed." "I don't want it put straight, Leaf. I only want the key." "Well, sir, you'll be covered with cobwebs if you go into it. Why, it hasn't been opened for nearly five years--not since his lordship died." He winced at the mention of his grandfather. He had hateful memories of him. "That does not matter," he answered. "I simply want to see the place--that is all. Give me the key." "And here is the key, sir," said the old lady, going over the contents of her bunch with tremulously uncertain hands. "Here is the key. I'll have it off the bunch in a moment. But you don't think of living up there, sir, and you so comfortable here?" "No, no," he cried petulantly. "Thank you, Leaf. That will do." She lingered for a few moments, and was garrulous over some detail of the household. He sighed and told her to manage things as she thought best. She left the room, wreathed in smiles. As the door closed, Dorian put the key in his pocket and looked round the room. His eye fell on a large, purple satin coverlet heavily embroidered with gold, a splendid piece of late seventeenth-century Venetian work that his grandfather had found in a convent near Bologna. Yes, that would serve to wrap the dreadful thing in. It had perhaps served often as a pall for the dead. Now it was to hide something that had a corruption of its own, worse than the corruption of death itself--something that would breed horrors and yet would never die. What the worm was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image on the canvas. They would mar its beauty and eat away its grace. They would defile it and make it shameful. And yet the thing would still live on. It would be always alive. He shuddered, and for a moment he regretted that he had not told Basil the true reason why he had wished to hide the picture away. Basil would have helped him to resist Lord Henry's influence, and the still more poisonous influences that came from his own temperament. The love that he bore him--for it was really love--had nothing in it that was not noble and intellectual. It was not that mere physical admiration of beauty that is born of the senses and that dies when the senses tire. It was such love as Michelangelo had known, and Montaigne, and Winckelmann, and Shakespeare himself. Yes, Basil could have saved him. But it was too late now. The past could always be annihilated. Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But the future was inevitable. There were passions in him that would find their terrible outlet, dreams that would make the shadow of their evil real. He took up from the couch the great purple-and-gold texture that covered it, and, holding it in his hands, passed behind the screen. Was the face on the canvas viler than before? It seemed to him that it was unchanged, and yet his loathing of it was intensified. Gold hair, blue eyes, and rose-red lips--they all were there. It was simply the expression that had altered. That was horrible in its cruelty. Compared to what he saw in it of censure or rebuke, how shallow Basil's reproaches about Sibyl Vane had been!--how shallow, and of what little account! His own soul was looking out at him from the canvas and calling him to judgement. A look of pain came across him, and he flung the rich pall over the picture. As he did so, a knock came to the door. He passed out as his servant entered. "The persons are here, Monsieur." He felt that the man must be got rid of at once. He must not be allowed to know where the picture was being taken to. There was something sly about him, and he had thoughtful, treacherous eyes. Sitting down at the writing-table he scribbled a note to Lord Henry, asking him to send him round something to read and reminding him that they were to meet at eight-fifteen that evening. "Wait for an answer," he said, handing it to him, "and show the men in here." In two or three minutes there was another knock, and Mr. Hubbard himself, the celebrated frame-maker of South Audley Street, came in with a somewhat rough-looking young assistant. Mr. Hubbard was a florid, red-whiskered little man, whose admiration for art was considerably tempered by the inveterate impecuniosity of most of the artists who dealt with him. As a rule, he never left his shop. He waited for people to come to him. But he always made an exception in favour of Dorian Gray. There was something about Dorian that charmed everybody. It was a pleasure even to see him. "What can I do for you, Mr. Gray?" he said, rubbing his fat freckled hands. "I thought I would do myself the honour of coming round in person. I have just got a beauty of a frame, sir. Picked it up at a sale. Old Florentine. Came from Fonthill, I believe. Admirably suited for a religious subject, Mr. Gray." "I am so sorry you have given yourself the trouble of coming round, Mr. Hubbard. I shall certainly drop in and look at the frame--though I don't go in much at present for religious art--but to-day I only want a picture carried to the top of the house for me. It is rather heavy, so I thought I would ask you to lend me a couple of your men." "No trouble at all, Mr. Gray. I am delighted to be of any service to you. Which is the work of art, sir?" "This," replied Dorian, moving the screen back. "Can you move it, covering and all, just as it is? I don't want it to get scratched going upstairs." "There will be no difficulty, sir," said the genial frame-maker, beginning, with the aid of his assistant, to unhook the picture from the long brass chains by which it was suspended. "And, now, where shall we carry it to, Mr. Gray?" "I will show you the way, Mr. Hubbard, if you will kindly follow me. Or perhaps you had better go in front. I am afraid it is right at the top of the house. We will go up by the front staircase, as it is wider." He held the door open for them, and they passed out into the hall and began the ascent. The elaborate character of the frame had made the picture extremely bulky, and now and then, in spite of the obsequious protests of Mr. Hubbard, who had the true tradesman's spirited dislike of seeing a gentleman doing anything useful, Dorian put his hand to it so as to help them. "Something of a load to carry, sir," gasped the little man when they reached the top landing. And he wiped his shiny forehead. "I am afraid it is rather heavy," murmured Dorian as he unlocked the door that opened into the room that was to keep for him the curious secret of his life and hide his soul from the eyes of men. He had not entered the place for more than four years--not, indeed, since he had used it first as a play-room when he was a child, and then as a study when he grew somewhat older. It was a large, well-proportioned room, which had been specially built by the last Lord Kelso for the use of the little grandson whom, for his strange likeness to his mother, and also for other reasons, he had always hated and desired to keep at a distance. It appeared to Dorian to have but little changed. There was the huge Italian _cassone_, with its fantastically painted panels and its tarnished gilt mouldings, in which he had so often hidden himself as a boy. There the satinwood book-case filled with his dog-eared schoolbooks. On the wall behind it was hanging the same ragged Flemish tapestry where a faded king and queen were playing chess in a garden, while a company of hawkers rode by, carrying hooded birds on their gauntleted wrists. How well he remembered it all! Every moment of his lonely childhood came back to him as he looked round. He recalled the stainless purity of his boyish life, and it seemed horrible to him that it was here the fatal portrait was to be hidden away. How little he had thought, in those dead days, of all that was in store for him! But there was no other place in the house so secure from prying eyes as this. He had the key, and no one else could enter it. Beneath its purple pall, the face painted on the canvas could grow bestial, sodden, and unclean. What did it matter? No one could see it. He himself would not see it. Why should he watch the hideous corruption of his soul? He kept his youth--that was enough. And, besides, might not his nature grow finer, after all? There was no reason that the future should be so full of shame. Some love might come across his life, and purify him, and shield him from those sins that seemed to be already stirring in spirit and in flesh--those curious unpictured sins whose very mystery lent them their subtlety and their charm. Perhaps, some day, the cruel look would have passed away from the scarlet sensitive mouth, and he might show to the world Basil Hallward's masterpiece. No; that was impossible. Hour by hour, and week by week, the thing upon the canvas was growing old. It might escape the hideousness of sin, but the hideousness of age was in store for it. The cheeks would become hollow or flaccid. Yellow crow's feet would creep round the fading eyes and make them horrible. The hair would lose its brightness, the mouth would gape or droop, would be foolish or gross, as the mouths of old men are. There would be the wrinkled throat, the cold, blue-veined hands, the twisted body, that he remembered in the grandfather who had been so stern to him in his boyhood. The picture had to be concealed. There was no help for it. "Bring it in, Mr. Hubbard, please," he said, wearily, turning round. "I am sorry I kept you so long. I was thinking of something else." "Always glad to have a rest, Mr. Gray," answered the frame-maker, who was still gasping for breath. "Where shall we put it, sir?" "Oh, anywhere. Here: this will do. I don't want to have it hung up. Just lean it against the wall. Thanks." "Might one look at the work of art, sir?" Dorian started. "It would not interest you, Mr. Hubbard," he said, keeping his eye on the man. He felt ready to leap upon him and fling him to the ground if he dared to lift the gorgeous hanging that concealed the secret of his life. "I shan't trouble you any more now. I am much obliged for your kindness in coming round." "Not at all, not at all, Mr. Gray. Ever ready to do anything for you, sir." And Mr. Hubbard tramped downstairs, followed by the assistant, who glanced back at Dorian with a look of shy wonder in his rough uncomely face. He had never seen any one so marvellous. When the sound of their footsteps had died away, Dorian locked the door and put the key in his pocket. He felt safe now. No one would ever look upon the horrible thing. No eye but his would ever see his shame. On reaching the library, he found that it was just after five o'clock and that the tea had been already brought up. On a little table of dark perfumed wood thickly incrusted with nacre, a present from Lady Radley, his guardian's wife, a pretty professional invalid who had spent the preceding winter in Cairo, was lying a note from Lord Henry, and beside it was a book bound in yellow paper, the cover slightly torn and the edges soiled. A copy of the third edition of _The St. James's Gazette_ had been placed on the tea-tray. It was evident that Victor had returned. He wondered if he had met the men in the hall as they were leaving the house and had wormed out of them what they had been doing. He would be sure to miss the picture--had no doubt missed it already, while he had been laying the tea-things. The screen had not been set back, and a blank space was visible on the wall. Perhaps some night he might find him creeping upstairs and trying to force the door of the room. It was a horrible thing to have a spy in one's house. He had heard of rich men who had been blackmailed all their lives by some servant who had read a letter, or overheard a conversation, or picked up a card with an address, or found beneath a pillow a withered flower or a shred of crumpled lace. He sighed, and having poured himself out some tea, opened Lord Henry's note. It was simply to say that he sent him round the evening paper, and a book that might interest him, and that he would be at the club at eight-fifteen. He opened _The St. James's_ languidly, and looked through it. A red pencil-mark on the fifth page caught his eye. It drew attention to the following paragraph: INQUEST ON AN ACTRESS.--An inquest was held this morning at the Bell Tavern, Hoxton Road, by Mr. Danby, the District Coroner, on the body of Sibyl Vane, a young actress recently engaged at the Royal Theatre, Holborn. A verdict of death by misadventure was returned. Considerable sympathy was expressed for the mother of the deceased, who was greatly affected during the giving of her own evidence, and that of Dr. Birrell, who had made the post-mortem examination of the deceased. He frowned, and tearing the paper in two, went across the room and flung the pieces away. How ugly it all was! And how horribly real ugliness made things! He felt a little annoyed with Lord Henry for having sent him the report. And it was certainly stupid of him to have marked it with red pencil. Victor might have read it. The man knew more than enough English for that. Perhaps he had read it and had begun to suspect something. And, yet, what did it matter? What had Dorian Gray to do with Sibyl Vane's death? There was nothing to fear. Dorian Gray had not killed her. His eye fell on the yellow book that Lord Henry had sent him. What was it, he wondered. He went towards the little, pearl-coloured octagonal stand that had always looked to him like the work of some strange Egyptian bees that wrought in silver, and taking up the volume, flung himself into an arm-chair and began to turn over the leaves. After a few minutes he became absorbed. It was the strangest book that he had ever read. It seemed to him that in exquisite raiment, and to the delicate sound of flutes, the sins of the world were passing in dumb show before him. Things that he had dimly dreamed of were suddenly made real to him. Things of which he had never dreamed were gradually revealed. It was a novel without a plot and with only one character, being, indeed, simply a psychological study of a certain young Parisian who spent his life trying to realize in the nineteenth century all the passions and modes of thought that belonged to every century except his own, and to sum up, as it were, in himself the various moods through which the world-spirit had ever passed, loving for their mere artificiality those renunciations that men have unwisely called virtue, as much as those natural rebellions that wise men still call sin. The style in which it was written was that curious jewelled style, vivid and obscure at once, full of _argot_ and of archaisms, of technical expressions and of elaborate paraphrases, that characterizes the work of some of the finest artists of the French school of _Symbolistes_. There were in it metaphors as monstrous as orchids and as subtle in colour. The life of the senses was described in the terms of mystical philosophy. One hardly knew at times whether one was reading the spiritual ecstasies of some mediaeval saint or the morbid confessions of a modern sinner. It was a poisonous book. The heavy odour of incense seemed to cling about its pages and to trouble the brain. The mere cadence of the sentences, the subtle monotony of their music, so full as it was of complex refrains and movements elaborately repeated, produced in the mind of the lad, as he passed from chapter to chapter, a form of reverie, a malady of dreaming, that made him unconscious of the falling day and creeping shadows. Cloudless, and pierced by one solitary star, a copper-green sky gleamed through the windows. He read on by its wan light till he could read no more. Then, after his valet had reminded him several times of the lateness of the hour, he got up, and going into the next room, placed the book on the little Florentine table that always stood at his bedside and began to dress for dinner. It was almost nine o'clock before he reached the club, where he found Lord Henry sitting alone, in the morning-room, looking very much bored. "I am so sorry, Harry," he cried, "but really it is entirely your fault. That book you sent me so fascinated me that I forgot how the time was going." "Yes, I thought you would like it," replied his host, rising from his chair. "I didn't say I liked it, Harry. I said it fascinated me. There is a great difference." "Ah, you have discovered that?" murmured Lord Henry. And they passed into the dining-room.

Chapter 10

https://web.archive.org/web/20210304030722/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/picture-dorian-gray/summary/chapter-10

Dorian decides to hide the portrait in his house's old schoolroom. He calls for the key, and wraps up the dreadful portrait with an ornate, funereal coverlet. While Dorian is taking care of business, he wonders why he didn't tell Basil the truth about the painting; he knows that Basil could have helped him resist Lord Henry's malignant influence, but decides that it's too late. Dorian looks at the canvas one more time before sending it away--it looks more hateful than before to him. Dorian's servant almost walks in on him contemplating the incriminating portrait, and he hastily writes a note to Henry, asking him for something new to read, and reminding him that they have a date later. He sends the servant to deliver the note. In a moment, Mr. Hubbard, a famous frame-maker, arrives with his helper. He tries to sell Dorian a new frame, but Dorian cuts him off brusquely, saying that he just wants a heavy picture moved to another room today. Mr. Hubbard and his assistant move the picture to the schoolroom for Dorian. The schoolroom has been empty ever since Dorian grew up; nobody's been in it for four years. The room, where he spend much of his childhood, away from his unloving grandfather, reminds Dorian of his innocent youth, and it occurs to him that it might be wrong to keep the proof of his corrupt soul there. However, there's nowhere else that's safe to keep it. Dorian has a brief moment of regret --maybe he can salvage the portrait by being a better person? He ignores this impulse, realizing that the portrait will grow old anyway. He locks it in the schoolroom and rushes Mr. Hubbard out. When Dorian returns to the library, he finds that Lord Henry has complied and sent him a rather worn book. It's covered with yellow paper, and looks well-read. Along with it, Henry has sent a short note and a newspaper, in which he's circled a brief paragraph about Sibyl Vane. To distract himself from this unpleasant item, Dorian starts to read Lord Henry's yellow book. It completely absorbs him--it's beautiful and "poisonous," and he can't stop reading it. Dorian loses track of time, and is late for his meeting with Lord Henry. When he gets there, he apologizes, saying that he was wrapped up in the book, which fascinates him--however, he can't say that he exactly likes it.

pinkmonkey

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/13.txt

finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_4_part_2.txt

Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 13

chapter 13

{"name": "CHAPTER 13", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820050202/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmTessD22.asp", "summary": "At first, when friends call on her in Marlott, Tess feels more cheerful; but before long she is the talk of the village. They whisper behind her back and cause her to think about her future, which seems like \"a long and stony highway which she must tread, without aid, and with little sympathy. To avoid their words and stares, she only goes out at night, hoping not to be seen and discussed. Her only relief is her work in the fields; but even as she works, Tess is full of remorse and considers herself a \"Figure of Guilt\".", "analysis": "Notes Tess becomes the talk of the village. The village folk talk about the gentleman who fell in love with her and whisper to each other about the gifts she received from him. It is sad to notice, however, that no one seems to genuinely sympathize with her, not her mother or her friends. As a result, her grief and remorse grow greater until she feels she is a symbol of guilt"}

The event of Tess Durbeyfield's return from the manor of her bogus kinsfolk was rumoured abroad, if rumour be not too large a word for a space of a square mile. In the afternoon several young girls of Marlott, former schoolfellows and acquaintances of Tess, called to see her, arriving dressed in their best starched and ironed, as became visitors to a person who had made a transcendent conquest (as they supposed), and sat round the room looking at her with great curiosity. For the fact that it was this said thirty-first cousin, Mr d'Urberville, who had fallen in love with her, a gentleman not altogether local, whose reputation as a reckless gallant and heartbreaker was beginning to spread beyond the immediate boundaries of Trantridge, lent Tess's supposed position, by its fearsomeness, a far higher fascination that it would have exercised if unhazardous. Their interest was so deep that the younger ones whispered when her back was turned-- "How pretty she is; and how that best frock do set her off! I believe it cost an immense deal, and that it was a gift from him." Tess, who was reaching up to get the tea-things from the corner-cupboard, did not hear these commentaries. If she had heard them, she might soon have set her friends right on the matter. But her mother heard, and Joan's simple vanity, having been denied the hope of a dashing marriage, fed itself as well as it could upon the sensation of a dashing flirtation. Upon the whole she felt gratified, even though such a limited and evanescent triumph should involve her daughter's reputation; it might end in marriage yet, and in the warmth of her responsiveness to their admiration she invited her visitors to stay to tea. Their chatter, their laughter, their good-humoured innuendoes, above all, their flashes and flickerings of envy, revived Tess's spirits also; and, as the evening wore on, she caught the infection of their excitement, and grew almost gay. The marble hardness left her face, she moved with something of her old bounding step, and flushed in all her young beauty. At moments, in spite of thought, she would reply to their inquiries with a manner of superiority, as if recognizing that her experiences in the field of courtship had, indeed, been slightly enviable. But so far was she from being, in the words of Robert South, "in love with her own ruin," that the illusion was transient as lightning; cold reason came back to mock her spasmodic weakness; the ghastliness of her momentary pride would convict her, and recall her to reserved listlessness again. And the despondency of the next morning's dawn, when it was no longer Sunday, but Monday; and no best clothes; and the laughing visitors were gone, and she awoke alone in her old bed, the innocent younger children breathing softly around her. In place of the excitement of her return, and the interest it had inspired, she saw before her a long and stony highway which she had to tread, without aid, and with little sympathy. Her depression was then terrible, and she could have hidden herself in a tomb. In the course of a few weeks Tess revived sufficiently to show herself so far as was necessary to get to church one Sunday morning. She liked to hear the chanting--such as it was--and the old Psalms, and to join in the Morning Hymn. That innate love of melody, which she had inherited from her ballad-singing mother, gave the simplest music a power over her which could well-nigh drag her heart out of her bosom at times. To be as much out of observation as possible for reasons of her own, and to escape the gallantries of the young men, she set out before the chiming began, and took a back seat under the gallery, close to the lumber, where only old men and women came, and where the bier stood on end among the churchyard tools. Parishioners dropped in by twos and threes, deposited themselves in rows before her, rested three-quarters of a minute on their foreheads as if they were praying, though they were not; then sat up, and looked around. When the chants came on, one of her favourites happened to be chosen among the rest--the old double chant "Langdon"--but she did not know what it was called, though she would much have liked to know. She thought, without exactly wording the thought, how strange and god-like was a composer's power, who from the grave could lead through sequences of emotion, which he alone had felt at first, a girl like her who had never heard of his name, and never would have a clue to his personality. The people who had turned their heads turned them again as the service proceeded; and at last observing her, they whispered to each other. She knew what their whispers were about, grew sick at heart, and felt that she could come to church no more. The bedroom which she shared with some of the children formed her retreat more continually than ever. Here, under her few square yards of thatch, she watched winds, and snows, and rains, gorgeous sunsets, and successive moons at their full. So close kept she that at length almost everybody thought she had gone away. The only exercise that Tess took at this time was after dark; and it was then, when out in the woods, that she seemed least solitary. She knew how to hit to a hair's-breadth that moment of evening when the light and the darkness are so evenly balanced that the constraint of day and the suspense of night neutralize each other, leaving absolute mental liberty. It is then that the plight of being alive becomes attenuated to its least possible dimensions. She had no fear of the shadows; her sole idea seemed to be to shun mankind--or rather that cold accretion called the world, which, so terrible in the mass, is so unformidable, even pitiable, in its units. On these lonely hills and dales her quiescent glide was of a piece with the element she moved in. Her flexuous and stealthy figure became an integral part of the scene. At times her whimsical fancy would intensify natural processes around her till they seemed a part of her own story. Rather they became a part of it; for the world is only a psychological phenomenon, and what they seemed they were. The midnight airs and gusts, moaning amongst the tightly-wrapped buds and bark of the winter twigs, were formulae of bitter reproach. A wet day was the expression of irremediable grief at her weakness in the mind of some vague ethical being whom she could not class definitely as the God of her childhood, and could not comprehend as any other. But this encompassment of her own characterization, based on shreds of convention, peopled by phantoms and voices antipathetic to her, was a sorry and mistaken creation of Tess's fancy--a cloud of moral hobgoblins by which she was terrified without reason. It was they that were out of harmony with the actual world, not she. Walking among the sleeping birds in the hedges, watching the skipping rabbits on a moonlit warren, or standing under a pheasant-laden bough, she looked upon herself as a figure of Guilt intruding into the haunts of Innocence. But all the while she was making a distinction where there was no difference. Feeling herself in antagonism, she was quite in accord. She had been made to break an accepted social law, but no law known to the environment in which she fancied herself such an anomaly.

CHAPTER 13

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

At first, when friends call on her in Marlott, Tess feels more cheerful; but before long she is the talk of the village. They whisper behind her back and cause her to think about her future, which seems like "a long and stony highway which she must tread, without aid, and with little sympathy. To avoid their words and stares, she only goes out at night, hoping not to be seen and discussed. Her only relief is her work in the fields; but even as she works, Tess is full of remorse and considers herself a "Figure of Guilt".

Notes Tess becomes the talk of the village. The village folk talk about the gentleman who fell in love with her and whisper to each other about the gifts she received from him. It is sad to notice, however, that no one seems to genuinely sympathize with her, not her mother or her friends. As a result, her grief and remorse grow greater until she feels she is a symbol of guilt

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/08.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_7_part_0.txt

Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 8

chapter 8

{"name": "Phase I: \"The Maiden,\" Chapter Eight", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210424232301/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary/chapter-8", "summary": "Alec drives Tess up the first hill as they leave Marlott, \"chatting compliments\" to Tess as they go . Tess is rather nervous in carriages ever since the accident with Prince, so she asks Alec to go down the hill slowly. Alec says he likes going down quickly, and is surprised that Tess doesn't. When Tess persists, Alec says that Tib is a wicked horse, and does what she wants--he can barely control her sometimes. So the horse bolts down the hill , and Tess clutches at Alec's arm. Alec cries out for her to hold his waist--clutching his arm interferes with his ability to control the horse. She's pretty angry when they reach the bottom, and lets go of him. When they reach the top of the next hill, he takes off again. She clutches the side of the carriage this time, to avoid touching him. He tells her that he'll stop if she allows him to kiss \"those holmberry lips\" . Tess is surprised and pulls away from him as best she can, and he rocks the carriage even harder. She miserably agrees, but dodges at the last minute. He's angry, and swears he'll break both their necks if she goes back on her word like that. Tess agrees again, but complains that she thought he was going to protect her, as her \"kinsman.\" Alec insists on the kiss. Tess doesn't want to be kissed, but allows it anyway. But as soon as he's kissed her, she rubs her cheek with her handkerchief. Alec is annoyed that she felt the need to wipe it off, so when they reach the top of the final hill, he threatens to race down it unless she allows him to kiss her again, and not to wipe it off. Tess starts to agree, and then her hat blows off. She asks to climb down to get it. Once she's down, she refuses to climb back up, even though it's still five or six miles to Trantridge. Alec suspects that she let the hat blow off on purpose. She doesn't answer. He scolds her and calls her names, and she yells at him for using bad words, and tells him she hates him, and will go back to her mother. Alec cheers up in response, and offers to allow her back into the carriage without pressing her for any more kisses. She doesn't trust him, even though she probably could at this point. So she walks the rest of the way to Trantridge, and Alec walks the carriage along beside her. She considers going back home to her parents, but is afraid that she would seem wishy-washy.", "analysis": ""}

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.

Phase I: "The Maiden," Chapter Eight

https://web.archive.org/web/20210424232301/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary/chapter-8

Alec drives Tess up the first hill as they leave Marlott, "chatting compliments" to Tess as they go . Tess is rather nervous in carriages ever since the accident with Prince, so she asks Alec to go down the hill slowly. Alec says he likes going down quickly, and is surprised that Tess doesn't. When Tess persists, Alec says that Tib is a wicked horse, and does what she wants--he can barely control her sometimes. So the horse bolts down the hill , and Tess clutches at Alec's arm. Alec cries out for her to hold his waist--clutching his arm interferes with his ability to control the horse. She's pretty angry when they reach the bottom, and lets go of him. When they reach the top of the next hill, he takes off again. She clutches the side of the carriage this time, to avoid touching him. He tells her that he'll stop if she allows him to kiss "those holmberry lips" . Tess is surprised and pulls away from him as best she can, and he rocks the carriage even harder. She miserably agrees, but dodges at the last minute. He's angry, and swears he'll break both their necks if she goes back on her word like that. Tess agrees again, but complains that she thought he was going to protect her, as her "kinsman." Alec insists on the kiss. Tess doesn't want to be kissed, but allows it anyway. But as soon as he's kissed her, she rubs her cheek with her handkerchief. Alec is annoyed that she felt the need to wipe it off, so when they reach the top of the final hill, he threatens to race down it unless she allows him to kiss her again, and not to wipe it off. Tess starts to agree, and then her hat blows off. She asks to climb down to get it. Once she's down, she refuses to climb back up, even though it's still five or six miles to Trantridge. Alec suspects that she let the hat blow off on purpose. She doesn't answer. He scolds her and calls her names, and she yells at him for using bad words, and tells him she hates him, and will go back to her mother. Alec cheers up in response, and offers to allow her back into the carriage without pressing her for any more kisses. She doesn't trust him, even though she probably could at this point. So she walks the rest of the way to Trantridge, and Alec walks the carriage along beside her. She considers going back home to her parents, but is afraid that she would seem wishy-washy.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/47.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Brothers Karamazov/section_46_part_0.txt

The Brothers Karamazov.book 8.chapter 2

book 8, chapter 2

{"name": "Book 8, Chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-8-chapter-2", "summary": "Having no money, Dmitri pawns his silver watch for six roubles and borrows three roubles from his landlords. Then off to Ilyinskoye he goes. At Ilyinskoye he meets up with the priest Lyagavy is staying with. The priest tells him that Lyagavy - who should be called Gorstkin, since he hates the name Lyagavy - is staying with a forester at Sukhoy Possyolok. Upon their arrival at the forester's, they discover that Lyagavy is passed out drunk in his room. Unable to wake him, Dmitri decides to wait outside the drunk's room until he wakes up. The priest heads back to Ilyinskoye. Dmitri must have fallen asleep, because all of a sudden he wakes up to find the room filled with fumes. The forester helps Dmitri air out the room, but Lyagavy sleeps peacefully on. Dmitri again falls asleep outside Lyagavy's room, and the next time he wakes it's 9 in the morning. He finds that Lyagavy has already started drinking heavily again. He tries to engage Lyagavy in conversation, but Lyagavy keeps accusing him of being out to cheat him. Realizing that he's been the victim of Samsonov's malicious trickery, Dmitri returns back home and straight to Grushenka's.", "analysis": ""}

Chapter II. Lyagavy So he must drive at full speed, and he had not the money for horses. He had forty kopecks, and that was all, all that was left after so many years of prosperity! But he had at home an old silver watch which had long ceased to go. He snatched it up and carried it to a Jewish watchmaker who had a shop in the market-place. The Jew gave him six roubles for it. "And I didn't expect that," cried Mitya, ecstatically. (He was still in a state of ecstasy.) He seized his six roubles and ran home. At home he borrowed three roubles from the people of the house, who loved him so much that they were pleased to give it him, though it was all they had. Mitya in his excitement told them on the spot that his fate would be decided that day, and he described, in desperate haste, the whole scheme he had put before Samsonov, the latter's decision, his own hopes for the future, and so on. These people had been told many of their lodger's secrets before, and so looked upon him as a gentleman who was not at all proud, and almost one of themselves. Having thus collected nine roubles Mitya sent for posting-horses to take him to the Volovya station. This was how the fact came to be remembered and established that "at midday, on the day before the event, Mitya had not a farthing, and that he had sold his watch to get money and had borrowed three roubles from his landlord, all in the presence of witnesses." I note this fact, later on it will be apparent why I do so. Though he was radiant with the joyful anticipation that he would at last solve all his difficulties, yet, as he drew near Volovya station, he trembled at the thought of what Grushenka might be doing in his absence. What if she made up her mind to-day to go to Fyodor Pavlovitch? This was why he had gone off without telling her and why he left orders with his landlady not to let out where he had gone, if any one came to inquire for him. "I must, I must get back to-night," he repeated, as he was jolted along in the cart, "and I dare say I shall have to bring this Lyagavy back here ... to draw up the deed." So mused Mitya, with a throbbing heart, but alas! his dreams were not fated to be carried out. To begin with, he was late, taking a short cut from Volovya station which turned out to be eighteen versts instead of twelve. Secondly, he did not find the priest at home at Ilyinskoe; he had gone off to a neighboring village. While Mitya, setting off there with the same exhausted horses, was looking for him, it was almost dark. The priest, a shy and amiable looking little man, informed him at once that though Lyagavy had been staying with him at first, he was now at Suhoy Possyolok, that he was staying the night in the forester's cottage, as he was buying timber there too. At Mitya's urgent request that he would take him to Lyagavy at once, and by so doing "save him, so to speak," the priest agreed, after some demur, to conduct him to Suhoy Possyolok; his curiosity was obviously aroused. But, unluckily, he advised their going on foot, as it would not be "much over" a verst. Mitya, of course, agreed, and marched off with his yard-long strides, so that the poor priest almost ran after him. He was a very cautious man, though not old. Mitya at once began talking to him, too, of his plans, nervously and excitedly asking advice in regard to Lyagavy, and talking all the way. The priest listened attentively, but gave little advice. He turned off Mitya's questions with: "I don't know. Ah, I can't say. How can I tell?" and so on. When Mitya began to speak of his quarrel with his father over his inheritance, the priest was positively alarmed, as he was in some way dependent on Fyodor Pavlovitch. He inquired, however, with surprise, why he called the peasant-trader Gorstkin, Lyagavy, and obligingly explained to Mitya that, though the man's name really was Lyagavy, he was never called so, as he would be grievously offended at the name, and that he must be sure to call him Gorstkin, "or you'll do nothing with him; he won't even listen to you," said the priest in conclusion. Mitya was somewhat surprised for a moment, and explained that that was what Samsonov had called him. On hearing this fact, the priest dropped the subject, though he would have done well to put into words his doubt whether, if Samsonov had sent him to that peasant, calling him Lyagavy, there was not something wrong about it and he was turning him into ridicule. But Mitya had no time to pause over such trifles. He hurried, striding along, and only when he reached Suhoy Possyolok did he realize that they had come not one verst, nor one and a half, but at least three. This annoyed him, but he controlled himself. They went into the hut. The forester lived in one half of the hut, and Gorstkin was lodging in the other, the better room the other side of the passage. They went into that room and lighted a tallow candle. The hut was extremely overheated. On the table there was a samovar that had gone out, a tray with cups, an empty rum bottle, a bottle of vodka partly full, and some half-eaten crusts of wheaten bread. The visitor himself lay stretched at full length on the bench, with his coat crushed up under his head for a pillow, snoring heavily. Mitya stood in perplexity. "Of course I must wake him. My business is too important. I've come in such haste. I'm in a hurry to get back to-day," he said in great agitation. But the priest and the forester stood in silence, not giving their opinion. Mitya went up and began trying to wake him himself; he tried vigorously, but the sleeper did not wake. "He's drunk," Mitya decided. "Good Lord! What am I to do? What am I to do?" And, terribly impatient, he began pulling him by the arms, by the legs, shaking his head, lifting him up and making him sit on the bench. Yet, after prolonged exertions, he could only succeed in getting the drunken man to utter absurd grunts, and violent, but inarticulate oaths. "No, you'd better wait a little," the priest pronounced at last, "for he's obviously not in a fit state." "He's been drinking the whole day," the forester chimed in. "Good heavens!" cried Mitya. "If only you knew how important it is to me and how desperate I am!" "No, you'd better wait till morning," the priest repeated. "Till morning? Mercy! that's impossible!" And in his despair he was on the point of attacking the sleeping man again, but stopped short at once, realizing the uselessness of his efforts. The priest said nothing, the sleepy forester looked gloomy. "What terrible tragedies real life contrives for people," said Mitya, in complete despair. The perspiration was streaming down his face. The priest seized the moment to put before him, very reasonably, that, even if he succeeded in wakening the man, he would still be drunk and incapable of conversation. "And your business is important," he said, "so you'd certainly better put it off till morning." With a gesture of despair Mitya agreed. "Father, I will stay here with a light, and seize the favorable moment. As soon as he wakes I'll begin. I'll pay you for the light," he said to the forester, "for the night's lodging, too; you'll remember Dmitri Karamazov. Only, Father, I don't know what we're to do with you. Where will you sleep?" "No, I'm going home. I'll take his horse and get home," he said, indicating the forester. "And now I'll say good-by. I wish you all success." So it was settled. The priest rode off on the forester's horse, delighted to escape, though he shook his head uneasily, wondering whether he ought not next day to inform his benefactor Fyodor Pavlovitch of this curious incident, "or he may in an unlucky hour hear of it, be angry, and withdraw his favor." The forester, scratching himself, went back to his room without a word, and Mitya sat on the bench to "catch the favorable moment," as he expressed it. Profound dejection clung about his soul like a heavy mist. A profound, intense dejection! He sat thinking, but could reach no conclusion. The candle burnt dimly, a cricket chirped; it became insufferably close in the overheated room. He suddenly pictured the garden, the path behind the garden, the door of his father's house mysteriously opening and Grushenka running in. He leapt up from the bench. "It's a tragedy!" he said, grinding his teeth. Mechanically he went up to the sleeping man and looked in his face. He was a lean, middle-aged peasant, with a very long face, flaxen curls, and a long, thin, reddish beard, wearing a blue cotton shirt and a black waistcoat, from the pocket of which peeped the chain of a silver watch. Mitya looked at his face with intense hatred, and for some unknown reason his curly hair particularly irritated him. What was insufferably humiliating was, that after leaving things of such importance and making such sacrifices, he, Mitya, utterly worn out, should with business of such urgency be standing over this dolt on whom his whole fate depended, while he snored as though there were nothing the matter, as though he'd dropped from another planet. "Oh, the irony of fate!" cried Mitya, and, quite losing his head, he fell again to rousing the tipsy peasant. He roused him with a sort of ferocity, pulled at him, pushed him, even beat him; but after five minutes of vain exertions, he returned to his bench in helpless despair, and sat down. "Stupid! Stupid!" cried Mitya. "And how dishonorable it all is!" something made him add. His head began to ache horribly. "Should he fling it up and go away altogether?" he wondered. "No, wait till to-morrow now. I'll stay on purpose. What else did I come for? Besides, I've no means of going. How am I to get away from here now? Oh, the idiocy of it!" But his head ached more and more. He sat without moving, and unconsciously dozed off and fell asleep as he sat. He seemed to have slept for two hours or more. He was waked up by his head aching so unbearably that he could have screamed. There was a hammering in his temples, and the top of his head ached. It was a long time before he could wake up fully and understand what had happened to him. At last he realized that the room was full of charcoal fumes from the stove, and that he might die of suffocation. And the drunken peasant still lay snoring. The candle guttered and was about to go out. Mitya cried out, and ran staggering across the passage into the forester's room. The forester waked up at once, but hearing that the other room was full of fumes, to Mitya's surprise and annoyance, accepted the fact with strange unconcern, though he did go to see to it. "But he's dead, he's dead! and ... what am I to do then?" cried Mitya frantically. They threw open the doors, opened a window and the chimney. Mitya brought a pail of water from the passage. First he wetted his own head, then, finding a rag of some sort, dipped it into the water, and put it on Lyagavy's head. The forester still treated the matter contemptuously, and when he opened the window said grumpily: "It'll be all right, now." He went back to sleep, leaving Mitya a lighted lantern. Mitya fussed about the drunken peasant for half an hour, wetting his head, and gravely resolved not to sleep all night. But he was so worn out that when he sat down for a moment to take breath, he closed his eyes, unconsciously stretched himself full length on the bench and slept like the dead. It was dreadfully late when he waked. It was somewhere about nine o'clock. The sun was shining brightly in the two little windows of the hut. The curly-headed peasant was sitting on the bench and had his coat on. He had another samovar and another bottle in front of him. Yesterday's bottle had already been finished, and the new one was more than half empty. Mitya jumped up and saw at once that the cursed peasant was drunk again, hopelessly and incurably. He stared at him for a moment with wide opened eyes. The peasant was silently and slyly watching him, with insulting composure, and even a sort of contemptuous condescension, so Mitya fancied. He rushed up to him. "Excuse me, you see ... I ... you've most likely heard from the forester here in the hut. I'm Lieutenant Dmitri Karamazov, the son of the old Karamazov whose copse you are buying." "That's a lie!" said the peasant, calmly and confidently. "A lie? You know Fyodor Pavlovitch?" "I don't know any of your Fyodor Pavlovitches," said the peasant, speaking thickly. "You're bargaining with him for the copse, for the copse. Do wake up, and collect yourself. Father Pavel of Ilyinskoe brought me here. You wrote to Samsonov, and he has sent me to you," Mitya gasped breathlessly. "You're l-lying!" Lyagavy blurted out again. Mitya's legs went cold. "For mercy's sake! It isn't a joke! You're drunk, perhaps. Yet you can speak and understand ... or else ... I understand nothing!" "You're a painter!" "For mercy's sake! I'm Karamazov, Dmitri Karamazov. I have an offer to make you, an advantageous offer ... very advantageous offer, concerning the copse!" The peasant stroked his beard importantly. "No, you've contracted for the job and turned out a scamp. You're a scoundrel!" "I assure you you're mistaken," cried Mitya, wringing his hands in despair. The peasant still stroked his beard, and suddenly screwed up his eyes cunningly. "No, you show me this: you tell me the law that allows roguery. D'you hear? You're a scoundrel! Do you understand that?" Mitya stepped back gloomily, and suddenly "something seemed to hit him on the head," as he said afterwards. In an instant a light seemed to dawn in his mind, "a light was kindled and I grasped it all." He stood, stupefied, wondering how he, after all a man of intelligence, could have yielded to such folly, have been led into such an adventure, and have kept it up for almost twenty-four hours, fussing round this Lyagavy, wetting his head. "Why, the man's drunk, dead drunk, and he'll go on drinking now for a week; what's the use of waiting here? And what if Samsonov sent me here on purpose? What if she--? Oh, God, what have I done?" The peasant sat watching him and grinning. Another time Mitya might have killed the fool in a fury, but now he felt as weak as a child. He went quietly to the bench, took up his overcoat, put it on without a word, and went out of the hut. He did not find the forester in the next room; there was no one there. He took fifty kopecks in small change out of his pocket and put them on the table for his night's lodging, the candle, and the trouble he had given. Coming out of the hut he saw nothing but forest all round. He walked at hazard, not knowing which way to turn out of the hut, to the right or to the left. Hurrying there the evening before with the priest, he had not noticed the road. He had no revengeful feeling for anybody, even for Samsonov, in his heart. He strode along a narrow forest path, aimless, dazed, without heeding where he was going. A child could have knocked him down, so weak was he in body and soul. He got out of the forest somehow, however, and a vista of fields, bare after the harvest, stretched as far as the eye could see. "What despair! What death all round!" he repeated, striding on and on. He was saved by meeting an old merchant who was being driven across country in a hired trap. When he overtook him, Mitya asked the way, and it turned out that the old merchant, too, was going to Volovya. After some discussion Mitya got into the trap. Three hours later they arrived. At Volovya, Mitya at once ordered posting-horses to drive to the town, and suddenly realized that he was appallingly hungry. While the horses were being harnessed, an omelette was prepared for him. He ate it all in an instant, ate a huge hunk of bread, ate a sausage, and swallowed three glasses of vodka. After eating, his spirits and his heart grew lighter. He flew towards the town, urged on the driver, and suddenly made a new and "unalterable" plan to procure that "accursed money" before evening. "And to think, only to think that a man's life should be ruined for the sake of that paltry three thousand!" he cried, contemptuously. "I'll settle it to- day." And if it had not been for the thought of Grushenka and of what might have happened to her, which never left him, he would perhaps have become quite cheerful again.... But the thought of her was stabbing him to the heart every moment, like a sharp knife. At last they arrived, and Mitya at once ran to Grushenka.

Book 8, Chapter 2

https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-8-chapter-2

Having no money, Dmitri pawns his silver watch for six roubles and borrows three roubles from his landlords. Then off to Ilyinskoye he goes. At Ilyinskoye he meets up with the priest Lyagavy is staying with. The priest tells him that Lyagavy - who should be called Gorstkin, since he hates the name Lyagavy - is staying with a forester at Sukhoy Possyolok. Upon their arrival at the forester's, they discover that Lyagavy is passed out drunk in his room. Unable to wake him, Dmitri decides to wait outside the drunk's room until he wakes up. The priest heads back to Ilyinskoye. Dmitri must have fallen asleep, because all of a sudden he wakes up to find the room filled with fumes. The forester helps Dmitri air out the room, but Lyagavy sleeps peacefully on. Dmitri again falls asleep outside Lyagavy's room, and the next time he wakes it's 9 in the morning. He finds that Lyagavy has already started drinking heavily again. He tries to engage Lyagavy in conversation, but Lyagavy keeps accusing him of being out to cheat him. Realizing that he's been the victim of Samsonov's malicious trickery, Dmitri returns back home and straight to Grushenka's.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/12915-chapters/9.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The White Devil/section_8_part_0.txt

The White Devil.act 4.scene 2

act 4, scene 2

{"name": "Act 4, Scene 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210510044810/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/the-white-devil/summary/act-4-scene-2", "summary": "Flamineo and a Matron enter--this scene is set in Vittoria's place of imprisonment, the \"house of convertites.\" The Matron is worried that she'll get in trouble for giving Brachiano access to Vittoria, but Flamineo says that everyone's been distracted by the death of the Pope and choosing a new Pope. No one is going to care. Francisco's servant enters, bearing the fake love-letter he wants to give to Vittoria. He passes it on to the Matron, and leaves. Brachiano enters. He demands to read the letter, and sees that it's from Florence. Flamineo opens it and reads it aloud: in it, Francisco tells Vittoria he wants to rescue and take her away to Florence. He claims that he's in love with her, making his case and urging her to accept him, despite his older age. Flamineo immediately sees that the letter is a trick, but the Duke flies into a jealous rage. He says that Vittoria is a \"whore\" and threatens to kill her. He and Flamineo almost come to blows, but Flamineo panders to the Duke and offers to lead him to Vittoria. Vittoria enters. Brachiano confronts her with the letter, insults her, and demands to see her stash of love-letters from Florence . Brachiano blames Vittoria's beauty for seducing him and causing him to pursue his course of action. Brachiano asks God to pardon him for killing his wife, while Vittoria says she hope God takes vengeance against him for killing his wife. She eloquently denounces the Duke for ruining her name and getting her confined to a \"house of penitent whores.\" She collapses weeping on the bed, while the Duke realizes he's wrong. He apologizes and says he's forgotten the fake love-letter. Vittoria's angry with him, and at Flamineo--she calls him a pander. Brachiano claims he'll never be jealous again, but Vittoria says she won't be his anymore--it'd be easier to light a bonfire on the bottom of the sea. Flamineo says to the Duke that he needs to use better tactics to get an angry woman back on his side. Flamineo acts like he's supporting Vittoria, saying she's justly angry, but urging her to be forgiving--it's more lady-like. He and Brachiano gradually work on Vittoria, acting sweet and apologetic. Flamineo says that the Duke needs to back up his words with deeds--so Brachiano says that he'll steal Francisco's fake escape plan and make it real. He'll bust Vittoria out of her imprisonment and bring her to Padua. Flamineo says it's a great time because everyone's distracted with the death of the pope and the election of the new pope. Brachiano is going to take Giovanni with him, and he tells Flamineo to bring Marcello and Cornelia. Flamineo then tells an allegory about how a crocodile was in pain with worm-infested gums. A little bird came to eat the worms, relieving the croc's pain. But, ungratefully, the crocodile tried to eat the bird--being prevented only by a prick or quill sticking out of the bird's head. The Duke thinks that Flamineo is saying the Duke hasn't done enough for him. But Flamineo explains that his sister is the crocodile and Brachiano is curing her infamy by rescuing her: so she should be grateful. He also notes to the audience that it might seem ridiculous that he's playing mad one second and acting like a wise counselor for Brachiano's benefit the next. But he says it's all for the greater goal of advancing himself in the world.", "analysis": ""}

SCENE II Enter the Matron, and Flamineo Matron. Should it be known the duke hath such recourse To your imprison'd sister, I were like T' incur much damage by it. Flam. Not a scruple. The Pope lies on his death-bed, and their heads Are troubled now with other business Than guarding of a lady. Enter Servant Servant. Yonder 's Flamineo in conference With the Matrona.--Let me speak with you: I would entreat you to deliver for me This letter to the fair Vittoria. Matron. I shall, sir. Enter Brachiano Servant. With all care and secrecy; Hereafter you shall know me, and receive Thanks for this courtesy. [Exit. Flam. How now? what 's that? Matron. A letter. Flam. To my sister? I 'll see 't deliver'd. Brach. What 's that you read, Flamineo? Flam. Look. Brach. Ha! 'To the most unfortunate, his best respected Vittoria'. Who was the messenger? Flam. I know not. Brach. No! who sent it? Flam. Ud's foot! you speak as if a man Should know what fowl is coffin'd in a bak'd meat Afore you cut it up. Brach. I 'll open 't, were 't her heart. What 's here subscrib'd! Florence! this juggling is gross and palpable. I have found out the conveyance. Read it, read it. Flam. [Reads the letter.] "Your tears I 'll turn to triumphs, be but mine; Your prop is fallen: I pity, that a vine Which princes heretofore have long'd to gather, Wanting supporters, now should fade and wither." Wine, i' faith, my lord, with lees would serve his turn. "Your sad imprisonment I 'll soon uncharm, And with a princely uncontrolled arm Lead you to Florence, where my love and care Shall hang your wishes in my silver hair." A halter on his strange equivocation! "Nor for my years return me the sad willow; Who prefer blossoms before fruit that 's mellow?" Rotten, on my knowledge, with lying too long i' th' bedstraw. "And all the lines of age this line convinces; The gods never wax old, no more do princes." A pox on 't, tear it; let 's have no more atheists, for God's sake. Brach. Ud's death! I 'll cut her into atomies, And let th' irregular north wind sweep her up, And blow her int' his nostrils: where 's this whore? Flam. What? what do you call her? Brach. Oh, I could be mad! Prevent the curs'd disease she 'll bring me to, And tear my hair off. Where 's this changeable stuff? Flam. O'er head and ears in water, I assure you; She is not for your wearing. Brach. In, you pander! Flam. What, me, my lord? am I your dog? Brach. A bloodhound: do you brave, do you stand me? Flam. Stand you! let those that have diseases run; I need no plasters. Brach. Would you be kick'd? Flam. Would you have your neck broke? I tell you, duke, I am not in Russia; My shins must be kept whole. Brach. Do you know me? Flam. Oh, my lord, methodically! As in this world there are degrees of evils, So in this world there are degrees of devils. You 're a great duke, I your poor secretary. I do look now for a Spanish fig, or an Italian sallet, daily. Brach. Pander, ply your convoy, and leave your prating. Flam. All your kindness to me, is like that miserable courtesy of Polyphemus to Ulysses; you reserve me to be devoured last: you would dig turfs out of my grave to feed your larks; that would be music to you. Come, I 'll lead you to her. Brach. Do you face me? Flam. Oh, sir, I would not go before a politic enemy with my back towards him, though there were behind me a whirlpool. Enter Vittoria to Brachiano and Flamineo Brach. Can you read, mistress? look upon that letter: There are no characters, nor hieroglyphics. You need no comment; I am grown your receiver. God's precious! you shall be a brave great lady, A stately and advanced whore. Vit. Say, sir? Brach. Come, come, let 's see your cabinet, discover Your treasury of love-letters. Death and furies! I 'll see them all. Vit. Sir, upon my soul, I have not any. Whence was this directed? Brach. Confusion on your politic ignorance! You are reclaim'd, are you? I 'll give you the bells, And let you fly to the devil. Flam. Ware hawk, my lord. Vit. Florence! this is some treacherous plot, my lord; To me he ne'er was lovely, I protest, So much as in my sleep. Brach. Right! there are plots. Your beauty! Oh, ten thousand curses on 't! How long have I beheld the devil in crystal! Thou hast led me, like an heathen sacrifice, With music, and with fatal yokes of flowers, To my eternal ruin. Woman to man Is either a god, or a wolf. Vit. My lord---- Brach. Away! We 'll be as differing as two adamants, The one shall shun the other. What! dost weep? Procure but ten of thy dissembling trade, Ye 'd furnish all the Irish funerals With howling past wild Irish. Flam. Fie, my lord! Brach. That hand, that cursed hand, which I have wearied With doting kisses!--Oh, my sweetest duchess, How lovely art thou now!--My loose thoughts Scatter like quicksilver: I was bewitch'd; For all the world speaks ill of thee. Vit. No matter; I 'll live so now, I 'll make that world recant, And change her speeches. You did name your duchess. Brach. Whose death God pardon! Vit. Whose death God revenge On thee, most godless duke! Flam. Now for ten whirlwinds. Vit. What have I gain'd by thee, but infamy? Thou hast stain'd the spotless honour of my house, And frighted thence noble society: Like those, which sick o' th' palsy, and retain Ill-scenting foxes 'bout them, are still shunn'd By those of choicer nostrils. What do you call this house? Is this your palace? did not the judge style it A house of penitent whores? who sent me to it? To this incontinent college? is 't not you? Is 't not your high preferment? go, go, brag How many ladies you have undone, like me. Fare you well, sir; let me hear no more of you! I had a limb corrupted to an ulcer, But I have cut it off; and now I 'll go Weeping to heaven on crutches. For your gifts, I will return them all, and I do wish That I could make you full executor To all my sins. O that I could toss myself Into a grave as quickly! for all thou art worth I 'll not shed one tear more--I 'll burst first. [She throws herself upon a bed. Brach. I have drunk Lethe: Vittoria! My dearest happiness! Vittoria! What do you ail, my love? why do you weep? Vit. Yes, I now weep poniards, do you see? Brach. Are not those matchless eyes mine? Vit. I had rather They were not matches. Brach. Is not this lip mine? Vit. Yes; thus to bite it off, rather than give it thee. Flam. Turn to my lord, good sister. Vit. Hence, you pander! Flam. Pander! am I the author of your sin? Vit. Yes; he 's a base thief that a thief lets in. Flam. We 're blown up, my lord---- Brach. Wilt thou hear me? Once to be jealous of thee, is t' express That I will love thee everlastingly, And never more be jealous. Vit. O thou fool, Whose greatness hath by much o'ergrown thy wit! What dar'st thou do, that I not dare to suffer, Excepting to be still thy whore? for that, In the sea's bottom sooner thou shalt make A bonfire. Flam. Oh, no oaths, for God's sake! Brach. Will you hear me? Vit. Never. Flam. What a damn'd imposthume is a woman's will! Can nothing break it? [Aside.] Fie, fie, my lord, Women are caught as you take tortoises, She must be turn'd on her back. Sister, by this hand I am on your side.--Come, come, you have wrong'd her; What a strange credulous man were you, my lord, To think the Duke of Florence would love her! Will any mercer take another's ware When once 'tis tows'd and sullied? And yet, sister, How scurvily this forwardness becomes you! Young leverets stand not long, and women's anger Should, like their flight, procure a little sport; A full cry for a quarter of an hour, And then be put to th' dead quat. Brach. Shall these eyes, Which have so long time dwelt upon your face, Be now put out? Flam. No cruel landlady i' th' world, Which lends forth groats to broom-men, and takes use For them, would do 't. Hand her, my lord, and kiss her: be not like A ferret, to let go your hold with blowing. Brach. Let us renew right hands. Vit. Hence! Brach. Never shall rage, or the forgetful wine, Make me commit like fault. Flam. Now you are i' th' way on 't, follow 't hard. Brach. Be thou at peace with me, let all the world Threaten the cannon. Flam. Mark his penitence; Best natures do commit the grosses faults, When they 're given o'er to jealousy, as best wine, Dying, makes strongest vinegar. I 'll tell you: The sea 's more rough and raging than calm rivers, But not so sweet, nor wholesome. A quiet woman Is a still water under a great bridge; A man may shoot her safely. Vit. O ye dissembling men! Flam. We suck'd that, sister, From women's breasts, in our first infancy. Vit. To add misery to misery! Brach. Sweetest! Vit. Am I not low enough? Ay, ay, your good heart gathers like a snowball, Now your affection 's cold. Flam. Ud's foot, it shall melt To a heart again, or all the wine in Rome Shall run o' th' lees for 't. Vit. Your dog or hawk should be rewarded better Than I have been. I 'll speak not one word more. Flam. Stop her mouth With a sweet kiss, my lord. So, Now the tide 's turn'd, the vessel 's come about. He 's a sweet armful. Oh, we curl-hair'd men Are still most kind to women! This is well. Brach. That you should chide thus! Flam. Oh, sir, your little chimneys Do ever cast most smoke! I sweat for you. Couple together with as deep a silence, As did the Grecians in their wooden horse. My lord, supply your promises with deeds; You know that painted meat no hunger feeds. Brach. Stay, ungrateful Rome---- Flam. Rome! it deserve to be call'd Barbary, For our villainous usage. Brach. Soft; the same project which the Duke of Florence, (Whether in love or gallery I know not) Laid down for her escape, will I pursue. Flam. And no time fitter than this night, my lord. The Pope being dead, and all the cardinals enter'd The conclave, for th' electing a new Pope; The city in a great confusion; We may attire her in a page's suit, Lay her post-horse, take shipping, and amain For Padua. Brach. I 'll instantly steal forth the Prince Giovanni, And make for Padua. You two with your old mother, And young Marcello that attends on Florence, If you can work him to it, follow me: I will advance you all; for you, Vittoria, Think of a duchess' title. Flam. Lo you, sister! Stay, my lord; I 'll tell you a tale. The crocodile, which lives in the River Nilus, hath a worm breeds i' th' teeth of 't, which puts it to extreme anguish: a little bird, no bigger than a wren, is barber-surgeon to this crocodile; flies into the jaws of 't, picks out the worm, and brings present remedy. The fish, glad of ease, but ungrateful to her that did it, that the bird may not talk largely of her abroad for non-payment, closeth her chaps, intending to swallow her, and so put her to perpetual silence. But nature, loathing such ingratitude, hath armed this bird with a quill or prick on the head, top o' th' which wounds the crocodile i' th' mouth, forceth her open her bloody prison, and away flies the pretty tooth-picker from her cruel patient. Brach. Your application is, I have not rewarded The service you have done me. Flam. No, my lord. You, sister, are the crocodile: you are blemish'd in your fame, my lord cures it; and though the comparison hold not in every particle, yet observe, remember, what good the bird with the prick i' th' head hath done you, and scorn ingratitude. It may appear to some ridiculous Thus to talk knave and madman, and sometimes Come in with a dried sentence, stuffed with sage: But this allows my varying of shapes; Knaves do grow great by being great men's apes.

Act 4, Scene 2

https://web.archive.org/web/20210510044810/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/the-white-devil/summary/act-4-scene-2

Flamineo and a Matron enter--this scene is set in Vittoria's place of imprisonment, the "house of convertites." The Matron is worried that she'll get in trouble for giving Brachiano access to Vittoria, but Flamineo says that everyone's been distracted by the death of the Pope and choosing a new Pope. No one is going to care. Francisco's servant enters, bearing the fake love-letter he wants to give to Vittoria. He passes it on to the Matron, and leaves. Brachiano enters. He demands to read the letter, and sees that it's from Florence. Flamineo opens it and reads it aloud: in it, Francisco tells Vittoria he wants to rescue and take her away to Florence. He claims that he's in love with her, making his case and urging her to accept him, despite his older age. Flamineo immediately sees that the letter is a trick, but the Duke flies into a jealous rage. He says that Vittoria is a "whore" and threatens to kill her. He and Flamineo almost come to blows, but Flamineo panders to the Duke and offers to lead him to Vittoria. Vittoria enters. Brachiano confronts her with the letter, insults her, and demands to see her stash of love-letters from Florence . Brachiano blames Vittoria's beauty for seducing him and causing him to pursue his course of action. Brachiano asks God to pardon him for killing his wife, while Vittoria says she hope God takes vengeance against him for killing his wife. She eloquently denounces the Duke for ruining her name and getting her confined to a "house of penitent whores." She collapses weeping on the bed, while the Duke realizes he's wrong. He apologizes and says he's forgotten the fake love-letter. Vittoria's angry with him, and at Flamineo--she calls him a pander. Brachiano claims he'll never be jealous again, but Vittoria says she won't be his anymore--it'd be easier to light a bonfire on the bottom of the sea. Flamineo says to the Duke that he needs to use better tactics to get an angry woman back on his side. Flamineo acts like he's supporting Vittoria, saying she's justly angry, but urging her to be forgiving--it's more lady-like. He and Brachiano gradually work on Vittoria, acting sweet and apologetic. Flamineo says that the Duke needs to back up his words with deeds--so Brachiano says that he'll steal Francisco's fake escape plan and make it real. He'll bust Vittoria out of her imprisonment and bring her to Padua. Flamineo says it's a great time because everyone's distracted with the death of the pope and the election of the new pope. Brachiano is going to take Giovanni with him, and he tells Flamineo to bring Marcello and Cornelia. Flamineo then tells an allegory about how a crocodile was in pain with worm-infested gums. A little bird came to eat the worms, relieving the croc's pain. But, ungratefully, the crocodile tried to eat the bird--being prevented only by a prick or quill sticking out of the bird's head. The Duke thinks that Flamineo is saying the Duke hasn't done enough for him. But Flamineo explains that his sister is the crocodile and Brachiano is curing her infamy by rescuing her: so she should be grateful. He also notes to the audience that it might seem ridiculous that he's playing mad one second and acting like a wise counselor for Brachiano's benefit the next. But he says it's all for the greater goal of advancing himself in the world.

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/59.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Brothers Karamazov/section_11_part_6.txt

The Brothers Karamazov.book 9.chapter 6

book 9, chapter 6

{"name": "book 9, Chapter 6", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section12/", "summary": "The Prosecutor Catches Mitya The officers search Dmitri's clothes and find that they are stained with blood. After the officers take his clothing as evidence, Dmitri becomes enraged with the prosecutors", "analysis": ""}

Chapter VI. The Prosecutor Catches Mitya Something utterly unexpected and amazing to Mitya followed. He could never, even a minute before, have conceived that any one could behave like that to him, Mitya Karamazov. What was worst of all, there was something humiliating in it, and on their side something "supercilious and scornful." It was nothing to take off his coat, but he was asked to undress further, or rather not asked but "commanded," he quite understood that. From pride and contempt he submitted without a word. Several peasants accompanied the lawyers and remained on the same side of the curtain. "To be ready if force is required," thought Mitya, "and perhaps for some other reason, too." "Well, must I take off my shirt, too?" he asked sharply, but Nikolay Parfenovitch did not answer. He was busily engaged with the prosecutor in examining the coat, the trousers, the waistcoat and the cap; and it was evident that they were both much interested in the scrutiny. "They make no bones about it," thought Mitya, "they don't keep up the most elementary politeness." "I ask you for the second time--need I take off my shirt or not?" he said, still more sharply and irritably. "Don't trouble yourself. We will tell you what to do," Nikolay Parfenovitch said, and his voice was positively peremptory, or so it seemed to Mitya. Meantime a consultation was going on in undertones between the lawyers. There turned out to be on the coat, especially on the left side at the back, a huge patch of blood, dry, and still stiff. There were bloodstains on the trousers, too. Nikolay Parfenovitch, moreover, in the presence of the peasant witnesses, passed his fingers along the collar, the cuffs, and all the seams of the coat and trousers, obviously looking for something--money, of course. He didn't even hide from Mitya his suspicion that he was capable of sewing money up in his clothes. "He treats me not as an officer but as a thief," Mitya muttered to himself. They communicated their ideas to one another with amazing frankness. The secretary, for instance, who was also behind the curtain, fussing about and listening, called Nikolay Parfenovitch's attention to the cap, which they were also fingering. "You remember Gridyenko, the copying-clerk," observed the secretary. "Last summer he received the wages of the whole office, and pretended to have lost the money when he was drunk. And where was it found? Why, in just such pipings in his cap. The hundred-rouble notes were screwed up in little rolls and sewed in the piping." Both the lawyers remembered Gridyenko's case perfectly, and so laid aside Mitya's cap, and decided that all his clothes must be more thoroughly examined later. "Excuse me," cried Nikolay Parfenovitch, suddenly, noticing that the right cuff of Mitya's shirt was turned in, and covered with blood, "excuse me, what's that, blood?" "Yes," Mitya jerked out. "That is, what blood? ... and why is the cuff turned in?" Mitya told him how he had got the sleeve stained with blood looking after Grigory, and had turned it inside when he was washing his hands at Perhotin's. "You must take off your shirt, too. That's very important as material evidence." Mitya flushed red and flew into a rage. "What, am I to stay naked?" he shouted. "Don't disturb yourself. We will arrange something. And meanwhile take off your socks." "You're not joking? Is that really necessary?" Mitya's eyes flashed. "We are in no mood for joking," answered Nikolay Parfenovitch sternly. "Well, if I must--" muttered Mitya, and sitting down on the bed, he took off his socks. He felt unbearably awkward. All were clothed, while he was naked, and strange to say, when he was undressed he felt somehow guilty in their presence, and was almost ready to believe himself that he was inferior to them, and that now they had a perfect right to despise him. "When all are undressed, one is somehow not ashamed, but when one's the only one undressed and everybody is looking, it's degrading," he kept repeating to himself, again and again. "It's like a dream, I've sometimes dreamed of being in such degrading positions." It was a misery to him to take off his socks. They were very dirty, and so were his underclothes, and now every one could see it. And what was worse, he disliked his feet. All his life he had thought both his big toes hideous. He particularly loathed the coarse, flat, crooked nail on the right one, and now they would all see it. Feeling intolerably ashamed made him, at once and intentionally, rougher. He pulled off his shirt, himself. "Would you like to look anywhere else if you're not ashamed to?" "No, there's no need to, at present." "Well, am I to stay naked like this?" he added savagely. "Yes, that can't be helped for the time.... Kindly sit down here for a while. You can wrap yourself in a quilt from the bed, and I ... I'll see to all this." All the things were shown to the witnesses. The report of the search was drawn up, and at last Nikolay Parfenovitch went out, and the clothes were carried out after him. Ippolit Kirillovitch went out, too. Mitya was left alone with the peasants, who stood in silence, never taking their eyes off him. Mitya wrapped himself up in the quilt. He felt cold. His bare feet stuck out, and he couldn't pull the quilt over so as to cover them. Nikolay Parfenovitch seemed to be gone a long time, "an insufferable time." "He thinks of me as a puppy," thought Mitya, gnashing his teeth. "That rotten prosecutor has gone, too, contemptuous no doubt, it disgusts him to see me naked!" Mitya imagined, however, that his clothes would be examined and returned to him. But what was his indignation when Nikolay Parfenovitch came back with quite different clothes, brought in behind him by a peasant. "Here are clothes for you," he observed airily, seeming well satisfied with the success of his mission. "Mr. Kalganov has kindly provided these for this unusual emergency, as well as a clean shirt. Luckily he had them all in his trunk. You can keep your own socks and underclothes." Mitya flew into a passion. "I won't have other people's clothes!" he shouted menacingly, "give me my own!" "It's impossible!" "Give me my own. Damn Kalganov and his clothes, too!" It was a long time before they could persuade him. But they succeeded somehow in quieting him down. They impressed upon him that his clothes, being stained with blood, must be "included with the other material evidence," and that they "had not even the right to let him have them now ... taking into consideration the possible outcome of the case." Mitya at last understood this. He subsided into gloomy silence and hurriedly dressed himself. He merely observed, as he put them on, that the clothes were much better than his old ones, and that he disliked "gaining by the change." The coat was, besides, "ridiculously tight. Am I to be dressed up like a fool ... for your amusement?" They urged upon him again that he was exaggerating, that Kalganov was only a little taller, so that only the trousers might be a little too long. But the coat turned out to be really tight in the shoulders. "Damn it all! I can hardly button it," Mitya grumbled. "Be so good as to tell Mr. Kalganov from me that I didn't ask for his clothes, and it's not my doing that they've dressed me up like a clown." "He understands that, and is sorry ... I mean, not sorry to lend you his clothes, but sorry about all this business," mumbled Nikolay Parfenovitch. "Confound his sorrow! Well, where now? Am I to go on sitting here?" He was asked to go back to the "other room." Mitya went in, scowling with anger, and trying to avoid looking at any one. Dressed in another man's clothes he felt himself disgraced, even in the eyes of the peasants, and of Trifon Borissovitch, whose face appeared, for some reason, in the doorway, and vanished immediately. "He's come to look at me dressed up," thought Mitya. He sat down on the same chair as before. He had an absurd nightmarish feeling, as though he were out of his mind. "Well, what now? Are you going to flog me? That's all that's left for you," he said, clenching his teeth and addressing the prosecutor. He would not turn to Nikolay Parfenovitch, as though he disdained to speak to him. "He looked too closely at my socks, and turned them inside out on purpose to show every one how dirty they were--the scoundrel!" "Well, now we must proceed to the examination of witnesses," observed Nikolay Parfenovitch, as though in reply to Mitya's question. "Yes," said the prosecutor thoughtfully, as though reflecting on something. "We've done what we could in your interest, Dmitri Fyodorovitch," Nikolay Parfenovitch went on, "but having received from you such an uncompromising refusal to explain to us the source from which you obtained the money found upon you, we are, at the present moment--" "What is the stone in your ring?" Mitya interrupted suddenly, as though awakening from a reverie. He pointed to one of the three large rings adorning Nikolay Parfenovitch's right hand. "Ring?" repeated Nikolay Parfenovitch with surprise. "Yes, that one ... on your middle finger, with the little veins in it, what stone is that?" Mitya persisted, like a peevish child. "That's a smoky topaz," said Nikolay Parfenovitch, smiling. "Would you like to look at it? I'll take it off ..." "No, don't take it off," cried Mitya furiously, suddenly waking up, and angry with himself. "Don't take it off ... there's no need.... Damn it!... Gentlemen, you've sullied my heart! Can you suppose that I would conceal it from you, if I had really killed my father, that I would shuffle, lie, and hide myself? No, that's not like Dmitri Karamazov, that he couldn't do, and if I were guilty, I swear I shouldn't have waited for your coming, or for the sunrise as I meant at first, but should have killed myself before this, without waiting for the dawn! I know that about myself now. I couldn't have learnt so much in twenty years as I've found out in this accursed night!... And should I have been like this on this night, and at this moment, sitting with you, could I have talked like this, could I have moved like this, could I have looked at you and at the world like this, if I had really been the murderer of my father, when the very thought of having accidentally killed Grigory gave me no peace all night--not from fear--oh, not simply from fear of your punishment! The disgrace of it! And you expect me to be open with such scoffers as you, who see nothing and believe in nothing, blind moles and scoffers, and to tell you another nasty thing I've done, another disgrace, even if that would save me from your accusation! No, better Siberia! The man who opened the door to my father and went in at that door, he killed him, he robbed him. Who was he? I'm racking my brains and can't think who. But I can tell you it was not Dmitri Karamazov, and that's all I can tell you, and that's enough, enough, leave me alone.... Exile me, punish me, but don't bother me any more. I'll say no more. Call your witnesses!" Mitya uttered his sudden monologue as though he were determined to be absolutely silent for the future. The prosecutor watched him the whole time and only when he had ceased speaking, observed, as though it were the most ordinary thing, with the most frigid and composed air: "Oh, about the open door of which you spoke just now, we may as well inform you, by the way, now, of a very interesting piece of evidence of the greatest importance both to you and to us, that has been given us by Grigory, the old man you wounded. On his recovery, he clearly and emphatically stated, in reply to our questions, that when, on coming out to the steps, and hearing a noise in the garden, he made up his mind to go into it through the little gate which stood open, before he noticed you running, as you have told us already, in the dark from the open window where you saw your father, he, Grigory, glanced to the left, and, while noticing the open window, observed at the same time, much nearer to him, the door, standing wide open--that door which you have stated to have been shut the whole time you were in the garden. I will not conceal from you that Grigory himself confidently affirms and bears witness that you must have run from that door, though, of course, he did not see you do so with his own eyes, since he only noticed you first some distance away in the garden, running towards the fence." Mitya had leapt up from his chair half-way through this speech. "Nonsense!" he yelled, in a sudden frenzy, "it's a barefaced lie. He couldn't have seen the door open because it was shut. He's lying!" "I consider it my duty to repeat that he is firm in his statement. He does not waver. He adheres to it. We've cross-examined him several times." "Precisely. I have cross-examined him several times," Nikolay Parfenovitch confirmed warmly. "It's false, false! It's either an attempt to slander me, or the hallucination of a madman," Mitya still shouted. "He's simply raving, from loss of blood, from the wound. He must have fancied it when he came to.... He's raving." "Yes, but he noticed the open door, not when he came to after his injuries, but before that, as soon as he went into the garden from the lodge." "But it's false, it's false! It can't be so! He's slandering me from spite.... He couldn't have seen it ... I didn't come from the door," gasped Mitya. The prosecutor turned to Nikolay Parfenovitch and said to him impressively: "Confront him with it." "Do you recognize this object?" Nikolay Parfenovitch laid upon the table a large and thick official envelope, on which three seals still remained intact. The envelope was empty, and slit open at one end. Mitya stared at it with open eyes. "It ... it must be that envelope of my father's, the envelope that contained the three thousand roubles ... and if there's inscribed on it, allow me, 'For my little chicken' ... yes--three thousand!" he shouted, "do you see, three thousand, do you see?" "Of course, we see. But we didn't find the money in it. It was empty, and lying on the floor by the bed, behind the screen." For some seconds Mitya stood as though thunderstruck. "Gentlemen, it's Smerdyakov!" he shouted suddenly, at the top of his voice. "It's he who's murdered him! He's robbed him! No one else knew where the old man hid the envelope. It's Smerdyakov, that's clear, now!" "But you, too, knew of the envelope and that it was under the pillow." "I never knew it. I've never seen it. This is the first time I've looked at it. I'd only heard of it from Smerdyakov.... He was the only one who knew where the old man kept it hidden, I didn't know ..." Mitya was completely breathless. "But you told us yourself that the envelope was under your deceased father's pillow. You especially stated that it was under the pillow, so you must have known it." "We've got it written down," confirmed Nikolay Parfenovitch. "Nonsense! It's absurd! I'd no idea it was under the pillow. And perhaps it wasn't under the pillow at all.... It was just a chance guess that it was under the pillow. What does Smerdyakov say? Have you asked him where it was? What does Smerdyakov say? that's the chief point.... And I went out of my way to tell lies against myself.... I told you without thinking that it was under the pillow, and now you-- Oh, you know how one says the wrong thing, without meaning it. No one knew but Smerdyakov, only Smerdyakov, and no one else.... He didn't even tell me where it was! But it's his doing, his doing; there's no doubt about it, he murdered him, that's as clear as daylight now," Mitya exclaimed more and more frantically, repeating himself incoherently, and growing more and more exasperated and excited. "You must understand that, and arrest him at once.... He must have killed him while I was running away and while Grigory was unconscious, that's clear now.... He gave the signal and father opened to him ... for no one but he knew the signal, and without the signal father would never have opened the door...." "But you're again forgetting the circumstance," the prosecutor observed, still speaking with the same restraint, though with a note of triumph, "that there was no need to give the signal if the door already stood open when you were there, while you were in the garden...." "The door, the door," muttered Mitya, and he stared speechless at the prosecutor. He sank back helpless in his chair. All were silent. "Yes, the door!... It's a nightmare! God is against me!" he exclaimed, staring before him in complete stupefaction. "Come, you see," the prosecutor went on with dignity, "and you can judge for yourself, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. On the one hand we have the evidence of the open door from which you ran out, a fact which overwhelms you and us. On the other side your incomprehensible, persistent, and, so to speak, obdurate silence with regard to the source from which you obtained the money which was so suddenly seen in your hands, when only three hours earlier, on your own showing, you pledged your pistols for the sake of ten roubles! In view of all these facts, judge for yourself. What are we to believe, and what can we depend upon? And don't accuse us of being 'frigid, cynical, scoffing people,' who are incapable of believing in the generous impulses of your heart.... Try to enter into our position ..." Mitya was indescribably agitated. He turned pale. "Very well!" he exclaimed suddenly. "I will tell you my secret. I'll tell you where I got the money!... I'll reveal my shame, that I may not have to blame myself or you hereafter." "And believe me, Dmitri Fyodorovitch," put in Nikolay Parfenovitch, in a voice of almost pathetic delight, "that every sincere and complete confession on your part at this moment may, later on, have an immense influence in your favor, and may, indeed, moreover--" But the prosecutor gave him a slight shove under the table, and he checked himself in time. Mitya, it is true, had not heard him.

book 9, Chapter 6

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

The Prosecutor Catches Mitya The officers search Dmitri's clothes and find that they are stained with blood. After the officers take his clothing as evidence, Dmitri becomes enraged with the prosecutors

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/2166-chapters/chapters_17_to_18.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/King Solomon's Mines/section_9_part_0.txt

King Solomon's Mines.chapters 17-18

chapters 17-18

{"name": "Chapters 17 and 18", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200804024551/https://www.gradesaver.com/king-solomons-mines/study-guide/summary-chapters-17-and-18", "summary": "While the explorers recover from their fright at the sights before them, Gagool busies herself by climbing atop the large table and addressing the dead Twala. Then she makes her way around the room to address the other fallen kings, but her words are unintelligible to the others. Gagool then squats beneath the figure of the White Death, presumably praying to it. Quatermain reminds Gagool to lead them to the treasure chamber. Gagool taunts them by asking whether or not they are afraid. She leads them to an apparently blank wall, and she secretly trips a switch that causes the rock face of the wall to ascent into the ceiling above. Before letting them enter, Gagool tells the men of another traveler whom \"Gagaoola the old\" led into this chamber long ago. Quatermain identifies the treasure-seeker as da Silvestra, surprising Gagool. She continues the tale, in which the man and his female companion entered the treasure chamber with a goat skin bag Gagool told them about, confirming the witch's story. The sight of the skin full of diamonds awes the men for a moment. Sir Henry takes the lamp from Gagool, and the men enter the chamber. Within the chamber they find a ceiling-high stack of elephant tusks, extending back beyond sight into the chamber. On the opposite side of the chamber they see about twenty wooden boxes, each one full of gold coins with Hebrew letters stamped on them. At first they find no other diamonds than the ones in the goat skin, but Gagool directs them to a nook in which rest three stone chests, two sealed and one open. Investigating, the men find the open chest mostly full of uncut diamonds. Opening the second and third chests, the men find the second full to the top with diamonds and the third only partially full, but of the largest diamonds of the lot. Awed by their newfound wealth, the men do not notice Gagool's hasty departure. Only Foulata's cry of warning alerts them that she is escaping and has set the stone doorway to closing. Foulata attempts to stop Gagool's exit, but Gagool stabs her. Nonetheless, Foulata's efforts delay Gagool long enough that the witch does not make it through the door before the tons of stone drop upon her, killing her instantly. The fatally injured Foulata asks Quatermain to translate her dying words to Good. Quatermain does so, and Foulata declares her love and her understanding that Good's own adoration of her was not destined to last long; nevertheless, she is grateful for her time with him. Foulata dies and Good is upset, but he does not see the impending doom until Quatermain points out that Good's own death will likely follow Foulata's soon, for they are buried alive. The men take stock of their grim situation. They console themselves that Gagool has met with justice, but are nonetheless disheartened at their own apparent doom. They know Infadoos will search for them eventually, but know that he is not going to find the secret to opening a hidden door that he is not even aware exists. The men somberly divide their food and prepare for their deaths. Their lamp-flame suddenly grows brighter, illuminating Foulata's dead body, and goes out completely. Quatermain, Sir Henry, and Good settle into a state of despair over their situation. The utter darkness and complete silence unnerve them. They clutch at straws for hope in their dire circumstances, even going so far as sending Good to cry out at the stone doorway in the hope that Infadoos will hear them. There is no response, of course, so they divide up their food and eat a slight amount to sustain their seeming last hours. Overcome by desolation, Quatermain and Good rest their heads on Sir Henry's shoulders and weep. Sir Henry, mindless of his own despair, comforts them by telling them stories of men who had escaped from near-death circumstances and, when those fail to relieve their misery, reminds them that everyone dies some time and it is only the anticipation of that moment that is dreadful. Hours later, Quatermain observes that the air in this sealed chamber remains fresh; therefore there must be some way for air to enter. Seizing on this hope, the men scramble through the dark chamber in search of the airway. Sir Henry and Quatermain give up after several minor injuries, but Good locates the air flow. Lighting a match, the men find a stone ring inset into the floor. Sir Henry, with help from Quatermain and Good, pulls the stone ring up, revealing a stone trap door with stairs beneath. The men gather their remaining food and water and venture into the unknown depths. On their way out of the chamber, Quatermain grabs two handfuls of diamonds and places them in his coat pockets; Good and Sir Henry are too focused on survival to care about such things. At the bottom of the stairs the men find a tunnel extending both right and left. They decide to go against the flow of air, reasoning that air flows from the outside in and not the other way around. For a long time they follow the winding tunnel, fearful that it will only lead them back where they started. Then they hear the sound of running water and become excited at the prospect of escape. In the darkness, Good takes a misstep and falls into the underground river. Sir Henry pulls Good out, but Good's experience has convinced him that the river is too dangerous to be used as a means of escape. They retrace their steps and find a tunnel stretching out to the right. Resigned at the hopelessness of making a reasonable choice of direction, the men follow the tunnel. Soon they spy a glimmer of light ahead and make haste toward it. The hewn tunnel gives way to earth, and the find the light comes through a small hole, probably dug by some animal. They widen the hole and in a matter of minutes escape the dark tunnels into the bright world outside. When the Kukuanas see them rise from the earth, they are awed and frightened at these seemingly supernatural beings. Only after the men address Infadoos and explain who they are do the Kukuanas relax and help the men be restored from their perilous adventure.", "analysis": "The tone of Chapter 17 foreshadows the formula for Saturday matinee serials, which usually ended on a cliffhanger between episodes. The treacherous villain, the discovery of treasure, the botched escape by the killer, the sacrifice of the innocent woman, and the impending doom on the protagonists are all used by later authors and film-makers as integral parts of adventure thrillers. Haggard was not the first or only writer to use these motifs, but he did become the most popular--and therefore the most influential--writer of adventure tales in his time. Gagool experiences a moment of surprise when Quatermain correctly identifies Silvestra. His knowledge, she must admit, can sometimes be a match for her own. However, she still maintains the superior position in her knowledge of the secret entrance to the treasure chamber. Information is the key to Gagool's power, but she has been displaced from influencing the king of all Kukuanaland to attempting to save her own life. Her treachery casts her in the most evil light of all the characters--even Twala would not kill these men through deceit--but also results in her own destruction. The innocent and beautiful Foulata is the agent of Gagool's death. Her inability to keep up with the men proves fortunate, as she alone sees Gagool's hasty departure. Her struggle with the crone keep Gagool from making her way through the door in time--the wise woman is crushed by her own deadly device. Just as honor and right conquered Twala in the previous battle, so does beauty and innocence crush the wicked Gagool. That the men did not noticed Gagool's escape at first is a testimony to her craftiness, but also an indication of the men's love of wealth. They are distracted by the diamonds of King Solomon's mines--to busy picturing what they might do with such wealth to keep their eyes on the situation before them. The next chapter will further develop the problem of material possessions for the men. Quatermain reiterates his own self-evaluation given their seemingly hopeless situation: \"The bravest man on earth might well quail from such a fate as awaited us--and I never had any great pretensions to be brave\" . All three men are given to despair at their imminent death by starvation of asphyxiation, but Sir Henry is able to rally himself and comfort the other two. In an unusual and touching scene, Sir Henry attempts to assuage the two weeping men's fears: \"Had we been two frightened children, and he our nurse, he could not have treated us more tenderly. Forgetting his own share of miseries, he did all he could to soothe our broken nerves.\" . Sir Henry's paternal treatment of the other two men leads Quatermain to declare, \"His is a beautiful character, very quiet, but very strong\" . Since Sir Henry Curtis has been established as the ideal of manhood in the novel, this moment of nurturing shows another facet to the \"true man\" Haggard wishes to present. Sir Henry is willing and able to fight when necessary--even to kill for a righteous cause--but he is equally able to put aside his own despair to tenderly care for others in pain. In this moment Sir Henry changes from the two-dimensional warrior-hero into a more fully rounded character. Although the men panic and give in to depression at their plight, in the end, their own minds offer them the key to escape. Through an application of basic science--identifying that there must be a source of air and then searching for it--the men find the passage out of the treasure chamber and to possible freedom. Again, European scientific thinking has triumphed where sinister and secretive knowledge sought to prevail. The previous chapter and this one together form the \"belly of the whale\" or \"journey to the underworld\" phase of the heroic quest for Quatermain and his companions. The men literally descend into the darkness under the earth, and then emerge through an animal's burrow. The imagery is clearly one of rebirth, as the men leave the womb of earth and are born anew into the world of fresh air and starlight. They have died--figuratively--and now have a second chance at a new life. Quatermain, however, holds on to his old life in at least one aspect: before leaving the treasure chamber, he grabs a handful of diamonds and secreted them in his coat pocket."}

While we were engaged in recovering from our fright, and in examining the grisly wonders of the Place of Death, Gagool had been differently occupied. Somehow or other--for she was marvellously active when she chose--she had scrambled on to the great table, and made her way to where our departed friend Twala was placed, under the drip, to see, suggested Good, how he was "pickling," or for some dark purpose of her own. Then, after bending down to kiss his icy lips as though in affectionate greeting, she hobbled back, stopping now and again to address the remark, the tenor of which I could not catch, to one or other of the shrouded forms, just as you or I might welcome an old acquaintance. Having gone through this mysterious and horrible ceremony, she squatted herself down on the table immediately under the White Death, and began, so far as I could make out, to offer up prayers. The spectacle of this wicked creature pouring out supplications, evil ones no doubt, to the arch enemy of mankind, was so uncanny that it caused us to hasten our inspection. "Now, Gagool," said I, in a low voice--somehow one did not dare to speak above a whisper in that place--"lead us to the chamber." The old witch promptly scrambled down from the table. "My lords are not afraid?" she said, leering up into my face. "Lead on." "Good, my lords;" and she hobbled round to the back of the great Death. "Here is the chamber; let my lords light the lamp, and enter," and she placed the gourd full of oil upon the floor, and leaned herself against the side of the cave. I took out a match, of which we had still a few in a box, and lit a rush wick, and then looked for the doorway, but there was nothing before us except the solid rock. Gagool grinned. "The way is there, my lords. _Ha! ha! ha!_" "Do not jest with us," I said sternly. "I jest not, my lords. See!" and she pointed at the rock. As she did so, on holding up the lamp we perceived that a mass of stone was rising slowly from the floor and vanishing into the rock above, where doubtless there is a cavity prepared to receive it. The mass was of the width of a good-sized door, about ten feet high and not less than five feet thick. It must have weighed at least twenty or thirty tons, and was clearly moved upon some simple balance principle of counter-weights, probably the same as that by which the opening and shutting of an ordinary modern window is arranged. How the principle was set in motion, of course none of us saw; Gagool was careful to avoid this; but I have little doubt that there was some very simple lever, which was moved ever so little by pressure at a secret spot, thereby throwing additional weight on to the hidden counter-balances, and causing the monolith to be lifted from the ground. Very slowly and gently the great stone raised itself, till at last it had vanished altogether, and a dark hole presented itself to us in the place which the door had filled. Our excitement was so intense, as we saw the way to Solomon's treasure chamber thrown open at last, that I for one began to tremble and shake. Would it prove a hoax after all, I wondered, or was old Da Silvestra right? Were there vast hoards of wealth hidden in that dark place, hoards which would make us the richest men in the whole world? We should know in a minute or two. "Enter, white men from the Stars," said Gagool, advancing into the doorway; "but first hear your servant, Gagool the old. The bright stones that ye will see were dug out of the pit over which the Silent Ones are set, and stored here, I know not by whom, for that was done longer ago than even I remember. But once has this place been entered since the time that those who hid the stones departed in haste, leaving them behind. The report of the treasure went down indeed among the people who lived in the country from age to age, but none knew where the chamber was, nor the secret of the door. But it happened that a white man reached this country from over the mountains--perchance he too came 'from the Stars'--and was well received by the king of that day. He it is who sits yonder," and she pointed to the fifth king at the table of the Dead. "And it came to pass that he and a woman of the country who was with him journeyed to this place, and that by chance the woman learnt the secret of the door--a thousand years might ye search, but ye should never find that secret. Then the white man entered with the woman, and found the stones, and filled with stones the skin of a small goat, which the woman had with her to hold food. And as he was going from the chamber he took up one more stone, a large one, and held it in his hand." Here she paused. "Well," I asked, breathless with interest as we all were, "what happened to Da Silvestra?" The old hag started at the mention of the name. "How knowest thou the dead man's name?" she asked sharply; and then, without waiting for an answer, went on-- "None can tell what happened; but it came about that the white man was frightened, for he flung down the goat-skin, with the stones, and fled out with only the one stone in his hand, and that the king took, and it is the stone which thou, Macumazahn, didst take from Twala's brow." "Have none entered here since?" I asked, peering again down the dark passage. "None, my lords. Only the secret of the door has been kept, and every king has opened it, though he has not entered. There is a saying, that those who enter there will die within a moon, even as the white man died in the cave upon the mountain, where ye found him, Macumazahn, and therefore the kings do not enter. _Ha! ha!_ mine are true words." Our eyes met as she said it, and I turned sick and cold. How did the old hag know all these things? "Enter, my lords. If I speak truth, the goat-skin with the stones will lie upon the floor; and if there is truth as to whether it is death to enter here, that ye will learn afterwards. _Ha! ha! ha!_" and she hobbled through the doorway, bearing the light with her; but I confess that once more I hesitated about following. "Oh, confound it all!" said Good; "here goes. I am not going to be frightened by that old devil;" and followed by Foulata, who, however, evidently did not at all like the business, for she was shivering with fear, he plunged into the passage after Gagool--an example which we quickly followed. A few yards down the passage, in the narrow way hewn out of the living rock, Gagool had paused, and was waiting for us. "See, my lords," she said, holding the light before her, "those who stored the treasure here fled in haste, and bethought them to guard against any who should find the secret of the door, but had not the time," and she pointed to large square blocks of stone, which, to the height of two courses (about two feet three), had been placed across the passage with a view to walling it up. Along the side of the passage were similar blocks ready for use, and, most curious of all, a heap of mortar and a couple of trowels, which tools, so far as we had time to examine them, appeared to be of a similar shape and make to those used by workmen to this day. Here Foulata, who had been in a state of great fear and agitation throughout, said that she felt faint and could go no farther, but would wait there. Accordingly we set her down on the unfinished wall, placing the basket of provisions by her side, and left her to recover. Following the passage for about fifteen paces farther, we came suddenly to an elaborately painted wooden door. It was standing wide open. Whoever was last there had either not found the time to shut it, or had forgotten to do so. _Across the threshold of this door lay a skin bag, formed of a goat-skin, that appeared to be full of pebbles._ "_Hee! hee!_ white men," sniggered Gagool, as the light from the lamp fell upon it. "What did I tell you, that the white man who came here fled in haste, and dropped the woman's bag--behold it! Look within also and ye will find a water-gourd amongst the stones." Good stooped down and lifted it. It was heavy and jingled. "By Jove! I believe it's full of diamonds," he said, in an awed whisper; and, indeed, the idea of a small goat-skin full of diamonds is enough to awe anybody. "Go on," said Sir Henry impatiently. "Here, old lady, give me the lamp," and taking it from Gagool's hand, he stepped through the doorway and held it high above his head. We pressed in after him, forgetful for the moment of the bag of diamonds, and found ourselves in King Solomon's treasure chamber. At first, all that the somewhat faint light given by the lamp revealed was a room hewn out of the living rock, and apparently not more than ten feet square. Next there came into sight, stored one on the other to the arch of the roof, a splendid collection of elephant-tusks. How many of them there were we did not know, for of course we could not see to what depth they went back, but there could not have been less than the ends of four or five hundred tusks of the first quality visible to our eyes. There, alone, was enough ivory to make a man wealthy for life. Perhaps, I thought, it was from this very store that Solomon drew the raw material for his "great throne of ivory," of which "there was not the like made in any kingdom." On the opposite side of the chamber were about a score of wooden boxes, something like Martini-Henry ammunition boxes, only rather larger, and painted red. "There are the diamonds," cried I; "bring the light." Sir Henry did so, holding it close to the top box, of which the lid, rendered rotten by time even in that dry place, appeared to have been smashed in, probably by Da Silvestra himself. Pushing my hand through the hole in the lid I drew it out full, not of diamonds, but of gold pieces, of a shape that none of us had seen before, and with what looked like Hebrew characters stamped upon them. "Ah!" I said, replacing the coin, "we shan't go back empty-handed, anyhow. There must be a couple of thousand pieces in each box, and there are eighteen boxes. I suppose this was the money to pay the workmen and merchants." "Well," put in Good, "I think that is the lot; I don't see any diamonds, unless the old Portuguese put them all into his bag." "Let my lords look yonder where it is darkest, if they would find the stones," said Gagool, interpreting our looks. "There my lords will find a nook, and three stone chests in the nook, two sealed and one open." Before translating this to Sir Henry, who carried the light, I could not resist asking how she knew these things, if no one had entered the place since the white man, generations ago. "Ah, Macumazahn, the watcher by night," was the mocking answer, "ye who dwell in the stars, do ye not know that some live long, and that some have eyes which can see through rock? _Ha! ha! ha!_" "Look in that corner, Curtis," I said, indicating the spot Gagool had pointed out. "Hullo, you fellows," he cried, "here's a recess. Great heavens! see here." We hurried up to where he was standing in a nook, shaped something like a small bow window. Against the wall of this recess were placed three stone chests, each about two feet square. Two were fitted with stone lids, the lid of the third rested against the side of the chest, which was open. "_See!_" he repeated hoarsely, holding the lamp over the open chest. We looked, and for a moment could make nothing out, on account of a silvery sheen which dazzled us. When our eyes grew used to it we saw that the chest was three-parts full of uncut diamonds, most of them of considerable size. Stooping, I picked some up. Yes, there was no doubt of it, there was the unmistakable soapy feel about them. I fairly gasped as I dropped them. "We are the richest men in the whole world," I said. "Monte Christo was a fool to us." "We shall flood the market with diamonds," said Good. "Got to get them there first," suggested Sir Henry. We stood still with pale faces and stared at each other, the lantern in the middle and the glimmering gems below, as though we were conspirators about to commit a crime, instead of being, as we thought, the most fortunate men on earth. "_Hee! hee! hee!_" cackled old Gagool behind us, as she flitted about like a vampire bat. "There are the bright stones ye love, white men, as many as ye will; take them, run them through your fingers, _eat_ of them, _hee! hee! drink_ of them, _ha! ha!_" At that moment there was something so ridiculous to my mind at the idea of eating and drinking diamonds, that I began to laugh outrageously, an example which the others followed, without knowing why. There we stood and shrieked with laughter over the gems that were ours, which had been found for _us_ thousands of years ago by the patient delvers in the great hole yonder, and stored for _us_ by Solomon's long-dead overseer, whose name, perchance, was written in the characters stamped on the faded wax that yet adhered to the lids of the chest. Solomon never got them, nor David, or Da Silvestra, nor anybody else. _We_ had got them: there before us were millions of pounds' worth of diamonds, and thousands of pounds' worth of gold and ivory only waiting to be taken away. Suddenly the fit passed off, and we stopped laughing. "Open the other chests, white men," croaked Gagool, "there are surely more therein. Take your fill, white lords! _Ha! ha!_ take your fill." Thus adjured, we set to work to pull up the stone lids on the other two, first--not without a feeling of sacrilege--breaking the seals that fastened them. Hoorah! they were full too, full to the brim; at least, the second one was; no wretched burglarious Da Silvestra had been filling goat-skins out of that. As for the third chest, it was only about a fourth full, but the stones were all picked ones; none less than twenty carats, and some of them as large as pigeon-eggs. A good many of these bigger ones, however, we could see by holding them up to the light, were a little yellow, "off coloured," as they call it at Kimberley. What we did _not_ see, however, was the look of fearful malevolence that old Gagool favoured us with as she crept, crept like a snake, out of the treasure chamber and down the passage towards the door of solid rock. * * * * * Hark! Cry upon cry comes ringing up the vaulted path. It is Foulata's voice! "_Oh, Bougwan! help! help! the stone falls!_" "Leave go, girl! Then--" "_Help! help! she has stabbed me!_" By now we are running down the passage, and this is what the light from the lamp shows us. The door of the rock is closing down slowly; it is not three feet from the floor. Near it struggle Foulata and Gagool. The red blood of the former runs to her knee, but still the brave girl holds the old witch, who fights like a wild cat. Ah! she is free! Foulata falls, and Gagool throws herself on the ground, to twist like a snake through the crack of the closing stone. She is under--ah! god! too late! too late! The stone nips her, and she yells in agony. Down, down it comes, all the thirty tons of it, slowly pressing her old body against the rock below. Shriek upon shriek, such as we have never heard, then a long sickening _crunch_, and the door was shut just as, rushing down the passage, we hurled ourselves against it. It was all done in four seconds. Then we turned to Foulata. The poor girl was stabbed in the body, and I saw that she could not live long. "Ah! Bougwan, I die!" gasped the beautiful creature. "She crept out--Gagool; I did not see her, I was faint--and the door began to fall; then she came back, and was looking up the path--I saw her come in through the slowly falling door, and caught her and held her, and she stabbed me, and _I die_, Bougwan!" "Poor girl! poor girl!" Good cried in his distress; and then, as he could do nothing else, he fell to kissing her. "Bougwan," she said, after a pause, "is Macumazahn there? It grows so dark, I cannot see." "Here I am, Foulata." "Macumazahn, be my tongue for a moment, I pray thee, for Bougwan cannot understand me, and before I go into the darkness I would speak to him a word." "Say on, Foulata, I will render it." "Say to my lord, Bougwan, that--I love him, and that I am glad to die because I know that he cannot cumber his life with such as I am, for the sun may not mate with the darkness, nor the white with the black. "Say that, since I saw him, at times I have felt as though there were a bird in my bosom, which would one day fly hence and sing elsewhere. Even now, though I cannot lift my hand, and my brain grows cold, I do not feel as though my heart were dying; it is so full of love that it could live ten thousand years, and yet be young. Say that if I live again, mayhap I shall see him in the Stars, and that--I will search them all, though perchance there I should still be black and he would--still be white. Say--nay, Macumazahn, say no more, save that I love--Oh, hold me closer, Bougwan, I cannot feel thine arms--_oh! oh!_" "She is dead--she is dead!" muttered Good, rising in grief, the tears running down his honest face. "You need not let that trouble you, old fellow," said Sir Henry. "Eh!" exclaimed Good; "what do you mean?" "I mean that you will soon be in a position to join her. _Man, don't you see that we are buried alive?_" Until Sir Henry uttered these words I do not think that the full horror of what had happened had come home to us, preoccupied as we were with the sight of poor Foulata's end. But now we understood. The ponderous mass of rock had closed, probably for ever, for the only brain which knew its secret was crushed to powder beneath its weight. This was a door that none could hope to force with anything short of dynamite in large quantities. And we were on the wrong side! For a few minutes we stood horrified, there over the corpse of Foulata. All the manhood seemed to have gone out of us. The first shock of this idea of the slow and miserable end that awaited us was overpowering. We saw it all now; that fiend Gagool had planned this snare for us from the first. It would have been just the jest that her evil mind would have rejoiced in, the idea of the three white men, whom, for some reason of her own, she had always hated, slowly perishing of thirst and hunger in the company of the treasure they had coveted. Now I saw the point of that sneer of hers about eating and drinking the diamonds. Probably somebody had tried to serve the poor old Dom in the same way, when he abandoned the skin full of jewels. "This will never do," said Sir Henry hoarsely; "the lamp will soon go out. Let us see if we can't find the spring that works the rock." We sprang forward with desperate energy, and, standing in a bloody ooze, began to feel up and down the door and the sides of the passage. But no knob or spring could we discover. "Depend on it," I said, "it does not work from the inside; if it did Gagool would not have risked trying to crawl underneath the stone. It was the knowledge of this that made her try to escape at all hazards, curse her." "At all events," said Sir Henry, with a hard little laugh, "retribution was swift; hers was almost as awful an end as ours is likely to be. We can do nothing with the door; let us go back to the treasure room." We turned and went, and as we passed it I perceived by the unfinished wall across the passage the basket of food which poor Foulata had carried. I took it up, and brought it with me to the accursed treasure chamber that was to be our grave. Then we returned and reverently bore in Foulata's corpse, laying it on the floor by the boxes of coin. Next we seated ourselves, leaning our backs against the three stone chests which contained the priceless treasure. "Let us divide the food," said Sir Henry, "so as to make it last as long as possible." Accordingly we did so. It would, we reckoned, make four infinitesimally small meals for each of us, enough, say, to support life for a couple of days. Besides the "biltong," or dried game-flesh, there were two gourds of water, each of which held not more than a quart. "Now," said Sir Henry grimly, "let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." We each ate a small portion of the "biltong," and drank a sip of water. Needless to say, we had but little appetite, though we were sadly in need of food, and felt better after swallowing it. Then we got up and made a systematic examination of the walls of our prison-house, in the faint hope of finding some means of exit, sounding them and the floor carefully. There was none. It was not probable that there would be any to a treasure chamber. The lamp began to burn dim. The fat was nearly exhausted. "Quatermain," said Sir Henry, "what is the time--your watch goes?" I drew it out, and looked at it. It was six o'clock; we had entered the cave at eleven. "Infadoos will miss us," I suggested. "If we do not return to-night he will search for us in the morning, Curtis." "He may search in vain. He does not know the secret of the door, nor even where it is. No living person knew it yesterday, except Gagool. To-day no one knows it. Even if he found the door he could not break it down. All the Kukuana army could not break through five feet of living rock. My friends, I see nothing for it but to bow ourselves to the will of the Almighty. The search for treasure has brought many to a bad end; we shall go to swell their number." The lamp grew dimmer yet. Presently it flared up and showed the whole scene in strong relief, the great mass of white tusks, the boxes of gold, the corpse of the poor Foulata stretched before them, the goat-skin full of treasure, the dim glimmer of the diamonds, and the wild, wan faces of us three white men seated there awaiting death by starvation. Then the flame sank and expired. I can give no adequate description of the horrors of the night which followed. Mercifully they were to some extent mitigated by sleep, for even in such a position as ours wearied nature will sometimes assert itself. But I, at any rate, found it impossible to sleep much. Putting aside the terrifying thought of our impending doom--for the bravest man on earth might well quail from such a fate as awaited us, and I never made any pretensions to be brave--the _silence_ itself was too great to allow of it. Reader, you may have lain awake at night and thought the quiet oppressive, but I say with confidence that you can have no idea what a vivid, tangible thing is perfect stillness. On the surface of the earth there is always some sound or motion, and though it may in itself be imperceptible, yet it deadens the sharp edge of absolute silence. But here there was none. We were buried in the bowels of a huge snow-clad peak. Thousands of feet above us the fresh air rushed over the white snow, but no sound of it reached us. We were separated by a long tunnel and five feet of rock even from the awful chamber of the Dead; and the dead make no noise. Did we not know it who lay by poor Foulata's side? The crashing of all the artillery of earth and heaven could not have come to our ears in our living tomb. We were cut off from every echo of the world--we were as men already in the grave. Then the irony of the situation forced itself upon me. There around us lay treasures enough to pay off a moderate national debt, or to build a fleet of ironclads, and yet we would have bartered them all gladly for the faintest chance of escape. Soon, doubtless, we should be rejoiced to exchange them for a bit of food or a cup of water, and, after that, even for the privilege of a speedy close to our sufferings. Truly wealth, which men spend their lives in acquiring, is a valueless thing at the last. And so the night wore on. "Good," said Sir Henry's voice at last, and it sounded awful in the intense stillness, "how many matches have you in the box?" "Eight, Curtis." "Strike one and let us see the time." He did so, and in contrast to the dense darkness the flame nearly blinded us. It was five o'clock by my watch. The beautiful dawn was now blushing on the snow-wreaths far over our heads, and the breeze would be stirring the night mists in the hollows. "We had better eat something and keep up our strength," I suggested. "What is the good of eating?" answered Good; "the sooner we die and get it over the better." "While there is life there is hope," said Sir Henry. Accordingly we ate and sipped some water, and another period of time elapsed. Then Sir Henry suggested that it might be well to get as near the door as possible and halloa, on the faint chance of somebody catching a sound outside. Accordingly Good, who, from long practice at sea, has a fine piercing note, groped his way down the passage and set to work. I must say that he made a most diabolical noise. I never heard such yells; but it might have been a mosquito buzzing for all the effect they produced. After a while he gave it up and came back very thirsty, and had to drink. Then we stopped yelling, as it encroached on the supply of water. So we sat down once more against the chests of useless diamonds in that dreadful inaction which was one of the hardest circumstances of our fate; and I am bound to say that, for my part, I gave way in despair. Laying my head against Sir Henry's broad shoulder I burst into tears; and I think that I heard Good gulping away on the other side, and swearing hoarsely at himself for doing so. Ah, how good and brave that great man was! Had we been two frightened children, and he our nurse, he could not have treated us more tenderly. Forgetting his own share of miseries, he did all he could to soothe our broken nerves, telling stories of men who had been in somewhat similar circumstances, and miraculously escaped; and when these failed to cheer us, pointing out how, after all, it was only anticipating an end which must come to us all, that it would soon be over, and that death from exhaustion was a merciful one (which is not true). Then, in a diffident sort of way, as once before I had heard him do, he suggested that we should throw ourselves on the mercy of a higher Power, which for my part I did with great vigour. His is a beautiful character, very quiet, but very strong. And so somehow the day went as the night had gone, if, indeed, one can use these terms where all was densest night, and when I lit a match to see the time it was seven o'clock. Once more we ate and drank, and as we did so an idea occurred to me. "How is it," said I, "that the air in this place keeps fresh? It is thick and heavy, but it is perfectly fresh." "Great heavens!" said Good, starting up, "I never thought of that. It can't come through the stone door, for it's air-tight, if ever a door was. It must come from somewhere. If there were no current of air in the place we should have been stifled or poisoned when we first came in. Let us have a look." It was wonderful what a change this mere spark of hope wrought in us. In a moment we were all three groping about on our hands and knees, feeling for the slightest indication of a draught. Presently my ardour received a check. I put my hand on something cold. It was dead Foulata's face. For an hour or more we went on feeling about, till at last Sir Henry and I gave it up in despair, having been considerably hurt by constantly knocking our heads against tusks, chests, and the sides of the chamber. But Good still persevered, saying, with an approach to cheerfulness, that it was better than doing nothing. "I say, you fellows," he said presently, in a constrained sort of voice, "come here." Needless to say we scrambled towards him quickly enough. "Quatermain, put your hand here where mine is. Now, do you feel anything?" "I _think_ I feel air coming up." "Now listen." He rose and stamped upon the place, and a flame of hope shot up in our hearts. _It rang hollow._ With trembling hands I lit a match. I had only three left, and we saw that we were in the angle of the far corner of the chamber, a fact that accounted for our not having noticed the hollow sound of the place during our former exhaustive examination. As the match burnt we scrutinised the spot. There was a join in the solid rock floor, and, great heavens! there, let in level with the rock, was a stone ring. We said no word, we were too excited, and our hearts beat too wildly with hope to allow us to speak. Good had a knife, at the back of which was one of those hooks that are made to extract stones from horses' hoofs. He opened it, and scratched round the ring with it. Finally he worked it under, and levered away gently for fear of breaking the hook. The ring began to move. Being of stone it had not rusted fast in all the centuries it had lain there, as would have been the case had it been of iron. Presently it was upright. Then he thrust his hands into it and tugged with all his force, but nothing budged. "Let me try," I said impatiently, for the situation of the stone, right in the angle of the corner, was such that it was impossible for two to pull at once. I took hold and strained away, but no results. Then Sir Henry tried and failed. Taking the hook again, Good scratched all round the crack where we felt the air coming up. "Now, Curtis," he said, "tackle on, and put your back into it; you are as strong as two. Stop," and he took off a stout black silk handkerchief, which, true to his habits of neatness, he still wore, and ran it through the ring. "Quatermain, get Curtis round the middle and pull for dear life when I give the word. _Now._" Sir Henry put out all his enormous strength, and Good and I did the same, with such power as nature had given us. "Heave! heave! it's giving," gasped Sir Henry; and I heard the muscles of his great back cracking. Suddenly there was a grating sound, then a rush of air, and we were all on our backs on the floor with a heavy flag-stone upon the top of us. Sir Henry's strength had done it, and never did muscular power stand a man in better stead. "Light a match, Quatermain," he said, so soon as we had picked ourselves up and got our breath; "carefully, now." I did so, and there before us, Heaven be praised! was the _first step of a stone stair._ "Now what is to be done?" asked Good. "Follow the stair, of course, and trust to Providence." "Stop!" said Sir Henry; "Quatermain, get the bit of biltong and the water that are left; we may want them." I went, creeping back to our place by the chests for that purpose, and as I was coming away an idea struck me. We had not thought much of the diamonds for the last twenty-four hours or so; indeed, the very idea of diamonds was nauseous, seeing what they had entailed upon us; but, reflected I, I may as well pocket some in case we ever should get out of this ghastly hole. So I just put my fist into the first chest and filled all the available pockets of my old shooting-coat and trousers, topping up--this was a happy thought--with a few handfuls of big ones from the third chest. Also, by an afterthought, I stuffed Foulata's basket, which, except for one water-gourd and a little biltong, was empty now, with great quantities of the stones. "I say, you fellows," I sang out, "won't you take some diamonds with you? I've filled my pockets and the basket." "Oh, come on, Quatermain! and hang the diamonds!" said Sir Henry. "I hope that I may never see another." As for Good, he made no answer. He was, I think, taking his last farewell of all that was left of the poor girl who had loved him so well. And curious as it may seem to you, my reader, sitting at home at ease and reflecting on the vast, indeed the immeasurable, wealth which we were thus abandoning, I can assure you that if you had passed some twenty-eight hours with next to nothing to eat and drink in that place, you would not have cared to cumber yourself with diamonds whilst plunging down into the unknown bowels of the earth, in the wild hope of escape from an agonising death. If from the habits of a lifetime, it had not become a sort of second nature with me never to leave anything worth having behind if there was the slightest chance of my being able to carry it away, I am sure that I should not have bothered to fill my pockets and that basket. "Come on, Quatermain," repeated Sir Henry, who was already standing on the first step of the stone stair. "Steady, I will go first." "Mind where you put your feet, there may be some awful hole underneath," I answered. "Much more likely to be another room," said Sir Henry, while he descended slowly, counting the steps as he went. When he got to "fifteen" he stopped. "Here's the bottom," he said. "Thank goodness! I think it's a passage. Follow me down." Good went next, and I came last, carrying the basket, and on reaching the bottom lit one of the two remaining matches. By its light we could just see that we were standing in a narrow tunnel, which ran right and left at right angles to the staircase we had descended. Before we could make out any more, the match burnt my fingers and went out. Then arose the delicate question of which way to go. Of course, it was impossible to know what the tunnel was, or where it led to, and yet to turn one way might lead us to safety, and the other to destruction. We were utterly perplexed, till suddenly it struck Good that when I had lit the match the draught of the passage blew the flame to the left. "Let us go against the draught," he said; "air draws inwards, not outwards." We took this suggestion, and feeling along the wall with our hands, whilst trying the ground before us at every step, we departed from that accursed treasure chamber on our terrible quest for life. If ever it should be entered again by living man, which I do not think probable, he will find tokens of our visit in the open chests of jewels, the empty lamp, and the white bones of poor Foulata. When we had groped our way for about a quarter of an hour along the passage, suddenly it took a sharp turn, or else was bisected by another, which we followed, only in course of time to be led into a third. And so it went on for some hours. We seemed to be in a stone labyrinth that led nowhere. What all these passages are, of course I cannot say, but we thought that they must be the ancient workings of a mine, of which the various shafts and adits travelled hither and thither as the ore led them. This is the only way in which we could account for such a multitude of galleries. At length we halted, thoroughly worn out with fatigue and with that hope deferred which maketh the heart sick, and ate up our poor remaining piece of biltong and drank our last sup of water, for our throats were like lime-kilns. It seemed to us that we had escaped Death in the darkness of the treasure chamber only to meet him in the darkness of the tunnels. As we stood, once more utterly depressed, I thought that I caught a sound, to which I called the attention of the others. It was very faint and very far off, but it _was_ a sound, a faint, murmuring sound, for the others heard it too, and no words can describe the blessedness of it after all those hours of utter, awful stillness. "By heaven! it's running water," said Good. "Come on." Off we started again in the direction from which the faint murmur seemed to come, groping our way as before along the rocky walls. I remember that I laid down the basket full of diamonds, wishing to be rid of its weight, but on second thoughts took it up again. One might as well die rich as poor, I reflected. As we went the sound became more and more audible, till at last it seemed quite loud in the quiet. On, yet on; now we could distinctly make out the unmistakable swirl of rushing water. And yet how could there be running water in the bowels of the earth? Now we were quite near it, and Good, who was leading, swore that he could smell it. "Go gently, Good," said Sir Henry, "we must be close." _Splash!_ and a cry from Good. He had fallen in. "Good! Good! where are you?" we shouted, in terrified distress. To our intense relief an answer came back in a choky voice. "All right; I've got hold of a rock. Strike a light to show me where you are." Hastily I lit the last remaining match. Its faint gleam discovered to us a dark mass of water running at our feet. How wide it was we could not see, but there, some way out, was the dark form of our companion hanging on to a projecting rock. "Stand clear to catch me," sung out Good. "I must swim for it." Then we heard a splash, and a great struggle. Another minute and he had grabbed at and caught Sir Henry's outstretched hand, and we had pulled him up high and dry into the tunnel. "My word!" he said, between his gasps, "that was touch and go. If I hadn't managed to catch that rock, and known how to swim, I should have been done. It runs like a mill-race, and I could feel no bottom." We dared not follow the banks of the subterranean river for fear lest we should fall into it again in the darkness. So after Good had rested a while, and we had drunk our fill of the water, which was sweet and fresh, and washed our faces, that needed it sadly, as well as we could, we started from the banks of this African Styx, and began to retrace our steps along the tunnel, Good dripping unpleasantly in front of us. At length we came to another gallery leading to our right. "We may as well take it," said Sir Henry wearily; "all roads are alike here; we can only go on till we drop." Slowly, for a long, long while, we stumbled, utterly exhausted, along this new tunnel, Sir Henry now leading the way. Again I thought of abandoning that basket, but did not. Suddenly he stopped, and we bumped up against him. "Look!" he whispered, "is my brain going, or is that light?" We stared with all our eyes, and there, yes, there, far ahead of us, was a faint, glimmering spot, no larger than a cottage window pane. It was so faint that I doubt if any eyes, except those which, like ours, had for days seen nothing but blackness, could have perceived it at all. With a gasp of hope we pushed on. In five minutes there was no longer any doubt; it _was_ a patch of faint light. A minute more and a breath of real live air was fanning us. On we struggled. All at once the tunnel narrowed. Sir Henry went on his knees. Smaller yet it grew, till it was only the size of a large fox's earth--it was _earth_ now, mind you; the rock had ceased. A squeeze, a struggle, and Sir Henry was out, and so was Good, and so was I, dragging Foulata's basket after me; and there above us were the blessed stars, and in our nostrils was the sweet air. Then suddenly something gave, and we were all rolling over and over and over through grass and bushes and soft, wet soil. The basket caught in something and I stopped. Sitting up I halloed lustily. An answering shout came from below, where Sir Henry's wild career had been checked by some level ground. I scrambled to him, and found him unhurt, though breathless. Then we looked for Good. A little way off we discovered him also, hammed in a forked root. He was a good deal knocked about, but soon came to himself. We sat down together, there on the grass, and the revulsion of feeling was so great that really I think we cried with joy. We had escaped from that awful dungeon, which was so near to becoming our grave. Surely some merciful Power guided our footsteps to the jackal hole, for that is what it must have been, at the termination of the tunnel. And see, yonder on the mountains the dawn we had never thought to look upon again was blushing rosy red. Presently the grey light stole down the slopes, and we saw that we were at the bottom, or rather, nearly at the bottom, of the vast pit in front of the entrance to the cave. Now we could make out the dim forms of the three Colossi who sat upon its verge. Doubtless those awful passages, along which we had wandered the livelong night, had been originally in some way connected with the great diamond mine. As for the subterranean river in the bowels of the mountain, Heaven only knows what it is, or whence it flows, or whither it goes. I, for one, have no anxiety to trace its course. Lighter it grew, and lighter yet. We could see each other now, and such a spectacle as we presented I have never set eyes on before or since. Gaunt-cheeked, hollow-eyed wretches, smeared all over with dust and mud, bruised, bleeding, the long fear of imminent death yet written on our countenances, we were, indeed, a sight to frighten the daylight. And yet it is a solemn fact that Good's eye-glass was still fixed in Good's eye. I doubt whether he had ever taken it out at all. Neither the darkness, nor the plunge in the subterranean river, nor the roll down the slope, had been able to separate Good and his eye-glass. Presently we rose, fearing that our limbs would stiffen if we stopped there longer, and commenced with slow and painful steps to struggle up the sloping sides of the great pit. For an hour or more we toiled steadfastly up the blue clay, dragging ourselves on by the help of the roots and grasses with which it was clothed. But now I had no more thought of leaving the basket; indeed, nothing but death should have parted us. At last it was done, and we stood by the great road, on that side of the pit which is opposite to the Colossi. At the side of the road, a hundred yards off, a fire was burning in front of some huts, and round the fire were figures. We staggered towards them, supporting one another, and halting every few paces. Presently one of the figures rose, saw us and fell on to the ground, crying out for fear. "Infadoos, Infadoos! it is we, thy friends." He rose; he ran to us, staring wildly, and still shaking with fear. "Oh, my lords, my lords, it is indeed you come back from the dead!--come back from the dead!" And the old warrior flung himself down before us, and clasping Sir Henry's knees, he wept aloud for joy.

Chapters 17 and 18

https://web.archive.org/web/20200804024551/https://www.gradesaver.com/king-solomons-mines/study-guide/summary-chapters-17-and-18

While the explorers recover from their fright at the sights before them, Gagool busies herself by climbing atop the large table and addressing the dead Twala. Then she makes her way around the room to address the other fallen kings, but her words are unintelligible to the others. Gagool then squats beneath the figure of the White Death, presumably praying to it. Quatermain reminds Gagool to lead them to the treasure chamber. Gagool taunts them by asking whether or not they are afraid. She leads them to an apparently blank wall, and she secretly trips a switch that causes the rock face of the wall to ascent into the ceiling above. Before letting them enter, Gagool tells the men of another traveler whom "Gagaoola the old" led into this chamber long ago. Quatermain identifies the treasure-seeker as da Silvestra, surprising Gagool. She continues the tale, in which the man and his female companion entered the treasure chamber with a goat skin bag Gagool told them about, confirming the witch's story. The sight of the skin full of diamonds awes the men for a moment. Sir Henry takes the lamp from Gagool, and the men enter the chamber. Within the chamber they find a ceiling-high stack of elephant tusks, extending back beyond sight into the chamber. On the opposite side of the chamber they see about twenty wooden boxes, each one full of gold coins with Hebrew letters stamped on them. At first they find no other diamonds than the ones in the goat skin, but Gagool directs them to a nook in which rest three stone chests, two sealed and one open. Investigating, the men find the open chest mostly full of uncut diamonds. Opening the second and third chests, the men find the second full to the top with diamonds and the third only partially full, but of the largest diamonds of the lot. Awed by their newfound wealth, the men do not notice Gagool's hasty departure. Only Foulata's cry of warning alerts them that she is escaping and has set the stone doorway to closing. Foulata attempts to stop Gagool's exit, but Gagool stabs her. Nonetheless, Foulata's efforts delay Gagool long enough that the witch does not make it through the door before the tons of stone drop upon her, killing her instantly. The fatally injured Foulata asks Quatermain to translate her dying words to Good. Quatermain does so, and Foulata declares her love and her understanding that Good's own adoration of her was not destined to last long; nevertheless, she is grateful for her time with him. Foulata dies and Good is upset, but he does not see the impending doom until Quatermain points out that Good's own death will likely follow Foulata's soon, for they are buried alive. The men take stock of their grim situation. They console themselves that Gagool has met with justice, but are nonetheless disheartened at their own apparent doom. They know Infadoos will search for them eventually, but know that he is not going to find the secret to opening a hidden door that he is not even aware exists. The men somberly divide their food and prepare for their deaths. Their lamp-flame suddenly grows brighter, illuminating Foulata's dead body, and goes out completely. Quatermain, Sir Henry, and Good settle into a state of despair over their situation. The utter darkness and complete silence unnerve them. They clutch at straws for hope in their dire circumstances, even going so far as sending Good to cry out at the stone doorway in the hope that Infadoos will hear them. There is no response, of course, so they divide up their food and eat a slight amount to sustain their seeming last hours. Overcome by desolation, Quatermain and Good rest their heads on Sir Henry's shoulders and weep. Sir Henry, mindless of his own despair, comforts them by telling them stories of men who had escaped from near-death circumstances and, when those fail to relieve their misery, reminds them that everyone dies some time and it is only the anticipation of that moment that is dreadful. Hours later, Quatermain observes that the air in this sealed chamber remains fresh; therefore there must be some way for air to enter. Seizing on this hope, the men scramble through the dark chamber in search of the airway. Sir Henry and Quatermain give up after several minor injuries, but Good locates the air flow. Lighting a match, the men find a stone ring inset into the floor. Sir Henry, with help from Quatermain and Good, pulls the stone ring up, revealing a stone trap door with stairs beneath. The men gather their remaining food and water and venture into the unknown depths. On their way out of the chamber, Quatermain grabs two handfuls of diamonds and places them in his coat pockets; Good and Sir Henry are too focused on survival to care about such things. At the bottom of the stairs the men find a tunnel extending both right and left. They decide to go against the flow of air, reasoning that air flows from the outside in and not the other way around. For a long time they follow the winding tunnel, fearful that it will only lead them back where they started. Then they hear the sound of running water and become excited at the prospect of escape. In the darkness, Good takes a misstep and falls into the underground river. Sir Henry pulls Good out, but Good's experience has convinced him that the river is too dangerous to be used as a means of escape. They retrace their steps and find a tunnel stretching out to the right. Resigned at the hopelessness of making a reasonable choice of direction, the men follow the tunnel. Soon they spy a glimmer of light ahead and make haste toward it. The hewn tunnel gives way to earth, and the find the light comes through a small hole, probably dug by some animal. They widen the hole and in a matter of minutes escape the dark tunnels into the bright world outside. When the Kukuanas see them rise from the earth, they are awed and frightened at these seemingly supernatural beings. Only after the men address Infadoos and explain who they are do the Kukuanas relax and help the men be restored from their perilous adventure.

The tone of Chapter 17 foreshadows the formula for Saturday matinee serials, which usually ended on a cliffhanger between episodes. The treacherous villain, the discovery of treasure, the botched escape by the killer, the sacrifice of the innocent woman, and the impending doom on the protagonists are all used by later authors and film-makers as integral parts of adventure thrillers. Haggard was not the first or only writer to use these motifs, but he did become the most popular--and therefore the most influential--writer of adventure tales in his time. Gagool experiences a moment of surprise when Quatermain correctly identifies Silvestra. His knowledge, she must admit, can sometimes be a match for her own. However, she still maintains the superior position in her knowledge of the secret entrance to the treasure chamber. Information is the key to Gagool's power, but she has been displaced from influencing the king of all Kukuanaland to attempting to save her own life. Her treachery casts her in the most evil light of all the characters--even Twala would not kill these men through deceit--but also results in her own destruction. The innocent and beautiful Foulata is the agent of Gagool's death. Her inability to keep up with the men proves fortunate, as she alone sees Gagool's hasty departure. Her struggle with the crone keep Gagool from making her way through the door in time--the wise woman is crushed by her own deadly device. Just as honor and right conquered Twala in the previous battle, so does beauty and innocence crush the wicked Gagool. That the men did not noticed Gagool's escape at first is a testimony to her craftiness, but also an indication of the men's love of wealth. They are distracted by the diamonds of King Solomon's mines--to busy picturing what they might do with such wealth to keep their eyes on the situation before them. The next chapter will further develop the problem of material possessions for the men. Quatermain reiterates his own self-evaluation given their seemingly hopeless situation: "The bravest man on earth might well quail from such a fate as awaited us--and I never had any great pretensions to be brave" . All three men are given to despair at their imminent death by starvation of asphyxiation, but Sir Henry is able to rally himself and comfort the other two. In an unusual and touching scene, Sir Henry attempts to assuage the two weeping men's fears: "Had we been two frightened children, and he our nurse, he could not have treated us more tenderly. Forgetting his own share of miseries, he did all he could to soothe our broken nerves." . Sir Henry's paternal treatment of the other two men leads Quatermain to declare, "His is a beautiful character, very quiet, but very strong" . Since Sir Henry Curtis has been established as the ideal of manhood in the novel, this moment of nurturing shows another facet to the "true man" Haggard wishes to present. Sir Henry is willing and able to fight when necessary--even to kill for a righteous cause--but he is equally able to put aside his own despair to tenderly care for others in pain. In this moment Sir Henry changes from the two-dimensional warrior-hero into a more fully rounded character. Although the men panic and give in to depression at their plight, in the end, their own minds offer them the key to escape. Through an application of basic science--identifying that there must be a source of air and then searching for it--the men find the passage out of the treasure chamber and to possible freedom. Again, European scientific thinking has triumphed where sinister and secretive knowledge sought to prevail. The previous chapter and this one together form the "belly of the whale" or "journey to the underworld" phase of the heroic quest for Quatermain and his companions. The men literally descend into the darkness under the earth, and then emerge through an animal's burrow. The imagery is clearly one of rebirth, as the men leave the womb of earth and are born anew into the world of fresh air and starlight. They have died--figuratively--and now have a second chance at a new life. Quatermain, however, holds on to his old life in at least one aspect: before leaving the treasure chamber, he grabs a handful of diamonds and secreted them in his coat pocket.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/44747-chapters/55.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_54_part_0.txt

The Red and the Black.part 2.chapter 25

part 2, chapter 25

{"name": "Part 2, Chapter 25", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-2-chapter-25", "summary": "Julien gets back to Paris and tells the Marquis de La Mole all about his meeting with the duke. The marquis seems really agitated by what he hears, but Julien couldn't care less. He's more interested in fulfilling his plot to get Mathilde to love him again. Julien then visits Count Altamira, whose friend used to flirt with the woman whom Julien is going to court . The woman's name is Madame de Fervaques, and Julien needs to inside scoop if he's going to win her over. Julien goes to dinner with the de La Moles for the evening. Later that night, Madame de Fervaques enters the house for a visit. He makes sure to sit near her. He finds out that she plans on going to the opera that night, so he finds a way of getting a box at the show near hers. Seeing Julien happy that night, Mathilde wonders again whether she really loves him. Basically, she loves him whenever he proves he can be happy without her. Go figure. She expects Julien to come pleading to her, but he never pays her any attention. As we learn, it takes every ounce of strength in Julien's body to keep him from breaking down and blubbering in front of Mathilde about how much he misses her.", "analysis": ""}

CHAPTER LV THE MINISTRY OF VIRTUE But if I take this pleasure with so much prudence and circumspection I shall no longer find it a pleasure.--_Lope de Vega_. As soon as our hero had returned to Paris and had come out of the study of the marquis de La Mole, who seemed very displeased with the despatches that were given him, he rushed off for the comte Altamira. This noble foreigner combined with the advantage of having once been condemned to death a very grave demeanour together with the good fortune of a devout temperament; these two qualities, and more than anything, the comte's high birth, made an especial appeal to madame de Fervaques who saw a lot of him. Julien solemnly confessed to him that he was very much in love with her. "Her virtue is the purest and the highest," answered Altamira, "only it is a little Jesuitical and dogmatic. "There are days when, though I understand each of the expressions which she makes use of, I never understand the whole sentence. She often makes me think that I do not know French as well as I am said to. But your acquaintance with her will get you talked about; it will give you weight in the world. But let us go to Bustos," said Count Altamira who had a methodical turn of mind; "he once paid court to madame la marechale." Don Diego Bustos had the matter explained to him at length, while he said nothing, like a barrister in his chambers. He had a big monk-like face with black moustaches and an inimitable gravity; he was, however, a good carbonaro. "I understand," he said to Julien at last. "Has the marechale de Fervaques had lovers, or has she not? Have you consequently any hope of success? That is the question. I don't mind telling you, for my own part, that I have failed. Now that I am no more piqued I reason it out to myself in this way; she is often bad tempered, and as I will tell you in a minute, she is quite vindictive. "I fail to detect in her that bilious temperament which is the sign of genius, and shows as it were a veneer of passion over all its actions. On the contrary, she owes her rare beauty and her fresh complexion to the phlegmatic, tranquil character of the Dutch." Julien began to lose patience with the phlegmatic slowness of the imperturbable Spaniard; he could not help giving vent to some monosyllables from time to time. "Will you listen to me?" Don Diego Bustos gravely said to him. "Forgive the _furia franchese_; I am all ears," said Julien. "The marechale de Fervaques then is a great hater; she persecutes ruthlessly people she has never seen--advocates, poor devils of men of letters who have composed songs like Colle, you know? "J'ai la marotte D'aimer Marote, etc." And Julien had to put up with the whole quotation. The Spaniard was very pleased to get a chance of singing in French. That divine song was never listened to more impatiently. When it was finished Don Diego said--"The marechale procured the dismissal of the author of the song: "Un jour l'amour au cabaret." Julien shuddered lest he should want to sing it. He contented himself with analysing it. As a matter of fact, it was blasphemous and somewhat indecent. "When the marechale become enraged against that song," said Don Diego, "I remarked to her that a woman of her rank ought not to read all the stupid things that are published. Whatever progress piety and gravity may make France will always have a cabaret literature. "'Be careful,' I said to madame de Fervaques when she had succeeded in depriving the author, a poor devil on half-pay, of a place worth eighteen hundred francs a year, 'you have attacked this rhymster with your own arms, he may answer you with his rhymes; he will make a song about virtue. The gilded salons will be on your side; but people who like to laugh will repeat his epigrams.' Do you know, monsieur, what the marechale answered? 'Let all Paris come and see me walking to my martyrdom for the sake of the Lord. It will be a new spectacle for France. The people will learn to respect the quality. It will be the finest day of my life.' Her eyes never looked finer." "And she has superb ones," exclaimed Julien. "I see that you are in love. Further," went on Don Diego Bustos gravely, "she has not the bilious constitution which causes vindictiveness. If, however, she likes to do harm, it is because she is unhappy, I suspect some secret misfortune. May it not be quite well a case of prude tired of her role?" The Spaniard looked at him in silence for a good minute. "That's the whole point," he added gravely, "and that's what may give you ground for some hope. I have often reflected about it during the two years that I was her very humble servant. All your future, my amorous sir, depends on this great problem. Is she a prude tired of her role and only malicious because she is unhappy?" "Or," said Altamira emerging at last from his deep silence, "can it be as I have said twenty times before, simply a case of French vanity; the memory of her father, the celebrated cloth merchant, constitutes the unhappiness of this frigid melancholy nature. The only happiness she could find would be to live in Toledo and to be tortured by a confessor who would show her hell wide open every day." "Altamira informs me you are one of us," said Don Diego, whose demeanour was growing graver and graver to Julien as he went out. "You will help us one day in re-winning our liberty, so I would like to help you in this little amusement. It is right that you should know the marechale's style; here are four letters in her hand-writing." "I will copy them out," exclaimed Julien, "and bring them back to you." "And you will never let anyone know a word of what we have been saying." "Never, on my honour," cried Julien. "Well, God help you," added the Spaniard, and he silently escorted Altamira and Julien as far as the staircase. This somewhat amused our hero; he was on the point of smiling. "So we have the devout Altamira," he said to himself, "aiding me in an adulterous enterprise." During Don Diego's solemn conversation Julien had been attentive to the hours struck by the clock of the Hotel d'Aligre. The dinner hour was drawing near, he was going to see Mathilde again. He went in and dressed with much care. "Mistake No. 1," he said to himself as he descended the staircase: "I must follow the prince's instructions to the letter." He went up to his room again and put on a travelling suit which was as simple as it could be. "All I have to do now," he thought, "is to keep control of my expression." It was only half-past five and they dined at six. He thought of going down to the salon which he found deserted. He was moved to the point of tears at the sight of the blue sofa. "I must make an end of this foolish sensitiveness," he said angrily, "it will betray me." He took up a paper in order to keep himself in countenance and passed three or four times from the salon into the garden. It was only when he was well concealed by a large oak and was trembling all over, that he ventured to raise his eyes at mademoiselle de la Mole's window. It was hermetically sealed; he was on the point of fainting and remained for a long time leaning against the oak; then with a staggering step he went to have another look at the gardener's ladder. The chain which he had once forced asunder--in, alas, such different circumstances--had not yet been repaired. Carried away by a moment of madness, Julien pressed it to his lips. After having wandered about for a long time between the salon and the garden, Julien felt horribly tired; he was now feeling acutely the effects of a first success. My eyes will be expressionless and will not betray me! The guests gradually arrived in the salon; the door never opened without instilling anxiety into Julien's heart. They sat down at table. Mademoiselle de la Mole, always faithful to her habit of keeping people waiting, eventually appeared. She blushed a great deal on seeing Julien, she had not been told of his arrival. In accordance with Prince Korasoff's recommendation, Julien looked at his hands. They were trembling. Troubled though he was beyond words by this discovery, he was sufficiently happy to look merely tired. M. de la Mole sang his praises. The marquise spoke to him a minute afterwards and complimented him on his tired appearance. Julien said to himself at every minute, "I ought not to look too much at mademoiselle de la Mole, I ought not to avoid looking at her too much either. I must appear as I was eight days before my unhappiness----" He had occasion to be satisfied with his success and remained in the salon. Paying attention for the first time to the mistress of the house, he made every effort to make the visitors speak and to keep the conversation alive. His politeness was rewarded; madame la marechale de Fervaques was announced about eight o'clock. Julien retired and shortly afterwards appeared dressed with the greatest care. Madame de la Mole was infinitely grateful to him for this mark of respect and made a point of manifesting her satisfaction by telling madame de Fervaques about his journey. Julien established himself near the marechale in such a position that Mathilde could not notice his eyes. In this position he lavished in accordance with all the rules in the art of love, the most abject admiration on madame de Fervaques. The first of the 53 letters with which Prince Korasoff had presented him commenced with a tirade on this sentiment. The marechale announced that she was going to the Opera-Bouffe. Julien rushed there. He ran across the Chevalier de Beauvoisis who took him into a box occupied by Messieurs the Gentlemen of the Chamber, just next to madame de Fervaques's box. Julien constantly looked at her. "I must keep a siege-journal," he said to himself as he went back to the hotel, "otherwise I shall forget my attacks." He wrote two or three pages on this boring theme, and in this way achieved the admirable result of scarcely thinking at all about mademoiselle de la Mole. Mathilde had almost forgotten him during his journey. "He is simply a commonplace person after all," she thought, "his name will always recall to me the greatest mistake in my life. I must honestly go back to all my ideas about prudence and honour; a woman who forgets them has everything to lose." She showed herself inclined to allow the contract with the marquis de Croisenois, which had been prepared so long ago, to be at last concluded. He was mad with joy; he would have been very much astonished had he been told that there was an element of resignation at the bottom of those feelings of Mathilde which made him so proud. All mademoiselle de la Mole's ideas changed when she saw Julien. "As a matter of fact he is my husband," she said to herself. "If I am sincere in my return to sensible notions, he is clearly the man I ought to marry." She was expecting importunities and airs of unhappiness on the part of Julien; she commenced rehearsing her answers, for he would doubtless try to address some words to her when they left the dinner table. Far from that he remained stubbornly in the salon and did not even look in the direction of the garden, though God knows what pain that caused him! "It is better to have this explanation out all at once," thought mademoiselle de la Mole; she went into the garden alone, Julien did not appear. Mathilde went and walked near the salon window. She found him very much occupied in describing to madame de Fervaques the old ruined chateau which crown the banks along the Rhine and invest them with so much atmosphere. He was beginning to acquit himself with some credit in that sentimental picturesque jargon which is called wit in certain salons. Prince Korasoff would have been very proud if he had been at Paris. This evening was exactly what he had predicted. He would have approved the line of conduct which Julien followed on the subsequent days. An intrigue among the members of the secret government was going to bestow a few blue ribbons; madame marechale de Fervaques was insisting on her great uncle being made a chevalier of the order. The marquis de la Mole had the same pretensions for his father-in-law; they joined forces and the marechale came to the Hotel de la Mole nearly every day. It was from her that Julien learned that the marquis was going to be a minister. He was offering to the _Camarilla_ a very ingenious plan for the annihilation of the charter within three years without any disturbance. If M. de la Mole became a minister, Julien could hope for a bishopric: but all these important interests seemed to be veiled and hazy. His imagination only perceived them very vaguely, and so to speak, in the far distance. The awful unhappiness which was making him into a madman could find no other interest in life except the character of his relations with mademoiselle de la Mole. He calculated that after five or six careful years he would manage to get himself loved again. This cold brain had been reduced, as one sees, to a state of complete disorder. Out of all the qualities which had formerly distinguished him, all that remained was a little firmness. He was literally faithful to the line of conduct which prince Korasoff had dictated, and placed himself every evening near madame Fervaques' armchair, but he found it impossible to think of a word to say to her. The strain of making Mathilde think that he had recovered exhausted his whole moral force, and when he was with the marechale he seemed almost lifeless; even his eyes had lost all their fire, as in cases of extreme physical suffering. As madame de la Mole's views were invariably a counterpart of the opinions of that husband of hers who could make her into a Duchess, she had been singing Julien's praises for some days.

Part 2, Chapter 25

https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-2-chapter-25

Julien gets back to Paris and tells the Marquis de La Mole all about his meeting with the duke. The marquis seems really agitated by what he hears, but Julien couldn't care less. He's more interested in fulfilling his plot to get Mathilde to love him again. Julien then visits Count Altamira, whose friend used to flirt with the woman whom Julien is going to court . The woman's name is Madame de Fervaques, and Julien needs to inside scoop if he's going to win her over. Julien goes to dinner with the de La Moles for the evening. Later that night, Madame de Fervaques enters the house for a visit. He makes sure to sit near her. He finds out that she plans on going to the opera that night, so he finds a way of getting a box at the show near hers. Seeing Julien happy that night, Mathilde wonders again whether she really loves him. Basically, she loves him whenever he proves he can be happy without her. Go figure. She expects Julien to come pleading to her, but he never pays her any attention. As we learn, it takes every ounce of strength in Julien's body to keep him from breaking down and blubbering in front of Mathilde about how much he misses her.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/22.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_21_part_0.txt

Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 22

chapter 22

{"name": "Phase III: \"The Rally,\" Chapter Twenty-Two", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210424232301/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary/chapter-22", "summary": "The next morning, Dairyman Crick is all in a huff because he's had a letter complaining of a funny taste in the butter. He can taste it himself, and realizes that there must be garlic in the fields that the cows have been munching. So all the dairymaids and dairymen gather up and go over every inch of the field in a row, trying to find the offending plants. This, as you can imagine, is very tedious work--like hunting meticulously for a needle in the proverbial haystack. Angel is sure to put himself next to Tess in the row, so that they can speak quietly to each other as they scour the field. After a while, Tess separates herself from the rest of the group, and Angel follows after a few minutes. Tess remarks on how pretty the other dairymaids look, especially Izz and Retty. After this, she tries to avoid Angel as much as possible, to give the other dairymaids a fair chance. After all, she thinks that she can't, in good conscience, marry anyone after having had a baby out of wedlock.", "analysis": ""}

They came downstairs yawning next morning; but skimming and milking were proceeded with as usual, and they went indoors to breakfast. Dairyman Crick was discovered stamping about the house. He had received a letter, in which a customer had complained that the butter had a twang. "And begad, so 't have!" said the dairyman, who held in his left hand a wooden slice on which a lump of butter was stuck. "Yes--taste for yourself!" Several of them gathered round him; and Mr Clare tasted, Tess tasted, also the other indoor milkmaids, one or two of the milking-men, and last of all Mrs Crick, who came out from the waiting breakfast-table. There certainly was a twang. The dairyman, who had thrown himself into abstraction to better realize the taste, and so divine the particular species of noxious weed to which it appertained, suddenly exclaimed-- "'Tis garlic! and I thought there wasn't a blade left in that mead!" Then all the old hands remembered that a certain dry mead, into which a few of the cows had been admitted of late, had, in years gone by, spoilt the butter in the same way. The dairyman had not recognized the taste at that time, and thought the butter bewitched. "We must overhaul that mead," he resumed; "this mustn't continny!" All having armed themselves with old pointed knives, they went out together. As the inimical plant could only be present in very microscopic dimensions to have escaped ordinary observation, to find it seemed rather a hopeless attempt in the stretch of rich grass before them. However, they formed themselves into line, all assisting, owing to the importance of the search; the dairyman at the upper end with Mr Clare, who had volunteered to help; then Tess, Marian, Izz Huett, and Retty; then Bill Lewell, Jonathan, and the married dairywomen--Beck Knibbs, with her wooly black hair and rolling eyes; and flaxen Frances, consumptive from the winter damps of the water-meads--who lived in their respective cottages. With eyes fixed upon the ground they crept slowly across a strip of the field, returning a little further down in such a manner that, when they should have finished, not a single inch of the pasture but would have fallen under the eye of some one of them. It was a most tedious business, not more than half a dozen shoots of garlic being discoverable in the whole field; yet such was the herb's pungency that probably one bite of it by one cow had been sufficient to season the whole dairy's produce for the day. Differing one from another in natures and moods so greatly as they did, they yet formed, bending, a curiously uniform row--automatic, noiseless; and an alien observer passing down the neighbouring lane might well have been excused for massing them as "Hodge". As they crept along, stooping low to discern the plant, a soft yellow gleam was reflected from the buttercups into their shaded faces, giving them an elfish, moonlit aspect, though the sun was pouring upon their backs in all the strength of noon. Angel Clare, who communistically stuck to his rule of taking part with the rest in everything, glanced up now and then. It was not, of course, by accident that he walked next to Tess. "Well, how are you?" he murmured. "Very well, thank you, sir," she replied demurely. As they had been discussing a score of personal matters only half-an-hour before, the introductory style seemed a little superfluous. But they got no further in speech just then. They crept and crept, the hem of her petticoat just touching his gaiter, and his elbow sometimes brushing hers. At last the dairyman, who came next, could stand it no longer. "Upon my soul and body, this here stooping do fairly make my back open and shut!" he exclaimed, straightening himself slowly with an excruciated look till quite upright. "And you, maidy Tess, you wasn't well a day or two ago--this will make your head ache finely! Don't do any more, if you feel fainty; leave the rest to finish it." Dairyman Crick withdrew, and Tess dropped behind. Mr Clare also stepped out of line, and began privateering about for the weed. When she found him near her, her very tension at what she had heard the night before made her the first to speak. "Don't they look pretty?" she said. "Who?" "Izzy Huett and Retty." Tess had moodily decided that either of these maidens would make a good farmer's wife, and that she ought to recommend them, and obscure her own wretched charms. "Pretty? Well, yes--they are pretty girls--fresh looking. I have often thought so." "Though, poor dears, prettiness won't last long!" "O no, unfortunately." "They are excellent dairywomen." "Yes: though not better than you." "They skim better than I." "Do they?" Clare remained observing them--not without their observing him. "She is colouring up," continued Tess heroically. "Who?" "Retty Priddle." "Oh! Why it that?" "Because you are looking at her." Self-sacrificing as her mood might be, Tess could not well go further and cry, "Marry one of them, if you really do want a dairywoman and not a lady; and don't think of marrying me!" She followed Dairyman Crick, and had the mournful satisfaction of seeing that Clare remained behind. From this day she forced herself to take pains to avoid him--never allowing herself, as formerly, to remain long in his company, even if their juxtaposition were purely accidental. She gave the other three every chance. Tess was woman enough to realize from their avowals to herself that Angel Clare had the honour of all the dairymaids in his keeping, and her perception of his care to avoid compromising the happiness of either in the least degree bred a tender respect in Tess for what she deemed, rightly or wrongly, the self-controlling sense of duty shown by him, a quality which she had never expected to find in one of the opposite sex, and in the absence of which more than one of the simple hearts who were his house-mates might have gone weeping on her pilgrimage.

Phase III: "The Rally," Chapter Twenty-Two

https://web.archive.org/web/20210424232301/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary/chapter-22

The next morning, Dairyman Crick is all in a huff because he's had a letter complaining of a funny taste in the butter. He can taste it himself, and realizes that there must be garlic in the fields that the cows have been munching. So all the dairymaids and dairymen gather up and go over every inch of the field in a row, trying to find the offending plants. This, as you can imagine, is very tedious work--like hunting meticulously for a needle in the proverbial haystack. Angel is sure to put himself next to Tess in the row, so that they can speak quietly to each other as they scour the field. After a while, Tess separates herself from the rest of the group, and Angel follows after a few minutes. Tess remarks on how pretty the other dairymaids look, especially Izz and Retty. After this, she tries to avoid Angel as much as possible, to give the other dairymaids a fair chance. After all, she thinks that she can't, in good conscience, marry anyone after having had a baby out of wedlock.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1130-chapters/8.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra/section_7_part_0.txt

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

act ii, scene iii

{"name": "Act II, Scene iii", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210116191009/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/antony-cleopatra/summary/act-ii-scene-iii", "summary": "Antony, Octavia, and Caesar are back at Caesar's palace in Rome. Antony promises Octavia that though his work will take him away from her often, he won't indulge in any monkey business, no matter how naughty he's been in the past. Caesar leads his sister away, and Antony meets with a soothsayer who tells him he should have never left Egypt, and should get back there ASAP. Antony asks whether he or Caesar will have better fortune, and the man replies that Caesar will. Further, Antony should stay as far away from Caesar as possible, as Antony's fortune is muted, and his greatness lessened, whenever Caesar is around. Antony agrees, and announces that though he married Octavia to make peace, he needs to return to his girl in Egypt as \"I' th' East my pleasure lies.\" In a totally unrelated side note, he sends his soldier Ventidius to Parthia to fight on his behalf.", "analysis": ""}

SCENE III. Rome. CAESAR'S house Enter ANTONY, CAESAR, OCTAVIA between them ANTONY. The world and my great office will sometimes Divide me from your bosom. OCTAVIA. All which time Before the gods my knee shall bow my prayers To them for you. ANTONY. Good night, sir. My Octavia, Read not my blemishes in the world's report. I have not kept my square; but that to come Shall all be done by th' rule. Good night, dear lady. OCTAVIA. Good night, sir. CAESAR. Good night. Exeunt CAESAR and OCTAVIA Enter SOOTHSAYER ANTONY. Now, sirrah, you do wish yourself in Egypt? SOOTHSAYER. Would I had never come from thence, nor you thither! ANTONY. If you can- your reason. SOOTHSAYER. I see it in my motion, have it not in my tongue; but yet hie you to Egypt again. ANTONY. Say to me, Whose fortunes shall rise higher, Caesar's or mine? SOOTHSAYER. Caesar's. Therefore, O Antony, stay not by his side. Thy daemon, that thy spirit which keeps thee, is Noble, courageous, high, unmatchable, Where Caesar's is not; but near him thy angel Becomes a fear, as being o'erpow'r'd. Therefore Make space enough between you. ANTONY. Speak this no more. SOOTHSAYER. To none but thee; no more but when to thee. If thou dost play with him at any game, Thou art sure to lose; and of that natural luck He beats thee 'gainst the odds. Thy lustre thickens When he shines by. I say again, thy spirit Is all afraid to govern thee near him; But, he away, 'tis noble. ANTONY. Get thee gone. Say to Ventidius I would speak with him. Exit SOOTHSAYER He shall to Parthia.- Be it art or hap, He hath spoken true. The very dice obey him; And in our sports my better cunning faints Under his chance. If we draw lots, he speeds; His cocks do win the battle still of mine, When it is all to nought, and his quails ever Beat mine, inhoop'd, at odds. I will to Egypt; And though I make this marriage for my peace, I' th' East my pleasure lies. Enter VENTIDIUS O, come, Ventidius, You must to Parthia. Your commission's ready; Follow me and receive't. Exeunt

Act II, Scene iii

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

Antony, Octavia, and Caesar are back at Caesar's palace in Rome. Antony promises Octavia that though his work will take him away from her often, he won't indulge in any monkey business, no matter how naughty he's been in the past. Caesar leads his sister away, and Antony meets with a soothsayer who tells him he should have never left Egypt, and should get back there ASAP. Antony asks whether he or Caesar will have better fortune, and the man replies that Caesar will. Further, Antony should stay as far away from Caesar as possible, as Antony's fortune is muted, and his greatness lessened, whenever Caesar is around. Antony agrees, and announces that though he married Octavia to make peace, he needs to return to his girl in Egypt as "I' th' East my pleasure lies." In a totally unrelated side note, he sends his soldier Ventidius to Parthia to fight on his behalf.

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/1232-chapters/18.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Prince/section_7_part_1.txt

The Prince.chapter xviii

chapter xviii

{"name": "Chapter XVIII", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210303115306/https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/prince/section8/", "summary": "In What Way Princes Should Keep Their Word Machiavelli acknowledges that a prince who honors his word is generally praised by others. But historical experience demonstrates that princes achieve the most success when they are crafty, cunning, and able to trick others. There are two ways of fighting: by law or by force. Laws come naturally to men, force comes naturally to beasts. In order to succeed, the prince must learn how to fight both with laws and with force--he must become half man and half beast. When a prince uses force, he acts like a beast. He must learn to act like two types of beasts: lions and foxes. A fox is defenseless against wolves; a lion is defenseless against traps. A prince must learn to act like both the fox and the lion: he must learn, like the fox, how to frighten off wolves and, like the lion, how to recognize the traps. In dealing with people, a prince must break his promises when they put him at a disadvantage and when the reasons for which he made the promises no longer exist. In any case, promises are never something on which a prince can rely, since men are by nature wretched and deceitful. A prince should be a master of deception. However, a prince must be careful to exude a virtuous aura that belies his deceitful mind. Pope Alexander VI was one ruler who excelled at this art. A prince should present the appearance of being a compassionate, trustworthy, kind, guileless, and pious ruler. Of course, actually possessing all these virtues is neither possible nor desirable. But so long as a prince appears to act virtuously, most men will believe in his virtue. If the populace believes the prince to be virtuous, it will be easier for him to maintain his state. Moreover, men will judge their prince solely on appearance and results. Thus, it doesn't matter to the people that a prince may occasionally employ evil to achieve his goal. So long as a prince appears virtuous and is successful in running the state, he will be regarded as virtuous", "analysis": ""}

Every one admits how praiseworthy it is in a prince to keep faith, and to live with integrity and not with craft. Nevertheless our experience has been that those princes who have done great things have held good faith of little account, and have known how to circumvent the intellect of men by craft, and in the end have overcome those who have relied on their word. You must know there are two ways of contesting,(*) the one by the law, the other by force; the first method is proper to men, the second to beasts; but because the first is frequently not sufficient, it is necessary to have recourse to the second. Therefore it is necessary for a prince to understand how to avail himself of the beast and the man. This has been figuratively taught to princes by ancient writers, who describe how Achilles and many other princes of old were given to the Centaur Chiron to nurse, who brought them up in his discipline; which means solely that, as they had for a teacher one who was half beast and half man, so it is necessary for a prince to know how to make use of both natures, and that one without the other is not durable. A prince, therefore, being compelled knowingly to adopt the beast, ought to choose the fox and the lion; because the lion cannot defend himself against snares and the fox cannot defend himself against wolves. Therefore, it is necessary to be a fox to discover the snares and a lion to terrify the wolves. Those who rely simply on the lion do not understand what they are about. Therefore a wise lord cannot, nor ought he to, keep faith when such observance may be turned against him, and when the reasons that caused him to pledge it exist no longer. If men were entirely good this precept would not hold, but because they are bad, and will not keep faith with you, you too are not bound to observe it with them. Nor will there ever be wanting to a prince legitimate reasons to excuse this non-observance. Of this endless modern examples could be given, showing how many treaties and engagements have been made void and of no effect through the faithlessness of princes; and he who has known best how to employ the fox has succeeded best. (*) "Contesting," i.e. "striving for mastery." Mr Burd points out that this passage is imitated directly from Cicero's "De Officiis": "Nam cum sint duo genera decertandi, unum per disceptationem, alterum per vim; cumque illud proprium sit hominis, hoc beluarum; confugiendum est ad posterius, si uti non licet superiore." But it is necessary to know well how to disguise this characteristic, and to be a great pretender and dissembler; and men are so simple, and so subject to present necessities, that he who seeks to deceive will always find someone who will allow himself to be deceived. One recent example I cannot pass over in silence. Alexander the Sixth did nothing else but deceive men, nor ever thought of doing otherwise, and he always found victims; for there never was a man who had greater power in asserting, or who with greater oaths would affirm a thing, yet would observe it less; nevertheless his deceits always succeeded according to his wishes,(*) because he well understood this side of mankind. (*) "Nondimanco sempre gli succederono gli inganni (ad votum)." The words "ad votum" are omitted in the Testina addition, 1550. Alexander never did what he said, Cesare never said what he did. Therefore it is unnecessary for a prince to have all the good qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them. And I shall dare to say this also, that to have them and always to observe them is injurious, and that to appear to have them is useful; to appear merciful, faithful, humane, religious, upright, and to be so, but with a mind so framed that should you require not to be so, you may be able and know how to change to the opposite. And you have to understand this, that a prince, especially a new one, cannot observe all those things for which men are esteemed, being often forced, in order to maintain the state, to act contrary to fidelity,(*) friendship, humanity, and religion. Therefore it is necessary for him to have a mind ready to turn itself accordingly as the winds and variations of fortune force it, yet, as I have said above, not to diverge from the good if he can avoid doing so, but, if compelled, then to know how to set about it. (*) "Contrary to fidelity" or "faith," "contro alla fede," and "tutto fede," "altogether faithful," in the next paragraph. It is noteworthy that these two phrases, "contro alla fede" and "tutto fede," were omitted in the Testina edition, which was published with the sanction of the papal authorities. It may be that the meaning attached to the word "fede" was "the faith," i.e. the Catholic creed, and not as rendered here "fidelity" and "faithful." Observe that the word "religione" was suffered to stand in the text of the Testina, being used to signify indifferently every shade of belief, as witness "the religion," a phrase inevitably employed to designate the Huguenot heresy. South in his Sermon IX, p. 69, ed. 1843, comments on this passage as follows: "That great patron and Coryphaeus of this tribe, Nicolo Machiavel, laid down this for a master rule in his political scheme: 'That the show of religion was helpful to the politician, but the reality of it hurtful and pernicious.'" For this reason a prince ought to take care that he never lets anything slip from his lips that is not replete with the above-named five qualities, that he may appear to him who sees and hears him altogether merciful, faithful, humane, upright, and religious. There is nothing more necessary to appear to have than this last quality, inasmuch as men judge generally more by the eye than by the hand, because it belongs to everybody to see you, to few to come in touch with you. Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are, and those few dare not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them; and in the actions of all men, and especially of princes, which it is not prudent to challenge, one judges by the result. For that reason, let a prince have the credit of conquering and holding his state, the means will always be considered honest, and he will be praised by everybody; because the vulgar are always taken by what a thing seems to be and by what comes of it; and in the world there are only the vulgar, for the few find a place there only when the many have no ground to rest on. One prince(*) of the present time, whom it is not well to name, never preaches anything else but peace and good faith, and to both he is most hostile, and either, if he had kept it, would have deprived him of reputation and kingdom many a time. (*) Ferdinand of Aragon. "When Machiavelli was writing 'The Prince' it would have been clearly impossible to mention Ferdinand's name here without giving offence." Burd's "Il Principe," p. 308.

Chapter XVIII

https://web.archive.org/web/20210303115306/https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/prince/section8/

In What Way Princes Should Keep Their Word Machiavelli acknowledges that a prince who honors his word is generally praised by others. But historical experience demonstrates that princes achieve the most success when they are crafty, cunning, and able to trick others. There are two ways of fighting: by law or by force. Laws come naturally to men, force comes naturally to beasts. In order to succeed, the prince must learn how to fight both with laws and with force--he must become half man and half beast. When a prince uses force, he acts like a beast. He must learn to act like two types of beasts: lions and foxes. A fox is defenseless against wolves; a lion is defenseless against traps. A prince must learn to act like both the fox and the lion: he must learn, like the fox, how to frighten off wolves and, like the lion, how to recognize the traps. In dealing with people, a prince must break his promises when they put him at a disadvantage and when the reasons for which he made the promises no longer exist. In any case, promises are never something on which a prince can rely, since men are by nature wretched and deceitful. A prince should be a master of deception. However, a prince must be careful to exude a virtuous aura that belies his deceitful mind. Pope Alexander VI was one ruler who excelled at this art. A prince should present the appearance of being a compassionate, trustworthy, kind, guileless, and pious ruler. Of course, actually possessing all these virtues is neither possible nor desirable. But so long as a prince appears to act virtuously, most men will believe in his virtue. If the populace believes the prince to be virtuous, it will be easier for him to maintain his state. Moreover, men will judge their prince solely on appearance and results. Thus, it doesn't matter to the people that a prince may occasionally employ evil to achieve his goal. So long as a prince appears virtuous and is successful in running the state, he will be regarded as virtuous

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/24.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_23_part_0.txt

Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 24

chapter 24

{"name": "Phase III: \"The Rally,\" Chapter Twenty-Four", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210424232301/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary/chapter-24", "summary": "It's hot and it's July: the weather conditions for falling in love are just perfect. It's so hot that everyone's feeling it. The cows are crowding around even the smallest trees, trying to stay in the shade. The dairymaids and dairymen do the milking out in the field, rather than herding the cows into the barnyard, because it's cooler and easier. Tess picks up her stool and goes to milk one of her favorite cows, which is standing at a distance from the main part of the herd. Angel starts milking a cow that's close to it, so that he can watch her. He sneezes, and Tess becomes aware that he's there, watching her. She blushes. He jumps up, and rushes to her and hugs her. She at first relaxes into the hug, and hugs him back, but the cow gets grumpy and stamps its feet and reminds Tess that she shouldn't be hugging anyone. Angel pulls back, and admits that he loves her, and apologizes for surprising her when he should have asked first. Tess blushes and doesn't say much, and they both go back to their milking.", "analysis": ""}

Amid the oozing fatness and warm ferments of the Froom Vale, at a season when the rush of juices could almost be heard below the hiss of fertilization, it was impossible that the most fanciful love should not grow passionate. The ready bosoms existing there were impregnated by their surroundings. July passed over their heads, and the Thermidorean weather which came in its wake seemed an effort on the part of Nature to match the state of hearts at Talbothays Dairy. The air of the place, so fresh in the spring and early summer, was stagnant and enervating now. Its heavy scents weighed upon them, and at mid-day the landscape seemed lying in a swoon. Ethiopic scorchings browned the upper slopes of the pastures, but there was still bright green herbage here where the watercourses purled. And as Clare was oppressed by the outward heats, so was he burdened inwardly by waxing fervour of passion for the soft and silent Tess. The rains having passed, the uplands were dry. The wheels of the dairyman's spring-cart, as he sped home from market, licked up the pulverized surface of the highway, and were followed by white ribands of dust, as if they had set a thin powder-train on fire. The cows jumped wildly over the five-barred barton-gate, maddened by the gad-fly; Dairyman Crick kept his shirt-sleeves permanently rolled up from Monday to Saturday; open windows had no effect in ventilation without open doors, and in the dairy-garden the blackbirds and thrushes crept about under the currant-bushes, rather in the manner of quadrupeds than of winged creatures. The flies in the kitchen were lazy, teasing, and familiar, crawling about in the unwonted places, on the floors, into drawers, and over the backs of the milkmaids' hands. Conversations were concerning sunstroke; while butter-making, and still more butter-keeping, was a despair. They milked entirely in the meads for coolness and convenience, without driving in the cows. During the day the animals obsequiously followed the shadow of the smallest tree as it moved round the stem with the diurnal roll; and when the milkers came they could hardly stand still for the flies. On one of these afternoons four or five unmilked cows chanced to stand apart from the general herd, behind the corner of a hedge, among them being Dumpling and Old Pretty, who loved Tess's hands above those of any other maid. When she rose from her stool under a finished cow, Angel Clare, who had been observing her for some time, asked her if she would take the aforesaid creatures next. She silently assented, and with her stool at arm's length, and the pail against her knee, went round to where they stood. Soon the sound of Old Pretty's milk fizzing into the pail came through the hedge, and then Angel felt inclined to go round the corner also, to finish off a hard-yielding milcher who had strayed there, he being now as capable of this as the dairyman himself. All the men, and some of the women, when milking, dug their foreheads into the cows and gazed into the pail. But a few--mainly the younger ones--rested their heads sideways. This was Tess Durbeyfield's habit, her temple pressing the milcher's flank, her eyes fixed on the far end of the meadow with the quiet of one lost in meditation. She was milking Old Pretty thus, and the sun chancing to be on the milking-side, it shone flat upon her pink-gowned form and her white curtain-bonnet, and upon her profile, rendering it keen as a cameo cut from the dun background of the cow. She did not know that Clare had followed her round, and that he sat under his cow watching her. The stillness of her head and features was remarkable: she might have been in a trance, her eyes open, yet unseeing. Nothing in the picture moved but Old Pretty's tail and Tess's pink hands, the latter so gently as to be a rhythmic pulsation only, as if they were obeying a reflex stimulus, like a beating heart. How very lovable her face was to him. Yet there was nothing ethereal about it; all was real vitality, real warmth, real incarnation. And it was in her mouth that this culminated. Eyes almost as deep and speaking he had seen before, and cheeks perhaps as fair; brows as arched, a chin and throat almost as shapely; her mouth he had seen nothing to equal on the face of the earth. To a young man with the least fire in him that little upward lift in the middle of her red top lip was distracting, infatuating, maddening. He had never before seen a woman's lips and teeth which forced upon his mind with such persistent iteration the old Elizabethan simile of roses filled with snow. Perfect, he, as a lover, might have called them off-hand. But no--they were not perfect. And it was the touch of the imperfect upon the would-be perfect that gave the sweetness, because it was that which gave the humanity. Clare had studied the curves of those lips so many times that he could reproduce them mentally with ease: and now, as they again confronted him, clothed with colour and life, they sent an _aura_ over his flesh, a breeze through his nerves, which well nigh produced a qualm; and actually produced, by some mysterious physiological process, a prosaic sneeze. She then became conscious that he was observing her; but she would not show it by any change of position, though the curious dream-like fixity disappeared, and a close eye might easily have discerned that the rosiness of her face deepened, and then faded till only a tinge of it was left. The influence that had passed into Clare like an excitation from the sky did not die down. Resolutions, reticences, prudences, fears, fell back like a defeated battalion. He jumped up from his seat, and, leaving his pail to be kicked over if the milcher had such a mind, went quickly towards the desire of his eyes, and, kneeling down beside her, clasped her in his arms. Tess was taken completely by surprise, and she yielded to his embrace with unreflecting inevitableness. Having seen that it was really her lover who had advanced, and no one else, her lips parted, and she sank upon him in her momentary joy, with something very like an ecstatic cry. He had been on the point of kissing that too tempting mouth, but he checked himself, for tender conscience' sake. "Forgive me, Tess dear!" he whispered. "I ought to have asked. I--did not know what I was doing. I do not mean it as a liberty. I am devoted to you, Tessy, dearest, in all sincerity!" Old Pretty by this time had looked round, puzzled; and seeing two people crouching under her where, by immemorial custom, there should have been only one, lifted her hind leg crossly. "She is angry--she doesn't know what we mean--she'll kick over the milk!" exclaimed Tess, gently striving to free herself, her eyes concerned with the quadruped's actions, her heart more deeply concerned with herself and Clare. She slipped up from her seat, and they stood together, his arm still encircling her. Tess's eyes, fixed on distance, began to fill. "Why do you cry, my darling?" he said. "O--I don't know!" she murmured. As she saw and felt more clearly the position she was in she became agitated and tried to withdraw. "Well, I have betrayed my feeling, Tess, at last," said he, with a curious sigh of desperation, signifying unconsciously that his heart had outrun his judgement. "That I--love you dearly and truly I need not say. But I--it shall go no further now--it distresses you--I am as surprised as you are. You will not think I have presumed upon your defencelessness--been too quick and unreflecting, will you?" "N'--I can't tell." He had allowed her to free herself; and in a minute or two the milking of each was resumed. Nobody had beheld the gravitation of the two into one; and when the dairyman came round by that screened nook a few minutes later, there was not a sign to reveal that the markedly sundered pair were more to each other than mere acquaintance. Yet in the interval since Crick's last view of them something had occurred which changed the pivot of the universe for their two natures; something which, had he known its quality, the dairyman would have despised, as a practical man; yet which was based upon a more stubborn and resistless tendency than a whole heap of so-called practicalities. A veil had been whisked aside; the tract of each one's outlook was to have a new horizon thenceforward--for a short time or for a long. END OF PHASE THE THIRD Phase the Fourth: The Consequence

Phase III: "The Rally," Chapter Twenty-Four

https://web.archive.org/web/20210424232301/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary/chapter-24

It's hot and it's July: the weather conditions for falling in love are just perfect. It's so hot that everyone's feeling it. The cows are crowding around even the smallest trees, trying to stay in the shade. The dairymaids and dairymen do the milking out in the field, rather than herding the cows into the barnyard, because it's cooler and easier. Tess picks up her stool and goes to milk one of her favorite cows, which is standing at a distance from the main part of the herd. Angel starts milking a cow that's close to it, so that he can watch her. He sneezes, and Tess becomes aware that he's there, watching her. She blushes. He jumps up, and rushes to her and hugs her. She at first relaxes into the hug, and hugs him back, but the cow gets grumpy and stamps its feet and reminds Tess that she shouldn't be hugging anyone. Angel pulls back, and admits that he loves her, and apologizes for surprising her when he should have asked first. Tess blushes and doesn't say much, and they both go back to their milking.

pinkmonkey

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/25.txt

finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_10_part_1.txt

Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 25

chapter 25

{"name": "CHAPTER 25", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820050202/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmTessD35.asp", "summary": "Confused by Tess's reaction to his advances, Angel decides to stay away from her. Since it will be difficult to do so on the farm, he decides to go for a visit with his family for a few days. On his way home to Emminster, Angel analyzes his amorous feelings. He concludes that his love for Tess is genuine and decides to tell his parents about her. When Angel arrives home unannounced, his parents and two brothers are having breakfast. His brothers notice that Angel is greatly changed, seeming now like a farmer rather than a scholar. Angel also thinks that his brothers have changed, growing limited in their views of life. Felix, a curate in a neighboring town, can only focus on church matters; Cuthbert, a dean at Cambridge, can only focus on university matters.", "analysis": "Notes This chapter contrasts Angel and his brothers. Staying and working at Talbothay's dairy has changed Angel. He is now much less a polished scholar and much more a country farmer, both in appearance and in thought. By contrast, his brothers lead much more sophisticated lives, one being a curate and one being a dean at Cambridge. But Angel feels their thinking has become very limited by their professions. He knows he no longer has anything in common with them other than his roots. It is important to notice the family's reactions to the gifts sent by Mrs. Crick. Her black pudding and mead have no place in their meal, for the family considers such plain country cooking to be unsuitable for consumption. Angel realizes that although his family is good in their religious duties, they lack real human sentiments. They cannot even appreciate the affection and love symbolized in Mrs. Crick's gifts"}

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 25

https://web.archive.org/web/20180820050202/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmTessD35.asp

Confused by Tess's reaction to his advances, Angel decides to stay away from her. Since it will be difficult to do so on the farm, he decides to go for a visit with his family for a few days. On his way home to Emminster, Angel analyzes his amorous feelings. He concludes that his love for Tess is genuine and decides to tell his parents about her. When Angel arrives home unannounced, his parents and two brothers are having breakfast. His brothers notice that Angel is greatly changed, seeming now like a farmer rather than a scholar. Angel also thinks that his brothers have changed, growing limited in their views of life. Felix, a curate in a neighboring town, can only focus on church matters; Cuthbert, a dean at Cambridge, can only focus on university matters.

Notes This chapter contrasts Angel and his brothers. Staying and working at Talbothay's dairy has changed Angel. He is now much less a polished scholar and much more a country farmer, both in appearance and in thought. By contrast, his brothers lead much more sophisticated lives, one being a curate and one being a dean at Cambridge. But Angel feels their thinking has become very limited by their professions. He knows he no longer has anything in common with them other than his roots. It is important to notice the family's reactions to the gifts sent by Mrs. Crick. Her black pudding and mead have no place in their meal, for the family considers such plain country cooking to be unsuitable for consumption. Angel realizes that although his family is good in their religious duties, they lack real human sentiments. They cannot even appreciate the affection and love symbolized in Mrs. Crick's gifts

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/107-chapters/chapters_52_to_57.txt

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

Far from the Madding Crowd.chapters 52-57

chapters 52-57

{"name": "", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210225000853/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/maddingcrowd/section11/", "summary": "The novel builds toward its climax in Chapter 52, appropriately named \"Converging Courses.\" Hardy divides the chapter into seven sections, charting the activities of Boldwood, Bathsheba, Gabriel, and Troy as they prepare for and attend Boldwood's Christmas Eve party. The party is talked about all over Weatherbury, largely because it is so unusual for Boldwood to give a party. He has decorated his long hall meticulously, but, we are told, \"In spite of all this, the spirit of revelry was wanting in the atmosphere of the house\"; Boldwood is not a natural host. Bathsheba is dressing for the party. She tells Liddy, \"I am foolishly agitated: I am the cause of the party, and that upsets me!\" She decides to continue to wear her mourning and dress in black for the festivities. Boldwood, too, is dressing and has given an inordinate amount of attention to his clothes, hiring a tailor to alter everything. Gabriel visits him and Boldwood asks for his assistance in tying his tie. He asks, \"'Does a woman keep her promise, Gabriel?'\" and Gabriel answers, \"If it is not inconvenient to her she may.'\" Gabriel warns him not to build too much on promises, and it is clear that Boldwood harbors fear of Bathsheba's refusal; he is highly agitated. We also see Troy and Pennyways as they prepare to go to Boldwood's party. Troy asks Pennyways about Bathsheba's relationships with Boldwood and Gabriel. Troy finally sets off for the party in disguise, thinking that Bathsheba is on the verge of marrying Boldwood. He plans to arrive at nine. Now we are shown Boldwood at his farm again, as he offers Gabriel a larger part of the farm's profits, saying that he hopes to retire from the management altogether. Boldwood says he knows Gabriel loves Bathsheba and says he believes he has won the competition for Bathsheba, in part, because of Gabriel's \"goodness of heart.\" As the guests arrive, Boldwood shows \"feverish anxiety.\" The climax of the novel comes in Chapter 53. The villagers gather outside Boldwood's house, whispering that Troy has been seen that day in Casterbridge. The night is \"dark as a hedge.\" Boldwood is waiting desperately for Bathsheba, and the workers overhear him say, \"Oh my darling, my darling, why do you keep me in suspense like this?\" Bathsheba arrives, and the workers try to decide whether to tell Boldwood about Troy. Then, they spot his face at the window. After an hour, Bathsheba prepares for departure, and Boldwood finds her alone in the parlor. He pressures her and she agrees to \"give the promise, if I must.\" Boldwood finally presses her to take a ring, persuading her to wear it for just that night, and she begins to cry. He is almost violent in his firmness, and she is \"beaten into non-resistance.\" Just then, a stranger is announced, and in front of the whole party, Troy announces, \"Bathsheba, I am come for you! \" She does not move. He reaches out to pull her toward him, but she shrinks back; her dread irritates Troy, who seizes her arm violently; she screams. The sound of the scream is followed by a deafening bang: Boldwood has shot Troy dead. He is about to shoot himself, as well, when a worker stops him. Boldwood leaves the hall. In the next chapter, we learn that Boldwood has turned himself in at the Casterbridge prison, while Bathsheba has tended to Troy and called for a surgeon. Troy, however, is dead. Months later, in March, Boldwood's trial occurs. The onlookers learn that Boldwood had prepared a set of ladies' dresses in expensive fabrics in a closet in his home and several sets of jewelry in packages labeled \"Bathsheba Boldwood. \" Boldwood is sentenced to death by hanging. However, the residents of Weatherbury are convinced that Boldwood is not \"morally responsible\" for his actions, and Gabriel sends a petition to the Home Secretary requesting a reconsideration of the sentence. Finally, on the eve of his execution the news comes that he has been pardoned and given \"confinement during Her Majesty's pleasure\" instead. Troy is buried in the same grave as Fanny Robin. Bathsheba's spirits slowly revive as the spring turns to summer. One day, as she is visiting the grave, she sees Gabriel singing in the church choir. He joins her at the grave and tells her that he intends to leave Weatherbury. Upset, she begs him to stay, but he will not. When she receives his official final notice as bailiff, she cries and decides to visit him at his cottage. He invites her in and explains that one of his motivations for leaving are the rumors going around the village about a romance between the two of them. After some confusion, Bathsheba admits that she has come \"courting him\" and the two agree to marry. The last chapter portrays the quiet wedding of Gabriel and Bathsheba. After the wedding, the two dine at the farm, and all the men of the village gather to sing and play for them.", "analysis": "Commentary The tension builds through the use of the villagers' comments about Troy, just as in a Greek tragedy in which the conflicts about to be unleashed are commented on by the chorus. They alone know what the reader knows--that Troy is alive and may turn up at the party. Yet also like the reader, they are powerless to intervene. The villagers articulate all the fears the readers have about how Boldwood and Bathsheba will react to Troy's presence. The tension they instill makes the somewhat melodramatic climax--Boldwood's murder of Troy--more plausible. Knowing how deeply Boldwood hopes that Troy's death will allow him to possess Bathsheba, we understand his urge to kill Troy. The scene-by-scene structure of Chapter 52 contributes to this dramatic suspense, as we imagine three separate sets of people each about to come together and each deeply anxious, wondering how it will all be resolved. Notice that Gabriel fulfills his classic role of the intelligent, sensible observer, who does not take part in the action. The final chapters serve to release this tension and to make sense of what has happened. Boldwood's trial looks back upon all the recent events and causes the readers to develop sympathy for his misdeed so that we, like the villagers, may forgive him. Similarly, by burying Troy with Fanny, Bathsheba shows acceptance of their previous bonds to each other. In the wake of these three ruined lives, only Gabriel and Bathsheba remain. Bathsheba's trip to Gabriel's cottage is the final instance of the series of intimate discussions about marriage the two have from the very outset of the novel, beginning with Gabriel's first proposal. In the previous scenes, Bathsheba has been hurt when Gabriel has not confessed his devotion to her. Here, finally, she is driven to admit her own love for him. This time, she is the one who introduces the notion of their marrying. Hardy is careful to show that the love that Gabriel and Bathsheba share is not the passion of a first love but a sadder and wiser connection. In the final scene, Jan Coggan makes a joke, and the narrator tells us, \"Then Oak laughed, and Bathsheba smiled , and their friends turned to go.\" While the ending is ostensibly a happy one, that happiness is tempered by all that has happened."}

CONVERGING COURSES Christmas-eve came, and a party that Boldwood was to give in the evening was the great subject of talk in Weatherbury. It was not that the rarity of Christmas parties in the parish made this one a wonder, but that Boldwood should be the giver. The announcement had had an abnormal and incongruous sound, as if one should hear of croquet-playing in a cathedral aisle, or that some much-respected judge was going upon the stage. That the party was intended to be a truly jovial one there was no room for doubt. A large bough of mistletoe had been brought from the woods that day, and suspended in the hall of the bachelor's home. Holly and ivy had followed in armfuls. From six that morning till past noon the huge wood fire in the kitchen roared and sparkled at its highest, the kettle, the saucepan, and the three-legged pot appearing in the midst of the flames like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego; moreover, roasting and basting operations were continually carried on in front of the genial blaze. As it grew later the fire was made up in the large long hall into which the staircase descended, and all encumbrances were cleared out for dancing. The log which was to form the back-brand of the evening fire was the uncleft trunk of a tree, so unwieldy that it could be neither brought nor rolled to its place; and accordingly two men were to be observed dragging and heaving it in by chains and levers as the hour of assembly drew near. In spite of all this, the spirit of revelry was wanting in the atmosphere of the house. Such a thing had never been attempted before by its owner, and it was now done as by a wrench. Intended gaieties would insist upon appearing like solemn grandeurs, the organization of the whole effort was carried out coldly, by hirelings, and a shadow seemed to move about the rooms, saying that the proceedings were unnatural to the place and the lone man who lived therein, and hence not good. Bathsheba was at this time in her room, dressing for the event. She had called for candles, and Liddy entered and placed one on each side of her mistress's glass. "Don't go away, Liddy," said Bathsheba, almost timidly. "I am foolishly agitated--I cannot tell why. I wish I had not been obliged to go to this dance; but there's no escaping now. I have not spoken to Mr. Boldwood since the autumn, when I promised to see him at Christmas on business, but I had no idea there was to be anything of this kind." "But I would go now," said Liddy, who was going with her; for Boldwood had been indiscriminate in his invitations. "Yes, I shall make my appearance, of course," said Bathsheba. "But I am THE CAUSE of the party, and that upsets me!--Don't tell, Liddy." "Oh no, ma'am. You the cause of it, ma'am?" "Yes. I am the reason of the party--I. If it had not been for me, there would never have been one. I can't explain any more--there's no more to be explained. I wish I had never seen Weatherbury." "That's wicked of you--to wish to be worse off than you are." "No, Liddy. I have never been free from trouble since I have lived here, and this party is likely to bring me more. Now, fetch my black silk dress, and see how it sits upon me." "But you will leave off that, surely, ma'am? You have been a widow-lady fourteen months, and ought to brighten up a little on such a night as this." "Is it necessary? No; I will appear as usual, for if I were to wear any light dress people would say things about me, and I should seem to be rejoicing when I am solemn all the time. The party doesn't suit me a bit; but never mind, stay and help to finish me off." Boldwood was dressing also at this hour. A tailor from Casterbridge was with him, assisting him in the operation of trying on a new coat that had just been brought home. Never had Boldwood been so fastidious, unreasonable about the fit, and generally difficult to please. The tailor walked round and round him, tugged at the waist, pulled the sleeve, pressed out the collar, and for the first time in his experience Boldwood was not bored. Times had been when the farmer had exclaimed against all such niceties as childish, but now no philosophic or hasty rebuke whatever was provoked by this man for attaching as much importance to a crease in the coat as to an earthquake in South America. Boldwood at last expressed himself nearly satisfied, and paid the bill, the tailor passing out of the door just as Oak came in to report progress for the day. "Oh, Oak," said Boldwood. "I shall of course see you here to-night. Make yourself merry. I am determined that neither expense nor trouble shall be spared." "I'll try to be here, sir, though perhaps it may not be very early," said Gabriel, quietly. "I am glad indeed to see such a change in 'ee from what it used to be." "Yes--I must own it--I am bright to-night: cheerful and more than cheerful--so much so that I am almost sad again with the sense that all of it is passing away. And sometimes, when I am excessively hopeful and blithe, a trouble is looming in the distance: so that I often get to look upon gloom in me with content, and to fear a happy mood. Still this may be absurd--I feel that it is absurd. Perhaps my day is dawning at last." "I hope it 'ill be a long and a fair one." "Thank you--thank you. Yet perhaps my cheerfulness rests on a slender hope. And yet I trust my hope. It is faith, not hope. I think this time I reckon with my host.--Oak, my hands are a little shaky, or something; I can't tie this neckerchief properly. Perhaps you will tie it for me. The fact is, I have not been well lately, you know." "I am sorry to hear that, sir." "Oh, it's nothing. I want it done as well as you can, please. Is there any late knot in fashion, Oak?" "I don't know, sir," said Oak. His tone had sunk to sadness. Boldwood approached Gabriel, and as Oak tied the neckerchief the farmer went on feverishly-- "Does a woman keep her promise, Gabriel?" "If it is not inconvenient to her she may." "--Or rather an implied promise." "I won't answer for her implying," said Oak, with faint bitterness. "That's a word as full o' holes as a sieve with them." "Oak, don't talk like that. You have got quite cynical lately--how is it? We seem to have shifted our positions: I have become the young and hopeful man, and you the old and unbelieving one. However, does a woman keep a promise, not to marry, but to enter on an engagement to marry at some time? Now you know women better than I--tell me." "I am afeard you honour my understanding too much. However, she may keep such a promise, if it is made with an honest meaning to repair a wrong." "It has not gone far yet, but I think it will soon--yes, I know it will," he said, in an impulsive whisper. "I have pressed her upon the subject, and she inclines to be kind to me, and to think of me as a husband at a long future time, and that's enough for me. How can I expect more? She has a notion that a woman should not marry within seven years of her husband's disappearance--that her own self shouldn't, I mean--because his body was not found. It may be merely this legal reason which influences her, or it may be a religious one, but she is reluctant to talk on the point. Yet she has promised--implied--that she will ratify an engagement to-night." "Seven years," murmured Oak. "No, no--it's no such thing!" he said, with impatience. "Five years, nine months, and a few days. Fifteen months nearly have passed since he vanished, and is there anything so wonderful in an engagement of little more than five years?" "It seems long in a forward view. Don't build too much upon such promises, sir. Remember, you have once be'n deceived. Her meaning may be good; but there--she's young yet." "Deceived? Never!" said Boldwood, vehemently. "She never promised me at that first time, and hence she did not break her promise! If she promises me, she'll marry me. Bathsheba is a woman to her word." Troy was sitting in a corner of The White Hart tavern at Casterbridge, smoking and drinking a steaming mixture from a glass. A knock was given at the door, and Pennyways entered. "Well, have you seen him?" Troy inquired, pointing to a chair. "Boldwood?" "No--Lawyer Long." "He wadn' at home. I went there first, too." "That's a nuisance." "'Tis rather, I suppose." "Yet I don't see that, because a man appears to be drowned and was not, he should be liable for anything. I shan't ask any lawyer--not I." "But that's not it, exactly. If a man changes his name and so forth, and takes steps to deceive the world and his own wife, he's a cheat, and that in the eye of the law is ayless a rogue, and that is ayless a lammocken vagabond; and that's a punishable situation." "Ha-ha! Well done, Pennyways," Troy had laughed, but it was with some anxiety that he said, "Now, what I want to know is this, do you think there's really anything going on between her and Boldwood? Upon my soul, I should never have believed it! How she must detest me! Have you found out whether she has encouraged him?" "I haen't been able to learn. There's a deal of feeling on his side seemingly, but I don't answer for her. I didn't know a word about any such thing till yesterday, and all I heard then was that she was gwine to the party at his house to-night. This is the first time she has ever gone there, they say. And they say that she've not so much as spoke to him since they were at Greenhill Fair: but what can folk believe o't? However, she's not fond of him--quite offish and quite careless, I know." "I'm not so sure of that.... She's a handsome woman, Pennyways, is she not? Own that you never saw a finer or more splendid creature in your life. Upon my honour, when I set eyes upon her that day I wondered what I could have been made of to be able to leave her by herself so long. And then I was hampered with that bothering show, which I'm free of at last, thank the stars." He smoked on awhile, and then added, "How did she look when you passed by yesterday?" "Oh, she took no great heed of me, ye may well fancy; but she looked well enough, far's I know. Just flashed her haughty eyes upon my poor scram body, and then let them go past me to what was yond, much as if I'd been no more than a leafless tree. She had just got off her mare to look at the last wring-down of cider for the year; she had been riding, and so her colours were up and her breath rather quick, so that her bosom plimmed and fell--plimmed and fell--every time plain to my eye. Ay, and there were the fellers round her wringing down the cheese and bustling about and saying, 'Ware o' the pommy, ma'am: 'twill spoil yer gown.' 'Never mind me,' says she. Then Gabe brought her some of the new cider, and she must needs go drinking it through a strawmote, and not in a nateral way at all. 'Liddy,' says she, 'bring indoors a few gallons, and I'll make some cider-wine.' Sergeant, I was no more to her than a morsel of scroff in the fuel-house!" "I must go and find her out at once--O yes, I see that--I must go. Oak is head man still, isn't he?" "Yes, 'a b'lieve. And at Little Weatherbury Farm too. He manages everything." "'Twill puzzle him to manage her, or any other man of his compass!" "I don't know about that. She can't do without him, and knowing it well he's pretty independent. And she've a few soft corners to her mind, though I've never been able to get into one, the devil's in't!" "Ah, baily, she's a notch above you, and you must own it: a higher class of animal--a finer tissue. However, stick to me, and neither this haughty goddess, dashing piece of womanhood, Juno-wife of mine (Juno was a goddess, you know), nor anybody else shall hurt you. But all this wants looking into, I perceive. What with one thing and another, I see that my work is well cut out for me." "How do I look to-night, Liddy?" said Bathsheba, giving a final adjustment to her dress before leaving the glass. "I never saw you look so well before. Yes--I'll tell you when you looked like it--that night, a year and a half ago, when you came in so wildlike, and scolded us for making remarks about you and Mr. Troy." "Everybody will think that I am setting myself to captivate Mr. Boldwood, I suppose," she murmured. "At least they'll say so. Can't my hair be brushed down a little flatter? I dread going--yet I dread the risk of wounding him by staying away." "Anyhow, ma'am, you can't well be dressed plainer than you are, unless you go in sackcloth at once. 'Tis your excitement is what makes you look so noticeable to-night." "I don't know what's the matter, I feel wretched at one time, and buoyant at another. I wish I could have continued quite alone as I have been for the last year or so, with no hopes and no fears, and no pleasure and no grief." "Now just suppose Mr. Boldwood should ask you--only just suppose it--to run away with him, what would you do, ma'am?" "Liddy--none of that," said Bathsheba, gravely. "Mind, I won't hear joking on any such matter. Do you hear?" "I beg pardon, ma'am. But knowing what rum things we women be, I just said--however, I won't speak of it again." "No marrying for me yet for many a year; if ever, 'twill be for reasons very, very different from those you think, or others will believe! Now get my cloak, for it is time to go." "Oak," said Boldwood, "before you go I want to mention what has been passing in my mind lately--that little arrangement we made about your share in the farm I mean. That share is small, too small, considering how little I attend to business now, and how much time and thought you give to it. Well, since the world is brightening for me, I want to show my sense of it by increasing your proportion in the partnership. I'll make a memorandum of the arrangement which struck me as likely to be convenient, for I haven't time to talk about it now; and then we'll discuss it at our leisure. My intention is ultimately to retire from the management altogether, and until you can take all the expenditure upon your shoulders, I'll be a sleeping partner in the stock. Then, if I marry her--and I hope--I feel I shall, why--" "Pray don't speak of it, sir," said Oak, hastily. "We don't know what may happen. So many upsets may befall 'ee. There's many a slip, as they say--and I would advise you--I know you'll pardon me this once--not to be TOO SURE." "I know, I know. But the feeling I have about increasing your share is on account of what I know of you. Oak, I have learnt a little about your secret: your interest in her is more than that of bailiff for an employer. But you have behaved like a man, and I, as a sort of successful rival--successful partly through your goodness of heart--should like definitely to show my sense of your friendship under what must have been a great pain to you." "O that's not necessary, thank 'ee," said Oak, hurriedly. "I must get used to such as that; other men have, and so shall I." Oak then left him. He was uneasy on Boldwood's account, for he saw anew that this constant passion of the farmer made him not the man he once had been. As Boldwood continued awhile in his room alone--ready and dressed to receive his company--the mood of anxiety about his appearance seemed to pass away, and to be succeeded by a deep solemnity. He looked out of the window, and regarded the dim outline of the trees upon the sky, and the twilight deepening to darkness. Then he went to a locked closet, and took from a locked drawer therein a small circular case the size of a pillbox, and was about to put it into his pocket. But he lingered to open the cover and take a momentary glance inside. It contained a woman's finger-ring, set all the way round with small diamonds, and from its appearance had evidently been recently purchased. Boldwood's eyes dwelt upon its many sparkles a long time, though that its material aspect concerned him little was plain from his manner and mien, which were those of a mind following out the presumed thread of that jewel's future history. The noise of wheels at the front of the house became audible. Boldwood closed the box, stowed it away carefully in his pocket, and went out upon the landing. The old man who was his indoor factotum came at the same moment to the foot of the stairs. "They be coming, sir--lots of 'em--a-foot and a-driving!" "I was coming down this moment. Those wheels I heard--is it Mrs. Troy?" "No, sir--'tis not she yet." A reserved and sombre expression had returned to Boldwood's face again, but it poorly cloaked his feelings when he pronounced Bathsheba's name; and his feverish anxiety continued to show its existence by a galloping motion of his fingers upon the side of his thigh as he went down the stairs. "How does this cover me?" said Troy to Pennyways. "Nobody would recognize me now, I'm sure." He was buttoning on a heavy grey overcoat of Noachian cut, with cape and high collar, the latter being erect and rigid, like a girdling wall, and nearly reaching to the verge of a travelling cap which was pulled down over his ears. Pennyways snuffed the candle, and then looked up and deliberately inspected Troy. "You've made up your mind to go then?" he said. "Made up my mind? Yes; of course I have." "Why not write to her? 'Tis a very queer corner that you have got into, sergeant. You see all these things will come to light if you go back, and they won't sound well at all. Faith, if I was you I'd even bide as you be--a single man of the name of Francis. A good wife is good, but the best wife is not so good as no wife at all. Now that's my outspoke mind, and I've been called a long-headed feller here and there." "All nonsense!" said Troy, angrily. "There she is with plenty of money, and a house and farm, and horses, and comfort, and here am I living from hand to mouth--a needy adventurer. Besides, it is no use talking now; it is too late, and I am glad of it; I've been seen and recognized here this very afternoon. I should have gone back to her the day after the fair, if it hadn't been for you talking about the law, and rubbish about getting a separation; and I don't put it off any longer. What the deuce put it into my head to run away at all, I can't think! Humbugging sentiment--that's what it was. But what man on earth was to know that his wife would be in such a hurry to get rid of his name!" "I should have known it. She's bad enough for anything." "Pennyways, mind who you are talking to." "Well, sergeant, all I say is this, that if I were you I'd go abroad again where I came from--'tisn't too late to do it now. I wouldn't stir up the business and get a bad name for the sake of living with her--for all that about your play-acting is sure to come out, you know, although you think otherwise. My eyes and limbs, there'll be a racket if you go back just now--in the middle of Boldwood's Christmasing!" "H'm, yes. I expect I shall not be a very welcome guest if he has her there," said the sergeant, with a slight laugh. "A sort of Alonzo the Brave; and when I go in the guests will sit in silence and fear, and all laughter and pleasure will be hushed, and the lights in the chamber burn blue, and the worms--Ugh, horrible!--Ring for some more brandy, Pennyways, I felt an awful shudder just then! Well, what is there besides? A stick--I must have a walking-stick." Pennyways now felt himself to be in something of a difficulty, for should Bathsheba and Troy become reconciled it would be necessary to regain her good opinion if he would secure the patronage of her husband. "I sometimes think she likes you yet, and is a good woman at bottom," he said, as a saving sentence. "But there's no telling to a certainty from a body's outside. Well, you'll do as you like about going, of course, sergeant, and as for me, I'll do as you tell me." "Now, let me see what the time is," said Troy, after emptying his glass in one draught as he stood. "Half-past six o'clock. I shall not hurry along the road, and shall be there then before nine." CONCURRITUR--HORAE MOMENTO Outside the front of Boldwood's house a group of men stood in the dark, with their faces towards the door, which occasionally opened and closed for the passage of some guest or servant, when a golden rod of light would stripe the ground for the moment and vanish again, leaving nothing outside but the glowworm shine of the pale lamp amid the evergreens over the door. "He was seen in Casterbridge this afternoon--so the boy said," one of them remarked in a whisper. "And I for one believe it. His body was never found, you know." "'Tis a strange story," said the next. "You may depend upon't that she knows nothing about it." "Not a word." "Perhaps he don't mean that she shall," said another man. "If he's alive and here in the neighbourhood, he means mischief," said the first. "Poor young thing: I do pity her, if 'tis true. He'll drag her to the dogs." "O no; he'll settle down quiet enough," said one disposed to take a more hopeful view of the case. "What a fool she must have been ever to have had anything to do with the man! She is so self-willed and independent too, that one is more minded to say it serves her right than pity her." "No, no. I don't hold with 'ee there. She was no otherwise than a girl mind, and how could she tell what the man was made of? If 'tis really true, 'tis too hard a punishment, and more than she ought to hae.--Hullo, who's that?" This was to some footsteps that were heard approaching. "William Smallbury," said a dim figure in the shades, coming up and joining them. "Dark as a hedge, to-night, isn't it? I all but missed the plank over the river ath'art there in the bottom--never did such a thing before in my life. Be ye any of Boldwood's workfolk?" He peered into their faces. "Yes--all o' us. We met here a few minutes ago." "Oh, I hear now--that's Sam Samway: thought I knowed the voice, too. Going in?" "Presently. But I say, William," Samway whispered, "have ye heard this strange tale?" "What--that about Sergeant Troy being seen, d'ye mean, souls?" said Smallbury, also lowering his voice. "Ay: in Casterbridge." "Yes, I have. Laban Tall named a hint of it to me but now--but I don't think it. Hark, here Laban comes himself, 'a b'lieve." A footstep drew near. "Laban?" "Yes, 'tis I," said Tall. "Have ye heard any more about that?" "No," said Tall, joining the group. "And I'm inclined to think we'd better keep quiet. If so be 'tis not true, 'twill flurry her, and do her much harm to repeat it; and if so be 'tis true, 'twill do no good to forestall her time o' trouble. God send that it mid be a lie, for though Henery Fray and some of 'em do speak against her, she's never been anything but fair to me. She's hot and hasty, but she's a brave girl who'll never tell a lie however much the truth may harm her, and I've no cause to wish her evil." "She never do tell women's little lies, that's true; and 'tis a thing that can be said of very few. Ay, all the harm she thinks she says to yer face: there's nothing underhand wi' her." They stood silent then, every man busied with his own thoughts, during which interval sounds of merriment could be heard within. Then the front door again opened, the rays streamed out, the well-known form of Boldwood was seen in the rectangular area of light, the door closed, and Boldwood walked slowly down the path. "'Tis master," one of the men whispered, as he neared them. "We'd better stand quiet--he'll go in again directly. He would think it unseemly o' us to be loitering here." Boldwood came on, and passed by the men without seeing them, they being under the bushes on the grass. He paused, leant over the gate, and breathed a long breath. They heard low words come from him. "I hope to God she'll come, or this night will be nothing but misery to me! Oh my darling, my darling, why do you keep me in suspense like this?" He said this to himself, and they all distinctly heard it. Boldwood remained silent after that, and the noise from indoors was again just audible, until, a few minutes later, light wheels could be distinguished coming down the hill. They drew nearer, and ceased at the gate. Boldwood hastened back to the door, and opened it; and the light shone upon Bathsheba coming up the path. Boldwood compressed his emotion to mere welcome: the men marked her light laugh and apology as she met him: he took her into the house; and the door closed again. "Gracious heaven, I didn't know it was like that with him!" said one of the men. "I thought that fancy of his was over long ago." "You don't know much of master, if you thought that," said Samway. "I wouldn't he should know we heard what 'a said for the world," remarked a third. "I wish we had told of the report at once," the first uneasily continued. "More harm may come of this than we know of. Poor Mr. Boldwood, it will be hard upon en. I wish Troy was in--Well, God forgive me for such a wish! A scoundrel to play a poor wife such tricks. Nothing has prospered in Weatherbury since he came here. And now I've no heart to go in. Let's look into Warren's for a few minutes first, shall us, neighbours?" Samway, Tall, and Smallbury agreed to go to Warren's, and went out at the gate, the remaining ones entering the house. The three soon drew near the malt-house, approaching it from the adjoining orchard, and not by way of the street. The pane of glass was illuminated as usual. Smallbury was a little in advance of the rest when, pausing, he turned suddenly to his companions and said, "Hist! See there." The light from the pane was now perceived to be shining not upon the ivied wall as usual, but upon some object close to the glass. It was a human face. "Let's come closer," whispered Samway; and they approached on tiptoe. There was no disbelieving the report any longer. Troy's face was almost close to the pane, and he was looking in. Not only was he looking in, but he appeared to have been arrested by a conversation which was in progress in the malt-house, the voices of the interlocutors being those of Oak and the maltster. "The spree is all in her honour, isn't it--hey?" said the old man. "Although he made believe 'tis only keeping up o' Christmas?" "I cannot say," replied Oak. "Oh 'tis true enough, faith. I cannot understand Farmer Boldwood being such a fool at his time of life as to ho and hanker after this woman in the way 'a do, and she not care a bit about en." The men, after recognizing Troy's features, withdrew across the orchard as quietly as they had come. The air was big with Bathsheba's fortunes to-night: every word everywhere concerned her. When they were quite out of earshot all by one instinct paused. "It gave me quite a turn--his face," said Tall, breathing. "And so it did me," said Samway. "What's to be done?" "I don't see that 'tis any business of ours," Smallbury murmured dubiously. "But it is! 'Tis a thing which is everybody's business," said Samway. "We know very well that master's on a wrong tack, and that she's quite in the dark, and we should let 'em know at once. Laban, you know her best--you'd better go and ask to speak to her." "I bain't fit for any such thing," said Laban, nervously. "I should think William ought to do it if anybody. He's oldest." "I shall have nothing to do with it," said Smallbury. "'Tis a ticklish business altogether. Why, he'll go on to her himself in a few minutes, ye'll see." "We don't know that he will. Come, Laban." "Very well, if I must I must, I suppose," Tall reluctantly answered. "What must I say?" "Just ask to see master." "Oh no; I shan't speak to Mr. Boldwood. If I tell anybody, 'twill be mistress." "Very well," said Samway. Laban then went to the door. When he opened it the hum of bustle rolled out as a wave upon a still strand--the assemblage being immediately inside the hall--and was deadened to a murmur as he closed it again. Each man waited intently, and looked around at the dark tree tops gently rocking against the sky and occasionally shivering in a slight wind, as if he took interest in the scene, which neither did. One of them began walking up and down, and then came to where he started from and stopped again, with a sense that walking was a thing not worth doing now. "I should think Laban must have seen mistress by this time," said Smallbury, breaking the silence. "Perhaps she won't come and speak to him." The door opened. Tall appeared, and joined them. "Well?" said both. "I didn't like to ask for her after all," Laban faltered out. "They were all in such a stir, trying to put a little spirit into the party. Somehow the fun seems to hang fire, though everything's there that a heart can desire, and I couldn't for my soul interfere and throw damp upon it--if 'twas to save my life, I couldn't!" "I suppose we had better all go in together," said Samway, gloomily. "Perhaps I may have a chance of saying a word to master." So the men entered the hall, which was the room selected and arranged for the gathering because of its size. The younger men and maids were at last just beginning to dance. Bathsheba had been perplexed how to act, for she was not much more than a slim young maid herself, and the weight of stateliness sat heavy upon her. Sometimes she thought she ought not to have come under any circumstances; then she considered what cold unkindness that would have been, and finally resolved upon the middle course of staying for about an hour only, and gliding off unobserved, having from the first made up her mind that she could on no account dance, sing, or take any active part in the proceedings. Her allotted hour having been passed in chatting and looking on, Bathsheba told Liddy not to hurry herself, and went to the small parlour to prepare for departure, which, like the hall, was decorated with holly and ivy, and well lighted up. Nobody was in the room, but she had hardly been there a moment when the master of the house entered. "Mrs. Troy--you are not going?" he said. "We've hardly begun!" "If you'll excuse me, I should like to go now." Her manner was restive, for she remembered her promise, and imagined what he was about to say. "But as it is not late," she added, "I can walk home, and leave my man and Liddy to come when they choose." "I've been trying to get an opportunity of speaking to you," said Boldwood. "You know perhaps what I long to say?" Bathsheba silently looked on the floor. "You do give it?" he said, eagerly. "What?" she whispered. "Now, that's evasion! Why, the promise. I don't want to intrude upon you at all, or to let it become known to anybody. But do give your word! A mere business compact, you know, between two people who are beyond the influence of passion." Boldwood knew how false this picture was as regarded himself; but he had proved that it was the only tone in which she would allow him to approach her. "A promise to marry me at the end of five years and three-quarters. You owe it to me!" "I feel that I do," said Bathsheba; "that is, if you demand it. But I am a changed woman--an unhappy woman--and not--not--" "You are still a very beautiful woman," said Boldwood. Honesty and pure conviction suggested the remark, unaccompanied by any perception that it might have been adopted by blunt flattery to soothe and win her. However, it had not much effect now, for she said, in a passionless murmur which was in itself a proof of her words: "I have no feeling in the matter at all. And I don't at all know what is right to do in my difficult position, and I have nobody to advise me. But I give my promise, if I must. I give it as the rendering of a debt, conditionally, of course, on my being a widow." "You'll marry me between five and six years hence?" "Don't press me too hard. I'll marry nobody else." "But surely you will name the time, or there's nothing in the promise at all?" "Oh, I don't know, pray let me go!" she said, her bosom beginning to rise. "I am afraid what to do! I want to be just to you, and to be that seems to be wronging myself, and perhaps it is breaking the commandments. There is considerable doubt of his death, and then it is dreadful; let me ask a solicitor, Mr. Boldwood, if I ought or no!" "Say the words, dear one, and the subject shall be dismissed; a blissful loving intimacy of six years, and then marriage--O Bathsheba, say them!" he begged in a husky voice, unable to sustain the forms of mere friendship any longer. "Promise yourself to me; I deserve it, indeed I do, for I have loved you more than anybody in the world! And if I said hasty words and showed uncalled-for heat of manner towards you, believe me, dear, I did not mean to distress you; I was in agony, Bathsheba, and I did not know what I said. You wouldn't let a dog suffer what I have suffered, could you but know it! Sometimes I shrink from your knowing what I have felt for you, and sometimes I am distressed that all of it you never will know. Be gracious, and give up a little to me, when I would give up my life for you!" The trimmings of her dress, as they quivered against the light, showed how agitated she was, and at last she burst out crying. "And you'll not--press me--about anything more--if I say in five or six years?" she sobbed, when she had power to frame the words. "Yes, then I'll leave it to time." She waited a moment. "Very well. I'll marry you in six years from this day, if we both live," she said solemnly. "And you'll take this as a token from me." Boldwood had come close to her side, and now he clasped one of her hands in both his own, and lifted it to his breast. "What is it? Oh I cannot wear a ring!" she exclaimed, on seeing what he held; "besides, I wouldn't have a soul know that it's an engagement! Perhaps it is improper? Besides, we are not engaged in the usual sense, are we? Don't insist, Mr. Boldwood--don't!" In her trouble at not being able to get her hand away from him at once, she stamped passionately on the floor with one foot, and tears crowded to her eyes again. "It means simply a pledge--no sentiment--the seal of a practical compact," he said more quietly, but still retaining her hand in his firm grasp. "Come, now!" And Boldwood slipped the ring on her finger. "I cannot wear it," she said, weeping as if her heart would break. "You frighten me, almost. So wild a scheme! Please let me go home!" "Only to-night: wear it just to-night, to please me!" Bathsheba sat down in a chair, and buried her face in her handkerchief, though Boldwood kept her hand yet. At length she said, in a sort of hopeless whisper-- "Very well, then, I will to-night, if you wish it so earnestly. Now loosen my hand; I will, indeed I will wear it to-night." "And it shall be the beginning of a pleasant secret courtship of six years, with a wedding at the end?" "It must be, I suppose, since you will have it so!" she said, fairly beaten into non-resistance. Boldwood pressed her hand, and allowed it to drop in her lap. "I am happy now," he said. "God bless you!" He left the room, and when he thought she might be sufficiently composed sent one of the maids to her. Bathsheba cloaked the effects of the late scene as she best could, followed the girl, and in a few moments came downstairs with her hat and cloak on, ready to go. To get to the door it was necessary to pass through the hall, and before doing so she paused on the bottom of the staircase which descended into one corner, to take a last look at the gathering. There was no music or dancing in progress just now. At the lower end, which had been arranged for the work-folk specially, a group conversed in whispers, and with clouded looks. Boldwood was standing by the fireplace, and he, too, though so absorbed in visions arising from her promise that he scarcely saw anything, seemed at that moment to have observed their peculiar manner, and their looks askance. "What is it you are in doubt about, men?" he said. One of them turned and replied uneasily: "It was something Laban heard of, that's all, sir." "News? Anybody married or engaged, born or dead?" inquired the farmer, gaily. "Tell it to us, Tall. One would think from your looks and mysterious ways that it was something very dreadful indeed." "Oh no, sir, nobody is dead," said Tall. "I wish somebody was," said Samway, in a whisper. "What do you say, Samway?" asked Boldwood, somewhat sharply. "If you have anything to say, speak out; if not, get up another dance." "Mrs. Troy has come downstairs," said Samway to Tall. "If you want to tell her, you had better do it now." "Do you know what they mean?" the farmer asked Bathsheba, across the room. "I don't in the least," said Bathsheba. There was a smart rapping at the door. One of the men opened it instantly, and went outside. "Mrs. Troy is wanted," he said, on returning. "Quite ready," said Bathsheba. "Though I didn't tell them to send." "It is a stranger, ma'am," said the man by the door. "A stranger?" she said. "Ask him to come in," said Boldwood. The message was given, and Troy, wrapped up to his eyes as we have seen him, stood in the doorway. There was an unearthly silence, all looking towards the newcomer. Those who had just learnt that he was in the neighbourhood recognized him instantly; those who did not were perplexed. Nobody noted Bathsheba. She was leaning on the stairs. Her brow had heavily contracted; her whole face was pallid, her lips apart, her eyes rigidly staring at their visitor. Boldwood was among those who did not notice that he was Troy. "Come in, come in!" he repeated, cheerfully, "and drain a Christmas beaker with us, stranger!" Troy next advanced into the middle of the room, took off his cap, turned down his coat-collar, and looked Boldwood in the face. Even then Boldwood did not recognize that the impersonator of Heaven's persistent irony towards him, who had once before broken in upon his bliss, scourged him, and snatched his delight away, had come to do these things a second time. Troy began to laugh a mechanical laugh: Boldwood recognized him now. Troy turned to Bathsheba. The poor girl's wretchedness at this time was beyond all fancy or narration. She had sunk down on the lowest stair; and there she sat, her mouth blue and dry, and her dark eyes fixed vacantly upon him, as if she wondered whether it were not all a terrible illusion. Then Troy spoke. "Bathsheba, I come here for you!" She made no reply. "Come home with me: come!" Bathsheba moved her feet a little, but did not rise. Troy went across to her. "Come, madam, do you hear what I say?" he said, peremptorily. A strange voice came from the fireplace--a voice sounding far off and confined, as if from a dungeon. Hardly a soul in the assembly recognized the thin tones to be those of Boldwood. Sudden despair had transformed him. "Bathsheba, go with your husband!" Nevertheless, she did not move. The truth was that Bathsheba was beyond the pale of activity--and yet not in a swoon. She was in a state of mental _gutta serena_; her mind was for the minute totally deprived of light at the same time no obscuration was apparent from without. Troy stretched out his hand to pull her her towards him, when she quickly shrank back. This visible dread of him seemed to irritate Troy, and he seized her arm and pulled it sharply. Whether his grasp pinched her, or whether his mere touch was the cause, was never known, but at the moment of his seizure she writhed, and gave a quick, low scream. The scream had been heard but a few seconds when it was followed by sudden deafening report that echoed through the room and stupefied them all. The oak partition shook with the concussion, and the place was filled with grey smoke. In bewilderment they turned their eyes to Boldwood. At his back, as stood before the fireplace, was a gun-rack, as is usual in farmhouses, constructed to hold two guns. When Bathsheba had cried out in her husband's grasp, Boldwood's face of gnashing despair had changed. The veins had swollen, and a frenzied look had gleamed in his eye. He had turned quickly, taken one of the guns, cocked it, and at once discharged it at Troy. Troy fell. The distance apart of the two men was so small that the charge of shot did not spread in the least, but passed like a bullet into his body. He uttered a long guttural sigh--there was a contraction--an extension--then his muscles relaxed, and he lay still. Boldwood was seen through the smoke to be now again engaged with the gun. It was double-barrelled, and he had, meanwhile, in some way fastened his hand-kerchief to the trigger, and with his foot on the other end was in the act of turning the second barrel upon himself. Samway his man was the first to see this, and in the midst of the general horror darted up to him. Boldwood had already twitched the handkerchief, and the gun exploded a second time, sending its contents, by a timely blow from Samway, into the beam which crossed the ceiling. "Well, it makes no difference!" Boldwood gasped. "There is another way for me to die." Then he broke from Samway, crossed the room to Bathsheba, and kissed her hand. He put on his hat, opened the door, and went into the darkness, nobody thinking of preventing him. AFTER THE SHOCK Boldwood passed into the high road and turned in the direction of Casterbridge. Here he walked at an even, steady pace over Yalbury Hill, along the dead level beyond, mounted Mellstock Hill, and between eleven and twelve o'clock crossed the Moor into the town. The streets were nearly deserted now, and the waving lamp-flames only lighted up rows of grey shop-shutters, and strips of white paving upon which his step echoed as his passed along. He turned to the right, and halted before an archway of heavy stonework, which was closed by an iron studded pair of doors. This was the entrance to the gaol, and over it a lamp was fixed, the light enabling the wretched traveller to find a bell-pull. The small wicket at last opened, and a porter appeared. Boldwood stepped forward, and said something in a low tone, when, after a delay, another man came. Boldwood entered, and the door was closed behind him, and he walked the world no more. Long before this time Weatherbury had been thoroughly aroused, and the wild deed which had terminated Boldwood's merrymaking became known to all. Of those out of the house Oak was one of the first to hear of the catastrophe, and when he entered the room, which was about five minutes after Boldwood's exit, the scene was terrible. All the female guests were huddled aghast against the walls like sheep in a storm, and the men were bewildered as to what to do. As for Bathsheba, she had changed. She was sitting on the floor beside the body of Troy, his head pillowed in her lap, where she had herself lifted it. With one hand she held her handkerchief to his breast and covered the wound, though scarcely a single drop of blood had flowed, and with the other she tightly clasped one of his. The household convulsion had made her herself again. The temporary coma had ceased, and activity had come with the necessity for it. Deeds of endurance, which seem ordinary in philosophy, are rare in conduct, and Bathsheba was astonishing all around her now, for her philosophy was her conduct, and she seldom thought practicable what she did not practise. She was of the stuff of which great men's mothers are made. She was indispensable to high generation, hated at tea parties, feared in shops, and loved at crises. Troy recumbent in his wife's lap formed now the sole spectacle in the middle of the spacious room. "Gabriel," she said, automatically, when he entered, turning up a face of which only the well-known lines remained to tell him it was hers, all else in the picture having faded quite. "Ride to Casterbridge instantly for a surgeon. It is, I believe, useless, but go. Mr. Boldwood has shot my husband." Her statement of the fact in such quiet and simple words came with more force than a tragic declamation, and had somewhat the effect of setting the distorted images in each mind present into proper focus. Oak, almost before he had comprehended anything beyond the briefest abstract of the event, hurried out of the room, saddled a horse and rode away. Not till he had ridden more than a mile did it occur to him that he would have done better by sending some other man on this errand, remaining himself in the house. What had become of Boldwood? He should have been looked after. Was he mad--had there been a quarrel? Then how had Troy got there? Where had he come from? How did this remarkable reappearance effect itself when he was supposed by many to be at the bottom of the sea? Oak had in some slight measure been prepared for the presence of Troy by hearing a rumour of his return just before entering Boldwood's house; but before he had weighed that information, this fatal event had been superimposed. However, it was too late now to think of sending another messenger, and he rode on, in the excitement of these self-inquiries not discerning, when about three miles from Casterbridge, a square-figured pedestrian passing along under the dark hedge in the same direction as his own. The miles necessary to be traversed, and other hindrances incidental to the lateness of the hour and the darkness of the night, delayed the arrival of Mr. Aldritch, the surgeon; and more than three hours passed between the time at which the shot was fired and that of his entering the house. Oak was additionally detained in Casterbridge through having to give notice to the authorities of what had happened; and he then found that Boldwood had also entered the town, and delivered himself up. In the meantime the surgeon, having hastened into the hall at Boldwood's, found it in darkness and quite deserted. He went on to the back of the house, where he discovered in the kitchen an old man, of whom he made inquiries. "She's had him took away to her own house, sir," said his informant. "Who has?" said the doctor. "Mrs. Troy. 'A was quite dead, sir." This was astonishing information. "She had no right to do that," said the doctor. "There will have to be an inquest, and she should have waited to know what to do." "Yes, sir; it was hinted to her that she had better wait till the law was known. But she said law was nothing to her, and she wouldn't let her dear husband's corpse bide neglected for folks to stare at for all the crowners in England." Mr. Aldritch drove at once back again up the hill to Bathsheba's. The first person he met was poor Liddy, who seemed literally to have dwindled smaller in these few latter hours. "What has been done?" he said. "I don't know, sir," said Liddy, with suspended breath. "My mistress has done it all." "Where is she?" "Upstairs with him, sir. When he was brought home and taken upstairs, she said she wanted no further help from the men. And then she called me, and made me fill the bath, and after that told me I had better go and lie down because I looked so ill. Then she locked herself into the room alone with him, and would not let a nurse come in, or anybody at all. But I thought I'd wait in the next room in case she should want me. I heard her moving about inside for more than an hour, but she only came out once, and that was for more candles, because hers had burnt down into the socket. She said we were to let her know when you or Mr. Thirdly came, sir." Oak entered with the parson at this moment, and they all went upstairs together, preceded by Liddy Smallbury. Everything was silent as the grave when they paused on the landing. Liddy knocked, and Bathsheba's dress was heard rustling across the room: the key turned in the lock, and she opened the door. Her looks were calm and nearly rigid, like a slightly animated bust of Melpomene. "Oh, Mr. Aldritch, you have come at last," she murmured from her lips merely, and threw back the door. "Ah, and Mr. Thirdly. Well, all is done, and anybody in the world may see him now." She then passed by him, crossed the landing, and entered another room. Looking into the chamber of death she had vacated they saw by the light of the candles which were on the drawers a tall straight shape lying at the further end of the bedroom, wrapped in white. Everything around was quite orderly. The doctor went in, and after a few minutes returned to the landing again, where Oak and the parson still waited. "It is all done, indeed, as she says," remarked Mr. Aldritch, in a subdued voice. "The body has been undressed and properly laid out in grave clothes. Gracious Heaven--this mere girl! She must have the nerve of a stoic!" "The heart of a wife merely," floated in a whisper about the ears of the three, and turning they saw Bathsheba in the midst of them. Then, as if at that instant to prove that her fortitude had been more of will than of spontaneity, she silently sank down between them and was a shapeless heap of drapery on the floor. The simple consciousness that superhuman strain was no longer required had at once put a period to her power to continue it. They took her away into a further room, and the medical attendance which had been useless in Troy's case was invaluable in Bathsheba's, who fell into a series of fainting-fits that had a serious aspect for a time. The sufferer was got to bed, and Oak, finding from the bulletins that nothing really dreadful was to be apprehended on her score, left the house. Liddy kept watch in Bathsheba's chamber, where she heard her mistress, moaning in whispers through the dull slow hours of that wretched night: "Oh it is my fault--how can I live! O Heaven, how can I live!" 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!" BEAUTY IN LONELINESS--AFTER ALL Bathsheba revived with the spring. The utter prostration that had followed the low fever from which she had suffered diminished perceptibly when all uncertainty upon every subject had come to an end. But she remained alone now for the greater part of her time, and stayed in the house, or at furthest went into the garden. She shunned every one, even Liddy, and could be brought to make no confidences, and to ask for no sympathy. As the summer drew on she passed more of her time in the open air, and began to examine into farming matters from sheer necessity, though she never rode out or personally superintended as at former times. One Friday evening in August she walked a little way along the road and entered the village for the first time since the sombre event of the preceding Christmas. None of the old colour had as yet come to her cheek, and its absolute paleness was heightened by the jet black of her gown, till it appeared preternatural. When she reached a little shop at the other end of the place, which stood nearly opposite to the churchyard, Bathsheba heard singing inside the church, and she knew that the singers were practising. She crossed the road, opened the gate, and entered the graveyard, the high sills of the church windows effectually screening her from the eyes of those gathered within. Her stealthy walk was to the nook wherein Troy had worked at planting flowers upon Fanny Robin's grave, and she came to the marble tombstone. A motion of satisfaction enlivened her face as she read the complete inscription. First came the words of Troy himself:-- ERECTED BY FRANCIS TROY IN BELOVED MEMORY OF FANNY ROBIN, WHO DIED OCTOBER 9, 18--, AGED 20 YEARS Underneath this was now inscribed in new letters:-- IN THE SAME GRAVE LIE THE REMAINS OF THE AFORESAID FRANCIS TROY, WHO DIED DECEMBER 24TH, 18--, AGED 26 YEARS Whilst she stood and read and meditated the tones of the organ began again in the church, and she went with the same light step round to the porch and listened. The door was closed, and the choir was learning a new hymn. Bathsheba was stirred by emotions which latterly she had assumed to be altogether dead within her. The little attenuated voices of the children brought to her ear in distinct utterance the words they sang without thought or comprehension-- Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom, Lead Thou me on. Bathsheba's feeling was always to some extent dependent upon her whim, as is the case with many other women. Something big came into her throat and an uprising to her eyes--and she thought that she would allow the imminent tears to flow if they wished. They did flow and plenteously, and one fell upon the stone bench beside her. Once that she had begun to cry for she hardly knew what, she could not leave off for crowding thoughts she knew too well. She would have given anything in the world to be, as those children were, unconcerned at the meaning of their words, because too innocent to feel the necessity for any such expression. All the impassioned scenes of her brief experience seemed to revive with added emotion at that moment, and those scenes which had been without emotion during enactment had emotion then. Yet grief came to her rather as a luxury than as the scourge of former times. Owing to Bathsheba's face being buried in her hands she did not notice a form which came quietly into the porch, and on seeing her, first moved as if to retreat, then paused and regarded her. Bathsheba did not raise her head for some time, and when she looked round her face was wet, and her eyes drowned and dim. "Mr. Oak," exclaimed she, disconcerted, "how long have you been here?" "A few minutes, ma'am," said Oak, respectfully. "Are you going in?" said Bathsheba; and there came from within the church as from a prompter-- I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears, Pride ruled my will: remember not past years. "I was," said Gabriel. "I am one of the bass singers, you know. I have sung bass for several months." "Indeed: I wasn't aware of that. I'll leave you, then." Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile, sang the children. "Don't let me drive you away, mistress. I think I won't go in to-night." "Oh no--you don't drive me away." Then they stood in a state of some embarrassment, Bathsheba trying to wipe her dreadfully drenched and inflamed face without his noticing her. At length Oak said, "I've not seen you--I mean spoken to you--since ever so long, have I?" But he feared to bring distressing memories back, and interrupted himself with: "Were you going into church?" "No," she said. "I came to see the tombstone privately--to see if they had cut the inscription as I wished. Mr. Oak, you needn't mind speaking to me, if you wish to, on the matter which is in both our minds at this moment." "And have they done it as you wished?" said Oak. "Yes. Come and see it, if you have not already." So together they went and read the tomb. "Eight months ago!" Gabriel murmured when he saw the date. "It seems like yesterday to me." "And to me as if it were years ago--long years, and I had been dead between. And now I am going home, Mr. Oak." Oak walked after her. "I wanted to name a small matter to you as soon as I could," he said, with hesitation. "Merely about business, and I think I may just mention it now, if you'll allow me." "Oh yes, certainly." "It is that I may soon have to give up the management of your farm, Mrs. Troy. The fact is, I am thinking of leaving England--not yet, you know--next spring." "Leaving England!" she said, in surprise and genuine disappointment. "Why, Gabriel, what are you going to do that for?" "Well, I've thought it best," Oak stammered out. "California is the spot I've had in my mind to try." "But it is understood everywhere that you are going to take poor Mr. Boldwood's farm on your own account." "I've had the refusal o' it 'tis true; but nothing is settled yet, and I have reasons for giving up. I shall finish out my year there as manager for the trustees, but no more." "And what shall I do without you? Oh, Gabriel, I don't think you ought to go away. You've been with me so long--through bright times and dark times--such old friends as we are--that it seems unkind almost. I had fancied that if you leased the other farm as master, you might still give a helping look across at mine. And now going away!" "I would have willingly." "Yet now that I am more helpless than ever you go away!" "Yes, that's the ill fortune o' it," said Gabriel, in a distressed tone. "And it is because of that very helplessness that I feel bound to go. Good afternoon, ma'am" he concluded, in evident anxiety to get away, and at once went out of the churchyard by a path she could follow on no pretence whatever. Bathsheba went home, her mind occupied with a new trouble, which being rather harassing than deadly was calculated to do good by diverting her from the chronic gloom of her life. She was set thinking a great deal about Oak and of his wish to shun her; and there occurred to Bathsheba several incidents of her latter intercourse with him, which, trivial when singly viewed, amounted together to a perceptible disinclination for her society. It broke upon her at length as a great pain that her last old disciple was about to forsake her and flee. He who had believed in her and argued on her side when all the rest of the world was against her, had at last like the others become weary and neglectful of the old cause, and was leaving her to fight her battles alone. Three weeks went on, and more evidence of his want of interest in her was forthcoming. She noticed that instead of entering the small parlour or office where the farm accounts were kept, and waiting, or leaving a memorandum as he had hitherto done during her seclusion, Oak never came at all when she was likely to be there, only entering at unseasonable hours when her presence in that part of the house was least to be expected. Whenever he wanted directions he sent a message, or note with neither heading nor signature, to which she was obliged to reply in the same offhand style. Poor Bathsheba began to suffer now from the most torturing sting of all--a sensation that she was despised. The autumn wore away gloomily enough amid these melancholy conjectures, and Christmas-day came, completing a year of her legal widowhood, and two years and a quarter of her life alone. On examining her heart it appeared beyond measure strange that the subject of which the season might have been supposed suggestive--the event in the hall at Boldwood's--was not agitating her at all; but instead, an agonizing conviction that everybody abjured her--for what she could not tell--and that Oak was the ringleader of the recusants. Coming out of church that day she looked round in hope that Oak, whose bass voice she had heard rolling out from the gallery overhead in a most unconcerned manner, might chance to linger in her path in the old way. There he was, as usual, coming down the path behind her. But on seeing Bathsheba turn, he looked aside, and as soon as he got beyond the gate, and there was the barest excuse for a divergence, he made one, and vanished. The next morning brought the culminating stroke; she had been expecting it long. It was a formal notice by letter from him that he should not renew his engagement with her for the following Lady-day. Bathsheba actually sat and cried over this letter most bitterly. She was aggrieved and wounded that the possession of hopeless love from Gabriel, which she had grown to regard as her inalienable right for life, should have been withdrawn just at his own pleasure in this way. She was bewildered too by the prospect of having to rely on her own resources again: it seemed to herself that she never could again acquire energy sufficient to go to market, barter, and sell. Since Troy's death Oak had attended all sales and fairs for her, transacting her business at the same time with his own. What should she do now? Her life was becoming a desolation. So desolate was Bathsheba this evening, that in an absolute hunger for pity and sympathy, and miserable in that she appeared to have outlived the only true friendship she had ever owned, she put on her bonnet and cloak and went down to Oak's house just after sunset, guided on her way by the pale primrose rays of a crescent moon a few days old. A lively firelight shone from the window, but nobody was visible in the room. She tapped nervously, and then thought it doubtful if it were right for a single woman to call upon a bachelor who lived alone, although he was her manager, and she might be supposed to call on business without any real impropriety. Gabriel opened the door, and the moon shone upon his forehead. "Mr. Oak," said Bathsheba, faintly. "Yes; I am Mr. Oak," said Gabriel. "Who have I the honour--O how stupid of me, not to know you, mistress!" "I shall not be your mistress much longer, shall I Gabriel?" she said, in pathetic tones. "Well, no. I suppose--But come in, ma'am. Oh--and I'll get a light," Oak replied, with some awkwardness. "No; not on my account." "It is so seldom that I get a lady visitor that I'm afraid I haven't proper accommodation. Will you sit down, please? Here's a chair, and there's one, too. I am sorry that my chairs all have wood seats, and are rather hard, but I--was thinking of getting some new ones." Oak placed two or three for her. "They are quite easy enough for me." So down she sat, and down sat he, the fire dancing in their faces, and upon the old furniture, all a-sheenen Wi' long years o' handlen, [3] [Footnote 3: W. Barnes] that formed Oak's array of household possessions, which sent back a dancing reflection in reply. It was very odd to these two persons, who knew each other passing well, that the mere circumstance of their meeting in a new place and in a new way should make them so awkward and constrained. In the fields, or at her house, there had never been any embarrassment; but now that Oak had become the entertainer their lives seemed to be moved back again to the days when they were strangers. "You'll think it strange that I have come, but--" "Oh no; not at all." "But I thought--Gabriel, I have been uneasy in the belief that I have offended you, and that you are going away on that account. It grieved me very much and I couldn't help coming." "Offended me! As if you could do that, Bathsheba!" "Haven't I?" she asked, gladly. "But, what are you going away for else?" "I am not going to emigrate, you know; I wasn't aware that you would wish me not to when I told 'ee or I shouldn't ha' thought of doing it," he said, simply. "I have arranged for Little Weatherbury Farm and shall have it in my own hands at Lady-day. You know I've had a share in it for some time. Still, that wouldn't prevent my attending to your business as before, hadn't it been that things have been said about us." "What?" said Bathsheba, in surprise. "Things said about you and me! What are they?" "I cannot tell you." "It would be wiser if you were to, I think. You have played the part of mentor to me many times, and I don't see why you should fear to do it now." "It is nothing that you have done, this time. The top and tail o't is this--that I am sniffing about here, and waiting for poor Boldwood's farm, with a thought of getting you some day." "Getting me! What does that mean?" "Marrying of 'ee, in plain British. You asked me to tell, so you mustn't blame me." Bathsheba did not look quite so alarmed as if a cannon had been discharged by her ear, which was what Oak had expected. "Marrying me! I didn't know it was that you meant," she said, quietly. "Such a thing as that is too absurd--too soon--to think of, by far!" "Yes; of course, it is too absurd. I don't desire any such thing; I should think that was plain enough by this time. Surely, surely you be the last person in the world I think of marrying. It is too absurd, as you say." "'Too--s-s-soon' were the words I used." "I must beg your pardon for correcting you, but you said, 'too absurd,' and so do I." "I beg your pardon too!" she returned, with tears in her eyes. "'Too soon' was what I said. But it doesn't matter a bit--not at all--but I only meant, 'too soon.' Indeed, I didn't, Mr. Oak, and you must believe me!" Gabriel looked her long in the face, but the firelight being faint there was not much to be seen. "Bathsheba," he said, tenderly and in surprise, and coming closer: "if I only knew one thing--whether you would allow me to love you and win you, and marry you after all--if I only knew that!" "But you never will know," she murmured. "Why?" "Because you never ask." "Oh--Oh!" said Gabriel, with a low laugh of joyousness. "My own dear--" "You ought not to have sent me that harsh letter this morning," she interrupted. "It shows you didn't care a bit about me, and were ready to desert me like all the rest of them! It was very cruel of you, considering I was the first sweetheart that you ever had, and you were the first I ever had; and I shall not forget it!" "Now, Bathsheba, was ever anybody so provoking," he said, laughing. "You know it was purely that I, as an unmarried man, carrying on a business for you as a very taking young woman, had a proper hard part to play--more particular that people knew I had a sort of feeling for 'ee; and I fancied, from the way we were mentioned together, that it might injure your good name. Nobody knows the heat and fret I have been caused by it." "And was that all?" "All." "Oh, how glad I am I came!" she exclaimed, thankfully, as she rose from her seat. "I have thought so much more of you since I fancied you did not want even to see me again. But I must be going now, or I shall be missed. Why Gabriel," she said, with a slight laugh, as they went to the door, "it seems exactly as if I had come courting you--how dreadful!" "And quite right too," said Oak. "I've danced at your skittish heels, my beautiful Bathsheba, for many a long mile, and many a long day; and it is hard to begrudge me this one visit." He accompanied her up the hill, explaining to her the details of his forthcoming tenure of the other farm. They spoke very little of their mutual feeling; pretty phrases and warm expressions being probably unnecessary between such tried friends. Theirs was that substantial affection which arises (if any arises at all) when the two who are thrown together begin first by knowing the rougher sides of each other's character, and not the best till further on, the romance growing up in the interstices of a mass of hard prosaic reality. This good-fellowship--_camaraderie_--usually occurring through similarity of pursuits, is unfortunately seldom superadded to love between the sexes, because men and women associate, not in their labours, but in their pleasures merely. Where, however, happy circumstance permits its development, the compounded feeling proves itself to be the only love which is strong as death--that love which many waters cannot quench, nor the floods drown, beside which the passion usually called by the name is evanescent as steam. 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."

https://web.archive.org/web/20210225000853/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/maddingcrowd/section11/

The novel builds toward its climax in Chapter 52, appropriately named "Converging Courses." Hardy divides the chapter into seven sections, charting the activities of Boldwood, Bathsheba, Gabriel, and Troy as they prepare for and attend Boldwood's Christmas Eve party. The party is talked about all over Weatherbury, largely because it is so unusual for Boldwood to give a party. He has decorated his long hall meticulously, but, we are told, "In spite of all this, the spirit of revelry was wanting in the atmosphere of the house"; Boldwood is not a natural host. Bathsheba is dressing for the party. She tells Liddy, "I am foolishly agitated: I am the cause of the party, and that upsets me!" She decides to continue to wear her mourning and dress in black for the festivities. Boldwood, too, is dressing and has given an inordinate amount of attention to his clothes, hiring a tailor to alter everything. Gabriel visits him and Boldwood asks for his assistance in tying his tie. He asks, "'Does a woman keep her promise, Gabriel?'" and Gabriel answers, "If it is not inconvenient to her she may.'" Gabriel warns him not to build too much on promises, and it is clear that Boldwood harbors fear of Bathsheba's refusal; he is highly agitated. We also see Troy and Pennyways as they prepare to go to Boldwood's party. Troy asks Pennyways about Bathsheba's relationships with Boldwood and Gabriel. Troy finally sets off for the party in disguise, thinking that Bathsheba is on the verge of marrying Boldwood. He plans to arrive at nine. Now we are shown Boldwood at his farm again, as he offers Gabriel a larger part of the farm's profits, saying that he hopes to retire from the management altogether. Boldwood says he knows Gabriel loves Bathsheba and says he believes he has won the competition for Bathsheba, in part, because of Gabriel's "goodness of heart." As the guests arrive, Boldwood shows "feverish anxiety." The climax of the novel comes in Chapter 53. The villagers gather outside Boldwood's house, whispering that Troy has been seen that day in Casterbridge. The night is "dark as a hedge." Boldwood is waiting desperately for Bathsheba, and the workers overhear him say, "Oh my darling, my darling, why do you keep me in suspense like this?" Bathsheba arrives, and the workers try to decide whether to tell Boldwood about Troy. Then, they spot his face at the window. After an hour, Bathsheba prepares for departure, and Boldwood finds her alone in the parlor. He pressures her and she agrees to "give the promise, if I must." Boldwood finally presses her to take a ring, persuading her to wear it for just that night, and she begins to cry. He is almost violent in his firmness, and she is "beaten into non-resistance." Just then, a stranger is announced, and in front of the whole party, Troy announces, "Bathsheba, I am come for you! " She does not move. He reaches out to pull her toward him, but she shrinks back; her dread irritates Troy, who seizes her arm violently; she screams. The sound of the scream is followed by a deafening bang: Boldwood has shot Troy dead. He is about to shoot himself, as well, when a worker stops him. Boldwood leaves the hall. In the next chapter, we learn that Boldwood has turned himself in at the Casterbridge prison, while Bathsheba has tended to Troy and called for a surgeon. Troy, however, is dead. Months later, in March, Boldwood's trial occurs. The onlookers learn that Boldwood had prepared a set of ladies' dresses in expensive fabrics in a closet in his home and several sets of jewelry in packages labeled "Bathsheba Boldwood. " Boldwood is sentenced to death by hanging. However, the residents of Weatherbury are convinced that Boldwood is not "morally responsible" for his actions, and Gabriel sends a petition to the Home Secretary requesting a reconsideration of the sentence. Finally, on the eve of his execution the news comes that he has been pardoned and given "confinement during Her Majesty's pleasure" instead. Troy is buried in the same grave as Fanny Robin. Bathsheba's spirits slowly revive as the spring turns to summer. One day, as she is visiting the grave, she sees Gabriel singing in the church choir. He joins her at the grave and tells her that he intends to leave Weatherbury. Upset, she begs him to stay, but he will not. When she receives his official final notice as bailiff, she cries and decides to visit him at his cottage. He invites her in and explains that one of his motivations for leaving are the rumors going around the village about a romance between the two of them. After some confusion, Bathsheba admits that she has come "courting him" and the two agree to marry. The last chapter portrays the quiet wedding of Gabriel and Bathsheba. After the wedding, the two dine at the farm, and all the men of the village gather to sing and play for them.

Commentary The tension builds through the use of the villagers' comments about Troy, just as in a Greek tragedy in which the conflicts about to be unleashed are commented on by the chorus. They alone know what the reader knows--that Troy is alive and may turn up at the party. Yet also like the reader, they are powerless to intervene. The villagers articulate all the fears the readers have about how Boldwood and Bathsheba will react to Troy's presence. The tension they instill makes the somewhat melodramatic climax--Boldwood's murder of Troy--more plausible. Knowing how deeply Boldwood hopes that Troy's death will allow him to possess Bathsheba, we understand his urge to kill Troy. The scene-by-scene structure of Chapter 52 contributes to this dramatic suspense, as we imagine three separate sets of people each about to come together and each deeply anxious, wondering how it will all be resolved. Notice that Gabriel fulfills his classic role of the intelligent, sensible observer, who does not take part in the action. The final chapters serve to release this tension and to make sense of what has happened. Boldwood's trial looks back upon all the recent events and causes the readers to develop sympathy for his misdeed so that we, like the villagers, may forgive him. Similarly, by burying Troy with Fanny, Bathsheba shows acceptance of their previous bonds to each other. In the wake of these three ruined lives, only Gabriel and Bathsheba remain. Bathsheba's trip to Gabriel's cottage is the final instance of the series of intimate discussions about marriage the two have from the very outset of the novel, beginning with Gabriel's first proposal. In the previous scenes, Bathsheba has been hurt when Gabriel has not confessed his devotion to her. Here, finally, she is driven to admit her own love for him. This time, she is the one who introduces the notion of their marrying. Hardy is careful to show that the love that Gabriel and Bathsheba share is not the passion of a first love but a sadder and wiser connection. In the final scene, Jan Coggan makes a joke, and the narrator tells us, "Then Oak laughed, and Bathsheba smiled , and their friends turned to go." While the ending is ostensibly a happy one, that happiness is tempered by all that has happened.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/chapters_45_to_49.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Tess of the d'Urbervilles/section_11_part_0.txt

Tess of the d'Urbervilles.chapters 45-49

chapters 45-49

{"name": "Chapters 45-49", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219151046/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary-and-analysis/phase-the-sixth-the-convert-chapters-4549", "summary": "Tess is disturbed greatly by Alec d'Urberville's appearance once again, now as an evangelic minister. He has taken on the appearance of a common person, not like his appearance earlier as man of wealth. Alec stops his sermon when he sees Tess. He tells Tess of his conversion and his mother's recent death. He apologizes for his past once he learns what happened to Tess after she left Trantridge, and he makes Tess swear never to tempt him again. Alec finds Tess working in the field at Flintcomb-Ash the next morning and asks her to marry him. She refuses. He tells her that she is a deserted wife and that her husband will not return. Alec leaves her and returns the same afternoon to ask her to leave with him again. She does not, and he blames her for his regression to his former self. In a later visit, Alec repeats his pleas for Tess' hand and she slaps his with a heavy work glove. He returns that same afternoon and offers to take Tess away from the hard labor on the farm. He also offers to help her family, which is Tess' one weak spot. Tess leaves Alec to begin an impassioned letter to Angel to urge him to come to her at once. The letter reaches the Clares in Emminster who forward it to Angel. Angel has had his share of misfortune as well, becoming ill in the wild of Brazil and having buried a fellow farmer who had died from disease. He feels remorse for his treatment of Tess, now having a change of heart from his previous position. When Tess nears the end of her time at Flintcomb-Ash, her sister, Liza Lu arrives to tell her that both of her parents are ill and that Tess must come home. Tess immediately leaves for Marlott that evening.", "analysis": "Alec begins his conversion from a fervent minister to his old self when he sees Tess. He blames her for his \"backsliding\" and proposes that she leave the farm at Flintcomb to marry him. She rebuffs him several times but is worn down by his persistence. Her weak point is his mentioning that he could provide for her family if she would be his live-in love. Alec says \"I have enough and more than enough to put you out of anxiety, both for yourself and your parents and sisters.\" Tess objects vehemently saying, \"'If you want to help them -- God knows they need it -- do it without telling me.\" Tess' doubts as to Alec's sincerity about being a minister are confirmed when he renounces his calling to pursue Tess once again. Thus, Hardy demonstrates the shallowness of recent converts when compared to the simple beliefs of a simple country girl. In a turn of curious events, when Alec first sees Tess, they both walk and converse until they come to a roadside marker called \"Cross-in Hand.\" Alec assumes that the marker denotes a former boundary or meeting place. Tess later learns that the marker is not a \"Holy Cross,\" but a symbol of man who had sold his soul to Satan -- \"It was put up in wuld times by 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.\" That Hardy would include such a marker and tale indicates that he wants readers to gain some understanding from it. And so a careful reader must wonder at its significance. Thus the cross becomes not a religious symbol, but a perverse reminder of a man and the promise he exacted from Tess not to tempt him anymore -- \"put your hand upon that stone hand, and swear that you will never tempt me -- by your charms or ways.\" But, in fact, he cannot resist her. Glossary mien a way of carrying and conducting oneself; manner. dandyism the condition of being or qualities of a dandy, a man who pays too much attention to his clothes and appearance. bizarrerie something strange, weird, singular, odd . lineaments the features of the body, usually of the face, esp. with regard to their outlines. Cyprian image the goddess of love in an ancient world, Venus and Aphrodite, was associated with Cyprus, but the legend mentioned has not been convincingly identified. \"the wrath to come\" an echo of Matthew 3:7. Petite mort shudder or chill; a premonition of death; a \"little death\" . \"The unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife . . . \" in 1 Corinthians, 7:13-14, Paul advises wives not to leave husbands who lack belief. \"Sermon on the Mount\" from Matthew 5-7. \"from the Dictionnaire Philosophique to Huxley's Essays\" The Dictionnaire is a collection of essays published in the eighteenth century by Voltaire, who was antagonistic to Christianity; Thomas Henry Huxley , a respected scientist and supporter of Darwinian theory, published many essays, including Essays on Some Controverted Questions . \"I worshipped on the mountains . . . \" from 2 Kings 17-23. \"servants of corruption\" from 2 Peter 2:19-20. \"witch of Babylon\" from Revelation 17, there are references to the Whore of Babylon. Primum mobile the outermost sphere of the world in Ptolemaic cosmography, which caused the movement of the heavens . pellucid transparent or translucent; clear; easy to understand. Tophet a place mentioned in the Bible where children were burned; it became identified in Judaism with an underworld where wickedness was punished after death; a synonym for hell that came into Middle English from Hebrew. \"Plutonic master\" Pluto, or Hades, god of the underworld, had the power to condemn people to hell. autochthonous characteristic of any of the earliest known inhabitants of a place. Stodded waggon a wagon that is stuck. \"the seven thunders\" from Revelation 10:3-4. Hagrode ridden by witches, troubled by nightmares. Weltlust desire for worldly things and pleasures . Hymenaeus and Alexander in this sentence Alec is echoing Paul in 1 Timothy 1:18-20, where he mentions these figures as examples of those who have lost faith. perdition the loss of the soul; damnation; hell. expostulate to reason with a person earnestly, objecting to that person's actions or intentions; remonstrate . Bachelor-apostle St. Paul; Alec is echoing Luke 9:62. \"And she shall follow after her lover . . . \" from Hosea 2:7. nammet-time time for a snack at mid-morning or mid-afternoon. Faeces feces, excrement. cadaverous of or like a cadaver; esp., pale, ghastly, or gaunt and haggard. \"grapes of Ephraim\" from Judges 8:1-3."}

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. In the afternoon the farmer made it known that the rick was to be finished that night, since there was a moon by which they could see to work, and the man with the engine was engaged for another farm on the morrow. Hence the twanging and humming and rustling proceeded with even less intermission than usual. It was not till "nammet"-time, about three o-clock, that Tess raised her eyes and gave a momentary glance round. She felt but little surprise at seeing that Alec d'Urberville had come back, and was standing under the hedge by the gate. He had seen her lift her eyes, and waved his hand urbanely to her, while he blew her a kiss. It meant that their quarrel was over. Tess looked down again, and carefully abstained from gazing in that direction. Thus the afternoon dragged on. The wheat-rick shrank lower, and the straw-rick grew higher, and the corn-sacks were carted away. At six o'clock the wheat-rick was about shoulder-high from the ground. But the unthreshed sheaves remaining untouched seemed countless still, notwithstanding the enormous numbers that had been gulped down by the insatiable swallower, fed by the man and Tess, through whose two young hands the greater part of them had passed. And the immense stack of straw where in the morning there had been nothing, appeared as the faeces of the same buzzing red glutton. From the west sky a wrathful shine--all that wild March could afford in the way of sunset--had burst forth after the cloudy day, flooding the tired and sticky faces of the threshers, and dyeing them with a coppery light, as also the flapping garments of the women, which clung to them like dull flames. A panting ache ran through the rick. The man who fed was weary, and Tess could see that the red nape of his neck was encrusted with dirt and husks. She still stood at her post, her flushed and perspiring face coated with the corndust, and her white bonnet embrowned by it. She was the only woman whose place was upon the machine so as to be shaken bodily by its spinning, and the decrease of the stack now separated her from Marian and Izz, and prevented their changing duties with her as they had done. The incessant quivering, in which every fibre of her frame participated, had thrown her into a stupefied reverie in which her arms worked on independently of her consciousness. She hardly knew where she was, and did not hear Izz Huett tell her from below that her hair was tumbling down. By degrees the freshest among them began to grow cadaverous and saucer-eyed. Whenever Tess lifted her head she beheld always the great upgrown straw-stack, with the men in shirt-sleeves upon it, against the gray north sky; in front of it the long red elevator like a Jacob's ladder, on which a perpetual stream of threshed straw ascended, a yellow river running uphill, and spouting out on the top of the rick. She knew that Alec d'Urberville was still on the scene, observing her from some point or other, though she could not say where. There was an excuse for his remaining, for when the threshed rick drew near its final sheaves a little ratting was always done, and men unconnected with the threshing sometimes dropped in for that performance--sporting characters of all descriptions, gents with terriers and facetious pipes, roughs with sticks and stones. But there was another hour's work before the layer of live rats at the base of the stack would be reached; and as the evening light in the direction of the Giant's Hill by Abbot's-Cernel dissolved away, the white-faced moon of the season arose from the horizon that lay towards Middleton Abbey and Shottsford on the other side. For the last hour or two Marian had felt uneasy about Tess, whom she could not get near enough to speak to, the other women having kept up their strength by drinking ale, and Tess having done without it through traditionary dread, owing to its results at her home in childhood. But Tess still kept going: if she could not fill her part she would have to leave; and this contingency, which she would have regarded with equanimity and even with relief a month or two earlier, had become a terror since d'Urberville had begun to hover round her. The sheaf-pitchers and feeders had now worked the rick so low that people on the ground could talk to them. To Tess's surprise Farmer Groby came up on the machine to her, and said that if she desired to join her friend he did not wish her to keep on any longer, and would send somebody else to take her place. The "friend" was d'Urberville, she knew, and also that this concession had been granted in obedience to the request of that friend, or enemy. She shook her head and toiled on. The time for the rat-catching arrived at last, and the hunt began. The creatures had crept downwards with the subsidence of the rick till they were all together at the bottom, and being now uncovered from their last refuge, they ran across the open ground in all directions, a loud shriek from the by-this-time half-tipsy Marian informing her companions that one of the rats had invaded her person--a terror which the rest of the women had guarded against by various schemes of skirt-tucking and self-elevation. The rat was at last dislodged, and, amid the barking of dogs, masculine shouts, feminine screams, oaths, stampings, and confusion as of Pandemonium, Tess untied her last sheaf; the drum slowed, the whizzing ceased, and she stepped from the machine to the ground. Her lover, who had only looked on at the rat-catching, was promptly at her side. "What--after all--my insulting slap, too!" said she in an underbreath. She was so utterly exhausted that she had not strength to speak louder. "I should indeed be foolish to feel offended at anything you say or do," he answered, in the seductive voice of the Trantridge time. "How the little limbs tremble! You are as weak as a bled calf, you know you are; and yet you need have done nothing since I arrived. How could you be so obstinate? However, I have told the farmer that he has no right to employ women at steam-threshing. It is not proper work for them; and on all the better class of farms it has been given up, as he knows very well. I will walk with you as far as your home." "O yes," she answered with a jaded gait. "Walk wi' me if you will! I do bear in mind that you came to marry me before you knew o' my state. Perhaps--perhaps you are a little better and kinder than I have been thinking you were. Whatever is meant as kindness I am grateful for; whatever is meant in any other way I am angered at. I cannot sense your meaning sometimes." "If I cannot legitimize our former relations at least I can assist you. And I will do it with much more regard for your feelings than I formerly showed. My religious mania, or whatever it was, is over. But I retain a little good nature; I hope I do. Now, Tess, by all that's tender and strong between man and woman, trust me! I have enough and more than enough to put you out of anxiety, both for yourself and your parents and sisters. I can make them all comfortable if you will only show confidence in me." "Have you seen 'em lately?" she quickly inquired. "Yes. They didn't know where you were. It was only by chance that I found you here." The cold moon looked aslant upon Tess's fagged face between the twigs of the garden-hedge as she paused outside the cottage which was her temporary home, d'Urberville pausing beside her. "Don't mention my little brothers and sisters--don't make me break down quite!" she said. "If you want to help them--God knows they need it--do it without telling me. But no, no!" she cried. "I will take nothing from you, either for them or for me!" He did not accompany her further, since, as she lived with the household, all was public indoors. No sooner had she herself entered, laved herself in a washing-tub, and shared supper with the family than she fell into thought, and withdrawing to the table under the wall, by the light of her own little lamp wrote in a passionate mood-- MY OWN HUSBAND,-- Let me call you so--I must--even if it makes you angry to think of such an unworthy wife as I. I must cry to you in my trouble--I have no one else! I am so exposed to temptation, Angel. I fear to say who it is, and I do not like to write about it at all. But I cling to you in a way you cannot think! Can you not come to me now, at once, before anything terrible happens? O, I know you cannot, because you are so far away! I think I must die if you do not come soon, or tell me to come to you. The punishment you have measured out to me is deserved--I do know that-- well deserved--and you are right and just to be angry with me. But, Angel, please, please, not to be just--only a little kind to me, even if I do not deserve it, and come 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! Angel, I live entirely for you. I love you too much to blame you for going away, and I know it was necessary you should find a farm. Do not think I shall say a word of sting or bitterness. Only come back to me. I am desolate without you, my darling, O, so desolate! I do not mind having to work: but if you will send me one little line, and say, "I am coming soon," I will bide on, Angel--O, so cheerfully! It has been so much my religion ever since we were married to be faithful to you in every thought and look, that even when a man speaks a compliment to me before I am aware, it seems wronging you. Have you never felt one little bit of what you used to feel when we were at the dairy? If you have, how can you keep away from me? I am the same women, Angel, as you fell in love with; yes, the very same!--not the one you disliked but never saw. What was the past to me as soon as I met you? It was a dead thing altogether. I became another woman, filled full of new life from you. How could I be the early one? Why do you not see this? Dear, if you would only be a little more conceited, and believe in yourself so far as to see that you were strong enough to work this change in me, you would perhaps be in a mind to come to me, your poor wife. How silly I was in my happiness when I thought I could trust you always to love me! I ought to have known that such as that was not for poor me. But I am sick at heart, not only for old times, but for the present. Think--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. People still say that I am rather pretty, Angel (handsome is the word they use, since I wish to be truthful). Perhaps I am what they say. But I do not value my good looks; I only like to have them because they belong to you, my dear, and that there may be at least one thing about me worth your having. So much have I felt this, that when I met with annoyance on account of the same, I tied up my face in a bandage as long as people would believe in it. O Angel, I tell you all this not from vanity--you will certainly know I do not--but only that you may come to me! If you really cannot come to me, will you let me come to you? I am, as I say, worried, pressed to do what I will not do. It cannot be that I shall yield one inch, yet I am in terror as to what an accident might lead to, and I so defenceless on account of my first error. I cannot say more about this--it makes me too miserable. But if I break down by falling into some fearful snare, my last state will be worse than my first. O God, I cannot think of it! Let me come at once, or at once come to me! 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. The daylight has nothing to show me, since you are not here, and I don't like to see the rooks and starlings in the field, because I grieve and grieve to miss you who used to see them with me. 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!-- Your faithful heartbroken TESS The appeal duly found its way to the breakfast-table of the quiet Vicarage to the westward, in that valley where the air is so soft and the soil so rich that the effort of growth requires but superficial aid by comparison with the tillage at Flintcomb-Ash, and where to Tess the human world seemed so different (though it was much the same). It was purely for security that she had been requested by Angel to send her communications through his father, whom he kept pretty well informed of his changing addresses in the country he had gone to exploit for himself with a heavy heart. "Now," said old Mr Clare to his wife, when he had read the envelope, "if Angel proposes leaving Rio for a visit home at the end of next month, as he told us that he hoped to do, I think this may hasten his plans; for I believe it to be from his wife." He breathed deeply at the thought of her; and the letter was redirected to be promptly sent on to Angel. "Dear fellow, I hope he will get home safely," murmured Mrs Clare. "To my dying day I shall feel that he has been ill-used. You should have sent him to Cambridge in spite of his want of faith and given him the same chance as the other boys had. He would have grown out of it under proper influence, and perhaps would have taken Orders after all. Church or no Church, it would have been fairer to him." This was the only wail with which Mrs Clare ever disturbed her husband's peace in respect to their sons. And she did not vent this often; for she was as considerate as she was devout, and knew that his mind too was troubled by doubts as to his justice in this matter. Only too often had she heard him lying awake at night, stifling sighs for Angel with prayers. But the uncompromising Evangelical did not even now hold that he would have been justified in giving his son, an unbeliever, the same academic advantages that he had given to the two others, when it was possible, if not probable, that those very advantages might have been used to decry the doctrines which he had made it his life's mission and desire to propagate, and the mission of his ordained sons likewise. To put with one hand a pedestal under the feet of the two faithful ones, and with the other to exalt the unfaithful by the same artificial means, he deemed to be alike inconsistent with his convictions, his position, and his hopes. Nevertheless, he loved his misnamed Angel, and in secret mourned over this treatment of him as Abraham might have mourned over the doomed Isaac while they went up the hill together. His silent self-generated regrets were far bitterer than the reproaches which his wife rendered audible. They blamed themselves for this unlucky marriage. If Angel had never been destined for a farmer he would never have been thrown with agricultural girls. They did not distinctly know what had separated him and his wife, nor the date on which the separation had taken place. At first they had supposed it must be something of the nature of a serious aversion. But in his later letters he occasionally alluded to the intention of coming home to fetch her; from which expressions they hoped the division might not owe its origin to anything so hopelessly permanent as that. He had told them that she was with her relatives, and in their doubts they had decided not to intrude into a situation which they knew no way of bettering. The eyes for which Tess's letter was intended were gazing at this time on a limitless expanse of country from the back of a mule which was bearing him from the interior of the South-American Continent towards the coast. His experiences of this strange land had been sad. The severe illness from which he had suffered shortly after his arrival had never wholly left him, and he had by degrees almost decided to relinquish his hope of farming here, though, as long as the bare possibility existed of his remaining, he kept this change of view a secret from his parents. The crowds of agricultural labourers who had come out to the country in his wake, dazzled by representations of easy independence, had suffered, died, and wasted away. He would see mothers from English farms trudging along with their infants in their arms, when the child would be stricken with fever and would die; the mother would pause to dig a hole in the loose earth with her bare hands, would bury the babe therein with the same natural grave-tools, shed one tear, and again trudge on. Angel's original intention had not been emigration to Brazil but a northern or eastern farm in his own country. He had come to this place in a fit of desperation, the Brazil movement among the English agriculturists having by chance coincided with his desire to escape from his past existence. During this time of absence he had mentally aged a dozen years. What arrested him now as of value in life was less its beauty than its pathos. Having long discredited the old systems of mysticism, he now began to discredit the old appraisements of morality. He thought they wanted readjusting. Who was the moral man? Still more pertinently, who was the moral woman? The beauty or ugliness of a character lay not only in its achievements, but in its aims and impulses; its true history lay, not among things done, but among things willed. How, then, about Tess? Viewing her in these lights, a regret for his hasty judgement began to oppress him. Did he reject her eternally, or did he not? He could no longer say that he would always reject her, and not to say that was in spirit to accept her now. This growing fondness for her memory coincided in point of time with her residence at Flintcomb-Ash, but it was before she had felt herself at liberty to trouble him with a word about her circumstances or her feelings. He was greatly perplexed; and in his perplexity as to her motives in withholding intelligence, he did not inquire. Thus her silence of docility was misinterpreted. How much it really said if he had understood!--that she adhered with literal exactness to orders which he had given and forgotten; that despite her natural fearlessness she asserted no rights, admitted his judgement to be in every respect the true one, and bent her head dumbly thereto. In the before-mentioned journey by mules through the interior of the country, another man rode beside him. Angel's companion was also an Englishman, bent on the same errand, though he came from another part of the island. They were both in a state of mental depression, and they spoke of home affairs. Confidence begat confidence. With that curious tendency evinced by men, more especially when in distant lands, to entrust to strangers details of their lives which they would on no account mention to friends, Angel admitted to this man as they rode along the sorrowful facts of his marriage. The stranger had sojourned in many more lands and among many more peoples than Angel; to his cosmopolitan mind such deviations from the social norm, so immense to domesticity, were no more than are the irregularities of vale and mountain-chain to the whole terrestrial curve. He viewed the matter in quite a different light from Angel; thought that what Tess had been was of no importance beside what she would be, and plainly told Clare that he was wrong in coming away from her. The next day they were drenched in a thunder-storm. Angel's companion was struck down with fever, and died by the week's end. Clare waited a few hours to bury him, and then went on his way. The cursory remarks of the large-minded stranger, of whom he knew absolutely nothing beyond a commonplace name, were sublimed by his death, and influenced Clare more than all the reasoned ethics of the philosophers. His own parochialism made him ashamed by its contrast. His inconsistencies rushed upon him in a flood. He had persistently elevated Hellenic Paganism at the expense of Christianity; yet in that civilization an illegal surrender was not certain disesteem. Surely then he might have regarded that abhorrence of the un-intact state, which he had inherited with the creed of mysticism, as at least open to correction when the result was due to treachery. A remorse struck into him. The words of Izz Huett, never quite stilled in his memory, came back to him. He had asked Izz if she loved him, and she had replied in the affirmative. Did she love him more than Tess did? No, she had replied; Tess would lay down her life for him, and she herself could do no more. He thought of Tess as she had appeared on the day of the wedding. How her eyes had lingered upon him; how she had hung upon his words as if they were a god's! And during the terrible evening over the hearth, when her simple soul uncovered itself to his, how pitiful her face had looked by the rays of the fire, in her inability to realize that his love and protection could possibly be withdrawn. Thus from being her critic he grew to be her advocate. Cynical things he had uttered to himself about her; but no man can be always a cynic and live; and he withdrew them. The mistake of expressing them had arisen from his allowing himself to be influenced by general principles to the disregard of the particular instance. But the reasoning is somewhat musty; lovers and husbands have gone over the ground before to-day. Clare had been harsh towards her; there is no doubt of it. Men are too often harsh with women they love or have loved; women with men. And yet these harshnesses are tenderness itself when compared with the universal harshness out of which they grow; the harshness of the position towards the temperament, of the means towards the aims, of to-day towards yesterday, of hereafter towards to-day. The historic interest of her family--that masterful line of d'Urbervilles--whom he had despised as a spent force, touched his sentiments now. Why had he not known the difference between the political value and the imaginative value of these things? In the latter aspect her d'Urberville descent was a fact of great dimensions; worthless to economics, it was a most useful ingredient to the dreamer, to the moralizer on declines and falls. It was a fact that would soon be forgotten--that bit of distinction in poor Tess's blood and name, and oblivion would fall upon her hereditary link with the marble monuments and leaded skeletons at Kingsbere. So does Time ruthlessly destroy his own romances. In recalling her face again and again, he thought now that he could see therein a flash of the dignity which must have graced her grand-dames; and the vision sent that _aura_ through his veins which he had formerly felt, and which left behind it a sense of sickness. Despite her not-inviolate past, what still abode in such a woman as Tess outvalued the freshness of her fellows. Was not the gleaning of the grapes of Ephraim better than the vintage of Abiezer? So spoke love renascent, preparing the way for Tess's devoted outpouring, which was then just being forwarded to him by his father; though owing to his distance inland it was to be a long time in reaching him. Meanwhile the writer's expectation that Angel would come in response to the entreaty was alternately great and small. What lessened it was that the facts of her life which had led to the parting had not changed--could never change; and that, if her presence had not attenuated them, her absence could not. Nevertheless she addressed her mind to the tender question of what she could do to please him best if he should arrive. Sighs were expended on the wish that she had taken more notice of the tunes he played on his harp, that she had inquired more curiously of him which were his favourite ballads among those the country-girls sang. She indirectly inquired of Amby Seedling, who had followed Izz from Talbothays, and by chance Amby remembered that, amongst the snatches of melody in which they had indulged at the dairyman's, to induce the cows to let down their milk, Clare had seemed to like "Cupid's Gardens", "I have parks, I have hounds", and "The break o' the day"; and had seemed not to care for "The Tailor's Breeches" and "Such a beauty I did grow", excellent ditties as they were. To perfect the ballads was now her whimsical desire. She practised them privately at odd moments, especially "The break o' the day": Arise, arise, arise! And pick your love a posy, All o' the sweetest flowers That in the garden grow. The turtle doves and sma' birds In every bough a-building, So early in the May-time At the break o' the day! It would have melted the heart of a stone to hear her singing these ditties whenever she worked apart from the rest of the girls in this cold dry time; the tears running down her cheeks all the while at the thought that perhaps he would not, after all, come to hear her, and the simple silly words of the songs resounding in painful mockery of the aching heart of the singer. Tess was so wrapt up in this fanciful dream that she seemed not to know how the season was advancing; that the days had lengthened, that Lady-Day was at hand, and would soon be followed by Old Lady-Day, the end of her term here. But before the quarter-day had quite come, something happened which made Tess think of far different matters. She was at her lodging as usual one evening, sitting in the downstairs room with the rest of the family, when somebody knocked at the door and inquired for Tess. Through the doorway she saw against the declining light a figure with the height of a woman and the breadth of a child, a tall, thin, girlish creature whom she did not recognize in the twilight till the girl said "Tess!" "What--is it 'Liza-Lu?" asked Tess, in startled accents. Her sister, whom a little over a year ago she had left at home as a child, had sprung up by a sudden shoot to a form of this presentation, of which as yet Lu seemed herself scarce able to understand the meaning. Her thin legs, visible below her once-long frock, now short by her growing, and her uncomfortable hands and arms revealed her youth and inexperience. "Yes, I have been traipsing about all day, Tess," said Lu, with unemotional gravity, "a-trying to find 'ee; and I'm very tired." "What is the matter at home?" "Mother is took very bad, and the doctor says she's dying, and as father is not very well neither, and says 'tis wrong for a man of such a high family as his to slave and drave at common labouring work, we don't know what to do." Tess stood in reverie a long time before she thought of asking 'Liza-Lu to come in and sit down. When she had done so, and 'Liza-Lu was having some tea, she came to a decision. It was imperative that she should go home. Her agreement did not end till Old Lady-Day, the sixth of April, but as the interval thereto was not a long one she resolved to run the risk of starting at once. To go that night would be a gain of twelve-hours; but her sister was too tired to undertake such a distance till the morrow. Tess ran down to where Marian and Izz lived, informed them of what had happened, and begged them to make the best of her case to the farmer. Returning, she got Lu a supper, and after that, having tucked the younger into her own bed, packed up as many of her belongings as would go into a withy basket, and started, directing Lu to follow her next morning.

Chapters 45-49

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219151046/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary-and-analysis/phase-the-sixth-the-convert-chapters-4549

Tess is disturbed greatly by Alec d'Urberville's appearance once again, now as an evangelic minister. He has taken on the appearance of a common person, not like his appearance earlier as man of wealth. Alec stops his sermon when he sees Tess. He tells Tess of his conversion and his mother's recent death. He apologizes for his past once he learns what happened to Tess after she left Trantridge, and he makes Tess swear never to tempt him again. Alec finds Tess working in the field at Flintcomb-Ash the next morning and asks her to marry him. She refuses. He tells her that she is a deserted wife and that her husband will not return. Alec leaves her and returns the same afternoon to ask her to leave with him again. She does not, and he blames her for his regression to his former self. In a later visit, Alec repeats his pleas for Tess' hand and she slaps his with a heavy work glove. He returns that same afternoon and offers to take Tess away from the hard labor on the farm. He also offers to help her family, which is Tess' one weak spot. Tess leaves Alec to begin an impassioned letter to Angel to urge him to come to her at once. The letter reaches the Clares in Emminster who forward it to Angel. Angel has had his share of misfortune as well, becoming ill in the wild of Brazil and having buried a fellow farmer who had died from disease. He feels remorse for his treatment of Tess, now having a change of heart from his previous position. When Tess nears the end of her time at Flintcomb-Ash, her sister, Liza Lu arrives to tell her that both of her parents are ill and that Tess must come home. Tess immediately leaves for Marlott that evening.

Alec begins his conversion from a fervent minister to his old self when he sees Tess. He blames her for his "backsliding" and proposes that she leave the farm at Flintcomb to marry him. She rebuffs him several times but is worn down by his persistence. Her weak point is his mentioning that he could provide for her family if she would be his live-in love. Alec says "I have enough and more than enough to put you out of anxiety, both for yourself and your parents and sisters." Tess objects vehemently saying, "'If you want to help them -- God knows they need it -- do it without telling me." Tess' doubts as to Alec's sincerity about being a minister are confirmed when he renounces his calling to pursue Tess once again. Thus, Hardy demonstrates the shallowness of recent converts when compared to the simple beliefs of a simple country girl. In a turn of curious events, when Alec first sees Tess, they both walk and converse until they come to a roadside marker called "Cross-in Hand." Alec assumes that the marker denotes a former boundary or meeting place. Tess later learns that the marker is not a "Holy Cross," but a symbol of man who had sold his soul to Satan -- "It was put up in wuld times by 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." That Hardy would include such a marker and tale indicates that he wants readers to gain some understanding from it. And so a careful reader must wonder at its significance. Thus the cross becomes not a religious symbol, but a perverse reminder of a man and the promise he exacted from Tess not to tempt him anymore -- "put your hand upon that stone hand, and swear that you will never tempt me -- by your charms or ways." But, in fact, he cannot resist her. Glossary mien a way of carrying and conducting oneself; manner. dandyism the condition of being or qualities of a dandy, a man who pays too much attention to his clothes and appearance. bizarrerie something strange, weird, singular, odd . lineaments the features of the body, usually of the face, esp. with regard to their outlines. Cyprian image the goddess of love in an ancient world, Venus and Aphrodite, was associated with Cyprus, but the legend mentioned has not been convincingly identified. "the wrath to come" an echo of Matthew 3:7. Petite mort shudder or chill; a premonition of death; a "little death" . "The unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife . . . " in 1 Corinthians, 7:13-14, Paul advises wives not to leave husbands who lack belief. "Sermon on the Mount" from Matthew 5-7. "from the Dictionnaire Philosophique to Huxley's Essays" The Dictionnaire is a collection of essays published in the eighteenth century by Voltaire, who was antagonistic to Christianity; Thomas Henry Huxley , a respected scientist and supporter of Darwinian theory, published many essays, including Essays on Some Controverted Questions . "I worshipped on the mountains . . . " from 2 Kings 17-23. "servants of corruption" from 2 Peter 2:19-20. "witch of Babylon" from Revelation 17, there are references to the Whore of Babylon. Primum mobile the outermost sphere of the world in Ptolemaic cosmography, which caused the movement of the heavens . pellucid transparent or translucent; clear; easy to understand. Tophet a place mentioned in the Bible where children were burned; it became identified in Judaism with an underworld where wickedness was punished after death; a synonym for hell that came into Middle English from Hebrew. "Plutonic master" Pluto, or Hades, god of the underworld, had the power to condemn people to hell. autochthonous characteristic of any of the earliest known inhabitants of a place. Stodded waggon a wagon that is stuck. "the seven thunders" from Revelation 10:3-4. Hagrode ridden by witches, troubled by nightmares. Weltlust desire for worldly things and pleasures . Hymenaeus and Alexander in this sentence Alec is echoing Paul in 1 Timothy 1:18-20, where he mentions these figures as examples of those who have lost faith. perdition the loss of the soul; damnation; hell. expostulate to reason with a person earnestly, objecting to that person's actions or intentions; remonstrate . Bachelor-apostle St. Paul; Alec is echoing Luke 9:62. "And she shall follow after her lover . . . " from Hosea 2:7. nammet-time time for a snack at mid-morning or mid-afternoon. Faeces feces, excrement. cadaverous of or like a cadaver; esp., pale, ghastly, or gaunt and haggard. "grapes of Ephraim" from Judges 8:1-3.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/02.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Sense and Sensibility/section_0_part_2.txt

Sense and Sensibility.chapter 2

chapter 2

{"name": "Chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210419170735/https://www.gradesaver.com/sense-and-sensibility/study-guide/summary-chapters-1-10", "summary": "Mrs. John Dashwood immediately takes over as mistress of the estate, as Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters become visitors in their former home. Mrs. John Dashwood also questions the extent of her husband's generosity; she advises her husband not to give too much lest it diminish the future inheritance of their son. She talks him down from a gift of a thousand pounds apiece, to occasionally giving them help, of a non-financial sort. Fanny reasons that they will have no expenses and more than enough money; she figures that the four of them will be better off on their five hundred pounds a year than herself and her husband, although they have many thousands at their disposal. So, John resolves to only do nice things for them on occasion, and forget any ideas of giving them money at all.", "analysis": "Mrs. John Dashwood, or Fanny, is revealed here as a creature even more selfish and uncaring as her husband. The coldness and selfishness of her logic is plainly exposed by Austen, as further ridicule of her greed in this situation. That Fanny Dashwood can confidently claim that the Dashwood women will be comfortably off with very little money, and their home taken from them, is obviously untrue. Fanny is certainly greedy in denying that Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters should have no need, while Fanny and her husband are depriving them of much of their former money and their home too. That John Dashwood finds his wife's argument \"irresistible\" shows how he relies on his wife to confirm any miserly tendencies he may have. She is even more selfish and uncaring than he is, which helps him to justify himself when he acts much the same. It is perhaps ironic that John Dashwood's wife brings out the worst in him rather than the best, and that they can be so miserly in the face of misfortune, but this same irony is a part of human nature"}

Mrs. John Dashwood now installed herself mistress of Norland; and her mother and sisters-in-law were degraded to the condition of visitors. As such, however, they were treated by her with quiet civility; and by her husband with as much kindness as he could feel towards anybody beyond himself, his wife, and their child. He really pressed them, with some earnestness, to consider Norland as their home; and, as no plan appeared so eligible to Mrs. Dashwood as remaining there till she could accommodate herself with a house in the neighbourhood, his invitation was accepted. A continuance in a place where everything reminded her of former delight, was exactly what suited her mind. In seasons of cheerfulness, no temper could be more cheerful than hers, or possess, in a greater degree, that sanguine expectation of happiness which is happiness itself. But in sorrow she must be equally carried away by her fancy, and as far beyond consolation as in pleasure she was beyond alloy. Mrs. John Dashwood did not at all approve of what her husband intended to do for his sisters. To take three thousand pounds from the fortune of their dear little boy would be impoverishing him to the most dreadful degree. She begged him to think again on the subject. How could he answer it to himself to rob his child, and his only child too, of so large a sum? And what possible claim could the Miss Dashwoods, who were related to him only by half blood, which she considered as no relationship at all, have on his generosity to so large an amount. It was very well known that no affection was ever supposed to exist between the children of any man by different marriages; and why was he to ruin himself, and their poor little Harry, by giving away all his money to his half sisters? "It was my father's last request to me," replied her husband, "that I should assist his widow and daughters." "He did not know what he was talking of, I dare say; ten to one but he was light-headed at the time. Had he been in his right senses, he could not have thought of such a thing as begging you to give away half your fortune from your own child." "He did not stipulate for any particular sum, my dear Fanny; he only requested me, in general terms, to assist them, and make their situation more comfortable than it was in his power to do. Perhaps it would have been as well if he had left it wholly to myself. He could hardly suppose I should neglect them. But as he required the promise, I could not do less than give it; at least I thought so at the time. The promise, therefore, was given, and must be performed. Something must be done for them whenever they leave Norland and settle in a new home." "Well, then, LET something be done for them; but THAT something need not be three thousand pounds. Consider," she added, "that when the money is once parted with, it never can return. Your sisters will marry, and it will be gone for ever. If, indeed, it could be restored to our poor little boy--" "Why, to be sure," said her husband, very gravely, "that would make great difference. The time may come when Harry will regret that so large a sum was parted with. If he should have a numerous family, for instance, it would be a very convenient addition." "To be sure it would." "Perhaps, then, it would be better for all parties, if the sum were diminished one half.--Five hundred pounds would be a prodigious increase to their fortunes!" "Oh! beyond anything great! What brother on earth would do half so much for his sisters, even if REALLY his sisters! And as it is--only half blood!--But you have such a generous spirit!" "I would not wish to do any thing mean," he replied. "One had rather, on such occasions, do too much than too little. No one, at least, can think I have not done enough for them: even themselves, they can hardly expect more." "There is no knowing what THEY may expect," said the lady, "but we are not to think of their expectations: the question is, what you can afford to do." "Certainly--and I think I may afford to give them five hundred pounds a-piece. As it is, without any addition of mine, they will each have about three thousand pounds on their mother's death--a very comfortable fortune for any young woman." "To be sure it is; and, indeed, it strikes me that they can want no addition at all. They will have ten thousand pounds divided amongst them. If they marry, they will be sure of doing well, and if they do not, they may all live very comfortably together on the interest of ten thousand pounds." "That is very true, and, therefore, I do not know whether, upon the whole, it would not be more advisable to do something for their mother while she lives, rather than for them--something of the annuity kind I mean.--My sisters would feel the good effects of it as well as herself. A hundred a year would make them all perfectly comfortable." His wife hesitated a little, however, in giving her consent to this plan. "To be sure," said she, "it is better than parting with fifteen hundred pounds at once. But, then, if Mrs. Dashwood should live fifteen years we shall be completely taken in." "Fifteen years! my dear Fanny; her life cannot be worth half that purchase." "Certainly not; but if you observe, people always live for ever when there is an annuity to be paid them; and she is very stout and healthy, and hardly forty. An annuity is a very serious business; it comes over and over every year, and there is no getting rid of it. You are not aware of what you are doing. I have known a great deal of the trouble of annuities; for my mother was clogged with the payment of three to old superannuated servants by my father's will, and it is amazing how disagreeable she found it. Twice every year these annuities were to be paid; and then there was the trouble of getting it to them; and then one of them was said to have died, and afterwards it turned out to be no such thing. My mother was quite sick of it. Her income was not her own, she said, with such perpetual claims on it; and it was the more unkind in my father, because, otherwise, the money would have been entirely at my mother's disposal, without any restriction whatever. It has given me such an abhorrence of annuities, that I am sure I would not pin myself down to the payment of one for all the world." "It is certainly an unpleasant thing," replied Mr. Dashwood, "to have those kind of yearly drains on one's income. One's fortune, as your mother justly says, is NOT one's own. To be tied down to the regular payment of such a sum, on every rent day, is by no means desirable: it takes away one's independence." "Undoubtedly; and after all you have no thanks for it. They think themselves secure, you do no more than what is expected, and it raises no gratitude at all. If I were you, whatever I did should be done at my own discretion entirely. I would not bind myself to allow them any thing yearly. It may be very inconvenient some years to spare a hundred, or even fifty pounds from our own expenses." "I believe you are right, my love; it will be better that there should be no annuity in the case; whatever I may give them occasionally will be of far greater assistance than a yearly allowance, because they would only enlarge their style of living if they felt sure of a larger income, and would not be sixpence the richer for it at the end of the year. It will certainly be much the best way. A present of fifty pounds, now and then, will prevent their ever being distressed for money, and will, I think, be amply discharging my promise to my father." "To be sure it will. Indeed, to say the truth, I am convinced within myself that your father had no idea of your giving them any money at all. The assistance he thought of, I dare say, was only such as might be reasonably expected of you; for instance, such as looking out for a comfortable small house for them, helping them to move their things, and sending them presents of fish and game, and so forth, whenever they are in season. I'll lay my life that he meant nothing farther; indeed, it would be very strange and unreasonable if he did. Do but consider, my dear Mr. Dashwood, how excessively comfortable your mother-in-law and her daughters may live on the interest of seven thousand pounds, besides the thousand pounds belonging to each of the girls, which brings them in fifty pounds a year a-piece, and, of course, they will pay their mother for their board out of it. Altogether, they will have five hundred a-year amongst them, and what on earth can four women want for more than that?--They will live so cheap! Their housekeeping will be nothing at all. They will have no carriage, no horses, and hardly any servants; they will keep no company, and can have no expenses of any kind! Only conceive how comfortable they will be! Five hundred a year! I am sure I cannot imagine how they will spend half of it; and as to your giving them more, it is quite absurd to think of it. They will be much more able to give YOU something." "Upon my word," said Mr. Dashwood, "I believe you are perfectly right. My father certainly could mean nothing more by his request to me than what you say. I clearly understand it now, and I will strictly fulfil my engagement by such acts of assistance and kindness to them as you have described. When my mother removes into another house my services shall be readily given to accommodate her as far as I can. Some little present of furniture too may be acceptable then." "Certainly," returned Mrs. John Dashwood. "But, however, ONE thing must be considered. When your father and mother moved to Norland, though the furniture of Stanhill was sold, all the china, plate, and linen was saved, and is now left to your mother. Her house will therefore be almost completely fitted up as soon as she takes it." "That is a material consideration undoubtedly. A valuable legacy indeed! And yet some of the plate would have been a very pleasant addition to our own stock here." "Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for any place THEY can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your father thought only of THEM. And I must say this: that you owe no particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the world to THEM." This argument was irresistible. It gave to his intentions whatever of decision was wanting before; and he finally resolved, that it would be absolutely unnecessary, if not highly indecorous, to do more for the widow and children of his father, than such kind of neighbourly acts as his own wife pointed out.

Chapter 2

https://web.archive.org/web/20210419170735/https://www.gradesaver.com/sense-and-sensibility/study-guide/summary-chapters-1-10

Mrs. John Dashwood immediately takes over as mistress of the estate, as Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters become visitors in their former home. Mrs. John Dashwood also questions the extent of her husband's generosity; she advises her husband not to give too much lest it diminish the future inheritance of their son. She talks him down from a gift of a thousand pounds apiece, to occasionally giving them help, of a non-financial sort. Fanny reasons that they will have no expenses and more than enough money; she figures that the four of them will be better off on their five hundred pounds a year than herself and her husband, although they have many thousands at their disposal. So, John resolves to only do nice things for them on occasion, and forget any ideas of giving them money at all.

Mrs. John Dashwood, or Fanny, is revealed here as a creature even more selfish and uncaring as her husband. The coldness and selfishness of her logic is plainly exposed by Austen, as further ridicule of her greed in this situation. That Fanny Dashwood can confidently claim that the Dashwood women will be comfortably off with very little money, and their home taken from them, is obviously untrue. Fanny is certainly greedy in denying that Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters should have no need, while Fanny and her husband are depriving them of much of their former money and their home too. That John Dashwood finds his wife's argument "irresistible" shows how he relies on his wife to confirm any miserly tendencies he may have. She is even more selfish and uncaring than he is, which helps him to justify himself when he acts much the same. It is perhaps ironic that John Dashwood's wife brings out the worst in him rather than the best, and that they can be so miserly in the face of misfortune, but this same irony is a part of human nature

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/epilogue.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/The Brothers Karamazov/section_12_part_0.txt

The Brothers Karamazov.epilogue.chapter 1-chapter 3

epilogue

{"name": "Epilogue", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422052201/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-brothers-karamazov/study-guide/summary-epilogue", "summary": "Alyosha visits Katerina, where he finds Ivan feverish and asleep. Katerina tells Alyosha that they are planning to break Dmitri out of prison so he can flee the country, and she needs Alyosha's help. Despite the fact that this will entail bribes and lies, Alyosha agrees with one condition, that Katerina will visit poor Dmitri in prison. When Alyosha visits Dmitri, Dmitri is consumed with a need to repent. He wants to be redeemed through suffering, but he says he needs Grushenka to help him through this difficult time in his life. Alyosha excitedly tells Dmitri of their plans for his escape. Dmitri says he will go along with the plan, but he says he feels a strong desire to return to Russia one day. Katerina visits Dmitri, and they make their peace. Grushenka visits Dmitri, too, and when Katerina sees her, she apologizes to her, too. Grushenka, however, does not forgive Katerina for her actions in the courtroom, which had led to Dmitri's conviction. Ilusha dies. Alyosha goes to his funeral. He talks to all of Ilusha's friends and tells them to remember their friend. The boys all like him very much, and they cheer for their mentor and friend.", "analysis": "This denouement is about redemption. It is not so much about Dmitri's redemption, though he explains how he plans to begin a new life. It is not so much about Ivan's redemption, even though he is being resuscitated in Katerina's arms. This epilogue shows that children are the redemption of Russia. When Alyosha talks to the children, they cheer his hopeful words and ideas, and one can assume that they will go out into the world and incorporate them into their lives. The search for redemption is larger than individuals such as Dmitri or Ivan. When Fyodor dies without redeeming his wicked, licentious life, the most lasting consequence is that the next generation inherits his burdens and debts. His sons, voluntarily or involuntarily, have all learned from him and have lived in his shadow all their lives. If they extricate themselves from this encumbrance in their lifetime, it is a small triumph. If they can pass down hope to the next generation, however, this is the greatest contribution they can make to their country and to their fellow man. When Alyosha passes words of love down to the young boys, he is doing his part to ensure the future of Russia. Dostoevsky felt very strongly about his country, and he had deep feelings for it. When Dmitri is talking to Alyosha about fleeing to another country, he expresses his determination to return to Russia one day, because even if it has forsaken him, it is his country and he loves it. This novel begins as a story about family and ends as a story about country, a place where individuals and families can be inspired to lead better lives."}

EPILOGUE Chapter I. Plans For Mitya's Escape Very early, at nine o'clock in the morning, five days after the trial, Alyosha went to Katerina Ivanovna's to talk over a matter of great importance to both of them, and to give her a message. She sat and talked to him in the very room in which she had once received Grushenka. In the next room Ivan Fyodorovitch lay unconscious in a high fever. Katerina Ivanovna had immediately after the scene at the trial ordered the sick and unconscious man to be carried to her house, disregarding the inevitable gossip and general disapproval of the public. One of the two relations who lived with her had departed to Moscow immediately after the scene in court, the other remained. But if both had gone away, Katerina Ivanovna would have adhered to her resolution, and would have gone on nursing the sick man and sitting by him day and night. Varvinsky and Herzenstube were attending him. The famous doctor had gone back to Moscow, refusing to give an opinion as to the probable end of the illness. Though the doctors encouraged Katerina Ivanovna and Alyosha, it was evident that they could not yet give them positive hopes of recovery. Alyosha came to see his sick brother twice a day. But this time he had specially urgent business, and he foresaw how difficult it would be to approach the subject, yet he was in great haste. He had another engagement that could not be put off for that same morning, and there was need of haste. They had been talking for a quarter of an hour. Katerina Ivanovna was pale and terribly fatigued, yet at the same time in a state of hysterical excitement. She had a presentiment of the reason why Alyosha had come to her. "Don't worry about his decision," she said, with confident emphasis to Alyosha. "One way or another he is bound to come to it. He must escape. That unhappy man, that hero of honor and principle--not he, not Dmitri Fyodorovitch, but the man lying the other side of that door, who has sacrificed himself for his brother," Katya added, with flashing eyes--"told me the whole plan of escape long ago. You know he has already entered into negotiations.... I've told you something already.... You see, it will probably come off at the third _etape_ from here, when the party of prisoners is being taken to Siberia. Oh, it's a long way off yet. Ivan Fyodorovitch has already visited the superintendent of the third _etape_. But we don't know yet who will be in charge of the party, and it's impossible to find that out so long beforehand. To-morrow perhaps I will show you in detail the whole plan which Ivan Fyodorovitch left me on the eve of the trial in case of need.... That was when--do you remember?--you found us quarreling. He had just gone down-stairs, but seeing you I made him come back; do you remember? Do you know what we were quarreling about then?" "No, I don't," said Alyosha. "Of course he did not tell you. It was about that plan of escape. He had told me the main idea three days before, and we began quarreling about it at once and quarreled for three days. We quarreled because, when he told me that if Dmitri Fyodorovitch were convicted he would escape abroad with that creature, I felt furious at once--I can't tell you why, I don't know myself why.... Oh, of course, I was furious then about that creature, and that she, too, should go abroad with Dmitri!" Katerina Ivanovna exclaimed suddenly, her lips quivering with anger. "As soon as Ivan Fyodorovitch saw that I was furious about that woman, he instantly imagined I was jealous of Dmitri and that I still loved Dmitri. That is how our first quarrel began. I would not give an explanation, I could not ask forgiveness. I could not bear to think that such a man could suspect me of still loving that ... and when I myself had told him long before that I did not love Dmitri, that I loved no one but him! It was only resentment against that creature that made me angry with him. Three days later, on the evening you came, he brought me a sealed envelope, which I was to open at once, if anything happened to him. Oh, he foresaw his illness! He told me that the envelope contained the details of the escape, and that if he died or was taken dangerously ill, I was to save Mitya alone. Then he left me money, nearly ten thousand--those notes to which the prosecutor referred in his speech, having learnt from some one that he had sent them to be changed. I was tremendously impressed to find that Ivan Fyodorovitch had not given up his idea of saving his brother, and was confiding this plan of escape to me, though he was still jealous of me and still convinced that I loved Mitya. Oh, that was a sacrifice! No, you cannot understand the greatness of such self-sacrifice, Alexey Fyodorovitch. I wanted to fall at his feet in reverence, but I thought at once that he would take it only for my joy at the thought of Mitya's being saved (and he certainly would have imagined that!), and I was so exasperated at the mere possibility of such an unjust thought on his part that I lost my temper again, and instead of kissing his feet, flew into a fury again! Oh, I am unhappy! It's my character, my awful, unhappy character! Oh, you will see, I shall end by driving him, too, to abandon me for another with whom he can get on better, like Dmitri. But ... no, I could not bear it, I should kill myself. And when you came in then, and when I called to you and told him to come back, I was so enraged by the look of contempt and hatred he turned on me that--do you remember?--I cried out to you that it was he, he alone who had persuaded me that his brother Dmitri was a murderer! I said that malicious thing on purpose to wound him again. He had never, never persuaded me that his brother was a murderer. On the contrary, it was I who persuaded him! Oh, my vile temper was the cause of everything! I paved the way to that hideous scene at the trial. He wanted to show me that he was an honorable man, and that, even if I loved his brother, he would not ruin him for revenge or jealousy. So he came to the court ... I am the cause of it all, I alone am to blame!" Katya never had made such confessions to Alyosha before, and he felt that she was now at that stage of unbearable suffering when even the proudest heart painfully crushes its pride and falls vanquished by grief. Oh, Alyosha knew another terrible reason of her present misery, though she had carefully concealed it from him during those days since the trial; but it would have been for some reason too painful to him if she had been brought so low as to speak to him now about that. She was suffering for her "treachery" at the trial, and Alyosha felt that her conscience was impelling her to confess it to him, to him, Alyosha, with tears and cries and hysterical writhings on the floor. But he dreaded that moment and longed to spare her. It made the commission on which he had come even more difficult. He spoke of Mitya again. "It's all right, it's all right, don't be anxious about him!" she began again, sharply and stubbornly. "All that is only momentary, I know him, I know his heart only too well. You may be sure he will consent to escape. It's not as though it would be immediately; he will have time to make up his mind to it. Ivan Fyodorovitch will be well by that time and will manage it all himself, so that I shall have nothing to do with it. Don't be anxious; he will consent to run away. He has agreed already: do you suppose he would give up that creature? And they won't let her go to him, so he is bound to escape. It's you he's most afraid of, he is afraid you won't approve of his escape on moral grounds. But you must generously _allow_ it, if your sanction is so necessary," Katya added viciously. She paused and smiled. "He talks about some hymn," she went on again, "some cross he has to bear, some duty; I remember Ivan Fyodorovitch told me a great deal about it, and if you knew how he talked!" Katya cried suddenly, with feeling she could not repress, "if you knew how he loved that wretched man at the moment he told me, and how he hated him, perhaps, at the same moment. And I heard his story and his tears with sneering disdain. Brute! Yes, I am a brute. I am responsible for his fever. But that man in prison is incapable of suffering," Katya concluded irritably. "Can such a man suffer? Men like him never suffer!" There was a note of hatred and contemptuous repulsion in her words. And yet it was she who had betrayed him. "Perhaps because she feels how she's wronged him she hates him at moments," Alyosha thought to himself. He hoped that it was only "at moments." In Katya's last words he detected a challenging note, but he did not take it up. "I sent for you this morning to make you promise to persuade him yourself. Or do you, too, consider that to escape would be dishonorable, cowardly, or something ... unchristian, perhaps?" Katya added, even more defiantly. "Oh, no. I'll tell him everything," muttered Alyosha. "He asks you to come and see him to-day," he blurted out suddenly, looking her steadily in the face. She started, and drew back a little from him on the sofa. "Me? Can that be?" she faltered, turning pale. "It can and ought to be!" Alyosha began emphatically, growing more animated. "He needs you particularly just now. I would not have opened the subject and worried you, if it were not necessary. He is ill, he is beside himself, he keeps asking for you. It is not to be reconciled with you that he wants you, but only that you would go and show yourself at his door. So much has happened to him since that day. He realizes that he has injured you beyond all reckoning. He does not ask your forgiveness--'It's impossible to forgive me,' he says himself--but only that you would show yourself in his doorway." "It's so sudden...." faltered Katya. "I've had a presentiment all these days that you would come with that message. I knew he would ask me to come. It's impossible!" "Let it be impossible, but do it. Only think, he realizes for the first time how he has wounded you, the first time in his life; he had never grasped it before so fully. He said, 'If she refuses to come I shall be unhappy all my life.' Do you hear? though he is condemned to penal servitude for twenty years, he is still planning to be happy--is not that piteous? Think--you must visit him; though he is ruined, he is innocent," broke like a challenge from Alyosha. "His hands are clean, there is no blood on them! For the sake of his infinite sufferings in the future visit him now. Go, greet him on his way into the darkness--stand at his door, that is all.... You ought to do it, you ought to!" Alyosha concluded, laying immense stress on the word "ought." "I ought to ... but I cannot...." Katya moaned. "He will look at me.... I can't." "Your eyes ought to meet. How will you live all your life, if you don't make up your mind to do it now?" "Better suffer all my life." "You ought to go, you ought to go," Alyosha repeated with merciless emphasis. "But why to-day, why at once?... I can't leave our patient--" "You can for a moment. It will only be a moment. If you don't come, he will be in delirium by to-night. I would not tell you a lie; have pity on him!" "Have pity on _me!_" Katya said, with bitter reproach, and she burst into tears. "Then you will come," said Alyosha firmly, seeing her tears. "I'll go and tell him you will come directly." "No, don't tell him so on any account," cried Katya in alarm. "I will come, but don't tell him beforehand, for perhaps I may go, but not go in.... I don't know yet--" Her voice failed her. She gasped for breath. Alyosha got up to go. "And what if I meet any one?" she said suddenly, in a low voice, turning white again. "That's just why you must go now, to avoid meeting any one. There will be no one there, I can tell you that for certain. We will expect you," he concluded emphatically, and went out of the room. Chapter II. For A Moment The Lie Becomes Truth He hurried to the hospital where Mitya was lying now. The day after his fate was determined, Mitya had fallen ill with nervous fever, and was sent to the prison division of the town hospital. But at the request of several persons (Alyosha, Madame Hohlakov, Lise, etc.), Doctor Varvinsky had put Mitya not with other prisoners, but in a separate little room, the one where Smerdyakov had been. It is true that there was a sentinel at the other end of the corridor, and there was a grating over the window, so that Varvinsky could be at ease about the indulgence he had shown, which was not quite legal, indeed; but he was a kind-hearted and compassionate young man. He knew how hard it would be for a man like Mitya to pass at once so suddenly into the society of robbers and murderers, and that he must get used to it by degrees. The visits of relations and friends were informally sanctioned by the doctor and overseer, and even by the police captain. But only Alyosha and Grushenka had visited Mitya. Rakitin had tried to force his way in twice, but Mitya persistently begged Varvinsky not to admit him. Alyosha found him sitting on his bed in a hospital dressing-gown, rather feverish, with a towel, soaked in vinegar and water, on his head. He looked at Alyosha as he came in with an undefined expression, but there was a shade of something like dread discernible in it. He had become terribly preoccupied since the trial; sometimes he would be silent for half an hour together, and seemed to be pondering something heavily and painfully, oblivious of everything about him. If he roused himself from his brooding and began to talk, he always spoke with a kind of abruptness and never of what he really wanted to say. He looked sometimes with a face of suffering at his brother. He seemed to be more at ease with Grushenka than with Alyosha. It is true, he scarcely spoke to her at all, but as soon as she came in, his whole face lighted up with joy. Alyosha sat down beside him on the bed in silence. This time Mitya was waiting for Alyosha in suspense, but he did not dare ask him a question. He felt it almost unthinkable that Katya would consent to come, and at the same time he felt that if she did not come, something inconceivable would happen. Alyosha understood his feelings. "Trifon Borissovitch," Mitya began nervously, "has pulled his whole inn to pieces, I am told. He's taken up the flooring, pulled apart the planks, split up all the gallery, I am told. He is seeking treasure all the time--the fifteen hundred roubles which the prosecutor said I'd hidden there. He began playing these tricks, they say, as soon as he got home. Serve him right, the swindler! The guard here told me yesterday; he comes from there." "Listen," began Alyosha. "She will come, but I don't know when. Perhaps to-day, perhaps in a few days, that I can't tell. But she will come, she will, that's certain." Mitya started, would have said something, but was silent. The news had a tremendous effect on him. It was evident that he would have liked terribly to know what had been said, but he was again afraid to ask. Something cruel and contemptuous from Katya would have cut him like a knife at that moment. "This was what she said among other things; that I must be sure to set your conscience at rest about escaping. If Ivan is not well by then she will see to it all herself." "You've spoken of that already," Mitya observed musingly. "And you have repeated it to Grusha," observed Alyosha. "Yes," Mitya admitted. "She won't come this morning." He looked timidly at his brother. "She won't come till the evening. When I told her yesterday that Katya was taking measures, she was silent, but she set her mouth. She only whispered, 'Let her!' She understood that it was important. I did not dare to try her further. She understands now, I think, that Katya no longer cares for me, but loves Ivan." "Does she?" broke from Alyosha. "Perhaps she does not. Only she is not coming this morning," Mitya hastened to explain again; "I asked her to do something for me. You know, Ivan is superior to all of us. He ought to live, not us. He will recover." "Would you believe it, though Katya is alarmed about him, she scarcely doubts of his recovery," said Alyosha. "That means that she is convinced he will die. It's because she is frightened she's so sure he will get well." "Ivan has a strong constitution, and I, too, believe there's every hope that he will get well," Alyosha observed anxiously. "Yes, he will get well. But she is convinced that he will die. She has a great deal of sorrow to bear..." A silence followed. A grave anxiety was fretting Mitya. "Alyosha, I love Grusha terribly," he said suddenly in a shaking voice, full of tears. "They won't let her go out there to you," Alyosha put in at once. "And there is something else I wanted to tell you," Mitya went on, with a sudden ring in his voice. "If they beat me on the way or out there, I won't submit to it. I shall kill some one, and shall be shot for it. And this will be going on for twenty years! They speak to me rudely as it is. I've been lying here all night, passing judgment on myself. I am not ready! I am not able to resign myself. I wanted to sing a 'hymn'; but if a guard speaks rudely to me, I have not the strength to bear it. For Grusha I would bear anything ... anything except blows.... But she won't be allowed to come there." Alyosha smiled gently. "Listen, brother, once for all," he said. "This is what I think about it. And you know that I would not tell you a lie. Listen: you are not ready, and such a cross is not for you. What's more, you don't need such a martyr's cross when you are not ready for it. If you had murdered our father, it would grieve me that you should reject your punishment. But you are innocent, and such a cross is too much for you. You wanted to make yourself another man by suffering. I say, only remember that other man always, all your life and wherever you go; and that will be enough for you. Your refusal of that great cross will only serve to make you feel all your life an even greater duty, and that constant feeling will do more to make you a new man, perhaps, than if you went there. For there you would not endure it and would repine, and perhaps at last would say: 'I am quits.' The lawyer was right about that. Such heavy burdens are not for all men. For some they are impossible. These are my thoughts about it, if you want them so much. If other men would have to answer for your escape, officers or soldiers, then I would not have 'allowed' you," smiled Alyosha. "But they declare--the superintendent of that _etape_ told Ivan himself--that if it's well managed there will be no great inquiry, and that they can get off easily. Of course, bribing is dishonest even in such a case, but I can't undertake to judge about it, because if Ivan and Katya commissioned me to act for you, I know I should go and give bribes. I must tell you the truth. And so I can't judge of your own action. But let me assure you that I shall never condemn you. And it would be a strange thing if I could judge you in this. Now I think I've gone into everything." "But I do condemn myself!" cried Mitya. "I shall escape, that was settled apart from you; could Mitya Karamazov do anything but run away? But I shall condemn myself, and I will pray for my sin for ever. That's how the Jesuits talk, isn't it? Just as we are doing?" "Yes." Alyosha smiled gently. "I love you for always telling the whole truth and never hiding anything," cried Mitya, with a joyful laugh. "So I've caught my Alyosha being Jesuitical. I must kiss you for that. Now listen to the rest; I'll open the other side of my heart to you. This is what I planned and decided. If I run away, even with money and a passport, and even to America, I should be cheered up by the thought that I am not running away for pleasure, not for happiness, but to another exile as bad, perhaps, as Siberia. It is as bad, Alyosha, it is! I hate that America, damn it, already. Even though Grusha will be with me. Just look at her; is she an American? She is Russian, Russian to the marrow of her bones; she will be homesick for the mother country, and I shall see every hour that she is suffering for my sake, that she has taken up that cross for me. And what harm has she done? And how shall I, too, put up with the rabble out there, though they may be better than I, every one of them? I hate that America already! And though they may be wonderful at machinery, every one of them, damn them, they are not of my soul. I love Russia, Alyosha, I love the Russian God, though I am a scoundrel myself. I shall choke there!" he exclaimed, his eyes suddenly flashing. His voice was trembling with tears. "So this is what I've decided, Alyosha, listen," he began again, mastering his emotion. "As soon as I arrive there with Grusha, we will set to work at once on the land, in solitude, somewhere very remote, with wild bears. There must be some remote parts even there. I am told there are still Redskins there, somewhere, on the edge of the horizon. So to the country of the _Last of the Mohicans_, and there we'll tackle the grammar at once, Grusha and I. Work and grammar--that's how we'll spend three years. And by that time we shall speak English like any Englishman. And as soon as we've learnt it--good-by to America! We'll run here to Russia as American citizens. Don't be uneasy--we would not come to this little town. We'd hide somewhere, a long way off, in the north or in the south. I shall be changed by that time, and she will, too, in America. The doctors shall make me some sort of wart on my face--what's the use of their being so mechanical!--or else I'll put out one eye, let my beard grow a yard, and I shall turn gray, fretting for Russia. I dare say they won't recognize us. And if they do, let them send us to Siberia. I don't care. It will show it's our fate. We'll work on the land here, too, somewhere in the wilds, and I'll make up as an American all my life. But we shall die on our own soil. That's my plan, and it shan't be altered. Do you approve?" "Yes," said Alyosha, not wanting to contradict him. Mitya paused for a minute and said suddenly: "And how they worked it up at the trial! Didn't they work it up!" "If they had not, you would have been convicted just the same," said Alyosha, with a sigh. "Yes, people are sick of me here! God bless them, but it's hard," Mitya moaned miserably. Again there was silence for a minute. "Alyosha, put me out of my misery at once!" he exclaimed suddenly. "Tell me, is she coming now, or not? Tell me? What did she say? How did she say it?" "She said she would come, but I don't know whether she will come to-day. It's hard for her, you know," Alyosha looked timidly at his brother. "I should think it is hard for her! Alyosha, it will drive me out of my mind. Grusha keeps looking at me. She understands. My God, calm my heart: what is it I want? I want Katya! Do I understand what I want? It's the headstrong, evil Karamazov spirit! No, I am not fit for suffering. I am a scoundrel, that's all one can say." "Here she is!" cried Alyosha. At that instant Katya appeared in the doorway. For a moment she stood still, gazing at Mitya with a dazed expression. He leapt impulsively to his feet, and a scared look came into his face. He turned pale, but a timid, pleading smile appeared on his lips at once, and with an irresistible impulse he held out both hands to Katya. Seeing it, she flew impetuously to him. She seized him by the hands, and almost by force made him sit down on the bed. She sat down beside him, and still keeping his hands pressed them violently. Several times they both strove to speak, but stopped short and again gazed speechless with a strange smile, their eyes fastened on one another. So passed two minutes. "Have you forgiven me?" Mitya faltered at last, and at the same moment turning to Alyosha, his face working with joy, he cried, "Do you hear what I am asking, do you hear?" "That's what I loved you for, that you are generous at heart!" broke from Katya. "My forgiveness is no good to you, nor yours to me; whether you forgive me or not, you will always be a sore place in my heart, and I in yours--so it must be...." She stopped to take breath. "What have I come for?" she began again with nervous haste: "to embrace your feet, to press your hands like this, till it hurts--you remember how in Moscow I used to squeeze them--to tell you again that you are my god, my joy, to tell you that I love you madly," she moaned in anguish, and suddenly pressed his hand greedily to her lips. Tears streamed from her eyes. Alyosha stood speechless and confounded; he had never expected what he was seeing. "Love is over, Mitya!" Katya began again, "but the past is painfully dear to me. Know that you will always be so. But now let what might have been come true for one minute," she faltered, with a drawn smile, looking into his face joyfully again. "You love another woman, and I love another man, and yet I shall love you for ever, and you will love me; do you know that? Do you hear? Love me, love me all your life!" she cried, with a quiver almost of menace in her voice. "I shall love you, and ... do you know, Katya," Mitya began, drawing a deep breath at each word, "do you know, five days ago, that same evening, I loved you.... When you fell down and were carried out ... All my life! So it will be, so it will always be--" So they murmured to one another frantic words, almost meaningless, perhaps not even true, but at that moment it was all true, and they both believed what they said implicitly. "Katya," cried Mitya suddenly, "do you believe I murdered him? I know you don't believe it now, but then ... when you gave evidence.... Surely, surely you did not believe it!" "I did not believe it even then. I've never believed it. I hated you, and for a moment I persuaded myself. While I was giving evidence I persuaded myself and believed it, but when I'd finished speaking I left off believing it at once. Don't doubt that! I have forgotten that I came here to punish myself," she said, with a new expression in her voice, quite unlike the loving tones of a moment before. "Woman, yours is a heavy burden," broke, as it were, involuntarily from Mitya. "Let me go," she whispered. "I'll come again. It's more than I can bear now." She was getting up from her place, but suddenly uttered a loud scream and staggered back. Grushenka walked suddenly and noiselessly into the room. No one had expected her. Katya moved swiftly to the door, but when she reached Grushenka, she stopped suddenly, turned as white as chalk and moaned softly, almost in a whisper: "Forgive me!" Grushenka stared at her and, pausing for an instant, in a vindictive, venomous voice, answered: "We are full of hatred, my girl, you and I! We are both full of hatred! As though we could forgive one another! Save him, and I'll worship you all my life." "You won't forgive her!" cried Mitya, with frantic reproach. "Don't be anxious, I'll save him for you!" Katya whispered rapidly, and she ran out of the room. "And you could refuse to forgive her when she begged your forgiveness herself?" Mitya exclaimed bitterly again. "Mitya, don't dare to blame her; you have no right to!" Alyosha cried hotly. "Her proud lips spoke, not her heart," Grushenka brought out in a tone of disgust. "If she saves you I'll forgive her everything--" She stopped speaking, as though suppressing something. She could not yet recover herself. She had come in, as appeared afterwards, accidentally, with no suspicion of what she would meet. "Alyosha, run after her!" Mitya cried to his brother; "tell her ... I don't know ... don't let her go away like this!" "I'll come to you again at nightfall," said Alyosha, and he ran after Katya. He overtook her outside the hospital grounds. She was walking fast, but as soon as Alyosha caught her up she said quickly: "No, before that woman I can't punish myself! I asked her forgiveness because I wanted to punish myself to the bitter end. She would not forgive me.... I like her for that!" she added, in an unnatural voice, and her eyes flashed with fierce resentment. "My brother did not expect this in the least," muttered Alyosha. "He was sure she would not come--" "No doubt. Let us leave that," she snapped. "Listen: I can't go with you to the funeral now. I've sent them flowers. I think they still have money. If necessary, tell them I'll never abandon them.... Now leave me, leave me, please. You are late as it is--the bells are ringing for the service.... Leave me, please!" Chapter III. Ilusha's Funeral. The Speech At The Stone He really was late. They had waited for him and had already decided to bear the pretty flower-decked little coffin to the church without him. It was the coffin of poor little Ilusha. He had died two days after Mitya was sentenced. At the gate of the house Alyosha was met by the shouts of the boys, Ilusha's schoolfellows. They had all been impatiently expecting him and were glad that he had come at last. There were about twelve of them, they all had their school-bags or satchels on their shoulders. "Father will cry, be with father," Ilusha had told them as he lay dying, and the boys remembered it. Kolya Krassotkin was the foremost of them. "How glad I am you've come, Karamazov!" he cried, holding out his hand to Alyosha. "It's awful here. It's really horrible to see it. Snegiryov is not drunk, we know for a fact he's had nothing to drink to-day, but he seems as if he were drunk ... I am always manly, but this is awful. Karamazov, if I am not keeping you, one question before you go in?" "What is it, Kolya?" said Alyosha. "Is your brother innocent or guilty? Was it he killed your father or was it the valet? As you say, so it will be. I haven't slept for the last four nights for thinking of it." "The valet killed him, my brother is innocent," answered Alyosha. "That's what I said," cried Smurov. "So he will perish an innocent victim!" exclaimed Kolya; "though he is ruined he is happy! I could envy him!" "What do you mean? How can you? Why?" cried Alyosha surprised. "Oh, if I, too, could sacrifice myself some day for truth!" said Kolya with enthusiasm. "But not in such a cause, not with such disgrace and such horror!" said Alyosha. "Of course ... I should like to die for all humanity, and as for disgrace, I don't care about that--our names may perish. I respect your brother!" "And so do I!" the boy, who had once declared that he knew who had founded Troy, cried suddenly and unexpectedly, and he blushed up to his ears like a peony as he had done on that occasion. Alyosha went into the room. Ilusha lay with his hands folded and his eyes closed in a blue coffin with a white frill round it. His thin face was hardly changed at all, and strange to say there was no smell of decay from the corpse. The expression of his face was serious and, as it were, thoughtful. His hands, crossed over his breast, looked particularly beautiful, as though chiseled in marble. There were flowers in his hands and the coffin, inside and out, was decked with flowers, which had been sent early in the morning by Lise Hohlakov. But there were flowers too from Katerina Ivanovna, and when Alyosha opened the door, the captain had a bunch in his trembling hands and was strewing them again over his dear boy. He scarcely glanced at Alyosha when he came in, and he would not look at any one, even at his crazy weeping wife, "mamma," who kept trying to stand on her crippled legs to get a nearer look at her dead boy. Nina had been pushed in her chair by the boys close up to the coffin. She sat with her head pressed to it and she too was no doubt quietly weeping. Snegiryov's face looked eager, yet bewildered and exasperated. There was something crazy about his gestures and the words that broke from him. "Old man, dear old man!" he exclaimed every minute, gazing at Ilusha. It was his habit to call Ilusha "old man," as a term of affection when he was alive. "Father, give me a flower, too; take that white one out of his hand and give it me," the crazy mother begged, whimpering. Either because the little white rose in Ilusha's hand had caught her fancy or that she wanted one from his hand to keep in memory of him, she moved restlessly, stretching out her hands for the flower. "I won't give it to any one, I won't give you anything," Snegiryov cried callously. "They are his flowers, not yours! Everything is his, nothing is yours!" "Father, give mother a flower!" said Nina, lifting her face wet with tears. "I won't give away anything and to her less than any one! She didn't love Ilusha. She took away his little cannon and he gave it to her," the captain broke into loud sobs at the thought of how Ilusha had given up his cannon to his mother. The poor, crazy creature was bathed in noiseless tears, hiding her face in her hands. The boys, seeing that the father would not leave the coffin and that it was time to carry it out, stood round it in a close circle and began to lift it up. "I don't want him to be buried in the churchyard," Snegiryov wailed suddenly; "I'll bury him by the stone, by our stone! Ilusha told me to. I won't let him be carried out!" He had been saying for the last three days that he would bury him by the stone, but Alyosha, Krassotkin, the landlady, her sister and all the boys interfered. "What an idea, bury him by an unholy stone, as though he had hanged himself!" the old landlady said sternly. "There in the churchyard the ground has been crossed. He'll be prayed for there. One can hear the singing in church and the deacon reads so plainly and verbally that it will reach him every time just as though it were read over his grave." At last the captain made a gesture of despair as though to say, "Take him where you will." The boys raised the coffin, but as they passed the mother, they stopped for a moment and lowered it that she might say good- by to Ilusha. But on seeing that precious little face, which for the last three days she had only looked at from a distance, she trembled all over and her gray head began twitching spasmodically over the coffin. "Mother, make the sign of the cross over him, give him your blessing, kiss him," Nina cried to her. But her head still twitched like an automaton and with a face contorted with bitter grief she began, without a word, beating her breast with her fist. They carried the coffin past her. Nina pressed her lips to her brother's for the last time as they bore the coffin by her. As Alyosha went out of the house he begged the landlady to look after those who were left behind, but she interrupted him before he had finished. "To be sure, I'll stay with them, we are Christians, too." The old woman wept as she said it. They had not far to carry the coffin to the church, not more than three hundred paces. It was a still, clear day, with a slight frost. The church bells were still ringing. Snegiryov ran fussing and distracted after the coffin, in his short old summer overcoat, with his head bare and his soft, old, wide-brimmed hat in his hand. He seemed in a state of bewildered anxiety. At one minute he stretched out his hand to support the head of the coffin and only hindered the bearers, at another he ran alongside and tried to find a place for himself there. A flower fell on the snow and he rushed to pick it up as though everything in the world depended on the loss of that flower. "And the crust of bread, we've forgotten the crust!" he cried suddenly in dismay. But the boys reminded him at once that he had taken the crust of bread already and that it was in his pocket. He instantly pulled it out and was reassured. "Ilusha told me to, Ilusha," he explained at once to Alyosha. "I was sitting by him one night and he suddenly told me: 'Father, when my grave is filled up crumble a piece of bread on it so that the sparrows may fly down, I shall hear and it will cheer me up not to be lying alone.' " "That's a good thing," said Alyosha, "we must often take some." "Every day, every day!" said the captain quickly, seeming cheered at the thought. They reached the church at last and set the coffin in the middle of it. The boys surrounded it and remained reverently standing so, all through the service. It was an old and rather poor church; many of the ikons were without settings; but such churches are the best for praying in. During the mass Snegiryov became somewhat calmer, though at times he had outbursts of the same unconscious and, as it were, incoherent anxiety. At one moment he went up to the coffin to set straight the cover or the wreath, when a candle fell out of the candlestick he rushed to replace it and was a fearful time fumbling over it, then he subsided and stood quietly by the coffin with a look of blank uneasiness and perplexity. After the Epistle he suddenly whispered to Alyosha, who was standing beside him, that the Epistle had not been read properly but did not explain what he meant. During the prayer, "Like the Cherubim," he joined in the singing but did not go on to the end. Falling on his knees, he pressed his forehead to the stone floor and lay so for a long while. At last came the funeral service itself and candles were distributed. The distracted father began fussing about again, but the touching and impressive funeral prayers moved and roused his soul. He seemed suddenly to shrink together and broke into rapid, short sobs, which he tried at first to smother, but at last he sobbed aloud. When they began taking leave of the dead and closing the coffin, he flung his arms about, as though he would not allow them to cover Ilusha, and began greedily and persistently kissing his dead boy on the lips. At last they succeeded in persuading him to come away from the step, but suddenly he impulsively stretched out his hand and snatched a few flowers from the coffin. He looked at them and a new idea seemed to dawn upon him, so that he apparently forgot his grief for a minute. Gradually he seemed to sink into brooding and did not resist when the coffin was lifted up and carried to the grave. It was an expensive one in the churchyard close to the church, Katerina Ivanovna had paid for it. After the customary rites the grave- diggers lowered the coffin. Snegiryov with his flowers in his hands bent down so low over the open grave that the boys caught hold of his coat in alarm and pulled him back. He did not seem to understand fully what was happening. When they began filling up the grave, he suddenly pointed anxiously at the falling earth and began trying to say something, but no one could make out what he meant, and he stopped suddenly. Then he was reminded that he must crumble the bread and he was awfully excited, snatched up the bread and began pulling it to pieces and flinging the morsels on the grave. "Come, fly down, birds, fly down, sparrows!" he muttered anxiously. One of the boys observed that it was awkward for him to crumble the bread with the flowers in his hands and suggested he should give them to some one to hold for a time. But he would not do this and seemed indeed suddenly alarmed for his flowers, as though they wanted to take them from him altogether. And after looking at the grave, and as it were, satisfying himself that everything had been done and the bread had been crumbled, he suddenly, to the surprise of every one, turned, quite composedly even, and made his way homewards. But his steps became more and more hurried, he almost ran. The boys and Alyosha kept up with him. "The flowers are for mamma, the flowers are for mamma! I was unkind to mamma," he began exclaiming suddenly. Some one called to him to put on his hat as it was cold. But he flung the hat in the snow as though he were angry and kept repeating, "I won't have the hat, I won't have the hat." Smurov picked it up and carried it after him. All the boys were crying, and Kolya and the boy who discovered about Troy most of all. Though Smurov, with the captain's hat in his hand, was crying bitterly too, he managed, as he ran, to snatch up a piece of red brick that lay on the snow of the path, to fling it at the flock of sparrows that was flying by. He missed them, of course, and went on crying as he ran. Half-way, Snegiryov suddenly stopped, stood still for half a minute, as though struck by something, and suddenly turning back to the church, ran towards the deserted grave. But the boys instantly overtook him and caught hold of him on all sides. Then he fell helpless on the snow as though he had been knocked down, and struggling, sobbing, and wailing, he began crying out, "Ilusha, old man, dear old man!" Alyosha and Kolya tried to make him get up, soothing and persuading him. "Captain, give over, a brave man must show fortitude," muttered Kolya. "You'll spoil the flowers," said Alyosha, "and mamma is expecting them, she is sitting crying because you would not give her any before. Ilusha's little bed is still there--" "Yes, yes, mamma!" Snegiryov suddenly recollected, "they'll take away the bed, they'll take it away," he added as though alarmed that they really would. He jumped up and ran homewards again. But it was not far off and they all arrived together. Snegiryov opened the door hurriedly and called to his wife with whom he had so cruelly quarreled just before: "Mamma, poor crippled darling, Ilusha has sent you these flowers," he cried, holding out to her a little bunch of flowers that had been frozen and broken while he was struggling in the snow. But at that instant he saw in the corner, by the little bed, Ilusha's little boots, which the landlady had put tidily side by side. Seeing the old, patched, rusty- looking, stiff boots he flung up his hands and rushed to them, fell on his knees, snatched up one boot and, pressing his lips to it, began kissing it greedily, crying, "Ilusha, old man, dear old man, where are your little feet?" "Where have you taken him away? Where have you taken him?" the lunatic cried in a heartrending voice. Nina, too, broke into sobs. Kolya ran out of the room, the boys followed him. At last Alyosha too went out. "Let them weep," he said to Kolya, "it's no use trying to comfort them just now. Let us wait a minute and then go back." "No, it's no use, it's awful," Kolya assented. "Do you know, Karamazov," he dropped his voice so that no one could hear them, "I feel dreadfully sad, and if it were only possible to bring him back, I'd give anything in the world to do it." "Ah, so would I," said Alyosha. "What do you think, Karamazov? Had we better come back here to-night? He'll be drunk, you know." "Perhaps he will. Let us come together, you and I, that will be enough, to spend an hour with them, with the mother and Nina. If we all come together we shall remind them of everything again," Alyosha suggested. "The landlady is laying the table for them now--there'll be a funeral dinner or something, the priest is coming; shall we go back to it, Karamazov?" "Of course," said Alyosha. "It's all so strange, Karamazov, such sorrow and then pancakes after it, it all seems so unnatural in our religion." "They are going to have salmon, too," the boy who had discovered about Troy observed in a loud voice. "I beg you most earnestly, Kartashov, not to interrupt again with your idiotic remarks, especially when one is not talking to you and doesn't care to know whether you exist or not!" Kolya snapped out irritably. The boy flushed crimson but did not dare to reply. Meantime they were strolling slowly along the path and suddenly Smurov exclaimed: "There's Ilusha's stone, under which they wanted to bury him." They all stood still by the big stone. Alyosha looked and the whole picture of what Snegiryov had described to him that day, how Ilusha, weeping and hugging his father, had cried, "Father, father, how he insulted you," rose at once before his imagination. A sudden impulse seemed to come into his soul. With a serious and earnest expression he looked from one to another of the bright, pleasant faces of Ilusha's schoolfellows, and suddenly said to them: "Boys, I should like to say one word to you, here at this place." The boys stood round him and at once bent attentive and expectant eyes upon him. "Boys, we shall soon part. I shall be for some time with my two brothers, of whom one is going to Siberia and the other is lying at death's door. But soon I shall leave this town, perhaps for a long time, so we shall part. Let us make a compact here, at Ilusha's stone, that we will never forget Ilusha and one another. And whatever happens to us later in life, if we don't meet for twenty years afterwards, let us always remember how we buried the poor boy at whom we once threw stones, do you remember, by the bridge? and afterwards we all grew so fond of him. He was a fine boy, a kind-hearted, brave boy, he felt for his father's honor and resented the cruel insult to him and stood up for him. And so in the first place, we will remember him, boys, all our lives. And even if we are occupied with most important things, if we attain to honor or fall into great misfortune--still let us remember how good it was once here, when we were all together, united by a good and kind feeling which made us, for the time we were loving that poor boy, better perhaps than we are. My little doves--let me call you so, for you are very like them, those pretty blue birds, at this minute as I look at your good dear faces. My dear children, perhaps you won't understand what I am saying to you, because I often speak very unintelligibly, but you'll remember it all the same and will agree with my words some time. You must know that there is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and good for life in the future than some good memory, especially a memory of childhood, of home. People talk to you a great deal about your education, but some good, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education. If a man carries many such memories with him into life, he is safe to the end of his days, and if one has only one good memory left in one's heart, even that may sometime be the means of saving us. Perhaps we may even grow wicked later on, may be unable to refrain from a bad action, may laugh at men's tears and at those people who say as Kolya did just now, 'I want to suffer for all men,' and may even jeer spitefully at such people. But however bad we may become--which God forbid--yet, when we recall how we buried Ilusha, how we loved him in his last days, and how we have been talking like friends all together, at this stone, the cruelest and most mocking of us--if we do become so--will not dare to laugh inwardly at having been kind and good at this moment! What's more, perhaps, that one memory may keep him from great evil and he will reflect and say, 'Yes, I was good and brave and honest then!' Let him laugh to himself, that's no matter, a man often laughs at what's good and kind. That's only from thoughtlessness. But I assure you, boys, that as he laughs he will say at once in his heart, 'No, I do wrong to laugh, for that's not a thing to laugh at.' " "That will be so, I understand you, Karamazov!" cried Kolya, with flashing eyes. The boys were excited and they, too, wanted to say something, but they restrained themselves, looking with intentness and emotion at the speaker. "I say this in case we become bad," Alyosha went on, "but there's no reason why we should become bad, is there, boys? Let us be, first and above all, kind, then honest and then let us never forget each other! I say that again. I give you my word for my part that I'll never forget one of you. Every face looking at me now I shall remember even for thirty years. Just now Kolya said to Kartashov that we did not care to know whether he exists or not. But I cannot forget that Kartashov exists and that he is not blushing now as he did when he discovered the founders of Troy, but is looking at me with his jolly, kind, dear little eyes. Boys, my dear boys, let us all be generous and brave like Ilusha, clever, brave and generous like Kolya (though he will be ever so much cleverer when he is grown up), and let us all be as modest, as clever and sweet as Kartashov. But why am I talking about those two? You are all dear to me, boys, from this day forth, I have a place in my heart for you all, and I beg you to keep a place in your hearts for me! Well, and who has united us in this kind, good feeling which we shall remember and intend to remember all our lives? Who, if not Ilusha, the good boy, the dear boy, precious to us for ever! Let us never forget him. May his memory live for ever in our hearts from this time forth!" "Yes, yes, for ever, for ever!" the boys cried in their ringing voices, with softened faces. "Let us remember his face and his clothes and his poor little boots, his coffin and his unhappy, sinful father, and how boldly he stood up for him alone against the whole school." "We will remember, we will remember," cried the boys. "He was brave, he was good!" "Ah, how I loved him!" exclaimed Kolya. "Ah, children, ah, dear friends, don't be afraid of life! How good life is when one does something good and just!" "Yes, yes," the boys repeated enthusiastically. "Karamazov, we love you!" a voice, probably Kartashov's, cried impulsively. "We love you, we love you!" they all caught it up. There were tears in the eyes of many of them. "Hurrah for Karamazov!" Kolya shouted ecstatically. "And may the dead boy's memory live for ever!" Alyosha added again with feeling. "For ever!" the boys chimed in again. "Karamazov," cried Kolya, "can it be true what's taught us in religion, that we shall all rise again from the dead and shall live and see each other again, all, Ilusha too?" "Certainly we shall all rise again, certainly we shall see each other and shall tell each other with joy and gladness all that has happened!" Alyosha answered, half laughing, half enthusiastic. "Ah, how splendid it will be!" broke from Kolya. "Well, now we will finish talking and go to his funeral dinner. Don't be put out at our eating pancakes--it's a very old custom and there's something nice in that!" laughed Alyosha. "Well, let us go! And now we go hand in hand." "And always so, all our lives hand in hand! Hurrah for Karamazov!" Kolya cried once more rapturously, and once more the boys took up his exclamation: "Hurrah for Karamazov!" THE END FOOTNOTES 1 In Russian, "silen." 2 A proverbial expression in Russia. 3 Grushenka. 4 i.e. setter dog. 5 Probably the public event was the Decabrist plot against the Tsar, of December 1825, in which the most distinguished men in Russia were concerned.--TRANSLATOR'S NOTE. 6 When a monk's body is carried out from the cell to the church and from the church to the graveyard, the canticle "What earthly joy..." is sung. If the deceased was a priest as well as a monk the canticle "Our Helper and Defender" is sung instead. 7 i.e. a chime of bells. 8 Literally: "Did you get off with a long nose made at you?"--a proverbial expression in Russia for failure. 9 Gogol is meant.

Epilogue

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422052201/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-brothers-karamazov/study-guide/summary-epilogue

Alyosha visits Katerina, where he finds Ivan feverish and asleep. Katerina tells Alyosha that they are planning to break Dmitri out of prison so he can flee the country, and she needs Alyosha's help. Despite the fact that this will entail bribes and lies, Alyosha agrees with one condition, that Katerina will visit poor Dmitri in prison. When Alyosha visits Dmitri, Dmitri is consumed with a need to repent. He wants to be redeemed through suffering, but he says he needs Grushenka to help him through this difficult time in his life. Alyosha excitedly tells Dmitri of their plans for his escape. Dmitri says he will go along with the plan, but he says he feels a strong desire to return to Russia one day. Katerina visits Dmitri, and they make their peace. Grushenka visits Dmitri, too, and when Katerina sees her, she apologizes to her, too. Grushenka, however, does not forgive Katerina for her actions in the courtroom, which had led to Dmitri's conviction. Ilusha dies. Alyosha goes to his funeral. He talks to all of Ilusha's friends and tells them to remember their friend. The boys all like him very much, and they cheer for their mentor and friend.

This denouement is about redemption. It is not so much about Dmitri's redemption, though he explains how he plans to begin a new life. It is not so much about Ivan's redemption, even though he is being resuscitated in Katerina's arms. This epilogue shows that children are the redemption of Russia. When Alyosha talks to the children, they cheer his hopeful words and ideas, and one can assume that they will go out into the world and incorporate them into their lives. The search for redemption is larger than individuals such as Dmitri or Ivan. When Fyodor dies without redeeming his wicked, licentious life, the most lasting consequence is that the next generation inherits his burdens and debts. His sons, voluntarily or involuntarily, have all learned from him and have lived in his shadow all their lives. If they extricate themselves from this encumbrance in their lifetime, it is a small triumph. If they can pass down hope to the next generation, however, this is the greatest contribution they can make to their country and to their fellow man. When Alyosha passes words of love down to the young boys, he is doing his part to ensure the future of Russia. Dostoevsky felt very strongly about his country, and he had deep feelings for it. When Dmitri is talking to Alyosha about fleeing to another country, he expresses his determination to return to Russia one day, because even if it has forsaken him, it is his country and he loves it. This novel begins as a story about family and ends as a story about country, a place where individuals and families can be inspired to lead better lives.

novelguide

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finished_summaries/novelguide/Sense and Sensibility/section_2_part_7.txt

Sense and Sensibility.chapter xviii

chapter xviii

{"name": "Chapter XVIII", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201020004256/https://www.novelguide.com/sense-and-sensibility/summaries/volume1-chapter12-22", "summary": "Elinor wonders if Edward is still attracted to her, as he does not seem to be as affectionate as before. Elinor and Marianne discuss with Edward his attitude towards picturesque scenery, which was a topic of interest in Austen's day. Edward is not fashionably romantic in his views: he prefers flourishing trees to lightning-blasted ones, and takes no pleasure in seeing a ruined cottage. Marianne is disappointed by his lack of romantic sensibility. Marianne spots a ring on Edward's finger containing a lock of hair, and asks if it is his sister Fanny's. Edward, embarrassed, says that it is. However, both Elinor and Marianne secretly feel that the hair is Elinor's; Marianne believes it to have been a gift, while Elinor believes that Edward obtained it by trickery. Sir John Middleton and Mrs. Jennings visit, prompted by curiosity after hearing that the Dashwoods have a visitor. They tease Elinor about her mysterious admirer, whom they know from Margaret to have a name beginning with \"F\" but have not identified as Edward Ferrars", "analysis": ""}

Elinor saw, with great uneasiness the low spirits of her friend. His visit afforded her but a very partial satisfaction, while his own enjoyment in it appeared so imperfect. It was evident that he was unhappy; she wished it were equally evident that he still distinguished her by the same affection which once she had felt no doubt of inspiring; but hitherto the continuance of his preference seemed very uncertain; and the reservedness of his manner towards her contradicted one moment what a more animated look had intimated the preceding one. He joined her and Marianne in the breakfast-room the next morning before the others were down; and Marianne, who was always eager to promote their happiness as far as she could, soon left them to themselves. But before she was half way upstairs she heard the parlour door open, and, turning round, was astonished to see Edward himself come out. "I am going into the village to see my horses," said he, "as you are not yet ready for breakfast; I shall be back again presently." *** Edward returned to them with fresh admiration of the surrounding country; in his walk to the village, he had seen many parts of the valley to advantage; and the village itself, in a much higher situation than the cottage, afforded a general view of the whole, which had exceedingly pleased him. This was a subject which ensured Marianne's attention, and she was beginning to describe her own admiration of these scenes, and to question him more minutely on the objects that had particularly struck him, when Edward interrupted her by saying, "You must not enquire too far, Marianne--remember I have no knowledge in the picturesque, and I shall offend you by my ignorance and want of taste if we come to particulars. I shall call hills steep, which ought to be bold; surfaces strange and uncouth, which ought to be irregular and rugged; and distant objects out of sight, which ought only to be indistinct through the soft medium of a hazy atmosphere. You must be satisfied with such admiration as I can honestly give. I call it a very fine country--the hills are steep, the woods seem full of fine timber, and the valley looks comfortable and snug--with rich meadows and several neat farm houses scattered here and there. It exactly answers my idea of a fine country, because it unites beauty with utility--and I dare say it is a picturesque one too, because you admire it; I can easily believe it to be full of rocks and promontories, grey moss and brush wood, but these are all lost on me. I know nothing of the picturesque." "I am afraid it is but too true," said Marianne; "but why should you boast of it?" "I suspect," said Elinor, "that to avoid one kind of affectation, Edward here falls into another. Because he believes many people pretend to more admiration of the beauties of nature than they really feel, and is disgusted with such pretensions, he affects greater indifference and less discrimination in viewing them himself than he possesses. He is fastidious and will have an affectation of his own." "It is very true," said Marianne, "that admiration of landscape scenery is become a mere jargon. Every body pretends to feel and tries to describe with the taste and elegance of him who first defined what picturesque beauty was. I detest jargon of every kind, and sometimes I have kept my feelings to myself, because I could find no language to describe them in but what was worn and hackneyed out of all sense and meaning." "I am convinced," said Edward, "that you really feel all the delight in a fine prospect which you profess to feel. But, in return, your sister must allow me to feel no more than I profess. I like a fine prospect, but not on picturesque principles. I do not like crooked, twisted, blasted trees. I admire them much more if they are tall, straight, and flourishing. I do not like ruined, tattered cottages. I am not fond of nettles or thistles, or heath blossoms. I have more pleasure in a snug farm-house than a watch-tower--and a troop of tidy, happy villages please me better than the finest banditti in the world." Marianne looked with amazement at Edward, with compassion at her sister. Elinor only laughed. The subject was continued no farther; and Marianne remained thoughtfully silent, till a new object suddenly engaged her attention. She was sitting by Edward, and in taking his tea from Mrs. Dashwood, his hand passed so directly before her, as to make a ring, with a plait of hair in the centre, very conspicuous on one of his fingers. "I never saw you wear a ring before, Edward," she cried. "Is that Fanny's hair? I remember her promising to give you some. But I should have thought her hair had been darker." Marianne spoke inconsiderately what she really felt--but when she saw how much she had pained Edward, her own vexation at her want of thought could not be surpassed by his. He coloured very deeply, and giving a momentary glance at Elinor, replied, "Yes; it is my sister's hair. The setting always casts a different shade on it, you know." Elinor had met his eye, and looked conscious likewise. That the hair was her own, she instantaneously felt as well satisfied as Marianne; the only difference in their conclusions was, that what Marianne considered as a free gift from her sister, Elinor was conscious must have been procured by some theft or contrivance unknown to herself. She was not in a humour, however, to regard it as an affront, and affecting to take no notice of what passed, by instantly talking of something else, she internally resolved henceforward to catch every opportunity of eyeing the hair and of satisfying herself, beyond all doubt, that it was exactly the shade of her own. Edward's embarrassment lasted some time, and it ended in an absence of mind still more settled. He was particularly grave the whole morning. Marianne severely censured herself for what she had said; but her own forgiveness might have been more speedy, had she known how little offence it had given her sister. Before the middle of the day, they were visited by Sir John and Mrs. Jennings, who, having heard of the arrival of a gentleman at the cottage, came to take a survey of the guest. With the assistance of his mother-in-law, Sir John was not long in discovering that the name of Ferrars began with an F. and this prepared a future mine of raillery against the devoted Elinor, which nothing but the newness of their acquaintance with Edward could have prevented from being immediately sprung. But, as it was, she only learned, from some very significant looks, how far their penetration, founded on Margaret's instructions, extended. Sir John never came to the Dashwoods without either inviting them to dine at the park the next day, or to drink tea with them that evening. On the present occasion, for the better entertainment of their visitor, towards whose amusement he felt himself bound to contribute, he wished to engage them for both. "You MUST drink tea with us to night," said he, "for we shall be quite alone--and tomorrow you must absolutely dine with us, for we shall be a large party." Mrs. Jennings enforced the necessity. "And who knows but you may raise a dance," said she. "And that will tempt YOU, Miss Marianne." "A dance!" cried Marianne. "Impossible! Who is to dance?" "Who! why yourselves, and the Careys, and Whitakers to be sure.--What! you thought nobody could dance because a certain person that shall be nameless is gone!" "I wish with all my soul," cried Sir John, "that Willoughby were among us again." This, and Marianne's blushing, gave new suspicions to Edward. "And who is Willoughby?" said he, in a low voice, to Miss Dashwood, by whom he was sitting. She gave him a brief reply. Marianne's countenance was more communicative. Edward saw enough to comprehend, not only the meaning of others, but such of Marianne's expressions as had puzzled him before; and when their visitors left them, he went immediately round her, and said, in a whisper, "I have been guessing. Shall I tell you my guess?" "What do you mean?" "Shall I tell you." "Certainly." "Well then; I guess that Mr. Willoughby hunts." Marianne was surprised and confused, yet she could not help smiling at the quiet archness of his manner, and after a moment's silence, said, "Oh, Edward! How can you?--But the time will come I hope...I am sure you will like him." "I do not doubt it," replied he, rather astonished at her earnestness and warmth; for had he not imagined it to be a joke for the good of her acquaintance in general, founded only on a something or a nothing between Mr. Willoughby and herself, he would not have ventured to mention it.

Chapter XVIII

https://web.archive.org/web/20201020004256/https://www.novelguide.com/sense-and-sensibility/summaries/volume1-chapter12-22

Elinor wonders if Edward is still attracted to her, as he does not seem to be as affectionate as before. Elinor and Marianne discuss with Edward his attitude towards picturesque scenery, which was a topic of interest in Austen's day. Edward is not fashionably romantic in his views: he prefers flourishing trees to lightning-blasted ones, and takes no pleasure in seeing a ruined cottage. Marianne is disappointed by his lack of romantic sensibility. Marianne spots a ring on Edward's finger containing a lock of hair, and asks if it is his sister Fanny's. Edward, embarrassed, says that it is. However, both Elinor and Marianne secretly feel that the hair is Elinor's; Marianne believes it to have been a gift, while Elinor believes that Edward obtained it by trickery. Sir John Middleton and Mrs. Jennings visit, prompted by curiosity after hearing that the Dashwoods have a visitor. They tease Elinor about her mysterious admirer, whom they know from Margaret to have a name beginning with "F" but have not identified as Edward Ferrars

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/22.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Sense and Sensibility/section_15_part_0.txt

Sense and Sensibility.chapter 22

chapter 22

{"name": "Chapter 22", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101060302/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/s/sense-and-sensibility/summary-and-analysis/chapter-22", "summary": "As Marianne refused any intimacy with the Misses Steele, they turned to Elinor. Lucy, especially, sought her out, and Elinor frequently found her clever and agreeable, but she also found her \"ignorant and illiterate\" through lack of education, and wanting in \"delicacy, . . . rectitude, and integrity of mind.\" One day while walking with Elinor, Lucy persisted in asking her opinion of Mrs. Ferrars, Edward's mother. She hinted that she would soon be \"very intimately connected\" with the family, and to Elinor's amazement, she confided that she had been secretly engaged to Edward for four years: \"He was four years with my uncle, who lives at Longstaple, near Plymouth. It was there our acquaintance begun.\" She showed Elinor a miniature of Edward which she carried in her pocket and spoke of the sufferings she had endured on his behalf: \"Everything in such suspense and uncertainty, and seeing him so seldom.\" Elinor desperately hoped that Lucy was lying, but all hope vanished when Lucy showed her a letter from Edward and told her that she had given him a lock of her hair, set in a ring.", "analysis": "Ironically, the vulgar Lucy becomes Elinor's rival. She is forced to listen to Lucy's confidences about him and is abashed to realize that the lock of hair in Edward's ring, which she fondly believed to be her own, is in reality Lucy's. Note how often Austen uses letters to give a turn to the plot. In an earlier chapter, Colonel Brandon \"changes colour\" and leaves mysteriously when he receives a letter. In this chapter, Lucy shows Elinor a letter which convinces her that Lucy is speaking the truth about her engagement to Edward."}

Marianne, who had never much toleration for any thing like impertinence, vulgarity, inferiority of parts, or even difference of taste from herself, was at this time particularly ill-disposed, from the state of her spirits, to be pleased with the Miss Steeles, or to encourage their advances; and to the invariable coldness of her behaviour towards them, which checked every endeavour at intimacy on their side, Elinor principally attributed that preference of herself which soon became evident in the manners of both, but especially of Lucy, who missed no opportunity of engaging her in conversation, or of striving to improve their acquaintance by an easy and frank communication of her sentiments. Lucy was naturally clever; her remarks were often just and amusing; and as a companion for half an hour Elinor frequently found her agreeable; but her powers had received no aid from education: she was ignorant and illiterate; and her deficiency of all mental improvement, her want of information in the most common particulars, could not be concealed from Miss Dashwood, in spite of her constant endeavour to appear to advantage. Elinor saw, and pitied her for, the neglect of abilities which education might have rendered so respectable; but she saw, with less tenderness of feeling, the thorough want of delicacy, of rectitude, and integrity of mind, which her attentions, her assiduities, her flatteries at the Park betrayed; and she could have no lasting satisfaction in the company of a person who joined insincerity with ignorance; whose want of instruction prevented their meeting in conversation on terms of equality, and whose conduct toward others made every shew of attention and deference towards herself perfectly valueless. "You will think my question an odd one, I dare say," said Lucy to her one day, as they were walking together from the park to the cottage--"but pray, are you personally acquainted with your sister-in-law's mother, Mrs. Ferrars?" Elinor DID think the question a very odd one, and her countenance expressed it, as she answered that she had never seen Mrs. Ferrars. "Indeed!" replied Lucy; "I wonder at that, for I thought you must have seen her at Norland sometimes. Then, perhaps, you cannot tell me what sort of a woman she is?" "No," returned Elinor, cautious of giving her real opinion of Edward's mother, and not very desirous of satisfying what seemed impertinent curiosity-- "I know nothing of her." "I am sure you think me very strange, for enquiring about her in such a way," said Lucy, eyeing Elinor attentively as she spoke; "but perhaps there may be reasons--I wish I might venture; but however I hope you will do me the justice of believing that I do not mean to be impertinent." Elinor made her a civil reply, and they walked on for a few minutes in silence. It was broken by Lucy, who renewed the subject again by saying, with some hesitation, "I cannot bear to have you think me impertinently curious. I am sure I would rather do any thing in the world than be thought so by a person whose good opinion is so well worth having as yours. And I am sure I should not have the smallest fear of trusting YOU; indeed, I should be very glad of your advice how to manage in such an uncomfortable situation as I am; but, however, there is no occasion to trouble YOU. I am sorry you do not happen to know Mrs. Ferrars." "I am sorry I do NOT," said Elinor, in great astonishment, "if it could be of any use to YOU to know my opinion of her. But really I never understood that you were at all connected with that family, and therefore I am a little surprised, I confess, at so serious an inquiry into her character." "I dare say you are, and I am sure I do not at all wonder at it. But if I dared tell you all, you would not be so much surprised. Mrs. Ferrars is certainly nothing to me at present--but the time MAY come--how soon it will come must depend upon herself--when we may be very intimately connected." She looked down as she said this, amiably bashful, with only one side glance at her companion to observe its effect on her. "Good heavens!" cried Elinor, "what do you mean? Are you acquainted with Mr. Robert Ferrars? Can you be?" And she did not feel much delighted with the idea of such a sister-in-law. "No," replied Lucy, "not to Mr. ROBERT Ferrars--I never saw him in my life; but," fixing her eyes upon Elinor, "to his eldest brother." What felt Elinor at that moment? Astonishment, that would have been as painful as it was strong, had not an immediate disbelief of the assertion attended it. She turned towards Lucy in silent amazement, unable to divine the reason or object of such a declaration; and though her complexion varied, she stood firm in incredulity, and felt in no danger of an hysterical fit, or a swoon. "You may well be surprised," continued Lucy; "for to be sure you could have had no idea of it before; for I dare say he never dropped the smallest hint of it to you or any of your family; because it was always meant to be a great secret, and I am sure has been faithfully kept so by me to this hour. Not a soul of all my relations know of it but Anne, and I never should have mentioned it to you, if I had not felt the greatest dependence in the world upon your secrecy; and I really thought my behaviour in asking so many questions about Mrs. Ferrars must seem so odd, that it ought to be explained. And I do not think Mr. Ferrars can be displeased, when he knows I have trusted you, because I know he has the highest opinion in the world of all your family, and looks upon yourself and the other Miss Dashwoods quite as his own sisters."--She paused. Elinor for a few moments remained silent. Her astonishment at what she heard was at first too great for words; but at length forcing herself to speak, and to speak cautiously, she said, with calmness of manner, which tolerably well concealed her surprise and solicitude-- "May I ask if your engagement is of long standing?" "We have been engaged these four years." "Four years!" "Yes." Elinor, though greatly shocked, still felt unable to believe it. "I did not know," said she, "that you were even acquainted till the other day." "Our acquaintance, however, is of many years date. He was under my uncle's care, you know, a considerable while." "Your uncle!" "Yes; Mr. Pratt. Did you never hear him talk of Mr. Pratt?" "I think I have," replied Elinor, with an exertion of spirits, which increased with her increase of emotion. "He was four years with my uncle, who lives at Longstaple, near Plymouth. It was there our acquaintance begun, for my sister and me was often staying with my uncle, and it was there our engagement was formed, though not till a year after he had quitted as a pupil; but he was almost always with us afterwards. I was very unwilling to enter into it, as you may imagine, without the knowledge and approbation of his mother; but I was too young, and loved him too well, to be so prudent as I ought to have been.-- Though you do not know him so well as me, Miss Dashwood, you must have seen enough of him to be sensible he is very capable of making a woman sincerely attached to him." "Certainly," answered Elinor, without knowing what she said; but after a moment's reflection, she added, with revived security of Edward's honour and love, and her companion's falsehood--"Engaged to Mr. Edward Ferrars!--I confess myself so totally surprised at what you tell me, that really--I beg your pardon; but surely there must be some mistake of person or name. We cannot mean the same Mr. Ferrars." "We can mean no other," cried Lucy, smiling. "Mr. Edward Ferrars, the eldest son of Mrs. Ferrars, of Park Street, and brother of your sister-in-law, Mrs. John Dashwood, is the person I mean; you must allow that I am not likely to be deceived as to the name of the man on who all my happiness depends." "It is strange," replied Elinor, in a most painful perplexity, "that I should never have heard him even mention your name." "No; considering our situation, it was not strange. Our first care has been to keep the matter secret.-- You knew nothing of me, or my family, and, therefore, there could be no OCCASION for ever mentioning my name to you; and, as he was always particularly afraid of his sister's suspecting any thing, THAT was reason enough for his not mentioning it." She was silent.--Elinor's security sunk; but her self-command did not sink with it. "Four years you have been engaged," said she with a firm voice. "Yes; and heaven knows how much longer we may have to wait. Poor Edward! It puts him quite out of heart." Then taking a small miniature from her pocket, she added, "To prevent the possibility of mistake, be so good as to look at this face. It does not do him justice, to be sure, but yet I think you cannot be deceived as to the person it was drew for.--I have had it above these three years." She put it into her hands as she spoke; and when Elinor saw the painting, whatever other doubts her fear of a too hasty decision, or her wish of detecting falsehood might suffer to linger in her mind, she could have none of its being Edward's face. She returned it almost instantly, acknowledging the likeness. "I have never been able," continued Lucy, "to give him my picture in return, which I am very much vexed at, for he has been always so anxious to get it! But I am determined to set for it the very first opportunity." "You are quite in the right," replied Elinor calmly. They then proceeded a few paces in silence. Lucy spoke first. "I am sure," said she, "I have no doubt in the world of your faithfully keeping this secret, because you must know of what importance it is to us, not to have it reach his mother; for she would never approve of it, I dare say. I shall have no fortune, and I fancy she is an exceeding proud woman." "I certainly did not seek your confidence," said Elinor; "but you do me no more than justice in imagining that I may be depended on. Your secret is safe with me; but pardon me if I express some surprise at so unnecessary a communication. You must at least have felt that my being acquainted with it could not add to its safety." As she said this, she looked earnestly at Lucy, hoping to discover something in her countenance; perhaps the falsehood of the greatest part of what she had been saying; but Lucy's countenance suffered no change. "I was afraid you would think I was taking a great liberty with you," said she, "in telling you all this. I have not known you long to be sure, personally at least, but I have known you and all your family by description a great while; and as soon as I saw you, I felt almost as if you was an old acquaintance. Besides in the present case, I really thought some explanation was due to you after my making such particular inquiries about Edward's mother; and I am so unfortunate, that I have not a creature whose advice I can ask. Anne is the only person that knows of it, and she has no judgment at all; indeed, she does me a great deal more harm than good, for I am in constant fear of her betraying me. She does not know how to hold her tongue, as you must perceive, and I am sure I was in the greatest fright in the world t'other day, when Edward's name was mentioned by Sir John, lest she should out with it all. You can't think how much I go through in my mind from it altogether. I only wonder that I am alive after what I have suffered for Edward's sake these last four years. Every thing in such suspense and uncertainty; and seeing him so seldom--we can hardly meet above twice a-year. I am sure I wonder my heart is not quite broke." Here she took out her handkerchief; but Elinor did not feel very compassionate. "Sometimes." continued Lucy, after wiping her eyes, "I think whether it would not be better for us both to break off the matter entirely." As she said this, she looked directly at her companion. "But then at other times I have not resolution enough for it.-- I cannot bear the thoughts of making him so miserable, as I know the very mention of such a thing would do. And on my own account too--so dear as he is to me--I don't think I could be equal to it. What would you advise me to do in such a case, Miss Dashwood? What would you do yourself?" "Pardon me," replied Elinor, startled by the question; "but I can give you no advice under such circumstances. Your own judgment must direct you." "To be sure," continued Lucy, after a few minutes silence on both sides, "his mother must provide for him sometime or other; but poor Edward is so cast down by it! Did you not think him dreadful low-spirited when he was at Barton? He was so miserable when he left us at Longstaple, to go to you, that I was afraid you would think him quite ill." "Did he come from your uncle's, then, when he visited us?" "Oh, yes; he had been staying a fortnight with us. Did you think he came directly from town?" "No," replied Elinor, most feelingly sensible of every fresh circumstance in favour of Lucy's veracity; "I remember he told us, that he had been staying a fortnight with some friends near Plymouth." She remembered too, her own surprise at the time, at his mentioning nothing farther of those friends, at his total silence with respect even to their names. "Did not you think him sadly out of spirits?" repeated Lucy. "We did, indeed, particularly so when he first arrived." "I begged him to exert himself for fear you should suspect what was the matter; but it made him so melancholy, not being able to stay more than a fortnight with us, and seeing me so much affected.-- Poor fellow!--I am afraid it is just the same with him now; for he writes in wretched spirits. I heard from him just before I left Exeter;" taking a letter from her pocket and carelessly showing the direction to Elinor. "You know his hand, I dare say, a charming one it is; but that is not written so well as usual.--He was tired, I dare say, for he had just filled the sheet to me as full as possible." Elinor saw that it WAS his hand, and she could doubt no longer. This picture, she had allowed herself to believe, might have been accidentally obtained; it might not have been Edward's gift; but a correspondence between them by letter, could subsist only under a positive engagement, could be authorised by nothing else; for a few moments, she was almost overcome--her heart sunk within her, and she could hardly stand; but exertion was indispensably necessary; and she struggled so resolutely against the oppression of her feelings, that her success was speedy, and for the time complete. "Writing to each other," said Lucy, returning the letter into her pocket, "is the only comfort we have in such long separations. Yes, I have one other comfort in his picture, but poor Edward has not even THAT. If he had but my picture, he says he should be easy. I gave him a lock of my hair set in a ring when he was at Longstaple last, and that was some comfort to him, he said, but not equal to a picture. Perhaps you might notice the ring when you saw him?" "I did," said Elinor, with a composure of voice, under which was concealed an emotion and distress beyond any thing she had ever felt before. She was mortified, shocked, confounded. Fortunately for her, they had now reached the cottage, and the conversation could be continued no farther. After sitting with them a few minutes, the Miss Steeles returned to the Park, and Elinor was then at liberty to think and be wretched. [At this point in the first and second editions, Volume 1 ends.]

Chapter 22

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101060302/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/s/sense-and-sensibility/summary-and-analysis/chapter-22

As Marianne refused any intimacy with the Misses Steele, they turned to Elinor. Lucy, especially, sought her out, and Elinor frequently found her clever and agreeable, but she also found her "ignorant and illiterate" through lack of education, and wanting in "delicacy, . . . rectitude, and integrity of mind." One day while walking with Elinor, Lucy persisted in asking her opinion of Mrs. Ferrars, Edward's mother. She hinted that she would soon be "very intimately connected" with the family, and to Elinor's amazement, she confided that she had been secretly engaged to Edward for four years: "He was four years with my uncle, who lives at Longstaple, near Plymouth. It was there our acquaintance begun." She showed Elinor a miniature of Edward which she carried in her pocket and spoke of the sufferings she had endured on his behalf: "Everything in such suspense and uncertainty, and seeing him so seldom." Elinor desperately hoped that Lucy was lying, but all hope vanished when Lucy showed her a letter from Edward and told her that she had given him a lock of her hair, set in a ring.

Ironically, the vulgar Lucy becomes Elinor's rival. She is forced to listen to Lucy's confidences about him and is abashed to realize that the lock of hair in Edward's ring, which she fondly believed to be her own, is in reality Lucy's. Note how often Austen uses letters to give a turn to the plot. In an earlier chapter, Colonel Brandon "changes colour" and leaves mysteriously when he receives a letter. In this chapter, Lucy shows Elinor a letter which convinces her that Lucy is speaking the truth about her engagement to Edward.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/107-chapters/45.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/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/20201101052914/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary-and-analysis/chapter-45", "summary": "\"When Troy's wife had left the house at the previous midnight his first act was to cover the dead from sight.\" He then went upstairs to wait for morning. \"Fate had dealt grimly with him through the last four-and-twenty hours.\" He had taken the twenty pounds from Bathsheba and another seven pounds ten that he was able to muster and had gone to meet Fanny. To his chagrin, she again failed to appear. He waited until the stroke of eleven -- \"in fact, at that moment she was being robed in her grave-clothes by two attendants at the Union poorhouse.\" Having watched the bridge and parapet until his patience ran out, Troy called for his gig and went to the racetrack, but he kept his vow not to wager. Leaving town at nine, he regretted not having inquired about Fanny. His return home was a shock. In the morning he arose, indifferent to Bathsheba's whereabouts. He walked to the vacant grave, then hastened to Casterbridge, where he sought out the stonemason. He asked for the best stone they had for twenty-seven pounds. He paid for it and gave directions for the inscription. In the afternoon he returned and saw the stone placed in the cart that would take it to Weatherbury. Toward dusk he traveled homeward, carrying a heavy basket. In the course of his journey he met the mason's men returning from the graveyard. They assured him that the stone had been set. At ten, Troy entered the cemetery and found the grave near the rear tower of the Weatherbury church where the land had recently been cleared of rubble to make room for new charity graves. Troy fetched a spade and lantern and read the inscription on the stone. Then he opened the basket and took out several bulbs. He had chosen a variety so that there would be blossoms from early spring until late fall. \"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.\" Just as he was finishing the planting, he felt rain and his lantern candle sputtered out. He groped his way to the north porch of the church and there fell asleep.", "analysis": "Troy's reversal to remorse is interesting. Where he had been callous and heedless, he is now precipitate in his contrition. Gravestone, planting -- all must be done at once, and he spends every penny he has on them . Nor is it surprising to have him remain in the churchyard, intent on completing his service to the departed as soon as he wakes."}

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/20201101052914/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary-and-analysis/chapter-45

"When Troy's wife had left the house at the previous midnight his first act was to cover the dead from sight." He then went upstairs to wait for morning. "Fate had dealt grimly with him through the last four-and-twenty hours." He had taken the twenty pounds from Bathsheba and another seven pounds ten that he was able to muster and had gone to meet Fanny. To his chagrin, she again failed to appear. He waited until the stroke of eleven -- "in fact, at that moment she was being robed in her grave-clothes by two attendants at the Union poorhouse." Having watched the bridge and parapet until his patience ran out, Troy called for his gig and went to the racetrack, but he kept his vow not to wager. Leaving town at nine, he regretted not having inquired about Fanny. His return home was a shock. In the morning he arose, indifferent to Bathsheba's whereabouts. He walked to the vacant grave, then hastened to Casterbridge, where he sought out the stonemason. He asked for the best stone they had for twenty-seven pounds. He paid for it and gave directions for the inscription. In the afternoon he returned and saw the stone placed in the cart that would take it to Weatherbury. Toward dusk he traveled homeward, carrying a heavy basket. In the course of his journey he met the mason's men returning from the graveyard. They assured him that the stone had been set. At ten, Troy entered the cemetery and found the grave near the rear tower of the Weatherbury church where the land had recently been cleared of rubble to make room for new charity graves. Troy fetched a spade and lantern and read the inscription on the stone. Then he opened the basket and took out several bulbs. He had chosen a variety so that there would be blossoms from early spring until late fall. "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." Just as he was finishing the planting, he felt rain and his lantern candle sputtered out. He groped his way to the north porch of the church and there fell asleep.

Troy's reversal to remorse is interesting. Where he had been callous and heedless, he is now precipitate in his contrition. Gravestone, planting -- all must be done at once, and he spends every penny he has on them . Nor is it surprising to have him remain in the churchyard, intent on completing his service to the departed as soon as he wakes.

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/chapters_37_to_38.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/Lord Jim/section_9_part_0.txt

Lord Jim.chapters 37-38

chapters 37-38

{"name": "Chapters 37 and 38", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210126121516/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/lordjim/section10/", "summary": "Marlow's narrative begins by describing an encounter with a dying pirate, Gentleman Brown. Marlow tells us that Brown's story will fill in the gaps of a narrative he has gotten from a visit to Stein's many months before. Arriving at Stein's, Marlow recognizes a Bugis whom he had occasionally seen at Jim's. Entering Stein's house, Marlow finds Tamb'Itam, and asks him if Jim is there. Tamb'Itam looks distraught and says, cryptically, \"He would not fight.\" Stein takes Marlow to see Jewel, who is also at his house. The people from Patusan arrived two days ago, according to their host. Jewel, quietly and calmly, reminds Marlow that she had predicted that Jim would leave her, as all men do. She gives Marlow a brief sketch of events, an account that is not shared with the reader. She is too distraught to talk more, and, when Marlow encounters her later in the day, he upsets her still further by pointing out that her distrust of Jim probably contributed to whatever has happened. Stein reassures her that Jim was true, and tells her he will try to explain it to her someday. Marlow leaves Stein's house in the company of Tamb'Itam, who completes Jewel's narrative . Marlow begins to tell the story of Jim's final fate by relating the history of Gentleman Brown, a successful pirate who has become the representative ruffian of the area. Brown is dying, sheltered in the hovel of a dissolute white man in Bangkok who worships Brown's legend and feels privileged to let him die in his home. Brown tells Marlow that he had a run of bad luck, beginning with his capture at the hands of a Spanish patrol boat while smuggling guns. He managed to bribe his way into an escape, stealing another ship to replace his, which had been disabled by his captors. Unfortunately, the stolen ship had very little in the way of fresh water or provisions on board, and Brown feared entering port in a stolen vessel. Dying of hunger, he recalls hearing of the remote territory of Patusan. He and his crew anchor off the fishing village and make their way upriver in a boat from their ship. The fishermen have managed to get a warning to the people of Patusan, though, and Brown and his crew are attacked the moment they land. They are forced to retreat to a small hilltop, where they dig in.", "analysis": "Commentary Marlow's interview with Gentleman Brown is similar in structure to his interview with the alcoholic second engineer of the Patna. These two morally, mentally, and physically corrupted men serve as conduits for parts of Jim's story. Brown is another figure who can be viewed as an alternate to Jim. His life is patterned on romantic tales and abstract ideas of heroics, albeit rather immoral ones. He, too, is largely motivated by fear of being held responsible for his earlier actions, as the next chapters will show. But there is a realism to Brown's struggle to realize his mental image of himself, a realism that Jim's story lacks. Brown is a small-time bandit, a blackmailer of poor villagers; his mistress dies almost immediately after he steals her away from her missionary husband; he himself is constantly subjected to the exigencies of everyday life--thirst, hunger, illness; and he dies horribly, choking to death in a Bangkok slum. Brown's fate is an important contrast to Jim's, which will become clear in a few chapters. Brown represents the real-life version of romantic tales. His life story is the generic bastard child that occurs when romance tries to become reality. Jim's story will end tragically, but aesthetically. Jim's attempt to make heroic tales come to life is not as successful as Brown's, though. Brown has always been a man of action, while Jim is still marked by his failure to act heroically aboard the Patna. Perhaps this accounts for the differing fates of their stories: Brown becomes the very type of the South Pacific ruffian, known even to those back \"home\" in Europe, while Jim is only of interest to a coterie of sympathetic individuals, who must struggle to piece together the final chapter of his history, and who still find his tale essentially indecipherable. Jewel's reaction to Marlow and his comments to her compromise his claim to Jim's memory. Marlow has often been cruel to Jim in their conversations, but his harshness in the face of Jewel's grief seems extreme. Jewel predicted Jim's eventual infidelity based on her own life experience and that of her mother. She seems intelligent and credible, and in the end she turns out to be right: Jim does abandon her in favor of something else, something he perceives to be better, an ideal. Stein immediately aligns himself with Marlow in his interpretation of Jim's actions . Jewel suggests that there is an alternative story here, one in which the worst thing may not be the failure to realize a heroic ideal but instead may be the betrayal of the people closest to one. Her take on the situation finds the actions that will be detailed in the succeeding chapters selfish rather than unselfishly honest, and her version of the story, if it were told, would consider Dain Waris's fate, not Jim's, to be the tragic outcome. That Marlow privileges the account he gets from Gentleman Brown rather than the versions from Jewel or Tamb'Itam is suggestive. On the other hand, Marlow, again, is the only person in the novel who has known Jim both in his moment of greatest failure and at his time of greatest triumph, so perhaps he is the only individual who has the necessary perspective to judge Jim truly."}

'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. '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.'

Chapters 37 and 38

https://web.archive.org/web/20210126121516/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/lordjim/section10/

Marlow's narrative begins by describing an encounter with a dying pirate, Gentleman Brown. Marlow tells us that Brown's story will fill in the gaps of a narrative he has gotten from a visit to Stein's many months before. Arriving at Stein's, Marlow recognizes a Bugis whom he had occasionally seen at Jim's. Entering Stein's house, Marlow finds Tamb'Itam, and asks him if Jim is there. Tamb'Itam looks distraught and says, cryptically, "He would not fight." Stein takes Marlow to see Jewel, who is also at his house. The people from Patusan arrived two days ago, according to their host. Jewel, quietly and calmly, reminds Marlow that she had predicted that Jim would leave her, as all men do. She gives Marlow a brief sketch of events, an account that is not shared with the reader. She is too distraught to talk more, and, when Marlow encounters her later in the day, he upsets her still further by pointing out that her distrust of Jim probably contributed to whatever has happened. Stein reassures her that Jim was true, and tells her he will try to explain it to her someday. Marlow leaves Stein's house in the company of Tamb'Itam, who completes Jewel's narrative . Marlow begins to tell the story of Jim's final fate by relating the history of Gentleman Brown, a successful pirate who has become the representative ruffian of the area. Brown is dying, sheltered in the hovel of a dissolute white man in Bangkok who worships Brown's legend and feels privileged to let him die in his home. Brown tells Marlow that he had a run of bad luck, beginning with his capture at the hands of a Spanish patrol boat while smuggling guns. He managed to bribe his way into an escape, stealing another ship to replace his, which had been disabled by his captors. Unfortunately, the stolen ship had very little in the way of fresh water or provisions on board, and Brown feared entering port in a stolen vessel. Dying of hunger, he recalls hearing of the remote territory of Patusan. He and his crew anchor off the fishing village and make their way upriver in a boat from their ship. The fishermen have managed to get a warning to the people of Patusan, though, and Brown and his crew are attacked the moment they land. They are forced to retreat to a small hilltop, where they dig in.

Commentary Marlow's interview with Gentleman Brown is similar in structure to his interview with the alcoholic second engineer of the Patna. These two morally, mentally, and physically corrupted men serve as conduits for parts of Jim's story. Brown is another figure who can be viewed as an alternate to Jim. His life is patterned on romantic tales and abstract ideas of heroics, albeit rather immoral ones. He, too, is largely motivated by fear of being held responsible for his earlier actions, as the next chapters will show. But there is a realism to Brown's struggle to realize his mental image of himself, a realism that Jim's story lacks. Brown is a small-time bandit, a blackmailer of poor villagers; his mistress dies almost immediately after he steals her away from her missionary husband; he himself is constantly subjected to the exigencies of everyday life--thirst, hunger, illness; and he dies horribly, choking to death in a Bangkok slum. Brown's fate is an important contrast to Jim's, which will become clear in a few chapters. Brown represents the real-life version of romantic tales. His life story is the generic bastard child that occurs when romance tries to become reality. Jim's story will end tragically, but aesthetically. Jim's attempt to make heroic tales come to life is not as successful as Brown's, though. Brown has always been a man of action, while Jim is still marked by his failure to act heroically aboard the Patna. Perhaps this accounts for the differing fates of their stories: Brown becomes the very type of the South Pacific ruffian, known even to those back "home" in Europe, while Jim is only of interest to a coterie of sympathetic individuals, who must struggle to piece together the final chapter of his history, and who still find his tale essentially indecipherable. Jewel's reaction to Marlow and his comments to her compromise his claim to Jim's memory. Marlow has often been cruel to Jim in their conversations, but his harshness in the face of Jewel's grief seems extreme. Jewel predicted Jim's eventual infidelity based on her own life experience and that of her mother. She seems intelligent and credible, and in the end she turns out to be right: Jim does abandon her in favor of something else, something he perceives to be better, an ideal. Stein immediately aligns himself with Marlow in his interpretation of Jim's actions . Jewel suggests that there is an alternative story here, one in which the worst thing may not be the failure to realize a heroic ideal but instead may be the betrayal of the people closest to one. Her take on the situation finds the actions that will be detailed in the succeeding chapters selfish rather than unselfishly honest, and her version of the story, if it were told, would consider Dain Waris's fate, not Jim's, to be the tragic outcome. That Marlow privileges the account he gets from Gentleman Brown rather than the versions from Jewel or Tamb'Itam is suggestive. On the other hand, Marlow, again, is the only person in the novel who has known Jim both in his moment of greatest failure and at his time of greatest triumph, so perhaps he is the only individual who has the necessary perspective to judge Jim truly.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/107-chapters/04.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Far From the Madding Crowd/section_3_part_0.txt

Far From the Madding Crowd.chapter 4

chapter 4

{"name": "Chapter 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-4", "summary": "So it's settled, then. Gabriel Oak is in love with the young woman who saved his life. He uses any opportunity he can to see the woman in the fields, but only ever from afar. He's kind of a stalker. After making some enquiries, he finds out that the girl's name is Bathsheba Everdene , and that she's probably leaving the area in eight days' time. Bummer. One day, he gets an opportunity to visit Bathsheba's house when one of his sheep dies. He packs up the sheep's lamb in a basket, gets all spruced up, and goes to the house. When he gets to the door, he asks Bathsheba's aunt if he could speak to the young woman. Bathsheba is out, but her aunt invites him inside. He announces that he has brought a lamb for her, in case she'd like to raise it. But instead of beating around the bush any longer, Oak tells the aunt that he has come to ask for Bathsheba's hand in marriage. He asks if Bathsheba has any other young men courting her. The aunt tells him that there are all kinds of men that want Bathsheba. She's a hottie. Farmer Oak gets discouraged and leaves. While he's walking down the lane, Bathsheba comes running after him. She wants to tell him that her aunt was lying and that there aren't any other young men in her life. This is great news for Oak, so he proposes to her right on the spot. Unfortunately, she rejects him. Okay, we're tempted at this point to abbreviate Bathsheba's name to B.S. because she is the head game queen. As you can imagine, he's pretty annoyed that she ran all the way down the road just to tell him that she's not interested. He asks her again if she'll marry him, telling her that he's very much in love with her. Ugh. At this point we want to take Oak aside and say, \"Be cool, man. Be cool.\" She says she needs a moment to think, since she's out of breath. Eventually, she tells him no again because she doesn't love him. He says he's totally fine with marrying without love, though, as long as she likes him a little. But no, it's no use. He promises he'll love her forever. But when she refuses him again, he goes all stone-faced and says he'll never ask again. Pardon us while we cringe.", "analysis": ""}

GABRIEL'S RESOLVE--THE VISIT--THE MISTAKE The only superiority in women that is tolerable to the rival sex is, as a rule, that of the unconscious kind; but a superiority which recognizes itself may sometimes please by suggesting possibilities of capture to the subordinated man. This well-favoured and comely girl soon made appreciable inroads upon the emotional constitution of young Farmer Oak. Love, being an extremely exacting usurer (a sense of exorbitant profit, spiritually, by an exchange of hearts, being at the bottom of pure passions, as that of exorbitant profit, bodily or materially, is at the bottom of those of lower atmosphere), every morning Oak's feelings were as sensitive as the money-market in calculations upon his chances. His dog waited for his meals in a way so like that in which Oak waited for the girl's presence, that the farmer was quite struck with the resemblance, felt it lowering, and would not look at the dog. However, he continued to watch through the hedge for her regular coming, and thus his sentiments towards her were deepened without any corresponding effect being produced upon herself. Oak had nothing finished and ready to say as yet, and not being able to frame love phrases which end where they begin; passionate tales-- --Full of sound and fury --Signifying nothing-- he said no word at all. By making inquiries he found that the girl's name was Bathsheba Everdene, and that the cow would go dry in about seven days. He dreaded the eighth day. At last the eighth day came. The cow had ceased to give milk for that year, and Bathsheba Everdene came up the hill no more. Gabriel had reached a pitch of existence he never could have anticipated a short time before. He liked saying "Bathsheba" as a private enjoyment instead of whistling; turned over his taste to black hair, though he had sworn by brown ever since he was a boy, isolated himself till the space he filled in the public eye was contemptibly small. Love is a possible strength in an actual weakness. Marriage transforms a distraction into a support, the power of which should be, and happily often is, in direct proportion to the degree of imbecility it supplants. Oak began now to see light in this direction, and said to himself, "I'll make her my wife, or upon my soul I shall be good for nothing!" All this while he was perplexing himself about an errand on which he might consistently visit the cottage of Bathsheba's aunt. He found his opportunity in the death of a ewe, mother of a living lamb. On a day which had a summer face and a winter constitution--a fine January morning, when there was just enough blue sky visible to make cheerfully-disposed people wish for more, and an occasional gleam of silvery sunshine, Oak put the lamb into a respectable Sunday basket, and stalked across the fields to the house of Mrs. Hurst, the aunt--George, the dog walking behind, with a countenance of great concern at the serious turn pastoral affairs seemed to be taking. Gabriel had watched the blue wood-smoke curling from the chimney with strange meditation. At evening he had fancifully traced it down the chimney to the spot of its origin--seen the hearth and Bathsheba beside it--beside it in her out-door dress; for the clothes she had worn on the hill were by association equally with her person included in the compass of his affection; they seemed at this early time of his love a necessary ingredient of the sweet mixture called Bathsheba Everdene. He had made a toilet of a nicely-adjusted kind--of a nature between the carefully neat and the carelessly ornate--of a degree between fine-market-day and wet-Sunday selection. He thoroughly cleaned his silver watch-chain with whiting, put new lacing straps to his boots, looked to the brass eyelet-holes, went to the inmost heart of the plantation for a new walking-stick, and trimmed it vigorously on his way back; took a new handkerchief from the bottom of his clothes-box, put on the light waistcoat patterned all over with sprigs of an elegant flower uniting the beauties of both rose and lily without the defects of either, and used all the hair-oil he possessed upon his usually dry, sandy, and inextricably curly hair, till he had deepened it to a splendidly novel colour, between that of guano and Roman cement, making it stick to his head like mace round a nutmeg, or wet seaweed round a boulder after the ebb. Nothing disturbed the stillness of the cottage save the chatter of a knot of sparrows on the eaves; one might fancy scandal and rumour to be no less the staple topic of these little coteries on roofs than of those under them. It seemed that the omen was an unpropitious one, for, as the rather untoward commencement of Oak's overtures, just as he arrived by the garden gate, he saw a cat inside, going into various arched shapes and fiendish convulsions at the sight of his dog George. The dog took no notice, for he had arrived at an age at which all superfluous barking was cynically avoided as a waste of breath--in fact, he never barked even at the sheep except to order, when it was done with an absolutely neutral countenance, as a sort of Commination-service, which, though offensive, had to be gone through once now and then to frighten the flock for their own good. A voice came from behind some laurel-bushes into which the cat had run: "Poor dear! Did a nasty brute of a dog want to kill it;--did he, poor dear!" "I beg your pardon," said Oak to the voice, "but George was walking on behind me with a temper as mild as milk." Almost before he had ceased speaking, Oak was seized with a misgiving as to whose ear was the recipient of his answer. Nobody appeared, and he heard the person retreat among the bushes. Gabriel meditated, and so deeply that he brought small furrows into his forehead by sheer force of reverie. Where the issue of an interview is as likely to be a vast change for the worse as for the better, any initial difference from expectation causes nipping sensations of failure. Oak went up to the door a little abashed: his mental rehearsal and the reality had had no common grounds of opening. Bathsheba's aunt was indoors. "Will you tell Miss Everdene that somebody would be glad to speak to her?" said Mr. Oak. (Calling one's self merely Somebody, without giving a name, is not to be taken as an example of the ill-breeding of the rural world: it springs from a refined modesty, of which townspeople, with their cards and announcements, have no notion whatever.) Bathsheba was out. The voice had evidently been hers. "Will you come in, Mr. Oak?" "Oh, thank 'ee," said Gabriel, following her to the fireplace. "I've brought a lamb for Miss Everdene. I thought she might like one to rear; girls do." "She might," said Mrs. Hurst, musingly; "though she's only a visitor here. If you will wait a minute, Bathsheba will be in." "Yes, I will wait," said Gabriel, sitting down. "The lamb isn't really the business I came about, Mrs. Hurst. In short, I was going to ask her if she'd like to be married." "And were you indeed?" "Yes. Because if she would, I should be very glad to marry her. D'ye know if she's got any other young man hanging about her at all?" "Let me think," said Mrs. Hurst, poking the fire superfluously.... "Yes--bless you, ever so many young men. You see, Farmer Oak, she's so good-looking, and an excellent scholar besides--she was going to be a governess once, you know, only she was too wild. Not that her young men ever come here--but, Lord, in the nature of women, she must have a dozen!" "That's unfortunate," said Farmer Oak, contemplating a crack in the stone floor with sorrow. "I'm only an every-day sort of man, and my only chance was in being the first comer ... Well, there's no use in my waiting, for that was all I came about: so I'll take myself off home-along, Mrs. Hurst." When Gabriel had gone about two hundred yards along the down, he heard a "hoi-hoi!" uttered behind him, in a piping note of more treble quality than that in which the exclamation usually embodies itself when shouted across a field. He looked round, and saw a girl racing after him, waving a white handkerchief. Oak stood still--and the runner drew nearer. It was Bathsheba Everdene. Gabriel's colour deepened: hers was already deep, not, as it appeared, from emotion, but from running. "Farmer Oak--I--" she said, pausing for want of breath pulling up in front of him with a slanted face and putting her hand to her side. "I have just called to see you," said Gabriel, pending her further speech. "Yes--I know that," she said panting like a robin, her face red and moist from her exertions, like a peony petal before the sun dries off the dew. "I didn't know you had come to ask to have me, or I should have come in from the garden instantly. I ran after you to say--that my aunt made a mistake in sending you away from courting me--" Gabriel expanded. "I'm sorry to have made you run so fast, my dear," he said, with a grateful sense of favours to come. "Wait a bit till you've found your breath." "--It was quite a mistake--aunt's telling you I had a young man already," Bathsheba went on. "I haven't a sweetheart at all--and I never had one, and I thought that, as times go with women, it was SUCH a pity to send you away thinking that I had several." "Really and truly I am glad to hear that!" said Farmer Oak, smiling one of his long special smiles, and blushing with gladness. He held out his hand to take hers, which, when she had eased her side by pressing it there, was prettily extended upon her bosom to still her loud-beating heart. Directly he seized it she put it behind her, so that it slipped through his fingers like an eel. "I have a nice snug little farm," said Gabriel, with half a degree less assurance than when he had seized her hand. "Yes; you have." "A man has advanced me money to begin with, but still, it will soon be paid off, and though I am only an every-day sort of man, I have got on a little since I was a boy." Gabriel uttered "a little" in a tone to show her that it was the complacent form of "a great deal." He continued: "When we be married, I am quite sure I can work twice as hard as I do now." He went forward and stretched out his arm again. Bathsheba had overtaken him at a point beside which stood a low stunted holly bush, now laden with red berries. Seeing his advance take the form of an attitude threatening a possible enclosure, if not compression, of her person, she edged off round the bush. "Why, Farmer Oak," she said, over the top, looking at him with rounded eyes, "I never said I was going to marry you." "Well--that IS a tale!" said Oak, with dismay. "To run after anybody like this, and then say you don't want him!" "What I meant to tell you was only this," she said eagerly, and yet half conscious of the absurdity of the position she had made for herself--"that nobody has got me yet as a sweetheart, instead of my having a dozen, as my aunt said; I HATE to be thought men's property in that way, though possibly I shall be had some day. Why, if I'd wanted you I shouldn't have run after you like this; 'twould have been the FORWARDEST thing! But there was no harm in hurrying to correct a piece of false news that had been told you." "Oh, no--no harm at all." But there is such a thing as being too generous in expressing a judgment impulsively, and Oak added with a more appreciative sense of all the circumstances--"Well, I am not quite certain it was no harm." "Indeed, I hadn't time to think before starting whether I wanted to marry or not, for you'd have been gone over the hill." "Come," said Gabriel, freshening again; "think a minute or two. I'll wait a while, Miss Everdene. Will you marry me? Do, Bathsheba. I love you far more than common!" "I'll try to think," she observed, rather more timorously; "if I can think out of doors; my mind spreads away so." "But you can give a guess." "Then give me time." Bathsheba looked thoughtfully into the distance, away from the direction in which Gabriel stood. "I can make you happy," said he to the back of her head, across the bush. "You shall have a piano in a year or two--farmers' wives are getting to have pianos now--and I'll practise up the flute right well to play with you in the evenings." "Yes; I should like that." "And have one of those little ten-pound gigs for market--and nice flowers, and birds--cocks and hens I mean, because they be useful," continued Gabriel, feeling balanced between poetry and practicality. "I should like it very much." "And a frame for cucumbers--like a gentleman and lady." "Yes." "And when the wedding was over, we'd have it put in the newspaper list of marriages." "Dearly I should like that!" "And the babies in the births--every man jack of 'em! And at home by the fire, whenever you look up, there I shall be--and whenever I look up there will be you." "Wait, wait, and don't be improper!" Her countenance fell, and she was silent awhile. He regarded the red berries between them over and over again, to such an extent, that holly seemed in his after life to be a cypher signifying a proposal of marriage. Bathsheba decisively turned to him. "No; 'tis no use," she said. "I don't want to marry you." "Try." "I have tried hard all the time I've been thinking; for a marriage would be very nice in one sense. People would talk about me, and think I had won my battle, and I should feel triumphant, and all that, But a husband--" "Well!" "Why, he'd always be there, as you say; whenever I looked up, there he'd be." "Of course he would--I, that is." "Well, what I mean is that I shouldn't mind being a bride at a wedding, if I could be one without having a husband. But since a woman can't show off in that way by herself, I shan't marry--at least yet." "That's a terrible wooden story!" At this criticism of her statement Bathsheba made an addition to her dignity by a slight sweep away from him. "Upon my heart and soul, I don't know what a maid can say stupider than that," said Oak. "But dearest," he continued in a palliative voice, "don't be like it!" Oak sighed a deep honest sigh--none the less so in that, being like the sigh of a pine plantation, it was rather noticeable as a disturbance of the atmosphere. "Why won't you have me?" he appealed, creeping round the holly to reach her side. "I cannot," she said, retreating. "But why?" he persisted, standing still at last in despair of ever reaching her, and facing over the bush. "Because I don't love you." "Yes, but--" She contracted a yawn to an inoffensive smallness, so that it was hardly ill-mannered at all. "I don't love you," she said. "But I love you--and, as for myself, I am content to be liked." "Oh Mr. Oak--that's very fine! You'd get to despise me." "Never," said Mr Oak, so earnestly that he seemed to be coming, by the force of his words, straight through the bush and into her arms. "I shall do one thing in this life--one thing certain--that is, love you, and long for you, and KEEP WANTING YOU till I die." His voice had a genuine pathos now, and his large brown hands perceptibly trembled. "It seems dreadfully wrong not to have you when you feel so much!" she said with a little distress, and looking hopelessly around for some means of escape from her moral dilemma. "How I wish I hadn't run after you!" However she seemed to have a short cut for getting back to cheerfulness, and set her face to signify archness. "It wouldn't do, Mr Oak. I want somebody to tame me; I am too independent; and you would never be able to, I know." Oak cast his eyes down the field in a way implying that it was useless to attempt argument. "Mr. Oak," she said, with luminous distinctness and common sense, "you are better off than I. I have hardly a penny in the world--I am staying with my aunt for my bare sustenance. I am better educated than you--and I don't love you a bit: that's my side of the case. Now yours: you are a farmer just beginning; and you ought in common prudence, if you marry at all (which you should certainly not think of doing at present), to marry a woman with money, who would stock a larger farm for you than you have now." Gabriel looked at her with a little surprise and much admiration. "That's the very thing I had been thinking myself!" he naively said. Farmer Oak had one-and-a-half Christian characteristics too many to succeed with Bathsheba: his humility, and a superfluous moiety of honesty. Bathsheba was decidedly disconcerted. "Well, then, why did you come and disturb me?" she said, almost angrily, if not quite, an enlarging red spot rising in each cheek. "I can't do what I think would be--would be--" "Right?" "No: wise." "You have made an admission NOW, Mr. Oak," she exclaimed, with even more hauteur, and rocking her head disdainfully. "After that, do you think I could marry you? Not if I know it." He broke in passionately. "But don't mistake me like that! Because I am open enough to own what every man in my shoes would have thought of, you make your colours come up your face, and get crabbed with me. That about your not being good enough for me is nonsense. You speak like a lady--all the parish notice it, and your uncle at Weatherbury is, I have heerd, a large farmer--much larger than ever I shall be. May I call in the evening, or will you walk along with me o' Sundays? I don't want you to make-up your mind at once, if you'd rather not." "No--no--I cannot. Don't press me any more--don't. I don't love you--so 'twould be ridiculous," she said, with a laugh. No man likes to see his emotions the sport of a merry-go-round of skittishness. "Very well," said Oak, firmly, with the bearing of one who was going to give his days and nights to Ecclesiastes for ever. "Then I'll ask you no more."

Chapter 4

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-4

So it's settled, then. Gabriel Oak is in love with the young woman who saved his life. He uses any opportunity he can to see the woman in the fields, but only ever from afar. He's kind of a stalker. After making some enquiries, he finds out that the girl's name is Bathsheba Everdene , and that she's probably leaving the area in eight days' time. Bummer. One day, he gets an opportunity to visit Bathsheba's house when one of his sheep dies. He packs up the sheep's lamb in a basket, gets all spruced up, and goes to the house. When he gets to the door, he asks Bathsheba's aunt if he could speak to the young woman. Bathsheba is out, but her aunt invites him inside. He announces that he has brought a lamb for her, in case she'd like to raise it. But instead of beating around the bush any longer, Oak tells the aunt that he has come to ask for Bathsheba's hand in marriage. He asks if Bathsheba has any other young men courting her. The aunt tells him that there are all kinds of men that want Bathsheba. She's a hottie. Farmer Oak gets discouraged and leaves. While he's walking down the lane, Bathsheba comes running after him. She wants to tell him that her aunt was lying and that there aren't any other young men in her life. This is great news for Oak, so he proposes to her right on the spot. Unfortunately, she rejects him. Okay, we're tempted at this point to abbreviate Bathsheba's name to B.S. because she is the head game queen. As you can imagine, he's pretty annoyed that she ran all the way down the road just to tell him that she's not interested. He asks her again if she'll marry him, telling her that he's very much in love with her. Ugh. At this point we want to take Oak aside and say, "Be cool, man. Be cool." She says she needs a moment to think, since she's out of breath. Eventually, she tells him no again because she doesn't love him. He says he's totally fine with marrying without love, though, as long as she likes him a little. But no, it's no use. He promises he'll love her forever. But when she refuses him again, he goes all stone-faced and says he'll never ask again. Pardon us while we cringe.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/44.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Lord Jim/section_43_part_0.txt

Lord Jim.chapter 44

chapter 44

{"name": "Chapter 44", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210118112654/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/lord-jim/summary/chapter-44", "summary": "Before dawn, Brown and his group head downriver. Elsewhere, a kind but completely oblivious Jim offers to send them some food. Of course Brown is too busy being led down an alternate channel by Cornelius. Meanwhile Tamb' Itam arrives at Dain Waris' camp and relays the message from Jim. No sooner has Dain Waris put on Jim's ring than Brown's army attacks. Dain Waris is caught completely off guard, and he is killed in the battle. An injured Tamb' Itam manages to get away, and while he is splitting, he sees Cornelius trying to do the exact same thing. He realizes what our resident traitor has done, so he charges Cornelius and kills the punk.", "analysis": ""}

'I don't think they spoke together again. The boat entered a narrow by-channel, where it was pushed by the oar-blades set into crumbling banks, and there was a gloom as if enormous black wings had been outspread above the mist that filled its depth to the summits of the trees. The branches overhead showered big drops through the gloomy fog. At a mutter from Cornelius, Brown ordered his men to load. "I'll give you a chance to get even with them before we're done, you dismal cripples, you," he said to his gang. "Mind you don't throw it away--you hounds." Low growls answered that speech. Cornelius showed much fussy concern for the safety of his canoe. 'Meantime Tamb' Itam had reached the end of his journey. The fog had delayed him a little, but he had paddled steadily, keeping in touch with the south bank. By-and-by daylight came like a glow in a ground glass globe. The shores made on each side of the river a dark smudge, in which one could detect hints of columnar forms and shadows of twisted branches high up. The mist was still thick on the water, but a good watch was being kept, for as Iamb' Itam approached the camp the figures of two men emerged out of the white vapour, and voices spoke to him boisterously. He answered, and presently a canoe lay alongside, and he exchanged news with the paddlers. All was well. The trouble was over. Then the men in the canoe let go their grip on the side of his dug-out and incontinently fell out of sight. He pursued his way till he heard voices coming to him quietly over the water, and saw, under the now lifting, swirling mist, the glow of many little fires burning on a sandy stretch, backed by lofty thin timber and bushes. There again a look-out was kept, for he was challenged. He shouted his name as the two last sweeps of his paddle ran his canoe up on the strand. It was a big camp. Men crouched in many little knots under a subdued murmur of early morning talk. Many thin threads of smoke curled slowly on the white mist. Little shelters, elevated above the ground, had been built for the chiefs. Muskets were stacked in small pyramids, and long spears were stuck singly into the sand near the fires. 'Tamb' Itam, assuming an air of importance, demanded to be led to Dain Waris. He found the friend of his white lord lying on a raised couch made of bamboo, and sheltered by a sort of shed of sticks covered with mats. Dain Waris was awake, and a bright fire was burning before his sleeping-place, which resembled a rude shrine. The only son of nakhoda Doramin answered his greeting kindly. Tamb' Itam began by handing him the ring which vouched for the truth of the messenger's words. Dain Waris, reclining on his elbow, bade him speak and tell all the news. Beginning with the consecrated formula, "The news is good," Tamb' Itam delivered Jim's own words. The white men, deputing with the consent of all the chiefs, were to be allowed to pass down the river. In answer to a question or two Tamb' Itam then reported the proceedings of the last council. Dain Waris listened attentively to the end, toying with the ring which ultimately he slipped on the forefinger of his right hand. After hearing all he had to say he dismissed Tamb' Itam to have food and rest. Orders for the return in the afternoon were given immediately. Afterwards Dain Waris lay down again, open-eyed, while his personal attendants were preparing his food at the fire, by which Tamb' Itam also sat talking to the men who lounged up to hear the latest intelligence from the town. The sun was eating up the mist. A good watch was kept upon the reach of the main stream where the boat of the whites was expected to appear every moment. 'It was then that Brown took his revenge upon the world which, after twenty years of contemptuous and reckless bullying, refused him the tribute of a common robber's success. It was an act of cold-blooded ferocity, and it consoled him on his deathbed like a memory of an indomitable defiance. Stealthily he landed his men on the other side of the island opposite to the Bugis camp, and led them across. After a short but quite silent scuffle, Cornelius, who had tried to slink away at the moment of landing, resigned himself to show the way where the undergrowth was most sparse. Brown held both his skinny hands together behind his back in the grip of one vast fist, and now and then impelled him forward with a fierce push. Cornelius remained as mute as a fish, abject but faithful to his purpose, whose accomplishment loomed before him dimly. At the edge of the patch of forest Brown's men spread themselves out in cover and waited. The camp was plain from end to end before their eyes, and no one looked their way. Nobody even dreamed that the white men could have any knowledge of the narrow channel at the back of the island. When he judged the moment come, Brown yelled, "Let them have it," and fourteen shots rang out like one. 'Tamb' Itam told me the surprise was so great that, except for those who fell dead or wounded, not a soul of them moved for quite an appreciable time after the first discharge. Then a man screamed, and after that scream a great yell of amazement and fear went up from all the throats. A blind panic drove these men in a surging swaying mob to and fro along the shore like a herd of cattle afraid of the water. Some few jumped into the river then, but most of them did so only after the last discharge. Three times Brown's men fired into the ruck, Brown, the only one in view, cursing and yelling, "Aim low! aim low!" 'Tamb' Itam says that, as for him, he understood at the first volley what had happened. Though untouched he fell down and lay as if dead, but with his eyes open. At the sound of the first shots Dain Waris, reclining on the couch, jumped up and ran out upon the open shore, just in time to receive a bullet in his forehead at the second discharge. Tamb' Itam saw him fling his arms wide open before he fell. Then, he says, a great fear came upon him--not before. The white men retired as they had come--unseen. 'Thus Brown balanced his account with the evil fortune. Notice that even in this awful outbreak there is a superiority as of a man who carries right--the abstract thing--within the envelope of his common desires. It was not a vulgar and treacherous massacre; it was a lesson, a retribution--a demonstration of some obscure and awful attribute of our nature which, I am afraid, is not so very far under the surface as we like to think. 'Afterwards the whites depart unseen by Tamb' Itam, and seem to vanish from before men's eyes altogether; and the schooner, too, vanishes after the manner of stolen goods. But a story is told of a white long-boat picked up a month later in the Indian Ocean by a cargo steamer. Two parched, yellow, glassy-eyed, whispering skeletons in her recognised the authority of a third, who declared that his name was Brown. His schooner, he reported, bound south with a cargo of Java sugar, had sprung a bad leak and sank under his feet. He and his companions were the survivors of a crew of six. The two died on board the steamer which rescued them. Brown lived to be seen by me, and I can testify that he had played his part to the last. 'It seems, however, that in going away they had neglected to cast off Cornelius's canoe. Cornelius himself Brown had let go at the beginning of the shooting, with a kick for a parting benediction. Tamb' Itam, after arising from amongst the dead, saw the Nazarene running up and down the shore amongst the corpses and the expiring fires. He uttered little cries. Suddenly he rushed to the water, and made frantic efforts to get one of the Bugis boats into the water. "Afterwards, till he had seen me," related Tamb' Itam, "he stood looking at the heavy canoe and scratching his head." "What became of him?" I asked. Tamb' Itam, staring hard at me, made an expressive gesture with his right arm. "Twice I struck, Tuan," he said. "When he beheld me approaching he cast himself violently on the ground and made a great outcry, kicking. He screeched like a frightened hen till he felt the point; then he was still, and lay staring at me while his life went out of his eyes." 'This done, Tamb' Itam did not tarry. He understood the importance of being the first with the awful news at the fort. There were, of course, many survivors of Dain Waris's party; but in the extremity of panic some had swum across the river, others had bolted into the bush. The fact is that they did not know really who struck that blow--whether more white robbers were not coming, whether they had not already got hold of the whole land. They imagined themselves to be the victims of a vast treachery, and utterly doomed to destruction. It is said that some small parties did not come in till three days afterwards. However, a few tried to make their way back to Patusan at once, and one of the canoes that were patrolling the river that morning was in sight of the camp at the very moment of the attack. It is true that at first the men in her leaped overboard and swam to the opposite bank, but afterwards they returned to their boat and started fearfully up-stream. Of these Tamb' Itam had an hour's advance.'

Chapter 44

https://web.archive.org/web/20210118112654/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/lord-jim/summary/chapter-44

Before dawn, Brown and his group head downriver. Elsewhere, a kind but completely oblivious Jim offers to send them some food. Of course Brown is too busy being led down an alternate channel by Cornelius. Meanwhile Tamb' Itam arrives at Dain Waris' camp and relays the message from Jim. No sooner has Dain Waris put on Jim's ring than Brown's army attacks. Dain Waris is caught completely off guard, and he is killed in the battle. An injured Tamb' Itam manages to get away, and while he is splitting, he sees Cornelius trying to do the exact same thing. He realizes what our resident traitor has done, so he charges Cornelius and kills the punk.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/88.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Brothers Karamazov/section_87_part_0.txt

The Brothers Karamazov.book 12.chapter 9

book 12, chapter 9

{"name": "Book 12, Chapter 9", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-12-chapter-9", "summary": "Phew. Now you've made it through Chapters 6 through 8 and have finally arrived at the final part of the prosecutor's closing statement. Kirillovich describes the events at Mokroye. He depicts Dmitri as someone who thought his world had ended and his romantic hopes were dashed until he arrived at Mokroye. There, according to Kirillovich, he realized that he still had a chance with Grushenka. Reunited with her, his desire to live is rekindled. The reason the investigators found only 1,500 roubles on him is that he stashed the rest of the money in some secret hole at the inn. Kirillovich claims that Dmitri's desire to live fuels his absurd stories during his interrogation at Mokroye. When confronted with the seemingly trivial but damning detail that the gate to his father's house was open, Dmitri desperately came up with the fiction of the amulet and Smerdyakov's murdering his father. Kirillovich then begs the jury to save Russia and convict Dmitri for the murder of his father. His speech over, Kirillovich leaves the courtroom immediately and nearly faints in the next room. The chapter ends with chatter in the courtroom during a brief, twenty-minute break, before the defense attorney begins his speech.", "analysis": ""}

Chapter IX. The Galloping Troika. The End Of The Prosecutor's Speech. Ippolit Kirillovitch had chosen the historical method of exposition, beloved by all nervous orators, who find in its limitation a check on their own eager rhetoric. At this moment in his speech he went off into a dissertation on Grushenka's "first lover," and brought forward several interesting thoughts on this theme. "Karamazov, who had been frantically jealous of every one, collapsed, so to speak, and effaced himself at once before this first lover. What makes it all the more strange is that he seems to have hardly thought of this formidable rival. But he had looked upon him as a remote danger, and Karamazov always lives in the present. Possibly he regarded him as a fiction. But his wounded heart grasped instantly that the woman had been concealing this new rival and deceiving him, because he was anything but a fiction to her, because he was the one hope of her life. Grasping this instantly, he resigned himself. "Gentlemen of the jury, I cannot help dwelling on this unexpected trait in the prisoner's character. He suddenly evinces an irresistible desire for justice, a respect for woman and a recognition of her right to love. And all this at the very moment when he had stained his hands with his father's blood for her sake! It is true that the blood he had shed was already crying out for vengeance, for, after having ruined his soul and his life in this world, he was forced to ask himself at that same instant what he was and what he could be now to her, to that being, dearer to him than his own soul, in comparison with that former lover who had returned penitent, with new love, to the woman he had once betrayed, with honorable offers, with the promise of a reformed and happy life. And he, luckless man, what could he give her now, what could he offer her? "Karamazov felt all this, knew that all ways were barred to him by his crime and that he was a criminal under sentence, and not a man with life before him! This thought crushed him. And so he instantly flew to one frantic plan, which, to a man of Karamazov's character, must have appeared the one inevitable way out of his terrible position. That way out was suicide. He ran for the pistols he had left in pledge with his friend Perhotin and on the way, as he ran, he pulled out of his pocket the money, for the sake of which he had stained his hands with his father's gore. Oh, now he needed money more than ever. Karamazov would die, Karamazov would shoot himself and it should be remembered! To be sure, he was a poet and had burnt the candle at both ends all his life. 'To her, to her! and there, oh, there I will give a feast to the whole world, such as never was before, that will be remembered and talked of long after! In the midst of shouts of wild merriment, reckless gypsy songs and dances I shall raise the glass and drink to the woman I adore and her new-found happiness! And then, on the spot, at her feet, I shall dash out my brains before her and punish myself! She will remember Mitya Karamazov sometimes, she will see how Mitya loved her, she will feel for Mitya!' "Here we see in excess a love of effect, a romantic despair and sentimentality, and the wild recklessness of the Karamazovs. Yes, but there is something else, gentlemen of the jury, something that cries out in the soul, throbs incessantly in the mind, and poisons the heart unto death--that _something_ is conscience, gentlemen of the jury, its judgment, its terrible torments! The pistol will settle everything, the pistol is the only way out! But _beyond_--I don't know whether Karamazov wondered at that moment 'What lies beyond,' and whether Karamazov could, like Hamlet, wonder 'What lies beyond.' No, gentlemen of the jury, they have their Hamlets, but we still have our Karamazovs!" Here Ippolit Kirillovitch drew a minute picture of Mitya's preparations, the scene at Perhotin's, at the shop, with the drivers. He quoted numerous words and actions, confirmed by witnesses, and the picture made a terrible impression on the audience. The guilt of this harassed and desperate man stood out clear and convincing, when the facts were brought together. "What need had he of precaution? Two or three times he almost confessed, hinted at it, all but spoke out." (Then followed the evidence given by witnesses.) "He even cried out to the peasant who drove him, 'Do you know, you are driving a murderer!' But it was impossible for him to speak out, he had to get to Mokroe and there to finish his romance. But what was awaiting the luckless man? Almost from the first minute at Mokroe he saw that his invincible rival was perhaps by no means so invincible, that the toast to their new-found happiness was not desired and would not be acceptable. But you know the facts, gentlemen of the jury, from the preliminary inquiry. Karamazov's triumph over his rival was complete and his soul passed into quite a new phase, perhaps the most terrible phase through which his soul has passed or will pass. "One may say with certainty, gentlemen of the jury," the prosecutor continued, "that outraged nature and the criminal heart bring their own vengeance more completely than any earthly justice. What's more, justice and punishment on earth positively alleviate the punishment of nature and are, indeed, essential to the soul of the criminal at such moments, as its salvation from despair. For I cannot imagine the horror and moral suffering of Karamazov when he learnt that she loved him, that for his sake she had rejected her first lover, that she was summoning him, Mitya, to a new life, that she was promising him happiness--and when? When everything was over for him and nothing was possible! "By the way, I will note in parenthesis a point of importance for the light it throws on the prisoner's position at the moment. This woman, this love of his, had been till the last moment, till the very instant of his arrest, a being unattainable, passionately desired by him but unattainable. Yet why did he not shoot himself then, why did he relinquish his design and even forget where his pistol was? It was just that passionate desire for love and the hope of satisfying it that restrained him. Throughout their revels he kept close to his adored mistress, who was at the banquet with him and was more charming and fascinating to him than ever--he did not leave her side, abasing himself in his homage before her. "His passion might well, for a moment, stifle not only the fear of arrest, but even the torments of conscience. For a moment, oh, only for a moment! I can picture the state of mind of the criminal hopelessly enslaved by these influences--first, the influence of drink, of noise and excitement, of the thud of the dance and the scream of the song, and of her, flushed with wine, singing and dancing and laughing to him! Secondly, the hope in the background that the fatal end might still be far off, that not till next morning, at least, they would come and take him. So he had a few hours and that's much, very much! In a few hours one can think of many things. I imagine that he felt something like what criminals feel when they are being taken to the scaffold. They have another long, long street to pass down and at walking pace, past thousands of people. Then there will be a turning into another street and only at the end of that street the dread place of execution! I fancy that at the beginning of the journey the condemned man, sitting on his shameful cart, must feel that he has infinite life still before him. The houses recede, the cart moves on--oh, that's nothing, it's still far to the turning into the second street and he still looks boldly to right and to left at those thousands of callously curious people with their eyes fixed on him, and he still fancies that he is just such a man as they. But now the turning comes to the next street. Oh, that's nothing, nothing, there's still a whole street before him, and however many houses have been passed, he will still think there are many left. And so to the very end, to the very scaffold. "This I imagine is how it was with Karamazov then. 'They've not had time yet,' he must have thought, 'I may still find some way out, oh, there's still time to make some plan of defense, and now, now--she is so fascinating!' "His soul was full of confusion and dread, but he managed, however, to put aside half his money and hide it somewhere--I cannot otherwise explain the disappearance of quite half of the three thousand he had just taken from his father's pillow. He had been in Mokroe more than once before, he had caroused there for two days together already, he knew the old big house with all its passages and outbuildings. I imagine that part of the money was hidden in that house, not long before the arrest, in some crevice, under some floor, in some corner, under the roof. With what object? I shall be asked. Why, the catastrophe may take place at once, of course; he hadn't yet considered how to meet it, he hadn't the time, his head was throbbing and his heart was with _her_, but money--money was indispensable in any case! With money a man is always a man. Perhaps such foresight at such a moment may strike you as unnatural? But he assures us himself that a month before, at a critical and exciting moment, he had halved his money and sewn it up in a little bag. And though that was not true, as we shall prove directly, it shows the idea was a familiar one to Karamazov, he had contemplated it. What's more, when he declared at the inquiry that he had put fifteen hundred roubles in a bag (which never existed) he may have invented that little bag on the inspiration of the moment, because he had two hours before divided his money and hidden half of it at Mokroe till morning, in case of emergency, simply not to have it on himself. Two extremes, gentlemen of the jury, remember that Karamazov can contemplate two extremes and both at once. "We have looked in the house, but we haven't found the money. It may still be there or it may have disappeared next day and be in the prisoner's hands now. In any case he was at her side, on his knees before her, she was lying on the bed, he had his hands stretched out to her and he had so entirely forgotten everything that he did not even hear the men coming to arrest him. He hadn't time to prepare any line of defense in his mind. He was caught unawares and confronted with his judges, the arbiters of his destiny. "Gentlemen of the jury, there are moments in the execution of our duties when it is terrible for us to face a man, terrible on his account, too! The moments of contemplating that animal fear, when the criminal sees that all is lost, but still struggles, still means to struggle, the moments when every instinct of self-preservation rises up in him at once and he looks at you with questioning and suffering eyes, studies you, your face, your thoughts, uncertain on which side you will strike, and his distracted mind frames thousands of plans in an instant, but he is still afraid to speak, afraid of giving himself away! This purgatory of the spirit, this animal thirst for self-preservation, these humiliating moments of the human soul, are awful, and sometimes arouse horror and compassion for the criminal even in the lawyer. And this was what we all witnessed then. "At first he was thunderstruck and in his terror dropped some very compromising phrases. 'Blood! I've deserved it!' But he quickly restrained himself. He had not prepared what he was to say, what answer he was to make, he had nothing but a bare denial ready. 'I am not guilty of my father's death.' That was his fence for the moment and behind it he hoped to throw up a barricade of some sort. His first compromising exclamations he hastened to explain by declaring that he was responsible for the death of the servant Grigory only. 'Of that bloodshed I am guilty, but who has killed my father, gentlemen, who has killed him? Who can have killed him, _if not I_?' Do you hear, he asked us that, us, who had come to ask him that question! Do you hear that phrase uttered with such premature haste--'if not I'--the animal cunning, the naivete, the Karamazov impatience of it? 'I didn't kill him and you mustn't think I did! I wanted to kill him, gentlemen, I wanted to kill him,' he hastens to admit (he was in a hurry, in a terrible hurry), 'but still I am not guilty, it is not I murdered him.' He concedes to us that he wanted to murder him, as though to say, you can see for yourselves how truthful I am, so you'll believe all the sooner that I didn't murder him. Oh, in such cases the criminal is often amazingly shallow and credulous. "At that point one of the lawyers asked him, as it were incidentally, the most simple question, 'Wasn't it Smerdyakov killed him?' Then, as we expected, he was horribly angry at our having anticipated him and caught him unawares, before he had time to pave the way to choose and snatch the moment when it would be most natural to bring in Smerdyakov's name. He rushed at once to the other extreme, as he always does, and began to assure us that Smerdyakov could not have killed him, was not capable of it. But don't believe him, that was only his cunning; he didn't really give up the idea of Smerdyakov; on the contrary, he meant to bring him forward again; for, indeed, he had no one else to bring forward, but he would do that later, because for the moment that line was spoiled for him. He would bring him forward perhaps next day, or even a few days later, choosing an opportunity to cry out to us, 'You know I was more skeptical about Smerdyakov than you, you remember that yourselves, but now I am convinced. He killed him, he must have done!' And for the present he falls back upon a gloomy and irritable denial. Impatience and anger prompted him, however, to the most inept and incredible explanation of how he looked into his father's window and how he respectfully withdrew. The worst of it was that he was unaware of the position of affairs, of the evidence given by Grigory. "We proceeded to search him. The search angered, but encouraged him, the whole three thousand had not been found on him, only half of it. And no doubt only at that moment of angry silence, the fiction of the little bag first occurred to him. No doubt he was conscious himself of the improbability of the story and strove painfully to make it sound more likely, to weave it into a romance that would sound plausible. In such cases the first duty, the chief task of the investigating lawyers, is to prevent the criminal being prepared, to pounce upon him unexpectedly so that he may blurt out his cherished ideas in all their simplicity, improbability and inconsistency. The criminal can only be made to speak by the sudden and apparently incidental communication of some new fact, of some circumstance of great importance in the case, of which he had no previous idea and could not have foreseen. We had such a fact in readiness--that was Grigory's evidence about the open door through which the prisoner had run out. He had completely forgotten about that door and had not even suspected that Grigory could have seen it. "The effect of it was amazing. He leapt up and shouted to us, 'Then Smerdyakov murdered him, it was Smerdyakov!' and so betrayed the basis of the defense he was keeping back, and betrayed it in its most improbable shape, for Smerdyakov could only have committed the murder after he had knocked Grigory down and run away. When we told him that Grigory saw the door was open before he fell down, and had heard Smerdyakov behind the screen as he came out of his bedroom--Karamazov was positively crushed. My esteemed and witty colleague, Nikolay Parfenovitch, told me afterwards that he was almost moved to tears at the sight of him. And to improve matters, the prisoner hastened to tell us about the much-talked-of little bag--so be it, you shall hear this romance! "Gentlemen of the jury, I have told you already why I consider this romance not only an absurdity, but the most improbable invention that could have been brought forward in the circumstances. If one tried for a bet to invent the most unlikely story, one could hardly find anything more incredible. The worst of such stories is that the triumphant romancers can always be put to confusion and crushed by the very details in which real life is so rich and which these unhappy and involuntary story-tellers neglect as insignificant trifles. Oh, they have no thought to spare for such details, their minds are concentrated on their grand invention as a whole, and fancy any one daring to pull them up for a trifle! But that's how they are caught. The prisoner was asked the question, 'Where did you get the stuff for your little bag and who made it for you?' 'I made it myself.' 'And where did you get the linen?' The prisoner was positively offended, he thought it almost insulting to ask him such a trivial question, and would you believe it, his resentment was genuine! But they are all like that. 'I tore it off my shirt.' 'Then we shall find that shirt among your linen to-morrow, with a piece torn off.' And only fancy, gentlemen of the jury, if we really had found that torn shirt (and how could we have failed to find it in his chest of drawers or trunk?) that would have been a fact, a material fact in support of his statement! But he was incapable of that reflection. 'I don't remember, it may not have been off my shirt, I sewed it up in one of my landlady's caps.' 'What sort of a cap?' 'It was an old cotton rag of hers lying about.' 'And do you remember that clearly?' 'No, I don't.' And he was angry, very angry, and yet imagine not remembering it! At the most terrible moments of man's life, for instance when he is being led to execution, he remembers just such trifles. He will forget anything but some green roof that has flashed past him on the road, or a jackdaw on a cross--that he will remember. He concealed the making of that little bag from his household, he must have remembered his humiliating fear that some one might come in and find him needle in hand, how at the slightest sound he slipped behind the screen (there is a screen in his lodgings). "But, gentlemen of the jury, why do I tell you all this, all these details, trifles?" cried Ippolit Kirillovitch suddenly. "Just because the prisoner still persists in these absurdities to this moment. He has not explained anything since that fatal night two months ago, he has not added one actual illuminating fact to his former fantastic statements; all those are trivialities. 'You must believe it on my honor.' Oh, we are glad to believe it, we are eager to believe it, even if only on his word of honor! Are we jackals thirsting for human blood? Show us a single fact in the prisoner's favor and we shall rejoice; but let it be a substantial, real fact, and not a conclusion drawn from the prisoner's expression by his own brother, or that when he beat himself on the breast he must have meant to point to the little bag, in the darkness, too. We shall rejoice at the new fact, we shall be the first to repudiate our charge, we shall hasten to repudiate it. But now justice cries out and we persist, we cannot repudiate anything." Ippolit Kirillovitch passed to his final peroration. He looked as though he was in a fever, he spoke of the blood that cried for vengeance, the blood of the father murdered by his son, with the base motive of robbery! He pointed to the tragic and glaring consistency of the facts. "And whatever you may hear from the talented and celebrated counsel for the defense," Ippolit Kirillovitch could not resist adding, "whatever eloquent and touching appeals may be made to your sensibilities, remember that at this moment you are in a temple of justice. Remember that you are the champions of our justice, the champions of our holy Russia, of her principles, her family, everything that she holds sacred! Yes, you represent Russia here at this moment, and your verdict will be heard not in this hall only but will reecho throughout the whole of Russia, and all Russia will hear you, as her champions and her judges, and she will be encouraged or disheartened by your verdict. Do not disappoint Russia and her expectations. Our fatal troika dashes on in her headlong flight perhaps to destruction and in all Russia for long past men have stretched out imploring hands and called a halt to its furious reckless course. And if other nations stand aside from that troika that may be, not from respect, as the poet would fain believe, but simply from horror. From horror, perhaps from disgust. And well it is that they stand aside, but maybe they will cease one day to do so and will form a firm wall confronting the hurrying apparition and will check the frenzied rush of our lawlessness, for the sake of their own safety, enlightenment and civilization. Already we have heard voices of alarm from Europe, they already begin to sound. Do not tempt them! Do not heap up their growing hatred by a sentence justifying the murder of a father by his son!" Though Ippolit Kirillovitch was genuinely moved, he wound up his speech with this rhetorical appeal--and the effect produced by him was extraordinary. When he had finished his speech, he went out hurriedly and, as I have mentioned before, almost fainted in the adjoining room. There was no applause in the court, but serious persons were pleased. The ladies were not so well satisfied, though even they were pleased with his eloquence, especially as they had no apprehensions as to the upshot of the trial and had full trust in Fetyukovitch. "He will speak at last and of course carry all before him." Every one looked at Mitya; he sat silent through the whole of the prosecutor's speech, clenching his teeth, with his hands clasped, and his head bowed. Only from time to time he raised his head and listened, especially when Grushenka was spoken of. When the prosecutor mentioned Rakitin's opinion of her, a smile of contempt and anger passed over his face and he murmured rather audibly, "The Bernards!" When Ippolit Kirillovitch described how he had questioned and tortured him at Mokroe, Mitya raised his head and listened with intense curiosity. At one point he seemed about to jump up and cry out, but controlled himself and only shrugged his shoulders disdainfully. People talked afterwards of the end of the speech, of the prosecutor's feat in examining the prisoner at Mokroe, and jeered at Ippolit Kirillovitch. "The man could not resist boasting of his cleverness," they said. The court was adjourned, but only for a short interval, a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes at most. There was a hum of conversation and exclamations in the audience. I remember some of them. "A weighty speech," a gentleman in one group observed gravely. "He brought in too much psychology," said another voice. "But it was all true, the absolute truth!" "Yes, he is first rate at it." "He summed it all up." "Yes, he summed us up, too," chimed in another voice. "Do you remember, at the beginning of his speech, making out we were all like Fyodor Pavlovitch?" "And at the end, too. But that was all rot." "And obscure too." "He was a little too much carried away." "It's unjust, it's unjust." "No, it was smartly done, anyway. He's had long to wait, but he's had his say, ha ha!" "What will the counsel for the defense say?" In another group I heard: "He had no business to make a thrust at the Petersburg man like that; 'appealing to your sensibilities'--do you remember?" "Yes, that was awkward of him." "He was in too great a hurry." "He is a nervous man." "We laugh, but what must the prisoner be feeling?" "Yes, what must it be for Mitya?" In a third group: "What lady is that, the fat one, with the lorgnette, sitting at the end?" "She is a general's wife, divorced, I know her." "That's why she has the lorgnette." "She is not good for much." "Oh, no, she is a piquante little woman." "Two places beyond her there is a little fair woman, she is prettier." "They caught him smartly at Mokroe, didn't they, eh?" "Oh, it was smart enough. We've heard it before, how often he has told the story at people's houses!" "And he couldn't resist doing it now. That's vanity." "He is a man with a grievance, he he!" "Yes, and quick to take offense. And there was too much rhetoric, such long sentences." "Yes, he tries to alarm us, he kept trying to alarm us. Do you remember about the troika? Something about 'They have Hamlets, but we have, so far, only Karamazovs!' That was cleverly said!" "That was to propitiate the liberals. He is afraid of them." "Yes, and he is afraid of the lawyer, too." "Yes, what will Fetyukovitch say?" "Whatever he says, he won't get round our peasants." "Don't you think so?" A fourth group: "What he said about the troika was good, that piece about the other nations." "And that was true what he said about other nations not standing it." "What do you mean?" "Why, in the English Parliament a Member got up last week and speaking about the Nihilists asked the Ministry whether it was not high time to intervene, to educate this barbarous people. Ippolit was thinking of him, I know he was. He was talking about that last week." "Not an easy job." "Not an easy job? Why not?" "Why, we'd shut up Kronstadt and not let them have any corn. Where would they get it?" "In America. They get it from America now." "Nonsense!" But the bell rang, all rushed to their places. Fetyukovitch mounted the tribune.

Book 12, Chapter 9

https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-12-chapter-9

Phew. Now you've made it through Chapters 6 through 8 and have finally arrived at the final part of the prosecutor's closing statement. Kirillovich describes the events at Mokroye. He depicts Dmitri as someone who thought his world had ended and his romantic hopes were dashed until he arrived at Mokroye. There, according to Kirillovich, he realized that he still had a chance with Grushenka. Reunited with her, his desire to live is rekindled. The reason the investigators found only 1,500 roubles on him is that he stashed the rest of the money in some secret hole at the inn. Kirillovich claims that Dmitri's desire to live fuels his absurd stories during his interrogation at Mokroye. When confronted with the seemingly trivial but damning detail that the gate to his father's house was open, Dmitri desperately came up with the fiction of the amulet and Smerdyakov's murdering his father. Kirillovich then begs the jury to save Russia and convict Dmitri for the murder of his father. His speech over, Kirillovich leaves the courtroom immediately and nearly faints in the next room. The chapter ends with chatter in the courtroom during a brief, twenty-minute break, before the defense attorney begins his speech.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1232-chapters/17.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Prince/section_17_part_0.txt

The Prince.chapter 17

chapter 17

{"name": "Chapter 17", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210420060055/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/prince-machiavelli/summary/chapter-17", "summary": "So generosity was a no-go. And compassion? Well, you guessed it: compassion isn't really conducive to the sort of warlike ruler Machiavelli advocates and might actually destroy a nation. Just like it's better to be a little mean than nice for the sake of the nation, it's better to be feared than loved because people seem to react better to punishment than love. Again, Machiavelli keeps telling us not to become hated, which is easy enough if you lay off people's families and lands. In Machiavelli's example section, he tells us how Hannibal was super awesome because he was insanely cruel. We mean, there's a reason why that scary dude from Silence of the Lambs was named Hannibal. Guess who almost wasn't awesome? This guy called Scipio who was all mushy touchy feely and didn't want to punish people. Lucky for him, other people covered up his namby-pamby nature. But everyone is not so lucky. Anyway, in the end, since the people choose if they like you or not, don't worry about it. Just make sure that they don't hate you.", "analysis": ""}

Coming now to the other qualities mentioned above, I say that every prince ought to desire to be considered clement and not cruel. Nevertheless he ought to take care not to misuse this clemency. Cesare Borgia was considered cruel; notwithstanding, his cruelty reconciled the Romagna, unified it, and restored it to peace and loyalty. And if this be rightly considered, he will be seen to have been much more merciful than the Florentine people, who, to avoid a reputation for cruelty, permitted Pistoia to be destroyed.(*) Therefore a prince, so long as he keeps his subjects united and loyal, ought not to mind the reproach of cruelty; because with a few examples he will be more merciful than those who, through too much mercy, allow disorders to arise, from which follow murders or robberies; for these are wont to injure the whole people, whilst those executions which originate with a prince offend the individual only. (*) During the rioting between the Cancellieri and Panciatichi factions in 1502 and 1503. And of all princes, it is impossible for the new prince to avoid the imputation of cruelty, owing to new states being full of dangers. Hence Virgil, through the mouth of Dido, excuses the inhumanity of her reign owing to its being new, saying: "Res dura, et regni novitas me talia cogunt Moliri, et late fines custode tueri."(*) Nevertheless he ought to be slow to believe and to act, nor should he himself show fear, but proceed in a temperate manner with prudence and humanity, so that too much confidence may not make him incautious and too much distrust render him intolerable. (*) . . . against my will, my fate A throne unsettled, and an infant state, Bid me defend my realms with all my pow'rs, And guard with these severities my shores. Christopher Pitt. Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved? It may be answered that one should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, it is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with. Because this is to be asserted in general of men, that they are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, covetous, and as long as you succeed they are yours entirely; they will offer you their blood, property, life, and children, as is said above, when the need is far distant; but when it approaches they turn against you. And that prince who, relying entirely on their promises, has neglected other precautions, is ruined; because friendships that are obtained by payments, and not by greatness or nobility of mind, may indeed be earned, but they are not secured, and in time of need cannot be relied upon; and men have less scruple in offending one who is beloved than one who is feared, for love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails. Nevertheless a prince ought to inspire fear in such a way that, if he does not win love, he avoids hatred; because he can endure very well being feared whilst he is not hated, which will always be as long as he abstains from the property of his citizens and subjects and from their women. But when it is necessary for him to proceed against the life of someone, he must do it on proper justification and for manifest cause, but above all things he must keep his hands off the property of others, because men more quickly forget the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony. Besides, pretexts for taking away the property are never wanting; for he who has once begun to live by robbery will always find pretexts for seizing what belongs to others; but reasons for taking life, on the contrary, are more difficult to find and sooner lapse. But when a prince is with his army, and has under control a multitude of soldiers, then it is quite necessary for him to disregard the reputation of cruelty, for without it he would never hold his army united or disposed to its duties. Among the wonderful deeds of Hannibal this one is enumerated: that having led an enormous army, composed of many various races of men, to fight in foreign lands, no dissensions arose either among them or against the prince, whether in his bad or in his good fortune. This arose from nothing else than his inhuman cruelty, which, with his boundless valour, made him revered and terrible in the sight of his soldiers, but without that cruelty, his other virtues were not sufficient to produce this effect. And short-sighted writers admire his deeds from one point of view and from another condemn the principal cause of them. That it is true his other virtues would not have been sufficient for him may be proved by the case of Scipio, that most excellent man, not only of his own times but within the memory of man, against whom, nevertheless, his army rebelled in Spain; this arose from nothing but his too great forbearance, which gave his soldiers more license than is consistent with military discipline. For this he was upbraided in the Senate by Fabius Maximus, and called the corrupter of the Roman soldiery. The Locrians were laid waste by a legate of Scipio, yet they were not avenged by him, nor was the insolence of the legate punished, owing entirely to his easy nature. Insomuch that someone in the Senate, wishing to excuse him, said there were many men who knew much better how not to err than to correct the errors of others. This disposition, if he had been continued in the command, would have destroyed in time the fame and glory of Scipio; but, he being under the control of the Senate, this injurious characteristic not only concealed itself, but contributed to his glory. Returning to the question of being feared or loved, I come to the conclusion that, men loving according to their own will and fearing according to that of the prince, a wise prince should establish himself on that which is in his own control and not in that of others; he must endeavour only to avoid hatred, as is noted.

Chapter 17

https://web.archive.org/web/20210420060055/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/prince-machiavelli/summary/chapter-17

So generosity was a no-go. And compassion? Well, you guessed it: compassion isn't really conducive to the sort of warlike ruler Machiavelli advocates and might actually destroy a nation. Just like it's better to be a little mean than nice for the sake of the nation, it's better to be feared than loved because people seem to react better to punishment than love. Again, Machiavelli keeps telling us not to become hated, which is easy enough if you lay off people's families and lands. In Machiavelli's example section, he tells us how Hannibal was super awesome because he was insanely cruel. We mean, there's a reason why that scary dude from Silence of the Lambs was named Hannibal. Guess who almost wasn't awesome? This guy called Scipio who was all mushy touchy feely and didn't want to punish people. Lucky for him, other people covered up his namby-pamby nature. But everyone is not so lucky. Anyway, in the end, since the people choose if they like you or not, don't worry about it. Just make sure that they don't hate you.

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/1232-chapters/01.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Prince/section_1_part_1.txt

The Prince.chapter i

chapter i

{"name": "Chapter I", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210303115306/https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/prince/section2/", "summary": "The Kinds of Principalities and the Means by Which They Are Acquired Machiavelli describes the different kinds of states, arguing that all states are either republics or principalities. Principalities can be divided into hereditary principalities and new principalities. New principalities are either completely new or new appendages to existing states. By fortune or strength, a prince can acquire a new principality with his own army or with the arms of others", "analysis": ""}

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.

Chapter I

https://web.archive.org/web/20210303115306/https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/prince/section2/

The Kinds of Principalities and the Means by Which They Are Acquired Machiavelli describes the different kinds of states, arguing that all states are either republics or principalities. Principalities can be divided into hereditary principalities and new principalities. New principalities are either completely new or new appendages to existing states. By fortune or strength, a prince can acquire a new principality with his own army or with the arms of others

pinkmonkey

all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/33.txt

finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Lord Jim/section_32_part_0.txt

Lord Jim.chapter 33

chapter 33

{"name": "Chapter 33", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820051943/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmLordJim42.asp", "summary": "Jewel confided in Marlow that she did not want to die weeping like her mother. Marlow was overwhelmed by the girl's fear and grief. He tried to convince her that Jim would never leave her, that Jim was truer than any man; but she remained doubtful and apprehensive. Her ignorance made her an object of pity. Marlow, wondering if Jim had told Jewel about the Patna, asked her what she knew about his past life. Jewel said she knew nothing, that he had only assured her that he would never leave her. Marlow explained that Jim had no one in the other world. When asked why, Marlow answered that he was not good enough. Jewel did not believe him.", "analysis": "Notes This chapter, an important one in the novel, has a very serious Mood. It shows the nature of Jewel's fears of being destroyed by a white man. Marlow assures Jewel that Jim will never leave Patusan. This is true, as long as no one discovers Jim's past or his guilt. Marlow feels that Jim does not permanently belong in Patusan; however, he knows Jim can never go back to England where he belongs. Marlow feels this fact makes Jim's existence tragic. Before he departs, he assures Jewel that he will never come back to Patusan, so she need not fear him."}

'I was immensely touched: her youth, her ignorance, her pretty beauty, which had the simple charm and the delicate vigour of a wild-flower, her pathetic pleading, her helplessness, appealed to me with almost the strength of her own unreasonable and natural fear. She feared the unknown as we all do, and her ignorance made the unknown infinitely vast. I stood for it, for myself, for you fellows, for all the world that neither cared for Jim nor needed him in the least. I would have been ready enough to answer for the indifference of the teeming earth but for the reflection that he too belonged to this mysterious unknown of her fears, and that, however much I stood for, I did not stand for him. This made me hesitate. A murmur of hopeless pain unsealed my lips. I began by protesting that I at least had come with no intention to take Jim away. 'Why did I come, then? After a slight movement she was as still as a marble statue in the night. I tried to explain briefly: friendship, business; if I had any wish in the matter it was rather to see him stay. . . . "They always leave us," she murmured. The breath of sad wisdom from the grave which her piety wreathed with flowers seemed to pass in a faint sigh. . . . Nothing, I said, could separate Jim from her. 'It is my firm conviction now; it was my conviction at the time; it was the only possible conclusion from the facts of the case. It was not made more certain by her whispering in a tone in which one speaks to oneself, "He swore this to me." "Did you ask him?" I said. 'She made a step nearer. "No. Never!" She had asked him only to go away. It was that night on the river-bank, after he had killed the man--after she had flung the torch in the water because he was looking at her so. There was too much light, and the danger was over then--for a little time--for a little time. He said then he would not abandon her to Cornelius. She had insisted. She wanted him to leave her. He said that he could not--that it was impossible. He trembled while he said this. She had felt him tremble. . . . One does not require much imagination to see the scene, almost to hear their whispers. She was afraid for him too. I believe that then she saw in him only a predestined victim of dangers which she understood better than himself. Though by nothing but his mere presence he had mastered her heart, had filled all her thoughts, and had possessed himself of all her affections, she underestimated his chances of success. It is obvious that at about that time everybody was inclined to underestimate his chances. Strictly speaking he didn't seem to have any. I know this was Cornelius's view. He confessed that much to me in extenuation of the shady part he had played in Sherif Ali's plot to do away with the infidel. Even Sherif Ali himself, as it seems certain now, had nothing but contempt for the white man. Jim was to be murdered mainly on religious grounds, I believe. A simple act of piety (and so far infinitely meritorious), but otherwise without much importance. In the last part of this opinion Cornelius concurred. "Honourable sir," he argued abjectly on the only occasion he managed to have me to himself--"honourable sir, how was I to know? Who was he? What could he do to make people believe him? What did Mr. Stein mean sending a boy like that to talk big to an old servant? I was ready to save him for eighty dollars. Only eighty dollars. Why didn't the fool go? Was I to get stabbed myself for the sake of a stranger?" He grovelled in spirit before me, with his body doubled up insinuatingly and his hands hovering about my knees, as though he were ready to embrace my legs. "What's eighty dollars? An insignificant sum to give to a defenceless old man ruined for life by a deceased she-devil." Here he wept. But I anticipate. I didn't that night chance upon Cornelius till I had had it out with the girl. 'She was unselfish when she urged Jim to leave her, and even to leave the country. It was his danger that was foremost in her thoughts--even if she wanted to save herself too--perhaps unconsciously: but then look at the warning she had, look at the lesson that could be drawn from every moment of the recently ended life in which all her memories were centred. She fell at his feet--she told me so--there by the river, in the discreet light of stars which showed nothing except great masses of silent shadows, indefinite open spaces, and trembling faintly upon the broad stream made it appear as wide as the sea. He had lifted her up. He lifted her up, and then she would struggle no more. Of course not. Strong arms, a tender voice, a stalwart shoulder to rest her poor lonely little head upon. The need--the infinite need--of all this for the aching heart, for the bewildered mind;--the promptings of youth--the necessity of the moment. What would you have? One understands--unless one is incapable of understanding anything under the sun. And so she was content to be lifted up--and held. "You know--Jove! this is serious--no nonsense in it!" as Jim had whispered hurriedly with a troubled concerned face on the threshold of his house. I don't know so much about nonsense, but there was nothing light-hearted in their romance: they came together under the shadow of a life's disaster, like knight and maiden meeting to exchange vows amongst haunted ruins. The starlight was good enough for that story, a light so faint and remote that it cannot resolve shadows into shapes, and show the other shore of a stream. I did look upon the stream that night and from the very place; it rolled silent and as black as Styx: the next day I went away, but I am not likely to forget what it was she wanted to be saved from when she entreated him to leave her while there was time. She told me what it was, calmed--she was now too passionately interested for mere excitement--in a voice as quiet in the obscurity as her white half-lost figure. She told me, "I didn't want to die weeping." I thought I had not heard aright. '"You did not want to die weeping?" I repeated after her. "Like my mother," she added readily. The outlines of her white shape did not stir in the least. "My mother had wept bitterly before she died," she explained. An inconceivable calmness seemed to have risen from the ground around us, imperceptibly, like the still rise of a flood in the night, obliterating the familiar landmarks of emotions. There came upon me, as though I had felt myself losing my footing in the midst of waters, a sudden dread, the dread of the unknown depths. She went on explaining that, during the last moments, being alone with her mother, she had to leave the side of the couch to go and set her back against the door, in order to keep Cornelius out. He desired to get in, and kept on drumming with both fists, only desisting now and again to shout huskily, "Let me in! Let me in! Let me in!" In a far corner upon a few mats the moribund woman, already speechless and unable to lift her arm, rolled her head over, and with a feeble movement of her hand seemed to command--"No! No!" and the obedient daughter, setting her shoulders with all her strength against the door, was looking on. "The tears fell from her eyes--and then she died," concluded the girl in an imperturbable monotone, which more than anything else, more than the white statuesque immobility of her person, more than mere words could do, troubled my mind profoundly with the passive, irremediable horror of the scene. It had the power to drive me out of my conception of existence, out of that shelter each of us makes for himself to creep under in moments of danger, as a tortoise withdraws within its shell. For a moment I had a view of a world that seemed to wear a vast and dismal aspect of disorder, while, in truth, thanks to our unwearied efforts, it is as sunny an arrangement of small conveniences as the mind of man can conceive. But still--it was only a moment: I went back into my shell directly. One _must_--don't you know?--though I seemed to have lost all my words in the chaos of dark thoughts I had contemplated for a second or two beyond the pale. These came back, too, very soon, for words also belong to the sheltering conception of light and order which is our refuge. I had them ready at my disposal before she whispered softly, "He swore he would never leave me, when we stood there alone! He swore to me!". . . "And it is possible that you--you! do not believe him?" I asked, sincerely reproachful, genuinely shocked. Why couldn't she believe? Wherefore this craving for incertitude, this clinging to fear, as if incertitude and fear had been the safeguards of her love. It was monstrous. She should have made for herself a shelter of inexpugnable peace out of that honest affection. She had not the knowledge--not the skill perhaps. The night had come on apace; it had grown pitch-dark where we were, so that without stirring she had faded like the intangible form of a wistful and perverse spirit. And suddenly I heard her quiet whisper again, "Other men had sworn the same thing." It was like a meditative comment on some thoughts full of sadness, of awe. And she added, still lower if possible, "My father did." She paused the time to draw an inaudible breath. "Her father too." . . . These were the things she knew! At once I said, "Ah! but he is not like that." This, it seemed, she did not intend to dispute; but after a time the strange still whisper wandering dreamily in the air stole into my ears. "Why is he different? Is he better? Is he . . ." "Upon my word of honour," I broke in, "I believe he is." We subdued our tones to a mysterious pitch. Amongst the huts of Jim's workmen (they were mostly liberated slaves from the Sherif's stockade) somebody started a shrill, drawling song. Across the river a big fire (at Doramin's, I think) made a glowing ball, completely isolated in the night. "Is he more true?" she murmured. "Yes," I said. "More true than any other man," she repeated in lingering accents. "Nobody here," I said, "would dream of doubting his word--nobody would dare--except you." 'I think she made a movement at this. "More brave," she went on in a changed tone. "Fear will never drive him away from you," I said a little nervously. The song stopped short on a shrill note, and was succeeded by several voices talking in the distance. Jim's voice too. I was struck by her silence. "What has he been telling you? He has been telling you something?" I asked. There was no answer. "What is it he told you?" I insisted. '"Do you think I can tell you? How am I to know? How am I to understand?" she cried at last. There was a stir. I believe she was wringing her hands. "There is something he can never forget." '"So much the better for you," I said gloomily. '"What is it? What is it?" She put an extraordinary force of appeal into her supplicating tone. "He says he had been afraid. How can I believe this? Am I a mad woman to believe this? You all remember something! You all go back to it. What is it? You tell me! What is this thing? Is it alive?--is it dead? I hate it. It is cruel. Has it got a face and a voice--this calamity? Will he see it--will he hear it? In his sleep perhaps when he cannot see me--and then arise and go. Ah! I shall never forgive him. My mother had forgiven--but I, never! Will it be a sign--a call?" 'It was a wonderful experience. She mistrusted his very slumbers--and she seemed to think I could tell her why! Thus a poor mortal seduced by the charm of an apparition might have tried to wring from another ghost the tremendous secret of the claim the other world holds over a disembodied soul astray amongst the passions of this earth. The very ground on which I stood seemed to melt under my feet. And it was so simple too; but if the spirits evoked by our fears and our unrest have ever to vouch for each other's constancy before the forlorn magicians that we are, then I--I alone of us dwellers in the flesh--have shuddered in the hopeless chill of such a task. A sign, a call! How telling in its expression was her ignorance. A few words! How she came to know them, how she came to pronounce them, I can't imagine. Women find their inspiration in the stress of moments that for us are merely awful, absurd, or futile. To discover that she had a voice at all was enough to strike awe into the heart. Had a spurned stone cried out in pain it could not have appeared a greater and more pitiful miracle. These few sounds wandering in the dark had made their two benighted lives tragic to my mind. It was impossible to make her understand. I chafed silently at my impotence. And Jim, too--poor devil! Who would need him? Who would remember him? He had what he wanted. His very existence probably had been forgotten by this time. They had mastered their fates. They were tragic. 'Her immobility before me was clearly expectant, and my part was to speak for my brother from the realm of forgetful shade. I was deeply moved at my responsibility and at her distress. I would have given anything for the power to soothe her frail soul, tormenting itself in its invincible ignorance like a small bird beating about the cruel wires of a cage. Nothing easier than to say, Have no fear! Nothing more difficult. How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a spectre through the heart, slash off its spectral head, take it by its spectral throat? It is an enterprise you rush into while you dream, and are glad to make your escape with wet hair and every limb shaking. The bullet is not run, the blade not forged, the man not born; even the winged words of truth drop at your feet like lumps of lead. You require for such a desperate encounter an enchanted and poisoned shaft dipped in a lie too subtle to be found on earth. An enterprise for a dream, my masters! 'I began my exorcism with a heavy heart, with a sort of sullen anger in it too. Jim's voice, suddenly raised with a stern intonation, carried across the courtyard, reproving the carelessness of some dumb sinner by the river-side. Nothing--I said, speaking in a distinct murmur--there could be nothing, in that unknown world she fancied so eager to rob her of her happiness, there was nothing, neither living nor dead, there was no face, no voice, no power, that could tear Jim from her side. I drew breath and she whispered softly, "He told me so." "He told you the truth," I said. "Nothing," she sighed out, and abruptly turned upon me with a barely audible intensity of tone: "Why did you come to us from out there? He speaks of you too often. You make me afraid. Do you--do you want him?" A sort of stealthy fierceness had crept into our hurried mutters. "I shall never come again," I said bitterly. "And I don't want him. No one wants him." "No one," she repeated in a tone of doubt. "No one," I affirmed, feeling myself swayed by some strange excitement. "You think him strong, wise, courageous, great--why not believe him to be true too? I shall go to-morrow--and that is the end. You shall never be troubled by a voice from there again. This world you don't know is too big to miss him. You understand? Too big. You've got his heart in your hand. You must feel that. You must know that." "Yes, I know that," she breathed out, hard and still, as a statue might whisper. 'I felt I had done nothing. And what is it that I had wished to do? I am not sure now. At the time I was animated by an inexplicable ardour, as if before some great and necessary task--the influence of the moment upon my mental and emotional state. There are in all our lives such moments, such influences, coming from the outside, as it were, irresistible, incomprehensible--as if brought about by the mysterious conjunctions of the planets. She owned, as I had put it to her, his heart. She had that and everything else--if she could only believe it. What I had to tell her was that in the whole world there was no one who ever would need his heart, his mind, his hand. It was a common fate, and yet it seemed an awful thing to say of any man. She listened without a word, and her stillness now was like the protest of an invincible unbelief. What need she care for the world beyond the forests? I asked. From all the multitudes that peopled the vastness of that unknown there would come, I assured her, as long as he lived, neither a call nor a sign for him. Never. I was carried away. Never! Never! I remember with wonder the sort of dogged fierceness I displayed. I had the illusion of having got the spectre by the throat at last. Indeed the whole real thing has left behind the detailed and amazing impression of a dream. Why should she fear? She knew him to be strong, true, wise, brave. He was all that. Certainly. He was more. He was great--invincible--and the world did not want him, it had forgotten him, it would not even know him. 'I stopped; the silence over Patusan was profound, and the feeble dry sound of a paddle striking the side of a canoe somewhere in the middle of the river seemed to make it infinite. "Why?" she murmured. I felt that sort of rage one feels during a hard tussle. The spectre was trying to slip out of my grasp. "Why?" she repeated louder; "tell me!" And as I remained confounded, she stamped with her foot like a spoilt child. "Why? Speak." "You want to know?" I asked in a fury. "Yes!" she cried. "Because he is not good enough," I said brutally. During the moment's pause I noticed the fire on the other shore blaze up, dilating the circle of its glow like an amazed stare, and contract suddenly to a red pin-point. I only knew how close to me she had been when I felt the clutch of her fingers on my forearm. Without raising her voice, she threw into it an infinity of scathing contempt, bitterness, and despair. '"This is the very thing he said. . . . You lie!" 'The last two words she cried at me in the native dialect. "Hear me out!" I entreated; she caught her breath tremulously, flung my arm away. "Nobody, nobody is good enough," I began with the greatest earnestness. I could hear the sobbing labour of her breath frightfully quickened. I hung my head. What was the use? Footsteps were approaching; I slipped away without another word. . . .'

Chapter 33

https://web.archive.org/web/20180820051943/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmLordJim42.asp

Jewel confided in Marlow that she did not want to die weeping like her mother. Marlow was overwhelmed by the girl's fear and grief. He tried to convince her that Jim would never leave her, that Jim was truer than any man; but she remained doubtful and apprehensive. Her ignorance made her an object of pity. Marlow, wondering if Jim had told Jewel about the Patna, asked her what she knew about his past life. Jewel said she knew nothing, that he had only assured her that he would never leave her. Marlow explained that Jim had no one in the other world. When asked why, Marlow answered that he was not good enough. Jewel did not believe him.

Notes This chapter, an important one in the novel, has a very serious Mood. It shows the nature of Jewel's fears of being destroyed by a white man. Marlow assures Jewel that Jim will never leave Patusan. This is true, as long as no one discovers Jim's past or his guilt. Marlow feels that Jim does not permanently belong in Patusan; however, he knows Jim can never go back to England where he belongs. Marlow feels this fact makes Jim's existence tragic. Before he departs, he assures Jewel that he will never come back to Patusan, so she need not fear him.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1232-chapters/25.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Prince/section_25_part_0.txt

The Prince.chapter 25

chapter 25

{"name": "Chapter 25", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210420060055/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/prince-machiavelli/summary/chapter-25", "summary": "Let's talk about luck. People feel like the world is just a Wheel of Fortune and they might as well give up because they can't do anything to change their luck. Well, Machiavelli says yeah, fortune is a real force, but just like we dam rivers and create earthquake resistant buildings, we can prepare for when bad luck strikes. The only people who get hit by \"bad luck\" are the ones who aren't prepared. That's how Italy got where it is. If they were prepared, it wouldn't matter if bad luck in the form of an occupation came knocking on their door. They would have been ready to deal with it. Some people might say that luck is what makes some people trying the same technique fail and others succeed. Nope. Machiavelli says that's just the circumstances. Sometimes certain techniques are good for certain circumstances, and sometimes they are not. It's up to a smart ruler to tell the difference, but that almost never happens. Look at Pope Julius II, our warrior pope. He jumped into everything he's ever done, and in his circumstances that was great. But what if circumstances changed? Things might not have turned out so well for him. Machiavelli ends with a weird sexist-style note about dominating fortune. Bottom line: when in doubt, be impulsive.", "analysis": ""}

It is not unknown to me how many men have had, and still have, the opinion that the affairs of the world are in such wise governed by fortune and by God that men with their wisdom cannot direct them and that no one can even help them; and because of this they would have us believe that it is not necessary to labour much in affairs, but to let chance govern them. This opinion has been more credited in our times because of the great changes in affairs which have been seen, and may still be seen, every day, beyond all human conjecture. Sometimes pondering over this, I am in some degree inclined to their opinion. Nevertheless, not to extinguish our free will, I hold it to be true that Fortune is the arbiter of one-half of our actions,(*) but that she still leaves us to direct the other half, or perhaps a little less. (*) Frederick the Great was accustomed to say: "The older one gets the more convinced one becomes that his Majesty King Chance does three-quarters of the business of this miserable universe." Sorel's "Eastern Question." I compare her to one of those raging rivers, which when in flood overflows the plains, sweeping away trees and buildings, bearing away the soil from place to place; everything flies before it, all yield to its violence, without being able in any way to withstand it; and yet, though its nature be such, it does not follow therefore that men, when the weather becomes fair, shall not make provision, both with defences and barriers, in such a manner that, rising again, the waters may pass away by canal, and their force be neither so unrestrained nor so dangerous. So it happens with fortune, who shows her power where valour has not prepared to resist her, and thither she turns her forces where she knows that barriers and defences have not been raised to constrain her. And if you will consider Italy, which is the seat of these changes, and which has given to them their impulse, you will see it to be an open country without barriers and without any defence. For if it had been defended by proper valour, as are Germany, Spain, and France, either this invasion would not have made the great changes it has made or it would not have come at all. And this I consider enough to say concerning resistance to fortune in general. But confining myself more to the particular, I say that a prince may be seen happy to-day and ruined to-morrow without having shown any change of disposition or character. This, I believe, arises firstly from causes that have already been discussed at length, namely, that the prince who relies entirely on fortune is lost when it changes. I believe also that he will be successful who directs his actions according to the spirit of the times, and that he whose actions do not accord with the times will not be successful. Because men are seen, in affairs that lead to the end which every man has before him, namely, glory and riches, to get there by various methods; one with caution, another with haste; one by force, another by skill; one by patience, another by its opposite; and each one succeeds in reaching the goal by a different method. One can also see of two cautious men the one attain his end, the other fail; and similarly, two men by different observances are equally successful, the one being cautious, the other impetuous; all this arises from nothing else than whether or not they conform in their methods to the spirit of the times. This follows from what I have said, that two men working differently bring about the same effect, and of two working similarly, one attains his object and the other does not. Changes in estate also issue from this, for if, to one who governs himself with caution and patience, times and affairs converge in such a way that his administration is successful, his fortune is made; but if times and affairs change, he is ruined if he does not change his course of action. But a man is not often found sufficiently circumspect to know how to accommodate himself to the change, both because he cannot deviate from what nature inclines him to do, and also because, having always prospered by acting in one way, he cannot be persuaded that it is well to leave it; and, therefore, the cautious man, when it is time to turn adventurous, does not know how to do it, hence he is ruined; but had he changed his conduct with the times fortune would not have changed. Pope Julius the Second went to work impetuously in all his affairs, and found the times and circumstances conform so well to that line of action that he always met with success. Consider his first enterprise against Bologna, Messer Giovanni Bentivogli being still alive. The Venetians were not agreeable to it, nor was the King of Spain, and he had the enterprise still under discussion with the King of France; nevertheless he personally entered upon the expedition with his accustomed boldness and energy, a move which made Spain and the Venetians stand irresolute and passive, the latter from fear, the former from desire to recover the kingdom of Naples; on the other hand, he drew after him the King of France, because that king, having observed the movement, and desiring to make the Pope his friend so as to humble the Venetians, found it impossible to refuse him. Therefore Julius with his impetuous action accomplished what no other pontiff with simple human wisdom could have done; for if he had waited in Rome until he could get away, with his plans arranged and everything fixed, as any other pontiff would have done, he would never have succeeded. Because the King of France would have made a thousand excuses, and the others would have raised a thousand fears. I will leave his other actions alone, as they were all alike, and they all succeeded, for the shortness of his life did not let him experience the contrary; but if circumstances had arisen which required him to go cautiously, his ruin would have followed, because he would never have deviated from those ways to which nature inclined him. I conclude, therefore that, fortune being changeful and mankind steadfast in their ways, so long as the two are in agreement men are successful, but unsuccessful when they fall out. For my part I consider that it is better to be adventurous than cautious, because fortune is a woman, and if you wish to keep her under it is necessary to beat and ill-use her; and it is seen that she allows herself to be mastered by the adventurous rather than by those who go to work more coldly. She is, therefore, always, woman-like, a lover of young men, because they are less cautious, more violent, and with more audacity command her.

Chapter 25

https://web.archive.org/web/20210420060055/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/prince-machiavelli/summary/chapter-25

Let's talk about luck. People feel like the world is just a Wheel of Fortune and they might as well give up because they can't do anything to change their luck. Well, Machiavelli says yeah, fortune is a real force, but just like we dam rivers and create earthquake resistant buildings, we can prepare for when bad luck strikes. The only people who get hit by "bad luck" are the ones who aren't prepared. That's how Italy got where it is. If they were prepared, it wouldn't matter if bad luck in the form of an occupation came knocking on their door. They would have been ready to deal with it. Some people might say that luck is what makes some people trying the same technique fail and others succeed. Nope. Machiavelli says that's just the circumstances. Sometimes certain techniques are good for certain circumstances, and sometimes they are not. It's up to a smart ruler to tell the difference, but that almost never happens. Look at Pope Julius II, our warrior pope. He jumped into everything he's ever done, and in his circumstances that was great. But what if circumstances changed? Things might not have turned out so well for him. Machiavelli ends with a weird sexist-style note about dominating fortune. Bottom line: when in doubt, be impulsive.

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/65.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Brothers Karamazov/section_12_part_3.txt

The Brothers Karamazov.book 10.chapter 3

book 10, chapter 3

{"name": "book 10, Chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section13/", "summary": "A Schoolboy At last, a servant returns to the house, and Kolya hurries to Ilyusha's house with Perezvon in tow. Outside Ilyusha's house, Kolya meets his friend Smurov, who is disappointed that he brought Perezvon. Smurov says that the other boys were hoping he would bring Zuchka, a dog that Ilyusha has apparently been desperate to see. Kolya contemptuously declares that he does not know where Zuchka is, and he asks Smurov to send Alyosha out to him before he goes in to see Ilyusha", "analysis": ""}

Chapter III. The Schoolboy But Kolya did not hear her. At last he could go out. As he went out at the gate he looked round him, shrugged up his shoulders, and saying "It is freezing," went straight along the street and turned off to the right towards the market-place. When he reached the last house but one before the market-place he stopped at the gate, pulled a whistle out of his pocket, and whistled with all his might as though giving a signal. He had not to wait more than a minute before a rosy-cheeked boy of about eleven, wearing a warm, neat and even stylish coat, darted out to meet him. This was Smurov, a boy in the preparatory class (two classes below Kolya Krassotkin), son of a well-to-do official. Apparently he was forbidden by his parents to associate with Krassotkin, who was well known to be a desperately naughty boy, so Smurov was obviously slipping out on the sly. He was--if the reader has not forgotten--one of the group of boys who two months before had thrown stones at Ilusha. He was the one who told Alyosha Karamazov about Ilusha. "I've been waiting for you for the last hour, Krassotkin," said Smurov stolidly, and the boys strode towards the market-place. "I am late," answered Krassotkin. "I was detained by circumstances. You won't be thrashed for coming with me?" "Come, I say, I'm never thrashed! And you've got Perezvon with you?" "Yes." "You're taking him, too?" "Yes." "Ah! if it were only Zhutchka!" "That's impossible. Zhutchka's non-existent. Zhutchka is lost in the mists of obscurity." "Ah! couldn't we do this?" Smurov suddenly stood still. "You see Ilusha says that Zhutchka was a shaggy, grayish, smoky-looking dog like Perezvon. Couldn't you tell him this is Zhutchka, and he might believe you?" "Boy, shun a lie, that's one thing; even with a good object--that's another. Above all, I hope you've not told them anything about my coming." "Heaven forbid! I know what I am about. But you won't comfort him with Perezvon," said Smurov, with a sigh. "You know his father, the captain, 'the wisp of tow,' told us that he was going to bring him a real mastiff pup, with a black nose, to-day. He thinks that would comfort Ilusha; but I doubt it." "And how is Ilusha?" "Ah, he is bad, very bad! I believe he's in consumption: he is quite conscious, but his breathing! His breathing's gone wrong. The other day he asked to have his boots on to be led round the room. He tried to walk, but he couldn't stand. 'Ah, I told you before, father,' he said, 'that those boots were no good. I could never walk properly in them.' He fancied it was his boots that made him stagger, but it was simply weakness, really. He won't live another week. Herzenstube is looking after him. Now they are rich again--they've got heaps of money." "They are rogues." "Who are rogues?" "Doctors and the whole crew of quacks collectively, and also, of course, individually. I don't believe in medicine. It's a useless institution. I mean to go into all that. But what's that sentimentality you've got up there? The whole class seems to be there every day." "Not the whole class: it's only ten of our fellows who go to see him every day. There's nothing in that." "What I don't understand in all this is the part that Alexey Karamazov is taking in it. His brother's going to be tried to-morrow or next day for such a crime, and yet he has so much time to spend on sentimentality with boys." "There's no sentimentality about it. You are going yourself now to make it up with Ilusha." "Make it up with him? What an absurd expression! But I allow no one to analyze my actions." "And how pleased Ilusha will be to see you! He has no idea that you are coming. Why was it, why was it you wouldn't come all this time?" Smurov cried with sudden warmth. "My dear boy, that's my business, not yours. I am going of myself because I choose to, but you've all been hauled there by Alexey Karamazov--there's a difference, you know. And how do you know? I may not be going to make it up at all. It's a stupid expression." "It's not Karamazov at all; it's not his doing. Our fellows began going there of themselves. Of course, they went with Karamazov at first. And there's been nothing of that sort--no silliness. First one went, and then another. His father was awfully pleased to see us. You know he will simply go out of his mind if Ilusha dies. He sees that Ilusha's dying. And he seems so glad we've made it up with Ilusha. Ilusha asked after you, that was all. He just asks and says no more. His father will go out of his mind or hang himself. He behaved like a madman before. You know he is a very decent man. We made a mistake then. It's all the fault of that murderer who beat him then." "Karamazov's a riddle to me all the same. I might have made his acquaintance long ago, but I like to have a proper pride in some cases. Besides, I have a theory about him which I must work out and verify." Kolya subsided into dignified silence. Smurov, too, was silent. Smurov, of course, worshiped Krassotkin and never dreamed of putting himself on a level with him. Now he was tremendously interested at Kolya's saying that he was "going of himself" to see Ilusha. He felt that there must be some mystery in Kolya's suddenly taking it into his head to go to him that day. They crossed the market-place, in which at that hour were many loaded wagons from the country and a great number of live fowls. The market women were selling rolls, cottons and threads, etc., in their booths. These Sunday markets were naively called "fairs" in the town, and there were many such fairs in the year. Perezvon ran about in the wildest spirits, sniffing about first one side, then the other. When he met other dogs they zealously smelt each other over according to the rules of canine etiquette. "I like to watch such realistic scenes, Smurov," said Kolya suddenly. "Have you noticed how dogs sniff at one another when they meet? It seems to be a law of their nature." "Yes; it's a funny habit." "No, it's not funny; you are wrong there. There's nothing funny in nature, however funny it may seem to man with his prejudices. If dogs could reason and criticize us they'd be sure to find just as much that would be funny to them, if not far more, in the social relations of men, their masters--far more, indeed. I repeat that, because I am convinced that there is far more foolishness among us. That's Rakitin's idea--a remarkable idea. I am a Socialist, Smurov." "And what is a Socialist?" asked Smurov. "That's when all are equal and all have property in common, there are no marriages, and every one has any religion and laws he likes best, and all the rest of it. You are not old enough to understand that yet. It's cold, though." "Yes, twelve degrees of frost. Father looked at the thermometer just now." "Have you noticed, Smurov, that in the middle of winter we don't feel so cold even when there are fifteen or eighteen degrees of frost as we do now, in the beginning of winter, when there is a sudden frost of twelve degrees, especially when there is not much snow. It's because people are not used to it. Everything is habit with men, everything even in their social and political relations. Habit is the great motive-power. What a funny-looking peasant!" Kolya pointed to a tall peasant, with a good-natured countenance in a long sheepskin coat, who was standing by his wagon, clapping together his hands, in their shapeless leather gloves, to warm them. His long fair beard was all white with frost. "That peasant's beard's frozen," Kolya cried in a loud provocative voice as he passed him. "Lots of people's beards are frozen," the peasant replied, calmly and sententiously. "Don't provoke him," observed Smurov. "It's all right; he won't be cross; he's a nice fellow. Good-by, Matvey." "Good-by." "Is your name Matvey?" "Yes. Didn't you know?" "No, I didn't. It was a guess." "You don't say so! You are a schoolboy, I suppose?" "Yes." "You get whipped, I expect?" "Nothing to speak of--sometimes." "Does it hurt?" "Well, yes, it does." "Ech, what a life!" The peasant heaved a sigh from the bottom of his heart. "Good-by, Matvey." "Good-by. You are a nice chap, that you are." The boys went on. "That was a nice peasant," Kolya observed to Smurov. "I like talking to the peasants, and am always glad to do them justice." "Why did you tell a lie, pretending we are thrashed?" asked Smurov. "I had to say that to please him." "How do you mean?" "You know, Smurov, I don't like being asked the same thing twice. I like people to understand at the first word. Some things can't be explained. According to a peasant's notions, schoolboys are whipped, and must be whipped. What would a schoolboy be if he were not whipped? And if I were to tell him we are not, he'd be disappointed. But you don't understand that. One has to know how to talk to the peasants." "Only don't tease them, please, or you'll get into another scrape as you did about that goose." "So you're afraid?" "Don't laugh, Kolya. Of course I'm afraid. My father would be awfully cross. I am strictly forbidden to go out with you." "Don't be uneasy, nothing will happen this time. Hallo, Natasha!" he shouted to a market woman in one of the booths. "Call me Natasha! What next! My name is Marya," the middle-aged market woman shouted at him. "I am so glad it's Marya. Good-by!" "Ah, you young rascal! A brat like you to carry on so!" "I'm in a hurry. I can't stay now. You shall tell me next Sunday." Kolya waved his hand at her, as though she had attacked him and not he her. "I've nothing to tell you next Sunday. You set upon me, you impudent young monkey. I didn't say anything," bawled Marya. "You want a whipping, that's what you want, you saucy jackanapes!" There was a roar of laughter among the other market women round her. Suddenly a man in a violent rage darted out from the arcade of shops close by. He was a young man, not a native of the town, with dark, curly hair and a long, pale face, marked with smallpox. He wore a long blue coat and a peaked cap, and looked like a merchant's clerk. He was in a state of stupid excitement and brandished his fist at Kolya. "I know you!" he cried angrily, "I know you!" Kolya stared at him. He could not recall when he could have had a row with the man. But he had been in so many rows in the street that he could hardly remember them all. "Do you?" he asked sarcastically. "I know you! I know you!" the man repeated idiotically. "So much the better for you. Well, it's time I was going. Good-by!" "You are at your saucy pranks again?" cried the man. "You are at your saucy pranks again? I know, you are at it again!" "It's not your business, brother, if I am at my saucy pranks again," said Kolya, standing still and scanning him. "Not my business?" "No; it's not your business." "Whose then? Whose then? Whose then?" "It's Trifon Nikititch's business, not yours." "What Trifon Nikititch?" asked the youth, staring with loutish amazement at Kolya, but still as angry as ever. Kolya scanned him gravely. "Have you been to the Church of the Ascension?" he suddenly asked him, with stern emphasis. "What Church of Ascension? What for? No, I haven't," said the young man, somewhat taken aback. "Do you know Sabaneyev?" Kolya went on even more emphatically and even more severely. "What Sabaneyev? No, I don't know him." "Well then you can go to the devil," said Kolya, cutting short the conversation; and turning sharply to the right he strode quickly on his way as though he disdained further conversation with a dolt who did not even know Sabaneyev. "Stop, heigh! What Sabaneyev?" the young man recovered from his momentary stupefaction and was as excited as before. "What did he say?" He turned to the market women with a silly stare. The women laughed. "You can never tell what he's after," said one of them. "What Sabaneyev is it he's talking about?" the young man repeated, still furious and brandishing his right arm. "It must be a Sabaneyev who worked for the Kuzmitchovs, that's who it must be," one of the women suggested. The young man stared at her wildly. "For the Kuzmitchovs?" repeated another woman. "But his name wasn't Trifon. His name's Kuzma, not Trifon; but the boy said Trifon Nikititch, so it can't be the same." "His name is not Trifon and not Sabaneyev, it's Tchizhov," put in suddenly a third woman, who had hitherto been silent, listening gravely. "Alexey Ivanitch is his name. Tchizhov, Alexey Ivanitch." "Not a doubt about it, it's Tchizhov," a fourth woman emphatically confirmed the statement. The bewildered youth gazed from one to another. "But what did he ask for, what did he ask for, good people?" he cried almost in desperation. " 'Do you know Sabaneyev?' says he. And who the devil's to know who is Sabaneyev?" "You're a senseless fellow. I tell you it's not Sabaneyev, but Tchizhov, Alexey Ivanitch Tchizhov, that's who it is!" one of the women shouted at him impressively. "What Tchizhov? Who is he? Tell me, if you know." "That tall, sniveling fellow who used to sit in the market in the summer." "And what's your Tchizhov to do with me, good people, eh?" "How can I tell what he's to do with you?" put in another. "You ought to know yourself what you want with him, if you make such a clamor about him. He spoke to you, he did not speak to us, you stupid. Don't you really know him?" "Know whom?" "Tchizhov." "The devil take Tchizhov and you with him. I'll give him a hiding, that I will. He was laughing at me!" "Will give Tchizhov a hiding! More likely he will give you one. You are a fool, that's what you are!" "Not Tchizhov, not Tchizhov, you spiteful, mischievous woman. I'll give the boy a hiding. Catch him, catch him, he was laughing at me!" The woman guffawed. But Kolya was by now a long way off, marching along with a triumphant air. Smurov walked beside him, looking round at the shouting group far behind. He too was in high spirits, though he was still afraid of getting into some scrape in Kolya's company. "What Sabaneyev did you mean?" he asked Kolya, foreseeing what his answer would be. "How do I know? Now there'll be a hubbub among them all day. I like to stir up fools in every class of society. There's another blockhead, that peasant there. You know, they say 'there's no one stupider than a stupid Frenchman,' but a stupid Russian shows it in his face just as much. Can't you see it all over his face that he is a fool, that peasant, eh?" "Let him alone, Kolya. Let's go on." "Nothing could stop me, now I am once off. Hey, good morning, peasant!" A sturdy-looking peasant, with a round, simple face and grizzled beard, who was walking by, raised his head and looked at the boy. He seemed not quite sober. "Good morning, if you are not laughing at me," he said deliberately in reply. "And if I am?" laughed Kolya. "Well, a joke's a joke. Laugh away. I don't mind. There's no harm in a joke." "I beg your pardon, brother, it was a joke." "Well, God forgive you!" "Do you forgive me, too?" "I quite forgive you. Go along." "I say, you seem a clever peasant." "Cleverer than you," the peasant answered unexpectedly, with the same gravity. "I doubt it," said Kolya, somewhat taken aback. "It's true, though." "Perhaps it is." "It is, brother." "Good-by, peasant!" "Good-by!" "There are all sorts of peasants," Kolya observed to Smurov after a brief silence. "How could I tell I had hit on a clever one? I am always ready to recognize intelligence in the peasantry." In the distance the cathedral clock struck half-past eleven. The boys made haste and they walked as far as Captain Snegiryov's lodging, a considerable distance, quickly and almost in silence. Twenty paces from the house Kolya stopped and told Smurov to go on ahead and ask Karamazov to come out to him. "One must sniff round a bit first," he observed to Smurov. "Why ask him to come out?" Smurov protested. "You go in; they will be awfully glad to see you. What's the sense of making friends in the frost out here?" "I know why I want to see him out here in the frost," Kolya cut him short in the despotic tone he was fond of adopting with "small boys," and Smurov ran to do his bidding.

book 10, Chapter 3

https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section13/

A Schoolboy At last, a servant returns to the house, and Kolya hurries to Ilyusha's house with Perezvon in tow. Outside Ilyusha's house, Kolya meets his friend Smurov, who is disappointed that he brought Perezvon. Smurov says that the other boys were hoping he would bring Zuchka, a dog that Ilyusha has apparently been desperate to see. Kolya contemptuously declares that he does not know where Zuchka is, and he asks Smurov to send Alyosha out to him before he goes in to see Ilyusha

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/1756-chapters/act_i.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/Uncle Vanya/section_0_part_0.txt

Uncle Vanya.act i

act i

{"name": "Act I - Part One", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210227035013/https://www.sparknotes.com/drama/unclevanya/section1/", "summary": "Act I opens on a muggy autumn afternoon in the garden of Professor Serebryakov's estate. Marina, an old nanny, sits knitting by a samovar as Astrov, the country doctor, paces back and forth. Astrov reminisces about the time when he first came to the region, a time when Vera Petrovna--Serebryakov's first wife and mother to his daughter Sonya--was still alive. Marina notes that since then Astrov has lost his good looks, started to show signs of age, and taken to drinking. Astrov then goes into an extended speech about his \"boring, stupid, sordid\" life, a life in which he is overworked and surrounded by \"eccentric people\". As a result, his feelings are \"dead to the world\": Astrov needs nothing, wants nothing, and loves no one. Refusing Marina's offer of food, Astrov then recounts how he went to Malitskoe over Lent to treat an epidemic of spotted typhus. One of his patients died while under chloroform, and he is plagued with guilt. Astrov also laments that future generations will not bother to remember those living in the present. Marina comforts him: God will remember. Voynitsky , Serebryakov's brother-in-law by his marriage to Vera Petrovna and caretaker of the estate, then enters yawning. He complains that the professor and his wife, having recently relocated to the estate from the city, have thrown the estate out of kilter, drawing everyone into sleep, boredom, and lethargy. Marina concurs, bemoaning the disruption of their dining schedule. Suddenly Serebryakov,--ridiculously over-dressed in an overcoat, a pair of galoshes, and a pair of gloves--his current young wife Yelena, Sonya, and Telegin, an impoverished landowner dubbed \"Waffles\" for his pockmarked face, return from a stroll. Speaking of plans to visit a forest preserve, the party enters the house; Telegin joins the group in the garden. Dreamily Voynitsky sighs about Yelena's beauty. When Astrov reproaches him for not joining the conversation, Voynitsky replies listlessly that he has nothing to say, that he has grown old and lazy. Bitterly, he goes on to caricaturize the other members of the household. His mother, Maria, is a \"lazy old crow\" who has \"one eye fastened on the grave\" and the other fixed on her pamphlets \"for the dawn of a new life.\" The professor is an \"old, dried up biscuit, a learned, smoke-cured fish\", a pompous charlatan of an art historian who knows nothing about art and has already faded into obscurity. Indeed, Serebryakov has spent his life \"pouring from one empty pot into the next\"--the empty pot of this joke referring to the vacant bodies of his mind, ideas, works, and students. When Astrov remarks that Voynitsky seems to envy Serebryakov, he readily concurs. In particular, Voynitsky envies Serebryakov's success with women: the examples he adduces are his angelic late sister, his mother , and the beautiful Yelena. He then points out the illogic of Yelena's fidelity to her dottering, decrepit husband. He questiones how it can be moral to deny one's vitality and youth while immoral to deceive a husband one despises. Voynitsky's remarks almost reduce Telegin to tears. Apparently his wife deserted him the day after their wedding because of his \"unprepossessing appearance.\" \"Waffles\" has remained faithful, however, supporting the children she has had by her lover. Though miserable, he has retained his pride, while his wife has grown old, and her lover has died.", "analysis": "As one might have noticed, most of the characters of Uncle Vanya are consumed with lethargy, boredom, and regret over their disappointing lives, mourning years they have wasted in drudgery and the ways in which their fates might have been different. To recall Voynitsky's description of his mother, the characters here are half-dead with bitterness and hopeless seek the renewal of their lives. Their malaise is reflected in the mugginess of the afternoon; indeed, Voynitsky will remark in the following scene that in such \"lovely weather\" one could hang oneself. Astrov introduces this theme of the wasted life in two extended speeches. Notably Astrov describes being surrounded by \"eccentric people\" and then, in the course of his disappointing life, becoming \"strange\" himself. This motif of estrangement--referring to a sense of alienation from not only those around you but from yourself as well--will recur in relation to the aging doctor. Astrov's becoming strange to himself over the years is materialized here by his \"colossal\" and \"asinine\" moustache--a moustache utterly foreign to his own self-concept. One might also note that the motif of self-estrangement describes Astrov's constant introspection as well. To some extent, the self-reflection he undertakes requires that he \"make himself strange\", that he distance himself from what is conventionally considered the most familiar--one's inner life. This self-estrangement is matched by the distance Astrov takes from the world around him when brooding. Though ostensibly addressed to Marina, his speeches seem to proceed entirely without their manifest listener in mind. Note how Astrov suddenly remembers that Marina is next to him at the end of his first speech and then rambles off into a memory of his childhood nanny. Also of interest is Astrov's story of the patient who dies while anesthetized. A few lines above, Astrov relates how his feelings have become dead to the world, how he no longer needs, wants, or loves. This numbness is tantamount to a kind of anesthesia: thus we can consider the dead patient Astrov's double, and, indeed, Astrov himself might be aware of this doubling. Tellingly, his \"feelings back again\" when the patient dies. As he confesses: \"I was tortured so much by my conscience I felt that I'd deliberately killed him. \" One could argue then that Astrov \"kills\"--albeit accidentally--the anesthetized patient, which doubles for ending his own anesthetizing in order to feel again, even if that feeing is one of guilt. Speeches such as Astrov's will recur throughout Uncle Vanya, the inner life of the characters constantly standing to release a torrent of unhappy introspection. In reading these artificially long speeches, however, we should keep in mind that they burst through the surface of a realistic, everyday context--indeed, a dialogue, action, and setting defined by banality and petty detail. Recall, for example, the anecdote of the dining schedule or Voynitsky's famous understated entrance: \" Yes Yes\" One might also recall here that the name \"Vanya\" is as common as \"Jack\" or \"John\" in English. Such use of banality helps to compose the very particular malaise described above, the misery in passing through the course of the everyday. Indeed, as we will see, everyday routine will ultimately subsume the changes in the characters' lives that their speeches might seem to foreshadow. Chekhov's petty details lend themselves to comedy as well: the humor in Voynitsky's entrance is clear. Thus we cannot close this discussion without noting how the tragedy of these first scenes is interlaced with comic elements . There are a number of obvious examples of humor here: the \"unprepossessing\" Telegin or \"Waffles\" is held up for ridicule. Voynitsky's caricatures of his mother and the professor are hilarious, posing him as a sort of bitterly comic misanthrope, the character who explicitly and insightfully points out the miserable nature of those around him.There also appears some subtle moments of humor. For example, when Marina offers Astrov something to eat after his first speech, she perhaps both ironizes his endless oratory and reveals herself as oblivious to these ruminations in her blind religious faith. Such an ironic interpretation of dialogue would find new voices in Chekhov's text alongside its manifestly tragic content: in this case, voices that criticize an indulgence in introspection as well as a simple-minded religiosity. In blending the tragic and comic, Uncle Vanya allows for endless flights of fancy along these lines."}

ACT I A country house on a terrace. In front of it a garden. In an avenue of trees, under an old poplar, stands a table set for tea, with a samovar, etc. Some benches and chairs stand near the table. On one of them is lying a guitar. A hammock is swung near the table. It is three o'clock in the afternoon of a cloudy day. MARINA, a quiet, grey-haired, little old woman, is sitting at the table knitting a stocking. ASTROFF is walking up and down near her. MARINA. [Pouring some tea into a glass] Take a little tea, my son. ASTROFF. [Takes the glass from her unwillingly] Somehow, I don't seem to want any. MARINA. Then will you have a little vodka instead? ASTROFF. No, I don't drink vodka every day, and besides, it is too hot now. [A pause] Tell me, nurse, how long have we known each other? MARINA. [Thoughtfully] Let me see, how long is it? Lord--help me to remember. You first came here, into our parts--let me think--when was it? Sonia's mother was still alive--it was two winters before she died; that was eleven years ago--[thoughtfully] perhaps more. ASTROFF. Have I changed much since then? MARINA. Oh, yes. You were handsome and young then, and now you are an old man and not handsome any more. You drink, too. ASTROFF. Yes, ten years have made me another man. And why? Because I am overworked. Nurse, I am on my feet from dawn till dusk. I know no rest; at night I tremble under my blankets for fear of being dragged out to visit some one who is sick; I have toiled without repose or a day's freedom since I have known you; could I help growing old? And then, existence is tedious, anyway; it is a senseless, dirty business, this life, and goes heavily. Every one about here is silly, and after living with them for two or three years one grows silly oneself. It is inevitable. [Twisting his moustache] See what a long moustache I have grown. A foolish, long moustache. Yes, I am as silly as the rest, nurse, but not as stupid; no, I have not grown stupid. Thank God, my brain is not addled yet, though my feelings have grown numb. I ask nothing, I need nothing, I love no one, unless it is yourself alone. [He kisses her head] I had a nurse just like you when I was a child. MARINA. Don't you want a bite of something to eat? ASTROFF. No. During the third week of Lent I went to the epidemic at Malitskoi. It was eruptive typhoid. The peasants were all lying side by side in their huts, and the calves and pigs were running about the floor among the sick. Such dirt there was, and smoke! Unspeakable! I slaved among those people all day, not a crumb passed my lips, but when I got home there was still no rest for me; a switchman was carried in from the railroad; I laid him on the operating table and he went and died in my arms under chloroform, and then my feelings that should have been deadened awoke again, my conscience tortured me as if I had killed the man. I sat down and closed my eyes--like this--and thought: will our descendants two hundred years from now, for whom we are breaking the road, remember to give us a kind word? No, nurse, they will forget. MARINA. Man is forgetful, but God remembers. ASTROFF. Thank you for that. You have spoken the truth. Enter VOITSKI from the house. He has been asleep after dinner and looks rather dishevelled. He sits down on the bench and straightens his collar. VOITSKI. H'm. Yes. [A pause] Yes. ASTROFF. Have you been asleep? VOITSKI. Yes, very much so. [He yawns] Ever since the Professor and his wife have come, our daily life seems to have jumped the track. I sleep at the wrong time, drink wine, and eat all sorts of messes for luncheon and dinner. It isn't wholesome. Sonia and I used to work together and never had an idle moment, but now Sonia works alone and I only eat and drink and sleep. Something is wrong. MARINA. [Shaking her head] Such a confusion in the house! The Professor gets up at twelve, the samovar is kept boiling all the morning, and everything has to wait for him. Before they came we used to have dinner at one o'clock, like everybody else, but now we have it at seven. The Professor sits up all night writing and reading, and suddenly, at two o'clock, there goes the bell! Heavens, what is that? The Professor wants some tea! Wake the servants, light the samovar! Lord, what disorder! ASTROFF. Will they be here long? VOITSKI. A hundred years! The Professor has decided to make his home here. MARINA. Look at this now! The samovar has been on the table for two hours, and they are all out walking! VOITSKI. All right, don't get excited; here they come. Voices are heard approaching. SEREBRAKOFF, HELENA, SONIA, and TELEGIN come in from the depths of the garden, returning from their walk. SEREBRAKOFF. Superb! Superb! What beautiful views! TELEGIN. They are wonderful, your Excellency. SONIA. To-morrow we shall go into the woods, shall we, papa? VOITSKI. Ladies and gentlemen, tea is ready. SEREBRAKOFF. Won't you please be good enough to send my tea into the library? I still have some work to finish. SONIA. I am sure you will love the woods. HELENA, SEREBRAKOFF, and SONIA go into the house. TELEGIN sits down at the table beside MARINA. VOITSKI. There goes our learned scholar on a hot, sultry day like this, in his overcoat and goloshes and carrying an umbrella! ASTROFF. He is trying to take good care of his health. VOITSKI. How lovely she is! How lovely! I have never in my life seen a more beautiful woman. TELEGIN. Do you know, Marina, that as I walk in the fields or in the shady garden, as I look at this table here, my heart swells with unbounded happiness. The weather is enchanting, the birds are singing, we are all living in peace and contentment--what more could the soul desire? [Takes a glass of tea.] VOITSKI. [Dreaming] Such eyes--a glorious woman! ASTROFF. Come, Ivan, tell us something. VOITSKI. [Indolently] What shall I tell you? ASTROFF. Haven't you any news for us? VOITSKI. No, it is all stale. I am just the same as usual, or perhaps worse, because I have become lazy. I don't do anything now but croak like an old raven. My mother, the old magpie, is still chattering about the emancipation of woman, with one eye on her grave and the other on her learned books, in which she is always looking for the dawn of a new life. ASTROFF. And the Professor? VOITSKI. The Professor sits in his library from morning till night, as usual-- "Straining the mind, wrinkling the brow, We write, write, write, Without respite Or hope of praise in the future or now." Poor paper! He ought to write his autobiography; he would make a really splendid subject for a book! Imagine it, the life of a retired professor, as stale as a piece of hardtack, tortured by gout, headaches, and rheumatism, his liver bursting with jealousy and envy, living on the estate of his first wife, although he hates it, because he can't afford to live in town. He is everlastingly whining about his hard lot, though, as a matter of fact, he is extraordinarily lucky. He is the son of a common deacon and has attained the professor's chair, become the son-in-law of a senator, is called "your Excellency," and so on. But I'll tell you something; the man has been writing on art for twenty-five years, and he doesn't know the very first thing about it. For twenty-five years he has been chewing on other men's thoughts about realism, naturalism, and all such foolishness; for twenty-five years he has been reading and writing things that clever men have long known and stupid ones are not interested in; for twenty-five years he has been making his imaginary mountains out of molehills. And just think of the man's self-conceit and presumption all this time! For twenty-five years he has been masquerading in false clothes and has now retired absolutely unknown to any living soul; and yet see him! stalking across the earth like a demi-god! ASTROFF. I believe you envy him. VOITSKI. Yes, I do. Look at the success he has had with women! Don Juan himself was not more favoured. His first wife, who was my sister, was a beautiful, gentle being, as pure as the blue heaven there above us, noble, great-hearted, with more admirers than he has pupils, and she loved him as only beings of angelic purity can love those who are as pure and beautiful as themselves. His mother-in-law, my mother, adores him to this day, and he still inspires a sort of worshipful awe in her. His second wife is, as you see, a brilliant beauty; she married him in his old age and has surrendered all the glory of her beauty and freedom to him. Why? What for? ASTROFF. Is she faithful to him? VOITSKI. Yes, unfortunately she is. ASTROFF. Why unfortunately? VOITSKI. Because such fidelity is false and unnatural, root and branch. It sounds well, but there is no logic in it. It is thought immoral for a woman to deceive an old husband whom she hates, but quite moral for her to strangle her poor youth in her breast and banish every vital desire from her heart. TELEGIN. [In a tearful voice] Vanya, I don't like to hear you talk so. Listen, Vanya; every one who betrays husband or wife is faithless, and could also betray his country. VOITSKI. [Crossly] Turn off the tap, Waffles. TELEGIN. No, allow me, Vanya. My wife ran away with a lover on the day after our wedding, because my exterior was unprepossessing. I have never failed in my duty since then. I love her and am true to her to this day. I help her all I can and have given my fortune to educate the daughter of herself and her lover. I have forfeited my happiness, but I have kept my pride. And she? Her youth has fled, her beauty has faded according to the laws of nature, and her lover is dead. What has she kept? HELENA and SONIA come in; after them comes MME. VOITSKAYA carrying a book. She sits down and begins to read. Some one hands her a glass of tea which she drinks without looking up. SONIA. [Hurriedly, to the nurse] There are some peasants waiting out there. Go and see what they want. I shall pour the tea. [Pours out some glasses of tea.] MARINA goes out. HELENA takes a glass and sits drinking in the hammock. ASTROFF. I have come to see your husband. You wrote me that he had rheumatism and I know not what else, and that he was very ill, but he appears to be as lively as a cricket. HELENA. He had a fit of the blues yesterday evening and complained of pains in his legs, but he seems all right again to-day. ASTROFF. And I galloped over here twenty miles at break-neck speed! No matter, though, it is not the first time. Once here, however, I am going to stay until to-morrow, and at any rate sleep _quantum satis._ SONIA. Oh, splendid! You so seldom spend the night with us. Have you had dinner yet? ASTROFF. No. SONIA. Good. So you will have it with us. We dine at seven now. [Drinks her tea] This tea is cold! TELEGIN. Yes, the samovar has grown cold. HELENA. Don't mind, Monsieur Ivan, we will drink cold tea, then. TELEGIN. I beg your pardon, my name is not Ivan, but Ilia, ma'am--Ilia Telegin, or Waffles, as I am sometimes called on account of my pock-marked face. I am Sonia's godfather, and his Excellency, your husband, knows me very well. I now live with you, ma'am, on this estate, and perhaps you will be so good as to notice that I dine with you every day. SONIA. He is our great help, our right-hand man. [Tenderly] Dear godfather, let me pour you some tea. MME. VOITSKAYA. Oh! Oh! SONIA. What is it, grandmother? MME. VOITSKAYA. I forgot to tell Alexander--I have lost my memory--I received a letter to-day from Paul Alexevitch in Kharkoff. He has sent me a new pamphlet. ASTROFF. Is it interesting? MME. VOITSKAYA. Yes, but strange. He refutes the very theories which he defended seven years ago. It is appalling! VOITSKI. There is nothing appalling about it. Drink your tea, mamma. MME. VOITSKAYA. It seems you never want to listen to what I have to say. Pardon me, Jean, but you have changed so in the last year that I hardly know you. You used to be a man of settled convictions and had an illuminating personality---- VOITSKI. Oh, yes. I had an illuminating personality, which illuminated no one. [A pause] I had an illuminating personality! You couldn't say anything more biting. I am forty-seven years old. Until last year I endeavoured, as you do now, to blind my eyes by your pedantry to the truths of life. But now--Oh, if you only knew! If you knew how I lie awake at night, heartsick and angry, to think how stupidly I have wasted my time when I might have been winning from life everything which my old age now forbids. SONIA. Uncle Vanya, how dreary! MME. VOITSKAYA. [To her son] You speak as if your former convictions were somehow to blame, but you yourself, not they, were at fault. You have forgotten that a conviction, in itself, is nothing but a dead letter. You should have done something. VOITSKI. Done something! Not every man is capable of being a writer _perpetuum mobile_ like your Herr Professor. MME. VOITSKAYA. What do you mean by that? SONIA. [Imploringly] Mother! Uncle Vanya! I entreat you! VOITSKI. I am silent. I apologise and am silent. [A pause.] HELENA. What a fine day! Not too hot. [A pause.] VOITSKI. A fine day to hang oneself. TELEGIN tunes the guitar. MARINA appears near the house, calling the chickens. MARINA. Chick, chick, chick! SONIA. What did the peasants want, nurse? MARINA. The same old thing, the same old nonsense. Chick, chick, chick! SONIA. Why are you calling the chickens? MARINA. The speckled hen has disappeared with her chicks. I am afraid the crows have got her. TELEGIN plays a polka. All listen in silence. Enter WORKMAN. WORKMAN. Is the doctor here? [To ASTROFF] Excuse me, sir, but I have been sent to fetch you. ASTROFF. Where are you from? WORKMAN. The factory. ASTROFF. [Annoyed] Thank you. There is nothing for it, then, but to go. [Looking around him for his cap] Damn it, this is annoying! SONIA. Yes, it is too bad, really. You must come back to dinner from the factory. ASTROFF. No, I won't be able to do that. It will be too late. Now where, where--[To the WORKMAN] Look here, my man, get me a glass of vodka, will you? [The WORKMAN goes out] Where--where--[Finds his cap] One of the characters in Ostroff's plays is a man with a long moustache and short wits, like me. However, let me bid you good-bye, ladies and gentlemen. [To HELENA] I should be really delighted if you would come to see me some day with Miss Sonia. My estate is small, but if you are interested in such things I should like to show you a nursery and seed-bed whose like you will not find within a thousand miles of here. My place is surrounded by government forests. The forester is old and always ailing, so I superintend almost all the work myself. HELENA. I have always heard that you were very fond of the woods. Of course one can do a great deal of good by helping to preserve them, but does not that work interfere with your real calling? ASTROFF. God alone knows what a man's real calling is. HELENA. And do you find it interesting? ASTROFF. Yes, very. VOITSKI. [Sarcastically] Oh, extremely! HELENA. You are still young, not over thirty-six or seven, I should say, and I suspect that the woods do not interest you as much as you say they do. I should think you would find them monotonous. SONIA. No, the work is thrilling. Dr. Astroff watches over the old woods and sets out new plantations every year, and he has already received a diploma and a bronze medal. If you will listen to what he can tell you, you will agree with him entirely. He says that forests are the ornaments of the earth, that they teach mankind to understand beauty and attune his mind to lofty sentiments. Forests temper a stern climate, and in countries where the climate is milder, less strength is wasted in the battle with nature, and the people are kind and gentle. The inhabitants of such countries are handsome, tractable, sensitive, graceful in speech and gesture. Their philosophy is joyous, art and science blossom among them, their treatment of women is full of exquisite nobility---- VOITSKI. [Laughing] Bravo! Bravo! All that is very pretty, but it is also unconvincing. So, my friend [To ASTROFF] you must let me go on burning firewood in my stoves and building my sheds of planks. ASTROFF. You can burn peat in your stoves and build your sheds of stone. Oh, I don't object, of course, to cutting wood from necessity, but why destroy the forests? The woods of Russia are trembling under the blows of the axe. Millions of trees have perished. The homes of the wild animals and birds have been desolated; the rivers are shrinking, and many beautiful landscapes are gone forever. And why? Because men are too lazy and stupid to stoop down and pick up their fuel from the ground. [To HELENA] Am I not right, Madame? Who but a stupid barbarian could burn so much beauty in his stove and destroy that which he cannot make? Man is endowed with reason and the power to create, so that he may increase that which has been given him, but until now he has not created, but demolished. The forests are disappearing, the rivers are running dry, the game is exterminated, the climate is spoiled, and the earth becomes poorer and uglier every day. [To VOITSKI] I read irony in your eye; you do not take what I am saying seriously, and--and--after all, it may very well be nonsense. But when I pass peasant-forests that I have preserved from the axe, or hear the rustling of the young plantations set out with my own hands, I feel as if I had had some small share in improving the climate, and that if mankind is happy a thousand years from now I will have been a little bit responsible for their happiness. When I plant a little birch tree and then see it budding into young green and swaying in the wind, my heart swells with pride and I--[Sees the WORKMAN, who is bringing him a glass of vodka on a tray] however--[He drinks] I must be off. Probably it is all nonsense, anyway. Good-bye. He goes toward the house. SONIA takes his arm and goes with him. SONIA. When are you coming to see us again? ASTROFF. I can't say. SONIA. In a month? ASTROFF and SONIA go into the house. HELENA and VOITSKI walk over to the terrace. HELENA. You have behaved shockingly again. Ivan, what sense was there in teasing your mother and talking about _perpetuum mobile?_ And at breakfast you quarreled with Alexander again. Really, your behaviour is too petty. VOITSKI. But if I hate him? HELENA. You hate Alexander without reason; he is like every one else, and no worse than you are. VOITSKI. If you could only see your face, your gestures! Oh, how tedious your life must be. HELENA. It is tedious, yes, and dreary! You all abuse my husband and look on me with compassion; you think, "Poor woman, she is married to an old man." How well I understand your compassion! As Astroff said just now, see how you thoughtlessly destroy the forests, so that there will soon be none left. So you also destroy mankind, and soon fidelity and purity and self-sacrifice will have vanished with the woods. Why cannot you look calmly at a woman unless she is yours? Because, the doctor was right, you are all possessed by a devil of destruction; you have no mercy on the woods or the birds or on women or on one another. VOITSKI. I don't like your philosophy. HELENA. That doctor has a sensitive, weary face--an interesting face. Sonia evidently likes him, and she is in love with him, and I can understand it. This is the third time he has been here since I have come, and I have not had a real talk with him yet or made much of him. He thinks I am disagreeable. Do you know, Ivan, the reason you and I are such friends? I think it is because we are both lonely and unfortunate. Yes, unfortunate. Don't look at me in that way, I don't like it. VOITSKI. How can I look at you otherwise when I love you? You are my joy, my life, and my youth. I know that my chances of being loved in return are infinitely small, do not exist, but I ask nothing of you. Only let me look at you, listen to your voice-- HELENA. Hush, some one will overhear you. [They go toward the house.] VOITSKI. [Following her] Let me speak to you of my love, do not drive me away, and this alone will be my greatest happiness! HELENA. Ah! This is agony! TELEGIN strikes the strings of his guitar and plays a polka. MME. VOITSKAYA writes something on the leaves of her pamphlet. The curtain falls.

Act I - Part One

https://web.archive.org/web/20210227035013/https://www.sparknotes.com/drama/unclevanya/section1/

Act I opens on a muggy autumn afternoon in the garden of Professor Serebryakov's estate. Marina, an old nanny, sits knitting by a samovar as Astrov, the country doctor, paces back and forth. Astrov reminisces about the time when he first came to the region, a time when Vera Petrovna--Serebryakov's first wife and mother to his daughter Sonya--was still alive. Marina notes that since then Astrov has lost his good looks, started to show signs of age, and taken to drinking. Astrov then goes into an extended speech about his "boring, stupid, sordid" life, a life in which he is overworked and surrounded by "eccentric people". As a result, his feelings are "dead to the world": Astrov needs nothing, wants nothing, and loves no one. Refusing Marina's offer of food, Astrov then recounts how he went to Malitskoe over Lent to treat an epidemic of spotted typhus. One of his patients died while under chloroform, and he is plagued with guilt. Astrov also laments that future generations will not bother to remember those living in the present. Marina comforts him: God will remember. Voynitsky , Serebryakov's brother-in-law by his marriage to Vera Petrovna and caretaker of the estate, then enters yawning. He complains that the professor and his wife, having recently relocated to the estate from the city, have thrown the estate out of kilter, drawing everyone into sleep, boredom, and lethargy. Marina concurs, bemoaning the disruption of their dining schedule. Suddenly Serebryakov,--ridiculously over-dressed in an overcoat, a pair of galoshes, and a pair of gloves--his current young wife Yelena, Sonya, and Telegin, an impoverished landowner dubbed "Waffles" for his pockmarked face, return from a stroll. Speaking of plans to visit a forest preserve, the party enters the house; Telegin joins the group in the garden. Dreamily Voynitsky sighs about Yelena's beauty. When Astrov reproaches him for not joining the conversation, Voynitsky replies listlessly that he has nothing to say, that he has grown old and lazy. Bitterly, he goes on to caricaturize the other members of the household. His mother, Maria, is a "lazy old crow" who has "one eye fastened on the grave" and the other fixed on her pamphlets "for the dawn of a new life." The professor is an "old, dried up biscuit, a learned, smoke-cured fish", a pompous charlatan of an art historian who knows nothing about art and has already faded into obscurity. Indeed, Serebryakov has spent his life "pouring from one empty pot into the next"--the empty pot of this joke referring to the vacant bodies of his mind, ideas, works, and students. When Astrov remarks that Voynitsky seems to envy Serebryakov, he readily concurs. In particular, Voynitsky envies Serebryakov's success with women: the examples he adduces are his angelic late sister, his mother , and the beautiful Yelena. He then points out the illogic of Yelena's fidelity to her dottering, decrepit husband. He questiones how it can be moral to deny one's vitality and youth while immoral to deceive a husband one despises. Voynitsky's remarks almost reduce Telegin to tears. Apparently his wife deserted him the day after their wedding because of his "unprepossessing appearance." "Waffles" has remained faithful, however, supporting the children she has had by her lover. Though miserable, he has retained his pride, while his wife has grown old, and her lover has died.

As one might have noticed, most of the characters of Uncle Vanya are consumed with lethargy, boredom, and regret over their disappointing lives, mourning years they have wasted in drudgery and the ways in which their fates might have been different. To recall Voynitsky's description of his mother, the characters here are half-dead with bitterness and hopeless seek the renewal of their lives. Their malaise is reflected in the mugginess of the afternoon; indeed, Voynitsky will remark in the following scene that in such "lovely weather" one could hang oneself. Astrov introduces this theme of the wasted life in two extended speeches. Notably Astrov describes being surrounded by "eccentric people" and then, in the course of his disappointing life, becoming "strange" himself. This motif of estrangement--referring to a sense of alienation from not only those around you but from yourself as well--will recur in relation to the aging doctor. Astrov's becoming strange to himself over the years is materialized here by his "colossal" and "asinine" moustache--a moustache utterly foreign to his own self-concept. One might also note that the motif of self-estrangement describes Astrov's constant introspection as well. To some extent, the self-reflection he undertakes requires that he "make himself strange", that he distance himself from what is conventionally considered the most familiar--one's inner life. This self-estrangement is matched by the distance Astrov takes from the world around him when brooding. Though ostensibly addressed to Marina, his speeches seem to proceed entirely without their manifest listener in mind. Note how Astrov suddenly remembers that Marina is next to him at the end of his first speech and then rambles off into a memory of his childhood nanny. Also of interest is Astrov's story of the patient who dies while anesthetized. A few lines above, Astrov relates how his feelings have become dead to the world, how he no longer needs, wants, or loves. This numbness is tantamount to a kind of anesthesia: thus we can consider the dead patient Astrov's double, and, indeed, Astrov himself might be aware of this doubling. Tellingly, his "feelings back again" when the patient dies. As he confesses: "I was tortured so much by my conscience I felt that I'd deliberately killed him. " One could argue then that Astrov "kills"--albeit accidentally--the anesthetized patient, which doubles for ending his own anesthetizing in order to feel again, even if that feeing is one of guilt. Speeches such as Astrov's will recur throughout Uncle Vanya, the inner life of the characters constantly standing to release a torrent of unhappy introspection. In reading these artificially long speeches, however, we should keep in mind that they burst through the surface of a realistic, everyday context--indeed, a dialogue, action, and setting defined by banality and petty detail. Recall, for example, the anecdote of the dining schedule or Voynitsky's famous understated entrance: " Yes Yes" One might also recall here that the name "Vanya" is as common as "Jack" or "John" in English. Such use of banality helps to compose the very particular malaise described above, the misery in passing through the course of the everyday. Indeed, as we will see, everyday routine will ultimately subsume the changes in the characters' lives that their speeches might seem to foreshadow. Chekhov's petty details lend themselves to comedy as well: the humor in Voynitsky's entrance is clear. Thus we cannot close this discussion without noting how the tragedy of these first scenes is interlaced with comic elements . There are a number of obvious examples of humor here: the "unprepossessing" Telegin or "Waffles" is held up for ridicule. Voynitsky's caricatures of his mother and the professor are hilarious, posing him as a sort of bitterly comic misanthrope, the character who explicitly and insightfully points out the miserable nature of those around him.There also appears some subtle moments of humor. For example, when Marina offers Astrov something to eat after his first speech, she perhaps both ironizes his endless oratory and reveals herself as oblivious to these ruminations in her blind religious faith. Such an ironic interpretation of dialogue would find new voices in Chekhov's text alongside its manifestly tragic content: in this case, voices that criticize an indulgence in introspection as well as a simple-minded religiosity. In blending the tragic and comic, Uncle Vanya allows for endless flights of fancy along these lines.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1232-chapters/05.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Prince/section_5_part_0.txt

The Prince.chapter 5

chapter 5

{"name": "Chapter 5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210420060055/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/prince-machiavelli/summary/chapter-5", "summary": "Now let's talk about conquering places used to governing themselves, like republics or democracies. There are three ways to do this: burn it all down, go live there, and basically leave them alone but make them pay taxes and create a small government. Got it? Now forget the last two, because those aren't going to work. You need to destroy these places. Republics are too feisty, and they don't seem to like the idea of being conquered by kings, oddly enough. If you don't burn it all down, they'll come back to bite you when you least expect it, even 100 years later.", "analysis": ""}

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.

Chapter 5

https://web.archive.org/web/20210420060055/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/prince-machiavelli/summary/chapter-5

Now let's talk about conquering places used to governing themselves, like republics or democracies. There are three ways to do this: burn it all down, go live there, and basically leave them alone but make them pay taxes and create a small government. Got it? Now forget the last two, because those aren't going to work. You need to destroy these places. Republics are too feisty, and they don't seem to like the idea of being conquered by kings, oddly enough. If you don't burn it all down, they'll come back to bite you when you least expect it, even 100 years later.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/107-chapters/43.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Far From the Madding Crowd/section_42_part_0.txt

Far From the Madding Crowd.chapter 43

chapter 43

{"name": "Chapter 43", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-43", "summary": "Bathsheba sits talking to her servant Liddy next to a fire. Bathsheba keeps asking questions about Fanny Robin's health when she left Weatherbury. It's pretty clear that she suspects that Fanny and Troy had a previous relationship and that Fanny was the woman they met on the road that day. Liddy mentions the rumor that there are actually two bodies inside Fanny's coffin, meaning that she has a baby inside with her. Bathsheba says this is impossible or else they would have written so on the coffin's lid. Bathsheba realizes that she needs to speak to someone with a strong character. So she throws on a cloak and goes to visit Gabriel Oak. She goes to his house and watches him through his windows for a while. She even watches him kneel next to his bed to pray. Once again, Thomas Hardy screams: this guy is so good. She soon realizes that it's too late at night for her, a married woman, to visit a bachelor alone. So she returns to her house. Once she's there, she goes to Fanny's coffin, bites the bullet, and opens it up. Inside, she sees Fanny lying dead with a baby in her arms. Bathsheba sinks to the floor and starts crying. Then she prays and lays some flowers around Fanny's head before closing the coffin again. A few moments later, she hears the house's front door opening and closing. She goes into the hallway to find her husband staring at her. He's now back from his trip. They stare at each other for a while before Troy asks what the matter is. Soon enough, he looks in on Fanny and the dead baby, and he falls completely silent. He finally admits to Bathsheba that Fanny was his former fiance and they had a baby together. He bends over and kisses Fanny. This fills Bathsheba with uncontrollable jealousy, and she jumps on him and demands that he kiss her to prove that he loves her more. Yeah, that's right: kiss her with the same lips that just kissed a corpse that had been sitting around for a few days. Troy, though, refuses to kiss her, admitting that he could never love her as much as he loved Fanny. He even says that in the eyes of heaven, there's no way he's married to Bathsheba. At this, Bathsheba can only turn and run out of the house.", "analysis": ""}

FANNY'S REVENGE "Do you want me any longer ma'am?" inquired Liddy, at a later hour the same evening, standing by the door with a chamber candlestick in her hand and addressing Bathsheba, who sat cheerless and alone in the large parlour beside the first fire of the season. "No more to-night, Liddy." "I'll sit up for master if you like, ma'am. I am not at all afraid of Fanny, if I may sit in my own room and have a candle. She was such a childlike, nesh young thing that her spirit couldn't appear to anybody if it tried, I'm quite sure." "Oh no, no! You go to bed. I'll sit up for him myself till twelve o'clock, and if he has not arrived by that time, I shall give him up and go to bed too." "It is half-past ten now." "Oh! is it?" "Why don't you sit upstairs, ma'am?" "Why don't I?" said Bathsheba, desultorily. "It isn't worth while--there's a fire here, Liddy." She suddenly exclaimed in an impulsive and excited whisper, "Have you heard anything strange said of Fanny?" The words had no sooner escaped her than an expression of unutterable regret crossed her face, and she burst into tears. "No--not a word!" said Liddy, looking at the weeping woman with astonishment. "What is it makes you cry so, ma'am; has anything hurt you?" She came to Bathsheba's side with a face full of sympathy. "No, Liddy--I don't want you any more. I can hardly say why I have taken to crying lately: I never used to cry. Good-night." Liddy then left the parlour and closed the door. Bathsheba was lonely and miserable now; not lonelier actually than she had been before her marriage; but her loneliness then was to that of the present time as the solitude of a mountain is to the solitude of a cave. And within the last day or two had come these disquieting thoughts about her husband's past. Her wayward sentiment that evening concerning Fanny's temporary resting-place had been the result of a strange complication of impulses in Bathsheba's bosom. Perhaps it would be more accurately described as a determined rebellion against her prejudices, a revulsion from a lower instinct of uncharitableness, which would have withheld all sympathy from the dead woman, because in life she had preceded Bathsheba in the attentions of a man whom Bathsheba had by no means ceased from loving, though her love was sick to death just now with the gravity of a further misgiving. In five or ten minutes there was another tap at the door. Liddy reappeared, and coming in a little way stood hesitating, until at length she said, "Maryann has just heard something very strange, but I know it isn't true. And we shall be sure to know the rights of it in a day or two." "What is it?" "Oh, nothing connected with you or us, ma'am. It is about Fanny. That same thing you have heard." "I have heard nothing." "I mean that a wicked story is got to Weatherbury within this last hour--that--" Liddy came close to her mistress and whispered the remainder of the sentence slowly into her ear, inclining her head as she spoke in the direction of the room where Fanny lay. Bathsheba trembled from head to foot. "I don't believe it!" she said, excitedly. "And there's only one name written on the coffin-cover." "Nor I, ma'am. And a good many others don't; for we should surely have been told more about it if it had been true--don't you think so, ma'am?" "We might or we might not." Bathsheba turned and looked into the fire, that Liddy might not see her face. Finding that her mistress was going to say no more, Liddy glided out, closed the door softly, and went to bed. Bathsheba's face, as she continued looking into the fire that evening, might have excited solicitousness on her account even among those who loved her least. The sadness of Fanny Robin's fate did not make Bathsheba's glorious, although she was the Esther to this poor Vashti, and their fates might be supposed to stand in some respects as contrasts to each other. When Liddy came into the room a second time the beautiful eyes which met hers had worn a listless, weary look. When she went out after telling the story they had expressed wretchedness in full activity. Her simple country nature, fed on old-fashioned principles, was troubled by that which would have troubled a woman of the world very little, both Fanny and her child, if she had one, being dead. Bathsheba had grounds for conjecturing a connection between her own history and the dimly suspected tragedy of Fanny's end which Oak and Boldwood never for a moment credited her with possessing. The meeting with the lonely woman on the previous Saturday night had been unwitnessed and unspoken of. Oak may have had the best of intentions in withholding for as many days as possible the details of what had happened to Fanny; but had he known that Bathsheba's perceptions had already been exercised in the matter, he would have done nothing to lengthen the minutes of suspense she was now undergoing, when the certainty which must terminate it would be the worst fact suspected after all. She suddenly felt a longing desire to speak to some one stronger than herself, and so get strength to sustain her surmised position with dignity and her lurking doubts with stoicism. Where could she find such a friend? nowhere in the house. She was by far the coolest of the women under her roof. Patience and suspension of judgement for a few hours were what she wanted to learn, and there was nobody to teach her. Might she but go to Gabriel Oak!--but that could not be. What a way Oak had, she thought, of enduring things. Boldwood, who seemed so much deeper and higher and stronger in feeling than Gabriel, had not yet learnt, any more than she herself, the simple lesson which Oak showed a mastery of by every turn and look he gave--that among the multitude of interests by which he was surrounded, those which affected his personal well-being were not the most absorbing and important in his eyes. Oak meditatively looked upon the horizon of circumstances without any special regard to his own standpoint in the midst. That was how she would wish to be. But then Oak was not racked by incertitude upon the inmost matter of his bosom, as she was at this moment. Oak knew all about Fanny that he wished to know--she felt convinced of that. If she were to go to him now at once and say no more than these few words, "What is the truth of the story?" he would feel bound in honour to tell her. It would be an inexpressible relief. No further speech would need to be uttered. He knew her so well that no eccentricity of behaviour in her would alarm him. She flung a cloak round her, went to the door and opened it. Every blade, every twig was still. The air was yet thick with moisture, though somewhat less dense than during the afternoon, and a steady smack of drops upon the fallen leaves under the boughs was almost musical in its soothing regularity. It seemed better to be out of the house than within it, and Bathsheba closed the door, and walked slowly down the lane till she came opposite to Gabriel's cottage, where he now lived alone, having left Coggan's house through being pinched for room. There was a light in one window only, and that was downstairs. The shutters were not closed, nor was any blind or curtain drawn over the window, neither robbery nor observation being a contingency which could do much injury to the occupant of the domicile. Yes, it was Gabriel himself who was sitting up: he was reading. From her standing-place in the road she could see him plainly, sitting quite still, his light curly head upon his hand, and only occasionally looking up to snuff the candle which stood beside him. At length he looked at the clock, seemed surprised at the lateness of the hour, closed his book, and arose. He was going to bed, she knew, and if she tapped it must be done at once. Alas for her resolve! She felt she could not do it. Not for worlds now could she give a hint about her misery to him, much less ask him plainly for information on the cause of Fanny's death. She must suspect, and guess, and chafe, and bear it all alone. Like a homeless wanderer she lingered by the bank, as if lulled and fascinated by the atmosphere of content which seemed to spread from that little dwelling, and was so sadly lacking in her own. Gabriel appeared in an upper room, placed his light in the window-bench, and then--knelt down to pray. The contrast of the picture with her rebellious and agitated existence at this same time was too much for her to bear to look upon longer. It was not for her to make a truce with trouble by any such means. She must tread her giddy distracting measure to its last note, as she had begun it. With a swollen heart she went again up the lane, and entered her own door. More fevered now by a reaction from the first feelings which Oak's example had raised in her, she paused in the hall, looking at the door of the room wherein Fanny lay. She locked her fingers, threw back her head, and strained her hot hands rigidly across her forehead, saying, with a hysterical sob, "Would to God you would speak and tell me your secret, Fanny! ... Oh, I hope, hope it is not true that there are two of you! ... If I could only look in upon you for one little minute, I should know all!" A few moments passed, and she added, slowly, "AND I WILL." Bathsheba in after times could never gauge the mood which carried her through the actions following this murmured resolution on this memorable evening of her life. She went to the lumber-closet for a screw-driver. At the end of a short though undefined time she found herself in the small room, quivering with emotion, a mist before her eyes, and an excruciating pulsation in her brain, standing beside the uncovered coffin of the girl whose conjectured end had so entirely engrossed her, and saying to herself in a husky voice as she gazed within-- "It was best to know the worst, and I know it now!" She was conscious of having brought about this situation by a series of actions done as by one in an extravagant dream; of following that idea as to method, which had burst upon her in the hall with glaring obviousness, by gliding to the top of the stairs, assuring herself by listening to the heavy breathing of her maids that they were asleep, gliding down again, turning the handle of the door within which the young girl lay, and deliberately setting herself to do what, if she had anticipated any such undertaking at night and alone, would have horrified her, but which, when done, was not so dreadful as was the conclusive proof of her husband's conduct which came with knowing beyond doubt the last chapter of Fanny's story. Bathsheba's head sank upon her bosom, and the breath which had been bated in suspense, curiosity, and interest, was exhaled now in the form of a whispered wail: "Oh-h-h!" she said, and the silent room added length to her moan. Her tears fell fast beside the unconscious pair in the coffin: tears of a complicated origin, of a nature indescribable, almost indefinable except as other than those of simple sorrow. Assuredly their wonted fires must have lived in Fanny's ashes when events were so shaped as to chariot her hither in this natural, unobtrusive, yet effectual manner. The one feat alone--that of dying--by which a mean condition could be resolved into a grand one, Fanny had achieved. And to that had destiny subjoined this reencounter to-night, which had, in Bathsheba's wild imagining, turned her companion's failure to success, her humiliation to triumph, her lucklessness to ascendency; it had thrown over herself a garish light of mockery, and set upon all things about her an ironical smile. Fanny's face was framed in by that yellow hair of hers; and there was no longer much room for doubt as to the origin of the curl owned by Troy. In Bathsheba's heated fancy the innocent white countenance expressed a dim triumphant consciousness of the pain she was retaliating for her pain with all the merciless rigour of the Mosaic law: "Burning for burning; wound for wound: strife for strife." Bathsheba indulged in contemplations of escape from her position by immediate death, which, thought she, though it was an inconvenient and awful way, had limits to its inconvenience and awfulness that could not be overpassed; whilst the shames of life were measureless. Yet even this scheme of extinction by death was but tamely copying her rival's method without the reasons which had glorified it in her rival's case. She glided rapidly up and down the room, as was mostly her habit when excited, her hands hanging clasped in front of her, as she thought and in part expressed in broken words: "O, I hate her, yet I don't mean that I hate her, for it is grievous and wicked; and yet I hate her a little! Yes, my flesh insists upon hating her, whether my spirit is willing or no! ... If she had only lived, I could have been angry and cruel towards her with some justification; but to be vindictive towards a poor dead woman recoils upon myself. O God, have mercy! I am miserable at all this!" Bathsheba became at this moment so terrified at her own state of mind that she looked around for some sort of refuge from herself. The vision of Oak kneeling down that night recurred to her, and with the imitative instinct which animates women she seized upon the idea, resolved to kneel, and, if possible, pray. Gabriel had prayed; so would she. She knelt beside the coffin, covered her face with her hands, and for a time the room was silent as a tomb. Whether from a purely mechanical, or from any other cause, when Bathsheba arose it was with a quieted spirit, and a regret for the antagonistic instincts which had seized upon her just before. In her desire to make atonement she took flowers from a vase by the window, and began laying them around the dead girl's head. Bathsheba knew no other way of showing kindness to persons departed than by giving them flowers. She knew not how long she remained engaged thus. She forgot time, life, where she was, what she was doing. A slamming together of the coach-house doors in the yard brought her to herself again. An instant after, the front door opened and closed, steps crossed the hall, and her husband appeared at the entrance to the room, looking in upon her. He beheld it all by degrees, stared in stupefaction at the scene, as if he thought it an illusion raised by some fiendish incantation. Bathsheba, pallid as a corpse on end, gazed back at him in the same wild way. So little are instinctive guesses the fruit of a legitimate induction that, at this moment, as he stood with the door in his hand, Troy never once thought of Fanny in connection with what he saw. His first confused idea was that somebody in the house had died. "Well--what?" said Troy, blankly. "I must go! I must go!" said Bathsheba, to herself more than to him. She came with a dilated eye towards the door, to push past him. "What's the matter, in God's name? who's dead?" said Troy. "I cannot say; let me go out. I want air!" she continued. "But no; stay, I insist!" He seized her hand, and then volition seemed to leave her, and she went off into a state of passivity. He, still holding her, came up the room, and thus, hand in hand, Troy and Bathsheba approached the coffin's side. The candle was standing on a bureau close by them, and the light slanted down, distinctly enkindling the cold features of both mother and babe. Troy looked in, dropped his wife's hand, knowledge of it all came over him in a lurid sheen, and he stood still. So still he remained that he could be imagined to have left in him no motive power whatever. The clashes of feeling in all directions confounded one another, produced a neutrality, and there was motion in none. "Do you know her?" said Bathsheba, in a small enclosed echo, as from the interior of a cell. "I do," said Troy. "Is it she?" "It is." He had originally stood perfectly erect. And now, in the well-nigh congealed immobility of his frame could be discerned an incipient movement, as in the darkest night may be discerned light after a while. He was gradually sinking forwards. The lines of his features softened, and dismay modulated to illimitable sadness. Bathsheba was regarding him from the other side, still with parted lips and distracted eyes. Capacity for intense feeling is proportionate to the general intensity of the nature, and perhaps in all Fanny's sufferings, much greater relatively to her strength, there never was a time she suffered in an absolute sense what Bathsheba suffered now. What Troy did was to sink upon his knees with an indefinable union of remorse and reverence upon his face, and, bending over Fanny Robin, gently kissed her, as one would kiss an infant asleep to avoid awakening it. At the sight and sound of that, to her, unendurable act, Bathsheba sprang towards him. All the strong feelings which had been scattered over her existence since she knew what feeling was, seemed gathered together into one pulsation now. The revulsion from her indignant mood a little earlier, when she had meditated upon compromised honour, forestalment, eclipse in maternity by another, was violent and entire. All that was forgotten in the simple and still strong attachment of wife to husband. She had sighed for her self-completeness then, and now she cried aloud against the severance of the union she had deplored. She flung her arms round Troy's neck, exclaiming wildly from the deepest deep of her heart-- "Don't--don't kiss them! O, Frank, I can't bear it--I can't! I love you better than she did: kiss me too, Frank--kiss me! YOU WILL, FRANK, KISS ME TOO!" There was something so abnormal and startling in the childlike pain and simplicity of this appeal from a woman of Bathsheba's calibre and independence, that Troy, loosening her tightly clasped arms from his neck, looked at her in bewilderment. It was such an unexpected revelation of all women being alike at heart, even those so different in their accessories as Fanny and this one beside him, that Troy could hardly seem to believe her to be his proud wife Bathsheba. Fanny's own spirit seemed to be animating her frame. But this was the mood of a few instants only. When the momentary surprise had passed, his expression changed to a silencing imperious gaze. "I will not kiss you!" he said pushing her away. Had the wife now but gone no further. Yet, perhaps, under the harrowing circumstances, to speak out was the one wrong act which can be better understood, if not forgiven in her, than the right and politic one, her rival being now but a corpse. All the feeling she had been betrayed into showing she drew back to herself again by a strenuous effort of self-command. "What have you to say as your reason?" she asked, her bitter voice being strangely low--quite that of another woman now. "I have to say that I have been a bad, black-hearted man," he answered. "And that this woman is your victim; and I not less than she." "Ah! don't taunt me, madam. This woman is more to me, dead as she is, than ever you were, or are, or can be. If Satan had not tempted me with that face of yours, and those cursed coquetries, I should have married her. I never had another thought till you came in my way. Would to God that I had; but it is all too late!" He turned to Fanny then. "But never mind, darling," he said; "in the sight of Heaven you are my very, very wife!" At these words there arose from Bathsheba's lips a long, low cry of measureless despair and indignation, such a wail of anguish as had never before been heard within those old-inhabited walls. It was the "Tetelestai" [GREEK word meaning "it is finished"] of her union with Troy. "If she's--that,--what--am I?" she added, as a continuation of the same cry, and sobbing pitifully: and the rarity with her of such abandonment only made the condition more dire. "You are nothing to me--nothing," said Troy, heartlessly. "A ceremony before a priest doesn't make a marriage. I am not morally yours." A vehement impulse to flee from him, to run from this place, hide, and escape his words at any price, not stopping short of death itself, mastered Bathsheba now. She waited not an instant, but turned to the door and ran out.

Chapter 43

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-43

Bathsheba sits talking to her servant Liddy next to a fire. Bathsheba keeps asking questions about Fanny Robin's health when she left Weatherbury. It's pretty clear that she suspects that Fanny and Troy had a previous relationship and that Fanny was the woman they met on the road that day. Liddy mentions the rumor that there are actually two bodies inside Fanny's coffin, meaning that she has a baby inside with her. Bathsheba says this is impossible or else they would have written so on the coffin's lid. Bathsheba realizes that she needs to speak to someone with a strong character. So she throws on a cloak and goes to visit Gabriel Oak. She goes to his house and watches him through his windows for a while. She even watches him kneel next to his bed to pray. Once again, Thomas Hardy screams: this guy is so good. She soon realizes that it's too late at night for her, a married woman, to visit a bachelor alone. So she returns to her house. Once she's there, she goes to Fanny's coffin, bites the bullet, and opens it up. Inside, she sees Fanny lying dead with a baby in her arms. Bathsheba sinks to the floor and starts crying. Then she prays and lays some flowers around Fanny's head before closing the coffin again. A few moments later, she hears the house's front door opening and closing. She goes into the hallway to find her husband staring at her. He's now back from his trip. They stare at each other for a while before Troy asks what the matter is. Soon enough, he looks in on Fanny and the dead baby, and he falls completely silent. He finally admits to Bathsheba that Fanny was his former fiance and they had a baby together. He bends over and kisses Fanny. This fills Bathsheba with uncontrollable jealousy, and she jumps on him and demands that he kiss her to prove that he loves her more. Yeah, that's right: kiss her with the same lips that just kissed a corpse that had been sitting around for a few days. Troy, though, refuses to kiss her, admitting that he could never love her as much as he loved Fanny. He even says that in the eyes of heaven, there's no way he's married to Bathsheba. At this, Bathsheba can only turn and run out of the house.

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/81.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Brothers Karamazov/section_14_part_2.txt

The Brothers Karamazov.book 12.chapter 2

book 12, chapter 2

{"name": "book 12, Chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section15/", "summary": "Dangerous Witnesses A sequence of witnesses is called, and one by one, through masterful cross-examinations, Fetyukovich casts suspicion on their words, discrediting their claims that Dmitri is guilty. Grigory, Fetyukovich notes, had taken a strong medicine on the night of the murder, and his senses may have been unreliable", "analysis": ""}

Chapter II. Dangerous Witnesses I do not know whether the witnesses for the defense and for the prosecution were separated into groups by the President, and whether it was arranged to call them in a certain order. But no doubt it was so. I only know that the witnesses for the prosecution were called first. I repeat I don't intend to describe all the questions step by step. Besides, my account would be to some extent superfluous, because in the speeches for the prosecution and for the defense the whole course of the evidence was brought together and set in a strong and significant light, and I took down parts of those two remarkable speeches in full, and will quote them in due course, together with one extraordinary and quite unexpected episode, which occurred before the final speeches, and undoubtedly influenced the sinister and fatal outcome of the trial. I will only observe that from the first moments of the trial one peculiar characteristic of the case was conspicuous and observed by all, that is, the overwhelming strength of the prosecution as compared with the arguments the defense had to rely upon. Every one realized it from the first moment that the facts began to group themselves round a single point, and the whole horrible and bloody crime was gradually revealed. Every one, perhaps, felt from the first that the case was beyond dispute, that there was no doubt about it, that there could be really no discussion, and that the defense was only a matter of form, and that the prisoner was guilty, obviously and conclusively guilty. I imagine that even the ladies, who were so impatiently longing for the acquittal of the interesting prisoner, were at the same time, without exception, convinced of his guilt. What's more, I believe they would have been mortified if his guilt had not been so firmly established, as that would have lessened the effect of the closing scene of the criminal's acquittal. That he would be acquitted, all the ladies, strange to say, were firmly persuaded up to the very last moment. "He is guilty, but he will be acquitted, from motives of humanity, in accordance with the new ideas, the new sentiments that had come into fashion," and so on, and so on. And that was why they had crowded into the court so impatiently. The men were more interested in the contest between the prosecutor and the famous Fetyukovitch. All were wondering and asking themselves what could even a talent like Fetyukovitch's make of such a desperate case; and so they followed his achievements, step by step, with concentrated attention. But Fetyukovitch remained an enigma to all up to the very end, up to his speech. Persons of experience suspected that he had some design, that he was working towards some object, but it was almost impossible to guess what it was. His confidence and self-reliance were unmistakable, however. Every one noticed with pleasure, moreover, that he, after so short a stay, not more than three days, perhaps, among us, had so wonderfully succeeded in mastering the case and "had studied it to a nicety." People described with relish, afterwards, how cleverly he had "taken down" all the witnesses for the prosecution, and as far as possible perplexed them and, what's more, had aspersed their reputation and so depreciated the value of their evidence. But it was supposed that he did this rather by way of sport, so to speak, for professional glory, to show nothing had been omitted of the accepted methods, for all were convinced that he could do no real good by such disparagement of the witnesses, and probably was more aware of this than any one, having some idea of his own in the background, some concealed weapon of defense, which he would suddenly reveal when the time came. But meanwhile, conscious of his strength, he seemed to be diverting himself. So, for instance, when Grigory, Fyodor Pavlovitch's old servant, who had given the most damning piece of evidence about the open door, was examined, the counsel for the defense positively fastened upon him when his turn came to question him. It must be noted that Grigory entered the hall with a composed and almost stately air, not the least disconcerted by the majesty of the court or the vast audience listening to him. He gave evidence with as much confidence as though he had been talking with his Marfa, only perhaps more respectfully. It was impossible to make him contradict himself. The prosecutor questioned him first in detail about the family life of the Karamazovs. The family picture stood out in lurid colors. It was plain to ear and eye that the witness was guileless and impartial. In spite of his profound reverence for the memory of his deceased master, he yet bore witness that he had been unjust to Mitya and "hadn't brought up his children as he should. He'd have been devoured by lice when he was little, if it hadn't been for me," he added, describing Mitya's early childhood. "It wasn't fair either of the father to wrong his son over his mother's property, which was by right his." In reply to the prosecutor's question what grounds he had for asserting that Fyodor Pavlovitch had wronged his son in their money relations, Grigory, to the surprise of every one, had no proof at all to bring forward, but he still persisted that the arrangement with the son was "unfair," and that he ought "to have paid him several thousand roubles more." I must note, by the way, that the prosecutor asked this question whether Fyodor Pavlovitch had really kept back part of Mitya's inheritance with marked persistence of all the witnesses who could be asked it, not excepting Alyosha and Ivan, but he obtained no exact information from any one; all alleged that it was so, but were unable to bring forward any distinct proof. Grigory's description of the scene at the dinner-table, when Dmitri had burst in and beaten his father, threatening to come back to kill him, made a sinister impression on the court, especially as the old servant's composure in telling it, his parsimony of words and peculiar phraseology, were as effective as eloquence. He observed that he was not angry with Mitya for having knocked him down and struck him on the face; he had forgiven him long ago, he said. Of the deceased Smerdyakov he observed, crossing himself, that he was a lad of ability, but stupid and afflicted, and, worse still, an infidel, and that it was Fyodor Pavlovitch and his elder son who had taught him to be so. But he defended Smerdyakov's honesty almost with warmth, and related how Smerdyakov had once found the master's money in the yard, and, instead of concealing it, had taken it to his master, who had rewarded him with a "gold piece" for it, and trusted him implicitly from that time forward. He maintained obstinately that the door into the garden had been open. But he was asked so many questions that I can't recall them all. At last the counsel for the defense began to cross-examine him, and the first question he asked was about the envelope in which Fyodor Pavlovitch was supposed to have put three thousand roubles for "a certain person." "Have you ever seen it, you, who were for so many years in close attendance on your master?" Grigory answered that he had not seen it and had never heard of the money from any one "till everybody was talking about it." This question about the envelope Fetyukovitch put to every one who could conceivably have known of it, as persistently as the prosecutor asked his question about Dmitri's inheritance, and got the same answer from all, that no one had seen the envelope, though many had heard of it. From the beginning every one noticed Fetyukovitch's persistence on this subject. "Now, with your permission I'll ask you a question," Fetyukovitch said, suddenly and unexpectedly. "Of what was that balsam, or, rather, decoction, made, which, as we learn from the preliminary inquiry, you used on that evening to rub your lumbago, in the hope of curing it?" Grigory looked blankly at the questioner, and after a brief silence muttered, "There was saffron in it." "Nothing but saffron? Don't you remember any other ingredient?" "There was milfoil in it, too." "And pepper perhaps?" Fetyukovitch queried. "Yes, there was pepper, too." "Etcetera. And all dissolved in vodka?" "In spirit." There was a faint sound of laughter in the court. "You see, in spirit. After rubbing your back, I believe, you drank what was left in the bottle with a certain pious prayer, only known to your wife?" "I did." "Did you drink much? Roughly speaking, a wine-glass or two?" "It might have been a tumbler-full." "A tumbler-full, even. Perhaps a tumbler and a half?" Grigory did not answer. He seemed to see what was meant. "A glass and a half of neat spirit--is not at all bad, don't you think? You might see the gates of heaven open, not only the door into the garden?" Grigory remained silent. There was another laugh in the court. The President made a movement. "Do you know for a fact," Fetyukovitch persisted, "whether you were awake or not when you saw the open door?" "I was on my legs." "That's not a proof that you were awake." (There was again laughter in the court.) "Could you have answered at that moment, if any one had asked you a question--for instance, what year it is?" "I don't know." "And what year is it, Anno Domini, do you know?" Grigory stood with a perplexed face, looking straight at his tormentor. Strange to say, it appeared he really did not know what year it was. "But perhaps you can tell me how many fingers you have on your hands?" "I am a servant," Grigory said suddenly, in a loud and distinct voice. "If my betters think fit to make game of me, it is my duty to suffer it." Fetyukovitch was a little taken aback, and the President intervened, reminding him that he must ask more relevant questions. Fetyukovitch bowed with dignity and said that he had no more questions to ask of the witness. The public and the jury, of course, were left with a grain of doubt in their minds as to the evidence of a man who might, while undergoing a certain cure, have seen "the gates of heaven," and who did not even know what year he was living in. But before Grigory left the box another episode occurred. The President, turning to the prisoner, asked him whether he had any comment to make on the evidence of the last witness. "Except about the door, all he has said is true," cried Mitya, in a loud voice. "For combing the lice off me, I thank him; for forgiving my blows, I thank him. The old man has been honest all his life and as faithful to my father as seven hundred poodles." "Prisoner, be careful in your language," the President admonished him. "I am not a poodle," Grigory muttered. "All right, it's I am a poodle myself," cried Mitya. "If it's an insult, I take it to myself and I beg his pardon. I was a beast and cruel to him. I was cruel to AEsop too." "What AEsop?" the President asked sternly again. "Oh, Pierrot ... my father, Fyodor Pavlovitch." The President again and again warned Mitya impressively and very sternly to be more careful in his language. "You are injuring yourself in the opinion of your judges." The counsel for the defense was equally clever in dealing with the evidence of Rakitin. I may remark that Rakitin was one of the leading witnesses and one to whom the prosecutor attached great significance. It appeared that he knew everything; his knowledge was amazing, he had been everywhere, seen everything, talked to everybody, knew every detail of the biography of Fyodor Pavlovitch and all the Karamazovs. Of the envelope, it is true, he had only heard from Mitya himself. But he described minutely Mitya's exploits in the "Metropolis," all his compromising doings and sayings, and told the story of Captain Snegiryov's "wisp of tow." But even Rakitin could say nothing positive about Mitya's inheritance, and confined himself to contemptuous generalities. "Who could tell which of them was to blame, and which was in debt to the other, with their crazy Karamazov way of muddling things so that no one could make head or tail of it?" He attributed the tragic crime to the habits that had become ingrained by ages of serfdom and the distressed condition of Russia, due to the lack of appropriate institutions. He was, in fact, allowed some latitude of speech. This was the first occasion on which Rakitin showed what he could do, and attracted notice. The prosecutor knew that the witness was preparing a magazine article on the case, and afterwards in his speech, as we shall see later, quoted some ideas from the article, showing that he had seen it already. The picture drawn by the witness was a gloomy and sinister one, and greatly strengthened the case for the prosecution. Altogether, Rakitin's discourse fascinated the public by its independence and the extraordinary nobility of its ideas. There were even two or three outbreaks of applause when he spoke of serfdom and the distressed condition of Russia. But Rakitin, in his youthful ardor, made a slight blunder, of which the counsel for the defense at once adroitly took advantage. Answering certain questions about Grushenka, and carried away by the loftiness of his own sentiments and his success, of which he was, of course, conscious, he went so far as to speak somewhat contemptuously of Agrafena Alexandrovna as "the kept mistress of Samsonov." He would have given a good deal to take back his words afterwards, for Fetyukovitch caught him out over it at once. And it was all because Rakitin had not reckoned on the lawyer having been able to become so intimately acquainted with every detail in so short a time. "Allow me to ask," began the counsel for the defense, with the most affable and even respectful smile, "you are, of course, the same Mr. Rakitin whose pamphlet, _The Life of the Deceased Elder, Father Zossima_, published by the diocesan authorities, full of profound and religious reflections and preceded by an excellent and devout dedication to the bishop, I have just read with such pleasure?" "I did not write it for publication ... it was published afterwards," muttered Rakitin, for some reason fearfully disconcerted and almost ashamed. "Oh, that's excellent! A thinker like you can, and indeed ought to, take the widest view of every social question. Your most instructive pamphlet has been widely circulated through the patronage of the bishop, and has been of appreciable service.... But this is the chief thing I should like to learn from you. You stated just now that you were very intimately acquainted with Madame Svyetlov." (It must be noted that Grushenka's surname was Svyetlov. I heard it for the first time that day, during the case.) "I cannot answer for all my acquaintances.... I am a young man ... and who can be responsible for every one he meets?" cried Rakitin, flushing all over. "I understand, I quite understand," cried Fetyukovitch, as though he, too, were embarrassed and in haste to excuse himself. "You, like any other, might well be interested in an acquaintance with a young and beautiful woman who would readily entertain the _elite_ of the youth of the neighborhood, but ... I only wanted to know ... It has come to my knowledge that Madame Svyetlov was particularly anxious a couple of months ago to make the acquaintance of the younger Karamazov, Alexey Fyodorovitch, and promised you twenty-five roubles, if you would bring him to her in his monastic dress. And that actually took place on the evening of the day on which the terrible crime, which is the subject of the present investigation, was committed. You brought Alexey Karamazov to Madame Svyetlov, and did you receive the twenty-five roubles from Madame Svyetlov as a reward, that's what I wanted to hear from you?" "It was a joke.... I don't see of what interest that can be to you.... I took it for a joke ... meaning to give it back later...." "Then you did take-- But you have not given it back yet ... or have you?" "That's of no consequence," muttered Rakitin, "I refuse to answer such questions.... Of course I shall give it back." The President intervened, but Fetyukovitch declared he had no more questions to ask of the witness. Mr. Rakitin left the witness-box not absolutely without a stain upon his character. The effect left by the lofty idealism of his speech was somewhat marred, and Fetyukovitch's expression, as he watched him walk away, seemed to suggest to the public "this is a specimen of the lofty-minded persons who accuse him." I remember that this incident, too, did not pass off without an outbreak from Mitya. Enraged by the tone in which Rakitin had referred to Grushenka, he suddenly shouted "Bernard!" When, after Rakitin's cross- examination, the President asked the prisoner if he had anything to say, Mitya cried loudly: "Since I've been arrested, he has borrowed money from me! He is a contemptible Bernard and opportunist, and he doesn't believe in God; he took the bishop in!" Mitya, of course, was pulled up again for the intemperance of his language, but Rakitin was done for. Captain Snegiryov's evidence was a failure, too, but from quite a different reason. He appeared in ragged and dirty clothes, muddy boots, and in spite of the vigilance and expert observation of the police officers, he turned out to be hopelessly drunk. On being asked about Mitya's attack upon him, he refused to answer. "God bless him. Ilusha told me not to. God will make it up to me yonder." "Who told you not to tell? Of whom are you talking?" "Ilusha, my little son. 'Father, father, how he insulted you!' He said that at the stone. Now he is dying...." The captain suddenly began sobbing, and plumped down on his knees before the President. He was hurriedly led away amidst the laughter of the public. The effect prepared by the prosecutor did not come off at all. Fetyukovitch went on making the most of every opportunity, and amazed people more and more by his minute knowledge of the case. Thus, for example, Trifon Borissovitch made a great impression, of course, very prejudicial to Mitya. He calculated almost on his fingers that on his first visit to Mokroe, Mitya must have spent three thousand roubles, "or very little less. Just think what he squandered on those gypsy girls alone! And as for our lousy peasants, it wasn't a case of flinging half a rouble in the street, he made them presents of twenty-five roubles each, at least, he didn't give them less. And what a lot of money was simply stolen from him! And if any one did steal, he did not leave a receipt. How could one catch the thief when he was flinging his money away all the time? Our peasants are robbers, you know; they have no care for their souls. And the way he went on with the girls, our village girls! They're completely set up since then, I tell you, they used to be poor." He recalled, in fact, every item of expense and added it all up. So the theory that only fifteen hundred had been spent and the rest had been put aside in a little bag seemed inconceivable. "I saw three thousand as clear as a penny in his hands, I saw it with my own eyes; I should think I ought to know how to reckon money," cried Trifon Borissovitch, doing his best to satisfy "his betters." When Fetyukovitch had to cross-examine him, he scarcely tried to refute his evidence, but began asking him about an incident at the first carousal at Mokroe, a month before the arrest, when Timofey and another peasant called Akim had picked up on the floor in the passage a hundred roubles dropped by Mitya when he was drunk, and had given them to Trifon Borissovitch and received a rouble each from him for doing so. "Well," asked the lawyer, "did you give that hundred roubles back to Mr. Karamazov?" Trifon Borissovitch shuffled in vain.... He was obliged, after the peasants had been examined, to admit the finding of the hundred roubles, only adding that he had religiously returned it all to Dmitri Fyodorovitch "in perfect honesty, and it's only because his honor was in liquor at the time, he wouldn't remember it." But, as he had denied the incident of the hundred roubles till the peasants had been called to prove it, his evidence as to returning the money to Mitya was naturally regarded with great suspicion. So one of the most dangerous witnesses brought forward by the prosecution was again discredited. The same thing happened with the Poles. They took up an attitude of pride and independence; they vociferated loudly that they had both been in the service of the Crown, and that "Pan Mitya" had offered them three thousand "to buy their honor," and that they had seen a large sum of money in his hands. Pan Mussyalovitch introduced a terrible number of Polish words into his sentences, and seeing that this only increased his consequence in the eyes of the President and the prosecutor, grew more and more pompous, and ended by talking in Polish altogether. But Fetyukovitch caught them, too, in his snares. Trifon Borissovitch, recalled, was forced, in spite of his evasions, to admit that Pan Vrublevsky had substituted another pack of cards for the one he had provided, and that Pan Mussyalovitch had cheated during the game. Kalganov confirmed this, and both the Poles left the witness-box with damaged reputations, amidst laughter from the public. Then exactly the same thing happened with almost all the most dangerous witnesses. Fetyukovitch succeeded in casting a slur on all of them, and dismissing them with a certain derision. The lawyers and experts were lost in admiration, and were only at a loss to understand what good purpose could be served by it, for all, I repeat, felt that the case for the prosecution could not be refuted, but was growing more and more tragically overwhelming. But from the confidence of the "great magician" they saw that he was serene, and they waited, feeling that "such a man" had not come from Petersburg for nothing, and that he was not a man to return unsuccessful.

book 12, Chapter 2

https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section15/

Dangerous Witnesses A sequence of witnesses is called, and one by one, through masterful cross-examinations, Fetyukovich casts suspicion on their words, discrediting their claims that Dmitri is guilty. Grigory, Fetyukovich notes, had taken a strong medicine on the night of the murder, and his senses may have been unreliable

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/book_vi.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/The Brothers Karamazov/section_9_part_0.txt

The Brothers Karamazov.book vi.chapter i-chapter iii

book vi

{"name": "Book VI", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219142226/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/b/the-brothers-karamazov/summary-and-analysis/part-2-book-vi", "summary": "Father Zossima is propped in bed, surrounded by his friends and followers, when Alyosha returns to the monastery. The elder is weak but is still quite alert and eager to talk with his audience. He greets Alyosha affectionately and asks about Dmitri; he says that the bow made to him was an acknowledgment of the intense suffering he foresees for the boy. Alyosha, however, he says, has quite a different future, and again he counsels the young monk to return to the world to look after his brothers. In this way, he says, Alyosha will learn to love all of life, to bless life, and to teach those who suffer to love and bless life. These pleas to Alyosha are Father Zossima's last requests. Now he tells all assembled the reasons why Alyosha is so very special to him. Once, the elder says, he had an older brother who influenced him tremendously. Alyosha bears a particularly strong resemblance to that brother -- physically and spiritually. Then Zossima begins to reminisce. He was born to a noble family of only moderate means. His father died when he was only two years old, and he was reared with his mother and the brother he spoke of. The brother, eight years older than Zossima, came under the influence of a freethinker and was soon a source of sorrow to the mother. He ridiculed her religious observances and her devout beliefs. Then, at seventeen, he contracted consumption, and the family was advised that he had but a few months to live. During the months he waited for death, a tremendous spiritual conversion took place in the boy. He became extremely pious and spoke continuously about the need to love all of God's creatures, even the little birds in the garden. He asked the servants to feel that they were his equal and often said that he wished he could be a servant to the servants. Besides his brother, Zossima says that there has been another influence on him: the Bible. This book, he says, is a testament of the extent of God's love for all men. Zossima mourns for those who cannot find the vast love that he finds contained in the Bible. But Zossima's affection for the Bible has not been lifelong. As a youth, he was sent to a military academy in St. Petersburg and soon neglected both the Bible and his religious training. After graduation, he led the carefree life that a typical young officer might. He courted a beautiful lady whom, he was sure, returned his affections, but while he was absent she married someone else. Zossima was insulted and immediately challenged her husband to a duel. But, waking on the morning of the duel, he looked out, saw a fresh, clean beauty on all of God's world, and remembered his dying brother's exhortation: love all of God's creatures. He leaped from his bed, apologized to a servant whom he had beaten the night before, and made plans for his duel. He would allow his opponent to take the first shot; afterward, Zossima would drop his pistols and beg the man's forgiveness. This he did. But the officers accompanying Zossima were shocked by the strange behavior. They questioned him and were even more surprised at the explanation: he had, he said, decided to resign his military commission and enter a monastery. Zossima fast became the talk of the town. One night a mysterious stranger visited him and begged to hear the motives that prompted Zossima's actions. Zossima talked at length to the man and for many nights afterward. Then, after hearing the whole of Zossima's story, the man made a confession of his own: years ago he killed a woman out of passion, and someone else was blamed for the deed. The man in question, however, died before he was tried. Now the perpetrator of the deed has wife and children and has become one of the most respected philanthropists in the community. But, he moans to Zossima, he has never found happiness for himself. In spite of an apparently successful life, he has always needed to confess. This, in fact, he finally did, and in public, but no one believed him; they thought that he was temporarily deranged. Not long after his confession to Zossima, the man falls ill. The elder visits him and is thanked greatly for his guidance. Zossima, until now, has never revealed the man's secret. The elder pauses and begins to speak to Alyosha of what it has meant to be a monk. Zossima feels that the Russian monk is, of all persons, closest to the Russian folk and that ultimately the salvation of Russia will come through these common people who, he feels sure, will always remain orthodox in their beliefs. He also talks of the equality of all people and hopes that everyone can someday be truly meek and can accept a servant as an equal and, in turn, function as a servant to others. True equality, he says, is found only in the \"spiritual dignity of man.\" As an example, he tells of an old servant's giving him a sum of money for the monastery. This, the elder reveals, is the ideal reversal in action; a master-servant relationship exists no longer. Zossima admonishes his listeners to love all of God's creatures and to take on the responsibility of all men's sins. He explains that often God expects many things that we cannot understand with human logic. Man, for example, should not judge his fellow men -- even criminals -- says Zossima; man must pray for those who are outside the church, for there does not exist a material hell. There is only a spiritual hell, he says. He then collapses to the floor and reaches out as though to embrace the earth. Joyfully he gives up his soul to God.", "analysis": "Because of their positive quality, Dostoevsky inserts the final views of Father Zossima next to the questioning disbeliefs of Ivan Karamazov. They act somewhat like a counterbalance to the many ideas presented in Book V. Unlike Ivan, Zossima is didactic -- the most didactic character in the novel, perhaps in all of Dostoevsky's writings. His ideas are too abstract to be presented as Ivan's were; his ideas are too profound to be presented in any other way than by simple exhortation. Parts of Zossima's philosophy have, of course, been discussed in earlier books, but here almost all of his tenets are gathered together and presented either by examples from his own life or through exhortations and miniature sermons. In one sense, Zossima is an extension of earlier Dostoevskian characters, but, because of his personal history, he is much more than a mere abstraction of the author's ideas. Surprisingly, Father Zossima is a rather robust character, one who undergoes many diverse experiences before dedicating his life to the monastery. There are reasons for his convictions; he is no conventional saint. Concerning the amount of background material that Zossima gives, it is most important that we see him against such relief. If the elder's theories are to be accepted as valid, we cannot view him as an isolated or even as a repressed person who turns to religion in order to escape the world's rejection. Zossima was not an introvert; his youth was wild and reckless, filled with \"drunkenness, debauchery, and devilry.\" He was popular with his fellow officers and with people in general. His conversion and his subsequent religious dedication, therefore, are grounded in motivated reality. The account of the duel and Zossima's actions show him to be a person of physical courage as well as of moral courage. It is significant that the conversion was brought about by his remembering some of his dead brother's ideas about loving life and respecting all things in this world. From this time onward, these ideas become more and more central to Zossima's final philosophy of life. Concerning suffering, Zossima's explanation of why he bowed down to Dmitri has its roots deep in Dostoevskian philosophy. In Crime and Punishment, for example, the protagonist bows down before a prostitute because he sees in her \"the suffering of all humanity.\" Suffering, Dostoevsky felt, was the genesis of retribution. Only through great suffering can a man be purified of his sins, and it is this process that Zossima sees within Dmitri. In speaking of his love for the Bible, Zossima says that the book's basic lesson is this: one must realize the vast love that God has for mankind. At first, admittedly, such a realization is not easy. It is difficult to accept God giving his beloved Job to the devil for no other reason than to boast to his opponent. But the value of the parable, says Zossima, lies in the fact that it is a mystery \"that the passing earthly show and the eternal verity are brought together.\" This, of course, is diametrically opposed to what Ivan believes. He refuses to accept any idea that cannot be comprehended by earthly logic. But for Zossima, the greatness of God lies in the fact that man cannot comprehend God's ways and that some things of earth must remain a mystery. Only with such a mystery does man realize the full extent of God's glory. If man could comprehend all, then God would lose his sense of majesty. Again in contrast to Ivan , Zossima says that \"one who does not believe in God will not believe in God's people. He who believes in God's people will see His Holiness too, even though he had not believed in it till then.\" The elder insists on practicing active love for mankind; only through love will one come to believe in God. For the present, Ivan would disagree. He spends his time intellectualizing over abstruse problems; he has no time left for active love. With the appearance of the mysterious stranger, Zossima is put to his first test. It would have been easy to tell the stranger that he has suffered enough and that there is no need for him to ruin his life and his family's life by making an open confession. But Zossima is quietly persuasive in his efforts to get the stranger to recognize his errors. There is no attempt at coercion, but simply a quiet plea for him to perform that which his conscience tells him must be done. As Zossima confides his wisdom to Alyosha, the reader should be aware that the elder's views are essentially those by which Dostoevsky himself tried to live, or at least wished to live. Particularly, Dostoevsky was interested in these concepts: 1. The Russian monk and his possible significance. -- Zossima believes that the salvation of Russia would come from two sources -- the Russian monks and a vast, idealized section of the Russian population that he referred to as the Russian people, or the Russian folk. The monks, however, were even more important than the folk if the regeneration of Russia was to be accomplished. From the monks would come the energy and ideas of purity and love. The monk, Zossima believes, practices obedience, fasting, and prayer, believing that these three disciplines will accomplish for him the only true freedom: sacred freedom. Such freedom is forever denied the man who exists in contemporary society, the slave to mechanical and material frivolities; he will never attain the freedom needed for a pure understanding of life's meaning. He is too involved with life to be able to contemplate life. Only the monk, a man who has \"freed himself from the tyranny of material things and habits\" can conceive great ideas and serve them. In essence, this is the elder's answer to the question posed by the Grand Inquisitor and Ivan. Only in freedom can man conceive of ideas great enough to make life worth preserving. After the monk gives birth to example and philosophy, the renascence begins, and within the Russian folk a new Russia is nourished. The folk, of course, can never hope to completely emulate the life of the monk, but because of their living close to the soil and to basic matters of life, they can easily assimilate the wisdom of the Russian monk. Of course, Zossima realizes that the average peasant sins occasionally, but he also believes that the peasant realizes that he is wrong in his sinning. This realization will be his salvation, for man must first recognize righteousness as the supreme virtue; this the folk do. One must not despair of the peasant, Zossima counsels, for even in his sinfulness and in his ignorant ways, \"salvation will come from the people, from their faith and their meekness,\" an idea very often advocated by Dostoevsky. He uses, for example, Sonia in Crime and Punishment as such a type, the so-called passive redemptive character, and suggests that through the passive acceptance of faith and by extreme meekness, salvation will be achieved. The folk are Zossima's hope, for they believe basically as does the monk. The elder says that \"an unbelieving reformer will never do anything in Russia. Even if he is sincere in heart and a genius, the people will meet the atheist and overcome him.\" But if one considers the widespread atheism that followed the Communist revolution in Russia, Dostoevsky perhaps never wrote anything that proved to be so absolutely incorrect as this prophecy of Father Zossima. 2. Of masters and servants, and of whether it is possible for them to be brothers in spirit. -- Zossima advocates absolute equality for all men. True dignity does not come from the possession of great material wealth. Dignity, the elder says, is derived only from an inner sense of personal worth; it is able to respect another person without envying that person. When man attains such dignity, he creates a unity, a brotherhood in which a master may associate with a servant without losing either self-respect or dignity. This is Zossima's utopia, founded on \"the grand unity of man,\" preserved by men who long with all their heart to be the servants of all. 3. Of prayer, of love, and of contact with other worlds. -- Zossima admonished his adherents to pray for others, even those who have sinned. God, he says, will look favorably upon any sinner who stands before Him, proving that someone is offering up a prayer for that sinner. Again the elder re-emphasizes to those assembled his strong belief in the power of positive love. \"Love a man even in his sin, for that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth. Love all God's creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things.\" By loving, man gains new respect for everything in God's world. Thus \"we must love not occasionally, for a moment, but for ever.\" One of Zossima's principal ideas that particularly touches Alyosha is the elder's view of man's responsibility for another's sins. Zossima maintains that everyone must make himself \"responsible for all men's sins . . . for as soon as you sincerely make yourself responsible for everything and for all men, you will see at once that it is really so and that you are to blame for every one and for all things.\" If one carries this idea to its logical conclusion, we see that Alyosha must eventually take partial responsibility for the murder of his father. This he indeed does, finally realizing that man must become an active participant rather than a passive observer of life. Concerning man's limitation of understanding all that is holy, Zossima says that man is given a mystic sense of his loving bond with the other world. Like Ivan, the elder admits that man cannot understand the mysterious ways of God, but, for Zossima, the very existence of something so mysteriously unexplainable is proof that man owes love and allegiance to a higher power. Zossima takes Ivan's premises, therefore, for his proof of God's existence. \"On the final judgment,\" says the elder, \"man will not be asked to account for things which he cannot comprehend, but only for those things he understands.\" 4. Can a man judge his fellow creatures? -- Zossima believes that no one can judge a criminal. First, one must recognize that no man is only a criminal, and perhaps more than all other men, the seemingly innocent, and not the allegedly guilty, is most to blame for whatever crime has been committed. Alyosha uses such a theory when he refuses to judge Dmitri; furthermore, during his brother's trial, he forgives him. From a realistic point of view, Zossima's views on the criminal are too ideal. Zossima would allow a criminal to go free and hope that he would come to condemn his acts. Such idealism is touchingly naive. And with the same sort of idealism, Zossima advocates kissing the earth, \"love it with an unceasing, consuming love.\" Love of the mother earth, one might note, is central to many of Dostoevsky's novels. In Crime and Punishment, the murderer Raskolnikov is told to go and bow down to the earth, which he has defiled because of his crime. In the poem from Schiller that Dmitri often recites, there is a hymn of praise for the earthly existence. In total loving, then -- loving even the earth -- Zossima says that man can realize an ecstasy that is a \"gift of God,\" not given to many but certainly to the elect. The ideal of a spiritual elite is foreign to Ivan's thinking, but Zossima believes in such a minority and stresses that they should be proud of being elect; their examples will lead others to God's light. 5. Of hell and hell fire, a mystic reflection. -- Zossima's views on this subject do not conform with the orthodox views of the church. Later Ferapont will allude to this fact when he drives the devils from Zossima's cell. Zossima absolutely does not believe in a material hellfire, one that burns and punishes. To him, hell is spiritual agony, growing out of the inner conscience of the damned. If there were material punishment, he says, it would alleviate the spiritual punishment because of its intense physical pain. The greater punishment, the spiritual punishment, is the sinner's recognition that he is forever separated from God. Zossima strays even further from the teachings of the church by his prayers for the condemned. He prays for them because \"love can never be an offense to Christ.\""}

Book VI. The Russian Monk Chapter I. Father Zossima And His Visitors When with an anxious and aching heart Alyosha went into his elder's cell, he stood still almost astonished. Instead of a sick man at his last gasp, perhaps unconscious, as he had feared to find him, he saw him sitting up in his chair and, though weak and exhausted, his face was bright and cheerful, he was surrounded by visitors and engaged in a quiet and joyful conversation. But he had only got up from his bed a quarter of an hour before Alyosha's arrival; his visitors had gathered together in his cell earlier, waiting for him to wake, having received a most confident assurance from Father Paissy that "the teacher would get up, and as he had himself promised in the morning, converse once more with those dear to his heart." This promise and indeed every word of the dying elder Father Paissy put implicit trust in. If he had seen him unconscious, if he had seen him breathe his last, and yet had his promise that he would rise up and say good-by to him, he would not have believed perhaps even in death, but would still have expected the dead man to recover and fulfill his promise. In the morning as he lay down to sleep, Father Zossima had told him positively: "I shall not die without the delight of another conversation with you, beloved of my heart. I shall look once more on your dear face and pour out my heart to you once again." The monks, who had gathered for this probably last conversation with Father Zossima, had all been his devoted friends for many years. There were four of them: Father Iosif and Father Paissy, Father Mihail, the warden of the hermitage, a man not very old and far from being learned. He was of humble origin, of strong will and steadfast faith, of austere appearance, but of deep tenderness, though he obviously concealed it as though he were almost ashamed of it. The fourth, Father Anfim, was a very old and humble little monk of the poorest peasant class. He was almost illiterate, and very quiet, scarcely speaking to any one. He was the humblest of the humble, and looked as though he had been frightened by something great and awful beyond the scope of his intelligence. Father Zossima had a great affection for this timorous man, and always treated him with marked respect, though perhaps there was no one he had known to whom he had said less, in spite of the fact that he had spent years wandering about holy Russia with him. That was very long ago, forty years before, when Father Zossima first began his life as a monk in a poor and little monastery at Kostroma, and when, shortly after, he had accompanied Father Anfim on his pilgrimage to collect alms for their poor monastery. The whole party were in the bedroom which, as we mentioned before, was very small, so that there was scarcely room for the four of them (in addition to Porfiry, the novice, who stood) to sit round Father Zossima on chairs brought from the sitting-room. It was already beginning to get dark, the room was lighted up by the lamps and the candles before the ikons. Seeing Alyosha standing embarrassed in the doorway, Father Zossima smiled at him joyfully and held out his hand. "Welcome, my quiet one, welcome, my dear, here you are too. I knew you would come." Alyosha went up to him, bowed down before him to the ground and wept. Something surged up from his heart, his soul was quivering, he wanted to sob. "Come, don't weep over me yet," Father Zossima smiled, laying his right hand on his head. "You see I am sitting up talking; maybe I shall live another twenty years yet, as that dear good woman from Vishegorye, with her little Lizaveta in her arms, wished me yesterday. God bless the mother and the little girl Lizaveta," he crossed himself. "Porfiry, did you take her offering where I told you?" He meant the sixty copecks brought him the day before by the good-humored woman to be given "to some one poorer than me." Such offerings, always of money gained by personal toil, are made by way of penance voluntarily undertaken. The elder had sent Porfiry the evening before to a widow, whose house had been burnt down lately, and who after the fire had gone with her children begging alms. Porfiry hastened to reply that he had given the money, as he had been instructed, "from an unknown benefactress." "Get up, my dear boy," the elder went on to Alyosha. "Let me look at you. Have you been home and seen your brother?" It seemed strange to Alyosha that he asked so confidently and precisely, about one of his brothers only--but which one? Then perhaps he had sent him out both yesterday and to-day for the sake of that brother. "I have seen one of my brothers," answered Alyosha. "I mean the elder one, to whom I bowed down." "I only saw him yesterday and could not find him to-day," said Alyosha. "Make haste to find him, go again to-morrow and make haste, leave everything and make haste. Perhaps you may still have time to prevent something terrible. I bowed down yesterday to the great suffering in store for him." He was suddenly silent and seemed to be pondering. The words were strange. Father Iosif, who had witnessed the scene yesterday, exchanged glances with Father Paissy. Alyosha could not resist asking: "Father and teacher," he began with extreme emotion, "your words are too obscure.... What is this suffering in store for him?" "Don't inquire. I seemed to see something terrible yesterday ... as though his whole future were expressed in his eyes. A look came into his eyes--so that I was instantly horror-stricken at what that man is preparing for himself. Once or twice in my life I've seen such a look in a man's face ... reflecting as it were his future fate, and that fate, alas, came to pass. I sent you to him, Alexey, for I thought your brotherly face would help him. But everything and all our fates are from the Lord. 'Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.' Remember that. You, Alexey, I've many times silently blessed for your face, know that," added the elder with a gentle smile. "This is what I think of you, you will go forth from these walls, but will live like a monk in the world. You will have many enemies, but even your foes will love you. Life will bring you many misfortunes, but you will find your happiness in them, and will bless life and will make others bless it--which is what matters most. Well, that is your character. Fathers and teachers," he addressed his friends with a tender smile, "I have never till to-day told even him why the face of this youth is so dear to me. Now I will tell you. His face has been as it were a remembrance and a prophecy for me. At the dawn of my life when I was a child I had an elder brother who died before my eyes at seventeen. And later on in the course of my life I gradually became convinced that that brother had been for a guidance and a sign from on high for me. For had he not come into my life, I should never perhaps, so I fancy at least, have become a monk and entered on this precious path. He appeared first to me in my childhood, and here, at the end of my pilgrimage, he seems to have come to me over again. It is marvelous, fathers and teachers, that Alexey, who has some, though not a great, resemblance in face, seems to me so like him spiritually, that many times I have taken him for that young man, my brother, mysteriously come back to me at the end of my pilgrimage, as a reminder and an inspiration. So that I positively wondered at so strange a dream in myself. Do you hear this, Porfiry?" he turned to the novice who waited on him. "Many times I've seen in your face as it were a look of mortification that I love Alexey more than you. Now you know why that was so, but I love you too, know that, and many times I grieved at your mortification. I should like to tell you, dear friends, of that youth, my brother, for there has been no presence in my life more precious, more significant and touching. My heart is full of tenderness, and I look at my whole life at this moment as though living through it again." ------------------------------------- Here I must observe that this last conversation of Father Zossima with the friends who visited him on the last day of his life has been partly preserved in writing. Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov wrote it down from memory, some time after his elder's death. But whether this was only the conversation that took place then, or whether he added to it his notes of parts of former conversations with his teacher, I cannot determine. In his account, Father Zossima's talk goes on without interruption, as though he told his life to his friends in the form of a story, though there is no doubt, from other accounts of it, that the conversation that evening was general. Though the guests did not interrupt Father Zossima much, yet they too talked, perhaps even told something themselves. Besides, Father Zossima could not have carried on an uninterrupted narrative, for he was sometimes gasping for breath, his voice failed him, and he even lay down to rest on his bed, though he did not fall asleep and his visitors did not leave their seats. Once or twice the conversation was interrupted by Father Paissy's reading the Gospel. It is worthy of note, too, that no one of them supposed that he would die that night, for on that evening of his life after his deep sleep in the day he seemed suddenly to have found new strength, which kept him up through this long conversation. It was like a last effort of love which gave him marvelous energy; only for a little time, however, for his life was cut short immediately.... But of that later. I will only add now that I have preferred to confine myself to the account given by Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov. It will be shorter and not so fatiguing, though of course, as I must repeat, Alyosha took a great deal from previous conversations and added them to it. ------------------------------------- Notes of the Life of the deceased Priest and Monk, the Elder Zossima, taken from his own words by Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov. BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES _(a)_ _Father Zossima's Brother_ Beloved fathers and teachers, I was born in a distant province in the north, in the town of V. My father was a gentleman by birth, but of no great consequence or position. He died when I was only two years old, and I don't remember him at all. He left my mother a small house built of wood, and a fortune, not large, but sufficient to keep her and her children in comfort. There were two of us, my elder brother Markel and I. He was eight years older than I was, of hasty irritable temperament, but kind-hearted and never ironical. He was remarkably silent, especially at home with me, his mother, and the servants. He did well at school, but did not get on with his schoolfellows, though he never quarreled, at least so my mother has told me. Six months before his death, when he was seventeen, he made friends with a political exile who had been banished from Moscow to our town for freethinking, and led a solitary existence there. He was a good scholar who had gained distinction in philosophy in the university. Something made him take a fancy to Markel, and he used to ask him to see him. The young man would spend whole evenings with him during that winter, till the exile was summoned to Petersburg to take up his post again at his own request, as he had powerful friends. It was the beginning of Lent, and Markel would not fast, he was rude and laughed at it. "That's all silly twaddle, and there is no God," he said, horrifying my mother, the servants, and me too. For though I was only nine, I too was aghast at hearing such words. We had four servants, all serfs. I remember my mother selling one of the four, the cook Afimya, who was lame and elderly, for sixty paper roubles, and hiring a free servant to take her place. In the sixth week in Lent, my brother, who was never strong and had a tendency to consumption, was taken ill. He was tall but thin and delicate- looking, and of very pleasing countenance. I suppose he caught cold, anyway the doctor, who came, soon whispered to my mother that it was galloping consumption, that he would not live through the spring. My mother began weeping, and, careful not to alarm my brother, she entreated him to go to church, to confess and take the sacrament, as he was still able to move about. This made him angry, and he said something profane about the church. He grew thoughtful, however; he guessed at once that he was seriously ill, and that that was why his mother was begging him to confess and take the sacrament. He had been aware, indeed, for a long time past, that he was far from well, and had a year before coolly observed at dinner to our mother and me, "My life won't be long among you, I may not live another year," which seemed now like a prophecy. Three days passed and Holy Week had come. And on Tuesday morning my brother began going to church. "I am doing this simply for your sake, mother, to please and comfort you," he said. My mother wept with joy and grief. "His end must be near," she thought, "if there's such a change in him." But he was not able to go to church long, he took to his bed, so he had to confess and take the sacrament at home. It was a late Easter, and the days were bright, fine, and full of fragrance. I remember he used to cough all night and sleep badly, but in the morning he dressed and tried to sit up in an arm-chair. That's how I remember him sitting, sweet and gentle, smiling, his face bright and joyous, in spite of his illness. A marvelous change passed over him, his spirit seemed transformed. The old nurse would come in and say, "Let me light the lamp before the holy image, my dear." And once he would not have allowed it and would have blown it out. "Light it, light it, dear, I was a wretch to have prevented you doing it. You are praying when you light the lamp, and I am praying when I rejoice seeing you. So we are praying to the same God." Those words seemed strange to us, and mother would go to her room and weep, but when she went in to him she wiped her eyes and looked cheerful. "Mother, don't weep, darling," he would say, "I've long to live yet, long to rejoice with you, and life is glad and joyful." "Ah, dear boy, how can you talk of joy when you lie feverish at night, coughing as though you would tear yourself to pieces." "Don't cry, mother," he would answer, "life is paradise, and we are all in paradise, but we won't see it, if we would, we should have heaven on earth the next day." Every one wondered at his words, he spoke so strangely and positively; we were all touched and wept. Friends came to see us. "Dear ones," he would say to them, "what have I done that you should love me so, how can you love any one like me, and how was it I did not know, I did not appreciate it before?" When the servants came in to him he would say continually, "Dear, kind people, why are you doing so much for me, do I deserve to be waited on? If it were God's will for me to live, I would wait on you, for all men should wait on one another." Mother shook her head as she listened. "My darling, it's your illness makes you talk like that." "Mother, darling," he would say, "there must be servants and masters, but if so I will be the servant of my servants, the same as they are to me. And another thing, mother, every one of us has sinned against all men, and I more than any." Mother positively smiled at that, smiled through her tears. "Why, how could you have sinned against all men, more than all? Robbers and murderers have done that, but what sin have you committed yet, that you hold yourself more guilty than all?" "Mother, little heart of mine," he said (he had begun using such strange caressing words at that time), "little heart of mine, my joy, believe me, every one is really responsible to all men for all men and for everything. I don't know how to explain it to you, but I feel it is so, painfully even. And how is it we went on then living, getting angry and not knowing?" So he would get up every day, more and more sweet and joyous and full of love. When the doctor, an old German called Eisenschmidt, came: "Well, doctor, have I another day in this world?" he would ask, joking. "You'll live many days yet," the doctor would answer, "and months and years too." "Months and years!" he would exclaim. "Why reckon the days? One day is enough for a man to know all happiness. My dear ones, why do we quarrel, try to outshine each other and keep grudges against each other? Let's go straight into the garden, walk and play there, love, appreciate, and kiss each other, and glorify life." "Your son cannot last long," the doctor told my mother, as she accompanied him to the door. "The disease is affecting his brain." The windows of his room looked out into the garden, and our garden was a shady one, with old trees in it which were coming into bud. The first birds of spring were flitting in the branches, chirruping and singing at the windows. And looking at them and admiring them, he began suddenly begging their forgiveness too: "Birds of heaven, happy birds, forgive me, for I have sinned against you too." None of us could understand that at the time, but he shed tears of joy. "Yes," he said, "there was such a glory of God all about me: birds, trees, meadows, sky; only I lived in shame and dishonored it all and did not notice the beauty and glory." "You take too many sins on yourself," mother used to say, weeping. "Mother, darling, it's for joy, not for grief I am crying. Though I can't explain it to you, I like to humble myself before them, for I don't know how to love them enough. If I have sinned against every one, yet all forgive me, too, and that's heaven. Am I not in heaven now?" And there was a great deal more I don't remember. I remember I went once into his room when there was no one else there. It was a bright evening, the sun was setting, and the whole room was lighted up. He beckoned me, and I went up to him. He put his hands on my shoulders and looked into my face tenderly, lovingly; he said nothing for a minute, only looked at me like that. "Well," he said, "run and play now, enjoy life for me too." I went out then and ran to play. And many times in my life afterwards I remembered even with tears how he told me to enjoy life for him too. There were many other marvelous and beautiful sayings of his, though we did not understand them at the time. He died the third week after Easter. He was fully conscious though he could not talk; up to his last hour he did not change. He looked happy, his eyes beamed and sought us, he smiled at us, beckoned us. There was a great deal of talk even in the town about his death. I was impressed by all this at the time, but not too much so, though I cried a good deal at his funeral. I was young then, a child, but a lasting impression, a hidden feeling of it all, remained in my heart, ready to rise up and respond when the time came. So indeed it happened. _(b) Of the Holy Scriptures in the Life of Father Zossima_ I was left alone with my mother. Her friends began advising her to send me to Petersburg as other parents did. "You have only one son now," they said, "and have a fair income, and you will be depriving him perhaps of a brilliant career if you keep him here." They suggested I should be sent to Petersburg to the Cadet Corps, that I might afterwards enter the Imperial Guard. My mother hesitated for a long time, it was awful to part with her only child, but she made up her mind to it at last, though not without many tears, believing she was acting for my happiness. She brought me to Petersburg and put me into the Cadet Corps, and I never saw her again. For she too died three years afterwards. She spent those three years mourning and grieving for both of us. From the house of my childhood I have brought nothing but precious memories, for there are no memories more precious than those of early childhood in one's first home. And that is almost always so if there is any love and harmony in the family at all. Indeed, precious memories may remain even of a bad home, if only the heart knows how to find what is precious. With my memories of home I count, too, my memories of the Bible, which, child as I was, I was very eager to read at home. I had a book of Scripture history then with excellent pictures, called _A Hundred and Four Stories from the Old and New Testament_, and I learned to read from it. I have it lying on my shelf now, I keep it as a precious relic of the past. But even before I learned to read, I remember first being moved to devotional feeling at eight years old. My mother took me alone to mass (I don't remember where my brother was at the time) on the Monday before Easter. It was a fine day, and I remember to-day, as though I saw it now, how the incense rose from the censer and softly floated upwards and, overhead in the cupola, mingled in rising waves with the sunlight that streamed in at the little window. I was stirred by the sight, and for the first time in my life I consciously received the seed of God's word in my heart. A youth came out into the middle of the church carrying a big book, so large that at the time I fancied he could scarcely carry it. He laid it on the reading desk, opened it, and began reading, and suddenly for the first time I understood something read in the church of God. In the land of Uz, there lived a man, righteous and God-fearing, and he had great wealth, so many camels, so many sheep and asses, and his children feasted, and he loved them very much and prayed for them. "It may be that my sons have sinned in their feasting." Now the devil came before the Lord together with the sons of God, and said to the Lord that he had gone up and down the earth and under the earth. "And hast thou considered my servant Job?" God asked of him. And God boasted to the devil, pointing to his great and holy servant. And the devil laughed at God's words. "Give him over to me and Thou wilt see that Thy servant will murmur against Thee and curse Thy name." And God gave up the just man He loved so, to the devil. And the devil smote his children and his cattle and scattered his wealth, all of a sudden like a thunderbolt from heaven. And Job rent his mantle and fell down upon the ground and cried aloud, "Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return into the earth; the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord for ever and ever." Fathers and teachers, forgive my tears now, for all my childhood rises up again before me, and I breathe now as I breathed then, with the breast of a little child of eight, and I feel as I did then, awe and wonder and gladness. The camels at that time caught my imagination, and Satan, who talked like that with God, and God who gave His servant up to destruction, and His servant crying out: "Blessed be Thy name although Thou dost punish me," and then the soft and sweet singing in the church: "Let my prayer rise up before Thee," and again incense from the priest's censer and the kneeling and the prayer. Ever since then--only yesterday I took it up--I've never been able to read that sacred tale without tears. And how much that is great, mysterious and unfathomable there is in it! Afterwards I heard the words of mockery and blame, proud words, "How could God give up the most loved of His saints for the diversion of the devil, take from him his children, smite him with sore boils so that he cleansed the corruption from his sores with a pot-sherd--and for no object except to boast to the devil! 'See what My saint can suffer for My sake.' " But the greatness of it lies just in the fact that it is a mystery--that the passing earthly show and the eternal verity are brought together in it. In the face of the earthly truth, the eternal truth is accomplished. The Creator, just as on the first days of creation He ended each day with praise: "That is good that I have created," looks upon Job and again praises His creation. And Job, praising the Lord, serves not only Him but all His creation for generations and generations, and for ever and ever, since for that he was ordained. Good heavens, what a book it is, and what lessons there are in it! What a book the Bible is, what a miracle, what strength is given with it to man! It is like a mold cast of the world and man and human nature, everything is there, and a law for everything for all the ages. And what mysteries are solved and revealed! God raises Job again, gives him wealth again. Many years pass by, and he has other children and loves them. But how could he love those new ones when those first children are no more, when he has lost them? Remembering them, how could he be fully happy with those new ones, however dear the new ones might be? But he could, he could. It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet, tender joy. The mild serenity of age takes the place of the riotous blood of youth. I bless the rising sun each day, and, as before, my hearts sings to meet it, but now I love even more its setting, its long slanting rays and the soft, tender, gentle memories that come with them, the dear images from the whole of my long, happy life--and over all the Divine Truth, softening, reconciling, forgiving! My life is ending, I know that well, but every day that is left me I feel how my earthly life is in touch with a new infinite, unknown, that approaching life, the nearness of which sets my soul quivering with rapture, my mind glowing and my heart weeping with joy. Friends and teachers, I have heard more than once, and of late one may hear it more often, that the priests, and above all the village priests, are complaining on all sides of their miserable income and their humiliating lot. They plainly state, even in print--I've read it myself--that they are unable to teach the Scriptures to the people because of the smallness of their means, and if Lutherans and heretics come and lead the flock astray, they let them lead them astray because they have so little to live upon. May the Lord increase the sustenance that is so precious to them, for their complaint is just, too. But of a truth I say, if any one is to blame in the matter, half the fault is ours. For he may be short of time, he may say truly that he is overwhelmed all the while with work and services, but still it's not all the time, even he has an hour a week to remember God. And he does not work the whole year round. Let him gather round him once a week, some hour in the evening, if only the children at first--the fathers will hear of it and they too will begin to come. There's no need to build halls for this, let him take them into his own cottage. They won't spoil his cottage, they would only be there one hour. Let him open that book and begin reading it without grand words or superciliousness, without condescension to them, but gently and kindly, being glad that he is reading to them and that they are listening with attention, loving the words himself, only stopping from time to time to explain words that are not understood by the peasants. Don't be anxious, they will understand everything, the orthodox heart will understand all! Let him read them about Abraham and Sarah, about Isaac and Rebecca, of how Jacob went to Laban and wrestled with the Lord in his dream and said, "This place is holy"--and he will impress the devout mind of the peasant. Let him read, especially to the children, how the brothers sold Joseph, the tender boy, the dreamer and prophet, into bondage, and told their father that a wild beast had devoured him, and showed him his blood- stained clothes. Let him read them how the brothers afterwards journeyed into Egypt for corn, and Joseph, already a great ruler, unrecognized by them, tormented them, accused them, kept his brother Benjamin, and all through love: "I love you, and loving you I torment you." For he remembered all his life how they had sold him to the merchants in the burning desert by the well, and how, wringing his hands, he had wept and besought his brothers not to sell him as a slave in a strange land. And how, seeing them again after many years, he loved them beyond measure, but he harassed and tormented them in love. He left them at last not able to bear the suffering of his heart, flung himself on his bed and wept. Then, wiping his tears away, he went out to them joyful and told them, "Brothers, I am your brother Joseph!" Let him read them further how happy old Jacob was on learning that his darling boy was still alive, and how he went to Egypt leaving his own country, and died in a foreign land, bequeathing his great prophecy that had lain mysteriously hidden in his meek and timid heart all his life, that from his offspring, from Judah, will come the great hope of the world, the Messiah and Saviour. Fathers and teachers, forgive me and don't be angry, that like a little child I've been babbling of what you know long ago, and can teach me a hundred times more skillfully. I only speak from rapture, and forgive my tears, for I love the Bible. Let him too weep, the priest of God, and be sure that the hearts of his listeners will throb in response. Only a little tiny seed is needed--drop it into the heart of the peasant and it won't die, it will live in his soul all his life, it will be hidden in the midst of his darkness and sin, like a bright spot, like a great reminder. And there's no need of much teaching or explanation, he will understand it all simply. Do you suppose that the peasants don't understand? Try reading them the touching story of the fair Esther and the haughty Vashti; or the miraculous story of Jonah in the whale. Don't forget either the parables of Our Lord, choose especially from the Gospel of St. Luke (that is what I did), and then from the Acts of the Apostles the conversion of St. Paul (that you mustn't leave out on any account), and from the _Lives of the Saints_, for instance, the life of Alexey, the man of God and, greatest of all, the happy martyr and the seer of God, Mary of Egypt--and you will penetrate their hearts with these simple tales. Give one hour a week to it in spite of your poverty, only one little hour. And you will see for yourselves that our people is gracious and grateful, and will repay you a hundred-fold. Mindful of the kindness of their priest and the moving words they have heard from him, they will of their own accord help him in his fields and in his house, and will treat him with more respect than before--so that it will even increase his worldly well-being too. The thing is so simple that sometimes one is even afraid to put it into words, for fear of being laughed at, and yet how true it is! One who does not believe in God will not believe in God's people. He who believes in God's people will see His Holiness too, even though he had not believed in it till then. Only the people and their future spiritual power will convert our atheists, who have torn themselves away from their native soil. And what is the use of Christ's words, unless we set an example? The people is lost without the Word of God, for its soul is athirst for the Word and for all that is good. In my youth, long ago, nearly forty years ago, I traveled all over Russia with Father Anfim, collecting funds for our monastery, and we stayed one night on the bank of a great navigable river with some fishermen. A good- looking peasant lad, about eighteen, joined us; he had to hurry back next morning to pull a merchant's barge along the bank. I noticed him looking straight before him with clear and tender eyes. It was a bright, warm, still, July night, a cool mist rose from the broad river, we could hear the plash of a fish, the birds were still, all was hushed and beautiful, everything praying to God. Only we two were not sleeping, the lad and I, and we talked of the beauty of this world of God's and of the great mystery of it. Every blade of grass, every insect, ant, and golden bee, all so marvelously know their path, though they have not intelligence, they bear witness to the mystery of God and continually accomplish it themselves. I saw the dear lad's heart was moved. He told me that he loved the forest and the forest birds. He was a bird-catcher, knew the note of each of them, could call each bird. "I know nothing better than to be in the forest," said he, "though all things are good." "Truly," I answered him, "all things are good and fair, because all is truth. Look," said I, "at the horse, that great beast that is so near to man; or the lowly, pensive ox, which feeds him and works for him; look at their faces, what meekness, what devotion to man, who often beats them mercilessly. What gentleness, what confidence and what beauty! It's touching to know that there's no sin in them, for all, all except man, is sinless, and Christ has been with them before us." "Why," asked the boy, "is Christ with them too?" "It cannot but be so," said I, "since the Word is for all. All creation and all creatures, every leaf is striving to the Word, singing glory to God, weeping to Christ, unconsciously accomplishing this by the mystery of their sinless life. Yonder," said I, "in the forest wanders the dreadful bear, fierce and menacing, and yet innocent in it." And I told him how once a bear came to a great saint who had taken refuge in a tiny cell in the wood. And the great saint pitied him, went up to him without fear and gave him a piece of bread. "Go along," said he, "Christ be with you," and the savage beast walked away meekly and obediently, doing no harm. And the lad was delighted that the bear had walked away without hurting the saint, and that Christ was with him too. "Ah," said he, "how good that is, how good and beautiful is all God's work!" He sat musing softly and sweetly. I saw he understood. And he slept beside me a light and sinless sleep. May God bless youth! And I prayed for him as I went to sleep. Lord, send peace and light to Thy people! Chapter II. The Duel _(c) Recollections of Father Zossima's Youth before he became a Monk. The Duel_ I spent a long time, almost eight years, in the military cadet school at Petersburg, and in the novelty of my surroundings there, many of my childish impressions grew dimmer, though I forgot nothing. I picked up so many new habits and opinions that I was transformed into a cruel, absurd, almost savage creature. A surface polish of courtesy and society manners I did acquire together with the French language. But we all, myself included, looked upon the soldiers in our service as cattle. I was perhaps worse than the rest in that respect, for I was so much more impressionable than my companions. By the time we left the school as officers, we were ready to lay down our lives for the honor of the regiment, but no one of us had any knowledge of the real meaning of honor, and if any one had known it, he would have been the first to ridicule it. Drunkenness, debauchery and devilry were what we almost prided ourselves on. I don't say that we were bad by nature, all these young men were good fellows, but they behaved badly, and I worst of all. What made it worse for me was that I had come into my own money, and so I flung myself into a life of pleasure, and plunged headlong into all the recklessness of youth. I was fond of reading, yet strange to say, the Bible was the one book I never opened at that time, though I always carried it about with me, and I was never separated from it; in very truth I was keeping that book "for the day and the hour, for the month and the year," though I knew it not. After four years of this life, I chanced to be in the town of K. where our regiment was stationed at the time. We found the people of the town hospitable, rich and fond of entertainments. I met with a cordial reception everywhere, as I was of a lively temperament and was known to be well off, which always goes a long way in the world. And then a circumstance happened which was the beginning of it all. I formed an attachment to a beautiful and intelligent young girl of noble and lofty character, the daughter of people much respected. They were well-to-do people of influence and position. They always gave me a cordial and friendly reception. I fancied that the young lady looked on me with favor and my heart was aflame at such an idea. Later on I saw and fully realized that I perhaps was not so passionately in love with her at all, but only recognized the elevation of her mind and character, which I could not indeed have helped doing. I was prevented, however, from making her an offer at the time by my selfishness, I was loath to part with the allurements of my free and licentious bachelor life in the heyday of my youth, and with my pockets full of money. I did drop some hint as to my feelings however, though I put off taking any decisive step for a time. Then, all of a sudden, we were ordered off for two months to another district. On my return two months later, I found the young lady already married to a rich neighboring landowner, a very amiable man, still young though older than I was, connected with the best Petersburg society, which I was not, and of excellent education, which I also was not. I was so overwhelmed at this unexpected circumstance that my mind was positively clouded. The worst of it all was that, as I learned then, the young landowner had been a long while betrothed to her, and I had met him indeed many times in her house, but blinded by my conceit I had noticed nothing. And this particularly mortified me; almost everybody had known all about it, while I knew nothing. I was filled with sudden irrepressible fury. With flushed face I began recalling how often I had been on the point of declaring my love to her, and as she had not attempted to stop me or to warn me, she must, I concluded, have been laughing at me all the time. Later on, of course, I reflected and remembered that she had been very far from laughing at me; on the contrary, she used to turn off any love-making on my part with a jest and begin talking of other subjects; but at that moment I was incapable of reflecting and was all eagerness for revenge. I am surprised to remember that my wrath and revengeful feelings were extremely repugnant to my own nature, for being of an easy temper, I found it difficult to be angry with any one for long, and so I had to work myself up artificially and became at last revolting and absurd. I waited for an opportunity and succeeded in insulting my "rival" in the presence of a large company. I insulted him on a perfectly extraneous pretext, jeering at his opinion upon an important public event--it was in the year 1826(5)--and my jeer was, so people said, clever and effective. Then I forced him to ask for an explanation, and behaved so rudely that he accepted my challenge in spite of the vast inequality between us, as I was younger, a person of no consequence, and of inferior rank. I learned afterwards for a fact that it was from a jealous feeling on his side also that my challenge was accepted; he had been rather jealous of me on his wife's account before their marriage; he fancied now that if he submitted to be insulted by me and refused to accept my challenge, and if she heard of it, she might begin to despise him and waver in her love for him. I soon found a second in a comrade, an ensign of our regiment. In those days though duels were severely punished, yet dueling was a kind of fashion among the officers--so strong and deeply rooted will a brutal prejudice sometimes be. It was the end of June, and our meeting was to take place at seven o'clock the next day on the outskirts of the town--and then something happened that in very truth was the turning-point of my life. In the evening, returning home in a savage and brutal humor, I flew into a rage with my orderly Afanasy, and gave him two blows in the face with all my might, so that it was covered with blood. He had not long been in my service and I had struck him before, but never with such ferocious cruelty. And, believe me, though it's forty years ago, I recall it now with shame and pain. I went to bed and slept for about three hours; when I waked up the day was breaking. I got up--I did not want to sleep any more--I went to the window--opened it, it looked out upon the garden; I saw the sun rising; it was warm and beautiful, the birds were singing. "What's the meaning of it?" I thought. "I feel in my heart as it were something vile and shameful. Is it because I am going to shed blood? No," I thought, "I feel it's not that. Can it be that I am afraid of death, afraid of being killed? No, that's not it, that's not it at all."... And all at once I knew what it was: it was because I had beaten Afanasy the evening before! It all rose before my mind, it all was as it were repeated over again; he stood before me and I was beating him straight on the face and he was holding his arms stiffly down, his head erect, his eyes fixed upon me as though on parade. He staggered at every blow and did not even dare to raise his hands to protect himself. That is what a man has been brought to, and that was a man beating a fellow creature! What a crime! It was as though a sharp dagger had pierced me right through. I stood as if I were struck dumb, while the sun was shining, the leaves were rejoicing and the birds were trilling the praise of God.... I hid my face in my hands, fell on my bed and broke into a storm of tears. And then I remembered my brother Markel and what he said on his death-bed to his servants: "My dear ones, why do you wait on me, why do you love me, am I worth your waiting on me?" "Yes, am I worth it?" flashed through my mind. "After all what am I worth, that another man, a fellow creature, made in the likeness and image of God, should serve me?" For the first time in my life this question forced itself upon me. He had said, "Mother, my little heart, in truth we are each responsible to all for all, it's only that men don't know this. If they knew it, the world would be a paradise at once." "God, can that too be false?" I thought as I wept. "In truth, perhaps, I am more than all others responsible for all, a greater sinner than all men in the world." And all at once the whole truth in its full light appeared to me; what was I going to do? I was going to kill a good, clever, noble man, who had done me no wrong, and by depriving his wife of happiness for the rest of her life, I should be torturing and killing her too. I lay thus in my bed with my face in the pillow, heedless how the time was passing. Suddenly my second, the ensign, came in with the pistols to fetch me. "Ah," said he, "it's a good thing you are up already, it's time we were off, come along!" I did not know what to do and hurried to and fro undecided; we went out to the carriage, however. "Wait here a minute," I said to him. "I'll be back directly, I have forgotten my purse." And I ran back alone, to Afanasy's little room. "Afanasy," I said, "I gave you two blows on the face yesterday, forgive me," I said. He started as though he were frightened, and looked at me; and I saw that it was not enough, and on the spot, in my full officer's uniform, I dropped at his feet and bowed my head to the ground. "Forgive me," I said. Then he was completely aghast. "Your honor ... sir, what are you doing? Am I worth it?" And he burst out crying as I had done before, hid this face in his hands, turned to the window and shook all over with his sobs. I flew out to my comrade and jumped into the carriage. "Ready," I cried. "Have you ever seen a conqueror?" I asked him. "Here is one before you." I was in ecstasy, laughing and talking all the way, I don't remember what about. He looked at me. "Well, brother, you are a plucky fellow, you'll keep up the honor of the uniform, I can see." So we reached the place and found them there, waiting us. We were placed twelve paces apart; he had the first shot. I stood gayly, looking him full in the face; I did not twitch an eyelash, I looked lovingly at him, for I knew what I would do. His shot just grazed my cheek and ear. "Thank God," I cried, "no man has been killed," and I seized my pistol, turned back and flung it far away into the wood. "That's the place for you," I cried. I turned to my adversary. "Forgive me, young fool that I am, sir," I said, "for my unprovoked insult to you and for forcing you to fire at me. I am ten times worse than you and more, maybe. Tell that to the person whom you hold dearest in the world." I had no sooner said this than they all three shouted at me. "Upon my word," cried my adversary, annoyed, "if you did not want to fight, why did not you let me alone?" "Yesterday I was a fool, to-day I know better," I answered him gayly. "As to yesterday, I believe you, but as for to-day, it is difficult to agree with your opinion," said he. "Bravo," I cried, clapping my hands. "I agree with you there too. I have deserved it!" "Will you shoot, sir, or not?" "No, I won't," I said; "if you like, fire at me again, but it would be better for you not to fire." The seconds, especially mine, were shouting too: "Can you disgrace the regiment like this, facing your antagonist and begging his forgiveness! If I'd only known this!" I stood facing them all, not laughing now. "Gentlemen," I said, "is it really so wonderful in these days to find a man who can repent of his stupidity and publicly confess his wrongdoing?" "But not in a duel," cried my second again. "That's what's so strange," I said. "For I ought to have owned my fault as soon as I got here, before he had fired a shot, before leading him into a great and deadly sin; but we have made our life so grotesque, that to act in that way would have been almost impossible, for only after I have faced his shot at the distance of twelve paces could my words have any significance for him, and if I had spoken before, he would have said, 'He is a coward, the sight of the pistols has frightened him, no use to listen to him.' Gentlemen," I cried suddenly, speaking straight from my heart, "look around you at the gifts of God, the clear sky, the pure air, the tender grass, the birds; nature is beautiful and sinless, and we, only we, are sinful and foolish, and we don't understand that life is heaven, for we have only to understand that and it will at once be fulfilled in all its beauty, we shall embrace each other and weep." I would have said more but I could not; my voice broke with the sweetness and youthful gladness of it, and there was such bliss in my heart as I had never known before in my life. "All this as rational and edifying," said my antagonist, "and in any case you are an original person." "You may laugh," I said to him, laughing too, "but afterwards you will approve of me." "Oh, I am ready to approve of you now," said he; "will you shake hands? for I believe you are genuinely sincere." "No," I said, "not now, later on when I have grown worthier and deserve your esteem, then shake hands and you will do well." We went home, my second upbraiding me all the way, while I kissed him. All my comrades heard of the affair at once and gathered together to pass judgment on me the same day. "He has disgraced the uniform," they said; "let him resign his commission." Some stood up for me: "He faced the shot," they said. "Yes, but he was afraid of his other shot and begged for forgiveness." "If he had been afraid of being shot, he would have shot his own pistol first before asking forgiveness, while he flung it loaded into the forest. No, there's something else in this, something original." I enjoyed listening and looking at them. "My dear friends and comrades," said I, "don't worry about my resigning my commission, for I have done so already. I have sent in my papers this morning and as soon as I get my discharge I shall go into a monastery--it's with that object I am leaving the regiment." When I had said this every one of them burst out laughing. "You should have told us of that first, that explains everything, we can't judge a monk." They laughed and could not stop themselves, and not scornfully, but kindly and merrily. They all felt friendly to me at once, even those who had been sternest in their censure, and all the following month, before my discharge came, they could not make enough of me. "Ah, you monk," they would say. And every one said something kind to me, they began trying to dissuade me, even to pity me: "What are you doing to yourself?" "No," they would say, "he is a brave fellow, he faced fire and could have fired his own pistol too, but he had a dream the night before that he should become a monk, that's why he did it." It was the same thing with the society of the town. Till then I had been kindly received, but had not been the object of special attention, and now all came to know me at once and invited me; they laughed at me, but they loved me. I may mention that although everybody talked openly of our duel, the authorities took no notice of it, because my antagonist was a near relation of our general, and as there had been no bloodshed and no serious consequences, and as I resigned my commission, they took it as a joke. And I began then to speak aloud and fearlessly, regardless of their laughter, for it was always kindly and not spiteful laughter. These conversations mostly took place in the evenings, in the company of ladies; women particularly liked listening to me then and they made the men listen. "But how can I possibly be responsible for all?" every one would laugh in my face. "Can I, for instance, be responsible for you?" "You may well not know it," I would answer, "since the whole world has long been going on a different line, since we consider the veriest lies as truth and demand the same lies from others. Here I have for once in my life acted sincerely and, well, you all look upon me as a madman. Though you are friendly to me, yet, you see, you all laugh at me." "But how can we help being friendly to you?" said my hostess, laughing. The room was full of people. All of a sudden the young lady rose, on whose account the duel had been fought and whom only lately I had intended to be my future wife. I had not noticed her coming into the room. She got up, came to me and held out her hand. "Let me tell you," she said, "that I am the first not to laugh at you, but on the contrary I thank you with tears and express my respect for you for your action then." Her husband, too, came up and then they all approached me and almost kissed me. My heart was filled with joy, but my attention was especially caught by a middle-aged man who came up to me with the others. I knew him by name already, but had never made his acquaintance nor exchanged a word with him till that evening. _(d) The Mysterious Visitor_ He had long been an official in the town; he was in a prominent position, respected by all, rich and had a reputation for benevolence. He subscribed considerable sums to the almshouse and the orphan asylum; he was very charitable, too, in secret, a fact which only became known after his death. He was a man of about fifty, almost stern in appearance and not much given to conversation. He had been married about ten years and his wife, who was still young, had borne him three children. Well, I was sitting alone in my room the following evening, when my door suddenly opened and this gentleman walked in. I must mention, by the way, that I was no longer living in my former quarters. As soon as I resigned my commission, I took rooms with an old lady, the widow of a government clerk. My landlady's servant waited upon me, for I had moved into her rooms simply because on my return from the duel I had sent Afanasy back to the regiment, as I felt ashamed to look him in the face after my last interview with him. So prone is the man of the world to be ashamed of any righteous action. "I have," said my visitor, "with great interest listened to you speaking in different houses the last few days and I wanted at last to make your personal acquaintance, so as to talk to you more intimately. Can you, dear sir, grant me this favor?" "I can, with the greatest pleasure, and I shall look upon it as an honor." I said this, though I felt almost dismayed, so greatly was I impressed from the first moment by the appearance of this man. For though other people had listened to me with interest and attention, no one had come to me before with such a serious, stern and concentrated expression. And now he had come to see me in my own rooms. He sat down. "You are, I see, a man of great strength of character," he said; "as you have dared to serve the truth, even when by doing so you risked incurring the contempt of all." "Your praise is, perhaps, excessive," I replied. "No, it's not excessive," he answered; "believe me, such a course of action is far more difficult than you think. It is that which has impressed me, and it is only on that account that I have come to you," he continued. "Tell me, please, that is if you are not annoyed by my perhaps unseemly curiosity, what were your exact sensations, if you can recall them, at the moment when you made up your mind to ask forgiveness at the duel. Do not think my question frivolous; on the contrary, I have in asking the question a secret motive of my own, which I will perhaps explain to you later on, if it is God's will that we should become more intimately acquainted." All the while he was speaking, I was looking at him straight into the face and I felt all at once a complete trust in him and great curiosity on my side also, for I felt that there was some strange secret in his soul. "You ask what were my exact sensations at the moment when I asked my opponent's forgiveness," I answered; "but I had better tell you from the beginning what I have not yet told any one else." And I described all that had passed between Afanasy and me, and how I had bowed down to the ground at his feet. "From that you can see for yourself," I concluded, "that at the time of the duel it was easier for me, for I had made a beginning already at home, and when once I had started on that road, to go farther along it was far from being difficult, but became a source of joy and happiness." I liked the way he looked at me as he listened. "All that," he said, "is exceedingly interesting. I will come to see you again and again." And from that time forth he came to see me nearly every evening. And we should have become greater friends, if only he had ever talked of himself. But about himself he scarcely ever said a word, yet continually asked me about myself. In spite of that I became very fond of him and spoke with perfect frankness to him about all my feelings; "for," thought I, "what need have I to know his secrets, since I can see without that that he is a good man? Moreover, though he is such a serious man and my senior, he comes to see a youngster like me and treats me as his equal." And I learned a great deal that was profitable from him, for he was a man of lofty mind. "That life is heaven," he said to me suddenly, "that I have long been thinking about"; and all at once he added, "I think of nothing else indeed." He looked at me and smiled. "I am more convinced of it than you are, I will tell you later why." I listened to him and thought that he evidently wanted to tell me something. "Heaven," he went on, "lies hidden within all of us--here it lies hidden in me now, and if I will it, it will be revealed to me to-morrow and for all time." I looked at him; he was speaking with great emotion and gazing mysteriously at me, as if he were questioning me. "And that we are all responsible to all for all, apart from our own sins, you were quite right in thinking that, and it is wonderful how you could comprehend it in all its significance at once. And in very truth, so soon as men understand that, the Kingdom of Heaven will be for them not a dream, but a living reality." "And when," I cried out to him bitterly, "when will that come to pass? and will it ever come to pass? Is not it simply a dream of ours?" "What then, you don't believe it," he said. "You preach it and don't believe it yourself. Believe me, this dream, as you call it, will come to pass without doubt; it will come, but not now, for every process has its law. It's a spiritual, psychological process. To transform the world, to recreate it afresh, men must turn into another path psychologically. Until you have become really, in actual fact, a brother to every one, brotherhood will not come to pass. No sort of scientific teaching, no kind of common interest, will ever teach men to share property and privileges with equal consideration for all. Every one will think his share too small and they will be always envying, complaining and attacking one another. You ask when it will come to pass; it will come to pass, but first we have to go through the period of isolation." "What do you mean by isolation?" I asked him. "Why, the isolation that prevails everywhere, above all in our age--it has not fully developed, it has not reached its limit yet. For every one strives to keep his individuality as apart as possible, wishes to secure the greatest possible fullness of life for himself; but meantime all his efforts result not in attaining fullness of life but self-destruction, for instead of self-realization he ends by arriving at complete solitude. All mankind in our age have split up into units, they all keep apart, each in his own groove; each one holds aloof, hides himself and hides what he has, from the rest, and he ends by being repelled by others and repelling them. He heaps up riches by himself and thinks, 'How strong I am now and how secure,' and in his madness he does not understand that the more he heaps up, the more he sinks into self-destructive impotence. For he is accustomed to rely upon himself alone and to cut himself off from the whole; he has trained himself not to believe in the help of others, in men and in humanity, and only trembles for fear he should lose his money and the privileges that he has won for himself. Everywhere in these days men have, in their mockery, ceased to understand that the true security is to be found in social solidarity rather than in isolated individual effort. But this terrible individualism must inevitably have an end, and all will suddenly understand how unnaturally they are separated from one another. It will be the spirit of the time, and people will marvel that they have sat so long in darkness without seeing the light. And then the sign of the Son of Man will be seen in the heavens.... But, until then, we must keep the banner flying. Sometimes even if he has to do it alone, and his conduct seems to be crazy, a man must set an example, and so draw men's souls out of their solitude, and spur them to some act of brotherly love, that the great idea may not die." Our evenings, one after another, were spent in such stirring and fervent talk. I gave up society and visited my neighbors much less frequently. Besides, my vogue was somewhat over. I say this, not as blame, for they still loved me and treated me good-humoredly, but there's no denying that fashion is a great power in society. I began to regard my mysterious visitor with admiration, for besides enjoying his intelligence, I began to perceive that he was brooding over some plan in his heart, and was preparing himself perhaps for a great deed. Perhaps he liked my not showing curiosity about his secret, not seeking to discover it by direct question nor by insinuation. But I noticed at last, that he seemed to show signs of wanting to tell me something. This had become quite evident, indeed, about a month after he first began to visit me. "Do you know," he said to me once, "that people are very inquisitive about us in the town and wonder why I come to see you so often. But let them wonder, for _soon all will be explained_." Sometimes an extraordinary agitation would come over him, and almost always on such occasions he would get up and go away. Sometimes he would fix a long piercing look upon me, and I thought, "He will say something directly now." But he would suddenly begin talking of something ordinary and familiar. He often complained of headache too. One day, quite unexpectedly indeed, after he had been talking with great fervor a long time, I saw him suddenly turn pale, and his face worked convulsively, while he stared persistently at me. "What's the matter?" I said; "do you feel ill?"--he had just been complaining of headache. "I ... do you know ... I murdered some one." He said this and smiled with a face as white as chalk. "Why is it he is smiling?" The thought flashed through my mind before I realized anything else. I too turned pale. "What are you saying?" I cried. "You see," he said, with a pale smile, "how much it has cost me to say the first word. Now I have said it, I feel I've taken the first step and shall go on." For a long while I could not believe him, and I did not believe him at that time, but only after he had been to see me three days running and told me all about it. I thought he was mad, but ended by being convinced, to my great grief and amazement. His crime was a great and terrible one. Fourteen years before, he had murdered the widow of a landowner, a wealthy and handsome young woman who had a house in our town. He fell passionately in love with her, declared his feeling and tried to persuade her to marry him. But she had already given her heart to another man, an officer of noble birth and high rank in the service, who was at that time away at the front, though she was expecting him soon to return. She refused his offer and begged him not to come and see her. After he had ceased to visit her, he took advantage of his knowledge of the house to enter at night through the garden by the roof, at great risk of discovery. But, as often happens, a crime committed with extraordinary audacity is more successful than others. Entering the garret through the skylight, he went down the ladder, knowing that the door at the bottom of it was sometimes, through the negligence of the servants, left unlocked. He hoped to find it so, and so it was. He made his way in the dark to her bedroom, where a light was burning. As though on purpose, both her maids had gone off to a birthday-party in the same street, without asking leave. The other servants slept in the servants' quarters or in the kitchen on the ground-floor. His passion flamed up at the sight of her asleep, and then vindictive, jealous anger took possession of his heart, and like a drunken man, beside himself, he thrust a knife into her heart, so that she did not even cry out. Then with devilish and criminal cunning he contrived that suspicion should fall on the servants. He was so base as to take her purse, to open her chest with keys from under her pillow, and to take some things from it, doing it all as it might have been done by an ignorant servant, leaving valuable papers and taking only money. He took some of the larger gold things, but left smaller articles that were ten times as valuable. He took with him, too, some things for himself as remembrances, but of that later. Having done this awful deed, he returned by the way he had come. Neither the next day, when the alarm was raised, nor at any time after in his life, did any one dream of suspecting that he was the criminal. No one indeed knew of his love for her, for he was always reserved and silent and had no friend to whom he would have opened his heart. He was looked upon simply as an acquaintance, and not a very intimate one, of the murdered woman, as for the previous fortnight he had not even visited her. A serf of hers called Pyotr was at once suspected, and every circumstance confirmed the suspicion. The man knew--indeed his mistress did not conceal the fact--that having to send one of her serfs as a recruit she had decided to send him, as he had no relations and his conduct was unsatisfactory. People had heard him angrily threatening to murder her when he was drunk in a tavern. Two days before her death, he had run away, staying no one knew where in the town. The day after the murder, he was found on the road leading out of the town, dead drunk, with a knife in his pocket, and his right hand happened to be stained with blood. He declared that his nose had been bleeding, but no one believed him. The maids confessed that they had gone to a party and that the street-door had been left open till they returned. And a number of similar details came to light, throwing suspicion on the innocent servant. They arrested him, and he was tried for the murder; but a week after the arrest, the prisoner fell sick of a fever and died unconscious in the hospital. There the matter ended and the judges and the authorities and every one in the town remained convinced that the crime had been committed by no one but the servant who had died in the hospital. And after that the punishment began. My mysterious visitor, now my friend, told me that at first he was not in the least troubled by pangs of conscience. He was miserable a long time, but not for that reason; only from regret that he had killed the woman he loved, that she was no more, that in killing her he had killed his love, while the fire of passion was still in his veins. But of the innocent blood he had shed, of the murder of a fellow creature, he scarcely thought. The thought that his victim might have become the wife of another man was insupportable to him, and so, for a long time, he was convinced in his conscience that he could not have acted otherwise. At first he was worried at the arrest of the servant, but his illness and death soon set his mind at rest, for the man's death was apparently (so he reflected at the time) not owing to his arrest or his fright, but a chill he had taken on the day he ran away, when he had lain all night dead drunk on the damp ground. The theft of the money and other things troubled him little, for he argued that the theft had not been committed for gain but to avert suspicion. The sum stolen was small, and he shortly afterwards subscribed the whole of it, and much more, towards the funds for maintaining an almshouse in the town. He did this on purpose to set his conscience at rest about the theft, and it's a remarkable fact that for a long time he really was at peace--he told me this himself. He entered then upon a career of great activity in the service, volunteered for a difficult and laborious duty, which occupied him two years, and being a man of strong will almost forgot the past. Whenever he recalled it, he tried not to think of it at all. He became active in philanthropy too, founded and helped to maintain many institutions in the town, did a good deal in the two capitals, and in both Moscow and Petersburg was elected a member of philanthropic societies. At last, however, he began brooding over the past, and the strain of it was too much for him. Then he was attracted by a fine and intelligent girl and soon after married her, hoping that marriage would dispel his lonely depression, and that by entering on a new life and scrupulously doing his duty to his wife and children, he would escape from old memories altogether. But the very opposite of what he expected happened. He began, even in the first month of his marriage, to be continually fretted by the thought, "My wife loves me--but what if she knew?" When she first told him that she would soon bear him a child, he was troubled. "I am giving life, but I have taken life." Children came. "How dare I love them, teach and educate them, how can I talk to them of virtue? I have shed blood." They were splendid children, he longed to caress them; "and I can't look at their innocent candid faces, I am unworthy." At last he began to be bitterly and ominously haunted by the blood of his murdered victim, by the young life he had destroyed, by the blood that cried out for vengeance. He had begun to have awful dreams. But, being a man of fortitude, he bore his suffering a long time, thinking: "I shall expiate everything by this secret agony." But that hope, too, was vain; the longer it went on, the more intense was his suffering. He was respected in society for his active benevolence, though every one was overawed by his stern and gloomy character. But the more he was respected, the more intolerable it was for him. He confessed to me that he had thoughts of killing himself. But he began to be haunted by another idea--an idea which he had at first regarded as impossible and unthinkable, though at last it got such a hold on his heart that he could not shake it off. He dreamed of rising up, going out and confessing in the face of all men that he had committed murder. For three years this dream had pursued him, haunting him in different forms. At last he believed with his whole heart that if he confessed his crime, he would heal his soul and would be at peace for ever. But this belief filled his heart with terror, for how could he carry it out? And then came what happened at my duel. "Looking at you, I have made up my mind." I looked at him. "Is it possible," I cried, clasping my hands, "that such a trivial incident could give rise to such a resolution in you?" "My resolution has been growing for the last three years," he answered, "and your story only gave the last touch to it. Looking at you, I reproached myself and envied you." He said this to me almost sullenly. "But you won't be believed," I observed; "it's fourteen years ago." "I have proofs, great proofs. I shall show them." Then I cried and kissed him. "Tell me one thing, one thing," he said (as though it all depended upon me), "my wife, my children! My wife may die of grief, and though my children won't lose their rank and property, they'll be a convict's children and for ever! And what a memory, what a memory of me I shall leave in their hearts!" I said nothing. "And to part from them, to leave them for ever? It's for ever, you know, for ever!" I sat still and repeated a silent prayer. I got up at last, I felt afraid. "Well?" He looked at me. "Go!" said I, "confess. Everything passes, only the truth remains. Your children will understand, when they grow up, the nobility of your resolution." He left me that time as though he had made up his mind. Yet for more than a fortnight afterwards, he came to me every evening, still preparing himself, still unable to bring himself to the point. He made my heart ache. One day he would come determined and say fervently: "I know it will be heaven for me, heaven, the moment I confess. Fourteen years I've been in hell. I want to suffer. I will take my punishment and begin to live. You can pass through the world doing wrong, but there's no turning back. Now I dare not love my neighbor nor even my own children. Good God, my children will understand, perhaps, what my punishment has cost me and will not condemn me! God is not in strength but in truth." "All will understand your sacrifice," I said to him, "if not at once, they will understand later; for you have served truth, the higher truth, not of the earth." And he would go away seeming comforted, but next day he would come again, bitter, pale, sarcastic. "Every time I come to you, you look at me so inquisitively as though to say, 'He has still not confessed!' Wait a bit, don't despise me too much. It's not such an easy thing to do, as you would think. Perhaps I shall not do it at all. You won't go and inform against me then, will you?" And far from looking at him with indiscreet curiosity, I was afraid to look at him at all. I was quite ill from anxiety, and my heart was full of tears. I could not sleep at night. "I have just come from my wife," he went on. "Do you understand what the word 'wife' means? When I went out, the children called to me, 'Good-by, father, make haste back to read _The Children's Magazine_ with us.' No, you don't understand that! No one is wise from another man's woe." His eyes were glittering, his lips were twitching. Suddenly he struck the table with his fist so that everything on it danced--it was the first time he had done such a thing, he was such a mild man. "But need I?" he exclaimed, "must I? No one has been condemned, no one has been sent to Siberia in my place, the man died of fever. And I've been punished by my sufferings for the blood I shed. And I shan't be believed, they won't believe my proofs. Need I confess, need I? I am ready to go on suffering all my life for the blood I have shed, if only my wife and children may be spared. Will it be just to ruin them with me? Aren't we making a mistake? What is right in this case? And will people recognize it, will they appreciate it, will they respect it?" "Good Lord!" I thought to myself, "he is thinking of other people's respect at such a moment!" And I felt so sorry for him then, that I believe I would have shared his fate if it could have comforted him. I saw he was beside himself. I was aghast, realizing with my heart as well as my mind what such a resolution meant. "Decide my fate!" he exclaimed again. "Go and confess," I whispered to him. My voice failed me, but I whispered it firmly. I took up the New Testament from the table, the Russian translation, and showed him the Gospel of St. John, chapter xii. verse 24: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." I had just been reading that verse when he came in. He read it. "That's true," he said, but he smiled bitterly. "It's terrible the things you find in those books," he said, after a pause. "It's easy enough to thrust them upon one. And who wrote them? Can they have been written by men?" "The Holy Spirit wrote them," said I. "It's easy for you to prate," he smiled again, this time almost with hatred. I took the book again, opened it in another place and showed him the Epistle to the Hebrews, chapter x. verse 31. He read: "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." He read it and simply flung down the book. He was trembling all over. "An awful text," he said. "There's no denying you've picked out fitting ones." He rose from the chair. "Well!" he said, "good-by, perhaps I shan't come again ... we shall meet in heaven. So I have been for fourteen years 'in the hands of the living God,' that's how one must think of those fourteen years. To-morrow I will beseech those hands to let me go." I wanted to take him in my arms and kiss him, but I did not dare--his face was contorted and somber. He went away. "Good God," I thought, "what has he gone to face!" I fell on my knees before the ikon and wept for him before the Holy Mother of God, our swift defender and helper. I was half an hour praying in tears, and it was late, about midnight. Suddenly I saw the door open and he came in again. I was surprised. "Where have you been?" I asked him. "I think," he said, "I've forgotten something ... my handkerchief, I think.... Well, even if I've not forgotten anything, let me stay a little." He sat down. I stood over him. "You sit down, too," said he. I sat down. We sat still for two minutes; he looked intently at me and suddenly smiled--I remembered that--then he got up, embraced me warmly and kissed me. "Remember," he said, "how I came to you a second time. Do you hear, remember it!" And he went out. "To-morrow," I thought. And so it was. I did not know that evening that the next day was his birthday. I had not been out for the last few days, so I had no chance of hearing it from any one. On that day he always had a great gathering, every one in the town went to it. It was the same this time. After dinner he walked into the middle of the room, with a paper in his hand--a formal declaration to the chief of his department who was present. This declaration he read aloud to the whole assembly. It contained a full account of the crime, in every detail. "I cut myself off from men as a monster. God has visited me," he said in conclusion. "I want to suffer for my sin!" Then he brought out and laid on the table all the things he had been keeping for fourteen years, that he thought would prove his crime, the jewels belonging to the murdered woman which he had stolen to divert suspicion, a cross and a locket taken from her neck with a portrait of her betrothed in the locket, her notebook and two letters; one from her betrothed, telling her that he would soon be with her, and her unfinished answer left on the table to be sent off next day. He carried off these two letters--what for? Why had he kept them for fourteen years afterwards instead of destroying them as evidence against him? And this is what happened: every one was amazed and horrified, every one refused to believe it and thought that he was deranged, though all listened with intense curiosity. A few days later it was fully decided and agreed in every house that the unhappy man was mad. The legal authorities could not refuse to take the case up, but they too dropped it. Though the trinkets and letters made them ponder, they decided that even if they did turn out to be authentic, no charge could be based on those alone. Besides, she might have given him those things as a friend, or asked him to take care of them for her. I heard afterwards, however, that the genuineness of the things was proved by the friends and relations of the murdered woman, and that there was no doubt about them. Yet nothing was destined to come of it, after all. Five days later, all had heard that he was ill and that his life was in danger. The nature of his illness I can't explain, they said it was an affection of the heart. But it became known that the doctors had been induced by his wife to investigate his mental condition also, and had come to the conclusion that it was a case of insanity. I betrayed nothing, though people ran to question me. But when I wanted to visit him, I was for a long while forbidden to do so, above all by his wife. "It's you who have caused his illness," she said to me; "he was always gloomy, but for the last year people noticed that he was peculiarly excited and did strange things, and now you have been the ruin of him. Your preaching has brought him to this; for the last month he was always with you." Indeed, not only his wife but the whole town were down upon me and blamed me. "It's all your doing," they said. I was silent and indeed rejoiced at heart, for I saw plainly God's mercy to the man who had turned against himself and punished himself. I could not believe in his insanity. They let me see him at last, he insisted upon saying good-by to me. I went in to him and saw at once, that not only his days, but his hours were numbered. He was weak, yellow, his hands trembled, he gasped for breath, but his face was full of tender and happy feeling. "It is done!" he said. "I've long been yearning to see you, why didn't you come?" I did not tell him that they would not let me see him. "God has had pity on me and is calling me to Himself. I know I am dying, but I feel joy and peace for the first time after so many years. There was heaven in my heart from the moment I had done what I had to do. Now I dare to love my children and to kiss them. Neither my wife nor the judges, nor any one has believed it. My children will never believe it either. I see in that God's mercy to them. I shall die, and my name will be without a stain for them. And now I feel God near, my heart rejoices as in Heaven ... I have done my duty." He could not speak, he gasped for breath, he pressed my hand warmly, looking fervently at me. We did not talk for long, his wife kept peeping in at us. But he had time to whisper to me: "Do you remember how I came back to you that second time, at midnight? I told you to remember it. You know what I came back for? I came to kill you!" I started. "I went out from you then into the darkness, I wandered about the streets, struggling with myself. And suddenly I hated you so that I could hardly bear it. Now, I thought, he is all that binds me, and he is my judge. I can't refuse to face my punishment to-morrow, for he knows all. It was not that I was afraid you would betray me (I never even thought of that), but I thought, 'How can I look him in the face if I don't confess?' And if you had been at the other end of the earth, but alive, it would have been all the same, the thought was unendurable that you were alive knowing everything and condemning me. I hated you as though you were the cause, as though you were to blame for everything. I came back to you then, remembering that you had a dagger lying on your table. I sat down and asked you to sit down, and for a whole minute I pondered. If I had killed you, I should have been ruined by that murder even if I had not confessed the other. But I didn't think about that at all, and I didn't want to think of it at that moment. I only hated you and longed to revenge myself on you for everything. The Lord vanquished the devil in my heart. But let me tell you, you were never nearer death." A week later he died. The whole town followed him to the grave. The chief priest made a speech full of feeling. All lamented the terrible illness that had cut short his days. But all the town was up in arms against me after the funeral, and people even refused to see me. Some, at first a few and afterwards more, began indeed to believe in the truth of his story, and they visited me and questioned me with great interest and eagerness, for man loves to see the downfall and disgrace of the righteous. But I held my tongue, and very shortly after, I left the town, and five months later by God's grace I entered upon the safe and blessed path, praising the unseen finger which had guided me so clearly to it. But I remember in my prayer to this day, the servant of God, Mihail, who suffered so greatly. Chapter III. Conversations And Exhortations Of Father Zossima _(e) The Russian Monk and his possible Significance_ Fathers and teachers, what is the monk? In the cultivated world the word is nowadays pronounced by some people with a jeer, and by others it is used as a term of abuse, and this contempt for the monk is growing. It is true, alas, it is true, that there are many sluggards, gluttons, profligates and insolent beggars among monks. Educated people point to these: "You are idlers, useless members of society, you live on the labor of others, you are shameless beggars." And yet how many meek and humble monks there are, yearning for solitude and fervent prayer in peace! These are less noticed, or passed over in silence. And how surprised men would be if I were to say that from these meek monks, who yearn for solitary prayer, the salvation of Russia will come perhaps once more! For they are in truth made ready in peace and quiet "for the day and the hour, the month and the year." Meanwhile, in their solitude, they keep the image of Christ fair and undefiled, in the purity of God's truth, from the times of the Fathers of old, the Apostles and the martyrs. And when the time comes they will show it to the tottering creeds of the world. That is a great thought. That star will rise out of the East. That is my view of the monk, and is it false? is it too proud? Look at the worldly and all who set themselves up above the people of God, has not God's image and His truth been distorted in them? They have science; but in science there is nothing but what is the object of sense. The spiritual world, the higher part of man's being is rejected altogether, dismissed with a sort of triumph, even with hatred. The world has proclaimed the reign of freedom, especially of late, but what do we see in this freedom of theirs? Nothing but slavery and self-destruction! For the world says: "You have desires and so satisfy them, for you have the same rights as the most rich and powerful. Don't be afraid of satisfying them and even multiply your desires." That is the modern doctrine of the world. In that they see freedom. And what follows from this right of multiplication of desires? In the rich, isolation and spiritual suicide; in the poor, envy and murder; for they have been given rights, but have not been shown the means of satisfying their wants. They maintain that the world is getting more and more united, more and more bound together in brotherly community, as it overcomes distance and sets thoughts flying through the air. Alas, put no faith in such a bond of union. Interpreting freedom as the multiplication and rapid satisfaction of desires, men distort their own nature, for many senseless and foolish desires and habits and ridiculous fancies are fostered in them. They live only for mutual envy, for luxury and ostentation. To have dinners, visits, carriages, rank and slaves to wait on one is looked upon as a necessity, for which life, honor and human feeling are sacrificed, and men even commit suicide if they are unable to satisfy it. We see the same thing among those who are not rich, while the poor drown their unsatisfied need and their envy in drunkenness. But soon they will drink blood instead of wine, they are being led on to it. I ask you is such a man free? I knew one "champion of freedom" who told me himself that, when he was deprived of tobacco in prison, he was so wretched at the privation that he almost went and betrayed his cause for the sake of getting tobacco again! And such a man says, "I am fighting for the cause of humanity." How can such a one fight? what is he fit for? He is capable perhaps of some action quickly over, but he cannot hold out long. And it's no wonder that instead of gaining freedom they have sunk into slavery, and instead of serving the cause of brotherly love and the union of humanity have fallen, on the contrary, into dissension and isolation, as my mysterious visitor and teacher said to me in my youth. And therefore the idea of the service of humanity, of brotherly love and the solidarity of mankind, is more and more dying out in the world, and indeed this idea is sometimes treated with derision. For how can a man shake off his habits? What can become of him if he is in such bondage to the habit of satisfying the innumerable desires he has created for himself? He is isolated, and what concern has he with the rest of humanity? They have succeeded in accumulating a greater mass of objects, but the joy in the world has grown less. The monastic way is very different. Obedience, fasting and prayer are laughed at, yet only through them lies the way to real, true freedom. I cut off my superfluous and unnecessary desires, I subdue my proud and wanton will and chastise it with obedience, and with God's help I attain freedom of spirit and with it spiritual joy. Which is most capable of conceiving a great idea and serving it--the rich man in his isolation or the man who has freed himself from the tyranny of material things and habits? The monk is reproached for his solitude, "You have secluded yourself within the walls of the monastery for your own salvation, and have forgotten the brotherly service of humanity!" But we shall see which will be most zealous in the cause of brotherly love. For it is not we, but they, who are in isolation, though they don't see that. Of old, leaders of the people came from among us, and why should they not again? The same meek and humble ascetics will rise up and go out to work for the great cause. The salvation of Russia comes from the people. And the Russian monk has always been on the side of the people. We are isolated only if the people are isolated. The people believe as we do, and an unbelieving reformer will never do anything in Russia, even if he is sincere in heart and a genius. Remember that! The people will meet the atheist and overcome him, and Russia will be one and orthodox. Take care of the peasant and guard his heart. Go on educating him quietly. That's your duty as monks, for the peasant has God in his heart. (_f_) _Of Masters and Servants, and of whether it is possible for them to be Brothers in the Spirit_ Of course, I don't deny that there is sin in the peasants too. And the fire of corruption is spreading visibly, hourly, working from above downwards. The spirit of isolation is coming upon the people too. Money- lenders and devourers of the commune are rising up. Already the merchant grows more and more eager for rank, and strives to show himself cultured though he has not a trace of culture, and to this end meanly despises his old traditions, and is even ashamed of the faith of his fathers. He visits princes, though he is only a peasant corrupted. The peasants are rotting in drunkenness and cannot shake off the habit. And what cruelty to their wives, to their children even! All from drunkenness! I've seen in the factories children of nine years old, frail, rickety, bent and already depraved. The stuffy workshop, the din of machinery, work all day long, the vile language and the drink, the drink--is that what a little child's heart needs? He needs sunshine, childish play, good examples all about him, and at least a little love. There must be no more of this, monks, no more torturing of children, rise up and preach that, make haste, make haste! But God will save Russia, for though the peasants are corrupted and cannot renounce their filthy sin, yet they know it is cursed by God and that they do wrong in sinning. So that our people still believe in righteousness, have faith in God and weep tears of devotion. It is different with the upper classes. They, following science, want to base justice on reason alone, but not with Christ, as before, and they have already proclaimed that there is no crime, that there is no sin. And that's consistent, for if you have no God what is the meaning of crime? In Europe the people are already rising up against the rich with violence, and the leaders of the people are everywhere leading them to bloodshed, and teaching them that their wrath is righteous. But their "wrath is accursed, for it is cruel." But God will save Russia as He has saved her many times. Salvation will come from the people, from their faith and their meekness. Fathers and teachers, watch over the people's faith and this will not be a dream. I've been struck all my life in our great people by their dignity, their true and seemly dignity. I've seen it myself, I can testify to it, I've seen it and marveled at it, I've seen it in spite of the degraded sins and poverty-stricken appearance of our peasantry. They are not servile, and even after two centuries of serfdom they are free in manner and bearing, yet without insolence, and not revengeful and not envious. "You are rich and noble, you are clever and talented, well, be so, God bless you. I respect you, but I know that I too am a man. By the very fact that I respect you without envy I prove my dignity as a man." In truth if they don't say this (for they don't know how to say this yet), that is how they act. I have seen it myself, I have known it myself, and, would you believe it, the poorer our Russian peasant is, the more noticeable is that serene goodness, for the rich among them are for the most part corrupted already, and much of that is due to our carelessness and indifference. But God will save His people, for Russia is great in her humility. I dream of seeing, and seem to see clearly already, our future. It will come to pass, that even the most corrupt of our rich will end by being ashamed of his riches before the poor, and the poor, seeing his humility, will understand and give way before him, will respond joyfully and kindly to his honorable shame. Believe me that it will end in that; things are moving to that. Equality is to be found only in the spiritual dignity of man, and that will only be understood among us. If we were brothers, there would be fraternity, but before that, they will never agree about the division of wealth. We preserve the image of Christ, and it will shine forth like a precious diamond to the whole world. So may it be, so may it be! Fathers and teachers, a touching incident befell me once. In my wanderings I met in the town of K. my old orderly, Afanasy. It was eight years since I had parted from him. He chanced to see me in the market-place, recognized me, ran up to me, and how delighted he was! He simply pounced on me: "Master dear, is it you? Is it really you I see?" He took me home with him. He was no longer in the army, he was married and already had two little children. He and his wife earned their living as costermongers in the market-place. His room was poor, but bright and clean. He made me sit down, set the samovar, sent for his wife, as though my appearance were a festival for them. He brought me his children: "Bless them, Father." "Is it for me to bless them? I am only a humble monk. I will pray for them. And for you, Afanasy Pavlovitch, I have prayed every day since that day, for it all came from you," said I. And I explained that to him as well as I could. And what do you think? The man kept gazing at me and could not believe that I, his former master, an officer, was now before him in such a guise and position; it made him shed tears. "Why are you weeping?" said I, "better rejoice over me, dear friend, whom I can never forget, for my path is a glad and joyful one." He did not say much, but kept sighing and shaking his head over me tenderly. "What has became of your fortune?" he asked. "I gave it to the monastery," I answered; "we live in common." After tea I began saying good-by, and suddenly he brought out half a rouble as an offering to the monastery, and another half-rouble I saw him thrusting hurriedly into my hand: "That's for you in your wanderings, it may be of use to you, Father." I took his half-rouble, bowed to him and his wife, and went out rejoicing. And on my way I thought: "Here we are both now, he at home and I on the road, sighing and shaking our heads, no doubt, and yet smiling joyfully in the gladness of our hearts, remembering how God brought about our meeting." I have never seen him again since then. I had been his master and he my servant, but now when we exchanged a loving kiss with softened hearts, there was a great human bond between us. I have thought a great deal about that, and now what I think is this: Is it so inconceivable that that grand and simple-hearted unity might in due time become universal among the Russian people? I believe that it will come to pass and that the time is at hand. And of servants I will add this: In old days when I was young I was often angry with servants; "the cook had served something too hot, the orderly had not brushed my clothes." But what taught me better then was a thought of my dear brother's, which I had heard from him in childhood: "Am I worth it, that another should serve me and be ordered about by me in his poverty and ignorance?" And I wondered at the time that such simple and self- evident ideas should be so slow to occur to our minds. It is impossible that there should be no servants in the world, but act so that your servant may be freer in spirit than if he were not a servant. And why cannot I be a servant to my servant and even let him see it, and that without any pride on my part or any mistrust on his? Why should not my servant be like my own kindred, so that I may take him into my family and rejoice in doing so? Even now this can be done, but it will lead to the grand unity of men in the future, when a man will not seek servants for himself, or desire to turn his fellow creatures into servants as he does now, but on the contrary, will long with his whole heart to be the servant of all, as the Gospel teaches. And can it be a dream, that in the end man will find his joy only in deeds of light and mercy, and not in cruel pleasures as now, in gluttony, fornication, ostentation, boasting and envious rivalry of one with the other? I firmly believe that it is not and that the time is at hand. People laugh and ask: "When will that time come and does it look like coming?" I believe that with Christ's help we shall accomplish this great thing. And how many ideas there have been on earth in the history of man which were unthinkable ten years before they appeared! Yet when their destined hour had come, they came forth and spread over the whole earth. So it will be with us, and our people will shine forth in the world, and all men will say: "The stone which the builders rejected has become the corner-stone of the building." And we may ask the scornful themselves: If our hope is a dream, when will you build up your edifice and order things justly by your intellect alone, without Christ? If they declare that it is they who are advancing towards unity, only the most simple-hearted among them believe it, so that one may positively marvel at such simplicity. Of a truth, they have more fantastic dreams than we. They aim at justice, but, denying Christ, they will end by flooding the earth with blood, for blood cries out for blood, and he that taketh up the sword shall perish by the sword. And if it were not for Christ's covenant, they would slaughter one another down to the last two men on earth. And those two last men would not be able to restrain each other in their pride, and the one would slay the other and then himself. And that would come to pass, were it not for the promise of Christ that for the sake of the humble and meek the days shall be shortened. While I was still wearing an officer's uniform after my duel, I talked about servants in general society, and I remember every one was amazed at me. "What!" they asked, "are we to make our servants sit down on the sofa and offer them tea?" And I answered them: "Why not, sometimes at least?" Every one laughed. Their question was frivolous and my answer was not clear; but the thought in it was to some extent right. (_g_) _Of Prayer, of Love, and of Contact with other Worlds_ Young man, be not forgetful of prayer. Every time you pray, if your prayer is sincere, there will be new feeling and new meaning in it, which will give you fresh courage, and you will understand that prayer is an education. Remember, too, every day, and whenever you can, repeat to yourself, "Lord, have mercy on all who appear before Thee to-day." For every hour and every moment thousands of men leave life on this earth, and their souls appear before God. And how many of them depart in solitude, unknown, sad, dejected that no one mourns for them or even knows whether they have lived or not! And behold, from the other end of the earth perhaps, your prayer for their rest will rise up to God though you knew them not nor they you. How touching it must be to a soul standing in dread before the Lord to feel at that instant that, for him too, there is one to pray, that there is a fellow creature left on earth to love him too! And God will look on you both more graciously, for if you have had so much pity on him, how much will He have pity Who is infinitely more loving and merciful than you! And He will forgive him for your sake. Brothers, have no fear of men's sin. Love a man even in his sin, for that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth. Love all God's creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all- embracing love. Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled. Do not trouble it, don't harass them, don't deprive them of their happiness, don't work against God's intent. Man, do not pride yourself on superiority to the animals; they are without sin, and you, with your greatness, defile the earth by your appearance on it, and leave the traces of your foulness after you--alas, it is true of almost every one of us! Love children especially, for they too are sinless like the angels; they live to soften and purify our hearts and as it were to guide us. Woe to him who offends a child! Father Anfim taught me to love children. The kind, silent man used often on our wanderings to spend the farthings given us on sweets and cakes for the children. He could not pass by a child without emotion. That's the nature of the man. At some thoughts one stands perplexed, especially at the sight of men's sin, and wonders whether one should use force or humble love. Always decide to use humble love. If you resolve on that once for all, you may subdue the whole world. Loving humility is marvelously strong, the strongest of all things, and there is nothing else like it. Every day and every hour, every minute, walk round yourself and watch yourself, and see that your image is a seemly one. You pass by a little child, you pass by, spiteful, with ugly words, with wrathful heart; you may not have noticed the child, but he has seen you, and your image, unseemly and ignoble, may remain in his defenseless heart. You don't know it, but you may have sown an evil seed in him and it may grow, and all because you were not careful before the child, because you did not foster in yourself a careful, actively benevolent love. Brothers, love is a teacher; but one must know how to acquire it, for it is hard to acquire, it is dearly bought, it is won slowly by long labor. For we must love not only occasionally, for a moment, but for ever. Every one can love occasionally, even the wicked can. My brother asked the birds to forgive him; that sounds senseless, but it is right; for all is like an ocean, all is flowing and blending; a touch in one place sets up movement at the other end of the earth. It may be senseless to beg forgiveness of the birds, but birds would be happier at your side--a little happier, anyway--and children and all animals, if you were nobler than you are now. It's all like an ocean, I tell you. Then you would pray to the birds too, consumed by an all-embracing love, in a sort of transport, and pray that they too will forgive you your sin. Treasure this ecstasy, however senseless it may seem to men. My friends, pray to God for gladness. Be glad as children, as the birds of heaven. And let not the sin of men confound you in your doings. Fear not that it will wear away your work and hinder its being accomplished. Do not say, "Sin is mighty, wickedness is mighty, evil environment is mighty, and we are lonely and helpless, and evil environment is wearing us away and hindering our good work from being done." Fly from that dejection, children! There is only one means of salvation, then take yourself and make yourself responsible for all men's sins, that is the truth, you know, friends, for as soon as you sincerely make yourself responsible for everything and for all men, you will see at once that it is really so, and that you are to blame for every one and for all things. But throwing your own indolence and impotence on others you will end by sharing the pride of Satan and murmuring against God. Of the pride of Satan what I think is this: it is hard for us on earth to comprehend it, and therefore it is so easy to fall into error and to share it, even imagining that we are doing something grand and fine. Indeed, many of the strongest feelings and movements of our nature we cannot comprehend on earth. Let not that be a stumbling-block, and think not that it may serve as a justification to you for anything. For the Eternal Judge asks of you what you can comprehend and not what you cannot. You will know that yourself hereafter, for you will behold all things truly then and will not dispute them. On earth, indeed, we are as it were astray, and if it were not for the precious image of Christ before us, we should be undone and altogether lost, as was the human race before the flood. Much on earth is hidden from us, but to make up for that we have been given a precious mystic sense of our living bond with the other world, with the higher heavenly world, and the roots of our thoughts and feelings are not here but in other worlds. That is why the philosophers say that we cannot apprehend the reality of things on earth. God took seeds from different worlds and sowed them on this earth, and His garden grew up and everything came up that could come up, but what grows lives and is alive only through the feeling of its contact with other mysterious worlds. If that feeling grows weak or is destroyed in you, the heavenly growth will die away in you. Then you will be indifferent to life and even grow to hate it. That's what I think. _(h) Can a Man judge his Fellow Creatures? Faith to the End_ Remember particularly that you cannot be a judge of any one. For no one can judge a criminal, until he recognizes that he is just such a criminal as the man standing before him, and that he perhaps is more than all men to blame for that crime. When he understands that, he will be able to be a judge. Though that sounds absurd, it is true. If I had been righteous myself, perhaps there would have been no criminal standing before me. If you can take upon yourself the crime of the criminal your heart is judging, take it at once, suffer for him yourself, and let him go without reproach. And even if the law itself makes you his judge, act in the same spirit so far as possible, for he will go away and condemn himself more bitterly than you have done. If, after your kiss, he goes away untouched, mocking at you, do not let that be a stumbling-block to you. It shows his time has not yet come, but it will come in due course. And if it come not, no matter; if not he, then another in his place will understand and suffer, and judge and condemn himself, and the truth will be fulfilled. Believe that, believe it without doubt; for in that lies all the hope and faith of the saints. Work without ceasing. If you remember in the night as you go to sleep, "I have not done what I ought to have done," rise up at once and do it. If the people around you are spiteful and callous and will not hear you, fall down before them and beg their forgiveness; for in truth you are to blame for their not wanting to hear you. And if you cannot speak to them in their bitterness, serve them in silence and in humility, never losing hope. If all men abandon you and even drive you away by force, then when you are left alone fall on the earth and kiss it, water it with your tears and it will bring forth fruit even though no one has seen or heard you in your solitude. Believe to the end, even if all men went astray and you were left the only one faithful; bring your offering even then and praise God in your loneliness. And if two of you are gathered together--then there is a whole world, a world of living love. Embrace each other tenderly and praise God, for if only in you two His truth has been fulfilled. If you sin yourself and grieve even unto death for your sins or for your sudden sin, then rejoice for others, rejoice for the righteous man, rejoice that if you have sinned, he is righteous and has not sinned. If the evil-doing of men moves you to indignation and overwhelming distress, even to a desire for vengeance on the evil-doers, shun above all things that feeling. Go at once and seek suffering for yourself, as though you were yourself guilty of that wrong. Accept that suffering and bear it and your heart will find comfort, and you will understand that you too are guilty, for you might have been a light to the evil-doers, even as the one man sinless, and you were not a light to them. If you had been a light, you would have lightened the path for others too, and the evil-doer might perhaps have been saved by your light from his sin. And even though your light was shining, yet you see men were not saved by it, hold firm and doubt not the power of the heavenly light. Believe that if they were not saved, they will be saved hereafter. And if they are not saved hereafter, then their sons will be saved, for your light will not die even when you are dead. The righteous man departs, but his light remains. Men are always saved after the death of the deliverer. Men reject their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and honor those whom they have slain. You are working for the whole, you are acting for the future. Seek no reward, for great is your reward on this earth: the spiritual joy which is only vouchsafed to the righteous man. Fear not the great nor the mighty, but be wise and ever serene. Know the measure, know the times, study that. When you are left alone, pray. Love to throw yourself on the earth and kiss it. Kiss the earth and love it with an unceasing, consuming love. Love all men, love everything. Seek that rapture and ecstasy. Water the earth with the tears of your joy and love those tears. Don't be ashamed of that ecstasy, prize it, for it is a gift of God and a great one; it is not given to many but only to the elect. _(i) Of Hell and Hell Fire, a Mystic Reflection_ Fathers and teachers, I ponder, "What is hell?" I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love. Once in infinite existence, immeasurable in time and space, a spiritual creature was given on his coming to earth, the power of saying, "I am and I love." Once, only once, there was given him a moment of active _living_ love, and for that was earthly life given him, and with it times and seasons. And that happy creature rejected the priceless gift, prized it and loved it not, scorned it and remained callous. Such a one, having left the earth, sees Abraham's bosom and talks with Abraham as we are told in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, and beholds heaven and can go up to the Lord. But that is just his torment, to rise up to the Lord without ever having loved, to be brought close to those who have loved when he has despised their love. For he sees clearly and says to himself, "Now I have understanding, and though I now thirst to love, there will be nothing great, no sacrifice in my love, for my earthly life is over, and Abraham will not come even with a drop of living water (that is the gift of earthly active life) to cool the fiery thirst of spiritual love which burns in me now, though I despised it on earth; there is no more life for me and will be no more time! Even though I would gladly give my life for others, it can never be, for that life is passed which can be sacrificed for love, and now there is a gulf fixed between that life and this existence." They talk of hell fire in the material sense. I don't go into that mystery and I shun it. But I think if there were fire in material sense, they would be glad of it, for I imagine that in material agony, their still greater spiritual agony would be forgotten for a moment. Moreover, that spiritual agony cannot be taken from them, for that suffering is not external but within them. And if it could be taken from them, I think it would be bitterer still for the unhappy creatures. For even if the righteous in Paradise forgave them, beholding their torments, and called them up to heaven in their infinite love, they would only multiply their torments, for they would arouse in them still more keenly a flaming thirst for responsive, active and grateful love which is now impossible. In the timidity of my heart I imagine, however, that the very recognition of this impossibility would serve at last to console them. For accepting the love of the righteous together with the impossibility of repaying it, by this submissiveness and the effect of this humility, they will attain at last, as it were, to a certain semblance of that active love which they scorned in life, to something like its outward expression.... I am sorry, friends and brothers, that I cannot express this clearly. But woe to those who have slain themselves on earth, woe to the suicides! I believe that there can be none more miserable then they. They tell us that it is a sin to pray for them and outwardly the Church, as it were, renounces them, but in my secret heart I believe that we may pray even for them. Love can never be an offense to Christ. For such as those I have prayed inwardly all my life, I confess it, fathers and teachers, and even now I pray for them every day. Oh, there are some who remain proud and fierce even in hell, in spite of their certain knowledge and contemplation of the absolute truth; there are some fearful ones who have given themselves over to Satan and his proud spirit entirely. For such, hell is voluntary and ever consuming; they are tortured by their own choice. For they have cursed themselves, cursing God and life. They live upon their vindictive pride like a starving man in the desert sucking blood out of his own body. But they are never satisfied, and they refuse forgiveness, they curse God Who calls them. They cannot behold the living God without hatred, and they cry out that the God of life should be annihilated, that God should destroy Himself and His own creation. And they will burn in the fire of their own wrath for ever and yearn for death and annihilation. But they will not attain to death.... ------------------------------------- Here Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov's manuscript ends. I repeat, it is incomplete and fragmentary. Biographical details, for instance, cover only Father Zossima's earliest youth. Of his teaching and opinions we find brought together sayings evidently uttered on very different occasions. His utterances during the last few hours have not been kept separate from the rest, but their general character can be gathered from what we have in Alexey Fyodorovitch's manuscript. The elder's death came in the end quite unexpectedly. For although those who were gathered about him that last evening realized that his death was approaching, yet it was difficult to imagine that it would come so suddenly. On the contrary, his friends, as I observed already, seeing him that night apparently so cheerful and talkative, were convinced that there was at least a temporary change for the better in his condition. Even five minutes before his death, they said afterwards wonderingly, it was impossible to foresee it. He seemed suddenly to feel an acute pain in his chest, he turned pale and pressed his hands to his heart. All rose from their seats and hastened to him. But though suffering, he still looked at them with a smile, sank slowly from his chair on to his knees, then bowed his face to the ground, stretched out his arms and as though in joyful ecstasy, praying and kissing the ground, quietly and joyfully gave up his soul to God. The news of his death spread at once through the hermitage and reached the monastery. The nearest friends of the deceased and those whose duty it was from their position began to lay out the corpse according to the ancient ritual, and all the monks gathered together in the church. And before dawn the news of the death reached the town. By the morning all the town was talking of the event, and crowds were flocking from the town to the monastery. But this subject will be treated in the next book; I will only add here that before a day had passed something happened so unexpected, so strange, upsetting, and bewildering in its effect on the monks and the townspeople, that after all these years, that day of general suspense is still vividly remembered in the town.

Book VI

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Father Zossima is propped in bed, surrounded by his friends and followers, when Alyosha returns to the monastery. The elder is weak but is still quite alert and eager to talk with his audience. He greets Alyosha affectionately and asks about Dmitri; he says that the bow made to him was an acknowledgment of the intense suffering he foresees for the boy. Alyosha, however, he says, has quite a different future, and again he counsels the young monk to return to the world to look after his brothers. In this way, he says, Alyosha will learn to love all of life, to bless life, and to teach those who suffer to love and bless life. These pleas to Alyosha are Father Zossima's last requests. Now he tells all assembled the reasons why Alyosha is so very special to him. Once, the elder says, he had an older brother who influenced him tremendously. Alyosha bears a particularly strong resemblance to that brother -- physically and spiritually. Then Zossima begins to reminisce. He was born to a noble family of only moderate means. His father died when he was only two years old, and he was reared with his mother and the brother he spoke of. The brother, eight years older than Zossima, came under the influence of a freethinker and was soon a source of sorrow to the mother. He ridiculed her religious observances and her devout beliefs. Then, at seventeen, he contracted consumption, and the family was advised that he had but a few months to live. During the months he waited for death, a tremendous spiritual conversion took place in the boy. He became extremely pious and spoke continuously about the need to love all of God's creatures, even the little birds in the garden. He asked the servants to feel that they were his equal and often said that he wished he could be a servant to the servants. Besides his brother, Zossima says that there has been another influence on him: the Bible. This book, he says, is a testament of the extent of God's love for all men. Zossima mourns for those who cannot find the vast love that he finds contained in the Bible. But Zossima's affection for the Bible has not been lifelong. As a youth, he was sent to a military academy in St. Petersburg and soon neglected both the Bible and his religious training. After graduation, he led the carefree life that a typical young officer might. He courted a beautiful lady whom, he was sure, returned his affections, but while he was absent she married someone else. Zossima was insulted and immediately challenged her husband to a duel. But, waking on the morning of the duel, he looked out, saw a fresh, clean beauty on all of God's world, and remembered his dying brother's exhortation: love all of God's creatures. He leaped from his bed, apologized to a servant whom he had beaten the night before, and made plans for his duel. He would allow his opponent to take the first shot; afterward, Zossima would drop his pistols and beg the man's forgiveness. This he did. But the officers accompanying Zossima were shocked by the strange behavior. They questioned him and were even more surprised at the explanation: he had, he said, decided to resign his military commission and enter a monastery. Zossima fast became the talk of the town. One night a mysterious stranger visited him and begged to hear the motives that prompted Zossima's actions. Zossima talked at length to the man and for many nights afterward. Then, after hearing the whole of Zossima's story, the man made a confession of his own: years ago he killed a woman out of passion, and someone else was blamed for the deed. The man in question, however, died before he was tried. Now the perpetrator of the deed has wife and children and has become one of the most respected philanthropists in the community. But, he moans to Zossima, he has never found happiness for himself. In spite of an apparently successful life, he has always needed to confess. This, in fact, he finally did, and in public, but no one believed him; they thought that he was temporarily deranged. Not long after his confession to Zossima, the man falls ill. The elder visits him and is thanked greatly for his guidance. Zossima, until now, has never revealed the man's secret. The elder pauses and begins to speak to Alyosha of what it has meant to be a monk. Zossima feels that the Russian monk is, of all persons, closest to the Russian folk and that ultimately the salvation of Russia will come through these common people who, he feels sure, will always remain orthodox in their beliefs. He also talks of the equality of all people and hopes that everyone can someday be truly meek and can accept a servant as an equal and, in turn, function as a servant to others. True equality, he says, is found only in the "spiritual dignity of man." As an example, he tells of an old servant's giving him a sum of money for the monastery. This, the elder reveals, is the ideal reversal in action; a master-servant relationship exists no longer. Zossima admonishes his listeners to love all of God's creatures and to take on the responsibility of all men's sins. He explains that often God expects many things that we cannot understand with human logic. Man, for example, should not judge his fellow men -- even criminals -- says Zossima; man must pray for those who are outside the church, for there does not exist a material hell. There is only a spiritual hell, he says. He then collapses to the floor and reaches out as though to embrace the earth. Joyfully he gives up his soul to God.

Because of their positive quality, Dostoevsky inserts the final views of Father Zossima next to the questioning disbeliefs of Ivan Karamazov. They act somewhat like a counterbalance to the many ideas presented in Book V. Unlike Ivan, Zossima is didactic -- the most didactic character in the novel, perhaps in all of Dostoevsky's writings. His ideas are too abstract to be presented as Ivan's were; his ideas are too profound to be presented in any other way than by simple exhortation. Parts of Zossima's philosophy have, of course, been discussed in earlier books, but here almost all of his tenets are gathered together and presented either by examples from his own life or through exhortations and miniature sermons. In one sense, Zossima is an extension of earlier Dostoevskian characters, but, because of his personal history, he is much more than a mere abstraction of the author's ideas. Surprisingly, Father Zossima is a rather robust character, one who undergoes many diverse experiences before dedicating his life to the monastery. There are reasons for his convictions; he is no conventional saint. Concerning the amount of background material that Zossima gives, it is most important that we see him against such relief. If the elder's theories are to be accepted as valid, we cannot view him as an isolated or even as a repressed person who turns to religion in order to escape the world's rejection. Zossima was not an introvert; his youth was wild and reckless, filled with "drunkenness, debauchery, and devilry." He was popular with his fellow officers and with people in general. His conversion and his subsequent religious dedication, therefore, are grounded in motivated reality. The account of the duel and Zossima's actions show him to be a person of physical courage as well as of moral courage. It is significant that the conversion was brought about by his remembering some of his dead brother's ideas about loving life and respecting all things in this world. From this time onward, these ideas become more and more central to Zossima's final philosophy of life. Concerning suffering, Zossima's explanation of why he bowed down to Dmitri has its roots deep in Dostoevskian philosophy. In Crime and Punishment, for example, the protagonist bows down before a prostitute because he sees in her "the suffering of all humanity." Suffering, Dostoevsky felt, was the genesis of retribution. Only through great suffering can a man be purified of his sins, and it is this process that Zossima sees within Dmitri. In speaking of his love for the Bible, Zossima says that the book's basic lesson is this: one must realize the vast love that God has for mankind. At first, admittedly, such a realization is not easy. It is difficult to accept God giving his beloved Job to the devil for no other reason than to boast to his opponent. But the value of the parable, says Zossima, lies in the fact that it is a mystery "that the passing earthly show and the eternal verity are brought together." This, of course, is diametrically opposed to what Ivan believes. He refuses to accept any idea that cannot be comprehended by earthly logic. But for Zossima, the greatness of God lies in the fact that man cannot comprehend God's ways and that some things of earth must remain a mystery. Only with such a mystery does man realize the full extent of God's glory. If man could comprehend all, then God would lose his sense of majesty. Again in contrast to Ivan , Zossima says that "one who does not believe in God will not believe in God's people. He who believes in God's people will see His Holiness too, even though he had not believed in it till then." The elder insists on practicing active love for mankind; only through love will one come to believe in God. For the present, Ivan would disagree. He spends his time intellectualizing over abstruse problems; he has no time left for active love. With the appearance of the mysterious stranger, Zossima is put to his first test. It would have been easy to tell the stranger that he has suffered enough and that there is no need for him to ruin his life and his family's life by making an open confession. But Zossima is quietly persuasive in his efforts to get the stranger to recognize his errors. There is no attempt at coercion, but simply a quiet plea for him to perform that which his conscience tells him must be done. As Zossima confides his wisdom to Alyosha, the reader should be aware that the elder's views are essentially those by which Dostoevsky himself tried to live, or at least wished to live. Particularly, Dostoevsky was interested in these concepts: 1. The Russian monk and his possible significance. -- Zossima believes that the salvation of Russia would come from two sources -- the Russian monks and a vast, idealized section of the Russian population that he referred to as the Russian people, or the Russian folk. The monks, however, were even more important than the folk if the regeneration of Russia was to be accomplished. From the monks would come the energy and ideas of purity and love. The monk, Zossima believes, practices obedience, fasting, and prayer, believing that these three disciplines will accomplish for him the only true freedom: sacred freedom. Such freedom is forever denied the man who exists in contemporary society, the slave to mechanical and material frivolities; he will never attain the freedom needed for a pure understanding of life's meaning. He is too involved with life to be able to contemplate life. Only the monk, a man who has "freed himself from the tyranny of material things and habits" can conceive great ideas and serve them. In essence, this is the elder's answer to the question posed by the Grand Inquisitor and Ivan. Only in freedom can man conceive of ideas great enough to make life worth preserving. After the monk gives birth to example and philosophy, the renascence begins, and within the Russian folk a new Russia is nourished. The folk, of course, can never hope to completely emulate the life of the monk, but because of their living close to the soil and to basic matters of life, they can easily assimilate the wisdom of the Russian monk. Of course, Zossima realizes that the average peasant sins occasionally, but he also believes that the peasant realizes that he is wrong in his sinning. This realization will be his salvation, for man must first recognize righteousness as the supreme virtue; this the folk do. One must not despair of the peasant, Zossima counsels, for even in his sinfulness and in his ignorant ways, "salvation will come from the people, from their faith and their meekness," an idea very often advocated by Dostoevsky. He uses, for example, Sonia in Crime and Punishment as such a type, the so-called passive redemptive character, and suggests that through the passive acceptance of faith and by extreme meekness, salvation will be achieved. The folk are Zossima's hope, for they believe basically as does the monk. The elder says that "an unbelieving reformer will never do anything in Russia. Even if he is sincere in heart and a genius, the people will meet the atheist and overcome him." But if one considers the widespread atheism that followed the Communist revolution in Russia, Dostoevsky perhaps never wrote anything that proved to be so absolutely incorrect as this prophecy of Father Zossima. 2. Of masters and servants, and of whether it is possible for them to be brothers in spirit. -- Zossima advocates absolute equality for all men. True dignity does not come from the possession of great material wealth. Dignity, the elder says, is derived only from an inner sense of personal worth; it is able to respect another person without envying that person. When man attains such dignity, he creates a unity, a brotherhood in which a master may associate with a servant without losing either self-respect or dignity. This is Zossima's utopia, founded on "the grand unity of man," preserved by men who long with all their heart to be the servants of all. 3. Of prayer, of love, and of contact with other worlds. -- Zossima admonished his adherents to pray for others, even those who have sinned. God, he says, will look favorably upon any sinner who stands before Him, proving that someone is offering up a prayer for that sinner. Again the elder re-emphasizes to those assembled his strong belief in the power of positive love. "Love a man even in his sin, for that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth. Love all God's creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things." By loving, man gains new respect for everything in God's world. Thus "we must love not occasionally, for a moment, but for ever." One of Zossima's principal ideas that particularly touches Alyosha is the elder's view of man's responsibility for another's sins. Zossima maintains that everyone must make himself "responsible for all men's sins . . . for as soon as you sincerely make yourself responsible for everything and for all men, you will see at once that it is really so and that you are to blame for every one and for all things." If one carries this idea to its logical conclusion, we see that Alyosha must eventually take partial responsibility for the murder of his father. This he indeed does, finally realizing that man must become an active participant rather than a passive observer of life. Concerning man's limitation of understanding all that is holy, Zossima says that man is given a mystic sense of his loving bond with the other world. Like Ivan, the elder admits that man cannot understand the mysterious ways of God, but, for Zossima, the very existence of something so mysteriously unexplainable is proof that man owes love and allegiance to a higher power. Zossima takes Ivan's premises, therefore, for his proof of God's existence. "On the final judgment," says the elder, "man will not be asked to account for things which he cannot comprehend, but only for those things he understands." 4. Can a man judge his fellow creatures? -- Zossima believes that no one can judge a criminal. First, one must recognize that no man is only a criminal, and perhaps more than all other men, the seemingly innocent, and not the allegedly guilty, is most to blame for whatever crime has been committed. Alyosha uses such a theory when he refuses to judge Dmitri; furthermore, during his brother's trial, he forgives him. From a realistic point of view, Zossima's views on the criminal are too ideal. Zossima would allow a criminal to go free and hope that he would come to condemn his acts. Such idealism is touchingly naive. And with the same sort of idealism, Zossima advocates kissing the earth, "love it with an unceasing, consuming love." Love of the mother earth, one might note, is central to many of Dostoevsky's novels. In Crime and Punishment, the murderer Raskolnikov is told to go and bow down to the earth, which he has defiled because of his crime. In the poem from Schiller that Dmitri often recites, there is a hymn of praise for the earthly existence. In total loving, then -- loving even the earth -- Zossima says that man can realize an ecstasy that is a "gift of God," not given to many but certainly to the elect. The ideal of a spiritual elite is foreign to Ivan's thinking, but Zossima believes in such a minority and stresses that they should be proud of being elect; their examples will lead others to God's light. 5. Of hell and hell fire, a mystic reflection. -- Zossima's views on this subject do not conform with the orthodox views of the church. Later Ferapont will allude to this fact when he drives the devils from Zossima's cell. Zossima absolutely does not believe in a material hellfire, one that burns and punishes. To him, hell is spiritual agony, growing out of the inner conscience of the damned. If there were material punishment, he says, it would alleviate the spiritual punishment because of its intense physical pain. The greater punishment, the spiritual punishment, is the sinner's recognition that he is forever separated from God. Zossima strays even further from the teachings of the church by his prayers for the condemned. He prays for them because "love can never be an offense to Christ."

pinkmonkey

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/41.txt

finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_15_part_3.txt

Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 40

chapter 40

{"name": "CHAPTER 40", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820050202/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmTessD48.asp", "summary": "On his way to London, from where he will sail to Brazil, Angel meets Izz Huett, one of the milkmaids at Well Bridge Farmhouse. He tells her that he and Tess have separated. Then in a moment of weakness, he asks Izz to accompany him on the trip. She readily agrees and confides honestly to him that, though she loves him, she lacks Tess's selfless love. Angel quickly realizes the foolishness of his invitation and leaves Izz behind. He goes straight to London and sails for Brazil five days later.", "analysis": "Notes Fate continues to work in this chapter. Angel encounters Izz Huett when he stops by Well Bridge Farmhouse. When he tells her of his separation from Tess, Izz is astounded and tells Angel that \"nobody could love 'ee more than Tess did. Her words cause Angel to think and he begins to wonder if he made a wise decision in treating Tess so harshly. He looks forward to his time in Brazil, when he can sort things out for himself. He also thinks that in this foreign land, with different customs and morals, that perhaps he and Tess can eventually make a life for themselves"}

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 40

https://web.archive.org/web/20180820050202/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmTessD48.asp

On his way to London, from where he will sail to Brazil, Angel meets Izz Huett, one of the milkmaids at Well Bridge Farmhouse. He tells her that he and Tess have separated. Then in a moment of weakness, he asks Izz to accompany him on the trip. She readily agrees and confides honestly to him that, though she loves him, she lacks Tess's selfless love. Angel quickly realizes the foolishness of his invitation and leaves Izz behind. He goes straight to London and sails for Brazil five days later.

Notes Fate continues to work in this chapter. Angel encounters Izz Huett when he stops by Well Bridge Farmhouse. When he tells her of his separation from Tess, Izz is astounded and tells Angel that "nobody could love 'ee more than Tess did. Her words cause Angel to think and he begins to wonder if he made a wise decision in treating Tess so harshly. He looks forward to his time in Brazil, when he can sort things out for himself. He also thinks that in this foreign land, with different customs and morals, that perhaps he and Tess can eventually make a life for themselves

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/107-chapters/39.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Far from the Madding Crowd/section_38_part_0.txt

Far from the Madding Crowd.chapter 39

chapter 39

{"name": "Chapter 39", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101052914/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary-and-analysis/chapter-39", "summary": "Bathsheba was riding up steep Yalbury Hill in the gig, with Troy walking alongside. He was no longer in uniform. They were discussing his gambling losses, which he blamed on a wet racetrack. Bathsheba tearfully predicted the eventual forfeit of the farm if he continued his present rate of loss. He grumbled displeasure at her \"chicken-hearted\" wifely ways. A woman appeared at the brow of the hill and, while Troy's back was to her, asked him whether he knew the closing time of the workhouse gates. Her voice startled him, but he did not turn. When she heard him reply, \"she uttered an hysterical cry, and fell down.\" Troy ordered Bathsheba to leave. Alone with the woman, Troy asked her why she had not written. She said that she had been afraid to. Troy gave her the little money he had with him, explaining that his wife kept him short. He told the woman to stay at the workhouse, Casterbridge Union-house, until Monday, when he would meet her on Gray's Bridge, give her as much money as he could obtain, and find lodgings for her. When Troy caught up with Bathsheba, he admitted that he knew the woman, but not her name. \"I think you do.'\" \"'Think if you will, and be -- ' The sentence was completed by a smart cut of the whip round Poppet's flank, which caused the animal to start forward at a wild pace. No more was said.\"", "analysis": "We suspect at once that \"the woman\" is Fanny Robin -- in fact, Troy lets the name slip. Otherwise Hardy maintains the term \"the woman.\" Troy's concern for her is real. Fanny is another victim of his inability, or his refusal, to live by anything but impulse. Impulse dictated his marriage to Bathsheba, which now is obviously crumbling. His childish nature is further revealed by his complete disregard for the financial ruin that his gambling losses will eventually bring about."}

COMING HOME--A CRY On the turnpike road, between Casterbridge and Weatherbury, and about three miles from the former place, is Yalbury Hill, one of those steep long ascents which pervade the highways of this undulating part of South Wessex. In returning from market it is usual for the farmers and other gig-gentry to alight at the bottom and walk up. One Saturday evening in the month of October Bathsheba's vehicle was duly creeping up this incline. She was sitting listlessly in the second seat of the gig, whilst walking beside her in a farmer's marketing suit of unusually fashionable cut was an erect, well-made young man. Though on foot, he held the reins and whip, and occasionally aimed light cuts at the horse's ear with the end of the lash, as a recreation. This man was her husband, formerly Sergeant Troy, who, having bought his discharge with Bathsheba's money, was gradually transforming himself into a farmer of a spirited and very modern school. People of unalterable ideas still insisted upon calling him "Sergeant" when they met him, which was in some degree owing to his having still retained the well-shaped moustache of his military days, and the soldierly bearing inseparable from his form and training. "Yes, if it hadn't been for that wretched rain I should have cleared two hundred as easy as looking, my love," he was saying. "Don't you see, it altered all the chances? To speak like a book I once read, wet weather is the narrative, and fine days are the episodes, of our country's history; now, isn't that true?" "But the time of year is come for changeable weather." "Well, yes. The fact is, these autumn races are the ruin of everybody. Never did I see such a day as 'twas! 'Tis a wild open place, just out of Budmouth, and a drab sea rolled in towards us like liquid misery. Wind and rain--good Lord! Dark? Why, 'twas as black as my hat before the last race was run. 'Twas five o'clock, and you couldn't see the horses till they were almost in, leave alone colours. The ground was as heavy as lead, and all judgment from a fellow's experience went for nothing. Horses, riders, people, were all blown about like ships at sea. Three booths were blown over, and the wretched folk inside crawled out upon their hands and knees; and in the next field were as many as a dozen hats at one time. Ay, Pimpernel regularly stuck fast, when about sixty yards off, and when I saw Policy stepping on, it did knock my heart against the lining of my ribs, I assure you, my love!" "And you mean, Frank," said Bathsheba, sadly--her voice was painfully lowered from the fulness and vivacity of the previous summer--"that you have lost more than a hundred pounds in a month by this dreadful horse-racing? O, Frank, it is cruel; it is foolish of you to take away my money so. We shall have to leave the farm; that will be the end of it!" "Humbug about cruel. Now, there 'tis again--turn on the waterworks; that's just like you." "But you'll promise me not to go to Budmouth second meeting, won't you?" she implored. Bathsheba was at the full depth for tears, but she maintained a dry eye. "I don't see why I should; in fact, if it turns out to be a fine day, I was thinking of taking you." "Never, never! I'll go a hundred miles the other way first. I hate the sound of the very word!" "But the question of going to see the race or staying at home has very little to do with the matter. Bets are all booked safely enough before the race begins, you may depend. Whether it is a bad race for me or a good one, will have very little to do with our going there next Monday." "But you don't mean to say that you have risked anything on this one too!" she exclaimed, with an agonized look. "There now, don't you be a little fool. Wait till you are told. Why, Bathsheba, you have lost all the pluck and sauciness you formerly had, and upon my life if I had known what a chicken-hearted creature you were under all your boldness, I'd never have--I know what." A flash of indignation might have been seen in Bathsheba's dark eyes as she looked resolutely ahead after this reply. They moved on without further speech, some early-withered leaves from the trees which hooded the road at this spot occasionally spinning downward across their path to the earth. A woman appeared on the brow of the hill. The ridge was in a cutting, so that she was very near the husband and wife before she became visible. Troy had turned towards the gig to remount, and whilst putting his foot on the step the woman passed behind him. Though the overshadowing trees and the approach of eventide enveloped them in gloom, Bathsheba could see plainly enough to discern the extreme poverty of the woman's garb, and the sadness of her face. "Please, sir, do you know at what time Casterbridge Union-house closes at night?" The woman said these words to Troy over his shoulder. Troy started visibly at the sound of the voice; yet he seemed to recover presence of mind sufficient to prevent himself from giving way to his impulse to suddenly turn and face her. He said, slowly-- "I don't know." The woman, on hearing him speak, quickly looked up, examined the side of his face, and recognized the soldier under the yeoman's garb. Her face was drawn into an expression which had gladness and agony both among its elements. She uttered an hysterical cry, and fell down. "Oh, poor thing!" exclaimed Bathsheba, instantly preparing to alight. "Stay where you are, and attend to the horse!" said Troy, peremptorily throwing her the reins and the whip. "Walk the horse to the top: I'll see to the woman." "But I--" "Do you hear? Clk--Poppet!" The horse, gig, and Bathsheba moved on. "How on earth did you come here? I thought you were miles away, or dead! Why didn't you write to me?" said Troy to the woman, in a strangely gentle, yet hurried voice, as he lifted her up. "I feared to." "Have you any money?" "None." "Good Heaven--I wish I had more to give you! Here's--wretched--the merest trifle. It is every farthing I have left. I have none but what my wife gives me, you know, and I can't ask her now." The woman made no answer. "I have only another moment," continued Troy; "and now listen. Where are you going to-night? Casterbridge Union?" "Yes; I thought to go there." "You shan't go there; yet, wait. Yes, perhaps for to-night; I can do nothing better--worse luck! Sleep there to-night, and stay there to-morrow. Monday is the first free day I have; and on Monday morning, at ten exactly, meet me on Grey's Bridge just out of the town. I'll bring all the money I can muster. You shan't want--I'll see that, Fanny; then I'll get you a lodging somewhere. Good-bye till then. I am a brute--but good-bye!" After advancing the distance which completed the ascent of the hill, Bathsheba turned her head. The woman was upon her feet, and Bathsheba saw her withdrawing from Troy, and going feebly down the hill by the third milestone from Casterbridge. Troy then came on towards his wife, stepped into the gig, took the reins from her hand, and without making any observation whipped the horse into a trot. He was rather agitated. "Do you know who that woman was?" said Bathsheba, looking searchingly into his face. "I do," he said, looking boldly back into hers. "I thought you did," said she, with angry hauteur, and still regarding him. "Who is she?" He suddenly seemed to think that frankness would benefit neither of the women. "Nothing to either of us," he said. "I know her by sight." "What is her name?" "How should I know her name?" "I think you do." "Think if you will, and be--" The sentence was completed by a smart cut of the whip round Poppet's flank, which caused the animal to start forward at a wild pace. No more was said.

Chapter 39

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101052914/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary-and-analysis/chapter-39

Bathsheba was riding up steep Yalbury Hill in the gig, with Troy walking alongside. He was no longer in uniform. They were discussing his gambling losses, which he blamed on a wet racetrack. Bathsheba tearfully predicted the eventual forfeit of the farm if he continued his present rate of loss. He grumbled displeasure at her "chicken-hearted" wifely ways. A woman appeared at the brow of the hill and, while Troy's back was to her, asked him whether he knew the closing time of the workhouse gates. Her voice startled him, but he did not turn. When she heard him reply, "she uttered an hysterical cry, and fell down." Troy ordered Bathsheba to leave. Alone with the woman, Troy asked her why she had not written. She said that she had been afraid to. Troy gave her the little money he had with him, explaining that his wife kept him short. He told the woman to stay at the workhouse, Casterbridge Union-house, until Monday, when he would meet her on Gray's Bridge, give her as much money as he could obtain, and find lodgings for her. When Troy caught up with Bathsheba, he admitted that he knew the woman, but not her name. "I think you do.'" "'Think if you will, and be -- ' The sentence was completed by a smart cut of the whip round Poppet's flank, which caused the animal to start forward at a wild pace. No more was said."

We suspect at once that "the woman" is Fanny Robin -- in fact, Troy lets the name slip. Otherwise Hardy maintains the term "the woman." Troy's concern for her is real. Fanny is another victim of his inability, or his refusal, to live by anything but impulse. Impulse dictated his marriage to Bathsheba, which now is obviously crumbling. His childish nature is further revealed by his complete disregard for the financial ruin that his gambling losses will eventually bring about.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/57.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_6_part_4.txt

Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 56

chapter 56

{"name": "Chapter 56", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410060617/https://www.gradesaver.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/study-guide/summary-phase-7-chapters-53-59", "summary": "Mrs. Brooks had heard fragments of the conversation between Angel and Tess, and hears Tess return to her room. Mrs. Brooks ascends the stairs and stands at the door of the drawing room. She can hear only a low sort of moaning as Tess sobs, and then hears portions of a conversation between Alec and Tess in which she tells him that Angel has returned and it looks as if he is dying. She tells Alec that she has lost Angel again because of him. Alec replies in sharper words and there is a sudden rustle before Mrs. Brooks hastily retreats down the stairs. Later, Mrs. Brooks notices a red spot on the white ceiling that had grown since the morning and has qualms of misgiving. She finds a workman nearby and asks him to enter the room with her. They find in the room Alec d'Urberville, who has been stabbed in the heart with a knife and is now dead.", "analysis": "Hardy introduces the character of Mrs. Brooks for several purposes. She serves as an entrance into the private conversation between Alec and Tess, giving this conversation a secretive and covert quality. By describing the murder of Alec through Mrs. Brooks' information about it, Hardy leaves ambiguous whether this murder was premeditated, impulse or an act of self-defense. Yet more importantly, Mrs. Brooks places the murder of Alec in a firmly public sphere. Hardy leaves no question that the murder is public knowledge and that the identity of the murderer is in little doubt. This lends a sense of inevitability to the impending tragic end for Tess Durbeyfield"}

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.

Chapter 56

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

Mrs. Brooks had heard fragments of the conversation between Angel and Tess, and hears Tess return to her room. Mrs. Brooks ascends the stairs and stands at the door of the drawing room. She can hear only a low sort of moaning as Tess sobs, and then hears portions of a conversation between Alec and Tess in which she tells him that Angel has returned and it looks as if he is dying. She tells Alec that she has lost Angel again because of him. Alec replies in sharper words and there is a sudden rustle before Mrs. Brooks hastily retreats down the stairs. Later, Mrs. Brooks notices a red spot on the white ceiling that had grown since the morning and has qualms of misgiving. She finds a workman nearby and asks him to enter the room with her. They find in the room Alec d'Urberville, who has been stabbed in the heart with a knife and is now dead.

Hardy introduces the character of Mrs. Brooks for several purposes. She serves as an entrance into the private conversation between Alec and Tess, giving this conversation a secretive and covert quality. By describing the murder of Alec through Mrs. Brooks' information about it, Hardy leaves ambiguous whether this murder was premeditated, impulse or an act of self-defense. Yet more importantly, Mrs. Brooks places the murder of Alec in a firmly public sphere. Hardy leaves no question that the murder is public knowledge and that the identity of the murderer is in little doubt. This lends a sense of inevitability to the impending tragic end for Tess Durbeyfield

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/08.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Tess of the d'Urbervilles/section_1_part_8.txt

Tess of the d'Urbervilles.chapter viii

chapter viii

{"name": "Chapter VIII", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210213065711/https://www.novelguide.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summaries/phase1-chapter1-11", "summary": "On their way to Trantridge, Alec terrifies Tess by driving quickly down the steep hill. He orders her to hang on to his waist and assures her he will drive more slowly if she agrees to let him kiss her on the cheek. Since she has no other choice, she allows the kiss but quickly wipes her cheek. This infuriates him. He is forced to stop after she drops her hat, on purpose, and Tess jumps out and continues the journey on foot", "analysis": ""}

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.

Chapter VIII

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

On their way to Trantridge, Alec terrifies Tess by driving quickly down the steep hill. He orders her to hang on to his waist and assures her he will drive more slowly if she agrees to let him kiss her on the cheek. Since she has no other choice, she allows the kiss but quickly wipes her cheek. This infuriates him. He is forced to stop after she drops her hat, on purpose, and Tess jumps out and continues the journey on foot

pinkmonkey

all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/35.txt

finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Lord Jim/section_34_part_0.txt

Lord Jim.chapter 35

chapter 35

{"name": "Chapter 35", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820051943/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmLordJim44.asp", "summary": "When it was time for Marlow to leave Patusan, Jim went down to the river and actually traveled a short way with his departing friend. When Jim deboarded, a fisherman complained to him about Raja Allang's men troubling him. Jim told Marlow that he would go and remind the Raja that things had changed in Patusan and that he needed to back off. The two men shook hands, and Marlow boarded his schooner. Jim felt depressed because of Marlow's departure. He knew Marlow would never return to Patusan. As Marlow sailed away, he remembered what Stein had said: \"In the destructive element immerse!\" Jim had done exactly that. As he looked back on his friend, Jim, appeared as a tiny white speck which seemed to catch all the light left in the darkened world; and then he disappeared from view, lost forever to Marlow.", "analysis": "Notes Jim is depressed at Marlow's departure, for he has been a friend to disperse the loneliness and a contact with the outside world. On the other hand, Marlow feels relieved to be leaving Patusan, where he felt stifled and afraid. He knows he will never return to the island and believes he will never see Jim again. It is important to notice how the departing Marlow views Jim as a tiny white speck. Jim is immersed in the darkness; the night will swallow him, but his light will never go out. The gloomy Mood intensifies in this chapter, further foreshadowing the impending tragedy. Almost everything is colored black; there are black figures, a black bird, a black canoe, and black men. For Conrad, everything black or dark is evil, fearful, and ominous; by contrast, white symbolizes goodness, innocence, and purity. This philosophy, a clear statement of white supremacy, leads Conrad to believe that the whites of Europe are preferable to the dark Malaysians. Throughout the novel, Marlow has told the story through first person narration, without entering Jim's mind. This chapter marks an end to the story from Marlow's objective point of view; the rest of the story will be told through reports and documents. This chapter also marks the last meeting of Jim and Marlow in person."}

'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/20180820051943/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmLordJim44.asp

When it was time for Marlow to leave Patusan, Jim went down to the river and actually traveled a short way with his departing friend. When Jim deboarded, a fisherman complained to him about Raja Allang's men troubling him. Jim told Marlow that he would go and remind the Raja that things had changed in Patusan and that he needed to back off. The two men shook hands, and Marlow boarded his schooner. Jim felt depressed because of Marlow's departure. He knew Marlow would never return to Patusan. As Marlow sailed away, he remembered what Stein had said: "In the destructive element immerse!" Jim had done exactly that. As he looked back on his friend, Jim, appeared as a tiny white speck which seemed to catch all the light left in the darkened world; and then he disappeared from view, lost forever to Marlow.

Notes Jim is depressed at Marlow's departure, for he has been a friend to disperse the loneliness and a contact with the outside world. On the other hand, Marlow feels relieved to be leaving Patusan, where he felt stifled and afraid. He knows he will never return to the island and believes he will never see Jim again. It is important to notice how the departing Marlow views Jim as a tiny white speck. Jim is immersed in the darkness; the night will swallow him, but his light will never go out. The gloomy Mood intensifies in this chapter, further foreshadowing the impending tragedy. Almost everything is colored black; there are black figures, a black bird, a black canoe, and black men. For Conrad, everything black or dark is evil, fearful, and ominous; by contrast, white symbolizes goodness, innocence, and purity. This philosophy, a clear statement of white supremacy, leads Conrad to believe that the whites of Europe are preferable to the dark Malaysians. Throughout the novel, Marlow has told the story through first person narration, without entering Jim's mind. This chapter marks an end to the story from Marlow's objective point of view; the rest of the story will be told through reports and documents. This chapter also marks the last meeting of Jim and Marlow in person.

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/chapters_16_to_19.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/Sense and Sensibility/section_3_part_0.txt

Sense and Sensibility.chapters 16-19

chapters 16-19

{"name": "Chapters 16-19", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210123003206/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/sensibility/section4/", "summary": "Marianne finds herself unable to eat or sleep following Willoughby's sudden departure, yet to her mother's surprise, she also does not appear to be expecting a letter from him. However, when Mrs. Jennings remarks that they have stopped their communal reading of Hamlet since Willoughby's departure, Marianne assures her that she expects Willoughby back within a few weeks. One morning, about a week after Willoughby's departure, the three sisters are out walking when they see a man approach on horseback. Marianne at first thinks it is Willoughby, but the rider turns out to be Edward Ferrars, who is on his way to visit them at Barton. Marianne greets him warmly, but Elinor waits to see how he will act toward them. To both girls' surprise, Edward, though cordial, is much more distant and reserved than they expect a lover to behave. However, Marianne is assured of his affection for Elinor when she notices that he is wearing a locket-like ring that contains a lock of hair; although Edward claims it is Fanny's hair, Marianne remains convinced that it is actually her sister's. Elinor, however, has no recollection of allowing Edward to remove this token of affection. One day during his week-long visit, Edward discusses his prospects with the Dashwoods. He tells them that he has no intention of finding a profession for himself; he prefers to remain an \"idle, helpless being\" in spite of his mother's high expectations of him. Marianne assures him that he does not need wealth or grandeur to be happy, but Elinor protests that wealth has much to do with happiness. The daughters then begin to fantasize about what they would do if each were granted a large fortune: Marianne would purchase all her favorite music and books. However, she hints that she would spend the majority of her fortune on facilitating her marriage to Willoughby. Elinor assures Edward that her sister has remained steadfast in her conviction that a person can only be in love once. This leads to a discussion of character and human nature in which Elinor reminds her sister that it is important to treat all people with civility, but that one should not necessarily adopt their sentiments. After a week of walks, dances, and visits to Sir John's estate at Barton Park, Edward ruefully explains that he must leave them. Elinor tries to account for the brevity of his visit by assuring herself that he must have some task to fulfill for his demanding mother. After he leaves, she tries to occupy herself by working diligently at her drawing table, though she still finds herself thinking frequently of Edward. The arrival of a large party at Barton Cottage interrupts one of her drawing table reveries. Sir John knocks on the casement and announces that along with Lady Middleton and Mrs. Jennings, he has brought his wife's sister and her husband, the Palmers. Mrs. Charlotte Palmer is a lively woman, expecting a child, but her husband sits reading the newspaper throughout the entire visit. Sir John encourages the Dashwood girls to join them for dinner the next day, and they find themselves unfortunately unable to decline his invitation.", "analysis": "Commentary At the beginning of the chapter, Marianne behaves as she believes a disappointed lover ought to act. She cultivates her own grief by reading only what she and Willoughby read together and by singing only their songs at the piano. She makes sure that she does not sleep at all on the first night after his departure and draws her mother and sister into her own gloom. Marianne makes herself and those around her as miserable as possible, unlike Elinor, who conceals her grief from her family; when she believes Edward no longer cares for her, she sits alone at her drawing table in silent thought. One of the governing themes of these chapters is the value of privacy, but also the confusions that result from secrecy and concealment. Since Marianne conceals any sort of understanding that may exist between herself and Willoughby about their status as a couple, Mrs. Dashwood and Elinor can only speculate about their status based on her misery and her remark to Mrs. Jennings about his expected return in a few weeks. Likewise, Elinor does not greet Edward with the warm and open regard of a lover but instead awaits his reactio; but as he is not forthcoming with his own emotions, this tactic leaves her to wonder if his feelings have changed. Marianne finds Edward's reserve puzzling as well. In a further instance of willful concealment, Edward clearly dissembles when he claims that the lock of hair in his ring once belonged to his sister, an echo of Margaret's eager whisper to Elinor that she saw Willoughby remove a lock of Marianne's hair. This preoccupation with secrets is evident also in the behavior of the Palmers: Mrs. Jennings leans towards Elinor and speaks in a low voice to inform her that Mrs. Palmer is pregnant, and Mr. Palmer hides his face behind a newspaper for the duration of their visit. Everyone in these chapters seems bent on concealing their own situation from the eyes of others; the ensuing misunderstandings and ambiguities fuel the plot the novel. The earlier Shakespearean reference to Queen Mab receives a second mention when the Dashwood sisters see a man approaching on horseback during their walk, and Marianne is convinced that it must be her beloved Willoughby. \"Queen Mab\" was the name of the horse that Willoughby was to give her, yet the horse was never more than a dream, for the Dashwoods could not afford such a gift. In this chapter, Marianne's identification of the horse's rider proves to be yet another vain fantasy like Queen Mab's dreams, for it is not Willoughby but Edward Ferrars who rides up to greet them. When Edward first rides up to the Dashwood sisters, he comments on the dirty lanes he had to traverse to reach Barton Cottage. Roads are essential to the action of the novel because they facilitate the connections among characters. Austen structures the novel according to journeys, including the Dashwoods' journey from Norland to Barton, Willoughby's and Edward's journeys to Barton, and Elinor and Marianne's journey to London with Mrs. Jennings. Although Mrs. Dashwood sells their carriage when they leave Norland, the Dashwood sisters are still able to maintain a lively social life because of the journeys that Brandon, Willoughby, Edward, the Palmers, and the Steeles undertake to visit Barton. This prevalence of journeys is significant: in Austen's day, improved roads linked parishes and towns to one another and to the nexus of all connections, London. Austen was thus highly aware of the changes roads could bring to people's lives. In a novel built around attachments and connections, dirty lanes are a feature of the landscape as well as a plot device."}

Marianne would have thought herself very inexcusable had she been able to sleep at all the first night after parting from Willoughby. She would have been ashamed to look her family in the face the next morning, had she not risen from her bed in more need of repose than when she lay down in it. But the feelings which made such composure a disgrace, left her in no danger of incurring it. She was awake the whole night, and she wept the greatest part of it. She got up with a headache, was unable to talk, and unwilling to take any nourishment; giving pain every moment to her mother and sisters, and forbidding all attempt at consolation from either. Her sensibility was potent enough! When breakfast was over she walked out by herself, and wandered about the village of Allenham, indulging the recollection of past enjoyment and crying over the present reverse for the chief of the morning. The evening passed off in the equal indulgence of feeling. She played over every favourite song that she had been used to play to Willoughby, every air in which their voices had been oftenest joined, and sat at the instrument gazing on every line of music that he had written out for her, till her heart was so heavy that no farther sadness could be gained; and this nourishment of grief was every day applied. She spent whole hours at the pianoforte alternately singing and crying; her voice often totally suspended by her tears. In books too, as well as in music, she courted the misery which a contrast between the past and present was certain of giving. She read nothing but what they had been used to read together. Such violence of affliction indeed could not be supported for ever; it sunk within a few days into a calmer melancholy; but these employments, to which she daily recurred, her solitary walks and silent meditations, still produced occasional effusions of sorrow as lively as ever. No letter from Willoughby came; and none seemed expected by Marianne. Her mother was surprised, and Elinor again became uneasy. But Mrs. Dashwood could find explanations whenever she wanted them, which at least satisfied herself. "Remember, Elinor," said she, "how very often Sir John fetches our letters himself from the post, and carries them to it. We have already agreed that secrecy may be necessary, and we must acknowledge that it could not be maintained if their correspondence were to pass through Sir John's hands." Elinor could not deny the truth of this, and she tried to find in it a motive sufficient for their silence. But there was one method so direct, so simple, and in her opinion so eligible of knowing the real state of the affair, and of instantly removing all mystery, that she could not help suggesting it to her mother. "Why do you not ask Marianne at once," said she, "whether she is or she is not engaged to Willoughby? From you, her mother, and so kind, so indulgent a mother, the question could not give offence. It would be the natural result of your affection for her. She used to be all unreserve, and to you more especially." "I would not ask such a question for the world. Supposing it possible that they are not engaged, what distress would not such an enquiry inflict! At any rate it would be most ungenerous. I should never deserve her confidence again, after forcing from her a confession of what is meant at present to be unacknowledged to any one. I know Marianne's heart: I know that she dearly loves me, and that I shall not be the last to whom the affair is made known, when circumstances make the revealment of it eligible. I would not attempt to force the confidence of any one; of a child much less; because a sense of duty would prevent the denial which her wishes might direct." Elinor thought this generosity overstrained, considering her sister's youth, and urged the matter farther, but in vain; common sense, common care, common prudence, were all sunk in Mrs. Dashwood's romantic delicacy. It was several days before Willoughby's name was mentioned before Marianne by any of her family; Sir John and Mrs. Jennings, indeed, were not so nice; their witticisms added pain to many a painful hour;--but one evening, Mrs. Dashwood, accidentally taking up a volume of Shakespeare, exclaimed, "We have never finished Hamlet, Marianne; our dear Willoughby went away before we could get through it. We will put it by, that when he comes again...But it may be months, perhaps, before THAT happens." "Months!" cried Marianne, with strong surprise. "No--nor many weeks." Mrs. Dashwood was sorry for what she had said; but it gave Elinor pleasure, as it produced a reply from Marianne so expressive of confidence in Willoughby and knowledge of his intentions. One morning, about a week after his leaving the country, Marianne was prevailed on to join her sisters in their usual walk, instead of wandering away by herself. Hitherto she had carefully avoided every companion in her rambles. If her sisters intended to walk on the downs, she directly stole away towards the lanes; if they talked of the valley, she was as speedy in climbing the hills, and could never be found when the others set off. But at length she was secured by the exertions of Elinor, who greatly disapproved such continual seclusion. They walked along the road through the valley, and chiefly in silence, for Marianne's MIND could not be controlled, and Elinor, satisfied with gaining one point, would not then attempt more. Beyond the entrance of the valley, where the country, though still rich, was less wild and more open, a long stretch of the road which they had travelled on first coming to Barton, lay before them; and on reaching that point, they stopped to look around them, and examine a prospect which formed the distance of their view from the cottage, from a spot which they had never happened to reach in any of their walks before. Amongst the objects in the scene, they soon discovered an animated one; it was a man on horseback riding towards them. In a few minutes they could distinguish him to be a gentleman; and in a moment afterwards Marianne rapturously exclaimed, "It is he; it is indeed;--I know it is!"--and was hastening to meet him, when Elinor cried out, "Indeed, Marianne, I think you are mistaken. It is not Willoughby. The person is not tall enough for him, and has not his air." "He has, he has," cried Marianne, "I am sure he has. His air, his coat, his horse. I knew how soon he would come." She walked eagerly on as she spoke; and Elinor, to screen Marianne from particularity, as she felt almost certain of its not being Willoughby, quickened her pace and kept up with her. They were soon within thirty yards of the gentleman. Marianne looked again; her heart sunk within her; and abruptly turning round, she was hurrying back, when the voices of both her sisters were raised to detain her; a third, almost as well known as Willoughby's, joined them in begging her to stop, and she turned round with surprise to see and welcome Edward Ferrars. He was the only person in the world who could at that moment be forgiven for not being Willoughby; the only one who could have gained a smile from her; but she dispersed her tears to smile on HIM, and in her sister's happiness forgot for a time her own disappointment. He dismounted, and giving his horse to his servant, walked back with them to Barton, whither he was purposely coming to visit them. He was welcomed by them all with great cordiality, but especially by Marianne, who showed more warmth of regard in her reception of him than even Elinor herself. To Marianne, indeed, the meeting between Edward and her sister was but a continuation of that unaccountable coldness which she had often observed at Norland in their mutual behaviour. On Edward's side, more particularly, there was a deficiency of all that a lover ought to look and say on such an occasion. He was confused, seemed scarcely sensible of pleasure in seeing them, looked neither rapturous nor gay, said little but what was forced from him by questions, and distinguished Elinor by no mark of affection. Marianne saw and listened with increasing surprise. She began almost to feel a dislike of Edward; and it ended, as every feeling must end with her, by carrying back her thoughts to Willoughby, whose manners formed a contrast sufficiently striking to those of his brother elect. After a short silence which succeeded the first surprise and enquiries of meeting, Marianne asked Edward if he came directly from London. No, he had been in Devonshire a fortnight. "A fortnight!" she repeated, surprised at his being so long in the same county with Elinor without seeing her before. He looked rather distressed as he added, that he had been staying with some friends near Plymouth. "Have you been lately in Sussex?" said Elinor. "I was at Norland about a month ago." "And how does dear, dear Norland look?" cried Marianne. "Dear, dear Norland," said Elinor, "probably looks much as it always does at this time of the year. The woods and walks thickly covered with dead leaves." "Oh," cried Marianne, "with what transporting sensation have I formerly seen them fall! How have I delighted, as I walked, to see them driven in showers about me by the wind! What feelings have they, the season, the air altogether inspired! Now there is no one to regard them. They are seen only as a nuisance, swept hastily off, and driven as much as possible from the sight." "It is not every one," said Elinor, "who has your passion for dead leaves." "No; my feelings are not often shared, not often understood. But SOMETIMES they are."--As she said this, she sunk into a reverie for a few moments;--but rousing herself again, "Now, Edward," said she, calling his attention to the prospect, "here is Barton valley. Look up to it, and be tranquil if you can. Look at those hills! Did you ever see their equals? To the left is Barton park, amongst those woods and plantations. You may see the end of the house. And there, beneath that farthest hill, which rises with such grandeur, is our cottage." "It is a beautiful country," he replied; "but these bottoms must be dirty in winter." "How can you think of dirt, with such objects before you?" "Because," replied he, smiling, "among the rest of the objects before me, I see a very dirty lane." "How strange!" said Marianne to herself as she walked on. "Have you an agreeable neighbourhood here? Are the Middletons pleasant people?" "No, not all," answered Marianne; "we could not be more unfortunately situated." "Marianne," cried her sister, "how can you say so? How can you be so unjust? They are a very respectable family, Mr. Ferrars; and towards us have behaved in the friendliest manner. Have you forgot, Marianne, how many pleasant days we have owed to them?" "No," said Marianne, in a low voice, "nor how many painful moments." Elinor took no notice of this; and directing her attention to their visitor, endeavoured to support something like discourse with him, by talking of their present residence, its conveniences, &c. extorting from him occasional questions and remarks. His coldness and reserve mortified her severely; she was vexed and half angry; but resolving to regulate her behaviour to him by the past rather than the present, she avoided every appearance of resentment or displeasure, and treated him as she thought he ought to be treated from the family connection. Mrs. Dashwood was surprised only for a moment at seeing him; for his coming to Barton was, in her opinion, of all things the most natural. Her joy and expression of regard long outlived her wonder. He received the kindest welcome from her; and shyness, coldness, reserve could not stand against such a reception. They had begun to fail him before he entered the house, and they were quite overcome by the captivating manners of Mrs. Dashwood. Indeed a man could not very well be in love with either of her daughters, without extending the passion to her; and Elinor had the satisfaction of seeing him soon become more like himself. His affections seemed to reanimate towards them all, and his interest in their welfare again became perceptible. He was not in spirits, however; he praised their house, admired its prospect, was attentive, and kind; but still he was not in spirits. The whole family perceived it, and Mrs. Dashwood, attributing it to some want of liberality in his mother, sat down to table indignant against all selfish parents. "What are Mrs. Ferrars's views for you at present, Edward?" said she, when dinner was over and they had drawn round the fire; "are you still to be a great orator in spite of yourself?" "No. I hope my mother is now convinced that I have no more talents than inclination for a public life!" "But how is your fame to be established? for famous you must be to satisfy all your family; and with no inclination for expense, no affection for strangers, no profession, and no assurance, you may find it a difficult matter." "I shall not attempt it. I have no wish to be distinguished; and have every reason to hope I never shall. Thank Heaven! I cannot be forced into genius and eloquence." "You have no ambition, I well know. Your wishes are all moderate." "As moderate as those of the rest of the world, I believe. I wish as well as every body else to be perfectly happy; but, like every body else it must be in my own way. Greatness will not make me so." "Strange that it would!" cried Marianne. "What have wealth or grandeur to do with happiness?" "Grandeur has but little," said Elinor, "but wealth has much to do with it." "Elinor, for shame!" said Marianne, "money can only give happiness where there is nothing else to give it. Beyond a competence, it can afford no real satisfaction, as far as mere self is concerned." "Perhaps," said Elinor, smiling, "we may come to the same point. YOUR competence and MY wealth are very much alike, I dare say; and without them, as the world goes now, we shall both agree that every kind of external comfort must be wanting. Your ideas are only more noble than mine. Come, what is your competence?" "About eighteen hundred or two thousand a year; not more than THAT." Elinor laughed. "TWO thousand a year! ONE is my wealth! I guessed how it would end." "And yet two thousand a-year is a very moderate income," said Marianne. "A family cannot well be maintained on a smaller. I am sure I am not extravagant in my demands. A proper establishment of servants, a carriage, perhaps two, and hunters, cannot be supported on less." Elinor smiled again, to hear her sister describing so accurately their future expenses at Combe Magna. "Hunters!" repeated Edward--"but why must you have hunters? Every body does not hunt." Marianne coloured as she replied, "But most people do." "I wish," said Margaret, striking out a novel thought, "that somebody would give us all a large fortune apiece!" "Oh that they would!" cried Marianne, her eyes sparkling with animation, and her cheeks glowing with the delight of such imaginary happiness. "We are all unanimous in that wish, I suppose," said Elinor, "in spite of the insufficiency of wealth." "Oh dear!" cried Margaret, "how happy I should be! I wonder what I should do with it!" Marianne looked as if she had no doubt on that point. "I should be puzzled to spend so large a fortune myself," said Mrs. Dashwood, "if my children were all to be rich without my help." "You must begin your improvements on this house," observed Elinor, "and your difficulties will soon vanish." "What magnificent orders would travel from this family to London," said Edward, "in such an event! What a happy day for booksellers, music-sellers, and print-shops! You, Miss Dashwood, would give a general commission for every new print of merit to be sent you--and as for Marianne, I know her greatness of soul, there would not be music enough in London to content her. And books!--Thomson, Cowper, Scott--she would buy them all over and over again: she would buy up every copy, I believe, to prevent their falling into unworthy hands; and she would have every book that tells her how to admire an old twisted tree. Should not you, Marianne? Forgive me, if I am very saucy. But I was willing to shew you that I had not forgot our old disputes." "I love to be reminded of the past, Edward--whether it be melancholy or gay, I love to recall it--and you will never offend me by talking of former times. You are very right in supposing how my money would be spent--some of it, at least--my loose cash would certainly be employed in improving my collection of music and books." "And the bulk of your fortune would be laid out in annuities on the authors or their heirs." "No, Edward, I should have something else to do with it." "Perhaps, then, you would bestow it as a reward on that person who wrote the ablest defence of your favourite maxim, that no one can ever be in love more than once in their life--your opinion on that point is unchanged, I presume?" "Undoubtedly. At my time of life opinions are tolerably fixed. It is not likely that I should now see or hear any thing to change them." "Marianne is as steadfast as ever, you see," said Elinor, "she is not at all altered." "She is only grown a little more grave than she was." "Nay, Edward," said Marianne, "you need not reproach me. You are not very gay yourself." "Why should you think so!" replied he, with a sigh. "But gaiety never was a part of MY character." "Nor do I think it a part of Marianne's," said Elinor; "I should hardly call her a lively girl--she is very earnest, very eager in all she does--sometimes talks a great deal and always with animation--but she is not often really merry." "I believe you are right," he replied, "and yet I have always set her down as a lively girl." "I have frequently detected myself in such kind of mistakes," said Elinor, "in a total misapprehension of character in some point or other: fancying people so much more gay or grave, or ingenious or stupid than they really are, and I can hardly tell why or in what the deception originated. Sometimes one is guided by what they say of themselves, and very frequently by what other people say of them, without giving oneself time to deliberate and judge." "But I thought it was right, Elinor," said Marianne, "to be guided wholly by the opinion of other people. I thought our judgments were given us merely to be subservient to those of neighbours. This has always been your doctrine, I am sure." "No, Marianne, never. My doctrine has never aimed at the subjection of the understanding. All I have ever attempted to influence has been the behaviour. You must not confound my meaning. I am guilty, I confess, of having often wished you to treat our acquaintance in general with greater attention; but when have I advised you to adopt their sentiments or to conform to their judgment in serious matters?" "You have not been able to bring your sister over to your plan of general civility," said Edward to Elinor. "Do you gain no ground?" "Quite the contrary," replied Elinor, looking expressively at Marianne. "My judgment," he returned, "is all on your side of the question; but I am afraid my practice is much more on your sister's. I never wish to offend, but I am so foolishly shy, that I often seem negligent, when I am only kept back by my natural awkwardness. I have frequently thought that I must have been intended by nature to be fond of low company, I am so little at my ease among strangers of gentility!" "Marianne has not shyness to excuse any inattention of hers," said Elinor. "She knows her own worth too well for false shame," replied Edward. "Shyness is only the effect of a sense of inferiority in some way or other. If I could persuade myself that my manners were perfectly easy and graceful, I should not be shy." "But you would still be reserved," said Marianne, "and that is worse." Edward started--"Reserved! Am I reserved, Marianne?" "Yes, very." "I do not understand you," replied he, colouring. "Reserved!--how, in what manner? What am I to tell you? What can you suppose?" Elinor looked surprised at his emotion; but trying to laugh off the subject, she said to him, "Do not you know my sister well enough to understand what she means? Do not you know she calls every one reserved who does not talk as fast, and admire what she admires as rapturously as herself?" Edward made no answer. His gravity and thoughtfulness returned on him in their fullest extent--and he sat for some time silent and dull. Elinor saw, with great uneasiness the low spirits of her friend. His visit afforded her but a very partial satisfaction, while his own enjoyment in it appeared so imperfect. It was evident that he was unhappy; she wished it were equally evident that he still distinguished her by the same affection which once she had felt no doubt of inspiring; but hitherto the continuance of his preference seemed very uncertain; and the reservedness of his manner towards her contradicted one moment what a more animated look had intimated the preceding one. He joined her and Marianne in the breakfast-room the next morning before the others were down; and Marianne, who was always eager to promote their happiness as far as she could, soon left them to themselves. But before she was half way upstairs she heard the parlour door open, and, turning round, was astonished to see Edward himself come out. "I am going into the village to see my horses," said he, "as you are not yet ready for breakfast; I shall be back again presently." *** Edward returned to them with fresh admiration of the surrounding country; in his walk to the village, he had seen many parts of the valley to advantage; and the village itself, in a much higher situation than the cottage, afforded a general view of the whole, which had exceedingly pleased him. This was a subject which ensured Marianne's attention, and she was beginning to describe her own admiration of these scenes, and to question him more minutely on the objects that had particularly struck him, when Edward interrupted her by saying, "You must not enquire too far, Marianne--remember I have no knowledge in the picturesque, and I shall offend you by my ignorance and want of taste if we come to particulars. I shall call hills steep, which ought to be bold; surfaces strange and uncouth, which ought to be irregular and rugged; and distant objects out of sight, which ought only to be indistinct through the soft medium of a hazy atmosphere. You must be satisfied with such admiration as I can honestly give. I call it a very fine country--the hills are steep, the woods seem full of fine timber, and the valley looks comfortable and snug--with rich meadows and several neat farm houses scattered here and there. It exactly answers my idea of a fine country, because it unites beauty with utility--and I dare say it is a picturesque one too, because you admire it; I can easily believe it to be full of rocks and promontories, grey moss and brush wood, but these are all lost on me. I know nothing of the picturesque." "I am afraid it is but too true," said Marianne; "but why should you boast of it?" "I suspect," said Elinor, "that to avoid one kind of affectation, Edward here falls into another. Because he believes many people pretend to more admiration of the beauties of nature than they really feel, and is disgusted with such pretensions, he affects greater indifference and less discrimination in viewing them himself than he possesses. He is fastidious and will have an affectation of his own." "It is very true," said Marianne, "that admiration of landscape scenery is become a mere jargon. Every body pretends to feel and tries to describe with the taste and elegance of him who first defined what picturesque beauty was. I detest jargon of every kind, and sometimes I have kept my feelings to myself, because I could find no language to describe them in but what was worn and hackneyed out of all sense and meaning." "I am convinced," said Edward, "that you really feel all the delight in a fine prospect which you profess to feel. But, in return, your sister must allow me to feel no more than I profess. I like a fine prospect, but not on picturesque principles. I do not like crooked, twisted, blasted trees. I admire them much more if they are tall, straight, and flourishing. I do not like ruined, tattered cottages. I am not fond of nettles or thistles, or heath blossoms. I have more pleasure in a snug farm-house than a watch-tower--and a troop of tidy, happy villages please me better than the finest banditti in the world." Marianne looked with amazement at Edward, with compassion at her sister. Elinor only laughed. The subject was continued no farther; and Marianne remained thoughtfully silent, till a new object suddenly engaged her attention. She was sitting by Edward, and in taking his tea from Mrs. Dashwood, his hand passed so directly before her, as to make a ring, with a plait of hair in the centre, very conspicuous on one of his fingers. "I never saw you wear a ring before, Edward," she cried. "Is that Fanny's hair? I remember her promising to give you some. But I should have thought her hair had been darker." Marianne spoke inconsiderately what she really felt--but when she saw how much she had pained Edward, her own vexation at her want of thought could not be surpassed by his. He coloured very deeply, and giving a momentary glance at Elinor, replied, "Yes; it is my sister's hair. The setting always casts a different shade on it, you know." Elinor had met his eye, and looked conscious likewise. That the hair was her own, she instantaneously felt as well satisfied as Marianne; the only difference in their conclusions was, that what Marianne considered as a free gift from her sister, Elinor was conscious must have been procured by some theft or contrivance unknown to herself. She was not in a humour, however, to regard it as an affront, and affecting to take no notice of what passed, by instantly talking of something else, she internally resolved henceforward to catch every opportunity of eyeing the hair and of satisfying herself, beyond all doubt, that it was exactly the shade of her own. Edward's embarrassment lasted some time, and it ended in an absence of mind still more settled. He was particularly grave the whole morning. Marianne severely censured herself for what she had said; but her own forgiveness might have been more speedy, had she known how little offence it had given her sister. Before the middle of the day, they were visited by Sir John and Mrs. Jennings, who, having heard of the arrival of a gentleman at the cottage, came to take a survey of the guest. With the assistance of his mother-in-law, Sir John was not long in discovering that the name of Ferrars began with an F. and this prepared a future mine of raillery against the devoted Elinor, which nothing but the newness of their acquaintance with Edward could have prevented from being immediately sprung. But, as it was, she only learned, from some very significant looks, how far their penetration, founded on Margaret's instructions, extended. Sir John never came to the Dashwoods without either inviting them to dine at the park the next day, or to drink tea with them that evening. On the present occasion, for the better entertainment of their visitor, towards whose amusement he felt himself bound to contribute, he wished to engage them for both. "You MUST drink tea with us to night," said he, "for we shall be quite alone--and tomorrow you must absolutely dine with us, for we shall be a large party." Mrs. Jennings enforced the necessity. "And who knows but you may raise a dance," said she. "And that will tempt YOU, Miss Marianne." "A dance!" cried Marianne. "Impossible! Who is to dance?" "Who! why yourselves, and the Careys, and Whitakers to be sure.--What! you thought nobody could dance because a certain person that shall be nameless is gone!" "I wish with all my soul," cried Sir John, "that Willoughby were among us again." This, and Marianne's blushing, gave new suspicions to Edward. "And who is Willoughby?" said he, in a low voice, to Miss Dashwood, by whom he was sitting. She gave him a brief reply. Marianne's countenance was more communicative. Edward saw enough to comprehend, not only the meaning of others, but such of Marianne's expressions as had puzzled him before; and when their visitors left them, he went immediately round her, and said, in a whisper, "I have been guessing. Shall I tell you my guess?" "What do you mean?" "Shall I tell you." "Certainly." "Well then; I guess that Mr. Willoughby hunts." Marianne was surprised and confused, yet she could not help smiling at the quiet archness of his manner, and after a moment's silence, said, "Oh, Edward! How can you?--But the time will come I hope...I am sure you will like him." "I do not doubt it," replied he, rather astonished at her earnestness and warmth; for had he not imagined it to be a joke for the good of her acquaintance in general, founded only on a something or a nothing between Mr. Willoughby and herself, he would not have ventured to mention it. 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."

Chapters 16-19

https://web.archive.org/web/20210123003206/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/sensibility/section4/

Marianne finds herself unable to eat or sleep following Willoughby's sudden departure, yet to her mother's surprise, she also does not appear to be expecting a letter from him. However, when Mrs. Jennings remarks that they have stopped their communal reading of Hamlet since Willoughby's departure, Marianne assures her that she expects Willoughby back within a few weeks. One morning, about a week after Willoughby's departure, the three sisters are out walking when they see a man approach on horseback. Marianne at first thinks it is Willoughby, but the rider turns out to be Edward Ferrars, who is on his way to visit them at Barton. Marianne greets him warmly, but Elinor waits to see how he will act toward them. To both girls' surprise, Edward, though cordial, is much more distant and reserved than they expect a lover to behave. However, Marianne is assured of his affection for Elinor when she notices that he is wearing a locket-like ring that contains a lock of hair; although Edward claims it is Fanny's hair, Marianne remains convinced that it is actually her sister's. Elinor, however, has no recollection of allowing Edward to remove this token of affection. One day during his week-long visit, Edward discusses his prospects with the Dashwoods. He tells them that he has no intention of finding a profession for himself; he prefers to remain an "idle, helpless being" in spite of his mother's high expectations of him. Marianne assures him that he does not need wealth or grandeur to be happy, but Elinor protests that wealth has much to do with happiness. The daughters then begin to fantasize about what they would do if each were granted a large fortune: Marianne would purchase all her favorite music and books. However, she hints that she would spend the majority of her fortune on facilitating her marriage to Willoughby. Elinor assures Edward that her sister has remained steadfast in her conviction that a person can only be in love once. This leads to a discussion of character and human nature in which Elinor reminds her sister that it is important to treat all people with civility, but that one should not necessarily adopt their sentiments. After a week of walks, dances, and visits to Sir John's estate at Barton Park, Edward ruefully explains that he must leave them. Elinor tries to account for the brevity of his visit by assuring herself that he must have some task to fulfill for his demanding mother. After he leaves, she tries to occupy herself by working diligently at her drawing table, though she still finds herself thinking frequently of Edward. The arrival of a large party at Barton Cottage interrupts one of her drawing table reveries. Sir John knocks on the casement and announces that along with Lady Middleton and Mrs. Jennings, he has brought his wife's sister and her husband, the Palmers. Mrs. Charlotte Palmer is a lively woman, expecting a child, but her husband sits reading the newspaper throughout the entire visit. Sir John encourages the Dashwood girls to join them for dinner the next day, and they find themselves unfortunately unable to decline his invitation.

Commentary At the beginning of the chapter, Marianne behaves as she believes a disappointed lover ought to act. She cultivates her own grief by reading only what she and Willoughby read together and by singing only their songs at the piano. She makes sure that she does not sleep at all on the first night after his departure and draws her mother and sister into her own gloom. Marianne makes herself and those around her as miserable as possible, unlike Elinor, who conceals her grief from her family; when she believes Edward no longer cares for her, she sits alone at her drawing table in silent thought. One of the governing themes of these chapters is the value of privacy, but also the confusions that result from secrecy and concealment. Since Marianne conceals any sort of understanding that may exist between herself and Willoughby about their status as a couple, Mrs. Dashwood and Elinor can only speculate about their status based on her misery and her remark to Mrs. Jennings about his expected return in a few weeks. Likewise, Elinor does not greet Edward with the warm and open regard of a lover but instead awaits his reactio; but as he is not forthcoming with his own emotions, this tactic leaves her to wonder if his feelings have changed. Marianne finds Edward's reserve puzzling as well. In a further instance of willful concealment, Edward clearly dissembles when he claims that the lock of hair in his ring once belonged to his sister, an echo of Margaret's eager whisper to Elinor that she saw Willoughby remove a lock of Marianne's hair. This preoccupation with secrets is evident also in the behavior of the Palmers: Mrs. Jennings leans towards Elinor and speaks in a low voice to inform her that Mrs. Palmer is pregnant, and Mr. Palmer hides his face behind a newspaper for the duration of their visit. Everyone in these chapters seems bent on concealing their own situation from the eyes of others; the ensuing misunderstandings and ambiguities fuel the plot the novel. The earlier Shakespearean reference to Queen Mab receives a second mention when the Dashwood sisters see a man approaching on horseback during their walk, and Marianne is convinced that it must be her beloved Willoughby. "Queen Mab" was the name of the horse that Willoughby was to give her, yet the horse was never more than a dream, for the Dashwoods could not afford such a gift. In this chapter, Marianne's identification of the horse's rider proves to be yet another vain fantasy like Queen Mab's dreams, for it is not Willoughby but Edward Ferrars who rides up to greet them. When Edward first rides up to the Dashwood sisters, he comments on the dirty lanes he had to traverse to reach Barton Cottage. Roads are essential to the action of the novel because they facilitate the connections among characters. Austen structures the novel according to journeys, including the Dashwoods' journey from Norland to Barton, Willoughby's and Edward's journeys to Barton, and Elinor and Marianne's journey to London with Mrs. Jennings. Although Mrs. Dashwood sells their carriage when they leave Norland, the Dashwood sisters are still able to maintain a lively social life because of the journeys that Brandon, Willoughby, Edward, the Palmers, and the Steeles undertake to visit Barton. This prevalence of journeys is significant: in Austen's day, improved roads linked parishes and towns to one another and to the nexus of all connections, London. Austen was thus highly aware of the changes roads could bring to people's lives. In a novel built around attachments and connections, dirty lanes are a feature of the landscape as well as a plot device.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/80.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Brothers Karamazov/section_79_part_0.txt

The Brothers Karamazov.book 12.chapter 1

book 12, chapter 1

{"name": "Book 12, Chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-12-chapter-1", "summary": "The chapter opens at 10 in the morning the next day, in the courtroom just before Dmitri's trial begins. The narrator tells us that the trial has attracted such nationwide attention that the court has made the unprecedented arrangement of setting up a row of chairs for dignitaries by the judges. Women seem in general to favor the romantic Dmitri, whose love triangle with Grushenka and Katerina seems to have struck a chord, and men seem to favor punishing him. The famous lawyer Fetyukovich has been brought in to defend Dmitri, while the prosecutor Kirillovich will present the case against him. Into the packed courtroom arrives the presiding judge, a second judge, then an honorary justice of the peace, followed immediately by Kirillovich. The jurors are already settled in, although the narrator seems to frown on their composition: four low-ranking officials, two merchants, and six local peasants and townsmen. The presiding judge announces the trial of Dmitri Karamazov, and Dmitri appears, followed by his lawyer. A list of witnesses is read, including four who are unable to appear: Miusov, who is in Paris; Madame Khokhlakov and Maximov, who are ill; and finally Smerdyakov, who killed himself the night before. It's the first that Dmitri, and the general public, have heard of Smerdyakov's death. Dmitri shouts, \"The dog died like a dog!\" for which the judge quickly reprimands him. The judge asks Dmitri how he'll plead, and Dmitri theatrically professes his innocence. The judge again orders Dmitri to cool it. The judge orders the trial to begin. The witnesses are led away to their seating area, after being lectured by the priest and the presiding judge.", "analysis": ""}

Book XII. A Judicial Error Chapter I. The Fatal Day At ten o'clock in the morning of the day following the events I have described, the trial of Dmitri Karamazov began in our district court. I hasten to emphasize the fact that I am far from esteeming myself capable of reporting all that took place at the trial in full detail, or even in the actual order of events. I imagine that to mention everything with full explanation would fill a volume, even a very large one. And so I trust I may not be reproached, for confining myself to what struck me. I may have selected as of most interest what was of secondary importance, and may have omitted the most prominent and essential details. But I see I shall do better not to apologize. I will do my best and the reader will see for himself that I have done all I can. And, to begin with, before entering the court, I will mention what surprised me most on that day. Indeed, as it appeared later, every one was surprised at it, too. We all knew that the affair had aroused great interest, that every one was burning with impatience for the trial to begin, that it had been a subject of talk, conjecture, exclamation and surmise for the last two months in local society. Every one knew, too, that the case had become known throughout Russia, but yet we had not imagined that it had aroused such burning, such intense, interest in every one, not only among ourselves, but all over Russia. This became evident at the trial this day. Visitors had arrived not only from the chief town of our province, but from several other Russian towns, as well as from Moscow and Petersburg. Among them were lawyers, ladies, and even several distinguished personages. Every ticket of admission had been snatched up. A special place behind the table at which the three judges sat was set apart for the most distinguished and important of the men visitors; a row of arm-chairs had been placed there--something exceptional, which had never been allowed before. A large proportion--not less than half of the public--were ladies. There was such a large number of lawyers from all parts that they did not know where to seat them, for every ticket had long since been eagerly sought for and distributed. I saw at the end of the room, behind the platform, a special partition hurriedly put up, behind which all these lawyers were admitted, and they thought themselves lucky to have standing room there, for all chairs had been removed for the sake of space, and the crowd behind the partition stood throughout the case closely packed, shoulder to shoulder. Some of the ladies, especially those who came from a distance, made their appearance in the gallery very smartly dressed, but the majority of the ladies were oblivious even of dress. Their faces betrayed hysterical, intense, almost morbid, curiosity. A peculiar fact--established afterwards by many observations--was that almost all the ladies, or, at least the vast majority of them, were on Mitya's side and in favor of his being acquitted. This was perhaps chiefly owing to his reputation as a conqueror of female hearts. It was known that two women rivals were to appear in the case. One of them--Katerina Ivanovna--was an object of general interest. All sorts of extraordinary tales were told about her, amazing anecdotes of her passion for Mitya, in spite of his crime. Her pride and "aristocratic connections" were particularly insisted upon (she had called upon scarcely any one in the town). People said she intended to petition the Government for leave to accompany the criminal to Siberia and to be married to him somewhere in the mines. The appearance of Grushenka in court was awaited with no less impatience. The public was looking forward with anxious curiosity to the meeting of the two rivals--the proud aristocratic girl and "the hetaira." But Grushenka was a more familiar figure to the ladies of the district than Katerina Ivanovna. They had already seen "the woman who had ruined Fyodor Pavlovitch and his unhappy son," and all, almost without exception, wondered how father and son could be so in love with "such a very common, ordinary Russian girl, who was not even pretty." In brief, there was a great deal of talk. I know for a fact that there were several serious family quarrels on Mitya's account in our town. Many ladies quarreled violently with their husbands over differences of opinion about the dreadful case, and it was only natural that the husbands of these ladies, far from being favorably disposed to the prisoner, should enter the court bitterly prejudiced against him. In fact, one may say pretty certainly that the masculine, as distinguished from the feminine, part of the audience were biased against the prisoner. There were numbers of severe, frowning, even vindictive faces. Mitya, indeed, had managed to offend many people during his stay in the town. Some of the visitors were, of course, in excellent spirits and quite unconcerned as to the fate of Mitya personally. But all were interested in the trial, and the majority of the men were certainly hoping for the conviction of the criminal, except perhaps the lawyers, who were more interested in the legal than in the moral aspect of the case. Everybody was excited at the presence of the celebrated lawyer, Fetyukovitch. His talent was well known, and this was not the first time he had defended notorious criminal cases in the provinces. And if he defended them, such cases became celebrated and long remembered all over Russia. There were stories, too, about our prosecutor and about the President of the Court. It was said that Ippolit Kirillovitch was in a tremor at meeting Fetyukovitch, and that they had been enemies from the beginning of their careers in Petersburg, that though our sensitive prosecutor, who always considered that he had been aggrieved by some one in Petersburg because his talents had not been properly appreciated, was keenly excited over the Karamazov case, and was even dreaming of rebuilding his flagging fortunes by means of it, Fetyukovitch, they said, was his one anxiety. But these rumors were not quite just. Our prosecutor was not one of those men who lose heart in face of danger. On the contrary, his self-confidence increased with the increase of danger. It must be noted that our prosecutor was in general too hasty and morbidly impressionable. He would put his whole soul into some case and work at it as though his whole fate and his whole fortune depended on its result. This was the subject of some ridicule in the legal world, for just by this characteristic our prosecutor had gained a wider notoriety than could have been expected from his modest position. People laughed particularly at his passion for psychology. In my opinion, they were wrong, and our prosecutor was, I believe, a character of greater depth than was generally supposed. But with his delicate health he had failed to make his mark at the outset of his career and had never made up for it later. As for the President of our Court, I can only say that he was a humane and cultured man, who had a practical knowledge of his work and progressive views. He was rather ambitious, but did not concern himself greatly about his future career. The great aim of his life was to be a man of advanced ideas. He was, too, a man of connections and property. He felt, as we learnt afterwards, rather strongly about the Karamazov case, but from a social, not from a personal standpoint. He was interested in it as a social phenomenon, in its classification and its character as a product of our social conditions, as typical of the national character, and so on, and so on. His attitude to the personal aspect of the case, to its tragic significance and the persons involved in it, including the prisoner, was rather indifferent and abstract, as was perhaps fitting, indeed. The court was packed and overflowing long before the judges made their appearance. Our court is the best hall in the town--spacious, lofty, and good for sound. On the right of the judges, who were on a raised platform, a table and two rows of chairs had been put ready for the jury. On the left was the place for the prisoner and the counsel for the defense. In the middle of the court, near the judges, was a table with the "material proofs." On it lay Fyodor Pavlovitch's white silk dressing-gown, stained with blood; the fatal brass pestle with which the supposed murder had been committed; Mitya's shirt, with a blood-stained sleeve; his coat, stained with blood in patches over the pocket in which he had put his handkerchief; the handkerchief itself, stiff with blood and by now quite yellow; the pistol loaded by Mitya at Perhotin's with a view to suicide, and taken from him on the sly at Mokroe by Trifon Borissovitch; the envelope in which the three thousand roubles had been put ready for Grushenka, the narrow pink ribbon with which it had been tied, and many other articles I don't remember. In the body of the hall, at some distance, came the seats for the public. But in front of the balustrade a few chairs had been placed for witnesses who remained in the court after giving their evidence. At ten o'clock the three judges arrived--the President, one honorary justice of the peace, and one other. The prosecutor, of course, entered immediately after. The President was a short, stout, thick-set man of fifty, with a dyspeptic complexion, dark hair turning gray and cut short, and a red ribbon, of what Order I don't remember. The prosecutor struck me and the others, too, as looking particularly pale, almost green. His face seemed to have grown suddenly thinner, perhaps in a single night, for I had seen him looking as usual only two days before. The President began with asking the court whether all the jury were present. But I see I can't go on like this, partly because some things I did not hear, others I did not notice, and others I have forgotten, but most of all because, as I have said before, I have literally no time or space to mention everything that was said and done. I only know that neither side objected to very many of the jurymen. I remember the twelve jurymen--four were petty officials of the town, two were merchants, and six peasants and artisans of the town. I remember, long before the trial, questions were continually asked with some surprise, especially by ladies: "Can such a delicate, complex and psychological case be submitted for decision to petty officials and even peasants?" and "What can an official, still more a peasant, understand in such an affair?" All the four officials in the jury were, in fact, men of no consequence and of low rank. Except one who was rather younger, they were gray-headed men, little known in society, who had vegetated on a pitiful salary, and who probably had elderly, unpresentable wives and crowds of children, perhaps even without shoes and stockings. At most, they spent their leisure over cards and, of course, had never read a single book. The two merchants looked respectable, but were strangely silent and stolid. One of them was close-shaven, and was dressed in European style; the other had a small, gray beard, and wore a red ribbon with some sort of a medal upon it on his neck. There is no need to speak of the artisans and the peasants. The artisans of Skotoprigonyevsk are almost peasants, and even work on the land. Two of them also wore European dress, and, perhaps for that reason, were dirtier and more uninviting-looking than the others. So that one might well wonder, as I did as soon as I had looked at them, "what men like that could possibly make of such a case?" Yet their faces made a strangely imposing, almost menacing, impression; they were stern and frowning. At last the President opened the case of the murder of Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov. I don't quite remember how he described him. The court usher was told to bring in the prisoner, and Mitya made his appearance. There was a hush through the court. One could have heard a fly. I don't know how it was with others, but Mitya made a most unfavorable impression on me. He looked an awful dandy in a brand-new frock-coat. I heard afterwards that he had ordered it in Moscow expressly for the occasion from his own tailor, who had his measure. He wore immaculate black kid gloves and exquisite linen. He walked in with his yard-long strides, looking stiffly straight in front of him, and sat down in his place with a most unperturbed air. At the same moment the counsel for defense, the celebrated Fetyukovitch, entered, and a sort of subdued hum passed through the court. He was a tall, spare man, with long thin legs, with extremely long, thin, pale fingers, clean-shaven face, demurely brushed, rather short hair, and thin lips that were at times curved into something between a sneer and a smile. He looked about forty. His face would have been pleasant, if it had not been for his eyes, which, in themselves small and inexpressive, were set remarkably close together, with only the thin, long nose as a dividing line between them. In fact, there was something strikingly birdlike about his face. He was in evening dress and white tie. I remember the President's first questions to Mitya, about his name, his calling, and so on. Mitya answered sharply, and his voice was so unexpectedly loud that it made the President start and look at the prisoner with surprise. Then followed a list of persons who were to take part in the proceedings--that is, of the witnesses and experts. It was a long list. Four of the witnesses were not present--Miuesov, who had given evidence at the preliminary inquiry, but was now in Paris; Madame Hohlakov and Maximov, who were absent through illness; and Smerdyakov, through his sudden death, of which an official statement from the police was presented. The news of Smerdyakov's death produced a sudden stir and whisper in the court. Many of the audience, of course, had not heard of the sudden suicide. What struck people most was Mitya's sudden outburst As soon as the statement of Smerdyakov's death was made, he cried out aloud from his place: "He was a dog and died like a dog!" I remember how his counsel rushed to him, and how the President addressed him, threatening to take stern measures, if such an irregularity were repeated. Mitya nodded and in a subdued voice repeated several times abruptly to his counsel, with no show of regret: "I won't again, I won't. It escaped me. I won't do it again." And, of course, this brief episode did him no good with the jury or the public. His character was displayed, and it spoke for itself. It was under the influence of this incident that the opening statement was read. It was rather short, but circumstantial. It only stated the chief reasons why he had been arrested, why he must be tried, and so on. Yet it made a great impression on me. The clerk read it loudly and distinctly. The whole tragedy was suddenly unfolded before us, concentrated, in bold relief, in a fatal and pitiless light. I remember how, immediately after it had been read, the President asked Mitya in a loud impressive voice: "Prisoner, do you plead guilty?" Mitya suddenly rose from his seat. "I plead guilty to drunkenness and dissipation," he exclaimed, again in a startling, almost frenzied, voice, "to idleness and debauchery. I meant to become an honest man for good, just at the moment when I was struck down by fate. But I am not guilty of the death of that old man, my enemy and my father. No, no, I am not guilty of robbing him! I could not be. Dmitri Karamazov is a scoundrel, but not a thief." He sat down again, visibly trembling all over. The President again briefly, but impressively, admonished him to answer only what was asked, and not to go off into irrelevant exclamations. Then he ordered the case to proceed. All the witnesses were led up to take the oath. Then I saw them all together. The brothers of the prisoner were, however, allowed to give evidence without taking the oath. After an exhortation from the priest and the President, the witnesses were led away and were made to sit as far as possible apart from one another. Then they began calling them up one by one.

Book 12, Chapter 1

https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-12-chapter-1

The chapter opens at 10 in the morning the next day, in the courtroom just before Dmitri's trial begins. The narrator tells us that the trial has attracted such nationwide attention that the court has made the unprecedented arrangement of setting up a row of chairs for dignitaries by the judges. Women seem in general to favor the romantic Dmitri, whose love triangle with Grushenka and Katerina seems to have struck a chord, and men seem to favor punishing him. The famous lawyer Fetyukovich has been brought in to defend Dmitri, while the prosecutor Kirillovich will present the case against him. Into the packed courtroom arrives the presiding judge, a second judge, then an honorary justice of the peace, followed immediately by Kirillovich. The jurors are already settled in, although the narrator seems to frown on their composition: four low-ranking officials, two merchants, and six local peasants and townsmen. The presiding judge announces the trial of Dmitri Karamazov, and Dmitri appears, followed by his lawyer. A list of witnesses is read, including four who are unable to appear: Miusov, who is in Paris; Madame Khokhlakov and Maximov, who are ill; and finally Smerdyakov, who killed himself the night before. It's the first that Dmitri, and the general public, have heard of Smerdyakov's death. Dmitri shouts, "The dog died like a dog!" for which the judge quickly reprimands him. The judge asks Dmitri how he'll plead, and Dmitri theatrically professes his innocence. The judge again orders Dmitri to cool it. The judge orders the trial to begin. The witnesses are led away to their seating area, after being lectured by the priest and the presiding judge.

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/174-chapters/02.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Picture of Dorian Gray/section_0_part_2.txt

The Picture of Dorian Gray.chapter 2

chapter 2

{"name": "Chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210228142327/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/doriangray/section1/", "summary": "Dorian Gray proves to be every bit as a handsome as his portrait. Basil introduces him to Lord Henry, and Dorian begs Lord Henry to stay and talk to him while he sits for Basil. Basil warns Dorian that Lord Henry is a bad influence, and Dorian seems intrigued by this idea. Lord Henry agrees to stay and, while Basil puts the finishing touches on the portrait, discusses his personal philosophy, which holds that \"the highest of all duties the duty that one owes to one's self. While Basil continues to work, Lord Henry escorts Dorian into the garden, where he praises Dorian's youth and beauty and warns him how surely and quickly those qualities will fade. He urges Dorian to live life to its fullest, to spend his time \"always searching for new sensations\" rather than devoting himself to \"common\" or \"vulgar\" pastimes. Basil calls the men inside, and Dorian sits for another quarter of an hour until the portrait is complete. It is a thing of remarkable beauty--\"the finest portrait of modern times,\" Lord Henry tells Basil--but looking at it makes Dorian unhappy. Remembering Lord Henry's warning about the advance of age, he reflects that his portrait will remain young even as he himself grows old and wrinkled. He curses this fate and pledges his soul \"f it were only the other way. Basil tries to comfort the young man, but Dorian pushes him away. Declaring that he will not allow the painting to ruin their friendship, Basil makes a move to destroy it. Dorian stops him, saying that he loves the painting, and a relieved Basil promises to give it to him as a gift. Dorian and Lord Henry depart after Dorian promises, despite Basil's objections, to go to the theater with Lord Henry later that evening", "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.\""}

As they entered they saw Dorian Gray. He was seated at the piano, with his back to them, turning over the pages of a volume of Schumann's "Forest Scenes." "You must lend me these, Basil," he cried. "I want to learn them. They are perfectly charming." "That entirely depends on how you sit to-day, Dorian." "Oh, I am tired of sitting, and I don't want a life-sized portrait of myself," answered the lad, swinging round on the music-stool in a wilful, petulant manner. When he caught sight of Lord Henry, a faint blush coloured his cheeks for a moment, and he started up. "I beg your pardon, Basil, but I didn't know you had any one with you." "This is Lord Henry Wotton, Dorian, an old Oxford friend of mine. I have just been telling him what a capital sitter you were, and now you have spoiled everything." "You have not spoiled my pleasure in meeting you, Mr. Gray," said Lord Henry, stepping forward and extending his hand. "My aunt has often spoken to me about you. You are one of her favourites, and, I am afraid, one of her victims also." "I am in Lady Agatha's black books at present," answered Dorian with a funny look of penitence. "I promised to go to a club in Whitechapel with her last Tuesday, and I really forgot all about it. We were to have played a duet together--three duets, I believe. I don't know what she will say to me. I am far too frightened to call." "Oh, I will make your peace with my aunt. She is quite devoted to you. And I don't think it really matters about your not being there. The audience probably thought it was a duet. When Aunt Agatha sits down to the piano, she makes quite enough noise for two people." "That is very horrid to her, and not very nice to me," answered Dorian, laughing. Lord Henry looked at him. Yes, he was certainly wonderfully handsome, with his finely curved scarlet lips, his frank blue eyes, his crisp gold hair. There was something in his face that made one trust him at once. All the candour of youth was there, as well as all youth's passionate purity. One felt that he had kept himself unspotted from the world. No wonder Basil Hallward worshipped him. "You are too charming to go in for philanthropy, Mr. Gray--far too charming." And Lord Henry flung himself down on the divan and opened his cigarette-case. The painter had been busy mixing his colours and getting his brushes ready. He was looking worried, and when he heard Lord Henry's last remark, he glanced at him, hesitated for a moment, and then said, "Harry, I want to finish this picture to-day. Would you think it awfully rude of me if I asked you to go away?" Lord Henry smiled and looked at Dorian Gray. "Am I to go, Mr. Gray?" he asked. "Oh, please don't, Lord Henry. I see that Basil is in one of his sulky moods, and I can't bear him when he sulks. Besides, I want you to tell me why I should not go in for philanthropy." "I don't know that I shall tell you that, Mr. Gray. It is so tedious a subject that one would have to talk seriously about it. But I certainly shall not run away, now that you have asked me to stop. You don't really mind, Basil, do you? You have often told me that you liked your sitters to have some one to chat to." Hallward bit his lip. "If Dorian wishes it, of course you must stay. Dorian's whims are laws to everybody, except himself." Lord Henry took up his hat and gloves. "You are very pressing, Basil, but I am afraid I must go. I have promised to meet a man at the Orleans. Good-bye, Mr. Gray. Come and see me some afternoon in Curzon Street. I am nearly always at home at five o'clock. Write to me when you are coming. I should be sorry to miss you." "Basil," cried Dorian Gray, "if Lord Henry Wotton goes, I shall go, too. You never open your lips while you are painting, and it is horribly dull standing on a platform and trying to look pleasant. Ask him to stay. I insist upon it." "Stay, Harry, to oblige Dorian, and to oblige me," said Hallward, gazing intently at his picture. "It is quite true, I never talk when I am working, and never listen either, and it must be dreadfully tedious for my unfortunate sitters. I beg you to stay." "But what about my man at the Orleans?" The painter laughed. "I don't think there will be any difficulty about that. Sit down again, Harry. And now, Dorian, get up on the platform, and don't move about too much, or pay any attention to what Lord Henry says. He has a very bad influence over all his friends, with the single exception of myself." Dorian Gray stepped up on the dais with the air of a young Greek martyr, and made a little _moue_ of discontent to Lord Henry, to whom he had rather taken a fancy. He was so unlike Basil. They made a delightful contrast. And he had such a beautiful voice. After a few moments he said to him, "Have you really a very bad influence, Lord Henry? As bad as Basil says?" "There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoral--immoral from the scientific point of view." "Why?" "Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly--that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self. Of course, they are charitable. They feed the hungry and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion--these are the two things that govern us. And yet--" "Just turn your head a little more to the right, Dorian, like a good boy," said the painter, deep in his work and conscious only that a look had come into the lad's face that he had never seen there before. "And yet," continued Lord Henry, in his low, musical voice, and with that graceful wave of the hand that was always so characteristic of him, and that he had even in his Eton days, "I believe that if one man were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream--I believe that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all the maladies of mediaevalism, and return to the Hellenic ideal--to something finer, richer than the Hellenic ideal, it may be. But the bravest man amongst us is afraid of himself. The mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial that mars our lives. We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind and poisons us. The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret. The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also. You, Mr. Gray, you yourself, with your rose-red youth and your rose-white boyhood, you have had passions that have made you afraid, thoughts that have filled you with terror, day-dreams and sleeping dreams whose mere memory might stain your cheek with shame--" "Stop!" faltered Dorian Gray, "stop! you bewilder me. I don't know what to say. There is some answer to you, but I cannot find it. Don't speak. Let me think. Or, rather, let me try not to think." For nearly ten minutes he stood there, motionless, with parted lips and eyes strangely bright. He was dimly conscious that entirely fresh influences were at work within him. Yet they seemed to him to have come really from himself. The few words that Basil's friend had said to him--words spoken by chance, no doubt, and with wilful paradox in them--had touched some secret chord that had never been touched before, but that he felt was now vibrating and throbbing to curious pulses. Music had stirred him like that. Music had troubled him many times. But music was not articulate. It was not a new world, but rather another chaos, that it created in us. Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words? Yes; there had been things in his boyhood that he had not understood. He understood them now. Life suddenly became fiery-coloured to him. It seemed to him that he had been walking in fire. Why had he not known it? With his subtle smile, Lord Henry watched him. He knew the precise psychological moment when to say nothing. He felt intensely interested. He was amazed at the sudden impression that his words had produced, and, remembering a book that he had read when he was sixteen, a book which had revealed to him much that he had not known before, he wondered whether Dorian Gray was passing through a similar experience. He had merely shot an arrow into the air. Had it hit the mark? How fascinating the lad was! Hallward painted away with that marvellous bold touch of his, that had the true refinement and perfect delicacy that in art, at any rate comes only from strength. He was unconscious of the silence. "Basil, I am tired of standing," cried Dorian Gray suddenly. "I must go out and sit in the garden. The air is stifling here." "My dear fellow, I am so sorry. When I am painting, I can't think of anything else. But you never sat better. You were perfectly still. And I have caught the effect I wanted--the half-parted lips and the bright look in the eyes. I don't know what Harry has been saying to you, but he has certainly made you have the most wonderful expression. I suppose he has been paying you compliments. You mustn't believe a word that he says." "He has certainly not been paying me compliments. Perhaps that is the reason that I don't believe anything he has told me." "You know you believe it all," said Lord Henry, looking at him with his dreamy languorous eyes. "I will go out to the garden with you. It is horribly hot in the studio. Basil, let us have something iced to drink, something with strawberries in it." "Certainly, Harry. Just touch the bell, and when Parker comes I will tell him what you want. I have got to work up this background, so I will join you later on. Don't keep Dorian too long. I have never been in better form for painting than I am to-day. This is going to be my masterpiece. It is my masterpiece as it stands." Lord Henry went out to the garden and found Dorian Gray burying his face in the great cool lilac-blossoms, feverishly drinking in their perfume as if it had been wine. He came close to him and put his hand upon his shoulder. "You are quite right to do that," he murmured. "Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul." The lad started and drew back. He was bareheaded, and the leaves had tossed his rebellious curls and tangled all their gilded threads. There was a look of fear in his eyes, such as people have when they are suddenly awakened. His finely chiselled nostrils quivered, and some hidden nerve shook the scarlet of his lips and left them trembling. "Yes," continued Lord Henry, "that is one of the great secrets of life--to cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul. You are a wonderful creation. You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know." Dorian Gray frowned and turned his head away. He could not help liking the tall, graceful young man who was standing by him. His romantic, olive-coloured face and worn expression interested him. There was something in his low languid voice that was absolutely fascinating. His cool, white, flowerlike hands, even, had a curious charm. They moved, as he spoke, like music, and seemed to have a language of their own. But he felt afraid of him, and ashamed of being afraid. Why had it been left for a stranger to reveal him to himself? He had known Basil Hallward for months, but the friendship between them had never altered him. Suddenly there had come some one across his life who seemed to have disclosed to him life's mystery. And, yet, what was there to be afraid of? He was not a schoolboy or a girl. It was absurd to be frightened. "Let us go and sit in the shade," said Lord Henry. "Parker has brought out the drinks, and if you stay any longer in this glare, you will be quite spoiled, and Basil will never paint you again. You really must not allow yourself to become sunburnt. It would be unbecoming." "What can it matter?" cried Dorian Gray, laughing, as he sat down on the seat at the end of the garden. "It should matter everything to you, Mr. Gray." "Why?" "Because you have the most marvellous youth, and youth is the one thing worth having." "I don't feel that, Lord Henry." "No, you don't feel it now. Some day, when you are old and wrinkled and ugly, when thought has seared your forehead with its lines, and passion branded your lips with its hideous fires, you will feel it, you will feel it terribly. Now, wherever you go, you charm the world. Will it always be so? ... You have a wonderfully beautiful face, Mr. Gray. Don't frown. You have. And beauty is a form of genius--is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or spring-time, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has its divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it. You smile? Ah! when you have lost it you won't smile.... People say sometimes that beauty is only superficial. That may be so, but at least it is not so superficial as thought is. To me, beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.... Yes, Mr. Gray, the gods have been good to you. But what the gods give they quickly take away. You have only a few years in which to live really, perfectly, and fully. When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and then you will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left for you, or have to content yourself with those mean triumphs that the memory of your past will make more bitter than defeats. Every month as it wanes brings you nearer to something dreadful. Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses. You will become sallow, and hollow-cheeked, and dull-eyed. You will suffer horribly.... Ah! realize your youth while you have it. Don't squander the gold of your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar. These are the sickly aims, the false ideals, of our age. Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing.... A new Hedonism--that is what our century wants. You might be its visible symbol. With your personality there is nothing you could not do. The world belongs to you for a season.... The moment I met you I saw that you were quite unconscious of what you really are, of what you really might be. There was so much in you that charmed me that I felt I must tell you something about yourself. I thought how tragic it would be if you were wasted. For there is such a little time that your youth will last--such a little time. The common hill-flowers wither, but they blossom again. The laburnum will be as yellow next June as it is now. In a month there will be purple stars on the clematis, and year after year the green night of its leaves will hold its purple stars. But we never get back our youth. The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to. Youth! Youth! There is absolutely nothing in the world but youth!" Dorian Gray listened, open-eyed and wondering. The spray of lilac fell from his hand upon the gravel. A furry bee came and buzzed round it for a moment. Then it began to scramble all over the oval stellated globe of the tiny blossoms. He watched it with that strange interest in trivial things that we try to develop when things of high import make us afraid, or when we are stirred by some new emotion for which we cannot find expression, or when some thought that terrifies us lays sudden siege to the brain and calls on us to yield. After a time the bee flew away. He saw it creeping into the stained trumpet of a Tyrian convolvulus. The flower seemed to quiver, and then swayed gently to and fro. Suddenly the painter appeared at the door of the studio and made staccato signs for them to come in. They turned to each other and smiled. "I am waiting," he cried. "Do come in. The light is quite perfect, and you can bring your drinks." They rose up and sauntered down the walk together. Two green-and-white butterflies fluttered past them, and in the pear-tree at the corner of the garden a thrush began to sing. "You are glad you have met me, Mr. Gray," said Lord Henry, looking at him. "Yes, I am glad now. I wonder shall I always be glad?" "Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it. Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to make it last for ever. It is a meaningless word, too. The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer." As they entered the studio, Dorian Gray put his hand upon Lord Henry's arm. "In that case, let our friendship be a caprice," he murmured, flushing at his own boldness, then stepped up on the platform and resumed his pose. Lord Henry flung himself into a large wicker arm-chair and watched him. The sweep and dash of the brush on the canvas made the only sound that broke the stillness, except when, now and then, Hallward stepped back to look at his work from a distance. In the slanting beams that streamed through the open doorway the dust danced and was golden. The heavy scent of the roses seemed to brood over everything. After about a quarter of an hour Hallward stopped painting, looked for a long time at Dorian Gray, and then for a long time at the picture, biting the end of one of his huge brushes and frowning. "It is quite finished," he cried at last, and stooping down he wrote his name in long vermilion letters on the left-hand corner of the canvas. Lord Henry came over and examined the picture. It was certainly a wonderful work of art, and a wonderful likeness as well. "My dear fellow, I congratulate you most warmly," he said. "It is the finest portrait of modern times. Mr. Gray, come over and look at yourself." The lad started, as if awakened from some dream. "Is it really finished?" he murmured, stepping down from the platform. "Quite finished," said the painter. "And you have sat splendidly to-day. I am awfully obliged to you." "That is entirely due to me," broke in Lord Henry. "Isn't it, Mr. Gray?" Dorian made no answer, but passed listlessly in front of his picture and turned towards it. When he saw it he drew back, and his cheeks flushed for a moment with pleasure. A look of joy came into his eyes, as if he had recognized himself for the first time. He stood there motionless and in wonder, dimly conscious that Hallward was speaking to him, but not catching the meaning of his words. The sense of his own beauty came on him like a revelation. He had never felt it before. Basil Hallward's compliments had seemed to him to be merely the charming exaggeration of friendship. He had listened to them, laughed at them, forgotten them. They had not influenced his nature. Then had come Lord Henry Wotton with his strange panegyric on youth, his terrible warning of its brevity. That had stirred him at the time, and now, as he stood gazing at the shadow of his own loveliness, the full reality of the description flashed across him. Yes, there would be a day when his face would be wrinkled and wizen, his eyes dim and colourless, the grace of his figure broken and deformed. The scarlet would pass away from his lips and the gold steal from his hair. The life that was to make his soul would mar his body. He would become dreadful, hideous, and uncouth. As he thought of it, a sharp pang of pain struck through him like a knife and made each delicate fibre of his nature quiver. His eyes deepened into amethyst, and across them came a mist of tears. He felt as if a hand of ice had been laid upon his heart. "Don't you like it?" cried Hallward at last, stung a little by the lad's silence, not understanding what it meant. "Of course he likes it," said Lord Henry. "Who wouldn't like it? It is one of the greatest things in modern art. I will give you anything you like to ask for it. I must have it." "It is not my property, Harry." "Whose property is it?" "Dorian's, of course," answered the painter. "He is a very lucky fellow." "How sad it is!" murmured Dorian Gray with his eyes still fixed upon his own portrait. "How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June.... If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that--for that--I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!" "You would hardly care for such an arrangement, Basil," cried Lord Henry, laughing. "It would be rather hard lines on your work." "I should object very strongly, Harry," said Hallward. Dorian Gray turned and looked at him. "I believe you would, Basil. You like your art better than your friends. I am no more to you than a green bronze figure. Hardly as much, I dare say." The painter stared in amazement. It was so unlike Dorian to speak like that. What had happened? He seemed quite angry. His face was flushed and his cheeks burning. "Yes," he continued, "I am less to you than your ivory Hermes or your silver Faun. You will like them always. How long will you like me? Till I have my first wrinkle, I suppose. I know, now, that when one loses one's good looks, whatever they may be, one loses everything. Your picture has taught me that. Lord Henry Wotton is perfectly right. Youth is the only thing worth having. When I find that I am growing old, I shall kill myself." Hallward turned pale and caught his hand. "Dorian! Dorian!" he cried, "don't talk like that. I have never had such a friend as you, and I shall never have such another. You are not jealous of material things, are you?--you who are finer than any of them!" "I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me. Why should it keep what I must lose? Every moment that passes takes something from me and gives something to it. Oh, if it were only the other way! If the picture could change, and I could be always what I am now! Why did you paint it? It will mock me some day--mock me horribly!" The hot tears welled into his eyes; he tore his hand away and, flinging himself on the divan, he buried his face in the cushions, as though he was praying. "This is your doing, Harry," said the painter bitterly. Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. "It is the real Dorian Gray--that is all." "It is not." "If it is not, what have I to do with it?" "You should have gone away when I asked you," he muttered. "I stayed when you asked me," was Lord Henry's answer. "Harry, I can't quarrel with my two best friends at once, but between you both you have made me hate the finest piece of work I have ever done, and I will destroy it. What is it but canvas and colour? I will not let it come across our three lives and mar them." Dorian Gray lifted his golden head from the pillow, and with pallid face and tear-stained eyes, looked at him as he walked over to the deal painting-table that was set beneath the high curtained window. What was he doing there? His fingers were straying about among the litter of tin tubes and dry brushes, seeking for something. Yes, it was for the long palette-knife, with its thin blade of lithe steel. He had found it at last. He was going to rip up the canvas. With a stifled sob the lad leaped from the couch, and, rushing over to Hallward, tore the knife out of his hand, and flung it to the end of the studio. "Don't, Basil, don't!" he cried. "It would be murder!" "I am glad you appreciate my work at last, Dorian," said the painter coldly when he had recovered from his surprise. "I never thought you would." "Appreciate it? I am in love with it, Basil. It is part of myself. I feel that." "Well, as soon as you are dry, you shall be varnished, and framed, and sent home. Then you can do what you like with yourself." And he walked across the room and rang the bell for tea. "You will have tea, of course, Dorian? And so will you, Harry? Or do you object to such simple pleasures?" "I adore simple pleasures," said Lord Henry. "They are the last refuge of the complex. But I don't like scenes, except on the stage. What absurd fellows you are, both of you! I wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given. Man is many things, but he is not rational. I am glad he is not, after all--though I wish you chaps would not squabble over the picture. You had much better let me have it, Basil. This silly boy doesn't really want it, and I really do." "If you let any one have it but me, Basil, I shall never forgive you!" cried Dorian Gray; "and I don't allow people to call me a silly boy." "You know the picture is yours, Dorian. I gave it to you before it existed." "And you know you have been a little silly, Mr. Gray, and that you don't really object to being reminded that you are extremely young." "I should have objected very strongly this morning, Lord Henry." "Ah! this morning! You have lived since then." There came a knock at the door, and the butler entered with a laden tea-tray and set it down upon a small Japanese table. There was a rattle of cups and saucers and the hissing of a fluted Georgian urn. Two globe-shaped china dishes were brought in by a page. Dorian Gray went over and poured out the tea. The two men sauntered languidly to the table and examined what was under the covers. "Let us go to the theatre to-night," said Lord Henry. "There is sure to be something on, somewhere. I have promised to dine at White's, but it is only with an old friend, so I can send him a wire to say that I am ill, or that I am prevented from coming in consequence of a subsequent engagement. I think that would be a rather nice excuse: it would have all the surprise of candour." "It is such a bore putting on one's dress-clothes," muttered Hallward. "And, when one has them on, they are so horrid." "Yes," answered Lord Henry dreamily, "the costume of the nineteenth century is detestable. It is so sombre, so depressing. Sin is the only real colour-element left in modern life." "You really must not say things like that before Dorian, Harry." "Before which Dorian? The one who is pouring out tea for us, or the one in the picture?" "Before either." "I should like to come to the theatre with you, Lord Henry," said the lad. "Then you shall come; and you will come, too, Basil, won't you?" "I can't, really. I would sooner not. I have a lot of work to do." "Well, then, you and I will go alone, Mr. Gray." "I should like that awfully." The painter bit his lip and walked over, cup in hand, to the picture. "I shall stay with the real Dorian," he said, sadly. "Is it the real Dorian?" cried the original of the portrait, strolling across to him. "Am I really like that?" "Yes; you are just like that." "How wonderful, Basil!" "At least you are like it in appearance. But it will never alter," sighed Hallward. "That is something." "What a fuss people make about fidelity!" exclaimed Lord Henry. "Why, even in love it is purely a question for physiology. It has nothing to do with our own will. Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot: that is all one can say." "Don't go to the theatre to-night, Dorian," said Hallward. "Stop and dine with me." "I can't, Basil." "Why?" "Because I have promised Lord Henry Wotton to go with him." "He won't like you the better for keeping your promises. He always breaks his own. I beg you not to go." Dorian Gray laughed and shook his head. "I entreat you." The lad hesitated, and looked over at Lord Henry, who was watching them from the tea-table with an amused smile. "I must go, Basil," he answered. "Very well," said Hallward, and he went over and laid down his cup on the tray. "It is rather late, and, as you have to dress, you had better lose no time. Good-bye, Harry. Good-bye, Dorian. Come and see me soon. Come to-morrow." "Certainly." "You won't forget?" "No, of course not," cried Dorian. "And ... Harry!" "Yes, Basil?" "Remember what I asked you, when we were in the garden this morning." "I have forgotten it." "I trust you." "I wish I could trust myself," said Lord Henry, laughing. "Come, Mr. Gray, my hansom is outside, and I can drop you at your own place. Good-bye, Basil. It has been a most interesting afternoon." As the door closed behind them, the painter flung himself down on a sofa, and a look of pain came into his face.

Chapter 2

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

Dorian Gray proves to be every bit as a handsome as his portrait. Basil introduces him to Lord Henry, and Dorian begs Lord Henry to stay and talk to him while he sits for Basil. Basil warns Dorian that Lord Henry is a bad influence, and Dorian seems intrigued by this idea. Lord Henry agrees to stay and, while Basil puts the finishing touches on the portrait, discusses his personal philosophy, which holds that "the highest of all duties the duty that one owes to one's self. While Basil continues to work, Lord Henry escorts Dorian into the garden, where he praises Dorian's youth and beauty and warns him how surely and quickly those qualities will fade. He urges Dorian to live life to its fullest, to spend his time "always searching for new sensations" rather than devoting himself to "common" or "vulgar" pastimes. Basil calls the men inside, and Dorian sits for another quarter of an hour until the portrait is complete. It is a thing of remarkable beauty--"the finest portrait of modern times," Lord Henry tells Basil--but looking at it makes Dorian unhappy. Remembering Lord Henry's warning about the advance of age, he reflects that his portrait will remain young even as he himself grows old and wrinkled. He curses this fate and pledges his soul "f it were only the other way. Basil tries to comfort the young man, but Dorian pushes him away. Declaring that he will not allow the painting to ruin their friendship, Basil makes a move to destroy it. Dorian stops him, saying that he loves the painting, and a relieved Basil promises to give it to him as a gift. Dorian and Lord Henry depart after Dorian promises, despite Basil's objections, to go to the theater with Lord Henry later that evening

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."

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/chapters_24_to_27.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/Lord Jim/section_6_part_0.txt

Lord Jim.chapters 24-27

chapters 24- 27

{"name": "Chapters 24- 27", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210126121516/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/lordjim/section7/", "summary": "Marlow visits Jim in Patusan two years after Jim's arrival there. He has come to offer Jim the trading post house and the stock of goods as a gift, on behalf of Stein. He finds a village of fishermen on the coast who tell him of the peace that Jim has brought to the area. Marlow's informant refers to Jim as \"Tuan Jim,\" or Lord Jim, and tells him that he brought Jim up the river in a canoe two years ago . Marlow is astounded that Jim's prediction--that he would hear of him--is being fulfilled. He notes that Jim's arrival was a major disruption to the area, since the natives had forgotten what white men were. Jim's unheralded appearance, Marlow's unloaded revolver cradled in his lap, created an opportunity of which Jim was quick to take advantage. The fishermen deliver Jim straight to Rajah Allang. Jim's revolver is unloaded, so he has no way of defending himself, and he agrees to see the Rajah. The Rajah imprisons Jim in a stockade for several days. Jim takes Marlow to see the Rajah, pointing out where he was imprisoned. He pauses to settle a dispute between the Rajah and some villagers, then continues with his story: While he is a prisoner of Allang's, he is subjected to absurd treatment--asked to fix a broken New England clock, interrogated about Dutch colonial strategy, questioned as to his motives. He manages to escape the stockade fairly easily by leaping over the wall and struggling up a muddy slope after jumping a creek. Upon his escape, Jim rushes to Doramin's compound and presents Stein's silver ring. He is received with warmth, and Doramin's people prepare to repel the Rajah. Doramin, Marlow relates, is the leader of one of the most powerful factions in Patusan, a group of merchants called the Bugis, who had emigrated from Celebes many years ago. Most of the conflict in Patusan stems from Rajah Allang's attempts to enforce a trading monopoly and Doramin's insistence on violating Allang's proclamation. Jim finds the Bugis arguing over the wisdom of allying themselves with Sherif Ali, an Arab religious zealot who, along with his band of tribesmen from the interior, has been decimating the countryside around Patusan. Some of the Bugis want to join with Ali to overthrow Allang. Jim meets Dain Waris, Doramin's son, who is to become his best friend. It soon occurs to Jim that he has an opportunity to make peace in Patusan and thus make a name for himself. Jim proposes that the Bugis organize an attack on Ali. Dain Waris is immediately enthusiastic, and the plan moves forward. Jim oversees the transfer of Doramin's meager artillery to a hilltop, from which the attack is launched and Ali defeated. Marlow remarks at the trust the Bugis placed in Jim in following him into battle. An old man tells Marlow that many think Jim possesses supernatural powers. Jim seems even more \"symbolic\" to Marlow than ever. In recounting the attack, Jim mentions the valor of his servant, Tamb'Itam, a refugee from Allang who has devoted himself to Jim. In triumphing over Sherif Ali, Jim has finally become a hero, and the people of Patusan await his command.", "analysis": "Commentary It is appropriate that Marlow remarks on how \"symbolic\" Jim seems to him at this moment. From this point onward, Jim begins to recede from the text. The temporal progression of the narrative becomes ever more convoluted, as Marlow has to work harder and harder to piece together the story. Jim no longer spends entire chapters struggling to express his inner anguish. Instead, the narrative is composed of his polished--if somewhat slangy--accounts of his actions, interspersed with small set-piece landscapes. It appears that Jim's hubris has been enabling, not fatal. Marlow feels distant from Jim; if Jim was once \"one of us,\" Marlow has no claim to being \"one of them,\" a person like the new Jim. Marlow suggests that nothing can touch Jim now, since he has escaped from the shadow of the Patna incident. Jim's legend is beginning to bloat, though, as he revels in the unlimited trust of his people and whispers of his supernatural abilities spread. He seems to be in peril even while on top of his world. Conrad uses the two new relationships described in this section to scrutinize some of the tropes of colonial literature. Tamb'Itam is the quintessential loyal servant, and Dain Waris is the ultimate \"other\" onto which a nearly homoerotic racial essentialism is projected. His relationship with Jim is described as \"one of those strange, profound, rare friendships between brown and white in which the very difference of race seems to draw two human beings closer by some mystic element of sympathy. \" This is Conrad at his most disingenuous. Patusan seems to be populated by two kinds of individuals: \"noble savages,\" like Dain Waris, whose astounding abilities and moral character lead to him being called a \"white man\" by his own people; and dissolute, dirty, scheming representatives of a decaying humanity, like Allang. The extremes in these two caricatures, especially when compared with the subtle meditations on character and the wide variety of people \"like us\" in the first section of the book, seem to function as a subtle critique of representations of colonial subjects. At times, Conrad can be too subtle, though; he has occasionally been accused of racist discourse himself. The juxtaposition of extremes and the replay of stereotypes suggest, however, that Conrad is fully knowledgeable of his literary actions and means to be subversive."}

'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.' 'Doramin was one of the most remarkable men of his race I had ever seen. His bulk for a Malay was immense, but he did not look merely fat; he looked imposing, monumental. This motionless body, clad in rich stuffs, coloured silks, gold embroideries; this huge head, enfolded in a red-and-gold headkerchief; the flat, big, round face, wrinkled, furrowed, with two semicircular heavy folds starting on each side of wide, fierce nostrils, and enclosing a thick-lipped mouth; the throat like a bull; the vast corrugated brow overhanging the staring proud eyes--made a whole that, once seen, can never be forgotten. His impassive repose (he seldom stirred a limb when once he sat down) was like a display of dignity. He was never known to raise his voice. It was a hoarse and powerful murmur, slightly veiled as if heard from a distance. When he walked, two short, sturdy young fellows, naked to the waist, in white sarongs and with black skull-caps on the backs of their heads, sustained his elbows; they would ease him down and stand behind his chair till he wanted to rise, when he would turn his head slowly, as if with difficulty, to the right and to the left, and then they would catch him under his armpits and help him up. For all that, there was nothing of a cripple about him: on the contrary, all his ponderous movements were like manifestations of a mighty deliberate force. It was generally believed he consulted his wife as to public affairs; but nobody, as far as I know, had ever heard them exchange a single word. When they sat in state by the wide opening it was in silence. They could see below them in the declining light the vast expanse of the forest country, a dark sleeping sea of sombre green undulating as far as the violet and purple range of mountains; the shining sinuosity of the river like an immense letter S of beaten silver; the brown ribbon of houses following the sweep of both banks, overtopped by the twin hills uprising above the nearer tree-tops. They were wonderfully contrasted: she, light, delicate, spare, quick, a little witch-like, with a touch of motherly fussiness in her repose; he, facing her, immense and heavy, like a figure of a man roughly fashioned of stone, with something magnanimous and ruthless in his immobility. The son of these old people was a most distinguished youth. 'They had him late in life. Perhaps he was not really so young as he looked. Four- or five-and-twenty is not so young when a man is already father of a family at eighteen. When he entered the large room, lined and carpeted with fine mats, and with a high ceiling of white sheeting, where the couple sat in state surrounded by a most deferential retinue, he would make his way straight to Doramin, to kiss his hand--which the other abandoned to him, majestically--and then would step across to stand by his mother's chair. I suppose I may say they idolised him, but I never caught them giving him an overt glance. Those, it is true, were public functions. The room was generally thronged. The solemn formality of greetings and leave-takings, the profound respect expressed in gestures, on the faces, in the low whispers, is simply indescribable. "It's well worth seeing," Jim had assured me while we were crossing the river, on our way back. "They are like people in a book, aren't they?" he said triumphantly. "And Dain Waris--their son--is the best friend (barring you) I ever had. What Mr. Stein would call a good 'war-comrade.' I was in luck. Jove! I was in luck when I tumbled amongst them at my last gasp." He meditated with bowed head, then rousing himself he added--'"Of course I didn't go to sleep over it, but . . ." He paused again. "It seemed to come to me," he murmured. "All at once I saw what I had to do . . ." 'There was no doubt that it had come to him; and it had come through war, too, as is natural, since this power that came to him was the power to make peace. It is in this sense alone that might so often is right. You must not think he had seen his way at once. When he arrived the Bugis community was in a most critical position. "They were all afraid," he said to me--"each man afraid for himself; while I could see as plain as possible that they must do something at once, if they did not want to go under one after another, what between the Rajah and that vagabond Sherif." But to see that was nothing. When he got his idea he had to drive it into reluctant minds, through the bulwarks of fear, of selfishness. He drove it in at last. And that was nothing. He had to devise the means. He devised them--an audacious plan; and his task was only half done. He had to inspire with his own confidence a lot of people who had hidden and absurd reasons to hang back; he had to conciliate imbecile jealousies, and argue away all sorts of senseless mistrusts. Without the weight of Doramin's authority, and his son's fiery enthusiasm, he would have failed. Dain Waris, the distinguished youth, was the first to believe in him; theirs was one of those strange, profound, rare friendships between brown and white, in which the very difference of race seems to draw two human beings closer by some mystic element of sympathy. Of Dain Waris, his own people said with pride that he knew how to fight like a white man. This was true; he had that sort of courage--the courage in the open, I may say--but he had also a European mind. You meet them sometimes like that, and are surprised to discover unexpectedly a familiar turn of thought, an unobscured vision, a tenacity of purpose, a touch of altruism. Of small stature, but admirably well proportioned, Dain Waris had a proud carriage, a polished, easy bearing, a temperament like a clear flame. His dusky face, with big black eyes, was in action expressive, and in repose thoughtful. He was of a silent disposition; a firm glance, an ironic smile, a courteous deliberation of manner seemed to hint at great reserves of intelligence and power. Such beings open to the Western eye, so often concerned with mere surfaces, the hidden possibilities of races and lands over which hangs the mystery of unrecorded ages. He not only trusted Jim, he understood him, I firmly believe. I speak of him because he had captivated me. His--if I may say so--his caustic placidity, and, at the same time, his intelligent sympathy with Jim's aspirations, appealed to me. I seemed to behold the very origin of friendship. If Jim took the lead, the other had captivated his leader. In fact, Jim the leader was a captive in every sense. The land, the people, the friendship, the love, were like the jealous guardians of his body. Every day added a link to the fetters of that strange freedom. I felt convinced of it, as from day to day I learned more of the story. 'The story! Haven't I heard the story? I've heard it on the march, in camp (he made me scour the country after invisible game); I've listened to a good part of it on one of the twin summits, after climbing the last hundred feet or so on my hands and knees. Our escort (we had volunteer followers from village to village) had camped meantime on a bit of level ground half-way up the slope, and in the still breathless evening the smell of wood-smoke reached our nostrils from below with the penetrating delicacy of some choice scent. Voices also ascended, wonderful in their distinct and immaterial clearness. Jim sat on the trunk of a felled tree, and pulling out his pipe began to smoke. A new growth of grass and bushes was springing up; there were traces of an earthwork under a mass of thorny twigs. "It all started from here," he said, after a long and meditative silence. On the other hill, two hundred yards across a sombre precipice, I saw a line of high blackened stakes, showing here and there ruinously--the remnants of Sherif Ali's impregnable camp. 'But it had been taken, though. That had been his idea. He had mounted Doramin's old ordnance on the top of that hill; two rusty iron 7-pounders, a lot of small brass cannon--currency cannon. But if the brass guns represent wealth, they can also, when crammed recklessly to the muzzle, send a solid shot to some little distance. The thing was to get them up there. He showed me where he had fastened the cables, explained how he had improvised a rude capstan out of a hollowed log turning upon a pointed stake, indicated with the bowl of his pipe the outline of the earthwork. The last hundred feet of the ascent had been the most difficult. He had made himself responsible for success on his own head. He had induced the war party to work hard all night. Big fires lighted at intervals blazed all down the slope, "but up here," he explained, "the hoisting gang had to fly around in the dark." From the top he saw men moving on the hillside like ants at work. He himself on that night had kept on rushing down and climbing up like a squirrel, directing, encouraging, watching all along the line. Old Doramin had himself carried up the hill in his arm-chair. They put him down on the level place upon the slope, and he sat there in the light of one of the big fires--"amazing old chap--real old chieftain," said Jim, "with his little fierce eyes--a pair of immense flintlock pistols on his knees. Magnificent things, ebony, silver-mounted, with beautiful locks and a calibre like an old blunderbuss. A present from Stein, it seems--in exchange for that ring, you know. Used to belong to good old McNeil. God only knows how _he_ came by them. There he sat, moving neither hand nor foot, a flame of dry brushwood behind him, and lots of people rushing about, shouting and pulling round him--the most solemn, imposing old chap you can imagine. He wouldn't have had much chance if Sherif Ali had let his infernal crew loose at us and stampeded my lot. Eh? Anyhow, he had come up there to die if anything went wrong. No mistake! Jove! It thrilled me to see him there--like a rock. But the Sherif must have thought us mad, and never troubled to come and see how we got on. Nobody believed it could be done. Why! I think the very chaps who pulled and shoved and sweated over it did not believe it could be done! Upon my word I don't think they did. . . ." 'He stood erect, the smouldering brier-wood in his clutch, with a smile on his lips and a sparkle in his boyish eyes. I sat on the stump of a tree at his feet, and below us stretched the land, the great expanse of the forests, sombre under the sunshine, rolling like a sea, with glints of winding rivers, the grey spots of villages, and here and there a clearing, like an islet of light amongst the dark waves of continuous tree-tops. A brooding gloom lay over this vast and monotonous landscape; the light fell on it as if into an abyss. The land devoured the sunshine; only far off, along the coast, the empty ocean, smooth and polished within the faint haze, seemed to rise up to the sky in a wall of steel. 'And there I was with him, high in the sunshine on the top of that historic hill of his. He dominated the forest, the secular gloom, the old mankind. He was like a figure set up on a pedestal, to represent in his persistent youth the power, and perhaps the virtues, of races that never grow old, that have emerged from the gloom. I don't know why he should always have appeared to me symbolic. Perhaps this is the real cause of my interest in his fate. I don't know whether it was exactly fair to him to remember the incident which had given a new direction to his life, but at that very moment I remembered very distinctly. It was like a shadow in the light.' 'Already the legend had gifted him with supernatural powers. Yes, it was said, there had been many ropes cunningly disposed, and a strange contrivance that turned by the efforts of many men, and each gun went up tearing slowly through the bushes, like a wild pig rooting its way in the undergrowth, but . . . and the wisest shook their heads. There was something occult in all this, no doubt; for what is the strength of ropes and of men's arms? There is a rebellious soul in things which must be overcome by powerful charms and incantations. Thus old Sura--a very respectable householder of Patusan--with whom I had a quiet chat one evening. However, Sura was a professional sorcerer also, who attended all the rice sowings and reapings for miles around for the purpose of subduing the stubborn souls of things. This occupation he seemed to think a most arduous one, and perhaps the souls of things are more stubborn than the souls of men. As to the simple folk of outlying villages, they believed and said (as the most natural thing in the world) that Jim had carried the guns up the hill on his back--two at a time. 'This would make Jim stamp his foot in vexation and exclaim with an exasperated little laugh, "What can you do with such silly beggars? They will sit up half the night talking bally rot, and the greater the lie the more they seem to like it." You could trace the subtle influence of his surroundings in this irritation. It was part of his captivity. The earnestness of his denials was amusing, and at last I said, "My dear fellow, you don't suppose _I_ believe this." He looked at me quite startled. "Well, no! I suppose not," he said, and burst into a Homeric peal of laughter. "Well, anyhow the guns were there, and went off all together at sunrise. Jove! You should have seen the splinters fly," he cried. By his side Dain Waris, listening with a quiet smile, dropped his eyelids and shuffled his feet a little. It appears that the success in mounting the guns had given Jim's people such a feeling of confidence that he ventured to leave the battery under charge of two elderly Bugis who had seen some fighting in their day, and went to join Dain Waris and the storming party who were concealed in the ravine. In the small hours they began creeping up, and when two-thirds of the way up, lay in the wet grass waiting for the appearance of the sun, which was the agreed signal. He told me with what impatient anguishing emotion he watched the swift coming of the dawn; how, heated with the work and the climbing, he felt the cold dew chilling his very bones; how afraid he was he would begin to shiver and shake like a leaf before the time came for the advance. "It was the slowest half-hour in my life," he declared. Gradually the silent stockade came out on the sky above him. Men scattered all down the slope were crouching amongst the dark stones and dripping bushes. Dain Waris was lying flattened by his side. "We looked at each other," Jim said, resting a gentle hand on his friend's shoulder. "He smiled at me as cheery as you please, and I dared not stir my lips for fear I would break out into a shivering fit. 'Pon my word, it's true! I had been streaming with perspiration when we took cover--so you may imagine . . ." He declared, and I believe him, that he had no fears as to the result. He was only anxious as to his ability to repress these shivers. He didn't bother about the result. He was bound to get to the top of that hill and stay there, whatever might happen. There could be no going back for him. Those people had trusted him implicitly. Him alone! His bare word. . . . 'I remember how, at this point, he paused with his eyes fixed upon me. "As far as he knew, they never had an occasion to regret it yet," he said. "Never. He hoped to God they never would. Meantime--worse luck!--they had got into the habit of taking his word for anything and everything. I could have no idea! Why, only the other day an old fool he had never seen in his life came from some village miles away to find out if he should divorce his wife. Fact. Solemn word. That's the sort of thing. . . He wouldn't have believed it. Would I? Squatted on the verandah chewing betel-nut, sighing and spitting all over the place for more than an hour, and as glum as an undertaker before he came out with that dashed conundrum. That's the kind of thing that isn't so funny as it looks. What was a fellow to say?--Good wife?--Yes. Good wife--old though. Started a confounded long story about some brass pots. Been living together for fifteen years--twenty years--could not tell. A long, long time. Good wife. Beat her a little--not much--just a little, when she was young. Had to--for the sake of his honour. Suddenly in her old age she goes and lends three brass pots to her sister's son's wife, and begins to abuse him every day in a loud voice. His enemies jeered at him; his face was utterly blackened. Pots totally lost. Awfully cut up about it. Impossible to fathom a story like that; told him to go home, and promised to come along myself and settle it all. It's all very well to grin, but it was the dashedest nuisance! A day's journey through the forest, another day lost in coaxing a lot of silly villagers to get at the rights of the affair. There was the making of a sanguinary shindy in the thing. Every bally idiot took sides with one family or the other, and one half of the village was ready to go for the other half with anything that came handy. Honour bright! No joke! . . . Instead of attending to their bally crops. Got him the infernal pots back of course--and pacified all hands. No trouble to settle it. Of course not. Could settle the deadliest quarrel in the country by crooking his little finger. The trouble was to get at the truth of anything. Was not sure to this day whether he had been fair to all parties. It worried him. And the talk! Jove! There didn't seem to be any head or tail to it. Rather storm a twenty-foot-high old stockade any day. Much! Child's play to that other job. Wouldn't take so long either. Well, yes; a funny set out, upon the whole--the fool looked old enough to be his grandfather. But from another point of view it was no joke. His word decided everything--ever since the smashing of Sherif Ali. An awful responsibility," he repeated. "No, really--joking apart, had it been three lives instead of three rotten brass pots it would have been the same. . . ." 'Thus he illustrated the moral effect of his victory in war. It was in truth immense. It had led him from strife to peace, and through death into the innermost life of the people; but the gloom of the land spread out under the sunshine preserved its appearance of inscrutable, of secular repose. The sound of his fresh young voice--it's extraordinary how very few signs of wear he showed--floated lightly, and passed away over the unchanged face of the forests like the sound of the big guns on that cold dewy morning when he had no other concern on earth but the proper control of the chills in his body. With the first slant of sun-rays along these immovable tree-tops the summit of one hill wreathed itself, with heavy reports, in white clouds of smoke, and the other burst into an amazing noise of yells, war-cries, shouts of anger, of surprise, of dismay. Jim and Dain Waris were the first to lay their hands on the stakes. The popular story has it that Jim with a touch of one finger had thrown down the gate. He was, of course, anxious to disclaim this achievement. The whole stockade--he would insist on explaining to you--was a poor affair (Sherif Ali trusted mainly to the inaccessible position); and, anyway, the thing had been already knocked to pieces and only hung together by a miracle. He put his shoulder to it like a little fool and went in head over heels. Jove! If it hadn't been for Dain Waris, a pock-marked tattooed vagabond would have pinned him with his spear to a baulk of timber like one of Stein's beetles. The third man in, it seems, had been Tamb' Itam, Jim's own servant. This was a Malay from the north, a stranger who had wandered into Patusan, and had been forcibly detained by Rajah Allang as paddler of one of the state boats. He had made a bolt of it at the first opportunity, and finding a precarious refuge (but very little to eat) amongst the Bugis settlers, had attached himself to Jim's person. His complexion was very dark, his face flat, his eyes prominent and injected with bile. There was something excessive, almost fanatical, in his devotion to his "white lord." He was inseparable from Jim like a morose shadow. On state occasions he would tread on his master's heels, one hand on the haft of his kriss, keeping the common people at a distance by his truculent brooding glances. Jim had made him the headman of his establishment, and all Patusan respected and courted him as a person of much influence. At the taking of the stockade he had distinguished himself greatly by the methodical ferocity of his fighting. The storming party had come on so quick--Jim said--that notwithstanding the panic of the garrison, there was a "hot five minutes hand-to-hand inside that stockade, till some bally ass set fire to the shelters of boughs and dry grass, and we all had to clear out for dear life." 'The rout, it seems, had been complete. Doramin, waiting immovably in his chair on the hillside, with the smoke of the guns spreading slowly above his big head, received the news with a deep grunt. When informed that his son was safe and leading the pursuit, he, without another sound, made a mighty effort to rise; his attendants hurried to his help, and, held up reverently, he shuffled with great dignity into a bit of shade, where he laid himself down to sleep, covered entirely with a piece of white sheeting. In Patusan the excitement was intense. Jim told me that from the hill, turning his back on the stockade with its embers, black ashes, and half-consumed corpses, he could see time after time the open spaces between the houses on both sides of the stream fill suddenly with a seething rush of people and get empty in a moment. His ears caught feebly from below the tremendous din of gongs and drums; the wild shouts of the crowd reached him in bursts of faint roaring. A lot of streamers made a flutter as of little white, red, yellow birds amongst the brown ridges of roofs. "You must have enjoyed it," I murmured, feeling the stir of sympathetic emotion. '"It was . . . it was immense! Immense!" he cried aloud, flinging his arms open. The sudden movement startled me as though I had seen him bare the secrets of his breast to the sunshine, to the brooding forests, to the steely sea. Below us the town reposed in easy curves upon the banks of a stream whose current seemed to sleep. "Immense!" he repeated for a third time, speaking in a whisper, for himself alone. 'Immense! No doubt it was immense; the seal of success upon his words, the conquered ground for the soles of his feet, the blind trust of men, the belief in himself snatched from the fire, the solitude of his achievement. All this, as I've warned you, gets dwarfed in the telling. I can't with mere words convey to you the impression of his total and utter isolation. I know, of course, he was in every sense alone of his kind there, but the unsuspected qualities of his nature had brought him in such close touch with his surroundings that this isolation seemed only the effect of his power. His loneliness added to his stature. There was nothing within sight to compare him with, as though he had been one of those exceptional men who can be only measured by the greatness of their fame; and his fame, remember, was the greatest thing around for many a day's journey. You would have to paddle, pole, or track a long weary way through the jungle before you passed beyond the reach of its voice. Its voice was not the trumpeting of the disreputable goddess we all know--not blatant--not brazen. It took its tone from the stillness and gloom of the land without a past, where his word was the one truth of every passing day. It shared something of the nature of that silence through which it accompanied you into unexplored depths, heard continuously by your side, penetrating, far-reaching--tinged with wonder and mystery on the lips of whispering men.'

Chapters 24- 27

https://web.archive.org/web/20210126121516/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/lordjim/section7/

Marlow visits Jim in Patusan two years after Jim's arrival there. He has come to offer Jim the trading post house and the stock of goods as a gift, on behalf of Stein. He finds a village of fishermen on the coast who tell him of the peace that Jim has brought to the area. Marlow's informant refers to Jim as "Tuan Jim," or Lord Jim, and tells him that he brought Jim up the river in a canoe two years ago . Marlow is astounded that Jim's prediction--that he would hear of him--is being fulfilled. He notes that Jim's arrival was a major disruption to the area, since the natives had forgotten what white men were. Jim's unheralded appearance, Marlow's unloaded revolver cradled in his lap, created an opportunity of which Jim was quick to take advantage. The fishermen deliver Jim straight to Rajah Allang. Jim's revolver is unloaded, so he has no way of defending himself, and he agrees to see the Rajah. The Rajah imprisons Jim in a stockade for several days. Jim takes Marlow to see the Rajah, pointing out where he was imprisoned. He pauses to settle a dispute between the Rajah and some villagers, then continues with his story: While he is a prisoner of Allang's, he is subjected to absurd treatment--asked to fix a broken New England clock, interrogated about Dutch colonial strategy, questioned as to his motives. He manages to escape the stockade fairly easily by leaping over the wall and struggling up a muddy slope after jumping a creek. Upon his escape, Jim rushes to Doramin's compound and presents Stein's silver ring. He is received with warmth, and Doramin's people prepare to repel the Rajah. Doramin, Marlow relates, is the leader of one of the most powerful factions in Patusan, a group of merchants called the Bugis, who had emigrated from Celebes many years ago. Most of the conflict in Patusan stems from Rajah Allang's attempts to enforce a trading monopoly and Doramin's insistence on violating Allang's proclamation. Jim finds the Bugis arguing over the wisdom of allying themselves with Sherif Ali, an Arab religious zealot who, along with his band of tribesmen from the interior, has been decimating the countryside around Patusan. Some of the Bugis want to join with Ali to overthrow Allang. Jim meets Dain Waris, Doramin's son, who is to become his best friend. It soon occurs to Jim that he has an opportunity to make peace in Patusan and thus make a name for himself. Jim proposes that the Bugis organize an attack on Ali. Dain Waris is immediately enthusiastic, and the plan moves forward. Jim oversees the transfer of Doramin's meager artillery to a hilltop, from which the attack is launched and Ali defeated. Marlow remarks at the trust the Bugis placed in Jim in following him into battle. An old man tells Marlow that many think Jim possesses supernatural powers. Jim seems even more "symbolic" to Marlow than ever. In recounting the attack, Jim mentions the valor of his servant, Tamb'Itam, a refugee from Allang who has devoted himself to Jim. In triumphing over Sherif Ali, Jim has finally become a hero, and the people of Patusan await his command.

Commentary It is appropriate that Marlow remarks on how "symbolic" Jim seems to him at this moment. From this point onward, Jim begins to recede from the text. The temporal progression of the narrative becomes ever more convoluted, as Marlow has to work harder and harder to piece together the story. Jim no longer spends entire chapters struggling to express his inner anguish. Instead, the narrative is composed of his polished--if somewhat slangy--accounts of his actions, interspersed with small set-piece landscapes. It appears that Jim's hubris has been enabling, not fatal. Marlow feels distant from Jim; if Jim was once "one of us," Marlow has no claim to being "one of them," a person like the new Jim. Marlow suggests that nothing can touch Jim now, since he has escaped from the shadow of the Patna incident. Jim's legend is beginning to bloat, though, as he revels in the unlimited trust of his people and whispers of his supernatural abilities spread. He seems to be in peril even while on top of his world. Conrad uses the two new relationships described in this section to scrutinize some of the tropes of colonial literature. Tamb'Itam is the quintessential loyal servant, and Dain Waris is the ultimate "other" onto which a nearly homoerotic racial essentialism is projected. His relationship with Jim is described as "one of those strange, profound, rare friendships between brown and white in which the very difference of race seems to draw two human beings closer by some mystic element of sympathy. " This is Conrad at his most disingenuous. Patusan seems to be populated by two kinds of individuals: "noble savages," like Dain Waris, whose astounding abilities and moral character lead to him being called a "white man" by his own people; and dissolute, dirty, scheming representatives of a decaying humanity, like Allang. The extremes in these two caricatures, especially when compared with the subtle meditations on character and the wide variety of people "like us" in the first section of the book, seem to function as a subtle critique of representations of colonial subjects. At times, Conrad can be too subtle, though; he has occasionally been accused of racist discourse himself. The juxtaposition of extremes and the replay of stereotypes suggest, however, that Conrad is fully knowledgeable of his literary actions and means to be subversive.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/44747-chapters/8.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_7_part_0.txt

The Red and the Black.part 1.chapter 8

part 1, chapter 8

{"name": "Part 1, Chapter 8", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-1-chapter-8", "summary": "The chambermaid Elisa finds out that she's going to inherit some money. She hopes that this money will give her the freedom she needs to marry Julien. Her local priest, Father Chelan is happy about this. But he's sad to find out that Julien isn't interested. Father sits Julien down and tells him that he needs to think carefully about becoming a priest. He knows Julien is ambitious and he's worried that Julien will do whatever it takes to become rich. That's why he's worried that Julien is going to compromise on his holy values in order to flatter and make friends with powerful men. Father Chelan can see through Julien's phony belief in the church. He wants Julien to stay way from the priesthood. Meanwhile, Madame de Renal realizes that Elisa has been very depressed lately, in spite of the money she's just inherited. Elisa tells Madame about Julien refusing her. Madame feels bad, but also is secretly pleased. She still promises Elisa that she'll try to convince Julien to marry the girl. The narrator tells us that Madame only does this because she loves the pleasure of hearing Julien reject Elisa over and over. It's only after this encounter that she starts to wonder if she's in love with Julien. The mayor needs to leave for a few days on business. While he's gone, Madame asks the workmen to construct a walkway on her property. She relishes the opportunity to spend the next couple of days with Julien, with both of them directing the workers. In other words, she likes having Julien temporarily replace her husband as man of the house. Julien and Madame start hunting butterflies together and reading about them in books. They finally have something they can talk about. Neighbors notice that Madame has started paying more attention to her wardrobe. A cousin of Madame de Renal's, named Madame Derville, visits the de Renal house. The two spend a lot of time together, and Derville recognizes that Madame is happier than usual. Julien often spends time with the two women as they hang out beneath a tree. One evening, his hand accidentally brushes against Madame de Renal's. She quickly pulls hers away. Julien decides that he must find a way to touch her hand without this happening.", "analysis": ""}

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.

Part 1, Chapter 8

https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-1-chapter-8

The chambermaid Elisa finds out that she's going to inherit some money. She hopes that this money will give her the freedom she needs to marry Julien. Her local priest, Father Chelan is happy about this. But he's sad to find out that Julien isn't interested. Father sits Julien down and tells him that he needs to think carefully about becoming a priest. He knows Julien is ambitious and he's worried that Julien will do whatever it takes to become rich. That's why he's worried that Julien is going to compromise on his holy values in order to flatter and make friends with powerful men. Father Chelan can see through Julien's phony belief in the church. He wants Julien to stay way from the priesthood. Meanwhile, Madame de Renal realizes that Elisa has been very depressed lately, in spite of the money she's just inherited. Elisa tells Madame about Julien refusing her. Madame feels bad, but also is secretly pleased. She still promises Elisa that she'll try to convince Julien to marry the girl. The narrator tells us that Madame only does this because she loves the pleasure of hearing Julien reject Elisa over and over. It's only after this encounter that she starts to wonder if she's in love with Julien. The mayor needs to leave for a few days on business. While he's gone, Madame asks the workmen to construct a walkway on her property. She relishes the opportunity to spend the next couple of days with Julien, with both of them directing the workers. In other words, she likes having Julien temporarily replace her husband as man of the house. Julien and Madame start hunting butterflies together and reading about them in books. They finally have something they can talk about. Neighbors notice that Madame has started paying more attention to her wardrobe. A cousin of Madame de Renal's, named Madame Derville, visits the de Renal house. The two spend a lot of time together, and Derville recognizes that Madame is happier than usual. Julien often spends time with the two women as they hang out beneath a tree. One evening, his hand accidentally brushes against Madame de Renal's. She quickly pulls hers away. Julien decides that he must find a way to touch her hand without this happening.

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/1756-chapters/act_iv.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/Uncle Vanya/section_6_part_0.txt

Uncle Vanya.act iv

act iv

{"name": "Act IV - Part One", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210227035013/https://www.sparknotes.com/drama/unclevanya/section7/", "summary": "Act IV is set in Voynitsky's bedroom, which doubles as the estate office. Chekhov describes it at length in his stage notes: a large table stands by the window, piled with account books and papers; Astrov's drawing table sits to the side; a map of Africa hangs on the wall. Telegin and Marina sit opposite each other, winding stocking wool. Again an unspecified period of time has passed; it is still autumn. Through the conversation of the nurse and landowner, we learn that Yelena and the professor are departing that evening for Kharkov, not even bothering to pack their things. Marina is relieved that the household will resume its routine. She then asks after Sonya--apparently she is searching for Voynitsky in the garden with Dr. Astrov, fearful that her father might injure himself. Voynitsky and Astrov then enter, and the former orders the Marina and Telegin out. Astrov asks Voynitsky to return what he took from him, threatening to use force if necessary. Voynitsky responds that Astrov can do what he likes as his friend is now nothing but a fool, a madman. Ironically, he notes that though he might be mad, no one would ever consider a sham professor or treacherous wife mad. He also accuses Astrov of infidelity with Yelena . Astrov thumbs his nose. The conversation continues: for Astrov, Voynitsky is not mad but \"simply eccentric\" and, indeed, \"being eccentric is the normal condition of mankind.\" Suddenly Voynitsky buries his face in shame, repeating the refrain from the act previous: \"What can I do?\" He dreads the many empty years to come, dreaming of a new life and begging Astrov to help him start one. Annoyed, Astrov tells him he can do nothing, that his situation is hopeless, and that, though they were once the only decent, educated men in the district, provincial life has poisoned them both. Astrov then renews his request for what Voynitsky has stolen, which is apparently a bottle of morphine. Voynitsky can shoot himself if he feels suicidal, but morphine would unnecessarily implicate the doctor. Sonya then enters, and the doctor appeals to her for help. After his daughter pleads with him, Voynitsky surrenders the bottle and crumbles. Astrov prepares to leave.", "analysis": "These final scenes are significant as they show Uncle Vanya asking for redemption; all too clearly, this redemption brusquely is denied to him. Intimately related to this final blow are the themes and motifs we have discussed thus far: estrangement, the memory of a wasted life, and so on. Voynitsky concludes that he is a madman and a fool. Astrov retorts that Voynitsky is not mad but \"simply eccentric\"--as Astrov himself has been described throughout the play. Though Astrov once considered eccentricity \"sick and abnormal\", he has come to realize it is the \"normal condition of mankind.\" As we have noted throughout, \"eccentricity\" refers in this play to an estrangement from both others and oneself. Thus, though the characters here might not be mad, we can certainly identify them they as doubly alienated in the manner described above. This estrangement is now a condition of existence. Voynitsky also brings up the subject of time and memory, begging the doctor for a new life. To quote: \"If you could wake up one clear, quiet morning and feel that you're beginning your life over again, that the entire past is forgotten, scattered to the winds like smoke.\" In begging for a new life, Voynitsky would escape his monotonous existence and make the memory of his wasted life disappear. Astrov, however, has no words of solace. Indeed, apparently no longer the visionary we saw in Act I, he remarks that the only happy visions one can hope for are those that may come in the grave. As we will see, Astrov's sentence, condemning Vanya to his misery, prefigures Sonya's similarly fatalistic speech at the end of the play. These final moments will above all reveal how a rebirth for Vanya is impossible-only drudgery awaits him. Indeed, the restoration of daily routine is already prefigured here, not only by the interlude between Marina and Telegin that precedes their conversation, but by Chekhov's detailed description of his office as well. was a famous painter of seascapes.]"}

ACT IV VOITSKI'S bedroom, which is also his office. A table stands near the window; on it are ledgers, letter scales, and papers of every description. Near by stands a smaller table belonging to ASTROFF, with his paints and drawing materials. On the wall hangs a cage containing a starling. There is also a map of Africa on the wall, obviously of no use to anybody. There is a large sofa covered with buckram. A door to the left leads into an inner room; one to the right leads into the front hall, and before this door lies a mat for the peasants with their muddy boots to stand on. It is an autumn evening. The silence is profound. TELEGIN and MARINA are sitting facing one another, winding wool. TELEGIN. Be quick, Marina, or we shall be called away to say good-bye before you have finished. The carriage has already been ordered. MARINA. [Trying to wind more quickly] I am a little tired. TELEGIN. They are going to Kharkoff to live. MARINA. They do well to go. TELEGIN. They have been frightened. The professor's wife won't stay here an hour longer. "If we are going at all, let's be off," says she, "we shall go to Kharkoff and look about us, and then we can send for our things." They are travelling light. It seems, Marina, that fate has decreed for them not to live here. MARINA. And quite rightly. What a storm they have just raised! It was shameful! TELEGIN. It was indeed. The scene was worthy of the brush of Aibazofski. MARINA. I wish I'd never laid eyes on them. [A pause] Now we shall have things as they were again: tea at eight, dinner at one, and supper in the evening; everything in order as decent folks, as Christians like to have it. [Sighs] It is a long time since I have eaten noodles. TELEGIN. Yes, we haven't had noodles for ages. [A pause] Not for ages. As I was going through the village this morning, Marina, one of the shop-keepers called after me, "Hi! you hanger-on!" I felt it bitterly. MARINA. Don't pay the least attention to them, master; we are all dependents on God. You and Sonia and all of us. Every one must work, no one can sit idle. Where is Sonia? TELEGIN. In the garden with the doctor, looking for Ivan. They fear he may lay violent hands on himself. MARINA. Where is his pistol? TELEGIN. [Whispers] I hid it in the cellar. VOITSKI and ASTROFF come in. VOITSKI. Leave me alone! [To MARINA and TELEGIN] Go away! Go away and leave me to myself, if but for an hour. I won't have you watching me like this! TELEGIN. Yes, yes, Vanya. [He goes out on tiptoe.] MARINA. The gander cackles; ho! ho! ho! [She gathers up her wool and goes out.] VOITSKI. Leave me by myself! ASTROFF. I would, with the greatest pleasure. I ought to have gone long ago, but I shan't leave you until you have returned what you took from me. VOITSKI. I took nothing from you. ASTROFF. I am not jesting, don't detain me, I really must go. VOITSKI. I took nothing of yours. ASTROFF. You didn't? Very well, I shall have to wait a little longer, and then you will have to forgive me if I resort to force. We shall have to bind you and search you. I mean what I say. VOITSKI. Do as you please. [A pause] Oh, to make such a fool of myself! To shoot twice and miss him both times! I shall never forgive myself. ASTROFF. When the impulse came to shoot, it would have been as well had you put a bullet through your own head. VOITSKI. [Shrugging his shoulders] Strange! I attempted murder, and am not going to be arrested or brought to trial. That means they think me mad. [With a bitter laugh] Me! I am mad, and those who hide their worthlessness, their dullness, their crying heartlessness behind a professor's mask, are sane! Those who marry old men and then deceive them under the noses of all, are sane! I saw you kiss her; I saw you in each other's arms! ASTROFF. Yes, sir, I did kiss her; so there. [He puts his thumb to his nose.] VOITSKI. [His eyes on the door] No, it is the earth that is mad, because she still bears us on her breast. ASTROFF. That is nonsense. VOITSKI. Well? Am I not a madman, and therefore irresponsible? Haven't I the right to talk nonsense? ASTROFF. This is a farce! You are not mad; you are simply a ridiculous fool. I used to think every fool was out of his senses, but now I see that lack of sense is a man's normal state, and you are perfectly normal. VOITSKI. [Covers his face with his hands] Oh! If you knew how ashamed I am! These piercing pangs of shame are like nothing on earth. [In an agonised voice] I can't endure them! [He leans against the table] What can I do? What can I do? ASTROFF. Nothing. VOITSKI. You must tell me something! Oh, my God! I am forty-seven years old. I may live to sixty; I still have thirteen years before me; an eternity! How shall I be able to endure life for thirteen years? What shall I do? How can I fill them? Oh, don't you see? [He presses ASTROFF'S hand convulsively] Don't you see, if only I could live the rest of my life in some new way! If I could only wake some still, bright morning and feel that life had begun again; that the past was forgotten and had vanished like smoke. [He weeps] Oh, to begin life anew! Tell me, tell me how to begin. ASTROFF. [Crossly] What nonsense! What sort of a new life can you and I look forward to? We can have no hope. VOITSKI. None? ASTROFF. None. Of that I am convinced. VOITSKI. Tell me what to do. [He puts his hand to his heart] I feel such a burning pain here. ASTROFF. [Shouts angrily] Stop! [Then, more gently] It may be that posterity, which will despise us for our blind and stupid lives, will find some road to happiness; but we--you and I--have but one hope, the hope that we may be visited by visions, perhaps by pleasant ones, as we lie resting in our graves. [Sighing] Yes, brother, there were only two respectable, intelligent men in this county, you and I. Ten years or so of this life of ours, this miserable life, have sucked us under, and we have become as contemptible and petty as the rest. But don't try to talk me out of my purpose! Give me what you took from me, will you? VOITSKI. I took nothing from you. ASTROFF. You took a little bottle of morphine out of my medicine-case. [A pause] Listen! If you are positively determined to make an end to yourself, go into the woods and shoot yourself there. Give up the morphine, or there will be a lot of talk and guesswork; people will think I gave it to you. I don't fancy having to perform a post-mortem on you. Do you think I should find it interesting? SONIA comes in. VOITSKI. Leave me alone. ASTROFF. [To SONIA] Sonia, your uncle has stolen a bottle of morphine out of my medicine-case and won't give it up. Tell him that his behaviour is--well, unwise. I haven't time, I must be going. SONIA. Uncle Vanya, did you take the morphine? ASTROFF. Yes, he took it. [A pause] I am absolutely sure. SONIA. Give it up! Why do you want to frighten us? [Tenderly] Give it up, Uncle Vanya! My misfortune is perhaps even greater than yours, but I am not plunged in despair. I endure my sorrow, and shall endure it until my life comes to a natural end. You must endure yours, too. [A pause] Give it up! Dear, darling Uncle Vanya. Give it up! [She weeps] You are so good, I am sure you will have pity on us and give it up. You must endure your sorrow, Uncle Vanya; you must endure it. VOITSKI takes a bottle from the drawer of the table and hands it to ASTROFF. VOITSKI. There it is! [To SONIA] And now, we must get to work at once; we must do something, or else I shall not be able to endure it. SONIA. Yes, yes, to work! As soon as we have seen them off we shall go to work. [She nervously straightens out the papers on the table] Everything is in a muddle! ASTROFF. [Putting the bottle in his case, which he straps together] Now I can be off. HELENA comes in. HELENA. Are you here, Ivan? We are starting in a moment. Go to Alexander, he wants to speak to you. SONIA. Go, Uncle Vanya. [She takes VOITSKI 'S arm] Come, you and papa must make peace; that is absolutely necessary. SONIA and VOITSKI go out. HELENA. I am going away. [She gives ASTROFF her hand] Good-bye. ASTROFF. So soon? HELENA. The carriage is waiting. ASTROFF. Good-bye. HELENA. You promised me you would go away yourself to-day. ASTROFF. I have not forgotten. I am going at once. [A pause] Were you frightened? Was it so terrible? HELENA. Yes. ASTROFF. Couldn't you stay? Couldn't you? To-morrow--in the forest-- HELENA. No. It is all settled, and that is why I can look you so bravely in the face. Our departure is fixed. One thing I must ask of you: don't think too badly of me; I should like you to respect me. ASTROFF. Ah! [With an impatient gesture] Stay, I implore you! Confess that there is nothing for you to do in this world. You have no object in life; there is nothing to occupy your attention, and sooner or later your feelings must master you. It is inevitable. It would be better if it happened not in Kharkoff or in Kursk, but here, in nature's lap. It would then at least be poetical, even beautiful. Here you have the forests, the houses half in ruins that Turgenieff writes of. HELENA. How comical you are! I am angry with you and yet I shall always remember you with pleasure. You are interesting and original. You and I will never meet again, and so I shall tell you--why should I conceal it?--that I am just a little in love with you. Come, one more last pressure of our hands, and then let us part good friends. Let us not bear each other any ill will. ASTROFF. [Pressing her hand] Yes, go. [Thoughtfully] You seem to be sincere and good, and yet there is something strangely disquieting about all your personality. No sooner did you arrive here with your husband than every one whom you found busy and actively creating something was forced to drop his work and give himself up for the whole summer to your husband's gout and yourself. You and he have infected us with your idleness. I have been swept off my feet; I have not put my hand to a thing for weeks, during which sickness has been running its course unchecked among the people, and the peasants have been pasturing their cattle in my woods and young plantations. Go where you will, you and your husband will always carry destruction in your train. I am joking of course, and yet I am strangely sure that had you stayed here we should have been overtaken by the most immense desolation. I would have gone to my ruin, and you--you would not have prospered. So go! E finita la comedia! HELENA. [Snatching a pencil off ASTROFF'S table, and hiding it with a quick movement] I shall take this pencil for memory! ASTROFF. How strange it is. We meet, and then suddenly it seems that we must part forever. That is the way in this world. As long as we are alone, before Uncle Vanya comes in with a bouquet--allow me--to kiss you good-bye--may I? [He kisses her on the cheek] So! Splendid! HELENA. I wish you every happiness. [She glances about her] For once in my life, I shall! and scorn the consequences! [She kisses him impetuously, and they quickly part] I must go. ASTROFF. Yes, go. If the carriage is there, then start at once. [They stand listening.] ASTROFF. E finita! VOITSKI, SEREBRAKOFF, MME. VOITSKAYA with her book, TELEGIN, and SONIA come in. SEREBRAKOFF. [To VOITSKI] Shame on him who bears malice for the past. I have gone through so much in the last few hours that I feel capable of writing a whole treatise on the conduct of life for the instruction of posterity. I gladly accept your apology, and myself ask your forgiveness. [He kisses VOITSKI three times.] HELENA embraces SONIA. SEREBRAKOFF. [Kissing MME. VOITSKAYA'S hand] Mother! MME. VOITSKAYA. [Kissing him] Have your picture taken, Alexander, and send me one. You know how dear you are to me. TELEGIN. Good-bye, your Excellency. Don't forget us. SEREBRAKOFF. [Kissing his daughter] Good-bye, good-bye all. [Shaking hands with ASTROFF] Many thanks for your pleasant company. I have a deep regard for your opinions and your enthusiasm, but let me, as an old man, give one word of advice at parting: do something, my friend! Work! Do something! [They all bow] Good luck to you all. [He goes out followed by MME. VOITSKAYA and SONIA.] VOITSKI [Kissing HELENA'S hand fervently] Good-bye--forgive me. I shall never see you again! HELENA. [Touched] Good-bye, dear boy. She lightly kisses his head as he bends over her hand, and goes out. ASTROFF. Tell them to bring my carriage around too, Waffles. TELEGIN. All right, old man. ASTROFF and VOITSKI are left behind alone. ASTROFF collects his paints and drawing materials on the table and packs them away in a box. ASTROFF. Why don't you go to see them off? VOITSKI. Let them go! I--I can't go out there. I feel too sad. I must go to work on something at once. To work! To work! He rummages through his papers on the table. A pause. The tinkling of bells is heard as the horses trot away. ASTROFF. They have gone! The professor, I suppose, is glad to go. He couldn't be tempted back now by a fortune. MARINA comes in. MARINA. They have gone. [She sits down in an arm-chair and knits her stocking.] SONIA comes in wiping her eyes. SONIA. They have gone. God be with them. [To her uncle] And now, Uncle Vanya, let us do something! VOITSKI. To work! To work! SONIA. It is long, long, since you and I have sat together at this table. [She lights a lamp on the table] No ink! [She takes the inkstand to the cupboard and fills it from an ink-bottle] How sad it is to see them go! MME. VOITSKAYA comes slowly in. MME. VOITSKAYA. They have gone. She sits down and at once becomes absorbed in her book. SONIA sits down at the table and looks through an account book. SONIA. First, Uncle Vanya, let us write up the accounts. They are in a dreadful state. Come, begin. You take one and I will take the other. VOITSKI. In account with [They sit silently writing.] MARINA. [Yawning] The sand-man has come. ASTROFF. How still it is. Their pens scratch, the cricket sings; it is so warm and comfortable. I hate to go. [The tinkling of bells is heard.] ASTROFF. My carriage has come. There now remains but to say good-bye to you, my friends, and to my table here, and then--away! [He puts the map into the portfolio.] MARINA. Don't hurry away; sit a little longer with us. ASTROFF. Impossible. VOITSKI. [Writing] And carry forward from the old debt two seventy-five-- WORKMAN comes in. WORKMAN. Your carriage is waiting, sir. ASTROFF. All right. [He hands the WORKMAN his medicine-case, portfolio, and box] Look out, don't crush the portfolio! WORKMAN. Very well, sir. SONIA. When shall we see you again? ASTROFF. Hardly before next summer. Probably not this winter, though, of course, if anything should happen you will let me know. [He shakes hands with them] Thank you for your kindness, for your hospitality, for everything! [He goes up to MARINA and kisses her head] Good-bye, old nurse! MARINA. Are you going without your tea? ASTROFF. I don't want any, nurse. MARINA. Won't you have a drop of vodka? ASTROFF. [Hesitatingly] Yes, I might. MARINA goes out. ASTROFF. [After a pause] My off-wheeler has gone lame for some reason. I noticed it yesterday when Peter was taking him to water. VOITSKI. You should have him re-shod. ASTROFF. I shall have to go around by the blacksmith's on my way home. It can't be avoided. [He stands looking up at the map of Africa hanging on the wall] I suppose it is roasting hot in Africa now. VOITSKI. Yes, I suppose it is. MARINA comes back carrying a tray on which are a glass of vodka and a piece of bread. MARINA. Help yourself. ASTROFF drinks MARINA. To your good health! [She bows deeply] Eat your bread with it. ASTROFF. No, I like it so. And now, good-bye. [To MARINA] You needn't come out to see me off, nurse. He goes out. SONIA follows him with a candle to light him to the carriage. MARINA sits down in her armchair. VOITSKI. [Writing] On the 2d of February, twenty pounds of butter; on the 16th, twenty pounds of butter again. Buckwheat flour--[A pause. Bells are heard tinkling.] MARINA. He has gone. [A pause.] SONIA comes in and sets the candle stick on the table. SONIA. He has gone. VOITSKI. [Adding and writing] Total, fifteen--twenty-five-- SONIA sits down and begins to write. [Yawning] Oh, ho! The Lord have mercy. TELEGIN comes in on tiptoe, sits down near the door, and begins to tune his guitar. VOITSKI. [To SONIA, stroking her hair] Oh, my child, I am miserable; if you only knew how miserable I am! SONIA. What can we do? We must live our lives. [A pause] Yes, we shall live, Uncle Vanya. We shall live through the long procession of days before us, and through the long evenings; we shall patiently bear the trials that fate imposes on us; we shall work for others without rest, both now and when we are old; and when our last hour comes we shall meet it humbly, and there, beyond the grave, we shall say that we have suffered and wept, that our life was bitter, and God will have pity on us. Ah, then dear, dear Uncle, we shall see that bright and beautiful life; we shall rejoice and look back upon our sorrow here; a tender smile--and--we shall rest. I have faith, Uncle, fervent, passionate faith. [SONIA kneels down before her uncle and lays her head on his hands. She speaks in a weary voice] We shall rest. [TELEGIN plays softly on the guitar] We shall rest. We shall hear the angels. We shall see heaven shining like a jewel. We shall see all evil and all our pain sink away in the great compassion that shall enfold the world. Our life will be as peaceful and tender and sweet as a caress. I have faith; I have faith. [She wipes away her tears] My poor, poor Uncle Vanya, you are crying! [Weeping] You have never known what happiness was, but wait, Uncle Vanya, wait! We shall rest. [She embraces him] We shall rest. [The WATCHMAN'S rattle is heard in the garden; TELEGIN plays softly; MME. VOITSKAYA writes something on the margin of her pamphlet; MARINA knits her stocking] We shall rest. The curtain slowly falls.

Act IV - Part One

https://web.archive.org/web/20210227035013/https://www.sparknotes.com/drama/unclevanya/section7/

Act IV is set in Voynitsky's bedroom, which doubles as the estate office. Chekhov describes it at length in his stage notes: a large table stands by the window, piled with account books and papers; Astrov's drawing table sits to the side; a map of Africa hangs on the wall. Telegin and Marina sit opposite each other, winding stocking wool. Again an unspecified period of time has passed; it is still autumn. Through the conversation of the nurse and landowner, we learn that Yelena and the professor are departing that evening for Kharkov, not even bothering to pack their things. Marina is relieved that the household will resume its routine. She then asks after Sonya--apparently she is searching for Voynitsky in the garden with Dr. Astrov, fearful that her father might injure himself. Voynitsky and Astrov then enter, and the former orders the Marina and Telegin out. Astrov asks Voynitsky to return what he took from him, threatening to use force if necessary. Voynitsky responds that Astrov can do what he likes as his friend is now nothing but a fool, a madman. Ironically, he notes that though he might be mad, no one would ever consider a sham professor or treacherous wife mad. He also accuses Astrov of infidelity with Yelena . Astrov thumbs his nose. The conversation continues: for Astrov, Voynitsky is not mad but "simply eccentric" and, indeed, "being eccentric is the normal condition of mankind." Suddenly Voynitsky buries his face in shame, repeating the refrain from the act previous: "What can I do?" He dreads the many empty years to come, dreaming of a new life and begging Astrov to help him start one. Annoyed, Astrov tells him he can do nothing, that his situation is hopeless, and that, though they were once the only decent, educated men in the district, provincial life has poisoned them both. Astrov then renews his request for what Voynitsky has stolen, which is apparently a bottle of morphine. Voynitsky can shoot himself if he feels suicidal, but morphine would unnecessarily implicate the doctor. Sonya then enters, and the doctor appeals to her for help. After his daughter pleads with him, Voynitsky surrenders the bottle and crumbles. Astrov prepares to leave.

These final scenes are significant as they show Uncle Vanya asking for redemption; all too clearly, this redemption brusquely is denied to him. Intimately related to this final blow are the themes and motifs we have discussed thus far: estrangement, the memory of a wasted life, and so on. Voynitsky concludes that he is a madman and a fool. Astrov retorts that Voynitsky is not mad but "simply eccentric"--as Astrov himself has been described throughout the play. Though Astrov once considered eccentricity "sick and abnormal", he has come to realize it is the "normal condition of mankind." As we have noted throughout, "eccentricity" refers in this play to an estrangement from both others and oneself. Thus, though the characters here might not be mad, we can certainly identify them they as doubly alienated in the manner described above. This estrangement is now a condition of existence. Voynitsky also brings up the subject of time and memory, begging the doctor for a new life. To quote: "If you could wake up one clear, quiet morning and feel that you're beginning your life over again, that the entire past is forgotten, scattered to the winds like smoke." In begging for a new life, Voynitsky would escape his monotonous existence and make the memory of his wasted life disappear. Astrov, however, has no words of solace. Indeed, apparently no longer the visionary we saw in Act I, he remarks that the only happy visions one can hope for are those that may come in the grave. As we will see, Astrov's sentence, condemning Vanya to his misery, prefigures Sonya's similarly fatalistic speech at the end of the play. These final moments will above all reveal how a rebirth for Vanya is impossible-only drudgery awaits him. Indeed, the restoration of daily routine is already prefigured here, not only by the interlude between Marina and Telegin that precedes their conversation, but by Chekhov's detailed description of his office as well. was a famous painter of seascapes.]

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/34.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Tess of the d'Urbervilles/section_4_part_10.txt

Tess of the d'Urbervilles.chapter xxxiv

chapter xxxiv

{"name": "Chapter XXXIV", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210213065711/https://www.novelguide.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summaries/phase4-chapter25-34", "summary": "Tess and Angel stay their first night as man and wife in the shoddy old d'Urberville mansion, where portraits of earlier d'Urberville women spook Tess. Angel, who is pleased to have a wife of noble lineage, notices that despite the terrifying countenances of the framed women, they bear a resemblance to his new wife. A package arrives from Angel's father. It contains diamond heirloom jewelry for a shocked Tess who looks more brilliant than the diamonds to her admiring new husband after she puts them on. However, almost immediately a man arrives late with their luggage and explains he was delayed by the suicide of Retty the milkmaid. Marian, another lovelorn milkmaid has also taken to drink. The newlyweds attempt to shake off the disastrous news, and Angel confesses to Tess about an earlier sexual indiscretion with a stranger. Deeply relieved, Tess finally confesses her own past to Angel without flinching, safe in the knowledge that he will forgive her because her \"crime\" with Alec d'Urberville is \"just the same\".", "analysis": ". Angel's family doesn't know what to make of their son's choice for a wife. Despite the rationality behind his decision--a farm woman is worth more to him than one familiar with the niceties of upper-class Victorian society-- they, especially his mother, are snobs and worry about their social standing and their position in the church. They immediately characterize Tess as low class and suggest Angel marry Mercy Chance instead. In addition, they are appalled that Angel's manners have deteriorated during the time he has spent away. Perhaps he has been contaminated by Tess who is sure to lower their social standing in the eyes of their neighbors. Both of Angel's brothers have entered the church and are also displeased with his choice of a common woman. Intellectuals, they are emotionally frozen. While Angel seems removed from his family, such training has also worked its way deep into his psyche and this will become increasing apparent. Is he saying one thing--that he totally accepts and loves Tess despite her lack of social and financial standing--or is he also a snob and a hypocrite. He has given up the church to live a more humble existence on the land, but his actions in the future bear watching. Consider that although Angel has earlier claimed to dislike ancient families, he is happy to learn of Tess's lineage and prompts her to use d'Urberville instead of Durbeyfield: \"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\". In short, Angel, like Tess, is not what he seems. Tess idealizes him entirely and sees him as a pagan god wandering around in the fertile fields--a man of Nature in search of a natural woman: \"It seemed natural enough to him now that Tess was again in sight to choose a mate from unrestrained Nature and not from the abodes of Art\". But, Tess takes on Angel's gestures and mimics his words and thus becomes less of what he makes her out to be, or indeed what he says he wants her to be. In the Victorian era, women's sexuality was denied, and they took on the role of Angel of the House, above men spiritually, and the moral guide of their children. A true lady merely tolerated sex for procreation. Tess's denial of Angel's advances makes Tess appear even more pure: \"I know you to be the most honest, most spotless creature that ever lived\". However, Angel fails to see Tess as a living breathing human, and when anyone is placed this high, down is the only direction they can move. While Tess does make several attempts to tell Angel the truth about her past, in fairness she chooses not to tell him out of fear that she will lose him. Yes, writing him the letter and attempting to tell him immediately before the wedding count as sincere efforts, but in reality, she held back the truth and married him: \"I can't bear to let anyone have him but me. Yet it is a wrong to him, and may kill him when he knows. Tess uses her mother's advice to justify her actions and chooses not to risk losing Angel. To Tess's credit, however, she decides to tell her new husband the truth, even though at this point she could have continued to withhold it"}

They drove by the level road along the valley to a distance of a few miles, and, reaching Wellbridge, turned away from the village to the left, and over the great Elizabethan bridge which gives the place half its name. Immediately behind it stood the house wherein they had engaged lodgings, whose exterior features are so well known to all travellers through the Froom Valley; once portion of a fine manorial residence, and the property and seat of a d'Urberville, but since its partial demolition a farmhouse. "Welcome to one of your ancestral mansions!" said Clare as he handed her down. But he regretted the pleasantry; it was too near a satire. On entering they found that, though they had only engaged a couple of rooms, the farmer had taken advantage of their proposed presence during the coming days to pay a New Year's visit to some friends, leaving a woman from a neighbouring cottage to minister to their few wants. The absoluteness of possession pleased them, and they realized it as the first moment of their experience under their own exclusive roof-tree. But he found that the mouldy old habitation somewhat depressed his bride. When the carriage was gone they ascended the stairs to wash their hands, the charwoman showing the way. On the landing Tess stopped and started. "What's the matter?" said he. "Those horrid women!" she answered with a smile. "How they frightened me." He looked up, and perceived two life-size portraits on panels built into the masonry. As all visitors to the mansion are aware, these paintings represent women of middle age, of a date some two hundred years ago, whose lineaments once seen can never be forgotten. The long pointed features, narrow eye, and smirk of the one, so suggestive of merciless treachery; the bill-hook nose, large teeth, and bold eye of the other suggesting arrogance to the point of ferocity, haunt the beholder afterwards in his dreams. "Whose portraits are those?" asked Clare of the charwoman. "I have been told by old folk that they were ladies of the d'Urberville family, the ancient lords of this manor," she said, "Owing to their being builded into the wall they can't be moved away." The unpleasantness of the matter was that, in addition to their effect upon Tess, her fine features were unquestionably traceable in these exaggerated forms. He said nothing of this, however, and, regretting that he had gone out of his way to choose the house for their bridal time, went on into the adjoining room. The place having been rather hastily prepared for them, they washed their hands in one basin. Clare touched hers under the water. "Which are my fingers and which are yours?" he said, looking up. "They are very much mixed." "They are all yours," said she, very prettily, and endeavoured to be gayer than she was. He had not been displeased with her thoughtfulness on such an occasion; it was what every sensible woman would show: but Tess knew that she had been thoughtful to excess, and struggled against it. The sun was so low on that short last afternoon of the year that it shone in through a small opening and formed a golden staff which stretched across to her skirt, where it made a spot like a paint-mark set upon her. They went into the ancient parlour to tea, and here they shared their first common meal alone. Such was their childishness, or rather his, that he found it interesting to use the same bread-and-butter plate as herself, and to brush crumbs from her lips with his own. He wondered a little that she did not enter into these frivolities with his own zest. Looking at her silently for a long time; "She is a dear dear Tess," he thought to himself, as one deciding on the true construction of a difficult passage. "Do I realize solemnly enough how utterly and irretrievably this little womanly thing is the creature of my good or bad faith and fortune? I think not. I think I could not, unless I were a woman myself. What I am in worldly estate, she is. What I become, she must become. What I cannot be, she cannot be. And shall I ever neglect her, or hurt her, or even forget to consider her? God forbid such a crime!" They sat on over the tea-table waiting for their luggage, which the dairyman had promised to send before it grew dark. But evening began to close in, and the luggage did not arrive, and they had brought nothing more than they stood in. With the departure of the sun the calm mood of the winter day changed. Out of doors there began noises as of silk smartly rubbed; the restful dead leaves of the preceding autumn were stirred to irritated resurrection, and whirled about unwillingly, and tapped against the shutters. It soon began to rain. "That cock knew the weather was going to change," said Clare. The woman who had attended upon them had gone home for the night, but she had placed candles upon the table, and now they lit them. Each candle-flame drew towards the fireplace. "These old houses are so draughty," continued Angel, looking at the flames, and at the grease guttering down the sides. "I wonder where that luggage is. We haven't even a brush and comb." "I don't know," she answered, absent-minded. "Tess, you are not a bit cheerful this evening--not at all as you used to be. Those harridans on the panels upstairs have unsettled you. I am sorry I brought you here. I wonder if you really love me, after all?" He knew that she did, and the words had no serious intent; but she was surcharged with emotion, and winced like a wounded animal. Though she tried not to shed tears, she could not help showing one or two. "I did not mean it!" said he, sorry. "You are worried at not having your things, I know. I cannot think why old Jonathan has not come with them. Why, it is seven o'clock? Ah, there he is!" A knock had come to the door, and, there being nobody else to answer it, Clare went out. He returned to the room with a small package in his hand. "It is not Jonathan, after all," he said. "How vexing!" said Tess. The packet had been brought by a special messenger, who had arrived at Talbothays from Emminster Vicarage immediately after the departure of the married couple, and had followed them hither, being under injunction to deliver it into nobody's hands but theirs. Clare brought it to the light. It was less than a foot long, sewed up in canvas, sealed in red wax with his father's seal, and directed in his father's hand to "Mrs Angel Clare." "It is a little wedding-present for you, Tess," said he, handing it to her. "How thoughtful they are!" Tess looked a little flustered as she took it. "I think I would rather have you open it, dearest," said she, turning over the parcel. "I don't like to break those great seals; they look so serious. Please open it for me!" He undid the parcel. Inside was a case of morocco leather, on the top of which lay a note and a key. The note was for Clare, in the following words: MY DEAR SON-- Possibly you have forgotten that on the death of your godmother, Mrs Pitney, when you were a lad, she--vain, kind woman that she was--left to me a portion of the contents of her jewel-case in trust for your wife, if you should ever have one, as a mark of her affection for you and whomsoever you should choose. This trust I have fulfilled, and the diamonds have been locked up at my banker's ever since. Though I feel it to be a somewhat incongruous act in the circumstances, I am, as you will see, bound to hand over the articles to the woman to whom the use of them for her lifetime will now rightly belong, and they are therefore promptly sent. They become, I believe, heirlooms, strictly speaking, according to the terms of your godmother's will. The precise words of the clause that refers to this matter are enclosed. "I do remember," said Clare; "but I had quite forgotten." Unlocking the case, they found it to contain a necklace, with pendant, bracelets, and ear-rings; and also some other small ornaments. Tess seemed afraid to touch them at first, but her eyes sparkled for a moment as much as the stones when Clare spread out the set. "Are they mine?" she asked incredulously. "They are, certainly," said he. He looked into the fire. He remembered how, when he was a lad of fifteen, his godmother, the Squire's wife--the only rich person with whom he had ever come in contact--had pinned her faith to his success; had prophesied a wondrous career for him. There had seemed nothing at all out of keeping with such a conjectured career in the storing up of these showy ornaments for his wife and the wives of her descendants. They gleamed somewhat ironically now. "Yet why?" he asked himself. It was but a question of vanity throughout; and if that were admitted into one side of the equation it should be admitted into the other. His wife was a d'Urberville: whom could they become better than her? Suddenly he said with enthusiasm-- "Tess, put them on--put them on!" And he turned from the fire to help her. But as if by magic she had already donned them--necklace, ear-rings, bracelets, and all. "But the gown isn't right, Tess," said Clare. "It ought to be a low one for a set of brilliants like that." "Ought it?" said Tess. "Yes," said he. He suggested to her how to tuck in the upper edge of her bodice, so as to make it roughly approximate to the cut for evening wear; and when she had done this, and the pendant to the necklace hung isolated amid the whiteness of her throat, as it was designed to do, he stepped back to survey her. "My heavens," said Clare, "how beautiful you are!" As everybody knows, fine feathers make fine birds; a peasant girl but very moderately prepossessing to the casual observer in her simple condition and attire will bloom as an amazing beauty if clothed as a woman of fashion with the aids that Art can render; while the beauty of the midnight crush would often cut but a sorry figure if placed inside the field-woman's wrapper upon a monotonous acreage of turnips on a dull day. He had never till now estimated the artistic excellence of Tess's limbs and features. "If you were only to appear in a ball-room!" he said. "But no--no, dearest; I think I love you best in the wing-bonnet and cotton-frock--yes, better than in this, well as you support these dignities." Tess's sense of her striking appearance had given her a flush of excitement, which was yet not happiness. "I'll take them off," she said, "in case Jonathan should see me. They are not fit for me, are they? They must be sold, I suppose?" "Let them stay a few minutes longer. Sell them? Never. It would be a breach of faith." Influenced by a second thought she readily obeyed. She had something to tell, and there might be help in these. She sat down with the jewels upon her; and they again indulged in conjectures as to where Jonathan could possibly be with their baggage. The ale they had poured out for his consumption when he came had gone flat with long standing. Shortly after this they began supper, which was already laid on a side-table. Ere they had finished there was a jerk in the fire-smoke, the rising skein of which bulged out into the room, as if some giant had laid his hand on the chimney-top for a moment. It had been caused by the opening of the outer door. A heavy step was now heard in the passage, and Angel went out. "I couldn' make nobody hear at all by knocking," apologized Jonathan Kail, for it was he at last; "and as't was raining out I opened the door. I've brought the things, sir." "I am very glad to see them. But you are very late." "Well, yes, sir." There was something subdued in Jonathan Kail's tone which had not been there in the day, and lines of concern were ploughed upon his forehead in addition to the lines of years. He continued-- "We've all been gallied at the dairy at what might ha' been a most terrible affliction since you and your Mis'ess--so to name her now--left us this a'ternoon. Perhaps you ha'nt forgot the cock's afternoon crow?" "Dear me;--what--" "Well, some says it do mane one thing, and some another; but what's happened is that poor little Retty Priddle hev tried to drown herself." "No! Really! Why, she bade us goodbye with the rest--" "Yes. Well, sir, when you and your Mis'ess--so to name what she lawful is--when you two drove away, as I say, Retty and Marian put on their bonnets and went out; and as there is not much doing now, being New Year's Eve, and folks mops and brooms from what's inside 'em, nobody took much notice. They went on to Lew-Everard, where they had summut to drink, and then on they vamped to Dree-armed Cross, and there they seemed to have parted, Retty striking across the water-meads as if for home, and Marian going on to the next village, where there's another public-house. Nothing more was zeed or heard o' Retty till the waterman, on his way home, noticed something by the Great Pool; 'twas her bonnet and shawl packed up. In the water he found her. He and another man brought her home, thinking a' was dead; but she fetched round by degrees." Angel, suddenly recollecting that Tess was overhearing this gloomy tale, went to shut the door between the passage and the ante-room to the inner parlour where she was; but his wife, flinging a shawl round her, had come to the outer room and was listening to the man's narrative, her eyes resting absently on the luggage and the drops of rain glistening upon it. "And, more than this, there's Marian; she's been found dead drunk by the withy-bed--a girl who hev never been known to touch anything before except shilling ale; though, to be sure, 'a was always a good trencher-woman, as her face showed. It seems as if the maids had all gone out o' their minds!" "And Izz?" asked Tess. "Izz is about house as usual; but 'a do say 'a can guess how it happened; and she seems to be very low in mind about it, poor maid, as well she mid be. And so you see, sir, as all this happened just when we was packing your few traps and your Mis'ess's night-rail and dressing things into the cart, why, it belated me." "Yes. Well, Jonathan, will you get the trunks upstairs, and drink a cup of ale, and hasten back as soon as you can, in case you should be wanted?" Tess had gone back to the inner parlour, and sat down by the fire, looking wistfully into it. She heard Jonathan Kail's heavy footsteps up and down the stairs till he had done placing the luggage, and heard him express his thanks for the ale her husband took out to him, and for the gratuity he received. Jonathan's footsteps then died from the door, and his cart creaked away. Angel slid forward the massive oak bar which secured the door, and coming in to where she sat over the hearth, pressed her cheeks between his hands from behind. He expected her to jump up gaily and unpack the toilet-gear that she had been so anxious about, but as she did not rise he sat down with her in the firelight, the candles on the supper-table being too thin and glimmering to interfere with its glow. "I am so sorry you should have heard this sad story about the girls," he said. "Still, don't let it depress you. Retty was naturally morbid, you know." "Without the least cause," said Tess. "While they who have cause to be, hide it, and pretend they are not." This incident had turned the scale for her. They were simple and innocent girls on whom the unhappiness of unrequited love had fallen; they had deserved better at the hands of Fate. She had deserved worse--yet she was the chosen one. It was wicked of her to take all without paying. She would pay to the uttermost farthing; she would tell, there and then. This final determination she came to when she looked into the fire, he holding her hand. A steady glare from the now flameless embers painted the sides and back of the fireplace with its colour, and the well-polished andirons, and the old brass tongs that would not meet. The underside of the mantel-shelf was flushed with the high-coloured light, and the legs of the table nearest the fire. Tess's face and neck reflected the same warmth, which each gem turned into an Aldebaran or a Sirius--a constellation of white, red, and green flashes, that interchanged their hues with her every pulsation. "Do you remember what we said to each other this morning about telling our faults?" he asked abruptly, finding that she still remained immovable. "We spoke lightly perhaps, and you may well have done so. But for me it was no light promise. I want to make a confession to you, Love." This, from him, so unexpectedly apposite, had the effect upon her of a Providential interposition. "You have to confess something?" she said quickly, and even with gladness and relief. "You did not expect it? Ah--you thought too highly of me. Now listen. Put your head there, because I want you to forgive me, and not to be indignant with me for not telling you before, as perhaps I ought to have done." How strange it was! He seemed to be her double. She did not speak, and Clare went on-- "I did not mention it because I was afraid of endangering my chance of you, darling, the great prize of my life--my Fellowship I call you. My brother's Fellowship was won at his college, mine at Talbothays Dairy. Well, I would not risk it. I was going to tell you a month ago--at the time you agreed to be mine, but I could not; I thought it might frighten you away from me. I put it off; then I thought I would tell you yesterday, to give you a chance at least of escaping me. But I did not. And I did not this morning, when you proposed our confessing our faults on the landing--the sinner that I was! But I must, now I see you sitting there so solemnly. I wonder if you will forgive me?" "O yes! I am sure that--" "Well, I hope so. But wait a minute. You don't know. To begin at the beginning. Though I imagine my poor father fears that I am one of the eternally lost for my doctrines, I am of course, a believer in good morals, Tess, as much as you. I used to wish to be a teacher of men, and it was a great disappointment to me when I found I could not enter the Church. I admired spotlessness, even though I could lay no claim to it, and hated impurity, as I hope I do now. Whatever one may think of plenary inspiration, one must heartily subscribe to these words of Paul: 'Be thou an example--in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity.' It is the only safeguard for us poor human beings. '_Integer vitae_,' says a Roman poet, who is strange company for St Paul-- "The man of upright life, from frailties free, Stands not in need of Moorish spear or bow. "Well, a certain place is paved with good intentions, and having felt all that so strongly, you will see what a terrible remorse it bred in me when, in the midst of my fine aims for other people, I myself fell." He then told her of that time of his life to which allusion has been made when, tossed about by doubts and difficulties in London, like a cork on the waves, he plunged into eight-and-forty hours' dissipation with a stranger. "Happily I awoke almost immediately to a sense of my folly," he continued. "I would have no more to say to her, and I came home. I have never repeated the offence. But I felt I should like to treat you with perfect frankness and honour, and I could not do so without telling this. Do you forgive me?" She pressed his hand tightly for an answer. "Then we will dismiss it at once and for ever!--too painful as it is for the occasion--and talk of something lighter." "O, Angel--I am almost glad--because now YOU can forgive ME! I have not made my confession. I have a confession, too--remember, I said so." "Ah, to be sure! Now then for it, wicked little one." "Perhaps, although you smile, it is as serious as yours, or more so." "It can hardly be more serious, dearest." "It cannot--O no, it cannot!" She jumped up joyfully at the hope. "No, it cannot be more serious, certainly," she cried, "because 'tis just the same! I will tell you now." She sat down again. Their hands were still joined. The ashes under the grate were lit by the fire vertically, like a torrid waste. Imagination might have beheld a Last Day luridness in this red-coaled glow, which fell on his face and hand, and on hers, peering into the loose hair about her brow, and firing the delicate skin underneath. A large shadow of her shape rose upon the wall and ceiling. She bent forward, at which each diamond on her neck gave a sinister wink like a toad's; and pressing her forehead against his temple she entered on her story of her acquaintance with Alec d'Urberville and its results, murmuring the words without flinching, and with her eyelids drooping down. END OF PHASE THE FOURTH Phase the Fifth: The Woman Pays

Chapter XXXIV

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

Tess and Angel stay their first night as man and wife in the shoddy old d'Urberville mansion, where portraits of earlier d'Urberville women spook Tess. Angel, who is pleased to have a wife of noble lineage, notices that despite the terrifying countenances of the framed women, they bear a resemblance to his new wife. A package arrives from Angel's father. It contains diamond heirloom jewelry for a shocked Tess who looks more brilliant than the diamonds to her admiring new husband after she puts them on. However, almost immediately a man arrives late with their luggage and explains he was delayed by the suicide of Retty the milkmaid. Marian, another lovelorn milkmaid has also taken to drink. The newlyweds attempt to shake off the disastrous news, and Angel confesses to Tess about an earlier sexual indiscretion with a stranger. Deeply relieved, Tess finally confesses her own past to Angel without flinching, safe in the knowledge that he will forgive her because her "crime" with Alec d'Urberville is "just the same".

. Angel's family doesn't know what to make of their son's choice for a wife. Despite the rationality behind his decision--a farm woman is worth more to him than one familiar with the niceties of upper-class Victorian society-- they, especially his mother, are snobs and worry about their social standing and their position in the church. They immediately characterize Tess as low class and suggest Angel marry Mercy Chance instead. In addition, they are appalled that Angel's manners have deteriorated during the time he has spent away. Perhaps he has been contaminated by Tess who is sure to lower their social standing in the eyes of their neighbors. Both of Angel's brothers have entered the church and are also displeased with his choice of a common woman. Intellectuals, they are emotionally frozen. While Angel seems removed from his family, such training has also worked its way deep into his psyche and this will become increasing apparent. Is he saying one thing--that he totally accepts and loves Tess despite her lack of social and financial standing--or is he also a snob and a hypocrite. He has given up the church to live a more humble existence on the land, but his actions in the future bear watching. Consider that although Angel has earlier claimed to dislike ancient families, he is happy to learn of Tess's lineage and prompts her to use d'Urberville instead of Durbeyfield: "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". In short, Angel, like Tess, is not what he seems. Tess idealizes him entirely and sees him as a pagan god wandering around in the fertile fields--a man of Nature in search of a natural woman: "It seemed natural enough to him now that Tess was again in sight to choose a mate from unrestrained Nature and not from the abodes of Art". But, Tess takes on Angel's gestures and mimics his words and thus becomes less of what he makes her out to be, or indeed what he says he wants her to be. In the Victorian era, women's sexuality was denied, and they took on the role of Angel of the House, above men spiritually, and the moral guide of their children. A true lady merely tolerated sex for procreation. Tess's denial of Angel's advances makes Tess appear even more pure: "I know you to be the most honest, most spotless creature that ever lived". However, Angel fails to see Tess as a living breathing human, and when anyone is placed this high, down is the only direction they can move. While Tess does make several attempts to tell Angel the truth about her past, in fairness she chooses not to tell him out of fear that she will lose him. Yes, writing him the letter and attempting to tell him immediately before the wedding count as sincere efforts, but in reality, she held back the truth and married him: "I can't bear to let anyone have him but me. Yet it is a wrong to him, and may kill him when he knows. Tess uses her mother's advice to justify her actions and chooses not to risk losing Angel. To Tess's credit, however, she decides to tell her new husband the truth, even though at this point she could have continued to withhold it

shmoop

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finished_summaries/shmoop/The Brothers Karamazov/section_82_part_0.txt

The Brothers Karamazov.book 12.chapter 4

book 12, chapter 4

{"name": "Book 12, Chapter 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-12-chapter-4", "summary": "Alyosha then takes the stand, and the prosecutor grills him about his brother's state of mind. Alyosha strongly insists on his belief in Dmitri's innocence and points to Smerdyakov as the real murderer. When the prosecutor asks for proof, Alyosha can only say that he can tell by the look on his brother's face that he's innocent. As Fetyukovich questions Alyosha, Alyosha suddenly remembers Dmitri's unusual gesture of pointing to his chest well above his heart in a conversation they had on their last meeting before their father's murder. Alyosha realizes that Dmitri must have been pointing to the amulet with the 1,500 roubles - an important memory that might support Dmitri's contention that he had had 1,500 roubles all along. Next up is Katerina. She explains that she understood Dmitri needed money when she entrusted him with the 3,000 roubles and that she viewed this as a kind of indirect loan. Then, much to Dmitri's dismay, she tells the entire court about the time when she went to borrow money from Dmitri to save her father's honor. After Katerina comes Grushenka, who, in the course of her testimony, reveals that Rakitin is her cousin. This destroys Rakitin's credibility - another score for the defense. Finally Ivan is called to the stand.", "analysis": ""}

Chapter IV. Fortune Smiles On Mitya It came quite as a surprise even to Alyosha himself. He was not required to take the oath, and I remember that both sides addressed him very gently and sympathetically. It was evident that his reputation for goodness had preceded him. Alyosha gave his evidence modestly and with restraint, but his warm sympathy for his unhappy brother was unmistakable. In answer to one question, he sketched his brother's character as that of a man, violent-tempered perhaps and carried away by his passions, but at the same time honorable, proud and generous, capable of self-sacrifice, if necessary. He admitted, however, that, through his passion for Grushenka and his rivalry with his father, his brother had been of late in an intolerable position. But he repelled with indignation the suggestion that his brother might have committed a murder for the sake of gain, though he recognized that the three thousand roubles had become almost an obsession with Mitya; that he looked upon them as part of the inheritance he had been cheated of by his father, and that, indifferent as he was to money as a rule, he could not even speak of that three thousand without fury. As for the rivalry of the two "ladies," as the prosecutor expressed it--that is, of Grushenka and Katya--he answered evasively and was even unwilling to answer one or two questions altogether. "Did your brother tell you, anyway, that he intended to kill your father?" asked the prosecutor. "You can refuse to answer if you think necessary," he added. "He did not tell me so directly," answered Alyosha. "How so? Did he indirectly?" "He spoke to me once of his hatred for our father and his fear that at an extreme moment ... at a moment of fury, he might perhaps murder him." "And you believed him?" "I am afraid to say that I did. But I never doubted that some higher feeling would always save him at the fatal moment, as it has indeed saved him, for it was not he killed my father," Alyosha said firmly, in a loud voice that was heard throughout the court. The prosecutor started like a war-horse at the sound of a trumpet. "Let me assure you that I fully believe in the complete sincerity of your conviction and do not explain it by or identify it with your affection for your unhappy brother. Your peculiar view of the whole tragic episode is known to us already from the preliminary investigation. I won't attempt to conceal from you that it is highly individual and contradicts all the other evidence collected by the prosecution. And so I think it essential to press you to tell me what facts have led you to this conviction of your brother's innocence and of the guilt of another person against whom you gave evidence at the preliminary inquiry?" "I only answered the questions asked me at the preliminary inquiry," replied Alyosha, slowly and calmly. "I made no accusation against Smerdyakov of myself." "Yet you gave evidence against him?" "I was led to do so by my brother Dmitri's words. I was told what took place at his arrest and how he had pointed to Smerdyakov before I was examined. I believe absolutely that my brother is innocent, and if he didn't commit the murder, then--" "Then Smerdyakov? Why Smerdyakov? And why are you so completely persuaded of your brother's innocence?" "I cannot help believing my brother. I know he wouldn't lie to me. I saw from his face he wasn't lying." "Only from his face? Is that all the proof you have?" "I have no other proof." "And of Smerdyakov's guilt you have no proof whatever but your brother's word and the expression of his face?" "No, I have no other proof." The prosecutor dropped the examination at this point. The impression left by Alyosha's evidence on the public was most disappointing. There had been talk about Smerdyakov before the trial; some one had heard something, some one had pointed out something else, it was said that Alyosha had gathered together some extraordinary proofs of his brother's innocence and Smerdyakov's guilt, and after all there was nothing, no evidence except certain moral convictions so natural in a brother. But Fetyukovitch began his cross-examination. On his asking Alyosha when it was that the prisoner had told him of his hatred for his father and that he might kill him, and whether he had heard it, for instance, at their last meeting before the catastrophe, Alyosha started as he answered, as though only just recollecting and understanding something. "I remember one circumstance now which I'd quite forgotten myself. It wasn't clear to me at the time, but now--" And, obviously only now for the first time struck by an idea, he recounted eagerly how, at his last interview with Mitya that evening under the tree, on the road to the monastery, Mitya had struck himself on the breast, "the upper part of the breast," and had repeated several times that he had a means of regaining his honor, that that means was here, here on his breast. "I thought, when he struck himself on the breast, he meant that it was in his heart," Alyosha continued, "that he might find in his heart strength to save himself from some awful disgrace which was awaiting him and which he did not dare confess even to me. I must confess I did think at the time that he was speaking of our father, and that the disgrace he was shuddering at was the thought of going to our father and doing some violence to him. Yet it was just then that he pointed to something on his breast, so that I remember the idea struck me at the time that the heart is not on that part of the breast, but below, and that he struck himself much too high, just below the neck, and kept pointing to that place. My idea seemed silly to me at the time, but he was perhaps pointing then to that little bag in which he had fifteen hundred roubles!" "Just so," Mitya cried from his place. "That's right, Alyosha, it was the little bag I struck with my fist." Fetyukovitch flew to him in hot haste entreating him to keep quiet, and at the same instant pounced on Alyosha. Alyosha, carried away himself by his recollection, warmly expressed his theory that this disgrace was probably just that fifteen hundred roubles on him, which he might have returned to Katerina Ivanovna as half of what he owed her, but which he had yet determined not to repay her and to use for another purpose--namely, to enable him to elope with Grushenka, if she consented. "It is so, it must be so," exclaimed Alyosha, in sudden excitement. "My brother cried several times that half of the disgrace, half of it (he said _half_ several times) he could free himself from at once, but that he was so unhappy in his weakness of will that he wouldn't do it ... that he knew beforehand he was incapable of doing it!" "And you clearly, confidently remember that he struck himself just on this part of the breast?" Fetyukovitch asked eagerly. "Clearly and confidently, for I thought at the time, 'Why does he strike himself up there when the heart is lower down?' and the thought seemed stupid to me at the time ... I remember its seeming stupid ... it flashed through my mind. That's what brought it back to me just now. How could I have forgotten it till now? It was that little bag he meant when he said he had the means but wouldn't give back that fifteen hundred. And when he was arrested at Mokroe he cried out--I know, I was told it--that he considered it the most disgraceful act of his life that when he had the means of repaying Katerina Ivanovna half (half, note!) what he owed her, he yet could not bring himself to repay the money and preferred to remain a thief in her eyes rather than part with it. And what torture, what torture that debt has been to him!" Alyosha exclaimed in conclusion. The prosecutor, of course, intervened. He asked Alyosha to describe once more how it had all happened, and several times insisted on the question, "Had the prisoner seemed to point to anything? Perhaps he had simply struck himself with his fist on the breast?" "But it was not with his fist," cried Alyosha; "he pointed with his fingers and pointed here, very high up.... How could I have so completely forgotten it till this moment?" The President asked Mitya what he had to say to the last witness's evidence. Mitya confirmed it, saying that he had been pointing to the fifteen hundred roubles which were on his breast, just below the neck, and that that was, of course, the disgrace, "A disgrace I cannot deny, the most shameful act of my whole life," cried Mitya. "I might have repaid it and didn't repay it. I preferred to remain a thief in her eyes rather than give it back. And the most shameful part of it was that I knew beforehand I shouldn't give it back! You are right, Alyosha! Thanks, Alyosha!" So Alyosha's cross-examination ended. What was important and striking about it was that one fact at least had been found, and even though this were only one tiny bit of evidence, a mere hint at evidence, it did go some little way towards proving that the bag had existed and had contained fifteen hundred roubles and that the prisoner had not been lying at the preliminary inquiry when he alleged at Mokroe that those fifteen hundred roubles were "his own." Alyosha was glad. With a flushed face he moved away to the seat assigned to him. He kept repeating to himself: "How was it I forgot? How could I have forgotten it? And what made it come back to me now?" Katerina Ivanovna was called to the witness-box. As she entered something extraordinary happened in the court. The ladies clutched their lorgnettes and opera-glasses. There was a stir among the men: some stood up to get a better view. Everybody alleged afterwards that Mitya had turned "white as a sheet" on her entrance. All in black, she advanced modestly, almost timidly. It was impossible to tell from her face that she was agitated; but there was a resolute gleam in her dark and gloomy eyes. I may remark that many people mentioned that she looked particularly handsome at that moment. She spoke softly but clearly, so that she was heard all over the court. She expressed herself with composure, or at least tried to appear composed. The President began his examination discreetly and very respectfully, as though afraid to touch on "certain chords," and showing consideration for her great unhappiness. But in answer to one of the first questions Katerina Ivanovna replied firmly that she had been formerly betrothed to the prisoner, "until he left me of his own accord..." she added quietly. When they asked her about the three thousand she had entrusted to Mitya to post to her relations, she said firmly, "I didn't give him the money simply to send it off. I felt at the time that he was in great need of money.... I gave him the three thousand on the understanding that he should post it within the month if he cared to. There was no need for him to worry himself about that debt afterwards." I will not repeat all the questions asked her and all her answers in detail. I will only give the substance of her evidence. "I was firmly convinced that he would send off that sum as soon as he got money from his father," she went on. "I have never doubted his disinterestedness and his honesty ... his scrupulous honesty ... in money matters. He felt quite certain that he would receive the money from his father, and spoke to me several times about it. I knew he had a feud with his father and have always believed that he had been unfairly treated by his father. I don't remember any threat uttered by him against his father. He certainly never uttered any such threat before me. If he had come to me at that time, I should have at once relieved his anxiety about that unlucky three thousand roubles, but he had given up coming to see me ... and I myself was put in such a position ... that I could not invite him.... And I had no right, indeed, to be exacting as to that money," she added suddenly, and there was a ring of resolution in her voice. "I was once indebted to him for assistance in money for more than three thousand, and I took it, although I could not at that time foresee that I should ever be in a position to repay my debt." There was a note of defiance in her voice. It was then Fetyukovitch began his cross-examination. "Did that take place not here, but at the beginning of your acquaintance?" Fetyukovitch suggested cautiously, feeling his way, instantly scenting something favorable. I must mention in parenthesis that, though Fetyukovitch had been brought from Petersburg partly at the instance of Katerina Ivanovna herself, he knew nothing about the episode of the four thousand roubles given her by Mitya, and of her "bowing to the ground to him." She concealed this from him and said nothing about it, and that was strange. It may be pretty certainly assumed that she herself did not know till the very last minute whether she would speak of that episode in the court, and waited for the inspiration of the moment. No, I can never forget those moments. She began telling her story. She told everything, the whole episode that Mitya had told Alyosha, and her bowing to the ground, and her reason. She told about her father and her going to Mitya, and did not in one word, in a single hint, suggest that Mitya had himself, through her sister, proposed they should "send him Katerina Ivanovna" to fetch the money. She generously concealed that and was not ashamed to make it appear as though she had of her own impulse run to the young officer, relying on something ... to beg him for the money. It was something tremendous! I turned cold and trembled as I listened. The court was hushed, trying to catch each word. It was something unexampled. Even from such a self-willed and contemptuously proud girl as she was, such an extremely frank avowal, such sacrifice, such self-immolation, seemed incredible. And for what, for whom? To save the man who had deceived and insulted her and to help, in however small a degree, in saving him, by creating a strong impression in his favor. And, indeed, the figure of the young officer who, with a respectful bow to the innocent girl, handed her his last four thousand roubles--all he had in the world--was thrown into a very sympathetic and attractive light, but ... I had a painful misgiving at heart! I felt that calumny might come of it later (and it did, in fact, it did). It was repeated all over the town afterwards with spiteful laughter that the story was perhaps not quite complete--that is, in the statement that the officer had let the young lady depart "with nothing but a respectful bow." It was hinted that something was here omitted. "And even if nothing had been omitted, if this were the whole story," the most highly respected of our ladies maintained, "even then it's very doubtful whether it was creditable for a young girl to behave in that way, even for the sake of saving her father." And can Katerina Ivanovna, with her intelligence, her morbid sensitiveness, have failed to understand that people would talk like that? She must have understood it, yet she made up her mind to tell everything. Of course, all these nasty little suspicions as to the truth of her story only arose afterwards and at the first moment all were deeply impressed by it. As for the judges and the lawyers, they listened in reverent, almost shame-faced silence to Katerina Ivanovna. The prosecutor did not venture upon even one question on the subject. Fetyukovitch made a low bow to her. Oh, he was almost triumphant! Much ground had been gained. For a man to give his last four thousand on a generous impulse and then for the same man to murder his father for the sake of robbing him of three thousand--the idea seemed too incongruous. Fetyukovitch felt that now the charge of theft, at least, was as good as disproved. "The case" was thrown into quite a different light. There was a wave of sympathy for Mitya. As for him.... I was told that once or twice, while Katerina Ivanovna was giving her evidence, he jumped up from his seat, sank back again, and hid his face in his hands. But when she had finished, he suddenly cried in a sobbing voice: "Katya, why have you ruined me?" and his sobs were audible all over the court. But he instantly restrained himself, and cried again: "Now I am condemned!" Then he sat rigid in his place, with his teeth clenched and his arms across his chest. Katerina Ivanovna remained in the court and sat down in her place. She was pale and sat with her eyes cast down. Those who were sitting near her declared that for a long time she shivered all over as though in a fever. Grushenka was called. I am approaching the sudden catastrophe which was perhaps the final cause of Mitya's ruin. For I am convinced, so is every one--all the lawyers said the same afterwards--that if the episode had not occurred, the prisoner would at least have been recommended to mercy. But of that later. A few words first about Grushenka. She, too, was dressed entirely in black, with her magnificent black shawl on her shoulders. She walked to the witness-box with her smooth, noiseless tread, with the slightly swaying gait common in women of full figure. She looked steadily at the President, turning her eyes neither to the right nor to the left. To my thinking she looked very handsome at that moment, and not at all pale, as the ladies alleged afterwards. They declared, too, that she had a concentrated and spiteful expression. I believe that she was simply irritated and painfully conscious of the contemptuous and inquisitive eyes of our scandal-loving public. She was proud and could not stand contempt. She was one of those people who flare up, angry and eager to retaliate, at the mere suggestion of contempt. There was an element of timidity, too, of course, and inward shame at her own timidity, so it was not strange that her tone kept changing. At one moment it was angry, contemptuous and rough, and at another there was a sincere note of self- condemnation. Sometimes she spoke as though she were taking a desperate plunge; as though she felt, "I don't care what happens, I'll say it...." Apropos of her acquaintance with Fyodor Pavlovitch, she remarked curtly, "That's all nonsense, and was it my fault that he would pester me?" But a minute later she added, "It was all my fault. I was laughing at them both--at the old man and at him, too--and I brought both of them to this. It was all on account of me it happened." Samsonov's name came up somehow. "That's nobody's business," she snapped at once, with a sort of insolent defiance. "He was my benefactor; he took me when I hadn't a shoe to my foot, when my family had turned me out." The President reminded her, though very politely, that she must answer the questions directly, without going off into irrelevant details. Grushenka crimsoned and her eyes flashed. The envelope with the notes in it she had not seen, but had only heard from "that wicked wretch" that Fyodor Pavlovitch had an envelope with notes for three thousand in it. "But that was all foolishness. I was only laughing. I wouldn't have gone to him for anything." "To whom are you referring as 'that wicked wretch'?" inquired the prosecutor. "The lackey, Smerdyakov, who murdered his master and hanged himself last night." She was, of course, at once asked what ground she had for such a definite accusation; but it appeared that she, too, had no grounds for it. "Dmitri Fyodorovitch told me so himself; you can believe him. The woman who came between us has ruined him; she is the cause of it all, let me tell you," Grushenka added. She seemed to be quivering with hatred, and there was a vindictive note in her voice. She was again asked to whom she was referring. "The young lady, Katerina Ivanovna there. She sent for me, offered me chocolate, tried to fascinate me. There's not much true shame about her, I can tell you that...." At this point the President checked her sternly, begging her to moderate her language. But the jealous woman's heart was burning, and she did not care what she did. "When the prisoner was arrested at Mokroe," the prosecutor asked, "every one saw and heard you run out of the next room and cry out: 'It's all my fault. We'll go to Siberia together!' So you already believed him to have murdered his father?" "I don't remember what I felt at the time," answered Grushenka. "Every one was crying out that he had killed his father, and I felt that it was my fault, that it was on my account he had murdered him. But when he said he wasn't guilty, I believed him at once, and I believe him now and always shall believe him. He is not the man to tell a lie." Fetyukovitch began his cross-examination. I remember that among other things he asked about Rakitin and the twenty-five roubles "you paid him for bringing Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov to see you." "There was nothing strange about his taking the money," sneered Grushenka, with angry contempt. "He was always coming to me for money: he used to get thirty roubles a month at least out of me, chiefly for luxuries: he had enough to keep him without my help." "What led you to be so liberal to Mr. Rakitin?" Fetyukovitch asked, in spite of an uneasy movement on the part of the President. "Why, he is my cousin. His mother was my mother's sister. But he's always besought me not to tell any one here of it, he is so dreadfully ashamed of me." This fact was a complete surprise to every one; no one in the town nor in the monastery, not even Mitya, knew of it. I was told that Rakitin turned purple with shame where he sat. Grushenka had somehow heard before she came into the court that he had given evidence against Mitya, and so she was angry. The whole effect on the public, of Rakitin's speech, of his noble sentiments, of his attacks upon serfdom and the political disorder of Russia, was this time finally ruined. Fetyukovitch was satisfied: it was another godsend. Grushenka's cross-examination did not last long and, of course, there could be nothing particularly new in her evidence. She left a very disagreeable impression on the public; hundreds of contemptuous eyes were fixed upon her, as she finished giving her evidence and sat down again in the court, at a good distance from Katerina Ivanovna. Mitya was silent throughout her evidence. He sat as though turned to stone, with his eyes fixed on the ground. Ivan was called to give evidence.

Book 12, Chapter 4

https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-12-chapter-4

Alyosha then takes the stand, and the prosecutor grills him about his brother's state of mind. Alyosha strongly insists on his belief in Dmitri's innocence and points to Smerdyakov as the real murderer. When the prosecutor asks for proof, Alyosha can only say that he can tell by the look on his brother's face that he's innocent. As Fetyukovich questions Alyosha, Alyosha suddenly remembers Dmitri's unusual gesture of pointing to his chest well above his heart in a conversation they had on their last meeting before their father's murder. Alyosha realizes that Dmitri must have been pointing to the amulet with the 1,500 roubles - an important memory that might support Dmitri's contention that he had had 1,500 roubles all along. Next up is Katerina. She explains that she understood Dmitri needed money when she entrusted him with the 3,000 roubles and that she viewed this as a kind of indirect loan. Then, much to Dmitri's dismay, she tells the entire court about the time when she went to borrow money from Dmitri to save her father's honor. After Katerina comes Grushenka, who, in the course of her testimony, reveals that Rakitin is her cousin. This destroys Rakitin's credibility - another score for the defense. Finally Ivan is called to the stand.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/86.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Brothers Karamazov/section_85_part_0.txt

The Brothers Karamazov.book 12.chapter 7

book 12, chapter 7

{"name": "Book 12, Chapter 7", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-12-chapter-7", "summary": "As in Chapter 6, we just have more of the prosecutor's closing statement in this chapter and not much action. The prosecutor rejects the insanity defense. He argues that Dmitri was just deeply resentful of his father, over his inheritance and over their romantic rivalry for Grushenka. As evidence of premeditation, he brings up the fact that Dmitri had shouted about his plans to kill and rob his father for months. The prosecutor finally turns to the events of the night of the murder, in which he paints a decidedly more sympathetic picture of Madame Khokhlakov's behavior. He points to Dmitri's grabbing the brass pestle as a further indication of premeditation. He then mocks the idea that Dmitri could have peeked in on his father and turned away without robbing and murdering him in the way that he had raved about for months, especially since he knew about those \"signals.\" At this point, the prosecutor turns to the topic of Smerdyakov.", "analysis": ""}

Chapter VII. An Historical Survey "The medical experts have striven to convince us that the prisoner is out of his mind and, in fact, a maniac. I maintain that he is in his right mind, and that if he had not been, he would have behaved more cleverly. As for his being a maniac, that I would agree with, but only in one point, that is, his fixed idea about the three thousand. Yet I think one might find a much simpler cause than his tendency to insanity. For my part I agree thoroughly with the young doctor who maintained that the prisoner's mental faculties have always been normal, and that he has only been irritable and exasperated. The object of the prisoner's continual and violent anger was not the sum itself; there was a special motive at the bottom of it. That motive is jealousy!" Here Ippolit Kirillovitch described at length the prisoner's fatal passion for Grushenka. He began from the moment when the prisoner went to the "young person's" lodgings "to beat her"--"I use his own expression," the prosecutor explained--"but instead of beating her, he remained there, at her feet. That was the beginning of the passion. At the same time the prisoner's father was captivated by the same young person--a strange and fatal coincidence, for they both lost their hearts to her simultaneously, though both had known her before. And she inspired in both of them the most violent, characteristically Karamazov passion. We have her own confession: 'I was laughing at both of them.' Yes, the sudden desire to make a jest of them came over her, and she conquered both of them at once. The old man, who worshiped money, at once set aside three thousand roubles as a reward for one visit from her, but soon after that, he would have been happy to lay his property and his name at her feet, if only she would become his lawful wife. We have good evidence of this. As for the prisoner, the tragedy of his fate is evident; it is before us. But such was the young person's 'game.' The enchantress gave the unhappy young man no hope until the last moment, when he knelt before her, stretching out hands that were already stained with the blood of his father and rival. It was in that position that he was arrested. 'Send me to Siberia with him, I have brought him to this, I am most to blame,' the woman herself cried, in genuine remorse at the moment of his arrest. "The talented young man, to whom I have referred already, Mr. Rakitin, characterized this heroine in brief and impressive terms: 'She was disillusioned early in life, deceived and ruined by a betrothed, who seduced and abandoned her. She was left in poverty, cursed by her respectable family, and taken under the protection of a wealthy old man, whom she still, however, considers as her benefactor. There was perhaps much that was good in her young heart, but it was embittered too early. She became prudent and saved money. She grew sarcastic and resentful against society.' After this sketch of her character it may well be understood that she might laugh at both of them simply from mischief, from malice. "After a month of hopeless love and moral degradation, during which he betrayed his betrothed and appropriated money entrusted to his honor, the prisoner was driven almost to frenzy, almost to madness by continual jealousy--and of whom? His father! And the worst of it was that the crazy old man was alluring and enticing the object of his affection by means of that very three thousand roubles, which the son looked upon as his own property, part of his inheritance from his mother, of which his father was cheating him. Yes, I admit it was hard to bear! It might well drive a man to madness. It was not the money, but the fact that this money was used with such revolting cynicism to ruin his happiness!" Then the prosecutor went on to describe how the idea of murdering his father had entered the prisoner's head, and illustrated his theory with facts. "At first he only talked about it in taverns--he was talking about it all that month. Ah, he likes being always surrounded with company, and he likes to tell his companions everything, even his most diabolical and dangerous ideas; he likes to share every thought with others, and expects, for some reason, that those he confides in will meet him with perfect sympathy, enter into all his troubles and anxieties, take his part and not oppose him in anything. If not, he flies into a rage and smashes up everything in the tavern. [Then followed the anecdote about Captain Snegiryov.] Those who heard the prisoner began to think at last that he might mean more than threats, and that such a frenzy might turn threats into actions." Here the prosecutor described the meeting of the family at the monastery, the conversations with Alyosha, and the horrible scene of violence when the prisoner had rushed into his father's house just after dinner. "I cannot positively assert," the prosecutor continued, "that the prisoner fully intended to murder his father before that incident. Yet the idea had several times presented itself to him, and he had deliberated on it--for that we have facts, witnesses, and his own words. I confess, gentlemen of the jury," he added, "that till to-day I have been uncertain whether to attribute to the prisoner conscious premeditation. I was firmly convinced that he had pictured the fatal moment beforehand, but had only pictured it, contemplating it as a possibility. He had not definitely considered when and how he might commit the crime. "But I was only uncertain till to-day, till that fatal document was presented to the court just now. You yourselves heard that young lady's exclamation, 'It is the plan, the program of the murder!' That is how she defined that miserable, drunken letter of the unhappy prisoner. And, in fact, from that letter we see that the whole fact of the murder was premeditated. It was written two days before, and so we know now for a fact that, forty-eight hours before the perpetration of his terrible design, the prisoner swore that, if he could not get money next day, he would murder his father in order to take the envelope with the notes from under his pillow, as soon as Ivan had left. 'As soon as Ivan had gone away'--you hear that; so he had thought everything out, weighing every circumstance, and he carried it all out just as he had written it. The proof of premeditation is conclusive; the crime must have been committed for the sake of the money, that is stated clearly, that is written and signed. The prisoner does not deny his signature. "I shall be told he was drunk when he wrote it. But that does not diminish the value of the letter, quite the contrary; he wrote when drunk what he had planned when sober. Had he not planned it when sober, he would not have written it when drunk. I shall be asked: Then why did he talk about it in taverns? A man who premeditates such a crime is silent and keeps it to himself. Yes, but he talked about it before he had formed a plan, when he had only the desire, only the impulse to it. Afterwards he talked less about it. On the evening he wrote that letter at the 'Metropolis' tavern, contrary to his custom he was silent, though he had been drinking. He did not play billiards, he sat in a corner, talked to no one. He did indeed turn a shopman out of his seat, but that was done almost unconsciously, because he could never enter a tavern without making a disturbance. It is true that after he had taken the final decision, he must have felt apprehensive that he had talked too much about his design beforehand, and that this might lead to his arrest and prosecution afterwards. But there was nothing for it; he could not take his words back, but his luck had served him before, it would serve him again. He believed in his star, you know! I must confess, too, that he did a great deal to avoid the fatal catastrophe. 'To-morrow I shall try and borrow the money from every one,' as he writes in his peculiar language, 'and if they won't give it to me, there will be bloodshed.' " Here Ippolit Kirillovitch passed to a detailed description of all Mitya's efforts to borrow the money. He described his visit to Samsonov, his journey to Lyagavy. "Harassed, jeered at, hungry, after selling his watch to pay for the journey (though he tells us he had fifteen hundred roubles on him--a likely story), tortured by jealousy at having left the object of his affections in the town, suspecting that she would go to Fyodor Pavlovitch in his absence, he returned at last to the town, to find, to his joy, that she had not been near his father. He accompanied her himself to her protector. (Strange to say, he doesn't seem to have been jealous of Samsonov, which is psychologically interesting.) Then he hastens back to his ambush in the back gardens, and there learns that Smerdyakov is in a fit, that the other servant is ill--the coast is clear and he knows the 'signals'--what a temptation! Still he resists it; he goes off to a lady who has for some time been residing in the town, and who is highly esteemed among us, Madame Hohlakov. That lady, who had long watched his career with compassion, gave him the most judicious advice, to give up his dissipated life, his unseemly love-affair, the waste of his youth and vigor in pot-house debauchery, and to set off to Siberia to the gold- mines: 'that would be an outlet for your turbulent energies, your romantic character, your thirst for adventure.' " After describing the result of this conversation and the moment when the prisoner learnt that Grushenka had not remained at Samsonov's, the sudden frenzy of the luckless man worn out with jealousy and nervous exhaustion, at the thought that she had deceived him and was now with his father, Ippolit Kirillovitch concluded by dwelling upon the fatal influence of chance. "Had the maid told him that her mistress was at Mokroe with her former lover, nothing would have happened. But she lost her head, she could only swear and protest her ignorance, and if the prisoner did not kill her on the spot, it was only because he flew in pursuit of his false mistress. "But note, frantic as he was, he took with him a brass pestle. Why that? Why not some other weapon? But since he had been contemplating his plan and preparing himself for it for a whole month, he would snatch up anything like a weapon that caught his eye. He had realized for a month past that any object of the kind would serve as a weapon, so he instantly, without hesitation, recognized that it would serve his purpose. So it was by no means unconsciously, by no means involuntarily, that he snatched up that fatal pestle. And then we find him in his father's garden--the coast is clear, there are no witnesses, darkness and jealousy. The suspicion that she was there, with him, with his rival, in his arms, and perhaps laughing at him at that moment--took his breath away. And it was not mere suspicion, the deception was open, obvious. She must be there, in that lighted room, she must be behind the screen; and the unhappy man would have us believe that he stole up to the window, peeped respectfully in, and discreetly withdrew, for fear something terrible and immoral should happen. And he tries to persuade us of that, us, who understand his character, who know his state of mind at the moment, and that he knew the signals by which he could at once enter the house." At this point Ippolit Kirillovitch broke off to discuss exhaustively the suspected connection of Smerdyakov with the murder. He did this very circumstantially, and every one realized that, although he professed to despise that suspicion, he thought the subject of great importance.

Book 12, Chapter 7

https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-12-chapter-7

As in Chapter 6, we just have more of the prosecutor's closing statement in this chapter and not much action. The prosecutor rejects the insanity defense. He argues that Dmitri was just deeply resentful of his father, over his inheritance and over their romantic rivalry for Grushenka. As evidence of premeditation, he brings up the fact that Dmitri had shouted about his plans to kill and rob his father for months. The prosecutor finally turns to the events of the night of the murder, in which he paints a decidedly more sympathetic picture of Madame Khokhlakov's behavior. He points to Dmitri's grabbing the brass pestle as a further indication of premeditation. He then mocks the idea that Dmitri could have peeked in on his father and turned away without robbing and murdering him in the way that he had raved about for months, especially since he knew about those "signals." At this point, the prosecutor turns to the topic of Smerdyakov.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/24.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Sense and Sensibility/section_2_part_4.txt

Sense and Sensibility.chapter 24

chapter 24

{"name": "Chapter 24", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210419170735/https://www.gradesaver.com/sense-and-sensibility/study-guide/summary-chapters-21-30", "summary": "Elinor broaches the subject of Lucy's engagement, on the pretense of wanting to be of more help to Lucy; Lucy admits that she is of a jealous nature, and Elinor does all that she can to get Lucy to believe that she has no designs on Edward. Elinor advises Lucy that to reveal the engagement to Edward's family might lead to his disinheritance in favor of his brother, who is rather foolish, and that to encourage Edward into the church so that they might marry would also prove unsuccessful. Lucy, frustrated, says that maybe she should call off the engagement because there are too many difficulties; Elinor says she should not advise this, though Lucy flatters Elinor as if she were a close advisor, and says whatever Elinor says she will do. Their conversation comes to an uneasy end, and though Elinor has made a good attempt to try and prove that she is not interested in Edward, it is not certain whether this has worked. The Miss Steeles end up staying at Barton Park for two months, because of Lady Middleton's favor of them. Elinor tries to avoid speaking of Edward with Lucy, since she is fully aware of Lucy's jealousy and thinks Lucy's confidences self-indulgent.", "analysis": "Lucy's insincerity disturbs Elinor, although Elinor is lucky that she senses Lucy's traps and avoids them. Lucy proves to be jealous, just as Elinor suspected, and acting with what seems like pure self-interest on her own part in holding Edward to such a long engagement. It is unfortunate for Edward that decorum will not permit him to break off the engagement himself, and that he also is bound to a woman who seems to think mostly of her own satisfaction rather than his. The delicacy required of such social interaction is revealed by Austen; one needs keen powers of perception, like Elinor's, the ability to convincingly state convictions that one does not feel, and a diplomatic ability to resolve situations adequately. In order to be successful, a person must have as much sense and caution as Elinor; for an incorrect statement or look in her conversation with Lucy would reveal Elinor's true feelings to her rival, and be disastrous. Austen's tendency toward understatement of these perils, and her calm, appraising tone in discussing them obscures somewhat the perils of such polite society, and its complex codes and requirements"}

In a firm, though cautious tone, Elinor thus began. "I should be undeserving of the confidence you have honoured me with, if I felt no desire for its continuance, or no farther curiosity on its subject. I will not apologize therefore for bringing it forward again." "Thank you," cried Lucy warmly, "for breaking the ice; you have set my heart at ease by it; for I was somehow or other afraid I had offended you by what I told you that Monday." "Offended me! How could you suppose so? Believe me," and Elinor spoke it with the truest sincerity, "nothing could be farther from my intention than to give you such an idea. Could you have a motive for the trust, that was not honourable and flattering to me?" "And yet I do assure you," replied Lucy, her little sharp eyes full of meaning, "there seemed to me to be a coldness and displeasure in your manner that made me quite uncomfortable. I felt sure that you was angry with me; and have been quarrelling with myself ever since, for having took such a liberty as to trouble you with my affairs. But I am very glad to find it was only my own fancy, and that you really do not blame me. If you knew what a consolation it was to me to relieve my heart speaking to you of what I am always thinking of every moment of my life, your compassion would make you overlook every thing else I am sure." "Indeed, I can easily believe that it was a very great relief to you, to acknowledge your situation to me, and be assured that you shall never have reason to repent it. Your case is a very unfortunate one; you seem to me to be surrounded with difficulties, and you will have need of all your mutual affection to support you under them. Mr. Ferrars, I believe, is entirely dependent on his mother." "He has only two thousand pounds of his own; it would be madness to marry upon that, though for my own part, I could give up every prospect of more without a sigh. I have been always used to a very small income, and could struggle with any poverty for him; but I love him too well to be the selfish means of robbing him, perhaps, of all that his mother might give him if he married to please her. We must wait, it may be for many years. With almost every other man in the world, it would be an alarming prospect; but Edward's affection and constancy nothing can deprive me of I know." "That conviction must be every thing to you; and he is undoubtedly supported by the same trust in your's. If the strength of your reciprocal attachment had failed, as between many people, and under many circumstances it naturally would during a four years' engagement, your situation would have been pitiable, indeed." Lucy here looked up; but Elinor was careful in guarding her countenance from every expression that could give her words a suspicious tendency. "Edward's love for me," said Lucy, "has been pretty well put to the test, by our long, very long absence since we were first engaged, and it has stood the trial so well, that I should be unpardonable to doubt it now. I can safely say that he has never gave me one moment's alarm on that account from the first." Elinor hardly knew whether to smile or sigh at this assertion. Lucy went on. "I am rather of a jealous temper too by nature, and from our different situations in life, from his being so much more in the world than me, and our continual separation, I was enough inclined for suspicion, to have found out the truth in an instant, if there had been the slightest alteration in his behaviour to me when we met, or any lowness of spirits that I could not account for, or if he had talked more of one lady than another, or seemed in any respect less happy at Longstaple than he used to be. I do not mean to say that I am particularly observant or quick-sighted in general, but in such a case I am sure I could not be deceived." "All this," thought Elinor, "is very pretty; but it can impose upon neither of us." "But what," said she after a short silence, "are your views? or have you none but that of waiting for Mrs. Ferrars's death, which is a melancholy and shocking extremity?--Is her son determined to submit to this, and to all the tediousness of the many years of suspense in which it may involve you, rather than run the risk of her displeasure for a while by owning the truth?" "If we could be certain that it would be only for a while! But Mrs. Ferrars is a very headstrong proud woman, and in her first fit of anger upon hearing it, would very likely secure every thing to Robert, and the idea of that, for Edward's sake, frightens away all my inclination for hasty measures." "And for your own sake too, or you are carrying your disinterestedness beyond reason." Lucy looked at Elinor again, and was silent. "Do you know Mr. Robert Ferrars?" asked Elinor. "Not at all--I never saw him; but I fancy he is very unlike his brother--silly and a great coxcomb." "A great coxcomb!" repeated Miss Steele, whose ear had caught those words by a sudden pause in Marianne's music.-- "Oh, they are talking of their favourite beaux, I dare say." "No sister," cried Lucy, "you are mistaken there, our favourite beaux are NOT great coxcombs." "I can answer for it that Miss Dashwood's is not," said Mrs. Jennings, laughing heartily; "for he is one of the modestest, prettiest behaved young men I ever saw; but as for Lucy, she is such a sly little creature, there is no finding out who SHE likes." "Oh," cried Miss Steele, looking significantly round at them, "I dare say Lucy's beau is quite as modest and pretty behaved as Miss Dashwood's." Elinor blushed in spite of herself. Lucy bit her lip, and looked angrily at her sister. A mutual silence took place for some time. Lucy first put an end to it by saying in a lower tone, though Marianne was then giving them the powerful protection of a very magnificent concerto-- "I will honestly tell you of one scheme which has lately come into my head, for bringing matters to bear; indeed I am bound to let you into the secret, for you are a party concerned. I dare say you have seen enough of Edward to know that he would prefer the church to every other profession; now my plan is that he should take orders as soon as he can, and then through your interest, which I am sure you would be kind enough to use out of friendship for him, and I hope out of some regard to me, your brother might be persuaded to give him Norland living; which I understand is a very good one, and the present incumbent not likely to live a great while. That would be enough for us to marry upon, and we might trust to time and chance for the rest." "I should always be happy," replied Elinor, "to show any mark of my esteem and friendship for Mr. Ferrars; but do you not perceive that my interest on such an occasion would be perfectly unnecessary? He is brother to Mrs. John Dashwood--THAT must be recommendation enough to her husband." "But Mrs. John Dashwood would not much approve of Edward's going into orders." "Then I rather suspect that my interest would do very little." They were again silent for many minutes. At length Lucy exclaimed with a deep sigh, "I believe it would be the wisest way to put an end to the business at once by dissolving the engagement. We seem so beset with difficulties on every side, that though it would make us miserable for a time, we should be happier perhaps in the end. But you will not give me your advice, Miss Dashwood?" "No," answered Elinor, with a smile, which concealed very agitated feelings, "on such a subject I certainly will not. You know very well that my opinion would have no weight with you, unless it were on the side of your wishes." "Indeed you wrong me," replied Lucy, with great solemnity; "I know nobody of whose judgment I think so highly as I do of yours; and I do really believe, that if you was to say to me, 'I advise you by all means to put an end to your engagement with Edward Ferrars, it will be more for the happiness of both of you,' I should resolve upon doing it immediately." Elinor blushed for the insincerity of Edward's future wife, and replied, "This compliment would effectually frighten me from giving any opinion on the subject had I formed one. It raises my influence much too high; the power of dividing two people so tenderly attached is too much for an indifferent person." "'Tis because you are an indifferent person," said Lucy, with some pique, and laying a particular stress on those words, "that your judgment might justly have such weight with me. If you could be supposed to be biased in any respect by your own feelings, your opinion would not be worth having." Elinor thought it wisest to make no answer to this, lest they might provoke each other to an unsuitable increase of ease and unreserve; and was even partly determined never to mention the subject again. Another pause therefore of many minutes' duration, succeeded this speech, and Lucy was still the first to end it. "Shall you be in town this winter, Miss Dashwood?" said she with all her accustomary complacency. "Certainly not." "I am sorry for that," returned the other, while her eyes brightened at the information, "it would have gave me such pleasure to meet you there! But I dare say you will go for all that. To be sure, your brother and sister will ask you to come to them." "It will not be in my power to accept their invitation if they do." "How unlucky that is! I had quite depended upon meeting you there. Anne and me are to go the latter end of January to some relations who have been wanting us to visit them these several years! But I only go for the sake of seeing Edward. He will be there in February, otherwise London would have no charms for me; I have not spirits for it." Elinor was soon called to the card-table by the conclusion of the first rubber, and the confidential discourse of the two ladies was therefore at an end, to which both of them submitted without any reluctance, for nothing had been said on either side to make them dislike each other less than they had done before; and Elinor sat down to the card table with the melancholy persuasion that Edward was not only without affection for the person who was to be his wife; but that he had not even the chance of being tolerably happy in marriage, which sincere affection on HER side would have given, for self-interest alone could induce a woman to keep a man to an engagement, of which she seemed so thoroughly aware that he was weary. From this time the subject was never revived by Elinor, and when entered on by Lucy, who seldom missed an opportunity of introducing it, and was particularly careful to inform her confidante, of her happiness whenever she received a letter from Edward, it was treated by the former with calmness and caution, and dismissed as soon as civility would allow; for she felt such conversations to be an indulgence which Lucy did not deserve, and which were dangerous to herself. The visit of the Miss Steeles at Barton Park was lengthened far beyond what the first invitation implied. Their favour increased; they could not be spared; Sir John would not hear of their going; and in spite of their numerous and long arranged engagements in Exeter, in spite of the absolute necessity of returning to fulfill them immediately, which was in full force at the end of every week, they were prevailed on to stay nearly two months at the park, and to assist in the due celebration of that festival which requires a more than ordinary share of private balls and large dinners to proclaim its importance.

Chapter 24

https://web.archive.org/web/20210419170735/https://www.gradesaver.com/sense-and-sensibility/study-guide/summary-chapters-21-30

Elinor broaches the subject of Lucy's engagement, on the pretense of wanting to be of more help to Lucy; Lucy admits that she is of a jealous nature, and Elinor does all that she can to get Lucy to believe that she has no designs on Edward. Elinor advises Lucy that to reveal the engagement to Edward's family might lead to his disinheritance in favor of his brother, who is rather foolish, and that to encourage Edward into the church so that they might marry would also prove unsuccessful. Lucy, frustrated, says that maybe she should call off the engagement because there are too many difficulties; Elinor says she should not advise this, though Lucy flatters Elinor as if she were a close advisor, and says whatever Elinor says she will do. Their conversation comes to an uneasy end, and though Elinor has made a good attempt to try and prove that she is not interested in Edward, it is not certain whether this has worked. The Miss Steeles end up staying at Barton Park for two months, because of Lady Middleton's favor of them. Elinor tries to avoid speaking of Edward with Lucy, since she is fully aware of Lucy's jealousy and thinks Lucy's confidences self-indulgent.

Lucy's insincerity disturbs Elinor, although Elinor is lucky that she senses Lucy's traps and avoids them. Lucy proves to be jealous, just as Elinor suspected, and acting with what seems like pure self-interest on her own part in holding Edward to such a long engagement. It is unfortunate for Edward that decorum will not permit him to break off the engagement himself, and that he also is bound to a woman who seems to think mostly of her own satisfaction rather than his. The delicacy required of such social interaction is revealed by Austen; one needs keen powers of perception, like Elinor's, the ability to convincingly state convictions that one does not feel, and a diplomatic ability to resolve situations adequately. In order to be successful, a person must have as much sense and caution as Elinor; for an incorrect statement or look in her conversation with Lucy would reveal Elinor's true feelings to her rival, and be disastrous. Austen's tendency toward understatement of these perils, and her calm, appraising tone in discussing them obscures somewhat the perils of such polite society, and its complex codes and requirements

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/44747-chapters/40.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_39_part_0.txt

The Red and the Black.part 2.chapter 10

part 2, chapter 10

{"name": "Part 2, Chapter 10", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-2-chapter-10", "summary": "Julien scolds himself for revealing his inner thoughts to Mathilde. He catches her later that day giving him strange looks, then realizes that being intense in front of her has made her like him. After dinner, Julien asks one of the de La Moles' friends why Mathilde is dressed in mourning clothes. It turns out that one of her ancestors was executed on this day a long time ago. After his head was cut off, his lover took his head and cradled it in her arms. The story makes Julien realize how much of a poetic, romantic soul Mathilde has. Now that the floodgates have opened between them, Julien tells Mathilde all of his thoughts about Napoleon and the corruption of the rich. Sometimes, Mathilde tries to regain power by acting like she's above him. But he always answers by becoming totally professional and treating her like an employer, which makes her back down. Julien decides that he wants to sleep with Mathilde and then leave the de La Mole house for good. He keeps wondering about whether Mathilde is actually in love with him.", "analysis": ""}

CHAPTER XL QUEEN MARGUERITE Love! In what madness do you not manage to make us find pleasure! Letters of a Portuguese Nun. Julien reread his letters. "How ridiculous I must have appeared in the eyes of that Parisian doll," he said to himself when the dinner-bell rang. "How foolish to have really told her what I was thinking! Perhaps it was not so foolish. Telling the truth on that occasion was worthy of me. Why did she come to question me on personal matters? That question was indiscreet on her part. She broke the convention. My thoughts about Danton are not part of the sacrifice which her father pays me to make." When he came into the dining-room Julien's thoughts were distracted from his bad temper by mademoiselle de la Mole's mourning which was all the more striking because none of the other members of the family were in black. After dinner he felt completely rid of the feeling which had obsessed him all day. Fortunately the academician who knew Latin was at dinner. "That's the man who will make the least fun of me," said Julien to himself, "if, as I surmise, my question about mademoiselle de la Mole's mourning is in bad taste." Mathilde was looking at him with a singular expression. "So this is the coquetry of the women of this part of the country, just as madame de Renal described it to me," said Julien to himself. "I was not nice to her this morning. I did not humour her caprice of talking to me. I got up in value in her eyes. The Devil doubtless is no loser by it. "Later on her haughty disdain will manage to revenge herself. I defy her to do her worst. What a contrast with what I have lost! What charming naturalness? What naivety! I used to know her thoughts before she did herself. I used to see them come into existence. The only rival she had in her heart was the fear of her childrens' death. It was a reasonable, natural feeling to me, and even though I suffered from it I found it charming. I have been a fool. The ideas I had in my head about Paris prevented me from appreciating that sublime woman. "Great God what a contrast and what do I find here? Arid, haughty vanity: all the fine shades of wounded egotism and nothing more." They got up from table. "I must not let my academician get snapped up," said Julien to himself. He went up to him as they were passing into the garden, assumed an air of soft submissiveness and shared in his fury against the success of Hernani. "If only we were still in the days of _lettres de cachet_!" he said. "Then he would not have dared," exclaimed the academician with a gesture worthy of Talma. Julien quoted some words from Virgil's Georgics in reference to a flower and expressed the opinion that nothing was equal to the abbe Delille's verses. In a word he flattered the academician in every possible way. He then said to him with the utmost indifference, "I suppose mademoiselle de la Mole has inherited something from some uncle for whom she is in mourning." "What! you belong to the house?" said the academician stopping short, "and you do not know her folly? As a matter of fact it is strange her mother should allow her to do such things, but between ourselves, they do not shine in this household exactly by their force of character. Mademoiselle's share has to do for all of them, and governs them. To-day is the thirtieth of April!" and the academician stopped and looked meaningly at Julien. Julien smiled with the most knowing expression he could master. "What connection can there be between ruling a household, wearing a black dress, and the thirtieth April?" he said to himself. "I must be even sillier than I thought." "I must confess...." he said to the academician while he continued to question him with his look. "Let us take a turn round the garden," said the academician delighted at seeing an opportunity of telling a long and well-turned story. "What! is it really possible you do not know what happened on the 30th April, 1574?" "And where?" said Julien in astonishment. "At the place de Greve." Julien was extremely astonished that these words did not supply him with the key. His curiosity and his expectation of a tragic interest which would be in such harmony with his own character gave his eyes that brilliance which the teller of a story likes to see so much in the person who is listening to him. The academician was delighted at finding a virgin ear, and narrated at length to Julien how Boniface de la Mole, the handsomest young man of this century together with Annibal de Coconasso, his friend, a gentleman of Piedmont, had been beheaded on the 30th April, 1574. La Mole was the adored lover of Queen Marguerite of Navarre and "observe," continued the academician, "that mademoiselle de La Mole's full name is Mathilde Marguerite. La Mole was at the same time a favourite of the Duke d'Alencon and the intimate friend of his mistress's husband, the King of Navarre, subsequently Henri IV. On Shrove Tuesday of that year 1574, the court happened to be at St. Germain with the poor king Charles IX. who was dying. La Mole wished to rescue his friends the princes, whom Queen Catherine of Medici was keeping prisoner in her Court. He advanced two hundred cavalry under the walls of St. Germain; the Duke d'Alencon was frightened and La Mole was thrown to the executioner. "But the thing which affects mademoiselle Mathilde, and what she has admitted to me herself seven or eight years ago when she was twelve, is a head! a head!----and the academician lifted up his eyes to the heavens. What struck her in this political catastrophe, was the hiding of Queen Marguerite de Navarre in a house in the place de Greve and her then asking for her lover's head. At midnight on the following day she took that head in her carriage and went and buried it herself in a chapel at the foot of the hill at Montmartre." "Impossible?" cried Julien really moved. "Mademoiselle Mathilde despises her brother because, as you see, he does not bother one whit about this ancient history, and never wears mourning on the thirtieth of April. It is since the time of this celebrated execution and in order to recall the intimate friendship of La Mole for the said Coconasso, who Italian that he was, bore the name of Annibal that all the men of that family bear that name. And," added the academician lowering his voice, "this Coconasso was, according to Charles IX. himself, one of the cruellest assassins of the twenty-fourth August, 1572. But how is it possible, my dear Sorel, that you should be ignorant of these things--you who take your meals with the family." "So that is why mademoiselle de la Mole twice called her brother Annibal at dinner. I thought I had heard wrong." "It was a reproach. It is strange that the marquise should allow such follies. The husband of that great girl will have a fine time of it." This remark was followed by five or six satiric phrases. Julien was shocked by the joy which shone in the academician's eyes. "We are just a couple of servants," he thought, "engaged in talking scandal about our masters. But I ought not to be astonished at anything this academy man does." Julien had surprised him on his knees one day before the marquise de la Mole; he was asking her for a tobacco receivership for a nephew in the provinces. In the evening a little chambermaid of mademoiselle de la Mole, who was paying court to Julien, just as Elisa had used to do, gave him to understand that her mistress's mourning was very far from being worn simply to attract attention. This eccentricity was rooted in her character. She really loved that la Mole, the beloved lover of the most witty queen of the century, who had died through trying to set his friends at liberty--and what friends! The first prince of the blood and Henri IV. Accustomed as he had been to the perfect naturalness which shone throughout madame de Renal's whole demeanour, Julien could not help finding all the women of Paris affected, and, though by no means of a morose disposition, found nothing to say to them. Mademoiselle de la Mole was an exception. He now began to cease taking for coldness of heart that kind of beauty which attaches importance to a noble bearing. He had long conversations with mademoiselle de la Mole, who would sometimes walk with him in the garden after dinner. She told him one day that she was reading the History of D'Aubigne and also Brantome. "Strange books to read," thought Julien; "and the marquis does not allow her to read Walter Scott's novels!" She told him one day, with that pleased brilliancy in her eyes, which is the real test of genuine admiration, about a characteristic act of a young woman of the reign of Henry III., which she had just read in the memoirs of L'Etoile. Finding her husband unfaithful she stabbed him. Julien's vanity was nattered. A person who was surrounded by so much homage, and who governed the whole house, according to the academician, deigned to talk to him on a footing almost resembling friendship. "I made a mistake," thought Julien soon afterwards. "This is not familiarity, I am simply the confidante of a tragedy, she needs to speak to someone. I pass in this family for a man of learning. I will go and read Brantome, D'Aubigne, L'Etoile. I shall then be able to challenge some of the anecdotes which madame de la Mole speaks to me about. I want to leave off this role of the passive confidante." His conversations with this young girl, whose demeanour was so impressive and yet so easy, gradually became more interesting. He forgot his grim role of the rebel plebian. He found her well-informed and even logical. Her opinions in the gardens were very different to those which she owned to in the salon. Sometimes she exhibited an enthusiasm and a frankness which were in absolute contrast to her usual cold haughtiness. "The wars of the League were the heroic days of France," she said to him one day, with eyes shining with enthusiasm. "Then everyone fought to gain something which he desired, for the sake of his party's triumph, and not just in order to win a cross as in the days of your emperor. Admit that there was then less egotism and less pettiness. I love that century." "And Boniface de la Mole was the hero of it," he said to her. "At least he was loved in a way that it is perhaps sweet to be loved. What woman alive now would not be horrified at touching the head of her decapitated lover?" Madame de la Mole called her daughter. To be effective hypocrisy ought to hide itself, yet Julien had half confided his admiration for Napoleon to mademoiselle de la Mole. Julien remained alone in the garden. "That is the immense advantage they have over us," he said to himself. "Their ancestors lift them above vulgar sentiments, and they have not got always to be thinking about their subsistence! What misery," he added bitterly. "I am not worthy to discuss these great matters. My life is nothing more than a series of hypocrisies because I have not got a thousand francs a year with which to buy my bread and butter." Mathilde came running back. "What are you dreaming about, monsieur?" she said to him. Julien was tired of despising himself. Through sheer pride he frankly told her his thoughts. He blushed a great deal while talking to such a person about his own poverty. He tried to make it as plain as he could that he was not asking for anything. Mathilde never thought him so handsome; she detected in him an expression of frankness and sensitiveness which he often lacked. Within a month of this episode Julien was pensively walking in the garden of the hotel; but his face had no longer the hardness and philosophic superciliousness which the chronic consciousness of his inferior position had used to write upon it. He had just escorted mademoiselle de la Mole to the door of the salon. She said she had hurt her foot while running with her brother. "She leaned on my arm in a very singular way," said Julien to himself. "Am I a coxcomb, or is it true that she has taken a fancy to me? She listens to me so gently, even when I confess to her all the sufferings of my pride! She too, who is so haughty to everyone! They would be very astonished in the salon if they saw that expression of hers. It is quite certain that she does not show anyone else such sweetness and goodness." Julien endeavoured not to exaggerate this singular friendship. He himself compared it to an armed truce. When they met again each day, they almost seemed before they took up the almost intimate tone of the previous day to ask themselves "are we going to be friends or enemies to-day?" Julien had realised that to allow himself to be insulted with impunity even once by this haughty girl would mean the loss of everything. "If I have got to quarrel would it not be better that it should be straight away in defending the rights of my own pride, than in parrying the expressions of contempt which would follow the slightest abandonment of my duty to my own self-respect?" On many occasions, on days when she was in a bad temper Mathilde, tried to play the great lady with him. These attempts were extremely subtle, but Julien rebuffed them roughly. One day he brusquely interrupted her. "Has mademoiselle de la Mole any orders to give her father's secretary?" he said to her. "If so he must listen to her orders, and execute them, but apart from that he has not a single word to say to her. He is not paid to tell her his thoughts." This kind of life, together with the singular surmises which it occasioned, dissipated the boredom which he had been accustomed to experience in that magnificent salon, where everyone was afraid, and where any kind of jest was in bad form. "It would be humorous if she loved me but whether she loves me or not," went on Julien, "I have for my confidential friend a girl of spirit before whom I see the whole household quake, while the marquis de Croisenois does so more than anyone else. Yes, to be sure, that same young man who is so polite, so gentle, and so brave, and who has combined all those advantages of birth and fortune a single one of which would put my heart at rest--he is madly in love with her, he ought to marry her. How many letters has M. de la Mole made me write to the two notaries in order to arrange the contract? And I, though I am an absolute inferior when I have my pen in my hand, why, I triumph over that young man two hours afterwards in this very garden; for, after all, her preference is striking and direct. Perhaps she hates him because she sees in him a future husband. She is haughty enough for that. As for her kindness to me, I receive it in my capacity of confidential servant. "But no, I am either mad or she is making advances to me; the colder and more respectful I show myself to her, the more she runs after me. It may be a deliberate piece of affectation; but I see her eyes become animated when I appear unexpectedly. Can the women of Paris manage to act to such an extent. What does it matter to me! I have appearances in my favour, let us enjoy appearances. Heavens, how beautiful she is! How I like her great blue eyes when I see them at close quarters, and they look at me in the way they often do? What a difference between this spring and that of last year, when I lived an unhappy life among three hundred dirty malicious hypocrites, and only kept myself afloat through sheer force of character, I was almost as malicious as they were." "That young girl is making fun of me," Julien would think in his suspicious days. "She is acting in concert with her brother to make a fool of me. But she seems to have an absolute contempt for her brother's lack of energy. He is brave and that is all. He has not a thought which dares to deviate from the conventional. It is always I who have to take up the cudgels in his defence. A young girl of nineteen! Can one at that age act up faithfully every second of the day to the part which one has determined to play. On the other hand whenever mademoiselle de la Mole fixes her eyes on me with a singular expression comte Norbert always goes away. I think that suspicious. Ought he not to be indignant at his sister singling out a servant of her household? For that is how I heard the Duke de Chaulnes speak about me. This recollection caused anger to supersede every other emotion. It is simply a fashion for old fashioned phraseology on the part of the eccentric duke?" "Well, she is pretty!" continued Julien with a tigerish expression, "I will have her, I will then go away, and woe to him who disturbs me in my flight." This idea became Julien's sole preoccupation. He could not think of anything else. His days passed like hours. Every moment when he tried to concentrate on some important matter his mind became a blank, and he would wake up a quarter of an hour afterwards with a beating heart and an anxious mind, brooding over this idea "does she love me?"

Part 2, Chapter 10

https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-2-chapter-10

Julien scolds himself for revealing his inner thoughts to Mathilde. He catches her later that day giving him strange looks, then realizes that being intense in front of her has made her like him. After dinner, Julien asks one of the de La Moles' friends why Mathilde is dressed in mourning clothes. It turns out that one of her ancestors was executed on this day a long time ago. After his head was cut off, his lover took his head and cradled it in her arms. The story makes Julien realize how much of a poetic, romantic soul Mathilde has. Now that the floodgates have opened between them, Julien tells Mathilde all of his thoughts about Napoleon and the corruption of the rich. Sometimes, Mathilde tries to regain power by acting like she's above him. But he always answers by becoming totally professional and treating her like an employer, which makes her back down. Julien decides that he wants to sleep with Mathilde and then leave the de La Mole house for good. He keeps wondering about whether Mathilde is actually in love with him.

pinkmonkey

all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/28.txt

finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Lord Jim/section_27_part_0.txt

Lord Jim.chapter 28

chapter 28

{"name": "Chapter 28", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820051943/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmLordJim37.asp", "summary": "After Sherif Ali fled, Raja Allang also settled down, fearing that Jim would kill him. The responsibility of re-organizing and administering the community fell on Dain Waris and Jim. In truth, Jim became the real ruler of Patusan. Marlow continues his story and acknowledges that he made a great mistake by speaking to Doramin before leaving Patusan. Doramin expressed hope that Jim would not live in Patusan forever and that Dain Waris would ultimately become the ruler of the land. Doramin's wife wanted to know about Jim's family and his past, but Marlow did not know what to answer, causing Doramin to sense that something was wrong. Marlow, in turn, tries to tell them that Jim plans on staying in Patusan forever. Marlow goes on to describe Jim's love affair with Jewel, the step- daughter of Cornelius, the former trading agent, who was a cunning, mean, and cowardly Portuguese man. He had ill-treated his wife before his death and he now mistreats her daughter, Jewel, by screaming and flinging mud at her. Jim, on the other hand, valued Jewel greatly and married her in a native ceremony. He defied Malay tradition and walked hand-in-hand with Jewel, rather than making her walk behind him in respect. Cornelius resented that Jim took both his job and his daughter from him.", "analysis": "Notes Marlow compares Doramin to \"a cunning old elephant.\" Earlier he had compared the fat skipper of the Patna to \"a baby elephant.\" Both comparisons are important, for animal symbols are very rare in Conrad. Conrad is again foreshadowing Jim's future. Just as Jim was rejected by the Patna's skipper, he will also be rejected by Doramin. Hints of this are actually given in the chapter when the chief says he hopes Jim does not stay on Patusan forever, for he wants Dain Waris to become the ruler of the island. He also grows suspicious when Marlow has nothing to say of Jim's family or his past. Marlow tells the story of Jim's love for Jewel. Her name is symbolic, for like a precious gem, Jim treasures her and calls her his own, almost like a possession. Furthermore, Marlow hears the story of Jim giving her an emerald, which Jewel hides. Jewel, like Jim, is always dressed in white, symbolizing purity. She loves him to distraction, and like Jim's servant, she is compared to a shadow that follows him everywhere."}

'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.'

Chapter 28

https://web.archive.org/web/20180820051943/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmLordJim37.asp

After Sherif Ali fled, Raja Allang also settled down, fearing that Jim would kill him. The responsibility of re-organizing and administering the community fell on Dain Waris and Jim. In truth, Jim became the real ruler of Patusan. Marlow continues his story and acknowledges that he made a great mistake by speaking to Doramin before leaving Patusan. Doramin expressed hope that Jim would not live in Patusan forever and that Dain Waris would ultimately become the ruler of the land. Doramin's wife wanted to know about Jim's family and his past, but Marlow did not know what to answer, causing Doramin to sense that something was wrong. Marlow, in turn, tries to tell them that Jim plans on staying in Patusan forever. Marlow goes on to describe Jim's love affair with Jewel, the step- daughter of Cornelius, the former trading agent, who was a cunning, mean, and cowardly Portuguese man. He had ill-treated his wife before his death and he now mistreats her daughter, Jewel, by screaming and flinging mud at her. Jim, on the other hand, valued Jewel greatly and married her in a native ceremony. He defied Malay tradition and walked hand-in-hand with Jewel, rather than making her walk behind him in respect. Cornelius resented that Jim took both his job and his daughter from him.

Notes Marlow compares Doramin to "a cunning old elephant." Earlier he had compared the fat skipper of the Patna to "a baby elephant." Both comparisons are important, for animal symbols are very rare in Conrad. Conrad is again foreshadowing Jim's future. Just as Jim was rejected by the Patna's skipper, he will also be rejected by Doramin. Hints of this are actually given in the chapter when the chief says he hopes Jim does not stay on Patusan forever, for he wants Dain Waris to become the ruler of the island. He also grows suspicious when Marlow has nothing to say of Jim's family or his past. Marlow tells the story of Jim's love for Jewel. Her name is symbolic, for like a precious gem, Jim treasures her and calls her his own, almost like a possession. Furthermore, Marlow hears the story of Jim giving her an emerald, which Jewel hides. Jewel, like Jim, is always dressed in white, symbolizing purity. She loves him to distraction, and like Jim's servant, she is compared to a shadow that follows him everywhere.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/48.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Tess of the d'Urbervilles/section_6_part_3.txt

Tess of the d'Urbervilles.chapter xlvii

chapter xlvii

{"name": "Chapter XLVII", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210213065711/https://www.novelguide.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summaries/phase6-chapter45-52", "summary": "In March, the mean-spirited Farmer Groby picks Tess to be on the thresher-machine, a physically taxing job usually assigned to men. Tess is completely exhausted when, yet once again, Alec approaches her and begs Tess to leave the farm. He feels a husband's responsibility for her, especially since she told him about the death of their child, and he castigates Angel for leaving her penniless. Tess slaps his face with a work glove and draws blood. No longer a preacher, he says he is her real husband and will not give up", "analysis": ""}

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.

Chapter XLVII

https://web.archive.org/web/20210213065711/https://www.novelguide.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summaries/phase6-chapter45-52

In March, the mean-spirited Farmer Groby picks Tess to be on the thresher-machine, a physically taxing job usually assigned to men. Tess is completely exhausted when, yet once again, Alec approaches her and begs Tess to leave the farm. He feels a husband's responsibility for her, especially since she told him about the death of their child, and he castigates Angel for leaving her penniless. Tess slaps his face with a work glove and draws blood. No longer a preacher, he says he is her real husband and will not give up

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/107-chapters/chapters_1_to_4.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/Far from the Madding Crowd/section_0_part_0.txt

Far from the Madding Crowd.chapters 1-4

chapters 1-4

{"name": "", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210225000853/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/maddingcrowd/section1/", "summary": "The first chapter introduces us to Gabriel Oak, our hero, a 28-year-old shepherd who has earned enough to acquire a small piece of land of his own. He has bought a farm of 200 sheep, many of the ewes pregnant. In the first scene, he watches a young woman with black hair drive up in a carriage laden with goods. Gabriel observes her as she waits for her driver. Thinking she is alone, she takes out a mirror and gazes at herself. Shortly afterward, he sees her again, stopped at a toll gate. She is arguing with the gatekeeper over the toll and Gabriel steps in to pay the two pence for her. When she drives off, he speaks with the gatekeeper and tells him that the black-haired woman has one fault: \"vanity.\" Tending to his sheep over the next few weeks, Gabriel spots the woman on several occasions as she walks to milk a cow at a nearby dairy. In several scenes he watches her without being seen, and he learns that she lives with her aunt. They meet when he goes to look for the hat she has lost, but he embarrasses her with his bold manner. Then, one night, Gabriel falls asleep in his shepherd's hut with the windows closed but the hearth still lit; he nearly dies from smoke inhalation but the woman breaks in and saves his life. He thanks her and asks her name; she refuses to tell him outright, challenging him to find it out for himself. Gabriel learns that her name is Bathsheba Everdene. He visits her aunt in order to ask for her niece's hand in marriage, but the aunt tells him that Bathsheba already has many lovers. Bathsheba runs after Gabriel to tell him that what her aunt has said is untrue, and in a funny and misunderstanding-laden exchange, the two discuss the possibility of their marriage. Gabriel assumes that if she has run after him to tell him he may court her, then she must be interested; however, she assures him that she would never marry him because she does not love him. When he asks her a second time and she again refuses, he at last agrees to drop the matter, though he declares he will always love her.", "analysis": "Commentary From the very first chapter, the novel's rustic focus emerges. Hardy's treatment of his subject alternates between a painstaking realism and an idealized romanticization: While he details the minutiae of rustic culture and includes specific information about the practice of farming, he also links Gabriel to the pastoral literary tradition, an ancient classical form that enjoyed new popularity during the Renaissance. Playing his flute as he tends his sheep, Gabriel evokes the carefree, flute-playing shepherds that populated these poems' idyllic landscapes. Furthermore, throughout the novel Gabriel will occupy the position of the observer who watches others make mistakes without ever implicating himself in the action; the traditional pastoral lyric commented on the civilized world in a tone of similar detachment. At the same time, the novel has the plot of a romance: A man meets a woman and falls in love. Hardy avidly analyzes the way a person in love forms ideas about the loved one, even if the two share only the slightest acquaintance. He avidly analyzes the delusions of human psychology, particularly regarding love, concluding that love is rarely returned with equal intensity, despite what the lover leads himself/herself to believe. Gabriel's conversation with Bathsheba shows her to be a capricious, spirited young woman who has never been in love. The two discuss marriage with remarkable frankness. Bathsheba admits that she would like to have all the trappings of marriage--she would delight in a piano, pets, and her own carriage; she would enjoy seeing her name in the newspaper's marriage announcements--but she objects to the concept of having a husband in the first place and to losing her freedom. While Bathsheba seems a bit superficial, her independence and strength are admirable, and she remains a sympathetic character."}

DESCRIPTION OF FARMER OAK--AN INCIDENT When Farmer Oak smiled, the corners of his mouth spread till they were within an unimportant distance of his ears, his eyes were reduced to chinks, and diverging wrinkles appeared round them, extending upon his countenance like the rays in a rudimentary sketch of the rising sun. His Christian name was Gabriel, and on working days he was a young man of sound judgment, easy motions, proper dress, and general good character. On Sundays he was a man of misty views, rather given to postponing, and hampered by his best clothes and umbrella: upon the whole, one who felt himself to occupy morally that vast middle space of Laodicean neutrality which lay between the Communion people of the parish and the drunken section,--that is, he went to church, but yawned privately by the time the congregation reached the Nicene creed, and thought of what there would be for dinner when he meant to be listening to the sermon. Or, to state his character as it stood in the scale of public opinion, when his friends and critics were in tantrums, he was considered rather a bad man; when they were pleased, he was rather a good man; when they were neither, he was a man whose moral colour was a kind of pepper-and-salt mixture. Since he lived six times as many working-days as Sundays, Oak's appearance in his old clothes was most peculiarly his own--the mental picture formed by his neighbours in imagining him being always dressed in that way. He wore a low-crowned felt hat, spread out at the base by tight jamming upon the head for security in high winds, and a coat like Dr. Johnson's; his lower extremities being encased in ordinary leather leggings and boots emphatically large, affording to each foot a roomy apartment so constructed that any wearer might stand in a river all day long and know nothing of damp--their maker being a conscientious man who endeavoured to compensate for any weakness in his cut by unstinted dimension and solidity. Mr. Oak carried about him, by way of watch, what may be called a small silver clock; in other words, it was a watch as to shape and intention, and a small clock as to size. This instrument being several years older than Oak's grandfather, had the peculiarity of going either too fast or not at all. The smaller of its hands, too, occasionally slipped round on the pivot, and thus, though the minutes were told with precision, nobody could be quite certain of the hour they belonged to. The stopping peculiarity of his watch Oak remedied by thumps and shakes, and he escaped any evil consequences from the other two defects by constant comparisons with and observations of the sun and stars, and by pressing his face close to the glass of his neighbours' windows, till he could discern the hour marked by the green-faced timekeepers within. It may be mentioned that Oak's fob being difficult of access, by reason of its somewhat high situation in the waistband of his trousers (which also lay at a remote height under his waistcoat), the watch was as a necessity pulled out by throwing the body to one side, compressing the mouth and face to a mere mass of ruddy flesh on account of the exertion required, and drawing up the watch by its chain, like a bucket from a well. But some thoughtful persons, who had seen him walking across one of his fields on a certain December morning--sunny and exceedingly mild--might have regarded Gabriel Oak in other aspects than these. In his face one might notice that many of the hues and curves of youth had tarried on to manhood: there even remained in his remoter crannies some relics of the boy. His height and breadth would have been sufficient to make his presence imposing, had they been exhibited with due consideration. But there is a way some men have, rural and urban alike, for which the mind is more responsible than flesh and sinew: it is a way of curtailing their dimensions by their manner of showing them. And from a quiet modesty that would have become a vestal, which seemed continually to impress upon him that he had no great claim on the world's room, Oak walked unassumingly and with a faintly perceptible bend, yet distinct from a bowing of the shoulders. This may be said to be a defect in an individual if he depends for his valuation more upon his appearance than upon his capacity to wear well, which Oak did not. He had just reached the time of life at which "young" is ceasing to be the prefix of "man" in speaking of one. He was at the brightest period of masculine growth, for his intellect and his emotions were clearly separated: he had passed the time during which the influence of youth indiscriminately mingles them in the character of impulse, and he had not yet arrived at the stage wherein they become united again, in the character of prejudice, by the influence of a wife and family. In short, he was twenty-eight, and a bachelor. The field he was in this morning sloped to a ridge called Norcombe Hill. Through a spur of this hill ran the highway between Emminster and Chalk-Newton. Casually glancing over the hedge, Oak saw coming down the incline before him an ornamental spring waggon, painted yellow and gaily marked, drawn by two horses, a waggoner walking alongside bearing a whip perpendicularly. The waggon was laden with household goods and window plants, and on the apex of the whole sat a woman, young and attractive. Gabriel had not beheld the sight for more than half a minute, when the vehicle was brought to a standstill just beneath his eyes. "The tailboard of the waggon is gone, Miss," said the waggoner. "Then I heard it fall," said the girl, in a soft, though not particularly low voice. "I heard a noise I could not account for when we were coming up the hill." "I'll run back." "Do," she answered. The sensible horses stood--perfectly still, and the waggoner's steps sank fainter and fainter in the distance. The girl on the summit of the load sat motionless, surrounded by tables and chairs with their legs upwards, backed by an oak settle, and ornamented in front by pots of geraniums, myrtles, and cactuses, together with a caged canary--all probably from the windows of the house just vacated. There was also a cat in a willow basket, from the partly-opened lid of which she gazed with half-closed eyes, and affectionately surveyed the small birds around. The handsome girl waited for some time idly in her place, and the only sound heard in the stillness was the hopping of the canary up and down the perches of its prison. Then she looked attentively downwards. It was not at the bird, nor at the cat; it was at an oblong package tied in paper, and lying between them. She turned her head to learn if the waggoner were coming. He was not yet in sight; and her eyes crept back to the package, her thoughts seeming to run upon what was inside it. At length she drew the article into her lap, and untied the paper covering; a small swing looking-glass was disclosed, in which she proceeded to survey herself attentively. She parted her lips and smiled. It was a fine morning, and the sun lighted up to a scarlet glow the crimson jacket she wore, and painted a soft lustre upon her bright face and dark hair. The myrtles, geraniums, and cactuses packed around her were fresh and green, and at such a leafless season they invested the whole concern of horses, waggon, furniture, and girl with a peculiar vernal charm. What possessed her to indulge in such a performance in the sight of the sparrows, blackbirds, and unperceived farmer who were alone its spectators,--whether the smile began as a factitious one, to test her capacity in that art,--nobody knows; it ended certainly in a real smile. She blushed at herself, and seeing her reflection blush, blushed the more. The change from the customary spot and necessary occasion of such an act--from the dressing hour in a bedroom to a time of travelling out of doors--lent to the idle deed a novelty it did not intrinsically possess. The picture was a delicate one. Woman's prescriptive infirmity had stalked into the sunlight, which had clothed it in the freshness of an originality. A cynical inference was irresistible by Gabriel Oak as he regarded the scene, generous though he fain would have been. There was no necessity whatever for her looking in the glass. She did not adjust her hat, or pat her hair, or press a dimple into shape, or do one thing to signify that any such intention had been her motive in taking up the glass. She simply observed herself as a fair product of Nature in the feminine kind, her thoughts seeming to glide into far-off though likely dramas in which men would play a part--vistas of probable triumphs--the smiles being of a phase suggesting that hearts were imagined as lost and won. Still, this was but conjecture, and the whole series of actions was so idly put forth as to make it rash to assert that intention had any part in them at all. The waggoner's steps were heard returning. She put the glass in the paper, and the whole again into its place. When the waggon had passed on, Gabriel withdrew from his point of espial, and descending into the road, followed the vehicle to the turnpike-gate some way beyond the bottom of the hill, where the object of his contemplation now halted for the payment of toll. About twenty steps still remained between him and the gate, when he heard a dispute. It was a difference concerning twopence between the persons with the waggon and the man at the toll-bar. "Mis'ess's niece is upon the top of the things, and she says that's enough that I've offered ye, you great miser, and she won't pay any more." These were the waggoner's words. "Very well; then mis'ess's niece can't pass," said the turnpike-keeper, closing the gate. Oak looked from one to the other of the disputants, and fell into a reverie. There was something in the tone of twopence remarkably insignificant. Threepence had a definite value as money--it was an appreciable infringement on a day's wages, and, as such, a higgling matter; but twopence--"Here," he said, stepping forward and handing twopence to the gatekeeper; "let the young woman pass." He looked up at her then; she heard his words, and looked down. Gabriel's features adhered throughout their form so exactly to the middle line between the beauty of St. John and the ugliness of Judas Iscariot, as represented in a window of the church he attended, that not a single lineament could be selected and called worthy either of distinction or notoriety. The red-jacketed and dark-haired maiden seemed to think so too, for she carelessly glanced over him, and told her man to drive on. She might have looked her thanks to Gabriel on a minute scale, but she did not speak them; more probably she felt none, for in gaining her a passage he had lost her her point, and we know how women take a favour of that kind. The gatekeeper surveyed the retreating vehicle. "That's a handsome maid," he said to Oak. "But she has her faults," said Gabriel. "True, farmer." "And the greatest of them is--well, what it is always." "Beating people down? ay, 'tis so." "O no." "What, then?" Gabriel, perhaps a little piqued by the comely traveller's indifference, glanced back to where he had witnessed her performance over the hedge, and said, "Vanity." NIGHT--THE FLOCK--AN INTERIOR--ANOTHER INTERIOR It was nearly midnight on the eve of St. Thomas's, the shortest day in the year. A desolating wind wandered from the north over the hill whereon Oak had watched the yellow waggon and its occupant in the sunshine of a few days earlier. Norcombe Hill--not far from lonely Toller-Down--was one of the spots which suggest to a passer-by that he is in the presence of a shape approaching the indestructible as nearly as any to be found on earth. It was a featureless convexity of chalk and soil--an ordinary specimen of those smoothly-outlined protuberances of the globe which may remain undisturbed on some great day of confusion, when far grander heights and dizzy granite precipices topple down. The hill was covered on its northern side by an ancient and decaying plantation of beeches, whose upper verge formed a line over the crest, fringing its arched curve against the sky, like a mane. To-night these trees sheltered the southern slope from the keenest blasts, which smote the wood and floundered through it with a sound as of grumbling, or gushed over its crowning boughs in a weakened moan. The dry leaves in the ditch simmered and boiled in the same breezes, a tongue of air occasionally ferreting out a few, and sending them spinning across the grass. A group or two of the latest in date amongst the dead multitude had remained till this very mid-winter time on the twigs which bore them and in falling rattled against the trunks with smart taps. Between this half-wooded half-naked hill, and the vague still horizon that its summit indistinctly commanded, was a mysterious sheet of fathomless shade--the sounds from which suggested that what it concealed bore some reduced resemblance to features here. The thin grasses, more or less coating the hill, were touched by the wind in breezes of differing powers, and almost of differing natures--one rubbing the blades heavily, another raking them piercingly, another brushing them like a soft broom. The instinctive act of humankind was to stand and listen, and learn how the trees on the right and the trees on the left wailed or chaunted to each other in the regular antiphonies of a cathedral choir; how hedges and other shapes to leeward then caught the note, lowering it to the tenderest sob; and how the hurrying gust then plunged into the south, to be heard no more. The sky was clear--remarkably clear--and the twinkling of all the stars seemed to be but throbs of one body, timed by a common pulse. The North Star was directly in the wind's eye, and since evening the Bear had swung round it outwardly to the east, till he was now at a right angle with the meridian. A difference of colour in the stars--oftener read of than seen in England--was really perceptible here. The sovereign brilliancy of Sirius pierced the eye with a steely glitter, the star called Capella was yellow, Aldebaran and Betelgueux shone with a fiery red. To persons standing alone on a hill during a clear midnight such as this, the roll of the world eastward is almost a palpable movement. The sensation may be caused by the panoramic glide of the stars past earthly objects, which is perceptible in a few minutes of stillness, or by the better outlook upon space that a hill affords, or by the wind, or by the solitude; but whatever be its origin, the impression of riding along is vivid and abiding. The poetry of motion is a phrase much in use, and to enjoy the epic form of that gratification it is necessary to stand on a hill at a small hour of the night, and, having first expanded with a sense of difference from the mass of civilised mankind, who are dreamwrapt and disregardful of all such proceedings at this time, long and quietly watch your stately progress through the stars. After such a nocturnal reconnoitre it is hard to get back to earth, and to believe that the consciousness of such majestic speeding is derived from a tiny human frame. Suddenly an unexpected series of sounds began to be heard in this place up against the sky. They had a clearness which was to be found nowhere in the wind, and a sequence which was to be found nowhere in nature. They were the notes of Farmer Oak's flute. The tune was not floating unhindered into the open air: it seemed muffled in some way, and was altogether too curtailed in power to spread high or wide. It came from the direction of a small dark object under the plantation hedge--a shepherd's hut--now presenting an outline to which an uninitiated person might have been puzzled to attach either meaning or use. The image as a whole was that of a small Noah's Ark on a small Ararat, allowing the traditionary outlines and general form of the Ark which are followed by toy-makers--and by these means are established in men's imaginations among their firmest, because earliest impressions--to pass as an approximate pattern. The hut stood on little wheels, which raised its floor about a foot from the ground. Such shepherds' huts are dragged into the fields when the lambing season comes on, to shelter the shepherd in his enforced nightly attendance. It was only latterly that people had begun to call Gabriel "Farmer" Oak. During the twelvemonth preceding this time he had been enabled by sustained efforts of industry and chronic good spirits to lease the small sheep-farm of which Norcombe Hill was a portion, and stock it with two hundred sheep. Previously he had been a bailiff for a short time, and earlier still a shepherd only, having from his childhood assisted his father in tending the flocks of large proprietors, till old Gabriel sank to rest. This venture, unaided and alone, into the paths of farming as master and not as man, with an advance of sheep not yet paid for, was a critical juncture with Gabriel Oak, and he recognised his position clearly. The first movement in his new progress was the lambing of his ewes, and sheep having been his speciality from his youth, he wisely refrained from deputing the task of tending them at this season to a hireling or a novice. The wind continued to beat about the corners of the hut, but the flute-playing ceased. A rectangular space of light appeared in the side of the hut, and in the opening the outline of Farmer Oak's figure. He carried a lantern in his hand, and closing the door behind him, came forward and busied himself about this nook of the field for nearly twenty minutes, the lantern light appearing and disappearing here and there, and brightening him or darkening him as he stood before or behind it. Oak's motions, though they had a quiet-energy, were slow, and their deliberateness accorded well with his occupation. Fitness being the basis of beauty, nobody could have denied that his steady swings and turns in and about the flock had elements of grace. Yet, although if occasion demanded he could do or think a thing with as mercurial a dash as can the men of towns who are more to the manner born, his special power, morally, physically, and mentally, was static, owing little or nothing to momentum as a rule. A close examination of the ground hereabout, even by the wan starlight only, revealed how a portion of what would have been casually called a wild slope had been appropriated by Farmer Oak for his great purpose this winter. Detached hurdles thatched with straw were stuck into the ground at various scattered points, amid and under which the whitish forms of his meek ewes moved and rustled. The ring of the sheep-bell, which had been silent during his absence, recommenced, in tones that had more mellowness than clearness, owing to an increasing growth of surrounding wool. This continued till Oak withdrew again from the flock. He returned to the hut, bringing in his arms a new-born lamb, consisting of four legs large enough for a full-grown sheep, united by a seemingly inconsiderable membrane about half the substance of the legs collectively, which constituted the animal's entire body just at present. The little speck of life he placed on a wisp of hay before the small stove, where a can of milk was simmering. Oak extinguished the lantern by blowing into it and then pinching the snuff, the cot being lighted by a candle suspended by a twisted wire. A rather hard couch, formed of a few corn sacks thrown carelessly down, covered half the floor of this little habitation, and here the young man stretched himself along, loosened his woollen cravat, and closed his eyes. In about the time a person unaccustomed to bodily labour would have decided upon which side to lie, Farmer Oak was asleep. The inside of the hut, as it now presented itself, was cosy and alluring, and the scarlet handful of fire in addition to the candle, reflecting its own genial colour upon whatever it could reach, flung associations of enjoyment even over utensils and tools. In the corner stood the sheep-crook, and along a shelf at one side were ranged bottles and canisters of the simple preparations pertaining to ovine surgery and physic; spirits of wine, turpentine, tar, magnesia, ginger, and castor-oil being the chief. On a triangular shelf across the corner stood bread, bacon, cheese, and a cup for ale or cider, which was supplied from a flagon beneath. Beside the provisions lay the flute, whose notes had lately been called forth by the lonely watcher to beguile a tedious hour. The house was ventilated by two round holes, like the lights of a ship's cabin, with wood slides. The lamb, revived by the warmth began to bleat, and the sound entered Gabriel's ears and brain with an instant meaning, as expected sounds will. Passing from the profoundest sleep to the most alert wakefulness with the same ease that had accompanied the reverse operation, he looked at his watch, found that the hour-hand had shifted again, put on his hat, took the lamb in his arms, and carried it into the darkness. After placing the little creature with its mother, he stood and carefully examined the sky, to ascertain the time of night from the altitudes of the stars. The Dog-star and Aldebaran, pointing to the restless Pleiades, were half-way up the Southern sky, and between them hung Orion, which gorgeous constellation never burnt more vividly than now, as it soared forth above the rim of the landscape. Castor and Pollux with their quiet shine were almost on the meridian: the barren and gloomy Square of Pegasus was creeping round to the north-west; far away through the plantation Vega sparkled like a lamp suspended amid the leafless trees, and Cassiopeia's chair stood daintily poised on the uppermost boughs. "One o'clock," said Gabriel. Being a man not without a frequent consciousness that there was some charm in this life he led, he stood still after looking at the sky as a useful instrument, and regarded it in an appreciative spirit, as a work of art superlatively beautiful. For a moment he seemed impressed with the speaking loneliness of the scene, or rather with the complete abstraction from all its compass of the sights and sounds of man. Human shapes, interferences, troubles, and joys were all as if they were not, and there seemed to be on the shaded hemisphere of the globe no sentient being save himself; he could fancy them all gone round to the sunny side. Occupied thus, with eyes stretched afar, Oak gradually perceived that what he had previously taken to be a star low down behind the outskirts of the plantation was in reality no such thing. It was an artificial light, almost close at hand. To find themselves utterly alone at night where company is desirable and expected makes some people fearful; but a case more trying by far to the nerves is to discover some mysterious companionship when intuition, sensation, memory, analogy, testimony, probability, induction--every kind of evidence in the logician's list--have united to persuade consciousness that it is quite in isolation. Farmer Oak went towards the plantation and pushed through its lower boughs to the windy side. A dim mass under the slope reminded him that a shed occupied a place here, the site being a cutting into the slope of the hill, so that at its back part the roof was almost level with the ground. In front it was formed of board nailed to posts and covered with tar as a preservative. Through crevices in the roof and side spread streaks and dots of light, a combination of which made the radiance that had attracted him. Oak stepped up behind, where, leaning down upon the roof and putting his eye close to a hole, he could see into the interior clearly. The place contained two women and two cows. By the side of the latter a steaming bran-mash stood in a bucket. One of the women was past middle age. Her companion was apparently young and graceful; he could form no decided opinion upon her looks, her position being almost beneath his eye, so that he saw her in a bird's-eye view, as Milton's Satan first saw Paradise. She wore no bonnet or hat, but had enveloped herself in a large cloak, which was carelessly flung over her head as a covering. "There, now we'll go home," said the elder of the two, resting her knuckles upon her hips, and looking at their goings-on as a whole. "I do hope Daisy will fetch round again now. I have never been more frightened in my life, but I don't mind breaking my rest if she recovers." The young woman, whose eyelids were apparently inclined to fall together on the smallest provocation of silence, yawned without parting her lips to any inconvenient extent, whereupon Gabriel caught the infection and slightly yawned in sympathy. "I wish we were rich enough to pay a man to do these things," she said. "As we are not, we must do them ourselves," said the other; "for you must help me if you stay." "Well, my hat is gone, however," continued the younger. "It went over the hedge, I think. The idea of such a slight wind catching it." The cow standing erect was of the Devon breed, and was encased in a tight warm hide of rich Indian red, as absolutely uniform from eyes to tail as if the animal had been dipped in a dye of that colour, her long back being mathematically level. The other was spotted, grey and white. Beside her Oak now noticed a little calf about a day old, looking idiotically at the two women, which showed that it had not long been accustomed to the phenomenon of eyesight, and often turning to the lantern, which it apparently mistook for the moon, inherited instinct having as yet had little time for correction by experience. Between the sheep and the cows Lucina had been busy on Norcombe Hill lately. "I think we had better send for some oatmeal," said the elder woman; "there's no more bran." "Yes, aunt; and I'll ride over for it as soon as it is light." "But there's no side-saddle." "I can ride on the other: trust me." Oak, upon hearing these remarks, became more curious to observe her features, but this prospect being denied him by the hooding effect of the cloak, and by his aerial position, he felt himself drawing upon his fancy for their details. In making even horizontal and clear inspections we colour and mould according to the wants within us whatever our eyes bring in. Had Gabriel been able from the first to get a distinct view of her countenance, his estimate of it as very handsome or slightly so would have been as his soul required a divinity at the moment or was ready supplied with one. Having for some time known the want of a satisfactory form to fill an increasing void within him, his position moreover affording the widest scope for his fancy, he painted her a beauty. By one of those whimsical coincidences in which Nature, like a busy mother, seems to spare a moment from her unremitting labours to turn and make her children smile, the girl now dropped the cloak, and forth tumbled ropes of black hair over a red jacket. Oak knew her instantly as the heroine of the yellow waggon, myrtles, and looking-glass: prosily, as the woman who owed him twopence. They placed the calf beside its mother again, took up the lantern, and went out, the light sinking down the hill till it was no more than a nebula. Gabriel Oak returned to his flock. A GIRL ON HORSEBACK--CONVERSATION The sluggish day began to break. Even its position terrestrially is one of the elements of a new interest, and for no particular reason save that the incident of the night had occurred there Oak went again into the plantation. Lingering and musing here, he heard the steps of a horse at the foot of the hill, and soon there appeared in view an auburn pony with a girl on its back, ascending by the path leading past the cattle-shed. She was the young woman of the night before. Gabriel instantly thought of the hat she had mentioned as having lost in the wind; possibly she had come to look for it. He hastily scanned the ditch and after walking about ten yards along it found the hat among the leaves. Gabriel took it in his hand and returned to his hut. Here he ensconced himself, and peeped through the loophole in the direction of the rider's approach. She came up and looked around--then on the other side of the hedge. Gabriel was about to advance and restore the missing article when an unexpected performance induced him to suspend the action for the present. The path, after passing the cowshed, bisected the plantation. It was not a bridle-path--merely a pedestrian's track, and the boughs spread horizontally at a height not greater than seven feet above the ground, which made it impossible to ride erect beneath them. The girl, who wore no riding-habit, looked around for a moment, as if to assure herself that all humanity was out of view, then dexterously dropped backwards flat upon the pony's back, her head over its tail, her feet against its shoulders, and her eyes to the sky. The rapidity of her glide into this position was that of a kingfisher--its noiselessness that of a hawk. Gabriel's eyes had scarcely been able to follow her. The tall lank pony seemed used to such doings, and ambled along unconcerned. Thus she passed under the level boughs. The performer seemed quite at home anywhere between a horse's head and its tail, and the necessity for this abnormal attitude having ceased with the passage of the plantation, she began to adopt another, even more obviously convenient than the first. She had no side-saddle, and it was very apparent that a firm seat upon the smooth leather beneath her was unattainable sideways. Springing to her accustomed perpendicular like a bowed sapling, and satisfying herself that nobody was in sight, she seated herself in the manner demanded by the saddle, though hardly expected of the woman, and trotted off in the direction of Tewnell Mill. Oak was amused, perhaps a little astonished, and hanging up the hat in his hut, went again among his ewes. An hour passed, the girl returned, properly seated now, with a bag of bran in front of her. On nearing the cattle-shed she was met by a boy bringing a milking-pail, who held the reins of the pony whilst she slid off. The boy led away the horse, leaving the pail with the young woman. Soon soft spirts alternating with loud spirts came in regular succession from within the shed, the obvious sounds of a person milking a cow. Gabriel took the lost hat in his hand, and waited beside the path she would follow in leaving the hill. She came, the pail in one hand, hanging against her knee. The left arm was extended as a balance, enough of it being shown bare to make Oak wish that the event had happened in the summer, when the whole would have been revealed. There was a bright air and manner about her now, by which she seemed to imply that the desirability of her existence could not be questioned; and this rather saucy assumption failed in being offensive because a beholder felt it to be, upon the whole, true. Like exceptional emphasis in the tone of a genius, that which would have made mediocrity ridiculous was an addition to recognised power. It was with some surprise that she saw Gabriel's face rising like the moon behind the hedge. The adjustment of the farmer's hazy conceptions of her charms to the portrait of herself she now presented him with was less a diminution than a difference. The starting-point selected by the judgment was her height. She seemed tall, but the pail was a small one, and the hedge diminutive; hence, making allowance for error by comparison with these, she could have been not above the height to be chosen by women as best. All features of consequence were severe and regular. It may have been observed by persons who go about the shires with eyes for beauty, that in Englishwoman a classically-formed face is seldom found to be united with a figure of the same pattern, the highly-finished features being generally too large for the remainder of the frame; that a graceful and proportionate figure of eight heads usually goes off into random facial curves. Without throwing a Nymphean tissue over a milkmaid, let it be said that here criticism checked itself as out of place, and looked at her proportions with a long consciousness of pleasure. From the contours of her figure in its upper part, she must have had a beautiful neck and shoulders; but since her infancy nobody had ever seen them. Had she been put into a low dress she would have run and thrust her head into a bush. Yet she was not a shy girl by any means; it was merely her instinct to draw the line dividing the seen from the unseen higher than they do it in towns. That the girl's thoughts hovered about her face and form as soon as she caught Oak's eyes conning the same page was natural, and almost certain. The self-consciousness shown would have been vanity if a little more pronounced, dignity if a little less. Rays of male vision seem to have a tickling effect upon virgin faces in rural districts; she brushed hers with her hand, as if Gabriel had been irritating its pink surface by actual touch, and the free air of her previous movements was reduced at the same time to a chastened phase of itself. Yet it was the man who blushed, the maid not at all. "I found a hat," said Oak. "It is mine," said she, and, from a sense of proportion, kept down to a small smile an inclination to laugh distinctly: "it flew away last night." "One o'clock this morning?" "Well--it was." She was surprised. "How did you know?" she said. "I was here." "You are Farmer Oak, are you not?" "That or thereabouts. I'm lately come to this place." "A large farm?" she inquired, casting her eyes round, and swinging back her hair, which was black in the shaded hollows of its mass; but it being now an hour past sunrise the rays touched its prominent curves with a colour of their own. "No; not large. About a hundred." (In speaking of farms the word "acres" is omitted by the natives, by analogy to such old expressions as "a stag of ten.") "I wanted my hat this morning," she went on. "I had to ride to Tewnell Mill." "Yes you had." "How do you know?" "I saw you." "Where?" she inquired, a misgiving bringing every muscle of her lineaments and frame to a standstill. "Here--going through the plantation, and all down the hill," said Farmer Oak, with an aspect excessively knowing with regard to some matter in his mind, as he gazed at a remote point in the direction named, and then turned back to meet his colloquist's eyes. A perception caused him to withdraw his own eyes from hers as suddenly as if he had been caught in a theft. Recollection of the strange antics she had indulged in when passing through the trees was succeeded in the girl by a nettled palpitation, and that by a hot face. It was a time to see a woman redden who was not given to reddening as a rule; not a point in the milkmaid but was of the deepest rose-colour. From the Maiden's Blush, through all varieties of the Provence down to the Crimson Tuscany, the countenance of Oak's acquaintance quickly graduated; whereupon he, in considerateness, turned away his head. The sympathetic man still looked the other way, and wondered when she would recover coolness sufficient to justify him in facing her again. He heard what seemed to be the flitting of a dead leaf upon the breeze, and looked. She had gone away. With an air between that of Tragedy and Comedy Gabriel returned to his work. Five mornings and evenings passed. The young woman came regularly to milk the healthy cow or to attend to the sick one, but never allowed her vision to stray in the direction of Oak's person. His want of tact had deeply offended her--not by seeing what he could not help, but by letting her know that he had seen it. For, as without law there is no sin, without eyes there is no indecorum; and she appeared to feel that Gabriel's espial had made her an indecorous woman without her own connivance. It was food for great regret with him; it was also a _contretemps_ which touched into life a latent heat he had experienced in that direction. The acquaintanceship might, however, have ended in a slow forgetting, but for an incident which occurred at the end of the same week. One afternoon it began to freeze, and the frost increased with evening, which drew on like a stealthy tightening of bonds. It was a time when in cottages the breath of the sleepers freezes to the sheets; when round the drawing-room fire of a thick-walled mansion the sitters' backs are cold, even whilst their faces are all aglow. Many a small bird went to bed supperless that night among the bare boughs. As the milking-hour drew near, Oak kept his usual watch upon the cowshed. At last he felt cold, and shaking an extra quantity of bedding round the yearling ewes he entered the hut and heaped more fuel upon the stove. The wind came in at the bottom of the door, and to prevent it Oak laid a sack there and wheeled the cot round a little more to the south. Then the wind spouted in at a ventilating hole--of which there was one on each side of the hut. Gabriel had always known that when the fire was lighted and the door closed one of these must be kept open--that chosen being always on the side away from the wind. Closing the slide to windward, he turned to open the other; on second thoughts the farmer considered that he would first sit down leaving both closed for a minute or two, till the temperature of the hut was a little raised. He sat down. His head began to ache in an unwonted manner, and, fancying himself weary by reason of the broken rests of the preceding nights, Oak decided to get up, open the slide, and then allow himself to fall asleep. He fell asleep, however, without having performed the necessary preliminary. How long he remained unconscious Gabriel never knew. During the first stages of his return to perception peculiar deeds seemed to be in course of enactment. His dog was howling, his head was aching fearfully--somebody was pulling him about, hands were loosening his neckerchief. On opening his eyes he found that evening had sunk to dusk in a strange manner of unexpectedness. The young girl with the remarkably pleasant lips and white teeth was beside him. More than this--astonishingly more--his head was upon her lap, his face and neck were disagreeably wet, and her fingers were unbuttoning his collar. "Whatever is the matter?" said Oak, vacantly. She seemed to experience mirth, but of too insignificant a kind to start enjoyment. "Nothing now," she answered, "since you are not dead. It is a wonder you were not suffocated in this hut of yours." "Ah, the hut!" murmured Gabriel. "I gave ten pounds for that hut. But I'll sell it, and sit under thatched hurdles as they did in old times, and curl up to sleep in a lock of straw! It played me nearly the same trick the other day!" Gabriel, by way of emphasis, brought down his fist upon the floor. "It was not exactly the fault of the hut," she observed in a tone which showed her to be that novelty among women--one who finished a thought before beginning the sentence which was to convey it. "You should, I think, have considered, and not have been so foolish as to leave the slides closed." "Yes I suppose I should," said Oak, absently. He was endeavouring to catch and appreciate the sensation of being thus with her, his head upon her dress, before the event passed on into the heap of bygone things. He wished she knew his impressions; but he would as soon have thought of carrying an odour in a net as of attempting to convey the intangibilities of his feeling in the coarse meshes of language. So he remained silent. She made him sit up, and then Oak began wiping his face and shaking himself like a Samson. "How can I thank 'ee?" he said at last, gratefully, some of the natural rusty red having returned to his face. "Oh, never mind that," said the girl, smiling, and allowing her smile to hold good for Gabriel's next remark, whatever that might prove to be. "How did you find me?" "I heard your dog howling and scratching at the door of the hut when I came to the milking (it was so lucky, Daisy's milking is almost over for the season, and I shall not come here after this week or the next). The dog saw me, and jumped over to me, and laid hold of my skirt. I came across and looked round the hut the very first thing to see if the slides were closed. My uncle has a hut like this one, and I have heard him tell his shepherd not to go to sleep without leaving a slide open. I opened the door, and there you were like dead. I threw the milk over you, as there was no water, forgetting it was warm, and no use." "I wonder if I should have died?" Gabriel said, in a low voice, which was rather meant to travel back to himself than to her. "Oh no!" the girl replied. She seemed to prefer a less tragic probability; to have saved a man from death involved talk that should harmonise with the dignity of such a deed--and she shunned it. "I believe you saved my life, Miss--I don't know your name. I know your aunt's, but not yours." "I would just as soon not tell it--rather not. There is no reason either why I should, as you probably will never have much to do with me." "Still, I should like to know." "You can inquire at my aunt's--she will tell you." "My name is Gabriel Oak." "And mine isn't. You seem fond of yours in speaking it so decisively, Gabriel Oak." "You see, it is the only one I shall ever have, and I must make the most of it." "I always think mine sounds odd and disagreeable." "I should think you might soon get a new one." "Mercy!--how many opinions you keep about you concerning other people, Gabriel Oak." "Well, Miss--excuse the words--I thought you would like them. But I can't match you, I know, in mapping out my mind upon my tongue. I never was very clever in my inside. But I thank you. Come, give me your hand." She hesitated, somewhat disconcerted at Oak's old-fashioned earnest conclusion to a dialogue lightly carried on. "Very well," she said, and gave him her hand, compressing her lips to a demure impassivity. He held it but an instant, and in his fear of being too demonstrative, swerved to the opposite extreme, touching her fingers with the lightness of a small-hearted person. "I am sorry," he said the instant after. "What for?" "Letting your hand go so quick." "You may have it again if you like; there it is." She gave him her hand again. Oak held it longer this time--indeed, curiously long. "How soft it is--being winter time, too--not chapped or rough or anything!" he said. "There--that's long enough," said she, though without pulling it away. "But I suppose you are thinking you would like to kiss it? You may if you want to." "I wasn't thinking of any such thing," said Gabriel, simply; "but I will--" "That you won't!" She snatched back her hand. Gabriel felt himself guilty of another want of tact. "Now find out my name," she said, teasingly; and withdrew. GABRIEL'S RESOLVE--THE VISIT--THE MISTAKE The only superiority in women that is tolerable to the rival sex is, as a rule, that of the unconscious kind; but a superiority which recognizes itself may sometimes please by suggesting possibilities of capture to the subordinated man. This well-favoured and comely girl soon made appreciable inroads upon the emotional constitution of young Farmer Oak. Love, being an extremely exacting usurer (a sense of exorbitant profit, spiritually, by an exchange of hearts, being at the bottom of pure passions, as that of exorbitant profit, bodily or materially, is at the bottom of those of lower atmosphere), every morning Oak's feelings were as sensitive as the money-market in calculations upon his chances. His dog waited for his meals in a way so like that in which Oak waited for the girl's presence, that the farmer was quite struck with the resemblance, felt it lowering, and would not look at the dog. However, he continued to watch through the hedge for her regular coming, and thus his sentiments towards her were deepened without any corresponding effect being produced upon herself. Oak had nothing finished and ready to say as yet, and not being able to frame love phrases which end where they begin; passionate tales-- --Full of sound and fury --Signifying nothing-- he said no word at all. By making inquiries he found that the girl's name was Bathsheba Everdene, and that the cow would go dry in about seven days. He dreaded the eighth day. At last the eighth day came. The cow had ceased to give milk for that year, and Bathsheba Everdene came up the hill no more. Gabriel had reached a pitch of existence he never could have anticipated a short time before. He liked saying "Bathsheba" as a private enjoyment instead of whistling; turned over his taste to black hair, though he had sworn by brown ever since he was a boy, isolated himself till the space he filled in the public eye was contemptibly small. Love is a possible strength in an actual weakness. Marriage transforms a distraction into a support, the power of which should be, and happily often is, in direct proportion to the degree of imbecility it supplants. Oak began now to see light in this direction, and said to himself, "I'll make her my wife, or upon my soul I shall be good for nothing!" All this while he was perplexing himself about an errand on which he might consistently visit the cottage of Bathsheba's aunt. He found his opportunity in the death of a ewe, mother of a living lamb. On a day which had a summer face and a winter constitution--a fine January morning, when there was just enough blue sky visible to make cheerfully-disposed people wish for more, and an occasional gleam of silvery sunshine, Oak put the lamb into a respectable Sunday basket, and stalked across the fields to the house of Mrs. Hurst, the aunt--George, the dog walking behind, with a countenance of great concern at the serious turn pastoral affairs seemed to be taking. Gabriel had watched the blue wood-smoke curling from the chimney with strange meditation. At evening he had fancifully traced it down the chimney to the spot of its origin--seen the hearth and Bathsheba beside it--beside it in her out-door dress; for the clothes she had worn on the hill were by association equally with her person included in the compass of his affection; they seemed at this early time of his love a necessary ingredient of the sweet mixture called Bathsheba Everdene. He had made a toilet of a nicely-adjusted kind--of a nature between the carefully neat and the carelessly ornate--of a degree between fine-market-day and wet-Sunday selection. He thoroughly cleaned his silver watch-chain with whiting, put new lacing straps to his boots, looked to the brass eyelet-holes, went to the inmost heart of the plantation for a new walking-stick, and trimmed it vigorously on his way back; took a new handkerchief from the bottom of his clothes-box, put on the light waistcoat patterned all over with sprigs of an elegant flower uniting the beauties of both rose and lily without the defects of either, and used all the hair-oil he possessed upon his usually dry, sandy, and inextricably curly hair, till he had deepened it to a splendidly novel colour, between that of guano and Roman cement, making it stick to his head like mace round a nutmeg, or wet seaweed round a boulder after the ebb. Nothing disturbed the stillness of the cottage save the chatter of a knot of sparrows on the eaves; one might fancy scandal and rumour to be no less the staple topic of these little coteries on roofs than of those under them. It seemed that the omen was an unpropitious one, for, as the rather untoward commencement of Oak's overtures, just as he arrived by the garden gate, he saw a cat inside, going into various arched shapes and fiendish convulsions at the sight of his dog George. The dog took no notice, for he had arrived at an age at which all superfluous barking was cynically avoided as a waste of breath--in fact, he never barked even at the sheep except to order, when it was done with an absolutely neutral countenance, as a sort of Commination-service, which, though offensive, had to be gone through once now and then to frighten the flock for their own good. A voice came from behind some laurel-bushes into which the cat had run: "Poor dear! Did a nasty brute of a dog want to kill it;--did he, poor dear!" "I beg your pardon," said Oak to the voice, "but George was walking on behind me with a temper as mild as milk." Almost before he had ceased speaking, Oak was seized with a misgiving as to whose ear was the recipient of his answer. Nobody appeared, and he heard the person retreat among the bushes. Gabriel meditated, and so deeply that he brought small furrows into his forehead by sheer force of reverie. Where the issue of an interview is as likely to be a vast change for the worse as for the better, any initial difference from expectation causes nipping sensations of failure. Oak went up to the door a little abashed: his mental rehearsal and the reality had had no common grounds of opening. Bathsheba's aunt was indoors. "Will you tell Miss Everdene that somebody would be glad to speak to her?" said Mr. Oak. (Calling one's self merely Somebody, without giving a name, is not to be taken as an example of the ill-breeding of the rural world: it springs from a refined modesty, of which townspeople, with their cards and announcements, have no notion whatever.) Bathsheba was out. The voice had evidently been hers. "Will you come in, Mr. Oak?" "Oh, thank 'ee," said Gabriel, following her to the fireplace. "I've brought a lamb for Miss Everdene. I thought she might like one to rear; girls do." "She might," said Mrs. Hurst, musingly; "though she's only a visitor here. If you will wait a minute, Bathsheba will be in." "Yes, I will wait," said Gabriel, sitting down. "The lamb isn't really the business I came about, Mrs. Hurst. In short, I was going to ask her if she'd like to be married." "And were you indeed?" "Yes. Because if she would, I should be very glad to marry her. D'ye know if she's got any other young man hanging about her at all?" "Let me think," said Mrs. Hurst, poking the fire superfluously.... "Yes--bless you, ever so many young men. You see, Farmer Oak, she's so good-looking, and an excellent scholar besides--she was going to be a governess once, you know, only she was too wild. Not that her young men ever come here--but, Lord, in the nature of women, she must have a dozen!" "That's unfortunate," said Farmer Oak, contemplating a crack in the stone floor with sorrow. "I'm only an every-day sort of man, and my only chance was in being the first comer ... Well, there's no use in my waiting, for that was all I came about: so I'll take myself off home-along, Mrs. Hurst." When Gabriel had gone about two hundred yards along the down, he heard a "hoi-hoi!" uttered behind him, in a piping note of more treble quality than that in which the exclamation usually embodies itself when shouted across a field. He looked round, and saw a girl racing after him, waving a white handkerchief. Oak stood still--and the runner drew nearer. It was Bathsheba Everdene. Gabriel's colour deepened: hers was already deep, not, as it appeared, from emotion, but from running. "Farmer Oak--I--" she said, pausing for want of breath pulling up in front of him with a slanted face and putting her hand to her side. "I have just called to see you," said Gabriel, pending her further speech. "Yes--I know that," she said panting like a robin, her face red and moist from her exertions, like a peony petal before the sun dries off the dew. "I didn't know you had come to ask to have me, or I should have come in from the garden instantly. I ran after you to say--that my aunt made a mistake in sending you away from courting me--" Gabriel expanded. "I'm sorry to have made you run so fast, my dear," he said, with a grateful sense of favours to come. "Wait a bit till you've found your breath." "--It was quite a mistake--aunt's telling you I had a young man already," Bathsheba went on. "I haven't a sweetheart at all--and I never had one, and I thought that, as times go with women, it was SUCH a pity to send you away thinking that I had several." "Really and truly I am glad to hear that!" said Farmer Oak, smiling one of his long special smiles, and blushing with gladness. He held out his hand to take hers, which, when she had eased her side by pressing it there, was prettily extended upon her bosom to still her loud-beating heart. Directly he seized it she put it behind her, so that it slipped through his fingers like an eel. "I have a nice snug little farm," said Gabriel, with half a degree less assurance than when he had seized her hand. "Yes; you have." "A man has advanced me money to begin with, but still, it will soon be paid off, and though I am only an every-day sort of man, I have got on a little since I was a boy." Gabriel uttered "a little" in a tone to show her that it was the complacent form of "a great deal." He continued: "When we be married, I am quite sure I can work twice as hard as I do now." He went forward and stretched out his arm again. Bathsheba had overtaken him at a point beside which stood a low stunted holly bush, now laden with red berries. Seeing his advance take the form of an attitude threatening a possible enclosure, if not compression, of her person, she edged off round the bush. "Why, Farmer Oak," she said, over the top, looking at him with rounded eyes, "I never said I was going to marry you." "Well--that IS a tale!" said Oak, with dismay. "To run after anybody like this, and then say you don't want him!" "What I meant to tell you was only this," she said eagerly, and yet half conscious of the absurdity of the position she had made for herself--"that nobody has got me yet as a sweetheart, instead of my having a dozen, as my aunt said; I HATE to be thought men's property in that way, though possibly I shall be had some day. Why, if I'd wanted you I shouldn't have run after you like this; 'twould have been the FORWARDEST thing! But there was no harm in hurrying to correct a piece of false news that had been told you." "Oh, no--no harm at all." But there is such a thing as being too generous in expressing a judgment impulsively, and Oak added with a more appreciative sense of all the circumstances--"Well, I am not quite certain it was no harm." "Indeed, I hadn't time to think before starting whether I wanted to marry or not, for you'd have been gone over the hill." "Come," said Gabriel, freshening again; "think a minute or two. I'll wait a while, Miss Everdene. Will you marry me? Do, Bathsheba. I love you far more than common!" "I'll try to think," she observed, rather more timorously; "if I can think out of doors; my mind spreads away so." "But you can give a guess." "Then give me time." Bathsheba looked thoughtfully into the distance, away from the direction in which Gabriel stood. "I can make you happy," said he to the back of her head, across the bush. "You shall have a piano in a year or two--farmers' wives are getting to have pianos now--and I'll practise up the flute right well to play with you in the evenings." "Yes; I should like that." "And have one of those little ten-pound gigs for market--and nice flowers, and birds--cocks and hens I mean, because they be useful," continued Gabriel, feeling balanced between poetry and practicality. "I should like it very much." "And a frame for cucumbers--like a gentleman and lady." "Yes." "And when the wedding was over, we'd have it put in the newspaper list of marriages." "Dearly I should like that!" "And the babies in the births--every man jack of 'em! And at home by the fire, whenever you look up, there I shall be--and whenever I look up there will be you." "Wait, wait, and don't be improper!" Her countenance fell, and she was silent awhile. He regarded the red berries between them over and over again, to such an extent, that holly seemed in his after life to be a cypher signifying a proposal of marriage. Bathsheba decisively turned to him. "No; 'tis no use," she said. "I don't want to marry you." "Try." "I have tried hard all the time I've been thinking; for a marriage would be very nice in one sense. People would talk about me, and think I had won my battle, and I should feel triumphant, and all that, But a husband--" "Well!" "Why, he'd always be there, as you say; whenever I looked up, there he'd be." "Of course he would--I, that is." "Well, what I mean is that I shouldn't mind being a bride at a wedding, if I could be one without having a husband. But since a woman can't show off in that way by herself, I shan't marry--at least yet." "That's a terrible wooden story!" At this criticism of her statement Bathsheba made an addition to her dignity by a slight sweep away from him. "Upon my heart and soul, I don't know what a maid can say stupider than that," said Oak. "But dearest," he continued in a palliative voice, "don't be like it!" Oak sighed a deep honest sigh--none the less so in that, being like the sigh of a pine plantation, it was rather noticeable as a disturbance of the atmosphere. "Why won't you have me?" he appealed, creeping round the holly to reach her side. "I cannot," she said, retreating. "But why?" he persisted, standing still at last in despair of ever reaching her, and facing over the bush. "Because I don't love you." "Yes, but--" She contracted a yawn to an inoffensive smallness, so that it was hardly ill-mannered at all. "I don't love you," she said. "But I love you--and, as for myself, I am content to be liked." "Oh Mr. Oak--that's very fine! You'd get to despise me." "Never," said Mr Oak, so earnestly that he seemed to be coming, by the force of his words, straight through the bush and into her arms. "I shall do one thing in this life--one thing certain--that is, love you, and long for you, and KEEP WANTING YOU till I die." His voice had a genuine pathos now, and his large brown hands perceptibly trembled. "It seems dreadfully wrong not to have you when you feel so much!" she said with a little distress, and looking hopelessly around for some means of escape from her moral dilemma. "How I wish I hadn't run after you!" However she seemed to have a short cut for getting back to cheerfulness, and set her face to signify archness. "It wouldn't do, Mr Oak. I want somebody to tame me; I am too independent; and you would never be able to, I know." Oak cast his eyes down the field in a way implying that it was useless to attempt argument. "Mr. Oak," she said, with luminous distinctness and common sense, "you are better off than I. I have hardly a penny in the world--I am staying with my aunt for my bare sustenance. I am better educated than you--and I don't love you a bit: that's my side of the case. Now yours: you are a farmer just beginning; and you ought in common prudence, if you marry at all (which you should certainly not think of doing at present), to marry a woman with money, who would stock a larger farm for you than you have now." Gabriel looked at her with a little surprise and much admiration. "That's the very thing I had been thinking myself!" he naively said. Farmer Oak had one-and-a-half Christian characteristics too many to succeed with Bathsheba: his humility, and a superfluous moiety of honesty. Bathsheba was decidedly disconcerted. "Well, then, why did you come and disturb me?" she said, almost angrily, if not quite, an enlarging red spot rising in each cheek. "I can't do what I think would be--would be--" "Right?" "No: wise." "You have made an admission NOW, Mr. Oak," she exclaimed, with even more hauteur, and rocking her head disdainfully. "After that, do you think I could marry you? Not if I know it." He broke in passionately. "But don't mistake me like that! Because I am open enough to own what every man in my shoes would have thought of, you make your colours come up your face, and get crabbed with me. That about your not being good enough for me is nonsense. You speak like a lady--all the parish notice it, and your uncle at Weatherbury is, I have heerd, a large farmer--much larger than ever I shall be. May I call in the evening, or will you walk along with me o' Sundays? I don't want you to make-up your mind at once, if you'd rather not." "No--no--I cannot. Don't press me any more--don't. I don't love you--so 'twould be ridiculous," she said, with a laugh. No man likes to see his emotions the sport of a merry-go-round of skittishness. "Very well," said Oak, firmly, with the bearing of one who was going to give his days and nights to Ecclesiastes for ever. "Then I'll ask you no more."

https://web.archive.org/web/20210225000853/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/maddingcrowd/section1/

The first chapter introduces us to Gabriel Oak, our hero, a 28-year-old shepherd who has earned enough to acquire a small piece of land of his own. He has bought a farm of 200 sheep, many of the ewes pregnant. In the first scene, he watches a young woman with black hair drive up in a carriage laden with goods. Gabriel observes her as she waits for her driver. Thinking she is alone, she takes out a mirror and gazes at herself. Shortly afterward, he sees her again, stopped at a toll gate. She is arguing with the gatekeeper over the toll and Gabriel steps in to pay the two pence for her. When she drives off, he speaks with the gatekeeper and tells him that the black-haired woman has one fault: "vanity." Tending to his sheep over the next few weeks, Gabriel spots the woman on several occasions as she walks to milk a cow at a nearby dairy. In several scenes he watches her without being seen, and he learns that she lives with her aunt. They meet when he goes to look for the hat she has lost, but he embarrasses her with his bold manner. Then, one night, Gabriel falls asleep in his shepherd's hut with the windows closed but the hearth still lit; he nearly dies from smoke inhalation but the woman breaks in and saves his life. He thanks her and asks her name; she refuses to tell him outright, challenging him to find it out for himself. Gabriel learns that her name is Bathsheba Everdene. He visits her aunt in order to ask for her niece's hand in marriage, but the aunt tells him that Bathsheba already has many lovers. Bathsheba runs after Gabriel to tell him that what her aunt has said is untrue, and in a funny and misunderstanding-laden exchange, the two discuss the possibility of their marriage. Gabriel assumes that if she has run after him to tell him he may court her, then she must be interested; however, she assures him that she would never marry him because she does not love him. When he asks her a second time and she again refuses, he at last agrees to drop the matter, though he declares he will always love her.

Commentary From the very first chapter, the novel's rustic focus emerges. Hardy's treatment of his subject alternates between a painstaking realism and an idealized romanticization: While he details the minutiae of rustic culture and includes specific information about the practice of farming, he also links Gabriel to the pastoral literary tradition, an ancient classical form that enjoyed new popularity during the Renaissance. Playing his flute as he tends his sheep, Gabriel evokes the carefree, flute-playing shepherds that populated these poems' idyllic landscapes. Furthermore, throughout the novel Gabriel will occupy the position of the observer who watches others make mistakes without ever implicating himself in the action; the traditional pastoral lyric commented on the civilized world in a tone of similar detachment. At the same time, the novel has the plot of a romance: A man meets a woman and falls in love. Hardy avidly analyzes the way a person in love forms ideas about the loved one, even if the two share only the slightest acquaintance. He avidly analyzes the delusions of human psychology, particularly regarding love, concluding that love is rarely returned with equal intensity, despite what the lover leads himself/herself to believe. Gabriel's conversation with Bathsheba shows her to be a capricious, spirited young woman who has never been in love. The two discuss marriage with remarkable frankness. Bathsheba admits that she would like to have all the trappings of marriage--she would delight in a piano, pets, and her own carriage; she would enjoy seeing her name in the newspaper's marriage announcements--but she objects to the concept of having a husband in the first place and to losing her freedom. While Bathsheba seems a bit superficial, her independence and strength are admirable, and she remains a sympathetic character.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/6.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Brothers Karamazov/section_5_part_0.txt

The Brothers Karamazov.book 2.chapter 1

book 2, chapter 1

{"name": "Book 2, Chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-2-chapter-1", "summary": "Fyodor, Ivan, Pyotr Miusov, and Miusov's distant relative Pyotr Fomich Kalganov arrive at the monastery, but there's no Dmitri in sight. They are led to Zosima's hermitage by Maximov, a landowner who happens to be headed in the same direction. On the way, a monk intercepts them and invites them to dinner with the Father Superior later in the day. The hermitage is surrounded by beautiful flowers. Outside, the faithful have gathered to wait for Zosima's blessing. A monk asks them to wait while he announces their arrival to Zosima.", "analysis": ""}

Book II. An Unfortunate Gathering Chapter I. They Arrive At The Monastery It was a warm, bright day at the end of August. The interview with the elder had been fixed for half-past eleven, immediately after late mass. Our visitors did not take part in the service, but arrived just as it was over. First an elegant open carriage, drawn by two valuable horses, drove up with Miuesov and a distant relative of his, a young man of twenty, called Pyotr Fomitch Kalganov. This young man was preparing to enter the university. Miuesov, with whom he was staying for the time, was trying to persuade him to go abroad to the university of Zurich or Jena. The young man was still undecided. He was thoughtful and absent-minded. He was nice- looking, strongly built, and rather tall. There was a strange fixity in his gaze at times. Like all very absent-minded people he would sometimes stare at a person without seeing him. He was silent and rather awkward, but sometimes, when he was alone with any one, he became talkative and effusive, and would laugh at anything or nothing. But his animation vanished as quickly as it appeared. He was always well and even elaborately dressed; he had already some independent fortune and expectations of much more. He was a friend of Alyosha's. In an ancient, jolting, but roomy, hired carriage, with a pair of old pinkish-gray horses, a long way behind Miuesov's carriage, came Fyodor Pavlovitch, with his son Ivan. Dmitri was late, though he had been informed of the time the evening before. The visitors left their carriage at the hotel, outside the precincts, and went to the gates of the monastery on foot. Except Fyodor Pavlovitch, none of the party had ever seen the monastery, and Miuesov had probably not even been to church for thirty years. He looked about him with curiosity, together with assumed ease. But, except the church and the domestic buildings, though these too were ordinary enough, he found nothing of interest in the interior of the monastery. The last of the worshippers were coming out of the church, bareheaded and crossing themselves. Among the humbler people were a few of higher rank--two or three ladies and a very old general. They were all staying at the hotel. Our visitors were at once surrounded by beggars, but none of them gave them anything, except young Kalganov, who took a ten- copeck piece out of his purse, and, nervous and embarrassed--God knows why!--hurriedly gave it to an old woman, saying: "Divide it equally." None of his companions made any remark upon it, so that he had no reason to be embarrassed; but, perceiving this, he was even more overcome. It was strange that their arrival did not seem expected, and that they were not received with special honor, though one of them had recently made a donation of a thousand roubles, while another was a very wealthy and highly cultured landowner, upon whom all in the monastery were in a sense dependent, as a decision of the lawsuit might at any moment put their fishing rights in his hands. Yet no official personage met them. Miuesov looked absent-mindedly at the tombstones round the church, and was on the point of saying that the dead buried here must have paid a pretty penny for the right of lying in this "holy place," but refrained. His liberal irony was rapidly changing almost into anger. "Who the devil is there to ask in this imbecile place? We must find out, for time is passing," he observed suddenly, as though speaking to himself. All at once there came up a bald-headed, elderly man with ingratiating little eyes, wearing a full, summer overcoat. Lifting his hat, he introduced himself with a honeyed lisp as Maximov, a landowner of Tula. He at once entered into our visitors' difficulty. "Father Zossima lives in the hermitage, apart, four hundred paces from the monastery, the other side of the copse." "I know it's the other side of the copse," observed Fyodor Pavlovitch, "but we don't remember the way. It is a long time since we've been here." "This way, by this gate, and straight across the copse ... the copse. Come with me, won't you? I'll show you. I have to go.... I am going myself. This way, this way." They came out of the gate and turned towards the copse. Maximov, a man of sixty, ran rather than walked, turning sideways to stare at them all, with an incredible degree of nervous curiosity. His eyes looked starting out of his head. "You see, we have come to the elder upon business of our own," observed Miuesov severely. "That personage has granted us an audience, so to speak, and so, though we thank you for showing us the way, we cannot ask you to accompany us." "I've been there. I've been already; _un chevalier parfait_," and Maximov snapped his fingers in the air. "Who is a _chevalier_?" asked Miuesov. "The elder, the splendid elder, the elder! The honor and glory of the monastery, Zossima. Such an elder!" But his incoherent talk was cut short by a very pale, wan-looking monk of medium height, wearing a monk's cap, who overtook them. Fyodor Pavlovitch and Miuesov stopped. The monk, with an extremely courteous, profound bow, announced: "The Father Superior invites all of you gentlemen to dine with him after your visit to the hermitage. At one o'clock, not later. And you also," he added, addressing Maximov. "That I certainly will, without fail," cried Fyodor Pavlovitch, hugely delighted at the invitation. "And, believe me, we've all given our word to behave properly here.... And you, Pyotr Alexandrovitch, will you go, too?" "Yes, of course. What have I come for but to study all the customs here? The only obstacle to me is your company...." "Yes, Dmitri Fyodorovitch is non-existent as yet." "It would be a capital thing if he didn't turn up. Do you suppose I like all this business, and in your company, too? So we will come to dinner. Thank the Father Superior," he said to the monk. "No, it is my duty now to conduct you to the elder," answered the monk. "If so I'll go straight to the Father Superior--to the Father Superior," babbled Maximov. "The Father Superior is engaged just now. But as you please--" the monk hesitated. "Impertinent old man!" Miuesov observed aloud, while Maximov ran back to the monastery. "He's like von Sohn," Fyodor Pavlovitch said suddenly. "Is that all you can think of?... In what way is he like von Sohn? Have you ever seen von Sohn?" "I've seen his portrait. It's not the features, but something indefinable. He's a second von Sohn. I can always tell from the physiognomy." "Ah, I dare say you are a connoisseur in that. But, look here, Fyodor Pavlovitch, you said just now that we had given our word to behave properly. Remember it. I advise you to control yourself. But, if you begin to play the fool I don't intend to be associated with you here.... You see what a man he is"--he turned to the monk--"I'm afraid to go among decent people with him." A fine smile, not without a certain slyness, came on to the pale, bloodless lips of the monk, but he made no reply, and was evidently silent from a sense of his own dignity. Miuesov frowned more than ever. "Oh, devil take them all! An outer show elaborated through centuries, and nothing but charlatanism and nonsense underneath," flashed through Miuesov's mind. "Here's the hermitage. We've arrived," cried Fyodor Pavlovitch. "The gates are shut." And he repeatedly made the sign of the cross to the saints painted above and on the sides of the gates. "When you go to Rome you must do as the Romans do. Here in this hermitage there are twenty-five saints being saved. They look at one another, and eat cabbages. And not one woman goes in at this gate. That's what is remarkable. And that really is so. But I did hear that the elder receives ladies," he remarked suddenly to the monk. "Women of the people are here too now, lying in the portico there waiting. But for ladies of higher rank two rooms have been built adjoining the portico, but outside the precincts--you can see the windows--and the elder goes out to them by an inner passage when he is well enough. They are always outside the precincts. There is a Harkov lady, Madame Hohlakov, waiting there now with her sick daughter. Probably he has promised to come out to her, though of late he has been so weak that he has hardly shown himself even to the people." "So then there are loopholes, after all, to creep out of the hermitage to the ladies. Don't suppose, holy father, that I mean any harm. But do you know that at Athos not only the visits of women are not allowed, but no creature of the female sex--no hens, nor turkey-hens, nor cows." "Fyodor Pavlovitch, I warn you I shall go back and leave you here. They'll turn you out when I'm gone." "But I'm not interfering with you, Pyotr Alexandrovitch. Look," he cried suddenly, stepping within the precincts, "what a vale of roses they live in!" Though there were no roses now, there were numbers of rare and beautiful autumn flowers growing wherever there was space for them, and evidently tended by a skillful hand; there were flower-beds round the church, and between the tombs; and the one-storied wooden house where the elder lived was also surrounded with flowers. "And was it like this in the time of the last elder, Varsonofy? He didn't care for such elegance. They say he used to jump up and thrash even ladies with a stick," observed Fyodor Pavlovitch, as he went up the steps. "The elder Varsonofy did sometimes seem rather strange, but a great deal that's told is foolishness. He never thrashed any one," answered the monk. "Now, gentlemen, if you will wait a minute I will announce you." "Fyodor Pavlovitch, for the last time, your compact, do you hear? Behave properly or I will pay you out!" Miuesov had time to mutter again. "I can't think why you are so agitated," Fyodor Pavlovitch observed sarcastically. "Are you uneasy about your sins? They say he can tell by one's eyes what one has come about. And what a lot you think of their opinion! you, a Parisian, and so advanced. I'm surprised at you." But Miuesov had no time to reply to this sarcasm. They were asked to come in. He walked in, somewhat irritated. "Now, I know myself, I am annoyed, I shall lose my temper and begin to quarrel--and lower myself and my ideas," he reflected.

Book 2, Chapter 1

https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-2-chapter-1

Fyodor, Ivan, Pyotr Miusov, and Miusov's distant relative Pyotr Fomich Kalganov arrive at the monastery, but there's no Dmitri in sight. They are led to Zosima's hermitage by Maximov, a landowner who happens to be headed in the same direction. On the way, a monk intercepts them and invites them to dinner with the Father Superior later in the day. The hermitage is surrounded by beautiful flowers. Outside, the faithful have gathered to wait for Zosima's blessing. A monk asks them to wait while he announces their arrival to Zosima.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/44747-chapters/part_2_chapters_40_to_42.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/The Red and the Black/section_20_part_0.txt

The Red and the Black.part 2.chapters 40-42

chapters 40-42

{"name": "Chapters 40-42", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201128052739/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/r/the-red-and-the-black/summary-and-analysis/part-2-chapters-4042", "summary": "Just before his trial, Julien pleads guilty of premeditated attempted murder to the judge and to his own defense lawyer, who visit his cell. Mathilde has succeeded in establishing a contact between Mme. de Fervaques and M. de Frilair with the result that promise has been intimated of a bishopric for Frilair in exchange for his willingness to influence the jurors. Frilair is certain of being able to control the votes of Valenod, de Moirod, and Cholin, and of being able to bring about an acquittal. In spite of the protests of her husband, Mme. de Renal has come to Besancon and has personally written a plea of mercy for Julien to each of the thirty-six jurors. All of Besancon has turned out for the trial. Mathilde makes a final tearful visit to Frilair, who assures her that all has been arranged. The jurors will vote as Valenod votes. Julien has decided not to speak out in his own defense at the trial. The trial begins. The audience, mostly women, is obviously sympathetic toward the defendant. The trial lasts far into the night with no recess. Julien delivers a final oration after the summation in spite of his resolve not to speak. The jury returns with a verdict of guilty with premeditation. Julien's only comment to the court is that he has been justly condemned to death. Julien is moved to the death cell. His thoughts are only of Mme. de Renal, whom he would hope to see before he dies. Mathilde disturbs his peaceful sleep to plead that he appeal for another trial. Julien stands firm in his refusal in spite of Mathilde's entreaties. Julien gives the same answer to his lawyer, and he feels more kindly disposed toward the lawyer as they depart than he does toward Mathilde.", "analysis": "These chapters relate the trial and the events immediately before and after it. Julien's soliloquy reveals his calm acceptance of the inevitability of his death. This attitude is in marked contrast to the frantic activity of Mathilde and Mme. de Renal to bring about his acquittal. Julien remains ignorant of their attempts, and the ironic result is that they are working at cross purposes: Julien admits premeditation, but Mme. de Renal urges the jurors not to find premeditation; Julien refuses to consider a plea of jealousy, as Mathilde, swallowing her pride, urges him to plead. Chapter 40 brings Mme. de Renal back into focus in preparation for the final role she will play in the last chapters. The movement of the short chapter shifts from Julien's cell to the final efforts of Mathilde with Frilair, and finally to the passionate plea for mercy that is Mme. de Renal's letter. In passing, Stendhal alludes to the effect that the trial has had on Besancon. This adds to the brief, but complete and suspenseful, summing up of everyone's pretrial state. Note the point at which Julien has arrived in his elaboration of an \"art of living.\" In his own mind, his affair is already classified. He is finally enjoying a life in which he may give himself over completely to contemplation, to dreams of past happiness with Mme. de Renal, to an objective, dispassionate self-scrutiny and evaluation. Any invasion of his privacy by sordid details of life outside his cell is painful to him. Freudians would see in the Stendhalian hero's passive, blissful state achieved in the protectiveness of prison Stendhal's desire to return to the womb. When maternal Mme. de Renal finally joins Julien in this happy seclusion, such a view is even more convincing. We witness the trial scene from Julien's point of view. Thus, the reader adopts Julien's physical vantage point, and he observes not individual faces in the courtroom but groups of faces, mostly feminine, localized only generally by their position vis-a-vis Julien. Across from the dock above the jurors and judge, twelve to fifteen pretty women occupy three galleries. In the circular gallery overhanging the crowded courtroom are more young, pretty faces. Just as he enters the courtroom, Julien glimpses the gothic pillars, an isolated and clear detail of the blurred scene that surrounds him. After his initial view, by means of a wide sweep Julien's attention is attracted to the galleries above the jury, where he sees Mme. Derville. Only once does the point of view stray -- to appreciate Julien's simple elegance as viewed by the ladies of the courtroom. The description is incomplete and fragmentary, but in that respect realistic. It is a foretaste of Stendhal's great battle scene in the Charterhouse in which the battle of Waterloo is seen from the point of view of an individual soldier, who is never quite sure of what is transpiring. This realistic technique was admired and imitated by the great Tolstoy. The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane, portrays war realistically in much the same way that Stendhal had done. Is it accurate to say that Julien commits suicide? Again, Stendhal does not offer an explicit answer. The answer lies partially in another question: Would Valenod have betrayed Julien had the latter not denounced the society that condemns him? Stendhal has been careful to reintroduce Valenod intermittently and to assert Valenod's jealousy of Julien, who had succeeded in making Mme. de Renal his mistress. Would this hatred and desire for vengeance have sufficed to cause Valenod to instruct the jury to condemn Julien, or was Julien's brutal condemnation of the aspiring bourgeoisie the final blow that precipitated the betrayal? At any rate, it is because of his accurate evaluation of the situation and because of his courage in proclaiming it to others that Julien plays a truly heroic role in the court scene. Julien tells the jury that he will be condemned not for having committed the crime but for having violated the social hierarchy, for having risen above his class. Julien, like Camus' Meursault, executes a reversal in position: The accused condemns the accuser. In a sense, Julien assumes the way in which he will die: He rejects the death penalty unless he, first, has admitted its justice. In this regard, he is the ancestor of Malraux's heroes, who do not undergo death passively, but who assume their death. To what extent is Julien aware of the gravity of the consequences of his oration, assuming that it did incite Valenod to betrayal? It would not appear to have been a deliberate attempt to bring about his own condemnation; rather, it is prompted by his sense of duty, which arises spontaneously. His manner during the trial is one of dignity and courage, although he has difficulty at times in controlling his emotions. During his emotional moments, Julien is seeing himself as the lady spectators see him. The oration would simply be another of those moments when Julien's sensibility betrays him. An impulsive awakening of emotion catches his mask of self-control and calm off guard. That Julien is aware of how others are viewing him during this trial when his life is in the balance should not surprise us too much. This is another faithful rendition of psychological truth by Stendhal. In crucial moments, immediate reactions will many times be quite far from the vital issue. Julien seems to view his trial with a certain objectivity. One critical view holds that Julien unconsciously harbors a death wish. Such a view would give more responsibility to Julien in the resulting verdict of guilty. Another view would see in Julien simply another example of the fate of the Stendhalian creature who, having lived so intensely, has burned himself out. It would be the extension on a grander scale of such phenomena as Mathilde's involuntary fainting, of Julien's loss of consciousness in the presence of Pirard, of La Sanseverina's falling asleep while seated in the Charterhouse. Such an interpretation of Julien's role in his own condemnation would be in keeping with Stendhal's romantic conception of character. Even after the death sentence is read, Julien keeps his aplomb and inner calm. He lucidly examines the act of vengeance that Valenod has committed and muses momentarily on what will await him after life. Recalled to reality by Mathilde's cry, Julien's thoughts come with haste and confusion, but he contains these and expresses outwardly only his approval of the death penalty. Note that the most strained emotional moments undergone by the characters are related with the most clipped, terse, and abrupt prose by Stendhal. Stendhal continues to \"detach\" Julien from the action, a tendency we first noticed when the hero left to assume his commission in the army. Now that he is condemned to death, Julien's detachment is even more strongly pronounced. In musing about himself, Julien utilizes the past tense. He sees himself as having already been guillotined, which produces the effect of an even greater degree of objectivity achieved by Julien. This approach and the ironic self-detachment characterizing his interior monologue are no doubt a sort of defense mechanism. Julien is steeling himself in order not to give way to the horror of death. At the same time, it is part of the new happiness, the \"art of living\" that Julien has perfected now that he is in the seclusion of the prison cell. Unconsciously, Julien is punishing Mathilde for all the humiliations she has imposed on him, as he refuses to give serious thought to her appeals. He even solicits her praise at his courtroom heroism, which is reminiscent of the ideal that characterized their love. In a sense, Julien has been victorious in their heroic rivalry: He has invited death and refused to appeal the sentence. It is quite possible that Mathilde feels somewhat cheated. Julien is destroying her own heroic role. Stendhal depicts for us here a truly superior soul. Julien is moved by genuine suffering, sensitive but proud to the point of refusing to expose his suffering to the view of others, thus to debasement. The tiresome presence of Mathilde succeeds only intermittently in piercing the reverie that increasingly characterizes the mental life of Julien. He imagines Mme. de Renal's reaction after his death. Stendhal is preparing for the long-awaited arrival of Julien's first and only love."}

CHAPTER LXX TRANQUILITY It is because I was foolish then that I am wise to-day. Oh thou philosopher who seest nothing except the actual instant. How short-sighted are thy views! Thine eye is not adapted to follow the subterranean work of the passions.--_M. Goethe_. This conversation was interrupted by an interrogation followed by a conference with the advocate entrusted with the defence. These moments were the only absolutely unpleasant ones in a life made up of nonchalance and tender reveries. "There is murder, and murder with premeditation," said Julien to the judge as he had done to the advocate, "I am sorry, gentlemen, he added with a smile, that this reduces your functions to a very small compass." "After all," said Julien to himself, when he had managed to rid himself of those two persons, "I must really be brave, and apparently braver than those two men. They regard that duel with an unfortunate termination, which I can only seriously bother myself about on the actual day, as the greatest of evils and the arch-terror." "The fact is that I have known a much greater unhappiness," continued Julien, as he went on philosophising with himself. "I suffered far more acutely during my first journey to Strasbourg, when I thought I was abandoned by Mathilde--and to think that I desired so passionately that same perfect intimacy which to-day leaves me so cold--as a matter of fact I am more happy alone than when that handsome girl shares my solitude." The advocate, who was a red-tape pedant, thought him mad, and believed, with the public, that it was jealousy which had lead him to take up the pistol. He ventured one day to give Julien to understand that this contention, whether true or false, would be an excellent way of pleading. But the accused man became in a single minute a passionate and drastic individual. "As you value your life, monsieur," exclaimed Julien, quite beside himself, "mind you never put forward such an abominable lie." The cautious advocate was for a moment afraid of being assassinated. He was preparing his case because the decisive moment was drawing near. The only topic of conversation in Besancon, and all the department, was the _cause celebre_. Julien did not know of this circumstance. He had requested his friends never to talk to him about that kind of thing. On this particular day, Fouque and Mathilde had tried to inform him of certain rumours which in their view were calculated to give hope. Julien had stopped them at the very first word. "Leave me my ideal life. Your pettifogging troubles and details of practical life all more or less jar on me and bring me down from my heaven. One dies as best one can: but I wish to chose my own way of thinking about death. What do I care for other people? My relations with other people will be sharply cut short. Be kind enough not to talk to me any more about those people. Seeing the judge and the advocate is more than enough." "As a matter of fact," he said to himself, "it seems that I am fated to die dreaming. An obscure creature like myself, who is certain to be forgotten within a fortnight, would be very silly, one must admit, to go and play a part. It is nevertheless singular that I never knew so much about the art of enjoying life, as since I have seen its end so near me." He passed his last day in promenading upon the narrow terrace at the top of the turret, smoking some excellent cigars which Mathilde had had fetched from Holland by a courier. He had no suspicion that his appearance was waited for each day by all the telescopes in the town. His thoughts were at Vergy. He never spoke to Fouque about madame de Renal, but his friend told him two or three times that she was rapidly recovering, and these words reverberated in his heart. While Julien's soul was nearly all the time wholly in the realm of ideas, Mathilde, who, as befits an aristocratic spirit, had occupied herself with concrete things, had managed to make the direct and intimate correspondence between madame de Fervaques and M. de Frilair progress so far that the great word bishopric had been already pronounced. The venerable prelate, who was entrusted with the distribution of the benefices, added in a postscript to one of his niece's letters, "This poor Sorel is only a lunatic. I hope he will be restored to us." At the sight of these lines, M. de Frilair felt transported. He had no doubts about saving Julien. "But for this Jacobin law which has ordered the formation of an unending panel of jurymen, and which has no other real object, except to deprive well-born people of all their influence," he said to Mathilde on the eve of the balloting for the thirty-six jurymen of the session, "I would have answered for the verdict. I certainly managed to get the cure N---- acquitted." When the names were selected by ballot on the following day, M. de Frilair experienced a genuine pleasure in finding that they contained five members of the Besancon congregation and that amongst those who were strangers to the town were the names of MM. Valenod, de Moirod, de Cholin. I can answer for these eight jurymen he said to Mathilde. The first five are mere machines, Valenod is my agent: Moirod owes me everything: de Cholin is an imbecile who is frightened of everything. The journal published the names of the jurymen throughout the department, and to her husband's unspeakable terror, madame de Renal wished to go to Besancon. All that M. de Renal could prevail on her to promise was that she would not leave her bed so as to avoid the unpleasantness of being called to give evidence. "You do not understand my position," said the former mayor of Verrieres. "I am now said to be disloyal and a Liberal. No doubt that scoundrel Valenod and M. de Frilair will get the procureur-general and the judges to do all they can to cause me unpleasantness." Madame de Renal found no difficulty in yielding to her husband's orders. "If I appear at the assize court," she said to herself, "I should seem as if I were asking for vengeance." In spite of all the promises she had made to the director of her conscience and to her husband that she would be discreet, she had scarcely arrived at Besancon before she wrote with her own hand to each of the thirty-six jurymen:-- "I shall not appear on the day of the trial, monsieur, because my presence might be prejudicial to M. Sorel's case. I only desire one thing in the world, and that I desire passionately--for him to be saved. Have no doubt about it, the awful idea that I am the cause of an innocent man being led to his death would poison the rest of my life and would no doubt curtail it. How can you condemn him to death while I continue to live? No, there is no doubt about it, society has no right to take away a man's life, and above all, the life of a being like Julien Sorel. Everyone at Verrieres knew that there were moments when he was quite distracted. This poor young man has some powerful enemies, but even among his enemies, (and how many has he not got?) who is there who casts any doubt on his admirable talents and his deep knowledge? The man whom you are going to try, monsieur, is not an ordinary person. For a period of nearly eighteen months we all knew him as a devout and well behaved student. Two or three times in the year he was seized by fits of melancholy that went to the point of distraction. The whole town of Verrieres, all our neighbours at Vergy, where we live in the fine weather, my whole family, and monsieur the sub-prefect himself will render justice to his exemplary piety. He knows all the Holy Bible by heart. Would a blasphemer have spent years of study in learning the Sacred Book. My sons will have the honour of presenting you with this letter, they are children. Be good enough to question them, monsieur, they will give you all the details concerning this poor young man which are necessary to convince you of how barbarous it would be to condemn him. Far from revenging me, you would be putting me to death. "What can his enemies argue against this? The wound, which was the result of one of those moments of madness, which my children themselves used to remark in their tutor, is so little dangerous than in less than two months it has allowed me to take the post from Verrieres to Besancon. If I learn, monsieur, that you show the slightest hesitation in releasing so innocent a person from the barbarity of the law, I will leave my bed, where I am only kept by my husband's express orders, and I will go and throw myself at your feet. Bring in a verdict, monsieur, that the premeditation has not been made out, and you will not have an innocent man's blood on your head, etc." CHAPTER LXXI THE TRIAL The country will remember this celebrated case for a long time. The interest in the accused amounted to an agitation. The reason was that his crime was astonishing, and yet not atrocious. Even if it had been, this young man was so handsome. His brilliant career, that came to an end so early in his life, intensified the pathos. "Will they condemn him?" the women asked of the men of their acquaintance, and they could be seen to grow pale as they waited for the answer.--_Sainte Beuve_. The day that madame de Renal and Mathilde feared so much arrived at last. Their terror was intensified by the strange appearance of the town, which had its emotional effect even upon Fouque's sturdy soul. All the province had rushed to Besancon to see the trial of this romantic case. There had been no room left in the inns for some days. M. the president of the assizes, was besieged by requests for tickets; all the ladies in the town wanted to be present at the trial. Julien's portrait was hawked about the streets, etc., etc. Mathilde was keeping in reserve for this supreme moment a complete autograph letter from my lord, bishop of ----. This prelate, who governed the Church of France and created its bishops, was good enough to ask for Julien's acquittal. On the eve of the trial, Mathilde took this letter to the all-powerful grand vicar. When she was going away in tears at the end of the interview, M. de Frilair at last emerged from his diplomatic reserve and almost shewed some emotion himself. "I will be responsible for the jury's verdict," he said to her. "Out of the twelve persons charged with the investigation of whether your friend's crime is made out, and above all, whether there was premeditation, I can count six friends who are devoted to my fortunes, and I have given them to understand that they have it in their power to promote me to the episcopate. Baron Valenod, whom I have made mayor of Verrieres, can do just as he likes with two of his officials, MM. de Moirod, and de Cholin. As a matter of fact, fate has given us for this business two jurymen of extremely loose views; but, although ultra-Liberals, they are faithful to my orders on great occasions, and I have requested them to vote like M. Valenod. I have learnt that a sixth juryman, a manufacturer, who is immensely rich, and a garrulous Liberal into the bargain, has secret aspirations for a contract with the War Office, and doubtless he would not like to displease me. I have had him told that M. de Valenod knows my final injunctions." "And who is this M. Valenod?" said Mathilde, anxiously. "If you knew him, you could not doubt our success. He is an audacious speaker, coarse, impudent, with a natural gift for managing fools. 1814 saw him in low water, and I am going to make a prefect of him. He is capable of beating the other jurymen if they do not vote his way." Mathilde felt a little reassured. Another discussion awaited her in the evening. To avoid the prolongation of an unpleasant scene, the result of which, in his view, was absolutely certain, Julien had resolved not to make a speech. "My advocate will speak," he said to Mathilde. "I shall figure too long anyway as a laughing-stock to all my enemies. These provincials have been shocked by the rapidity of my success, for which I have to thank you, and believe me, there is not one of them who does not desire my conviction, though he would be quite ready to cry like an idiot when I am taken to my death." "They desire to see you humiliated. That is only too true," answered Mathilde, "but I do not think they are at all cruel. My presence at Besancon, and the sight of my sufferings have interested all the women; your handsome face will do the rest. If you say a few words to your judges, the whole audience will be on your side, etc., etc." At nine o'clock on the following day, when Julien left his prison for the great hall of the Palais de Justice, the gendarmes had much difficulty in driving away the immense crowd that was packed in the courtyard. Julien had slept well. He was very calm, and experienced no other sentiment except a sense of philosophic pity towards that crowd of jealous creatures who were going to applaud his death sentence, though without cruelty. He was very surprised when, having been detained in the middle of the crowd more than a quarter of an hour, he was obliged to admit that his presence affected the public with a tender pity. He did not hear a single unpleasant remark. "These provincials are less evil than I thought," he said to himself. As he entered the courtroom, he was struck by the elegance of the architecture. It was real Gothic, with a number of pretty little columns hewn out of stone with the utmost care. He thought himself in England. But his attention was soon engrossed by twelve or fifteen pretty women, who sat exactly opposite the prisoner's seat and filled the three balconies above the judges and the jury. As he turned round towards the public, he saw that the circular gallery that dominated the amphitheatre was filled with women, the majority were young and seemed very pretty, their eyes were shining and full of interest. The crowd was enormous throughout the rest of the room. People were knocking against the door, and the janitors could not obtain silence. When all the eyes that were looking for Julien observed where he was, and saw him occupying the slightly raised place which is reserved for the prisoner, he was greeted by a murmur of astonishment and tender interest. You would have taken him for under twenty on this day. He was dressed very simply, but with a perfect grace. His hair and his forehead were charming. Mathilde had insisted on officiating personally at his toilette. Julien's pallor was extreme. Scarcely was he seated in this place than he heard people say all over the room, "Great heavens! how young he is!... But he's quite a child!... He is much better than his portrait." "Prisoner," said the gendarme who was sitting on his right, "do you see those six ladies in that balcony?" The gendarme pointed out a little gallery that jutted out over the amphitheatre where the jury were placed. "That's madame, the prefect's wife," continued the gendarme. "Next to her, madame the marquise de M----. She likes you well: I have heard her speak to the judge of first instance. Next to her is madame Derville." "Madame Derville!" exclaimed Julien, and a vivid blush spread over his forehead. "When she leaves here," he thought, "she will write to madame de Renal." He was ignorant of madame de Renal's arrival at Besancon. The witnesses were quickly heard. After the first words of the opening of the prosecution by the advocate-general, two of the ladies in the little balcony just opposite Julien burst into tears. Julien noticed that madame Derville did not break down at all. He remarked, however, that she was very red. The advocate-general was indulging in melodrama in bad French over the barbarity of the crime that had been perpetrated. Julien noticed that madame Derville's neighbours seemed to manifest a keen disapproval. Several jurors, who were apparently acquainted with the ladies, spoke to them and seemed to reassure them. "So far as it goes, that is certainly a good omen," thought Julien. Up to the present, he had felt himself steeped in an unadulterated contempt for all the persons who were present at the trial. This sentiment of disgust was intensified by the stale eloquence of the advocate-general. But the coldness of Julien's soul gradually disappeared before the marks of interest of which he was evidently the object. He was satisfied with the sturdy demeanour of his advocate. "No phrases," he said to him in a whisper, as he was about to commence his speech. "All the bombast which our opponent has stolen from Bossuet and lavished upon you," said the advocate, "has done you good." As a matter of fact, he had scarcely spoken for five minutes before practically all the women had their handkerchiefs in their hands. The advocate was encouraged, and addressed some extremely strong remarks to the jury. Julien shuddered. He felt on the point of breaking into tears. "My God," he thought, "what would my enemies say?" He was on the point of succumbing to the emotion which was overcoming him, when, luckily for him, he surprised an insolent look from M. the baron de Valenod. "That rogue's eyes are gleaming," he said to himself "What a triumph for that base soul! If my crime had only produced this one result, it would be my duty to curse it. God knows what he will say about it to madame de Renal." This idea effaced all others. Shortly afterwards Julien was brought back to reality by the public's manifestation of applause. The advocate had just finished his speech. Julien remembered that it was good form to shake hands with him. The time had passed rapidly. They brought in refreshments for the advocate and the prisoner. It was only then that Julien was struck by the fact that none of the women had left the audience to go and get dinner. "Upon my word, I am dying of hunger," said the advocate. "And you?" "I, too," answered Julien. "See, there's madame, the prefect's wife, who is also getting her dinner," said the advocate, as he pointed out the little balcony. "Keep up your courage; everything is going all right." The court sat again. Midnight struck as the president was summing up. The president was obliged to pause in his remarks. Amid the silence and the anxiety of all present, the reverberation of the clock filled the hall. "So my last day is now beginning," thought Julien. He soon felt inflamed by the idea of his duty. Up to the present he had controlled his emotion and had kept his resolution not to speak. When the president of the assizes asked him if he had anything to add, he got up. He saw in front of him the eyes of madame Derville, which seemed very brilliant in the artificial light. "Can she by any chance be crying?" he thought. "Gentlemen of the jury! "I am induced to speak by my fear of that contempt which I thought, at the very moment of my death, I should be able to defy. Gentlemen, I have not the honour of belonging to your class. You behold in me a peasant who has rebelled against the meanness of his fortune. "I do not ask you for any pardon," continued Julien, with a firmer note in his voice. "I am under no illusions. Death awaits me; it will be just. I have brought myself to make an attempt on the life of the woman who is most worthy of all reverence and all respect. Madame de Renal was a mother to me. My crime was atrocious, and it was premeditated. Consequently, I have deserved death, gentlemen of the jury. But even if I were not so guilty, I see among you men who, without a thought for any pity that may be due to my youth, would like to use me as a means for punishing and discouraging for ever that class of young man who, though born in an inferior class, and to some extent oppressed by poverty, have none the less been fortunate enough to obtain a good education, and bold enough to mix with what the pride of the rich calls Society. "That is my crime, gentlemen, and it will be punished with even more severity, inasmuch as, in fact, I am very far from being judged by my peers. I do not see on the jury benches any peasant who has made money, but only indignant bourgeois...." Julien talked in this strain for twenty minutes. He said everything he had on his mind. The advocate-general, who aspired to the favours of the aristocracy, writhed in his seat. But in spite of the somewhat abstract turn which Julien had given to his speech, all the women burst out into tears. Even madame Derville put her handkerchief to her eyes. Before finishing, Julien alluded again to the fact of his premeditation, to his repentance, and to the respect and unbounded filial admiration which, in happier days, he had entertained for madame de Renal.... Madame Derville gave a cry and fainted. One o'clock was striking when the jury retired to their room. None of the women had left their places; several men had tears in their eyes. The conversations were at first very animated, but, as there was a delay in the verdict of the jury, their general fatigue gradually began to invest the gathering with an atmosphere of calm. It was a solemn moment; the lights grew less brilliant. Julien, who was very tired, heard people around him debating the question of whether this delay was a good or a bad omen. He was pleased to see that all the wishes were for him. The jury did not come back, and yet not a woman left the court. When two o'clock had struck, a great movement was heard. The little door of the jury room opened. M. the baron de Valenod advanced with a slow and melodramatic step. He was followed by all the jurors. He coughed, and then declared on his soul and conscience that the jury's unanimous verdict was that Julien Sorel was guilty of murder, and of murder with premeditation. This verdict involved the death penalty, which was pronounced a moment afterwards. Julien looked at his watch, and remembered M. de Lavalette. It was a quarter past two. "To-day is Friday," he thought. "Yes, but this day is lucky for the Valenod who has got me convicted.... I am watched too well for Mathilde to manage to save me like madame de Lavalette saved her husband.... So in three days' time, at this very hour, I shall know what view to take about the great perhaps." At this moment he heard a cry and was called back to the things of this world. The women around him were sobbing: he saw that all faces were turned towards a little gallery built into the crowning of a Gothic pilaster. He knew later that Mathilde had concealed herself there. As the cry was not repeated, everybody began to look at Julien again, as the gendarmes were trying to get him through the crowd. "Let us try not to give that villain Valenod any chance of laughing at me," thought Julien. "With what a contrite sycophantic expression he pronounced the verdict which entails the death penalty, while that poor president of the assizes, although he has been a judge for years and years, had tears in his eyes as he sentenced me. What a joy the Valenod must find in revenging himself for our former rivalry for madame de Renal's favors! ... So I shall never see her again! The thing is finished.... A last good-bye between us is impossible--I feel it.... How happy I should have been to have told her all the horror I feel for my crime! "Mere words. I consider myself justly convicted." CHAPTER LXXII[1] When Julien was taken back to prison he had been taken into a room intended for those who were condemned to death. Although a man who in the usual way would notice the most petty details, he had quite failed to observe that he had not been taken up to his turret. He was thinking of what he would say to madame de Renal if he had the happiness of seeing her before the final moment. He thought that she would break into what he was saying and was anxious to be able to express his absolute repentance with his very first words. "How can I convince her that I love her alone after committing an action like that? For after all, it was either out of ambition, or out of love for Mathilde, that I wanted to kill her." As he went to bed, he came across sheets of a rough coarse material. "Ah! I am in the condemned cell, he said to himself. That is right. "Comte Altamira used to tell me that Danton, on the eve of his death, would say in his loud voice: 'it is singular but you cannot conjugate the verb guillotine in all its tenses: of course you can say, I shall be guillotined, thou shalt be guillotined, but you don't say, I have been guillotined.' "Why not?" went on Julien, "if there is another life.... Upon my word, it will be all up with me if I find the God of the Christians there: He is a tyrant, and as such, he is full of ideas of vengeance: his Bible speaks of nothing but atrocious punishment. I never liked him--I could never get myself to believe that anyone really liked him. He has no pity (and he remembered several passages in the Bible) he will punish me atrociously. "But supposing I find Fenelon's God: He will perhaps say to me: 'Much forgiveness will be vouchsafed to thee, inasmuch as thou hast loved much.' "Have I loved much? Ah! I loved madame de Renal, but my conduct has been atrocious. In that, as in other cases, simple modest merit was abandoned for the sake of what was brilliant. "But still, what fine prospects? Colonel of Hussars, if we had had a war: secretary of a legation during peace: then ambassador ... for I should soon have picked up politics ... and even if I had been an idiot, would the marquis de la Mole's son-in-law have had any rivalry to fear? All my stupidities have been forgiven, or rather, counted as merits. A man of merit, then, and living in the grandest style at Vienna or London. "Not exactly, monsieur. Guillotined in three days' time." Julien laughed heartily at this sally of his wit. "As a matter of fact, man has two beings within him, he thought. Who the devil can have thought of such a sinister notion?" "Well, yes, my friend: guillotined in three days," he answered the interruptor. "M. de Cholin will hire a window and share the expense with the abbe Maslon. Well, which of those two worthy personages will rob the other over the price paid for hiring that window?" The following passage from Rotrou's "Venceslas" suddenly came back into his mind:-- LADISLAS .................Mon ame est toute prete. THE KING, _father of Ladislas_. L'echafaud l'est aussi: portez-y-votre tete. "A good repartee" he thought, as he went to sleep. He was awakened in the morning by someone catching hold of him violently. "What! already," said Julien, opening his haggard eyes. He thought he was already in the executioner's hands. It was Mathilde. "Luckily, she has not understood me." This reflection restored all his self possession. He found Mathilde as changed as though she had gone through a six months' illness: she was really not recognisable. "That infamous Frilair has betrayed me," she said to him, wringing her hands. Her fury prevented her from crying. "Was I not fine when I made my speech yesterday?" answered Julien. "I was improvising for the first time in my life! It is true that it is to be feared that it will also be the last." At this moment, Julien was playing on Mathilde's character with all the self-possession of a clever pianist, whose fingers are on the instrument.... "It is true," he added, "that I lack the advantage of a distinguished birth, but Mathilde's great soul has lifted her lover up to her own level. Do you think that Boniface de la Mole would have cut a better figure before his judges?" On this particular day, Mathilde was as unaffectedly tender as a poor girl living in a fifth storey. But she failed to extract from him any simpler remark. He was paying her back without knowing it for all the torture she had frequently inflicted on him. "The sources of the Nile are unknown," said Julien to himself: "it has not been vouchsafed to the human eye to see the king of rivers as a simple brook: similarly, no human eye shall see Julien weak. In the first place because he is not so. But I have a heart which it is easy to touch. The most commonplace words, if said in a genuine tone, can make my voice broken and even cause me to shed tears. How often have frigid characters not despised me for this weakness. They thought that I was asking a favour: that is what I cannot put up with. "It is said that when at the foot of the scaffold, Danton was affected by the thought of his wife: but Danton had given strength to a nation of coxcombs and prevented the enemy from reaching Paris.... I alone know what I should have been able to do.... I represent to the others at the very outside, simply A PERHAPS. "If madame de Renal had been here in my cell instead of Mathilde, should I have been able to have answered for myself? The extremity of my despair and my repentance would have been taken for a craven fear of death by the Valenods and all the patricians of the locality. They are so proud, are those feeble spirits, whom their pecuniary position puts above temptation! 'You see what it is to be born a carpenter's son,' M. de Moirod and de Cholin doubtless said after having condemned me to death! 'A man can learn to be learned and clever, but the qualities of the heart--the qualities of the heart cannot be learnt.' Even in the case of this poor Mathilde, who is crying now, or rather, who cannot cry," he said to himself, as he looked at her red eyes.... And he clasped her in his arms: the sight of a genuine grief made him forget the sequence of his logic.... "She has perhaps cried all the night," he said to himself, "but how ashamed she will be of this memory on some future day! She will regard herself as having been led astray in her first youth by a plebeian's low view of life.... Le Croisenois is weak enough to marry her, and upon my word, he will do well to do so. She will make him play a part." "Du droit qu'un esprit ferme et vaste en ses desseins A sur l'esprit grossier des vulgaires humaines." "Ah! that's really humorous; since I have been doomed to die, all the verses I ever knew in my life are coming back into my memory. It must be a sign of demoralisation." Mathilde kept on repeating in a choked voice: "He is there in the next room." At last he paid attention to what she was saying. "Her voice is weak," he thought, "but all the imperiousness of her character comes out in her intonation. She lowers her voice in order to avoid getting angry." "And who is there?" he said, gently. "The advocate, to get you to sign your appeal." "I shall not appeal." "What! you will not appeal," she said, getting up, with her eyes sparkling with rage. "And why, if you please?" "Because I feel at the present time that I have the courage to die without giving people occasion to laugh too much at my expense. And who will guarantee that I shall be in so sound a frame of mind in two months' time, after living for a long time in this damp cell? I foresee interviews with the priests, with my father. I can imagine nothing more unpleasant. Let's die." This unexpected opposition awakened all the haughtiness of Mathilde's character. She had not managed to see the abbe de Frilair before the time when visitors were admitted to the cells in the Besancon prison. Her fury vented itself on Julien. She adored him, and nevertheless she exhibited for a good quarter of an hour in her invective against his, Julien's, character, and her regret at having ever loved him, the same haughty soul which had formerly overwhelmed him with such cutting insults in the library of the Hotel de la Mole. "In justice to the glory of your stock, Heaven should have had you born a man," he said to her. "But as for myself," he thought, "I should be very foolish to go on living for two more months in this disgusting place, to serve as a butt for all the infamous humiliations which the patrician party can devise,[2] and having the outburst of this mad woman for my only consolation.... Well, the morning after to-morrow I shall fight a duel with a man known for his self-possession and his remarkable skill ... his very remarkable skill," said the Mephistophelian part of him; "he never makes a miss. Well, so be it--good." (Mathilde continued to wax eloquent). "No, not for a minute," he said to himself, "I shall not appeal." Having made this resolution, he fell into meditation.... "The courier will bring the paper at six o'clock as usual, as he passes; at eight o'clock, after M. de Renal has finished reading it, Elisa will go on tiptoe and place it on her bed. Later on she will wake up; suddenly, as she reads it she will become troubled; her pretty hands will tremble; she will go on reading down to these words: _At five minutes past ten he had ceased to exist_. "She will shed hot tears, I know her; it will matter nothing that I tried to assassinate her--all will be forgotten, and the person whose life I wished to take will be the only one who will sincerely lament my death. "Ah, that's a good paradox," he thought, and he thought about nothing except madame de Renal during the good quarter of an hour which the scene Mathilde was making still lasted. In spite of himself, and though he made frequent answers to what Mathilde was saying, he could not take his mind away from the thought of the bedroom at Verrieres. He saw the Besancon Gazette on the counterpane of orange taffeta; he saw that white hand clutching at it convulsively. He saw madame de Renal cry.... He followed the path of every tear over her charming face. Mademoiselle de la Mole, being unable to get anything out of Julien, asked the advocate to come in. Fortunately, he was an old captain of the Italian army of 1796, where he had been a comrade of Manuel. He opposed the condemned man's resolution as a matter of form. Wishing to treat him with respect, Julien explained all his reasons. "Upon my word, I can understand a man taking the view you do," said M. Felix Vaneau (that was the advocate's name) to him at last. "But you have three full days in which to appeal, and it is my duty to come back every day. If a volcano were to open under the prison between now and two months' time you would be saved. You might die of illness," he said, looking at Julien. Julien pressed his hand--"I thank you, you are a good fellow. I will think it over." And when Mathilde eventually left with the advocate, he felt much more affection for the advocate than for her. [1] There is no heading to this and the following chapters in the original.--TRANSL. [2] The speaker is a Jacobin.

Chapters 40-42

https://web.archive.org/web/20201128052739/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/r/the-red-and-the-black/summary-and-analysis/part-2-chapters-4042

Just before his trial, Julien pleads guilty of premeditated attempted murder to the judge and to his own defense lawyer, who visit his cell. Mathilde has succeeded in establishing a contact between Mme. de Fervaques and M. de Frilair with the result that promise has been intimated of a bishopric for Frilair in exchange for his willingness to influence the jurors. Frilair is certain of being able to control the votes of Valenod, de Moirod, and Cholin, and of being able to bring about an acquittal. In spite of the protests of her husband, Mme. de Renal has come to Besancon and has personally written a plea of mercy for Julien to each of the thirty-six jurors. All of Besancon has turned out for the trial. Mathilde makes a final tearful visit to Frilair, who assures her that all has been arranged. The jurors will vote as Valenod votes. Julien has decided not to speak out in his own defense at the trial. The trial begins. The audience, mostly women, is obviously sympathetic toward the defendant. The trial lasts far into the night with no recess. Julien delivers a final oration after the summation in spite of his resolve not to speak. The jury returns with a verdict of guilty with premeditation. Julien's only comment to the court is that he has been justly condemned to death. Julien is moved to the death cell. His thoughts are only of Mme. de Renal, whom he would hope to see before he dies. Mathilde disturbs his peaceful sleep to plead that he appeal for another trial. Julien stands firm in his refusal in spite of Mathilde's entreaties. Julien gives the same answer to his lawyer, and he feels more kindly disposed toward the lawyer as they depart than he does toward Mathilde.

These chapters relate the trial and the events immediately before and after it. Julien's soliloquy reveals his calm acceptance of the inevitability of his death. This attitude is in marked contrast to the frantic activity of Mathilde and Mme. de Renal to bring about his acquittal. Julien remains ignorant of their attempts, and the ironic result is that they are working at cross purposes: Julien admits premeditation, but Mme. de Renal urges the jurors not to find premeditation; Julien refuses to consider a plea of jealousy, as Mathilde, swallowing her pride, urges him to plead. Chapter 40 brings Mme. de Renal back into focus in preparation for the final role she will play in the last chapters. The movement of the short chapter shifts from Julien's cell to the final efforts of Mathilde with Frilair, and finally to the passionate plea for mercy that is Mme. de Renal's letter. In passing, Stendhal alludes to the effect that the trial has had on Besancon. This adds to the brief, but complete and suspenseful, summing up of everyone's pretrial state. Note the point at which Julien has arrived in his elaboration of an "art of living." In his own mind, his affair is already classified. He is finally enjoying a life in which he may give himself over completely to contemplation, to dreams of past happiness with Mme. de Renal, to an objective, dispassionate self-scrutiny and evaluation. Any invasion of his privacy by sordid details of life outside his cell is painful to him. Freudians would see in the Stendhalian hero's passive, blissful state achieved in the protectiveness of prison Stendhal's desire to return to the womb. When maternal Mme. de Renal finally joins Julien in this happy seclusion, such a view is even more convincing. We witness the trial scene from Julien's point of view. Thus, the reader adopts Julien's physical vantage point, and he observes not individual faces in the courtroom but groups of faces, mostly feminine, localized only generally by their position vis-a-vis Julien. Across from the dock above the jurors and judge, twelve to fifteen pretty women occupy three galleries. In the circular gallery overhanging the crowded courtroom are more young, pretty faces. Just as he enters the courtroom, Julien glimpses the gothic pillars, an isolated and clear detail of the blurred scene that surrounds him. After his initial view, by means of a wide sweep Julien's attention is attracted to the galleries above the jury, where he sees Mme. Derville. Only once does the point of view stray -- to appreciate Julien's simple elegance as viewed by the ladies of the courtroom. The description is incomplete and fragmentary, but in that respect realistic. It is a foretaste of Stendhal's great battle scene in the Charterhouse in which the battle of Waterloo is seen from the point of view of an individual soldier, who is never quite sure of what is transpiring. This realistic technique was admired and imitated by the great Tolstoy. The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane, portrays war realistically in much the same way that Stendhal had done. Is it accurate to say that Julien commits suicide? Again, Stendhal does not offer an explicit answer. The answer lies partially in another question: Would Valenod have betrayed Julien had the latter not denounced the society that condemns him? Stendhal has been careful to reintroduce Valenod intermittently and to assert Valenod's jealousy of Julien, who had succeeded in making Mme. de Renal his mistress. Would this hatred and desire for vengeance have sufficed to cause Valenod to instruct the jury to condemn Julien, or was Julien's brutal condemnation of the aspiring bourgeoisie the final blow that precipitated the betrayal? At any rate, it is because of his accurate evaluation of the situation and because of his courage in proclaiming it to others that Julien plays a truly heroic role in the court scene. Julien tells the jury that he will be condemned not for having committed the crime but for having violated the social hierarchy, for having risen above his class. Julien, like Camus' Meursault, executes a reversal in position: The accused condemns the accuser. In a sense, Julien assumes the way in which he will die: He rejects the death penalty unless he, first, has admitted its justice. In this regard, he is the ancestor of Malraux's heroes, who do not undergo death passively, but who assume their death. To what extent is Julien aware of the gravity of the consequences of his oration, assuming that it did incite Valenod to betrayal? It would not appear to have been a deliberate attempt to bring about his own condemnation; rather, it is prompted by his sense of duty, which arises spontaneously. His manner during the trial is one of dignity and courage, although he has difficulty at times in controlling his emotions. During his emotional moments, Julien is seeing himself as the lady spectators see him. The oration would simply be another of those moments when Julien's sensibility betrays him. An impulsive awakening of emotion catches his mask of self-control and calm off guard. That Julien is aware of how others are viewing him during this trial when his life is in the balance should not surprise us too much. This is another faithful rendition of psychological truth by Stendhal. In crucial moments, immediate reactions will many times be quite far from the vital issue. Julien seems to view his trial with a certain objectivity. One critical view holds that Julien unconsciously harbors a death wish. Such a view would give more responsibility to Julien in the resulting verdict of guilty. Another view would see in Julien simply another example of the fate of the Stendhalian creature who, having lived so intensely, has burned himself out. It would be the extension on a grander scale of such phenomena as Mathilde's involuntary fainting, of Julien's loss of consciousness in the presence of Pirard, of La Sanseverina's falling asleep while seated in the Charterhouse. Such an interpretation of Julien's role in his own condemnation would be in keeping with Stendhal's romantic conception of character. Even after the death sentence is read, Julien keeps his aplomb and inner calm. He lucidly examines the act of vengeance that Valenod has committed and muses momentarily on what will await him after life. Recalled to reality by Mathilde's cry, Julien's thoughts come with haste and confusion, but he contains these and expresses outwardly only his approval of the death penalty. Note that the most strained emotional moments undergone by the characters are related with the most clipped, terse, and abrupt prose by Stendhal. Stendhal continues to "detach" Julien from the action, a tendency we first noticed when the hero left to assume his commission in the army. Now that he is condemned to death, Julien's detachment is even more strongly pronounced. In musing about himself, Julien utilizes the past tense. He sees himself as having already been guillotined, which produces the effect of an even greater degree of objectivity achieved by Julien. This approach and the ironic self-detachment characterizing his interior monologue are no doubt a sort of defense mechanism. Julien is steeling himself in order not to give way to the horror of death. At the same time, it is part of the new happiness, the "art of living" that Julien has perfected now that he is in the seclusion of the prison cell. Unconsciously, Julien is punishing Mathilde for all the humiliations she has imposed on him, as he refuses to give serious thought to her appeals. He even solicits her praise at his courtroom heroism, which is reminiscent of the ideal that characterized their love. In a sense, Julien has been victorious in their heroic rivalry: He has invited death and refused to appeal the sentence. It is quite possible that Mathilde feels somewhat cheated. Julien is destroying her own heroic role. Stendhal depicts for us here a truly superior soul. Julien is moved by genuine suffering, sensitive but proud to the point of refusing to expose his suffering to the view of others, thus to debasement. The tiresome presence of Mathilde succeeds only intermittently in piercing the reverie that increasingly characterizes the mental life of Julien. He imagines Mme. de Renal's reaction after his death. Stendhal is preparing for the long-awaited arrival of Julien's first and only love.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/07.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Tess of the d'Urbervilles/section_1_part_7.txt

Tess of the d'Urbervilles.chapter vii

chapter vii

{"name": "Chapter VII", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210213065711/https://www.novelguide.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summaries/phase1-chapter1-11", "summary": "Tess is dejected about leaving Marlott. However, her mother scolds her and makes her wear the white dress she wore at the May Day dance. Joan is sure Alec d'Urberville will marry her beautiful daughter. Her father tells Tess that he would be willing to sell his title, Sir John, to d'Urberville, for one thousand pounds, and then lowers the price incrementally to fifty pounds. Alec arrives in a carriage to take Tess to her new job and Joan has a moment of fear--allowing Tess to leave might not be a good decision--but believes Tess will make out all right if she plays her trump card right", "analysis": ""}

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."

Chapter VII

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

Tess is dejected about leaving Marlott. However, her mother scolds her and makes her wear the white dress she wore at the May Day dance. Joan is sure Alec d'Urberville will marry her beautiful daughter. Her father tells Tess that he would be willing to sell his title, Sir John, to d'Urberville, for one thousand pounds, and then lowers the price incrementally to fifty pounds. Alec arrives in a carriage to take Tess to her new job and Joan has a moment of fear--allowing Tess to leave might not be a good decision--but believes Tess will make out all right if she plays her trump card right

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/30.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Sense and Sensibility/section_2_part_10.txt

Sense and Sensibility.chapter 30

chapter 30

{"name": "Chapter 30", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210419170735/https://www.gradesaver.com/sense-and-sensibility/study-guide/summary-chapters-21-30", "summary": "Mrs. Jennings returns, with news of Willoughby's fiancee and his coming marriage. Marianne doesn't want Mrs. Jennings to trouble too much about her, and decides to pull herself together and be with company; and Mrs. Jennings dotes on her, offering her treats and paying much attention to her. Apparently, Willoughby is to marry Miss Grey, who was left a great deal of money by her parents, probably out of want of money. Mrs. Jennings posits that now Colonel Brandon will probably become Marianne's favorite; indeed, he comes the next day, and is deeply concerned about Marianne's situation.", "analysis": "Despite Mrs. Jennings kindness, this chapter shows a great contrast between her own rough manners and Elinor's polished gentility. Mrs. Jennings means well, but going on about how Marianne will probably marry Colonel Brandon any day now is quite insensitive and foolish. Elinor would never speak so foolishly or in such an ill-informed manner; but Mrs. Jennings is a gossip and a busybody, and such protestations are part of her character. As foolish as Mrs. Jennings' prating on the subject may be, her remarks, coupled with the Colonel's great concern for Marianne's situation, do foreshadow a future relationship between the two. As a foil of Willoughby, Colonel Brandon will probably be more appealing to Marianne because he is constant and clearly good-hearted; and the Colonel's polite, concerned inquiries about Marianne betray that he still feels strongly for her despite her misfortune"}

Mrs. Jennings came immediately to their room on her return, and without waiting to have her request of admittance answered, opened the door and walked in with a look of real concern. "How do you do my dear?"--said she in a voice of great compassion to Marianne, who turned away her face without attempting to answer. "How is she, Miss Dashwood?--Poor thing! she looks very bad.-- No wonder. Ay, it is but too true. He is to be married very soon--a good-for-nothing fellow! I have no patience with him. Mrs. Taylor told me of it half an hour ago, and she was told it by a particular friend of Miss Grey herself, else I am sure I should not have believed it; and I was almost ready to sink as it was. Well, said I, all I can say is, that if this be true, he has used a young lady of my acquaintance abominably ill, and I wish with all my soul his wife may plague his heart out. And so I shall always say, my dear, you may depend on it. I have no notion of men's going on in this way; and if ever I meet him again, I will give him such a dressing as he has not had this many a day. But there is one comfort, my dear Miss Marianne; he is not the only young man in the world worth having; and with your pretty face you will never want admirers. Well, poor thing! I won't disturb her any longer, for she had better have her cry out at once and have done with. The Parrys and Sandersons luckily are coming tonight you know, and that will amuse her." She then went away, walking on tiptoe out of the room, as if she supposed her young friend's affliction could be increased by noise. Marianne, to the surprise of her sister, determined on dining with them. Elinor even advised her against it. But "no, she would go down; she could bear it very well, and the bustle about her would be less." Elinor, pleased to have her governed for a moment by such a motive, though believing it hardly possible that she could sit out the dinner, said no more; and adjusting her dress for her as well as she could, while Marianne still remained on the bed, was ready to assist her into the dining room as soon as they were summoned to it. When there, though looking most wretchedly, she ate more and was calmer than her sister had expected. Had she tried to speak, or had she been conscious of half Mrs. Jennings's well-meant but ill-judged attentions to her, this calmness could not have been maintained; but not a syllable escaped her lips; and the abstraction of her thoughts preserved her in ignorance of every thing that was passing before her. Elinor, who did justice to Mrs. Jennings's kindness, though its effusions were often distressing, and sometimes almost ridiculous, made her those acknowledgments, and returned her those civilities, which her sister could not make or return for herself. Their good friend saw that Marianne was unhappy, and felt that every thing was due to her which might make her at all less so. She treated her therefore, with all the indulgent fondness of a parent towards a favourite child on the last day of its holidays. Marianne was to have the best place by the fire, was to be tempted to eat by every delicacy in the house, and to be amused by the relation of all the news of the day. Had not Elinor, in the sad countenance of her sister, seen a check to all mirth, she could have been entertained by Mrs. Jennings's endeavours to cure a disappointment in love, by a variety of sweetmeats and olives, and a good fire. As soon, however, as the consciousness of all this was forced by continual repetition on Marianne, she could stay no longer. With a hasty exclamation of Misery, and a sign to her sister not to follow her, she directly got up and hurried out of the room. "Poor soul!" cried Mrs. Jennings, as soon as she was gone, "how it grieves me to see her! And I declare if she is not gone away without finishing her wine! And the dried cherries too! Lord! nothing seems to do her any good. I am sure if I knew of any thing she would like, I would send all over the town for it. Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such things!--" "The lady then--Miss Grey I think you called her--is very rich?" "Fifty thousand pounds, my dear. Did you ever see her? a smart, stylish girl they say, but not handsome. I remember her aunt very well, Biddy Henshawe; she married a very wealthy man. But the family are all rich together. Fifty thousand pounds! and by all accounts, it won't come before it's wanted; for they say he is all to pieces. No wonder! dashing about with his curricle and hunters! Well, it don't signify talking; but when a young man, be who he will, comes and makes love to a pretty girl, and promises marriage, he has no business to fly off from his word only because he grows poor, and a richer girl is ready to have him. Why don't he, in such a case, sell his horses, let his house, turn off his servants, and make a thorough reform at once? I warrant you, Miss Marianne would have been ready to wait till matters came round. But that won't do now-a-days; nothing in the way of pleasure can ever be given up by the young men of this age." "Do you know what kind of a girl Miss Grey is? Is she said to be amiable?" "I never heard any harm of her; indeed I hardly ever heard her mentioned; except that Mrs. Taylor did say this morning, that one day Miss Walker hinted to her, that she believed Mr. and Mrs. Ellison would not be sorry to have Miss Grey married, for she and Mrs. Ellison could never agree."-- "And who are the Ellisons?" "Her guardians, my dear. But now she is of age and may choose for herself; and a pretty choice she has made!--What now," after pausing a moment--"your poor sister is gone to her own room, I suppose, to moan by herself. Is there nothing one can get to comfort her? Poor dear, it seems quite cruel to let her be alone. Well, by-and-by we shall have a few friends, and that will amuse her a little. What shall we play at? She hates whist I know; but is there no round game she cares for?" "Dear ma'am, this kindness is quite unnecessary. Marianne, I dare say, will not leave her room again this evening. I shall persuade her if I can to go early to bed, for I am sure she wants rest." "Aye, I believe that will be best for her. Let her name her own supper, and go to bed. Lord! no wonder she has been looking so bad and so cast down this last week or two, for this matter I suppose has been hanging over her head as long as that. And so the letter that came today finished it! Poor soul! I am sure if I had had a notion of it, I would not have joked her about it for all my money. But then you know, how should I guess such a thing? I made sure of its being nothing but a common love letter, and you know young people like to be laughed at about them. Lord! how concerned Sir John and my daughters will be when they hear it! If I had my senses about me I might have called in Conduit Street in my way home, and told them of it. But I shall see them tomorrow." "It would be unnecessary I am sure, for you to caution Mrs. Palmer and Sir John against ever naming Mr. Willoughby, or making the slightest allusion to what has passed, before my sister. Their own good-nature must point out to them the real cruelty of appearing to know any thing about it when she is present; and the less that may ever be said to myself on the subject, the more my feelings will be spared, as you my dear madam will easily believe." "Oh! Lord! yes, that I do indeed. It must be terrible for you to hear it talked of; and as for your sister, I am sure I would not mention a word about it to her for the world. You saw I did not all dinner time. No more would Sir John, nor my daughters, for they are all very thoughtful and considerate; especially if I give them a hint, as I certainly will. For my part, I think the less that is said about such things, the better, the sooner 'tis blown over and forgot. And what does talking ever do you know?" "In this affair it can only do harm; more so perhaps than in many cases of a similar kind, for it has been attended by circumstances which, for the sake of every one concerned in it, make it unfit to become the public conversation. I must do THIS justice to Mr. Willoughby--he has broken no positive engagement with my sister." "Law, my dear! Don't pretend to defend him. No positive engagement indeed! after taking her all over Allenham House, and fixing on the very rooms they were to live in hereafter!" Elinor, for her sister's sake, could not press the subject farther, and she hoped it was not required of her for Willoughby's; since, though Marianne might lose much, he could gain very little by the enforcement of the real truth. After a short silence on both sides, Mrs. Jennings, with all her natural hilarity, burst forth again. "Well, my dear, 'tis a true saying about an ill-wind, for it will be all the better for Colonel Brandon. He will have her at last; aye, that he will. Mind me, now, if they an't married by Mid-summer. Lord! how he'll chuckle over this news! I hope he will come tonight. It will be all to one a better match for your sister. Two thousand a year without debt or drawback--except the little love-child, indeed; aye, I had forgot her; but she may be 'prenticed out at a small cost, and then what does it signify? Delaford is a nice place, I can tell you; exactly what I call a nice old fashioned place, full of comforts and conveniences; quite shut in with great garden walls that are covered with the best fruit-trees in the country; and such a mulberry tree in one corner! Lord! how Charlotte and I did stuff the only time we were there! Then, there is a dove-cote, some delightful stew-ponds, and a very pretty canal; and every thing, in short, that one could wish for; and, moreover, it is close to the church, and only a quarter of a mile from the turnpike-road, so 'tis never dull, for if you only go and sit up in an old yew arbour behind the house, you may see all the carriages that pass along. Oh! 'tis a nice place! A butcher hard by in the village, and the parsonage-house within a stone's throw. To my fancy, a thousand times prettier than Barton Park, where they are forced to send three miles for their meat, and have not a neighbour nearer than your mother. Well, I shall spirit up the Colonel as soon as I can. One shoulder of mutton, you know, drives another down. If we CAN but put Willoughby out of her head!" "Ay, if we can do THAT, Ma'am," said Elinor, "we shall do very well with or without Colonel Brandon." And then rising, she went away to join Marianne, whom she found, as she expected, in her own room, leaning, in silent misery, over the small remains of a fire, which, till Elinor's entrance, had been her only light. "You had better leave me," was all the notice that her sister received from her. "I will leave you," said Elinor, "if you will go to bed." But this, from the momentary perverseness of impatient suffering, she at first refused to do. Her sister's earnest, though gentle persuasion, however, soon softened her to compliance, and Elinor saw her lay her aching head on the pillow, and as she hoped, in a way to get some quiet rest before she left her. In the drawing-room, whither she then repaired, she was soon joined by Mrs. Jennings, with a wine-glass, full of something, in her hand. "My dear," said she, entering, "I have just recollected that I have some of the finest old Constantia wine in the house that ever was tasted, so I have brought a glass of it for your sister. My poor husband! how fond he was of it! Whenever he had a touch of his old colicky gout, he said it did him more good than any thing else in the world. Do take it to your sister." "Dear Ma'am," replied Elinor, smiling at the difference of the complaints for which it was recommended, "how good you are! But I have just left Marianne in bed, and, I hope, almost asleep; and as I think nothing will be of so much service to her as rest, if you will give me leave, I will drink the wine myself." Mrs. Jennings, though regretting that she had not been five minutes earlier, was satisfied with the compromise; and Elinor, as she swallowed the chief of it, reflected, that though its effects on a colicky gout were, at present, of little importance to her, its healing powers, on a disappointed heart might be as reasonably tried on herself as on her sister. Colonel Brandon came in while the party were at tea, and by his manner of looking round the room for Marianne, Elinor immediately fancied that he neither expected nor wished to see her there, and, in short, that he was already aware of what occasioned her absence. Mrs. Jennings was not struck by the same thought; for soon after his entrance, she walked across the room to the tea-table where Elinor presided, and whispered-- "The Colonel looks as grave as ever you see. He knows nothing of it; do tell him, my dear." He shortly afterwards drew a chair close to hers, and, with a look which perfectly assured her of his good information, inquired after her sister. "Marianne is not well," said she. "She has been indisposed all day, and we have persuaded her to go to bed." "Perhaps, then," he hesitatingly replied, "what I heard this morning may be--there may be more truth in it than I could believe possible at first." "What did you hear?" "That a gentleman, whom I had reason to think--in short, that a man, whom I KNEW to be engaged--but how shall I tell you? If you know it already, as surely you must, I may be spared." "You mean," answered Elinor, with forced calmness, "Mr. Willoughby's marriage with Miss Grey. Yes, we DO know it all. This seems to have been a day of general elucidation, for this very morning first unfolded it to us. Mr. Willoughby is unfathomable! Where did you hear it?" "In a stationer's shop in Pall Mall, where I had business. Two ladies were waiting for their carriage, and one of them was giving the other an account of the intended match, in a voice so little attempting concealment, that it was impossible for me not to hear all. The name of Willoughby, John Willoughby, frequently repeated, first caught my attention; and what followed was a positive assertion that every thing was now finally settled respecting his marriage with Miss Grey--it was no longer to be a secret--it would take place even within a few weeks, with many particulars of preparations and other matters. One thing, especially, I remember, because it served to identify the man still more:--as soon as the ceremony was over, they were to go to Combe Magna, his seat in Somersetshire. My astonishment!--but it would be impossible to describe what I felt. The communicative lady I learnt, on inquiry, for I stayed in the shop till they were gone, was a Mrs. Ellison, and that, as I have been since informed, is the name of Miss Grey's guardian." "It is. But have you likewise heard that Miss Grey has fifty thousand pounds? In that, if in any thing, we may find an explanation." "It may be so; but Willoughby is capable--at least I think"--he stopped a moment; then added in a voice which seemed to distrust itself, "And your sister--how did she--" "Her sufferings have been very severe. I have only to hope that they may be proportionately short. It has been, it is a most cruel affliction. Till yesterday, I believe, she never doubted his regard; and even now, perhaps--but I am almost convinced that he never was really attached to her. He has been very deceitful! and, in some points, there seems a hardness of heart about him." "Ah!" said Colonel Brandon, "there is, indeed! But your sister does not--I think you said so--she does not consider quite as you do?" "You know her disposition, and may believe how eagerly she would still justify him if she could." He made no answer; and soon afterwards, by the removal of the tea-things, and the arrangement of the card parties, the subject was necessarily dropped. Mrs. Jennings, who had watched them with pleasure while they were talking, and who expected to see the effect of Miss Dashwood's communication, in such an instantaneous gaiety on Colonel Brandon's side, as might have become a man in the bloom of youth, of hope and happiness, saw him, with amazement, remain the whole evening more serious and thoughtful than usual.

Chapter 30

https://web.archive.org/web/20210419170735/https://www.gradesaver.com/sense-and-sensibility/study-guide/summary-chapters-21-30

Mrs. Jennings returns, with news of Willoughby's fiancee and his coming marriage. Marianne doesn't want Mrs. Jennings to trouble too much about her, and decides to pull herself together and be with company; and Mrs. Jennings dotes on her, offering her treats and paying much attention to her. Apparently, Willoughby is to marry Miss Grey, who was left a great deal of money by her parents, probably out of want of money. Mrs. Jennings posits that now Colonel Brandon will probably become Marianne's favorite; indeed, he comes the next day, and is deeply concerned about Marianne's situation.

Despite Mrs. Jennings kindness, this chapter shows a great contrast between her own rough manners and Elinor's polished gentility. Mrs. Jennings means well, but going on about how Marianne will probably marry Colonel Brandon any day now is quite insensitive and foolish. Elinor would never speak so foolishly or in such an ill-informed manner; but Mrs. Jennings is a gossip and a busybody, and such protestations are part of her character. As foolish as Mrs. Jennings' prating on the subject may be, her remarks, coupled with the Colonel's great concern for Marianne's situation, do foreshadow a future relationship between the two. As a foil of Willoughby, Colonel Brandon will probably be more appealing to Marianne because he is constant and clearly good-hearted; and the Colonel's polite, concerned inquiries about Marianne betray that he still feels strongly for her despite her misfortune

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/12915-chapters/act_1.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/The White Devil/section_0_part_0.txt

The White Devil.act 1.scene 1-scene 2

act 1

{"name": "Act 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180409073731/http://www.gradesaver.com/the-white-devil/study-guide/summary-act-1", "summary": "The play opens in Rome. Three men enter: Count Lodovico, and his two friends Antonelli and Gasparo. Antonelli and Gasparo tell Lodovico that he has been banished from Italy for his crimes, and explain that his noblemen friends now laugh at his misery, considering him like a worthless meteor pulled from the earth - an evil omen. Gasparo reveals that Lodovico has been banished because he has murdered several people in Rome. When Lodovico asks why the court will not simply execute him, Gasparo explains that the court wants to prevent further bloodshed and give Lodovico a chance at penance. Lodovico complains that other wicked men are spared banishment. He offers as example the Duke of Brachiano, who is secretly trying to seduce Vittoria Corombona. Antonelli tries to soothe Lodovico, but Lodovico instead threatens to cut his enemies into shreds. Lodovico finally accepts his fate and decides to leave. Before he goes, he gives Gasparo and Antonelli money with which to try and repeal his banishment. Scene 2 Brachiano, Camillo, Flamineo, Vittoria, and several unidentified gentlemen, holding torches, enter. Vittoria welcomes Brachiano to Rome, and then leaves with Camillo, her husband. Flamineo, her brother, whispers to Brachiano that she will meet with him in private, and then tells the men with torches to leave. Now that they are alone, Flamineo can speak to Brachiano freely. He explains that Vittoria is enamored of Brachiano, and that her servant, Zanche the Moor, will help facilitate an affair. He also criticizes feminine coyness, accusing women of manipulating men's desire for their own gain. When Brachiano inquires about the obstacle of Camillo, Flamineo quickly dismisses him, claiming Camillo has grown dispassionate and impotent because of syphilis. Hearing Camillo returning, Flamineo tells Brachiano to hide in the closet so that Flamineo can trick Camillo. Under his breath, Flamineo mocks Camillo's rich clothing and poor wit as the latter enters. Flamineo asks Camillo if he is going to Vittoria's bed, and Camillo admits that he cannot remember the last time he slept with Vittoria. Flamineo laments that Camillo has lost his \"count,\" punning on the similarity of the word to \"cunt.\" Camillo then admits his suspicion over Brachiano's motives. He compares Brachiano's visit to a game of bowls, subtly accusing Brachiano of \"bowl booty,\" or of conspiring with another player against a third in order to get a desired object . Flamineo dismisses Camillo's fears, insisting Camillo is both wise and born under lucky stars, but Camillo counters, claiming that the stars have nothing to do with being cuckolded. Flamineo sarcastically advises him to lock Vittoria up for a fortnight, to ensure he will not be cuckolded. When Camillo pleads for serious advice, Flamineo suggests that women are most chaste when they have the most liberty. He claims Camillo's jealousy is coloring his vision, making him see threats where there are none. Vittoria enters, and Flamineo tells Camillo to watch from a distance as he convinces his sister to sleep with Camillo. Flamineo pulls Vittoria aside, where he privately tells her that Camillo is upset. She insists she was respectful to him at dinner - she \"carved\" to him, in her language. He puns in response, saying she didn't need to \"carve\" him, since he already has the reputation of being a eunuch. He then loudly compliments Camillo, so that the latter can hear, and Camillo remarks to himself that Flamineo will now arouse Vittoria. However, Flamineo privately undermines his compliments in conversation with Vittoria, even as he continues to speak them aloud. Aloud so that Camillo can hear, Flamineo tells Vittoria that she will go to bed with \"his lord,\" who will give her a ring adorned with a philosopher's stone as they lie in a bed stuffed with turtle dove feathers. Camillo believes \"lord\" refers to him, wheras Flamineo is subtly suggesting Brachiano to his sister. She quietly asks Flamineo how they will get rid of Camillo, and Flamineo then speaks to Camillo, suggesting she is almost ready, but that he should deny her this night so as to increase her desire for the next night. Camillo thanks Flamineo for his wise advice, and tells Vittoria that he will not sleep with her that night. Flamineo asks how he can ensure Camillo will not renege on his commitment to wait, and Camillo offers to be locked in his room for assurance. He then leaves, happy with the way things have gone. As Camillo leaves, Brachiano enters from the shadows where he was hiding, and begins wooing Vittoria with courtly vows. At the same time, Zanche brings out a carpet and two pillows to set up a bed for their affair. Cornelia, Vittoria and Flamineo's mother, enters and hears the planning. She laments to herself how her family is sinking into ruin, predicting that this affair will ruin them all. Brachiano gives Vittoria a jewel for her \"jewel,\" punning on the female sexual organ, and tells her to wear it at the base of her dress bodice. Vittoria then tells him of her most recent dream. She was sitting under a yew tree when Brachiano's wife and Camillo confronted her, accusing her of trying to uproot the yew. They decided to bury her alive and began to dig a grave for her, when the yew tree killed them with one of its branches. Flamineo whispers to himself that the smart and devilish Vittoria has subtly insisted that Brachiano kill his wife and Camillo. Brachiano promises to protect Vittoria from their spouses, and to devote himself to her entirely. Cornelia enters from the shadows as Flamineo chases Zanche away. She lectures Vittoria and Brachiano on the sinfulness of their illicit relationship, and Vittoria pleads with her mother to understand. Cornelia reveals that Brachiano's sick wife is returning to Rome, and Vittoria protests that she could only have resisted Brachiano's love at the cost of bloodshed. Together, Cornelia and Vittoria kneel for forgiveness, and Vittoria flees from shame. Flamineo insists to Brachiano that he can bring her back, but Brachiano is upset, and tells Cornelia that she has stirred up a storm. He then leaves. Flamineo accuses Cornelia of betrayal, insisting this was the only way he knew to increase his and the family's financial and social position. Cornelia regrets having given birth to him, and he counters that he would rather have been born to a prostitute in Rome. Cornelia leaves upset, and Flamineo resolves to continue with his mischief, using deception and indirect methods if necessary.", "analysis": "As a revenge tragedy, John Webster's The White Devil promises its audience imminent violence, bloodshed, and betrayal. It delivers on all counts. Few characters in the work are marked by goodness or purity, and the perspective on humanity is rather bleak and pessimistic. However, to Webster's credit, he also mostly avoids a simplistic understanding of evil, by giving his villains motives that are as much symptoms of society as of original sin. Significantly, Webster chooses to open his play with the scene of Lodovico's banishment. Lodovico is a side character compared to Brachiano, Vittoria, or Flamineo, yet he both opens and closes the play. Arguably, this is because his story so perfectly encapsulates the play's conflict between powerful social forces and the anarchic individual. Lodovico is a dangerous man without any regard for law and order, and he is banished precisely because he openly refuses to bow before the laws of the land. The Roman rulers have decided that Lodovico is too unstable and violent to live within their society, and so wish him gone. Similarly, the same social forces will reject Vittoria for her unruly sexuality, and Brachiano for his unbridled lust. These social forces, however, are not to be trusted as inexorably just. In fact, Flamineo wishes not to flaunt these forces but rather to be embraced by them, and through Flamineo's social-climbing, Webster makes an implicit attack on the forces of money and power than define society. Like Lodovico, Flamineo is a desperate and dangerous man who will balk at nothing to get what he wants, including prostituting his sister and killing his own brother, but he does so surreptitiously. He wishes respect and acceptance, whereas Lodovico is willing to forgo those. One distinction is that Flamineo is born poor, and hence has to rely on his wit to balance the score with his social 'betters.' His use of wit, puns, and double-entendres touches on the discrepancy between what appears and what truly is, a crucial motif in the play. One instance of Flamineo's wit comes when Camillo remarks that he cannot remember that last time that he and Vittoria slept together, and Flamineo responds, \"Strange you should lose your count.\" Flamineo is superficially referring to Camillo's count of the days since his last union with Vittoria, but he also is referring to female genitals, punning on the pronunciation of the word \"count.\" This distinction between what appears and what is, extends from Flamineo's verbal acrobatics to the moral natures of many of the play's characters. Flamineo is a low-born man but will use subterfuge to gain prestige even as he does not admit his goal to anyone but his mother. However, class inequality is not the only factor that creates a hierarchy forcing people to use subterfuge for their gain. Women, too, are rather powerless unless they use manipulation. Flamineo indicates as much in his first conversation with Brachiano, but the latter is nevertheless easily fooled when Vittoria plants the idea of murder by relating her dream. In the dream , she subtly compares Brachiano to the yew tree, which has several psychological implications. The first is a compliment to his ego - the tree is large, a foundation, a powerful institution that dwarfs the people under it. However, the language is also effective, as \"yew\" is a homophone of \"you,\" which leads Brachiano to associate himself with the tree. Its final rhetorical effect relies on the symbolic connection between a yew tree and death, a common motif in revenge tragedy. While Vittoria never explicitly admits that she uses the dream as tactic, the play's general perspective on humanity, and her later admission that a woman's only weapon is her words, suggest that she is compensating for her lack of power through a trickery similar to that of her brother. What she presents is not what she truly is, which conforms to one of the play's most pervasive themes. A woman's position in the world is also explored through the fear of cuckoldry that Camillo expresses in his discussion with Flamineo. A cuckold is a husband whose wife has been unfaithful to him. The word stems from the cuckoo bird, who is known to change mates frequently and lay its eggs in other nests. The many references to a cuckold's horns refer to the mating practice of stags, where defeated male stags lose their horns. As the husband of the unfaithful Vittoria, Camillo is a classic cuckold. Traditionally, there were fewer worse insults that a man could suffer, whereas male infidelity was nowhere near as grievous. The extremity of the fear serves as reminder that a wife was considered as much possession as partner, and hence was limited in her agency. Flamineo manipulates this excessive fear. While Vittoria keeps Camillo sexually impotent by refusing to copulate with him, Flamineo emasculates him verbally by subtly insulting him over and over again. Cornelia's entrance at the end of Scene Two evokes a symbolic morality play. Morality plays, popular in the medieval period, usually detailed one individual's path as he fell from innocence into sin, repented, and was ultimately saved. The plays personified concepts like virtues and sins in order to make them more understandable. In the case of The White Devil, Brachiano and Vittoria's love-bed would likely be placed at the center of the stage, with Flamineo and Zanche representing Vice on one side, and Cornelia representing Virtue on the other. The contrast between the two groups vividly and visually depicts the two possibilities for the lovers. Invoking these morality plays makes the play's narrative arc easier to understand, and it prepares the audience for the imminent drama. Of course, Webster's morality is far more ambiguous, and he ends his Act with Flamineo to remind us that evil comes not from simple choice, but rather from complicated social desires. Flamineo is not interested in a moral choice, but in a physical gain, in achieving a social position to which he feels entitled. It is unlikely that many characters will choose the side of Virtue that Cornelia represents, and the audience can feel this even at the end of Act I."}

ACT I SCENE I Enter Count Lodovico, Antonelli, and Gasparo Lodo. Banish'd! Ant. It griev'd me much to hear the sentence. Lodo. Ha, ha, O Democritus, thy gods That govern the whole world! courtly reward And punishment. Fortune 's a right whore: If she give aught, she deals it in small parcels, That she may take away all at one swoop. This 'tis to have great enemies! God 'quite them. Your wolf no longer seems to be a wolf Than when she 's hungry. Gas. You term those enemies, Are men of princely rank. Lodo. Oh, I pray for them: The violent thunder is adored by those Are pasht in pieces by it. Ant. Come, my lord, You are justly doom'd; look but a little back Into your former life: you have in three years Ruin'd the noblest earldom. Gas. Your followers Have swallowed you, like mummia, and being sick With such unnatural and horrid physic, Vomit you up i' th' kennel. Ant. All the damnable degrees Of drinking have you stagger'd through. One citizen, Is lord of two fair manors, call'd you master, Only for caviare. Gas. Those noblemen Which were invited to your prodigal feasts, (Wherein the phoenix scarce could 'scape your throats) Laugh at your misery, as fore-deeming you An idle meteor, which drawn forth, the earth Would be soon lost i' the air. Ant. Jest upon you, And say you were begotten in an earthquake, You have ruin'd such fair lordships. Lodo. Very good. This well goes with two buckets: I must tend The pouring out of either. Gas. Worse than these. You have acted certain murders here in Rome, Bloody and full of horror. Lodo. 'Las, they were flea-bitings: Why took they not my head then? Gas. O, my lord! The law doth sometimes mediate, thinks it good Not ever to steep violent sins in blood: This gentle penance may both end your crimes, And in the example better these bad times. Lodo. So; but I wonder then some great men 'scape This banishment: there 's Paulo Giordano Ursini, The Duke of Brachiano, now lives in Rome, And by close panderism seeks to prostitute The honour of Vittoria Corombona: Vittoria, she that might have got my pardon For one kiss to the duke. Ant. Have a full man within you: We see that trees bear no such pleasant fruit There where they grew first, as where they are new set. Perfumes, the more they are chaf'd, the more they render Their pleasing scents, and so affliction Expresseth virtue fully, whether true, Or else adulterate. Lodo. Leave your painted comforts; I 'll make Italian cut-works in their guts If ever I return. Gas. Oh, sir. Lodo. I am patient. I have seen some ready to be executed, Give pleasant looks, and money, and grown familiar With the knave hangman; so do I; I thank them, And would account them nobly merciful, Would they dispatch me quickly. Ant. Fare you well; We shall find time, I doubt not, to repeal Your banishment. Lodo. I am ever bound to you. This is the world's alms; pray make use of it. Great men sell sheep, thus to be cut in pieces, When first they have shorn them bare, and sold their fleeces. [Exeunt SCENE II Enter Brachiano, Camillo, Flamineo, Vittoria Brach. Your best of rest. Vit. Unto my lord the duke, The best of welcome. More lights: attend the duke. [Exeunt Camillo and Vittoria. Brach. Flamineo. Flam. My lord. Brach. Quite lost, Flamineo. Flam. Pursue your noble wishes, I am prompt As lightning to your service. O my lord! The fair Vittoria, my happy sister, Shall give you present audience--Gentlemen, [Whisper. Let the caroch go on--and 'tis his pleasure You put out all your torches and depart. Brach. Are we so happy? Flam. Can it be otherwise? Observ'd you not to-night, my honour'd lord, Which way soe'er you went, she threw her eyes? I have dealt already with her chambermaid, Zanche the Moor, and she is wondrous proud To be the agent for so high a spirit. Brach. We are happy above thought, because 'bove merit. Flam. 'Bove merit! we may now talk freely: 'bove merit! what is 't you doubt? her coyness! that 's but the superficies of lust most women have; yet why should ladies blush to hear that named, which they do not fear to handle? Oh, they are politic; they know our desire is increased by the difficulty of enjoying; whereas satiety is a blunt, weary, and drowsy passion. If the buttery-hatch at court stood continually open, there would be nothing so passionate crowding, nor hot suit after the beverage. Brach. Oh, but her jealous husband---- Flam. Hang him; a gilder that hath his brains perished with quicksilver is not more cold in the liver. The great barriers moulted not more feathers, than he hath shed hairs, by the confession of his doctor. An Irish gamester that will play himself naked, and then wage all downward, at hazard, is not more venturous. So unable to please a woman, that, like a Dutch doublet, all his back is shrunk into his breaches. Shroud you within this closet, good my lord; Some trick now must be thought on to divide My brother-in-law from his fair bed-fellow. Brach. Oh, should she fail to come---- Flam. I must not have your lordship thus unwisely amorous. I myself have not loved a lady, and pursued her with a great deal of under-age protestation, whom some three or four gallants that have enjoyed would with all their hearts have been glad to have been rid of. 'Tis just like a summer bird-cage in a garden: the birds that are without despair to get in, and the birds that are within despair and are in a consumption for fear they shall never get out. Away, away, my lord. [Exit Brachiano as Camillo enters. See here he comes. This fellow by his apparel Some men would judge a politician; But call his wit in question, you shall find it Merely an ass in 's foot-cloth. How now, brother? What, travelling to bed with your kind wife? Cam. I assure you, brother, no. My voyage lies More northerly, in a far colder clime. I do not well remember, I protest, When I last lay with her. Flam. Strange you should lose your count. Cam. We never lay together, but ere morning There grew a flaw between us. Flam. 'T had been your part To have made up that flaw. Cam. True, but she loathes I should be seen in 't. Flam. Why, sir, what 's the matter? Cam. The duke your master visits me, I thank him; And I perceive how, like an earnest bowler, He very passionately leans that way he should have his bowl run. Flam. I hope you do not think---- Cam. That nobleman bowl booty? faith, his cheek Hath a most excellent bias: it would fain Jump with my mistress. Flam. Will you be an ass, Despite your Aristotle? or a cuckold, Contrary to your Ephemerides, Which shows you under what a smiling planet You were first swaddled? Cam. Pew wew, sir; tell me not Of planets nor of Ephemerides. A man may be made cuckold in the day-time, When the stars' eyes are out. Flam. Sir, good-bye you; I do commit you to your pitiful pillow Stuffed with horn-shavings. Cam. Brother! Flam. God refuse me. Might I advise you now, your only course Were to lock up your wife. Cam. 'Twere very good. Flam. Bar her the sight of revels. Cam. Excellent. Flam. Let her not go to church, but, like a hound In leon, at your heels. Cam. 'Twere for her honour. Flam. And so you should be certain in one fortnight, Despite her chastity or innocence, To be cuckolded, which yet is in suspense: This is my counsel, and I ask no fee for 't. Cam. Come, you know not where my nightcap wrings me. Flam. Wear it a' th' old fashion; let your large ears come through, it will be more easy--nay, I will be bitter--bar your wife of her entertainment: women are more willingly and more gloriously chaste, when they are least restrained of their liberty. It seems you would be a fine capricious, mathematically jealous coxcomb; take the height of your own horns with a Jacob's staff, afore they are up. These politic enclosures for paltry mutton, makes more rebellion in the flesh, than all the provocative electuaries doctors have uttered since last jubilee. Cam. This doth not physic me---- Flam. It seems you are jealous: I 'll show you the error of it by a familiar example: I have seen a pair of spectacles fashioned with such perspective art, that lay down but one twelve pence a' th' board, 'twill appear as if there were twenty; now should you wear a pair of these spectacles, and see your wife tying her shoe, you would imagine twenty hands were taking up of your wife's clothes, and this would put you into a horrible causeless fury. Cam. The fault there, sir, is not in the eyesight. Flam. True, but they that have the yellow jaundice think all objects they look on to be yellow. Jealousy is worse; her fits present to a man, like so many bubbles in a basin of water, twenty several crabbed faces, many times makes his own shadow his cuckold-maker. [Enter Vittoria Corombona.] See, she comes; what reason have you to be jealous of this creature? what an ignorant ass or flattering knave might be counted, that should write sonnets to her eyes, or call her brow the snow of Ida, or ivory of Corinth; or compare her hair to the blackbird's bill, when 'tis liker the blackbird's feather? This is all. Be wise; I will make you friends, and you shall go to bed together. Marry, look you, it shall not be your seeking. Do you stand upon that, by any means: walk you aloof; I would not have you seen in 't.--Sister [my lord attend you in the banqueting-house,] your husband is wondrous discontented. Vit. I did nothing to displease him; I carved to him at supper-time. Flam. [You need not have carved him, in faith; they say he is a capon already. I must now seemingly fall out with you.] Shall a gentleman so well descended as Camillo [a lousy slave, that within this twenty years rode with the black guard in the duke's carriage, 'mongst spits and dripping-pans!]-- Cam. Now he begins to tickle her. Flam. An excellent scholar [one that hath a head fill'd with calves' brains without any sage in them,] come crouching in the hams to you for a night's lodging? [that hath an itch in 's hams, which like the fire at the glass-house hath not gone out this seven years] Is he not a courtly gentleman? [when he wears white satin, one would take him by his black muzzle to be no other creature than a maggot] You are a goodly foil, I confess, well set out [but cover'd with a false stone-- yon counterfeit diamond]. Cam. He will make her know what is in me. Flam. Come, my lord attends you; thou shalt go to bed to my lord. Cam. Now he comes to 't. Flam. [With a relish as curious as a vintner going to taste new wine.] [To Camillo.] I am opening your case hard. Cam. A virtuous brother, o' my credit! Flam. He will give thee a ring with a philosopher's stone in it. Cam. Indeed, I am studying alchemy. Flam. Thou shalt lie in a bed stuffed with turtle's feathers; swoon in perfumed linen, like the fellow was smothered in roses. So perfect shall be thy happiness, that as men at sea think land, and trees, and ships, go that way they go; so both heaven and earth shall seem to go your voyage. Shalt meet him; 'tis fix'd, with nails of diamonds to inevitable necessity. Vit. How shalt rid him hence? Flam. [I will put brize in 's tail, set him gadding presently.] I have almost wrought her to it; I find her coming: but, might I advise you now, for this night I would not lie with her, I would cross her humour to make her more humble. Cam. Shall I, shall I? Flam. It will show in you a supremacy of judgment. Cam. True, and a mind differing from the tumultuary opinion; for, quae negata, grata. Flam. Right: you are the adamant shall draw her to you, though you keep distance off. Cam. A philosophical reason. Flam. Walk by her a' th' nobleman's fashion, and tell her you will lie with her at the end of the progress. Cam. Vittoria, I cannot be induc'd, or as a man would say, incited---- Vit. To do what, sir? Cam. To lie with you to-night. Your silkworm used to fast every third day, and the next following spins the better. To-morrow at night, I am for you. Vit. You 'll spin a fair thread, trust to 't. Flam. But do you hear, I shall have you steal to her chamber about midnight. Cam. Do you think so? why look you, brother, because you shall not say I 'll gull you, take the key, lock me into the chamber, and say you shall be sure of me. Flam. In troth I will; I 'll be your jailor once. Cam. A pox on 't, as I am a Christian! tell me to-morrow how scurvily she takes my unkind parting. Flam. I will. Cam. Didst thou not mark the jest of the silkworm? Good-night; in faith, I will use this trick often. Flam. Do, do, do. [Exit Camillo. So, now you are safe. Ha, ha, ha, thou entanglest thyself in thine own work like a silkworm. [Enter Brachiano.] Come, sister, darkness hides your blush. Women are like cursed dogs: civility keeps them tied all daytime, but they are let loose at midnight; then they do most good, or most mischief. My lord, my lord! Zanche brings out a carpet, spreads it, and lays on it two fair cushions. Enter Cornelia listening, but unperceived. Brach. Give credit: I could wish time would stand still, And never end this interview, this hour; But all delight doth itself soon'st devour. Let me into your bosom, happy lady, Pour out, instead of eloquence, my vows. Loose me not, madam, for if you forgo me, I am lost eternally. Vit. Sir, in the way of pity, I wish you heart-whole. Brach. You are a sweet physician. Vit. Sure, sir, a loathed cruelty in ladies Is as to doctors many funerals: It takes away their credit. Brach. Excellent creature! We call the cruel fair; what name for you That are so merciful? Zan. See now they close. Flam. Most happy union. Corn. [Aside.] My fears are fall'n upon me: oh, my heart! My son the pander! now I find our house Sinking to ruin. Earthquakes leave behind, Where they have tyranniz'd, iron, or lead, or stone; But woe to ruin, violent lust leaves none. Brach. What value is this jewel? Vit. 'Tis the ornament of a weak fortune. Brach. In sooth, I 'll have it; nay, I will but change My jewel for your jewel. Flam. Excellent; His jewel for her jewel: well put in, duke. Brach. Nay, let me see you wear it. Vit. Here, sir? Brach. Nay, lower, you shall wear my jewel lower. Flam. That 's better: she must wear his jewel lower. Vit. To pass away the time, I 'll tell your grace A dream I had last night. Brach. Most wishedly. Vit. A foolish idle dream: Methought I walked about the mid of night Into a churchyard, where a goodly yew-tree Spread her large root in ground: under that yew, As I sat sadly leaning on a grave, Chequer'd with cross-sticks, there came stealing in Your duchess and my husband; one of them A pickaxe bore, th' other a rusty spade, And in rough terms they 'gan to challenge me About this yew. Brach. That tree? Vit. This harmless yew; They told me my intent was to root up That well-grown yew, and plant i' the stead of it A wither'd blackthorn; and for that they vow'd To bury me alive. My husband straight With pickaxe 'gan to dig, and your fell duchess With shovel, like a fury, voided out The earth and scatter'd bones: Lord, how methought I could not pray. Flam. No; the devil was in your dream. Vit. When to my rescue there arose, methought, A whirlwind, which let fall a massy arm From that strong plant; And both were struck dead by that sacred yew, In that base shallow grave that was their due. Flam. Excellent devil! She hath taught him in a dream To make away his duchess and her husband. Brach. Sweetly shall I interpret this your dream. You are lodg'd within his arms who shall protect you From all the fevers of a jealous husband, From the poor envy of our phlegmatic duchess. I 'll seat you above law, and above scandal; Give to your thoughts the invention of delight, And the fruition; nor shall government Divide me from you longer, than a care To keep you great: you shall to me at once Be dukedom, health, wife, children, friends, and all. Corn. [Advancing.] Woe to light hearts, they still forerun our fall! Flam. What fury raised thee up? away, away. [Exit Zanche. Corn. What make you here, my lord, this dead of night? Never dropp'd mildew on a flower here till now. Flam. I pray, will you go to bed then, Lest you be blasted? Corn. O that this fair garden Had with all poison'd herbs of Thessaly At first been planted; made a nursery For witchcraft, rather than a burial plot For both your honours! Vit. Dearest mother, hear me. Corn. O, thou dost make my brow bend to the earth. Sooner than nature! See the curse of children! In life they keep us frequently in tears; And in the cold grave leave us in pale fears. Brach. Come, come, I will not hear you. Vit. Dear my lord. Corn. Where is thy duchess now, adulterous duke? Thou little dream'st this night she 's come to Rome. Flam. How! come to Rome! Vit. The duchess! Brach. She had been better---- Corn. The lives of princes should like dials move, Whose regular example is so strong, They make the times by them go right, or wrong. Flam. So, have you done? Corn. Unfortunate Camillo! Vit. I do protest, if any chaste denial, If anything but blood could have allay'd His long suit to me---- Corn. I will join with thee, To the most woeful end e'er mother kneel'd: If thou dishonour thus thy husband's bed, Be thy life short as are the funeral tears In great men's---- Brach. Fie, fie, the woman's mad. Corn. Be thy act Judas-like; betray in kissing: May'st thou be envied during his short breath, And pitied like a wretch after his death! Vit. O me accurs'd! [Exit. Flam. Are you out of your wits? my lord, I 'll fetch her back again. Brach. No, I 'll to bed: Send Doctor Julio to me presently. Uncharitable woman! thy rash tongue Hath rais'd a fearful and prodigious storm: Be thou the cause of all ensuing harm. [Exit. Flam. Now, you that stand so much upon your honour, Is this a fitting time a' night, think you, To send a duke home without e'er a man? I would fain know where lies the mass of wealth Which you have hoarded for my maintenance, That I may bear my bear out of the level Of my lord's stirrup. Corn. What! because we are poor Shall we be vicious? Flam. Pray, what means have you To keep me from the galleys, or the gallows? My father prov'd himself a gentleman, Sold all 's land, and, like a fortunate fellow, Died ere the money was spent. You brought me up At Padua, I confess, where I protest, For want of means--the University judge me-- I have been fain to heel my tutor's stockings, At least seven years; conspiring with a beard, Made me a graduate; then to this duke's service, I visited the court, whence I return'd More courteous, more lecherous by far, But not a suit the richer. And shall I, Having a path so open, and so free To my preferment, still retain your milk In my pale forehead? No, this face of mine I 'll arm, and fortify with lusty wine, 'Gainst shame and blushing. Corn. O that I ne'er had borne thee! Flam. So would I; I would the common'st courtesan in Rome Had been my mother, rather than thyself. Nature is very pitiful to whores, To give them but few children, yet those children Plurality of fathers; they are sure They shall not want. Go, go, Complain unto my great lord cardinal; It may be he will justify the act. Lycurgus wonder'd much, men would provide Good stallions for their mares, and yet would suffer Their fair wives to be barren. Corn. Misery of miseries! [Exit. Flam. The duchess come to court! I like not that. We are engag'd to mischief, and must on; As rivers to find out the ocean Flow with crook bendings beneath forced banks, Or as we see, to aspire some mountain's top, The way ascends not straight, but imitates The subtle foldings of a winter's snake, So who knows policy and her true aspect, Shall find her ways winding and indirect.

Act 1

https://web.archive.org/web/20180409073731/http://www.gradesaver.com/the-white-devil/study-guide/summary-act-1

The play opens in Rome. Three men enter: Count Lodovico, and his two friends Antonelli and Gasparo. Antonelli and Gasparo tell Lodovico that he has been banished from Italy for his crimes, and explain that his noblemen friends now laugh at his misery, considering him like a worthless meteor pulled from the earth - an evil omen. Gasparo reveals that Lodovico has been banished because he has murdered several people in Rome. When Lodovico asks why the court will not simply execute him, Gasparo explains that the court wants to prevent further bloodshed and give Lodovico a chance at penance. Lodovico complains that other wicked men are spared banishment. He offers as example the Duke of Brachiano, who is secretly trying to seduce Vittoria Corombona. Antonelli tries to soothe Lodovico, but Lodovico instead threatens to cut his enemies into shreds. Lodovico finally accepts his fate and decides to leave. Before he goes, he gives Gasparo and Antonelli money with which to try and repeal his banishment. Scene 2 Brachiano, Camillo, Flamineo, Vittoria, and several unidentified gentlemen, holding torches, enter. Vittoria welcomes Brachiano to Rome, and then leaves with Camillo, her husband. Flamineo, her brother, whispers to Brachiano that she will meet with him in private, and then tells the men with torches to leave. Now that they are alone, Flamineo can speak to Brachiano freely. He explains that Vittoria is enamored of Brachiano, and that her servant, Zanche the Moor, will help facilitate an affair. He also criticizes feminine coyness, accusing women of manipulating men's desire for their own gain. When Brachiano inquires about the obstacle of Camillo, Flamineo quickly dismisses him, claiming Camillo has grown dispassionate and impotent because of syphilis. Hearing Camillo returning, Flamineo tells Brachiano to hide in the closet so that Flamineo can trick Camillo. Under his breath, Flamineo mocks Camillo's rich clothing and poor wit as the latter enters. Flamineo asks Camillo if he is going to Vittoria's bed, and Camillo admits that he cannot remember the last time he slept with Vittoria. Flamineo laments that Camillo has lost his "count," punning on the similarity of the word to "cunt." Camillo then admits his suspicion over Brachiano's motives. He compares Brachiano's visit to a game of bowls, subtly accusing Brachiano of "bowl booty," or of conspiring with another player against a third in order to get a desired object . Flamineo dismisses Camillo's fears, insisting Camillo is both wise and born under lucky stars, but Camillo counters, claiming that the stars have nothing to do with being cuckolded. Flamineo sarcastically advises him to lock Vittoria up for a fortnight, to ensure he will not be cuckolded. When Camillo pleads for serious advice, Flamineo suggests that women are most chaste when they have the most liberty. He claims Camillo's jealousy is coloring his vision, making him see threats where there are none. Vittoria enters, and Flamineo tells Camillo to watch from a distance as he convinces his sister to sleep with Camillo. Flamineo pulls Vittoria aside, where he privately tells her that Camillo is upset. She insists she was respectful to him at dinner - she "carved" to him, in her language. He puns in response, saying she didn't need to "carve" him, since he already has the reputation of being a eunuch. He then loudly compliments Camillo, so that the latter can hear, and Camillo remarks to himself that Flamineo will now arouse Vittoria. However, Flamineo privately undermines his compliments in conversation with Vittoria, even as he continues to speak them aloud. Aloud so that Camillo can hear, Flamineo tells Vittoria that she will go to bed with "his lord," who will give her a ring adorned with a philosopher's stone as they lie in a bed stuffed with turtle dove feathers. Camillo believes "lord" refers to him, wheras Flamineo is subtly suggesting Brachiano to his sister. She quietly asks Flamineo how they will get rid of Camillo, and Flamineo then speaks to Camillo, suggesting she is almost ready, but that he should deny her this night so as to increase her desire for the next night. Camillo thanks Flamineo for his wise advice, and tells Vittoria that he will not sleep with her that night. Flamineo asks how he can ensure Camillo will not renege on his commitment to wait, and Camillo offers to be locked in his room for assurance. He then leaves, happy with the way things have gone. As Camillo leaves, Brachiano enters from the shadows where he was hiding, and begins wooing Vittoria with courtly vows. At the same time, Zanche brings out a carpet and two pillows to set up a bed for their affair. Cornelia, Vittoria and Flamineo's mother, enters and hears the planning. She laments to herself how her family is sinking into ruin, predicting that this affair will ruin them all. Brachiano gives Vittoria a jewel for her "jewel," punning on the female sexual organ, and tells her to wear it at the base of her dress bodice. Vittoria then tells him of her most recent dream. She was sitting under a yew tree when Brachiano's wife and Camillo confronted her, accusing her of trying to uproot the yew. They decided to bury her alive and began to dig a grave for her, when the yew tree killed them with one of its branches. Flamineo whispers to himself that the smart and devilish Vittoria has subtly insisted that Brachiano kill his wife and Camillo. Brachiano promises to protect Vittoria from their spouses, and to devote himself to her entirely. Cornelia enters from the shadows as Flamineo chases Zanche away. She lectures Vittoria and Brachiano on the sinfulness of their illicit relationship, and Vittoria pleads with her mother to understand. Cornelia reveals that Brachiano's sick wife is returning to Rome, and Vittoria protests that she could only have resisted Brachiano's love at the cost of bloodshed. Together, Cornelia and Vittoria kneel for forgiveness, and Vittoria flees from shame. Flamineo insists to Brachiano that he can bring her back, but Brachiano is upset, and tells Cornelia that she has stirred up a storm. He then leaves. Flamineo accuses Cornelia of betrayal, insisting this was the only way he knew to increase his and the family's financial and social position. Cornelia regrets having given birth to him, and he counters that he would rather have been born to a prostitute in Rome. Cornelia leaves upset, and Flamineo resolves to continue with his mischief, using deception and indirect methods if necessary.

As a revenge tragedy, John Webster's The White Devil promises its audience imminent violence, bloodshed, and betrayal. It delivers on all counts. Few characters in the work are marked by goodness or purity, and the perspective on humanity is rather bleak and pessimistic. However, to Webster's credit, he also mostly avoids a simplistic understanding of evil, by giving his villains motives that are as much symptoms of society as of original sin. Significantly, Webster chooses to open his play with the scene of Lodovico's banishment. Lodovico is a side character compared to Brachiano, Vittoria, or Flamineo, yet he both opens and closes the play. Arguably, this is because his story so perfectly encapsulates the play's conflict between powerful social forces and the anarchic individual. Lodovico is a dangerous man without any regard for law and order, and he is banished precisely because he openly refuses to bow before the laws of the land. The Roman rulers have decided that Lodovico is too unstable and violent to live within their society, and so wish him gone. Similarly, the same social forces will reject Vittoria for her unruly sexuality, and Brachiano for his unbridled lust. These social forces, however, are not to be trusted as inexorably just. In fact, Flamineo wishes not to flaunt these forces but rather to be embraced by them, and through Flamineo's social-climbing, Webster makes an implicit attack on the forces of money and power than define society. Like Lodovico, Flamineo is a desperate and dangerous man who will balk at nothing to get what he wants, including prostituting his sister and killing his own brother, but he does so surreptitiously. He wishes respect and acceptance, whereas Lodovico is willing to forgo those. One distinction is that Flamineo is born poor, and hence has to rely on his wit to balance the score with his social 'betters.' His use of wit, puns, and double-entendres touches on the discrepancy between what appears and what truly is, a crucial motif in the play. One instance of Flamineo's wit comes when Camillo remarks that he cannot remember that last time that he and Vittoria slept together, and Flamineo responds, "Strange you should lose your count." Flamineo is superficially referring to Camillo's count of the days since his last union with Vittoria, but he also is referring to female genitals, punning on the pronunciation of the word "count." This distinction between what appears and what is, extends from Flamineo's verbal acrobatics to the moral natures of many of the play's characters. Flamineo is a low-born man but will use subterfuge to gain prestige even as he does not admit his goal to anyone but his mother. However, class inequality is not the only factor that creates a hierarchy forcing people to use subterfuge for their gain. Women, too, are rather powerless unless they use manipulation. Flamineo indicates as much in his first conversation with Brachiano, but the latter is nevertheless easily fooled when Vittoria plants the idea of murder by relating her dream. In the dream , she subtly compares Brachiano to the yew tree, which has several psychological implications. The first is a compliment to his ego - the tree is large, a foundation, a powerful institution that dwarfs the people under it. However, the language is also effective, as "yew" is a homophone of "you," which leads Brachiano to associate himself with the tree. Its final rhetorical effect relies on the symbolic connection between a yew tree and death, a common motif in revenge tragedy. While Vittoria never explicitly admits that she uses the dream as tactic, the play's general perspective on humanity, and her later admission that a woman's only weapon is her words, suggest that she is compensating for her lack of power through a trickery similar to that of her brother. What she presents is not what she truly is, which conforms to one of the play's most pervasive themes. A woman's position in the world is also explored through the fear of cuckoldry that Camillo expresses in his discussion with Flamineo. A cuckold is a husband whose wife has been unfaithful to him. The word stems from the cuckoo bird, who is known to change mates frequently and lay its eggs in other nests. The many references to a cuckold's horns refer to the mating practice of stags, where defeated male stags lose their horns. As the husband of the unfaithful Vittoria, Camillo is a classic cuckold. Traditionally, there were fewer worse insults that a man could suffer, whereas male infidelity was nowhere near as grievous. The extremity of the fear serves as reminder that a wife was considered as much possession as partner, and hence was limited in her agency. Flamineo manipulates this excessive fear. While Vittoria keeps Camillo sexually impotent by refusing to copulate with him, Flamineo emasculates him verbally by subtly insulting him over and over again. Cornelia's entrance at the end of Scene Two evokes a symbolic morality play. Morality plays, popular in the medieval period, usually detailed one individual's path as he fell from innocence into sin, repented, and was ultimately saved. The plays personified concepts like virtues and sins in order to make them more understandable. In the case of The White Devil, Brachiano and Vittoria's love-bed would likely be placed at the center of the stage, with Flamineo and Zanche representing Vice on one side, and Cornelia representing Virtue on the other. The contrast between the two groups vividly and visually depicts the two possibilities for the lovers. Invoking these morality plays makes the play's narrative arc easier to understand, and it prepares the audience for the imminent drama. Of course, Webster's morality is far more ambiguous, and he ends his Act with Flamineo to remind us that evil comes not from simple choice, but rather from complicated social desires. Flamineo is not interested in a moral choice, but in a physical gain, in achieving a social position to which he feels entitled. It is unlikely that many characters will choose the side of Virtue that Cornelia represents, and the audience can feel this even at the end of Act I.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1130-chapters/21.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra/section_20_part_0.txt

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

act iii, scene ix

{"name": "Act III, Scene ix", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210116191009/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/antony-cleopatra/summary/act-iii-scene-ix", "summary": "Antony speaks to Enobarbus--the plan is to set up on one side of the hill, so they can observe how strong Caesar's fleet is, and then plan accordingly.", "analysis": ""}

SCENE IX. Another part of the plain Enter ANTONY and ENOBARBUS ANTONY. Set we our squadrons on yon side o' th' hill, In eye of Caesar's battle; from which place We may the number of the ships behold, And so proceed accordingly. Exeunt ACT_3|SC_10

Act III, Scene ix

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

Antony speaks to Enobarbus--the plan is to set up on one side of the hill, so they can observe how strong Caesar's fleet is, and then plan accordingly.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/12915-chapters/1.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The White Devil/section_0_part_0.txt

The White Devil.act 1.scene 1

act 1, scene 1

{"name": "Act 1, Scene 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210510044810/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/the-white-devil/summary/act-1-scene-1", "summary": "Count Lodovico--a notorious crook, murderer, and all around bad dude--has just been banished from Rome. Speaking with his cronies, Antonelli and Gasparo, he attacks Fortune for being a \"whore,\" saying she ripped him off by taking back the goodies she had given him. Gasparo and Antonelli point out how corrupt he's been. They list some of his sins and how his followers have been wrecked by his lifestyle--worse, he's committed bloody murders in Rome. Although true, this also seems to partly be joking around--they're all aware of how bad they are, and Lodovico doesn't take these comments to seriously. Gasparo suggests penance. Lodovico says that's not a bad idea--but what about guys like the Duke of Brachiano, Paulo Giordano Orsini, who avoid banishment, while still doing bad things? Like, Brachiano is trying to commit adultery with Vittoria Corombona, another man's wife. Antonelli says that trees that are planted elsewhere sometimes give off pleasant scents--meaning Lodovico might thrive in banishment. But Lodovico says he'll disembowel the people who banished him if he ever comes back. Antonelli and Gasparo expect they'll have luck in trying to repeal the banishment. Lodovico wishes them well, and reminds them that \"great men\" treat their underlings the same way farmers treat sheep: they cut them in pieces after selling their fleeces.", "analysis": ""}

ACT I SCENE I Enter Count Lodovico, Antonelli, and Gasparo Lodo. Banish'd! Ant. It griev'd me much to hear the sentence. Lodo. Ha, ha, O Democritus, thy gods That govern the whole world! courtly reward And punishment. Fortune 's a right whore: If she give aught, she deals it in small parcels, That she may take away all at one swoop. This 'tis to have great enemies! God 'quite them. Your wolf no longer seems to be a wolf Than when she 's hungry. Gas. You term those enemies, Are men of princely rank. Lodo. Oh, I pray for them: The violent thunder is adored by those Are pasht in pieces by it. Ant. Come, my lord, You are justly doom'd; look but a little back Into your former life: you have in three years Ruin'd the noblest earldom. Gas. Your followers Have swallowed you, like mummia, and being sick With such unnatural and horrid physic, Vomit you up i' th' kennel. Ant. All the damnable degrees Of drinking have you stagger'd through. One citizen, Is lord of two fair manors, call'd you master, Only for caviare. Gas. Those noblemen Which were invited to your prodigal feasts, (Wherein the phoenix scarce could 'scape your throats) Laugh at your misery, as fore-deeming you An idle meteor, which drawn forth, the earth Would be soon lost i' the air. Ant. Jest upon you, And say you were begotten in an earthquake, You have ruin'd such fair lordships. Lodo. Very good. This well goes with two buckets: I must tend The pouring out of either. Gas. Worse than these. You have acted certain murders here in Rome, Bloody and full of horror. Lodo. 'Las, they were flea-bitings: Why took they not my head then? Gas. O, my lord! The law doth sometimes mediate, thinks it good Not ever to steep violent sins in blood: This gentle penance may both end your crimes, And in the example better these bad times. Lodo. So; but I wonder then some great men 'scape This banishment: there 's Paulo Giordano Ursini, The Duke of Brachiano, now lives in Rome, And by close panderism seeks to prostitute The honour of Vittoria Corombona: Vittoria, she that might have got my pardon For one kiss to the duke. Ant. Have a full man within you: We see that trees bear no such pleasant fruit There where they grew first, as where they are new set. Perfumes, the more they are chaf'd, the more they render Their pleasing scents, and so affliction Expresseth virtue fully, whether true, Or else adulterate. Lodo. Leave your painted comforts; I 'll make Italian cut-works in their guts If ever I return. Gas. Oh, sir. Lodo. I am patient. I have seen some ready to be executed, Give pleasant looks, and money, and grown familiar With the knave hangman; so do I; I thank them, And would account them nobly merciful, Would they dispatch me quickly. Ant. Fare you well; We shall find time, I doubt not, to repeal Your banishment. Lodo. I am ever bound to you. This is the world's alms; pray make use of it. Great men sell sheep, thus to be cut in pieces, When first they have shorn them bare, and sold their fleeces. [Exeunt

Act 1, Scene 1

https://web.archive.org/web/20210510044810/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/the-white-devil/summary/act-1-scene-1

Count Lodovico--a notorious crook, murderer, and all around bad dude--has just been banished from Rome. Speaking with his cronies, Antonelli and Gasparo, he attacks Fortune for being a "whore," saying she ripped him off by taking back the goodies she had given him. Gasparo and Antonelli point out how corrupt he's been. They list some of his sins and how his followers have been wrecked by his lifestyle--worse, he's committed bloody murders in Rome. Although true, this also seems to partly be joking around--they're all aware of how bad they are, and Lodovico doesn't take these comments to seriously. Gasparo suggests penance. Lodovico says that's not a bad idea--but what about guys like the Duke of Brachiano, Paulo Giordano Orsini, who avoid banishment, while still doing bad things? Like, Brachiano is trying to commit adultery with Vittoria Corombona, another man's wife. Antonelli says that trees that are planted elsewhere sometimes give off pleasant scents--meaning Lodovico might thrive in banishment. But Lodovico says he'll disembowel the people who banished him if he ever comes back. Antonelli and Gasparo expect they'll have luck in trying to repeal the banishment. Lodovico wishes them well, and reminds them that "great men" treat their underlings the same way farmers treat sheep: they cut them in pieces after selling their fleeces.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/174-chapters/chapters_19_to_20.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/The Picture of Dorian Gray/section_17_part_0.txt

The Picture of Dorian Gray.chapters 19-20

chapters 19-20

{"name": "Chapters 19-20", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219150422/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/p/the-picture-of-dorian-gray/summary-and-analysis/chapters-1920", "summary": "Approximately six months have passed. As Chapter 19 opens, Dorian and Lord Henry apparently have just dined at the older man's home. Despite recently having gone through a divorce, Lord Henry is his usual witty self. Dorian seems more pensive, even grave. They are discussing Dorian's vow to change his behavior. Lord Henry says that Dorian is perfectly fine as he is. Dorian, however, says that he has done \"too many dreadful things\" in his life. He wants to reform. In fact, he began the previous day. He was staying alone at a small inn in the country and was seeing a young girl named Hetty Merton. She reminded him of Sibyl Vane in her beauty and innocence. A simple village girl, Dorian is fairly sure that he loved her. They were to run off together that morning at dawn, but he spared the child by leaving her \"as flowerlike as I had found her.\" Lord Henry brings up the disappearance of Basil; he also mentions his own divorce and Alan Campbell's suicide. Lord Henry allows that only death and vulgarity cannot be explained. He asks Dorian to play the piano. Dorian plays for a while but stops and asks Lord Henry if he ever thought that Basil might have been murdered. Lord Henry dismisses the idea with a quip. When Dorian asks what Lord Henry would say if Dorian claimed to be the murderer, Lord Henry states that the crime does not suit Dorian; it is too vulgar. Lord Henry then asks about Basil's portrait of Dorian. Dorian confirms that it was lost or stolen, but he never cared much for it anyway. Lord Henry tells of walking through the park the previous Sunday and observing a group of people listening to a preacher who asked, \"What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?\" Lord Henry found this \"uncouth Christian\" to be \"curious\" and \"hysterical.\" Dorian, however, is not amused. Lord Henry has no interest in a serious discussion and indirectly asks Dorian to reveal the secret of his youth. To retrieve his youth, says the older man, \"I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.\" He wishes he could change places with Dorian, and he is pleased that the younger man has never actually \"done anything.\" Dorian's life has been his art. For once, Dorian is in no mood for flattery and says he wishes to retire early. The subject of the \"yellow book\" occurs to Dorian, and he asks Lord Henry never to lend the destructive volume to anyone else. They agree to meet the next morning. Back home, Dorian wonders if he will ever really change. He reflects on Basil's death and Alan Campbell's suicide, but what really bothers him is the death of his own soul. He rationalizes that Basil painted the damaging portrait and said \"unbearable\" things to Dorian. Alan Campbell's suicide was the man's own doing, not Dorian's. They are nothing to him. His own life is his only concern. Wondering if the portrait has changed since his virtuous behavior toward Hetty Merton, he creeps upstairs to see. In the attic room, Dorian lifts the cloth off the portrait. If anything, the picture looks even more evil. Around the eyes there is \"a look of cunning and in the mouth the curved wrinkle of the hypocrite.\" Blood has spread over the fingers, onto the feet, even to the other hand. Dorian shudders. He wonders if he should confess Basil's murder but dismisses the idea. The portrait itself is the only evidence against him. He no longer enjoys its record of his debauchery. He worries that it will be discovered and decides to destroy it. The knife he used to murder Basil is still in the room. Using it to \"kill the past,\" he grabs the knife and stabs the portrait. The servants are awakened by a horrible scream and a crash. Two passersby outside are so alarmed that they summon a policeman. No one inside Dorian's house responds when the officer rings at the door. After fifteen minutes or so, Francis ascends the staircase with two other servants. No one answers their knock on the attic door, and they cannot force it open. They climb to the roof, drop to the balcony, open a window, and go into the attic. There, they find an old and ugly man lying in front of their master's portrait. In the portrait, Dorian appears as beautiful and young as he had the day before.", "analysis": "In the Faust legend, the main character ultimately confronts the loss of his soul but is incapable of seeking redemption through confession and absolution. He despairs and feels that he is beneath pardon or that there is no God or power strong enough to save him. In this sense, the Faust protagonist still suffers the sin of pride in that he sees his own case as so special that it is beyond God's help. Despair is the one unpardonable sin because the sinner is incapable of asking to be pardoned. Traditionally, despair is symbolized by suicide. In the closing chapters of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorian's behavior and attitude are consistent with this Faust tradition. Dorian has matured from the naive, vain youth in Basil's studio. He has grown into a man who was at first despicable but in the end is almost likable. Perhaps he is more pitiable than likable. However, he cannot find salvation because he is incapable of setting aside his pride, confessing, and asking for absolution. In Chapter 19, as the after-dinner scene opens at Lord Henry's, Dorian is bursting with pride because of a recent act of decency. He has returned Hetty Merton to her country life after winning her devotion. Unfortunately, instead of seeing this act as only one small step, Dorian expects instant reward. When he checks the portrait for some sign of his newfound virtue, he finds only a look of cunning about the eyes and a wrinkle of hypocrisy in the mouth. There seems to be fresh blood on the hands. Instead of redeeming his soul, his act of supposed redemption has tarnished his soul even more because the act was motivated by selfishness. Dorian cannot redeem his soul because he is still primarily interested in himself. He dismisses the deaths of Basil and Alan Campbell. The first, he decides, was inevitable; the second made his own choice. In neither case does Dorian accept his own responsibility. Still, he is torn because he realizes that the \"soul is a terrible reality.\" He thinks that a person should pray for punishment, but he fails to understand that the only way of absolving immoral responsibility is to pray for forgiveness. In the novel's powerful final paragraphs, Dorian, in effect, commits suicide. He despises the figure in the portrait, but that is who he has become. When he slashes at the painting with the knife, appropriately the same knife that killed Basil, Dorian kills himself. The horrible cry, which awakens the servants and startles the men on the street, carries with it the agony of eighteen years of horror. Glossary idyll a scene or event of rural simplicity. Perdita and Florizel lovers in William Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. Ophelia a leading character in William Shakespeare's Hamlet; she dies by drowning, although Shakespeare leaves unclear if her drowning is a suicide or an accident. Scotland Yard headquarters of the London Metropolitan Police, housed at New Scotland Yard on the Thames embankment. Burgundy a wine, usually red, produced in the Burgundy region of southeastern France. vinaigrette French, from Old French vinaigre, \"vinegar\"; a small, often decorated container used for aromatic restoratives, such as smelling salts or vinegar solutions. Chopin Frederic Francois Chopin , Polish pianist and composer of works for piano and orchestra; resident of France from 1829 until his death. Velasquez Diego Rodriquez de Silva y Velasquez , Spanish painter. Seine the river that runs through Paris. Like the painting of a sorrow, / A face without a heart from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 7, 108-09. Jav an island of Indonesia. scurf scaly or shredded dry skin. nocturne a musical composition intended to evoke thoughts or feelings of night. Majorca largest of Spain's Balearic Islands, in the Mediterranean Sea, about 120 miles southeast of Barcelona. Apollo in Greek mythology, the god of the sun, music, and poetry; a young man of great physical beauty. Marsyas in Greek mythology, he lost a music contest and his life to Apollo. palate the roof of the mouth. lilas blanc French, meaning \"white lilac.\" iniquities sins. idolatrous excessively adoring. visage facial expression; appearance."}

"There is no use your telling me that you are going to be good," cried Lord Henry, dipping his white fingers into a red copper bowl filled with rose-water. "You are quite perfect. Pray, don't change." Dorian Gray shook his head. "No, Harry, I have done too many dreadful things in my life. I am not going to do any more. I began my good actions yesterday." "Where were you yesterday?" "In the country, Harry. I was staying at a little inn by myself." "My dear boy," said Lord Henry, smiling, "anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there. That is the reason why people who live out of town are so absolutely uncivilized. Civilization is not by any means an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which man can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt. Country people have no opportunity of being either, so they stagnate." "Culture and corruption," echoed Dorian. "I have known something of both. It seems terrible to me now that they should ever be found together. For I have a new ideal, Harry. I am going to alter. I think I have altered." "You have not yet told me what your good action was. Or did you say you had done more than one?" asked his companion as he spilled into his plate a little crimson pyramid of seeded strawberries and, through a perforated, shell-shaped spoon, snowed white sugar upon them. "I can tell you, Harry. It is not a story I could tell to any one else. I spared somebody. It sounds vain, but you understand what I mean. She was quite beautiful and wonderfully like Sibyl Vane. I think it was that which first attracted me to her. You remember Sibyl, don't you? How long ago that seems! Well, Hetty was not one of our own class, of course. She was simply a girl in a village. But I really loved her. I am quite sure that I loved her. All during this wonderful May that we have been having, I used to run down and see her two or three times a week. Yesterday she met me in a little orchard. The apple-blossoms kept tumbling down on her hair, and she was laughing. We were to have gone away together this morning at dawn. Suddenly I determined to leave her as flowerlike as I had found her." "I should think the novelty of the emotion must have given you a thrill of real pleasure, Dorian," interrupted Lord Henry. "But I can finish your idyll for you. You gave her good advice and broke her heart. That was the beginning of your reformation." "Harry, you are horrible! You mustn't say these dreadful things. Hetty's heart is not broken. Of course, she cried and all that. But there is no disgrace upon her. She can live, like Perdita, in her garden of mint and marigold." "And weep over a faithless Florizel," said Lord Henry, laughing, as he leaned back in his chair. "My dear Dorian, you have the most curiously boyish moods. Do you think this girl will ever be really content now with any one of her own rank? I suppose she will be married some day to a rough carter or a grinning ploughman. Well, the fact of having met you, and loved you, will teach her to despise her husband, and she will be wretched. From a moral point of view, I cannot say that I think much of your great renunciation. Even as a beginning, it is poor. Besides, how do you know that Hetty isn't floating at the present moment in some starlit mill-pond, with lovely water-lilies round her, like Ophelia?" "I can't bear this, Harry! You mock at everything, and then suggest the most serious tragedies. I am sorry I told you now. I don't care what you say to me. I know I was right in acting as I did. Poor Hetty! As I rode past the farm this morning, I saw her white face at the window, like a spray of jasmine. Don't let us talk about it any more, and don't try to persuade me that the first good action I have done for years, the first little bit of self-sacrifice I have ever known, is really a sort of sin. I want to be better. I am going to be better. Tell me something about yourself. What is going on in town? I have not been to the club for days." "The people are still discussing poor Basil's disappearance." "I should have thought they had got tired of that by this time," said Dorian, pouring himself out some wine and frowning slightly. "My dear boy, they have only been talking about it for six weeks, and the British public are really not equal to the mental strain of having more than one topic every three months. They have been very fortunate lately, however. They have had my own divorce-case and Alan Campbell's suicide. Now they have got the mysterious disappearance of an artist. Scotland Yard still insists that the man in the grey ulster who left for Paris by the midnight train on the ninth of November was poor Basil, and the French police declare that Basil never arrived in Paris at all. I suppose in about a fortnight we shall be told that he has been seen in San Francisco. It is an odd thing, but every one who disappears is said to be seen at San Francisco. It must be a delightful city, and possess all the attractions of the next world." "What do you think has happened to Basil?" asked Dorian, holding up his Burgundy against the light and wondering how it was that he could discuss the matter so calmly. "I have not the slightest idea. If Basil chooses to hide himself, it is no business of mine. If he is dead, I don't want to think about him. Death is the only thing that ever terrifies me. I hate it." "Why?" said the younger man wearily. "Because," said Lord Henry, passing beneath his nostrils the gilt trellis of an open vinaigrette box, "one can survive everything nowadays except that. Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away. Let us have our coffee in the music-room, Dorian. You must play Chopin to me. The man with whom my wife ran away played Chopin exquisitely. Poor Victoria! I was very fond of her. The house is rather lonely without her. Of course, married life is merely a habit, a bad habit. But then one regrets the loss even of one's worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part of one's personality." Dorian said nothing, but rose from the table, and passing into the next room, sat down to the piano and let his fingers stray across the white and black ivory of the keys. After the coffee had been brought in, he stopped, and looking over at Lord Henry, said, "Harry, did it ever occur to you that Basil was murdered?" Lord Henry yawned. "Basil was very popular, and always wore a Waterbury watch. Why should he have been murdered? He was not clever enough to have enemies. Of course, he had a wonderful genius for painting. But a man can paint like Velasquez and yet be as dull as possible. Basil was really rather dull. He only interested me once, and that was when he told me, years ago, that he had a wild adoration for you and that you were the dominant motive of his art." "I was very fond of Basil," said Dorian with a note of sadness in his voice. "But don't people say that he was murdered?" "Oh, some of the papers do. It does not seem to me to be at all probable. I know there are dreadful places in Paris, but Basil was not the sort of man to have gone to them. He had no curiosity. It was his chief defect." "What would you say, Harry, if I told you that I had murdered Basil?" said the younger man. He watched him intently after he had spoken. "I would say, my dear fellow, that you were posing for a character that doesn't suit you. All crime is vulgar, just as all vulgarity is crime. It is not in you, Dorian, to commit a murder. I am sorry if I hurt your vanity by saying so, but I assure you it is true. Crime belongs exclusively to the lower orders. I don't blame them in the smallest degree. I should fancy that crime was to them what art is to us, simply a method of procuring extraordinary sensations." "A method of procuring sensations? Do you think, then, that a man who has once committed a murder could possibly do the same crime again? Don't tell me that." "Oh! anything becomes a pleasure if one does it too often," cried Lord Henry, laughing. "That is one of the most important secrets of life. I should fancy, however, that murder is always a mistake. One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner. But let us pass from poor Basil. I wish I could believe that he had come to such a really romantic end as you suggest, but I can't. I dare say he fell into the Seine off an omnibus and that the conductor hushed up the scandal. Yes: I should fancy that was his end. I see him lying now on his back under those dull-green waters, with the heavy barges floating over him and long weeds catching in his hair. Do you know, I don't think he would have done much more good work. During the last ten years his painting had gone off very much." Dorian heaved a sigh, and Lord Henry strolled across the room and began to stroke the head of a curious Java parrot, a large, grey-plumaged bird with pink crest and tail, that was balancing itself upon a bamboo perch. As his pointed fingers touched it, it dropped the white scurf of crinkled lids over black, glasslike eyes and began to sway backwards and forwards. "Yes," he continued, turning round and taking his handkerchief out of his pocket; "his painting had quite gone off. It seemed to me to have lost something. It had lost an ideal. When you and he ceased to be great friends, he ceased to be a great artist. What was it separated you? I suppose he bored you. If so, he never forgave you. It's a habit bores have. By the way, what has become of that wonderful portrait he did of you? I don't think I have ever seen it since he finished it. Oh! I remember your telling me years ago that you had sent it down to Selby, and that it had got mislaid or stolen on the way. You never got it back? What a pity! it was really a masterpiece. I remember I wanted to buy it. I wish I had now. It belonged to Basil's best period. Since then, his work was that curious mixture of bad painting and good intentions that always entitles a man to be called a representative British artist. Did you advertise for it? You should." "I forget," said Dorian. "I suppose I did. But I never really liked it. I am sorry I sat for it. The memory of the thing is hateful to me. Why do you talk of it? It used to remind me of those curious lines in some play--Hamlet, I think--how do they run?-- "Like the painting of a sorrow, A face without a heart." Yes: that is what it was like." Lord Henry laughed. "If a man treats life artistically, his brain is his heart," he answered, sinking into an arm-chair. Dorian Gray shook his head and struck some soft chords on the piano. "'Like the painting of a sorrow,'" he repeated, "'a face without a heart.'" The elder man lay back and looked at him with half-closed eyes. "By the way, Dorian," he said after a pause, "'what does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose--how does the quotation run?--his own soul'?" The music jarred, and Dorian Gray started and stared at his friend. "Why do you ask me that, Harry?" "My dear fellow," said Lord Henry, elevating his eyebrows in surprise, "I asked you because I thought you might be able to give me an answer. That is all. I was going through the park last Sunday, and close by the Marble Arch there stood a little crowd of shabby-looking people listening to some vulgar street-preacher. As I passed by, I heard the man yelling out that question to his audience. It struck me as being rather dramatic. London is very rich in curious effects of that kind. A wet Sunday, an uncouth Christian in a mackintosh, a ring of sickly white faces under a broken roof of dripping umbrellas, and a wonderful phrase flung into the air by shrill hysterical lips--it was really very good in its way, quite a suggestion. I thought of telling the prophet that art had a soul, but that man had not. I am afraid, however, he would not have understood me." "Don't, Harry. The soul is a terrible reality. It can be bought, and sold, and bartered away. It can be poisoned, or made perfect. There is a soul in each one of us. I know it." "Do you feel quite sure of that, Dorian?" "Quite sure." "Ah! then it must be an illusion. The things one feels absolutely certain about are never true. That is the fatality of faith, and the lesson of romance. How grave you are! Don't be so serious. What have you or I to do with the superstitions of our age? No: we have given up our belief in the soul. Play me something. Play me a nocturne, Dorian, and, as you play, tell me, in a low voice, how you have kept your youth. You must have some secret. I am only ten years older than you are, and I am wrinkled, and worn, and yellow. You are really wonderful, Dorian. You have never looked more charming than you do to-night. You remind me of the day I saw you first. You were rather cheeky, very shy, and absolutely extraordinary. You have changed, of course, but not in appearance. I wish you would tell me your secret. To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable. Youth! There is nothing like it. It's absurd to talk of the ignorance of youth. The only people to whose opinions I listen now with any respect are people much younger than myself. They seem in front of me. Life has revealed to them her latest wonder. As for the aged, I always contradict the aged. I do it on principle. If you ask them their opinion on something that happened yesterday, they solemnly give you the opinions current in 1820, when people wore high stocks, believed in everything, and knew absolutely nothing. How lovely that thing you are playing is! I wonder, did Chopin write it at Majorca, with the sea weeping round the villa and the salt spray dashing against the panes? It is marvellously romantic. What a blessing it is that there is one art left to us that is not imitative! Don't stop. I want music to-night. It seems to me that you are the young Apollo and that I am Marsyas listening to you. I have sorrows, Dorian, of my own, that even you know nothing of. The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young. I am amazed sometimes at my own sincerity. Ah, Dorian, how happy you are! What an exquisite life you have had! You have drunk deeply of everything. You have crushed the grapes against your palate. Nothing has been hidden from you. And it has all been to you no more than the sound of music. It has not marred you. You are still the same." "I am not the same, Harry." "Yes, you are the same. I wonder what the rest of your life will be. Don't spoil it by renunciations. At present you are a perfect type. Don't make yourself incomplete. You are quite flawless now. You need not shake your head: you know you are. Besides, Dorian, don't deceive yourself. Life is not governed by will or intention. Life is a question of nerves, and fibres, and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides itself and passion has its dreams. You may fancy yourself safe and think yourself strong. But a chance tone of colour in a room or a morning sky, a particular perfume that you had once loved and that brings subtle memories with it, a line from a forgotten poem that you had come across again, a cadence from a piece of music that you had ceased to play--I tell you, Dorian, that it is on things like these that our lives depend. Browning writes about that somewhere; but our own senses will imagine them for us. There are moments when the odour of _lilas blanc_ passes suddenly across me, and I have to live the strangest month of my life over again. I wish I could change places with you, Dorian. The world has cried out against us both, but it has always worshipped you. It always will worship you. You are the type of what the age is searching for, and what it is afraid it has found. I am so glad that you have never done anything, never carved a statue, or painted a picture, or produced anything outside of yourself! Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets." Dorian rose up from the piano and passed his hand through his hair. "Yes, life has been exquisite," he murmured, "but I am not going to have the same life, Harry. And you must not say these extravagant things to me. You don't know everything about me. I think that if you did, even you would turn from me. You laugh. Don't laugh." "Why have you stopped playing, Dorian? Go back and give me the nocturne over again. Look at that great, honey-coloured moon that hangs in the dusky air. She is waiting for you to charm her, and if you play she will come closer to the earth. You won't? Let us go to the club, then. It has been a charming evening, and we must end it charmingly. There is some one at White's who wants immensely to know you--young Lord Poole, Bournemouth's eldest son. He has already copied your neckties, and has begged me to introduce him to you. He is quite delightful and rather reminds me of you." "I hope not," said Dorian with a sad look in his eyes. "But I am tired to-night, Harry. I shan't go to the club. It is nearly eleven, and I want to go to bed early." "Do stay. You have never played so well as to-night. There was something in your touch that was wonderful. It had more expression than I had ever heard from it before." "It is because I am going to be good," he answered, smiling. "I am a little changed already." "You cannot change to me, Dorian," said Lord Henry. "You and I will always be friends." "Yet you poisoned me with a book once. I should not forgive that. Harry, promise me that you will never lend that book to any one. It does harm." "My dear boy, you are really beginning to moralize. You will soon be going about like the converted, and the revivalist, warning people against all the sins of which you have grown tired. You are much too delightful to do that. Besides, it is no use. You and I are what we are, and will be what we will be. As for being poisoned by a book, there is no such thing as that. Art has no influence upon action. It annihilates the desire to act. It is superbly sterile. The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame. That is all. But we won't discuss literature. Come round to-morrow. I am going to ride at eleven. We might go together, and I will take you to lunch afterwards with Lady Branksome. She is a charming woman, and wants to consult you about some tapestries she is thinking of buying. Mind you come. Or shall we lunch with our little duchess? She says she never sees you now. Perhaps you are tired of Gladys? I thought you would be. Her clever tongue gets on one's nerves. Well, in any case, be here at eleven." "Must I really come, Harry?" "Certainly. The park is quite lovely now. I don't think there have been such lilacs since the year I met you." "Very well. I shall be here at eleven," said Dorian. "Good night, Harry." As he reached the door, he hesitated for a moment, as if he had something more to say. Then he sighed and went out. It was a lovely night, so warm that he threw his coat over his arm and did not even put his silk scarf round his throat. As he strolled home, smoking his cigarette, two young men in evening dress passed him. He heard one of them whisper to the other, "That is Dorian Gray." He remembered how pleased he used to be when he was pointed out, or stared at, or talked about. He was tired of hearing his own name now. Half the charm of the little village where he had been so often lately was that no one knew who he was. He had often told the girl whom he had lured to love him that he was poor, and she had believed him. He had told her once that he was wicked, and she had laughed at him and answered that wicked people were always very old and very ugly. What a laugh she had!--just like a thrush singing. And how pretty she had been in her cotton dresses and her large hats! She knew nothing, but she had everything that he had lost. When he reached home, he found his servant waiting up for him. He sent him to bed, and threw himself down on the sofa in the library, and began to think over some of the things that Lord Henry had said to him. Was it really true that one could never change? He felt a wild longing for the unstained purity of his boyhood--his rose-white boyhood, as Lord Henry had once called it. He knew that he had tarnished himself, filled his mind with corruption and given horror to his fancy; that he had been an evil influence to others, and had experienced a terrible joy in being so; and that of the lives that had crossed his own, it had been the fairest and the most full of promise that he had brought to shame. But was it all irretrievable? Was there no hope for him? Ah! in what a monstrous moment of pride and passion he had prayed that the portrait should bear the burden of his days, and he keep the unsullied splendour of eternal youth! All his failure had been due to that. Better for him that each sin of his life had brought its sure swift penalty along with it. There was purification in punishment. Not "Forgive us our sins" but "Smite us for our iniquities" should be the prayer of man to a most just God. The curiously carved mirror that Lord Henry had given to him, so many years ago now, was standing on the table, and the white-limbed Cupids laughed round it as of old. He took it up, as he had done on that night of horror when he had first noted the change in the fatal picture, and with wild, tear-dimmed eyes looked into its polished shield. Once, some one who had terribly loved him had written to him a mad letter, ending with these idolatrous words: "The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history." The phrases came back to his memory, and he repeated them over and over to himself. Then he loathed his own beauty, and flinging the mirror on the floor, crushed it into silver splinters beneath his heel. It was his beauty that had ruined him, his beauty and the youth that he had prayed for. But for those two things, his life might have been free from stain. His beauty had been to him but a mask, his youth but a mockery. What was youth at best? A green, an unripe time, a time of shallow moods, and sickly thoughts. Why had he worn its livery? Youth had spoiled him. It was better not to think of the past. Nothing could alter that. It was of himself, and of his own future, that he had to think. James Vane was hidden in a nameless grave in Selby churchyard. Alan Campbell had shot himself one night in his laboratory, but had not revealed the secret that he had been forced to know. The excitement, such as it was, over Basil Hallward's disappearance would soon pass away. It was already waning. He was perfectly safe there. Nor, indeed, was it the death of Basil Hallward that weighed most upon his mind. It was the living death of his own soul that troubled him. Basil had painted the portrait that had marred his life. He could not forgive him that. It was the portrait that had done everything. Basil had said things to him that were unbearable, and that he had yet borne with patience. The murder had been simply the madness of a moment. As for Alan Campbell, his suicide had been his own act. He had chosen to do it. It was nothing to him. A new life! That was what he wanted. That was what he was waiting for. Surely he had begun it already. He had spared one innocent thing, at any rate. He would never again tempt innocence. He would be good. As he thought of Hetty Merton, he began to wonder if the portrait in the locked room had changed. Surely it was not still so horrible as it had been? Perhaps if his life became pure, he would be able to expel every sign of evil passion from the face. Perhaps the signs of evil had already gone away. He would go and look. He took the lamp from the table and crept upstairs. As he unbarred the door, a smile of joy flitted across his strangely young-looking face and lingered for a moment about his lips. Yes, he would be good, and the hideous thing that he had hidden away would no longer be a terror to him. He felt as if the load had been lifted from him already. He went in quietly, locking the door behind him, as was his custom, and dragged the purple hanging from the portrait. A cry of pain and indignation broke from him. He could see no change, save that in the eyes there was a look of cunning and in the mouth the curved wrinkle of the hypocrite. The thing was still loathsome--more loathsome, if possible, than before--and the scarlet dew that spotted the hand seemed brighter, and more like blood newly spilled. Then he trembled. Had it been merely vanity that had made him do his one good deed? Or the desire for a new sensation, as Lord Henry had hinted, with his mocking laugh? Or that passion to act a part that sometimes makes us do things finer than we are ourselves? Or, perhaps, all these? And why was the red stain larger than it had been? It seemed to have crept like a horrible disease over the wrinkled fingers. There was blood on the painted feet, as though the thing had dripped--blood even on the hand that had not held the knife. Confess? Did it mean that he was to confess? To give himself up and be put to death? He laughed. He felt that the idea was monstrous. Besides, even if he did confess, who would believe him? There was no trace of the murdered man anywhere. Everything belonging to him had been destroyed. He himself had burned what had been below-stairs. The world would simply say that he was mad. They would shut him up if he persisted in his story.... Yet it was his duty to confess, to suffer public shame, and to make public atonement. There was a God who called upon men to tell their sins to earth as well as to heaven. Nothing that he could do would cleanse him till he had told his own sin. His sin? He shrugged his shoulders. The death of Basil Hallward seemed very little to him. He was thinking of Hetty Merton. For it was an unjust mirror, this mirror of his soul that he was looking at. Vanity? Curiosity? Hypocrisy? Had there been nothing more in his renunciation than that? There had been something more. At least he thought so. But who could tell? ... No. There had been nothing more. Through vanity he had spared her. In hypocrisy he had worn the mask of goodness. For curiosity's sake he had tried the denial of self. He recognized that now. But this murder--was it to dog him all his life? Was he always to be burdened by his past? Was he really to confess? Never. There was only one bit of evidence left against him. The picture itself--that was evidence. He would destroy it. Why had he kept it so long? Once it had given him pleasure to watch it changing and growing old. Of late he had felt no such pleasure. It had kept him awake at night. When he had been away, he had been filled with terror lest other eyes should look upon it. It had brought melancholy across his passions. Its mere memory had marred many moments of joy. It had been like conscience to him. Yes, it had been conscience. He would destroy it. He looked round and saw the knife that had stabbed Basil Hallward. He had cleaned it many times, till there was no stain left upon it. It was bright, and glistened. As it had killed the painter, so it would kill the painter's work, and all that that meant. It would kill the past, and when that was dead, he would be free. It would kill this monstrous soul-life, and without its hideous warnings, he would be at peace. He seized the thing, and stabbed the picture with it. There was a cry heard, and a crash. The cry was so horrible in its agony that the frightened servants woke and crept out of their rooms. Two gentlemen, who were passing in the square below, stopped and looked up at the great house. They walked on till they met a policeman and brought him back. The man rang the bell several times, but there was no answer. Except for a light in one of the top windows, the house was all dark. After a time, he went away and stood in an adjoining portico and watched. "Whose house is that, Constable?" asked the elder of the two gentlemen. "Mr. Dorian Gray's, sir," answered the policeman. They looked at each other, as they walked away, and sneered. One of them was Sir Henry Ashton's uncle. Inside, in the servants' part of the house, the half-clad domestics were talking in low whispers to each other. Old Mrs. Leaf was crying and wringing her hands. Francis was as pale as death. After about a quarter of an hour, he got the coachman and one of the footmen and crept upstairs. They knocked, but there was no reply. They called out. Everything was still. Finally, after vainly trying to force the door, they got on the roof and dropped down on to the balcony. The windows yielded easily--their bolts were old. When they entered, they found hanging upon the wall a splendid portrait of their master as they had last seen him, in all the wonder of his exquisite youth and beauty. Lying on the floor was a dead man, in evening dress, with a knife in his heart. He was withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. It was not till they had examined the rings that they recognized who it was.

Chapters 19-20

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219150422/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/p/the-picture-of-dorian-gray/summary-and-analysis/chapters-1920

Approximately six months have passed. As Chapter 19 opens, Dorian and Lord Henry apparently have just dined at the older man's home. Despite recently having gone through a divorce, Lord Henry is his usual witty self. Dorian seems more pensive, even grave. They are discussing Dorian's vow to change his behavior. Lord Henry says that Dorian is perfectly fine as he is. Dorian, however, says that he has done "too many dreadful things" in his life. He wants to reform. In fact, he began the previous day. He was staying alone at a small inn in the country and was seeing a young girl named Hetty Merton. She reminded him of Sibyl Vane in her beauty and innocence. A simple village girl, Dorian is fairly sure that he loved her. They were to run off together that morning at dawn, but he spared the child by leaving her "as flowerlike as I had found her." Lord Henry brings up the disappearance of Basil; he also mentions his own divorce and Alan Campbell's suicide. Lord Henry allows that only death and vulgarity cannot be explained. He asks Dorian to play the piano. Dorian plays for a while but stops and asks Lord Henry if he ever thought that Basil might have been murdered. Lord Henry dismisses the idea with a quip. When Dorian asks what Lord Henry would say if Dorian claimed to be the murderer, Lord Henry states that the crime does not suit Dorian; it is too vulgar. Lord Henry then asks about Basil's portrait of Dorian. Dorian confirms that it was lost or stolen, but he never cared much for it anyway. Lord Henry tells of walking through the park the previous Sunday and observing a group of people listening to a preacher who asked, "What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" Lord Henry found this "uncouth Christian" to be "curious" and "hysterical." Dorian, however, is not amused. Lord Henry has no interest in a serious discussion and indirectly asks Dorian to reveal the secret of his youth. To retrieve his youth, says the older man, "I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable." He wishes he could change places with Dorian, and he is pleased that the younger man has never actually "done anything." Dorian's life has been his art. For once, Dorian is in no mood for flattery and says he wishes to retire early. The subject of the "yellow book" occurs to Dorian, and he asks Lord Henry never to lend the destructive volume to anyone else. They agree to meet the next morning. Back home, Dorian wonders if he will ever really change. He reflects on Basil's death and Alan Campbell's suicide, but what really bothers him is the death of his own soul. He rationalizes that Basil painted the damaging portrait and said "unbearable" things to Dorian. Alan Campbell's suicide was the man's own doing, not Dorian's. They are nothing to him. His own life is his only concern. Wondering if the portrait has changed since his virtuous behavior toward Hetty Merton, he creeps upstairs to see. In the attic room, Dorian lifts the cloth off the portrait. If anything, the picture looks even more evil. Around the eyes there is "a look of cunning and in the mouth the curved wrinkle of the hypocrite." Blood has spread over the fingers, onto the feet, even to the other hand. Dorian shudders. He wonders if he should confess Basil's murder but dismisses the idea. The portrait itself is the only evidence against him. He no longer enjoys its record of his debauchery. He worries that it will be discovered and decides to destroy it. The knife he used to murder Basil is still in the room. Using it to "kill the past," he grabs the knife and stabs the portrait. The servants are awakened by a horrible scream and a crash. Two passersby outside are so alarmed that they summon a policeman. No one inside Dorian's house responds when the officer rings at the door. After fifteen minutes or so, Francis ascends the staircase with two other servants. No one answers their knock on the attic door, and they cannot force it open. They climb to the roof, drop to the balcony, open a window, and go into the attic. There, they find an old and ugly man lying in front of their master's portrait. In the portrait, Dorian appears as beautiful and young as he had the day before.

In the Faust legend, the main character ultimately confronts the loss of his soul but is incapable of seeking redemption through confession and absolution. He despairs and feels that he is beneath pardon or that there is no God or power strong enough to save him. In this sense, the Faust protagonist still suffers the sin of pride in that he sees his own case as so special that it is beyond God's help. Despair is the one unpardonable sin because the sinner is incapable of asking to be pardoned. Traditionally, despair is symbolized by suicide. In the closing chapters of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorian's behavior and attitude are consistent with this Faust tradition. Dorian has matured from the naive, vain youth in Basil's studio. He has grown into a man who was at first despicable but in the end is almost likable. Perhaps he is more pitiable than likable. However, he cannot find salvation because he is incapable of setting aside his pride, confessing, and asking for absolution. In Chapter 19, as the after-dinner scene opens at Lord Henry's, Dorian is bursting with pride because of a recent act of decency. He has returned Hetty Merton to her country life after winning her devotion. Unfortunately, instead of seeing this act as only one small step, Dorian expects instant reward. When he checks the portrait for some sign of his newfound virtue, he finds only a look of cunning about the eyes and a wrinkle of hypocrisy in the mouth. There seems to be fresh blood on the hands. Instead of redeeming his soul, his act of supposed redemption has tarnished his soul even more because the act was motivated by selfishness. Dorian cannot redeem his soul because he is still primarily interested in himself. He dismisses the deaths of Basil and Alan Campbell. The first, he decides, was inevitable; the second made his own choice. In neither case does Dorian accept his own responsibility. Still, he is torn because he realizes that the "soul is a terrible reality." He thinks that a person should pray for punishment, but he fails to understand that the only way of absolving immoral responsibility is to pray for forgiveness. In the novel's powerful final paragraphs, Dorian, in effect, commits suicide. He despises the figure in the portrait, but that is who he has become. When he slashes at the painting with the knife, appropriately the same knife that killed Basil, Dorian kills himself. The horrible cry, which awakens the servants and startles the men on the street, carries with it the agony of eighteen years of horror. Glossary idyll a scene or event of rural simplicity. Perdita and Florizel lovers in William Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. Ophelia a leading character in William Shakespeare's Hamlet; she dies by drowning, although Shakespeare leaves unclear if her drowning is a suicide or an accident. Scotland Yard headquarters of the London Metropolitan Police, housed at New Scotland Yard on the Thames embankment. Burgundy a wine, usually red, produced in the Burgundy region of southeastern France. vinaigrette French, from Old French vinaigre, "vinegar"; a small, often decorated container used for aromatic restoratives, such as smelling salts or vinegar solutions. Chopin Frederic Francois Chopin , Polish pianist and composer of works for piano and orchestra; resident of France from 1829 until his death. Velasquez Diego Rodriquez de Silva y Velasquez , Spanish painter. Seine the river that runs through Paris. Like the painting of a sorrow, / A face without a heart from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 7, 108-09. Jav an island of Indonesia. scurf scaly or shredded dry skin. nocturne a musical composition intended to evoke thoughts or feelings of night. Majorca largest of Spain's Balearic Islands, in the Mediterranean Sea, about 120 miles southeast of Barcelona. Apollo in Greek mythology, the god of the sun, music, and poetry; a young man of great physical beauty. Marsyas in Greek mythology, he lost a music contest and his life to Apollo. palate the roof of the mouth. lilas blanc French, meaning "white lilac." iniquities sins. idolatrous excessively adoring. visage facial expression; appearance.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/89.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Brothers Karamazov/section_88_part_0.txt

The Brothers Karamazov.book 12.chapter 10

book 12, chapter 10

{"name": "Book 12, Chapter 10", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-12-chapter-10", "summary": "Like Chapters 6-9, Chapters 10-13 consist entirely in the defense attorney's speech, with little action, if any. We give you the basic rundown of the speech over the next four chapters. In contrast to the prosecutor, Fetyukovich is quite calm, and everyone in the courtroom is impressed with his eloquence. Fetyukovich puts forward his argument that while all of the details the prosecutor presented seem convincing when taken as a whole, not one of the details can be held up as a concrete, indisputable fact. Every detail can be questioned or challenged in some way. Fetyukovich describes the prosecutor's use of psychology as a \"stick with two ends\": psychology can justify two contradictory explanations of the same thing. So on one hand the prosecutor says Dmitri recklessly left an envelope on his father's bedroom floor in his mad rush. On the other hand, he says Dmitri was methodical in making sure that Grigory was dead. Psychology paints Dmitri as both reckless and methodical at the same time. How can that be, Fetyukovich asks? Fetyukovich gets a few chuckles from the courtroom here, then he moves on.", "analysis": ""}

Chapter X. The Speech For The Defense. An Argument That Cuts Both Ways All was hushed as the first words of the famous orator rang out. The eyes of the audience were fastened upon him. He began very simply and directly, with an air of conviction, but not the slightest trace of conceit. He made no attempt at eloquence, at pathos, or emotional phrases. He was like a man speaking in a circle of intimate and sympathetic friends. His voice was a fine one, sonorous and sympathetic, and there was something genuine and simple in the very sound of it. But every one realized at once that the speaker might suddenly rise to genuine pathos and "pierce the heart with untold power." His language was perhaps more irregular than Ippolit Kirillovitch's, but he spoke without long phrases, and indeed, with more precision. One thing did not please the ladies: he kept bending forward, especially at the beginning of his speech, not exactly bowing, but as though he were about to dart at his listeners, bending his long spine in half, as though there were a spring in the middle that enabled him to bend almost at right angles. At the beginning of his speech he spoke rather disconnectedly, without system, one may say, dealing with facts separately, though, at the end, these facts formed a whole. His speech might be divided into two parts, the first consisting of criticism in refutation of the charge, sometimes malicious and sarcastic. But in the second half he suddenly changed his tone, and even his manner, and at once rose to pathos. The audience seemed on the look-out for it, and quivered with enthusiasm. He went straight to the point, and began by saying that although he practiced in Petersburg, he had more than once visited provincial towns to defend prisoners, of whose innocence he had a conviction or at least a preconceived idea. "That is what has happened to me in the present case," he explained. "From the very first accounts in the newspapers I was struck by something which strongly prepossessed me in the prisoner's favor. What interested me most was a fact which often occurs in legal practice, but rarely, I think, in such an extreme and peculiar form as in the present case. I ought to formulate that peculiarity only at the end of my speech, but I will do so at the very beginning, for it is my weakness to go to work directly, not keeping my effects in reserve and economizing my material. That may be imprudent on my part, but at least it's sincere. What I have in my mind is this: there is an overwhelming chain of evidence against the prisoner, and at the same time not one fact that will stand criticism, if it is examined separately. As I followed the case more closely in the papers my idea was more and more confirmed, and I suddenly received from the prisoner's relatives a request to undertake his defense. I at once hurried here, and here I became completely convinced. It was to break down this terrible chain of facts, and to show that each piece of evidence taken separately was unproved and fantastic, that I undertook the case." So Fetyukovitch began. "Gentlemen of the jury," he suddenly protested, "I am new to this district. I have no preconceived ideas. The prisoner, a man of turbulent and unbridled temper, has not insulted me. But he has insulted perhaps hundreds of persons in this town, and so prejudiced many people against him beforehand. Of course I recognize that the moral sentiment of local society is justly excited against him. The prisoner is of turbulent and violent temper. Yet he was received in society here; he was even welcome in the family of my talented friend, the prosecutor." (N.B. At these words there were two or three laughs in the audience, quickly suppressed, but noticed by all. All of us knew that the prosecutor received Mitya against his will, solely because he had somehow interested his wife--a lady of the highest virtue and moral worth, but fanciful, capricious, and fond of opposing her husband, especially in trifles. Mitya's visits, however, had not been frequent.) "Nevertheless I venture to suggest," Fetyukovitch continued, "that in spite of his independent mind and just character, my opponent may have formed a mistaken prejudice against my unfortunate client. Oh, that is so natural; the unfortunate man has only too well deserved such prejudice. Outraged morality, and still more outraged taste, is often relentless. We have, in the talented prosecutor's speech, heard a stern analysis of the prisoner's character and conduct, and his severe critical attitude to the case was evident. And, what's more, he went into psychological subtleties into which he could not have entered, if he had the least conscious and malicious prejudice against the prisoner. But there are things which are even worse, even more fatal in such cases, than the most malicious and consciously unfair attitude. It is worse if we are carried away by the artistic instinct, by the desire to create, so to speak, a romance, especially if God has endowed us with psychological insight. Before I started on my way here, I was warned in Petersburg, and was myself aware, that I should find here a talented opponent whose psychological insight and subtlety had gained him peculiar renown in legal circles of recent years. But profound as psychology is, it's a knife that cuts both ways." (Laughter among the public.) "You will, of course, forgive me my comparison; I can't boast of eloquence. But I will take as an example any point in the prosecutor's speech. "The prisoner, running away in the garden in the dark, climbed over the fence, was seized by the servant, and knocked him down with a brass pestle. Then he jumped back into the garden and spent five minutes over the man, trying to discover whether he had killed him or not. And the prosecutor refuses to believe the prisoner's statement that he ran to old Grigory out of pity. 'No,' he says, 'such sensibility is impossible at such a moment, that's unnatural; he ran to find out whether the only witness of his crime was dead or alive, and so showed that he had committed the murder, since he would not have run back for any other reason.' "Here you have psychology; but let us take the same method and apply it to the case the other way round, and our result will be no less probable. The murderer, we are told, leapt down to find out, as a precaution, whether the witness was alive or not, yet he had left in his murdered father's study, as the prosecutor himself argues, an amazing piece of evidence in the shape of a torn envelope, with an inscription that there had been three thousand roubles in it. 'If he had carried that envelope away with him, no one in the world would have known of that envelope and of the notes in it, and that the money had been stolen by the prisoner.' Those are the prosecutor's own words. So on one side you see a complete absence of precaution, a man who has lost his head and run away in a fright, leaving that clew on the floor, and two minutes later, when he has killed another man, we are entitled to assume the most heartless and calculating foresight in him. But even admitting this was so, it is psychological subtlety, I suppose, that discerns that under certain circumstances I become as bloodthirsty and keen-sighted as a Caucasian eagle, while at the next I am as timid and blind as a mole. But if I am so bloodthirsty and cruelly calculating that when I kill a man I only run back to find out whether he is alive to witness against me, why should I spend five minutes looking after my victim at the risk of encountering other witnesses? Why soak my handkerchief, wiping the blood off his head so that it may be evidence against me later? If he were so cold-hearted and calculating, why not hit the servant on the head again and again with the same pestle so as to kill him outright and relieve himself of all anxiety about the witness? "Again, though he ran to see whether the witness was alive, he left another witness on the path, that brass pestle which he had taken from the two women, and which they could always recognize afterwards as theirs, and prove that he had taken it from them. And it is not as though he had forgotten it on the path, dropped it through carelessness or haste, no, he had flung away his weapon, for it was found fifteen paces from where Grigory lay. Why did he do so? Just because he was grieved at having killed a man, an old servant; and he flung away the pestle with a curse, as a murderous weapon. That's how it must have been, what other reason could he have had for throwing it so far? And if he was capable of feeling grief and pity at having killed a man, it shows that he was innocent of his father's murder. Had he murdered him, he would never have run to another victim out of pity; then he would have felt differently; his thoughts would have been centered on self-preservation. He would have had none to spare for pity, that is beyond doubt. On the contrary, he would have broken his skull instead of spending five minutes looking after him. There was room for pity and good-feeling just because his conscience had been clear till then. Here we have a different psychology. I have purposely resorted to this method, gentlemen of the jury, to show that you can prove anything by it. It all depends on who makes use of it. Psychology lures even most serious people into romancing, and quite unconsciously. I am speaking of the abuse of psychology, gentlemen." Sounds of approval and laughter, at the expense of the prosecutor, were again audible in the court. I will not repeat the speech in detail; I will only quote some passages from it, some leading points.

Book 12, Chapter 10

https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-12-chapter-10

Like Chapters 6-9, Chapters 10-13 consist entirely in the defense attorney's speech, with little action, if any. We give you the basic rundown of the speech over the next four chapters. In contrast to the prosecutor, Fetyukovich is quite calm, and everyone in the courtroom is impressed with his eloquence. Fetyukovich puts forward his argument that while all of the details the prosecutor presented seem convincing when taken as a whole, not one of the details can be held up as a concrete, indisputable fact. Every detail can be questioned or challenged in some way. Fetyukovich describes the prosecutor's use of psychology as a "stick with two ends": psychology can justify two contradictory explanations of the same thing. So on one hand the prosecutor says Dmitri recklessly left an envelope on his father's bedroom floor in his mad rush. On the other hand, he says Dmitri was methodical in making sure that Grigory was dead. Psychology paints Dmitri as both reckless and methodical at the same time. How can that be, Fetyukovich asks? Fetyukovich gets a few chuckles from the courtroom here, then he moves on.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/08.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Lord Jim/section_7_part_0.txt

Lord Jim.chapter 8

chapter 8

{"name": "Chapter 8", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210118112654/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/lord-jim/summary/chapter-8", "summary": "Imagine Jim, still frozen, waiting for the ship to sink. He manages to snap out of it and rushes to the lifeboats, of which there are only three. Notice he's not exactly sounding the alarm. Nope, he's too busy saving his own skin. When he is stopped on his mad dash to the lifeboats by a beggar asking for water, Jim gets so agitated by the interruption that he nearly flips out. Actually he does flip out: Jim whacks him in the face with a lantern. Chill out, Jimmy. Take a deep breath. The poor beggar keeps asking for water, and Jim finally tosses his entire water canteen at the guy. Meanwhile, the rest of the crew are anxiously working on getting the lifeboat ready to go. Not wanting to wake the passengers, they work in a quiet panic. It's clear by now that this is one of those every-man-for-himself situations. To defend his actions, Jim interrupts himself and asks Marlow what he would have done in the same situation. We also learn that two Malays remained at the wheel of the ship the entire time. The white men pretty much ignored them. They were too busy looking out for number one. Taking over the storytelling for a bit, Marlow tells us about the pilgrims who were left alone and adrift on the ship. We hope they got a refund. When the scandal broke and the pilgrims and Malay helmsmen were rescued, the two \"native\" helmsmen had to give evidence. One of these Malay men couldn't believe that the white men had abandoned ship in such a cowardly fashion and insisted they had \"secret reasons\" for leaving , perhaps racist ones. There's all sorts of social commentary going on. We hate to break it to you, dude, but the secret reason was that they were all a bunch of punks. But before we get too sidetracked, let's jump back to Jim's story. As he relates it to Marlow, Jim starts to laugh hysterically in the restaurant with Marlow: \"Along the whole dim length of the gallery the voices dropped and the silence became so profound that the clear tinkle of a teaspoon falling on the tessellated floor of the verandah rang out like a tiny silvery scream.\" Awkward.", "analysis": ""}

'How long he stood stock-still by the hatch expecting every moment to feel the ship dip under his feet and the rush of water take him at the back and toss him like a chip, I cannot say. Not very long--two minutes perhaps. A couple of men he could not make out began to converse drowsily, and also, he could not tell where, he detected a curious noise of shuffling feet. Above these faint sounds there was that awful stillness preceding a catastrophe, that trying silence of the moment before the crash; then it came into his head that perhaps he would have time to rush along and cut all the lanyards of the gripes, so that the boats would float as the ship went down. 'The Patna had a long bridge, and all the boats were up there, four on one side and three on the other--the smallest of them on the port-side and nearly abreast of the steering gear. He assured me, with evident anxiety to be believed, that he had been most careful to keep them ready for instant service. He knew his duty. I dare say he was a good enough mate as far as that went. "I always believed in being prepared for the worst," he commented, staring anxiously in my face. I nodded my approval of the sound principle, averting my eyes before the subtle unsoundness of the man. 'He started unsteadily to run. He had to step over legs, avoid stumbling against the heads. Suddenly some one caught hold of his coat from below, and a distressed voice spoke under his elbow. The light of the lamp he carried in his right hand fell upon an upturned dark face whose eyes entreated him together with the voice. He had picked up enough of the language to understand the word water, repeated several times in a tone of insistence, of prayer, almost of despair. He gave a jerk to get away, and felt an arm embrace his leg. '"The beggar clung to me like a drowning man," he said impressively. "Water, water! What water did he mean? What did he know? As calmly as I could I ordered him to let go. He was stopping me, time was pressing, other men began to stir; I wanted time--time to cut the boats adrift. He got hold of my hand now, and I felt that he would begin to shout. It flashed upon me it was enough to start a panic, and I hauled off with my free arm and slung the lamp in his face. The glass jingled, the light went out, but the blow made him let go, and I ran off--I wanted to get at the boats; I wanted to get at the boats. He leaped after me from behind. I turned on him. He would not keep quiet; he tried to shout; I had half throttled him before I made out what he wanted. He wanted some water--water to drink; they were on strict allowance, you know, and he had with him a young boy I had noticed several times. His child was sick--and thirsty. He had caught sight of me as I passed by, and was begging for a little water. That's all. We were under the bridge, in the dark. He kept on snatching at my wrists; there was no getting rid of him. I dashed into my berth, grabbed my water-bottle, and thrust it into his hands. He vanished. I didn't find out till then how much I was in want of a drink myself." He leaned on one elbow with a hand over his eyes. 'I felt a creepy sensation all down my backbone; there was something peculiar in all this. The fingers of the hand that shaded his brow trembled slightly. He broke the short silence. '"These things happen only once to a man and . . . Ah! well! When I got on the bridge at last the beggars were getting one of the boats off the chocks. A boat! I was running up the ladder when a heavy blow fell on my shoulder, just missing my head. It didn't stop me, and the chief engineer--they had got him out of his bunk by then--raised the boat-stretcher again. Somehow I had no mind to be surprised at anything. All this seemed natural--and awful--and awful. I dodged that miserable maniac, lifted him off the deck as though he had been a little child, and he started whispering in my arms: 'Don't! don't! I thought you were one of them niggers.' I flung him away, he skidded along the bridge and knocked the legs from under the little chap--the second. The skipper, busy about the boat, looked round and came at me head down, growling like a wild beast. I flinched no more than a stone. I was as solid standing there as this," he tapped lightly with his knuckles the wall beside his chair. "It was as though I had heard it all, seen it all, gone through it all twenty times already. I wasn't afraid of them. I drew back my fist and he stopped short, muttering-- '"'Ah! it's you. Lend a hand quick.' '"That's what he said. Quick! As if anybody could be quick enough. 'Aren't you going to do something?' I asked. 'Yes. Clear out,' he snarled over his shoulder. '"I don't think I understood then what he meant. The other two had picked themselves up by that time, and they rushed together to the boat. They tramped, they wheezed, they shoved, they cursed the boat, the ship, each other--cursed me. All in mutters. I didn't move, I didn't speak. I watched the slant of the ship. She was as still as if landed on the blocks in a dry dock--only she was like this," He held up his hand, palm under, the tips of the fingers inclined downwards. "Like this," he repeated. "I could see the line of the horizon before me, as clear as a bell, above her stem-head; I could see the water far off there black and sparkling, and still--still as a-pond, deadly still, more still than ever sea was before--more still than I could bear to look at. Have you watched a ship floating head down, checked in sinking by a sheet of old iron too rotten to stand being shored up? Have you? Oh yes, shored up? I thought of that--I thought of every mortal thing; but can you shore up a bulkhead in five minutes--or in fifty for that matter? Where was I going to get men that would go down below? And the timber--the timber! Would you have had the courage to swing the maul for the first blow if you had seen that bulkhead? Don't say you would: you had not seen it; nobody would. Hang it--to do a thing like that you must believe there is a chance, one in a thousand, at least, some ghost of a chance; and you would not have believed. Nobody would have believed. You think me a cur for standing there, but what would you have done? What! You can't tell--nobody can tell. One must have time to turn round. What would you have me do? Where was the kindness in making crazy with fright all those people I could not save single-handed--that nothing could save? Look here! As true as I sit on this chair before you . . ." 'He drew quick breaths at every few words and shot quick glances at my face, as though in his anguish he were watchful of the effect. He was not speaking to me, he was only speaking before me, in a dispute with an invisible personality, an antagonistic and inseparable partner of his existence--another possessor of his soul. These were issues beyond the competency of a court of inquiry: it was a subtle and momentous quarrel as to the true essence of life, and did not want a judge. He wanted an ally, a helper, an accomplice. I felt the risk I ran of being circumvented, blinded, decoyed, bullied, perhaps, into taking a definite part in a dispute impossible of decision if one had to be fair to all the phantoms in possession--to the reputable that had its claims and to the disreputable that had its exigencies. I can't explain to you who haven't seen him and who hear his words only at second hand the mixed nature of my feelings. It seemed to me I was being made to comprehend the Inconceivable--and I know of nothing to compare with the discomfort of such a sensation. I was made to look at the convention that lurks in all truth and on the essential sincerity of falsehood. He appealed to all sides at once--to the side turned perpetually to the light of day, and to that side of us which, like the other hemisphere of the moon, exists stealthily in perpetual darkness, with only a fearful ashy light falling at times on the edge. He swayed me. I own to it, I own up. The occasion was obscure, insignificant--what you will: a lost youngster, one in a million--but then he was one of us; an incident as completely devoid of importance as the flooding of an ant-heap, and yet the mystery of his attitude got hold of me as though he had been an individual in the forefront of his kind, as if the obscure truth involved were momentous enough to affect mankind's conception of itself. . . .' Marlow paused to put new life into his expiring cheroot, seemed to forget all about the story, and abruptly began again. 'My fault of course. One has no business really to get interested. It's a weakness of mine. His was of another kind. My weakness consists in not having a discriminating eye for the incidental--for the externals--no eye for the hod of the rag-picker or the fine linen of the next man. Next man--that's it. I have met so many men,' he pursued, with momentary sadness--'met them too with a certain--certain--impact, let us say; like this fellow, for instance--and in each case all I could see was merely the human being. A confounded democratic quality of vision which may be better than total blindness, but has been of no advantage to me, I can assure you. Men expect one to take into account their fine linen. But I never could get up any enthusiasm about these things. Oh! it's a failing; it's a failing; and then comes a soft evening; a lot of men too indolent for whist--and a story. . . .' He paused again to wait for an encouraging remark, perhaps, but nobody spoke; only the host, as if reluctantly performing a duty, murmured-- 'You are so subtle, Marlow.' 'Who? I?' said Marlow in a low voice. 'Oh no! But _he_ was; and try as I may for the success of this yarn, I am missing innumerable shades--they were so fine, so difficult to render in colourless words. Because he complicated matters by being so simple, too--the simplest poor devil! . . . By Jove! he was amazing. There he sat telling me that just as I saw him before my eyes he wouldn't be afraid to face anything--and believing in it too. I tell you it was fabulously innocent and it was enormous, enormous! I watched him covertly, just as though I had suspected him of an intention to take a jolly good rise out of me. He was confident that, on the square, "on the square, mind!" there was nothing he couldn't meet. Ever since he had been "so high"--"quite a little chap," he had been preparing himself for all the difficulties that can beset one on land and water. He confessed proudly to this kind of foresight. He had been elaborating dangers and defences, expecting the worst, rehearsing his best. He must have led a most exalted existence. Can you fancy it? A succession of adventures, so much glory, such a victorious progress! and the deep sense of his sagacity crowning every day of his inner life. He forgot himself; his eyes shone; and with every word my heart, searched by the light of his absurdity, was growing heavier in my breast. I had no mind to laugh, and lest I should smile I made for myself a stolid face. He gave signs of irritation. '"It is always the unexpected that happens," I said in a propitiatory tone. My obtuseness provoked him into a contemptuous "Pshaw!" I suppose he meant that the unexpected couldn't touch him; nothing less than the unconceivable itself could get over his perfect state of preparation. He had been taken unawares--and he whispered to himself a malediction upon the waters and the firmament, upon the ship, upon the men. Everything had betrayed him! He had been tricked into that sort of high-minded resignation which prevented him lifting as much as his little finger, while these others who had a very clear perception of the actual necessity were tumbling against each other and sweating desperately over that boat business. Something had gone wrong there at the last moment. It appears that in their flurry they had contrived in some mysterious way to get the sliding bolt of the foremost boat-chock jammed tight, and forthwith had gone out of the remnants of their minds over the deadly nature of that accident. It must have been a pretty sight, the fierce industry of these beggars toiling on a motionless ship that floated quietly in the silence of a world asleep, fighting against time for the freeing of that boat, grovelling on all-fours, standing up in despair, tugging, pushing, snarling at each other venomously, ready to kill, ready to weep, and only kept from flying at each other's throats by the fear of death that stood silent behind them like an inflexible and cold-eyed taskmaster. Oh yes! It must have been a pretty sight. He saw it all, he could talk about it with scorn and bitterness; he had a minute knowledge of it by means of some sixth sense, I conclude, because he swore to me he had remained apart without a glance at them and at the boat--without one single glance. And I believe him. I should think he was too busy watching the threatening slant of the ship, the suspended menace discovered in the midst of the most perfect security--fascinated by the sword hanging by a hair over his imaginative head. 'Nothing in the world moved before his eyes, and he could depict to himself without hindrance the sudden swing upwards of the dark sky-line, the sudden tilt up of the vast plain of the sea, the swift still rise, the brutal fling, the grasp of the abyss, the struggle without hope, the starlight closing over his head for ever like the vault of a tomb--the revolt of his young life--the black end. He could! By Jove! who couldn't? And you must remember he was a finished artist in that peculiar way, he was a gifted poor devil with the faculty of swift and forestalling vision. The sights it showed him had turned him into cold stone from the soles of his feet to the nape of his neck; but there was a hot dance of thoughts in his head, a dance of lame, blind, mute thoughts--a whirl of awful cripples. Didn't I tell you he confessed himself before me as though I had the power to bind and to loose? He burrowed deep, deep, in the hope of my absolution, which would have been of no good to him. This was one of those cases which no solemn deception can palliate, where no man can help; where his very Maker seems to abandon a sinner to his own devices. 'He stood on the starboard side of the bridge, as far as he could get from the struggle for the boat, which went on with the agitation of madness and the stealthiness of a conspiracy. The two Malays had meantime remained holding to the wheel. Just picture to yourselves the actors in that, thank God! unique, episode of the sea, four beside themselves with fierce and secret exertions, and three looking on in complete immobility, above the awnings covering the profound ignorance of hundreds of human beings, with their weariness, with their dreams, with their hopes, arrested, held by an invisible hand on the brink of annihilation. For that they were so, makes no doubt to me: given the state of the ship, this was the deadliest possible description of accident that could happen. These beggars by the boat had every reason to go distracted with funk. Frankly, had I been there, I would not have given as much as a counterfeit farthing for the ship's chance to keep above water to the end of each successive second. And still she floated! These sleeping pilgrims were destined to accomplish their whole pilgrimage to the bitterness of some other end. It was as if the Omnipotence whose mercy they confessed had needed their humble testimony on earth for a while longer, and had looked down to make a sign, "Thou shalt not!" to the ocean. Their escape would trouble me as a prodigiously inexplicable event, did I not know how tough old iron can be--as tough sometimes as the spirit of some men we meet now and then, worn to a shadow and breasting the weight of life. Not the least wonder of these twenty minutes, to my mind, is the behaviour of the two helmsmen. They were amongst the native batch of all sorts brought over from Aden to give evidence at the inquiry. One of them, labouring under intense bashfulness, was very young, and with his smooth, yellow, cheery countenance looked even younger than he was. I remember perfectly Brierly asking him, through the interpreter, what he thought of it at the time, and the interpreter, after a short colloquy, turning to the court with an important air-- '"He says he thought nothing." 'The other, with patient blinking eyes, a blue cotton handkerchief, faded with much washing, bound with a smart twist over a lot of grey wisps, his face shrunk into grim hollows, his brown skin made darker by a mesh of wrinkles, explained that he had a knowledge of some evil thing befalling the ship, but there had been no order; he could not remember an order; why should he leave the helm? To some further questions he jerked back his spare shoulders, and declared it never came into his mind then that the white men were about to leave the ship through fear of death. He did not believe it now. There might have been secret reasons. He wagged his old chin knowingly. Aha! secret reasons. He was a man of great experience, and he wanted _that_ white Tuan to know--he turned towards Brierly, who didn't raise his head--that he had acquired a knowledge of many things by serving white men on the sea for a great number of years--and, suddenly, with shaky excitement he poured upon our spellbound attention a lot of queer-sounding names, names of dead-and-gone skippers, names of forgotten country ships, names of familiar and distorted sound, as if the hand of dumb time had been at work on them for ages. They stopped him at last. A silence fell upon the court,--a silence that remained unbroken for at least a minute, and passed gently into a deep murmur. This episode was the sensation of the second day's proceedings--affecting all the audience, affecting everybody except Jim, who was sitting moodily at the end of the first bench, and never looked up at this extraordinary and damning witness that seemed possessed of some mysterious theory of defence. 'So these two lascars stuck to the helm of that ship without steerage-way, where death would have found them if such had been their destiny. The whites did not give them half a glance, had probably forgotten their existence. Assuredly Jim did not remember it. He remembered he could do nothing; he could do nothing, now he was alone. There was nothing to do but to sink with the ship. No use making a disturbance about it. Was there? He waited upstanding, without a sound, stiffened in the idea of some sort of heroic discretion. The first engineer ran cautiously across the bridge to tug at his sleeve. '"Come and help! For God's sake, come and help!" 'He ran back to the boat on the points of his toes, and returned directly to worry at his sleeve, begging and cursing at the same time. '"I believe he would have kissed my hands," said Jim savagely, "and, next moment, he starts foaming and whispering in my face, 'If I had the time I would like to crack your skull for you.' I pushed him away. Suddenly he caught hold of me round the neck. Damn him! I hit him. I hit out without looking. 'Won't you save your own life--you infernal coward?' he sobs. Coward! He called me an infernal coward! Ha! ha! ha! ha! He called me--ha! ha! ha! . . ." 'He had thrown himself back and was shaking with laughter. I had never in my life heard anything so bitter as that noise. It fell like a blight on all the merriment about donkeys, pyramids, bazaars, or what not. Along the whole dim length of the gallery the voices dropped, the pale blotches of faces turned our way with one accord, and the silence became so profound that the clear tinkle of a teaspoon falling on the tesselated floor of the verandah rang out like a tiny and silvery scream. '"You mustn't laugh like this, with all these people about," I remonstrated. "It isn't nice for them, you know." 'He gave no sign of having heard at first, but after a while, with a stare that, missing me altogether, seemed to probe the heart of some awful vision, he muttered carelessly--"Oh! they'll think I am drunk." 'And after that you would have thought from his appearance he would never make a sound again. But--no fear! He could no more stop telling now than he could have stopped living by the mere exertion of his will.'

Chapter 8

https://web.archive.org/web/20210118112654/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/lord-jim/summary/chapter-8

Imagine Jim, still frozen, waiting for the ship to sink. He manages to snap out of it and rushes to the lifeboats, of which there are only three. Notice he's not exactly sounding the alarm. Nope, he's too busy saving his own skin. When he is stopped on his mad dash to the lifeboats by a beggar asking for water, Jim gets so agitated by the interruption that he nearly flips out. Actually he does flip out: Jim whacks him in the face with a lantern. Chill out, Jimmy. Take a deep breath. The poor beggar keeps asking for water, and Jim finally tosses his entire water canteen at the guy. Meanwhile, the rest of the crew are anxiously working on getting the lifeboat ready to go. Not wanting to wake the passengers, they work in a quiet panic. It's clear by now that this is one of those every-man-for-himself situations. To defend his actions, Jim interrupts himself and asks Marlow what he would have done in the same situation. We also learn that two Malays remained at the wheel of the ship the entire time. The white men pretty much ignored them. They were too busy looking out for number one. Taking over the storytelling for a bit, Marlow tells us about the pilgrims who were left alone and adrift on the ship. We hope they got a refund. When the scandal broke and the pilgrims and Malay helmsmen were rescued, the two "native" helmsmen had to give evidence. One of these Malay men couldn't believe that the white men had abandoned ship in such a cowardly fashion and insisted they had "secret reasons" for leaving , perhaps racist ones. There's all sorts of social commentary going on. We hate to break it to you, dude, but the secret reason was that they were all a bunch of punks. But before we get too sidetracked, let's jump back to Jim's story. As he relates it to Marlow, Jim starts to laugh hysterically in the restaurant with Marlow: "Along the whole dim length of the gallery the voices dropped and the silence became so profound that the clear tinkle of a teaspoon falling on the tessellated floor of the verandah rang out like a tiny silvery scream." Awkward.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/174-chapters/02.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Picture of Dorian Gray/section_1_part_0.txt

The Picture of Dorian Gray.chapter 2

chapter 2

{"name": "Chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210304030722/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/picture-dorian-gray/summary/chapter-2", "summary": "Basil and Henry return to the house, where they find Dorian at the piano. He's startled to see that there's someone else there. Basil introduces his two friends. Lord Henry brings up their other mutual acquaintance, his Aunt Agatha. While he chats politely with Dorian, he notices just how splendid the boy's looks are--there's something about him that's totally innocent and pure. Basil is distracted by Henry and Dorian's conversation--he's worried about what his old friend will say to influence his new one. He asks Henry to leave, but Dorian raises a fuss begs him to stay. Basil gives in and allows Henry to stay, but warns Dorian not to listen to everything Henry says, since he's a bad influence over everyone except Basil himself. Dorian has taken a liking to Henry already--he's charmed by how different the young lord is from his friend. As Dorian poses for the painting, Henry takes it upon himself to enlighten the boy; he launches into a long explanation of his own decadent values, basically claiming that any form of influence is a bad influence, and that people should try to live their lives fully and give into their impulses. Dorian is shocked by all this, and Basil, who's wrapped up in his painting, notices a new look in the boy's face for the first time. Henry continues his diatribe about returning to the Hellenic mode of life, in which everyone yields to all of their desires and temptations. He suggests daringly that even Dorian, whose youthful innocence is complete, has secret desires that he won't even admit to himself. This is too much for the boy, and he demands silence so he can think things through. The provocative, challenging words of Lord Henry resonate mysteriously within Dorian's soul, and he's not quite sure what's happening to him. All of a sudden, it seems as though his whole life has changed, and things that he didn't even recognize in himself before come to life. As Dorian ponders the meaning of this conversation, Henry looks on, intrigued and pleased--he knows his words have hit close to home. Meanwhile, Basil, in a painting trance, works in silence, not noticing what's happening between his two friends. Dorian breaks from his pose, and demands some rest--Basil lets him go, commenting that whatever Henry was saying to Dorian must have been working, because he posed beautifully. Henry follows Dorian to the garden, where he finds the boy desperately trying to calm himself down via aromatherapy with some lilacs. Henry approves of this--he thinks the best way to calm the soul is to appeal to the senses, and vice versa. Dorian is disturbed by the effect Lord Henry has on him, and a little afraid of him--but he's deeply intrigued by the other man. Henry warns Dorian not to get sunburnt, telling the boy that he should value his youth and exceptional beauty. He explains that to him, Beauty is the most important and valuable thing in the whole world--but that it's transient, and Dorian should enjoy it while he can. Basil calls his friends back into the studio, and as they go into the house, they confirm their new friendship. Dorian gets back into picture pose, and Basil continues his work--soon enough, he's actually done with the painting. Henry comes over to admire it exuberantly, and calls Dorian over. Dorian is overjoyed by the recognition of his own beauty; Lord Henry's words opened his eyes for the first time to just how gorgeous he is. This just makes him afraid of the day when he'll grow old and lose his beauty, and he breaks down in tears. Basil doesn't understand Dorian's reaction, and asks if he doesn't like it. Lord Henry tries to make Basil feel better, and asks to buy the painting--but Basil says it already belongs to Dorian. Dorian explains his sadness in seeing the beauty of the portrait. He can't believe that he himself will grow older every day, but the painting will never age, and he wishes it was the other way around--why can't the painting age as he stays the same? He says he would give his soul to have this wish come true. Henry jokes that Basil wouldn't like this arrangement, as it would reflect poorly upon his own work. Dorian responds too seriously that it's true--Basil likes his work better than his real friends. Dorian goes on rather madly, saying that Basil only cares for his youth and beauty, and that the day he grows old and ugly, he'll kill himself. Basil is horrified, and blames Henry for this change in Dorian; Henry, however, responds that it's the real Dorian who's emerged. Basil turns on the painting, the cause of this argument between him and his best friends. He attempts to slash the canvas, but Dorian stops him, saying that he's in love with this image of himself. Everyone calms down, and it seems that the moment of high drama is over. Everyone settles down, and, like good Englishmen, the three settle down for a cup of tea. Lord Henry proposes that they all go to the theatre that night. Dorian is all up for it, but Basil says he has to stay home and work--he sadly comments that he'll stay with the \"real\" Dorian, the innocent one in the painting. Basil begs Dorian not to go to the theatre with Lord Henry, but the boy says that he must. We get the feeling that this is rather more symbolic than it seems--will he stay back with Basil and his old self, or will he go out with Lord Henry, and perhaps come back a different person?... Dorian and Henry leave Basil in the studio, alone and pained.", "analysis": ""}

As they entered they saw Dorian Gray. He was seated at the piano, with his back to them, turning over the pages of a volume of Schumann's "Forest Scenes." "You must lend me these, Basil," he cried. "I want to learn them. They are perfectly charming." "That entirely depends on how you sit to-day, Dorian." "Oh, I am tired of sitting, and I don't want a life-sized portrait of myself," answered the lad, swinging round on the music-stool in a wilful, petulant manner. When he caught sight of Lord Henry, a faint blush coloured his cheeks for a moment, and he started up. "I beg your pardon, Basil, but I didn't know you had any one with you." "This is Lord Henry Wotton, Dorian, an old Oxford friend of mine. I have just been telling him what a capital sitter you were, and now you have spoiled everything." "You have not spoiled my pleasure in meeting you, Mr. Gray," said Lord Henry, stepping forward and extending his hand. "My aunt has often spoken to me about you. You are one of her favourites, and, I am afraid, one of her victims also." "I am in Lady Agatha's black books at present," answered Dorian with a funny look of penitence. "I promised to go to a club in Whitechapel with her last Tuesday, and I really forgot all about it. We were to have played a duet together--three duets, I believe. I don't know what she will say to me. I am far too frightened to call." "Oh, I will make your peace with my aunt. She is quite devoted to you. And I don't think it really matters about your not being there. The audience probably thought it was a duet. When Aunt Agatha sits down to the piano, she makes quite enough noise for two people." "That is very horrid to her, and not very nice to me," answered Dorian, laughing. Lord Henry looked at him. Yes, he was certainly wonderfully handsome, with his finely curved scarlet lips, his frank blue eyes, his crisp gold hair. There was something in his face that made one trust him at once. All the candour of youth was there, as well as all youth's passionate purity. One felt that he had kept himself unspotted from the world. No wonder Basil Hallward worshipped him. "You are too charming to go in for philanthropy, Mr. Gray--far too charming." And Lord Henry flung himself down on the divan and opened his cigarette-case. The painter had been busy mixing his colours and getting his brushes ready. He was looking worried, and when he heard Lord Henry's last remark, he glanced at him, hesitated for a moment, and then said, "Harry, I want to finish this picture to-day. Would you think it awfully rude of me if I asked you to go away?" Lord Henry smiled and looked at Dorian Gray. "Am I to go, Mr. Gray?" he asked. "Oh, please don't, Lord Henry. I see that Basil is in one of his sulky moods, and I can't bear him when he sulks. Besides, I want you to tell me why I should not go in for philanthropy." "I don't know that I shall tell you that, Mr. Gray. It is so tedious a subject that one would have to talk seriously about it. But I certainly shall not run away, now that you have asked me to stop. You don't really mind, Basil, do you? You have often told me that you liked your sitters to have some one to chat to." Hallward bit his lip. "If Dorian wishes it, of course you must stay. Dorian's whims are laws to everybody, except himself." Lord Henry took up his hat and gloves. "You are very pressing, Basil, but I am afraid I must go. I have promised to meet a man at the Orleans. Good-bye, Mr. Gray. Come and see me some afternoon in Curzon Street. I am nearly always at home at five o'clock. Write to me when you are coming. I should be sorry to miss you." "Basil," cried Dorian Gray, "if Lord Henry Wotton goes, I shall go, too. You never open your lips while you are painting, and it is horribly dull standing on a platform and trying to look pleasant. Ask him to stay. I insist upon it." "Stay, Harry, to oblige Dorian, and to oblige me," said Hallward, gazing intently at his picture. "It is quite true, I never talk when I am working, and never listen either, and it must be dreadfully tedious for my unfortunate sitters. I beg you to stay." "But what about my man at the Orleans?" The painter laughed. "I don't think there will be any difficulty about that. Sit down again, Harry. And now, Dorian, get up on the platform, and don't move about too much, or pay any attention to what Lord Henry says. He has a very bad influence over all his friends, with the single exception of myself." Dorian Gray stepped up on the dais with the air of a young Greek martyr, and made a little _moue_ of discontent to Lord Henry, to whom he had rather taken a fancy. He was so unlike Basil. They made a delightful contrast. And he had such a beautiful voice. After a few moments he said to him, "Have you really a very bad influence, Lord Henry? As bad as Basil says?" "There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoral--immoral from the scientific point of view." "Why?" "Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly--that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self. Of course, they are charitable. They feed the hungry and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion--these are the two things that govern us. And yet--" "Just turn your head a little more to the right, Dorian, like a good boy," said the painter, deep in his work and conscious only that a look had come into the lad's face that he had never seen there before. "And yet," continued Lord Henry, in his low, musical voice, and with that graceful wave of the hand that was always so characteristic of him, and that he had even in his Eton days, "I believe that if one man were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream--I believe that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all the maladies of mediaevalism, and return to the Hellenic ideal--to something finer, richer than the Hellenic ideal, it may be. But the bravest man amongst us is afraid of himself. The mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial that mars our lives. We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind and poisons us. The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret. The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also. You, Mr. Gray, you yourself, with your rose-red youth and your rose-white boyhood, you have had passions that have made you afraid, thoughts that have filled you with terror, day-dreams and sleeping dreams whose mere memory might stain your cheek with shame--" "Stop!" faltered Dorian Gray, "stop! you bewilder me. I don't know what to say. There is some answer to you, but I cannot find it. Don't speak. Let me think. Or, rather, let me try not to think." For nearly ten minutes he stood there, motionless, with parted lips and eyes strangely bright. He was dimly conscious that entirely fresh influences were at work within him. Yet they seemed to him to have come really from himself. The few words that Basil's friend had said to him--words spoken by chance, no doubt, and with wilful paradox in them--had touched some secret chord that had never been touched before, but that he felt was now vibrating and throbbing to curious pulses. Music had stirred him like that. Music had troubled him many times. But music was not articulate. It was not a new world, but rather another chaos, that it created in us. Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words? Yes; there had been things in his boyhood that he had not understood. He understood them now. Life suddenly became fiery-coloured to him. It seemed to him that he had been walking in fire. Why had he not known it? With his subtle smile, Lord Henry watched him. He knew the precise psychological moment when to say nothing. He felt intensely interested. He was amazed at the sudden impression that his words had produced, and, remembering a book that he had read when he was sixteen, a book which had revealed to him much that he had not known before, he wondered whether Dorian Gray was passing through a similar experience. He had merely shot an arrow into the air. Had it hit the mark? How fascinating the lad was! Hallward painted away with that marvellous bold touch of his, that had the true refinement and perfect delicacy that in art, at any rate comes only from strength. He was unconscious of the silence. "Basil, I am tired of standing," cried Dorian Gray suddenly. "I must go out and sit in the garden. The air is stifling here." "My dear fellow, I am so sorry. When I am painting, I can't think of anything else. But you never sat better. You were perfectly still. And I have caught the effect I wanted--the half-parted lips and the bright look in the eyes. I don't know what Harry has been saying to you, but he has certainly made you have the most wonderful expression. I suppose he has been paying you compliments. You mustn't believe a word that he says." "He has certainly not been paying me compliments. Perhaps that is the reason that I don't believe anything he has told me." "You know you believe it all," said Lord Henry, looking at him with his dreamy languorous eyes. "I will go out to the garden with you. It is horribly hot in the studio. Basil, let us have something iced to drink, something with strawberries in it." "Certainly, Harry. Just touch the bell, and when Parker comes I will tell him what you want. I have got to work up this background, so I will join you later on. Don't keep Dorian too long. I have never been in better form for painting than I am to-day. This is going to be my masterpiece. It is my masterpiece as it stands." Lord Henry went out to the garden and found Dorian Gray burying his face in the great cool lilac-blossoms, feverishly drinking in their perfume as if it had been wine. He came close to him and put his hand upon his shoulder. "You are quite right to do that," he murmured. "Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul." The lad started and drew back. He was bareheaded, and the leaves had tossed his rebellious curls and tangled all their gilded threads. There was a look of fear in his eyes, such as people have when they are suddenly awakened. His finely chiselled nostrils quivered, and some hidden nerve shook the scarlet of his lips and left them trembling. "Yes," continued Lord Henry, "that is one of the great secrets of life--to cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul. You are a wonderful creation. You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know." Dorian Gray frowned and turned his head away. He could not help liking the tall, graceful young man who was standing by him. His romantic, olive-coloured face and worn expression interested him. There was something in his low languid voice that was absolutely fascinating. His cool, white, flowerlike hands, even, had a curious charm. They moved, as he spoke, like music, and seemed to have a language of their own. But he felt afraid of him, and ashamed of being afraid. Why had it been left for a stranger to reveal him to himself? He had known Basil Hallward for months, but the friendship between them had never altered him. Suddenly there had come some one across his life who seemed to have disclosed to him life's mystery. And, yet, what was there to be afraid of? He was not a schoolboy or a girl. It was absurd to be frightened. "Let us go and sit in the shade," said Lord Henry. "Parker has brought out the drinks, and if you stay any longer in this glare, you will be quite spoiled, and Basil will never paint you again. You really must not allow yourself to become sunburnt. It would be unbecoming." "What can it matter?" cried Dorian Gray, laughing, as he sat down on the seat at the end of the garden. "It should matter everything to you, Mr. Gray." "Why?" "Because you have the most marvellous youth, and youth is the one thing worth having." "I don't feel that, Lord Henry." "No, you don't feel it now. Some day, when you are old and wrinkled and ugly, when thought has seared your forehead with its lines, and passion branded your lips with its hideous fires, you will feel it, you will feel it terribly. Now, wherever you go, you charm the world. Will it always be so? ... You have a wonderfully beautiful face, Mr. Gray. Don't frown. You have. And beauty is a form of genius--is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or spring-time, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has its divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it. You smile? Ah! when you have lost it you won't smile.... People say sometimes that beauty is only superficial. That may be so, but at least it is not so superficial as thought is. To me, beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.... Yes, Mr. Gray, the gods have been good to you. But what the gods give they quickly take away. You have only a few years in which to live really, perfectly, and fully. When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and then you will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left for you, or have to content yourself with those mean triumphs that the memory of your past will make more bitter than defeats. Every month as it wanes brings you nearer to something dreadful. Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses. You will become sallow, and hollow-cheeked, and dull-eyed. You will suffer horribly.... Ah! realize your youth while you have it. Don't squander the gold of your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar. These are the sickly aims, the false ideals, of our age. Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing.... A new Hedonism--that is what our century wants. You might be its visible symbol. With your personality there is nothing you could not do. The world belongs to you for a season.... The moment I met you I saw that you were quite unconscious of what you really are, of what you really might be. There was so much in you that charmed me that I felt I must tell you something about yourself. I thought how tragic it would be if you were wasted. For there is such a little time that your youth will last--such a little time. The common hill-flowers wither, but they blossom again. The laburnum will be as yellow next June as it is now. In a month there will be purple stars on the clematis, and year after year the green night of its leaves will hold its purple stars. But we never get back our youth. The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to. Youth! Youth! There is absolutely nothing in the world but youth!" Dorian Gray listened, open-eyed and wondering. The spray of lilac fell from his hand upon the gravel. A furry bee came and buzzed round it for a moment. Then it began to scramble all over the oval stellated globe of the tiny blossoms. He watched it with that strange interest in trivial things that we try to develop when things of high import make us afraid, or when we are stirred by some new emotion for which we cannot find expression, or when some thought that terrifies us lays sudden siege to the brain and calls on us to yield. After a time the bee flew away. He saw it creeping into the stained trumpet of a Tyrian convolvulus. The flower seemed to quiver, and then swayed gently to and fro. Suddenly the painter appeared at the door of the studio and made staccato signs for them to come in. They turned to each other and smiled. "I am waiting," he cried. "Do come in. The light is quite perfect, and you can bring your drinks." They rose up and sauntered down the walk together. Two green-and-white butterflies fluttered past them, and in the pear-tree at the corner of the garden a thrush began to sing. "You are glad you have met me, Mr. Gray," said Lord Henry, looking at him. "Yes, I am glad now. I wonder shall I always be glad?" "Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it. Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to make it last for ever. It is a meaningless word, too. The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer." As they entered the studio, Dorian Gray put his hand upon Lord Henry's arm. "In that case, let our friendship be a caprice," he murmured, flushing at his own boldness, then stepped up on the platform and resumed his pose. Lord Henry flung himself into a large wicker arm-chair and watched him. The sweep and dash of the brush on the canvas made the only sound that broke the stillness, except when, now and then, Hallward stepped back to look at his work from a distance. In the slanting beams that streamed through the open doorway the dust danced and was golden. The heavy scent of the roses seemed to brood over everything. After about a quarter of an hour Hallward stopped painting, looked for a long time at Dorian Gray, and then for a long time at the picture, biting the end of one of his huge brushes and frowning. "It is quite finished," he cried at last, and stooping down he wrote his name in long vermilion letters on the left-hand corner of the canvas. Lord Henry came over and examined the picture. It was certainly a wonderful work of art, and a wonderful likeness as well. "My dear fellow, I congratulate you most warmly," he said. "It is the finest portrait of modern times. Mr. Gray, come over and look at yourself." The lad started, as if awakened from some dream. "Is it really finished?" he murmured, stepping down from the platform. "Quite finished," said the painter. "And you have sat splendidly to-day. I am awfully obliged to you." "That is entirely due to me," broke in Lord Henry. "Isn't it, Mr. Gray?" Dorian made no answer, but passed listlessly in front of his picture and turned towards it. When he saw it he drew back, and his cheeks flushed for a moment with pleasure. A look of joy came into his eyes, as if he had recognized himself for the first time. He stood there motionless and in wonder, dimly conscious that Hallward was speaking to him, but not catching the meaning of his words. The sense of his own beauty came on him like a revelation. He had never felt it before. Basil Hallward's compliments had seemed to him to be merely the charming exaggeration of friendship. He had listened to them, laughed at them, forgotten them. They had not influenced his nature. Then had come Lord Henry Wotton with his strange panegyric on youth, his terrible warning of its brevity. That had stirred him at the time, and now, as he stood gazing at the shadow of his own loveliness, the full reality of the description flashed across him. Yes, there would be a day when his face would be wrinkled and wizen, his eyes dim and colourless, the grace of his figure broken and deformed. The scarlet would pass away from his lips and the gold steal from his hair. The life that was to make his soul would mar his body. He would become dreadful, hideous, and uncouth. As he thought of it, a sharp pang of pain struck through him like a knife and made each delicate fibre of his nature quiver. His eyes deepened into amethyst, and across them came a mist of tears. He felt as if a hand of ice had been laid upon his heart. "Don't you like it?" cried Hallward at last, stung a little by the lad's silence, not understanding what it meant. "Of course he likes it," said Lord Henry. "Who wouldn't like it? It is one of the greatest things in modern art. I will give you anything you like to ask for it. I must have it." "It is not my property, Harry." "Whose property is it?" "Dorian's, of course," answered the painter. "He is a very lucky fellow." "How sad it is!" murmured Dorian Gray with his eyes still fixed upon his own portrait. "How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June.... If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that--for that--I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!" "You would hardly care for such an arrangement, Basil," cried Lord Henry, laughing. "It would be rather hard lines on your work." "I should object very strongly, Harry," said Hallward. Dorian Gray turned and looked at him. "I believe you would, Basil. You like your art better than your friends. I am no more to you than a green bronze figure. Hardly as much, I dare say." The painter stared in amazement. It was so unlike Dorian to speak like that. What had happened? He seemed quite angry. His face was flushed and his cheeks burning. "Yes," he continued, "I am less to you than your ivory Hermes or your silver Faun. You will like them always. How long will you like me? Till I have my first wrinkle, I suppose. I know, now, that when one loses one's good looks, whatever they may be, one loses everything. Your picture has taught me that. Lord Henry Wotton is perfectly right. Youth is the only thing worth having. When I find that I am growing old, I shall kill myself." Hallward turned pale and caught his hand. "Dorian! Dorian!" he cried, "don't talk like that. I have never had such a friend as you, and I shall never have such another. You are not jealous of material things, are you?--you who are finer than any of them!" "I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me. Why should it keep what I must lose? Every moment that passes takes something from me and gives something to it. Oh, if it were only the other way! If the picture could change, and I could be always what I am now! Why did you paint it? It will mock me some day--mock me horribly!" The hot tears welled into his eyes; he tore his hand away and, flinging himself on the divan, he buried his face in the cushions, as though he was praying. "This is your doing, Harry," said the painter bitterly. Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. "It is the real Dorian Gray--that is all." "It is not." "If it is not, what have I to do with it?" "You should have gone away when I asked you," he muttered. "I stayed when you asked me," was Lord Henry's answer. "Harry, I can't quarrel with my two best friends at once, but between you both you have made me hate the finest piece of work I have ever done, and I will destroy it. What is it but canvas and colour? I will not let it come across our three lives and mar them." Dorian Gray lifted his golden head from the pillow, and with pallid face and tear-stained eyes, looked at him as he walked over to the deal painting-table that was set beneath the high curtained window. What was he doing there? His fingers were straying about among the litter of tin tubes and dry brushes, seeking for something. Yes, it was for the long palette-knife, with its thin blade of lithe steel. He had found it at last. He was going to rip up the canvas. With a stifled sob the lad leaped from the couch, and, rushing over to Hallward, tore the knife out of his hand, and flung it to the end of the studio. "Don't, Basil, don't!" he cried. "It would be murder!" "I am glad you appreciate my work at last, Dorian," said the painter coldly when he had recovered from his surprise. "I never thought you would." "Appreciate it? I am in love with it, Basil. It is part of myself. I feel that." "Well, as soon as you are dry, you shall be varnished, and framed, and sent home. Then you can do what you like with yourself." And he walked across the room and rang the bell for tea. "You will have tea, of course, Dorian? And so will you, Harry? Or do you object to such simple pleasures?" "I adore simple pleasures," said Lord Henry. "They are the last refuge of the complex. But I don't like scenes, except on the stage. What absurd fellows you are, both of you! I wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given. Man is many things, but he is not rational. I am glad he is not, after all--though I wish you chaps would not squabble over the picture. You had much better let me have it, Basil. This silly boy doesn't really want it, and I really do." "If you let any one have it but me, Basil, I shall never forgive you!" cried Dorian Gray; "and I don't allow people to call me a silly boy." "You know the picture is yours, Dorian. I gave it to you before it existed." "And you know you have been a little silly, Mr. Gray, and that you don't really object to being reminded that you are extremely young." "I should have objected very strongly this morning, Lord Henry." "Ah! this morning! You have lived since then." There came a knock at the door, and the butler entered with a laden tea-tray and set it down upon a small Japanese table. There was a rattle of cups and saucers and the hissing of a fluted Georgian urn. Two globe-shaped china dishes were brought in by a page. Dorian Gray went over and poured out the tea. The two men sauntered languidly to the table and examined what was under the covers. "Let us go to the theatre to-night," said Lord Henry. "There is sure to be something on, somewhere. I have promised to dine at White's, but it is only with an old friend, so I can send him a wire to say that I am ill, or that I am prevented from coming in consequence of a subsequent engagement. I think that would be a rather nice excuse: it would have all the surprise of candour." "It is such a bore putting on one's dress-clothes," muttered Hallward. "And, when one has them on, they are so horrid." "Yes," answered Lord Henry dreamily, "the costume of the nineteenth century is detestable. It is so sombre, so depressing. Sin is the only real colour-element left in modern life." "You really must not say things like that before Dorian, Harry." "Before which Dorian? The one who is pouring out tea for us, or the one in the picture?" "Before either." "I should like to come to the theatre with you, Lord Henry," said the lad. "Then you shall come; and you will come, too, Basil, won't you?" "I can't, really. I would sooner not. I have a lot of work to do." "Well, then, you and I will go alone, Mr. Gray." "I should like that awfully." The painter bit his lip and walked over, cup in hand, to the picture. "I shall stay with the real Dorian," he said, sadly. "Is it the real Dorian?" cried the original of the portrait, strolling across to him. "Am I really like that?" "Yes; you are just like that." "How wonderful, Basil!" "At least you are like it in appearance. But it will never alter," sighed Hallward. "That is something." "What a fuss people make about fidelity!" exclaimed Lord Henry. "Why, even in love it is purely a question for physiology. It has nothing to do with our own will. Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot: that is all one can say." "Don't go to the theatre to-night, Dorian," said Hallward. "Stop and dine with me." "I can't, Basil." "Why?" "Because I have promised Lord Henry Wotton to go with him." "He won't like you the better for keeping your promises. He always breaks his own. I beg you not to go." Dorian Gray laughed and shook his head. "I entreat you." The lad hesitated, and looked over at Lord Henry, who was watching them from the tea-table with an amused smile. "I must go, Basil," he answered. "Very well," said Hallward, and he went over and laid down his cup on the tray. "It is rather late, and, as you have to dress, you had better lose no time. Good-bye, Harry. Good-bye, Dorian. Come and see me soon. Come to-morrow." "Certainly." "You won't forget?" "No, of course not," cried Dorian. "And ... Harry!" "Yes, Basil?" "Remember what I asked you, when we were in the garden this morning." "I have forgotten it." "I trust you." "I wish I could trust myself," said Lord Henry, laughing. "Come, Mr. Gray, my hansom is outside, and I can drop you at your own place. Good-bye, Basil. It has been a most interesting afternoon." As the door closed behind them, the painter flung himself down on a sofa, and a look of pain came into his face.

Chapter 2

https://web.archive.org/web/20210304030722/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/picture-dorian-gray/summary/chapter-2

Basil and Henry return to the house, where they find Dorian at the piano. He's startled to see that there's someone else there. Basil introduces his two friends. Lord Henry brings up their other mutual acquaintance, his Aunt Agatha. While he chats politely with Dorian, he notices just how splendid the boy's looks are--there's something about him that's totally innocent and pure. Basil is distracted by Henry and Dorian's conversation--he's worried about what his old friend will say to influence his new one. He asks Henry to leave, but Dorian raises a fuss begs him to stay. Basil gives in and allows Henry to stay, but warns Dorian not to listen to everything Henry says, since he's a bad influence over everyone except Basil himself. Dorian has taken a liking to Henry already--he's charmed by how different the young lord is from his friend. As Dorian poses for the painting, Henry takes it upon himself to enlighten the boy; he launches into a long explanation of his own decadent values, basically claiming that any form of influence is a bad influence, and that people should try to live their lives fully and give into their impulses. Dorian is shocked by all this, and Basil, who's wrapped up in his painting, notices a new look in the boy's face for the first time. Henry continues his diatribe about returning to the Hellenic mode of life, in which everyone yields to all of their desires and temptations. He suggests daringly that even Dorian, whose youthful innocence is complete, has secret desires that he won't even admit to himself. This is too much for the boy, and he demands silence so he can think things through. The provocative, challenging words of Lord Henry resonate mysteriously within Dorian's soul, and he's not quite sure what's happening to him. All of a sudden, it seems as though his whole life has changed, and things that he didn't even recognize in himself before come to life. As Dorian ponders the meaning of this conversation, Henry looks on, intrigued and pleased--he knows his words have hit close to home. Meanwhile, Basil, in a painting trance, works in silence, not noticing what's happening between his two friends. Dorian breaks from his pose, and demands some rest--Basil lets him go, commenting that whatever Henry was saying to Dorian must have been working, because he posed beautifully. Henry follows Dorian to the garden, where he finds the boy desperately trying to calm himself down via aromatherapy with some lilacs. Henry approves of this--he thinks the best way to calm the soul is to appeal to the senses, and vice versa. Dorian is disturbed by the effect Lord Henry has on him, and a little afraid of him--but he's deeply intrigued by the other man. Henry warns Dorian not to get sunburnt, telling the boy that he should value his youth and exceptional beauty. He explains that to him, Beauty is the most important and valuable thing in the whole world--but that it's transient, and Dorian should enjoy it while he can. Basil calls his friends back into the studio, and as they go into the house, they confirm their new friendship. Dorian gets back into picture pose, and Basil continues his work--soon enough, he's actually done with the painting. Henry comes over to admire it exuberantly, and calls Dorian over. Dorian is overjoyed by the recognition of his own beauty; Lord Henry's words opened his eyes for the first time to just how gorgeous he is. This just makes him afraid of the day when he'll grow old and lose his beauty, and he breaks down in tears. Basil doesn't understand Dorian's reaction, and asks if he doesn't like it. Lord Henry tries to make Basil feel better, and asks to buy the painting--but Basil says it already belongs to Dorian. Dorian explains his sadness in seeing the beauty of the portrait. He can't believe that he himself will grow older every day, but the painting will never age, and he wishes it was the other way around--why can't the painting age as he stays the same? He says he would give his soul to have this wish come true. Henry jokes that Basil wouldn't like this arrangement, as it would reflect poorly upon his own work. Dorian responds too seriously that it's true--Basil likes his work better than his real friends. Dorian goes on rather madly, saying that Basil only cares for his youth and beauty, and that the day he grows old and ugly, he'll kill himself. Basil is horrified, and blames Henry for this change in Dorian; Henry, however, responds that it's the real Dorian who's emerged. Basil turns on the painting, the cause of this argument between him and his best friends. He attempts to slash the canvas, but Dorian stops him, saying that he's in love with this image of himself. Everyone calms down, and it seems that the moment of high drama is over. Everyone settles down, and, like good Englishmen, the three settle down for a cup of tea. Lord Henry proposes that they all go to the theatre that night. Dorian is all up for it, but Basil says he has to stay home and work--he sadly comments that he'll stay with the "real" Dorian, the innocent one in the painting. Basil begs Dorian not to go to the theatre with Lord Henry, but the boy says that he must. We get the feeling that this is rather more symbolic than it seems--will he stay back with Basil and his old self, or will he go out with Lord Henry, and perhaps come back a different person?... Dorian and Henry leave Basil in the studio, alone and pained.

cliffnotes

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finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Far from the Madding Crowd/section_31_part_0.txt

Far from the Madding Crowd.chapter 32

chapter 32

{"name": "Chapter 32", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101052914/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary-and-analysis/chapter-32", "summary": "\"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 clock of the same at their close.\" Maryann, alone in the manorhouse, was startled by a stealthy footfall. She saw a gray figure enter the paddock; shortly thereafter, she heard the gig traveling down the road. Thinking that gypsies had stolen the wagon, she ran to Coggan's house, where Gabriel was again staying. The men found that Dainty was the horse that had been stolen. To pursue her, they would need light, quick horses; Gabriel decided to borrow Boldwood's. They followed the hoofmarks, and were sure because of the shoeing on one foot that it was indeed Dainty. Finally, at a tollgate, they caught up, only to discover that the \"thief' was -- Bathsheba! Bathsheba explained that she had given up the trip to Liddy's for \"an important matter.\" Then, unable to rouse Maryann, she had chalked a message on the coach-house door. She said that now that she had removed the stone from Dainty's shoe, she would be able to reach Bath by daylight. The men were sure she was miscalculating the distance, as in truth she was. \"Bathsheba's perturbed mediations 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.\" Following Troy to Bath insured another meeting with him, but this was something Bathsheba chose not to think about. The rest of her plan was to go from Bath to Yalbury, meet Liddy, and return with her.", "analysis": "The deductions made by the men in tracing and identifying the \"stolen\" horse reveal native skills, as does their estimation of distances. Since both men are sufficiently convinced that Bathsheba's behavior is erratic, Gabriel easily enjoins Coggan to silence."}

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.

Chapter 32

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101052914/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary-and-analysis/chapter-32

"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 clock of the same at their close." Maryann, alone in the manorhouse, was startled by a stealthy footfall. She saw a gray figure enter the paddock; shortly thereafter, she heard the gig traveling down the road. Thinking that gypsies had stolen the wagon, she ran to Coggan's house, where Gabriel was again staying. The men found that Dainty was the horse that had been stolen. To pursue her, they would need light, quick horses; Gabriel decided to borrow Boldwood's. They followed the hoofmarks, and were sure because of the shoeing on one foot that it was indeed Dainty. Finally, at a tollgate, they caught up, only to discover that the "thief' was -- Bathsheba! Bathsheba explained that she had given up the trip to Liddy's for "an important matter." Then, unable to rouse Maryann, she had chalked a message on the coach-house door. She said that now that she had removed the stone from Dainty's shoe, she would be able to reach Bath by daylight. The men were sure she was miscalculating the distance, as in truth she was. "Bathsheba's perturbed mediations 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." Following Troy to Bath insured another meeting with him, but this was something Bathsheba chose not to think about. The rest of her plan was to go from Bath to Yalbury, meet Liddy, and return with her.

The deductions made by the men in tracing and identifying the "stolen" horse reveal native skills, as does their estimation of distances. Since both men are sufficiently convinced that Bathsheba's behavior is erratic, Gabriel easily enjoins Coggan to silence.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/49.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Sense and Sensibility/section_4_part_9.txt

Sense and Sensibility.chapter 49

chapter 49

{"name": "Chapter 49", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210419170735/https://www.gradesaver.com/sense-and-sensibility/study-guide/summary-chapters-41-50", "summary": "Edward came to Barton with the intent of proposing marriage to Elinor, now that he is free; Elinor accepts and he gains Mrs. Dashwood's consent to the match during the afternoon. Edward admits that any regard he had for Lucy was formed out of idleness and lack of knowledge of the world; but during the four years they were engaged, he soon came to regret the match, although he could not break with Lucy in good conscience. The entire family is unbelievably happy that Edward got an honorable release from his engagement, and that Elinor and Edward are to be wed; Elinor is absolutely overcome, since she had expected him to be lost forever to her. Edward also reveals that after leaving London, he received a letter from Lucy saying that she had married his brother Robert, and has not seen her since. After receiving the letter, he also set out for Barton immediately, now at liberty to do as he had wished. Colonel Brandon soon comes to visit, and they are all at Barton for some time; Edward will still accept the position at Delaford, although he and Elinor still will not have enough money to live on comfortably. Edward and the Colonel become good friends, since they are suited in sense and temperament; Edward goes to Delaford with the Colonel to see his new home, and then decides to go to town to attempt reconciliation with his family, and hope to regain financial support from them.", "analysis": "Austen still does not explain exactly how Robert and Lucy managed to become a couple, but Edward's statement that their vanities must have bound them together is probably the best explanation for their sudden elopement. How ironic that Robert commits the grave offense against his family of marrying Lucy, yet it is Edward who is left without support; hopefully this is remedied somehow, although news of Edward's engagement to Elinor will hardly be more welcome than news of his engagement to Lucy. In the end, Lucy proves just as unscrupulous, vain, and malicious as Elinor suspected she might be. She ditches Edward because of money, when it suits her to do so; she sends the message to the Dashwoods to lead them to the painful conclusion that she has married Edward, and then she even takes all her sister's money and leaves her in town. It would hardly be fair if Robert got to keep Edward's inheritance now, and would be just desserts if Lucy was stuck with Robert, and had even less money than she would have with Edward. But, it is almost certain that considering the selfishness and folly of the couple, theirs will hardly be a joyful marriage at all"}

Unaccountable, however, as the circumstances of his release might appear to the whole family, it was certain that Edward was free; and to what purpose that freedom would be employed was easily pre-determined by all;--for after experiencing the blessings of ONE imprudent engagement, contracted without his mother's consent, as he had already done for more than four years, nothing less could be expected of him in the failure of THAT, than the immediate contraction of another. His errand at Barton, in fact, was a simple one. It was only to ask Elinor to marry him;--and considering that he was not altogether inexperienced in such a question, it might be strange that he should feel so uncomfortable in the present case as he really did, so much in need of encouragement and fresh air. How soon he had walked himself into the proper resolution, however, how soon an opportunity of exercising it occurred, in what manner he expressed himself, and how he was received, need not be particularly told. This only need be said;--that when they all sat down to table at four o'clock, about three hours after his arrival, he had secured his lady, engaged her mother's consent, and was not only in the rapturous profession of the lover, but, in the reality of reason and truth, one of the happiest of men. His situation indeed was more than commonly joyful. He had more than the ordinary triumph of accepted love to swell his heart, and raise his spirits. He was released without any reproach to himself, from an entanglement which had long formed his misery, from a woman whom he had long ceased to love;--and elevated at once to that security with another, which he must have thought of almost with despair, as soon as he had learnt to consider it with desire. He was brought, not from doubt or suspense, but from misery to happiness;--and the change was openly spoken in such a genuine, flowing, grateful cheerfulness, as his friends had never witnessed in him before. His heart was now open to Elinor, all its weaknesses, all its errors confessed, and his first boyish attachment to Lucy treated with all the philosophic dignity of twenty-four. "It was a foolish, idle inclination on my side," said he, "the consequence of ignorance of the world--and want of employment. Had my mother given me some active profession when I was removed at eighteen from the care of Mr. Pratt, I think--nay, I am sure, it would never have happened; for though I left Longstaple with what I thought, at the time, a most unconquerable preference for his niece, yet had I then had any pursuit, any object to engage my time and keep me at a distance from her for a few months, I should very soon have outgrown the fancied attachment, especially by mixing more with the world, as in such case I must have done. But instead of having any thing to do, instead of having any profession chosen for me, or being allowed to chuse any myself, I returned home to be completely idle; and for the first twelvemonth afterwards I had not even the nominal employment, which belonging to the university would have given me; for I was not entered at Oxford till I was nineteen. I had therefore nothing in the world to do, but to fancy myself in love; and as my mother did not make my home in every respect comfortable, as I had no friend, no companion in my brother, and disliked new acquaintance, it was not unnatural for me to be very often at Longstaple, where I always felt myself at home, and was always sure of a welcome; and accordingly I spent the greatest part of my time there from eighteen to nineteen: Lucy appeared everything that was amiable and obliging. She was pretty too--at least I thought so THEN; and I had seen so little of other women, that I could make no comparisons, and see no defects. Considering everything, therefore, I hope, foolish as our engagement was, foolish as it has since in every way been proved, it was not at the time an unnatural or an inexcusable piece of folly." The change which a few hours had wrought in the minds and the happiness of the Dashwoods, was such--so great--as promised them all, the satisfaction of a sleepless night. Mrs. Dashwood, too happy to be comfortable, knew not how to love Edward, nor praise Elinor enough, how to be enough thankful for his release without wounding his delicacy, nor how at once to give them leisure for unrestrained conversation together, and yet enjoy, as she wished, the sight and society of both. Marianne could speak HER happiness only by tears. Comparisons would occur--regrets would arise;--and her joy, though sincere as her love for her sister, was of a kind to give her neither spirits nor language. But Elinor--how are HER feelings to be described?--From the moment of learning that Lucy was married to another, that Edward was free, to the moment of his justifying the hopes which had so instantly followed, she was every thing by turns but tranquil. But when the second moment had passed, when she found every doubt, every solicitude removed, compared her situation with what so lately it had been,--saw him honourably released from his former engagement, saw him instantly profiting by the release, to address herself and declare an affection as tender, as constant as she had ever supposed it to be,--she was oppressed, she was overcome by her own felicity;--and happily disposed as is the human mind to be easily familiarized with any change for the better, it required several hours to give sedateness to her spirits, or any degree of tranquillity to her heart. Edward was now fixed at the cottage at least for a week;--for whatever other claims might be made on him, it was impossible that less than a week should be given up to the enjoyment of Elinor's company, or suffice to say half that was to be said of the past, the present, and the future;--for though a very few hours spent in the hard labor of incessant talking will despatch more subjects than can really be in common between any two rational creatures, yet with lovers it is different. Between THEM no subject is finished, no communication is even made, till it has been made at least twenty times over. Lucy's marriage, the unceasing and reasonable wonder among them all, formed of course one of the earliest discussions of the lovers;--and Elinor's particular knowledge of each party made it appear to her in every view, as one of the most extraordinary and unaccountable circumstances she had ever heard. How they could be thrown together, and by what attraction Robert could be drawn on to marry a girl, of whose beauty she had herself heard him speak without any admiration,--a girl too already engaged to his brother, and on whose account that brother had been thrown off by his family--it was beyond her comprehension to make out. To her own heart it was a delightful affair, to her imagination it was even a ridiculous one, but to her reason, her judgment, it was completely a puzzle. Edward could only attempt an explanation by supposing, that, perhaps, at first accidentally meeting, the vanity of the one had been so worked on by the flattery of the other, as to lead by degrees to all the rest. Elinor remembered what Robert had told her in Harley Street, of his opinion of what his own mediation in his brother's affairs might have done, if applied to in time. She repeated it to Edward. "THAT was exactly like Robert,"--was his immediate observation.--"And THAT," he presently added, "might perhaps be in HIS head when the acquaintance between them first began. And Lucy perhaps at first might think only of procuring his good offices in my favour. Other designs might afterward arise." How long it had been carrying on between them, however, he was equally at a loss with herself to make out; for at Oxford, where he had remained for choice ever since his quitting London, he had had no means of hearing of her but from herself, and her letters to the very last were neither less frequent, nor less affectionate than usual. Not the smallest suspicion, therefore, had ever occurred to prepare him for what followed;--and when at last it burst on him in a letter from Lucy herself, he had been for some time, he believed, half stupified between the wonder, the horror, and the joy of such a deliverance. He put the letter into Elinor's hands. "DEAR SIR, "Being very sure I have long lost your affections, I have thought myself at liberty to bestow my own on another, and have no doubt of being as happy with him as I once used to think I might be with you; but I scorn to accept a hand while the heart was another's. Sincerely wish you happy in your choice, and it shall not be my fault if we are not always good friends, as our near relationship now makes proper. I can safely say I owe you no ill-will, and am sure you will be too generous to do us any ill offices. Your brother has gained my affections entirely, and as we could not live without one another, we are just returned from the altar, and are now on our way to Dawlish for a few weeks, which place your dear brother has great curiosity to see, but thought I would first trouble you with these few lines, and shall always remain, "Your sincere well-wisher, friend, and sister, "LUCY FERRARS. "I have burnt all your letters, and will return your picture the first opportunity. Please to destroy my scrawls--but the ring with my hair you are very welcome to keep." Elinor read and returned it without any comment. "I will not ask your opinion of it as a composition," said Edward.--"For worlds would not I have had a letter of hers seen by YOU in former days.--In a sister it is bad enough, but in a wife!--how I have blushed over the pages of her writing!--and I believe I may say that since the first half year of our foolish--business--this is the only letter I ever received from her, of which the substance made me any amends for the defect of the style." "However it may have come about," said Elinor, after a pause,--"they are certainly married. And your mother has brought on herself a most appropriate punishment. The independence she settled on Robert, through resentment against you, has put it in his power to make his own choice; and she has actually been bribing one son with a thousand a-year, to do the very deed which she disinherited the other for intending to do. She will hardly be less hurt, I suppose, by Robert's marrying Lucy, than she would have been by your marrying her." "She will be more hurt by it, for Robert always was her favourite.--She will be more hurt by it, and on the same principle will forgive him much sooner." In what state the affair stood at present between them, Edward knew not, for no communication with any of his family had yet been attempted by him. He had quitted Oxford within four and twenty hours after Lucy's letter arrived, and with only one object before him, the nearest road to Barton, had had no leisure to form any scheme of conduct, with which that road did not hold the most intimate connection. He could do nothing till he were assured of his fate with Miss Dashwood; and by his rapidity in seeking THAT fate, it is to be supposed, in spite of the jealousy with which he had once thought of Colonel Brandon, in spite of the modesty with which he rated his own deserts, and the politeness with which he talked of his doubts, he did not, upon the whole, expect a very cruel reception. It was his business, however, to say that he DID, and he said it very prettily. What he might say on the subject a twelvemonth after, must be referred to the imagination of husbands and wives. That Lucy had certainly meant to deceive, to go off with a flourish of malice against him in her message by Thomas, was perfectly clear to Elinor; and Edward himself, now thoroughly enlightened on her character, had no scruple in believing her capable of the utmost meanness of wanton ill-nature. Though his eyes had been long opened, even before his acquaintance with Elinor began, to her ignorance and a want of liberality in some of her opinions--they had been equally imputed, by him, to her want of education; and till her last letter reached him, he had always believed her to be a well-disposed, good-hearted girl, and thoroughly attached to himself. Nothing but such a persuasion could have prevented his putting an end to an engagement, which, long before the discovery of it laid him open to his mother's anger, had been a continual source of disquiet and regret to him. "I thought it my duty," said he, "independent of my feelings, to give her the option of continuing the engagement or not, when I was renounced by my mother, and stood to all appearance without a friend in the world to assist me. In such a situation as that, where there seemed nothing to tempt the avarice or the vanity of any living creature, how could I suppose, when she so earnestly, so warmly insisted on sharing my fate, whatever it might be, that any thing but the most disinterested affection was her inducement? And even now, I cannot comprehend on what motive she acted, or what fancied advantage it could be to her, to be fettered to a man for whom she had not the smallest regard, and who had only two thousand pounds in the world. She could not foresee that Colonel Brandon would give me a living." "No; but she might suppose that something would occur in your favour; that your own family might in time relent. And at any rate, she lost nothing by continuing the engagement, for she has proved that it fettered neither her inclination nor her actions. The connection was certainly a respectable one, and probably gained her consideration among her friends; and, if nothing more advantageous occurred, it would be better for her to marry YOU than be single." Edward was, of course, immediately convinced that nothing could have been more natural than Lucy's conduct, nor more self-evident than the motive of it. Elinor scolded him, harshly as ladies always scold the imprudence which compliments themselves, for having spent so much time with them at Norland, when he must have felt his own inconstancy. "Your behaviour was certainly very wrong," said she; "because--to say nothing of my own conviction, our relations were all led away by it to fancy and expect WHAT, as you were THEN situated, could never be." He could only plead an ignorance of his own heart, and a mistaken confidence in the force of his engagement. "I was simple enough to think, that because my FAITH was plighted to another, there could be no danger in my being with you; and that the consciousness of my engagement was to keep my heart as safe and sacred as my honour. I felt that I admired you, but I told myself it was only friendship; and till I began to make comparisons between yourself and Lucy, I did not know how far I was got. After that, I suppose, I WAS wrong in remaining so much in Sussex, and the arguments with which I reconciled myself to the expediency of it, were no better than these:--The danger is my own; I am doing no injury to anybody but myself." Elinor smiled, and shook her head. Edward heard with pleasure of Colonel Brandon's being expected at the Cottage, as he really wished not only to be better acquainted with him, but to have an opportunity of convincing him that he no longer resented his giving him the living of Delaford--"Which, at present," said he, "after thanks so ungraciously delivered as mine were on the occasion, he must think I have never forgiven him for offering." NOW he felt astonished himself that he had never yet been to the place. But so little interest had he taken in the matter, that he owed all his knowledge of the house, garden, and glebe, extent of the parish, condition of the land, and rate of the tithes, to Elinor herself, who had heard so much of it from Colonel Brandon, and heard it with so much attention, as to be entirely mistress of the subject. One question after this only remained undecided, between them, one difficulty only was to be overcome. They were brought together by mutual affection, with the warmest approbation of their real friends; their intimate knowledge of each other seemed to make their happiness certain--and they only wanted something to live upon. Edward had two thousand pounds, and Elinor one, which, with Delaford living, was all that they could call their own; for it was impossible that Mrs. Dashwood should advance anything; and they were neither of them quite enough in love to think that three hundred and fifty pounds a-year would supply them with the comforts of life. Edward was not entirely without hopes of some favourable change in his mother towards him; and on THAT he rested for the residue of their income. But Elinor had no such dependence; for since Edward would still be unable to marry Miss Morton, and his chusing herself had been spoken of in Mrs. Ferrars's flattering language as only a lesser evil than his chusing Lucy Steele, she feared that Robert's offence would serve no other purpose than to enrich Fanny. About four days after Edward's arrival Colonel Brandon appeared, to complete Mrs. Dashwood's satisfaction, and to give her the dignity of having, for the first time since her living at Barton, more company with her than her house would hold. Edward was allowed to retain the privilege of first comer, and Colonel Brandon therefore walked every night to his old quarters at the Park; from whence he usually returned in the morning, early enough to interrupt the lovers' first tete-a-tete before breakfast. A three weeks' residence at Delaford, where, in his evening hours at least, he had little to do but to calculate the disproportion between thirty-six and seventeen, brought him to Barton in a temper of mind which needed all the improvement in Marianne's looks, all the kindness of her welcome, and all the encouragement of her mother's language, to make it cheerful. Among such friends, however, and such flattery, he did revive. No rumour of Lucy's marriage had yet reached him:--he knew nothing of what had passed; and the first hours of his visit were consequently spent in hearing and in wondering. Every thing was explained to him by Mrs. Dashwood, and he found fresh reason to rejoice in what he had done for Mr. Ferrars, since eventually it promoted the interest of Elinor. It would be needless to say, that the gentlemen advanced in the good opinion of each other, as they advanced in each other's acquaintance, for it could not be otherwise. Their resemblance in good principles and good sense, in disposition and manner of thinking, would probably have been sufficient to unite them in friendship, without any other attraction; but their being in love with two sisters, and two sisters fond of each other, made that mutual regard inevitable and immediate, which might otherwise have waited the effect of time and judgment. The letters from town, which a few days before would have made every nerve in Elinor's body thrill with transport, now arrived to be read with less emotion than mirth. Mrs. Jennings wrote to tell the wonderful tale, to vent her honest indignation against the jilting girl, and pour forth her compassion towards poor Mr. Edward, who, she was sure, had quite doted upon the worthless hussy, and was now, by all accounts, almost broken-hearted, at Oxford.-- "I do think," she continued, "nothing was ever carried on so sly; for it was but two days before Lucy called and sat a couple of hours with me. Not a soul suspected anything of the matter, not even Nancy, who, poor soul! came crying to me the day after, in a great fright for fear of Mrs. Ferrars, as well as not knowing how to get to Plymouth; for Lucy it seems borrowed all her money before she went off to be married, on purpose we suppose to make a show with, and poor Nancy had not seven shillings in the world;--so I was very glad to give her five guineas to take her down to Exeter, where she thinks of staying three or four weeks with Mrs. Burgess, in hopes, as I tell her, to fall in with the Doctor again. And I must say that Lucy's crossness not to take them along with them in the chaise is worse than all. Poor Mr. Edward! I cannot get him out of my head, but you must send for him to Barton, and Miss Marianne must try to comfort him." Mr. Dashwood's strains were more solemn. Mrs. Ferrars was the most unfortunate of women--poor Fanny had suffered agonies of sensibility--and he considered the existence of each, under such a blow, with grateful wonder. Robert's offence was unpardonable, but Lucy's was infinitely worse. Neither of them were ever again to be mentioned to Mrs. Ferrars; and even, if she might hereafter be induced to forgive her son, his wife should never be acknowledged as her daughter, nor be permitted to appear in her presence. The secrecy with which everything had been carried on between them, was rationally treated as enormously heightening the crime, because, had any suspicion of it occurred to the others, proper measures would have been taken to prevent the marriage; and he called on Elinor to join with him in regretting that Lucy's engagement with Edward had not rather been fulfilled, than that she should thus be the means of spreading misery farther in the family.-- He thus continued: "Mrs. Ferrars has never yet mentioned Edward's name, which does not surprise us; but, to our great astonishment, not a line has been received from him on the occasion. Perhaps, however, he is kept silent by his fear of offending, and I shall, therefore, give him a hint, by a line to Oxford, that his sister and I both think a letter of proper submission from him, addressed perhaps to Fanny, and by her shewn to her mother, might not be taken amiss; for we all know the tenderness of Mrs. Ferrars's heart, and that she wishes for nothing so much as to be on good terms with her children." This paragraph was of some importance to the prospects and conduct of Edward. It determined him to attempt a reconciliation, though not exactly in the manner pointed out by their brother and sister. "A letter of proper submission!" repeated he; "would they have me beg my mother's pardon for Robert's ingratitude to HER, and breach of honour to ME?--I can make no submission--I am grown neither humble nor penitent by what has passed.--I am grown very happy; but that would not interest.--I know of no submission that IS proper for me to make." "You may certainly ask to be forgiven," said Elinor, "because you have offended;--and I should think you might NOW venture so far as to profess some concern for having ever formed the engagement which drew on you your mother's anger." He agreed that he might. "And when she has forgiven you, perhaps a little humility may be convenient while acknowledging a second engagement, almost as imprudent in HER eyes as the first." He had nothing to urge against it, but still resisted the idea of a letter of proper submission; and therefore, to make it easier to him, as he declared a much greater willingness to make mean concessions by word of mouth than on paper, it was resolved that, instead of writing to Fanny, he should go to London, and personally intreat her good offices in his favour.-- "And if they really DO interest themselves," said Marianne, in her new character of candour, "in bringing about a reconciliation, I shall think that even John and Fanny are not entirely without merit." After a visit on Colonel Brandon's side of only three or four days, the two gentlemen quitted Barton together.-- They were to go immediately to Delaford, that Edward might have some personal knowledge of his future home, and assist his patron and friend in deciding on what improvements were needed to it; and from thence, after staying there a couple of nights, he was to proceed on his journey to town.

Chapter 49

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

Edward came to Barton with the intent of proposing marriage to Elinor, now that he is free; Elinor accepts and he gains Mrs. Dashwood's consent to the match during the afternoon. Edward admits that any regard he had for Lucy was formed out of idleness and lack of knowledge of the world; but during the four years they were engaged, he soon came to regret the match, although he could not break with Lucy in good conscience. The entire family is unbelievably happy that Edward got an honorable release from his engagement, and that Elinor and Edward are to be wed; Elinor is absolutely overcome, since she had expected him to be lost forever to her. Edward also reveals that after leaving London, he received a letter from Lucy saying that she had married his brother Robert, and has not seen her since. After receiving the letter, he also set out for Barton immediately, now at liberty to do as he had wished. Colonel Brandon soon comes to visit, and they are all at Barton for some time; Edward will still accept the position at Delaford, although he and Elinor still will not have enough money to live on comfortably. Edward and the Colonel become good friends, since they are suited in sense and temperament; Edward goes to Delaford with the Colonel to see his new home, and then decides to go to town to attempt reconciliation with his family, and hope to regain financial support from them.

Austen still does not explain exactly how Robert and Lucy managed to become a couple, but Edward's statement that their vanities must have bound them together is probably the best explanation for their sudden elopement. How ironic that Robert commits the grave offense against his family of marrying Lucy, yet it is Edward who is left without support; hopefully this is remedied somehow, although news of Edward's engagement to Elinor will hardly be more welcome than news of his engagement to Lucy. In the end, Lucy proves just as unscrupulous, vain, and malicious as Elinor suspected she might be. She ditches Edward because of money, when it suits her to do so; she sends the message to the Dashwoods to lead them to the painful conclusion that she has married Edward, and then she even takes all her sister's money and leaves her in town. It would hardly be fair if Robert got to keep Edward's inheritance now, and would be just desserts if Lucy was stuck with Robert, and had even less money than she would have with Edward. But, it is almost certain that considering the selfishness and folly of the couple, theirs will hardly be a joyful marriage at all

pinkmonkey

all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/42.txt

finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Sense and Sensibility/section_41_part_0.txt

Sense and Sensibility.chapter 42

chapter 42

{"name": "Chapter 42", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820034609/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmSenseSensibility58.asp", "summary": "Edward goes to meet Lucy after thanking Colonel Brandon. Mrs. Jennings is grateful to both Elinor and Brandon for helping Lucy to settle down. Elinor decides to visit her brother before the departure for Cleveland. Since Marianne refuses to accompany her, she goes alone to meet Lady Dashwood and her brother. John Dashwood welcomes her. He shows his surprise at Colonel Brandon's generosity towards Edward. He then informs her of Robert's plans to get married to Miss Morton. When John goes to inform his wife of Elinor's visit, Robert comes to meet her and keeps her company. He is amused at Edward's choosing to become a clergyman and takes pity on him for having to marry Lucy. Shortly afterwards, Fanny Dashwood comes forward to meet Elinor. She talks politely and expresses regret at their departure to Cleveland.", "analysis": "Notes Most of the scenes in which Mrs. Jennings and John Dashwood are present evoke humor. In this chapter John Dashwood amuses the readers through his conversation with Elinor. Obsessed with money and miserly in his attitude, he fails to believe that the Colonel has been so kind as to offer a position at Delaford to Edward. He assumes that the Colonel must have an ulterior motive. He dubs Brandon as unthinking and strange. However, he is happy at the thought that the wealthy Colonel may soon marry Elinor. A hen-pecked and indulgent husband, John Dashwood is afraid to hurt the feelings of his cunning wife. Thus he requests Elinor to refrain from mentioning the Colonel's benevolence to her. He is happy to see his wife talking politely to Elinor and appreciates Fanny's gesture. John Dashwood's views and ideas shock Elinor. Referring to the marriage of Robert Ferrars to Miss Morton, he voices his opinion that Miss Morton should not mind getting married to any one of the brothers as long as he inherits the family property. His line of argument appalls Elinor thoroughly: her brother considers money superior to emotion. CHAPTER 42 Summary In early April the two families from Hanover Square and Berkeley Street set out on their journey to Cleveland. Passing through Somerset, they take three days to reach their destination. The Palmers' house is modern and spacious, and the surrounding flora and fauna enhance its beauty. Marianne is excited at the idea of being able to explore the countryside. However, she is forced to stay indoors due to rain. Mr. Palmer and Colonel Brandon arrive shortly afterwards. Elinor finds both Mr. and Mrs. Palmer charming and friendly hosts. Brandon talks to her about Delaford. He suspects that Marianne has caught a cold, and in fact, she falls ill with the flu a few days later. Notes Marianne and Elinor have different reactions to the departure for Cleveland. Marianne becomes emotional, recollecting the pleasures and pains she has experienced while in London. Elinor is quite content to leave the place, as she is not at all sentimental about it. In fact, she is relieved to be spared the company of Lucy Steele. She also hopes that a change of scene will help Marianne to regain her health. Jane Austen once again highlights Marianne's sensibility in contrast to Elinor's good sense. Mr. Palmer reveals himself to be a gentleman beneath his tough exterior. Elinor is at first apprehensive about living under his roof. However, she finds him refreshingly different at Cleveland. Austen writes, \"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.\" Elinor is arguably the mouthpiece of the author, and therefore her renewed assessment of Mr. Palmer is important. John Dashwood is still under the impression that Colonel Brandon is in love with Elinor. Therefore he informs his sister that he will be making a visit to Delaford in the future. Elinor is merely amused at his remark, as she is well aware of the true object of the Colonel's desire: her sister, Marianne. CHAPTER 43 Summary This entire chapter deals with Marianne's illness. Her cold develops into influenza and then into a mysterious illness. The doctor administers medication and predicts her recovery, but Marianne's health turns from bad to worse. Mrs. Palmer, fearing an infection that could be caught by her new-born baby, moves to a friend's house near Bath. Mr. Palmer follows her after a few days. After four days, when Marianne's health shows no improvement, Elinor decides to consult with the Colonel before calling her mother to Cleveland. Colonel Brandon willingly offers to fetch Mrs. Dashwood from Barton and leaves immediately on this errand. Both Mrs. Jennings and Elinor are anxious after the doctor gives up hope, since the medication fails to cure Marianne. However, after a few more days, Marianne recovers miraculously. As Elinor waits for her mother to arrive, she gets a surprise visitor. It is Willoughby, who makes an appearance at the cottage. Notes Jane Austen throws light on the attitude of the different characters through their distinct reactions to Marianne's illness. When Marianne's condition worsens, Elinor is quite disturbed, but she does not panic. She thinks calmly and arrives at the decision to summon her mother from Barton. The Colonel is concerned about Marianne's health. He sensibly offers to fetch Mrs. Dashwood and undertakes his mission without delay. Both Elinor and the Colonel use their sense to the best advantage in order to improve the situation. Mrs. Jennings is highly emotional. She thinks of the worst when Marianne's health deteriorates. She feels sorry for the girl, as she is afraid that she may succumb to her illness. However, when Marianne recovers miraculously, she is overjoyed. Mrs. Jennings displays the extremes of emotion. Mr. Palmer conducts himself in a stable manner. When his wife panics about a possible threat to her baby's health, he chides her. As a host, he considers Marianne his responsibility and therefore shows reluctance to leave Cleveland."}

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.

Chapter 42

https://web.archive.org/web/20180820034609/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmSenseSensibility58.asp

Edward goes to meet Lucy after thanking Colonel Brandon. Mrs. Jennings is grateful to both Elinor and Brandon for helping Lucy to settle down. Elinor decides to visit her brother before the departure for Cleveland. Since Marianne refuses to accompany her, she goes alone to meet Lady Dashwood and her brother. John Dashwood welcomes her. He shows his surprise at Colonel Brandon's generosity towards Edward. He then informs her of Robert's plans to get married to Miss Morton. When John goes to inform his wife of Elinor's visit, Robert comes to meet her and keeps her company. He is amused at Edward's choosing to become a clergyman and takes pity on him for having to marry Lucy. Shortly afterwards, Fanny Dashwood comes forward to meet Elinor. She talks politely and expresses regret at their departure to Cleveland.

Notes Most of the scenes in which Mrs. Jennings and John Dashwood are present evoke humor. In this chapter John Dashwood amuses the readers through his conversation with Elinor. Obsessed with money and miserly in his attitude, he fails to believe that the Colonel has been so kind as to offer a position at Delaford to Edward. He assumes that the Colonel must have an ulterior motive. He dubs Brandon as unthinking and strange. However, he is happy at the thought that the wealthy Colonel may soon marry Elinor. A hen-pecked and indulgent husband, John Dashwood is afraid to hurt the feelings of his cunning wife. Thus he requests Elinor to refrain from mentioning the Colonel's benevolence to her. He is happy to see his wife talking politely to Elinor and appreciates Fanny's gesture. John Dashwood's views and ideas shock Elinor. Referring to the marriage of Robert Ferrars to Miss Morton, he voices his opinion that Miss Morton should not mind getting married to any one of the brothers as long as he inherits the family property. His line of argument appalls Elinor thoroughly: her brother considers money superior to emotion. CHAPTER 42 Summary In early April the two families from Hanover Square and Berkeley Street set out on their journey to Cleveland. Passing through Somerset, they take three days to reach their destination. The Palmers' house is modern and spacious, and the surrounding flora and fauna enhance its beauty. Marianne is excited at the idea of being able to explore the countryside. However, she is forced to stay indoors due to rain. Mr. Palmer and Colonel Brandon arrive shortly afterwards. Elinor finds both Mr. and Mrs. Palmer charming and friendly hosts. Brandon talks to her about Delaford. He suspects that Marianne has caught a cold, and in fact, she falls ill with the flu a few days later. Notes Marianne and Elinor have different reactions to the departure for Cleveland. Marianne becomes emotional, recollecting the pleasures and pains she has experienced while in London. Elinor is quite content to leave the place, as she is not at all sentimental about it. In fact, she is relieved to be spared the company of Lucy Steele. She also hopes that a change of scene will help Marianne to regain her health. Jane Austen once again highlights Marianne's sensibility in contrast to Elinor's good sense. Mr. Palmer reveals himself to be a gentleman beneath his tough exterior. Elinor is at first apprehensive about living under his roof. However, she finds him refreshingly different at Cleveland. Austen writes, "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." Elinor is arguably the mouthpiece of the author, and therefore her renewed assessment of Mr. Palmer is important. John Dashwood is still under the impression that Colonel Brandon is in love with Elinor. Therefore he informs his sister that he will be making a visit to Delaford in the future. Elinor is merely amused at his remark, as she is well aware of the true object of the Colonel's desire: her sister, Marianne. CHAPTER 43 Summary This entire chapter deals with Marianne's illness. Her cold develops into influenza and then into a mysterious illness. The doctor administers medication and predicts her recovery, but Marianne's health turns from bad to worse. Mrs. Palmer, fearing an infection that could be caught by her new-born baby, moves to a friend's house near Bath. Mr. Palmer follows her after a few days. After four days, when Marianne's health shows no improvement, Elinor decides to consult with the Colonel before calling her mother to Cleveland. Colonel Brandon willingly offers to fetch Mrs. Dashwood from Barton and leaves immediately on this errand. Both Mrs. Jennings and Elinor are anxious after the doctor gives up hope, since the medication fails to cure Marianne. However, after a few more days, Marianne recovers miraculously. As Elinor waits for her mother to arrive, she gets a surprise visitor. It is Willoughby, who makes an appearance at the cottage. Notes Jane Austen throws light on the attitude of the different characters through their distinct reactions to Marianne's illness. When Marianne's condition worsens, Elinor is quite disturbed, but she does not panic. She thinks calmly and arrives at the decision to summon her mother from Barton. The Colonel is concerned about Marianne's health. He sensibly offers to fetch Mrs. Dashwood and undertakes his mission without delay. Both Elinor and the Colonel use their sense to the best advantage in order to improve the situation. Mrs. Jennings is highly emotional. She thinks of the worst when Marianne's health deteriorates. She feels sorry for the girl, as she is afraid that she may succumb to her illness. However, when Marianne recovers miraculously, she is overjoyed. Mrs. Jennings displays the extremes of emotion. Mr. Palmer conducts himself in a stable manner. When his wife panics about a possible threat to her baby's health, he chides her. As a host, he considers Marianne his responsibility and therefore shows reluctance to leave Cleveland.

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/chapters_13_to_18.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/Lord Jim/section_4_part_0.txt

Lord Jim.chapters 13-18

chapters 13 - 18

{"name": "Chapters 13 - 18", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210126121516/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/lordjim/section5/", "summary": "Marlow concludes his conversation with the French lieutenant. He tells the man the story of the inquiry and subsequent events. Somehow, the man discerns Marlow's interest in Jim and inquires whether Jim, too, ran off rather than stand trial. This leads the lieutenant to meditate on bravery and fear. Like Marlow, he fails to find words for what he is trying to say, and as they take leave of one another, Marlow is struck by the futility of conversation. Marlow mentions that he has seen Jim recently, working as a water-clerk in the port of Samarang. He also notes that it is through his recommendation that Jim got the job. Marlow digresses briefly to tell the story of Bob Stanton, a sailor he once knew who also spent some time as a water-clerk, who drowned trying to save a woman after a ship collision. Marlow goes back in time to the dinner with Jim at his hotel, recalling that the next day was to be Jim's day of sentencing. That night, Marlow makes Jim the offer he has discussed with Captain Brierly, telling him that if he chooses to flee, Marlow will provide him with money and a job recommendation. Jim refuses. Marlow realizes that Jim has made the ultimate appeal to his ego: would Marlow behave the way Jim does, in the same situation? Marlow thinks he'd be able to do better. The next morning, Marlow goes to the court to hear the verdict. The court finds the Patna to have been unfit to go to sea, deems her navigation and operation up to the accident proper, declines to speculate as to the cause of the collision, and finds the crew derelict in their duties, revoking their officers' certifications. Leaving the court, Marlow encounters Chester and Captain Robinson, two suspicious characters who have stayed one step ahead of the law for years. They discuss with Marlow a business scheme in which they want to involve Jim. They want to find a derelict old boat and send it out to a deserted, waterless island to harvest guano , which can then be sold as fertilizer to sugar planters in Australia, and they want Jim to command the boat. Marlow refuses to make Jim the offer, and the men insult Jim, noting that at least the island won't sink. Aware of Jim's vulnerability to people like Chester and Robinson now that he has been punished, Marlow finds him and takes him back to his hotel room, where he writes letters as Jim struggles with his own thoughts. Marlow admits his responsibility to Jim and thinks about ways to help him. Suddenly Marlow draws back and reveals to the audience that soon Jim will be \"loved, trusted, admired, with a legend of strength and prowess forming round his name.\" He explains why he will not present Chester and Robinson's offer to Jim , and notes that their expedition was lost without a trace after a hurricane. The narrative returns to Marlow's hotel room. Jim tells Marlow that he thinks he will have another chance to become a hero, that he's \"bound to come upon some sort of chance to get it all back again.\" Marlow convinces Jim to stay a little longer and persuades him to accept a letter of recommendation for a job. Jim thanks him for giving him a \"clean slate.\" Marlow receives a letter from Jim's new employer, praising Jim. The man wonders at what Jim has done to need Marlow's protection, but says that Jim is \"blooming. . .like a violet\" in his new position. Not long afterward, Marlow receives another letter from his friend. Jim has departed suddenly, leaving only a note of apology. In the same batch of mail, there is a letter from Jim, explaining that the second engineer from the Patna turned up and got a job with Jim's employer. The engineer tormented Jim, reminding him of the incident; the anguish forced Jim to leave. Marlow soon runs into Jim, who is now working as a water-clerk in another port. Returning to that port a few months later, he finds that Jim has again quit a promising job, this time because a damaged steamer carrying pilgrims had put in, and the Patna case had again become a subject of conversation. His most recent employer remarks to Marlow that he had told Jim that, although he didn't know what he had done, \"the earth wouldn't be big enough to hold his caper.\"", "analysis": "Commentary This section explores the aftermath of Jim's \"conviction.\" Jim believes that he still has the chance to be a hero, but Chester and Robinson's questionable offer and his difficulty in retaining a job suggest otherwise. Jim has been marked in some way by his actions . Marlow hints at a mysterious future for Jim, however, in which he will be wildly successful, although the statement is qualified in an odd way; Marlow says that a legend will develop around Jim \"as though he had been the stuff of a hero. \" Why is Jim just comparable to a hero in the future, rather than actually becoming one? It seems that the moment that has been omitted from the narrative, the moment of Jim's leap overboard, will become the moment that defines his life, and that, for Jim, there can be no such thing as a \"clean slate. \" This is in part a result of his punishment. Tried by a court of his professional peers, Jim has been found to be unfit to keep the certification he earned as a young man; in some way, he's no longer \"one of us.\" Marlow, however, still thinks that he and Jim do belong to the same fraternity. He helps Jim recover some semblance of a life and continues to follow him with interest. Marlow's interpretive skills are called into question in this section, though, as he declares himself \"unenlightened\" by his encounter with Jim. He also makes the strange claim that by helping Jim out he \"had saved him from starvation--of that peculiar sort that is almost invariably associated with drink.\" This is a strange claim to make. It doesn't square with what we know of Jim, and it doesn't seem in line with Marlow's opinion of Jim in general. Perhaps Marlow has begun to fear the implications of his own association with Jim, and comments like this one are a way for him to distance himself. Chester and Robinson approach him because of his budding friendship with Jim, after all, and Marlow himself sadly notes that, of he and Jim, \"it was yet he, of us two, who had the light.\" Jim may have been publicly condemned, but it is Marlow who has no chance. Jim seems to be headed for a successful future, while Marlow will be left only to repeat Jim's tale to anyone who will listen."}

'After these words, and without a change of attitude, he, so to speak, submitted himself passively to a state of silence. I kept him company; and suddenly, but not abruptly, as if the appointed time had arrived for his moderate and husky voice to come out of his immobility, he pronounced, "Mon Dieu! how the time passes!" Nothing could have been more commonplace than this remark; but its utterance coincided for me with a moment of vision. It's extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut, with dull ears, with dormant thoughts. Perhaps it's just as well; and it may be that it is this very dullness that makes life to the incalculable majority so supportable and so welcome. Nevertheless, there can be but few of us who had never known one of these rare moments of awakening when we see, hear, understand ever so much--everything--in a flash--before we fall back again into our agreeable somnolence. I raised my eyes when he spoke, and I saw him as though I had never seen him before. I saw his chin sunk on his breast, the clumsy folds of his coat, his clasped hands, his motionless pose, so curiously suggestive of his having been simply left there. Time had passed indeed: it had overtaken him and gone ahead. It had left him hopelessly behind with a few poor gifts: the iron-grey hair, the heavy fatigue of the tanned face, two scars, a pair of tarnished shoulder-straps; one of those steady, reliable men who are the raw material of great reputations, one of those uncounted lives that are buried without drums and trumpets under the foundations of monumental successes. "I am now third lieutenant of the Victorieuse" (she was the flagship of the French Pacific squadron at the time), he said, detaching his shoulders from the wall a couple of inches to introduce himself. I bowed slightly on my side of the table, and told him I commanded a merchant vessel at present anchored in Rushcutters' Bay. He had "remarked" her,--a pretty little craft. He was very civil about it in his impassive way. I even fancy he went the length of tilting his head in compliment as he repeated, breathing visibly the while, "Ah, yes. A little craft painted black--very pretty--very pretty (tres coquet)." After a time he twisted his body slowly to face the glass door on our right. "A dull town (triste ville)," he observed, staring into the street. It was a brilliant day; a southerly buster was raging, and we could see the passers-by, men and women, buffeted by the wind on the sidewalks, the sunlit fronts of the houses across the road blurred by the tall whirls of dust. "I descended on shore," he said, "to stretch my legs a little, but . . ." He didn't finish, and sank into the depths of his repose. "Pray--tell me," he began, coming up ponderously, "what was there at the bottom of this affair--precisely (au juste)? It is curious. That dead man, for instance--and so on." '"There were living men too," I said; "much more curious." '"No doubt, no doubt," he agreed half audibly, then, as if after mature consideration, murmured, "Evidently." I made no difficulty in communicating to him what had interested me most in this affair. It seemed as though he had a right to know: hadn't he spent thirty hours on board the Patna--had he not taken the succession, so to speak, had he not done "his possible"? He listened to me, looking more priest-like than ever, and with what--probably on account of his downcast eyes--had the appearance of devout concentration. Once or twice he elevated his eyebrows (but without raising his eyelids), as one would say "The devil!" Once he calmly exclaimed, "Ah, bah!" under his breath, and when I had finished he pursed his lips in a deliberate way and emitted a sort of sorrowful whistle. 'In any one else it might have been an evidence of boredom, a sign of indifference; but he, in his occult way, managed to make his immobility appear profoundly responsive, and as full of valuable thoughts as an egg is of meat. What he said at last was nothing more than a "Very interesting," pronounced politely, and not much above a whisper. Before I got over my disappointment he added, but as if speaking to himself, "That's it. That _is_ it." His chin seemed to sink lower on his breast, his body to weigh heavier on his seat. I was about to ask him what he meant, when a sort of preparatory tremor passed over his whole person, as a faint ripple may be seen upon stagnant water even before the wind is felt. "And so that poor young man ran away along with the others," he said, with grave tranquillity. 'I don't know what made me smile: it is the only genuine smile of mine I can remember in connection with Jim's affair. But somehow this simple statement of the matter sounded funny in French. . . . "S'est enfui avec les autres," had said the lieutenant. And suddenly I began to admire the discrimination of the man. He had made out the point at once: he did get hold of the only thing I cared about. I felt as though I were taking professional opinion on the case. His imperturbable and mature calmness was that of an expert in possession of the facts, and to whom one's perplexities are mere child's-play. "Ah! The young, the young," he said indulgently. "And after all, one does not die of it." "Die of what?" I asked swiftly. "Of being afraid." He elucidated his meaning and sipped his drink. 'I perceived that the three last fingers of his wounded hand were stiff and could not move independently of each other, so that he took up his tumbler with an ungainly clutch. "One is always afraid. One may talk, but . . ." He put down the glass awkwardly. . . . "The fear, the fear--look you--it is always there." . . . He touched his breast near a brass button, on the very spot where Jim had given a thump to his own when protesting that there was nothing the matter with his heart. I suppose I made some sign of dissent, because he insisted, "Yes! yes! One talks, one talks; this is all very fine; but at the end of the reckoning one is no cleverer than the next man--and no more brave. Brave! This is always to be seen. I have rolled my hump (roule ma bosse)," he said, using the slang expression with imperturbable seriousness, "in all parts of the world; I have known brave men--famous ones! Allez!" . . . He drank carelessly. . . . "Brave--you conceive--in the Service--one has got to be--the trade demands it (le metier veut ca). Is it not so?" he appealed to me reasonably. "Eh bien! Each of them--I say each of them, if he were an honest man--bien entendu--would confess that there is a point--there is a point--for the best of us--there is somewhere a point when you let go everything (vous lachez tout). And you have got to live with that truth--do you see? Given a certain combination of circumstances, fear is sure to come. Abominable funk (un trac epouvantable). And even for those who do not believe this truth there is fear all the same--the fear of themselves. Absolutely so. Trust me. Yes. Yes. . . . At my age one knows what one is talking about--que diable!" . . . He had delivered himself of all this as immovably as though he had been the mouthpiece of abstract wisdom, but at this point he heightened the effect of detachment by beginning to twirl his thumbs slowly. "It's evident--parbleu!" he continued; "for, make up your mind as much as you like, even a simple headache or a fit of indigestion (un derangement d'estomac) is enough to . . . Take me, for instance--I have made my proofs. Eh bien! I, who am speaking to you, once . . ." 'He drained his glass and returned to his twirling. "No, no; one does not die of it," he pronounced finally, and when I found he did not mean to proceed with the personal anecdote, I was extremely disappointed; the more so as it was not the sort of story, you know, one could very well press him for. I sat silent, and he too, as if nothing could please him better. Even his thumbs were still now. Suddenly his lips began to move. "That is so," he resumed placidly. "Man is born a coward (L'homme est ne poltron). It is a difficulty--parbleu! It would be too easy other vise. But habit--habit--necessity--do you see?--the eye of others--voila. One puts up with it. And then the example of others who are no better than yourself, and yet make good countenance. . . ." 'His voice ceased. '"That young man--you will observe--had none of these inducements--at least at the moment," I remarked. 'He raised his eyebrows forgivingly: "I don't say; I don't say. The young man in question might have had the best dispositions--the best dispositions," he repeated, wheezing a little. '"I am glad to see you taking a lenient view," I said. "His own feeling in the matter was--ah!--hopeful, and . . ." 'The shuffle of his feet under the table interrupted me. He drew up his heavy eyelids. Drew up, I say--no other expression can describe the steady deliberation of the act--and at last was disclosed completely to me. I was confronted by two narrow grey circlets, like two tiny steel rings around the profound blackness of the pupils. The sharp glance, coming from that massive body, gave a notion of extreme efficiency, like a razor-edge on a battle-axe. "Pardon," he said punctiliously. His right hand went up, and he swayed forward. "Allow me . . . I contended that one may get on knowing very well that one's courage does not come of itself (ne vient pas tout seul). There's nothing much in that to get upset about. One truth the more ought not to make life impossible. . . . But the honour--the honour, monsieur! . . . The honour . . . that is real--that is! And what life may be worth when" . . . he got on his feet with a ponderous impetuosity, as a startled ox might scramble up from the grass . . . "when the honour is gone--ah ca! par exemple--I can offer no opinion. I can offer no opinion--because--monsieur--I know nothing of it." 'I had risen too, and, trying to throw infinite politeness into our attitudes, we faced each other mutely, like two china dogs on a mantelpiece. Hang the fellow! he had pricked the bubble. The blight of futility that lies in wait for men's speeches had fallen upon our conversation, and made it a thing of empty sounds. "Very well," I said, with a disconcerted smile; "but couldn't it reduce itself to not being found out?" He made as if to retort readily, but when he spoke he had changed his mind. "This, monsieur, is too fine for me--much above me--I don't think about it." He bowed heavily over his cap, which he held before him by the peak, between the thumb and the forefinger of his wounded hand. I bowed too. We bowed together: we scraped our feet at each other with much ceremony, while a dirty specimen of a waiter looked on critically, as though he had paid for the performance. "Serviteur," said the Frenchman. Another scrape. "Monsieur" . . . "Monsieur." . . . The glass door swung behind his burly back. I saw the southerly buster get hold of him and drive him down wind with his hand to his head, his shoulders braced, and the tails of his coat blown hard against his legs. 'I sat down again alone and discouraged--discouraged about Jim's case. If you wonder that after more than three years it had preserved its actuality, you must know that I had seen him only very lately. I had come straight from Samarang, where I had loaded a cargo for Sydney: an utterly uninteresting bit of business,--what Charley here would call one of my rational transactions,--and in Samarang I had seen something of Jim. He was then working for De Jongh, on my recommendation. Water-clerk. "My representative afloat," as De Jongh called him. You can't imagine a mode of life more barren of consolation, less capable of being invested with a spark of glamour--unless it be the business of an insurance canvasser. Little Bob Stanton--Charley here knew him well--had gone through that experience. The same who got drowned afterwards trying to save a lady's-maid in the Sephora disaster. A case of collision on a hazy morning off the Spanish coast--you may remember. All the passengers had been packed tidily into the boats and shoved clear of the ship, when Bob sheered alongside again and scrambled back on deck to fetch that girl. How she had been left behind I can't make out; anyhow, she had gone completely crazy--wouldn't leave the ship--held to the rail like grim death. The wrestling-match could be seen plainly from the boats; but poor Bob was the shortest chief mate in the merchant service, and the woman stood five feet ten in her shoes and was as strong as a horse, I've been told. So it went on, pull devil, pull baker, the wretched girl screaming all the time, and Bob letting out a yell now and then to warn his boat to keep well clear of the ship. One of the hands told me, hiding a smile at the recollection, "It was for all the world, sir, like a naughty youngster fighting with his mother." The same old chap said that "At the last we could see that Mr. Stanton had given up hauling at the gal, and just stood by looking at her, watchful like. We thought afterwards he must've been reckoning that, maybe, the rush of water would tear her away from the rail by-and-by and give him a show to save her. We daren't come alongside for our life; and after a bit the old ship went down all on a sudden with a lurch to starboard--plop. The suck in was something awful. We never saw anything alive or dead come up." Poor Bob's spell of shore-life had been one of the complications of a love affair, I believe. He fondly hoped he had done with the sea for ever, and made sure he had got hold of all the bliss on earth, but it came to canvassing in the end. Some cousin of his in Liverpool put up to it. He used to tell us his experiences in that line. He made us laugh till we cried, and, not altogether displeased at the effect, undersized and bearded to the waist like a gnome, he would tiptoe amongst us and say, "It's all very well for you beggars to laugh, but my immortal soul was shrivelled down to the size of a parched pea after a week of that work." I don't know how Jim's soul accommodated itself to the new conditions of his life--I was kept too busy in getting him something to do that would keep body and soul together--but I am pretty certain his adventurous fancy was suffering all the pangs of starvation. It had certainly nothing to feed upon in this new calling. It was distressing to see him at it, though he tackled it with a stubborn serenity for which I must give him full credit. I kept my eye on his shabby plodding with a sort of notion that it was a punishment for the heroics of his fancy--an expiation for his craving after more glamour than he could carry. He had loved too well to imagine himself a glorious racehorse, and now he was condemned to toil without honour like a costermonger's donkey. He did it very well. He shut himself in, put his head down, said never a word. Very well; very well indeed--except for certain fantastic and violent outbreaks, on the deplorable occasions when the irrepressible Patna case cropped up. Unfortunately that scandal of the Eastern seas would not die out. And this is the reason why I could never feel I had done with Jim for good. 'I sat thinking of him after the French lieutenant had left, not, however, in connection with De Jongh's cool and gloomy backshop, where we had hurriedly shaken hands not very long ago, but as I had seen him years before in the last flickers of the candle, alone with me in the long gallery of the Malabar House, with the chill and the darkness of the night at his back. The respectable sword of his country's law was suspended over his head. To-morrow--or was it to-day? (midnight had slipped by long before we parted)--the marble-faced police magistrate, after distributing fines and terms of imprisonment in the assault-and-battery case, would take up the awful weapon and smite his bowed neck. Our communion in the night was uncommonly like a last vigil with a condemned man. He was guilty too. He was guilty--as I had told myself repeatedly, guilty and done for; nevertheless, I wished to spare him the mere detail of a formal execution. I don't pretend to explain the reasons of my desire--I don't think I could; but if you haven't got a sort of notion by this time, then I must have been very obscure in my narrative, or you too sleepy to seize upon the sense of my words. I don't defend my morality. There was no morality in the impulse which induced me to lay before him Brierly's plan of evasion--I may call it--in all its primitive simplicity. There were the rupees--absolutely ready in my pocket and very much at his service. Oh! a loan; a loan of course--and if an introduction to a man (in Rangoon) who could put some work in his way . . . Why! with the greatest pleasure. I had pen, ink, and paper in my room on the first floor And even while I was speaking I was impatient to begin the letter--day, month, year, 2.30 A.M. . . . for the sake of our old friendship I ask you to put some work in the way of Mr. James So-and-so, in whom, &c., &c. . . . I was even ready to write in that strain about him. If he had not enlisted my sympathies he had done better for himself--he had gone to the very fount and origin of that sentiment he had reached the secret sensibility of my egoism. I am concealing nothing from you, because were I to do so my action would appear more unintelligible than any man's action has the right to be, and--in the second place--to-morrow you will forget my sincerity along with the other lessons of the past. In this transaction, to speak grossly and precisely, I was the irreproachable man; but the subtle intentions of my immorality were defeated by the moral simplicity of the criminal. No doubt he was selfish too, but his selfishness had a higher origin, a more lofty aim. I discovered that, say what I would, he was eager to go through the ceremony of execution, and I didn't say much, for I felt that in argument his youth would tell against me heavily: he believed where I had already ceased to doubt. There was something fine in the wildness of his unexpressed, hardly formulated hope. "Clear out! Couldn't think of it," he said, with a shake of the head. "I make you an offer for which I neither demand nor expect any sort of gratitude," I said; "you shall repay the money when convenient, and . . ." "Awfully good of you," he muttered without looking up. I watched him narrowly: the future must have appeared horribly uncertain to him; but he did not falter, as though indeed there had been nothing wrong with his heart. I felt angry--not for the first time that night. "The whole wretched business," I said, "is bitter enough, I should think, for a man of your kind . . ." "It is, it is," he whispered twice, with his eyes fixed on the floor. It was heartrending. He towered above the light, and I could see the down on his cheek, the colour mantling warm under the smooth skin of his face. Believe me or not, I say it was outrageously heartrending. It provoked me to brutality. "Yes," I said; "and allow me to confess that I am totally unable to imagine what advantage you can expect from this licking of the dregs." "Advantage!" he murmured out of his stillness. "I am dashed if I do," I said, enraged. "I've been trying to tell you all there is in it," he went on slowly, as if meditating something unanswerable. "But after all, it is _my_ trouble." I opened my mouth to retort, and discovered suddenly that I'd lost all confidence in myself; and it was as if he too had given me up, for he mumbled like a man thinking half aloud. "Went away . . . went into hospitals. . . . Not one of them would face it. . . . They! . . ." He moved his hand slightly to imply disdain. "But I've got to get over this thing, and I mustn't shirk any of it or . . . I won't shirk any of it." He was silent. He gazed as though he had been haunted. His unconscious face reflected the passing expressions of scorn, of despair, of resolution--reflected them in turn, as a magic mirror would reflect the gliding passage of unearthly shapes. He lived surrounded by deceitful ghosts, by austere shades. "Oh! nonsense, my dear fellow," I began. He had a movement of impatience. "You don't seem to understand," he said incisively; then looking at me without a wink, "I may have jumped, but I don't run away." "I meant no offence," I said; and added stupidly, "Better men than you have found it expedient to run, at times." He coloured all over, while in my confusion I half-choked myself with my own tongue. "Perhaps so," he said at last, "I am not good enough; I can't afford it. I am bound to fight this thing down--I am fighting it now." I got out of my chair and felt stiff all over. The silence was embarrassing, and to put an end to it I imagined nothing better but to remark, "I had no idea it was so late," in an airy tone. . . . "I dare say you have had enough of this," he said brusquely: "and to tell you the truth"--he began to look round for his hat--"so have I." 'Well! he had refused this unique offer. He had struck aside my helping hand; he was ready to go now, and beyond the balustrade the night seemed to wait for him very still, as though he had been marked down for its prey. I heard his voice. "Ah! here it is." He had found his hat. For a few seconds we hung in the wind. "What will you do after--after . . ." I asked very low. "Go to the dogs as likely as not," he answered in a gruff mutter. I had recovered my wits in a measure, and judged best to take it lightly. "Pray remember," I said, "that I should like very much to see you again before you go." "I don't know what's to prevent you. The damned thing won't make me invisible," he said with intense bitterness,--"no such luck." And then at the moment of taking leave he treated me to a ghastly muddle of dubious stammers and movements, to an awful display of hesitations. God forgive him--me! He had taken it into his fanciful head that I was likely to make some difficulty as to shaking hands. It was too awful for words. I believe I shouted suddenly at him as you would bellow to a man you saw about to walk over a cliff; I remember our voices being raised, the appearance of a miserable grin on his face, a crushing clutch on my hand, a nervous laugh. The candle spluttered out, and the thing was over at last, with a groan that floated up to me in the dark. He got himself away somehow. The night swallowed his form. He was a horrible bungler. Horrible. I heard the quick crunch-crunch of the gravel under his boots. He was running. Absolutely running, with nowhere to go to. And he was not yet four-and-twenty.' 'I slept little, hurried over my breakfast, and after a slight hesitation gave up my early morning visit to my ship. It was really very wrong of me, because, though my chief mate was an excellent man all round, he was the victim of such black imaginings that if he did not get a letter from his wife at the expected time he would go quite distracted with rage and jealousy, lose all grip on the work, quarrel with all hands, and either weep in his cabin or develop such a ferocity of temper as all but drove the crew to the verge of mutiny. The thing had always seemed inexplicable to me: they had been married thirteen years; I had a glimpse of her once, and, honestly, I couldn't conceive a man abandoned enough to plunge into sin for the sake of such an unattractive person. I don't know whether I have not done wrong by refraining from putting that view before poor Selvin: the man made a little hell on earth for himself, and I also suffered indirectly, but some sort of, no doubt, false delicacy prevented me. The marital relations of seamen would make an interesting subject, and I could tell you instances. . . . However, this is not the place, nor the time, and we are concerned with Jim--who was unmarried. If his imaginative conscience or his pride; if all the extravagant ghosts and austere shades that were the disastrous familiars of his youth would not let him run away from the block, I, who of course can't be suspected of such familiars, was irresistibly impelled to go and see his head roll off. I wended my way towards the court. I didn't hope to be very much impressed or edified, or interested or even frightened--though, as long as there is any life before one, a jolly good fright now and then is a salutary discipline. But neither did I expect to be so awfully depressed. The bitterness of his punishment was in its chill and mean atmosphere. The real significance of crime is in its being a breach of faith with the community of mankind, and from that point of view he was no mean traitor, but his execution was a hole-and-corner affair. There was no high scaffolding, no scarlet cloth (did they have scarlet cloth on Tower Hill? They should have had), no awe-stricken multitude to be horrified at his guilt and be moved to tears at his fate--no air of sombre retribution. There was, as I walked along, the clear sunshine, a brilliance too passionate to be consoling, the streets full of jumbled bits of colour like a damaged kaleidoscope: yellow, green, blue, dazzling white, the brown nudity of an undraped shoulder, a bullock-cart with a red canopy, a company of native infantry in a drab body with dark heads marching in dusty laced boots, a native policeman in a sombre uniform of scanty cut and belted in patent leather, who looked up at me with orientally pitiful eyes as though his migrating spirit were suffering exceedingly from that unforeseen--what d'ye call 'em?--avatar--incarnation. Under the shade of a lonely tree in the courtyard, the villagers connected with the assault case sat in a picturesque group, looking like a chromo-lithograph of a camp in a book of Eastern travel. One missed the obligatory thread of smoke in the foreground and the pack-animals grazing. A blank yellow wall rose behind overtopping the tree, reflecting the glare. The court-room was sombre, seemed more vast. High up in the dim space the punkahs were swaying short to and fro, to and fro. Here and there a draped figure, dwarfed by the bare walls, remained without stirring amongst the rows of empty benches, as if absorbed in pious meditation. The plaintiff, who had been beaten,--an obese chocolate-coloured man with shaved head, one fat breast bare and a bright yellow caste-mark above the bridge of his nose,--sat in pompous immobility: only his eyes glittered, rolling in the gloom, and the nostrils dilated and collapsed violently as he breathed. Brierly dropped into his seat looking done up, as though he had spent the night in sprinting on a cinder-track. The pious sailing-ship skipper appeared excited and made uneasy movements, as if restraining with difficulty an impulse to stand up and exhort us earnestly to prayer and repentance. The head of the magistrate, delicately pale under the neatly arranged hair, resembled the head of a hopeless invalid after he had been washed and brushed and propped up in bed. He moved aside the vase of flowers--a bunch of purple with a few pink blossoms on long stalks--and seizing in both hands a long sheet of bluish paper, ran his eye over it, propped his forearms on the edge of the desk, and began to read aloud in an even, distinct, and careless voice. 'By Jove! For all my foolishness about scaffolds and heads rolling off--I assure you it was infinitely worse than a beheading. A heavy sense of finality brooded over all this, unrelieved by the hope of rest and safety following the fall of the axe. These proceedings had all the cold vengefulness of a death-sentence, and the cruelty of a sentence of exile. This is how I looked at it that morning--and even now I seem to see an undeniable vestige of truth in that exaggerated view of a common occurrence. You may imagine how strongly I felt this at the time. Perhaps it is for that reason that I could not bring myself to admit the finality. The thing was always with me, I was always eager to take opinion on it, as though it had not been practically settled: individual opinion--international opinion--by Jove! That Frenchman's, for instance. His own country's pronouncement was uttered in the passionless and definite phraseology a machine would use, if machines could speak. The head of the magistrate was half hidden by the paper, his brow was like alabaster. 'There were several questions before the court. The first as to whether the ship was in every respect fit and seaworthy for the voyage. The court found she was not. The next point, I remember, was, whether up to the time of the accident the ship had been navigated with proper and seamanlike care. They said Yes to that, goodness knows why, and then they declared that there was no evidence to show the exact cause of the accident. A floating derelict probably. I myself remember that a Norwegian barque bound out with a cargo of pitch-pine had been given up as missing about that time, and it was just the sort of craft that would capsize in a squall and float bottom up for months--a kind of maritime ghoul on the prowl to kill ships in the dark. Such wandering corpses are common enough in the North Atlantic, which is haunted by all the terrors of the sea,--fogs, icebergs, dead ships bent upon mischief, and long sinister gales that fasten upon one like a vampire till all the strength and the spirit and even hope are gone, and one feels like the empty shell of a man. But there--in those seas--the incident was rare enough to resemble a special arrangement of a malevolent providence, which, unless it had for its object the killing of a donkeyman and the bringing of worse than death upon Jim, appeared an utterly aimless piece of devilry. This view occurring to me took off my attention. For a time I was aware of the magistrate's voice as a sound merely; but in a moment it shaped itself into distinct words . . . "in utter disregard of their plain duty," it said. The next sentence escaped me somehow, and then . . . "abandoning in the moment of danger the lives and property confided to their charge" . . . went on the voice evenly, and stopped. A pair of eyes under the white forehead shot darkly a glance above the edge of the paper. I looked for Jim hurriedly, as though I had expected him to disappear. He was very still--but he was there. He sat pink and fair and extremely attentive. "Therefore, . . ." began the voice emphatically. He stared with parted lips, hanging upon the words of the man behind the desk. These came out into the stillness wafted on the wind made by the punkahs, and I, watching for their effect upon him, caught only the fragments of official language. . . . "The Court . . . Gustav So-and-so . . . master . . . native of Germany . . . James So-and-so . . . mate . . . certificates cancelled." A silence fell. The magistrate had dropped the paper, and, leaning sideways on the arm of his chair, began to talk with Brierly easily. People started to move out; others were pushing in, and I also made for the door. Outside I stood still, and when Jim passed me on his way to the gate, I caught at his arm and detained him. The look he gave discomposed me, as though I had been responsible for his state he looked at me as if I had been the embodied evil of life. "It's all over," I stammered. "Yes," he said thickly. "And now let no man . . ." He jerked his arm out of my grasp. I watched his back as he went away. It was a long street, and he remained in sight for some time. He walked rather slow, and straddling his legs a little, as if he had found it difficult to keep a straight line. Just before I lost him I fancied he staggered a bit. '"Man overboard," said a deep voice behind me. Turning round, I saw a fellow I knew slightly, a West Australian; Chester was his name. He, too, had been looking after Jim. He was a man with an immense girth of chest, a rugged, clean-shaved face of mahogany colour, and two blunt tufts of iron-grey, thick, wiry hairs on his upper lip. He had been pearler, wrecker, trader, whaler too, I believe; in his own words--anything and everything a man may be at sea, but a pirate. The Pacific, north and south, was his proper hunting-ground; but he had wandered so far afield looking for a cheap steamer to buy. Lately he had discovered--so he said--a guano island somewhere, but its approaches were dangerous, and the anchorage, such as it was, could not be considered safe, to say the least of it. "As good as a gold-mine," he would exclaim. "Right bang in the middle of the Walpole Reefs, and if it's true enough that you can get no holding-ground anywhere in less than forty fathom, then what of that? There are the hurricanes, too. But it's a first-rate thing. As good as a gold-mine--better! Yet there's not a fool of them that will see it. I can't get a skipper or a shipowner to go near the place. So I made up my mind to cart the blessed stuff myself." . . . This was what he required a steamer for, and I knew he was just then negotiating enthusiastically with a Parsee firm for an old, brig-rigged, sea-anachronism of ninety horse-power. We had met and spoken together several times. He looked knowingly after Jim. "Takes it to heart?" he asked scornfully. "Very much," I said. "Then he's no good," he opined. "What's all the to-do about? A bit of ass's skin. That never yet made a man. You must see things exactly as they are--if you don't, you may just as well give in at once. You will never do anything in this world. Look at me. I made it a practice never to take anything to heart." "Yes," I said, "you see things as they are." "I wish I could see my partner coming along, that's what I wish to see," he said. "Know my partner? Old Robinson. Yes; _the_ Robinson. Don't _you_ know? The notorious Robinson. The man who smuggled more opium and bagged more seals in his time than any loose Johnny now alive. They say he used to board the sealing-schooners up Alaska way when the fog was so thick that the Lord God, He alone, could tell one man from another. Holy-Terror Robinson. That's the man. He is with me in that guano thing. The best chance he ever came across in his life." He put his lips to my ear. "Cannibal?--well, they used to give him the name years and years ago. You remember the story? A shipwreck on the west side of Stewart Island; that's right; seven of them got ashore, and it seems they did not get on very well together. Some men are too cantankerous for anything--don't know how to make the best of a bad job--don't see things as they are--as they _are_, my boy! And then what's the consequence? Obvious! Trouble, trouble; as likely as not a knock on the head; and serve 'em right too. That sort is the most useful when it's dead. The story goes that a boat of Her Majesty's ship Wolverine found him kneeling on the kelp, naked as the day he was born, and chanting some psalm-tune or other; light snow was falling at the time. He waited till the boat was an oar's length from the shore, and then up and away. They chased him for an hour up and down the boulders, till a marihe flung a stone that took him behind the ear providentially and knocked him senseless. Alone? Of course. But that's like that tale of sealing-schooners; the Lord God knows the right and the wrong of that story. The cutter did not investigate much. They wrapped him in a boat-cloak and took him off as quick as they could, with a dark night coming on, the weather threatening, and the ship firing recall guns every five minutes. Three weeks afterwards he was as well as ever. He didn't allow any fuss that was made on shore to upset him; he just shut his lips tight, and let people screech. It was bad enough to have lost his ship, and all he was worth besides, without paying attention to the hard names they called him. That's the man for me." He lifted his arm for a signal to some one down the street. "He's got a little money, so I had to let him into my thing. Had to! It would have been sinful to throw away such a find, and I was cleaned out myself. It cut me to the quick, but I could see the matter just as it was, and if I _must_ share--thinks I--with any man, then give me Robinson. I left him at breakfast in the hotel to come to court, because I've an idea. . . . Ah! Good morning, Captain Robinson. . . . Friend of mine, Captain Robinson." 'An emaciated patriarch in a suit of white drill, a solah topi with a green-lined rim on a head trembling with age, joined us after crossing the street in a trotting shuffle, and stood propped with both hands on the handle of an umbrella. A white beard with amber streaks hung lumpily down to his waist. He blinked his creased eyelids at me in a bewildered way. "How do you do? how do you do?" he piped amiably, and tottered. "A little deaf," said Chester aside. "Did you drag him over six thousand miles to get a cheap steamer?" I asked. "I would have taken him twice round the world as soon as look at him," said Chester with immense energy. "The steamer will be the making of us, my lad. Is it my fault that every skipper and shipowner in the whole of blessed Australasia turns out a blamed fool? Once I talked for three hours to a man in Auckland. 'Send a ship,' I said, 'send a ship. I'll give you half of the first cargo for yourself, free gratis for nothing--just to make a good start.' Says he, 'I wouldn't do it if there was no other place on earth to send a ship to.' Perfect ass, of course. Rocks, currents, no anchorage, sheer cliff to lay to, no insurance company would take the risk, didn't see how he could get loaded under three years. Ass! I nearly went on my knees to him. 'But look at the thing as it is,' says I. 'Damn rocks and hurricanes. Look at it as it is. There's guano there Queensland sugar-planters would fight for--fight for on the quay, I tell you.' . . . What can you do with a fool? . . . 'That's one of your little jokes, Chester,' he says. . . . Joke! I could have wept. Ask Captain Robinson here. . . . And there was another shipowning fellow--a fat chap in a white waistcoat in Wellington, who seemed to think I was up to some swindle or other. 'I don't know what sort of fool you're looking for,' he says, 'but I am busy just now. Good morning.' I longed to take him in my two hands and smash him through the window of his own office. But I didn't. I was as mild as a curate. 'Think of it,' says I. '_Do_ think it over. I'll call to-morrow.' He grunted something about being 'out all day.' On the stairs I felt ready to beat my head against the wall from vexation. Captain Robinson here can tell you. It was awful to think of all that lovely stuff lying waste under the sun--stuff that would send the sugar-cane shooting sky-high. The making of Queensland! The making of Queensland! And in Brisbane, where I went to have a last try, they gave me the name of a lunatic. Idiots! The only sensible man I came across was the cabman who drove me about. A broken-down swell he was, I fancy. Hey! Captain Robinson? You remember I told you about my cabby in Brisbane--don't you? The chap had a wonderful eye for things. He saw it all in a jiffy. It was a real pleasure to talk with him. One evening after a devil of a day amongst shipowners I felt so bad that, says I, 'I must get drunk. Come along; I must get drunk, or I'll go mad.' 'I am your man,' he says; 'go ahead.' I don't know what I would have done without him. Hey! Captain Robinson." 'He poked the ribs of his partner. "He! he! he!" laughed the Ancient, looked aimlessly down the street, then peered at me doubtfully with sad, dim pupils. . . . "He! he! he!" . . . He leaned heavier on the umbrella, and dropped his gaze on the ground. I needn't tell you I had tried to get away several times, but Chester had foiled every attempt by simply catching hold of my coat. "One minute. I've a notion." "What's your infernal notion?" I exploded at last. "If you think I am going in with you . . ." "No, no, my boy. Too late, if you wanted ever so much. We've got a steamer." "You've got the ghost of a steamer," I said. "Good enough for a start--there's no superior nonsense about us. Is there, Captain Robinson?" "No! no! no!" croaked the old man without lifting his eyes, and the senile tremble of his head became almost fierce with determination. "I understand you know that young chap," said Chester, with a nod at the street from which Jim had disappeared long ago. "He's been having grub with you in the Malabar last night--so I was told." 'I said that was true, and after remarking that he too liked to live well and in style, only that, for the present, he had to be saving of every penny--"none too many for the business! Isn't that so, Captain Robinson?"--he squared his shoulders and stroked his dumpy moustache, while the notorious Robinson, coughing at his side, clung more than ever to the handle of the umbrella, and seemed ready to subside passively into a heap of old bones. "You see, the old chap has all the money," whispered Chester confidentially. "I've been cleaned out trying to engineer the dratted thing. But wait a bit, wait a bit. The good time is coming." . . . He seemed suddenly astonished at the signs of impatience I gave. "Oh, crakee!" he cried; "I am telling you of the biggest thing that ever was, and you . . ." "I have an appointment," I pleaded mildly. "What of that?" he asked with genuine surprise; "let it wait." "That's exactly what I am doing now," I remarked; "hadn't you better tell me what it is you want?" "Buy twenty hotels like that," he growled to himself; "and every joker boarding in them too--twenty times over." He lifted his head smartly "I want that young chap." "I don't understand," I said. "He's no good, is he?" said Chester crisply. "I know nothing about it," I protested. "Why, you told me yourself he was taking it to heart," argued Chester. "Well, in my opinion a chap who . . . Anyhow, he can't be much good; but then you see I am on the look-out for somebody, and I've just got a thing that will suit him. I'll give him a job on my island." He nodded significantly. "I'm going to dump forty coolies there--if I've to steal 'em. Somebody must work the stuff. Oh! I mean to act square: wooden shed, corrugated-iron roof--I know a man in Hobart who will take my bill at six months for the materials. I do. Honour bright. Then there's the water-supply. I'll have to fly round and get somebody to trust me for half-a-dozen second-hand iron tanks. Catch rain-water, hey? Let him take charge. Make him supreme boss over the coolies. Good idea, isn't it? What do you say?" "There are whole years when not a drop of rain falls on Walpole," I said, too amazed to laugh. He bit his lip and seemed bothered. "Oh, well, I will fix up something for them--or land a supply. Hang it all! That's not the question." 'I said nothing. I had a rapid vision of Jim perched on a shadowless rock, up to his knees in guano, with the screams of sea-birds in his ears, the incandescent ball of the sun above his head; the empty sky and the empty ocean all a-quiver, simmering together in the heat as far as the eye could reach. "I wouldn't advise my worst enemy . . ." I began. "What's the matter with you?" cried Chester; "I mean to give him a good screw--that is, as soon as the thing is set going, of course. It's as easy as falling off a log. Simply nothing to do; two six-shooters in his belt . . . Surely he wouldn't be afraid of anything forty coolies could do--with two six-shooters and he the only armed man too! It's much better than it looks. I want you to help me to talk him over." "No!" I shouted. Old Robinson lifted his bleared eyes dismally for a moment, Chester looked at me with infinite contempt. "So you wouldn't advise him?" he uttered slowly. "Certainly not," I answered, as indignant as though he had requested me to help murder somebody; "moreover, I am sure he wouldn't. He is badly cut up, but he isn't mad as far as I know." "He is no earthly good for anything," Chester mused aloud. "He would just have done for me. If you only could see a thing as it is, you would see it's the very thing for him. And besides . . . Why! it's the most splendid, sure chance . . ." He got angry suddenly. "I must have a man. There! . . ." He stamped his foot and smiled unpleasantly. "Anyhow, I could guarantee the island wouldn't sink under him--and I believe he is a bit particular on that point." "Good morning," I said curtly. He looked at me as though I had been an incomprehensible fool. . . . "Must be moving, Captain Robinson," he yelled suddenly into the old man's ear. "These Parsee Johnnies are waiting for us to clinch the bargain." He took his partner under the arm with a firm grip, swung him round, and, unexpectedly, leered at me over his shoulder. "I was trying to do him a kindness," he asserted, with an air and tone that made my blood boil. "Thank you for nothing--in his name," I rejoined. "Oh! you are devilish smart," he sneered; "but you are like the rest of them. Too much in the clouds. See what you will do with him." "I don't know that I want to do anything with him." "Don't you?" he spluttered; his grey moustache bristled with anger, and by his side the notorious Robinson, propped on the umbrella, stood with his back to me, as patient and still as a worn-out cab-horse. "I haven't found a guano island," I said. "It's my belief you wouldn't know one if you were led right up to it by the hand," he riposted quickly; "and in this world you've got to see a thing first, before you can make use of it. Got to see it through and through at that, neither more nor less." "And get others to see it, too," I insinuated, with a glance at the bowed back by his side. Chester snorted at me. "His eyes are right enough--don't you worry. He ain't a puppy." "Oh, dear, no!" I said. "Come along, Captain Robinson," he shouted, with a sort of bullying deference under the rim of the old man's hat; the Holy Terror gave a submissive little jump. The ghost of a steamer was waiting for them, Fortune on that fair isle! They made a curious pair of Argonauts. Chester strode on leisurely, well set up, portly, and of conquering mien; the other, long, wasted, drooping, and hooked to his arm, shuffled his withered shanks with desperate haste.''I did not start in search of Jim at once, only because I had really an appointment which I could not neglect. Then, as ill-luck would have it, in my agent's office I was fastened upon by a fellow fresh from Madagascar with a little scheme for a wonderful piece of business. It had something to do with cattle and cartridges and a Prince Ravonalo something; but the pivot of the whole affair was the stupidity of some admiral--Admiral Pierre, I think. Everything turned on that, and the chap couldn't find words strong enough to express his confidence. He had globular eyes starting out of his head with a fishy glitter, bumps on his forehead, and wore his long hair brushed back without a parting. He had a favourite phrase which he kept on repeating triumphantly, "The minimum of risk with the maximum of profit is my motto. What?" He made my head ache, spoiled my tiffin, but got his own out of me all right; and as soon as I had shaken him off, I made straight for the water-side. I caught sight of Jim leaning over the parapet of the quay. Three native boatmen quarrelling over five annas were making an awful row at his elbow. He didn't hear me come up, but spun round as if the slight contact of my finger had released a catch. "I was looking," he stammered. I don't remember what I said, not much anyhow, but he made no difficulty in following me to the hotel. 'He followed me as manageable as a little child, with an obedient air, with no sort of manifestation, rather as though he had been waiting for me there to come along and carry him off. I need not have been so surprised as I was at his tractability. On all the round earth, which to some seems so big and that others affect to consider as rather smaller than a mustard-seed, he had no place where he could--what shall I say?--where he could withdraw. That's it! Withdraw--be alone with his loneliness. He walked by my side very calm, glancing here and there, and once turned his head to look after a Sidiboy fireman in a cutaway coat and yellowish trousers, whose black face had silky gleams like a lump of anthracite coal. I doubt, however, whether he saw anything, or even remained all the time aware of my companionship, because if I had not edged him to the left here, or pulled him to the right there, I believe he would have gone straight before him in any direction till stopped by a wall or some other obstacle. I steered him into my bedroom, and sat down at once to write letters. This was the only place in the world (unless, perhaps, the Walpole Reef--but that was not so handy) where he could have it out with himself without being bothered by the rest of the universe. The damned thing--as he had expressed it--had not made him invisible, but I behaved exactly as though he were. No sooner in my chair I bent over my writing-desk like a medieval scribe, and, but for the movement of the hand holding the pen, remained anxiously quiet. I can't say I was frightened; but I certainly kept as still as if there had been something dangerous in the room, that at the first hint of a movement on my part would be provoked to pounce upon me. There was not much in the room--you know how these bedrooms are--a sort of four-poster bedstead under a mosquito-net, two or three chairs, the table I was writing at, a bare floor. A glass door opened on an upstairs verandah, and he stood with his face to it, having a hard time with all possible privacy. Dusk fell; I lit a candle with the greatest economy of movement and as much prudence as though it were an illegal proceeding. There is no doubt that he had a very hard time of it, and so had I, even to the point, I must own, of wishing him to the devil, or on Walpole Reef at least. It occurred to me once or twice that, after all, Chester was, perhaps, the man to deal effectively with such a disaster. That strange idealist had found a practical use for it at once--unerringly, as it were. It was enough to make one suspect that, maybe, he really could see the true aspect of things that appeared mysterious or utterly hopeless to less imaginative persons. I wrote and wrote; I liquidated all the arrears of my correspondence, and then went on writing to people who had no reason whatever to expect from me a gossipy letter about nothing at all. At times I stole a sidelong glance. He was rooted to the spot, but convulsive shudders ran down his back; his shoulders would heave suddenly. He was fighting, he was fighting--mostly for his breath, as it seemed. The massive shadows, cast all one way from the straight flame of the candle, seemed possessed of gloomy consciousness; the immobility of the furniture had to my furtive eye an air of attention. I was becoming fanciful in the midst of my industrious scribbling; and though, when the scratching of my pen stopped for a moment, there was complete silence and stillness in the room, I suffered from that profound disturbance and confusion of thought which is caused by a violent and menacing uproar--of a heavy gale at sea, for instance. Some of you may know what I mean: that mingled anxiety, distress, and irritation with a sort of craven feeling creeping in--not pleasant to acknowledge, but which gives a quite special merit to one's endurance. I don't claim any merit for standing the stress of Jim's emotions; I could take refuge in the letters; I could have written to strangers if necessary. Suddenly, as I was taking up a fresh sheet of notepaper, I heard a low sound, the first sound that, since we had been shut up together, had come to my ears in the dim stillness of the room. I remained with my head down, with my hand arrested. Those who have kept vigil by a sick-bed have heard such faint sounds in the stillness of the night watches, sounds wrung from a racked body, from a weary soul. He pushed the glass door with such force that all the panes rang: he stepped out, and I held my breath, straining my ears without knowing what else I expected to hear. He was really taking too much to heart an empty formality which to Chester's rigorous criticism seemed unworthy the notice of a man who could see things as they were. An empty formality; a piece of parchment. Well, well. As to an inaccessible guano deposit, that was another story altogether. One could intelligibly break one's heart over that. A feeble burst of many voices mingled with the tinkle of silver and glass floated up from the dining-room below; through the open door the outer edge of the light from my candle fell on his back faintly; beyond all was black; he stood on the brink of a vast obscurity, like a lonely figure by the shore of a sombre and hopeless ocean. There was the Walpole Reef in it--to be sure--a speck in the dark void, a straw for the drowning man. My compassion for him took the shape of the thought that I wouldn't have liked his people to see him at that moment. I found it trying myself. His back was no longer shaken by his gasps; he stood straight as an arrow, faintly visible and still; and the meaning of this stillness sank to the bottom of my soul like lead into the water, and made it so heavy that for a second I wished heartily that the only course left open for me was to pay for his funeral. Even the law had done with him. To bury him would have been such an easy kindness! It would have been so much in accordance with the wisdom of life, which consists in putting out of sight all the reminders of our folly, of our weakness, of our mortality; all that makes against our efficiency--the memory of our failures, the hints of our undying fears, the bodies of our dead friends. Perhaps he did take it too much to heart. And if so then--Chester's offer. . . . At this point I took up a fresh sheet and began to write resolutely. There was nothing but myself between him and the dark ocean. I had a sense of responsibility. If I spoke, would that motionless and suffering youth leap into the obscurity--clutch at the straw? I found out how difficult it may be sometimes to make a sound. There is a weird power in a spoken word. And why the devil not? I was asking myself persistently while I drove on with my writing. All at once, on the blank page, under the very point of the pen, the two figures of Chester and his antique partner, very distinct and complete, would dodge into view with stride and gestures, as if reproduced in the field of some optical toy. I would watch them for a while. No! They were too phantasmal and extravagant to enter into any one's fate. And a word carries far--very far--deals destruction through time as the bullets go flying through space. I said nothing; and he, out there with his back to the light, as if bound and gagged by all the invisible foes of man, made no stir and made no sound.' 'The time was coming when I should see him loved, trusted, admired, with a legend of strength and prowess forming round his name as though he had been the stuff of a hero. It's true--I assure you; as true as I'm sitting here talking about him in vain. He, on his side, had that faculty of beholding at a hint the face of his desire and the shape of his dream, without which the earth would know no lover and no adventurer. He captured much honour and an Arcadian happiness (I won't say anything about innocence) in the bush, and it was as good to him as the honour and the Arcadian happiness of the streets to another man. Felicity, felicity--how shall I say it?--is quaffed out of a golden cup in every latitude: the flavour is with you--with you alone, and you can make it as intoxicating as you please. He was of the sort that would drink deep, as you may guess from what went before. I found him, if not exactly intoxicated, then at least flushed with the elixir at his lips. He had not obtained it at once. There had been, as you know, a period of probation amongst infernal ship-chandlers, during which he had suffered and I had worried about--about--my trust--you may call it. I don't know that I am completely reassured now, after beholding him in all his brilliance. That was my last view of him--in a strong light, dominating, and yet in complete accord with his surroundings--with the life of the forests and with the life of men. I own that I was impressed, but I must admit to myself that after all this is not the lasting impression. He was protected by his isolation, alone of his own superior kind, in close touch with Nature, that keeps faith on such easy terms with her lovers. But I cannot fix before my eye the image of his safety. I shall always remember him as seen through the open door of my room, taking, perhaps, too much to heart the mere consequences of his failure. I am pleased, of course, that some good--and even some splendour--came out of my endeavours; but at times it seems to me it would have been better for my peace of mind if I had not stood between him and Chester's confoundedly generous offer. I wonder what his exuberant imagination would have made of Walpole islet--that most hopelessly forsaken crumb of dry land on the face of the waters. It is not likely I would ever have heard, for I must tell you that Chester, after calling at some Australian port to patch up his brig-rigged sea-anachronism, steamed out into the Pacific with a crew of twenty-two hands all told, and the only news having a possible bearing upon the mystery of his fate was the news of a hurricane which is supposed to have swept in its course over the Walpole shoals, a month or so afterwards. Not a vestige of the Argonauts ever turned up; not a sound came out of the waste. Finis! The Pacific is the most discreet of live, hot-tempered oceans: the chilly Antarctic can keep a secret too, but more in the manner of a grave. 'And there is a sense of blessed finality in such discretion, which is what we all more or less sincerely are ready to admit--for what else is it that makes the idea of death supportable? End! Finis! the potent word that exorcises from the house of life the haunting shadow of fate. This is what--notwithstanding the testimony of my eyes and his own earnest assurances--I miss when I look back upon Jim's success. While there's life there is hope, truly; but there is fear too. I don't mean to say that I regret my action, nor will I pretend that I can't sleep o' nights in consequence; still, the idea obtrudes itself that he made so much of his disgrace while it is the guilt alone that matters. He was not--if I may say so--clear to me. He was not clear. And there is a suspicion he was not clear to himself either. There were his fine sensibilities, his fine feelings, his fine longings--a sort of sublimated, idealised selfishness. He was--if you allow me to say so--very fine; very fine--and very unfortunate. A little coarser nature would not have borne the strain; it would have had to come to terms with itself--with a sigh, with a grunt, or even with a guffaw; a still coarser one would have remained invulnerably ignorant and completely uninteresting. 'But he was too interesting or too unfortunate to be thrown to the dogs, or even to Chester. I felt this while I sat with my face over the paper and he fought and gasped, struggling for his breath in that terribly stealthy way, in my room; I felt it when he rushed out on the verandah as if to fling himself over--and didn't; I felt it more and more all the time he remained outside, faintly lighted on the background of night, as if standing on the shore of a sombre and hopeless sea. 'An abrupt heavy rumble made me lift my head. The noise seemed to roll away, and suddenly a searching and violent glare fell on the blind face of the night. The sustained and dazzling flickers seemed to last for an unconscionable time. The growl of the thunder increased steadily while I looked at him, distinct and black, planted solidly upon the shores of a sea of light. At the moment of greatest brilliance the darkness leaped back with a culminating crash, and he vanished before my dazzled eyes as utterly as though he had been blown to atoms. A blustering sigh passed; furious hands seemed to tear at the shrubs, shake the tops of the trees below, slam doors, break window-panes, all along the front of the building. He stepped in, closing the door behind him, and found me bending over the table: my sudden anxiety as to what he would say was very great, and akin to a fright. "May I have a cigarette?" he asked. I gave a push to the box without raising my head. "I want--want--tobacco," he muttered. I became extremely buoyant. "Just a moment." I grunted pleasantly. He took a few steps here and there. "That's over," I heard him say. A single distant clap of thunder came from the sea like a gun of distress. "The monsoon breaks up early this year," he remarked conversationally, somewhere behind me. This encouraged me to turn round, which I did as soon as I had finished addressing the last envelope. He was smoking greedily in the middle of the room, and though he heard the stir I made, he remained with his back to me for a time. '"Come--I carried it off pretty well," he said, wheeling suddenly. "Something's paid off--not much. I wonder what's to come." His face did not show any emotion, only it appeared a little darkened and swollen, as though he had been holding his breath. He smiled reluctantly as it were, and went on while I gazed up at him mutely. . . . "Thank you, though--your room--jolly convenient--for a chap--badly hipped." . . . The rain pattered and swished in the garden; a water-pipe (it must have had a hole in it) performed just outside the window a parody of blubbering woe with funny sobs and gurgling lamentations, interrupted by jerky spasms of silence. . . . "A bit of shelter," he mumbled and ceased. 'A flash of faded lightning darted in through the black framework of the windows and ebbed out without any noise. I was thinking how I had best approach him (I did not want to be flung off again) when he gave a little laugh. "No better than a vagabond now" . . . the end of the cigarette smouldered between his fingers . . . "without a single--single," he pronounced slowly; "and yet . . ." He paused; the rain fell with redoubled violence. "Some day one's bound to come upon some sort of chance to get it all back again. Must!" he whispered distinctly, glaring at my boots. 'I did not even know what it was he wished so much to regain, what it was he had so terribly missed. It might have been so much that it was impossible to say. A piece of ass's skin, according to Chester. . . . He looked up at me inquisitively. "Perhaps. If life's long enough," I muttered through my teeth with unreasonable animosity. "Don't reckon too much on it." '"Jove! I feel as if nothing could ever touch me," he said in a tone of sombre conviction. "If this business couldn't knock me over, then there's no fear of there being not enough time to--climb out, and . . ." He looked upwards. 'It struck me that it is from such as he that the great army of waifs and strays is recruited, the army that marches down, down into all the gutters of the earth. As soon as he left my room, that "bit of shelter," he would take his place in the ranks, and begin the journey towards the bottomless pit. I at least had no illusions; but it was I, too, who a moment ago had been so sure of the power of words, and now was afraid to speak, in the same way one dares not move for fear of losing a slippery hold. It is when we try to grapple with another man's intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible, wavering, and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun. It is as if loneliness were a hard and absolute condition of existence; the envelope of flesh and blood on which our eyes are fixed melts before the outstretched hand, and there remains only the capricious, unconsolable, and elusive spirit that no eye can follow, no hand can grasp. It was the fear of losing him that kept me silent, for it was borne upon me suddenly and with unaccountable force that should I let him slip away into the darkness I would never forgive myself. '"Well. Thanks--once more. You've been--er--uncommonly--really there's no word to . . . Uncommonly! I don't know why, I am sure. I am afraid I don't feel as grateful as I would if the whole thing hadn't been so brutally sprung on me. Because at bottom . . . you, yourself . . ." He stuttered. '"Possibly," I struck in. He frowned. '"All the same, one is responsible." He watched me like a hawk. '"And that's true, too," I said. '"Well. I've gone with it to the end, and I don't intend to let any man cast it in my teeth without--without--resenting it." He clenched his fist. '"There's yourself," I said with a smile--mirthless enough, God knows--but he looked at me menacingly. "That's my business," he said. An air of indomitable resolution came and went upon his face like a vain and passing shadow. Next moment he looked a dear good boy in trouble, as before. He flung away the cigarette. "Good-bye," he said, with the sudden haste of a man who had lingered too long in view of a pressing bit of work waiting for him; and then for a second or so he made not the slightest movement. The downpour fell with the heavy uninterrupted rush of a sweeping flood, with a sound of unchecked overwhelming fury that called to one's mind the images of collapsing bridges, of uprooted trees, of undermined mountains. No man could breast the colossal and headlong stream that seemed to break and swirl against the dim stillness in which we were precariously sheltered as if on an island. The perforated pipe gurgled, choked, spat, and splashed in odious ridicule of a swimmer fighting for his life. "It is raining," I remonstrated, "and I . . ." "Rain or shine," he began brusquely, checked himself, and walked to the window. "Perfect deluge," he muttered after a while: he leaned his forehead on the glass. "It's dark, too." '"Yes, it is very dark," I said. 'He pivoted on his heels, crossed the room, and had actually opened the door leading into the corridor before I leaped up from my chair. "Wait," I cried, "I want you to . . ." "I can't dine with you again to-night," he flung at me, with one leg out of the room already. "I haven't the slightest intention to ask you," I shouted. At this he drew back his foot, but remained mistrustfully in the very doorway. I lost no time in entreating him earnestly not to be absurd; to come in and shut the door.' 'He came in at last; but I believe it was mostly the rain that did it; it was falling just then with a devastating violence which quieted down gradually while we talked. His manner was very sober and set; his bearing was that of a naturally taciturn man possessed by an idea. My talk was of the material aspect of his position; it had the sole aim of saving him from the degradation, ruin, and despair that out there close so swiftly upon a friendless, homeless man; I pleaded with him to accept my help; I argued reasonably: and every time I looked up at that absorbed smooth face, so grave and youthful, I had a disturbing sense of being no help but rather an obstacle to some mysterious, inexplicable, impalpable striving of his wounded spirit. '"I suppose you intend to eat and drink and to sleep under shelter in the usual way," I remember saying with irritation. "You say you won't touch the money that is due to you." . . . He came as near as his sort can to making a gesture of horror. (There were three weeks and five days' pay owing him as mate of the Patna.) "Well, that's too little to matter anyhow; but what will you do to-morrow? Where will you turn? You must live . . ." "That isn't the thing," was the comment that escaped him under his breath. I ignored it, and went on combating what I assumed to be the scruples of an exaggerated delicacy. "On every conceivable ground," I concluded, "you must let me help you." "You can't," he said very simply and gently, and holding fast to some deep idea which I could detect shimmering like a pool of water in the dark, but which I despaired of ever approaching near enough to fathom. I surveyed his well-proportioned bulk. "At any rate," I said, "I am able to help what I can see of you. I don't pretend to do more." He shook his head sceptically without looking at me. I got very warm. "But I can," I insisted. "I can do even more. I _am_ doing more. I am trusting you . . ." "The money . . ." he began. "Upon my word you deserve being told to go to the devil," I cried, forcing the note of indignation. He was startled, smiled, and I pressed my attack home. "It isn't a question of money at all. You are too superficial," I said (and at the same time I was thinking to myself: Well, here goes! And perhaps he is, after all). "Look at the letter I want you to take. I am writing to a man of whom I've never asked a favour, and I am writing about you in terms that one only ventures to use when speaking of an intimate friend. I make myself unreservedly responsible for you. That's what I am doing. And really if you will only reflect a little what that means . . ." 'He lifted his head. The rain had passed away; only the water-pipe went on shedding tears with an absurd drip, drip outside the window. It was very quiet in the room, whose shadows huddled together in corners, away from the still flame of the candle flaring upright in the shape of a dagger; his face after a while seemed suffused by a reflection of a soft light as if the dawn had broken already. '"Jove!" he gasped out. "It is noble of you!" 'Had he suddenly put out his tongue at me in derision, I could not have felt more humiliated. I thought to myself--Serve me right for a sneaking humbug. . . . His eyes shone straight into my face, but I perceived it was not a mocking brightness. All at once he sprang into jerky agitation, like one of those flat wooden figures that are worked by a string. His arms went up, then came down with a slap. He became another man altogether. "And I had never seen," he shouted; then suddenly bit his lip and frowned. "What a bally ass I've been," he said very slow in an awed tone. . . . "You are a brick!" he cried next in a muffled voice. He snatched my hand as though he had just then seen it for the first time, and dropped it at once. "Why! this is what I--you--I . . ." he stammered, and then with a return of his old stolid, I may say mulish, manner he began heavily, "I would be a brute now if I . . ." and then his voice seemed to break. "That's all right," I said. I was almost alarmed by this display of feeling, through which pierced a strange elation. I had pulled the string accidentally, as it were; I did not fully understand the working of the toy. "I must go now," he said. "Jove! You _have_ helped me. Can't sit still. The very thing . . ." He looked at me with puzzled admiration. "The very thing . . ." 'Of course it was the thing. It was ten to one that I had saved him from starvation--of that peculiar sort that is almost invariably associated with drink. This was all. I had not a single illusion on that score, but looking at him, I allowed myself to wonder at the nature of the one he had, within the last three minutes, so evidently taken into his bosom. I had forced into his hand the means to carry on decently the serious business of life, to get food, drink, and shelter of the customary kind while his wounded spirit, like a bird with a broken wing, might hop and flutter into some hole to die quietly of inanition there. This is what I had thrust upon him: a definitely small thing; and--behold!--by the manner of its reception it loomed in the dim light of the candle like a big, indistinct, perhaps a dangerous shadow. "You don't mind me not saying anything appropriate," he burst out. "There isn't anything one could say. Last night already you had done me no end of good. Listening to me--you know. I give you my word I've thought more than once the top of my head would fly off. . ." He darted--positively darted--here and there, rammed his hands into his pockets, jerked them out again, flung his cap on his head. I had no idea it was in him to be so airily brisk. I thought of a dry leaf imprisoned in an eddy of wind, while a mysterious apprehension, a load of indefinite doubt, weighed me down in my chair. He stood stock-still, as if struck motionless by a discovery. "You have given me confidence," he declared, soberly. "Oh! for God's sake, my dear fellow--don't!" I entreated, as though he had hurt me. "All right. I'll shut up now and henceforth. Can't prevent me thinking though. . . . Never mind! . . . I'll show yet . . ." He went to the door in a hurry, paused with his head down, and came back, stepping deliberately. "I always thought that if a fellow could begin with a clean slate . . . And now you . . . in a measure . . . yes . . . clean slate." I waved my hand, and he marched out without looking back; the sound of his footfalls died out gradually behind the closed door--the unhesitating tread of a man walking in broad daylight. 'But as to me, left alone with the solitary candle, I remained strangely unenlightened. I was no longer young enough to behold at every turn the magnificence that besets our insignificant footsteps in good and in evil. I smiled to think that, after all, it was yet he, of us two, who had the light. And I felt sad. A clean slate, did he say? As if the initial word of each our destiny were not graven in imperishable characters upon the face of a rock.' 'Six months afterwards my friend (he was a cynical, more than middle-aged bachelor, with a reputation for eccentricity, and owned a rice-mill) wrote to me, and judging, from the warmth of my recommendation, that I would like to hear, enlarged a little upon Jim's perfections. These were apparently of a quiet and effective sort. "Not having been able so far to find more in my heart than a resigned toleration for any individual of my kind, I have lived till now alone in a house that even in this steaming climate could be considered as too big for one man. I have had him to live with me for some time past. It seems I haven't made a mistake." It seemed to me on reading this letter that my friend had found in his heart more than tolerance for Jim--that there were the beginnings of active liking. Of course he stated his grounds in a characteristic way. For one thing, Jim kept his freshness in the climate. Had he been a girl--my friend wrote--one could have said he was blooming--blooming modestly--like a violet, not like some of these blatant tropical flowers. He had been in the house for six weeks, and had not as yet attempted to slap him on the back, or address him as "old boy," or try to make him feel a superannuated fossil. He had nothing of the exasperating young man's chatter. He was good-tempered, had not much to say for himself, was not clever by any means, thank goodness--wrote my friend. It appeared, however, that Jim was clever enough to be quietly appreciative of his wit, while, on the other hand, he amused him by his naiveness. "The dew is yet on him, and since I had the bright idea of giving him a room in the house and having him at meals I feel less withered myself. The other day he took it into his head to cross the room with no other purpose but to open a door for me; and I felt more in touch with mankind than I had been for years. Ridiculous, isn't it? Of course I guess there is something--some awful little scrape--which you know all about--but if I am sure that it is terribly heinous, I fancy one could manage to forgive it. For my part, I declare I am unable to imagine him guilty of anything much worse than robbing an orchard. Is it much worse? Perhaps you ought to have told me; but it is such a long time since we both turned saints that you may have forgotten we, too, had sinned in our time? It may be that some day I shall have to ask you, and then I shall expect to be told. I don't care to question him myself till I have some idea what it is. Moreover, it's too soon as yet. Let him open the door a few times more for me. . . ." Thus my friend. I was trebly pleased--at Jim's shaping so well, at the tone of the letter, at my own cleverness. Evidently I had known what I was doing. I had read characters aright, and so on. And what if something unexpected and wonderful were to come of it? That evening, reposing in a deck-chair under the shade of my own poop awning (it was in Hong-Kong harbour), I laid on Jim's behalf the first stone of a castle in Spain. 'I made a trip to the northward, and when I returned I found another letter from my friend waiting for me. It was the first envelope I tore open. "There are no spoons missing, as far as I know," ran the first line; "I haven't been interested enough to inquire. He is gone, leaving on the breakfast-table a formal little note of apology, which is either silly or heartless. Probably both--and it's all one to me. Allow me to say, lest you should have some more mysterious young men in reserve, that I have shut up shop, definitely and for ever. This is the last eccentricity I shall be guilty of. Do not imagine for a moment that I care a hang; but he is very much regretted at tennis-parties, and for my own sake I've told a plausible lie at the club. . . ." I flung the letter aside and started looking through the batch on my table, till I came upon Jim's handwriting. Would you believe it? One chance in a hundred! But it is always that hundredth chance! That little second engineer of the Patna had turned up in a more or less destitute state, and got a temporary job of looking after the machinery of the mill. "I couldn't stand the familiarity of the little beast," Jim wrote from a seaport seven hundred miles south of the place where he should have been in clover. "I am now for the time with Egstrom & Blake, ship-chandlers, as their--well--runner, to call the thing by its right name. For reference I gave them your name, which they know of course, and if you could write a word in my favour it would be a permanent employment." I was utterly crushed under the ruins of my castle, but of course I wrote as desired. Before the end of the year my new charter took me that way, and I had an opportunity of seeing him. 'He was still with Egstrom & Blake, and we met in what they called "our parlour" opening out of the store. He had that moment come in from boarding a ship, and confronted me head down, ready for a tussle. "What have you got to say for yourself?" I began as soon as we had shaken hands. "What I wrote you--nothing more," he said stubbornly. "Did the fellow blab--or what?" I asked. He looked up at me with a troubled smile. "Oh, no! He didn't. He made it a kind of confidential business between us. He was most damnably mysterious whenever I came over to the mill; he would wink at me in a respectful manner--as much as to say 'We know what we know.' Infernally fawning and familiar--and that sort of thing . . ." He threw himself into a chair and stared down his legs. "One day we happened to be alone and the fellow had the cheek to say, 'Well, Mr. James'--I was called Mr. James there as if I had been the son--'here we are together once more. This is better than the old ship--ain't it?' . . . Wasn't it appalling, eh? I looked at him, and he put on a knowing air. 'Don't you be uneasy, sir,' he says. 'I know a gentleman when I see one, and I know how a gentleman feels. I hope, though, you will be keeping me on this job. I had a hard time of it too, along of that rotten old Patna racket.' Jove! It was awful. I don't know what I should have said or done if I had not just then heard Mr. Denver calling me in the passage. It was tiffin-time, and we walked together across the yard and through the garden to the bungalow. He began to chaff me in his kindly way . . . I believe he liked me . . ." 'Jim was silent for a while. '"I know he liked me. That's what made it so hard. Such a splendid man! . . . That morning he slipped his hand under my arm. . . . He, too, was familiar with me." He burst into a short laugh, and dropped his chin on his breast. "Pah! When I remembered how that mean little beast had been talking to me," he began suddenly in a vibrating voice, "I couldn't bear to think of myself . . . I suppose you know . . ." I nodded. . . . "More like a father," he cried; his voice sank. "I would have had to tell him. I couldn't let it go on--could I?" "Well?" I murmured, after waiting a while. "I preferred to go," he said slowly; "this thing must be buried." 'We could hear in the shop Blake upbraiding Egstrom in an abusive, strained voice. They had been associated for many years, and every day from the moment the doors were opened to the last minute before closing, Blake, a little man with sleek, jetty hair and unhappy, beady eyes, could be heard rowing his partner incessantly with a sort of scathing and plaintive fury. The sound of that everlasting scolding was part of the place like the other fixtures; even strangers would very soon come to disregard it completely unless it be perhaps to mutter "Nuisance," or to get up suddenly and shut the door of the "parlour." Egstrom himself, a raw-boned, heavy Scandinavian, with a busy manner and immense blonde whiskers, went on directing his people, checking parcels, making out bills or writing letters at a stand-up desk in the shop, and comported himself in that clatter exactly as though he had been stone-deaf. Now and again he would emit a bothered perfunctory "Sssh," which neither produced nor was expected to produce the slightest effect. "They are very decent to me here," said Jim. "Blake's a little cad, but Egstrom's all right." He stood up quickly, and walking with measured steps to a tripod telescope standing in the window and pointed at the roadstead, he applied his eye to it. "There's that ship which has been becalmed outside all the morning has got a breeze now and is coming in," he remarked patiently; "I must go and board." We shook hands in silence, and he turned to go. "Jim!" I cried. He looked round with his hand on the lock. "You--you have thrown away something like a fortune." He came back to me all the way from the door. "Such a splendid old chap," he said. "How could I? How could I?" His lips twitched. "Here it does not matter." "Oh! you--you--" I began, and had to cast about for a suitable word, but before I became aware that there was no name that would just do, he was gone. I heard outside Egstrom's deep gentle voice saying cheerily, "That's the Sarah W. Granger, Jimmy. You must manage to be first aboard"; and directly Blake struck in, screaming after the manner of an outraged cockatoo, "Tell the captain we've got some of his mail here. That'll fetch him. D'ye hear, Mister What's-your-name?" And there was Jim answering Egstrom with something boyish in his tone. "All right. I'll make a race of it." He seemed to take refuge in the boat-sailing part of that sorry business. 'I did not see him again that trip, but on my next (I had a six months' charter) I went up to the store. Ten yards away from the door Blake's scolding met my ears, and when I came in he gave me a glance of utter wretchedness; Egstrom, all smiles, advanced, extending a large bony hand. "Glad to see you, captain. . . . Sssh. . . . Been thinking you were about due back here. What did you say, sir? . . . Sssh. . . . Oh! him! He has left us. Come into the parlour." . . . After the slam of the door Blake's strained voice became faint, as the voice of one scolding desperately in a wilderness. . . . "Put us to a great inconvenience, too. Used us badly--I must say . . ." "Where's he gone to? Do you know?" I asked. "No. It's no use asking either," said Egstrom, standing bewhiskered and obliging before me with his arms hanging down his sides clumsily, and a thin silver watch-chain looped very low on a rucked-up blue serge waistcoat. "A man like that don't go anywhere in particular." I was too concerned at the news to ask for the explanation of that pronouncement, and he went on. "He left--let's see--the very day a steamer with returning pilgrims from the Red Sea put in here with two blades of her propeller gone. Three weeks ago now." "Wasn't there something said about the Patna case?" I asked, fearing the worst. He gave a start, and looked at me as if I had been a sorcerer. "Why, yes! How do you know? Some of them were talking about it here. There was a captain or two, the manager of Vanlo's engineering shop at the harbour, two or three others, and myself. Jim was in here too, having a sandwich and a glass of beer; when we are busy--you see, captain--there's no time for a proper tiffin. He was standing by this table eating sandwiches, and the rest of us were round the telescope watching that steamer come in; and by-and-by Vanlo's manager began to talk about the chief of the Patna; he had done some repairs for him once, and from that he went on to tell us what an old ruin she was, and the money that had been made out of her. He came to mention her last voyage, and then we all struck in. Some said one thing and some another--not much--what you or any other man might say; and there was some laughing. Captain O'Brien of the Sarah W. Granger, a large, noisy old man with a stick--he was sitting listening to us in this arm-chair here--he let drive suddenly with his stick at the floor, and roars out, 'Skunks!' . . . Made us all jump. Vanlo's manager winks at us and asks, 'What's the matter, Captain O'Brien?' 'Matter! matter!' the old man began to shout; 'what are you Injuns laughing at? It's no laughing matter. It's a disgrace to human natur'--that's what it is. I would despise being seen in the same room with one of those men. Yes, sir!' He seemed to catch my eye like, and I had to speak out of civility. 'Skunks!' says I, 'of course, Captain O'Brien, and I wouldn't care to have them here myself, so you're quite safe in this room, Captain O'Brien. Have a little something cool to drink.' 'Dam' your drink, Egstrom,' says he, with a twinkle in his eye; 'when I want a drink I will shout for it. I am going to quit. It stinks here now.' At this all the others burst out laughing, and out they go after the old man. And then, sir, that blasted Jim he puts down the sandwich he had in his hand and walks round the table to me; there was his glass of beer poured out quite full. 'I am off,' he says--just like this. 'It isn't half-past one yet,' says I; 'you might snatch a smoke first.' I thought he meant it was time for him to go down to his work. When I understood what he was up to, my arms fell--so! Can't get a man like that every day, you know, sir; a regular devil for sailing a boat; ready to go out miles to sea to meet ships in any sort of weather. More than once a captain would come in here full of it, and the first thing he would say would be, 'That's a reckless sort of a lunatic you've got for water-clerk, Egstrom. I was feeling my way in at daylight under short canvas when there comes flying out of the mist right under my forefoot a boat half under water, sprays going over the mast-head, two frightened niggers on the bottom boards, a yelling fiend at the tiller. Hey! hey! Ship ahoy! ahoy! Captain! Hey! hey! Egstrom & Blake's man first to speak to you! Hey! hey! Egstrom & Blake! Hallo! hey! whoop! Kick the niggers--out reefs--a squall on at the time--shoots ahead whooping and yelling to me to make sail and he would give me a lead in--more like a demon than a man. Never saw a boat handled like that in all my life. Couldn't have been drunk--was he? Such a quiet, soft-spoken chap too--blush like a girl when he came on board. . . .' I tell you, Captain Marlow, nobody had a chance against us with a strange ship when Jim was out. The other ship-chandlers just kept their old customers, and . . ." 'Egstrom appeared overcome with emotion. '"Why, sir--it seemed as though he wouldn't mind going a hundred miles out to sea in an old shoe to nab a ship for the firm. If the business had been his own and all to make yet, he couldn't have done more in that way. And now . . . all at once . . . like this! Thinks I to myself: 'Oho! a rise in the screw--that's the trouble--is it?' 'All right,' says I, 'no need of all that fuss with me, Jimmy. Just mention your figure. Anything in reason.' He looks at me as if he wanted to swallow something that stuck in his throat. 'I can't stop with you.' 'What's that blooming joke?' I asks. He shakes his head, and I could see in his eye he was as good as gone already, sir. So I turned to him and slanged him till all was blue. 'What is it you're running away from?' I asks. 'Who has been getting at you? What scared you? You haven't as much sense as a rat; they don't clear out from a good ship. Where do you expect to get a better berth?--you this and you that.' I made him look sick, I can tell you. 'This business ain't going to sink,' says I. He gave a big jump. 'Good-bye,' he says, nodding at me like a lord; 'you ain't half a bad chap, Egstrom. I give you my word that if you knew my reasons you wouldn't care to keep me.' 'That's the biggest lie you ever told in your life,' says I; 'I know my own mind.' He made me so mad that I had to laugh. 'Can't you really stop long enough to drink this glass of beer here, you funny beggar, you?' I don't know what came over him; he didn't seem able to find the door; something comical, I can tell you, captain. I drank the beer myself. 'Well, if you're in such a hurry, here's luck to you in your own drink,' says I; 'only, you mark my words, if you keep up this game you'll very soon find that the earth ain't big enough to hold you--that's all.' He gave me one black look, and out he rushed with a face fit to scare little children." 'Egstrom snorted bitterly, and combed one auburn whisker with knotty fingers. "Haven't been able to get a man that was any good since. It's nothing but worry, worry, worry in business. And where might you have come across him, captain, if it's fair to ask?" '"He was the mate of the Patna that voyage," I said, feeling that I owed some explanation. For a time Egstrom remained very still, with his fingers plunged in the hair at the side of his face, and then exploded. "And who the devil cares about that?" "I daresay no one," I began . . . "And what the devil is he--anyhow--for to go on like this?" He stuffed suddenly his left whisker into his mouth and stood amazed. "Jee!" he exclaimed, "I told him the earth wouldn't be big enough to hold his caper."'

Chapters 13 - 18

https://web.archive.org/web/20210126121516/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/lordjim/section5/

Marlow concludes his conversation with the French lieutenant. He tells the man the story of the inquiry and subsequent events. Somehow, the man discerns Marlow's interest in Jim and inquires whether Jim, too, ran off rather than stand trial. This leads the lieutenant to meditate on bravery and fear. Like Marlow, he fails to find words for what he is trying to say, and as they take leave of one another, Marlow is struck by the futility of conversation. Marlow mentions that he has seen Jim recently, working as a water-clerk in the port of Samarang. He also notes that it is through his recommendation that Jim got the job. Marlow digresses briefly to tell the story of Bob Stanton, a sailor he once knew who also spent some time as a water-clerk, who drowned trying to save a woman after a ship collision. Marlow goes back in time to the dinner with Jim at his hotel, recalling that the next day was to be Jim's day of sentencing. That night, Marlow makes Jim the offer he has discussed with Captain Brierly, telling him that if he chooses to flee, Marlow will provide him with money and a job recommendation. Jim refuses. Marlow realizes that Jim has made the ultimate appeal to his ego: would Marlow behave the way Jim does, in the same situation? Marlow thinks he'd be able to do better. The next morning, Marlow goes to the court to hear the verdict. The court finds the Patna to have been unfit to go to sea, deems her navigation and operation up to the accident proper, declines to speculate as to the cause of the collision, and finds the crew derelict in their duties, revoking their officers' certifications. Leaving the court, Marlow encounters Chester and Captain Robinson, two suspicious characters who have stayed one step ahead of the law for years. They discuss with Marlow a business scheme in which they want to involve Jim. They want to find a derelict old boat and send it out to a deserted, waterless island to harvest guano , which can then be sold as fertilizer to sugar planters in Australia, and they want Jim to command the boat. Marlow refuses to make Jim the offer, and the men insult Jim, noting that at least the island won't sink. Aware of Jim's vulnerability to people like Chester and Robinson now that he has been punished, Marlow finds him and takes him back to his hotel room, where he writes letters as Jim struggles with his own thoughts. Marlow admits his responsibility to Jim and thinks about ways to help him. Suddenly Marlow draws back and reveals to the audience that soon Jim will be "loved, trusted, admired, with a legend of strength and prowess forming round his name." He explains why he will not present Chester and Robinson's offer to Jim , and notes that their expedition was lost without a trace after a hurricane. The narrative returns to Marlow's hotel room. Jim tells Marlow that he thinks he will have another chance to become a hero, that he's "bound to come upon some sort of chance to get it all back again." Marlow convinces Jim to stay a little longer and persuades him to accept a letter of recommendation for a job. Jim thanks him for giving him a "clean slate." Marlow receives a letter from Jim's new employer, praising Jim. The man wonders at what Jim has done to need Marlow's protection, but says that Jim is "blooming. . .like a violet" in his new position. Not long afterward, Marlow receives another letter from his friend. Jim has departed suddenly, leaving only a note of apology. In the same batch of mail, there is a letter from Jim, explaining that the second engineer from the Patna turned up and got a job with Jim's employer. The engineer tormented Jim, reminding him of the incident; the anguish forced Jim to leave. Marlow soon runs into Jim, who is now working as a water-clerk in another port. Returning to that port a few months later, he finds that Jim has again quit a promising job, this time because a damaged steamer carrying pilgrims had put in, and the Patna case had again become a subject of conversation. His most recent employer remarks to Marlow that he had told Jim that, although he didn't know what he had done, "the earth wouldn't be big enough to hold his caper."

Commentary This section explores the aftermath of Jim's "conviction." Jim believes that he still has the chance to be a hero, but Chester and Robinson's questionable offer and his difficulty in retaining a job suggest otherwise. Jim has been marked in some way by his actions . Marlow hints at a mysterious future for Jim, however, in which he will be wildly successful, although the statement is qualified in an odd way; Marlow says that a legend will develop around Jim "as though he had been the stuff of a hero. " Why is Jim just comparable to a hero in the future, rather than actually becoming one? It seems that the moment that has been omitted from the narrative, the moment of Jim's leap overboard, will become the moment that defines his life, and that, for Jim, there can be no such thing as a "clean slate. " This is in part a result of his punishment. Tried by a court of his professional peers, Jim has been found to be unfit to keep the certification he earned as a young man; in some way, he's no longer "one of us." Marlow, however, still thinks that he and Jim do belong to the same fraternity. He helps Jim recover some semblance of a life and continues to follow him with interest. Marlow's interpretive skills are called into question in this section, though, as he declares himself "unenlightened" by his encounter with Jim. He also makes the strange claim that by helping Jim out he "had saved him from starvation--of that peculiar sort that is almost invariably associated with drink." This is a strange claim to make. It doesn't square with what we know of Jim, and it doesn't seem in line with Marlow's opinion of Jim in general. Perhaps Marlow has begun to fear the implications of his own association with Jim, and comments like this one are a way for him to distance himself. Chester and Robinson approach him because of his budding friendship with Jim, after all, and Marlow himself sadly notes that, of he and Jim, "it was yet he, of us two, who had the light." Jim may have been publicly condemned, but it is Marlow who has no chance. Jim seems to be headed for a successful future, while Marlow will be left only to repeat Jim's tale to anyone who will listen.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/chapters_27_to_28.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Sense and Sensibility/section_18_part_0.txt

Sense and Sensibility.chapters 27-28

chapters 27-28

{"name": "Chapters 27-28", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101060302/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/s/sense-and-sensibility/summary-and-analysis/chapters-2728", "summary": "One day while the ladies were out, Willoughby left his card. Marianne, highly excited, expected him to call the next day, but he did not. When a letter arrived from Lady Middleton \"announcing their arrival in Conduit Street the night before, and requesting the company of her mother and cousins the following evening,\" Elinor had great trouble in persuading Marianne to go with them. During the party, Marianne was upset to learn that Willoughby had been invited but had refused the invitation. The following day Elinor wrote to her mother, urging her to \"demand from Marianne an account of her real situation.\" She had just finished when Colonel Brandon called. He seemed disturbed and asked Elinor whether congratulations were in order for Marianne's engagement. Everyone, it seemed, believed that Marianne was engaged to Willoughby, and he himself had seen a letter by Marianne in a servant's hand, addressed to Willoughby. He seemed to want to know whether there was any hope for him, and Elinor, not wanting to lead him on, told him that Willoughby and her sister had a mutual affection. For the next four days, Marianne was \"wholly dispirited.\" She went with Elinor to a party at Lady Middleton's and, \"not in spirits for moving about,\" sat down with her sister. Soon Elinor perceived Willoughby \"in earnest conversation with a very fashionable-looking young woman.\" He bowed but did not approach them. Marianne's exclamation brought him to her side, and when she asked him if he had received her messages, he seemed embarrassed but answered that he had. Then he \"turned hastily away with a slight bow.\" Marianne, \"looking dreadfully white, . . . sank into her chair.\" She begged Elinor to tell Willoughby that she \"must speak to him instantly.\" Elinor waited and, seeing Willoughby leave the room, told Marianne that he was gone. Marianne then begged her sister to ask Lady Middleton to take them home. Marianne, \"in a silent agony, too much oppressed even for tears,\" went to bed as soon as they arrived at Mrs. Jennings'. Deeply worried, Elinor pondered Willoughby's strange behavior. \"Absence might have weakened his regard,\" she thought, \"and convenience might have determined him to overcome it, but that such a regard had formerly existed she could not bring herself to doubt.\"", "analysis": "In this, as in all Austen's novels, there is a great deal of gossip. Everybody is interested in everybody else, and the heroines suffer from a lack of privacy. Colonel Brandon surprises Elinor by telling her, \"Your sister's engagement to Mr. Willoughby is very generally known.\" When Elinor replies, \"It cannot be generally known, for her own family do not know it,\" the colonel tells her, \"their marriage is universally talked of . . . by some of whom you know nothing, by others with whom you are most intimate. That Elinor desperately wants to avoid gossip about Marianne and Willoughby is seen in her attempts to calm Marianne and prevent her from demanding an explanation from Willoughby during the dance. \"No, my dearest Marianne, you must wait,\" she says. \"This is not a place for explanations. Wait only till tomorrow.\" Notice Elinor's reserve with her own sister. Although the two girls are close, she must write her mother to demand from Marianne an account of her behavior."}

"If this open weather holds much longer," said Mrs. Jennings, when they met at breakfast the following morning, "Sir John will not like leaving Barton next week; 'tis a sad thing for sportsmen to lose a day's pleasure. Poor souls! I always pity them when they do; they seem to take it so much to heart." "That is true," cried Marianne, in a cheerful voice, and walking to the window as she spoke, to examine the day. "I had not thought of that. This weather will keep many sportsmen in the country." It was a lucky recollection, all her good spirits were restored by it. "It is charming weather for THEM indeed," she continued, as she sat down to the breakfast table with a happy countenance. "How much they must enjoy it! But" (with a little return of anxiety) "it cannot be expected to last long. At this time of the year, and after such a series of rain, we shall certainly have very little more of it. Frosts will soon set in, and in all probability with severity. In another day or two perhaps; this extreme mildness can hardly last longer--nay, perhaps it may freeze tonight!" "At any rate," said Elinor, wishing to prevent Mrs. Jennings from seeing her sister's thoughts as clearly as she did, "I dare say we shall have Sir John and Lady Middleton in town by the end of next week." "Ay, my dear, I'll warrant you we do. Mary always has her own way." "And now," silently conjectured Elinor, "she will write to Combe by this day's post." But if she DID, the letter was written and sent away with a privacy which eluded all her watchfulness to ascertain the fact. Whatever the truth of it might be, and far as Elinor was from feeling thorough contentment about it, yet while she saw Marianne in spirits, she could not be very uncomfortable herself. And Marianne was in spirits; happy in the mildness of the weather, and still happier in her expectation of a frost. The morning was chiefly spent in leaving cards at the houses of Mrs. Jennings's acquaintance to inform them of her being in town; and Marianne was all the time busy in observing the direction of the wind, watching the variations of the sky and imagining an alteration in the air. "Don't you find it colder than it was in the morning, Elinor? There seems to me a very decided difference. I can hardly keep my hands warm even in my muff. It was not so yesterday, I think. The clouds seem parting too, the sun will be out in a moment, and we shall have a clear afternoon." Elinor was alternately diverted and pained; but Marianne persevered, and saw every night in the brightness of the fire, and every morning in the appearance of the atmosphere, the certain symptoms of approaching frost. The Miss Dashwoods had no greater reason to be dissatisfied with Mrs. Jennings's style of living, and set of acquaintance, than with her behaviour to themselves, which was invariably kind. Every thing in her household arrangements was conducted on the most liberal plan, and excepting a few old city friends, whom, to Lady Middleton's regret, she had never dropped, she visited no one to whom an introduction could at all discompose the feelings of her young companions. Pleased to find herself more comfortably situated in that particular than she had expected, Elinor was very willing to compound for the want of much real enjoyment from any of their evening parties, which, whether at home or abroad, formed only for cards, could have little to amuse her. Colonel Brandon, who had a general invitation to the house, was with them almost every day; he came to look at Marianne and talk to Elinor, who often derived more satisfaction from conversing with him than from any other daily occurrence, but who saw at the same time with much concern his continued regard for her sister. She feared it was a strengthening regard. It grieved her to see the earnestness with which he often watched Marianne, and his spirits were certainly worse than when at Barton. About a week after their arrival, it became certain that Willoughby was also arrived. His card was on the table when they came in from the morning's drive. "Good God!" cried Marianne, "he has been here while we were out." Elinor, rejoiced to be assured of his being in London, now ventured to say, "Depend upon it, he will call again tomorrow." But Marianne seemed hardly to hear her, and on Mrs. Jennings's entrance, escaped with the precious card. This event, while it raised the spirits of Elinor, restored to those of her sister all, and more than all, their former agitation. From this moment her mind was never quiet; the expectation of seeing him every hour of the day, made her unfit for any thing. She insisted on being left behind, the next morning, when the others went out. Elinor's thoughts were full of what might be passing in Berkeley Street during their absence; but a moment's glance at her sister when they returned was enough to inform her, that Willoughby had paid no second visit there. A note was just then brought in, and laid on the table. "For me!" cried Marianne, stepping hastily forward. "No, ma'am, for my mistress." But Marianne, not convinced, took it instantly up. "It is indeed for Mrs. Jennings; how provoking!" "You are expecting a letter, then?" said Elinor, unable to be longer silent. "Yes, a little--not much." After a short pause. "You have no confidence in me, Marianne." "Nay, Elinor, this reproach from YOU--you who have confidence in no one!" "Me!" returned Elinor in some confusion; "indeed, Marianne, I have nothing to tell." "Nor I," answered Marianne with energy, "our situations then are alike. We have neither of us any thing to tell; you, because you do not communicate, and I, because I conceal nothing." Elinor, distressed by this charge of reserve in herself, which she was not at liberty to do away, knew not how, under such circumstances, to press for greater openness in Marianne. Mrs. Jennings soon appeared, and the note being given her, she read it aloud. It was from Lady Middleton, announcing their arrival in Conduit Street the night before, and requesting the company of her mother and cousins the following evening. Business on Sir John's part, and a violent cold on her own, prevented their calling in Berkeley Street. The invitation was accepted; but when the hour of appointment drew near, necessary as it was in common civility to Mrs. Jennings, that they should both attend her on such a visit, Elinor had some difficulty in persuading her sister to go, for still she had seen nothing of Willoughby; and therefore was not more indisposed for amusement abroad, than unwilling to run the risk of his calling again in her absence. Elinor found, when the evening was over, that disposition is not materially altered by a change of abode, for although scarcely settled in town, Sir John had contrived to collect around him, nearly twenty young people, and to amuse them with a ball. This was an affair, however, of which Lady Middleton did not approve. In the country, an unpremeditated dance was very allowable; but in London, where the reputation of elegance was more important and less easily attained, it was risking too much for the gratification of a few girls, to have it known that Lady Middleton had given a small dance of eight or nine couple, with two violins, and a mere side-board collation. Mr. and Mrs. Palmer were of the party; from the former, whom they had not seen before since their arrival in town, as he was careful to avoid the appearance of any attention to his mother-in-law, and therefore never came near her, they received no mark of recognition on their entrance. He looked at them slightly, without seeming to know who they were, and merely nodded to Mrs. Jennings from the other side of the room. Marianne gave one glance round the apartment as she entered: it was enough--HE was not there--and she sat down, equally ill-disposed to receive or communicate pleasure. After they had been assembled about an hour, Mr. Palmer sauntered towards the Miss Dashwoods to express his surprise on seeing them in town, though Colonel Brandon had been first informed of their arrival at his house, and he had himself said something very droll on hearing that they were to come. "I thought you were both in Devonshire," said he. "Did you?" replied Elinor. "When do you go back again?" "I do not know." And thus ended their discourse. Never had Marianne been so unwilling to dance in her life, as she was that evening, and never so much fatigued by the exercise. She complained of it as they returned to Berkeley Street. "Aye, aye," said Mrs. Jennings, "we know the reason of all that very well; if a certain person who shall be nameless, had been there, you would not have been a bit tired: and to say the truth it was not very pretty of him not to give you the meeting when he was invited." "Invited!" cried Marianne. "So my daughter Middleton told me, for it seems Sir John met him somewhere in the street this morning." Marianne said no more, but looked exceedingly hurt. Impatient in this situation to be doing something that might lead to her sister's relief, Elinor resolved to write the next morning to her mother, and hoped by awakening her fears for the health of Marianne, to procure those inquiries which had been so long delayed; and she was still more eagerly bent on this measure by perceiving after breakfast on the morrow, that Marianne was again writing to Willoughby, for she could not suppose it to be to any other person. About the middle of the day, Mrs. Jennings went out by herself on business, and Elinor began her letter directly, while Marianne, too restless for employment, too anxious for conversation, walked from one window to the other, or sat down by the fire in melancholy meditation. Elinor was very earnest in her application to her mother, relating all that had passed, her suspicions of Willoughby's inconstancy, urging her by every plea of duty and affection to demand from Marianne an account of her real situation with respect to him. Her letter was scarcely finished, when a rap foretold a visitor, and Colonel Brandon was announced. Marianne, who had seen him from the window, and who hated company of any kind, left the room before he entered it. He looked more than usually grave, and though expressing satisfaction at finding Miss Dashwood alone, as if he had somewhat in particular to tell her, sat for some time without saying a word. Elinor, persuaded that he had some communication to make in which her sister was concerned, impatiently expected its opening. It was not the first time of her feeling the same kind of conviction; for, more than once before, beginning with the observation of "your sister looks unwell to-day," or "your sister seems out of spirits," he had appeared on the point, either of disclosing, or of inquiring, something particular about her. After a pause of several minutes, their silence was broken, by his asking her in a voice of some agitation, when he was to congratulate her on the acquisition of a brother? Elinor was not prepared for such a question, and having no answer ready, was obliged to adopt the simple and common expedient, of asking what he meant? He tried to smile as he replied, "your sister's engagement to Mr. Willoughby is very generally known." "It cannot be generally known," returned Elinor, "for her own family do not know it." He looked surprised and said, "I beg your pardon, I am afraid my inquiry has been impertinent; but I had not supposed any secrecy intended, as they openly correspond, and their marriage is universally talked of." "How can that be? By whom can you have heard it mentioned?" "By many--by some of whom you know nothing, by others with whom you are most intimate, Mrs. Jennings, Mrs. Palmer, and the Middletons. But still I might not have believed it, for where the mind is perhaps rather unwilling to be convinced, it will always find something to support its doubts, if I had not, when the servant let me in today, accidentally seen a letter in his hand, directed to Mr. Willoughby in your sister's writing. I came to inquire, but I was convinced before I could ask the question. Is every thing finally settled? Is it impossible to-? But I have no right, and I could have no chance of succeeding. Excuse me, Miss Dashwood. I believe I have been wrong in saying so much, but I hardly know what to do, and on your prudence I have the strongest dependence. Tell me that it is all absolutely resolved on, that any attempt, that in short concealment, if concealment be possible, is all that remains." These words, which conveyed to Elinor a direct avowal of his love for her sister, affected her very much. She was not immediately able to say anything, and even when her spirits were recovered, she debated for a short time, on the answer it would be most proper to give. The real state of things between Willoughby and her sister was so little known to herself, that in endeavouring to explain it, she might be as liable to say too much as too little. Yet as she was convinced that Marianne's affection for Willoughby, could leave no hope of Colonel Brandon's success, whatever the event of that affection might be, and at the same time wished to shield her conduct from censure, she thought it most prudent and kind, after some consideration, to say more than she really knew or believed. She acknowledged, therefore, that though she had never been informed by themselves of the terms on which they stood with each other, of their mutual affection she had no doubt, and of their correspondence she was not astonished to hear. He listened to her with silent attention, and on her ceasing to speak, rose directly from his seat, and after saying in a voice of emotion, "to your sister I wish all imaginable happiness; to Willoughby that he may endeavour to deserve her,"--took leave, and went away. Elinor derived no comfortable feelings from this conversation, to lessen the uneasiness of her mind on other points; she was left, on the contrary, with a melancholy impression of Colonel Brandon's unhappiness, and was prevented even from wishing it removed, by her anxiety for the very event that must confirm it. Nothing occurred during the next three or four days, to make Elinor regret what she had done, in applying to her mother; for Willoughby neither came nor wrote. They were engaged about the end of that time to attend Lady Middleton to a party, from which Mrs. Jennings was kept away by the indisposition of her youngest daughter; and for this party, Marianne, wholly dispirited, careless of her appearance, and seeming equally indifferent whether she went or staid, prepared, without one look of hope or one expression of pleasure. She sat by the drawing-room fire after tea, till the moment of Lady Middleton's arrival, without once stirring from her seat, or altering her attitude, lost in her own thoughts, and insensible of her sister's presence; and when at last they were told that Lady Middleton waited for them at the door, she started as if she had forgotten that any one was expected. They arrived in due time at the place of destination, and as soon as the string of carriages before them would allow, alighted, ascended the stairs, heard their names announced from one landing-place to another in an audible voice, and entered a room splendidly lit up, quite full of company, and insufferably hot. When they had paid their tribute of politeness by curtsying to the lady of the house, they were permitted to mingle in the crowd, and take their share of the heat and inconvenience, to which their arrival must necessarily add. After some time spent in saying little or doing less, Lady Middleton sat down to Cassino, and as Marianne was not in spirits for moving about, she and Elinor luckily succeeding to chairs, placed themselves at no great distance from the table. They had not remained in this manner long, before Elinor perceived Willoughby, standing within a few yards of them, in earnest conversation with a very fashionable looking young woman. She soon caught his eye, and he immediately bowed, but without attempting to speak to her, or to approach Marianne, though he could not but see her; and then continued his discourse with the same lady. Elinor turned involuntarily to Marianne, to see whether it could be unobserved by her. At that moment she first perceived him, and her whole countenance glowing with sudden delight, she would have moved towards him instantly, had not her sister caught hold of her. "Good heavens!" she exclaimed, "he is there--he is there--Oh! why does he not look at me? why cannot I speak to him?" "Pray, pray be composed," cried Elinor, "and do not betray what you feel to every body present. Perhaps he has not observed you yet." This however was more than she could believe herself; and to be composed at such a moment was not only beyond the reach of Marianne, it was beyond her wish. She sat in an agony of impatience which affected every feature. At last he turned round again, and regarded them both; she started up, and pronouncing his name in a tone of affection, held out her hand to him. He approached, and addressing himself rather to Elinor than Marianne, as if wishing to avoid her eye, and determined not to observe her attitude, inquired in a hurried manner after Mrs. Dashwood, and asked how long they had been in town. Elinor was robbed of all presence of mind by such an address, and was unable to say a word. But the feelings of her sister were instantly expressed. Her face was crimsoned over, and she exclaimed, in a voice of the greatest emotion, "Good God! Willoughby, what is the meaning of this? Have you not received my letters? Will you not shake hands with me?" He could not then avoid it, but her touch seemed painful to him, and he held her hand only for a moment. During all this time he was evidently struggling for composure. Elinor watched his countenance and saw its expression becoming more tranquil. After a moment's pause, he spoke with calmness. "I did myself the honour of calling in Berkeley Street last Tuesday, and very much regretted that I was not fortunate enough to find yourselves and Mrs. Jennings at home. My card was not lost, I hope." "But have you not received my notes?" cried Marianne in the wildest anxiety. "Here is some mistake I am sure--some dreadful mistake. What can be the meaning of it? Tell me, Willoughby; for heaven's sake tell me, what is the matter?" He made no reply; his complexion changed and all his embarrassment returned; but as if, on catching the eye of the young lady with whom he had been previously talking, he felt the necessity of instant exertion, he recovered himself again, and after saying, "Yes, I had the pleasure of receiving the information of your arrival in town, which you were so good as to send me," turned hastily away with a slight bow and joined his friend. Marianne, now looking dreadfully white, and unable to stand, sunk into her chair, and Elinor, expecting every moment to see her faint, tried to screen her from the observation of others, while reviving her with lavender water. "Go to him, Elinor," she cried, as soon as she could speak, "and force him to come to me. Tell him I must see him again--must speak to him instantly.-- I cannot rest--I shall not have a moment's peace till this is explained--some dreadful misapprehension or other.-- Oh go to him this moment." "How can that be done? No, my dearest Marianne, you must wait. This is not the place for explanations. Wait only till tomorrow." With difficulty however could she prevent her from following him herself; and to persuade her to check her agitation, to wait, at least, with the appearance of composure, till she might speak to him with more privacy and more effect, was impossible; for Marianne continued incessantly to give way in a low voice to the misery of her feelings, by exclamations of wretchedness. In a short time Elinor saw Willoughby quit the room by the door towards the staircase, and telling Marianne that he was gone, urged the impossibility of speaking to him again that evening, as a fresh argument for her to be calm. She instantly begged her sister would entreat Lady Middleton to take them home, as she was too miserable to stay a minute longer. Lady Middleton, though in the middle of a rubber, on being informed that Marianne was unwell, was too polite to object for a moment to her wish of going away, and making over her cards to a friend, they departed as soon the carriage could be found. Scarcely a word was spoken during their return to Berkeley Street. Marianne was in a silent agony, too much oppressed even for tears; but as Mrs. Jennings was luckily not come home, they could go directly to their own room, where hartshorn restored her a little to herself. She was soon undressed and in bed, and as she seemed desirous of being alone, her sister then left her, and while she waited the return of Mrs. Jennings, had leisure enough for thinking over the past. That some kind of engagement had subsisted between Willoughby and Marianne she could not doubt, and that Willoughby was weary of it, seemed equally clear; for however Marianne might still feed her own wishes, SHE could not attribute such behaviour to mistake or misapprehension of any kind. Nothing but a thorough change of sentiment could account for it. Her indignation would have been still stronger than it was, had she not witnessed that embarrassment which seemed to speak a consciousness of his own misconduct, and prevented her from believing him so unprincipled as to have been sporting with the affections of her sister from the first, without any design that would bear investigation. Absence might have weakened his regard, and convenience might have determined him to overcome it, but that such a regard had formerly existed she could not bring herself to doubt. As for Marianne, on the pangs which so unhappy a meeting must already have given her, and on those still more severe which might await her in its probable consequence, she could not reflect without the deepest concern. Her own situation gained in the comparison; for while she could ESTEEM Edward as much as ever, however they might be divided in future, her mind might be always supported. But every circumstance that could embitter such an evil seemed uniting to heighten the misery of Marianne in a final separation from Willoughby--in an immediate and irreconcilable rupture with him.

Chapters 27-28

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101060302/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/s/sense-and-sensibility/summary-and-analysis/chapters-2728

One day while the ladies were out, Willoughby left his card. Marianne, highly excited, expected him to call the next day, but he did not. When a letter arrived from Lady Middleton "announcing their arrival in Conduit Street the night before, and requesting the company of her mother and cousins the following evening," Elinor had great trouble in persuading Marianne to go with them. During the party, Marianne was upset to learn that Willoughby had been invited but had refused the invitation. The following day Elinor wrote to her mother, urging her to "demand from Marianne an account of her real situation." She had just finished when Colonel Brandon called. He seemed disturbed and asked Elinor whether congratulations were in order for Marianne's engagement. Everyone, it seemed, believed that Marianne was engaged to Willoughby, and he himself had seen a letter by Marianne in a servant's hand, addressed to Willoughby. He seemed to want to know whether there was any hope for him, and Elinor, not wanting to lead him on, told him that Willoughby and her sister had a mutual affection. For the next four days, Marianne was "wholly dispirited." She went with Elinor to a party at Lady Middleton's and, "not in spirits for moving about," sat down with her sister. Soon Elinor perceived Willoughby "in earnest conversation with a very fashionable-looking young woman." He bowed but did not approach them. Marianne's exclamation brought him to her side, and when she asked him if he had received her messages, he seemed embarrassed but answered that he had. Then he "turned hastily away with a slight bow." Marianne, "looking dreadfully white, . . . sank into her chair." She begged Elinor to tell Willoughby that she "must speak to him instantly." Elinor waited and, seeing Willoughby leave the room, told Marianne that he was gone. Marianne then begged her sister to ask Lady Middleton to take them home. Marianne, "in a silent agony, too much oppressed even for tears," went to bed as soon as they arrived at Mrs. Jennings'. Deeply worried, Elinor pondered Willoughby's strange behavior. "Absence might have weakened his regard," she thought, "and convenience might have determined him to overcome it, but that such a regard had formerly existed she could not bring herself to doubt."

In this, as in all Austen's novels, there is a great deal of gossip. Everybody is interested in everybody else, and the heroines suffer from a lack of privacy. Colonel Brandon surprises Elinor by telling her, "Your sister's engagement to Mr. Willoughby is very generally known." When Elinor replies, "It cannot be generally known, for her own family do not know it," the colonel tells her, "their marriage is universally talked of . . . by some of whom you know nothing, by others with whom you are most intimate. That Elinor desperately wants to avoid gossip about Marianne and Willoughby is seen in her attempts to calm Marianne and prevent her from demanding an explanation from Willoughby during the dance. "No, my dearest Marianne, you must wait," she says. "This is not a place for explanations. Wait only till tomorrow." Notice Elinor's reserve with her own sister. Although the two girls are close, she must write her mother to demand from Marianne an account of her behavior.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/14.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Lord Jim/section_11_part_0.txt

Lord Jim.chapter 14

chapter 14

{"name": "Chapter 14", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219145744/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/l/lord-jim/summary-and-analysis/chapter-14", "summary": "The day of Jim's sentencing arrived. Marlow imagined Jim on a scaffolding, ready to be beheaded. But Jim's punishment was not that romantic; still, however, it was every bit as cruel. Jim's certificate to be a British naval officer was canceled. He could never again serve aboard a ship -- except as a common sailor. Jim's dream of being a ship's officer and performing all sorts of heroic deeds had been shattered. He had planned to live forever on the sea; now he had to begin a new life, with the knowledge that he had been judged unfit to be responsible for other people. Marlow tried to talk with Jim after the sentencing, but he was too upset and dazed, and he pulled away. \"Let no man . . . \" he said thickly. Marlow stared after him for only a moment; then he turned his attention to \"Chester,\" an old, well-known roustabout sailor, who seemed anxious to talk. Chester asked Marlow if he would try to convince Jim that he had a future ahead of him if he would agree to be the chief overseer of forty coolies on a guano island that Chester planned to develop. Marlow could not imagine a worse future for Jim; he refused to even mention the job. He would not sentence Jim to such a fate.", "analysis": "This chapter presents the final, \"official\" verdict about Jim's jumping ship, and Conrad builds up suspense for it by having the court ask a series of unimportant questions. Then we hear the final verdict: \"Certificate cancelled.\" Having been branded as a coward and his certificate cancelled, what worse fate could befall Jim? Conrad hints at one possible \"worse\" fate in the episode concerning Chester and Robinson, who are two of the most disreputable men of the South Seas -- in fact, one of them, Robinson, has long been suspected of cannibalism. These two horrible creatures typify the dark powers that wait to swallow a discouraged and rejected man. They are introduced to show the change that is taking place within Marlow because Chester's suggestion fills Marlow with utter loathing. These two unsavory men need a kind of non-person to do their dirty work -- overseeing coolie labor in digging and sacking bird manure -- and they feel that the horribly disgraced Jim is just such a person, or non-person. Marlow, horrified at this completely decadent, immoral proposition, will not intervene. His view of Jim does not include such depraved labors or even working with such depraved men. Marlow is clearly so deeply involved with Jim that he cannot abandon him to such degradation."}

'I slept little, hurried over my breakfast, and after a slight hesitation gave up my early morning visit to my ship. It was really very wrong of me, because, though my chief mate was an excellent man all round, he was the victim of such black imaginings that if he did not get a letter from his wife at the expected time he would go quite distracted with rage and jealousy, lose all grip on the work, quarrel with all hands, and either weep in his cabin or develop such a ferocity of temper as all but drove the crew to the verge of mutiny. The thing had always seemed inexplicable to me: they had been married thirteen years; I had a glimpse of her once, and, honestly, I couldn't conceive a man abandoned enough to plunge into sin for the sake of such an unattractive person. I don't know whether I have not done wrong by refraining from putting that view before poor Selvin: the man made a little hell on earth for himself, and I also suffered indirectly, but some sort of, no doubt, false delicacy prevented me. The marital relations of seamen would make an interesting subject, and I could tell you instances. . . . However, this is not the place, nor the time, and we are concerned with Jim--who was unmarried. If his imaginative conscience or his pride; if all the extravagant ghosts and austere shades that were the disastrous familiars of his youth would not let him run away from the block, I, who of course can't be suspected of such familiars, was irresistibly impelled to go and see his head roll off. I wended my way towards the court. I didn't hope to be very much impressed or edified, or interested or even frightened--though, as long as there is any life before one, a jolly good fright now and then is a salutary discipline. But neither did I expect to be so awfully depressed. The bitterness of his punishment was in its chill and mean atmosphere. The real significance of crime is in its being a breach of faith with the community of mankind, and from that point of view he was no mean traitor, but his execution was a hole-and-corner affair. There was no high scaffolding, no scarlet cloth (did they have scarlet cloth on Tower Hill? They should have had), no awe-stricken multitude to be horrified at his guilt and be moved to tears at his fate--no air of sombre retribution. There was, as I walked along, the clear sunshine, a brilliance too passionate to be consoling, the streets full of jumbled bits of colour like a damaged kaleidoscope: yellow, green, blue, dazzling white, the brown nudity of an undraped shoulder, a bullock-cart with a red canopy, a company of native infantry in a drab body with dark heads marching in dusty laced boots, a native policeman in a sombre uniform of scanty cut and belted in patent leather, who looked up at me with orientally pitiful eyes as though his migrating spirit were suffering exceedingly from that unforeseen--what d'ye call 'em?--avatar--incarnation. Under the shade of a lonely tree in the courtyard, the villagers connected with the assault case sat in a picturesque group, looking like a chromo-lithograph of a camp in a book of Eastern travel. One missed the obligatory thread of smoke in the foreground and the pack-animals grazing. A blank yellow wall rose behind overtopping the tree, reflecting the glare. The court-room was sombre, seemed more vast. High up in the dim space the punkahs were swaying short to and fro, to and fro. Here and there a draped figure, dwarfed by the bare walls, remained without stirring amongst the rows of empty benches, as if absorbed in pious meditation. The plaintiff, who had been beaten,--an obese chocolate-coloured man with shaved head, one fat breast bare and a bright yellow caste-mark above the bridge of his nose,--sat in pompous immobility: only his eyes glittered, rolling in the gloom, and the nostrils dilated and collapsed violently as he breathed. Brierly dropped into his seat looking done up, as though he had spent the night in sprinting on a cinder-track. The pious sailing-ship skipper appeared excited and made uneasy movements, as if restraining with difficulty an impulse to stand up and exhort us earnestly to prayer and repentance. The head of the magistrate, delicately pale under the neatly arranged hair, resembled the head of a hopeless invalid after he had been washed and brushed and propped up in bed. He moved aside the vase of flowers--a bunch of purple with a few pink blossoms on long stalks--and seizing in both hands a long sheet of bluish paper, ran his eye over it, propped his forearms on the edge of the desk, and began to read aloud in an even, distinct, and careless voice. 'By Jove! For all my foolishness about scaffolds and heads rolling off--I assure you it was infinitely worse than a beheading. A heavy sense of finality brooded over all this, unrelieved by the hope of rest and safety following the fall of the axe. These proceedings had all the cold vengefulness of a death-sentence, and the cruelty of a sentence of exile. This is how I looked at it that morning--and even now I seem to see an undeniable vestige of truth in that exaggerated view of a common occurrence. You may imagine how strongly I felt this at the time. Perhaps it is for that reason that I could not bring myself to admit the finality. The thing was always with me, I was always eager to take opinion on it, as though it had not been practically settled: individual opinion--international opinion--by Jove! That Frenchman's, for instance. His own country's pronouncement was uttered in the passionless and definite phraseology a machine would use, if machines could speak. The head of the magistrate was half hidden by the paper, his brow was like alabaster. 'There were several questions before the court. The first as to whether the ship was in every respect fit and seaworthy for the voyage. The court found she was not. The next point, I remember, was, whether up to the time of the accident the ship had been navigated with proper and seamanlike care. They said Yes to that, goodness knows why, and then they declared that there was no evidence to show the exact cause of the accident. A floating derelict probably. I myself remember that a Norwegian barque bound out with a cargo of pitch-pine had been given up as missing about that time, and it was just the sort of craft that would capsize in a squall and float bottom up for months--a kind of maritime ghoul on the prowl to kill ships in the dark. Such wandering corpses are common enough in the North Atlantic, which is haunted by all the terrors of the sea,--fogs, icebergs, dead ships bent upon mischief, and long sinister gales that fasten upon one like a vampire till all the strength and the spirit and even hope are gone, and one feels like the empty shell of a man. But there--in those seas--the incident was rare enough to resemble a special arrangement of a malevolent providence, which, unless it had for its object the killing of a donkeyman and the bringing of worse than death upon Jim, appeared an utterly aimless piece of devilry. This view occurring to me took off my attention. For a time I was aware of the magistrate's voice as a sound merely; but in a moment it shaped itself into distinct words . . . "in utter disregard of their plain duty," it said. The next sentence escaped me somehow, and then . . . "abandoning in the moment of danger the lives and property confided to their charge" . . . went on the voice evenly, and stopped. A pair of eyes under the white forehead shot darkly a glance above the edge of the paper. I looked for Jim hurriedly, as though I had expected him to disappear. He was very still--but he was there. He sat pink and fair and extremely attentive. "Therefore, . . ." began the voice emphatically. He stared with parted lips, hanging upon the words of the man behind the desk. These came out into the stillness wafted on the wind made by the punkahs, and I, watching for their effect upon him, caught only the fragments of official language. . . . "The Court . . . Gustav So-and-so . . . master . . . native of Germany . . . James So-and-so . . . mate . . . certificates cancelled." A silence fell. The magistrate had dropped the paper, and, leaning sideways on the arm of his chair, began to talk with Brierly easily. People started to move out; others were pushing in, and I also made for the door. Outside I stood still, and when Jim passed me on his way to the gate, I caught at his arm and detained him. The look he gave discomposed me, as though I had been responsible for his state he looked at me as if I had been the embodied evil of life. "It's all over," I stammered. "Yes," he said thickly. "And now let no man . . ." He jerked his arm out of my grasp. I watched his back as he went away. It was a long street, and he remained in sight for some time. He walked rather slow, and straddling his legs a little, as if he had found it difficult to keep a straight line. Just before I lost him I fancied he staggered a bit. '"Man overboard," said a deep voice behind me. Turning round, I saw a fellow I knew slightly, a West Australian; Chester was his name. He, too, had been looking after Jim. He was a man with an immense girth of chest, a rugged, clean-shaved face of mahogany colour, and two blunt tufts of iron-grey, thick, wiry hairs on his upper lip. He had been pearler, wrecker, trader, whaler too, I believe; in his own words--anything and everything a man may be at sea, but a pirate. The Pacific, north and south, was his proper hunting-ground; but he had wandered so far afield looking for a cheap steamer to buy. Lately he had discovered--so he said--a guano island somewhere, but its approaches were dangerous, and the anchorage, such as it was, could not be considered safe, to say the least of it. "As good as a gold-mine," he would exclaim. "Right bang in the middle of the Walpole Reefs, and if it's true enough that you can get no holding-ground anywhere in less than forty fathom, then what of that? There are the hurricanes, too. But it's a first-rate thing. As good as a gold-mine--better! Yet there's not a fool of them that will see it. I can't get a skipper or a shipowner to go near the place. So I made up my mind to cart the blessed stuff myself." . . . This was what he required a steamer for, and I knew he was just then negotiating enthusiastically with a Parsee firm for an old, brig-rigged, sea-anachronism of ninety horse-power. We had met and spoken together several times. He looked knowingly after Jim. "Takes it to heart?" he asked scornfully. "Very much," I said. "Then he's no good," he opined. "What's all the to-do about? A bit of ass's skin. That never yet made a man. You must see things exactly as they are--if you don't, you may just as well give in at once. You will never do anything in this world. Look at me. I made it a practice never to take anything to heart." "Yes," I said, "you see things as they are." "I wish I could see my partner coming along, that's what I wish to see," he said. "Know my partner? Old Robinson. Yes; _the_ Robinson. Don't _you_ know? The notorious Robinson. The man who smuggled more opium and bagged more seals in his time than any loose Johnny now alive. They say he used to board the sealing-schooners up Alaska way when the fog was so thick that the Lord God, He alone, could tell one man from another. Holy-Terror Robinson. That's the man. He is with me in that guano thing. The best chance he ever came across in his life." He put his lips to my ear. "Cannibal?--well, they used to give him the name years and years ago. You remember the story? A shipwreck on the west side of Stewart Island; that's right; seven of them got ashore, and it seems they did not get on very well together. Some men are too cantankerous for anything--don't know how to make the best of a bad job--don't see things as they are--as they _are_, my boy! And then what's the consequence? Obvious! Trouble, trouble; as likely as not a knock on the head; and serve 'em right too. That sort is the most useful when it's dead. The story goes that a boat of Her Majesty's ship Wolverine found him kneeling on the kelp, naked as the day he was born, and chanting some psalm-tune or other; light snow was falling at the time. He waited till the boat was an oar's length from the shore, and then up and away. They chased him for an hour up and down the boulders, till a marihe flung a stone that took him behind the ear providentially and knocked him senseless. Alone? Of course. But that's like that tale of sealing-schooners; the Lord God knows the right and the wrong of that story. The cutter did not investigate much. They wrapped him in a boat-cloak and took him off as quick as they could, with a dark night coming on, the weather threatening, and the ship firing recall guns every five minutes. Three weeks afterwards he was as well as ever. He didn't allow any fuss that was made on shore to upset him; he just shut his lips tight, and let people screech. It was bad enough to have lost his ship, and all he was worth besides, without paying attention to the hard names they called him. That's the man for me." He lifted his arm for a signal to some one down the street. "He's got a little money, so I had to let him into my thing. Had to! It would have been sinful to throw away such a find, and I was cleaned out myself. It cut me to the quick, but I could see the matter just as it was, and if I _must_ share--thinks I--with any man, then give me Robinson. I left him at breakfast in the hotel to come to court, because I've an idea. . . . Ah! Good morning, Captain Robinson. . . . Friend of mine, Captain Robinson." 'An emaciated patriarch in a suit of white drill, a solah topi with a green-lined rim on a head trembling with age, joined us after crossing the street in a trotting shuffle, and stood propped with both hands on the handle of an umbrella. A white beard with amber streaks hung lumpily down to his waist. He blinked his creased eyelids at me in a bewildered way. "How do you do? how do you do?" he piped amiably, and tottered. "A little deaf," said Chester aside. "Did you drag him over six thousand miles to get a cheap steamer?" I asked. "I would have taken him twice round the world as soon as look at him," said Chester with immense energy. "The steamer will be the making of us, my lad. Is it my fault that every skipper and shipowner in the whole of blessed Australasia turns out a blamed fool? Once I talked for three hours to a man in Auckland. 'Send a ship,' I said, 'send a ship. I'll give you half of the first cargo for yourself, free gratis for nothing--just to make a good start.' Says he, 'I wouldn't do it if there was no other place on earth to send a ship to.' Perfect ass, of course. Rocks, currents, no anchorage, sheer cliff to lay to, no insurance company would take the risk, didn't see how he could get loaded under three years. Ass! I nearly went on my knees to him. 'But look at the thing as it is,' says I. 'Damn rocks and hurricanes. Look at it as it is. There's guano there Queensland sugar-planters would fight for--fight for on the quay, I tell you.' . . . What can you do with a fool? . . . 'That's one of your little jokes, Chester,' he says. . . . Joke! I could have wept. Ask Captain Robinson here. . . . And there was another shipowning fellow--a fat chap in a white waistcoat in Wellington, who seemed to think I was up to some swindle or other. 'I don't know what sort of fool you're looking for,' he says, 'but I am busy just now. Good morning.' I longed to take him in my two hands and smash him through the window of his own office. But I didn't. I was as mild as a curate. 'Think of it,' says I. '_Do_ think it over. I'll call to-morrow.' He grunted something about being 'out all day.' On the stairs I felt ready to beat my head against the wall from vexation. Captain Robinson here can tell you. It was awful to think of all that lovely stuff lying waste under the sun--stuff that would send the sugar-cane shooting sky-high. The making of Queensland! The making of Queensland! And in Brisbane, where I went to have a last try, they gave me the name of a lunatic. Idiots! The only sensible man I came across was the cabman who drove me about. A broken-down swell he was, I fancy. Hey! Captain Robinson? You remember I told you about my cabby in Brisbane--don't you? The chap had a wonderful eye for things. He saw it all in a jiffy. It was a real pleasure to talk with him. One evening after a devil of a day amongst shipowners I felt so bad that, says I, 'I must get drunk. Come along; I must get drunk, or I'll go mad.' 'I am your man,' he says; 'go ahead.' I don't know what I would have done without him. Hey! Captain Robinson." 'He poked the ribs of his partner. "He! he! he!" laughed the Ancient, looked aimlessly down the street, then peered at me doubtfully with sad, dim pupils. . . . "He! he! he!" . . . He leaned heavier on the umbrella, and dropped his gaze on the ground. I needn't tell you I had tried to get away several times, but Chester had foiled every attempt by simply catching hold of my coat. "One minute. I've a notion." "What's your infernal notion?" I exploded at last. "If you think I am going in with you . . ." "No, no, my boy. Too late, if you wanted ever so much. We've got a steamer." "You've got the ghost of a steamer," I said. "Good enough for a start--there's no superior nonsense about us. Is there, Captain Robinson?" "No! no! no!" croaked the old man without lifting his eyes, and the senile tremble of his head became almost fierce with determination. "I understand you know that young chap," said Chester, with a nod at the street from which Jim had disappeared long ago. "He's been having grub with you in the Malabar last night--so I was told." 'I said that was true, and after remarking that he too liked to live well and in style, only that, for the present, he had to be saving of every penny--"none too many for the business! Isn't that so, Captain Robinson?"--he squared his shoulders and stroked his dumpy moustache, while the notorious Robinson, coughing at his side, clung more than ever to the handle of the umbrella, and seemed ready to subside passively into a heap of old bones. "You see, the old chap has all the money," whispered Chester confidentially. "I've been cleaned out trying to engineer the dratted thing. But wait a bit, wait a bit. The good time is coming." . . . He seemed suddenly astonished at the signs of impatience I gave. "Oh, crakee!" he cried; "I am telling you of the biggest thing that ever was, and you . . ." "I have an appointment," I pleaded mildly. "What of that?" he asked with genuine surprise; "let it wait." "That's exactly what I am doing now," I remarked; "hadn't you better tell me what it is you want?" "Buy twenty hotels like that," he growled to himself; "and every joker boarding in them too--twenty times over." He lifted his head smartly "I want that young chap." "I don't understand," I said. "He's no good, is he?" said Chester crisply. "I know nothing about it," I protested. "Why, you told me yourself he was taking it to heart," argued Chester. "Well, in my opinion a chap who . . . Anyhow, he can't be much good; but then you see I am on the look-out for somebody, and I've just got a thing that will suit him. I'll give him a job on my island." He nodded significantly. "I'm going to dump forty coolies there--if I've to steal 'em. Somebody must work the stuff. Oh! I mean to act square: wooden shed, corrugated-iron roof--I know a man in Hobart who will take my bill at six months for the materials. I do. Honour bright. Then there's the water-supply. I'll have to fly round and get somebody to trust me for half-a-dozen second-hand iron tanks. Catch rain-water, hey? Let him take charge. Make him supreme boss over the coolies. Good idea, isn't it? What do you say?" "There are whole years when not a drop of rain falls on Walpole," I said, too amazed to laugh. He bit his lip and seemed bothered. "Oh, well, I will fix up something for them--or land a supply. Hang it all! That's not the question." 'I said nothing. I had a rapid vision of Jim perched on a shadowless rock, up to his knees in guano, with the screams of sea-birds in his ears, the incandescent ball of the sun above his head; the empty sky and the empty ocean all a-quiver, simmering together in the heat as far as the eye could reach. "I wouldn't advise my worst enemy . . ." I began. "What's the matter with you?" cried Chester; "I mean to give him a good screw--that is, as soon as the thing is set going, of course. It's as easy as falling off a log. Simply nothing to do; two six-shooters in his belt . . . Surely he wouldn't be afraid of anything forty coolies could do--with two six-shooters and he the only armed man too! It's much better than it looks. I want you to help me to talk him over." "No!" I shouted. Old Robinson lifted his bleared eyes dismally for a moment, Chester looked at me with infinite contempt. "So you wouldn't advise him?" he uttered slowly. "Certainly not," I answered, as indignant as though he had requested me to help murder somebody; "moreover, I am sure he wouldn't. He is badly cut up, but he isn't mad as far as I know." "He is no earthly good for anything," Chester mused aloud. "He would just have done for me. If you only could see a thing as it is, you would see it's the very thing for him. And besides . . . Why! it's the most splendid, sure chance . . ." He got angry suddenly. "I must have a man. There! . . ." He stamped his foot and smiled unpleasantly. "Anyhow, I could guarantee the island wouldn't sink under him--and I believe he is a bit particular on that point." "Good morning," I said curtly. He looked at me as though I had been an incomprehensible fool. . . . "Must be moving, Captain Robinson," he yelled suddenly into the old man's ear. "These Parsee Johnnies are waiting for us to clinch the bargain." He took his partner under the arm with a firm grip, swung him round, and, unexpectedly, leered at me over his shoulder. "I was trying to do him a kindness," he asserted, with an air and tone that made my blood boil. "Thank you for nothing--in his name," I rejoined. "Oh! you are devilish smart," he sneered; "but you are like the rest of them. Too much in the clouds. See what you will do with him." "I don't know that I want to do anything with him." "Don't you?" he spluttered; his grey moustache bristled with anger, and by his side the notorious Robinson, propped on the umbrella, stood with his back to me, as patient and still as a worn-out cab-horse. "I haven't found a guano island," I said. "It's my belief you wouldn't know one if you were led right up to it by the hand," he riposted quickly; "and in this world you've got to see a thing first, before you can make use of it. Got to see it through and through at that, neither more nor less." "And get others to see it, too," I insinuated, with a glance at the bowed back by his side. Chester snorted at me. "His eyes are right enough--don't you worry. He ain't a puppy." "Oh, dear, no!" I said. "Come along, Captain Robinson," he shouted, with a sort of bullying deference under the rim of the old man's hat; the Holy Terror gave a submissive little jump. The ghost of a steamer was waiting for them, Fortune on that fair isle! They made a curious pair of Argonauts. Chester strode on leisurely, well set up, portly, and of conquering mien; the other, long, wasted, drooping, and hooked to his arm, shuffled his withered shanks with desperate haste.'

Chapter 14

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219145744/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/l/lord-jim/summary-and-analysis/chapter-14

The day of Jim's sentencing arrived. Marlow imagined Jim on a scaffolding, ready to be beheaded. But Jim's punishment was not that romantic; still, however, it was every bit as cruel. Jim's certificate to be a British naval officer was canceled. He could never again serve aboard a ship -- except as a common sailor. Jim's dream of being a ship's officer and performing all sorts of heroic deeds had been shattered. He had planned to live forever on the sea; now he had to begin a new life, with the knowledge that he had been judged unfit to be responsible for other people. Marlow tried to talk with Jim after the sentencing, but he was too upset and dazed, and he pulled away. "Let no man . . . " he said thickly. Marlow stared after him for only a moment; then he turned his attention to "Chester," an old, well-known roustabout sailor, who seemed anxious to talk. Chester asked Marlow if he would try to convince Jim that he had a future ahead of him if he would agree to be the chief overseer of forty coolies on a guano island that Chester planned to develop. Marlow could not imagine a worse future for Jim; he refused to even mention the job. He would not sentence Jim to such a fate.

This chapter presents the final, "official" verdict about Jim's jumping ship, and Conrad builds up suspense for it by having the court ask a series of unimportant questions. Then we hear the final verdict: "Certificate cancelled." Having been branded as a coward and his certificate cancelled, what worse fate could befall Jim? Conrad hints at one possible "worse" fate in the episode concerning Chester and Robinson, who are two of the most disreputable men of the South Seas -- in fact, one of them, Robinson, has long been suspected of cannibalism. These two horrible creatures typify the dark powers that wait to swallow a discouraged and rejected man. They are introduced to show the change that is taking place within Marlow because Chester's suggestion fills Marlow with utter loathing. These two unsavory men need a kind of non-person to do their dirty work -- overseeing coolie labor in digging and sacking bird manure -- and they feel that the horribly disgraced Jim is just such a person, or non-person. Marlow, horrified at this completely decadent, immoral proposition, will not intervene. His view of Jim does not include such depraved labors or even working with such depraved men. Marlow is clearly so deeply involved with Jim that he cannot abandon him to such degradation.

shmoop

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finished_summaries/shmoop/The White Devil/section_2_part_0.txt

The White Devil.act 2.scene 1

act 2, scene 1

{"name": "Act 2, Scene 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210510044810/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/the-white-devil/summary/act-2-scene-1", "summary": "Brachiano's wife, Isabella, enters with her brother Francisco, Cardinal Monticelso , Marcello , and Giovanni . Francisco and Isabella talk about Brachiano's suspected infidelity, and Francisco promises to give Giovanni a horse as a present. Marcello and Giovanni exit to fit the horse. Isabella tells Francisco to gently reason with Brachiano--she wants to charm him into staying true to her. She exits, as Flamineo and Brachiano enter. Monticelso tells Brachiano that he's dishonoring his noble title by pursuing Vittoria and that, when he gets over his lustful obsesson, he'll see how horribly he's behaving and repent. Brachiano cockily asks Francisco what he has to say, and Francisco replies with a threatening metaphor comparing himself to an eagle hunting dunghill birds . He attacks the Duke for trying to seduce Vittoria and calls her a strumpet. Oh no he didn't! The Duke says that if Vittoria was his mistress, all Francisco's cannons couldn't take her away from him. Francisco dismisses this suggestion of war, but then says he wishes he'd never let the Duke marry Isabella, and that they probably will go to war. Francisco says that they came to consult Brachiano about pirates, but he's always busy--he probably will only stop being busy when the pirate problem has grown totally out of control. Giovanni re-enters and the Cardinal says that the Duke should try to set an example for his good and noble son. Giovanni talks about how he's been practicing throwing a pike, and how, when he's a general, he'll charge at the front of his army, and free prisoners without charging ransom. Francisco and he joke about this, with Giovanni wittily discussing how he'll manage to pay his troops. Giovanni's presence makes Francisco and Brachiano reconcile. Francisco is looking for Camillo to discuss how Count Lodovico has become a pirate--he leaves with Monticelso and Giovanni. Isabella enters. Brachiano asks what brought her here, and she says devotion. Brachiano, irritated, tells her to go to her room. He refuses to kiss her and is disgusted by her efforts to win him back. Cynically, he even suggests that only came here to find a lover of her own. Isabella is upset, but Brachiano continues: he attacks Francisco, \"the great duke\" , and claims that the only thing that's great about him is his wardrobe. He curses Francisco, and the priest who married him and Isabella, and his own \"issue\" . Isabella says he's gone too far. Brachiano swears by his wedding ring he'll never sleep with her again, and says that they're effectively divorced. He tells her to go whine about it to Francisco. Isabella, with her heart broken, nobly says she's going to preserve peace by pretending that she said she would refuse to sleep with him, and wants a divorce. Francisco, Flamineo, Monticelso, and Camillo all re-enter. Isabella puts on a show--when Francisco tries to get them to reconcile, she calls Vittoria a \"whore,\" and generally acts like she's really jealous and enraged. She wishes she had the power of a man, and could murder Vittoria. Isabella swears on her wedding ring that she'll never sleep with the Duke again. Brachiano plays along, acting like he's angry. Francisco says she's mad and jealous, claiming she broke her promise to gently convince the Duke. Isabella, internally grief-stricken, leaves, saying she's headed to Padua. Camillo enters. Flamineo takes the Duke aside and introduces the corrupt doctor who will help poison Isabella. Flamineo jokes about the doctor's seedy ways, before they dispatch him after Isabella. Flamineo personally says he's going to kill Camillo and make it look like an accident. The doctor exits . Camillo, Monticelso, Marcello, and Francisco come forward. Monticelso shows Camillo an emblem of a weeping stag with no antlers someone threw in Camillo's window--it means he's a cuckold. Francisco says that it's a good thing Camillo has no children--in Greek myth, says Francisco, people made sure the sun god, Phoebus, never had kids, by asking Zeus to castrate him. They couldn't tolerate more than one sun: it would be too hot. Francisco applies this to Vittoria--they wouldn't want more than one of her in the world. Monticelso and Francisco give Camillo, with Marcello as joint-commissioner, the job of ridding the Italian coast of pirates. Camillo is worried his wife will cheat on him even more before he gets back, but Monticelso says he'll try to make sure that doesn't happen. Camillo is still worried and plans on getting drunk tonight. He and Marcello exit. Monticelso and Francisco admit that they're making Camillo a sea captain so they can see what will happen if the Duke tries to seduce Vittoria--which they want to prevent. They also reveal the Count Lodovico, though rumored a pirate, is actually now in Padua. Apparently, Lodovico is hot for Isabella and wants to seduce her. They wish Brachiano wouldn't damage his name by pursuing adultery, but feel that's he's going to do it. They leave, in order to see what goes down.", "analysis": ""}

ACT II SCENE I Enter Francisco de Medicis, Cardinal Monticelso, Marcello, Isabella, young Giovanni, with little Jacques the Moor Fran. Have you not seen your husband since you arrived? Isab. Not yet, sir. Fran. Surely he is wondrous kind; If I had such a dove-house as Camillo's, I would set fire on 't were 't but to destroy The polecats that haunt to it--My sweet cousin! Giov. Lord uncle, you did promise me a horse, And armour. Fran. That I did, my pretty cousin. Marcello, see it fitted. Marc. My lord, the duke is here. Fran. Sister, away; you must not yet be seen. Isab. I do beseech you, Entreat him mildly, let not your rough tongue Set us at louder variance; all my wrongs Are freely pardon'd; and I do not doubt, As men to try the precious unicorn's horn Make of the powder a preservative circle, And in it put a spider, so these arms Shall charm his poison, force it to obeying, And keep him chaste from an infected straying. Fran. I wish it may. Begone. [Exit Isabella as Brachiano and Flamineo enter.] Void the chamber. You are welcome; will you sit?--I pray, my lord, Be you my orator, my heart 's too full; I 'll second you anon. Mont. Ere I begin, Let me entreat your grace forgo all passion, Which may be raised by my free discourse. Brach. As silent as i' th' church: you may proceed. Mont. It is a wonder to your noble friends, That you, having as 'twere enter'd the world With a free scepter in your able hand, And having to th' use of nature well applied High gifts of learning, should in your prime age Neglect your awful throne for the soft down Of an insatiate bed. O my lord, The drunkard after all his lavish cups Is dry, and then is sober; so at length, When you awake from this lascivious dream, Repentance then will follow, like the sting Plac'd in the adder's tail. Wretched are princes When fortune blasteth but a petty flower Of their unwieldy crowns, or ravisheth But one pearl from their scepter; but alas! When they to wilful shipwreck lose good fame, All princely titles perish with their name. Brach. You have said, my lord---- Mont. Enough to give you taste How far I am from flattering your greatness. Brach. Now you that are his second, what say you? Do not like young hawks fetch a course about; Your game flies fair, and for you. Fran. Do not fear it: I 'll answer you in your own hawking phrase. Some eagles that should gaze upon the sun Seldom soar high, but take their lustful ease, Since they from dunghill birds their prey can seize. You know Vittoria? Brach. Yes. Fran. You shift your shirt there, When you retire from tennis? Brach. Happily. Fran. Her husband is lord of a poor fortune, Yet she wears cloth of tissue. Brach. What of this? Will you urge that, my good lord cardinal, As part of her confession at next shrift, And know from whence it sails? Fran. She is your strumpet---- Brach. Uncivil sir, there 's hemlock in thy breath, And that black slander. Were she a whore of mine, All thy loud cannons, and thy borrow'd Switzers, Thy galleys, nor thy sworn confederates, Durst not supplant her. Fran. Let 's not talk on thunder. Thou hast a wife, our sister; would I had given Both her white hands to death, bound and lock'd fast In her last winding sheet, when I gave thee But one. Brach. Thou hadst given a soul to God then. Fran. True: Thy ghostly father, with all his absolution, Shall ne'er do so by thee. Brach. Spit thy poison. Fran. I shall not need; lust carries her sharp whip At her own girdle. Look to 't, for our anger Is making thunderbolts. Brach. Thunder! in faith, They are but crackers. Fran. We 'll end this with the cannon. Brach. Thou 'lt get naught by it, but iron in thy wounds, And gunpowder in thy nostrils. Fran. Better that, Than change perfumes for plasters. Brach. Pity on thee! 'Twere good you 'd show your slaves or men condemn'd, Your new-plough'd forehead. Defiance! and I 'll meet thee, Even in a thicket of thy ablest men. Mont. My lords, you shall not word it any further Without a milder limit. Fran. Willingly. Brach. Have you proclaim'd a triumph, that you bait A lion thus? Mont. My lord! Brach. I am tame, I am tame, sir. Fran. We send unto the duke for conference 'Bout levies 'gainst the pirates; my lord duke Is not at home: we come ourself in person; Still my lord duke is busied. But we fear When Tiber to each prowling passenger Discovers flocks of wild ducks, then, my lord-- 'Bout moulting time I mean--we shall be certain To find you sure enough, and speak with you. Brach. Ha! Fran. A mere tale of a tub: my words are idle. But to express the sonnet by natural reason, [Enter Giovanni. When stags grow melancholic you 'll find the season. Mont. No more, my lord; here comes a champion Shall end the difference between you both; Your son, the Prince Giovanni. See, my lords, What hopes you store in him; this is a casket For both your crowns, and should be held like dear. Now is he apt for knowledge; therefore know It is a more direct and even way, To train to virtue those of princely blood, By examples than by precepts: if by examples, Whom should he rather strive to imitate Than his own father? be his pattern then, Leave him for a stock of virtue that may last, Should fortune rend his sails, and split his mast. Brach. Your hand, boy: growing to a soldier? Giov. Give me a pike. Fran. What, practising your pike so young, fair cousin? Giov. Suppose me one of Homer's frogs, my lord, Tossing my bulrush thus. Pray, sir, tell me, Might not a child of good discretion Be leader to an army? Fran. Yes, cousin, a young prince Of good discretion might. Giov. Say you so? Indeed I have heard, 'tis fit a general Should not endanger his own person oft; So that he make a noise when he 's a-horseback, Like a Danske drummer,--Oh, 'tis excellent!-- He need not fight! methinks his horse as well Might lead an army for him. If I live, I 'll charge the French foe in the very front Of all my troops, the foremost man. Fran. What! what! Giov. And will not bid my soldiers up, and follow, But bid them follow me. Brach. Forward lapwing! He flies with the shell on 's head. Fran. Pretty cousin! Giov. The first year, uncle, that I go to war, All prisoners that I take, I will set free, Without their ransom. Fran. Ha! without their ransom! How then will you reward your soldiers, That took those prisoners for you? Giov. Thus, my lord: I 'll marry them to all the wealthy widows That falls that year. Fran. Why then, the next year following, You 'll have no men to go with you to war. Giov. Why then I 'll press the women to the war, And then the men will follow. Mont. Witty prince! Fran. See, a good habit makes a child a man, Whereas a bad one makes a man a beast. Come, you and I are friends. Brach. Most wishedly: Like bones which, broke in sunder, and well set, Knit the more strongly. Fran. Call Camillo hither.-- You have receiv'd the rumour, how Count Lodowick Is turn'd a pirate? Brach. Yes. Fran. We are now preparing to fetch him in. Behold your duchess. We now will leave you, and expect from you Nothing but kind entreaty. Brach. You have charm'd me. [Exeunt Francisco, Monticelso, and Giovanni. Enter Isabella You are in health, we see. Isab. And above health, To see my lord well. Brach. So: I wonder much What amorous whirlwind hurried you to Rome. Isab. Devotion, my lord. Brach. Devotion! Is your soul charg'd with any grievous sin? Isab. 'Tis burden'd with too many; and I think The oftener that we cast our reckonings up, Our sleep will be the sounder. Brach. Take your chamber. Isab. Nay, my dear lord, I will not have you angry! Doth not my absence from you, now two months, Merit one kiss? Brach. I do not use to kiss: If that will dispossess your jealousy, I 'll swear it to you. Isab. O, my loved lord, I do not come to chide: my jealousy! I am to learn what that Italian means. You are as welcome to these longing arms, As I to you a virgin. Brach. Oh, your breath! Out upon sweetmeats and continued physic, The plague is in them! Isab. You have oft, for these two lips, Neglected cassia, or the natural sweets Of the spring-violet: they are not yet much wither'd. My lord, I should be merry: these your frowns Show in a helmet lovely; but on me, In such a peaceful interview, methinks They are too roughly knit. Brach. O dissemblance! Do you bandy factions 'gainst me? have you learnt The trick of impudent baseness to complain Unto your kindred? Isab. Never, my dear lord. Brach. Must I be hunted out? or was 't your trick To meet some amorous gallant here in Rome, That must supply our discontinuance? Isab. Pray, sir, burst my heart; and in my death Turn to your ancient pity, though not love. Brach. Because your brother is the corpulent duke, That is, the great duke, 'sdeath, I shall not shortly Racket away five hundred crowns at tennis, But it shall rest 'pon record! I scorn him Like a shav'd Polack: all his reverend wit Lies in his wardrobe; he 's a discreet fellow, When he 's made up in his robes of state. Your brother, the great duke, because h' 'as galleys, And now and then ransacks a Turkish fly-boat, (Now all the hellish furies take his soul!) First made this match: accursed be the priest That sang the wedding-mass, and even my issue! Isab. Oh, too, too far you have curs'd! Brach. Your hand I 'll kiss; This is the latest ceremony of my love. Henceforth I 'll never lie with thee; by this, This wedding-ring, I 'll ne'er more lie with thee! And this divorce shall be as truly kept, As if the judge had doomed it. Fare you well: Our sleeps are sever'd. Isab. Forbid it the sweet union Of all things blessed! why, the saints in heaven Will knit their brows at that. Brach. Let not thy love Make thee an unbeliever; this my vow Shall never, on my soul, be satisfied With my repentance: let thy brother rage Beyond a horrid tempest, or sea-fight, My vow is fixed. Isab. O, my winding-sheet! Now shall I need thee shortly. Dear my lord, Let me hear once more, what I would not hear: Never? Brach. Never. Isab. Oh, my unkind lord! may your sins find mercy, As I upon a woeful widow'd bed Shall pray for you, if not to turn your eyes Upon your wretched wife and hopeful son, Yet that in time you 'll fix them upon heaven! Brach. No more; go, go, complain to the great duke. Isab. No, my dear lord; you shall have present witness How I 'll work peace between you. I will make Myself the author of your cursed vow; I have some cause to do it, you have none. Conceal it, I beseech you, for the weal Of both your dukedoms, that you wrought the means Of such a separation: let the fault Remain with my supposed jealousy, And think with what a piteous and rent heart I shall perform this sad ensuing part. Enter Francisco, Flamineo, Monticelso, and Camillo Brach. Well, take your course.--My honourable brother! Fran. Sister!--This is not well, my lord.--Why, sister!--She merits not this welcome. Brach. Welcome, say! She hath given a sharp welcome. Fran. Are you foolish? Come, dry your tears: is this a modest course To better what is naught, to rail and weep? Grow to a reconcilement, or, by heaven, I 'll ne'er more deal between you. Isab. Sir, you shall not; No, though Vittoria, upon that condition, Would become honest. Fran. Was your husband loud Since we departed? Isab. By my life, sir, no, I swear by that I do not care to lose. Are all these ruins of my former beauty Laid out for a whore's triumph? Fran. Do you hear? Look upon other women, with what patience They suffer these slight wrongs, and with what justice They study to requite them: take that course. Isab. O that I were a man, or that I had power To execute my apprehended wishes! I would whip some with scorpions. Fran. What! turn'd fury! Isab. To dig that strumpet's eyes out; let her die Some twenty months a-dying; to cut off Her nose and lips, pull out her rotten teeth; Preserve her flesh like mummia, for trophies Of my just anger! Hell, to my affliction, Is mere snow-water. By your favour, sir;-- Brother, draw near, and my lord cardinal;-- Sir, let me borrow of you but one kiss; Henceforth I 'll never lie with you, by this, This wedding-ring. Fran. How, ne'er more lie with him! Isab. And this divorce shall be as truly kept As if in thronged court a thousand ears Had heard it, and a thousand lawyers' hands Sealed to the separation. Brach. Ne'er lie with me! Isab. Let not my former dotage Make thee an unbeliever; this my vow Shall never on my soul be satisfied With my repentance: manet alta mente repostum. Fran. Now, by my birth, you are a foolish, mad, And jealous woman. Brach. You see 'tis not my seeking. Fran. Was this your circle of pure unicorn's horn, You said should charm your lord! now horns upon thee, For jealousy deserves them! Keep your vow And take your chamber. Isab. No, sir, I 'll presently to Padua; I will not stay a minute. Mont. Oh, good madam! Brach. 'Twere best to let her have her humour; Some half-day's journey will bring down her stomach, And then she 'll turn in post. Fran. To see her come To my lord for a dispensation Of her rash vow, will beget excellent laughter. Isab. 'Unkindness, do thy office; poor heart, break: Those are the killing griefs, which dare not speak.' [Exit. Marc. Camillo's come, my lord. Enter Camillo Fran. Where 's the commission? Marc. 'Tis here. Fran. Give me the signet. Flam. [Leading Brachiano aside.] My lord, do you mark their whispering? I will compound a medicine, out of their two heads, stronger than garlic, deadlier than stibium: the cantharides, which are scarce seen to stick upon the flesh, when they work to the heart, shall not do it with more silence or invisible cunning. Enter Doctor Brach. About the murder? Flam. They are sending him to Naples, but I 'll send him to Candy. Here 's another property too. Brach. Oh, the doctor! Flam. A poor quack-salving knave, my lord; one that should have been lashed for 's lechery, but that he confessed a judgment, had an execution laid upon him, and so put the whip to a non plus. Doctor. And was cozened, my lord, by an arranter knave than myself, and made pay all the colorable execution. Flam. He will shoot pills into a man's guts shall make them have more ventages than a cornet or a lamprey; he will poison a kiss; and was once minded for his masterpiece, because Ireland breeds no poison, to have prepared a deadly vapour in a Spaniard's fart, that should have poisoned all Dublin. Brach. Oh, Saint Anthony's fire! Doctor. Your secretary is merry, my lord. Flam. O thou cursed antipathy to nature! Look, his eye 's bloodshot, like a needle a surgeon stitcheth a wound with. Let me embrace thee, toad, and love thee, O thou abominable, loathsome gargarism, that will fetch up lungs, lights, heart, and liver, by scruples! Brach. No more.--I must employ thee, honest doctor: You must to Padua, and by the way, Use some of your skill for us. Doctor. Sir, I shall. Brach. But for Camillo? Flam. He dies this night, by such a politic strain, Men shall suppose him by 's own engine slain. But for your duchess' death---- Doctor. I 'll make her sure. Brach. Small mischiefs are by greater made secure. Flam. Remember this, you slave; when knaves come to preferment, they rise as gallows in the Low Countries, one upon another's shoulders. [Exeunt. Monticelso, Camillo, and Francisco come forward. Mont. Here is an emblem, nephew, pray peruse it: 'Twas thrown in at your window. Cam. At my window! Here is a stag, my lord, hath shed his horns, And, for the loss of them, the poor beast weeps: The word, Inopem me copia fecit. Mont. That is, Plenty of horns hath made him poor of horns. Cam. What should this mean? Mont. I 'll tell you; 'tis given out You are a cuckold. Cam. Is it given out so? I had rather such reports as that, my lord, Should keep within doors. Fran. Have you any children? Cam. None, my lord. Fran. You are the happier: I 'll tell you a tale. Cam. Pray, my lord. Fran. An old tale. Upon a time Phoebus, the god of light, Or him we call the sun, would need to be married: The gods gave their consent, and Mercury Was sent to voice it to the general world. But what a piteous cry there straight arose Amongst smiths and felt-makers, brewers and cooks, Reapers and butter-women, amongst fishmongers, And thousand other trades, which are annoyed By his excessive heat! 'twas lamentable. They came to Jupiter all in a sweat, And do forbid the banns. A great fat cook Was made their speaker, who entreats of Jove That Phoebus might be gelded; for if now, When there was but one sun, so many men Were like to perish by his violent heat, What should they do if he were married, And should beget more, and those children Make fireworks like their father? So say I; Only I apply it to your wife; Her issue, should not providence prevent it, Would make both nature, time, and man repent it. Mont. Look you, cousin, Go, change the air for shame; see if your absence Will blast your cornucopia. Marcello Is chosen with you joint commissioner, For the relieving our Italian coast From pirates. Marc. I am much honour'd in 't. Cam. But, sir, Ere I return, the stag's horns may be sprouted Greater than those are shed. Mont. Do not fear it; I 'll be your ranger. Cam. You must watch i' th' nights; Then 's the most danger. Fran. Farewell, good Marcello: All the best fortunes of a soldier's wish Bring you a-shipboard. Cam. Were I not best, now I am turn'd soldier, Ere that I leave my wife, sell all she hath, And then take leave of her? Mont. I expect good from you, Your parting is so merry. Cam. Merry, my lord! a' th' captain's humour right, I am resolved to be drunk this night. [Exeunt. Fran. So, 'twas well fitted; now shall we discern How his wish'd absence will give violent way To Duke Brachiano's lust. Mont. Why, that was it; To what scorn'd purpose else should we make choice Of him for a sea-captain? and, besides, Count Lodowick, which was rumour'd for a pirate, Is now in Padua. Fran. Is 't true? Mont. Most certain. I have letters from him, which are suppliant To work his quick repeal from banishment: He means to address himself for pension Unto our sister duchess. Fran. Oh, 'twas well! We shall not want his absence past six days: I fain would have the Duke Brachiano run Into notorious scandal; for there 's naught In such cursed dotage, to repair his name, Only the deep sense of some deathless shame. Mont. It may be objected, I am dishonourable To play thus with my kinsman; but I answer, For my revenge I 'd stake a brother's life, That being wrong'd, durst not avenge himself. Fran. Come, to observe this strumpet. Mont. Curse of greatness! Sure he 'll not leave her? Fran. There 's small pity in 't: Like mistletoe on sere elms spent by weather, Let him cleave to her, and both rot together. [Exeunt.

Act 2, Scene 1

https://web.archive.org/web/20210510044810/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/the-white-devil/summary/act-2-scene-1

Brachiano's wife, Isabella, enters with her brother Francisco, Cardinal Monticelso , Marcello , and Giovanni . Francisco and Isabella talk about Brachiano's suspected infidelity, and Francisco promises to give Giovanni a horse as a present. Marcello and Giovanni exit to fit the horse. Isabella tells Francisco to gently reason with Brachiano--she wants to charm him into staying true to her. She exits, as Flamineo and Brachiano enter. Monticelso tells Brachiano that he's dishonoring his noble title by pursuing Vittoria and that, when he gets over his lustful obsesson, he'll see how horribly he's behaving and repent. Brachiano cockily asks Francisco what he has to say, and Francisco replies with a threatening metaphor comparing himself to an eagle hunting dunghill birds . He attacks the Duke for trying to seduce Vittoria and calls her a strumpet. Oh no he didn't! The Duke says that if Vittoria was his mistress, all Francisco's cannons couldn't take her away from him. Francisco dismisses this suggestion of war, but then says he wishes he'd never let the Duke marry Isabella, and that they probably will go to war. Francisco says that they came to consult Brachiano about pirates, but he's always busy--he probably will only stop being busy when the pirate problem has grown totally out of control. Giovanni re-enters and the Cardinal says that the Duke should try to set an example for his good and noble son. Giovanni talks about how he's been practicing throwing a pike, and how, when he's a general, he'll charge at the front of his army, and free prisoners without charging ransom. Francisco and he joke about this, with Giovanni wittily discussing how he'll manage to pay his troops. Giovanni's presence makes Francisco and Brachiano reconcile. Francisco is looking for Camillo to discuss how Count Lodovico has become a pirate--he leaves with Monticelso and Giovanni. Isabella enters. Brachiano asks what brought her here, and she says devotion. Brachiano, irritated, tells her to go to her room. He refuses to kiss her and is disgusted by her efforts to win him back. Cynically, he even suggests that only came here to find a lover of her own. Isabella is upset, but Brachiano continues: he attacks Francisco, "the great duke" , and claims that the only thing that's great about him is his wardrobe. He curses Francisco, and the priest who married him and Isabella, and his own "issue" . Isabella says he's gone too far. Brachiano swears by his wedding ring he'll never sleep with her again, and says that they're effectively divorced. He tells her to go whine about it to Francisco. Isabella, with her heart broken, nobly says she's going to preserve peace by pretending that she said she would refuse to sleep with him, and wants a divorce. Francisco, Flamineo, Monticelso, and Camillo all re-enter. Isabella puts on a show--when Francisco tries to get them to reconcile, she calls Vittoria a "whore," and generally acts like she's really jealous and enraged. She wishes she had the power of a man, and could murder Vittoria. Isabella swears on her wedding ring that she'll never sleep with the Duke again. Brachiano plays along, acting like he's angry. Francisco says she's mad and jealous, claiming she broke her promise to gently convince the Duke. Isabella, internally grief-stricken, leaves, saying she's headed to Padua. Camillo enters. Flamineo takes the Duke aside and introduces the corrupt doctor who will help poison Isabella. Flamineo jokes about the doctor's seedy ways, before they dispatch him after Isabella. Flamineo personally says he's going to kill Camillo and make it look like an accident. The doctor exits . Camillo, Monticelso, Marcello, and Francisco come forward. Monticelso shows Camillo an emblem of a weeping stag with no antlers someone threw in Camillo's window--it means he's a cuckold. Francisco says that it's a good thing Camillo has no children--in Greek myth, says Francisco, people made sure the sun god, Phoebus, never had kids, by asking Zeus to castrate him. They couldn't tolerate more than one sun: it would be too hot. Francisco applies this to Vittoria--they wouldn't want more than one of her in the world. Monticelso and Francisco give Camillo, with Marcello as joint-commissioner, the job of ridding the Italian coast of pirates. Camillo is worried his wife will cheat on him even more before he gets back, but Monticelso says he'll try to make sure that doesn't happen. Camillo is still worried and plans on getting drunk tonight. He and Marcello exit. Monticelso and Francisco admit that they're making Camillo a sea captain so they can see what will happen if the Duke tries to seduce Vittoria--which they want to prevent. They also reveal the Count Lodovico, though rumored a pirate, is actually now in Padua. Apparently, Lodovico is hot for Isabella and wants to seduce her. They wish Brachiano wouldn't damage his name by pursuing adultery, but feel that's he's going to do it. They leave, in order to see what goes down.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/174-chapters/chapters_15_to_16.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/The Picture of Dorian Gray/section_10_part_0.txt

The Picture of Dorian Gray.chapters 15-16

chapters 15-16

{"name": "Chapters 15 & 16", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210421171214/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-picture-of-dorian-gray/study-guide/summary-chapters-15-and-16", "summary": "Later that evening, Dorian attends a party thrown by Lady Narborough, a wealthy widow and popular socialite. He acts naturally and comfortably, charming his hostess and successfully masking his tortured conscience, but is unable to stomach any food. Most of the guests are dull and witless, so Dorian is glad when Lord Henry arrives. As usual, Dorian delights in Henry's paradoxical, slightly offensive witticisms. The evening goes smoothly until Dorian is asked how he spent the previous night. He founders and retracts several answers, clearly discombobulated and unnecessarily defensive. Henry can easily see that something is wrong, but when he tries to get Dorian to share his troubles, the younger man excuses himself, saying that he is \"out of temper\" and \"must go home.\" Once home, Dorian faces the fact that Basil's belongings, which he had left in Dorian's closet, still have to be destroyed. He throws them into his fireplace, feeling sick at the smell of burning fabric and leather. He is then overcome by an unspecified \"mad craving.\" He examines \"a small Chinese box of black and gold-dust lacquer\" taken from one of his cabinets, and decides to leave. His cab driver at first refuses to take him where he wants to go, but soon relents and accepts Dorian's bribe. During the long cab ride, Dorian remembers Lord Henry's words from their first meeting: \"To cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul.\" He feels as if his soul is quite sick, and takes comfort in the idea of curing it. He dismounts from the cab and walks several blocks, nervously checking behind him, until he finds a small, dilapidated house hidden in an alley between two factories. He enters the house, which is revealed to be an opium den. Inside are groups of haggard, complacent, disheveled individuals. Among them is Adrian Singleton, who joins Dorian at the bar. They are harassed by two women, and Dorian walks out of the place. As he is leaving, one of the women calls him \"Prince Charming,\" at which point an unrecognized sailor springs to his feet and pursues Dorian outside. The sailor grabs Dorian by the throat, brings him to his knees, and points a revolver in his face, telling him that he is the brother of Sibyl Vane, whom Dorian drove to suicide. He only knew his sister's lover by the nickname \"Prince Charming.\" Dorian pretends to have never heard of Sibyl Vane, and tells James to hold his face under the lamplight. James complies, and realizes that he has made a mistake: Sibyl died 18 years ago, making her lover nearly 40, but the person standing before him looks no older than 20. James is embarrassed, and begs Dorian's forgiveness. Dorian chides him for his behavior and flees. James then speaks with the two women from the bar and learns that Dorian is much older than he seems. One of the women remarks that \"it's nigh on eighteen year since Prince Charming made me what I am.\" Realizing that he has been deceived, James rushes after Dorian in an outrage, but turns the corner to find that the villain has already disappeared.", "analysis": "Dorian succumbs to paranoia at Lady Narborough's home, but his fear of being discovered prove unnecessary. His hostess tells him that \"you are made to be good - you look so good.\" The inability to accept the possibility that a young, innocent appearance hides anything other than an innocent, beautiful personality is a common one in Dorian's social circle; this superficiality is what allows him to maintain a level of respect and admiration, despite the preponderance of nasty rumors, and even despite the guilt of a murder weighing on his conscience. Wilde uses Dorian's group of friends to parody the superficiality of London's aristocracy. Lord Henry's convictions that beauty is the most important thing in the world and that physical beauty is the greatest asset a person can have seem to be shockingly accurate, at least amongst people such as those whom Dorian and Henry associate with. This raises an important question: if Lord Henry's morally shallow beliefs are justified, can we condemn his character for espousing them? Dorian's odd mannerisms while handling the ornate box of opium and his discreet flight to the opium den reveal an addiction that we have been thus far unaware of. Dorian has always escaped his guilt by immersing himself in pleasurable distractions, but his lapse into addiction signifies that he has sunk to yet a lower level of degradation. This addiction also reminds us of the nature of Dorian's relationship to the portrait. Like an addict, Dorian cannot refrain from seeking out and indulging himself in new guilty pleasures. And, like an addict, Dorian cannot help but return to the attic and bask in the horror of his disfigured soul. Adrian's presence in the opium den bothers Dorian because he \"wanted to be where no one knew who he was. He wanted to escape from himself.\" His past, however, haunts him no matter where he turns. One might expect Dorian to take some solace from the fact that, unlike Alan Campbell, Adrian is willing to interact with Dorian, but other people mean so little to Dorian at this point that he can only view Adrian as a nuisance. Instead of taking pity on Adrian's deplorable state, Dorian is repulsed. The inescapability of the past is also exemplified by the reappearance of Sibyl's vengeful brother. James Vane seeks revenge for the very first instance of Dorian's corruption: the act of selfish vanity that caused the initial change in the painting. James's determination to avenge his sister's death represents the culmination of all of Dorian's sins, returning to hunt him down. However, superficiality does not fail Dorian yet; in this first encounter with James, Dorian's face literally saves his life."}

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. A cold rain began to fall, and the blurred street-lamps looked ghastly in the dripping mist. The public-houses were just closing, and dim men and women were clustering in broken groups round their doors. From some of the bars came the sound of horrible laughter. In others, drunkards brawled and screamed. Lying back in the hansom, with his hat pulled over his forehead, Dorian Gray watched with listless eyes the sordid shame of the great city, and now and then he repeated to himself the words that Lord Henry had said to him on the first day they had met, "To cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul." Yes, that was the secret. He had often tried it, and would try it again now. There were opium dens where one could buy oblivion, dens of horror where the memory of old sins could be destroyed by the madness of sins that were new. The moon hung low in the sky like a yellow skull. From time to time a huge misshapen cloud stretched a long arm across and hid it. The gas-lamps grew fewer, and the streets more narrow and gloomy. Once the man lost his way and had to drive back half a mile. A steam rose from the horse as it splashed up the puddles. The sidewindows of the hansom were clogged with a grey-flannel mist. "To cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul!" How the words rang in his ears! His soul, certainly, was sick to death. Was it true that the senses could cure it? Innocent blood had been spilled. What could atone for that? Ah! for that there was no atonement; but though forgiveness was impossible, forgetfulness was possible still, and he was determined to forget, to stamp the thing out, to crush it as one would crush the adder that had stung one. Indeed, what right had Basil to have spoken to him as he had done? Who had made him a judge over others? He had said things that were dreadful, horrible, not to be endured. On and on plodded the hansom, going slower, it seemed to him, at each step. He thrust up the trap and called to the man to drive faster. The hideous hunger for opium began to gnaw at him. His throat burned and his delicate hands twitched nervously together. He struck at the horse madly with his stick. The driver laughed and whipped up. He laughed in answer, and the man was silent. The way seemed interminable, and the streets like the black web of some sprawling spider. The monotony became unbearable, and as the mist thickened, he felt afraid. Then they passed by lonely brickfields. The fog was lighter here, and he could see the strange, bottle-shaped kilns with their orange, fanlike tongues of fire. A dog barked as they went by, and far away in the darkness some wandering sea-gull screamed. The horse stumbled in a rut, then swerved aside and broke into a gallop. After some time they left the clay road and rattled again over rough-paven streets. Most of the windows were dark, but now and then fantastic shadows were silhouetted against some lamplit blind. He watched them curiously. They moved like monstrous marionettes and made gestures like live things. He hated them. A dull rage was in his heart. As they turned a corner, a woman yelled something at them from an open door, and two men ran after the hansom for about a hundred yards. The driver beat at them with his whip. It is said that passion makes one think in a circle. Certainly with hideous iteration the bitten lips of Dorian Gray shaped and reshaped those subtle words that dealt with soul and sense, till he had found in them the full expression, as it were, of his mood, and justified, by intellectual approval, passions that without such justification would still have dominated his temper. From cell to cell of his brain crept the one thought; and the wild desire to live, most terrible of all man's appetites, quickened into force each trembling nerve and fibre. Ugliness that had once been hateful to him because it made things real, became dear to him now for that very reason. Ugliness was the one reality. The coarse brawl, the loathsome den, the crude violence of disordered life, the very vileness of thief and outcast, were more vivid, in their intense actuality of impression, than all the gracious shapes of art, the dreamy shadows of song. They were what he needed for forgetfulness. In three days he would be free. Suddenly the man drew up with a jerk at the top of a dark lane. Over the low roofs and jagged chimney-stacks of the houses rose the black masts of ships. Wreaths of white mist clung like ghostly sails to the yards. "Somewhere about here, sir, ain't it?" he asked huskily through the trap. Dorian started and peered round. "This will do," he answered, and having got out hastily and given the driver the extra fare he had promised him, he walked quickly in the direction of the quay. Here and there a lantern gleamed at the stern of some huge merchantman. The light shook and splintered in the puddles. A red glare came from an outward-bound steamer that was coaling. The slimy pavement looked like a wet mackintosh. He hurried on towards the left, glancing back now and then to see if he was being followed. In about seven or eight minutes he reached a small shabby house that was wedged in between two gaunt factories. In one of the top-windows stood a lamp. He stopped and gave a peculiar knock. After a little time he heard steps in the passage and the chain being unhooked. The door opened quietly, and he went in without saying a word to the squat misshapen figure that flattened itself into the shadow as he passed. At the end of the hall hung a tattered green curtain that swayed and shook in the gusty wind which had followed him in from the street. He dragged it aside and entered a long low room which looked as if it had once been a third-rate dancing-saloon. Shrill flaring gas-jets, dulled and distorted in the fly-blown mirrors that faced them, were ranged round the walls. Greasy reflectors of ribbed tin backed them, making quivering disks of light. The floor was covered with ochre-coloured sawdust, trampled here and there into mud, and stained with dark rings of spilled liquor. Some Malays were crouching by a little charcoal stove, playing with bone counters and showing their white teeth as they chattered. In one corner, with his head buried in his arms, a sailor sprawled over a table, and by the tawdrily painted bar that ran across one complete side stood two haggard women, mocking an old man who was brushing the sleeves of his coat with an expression of disgust. "He thinks he's got red ants on him," laughed one of them, as Dorian passed by. The man looked at her in terror and began to whimper. At the end of the room there was a little staircase, leading to a darkened chamber. As Dorian hurried up its three rickety steps, the heavy odour of opium met him. He heaved a deep breath, and his nostrils quivered with pleasure. When he entered, a young man with smooth yellow hair, who was bending over a lamp lighting a long thin pipe, looked up at him and nodded in a hesitating manner. "You here, Adrian?" muttered Dorian. "Where else should I be?" he answered, listlessly. "None of the chaps will speak to me now." "I thought you had left England." "Darlington is not going to do anything. My brother paid the bill at last. George doesn't speak to me either.... I don't care," he added with a sigh. "As long as one has this stuff, one doesn't want friends. I think I have had too many friends." Dorian winced and looked round at the grotesque things that lay in such fantastic postures on the ragged mattresses. The twisted limbs, the gaping mouths, the staring lustreless eyes, fascinated him. He knew in what strange heavens they were suffering, and what dull hells were teaching them the secret of some new joy. They were better off than he was. He was prisoned in thought. Memory, like a horrible malady, was eating his soul away. From time to time he seemed to see the eyes of Basil Hallward looking at him. Yet he felt he could not stay. The presence of Adrian Singleton troubled him. He wanted to be where no one would know who he was. He wanted to escape from himself. "I am going on to the other place," he said after a pause. "On the wharf?" "Yes." "That mad-cat is sure to be there. They won't have her in this place now." Dorian shrugged his shoulders. "I am sick of women who love one. Women who hate one are much more interesting. Besides, the stuff is better." "Much the same." "I like it better. Come and have something to drink. I must have something." "I don't want anything," murmured the young man. "Never mind." Adrian Singleton rose up wearily and followed Dorian to the bar. A half-caste, in a ragged turban and a shabby ulster, grinned a hideous greeting as he thrust a bottle of brandy and two tumblers in front of them. The women sidled up and began to chatter. Dorian turned his back on them and said something in a low voice to Adrian Singleton. A crooked smile, like a Malay crease, writhed across the face of one of the women. "We are very proud to-night," she sneered. "For God's sake don't talk to me," cried Dorian, stamping his foot on the ground. "What do you want? Money? Here it is. Don't ever talk to me again." Two red sparks flashed for a moment in the woman's sodden eyes, then flickered out and left them dull and glazed. She tossed her head and raked the coins off the counter with greedy fingers. Her companion watched her enviously. "It's no use," sighed Adrian Singleton. "I don't care to go back. What does it matter? I am quite happy here." "You will write to me if you want anything, won't you?" said Dorian, after a pause. "Perhaps." "Good night, then." "Good night," answered the young man, passing up the steps and wiping his parched mouth with a handkerchief. Dorian walked to the door with a look of pain in his face. As he drew the curtain aside, a hideous laugh broke from the painted lips of the woman who had taken his money. "There goes the devil's bargain!" she hiccoughed, in a hoarse voice. "Curse you!" he answered, "don't call me that." She snapped her fingers. "Prince Charming is what you like to be called, ain't it?" she yelled after him. The drowsy sailor leaped to his feet as she spoke, and looked wildly round. The sound of the shutting of the hall door fell on his ear. He rushed out as if in pursuit. Dorian Gray hurried along the quay through the drizzling rain. His meeting with Adrian Singleton had strangely moved him, and he wondered if the ruin of that young life was really to be laid at his door, as Basil Hallward had said to him with such infamy of insult. He bit his lip, and for a few seconds his eyes grew sad. Yet, after all, what did it matter to him? One's days were too brief to take the burden of another's errors on one's shoulders. Each man lived his own life and paid his own price for living it. The only pity was one had to pay so often for a single fault. One had to pay over and over again, indeed. In her dealings with man, destiny never closed her accounts. There are moments, psychologists tell us, when the passion for sin, or for what the world calls sin, so dominates a nature that every fibre of the body, as every cell of the brain, seems to be instinct with fearful impulses. Men and women at such moments lose the freedom of their will. They move to their terrible end as automatons move. Choice is taken from them, and conscience is either killed, or, if it lives at all, lives but to give rebellion its fascination and disobedience its charm. For all sins, as theologians weary not of reminding us, are sins of disobedience. When that high spirit, that morning star of evil, fell from heaven, it was as a rebel that he fell. Callous, concentrated on evil, with stained mind, and soul hungry for rebellion, Dorian Gray hastened on, quickening his step as he went, but as he darted aside into a dim archway, that had served him often as a short cut to the ill-famed place where he was going, he felt himself suddenly seized from behind, and before he had time to defend himself, he was thrust back against the wall, with a brutal hand round his throat. He struggled madly for life, and by a terrible effort wrenched the tightening fingers away. In a second he heard the click of a revolver, and saw the gleam of a polished barrel, pointing straight at his head, and the dusky form of a short, thick-set man facing him. "What do you want?" he gasped. "Keep quiet," said the man. "If you stir, I shoot you." "You are mad. What have I done to you?" "You wrecked the life of Sibyl Vane," was the answer, "and Sibyl Vane was my sister. She killed herself. I know it. Her death is at your door. I swore I would kill you in return. For years I have sought you. I had no clue, no trace. The two people who could have described you were dead. I knew nothing of you but the pet name she used to call you. I heard it to-night by chance. Make your peace with God, for to-night you are going to die." Dorian Gray grew sick with fear. "I never knew her," he stammered. "I never heard of her. You are mad." "You had better confess your sin, for as sure as I am James Vane, you are going to die." There was a horrible moment. Dorian did not know what to say or do. "Down on your knees!" growled the man. "I give you one minute to make your peace--no more. I go on board to-night for India, and I must do my job first. One minute. That's all." Dorian's arms fell to his side. Paralysed with terror, he did not know what to do. Suddenly a wild hope flashed across his brain. "Stop," he cried. "How long ago is it since your sister died? Quick, tell me!" "Eighteen years," said the man. "Why do you ask me? What do years matter?" "Eighteen years," laughed Dorian Gray, with a touch of triumph in his voice. "Eighteen years! Set me under the lamp and look at my face!" James Vane hesitated for a moment, not understanding what was meant. Then he seized Dorian Gray and dragged him from the archway. Dim and wavering as was the wind-blown light, yet it served to show him the hideous error, as it seemed, into which he had fallen, for the face of the man he had sought to kill had all the bloom of boyhood, all the unstained purity of youth. He seemed little more than a lad of twenty summers, hardly older, if older indeed at all, than his sister had been when they had parted so many years ago. It was obvious that this was not the man who had destroyed her life. He loosened his hold and reeled back. "My God! my God!" he cried, "and I would have murdered you!" Dorian Gray drew a long breath. "You have been on the brink of committing a terrible crime, my man," he said, looking at him sternly. "Let this be a warning to you not to take vengeance into your own hands." "Forgive me, sir," muttered James Vane. "I was deceived. A chance word I heard in that damned den set me on the wrong track." "You had better go home and put that pistol away, or you may get into trouble," said Dorian, turning on his heel and going slowly down the street. James Vane stood on the pavement in horror. He was trembling from head to foot. After a little while, a black shadow that had been creeping along the dripping wall moved out into the light and came close to him with stealthy footsteps. He felt a hand laid on his arm and looked round with a start. It was one of the women who had been drinking at the bar. "Why didn't you kill him?" she hissed out, putting haggard face quite close to his. "I knew you were following him when you rushed out from Daly's. You fool! You should have killed him. He has lots of money, and he's as bad as bad." "He is not the man I am looking for," he answered, "and I want no man's money. I want a man's life. The man whose life I want must be nearly forty now. This one is little more than a boy. Thank God, I have not got his blood upon my hands." The woman gave a bitter laugh. "Little more than a boy!" she sneered. "Why, man, it's nigh on eighteen years since Prince Charming made me what I am." "You lie!" cried James Vane. She raised her hand up to heaven. "Before God I am telling the truth," she cried. "Before God?" "Strike me dumb if it ain't so. He is the worst one that comes here. They say he has sold himself to the devil for a pretty face. It's nigh on eighteen years since I met him. He hasn't changed much since then. I have, though," she added, with a sickly leer. "You swear this?" "I swear it," came in hoarse echo from her flat mouth. "But don't give me away to him," she whined; "I am afraid of him. Let me have some money for my night's lodging." He broke from her with an oath and rushed to the corner of the street, but Dorian Gray had disappeared. When he looked back, the woman had vanished also.

Chapters 15 & 16

https://web.archive.org/web/20210421171214/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-picture-of-dorian-gray/study-guide/summary-chapters-15-and-16

Later that evening, Dorian attends a party thrown by Lady Narborough, a wealthy widow and popular socialite. He acts naturally and comfortably, charming his hostess and successfully masking his tortured conscience, but is unable to stomach any food. Most of the guests are dull and witless, so Dorian is glad when Lord Henry arrives. As usual, Dorian delights in Henry's paradoxical, slightly offensive witticisms. The evening goes smoothly until Dorian is asked how he spent the previous night. He founders and retracts several answers, clearly discombobulated and unnecessarily defensive. Henry can easily see that something is wrong, but when he tries to get Dorian to share his troubles, the younger man excuses himself, saying that he is "out of temper" and "must go home." Once home, Dorian faces the fact that Basil's belongings, which he had left in Dorian's closet, still have to be destroyed. He throws them into his fireplace, feeling sick at the smell of burning fabric and leather. He is then overcome by an unspecified "mad craving." He examines "a small Chinese box of black and gold-dust lacquer" taken from one of his cabinets, and decides to leave. His cab driver at first refuses to take him where he wants to go, but soon relents and accepts Dorian's bribe. During the long cab ride, Dorian remembers Lord Henry's words from their first meeting: "To cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul." He feels as if his soul is quite sick, and takes comfort in the idea of curing it. He dismounts from the cab and walks several blocks, nervously checking behind him, until he finds a small, dilapidated house hidden in an alley between two factories. He enters the house, which is revealed to be an opium den. Inside are groups of haggard, complacent, disheveled individuals. Among them is Adrian Singleton, who joins Dorian at the bar. They are harassed by two women, and Dorian walks out of the place. As he is leaving, one of the women calls him "Prince Charming," at which point an unrecognized sailor springs to his feet and pursues Dorian outside. The sailor grabs Dorian by the throat, brings him to his knees, and points a revolver in his face, telling him that he is the brother of Sibyl Vane, whom Dorian drove to suicide. He only knew his sister's lover by the nickname "Prince Charming." Dorian pretends to have never heard of Sibyl Vane, and tells James to hold his face under the lamplight. James complies, and realizes that he has made a mistake: Sibyl died 18 years ago, making her lover nearly 40, but the person standing before him looks no older than 20. James is embarrassed, and begs Dorian's forgiveness. Dorian chides him for his behavior and flees. James then speaks with the two women from the bar and learns that Dorian is much older than he seems. One of the women remarks that "it's nigh on eighteen year since Prince Charming made me what I am." Realizing that he has been deceived, James rushes after Dorian in an outrage, but turns the corner to find that the villain has already disappeared.

Dorian succumbs to paranoia at Lady Narborough's home, but his fear of being discovered prove unnecessary. His hostess tells him that "you are made to be good - you look so good." The inability to accept the possibility that a young, innocent appearance hides anything other than an innocent, beautiful personality is a common one in Dorian's social circle; this superficiality is what allows him to maintain a level of respect and admiration, despite the preponderance of nasty rumors, and even despite the guilt of a murder weighing on his conscience. Wilde uses Dorian's group of friends to parody the superficiality of London's aristocracy. Lord Henry's convictions that beauty is the most important thing in the world and that physical beauty is the greatest asset a person can have seem to be shockingly accurate, at least amongst people such as those whom Dorian and Henry associate with. This raises an important question: if Lord Henry's morally shallow beliefs are justified, can we condemn his character for espousing them? Dorian's odd mannerisms while handling the ornate box of opium and his discreet flight to the opium den reveal an addiction that we have been thus far unaware of. Dorian has always escaped his guilt by immersing himself in pleasurable distractions, but his lapse into addiction signifies that he has sunk to yet a lower level of degradation. This addiction also reminds us of the nature of Dorian's relationship to the portrait. Like an addict, Dorian cannot refrain from seeking out and indulging himself in new guilty pleasures. And, like an addict, Dorian cannot help but return to the attic and bask in the horror of his disfigured soul. Adrian's presence in the opium den bothers Dorian because he "wanted to be where no one knew who he was. He wanted to escape from himself." His past, however, haunts him no matter where he turns. One might expect Dorian to take some solace from the fact that, unlike Alan Campbell, Adrian is willing to interact with Dorian, but other people mean so little to Dorian at this point that he can only view Adrian as a nuisance. Instead of taking pity on Adrian's deplorable state, Dorian is repulsed. The inescapability of the past is also exemplified by the reappearance of Sibyl's vengeful brother. James Vane seeks revenge for the very first instance of Dorian's corruption: the act of selfish vanity that caused the initial change in the painting. James's determination to avenge his sister's death represents the culmination of all of Dorian's sins, returning to hunt him down. However, superficiality does not fail Dorian yet; in this first encounter with James, Dorian's face literally saves his life.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/39.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_37_part_0.txt

Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 38

chapter 38

{"name": "Phase V: \"The Woman Pays,\" Chapter Thirty-Eight", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210424232301/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary/chapter-38", "summary": "Tess's carriage pulls up to the gate of the village of Marlott, and she asks the turnpike-keeper if anything's new in the village. He says that John Durbeyfield's daughter recently got married, and that \"Sir John,\" as the villagers now call him, honored the occasion by getting drunk at The Pure Drop tavern and buying drinks for his neighbors. This is obviously not very cheering news for Tess--she doesn't know how she's going to be able to face her family. She decides it would be easier to approach the house on foot, so she leaves her luggage at the turnpike-keeper's house and walks into town. An old friend meets her in the street, and asks where her husband is. Tess answers that he's away on business, and goes into her parents' house. Her mother is surprised to see her , and asks if she were married, and where her husband was. Tess says that he went away, because she told him what had happened. Her mother is furious, and calls her a fool. But her mother's anger doesn't last long--she's so chill that she calms down and takes a \"whatever happens, happens\" attitude about it. Her father soon gets home. He's been drinking at Rolliver's and bragging about his daughter's fine marriage. Mrs. Durbeyfield tells him that Tess is home, and that Angel has left her. Mr. Durbeyfield is pretty depressed about it, because he knows that they'll laugh at him at Rolliver's. He asks if Tess is actually married this time, or if it's like before, with Alec. Tess overhears all this from upstairs, and decides that if her own parents can doubt her word, she won't stay there for long. Tess gets a letter from Angel the next morning, saying that he is going to look at farm in the north of England. She uses that letter as an excuse to leave, and they all assume that the letter was asking Tess to join him. She leaves half of the fifty pounds of cash that Angel had given her to her parents, and leaves their house.", "analysis": ""}

As she drove on through Blackmoor Vale, and the landscape of her youth began to open around her, Tess aroused herself from her stupor. Her first thought was how would she be able to face her parents? She reached a turnpike-gate which stood upon the highway to the village. It was thrown open by a stranger, not by the old man who had kept it for many years, and to whom she had been known; he had probably left on New Year's Day, the date when such changes were made. Having received no intelligence lately from her home, she asked the turnpike-keeper for news. "Oh--nothing, miss," he answered. "Marlott is Marlott still. Folks have died and that. John Durbeyfield, too, hev had a daughter married this week to a gentleman-farmer; not from John's own house, you know; they was married elsewhere; the gentleman being of that high standing that John's own folk was not considered well-be-doing enough to have any part in it, the bridegroom seeming not to know how't have been discovered that John is a old and ancient nobleman himself by blood, with family skillentons in their own vaults to this day, but done out of his property in the time o' the Romans. However, Sir John, as we call 'n now, kept up the wedding-day as well as he could, and stood treat to everybody in the parish; and John's wife sung songs at The Pure Drop till past eleven o'clock." Hearing this, Tess felt so sick at heart that she could not decide to go home publicly in the fly with her luggage and belongings. She asked the turnpike-keeper if she might deposit her things at his house for a while, and, on his offering no objection, she dismissed her carriage, and went on to the village alone by a back lane. At sight of her father's chimney she asked herself how she could possibly enter the house? Inside that cottage her relations were calmly supposing her far away on a wedding-tour with a comparatively rich man, who was to conduct her to bouncing prosperity; while here she was, friendless, creeping up to the old door quite by herself, with no better place to go to in the world. She did not reach the house unobserved. Just by the garden-hedge she was met by a girl who knew her--one of the two or three with whom she had been intimate at school. After making a few inquiries as to how Tess came there, her friend, unheeding her tragic look, interrupted with-- "But where's thy gentleman, Tess?" Tess hastily explained that he had been called away on business, and, leaving her interlocutor, clambered over the garden-hedge, and thus made her way to the house. As she went up the garden-path she heard her mother singing by the back door, coming in sight of which she perceived Mrs Durbeyfield on the doorstep in the act of wringing a sheet. Having performed this without observing Tess, she went indoors, and her daughter followed her. The washing-tub stood in the same old place on the same old quarter-hogshead, and her mother, having thrown the sheet aside, was about to plunge her arms in anew. "Why--Tess!--my chil'--I thought you was married!--married really and truly this time--we sent the cider--" "Yes, mother; so I am." "Going to be?" "No--I am married." "Married! Then where's thy husband?" "Oh, he's gone away for a time." "Gone away! When was you married, then? The day you said?" "Yes, Tuesday, mother." "And now 'tis on'y Saturday, and he gone away?" "Yes, he's gone." "What's the meaning o' that? 'Nation seize such husbands as you seem to get, say I!" "Mother!" Tess went across to Joan Durbeyfield, laid her face upon the matron's bosom, and burst into sobs. "I don't know how to tell 'ee, mother! You said to me, and wrote to me, that I was not to tell him. But I did tell him--I couldn't help it--and he went away!" "O you little fool--you little fool!" burst out Mrs Durbeyfield, splashing Tess and herself in her agitation. "My good God! that ever I should ha' lived to say it, but I say it again, you little fool!" Tess was convulsed with weeping, the tension of so many days having relaxed at last. "I know it--I know--I know!" she gasped through her sobs. "But, O my mother, I could not help it! He was so good--and I felt the wickedness of trying to blind him as to what had happened! If--if--it were to be done again--I should do the same. I could not--I dared not--so sin--against him!" "But you sinned enough to marry him first!" "Yes, yes; that's where my misery do lie! But I thought he could get rid o' me by law if he were determined not to overlook it. And O, if you knew--if you could only half know how I loved him--how anxious I was to have him--and how wrung I was between caring so much for him and my wish to be fair to him!" Tess was so shaken that she could get no further, and sank, a helpless thing, into a chair. "Well, well; what's done can't be undone! I'm sure I don't know why children o' my bringing forth should all be bigger simpletons than other people's--not to know better than to blab such a thing as that, when he couldn't ha' found it out till too late!" Here Mrs Durbeyfield began shedding tears on her own account as a mother to be pitied. "What your father will say I don't know," she continued; "for he's been talking about the wedding up at Rolliver's and The Pure Drop every day since, and about his family getting back to their rightful position through you--poor silly man!--and now you've made this mess of it! The Lord-a-Lord!" As if to bring matters to a focus, Tess's father was heard approaching at that moment. He did not, however, enter immediately, and Mrs Durbeyfield said that she would break the bad news to him herself, Tess keeping out of sight for the present. After her first burst of disappointment Joan began to take the mishap as she had taken Tess's original trouble, as she would have taken a wet holiday or failure in the potato-crop; as a thing which had come upon them irrespective of desert or folly; a chance external impingement to be borne with; not a lesson. Tess retreated upstairs and beheld casually that the beds had been shifted, and new arrangements made. Her old bed had been adapted for two younger children. There was no place here for her now. The room below being unceiled she could hear most of what went on there. Presently her father entered, apparently carrying in a live hen. He was a foot-haggler now, having been obliged to sell his second horse, and he travelled with his basket on his arm. The hen had been carried about this morning as it was often carried, to show people that he was in his work, though it had lain, with its legs tied, under the table at Rolliver's for more than an hour. "We've just had up a story about--" Durbeyfield began, and thereupon related in detail to his wife a discussion which had arisen at the inn about the clergy, originated by the fact of his daughter having married into a clerical family. "They was formerly styled 'sir', like my own ancestry," he said, "though nowadays their true style, strictly speaking, is 'clerk' only." As Tess had wished that no great publicity should be given to the event, he had mentioned no particulars. He hoped she would remove that prohibition soon. He proposed that the couple should take Tess's own name, d'Urberville, as uncorrupted. It was better than her husbands's. He asked if any letter had come from her that day. Then Mrs Durbeyfield informed him that no letter had come, but Tess unfortunately had come herself. When at length the collapse was explained to him, a sullen mortification, not usual with Durbeyfield, overpowered the influence of the cheering glass. Yet the intrinsic quality of the event moved his touchy sensitiveness less than its conjectured effect upon the minds of others. "To think, now, that this was to be the end o't!" said Sir John. "And I with a family vault under that there church of Kingsbere as big as Squire Jollard's ale-cellar, and my folk lying there in sixes and sevens, as genuine county bones and marrow as any recorded in history. And now to be sure what they fellers at Rolliver's and The Pure Drop will say to me! How they'll squint and glane, and say, 'This is yer mighty match is it; this is yer getting back to the true level of yer forefathers in King Norman's time!' I feel this is too much, Joan; I shall put an end to myself, title and all--I can bear it no longer! ... But she can make him keep her if he's married her?" "Why, yes. But she won't think o' doing that." "D'ye think he really have married her?--or is it like the first--" Poor Tess, who had heard as far as this, could not bear to hear more. The perception that her word could be doubted even here, in her own parental house, set her mind against the spot as nothing else could have done. How unexpected were the attacks of destiny! And if her father doubted her a little, would not neighbours and acquaintance doubt her much? O, she could not live long at home! A few days, accordingly, were all that she allowed herself here, at the end of which time she received a short note from Clare, informing her that he had gone to the North of England to look at a farm. In her craving for the lustre of her true position as his wife, and to hide from her parents the vast extent of the division between them, she made use of this letter as her reason for again departing, leaving them under the impression that she was setting out to join him. Still further to screen her husband from any imputation of unkindness to her, she took twenty-five of the fifty pounds Clare had given her, and handed the sum over to her mother, as if the wife of a man like Angel Clare could well afford it, saying that it was a slight return for the trouble and humiliation she had brought upon them in years past. With this assertion of her dignity she bade them farewell; and after that there were lively doings in the Durbeyfield household for some time on the strength of Tess's bounty, her mother saying, and, indeed, believing, that the rupture which had arisen between the young husband and wife had adjusted itself under their strong feeling that they could not live apart from each other.

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

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Tess's carriage pulls up to the gate of the village of Marlott, and she asks the turnpike-keeper if anything's new in the village. He says that John Durbeyfield's daughter recently got married, and that "Sir John," as the villagers now call him, honored the occasion by getting drunk at The Pure Drop tavern and buying drinks for his neighbors. This is obviously not very cheering news for Tess--she doesn't know how she's going to be able to face her family. She decides it would be easier to approach the house on foot, so she leaves her luggage at the turnpike-keeper's house and walks into town. An old friend meets her in the street, and asks where her husband is. Tess answers that he's away on business, and goes into her parents' house. Her mother is surprised to see her , and asks if she were married, and where her husband was. Tess says that he went away, because she told him what had happened. Her mother is furious, and calls her a fool. But her mother's anger doesn't last long--she's so chill that she calms down and takes a "whatever happens, happens" attitude about it. Her father soon gets home. He's been drinking at Rolliver's and bragging about his daughter's fine marriage. Mrs. Durbeyfield tells him that Tess is home, and that Angel has left her. Mr. Durbeyfield is pretty depressed about it, because he knows that they'll laugh at him at Rolliver's. He asks if Tess is actually married this time, or if it's like before, with Alec. Tess overhears all this from upstairs, and decides that if her own parents can doubt her word, she won't stay there for long. Tess gets a letter from Angel the next morning, saying that he is going to look at farm in the north of England. She uses that letter as an excuse to leave, and they all assume that the letter was asking Tess to join him. She leaves half of the fifty pounds of cash that Angel had given her to her parents, and leaves their house.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/2166-chapters/02.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/King Solomon's Mines/section_0_part_2.txt

King Solomon's Mines.chapter 2

chapter 2

{"name": "Chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200804024551/https://www.gradesaver.com/king-solomons-mines/study-guide/summary-chapters-1-and-2", "summary": "Sir Henry Curtis asks Quatermain what he knows of Neville. Quatermain states that he had heard Neville was heading off to find King Solomon's mines. Astonished at this knowledge, Sir Henry and Captain Good ask Quatermain what he has heard about King Solomon's mines. Quatermain relates the story of another elephant hunter, Evans, who told Quatermain the legend of the diamond mines. Evan had gained the information from natives of the Transvaal, including a witch-doctor, Isanusi, who connected the Suliman Mountains to Solomon's mines. Suliman\" is assumed to be a corruption of \"Solomon,\" but is noted by the editor to be the Arabic form of the name. Twenty years later, Quatermain was laid low by a fever when he met another traveler, Jose Silvestre, who speaks briefly with Quatermain and bids him farewell, stating, \"If we ever meet again, I shall be the richest man in the world, and I shall remember you. A week later, having recovered from his fever, Quatermain is hunting with his companions when they come across a man nearly dead from exposure to the elements. This is none other than Jose Silvestre, whom Quatermain and his men nurse back to a modicum of health. Knowing he will die soon, Silvestre bequeaths his link to King Solomon's mines, a document written by his ancestor, Jose da Silvestra, detailing in obscure terms the location of the fabled mines. Captain Good and Sir Henry are astonished at Quatermain's story, and the latter takes their amazement as disbelief and nearly quits their company. The two men assure Quatermain that they believe his story. In fact, upon learning of Quatermain's acquaintance with both the legend and the man, Sir Henry seeks Quatermain's assistance in locating his brother, who had gone off in a quest to find the diamond mines. He is so concerned for his brother's welfare that he offers to split the diamonds of King Solomon's mines equally between Quatermain and Captain Good, as all he desires is the safety of his only 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."}

"What was it that you heard about my brother's journey at Bamangwato?" asked Sir Henry, as I paused to fill my pipe before replying to Captain Good. "I heard this," I answered, "and I have never mentioned it to a soul till to-day. I heard that he was starting for Solomon's Mines." "Solomon's Mines?" ejaculated both my hearers at once. "Where are they?" "I don't know," I said; "I know where they are said to be. Once I saw the peaks of the mountains that border them, but there were a hundred and thirty miles of desert between me and them, and I am not aware that any white man ever got across it save one. But perhaps the best thing I can do is to tell you the legend of Solomon's Mines as I know it, you passing your word not to reveal anything I tell you without my permission. Do you agree to that? I have my reasons for asking." Sir Henry nodded, and Captain Good replied, "Certainly, certainly." "Well," I began, "as you may guess, generally speaking, elephant hunters are a rough set of men, who do not trouble themselves with much beyond the facts of life and the ways of Kafirs. But here and there you meet a man who takes the trouble to collect traditions from the natives, and tries to make out a little piece of the history of this dark land. It was such a man as this who first told me the legend of Solomon's Mines, now a matter of nearly thirty years ago. That was when I was on my first elephant hunt in the Matabele country. His name was Evans, and he was killed the following year, poor fellow, by a wounded buffalo, and lies buried near the Zambesi Falls. I was telling Evans one night, I remember, of some wonderful workings I had found whilst hunting koodoo and eland in what is now the Lydenburg district of the Transvaal. I see they have come across these workings again lately in prospecting for gold, but I knew of them years ago. There is a great wide wagon road cut out of the solid rock, and leading to the mouth of the working or gallery. Inside the mouth of this gallery are stacks of gold quartz piled up ready for roasting, which shows that the workers, whoever they were, must have left in a hurry. Also, about twenty paces in, the gallery is built across, and a beautiful bit of masonry it is." "'Ay,' said Evans, 'but I will spin you a queerer yarn than that'; and he went on to tell me how he had found in the far interior a ruined city, which he believed to be the Ophir of the Bible, and, by the way, other more learned men have said the same long since poor Evans's time. I was, I remember, listening open-eared to all these wonders, for I was young at the time, and this story of an ancient civilisation and of the treasures which those old Jewish or Phoenician adventurers used to extract from a country long since lapsed into the darkest barbarism took a great hold upon my imagination, when suddenly he said to me, 'Lad, did you ever hear of the Suliman Mountains up to the north-west of the Mushakulumbwe country?' I told him I never had. 'Ah, well,' he said, 'that is where Solomon really had his mines, his diamond mines, I mean.' "'How do you know that?' I asked. "'Know it! why, what is "Suliman" but a corruption of Solomon?[1] Besides, an old Isanusi or witch doctoress up in the Manica country told me all about it. She said that the people who lived across those mountains were a "branch" of the Zulus, speaking a dialect of Zulu, but finer and bigger men even; that there lived among them great wizards, who had learnt their art from white men when "all the world was dark," and who had the secret of a wonderful mine of "bright stones."' "Well, I laughed at this story at the time, though it interested me, for the Diamond Fields were not discovered then, but poor Evans went off and was killed, and for twenty years I never thought any more of the matter. However, just twenty years afterwards--and that is a long time, gentlemen; an elephant hunter does not often live for twenty years at his business--I heard something more definite about Suliman's Mountains and the country which lies beyond them. I was up beyond the Manica country, at a place called Sitanda's Kraal, and a miserable place it was, for a man could get nothing to eat, and there was but little game about. I had an attack of fever, and was in a bad way generally, when one day a Portugee arrived with a single companion--a half-breed. Now I know your low-class Delagoa Portugee well. There is no greater devil unhung in a general way, battening as he does upon human agony and flesh in the shape of slaves. But this was quite a different type of man to the mean fellows whom I had been accustomed to meet; indeed, in appearance he reminded me more of the polite doms I have read about, for he was tall and thin, with large dark eyes and curling grey mustachios. We talked together for a while, for he could speak broken English, and I understood a little Portugee, and he told me that his name was Jose Silvestre, and that he had a place near Delagoa Bay. When he went on next day with his half-breed companion, he said 'Good-bye,' taking off his hat quite in the old style. "'Good-bye, senor,' he said; 'if ever we meet again I shall be the richest man in the world, and I will remember you.' I laughed a little--I was too weak to laugh much--and watched him strike out for the great desert to the west, wondering if he was mad, or what he thought he was going to find there. "A week passed, and I got the better of my fever. One evening I was sitting on the ground in front of the little tent I had with me, chewing the last leg of a miserable fowl I had bought from a native for a bit of cloth worth twenty fowls, and staring at the hot red sun sinking down over the desert, when suddenly I saw a figure, apparently that of a European, for it wore a coat, on the slope of the rising ground opposite to me, about three hundred yards away. The figure crept along on its hands and knees, then it got up and staggered forward a few yards on its legs, only to fall and crawl again. Seeing that it must be somebody in distress, I sent one of my hunters to help him, and presently he arrived, and who do you suppose it turned out to be?" "Jose Silvestre, of course," said Captain Good. "Yes, Jose Silvestre, or rather his skeleton and a little skin. His face was a bright yellow with bilious fever, and his large dark eyes stood nearly out of his head, for all the flesh had gone. There was nothing but yellow parchment-like skin, white hair, and the gaunt bones sticking up beneath. "'Water! for the sake of Christ, water!' he moaned and I saw that his lips were cracked, and his tongue, which protruded between them, was swollen and blackish. "I gave him water with a little milk in it, and he drank it in great gulps, two quarts or so, without stopping. I would not let him have any more. Then the fever took him again, and he fell down and began to rave about Suliman's Mountains, and the diamonds, and the desert. I carried him into the tent and did what I could for him, which was little enough; but I saw how it must end. About eleven o'clock he grew quieter, and I lay down for a little rest and went to sleep. At dawn I woke again, and in the half light saw Silvestre sitting up, a strange, gaunt form, and gazing out towards the desert. Presently the first ray of the sun shot right across the wide plain before us till it reached the faraway crest of one of the tallest of the Suliman Mountains more than a hundred miles away. "'There it is!' cried the dying man in Portuguese, and pointing with his long, thin arm, 'but I shall never reach it, never. No one will ever reach it!' "Suddenly, he paused, and seemed to take a resolution. 'Friend,' he said, turning towards me, 'are you there? My eyes grow dark.' "'Yes,' I said; 'yes, lie down now, and rest.' "'Ay,' he answered, 'I shall rest soon, I have time to rest--all eternity. Listen, I am dying! You have been good to me. I will give you the writing. Perhaps you will get there if you can live to pass the desert, which has killed my poor servant and me.' "Then he groped in his shirt and brought out what I thought was a Boer tobacco pouch made of the skin of the Swart-vet-pens or sable antelope. It was fastened with a little strip of hide, what we call a rimpi, and this he tried to loose, but could not. He handed it to me. 'Untie it,' he said. I did so, and extracted a bit of torn yellow linen on which something was written in rusty letters. Inside this rag was a paper. "Then he went on feebly, for he was growing weak: 'The paper has all that is on the linen. It took me years to read. Listen: my ancestor, a political refugee from Lisbon, and one of the first Portuguese who landed on these shores, wrote that when he was dying on those mountains which no white foot ever pressed before or since. His name was Jose da Silvestra, and he lived three hundred years ago. His slave, who waited for him on this side of the mountains, found him dead, and brought the writing home to Delagoa. It has been in the family ever since, but none have cared to read it, till at last I did. And I have lost my life over it, but another may succeed, and become the richest man in the world--the richest man in the world. Only give it to no one, senor; go yourself!' "Then he began to wander again, and in an hour it was all over. "God rest him! he died very quietly, and I buried him deep, with big boulders on his breast; so I do not think that the jackals can have dug him up. And then I came away." "Ay, but the document?" said Sir Henry, in a tone of deep interest. "Yes, the document; what was in it?" added the captain. "Well, gentlemen, if you like I will tell you. I have never showed it to anybody yet except to a drunken old Portuguese trader who translated it for me, and had forgotten all about it by the next morning. The original rag is at my home in Durban, together with poor Dom Jose's translation, but I have the English rendering in my pocket-book, and a facsimile of the map, if it can be called a map. Here it is." [Illustration: MAP] "I, Jose da Silvestra, who am now dying of hunger in the little cave where no snow is on the north side of the nipple of the southernmost of the two mountains I have named Sheba's Breasts, write this in the year 1590 with a cleft bone upon a remnant of my raiment, my blood being the ink. If my slave should find it when he comes, and should bring it to Delagoa, let my friend (name illegible) bring the matter to the knowledge of the king, that he may send an army which, if they live through the desert and the mountains, and can overcome the brave Kukuanes and their devilish arts, to which end many priests should be brought, will make him the richest king since Solomon. With my own eyes I have seen the countless diamonds stored in Solomon's treasure chamber behind the white Death; but through the treachery of Gagool the witch-finder I might bring nought away, scarcely my life. Let him who comes follow the map, and climb the snow of Sheba's left breast till he reaches the nipple, on the north side of which is the great road Solomon made, from whence three days' journey to the King's Palace. Let him kill Gagool. Pray for my soul. Farewell. Jose da Silvestra."[2] When I had finished reading the above, and shown the copy of the map, drawn by the dying hand of the old Dom with his blood for ink, there followed a silence of astonishment. "Well," said Captain Good, "I have been round the world twice, and put in at most ports, but may I be hung for a mutineer if ever I heard a yarn like this out of a story book, or in it either, for the matter of that." "It's a queer tale, Mr. Quatermain," said Sir Henry. "I suppose you are not hoaxing us? It is, I know, sometimes thought allowable to take in a greenhorn." "If you think that, Sir Henry," I said, much put out, and pocketing my paper--for I do not like to be thought one of those silly fellows who consider it witty to tell lies, and who are for ever boasting to newcomers of extraordinary hunting adventures which never happened--"if you think that, why, there is an end to the matter," and I rose to go. Sir Henry laid his large hand upon my shoulder. "Sit down, Mr. Quatermain," he said, "I beg your pardon; I see very well you do not wish to deceive us, but the story sounded so strange that I could hardly believe it." "You shall see the original map and writing when we reach Durban," I answered, somewhat mollified, for really when I came to consider the question it was scarcely wonderful that he should doubt my good faith. "But," I went on, "I have not told you about your brother. I knew the man Jim who was with him. He was a Bechuana by birth, a good hunter, and for a native a very clever man. That morning on which Mr. Neville was starting I saw Jim standing by my wagon and cutting up tobacco on the disselboom. "'Jim,' said I, 'where are you off to this trip? It is elephants?' "'No, Baas,' he answered, 'we are after something worth much more than ivory.' "'And what might that be?' I said, for I was curious. 'Is it gold?' "'No, Baas, something worth more than gold,' and he grinned. "I asked no more questions, for I did not like to lower my dignity by seeming inquisitive, but I was puzzled. Presently Jim finished cutting his tobacco. "'Baas,' said he. "I took no notice. "'Baas,' said he again. "'Eh, boy, what is it?' I asked. "'Baas, we are going after diamonds.' "'Diamonds! why, then, you are steering in the wrong direction; you should head for the Fields.' "'Baas, have you ever heard of Suliman's Berg?'--that is, Solomon's Mountains, Sir Henry. "'Ay!' "'Have you ever heard of the diamonds there?' "'I have heard a foolish story, Jim.' "'It is no story, Baas. Once I knew a woman who came from there, and reached Natal with her child, she told me:--she is dead now.' "'Your master will feed the assvoegels'--that is, vultures--'Jim, if he tries to reach Suliman's country, and so will you if they can get any pickings off your worthless old carcass,' said I. "He grinned. 'Mayhap, Baas. Man must die; I'd rather like to try a new country myself; the elephants are getting worked out about here.' "'Ah! my boy,' I said, 'you wait till the "pale old man" gets a grip of your yellow throat, and then we shall hear what sort of a tune you sing.' "Half an hour after that I saw Neville's wagon move off. Presently Jim came back running. 'Good-bye, Baas,' he said. 'I didn't like to start without bidding you good-bye, for I daresay you are right, and that we shall never trek south again.' "'Is your master really going to Suliman's Berg, Jim, or are you lying?' "'No,' he answered, 'he is going. He told me he was bound to make his fortune somehow, or try to; so he might as well have a fling for the diamonds.' "'Oh!' I said; 'wait a bit, Jim; will you take a note to your master, Jim, and promise not to give it to him till you reach Inyati?' which was some hundred miles off. "'Yes, Baas.' "So I took a scrap of paper, and wrote on it, 'Let him who comes . . . climb the snow of Sheba's left breast, till he reaches the nipple, on the north side of which is Solomon's great road.' "'Now, Jim,' I said, 'when you give this to your master, tell him he had better follow the advice on it implicitly. You are not to give it to him now, because I don't want him back asking me questions which I won't answer. Now be off, you idle fellow, the wagon is nearly out of sight.' "Jim took the note and went, and that is all I know about your brother, Sir Henry; but I am much afraid--" "Mr. Quatermain," said Sir Henry, "I am going to look for my brother; I am going to trace him to Suliman's Mountains, and over them if necessary, till I find him, or until I know that he is dead. Will you come with me?" I am, as I think I have said, a cautious man, indeed a timid one, and this suggestion frightened me. It seemed to me that to undertake such a journey would be to go to certain death, and putting other considerations aside, as I had a son to support, I could not afford to die just then. "No, thank you, Sir Henry, I think I had rather not," I answered. "I am too old for wild-goose chases of that sort, and we should only end up like my poor friend Silvestre. I have a son dependent on me, so I cannot afford to risk my life foolishly." Both Sir Henry and Captain Good looked very disappointed. "Mr. Quatermain," said the former, "I am well off, and I am bent upon this business. You may put the remuneration for your services at whatever figure you like in reason, and it shall be paid over to you before we start. Moreover, I will arrange in the event of anything untoward happening to us or to you, that your son shall be suitably provided for. You will see from this offer how necessary I think your presence. Also if by chance we should reach this place, and find diamonds, they shall belong to you and Good equally. I do not want them. But of course that promise is worth nothing at all, though the same thing would apply to any ivory we might get. You may pretty well make your own terms with me, Mr. Quatermain; and of course I shall pay all expenses." "Sir Henry," said I, "this is the most liberal proposal I ever had, and one not to be sneezed at by a poor hunter and trader. But the job is the biggest I have come across, and I must take time to think it over. I will give you my answer before we get to Durban." "Very good," answered Sir Henry. Then I said good-night and turned in, and dreamt about poor long-dead Silvestre and the diamonds. [1] Suliman is the Arabic form of Solomon.--Editor. [2] Eu Jose da Silvestra que estou morrendo de fome na pequena cova onde nao ha neve ao lado norte do bico mais ao sul das duas montanhas que chamei scio de Sheba; escrevo isto no anno 1590; escrevo isto com um pedaco d'osso n' um farrapo de minha roupa e com sangue meu por tinta; se o meu escravo der com isto quando venha ao levar para Lourenzo Marquez, que o meu amigo --------- leve a cousa ao conhecimento d' El Rei, para que possa mandar um exercito que, se desfiler pelo deserto e pelas montonhas e mesmo sobrepujar os bravos Kukuanes e suas artes diabolicas, pelo que se deviam trazer muitos padres Far o Rei mais rico depois de Salomao Com meus proprios olhos ve os di amantes sem conto guardados nas camaras do thesouro de Salomao a traz da morte branca, mas pela traicao de Gagoal a feiticeira achadora, nada poderia levar, e apenas a minha vida. Quem vier siga o mappa e trepe pela neve de Sheba peito a esquerda ate chegar ao bica, do lado norte do qual esta a grande estrada do Solomao por elle feita, donde ha tres dias de jornada ate ao Palacio do Rei. Mate Gagoal. Reze por minha alma. Adeos. Jose da Silvestra.

Chapter 2

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Sir Henry Curtis asks Quatermain what he knows of Neville. Quatermain states that he had heard Neville was heading off to find King Solomon's mines. Astonished at this knowledge, Sir Henry and Captain Good ask Quatermain what he has heard about King Solomon's mines. Quatermain relates the story of another elephant hunter, Evans, who told Quatermain the legend of the diamond mines. Evan had gained the information from natives of the Transvaal, including a witch-doctor, Isanusi, who connected the Suliman Mountains to Solomon's mines. Suliman" is assumed to be a corruption of "Solomon," but is noted by the editor to be the Arabic form of the name. Twenty years later, Quatermain was laid low by a fever when he met another traveler, Jose Silvestre, who speaks briefly with Quatermain and bids him farewell, stating, "If we ever meet again, I shall be the richest man in the world, and I shall remember you. A week later, having recovered from his fever, Quatermain is hunting with his companions when they come across a man nearly dead from exposure to the elements. This is none other than Jose Silvestre, whom Quatermain and his men nurse back to a modicum of health. Knowing he will die soon, Silvestre bequeaths his link to King Solomon's mines, a document written by his ancestor, Jose da Silvestra, detailing in obscure terms the location of the fabled mines. Captain Good and Sir Henry are astonished at Quatermain's story, and the latter takes their amazement as disbelief and nearly quits their company. The two men assure Quatermain that they believe his story. In fact, upon learning of Quatermain's acquaintance with both the legend and the man, Sir Henry seeks Quatermain's assistance in locating his brother, who had gone off in a quest to find the diamond mines. He is so concerned for his brother's welfare that he offers to split the diamonds of King Solomon's mines equally between Quatermain and Captain Good, as all he desires is the safety of his only 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.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/chapters_24_to_26.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Lord Jim/section_10_part_0.txt

Lord Jim.chapters 24-26

chapters 24-26

{"name": "Chapters 24-26", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210215030710/https://www.novelguide.com/lord-jim/summaries/chapter24-26", "summary": "Four, Twenty Five and Twenty Six . Chapter Twenty Four begins with a description of Patusan, which Marlow visits nearly two years later. It is 'straight and sombre, and faces a misty ocean'. When Marlow goes there, the elderly headsman, who acts as his pilot, calls Jim 'Tuan Jim' with a tone of familiarity and awe. . . The narrative switches back to the time of Jim's arrival . On his journey up the river, Jim sat on Marlow's box and held the unloaded revolver. He tells Marlow later that he never felt as depressed and tired as when he was sitting there. When Jim thought he had arrived, he jumped out and a boat full of armed men appeared alongside him. He was startled and would have shot somebody if his gun had been loaded. Kassim then ran out to him and told him the Rajah wants to see him. . . Jim points out to Marlow that if he had been 'wiped out', this place 'would have been the loser'. Jim tells him this in the moonlight and says he is now trusted in all the houses. He also says he has no thought of leaving especially since he has been informed that Stein wants him to keep the house and trading goods. Initially Jim wants to disagree with this idea, but Marlow corrects him. Marlow also sees that 'all these things that made him master had made him captive too'. Jim looks at his surroundings with an 'owner's eye', but Marlow believes that it is they that possess him. . . In Chapter Twenty Five, Marlow and Jim visit the Rajah. They are both given coffee and Jim tells him he does not have to drink it. When they leave, Jim explains there is a risk that the Rajah might try to poison them. Jim takes the risk every month as many people trust him to do so. He then explains how he escaped the Rajah's courtyard . He suddenly decided to escape when his 'extreme peril dawned upon him'. He leapt over his confines and landed on a soft and sticky mud bank. He managed to crawl up it and, covered in mud, he crossed half the settlement. He noticed children run away in fear, but he is taken in by Doramin, the chief of the Bugis and rival of the Rajah . . . Chapter Twenty Six begins with Marlow describing Doramin as 'one of the most remarkable men of his race I had ever seen'. He has an immense bulk and looks 'monumental'. His son, Dain Waris, is a most distinguished youth and Jim now sees him as his best friend . . . Jim realizes how lucky he has been because when he first arrived in the Bugis community, he 'was in a most critical position'. Each man was afraid for himself and of the Rajah and a newcomer, Sherif Ali, and Jim could see that something needed to be done. He devised a plan and gained the community's confidence including that of Doramin and Dain Waris. Jim's idea was to take Sherif Ali's camp in the hills and directed the attack . Marlow recalls looking at Jim and thinking he dominated the forest. He also remembers the incident which gave Jim this new direction and thinks of it as 'a shadow in the light'. .", "analysis": "Four, Twenty Five and Twenty Six . On Marlow's visit to Jim in Patusan, it transpires that Jim has not only settled into having a new life there, he is also highly regarded . At last, Jim has found the admiration and status he has sought since he was child reading literature of heroic deeds. His successful plan to attack Sherif Ali's camp has helped to bring him this trusted status and his decision to formulate this can be seen to be inspired by his dreams of leadership and honorability."}

'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.' 'Doramin was one of the most remarkable men of his race I had ever seen. His bulk for a Malay was immense, but he did not look merely fat; he looked imposing, monumental. This motionless body, clad in rich stuffs, coloured silks, gold embroideries; this huge head, enfolded in a red-and-gold headkerchief; the flat, big, round face, wrinkled, furrowed, with two semicircular heavy folds starting on each side of wide, fierce nostrils, and enclosing a thick-lipped mouth; the throat like a bull; the vast corrugated brow overhanging the staring proud eyes--made a whole that, once seen, can never be forgotten. His impassive repose (he seldom stirred a limb when once he sat down) was like a display of dignity. He was never known to raise his voice. It was a hoarse and powerful murmur, slightly veiled as if heard from a distance. When he walked, two short, sturdy young fellows, naked to the waist, in white sarongs and with black skull-caps on the backs of their heads, sustained his elbows; they would ease him down and stand behind his chair till he wanted to rise, when he would turn his head slowly, as if with difficulty, to the right and to the left, and then they would catch him under his armpits and help him up. For all that, there was nothing of a cripple about him: on the contrary, all his ponderous movements were like manifestations of a mighty deliberate force. It was generally believed he consulted his wife as to public affairs; but nobody, as far as I know, had ever heard them exchange a single word. When they sat in state by the wide opening it was in silence. They could see below them in the declining light the vast expanse of the forest country, a dark sleeping sea of sombre green undulating as far as the violet and purple range of mountains; the shining sinuosity of the river like an immense letter S of beaten silver; the brown ribbon of houses following the sweep of both banks, overtopped by the twin hills uprising above the nearer tree-tops. They were wonderfully contrasted: she, light, delicate, spare, quick, a little witch-like, with a touch of motherly fussiness in her repose; he, facing her, immense and heavy, like a figure of a man roughly fashioned of stone, with something magnanimous and ruthless in his immobility. The son of these old people was a most distinguished youth. 'They had him late in life. Perhaps he was not really so young as he looked. Four- or five-and-twenty is not so young when a man is already father of a family at eighteen. When he entered the large room, lined and carpeted with fine mats, and with a high ceiling of white sheeting, where the couple sat in state surrounded by a most deferential retinue, he would make his way straight to Doramin, to kiss his hand--which the other abandoned to him, majestically--and then would step across to stand by his mother's chair. I suppose I may say they idolised him, but I never caught them giving him an overt glance. Those, it is true, were public functions. The room was generally thronged. The solemn formality of greetings and leave-takings, the profound respect expressed in gestures, on the faces, in the low whispers, is simply indescribable. "It's well worth seeing," Jim had assured me while we were crossing the river, on our way back. "They are like people in a book, aren't they?" he said triumphantly. "And Dain Waris--their son--is the best friend (barring you) I ever had. What Mr. Stein would call a good 'war-comrade.' I was in luck. Jove! I was in luck when I tumbled amongst them at my last gasp." He meditated with bowed head, then rousing himself he added--'"Of course I didn't go to sleep over it, but . . ." He paused again. "It seemed to come to me," he murmured. "All at once I saw what I had to do . . ." 'There was no doubt that it had come to him; and it had come through war, too, as is natural, since this power that came to him was the power to make peace. It is in this sense alone that might so often is right. You must not think he had seen his way at once. When he arrived the Bugis community was in a most critical position. "They were all afraid," he said to me--"each man afraid for himself; while I could see as plain as possible that they must do something at once, if they did not want to go under one after another, what between the Rajah and that vagabond Sherif." But to see that was nothing. When he got his idea he had to drive it into reluctant minds, through the bulwarks of fear, of selfishness. He drove it in at last. And that was nothing. He had to devise the means. He devised them--an audacious plan; and his task was only half done. He had to inspire with his own confidence a lot of people who had hidden and absurd reasons to hang back; he had to conciliate imbecile jealousies, and argue away all sorts of senseless mistrusts. Without the weight of Doramin's authority, and his son's fiery enthusiasm, he would have failed. Dain Waris, the distinguished youth, was the first to believe in him; theirs was one of those strange, profound, rare friendships between brown and white, in which the very difference of race seems to draw two human beings closer by some mystic element of sympathy. Of Dain Waris, his own people said with pride that he knew how to fight like a white man. This was true; he had that sort of courage--the courage in the open, I may say--but he had also a European mind. You meet them sometimes like that, and are surprised to discover unexpectedly a familiar turn of thought, an unobscured vision, a tenacity of purpose, a touch of altruism. Of small stature, but admirably well proportioned, Dain Waris had a proud carriage, a polished, easy bearing, a temperament like a clear flame. His dusky face, with big black eyes, was in action expressive, and in repose thoughtful. He was of a silent disposition; a firm glance, an ironic smile, a courteous deliberation of manner seemed to hint at great reserves of intelligence and power. Such beings open to the Western eye, so often concerned with mere surfaces, the hidden possibilities of races and lands over which hangs the mystery of unrecorded ages. He not only trusted Jim, he understood him, I firmly believe. I speak of him because he had captivated me. His--if I may say so--his caustic placidity, and, at the same time, his intelligent sympathy with Jim's aspirations, appealed to me. I seemed to behold the very origin of friendship. If Jim took the lead, the other had captivated his leader. In fact, Jim the leader was a captive in every sense. The land, the people, the friendship, the love, were like the jealous guardians of his body. Every day added a link to the fetters of that strange freedom. I felt convinced of it, as from day to day I learned more of the story. 'The story! Haven't I heard the story? I've heard it on the march, in camp (he made me scour the country after invisible game); I've listened to a good part of it on one of the twin summits, after climbing the last hundred feet or so on my hands and knees. Our escort (we had volunteer followers from village to village) had camped meantime on a bit of level ground half-way up the slope, and in the still breathless evening the smell of wood-smoke reached our nostrils from below with the penetrating delicacy of some choice scent. Voices also ascended, wonderful in their distinct and immaterial clearness. Jim sat on the trunk of a felled tree, and pulling out his pipe began to smoke. A new growth of grass and bushes was springing up; there were traces of an earthwork under a mass of thorny twigs. "It all started from here," he said, after a long and meditative silence. On the other hill, two hundred yards across a sombre precipice, I saw a line of high blackened stakes, showing here and there ruinously--the remnants of Sherif Ali's impregnable camp. 'But it had been taken, though. That had been his idea. He had mounted Doramin's old ordnance on the top of that hill; two rusty iron 7-pounders, a lot of small brass cannon--currency cannon. But if the brass guns represent wealth, they can also, when crammed recklessly to the muzzle, send a solid shot to some little distance. The thing was to get them up there. He showed me where he had fastened the cables, explained how he had improvised a rude capstan out of a hollowed log turning upon a pointed stake, indicated with the bowl of his pipe the outline of the earthwork. The last hundred feet of the ascent had been the most difficult. He had made himself responsible for success on his own head. He had induced the war party to work hard all night. Big fires lighted at intervals blazed all down the slope, "but up here," he explained, "the hoisting gang had to fly around in the dark." From the top he saw men moving on the hillside like ants at work. He himself on that night had kept on rushing down and climbing up like a squirrel, directing, encouraging, watching all along the line. Old Doramin had himself carried up the hill in his arm-chair. They put him down on the level place upon the slope, and he sat there in the light of one of the big fires--"amazing old chap--real old chieftain," said Jim, "with his little fierce eyes--a pair of immense flintlock pistols on his knees. Magnificent things, ebony, silver-mounted, with beautiful locks and a calibre like an old blunderbuss. A present from Stein, it seems--in exchange for that ring, you know. Used to belong to good old McNeil. God only knows how _he_ came by them. There he sat, moving neither hand nor foot, a flame of dry brushwood behind him, and lots of people rushing about, shouting and pulling round him--the most solemn, imposing old chap you can imagine. He wouldn't have had much chance if Sherif Ali had let his infernal crew loose at us and stampeded my lot. Eh? Anyhow, he had come up there to die if anything went wrong. No mistake! Jove! It thrilled me to see him there--like a rock. But the Sherif must have thought us mad, and never troubled to come and see how we got on. Nobody believed it could be done. Why! I think the very chaps who pulled and shoved and sweated over it did not believe it could be done! Upon my word I don't think they did. . . ." 'He stood erect, the smouldering brier-wood in his clutch, with a smile on his lips and a sparkle in his boyish eyes. I sat on the stump of a tree at his feet, and below us stretched the land, the great expanse of the forests, sombre under the sunshine, rolling like a sea, with glints of winding rivers, the grey spots of villages, and here and there a clearing, like an islet of light amongst the dark waves of continuous tree-tops. A brooding gloom lay over this vast and monotonous landscape; the light fell on it as if into an abyss. The land devoured the sunshine; only far off, along the coast, the empty ocean, smooth and polished within the faint haze, seemed to rise up to the sky in a wall of steel. 'And there I was with him, high in the sunshine on the top of that historic hill of his. He dominated the forest, the secular gloom, the old mankind. He was like a figure set up on a pedestal, to represent in his persistent youth the power, and perhaps the virtues, of races that never grow old, that have emerged from the gloom. I don't know why he should always have appeared to me symbolic. Perhaps this is the real cause of my interest in his fate. I don't know whether it was exactly fair to him to remember the incident which had given a new direction to his life, but at that very moment I remembered very distinctly. It was like a shadow in the light.'

Chapters 24-26

https://web.archive.org/web/20210215030710/https://www.novelguide.com/lord-jim/summaries/chapter24-26

Four, Twenty Five and Twenty Six . Chapter Twenty Four begins with a description of Patusan, which Marlow visits nearly two years later. It is 'straight and sombre, and faces a misty ocean'. When Marlow goes there, the elderly headsman, who acts as his pilot, calls Jim 'Tuan Jim' with a tone of familiarity and awe. . . The narrative switches back to the time of Jim's arrival . On his journey up the river, Jim sat on Marlow's box and held the unloaded revolver. He tells Marlow later that he never felt as depressed and tired as when he was sitting there. When Jim thought he had arrived, he jumped out and a boat full of armed men appeared alongside him. He was startled and would have shot somebody if his gun had been loaded. Kassim then ran out to him and told him the Rajah wants to see him. . . Jim points out to Marlow that if he had been 'wiped out', this place 'would have been the loser'. Jim tells him this in the moonlight and says he is now trusted in all the houses. He also says he has no thought of leaving especially since he has been informed that Stein wants him to keep the house and trading goods. Initially Jim wants to disagree with this idea, but Marlow corrects him. Marlow also sees that 'all these things that made him master had made him captive too'. Jim looks at his surroundings with an 'owner's eye', but Marlow believes that it is they that possess him. . . In Chapter Twenty Five, Marlow and Jim visit the Rajah. They are both given coffee and Jim tells him he does not have to drink it. When they leave, Jim explains there is a risk that the Rajah might try to poison them. Jim takes the risk every month as many people trust him to do so. He then explains how he escaped the Rajah's courtyard . He suddenly decided to escape when his 'extreme peril dawned upon him'. He leapt over his confines and landed on a soft and sticky mud bank. He managed to crawl up it and, covered in mud, he crossed half the settlement. He noticed children run away in fear, but he is taken in by Doramin, the chief of the Bugis and rival of the Rajah . . . Chapter Twenty Six begins with Marlow describing Doramin as 'one of the most remarkable men of his race I had ever seen'. He has an immense bulk and looks 'monumental'. His son, Dain Waris, is a most distinguished youth and Jim now sees him as his best friend . . . Jim realizes how lucky he has been because when he first arrived in the Bugis community, he 'was in a most critical position'. Each man was afraid for himself and of the Rajah and a newcomer, Sherif Ali, and Jim could see that something needed to be done. He devised a plan and gained the community's confidence including that of Doramin and Dain Waris. Jim's idea was to take Sherif Ali's camp in the hills and directed the attack . Marlow recalls looking at Jim and thinking he dominated the forest. He also remembers the incident which gave Jim this new direction and thinks of it as 'a shadow in the light'. .

Four, Twenty Five and Twenty Six . On Marlow's visit to Jim in Patusan, it transpires that Jim has not only settled into having a new life there, he is also highly regarded . At last, Jim has found the admiration and status he has sought since he was child reading literature of heroic deeds. His successful plan to attack Sherif Ali's camp has helped to bring him this trusted status and his decision to formulate this can be seen to be inspired by his dreams of leadership and honorability.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1130-chapters/31.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra/section_30_part_0.txt

The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra.act iv.scene vi

act iv, scene vi

{"name": "Act IV, Scene vi", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210116191009/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/antony-cleopatra/summary/act-iv-scene-vi", "summary": "On Caesar's side of the battle, we find Caesar confident that he will be victorious. He instructs his men of the following: he wants Antony taken alive, and he announces that the end of this battle will bring a time of universal peace. Caesar instructs Agrippa to put the defectors from Antony's army on the front line--he hopes Antony's morale will be hurt by having to face his own deserting men. All head out for some more planning, leaving Enobarbus by himself. He notes privately that Caesar has a strange sense of justice; Alexas, on an errand for Antony, ended up persuading King Herod to join Caesar's side , but regardless, Caesar had Alexas killed for it. Other cases are clearer: all the others who have deserted Antony have gained employment with Caesar, but lost their honor in doing so. Just as Enobarbus is deciding to be really ashamed of himself for his desertion, one of Caesar's soldier's announces the arrival of a messenger from Antony. The man bears Antony's good tidings to Enobarbus and the treasure Enobarbus left behind, plus a little more that Antony added on. Enobarbus is shocked and now even more ashamed of his desertion. He's sure his thoughts will kill him, as he certainly can't bear to fight against Antony. He hopes to die in a ditch, which he imagines is the only end fitting the miserable lowness of his recent actions.", "analysis": ""}

SCENE VI. Alexandria. CAESAR'S camp Flourish. Enter AGRIPPA, CAESAR, With DOLABELLA and ENOBARBUS CAESAR. Go forth, Agrippa, and begin the fight. Our will is Antony be took alive; Make it so known. AGRIPPA. Caesar, I shall. Exit CAESAR. The time of universal peace is near. Prove this a prosp'rous day, the three-nook'd world Shall bear the olive freely. Enter A MESSENGER MESSENGER. Antony Is come into the field. CAESAR. Go charge Agrippa Plant those that have revolted in the vant, That Antony may seem to spend his fury Upon himself. Exeunt all but ENOBARBUS ENOBARBUS. Alexas did revolt and went to Jewry on Affairs of Antony; there did dissuade Great Herod to incline himself to Caesar And leave his master Antony. For this pains Casaer hath hang'd him. Canidius and the rest That fell away have entertainment, but No honourable trust. I have done ill, Of which I do accuse myself so sorely That I will joy no more. Enter a SOLDIER of CAESAR'S SOLDIER. Enobarbus, Antony Hath after thee sent all thy treasure, with His bounty overplus. The messenger Came on my guard, and at thy tent is now Unloading of his mules. ENOBARBUS. I give it you. SOLDIER. Mock not, Enobarbus. I tell you true. Best you saf'd the bringer Out of the host. I must attend mine office, Or would have done't myself. Your emperor Continues still a Jove. Exit ENOBARBUS. I am alone the villain of the earth, And feel I am so most. O Antony, Thou mine of bounty, how wouldst thou have paid My better service, when my turpitude Thou dost so crown with gold! This blows my heart. If swift thought break it not, a swifter mean Shall outstrike thought; but thought will do't, I feel. I fight against thee? No! I will go seek Some ditch wherein to die; the foul'st best fits My latter part of life. Exit ACT_4|SC_7

Act IV, Scene vi

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

On Caesar's side of the battle, we find Caesar confident that he will be victorious. He instructs his men of the following: he wants Antony taken alive, and he announces that the end of this battle will bring a time of universal peace. Caesar instructs Agrippa to put the defectors from Antony's army on the front line--he hopes Antony's morale will be hurt by having to face his own deserting men. All head out for some more planning, leaving Enobarbus by himself. He notes privately that Caesar has a strange sense of justice; Alexas, on an errand for Antony, ended up persuading King Herod to join Caesar's side , but regardless, Caesar had Alexas killed for it. Other cases are clearer: all the others who have deserted Antony have gained employment with Caesar, but lost their honor in doing so. Just as Enobarbus is deciding to be really ashamed of himself for his desertion, one of Caesar's soldier's announces the arrival of a messenger from Antony. The man bears Antony's good tidings to Enobarbus and the treasure Enobarbus left behind, plus a little more that Antony added on. Enobarbus is shocked and now even more ashamed of his desertion. He's sure his thoughts will kill him, as he certainly can't bear to fight against Antony. He hopes to die in a ditch, which he imagines is the only end fitting the miserable lowness of his recent actions.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/14.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Lord Jim/section_13_part_0.txt

Lord Jim.chapter 14

chapter 14

{"name": "Chapter 14", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210118112654/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/lord-jim/summary/chapter-14", "summary": "Marlow has a sleepless night. We're betting Jim does, too. The next day he goes to Jim's sentencing, at which the court finds the crew members derelict in their duty and strip them of their officer certification. There you have it, folks: Jim has been publicly shamed. After the trial Marlow runs into two guys named Chester and Captain Robinson, who are planning some shady business and want to offer Jim a job. But Marlow, looking out for his new buddy, refuses to pass along the offer and the two men leave in a huff. Good one, Marlow. Way to be a friend.", "analysis": ""}

'I slept little, hurried over my breakfast, and after a slight hesitation gave up my early morning visit to my ship. It was really very wrong of me, because, though my chief mate was an excellent man all round, he was the victim of such black imaginings that if he did not get a letter from his wife at the expected time he would go quite distracted with rage and jealousy, lose all grip on the work, quarrel with all hands, and either weep in his cabin or develop such a ferocity of temper as all but drove the crew to the verge of mutiny. The thing had always seemed inexplicable to me: they had been married thirteen years; I had a glimpse of her once, and, honestly, I couldn't conceive a man abandoned enough to plunge into sin for the sake of such an unattractive person. I don't know whether I have not done wrong by refraining from putting that view before poor Selvin: the man made a little hell on earth for himself, and I also suffered indirectly, but some sort of, no doubt, false delicacy prevented me. The marital relations of seamen would make an interesting subject, and I could tell you instances. . . . However, this is not the place, nor the time, and we are concerned with Jim--who was unmarried. If his imaginative conscience or his pride; if all the extravagant ghosts and austere shades that were the disastrous familiars of his youth would not let him run away from the block, I, who of course can't be suspected of such familiars, was irresistibly impelled to go and see his head roll off. I wended my way towards the court. I didn't hope to be very much impressed or edified, or interested or even frightened--though, as long as there is any life before one, a jolly good fright now and then is a salutary discipline. But neither did I expect to be so awfully depressed. The bitterness of his punishment was in its chill and mean atmosphere. The real significance of crime is in its being a breach of faith with the community of mankind, and from that point of view he was no mean traitor, but his execution was a hole-and-corner affair. There was no high scaffolding, no scarlet cloth (did they have scarlet cloth on Tower Hill? They should have had), no awe-stricken multitude to be horrified at his guilt and be moved to tears at his fate--no air of sombre retribution. There was, as I walked along, the clear sunshine, a brilliance too passionate to be consoling, the streets full of jumbled bits of colour like a damaged kaleidoscope: yellow, green, blue, dazzling white, the brown nudity of an undraped shoulder, a bullock-cart with a red canopy, a company of native infantry in a drab body with dark heads marching in dusty laced boots, a native policeman in a sombre uniform of scanty cut and belted in patent leather, who looked up at me with orientally pitiful eyes as though his migrating spirit were suffering exceedingly from that unforeseen--what d'ye call 'em?--avatar--incarnation. Under the shade of a lonely tree in the courtyard, the villagers connected with the assault case sat in a picturesque group, looking like a chromo-lithograph of a camp in a book of Eastern travel. One missed the obligatory thread of smoke in the foreground and the pack-animals grazing. A blank yellow wall rose behind overtopping the tree, reflecting the glare. The court-room was sombre, seemed more vast. High up in the dim space the punkahs were swaying short to and fro, to and fro. Here and there a draped figure, dwarfed by the bare walls, remained without stirring amongst the rows of empty benches, as if absorbed in pious meditation. The plaintiff, who had been beaten,--an obese chocolate-coloured man with shaved head, one fat breast bare and a bright yellow caste-mark above the bridge of his nose,--sat in pompous immobility: only his eyes glittered, rolling in the gloom, and the nostrils dilated and collapsed violently as he breathed. Brierly dropped into his seat looking done up, as though he had spent the night in sprinting on a cinder-track. The pious sailing-ship skipper appeared excited and made uneasy movements, as if restraining with difficulty an impulse to stand up and exhort us earnestly to prayer and repentance. The head of the magistrate, delicately pale under the neatly arranged hair, resembled the head of a hopeless invalid after he had been washed and brushed and propped up in bed. He moved aside the vase of flowers--a bunch of purple with a few pink blossoms on long stalks--and seizing in both hands a long sheet of bluish paper, ran his eye over it, propped his forearms on the edge of the desk, and began to read aloud in an even, distinct, and careless voice. 'By Jove! For all my foolishness about scaffolds and heads rolling off--I assure you it was infinitely worse than a beheading. A heavy sense of finality brooded over all this, unrelieved by the hope of rest and safety following the fall of the axe. These proceedings had all the cold vengefulness of a death-sentence, and the cruelty of a sentence of exile. This is how I looked at it that morning--and even now I seem to see an undeniable vestige of truth in that exaggerated view of a common occurrence. You may imagine how strongly I felt this at the time. Perhaps it is for that reason that I could not bring myself to admit the finality. The thing was always with me, I was always eager to take opinion on it, as though it had not been practically settled: individual opinion--international opinion--by Jove! That Frenchman's, for instance. His own country's pronouncement was uttered in the passionless and definite phraseology a machine would use, if machines could speak. The head of the magistrate was half hidden by the paper, his brow was like alabaster. 'There were several questions before the court. The first as to whether the ship was in every respect fit and seaworthy for the voyage. The court found she was not. The next point, I remember, was, whether up to the time of the accident the ship had been navigated with proper and seamanlike care. They said Yes to that, goodness knows why, and then they declared that there was no evidence to show the exact cause of the accident. A floating derelict probably. I myself remember that a Norwegian barque bound out with a cargo of pitch-pine had been given up as missing about that time, and it was just the sort of craft that would capsize in a squall and float bottom up for months--a kind of maritime ghoul on the prowl to kill ships in the dark. Such wandering corpses are common enough in the North Atlantic, which is haunted by all the terrors of the sea,--fogs, icebergs, dead ships bent upon mischief, and long sinister gales that fasten upon one like a vampire till all the strength and the spirit and even hope are gone, and one feels like the empty shell of a man. But there--in those seas--the incident was rare enough to resemble a special arrangement of a malevolent providence, which, unless it had for its object the killing of a donkeyman and the bringing of worse than death upon Jim, appeared an utterly aimless piece of devilry. This view occurring to me took off my attention. For a time I was aware of the magistrate's voice as a sound merely; but in a moment it shaped itself into distinct words . . . "in utter disregard of their plain duty," it said. The next sentence escaped me somehow, and then . . . "abandoning in the moment of danger the lives and property confided to their charge" . . . went on the voice evenly, and stopped. A pair of eyes under the white forehead shot darkly a glance above the edge of the paper. I looked for Jim hurriedly, as though I had expected him to disappear. He was very still--but he was there. He sat pink and fair and extremely attentive. "Therefore, . . ." began the voice emphatically. He stared with parted lips, hanging upon the words of the man behind the desk. These came out into the stillness wafted on the wind made by the punkahs, and I, watching for their effect upon him, caught only the fragments of official language. . . . "The Court . . . Gustav So-and-so . . . master . . . native of Germany . . . James So-and-so . . . mate . . . certificates cancelled." A silence fell. The magistrate had dropped the paper, and, leaning sideways on the arm of his chair, began to talk with Brierly easily. People started to move out; others were pushing in, and I also made for the door. Outside I stood still, and when Jim passed me on his way to the gate, I caught at his arm and detained him. The look he gave discomposed me, as though I had been responsible for his state he looked at me as if I had been the embodied evil of life. "It's all over," I stammered. "Yes," he said thickly. "And now let no man . . ." He jerked his arm out of my grasp. I watched his back as he went away. It was a long street, and he remained in sight for some time. He walked rather slow, and straddling his legs a little, as if he had found it difficult to keep a straight line. Just before I lost him I fancied he staggered a bit. '"Man overboard," said a deep voice behind me. Turning round, I saw a fellow I knew slightly, a West Australian; Chester was his name. He, too, had been looking after Jim. He was a man with an immense girth of chest, a rugged, clean-shaved face of mahogany colour, and two blunt tufts of iron-grey, thick, wiry hairs on his upper lip. He had been pearler, wrecker, trader, whaler too, I believe; in his own words--anything and everything a man may be at sea, but a pirate. The Pacific, north and south, was his proper hunting-ground; but he had wandered so far afield looking for a cheap steamer to buy. Lately he had discovered--so he said--a guano island somewhere, but its approaches were dangerous, and the anchorage, such as it was, could not be considered safe, to say the least of it. "As good as a gold-mine," he would exclaim. "Right bang in the middle of the Walpole Reefs, and if it's true enough that you can get no holding-ground anywhere in less than forty fathom, then what of that? There are the hurricanes, too. But it's a first-rate thing. As good as a gold-mine--better! Yet there's not a fool of them that will see it. I can't get a skipper or a shipowner to go near the place. So I made up my mind to cart the blessed stuff myself." . . . This was what he required a steamer for, and I knew he was just then negotiating enthusiastically with a Parsee firm for an old, brig-rigged, sea-anachronism of ninety horse-power. We had met and spoken together several times. He looked knowingly after Jim. "Takes it to heart?" he asked scornfully. "Very much," I said. "Then he's no good," he opined. "What's all the to-do about? A bit of ass's skin. That never yet made a man. You must see things exactly as they are--if you don't, you may just as well give in at once. You will never do anything in this world. Look at me. I made it a practice never to take anything to heart." "Yes," I said, "you see things as they are." "I wish I could see my partner coming along, that's what I wish to see," he said. "Know my partner? Old Robinson. Yes; _the_ Robinson. Don't _you_ know? The notorious Robinson. The man who smuggled more opium and bagged more seals in his time than any loose Johnny now alive. They say he used to board the sealing-schooners up Alaska way when the fog was so thick that the Lord God, He alone, could tell one man from another. Holy-Terror Robinson. That's the man. He is with me in that guano thing. The best chance he ever came across in his life." He put his lips to my ear. "Cannibal?--well, they used to give him the name years and years ago. You remember the story? A shipwreck on the west side of Stewart Island; that's right; seven of them got ashore, and it seems they did not get on very well together. Some men are too cantankerous for anything--don't know how to make the best of a bad job--don't see things as they are--as they _are_, my boy! And then what's the consequence? Obvious! Trouble, trouble; as likely as not a knock on the head; and serve 'em right too. That sort is the most useful when it's dead. The story goes that a boat of Her Majesty's ship Wolverine found him kneeling on the kelp, naked as the day he was born, and chanting some psalm-tune or other; light snow was falling at the time. He waited till the boat was an oar's length from the shore, and then up and away. They chased him for an hour up and down the boulders, till a marihe flung a stone that took him behind the ear providentially and knocked him senseless. Alone? Of course. But that's like that tale of sealing-schooners; the Lord God knows the right and the wrong of that story. The cutter did not investigate much. They wrapped him in a boat-cloak and took him off as quick as they could, with a dark night coming on, the weather threatening, and the ship firing recall guns every five minutes. Three weeks afterwards he was as well as ever. He didn't allow any fuss that was made on shore to upset him; he just shut his lips tight, and let people screech. It was bad enough to have lost his ship, and all he was worth besides, without paying attention to the hard names they called him. That's the man for me." He lifted his arm for a signal to some one down the street. "He's got a little money, so I had to let him into my thing. Had to! It would have been sinful to throw away such a find, and I was cleaned out myself. It cut me to the quick, but I could see the matter just as it was, and if I _must_ share--thinks I--with any man, then give me Robinson. I left him at breakfast in the hotel to come to court, because I've an idea. . . . Ah! Good morning, Captain Robinson. . . . Friend of mine, Captain Robinson." 'An emaciated patriarch in a suit of white drill, a solah topi with a green-lined rim on a head trembling with age, joined us after crossing the street in a trotting shuffle, and stood propped with both hands on the handle of an umbrella. A white beard with amber streaks hung lumpily down to his waist. He blinked his creased eyelids at me in a bewildered way. "How do you do? how do you do?" he piped amiably, and tottered. "A little deaf," said Chester aside. "Did you drag him over six thousand miles to get a cheap steamer?" I asked. "I would have taken him twice round the world as soon as look at him," said Chester with immense energy. "The steamer will be the making of us, my lad. Is it my fault that every skipper and shipowner in the whole of blessed Australasia turns out a blamed fool? Once I talked for three hours to a man in Auckland. 'Send a ship,' I said, 'send a ship. I'll give you half of the first cargo for yourself, free gratis for nothing--just to make a good start.' Says he, 'I wouldn't do it if there was no other place on earth to send a ship to.' Perfect ass, of course. Rocks, currents, no anchorage, sheer cliff to lay to, no insurance company would take the risk, didn't see how he could get loaded under three years. Ass! I nearly went on my knees to him. 'But look at the thing as it is,' says I. 'Damn rocks and hurricanes. Look at it as it is. There's guano there Queensland sugar-planters would fight for--fight for on the quay, I tell you.' . . . What can you do with a fool? . . . 'That's one of your little jokes, Chester,' he says. . . . Joke! I could have wept. Ask Captain Robinson here. . . . And there was another shipowning fellow--a fat chap in a white waistcoat in Wellington, who seemed to think I was up to some swindle or other. 'I don't know what sort of fool you're looking for,' he says, 'but I am busy just now. Good morning.' I longed to take him in my two hands and smash him through the window of his own office. But I didn't. I was as mild as a curate. 'Think of it,' says I. '_Do_ think it over. I'll call to-morrow.' He grunted something about being 'out all day.' On the stairs I felt ready to beat my head against the wall from vexation. Captain Robinson here can tell you. It was awful to think of all that lovely stuff lying waste under the sun--stuff that would send the sugar-cane shooting sky-high. The making of Queensland! The making of Queensland! And in Brisbane, where I went to have a last try, they gave me the name of a lunatic. Idiots! The only sensible man I came across was the cabman who drove me about. A broken-down swell he was, I fancy. Hey! Captain Robinson? You remember I told you about my cabby in Brisbane--don't you? The chap had a wonderful eye for things. He saw it all in a jiffy. It was a real pleasure to talk with him. One evening after a devil of a day amongst shipowners I felt so bad that, says I, 'I must get drunk. Come along; I must get drunk, or I'll go mad.' 'I am your man,' he says; 'go ahead.' I don't know what I would have done without him. Hey! Captain Robinson." 'He poked the ribs of his partner. "He! he! he!" laughed the Ancient, looked aimlessly down the street, then peered at me doubtfully with sad, dim pupils. . . . "He! he! he!" . . . He leaned heavier on the umbrella, and dropped his gaze on the ground. I needn't tell you I had tried to get away several times, but Chester had foiled every attempt by simply catching hold of my coat. "One minute. I've a notion." "What's your infernal notion?" I exploded at last. "If you think I am going in with you . . ." "No, no, my boy. Too late, if you wanted ever so much. We've got a steamer." "You've got the ghost of a steamer," I said. "Good enough for a start--there's no superior nonsense about us. Is there, Captain Robinson?" "No! no! no!" croaked the old man without lifting his eyes, and the senile tremble of his head became almost fierce with determination. "I understand you know that young chap," said Chester, with a nod at the street from which Jim had disappeared long ago. "He's been having grub with you in the Malabar last night--so I was told." 'I said that was true, and after remarking that he too liked to live well and in style, only that, for the present, he had to be saving of every penny--"none too many for the business! Isn't that so, Captain Robinson?"--he squared his shoulders and stroked his dumpy moustache, while the notorious Robinson, coughing at his side, clung more than ever to the handle of the umbrella, and seemed ready to subside passively into a heap of old bones. "You see, the old chap has all the money," whispered Chester confidentially. "I've been cleaned out trying to engineer the dratted thing. But wait a bit, wait a bit. The good time is coming." . . . He seemed suddenly astonished at the signs of impatience I gave. "Oh, crakee!" he cried; "I am telling you of the biggest thing that ever was, and you . . ." "I have an appointment," I pleaded mildly. "What of that?" he asked with genuine surprise; "let it wait." "That's exactly what I am doing now," I remarked; "hadn't you better tell me what it is you want?" "Buy twenty hotels like that," he growled to himself; "and every joker boarding in them too--twenty times over." He lifted his head smartly "I want that young chap." "I don't understand," I said. "He's no good, is he?" said Chester crisply. "I know nothing about it," I protested. "Why, you told me yourself he was taking it to heart," argued Chester. "Well, in my opinion a chap who . . . Anyhow, he can't be much good; but then you see I am on the look-out for somebody, and I've just got a thing that will suit him. I'll give him a job on my island." He nodded significantly. "I'm going to dump forty coolies there--if I've to steal 'em. Somebody must work the stuff. Oh! I mean to act square: wooden shed, corrugated-iron roof--I know a man in Hobart who will take my bill at six months for the materials. I do. Honour bright. Then there's the water-supply. I'll have to fly round and get somebody to trust me for half-a-dozen second-hand iron tanks. Catch rain-water, hey? Let him take charge. Make him supreme boss over the coolies. Good idea, isn't it? What do you say?" "There are whole years when not a drop of rain falls on Walpole," I said, too amazed to laugh. He bit his lip and seemed bothered. "Oh, well, I will fix up something for them--or land a supply. Hang it all! That's not the question." 'I said nothing. I had a rapid vision of Jim perched on a shadowless rock, up to his knees in guano, with the screams of sea-birds in his ears, the incandescent ball of the sun above his head; the empty sky and the empty ocean all a-quiver, simmering together in the heat as far as the eye could reach. "I wouldn't advise my worst enemy . . ." I began. "What's the matter with you?" cried Chester; "I mean to give him a good screw--that is, as soon as the thing is set going, of course. It's as easy as falling off a log. Simply nothing to do; two six-shooters in his belt . . . Surely he wouldn't be afraid of anything forty coolies could do--with two six-shooters and he the only armed man too! It's much better than it looks. I want you to help me to talk him over." "No!" I shouted. Old Robinson lifted his bleared eyes dismally for a moment, Chester looked at me with infinite contempt. "So you wouldn't advise him?" he uttered slowly. "Certainly not," I answered, as indignant as though he had requested me to help murder somebody; "moreover, I am sure he wouldn't. He is badly cut up, but he isn't mad as far as I know." "He is no earthly good for anything," Chester mused aloud. "He would just have done for me. If you only could see a thing as it is, you would see it's the very thing for him. And besides . . . Why! it's the most splendid, sure chance . . ." He got angry suddenly. "I must have a man. There! . . ." He stamped his foot and smiled unpleasantly. "Anyhow, I could guarantee the island wouldn't sink under him--and I believe he is a bit particular on that point." "Good morning," I said curtly. He looked at me as though I had been an incomprehensible fool. . . . "Must be moving, Captain Robinson," he yelled suddenly into the old man's ear. "These Parsee Johnnies are waiting for us to clinch the bargain." He took his partner under the arm with a firm grip, swung him round, and, unexpectedly, leered at me over his shoulder. "I was trying to do him a kindness," he asserted, with an air and tone that made my blood boil. "Thank you for nothing--in his name," I rejoined. "Oh! you are devilish smart," he sneered; "but you are like the rest of them. Too much in the clouds. See what you will do with him." "I don't know that I want to do anything with him." "Don't you?" he spluttered; his grey moustache bristled with anger, and by his side the notorious Robinson, propped on the umbrella, stood with his back to me, as patient and still as a worn-out cab-horse. "I haven't found a guano island," I said. "It's my belief you wouldn't know one if you were led right up to it by the hand," he riposted quickly; "and in this world you've got to see a thing first, before you can make use of it. Got to see it through and through at that, neither more nor less." "And get others to see it, too," I insinuated, with a glance at the bowed back by his side. Chester snorted at me. "His eyes are right enough--don't you worry. He ain't a puppy." "Oh, dear, no!" I said. "Come along, Captain Robinson," he shouted, with a sort of bullying deference under the rim of the old man's hat; the Holy Terror gave a submissive little jump. The ghost of a steamer was waiting for them, Fortune on that fair isle! They made a curious pair of Argonauts. Chester strode on leisurely, well set up, portly, and of conquering mien; the other, long, wasted, drooping, and hooked to his arm, shuffled his withered shanks with desperate haste.'

Chapter 14

https://web.archive.org/web/20210118112654/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/lord-jim/summary/chapter-14

Marlow has a sleepless night. We're betting Jim does, too. The next day he goes to Jim's sentencing, at which the court finds the crew members derelict in their duty and strip them of their officer certification. There you have it, folks: Jim has been publicly shamed. After the trial Marlow runs into two guys named Chester and Captain Robinson, who are planning some shady business and want to offer Jim a job. But Marlow, looking out for his new buddy, refuses to pass along the offer and the two men leave in a huff. Good one, Marlow. Way to be a friend.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/chapters_15_to_17.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Lord Jim/section_12_part_0.txt

Lord Jim.chapters 15-17

chapters 15-17

{"name": "Chapters 15-17", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219145744/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/l/lord-jim/summary-and-analysis/chapters-1517", "summary": "Marlow finally found Jim gazing emptily off the quay, and he told him to come to his room. Jim followed him, seemingly still in a daze. Marlow led him into his bedroom and began writing letters immediately, so that Jim could feel that he was not totally alone, but that he was sufficiently alone so that he could confront his unhappiness and despair during this darkest moment of his life. Marlow tells us that throughout that afternoon and into the evening, he, Marlow, filled sheet after sheet of fresh paper, stopping only momentarily to notice Jim's convulsive shoulders and his struggling for breath as he stood rooted in front of a glass door. Then, suddenly, Jim opened the glass door and lurched onto the upstairs verandah, as if to throw himself off. Marlow noted his straight, resolute outline. Symbolically, it seemed as though Jim were alone, abandoned on the brink of a dark and hopeless ocean. What would have happened if Marlow had offered Jim the job as Chester's overseer? He felt, at that moment, that he had saved Jim from what would probably have been a living death on the Guano Island. But, at the same time, Marlow felt that \"to bury him would have been such an easy kindness.\" What had he saved Jim for? Marlow was aware of a sense of deep responsibility for Jim, a sense of kinship and responsibility that he could no longer ignore. Marlow breaks the suspense and tells us that eventually Jim became \"loved, trusted, admired.\" He became a \"legend of strength and prowess . . . the stuff of a hero.\" In short, Marlow says, Jim \"captured much honour,\" meaning that Jim became a hero in the eyes of himself and others. This is what Jim desired so desperately and what he thought was denied to him because of his actions aboard the Patna. Jim's future, then, was not as black as he believed it was; eventually, he would perform an act of bravery that would balance and cancel out the enormous guilt that he had carried after jumping from the Patna and leaving 800 Moslems to what he believed was certain death. At that moment, a violent tropical rainstorm suddenly ruptured the stillness, and Jim stepped back into the room. At last, he seemed ready to talk. Desperately, he said that a person was \"bound to come upon some sort of a chance to get it all back -- must!\" He was determined to convince himself that he would someday have a chance to redeem himself in his own eyes, a chance to do something that would erase the blot of guilt on his character. Marlow tried to force Jim to talk about the future -- how he planned to earn money, and how he planned to pay for food and lodging. But Jim refused to talk about practical matters. \"That isn't the thing,\" he said, and he added that it was useless for Marlow to try and convince him to accept the back pay that was still due him from the Patna. Marlow found Jim's torturous soul-searching to be blindly melodramatic; he couldn't understand why Jim seemed determined to dwell on \"some deep idea.\" He sensed intuitively that he himself could probably never heal the agony in Jim's \"wounded spirit.\" Nevertheless, Marlow told Jim that he had written a letter of recommendation to a man who would give Jim a second chance. He stressed that he, Marlow, had faith in Jim's goodness and promise even if Jim did not; he was making himself \"unreservedly responsible\" for Jim. After awhile, the rain stopped and Jim leapt up. \"It is noble of you!\" he shouted. Marlow was so stunned that he wondered if Jim were mocking him. Jim seemed madly exhilarated. But the young man was not mocking Marlow's offer. His eyes were bright, and his voice was a stammer of half-sentences. He was agitated and seemingly wild with newfound confidence. \"You have given me a clean slate,\" he announced to Marlow.", "analysis": "After showing Jim at his lowest point in the preceding chapter, Marlow tells us that he lived to see Jim \"loved, trusted, admired, with a legend of strength and prowess forming round his name as though he had been the stuff of a hero.\" It is as though Marlow is telling us to wait -- because his evaluation of Jim is correct. That is, Jim is indeed one of us. He also lets us know that had he not interceded between Chester and Jim, then he would never have seen Jim again because he learns later that the men on Chester's guano enterprise disappeared. And yet, Chester, and all that pertains to him, is important because it shows Marlow's development. Marlow still feels that Jim is concerned not so much with his guilt as he is with the humiliating and treacherous \"Jump\" and its shameful consequences. Jim is seen here writhing in the agonies of romantic melancholy with his \"refined sensibilities and his fine feelings, fine longings -- a sort of sublimated, idealized selfishness\"; that is, Jim is too \"fine a fellow\" to throw over to Chester and his kind. These descriptions of Jim prepare us for Stein's firm statement that Jim is a romantic. And certainly in the romantic tradition, Jim's raging emotions within are symbolically reflected in the raging storm outside. Throughout these scenes, Marlow watches Jim writhe and squirm in agony like one of Stein's impaled beetles, but then Marlow is also impaled on the sharp point of his own new affection for Jim and the sense of his responsibility for Jim. Since the trial is now over, Marlow turns to practical matters , and when Marlow volunteers to help, Jim responds by saying, \"You can't.\" Of course, Marlow meant \"help with practical matters,\" but Jim means help in an entirely different sense -- in assuaging his feelings of disgrace and guilt. Thus, when Marlow tells Jim that he is writing to a man in Jim's behalf, Jim's appreciation is immense -- mainly because he now realizes that there is someone who still cares for him, or believes in him, a fact which gives Jim a new confidence in himself. Jim's soaring gratitude and unbounded delight as Marlow unfolds his plan indicate a relief and a deliverance from an alternative so forbidding as to suggest nothing short of death itself."}

'I did not start in search of Jim at once, only because I had really an appointment which I could not neglect. Then, as ill-luck would have it, in my agent's office I was fastened upon by a fellow fresh from Madagascar with a little scheme for a wonderful piece of business. It had something to do with cattle and cartridges and a Prince Ravonalo something; but the pivot of the whole affair was the stupidity of some admiral--Admiral Pierre, I think. Everything turned on that, and the chap couldn't find words strong enough to express his confidence. He had globular eyes starting out of his head with a fishy glitter, bumps on his forehead, and wore his long hair brushed back without a parting. He had a favourite phrase which he kept on repeating triumphantly, "The minimum of risk with the maximum of profit is my motto. What?" He made my head ache, spoiled my tiffin, but got his own out of me all right; and as soon as I had shaken him off, I made straight for the water-side. I caught sight of Jim leaning over the parapet of the quay. Three native boatmen quarrelling over five annas were making an awful row at his elbow. He didn't hear me come up, but spun round as if the slight contact of my finger had released a catch. "I was looking," he stammered. I don't remember what I said, not much anyhow, but he made no difficulty in following me to the hotel. 'He followed me as manageable as a little child, with an obedient air, with no sort of manifestation, rather as though he had been waiting for me there to come along and carry him off. I need not have been so surprised as I was at his tractability. On all the round earth, which to some seems so big and that others affect to consider as rather smaller than a mustard-seed, he had no place where he could--what shall I say?--where he could withdraw. That's it! Withdraw--be alone with his loneliness. He walked by my side very calm, glancing here and there, and once turned his head to look after a Sidiboy fireman in a cutaway coat and yellowish trousers, whose black face had silky gleams like a lump of anthracite coal. I doubt, however, whether he saw anything, or even remained all the time aware of my companionship, because if I had not edged him to the left here, or pulled him to the right there, I believe he would have gone straight before him in any direction till stopped by a wall or some other obstacle. I steered him into my bedroom, and sat down at once to write letters. This was the only place in the world (unless, perhaps, the Walpole Reef--but that was not so handy) where he could have it out with himself without being bothered by the rest of the universe. The damned thing--as he had expressed it--had not made him invisible, but I behaved exactly as though he were. No sooner in my chair I bent over my writing-desk like a medieval scribe, and, but for the movement of the hand holding the pen, remained anxiously quiet. I can't say I was frightened; but I certainly kept as still as if there had been something dangerous in the room, that at the first hint of a movement on my part would be provoked to pounce upon me. There was not much in the room--you know how these bedrooms are--a sort of four-poster bedstead under a mosquito-net, two or three chairs, the table I was writing at, a bare floor. A glass door opened on an upstairs verandah, and he stood with his face to it, having a hard time with all possible privacy. Dusk fell; I lit a candle with the greatest economy of movement and as much prudence as though it were an illegal proceeding. There is no doubt that he had a very hard time of it, and so had I, even to the point, I must own, of wishing him to the devil, or on Walpole Reef at least. It occurred to me once or twice that, after all, Chester was, perhaps, the man to deal effectively with such a disaster. That strange idealist had found a practical use for it at once--unerringly, as it were. It was enough to make one suspect that, maybe, he really could see the true aspect of things that appeared mysterious or utterly hopeless to less imaginative persons. I wrote and wrote; I liquidated all the arrears of my correspondence, and then went on writing to people who had no reason whatever to expect from me a gossipy letter about nothing at all. At times I stole a sidelong glance. He was rooted to the spot, but convulsive shudders ran down his back; his shoulders would heave suddenly. He was fighting, he was fighting--mostly for his breath, as it seemed. The massive shadows, cast all one way from the straight flame of the candle, seemed possessed of gloomy consciousness; the immobility of the furniture had to my furtive eye an air of attention. I was becoming fanciful in the midst of my industrious scribbling; and though, when the scratching of my pen stopped for a moment, there was complete silence and stillness in the room, I suffered from that profound disturbance and confusion of thought which is caused by a violent and menacing uproar--of a heavy gale at sea, for instance. Some of you may know what I mean: that mingled anxiety, distress, and irritation with a sort of craven feeling creeping in--not pleasant to acknowledge, but which gives a quite special merit to one's endurance. I don't claim any merit for standing the stress of Jim's emotions; I could take refuge in the letters; I could have written to strangers if necessary. Suddenly, as I was taking up a fresh sheet of notepaper, I heard a low sound, the first sound that, since we had been shut up together, had come to my ears in the dim stillness of the room. I remained with my head down, with my hand arrested. Those who have kept vigil by a sick-bed have heard such faint sounds in the stillness of the night watches, sounds wrung from a racked body, from a weary soul. He pushed the glass door with such force that all the panes rang: he stepped out, and I held my breath, straining my ears without knowing what else I expected to hear. He was really taking too much to heart an empty formality which to Chester's rigorous criticism seemed unworthy the notice of a man who could see things as they were. An empty formality; a piece of parchment. Well, well. As to an inaccessible guano deposit, that was another story altogether. One could intelligibly break one's heart over that. A feeble burst of many voices mingled with the tinkle of silver and glass floated up from the dining-room below; through the open door the outer edge of the light from my candle fell on his back faintly; beyond all was black; he stood on the brink of a vast obscurity, like a lonely figure by the shore of a sombre and hopeless ocean. There was the Walpole Reef in it--to be sure--a speck in the dark void, a straw for the drowning man. My compassion for him took the shape of the thought that I wouldn't have liked his people to see him at that moment. I found it trying myself. His back was no longer shaken by his gasps; he stood straight as an arrow, faintly visible and still; and the meaning of this stillness sank to the bottom of my soul like lead into the water, and made it so heavy that for a second I wished heartily that the only course left open for me was to pay for his funeral. Even the law had done with him. To bury him would have been such an easy kindness! It would have been so much in accordance with the wisdom of life, which consists in putting out of sight all the reminders of our folly, of our weakness, of our mortality; all that makes against our efficiency--the memory of our failures, the hints of our undying fears, the bodies of our dead friends. Perhaps he did take it too much to heart. And if so then--Chester's offer. . . . At this point I took up a fresh sheet and began to write resolutely. There was nothing but myself between him and the dark ocean. I had a sense of responsibility. If I spoke, would that motionless and suffering youth leap into the obscurity--clutch at the straw? I found out how difficult it may be sometimes to make a sound. There is a weird power in a spoken word. And why the devil not? I was asking myself persistently while I drove on with my writing. All at once, on the blank page, under the very point of the pen, the two figures of Chester and his antique partner, very distinct and complete, would dodge into view with stride and gestures, as if reproduced in the field of some optical toy. I would watch them for a while. No! They were too phantasmal and extravagant to enter into any one's fate. And a word carries far--very far--deals destruction through time as the bullets go flying through space. I said nothing; and he, out there with his back to the light, as if bound and gagged by all the invisible foes of man, made no stir and made no sound.' 'The time was coming when I should see him loved, trusted, admired, with a legend of strength and prowess forming round his name as though he had been the stuff of a hero. It's true--I assure you; as true as I'm sitting here talking about him in vain. He, on his side, had that faculty of beholding at a hint the face of his desire and the shape of his dream, without which the earth would know no lover and no adventurer. He captured much honour and an Arcadian happiness (I won't say anything about innocence) in the bush, and it was as good to him as the honour and the Arcadian happiness of the streets to another man. Felicity, felicity--how shall I say it?--is quaffed out of a golden cup in every latitude: the flavour is with you--with you alone, and you can make it as intoxicating as you please. He was of the sort that would drink deep, as you may guess from what went before. I found him, if not exactly intoxicated, then at least flushed with the elixir at his lips. He had not obtained it at once. There had been, as you know, a period of probation amongst infernal ship-chandlers, during which he had suffered and I had worried about--about--my trust--you may call it. I don't know that I am completely reassured now, after beholding him in all his brilliance. That was my last view of him--in a strong light, dominating, and yet in complete accord with his surroundings--with the life of the forests and with the life of men. I own that I was impressed, but I must admit to myself that after all this is not the lasting impression. He was protected by his isolation, alone of his own superior kind, in close touch with Nature, that keeps faith on such easy terms with her lovers. But I cannot fix before my eye the image of his safety. I shall always remember him as seen through the open door of my room, taking, perhaps, too much to heart the mere consequences of his failure. I am pleased, of course, that some good--and even some splendour--came out of my endeavours; but at times it seems to me it would have been better for my peace of mind if I had not stood between him and Chester's confoundedly generous offer. I wonder what his exuberant imagination would have made of Walpole islet--that most hopelessly forsaken crumb of dry land on the face of the waters. It is not likely I would ever have heard, for I must tell you that Chester, after calling at some Australian port to patch up his brig-rigged sea-anachronism, steamed out into the Pacific with a crew of twenty-two hands all told, and the only news having a possible bearing upon the mystery of his fate was the news of a hurricane which is supposed to have swept in its course over the Walpole shoals, a month or so afterwards. Not a vestige of the Argonauts ever turned up; not a sound came out of the waste. Finis! The Pacific is the most discreet of live, hot-tempered oceans: the chilly Antarctic can keep a secret too, but more in the manner of a grave. 'And there is a sense of blessed finality in such discretion, which is what we all more or less sincerely are ready to admit--for what else is it that makes the idea of death supportable? End! Finis! the potent word that exorcises from the house of life the haunting shadow of fate. This is what--notwithstanding the testimony of my eyes and his own earnest assurances--I miss when I look back upon Jim's success. While there's life there is hope, truly; but there is fear too. I don't mean to say that I regret my action, nor will I pretend that I can't sleep o' nights in consequence; still, the idea obtrudes itself that he made so much of his disgrace while it is the guilt alone that matters. He was not--if I may say so--clear to me. He was not clear. And there is a suspicion he was not clear to himself either. There were his fine sensibilities, his fine feelings, his fine longings--a sort of sublimated, idealised selfishness. He was--if you allow me to say so--very fine; very fine--and very unfortunate. A little coarser nature would not have borne the strain; it would have had to come to terms with itself--with a sigh, with a grunt, or even with a guffaw; a still coarser one would have remained invulnerably ignorant and completely uninteresting. 'But he was too interesting or too unfortunate to be thrown to the dogs, or even to Chester. I felt this while I sat with my face over the paper and he fought and gasped, struggling for his breath in that terribly stealthy way, in my room; I felt it when he rushed out on the verandah as if to fling himself over--and didn't; I felt it more and more all the time he remained outside, faintly lighted on the background of night, as if standing on the shore of a sombre and hopeless sea. 'An abrupt heavy rumble made me lift my head. The noise seemed to roll away, and suddenly a searching and violent glare fell on the blind face of the night. The sustained and dazzling flickers seemed to last for an unconscionable time. The growl of the thunder increased steadily while I looked at him, distinct and black, planted solidly upon the shores of a sea of light. At the moment of greatest brilliance the darkness leaped back with a culminating crash, and he vanished before my dazzled eyes as utterly as though he had been blown to atoms. A blustering sigh passed; furious hands seemed to tear at the shrubs, shake the tops of the trees below, slam doors, break window-panes, all along the front of the building. He stepped in, closing the door behind him, and found me bending over the table: my sudden anxiety as to what he would say was very great, and akin to a fright. "May I have a cigarette?" he asked. I gave a push to the box without raising my head. "I want--want--tobacco," he muttered. I became extremely buoyant. "Just a moment." I grunted pleasantly. He took a few steps here and there. "That's over," I heard him say. A single distant clap of thunder came from the sea like a gun of distress. "The monsoon breaks up early this year," he remarked conversationally, somewhere behind me. This encouraged me to turn round, which I did as soon as I had finished addressing the last envelope. He was smoking greedily in the middle of the room, and though he heard the stir I made, he remained with his back to me for a time. '"Come--I carried it off pretty well," he said, wheeling suddenly. "Something's paid off--not much. I wonder what's to come." His face did not show any emotion, only it appeared a little darkened and swollen, as though he had been holding his breath. He smiled reluctantly as it were, and went on while I gazed up at him mutely. . . . "Thank you, though--your room--jolly convenient--for a chap--badly hipped." . . . The rain pattered and swished in the garden; a water-pipe (it must have had a hole in it) performed just outside the window a parody of blubbering woe with funny sobs and gurgling lamentations, interrupted by jerky spasms of silence. . . . "A bit of shelter," he mumbled and ceased. 'A flash of faded lightning darted in through the black framework of the windows and ebbed out without any noise. I was thinking how I had best approach him (I did not want to be flung off again) when he gave a little laugh. "No better than a vagabond now" . . . the end of the cigarette smouldered between his fingers . . . "without a single--single," he pronounced slowly; "and yet . . ." He paused; the rain fell with redoubled violence. "Some day one's bound to come upon some sort of chance to get it all back again. Must!" he whispered distinctly, glaring at my boots. 'I did not even know what it was he wished so much to regain, what it was he had so terribly missed. It might have been so much that it was impossible to say. A piece of ass's skin, according to Chester. . . . He looked up at me inquisitively. "Perhaps. If life's long enough," I muttered through my teeth with unreasonable animosity. "Don't reckon too much on it." '"Jove! I feel as if nothing could ever touch me," he said in a tone of sombre conviction. "If this business couldn't knock me over, then there's no fear of there being not enough time to--climb out, and . . ." He looked upwards. 'It struck me that it is from such as he that the great army of waifs and strays is recruited, the army that marches down, down into all the gutters of the earth. As soon as he left my room, that "bit of shelter," he would take his place in the ranks, and begin the journey towards the bottomless pit. I at least had no illusions; but it was I, too, who a moment ago had been so sure of the power of words, and now was afraid to speak, in the same way one dares not move for fear of losing a slippery hold. It is when we try to grapple with another man's intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible, wavering, and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun. It is as if loneliness were a hard and absolute condition of existence; the envelope of flesh and blood on which our eyes are fixed melts before the outstretched hand, and there remains only the capricious, unconsolable, and elusive spirit that no eye can follow, no hand can grasp. It was the fear of losing him that kept me silent, for it was borne upon me suddenly and with unaccountable force that should I let him slip away into the darkness I would never forgive myself. '"Well. Thanks--once more. You've been--er--uncommonly--really there's no word to . . . Uncommonly! I don't know why, I am sure. I am afraid I don't feel as grateful as I would if the whole thing hadn't been so brutally sprung on me. Because at bottom . . . you, yourself . . ." He stuttered. '"Possibly," I struck in. He frowned. '"All the same, one is responsible." He watched me like a hawk. '"And that's true, too," I said. '"Well. I've gone with it to the end, and I don't intend to let any man cast it in my teeth without--without--resenting it." He clenched his fist. '"There's yourself," I said with a smile--mirthless enough, God knows--but he looked at me menacingly. "That's my business," he said. An air of indomitable resolution came and went upon his face like a vain and passing shadow. Next moment he looked a dear good boy in trouble, as before. He flung away the cigarette. "Good-bye," he said, with the sudden haste of a man who had lingered too long in view of a pressing bit of work waiting for him; and then for a second or so he made not the slightest movement. The downpour fell with the heavy uninterrupted rush of a sweeping flood, with a sound of unchecked overwhelming fury that called to one's mind the images of collapsing bridges, of uprooted trees, of undermined mountains. No man could breast the colossal and headlong stream that seemed to break and swirl against the dim stillness in which we were precariously sheltered as if on an island. The perforated pipe gurgled, choked, spat, and splashed in odious ridicule of a swimmer fighting for his life. "It is raining," I remonstrated, "and I . . ." "Rain or shine," he began brusquely, checked himself, and walked to the window. "Perfect deluge," he muttered after a while: he leaned his forehead on the glass. "It's dark, too." '"Yes, it is very dark," I said. 'He pivoted on his heels, crossed the room, and had actually opened the door leading into the corridor before I leaped up from my chair. "Wait," I cried, "I want you to . . ." "I can't dine with you again to-night," he flung at me, with one leg out of the room already. "I haven't the slightest intention to ask you," I shouted. At this he drew back his foot, but remained mistrustfully in the very doorway. I lost no time in entreating him earnestly not to be absurd; to come in and shut the door.' 'He came in at last; but I believe it was mostly the rain that did it; it was falling just then with a devastating violence which quieted down gradually while we talked. His manner was very sober and set; his bearing was that of a naturally taciturn man possessed by an idea. My talk was of the material aspect of his position; it had the sole aim of saving him from the degradation, ruin, and despair that out there close so swiftly upon a friendless, homeless man; I pleaded with him to accept my help; I argued reasonably: and every time I looked up at that absorbed smooth face, so grave and youthful, I had a disturbing sense of being no help but rather an obstacle to some mysterious, inexplicable, impalpable striving of his wounded spirit. '"I suppose you intend to eat and drink and to sleep under shelter in the usual way," I remember saying with irritation. "You say you won't touch the money that is due to you." . . . He came as near as his sort can to making a gesture of horror. (There were three weeks and five days' pay owing him as mate of the Patna.) "Well, that's too little to matter anyhow; but what will you do to-morrow? Where will you turn? You must live . . ." "That isn't the thing," was the comment that escaped him under his breath. I ignored it, and went on combating what I assumed to be the scruples of an exaggerated delicacy. "On every conceivable ground," I concluded, "you must let me help you." "You can't," he said very simply and gently, and holding fast to some deep idea which I could detect shimmering like a pool of water in the dark, but which I despaired of ever approaching near enough to fathom. I surveyed his well-proportioned bulk. "At any rate," I said, "I am able to help what I can see of you. I don't pretend to do more." He shook his head sceptically without looking at me. I got very warm. "But I can," I insisted. "I can do even more. I _am_ doing more. I am trusting you . . ." "The money . . ." he began. "Upon my word you deserve being told to go to the devil," I cried, forcing the note of indignation. He was startled, smiled, and I pressed my attack home. "It isn't a question of money at all. You are too superficial," I said (and at the same time I was thinking to myself: Well, here goes! And perhaps he is, after all). "Look at the letter I want you to take. I am writing to a man of whom I've never asked a favour, and I am writing about you in terms that one only ventures to use when speaking of an intimate friend. I make myself unreservedly responsible for you. That's what I am doing. And really if you will only reflect a little what that means . . ." 'He lifted his head. The rain had passed away; only the water-pipe went on shedding tears with an absurd drip, drip outside the window. It was very quiet in the room, whose shadows huddled together in corners, away from the still flame of the candle flaring upright in the shape of a dagger; his face after a while seemed suffused by a reflection of a soft light as if the dawn had broken already. '"Jove!" he gasped out. "It is noble of you!" 'Had he suddenly put out his tongue at me in derision, I could not have felt more humiliated. I thought to myself--Serve me right for a sneaking humbug. . . . His eyes shone straight into my face, but I perceived it was not a mocking brightness. All at once he sprang into jerky agitation, like one of those flat wooden figures that are worked by a string. His arms went up, then came down with a slap. He became another man altogether. "And I had never seen," he shouted; then suddenly bit his lip and frowned. "What a bally ass I've been," he said very slow in an awed tone. . . . "You are a brick!" he cried next in a muffled voice. He snatched my hand as though he had just then seen it for the first time, and dropped it at once. "Why! this is what I--you--I . . ." he stammered, and then with a return of his old stolid, I may say mulish, manner he began heavily, "I would be a brute now if I . . ." and then his voice seemed to break. "That's all right," I said. I was almost alarmed by this display of feeling, through which pierced a strange elation. I had pulled the string accidentally, as it were; I did not fully understand the working of the toy. "I must go now," he said. "Jove! You _have_ helped me. Can't sit still. The very thing . . ." He looked at me with puzzled admiration. "The very thing . . ." 'Of course it was the thing. It was ten to one that I had saved him from starvation--of that peculiar sort that is almost invariably associated with drink. This was all. I had not a single illusion on that score, but looking at him, I allowed myself to wonder at the nature of the one he had, within the last three minutes, so evidently taken into his bosom. I had forced into his hand the means to carry on decently the serious business of life, to get food, drink, and shelter of the customary kind while his wounded spirit, like a bird with a broken wing, might hop and flutter into some hole to die quietly of inanition there. This is what I had thrust upon him: a definitely small thing; and--behold!--by the manner of its reception it loomed in the dim light of the candle like a big, indistinct, perhaps a dangerous shadow. "You don't mind me not saying anything appropriate," he burst out. "There isn't anything one could say. Last night already you had done me no end of good. Listening to me--you know. I give you my word I've thought more than once the top of my head would fly off. . ." He darted--positively darted--here and there, rammed his hands into his pockets, jerked them out again, flung his cap on his head. I had no idea it was in him to be so airily brisk. I thought of a dry leaf imprisoned in an eddy of wind, while a mysterious apprehension, a load of indefinite doubt, weighed me down in my chair. He stood stock-still, as if struck motionless by a discovery. "You have given me confidence," he declared, soberly. "Oh! for God's sake, my dear fellow--don't!" I entreated, as though he had hurt me. "All right. I'll shut up now and henceforth. Can't prevent me thinking though. . . . Never mind! . . . I'll show yet . . ." He went to the door in a hurry, paused with his head down, and came back, stepping deliberately. "I always thought that if a fellow could begin with a clean slate . . . And now you . . . in a measure . . . yes . . . clean slate." I waved my hand, and he marched out without looking back; the sound of his footfalls died out gradually behind the closed door--the unhesitating tread of a man walking in broad daylight. 'But as to me, left alone with the solitary candle, I remained strangely unenlightened. I was no longer young enough to behold at every turn the magnificence that besets our insignificant footsteps in good and in evil. I smiled to think that, after all, it was yet he, of us two, who had the light. And I felt sad. A clean slate, did he say? As if the initial word of each our destiny were not graven in imperishable characters upon the face of a rock.'

Chapters 15-17

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Marlow finally found Jim gazing emptily off the quay, and he told him to come to his room. Jim followed him, seemingly still in a daze. Marlow led him into his bedroom and began writing letters immediately, so that Jim could feel that he was not totally alone, but that he was sufficiently alone so that he could confront his unhappiness and despair during this darkest moment of his life. Marlow tells us that throughout that afternoon and into the evening, he, Marlow, filled sheet after sheet of fresh paper, stopping only momentarily to notice Jim's convulsive shoulders and his struggling for breath as he stood rooted in front of a glass door. Then, suddenly, Jim opened the glass door and lurched onto the upstairs verandah, as if to throw himself off. Marlow noted his straight, resolute outline. Symbolically, it seemed as though Jim were alone, abandoned on the brink of a dark and hopeless ocean. What would have happened if Marlow had offered Jim the job as Chester's overseer? He felt, at that moment, that he had saved Jim from what would probably have been a living death on the Guano Island. But, at the same time, Marlow felt that "to bury him would have been such an easy kindness." What had he saved Jim for? Marlow was aware of a sense of deep responsibility for Jim, a sense of kinship and responsibility that he could no longer ignore. Marlow breaks the suspense and tells us that eventually Jim became "loved, trusted, admired." He became a "legend of strength and prowess . . . the stuff of a hero." In short, Marlow says, Jim "captured much honour," meaning that Jim became a hero in the eyes of himself and others. This is what Jim desired so desperately and what he thought was denied to him because of his actions aboard the Patna. Jim's future, then, was not as black as he believed it was; eventually, he would perform an act of bravery that would balance and cancel out the enormous guilt that he had carried after jumping from the Patna and leaving 800 Moslems to what he believed was certain death. At that moment, a violent tropical rainstorm suddenly ruptured the stillness, and Jim stepped back into the room. At last, he seemed ready to talk. Desperately, he said that a person was "bound to come upon some sort of a chance to get it all back -- must!" He was determined to convince himself that he would someday have a chance to redeem himself in his own eyes, a chance to do something that would erase the blot of guilt on his character. Marlow tried to force Jim to talk about the future -- how he planned to earn money, and how he planned to pay for food and lodging. But Jim refused to talk about practical matters. "That isn't the thing," he said, and he added that it was useless for Marlow to try and convince him to accept the back pay that was still due him from the Patna. Marlow found Jim's torturous soul-searching to be blindly melodramatic; he couldn't understand why Jim seemed determined to dwell on "some deep idea." He sensed intuitively that he himself could probably never heal the agony in Jim's "wounded spirit." Nevertheless, Marlow told Jim that he had written a letter of recommendation to a man who would give Jim a second chance. He stressed that he, Marlow, had faith in Jim's goodness and promise even if Jim did not; he was making himself "unreservedly responsible" for Jim. After awhile, the rain stopped and Jim leapt up. "It is noble of you!" he shouted. Marlow was so stunned that he wondered if Jim were mocking him. Jim seemed madly exhilarated. But the young man was not mocking Marlow's offer. His eyes were bright, and his voice was a stammer of half-sentences. He was agitated and seemingly wild with newfound confidence. "You have given me a clean slate," he announced to Marlow.

After showing Jim at his lowest point in the preceding chapter, Marlow tells us that he lived to see Jim "loved, trusted, admired, with a legend of strength and prowess forming round his name as though he had been the stuff of a hero." It is as though Marlow is telling us to wait -- because his evaluation of Jim is correct. That is, Jim is indeed one of us. He also lets us know that had he not interceded between Chester and Jim, then he would never have seen Jim again because he learns later that the men on Chester's guano enterprise disappeared. And yet, Chester, and all that pertains to him, is important because it shows Marlow's development. Marlow still feels that Jim is concerned not so much with his guilt as he is with the humiliating and treacherous "Jump" and its shameful consequences. Jim is seen here writhing in the agonies of romantic melancholy with his "refined sensibilities and his fine feelings, fine longings -- a sort of sublimated, idealized selfishness"; that is, Jim is too "fine a fellow" to throw over to Chester and his kind. These descriptions of Jim prepare us for Stein's firm statement that Jim is a romantic. And certainly in the romantic tradition, Jim's raging emotions within are symbolically reflected in the raging storm outside. Throughout these scenes, Marlow watches Jim writhe and squirm in agony like one of Stein's impaled beetles, but then Marlow is also impaled on the sharp point of his own new affection for Jim and the sense of his responsibility for Jim. Since the trial is now over, Marlow turns to practical matters , and when Marlow volunteers to help, Jim responds by saying, "You can't." Of course, Marlow meant "help with practical matters," but Jim means help in an entirely different sense -- in assuaging his feelings of disgrace and guilt. Thus, when Marlow tells Jim that he is writing to a man in Jim's behalf, Jim's appreciation is immense -- mainly because he now realizes that there is someone who still cares for him, or believes in him, a fact which gives Jim a new confidence in himself. Jim's soaring gratitude and unbounded delight as Marlow unfolds his plan indicate a relief and a deliverance from an alternative so forbidding as to suggest nothing short of death itself.