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Between London and Chatham On quitting Brighton, our friend George, as became a person of rank and fashion travelling in a barouche with four horses, drove in state to a fine hotel in Cavendish Square, where a suite of splendid rooms, and a table magnificently furnished with plate and surrounded by a half-dozen of black and silent waiters, was ready to receive the young gentleman and his bride. George did the honours of the place with a princely air to Jos and Dobbin; and Amelia, for the first time, and with exceeding shyness and timidity, presided at what George called her own table. George pooh-poohed the wine and bullied the waiters royally, and Jos gobbled the turtle with immense satisfaction. Dobbin helped him to it; for the lady of the house, before whom the tureen was placed, was so ignorant of the contents, that she was going to help Mr. Sedley without bestowing upon him either calipash or calipee. The splendour of the entertainment, and the apartments in which it was given, alarmed Mr. Dobbin, who remonstrated after dinner, when Jos was asleep in the great chair. But in vain he cried out against the enormity of turtle and champagne that was fit for an archbishop. "I've always been accustomed to travel like a gentleman," George said, "and, damme, my wife shall travel like a lady. As long as there's a shot in the locker, she shall want for nothing," said the generous fellow, quite pleased with himself for his magnificence of spirit. Nor did Dobbin try and convince him that Amelia's happiness was not centred in turtle-soup. A while after dinner, Amelia timidly expressed a wish to go and see her mamma, at Fulham: which permission George granted her with some grumbling. And she tripped away to her enormous bedroom, in the centre of which stood the enormous funereal bed, "that the Emperor Halixander's sister slep in when the allied sufferings was here," and put on her little bonnet and shawl with the utmost eagerness and pleasure. George was still drinking claret when she returned to the dining-room, and made no signs of moving. "Ar'n't you coming with me, dearest?" she asked him. No; the "dearest" had "business" that night. His man should get her a coach and go with her. And the coach being at the door of the hotel, Amelia made George a little disappointed curtsey after looking vainly into his face once or twice, and went sadly down the great staircase, Captain Dobbin after, who handed her into the vehicle, and saw it drive away to its destination. The very valet was ashamed of mentioning the address to the hackney-coachman before the hotel waiters, and promised to instruct him when they got further on. Dobbin walked home to his old quarters and the Slaughters', thinking very likely that it would be delightful to be in that hackney-coach, along with Mrs. Osborne. George was evidently of quite a different taste; for when he had taken wine enough, he went off to half-price at the play, to see Mr. Kean perform in Shylock. Captain Osborne was a great lover of the drama, and had himself performed high-comedy characters with great distinction in several garrison theatrical entertainments. Jos slept on until long after dark, when he woke up with a start at the motions of his servant, who was removing and emptying the decanters on the table; and the hackney-coach stand was again put into requisition for a carriage to convey this stout hero to his lodgings and bed. Mrs. Sedley, you may be sure, clasped her daughter to her heart with all maternal eagerness and affection, running out of the door as the carriage drew up before the little garden-gate, to welcome the weeping, trembling, young bride. Old Mr. Clapp, who was in his shirt-sleeves, trimming the garden-plot, shrank back alarmed. The Irish servant-lass rushed up from the kitchen and smiled a "God bless you." Amelia could hardly walk along the flags and up the steps into the parlour. How the floodgates were opened, and mother and daughter wept, when they were together embracing each other in this sanctuary, may readily be imagined by every reader who possesses the least sentimental turn. When don't ladies weep? At what occasion of joy, sorrow, or other business of life, and, after such an event as a marriage, mother and daughter were surely at liberty to give way to a sensibility which is as tender as it is refreshing. About a question of marriage I have seen women who hate each other kiss and cry together quite fondly. How much more do they feel when they love! Good mothers are married over again at their daughters' weddings: and as for subsequent events, who does not know how ultra-maternal grandmothers are?--in fact a woman, until she is a grandmother, does not often really know what to be a mother is. Let us respect Amelia and her mamma whispering and whimpering and laughing and crying in the parlour and the twilight. Old Mr. Sedley did. HE had not divined who was in the carriage when it drove up. He had not flown out to meet his daughter, though he kissed her very warmly when she entered the room (where he was occupied, as usual, with his papers and tapes and statements of accounts), and after sitting with the mother and daughter for a short time, he very wisely left the little apartment in their possession. George's valet was looking on in a very supercilious manner at Mr. Clapp in his shirt-sleeves, watering his rose-bushes. He took off his hat, however, with much condescension to Mr. Sedley, who asked news about his son-in-law, and about Jos's carriage, and whether his horses had been down to Brighton, and about that infernal traitor Bonaparty, and the war; until the Irish maid-servant came with a plate and a bottle of wine, from which the old gentleman insisted upon helping the valet. He gave him a half-guinea too, which the servant pocketed with a mixture of wonder and contempt. "To the health of your master and mistress, Trotter," Mr. Sedley said, "and here's something to drink your health when you get home, Trotter." There were but nine days past since Amelia had left that little cottage and home--and yet how far off the time seemed since she had bidden it farewell. What a gulf lay between her and that past life. She could look back to it from her present standing-place, and contemplate, almost as another being, the young unmarried girl absorbed in her love, having no eyes but for one special object, receiving parental affection if not ungratefully, at least indifferently, and as if it were her due--her whole heart and thoughts bent on the accomplishment of one desire. The review of those days, so lately gone yet so far away, touched her with shame; and the aspect of the kind parents filled her with tender remorse. Was the prize gained--the heaven of life--and the winner still doubtful and unsatisfied? As his hero and heroine pass the matrimonial barrier, the novelist generally drops the curtain, as if the drama were over then: the doubts and struggles of life ended: as if, once landed in the marriage country, all were green and pleasant there: and wife and husband had nothing to do but to link each other's arms together, and wander gently downwards towards old age in happy and perfect fruition. But our little Amelia was just on the bank of her new country, and was already looking anxiously back towards the sad friendly figures waving farewell to her across the stream, from the other distant shore. In honour of the young bride's arrival, her mother thought it necessary to prepare I don't know what festive entertainment, and after the first ebullition of talk, took leave of Mrs. George Osborne for a while, and dived down to the lower regions of the house to a sort of kitchen-parlour (occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Clapp, and in the evening, when her dishes were washed and her curl-papers removed, by Miss Flannigan, the Irish servant), there to take measures for the preparing of a magnificent ornamented tea. All people have their ways of expressing kindness, and it seemed to Mrs. Sedley that a muffin and a quantity of orange marmalade spread out in a little cut-glass saucer would be peculiarly agreeable refreshments to Amelia in her most interesting situation. While these delicacies were being transacted below, Amelia, leaving the drawing-room, walked upstairs and found herself, she scarce knew how, in the little room which she had occupied before her marriage, and in that very chair in which she had passed so many bitter hours. She sank back in its arms as if it were an old friend; and fell to thinking over the past week, and the life beyond it. Already to be looking sadly and vaguely back: always to be pining for something which, when obtained, brought doubt and sadness rather than pleasure; here was the lot of our poor little creature and harmless lost wanderer in the great struggling crowds of Vanity Fair. Here she sate, and recalled to herself fondly that image of George to which she had knelt before marriage. Did she own to herself how different the real man was from that superb young hero whom she had worshipped? It requires many, many years--and a man must be very bad indeed--before a woman's pride and vanity will let her own to such a confession. Then Rebecca's twinkling green eyes and baleful smile lighted upon her, and filled her with dismay. And so she sate for awhile indulging in her usual mood of selfish brooding, in that very listless melancholy attitude in which the honest maid-servant had found her, on the day when she brought up the letter in which George renewed his offer of marriage. She looked at the little white bed, which had been hers a few days before, and thought she would like to sleep in it that night, and wake, as formerly, with her mother smiling over her in the morning: Then she thought with terror of the great funereal damask pavilion in the vast and dingy state bedroom, which was awaiting her at the grand hotel in Cavendish Square. Dear little white bed! how many a long night had she wept on its pillow! How she had despaired and hoped to die there; and now were not all her wishes accomplished, and the lover of whom she had despaired her own for ever? Kind mother! how patiently and tenderly she had watched round that bed! She went and knelt down by the bedside; and there this wounded and timorous, but gentle and loving soul, sought for consolation, where as yet, it must be owned, our little girl had but seldom looked for it. Love had been her faith hitherto; and the sad, bleeding disappointed heart began to feel the want of another consoler. Have we a right to repeat or to overhear her prayers? These, brother, are secrets, and out of the domain of Vanity Fair, in which our story lies. But this may be said, that when the tea was finally announced, our young lady came downstairs a great deal more cheerful; that she did not despond, or deplore her fate, or think about George's coldness, or Rebecca's eyes, as she had been wont to do of late. She went downstairs, and kissed her father and mother, and talked to the old gentleman, and made him more merry than he had been for many a day. She sate down at the piano which Dobbin had bought for her, and sang over all her father's favourite old songs. She pronounced the tea to be excellent, and praised the exquisite taste in which the marmalade was arranged in the saucers. And in determining to make everybody else happy, she found herself so; and was sound asleep in the great funereal pavilion, and only woke up with a smile when George arrived from the theatre. For the next day, George had more important "business" to transact than that which took him to see Mr. Kean in Shylock. Immediately on his arrival in London he had written off to his father's solicitors, signifying his royal pleasure that an interview should take place between them on the morrow. His hotel bill, losses at billiards and cards to Captain Crawley had almost drained the young man's purse, which wanted replenishing before he set out on his travels, and he had no resource but to infringe upon the two thousand pounds which the attorneys were commissioned to pay over to him. He had a perfect belief in his own mind that his father would relent before very long. How could any parent be obdurate for a length of time against such a paragon as he was? If his mere past and personal merits did not succeed in mollifying his father, George determined that he would distinguish himself so prodigiously in the ensuing campaign that the old gentleman must give in to him. And if not? Bah! the world was before him. His luck might change at cards, and there was a deal of spending in two thousand pounds. So he sent off Amelia once more in a carriage to her mamma, with strict orders and carte blanche to the two ladies to purchase everything requisite for a lady of Mrs. George Osborne's fashion, who was going on a foreign tour. They had but one day to complete the outfit, and it may be imagined that their business therefore occupied them pretty fully. In a carriage once more, bustling about from milliner to linen-draper, escorted back to the carriage by obsequious shopmen or polite owners, Mrs. Sedley was herself again almost, and sincerely happy for the first time since their misfortunes. Nor was Mrs. Amelia at all above the pleasure of shopping, and bargaining, and seeing and buying pretty things. (Would any man, the most philosophic, give twopence for a woman who was?) She gave herself a little treat, obedient to her husband's orders, and purchased a quantity of lady's gear, showing a great deal of taste and elegant discernment, as all the shopfolks said. And about the war that was ensuing, Mrs. Osborne was not much alarmed; Bonaparty was to be crushed almost without a struggle. Margate packets were sailing every day, filled with men of fashion and ladies of note, on their way to Brussels and Ghent. People were going not so much to a war as to a fashionable tour. The newspapers laughed the wretched upstart and swindler to scorn. Such a Corsican wretch as that withstand the armies of Europe and the genius of the immortal Wellington! Amelia held him in utter contempt; for it needs not to be said that this soft and gentle creature took her opinions from those people who surrounded her, such fidelity being much too humble-minded to think for itself. Well, in a word, she and her mother performed a great day's shopping, and she acquitted herself with considerable liveliness and credit on this her first appearance in the genteel world of London. George meanwhile, with his hat on one side, his elbows squared, and his swaggering martial air, made for Bedford Row, and stalked into the attorney's offices as if he was lord of every pale-faced clerk who was scribbling there. He ordered somebody to inform Mr. Higgs that Captain Osborne was waiting, in a fierce and patronizing way, as if the pekin of an attorney, who had thrice his brains, fifty times his money, and a thousand times his experience, was a wretched underling who should instantly leave all his business in life to attend on the Captain's pleasure. He did not see the sneer of contempt which passed all round the room, from the first clerk to the articled gents, from the articled gents to the ragged writers and white-faced runners, in clothes too tight for them, as he sate there tapping his boot with his cane, and thinking what a parcel of miserable poor devils these were. The miserable poor devils knew all about his affairs. They talked about them over their pints of beer at their public-house clubs to other clerks of a night. Ye gods, what do not attorneys and attorneys' clerks know in London! Nothing is hidden from their inquisition, and their families mutely rule our city. Perhaps George expected, when he entered Mr. Higgs's apartment, to find that gentleman commissioned to give him some message of compromise or conciliation from his father; perhaps his haughty and cold demeanour was adopted as a sign of his spirit and resolution: but if so, his fierceness was met by a chilling coolness and indifference on the attorney's part, that rendered swaggering absurd. He pretended to be writing at a paper, when the Captain entered. "Pray, sit down, sir," said he, "and I will attend to your little affair in a moment. Mr. Poe, get the release papers, if you please"; and then he fell to writing again. Poe having produced those papers, his chief calculated the amount of two thousand pounds stock at the rate of the day; and asked Captain Osborne whether he would take the sum in a cheque upon the bankers, or whether he should direct the latter to purchase stock to that amount. "One of the late Mrs. Osborne's trustees is out of town," he said indifferently, "but my client wishes to meet your wishes, and have done with the business as quick as possible." "Give me a cheque, sir," said the Captain very surlily. "Damn the shillings and halfpence, sir," he added, as the lawyer was making out the amount of the draft; and, flattering himself that by this stroke of magnanimity he had put the old quiz to the blush, he stalked out of the office with the paper in his pocket. "That chap will be in gaol in two years," Mr. Higgs said to Mr. Poe. "Won't O. come round, sir, don't you think?" "Won't the monument come round," Mr. Higgs replied. "He's going it pretty fast," said the clerk. "He's only married a week, and I saw him and some other military chaps handing Mrs. Highflyer to her carriage after the play." And then another case was called, and Mr. George Osborne thenceforth dismissed from these worthy gentlemen's memory. The draft was upon our friends Hulker and Bullock of Lombard Street, to whose house, still thinking he was doing business, George bent his way, and from whom he received his money. Frederick Bullock, Esq., whose yellow face was over a ledger, at which sate a demure clerk, happened to be in the banking-room when George entered. His yellow face turned to a more deadly colour when he saw the Captain, and he slunk back guiltily into the inmost parlour. George was too busy gloating over the money (for he had never had such a sum before), to mark the countenance or flight of the cadaverous suitor of his sister. Fred Bullock told old Osborne of his son's appearance and conduct. "He came in as bold as brass," said Frederick. "He has drawn out every shilling. How long will a few hundred pounds last such a chap as that?" Osborne swore with a great oath that he little cared when or how soon he spent it. Fred dined every day in Russell Square now. But altogether, George was highly pleased with his day's business. All his own baggage and outfit was put into a state of speedy preparation, and he paid Amelia's purchases with cheques on his agents, and with the splendour of a lord.

Amelia, Dobbin, Jos, and George head back to London. The more we see of George, the more jerk-tastic he is turning out to be. On their trip back he insists on renting a super-swanky hotel suite and going out to the most expensive restaurant he can find. Ostensibly this is all for Amelia, because "as long as there's a shot in the locker, she shall want for nothing" . Too bad there's really not all that much shot in that locker; soon they're going to be totally bankrupt. Amelia asks to go see her mother, and George is sort of annoyed that she wants to go to the poor neighborhood where the Sedleys now live. Welcome to reality, George. It's only been nine days since the wedding, but it feels like forever ago to Amelia. She hugs her mom, looks at her old room, and studies George's portrait. She's jealous of Becky and upset that George is out every night without her, but she still can't admit to herself how crummy he is. Still, she makes the best of the visit, chats with her parents, and is happier when she gets back to the fancy-pants hotel. The next day George goes downtown to transact what he thinks is "business." The narrator mocks him mercilessly because he is the laziest, most good-for-nothing loser around but carries himself like he's God's gift to humanity. He has no sense of money, and though his father has worked tirelessly all his life, George has been brought up to lead a life of leisure and lacks any useful skills. This was his father's idea of what a gentleman should be - but to be a gentleman like that you need to be really rich. Anyhoodle, George sends Amelia off to buy some suitably spiffy clothes, since he's such a fine gentleman and all. Clearly they can't actually afford them, but he is stubborn and kind of stupid. Meanwhile, George goes to see Mr. Higgs, his father's lawyer, to get a check for the small inheritance his mother left him. It's two thousand pounds, and he spends something like a hundred a week, at least. You do the math! At Mr. Higgs's office, he acts all superior and haughty and doesn't notice that even the lowliest clerks are mocking and sneering at him. Higgs is totally calm and indifferent, gives him the check, and forgets about him. George then goes to the bank and cashes the check. There he runs into Fred Bullock, who of course reports back to Mr. Osborne how obnoxiously George was acting. This makes Mr. Osborne all the more angry and all the more set to never forgive his son. George, totally oblivious of all this, pays for Amelia's clothing, the hotel and the restaurant, convinced that he is quite the aristocrat.

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

Cleopatra's palace, in Alexandria. Cleopatra enters with Charmian, Alexas, and Iras. She tells them to find Antony, and exactly what deceptions to use to bring him to her. When Charmian suggests that honesty and obedience might be a better way to keep Antony's heart, Cleopatra replies that such behavior would be a sure way to lose him. When Antony appears and tries to tell Cleopatra that he must leave, her response is scathing. Even news of Fulvia's death only increases her distress: as Fulvia goes unmourned, Cleopatra says, so will she. Yet eventually she asks forgiveness for her behavior, and wishes Antony success. He promises that though they separate, they will be with each other in spirit.

We passed a few sad hours, until eleven o'clock, when the trial was to commence. My father and the rest of the family being obliged to attend as witnesses, I accompanied them to the court. During the whole of this wretched mockery of justice, I suffered living torture. It was to be decided, whether the result of my curiosity and lawless devices would cause the death of two of my fellow-beings: one a smiling babe, full of innocence and joy; the other far more dreadfully murdered, with every aggravation of infamy that could make the murder memorable in horror. Justine also was a girl of merit, and possessed qualities which promised to render her life happy: now all was to be obliterated in an ignominious grave; and I the cause! A thousand times rather would I have confessed myself guilty of the crime ascribed to Justine; but I was absent when it was committed, and such a declaration would have been considered as the ravings of a madman, and would not have exculpated her who suffered through me. The appearance of Justine was calm. She was dressed in mourning; and her countenance, always engaging, was rendered, by the solemnity of her feelings, exquisitely beautiful. Yet she appeared confident in innocence, and did not tremble, although gazed on and execrated by thousands; for all the kindness which her beauty might otherwise have excited, was obliterated in the minds of the spectators by the imagination of the enormity she was supposed to have committed. She was tranquil, yet her tranquillity was evidently constrained; and as her confusion had before been adduced as a proof of her guilt, she worked up her mind to an appearance of courage. When she entered the court, she threw her eyes round it, and quickly discovered where we were seated. A tear seemed to dim her eye when she saw us; but she quickly recovered herself, and a look of sorrowful affection seemed to attest her utter guiltlessness. The trial began; and after the advocate against her had stated the charge, several witnesses were called. Several strange facts combined against her, which might have staggered any one who had not such proof of her innocence as I had. She had been out the whole of the night on which the murder had been committed, and towards morning had been perceived by a market-woman not far from the spot where the body of the murdered child had been afterwards found. The woman asked her what she did there; but she looked very strangely, and only returned a confused and unintelligible answer. She returned to the house about eight o'clock; and when one inquired where she had passed the night, she replied, that she had been looking for the child, and demanded earnestly, if any thing had been heard concerning him. When shewn the body, she fell into violent hysterics, and kept her bed for several days. The picture was then produced, which the servant had found in her pocket; and when Elizabeth, in a faltering voice, proved that it was the same which, an hour before the child had been missed, she had placed round his neck, a murmur of horror and indignation filled the court. Justine was called on for her defence. As the trial had proceeded, her countenance had altered. Surprise, horror, and misery, were strongly expressed. Sometimes she struggled with her tears; but when she was desired to plead, she collected her powers, and spoke in an audible although variable voice:-- "God knows," she said, "how entirely I am innocent. But I do not pretend that my protestations should acquit me: I rest my innocence on a plain and simple explanation of the facts which have been adduced against me; and I hope the character I have always borne will incline my judges to a favourable interpretation, where any circumstance appears doubtful or suspicious." She then related that, by the permission of Elizabeth, she had passed the evening of the night on which the murder had been committed, at the house of an aunt at Chene, a village situated at about a league from Geneva. On her return, at about nine o'clock, she met a man, who asked her if she had seen any thing of the child who was lost. She was alarmed by this account, and passed several hours in looking for him, when the gates of Geneva were shut, and she was forced to remain several hours of the night in a barn belonging to a cottage, being unwilling to call up the inhabitants, to whom she was well known. Unable to rest or sleep, she quitted her asylum early, that she might again endeavour to find my brother. If she had gone near the spot where his body lay, it was without her knowledge. That she had been bewildered when questioned by the market-woman, was not surprising, since she had passed a sleepless night, and the fate of poor William was yet uncertain. Concerning the picture she could give no account. "I know," continued the unhappy victim, "how heavily and fatally this one circumstance weighs against me, but I have no power of explaining it; and when I have expressed my utter ignorance, I am only left to conjecture concerning the probabilities by which it might have been placed in my pocket. But here also I am checked. I believe that I have no enemy on earth, and none surely would have been so wicked as to destroy me wantonly. Did the murderer place it there? I know of no opportunity afforded him for so doing; or if I had, why should he have stolen the jewel, to part with it again so soon? "I commit my cause to the justice of my judges, yet I see no room for hope. I beg permission to have a few witnesses examined concerning my character; and if their testimony shall not overweigh my supposed guilt, I must be condemned, although I would pledge my salvation on my innocence." Several witnesses were called, who had known her for many years, and they spoke well of her; but fear, and hatred of the crime of which they supposed her guilty, rendered them timorous, and unwilling to come forward. Elizabeth saw even this last resource, her excellent dispositions and irreproachable conduct, about to fail the accused, when, although violently agitated, she desired permission to address the court. "I am," said she, "the cousin of the unhappy child who was murdered, or rather his sister, for I was educated by and have lived with his parents ever since and even long before his birth. It may therefore be judged indecent in me to come forward on this occasion; but when I see a fellow-creature about to perish through the cowardice of her pretended friends, I wish to be allowed to speak, that I may say what I know of her character. I am well acquainted with the accused. I have lived in the same house with her, at one time for five, and at another for nearly two years. During all that period she appeared to me the most amiable and benevolent of human creatures. She nursed Madame Frankenstein, my aunt, in her last illness with the greatest affection and care; and afterwards attended her own mother during a tedious illness, in a manner that excited the admiration of all who knew her. After which she again lived in my uncle's house, where she was beloved by all the family. She was warmly attached to the child who is now dead, and acted towards him like a most affectionate mother. For my own part, I do not hesitate to say, that, notwithstanding all the evidence produced against her, I believe and rely on her perfect innocence. She had no temptation for such an action: as to the bauble on which the chief proof rests, if she had earnestly desired it, I should have willingly given it to her; so much do I esteem and value her." Excellent Elizabeth! A murmur of approbation was heard; but it was excited by her generous interference, and not in favour of poor Justine, on whom the public indignation was turned with renewed violence, charging her with the blackest ingratitude. She herself wept as Elizabeth spoke, but she did not answer. My own agitation and anguish was extreme during the whole trial. I believed in her innocence; I knew it. Could the daemon, who had (I did not for a minute doubt) murdered my brother, also in his hellish sport have betrayed the innocent to death and ignominy. I could not sustain the horror of my situation; and when I perceived that the popular voice, and the countenances of the judges, had already condemned my unhappy victim, I rushed out of the court in agony. The tortures of the accused did not equal mine; she was sustained by innocence, but the fangs of remorse tore my bosom, and would not forego their hold. I passed a night of unmingled wretchedness. In the morning I went to the court; my lips and throat were parched. I dared not ask the fatal question; but I was known, and the officer guessed the cause of my visit. The ballots had been thrown; they were all black, and Justine was condemned. I cannot pretend to describe what I then felt. I had before experienced sensations of horror; and I have endeavoured to bestow upon them adequate expressions, but words cannot convey an idea of the heart-sickening despair that I then endured. The person to whom I addressed myself added, that Justine had already confessed her guilt. "That evidence," he observed, "was hardly required in so glaring a case, but I am glad of it; and, indeed, none of our judges like to condemn a criminal upon circumstantial evidence, be it ever so decisive." When I returned home, Elizabeth eagerly demanded the result. "My cousin," replied I, "it is decided as you may have expected; all judges had rather that ten innocent should suffer, than that one guilty should escape. But she has confessed." This was a dire blow to poor Elizabeth, who had relied with firmness upon Justine's innocence. "Alas!" said she, "how shall I ever again believe in human benevolence? Justine, whom I loved and esteemed as my sister, how could she put on those smiles of innocence only to betray; her mild eyes seemed incapable of any severity or ill-humour, and yet she has committed a murder." Soon after we heard that the poor victim had expressed a wish to see my cousin. My father wished her not to go; but said, that he left it to her own judgment and feelings to decide. "Yes," said Elizabeth, "I will go, although she is guilty; and you, Victor, shall accompany me: I cannot go alone." The idea of this visit was torture to me, yet I could not refuse. We entered the gloomy prison-chamber, and beheld Justine sitting on some straw at the further end; her hands were manacled, and her head rested on her knees. She rose on seeing us enter; and when we were left alone with her, she threw herself at the feet of Elizabeth, weeping bitterly. My cousin wept also. "Oh, Justine!" said she, "why did you rob me of my last consolation. I relied on your innocence; and although I was then very wretched, I was not so miserable as I am now." "And do you also believe that I am so very, very wicked? Do you also join with my enemies to crush me?" Her voice was suffocated with sobs. "Rise, my poor girl," said Elizabeth, "why do you kneel, if you are innocent? I am not one of your enemies; I believed you guiltless, notwithstanding every evidence, until I heard that you had yourself declared your guilt. That report, you say, is false; and be assured, dear Justine, that nothing can shake my confidence in you for a moment, but your own confession." "I did confess; but I confessed a lie. I confessed, that I might obtain absolution; but now that falsehood lies heavier at my heart than all my other sins. The God of heaven forgive me! Ever since I was condemned, my confessor has besieged me; he threatened and menaced, until I almost began to think that I was the monster that he said I was. He threatened excommunication and hell fire in my last moments, if I continued obdurate. Dear lady, I had none to support me; all looked on me as a wretch doomed to ignominy and perdition. What could I do? In an evil hour I subscribed to a lie; and now only am I truly miserable." She paused, weeping, and then continued--"I thought with horror, my sweet lady, that you should believe your Justine, whom your blessed aunt had so highly honoured, and whom you loved, was a creature capable of a crime which none but the devil himself could have perpetrated. Dear William! dearest blessed child! I soon shall see you again in heaven, where we shall all be happy; and that consoles me, going as I am to suffer ignominy and death." "Oh, Justine! forgive me for having for one moment distrusted you. Why did you confess? But do not mourn, my dear girl; I will every where proclaim your innocence, and force belief. Yet you must die; you, my playfellow, my companion, my more than sister. I never can survive so horrible a misfortune." "Dear, sweet Elizabeth, do not weep. You ought to raise me with thoughts of a better life, and elevate me from the petty cares of this world of injustice and strife. Do not you, excellent friend, drive me to despair." "I will try to comfort you; but this, I fear, is an evil too deep and poignant to admit of consolation, for there is no hope. Yet heaven bless thee, my dearest Justine, with resignation, and a confidence elevated beyond this world. Oh! how I hate its shews and mockeries! when one creature is murdered, another is immediately deprived of life in a slow torturing manner; then the executioners, their hands yet reeking with the blood of innocence, believe that they have done a great deed. They call this _retribution_. Hateful name! When that word is pronounced, I know greater and more horrid punishments are going to be inflicted than the gloomiest tyrant has ever invented to satiate his utmost revenge. Yet this is not consolation for you, my Justine, unless indeed that you may glory in escaping from so miserable a den. Alas! I would I were in peace with my aunt and my lovely William, escaped from a world which is hateful to me, and the visages of men which I abhor." Justine smiled languidly. "This, dear lady, is despair, and not resignation. I must not learn the lesson that you would teach me. Talk of something else, something that will bring peace, and not increase of misery." During this conversation I had retired to a corner of the prison-room, where I could conceal the horrid anguish that possessed me. Despair! Who dared talk of that? The poor victim, who on the morrow was to pass the dreary boundary between life and death, felt not as I did, such deep and bitter agony. I gnashed my teeth, and ground them together, uttering a groan that came from my inmost soul. Justine started. When she saw who it was, she approached me, and said, "Dear Sir, you are very kind to visit me; you, I hope, do not believe that I am guilty." I could not answer. "No, Justine," said Elizabeth; "he is more convinced of your innocence than I was; for even when he heard that you had confessed, he did not credit it." "I truly thank him. In these last moments I feel the sincerest gratitude towards those who think of me with kindness. How sweet is the affection of others to such a wretch as I am! It removes more than half my misfortune; and I feel as if I could die in peace, now that my innocence is acknowledged by you, dear lady, and your cousin." Thus the poor sufferer tried to comfort others and herself. She indeed gained the resignation she desired. But I, the true murderer, felt the never-dying worm alive in my bosom, which allowed of no hope or consolation. Elizabeth also wept, and was unhappy; but her's also was the misery of innocence, which, like a cloud that passes over the fair moon, for a while hides, but cannot tarnish its brightness. Anguish and despair had penetrated into the core of my heart; I bore a hell within me, which nothing could extinguish. We staid several hours with Justine; and it was with great difficulty that Elizabeth could tear herself away. "I wish," cried she, "that I were to die with you; I cannot live in this world of misery." Justine assumed an air of cheerfulness, while she with difficulty repressed her bitter tears. She embraced Elizabeth, and said, in a voice of half-suppressed emotion, "Farewell, sweet lady, dearest Elizabeth, my beloved and only friend; may heaven in its bounty bless and preserve you; may this be the last misfortune that you will ever suffer. Live, and be happy, and make others so." As we returned, Elizabeth said, "You know not, my dear Victor, how much I am relieved, now that I trust in the innocence of this unfortunate girl. I never could again have known peace, if I had been deceived in my reliance on her. For the moment that I did believe her guilty, I felt an anguish that I could not have long sustained. Now my heart is lightened. The innocent suffers; but she whom I thought amiable and good has not betrayed the trust I reposed in her, and I am consoled." Amiable cousin! such were your thoughts, mild and gentle as your own dear eyes and voice. But I--I was a wretch, and none ever conceived of the misery that I then endured.

The trial commences the following morning. Victor is extremely apprehensive as to what the verdict will be: he is tortured by the thought that his "curiosity and lawless devices" will cause not one death, but two. He mournfully reflects that Justine is a girl of exceptional qualities, destined to lead an admirable life; because of him, her life will be cruelly foreshortened. Victor briefly considers confessing to the crime, but realizes that, as he was at Ingolstadt on the night of the murder, his confession would be dismissed as the ravings of a madman. In court, Justine stands calmly before her accusers; her solemn face lends her an exquisite beauty. The prosecutor brings forth a number of witnesses, who provide compelling evidence against her: she was out for the whole night on which the murder was committed; she was seen near to the spot where the body was found; when questioned, she gave a confused and unintelligible answer; and she became hysterical at the sight of William's body. The most damning piece of evidence, however, is the fact that William's miniature, which he had been wearing at the time of the murder, was found in the pocket of Justine's dress. Justine, called to the witness stand, provides another account of the events: with Elizabeth's permission, she had passed the night of the murder at her aunt's house in Chene. Upon hearing of William's disappearance, she spent several hours searching for him; unable to return home, as it had grown too late, she determined to spend the night in a nearby barn. Justine says that if she was near the body, she did not know it; her confusion was only a manifestation of her tiredness. She remains unable to explain how the picture came to be on her person; she can only assume that the murderer himself placed it there. Though few witnesses are willing to come forth to aver Justine's innocence, Elizabeth insists on speaking on the girl's behalf. She praises Justine's character, and says that she was beloved by the entire Frankenstein family; Elizabeth, for he part, will never believe that Justine is guilty. Despite this brave display of loyalty, Justine is condemned to death. Victor considers Justine's plight to be less than his own she is consoled by the fact of her own blamelessness, while he must live with his guilt. Shockingly, Justine confesses to the murder, and expresses a wish to see Elizabeth, who asks Victor to accompany her. Justine tells them that she confessed to a lie in order to obtain absolution and avoid excommunication in her last moments. She does not fear death, and nobly spends her last moments in comforting Elizabeth and Victor. This only serves to heighten Victor's anguish, and he reflects that Justine and William are the first victims of his "unhallowed arts.

BABBITT'S preparations for leaving the office to its feeble self during the hour and a half of his lunch-period were somewhat less elaborate than the plans for a general European war. He fretted to Miss McGoun, "What time you going to lunch? Well, make sure Miss Bannigan is in then. Explain to her that if Wiedenfeldt calls up, she's to tell him I'm already having the title traced. And oh, b' the way, remind me to-morrow to have Penniman trace it. Now if anybody comes in looking for a cheap house, remember we got to shove that Bangor Road place off onto somebody. If you need me, I'll be at the Athletic Club. And--uh--And--uh--I'll be back by two." He dusted the cigar-ashes off his vest. He placed a difficult unanswered letter on the pile of unfinished work, that he might not fail to attend to it that afternoon. (For three noons, now, he had placed the same letter on the unfinished pile.) He scrawled on a sheet of yellow backing-paper the memorandum: "See abt apt h drs," which gave him an agreeable feeling of having already seen about the apartment-house doors. He discovered that he was smoking another cigar. He threw it away, protesting, "Darn it, I thought you'd quit this darn smoking!" He courageously returned the cigar-box to the correspondence-file, locked it up, hid the key in a more difficult place, and raged, "Ought to take care of myself. And need more exercise--walk to the club, every single noon--just what I'll do--every noon--cut out this motoring all the time." The resolution made him feel exemplary. Immediately after it he decided that this noon it was too late to walk. It took but little more time to start his car and edge it into the traffic than it would have taken to walk the three and a half blocks to the club. II As he drove he glanced with the fondness of familiarity at the buildings. A stranger suddenly dropped into the business-center of Zenith could not have told whether he was in a city of Oregon or Georgia, Ohio or Maine, Oklahoma or Manitoba. But to Babbitt every inch was individual and stirring. As always he noted that the California Building across the way was three stories lower, therefore three stories less beautiful, than his own Reeves Building. As always when he passed the Parthenon Shoe Shine Parlor, a one-story hut which beside the granite and red-brick ponderousness of the old California Building resembled a bath-house under a cliff, he commented, "Gosh, ought to get my shoes shined this afternoon. Keep forgetting it." At the Simplex Office Furniture Shop, the National Cash Register Agency, he yearned for a dictaphone, for a typewriter which would add and multiply, as a poet yearns for quartos or a physician for radium. At the Nobby Men's Wear Shop he took his left hand off the steering-wheel to touch his scarf, and thought well of himself as one who bought expensive ties "and could pay cash for 'em, too, by golly;" and at the United Cigar Store, with its crimson and gold alertness, he reflected, "Wonder if I need some cigars--idiot--plumb forgot--going t' cut down my fool smoking." He looked at his bank, the Miners' and Drovers' National, and considered how clever and solid he was to bank with so marbled an establishment. His high moment came in the clash of traffic when he was halted at the corner beneath the lofty Second National Tower. His car was banked with four others in a line of steel restless as cavalry, while the cross town traffic, limousines and enormous moving-vans and insistent motor-cycles, poured by; on the farther corner, pneumatic riveters rang on the sun-plated skeleton of a new building; and out of this tornado flashed the inspiration of a familiar face, and a fellow Booster shouted, "H' are you, George!" Babbitt waved in neighborly affection, and slid on with the traffic as the policeman lifted his hand. He noted how quickly his car picked up. He felt superior and powerful, like a shuttle of polished steel darting in a vast machine. As always he ignored the next two blocks, decayed blocks not yet reclaimed from the grime and shabbiness of the Zenith of 1885. While he was passing the five-and-ten-cent store, the Dakota Lodging House, Concordia Hall with its lodge-rooms and the offices of fortune-tellers and chiropractors, he thought of how much money he made, and he boasted a little and worried a little and did old familiar sums: "Four hundred fifty plunks this morning from the Lyte deal. But taxes due. Let's see: I ought to pull out eight thousand net this year, and save fifteen hundred of that--no, not if I put up garage and--Let's see: six hundred and forty clear last month, and twelve times six-forty makes--makes--let see: six times twelve is seventy-two hundred and--Oh rats, anyway, I'll make eight thousand--gee now, that's not so bad; mighty few fellows pulling down eight thousand dollars a year--eight thousand good hard iron dollars--bet there isn't more than five per cent. of the people in the whole United States that make more than Uncle George does, by golly! Right up at the top of the heap! But--Way expenses are--Family wasting gasoline, and always dressed like millionaires, and sending that eighty a month to Mother--And all these stenographers and salesmen gouging me for every cent they can get--" The effect of his scientific budget-planning was that he felt at once triumphantly wealthy and perilously poor, and in the midst of these dissertations he stopped his car, rushed into a small news-and-miscellany shop, and bought the electric cigar-lighter which he had coveted for a week. He dodged his conscience by being jerky and noisy, and by shouting at the clerk, "Guess this will prett' near pay for itself in matches, eh?" It was a pretty thing, a nickeled cylinder with an almost silvery socket, to be attached to the dashboard of his car. It was not only, as the placard on the counter observed, "a dandy little refinement, lending the last touch of class to a gentleman's auto," but a priceless time-saver. By freeing him from halting the car to light a match, it would in a month or two easily save ten minutes. As he drove on he glanced at it. "Pretty nice. Always wanted one," he said wistfully. "The one thing a smoker needs, too." Then he remembered that he had given up smoking. "Darn it!" he mourned. "Oh well, I suppose I'll hit a cigar once in a while. And--Be a great convenience for other folks. Might make just the difference in getting chummy with some fellow that would put over a sale. And--Certainly looks nice there. Certainly is a mighty clever little jigger. Gives the last touch of refinement and class. I--By golly, I guess I can afford it if I want to! Not going to be the only member of this family that never has a single doggone luxury!" Thus, laden with treasure, after three and a half blocks of romantic adventure, he drove up to the club. III The Zenith Athletic Club is not athletic and it isn't exactly a club, but it is Zenith in perfection. It has an active and smoke-misted billiard room, it is represented by baseball and football teams, and in the pool and the gymnasium a tenth of the members sporadically try to reduce. But most of its three thousand members use it as a cafe in which to lunch, play cards, tell stories, meet customers, and entertain out-of town uncles at dinner. It is the largest club in the city, and its chief hatred is the conservative Union Club, which all sound members of the Athletic call "a rotten, snobbish, dull, expensive old hole--not one Good Mixer in the place--you couldn't hire me to join." Statistics show that no member of the Athletic has ever refused election to the Union, and of those who are elected, sixty-seven per cent. resign from the Athletic and are thereafter heard to say, in the drowsy sanctity of the Union lounge, "The Athletic would be a pretty good hotel, if it were more exclusive." The Athletic Club building is nine stories high, yellow brick with glassy roof-garden above and portico of huge limestone columns below. The lobby, with its thick pillars of porous Caen stone, its pointed vaulting, and a brown glazed-tile floor like well-baked bread-crust, is a combination of cathedral-crypt and rathskellar. The members rush into the lobby as though they were shopping and hadn't much time for it. Thus did Babbitt enter, and to the group standing by the cigar-counter he whooped, "How's the boys? How's the boys? Well, well, fine day!" Jovially they whooped back--Vergil Gunch, the coal-dealer, Sidney Finkelstein, the ladies'-ready-to-wear buyer for Parcher & Stein's department-store, and Professor Joseph K. Pumphrey, owner of the Riteway Business College and instructor in Public Speaking, Business English, Scenario Writing, and Commercial Law. Though Babbitt admired this savant, and appreciated Sidney Finkelstein as "a mighty smart buyer and a good liberal spender," it was to Vergil Gunch that he turned with enthusiasm. Mr. Gunch was president of the Boosters' Club, a weekly lunch-club, local chapter of a national organization which promoted sound business and friendliness among Regular Fellows. He was also no less an official than Esteemed Leading Knight in the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, and it was rumored that at the next election he would be a candidate for Exalted Ruler. He was a jolly man, given to oratory and to chumminess with the arts. He called on the famous actors and vaudeville artists when they came to town, gave them cigars, addressed them by their first names, and--sometimes--succeeded in bringing them to the Boosters' lunches to give The Boys a Free Entertainment. He was a large man with hair en brosse, and he knew the latest jokes, but he played poker close to the chest. It was at his party that Babbitt had sucked in the virus of to-day's restlessness. Gunch shouted, "How's the old Bolsheviki? How do you feel, the morning after the night before?" "Oh, boy! Some head! That was a regular party you threw, Verg! Hope you haven't forgotten I took that last cute little jack-pot!" Babbitt bellowed. (He was three feet from Gunch.) "That's all right now! What I'll hand you next time, Georgie! Say, juh notice in the paper the way the New York Assembly stood up to the Reds?" "You bet I did. That was fine, eh? Nice day to-day." "Yes, it's one mighty fine spring day, but nights still cold." "Yeh, you're right they are! Had to have coupla blankets last night, out on the sleeping-porch. Say, Sid," Babbitt turned to Finkelstein, the buyer, "got something wanta ask you about. I went out and bought me an electric cigar-lighter for the car, this noon, and--" "Good hunch!" said Finkelstein, while even the learned Professor Pumphrey, a bulbous man with a pepper-and-salt cutaway and a pipe-organ voice, commented, "That makes a dandy accessory. Cigar-lighter gives tone to the dashboard." "Yep, finally decided I'd buy me one. Got the best on the market, the clerk said it was. Paid five bucks for it. Just wondering if I got stuck. What do they charge for 'em at the store, Sid?" Finkelstein asserted that five dollars was not too great a sum, not for a really high-class lighter which was suitably nickeled and provided with connections of the very best quality. "I always say--and believe me, I base it on a pretty fairly extensive mercantile experience--the best is the cheapest in the long run. Of course if a fellow wants to be a Jew about it, he can get cheap junk, but in the long RUN, the cheapest thing is--the best you can get! Now you take here just th' other day: I got a new top for my old boat and some upholstery, and I paid out a hundred and twenty-six fifty, and of course a lot of fellows would say that was too much--Lord, if the Old Folks--they live in one of these hick towns up-state and they simply can't get onto the way a city fellow's mind works, and then, of course, they're Jews, and they'd lie right down and die if they knew Sid had anted up a hundred and twenty-six bones. But I don't figure I was stuck, George, not a bit. Machine looks brand new now--not that it's so darned old, of course; had it less 'n three years, but I give it hard service; never drive less 'n a hundred miles on Sunday and, uh--Oh, I don't really think you got stuck, George. In the LONG run, the best is, you might say, it's unquestionably the cheapest." "That's right," said Vergil Gunch. "That's the way I look at it. If a fellow is keyed up to what you might call intensive living, the way you get it here in Zenith--all the hustle and mental activity that's going on with a bunch of live-wires like the Boosters and here in the Z.A.C., why, he's got to save his nerves by having the best." Babbitt nodded his head at every fifth word in the roaring rhythm; and by the conclusion, in Gunch's renowned humorous vein, he was enchanted: "Still, at that, George, don't know's you can afford it. I've heard your business has been kind of under the eye of the gov'ment since you stole the tail of Eathorne Park and sold it!" "Oh, you're a great little josher, Verg. But when it comes to kidding, how about this report that you stole the black marble steps off the post-office and sold 'em for high-grade coal!" In delight Babbitt patted Gunch's back, stroked his arm. "That's all right, but what I want to know is: who's the real-estate shark that bought that coal for his apartment-houses?" "I guess that'll hold you for a while, George!" said Finkelstein. "I'll tell you, though, boys, what I did hear: George's missus went into the gents' wear department at Parcher's to buy him some collars, and before she could give his neck-size the clerk slips her some thirteens. 'How juh know the size?' says Mrs. Babbitt, and the clerk says, 'Men that let their wives buy collars for 'em always wear thirteen, madam.' How's that! That's pretty good, eh? How's that, eh? I guess that'll about fix you, George!" "I--I--" Babbitt sought for amiable insults in answer. He stopped, stared at the door. Paul Riesling was coming in. Babbitt cried, "See you later, boys," and hastened across the lobby. He was, just then, neither the sulky child of the sleeping-porch, the domestic tyrant of the breakfast table, the crafty money-changer of the Lyte-Purdy conference, nor the blaring Good Fellow, the Josher and Regular Guy, of the Athletic Club. He was an older brother to Paul Riesling, swift to defend him, admiring him with a proud and credulous love passing the love of women. Paul and he shook hands solemnly; they smiled as shyly as though they had been parted three years, not three days--and they said: "How's the old horse-thief?" "All right, I guess. How're you, you poor shrimp?" "I'm first-rate, you second-hand hunk o' cheese." Reassured thus of their high fondness, Babbitt grunted, "You're a fine guy, you are! Ten minutes late!" Riesling snapped, "Well, you're lucky to have a chance to lunch with a gentleman!" They grinned and went into the Neronian washroom, where a line of men bent over the bowls inset along a prodigious slab of marble as in religious prostration before their own images in the massy mirror. Voices thick, satisfied, authoritative, hurtled along the marble walls, bounded from the ceiling of lavender-bordered milky tiles, while the lords of the city, the barons of insurance and law and fertilizers and motor tires, laid down the law for Zenith; announced that the day was warm-indeed, indisputably of spring; that wages were too high and the interest on mortgages too low; that Babe Ruth, the eminent player of baseball, was a noble man; and that "those two nuts at the Climax Vaudeville Theater this week certainly are a slick pair of actors." Babbitt, though ordinarily his voice was the surest and most episcopal of all, was silent. In the presence of the slight dark reticence of Paul Riesling, he was awkward, he desired to be quiet and firm and deft. The entrance lobby of the Athletic Club was Gothic, the washroom Roman Imperial, the lounge Spanish Mission, and the reading-room in Chinese Chippendale, but the gem of the club was the dining-room, the masterpiece of Ferdinand Reitman, Zenith's busiest architect. It was lofty and half-timbered, with Tudor leaded casements, an oriel, a somewhat musicianless musicians'-gallery, and tapestries believed to illustrate the granting of Magna Charta. The open beams had been hand-adzed at Jake Offutt's car-body works, the hinge; were of hand-wrought iron, the wainscot studded with handmade wooden pegs, and at one end of the room was a heraldic and hooded stone fireplace which the club's advertising-pamphlet asserted to be not only larger than any of the fireplaces in European castles but of a draught incomparably more scientific. It was also much cleaner, as no fire had ever been built in it. Half of the tables were mammoth slabs which seated twenty or thirty men. Babbitt usually sat at the one near the door, with a group including Gunch, Finkelstein, Professor Pumphrey, Howard Littlefield, his neighbor, T. Cholmondeley Frink, the poet and advertising-agent, and Orville Jones, whose laundry was in many ways the best in Zenith. They composed a club within the club, and merrily called themselves "The Roughnecks." To-day as he passed their table the Roughnecks greeted him, "Come on, sit in! You 'n' Paul too proud to feed with poor folks? Afraid somebody might stick you for a bottle of Bevo, George? Strikes me you swells are getting awful darn exclusive!" He thundered, "You bet! We can't afford to have our reps ruined by being seen with you tightwads!" and guided Paul to one of the small tables beneath the musicians'-gallery. He felt guilty. At the Zenith Athletic Club, privacy was very bad form. But he wanted Paul to himself. That morning he had advocated lighter lunches and now he ordered nothing but English mutton chop, radishes, peas, deep-dish apple pie, a bit of cheese, and a pot of coffee with cream, adding, as he did invariably, "And uh--Oh, and you might give me an order of French fried potatoes." When the chop came he vigorously peppered it and salted it. He always peppered and salted his meat, and vigorously, before tasting it. Paul and he took up the spring-like quality of the spring, the virtues of the electric cigar-lighter, and the action of the New York State Assembly. It was not till Babbitt was thick and disconsolate with mutton grease that he flung out: "I wound up a nice little deal with Conrad Lyte this morning that put five hundred good round plunks in my pocket. Pretty nice--pretty nice! And yet--I don't know what's the matter with me to-day. Maybe it's an attack of spring fever, or staying up too late at Verg Gunch's, or maybe it's just the winter's work piling up, but I've felt kind of down in the mouth all day long. Course I wouldn't beef about it to the fellows at the Roughnecks' Table there, but you--Ever feel that way, Paul? Kind of comes over me: here I've pretty much done all the things I ought to; supported my family, and got a good house and a six-cylinder car, and built up a nice little business, and I haven't any vices 'specially, except smoking--and I'm practically cutting that out, by the way. And I belong to the church, and play enough golf to keep in trim, and I only associate with good decent fellows. And yet, even so, I don't know that I'm entirely satisfied!" It was drawled out, broken by shouts from the neighboring tables, by mechanical love-making to the waitress, by stertorous grunts as the coffee filled him with dizziness and indigestion. He was apologetic and doubtful, and it was Paul, with his thin voice, who pierced the fog: "Good Lord, George, you don't suppose it's any novelty to me to find that we hustlers, that think we're so all-fired successful, aren't getting much out of it? You look as if you expected me to report you as seditious! You know what my own life's been." "I know, old man." "I ought to have been a fiddler, and I'm a pedler of tar-roofing! And Zilla--Oh, I don't want to squeal, but you know as well as I do about how inspiring a wife she is.... Typical instance last evening: We went to the movies. There was a big crowd waiting in the lobby, us at the tail-end. She began to push right through it with her 'Sir, how dare you?' manner--Honestly, sometimes when I look at her and see how she's always so made up and stinking of perfume and looking for trouble and kind of always yelping, 'I tell yuh I'm a lady, damn yuh!'--why, I want to kill her! Well, she keeps elbowing through the crowd, me after her, feeling good and ashamed, till she's almost up to the velvet rope and ready to be the next let in. But there was a little squirt of a man there--probably been waiting half an hour--I kind of admired the little cuss--and he turns on Zilla and says, perfectly polite, 'Madam, why are you trying to push past me?' And she simply--God, I was so ashamed!--she rips out at him, 'You're no gentleman,' and she drags me into it and hollers, 'Paul, this person insulted me!' and the poor skate he got ready to fight. "I made out I hadn't heard them--sure! same as you wouldn't hear a boiler-factory!--and I tried to look away--I can tell you exactly how every tile looks in the ceiling of that lobby; there's one with brown spots on it like the face of the devil--and all the time the people there--they were packed in like sardines--they kept making remarks about us, and Zilla went right on talking about the little chap, and screeching that 'folks like him oughtn't to be admitted in a place that's SUPPOSED to be for ladies and gentlemen,' and 'Paul, will you kindly call the manager, so I can report this dirty rat?' and--Oof! Maybe I wasn't glad when I could sneak inside and hide in the dark! "After twenty-four years of that kind of thing, you don't expect me to fall down and foam at the mouth when you hint that this sweet, clean, respectable, moral life isn't all it's cracked up to be, do you? I can't even talk about it, except to you, because anybody else would think I was yellow. Maybe I am. Don't care any longer.... Gosh, you've had to stand a lot of whining from me, first and last, Georgie!" "Rats, now, Paul, you've never really what you could call whined. Sometimes--I'm always blowing to Myra and the kids about what a whale of a realtor I am, and yet sometimes I get a sneaking idea I'm not such a Pierpont Morgan as I let on to be. But if I ever do help by jollying you along, old Paulski, I guess maybe Saint Pete may let me in after all!" "Yuh, you're an old blow-hard, Georgie, you cheerful cut-throat, but you've certainly kept me going." "Why don't you divorce Zilla?" "Why don't I! If I only could! If she'd just give me the chance! You couldn't hire her to divorce me, no, nor desert me. She's too fond of her three squares and a few pounds of nut-center chocolates in between. If she'd only be what they call unfaithful to me! George, I don't want to be too much of a stinker; back in college I'd 've thought a man who could say that ought to be shot at sunrise. But honestly, I'd be tickled to death if she'd really go making love with somebody. Fat chance! Of course she'll flirt with anything--you know how she holds hands and laughs--that laugh--that horrible brassy laugh--the way she yaps, 'You naughty man, you better be careful or my big husband will be after you!'--and the guy looking me over and thinking, 'Why, you cute little thing, you run away now or I'll spank you!' And she'll let him go just far enough so she gets some excitement out of it and then she'll begin to do the injured innocent and have a beautiful time wailing, 'I didn't think you were that kind of a person.' They talk about these demi-vierges in stories--" "These WHATS?" "--but the wise, hard, corseted, old married women like Zilla are worse than any bobbed-haired girl that ever went boldly out into this-here storm of life--and kept her umbrella slid up her sleeve! But rats, you know what Zilla is. How she nags--nags--nags. How she wants everything I can buy her, and a lot that I can't, and how absolutely unreasonable she is, and when I get sore and try to have it out with her she plays the Perfect Lady so well that even I get fooled and get all tangled up in a lot of 'Why did you say's' and 'I didn't mean's.' I'll tell you, Georgie: You know my tastes are pretty fairly simple--in the matter of food, at least. Course, as you're always complaining, I do like decent cigars--not those Flor de Cabagos you're smoking--" "That's all right now! That's a good two-for. By the way, Paul, did I tell you I decided to practically cut out smok--" "Yes you--At the same time, if I can't get what I like, why, I can do without it. I don't mind sitting down to burnt steak, with canned peaches and store cake for a thrilling little dessert afterwards, but I do draw the line at having to sympathize with Zilla because she's so rotten bad-tempered that the cook has quit, and she's been so busy sitting in a dirty lace negligee all afternoon, reading about some brave manly Western hero, that she hasn't had time to do any cooking. You're always talking about 'morals'--meaning monogamy, I suppose. You've been the rock of ages to me, all right, but you're essentially a simp. You--" "Where d' you get that 'simp,' little man? Let me tell you--" "--love to look earnest and inform the world that it's the 'duty of responsible business men to be strictly moral, as an example to the community.' In fact you're so earnest about morality, old Georgie, that I hate to think how essentially immoral you must be underneath. All right, you can--" "Wait, wait now! What's--" "--talk about morals all you want to, old thing, but believe me, if it hadn't been for you and an occasional evening playing the violin to Terrill O'Farrell's 'cello, and three or four darling girls that let me forget this beastly joke they call 'respectable life,' I'd 've killed myself years ago. "And business! The roofing business! Roofs for cowsheds! Oh, I don't mean I haven't had a lot of fun out of the Game; out of putting it over on the labor unions, and seeing a big check coming in, and the business increasing. But what's the use of it? You know, my business isn't distributing roofing--it's principally keeping my competitors from distributing roofing. Same with you. All we do is cut each other's throats and make the public pay for it!" "Look here now, Paul! You're pretty darn near talking socialism!" "Oh yes, of course I don't really exactly mean that--I s'pose. Course--competition--brings out the best--survival of the fittest--but--But I mean: Take all these fellows we know, the kind right here in the club now, that seem to be perfectly content with their home-life and their businesses, and that boost Zenith and the Chamber of Commerce and holler for a million population. I bet if you could cut into their heads you'd find that one-third of 'em are sure-enough satisfied with their wives and kids and friends and their offices; and one-third feel kind of restless but won't admit it; and one-third are miserable and know it. They hate the whole peppy, boosting, go-ahead game, and they're bored by their wives and think their families are fools--at least when they come to forty or forty-five they're bored--and they hate business, and they'd go--Why do you suppose there's so many 'mysterious' suicides? Why do you suppose so many Substantial Citizens jumped right into the war? Think it was all patriotism?" Babbitt snorted, "What do you expect? Think we were sent into the world to have a soft time and--what is it?--'float on flowery beds of ease'? Think Man was just made to be happy?" "Why not? Though I've never discovered anybody that knew what the deuce Man really was made for!" "Well we know--not just in the Bible alone, but it stands to reason--a man who doesn't buckle down and do his duty, even if it does bore him sometimes, is nothing but a--well, he's simply a weakling. Mollycoddle, in fact! And what do you advocate? Come down to cases! If a man is bored by his wife, do you seriously mean he has a right to chuck her and take a sneak, or even kill himself?" "Good Lord, I don't know what 'rights' a man has! And I don't know the solution of boredom. If I did, I'd be the one philosopher that had the cure for living. But I do know that about ten times as many people find their lives dull, and unnecessarily dull, as ever admit it; and I do believe that if we busted out and admitted it sometimes, instead of being nice and patient and loyal for sixty years, and then nice and patient and dead for the rest of eternity, why, maybe, possibly, we might make life more fun." They drifted into a maze of speculation. Babbitt was elephantishly uneasy. Paul was bold, but not quite sure about what he was being bold. Now and then Babbitt suddenly agreed with Paul in an admission which contradicted all his defense of duty and Christian patience, and at each admission he had a curious reckless joy. He said at last: "Look here, old Paul, you do a lot of talking about kicking things in the face, but you never kick. Why don't you?" "Nobody does. Habit too strong. But--Georgie, I've been thinking of one mild bat--oh, don't worry, old pillar of monogamy; it's highly proper. It seems to be settled now, isn't it--though of course Zilla keeps rooting for a nice expensive vacation in New York and Atlantic City, with the bright lights and the bootlegged cocktails and a bunch of lounge-lizards to dance with--but the Babbitts and the Rieslings are sure-enough going to Lake Sunasquam, aren't we? Why couldn't you and I make some excuse--say business in New York--and get up to Maine four or five days before they do, and just loaf by ourselves and smoke and cuss and be natural?" "Great! Great idea!" Babbitt admired. Not for fourteen years had he taken a holiday without his wife, and neither of them quite believed they could commit this audacity. Many members of the Athletic Club did go camping without their wives, but they were officially dedicated to fishing and hunting, whereas the sacred and unchangeable sports of Babbitt and Paul Riesling were golfing, motoring, and bridge. For either the fishermen or the golfers to have changed their habits would have been an infraction of their self-imposed discipline which would have shocked all right-thinking and regularized citizens. Babbitt blustered, "Why don't we just put our foot down and say, 'We're going on ahead of you, and that's all there is to it!' Nothing criminal in it. Simply say to Zilla--" "You don't say anything to Zilla simply. Why, Georgie, she's almost as much of a moralist as you are, and if I told her the truth she'd believe we were going to meet some dames in New York. And even Myra--she never nags you, the way Zilla does, but she'd worry. She'd say, 'Don't you WANT me to go to Maine with you? I shouldn't dream of going unless you wanted me;' and you'd give in to save her feelings. Oh, the devil! Let's have a shot at duck-pins." During the game of duck-pins, a juvenile form of bowling, Paul was silent. As they came down the steps of the club, not more than half an hour after the time at which Babbitt had sternly told Miss McGoun he would be back, Paul sighed, "Look here, old man, oughtn't to talked about Zilla way I did." "Rats, old man, it lets off steam." "Oh, I know! After spending all noon sneering at the conventional stuff, I'm conventional enough to be ashamed of saving my life by busting out with my fool troubles!" "Old Paul, your nerves are kind of on the bum. I'm going to take you away. I'm going to rig this thing. I'm going to have an important deal in New York and--and sure, of course!--I'll need you to advise me on the roof of the building! And the ole deal will fall through, and there'll be nothing for us but to go on ahead to Maine. I--Paul, when it comes right down to it, I don't care whether you bust loose or not. I do like having a rep for being one of the Bunch, but if you ever needed me I'd chuck it and come out for you every time! Not of course but what you're--course I don't mean you'd ever do anything that would put--that would put a decent position on the fritz but--See how I mean? I'm kind of a clumsy old codger, and I need your fine Eyetalian hand. We--Oh, hell, I can't stand here gassing all day! On the job! S' long! Don't take any wooden money, Paulibus! See you soon! S' long!"

As Babbitt prepares to meet Riesling for lunch at the Athletic Club, he admonishes himself for smoking and resolves to get more exercise. Nevertheless, he drives the three blocks to meet Riesling instead of walking. Although Zenith is undistinguishable from other Midwestern cities, Babbitt believes it is "individual and stirring." Meanwhile, he yearns for a Dictaphone and a typewriter with addition and subtraction capabilities. He praises himself for his expensive tie, scarf, and well-maintained car. He mentally calculates his expected income for the year and the new garage he wishes to build. Before meeting Riesling, he purchases an expensive electric cigar lighter. The Athletic Club is actually used most often as a place to eat lunch, play cards, and socialize. Its members hate the Union Club, which they regard as "snobbish" and "expensive." Nevertheless, no member of the Athletic Club has rejected an offer of membership in the Union Club, and, once Union Club members, most of them cease their memberships in the Athletic Club. Babbitt pauses for a few moments of meaningless chatter with Gunch, Sidney Finkelstein, and Professor Joseph K. Pumphrey. He shows off his new lighter, and they praise the wisdom of buying the best of everything. Riesling and Babbitt decline an invitation to sit with Babbitt's other friends, collectively known as the "Roughnecks," of which Babbitt is a member. They choose a more secluded table, a breach of the Club's standard protocol. Babbitt confesses to Riesling that he is discontent although he has done everything he should. He has a family and a profitable business to support it. Riesling unburdens his unhappiness at being mired in the roofing business because he always wanted to be a professional violinist. He complains that his wife Zilla, whom he wishes he could divorce, embarrasses him with her pushy self-serving attitude and constant nagging. Riesling criticizes Babbit's tendency to preach morality when the business world of Zenith is rife with unethical practices, and Babbitt becomes defensive. Riesling predicts that at least two-thirds of the businessmen at the Athletic Club find their lives boring and unfulfilling, but few of them would admit it. Despite his defensive posture, Babbitt feels freer when he agrees with some of Riesling's statements. They agree to break with convention and travel ahead of their families to Maine when they take their annual vacation.

Obstinacy But one other day had intervened when, early in the morning as we were going to breakfast, Mr. Woodcourt came in haste with the astounding news that a terrible murder had been committed for which Mr. George had been apprehended and was in custody. When he told us that a large reward was offered by Sir Leicester Dedlock for the murderer's apprehension, I did not in my first consternation understand why; but a few more words explained to me that the murdered person was Sir Leicester's lawyer, and immediately my mother's dread of him rushed into my remembrance. This unforeseen and violent removal of one whom she had long watched and distrusted and who had long watched and distrusted her, one for whom she could have had few intervals of kindness, always dreading in him a dangerous and secret enemy, appeared so awful that my first thoughts were of her. How appalling to hear of such a death and be able to feel no pity! How dreadful to remember, perhaps, that she had sometimes even wished the old man away who was so swiftly hurried out of life! Such crowding reflections, increasing the distress and fear I always felt when the name was mentioned, made me so agitated that I could scarcely hold my place at the table. I was quite unable to follow the conversation until I had had a little time to recover. But when I came to myself and saw how shocked my guardian was and found that they were earnestly speaking of the suspected man and recalling every favourable impression we had formed of him out of the good we had known of him, my interest and my fears were so strongly aroused in his behalf that I was quite set up again. "Guardian, you don't think it possible that he is justly accused?" "My dear, I CAN'T think so. This man whom we have seen so open-hearted and compassionate, who with the might of a giant has the gentleness of a child, who looks as brave a fellow as ever lived and is so simple and quiet with it, this man justly accused of such a crime? I can't believe it. It's not that I don't or I won't. I can't!" "And I can't," said Mr. Woodcourt. "Still, whatever we believe or know of him, we had better not forget that some appearances are against him. He bore an animosity towards the deceased gentleman. He has openly mentioned it in many places. He is said to have expressed himself violently towards him, and he certainly did about him, to my knowledge. He admits that he was alone on the scene of the murder within a few minutes of its commission. I sincerely believe him to be as innocent of any participation in it as I am, but these are all reasons for suspicion falling upon him." "True," said my guardian. And he added, turning to me, "It would be doing him a very bad service, my dear, to shut our eyes to the truth in any of these respects." I felt, of course, that we must admit, not only to ourselves but to others, the full force of the circumstances against him. Yet I knew withal (I could not help saying) that their weight would not induce us to desert him in his need. "Heaven forbid!" returned my guardian. "We will stand by him, as he himself stood by the two poor creatures who are gone." He meant Mr. Gridley and the boy, to both of whom Mr. George had given shelter. Mr. Woodcourt then told us that the trooper's man had been with him before day, after wandering about the streets all night like a distracted creature. That one of the trooper's first anxieties was that we should not suppose him guilty. That he had charged his messenger to represent his perfect innocence with every solemn assurance he could send us. That Mr. Woodcourt had only quieted the man by undertaking to come to our house very early in the morning with these representations. He added that he was now upon his way to see the prisoner himself. My guardian said directly he would go too. Now, besides that I liked the retired soldier very much and that he liked me, I had that secret interest in what had happened which was only known to my guardian. I felt as if it came close and near to me. It seemed to become personally important to myself that the truth should be discovered and that no innocent people should be suspected, for suspicion, once run wild, might run wilder. In a word, I felt as if it were my duty and obligation to go with them. My guardian did not seek to dissuade me, and I went. It was a large prison with many courts and passages so like one another and so uniformly paved that I seemed to gain a new comprehension, as I passed along, of the fondness that solitary prisoners, shut up among the same staring walls from year to year, have had--as I have read--for a weed or a stray blade of grass. In an arched room by himself, like a cellar upstairs, with walls so glaringly white that they made the massive iron window-bars and iron-bound door even more profoundly black than they were, we found the trooper standing in a corner. He had been sitting on a bench there and had risen when he heard the locks and bolts turn. When he saw us, he came forward a step with his usual heavy tread, and there stopped and made a slight bow. But as I still advanced, putting out my hand to him, he understood us in a moment. "This is a load off my mind, I do assure you, miss and gentlemen," said he, saluting us with great heartiness and drawing a long breath. "And now I don't so much care how it ends." He scarcely seemed to be the prisoner. What with his coolness and his soldierly bearing, he looked far more like the prison guard. "This is even a rougher place than my gallery to receive a lady in," said Mr. George, "but I know Miss Summerson will make the best of it." As he handed me to the bench on which he had been sitting, I sat down, which seemed to give him great satisfaction. "I thank you, miss," said he. "Now, George," observed my guardian, "as we require no new assurances on your part, so I believe we need give you none on ours." "Not at all, sir. I thank you with all my heart. If I was not innocent of this crime, I couldn't look at you and keep my secret to myself under the condescension of the present visit. I feel the present visit very much. I am not one of the eloquent sort, but I feel it, Miss Summerson and gentlemen, deeply." He laid his hand for a moment on his broad chest and bent his head to us. Although he squared himself again directly, he expressed a great amount of natural emotion by these simple means. "First," said my guardian, "can we do anything for your personal comfort, George?" "For which, sir?" he inquired, clearing his throat. "For your personal comfort. Is there anything you want that would lessen the hardship of this confinement?" "Well, sir," replied George, after a little cogitation, "I am equally obliged to you, but tobacco being against the rules, I can't say that there is." "You will think of many little things perhaps, by and by. Whenever you do, George, let us know." "Thank you, sir. Howsoever," observed Mr. George with one of his sunburnt smiles, "a man who has been knocking about the world in a vagabond kind of a way as long as I have gets on well enough in a place like the present, so far as that goes." "Next, as to your case," observed my guardian. "Exactly so, sir," returned Mr. George, folding his arms upon his breast with perfect self-possession and a little curiosity. "How does it stand now?" "Why, sir, it is under remand at present. Bucket gives me to understand that he will probably apply for a series of remands from time to time until the case is more complete. How it is to be made more complete I don't myself see, but I dare say Bucket will manage it somehow." "Why, heaven save us, man," exclaimed my guardian, surprised into his old oddity and vehemence, "you talk of yourself as if you were somebody else!" "No offence, sir," said Mr. George. "I am very sensible of your kindness. But I don't see how an innocent man is to make up his mind to this kind of thing without knocking his head against the walls unless he takes it in that point of view. "That is true enough to a certain extent," returned my guardian, softened. "But my good fellow, even an innocent man must take ordinary precautions to defend himself." "Certainly, sir. And I have done so. I have stated to the magistrates, 'Gentlemen, I am as innocent of this charge as yourselves; what has been stated against me in the way of facts is perfectly true; I know no more about it.' I intend to continue stating that, sir. What more can I do? It's the truth." "But the mere truth won't do," rejoined my guardian. "Won't it indeed, sir? Rather a bad look-out for me!" Mr. George good-humouredly observed. "You must have a lawyer," pursued my guardian. "We must engage a good one for you." "I ask your pardon, sir," said Mr. George with a step backward. "I am equally obliged. But I must decidedly beg to be excused from anything of that sort." "You won't have a lawyer?" "No, sir." Mr. George shook his head in the most emphatic manner. "I thank you all the same, sir, but--no lawyer!" "Why not?" "I don't take kindly to the breed," said Mr. George. "Gridley didn't. And--if you'll excuse my saying so much--I should hardly have thought you did yourself, sir." "That's equity," my guardian explained, a little at a loss; "that's equity, George." "Is it, indeed, sir?" returned the trooper in his off-hand manner. "I am not acquainted with those shades of names myself, but in a general way I object to the breed." Unfolding his arms and changing his position, he stood with one massive hand upon the table and the other on his hip, as complete a picture of a man who was not to be moved from a fixed purpose as ever I saw. It was in vain that we all three talked to him and endeavoured to persuade him; he listened with that gentleness which went so well with his bluff bearing, but was evidently no more shaken by our representations that his place of confinement was. "Pray think, once more, Mr. George," said I. "Have you no wish in reference to your case?" "I certainly could wish it to be tried, miss," he returned, "by court-martial; but that is out of the question, as I am well aware. If you will be so good as to favour me with your attention for a couple of minutes, miss, not more, I'll endeavour to explain myself as clearly as I can." He looked at us all three in turn, shook his head a little as if he were adjusting it in the stock and collar of a tight uniform, and after a moment's reflection went on. "You see, miss, I have been handcuffed and taken into custody and brought here. I am a marked and disgraced man, and here I am. My shooting gallery is rummaged, high and low, by Bucket; such property as I have--'tis small--is turned this way and that till it don't know itself; and (as aforesaid) here I am! I don't particular complain of that. Though I am in these present quarters through no immediately preceding fault of mine, I can very well understand that if I hadn't gone into the vagabond way in my youth, this wouldn't have happened. It HAS happened. Then comes the question how to meet it." He rubbed his swarthy forehead for a moment with a good-humoured look and said apologetically, "I am such a short-winded talker that I must think a bit." Having thought a bit, he looked up again and resumed. "How to meet it. Now, the unfortunate deceased was himself a lawyer and had a pretty tight hold of me. I don't wish to rake up his ashes, but he had, what I should call if he was living, a devil of a tight hold of me. I don't like his trade the better for that. If I had kept clear of his trade, I should have kept outside this place. But that's not what I mean. Now, suppose I had killed him. Suppose I really had discharged into his body any one of those pistols recently fired off that Bucket has found at my place, and dear me, might have found there any day since it has been my place. What should I have done as soon as I was hard and fast here? Got a lawyer." He stopped on hearing some one at the locks and bolts and did not resume until the door had been opened and was shut again. For what purpose opened, I will mention presently. "I should have got a lawyer, and he would have said (as I have often read in the newspapers), 'My client says nothing, my client reserves his defence': my client this, that, and t'other. Well, 'tis not the custom of that breed to go straight, according to my opinion, or to think that other men do. Say I am innocent and I get a lawyer. He would be as likely to believe me guilty as not; perhaps more. What would he do, whether or not? Act as if I was--shut my mouth up, tell me not to commit myself, keep circumstances back, chop the evidence small, quibble, and get me off perhaps! But, Miss Summerson, do I care for getting off in that way; or would I rather be hanged in my own way--if you'll excuse my mentioning anything so disagreeable to a lady?" He had warmed into his subject now, and was under no further necessity to wait a bit. "I would rather be hanged in my own way. And I mean to be! I don't intend to say," looking round upon us with his powerful arms akimbo and his dark eyebrows raised, "that I am more partial to being hanged than another man. What I say is, I must come off clear and full or not at all. Therefore, when I hear stated against me what is true, I say it's true; and when they tell me, 'whatever you say will be used,' I tell them I don't mind that; I mean it to be used. If they can't make me innocent out of the whole truth, they are not likely to do it out of anything less, or anything else. And if they are, it's worth nothing to me." Taking a pace or two over the stone floor, he came back to the table and finished what he had to say. "I thank you, miss and gentlemen both, many times for your attention, and many times more for your interest. That's the plain state of the matter as it points itself out to a mere trooper with a blunt broadsword kind of a mind. I have never done well in life beyond my duty as a soldier, and if the worst comes after all, I shall reap pretty much as I have sown. When I got over the first crash of being seized as a murderer--it don't take a rover who has knocked about so much as myself so very long to recover from a crash--I worked my way round to what you find me now. As such I shall remain. No relations will be disgraced by me or made unhappy for me, and--and that's all I've got to say." The door had been opened to admit another soldier-looking man of less prepossessing appearance at first sight and a weather-tanned, bright-eyed wholesome woman with a basket, who, from her entrance, had been exceedingly attentive to all Mr. George had said. Mr. George had received them with a familiar nod and a friendly look, but without any more particular greeting in the midst of his address. He now shook them cordially by the hand and said, "Miss Summerson and gentlemen, this is an old comrade of mine, Matthew Bagnet. And this is his wife, Mrs. Bagnet." Mr. Bagnet made us a stiff military bow, and Mrs. Bagnet dropped us a curtsy. "Real good friends of mine, they are," sald Mr. George. "It was at their house I was taken." "With a second-hand wiolinceller," Mr. Bagnet put in, twitching his head angrily. "Of a good tone. For a friend. That money was no object to." "Mat," said Mr. George, "you have heard pretty well all I have been saying to this lady and these two gentlemen. I know it meets your approval?" Mr. Bagnet, after considering, referred the point to his wife. "Old girl," said he. "Tell him. Whether or not. It meets my approval." "Why, George," exclaimed Mrs. Bagnet, who had been unpacking her basket, in which there was a piece of cold pickled pork, a little tea and sugar, and a brown loaf, "you ought to know it don't. You ought to know it's enough to drive a person wild to hear you. You won't be got off this way, and you won't be got off that way--what do you mean by such picking and choosing? It's stuff and nonsense, George." "Don't be severe upon me in my misfortunes, Mrs. Bagnet," said the trooper lightly. "Oh! Bother your misfortunes," cried Mrs. Bagnet, "if they don't make you more reasonable than that comes to. I never was so ashamed in my life to hear a man talk folly as I have been to hear you talk this day to the present company. Lawyers? Why, what but too many cooks should hinder you from having a dozen lawyers if the gentleman recommended them to you." "This is a very sensible woman," said my guardian. "I hope you will persuade him, Mrs. Bagnet." "Persuade him, sir?" she returned. "Lord bless you, no. You don't know George. Now, there!" Mrs. Bagnet left her basket to point him out with both her bare brown hands. "There he stands! As self-willed and as determined a man, in the wrong way, as ever put a human creature under heaven out of patience! You could as soon take up and shoulder an eight and forty pounder by your own strength as turn that man when he has got a thing into his head and fixed it there. Why, don't I know him!" cried Mrs. Bagnet. "Don't I know you, George! You don't mean to set up for a new character with ME after all these years, I hope?" Her friendly indignation had an exemplary effect upon her husband, who shook his head at the trooper several times as a silent recommendation to him to yield. Between whiles, Mrs. Bagnet looked at me; and I understood from the play of her eyes that she wished me to do something, though I did not comprehend what. "But I have given up talking to you, old fellow, years and years," said Mrs. Bagnet as she blew a little dust off the pickled pork, looking at me again; "and when ladies and gentlemen know you as well as I do, they'll give up talking to you too. If you are not too headstrong to accept of a bit of dinner, here it is." "I accept it with many thanks," returned the trooper. "Do you though, indeed?" said Mrs. Bagnet, continuing to grumble on good-humouredly. "I'm sure I'm surprised at that. I wonder you don't starve in your own way also. It would only be like you. Perhaps you'll set your mind upon THAT next." Here she again looked at me, and I now perceived from her glances at the door and at me, by turns, that she wished us to retire and to await her following us outside the prison. Communicating this by similar means to my guardian and Mr. Woodcourt, I rose. "We hope you will think better of it, Mr. George," said I, "and we shall come to see you again, trusting to find you more reasonable." "More grateful, Miss Summerson, you can't find me," he returned. "But more persuadable we can, I hope," said I. "And let me entreat you to consider that the clearing up of this mystery and the discovery of the real perpetrator of this deed may be of the last importance to others besides yourself." He heard me respectfully but without much heeding these words, which I spoke a little turned from him, already on my way to the door; he was observing (this they afterwards told me) my height and figure, which seemed to catch his attention all at once. "'Tis curious," said he. "And yet I thought so at the time!" My guardian asked him what he meant. "Why, sir," he answered, "when my ill fortune took me to the dead man's staircase on the night of his murder, I saw a shape so like Miss Summerson's go by me in the dark that I had half a mind to speak to it." For an instant I felt such a shudder as I never felt before or since and hope I shall never feel again. "It came downstairs as I went up," said the trooper, "and crossed the moonlighted window with a loose black mantle on; I noticed a deep fringe to it. However, it has nothing to do with the present subject, excepting that Miss Summerson looked so like it at the moment that it came into my head." I cannot separate and define the feelings that arose in me after this; it is enough that the vague duty and obligation I had felt upon me from the first of following the investigation was, without my distinctly daring to ask myself any question, increased, and that I was indignantly sure of there being no possibility of a reason for my being afraid. We three went out of the prison and walked up and down at some short distance from the gate, which was in a retired place. We had not waited long when Mr. and Mrs. Bagnet came out too and quickly joined us. There was a tear in each of Mrs. Bagnet's eyes, and her face was flushed and hurried. "I didn't let George see what I thought about it, you know, miss," was her first remark when she came up, "but he's in a bad way, poor old fellow!" "Not with care and prudence and good help," said my guardian. "A gentleman like you ought to know best, sir," returned Mrs. Bagnet, hurriedly drying her eyes on the hem of her grey cloak, "but I am uneasy for him. He has been so careless and said so much that he never meant. The gentlemen of the juries might not understand him as Lignum and me do. And then such a number of circumstances have happened bad for him, and such a number of people will be brought forward to speak against him, and Bucket is so deep." "With a second-hand wiolinceller. And said he played the fife. When a boy," Mr. Bagnet added with great solemnity. "Now, I tell you, miss," said Mrs. Bagnet; "and when I say miss, I mean all! Just come into the corner of the wall and I'll tell you!" Mrs. Bagnet hurried us into a more secluded place and was at first too breathless to proceed, occasioning Mr. Bagnet to say, "Old girl! Tell 'em!" "Why, then, miss," the old girl proceeded, untying the strings of her bonnet for more air, "you could as soon move Dover Castle as move George on this point unless you had got a new power to move him with. And I have got it!" "You are a jewel of a woman," said my guardian. "Go on!" "Now, I tell you, miss," she proceeded, clapping her hands in her hurry and agitation a dozen times in every sentence, "that what he says concerning no relations is all bosh. They don't know of him, but he does know of them. He has said more to me at odd times than to anybody else, and it warn't for nothing that he once spoke to my Woolwich about whitening and wrinkling mothers' heads. For fifty pounds he had seen his mother that day. She's alive and must be brought here straight!" Instantly Mrs. Bagnet put some pins into her mouth and began pinning up her skirts all round a little higher than the level of her grey cloak, which she accomplished with surpassing dispatch and dexterity. "Lignum," said Mrs. Bagnet, "you take care of the children, old man, and give me the umbrella! I'm away to Lincolnshire to bring that old lady here." "But, bless the woman," cried my guardian with his hand in his pocket, "how is she going? What money has she got?" Mrs. Bagnet made another application to her skirts and brought forth a leathern purse in which she hastily counted over a few shillings and which she then shut up with perfect satisfaction. "Never you mind for me, miss. I'm a soldier's wife and accustomed to travel my own way. Lignum, old boy," kissing him, "one for yourself, three for the children. Now I'm away into Lincolnshire after George's mother!" And she actually set off while we three stood looking at one another lost in amazement. She actually trudged away in her grey cloak at a sturdy pace, and turned the corner, and was gone. "Mr. Bagnet," said my guardian. "Do you mean to let her go in that way?" "Can't help it," he returned. "Made her way home once from another quarter of the world. With the same grey cloak. And same umbrella. Whatever the old girl says, do. Do it! Whenever the old girl says, I'LL do it. She does it." "Then she is as honest and genuine as she looks," rejoined my guardian, "and it is impossible to say more for her." "She's Colour-Sergeant of the Nonpareil battalion," said Mr. Bagnet, looking at us over his shoulder as he went his way also. "And there's not such another. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be maintained."

A day later, more terrible news. Woodcourt comes to tell the gang that Mr. George has been arrested for the murder of Tulkinghorn. Esther is instantly worried that her mom did it. She's got plenty of motive, after all. In any case, they all agree that Mr. George couldn't have done it, whatever the circumstantial evidence. They decide to go visit him in jail. Mr. George is surprisingly relaxed in his cell and is really happy to see that Jarndyce and Esther believe that he's innocent. They ask about his case, and he tells them that Bucket keeps postponing the trial for some reason. Also, he doesn't have a lawyer. When Jarndyce offers to pay for one, Mr. George refuses and launches into a rant about how crappy lawyers are. He wants to get off based on the truth, not based on how a lawyer would spin the facts. If he can't get off with just the truth, he might as well be hanged. That seems a little crazy, no? But he's a man of extreme honor. Or something. Mr. and Mrs. Bagnet come to the jail and overhear this speech. Mrs. Bagnet is all, "wow, that's completely ridiculous, and selfish too." But she also explains that it's impossible to change Mr. George's mind once it's made up. Suddenly Mr. George looks at Esther and is struck by the memory of seeing someone who looked like her go past him on Tulkinghorn's stairs the night of the murder. Esther's heart skips a beat. They leave, and Mrs. Bagnet has a brilliant idea for how to get Mr. George to change his mind about the lawyer. She's convinced from some hints he's dropped here and there that his mother lives up in the country somewhere, and she immediately sets off to find her. Literally, she just turns and walks off to Lincolnshire. Jarndyce is amazed and asks Mr. Bagnet if he's just going to let her go like that. Bagnet is all, well, why on earth not? She's an amazing woman, after all.

SHELTER When Jess opened her eyes it must have been about ten o'clock in the morning. She sat up and looked all around her. She could see dimly the opening where they had come into the woods. She looked around to see that her family was still safely by her. Then she looked up at the sky. At first she thought it must still be night, and then she realized that the darkness was caused by an approaching storm. "Whatever, _whatever_ shall we do now?" demanded Jess of the air. She got up and looked in every direction for shelter. She even walked quite a little way into the woods, and down a hill. And there she stood, not knowing what to do next. "I shall have to wake Henry up," she said at last. "Only how I hate to!" As she spoke she glanced into the forest, and her feet felt as if they were nailed to the ground. She could not stir. Faintly outlined among the trees, Jess saw an old freight or box car. Her first thought was one of fear; her second, hope for shelter. As she thought of shelter, her feet moved, and she stumbled toward it. It really was a freight car. She felt of it. It stood on rusty broken rails which were nearly covered with dead leaves. Then the thunder cracked overhead. Jess came to her usual senses and started back for Henry, flying like the wind. He was awake, looking anxiously overhead. He had not noticed that Jess was missing. "Come!" panted Jess. "I've found a place! Hurry! hurry!" Henry did not stop to ask questions. He picked up Benny, telling Violet to gather up the hay. And then they ran headlong through the thick underbrush in Jess' wake, seeing their way only too well by the sharp flashes of lightning. "It's beginning to sprinkle!" gasped Henry. "We'll get there, all right," Jess shouted back. "It's not far. Be all ready to help me open the door when we get there!" By sheer good fortune a big tree stump stood under the door of the freight car, or the children never could have opened it. As it was, Jess sprang on the stump and Henry, pausing to lay Benny down, did likewise. Together they rolled back the heavy door about a foot. "That's enough," panted Jess. "I'll get in, and you hand Benny up to me." "No," said Henry quietly. "I must see first if any one is in there." "It will rain!" protested Jess. "Nothing will hurt me." But she knew it was useless to argue with Henry, so she hastily groped in the bag for the matches and handed them to her brother. It must be confessed that Jess held her breath while Henry struck one and peered about inside the car. "All's well!" he reported. "Come in, everybody!" Violet passed the hay up to her brother, and crawled in herself. Then Jess handed Benny up like a package of groceries and, taking one last look at the angry sky and waving trees, she climbed in after him. The two children managed to roll the door back so that the crack was completely closed before the storm broke. But at that very instant it broke with a vengeance. It seemed to the children that the sky would split, so sharp were the cracks of thunder. But not a drop of rain reached them in their roomy retreat. They could see nothing at all, for the freight car was tightly made, and all outside was nearly as black as night. Through it all, Benny slept on. Presently the thunder grew fainter, and rumbled away down the valley, and the rain spent itself. Only the drip from the trees on the top of the car could be heard. Then Henry ventured to open the door. He knelt on his hands and knees and thrust his head out. The warm sunlight was filtering through the trees, making golden pools of light here and there. The beautiful trees, pines and white birches and oaks, grew thickly around and the ground was carpeted with flowers and wonderful ferns more than a yard high. But most miraculous of all was a miniature waterfall, small but perfect, where the same little brown brook fell gracefully over some ledges, and danced away down the glen. In an instant Jess and Violet were looking over Henry's shoulder at the pretty sight. "How different everything looks with the sun shining!" exclaimed Jess. "Things will soon be dry at this rate." "It must be about noon," observed Henry, looking at the sun. And as he spoke the faint echo of mill bells in the distance was heard. "Henry!" said Jess sharply. "Let's _live_ here!" "Live here?" repeated Henry dully. "Yes! Why not?" replied Jess. "Nobody uses this car, and it's dry and warm. We're quite far away. And yet we are near enough to a town so we can buy things." "And we're near water," added Violet. Jess hugged her sister. "So we are, little mouse," she said--"the most important thing of all." "But--" began Henry. "_Please_, Henry," said Jess excitedly. "I could make this old freight car into the dearest little house, with beds, and chairs, and a table--and dishes--" "I'd like to live here, too," said a determined little voice from the corner, "but I don't want to, unless--" "Unless what?" asked Henry, panic-stricken. "Unless I can have my dinner," Benny finished anxiously. "We'll have something to eat right away, old fellow," said Henry, thankful it was no worse. For he himself was beginning to see what a cozy home the car really would make. Jess cut the last loaf of bread into four pieces, but alas! it was very dry. The children were so hungry that they tore it with their teeth like little dogs, but Benny was nearly crying. He did not actually cry, however, for just at the crucial moment Violet started a funny story about Cinnamon Bear eating bread crusts out of the ash can. "He ought to have milk," said Jess quietly to Henry. "He _shall_ have milk," replied Henry. "I'll go down the railroad track to the town and get some." Jess counted out a dollar in ten dimes and handed it to Henry. "By the time our four dollars are gone, you will have some work to do," she said. All the same Henry did not like to begin his trip. "How I hate to leave you alone, Jess!" he said miserably. "Oh, don't you worry," began Jess lightly. "We'll have a surprise for you when you come back. You just wait and see!" And she nodded her head wisely as Henry walked slowly off through the woods. The moment he was out of sight she turned to Benny and Violet. "Now, children," she said, "what do you think we're going to do? Do you know what I saw over in the sunny part of the woods? I saw some blueberries!" "Oh, oh!" cried Benny, who knew what blueberries were. "Can't we have some blueberries and milk?" "We certainly--" began Jess. But the sentence never was finished, for a sharp crackle of dry leaves was heard. Something was moving in the woods.

Good morning. Jessie is up first, and she realizes there's about to be a big storm. She takes initiative and walks off into the woods, looking for shelter. She comes upon an old boxcar. Something tells Shmoop that this might be where the Boxcar Children get their name. Jessie runs back to the other kids and tells them about the boxcar. The storm is imminent, so they take off through the woods. It starts to rain before they get to the boxcar. Jessie and Henry arrive first and roll back the heavy door. As the storm begins in earnest, the Boxcar Children just chill in the boxcar. Violet declares the empty, old boxcar totally perfect. Sure, Violet, whatever you say. Finally, the storm ends and the children emerge into the forest. It's really pretty. Jessie declares that they should live there; the boxcar can be their house. Benny doesn't want to live in the boxcar because he thinks an engine will come along and hit it. And also, it's a boxcar. Henry explains that the boxcar has been abandoned and the track is no longer in use. Henry is totally on board with this living-in-a-boxcar plan. Giving up, Benny asks about dinner. Guess what's on the menu? Bread. Benny starts to cry because he hates his sad bread dinner. Shmoop is starting to think he's the most sensible of the children. Henry decides he'll walk into town and get some milk. He's worried about leaving the girls on their own, but Jessie tells him not to worry and that they'll have a surprise for him when he gets back. When Henry is gone, Jessie tells the other kids she saw some blueberries in the woods. That's the surprise. They're about to gather blueberries when Jessie hears something making noise in the woods. Oh, dear.

ACT II. Scene I. A hall in Leonato's house. [Enter Leonato, [Antonio] his Brother, Hero his Daughter, and Beatrice his Niece, and a Kinsman; [also Margaret and Ursula.] Leon. Was not Count John here at supper? Ant. I saw him not. Beat. How tartly that gentleman looks! I never can see him but I am heart-burn'd an hour after. Hero. He is of a very melancholy disposition. Beat. He were an excellent man that were made just in the midway between him and Benedick. The one is too like an image and says nothing, and the other too like my lady's eldest son, evermore tattling. Leon. Then half Signior Benedick's tongue in Count John's mouth, and half Count John's melancholy in Signior Benedick's face-- Beat. With a good leg and a good foot, uncle, and money enough in his purse, such a man would win any woman in the world--if 'a could get her good will. Leon. By my troth, niece, thou wilt never get thee a husband if thou be so shrewd of thy tongue. Ant. In faith, she's too curst. Beat. Too curst is more than curst. I shall lessen God's sending that way, for it is said, 'God sends a curst cow short horns,' but to a cow too curst he sends none. Leon. So, by being too curst, God will send you no horns. Beat. Just, if he send me no husband; for the which blessing I am at him upon my knees every morning and evening. Lord, I could not endure a husband with a beard on his face. I had rather lie in the woollen! Leon. You may light on a husband that hath no beard. Beat. What should I do with him? dress him in my apparel and make him my waiting gentlewoman? He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man; and he that is more than a youth is not for me; and he that is less than a man, I am not for him. Therefore I will even take sixpence in earnest of the berrord and lead his apes into hell. Leon. Well then, go you into hell? Beat. No; but to the gate, and there will the devil meet me like an old cuckold with horns on his head, and say 'Get you to heaven, Beatrice, get you to heaven. Here's no place for you maids.' So deliver I up my apes, and away to Saint Peter--for the heavens. He shows me where the bachelors sit, and there live we as merry as the day is long. Ant. [to Hero] Well, niece, I trust you will be rul'd by your father. Beat. Yes faith. It is my cousin's duty to make cursy and say, 'Father, as it please you.' But yet for all that, cousin, let him be a handsome fellow, or else make another cursy, and say, 'Father, as it please me.' Leon. Well, niece, I hope to see you one day fitted with a husband. Beat. Not till God make men of some other metal than earth. Would it not grieve a woman to be overmaster'd with a piece of valiant dust? to make an account of her life to a clod of wayward marl? No, uncle, I'll none. Adam's sons are my brethren, and truly I hold it a sin to match in my kinred. Leon. Daughter, remember what I told you. If the Prince do solicit you in that kind, you know your answer. Beat. The fault will be in the music, cousin, if you be not wooed in good time. If the Prince be too important, tell him there is measure in everything, and so dance out the answer. For, hear me, Hero: wooing, wedding, and repenting is as a Scotch jig, a measure, and a cinque-pace: the first suit is hot and hasty like a Scotch jig--and full as fantastical; the wedding, mannerly modest, as a measure, full of state and ancientry; and then comes Repentance and with his bad legs falls into the cinque-pace faster and faster, till he sink into his grave. Leon. Cousin, you apprehend passing shrewdly. Beat. I have a good eye, uncle; I can see a church by daylight. Leon. The revellers are ent'ring, brother. Make good room. [Exit Antonio.] [Enter, [masked,] Don Pedro, Claudio, Benedick, and Balthasar. With them enter Antonio, also masked. After them enter Don John [and Borachio (without masks), who stand aside and look on during the dance.] Pedro. Lady, will you walk a bout with your friend? Hero. So you walk softly and look sweetly and say nothing, I am yours for the walk; and especially when I walk away. Pedro. With me in your company? Hero. I may say so when I please. Pedro. And when please you to say so? Hero. When I like your favour, for God defend the lute should be like the case! Pedro. My visor is Philemon's roof; within the house is Jove. Hero. Why then, your visor should be thatch'd. Pedro. Speak low if you speak love. [Takes her aside.] Balth. Well, I would you did like me. Marg. So would not I for your own sake, for I have many ill qualities. Balth. Which is one? Marg. I say my prayers aloud. Balth. I love you the better. The hearers may cry Amen. Marg. God match me with a good dancer! Balth. Amen. Marg. And God keep him out of my sight when the dance is done! Answer, clerk. Balth. No more words. The clerk is answered. [Takes her aside.] Urs. I know you well enough. You are Signior Antonio. Ant. At a word, I am not. Urs. I know you by the waggling of your head. Ant. To tell you true, I counterfeit him. Urs. You could never do him so ill-well unless you were the very man. Here's his dry hand up and down. You are he, you are he! Ant. At a word, I am not. Urs. Come, come, do you think I do not know you by your excellent wit? Can virtue hide itself? Go to, mum you are he. Graces will appear, and there's an end. [ They step aside.] Beat. Will you not tell me who told you so? Bene. No, you shall pardon me. Beat. Nor will you not tell me who you are? Bene. Not now. Beat. That I was disdainful, and that I had my good wit out of the 'Hundred Merry Tales.' Well, this was Signior Benedick that said so. Bene. What's he? Beat. I am sure you know him well enough. Bene. Not I, believe me. Beat. Did he never make you laugh? Bene. I pray you, what is he? Beat. Why, he is the Prince's jester, a very dull fool. Only his gift is in devising impossible slanders. None but libertines delight in him; and the commendation is not in his wit, but in his villany; for he both pleases men and angers them, and then they laugh at him and beat him. I am sure he is in the fleet. I would he had boarded me. Bene. When I know the gentleman, I'll tell him what you say. Beat. Do, do. He'll but break a comparison or two on me; which peradventure, not marked or not laugh'd at, strikes him into melancholy; and then there's a partridge wing saved, for the fool will eat no supper that night. [Music.] We must follow the leaders. Bene. In every good thing. Beat. Nay, if they lead to any ill, I will leave them at the next turning. [Dance. Exeunt (all but Don John, Borachio, and Claudio]. John. Sure my brother is amorous on Hero and hath withdrawn her father to break with him about it. The ladies follow her and but one visor remains. Bora. And that is Claudio. I know him by his bearing. John. Are you not Signior Benedick? Claud. You know me well. I am he. John. Signior, you are very near my brother in his love. He is enamour'd on Hero. I pray you dissuade him from her; she is no equal for his birth. You may do the part of an honest man in it. Claud. How know you he loves her? John. I heard him swear his affection. Bora. So did I too, and he swore he would marry her tonight. John. Come, let us to the banquet. [Exeunt. Manet Claudio.] Claud. Thus answer I in name of Benedick But hear these ill news with the ears of Claudio. [Unmasks.] 'Tis certain so. The Prince wooes for himself. Friendship is constant in all other things Save in the office and affairs of love. Therefore all hearts in love use their own tongues; Let every eye negotiate for itself And trust no agent; for beauty is a witch Against whose charms faith melteth into blood. This is an accident of hourly proof, Which I mistrusted not. Farewell therefore Hero! [Enter Benedick [unmasked]]. Bene. Count Claudio? Claud. Yea, the same. Bene. Come, will you go with me? Claud. Whither? Bene. Even to the next willow, about your own business, County. What fashion will you wear the garland of? about your neck, like an usurer's chain? or under your arm, like a lieutenant's scarf? You must wear it one way, for the Prince hath got your Hero. Claud. I wish him joy of her. Bene. Why, that's spoken like an honest drovier. So they sell bullocks. But did you think the Prince would have served you thus? Claud. I pray you leave me. Bene. Ho! now you strike like the blind man! 'Twas the boy that stole your meat, and you'll beat the post. Claud. If it will not be, I'll leave you. [Exit.] Bene. Alas, poor hurt fowl! now will he creep into sedges. But, that my Lady Beatrice should know me, and not know me! The Prince's fool! Ha! it may be I go under that title because I am merry. Yea, but so I am apt to do myself wrong. I am not so reputed. It is the base (though bitter) disposition of Beatrice that puts the world into her person and so gives me out. Well, I'll be revenged as I may. [Enter Don Pedro.] Pedro. Now, signior, where's the Count? Did you see him? Bene. Troth, my lord, I have played the part of Lady Fame, I found him here as melancholy as a lodge in a warren. I told him, and I think I told him true, that your Grace had got the good will of this young lady, and I off'red him my company to a willow tree, either to make him a garland, as being forsaken, or to bind him up a rod, as being worthy to be whipt. Pedro. To be whipt? What's his fault? Bene. The flat transgression of a schoolboy who, being overjoyed with finding a bird's nest, shows it his companion, and he steals it. Pedro. Wilt thou make a trust a transgression? The transgression is in the stealer. Bene. Yet it had not been amiss the rod had been made, and the garland too; for the garland he might have worn himself, and the rod he might have bestowed on you, who, as I take it, have stol'n his bird's nest. Pedro. I will but teach them to sing and restore them to the owner. Bene. If their singing answer your saying, by my faith you say honestly. Pedro. The Lady Beatrice hath a quarrel to you. The gentleman that danc'd with her told her she is much wrong'd by you. Bene. O, she misus'd me past the endurance of a block! An oak but with one green leaf on it would have answered her; my very visor began to assume life and scold with her. She told me, not thinking I had been myself, that I was the Prince's jester, that I was duller than a great thaw; huddling jest upon jest with such impossible conveyance upon me that I stood like a man at a mark, with a whole army shooting at me. She speaks poniards, and every word stabs. If her breath were as terrible as her terminations, there were no living near her; she would infect to the North Star. I would not marry her though she were endowed with all that Adam had left him before he transgress'd. She would have made Hercules have turn'd spit, yea, and have cleft his club to make the fire too. Come, talk not of her. You shall find her the infernal Ate in good apparel. I would to God some scholar would conjure her, for certainly, while she is here, a man may live as quiet in hell as in a sanctuary; and people sin upon purpose, because they would go thither; so indeed all disquiet, horror, and perturbation follows her. [Enter Claudio and Beatrice, Leonato, Hero.] Pedro. Look, here she comes. Bene. Will your Grace command me any service to the world's end? I will go on the slightest errand now to the Antipodes that you can devise to send me on; I will fetch you a toothpicker now from the furthest inch of Asia; bring you the length of Prester John's foot; fetch you a hair off the great Cham's beard; do you any embassage to the Pygmies--rather than hold three words' conference with this harpy. You have no employment for me? Pedro. None, but to desire your good company. Bene. O God, sir, here's a dish I love not! I cannot endure my Lady Tongue. [Exit.] Pedro. Come, lady, come; you have lost the heart of Signior Benedick. Beat. Indeed, my lord, he lent it me awhile, and I gave him use for it--a double heart for his single one. Marry, once before he won it of me with false dice; therefore your Grace may well say I have lost it. Pedro. You have put him down, lady; you have put him down. Beat. So I would not he should do me, my lord, lest I should prove the mother of fools. I have brought Count Claudio, whom you sent me to seek. Pedro. Why, how now, Count? Wherefore are you sad? Claud. Not sad, my lord. Pedro. How then? sick? Claud. Neither, my lord. Beat. The Count is neither sad, nor sick, nor merry, nor well; but civil count--civil as an orange, and something of that jealous complexion. Pedro. I' faith, lady, I think your blazon to be true; though I'll be sworn, if he be so, his conceit is false. Here, Claudio, I have wooed in thy name, and fair Hero is won. I have broke with her father, and his good will obtained. Name the day of marriage, and God give thee joy! Leon. Count, take of me my daughter, and with her my fortunes. His Grace hath made the match, and all grace say Amen to it! Beat. Speak, Count, 'tis your cue. Claud. Silence is the perfectest herald of joy. I were but little happy if I could say how much. Lady, as you are mine, I am yours. I give away myself for you and dote upon the exchange. Beat. Speak, cousin; or, if you cannot, stop his mouth with a kiss and let not him speak neither. Pedro. In faith, lady, you have a merry heart. Beat. Yea, my lord; I thank it, poor fool, it keeps on the windy side of care. My cousin tells him in his ear that he is in her heart. Claud. And so she doth, cousin. Beat. Good Lord, for alliance! Thus goes every one to the world but I, and I am sunburnt. I may sit in a corner and cry 'Heigh-ho for a husband!' Pedro. Lady Beatrice, I will get you one. Beat. I would rather have one of your father's getting. Hath your Grace ne'er a brother like you? Your father got excellent husbands, if a maid could come by them. Pedro. Will you have me, lady? Beat. No, my lord, unless I might have another for working days: your Grace is too costly to wear every day. But I beseech your Grace pardon me. I was born to speak all mirth and no matter. Pedro. Your silence most offends me, and to be merry best becomes you, for out o' question you were born in a merry hour. Beat. No, sure, my lord, my mother cried; but then there was a star danc'd, and under that was I born. Cousins, God give you joy! Leon. Niece, will you look to those things I told you of? Beat. I cry you mercy, uncle, By your Grace's pardon. [Exit.] Pedro. By my troth, a pleasant-spirited lady. Leon. There's little of the melancholy element in her, my lord. She is never sad but when she sleeps, and not ever sad then; for I have heard my daughter say she hath often dreamt of unhappiness and wak'd herself with laughing. Pedro. She cannot endure to hear tell of a husband. Leon. O, by no means! She mocks all her wooers out of suit. Pedro. She were an excellent wife for Benedick. Leon. O Lord, my lord! if they were but a week married, they would talk themselves mad. Pedro. County Claudio, when mean you to go to church? Claud. To-morrow, my lord. Time goes on crutches till love have all his rites. Leon. Not till Monday, my dear son, which is hence a just sevennight; and a time too brief too, to have all things answer my mind. Pedro. Come, you shake the head at so long a breathing; but I warrant thee, Claudio, the time shall not go dully by us. I will in the interim undertake one of Hercules' labours, which is, to bring Signior Benedick and the Lady Beatrice into a mountain of affection th' one with th' other. I would fain have it a match, and I doubt not but to fashion it if you three will but minister such assistance as I shall give you direction. Leon. My lord, I am for you, though it cost me ten nights' watchings. Claud. And I, my lord. Pedro. And you too, gentle Hero? Hero. I will do any modest office, my lord, to help my cousin to a good husband. Pedro. And Benedick is not the unhopefullest husband that I know. Thus far can I praise him: he is of a noble strain, of approved valour, and confirm'd honesty. I will teach you how to humour your cousin, that she shall fall in love with Benedick; and I, [to Leonato and Claudio] with your two helps, will so practise on Benedick that, in despite of his quick wit and his queasy stomach, he shall fall in love with Beatrice. If we can do this, Cupid is no longer an archer; his glory shall be ours, for we are the only love-gods. Go in with me, and I will tell you my drift. [Exeunt.]

Leonato and Antonio wonder aloud where Don John has gone. Beatrice and Hero comment about their dislike of such a melancholy and disagreeable man. Beatrice jests that a man who is a cross between Benedick and Don John would be perfect, neither too garrulous or reticent. She, like Benedick, extols the virtues of being a bachelor and condemns marriage for those with inferior wit and mental strength. Leonato tells her that he hopes that she will be happily married one day. . Day turns to night and a dance is underway. Since everyone must wear a disguise to the party, there are naturally a few misidentifications. Don Pedro escorts Hero to a secluded spot to speak with her. Balthasar, one of Don Pedro's attendants, flirts with Margaret, Hero's maid. At the same time, the gentlewoman Ursula converses with Antonio. Beatrice and Benedick are in yet another corner of the room. Beatrice cannot figure out who Benedick is under the mask, although he realizes whom he is talking with. He pretends to be someone else and Beatrice launches in a tirade of insults against Benedick, whom she supposes is somewhere else in the party. Benedick hides his hurt and rage against this gratuitous volley of insults and leaves the party. . Now, only Don John, Borachio and Claudio remain in the room. Don John addresses Claudio as Benedick, although he knows his true identity. Claudio, who is unaware of Don John's scheme, innocently plays along and pretends to indeed be Benedick. Don John tells him that Don Pedro is in love with Hero. Don John pretends that as a loving brother he opposes the union. This is, of course, entirely false, but Claudio believes it to be true. After Don John and Borachio leave, Claudio is enraged at his friend's supposed treachery. The real Benedick reenters and tells Claudio that Don Pedro has successfully persuaded Hero to marriage. Claudio erroneously believes that Benedick is talking about Don Pedro and Hero's marriage, when the opposite is true. . Don Pedro reenters and asks Benedick about Claudio's whereabouts. Benedick tells him about the count's strange reaction to the happy news. Don Pedro vows to set Claudio straight about whom Hero will marry. Benedick then complains about Beatrice to Don Pedro. Beatrice, Claudio, Hero and Leonato join the group. Benedick, in fear of Beatrice's sharp tongue, quickly exits. Don Pedro tells Claudio the truth about Hero and Claudio is overwhelmed with joy that he will soon marry his love. Beatrice jokingly complains about want of a husband for herself, when Don Pedro promptly proposes to her. She refuses, but neither takes the situation too seriously. She leaves the room shortly after this banter. . Leonato tells everyone else that the wedding will take place in one week. In order to amuse himself for the duration of the next week, Don Pedro decides to play matchmaker between Benedick and Beatrice. Leonato, Hero and Claudio agree to help him out.

We are sitting at a table and we are writing this upon paper made thousands of years ago. The light is dim, and we cannot see the Golden One, only one lock of gold on the pillow of an ancient bed. This is our home. We came upon it today, at sunrise. For many days we [-had-] {+have+} been crossing a chain of mountains. The forest rose among cliffs, and whenever we walked out upon a barren stretch of rock we saw great peaks before us in the west, and to the north of us, and to the south, as far as our eyes could see. The peaks were red and brown, with the green streaks of forests as veins upon them, with blue mists as veils over their heads. We had never heard of these mountains, nor seen them marked on any map. The Uncharted Forest has protected them from the Cities and from the men of the Cities. We climbed paths where the wild goat dared not follow. Stones rolled from under our feet, and we heard them striking the rocks below, farther and farther down, and the mountains rang with each stroke, and long after the strokes had died. But we went on, for we knew that no men would ever follow our track nor reach us here. Then today, at sunrise, we saw a white flame among the trees, high on a sheer peak before us. We thought that it was a fire and {+we+} stopped. But the flame [-was-] {+as+} unmoving, yet blinding as liquid metal. So we climbed toward it through the rocks. And there, before us, on a broad summit, with the mountains rising behind it, stood a house such as we had never seen, and the white fire came from the sun on the glass of its windows. The house had two stories and a strange roof flat as a floor. There was more window than wall upon its walls, and the windows went on straight around [-the-] corners, though how this [-kept the-] house {+kept+} standing we could not guess. The walls were hard and smooth, of that stone unlike stone which we had seen in our tunnel. We both knew it without words: this house was left from the Unmentionable Times. The trees had protected it from time and weather, and from men who have less pity than time and weather. We turned to the Golden One and we asked: "Are you afraid?" But they shook their head. So we walked to the door, and we threw it open, and we stepped together into the house of the Unmentionable Times. We shall need the days and the years ahead, to look, to [-learn,-] {+learn+} and to understand the things of this house. Today, we could only look and try to believe the sight of our eyes. We pulled the heavy curtains from the windows and we saw that the rooms were small, and we thought that not more than twelve men could have lived here. We thought it strange that [-men-] {+man+} had been permitted to build a house for only twelve. Never had we seen rooms so full of light. The sunrays danced upon colors, colors, {+and+} more colors [-that-] {+than+} we thought possible, we who had seen no houses save the white ones, the brown ones and the grey. There were great pieces of glass on the walls, but it was not glass, for when we looked upon it we saw our own bodies and all the things behind us, as on the face of a lake. There were strange things which we had never seen and the use of which we do not know. And there were globes of glass everywhere, in each room, the globes with the metal cobwebs inside, such as we had seen in our tunnel. We found the sleeping hall and we stood in awe upon its threshold. For it was a small room and there were only two beds in it. We found no other beds in the house, and then we knew that only two had lived here, and this passes understanding. What kind of world did they have, the men of the Unmentionable Times? We found garments, and the Golden One gasped at the sight of them. For they were not white tunics, nor white togas; they were of all colors, no two of them alike. Some crumbled to dust as we touched [-them. But-] {+them, but+} others were of heavier cloth, and they felt soft and new in our fingers. We found a room with walls made of shelves, which held rows of manuscripts, from the floor to the ceiling. Never had we seen such a number of them, nor of such strange shape. They were not soft and rolled, they had hard shells of cloth and leather; and the letters on their pages were [-so-] small and so even that we wondered at the men who had such handwriting. We glanced through the pages, and we saw that they were written in our language, but we found many words which we could not understand. Tomorrow, we shall begin to read these scripts. When we had seen all the rooms of the house, we looked at the Golden One and we both knew the thought in our minds. "We shall never leave this house," we said, "nor let it be taken from us. This is our home and the end of our journey. This is your house, Golden One, and ours, and it belongs to no other men whatever as far as the earth may stretch. We shall not share it with others, as we share not our joy with them, nor our love, nor our hunger. So be it to the end of our days." "Your will be done," they said. Then we went out to gather wood for the great hearth of our home. We brought water from the stream which runs among the trees under our windows. We killed a mountain goat, and we brought its flesh to be cooked in a strange copper pot we found in a place of wonders, which must have been the cooking room of the house. We did this work alone, for no words of ours could take the Golden One away from the big glass which is not glass. They stood before it and they looked and looked upon their own body. When the sun sank beyond the mountains, the Golden One fell asleep on the floor, amidst jewels, and bottles of crystal, and flowers of silk. We lifted the Golden One in our arms and we carried them to a bed, their head falling softly upon our shoulder. Then we lit a candle, and we brought paper from the room of the manuscripts, and we sat by the window, for we knew that we could not sleep tonight. And now we look upon the earth and sky. This spread of naked rock and peaks and moonlight is like a world ready to be born, a world that waits. It seems to us it asks a sign from us, a spark, a first commandment. We cannot know what word we are to give, nor what great deed this earth expects to witness. We know it waits. It seems to say it has great gifts to lay before [-us, but it wishes a greater gift for-] us. We are to speak. We are to give its goal, its highest meaning to all this glowing space of rock and sky. We look ahead, we beg our heart for guidance in answering this call no voice has spoken, yet we have heard. We look upon our hands. We see the dust of centuries, the dust which hid [-the-] great secrets and perhaps great evils. And yet it stirs no fear within our heart, but only silent reverence and pity. May knowledge come to us! What is [-the-] {+this+} secret our heart has understood and yet will not reveal to us, although it seems to beat as if it were endeavoring to tell it?

Equality 7-2521 begins his next journal entry sitting at a table with paper that is thousands of years old. He cannot see the Golden One sleeping on the bed in the dim light. They find the house earlier in the morning after crossing a mountain chain that has been protected by the Uncharted Forest from discovery by the Cities. Their path through the mountains is dangerous, but they know this way that no one can follow them. At sunrise, they see what they think is a fire but actually turns out upon further investigation to be the reflection of the sun on the glass of a house's windows. The house has two stories, a flat roof, and many windows, and it is made of the same hard substance as his secret tunnel. They realize without speaking that the house must be a remnant from the Unmentionable Times, hidden by the trees from time, weather, and man. Neither Equality 7-2521 nor the Golden One are afraid, so they enter the house of the Unmentionable Times and explore the house. The rooms are small, suggesting that only a few people lived in the house, although they find it hard to imagine that men were allowed to live in such small groups. The rooms are full of light and color, and the glass on the walls reflect instead of being transparent. The house holds many strange objects, including globes of glass that contain metal strands such as those in Equality 7-2521's tunnel. The sleeping hall is small, with only two beds, and they are surprised that the men of the Unmentionable Times were allowed to live in groups of two. The clothes in the house are colorful, unlike the City's plain white togas and tunics, and some of the less fragile clothes still feel soft and new. One of the rooms is full of shelves holding many manuscripts which are bound with hard leather and cloth rather than curled into rolls. They are fascinated by the small letters on the page and by some of the words which are in their language but unfamiliar, and they decide to begin reading tomorrow. After seeing all the rooms, he decides to claim the house as their own, and she agrees. He gathers wood for the fireplace and water from the nearby stream, and he kills a goat, which he cooks in a copper pot they find in the strange cooking room. Meanwhile, the Golden One continues to stare at her reflection in the mirror. When she falls asleep on the floor after dark, he carries her to a bed and lights a candle before bringing paper from the manuscript room and sitting sleeplessly by the window. Equality 7-2521 looks outside at the mountains and moonlight, which seem to hint at the renewal of the world. He feels that the world is waiting for his words, but he does not know what he must say. On his hands, he sees the residue of centuries which hides many secrets, and he feels both pity and respect as he ponders what his heart wishes to reveal to him.

The Provision For The Support of the Executive, and the Veto Power From the New York Packet. Friday, March 21, 1788. HAMILTON To the People of the State of New York: THE third ingredient towards constituting the vigor of the executive authority, is an adequate provision for its support. It is evident that, without proper attention to this article, the separation of the executive from the legislative department would be merely nominal and nugatory. The legislature, with a discretionary power over the salary and emoluments of the Chief Magistrate, could render him as obsequious to their will as they might think proper to make him. They might, in most cases, either reduce him by famine, or tempt him by largesses, to surrender at discretion his judgment to their inclinations. These expressions, taken in all the latitude of the terms, would no doubt convey more than is intended. There are men who could neither be distressed nor won into a sacrifice of their duty; but this stern virtue is the growth of few soils; and in the main it will be found that a power over a man's support is a power over his will. If it were necessary to confirm so plain a truth by facts, examples would not be wanting, even in this country, of the intimidation or seduction of the Executive by the terrors or allurements of the pecuniary arrangements of the legislative body. It is not easy, therefore, to commend too highly the judicious attention which has been paid to this subject in the proposed Constitution. It is there provided that "The President of the United States shall, at stated times, receive for his services a compensation which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the period for which he shall have been elected; and he shall not receive within that period any other emolument from the United States, or any of them." It is impossible to imagine any provision which would have been more eligible than this. The legislature, on the appointment of a President, is once for all to declare what shall be the compensation for his services during the time for which he shall have been elected. This done, they will have no power to alter it, either by increase or diminution, till a new period of service by a new election commences. They can neither weaken his fortitude by operating on his necessities, nor corrupt his integrity by appealing to his avarice. Neither the Union, nor any of its members, will be at liberty to give, nor will he be at liberty to receive, any other emolument than that which may have been determined by the first act. He can, of course, have no pecuniary inducement to renounce or desert the independence intended for him by the Constitution. The last of the requisites to energy, which have been enumerated, are competent powers. Let us proceed to consider those which are proposed to be vested in the President of the United States. The first thing that offers itself to our observation, is the qualified negative of the President upon the acts or resolutions of the two houses of the legislature; or, in other words, his power of returning all bills with objections, to have the effect of preventing their becoming laws, unless they should afterwards be ratified by two thirds of each of the component members of the legislative body. The propensity of the legislative department to intrude upon the rights, and to absorb the powers, of the other departments, has been already suggested and repeated; the insufficiency of a mere parchment delineation of the boundaries of each, has also been remarked upon; and the necessity of furnishing each with constitutional arms for its own defense, has been inferred and proved. From these clear and indubitable principles results the propriety of a negative, either absolute or qualified, in the Executive, upon the acts of the legislative branches. Without the one or the other, the former would be absolutely unable to defend himself against the depredations of the latter. He might gradually be stripped of his authorities by successive resolutions, or annihilated by a single vote. And in the one mode or the other, the legislative and executive powers might speedily come to be blended in the same hands. If even no propensity had ever discovered itself in the legislative body to invade the rights of the Executive, the rules of just reasoning and theoretic propriety would of themselves teach us, that the one ought not to be left to the mercy of the other, but ought to possess a constitutional and effectual power of self-defense. But the power in question has a further use. It not only serves as a shield to the Executive, but it furnishes an additional security against the enaction of improper laws. It establishes a salutary check upon the legislative body, calculated to guard the community against the effects of faction, precipitancy, or of any impulse unfriendly to the public good, which may happen to influence a majority of that body. The propriety of a negative has, upon some occasions, been combated by an observation, that it was not to be presumed a single man would possess more virtue and wisdom than a number of men; and that unless this presumption should be entertained, it would be improper to give the executive magistrate any species of control over the legislative body. But this observation, when examined, will appear rather specious than solid. The propriety of the thing does not turn upon the supposition of superior wisdom or virtue in the Executive, but upon the supposition that the legislature will not be infallible; that the love of power may sometimes betray it into a disposition to encroach upon the rights of other members of the government; that a spirit of faction may sometimes pervert its deliberations; that impressions of the moment may sometimes hurry it into measures which itself, on maturer reflexion, would condemn. The primary inducement to conferring the power in question upon the Executive is, to enable him to defend himself; the secondary one is to increase the chances in favor of the community against the passing of bad laws, through haste, inadvertence, or design. The oftener the measure is brought under examination, the greater the diversity in the situations of those who are to examine it, the less must be the danger of those errors which flow from want of due deliberation, or of those missteps which proceed from the contagion of some common passion or interest. It is far less probable, that culpable views of any kind should infect all the parts of the government at the same moment and in relation to the same object, than that they should by turns govern and mislead every one of them. It may perhaps be said that the power of preventing bad laws includes that of preventing good ones; and may be used to the one purpose as well as to the other. But this objection will have little weight with those who can properly estimate the mischiefs of that inconstancy and mutability in the laws, which form the greatest blemish in the character and genius of our governments. They will consider every institution calculated to restrain the excess of law-making, and to keep things in the same state in which they happen to be at any given period, as much more likely to do good than harm; because it is favorable to greater stability in the system of legislation. The injury which may possibly be done by defeating a few good laws, will be amply compensated by the advantage of preventing a number of bad ones. Nor is this all. The superior weight and influence of the legislative body in a free government, and the hazard to the Executive in a trial of strength with that body, afford a satisfactory security that the negative would generally be employed with great caution; and there would oftener be room for a charge of timidity than of rashness in the exercise of it. A king of Great Britain, with all his train of sovereign attributes, and with all the influence he draws from a thousand sources, would, at this day, hesitate to put a negative upon the joint resolutions of the two houses of Parliament. He would not fail to exert the utmost resources of that influence to strangle a measure disagreeable to him, in its progress to the throne, to avoid being reduced to the dilemma of permitting it to take effect, or of risking the displeasure of the nation by an opposition to the sense of the legislative body. Nor is it probable, that he would ultimately venture to exert his prerogatives, but in a case of manifest propriety, or extreme necessity. All well-informed men in that kingdom will accede to the justness of this remark. A very considerable period has elapsed since the negative of the crown has been exercised. If a magistrate so powerful and so well fortified as a British monarch, would have scruples about the exercise of the power under consideration, how much greater caution may be reasonably expected in a President of the United States, clothed for the short period of four years with the executive authority of a government wholly and purely republican? It is evident that there would be greater danger of his not using his power when necessary, than of his using it too often, or too much. An argument, indeed, against its expediency, has been drawn from this very source. It has been represented, on this account, as a power odious in appearance, useless in practice. But it will not follow, that because it might be rarely exercised, it would never be exercised. In the case for which it is chiefly designed, that of an immediate attack upon the constitutional rights of the Executive, or in a case in which the public good was evidently and palpably sacrificed, a man of tolerable firmness would avail himself of his constitutional means of defense, and would listen to the admonitions of duty and responsibility. In the former supposition, his fortitude would be stimulated by his immediate interest in the power of his office; in the latter, by the probability of the sanction of his constituents, who, though they would naturally incline to the legislative body in a doubtful case, would hardly suffer their partiality to delude them in a very plain case. I speak now with an eye to a magistrate possessing only a common share of firmness. There are men who, under any circumstances, will have the courage to do their duty at every hazard. But the convention have pursued a mean in this business, which will both facilitate the exercise of the power vested in this respect in the executive magistrate, and make its efficacy to depend on the sense of a considerable part of the legislative body. Instead of an absolute negative, it is proposed to give the Executive the qualified negative already described. This is a power which would be much more readily exercised than the other. A man who might be afraid to defeat a law by his single VETO, might not scruple to return it for reconsideration; subject to being finally rejected only in the event of more than one third of each house concurring in the sufficiency of his objections. He would be encouraged by the reflection, that if his opposition should prevail, it would embark in it a very respectable proportion of the legislative body, whose influence would be united with his in supporting the propriety of his conduct in the public opinion. A direct and categorical negative has something in the appearance of it more harsh, and more apt to irritate, than the mere suggestion of argumentative objections to be approved or disapproved by those to whom they are addressed. In proportion as it would be less apt to offend, it would be more apt to be exercised; and for this very reason, it may in practice be found more effectual. It is to be hoped that it will not often happen that improper views will govern so large a proportion as two thirds of both branches of the legislature at the same time; and this, too, in spite of the counterposing weight of the Executive. It is at any rate far less probable that this should be the case, than that such views should taint the resolutions and conduct of a bare majority. A power of this nature in the Executive, will often have a silent and unperceived, though forcible, operation. When men, engaged in unjustifiable pursuits, are aware that obstructions may come from a quarter which they cannot control, they will often be restrained by the bare apprehension of opposition, from doing what they would with eagerness rush into, if no such external impediments were to be feared. This qualified negative, as has been elsewhere remarked, is in this State vested in a council, consisting of the governor, with the chancellor and judges of the Supreme Court, or any two of them. It has been freely employed upon a variety of occasions, and frequently with success. And its utility has become so apparent, that persons who, in compiling the Constitution, were violent opposers of it, have from experience become its declared admirers.(1) I have in another place remarked, that the convention, in the formation of this part of their plan, had departed from the model of the constitution of this State, in favor of that of Massachusetts. Two strong reasons may be imagined for this preference. One is that the judges, who are to be the interpreters of the law, might receive an improper bias, from having given a previous opinion in their revisionary capacities; the other is that by being often associated with the Executive, they might be induced to embark too far in the political views of that magistrate, and thus a dangerous combination might by degrees be cemented between the executive and judiciary departments. It is impossible to keep the judges too distinct from every other avocation than that of expounding the laws. It is peculiarly dangerous to place them in a situation to be either corrupted or influenced by the Executive. PUBLIUS 1. Mr. Abraham Yates, a warm opponent of the plan of the convention is of this number.

Hamilton discusses the provisions in the Constitution guaranteeing a salary for the president that cannot be adjusted by Congress during his term and defends the president's right to veto congressional legislation. Hamilton contends that if the president's salary could be raised or lowered by Congress during his term, the legislative branch would gain an undue degree of power over the executive. Hamilton defends the presidential veto by pointing to the necessity of holding legislative authority in check. He warns that Congress may at various points be convulsed by the influence of faction and, as a result, seek to pass laws detrimental to the public interest. In such situations, it is necessary for the president to be able to obstruct such legislation. Hamilton claims that in a republican society the executive will always hesitate to overrule the decisions of the legislative branch. He also points out that the veto is only a qualified negative; that is, the congress can override the veto with a two-thirds vote in both houses.

Clerval then put the following letter into my hands. "_To_ V. FRANKENSTEIN. "MY DEAR COUSIN, "I cannot describe to you the uneasiness we have all felt concerning your health. We cannot help imagining that your friend Clerval conceals the extent of your disorder: for it is now several months since we have seen your hand-writing; and all this time you have been obliged to dictate your letters to Henry. Surely, Victor, you must have been exceedingly ill; and this makes us all very wretched, as much so nearly as after the death of your dear mother. My uncle was almost persuaded that you were indeed dangerously ill, and could hardly be restrained from undertaking a journey to Ingolstadt. Clerval always writes that you are getting better; I eagerly hope that you will confirm this intelligence soon in your own hand-writing; for indeed, indeed, Victor, we are all very miserable on this account. Relieve us from this fear, and we shall be the happiest creatures in the world. Your father's health is now so vigorous, that he appears ten years younger since last winter. Ernest also is so much improved, that you would hardly know him: he is now nearly sixteen, and has lost that sickly appearance which he had some years ago; he is grown quite robust and active. "My uncle and I conversed a long time last night about what profession Ernest should follow. His constant illness when young has deprived him of the habits of application; and now that he enjoys good health, he is continually in the open air, climbing the hills, or rowing on the lake. I therefore proposed that he should be a farmer; which you know, Cousin, is a favourite scheme of mine. A farmer's is a very healthy happy life; and the least hurtful, or rather the most beneficial profession of any. My uncle had an idea of his being educated as an advocate, that through his interest he might become a judge. But, besides that he is not at all fitted for such an occupation, it is certainly more creditable to cultivate the earth for the sustenance of man, than to be the confidant, and sometimes the accomplice, of his vices; which is the profession of a lawyer. I said, that the employments of a prosperous farmer, if they were not a more honourable, they were at least a happier species of occupation than that of a judge, whose misfortune it was always to meddle with the dark side of human nature. My uncle smiled, and said, that I ought to be an advocate myself, which put an end to the conversation on that subject. "And now I must tell you a little story that will please, and perhaps amuse you. Do you not remember Justine Moritz? Probably you do not; I will relate her history, therefore, in a few words. Madame Moritz, her mother, was a widow with four children, of whom Justine was the third. This girl had always been the favourite of her father; but, through a strange perversity, her mother could not endure her, and, after the death of M. Moritz, treated her very ill. My aunt observed this; and, when Justine was twelve years of age, prevailed on her mother to allow her to live at her house. The republican institutions of our country have produced simpler and happier manners than those which prevail in the great monarchies that surround it. Hence there is less distinction between the several classes of its inhabitants; and the lower orders being neither so poor nor so despised, their manners are more refined and moral. A servant in Geneva does not mean the same thing as a servant in France and England. Justine, thus received in our family, learned the duties of a servant; a condition which, in our fortunate country, does not include the idea of ignorance, and a sacrifice of the dignity of a human being. "After what I have said, I dare say you well remember the heroine of my little tale: for Justine was a great favourite of your's; and I recollect you once remarked, that if you were in an ill humour, one glance from Justine could dissipate it, for the same reason that Ariosto gives concerning the beauty of Angelica--she looked so frank-hearted and happy. My aunt conceived a great attachment for her, by which she was induced to give her an education superior to that which she had at first intended. This benefit was fully repaid; Justine was the most grateful little creature in the world: I do not mean that she made any professions, I never heard one pass her lips; but you could see by her eyes that she almost adored her protectress. Although her disposition was gay, and in many respects inconsiderate, yet she paid the greatest attention to every gesture of my aunt. She thought her the model of all excellence, and endeavoured to imitate her phraseology and manners, so that even now she often reminds me of her. "When my dearest aunt died, every one was too much occupied in their own grief to notice poor Justine, who had attended her during her illness with the most anxious affection. Poor Justine was very ill; but other trials were reserved for her. "One by one, her brothers and sister died; and her mother, with the exception of her neglected daughter, was left childless. The conscience of the woman was troubled; she began to think that the deaths of her favourites was a judgment from heaven to chastise her partiality. She was a Roman Catholic; and I believe her confessor confirmed the idea which she had conceived. Accordingly, a few months after your departure for Ingolstadt, Justine was called home by her repentant mother. Poor girl! she wept when she quitted our house: she was much altered since the death of my aunt; grief had given softness and a winning mildness to her manners, which had before been remarkable for vivacity. Nor was her residence at her mother's house of a nature to restore her gaiety. The poor woman was very vacillating in her repentance. She sometimes begged Justine to forgive her unkindness, but much oftener accused her of having caused the deaths of her brothers and sister. Perpetual fretting at length threw Madame Moritz into a decline, which at first increased her irritability, but she is now at peace for ever. She died on the first approach of cold weather, at the beginning of this last winter. Justine has returned to us; and I assure you I love her tenderly. She is very clever and gentle, and extremely pretty; as I mentioned before, her mien and her expressions continually remind me of my dear aunt. "I must say also a few words to you, my dear cousin, of little darling William. I wish you could see him; he is very tall of his age, with sweet laughing blue eyes, dark eye-lashes, and curling hair. When he smiles, two little dimples appear on each cheek, which are rosy with health. He has already had one or two little _wives_, but Louisa Biron is his favourite, a pretty little girl of five years of age. "Now, dear Victor, I dare say you wish to be indulged in a little gossip concerning the good people of Geneva. The pretty Miss Mansfield has already received the congratulatory visits on her approaching marriage with a young Englishman, John Melbourne, Esq. Her ugly sister, Manon, married M. Duvillard, the rich banker, last autumn. Your favourite schoolfellow, Louis Manoir, has suffered several misfortunes since the departure of Clerval from Geneva. But he has already recovered his spirits, and is reported to be on the point of marrying a very lively pretty Frenchwoman, Madame Tavernier. She is a widow, and much older than Manoir; but she is very much admired, and a favourite with every body. "I have written myself into good spirits, dear cousin; yet I cannot conclude without again anxiously inquiring concerning your health. Dear Victor, if you are not very ill, write yourself, and make your father and all of us happy; or----I cannot bear to think of the other side of the question; my tears already flow. Adieu, my dearest cousin." "ELIZABETH LAVENZA. "Geneva, March 18th, 17--." * * * * * "Dear, dear Elizabeth!" I exclaimed when I had read her letter, "I will write instantly, and relieve them from the anxiety they must feel." I wrote, and this exertion greatly fatigued me; but my convalescence had commenced, and proceeded regularly. In another fortnight I was able to leave my chamber. One of my first duties on my recovery was to introduce Clerval to the several professors of the university. In doing this, I underwent a kind of rough usage, ill befitting the wounds that my mind had sustained. Ever since the fatal night, the end of my labours, and the beginning of my misfortunes, I had conceived a violent antipathy even to the name of natural philosophy. When I was otherwise quite restored to health, the sight of a chemical instrument would renew all the agony of my nervous symptoms. Henry saw this, and had removed all my apparatus from my view. He had also changed my apartment; for he perceived that I had acquired a dislike for the room which had previously been my laboratory. But these cares of Clerval were made of no avail when I visited the professors. M. Waldman inflicted torture when he praised, with kindness and warmth, the astonishing progress I had made in the sciences. He soon perceived that I disliked the subject; but, not guessing the real cause, he attributed my feelings to modesty, and changed the subject from my improvement to the science itself, with a desire, as I evidently saw, of drawing me out. What could I do? He meant to please, and he tormented me. I felt as if he had placed carefully, one by one, in my view those instruments which were to be afterwards used in putting me to a slow and cruel death. I writhed under his words, yet dared not exhibit the pain I felt. Clerval, whose eyes and feelings were always quick in discerning the sensations of others, declined the subject, alleging, in excuse, his total ignorance; and the conversation took a more general turn. I thanked my friend from my heart, but I did not speak. I saw plainly that he was surprised, but he never attempted to draw my secret from me; and although I loved him with a mixture of affection and reverence that knew no bounds, yet I could never persuade myself to confide to him that event which was so often present to my recollection, but which I feared the detail to another would only impress more deeply. M. Krempe was not equally docile; and in my condition at that time, of almost insupportable sensitiveness, his harsh blunt encomiums gave me even more pain than the benevolent approbation of M. Waldman. "D--n the fellow!" cried he; "why, M. Clerval, I assure you he has outstript us all. Aye, stare if you please; but it is nevertheless true. A youngster who, but a few years ago, believed Cornelius Agrippa as firmly as the gospel, has now set himself at the head of the university; and if he is not soon pulled down, we shall all be out of countenance.--Aye, aye," continued he, observing my face expressive of suffering, "M. Frankenstein is modest; an excellent quality in a young man. Young men should be diffident of themselves, you know, M. Clerval; I was myself when young: but that wears out in a very short time." M. Krempe had now commenced an eulogy on himself, which happily turned the conversation from a subject that was so annoying to me. Clerval was no natural philosopher. His imagination was too vivid for the minutiae of science. Languages were his principal study; and he sought, by acquiring their elements, to open a field for self-instruction on his return to Geneva. Persian, Arabic, and Hebrew, gained his attention, after he had made himself perfectly master of Greek and Latin. For my own part, idleness had ever been irksome to me; and now that I wished to fly from reflection, and hated my former studies, I felt great relief in being the fellow-pupil with my friend, and found not only instruction but consolation in the works of the orientalists. Their melancholy is soothing, and their joy elevating to a degree I never experienced in studying the authors of any other country. When you read their writings, life appears to consist in a warm sun and garden of roses,--in the smiles and frowns of a fair enemy, and the fire that consumes your own heart. How different from the manly and heroical poetry of Greece and Rome. Summer passed away in these occupations, and my return to Geneva was fixed for the latter end of autumn; but being delayed by several accidents, winter and snow arrived, the roads were deemed impassable, and my journey was retarded until the ensuing spring. I felt this delay very bitterly; for I longed to see my native town, and my beloved friends. My return had only been delayed so long from an unwillingness to leave Clerval in a strange place, before he had become acquainted with any of its inhabitants. The winter, however, was spent cheerfully; and although the spring was uncommonly late, when it came, its beauty compensated for its dilatoriness. The month of May had already commenced, and I expected the letter daily which was to fix the date of my departure, when Henry proposed a pedestrian tour in the environs of Ingolstadt that I might bid a personal farewell to the country I had so long inhabited. I acceded with pleasure to this proposition: I was fond of exercise, and Clerval had always been my favourite companion in the rambles of this nature that I had taken among the scenes of my native country. We passed a fortnight in these perambulations: my health and spirits had long been restored, and they gained additional strength from the salubrious air I breathed, the natural incidents of our progress, and the conversation of my friend. Study had before secluded me from the intercourse of my fellow-creatures, and rendered me unsocial; but Clerval called forth the better feelings of my heart; he again taught me to love the aspect of nature, and the cheerful faces of children. Excellent friend! how sincerely did you love me, and endeavour to elevate my mind, until it was on a level with your own. A selfish pursuit had cramped and narrowed me, until your gentleness and affection warmed and opened my senses; I became the same happy creature who, a few years ago, loving and beloved by all, had no sorrow or care. When happy, inanimate nature had the power of bestowing on me the most delightful sensations. A serene sky and verdant fields filled me with ecstacy. The present season was indeed divine; the flowers of spring bloomed in the hedges, while those of summer were already in bud: I was undisturbed by thoughts which during the preceding year had pressed upon me, notwithstanding my endeavours to throw them off, with an invincible burden. Henry rejoiced in my gaiety, and sincerely sympathized in my feelings: he exerted himself to amuse me, while he expressed the sensations that filled his soul. The resources of his mind on this occasion were truly astonishing: his conversation was full of imagination; and very often, in imitation of the Persian and Arabic writers, he invented tales of wonderful fancy and passion. At other times he repeated my favourite poems, or drew me out into arguments, which he supported with great ingenuity. We returned to our college on a Sunday afternoon: the peasants were dancing, and every one we met appeared gay and happy. My own spirits were high, and I bounded along with feelings of unbridled joy and hilarity.

Victor receives a letter from Elizabeth which helps lift his spirits. She gives details concerning Justine Moritz who is the Frankenstein's housekeeper and trusted friend. She was treated badly by her own family, but she has become indispensable in the Frankenstein home. Henry encourages Victor to study with him Ancient and Foreign Languages, and the pair work happily and well together. Victor remains with Henry in Ingolstadt for a further year.

The Palmers returned to Cleveland the next day, and the two families at Barton were again left to entertain each other. But this did not last long; Elinor had hardly got their last visitors out of her head, had hardly done wondering at Charlotte's being so happy without a cause, at Mr. Palmer's acting so simply, with good abilities, and at the strange unsuitableness which often existed between husband and wife, before Sir John's and Mrs. Jennings's active zeal in the cause of society, procured her some other new acquaintance to see and observe. In a morning's excursion to Exeter, they had met with two young ladies, whom Mrs. Jennings had the satisfaction of discovering to be her relations, and this was enough for Sir John to invite them directly to the park, as soon as their present engagements at Exeter were over. Their engagements at Exeter instantly gave way before such an invitation, and Lady Middleton was thrown into no little alarm on the return of Sir John, by hearing that she was very soon to receive a visit from two girls whom she had never seen in her life, and of whose elegance,--whose tolerable gentility even, she could have no proof; for the assurances of her husband and mother on that subject went for nothing at all. Their being her relations too made it so much the worse; and Mrs. Jennings's attempts at consolation were therefore unfortunately founded, when she advised her daughter not to care about their being so fashionable; because they were all cousins and must put up with one another. As it was impossible, however, now to prevent their coming, Lady Middleton resigned herself to the idea of it, with all the philosophy of a well-bred woman, contenting herself with merely giving her husband a gentle reprimand on the subject five or six times every day. The young ladies arrived: their appearance was by no means ungenteel or unfashionable. Their dress was very smart, their manners very civil, they were delighted with the house, and in raptures with the furniture, and they happened to be so doatingly fond of children that Lady Middleton's good opinion was engaged in their favour before they had been an hour at the Park. She declared them to be very agreeable girls indeed, which for her ladyship was enthusiastic admiration. Sir John's confidence in his own judgment rose with this animated praise, and he set off directly for the cottage to tell the Miss Dashwoods of the Miss Steeles' arrival, and to assure them of their being the sweetest girls in the world. From such commendation as this, however, there was not much to be learned; Elinor well knew that the sweetest girls in the world were to be met with in every part of England, under every possible variation of form, face, temper and understanding. Sir John wanted the whole family to walk to the Park directly and look at his guests. Benevolent, philanthropic man! It was painful to him even to keep a third cousin to himself. "Do come now," said he--"pray come--you must come--I declare you shall come--You can't think how you will like them. Lucy is monstrous pretty, and so good humoured and agreeable! The children are all hanging about her already, as if she was an old acquaintance. And they both long to see you of all things, for they have heard at Exeter that you are the most beautiful creatures in the world; and I have told them it is all very true, and a great deal more. You will be delighted with them I am sure. They have brought the whole coach full of playthings for the children. How can you be so cross as not to come? Why they are your cousins, you know, after a fashion. YOU are my cousins, and they are my wife's, so you must be related." But Sir John could not prevail. He could only obtain a promise of their calling at the Park within a day or two, and then left them in amazement at their indifference, to walk home and boast anew of their attractions to the Miss Steeles, as he had been already boasting of the Miss Steeles to them. When their promised visit to the Park and consequent introduction to these young ladies took place, they found in the appearance of the eldest, who was nearly thirty, with a very plain and not a sensible face, nothing to admire; but in the other, who was not more than two or three and twenty, they acknowledged considerable beauty; her features were pretty, and she had a sharp quick eye, and a smartness of air, which though it did not give actual elegance or grace, gave distinction to her person.-- Their manners were particularly civil, and Elinor soon allowed them credit for some kind of sense, when she saw with what constant and judicious attention they were making themselves agreeable to Lady Middleton. With her children they were in continual raptures, extolling their beauty, courting their notice, and humouring their whims; and such of their time as could be spared from the importunate demands which this politeness made on it, was spent in admiration of whatever her ladyship was doing, if she happened to be doing any thing, or in taking patterns of some elegant new dress, in which her appearance the day before had thrown them into unceasing delight. Fortunately for those who pay their court through such foibles, a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her cousins submitted. She saw their sashes untied, their hair pulled about their ears, their work-bags searched, and their knives and scissors stolen away, and felt no doubt of its being a reciprocal enjoyment. It suggested no other surprise than that Elinor and Marianne should sit so composedly by, without claiming a share in what was passing. "John is in such spirits today!" said she, on his taking Miss Steeles's pocket handkerchief, and throwing it out of window--"He is full of monkey tricks." And soon afterwards, on the second boy's violently pinching one of the same lady's fingers, she fondly observed, "How playful William is!" "And here is my sweet little Annamaria," she added, tenderly caressing a little girl of three years old, who had not made a noise for the last two minutes; "And she is always so gentle and quiet--Never was there such a quiet little thing!" But unfortunately in bestowing these embraces, a pin in her ladyship's head dress slightly scratching the child's neck, produced from this pattern of gentleness such violent screams, as could hardly be outdone by any creature professedly noisy. The mother's consternation was excessive; but it could not surpass the alarm of the Miss Steeles, and every thing was done by all three, in so critical an emergency, which affection could suggest as likely to assuage the agonies of the little sufferer. She was seated in her mother's lap, covered with kisses, her wound bathed with lavender-water, by one of the Miss Steeles, who was on her knees to attend her, and her mouth stuffed with sugar plums by the other. With such a reward for her tears, the child was too wise to cease crying. She still screamed and sobbed lustily, kicked her two brothers for offering to touch her, and all their united soothings were ineffectual till Lady Middleton luckily remembering that in a scene of similar distress last week, some apricot marmalade had been successfully applied for a bruised temple, the same remedy was eagerly proposed for this unfortunate scratch, and a slight intermission of screams in the young lady on hearing it, gave them reason to hope that it would not be rejected.-- She was carried out of the room therefore in her mother's arms, in quest of this medicine, and as the two boys chose to follow, though earnestly entreated by their mother to stay behind, the four young ladies were left in a quietness which the room had not known for many hours. "Poor little creatures!" said Miss Steele, as soon as they were gone. "It might have been a very sad accident." "Yet I hardly know how," cried Marianne, "unless it had been under totally different circumstances. But this is the usual way of heightening alarm, where there is nothing to be alarmed at in reality." "What a sweet woman Lady Middleton is!" said Lucy Steele. Marianne was silent; it was impossible for her to say what she did not feel, however trivial the occasion; and upon Elinor therefore the whole task of telling lies when politeness required it, always fell. She did her best when thus called on, by speaking of Lady Middleton with more warmth than she felt, though with far less than Miss Lucy. "And Sir John too," cried the elder sister, "what a charming man he is!" Here too, Miss Dashwood's commendation, being only simple and just, came in without any eclat. She merely observed that he was perfectly good humoured and friendly. "And what a charming little family they have! I never saw such fine children in my life.--I declare I quite doat upon them already, and indeed I am always distractedly fond of children." "I should guess so," said Elinor, with a smile, "from what I have witnessed this morning." "I have a notion," said Lucy, "you think the little Middletons rather too much indulged; perhaps they may be the outside of enough; but it is so natural in Lady Middleton; and for my part, I love to see children full of life and spirits; I cannot bear them if they are tame and quiet." "I confess," replied Elinor, "that while I am at Barton Park, I never think of tame and quiet children with any abhorrence." A short pause succeeded this speech, which was first broken by Miss Steele, who seemed very much disposed for conversation, and who now said rather abruptly, "And how do you like Devonshire, Miss Dashwood? I suppose you were very sorry to leave Sussex." In some surprise at the familiarity of this question, or at least of the manner in which it was spoken, Elinor replied that she was. "Norland is a prodigious beautiful place, is not it?" added Miss Steele. "We have heard Sir John admire it excessively," said Lucy, who seemed to think some apology necessary for the freedom of her sister. "I think every one MUST admire it," replied Elinor, "who ever saw the place; though it is not to be supposed that any one can estimate its beauties as we do." "And had you a great many smart beaux there? I suppose you have not so many in this part of the world; for my part, I think they are a vast addition always." "But why should you think," said Lucy, looking ashamed of her sister, "that there are not as many genteel young men in Devonshire as Sussex?" "Nay, my dear, I'm sure I don't pretend to say that there an't. I'm sure there's a vast many smart beaux in Exeter; but you know, how could I tell what smart beaux there might be about Norland; and I was only afraid the Miss Dashwoods might find it dull at Barton, if they had not so many as they used to have. But perhaps you young ladies may not care about the beaux, and had as lief be without them as with them. For my part, I think they are vastly agreeable, provided they dress smart and behave civil. But I can't bear to see them dirty and nasty. Now there's Mr. Rose at Exeter, a prodigious smart young man, quite a beau, clerk to Mr. Simpson, you know, and yet if you do but meet him of a morning, he is not fit to be seen.-- I suppose your brother was quite a beau, Miss Dashwood, before he married, as he was so rich?" "Upon my word," replied Elinor, "I cannot tell you, for I do not perfectly comprehend the meaning of the word. But this I can say, that if he ever was a beau before he married, he is one still for there is not the smallest alteration in him." "Oh! dear! one never thinks of married men's being beaux--they have something else to do." "Lord! Anne," cried her sister, "you can talk of nothing but beaux;--you will make Miss Dashwood believe you think of nothing else." And then to turn the discourse, she began admiring the house and the furniture. This specimen of the Miss Steeles was enough. The vulgar freedom and folly of the eldest left her no recommendation, and as Elinor was not blinded by the beauty, or the shrewd look of the youngest, to her want of real elegance and artlessness, she left the house without any wish of knowing them better. Not so the Miss Steeles.--They came from Exeter, well provided with admiration for the use of Sir John Middleton, his family, and all his relations, and no niggardly proportion was now dealt out to his fair cousins, whom they declared to be the most beautiful, elegant, accomplished, and agreeable girls they had ever beheld, and with whom they were particularly anxious to be better acquainted.-- And to be better acquainted therefore, Elinor soon found was their inevitable lot, for as Sir John was entirely on the side of the Miss Steeles, their party would be too strong for opposition, and that kind of intimacy must be submitted to, which consists of sitting an hour or two together in the same room almost every day. Sir John could do no more; but he did not know that any more was required: to be together was, in his opinion, to be intimate, and while his continual schemes for their meeting were effectual, he had not a doubt of their being established friends. To do him justice, he did every thing in his power to promote their unreserve, by making the Miss Steeles acquainted with whatever he knew or supposed of his cousins' situations in the most delicate particulars,--and Elinor had not seen them more than twice, before the eldest of them wished her joy on her sister's having been so lucky as to make a conquest of a very smart beau since she came to Barton. "'Twill be a fine thing to have her married so young to be sure," said she, "and I hear he is quite a beau, and prodigious handsome. And I hope you may have as good luck yourself soon,--but perhaps you may have a friend in the corner already." Elinor could not suppose that Sir John would be more nice in proclaiming his suspicions of her regard for Edward, than he had been with respect to Marianne; indeed it was rather his favourite joke of the two, as being somewhat newer and more conjectural; and since Edward's visit, they had never dined together without his drinking to her best affections with so much significancy and so many nods and winks, as to excite general attention. The letter F--had been likewise invariably brought forward, and found productive of such countless jokes, that its character as the wittiest letter in the alphabet had been long established with Elinor. The Miss Steeles, as she expected, had now all the benefit of these jokes, and in the eldest of them they raised a curiosity to know the name of the gentleman alluded to, which, though often impertinently expressed, was perfectly of a piece with her general inquisitiveness into the concerns of their family. But Sir John did not sport long with the curiosity which he delighted to raise, for he had at least as much pleasure in telling the name, as Miss Steele had in hearing it. "His name is Ferrars," said he, in a very audible whisper; "but pray do not tell it, for it's a great secret." "Ferrars!" repeated Miss Steele; "Mr. Ferrars is the happy man, is he? What! your sister-in-law's brother, Miss Dashwood? a very agreeable young man to be sure; I know him very well." "How can you say so, Anne?" cried Lucy, who generally made an amendment to all her sister's assertions. "Though we have seen him once or twice at my uncle's, it is rather too much to pretend to know him very well." Elinor heard all this with attention and surprise. "And who was this uncle? Where did he live? How came they acquainted?" She wished very much to have the subject continued, though she did not chuse to join in it herself; but nothing more of it was said, and for the first time in her life, she thought Mrs. Jennings deficient either in curiosity after petty information, or in a disposition to communicate it. The manner in which Miss Steele had spoken of Edward, increased her curiosity; for it struck her as being rather ill-natured, and suggested the suspicion of that lady's knowing, or fancying herself to know something to his disadvantage.--But her curiosity was unavailing, for no farther notice was taken of Mr. Ferrars's name by Miss Steele when alluded to, or even openly mentioned by Sir John.

The Palmers return to their home at Cleveland the next day, but there are more visitors in store for Barton Park. Mrs. Jennings has discovered some distant relatives on a brief trip to Exeter, and invited them to come stay. Lady Middleton is shaken by this rather odd invitation, but comes around. When the young cousins arrive, they don't disappoint - they're quite polite and fashionable. They simply love everything about Barton, and go out of their way to flatter Lady Middleton, who decides that she likes them after all. Sir John rushes over to fetch Marianne and Elinor, wanting them to meet the new arrivals. He's sure they'll all get along. Sir John can't believe that the Dashwoods aren't stumbling over themselves to get there - instead, they promise him that they'll come and visit within the next couple of days. He goes back to brag about them to the new arrivals, the two Miss Steeles. Elinor and Marianne finally go to see the visitors a couple of days later. The elder Miss Steele is nothing to write home about - she's almost thirty , and not very pretty. The younger sister, Lucy, is a different story, though. She's about 22, and is very pretty - she's very sharp and put-together, though not exactly elegant. Elinor admits to herself that the two sisters do have some common sense; they've figured out that the way into Lady Middleton's heart is by praising her children. Everyone sits and admires the children, even though one of them, Annamaria, has a screaming fit. The Miss Steeles pamper her wholeheartedly. Lady Middleton carries the screaming child away, leaving her four guests alone. They make small talk about Lady Middleton and Sir John; Marianne can't bear to participate in such niceties, so Elinor bears the brunt of the small talk. Miss Steele asks if they've been enjoying their new home in Devonshire, and comments that they must have been sad to leave Norland. Whoa - this is kind of a personal question for someone who's practically a stranger! Elinor is a little taken aback, and responds rather cautiously that she was. There's some small talk about Norland's beauties, in which Lucy seems a little apologetic for her rude older sister. Miss Steele then pushes forward, asking if the Dashwoods had many handsome beaux there - that is, did they have a lot of boyfriends? Lucy's embarrassed again by her sister's forthrightness. Miss Steele goes on and on about "beaux" - what men should be like to be a good beau. She's totally ridiculous, and it's obvious that this is all she ever thinks about. Everyone else is kind of mortified by the turn of conversation. Lucy changes the subject, but the damage is done - the Dashwoods leave, certain that they don't want to hang out with the Steeles anymore. Elinor can't stand the older one, and even pretty Lucy kind of turned her off with her obvious shrewdness. Unfortunately, the Steeles don't feel the same way - they simply loved the Dashwoods, and think they're going to be BFFs. Sir John joins the side of the Miss Steeles, and insist that the young ladies all hang out together. The Miss Steeles join in the Middleton family pastime of teasing Elinor and Marianne about their suitors. It's not a welcome addition. Sir John lets slip the name of Elinor's supposed "beau" - Ferrars. It turns out Lucy and Anne know him through their uncle. She wonders what exactly they know about him.

She had read "Paul and Virginia," and she had dreamed of the little bamboo-house, the nigger Domingo, the dog Fidele, but above all of the sweet friendship of some dear little brother, who seeks red fruit for you on trees taller than steeples, or who runs barefoot over the sand, bringing you a bird's nest. When she was thirteen, her father himself took her to town to place her in the convent. They stopped at an inn in the St. Gervais quarter, where, at their supper, they used painted plates that set forth the story of Mademoiselle de la Valliere. The explanatory legends, chipped here and there by the scratching of knives, all glorified religion, the tendernesses of the heart, and the pomps of court. Far from being bored at first at the convent, she took pleasure in the society of the good sisters, who, to amuse her, took her to the chapel, which one entered from the refectory by a long corridor. She played very little during recreation hours, knew her catechism well, and it was she who always answered Monsieur le Vicaire's difficult questions. Living thus, without ever leaving the warm atmosphere of the classrooms, and amid these pale-faced women wearing rosaries with brass crosses, she was softly lulled by the mystic languor exhaled in the perfumes of the altar, the freshness of the holy water, and the lights of the tapers. Instead of attending to mass, she looked at the pious vignettes with their azure borders in her book, and she loved the sick lamb, the sacred heart pierced with sharp arrows, or the poor Jesus sinking beneath the cross he carries. She tried, by way of mortification, to eat nothing a whole day. She puzzled her head to find some vow to fulfil. When she went to confession, she invented little sins in order that she might stay there longer, kneeling in the shadow, her hands joined, her face against the grating beneath the whispering of the priest. The comparisons of betrothed, husband, celestial lover, and eternal marriage, that recur in sermons, stirred within her soul depths of unexpected sweetness. In the evening, before prayers, there was some religious reading in the study. On week-nights it was some abstract of sacred history or the Lectures of the Abbe Frayssinous, and on Sundays passages from the "Genie du Christianisme," as a recreation. How she listened at first to the sonorous lamentations of its romantic melancholies reechoing through the world and eternity! If her childhood had been spent in the shop-parlour of some business quarter, she might perhaps have opened her heart to those lyrical invasions of Nature, which usually come to us only through translation in books. But she knew the country too well; she knew the lowing of cattle, the milking, the ploughs. Accustomed to calm aspects of life, she turned, on the contrary, to those of excitement. She loved the sea only for the sake of its storms, and the green fields only when broken up by ruins. She wanted to get some personal profit out of things, and she rejected as useless all that did not contribute to the immediate desires of her heart, being of a temperament more sentimental than artistic, looking for emotions, not landscapes. At the convent there was an old maid who came for a week each month to mend the linen. Patronized by the clergy, because she belonged to an ancient family of noblemen ruined by the Revolution, she dined in the refectory at the table of the good sisters, and after the meal had a bit of chat with them before going back to her work. The girls often slipped out from the study to go and see her. She knew by heart the love songs of the last century, and sang them in a low voice as she stitched away. She told stories, gave them news, went errands in the town, and on the sly lent the big girls some novel, that she always carried in the pockets of her apron, and of which the good lady herself swallowed long chapters in the intervals of her work. They were all love, lovers, sweethearts, persecuted ladies fainting in lonely pavilions, postilions killed at every stage, horses ridden to death on every page, sombre forests, heartaches, vows, sobs, tears and kisses, little skiffs by moonlight, nightingales in shady groves, "gentlemen" brave as lions, gentle as lambs, virtuous as no one ever was, always well dressed, and weeping like fountains. For six months, then, Emma, at fifteen years of age, made her hands dirty with books from old lending libraries. Through Walter Scott, later on, she fell in love with historical events, dreamed of old chests, guard-rooms and minstrels. She would have liked to live in some old manor-house, like those long-waisted chatelaines who, in the shade of pointed arches, spent their days leaning on the stone, chin in hand, watching a cavalier with white plume galloping on his black horse from the distant fields. At this time she had a cult for Mary Stuart and enthusiastic veneration for illustrious or unhappy women. Joan of Arc, Heloise, Agnes Sorel, the beautiful Ferroniere, and Clemence Isaure stood out to her like comets in the dark immensity of heaven, where also were seen, lost in shadow, and all unconnected, St. Louis with his oak, the dying Bayard, some cruelties of Louis XI, a little of St. Bartholomew's Day, the plume of the Bearnais, and always the remembrance of the plates painted in honour of Louis XIV. In the music class, in the ballads she sang, there was nothing but little angels with golden wings, madonnas, lagunes, gondoliers;-mild compositions that allowed her to catch a glimpse athwart the obscurity of style and the weakness of the music of the attractive phantasmagoria of sentimental realities. Some of her companions brought "keepsakes" given them as new year's gifts to the convent. These had to be hidden; it was quite an undertaking; they were read in the dormitory. Delicately handling the beautiful satin bindings, Emma looked with dazzled eyes at the names of the unknown authors, who had signed their verses for the most part as counts or viscounts. She trembled as she blew back the tissue paper over the engraving and saw it folded in two and fall gently against the page. Here behind the balustrade of a balcony was a young man in a short cloak, holding in his arms a young girl in a white dress wearing an alms-bag at her belt; or there were nameless portraits of English ladies with fair curls, who looked at you from under their round straw hats with their large clear eyes. Some there were lounging in their carriages, gliding through parks, a greyhound bounding along in front of the equipage driven at a trot by two midget postilions in white breeches. Others, dreaming on sofas with an open letter, gazed at the moon through a slightly open window half draped by a black curtain. The naive ones, a tear on their cheeks, were kissing doves through the bars of a Gothic cage, or, smiling, their heads on one side, were plucking the leaves of a marguerite with their taper fingers, that curved at the tips like peaked shoes. And you, too, were there, Sultans with long pipes reclining beneath arbours in the arms of Bayaderes; Djiaours, Turkish sabres, Greek caps; and you especially, pale landscapes of dithyrambic lands, that often show us at once palm trees and firs, tigers on the right, a lion to the left, Tartar minarets on the horizon; the whole framed by a very neat virgin forest, and with a great perpendicular sunbeam trembling in the water, where, standing out in relief like white excoriations on a steel-grey ground, swans are swimming about. And the shade of the argand lamp fastened to the wall above Emma's head lighted up all these pictures of the world, that passed before her one by one in the silence of the dormitory, and to the distant noise of some belated carriage rolling over the Boulevards. When her mother died she cried much the first few days. She had a funeral picture made with the hair of the deceased, and, in a letter sent to the Bertaux full of sad reflections on life, she asked to be buried later on in the same grave. The goodman thought she must be ill, and came to see her. Emma was secretly pleased that she had reached at a first attempt the rare ideal of pale lives, never attained by mediocre hearts. She let herself glide along with Lamartine meanderings, listened to harps on lakes, to all the songs of dying swans, to the falling of the leaves, the pure virgins ascending to heaven, and the voice of the Eternal discoursing down the valleys. She wearied of it, would not confess it, continued from habit, and at last was surprised to feel herself soothed, and with no more sadness at heart than wrinkles on her brow. The good nuns, who had been so sure of her vocation, perceived with great astonishment that Mademoiselle Rouault seemed to be slipping from them. They had indeed been so lavish to her of prayers, retreats, novenas, and sermons, they had so often preached the respect due to saints and martyrs, and given so much good advice as to the modesty of the body and the salvation of her soul, that she did as tightly reined horses; she pulled up short and the bit slipped from her teeth. This nature, positive in the midst of its enthusiasms, that had loved the church for the sake of the flowers, and music for the words of the songs, and literature for its passional stimulus, rebelled against the mysteries of faith as it grew irritated by discipline, a thing antipathetic to her constitution. When her father took her from school, no one was sorry to see her go. The Lady Superior even thought that she had latterly been somewhat irreverent to the community. Emma, at home once more, first took pleasure in looking after the servants, then grew disgusted with the country and missed her convent. When Charles came to the Bertaux for the first time, she thought herself quite disillusioned, with nothing more to learn, and nothing more to feel. But the uneasiness of her new position, or perhaps the disturbance caused by the presence of this man, had sufficed to make her believe that she at last felt that wondrous passion which, till then, like a great bird with rose-coloured wings, hung in the splendour of the skies of poesy; and now she could not think that the calm in which she lived was the happiness she had dreamed.

Emma recalls her thirteenth year, when her father took her to the convent to live. She enjoyed the convent at first; she liked talking with the nuns and she enjoyed answering the difficult questions correctly. But she soon relinquished herself to the languid atmosphere of the convent and found herself admiring the beauty of the chapel rather than listening to the lessons. She gave herself over to romantic notions concerning the church and dreamed of the "sick lamb" and the metaphors of a "betrothed spouse, heavenly lover, marriage everlasting," and she listened only to the romantic melancholy of the lamentations. There was an old maid who came to the convent and who would sing romantic ballads to the girls on the sly. Emma then read voraciously from tales of romance involving lonely meetings, secret encounters, gloomy forests, and troubles of the heart. She became enthusiastic over Sir Walter Scott and dreamed of living in some romantic palace where a cavalier with a white plume could come galloping up and rescue her. When her mother died, Emma had a lock of her dead mother's hair mounted and wrote her father that when she died she would like to be buried in the same grave. She gave her time to reading romantic, sentimental poetry and while enjoying the mysteries of the church, she rebelled against the discipline. When her father took her from the convent, she enjoyed managing the servants for a while, but soon tired of it and longed for the convent. When Charles appeared, she found it difficult to believe that the quietness and dullness of her romance was what she had read about in the novels.

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.

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.

Scene III. Elsinore. A room in the Castle. Enter King. King. I have sent to seek him and to find the body. How dangerous is it that this man goes loose! Yet must not we put the strong law on him. He's lov'd of the distracted multitude, Who like not in their judgment, but their eyes; And where 'tis so, th' offender's scourge is weigh'd, But never the offence. To bear all smooth and even, This sudden sending him away must seem Deliberate pause. Diseases desperate grown By desperate appliance are reliev'd, Or not at all. Enter Rosencrantz. How now O What hath befall'n? Ros. Where the dead body is bestow'd, my lord, We cannot get from him. King. But where is he? Ros. Without, my lord; guarded, to know your pleasure. King. Bring him before us. Ros. Ho, Guildenstern! Bring in my lord. Enter Hamlet and Guildenstern [with Attendants]. King. Now, Hamlet, where's Polonius? Ham. At supper. King. At supper? Where? Ham. Not where he eats, but where he is eaten. A certain convocation of politic worms are e'en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet. We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service- two dishes, but to one table. That's the end. King. Alas, alas! Ham. A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm. King. What dost thou mean by this? Ham. Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar. King. Where is Polonius? Ham. In heaven. Send thither to see. If your messenger find him not there, seek him i' th' other place yourself. But indeed, if you find him not within this month, you shall nose him as you go up the stair, into the lobby. King. Go seek him there. [To Attendants.] Ham. He will stay till you come. [Exeunt Attendants.] King. Hamlet, this deed, for thine especial safety,- Which we do tender as we dearly grieve For that which thou hast done,- must send thee hence With fiery quickness. Therefore prepare thyself. The bark is ready and the wind at help, Th' associates tend, and everything is bent For England. Ham. For England? King. Ay, Hamlet. Ham. Good. King. So is it, if thou knew'st our purposes. Ham. I see a cherub that sees them. But come, for England! Farewell, dear mother. King. Thy loving father, Hamlet. Ham. My mother! Father and mother is man and wife; man and wife is one flesh; and so, my mother. Come, for England! Exit. King. Follow him at foot; tempt him with speed aboard. Delay it not; I'll have him hence to-night. Away! for everything is seal'd and done That else leans on th' affair. Pray you make haste. Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern] And, England, if my love thou hold'st at aught,- As my great power thereof may give thee sense, Since yet thy cicatrice looks raw and red After the Danish sword, and thy free awe Pays homage to us,- thou mayst not coldly set Our sovereign process, which imports at full, By letters congruing to that effect, The present death of Hamlet. Do it, England; For like the hectic in my blood he rages, And thou must cure me. Till I know 'tis done, Howe'er my haps, my joys were ne'er begun. Exit.

The king speaks to a group of attendants, telling them of Polonius's death and his intention to send Hamlet to England. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern appear with Hamlet, who is under guard. Pressed by Claudius to reveal the location of Polonius's body, Hamlet is by turns inane, coy, and clever, saying that Polonius is being eaten by worms, and that the king could send a messenger to find Polonius in heaven or seek him in hell himself. Finally, Hamlet reveals that Polonius's body is under the stairs near the castle lobby, and the king dispatches his attendants to look there. The king tells Hamlet that he must leave at once for England, and Hamlet enthusiastically agrees. He exits, and Claudius sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to ensure that he boards the ship at once. Alone with his thoughts, Claudius states his hope that England will obey the sealed orders he has sent with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The orders call for Prince Hamlet to be put to death

SCENE II. LUCENTIO'S house Enter BAPTISTA, VINCENTIO, GREMIO, the PEDANT, LUCENTIO, BIANCA, PETRUCHIO, KATHERINA, HORTENSIO, and WIDOW. The SERVINGMEN with TRANIO, BIONDELLO, and GRUMIO, bringing in a banquet LUCENTIO. At last, though long, our jarring notes agree; And time it is when raging war is done To smile at scapes and perils overblown. My fair Bianca, bid my father welcome, While I with self-same kindness welcome thine. Brother Petruchio, sister Katherina, And thou, Hortensio, with thy loving widow, Feast with the best, and welcome to my house. My banquet is to close our stomachs up After our great good cheer. Pray you, sit down; For now we sit to chat as well as eat. [They sit] PETRUCHIO. Nothing but sit and sit, and eat and eat! BAPTISTA. Padua affords this kindness, son Petruchio. PETRUCHIO. Padua affords nothing but what is kind. HORTENSIO. For both our sakes I would that word were true. PETRUCHIO. Now, for my life, Hortensio fears his widow. WIDOW. Then never trust me if I be afeard. PETRUCHIO. YOU are very sensible, and yet you miss my sense: I mean Hortensio is afeard of you. WIDOW. He that is giddy thinks the world turns round. PETRUCHIO. Roundly replied. KATHERINA. Mistress, how mean you that? WIDOW. Thus I conceive by him. PETRUCHIO. Conceives by me! How likes Hortensio that? HORTENSIO. My widow says thus she conceives her tale. PETRUCHIO. Very well mended. Kiss him for that, good widow. KATHERINA. 'He that is giddy thinks the world turns round.' I pray you tell me what you meant by that. WIDOW. Your husband, being troubled with a shrew, Measures my husband's sorrow by his woe; And now you know my meaning. KATHERINA. A very mean meaning. WIDOW. Right, I mean you. KATHERINA. And I am mean, indeed, respecting you. PETRUCHIO. To her, Kate! HORTENSIO. To her, widow! PETRUCHIO. A hundred marks, my Kate does put her down. HORTENSIO. That's my office. PETRUCHIO. Spoke like an officer- ha' to thee, lad. [Drinks to HORTENSIO] BAPTISTA. How likes Gremio these quick-witted folks? GREMIO. Believe me, sir, they butt together well. BIANCA. Head and butt! An hasty-witted body Would say your head and butt were head and horn. VINCENTIO. Ay, mistress bride, hath that awakened you? BIANCA. Ay, but not frighted me; therefore I'll sleep again. PETRUCHIO. Nay, that you shall not; since you have begun, Have at you for a bitter jest or two. BIANCA. Am I your bird? I mean to shift my bush, And then pursue me as you draw your bow. You are welcome all. Exeunt BIANCA, KATHERINA, and WIDOW PETRUCHIO. She hath prevented me. Here, Signior Tranio, This bird you aim'd at, though you hit her not; Therefore a health to all that shot and miss'd. TRANIO. O, sir, Lucentio slipp'd me like his greyhound, Which runs himself, and catches for his master. PETRUCHIO. A good swift simile, but something currish. TRANIO. 'Tis well, sir, that you hunted for yourself; 'Tis thought your deer does hold you at a bay. BAPTISTA. O, O, Petruchio! Tranio hits you now. LUCENTIO. I thank thee for that gird, good Tranio. HORTENSIO. Confess, confess; hath he not hit you here? PETRUCHIO. 'A has a little gall'd me, I confess; And, as the jest did glance away from me, 'Tis ten to one it maim'd you two outright. BAPTISTA. Now, in good sadness, son Petruchio, I think thou hast the veriest shrew of all. PETRUCHIO. Well, I say no; and therefore, for assurance, Let's each one send unto his wife, And he whose wife is most obedient, To come at first when he doth send for her, Shall win the wager which we will propose. HORTENSIO. Content. What's the wager? LUCENTIO. Twenty crowns. PETRUCHIO. Twenty crowns? I'll venture so much of my hawk or hound, But twenty times so much upon my wife. LUCENTIO. A hundred then. HORTENSIO. Content. PETRUCHIO. A match! 'tis done. HORTENSIO. Who shall begin? LUCENTIO. That will I. Go, Biondello, bid your mistress come to me. BIONDELLO. I go. Exit BAPTISTA. Son, I'll be your half Bianca comes. LUCENTIO. I'll have no halves; I'll bear it all myself. Re-enter BIONDELLO How now! what news? BIONDELLO. Sir, my mistress sends you word That she is busy and she cannot come. PETRUCHIO. How! She's busy, and she cannot come! Is that an answer? GREMIO. Ay, and a kind one too. Pray God, sir, your wife send you not a worse. PETRUCHIO. I hope better. HORTENSIO. Sirrah Biondello, go and entreat my wife To come to me forthwith. Exit BIONDELLO PETRUCHIO. O, ho! entreat her! Nay, then she must needs come. HORTENSIO. I am afraid, sir, Do what you can, yours will not be entreated. Re-enter BIONDELLO Now, where's my wife? BIONDELLO. She says you have some goodly jest in hand: She will not come; she bids you come to her. PETRUCHIO. Worse and worse; she will not come! O vile, Intolerable, not to be endur'd! Sirrah Grumio, go to your mistress; Say I command her come to me. Exit GRUMIO HORTENSIO. I know her answer. PETRUCHIO. What? HORTENSIO. She will not. PETRUCHIO. The fouler fortune mine, and there an end. Re-enter KATHERINA BAPTISTA. Now, by my holidame, here comes Katherina! KATHERINA. What is your sir, that you send for me? PETRUCHIO. Where is your sister, and Hortensio's wife? KATHERINA. They sit conferring by the parlour fire. PETRUCHIO. Go, fetch them hither; if they deny to come. Swinge me them soundly forth unto their husbands. Away, I say, and bring them hither straight. Exit KATHERINA LUCENTIO. Here is a wonder, if you talk of a wonder. HORTENSIO. And so it is. I wonder what it bodes. PETRUCHIO. Marry, peace it bodes, and love, and quiet life, An awful rule, and right supremacy; And, to be short, what not that's sweet and happy. BAPTISTA. Now fair befall thee, good Petruchio! The wager thou hast won; and I will add Unto their losses twenty thousand crowns; Another dowry to another daughter, For she is chang'd, as she had never been. PETRUCHIO. Nay, I will win my wager better yet, And show more sign of her obedience, Her new-built virtue and obedience. Re-enter KATHERINA with BIANCA and WIDOW See where she comes, and brings your froward wives As prisoners to her womanly persuasion. Katherine, that cap of yours becomes you not: Off with that bauble, throw it underfoot. [KATHERINA complies] WIDOW. Lord, let me never have a cause to sigh Till I be brought to such a silly pass! BIANCA. Fie! what a foolish duty call you this? LUCENTIO. I would your duty were as foolish too; The wisdom of your duty, fair Bianca, Hath cost me a hundred crowns since supper-time! BIANCA. The more fool you for laying on my duty. PETRUCHIO. Katherine, I charge thee, tell these headstrong women What duty they do owe their lords and husbands. WIDOW. Come, come, you're mocking; we will have no telling. PETRUCHIO. Come on, I say; and first begin with her. WIDOW. She shall not. PETRUCHIO. I say she shall. And first begin with her. KATHERINA. Fie, fie! unknit that threatening unkind brow, And dart not scornful glances from those eyes To wound thy lord, thy king, thy governor. It blots thy beauty as frosts do bite the meads, Confounds thy fame as whirlwinds shake fair buds, And in no sense is meet or amiable. A woman mov'd is like a fountain troubled- Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty; And while it is so, none so dry or thirsty Will deign to sip or touch one drop of it. Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper, Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee, And for thy maintenance commits his body To painful labour both by sea and land, To watch the night in storms, the day in cold, Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe; And craves no other tribute at thy hands But love, fair looks, and true obedience- Too little payment for so great a debt. Such duty as the subject owes the prince, Even such a woman oweth to her husband; And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour, And not obedient to his honest will, What is she but a foul contending rebel And graceless traitor to her loving lord? I am asham'd that women are so simple To offer war where they should kneel for peace; Or seek for rule, supremacy, and sway, When they are bound to serve, love, and obey. Why are our bodies soft and weak and smooth, Unapt to toil and trouble in the world, But that our soft conditions and our hearts Should well agree with our external parts? Come, come, you forward and unable worms! My mind hath been as big as one of yours, My heart as great, my reason haply more, To bandy word for word and frown for frown; But now I see our lances are but straws, Our strength as weak, our weakness past compare, That seeming to be most which we indeed least are. Then vail your stomachs, for it is no boot, And place your hands below your husband's foot; In token of which duty, if he please, My hand is ready, may it do him ease. PETRUCHIO. Why, there's a wench! Come on, and kiss me, Kate. LUCENTIO. Well, go thy ways, old lad, for thou shalt ha't. VINCENTIO. 'Tis a good hearing when children are toward. LUCENTIO. But a harsh hearing when women are froward. PETRUCHIO. Come, Kate, we'll to bed. We three are married, but you two are sped. [To LUCENTIO] 'Twas I won the wager, though you hit the white; And being a winner, God give you good night! Exeunt PETRUCHIO and KATHERINA HORTENSIO. Now go thy ways; thou hast tam'd a curst shrow. LUCENTIO. 'Tis a wonder, by your leave, she will be tam'd so. Exeunt THE END

Lucentio throws a banquet to celebrate the three recent marriages in Padua: Petruchio to Kate, Lucentio to Bianca, and Hortensio to the widow he had spoken of before. As they sit around the table eating and chatting, Petruchio and the widow engage in some jesting . Kate joins in, and she begins to argue with the widow. The argument nearly turns to violence, with the men cheering them on to fight, but Bianca calms them, and the three wives go off together to talk. Meanwhile, the men begin to chide Petruchio--Baptista, Lucentio, Tranio, and Hortensio still think that Petruchio has been stuck with a vicious shrew, and they give him some grief for it. Petruchio confidently suggests a test to see which of the three new husbands has the most obedient wife. Each of them will send for his wife, and the one whose wife obeys first will be the winner. After placing a significant amount of money on the wager, Lucentio sends Biondello go to get Bianca, confident that she will obey at once. However, Biondello returns to tell them that she is busy and will not come. Hortensio receives a similar response from the widow. Finally, Grumio goes back to get Kate, and she returns at once, to the great surprise of all but Petruchio. Petruchio sends Kate back to bring in the other wives. Again, she obeys. Upon their return, Petruchio comments that he dislikes Kate's hat and tells her to throw it off. She obeys at once. Bianca and the widow, aghast at Kate's subservience, become even further shocked when, at Petruchio's request, Kate gives a speech on the duty that wives owe to their husbands. In the speech, Kate reprimands them for their angry dispositions, saying that it does not become a woman to behave this way, especially toward her husband. A wife's duty to her husband, she says, mimics the duty that "the subject owes the prince," because the husband endures great pain and labor for her benefit . She admits that once she was as haughty as Bianca and the widow are now, but that she has since changed her ways and most willingly gives her obedience to her husband. The other men admit complete defeat, and Petruchio leaves victorious--he and Kate go to bed happily, and Hortensio and Lucentio remain behind to wonder at this miraculous change of fates.

"Though it be songe of old and yonge, That I sholde be to blame, Theyrs be the charge, that spoke so large In hurtynge of my name." --The Not-Browne Mayde. It was just after the Lords had thrown out the Reform Bill: that explains how Mr. Cadwallader came to be walking on the slope of the lawn near the great conservatory at Freshitt Hall, holding the "Times" in his hands behind him, while he talked with a trout-fisher's dispassionateness about the prospects of the country to Sir James Chettam. Mrs. Cadwallader, the Dowager Lady Chettam, and Celia were sometimes seated on garden-chairs, sometimes walking to meet little Arthur, who was being drawn in his chariot, and, as became the infantine Bouddha, was sheltered by his sacred umbrella with handsome silken fringe. The ladies also talked politics, though more fitfully. Mrs. Cadwallader was strong on the intended creation of peers: she had it for certain from her cousin that Truberry had gone over to the other side entirely at the instigation of his wife, who had scented peerages in the air from the very first introduction of the Reform question, and would sign her soul away to take precedence of her younger sister, who had married a baronet. Lady Chettam thought that such conduct was very reprehensible, and remembered that Mrs. Truberry's mother was a Miss Walsingham of Melspring. Celia confessed it was nicer to be "Lady" than "Mrs.," and that Dodo never minded about precedence if she could have her own way. Mrs. Cadwallader held that it was a poor satisfaction to take precedence when everybody about you knew that you had not a drop of good blood in your veins; and Celia again, stopping to look at Arthur, said, "It would be very nice, though, if he were a Viscount--and his lordship's little tooth coming through! He might have been, if James had been an Earl." "My dear Celia," said the Dowager, "James's title is worth far more than any new earldom. I never wished his father to be anything else than Sir James." "Oh, I only meant about Arthur's little tooth," said Celia, comfortably. "But see, here is my uncle coming." She tripped off to meet her uncle, while Sir James and Mr. Cadwallader came forward to make one group with the ladies. Celia had slipped her arm through her uncle's, and he patted her hand with a rather melancholy "Well, my dear!" As they approached, it was evident that Mr. Brooke was looking dejected, but this was fully accounted for by the state of politics; and as he was shaking hands all round without more greeting than a "Well, you're all here, you know," the Rector said, laughingly-- "Don't take the throwing out of the Bill so much to heart, Brooke; you've got all the riff-raff of the country on your side." "The Bill, eh? ah!" said Mr. Brooke, with a mild distractedness of manner. "Thrown out, you know, eh? The Lords are going too far, though. They'll have to pull up. Sad news, you know. I mean, here at home--sad news. But you must not blame me, Chettam." "What is the matter?" said Sir James. "Not another gamekeeper shot, I hope? It's what I should expect, when a fellow like Trapping Bass is let off so easily." "Gamekeeper? No. Let us go in; I can tell you all in the house, you know," said Mr. Brooke, nodding at the Cadwalladers, to show that he included them in his confidence. "As to poachers like Trapping Bass, you know, Chettam," he continued, as they were entering, "when you are a magistrate, you'll not find it so easy to commit. Severity is all very well, but it's a great deal easier when you've got somebody to do it for you. You have a soft place in your heart yourself, you know--you're not a Draco, a Jeffreys, that sort of thing." Mr. Brooke was evidently in a state of nervous perturbation. When he had something painful to tell, it was usually his way to introduce it among a number of disjointed particulars, as if it were a medicine that would get a milder flavor by mixing. He continued his chat with Sir James about the poachers until they were all seated, and Mrs. Cadwallader, impatient of this drivelling, said-- "I'm dying to know the sad news. The gamekeeper is not shot: that is settled. What is it, then?" "Well, it's a very trying thing, you know," said Mr. Brooke. "I'm glad you and the Rector are here; it's a family matter--but you will help us all to bear it, Cadwallader. I've got to break it to you, my dear." Here Mr. Brooke looked at Celia--"You've no notion what it is, you know. And, Chettam, it will annoy you uncommonly--but, you see, you have not been able to hinder it, any more than I have. There's something singular in things: they come round, you know." "It must be about Dodo," said Celia, who had been used to think of her sister as the dangerous part of the family machinery. She had seated herself on a low stool against her husband's knee. "For God's sake let us hear what it is!" said Sir James. "Well, you know, Chettam, I couldn't help Casaubon's will: it was a sort of will to make things worse." "Exactly," said Sir James, hastily. "But _what_ is worse?" "Dorothea is going to be married again, you know," said Mr. Brooke, nodding towards Celia, who immediately looked up at her husband with a frightened glance, and put her hand on his knee. Sir James was almost white with anger, but he did not speak. "Merciful heaven!" said Mrs. Cadwallader. "Not to _young_ Ladislaw?" Mr. Brooke nodded, saying, "Yes; to Ladislaw," and then fell into a prudential silence. "You see, Humphrey!" said Mrs. Cadwallader, waving her arm towards her husband. "Another time you will admit that I have some foresight; or rather you will contradict me and be just as blind as ever. _You_ supposed that the young gentleman was gone out of the country." "So he might be, and yet come back," said the Rector, quietly "When did you learn this?" said Sir James, not liking to hear any one else speak, though finding it difficult to speak himself. "Yesterday," said Mr. Brooke, meekly. "I went to Lowick. Dorothea sent for me, you know. It had come about quite suddenly--neither of them had any idea two days ago--not any idea, you know. There's something singular in things. But Dorothea is quite determined--it is no use opposing. I put it strongly to her. I did my duty, Chettam. But she can act as she likes, you know." "It would have been better if I had called him out and shot him a year ago," said Sir James, not from bloody-mindedness, but because he needed something strong to say. "Really, James, that would have been very disagreeable," said Celia. "Be reasonable, Chettam. Look at the affair more quietly," said Mr. Cadwallader, sorry to see his good-natured friend so overmastered by anger. "That is not so very easy for a man of any dignity--with any sense of right--when the affair happens to be in his own family," said Sir James, still in his white indignation. "It is perfectly scandalous. If Ladislaw had had a spark of honor he would have gone out of the country at once, and never shown his face in it again. However, I am not surprised. The day after Casaubon's funeral I said what ought to be done. But I was not listened to." "You wanted what was impossible, you know, Chettam," said Mr. Brooke. "You wanted him shipped off. I told you Ladislaw was not to be done as we liked with: he had his ideas. He was a remarkable fellow--I always said he was a remarkable fellow." "Yes," said Sir James, unable to repress a retort, "it is rather a pity you formed that high opinion of him. We are indebted to that for his being lodged in this neighborhood. We are indebted to that for seeing a woman like Dorothea degrading herself by marrying him." Sir James made little stoppages between his clauses, the words not coming easily. "A man so marked out by her husband's will, that delicacy ought to have forbidden her from seeing him again--who takes her out of her proper rank--into poverty--has the meanness to accept such a sacrifice--has always had an objectionable position--a bad origin--and, I _believe_, is a man of little principle and light character. That is my opinion." Sir James ended emphatically, turning aside and crossing his leg. "I pointed everything out to her," said Mr. Brooke, apologetically--"I mean the poverty, and abandoning her position. I said, 'My dear, you don't know what it is to live on seven hundred a-year, and have no carriage, and that kind of thing, and go amongst people who don't know who you are.' I put it strongly to her. But I advise you to talk to Dorothea herself. The fact is, she has a dislike to Casaubon's property. You will hear what she says, you know." "No--excuse me--I shall not," said Sir James, with more coolness. "I cannot bear to see her again; it is too painful. It hurts me too much that a woman like Dorothea should have done what is wrong." "Be just, Chettam," said the easy, large-lipped Rector, who objected to all this unnecessary discomfort. "Mrs. Casaubon may be acting imprudently: she is giving up a fortune for the sake of a man, and we men have so poor an opinion of each other that we can hardly call a woman wise who does that. But I think you should not condemn it as a wrong action, in the strict sense of the word." "Yes, I do," answered Sir James. "I think that Dorothea commits a wrong action in marrying Ladislaw." "My dear fellow, we are rather apt to consider an act wrong because it is unpleasant to us," said the Rector, quietly. Like many men who take life easily, he had the knack of saying a home truth occasionally to those who felt themselves virtuously out of temper. Sir James took out his handkerchief and began to bite the corner. "It is very dreadful of Dodo, though," said Celia, wishing to justify her husband. "She said she _never would_ marry again--not anybody at all." "I heard her say the same thing myself," said Lady Chettam, majestically, as if this were royal evidence. "Oh, there is usually a silent exception in such cases," said Mrs. Cadwallader. "The only wonder to me is, that any of you are surprised. You did nothing to hinder it. If you would have had Lord Triton down here to woo her with his philanthropy, he might have carried her off before the year was over. There was no safety in anything else. Mr. Casaubon had prepared all this as beautifully as possible. He made himself disagreeable--or it pleased God to make him so--and then he dared her to contradict him. It's the way to make any trumpery tempting, to ticket it at a high price in that way." "I don't know what you mean by wrong, Cadwallader," said Sir James, still feeling a little stung, and turning round in his chair towards the Rector. "He's not a man we can take into the family. At least, I must speak for myself," he continued, carefully keeping his eyes off Mr. Brooke. "I suppose others will find his society too pleasant to care about the propriety of the thing." "Well, you know, Chettam," said Mr. Brooke, good-humoredly, nursing his leg, "I can't turn my back on Dorothea. I must be a father to her up to a certain point. I said, 'My dear, I won't refuse to give you away.' I had spoken strongly before. But I can cut off the entail, you know. It will cost money and be troublesome; but I can do it, you know." Mr. Brooke nodded at Sir James, and felt that he was both showing his own force of resolution and propitiating what was just in the Baronet's vexation. He had hit on a more ingenious mode of parrying than he was aware of. He had touched a motive of which Sir James was ashamed. The mass of his feeling about Dorothea's marriage to Ladislaw was due partly to excusable prejudice, or even justifiable opinion, partly to a jealous repugnance hardly less in Ladislaw's case than in Casaubon's. He was convinced that the marriage was a fatal one for Dorothea. But amid that mass ran a vein of which he was too good and honorable a man to like the avowal even to himself: it was undeniable that the union of the two estates--Tipton and Freshitt--lying charmingly within a ring-fence, was a prospect that flattered him for his son and heir. Hence when Mr. Brooke noddingly appealed to that motive, Sir James felt a sudden embarrassment; there was a stoppage in his throat; he even blushed. He had found more words than usual in the first jet of his anger, but Mr. Brooke's propitiation was more clogging to his tongue than Mr. Cadwallader's caustic hint. But Celia was glad to have room for speech after her uncle's suggestion of the marriage ceremony, and she said, though with as little eagerness of manner as if the question had turned on an invitation to dinner, "Do you mean that Dodo is going to be married directly, uncle?" "In three weeks, you know," said Mr. Brooke, helplessly. "I can do nothing to hinder it, Cadwallader," he added, turning for a little countenance toward the Rector, who said-- "--I--should not make any fuss about it. If she likes to be poor, that is her affair. Nobody would have said anything if she had married the young fellow because he was rich. Plenty of beneficed clergy are poorer than they will be. Here is Elinor," continued the provoking husband; "she vexed her friends by me: I had hardly a thousand a-year--I was a lout--nobody could see anything in me--my shoes were not the right cut--all the men wondered how a woman could like me. Upon my word, I must take Ladislaw's part until I hear more harm of him." "Humphrey, that is all sophistry, and you know it," said his wife. "Everything is all one--that is the beginning and end with you. As if you had not been a Cadwallader! Does any one suppose that I would have taken such a monster as you by any other name?" "And a clergyman too," observed Lady Chettam with approbation. "Elinor cannot be said to have descended below her rank. It is difficult to say what Mr. Ladislaw is, eh, James?" Sir James gave a small grunt, which was less respectful than his usual mode of answering his mother. Celia looked up at him like a thoughtful kitten. "It must be admitted that his blood is a frightful mixture!" said Mrs. Cadwallader. "The Casaubon cuttle-fish fluid to begin with, and then a rebellious Polish fiddler or dancing-master, was it?--and then an old clo--" "Nonsense, Elinor," said the Rector, rising. "It is time for us to go." "After all, he is a pretty sprig," said Mrs. Cadwallader, rising too, and wishing to make amends. "He is like the fine old Crichley portraits before the idiots came in." "I'll go with you," said Mr. Brooke, starting up with alacrity. "You must all come and dine with me to-morrow, you know--eh, Celia, my dear?" "You will, James--won't you?" said Celia, taking her husband's hand. "Oh, of course, if you like," said Sir James, pulling down his waistcoat, but unable yet to adjust his face good-humoredly. "That is to say, if it is not to meet anybody else.': "No, no, no," said Mr. Brooke, understanding the condition. "Dorothea would not come, you know, unless you had been to see her." When Sir James and Celia were alone, she said, "Do you mind about my having the carriage to go to Lowick, James?" "What, now, directly?" he answered, with some surprise. "Yes, it is very important," said Celia. "Remember, Celia, I cannot see her," said Sir James. "Not if she gave up marrying?" "What is the use of saying that?--however, I'm going to the stables. I'll tell Briggs to bring the carriage round." Celia thought it was of great use, if not to say that, at least to take a journey to Lowick in order to influence Dorothea's mind. All through their girlhood she had felt that she could act on her sister by a word judiciously placed--by opening a little window for the daylight of her own understanding to enter among the strange colored lamps by which Dodo habitually saw. And Celia the matron naturally felt more able to advise her childless sister. How could any one understand Dodo so well as Celia did or love her so tenderly? Dorothea, busy in her boudoir, felt a glow of pleasure at the sight of her sister so soon after the revelation of her intended marriage. She had prefigured to herself, even with exaggeration, the disgust of her friends, and she had even feared that Celia might be kept aloof from her. "O Kitty, I am delighted to see you!" said Dorothea, putting her hands on Celia's shoulders, and beaming on her. "I almost thought you would not come to me." "I have not brought Arthur, because I was in a hurry," said Celia, and they sat down on two small chairs opposite each other, with their knees touching. "You know, Dodo, it is very bad," said Celia, in her placid guttural, looking as prettily free from humors as possible. "You have disappointed us all so. And I can't think that it ever _will_ be--you never can go and live in that way. And then there are all your plans! You never can have thought of that. James would have taken any trouble for you, and you might have gone on all your life doing what you liked." "On the contrary, dear," said Dorothea, "I never could do anything that I liked. I have never carried out any plan yet." "Because you always wanted things that wouldn't do. But other plans would have come. And how can you marry Mr. Ladislaw, that we none of us ever thought you _could_ marry? It shocks James so dreadfully. And then it is all so different from what you have always been. You would have Mr. Casaubon because he had such a great soul, and was so and dismal and learned; and now, to think of marrying Mr. Ladislaw, who has got no estate or anything. I suppose it is because you must be making yourself uncomfortable in some way or other." Dorothea laughed. "Well, it is very serious, Dodo," said Celia, becoming more impressive. "How will you live? and you will go away among queer people. And I shall never see you--and you won't mind about little Arthur--and I thought you always would--" Celia's rare tears had got into her eyes, and the corners of her mouth were agitated. "Dear Celia," said Dorothea, with tender gravity, "if you don't ever see me, it will not be my fault." "Yes, it will," said Celia, with the same touching distortion of her small features. "How can I come to you or have you with me when James can't bear it?--that is because he thinks it is not right--he thinks you are so wrong, Dodo. But you always were wrong: only I can't help loving you. And nobody can think where you will live: where can you go?" "I am going to London," said Dorothea. "How can you always live in a street? And you will be so poor. I could give you half my things, only how can I, when I never see you?" "Bless you, Kitty," said Dorothea, with gentle warmth. "Take comfort: perhaps James will forgive me some time." "But it would be much better if you would not be married," said Celia, drying her eyes, and returning to her argument; "then there would be nothing uncomfortable. And you would not do what nobody thought you could do. James always said you ought to be a queen; but this is not at all being like a queen. You know what mistakes you have always been making, Dodo, and this is another. Nobody thinks Mr. Ladislaw a proper husband for you. And you _said you_ would never be married again." "It is quite true that I might be a wiser person, Celia," said Dorothea, "and that I might have done something better, if I had been better. But this is what I am going to do. I have promised to marry Mr. Ladislaw; and I am going to marry him." The tone in which Dorothea said this was a note that Celia had long learned to recognize. She was silent a few moments, and then said, as if she had dismissed all contest, "Is he very fond of you, Dodo?" "I hope so. I am very fond of him." "That is nice," said Celia, comfortably. "Only I rather you had such a sort of husband as James is, with a place very near, that I could drive to." Dorothea smiled, and Celia looked rather meditative. Presently she said, "I cannot think how it all came about." Celia thought it would be pleasant to hear the story. "I dare say not," said-Dorothea, pinching her sister's chin. "If you knew how it came about, it would not seem wonderful to you." "Can't you tell me?" said Celia, settling her arms cozily. "No, dear, you would have to feel with me, else you would never know."

The House of Lords throw out the controversial Reform Bill. A group consisting of the Cadwalladers and the Chettams is discussing this subject. Into their midst, comes, a nervous Brooke to break the "bad news" of Dorotheas second marriage. The company receives with general disgust. Sir James in particular is white with anger. Cadwallader advises to accept, saying it is Dorotheas choice if she wishes to be poor, as his wife was when she married him. Finally, Brooke offers to cut Dorotheas future children off from inheriting his land. As it was a cherished wish of Sir James to have the land for his son, he is ashamed at the connection, and subsides unhappily. Celia rides over to Lowick to try and persuade Dorothea not to go ahead with the marriage. Failing, she accepts it tearfully and affectionately.

ACT III. SCENE I. Britain. A hall in CYMBELINE'S palace Enter in state, CYMBELINE, QUEEN, CLOTEN, and LORDS at one door, and at another CAIUS LUCIUS and attendants CYMBELINE. Now say, what would Augustus Caesar with us? LUCIUS. When Julius Caesar- whose remembrance yet Lives in men's eyes, and will to ears and tongues Be theme and hearing ever- was in this Britain, And conquer'd it, Cassibelan, thine uncle, Famous in Caesar's praises no whit less Than in his feats deserving it, for him And his succession granted Rome a tribute, Yearly three thousand pounds, which by thee lately Is left untender'd. QUEEN. And, to kill the marvel, Shall be so ever. CLOTEN. There be many Caesars Ere such another Julius. Britain is A world by itself, and we will nothing pay For wearing our own noses. QUEEN. That opportunity, Which then they had to take from 's, to resume We have again. Remember, sir, my liege, The kings your ancestors, together with The natural bravery of your isle, which stands As Neptune's park, ribb'd and pal'd in With rocks unscalable and roaring waters, With sands that will not bear your enemies' boats But suck them up to th' top-mast. A kind of conquest Caesar made here; but made not here his brag Of 'came, and saw, and overcame.' With shame- The first that ever touch'd him- he was carried From off our coast, twice beaten; and his shipping- Poor ignorant baubles!- on our terrible seas, Like egg-shells mov'd upon their surges, crack'd As easily 'gainst our rocks; for joy whereof The fam'd Cassibelan, who was once at point- O, giglot fortune!- to master Caesar's sword, Made Lud's Town with rejoicing fires bright And Britons strut with courage. CLOTEN. Come, there's no more tribute to be paid. Our kingdom is stronger than it was at that time; and, as I said, there is no moe such Caesars. Other of them may have crook'd noses; but to owe such straight arms, none. CYMBELINE. Son, let your mother end. CLOTEN. We have yet many among us can gripe as hard as Cassibelan. I do not say I am one; but I have a hand. Why tribute? Why should we pay tribute? If Caesar can hide the sun from us with a blanket, or put the moon in his pocket, we will pay him tribute for light; else, sir, no more tribute, pray you now. CYMBELINE. You must know, Till the injurious Romans did extort This tribute from us, we were free. Caesar's ambition- Which swell'd so much that it did almost stretch The sides o' th' world- against all colour here Did put the yoke upon's; which to shake off Becomes a warlike people, whom we reckon Ourselves to be. CLOTEN. We do. CYMBELINE. Say then to Caesar, Our ancestor was that Mulmutius which Ordain'd our laws- whose use the sword of Caesar Hath too much mangled; whose repair and franchise Shall, by the power we hold, be our good deed, Though Rome be therefore angry. Mulmutius made our laws, Who was the first of Britain which did put His brows within a golden crown, and call'd Himself a king. LUCIUS. I am sorry, Cymbeline, That I am to pronounce Augustus Caesar- Caesar, that hath moe kings his servants than Thyself domestic officers- thine enemy. Receive it from me, then: war and confusion In Caesar's name pronounce I 'gainst thee; look For fury not to be resisted. Thus defied, I thank thee for myself. CYMBELINE. Thou art welcome, Caius. Thy Caesar knighted me; my youth I spent Much under him; of him I gather'd honour, Which he to seek of me again, perforce, Behoves me keep at utterance. I am perfect That the Pannonians and Dalmatians for Their liberties are now in arms, a precedent Which not to read would show the Britons cold; So Caesar shall not find them. LUCIUS. Let proof speak. CLOTEN. His majesty bids you welcome. Make pastime with us a day or two, or longer. If you seek us afterwards in other terms, you shall find us in our salt-water girdle. If you beat us out of it, it is yours; if you fall in the adventure, our crows shall fare the better for you; and there's an end. LUCIUS. So, sir. CYMBELINE. I know your master's pleasure, and he mine; All the remain is, welcome. Exeunt

The political situation arising out of Cymbeline's refusal to pay tribute to Augustus Caesar is dramatized in this scene. When Caius Lucius, on behalf of the Roman Emperor, reminds Cymbeline of the events leading to the payment of the annual tribute of three thousand pounds which Cymbeline has neglected to pay, the Queen and Cloten are vociferous in opposing the payment of the tribute. Cloten shows rare spunk in declaring: "Britain is/a world by itself; and we will nothing pay/for wearing our noses." The Queen also shows courage in resisting the Roman claim, and reminds the King of the Roman aggression and how the British King, Cassibelan, had fought bravely and almost defeated Caesar. She declares that it is time now, when Britain was stronger and more powerful than in Cassibelan's time, to ensure their freedom from Roman dominance. Cymbeline adds that Caesar had put a yoke upon them, and the warlike British have decided to shake it off. Faced with such opposition, Caius Lucius can do nothing better than to declare war on behalf of the Emperor. Cymbeline is not afraid; he is willing to face the consequences of his action even as he is gracious enough to extend an invitation to Lucius to stay as a friend for a day or two.

AT the same moment young Corey let himself in at his own door with his latch-key, and went to the library, where he found his father turning the last leaves of a story in the Revue des Deux Mondes. He was a white-moustached old gentleman, who had never been able to abandon his pince-nez for the superior comfort of spectacles, even in the privacy of his own library. He knocked the glasses off as his son came in and looked up at him with lazy fondness, rubbing the two red marks that they always leave on the side of the nose. "Tom," he said, "where did you get such good clothes?" "I stopped over a day in New York," replied the son, finding himself a chair. "I'm glad you like them." "Yes, I always do like your clothes, Tom," returned the father thoughtfully, swinging his glasses, "But I don't see how you can afford 'em, I can't." "Well, sir," said the son, who dropped the "sir" into his speech with his father, now and then, in an old-fashioned way that was rather charming, "you see, I have an indulgent parent." "Smoke?" suggested the father, pushing toward his son a box of cigarettes, from which he had taken one. "No, thank you," said the son. "I've dropped that." "Ah, is that so?" The father began to feel about on the table for matches, in the purblind fashion of elderly men. His son rose, lighted one, and handed it to him. "Well,--oh, thank you, Tom!--I believe some statisticians prove that if you will give up smoking you can dress very well on the money your tobacco costs, even if you haven't got an indulgent parent. But I'm too old to try. Though, I confess, I should rather like the clothes. Whom did you find at the club?" "There were a lot of fellows there," said young Corey, watching the accomplished fumigation of his father in an absent way. "It's astonishing what a hardy breed the young club-men are," observed his father. "All summer through, in weather that sends the sturdiest female flying to the sea-shore, you find the clubs filled with young men, who don't seem to mind the heat in the least." "Boston isn't a bad place, at the worst, in summer," said the son, declining to take up the matter in its ironical shape. "I dare say it isn't, compared with Texas," returned the father, smoking tranquilly on. "But I don't suppose you find many of your friends in town outside of the club." "No; you're requested to ring at the rear door, all the way down Beacon Street and up Commonwealth Avenue. It's rather a blank reception for the returning prodigal." "Ah, the prodigal must take his chance if he comes back out of season. But I'm glad to have you back, Tom, even as it is, and I hope you're not going to hurry away. You must give your energies a rest." "I'm sure you never had to reproach me with abnormal activity," suggested the son, taking his father's jokes in good part. "No, I don't know that I have," admitted the elder. "You've always shown a fair degree of moderation, after all. What do you think of taking up next? I mean after you have embraced your mother and sisters at Mount Desert. Real estate? It seems to me that it is about time for you to open out as a real-estate broker. Or did you ever think of matrimony?" "Well, not just in that way, sir," said the young man. "I shouldn't quite like to regard it as a career, you know." "No, no. I understand that. And I quite agree with you. But you know I've always contended that the affections could be made to combine pleasure and profit. I wouldn't have a man marry for money,--that would be rather bad,--but I don't see why, when it comes to falling in love, a man shouldn't fall in love with a rich girl as easily as a poor one. Some of the rich girls are very nice, and I should say that the chances of a quiet life with them were rather greater. They've always had everything, and they wouldn't be so ambitious and uneasy. Don't you think so?" "It would depend," said the son, "upon whether a girl's people had been rich long enough to have given her position before she married. If they hadn't, I don't see how she would be any better than a poor girl in that respect." "Yes, there's sense in that. But the suddenly rich are on a level with any of us nowadays. Money buys position at once. I don't say that it isn't all right. The world generally knows what it's about, and knows how to drive a bargain. I dare say it makes the new rich pay too much. But there's no doubt but money is to the fore now. It is the romance, the poetry of our age. It's the thing that chiefly strikes the imagination. The Englishmen who come here are more curious about the great new millionaires than about any one else, and they respect them more. It's all very well. I don't complain of it." "And you would like a rich daughter-in-law, quite regardless, then?" "Oh, not quite so bad as that, Tom," said his father. "A little youth, a little beauty, a little good sense and pretty behaviour--one mustn't object to those things; and they go just as often with money as without it. And I suppose I should like her people to be rather grammatical." "It seems to me that you're exacting, sir," said the son. "How can you expect people who have been strictly devoted to business to be grammatical? Isn't that rather too much?" "Perhaps it is. Perhaps you're right. But I understood your mother to say that those benefactors of hers, whom you met last summer, were very passably grammatical." "The father isn't." The elder, who had been smoking with his profile toward his son, now turned his face full upon him. "I didn't know you had seen him?" "I hadn't until to-day," said young Corey, with a little heightening of his colour. "But I was walking down street this afternoon, and happened to look round at a new house some one was putting up, and I saw the whole family in the window. It appears that Mr. Lapham is building the house." The elder Corey knocked the ash of his cigarette into the holder at his elbow. "I am more and more convinced, the longer I know you, Tom, that we are descended from Giles Corey. The gift of holding one's tongue seems to have skipped me, but you have it in full force. I can't say just how you would behave under peine forte et dure, but under ordinary pressure you are certainly able to keep your own counsel. Why didn't you mention this encounter at dinner? You weren't asked to plead to an accusation of witchcraft." "No, not exactly," said the young man. "But I didn't quite see my way to speaking of it. We had a good many other things before us." "Yes, that's true. I suppose you wouldn't have mentioned it now if I hadn't led up to it, would you?" "I don't know, sir. It was rather on my mind to do so. Perhaps it was I who led up to it." His father laughed. "Perhaps you did, Tom; perhaps you did. Your mother would have known you were leading up to something, but I'll confess that I didn't. What is it?" "Nothing very definite. But do you know that in spite of his syntax I rather liked him?" The father looked keenly at the son; but unless the boy's full confidence was offered, Corey was not the man to ask it. "Well?" was all that he said. "I suppose that in a new country one gets to looking at people a little out of our tradition; and I dare say that if I hadn't passed a winter in Texas I might have found Colonel Lapham rather too much." "You mean that there are worse things in Texas?" "Not that exactly. I mean that I saw it wouldn't be quite fair to test him by our standards." "This comes of the error which I have often deprecated," said the elder Corey. "In fact I am always saying that the Bostonian ought never to leave Boston. Then he knows--and then only--that there can BE no standard but ours. But we are constantly going away, and coming back with our convictions shaken to their foundations. One man goes to England, and returns with the conception of a grander social life; another comes home from Germany with the notion of a more searching intellectual activity; a fellow just back from Paris has the absurdest ideas of art and literature; and you revert to us from the cowboys of Texas, and tell us to our faces that we ought to try Papa Lapham by a jury of his peers. It ought to be stopped--it ought, really. The Bostonian who leaves Boston ought to be condemned to perpetual exile." The son suffered the father to reach his climax with smiling patience. When he asked finally, "What are the characteristics of Papa Lapham that place him beyond our jurisdiction?" the younger Corey crossed his long legs, and leaned forward to take one of his knees between his hands. "Well, sir, he bragged, rather." "Oh, I don't know that bragging should exempt him from the ordinary processes. I've heard other people brag in Boston." "Ah, not just in that personal way--not about money." "No, that was certainly different." "I don't mean," said the young fellow, with the scrupulosity which people could not help observing and liking in him, "that it was more than an indirect expression of satisfaction in the ability to spend." "No. I should be glad to express something of the kind myself, if the facts would justify me." The son smiled tolerantly again. "But if he was enjoying his money in that way, I didn't see why he shouldn't show his pleasure in it. It might have been vulgar, but it wasn't sordid. And I don't know that it was vulgar. Perhaps his successful strokes of business were the romance of his life----" The father interrupted with a laugh. "The girl must be uncommonly pretty. What did she seem to think of her father's brag?" "There were two of them," answered the son evasively. "Oh, two! And is the sister pretty too?" "Not pretty, but rather interesting. She is like her mother." "Then the pretty one isn't the father's pet?" "I can't say, sir. I don't believe," added the young fellow, "that I can make you see Colonel Lapham just as I did. He struck me as very simple-hearted and rather wholesome. Of course he could be tiresome; we all can; and I suppose his range of ideas is limited. But he is a force, and not a bad one. If he hasn't got over being surprised at the effect of rubbing his lamp." "Oh, one could make out a case. I suppose you know what you are about, Tom. But remember that we are Essex County people, and that in savour we are just a little beyond the salt of the earth. I will tell you plainly that I don't like the notion of a man who has rivalled the hues of nature in her wildest haunts with the tints of his mineral paint; but I don't say there are not worse men. He isn't to my taste, though he might be ever so much to my conscience." "I suppose," said the son, "that there is nothing really to be ashamed of in mineral paint. People go into all sorts of things." His father took his cigarette from his mouth and once more looked his son full in the face. "Oh, is THAT it?" "It has crossed my mind," admitted the son. "I must do something. I've wasted time and money enough. I've seen much younger men all through the West and South-west taking care of themselves. I don't think I was particularly fit for anything out there, but I am ashamed to come back and live upon you, sir." His father shook his head with an ironical sigh. "Ah, we shall never have a real aristocracy while this plebeian reluctance to live upon a parent or a wife continues the animating spirit of our youth. It strikes at the root of the whole feudal system. I really think you owe me an apology, Tom. I supposed you wished to marry the girl's money, and here you are, basely seeking to go into business with her father." Young Corey laughed again like a son who perceives that his father is a little antiquated, but keeps a filial faith in his wit. "I don't know that it's quite so bad as that; but the thing had certainly crossed my mind. I don't know how it's to be approached, and I don't know that it's at all possible. But I confess that I 'took to' Colonel Lapham from the moment I saw him. He looked as if he 'meant business,' and I mean business too." The father smoked thoughtfully. "Of course people do go into all sorts of things, as you say, and I don't know that one thing is more ignoble than another, if it's decent and large enough. In my time you would have gone into the China trade or the India trade--though I didn't; and a little later cotton would have been your manifest destiny--though it wasn't mine; but now a man may do almost anything. The real-estate business is pretty full. Yes, if you have a deep inward vocation for it, I don't see why mineral paint shouldn't do. I fancy it's easy enough approaching the matter. We will invite Papa Lapham to dinner, and talk it over with him." "Oh, I don't think that would be exactly the way, sir," said the son, smiling at his father's patrician unworldliness. "No? Why not?" "I'm afraid it would be a bad start. I don't think it would strike him as business-like." "I don't see why he should be punctilious, if we're not." "Ah, we might say that if he were making the advances." "Well, perhaps you are right, Tom. What is your idea?" "I haven't a very clear one. It seems to me I ought to get some business friend of ours, whose judgment he would respect, to speak a good word for me." "Give you a character?" "Yes. And of course I must go to Colonel Lapham. My notion would be to inquire pretty thoroughly about him, and then, if I liked the look of things, to go right down to Republic Street and let him see what he could do with me, if anything." "That sounds tremendously practical to me, Tom, though it may be just the wrong way. When are you going down to Mount Desert?" "To-morrow, I think, sir," said the young man. "I shall turn it over in my mind while I'm off." The father rose, showing something more than his son's height, with a very slight stoop, which the son's figure had not. "Well," he said, whimsically, "I admire your spirit, and I don't deny that it is justified by necessity. It's a consolation to think that while I've been spending and enjoying, I have been preparing the noblest future for you--a future of industry and self-reliance. You never could draw, but this scheme of going into the mineral-paint business shows that you have inherited something of my feeling for colour." The son laughed once more, and waiting till his father was well on his way upstairs, turned out the gas and then hurried after him and preceded him into his chamber. He glanced over it to see that everything was there, to his father's hand. Then he said, "Good night, sir," and the elder responded, "Good night, my son," and the son went to his own room. Over the mantel in the elder Corey's room hung a portrait which he had painted of his own father, and now he stood a moment and looked at this as if struck by something novel in it. The resemblance between his son and the old India merchant, who had followed the trade from Salem to Boston when the larger city drew it away from the smaller, must have been what struck him. Grandfather and grandson had both the Roman nose which appears to have flourished chiefly at the formative period of the republic, and which occurs more rarely in the descendants of the conscript fathers, though it still characterises the profiles of a good many Boston ladies. Bromfield Corey had not inherited it, and he had made his straight nose his defence when the old merchant accused him of a want of energy. He said, "What could a man do whose unnatural father had left his own nose away from him?" This amused but did not satisfy the merchant. "You must do something," he said; "and it's for you to choose. If you don't like the India trade, go into something else. Or, take up law or medicine. No Corey yet ever proposed to do nothing." "Ah, then, it's quite time one of us made a beginning," urged the man who was then young, and who was now old, looking into the somewhat fierce eyes of his father's portrait. He had inherited as little of the fierceness as of the nose, and there was nothing predatory in his son either, though the aquiline beak had come down to him in such force. Bromfield Corey liked his son Tom for the gentleness which tempered his energy. "Well let us compromise," he seemed to be saying to his father's portrait. "I will travel." "Travel? How long?" the keen eyes demanded. "Oh, indefinitely. I won't be hard with you, father." He could see the eyes soften, and the smile of yielding come over his father's face; the merchant could not resist a son who was so much like his dead mother. There was some vague understanding between them that Bromfield Corey was to come back and go into business after a time, but he never did so. He travelled about over Europe, and travelled handsomely, frequenting good society everywhere, and getting himself presented at several courts, at a period when it was a distinction to do so. He had always sketched, and with his father's leave he fixed himself at Rome, where he remained studying art and rounding the being inherited from his Yankee progenitors, till there was very little left of the ancestral angularities. After ten years he came home and painted that portrait of his father. It was very good, if a little amateurish, and he might have made himself a name as a painter of portraits if he had not had so much money. But he had plenty of money, though by this time he was married and beginning to have a family. It was absurd for him to paint portraits for pay, and ridiculous to paint them for nothing; so he did not paint them at all. He continued a dilettante, never quite abandoning his art, but working at it fitfully, and talking more about it than working at it. He had his theory of Titian's method; and now and then a Bostonian insisted upon buying a picture of him. After a while he hung it more and more inconspicuously, and said apologetically, "Oh yes! that's one of Bromfield Corey's things. It has nice qualities, but it's amateurish." In process of time the money seemed less abundant. There were shrinkages of one kind and another, and living had grown much more expensive and luxurious. For many years he talked about going back to Rome, but he never went, and his children grew up in the usual way. Before he knew it his son had him out to his class-day spread at Harvard, and then he had his son on his hands. The son made various unsuccessful provisions for himself, and still continued upon his father's hands, to their common dissatisfaction, though it was chiefly the younger who repined. He had the Roman nose and the energy without the opportunity, and at one of the reversions his father said to him, "You ought not to have that nose, Tom; then you would do very well. You would go and travel, as I did." LAPHAM and his wife continued talking after he had quelled the disturbance in his daughters' room overhead; and their talk was not altogether of the new house. "I tell you," he said, "if I had that fellow in the business with me I would make a man of him." "Well, Silas Lapham," returned his wife, "I do believe you've got mineral paint on the brain. Do you suppose a fellow like young Corey, brought up the way he's been, would touch mineral paint with a ten-foot pole?" "Why not?" haughtily asked the Colonel. "Well, if you don't know already, there's no use trying to tell you."

Tom returns home to find his father, Bromfield Corey, home alone while his wife and daughters are at the seashore for the summer. They discuss Tom's desire to do something. Bromfield suggests marriage, but Tom does not regard it as an occupation. Bromfield goes on to suggest that Tom fall in love with a rich girl. Tom does not see how a poor girl would differ from a rich girl whose parents have not been wealthy long enough to give her position. Bromfield agrees that it is the age when the quickly rich are suddenly on the same level with the Coreys. Howells relates that Bromfield was a painter who traveled to Rome, painted, and lived off his father. He made money only painting portraits, but, since he was wealthy, "It was absurd," Howells tells us, "for him to paint portraits for pay and ridiculous to paint them for nothing; so he did not paint them at all." Instead, Bromfield lived a life of seclusion, occasionally expounding on the theories of painting rather than practicing them. The chapter ends with a few words between Mr. and Mrs. Lapham concerning Tom. "If I had that fellow in the business with me, I would make a man of him," Silas says. "Do you suppose a fellow like young Corey, brought up the way he's been, would touch mineral paint with a ten-foot pole?" Mrs. Lapham jeers. "Why not?" Silas haughtily replies.

Not all that Mrs. Bennet, however, with the assistance of her five daughters, could ask on the subject was sufficient to draw from her husband any satisfactory description of Mr. Bingley. They attacked him in various ways; with barefaced questions, ingenious suppositions, and distant surmises; but he eluded the skill of them all; and they were at last obliged to accept the second-hand intelligence of their neighbour Lady Lucas. Her report was highly favourable. Sir William had been delighted with him. He was quite young, wonderfully handsome, extremely agreeable, and to crown the whole, he meant to be at the next assembly with a large party. Nothing could be more delightful! To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love; and very lively hopes of Mr. Bingley's heart were entertained. "If I can but see one of my daughters happily settled at Netherfield," said Mrs. Bennet to her husband, "and all the others equally well married, I shall have nothing to wish for." In a few days Mr. Bingley returned Mr. Bennet's visit, and sat about ten minutes with him in his library. He had entertained hopes of being admitted to a sight of the young ladies, of whose beauty he had heard much; but he saw only the father. The ladies were somewhat more fortunate, for they had the advantage of ascertaining from an upper window, that he wore a blue coat and rode a black horse. An invitation to dinner was soon afterwards dispatched; and already had Mrs. Bennet planned the courses that were to do credit to her housekeeping, when an answer arrived which deferred it all. Mr. Bingley was obliged to be in town the following day, and consequently unable to accept the honour of their invitation, &c. Mrs. Bennet was quite disconcerted. She could not imagine what business he could have in town so soon after his arrival in Hertfordshire; and she began to fear that he might be always flying about from one place to another, and never settled at Netherfield as he ought to be. Lady Lucas quieted her fears a little by starting the idea of his being gone to London only to get a large party for the ball; and a report soon followed that Mr. Bingley was to bring twelve ladies and seven gentlemen with him to the assembly. The girls grieved over such a number of ladies; but were comforted the day before the ball by hearing, that instead of twelve, he had brought only six with him from London, his five sisters and a cousin. And when the party entered the assembly room, it consisted of only five altogether; Mr. Bingley, his two sisters, the husband of the eldest, and another young man. Mr. Bingley was good looking and gentleman-like; he had a pleasant countenance, and easy, unaffected manners. His sisters were fine women, with an air of decided fashion. His brother-in-law, Mr. Hurst, merely looked the gentleman; but his friend Mr. Darcy soon drew the attention of the room by his fine, tall person, handsome features, noble mien; and the report which was in general circulation within five minutes after his entrance, of his having ten thousand a year. The gentlemen pronounced him to be a fine figure of a man, the ladies declared he was much handsomer than Mr. Bingley, and he was looked at with great admiration for about half the evening, till his manners gave a disgust which turned the tide of his popularity; for he was discovered to be proud, to be above his company, and above being pleased; and not all his large estate in Derbyshire could then save him from having a most forbidding, disagreeable countenance, and being unworthy to be compared with his friend. Mr. Bingley had soon made himself acquainted with all the principal people in the room; he was lively and unreserved, danced every dance, was angry that the ball closed so early, and talked of giving one himself at Netherfield. Such amiable qualities must speak for themselves. What a contrast between him and his friend! Mr. Darcy danced only once with Mrs. Hurst and once with Miss Bingley, declined being introduced to any other lady, and spent the rest of the evening in walking about the room, speaking occasionally to one of his own party. His character was decided. He was the proudest, most disagreeable man in the world, and every body hoped that he would never come there again. Amongst the most violent against him was Mrs. Bennet, whose dislike of his general behaviour, was sharpened into particular resentment, by his having slighted one of her daughters. Elizabeth Bennet had been obliged, by the scarcity of gentlemen, to sit down for two dances; and during part of that time, Mr. Darcy had been standing near enough for her to overhear a conversation between him and Mr. Bingley, who came from the dance for a few minutes, to press his friend to join it. "Come, Darcy," said he, "I must have you dance. I hate to see you standing about by yourself in this stupid manner. You had much better dance." "I certainly shall not. You know how I detest it, unless I am particularly acquainted with my partner. At such an assembly as this, it would be insupportable. Your sisters are engaged, and there is not another woman in the room, whom it would not be a punishment to me to stand up with." "I would not be so fastidious as you are," cried Bingley, "for a kingdom! Upon my honour, I never met with so many pleasant girls in my life, as I have this evening; and there are several of them you see uncommonly pretty." "_You_ are dancing with the only handsome girl in the room," said Mr. Darcy, looking at the eldest Miss Bennet. "Oh! she is the most beautiful creature I ever beheld! But there is one of her sisters sitting down just behind you, who is very pretty, and I dare say, very agreeable. Do let me ask my partner to introduce you." "Which do you mean?" and turning round, he looked for a moment at Elizabeth, till catching her eye, he withdrew his own and coldly said, "She is tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt _me_; and I am in no humour at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men. You had better return to your partner and enjoy her smiles, for you are wasting your time with me." Mr. Bingley followed his advice. Mr. Darcy walked off; and Elizabeth remained with no very cordial feelings towards him. She told the story however with great spirit among her friends; for she had a lively, playful disposition, which delighted in any thing ridiculous. The evening altogether passed off pleasantly to the whole family. Mrs. Bennet had seen her eldest daughter much admired by the Netherfield party. Mr. Bingley had danced with her twice, and she had been distinguished by his sisters. Jane was as much gratified by this, as her mother could be, though in a quieter way. Elizabeth felt Jane's pleasure. Mary had heard herself mentioned to Miss Bingley as the most accomplished girl in the neighbourhood; and Catherine and Lydia had been fortunate enough to be never without partners, which was all that they had yet learnt to care for at a ball. They returned therefore in good spirits to Longbourn, the village where they lived, and of which they were the principal inhabitants. They found Mr. Bennet still up. With a book he was regardless of time; and on the present occasion he had a good deal of curiosity as to the event of an evening which had raised such splendid expectations. He had rather hoped that all his wife's views on the stranger would be disappointed; but he soon found that he had a very different story to hear. "Oh! my dear Mr. Bennet," as she entered the room, "we have had a most delightful evening, a most excellent ball. I wish you had been there. Jane was so admired, nothing could be like it. Every body said how well she looked; and Mr. Bingley thought her quite beautiful, and danced with her twice. Only think of _that_ my dear; he actually danced with her twice; and she was the only creature in the room that he asked a second time. First of all, he asked Miss Lucas. I was so vexed to see him stand up with her; but, however, he did not admire her at all: indeed, nobody can, you know; and he seemed quite struck with Jane as she was going down the dance. So, he enquired who she was, and got introduced, and asked her for the two next. Then, the two third he danced with Miss King, and the two fourth with Maria Lucas, and the two fifth with Jane again, and the two sixth with Lizzy, and the Boulanger----" "If he had had any compassion for _me_," cried her husband impatiently, "he would not have danced half so much! For God's sake, say no more of his partners. Oh! that he had sprained his ancle in the first dance!" "Oh! my dear," continued Mrs. Bennet, "I am quite delighted with him. He is so excessively handsome! and his sisters are charming women. I never in my life saw any thing more elegant than their dresses. I dare say the lace upon Mrs. Hurst's gown----" Here she was interrupted again. Mr. Bennet protested against any description of finery. She was therefore obliged to seek another branch of the subject, and related, with much bitterness of spirit and some exaggeration, the shocking rudeness of Mr. Darcy. "But I can assure you," she added, "that Lizzy does not lose much by not suiting _his_ fancy; for he is a most disagreeable, horrid man, not at all worth pleasing. So high and so conceited that there was no enduring him! He walked here, and he walked there, fancying himself so very great! Not handsome enough to dance with! I wish you had been there, my dear, to have given him one of your set downs. I quite detest the man."

Mr. Bingley returns Mrs. Bennett's visit, but the girls are absent, and they will not get the chance to meet him until the next Ball is held in the neighborhood. There is much gossip in the neighborhood as to the extent and content of Bingley's party at the forthcoming Ball. At the end, he brings himself, his two sisters, his brother-in-law and a friend, Mr. Darcy. It is clear that Darcy finds the Ball disagreeable, and those there consider him to be haughty and proud. Elizabeth overhears Bingley encouraging Darcy to ask Elizabeth to dance, but he refuses to take up Bingley's suggestion. Mrs. Bennett notices that Bingley danced with Jane twice - more than with any other lady present. Mrs. Bennett hopes, "If I can but see one of my daughters happily settled at Netherfield and all the others equally well married, I shall have nothing to wish for." It has been a successful night for Jane, but Elizabeth feels offended at Darcy's behavior.

It remains now to see what ought to be the rules of conduct for a prince towards subject and friends. And as I know that many have written on this point, I expect I shall be considered presumptuous in mentioning it again, especially as in discussing it I shall depart from the methods of other people. But, it being my intention to write a thing which shall be useful to him who apprehends it, it appears to me more appropriate to follow up the real truth of the matter than the imagination of it; for many have pictured republics and principalities which in fact have never been known or seen, because how one lives is so far distant from how one ought to live, that he who neglects what is done for what ought to be done, sooner effects his ruin than his preservation; for a man who wishes to act entirely up to his professions of virtue soon meets with what destroys him among so much that is evil. Hence it is necessary for a prince wishing to hold his own to know how to do wrong, and to make use of it or not according to necessity. Therefore, putting on one side imaginary things concerning a prince, and discussing those which are real, I say that all men when they are spoken of, and chiefly princes for being more highly placed, are remarkable for some of those qualities which bring them either blame or praise; and thus it is that one is reputed liberal, another miserly, using a Tuscan term (because an avaricious person in our language is still he who desires to possess by robbery, whilst we call one miserly who deprives himself too much of the use of his own); one is reputed generous, one rapacious; one cruel, one compassionate; one faithless, another faithful; one effeminate and cowardly, another bold and brave; one affable, another haughty; one lascivious, another chaste; one sincere, another cunning; one hard, another easy; one grave, another frivolous; one religious, another unbelieving, and the like. And I know that every one will confess that it would be most praiseworthy in a prince to exhibit all the above qualities that are considered good; but because they can neither be entirely possessed nor observed, for human conditions do not permit it, it is necessary for him to be sufficiently prudent that he may know how to avoid the reproach of those vices which would lose him his state; and also to keep himself, if it be possible, from those which would not lose him it; but this not being possible, he may with less hesitation abandon himself to them. And again, he need not make himself uneasy at incurring a reproach for those vices without which the state can only be saved with difficulty, for if everything is considered carefully, it will be found that something which looks like virtue, if followed, would be his ruin; whilst something else, which looks like vice, yet followed brings him security and prosperity.

The proper behavior of princes toward subjects and allies remains to be discussed. Many others have treated this subject, but Machiavelli bases his observations on the real world, not on an imagined ideal. There is so much difference between the way people should act and the way they do act that any prince who tries to do what he should will ruin himself. A prince must know when to act immorally. Everyone agrees that a prince should have all good qualities, but because that is impossible, a wise prince will avoid those vices that would destroy his power and not worry about the rest. Some actions that seem virtuous will ruin a prince, while others that seem like vices will make a prince prosper.

Be Mowbray's sins so heavy in his bosom, That they may break his foaming courser's back, And throw the rider headlong in the lists, A caitiff recreant! --Richard II Our scene now returns to the exterior of the Castle, or Preceptory, of Templestowe, about the hour when the bloody die was to be cast for the life or death of Rebecca. It was a scene of bustle and life, as if the whole vicinity had poured forth its inhabitants to a village wake, or rural feast. But the earnest desire to look on blood and death, is not peculiar to those dark ages; though in the gladiatorial exercise of single combat and general tourney, they were habituated to the bloody spectacle of brave men falling by each other's hands. Even in our own days, when morals are better understood, an execution, a bruising match, a riot, or a meeting of radical reformers, collects, at considerable hazard to themselves, immense crowds of spectators, otherwise little interested, except to see how matters are to be conducted, or whether the heroes of the day are, in the heroic language of insurgent tailors, flints or dunghills. The eyes, therefore, of a very considerable multitude, were bent on the gate of the Preceptory of Templestowe, with the purpose of witnessing the procession; while still greater numbers had already surrounded the tiltyard belonging to that establishment. This enclosure was formed on a piece of level ground adjoining to the Preceptory, which had been levelled with care, for the exercise of military and chivalrous sports. It occupied the brow of a soft and gentle eminence, was carefully palisaded around, and, as the Templars willingly invited spectators to be witnesses of their skill in feats of chivalry, was amply supplied with galleries and benches for their use. On the present occasion, a throne was erected for the Grand Master at the east end, surrounded with seats of distinction for the Preceptors and Knights of the Order. Over these floated the sacred standard, called "Le Beau-seant", which was the ensign, as its name was the battle-cry, of the Templars. At the opposite end of the lists was a pile of faggots, so arranged around a stake, deeply fixed in the ground, as to leave a space for the victim whom they were destined to consume, to enter within the fatal circle, in order to be chained to the stake by the fetters which hung ready for that purpose. Beside this deadly apparatus stood four black slaves, whose colour and African features, then so little known in England, appalled the multitude, who gazed on them as on demons employed about their own diabolical exercises. These men stirred not, excepting now and then, under the direction of one who seemed their chief, to shift and replace the ready fuel. They looked not on the multitude. In fact, they seemed insensible of their presence, and of every thing save the discharge of their own horrible duty. And when, in speech with each other, they expanded their blubber lips, and showed their white fangs, as if they grinned at the thoughts of the expected tragedy, the startled commons could scarcely help believing that they were actually the familiar spirits with whom the witch had communed, and who, her time being out, stood ready to assist in her dreadful punishment. They whispered to each other, and communicated all the feats which Satan had performed during that busy and unhappy period, not failing, of course, to give the devil rather more than his due. "Have you not heard, Father Dennet," quoth one boor to another advanced in years, "that the devil has carried away bodily the great Saxon Thane, Athelstane of Coningsburgh?" "Ay, but he brought him back though, by the blessing of God and Saint Dunstan." "How's that?" said a brisk young fellow, dressed in a green cassock embroidered with gold, and having at his heels a stout lad bearing a harp upon his back, which betrayed his vocation. The Minstrel seemed of no vulgar rank; for, besides the splendour of his gaily braidered doublet, he wore around his neck a silver chain, by which hung the "wrest", or key, with which he tuned his harp. On his right arm was a silver plate, which, instead of bearing, as usual, the cognizance or badge of the baron to whose family he belonged, had barely the word SHERWOOD engraved upon it.--"How mean you by that?" said the gay Minstrel, mingling in the conversation of the peasants; "I came to seek one subject for my rhyme, and, by'r Lady, I were glad to find two." "It is well avouched," said the elder peasant, "that after Athelstane of Coningsburgh had been dead four weeks--" "That is impossible," said the Minstrel; "I saw him in life at the Passage of Arms at Ashby-de-la-Zouche." "Dead, however, he was, or else translated," said the younger peasant; "for I heard the Monks of Saint Edmund's singing the death's hymn for him; and, moreover, there was a rich death-meal and dole at the Castle of Coningsburgh, as right was; and thither had I gone, but for Mabel Parkins, who--" "Ay, dead was Athelstane," said the old man, shaking his head, "and the more pity it was, for the old Saxon blood--" "But, your story, my masters--your story," said the Minstrel, somewhat impatiently. "Ay, ay--construe us the story," said a burly Friar, who stood beside them, leaning on a pole that exhibited an appearance between a pilgrim's staff and a quarter-staff, and probably acted as either when occasion served,--"Your story," said the stalwart churchman; "burn not daylight about it--we have short time to spare." "An please your reverence," said Dennet, "a drunken priest came to visit the Sacristan at Saint Edmund's---" "It does not please my reverence," answered the churchman, "that there should be such an animal as a drunken priest, or, if there were, that a layman should so speak him. Be mannerly, my friend, and conclude the holy man only wrapt in meditation, which makes the head dizzy and foot unsteady, as if the stomach were filled with new wine--I have felt it myself." "Well, then," answered Father Dennet, "a holy brother came to visit the Sacristan at Saint Edmund's--a sort of hedge-priest is the visitor, and kills half the deer that are stolen in the forest, who loves the tinkling of a pint-pot better than the sacring-bell, and deems a flitch of bacon worth ten of his breviary; for the rest, a good fellow and a merry, who will flourish a quarter-staff, draw a bow, and dance a Cheshire round, with e'er a man in Yorkshire." "That last part of thy speech, Dennet," said the Minstrel, "has saved thee a rib or twain." "Tush, man, I fear him not," said Dennet; "I am somewhat old and stiff, but when I fought for the bell and ram at Doncaster--" "But the story--the story, my friend," again said the Minstrel. "Why, the tale is but this--Athelstane of Coningsburgh was buried at Saint Edmund's." "That's a lie, and a loud one," said the Friar, "for I saw him borne to his own Castle of Coningsburgh." "Nay, then, e'en tell the story yourself, my masters," said Dennet, turning sulky at these repeated contradictions; and it was with some difficulty that the boor could be prevailed on, by the request of his comrade and the Minstrel, to renew his tale.--"These two 'sober' friars," said he at length, "since this reverend man will needs have them such, had continued drinking good ale, and wine, and what not, for the best part for a summer's day, when they were aroused by a deep groan, and a clanking of chains, and the figure of the deceased Athelstane entered the apartment, saying, 'Ye evil shep-herds!--'" "It is false," said the Friar, hastily, "he never spoke a word." "So ho! Friar Tuck," said the Minstrel, drawing him apart from the rustics; "we have started a new hare, I find." "I tell thee, Allan-a-Dale," said the Hermit, "I saw Athelstane of Coningsburgh as much as bodily eyes ever saw a living man. He had his shroud on, and all about him smelt of the sepulchre--A butt of sack will not wash it out of my memory." "Pshaw!" answered the Minstrel; "thou dost but jest with me!" "Never believe me," said the Friar, "an I fetched not a knock at him with my quarter-staff that would have felled an ox, and it glided through his body as it might through a pillar of smoke!" "By Saint Hubert," said the Minstrel, "but it is a wondrous tale, and fit to be put in metre to the ancient tune, 'Sorrow came to the old Friar.'" "Laugh, if ye list," said Friar Tuck; "but an ye catch me singing on such a theme, may the next ghost or devil carry me off with him headlong! No, no--I instantly formed the purpose of assisting at some good work, such as the burning of a witch, a judicial combat, or the like matter of godly service, and therefore am I here." As they thus conversed, the heavy bell of the church of Saint Michael of Templestowe, a venerable building, situated in a hamlet at some distance from the Preceptory, broke short their argument. One by one the sullen sounds fell successively on the ear, leaving but sufficient space for each to die away in distant echo, ere the air was again filled by repetition of the iron knell. These sounds, the signal of the approaching ceremony, chilled with awe the hearts of the assembled multitude, whose eyes were now turned to the Preceptory, expecting the approach of the Grand Master, the champion, and the criminal. At length the drawbridge fell, the gates opened, and a knight, bearing the great standard of the Order, sallied from the castle, preceded by six trumpets, and followed by the Knights Preceptors, two and two, the Grand Master coming last, mounted on a stately horse, whose furniture was of the simplest kind. Behind him came Brian de Bois-Guilbert, armed cap-a-pie in bright armour, but without his lance, shield, and sword, which were borne by his two esquires behind him. His face, though partly hidden by a long plume which floated down from his barrel-cap, bore a strong and mingled expression of passion, in which pride seemed to contend with irresolution. He looked ghastly pale, as if he had not slept for several nights, yet reined his pawing war-horse with the habitual ease and grace proper to the best lance of the Order of the Temple. His general appearance was grand and commanding; but, looking at him with attention, men read that in his dark features, from which they willingly withdrew their eyes. On either side rode Conrade of Mont-Fitchet, and Albert de Malvoisin, who acted as godfathers to the champion. They were in their robes of peace, the white dress of the Order. Behind them followed other Companions of the Temple, with a long train of esquires and pages clad in black, aspirants to the honour of being one day Knights of the Order. After these neophytes came a guard of warders on foot, in the same sable livery, amidst whose partisans might be seen the pale form of the accused, moving with a slow but undismayed step towards the scene of her fate. She was stript of all her ornaments, lest perchance there should be among them some of those amulets which Satan was supposed to bestow upon his victims, to deprive them of the power of confession even when under the torture. A coarse white dress, of the simplest form, had been substituted for her Oriental garments; yet there was such an exquisite mixture of courage and resignation in her look, that even in this garb, and with no other ornament than her long black tresses, each eye wept that looked upon her, and the most hardened bigot regretted the fate that had converted a creature so goodly into a vessel of wrath, and a waged slave of the devil. A crowd of inferior personages belonging to the Preceptory followed the victim, all moving with the utmost order, with arms folded, and looks bent upon the ground. This slow procession moved up the gentle eminence, on the summit of which was the tiltyard, and, entering the lists, marched once around them from right to left, and when they had completed the circle, made a halt. There was then a momentary bustle, while the Grand Master and all his attendants, excepting the champion and his godfathers, dismounted from their horses, which were immediately removed out of the lists by the esquires, who were in attendance for that purpose. The unfortunate Rebecca was conducted to the black chair placed near the pile. On her first glance at the terrible spot where preparations were making for a death alike dismaying to the mind and painful to the body, she was observed to shudder and shut her eyes, praying internally doubtless, for her lips moved though no speech was heard. In the space of a minute she opened her eyes, looked fixedly on the pile as if to familiarize her mind with the object, and then slowly and naturally turned away her head. Meanwhile, the Grand Master had assumed his seat; and when the chivalry of his order was placed around and behind him, each in his due rank, a loud and long flourish of the trumpets announced that the Court were seated for judgment. Malvoisin, then, acting as godfather of the champion, stepped forward, and laid the glove of the Jewess, which was the pledge of battle, at the feet of the Grand Master. "Valorous Lord, and reverend Father," said he, "here standeth the good Knight, Brian de Bois-Guilbert, Knight Preceptor of the Order of the Temple, who, by accepting the pledge of battle which I now lay at your reverence's feet, hath become bound to do his devoir in combat this day, to maintain that this Jewish maiden, by name Rebecca, hath justly deserved the doom passed upon her in a Chapter of this most Holy Order of the Temple of Zion, condemning her to die as a sorceress;--here, I say, he standeth, such battle to do, knightly and honourable, if such be your noble and sanctified pleasure." "Hath he made oath," said the Grand Master, "that his quarrel is just and honourable? Bring forward the Crucifix and the 'Te igitur'." "Sir, and most reverend father," answered Malvoisin, readily, "our brother here present hath already sworn to the truth of his accusation in the hand of the good Knight Conrade de Mont-Fitchet; and otherwise he ought not to be sworn, seeing that his adversary is an unbeliever, and may take no oath." This explanation was satisfactory, to Albert's great joy; for the wily knight had foreseen the great difficulty, or rather impossibility, of prevailing upon Brian de Bois-Guilbert to take such an oath before the assembly, and had invented this excuse to escape the necessity of his doing so. The Grand Master, having allowed the apology of Albert Malvoisin, commanded the herald to stand forth and do his devoir. The trumpets then again flourished, and a herald, stepping forward, proclaimed aloud,--"Oyez, oyez, oyez.--Here standeth the good Knight, Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert, ready to do battle with any knight of free blood, who will sustain the quarrel allowed and allotted to the Jewess Rebecca, to try by champion, in respect of lawful essoine of her own body; and to such champion the reverend and valorous Grand Master here present allows a fair field, and equal partition of sun and wind, and whatever else appertains to a fair combat." The trumpets again sounded, and there was a dead pause of many minutes. "No champion appears for the appellant," said the Grand Master. "Go, herald, and ask her whether she expects any one to do battle for her in this her cause." The herald went to the chair in which Rebecca was seated, and Bois-Guilbert suddenly turning his horse's head toward that end of the lists, in spite of hints on either side from Malvoisin and Mont-Fitchet, was by the side of Rebecca's chair as soon as the herald. "Is this regular, and according to the law of combat?" said Malvoisin, looking to the Grand Master. "Albert de Malvoisin, it is," answered Beaumanoir; "for in this appeal to the judgment of God, we may not prohibit parties from having that communication with each other, which may best tend to bring forth the truth of the quarrel." In the meantime, the herald spoke to Rebecca in these terms:--"Damsel, the Honourable and Reverend the Grand Master demands of thee, if thou art prepared with a champion to do battle this day in thy behalf, or if thou dost yield thee as one justly condemned to a deserved doom?" "Say to the Grand Master," replied Rebecca, "that I maintain my innocence, and do not yield me as justly condemned, lest I become guilty of mine own blood. Say to him, that I challenge such delay as his forms will permit, to see if God, whose opportunity is in man's extremity, will raise me up a deliverer; and when such uttermost space is passed, may His holy will be done!" The herald retired to carry this answer to the Grand Master. "God forbid," said Lucas Beaumanoir, "that Jew or Pagan should impeach us of injustice!--Until the shadows be cast from the west to the eastward, will we wait to see if a champion shall appear for this unfortunate woman. When the day is so far passed, let her prepare for death." The herald communicated the words of the Grand Master to Rebecca, who bowed her head submissively, folded her arms, and, looking up towards heaven, seemed to expect that aid from above which she could scarce promise herself from man. During this awful pause, the voice of Bois-Guilbert broke upon her ear--it was but a whisper, yet it startled her more than the summons of the herald had appeared to do. "Rebecca," said the Templar, "dost thou hear me?" "I have no portion in thee, cruel, hard-hearted man," said the unfortunate maiden. "Ay, but dost thou understand my words?" said the Templar; "for the sound of my voice is frightful in mine own ears. I scarce know on what ground we stand, or for what purpose they have brought us hither.--This listed space--that chair--these faggots--I know their purpose, and yet it appears to me like something unreal--the fearful picture of a vision, which appals my sense with hideous fantasies, but convinces not my reason." "My mind and senses keep touch and time," answered Rebecca, "and tell me alike that these faggots are destined to consume my earthly body, and open a painful but a brief passage to a better world." "Dreams, Rebecca,--dreams," answered the Templar; "idle visions, rejected by the wisdom of your own wiser Sadducees. Hear me, Rebecca," he said, proceeding with animation; "a better chance hast thou for life and liberty than yonder knaves and dotard dream of. Mount thee behind me on my steed--on Zamor, the gallant horse that never failed his rider. I won him in single fight from the Soldan of Trebizond--mount, I say, behind me--in one short hour is pursuit and enquiry far behind--a new world of pleasure opens to thee--to me a new career of fame. Let them speak the doom which I despise, and erase the name of Bois-Guilbert from their list of monastic slaves! I will wash out with blood whatever blot they may dare to cast on my scutcheon." "Tempter," said Rebecca, "begone!--Not in this last extremity canst thou move me one hair's-breadth from my resting place--surrounded as I am by foes, I hold thee as my worst and most deadly enemy--avoid thee, in the name of God!" Albert Malvoisin, alarmed and impatient at the duration of their conference, now advanced to interrupt it. "Hath the maiden acknowledged her guilt?" he demanded of Bois-Guilbert; "or is she resolute in her denial?" "She is indeed resolute," said Bois-Guilbert. "Then," said Malvoisin, "must thou, noble brother, resume thy place to attend the issue--The shades are changing on the circle of the dial--Come, brave Bois-Guilbert--come, thou hope of our holy Order, and soon to be its head." As he spoke in this soothing tone, he laid his hand on the knight's bridle, as if to lead him back to his station. "False villain! what meanest thou by thy hand on my rein?" said Sir Brian, angrily. And shaking off his companion's grasp, he rode back to the upper end of the lists. "There is yet spirit in him," said Malvoisin apart to Mont-Fitchet, "were it well directed--but, like the Greek fire, it burns whatever approaches it." The Judges had now been two hours in the lists, awaiting in vain the appearance of a champion. "And reason good," said Friar Tuck, "seeing she is a Jewess--and yet, by mine Order, it is hard that so young and beautiful a creature should perish without one blow being struck in her behalf! Were she ten times a witch, provided she were but the least bit of a Christian, my quarter-staff should ring noon on the steel cap of yonder fierce Templar, ere he carried the matter off thus." It was, however, the general belief that no one could or would appear for a Jewess, accused of sorcery; and the knights, instigated by Malvoisin, whispered to each other, that it was time to declare the pledge of Rebecca forfeited. At this instant a knight, urging his horse to speed, appeared on the plain advancing towards the lists. A hundred voices exclaimed, "A champion! a champion!" And despite the prepossessions and prejudices of the multitude, they shouted unanimously as the knight rode into the tiltyard. The second glance, however, served to destroy the hope that his timely arrival had excited. His horse, urged for many miles to its utmost speed, appeared to reel from fatigue, and the rider, however undauntedly he presented himself in the lists, either from weakness, weariness, or both, seemed scarce able to support himself in the saddle. To the summons of the herald, who demanded his rank, his name, and purpose, the stranger knight answered readily and boldly, "I am a good knight and noble, come hither to sustain with lance and sword the just and lawful quarrel of this damsel, Rebecca, daughter of Isaac of York; to uphold the doom pronounced against her to be false and truthless, and to defy Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert, as a traitor, murderer, and liar; as I will prove in this field with my body against his, by the aid of God, of Our Lady, and of Monseigneur Saint George, the good knight." "The stranger must first show," said Malvoisin, "that he is good knight, and of honourable lineage. The Temple sendeth not forth her champions against nameless men." "My name," said the Knight, raising his helmet, "is better known, my lineage more pure, Malvoisin, than thine own. I am Wilfred of Ivanhoe." "I will not fight with thee at present," said the Templar, in a changed and hollow voice. "Get thy wounds healed, purvey thee a better horse, and it may be I will hold it worth my while to scourge out of thee this boyish spirit of bravado." "Ha! proud Templar," said Ivanhoe, "hast thou forgotten that twice didst thou fall before this lance? Remember the lists at Acre--remember the Passage of Arms at Ashby--remember thy proud vaunt in the halls of Rotherwood, and the gage of your gold chain against my reliquary, that thou wouldst do battle with Wilfred of Ivanhoe, and recover the honour thou hadst lost! By that reliquary and the holy relic it contains, I will proclaim thee, Templar, a coward in every court in Europe--in every Preceptory of thine Order--unless thou do battle without farther delay." Bois-Guilbert turned his countenance irresolutely towards Rebecca, and then exclaimed, looking fiercely at Ivanhoe, "Dog of a Saxon! take thy lance, and prepare for the death thou hast drawn upon thee!" "Does the Grand Master allow me the combat?" said Ivanhoe. "I may not deny what thou hast challenged," said the Grand Master, "provided the maiden accepts thee as her champion. Yet I would thou wert in better plight to do battle. An enemy of our Order hast thou ever been, yet would I have thee honourably met with." "Thus--thus as I am, and not otherwise," said Ivanhoe; "it is the judgment of God--to his keeping I commend myself.--Rebecca," said he, riding up to the fatal chair, "dost thou accept of me for thy champion?" "I do," she said--"I do," fluttered by an emotion which the fear of death had been unable to produce, "I do accept thee as the champion whom Heaven hath sent me. Yet, no--no--thy wounds are uncured--Meet not that proud man--why shouldst thou perish also?" But Ivanhoe was already at his post, and had closed his visor, and assumed his lance. Bois-Guilbert did the same; and his esquire remarked, as he clasped his visor, that his face, which had, notwithstanding the variety of emotions by which he had been agitated, continued during the whole morning of an ashy paleness, was now become suddenly very much flushed. The herald, then, seeing each champion in his place, uplifted his voice, repeating thrice--"Faites vos devoirs, preux chevaliers!" After the third cry, he withdrew to one side of the lists, and again proclaimed, that none, on peril of instant death, should dare, by word, cry, or action, to interfere with or disturb this fair field of combat. The Grand Master, who held in his hand the gage of battle, Rebecca's glove, now threw it into the lists, and pronounced the fatal signal words, "Laissez aller". The trumpets sounded, and the knights charged each other in full career. The wearied horse of Ivanhoe, and its no less exhausted rider, went down, as all had expected, before the well-aimed lance and vigorous steed of the Templar. This issue of the combat all had foreseen; but although the spear of Ivanhoe did but, in comparison, touch the shield of Bois-Guilbert, that champion, to the astonishment of all who beheld it reeled in his saddle, lost his stirrups, and fell in the lists. Ivanhoe, extricating himself from his fallen horse, was soon on foot, hastening to mend his fortune with his sword; but his antagonist arose not. Wilfred, placing his foot on his breast, and the sword's point to his throat, commanded him to yield him, or die on the spot. Bois-Guilbert returned no answer. "Slay him not, Sir Knight," cried the Grand Master, "unshriven and unabsolved--kill not body and soul! We allow him vanquished." He descended into the lists, and commanded them to unhelm the conquered champion. His eyes were closed--the dark red flush was still on his brow. As they looked on him in astonishment, the eyes opened--but they were fixed and glazed. The flush passed from his brow, and gave way to the pallid hue of death. Unscathed by the lance of his enemy, he had died a victim to the violence of his own contending passions. "This is indeed the judgment of God," said the Grand Master, looking upwards--"'Fiat voluntas tua!'"

This is the second epigraph from Shakespeare's <em>Richard II</em> .This one comes from Act I, Scene 2. The speaker, the Duchess of Gloucester, curses her enemy Thomas Mowbray. She hopes he will be thrown from his horse during a tournament.Now our attention turns back to Templestowe.The whole town is packed with people eager to watch the trial by combat.Beaumanoir is sitting on a throne next to the tournament grounds.They have set up a pile of sticks around a stake, since they expect that Rebecca will be burned by the end of the day.The peasants gathered at the tournament grounds have heard rumors that Athelstane is still alive.A friar, a minstrel , and a priest all discuss Athelstane's fate.They debate whether his return is supernatural, magical, or what. The friar thinks Athelstane came back from hell.The minstrel tells his version of the story:Athelstane appeared from the basement of Saint Edmund's in front of a drunken monk and the Sacristan . The friar protests that Athelstane smelled like hell itself. He adds that his staff passed through Athelstane's body as though it was made of smoke.So now we have confirmation that it <em>was</em> Friar Tuck who was there at the church when Athelstane escaped.The men grow silent as the Templars appear for the combat.Rebecca's guards make her sit near the stake.Albert officially presents Bois-Guilbert to Beaumanoir as the champion for the Templars.Beaumanoir demands if Rebecca has a champion.She demands time to see if God will provide her with one.While they are waiting to see if a champion appears, Bois-Guilbert approaches Rebecca.He pretends to be counseling her to repent and confess her sins. But in fact, he is making a last-ditch effort to convince her to run away with him.Rebecca refuses.Albert leads Bois-Guilbert away from Rebecca.Just when Beaumanoir is about to declare that Rebecca has forfeited her trial, a knight appears in the distance.It's Ivanhoe .He presents himself as Rebecca's champion.Bois-Guilbert refuses to fight Ivanhoe while he's wounded.Ivanhoe reminds Bois-Guilbert of the oath he swore after the tournament to fight a rematch with him.Bois-Guilbert still looks undecided.But Beaumanoir allows Ivanhoe to stand as Rebecca's champion.Rebecca hesitates: how can she allow Ivanhoe to fight when he's still wounded?But Ivanhoe doesn't listen. He rides to one end of the tournament field and prepares to joust with Bois-Guilbert.The two ride toward each other.As they strike each other with their lances, Ivanhoe's exhausted horse collapses to the ground.But Bois-Guilbert, whose shield is barely touched by Ivanhoe's lance, still falls out of his saddle.Ivanhoe walks over, puts his foot on Bois-Guilbert's chest, and holds his sword to the man's throat.Bois-Guilbert doesn't say a word.Beaumanoir jumps in to declare the fight for Ivanhoe.When they pull Bois-Guilbert's helmet off, he opens his eyes.Even though he has no injury, he suddenly dies. His own conflicting emotions have overcome him.Beaumanoir declares that this is the will of God.

At half-past twelve next day Lord Henry Wotton strolled from Curzon Street over to the Albany to call on his uncle, Lord Fermor, a genial if somewhat rough-mannered old bachelor, whom the outside world called selfish because it derived no particular benefit from him, but who was considered generous by Society as he fed the people who amused him. His father had been our ambassador at Madrid when Isabella was young and Prim unthought of, but had retired from the diplomatic service in a capricious moment of annoyance on not being offered the Embassy at Paris, a post to which he considered that he was fully entitled by reason of his birth, his indolence, the good English of his dispatches, and his inordinate passion for pleasure. The son, who had been his father's secretary, had resigned along with his chief, somewhat foolishly as was thought at the time, and on succeeding some months later to the title, had set himself to the serious study of the great aristocratic art of doing absolutely nothing. He had two large town houses, but preferred to live in chambers as it was less trouble, and took most of his meals at his club. He paid some attention to the management of his collieries in the Midland counties, excusing himself for this taint of industry on the ground that the one advantage of having coal was that it enabled a gentleman to afford the decency of burning wood on his own hearth. In politics he was a Tory, except when the Tories were in office, during which period he roundly abused them for being a pack of Radicals. He was a hero to his valet, who bullied him, and a terror to most of his relations, whom he bullied in turn. Only England could have produced him, and he always said that the country was going to the dogs. His principles were out of date, but there was a good deal to be said for his prejudices. When Lord Henry entered the room, he found his uncle sitting in a rough shooting-coat, smoking a cheroot and grumbling over _The Times_. "Well, Harry," said the old gentleman, "what brings you out so early? I thought you dandies never got up till two, and were not visible till five." "Pure family affection, I assure you, Uncle George. I want to get something out of you." "Money, I suppose," said Lord Fermor, making a wry face. "Well, sit down and tell me all about it. Young people, nowadays, imagine that money is everything." "Yes," murmured Lord Henry, settling his button-hole in his coat; "and when they grow older they know it. But I don't want money. It is only people who pay their bills who want that, Uncle George, and I never pay mine. Credit is the capital of a younger son, and one lives charmingly upon it. Besides, I always deal with Dartmoor's tradesmen, and consequently they never bother me. What I want is information: not useful information, of course; useless information." "Well, I can tell you anything that is in an English Blue Book, Harry, although those fellows nowadays write a lot of nonsense. When I was in the Diplomatic, things were much better. But I hear they let them in now by examination. What can you expect? Examinations, sir, are pure humbug from beginning to end. If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him." "Mr. Dorian Gray does not belong to Blue Books, Uncle George," said Lord Henry languidly. "Mr. Dorian Gray? Who is he?" asked Lord Fermor, knitting his bushy white eyebrows. "That is what I have come to learn, Uncle George. Or rather, I know who he is. He is the last Lord Kelso's grandson. His mother was a Devereux, Lady Margaret Devereux. I want you to tell me about his mother. What was she like? Whom did she marry? You have known nearly everybody in your time, so you might have known her. I am very much interested in Mr. Gray at present. I have only just met him." "Kelso's grandson!" echoed the old gentleman. "Kelso's grandson! ... Of course.... I knew his mother intimately. I believe I was at her christening. She was an extraordinarily beautiful girl, Margaret Devereux, and made all the men frantic by running away with a penniless young fellow--a mere nobody, sir, a subaltern in a foot regiment, or something of that kind. Certainly. I remember the whole thing as if it happened yesterday. The poor chap was killed in a duel at Spa a few months after the marriage. There was an ugly story about it. They said Kelso got some rascally adventurer, some Belgian brute, to insult his son-in-law in public--paid him, sir, to do it, paid him--and that the fellow spitted his man as if he had been a pigeon. The thing was hushed up, but, egad, Kelso ate his chop alone at the club for some time afterwards. He brought his daughter back with him, I was told, and she never spoke to him again. Oh, yes; it was a bad business. The girl died, too, died within a year. So she left a son, did she? I had forgotten that. What sort of boy is he? If he is like his mother, he must be a good-looking chap." "He is very good-looking," assented Lord Henry. "I hope he will fall into proper hands," continued the old man. "He should have a pot of money waiting for him if Kelso did the right thing by him. His mother had money, too. All the Selby property came to her, through her grandfather. Her grandfather hated Kelso, thought him a mean dog. He was, too. Came to Madrid once when I was there. Egad, I was ashamed of him. The Queen used to ask me about the English noble who was always quarrelling with the cabmen about their fares. They made quite a story of it. I didn't dare show my face at Court for a month. I hope he treated his grandson better than he did the jarvies." "I don't know," answered Lord Henry. "I fancy that the boy will be well off. He is not of age yet. He has Selby, I know. He told me so. And ... his mother was very beautiful?" "Margaret Devereux was one of the loveliest creatures I ever saw, Harry. What on earth induced her to behave as she did, I never could understand. She could have married anybody she chose. Carlington was mad after her. She was romantic, though. All the women of that family were. The men were a poor lot, but, egad! the women were wonderful. Carlington went on his knees to her. Told me so himself. She laughed at him, and there wasn't a girl in London at the time who wasn't after him. And by the way, Harry, talking about silly marriages, what is this humbug your father tells me about Dartmoor wanting to marry an American? Ain't English girls good enough for him?" "It is rather fashionable to marry Americans just now, Uncle George." "I'll back English women against the world, Harry," said Lord Fermor, striking the table with his fist. "The betting is on the Americans." "They don't last, I am told," muttered his uncle. "A long engagement exhausts them, but they are capital at a steeplechase. They take things flying. I don't think Dartmoor has a chance." "Who are her people?" grumbled the old gentleman. "Has she got any?" Lord Henry shook his head. "American girls are as clever at concealing their parents, as English women are at concealing their past," he said, rising to go. "They are pork-packers, I suppose?" "I hope so, Uncle George, for Dartmoor's sake. I am told that pork-packing is the most lucrative profession in America, after politics." "Is she pretty?" "She behaves as if she was beautiful. Most American women do. It is the secret of their charm." "Why can't these American women stay in their own country? They are always telling us that it is the paradise for women." "It is. That is the reason why, like Eve, they are so excessively anxious to get out of it," said Lord Henry. "Good-bye, Uncle George. I shall be late for lunch, if I stop any longer. Thanks for giving me the information I wanted. I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones." "Where are you lunching, Harry?" "At Aunt Agatha's. I have asked myself and Mr. Gray. He is her latest _protege_." "Humph! tell your Aunt Agatha, Harry, not to bother me any more with her charity appeals. I am sick of them. Why, the good woman thinks that I have nothing to do but to write cheques for her silly fads." "All right, Uncle George, I'll tell her, but it won't have any effect. Philanthropic people lose all sense of humanity. It is their distinguishing characteristic." The old gentleman growled approvingly and rang the bell for his servant. Lord Henry passed up the low arcade into Burlington Street and turned his steps in the direction of Berkeley Square. So that was the story of Dorian Gray's parentage. Crudely as it had been told to him, it had yet stirred him by its suggestion of a strange, almost modern romance. A beautiful woman risking everything for a mad passion. A few wild weeks of happiness cut short by a hideous, treacherous crime. Months of voiceless agony, and then a child born in pain. The mother snatched away by death, the boy left to solitude and the tyranny of an old and loveless man. Yes; it was an interesting background. It posed the lad, made him more perfect, as it were. Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic. Worlds had to be in travail, that the meanest flower might blow.... And how charming he had been at dinner the night before, as with startled eyes and lips parted in frightened pleasure he had sat opposite to him at the club, the red candleshades staining to a richer rose the wakening wonder of his face. Talking to him was like playing upon an exquisite violin. He answered to every touch and thrill of the bow.... There was something terribly enthralling in the exercise of influence. No other activity was like it. To project one's soul into some gracious form, and let it tarry there for a moment; to hear one's own intellectual views echoed back to one with all the added music of passion and youth; to convey one's temperament into another as though it were a subtle fluid or a strange perfume: there was a real joy in that--perhaps the most satisfying joy left to us in an age so limited and vulgar as our own, an age grossly carnal in its pleasures, and grossly common in its aims.... He was a marvellous type, too, this lad, whom by so curious a chance he had met in Basil's studio, or could be fashioned into a marvellous type, at any rate. Grace was his, and the white purity of boyhood, and beauty such as old Greek marbles kept for us. There was nothing that one could not do with him. He could be made a Titan or a toy. What a pity it was that such beauty was destined to fade! ... And Basil? From a psychological point of view, how interesting he was! The new manner in art, the fresh mode of looking at life, suggested so strangely by the merely visible presence of one who was unconscious of it all; the silent spirit that dwelt in dim woodland, and walked unseen in open field, suddenly showing herself, Dryadlike and not afraid, because in his soul who sought for her there had been wakened that wonderful vision to which alone are wonderful things revealed; the mere shapes and patterns of things becoming, as it were, refined, and gaining a kind of symbolical value, as though they were themselves patterns of some other and more perfect form whose shadow they made real: how strange it all was! He remembered something like it in history. Was it not Plato, that artist in thought, who had first analyzed it? Was it not Buonarotti who had carved it in the coloured marbles of a sonnet-sequence? But in our own century it was strange.... Yes; he would try to be to Dorian Gray what, without knowing it, the lad was to the painter who had fashioned the wonderful portrait. He would seek to dominate him--had already, indeed, half done so. He would make that wonderful spirit his own. There was something fascinating in this son of love and death. Suddenly he stopped and glanced up at the houses. He found that he had passed his aunt's some distance, and, smiling to himself, turned back. When he entered the somewhat sombre hall, the butler told him that they had gone in to lunch. He gave one of the footmen his hat and stick and passed into the dining-room. "Late as usual, Harry," cried his aunt, shaking her head at him. He invented a facile excuse, and having taken the vacant seat next to her, looked round to see who was there. Dorian bowed to him shyly from the end of the table, a flush of pleasure stealing into his cheek. Opposite was the Duchess of Harley, a lady of admirable good-nature and good temper, much liked by every one who knew her, and of those ample architectural proportions that in women who are not duchesses are described by contemporary historians as stoutness. Next to her sat, on her right, Sir Thomas Burdon, a Radical member of Parliament, who followed his leader in public life and in private life followed the best cooks, dining with the Tories and thinking with the Liberals, in accordance with a wise and well-known rule. The post on her left was occupied by Mr. Erskine of Treadley, an old gentleman of considerable charm and culture, who had fallen, however, into bad habits of silence, having, as he explained once to Lady Agatha, said everything that he had to say before he was thirty. His own neighbour was Mrs. Vandeleur, one of his aunt's oldest friends, a perfect saint amongst women, but so dreadfully dowdy that she reminded one of a badly bound hymn-book. Fortunately for him she had on the other side Lord Faudel, a most intelligent middle-aged mediocrity, as bald as a ministerial statement in the House of Commons, with whom she was conversing in that intensely earnest manner which is the one unpardonable error, as he remarked once himself, that all really good people fall into, and from which none of them ever quite escape. "We are talking about poor Dartmoor, Lord Henry," cried the duchess, nodding pleasantly to him across the table. "Do you think he will really marry this fascinating young person?" "I believe she has made up her mind to propose to him, Duchess." "How dreadful!" exclaimed Lady Agatha. "Really, some one should interfere." "I am told, on excellent authority, that her father keeps an American dry-goods store," said Sir Thomas Burdon, looking supercilious. "My uncle has already suggested pork-packing, Sir Thomas." "Dry-goods! What are American dry-goods?" asked the duchess, raising her large hands in wonder and accentuating the verb. "American novels," answered Lord Henry, helping himself to some quail. The duchess looked puzzled. "Don't mind him, my dear," whispered Lady Agatha. "He never means anything that he says." "When America was discovered," said the Radical member--and he began to give some wearisome facts. Like all people who try to exhaust a subject, he exhausted his listeners. The duchess sighed and exercised her privilege of interruption. "I wish to goodness it never had been discovered at all!" she exclaimed. "Really, our girls have no chance nowadays. It is most unfair." "Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered," said Mr. Erskine; "I myself would say that it had merely been detected." "Oh! but I have seen specimens of the inhabitants," answered the duchess vaguely. "I must confess that most of them are extremely pretty. And they dress well, too. They get all their dresses in Paris. I wish I could afford to do the same." "They say that when good Americans die they go to Paris," chuckled Sir Thomas, who had a large wardrobe of Humour's cast-off clothes. "Really! And where do bad Americans go to when they die?" inquired the duchess. "They go to America," murmured Lord Henry. Sir Thomas frowned. "I am afraid that your nephew is prejudiced against that great country," he said to Lady Agatha. "I have travelled all over it in cars provided by the directors, who, in such matters, are extremely civil. I assure you that it is an education to visit it." "But must we really see Chicago in order to be educated?" asked Mr. Erskine plaintively. "I don't feel up to the journey." Sir Thomas waved his hand. "Mr. Erskine of Treadley has the world on his shelves. We practical men like to see things, not to read about them. The Americans are an extremely interesting people. They are absolutely reasonable. I think that is their distinguishing characteristic. Yes, Mr. Erskine, an absolutely reasonable people. I assure you there is no nonsense about the Americans." "How dreadful!" cried Lord Henry. "I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect." "I do not understand you," said Sir Thomas, growing rather red. "I do, Lord Henry," murmured Mr. Erskine, with a smile. "Paradoxes are all very well in their way...." rejoined the baronet. "Was that a paradox?" asked Mr. Erskine. "I did not think so. Perhaps it was. Well, the way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test reality we must see it on the tight rope. When the verities become acrobats, we can judge them." "Dear me!" said Lady Agatha, "how you men argue! I am sure I never can make out what you are talking about. Oh! Harry, I am quite vexed with you. Why do you try to persuade our nice Mr. Dorian Gray to give up the East End? I assure you he would be quite invaluable. They would love his playing." "I want him to play to me," cried Lord Henry, smiling, and he looked down the table and caught a bright answering glance. "But they are so unhappy in Whitechapel," continued Lady Agatha. "I can sympathize with everything except suffering," said Lord Henry, shrugging his shoulders. "I cannot sympathize with that. It is too ugly, too horrible, too distressing. There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathize with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life's sores, the better." "Still, the East End is a very important problem," remarked Sir Thomas with a grave shake of the head. "Quite so," answered the young lord. "It is the problem of slavery, and we try to solve it by amusing the slaves." The politician looked at him keenly. "What change do you propose, then?" he asked. Lord Henry laughed. "I don't desire to change anything in England except the weather," he answered. "I am quite content with philosophic contemplation. But, as the nineteenth century has gone bankrupt through an over-expenditure of sympathy, I would suggest that we should appeal to science to put us straight. The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray, and the advantage of science is that it is not emotional." "But we have such grave responsibilities," ventured Mrs. Vandeleur timidly. "Terribly grave," echoed Lady Agatha. Lord Henry looked over at Mr. Erskine. "Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the caveman had known how to laugh, history would have been different." "You are really very comforting," warbled the duchess. "I have always felt rather guilty when I came to see your dear aunt, for I take no interest at all in the East End. For the future I shall be able to look her in the face without a blush." "A blush is very becoming, Duchess," remarked Lord Henry. "Only when one is young," she answered. "When an old woman like myself blushes, it is a very bad sign. Ah! Lord Henry, I wish you would tell me how to become young again." He thought for a moment. "Can you remember any great error that you committed in your early days, Duchess?" he asked, looking at her across the table. "A great many, I fear," she cried. "Then commit them over again," he said gravely. "To get back one's youth, one has merely to repeat one's follies." "A delightful theory!" she exclaimed. "I must put it into practice." "A dangerous theory!" came from Sir Thomas's tight lips. Lady Agatha shook her head, but could not help being amused. Mr. Erskine listened. "Yes," he continued, "that is one of the great secrets of life. Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes." A laugh ran round the table. He played with the idea and grew wilful; tossed it into the air and transformed it; let it escape and recaptured it; made it iridescent with fancy and winged it with paradox. The praise of folly, as he went on, soared into a philosophy, and philosophy herself became young, and catching the mad music of pleasure, wearing, one might fancy, her wine-stained robe and wreath of ivy, danced like a Bacchante over the hills of life, and mocked the slow Silenus for being sober. Facts fled before her like frightened forest things. Her white feet trod the huge press at which wise Omar sits, till the seething grape-juice rose round her bare limbs in waves of purple bubbles, or crawled in red foam over the vat's black, dripping, sloping sides. It was an extraordinary improvisation. He felt that the eyes of Dorian Gray were fixed on him, and the consciousness that amongst his audience there was one whose temperament he wished to fascinate seemed to give his wit keenness and to lend colour to his imagination. He was brilliant, fantastic, irresponsible. He charmed his listeners out of themselves, and they followed his pipe, laughing. Dorian Gray never took his gaze off him, but sat like one under a spell, smiles chasing each other over his lips and wonder growing grave in his darkening eyes. At last, liveried in the costume of the age, reality entered the room in the shape of a servant to tell the duchess that her carriage was waiting. She wrung her hands in mock despair. "How annoying!" she cried. "I must go. I have to call for my husband at the club, to take him to some absurd meeting at Willis's Rooms, where he is going to be in the chair. If I am late he is sure to be furious, and I couldn't have a scene in this bonnet. It is far too fragile. A harsh word would ruin it. No, I must go, dear Agatha. Good-bye, Lord Henry, you are quite delightful and dreadfully demoralizing. I am sure I don't know what to say about your views. You must come and dine with us some night. Tuesday? Are you disengaged Tuesday?" "For you I would throw over anybody, Duchess," said Lord Henry with a bow. "Ah! that is very nice, and very wrong of you," she cried; "so mind you come"; and she swept out of the room, followed by Lady Agatha and the other ladies. When Lord Henry had sat down again, Mr. Erskine moved round, and taking a chair close to him, placed his hand upon his arm. "You talk books away," he said; "why don't you write one?" "I am too fond of reading books to care to write them, Mr. Erskine. I should like to write a novel certainly, a novel that would be as lovely as a Persian carpet and as unreal. But there is no literary public in England for anything except newspapers, primers, and encyclopaedias. Of all people in the world the English have the least sense of the beauty of literature." "I fear you are right," answered Mr. Erskine. "I myself used to have literary ambitions, but I gave them up long ago. And now, my dear young friend, if you will allow me to call you so, may I ask if you really meant all that you said to us at lunch?" "I quite forget what I said," smiled Lord Henry. "Was it all very bad?" "Very bad indeed. In fact I consider you extremely dangerous, and if anything happens to our good duchess, we shall all look on you as being primarily responsible. But I should like to talk to you about life. The generation into which I was born was tedious. Some day, when you are tired of London, come down to Treadley and expound to me your philosophy of pleasure over some admirable Burgundy I am fortunate enough to possess." "I shall be charmed. A visit to Treadley would be a great privilege. It has a perfect host, and a perfect library." "You will complete it," answered the old gentleman with a courteous bow. "And now I must bid good-bye to your excellent aunt. I am due at the Athenaeum. It is the hour when we sleep there." "All of you, Mr. Erskine?" "Forty of us, in forty arm-chairs. We are practising for an English Academy of Letters." Lord Henry laughed and rose. "I am going to the park," he cried. As he was passing out of the door, Dorian Gray touched him on the arm. "Let me come with you," he murmured. "But I thought you had promised Basil Hallward to go and see him," answered Lord Henry. "I would sooner come with you; yes, I feel I must come with you. Do let me. And you will promise to talk to me all the time? No one talks so wonderfully as you do." "Ah! I have talked quite enough for to-day," said Lord Henry, smiling. "All I want now is to look at life. You may come and look at it with me, if you care to."

The next day, Lord Henry goes to visit his crotchety old uncle George, with the intent of finding out about Dorian's background. It seems that Uncle George is something of a society gossip, underneath his gruff exterior. We learn that Dorian's the grandson of one Lord Kelso, an old acquaintance of Uncle George's; Dorian's mother, Kelso's daughter, was Lady Margaret Devereux, who was incredibly beautiful. Lady Margaret apparently fell passionately in love and married a guy far below her social rank, and rumor has it that Lord Kelso arranged for his son-in-law to be killed in a duel. Uncle George imagines that Lord Kelso probably left his grandson a huge fortune when he died--so Dorian's probably rolling in dough . The conversation veers off into idle gossip about some guy named Dartmoor and his American fiancee. Lord Henry heads out and walks over to Aunt Agatha's house for lunch. As he walks, he muses over the tragic, romantic story of Dorian's parents. He thinks again about how very marvelous and special Dorian is, and decides that he wants to do for Dorian what Dorian did for Basil--that is, change the way the boy sees the world entirely. Lord Henry notices that, in his thoughtful daze, he's passed his aunt's house. When he finally reaches his destination, he's late, and gets told off by Aunt Agatha. The dining room is full of notable visitors, including the Duchess of Harley, Sir Thomas Burdon , and Mr. Erskine , among other luminaries. Dorian is also there. The conversation here is also about Dartmoor and his American sweetheart. The genteel gathering is rather puzzled by Americans, especially by American women, who are all the rage at the moment. Lord Henry quickly assumes control of the whole conversation, and entertains the table with his extravagant ideas. Everyone is totally charmed by him, none more than Dorian. The luncheon ends when the Duchess, followed by the other ladies, leaves. Mr. Erskine pulls Lord Henry aside, asking why he doesn't write a book; he invites Henry to come visit him at his home, Treadley, sometime. Even though he's supposed to hang out with Basil, Dorian asks if he can accompany Lord Henry, so he can listen to Henry talk some more. Henry agrees, but says that he's talked enough for today--the two friends go to the park to "look at life."

Phileas Fogg rightly suspected that his departure from London would create a lively sensation at the West End. The news of the bet spread through the Reform Club, and afforded an exciting topic of conversation to its members. From the club it soon got into the papers throughout England. The boasted "tour of the world" was talked about, disputed, argued with as much warmth as if the subject were another Alabama claim. Some took sides with Phileas Fogg, but the large majority shook their heads and declared against him; it was absurd, impossible, they declared, that the tour of the world could be made, except theoretically and on paper, in this minimum of time, and with the existing means of travelling. The Times, Standard, Morning Post, and Daily News, and twenty other highly respectable newspapers scouted Mr. Fogg's project as madness; the Daily Telegraph alone hesitatingly supported him. People in general thought him a lunatic, and blamed his Reform Club friends for having accepted a wager which betrayed the mental aberration of its proposer. Articles no less passionate than logical appeared on the question, for geography is one of the pet subjects of the English; and the columns devoted to Phileas Fogg's venture were eagerly devoured by all classes of readers. At first some rash individuals, principally of the gentler sex, espoused his cause, which became still more popular when the Illustrated London News came out with his portrait, copied from a photograph in the Reform Club. A few readers of the Daily Telegraph even dared to say, "Why not, after all? Stranger things have come to pass." At last a long article appeared, on the 7th of October, in the bulletin of the Royal Geographical Society, which treated the question from every point of view, and demonstrated the utter folly of the enterprise. Everything, it said, was against the travellers, every obstacle imposed alike by man and by nature. A miraculous agreement of the times of departure and arrival, which was impossible, was absolutely necessary to his success. He might, perhaps, reckon on the arrival of trains at the designated hours, in Europe, where the distances were relatively moderate; but when he calculated upon crossing India in three days, and the United States in seven, could he rely beyond misgiving upon accomplishing his task? There were accidents to machinery, the liability of trains to run off the line, collisions, bad weather, the blocking up by snow--were not all these against Phileas Fogg? Would he not find himself, when travelling by steamer in winter, at the mercy of the winds and fogs? Is it uncommon for the best ocean steamers to be two or three days behind time? But a single delay would suffice to fatally break the chain of communication; should Phileas Fogg once miss, even by an hour; a steamer, he would have to wait for the next, and that would irrevocably render his attempt vain. This article made a great deal of noise, and, being copied into all the papers, seriously depressed the advocates of the rash tourist. Everybody knows that England is the world of betting men, who are of a higher class than mere gamblers; to bet is in the English temperament. Not only the members of the Reform, but the general public, made heavy wagers for or against Phileas Fogg, who was set down in the betting books as if he were a race-horse. Bonds were issued, and made their appearance on 'Change; "Phileas Fogg bonds" were offered at par or at a premium, and a great business was done in them. But five days after the article in the bulletin of the Geographical Society appeared, the demand began to subside: "Phileas Fogg" declined. They were offered by packages, at first of five, then of ten, until at last nobody would take less than twenty, fifty, a hundred! Lord Albemarle, an elderly paralytic gentleman, was now the only advocate of Phileas Fogg left. This noble lord, who was fastened to his chair, would have given his fortune to be able to make the tour of the world, if it took ten years; and he bet five thousand pounds on Phileas Fogg. When the folly as well as the uselessness of the adventure was pointed out to him, he contented himself with replying, "If the thing is feasible, the first to do it ought to be an Englishman." The Fogg party dwindled more and more, everybody was going against him, and the bets stood a hundred and fifty and two hundred to one; and a week after his departure an incident occurred which deprived him of backers at any price. The commissioner of police was sitting in his office at nine o'clock one evening, when the following telegraphic dispatch was put into his hands: Suez to London. Rowan, Commissioner of Police, Scotland Yard: I've found the bank robber, Phileas Fogg. Send with out delay warrant of arrest to Bombay. Fix, Detective. The effect of this dispatch was instantaneous. The polished gentleman disappeared to give place to the bank robber. His photograph, which was hung with those of the rest of the members at the Reform Club, was minutely examined, and it betrayed, feature by feature, the description of the robber which had been provided to the police. The mysterious habits of Phileas Fogg were recalled; his solitary ways, his sudden departure; and it seemed clear that, in undertaking a tour round the world on the pretext of a wager, he had had no other end in view than to elude the detectives, and throw them off his track.

Phileas Fogg rightly suspected that his departure from London would create a lively sensation. The news of the bet spread through the Reform Club, and got into the papers throughout England. The boasted "tour of the world" was talked about, disputed and argued by many. Some took sides with Phileas Fogg, but the large majority shook their heads and declared against him. Those who did not support him declared, that the tour of the world could be made, but only theoretically. Numerous articles in papers debated the question of the possibility of such a journey. The ladies supported Fogg after seeing a picture of his handsome figure. At last a long article appeared, on the 7 th of October, in the bulletin of the Royal Geographical Society, which treated the question from every point of view, and demonstrated the utter folly of the enterprise. It showed how Fogg would have to mathematically jump from trains to ships and so on to be able to accomplish the task at hand. It pointed out the many obstacles that would be faced. This article made a great deal of noise, and, being copied into all the papers, seriously depressed the advocates of the rash tourist. England is the world of betting men, who are of a higher class than mere gamblers. Not only the members of the Reform, but the general public, made heavy wagers for or against Phileas Fogg, who was set down in the betting books as if he were a race-horse. Bonds were issued, and made their appearance on 'Change. Though after the article, the value of Fogg stock declined. Lord Albemarle, an elderly paralytic gentleman, was now the only advocate of Phileas Fogg left. He felt that if the journey could be accomplished, an Englishman should complete it first. The Fogg party dwindled more and more, everybody was going against him, and the bets stood a hundred and fifty and two hundred to one; and a week after his departure an incident occurred which deprived him of backers at any price.The commissioner of police received the following telegraphic dispatch:- Suez. Rowan, Chief of Police, Scotland Yard, London. 'Am shadowing bank thief, Phileas Fogg. Send without delay warrant for arrest Bombay .Detective Fix' The effect of this dispatch was instantaneous. The polished gentleman disappeared to give place to the bank robber. His photograph was minutely examined, and it betrayed, feature by feature, the description of the robber which had been provided to the police. The mysterious habits of Phileas Fogg were recalled; his solitary ways, his sudden departure; and it seemed clear that, in undertaking a tour round the world on the pretext of a wager, he had no other end in view than to elude the detectives, and throw them off his track.

SCENE II. The same. Enter HOLOFERNES, SIR NATHANIEL, and DULL. NATHANIEL. Very reverent sport, truly; and done in the testimony of a good conscience. HOLOFERNES. The deer was, as you know, sanguis, in blood; ripe as the pomewater, who now hangeth like a jewel in the ear of caelo, the sky, the welkin, the heaven; and anon falleth like a crab on the face of terra, the soil, the land, the earth. NATHANIEL. Truly, Master Holofernes, the epithets are sweetly varied, like a scholar at the least: but, sir, I assure ye it was a buck of the first head. HOLOFERNES. Sir Nathaniel, haud credo. DULL. Twas not a haud credo; 'twas a pricket. HOLOFERNES. Most barbarous intimation! yet a kind of insinuation, as it were, in via, in way, of explication; facere, as it were, replication, or rather, ostentare, to show, as it were, his inclination,--after his undressed, unpolished, uneducated, unpruned, untrained, or rather, unlettered, or ratherest, unconfirmed fashion,--to insert again my haud credo for a deer. DULL. I sthe deer was not a haud credo; 'twas a pricket. HOLOFERNES. Twice sod simplicity, bis coctus! O! thou monster Ignorance, how deformed dost thou look! NATHANIEL. Sir, he hath never fed of the dainties that are bred of a book; he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink: his intellect is not replenished; he is only an animal, only sensible in the duller parts: And such barren plants are set before us that we thankful should be, Which we of taste and feeling are, for those parts that do fructify in us more than he; For as it would ill become me to be vain, indiscreet, or a fool, So, were there a patch set on learning, to see him in a school. But, omne bene, say I; being of an old Father's mind: Many can brook the weather that love not the wind. DULL. You two are book-men: can you tell me by your wit, What was a month old at Cain's birth, that's not five weeks old as yet? HOLOFERNES. Dictynna, goodman Dull; Dictynna, goodman Dull. DULL. What is Dictynna? NATHANIEL. A title to Phoebe, to Luna, to the moon. HOLOFERNES. The moon was a month old when Adam was no more, And raught not to five weeks when he came to five-score. The allusion holds in the exchange. DULL. 'Tis true, indeed; the collusion holds in the exchange. HOLOFERNES. God comfort thy capacity! I say, the allusion holds in the exchange. DULL. And I say the pollusion holds in the exchange, for the moon is never but a month old; and I say beside that 'twas a pricket that the Princess killed. HOLOFERNES. Sir Nathaniel, will you hear an extemporal epitaph on the death of the deer? And, to humour the ignorant, I have call'd the deer the Princess killed, a pricket. NATHANIEL. Perge, good Master Holofernes, perge; so it shall please you to abrogate scurrility. HOLOFERNES. I will something affect the letter; for it argues facility. The preyful Princess pierc'd and prick'd a pretty pleasing pricket; Some say a sore; but not a sore till now made sore with shooting. The dogs did yell; put L to sore, then sorel jumps from thicket- Or pricket sore, or else sorel; the people fall a-hooting. If sore be sore, then L to sore makes fifty sores one sorel! Of one sore I an hundred make, by adding but one more L. NATHANIEL. A rare talent! DULL. [Aside] If a talent be a claw, look how he claws him with a talent. HOLOFERNES. This is a gift that I have, simple, simple; a foolish extravagant spirit, full of forms, figures, shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, motions, revolutions: these are begot in the ventricle of memory, nourished in the womb of pia mater, and delivered upon the mellowing of occasion. But the gift is good in those in whom it is acute, and I am thankful for it. NATHANIEL. Sir, I praise the Lord for you, and so may my parishioners; for their sons are well tutored by you, and their daughters profit very greatly under you: you are a good member of the commonwealth. HOLOFERNES. Mehercle! if their sons be ingenious, they shall want no instruction; if their daughters be capable, I will put it to them; but, vir sapit qui pauca loquitur. A soul feminine saluteth us. [Enter JAQUENETTA and COSTARD.] JAQUENETTA. God give you good morrow, Master parson. HOLOFERNES. Master parson, quasi pers-on. And if one should be pierced, which is the one? COSTARD. Marry, Master schoolmaster, he that is likest to a hogshead. HOLOFERNES. Piercing a hogshead! A good lustre or conceit in a turf of earth; fire enough for a flint, pearl enough for a swine; 'tis pretty; it is well. JAQUENETTA. Good Master parson [Giving a letter to NATHANIEL.], be so good as read me this letter: it was given me by Costard, and sent me from Don Armado: I beseech you read it. HOLOFERNES. 'Fauste, precor gelida quando pecus omne sub umbra Ruminat,' and so forth. Ah! good old Mantuan. I may speak of thee as the traveller doth of Venice: --Venetia, Venetia, Chi non ti vede, non ti pretia. Old Mantuan! old Mantuan! Who understandeth thee not, loves thee not. Ut, re, sol, la, mi, fa. Under pardon, sir, what are the contents? or rather as Horace says in his-- What, my soul, verses? NATHANIEL. Ay, sir, and very learned. HOLOFERNES. Let me hear a staff, a stanze, a verse; lege, domine. NATHANIEL. If love make me forsworn, how shall I swear to love? Ah! never faith could hold, if not to beauty vow'd; Though to myself forsworn, to thee I'll faithful prove; Those thoughts to me were oaks, to thee like osiers bowed. Study his bias leaves, and makes his book thine eyes, Where all those pleasures live that art would comprehend: If knowledge be the mark, to know thee shall suffice. Well learned is that tongue that well can thee commend; All ignorant that soul that sees thee without wonder; Which is to me some praise that I thy parts admire. Thy eye Jove's lightning bears, thy voice his dreadful thunder, Which, not to anger bent, is music and sweet fire. Celestial as thou art, O! pardon love this wrong, That sings heaven's praise with such an earthly tongue. HOLOFERNES. You find not the apostrophas, and so miss the accent: let me supervise the canzonet. Here are only numbers ratified; but, for the elegancy, facility, and golden cadence of poesy, caret. Ovidius Naso was the man: and why, indeed, Naso but for smelling out the odoriferous flowers of fancy, the jerks of invention? Imitari is nothing: so doth the hound his master, the ape his keeper, the 'tired horse his rider. But, damosella virgin, was this directed to you? JAQUENETTA. Ay, sir; from one Monsieur Berowne, one of the strange queen's lords. HOLOFERNES. I will overglance the superscript: 'To the snow-white hand of the most beauteous Lady Rosaline.' I will look again on the intellect of the letter, for the nomination of the party writing to the person written unto: 'Your Ladyship's in all desired employment, Berowne.'--Sir Nathaniel, this Berowne is one of the votaries with the king; and here he hath framed a letter to a sequent of the stranger queen's, which, accidentally, or by the way of progression, hath miscarried. Trip and go, my sweet; deliver this paper into the royal hand of the king; it may concern much. Stay not thy compliment; I forgive thy duty. Adieu. JAQUENETTA. Good Costard, go with me. Sir, God save your life! COSTARD. Have with thee, my girl. [Exeunt COSTARD and JAQUENETTA.] NATHANIEL. Sir, you have done this in the fear of God, very religiously; and, as a certain Father saith-- HOLOFERNES. Sir, tell not me of the Father; I do fear colourable colours. But to return to the verses: did they please you, Sir Nathaniel? NATHANIEL. Marvellous well for the pen. HOLOFERNES. I do dine to-day at the father's of a certain pupil of mine; where, if, before repast, it shall please you to gratify the table with a grace, I will, on my privilege I have with the parents of the foresaid child or pupil, undertake your ben venuto; where I will prove those verses to be very unlearned, neither savouring of poetry, wit, nor invention. I beseech your society. NATHANIEL. And thank you too; for society,--saith the text,--is the happiness of life. HOLOFERNES. And certes, the text most infallibly concludes it. [To DULL] Sir, I do invite you too; you shall not say me nay: pauca verba. Away! the gentles are at their game, and we will to our recreation. [Exeunt.]

The constable, the curate, and the pendant sit and comment about the deer the Princess killed on her hunt. As they talk, they are approached by Jaquenetta who asks them to read her the letter she has received from Armando. They read it, and realize that the letter was delivered into the wrong hand. They tell Jaquenetta to take the letter to the King because it was written by one of his men that vowed to stay away from women. Jaquenetta agrees but asks Costard to come with her.

Enter Queene and her Women as at worke. Queen. Take thy Lute wench, My Soule growes sad with troubles, Sing, and disperse 'em if thou canst: leaue working. SONG. Orpheus with his Lute made Trees, And the Mountaine tops that freeze, Bow themselues when he did sing. To his Musicke, Plants and Flowers Euer sprung; as Sunne and Showers, There had made a lasting Spring. Euery thing that heard him play, Euen the Billowes of the Sea, Hung their heads, & then lay by. In sweet Musicke is such Art, Killing care, & griefe of heart, Fall asleepe, or hearing dye. Enter a Gentleman. Queen. How now? Gent. And't please your Grace, the two great Cardinals Wait in the presence Queen. Would they speake with me? Gent. They wil'd me say so Madam Queen. Pray their Graces To come neere: what can be their busines With me, a poore weake woman, falne from fauour? I doe not like their comming; now I thinke on't, They should bee good men, their affaires as righteous: But all Hoods, make not Monkes. Enter the two Cardinalls, Wolsey & Campian. Wols. Peace to your Highnesse Queen. Your Graces find me heere part of a Houswife, (I would be all) against the worst may happen: What are your pleasures with me, reuerent Lords? Wol. May it please you Noble Madam, to withdraw Into your priuate Chamber; we shall giue you The full cause of our comming Queen. Speake it heere. There's nothing I haue done yet o' my Conscience Deserues a Corner: would all other Women Could speake this with as free a Soule as I doe. My Lords, I care not (so much I am happy Aboue a number) if my actions Were tri'de by eu'ry tongue, eu'ry eye saw 'em, Enuy and base opinion set against 'em, I know my life so euen. If your busines Seeke me out, and that way I am Wife in; Out with it boldly: Truth loues open dealing Card. Tanta est erga te mentis integritas Regina serenissima Queen. O good my Lord, no Latin; I am not such a Truant since my comming, As not to know the Language I haue liu'd in: A strange Tongue makes my cause more strange, suspitious: Pray speake in English; heere are some will thanke you, If you speake truth, for their poore Mistris sake; Beleeue me she ha's had much wrong. Lord Cardinall, The willing'st sinne I euer yet committed, May be absolu'd in English Card. Noble Lady, I am sorry my integrity should breed, (And seruice to his Maiesty and you) So deepe suspition, where all faith was meant; We come not by the way of Accusation, To taint that honour euery good Tongue blesses; Nor to betray you any way to sorrow; You haue too much good Lady: But to know How you stand minded in the waighty difference Betweene the King and you, and to deliuer (Like free and honest men) our iust opinions, And comforts to our cause Camp. Most honour'd Madam, My Lord of Yorke, out of his Noble nature, Zeale and obedience he still bore your Grace, Forgetting (like a good man) your late Censure Both of his truth and him (which was too farre) Offers, as I doe, in a signe of peace, His Seruice, and his Counsell Queen. To betray me. My Lords, I thanke you both for your good wills, Ye speake like honest men, (pray God ye proue so) But how to make ye sodainly an Answere In such a poynt of weight, so neere mine Honour, (More neere my Life I feare) with my weake wit; And to such men of grauity and learning; In truth I know not. I was set at worke, Among my Maids, full little (God knowes) looking Either for such men, or such businesse; For her sake that I haue beene, for I feele The last fit of my Greatnesse; good your Graces Let me haue time and Councell for my Cause: Alas, I am a Woman frendlesse, hopelesse Wol. Madam, You wrong the Kings loue with these feares, Your hopes and friends are infinite Queen. In England, But little for my profit can you thinke Lords, That any English man dare giue me Councell? Or be a knowne friend 'gainst his Highnes pleasure, (Though he be growne so desperate to be honest) And liue a Subiect? Nay forsooth, my Friends, They that must weigh out my afflictions, They that my trust must grow to, liue not heere, They are (as all my other comforts) far hence In mine owne Countrey Lords Camp. I would your Grace Would leaue your greefes, and take my Counsell Queen. How Sir? Camp. Put your maine cause into the Kings protection, Hee's louing and most gracious. 'Twill be much, Both for your Honour better, and your Cause: For if the tryall of the Law o'retake ye, You'l part away disgrac'd Wol. He tels you rightly Queen. Ye tell me what ye wish for both, my ruine: Is this your Christian Councell? Out vpon ye. Heauen is aboue all yet; there sits a Iudge, That no King can corrupt Camp. Your rage mistakes vs Queen. The more shame for ye; holy men I thought ye, Vpon my Soule two reuerend Cardinall Vertues: But Cardinall Sins, and hollow hearts I feare ye: Mend 'em for shame my Lords: Is this your comfort? The Cordiall that ye bring a wretched Lady? A woman lost among ye, laugh't at, scornd? I will not wish ye halfe my miseries, I haue more Charity. But say I warn'd ye; Take heed, for heauens sake take heed, least at once The burthen of my sorrowes, fall vpon ye Car. Madam, this is a meere distraction, You turne the good we offer, into enuy Quee. Ye turne me into nothing. Woe vpon ye, And all such false Professors. Would you haue me (If you haue any Iustice, any Pitty, If ye be any thing but Churchmens habits) Put my sicke cause into his hands, that hates me? Alas, ha's banish'd me his Bed already, His Loue, too long ago. I am old my Lords, And all the Fellowship I hold now with him Is onely my Obedience. What can happen To me, aboue this wretchednesse? All your Studies Make me a Curse, like this Camp. Your feares are worse Qu. Haue I liu'd thus long (let me speake my selfe, Since Vertue findes no friends) a Wife, a true one? A Woman (I dare say without Vainglory) Neuer yet branded with Suspition? Haue I, with all my full Affections Still met the King? Lou'd him next Heau'n? Obey'd him? Bin (out of fondnesse) superstitious to him? Almost forgot my Prayres to content him? And am I thus rewarded? 'Tis not well Lords. Bring me a constant woman to her Husband, One that ne're dream'd a Ioy, beyond his pleasure; And to that Woman (when she has done most) Yet will I adde an Honor; a great Patience Car. Madam, you wander from the good We ayme at Qu. My Lord, I dare not make my selfe so guiltie, To giue vp willingly that Noble Title Your Master wed me to: nothing but death Shall e're diuorce my Dignities Car. Pray heare me Qu. Would I had neuer trod this English Earth, Or felt the Flatteries that grow vpon it: Ye haue Angels Faces; but Heauen knowes your hearts. What will become of me now, wretched Lady? I am the most vnhappy Woman liuing. Alas (poore Wenches) where are now your Fortunes? Shipwrack'd vpon a Kingdome, where no Pitty, No Friends, no Hope, no Kindred weepe for me? Almost no Graue allow'd me? Like the Lilly That once was Mistris of the Field, and flourish'd, Ile hang my head, and perish Car. If your Grace Could but be brought to know, our Ends are honest, Youl'd feele more comfort. Why shold we (good Lady) Vpon what cause wrong you? Alas, our Places, The way of our Profession is against it; We are to Cure such sorrowes, not to sowe 'em. For Goodnesse sake, consider what you do, How you may hurt your selfe: I, vtterly Grow from the Kings Acquaintance, by this Carriage. The hearts of Princes kisse Obedience, So much they loue it. But to stubborne Spirits, They swell and grow, as terrible as stormes. I know you haue a Gentle, Noble temper, A Soule as euen as a Calme; Pray thinke vs, Those we professe, Peace-makers, Friends, and Seruants Camp. Madam, you'l finde it so: You wrong your Vertues With these weake Womens feares. A Noble Spirit As yours was, put into you, euer casts Such doubts as false Coine from it. The King loues you, Beware you loose it not: For vs (if you please To trust vs in your businesse) we are ready To vse our vtmost Studies, in your seruice Qu. Do what ye will, my Lords: And pray forgiue me; If I haue vs'd my selfe vnmannerly, You know I am a Woman, lacking wit To make a seemely answer to such persons. Pray do my seruice to his Maiestie, He ha's my heart yet, and shall haue my Prayers While I shall haue my life. Come reuerend Fathers, Bestow your Councels on me. She now begges That little thought when she set footing heere, She should haue bought her Dignities so deere. Exeunt.

The queen and her women are at work. The queen is depressed and asks one of her women to sing in the hope that it will uplift her spirit. Cardinal, Wolsey and Campeius come to the queen offering their counsels in her service. Katherine suspects their motives and at first doesnt accept their preferred help. She declares herself to be friendless in England and says that her only allies lie in Spain. Campeius advises her to put her fate in the Kings hands and trust his generosity. Provoked by Campeius words she orders them out of her apartments. After much effort, they convince her that they have her best interest at heart, and she agrees to accept their advice in the matter of her divorce.

Chapter V. The Third Ordeal Though Mitya spoke sullenly, it was evident that he was trying more than ever not to forget or miss a single detail of his story. He told them how he had leapt over the fence into his father's garden; how he had gone up to the window; told them all that had passed under the window. Clearly, precisely, distinctly, he described the feelings that troubled him during those moments in the garden when he longed so terribly to know whether Grushenka was with his father or not. But, strange to say, both the lawyers listened now with a sort of awful reserve, looked coldly at him, asked few questions. Mitya could gather nothing from their faces. "They're angry and offended," he thought. "Well, bother them!" When he described how he made up his mind at last to make the "signal" to his father that Grushenka had come, so that he should open the window, the lawyers paid no attention to the word "signal," as though they entirely failed to grasp the meaning of the word in this connection: so much so, that Mitya noticed it. Coming at last to the moment when, seeing his father peering out of the window, his hatred flared up and he pulled the pestle out of his pocket, he suddenly, as though of design, stopped short. He sat gazing at the wall and was aware that their eyes were fixed upon him. "Well?" said the investigating lawyer. "You pulled out the weapon and ... and what happened then?" "Then? Why, then I murdered him ... hit him on the head and cracked his skull.... I suppose that's your story. That's it!" His eyes suddenly flashed. All his smothered wrath suddenly flamed up with extraordinary violence in his soul. "Our story?" repeated Nikolay Parfenovitch. "Well--and yours?" Mitya dropped his eyes and was a long time silent. "My story, gentlemen? Well, it was like this," he began softly. "Whether it was some one's tears, or my mother prayed to God, or a good angel kissed me at that instant, I don't know. But the devil was conquered. I rushed from the window and ran to the fence. My father was alarmed and, for the first time, he saw me then, cried out, and sprang back from the window. I remember that very well. I ran across the garden to the fence ... and there Grigory caught me, when I was sitting on the fence." At that point he raised his eyes at last and looked at his listeners. They seemed to be staring at him with perfectly unruffled attention. A sort of paroxysm of indignation seized on Mitya's soul. "Why, you're laughing at me at this moment, gentlemen!" he broke off suddenly. "What makes you think that?" observed Nikolay Parfenovitch. "You don't believe one word--that's why! I understand, of course, that I have come to the vital point. The old man's lying there now with his skull broken, while I--after dramatically describing how I wanted to kill him, and how I snatched up the pestle--I suddenly run away from the window. A romance! Poetry! As though one could believe a fellow on his word. Ha ha! You are scoffers, gentlemen!" And he swung round on his chair so that it creaked. "And did you notice," asked the prosecutor suddenly, as though not observing Mitya's excitement, "did you notice when you ran away from the window, whether the door into the garden was open?" "No, it was not open." "It was not?" "It was shut. And who could open it? Bah! the door. Wait a bit!" he seemed suddenly to bethink himself, and almost with a start: "Why, did you find the door open?" "Yes, it was open." "Why, who could have opened it if you did not open it yourselves?" cried Mitya, greatly astonished. "The door stood open, and your father's murderer undoubtedly went in at that door, and, having accomplished the crime, went out again by the same door," the prosecutor pronounced deliberately, as though chiseling out each word separately. "That is perfectly clear. The murder was committed in the room and _not through the __ window_; that is absolutely certain from the examination that has been made, from the position of the body and everything. There can be no doubt of that circumstance." Mitya was absolutely dumbfounded. "But that's utterly impossible!" he cried, completely at a loss. "I ... I didn't go in.... I tell you positively, definitely, the door was shut the whole time I was in the garden, and when I ran out of the garden. I only stood at the window and saw him through the window. That's all, that's all.... I remember to the last minute. And if I didn't remember, it would be just the same. I know it, for no one knew the signals except Smerdyakov, and me, and the dead man. And he wouldn't have opened the door to any one in the world without the signals." "Signals? What signals?" asked the prosecutor, with greedy, almost hysterical, curiosity. He instantly lost all trace of his reserve and dignity. He asked the question with a sort of cringing timidity. He scented an important fact of which he had known nothing, and was already filled with dread that Mitya might be unwilling to disclose it. "So you didn't know!" Mitya winked at him with a malicious and mocking smile. "What if I won't tell you? From whom could you find out? No one knew about the signals except my father, Smerdyakov, and me: that was all. Heaven knew, too, but it won't tell you. But it's an interesting fact. There's no knowing what you might build on it. Ha ha! Take comfort, gentlemen, I'll reveal it. You've some foolish idea in your hearts. You don't know the man you have to deal with! You have to do with a prisoner who gives evidence against himself, to his own damage! Yes, for I'm a man of honor and you--are not." The prosecutor swallowed this without a murmur. He was trembling with impatience to hear the new fact. Minutely and diffusely Mitya told them everything about the signals invented by Fyodor Pavlovitch for Smerdyakov. He told them exactly what every tap on the window meant, tapped the signals on the table, and when Nikolay Parfenovitch said that he supposed he, Mitya, had tapped the signal "Grushenka has come," when he tapped to his father, he answered precisely that he had tapped that signal, that "Grushenka had come." "So now you can build up your tower," Mitya broke off, and again turned away from them contemptuously. "So no one knew of the signals but your dead father, you, and the valet Smerdyakov? And no one else?" Nikolay Parfenovitch inquired once more. "Yes. The valet Smerdyakov, and Heaven. Write down about Heaven. That may be of use. Besides, you will need God yourselves." And they had already, of course, begun writing it down. But while they wrote, the prosecutor said suddenly, as though pitching on a new idea: "But if Smerdyakov also knew of these signals and you absolutely deny all responsibility for the death of your father, was it not he, perhaps, who knocked the signal agreed upon, induced your father to open to him, and then ... committed the crime?" Mitya turned upon him a look of profound irony and intense hatred. His silent stare lasted so long that it made the prosecutor blink. "You've caught the fox again," commented Mitya at last; "you've got the beast by the tail. Ha ha! I see through you, Mr. Prosecutor. You thought, of course, that I should jump at that, catch at your prompting, and shout with all my might, 'Aie! it's Smerdyakov; he's the murderer.' Confess that's what you thought. Confess, and I'll go on." But the prosecutor did not confess. He held his tongue and waited. "You're mistaken. I'm not going to shout 'It's Smerdyakov,' " said Mitya. "And you don't even suspect him?" "Why, do you suspect him?" "He is suspected, too." Mitya fixed his eyes on the floor. "Joking apart," he brought out gloomily. "Listen. From the very beginning, almost from the moment when I ran out to you from behind the curtain, I've had the thought of Smerdyakov in my mind. I've been sitting here, shouting that I'm innocent and thinking all the time 'Smerdyakov!' I can't get Smerdyakov out of my head. In fact, I, too, thought of Smerdyakov just now; but only for a second. Almost at once I thought, 'No, it's not Smerdyakov.' It's not his doing, gentlemen." "In that case is there anybody else you suspect?" Nikolay Parfenovitch inquired cautiously. "I don't know any one it could be, whether it's the hand of Heaven or Satan, but ... not Smerdyakov," Mitya jerked out with decision. "But what makes you affirm so confidently and emphatically that it's not he?" "From my conviction--my impression. Because Smerdyakov is a man of the most abject character and a coward. He's not a coward, he's the epitome of all the cowardice in the world walking on two legs. He has the heart of a chicken. When he talked to me, he was always trembling for fear I should kill him, though I never raised my hand against him. He fell at my feet and blubbered; he has kissed these very boots, literally, beseeching me 'not to frighten him.' Do you hear? 'Not to frighten him.' What a thing to say! Why, I offered him money. He's a puling chicken--sickly, epileptic, weak-minded--a child of eight could thrash him. He has no character worth talking about. It's not Smerdyakov, gentlemen. He doesn't care for money; he wouldn't take my presents. Besides, what motive had he for murdering the old man? Why, he's very likely his son, you know--his natural son. Do you know that?" "We have heard that legend. But you are your father's son, too, you know; yet you yourself told every one you meant to murder him." "That's a thrust! And a nasty, mean one, too! I'm not afraid! Oh, gentlemen, isn't it too base of you to say that to my face? It's base, because I told you that myself. I not only wanted to murder him, but I might have done it. And, what's more, I went out of my way to tell you of my own accord that I nearly murdered him. But, you see, I didn't murder him; you see, my guardian angel saved me--that's what you've not taken into account. And that's why it's so base of you. For I didn't kill him, I didn't kill him! Do you hear, I did not kill him." He was almost choking. He had not been so moved before during the whole interrogation. "And what has he told you, gentlemen--Smerdyakov, I mean?" he added suddenly, after a pause. "May I ask that question?" "You may ask any question," the prosecutor replied with frigid severity, "any question relating to the facts of the case, and we are, I repeat, bound to answer every inquiry you make. We found the servant Smerdyakov, concerning whom you inquire, lying unconscious in his bed, in an epileptic fit of extreme severity, that had recurred, possibly, ten times. The doctor who was with us told us, after seeing him, that he may possibly not outlive the night." "Well, if that's so, the devil must have killed him," broke suddenly from Mitya, as though until that moment he had been asking himself: "Was it Smerdyakov or not?" "We will come back to this later," Nikolay Parfenovitch decided. "Now, wouldn't you like to continue your statement?" Mitya asked for a rest. His request was courteously granted. After resting, he went on with his story. But he was evidently depressed. He was exhausted, mortified and morally shaken. To make things worse the prosecutor exasperated him, as though intentionally, by vexatious interruptions about "trifling points." Scarcely had Mitya described how, sitting on the wall, he had struck Grigory on the head with the pestle, while the old man had hold of his left leg, and how he had then jumped down to look at him, when the prosecutor stopped him to ask him to describe exactly how he was sitting on the wall. Mitya was surprised. "Oh, I was sitting like this, astride, one leg on one side of the wall and one on the other." "And the pestle?" "The pestle was in my hand." "Not in your pocket? Do you remember that precisely? Was it a violent blow you gave him?" "It must have been a violent one. But why do you ask?" "Would you mind sitting on the chair just as you sat on the wall then and showing us just how you moved your arm, and in what direction?" "You're making fun of me, aren't you?" asked Mitya, looking haughtily at the speaker; but the latter did not flinch. Mitya turned abruptly, sat astride on his chair, and swung his arm. "This was how I struck him! That's how I knocked him down! What more do you want?" "Thank you. May I trouble you now to explain why you jumped down, with what object, and what you had in view?" "Oh, hang it!... I jumped down to look at the man I'd hurt ... I don't know what for!" "Though you were so excited and were running away?" "Yes, though I was excited and running away." "You wanted to help him?" "Help!... Yes, perhaps I did want to help him.... I don't remember." "You don't remember? Then you didn't quite know what you were doing?" "Not at all. I remember everything--every detail. I jumped down to look at him, and wiped his face with my handkerchief." "We have seen your handkerchief. Did you hope to restore him to consciousness?" "I don't know whether I hoped it. I simply wanted to make sure whether he was alive or not." "Ah! You wanted to be sure? Well, what then?" "I'm not a doctor. I couldn't decide. I ran away thinking I'd killed him. And now he's recovered." "Excellent," commented the prosecutor. "Thank you. That's all I wanted. Kindly proceed." Alas! it never entered Mitya's head to tell them, though he remembered it, that he had jumped back from pity, and standing over the prostrate figure had even uttered some words of regret: "You've come to grief, old man--there's no help for it. Well, there you must lie." The prosecutor could only draw one conclusion: that the man had jumped back "at such a moment and in such excitement simply with the object of ascertaining whether the _only_ witness of his crime were dead; that he must therefore have been a man of great strength, coolness, decision and foresight even at such a moment," ... and so on. The prosecutor was satisfied: "I've provoked the nervous fellow by 'trifles' and he has said more than he meant to." With painful effort Mitya went on. But this time he was pulled up immediately by Nikolay Parfenovitch. "How came you to run to the servant, Fedosya Markovna, with your hands so covered with blood, and, as it appears, your face, too?" "Why, I didn't notice the blood at all at the time," answered Mitya. "That's quite likely. It does happen sometimes." The prosecutor exchanged glances with Nikolay Parfenovitch. "I simply didn't notice. You're quite right there, prosecutor," Mitya assented suddenly. Next came the account of Mitya's sudden determination to "step aside" and make way for their happiness. But he could not make up his mind to open his heart to them as before, and tell them about "the queen of his soul." He disliked speaking of her before these chilly persons "who were fastening on him like bugs." And so in response to their reiterated questions he answered briefly and abruptly: "Well, I made up my mind to kill myself. What had I left to live for? That question stared me in the face. Her first rightful lover had come back, the man who wronged her but who'd hurried back to offer his love, after five years, and atone for the wrong with marriage.... So I knew it was all over for me.... And behind me disgrace, and that blood--Grigory's.... What had I to live for? So I went to redeem the pistols I had pledged, to load them and put a bullet in my brain to-morrow." "And a grand feast the night before?" "Yes, a grand feast the night before. Damn it all, gentlemen! Do make haste and finish it. I meant to shoot myself not far from here, beyond the village, and I'd planned to do it at five o'clock in the morning. And I had a note in my pocket already. I wrote it at Perhotin's when I loaded my pistols. Here's the letter. Read it! It's not for you I tell it," he added contemptuously. He took it from his waistcoat pocket and flung it on the table. The lawyers read it with curiosity, and, as is usual, added it to the papers connected with the case. "And you didn't even think of washing your hands at Perhotin's? You were not afraid then of arousing suspicion?" "What suspicion? Suspicion or not, I should have galloped here just the same, and shot myself at five o'clock, and you wouldn't have been in time to do anything. If it hadn't been for what's happened to my father, you would have known nothing about it, and wouldn't have come here. Oh, it's the devil's doing. It was the devil murdered father, it was through the devil that you found it out so soon. How did you manage to get here so quick? It's marvelous, a dream!" "Mr. Perhotin informed us that when you came to him, you held in your hands ... your blood-stained hands ... your money ... a lot of money ... a bundle of hundred-rouble notes, and that his servant-boy saw it too." "That's true, gentlemen. I remember it was so." "Now, there's one little point presents itself. Can you inform us," Nikolay Parfenovitch began, with extreme gentleness, "where did you get so much money all of a sudden, when it appears from the facts, from the reckoning of time, that you had not been home?" The prosecutor's brows contracted at the question being asked so plainly, but he did not interrupt Nikolay Parfenovitch. "No, I didn't go home," answered Mitya, apparently perfectly composed, but looking at the floor. "Allow me then to repeat my question," Nikolay Parfenovitch went on as though creeping up to the subject. "Where were you able to procure such a sum all at once, when by your own confession, at five o'clock the same day you--" "I was in want of ten roubles and pledged my pistols with Perhotin, and then went to Madame Hohlakov to borrow three thousand which she wouldn't give me, and so on, and all the rest of it," Mitya interrupted sharply. "Yes, gentlemen, I was in want of it, and suddenly thousands turned up, eh? Do you know, gentlemen, you're both afraid now 'what if he won't tell us where he got it?' That's just how it is. I'm not going to tell you, gentlemen. You've guessed right. You'll never know," said Mitya, chipping out each word with extraordinary determination. The lawyers were silent for a moment. "You must understand, Mr. Karamazov, that it is of vital importance for us to know," said Nikolay Parfenovitch, softly and suavely. "I understand; but still I won't tell you." The prosecutor, too, intervened, and again reminded the prisoner that he was at liberty to refuse to answer questions, if he thought it to his interest, and so on. But in view of the damage he might do himself by his silence, especially in a case of such importance as-- "And so on, gentlemen, and so on. Enough! I've heard that rigmarole before," Mitya interrupted again. "I can see for myself how important it is, and that this is the vital point, and still I won't say." "What is it to us? It's not our business, but yours. You are doing yourself harm," observed Nikolay Parfenovitch nervously. "You see, gentlemen, joking apart"--Mitya lifted his eyes and looked firmly at them both--"I had an inkling from the first that we should come to loggerheads at this point. But at first when I began to give my evidence, it was all still far away and misty; it was all floating, and I was so simple that I began with the supposition of mutual confidence existing between us. Now I can see for myself that such confidence is out of the question, for in any case we were bound to come to this cursed stumbling- block. And now we've come to it! It's impossible and there's an end of it! But I don't blame you. You can't believe it all simply on my word. I understand that, of course." He relapsed into gloomy silence. "Couldn't you, without abandoning your resolution to be silent about the chief point, could you not, at the same time, give us some slight hint as to the nature of the motives which are strong enough to induce you to refuse to answer, at a crisis so full of danger to you?" Mitya smiled mournfully, almost dreamily. "I'm much more good-natured than you think, gentlemen. I'll tell you the reason why and give you that hint, though you don't deserve it. I won't speak of that, gentlemen, because it would be a stain on my honor. The answer to the question where I got the money would expose me to far greater disgrace than the murder and robbing of my father, if I had murdered and robbed him. That's why I can't tell you. I can't for fear of disgrace. What, gentlemen, are you going to write that down?" "Yes, we'll write it down," lisped Nikolay Parfenovitch. "You ought not to write that down about 'disgrace.' I only told you that in the goodness of my heart. I needn't have told you. I made you a present of it, so to speak, and you pounce upon it at once. Oh, well, write--write what you like," he concluded, with scornful disgust. "I'm not afraid of you and I can still hold up my head before you." "And can't you tell us the nature of that disgrace?" Nikolay Parfenovitch hazarded. The prosecutor frowned darkly. "No, no, _c'est fini_, don't trouble yourselves. It's not worth while soiling one's hands. I have soiled myself enough through you as it is. You're not worth it--no one is ... Enough, gentlemen. I'm not going on." This was said too peremptorily. Nikolay Parfenovitch did not insist further, but from Ippolit Kirillovitch's eyes he saw that he had not given up hope. "Can you not, at least, tell us what sum you had in your hands when you went into Mr. Perhotin's--how many roubles exactly?" "I can't tell you that." "You spoke to Mr. Perhotin, I believe, of having received three thousand from Madame Hohlakov." "Perhaps I did. Enough, gentlemen. I won't say how much I had." "Will you be so good then as to tell us how you came here and what you have done since you arrived?" "Oh! you might ask the people here about that. But I'll tell you if you like." He proceeded to do so, but we won't repeat his story. He told it dryly and curtly. Of the raptures of his love he said nothing, but told them that he abandoned his determination to shoot himself, owing to "new factors in the case." He told the story without going into motives or details. And this time the lawyers did not worry him much. It was obvious that there was no essential point of interest to them here. "We shall verify all that. We will come back to it during the examination of the witnesses, which will, of course, take place in your presence," said Nikolay Parfenovitch in conclusion. "And now allow me to request you to lay on the table everything in your possession, especially all the money you still have about you." "My money, gentlemen? Certainly. I understand that that is necessary. I'm surprised, indeed, that you haven't inquired about it before. It's true I couldn't get away anywhere. I'm sitting here where I can be seen. But here's my money--count it--take it. That's all, I think." He turned it all out of his pockets; even the small change--two pieces of twenty copecks--he pulled out of his waistcoat pocket. They counted the money, which amounted to eight hundred and thirty-six roubles, and forty copecks. "And is that all?" asked the investigating lawyer. "Yes." "You stated just now in your evidence that you spent three hundred roubles at Plotnikovs'. You gave Perhotin ten, your driver twenty, here you lost two hundred, then...." Nikolay Parfenovitch reckoned it all up. Mitya helped him readily. They recollected every farthing and included it in the reckoning. Nikolay Parfenovitch hurriedly added up the total. "With this eight hundred you must have had about fifteen hundred at first?" "I suppose so," snapped Mitya. "How is it they all assert there was much more?" "Let them assert it." "But you asserted it yourself." "Yes, I did, too." "We will compare all this with the evidence of other persons not yet examined. Don't be anxious about your money. It will be properly taken care of and be at your disposal at the conclusion of ... what is beginning ... if it appears, or, so to speak, is proved that you have undisputed right to it. Well, and now...." Nikolay Parfenovitch suddenly got up, and informed Mitya firmly that it was his duty and obligation to conduct a minute and thorough search "of your clothes and everything else...." "By all means, gentlemen. I'll turn out all my pockets, if you like." And he did, in fact, begin turning out his pockets. "It will be necessary to take off your clothes, too." "What! Undress? Ugh! Damn it! Won't you search me as I am! Can't you?" "It's utterly impossible, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. You must take off your clothes." "As you like," Mitya submitted gloomily; "only, please, not here, but behind the curtains. Who will search them?" "Behind the curtains, of course." Nikolay Parfenovitch bent his head in assent. His small face wore an expression of peculiar solemnity.

The Third Torment The officers continue to question Dmitri and to explore the evidence against him, trying to decide whether to charge him formally or set him free. Convinced that the truth is his ally, Dmitri seems to try to answer their questions honestly, but his evasions about the money continue to make him appear suspicious

I have paid a visit to the Heights, but I have not seen her since she left: Joseph held the door in his hand when I called to ask after her, and wouldn't let me pass. He said Mrs. Linton was 'thrang,' and the master was not in. Zillah has told me something of the way they go on, otherwise I should hardly know who was dead and who living. She thinks Catherine haughty, and does not like her, I can guess by her talk. My young lady asked some aid of her when she first came; but Mr. Heathcliff told her to follow her own business, and let his daughter-in-law look after herself; and Zillah willingly acquiesced, being a narrow-minded, selfish woman. Catherine evinced a child's annoyance at this neglect; repaid it with contempt, and thus enlisted my informant among her enemies, as securely as if she had done her some great wrong. I had a long talk with Zillah about six weeks ago, a little before you came, one day when we foregathered on the moor; and this is what she told me. 'The first thing Mrs. Linton did,' she said, 'on her arrival at the Heights, was to run up-stairs, without even wishing good-evening to me and Joseph; she shut herself into Linton's room, and remained till morning. Then, while the master and Earnshaw were at breakfast, she entered the house, and asked all in a quiver if the doctor might be sent for? her cousin was very ill. '"We know that!" answered Heathcliff; "but his life is not worth a farthing, and I won't spend a farthing on him." '"But I cannot tell how to do," she said; "and if nobody will help me, he'll die!" '"Walk out of the room," cried the master, "and let me never hear a word more about him! None here care what becomes of him; if you do, act the nurse; if you do not, lock him up and leave him." 'Then she began to bother me, and I said I'd had enough plague with the tiresome thing; we each had our tasks, and hers was to wait on Linton: Mr. Heathcliff bid me leave that labour to her. 'How they managed together, I can't tell. I fancy he fretted a great deal, and moaned hisseln night and day; and she had precious little rest: one could guess by her white face and heavy eyes. She sometimes came into the kitchen all wildered like, and looked as if she would fain beg assistance; but I was not going to disobey the master: I never dare disobey him, Mrs. Dean; and, though I thought it wrong that Kenneth should not be sent for, it was no concern of mine either to advise or complain, and I always refused to meddle. Once or twice, after we had gone to bed, I've happened to open my door again and seen her sitting crying on the stairs'-top; and then I've shut myself in quick, for fear of being moved to interfere. I did pity her then, I'm sure: still I didn't wish to lose my place, you know. 'At last, one night she came boldly into my chamber, and frightened me out of my wits, by saying, "Tell Mr. Heathcliff that his son is dying--I'm sure he is, this time. Get up, instantly, and tell him." 'Having uttered this speech, she vanished again. I lay a quarter of an hour listening and trembling. Nothing stirred--the house was quiet. 'She's mistaken, I said to myself. He's got over it. I needn't disturb them; and I began to doze. But my sleep was marred a second time by a sharp ringing of the bell--the only bell we have, put up on purpose for Linton; and the master called to me to see what was the matter, and inform them that he wouldn't have that noise repeated. 'I delivered Catherine's message. He cursed to himself, and in a few minutes came out with a lighted candle, and proceeded to their room. I followed. Mrs. Heathcliff was seated by the bedside, with her hands folded on her knees. Her father-in-law went up, held the light to Linton's face, looked at him, and touched him; afterwards he turned to her. '"Now--Catherine," he said, "how do you feel?" 'She was dumb. '"How do you feel, Catherine?" he repeated. '"He's safe, and I'm free," she answered: "I should feel well--but," she continued, with a bitterness she couldn't conceal, "you have left me so long to struggle against death alone, that I feel and see only death! I feel like death!" 'And she looked like it, too! I gave her a little wine. Hareton and Joseph, who had been wakened by the ringing and the sound of feet, and heard our talk from outside, now entered. Joseph was fain, I believe, of the lad's removal; Hareton seemed a thought bothered: though he was more taken up with staring at Catherine than thinking of Linton. But the master bid him get off to bed again: we didn't want his help. He afterwards made Joseph remove the body to his chamber, and told me to return to mine, and Mrs. Heathcliff remained by herself. 'In the morning, he sent me to tell her she must come down to breakfast: she had undressed, and appeared going to sleep, and said she was ill; at which I hardly wondered. I informed Mr. Heathcliff, and he replied,--"Well, let her be till after the funeral; and go up now and then to get her what is needful; and, as soon as she seems better, tell me."' Cathy stayed upstairs a fortnight, according to Zillah; who visited her twice a day, and would have been rather more friendly, but her attempts at increasing kindness were proudly and promptly repelled. Heathcliff went up once, to show her Linton's will. He had bequeathed the whole of his, and what had been her, moveable property, to his father: the poor creature was threatened, or coaxed, into that act during her week's absence, when his uncle died. The lands, being a minor, he could not meddle with. However, Mr. Heathcliff has claimed and kept them in his wife's right and his also: I suppose legally; at any rate, Catherine, destitute of cash and friends, cannot disturb his possession. 'Nobody,' said Zillah, 'ever approached her door, except that once, but I; and nobody asked anything about her. The first occasion of her coming down into the house was on a Sunday afternoon. She had cried out, when I carried up her dinner, that she couldn't bear any longer being in the cold; and I told her the master was going to Thrushcross Grange, and Earnshaw and I needn't hinder her from descending; so, as soon as she heard Heathcliff's horse trot off, she made her appearance, donned in black, and her yellow curls combed back behind her ears as plain as a Quaker: she couldn't comb them out. 'Joseph and I generally go to chapel on Sundays:' the kirk, you know, has no minister now, explained Mrs. Dean; and they call the Methodists' or Baptists' place (I can't say which it is) at Gimmerton, a chapel. 'Joseph had gone,' she continued, 'but I thought proper to bide at home. Young folks are always the better for an elder's over-looking; and Hareton, with all his bashfulness, isn't a model of nice behaviour. I let him know that his cousin would very likely sit with us, and she had been always used to see the Sabbath respected; so he had as good leave his guns and bits of indoor work alone, while she stayed. He coloured up at the news, and cast his eyes over his hands and clothes. The train-oil and gunpowder were shoved out of sight in a minute. I saw he meant to give her his company; and I guessed, by his way, he wanted to be presentable; so, laughing, as I durst not laugh when the master is by, I offered to help him, if he would, and joked at his confusion. He grew sullen, and began to swear. 'Now, Mrs. Dean,' Zillah went on, seeing me not pleased by her manner, 'you happen think your young lady too fine for Mr. Hareton; and happen you're right: but I own I should love well to bring her pride a peg lower. And what will all her learning and her daintiness do for her, now? She's as poor as you or I: poorer, I'll be bound: you're saying, and I'm doing my little all that road.' Hareton allowed Zillah to give him her aid; and she flattered him into a good humour; so, when Catherine came, half forgetting her former insults, he tried to make himself agreeable, by the housekeeper's account. 'Missis walked in,' she said, 'as chill as an icicle, and as high as a princess. I got up and offered her my seat in the arm-chair. No, she turned up her nose at my civility. Earnshaw rose, too, and bid her come to the settle, and sit close by the fire: he was sure she was starved. '"I've been starved a month and more," she answered, resting on the word as scornful as she could. 'And she got a chair for herself, and placed it at a distance from both of us. Having sat till she was warm, she began to look round, and discovered a number of books on the dresser; she was instantly upon her feet again, stretching to reach them: but they were too high up. Her cousin, after watching her endeavours a while, at last summoned courage to help her; she held her frock, and he filled it with the first that came to hand. 'That was a great advance for the lad. She didn't thank him; still, he felt gratified that she had accepted his assistance, and ventured to stand behind as she examined them, and even to stoop and point out what struck his fancy in certain old pictures which they contained; nor was he daunted by the saucy style in which she jerked the page from his finger: he contented himself with going a bit farther back and looking at her instead of the book. She continued reading, or seeking for something to read. His attention became, by degrees, quite centred in the study of her thick silky curls: her face he couldn't see, and she couldn't see him. And, perhaps, not quite awake to what he did, but attracted like a child to a candle, at last he proceeded from staring to touching; he put out his hand and stroked one curl, as gently as if it were a bird. He might have stuck a knife into her neck, she started round in such a taking. '"Get away this moment! How dare you touch me? Why are you stopping there?" she cried, in a tone of disgust. "I can't endure you! I'll go upstairs again, if you come near me." 'Mr. Hareton recoiled, looking as foolish as he could do: he sat down in the settle very quiet, and she continued turning over her volumes another half hour; finally, Earnshaw crossed over, and whispered to me. '"Will you ask her to read to us, Zillah? I'm stalled of doing naught; and I do like--I could like to hear her! Dunnot say I wanted it, but ask of yourseln." '"Mr. Hareton wishes you would read to us, ma'am," I said, immediately. "He'd take it very kind--he'd be much obliged." 'She frowned; and looking up, answered-- '"Mr. Hareton, and the whole set of you, will be good enough to understand that I reject any pretence at kindness you have the hypocrisy to offer! I despise you, and will have nothing to say to any of you! When I would have given my life for one kind word, even to see one of your faces, you all kept off. But I won't complain to you! I'm driven down here by the cold; not either to amuse you or enjoy your society." '"What could I ha' done?" began Earnshaw. "How was I to blame?" '"Oh! you are an exception," answered Mrs. Heathcliff. "I never missed such a concern as you." '"But I offered more than once, and asked," he said, kindling up at her pertness, "I asked Mr. Heathcliff to let me wake for you--" '"Be silent! I'll go out of doors, or anywhere, rather than have your disagreeable voice in my ear!" said my lady. 'Hareton muttered she might go to hell, for him! and unslinging his gun, restrained himself from his Sunday occupations no longer. He talked now, freely enough; and she presently saw fit to retreat to her solitude: but the frost had set in, and, in spite of her pride, she was forced to condescend to our company, more and more. However, I took care there should be no further scorning at my good nature: ever since, I've been as stiff as herself; and she has no lover or liker among us: and she does not deserve one; for, let them say the least word to her, and she'll curl back without respect of any one. She'll snap at the master himself, and as good as dares him to thrash her; and the more hurt she gets, the more venomous she grows.' At first, on hearing this account from Zillah, I determined to leave my situation, take a cottage, and get Catherine to come and live with me: but Mr. Heathcliff would as soon permit that as he would set up Hareton in an independent house; and I can see no remedy, at present, unless she could marry again; and that scheme it does not come within my province to arrange. * * * * * Thus ended Mrs. Dean's story. Notwithstanding the doctor's prophecy, I am rapidly recovering strength; and though it be only the second week in January, I propose getting out on horseback in a day or two, and riding over to Wuthering Heights, to inform my landlord that I shall spend the next six months in London; and, if he likes, he may look out for another tenant to take the place after October. I would not pass another winter here for much.

This chapter is the end of Nelly's narrative: Zillah now serves as Nelly's source of information about Cathy. Following Heathcliff's orders, Zillah refused to help Cathy when she first came to Wuthering Heights; Hareton was not able to do anything for her, either. Until the day Linton dies, Cathy tends to him herself. After his death, Cathy is not willing to let Zillah or Hareton be nice to her. At the end of the chapter, Lockwood, who is recuperated, informs Nelly that Heathcliff may look for another tenant for the Grange.

My sense of how he received this suffered for a minute from something that I can describe only as a fierce split of my attention--a stroke that at first, as I sprang straight up, reduced me to the mere blind movement of getting hold of him, drawing him close, and, while I just fell for support against the nearest piece of furniture, instinctively keeping him with his back to the window. The appearance was full upon us that I had already had to deal with here: Peter Quint had come into view like a sentinel before a prison. The next thing I saw was that, from outside, he had reached the window, and then I knew that, close to the glass and glaring in through it, he offered once more to the room his white face of damnation. It represents but grossly what took place within me at the sight to say that on the second my decision was made; yet I believe that no woman so overwhelmed ever in so short a time recovered her grasp of the ACT. It came to me in the very horror of the immediate presence that the act would be, seeing and facing what I saw and faced, to keep the boy himself unaware. The inspiration--I can call it by no other name--was that I felt how voluntarily, how transcendently, I MIGHT. It was like fighting with a demon for a human soul, and when I had fairly so appraised it I saw how the human soul--held out, in the tremor of my hands, at arm's length--had a perfect dew of sweat on a lovely childish forehead. The face that was close to mine was as white as the face against the glass, and out of it presently came a sound, not low nor weak, but as if from much further away, that I drank like a waft of fragrance. "Yes--I took it." At this, with a moan of joy, I enfolded, I drew him close; and while I held him to my breast, where I could feel in the sudden fever of his little body the tremendous pulse of his little heart, I kept my eyes on the thing at the window and saw it move and shift its posture. I have likened it to a sentinel, but its slow wheel, for a moment, was rather the prowl of a baffled beast. My present quickened courage, however, was such that, not too much to let it through, I had to shade, as it were, my flame. Meanwhile the glare of the face was again at the window, the scoundrel fixed as if to watch and wait. It was the very confidence that I might now defy him, as well as the positive certitude, by this time, of the child's unconsciousness, that made me go on. "What did you take it for?" "To see what you said about me." "You opened the letter?" "I opened it." My eyes were now, as I held him off a little again, on Miles's own face, in which the collapse of mockery showed me how complete was the ravage of uneasiness. What was prodigious was that at last, by my success, his sense was sealed and his communication stopped: he knew that he was in presence, but knew not of what, and knew still less that I also was and that I did know. And what did this strain of trouble matter when my eyes went back to the window only to see that the air was clear again and--by my personal triumph--the influence quenched? There was nothing there. I felt that the cause was mine and that I should surely get ALL. "And you found nothing!"--I let my elation out. He gave the most mournful, thoughtful little headshake. "Nothing." "Nothing, nothing!" I almost shouted in my joy. "Nothing, nothing," he sadly repeated. I kissed his forehead; it was drenched. "So what have you done with it?" "I've burned it." "Burned it?" It was now or never. "Is that what you did at school?" Oh, what this brought up! "At school?" "Did you take letters?--or other things?" "Other things?" He appeared now to be thinking of something far off and that reached him only through the pressure of his anxiety. Yet it did reach him. "Did I STEAL?" I felt myself redden to the roots of my hair as well as wonder if it were more strange to put to a gentleman such a question or to see him take it with allowances that gave the very distance of his fall in the world. "Was it for that you mightn't go back?" The only thing he felt was rather a dreary little surprise. "Did you know I mightn't go back?" "I know everything." He gave me at this the longest and strangest look. "Everything?" "Everything. Therefore DID you--?" But I couldn't say it again. Miles could, very simply. "No. I didn't steal." My face must have shown him I believed him utterly; yet my hands--but it was for pure tenderness--shook him as if to ask him why, if it was all for nothing, he had condemned me to months of torment. "What then did you do?" He looked in vague pain all round the top of the room and drew his breath, two or three times over, as if with difficulty. He might have been standing at the bottom of the sea and raising his eyes to some faint green twilight. "Well--I said things." "Only that?" "They thought it was enough!" "To turn you out for?" Never, truly, had a person "turned out" shown so little to explain it as this little person! He appeared to weigh my question, but in a manner quite detached and almost helpless. "Well, I suppose I oughtn't." "But to whom did you say them?" He evidently tried to remember, but it dropped--he had lost it. "I don't know!" He almost smiled at me in the desolation of his surrender, which was indeed practically, by this time, so complete that I ought to have left it there. But I was infatuated--I was blind with victory, though even then the very effect that was to have brought him so much nearer was already that of added separation. "Was it to everyone?" I asked. "No; it was only to--" But he gave a sick little headshake. "I don't remember their names." "Were they then so many?" "No--only a few. Those I liked." Those he liked? I seemed to float not into clearness, but into a darker obscure, and within a minute there had come to me out of my very pity the appalling alarm of his being perhaps innocent. It was for the instant confounding and bottomless, for if he WERE innocent, what then on earth was _I_? Paralyzed, while it lasted, by the mere brush of the question, I let him go a little, so that, with a deep-drawn sigh, he turned away from me again; which, as he faced toward the clear window, I suffered, feeling that I had nothing now there to keep him from. "And did they repeat what you said?" I went on after a moment. He was soon at some distance from me, still breathing hard and again with the air, though now without anger for it, of being confined against his will. Once more, as he had done before, he looked up at the dim day as if, of what had hitherto sustained him, nothing was left but an unspeakable anxiety. "Oh, yes," he nevertheless replied--"they must have repeated them. To those THEY liked," he added. There was, somehow, less of it than I had expected; but I turned it over. "And these things came round--?" "To the masters? Oh, yes!" he answered very simply. "But I didn't know they'd tell." "The masters? They didn't--they've never told. That's why I ask you." He turned to me again his little beautiful fevered face. "Yes, it was too bad." "Too bad?" "What I suppose I sometimes said. To write home." I can't name the exquisite pathos of the contradiction given to such a speech by such a speaker; I only know that the next instant I heard myself throw off with homely force: "Stuff and nonsense!" But the next after that I must have sounded stern enough. "What WERE these things?" My sternness was all for his judge, his executioner; yet it made him avert himself again, and that movement made ME, with a single bound and an irrepressible cry, spring straight upon him. For there again, against the glass, as if to blight his confession and stay his answer, was the hideous author of our woe--the white face of damnation. I felt a sick swim at the drop of my victory and all the return of my battle, so that the wildness of my veritable leap only served as a great betrayal. I saw him, from the midst of my act, meet it with a divination, and on the perception that even now he only guessed, and that the window was still to his own eyes free, I let the impulse flame up to convert the climax of his dismay into the very proof of his liberation. "No more, no more, no more!" I shrieked, as I tried to press him against me, to my visitant. "Is she HERE?" Miles panted as he caught with his sealed eyes the direction of my words. Then as his strange "she" staggered me and, with a gasp, I echoed it, "Miss Jessel, Miss Jessel!" he with a sudden fury gave me back. I seized, stupefied, his supposition--some sequel to what we had done to Flora, but this made me only want to show him that it was better still than that. "It's not Miss Jessel! But it's at the window--straight before us. It's THERE--the coward horror, there for the last time!" At this, after a second in which his head made the movement of a baffled dog's on a scent and then gave a frantic little shake for air and light, he was at me in a white rage, bewildered, glaring vainly over the place and missing wholly, though it now, to my sense, filled the room like the taste of poison, the wide, overwhelming presence. "It's HE?" I was so determined to have all my proof that I flashed into ice to challenge him. "Whom do you mean by 'he'?" "Peter Quint--you devil!" His face gave again, round the room, its convulsed supplication. "WHERE?" They are in my ears still, his supreme surrender of the name and his tribute to my devotion. "What does he matter now, my own?--what will he EVER matter? _I_ have you," I launched at the beast, "but he has lost you forever!" Then, for the demonstration of my work, "There, THERE!" I said to Miles. But he had already jerked straight round, stared, glared again, and seen but the quiet day. With the stroke of the loss I was so proud of he uttered the cry of a creature hurled over an abyss, and the grasp with which I recovered him might have been that of catching him in his fall. I caught him, yes, I held him--it may be imagined with what a passion; but at the end of a minute I began to feel what it truly was that I held. We were alone with the quiet day, and his little heart, dispossessed, had stopped.

In the middle of this conversation, the governess is suddenly distracted by Peter Quint looking in through the window. She springs up and draws Miles close, his back to the window. Miles confesses that he took the letter. Moaning with joy, the governess embraces him and notes the quickness of his pulse. Miles says he wanted to know what the letter said about him but found it said nothing and burned it. The governess asks if he had stolen letters at school. Surprised, Miles asks if she had known that he couldn't go back to school. The governess claims to know everything. Denying the charge, Miles says he "said things" to boys he liked. The governess presses the issue. Miles shifts, and she springs forward upon him, pressing him against her. Miles asks if "she" is here. The governess says the "coward horror" is here. Miles searches in the direction of the governess's gaze and names Peter Quint, crying out "ou devil. and asking where. The governess yells at the ghost and points him out. Miles's heart stops.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday have now passed in review before the reader; the events of each day, its hopes and fears, mortifications and pleasures, have been separately stated, and the pangs of Sunday only now remain to be described, and close the week. The Clifton scheme had been deferred, not relinquished, and on the afternoon's Crescent of this day, it was brought forward again. In a private consultation between Isabella and James, the former of whom had particularly set her heart upon going, and the latter no less anxiously placed his upon pleasing her, it was agreed that, provided the weather were fair, the party should take place on the following morning; and they were to set off very early, in order to be at home in good time. The affair thus determined, and Thorpe's approbation secured, Catherine only remained to be apprised of it. She had left them for a few minutes to speak to Miss Tilney. In that interval the plan was completed, and as soon as she came again, her agreement was demanded; but instead of the gay acquiescence expected by Isabella, Catherine looked grave, was very sorry, but could not go. The engagement which ought to have kept her from joining in the former attempt would make it impossible for her to accompany them now. She had that moment settled with Miss Tilney to take their proposed walk tomorrow; it was quite determined, and she would not, upon any account, retract. But that she must and should retract was instantly the eager cry of both the Thorpes; they must go to Clifton tomorrow, they would not go without her, it would be nothing to put off a mere walk for one day longer, and they would not hear of a refusal. Catherine was distressed, but not subdued. "Do not urge me, Isabella. I am engaged to Miss Tilney. I cannot go." This availed nothing. The same arguments assailed her again; she must go, she should go, and they would not hear of a refusal. "It would be so easy to tell Miss Tilney that you had just been reminded of a prior engagement, and must only beg to put off the walk till Tuesday." "No, it would not be easy. I could not do it. There has been no prior engagement." But Isabella became only more and more urgent, calling on her in the most affectionate manner, addressing her by the most endearing names. She was sure her dearest, sweetest Catherine would not seriously refuse such a trifling request to a friend who loved her so dearly. She knew her beloved Catherine to have so feeling a heart, so sweet a temper, to be so easily persuaded by those she loved. But all in vain; Catherine felt herself to be in the right, and though pained by such tender, such flattering supplication, could not allow it to influence her. Isabella then tried another method. She reproached her with having more affection for Miss Tilney, though she had known her so little a while, than for her best and oldest friends, with being grown cold and indifferent, in short, towards herself. "I cannot help being jealous, Catherine, when I see myself slighted for strangers, I, who love you so excessively! When once my affections are placed, it is not in the power of anything to change them. But I believe my feelings are stronger than anybody's; I am sure they are too strong for my own peace; and to see myself supplanted in your friendship by strangers does cut me to the quick, I own. These Tilneys seem to swallow up everything else." Catherine thought this reproach equally strange and unkind. Was it the part of a friend thus to expose her feelings to the notice of others? Isabella appeared to her ungenerous and selfish, regardless of everything but her own gratification. These painful ideas crossed her mind, though she said nothing. Isabella, in the meanwhile, had applied her handkerchief to her eyes; and Morland, miserable at such a sight, could not help saying, "Nay, Catherine. I think you cannot stand out any longer now. The sacrifice is not much; and to oblige such a friend--I shall think you quite unkind, if you still refuse." This was the first time of her brother's openly siding against her, and anxious to avoid his displeasure, she proposed a compromise. If they would only put off their scheme till Tuesday, which they might easily do, as it depended only on themselves, she could go with them, and everybody might then be satisfied. But "No, no, no!" was the immediate answer; "that could not be, for Thorpe did not know that he might not go to town on Tuesday." Catherine was sorry, but could do no more; and a short silence ensued, which was broken by Isabella, who in a voice of cold resentment said, "Very well, then there is an end of the party. If Catherine does not go, I cannot. I cannot be the only woman. I would not, upon any account in the world, do so improper a thing." "Catherine, you must go," said James. "But why cannot Mr. Thorpe drive one of his other sisters? I dare say either of them would like to go." "Thank ye," cried Thorpe, "but I did not come to Bath to drive my sisters about, and look like a fool. No, if you do not go, d---- me if I do. I only go for the sake of driving you." "That is a compliment which gives me no pleasure." But her words were lost on Thorpe, who had turned abruptly away. The three others still continued together, walking in a most uncomfortable manner to poor Catherine; sometimes not a word was said, sometimes she was again attacked with supplications or reproaches, and her arm was still linked within Isabella's, though their hearts were at war. At one moment she was softened, at another irritated; always distressed, but always steady. "I did not think you had been so obstinate, Catherine," said James; "you were not used to be so hard to persuade; you once were the kindest, best-tempered of my sisters." "I hope I am not less so now," she replied, very feelingly; "but indeed I cannot go. If I am wrong, I am doing what I believe to be right." "I suspect," said Isabella, in a low voice, "there is no great struggle." Catherine's heart swelled; she drew away her arm, and Isabella made no opposition. Thus passed a long ten minutes, till they were again joined by Thorpe, who, coming to them with a gayer look, said, "Well, I have settled the matter, and now we may all go tomorrow with a safe conscience. I have been to Miss Tilney, and made your excuses." "You have not!" cried Catherine. "I have, upon my soul. Left her this moment. Told her you had sent me to say that, having just recollected a prior engagement of going to Clifton with us tomorrow, you could not have the pleasure of walking with her till Tuesday. She said very well, Tuesday was just as convenient to her; so there is an end of all our difficulties. A pretty good thought of mine--hey?" Isabella's countenance was once more all smiles and good humour, and James too looked happy again. "A most heavenly thought indeed! Now, my sweet Catherine, all our distresses are over; you are honourably acquitted, and we shall have a most delightful party." "This will not do," said Catherine; "I cannot submit to this. I must run after Miss Tilney directly and set her right." Isabella, however, caught hold of one hand, Thorpe of the other, and remonstrances poured in from all three. Even James was quite angry. When everything was settled, when Miss Tilney herself said that Tuesday would suit her as well, it was quite ridiculous, quite absurd, to make any further objection. "I do not care. Mr. Thorpe had no business to invent any such message. If I had thought it right to put it off, I could have spoken to Miss Tilney myself. This is only doing it in a ruder way; and how do I know that Mr. Thorpe has--He may be mistaken again perhaps; he led me into one act of rudeness by his mistake on Friday. Let me go, Mr. Thorpe; Isabella, do not hold me." Thorpe told her it would be in vain to go after the Tilneys; they were turning the corner into Brock Street, when he had overtaken them, and were at home by this time. "Then I will go after them," said Catherine; "wherever they are I will go after them. It does not signify talking. If I could not be persuaded into doing what I thought wrong, I never will be tricked into it." And with these words she broke away and hurried off. Thorpe would have darted after her, but Morland withheld him. "Let her go, let her go, if she will go." "She is as obstinate as--" Thorpe never finished the simile, for it could hardly have been a proper one. Away walked Catherine in great agitation, as fast as the crowd would permit her, fearful of being pursued, yet determined to persevere. As she walked, she reflected on what had passed. It was painful to her to disappoint and displease them, particularly to displease her brother; but she could not repent her resistance. Setting her own inclination apart, to have failed a second time in her engagement to Miss Tilney, to have retracted a promise voluntarily made only five minutes before, and on a false pretence too, must have been wrong. She had not been withstanding them on selfish principles alone, she had not consulted merely her own gratification; that might have been ensured in some degree by the excursion itself, by seeing Blaize Castle; no, she had attended to what was due to others, and to her own character in their opinion. Her conviction of being right, however, was not enough to restore her composure; till she had spoken to Miss Tilney she could not be at ease; and quickening her pace when she got clear of the Crescent, she almost ran over the remaining ground till she gained the top of Milsom Street. So rapid had been her movements that in spite of the Tilneys' advantage in the outset, they were but just turning into their lodgings as she came within view of them; and the servant still remaining at the open door, she used only the ceremony of saying that she must speak with Miss Tilney that moment, and hurrying by him proceeded upstairs. Then, opening the first door before her, which happened to be the right, she immediately found herself in the drawing-room with General Tilney, his son, and daughter. Her explanation, defective only in being--from her irritation of nerves and shortness of breath--no explanation at all, was instantly given. "I am come in a great hurry--It was all a mistake--I never promised to go--I told them from the first I could not go.--I ran away in a great hurry to explain it.--I did not care what you thought of me.--I would not stay for the servant." The business, however, though not perfectly elucidated by this speech, soon ceased to be a puzzle. Catherine found that John Thorpe had given the message; and Miss Tilney had no scruple in owning herself greatly surprised by it. But whether her brother had still exceeded her in resentment, Catherine, though she instinctively addressed herself as much to one as to the other in her vindication, had no means of knowing. Whatever might have been felt before her arrival, her eager declarations immediately made every look and sentence as friendly as she could desire. The affair thus happily settled, she was introduced by Miss Tilney to her father, and received by him with such ready, such solicitous politeness as recalled Thorpe's information to her mind, and made her think with pleasure that he might be sometimes depended on. To such anxious attention was the general's civility carried, that not aware of her extraordinary swiftness in entering the house, he was quite angry with the servant whose neglect had reduced her to open the door of the apartment herself. "What did William mean by it? He should make a point of inquiring into the matter." And if Catherine had not most warmly asserted his innocence, it seemed likely that William would lose the favour of his master forever, if not his place, by her rapidity. After sitting with them a quarter of an hour, she rose to take leave, and was then most agreeably surprised by General Tilney's asking her if she would do his daughter the honour of dining and spending the rest of the day with her. Miss Tilney added her own wishes. Catherine was greatly obliged; but it was quite out of her power. Mr. and Mrs. Allen would expect her back every moment. The general declared he could say no more; the claims of Mr. and Mrs. Allen were not to be superseded; but on some other day he trusted, when longer notice could be given, they would not refuse to spare her to her friend. "Oh, no; Catherine was sure they would not have the least objection, and she should have great pleasure in coming." The general attended her himself to the street-door, saying everything gallant as they went downstairs, admiring the elasticity of her walk, which corresponded exactly with the spirit of her dancing, and making her one of the most graceful bows she had ever beheld, when they parted. Catherine, delighted by all that had passed, proceeded gaily to Pulteney Street, walking, as she concluded, with great elasticity, though she had never thought of it before. She reached home without seeing anything more of the offended party; and now that she had been triumphant throughout, had carried her point, and was secure of her walk, she began (as the flutter of her spirits subsided) to doubt whether she had been perfectly right. A sacrifice was always noble; and if she had given way to their entreaties, she should have been spared the distressing idea of a friend displeased, a brother angry, and a scheme of great happiness to both destroyed, perhaps through her means. To ease her mind, and ascertain by the opinion of an unprejudiced person what her own conduct had really been, she took occasion to mention before Mr. Allen the half-settled scheme of her brother and the Thorpes for the following day. Mr. Allen caught at it directly. "Well," said he, "and do you think of going too?" "No; I had just engaged myself to walk with Miss Tilney before they told me of it; and therefore you know I could not go with them, could I?" "No, certainly not; and I am glad you do not think of it. These schemes are not at all the thing. Young men and women driving about the country in open carriages! Now and then it is very well; but going to inns and public places together! It is not right; and I wonder Mrs. Thorpe should allow it. I am glad you do not think of going; I am sure Mrs. Morland would not be pleased. Mrs. Allen, are not you of my way of thinking? Do not you think these kind of projects objectionable?" "Yes, very much so indeed. Open carriages are nasty things. A clean gown is not five minutes' wear in them. You are splashed getting in and getting out; and the wind takes your hair and your bonnet in every direction. I hate an open carriage myself." "I know you do; but that is not the question. Do not you think it has an odd appearance, if young ladies are frequently driven about in them by young men, to whom they are not even related?" "Yes, my dear, a very odd appearance indeed. I cannot bear to see it." "Dear madam," cried Catherine, "then why did not you tell me so before? I am sure if I had known it to be improper, I would not have gone with Mr. Thorpe at all; but I always hoped you would tell me, if you thought I was doing wrong." "And so I should, my dear, you may depend on it; for as I told Mrs. Morland at parting, I would always do the best for you in my power. But one must not be over particular. Young people will be young people, as your good mother says herself. You know I wanted you, when we first came, not to buy that sprigged muslin, but you would. Young people do not like to be always thwarted." "But this was something of real consequence; and I do not think you would have found me hard to persuade." "As far as it has gone hitherto, there is no harm done," said Mr. Allen; "and I would only advise you, my dear, not to go out with Mr. Thorpe any more." "That is just what I was going to say," added his wife. Catherine, relieved for herself, felt uneasy for Isabella, and after a moment's thought, asked Mr. Allen whether it would not be both proper and kind in her to write to Miss Thorpe, and explain the indecorum of which she must be as insensible as herself; for she considered that Isabella might otherwise perhaps be going to Clifton the next day, in spite of what had passed. Mr. Allen, however, discouraged her from doing any such thing. "You had better leave her alone, my dear; she is old enough to know what she is about, and if not, has a mother to advise her. Mrs. Thorpe is too indulgent beyond a doubt; but, however, you had better not interfere. She and your brother choose to go, and you will be only getting ill will." Catherine submitted, and though sorry to think that Isabella should be doing wrong, felt greatly relieved by Mr. Allen's approbation of her own conduct, and truly rejoiced to be preserved by his advice from the danger of falling into such an error herself. Her escape from being one of the party to Clifton was now an escape indeed; for what would the Tilneys have thought of her, if she had broken her promise to them in order to do what was wrong in itself, if she had been guilty of one breach of propriety, only to enable her to be guilty of another?

Isabella, James, and John revive their plans to drive down to Clifton on Sunday and try to convince Catherine to come along. Since Catherine already has plans to go on a walk with the Tilneys, she refuses to be persuaded by her friends. Isabella first appeals to Catherine by flattery, then berates her for "having more affection" for Miss Tilney. Catherine thinks that Isabella appears "ungenerous and selfish," and she stops linking arms with Isabella. John sees the Tilneys walking on the street. Without asking Catherine for her permission, he stops them and says that Catherine will be unable to join them for a walk until Tuesday. Catherine is angry and distraught when John announces that he has already made excuses for her. Despite everyone's protests, she rushes over to the Tilneys' house and explains that she can still go on their scheduled walk. The Tilneys accept her explanation warmly and introduce her to General Tilney. After a pleasant visit, Catherine goes home to the Allens, where she learns that it is generally considered an act of impropriety for a young lady to drive in an open carriage with a gentleman. She is glad that she refused to go to Clifton with John, Isabella, and James: "for what would the Tilneys have thought of her, if she had broken her promise to them in order to do what was wrong in itself

Scena Secunda. Enter Bastard. Bast. Thou Nature art my Goddesse, to thy Law My seruices are bound, wherefore should I Stand in the plague of custome, and permit The curiosity of Nations, to depriue me? For that I am some twelue, or fourteene Moonshines Lag of a Brother? Why Bastard? Wherefore base? When my Dimensions are as well compact, My minde as generous, and my shape as true As honest Madams issue? Why brand they vs With Base? With basenes Bastardie? Base, Base? Who in the lustie stealth of Nature, take More composition, and fierce qualitie, Then doth within a dull stale tyred bed Goe to th' creating a whole tribe of Fops Got 'tweene a sleepe, and wake? Well then, Legitimate Edgar, I must haue your land, Our Fathers loue, is to the Bastard Edmond, As to th' legitimate: fine word: Legitimate. Well, my Legittimate, if this Letter speed, And my inuention thriue, Edmond the base Shall to'th' Legitimate: I grow, I prosper: Now Gods, stand vp for Bastards. Enter Gloucester. Glo. Kent banish'd thus? and France in choller parted? And the King gone to night? Prescrib'd his powre, Confin'd to exhibition? All this done Vpon the gad? Edmond, how now? What newes? Bast. So please your Lordship, none Glou. Why so earnestly seeke you to put vp y Letter? Bast. I know no newes, my Lord Glou. What Paper were you reading? Bast. Nothing my Lord Glou. No? what needed then that terrible dispatch of it into your Pocket? The quality of nothing, hath not such neede to hide it selfe. Let's see: come, if it bee nothing, I shall not neede Spectacles Bast. I beseech you Sir, pardon mee; it is a Letter from my Brother, that I haue not all ore-read; and for so much as I haue perus'd, I finde it not fit for your ore-looking Glou. Giue me the Letter, Sir Bast. I shall offend, either to detaine, or giue it: The Contents, as in part I vnderstand them, Are too blame Glou. Let's see, let's see Bast. I hope for my Brothers iustification, hee wrote this but as an essay, or taste of my Vertue Glou. reads. This policie, and reuerence of Age, makes the world bitter to the best of our times: keepes our Fortunes from vs, till our oldnesse cannot rellish them. I begin to finde an idle and fond bondage, in the oppression of aged tyranny, who swayes not as it hath power, but as it is suffer'd. Come to me, that of this I may speake more. If our Father would sleepe till I wak'd him, you should enioy halfe his Reuennew for euer, and liue the beloued of your Brother. Edgar. Hum? Conspiracy? Sleepe till I wake him, you should enioy halfe his Reuennew: my Sonne Edgar, had hee a hand to write this? A heart and braine to breede it in? When came you to this? Who brought it? Bast. It was not brought mee, my Lord; there's the cunning of it. I found it throwne in at the Casement of my Closset Glou. You know the character to be your Brothers? Bast. If the matter were good my Lord, I durst swear it were his: but in respect of that, I would faine thinke it were not Glou. It is his Bast. It is his hand, my Lord: but I hope his heart is not in the Contents Glo. Has he neuer before sounded you in this busines? Bast. Neuer my Lord. But I haue heard him oft maintaine it to be fit, that Sonnes at perfect age, and Fathers declin'd, the Father should bee as Ward to the Son, and the Sonne manage his Reuennew Glou. O Villain, villain: his very opinion in the Letter. Abhorred Villaine, vnnaturall, detested, brutish Villaine; worse then brutish: Go sirrah, seeke him: Ile apprehend him. Abhominable Villaine, where is he? Bast. I do not well know my L[ord]. If it shall please you to suspend your indignation against my Brother, til you can deriue from him better testimony of his intent, you shold run a certaine course: where, if you violently proceed against him, mistaking his purpose, it would make a great gap in your owne Honor, and shake in peeces, the heart of his obedience. I dare pawne downe my life for him, that he hath writ this to feele my affection to your Honor, & to no other pretence of danger Glou. Thinke you so? Bast. If your Honor iudge it meete, I will place you where you shall heare vs conferre of this, and by an Auricular assurance haue your satisfaction, and that without any further delay, then this very Euening Glou. He cannot bee such a Monster. Edmond seeke him out: winde me into him, I pray you: frame the Businesse after your owne wisedome. I would vnstate my selfe, to be in a due resolution Bast. I will seeke him Sir, presently: conuey the businesse as I shall find meanes, and acquaint you withall Glou. These late Eclipses in the Sun and Moone portend no good to vs: though the wisedome of Nature can reason it thus, and thus, yet Nature finds it selfe scourg'd by the sequent effects. Loue cooles, friendship falls off, Brothers diuide. In Cities, mutinies; in Countries, discord; in Pallaces, Treason; and the Bond crack'd, 'twixt Sonne and Father. This villaine of mine comes vnder the prediction; there's Son against Father, the King fals from byas of Nature, there's Father against Childe. We haue seene the best of our time. Machinations, hollownesse, treacherie, and all ruinous disorders follow vs disquietly to our Graues. Find out this Villain, Edmond, it shall lose thee nothing, do it carefully: and the Noble & true-harted Kent banish'd; his offence, honesty. 'Tis strange. Exit Bast. This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sicke in fortune, often the surfets of our own behauiour, we make guilty of our disasters, the Sun, the Moone, and Starres, as if we were villaines on necessitie, Fooles by heauenly compulsion, Knaues, Theeues, and Treachers by Sphericall predominance. Drunkards, Lyars, and Adulterers by an inforc'd obedience of Planatary influence; and all that we are euill in, by a diuine thrusting on. An admirable euasion of Whore-master-man, to lay his Goatish disposition on the charge of a Starre, My father compounded with my mother vnder the Dragons taile, and my Natiuity was vnder Vrsa Maior, so that it followes, I am rough and Leacherous. I should haue bin that I am, had the maidenlest Starre in the Firmament twinkled on my bastardizing. Enter Edgar. Pat: he comes like the Catastrophe of the old Comedie: my Cue is villanous Melancholly, with a sighe like Tom o' Bedlam. - O these Eclipses do portend these diuisions. Fa, Sol, La, Me Edg. How now Brother Edmond, what serious contemplation are you in? Bast. I am thinking Brother of a prediction I read this other day, what should follow these Eclipses Edg. Do you busie your selfe with that? Bast. I promise you, the effects he writes of, succeede vnhappily. When saw you my Father last? Edg. The night gone by Bast. Spake you with him? Edg. I, two houres together Bast. Parted you in good termes? Found you no displeasure in him, by word, nor countenance? Edg. None at all, Bast. Bethink your selfe wherein you may haue offended him: and at my entreaty forbeare his presence, vntill some little time hath qualified the heat of his displeasure, which at this instant so rageth in him, that with the mischiefe of your person, it would scarsely alay Edg. Some Villaine hath done me wrong Edm. That's my feare, I pray you haue a continent forbearance till the speed of his rage goes slower: and as I say, retire with me to my lodging, from whence I will fitly bring you to heare my Lord speake: pray ye goe, there's my key: if you do stirre abroad, goe arm'd Edg. Arm'd, Brother? Edm. Brother, I aduise you to the best, I am no honest man, if ther be any good meaning toward you: I haue told you what I haue seene, and heard: But faintly. Nothing like the image, and horror of it, pray you away Edg. Shall I heare from you anon? Enter. Edm. I do serue you in this businesse: A Credulous Father, and a Brother Noble, Whose nature is so farre from doing harmes, That he suspects none: on whose foolish honestie My practises ride easie: I see the businesse. Let me, if not by birth, haue lands by wit, All with me's meete, that I can fashion fit. Enter.

Edmund enters the scene -- set in the Earl of Gloucester's house -- talking out loud to himself. In this soliloquy, Edmund figuratively asks Nature why society sees him as inferior to his brother Edgar simply because he is not his father's legitimate firstborn. Edmund's soliloquy reveals his plan to undermine his brother's position by tricking his father with a forged letter, which he presents to Gloucester in this scene. Edmund also succeeds in convincing Edgar that he's looking out for his brother's safety when he suggests that Edgar carry a weapon as protection from their father's anger -- a wrath, Edmund intimates, that's directed toward Edmund.

A Struggle When our time came for returning to Bleak House again, we were punctual to the day and were received with an overpowering welcome. I was perfectly restored to health and strength, and finding my housekeeping keys laid ready for me in my room, rang myself in as if I had been a new year, with a merry little peal. "Once more, duty, duty, Esther," said I; "and if you are not overjoyed to do it, more than cheerfully and contentedly, through anything and everything, you ought to be. That's all I have to say to you, my dear!" The first few mornings were mornings of so much bustle and business, devoted to such settlements of accounts, such repeated journeys to and fro between the growlery and all other parts of the house, so many rearrangements of drawers and presses, and such a general new beginning altogether, that I had not a moment's leisure. But when these arrangements were completed and everything was in order, I paid a visit of a few hours to London, which something in the letter I had destroyed at Chesney Wold had induced me to decide upon in my own mind. I made Caddy Jellyby--her maiden name was so natural to me that I always called her by it--the pretext for this visit and wrote her a note previously asking the favour of her company on a little business expedition. Leaving home very early in the morning, I got to London by stage-coach in such good time that I got to Newman Street with the day before me. Caddy, who had not seen me since her wedding-day, was so glad and so affectionate that I was half inclined to fear I should make her husband jealous. But he was, in his way, just as bad--I mean as good; and in short it was the old story, and nobody would leave me any possibility of doing anything meritorious. The elder Mr. Turveydrop was in bed, I found, and Caddy was milling his chocolate, which a melancholy little boy who was an apprentice--it seemed such a curious thing to be apprenticed to the trade of dancing--was waiting to carry upstairs. Her father-in-law was extremely kind and considerate, Caddy told me, and they lived most happily together. (When she spoke of their living together, she meant that the old gentleman had all the good things and all the good lodging, while she and her husband had what they could get, and were poked into two corner rooms over the Mews.) "And how is your mama, Caddy?" said I. "Why, I hear of her, Esther," replied Caddy, "through Pa, but I see very little of her. We are good friends, I am glad to say, but Ma thinks there is something absurd in my having married a dancing-master, and she is rather afraid of its extending to her." It struck me that if Mrs. Jellyby had discharged her own natural duties and obligations before she swept the horizon with a telescope in search of others, she would have taken the best precautions against becoming absurd, but I need scarcely observe that I kept this to myself. "And your papa, Caddy?" "He comes here every evening," returned Caddy, "and is so fond of sitting in the corner there that it's a treat to see him." Looking at the corner, I plainly perceived the mark of Mr. Jellyby's head against the wall. It was consolatory to know that he had found such a resting-place for it. "And you, Caddy," said I, "you are always busy, I'll be bound?" "Well, my dear," returned Caddy, "I am indeed, for to tell you a grand secret, I am qualifying myself to give lessons. Prince's health is not strong, and I want to be able to assist him. What with schools, and classes here, and private pupils, AND the apprentices, he really has too much to do, poor fellow!" The notion of the apprentices was still so odd to me that I asked Caddy if there were many of them. "Four," said Caddy. "One in-door, and three out. They are very good children; only when they get together they WILL play--children-like--instead of attending to their work. So the little boy you saw just now waltzes by himself in the empty kitchen, and we distribute the others over the house as well as we can." "That is only for their steps, of course?" said I. "Only for their steps," said Caddy. "In that way they practise, so many hours at a time, whatever steps they happen to be upon. They dance in the academy, and at this time of year we do figures at five every morning." "Why, what a laborious life!" I exclaimed. "I assure you, my dear," returned Caddy, smiling, "when the out-door apprentices ring us up in the morning (the bell rings into our room, not to disturb old Mr. Turveydrop), and when I put up the window and see them standing on the door-step with their little pumps under their arms, I am actually reminded of the Sweeps." All this presented the art to me in a singular light, to be sure. Caddy enjoyed the effect of her communication and cheerfully recounted the particulars of her own studies. "You see, my dear, to save expense I ought to know something of the piano, and I ought to know something of the kit too, and consequently I have to practise those two instruments as well as the details of our profession. If Ma had been like anybody else, I might have had some little musical knowledge to begin upon. However, I hadn't any; and that part of the work is, at first, a little discouraging, I must allow. But I have a very good ear, and I am used to drudgery--I have to thank Ma for that, at all events--and where there's a will there's a way, you know, Esther, the world over." Saying these words, Caddy laughingly sat down at a little jingling square piano and really rattled off a quadrille with great spirit. Then she good-humouredly and blushingly got up again, and while she still laughed herself, said, "Don't laugh at me, please; that's a dear girl!" I would sooner have cried, but I did neither. I encouraged her and praised her with all my heart. For I conscientiously believed, dancing-master's wife though she was, and dancing-mistress though in her limited ambition she aspired to be, she had struck out a natural, wholesome, loving course of industry and perseverance that was quite as good as a mission. "My dear," said Caddy, delighted, "you can't think how you cheer me. I shall owe you, you don't know how much. What changes, Esther, even in my small world! You recollect that first night, when I was so unpolite and inky? Who would have thought, then, of my ever teaching people to dance, of all other possibilities and impossibilities!" Her husband, who had left us while we had this chat, now coming back, preparatory to exercising the apprentices in the ball-room, Caddy informed me she was quite at my disposal. But it was not my time yet, I was glad to tell her, for I should have been vexed to take her away then. Therefore we three adjourned to the apprentices together, and I made one in the dance. The apprentices were the queerest little people. Besides the melancholy boy, who, I hoped, had not been made so by waltzing alone in the empty kitchen, there were two other boys and one dirty little limp girl in a gauzy dress. Such a precocious little girl, with such a dowdy bonnet on (that, too, of a gauzy texture), who brought her sandalled shoes in an old threadbare velvet reticule. Such mean little boys, when they were not dancing, with string, and marbles, and cramp-bones in their pockets, and the most untidy legs and feet--and heels particularly. I asked Caddy what had made their parents choose this profession for them. Caddy said she didn't know; perhaps they were designed for teachers, perhaps for the stage. They were all people in humble circumstances, and the melancholy boy's mother kept a ginger-beer shop. We danced for an hour with great gravity, the melancholy child doing wonders with his lower extremities, in which there appeared to be some sense of enjoyment though it never rose above his waist. Caddy, while she was observant of her husband and was evidently founded upon him, had acquired a grace and self-possession of her own, which, united to her pretty face and figure, was uncommonly agreeable. She already relieved him of much of the instruction of these young people, and he seldom interfered except to walk his part in the figure if he had anything to do in it. He always played the tune. The affectation of the gauzy child, and her condescension to the boys, was a sight. And thus we danced an hour by the clock. When the practice was concluded, Caddy's husband made himself ready to go out of town to a school, and Caddy ran away to get ready to go out with me. I sat in the ball-room in the interval, contemplating the apprentices. The two out-door boys went upon the staircase to put on their half-boots and pull the in-door boy's hair, as I judged from the nature of his objections. Returning with their jackets buttoned and their pumps stuck in them, they then produced packets of cold bread and meat and bivouacked under a painted lyre on the wall. The little gauzy child, having whisked her sandals into the reticule and put on a trodden-down pair of shoes, shook her head into the dowdy bonnet at one shake, and answering my inquiry whether she liked dancing by replying, "Not with boys," tied it across her chin, and went home contemptuous. "Old Mr. Turveydrop is so sorry," said Caddy, "that he has not finished dressing yet and cannot have the pleasure of seeing you before you go. You are such a favourite of his, Esther." I expressed myself much obliged to him, but did not think it necessary to add that I readily dispensed with this attention. "It takes him a long time to dress," said Caddy, "because he is very much looked up to in such things, you know, and has a reputation to support. You can't think how kind he is to Pa. He talks to Pa of an evening about the Prince Regent, and I never saw Pa so interested." There was something in the picture of Mr. Turveydrop bestowing his deportment on Mr. Jellyby that quite took my fancy. I asked Caddy if he brought her papa out much. "No," said Caddy, "I don't know that he does that, but he talks to Pa, and Pa greatly admires him, and listens, and likes it. Of course I am aware that Pa has hardly any claims to deportment, but they get on together delightfully. You can't think what good companions they make. I never saw Pa take snuff before in my life, but he takes one pinch out of Mr. Turveydrop's box regularly and keeps putting it to his nose and taking it away again all the evening." That old Mr. Turveydrop should ever, in the chances and changes of life, have come to the rescue of Mr. Jellyby from Borrioboola-Gha appeared to me to be one of the pleasantest of oddities. "As to Peepy," said Caddy with a little hesitation, "whom I was most afraid of--next to having any family of my own, Esther--as an inconvenience to Mr. Turveydrop, the kindness of the old gentleman to that child is beyond everything. He asks to see him, my dear! He lets him take the newspaper up to him in bed; he gives him the crusts of his toast to eat; he sends him on little errands about the house; he tells him to come to me for sixpences. In short," said Caddy cheerily, "and not to prose, I am a very fortunate girl and ought to be very grateful. Where are we going, Esther?" "To the Old Street Road," said I, "where I have a few words to say to the solicitor's clerk who was sent to meet me at the coach-office on the very day when I came to London and first saw you, my dear. Now I think of it, the gentleman who brought us to your house." "Then, indeed, I seem to be naturally the person to go with you," returned Caddy. To the Old Street Road we went and there inquired at Mrs. Guppy's residence for Mrs. Guppy. Mrs. Guppy, occupying the parlours and having indeed been visibly in danger of cracking herself like a nut in the front-parlour door by peeping out before she was asked for, immediately presented herself and requested us to walk in. She was an old lady in a large cap, with rather a red nose and rather an unsteady eye, but smiling all over. Her close little sitting-room was prepared for a visit, and there was a portrait of her son in it which, I had almost written here, was more like than life: it insisted upon him with such obstinacy, and was so determined not to let him off. Not only was the portrait there, but we found the original there too. He was dressed in a great many colours and was discovered at a table reading law-papers with his forefinger to his forehead. "Miss Summerson," said Mr. Guppy, rising, "this is indeed an oasis. Mother, will you be so good as to put a chair for the other lady and get out of the gangway." Mrs. Guppy, whose incessant smiling gave her quite a waggish appearance, did as her son requested and then sat down in a corner, holding her pocket handkerchief to her chest, like a fomentation, with both hands. I presented Caddy, and Mr. Guppy said that any friend of mine was more than welcome. I then proceeded to the object of my visit. "I took the liberty of sending you a note, sir," said I. Mr. Guppy acknowledged the receipt by taking it out of his breast-pocket, putting it to his lips, and returning it to his pocket with a bow. Mr. Guppy's mother was so diverted that she rolled her head as she smiled and made a silent appeal to Caddy with her elbow. "Could I speak to you alone for a moment?" said I. Anything like the jocoseness of Mr. Guppy's mother just now, I think I never saw. She made no sound of laughter, but she rolled her head, and shook it, and put her handkerchief to her mouth, and appealed to Caddy with her elbow, and her hand, and her shoulder, and was so unspeakably entertained altogether that it was with some difficulty she could marshal Caddy through the little folding-door into her bedroom adjoining. "Miss Summerson," said Mr. Guppy, "you will excuse the waywardness of a parent ever mindful of a son's appiness. My mother, though highly exasperating to the feelings, is actuated by maternal dictates." I could hardly have believed that anybody could in a moment have turned so red or changed so much as Mr. Guppy did when I now put up my veil. "I asked the favour of seeing you for a few moments here," said I, "in preference to calling at Mr. Kenge's because, remembering what you said on an occasion when you spoke to me in confidence, I feared I might otherwise cause you some embarrassment, Mr. Guppy." I caused him embarrassment enough as it was, I am sure. I never saw such faltering, such confusion, such amazement and apprehension. "Miss Summerson," stammered Mr. Guppy, "I--I--beg your pardon, but in our profession--we--we--find it necessary to be explicit. You have referred to an occasion, miss, when I--when I did myself the honour of making a declaration which--" Something seemed to rise in his throat that he could not possibly swallow. He put his hand there, coughed, made faces, tried again to swallow it, coughed again, made faces again, looked all round the room, and fluttered his papers. "A kind of giddy sensation has come upon me, miss," he explained, "which rather knocks me over. I--er--a little subject to this sort of thing--er--by George!" I gave him a little time to recover. He consumed it in putting his hand to his forehead and taking it away again, and in backing his chair into the corner behind him. "My intention was to remark, miss," said Mr. Guppy, "dear me--something bronchial, I think--hem!--to remark that you was so good on that occasion as to repel and repudiate that declaration. You--you wouldn't perhaps object to admit that? Though no witnesses are present, it might be a satisfaction to--to your mind--if you was to put in that admission." "There can be no doubt," said I, "that I declined your proposal without any reservation or qualification whatever, Mr. Guppy." "Thank you, miss," he returned, measuring the table with his troubled hands. "So far that's satisfactory, and it does you credit. Er--this is certainly bronchial!--must be in the tubes--er--you wouldn't perhaps be offended if I was to mention--not that it's necessary, for your own good sense or any person's sense must show 'em that--if I was to mention that such declaration on my part was final, and there terminated?" "I quite understand that," said I. "Perhaps--er--it may not be worth the form, but it might be a satisfaction to your mind--perhaps you wouldn't object to admit that, miss?" said Mr. Guppy. "I admit it most fully and freely," said I. "Thank you," returned Mr. Guppy. "Very honourable, I am sure. I regret that my arrangements in life, combined with circumstances over which I have no control, will put it out of my power ever to fall back upon that offer or to renew it in any shape or form whatever, but it will ever be a retrospect entwined--er--with friendship's bowers." Mr. Guppy's bronchitis came to his relief and stopped his measurement of the table. "I may now perhaps mention what I wished to say to you?" I began. "I shall be honoured, I am sure," said Mr. Guppy. "I am so persuaded that your own good sense and right feeling, miss, will--will keep you as square as possible--that I can have nothing but pleasure, I am sure, in hearing any observations you may wish to offer." "You were so good as to imply, on that occasion--" "Excuse me, miss," said Mr. Guppy, "but we had better not travel out of the record into implication. I cannot admit that I implied anything." "You said on that occasion," I recommenced, "that you might possibly have the means of advancing my interests and promoting my fortunes by making discoveries of which I should be the subject. I presume that you founded that belief upon your general knowledge of my being an orphan girl, indebted for everything to the benevolence of Mr. Jarndyce. Now, the beginning and the end of what I have come to beg of you is, Mr. Guppy, that you will have the kindness to relinquish all idea of so serving me. I have thought of this sometimes, and I have thought of it most lately--since I have been ill. At length I have decided, in case you should at any time recall that purpose and act upon it in any way, to come to you and assure you that you are altogether mistaken. You could make no discovery in reference to me that would do me the least service or give me the least pleasure. I am acquainted with my personal history, and I have it in my power to assure you that you never can advance my welfare by such means. You may, perhaps, have abandoned this project a long time. If so, excuse my giving you unnecessary trouble. If not, I entreat you, on the assurance I have given you, henceforth to lay it aside. I beg you to do this, for my peace." "I am bound to confess," said Mr. Guppy, "that you express yourself, miss, with that good sense and right feeling for which I gave you credit. Nothing can be more satisfactory than such right feeling, and if I mistook any intentions on your part just now, I am prepared to tender a full apology. I should wish to be understood, miss, as hereby offering that apology--limiting it, as your own good sense and right feeling will point out the necessity of, to the present proceedings." I must say for Mr. Guppy that the snuffling manner he had had upon him improved very much. He seemed truly glad to be able to do something I asked, and he looked ashamed. "If you will allow me to finish what I have to say at once so that I may have no occasion to resume," I went on, seeing him about to speak, "you will do me a kindness, sir. I come to you as privately as possible because you announced this impression of yours to me in a confidence which I have really wished to respect--and which I always have respected, as you remember. I have mentioned my illness. There really is no reason why I should hesitate to say that I know very well that any little delicacy I might have had in making a request to you is quite removed. Therefore I make the entreaty I have now preferred, and I hope you will have sufficient consideration for me to accede to it." I must do Mr. Guppy the further justice of saying that he had looked more and more ashamed and that he looked most ashamed and very earnest when he now replied with a burning face, "Upon my word and honour, upon my life, upon my soul, Miss Summerson, as I am a living man, I'll act according to your wish! I'll never go another step in opposition to it. I'll take my oath to it if it will be any satisfaction to you. In what I promise at this present time touching the matters now in question," continued Mr. Guppy rapidly, as if he were repeating a familiar form of words, "I speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so--" "I am quite satisfied," said I, rising at this point, "and I thank you very much. Caddy, my dear, I am ready!" Mr. Guppy's mother returned with Caddy (now making me the recipient of her silent laughter and her nudges), and we took our leave. Mr. Guppy saw us to the door with the air of one who was either imperfectly awake or walking in his sleep; and we left him there, staring. But in a minute he came after us down the street without any hat, and with his long hair all blown about, and stopped us, saying fervently, "Miss Summerson, upon my honour and soul, you may depend upon me!" "I do," said I, "quite confidently." "I beg your pardon, miss," said Mr. Guppy, going with one leg and staying with the other, "but this lady being present--your own witness--it might be a satisfaction to your mind (which I should wish to set at rest) if you was to repeat those admissions." "Well, Caddy," said I, turning to her, "perhaps you will not be surprised when I tell you, my dear, that there never has been any engagement--" "No proposal or promise of marriage whatsoever," suggested Mr. Guppy. "No proposal or promise of marriage whatsoever," said I, "between this gentleman--" "William Guppy, of Penton Place, Pentonville, in the county of Middlesex," he murmured. "Between this gentleman, Mr. William Guppy, of Penton Place, Pentonville, in the county of Middlesex, and myself." "Thank you, miss," said Mr. Guppy. "Very full--er--excuse me--lady's name, Christian and surname both?" I gave them. "Married woman, I believe?" said Mr. Guppy. "Married woman. Thank you. Formerly Caroline Jellyby, spinster, then of Thavies Inn, within the city of London, but extra-parochial; now of Newman Street, Oxford Street. Much obliged." He ran home and came running back again. "Touching that matter, you know, I really and truly am very sorry that my arrangements in life, combined with circumstances over which I have no control, should prevent a renewal of what was wholly terminated some time back," said Mr. Guppy to me forlornly and despondently, "but it couldn't be. Now COULD it, you know! I only put it to you." I replied it certainly could not. The subject did not admit of a doubt. He thanked me and ran to his mother's again--and back again. "It's very honourable of you, miss, I am sure," said Mr. Guppy. "If an altar could be erected in the bowers of friendship--but, upon my soul, you may rely upon me in every respect save and except the tender passion only!" The struggle in Mr. Guppy's breast and the numerous oscillations it occasioned him between his mother's door and us were sufficiently conspicuous in the windy street (particularly as his hair wanted cutting) to make us hurry away. I did so with a lightened heart; but when we last looked back, Mr. Guppy was still oscillating in the same troubled state of mind.

After a nice long recovery, the gang leaves Boythorn's and returns to Bleak House. It's all in disarray, since Esther couldn't do the housekeeping while she was sick. She puts everything back in order. Then she sets off to London on a mission she doesn't yet tell us about. On the way she decides to visit Caddy and see how life is going with the Turveydrops. Life with the Turveydrops is going pretty well, actually. Caddy is learning how to dance a little and to play the piano and violin so they can save money on accompanists. They've also taken on four apprentices. Brain snack time: back before formal vocational training, all different kinds of tradesmen - tailors, gardeners, doctors, and anyone else with specialized knowledge - would take on students to live with them and learn the business. Parents would pay a reasonably steep fee for this. The idea was that after the kid learned whatever he needed to learn, he'd either set up his own business or take over the one where he'd been apprenticed. Anywho.... Mr. Turveydrop and Mr. Jellyby get along really well, since one is all performance and the other is all audience. Esther and Caddy go on Esther's original errand, which brings them to the house of Mr. Guppy. At first he's all excited to see them. But as soon as Esther takes off her veil and he sees her face, he loses it. What comes next is a totally horrible scene of awkwardness straight out of The Office. Guppy starts, in legal language, to make it clear to Esther that since she had refused his offer of marriage already, there is nothing legally binding them, and that he can't re-propose. It's so painful. She is cringing. He's embarrassed. Disaster. Finally Esther interrupts and tells him what she actually came there for. She's worried he's going to find out about Lady Dedlock, so she makes him promise to stop trying to do anything for her interests like he'd said he was going to do. He is so relieved that he swears to do whatever she asks, cross his heart, hope to die. Esther and Caddy leave and he follows them into the street to make Esther repeat again that they are not engaged, and to get Caddy's name and address as a witness.

SCENE II. _The island. Before PROSPERO'S cell._ _Enter PROSPERO and MIRANDA._ _Mir._ If by your art, my dearest father, you have Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them. The sky, it seems, would pour down stinking pitch, But that the sea, mounting to the welkin's cheek, Dashes the fire out. O, I have suffer'd 5 With those that I saw suffer! a brave vessel, Who had, no doubt, some noble creature in her, Dash'd all to pieces. O, the cry did knock Against my very heart! Poor souls, they perish'd! Had I been any god of power, I would 10 Have sunk the sea within the earth, or ere It should the good ship so have swallow'd and The fraughting souls within her. _Pros._ Be collected: No more amazement: tell your piteous heart There's no harm done. _Mir._ O, woe the day! _Pros._ No harm. 15 I have done nothing but in care of thee, Of thee, my dear one, thee, my daughter, who Art ignorant of what thou art, nought knowing Of whence I am, nor that I am more better Than Prospero, master of a full poor cell, 20 And thy no greater father. _Mir._ More to know Did never meddle with my thoughts. _Pros._ 'Tis time I should inform thee farther. Lend thy hand, And pluck my magic garment from me. --So: [_Lays down his mantle._ Lie there, my art. Wipe thou thine eyes; have comfort. 25 The direful spectacle of the wreck, which touch'd The very virtue of compassion in thee, I have with such provision in mine art So safely order'd, that there is no soul, No, not so much perdition as an hair 30 Betid to any creature in the vessel Which thou heard'st cry, which thou saw'st sink. Sit down; For thou must now know farther. _Mir._ You have often Begun to tell me what I am; but stopp'd, And left me to a bootless inquisition, 35 Concluding "Stay: not yet." _Pros._ The hour's now come; The very minute bids thee ope thine ear; Obey, and be attentive. Canst thou remember A time before we came unto this cell? I do not think thou canst, for then thou wast not 40 Out three years old. _Mir._ Certainly, sir, I can. _Pros._ By what? by any other house or person? Of any thing the image tell me that Hath kept with thy remembrance. _Mir._ 'Tis far off, And rather like a dream than an assurance 45 That my remembrance warrants. Had I not Four or five women once that tended me? _Pros._ Thou hadst, and more, Miranda. But how is it That this lives in thy mind? What seest thou else In the dark backward and abysm of time? 50 If thou remember'st ought ere thou camest here, How thou camest here thou mayst. _Mir._ But that I do not. _Pros._ Twelve year since, Miranda, twelve year since, Thy father was the Duke of Milan, and A prince of power. _Mir._ Sir, are not you my father? 55 _Pros._ Thy mother was a piece of virtue, and She said thou wast my daughter; and thy father Was Duke of Milan; and his only heir And princess, no worse issued. _Mir._ O the heavens! What foul play had we, that we came from thence? 60 Or blessed was't we did? _Pros._ Both, both, my girl: By foul play, as thou say'st, were we heaved thence; But blessedly holp hither. _Mir._ O, my heart bleeds To think o' the teen that I have turn'd you to. Which is from my remembrance! Please you, farther. 65 _Pros._ My brother, and thy uncle, call'd Antonio,-- I pray thee, mark me,--that a brother should Be so perfidious!--he whom, next thyself, Of all the world I loved, and to him put The manage of my state; as, at that time, 70 Through all the signories it was the first, And Prospero the prime duke, being so reputed In dignity, and for the liberal arts Without a parallel; those being all my study, The government I cast upon my brother, 75 And to my state grew stranger, being transported And rapt in secret studies. Thy false uncle-- Dost thou attend me? _Mir._ Sir, most heedfully. _Pros._ Being once perfected how to grant suits, How to deny them, whom to advance, and whom 80 To trash for over-topping, new created The creatures that were mine, I say, or changed 'em, Or else new form'd 'em; having both the key Of officer and office, set all hearts i' the state To what tune pleased his ear; that now he was 85 The ivy which had hid my princely trunk, And suck'd my verdure out on't. Thou attend'st not. _Mir._ O, good sir, I do. _Pros._ I pray thee, mark me. I, thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated To closeness and the bettering of my mind 90 With that which, but by being so retired, O'er-prized all popular rate, in my false brother Awaked an evil nature; and my trust, Like a good parent, did beget of him A falsehood in its contrary, as great 95 As my trust was; which had indeed no limit, A confidence sans bound. He being thus lorded, Not only with what my revenue yielded, But what my power might else exact, like one Who having into truth, by telling of it, 100 Made such a sinner of his memory, To credit his own lie, he did believe He was indeed the duke; out o' the substitution, And executing the outward face of royalty, With all prerogative:--hence his ambition growing,-- 105 Dost thou hear? _Mir._ Your tale, sir, would cure deafness. _Pros._ To have no screen between this part he play'd And him he play'd it for, he needs will be Absolute Milan. Me, poor man, my library Was dukedom large enough: of temporal royalties 110 He thinks me now incapable; confederates, So dry he was for sway, wi' the King of Naples To give him annual tribute, do him homage, Subject his coronet to his crown, and bend The dukedom, yet unbow'd,--alas, poor Milan!-- 115 To most ignoble stooping. _Mir._ O the heavens! _Pros._ Mark his condition, and th' event; then tell me If this might be a brother. _Mir._ I should sin To think but nobly of my grandmother: Good wombs have borne bad sons. _Pros._ Now the condition. 120 This King of Naples, being an enemy To me inveterate, hearkens my brother's suit; Which was, that he, in lieu o' the premises, Of homage and I know not how much tribute, Should presently extirpate me and mine 125 Out of the dukedom, and confer fair Milan, With all the honours, on my brother: whereon, A treacherous army levied, one midnight Fated to the purpose, did Antonio open The gates of Milan; and, i' the dead of darkness, 130 The ministers for the purpose hurried thence Me and thy crying self. _Mir._ Alack, for pity! I, not remembering how I cried out then, Will cry it o'er again: it is a hint That wrings mine eyes to't. _Pros._ Hear a little further, 135 And then I'll bring thee to the present business Which now's upon 's; without the which, this story Were most impertinent. _Mir._ Wherefore did they not That hour destroy us? _Pros._ Well demanded, wench: My tale provokes that question. Dear, they durst not, 140 So dear the love my people bore me; nor set A mark so bloody on the business; but With colours fairer painted their foul ends. In few, they hurried us aboard a bark, Bore us some leagues to sea; where they prepared 145 A rotten carcass of a boat, not rigg'd, Nor tackle, sail, nor mast; the very rats Instinctively have quit it: there they hoist us, To cry to the sea that roar'd to us; to sigh To the winds, whose pity, sighing back again, 150 Did us but loving wrong. _Mir._ Alack, what trouble Was I then to you! _Pros._ O, a cherubin Thou wast that did preserve me. Thou didst smile, Infused with a fortitude from heaven, When I have deck'd the sea with drops full salt, 155 Under my burthen groan'd; which raised in me An undergoing stomach, to bear up Against what should ensue. _Mir._ How came we ashore? _Pros._ By Providence divine. Some food we had, and some fresh water, that 160 A noble Neapolitan, Gonzalo, Out of his charity, who being then appointed Master of this design, did give us, with Rich garments, linens, stuffs and necessaries, Which since have steaded much; so, of his gentleness, 165 Knowing I loved my books, he furnish'd me From mine own library with volumes that I prize above my dukedom. _Mir._ Would I might But ever see that man! _Pros._ Now I arise: [_Resumes his mantle._ Sit still, and hear the last of our sea-sorrow. 170 Here in this island we arrived; and here Have I, thy schoolmaster, made thee more profit Than other princesses can, that have more time For vainer hours, and tutors not so careful. _Mir._ Heavens thank you for't! And now, I pray you, sir, 175 For still 'tis beating in my mind, your reason For raising this sea-storm? _Pros._ Know thus far forth. By accident most strange, bountiful Fortune, Now my dear lady, hath mine enemies Brought to this shore; and by my prescience 180 I find my zenith doth depend upon A most auspicious star, whose influence If now I court not, but omit, my fortunes Will ever after droop. Here cease more questions: Thou art inclined to sleep; 'tis a good dulness, 185 And give it way: I know thou canst not choose. [_Miranda sleeps._ Come away, servant, come. I am ready now. Approach, my Ariel, come. _Enter _ARIEL_._ _Ari._ All hail, great master! grave sir, hail! I come To answer thy best pleasure; be't to fly, 190 To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride On the curl'd clouds, to thy strong bidding task Ariel and all his quality. _Pros._ Hast thou, spirit, Perform'd to point the tempest that I bade thee? _Ari._ To every article. 195 I boarded the king's ship; now on the beak, Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin, I flamed amazement: sometime I'ld divide, And burn in many places; on the topmast, The yards and bowsprit, would I flame distinctly, 200 Then meet and join. Jove's lightnings, the precursors O' the dreadful thunder-claps, more momentary And sight-outrunning were not: the fire and cracks Of sulphurous roaring the most mighty Neptune Seem to besiege, and make his bold waves tremble, 205 Yea, his dread trident shake. _Pros._ My brave spirit! Who was so firm, so constant, that this coil Would not infect his reason? _Ari._ Not a soul But felt a fever of the mad, and play'd Some tricks of desperation. All but mariners 210 Plunged in the foaming brine, and quit the vessel, Then all afire with me: the king's son, Ferdinand, With hair up-staring,--then like reeds, not hair,-- Was the first man that leap'd; cried, "Hell is empty, And all the devils are here." _Pros._ Why, that's my spirit! 215 But was not this nigh shore? _Ari._ Close by, my master. _Pros._ But are they, Ariel, safe? _Ari._ Not a hair perish'd; On their sustaining garments not a blemish, But fresher than before: and, as thou badest me, In troops I have dispersed them 'bout the isle. 220 The king's son have I landed by himself; Whom I left cooling of the air with sighs In an odd angle of the isle, and sitting, His arms in this sad knot. _Pros._ Of the king's ship The mariners, say how thou hast disposed, 225 And all the rest o' the fleet. _Ari._ Safely in harbour Is the king's ship; in the deep nook, where once Thou call'dst me up at midnight to fetch dew From the still-vex'd Bermoothes, there she's hid: The mariners all under hatches stow'd; 230 Who, with a charm join'd to their suffer'd labour, I have left asleep: and for the rest o' the fleet, Which I dispersed, they all have met again, And are upon the Mediterranean flote, Bound sadly home for Naples; 235 Supposing that they saw the king's ship wreck'd, And his great person perish. _Pros._ Ariel, thy charge Exactly is perform'd: but there's more work. What is the time o' the day? _Ari._ Past the mid season. _Pros._ At least two glasses. The time 'twixt six and now 240 Must by us both be spent most preciously. _Ari._ Is there more toil? Since thou dost give me pains, Let me remember thee what thou hast promised, Which is not yet perform'd me. _Pros._ How now? moody? What is't thou canst demand? _Ari._ My liberty. 245 _Pros._ Before the time be out? no more! _Ari._ I prithee, Remember I have done thee worthy service; Told thee no lies, made thee no mistakings, served Without or grudge or grumblings: thou didst promise To bate me a full year. _Pros._ Dost thou forget 250 From what a torment I did free thee? _Ari._ No. _Pros._ Thou dost; and think'st it much to tread the ooze Of the salt deep, To run upon the sharp wind of the north, To do me business in the veins o' the earth 255 When it is baked with frost. _Ari._ I do not, sir. _Pros._ Thou liest, malignant thing! Hast thou forgot The foul witch Sycorax, who with age and envy Was grown into a hoop? hast thou forgot her? _Ari._ No, sir. _Pros._ Thou hast. Where was she born? speak; tell me. 260 _Ari._ Sir, in Argier. _Pros._ O, was she so? I must Once in a month recount what thou hast been, Which thou forget'st. This damn'd witch Sycorax, For mischiefs manifold, and sorceries terrible To enter human hearing, from Argier, 265 Thou know'st, was banish'd: for one thing she did They would not take her life. Is not this true? _Ari._ Ay, sir. _Pros._ This blue-eyed hag was hither brought with child, And here was left by the sailors. Thou, my slave, 270 As thou report'st thyself, wast then her servant; And, for thou wast a spirit too delicate To act her earthy and abhorr'd commands, Refusing her grand hests, she did confine thee, By help of her more potent ministers, 275 And in her most unmitigable rage, Into a cloven pine; within which rift Imprison'd thou didst painfully remain A dozen years; within which space she died, And left thee there; where thou didst vent thy groans 280 As fast as mill-wheels strike. Then was this island-- Save for the son that she did litter here, A freckled whelp hag-born--not honour'd with A human shape. _Ari._ Yes, Caliban her son. _Pros._ Dull thing, I say so; he, that Caliban, 285 Whom now I keep in service. Thou best know'st What torment I did find thee in; thy groans Did make wolves howl, and penetrate the breasts Of ever-angry bears: it was a torment To lay upon the damn'd, which Sycorax 290 Could not again undo: it was mine art, When I arrived and heard thee, that made gape The pine, and let thee out. _Ari._ I thank thee, master. _Pros._ If thou more murmur'st, I will rend an oak, And peg thee in his knotty entrails, till 295 Thou hast howl'd away twelve winters. _Ari._ Pardon, master: I will be correspondent to command, And do my spiriting gently. _Pros._ Do so; and after two days I will discharge thee. _Ari._ That's my noble master! What shall I do? say what; what shall I do? 300 _Pros._ Go make thyself like a nymph o' the sea: Be subject to no sight but thine and mine; invisible To every eyeball else. Go take this shape, And hither come in't: go, hence with diligence! [_Exit Ariel._ Awake, dear heart, awake! thou hast slept well; 305 Awake! _Mir._ The strangeness of your story put Heaviness in me. _Pros._ Shake it off. Come on; We'll visit Caliban my slave, who never Yields us kind answer. _Mir._ 'Tis a villain, sir, I do not love to look on. _Pros._ But, as 'tis, 310 We cannot miss him: he does make our fire, Fetch in our wood, and serves in offices That profit us. What, ho! slave! Caliban! Thou earth, thou! speak. _Cal._ [_within_] There's wood enough within. _Pros._ Come forth, I say! there's other business for thee: 315 Come, thou tortoise! when? _Re-enter ARIEL like a water-nymph._ Fine apparition! My quaint Ariel, Hark in thine ear. _Ari._ My lord, it shall be done. [_Exit._ _Pros._ Thou poisonous slave, got by the devil himself Upon thy wicked dam, come forth! 320 _Enter CALIBAN._ _Cal._ As wicked dew as e'er my mother brush'd With raven's feather from unwholesome fen Drop on you both! a south-west blow on ye And blister you all o'er! _Pros._ For this, be sure, to-night thou shalt have cramps, 325 Side-stitches that shall pen thy breath up; urchins Shall, for that vast of night that they may work, All exercise on thee; thou shalt be pinch'd As thick as honeycomb, each pinch more stinging Than bees that made 'em. _Cal._ I must eat my dinner. 330 This island's mine, by Sycorax my mother, Which thou takest from me. When thou camest first, Thou strokedst me, and madest much of me; wouldst give me Water with berries in't; and teach me how To name the bigger light, and how the less, 335 That burn by day and night: and then I loved thee, And show'd thee all the qualities o' th' isle, The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile: Curs'd be I that did so! All the charms Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you! 340 For I am all the subjects that you have, Which first was mine own king: and here you sty me In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me The rest o' th' island. _Pros._ Thou most lying slave, Whom stripes may move, not kindness! I have used thee, 345 Filth as thou art, with human care; and lodged thee In mine own cell, till thou didst seek to violate The honour of my child. _Cal._ O ho, O ho! would 't had been done! Thou didst prevent me; I had peopled else 350 This isle with Calibans. _Pros._ Abhorred slave, Which any print of goodness wilt not take, Being capable of all ill! I pitied thee, Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour One thing or other: when thou didst not, savage, 355 Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like A thing most brutish, I endow'd thy purposes With words that made them known. But thy vile race, Though thou didst learn, had that in't which good natures Could not abide to be with; therefore wast thou 360 Deservedly confined into this rock, Who hadst deserved more than a prison. _Cal._ You taught me language; and my profit on't Is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you For learning me your language! _Pros._ Hag-seed, hence! 365 Fetch us in fuel; and be quick, thou'rt best, To answer other business. Shrug'st thou, malice? If thou neglect'st, or dost unwillingly What I command, I'll rack thee with old cramps, Fill all thy bones with aches, make thee roar, 370 That beasts shall tremble at thy din. _Cal._ No, pray thee. [_Aside_] I must obey: his art is of such power, It would control my dam's god, Setebos, And make a vassal of him. _Pros._ So, slave; hence! [_Exit Caliban._ _Re-enter ARIEL, invisible, playing and singing; FERDINAND following._ _ARIEL'S song._ Come unto these yellow sands, 375 And then take hands: Courtsied when you have and kiss'd The wild waves whist: Foot it featly here and there; And, sweet sprites, the burthen bear. 380 _Burthen_ [_dispersedly_]. Hark, hark! Bow-wow. The watch-dogs bark: Bow-wow. _Ari._ Hark, hark! I hear The strain of strutting chanticleer 385 Cry, Cock-a-diddle-dow. _Fer._ Where should this music be? i' th' air or th' earth? It sounds no more: and, sure, it waits upon Some god o' th' island. Sitting on a bank, Weeping again the king my father's wreck, 390 This music crept by me upon the waters, Allaying both their fury and my passion With its sweet air: thence I have follow'd it. Or it hath drawn me rather. But 'tis gone. No, it begins again. 395 _ARIEL sings._ Full fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change 400 Into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: _Burthen:_ Ding-dong. _Ari._ Hark! now I hear them,--Ding-dong, bell. _Fer._ The ditty does remember my drown'd father. 405 This is no mortal business, nor no sound That the earth owes:--I hear it now above me. _Pros._ The fringed curtains of thine eye advance, And say what thou seest yond. _Mir._ What is't? a spirit? Lord, how it looks about! Believe me, sir, 410 It carries a brave form. But 'tis a spirit. _Pros._ No, wench; it eats and sleeps and hath such senses As we have, such. This gallant which thou seest Was in the wreck; and, but he's something stain'd With grief, that's beauty's canker, thou mightst call him 415 A goodly person: he hath lost his fellows, And strays about to find 'em. _Mir._ I might call him A thing divine; for nothing natural I ever saw so noble. _Pros._ [_Aside_] It goes on, I see, As my soul prompts it. Spirit, fine spirit! I'll free thee 420 Within two days for this. _Fer._ Most sure, the goddess On whom these airs attend! Vouchsafe my prayer May know if you remain upon this island; And that you will some good instruction give How I may bear me here: my prime request, 425 Which I do last pronounce, is, O you wonder! If you be maid or no? _Mir._ No wonder, sir; But certainly a maid. _Fer._ My language! heavens! I am the best of them that speak this speech, Were I but where 'tis spoken. _Pros._ How? the best? 430 What wert thou, if the King of Naples heard thee? _Fer._ A single thing, as I am now, that wonders To hear thee speak of Naples. He does hear me; And that he does I weep: myself am Naples, Who with mine eyes, never since at ebb, beheld 435 The king my father wreck'd. _Mir._ Alack, for mercy! _Fer._ Yes, faith, and all his lords; the Duke of Milan And his brave son being twain. _Pros._ [_Aside_] The Duke of Milan And his more braver daughter could control thee, If now 'twere fit to do't. At the first sight 440 They have changed eyes. Delicate Ariel, I'll set thee free for this. [_To Fer._] A word, good sir; I fear you have done yourself some wrong: a word. _Mir._ Why speaks my father so ungently? This Is the third man that e'er I saw; the first 445 That e'er I sigh'd for: pity move my father To be inclined my way! _Fer._ O, if a virgin, And your affection not gone forth, I'll make you The queen of Naples. _Pros._ Soft, sir! one word more. [_Aside_] They are both in either's powers: but this swift business 450 I must uneasy make, lest too light winning Make the prize light. [_To Fer._] One word more; I charge thee That thou attend me: thou dost here usurp The name thou owest not; and hast put thyself Upon this island as a spy, to win it 455 From me, the lord on't. _Fer._ No, as I am a man. _Mir._ There's nothing ill can dwell in such a temple: If the ill spirit have so fair a house, Good things will strive to dwell with't. _Pros._ Follow me. Speak not you for him; he's a traitor. Come; 460 I'll manacle thy neck and feet together: Sea-water shalt thou drink; thy food shall be The fresh-brook muscles, wither'd roots, and husks Wherein the acorn cradled. Follow. _Fer._ No; I will resist such entertainment till 465 Mine enemy has more power. [_Draws, and is charmed from moving._ _Mir._ O dear father, Make not too rash a trial of him, for He's gentle, and not fearful. _Pros._ What! I say, My foot my tutor? Put thy sword up, traitor; Who makest a show, but darest not strike, thy conscience 470 Is so possess'd with guilt: come from thy ward; For I can here disarm thee with this stick And make thy weapon drop. _Mir._ Beseech you, father. _Pros._ Hence! hang not on my garments. _Mir._ Sir, have pity; I'll be his surety. _Pros._ Silence! one word more 475 Shall make me chide thee, if not hate thee. What! An advocate for an impostor! hush! Thou think'st there is no more such shapes as he, Having seen but him and Caliban: foolish wench! To the most of men this is a Caliban, 480 And they to him are angels. _Mir._ My affections Are, then, most humble; I have no ambition To see a goodlier man. _Pros._ Come on; obey: Thy nerves are in their infancy again, And have no vigour in them. _Fer._ So they are: 485 My spirits, as in a dream, are all bound up. My father's loss, the weakness which I feel, The wreck of all my friends, nor this man's threats, To whom I am subdued, are but light to me, Might I but through my prison once a day 490 Behold this maid: all corners else o' th' earth Let liberty make use of; space enough Have I in such a prison. _Pros._ [_Aside_] It works. [_To Fer._] Come on. Thou hast done well, fine Ariel! [_To Fer._] Follow me. [_To Ari._] Hark what thou else shalt do me. _Mir._ Be of comfort; 495 My father's of a better nature, sir, Than he appears by speech: this is unwonted Which now came from him. _Pros._ Thou shalt be as free As mountain winds: but then exactly do All points of my command. _Ari._ To the syllable. 500 _Pros._ Come, follow. Speak not for him. [_Exeunt._ Notes: I, 2. 3: _stinking_] _flaming_ Singer conj. _kindling_ S. Verges conj. 4: _cheek_] _heat_ Collier MS. _crack_ Staunton conj. 7: _creature_] _creatures_ Theobald. 13: _fraughting_] Ff. _fraighted_ Pope. _fraighting_ Theobald. _freighting_ Steevens. 15: Mir. _O, woe the day!_ Pros. _No harm._] Mir. _O woe the day! no harm?_ Johnson conj. 19: _I am more better_] _I'm more or better_ Pope. 24: [Lays ... mantle] Pope. 28: _provision_] F1. _compassion_ F2 F3 F4. _prevision_ Hunter conj. 29: _soul_] _soul lost_ Rowe. _foyle_ Theobald. _soil_ Johnson conj. _loss_ Capell. _foul_ Wright conj. 31: _betid_] F1. _betide_ F2 F3 F4. 35: _a_] F1. _the_ F2 F3 F4. 38: _thou_] om. Pope. 41: _Out_] _Full_ Pope (after Dryden). _Quite_ Collier MS. 44: _with_] _in_ Pope (after Dryden). 53: _Twelve year ... year_] _Tis twelve years ... years_ Pope. 58, 59: _and his only heir And princess_] _and his only heir A princess_ Pope. _thou his only heir And princess_ Steevens. _and though his only heir A princess_] Johnson conj. 63: _holp_] _help'd_ Pope. _O, my heart_] _My heart_ Pope. 78: _me_] om. F3 F4. 80: _whom ... whom_] F2 F3 F4. _who ... who_ F1. 81: _trash_] _plash_ Hanmer. 82, 83: _'em ... 'em_] _them ... them_ Capell. 84: _i' the state_] _i'th state_ F1. _e'th state_ F2. _o'th state_ F3 F4. om. Pope. 88: _O, good sir ... mark me._] _Good sir ... mark me then._ Pope. _O yes, good sir ... mark me._ Capell. Mir. _O, ... do._ Pros. _I ... me_] _I ... me._ Mir. _O ... do._ Steevens. 89: _dedicated_] _dedicate_ Steevens (Ritson conj.). 91: _so_] F1. om. F2 F3 F4. 97: _lorded_] _loaded_ Collier MS. 99: _exact, like_] _exact. Like_ Ff. 100: _having into truth ... of it_] _loving an untruth, and telling 't oft_ Hanmer. _having unto truth ... oft_ Warburton. _having to untruth ... of it_ Collier MS. _having sinn'd to truth ... oft_ Musgrave conj. _telling_] _quelling_ S. Verges conj. 101: _Made ... memory_] _Makes ... memory_ Hanmer. _Makes ... memory too_ Musgrave conj. 103: _indeed the duke_] _the duke_ Steevens. _indeed duke_ S. Walker conj. _out o' the_] _from_ Pope. 105: _his_] _is_ F2. 105, 106: _ambition growing_] _ambition Growing_ Steevens. 106: _hear?_] _hear, child?_ Hanmer. 109: _Milan_] _Millanie_ F1 (Capell's copy). 112: _wi' the_] Capell. _with_ Ff. _wi' th'_ Rowe. _with the_ Steevens. 116: _most_] F1. _much_ F2 F3 F4. 119: _but_] _not_ Pope. 120: _Good ... sons_] Theobald suggested that these words should be given to Prospero. Hanmer prints them so. 122: _hearkens_] _hears_ Pope. _hearks_ Theobald. 129: _Fated_] _Mated_ Dryden's version. _purpose_] _practise_ Collier MS. 131: _ministers_] _minister_ Rowe. 133: _out_] _on't_ Steevens conj. 135: _to 't_] om. Steevens (Farmer conj.). 138: _Wherefore_] _Why_ Pope. 141: _me_] om. Pope. 146: _boat_] Rowe (after Dryden). _butt_ F1 F2 F3. _but_ F4. _busse_ Black conj. 147: _sail_] F1. _nor sail_ F2 F3 F4. 148: _have_] _had_ Rowe (after Dryden). 150: _the winds_] _winds_ Pope. 155: _deck'd_] _brack'd_ Hanmer. _mock'd_ Warburton. _fleck'd_ Johnson conj. _degg'd_ anon. ap. Reed conj. 162: _who_] om. Pope. _he_ Steevens conj. 169: _Now I arise_] Continued to Miranda. Blackstone conj. [Resumes his mantle] om. Ff. [Put on robe again. Collier MS. 173: _princesses_] _princesse_ F1 F2 F3. _princess_ F4. _princes_ Rowe. _princess'_ Dyce (S. Walker conj.). See note (III). 186: [M. sleeps] Theobald. 189: SCENE III. Pope. 190: _be't_] F1. _be it_ F2 F3 F4. 193: _quality_] _qualities_ Pope (after Dryden). 198: _sometime_] F1. _sometimes_ F2 F3 F4. 200: _bowsprit_] _bore-sprit_ Ff. _bolt-sprit_ Rowe. 201: _lightnings_] Theobald. _lightning_ Ff. 202: _o' the_] _of_ Pope. _thunder-claps_] _thunder-clap_ Johnson. 205: _Seem_] _Seem'd_ Theobald. 206: _dread_] F1. _dead_ F2 F3 F4. _My brave_] _My brave, brave_ Theobald. _That's my brave_ Hanmer. 209: _mad_] _mind_ Pope (after Dryden). 211, 212: _vessel, ... son_] _vessell; Then all a fire with me the King's sonne_ Ff. 218: _sustaining_] _sea-stained_ Edwards conj. _unstaining_ or _sea-staining_ Spedding conj. 229: _Bermoothes_] _Bermudas_ Theobald. 231: _Who_] _Whom_ Hanmer. 234: _are_] _all_ Collier MS. _upon_] _on_ Pope. 239-240: Ari. _Past the mid season._ Pros. _At least two glasses_] Ari. _Past the mid season at least two glasses._ Warburton. Pros. _... Past the mid season?_ Ari. _At least two glasses_ Johnson conj. 244: _How now? moody?_] _How now, moody!_ Dyce (so Dryden, ed. 1808). 245: _What_] F1. _Which_ F2 F3 F4. 248: _made thee_] Ff. _made_ Pope. 249: _didst_] F3 F4. _did_ F1 F2. 264: _and sorceries_] _sorceries too_ Hanmer. 267: _Is not this true?_] _Is this not true?_ Pope. 271: _wast then_] Rowe (after Dryden). _was then_ Ff. 273: _earthy_] _earthly_ Pope. 282: _son_] F1. _sunne_ F2. _sun_ F3 F4. _she_] Rowe (after Dryden). _he_ Ff. 298: See note (IV). 301: _like_] F1. _like to_ F2 F3 F4. 302: _Be subject to_] _be subject To_ Malone. _but thine and mine_] _but mine_ Pope. 304: _in't_] _in it_ Pope. _go, hence_] _goe: hence_ Ff. _go hence_ Pope. _hence_ Hanmer. 307: _Heaviness_] _Strange heaviness_ Edd. conj. 312: _serves in offices_] F1. _serves offices_ F2 F3 F4. _serveth offices_ Collier MS. 316: _Come, thou tortoise! when?_] om. Pope. _Come_] _Come forth_ Steevens.] 320: _come forth!_] _come forth, thou tortoise!_ Pope. 321: SCENE IV. Pope. 332: _camest_] Rowe. _cam'st_ Ff. _cam'st here_ Ritson conj. 333: _madest_] Rowe (after Dryden). _made_ Ff. 339: _Curs'd be I that_] F1. _Curs'd be I that I_ F2 F3 F4. _cursed be I that_ Steevens. 342: _Which_] _Who_ Pope, and at line 351. 346: _thee_] om. F4. 349: _would 't_] Ff. _I wou'd it_ Pope. 351: Pros.] Theobald (after Dryden). Mira. Ff. 352: _wilt_] F1. _will_ F2 F3 F4. 355, 356: _didst not ... Know_] _couldst not ... Shew_ Hanmer. 356: _wouldst_] _didst_ Hanmer. 361, 362: _Deservedly ... deserved_] _Justly ... who hadst Deserv'd_ S. Walker conj. _Confin'd ... deserv'd_ id. conj. 362: _Who ... prison_] om. Pope (after Dryden). 366: _thou'rt_] F1 F2 F3. _thou art_ F4. _thou wer't_ Rowe. 375: SCENE V. Pope. following.] Malone. 378: _The wild waves whist_] Printed as a parenthesis by Steevens. See note (V). 380: _the burthen bear_] Pope. _bear the burthen_ Ff. 381-383: Steevens gives _Hark, hark! The watch-dogs bark_ to Ariel. 387: _i' th' air or th' earth?_] _in air or earth?_ Pope. 390: _again_] _against_ Rowe (after Dryden). 407: _owes_] _owns_ Pope (after Dryden), but leaves _ow'st_ 454. 408: SCENE VI. Pope. 419: _It goes on, I see,_] _It goes, I see_ Capell. _It goes on_ Steevens. 420: _fine spirit!_] om. Hanmer. 427: _maid_] F3. _mayd_ F1 F2. _made_ F4. 443: See note (VI). 444: _ungently_] F1. _urgently_ F2 F3 F4. 451: _lest_] F4. _least_ F1 F2 F3. 452: _One_] _Sir, one_ Pope. _I charge thee_] _I charge thee_ [to Ariel. Pope. 460: Pros. prefixed again to this line in Ff. 468: _and_] _tho'_ Hanmer. 469: _foot_] _fool_ S. Walker conj. _child_ Dryden's version. 470: _makest_] _mak'st_ F1. _makes_ F2 F3 F4. 471: _so_] F1. om. F2 F3 F4. _all_ Pope. 478: _is_] _are_ Rowe. 488: _nor_] _and_ Rowe (after Dryden). _or_ Capell. 489: _are_] _were_ Malone conj.

Prospero and his daughter Miranda are the focus of this scene, and from Miranda's first speech it becomes clear that the storm in the previous scene was somehow caused and controlled by Prospero. Miranda is concerned that good men were lost in the wreck, but Prospero assures her that it all went to plan, and no men were harmed. Prospero explains his motivations for causing the storm by telling her his history with the nobles aboard the ship; he reveals to Miranda that Antonio is his brother, and that he was once the rightful Duke of Milan, a position Antonio now holds. Antonio usurped Prospero's estate and wealth while Prospero became increasingly "rapt in secret studies" and oblivious to his brother's machinations; and in order to take Prospero's title as well, Antonio arranged to have his brother Prospero and Prospero's daughter Miranda killed secretly. But Prospero is widely known to be a good man, so those charged with his death decide not to kill him, Instead, Prospero and Miranda were set adrift on the open sea in a decayed vessel, and were able to survive off the supplies that the honest councilor Gonzalo arranged for them to have; thus, they landed on the island where they now live. After Prospero's tale, Ariel, a magical spirit, appears; it becomes clear that she is in Prospero's service, and caused the storm, at Prospero's bidding. King Alonso and company are now "dispersed'bout the isle," and Ariel has made the incident look like a shipwreck. Ariel also expresses her wish to be freed by Prospero, although he rescued her from the nasty witch Sycorax. Caliban, who was Syncorax's son, also makes an appearance; Miranda expresses her strong dislike for him, and he has been reduced to no more than Prospero's slave. Ferdinand, Alonso's son, meets Miranda, and falls immediately in love with her; this appears to be of Ariel's doing, and part of the carefully-laid plan that she must carry out to win her freedom from Prospero.

In returning to his native town of Shaston as schoolmaster Phillotson had won the interest and awakened the memories of the inhabitants, who, though they did not honour him for his miscellaneous acquirements as he would have been honoured elsewhere, retained for him a sincere regard. When, shortly after his arrival, he brought home a pretty wife--awkwardly pretty for him, if he did not take care, they said--they were glad to have her settle among them. For some time after her flight from that home Sue's absence did not excite comment. Her place as monitor in the school was taken by another young woman within a few days of her vacating it, which substitution also passed without remark, Sue's services having been of a provisional nature only. When, however, a month had passed, and Phillotson casually admitted to an acquaintance that he did not know where his wife was staying, curiosity began to be aroused; till, jumping to conclusions, people ventured to affirm that Sue had played him false and run away from him. The schoolmaster's growing languor and listlessness over his work gave countenance to the idea. Though Phillotson had held his tongue as long as he could, except to his friend Gillingham, his honesty and directness would not allow him to do so when misapprehensions as to Sue's conduct spread abroad. On a Monday morning the chairman of the school committee called, and after attending to the business of the school drew Phillotson aside out of earshot of the children. "You'll excuse my asking, Phillotson, since everybody is talking of it: is this true as to your domestic affairs--that your wife's going away was on no visit, but a secret elopement with a lover? If so, I condole with you." "Don't," said Phillotson. "There was no secret about it." "She has gone to visit friends?" "No." "Then what has happened?" "She has gone away under circumstances that usually call for condolence with the husband. But I gave my consent." The chairman looked as if he had not apprehended the remark. "What I say is quite true," Phillotson continued testily. "She asked leave to go away with her lover, and I let her. Why shouldn't I? A woman of full age, it was a question of her own conscience--not for me. I was not her gaoler. I can't explain any further. I don't wish to be questioned." The children observed that much seriousness marked the faces of the two men, and went home and told their parents that something new had happened about Mrs. Phillotson. Then Phillotson's little maidservant, who was a schoolgirl just out of her standards, said that Mr. Phillotson had helped in his wife's packing, had offered her what money she required, and had written a friendly letter to her young man, telling him to take care of her. The chairman of committee thought the matter over, and talked to the other managers of the school, till a request came to Phillotson to meet them privately. The meeting lasted a long time, and at the end the school-master came home, looking as usual pale and worn. Gillingham was sitting in his house awaiting him. "Well; it is as you said," observed Phillotson, flinging himself down wearily in a chair. "They have requested me to send in my resignation on account of my scandalous conduct in giving my tortured wife her liberty--or, as they call it, condoning her adultery. But I shan't resign!" "I think I would." "I won't. It is no business of theirs. It doesn't affect me in my public capacity at all. They may expel me if they like." "If you make a fuss it will get into the papers, and you'll never get appointed to another school. You see, they have to consider what you did as done by a teacher of youth--and its effects as such upon the morals of the town; and, to ordinary opinion, your position is indefensible. You must let me say that." To this good advice, however, Phillotson would not listen. "I don't care," he said. "I don't go unless I am turned out. And for this reason; that by resigning I acknowledge I have acted wrongly by her; when I am more and more convinced every day that in the sight of Heaven and by all natural, straightforward humanity, I have acted rightly." Gillingham saw that his rather headstrong friend would not be able to maintain such a position as this; but he said nothing further, and in due time--indeed, in a quarter of an hour--the formal letter of dismissal arrived, the managers having remained behind to write it after Phillotson's withdrawal. The latter replied that he should not accept dismissal; and called a public meeting, which he attended, although he looked so weak and ill that his friend implored him to stay at home. When he stood up to give his reasons for contesting the decision of the managers he advanced them firmly, as he had done to his friend, and contended, moreover, that the matter was a domestic theory which did not concern them. This they over-ruled, insisting that the private eccentricities of a teacher came quite within their sphere of control, as it touched the morals of those he taught. Phillotson replied that he did not see how an act of natural charity could injure morals. All the respectable inhabitants and well-to-do fellow-natives of the town were against Phillotson to a man. But, somewhat to his surprise, some dozen or more champions rose up in his defence as from the ground. It has been stated that Shaston was the anchorage of a curious and interesting group of itinerants, who frequented the numerous fairs and markets held up and down Wessex during the summer and autumn months. Although Phillotson had never spoken to one of these gentlemen they now nobly led the forlorn hope in his defence. The body included two cheap Jacks, a shooting-gallery proprietor and the ladies who loaded the guns, a pair of boxing-masters, a steam-roundabout manager, two travelling broom-makers, who called themselves widows, a gingerbread-stall keeper, a swing-boat owner, and a "test-your-strength" man. This generous phalanx of supporters, and a few others of independent judgment, whose own domestic experiences had been not without vicissitude, came up and warmly shook hands with Phillotson; after which they expressed their thoughts so strongly to the meeting that issue was joined, the result being a general scuffle, wherein a black board was split, three panes of the school windows were broken, an inkbottle was spilled over a town-councillor's shirt front, a churchwarden was dealt such a topper with the map of Palestine that his head went right through Samaria, and many black eyes and bleeding noses were given, one of which, to everybody's horror, was the venerable incumbent's, owing to the zeal of an emancipated chimney-sweep, who took the side of Phillotson's party. When Phillotson saw the blood running down the rector's face he deplored almost in groans the untoward and degrading circumstances, regretted that he had not resigned when called upon, and went home so ill that next morning he could not leave his bed. The farcical yet melancholy event was the beginning of a serious illness for him; and he lay in his lonely bed in the pathetic state of mind of a middle-aged man who perceives at length that his life, intellectual and domestic, is tending to failure and gloom. Gillingham came to see him in the evenings, and on one occasion mentioned Sue's name. "She doesn't care anything about me!" said Phillotson. "Why should she?" "She doesn't know you are ill." "So much the better for both of us." "Where are her lover and she living?" "At Melchester--I suppose; at least he was living there some time ago." When Gillingham reached home he sat and reflected, and at last wrote an anonymous line to Sue, on the bare chance of its reaching her, the letter being enclosed in an envelope addressed to Jude at the diocesan capital. Arriving at that place it was forwarded to Marygreen in North Wessex, and thence to Aldbrickham by the only person who knew his present address--the widow who had nursed his aunt. Three days later, in the evening, when the sun was going down in splendour over the lowlands of Blackmoor, and making the Shaston windows like tongues of fire to the eyes of the rustics in that vale, the sick man fancied that he heard somebody come to the house, and a few minutes after there was a tap at the bedroom door. Phillotson did not speak; the door was hesitatingly opened, and there entered--Sue. She was in light spring clothing, and her advent seemed ghostly--like the flitting in of a moth. He turned his eyes upon her, and flushed; but appeared to check his primary impulse to speak. "I have no business here," she said, bending her frightened face to him. "But I heard you were ill--very ill; and--and as I know that you recognize other feelings between man and woman than physical love, I have come." "I am not very ill, my dear friend. Only unwell." "I didn't know that; and I am afraid that only a severe illness would have justified my coming!" "Yes... yes. And I almost wish you had not come! It is a little too soon--that's all I mean. Still, let us make the best of it. You haven't heard about the school, I suppose?" "No--what about it?" "Only that I am going away from here to another place. The managers and I don't agree, and we are going to part--that's all." Sue did not for a moment, either now or later, suspect what troubles had resulted to him from letting her go; it never once seemed to cross her mind, and she had received no news whatever from Shaston. They talked on slight and ephemeral subjects, and when his tea was brought up he told the amazed little servant that a cup was to be set for Sue. That young person was much more interested in their history than they supposed, and as she descended the stairs she lifted her eyes and hands in grotesque amazement. While they sipped Sue went to the window and thoughtfully said, "It is such a beautiful sunset, Richard." "They are mostly beautiful from here, owing to the rays crossing the mist of the vale. But I lose them all, as they don't shine into this gloomy corner where I lie." "Wouldn't you like to see this particular one? It is like heaven opened." "Ah yes! But I can't." "I'll help you to." "No--the bedstead can't be shifted." "But see how I mean." She went to where a swing-glass stood, and taking it in her hands carried it to a spot by the window where it could catch the sunshine, moving the glass till the beams were reflected into Phillotson's face. "There--you can see the great red sun now!" she said. "And I am sure it will cheer you--I do so hope it will!" She spoke with a childlike, repentant kindness, as if she could not do too much for him. Phillotson smiled sadly. "You are an odd creature!" he murmured as the sun glowed in his eyes. "The idea of your coming to see me after what has passed!" "Don't let us go back upon that!" she said quickly. "I have to catch the omnibus for the train, as Jude doesn't know I have come; he was out when I started; so I must return home almost directly. Richard, I am so very glad you are better. You don't hate me, do you? You have been such a kind friend to me!" "I am glad to know you think so," said Phillotson huskily. "No. I don't hate you!" It grew dusk quickly in the gloomy room during their intermittent chat, and when candles were brought and it was time to leave she put her hand in his or rather allowed it to flit through his; for she was significantly light in touch. She had nearly closed the door when he said, "Sue!" He had noticed that, in turning away from him, tears were on her face and a quiver in her lip. It was bad policy to recall her--he knew it while he pursued it. But he could not help it. She came back. "Sue," he murmured, "do you wish to make it up, and stay? I'll forgive you and condone everything!" "Oh you can't, you can't!" she said hastily. "You can't condone it now!" "HE is your husband now, in effect, you mean, of course?" "You may assume it. He is obtaining a divorce from his wife Arabella." "His wife! It is altogether news to me that he has a wife." "It was a bad marriage." "Like yours." "Like mine. He is not doing it so much on his own account as on hers. She wrote and told him it would be a kindness to her, since then she could marry and live respectably. And Jude has agreed." "A wife... A kindness to her. Ah, yes; a kindness to her to release her altogether... But I don't like the sound of it. I can forgive, Sue." "No, no! You can't have me back now I have been so wicked--as to do what I have done!" There had arisen in Sue's face that incipient fright which showed itself whenever he changed from friend to husband, and which made her adopt any line of defence against marital feeling in him. "I MUST go now. I'll come again--may I?" "I don't ask you to go, even now. I ask you to stay." "I thank you, Richard; but I must. As you are not so ill as I thought, I CANNOT stay!" "She's his--his from lips to heel!" said Phillotson; but so faintly that in closing the door she did not hear it. The dread of a reactionary change in the schoolmaster's sentiments, coupled, perhaps, with a faint shamefacedness at letting even him know what a slipshod lack of thoroughness, from a man's point of view, characterized her transferred allegiance, prevented her telling him of her, thus far, incomplete relations with Jude; and Phillotson lay writhing like a man in hell as he pictured the prettily dressed, maddening compound of sympathy and averseness who bore his name, returning impatiently to the home of her lover. Gillingham was so interested in Phillotson's affairs, and so seriously concerned about him, that he walked up the hill-side to Shaston two or three times a week, although, there and back, it was a journey of nine miles, which had to be performed between tea and supper, after a hard day's work in school. When he called on the next occasion after Sue's visit his friend was downstairs, and Gillingham noticed that his restless mood had been supplanted by a more fixed and composed one. "She's been here since you called last," said Phillotson. "Not Mrs. Phillotson?" "Yes." "Ah! You have made it up?" "No... She just came, patted my pillow with her little white hand, played the thoughtful nurse for half an hour, and went away." "Well--I'm hanged! A little hussy!" "What do you say?" "Oh--nothing!" "What do you mean?" "I mean, what a tantalizing, capricious little woman! If she were not your wife--" "She is not; she's another man's except in name and law. And I have been thinking--it was suggested to me by a conversation I had with her--that, in kindness to her, I ought to dissolve the legal tie altogether; which, singularly enough, I think I can do, now she has been back, and refused my request to stay after I said I had forgiven her. I believe that fact would afford me opportunity of doing it, though I did not see it at the moment. What's the use of keeping her chained on to me if she doesn't belong to me? I know--I feel absolutely certain--that she would welcome my taking such a step as the greatest charity to her. For though as a fellow-creature she sympathizes with, and pities me, and even weeps for me, as a husband she cannot endure me--she loathes me--there's no use in mincing words--she loathes me, and my only manly, and dignified, and merciful course is to complete what I have begun... And for worldly reasons, too, it will be better for her to be independent. I have hopelessly ruined my prospects because of my decision as to what was best for us, though she does not know it; I see only dire poverty ahead from my feet to the grave; for I can be accepted as teacher no more. I shall probably have enough to do to make both ends meet during the remainder of my life, now my occupation's gone; and I shall be better able to bear it alone. I may as well tell you that what has suggested my letting her go is some news she brought me--the news that Fawley is doing the same." "Oh--he had a spouse, too? A queer couple, these lovers!" "Well--I don't want your opinion on that. What I was going to say is that my liberating her can do her no possible harm, and will open up a chance of happiness for her which she has never dreamt of hitherto. For then they'll be able to marry, as they ought to have done at first." Gillingham did not hurry to reply. "I may disagree with your motive," he said gently, for he respected views he could not share. "But I think you are right in your determination--if you can carry it out. I doubt, however, if you can." Part Fifth AT ALDBRICKHAM AND ELSEWHERE "Thy aerial part, and all the fiery parts which are mingled in thee, though by nature they have an upward tendency, still in obedience to the disposition of the universe they are over-powered here in the compound mass the body."--M. ANTONINUS (Long).

When Sue does not return to Phillotson and he does not hesitate to tell the school authorities why, he is asked to resign, refuses to do so, and is dismissed. In the public meeting he calls to defend himself, most townspeople are against him, but some few are for him. The scuffle that results turns the meeting into a bad farce. Owing to Gillingham's telling her that he is ill, Sue comes to see Phillotson; he asks her to come back but she will not. He learns for the first time that Jude has been married. Later, he tells Gillingham that for Sue's sake he is going to divorce her, as Jude is divorcing Arabella.

And the secret garden bloomed and bloomed and every morning revealed new miracles. In the robin's nest there were Eggs and the robin's mate sat upon them keeping them warm with her feathery little breast and careful wings. At first she was very nervous and the robin himself was indignantly watchful. Even Dickon did not go near the close-grown corner in those days, but waited until by the quiet working of some mysterious spell he seemed to have conveyed to the soul of the little pair that in the garden there was nothing which was not quite like themselves--nothing which did not understand the wonderfulness of what was happening to them--the immense, tender, terrible, heart-breaking beauty and solemnity of Eggs. If there had been one person in that garden who had not known through all his or her innermost being that if an Egg were taken away or hurt the whole world would whirl round and crash through space and come to an end--if there had been even one who did not feel it and act accordingly there could have been no happiness even in that golden springtime air. But they all knew it and felt it and the robin and his mate knew they knew it. At first the robin watched Mary and Colin with sharp anxiety. For some mysterious reason he knew he need not watch Dickon. The first moment he set his dew-bright black eye on Dickon he knew he was not a stranger but a sort of robin without beak or feathers. He could speak robin (which is a quite distinct language not to be mistaken for any other). To speak robin to a robin is like speaking French to a Frenchman. Dickon always spoke it to the robin himself, so the queer gibberish he used when he spoke to humans did not matter in the least. The robin thought he spoke this gibberish to them because they were not intelligent enough to understand feathered speech. His movements also were robin. They never startled one by being sudden enough to seem dangerous or threatening. Any robin could understand Dickon, so his presence was not even disturbing. But at the outset it seemed necessary to be on guard against the other two. In the first place the boy creature did not come into the garden on his legs. He was pushed in on a thing with wheels and the skins of wild animals were thrown over him. That in itself was doubtful. Then when he began to stand up and move about he did it in a queer unaccustomed way and the others seemed to have to help him. The robin used to secrete himself in a bush and watch this anxiously, his head tilted first on one side and then on the other. He thought that the slow movements might mean that he was preparing to pounce, as cats do. When cats are preparing to pounce they creep over the ground very slowly. The robin talked this over with his mate a great deal for a few days but after that he decided not to speak of the subject because her terror was so great that he was afraid it might be injurious to the Eggs. When the boy began to walk by himself and even to move more quickly it was an immense relief. But for a long time--or it seemed a long time to the robin--he was a source of some anxiety. He did not act as the other humans did. He seemed very fond of walking but he had a way of sitting or lying down for a while and then getting up in a disconcerting manner to begin again. One day the robin remembered that when he himself had been made to learn to fly by his parents he had done much the same sort of thing. He had taken short flights of a few yards and then had been obliged to rest. So it occurred to him that this boy was learning to fly--or rather to walk. He mentioned this to his mate and when he told her that the Eggs would probably conduct themselves in the same way after they were fledged she was quite comforted and even became eagerly interested and derived great pleasure from watching the boy over the edge of her nest--though she always thought that the Eggs would be much cleverer and learn more quickly. But then she said indulgently that humans were always more clumsy and slow than Eggs and most of them never seemed really to learn to fly at all. You never met them in the air or on tree-tops. After a while the boy began to move about as the others did, but all three of the children at times did unusual things. They would stand under the trees and move their arms and legs and heads about in a way which was neither walking nor running nor sitting down. They went through these movements at intervals every day and the robin was never able to explain to his mate what they were doing or tying to do. He could only say that he was sure that the Eggs would never flap about in such a manner; but as the boy who could speak robin so fluently was doing the thing with them, birds could be quite sure that the actions were not of a dangerous nature. Of course neither the robin nor his mate had ever heard of the champion wrestler, Bob Haworth, and his exercises for making the muscles stand out like lumps. Robins are not like human beings; their muscles are always exercised from the first and so they develop themselves in a natural manner. If you have to fly about to find every meal you eat, your muscles do not become atrophied (atrophied means wasted away through want of use). When the boy was walking and running about and digging and weeding like the others, the nest in the corner was brooded over by a great peace and content. Fears for the Eggs became things of the past. Knowing that your Eggs were as safe as if they were locked in a bank vault and the fact that you could watch so many curious things going on made setting a most entertaining occupation. On wet days the Eggs' mother sometimes felt even a little dull because the children did not come into the garden. But even on wet days it could not be said that Mary and Colin were dull. One morning when the rain streamed down unceasingly and Colin was beginning to feel a little restive, as he was obliged to remain on his sofa because it was not safe to get up and walk about, Mary had an inspiration. "Now that I am a real boy," Colin had said, "my legs and arms and all my body are so full of Magic that I can't keep them still. They want to be doing things all the time. Do you know that when I waken in the morning, Mary, when it's quite early and the birds are just shouting outside and everything seems just shouting for joy--even the trees and things we can't really hear--I feel as if I must jump out of bed and shout myself. If I did it, just think what would happen!" Mary giggled inordinately. "The nurse would come running and Mrs. Medlock would come running and they would be sure you had gone crazy and they'd send for the doctor," she said. Colin giggled himself. He could see how they would all look--how horrified by his outbreak and how amazed to see him standing upright. "I wish my father would come home," he said. "I want to tell him myself. I'm always thinking about it--but we couldn't go on like this much longer. I can't stand lying still and pretending, and besides I look too different. I wish it wasn't raining today." It was then Mistress Mary had her inspiration. "Colin," she began mysteriously, "do you know how many rooms there are in this house?" "About a thousand, I suppose," he answered. "There's about a hundred no one ever goes into," said Mary. "And one rainy day I went and looked into ever so many of them. No one ever knew, though Mrs. Medlock nearly found me out. I lost my way when I was coming back and I stopped at the end of your corridor. That was the second time I heard you crying." Colin started up on his sofa. "A hundred rooms no one goes into," he said. "It sounds almost like a secret garden. Suppose we go and look at them. Wheel me in my chair and nobody would know we went." "That's what I was thinking," said Mary. "No one would dare to follow us. There are galleries where you could run. We could do our exercises. There is a little Indian room where there is a cabinet full of ivory elephants. There are all sorts of rooms." "Ring the bell," said Colin. When the nurse came in he gave his orders. "I want my chair," he said. "Miss Mary and I are going to look at the part of the house which is not used. John can push me as far as the picture-gallery because there are some stairs. Then he must go away and leave us alone until I send for him again." Rainy days lost their terrors that morning. When the footman had wheeled the chair into the picture-gallery and left the two together in obedience to orders, Colin and Mary looked at each other delighted. As soon as Mary had made sure that John was really on his way back to his own quarters below stairs, Colin got out of his chair. "I am going to run from one end of the gallery to the other," he said, "and then I am going to jump and then we will do Bob Haworth's exercises." And they did all these things and many others. They looked at the portraits and found the plain little girl dressed in green brocade and holding the parrot on her finger. "All these," said Colin, "must be my relations. They lived a long time ago. That parrot one, I believe, is one of my great, great, great, great aunts. She looks rather like you, Mary--not as you look now but as you looked when you came here. Now you are a great deal fatter and better looking." "So are you," said Mary, and they both laughed. They went to the Indian room and amused themselves with the ivory elephants. They found the rose-colored brocade boudoir and the hole in the cushion the mouse had left, but the mice had grown up and run away and the hole was empty. They saw more rooms and made more discoveries than Mary had made on her first pilgrimage. They found new corridors and corners and flights of steps and new old pictures they liked and weird old things they did not know the use of. It was a curiously entertaining morning and the feeling of wandering about in the same house with other people but at the same time feeling as if one were miles away from them was a fascinating thing. "I'm glad we came," Colin said. "I never knew I lived in such a big queer old place. I like it. We will ramble about every rainy day. We shall always be finding new queer corners and things." That morning they had found among other things such good appetites that when they returned to Colin's room it was not possible to send the luncheon away untouched. When the nurse carried the tray down-stairs she slapped it down on the kitchen dresser so that Mrs. Loomis, the cook, could see the highly polished dishes and plates. "Look at that!" she said. "This is a house of mystery, and those two children are the greatest mysteries in it." "If they keep that up every day," said the strong young footman John, "there'd be small wonder that he weighs twice as much to-day as he did a month ago. I should have to give up my place in time, for fear of doing my muscles an injury." That afternoon Mary noticed that something new had happened in Colin's room. She had noticed it the day before but had said nothing because she thought the change might have been made by chance. She said nothing today but she sat and looked fixedly at the picture over the mantel. She could look at it because the curtain had been drawn aside. That was the change she noticed. "I know what you want me to tell you," said Colin, after she had stared a few minutes. "I always know when you want me to tell you something. You are wondering why the curtain is drawn back. I am going to keep it like that." "Why?" asked Mary. "Because it doesn't make me angry any more to see her laughing. I wakened when it was bright moonlight two nights ago and felt as if the Magic was filling the room and making everything so splendid that I couldn't lie still. I got up and looked out of the window. The room was quite light and there was a patch of moonlight on the curtain and somehow that made me go and pull the cord. She looked right down at me as if she were laughing because she was glad I was standing there. It made me like to look at her. I want to see her laughing like that all the time. I think she must have been a sort of Magic person perhaps." "You are so like her now," said Mary, "that sometimes I think perhaps you are her ghost made into a boy." That idea seemed to impress Colin. He thought it over and then answered her slowly. "If I were her ghost--my father would be fond of me." "Do you want him to be fond of you?" inquired Mary. "I used to hate it because he was not fond of me. If he grew fond of me I think I should tell him about the Magic. It might make him more cheerful."

The first half of this chapter concerns itself with the observations of the robin redbreast, which is watching all of the children's activities in the garden. He and his mate are sitting on their nest, waiting for their eggs to hatch, throughout the early part of spring. Colin and Mary are obliged to stay indoors on rainy days. At Mary's suggestion, they begin exploring the hundred rooms of the manor house. They remark that Mary no longer looks like the portrait of the girl and her pet parrot: she has been utterly transformed by the garden and the springtime, and is now quite pretty. Mary notices that Colin has drawn back the rose-colored curtain in his room so that the portrait of his mother is now visible. Colin says that "Magic filled his room" two nights before, and thus compelled him to pull back the curtain. Now that he is healthy, he feels that her laughter is meant for him, as a kind of unspoken blessing. Mary remarks that she has often thought that Colin is a great deal like his mother; it is as though he is "her ghost made into a boy. Colin is greatly moved by this idea, because it suggests that his father might become fond of him

THE SHEEP-WASHING--THE OFFER Boldwood did eventually call upon her. She was not at home. "Of course not," he murmured. In contemplating Bathsheba as a woman, he had forgotten the accidents of her position as an agriculturist--that being as much of a farmer, and as extensive a farmer, as himself, her probable whereabouts was out-of-doors at this time of the year. This, and the other oversights Boldwood was guilty of, were natural to the mood, and still more natural to the circumstances. The great aids to idealization in love were present here: occasional observation of her from a distance, and the absence of social intercourse with her--visual familiarity, oral strangeness. The smaller human elements were kept out of sight; the pettinesses that enter so largely into all earthly living and doing were disguised by the accident of lover and loved-one not being on visiting terms; and there was hardly awakened a thought in Boldwood that sorry household realities appertained to her, or that she, like all others, had moments of commonplace, when to be least plainly seen was to be most prettily remembered. Thus a mild sort of apotheosis took place in his fancy, whilst she still lived and breathed within his own horizon, a troubled creature like himself. It was the end of May when the farmer determined to be no longer repulsed by trivialities or distracted by suspense. He had by this time grown used to being in love; the passion now startled him less even when it tortured him more, and he felt himself adequate to the situation. On inquiring for her at her house they had told him she was at the sheep-washing, and he went off to seek her there. The sheep-washing pool was a perfectly circular basin of brickwork in the meadows, full of the clearest water. To birds on the wing its glassy surface, reflecting the light sky, must have been visible for miles around as a glistening Cyclops' eye in a green face. The grass about the margin at this season was a sight to remember long--in a minor sort of way. Its activity in sucking the moisture from the rich damp sod was almost a process observable by the eye. The outskirts of this level water-meadow were diversified by rounded and hollow pastures, where just now every flower that was not a buttercup was a daisy. The river slid along noiselessly as a shade, the swelling reeds and sedge forming a flexible palisade upon its moist brink. To the north of the mead were trees, the leaves of which were new, soft, and moist, not yet having stiffened and darkened under summer sun and drought, their colour being yellow beside a green--green beside a yellow. From the recesses of this knot of foliage the loud notes of three cuckoos were resounding through the still air. Boldwood went meditating down the slopes with his eyes on his boots, which the yellow pollen from the buttercups had bronzed in artistic gradations. A tributary of the main stream flowed through the basin of the pool by an inlet and outlet at opposite points of its diameter. Shepherd Oak, Jan Coggan, Moon, Poorgrass, Cain Ball, and several others were assembled here, all dripping wet to the very roots of their hair, and Bathsheba was standing by in a new riding-habit--the most elegant she had ever worn--the reins of her horse being looped over her arm. Flagons of cider were rolling about upon the green. The meek sheep were pushed into the pool by Coggan and Matthew Moon, who stood by the lower hatch, immersed to their waists; then Gabriel, who stood on the brink, thrust them under as they swam along, with an instrument like a crutch, formed for the purpose, and also for assisting the exhausted animals when the wool became saturated and they began to sink. They were let out against the stream, and through the upper opening, all impurities flowing away below. Cainy Ball and Joseph, who performed this latter operation, were if possible wetter than the rest; they resembled dolphins under a fountain, every protuberance and angle of their clothes dribbling forth a small rill. Boldwood came close and bade her good morning, with such constraint that she could not but think he had stepped across to the washing for its own sake, hoping not to find her there; more, she fancied his brow severe and his eye slighting. Bathsheba immediately contrived to withdraw, and glided along by the river till she was a stone's throw off. She heard footsteps brushing the grass, and had a consciousness that love was encircling her like a perfume. Instead of turning or waiting, Bathsheba went further among the high sedges, but Boldwood seemed determined, and pressed on till they were completely past the bend of the river. Here, without being seen, they could hear the splashing and shouts of the washers above. "Miss Everdene!" said the farmer. She trembled, turned, and said "Good morning." His tone was so utterly removed from all she had expected as a beginning. It was lowness and quiet accentuated: an emphasis of deep meanings, their form, at the same time, being scarcely expressed. Silence has sometimes a remarkable power of showing itself as the disembodied soul of feeling wandering without its carcase, and it is then more impressive than speech. In the same way, to say a little is often to tell more than to say a great deal. Boldwood told everything in that word. As the consciousness expands on learning that what was fancied to be the rumble of wheels is the reverberation of thunder, so did Bathsheba's at her intuitive conviction. "I feel--almost too much--to think," he said, with a solemn simplicity. "I have come to speak to you without preface. My life is not my own since I have beheld you clearly, Miss Everdene--I come to make you an offer of marriage." Bathsheba tried to preserve an absolutely neutral countenance, and all the motion she made was that of closing lips which had previously been a little parted. "I am now forty-one years old," he went on. "I may have been called a confirmed bachelor, and I was a confirmed bachelor. I had never any views of myself as a husband in my earlier days, nor have I made any calculation on the subject since I have been older. But we all change, and my change, in this matter, came with seeing you. I have felt lately, more and more, that my present way of living is bad in every respect. Beyond all things, I want you as my wife." "I feel, Mr. Boldwood, that though I respect you much, I do not feel--what would justify me to--in accepting your offer," she stammered. This giving back of dignity for dignity seemed to open the sluices of feeling that Boldwood had as yet kept closed. "My life is a burden without you," he exclaimed, in a low voice. "I want you--I want you to let me say I love you again and again!" Bathsheba answered nothing, and the horse upon her arm seemed so impressed that instead of cropping the herbage she looked up. "I think and hope you care enough for me to listen to what I have to tell!" Bathsheba's momentary impulse at hearing this was to ask why he thought that, till she remembered that, far from being a conceited assumption on Boldwood's part, it was but the natural conclusion of serious reflection based on deceptive premises of her own offering. "I wish I could say courteous flatteries to you," the farmer continued in an easier tone, "and put my rugged feeling into a graceful shape: but I have neither power nor patience to learn such things. I want you for my wife--so wildly that no other feeling can abide in me; but I should not have spoken out had I not been led to hope." "The valentine again! O that valentine!" she said to herself, but not a word to him. "If you can love me say so, Miss Everdene. If not--don't say no!" "Mr. Boldwood, it is painful to have to say I am surprised, so that I don't know how to answer you with propriety and respect--but am only just able to speak out my feeling--I mean my meaning; that I am afraid I can't marry you, much as I respect you. You are too dignified for me to suit you, sir." "But, Miss Everdene!" "I--I didn't--I know I ought never to have dreamt of sending that valentine--forgive me, sir--it was a wanton thing which no woman with any self-respect should have done. If you will only pardon my thoughtlessness, I promise never to--" "No, no, no. Don't say thoughtlessness! Make me think it was something more--that it was a sort of prophetic instinct--the beginning of a feeling that you would like me. You torture me to say it was done in thoughtlessness--I never thought of it in that light, and I can't endure it. Ah! I wish I knew how to win you! but that I can't do--I can only ask if I have already got you. If I have not, and it is not true that you have come unwittingly to me as I have to you, I can say no more." "I have not fallen in love with you, Mr. Boldwood--certainly I must say that." She allowed a very small smile to creep for the first time over her serious face in saying this, and the white row of upper teeth, and keenly-cut lips already noticed, suggested an idea of heartlessness, which was immediately contradicted by the pleasant eyes. "But you will just think--in kindness and condescension think--if you cannot bear with me as a husband! I fear I am too old for you, but believe me I will take more care of you than would many a man of your own age. I will protect and cherish you with all my strength--I will indeed! You shall have no cares--be worried by no household affairs, and live quite at ease, Miss Everdene. The dairy superintendence shall be done by a man--I can afford it well--you shall never have so much as to look out of doors at haymaking time, or to think of weather in the harvest. I rather cling to the chaise, because it is the same my poor father and mother drove, but if you don't like it I will sell it, and you shall have a pony-carriage of your own. I cannot say how far above every other idea and object on earth you seem to me--nobody knows--God only knows--how much you are to me!" Bathsheba's heart was young, and it swelled with sympathy for the deep-natured man who spoke so simply. "Don't say it! don't! I cannot bear you to feel so much, and me to feel nothing. And I am afraid they will notice us, Mr. Boldwood. Will you let the matter rest now? I cannot think collectedly. I did not know you were going to say this to me. Oh, I am wicked to have made you suffer so!" She was frightened as well as agitated at his vehemence. "Say then, that you don't absolutely refuse. Do not quite refuse?" "I can do nothing. I cannot answer." "I may speak to you again on the subject?" "Yes." "I may think of you?" "Yes, I suppose you may think of me." "And hope to obtain you?" "No--do not hope! Let us go on." "I will call upon you again to-morrow." "No--please not. Give me time." "Yes--I will give you any time," he said earnestly and gratefully. "I am happier now." "No--I beg you! Don't be happier if happiness only comes from my agreeing. Be neutral, Mr. Boldwood! I must think." "I will wait," he said. And then she turned away. Boldwood dropped his gaze to the ground, and stood long like a man who did not know where he was. Realities then returned upon him like the pain of a wound received in an excitement which eclipses it, and he, too, then went on.

Eventually, Boldwood calls upon Bathsheba at her home. She's not there, though. By this point, we're told that Boldwood is used to being in love and isn't afraid of it anymore. Huh. That was quick. He goes off to seek Bathsheba at the pool used for washing sheep. Once again, Oak is there with her, along with the rest of her farmhands. When he gets a chance to speak to her alone he comes out with it and asks her to marry him. Yup, that's how they went about it back in the old days. Bathsheba politely refuses, which just opens up the floodgates of Boldwood's passion. The guy practically drops to his knees to tell her how much he loves her. The sad thing is that Bathsheba ultimately knows it's her fault for making him feel this way because of the Valentine she sent him as a joke. Bathsheba tries to give him the whole, "It's not you; it's me" routine, but Boldwood isn't satisfied. In a last ditch effort Boldwood reminds her how rich he is. But it's still not enough. Bathsheba doesn't love him. Reminder: Oak wasn't rich enough for Bathsheba, and Boldwood isn't lovable enough. Bathsheba wants both love and money. Finally, she tells him that she won't refuse him outright, even though she'll probably never marry him. She thinks this is the nice thing to do, but it's probably way worse for him in the long run. With that, Boldwood walks away, telling Bathsheba that he'll wait forever if he needs to. But one day, he believes she'll be ready to marry him. All in all, a super-uncomfortable chapter.

That evening, after Mr. Jackson had taken himself away, and the ladies had retired to their chintz-curtained bedroom, Newland Archer mounted thoughtfully to his own study. A vigilant hand had, as usual, kept the fire alive and the lamp trimmed; and the room, with its rows and rows of books, its bronze and steel statuettes of "The Fencers" on the mantelpiece and its many photographs of famous pictures, looked singularly home-like and welcoming. As he dropped into his armchair near the fire his eyes rested on a large photograph of May Welland, which the young girl had given him in the first days of their romance, and which had now displaced all the other portraits on the table. With a new sense of awe he looked at the frank forehead, serious eyes and gay innocent mouth of the young creature whose soul's custodian he was to be. That terrifying product of the social system he belonged to and believed in, the young girl who knew nothing and expected everything, looked back at him like a stranger through May Welland's familiar features; and once more it was borne in on him that marriage was not the safe anchorage he had been taught to think, but a voyage on uncharted seas. The case of the Countess Olenska had stirred up old settled convictions and set them drifting dangerously through his mind. His own exclamation: "Women should be free--as free as we are," struck to the root of a problem that it was agreed in his world to regard as non-existent. "Nice" women, however wronged, would never claim the kind of freedom he meant, and generous-minded men like himself were therefore--in the heat of argument--the more chivalrously ready to concede it to them. Such verbal generosities were in fact only a humbugging disguise of the inexorable conventions that tied things together and bound people down to the old pattern. But here he was pledged to defend, on the part of his betrothed's cousin, conduct that, on his own wife's part, would justify him in calling down on her all the thunders of Church and State. Of course the dilemma was purely hypothetical; since he wasn't a blackguard Polish nobleman, it was absurd to speculate what his wife's rights would be if he WERE. But Newland Archer was too imaginative not to feel that, in his case and May's, the tie might gall for reasons far less gross and palpable. What could he and she really know of each other, since it was his duty, as a "decent" fellow, to conceal his past from her, and hers, as a marriageable girl, to have no past to conceal? What if, for some one of the subtler reasons that would tell with both of them, they should tire of each other, misunderstand or irritate each other? He reviewed his friends' marriages--the supposedly happy ones--and saw none that answered, even remotely, to the passionate and tender comradeship which he pictured as his permanent relation with May Welland. He perceived that such a picture presupposed, on her part, the experience, the versatility, the freedom of judgment, which she had been carefully trained not to possess; and with a shiver of foreboding he saw his marriage becoming what most of the other marriages about him were: a dull association of material and social interests held together by ignorance on the one side and hypocrisy on the other. Lawrence Lefferts occurred to him as the husband who had most completely realised this enviable ideal. As became the high-priest of form, he had formed a wife so completely to his own convenience that, in the most conspicuous moments of his frequent love-affairs with other men's wives, she went about in smiling unconsciousness, saying that "Lawrence was so frightfully strict"; and had been known to blush indignantly, and avert her gaze, when some one alluded in her presence to the fact that Julius Beaufort (as became a "foreigner" of doubtful origin) had what was known in New York as "another establishment." Archer tried to console himself with the thought that he was not quite such an ass as Larry Lefferts, nor May such a simpleton as poor Gertrude; but the difference was after all one of intelligence and not of standards. In reality they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs; as when Mrs. Welland, who knew exactly why Archer had pressed her to announce her daughter's engagement at the Beaufort ball (and had indeed expected him to do no less), yet felt obliged to simulate reluctance, and the air of having had her hand forced, quite as, in the books on Primitive Man that people of advanced culture were beginning to read, the savage bride is dragged with shrieks from her parents' tent. The result, of course, was that the young girl who was the centre of this elaborate system of mystification remained the more inscrutable for her very frankness and assurance. She was frank, poor darling, because she had nothing to conceal, assured because she knew of nothing to be on her guard against; and with no better preparation than this, she was to be plunged overnight into what people evasively called "the facts of life." The young man was sincerely but placidly in love. He delighted in the radiant good looks of his betrothed, in her health, her horsemanship, her grace and quickness at games, and the shy interest in books and ideas that she was beginning to develop under his guidance. (She had advanced far enough to join him in ridiculing the Idyls of the King, but not to feel the beauty of Ulysses and the Lotus Eaters.) She was straightforward, loyal and brave; she had a sense of humour (chiefly proved by her laughing at HIS jokes); and he suspected, in the depths of her innocently-gazing soul, a glow of feeling that it would be a joy to waken. But when he had gone the brief round of her he returned discouraged by the thought that all this frankness and innocence were only an artificial product. Untrained human nature was not frank and innocent; it was full of the twists and defences of an instinctive guile. And he felt himself oppressed by this creation of factitious purity, so cunningly manufactured by a conspiracy of mothers and aunts and grandmothers and long-dead ancestresses, because it was supposed to be what he wanted, what he had a right to, in order that he might exercise his lordly pleasure in smashing it like an image made of snow. There was a certain triteness in these reflections: they were those habitual to young men on the approach of their wedding day. But they were generally accompanied by a sense of compunction and self-abasement of which Newland Archer felt no trace. He could not deplore (as Thackeray's heroes so often exasperated him by doing) that he had not a blank page to offer his bride in exchange for the unblemished one she was to give to him. He could not get away from the fact that if he had been brought up as she had they would have been no more fit to find their way about than the Babes in the Wood; nor could he, for all his anxious cogitations, see any honest reason (any, that is, unconnected with his own momentary pleasure, and the passion of masculine vanity) why his bride should not have been allowed the same freedom of experience as himself. Such questions, at such an hour, were bound to drift through his mind; but he was conscious that their uncomfortable persistence and precision were due to the inopportune arrival of the Countess Olenska. Here he was, at the very moment of his betrothal--a moment for pure thoughts and cloudless hopes--pitchforked into a coil of scandal which raised all the special problems he would have preferred to let lie. "Hang Ellen Olenska!" he grumbled, as he covered his fire and began to undress. He could not really see why her fate should have the least bearing on his; yet he dimly felt that he had only just begun to measure the risks of the championship which his engagement had forced upon him. A few days later the bolt fell. The Lovell Mingotts had sent out cards for what was known as "a formal dinner" (that is, three extra footmen, two dishes for each course, and a Roman punch in the middle), and had headed their invitations with the words "To meet the Countess Olenska," in accordance with the hospitable American fashion, which treats strangers as if they were royalties, or at least as their ambassadors. The guests had been selected with a boldness and discrimination in which the initiated recognised the firm hand of Catherine the Great. Associated with such immemorial standbys as the Selfridge Merrys, who were asked everywhere because they always had been, the Beauforts, on whom there was a claim of relationship, and Mr. Sillerton Jackson and his sister Sophy (who went wherever her brother told her to), were some of the most fashionable and yet most irreproachable of the dominant "young married" set; the Lawrence Leffertses, Mrs. Lefferts Rushworth (the lovely widow), the Harry Thorleys, the Reggie Chiverses and young Morris Dagonet and his wife (who was a van der Luyden). The company indeed was perfectly assorted, since all the members belonged to the little inner group of people who, during the long New York season, disported themselves together daily and nightly with apparently undiminished zest. Forty-eight hours later the unbelievable had happened; every one had refused the Mingotts' invitation except the Beauforts and old Mr. Jackson and his sister. The intended slight was emphasised by the fact that even the Reggie Chiverses, who were of the Mingott clan, were among those inflicting it; and by the uniform wording of the notes, in all of which the writers "regretted that they were unable to accept," without the mitigating plea of a "previous engagement" that ordinary courtesy prescribed. New York society was, in those days, far too small, and too scant in its resources, for every one in it (including livery-stable-keepers, butlers and cooks) not to know exactly on which evenings people were free; and it was thus possible for the recipients of Mrs. Lovell Mingott's invitations to make cruelly clear their determination not to meet the Countess Olenska. The blow was unexpected; but the Mingotts, as their way was, met it gallantly. Mrs. Lovell Mingott confided the case to Mrs. Welland, who confided it to Newland Archer; who, aflame at the outrage, appealed passionately and authoritatively to his mother; who, after a painful period of inward resistance and outward temporising, succumbed to his instances (as she always did), and immediately embracing his cause with an energy redoubled by her previous hesitations, put on her grey velvet bonnet and said: "I'll go and see Louisa van der Luyden." The New York of Newland Archer's day was a small and slippery pyramid, in which, as yet, hardly a fissure had been made or a foothold gained. At its base was a firm foundation of what Mrs. Archer called "plain people"; an honourable but obscure majority of respectable families who (as in the case of the Spicers or the Leffertses or the Jacksons) had been raised above their level by marriage with one of the ruling clans. People, Mrs. Archer always said, were not as particular as they used to be; and with old Catherine Spicer ruling one end of Fifth Avenue, and Julius Beaufort the other, you couldn't expect the old traditions to last much longer. Firmly narrowing upward from this wealthy but inconspicuous substratum was the compact and dominant group which the Mingotts, Newlands, Chiverses and Mansons so actively represented. Most people imagined them to be the very apex of the pyramid; but they themselves (at least those of Mrs. Archer's generation) were aware that, in the eyes of the professional genealogist, only a still smaller number of families could lay claim to that eminence. "Don't tell me," Mrs. Archer would say to her children, "all this modern newspaper rubbish about a New York aristocracy. If there is one, neither the Mingotts nor the Mansons belong to it; no, nor the Newlands or the Chiverses either. Our grandfathers and great-grandfathers were just respectable English or Dutch merchants, who came to the colonies to make their fortune, and stayed here because they did so well. One of your great-grandfathers signed the Declaration, and another was a general on Washington's staff, and received General Burgoyne's sword after the battle of Saratoga. These are things to be proud of, but they have nothing to do with rank or class. New York has always been a commercial community, and there are not more than three families in it who can claim an aristocratic origin in the real sense of the word." Mrs. Archer and her son and daughter, like every one else in New York, knew who these privileged beings were: the Dagonets of Washington Square, who came of an old English county family allied with the Pitts and Foxes; the Lannings, who had intermarried with the descendants of Count de Grasse, and the van der Luydens, direct descendants of the first Dutch governor of Manhattan, and related by pre-revolutionary marriages to several members of the French and British aristocracy. The Lannings survived only in the person of two very old but lively Miss Lannings, who lived cheerfully and reminiscently among family portraits and Chippendale; the Dagonets were a considerable clan, allied to the best names in Baltimore and Philadelphia; but the van der Luydens, who stood above all of them, had faded into a kind of super-terrestrial twilight, from which only two figures impressively emerged; those of Mr. and Mrs. Henry van der Luyden. Mrs. Henry van der Luyden had been Louisa Dagonet, and her mother had been the granddaughter of Colonel du Lac, of an old Channel Island family, who had fought under Cornwallis and had settled in Maryland, after the war, with his bride, Lady Angelica Trevenna, fifth daughter of the Earl of St. Austrey. The tie between the Dagonets, the du Lacs of Maryland, and their aristocratic Cornish kinsfolk, the Trevennas, had always remained close and cordial. Mr. and Mrs. van der Luyden had more than once paid long visits to the present head of the house of Trevenna, the Duke of St. Austrey, at his country-seat in Cornwall and at St. Austrey in Gloucestershire; and his Grace had frequently announced his intention of some day returning their visit (without the Duchess, who feared the Atlantic). Mr. and Mrs. van der Luyden divided their time between Trevenna, their place in Maryland, and Skuytercliff, the great estate on the Hudson which had been one of the colonial grants of the Dutch government to the famous first Governor, and of which Mr. van der Luyden was still "Patroon." Their large solemn house in Madison Avenue was seldom opened, and when they came to town they received in it only their most intimate friends. "I wish you would go with me, Newland," his mother said, suddenly pausing at the door of the Brown coupe. "Louisa is fond of you; and of course it's on account of dear May that I'm taking this step--and also because, if we don't all stand together, there'll be no such thing as Society left."

After Mr. Sillerton Jackson leaves, Newland thinks over his marriage and finds himself comparing May, who is all virginal innocence, with Ellen and her troubled past. A few days later, the Lovell Mingotts send out a dinner invitation to a bunch of New York society notables, including the Selfridge Merrys, the Beauforts, Sillerton Jackson and his sister, the Lawrence Leffertses, the Reggie Chiverses, and essentially the entire Who's Who of New York. Forty-eight-hours later, everyone except the Beauforts and the Jacksons has RSVP'ed no. The Lovell Mingotts appeal to Mrs. Welland, who appeals to Newland, who then convinces his mother to intercede. Mrs. Archer decides to visit the van der Luydens --who are at the top of the social pyramid-- for their support.

BATHSHEBA TALKS WITH HER OUTRIDER The arrangement for getting back again to Weatherbury had been that Oak should take the place of Poorgrass in Bathsheba's conveyance and drive her home, it being discovered late in the afternoon that Joseph was suffering from his old complaint, a multiplying eye, and was, therefore, hardly trustworthy as coachman and protector to a woman. But Oak had found himself so occupied, and was full of so many cares relative to those portions of Boldwood's flocks that were not disposed of, that Bathsheba, without telling Oak or anybody, resolved to drive home herself, as she had many times done from Casterbridge Market, and trust to her good angel for performing the journey unmolested. But having fallen in with Farmer Boldwood accidentally (on her part at least) at the refreshment-tent, she found it impossible to refuse his offer to ride on horseback beside her as escort. It had grown twilight before she was aware, but Boldwood assured her that there was no cause for uneasiness, as the moon would be up in half-an-hour. Immediately after the incident in the tent, she had risen to go--now absolutely alarmed and really grateful for her old lover's protection--though regretting Gabriel's absence, whose company she would have much preferred, as being more proper as well as more pleasant, since he was her own managing-man and servant. This, however, could not be helped; she would not, on any consideration, treat Boldwood harshly, having once already ill-used him, and the moon having risen, and the gig being ready, she drove across the hilltop in the wending way's which led downwards--to oblivious obscurity, as it seemed, for the moon and the hill it flooded with light were in appearance on a level, the rest of the world lying as a vast shady concave between them. Boldwood mounted his horse, and followed in close attendance behind. Thus they descended into the lowlands, and the sounds of those left on the hill came like voices from the sky, and the lights were as those of a camp in heaven. They soon passed the merry stragglers in the immediate vicinity of the hill, traversed Kingsbere, and got upon the high road. The keen instincts of Bathsheba had perceived that the farmer's staunch devotion to herself was still undiminished, and she sympathized deeply. The sight had quite depressed her this evening; had reminded her of her folly; she wished anew, as she had wished many months ago, for some means of making reparation for her fault. Hence her pity for the man who so persistently loved on to his own injury and permanent gloom had betrayed Bathsheba into an injudicious considerateness of manner, which appeared almost like tenderness, and gave new vigour to the exquisite dream of a Jacob's seven years service in poor Boldwood's mind. He soon found an excuse for advancing from his position in the rear, and rode close by her side. They had gone two or three miles in the moonlight, speaking desultorily across the wheel of her gig concerning the fair, farming, Oak's usefulness to them both, and other indifferent subjects, when Boldwood said suddenly and simply-- "Mrs. Troy, you will marry again some day?" This point-blank query unmistakably confused her, and it was not till a minute or more had elapsed that she said, "I have not seriously thought of any such subject." "I quite understand that. Yet your late husband has been dead nearly one year, and--" "You forget that his death was never absolutely proved, and may not have taken place; so that I may not be really a widow," she said, catching at the straw of escape that the fact afforded. "Not absolutely proved, perhaps, but it was proved circumstantially. A man saw him drowning, too. No reasonable person has any doubt of his death; nor have you, ma'am, I should imagine." "I have none now, or I should have acted differently," she said, gently. "I certainly, at first, had a strange unaccountable feeling that he could not have perished, but I have been able to explain that in several ways since. But though I am fully persuaded that I shall see him no more, I am far from thinking of marriage with another. I should be very contemptible to indulge in such a thought." They were silent now awhile, and having struck into an unfrequented track across a common, the creaks of Boldwood's saddle and her gig springs were all the sounds to be heard. Boldwood ended the pause. "Do you remember when I carried you fainting in my arms into the King's Arms, in Casterbridge? Every dog has his day: that was mine." "I know--I know it all," she said, hurriedly. "I, for one, shall never cease regretting that events so fell out as to deny you to me." "I, too, am very sorry," she said, and then checked herself. "I mean, you know, I am sorry you thought I--" "I have always this dreary pleasure in thinking over those past times with you--that I was something to you before HE was anything, and that you belonged ALMOST to me. But, of course, that's nothing. You never liked me." "I did; and respected you, too." "Do you now?" "Yes." "Which?" "How do you mean which?" "Do you like me, or do you respect me?" "I don't know--at least, I cannot tell you. It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs. My treatment of you was thoughtless, inexcusable, wicked! I shall eternally regret it. If there had been anything I could have done to make amends I would most gladly have done it--there was nothing on earth I so longed to do as to repair the error. But that was not possible." "Don't blame yourself--you were not so far in the wrong as you suppose. Bathsheba, suppose you had real complete proof that you are what, in fact, you are--a widow--would you repair the old wrong to me by marrying me?" "I cannot say. I shouldn't yet, at any rate." "But you might at some future time of your life?" "Oh yes, I might at some time." "Well, then, do you know that without further proof of any kind you may marry again in about six years from the present--subject to nobody's objection or blame?" "Oh yes," she said, quickly. "I know all that. But don't talk of it--seven or six years--where may we all be by that time?" "They will soon glide by, and it will seem an astonishingly short time to look back upon when they are past--much less than to look forward to now." "Yes, yes; I have found that in my own experience." "Now listen once more," Boldwood pleaded. "If I wait that time, will you marry me? You own that you owe me amends--let that be your way of making them." "But, Mr. Boldwood--six years--" "Do you want to be the wife of any other man?" "No indeed! I mean, that I don't like to talk about this matter now. Perhaps it is not proper, and I ought not to allow it. Let us drop it. My husband may be living, as I said." "Of course, I'll drop the subject if you wish. But propriety has nothing to do with reasons. I am a middle-aged man, willing to protect you for the remainder of our lives. On your side, at least, there is no passion or blamable haste--on mine, perhaps, there is. But I can't help seeing that if you choose from a feeling of pity, and, as you say, a wish to make amends, to make a bargain with me for a far-ahead time--an agreement which will set all things right and make me happy, late though it may be--there is no fault to be found with you as a woman. Hadn't I the first place beside you? Haven't you been almost mine once already? Surely you can say to me as much as this, you will have me back again should circumstances permit? Now, pray speak! O Bathsheba, promise--it is only a little promise--that if you marry again, you will marry me!" His tone was so excited that she almost feared him at this moment, even whilst she sympathized. It was a simple physical fear--the weak of the strong; there was no emotional aversion or inner repugnance. She said, with some distress in her voice, for she remembered vividly his outburst on the Yalbury Road, and shrank from a repetition of his anger:-- "I will never marry another man whilst you wish me to be your wife, whatever comes--but to say more--you have taken me so by surprise--" "But let it stand in these simple words--that in six years' time you will be my wife? Unexpected accidents we'll not mention, because those, of course, must be given way to. Now, this time I know you will keep your word." "That's why I hesitate to give it." "But do give it! Remember the past, and be kind." She breathed; and then said mournfully: "Oh what shall I do? I don't love you, and I much fear that I never shall love you as much as a woman ought to love a husband. If you, sir, know that, and I can yet give you happiness by a mere promise to marry at the end of six years, if my husband should not come back, it is a great honour to me. And if you value such an act of friendship from a woman who doesn't esteem herself as she did, and has little love left, why I--I will--" "Promise!" "--Consider, if I cannot promise soon." "But soon is perhaps never?" "Oh no, it is not! I mean soon. Christmas, we'll say." "Christmas!" He said nothing further till he added: "Well, I'll say no more to you about it till that time." Bathsheba was in a very peculiar state of mind, which showed how entirely the soul is the slave of the body, the ethereal spirit dependent for its quality upon the tangible flesh and blood. It is hardly too much to say that she felt coerced by a force stronger than her own will, not only into the act of promising upon this singularly remote and vague matter, but into the emotion of fancying that she ought to promise. When the weeks intervening between the night of this conversation and Christmas day began perceptibly to diminish, her anxiety and perplexity increased. One day she was led by an accident into an oddly confidential dialogue with Gabriel about her difficulty. It afforded her a little relief--of a dull and cheerless kind. They were auditing accounts, and something occurred in the course of their labours which led Oak to say, speaking of Boldwood, "He'll never forget you, ma'am, never." Then out came her trouble before she was aware; and she told him how she had again got into the toils; what Boldwood had asked her, and how he was expecting her assent. "The most mournful reason of all for my agreeing to it," she said sadly, "and the true reason why I think to do so for good or for evil, is this--it is a thing I have not breathed to a living soul as yet--I believe that if I don't give my word, he'll go out of his mind." "Really, do ye?" said Gabriel, gravely. "I believe this," she continued, with reckless frankness; "and Heaven knows I say it in a spirit the very reverse of vain, for I am grieved and troubled to my soul about it--I believe I hold that man's future in my hand. His career depends entirely upon my treatment of him. O Gabriel, I tremble at my responsibility, for it is terrible!" "Well, I think this much, ma'am, as I told you years ago," said Oak, "that his life is a total blank whenever he isn't hoping for 'ee; but I can't suppose--I hope that nothing so dreadful hangs on to it as you fancy. His natural manner has always been dark and strange, you know. But since the case is so sad and odd-like, why don't ye give the conditional promise? I think I would." "But is it right? Some rash acts of my past life have taught me that a watched woman must have very much circumspection to retain only a very little credit, and I do want and long to be discreet in this! And six years--why we may all be in our graves by that time, even if Mr. Troy does not come back again, which he may not impossibly do! Such thoughts give a sort of absurdity to the scheme. Now, isn't it preposterous, Gabriel? However he came to dream of it, I cannot think. But is it wrong? You know--you are older than I." "Eight years older, ma'am." "Yes, eight years--and is it wrong?" "Perhaps it would be an uncommon agreement for a man and woman to make: I don't see anything really wrong about it," said Oak, slowly. "In fact the very thing that makes it doubtful if you ought to marry en under any condition, that is, your not caring about him--for I may suppose--" "Yes, you may suppose that love is wanting," she said shortly. "Love is an utterly bygone, sorry, worn-out, miserable thing with me--for him or any one else." "Well, your want of love seems to me the one thing that takes away harm from such an agreement with him. If wild heat had to do wi' it, making ye long to over-come the awkwardness about your husband's vanishing, it mid be wrong; but a cold-hearted agreement to oblige a man seems different, somehow. The real sin, ma'am in my mind, lies in thinking of ever wedding wi' a man you don't love honest and true." "That I'm willing to pay the penalty of," said Bathsheba, firmly. "You know, Gabriel, this is what I cannot get off my conscience--that I once seriously injured him in sheer idleness. If I had never played a trick upon him, he would never have wanted to marry me. Oh if I could only pay some heavy damages in money to him for the harm I did, and so get the sin off my soul that way!... Well, there's the debt, which can only be discharged in one way, and I believe I am bound to do it if it honestly lies in my power, without any consideration of my own future at all. When a rake gambles away his expectations, the fact that it is an inconvenient debt doesn't make him the less liable. I've been a rake, and the single point I ask you is, considering that my own scruples, and the fact that in the eye of the law my husband is only missing, will keep any man from marrying me until seven years have passed--am I free to entertain such an idea, even though 'tis a sort of penance--for it will be that? I HATE the act of marriage under such circumstances, and the class of women I should seem to belong to by doing it!" "It seems to me that all depends upon whe'r you think, as everybody else do, that your husband is dead." "Yes--I've long ceased to doubt that. I well know what would have brought him back long before this time if he had lived." "Well, then, in a religious sense you will be as free to THINK o' marrying again as any real widow of one year's standing. But why don't ye ask Mr. Thirdly's advice on how to treat Mr. Boldwood?" "No. When I want a broad-minded opinion for general enlightenment, distinct from special advice, I never go to a man who deals in the subject professionally. So I like the parson's opinion on law, the lawyer's on doctoring, the doctor's on business, and my business-man's--that is, yours--on morals." "And on love--" "My own." "I'm afraid there's a hitch in that argument," said Oak, with a grave smile. She did not reply at once, and then saying, "Good evening, Mr. Oak." went away. She had spoken frankly, and neither asked nor expected any reply from Gabriel more satisfactory than that she had obtained. Yet in the centremost parts of her complicated heart there existed at this minute a little pang of disappointment, for a reason she would not allow herself to recognize. Oak had not once wished her free that he might marry her himself--had not once said, "I could wait for you as well as he." That was the insect sting. Not that she would have listened to any such hypothesis. O no--for wasn't she saying all the time that such thoughts of the future were improper, and wasn't Gabriel far too poor a man to speak sentiment to her? Yet he might have just hinted about that old love of his, and asked, in a playful off-hand way, if he might speak of it. It would have seemed pretty and sweet, if no more; and then she would have shown how kind and inoffensive a woman's "No" can sometimes be. But to give such cool advice--the very advice she had asked for--it ruffled our heroine all the afternoon.

Because Poorgrass had suffered a recurrence of his "multiplying eye," Oak was to drive Bathsheba home. He was still involved in Boldwood's business, however, and so when Boldwood offered to escort Bathsheba, she accepted, still somewhat alarmed by the incident in the tent. Riding beside her, Boldwood renewed his proposal. He suggested that now there was no longer any reasonable doubt about Troy's death. Bathsheba objected: "From the first I have had a strange unaccountable feeling that he could not have perished." She did not want to remarry, but she did regret her treatment of Boldwood and wished she could make amends. Boldwood immediately asked her to repair the wrong by marrying him in six years, when Troy could legally be declared dead. When he persisted, she asked to delay her answer until Christmas. Later, Bathsheba told Oak that she was afraid that outright refusal would cause Boldwood to go mad. Oak advised a conditional promise. Suggesting that there was no guarantee that they would all be alive in six years, she deferred to Oak's judgment. "She had spoken frankly, and neither asked nor expected any reply from Gabriel more satisfactory than she had obtained. Yet in . . . her complicated heart there existed at this minute a little pang of disappointment. . . . He might have just hinted at that old love of his. . . . it ruffled our heroine all the afternoon."

On the fifth morning, or rather afternoon, a different step approached--lighter and shorter; and, this time, the person entered the room. It was Zillah; donned in her scarlet shawl, with a black silk bonnet on her head, and a willow-basket swung to her arm. 'Eh, dear! Mrs. Dean!' she exclaimed. 'Well! there is a talk about you at Gimmerton. I never thought but you were sunk in the Blackhorse marsh, and missy with you, till master told me you'd been found, and he'd lodged you here! What! and you must have got on an island, sure? And how long were you in the hole? Did master save you, Mrs. Dean? But you're not so thin--you've not been so poorly, have you?' 'Your master is a true scoundrel!' I replied. 'But he shall answer for it. He needn't have raised that tale: it shall all be laid bare!' 'What do you mean?' asked Zillah. 'It's not his tale: they tell that in the village--about your being lost in the marsh; and I calls to Earnshaw, when I come in--"Eh, they's queer things, Mr. Hareton, happened since I went off. It's a sad pity of that likely young lass, and cant Nelly Dean." He stared. I thought he had not heard aught, so I told him the rumour. The master listened, and he just smiled to himself, and said, "If they have been in the marsh, they are out now, Zillah. Nelly Dean is lodged, at this minute, in your room. You can tell her to flit, when you go up; here is the key. The bog-water got into her head, and she would have run home quite flighty; but I fixed her till she came round to her senses. You can bid her go to the Grange at once, if she be able, and carry a message from me, that her young lady will follow in time to attend the squire's funeral."' 'Mr. Edgar is not dead?' I gasped. 'Oh! Zillah, Zillah!' 'No, no; sit you down, my good mistress,' she replied; 'you're right sickly yet. He's not dead; Doctor Kenneth thinks he may last another day. I met him on the road and asked.' Instead of sitting down, I snatched my outdoor things, and hastened below, for the way was free. On entering the house, I looked about for some one to give information of Catherine. The place was filled with sunshine, and the door stood wide open; but nobody seemed at hand. As I hesitated whether to go off at once, or return and seek my mistress, a slight cough drew my attention to the hearth. Linton lay on the settle, sole tenant, sucking a stick of sugar-candy, and pursuing my movements with apathetic eyes. 'Where is Miss Catherine?' I demanded sternly, supposing I could frighten him into giving intelligence, by catching him thus, alone. He sucked on like an innocent. 'Is she gone?' I said. 'No,' he replied; 'she's upstairs: she's not to go; we won't let her.' 'You won't let her, little idiot!' I exclaimed. 'Direct me to her room immediately, or I'll make you sing out sharply.' 'Papa would make you sing out, if you attempted to get there,' he answered. 'He says I'm not to be soft with Catherine: she's my wife, and it's shameful that she should wish to leave me. He says she hates me and wants me to die, that she may have my money; but she shan't have it: and she shan't go home! She never shall!--she may cry, and be sick as much as she pleases!' He resumed his former occupation, closing his lids, as if he meant to drop asleep. 'Master Heathcliff,' I resumed, 'have you forgotten all Catherine's kindness to you last winter, when you affirmed you loved her, and when she brought you books and sung you songs, and came many a time through wind and snow to see you? She wept to miss one evening, because you would be disappointed; and you felt then that she was a hundred times too good to you: and now you believe the lies your father tells, though you know he detests you both. And you join him against her. That's fine gratitude, is it not?' The corner of Linton's mouth fell, and he took the sugar-candy from his lips. 'Did she come to Wuthering Heights because she hated you?' I continued. 'Think for yourself! As to your money, she does not even know that you will have any. And you say she's sick; and yet you leave her alone, up there in a strange house! You who have felt what it is to be so neglected! You could pity your own sufferings; and she pitied them, too; but you won't pity hers! I shed tears, Master Heathcliff, you see--an elderly woman, and a servant merely--and you, after pretending such affection, and having reason to worship her almost, store every tear you have for yourself, and lie there quite at ease. Ah! you're a heartless, selfish boy!' 'I can't stay with her,' he answered crossly. 'I'll not stay by myself. She cries so I can't bear it. And she won't give over, though I say I'll call my father. I did call him once, and he threatened to strangle her if she was not quiet; but she began again the instant he left the room, moaning and grieving all night long, though I screamed for vexation that I couldn't sleep.' 'Is Mr. Heathcliff out?' I inquired, perceiving that the wretched creature had no power to sympathize with his cousin's mental tortures. 'He's in the court,' he replied, 'talking to Doctor Kenneth; who says uncle is dying, truly, at last. I'm glad, for I shall be master of the Grange after him. Catherine always spoke of it as her house. It isn't hers! It's mine: papa says everything she has is mine. All her nice books are mine; she offered to give me them, and her pretty birds, and her pony Minny, if I would get the key of our room, and let her out; but I told her she had nothing to give, they were all, all mine. And then she cried, and took a little picture from her neck, and said I should have that; two pictures in a gold case, on one side her mother, and on the other uncle, when they were young. That was yesterday--I said they were mine, too; and tried to get them from her. The spiteful thing wouldn't let me: she pushed me off, and hurt me. I shrieked out--that frightens her--she heard papa coming, and she broke the hinges and divided the case, and gave me her mother's portrait; the other she attempted to hide: but papa asked what was the matter, and I explained it. He took the one I had away, and ordered her to resign hers to me; she refused, and he--he struck her down, and wrenched it off the chain, and crushed it with his foot.' 'And were you pleased to see her struck?' I asked: having my designs in encouraging his talk. 'I winked,' he answered: 'I wink to see my father strike a dog or a horse, he does it so hard. Yet I was glad at first--she deserved punishing for pushing me: but when papa was gone, she made me come to the window and showed me her cheek cut on the inside, against her teeth, and her mouth filling with blood; and then she gathered up the bits of the picture, and went and sat down with her face to the wall, and she has never spoken to me since: and I sometimes think she can't speak for pain. I don't like to think so; but she's a naughty thing for crying continually; and she looks so pale and wild, I'm afraid of her.' 'And you can get the key if you choose?' I said. 'Yes, when I am up-stairs,' he answered; 'but I can't walk up-stairs now.' 'In what apartment is it?' I asked. 'Oh,' he cried, 'I shan't tell _you_ where it is. It is our secret. Nobody, neither Hareton nor Zillah, is to know. There! you've tired me--go away, go away!' And he turned his face on to his arm, and shut his eyes again. I considered it best to depart without seeing Mr. Heathcliff, and bring a rescue for my young lady from the Grange. On reaching it, the astonishment of my fellow-servants to see me, and their joy also, was intense; and when they heard that their little mistress was safe, two or three were about to hurry up and shout the news at Mr. Edgar's door: but I bespoke the announcement of it myself. How changed I found him, even in those few days! He lay an image of sadness and resignation awaiting his death. Very young he looked: though his actual age was thirty-nine, one would have called him ten years younger, at least. He thought of Catherine; for he murmured her name. I touched his hand, and spoke. 'Catherine is coming, dear master!' I whispered; 'she is alive and well; and will be here, I hope, to-night.' I trembled at the first effects of this intelligence: he half rose up, looked eagerly round the apartment, and then sank back in a swoon. As soon as he recovered, I related our compulsory visit, and detention at the Heights. I said Heathcliff forced me to go in: which was not quite true. I uttered as little as possible against Linton; nor did I describe all his father's brutal conduct--my intentions being to add no bitterness, if I could help it, to his already over-flowing cup. He divined that one of his enemy's purposes was to secure the personal property, as well as the estate, to his son: or rather himself; yet why he did not wait till his decease was a puzzle to my master, because ignorant how nearly he and his nephew would quit the world together. However, he felt that his will had better be altered: instead of leaving Catherine's fortune at her own disposal, he determined to put it in the hands of trustees for her use during life, and for her children, if she had any, after her. By that means, it could not fall to Mr. Heathcliff should Linton die. Having received his orders, I despatched a man to fetch the attorney, and four more, provided with serviceable weapons, to demand my young lady of her jailor. Both parties were delayed very late. The single servant returned first. He said Mr. Green, the lawyer, was out when he arrived at his house, and he had to wait two hours for his re-entrance; and then Mr. Green told him he had a little business in the village that must be done; but he would be at Thrushcross Grange before morning. The four men came back unaccompanied also. They brought word that Catherine was ill: too ill to quit her room; and Heathcliff would not suffer them to see her. I scolded the stupid fellows well for listening to that tale, which I would not carry to my master; resolving to take a whole bevy up to the Heights, at day-light, and storm it literally, unless the prisoner were quietly surrendered to us. Her father _shall_ see her, I vowed, and vowed again, if that devil be killed on his own doorstones in trying to prevent it! Happily, I was spared the journey and the trouble. I had gone down-stairs at three o'clock to fetch a jug of water; and was passing through the hall with it in my hand, when a sharp knock at the front door made me jump. 'Oh! it is Green,' I said, recollecting myself--'only Green,' and I went on, intending to send somebody else to open it; but the knock was repeated: not loud, and still importunately. I put the jug on the banister and hastened to admit him myself. The harvest moon shone clear outside. It was not the attorney. My own sweet little mistress sprang on my neck sobbing, 'Ellen, Ellen! Is papa alive?' 'Yes,' I cried: 'yes, my angel, he is, God be thanked, you are safe with us again!' She wanted to run, breathless as she was, up-stairs to Mr. Linton's room; but I compelled her to sit down on a chair, and made her drink, and washed her pale face, chafing it into a faint colour with my apron. Then I said I must go first, and tell of her arrival; imploring her to say, she should be happy with young Heathcliff. She stared, but soon comprehending why I counselled her to utter the falsehood, she assured me she would not complain. I couldn't abide to be present at their meeting. I stood outside the chamber-door a quarter of an hour, and hardly ventured near the bed, then. All was composed, however: Catherine's despair was as silent as her father's joy. She supported him calmly, in appearance; and he fixed on her features his raised eyes that seemed dilating with ecstasy. He died blissfully, Mr. Lockwood: he died so. Kissing her cheek, he murmured,--'I am going to her; and you, darling child, shall come to us!' and never stirred or spoke again; but continued that rapt, radiant gaze, till his pulse imperceptibly stopped and his soul departed. None could have noticed the exact minute of his death, it was so entirely without a struggle. Whether Catherine had spent her tears, or whether the grief were too weighty to let them flow, she sat there dry-eyed till the sun rose: she sat till noon, and would still have remained brooding over that deathbed, but I insisted on her coming away and taking some repose. It was well I succeeded in removing her, for at dinner-time appeared the lawyer, having called at Wuthering Heights to get his instructions how to behave. He had sold himself to Mr. Heathcliff: that was the cause of his delay in obeying my master's summons. Fortunately, no thought of worldly affairs crossed the latter's mind, to disturb him, after his daughter's arrival. Mr. Green took upon himself to order everything and everybody about the place. He gave all the servants but me, notice to quit. He would have carried his delegated authority to the point of insisting that Edgar Linton should not be buried beside his wife, but in the chapel, with his family. There was the will, however, to hinder that, and my loud protestations against any infringement of its directions. The funeral was hurried over; Catherine, Mrs. Linton Heathcliff now, was suffered to stay at the Grange till her father's corpse had quitted it. She told me that her anguish had at last spurred Linton to incur the risk of liberating her. She heard the men I sent disputing at the door, and she gathered the sense of Heathcliff's answer. It drove her desperate. Linton who had been conveyed up to the little parlour soon after I left, was terrified into fetching the key before his father re-ascended. He had the cunning to unlock and re-lock the door, without shutting it; and when he should have gone to bed, he begged to sleep with Hareton, and his petition was granted for once. Catherine stole out before break of day. She dared not try the doors lest the dogs should raise an alarm; she visited the empty chambers and examined their windows; and, luckily, lighting on her mother's, she got easily out of its lattice, and on to the ground, by means of the fir-tree close by. Her accomplice suffered for his share in the escape, notwithstanding his timid contrivances.

At last, the housekeeper, Zillah, frees Nelly from her imprisonment, telling her that the villagers in Gimmerton have spread the news that both Nelly and Catherine have been lost in Blackhorse Marsh. Nelly searches through the house until she finds Linton, who tells her that Catherine is locked away in another room. The two are now husband and wife. Linton gloats over this development, claiming that all of Catherine's possessions are now his, as Edgar is dying quickly. Fearing discovery by Heathcliff, Nelly hurries back to Thrushcross Grange. Here, she tells the dying Edgar that Catherine is safe and will soon be home. She sends a group of men to Wuthering Heights to retrieve Catherine, but they fail in their task. Edgar plans to change his will, placing Catherine's inheritance in the hands of trustees and thus keeping it from Heathcliff. He summons Mr. Green, his lawyer, to the Grange. Nelly hears someone arriving and believes it to be Mr. Green, but it is Catherine. Thus Edgar sees his daughter once more before he dies, believing that his daughter is happily married to Linton, and knowing nothing about her desperate circumstances. Shortly after Edgar's death, Mr. Green arrives, and dismisses all of the servants except Nelly. He tries to have Edgar buried in the chapel, but Nelly insists that he obey Edgar's will, which states that he wishes to be buried in the churchyard next to his wife

"Harriet, poor Harriet!"--Those were the words; in them lay the tormenting ideas which Emma could not get rid of, and which constituted the real misery of the business to her. Frank Churchill had behaved very ill by herself--very ill in many ways,--but it was not so much _his_ behaviour as her _own_, which made her so angry with him. It was the scrape which he had drawn her into on Harriet's account, that gave the deepest hue to his offence.--Poor Harriet! to be a second time the dupe of her misconceptions and flattery. Mr. Knightley had spoken prophetically, when he once said, "Emma, you have been no friend to Harriet Smith."--She was afraid she had done her nothing but disservice.--It was true that she had not to charge herself, in this instance as in the former, with being the sole and original author of the mischief; with having suggested such feelings as might otherwise never have entered Harriet's imagination; for Harriet had acknowledged her admiration and preference of Frank Churchill before she had ever given her a hint on the subject; but she felt completely guilty of having encouraged what she might have repressed. She might have prevented the indulgence and increase of such sentiments. Her influence would have been enough. And now she was very conscious that she ought to have prevented them.--She felt that she had been risking her friend's happiness on most insufficient grounds. Common sense would have directed her to tell Harriet, that she must not allow herself to think of him, and that there were five hundred chances to one against his ever caring for her.--"But, with common sense," she added, "I am afraid I have had little to do." She was extremely angry with herself. If she could not have been angry with Frank Churchill too, it would have been dreadful.--As for Jane Fairfax, she might at least relieve her feelings from any present solicitude on her account. Harriet would be anxiety enough; she need no longer be unhappy about Jane, whose troubles and whose ill-health having, of course, the same origin, must be equally under cure.--Her days of insignificance and evil were over.--She would soon be well, and happy, and prosperous.--Emma could now imagine why her own attentions had been slighted. This discovery laid many smaller matters open. No doubt it had been from jealousy.--In Jane's eyes she had been a rival; and well might any thing she could offer of assistance or regard be repulsed. An airing in the Hartfield carriage would have been the rack, and arrowroot from the Hartfield storeroom must have been poison. She understood it all; and as far as her mind could disengage itself from the injustice and selfishness of angry feelings, she acknowledged that Jane Fairfax would have neither elevation nor happiness beyond her desert. But poor Harriet was such an engrossing charge! There was little sympathy to be spared for any body else. Emma was sadly fearful that this second disappointment would be more severe than the first. Considering the very superior claims of the object, it ought; and judging by its apparently stronger effect on Harriet's mind, producing reserve and self-command, it would.--She must communicate the painful truth, however, and as soon as possible. An injunction of secresy had been among Mr. Weston's parting words. "For the present, the whole affair was to be completely a secret. Mr. Churchill had made a point of it, as a token of respect to the wife he had so very recently lost; and every body admitted it to be no more than due decorum."--Emma had promised; but still Harriet must be excepted. It was her superior duty. In spite of her vexation, she could not help feeling it almost ridiculous, that she should have the very same distressing and delicate office to perform by Harriet, which Mrs. Weston had just gone through by herself. The intelligence, which had been so anxiously announced to her, she was now to be anxiously announcing to another. Her heart beat quick on hearing Harriet's footstep and voice; so, she supposed, had poor Mrs. Weston felt when _she_ was approaching Randalls. Could the event of the disclosure bear an equal resemblance!--But of that, unfortunately, there could be no chance. "Well, Miss Woodhouse!" cried Harriet, coming eagerly into the room--"is not this the oddest news that ever was?" "What news do you mean?" replied Emma, unable to guess, by look or voice, whether Harriet could indeed have received any hint. "About Jane Fairfax. Did you ever hear any thing so strange? Oh!--you need not be afraid of owning it to me, for Mr. Weston has told me himself. I met him just now. He told me it was to be a great secret; and, therefore, I should not think of mentioning it to any body but you, but he said you knew it." "What did Mr. Weston tell you?"--said Emma, still perplexed. "Oh! he told me all about it; that Jane Fairfax and Mr. Frank Churchill are to be married, and that they have been privately engaged to one another this long while. How very odd!" It was, indeed, so odd; Harriet's behaviour was so extremely odd, that Emma did not know how to understand it. Her character appeared absolutely changed. She seemed to propose shewing no agitation, or disappointment, or peculiar concern in the discovery. Emma looked at her, quite unable to speak. "Had you any idea," cried Harriet, "of his being in love with her?--You, perhaps, might.--You (blushing as she spoke) who can see into every body's heart; but nobody else--" "Upon my word," said Emma, "I begin to doubt my having any such talent. Can you seriously ask me, Harriet, whether I imagined him attached to another woman at the very time that I was--tacitly, if not openly--encouraging you to give way to your own feelings?--I never had the slightest suspicion, till within the last hour, of Mr. Frank Churchill's having the least regard for Jane Fairfax. You may be very sure that if I had, I should have cautioned you accordingly." "Me!" cried Harriet, colouring, and astonished. "Why should you caution me?--You do not think I care about Mr. Frank Churchill." "I am delighted to hear you speak so stoutly on the subject," replied Emma, smiling; "but you do not mean to deny that there was a time--and not very distant either--when you gave me reason to understand that you did care about him?" "Him!--never, never. Dear Miss Woodhouse, how could you so mistake me?" turning away distressed. "Harriet!" cried Emma, after a moment's pause--"What do you mean?--Good Heaven! what do you mean?--Mistake you!--Am I to suppose then?--" She could not speak another word.--Her voice was lost; and she sat down, waiting in great terror till Harriet should answer. Harriet, who was standing at some distance, and with face turned from her, did not immediately say any thing; and when she did speak, it was in a voice nearly as agitated as Emma's. "I should not have thought it possible," she began, "that you could have misunderstood me! I know we agreed never to name him--but considering how infinitely superior he is to every body else, I should not have thought it possible that I could be supposed to mean any other person. Mr. Frank Churchill, indeed! I do not know who would ever look at him in the company of the other. I hope I have a better taste than to think of Mr. Frank Churchill, who is like nobody by his side. And that you should have been so mistaken, is amazing!--I am sure, but for believing that you entirely approved and meant to encourage me in my attachment, I should have considered it at first too great a presumption almost, to dare to think of him. At first, if you had not told me that more wonderful things had happened; that there had been matches of greater disparity (those were your very words);--I should not have dared to give way to--I should not have thought it possible--But if _you_, who had been always acquainted with him--" "Harriet!" cried Emma, collecting herself resolutely--"Let us understand each other now, without the possibility of farther mistake. Are you speaking of--Mr. Knightley?" "To be sure I am. I never could have an idea of any body else--and so I thought you knew. When we talked about him, it was as clear as possible." "Not quite," returned Emma, with forced calmness, "for all that you then said, appeared to me to relate to a different person. I could almost assert that you had _named_ Mr. Frank Churchill. I am sure the service Mr. Frank Churchill had rendered you, in protecting you from the gipsies, was spoken of." "Oh! Miss Woodhouse, how you do forget!" "My dear Harriet, I perfectly remember the substance of what I said on the occasion. I told you that I did not wonder at your attachment; that considering the service he had rendered you, it was extremely natural:--and you agreed to it, expressing yourself very warmly as to your sense of that service, and mentioning even what your sensations had been in seeing him come forward to your rescue.--The impression of it is strong on my memory." "Oh, dear," cried Harriet, "now I recollect what you mean; but I was thinking of something very different at the time. It was not the gipsies--it was not Mr. Frank Churchill that I meant. No! (with some elevation) I was thinking of a much more precious circumstance--of Mr. Knightley's coming and asking me to dance, when Mr. Elton would not stand up with me; and when there was no other partner in the room. That was the kind action; that was the noble benevolence and generosity; that was the service which made me begin to feel how superior he was to every other being upon earth." "Good God!" cried Emma, "this has been a most unfortunate--most deplorable mistake!--What is to be done?" "You would not have encouraged me, then, if you had understood me? At least, however, I cannot be worse off than I should have been, if the other had been the person; and now--it _is_ possible--" She paused a few moments. Emma could not speak. "I do not wonder, Miss Woodhouse," she resumed, "that you should feel a great difference between the two, as to me or as to any body. You must think one five hundred million times more above me than the other. But I hope, Miss Woodhouse, that supposing--that if--strange as it may appear--. But you know they were your own words, that _more_ wonderful things had happened, matches of _greater_ disparity had taken place than between Mr. Frank Churchill and me; and, therefore, it seems as if such a thing even as this, may have occurred before--and if I should be so fortunate, beyond expression, as to--if Mr. Knightley should really--if _he_ does not mind the disparity, I hope, dear Miss Woodhouse, you will not set yourself against it, and try to put difficulties in the way. But you are too good for that, I am sure." Harriet was standing at one of the windows. Emma turned round to look at her in consternation, and hastily said, "Have you any idea of Mr. Knightley's returning your affection?" "Yes," replied Harriet modestly, but not fearfully--"I must say that I have." Emma's eyes were instantly withdrawn; and she sat silently meditating, in a fixed attitude, for a few minutes. A few minutes were sufficient for making her acquainted with her own heart. A mind like hers, once opening to suspicion, made rapid progress. She touched--she admitted--she acknowledged the whole truth. Why was it so much worse that Harriet should be in love with Mr. Knightley, than with Frank Churchill? Why was the evil so dreadfully increased by Harriet's having some hope of a return? It darted through her, with the speed of an arrow, that Mr. Knightley must marry no one but herself! Her own conduct, as well as her own heart, was before her in the same few minutes. She saw it all with a clearness which had never blessed her before. How improperly had she been acting by Harriet! How inconsiderate, how indelicate, how irrational, how unfeeling had been her conduct! What blindness, what madness, had led her on! It struck her with dreadful force, and she was ready to give it every bad name in the world. Some portion of respect for herself, however, in spite of all these demerits--some concern for her own appearance, and a strong sense of justice by Harriet--(there would be no need of _compassion_ to the girl who believed herself loved by Mr. Knightley--but justice required that she should not be made unhappy by any coldness now,) gave Emma the resolution to sit and endure farther with calmness, with even apparent kindness.--For her own advantage indeed, it was fit that the utmost extent of Harriet's hopes should be enquired into; and Harriet had done nothing to forfeit the regard and interest which had been so voluntarily formed and maintained--or to deserve to be slighted by the person, whose counsels had never led her right.--Rousing from reflection, therefore, and subduing her emotion, she turned to Harriet again, and, in a more inviting accent, renewed the conversation; for as to the subject which had first introduced it, the wonderful story of Jane Fairfax, that was quite sunk and lost.--Neither of them thought but of Mr. Knightley and themselves. Harriet, who had been standing in no unhappy reverie, was yet very glad to be called from it, by the now encouraging manner of such a judge, and such a friend as Miss Woodhouse, and only wanted invitation, to give the history of her hopes with great, though trembling delight.--Emma's tremblings as she asked, and as she listened, were better concealed than Harriet's, but they were not less. Her voice was not unsteady; but her mind was in all the perturbation that such a development of self, such a burst of threatening evil, such a confusion of sudden and perplexing emotions, must create.--She listened with much inward suffering, but with great outward patience, to Harriet's detail.--Methodical, or well arranged, or very well delivered, it could not be expected to be; but it contained, when separated from all the feebleness and tautology of the narration, a substance to sink her spirit--especially with the corroborating circumstances, which her own memory brought in favour of Mr. Knightley's most improved opinion of Harriet. Harriet had been conscious of a difference in his behaviour ever since those two decisive dances.--Emma knew that he had, on that occasion, found her much superior to his expectation. From that evening, or at least from the time of Miss Woodhouse's encouraging her to think of him, Harriet had begun to be sensible of his talking to her much more than he had been used to do, and of his having indeed quite a different manner towards her; a manner of kindness and sweetness!--Latterly she had been more and more aware of it. When they had been all walking together, he had so often come and walked by her, and talked so very delightfully!--He seemed to want to be acquainted with her. Emma knew it to have been very much the case. She had often observed the change, to almost the same extent.--Harriet repeated expressions of approbation and praise from him--and Emma felt them to be in the closest agreement with what she had known of his opinion of Harriet. He praised her for being without art or affectation, for having simple, honest, generous, feelings.--She knew that he saw such recommendations in Harriet; he had dwelt on them to her more than once.--Much that lived in Harriet's memory, many little particulars of the notice she had received from him, a look, a speech, a removal from one chair to another, a compliment implied, a preference inferred, had been unnoticed, because unsuspected, by Emma. Circumstances that might swell to half an hour's relation, and contained multiplied proofs to her who had seen them, had passed undiscerned by her who now heard them; but the two latest occurrences to be mentioned, the two of strongest promise to Harriet, were not without some degree of witness from Emma herself.--The first, was his walking with her apart from the others, in the lime-walk at Donwell, where they had been walking some time before Emma came, and he had taken pains (as she was convinced) to draw her from the rest to himself--and at first, he had talked to her in a more particular way than he had ever done before, in a very particular way indeed!--(Harriet could not recall it without a blush.) He seemed to be almost asking her, whether her affections were engaged.--But as soon as she (Miss Woodhouse) appeared likely to join them, he changed the subject, and began talking about farming:--The second, was his having sat talking with her nearly half an hour before Emma came back from her visit, the very last morning of his being at Hartfield--though, when he first came in, he had said that he could not stay five minutes--and his having told her, during their conversation, that though he must go to London, it was very much against his inclination that he left home at all, which was much more (as Emma felt) than he had acknowledged to _her_. The superior degree of confidence towards Harriet, which this one article marked, gave her severe pain. On the subject of the first of the two circumstances, she did, after a little reflection, venture the following question. "Might he not?--Is not it possible, that when enquiring, as you thought, into the state of your affections, he might be alluding to Mr. Martin--he might have Mr. Martin's interest in view? But Harriet rejected the suspicion with spirit. "Mr. Martin! No indeed!--There was not a hint of Mr. Martin. I hope I know better now, than to care for Mr. Martin, or to be suspected of it." When Harriet had closed her evidence, she appealed to her dear Miss Woodhouse, to say whether she had not good ground for hope. "I never should have presumed to think of it at first," said she, "but for you. You told me to observe him carefully, and let his behaviour be the rule of mine--and so I have. But now I seem to feel that I may deserve him; and that if he does chuse me, it will not be any thing so very wonderful." The bitter feelings occasioned by this speech, the many bitter feelings, made the utmost exertion necessary on Emma's side, to enable her to say on reply, "Harriet, I will only venture to declare, that Mr. Knightley is the last man in the world, who would intentionally give any woman the idea of his feeling for her more than he really does." Harriet seemed ready to worship her friend for a sentence so satisfactory; and Emma was only saved from raptures and fondness, which at that moment would have been dreadful penance, by the sound of her father's footsteps. He was coming through the hall. Harriet was too much agitated to encounter him. "She could not compose herself-- Mr. Woodhouse would be alarmed--she had better go;"--with most ready encouragement from her friend, therefore, she passed off through another door--and the moment she was gone, this was the spontaneous burst of Emma's feelings: "Oh God! that I had never seen her!" The rest of the day, the following night, were hardly enough for her thoughts.--She was bewildered amidst the confusion of all that had rushed on her within the last few hours. Every moment had brought a fresh surprize; and every surprize must be matter of humiliation to her.--How to understand it all! How to understand the deceptions she had been thus practising on herself, and living under!--The blunders, the blindness of her own head and heart!--she sat still, she walked about, she tried her own room, she tried the shrubbery--in every place, every posture, she perceived that she had acted most weakly; that she had been imposed on by others in a most mortifying degree; that she had been imposing on herself in a degree yet more mortifying; that she was wretched, and should probably find this day but the beginning of wretchedness. To understand, thoroughly understand her own heart, was the first endeavour. To that point went every leisure moment which her father's claims on her allowed, and every moment of involuntary absence of mind. How long had Mr. Knightley been so dear to her, as every feeling declared him now to be? When had his influence, such influence begun?-- When had he succeeded to that place in her affection, which Frank Churchill had once, for a short period, occupied?--She looked back; she compared the two--compared them, as they had always stood in her estimation, from the time of the latter's becoming known to her--and as they must at any time have been compared by her, had it--oh! had it, by any blessed felicity, occurred to her, to institute the comparison.--She saw that there never had been a time when she did not consider Mr. Knightley as infinitely the superior, or when his regard for her had not been infinitely the most dear. She saw, that in persuading herself, in fancying, in acting to the contrary, she had been entirely under a delusion, totally ignorant of her own heart--and, in short, that she had never really cared for Frank Churchill at all! This was the conclusion of the first series of reflection. This was the knowledge of herself, on the first question of inquiry, which she reached; and without being long in reaching it.--She was most sorrowfully indignant; ashamed of every sensation but the one revealed to her--her affection for Mr. Knightley.--Every other part of her mind was disgusting. With insufferable vanity had she believed herself in the secret of every body's feelings; with unpardonable arrogance proposed to arrange every body's destiny. She was proved to have been universally mistaken; and she had not quite done nothing--for she had done mischief. She had brought evil on Harriet, on herself, and she too much feared, on Mr. Knightley.--Were this most unequal of all connexions to take place, on her must rest all the reproach of having given it a beginning; for his attachment, she must believe to be produced only by a consciousness of Harriet's;--and even were this not the case, he would never have known Harriet at all but for her folly. Mr. Knightley and Harriet Smith!--It was a union to distance every wonder of the kind.--The attachment of Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax became commonplace, threadbare, stale in the comparison, exciting no surprize, presenting no disparity, affording nothing to be said or thought.--Mr. Knightley and Harriet Smith!--Such an elevation on her side! Such a debasement on his! It was horrible to Emma to think how it must sink him in the general opinion, to foresee the smiles, the sneers, the merriment it would prompt at his expense; the mortification and disdain of his brother, the thousand inconveniences to himself.--Could it be?--No; it was impossible. And yet it was far, very far, from impossible.--Was it a new circumstance for a man of first-rate abilities to be captivated by very inferior powers? Was it new for one, perhaps too busy to seek, to be the prize of a girl who would seek him?--Was it new for any thing in this world to be unequal, inconsistent, incongruous--or for chance and circumstance (as second causes) to direct the human fate? Oh! had she never brought Harriet forward! Had she left her where she ought, and where he had told her she ought!--Had she not, with a folly which no tongue could express, prevented her marrying the unexceptionable young man who would have made her happy and respectable in the line of life to which she ought to belong--all would have been safe; none of this dreadful sequel would have been. How Harriet could ever have had the presumption to raise her thoughts to Mr. Knightley!--How she could dare to fancy herself the chosen of such a man till actually assured of it!--But Harriet was less humble, had fewer scruples than formerly.--Her inferiority, whether of mind or situation, seemed little felt.--She had seemed more sensible of Mr. Elton's being to stoop in marrying her, than she now seemed of Mr. Knightley's.--Alas! was not that her own doing too? Who had been at pains to give Harriet notions of self-consequence but herself?--Who but herself had taught her, that she was to elevate herself if possible, and that her claims were great to a high worldly establishment?--If Harriet, from being humble, were grown vain, it was her doing too.

Immediately concerned about Harriet - who's about to be snubbed for the second time - Emma hurries home. As she walks, she thinks about all the things that she could have done differently had she known about the engagement. For one thing, she might have liked Jane much more. And she wouldn't have made fun of her with Frank. It now occurs to her that all of her attempts to befriend Jane when she was ill were probably arrows into Jane's heart. Just think about how badly Frank ignored her at Box Hill - and how much he flirted with Emma! Emma regrets that Mr. Weston swore her to secrecy about the engagement. Surprisingly, Emma meets Harriet at the gate of Hartfield - and Harriet has already heard all about the engagement. She met Mr. Weston on the road. Apparently Mr. Weston has a pretty broad definition of the word "secret." Harriet relates the news to Emma with apparent joy. She's not even a little bit upset. Emma's totally confused. Wasn't Harriet madly in love with Frank? How can she be so calm about the utter failure of her plans - again? Emma asks Harriet why she's not upset. Harriet is confused . She explains to Emma that the man she loves - the man she agreed never to name - is so totally completely better than Frank that she never even thought about Frank. Not for a second. Emma feels the ground drop from under her. Could Harriet mean Mr. Knightley? Yup. As it turns out, Harriet loves Mr. Knightley. And, to make matters worse, she thinks that Emma supports her love. What about the fact that Frank rescued Harriet from the gypsies? We're so glad you asked. In fact, Emma asks the same question. As it turns out, the "rescue" Harriet was thinking about was when Mr. Knightley asked her to dance. Mortal terror versus social awkwardness? It's an easy call. It's ALWAYS worse to be left alone at a dance! Emma suddenly can't hear Harriet talking - her mind is moving too fast. In a flash, Emma realizes that Harriet can't love Mr. Knightley. SHE loves him! There are a few moments of dramatic self-revelation. It's pretty amazing, actually. Emma slowly realizes that there's another problem: what if Mr. Knightley loves Harriet? Harriet explains why she thinks Mr. Knightley might like her. As Emma listens, her heart sinks. Maybe Mr. Knightley does like Harriet. Emma shudders at the thought. Harriet totally doesn't deserve him. Then again, it wouldn't be the first time that an amazing man married a stupid woman. Confused, Emma tells Harriet to leave. Left alone with her thoughts, Emma realizes that she's always loved Mr. Knightley. She finally recognizes that it was pretty vain to assume that she could understand everyone else's loves - when, really, she had no idea what her own feelings were!

Miss Bart's telegram caught Lawrence Selden at the door of his hotel; and having read it, he turned back to wait for Dorset. The message necessarily left large gaps for conjecture; but all that he had recently heard and seen made these but too easy to fill in. On the whole he was surprised; for though he had perceived that the situation contained all the elements of an explosion, he had often enough, in the range of his personal experience, seen just such combinations subside into harmlessness. Still, Dorset's spasmodic temper, and his wife's reckless disregard of appearances, gave the situation a peculiar insecurity; and it was less from the sense of any special relation to the case than from a purely professional zeal, that Selden resolved to guide the pair to safety. Whether, in the present instance, safety for either lay in repairing so damaged a tie, it was no business of his to consider: he had only, on general principles, to think of averting a scandal, and his desire to avert it was increased by his fear of its involving Miss Bart. There was nothing specific in this apprehension; he merely wished to spare her the embarrassment of being ever so remotely connected with the public washing of the Dorset linen. How exhaustive and unpleasant such a process would be, he saw even more vividly after his two hours' talk with poor Dorset. If anything came out at all, it would be such a vast unpacking of accumulated moral rags as left him, after his visitor had gone, with the feeling that he must fling open the windows and have his room swept out. But nothing should come out; and happily for his side of the case, the dirty rags, however pieced together, could not, without considerable difficulty, be turned into a homogeneous grievance. The torn edges did not always fit--there were missing bits, there were disparities of size and colour, all of which it was naturally Selden's business to make the most of in putting them under his client's eye. But to a man in Dorset's mood the completest demonstration could not carry conviction, and Selden saw that for the moment all he could do was to soothe and temporize, to offer sympathy and to counsel prudence. He let Dorset depart charged to the brim with the sense that, till their next meeting, he must maintain a strictly noncommittal attitude; that, in short, his share in the game consisted for the present in looking on. Selden knew, however, that he could not long keep such violences in equilibrium; and he promised to meet Dorset, the next morning, at an hotel in Monte Carlo. Meanwhile he counted not a little on the reaction of weakness and self-distrust that, in such natures, follows on every unwonted expenditure of moral force; and his telegraphic reply to Miss Bart consisted simply in the injunction: "Assume that everything is as usual." On this assumption, in fact, the early part of the following day was lived through. Dorset, as if in obedience to Lily's imperative bidding, had actually returned in time for a late dinner on the yacht. The repast had been the most difficult moment of the day. Dorset was sunk in one of the abysmal silences which so commonly followed on what his wife called his "attacks" that it was easy, before the servants, to refer it to this cause; but Bertha herself seemed, perversely enough, little disposed to make use of this obvious means of protection. She simply left the brunt of the situation on her husband's hands, as if too absorbed in a grievance of her own to suspect that she might be the object of one herself. To Lily this attitude was the most ominous, because the most perplexing, element in the situation. As she tried to fan the weak flicker of talk, to build up, again and again, the crumbling structure of "appearances," her own attention was perpetually distracted by the question: "What on earth can she be driving at?" There was something positively exasperating in Bertha's attitude of isolated defiance. If only she would have given her friend a hint they might still have worked together successfully; but how could Lily be of use, while she was thus obstinately shut out from participation? To be of use was what she honestly wanted; and not for her own sake but for the Dorsets'. She had not thought of her own situation at all: she was simply engrossed in trying to put a little order in theirs. But the close of the short dreary evening left her with a sense of effort hopelessly wasted. She had not tried to see Dorset alone: she had positively shrunk from a renewal of his confidences. It was Bertha whose confidence she sought, and who should as eagerly have invited her own; and Bertha, as if in the infatuation of self-destruction, was actually pushing away her rescuing hand. Lily, going to bed early, had left the couple to themselves; and it seemed part of the general mystery in which she moved that more than an hour should elapse before she heard Bertha walk down the silent passage and regain her room. The morrow, rising on an apparent continuance of the same conditions, revealed nothing of what had occurred between the confronted pair. One fact alone outwardly proclaimed the change they were all conspiring to ignore; and that was the non-appearance of Ned Silverton. No one referred to it, and this tacit avoidance of the subject kept it in the immediate foreground of consciousness. But there was another change, perceptible only to Lily; and that was that Dorset now avoided her almost as pointedly as his wife. Perhaps he was repenting his rash outpourings of the previous day; perhaps only trying, in his clumsy way, to conform to Selden's counsel to behave "as usual." Such instructions no more make for easiness of attitude than the photographer's behest to "look natural"; and in a creature as unconscious as poor Dorset of the appearance he habitually presented, the struggle to maintain a pose was sure to result in queer contortions. It resulted, at any rate, in throwing Lily strangely on her own resources. She had learned, on leaving her room, that Mrs. Dorset was still invisible, and that Dorset had left the yacht early; and feeling too restless to remain alone, she too had herself ferried ashore. Straying toward the Casino, she attached herself to a group of acquaintances from Nice, with whom she lunched, and in whose company she was returning to the rooms when she encountered Selden crossing the square. She could not, at the moment, separate herself definitely from her party, who had hospitably assumed that she would remain with them till they took their departure; but she found time for a momentary pause of enquiry, to which he promptly returned: "I've seen him again--he's just left me." She waited before him anxiously. "Well? what has happened? What WILL happen?" "Nothing as yet--and nothing in the future, I think." "It's over, then? It's settled? You're sure?" He smiled. "Give me time. I'm not sure--but I'm a good deal surer." And with that she had to content herself, and hasten on to the expectant group on the steps. Selden had in fact given her the utmost measure of his sureness, had even stretched it a shade to meet the anxiety in her eyes. And now, as he turned away, strolling down the hill toward the station, that anxiety remained with him as the visible justification of his own. It was not, indeed, anything specific that he feared: there had been a literal truth in his declaration that he did not think anything would happen. What troubled him was that, though Dorset's attitude had perceptibly changed, the change was not clearly to be accounted for. It had certainly not been produced by Selden's arguments, or by the action of his own soberer reason. Five minutes' talk sufficed to show that some alien influence had been at work, and that it had not so much subdued his resentment as weakened his will, so that he moved under it in a state of apathy, like a dangerous lunatic who has been drugged. Temporarily, no doubt, however exerted, it worked for the general safety: the question was how long it would last, and by what kind of reaction it was likely to be followed. On these points Selden could gain no light; for he saw that one effect of the transformation had been to shut him off from free communion with Dorset. The latter, indeed, was still moved by the irresistible desire to discuss his wrong; but, though he revolved about it with the same forlorn tenacity, Selden was aware that something always restrained him from full expression. His state was one to produce first weariness and then impatience in his hearer; and when their talk was over, Selden began to feel that he had done his utmost, and might justifiably wash his hands of the sequel. It was in this mind that he had been making his way back to the station when Miss Bart crossed his path; but though, after his brief word with her, he kept mechanically on his course, he was conscious of a gradual change in his purpose. The change had been produced by the look in her eyes; and in his eagerness to define the nature of that look, he dropped into a seat in the gardens, and sat brooding upon the question. It was natural enough, in all conscience, that she should appear anxious: a young woman placed, in the close intimacy of a yachting-cruise, between a couple on the verge of disaster, could hardly, aside from her concern for her friends, be insensible to the awkwardness of her own position. The worst of it was that, in interpreting Miss Bart's state of mind, so many alternative readings were possible; and one of these, in Selden's troubled mind, took the ugly form suggested by Mrs. Fisher. If the girl was afraid, was she afraid for herself or for her friends? And to what degree was her dread of a catastrophe intensified by the sense of being fatally involved in it? The burden of offence lying manifestly with Mrs. Dorset, this conjecture seemed on the face of it gratuitously unkind; but Selden knew that in the most one-sided matrimonial quarrel there are generally counter-charges to be brought, and that they are brought with the greater audacity where the original grievance is so emphatic. Mrs. Fisher had not hesitated to suggest the likelihood of Dorset's marrying Miss Bart if "anything happened"; and though Mrs. Fisher's conclusions were notoriously rash, she was shrewd enough in reading the signs from which they were drawn. Dorset had apparently shown marked interest in the girl, and this interest might be used to cruel advantage in his wife's struggle for rehabilitation. Selden knew that Bertha would fight to the last round of powder: the rashness of her conduct was illogically combined with a cold determination to escape its consequences. She could be as unscrupulous in fighting for herself as she was reckless in courting danger, and whatever came to her hand at such moments was likely to be used as a defensive missile. He did not, as yet, see clearly just what course she was likely to take, but his perplexity increased his apprehension, and with it the sense that, before leaving, he must speak again with Miss Bart. Whatever her share in the situation--and he had always honestly tried to resist judging her by her surroundings--however free she might be from any personal connection with it, she would be better out of the way of a possible crash; and since she had appealed to him for help, it was clearly his business to tell her so. This decision at last brought him to his feet, and carried him back to the gambling rooms, within whose doors he had seen her disappearing; but a prolonged exploration of the crowd failed to put him on her traces. He saw instead, to his surprise, Ned Silverton loitering somewhat ostentatiously about the tables; and the discovery that this actor in the drama was not only hovering in the wings, but actually inviting the exposure of the footlights, though it might have seemed to imply that all peril was over, served rather to deepen Selden's sense of foreboding. Charged with this impression he returned to the square, hoping to see Miss Bart move across it, as every one in Monte Carlo seemed inevitably to do at least a dozen times a day; but here again he waited vainly for a glimpse of her, and the conclusion was slowly forced on him that she had gone back to the Sabrina. It would be difficult to follow her there, and still more difficult, should he do so, to contrive the opportunity for a private word; and he had almost decided on the unsatisfactory alternative of writing, when the ceaseless diorama of the square suddenly unrolled before him the figures of Lord Hubert and Mrs. Bry. Hailing them at once with his question, he learned from Lord Hubert that Miss Bart had just returned to the Sabrina in Dorset's company; an announcement so evidently disconcerting to him that Mrs. Bry, after a glance from her companion, which seemed to act like the pressure on a spring, brought forth the prompt proposal that he should come and meet his friends at dinner that evening--"At Becassin's--a little dinner to the Duchess," she flashed out before Lord Hubert had time to remove the pressure. Selden's sense of the privilege of being included in such company brought him early in the evening to the door of the restaurant, where he paused to scan the ranks of diners approaching down the brightly lit terrace. There, while the Brys hovered within over the last agitating alternatives of the MENU, he kept watch for the guests from the Sabrina, who at length rose on the horizon in company with the Duchess, Lord and Lady Skiddaw and the Stepneys. From this group it was easy for him to detach Miss Bart on the pretext of a moment's glance into one of the brilliant shops along the terrace, and to say to her, while they lingered together in the white dazzle of a jeweller's window: "I stopped over to see you--to beg of you to leave the yacht." The eyes she turned on him showed a quick gleam of her former fear. "To leave--? What do you mean? What has happened?" "Nothing. But if anything should, why be in the way of it?" The glare from the jeweller's window, deepening the pallour of her face, gave to its delicate lines the sharpness of a tragic mask. "Nothing will, I am sure; but while there's even a doubt left, how can you think I would leave Bertha?" The words rang out on a note of contempt--was it possibly of contempt for himself? Well, he was willing to risk its renewal to the extent of insisting, with an undeniable throb of added interest: "You have yourself to think of, you know--" to which, with a strange fall of sadness in her voice, she answered, meeting his eyes: "If you knew how little difference that makes!" "Oh, well, nothing WILL happen," he said, more for his own reassurance than for hers; and "Nothing, nothing, of course!" she valiantly assented, as they turned to overtake their companions. In the thronged restaurant, taking their places about Mrs. Bry's illuminated board, their confidence seemed to gain support from the familiarity of their surroundings. Here were Dorset and his wife once more presenting their customary faces to the world, she engrossed in establishing her relation with an intensely new gown, he shrinking with dyspeptic dread from the multiplied solicitations of the MENU. The mere fact that they thus showed themselves together, with the utmost openness the place afforded, seemed to declare beyond a doubt that their differences were composed. How this end had been attained was still matter for wonder, but it was clear that for the moment Miss Bart rested confidently in the result; and Selden tried to achieve the same view by telling himself that her opportunities for observation had been ampler than his own. Meanwhile, as the dinner advanced through a labyrinth of courses, in which it became clear that Mrs. Bry had occasionally broken away from Lord Hubert's restraining hand, Selden's general watchfulness began to lose itself in a particular study of Miss Bart. It was one of the days when she was so handsome that to be handsome was enough, and all the rest--her grace, her quickness, her social felicities--seemed the overflow of a bounteous nature. But what especially struck him was the way in which she detached herself, by a hundred undefinable shades, from the persons who most abounded in her own style. It was in just such company, the fine flower and complete expression of the state she aspired to, that the differences came out with special poignancy, her grace cheapening the other women's smartness as her finely-discriminated silences made their chatter dull. The strain of the last hours had restored to her face the deeper eloquence which Selden had lately missed in it, and the bravery of her words to him still fluttered in her voice and eyes. Yes, she was matchless--it was the one word for her; and he could give his admiration the freer play because so little personal feeling remained in it. His real detachment from her had taken place, not at the lurid moment of disenchantment, but now, in the sober after-light of discrimination, where he saw her definitely divided from him by the crudeness of a choice which seemed to deny the very differences he felt in her. It was before him again in its completeness--the choice in which she was content to rest: in the stupid costliness of the food and the showy dulness of the talk, in the freedom of speech which never arrived at wit and the freedom of act which never made for romance. The strident setting of the restaurant, in which their table seemed set apart in a special glare of publicity, and the presence at it of little Dabham of the "Riviera Notes," emphasized the ideals of a world where conspicuousness passed for distinction, and the society column had become the roll of fame. It was as the immortalizer of such occasions that little Dabham, wedged in modest watchfulness between two brilliant neighbours, suddenly became the centre of Selden's scrutiny. How much did he know of what was going on, and how much, for his purpose, was still worth finding out? His little eyes were like tentacles thrown out to catch the floating intimations with which, to Selden, the air at moments seemed thick; then again it cleared to its normal emptiness, and he could see nothing in it for the journalist but leisure to note the elegance of the ladies' gowns. Mrs. Dorset's, in particular, challenged all the wealth of Mr. Dabham's vocabulary: it had surprises and subtleties worthy of what he would have called "the literary style." At first, as Selden had noticed, it had been almost too preoccupying to its wearer; but now she was in full command of it, and was even producing her effects with unwonted freedom. Was she not, indeed, too free, too fluent, for perfect naturalness? And was not Dorset, to whom his glance had passed by a natural transition, too jerkily wavering between the same extremes? Dorset indeed was always jerky; but it seemed to Selden that tonight each vibration swung him farther from his centre. The dinner, meanwhile, was moving to its triumphant close, to the evident satisfaction of Mrs. Bry, who, throned in apoplectic majesty between Lord Skiddaw and Lord Hubert, seemed in spirit to be calling on Mrs. Fisher to witness her achievement. Short of Mrs. Fisher her audience might have been called complete; for the restaurant was crowded with persons mainly gathered there for the purpose of spectatorship, and accurately posted as to the names and faces of the celebrities they had come to see. Mrs. Bry, conscious that all her feminine guests came under that heading, and that each one looked her part to admiration, shone on Lily with all the pent-up gratitude that Mrs. Fisher had failed to deserve. Selden, catching the glance, wondered what part Miss Bart had played in organizing the entertainment. She did, at least, a great deal to adorn it; and as he watched the bright security with which she bore herself, he smiled to think that he should have fancied her in need of help. Never had she appeared more serenely mistress of the situation than when, at the moment of dispersal, detaching herself a little from the group about the table, she turned with a smile and a graceful slant of the shoulders to receive her cloak from Dorset. The dinner had been protracted over Mr. Bry's exceptional cigars and a bewildering array of liqueurs, and many of the other tables were empty; but a sufficient number of diners still lingered to give relief to the leave-taking of Mrs. Bry's distinguished guests. This ceremony was drawn out and complicated by the fact that it involved, on the part of the Duchess and Lady Skiddaw, definite farewells, and pledges of speedy reunion in Paris, where they were to pause and replenish their wardrobes on the way to England. The quality of Mrs. Bry's hospitality, and of the tips her husband had presumably imparted, lent to the manner of the English ladies a general effusiveness which shed the rosiest light over their hostess's future. In its glow Mrs. Dorset and the Stepneys were also visibly included, and the whole scene had touches of intimacy worth their weight in gold to the watchful pen of Mr. Dabham. A glance at her watch caused the Duchess to exclaim to her sister that they had just time to dash for their train, and the flurry of this departure over, the Stepneys, who had their motor at the door, offered to convey the Dorsets and Miss Bart to the quay. The offer was accepted, and Mrs. Dorset moved away with her husband in attendance. Miss Bart had lingered for a last word with Lord Hubert, and Stepney, on whom Mr. Bry was pressing a final, and still more expensive, cigar, called out: "Come on, Lily, if you're going back to the yacht." Lily turned to obey; but as she did so, Mrs. Dorset, who had paused on her way out, moved a few steps back toward the table. "Miss Bart is not going back to the yacht," she said in a voice of singular distinctness. A startled look ran from eye to eye; Mrs. Bry crimsoned to the verge of congestion, Mrs. Stepney slipped nervously behind her husband, and Selden, in the general turmoil of his sensations, was mainly conscious of a longing to grip Dabham by the collar and fling him out into the street. Dorset, meanwhile, had stepped back to his wife's side. His face was white, and he looked about him with cowed angry eyes. "Bertha!--Miss Bart . . . this is some misunderstanding . . . some mistake . . ." "Miss Bart remains here," his wife rejoined incisively. "And, I think, George, we had better not detain Mrs. Stepney any longer." Miss Bart, during this brief exchange of words, remained in admirable erectness, slightly isolated from the embarrassed group about her. She had paled a little under the shock of the insult, but the discomposure of the surrounding faces was not reflected in her own. The faint disdain of her smile seemed to lift her high above her antagonist's reach, and it was not till she had given Mrs. Dorset the full measure of the distance between them that she turned and extended her hand to her hostess. "I am joining the Duchess tomorrow," she explained, "and it seemed easier for me to remain on shore for the night." She held firmly to Mrs. Bry's wavering eye while she gave this explanation, but when it was over Selden saw her send a tentative glance from one to another of the women's faces. She read their incredulity in their averted looks, and in the mute wretchedness of the men behind them, and for a miserable half-second he thought she quivered on the brink of failure. Then, turning to him with an easy gesture, and the pale bravery of her recovered smile--"Dear Mr. Selden," she said, "you promised to see me to my cab." Outside, the sky was gusty and overcast, and as Lily and Selden moved toward the deserted gardens below the restaurant, spurts of warm rain blew fitfully against their faces. The fiction of the cab had been tacitly abandoned; they walked on in silence, her hand on his arm, till the deeper shade of the gardens received them, and pausing beside a bench, he said: "Sit down a moment." She dropped to the seat without answering, but the electric lamp at the bend of the path shed a gleam on the struggling misery of her face. Selden sat down beside her, waiting for her to speak, fearful lest any word he chose should touch too roughly on her wound, and kept also from free utterance by the wretched doubt which had slowly renewed itself within him. What had brought her to this pass? What weakness had placed her so abominably at her enemy's mercy? And why should Bertha Dorset have turned into an enemy at the very moment when she so obviously needed the support of her sex? Even while his nerves raged at the subjection of husbands to their wives, and at the cruelty of women to their kind, reason obstinately harped on the proverbial relation between smoke and fire. The memory of Mrs. Fisher's hints, and the corroboration of his own impressions, while they deepened his pity also increased his constraint, since, whichever way he sought a free outlet for sympathy, it was blocked by the fear of committing a blunder. Suddenly it struck him that his silence must seem almost as accusatory as that of the men he had despised for turning from her; but before he could find the fitting word she had cut him short with a question. "Do you know of a quiet hotel? I can send for my maid in the morning." "An hotel--HERE--that you can go to alone? It's not possible." She met this with a pale gleam of her old playfulness. "What IS, then? It's too wet to sleep in the gardens." "But there must be some one----" "Some one to whom I can go? Of course--any number--but at THIS hour? You see my change of plan was rather sudden----" "Good God--if you'd listened to me!" he cried, venting his helplessness in a burst of anger. She still held him off with the gentle mockery of her smile. "But haven't I?" she rejoined. "You advised me to leave the yacht, and I'm leaving it." He saw then, with a pang of self-reproach, that she meant neither to explain nor to defend herself; that by his miserable silence he had forfeited all chance of helping her, and that the decisive hour was past. She had risen, and stood before him in a kind of clouded majesty, like some deposed princess moving tranquilly to exile. "Lily!" he exclaimed, with a note of despairing appeal; but--"Oh, not now," she gently admonished him; and then, in all the sweetness of her recovered composure: "Since I must find shelter somewhere, and since you're so kindly here to help me----" He gathered himself up at the challenge. "You will do as I tell you? There's but one thing, then; you must go straight to your cousins, the Stepneys." "Oh--" broke from her with a movement of instinctive resistance; but he insisted: "Come--it's late, and you must appear to have gone there directly." He had drawn her hand into his arm, but she held him back with a last gesture of protest. "I can't--I can't--not that--you don't know Gwen: you mustn't ask me!" "I MUST ask you--you must obey me," he persisted, though infected at heart by her own fear. Her voice sank to a whisper: "And if she refuses?"--but, "Oh, trust me--trust me!" he could only insist in return; and yielding to his touch, she let him lead her back in silence to the edge of the square. In the cab they continued to remain silent through the brief drive which carried them to the illuminated portals of the Stepneys' hotel. Here he left her outside, in the darkness of the raised hood, while his name was sent up to Stepney, and he paced the showy hall, awaiting the latter's descent. Ten minutes later the two men passed out together between the gold-laced custodians of the threshold; but in the vestibule Stepney drew up with a last flare of reluctance. "It's understood, then?" he stipulated nervously, with his hand on Selden's arm. "She leaves tomorrow by the early train--and my wife's asleep, and can't be disturbed."

Selden receives a telegram from Lily asking for help in this Dorset mess. He wishes to help avert a scandal, and especially doesn't want Lily involved in "the public washing of the Dorset linen." He meets with Dorset and tells him to appear non-committal to one course of action or the other when in public. Then, he sends a telegram back to Lily telling her to "assume that everything is as usual." Everyone does. Lily finds it absurd that Bertha acts so defiantly toward her, when in fact Lily is the one who can help her smooth out the situation. She feels as though Bertha is "pushing away her rescuing hand." She also notes that Ned Silverton is absent from their company. When Lily bumps into Selden, he tells her not to worry, as he thinks that he's calmed George down. The truth is, Selden has noted a change in Dorset's attitude, but he doesn't credit himself for effecting the change. He's not sure why Dorset is suddenly placated, but the unknown source of this shift in attitude makes Selden nervous. Selden also feels bad for Lily. He knows that this whole scenario is undeniably Bertha's fault, but he also knows that when blame lies so clearly with one party, that party is likely to try and blame someone else. He also remembers Carry Fisher telling him that George Dorset would definitely marry Lily if his marriage to Bertha fell apart. He runs into Lord Hubert and Mrs. Bry, who invites him to join them, the Dorsets, Lily, and the Duchess for dinner ashore. He does. At dinner, the Stepneys and Lord and Lady Skiddaw are also present. In other words, everyone who matters is at this dinner. Before the meal, Selden takes Lily aside and begs her to leave the Dorsets and their yacht. He doesn't want her involved in the mess that's unfolding between George and Bertha. Lily thinks he's being absurd and insists that nothing will happen. Besides, she still feels loyal to Bertha for providing so well for her. Over dinner, Selden has the opportunity to observe Lily at length. He muses on her beauty, but also her charm and grace, and decides that she is "matchless" among these other women. He admires her, but there is little "personal feeling" left in his observation. In other words... he's over her. Selden also notices the gossip columnist, Dabham. Selden wonders how much he knows about the Dorset mess. Dinner draws to a close and George rises to get Lily's coat so that they can all go back to the yacht. Then, Bertha says, loudly enough so that everyone can hear, "Miss Bart is not going back to the yacht." George tries to insist that this is some sort of mistake, but Bertha simply repeats herself. Lily, trying to make a good show of it, explains to everyone that she has some business to attend to early in the morning and it is easier for her to remain ashore. We're pretty sure no one buys it. The party breaks up and Selden escorts Lily outside. She asks him if he knows anywhere where she can spend the night without running the risk of a scandal. Selden says she should go to the Stepneys - Jack and Gwen. Lily begs him to come up with something else, but Selden insists it's the only option. Selden meets with Jack and discusses the matter with him privately. Jack agrees to let Lily spend the night on the conditions that she is gone early in the morning and that his wife not know about it.

THE day after Commencement I moved my books and desk upstairs, to an empty room where I should be undisturbed, and I fell to studying in earnest. I worked off a year's trigonometry that summer, and began Virgil alone. Morning after morning I used to pace up and down my sunny little room, looking off at the distant river bluffs and the roll of the blond pastures between, scanning the AEneid aloud and committing long passages to memory. Sometimes in the evening Mrs. Harling called to me as I passed her gate, and asked me to come in and let her play for me. She was lonely for Charley, she said, and liked to have a boy about. Whenever my grandparents had misgivings, and began to wonder whether I was not too young to go off to college alone, Mrs. Harling took up my cause vigorously. Grandfather had such respect for her judgment that I knew he would not go against her. I had only one holiday that summer. It was in July. I met Antonia downtown on Saturday afternoon, and learned that she and Tiny and Lena were going to the river next day with Anna Hansen--the elder was all in bloom now, and Anna wanted to make elder-blow wine. "Anna's to drive us down in the Marshalls' delivery wagon, and we'll take a nice lunch and have a picnic. Just us; nobody else. Could n't you happen along, Jim? It would be like old times." I considered a moment. "Maybe I can, if I won't be in the way." On Sunday morning I rose early and got out of Black Hawk while the dew was still heavy on the long meadow grasses. It was the high season for summer flowers. The pink bee-bush stood tall along the sandy roadsides, and the cone-flowers and rose mallow grew everywhere. Across the wire fence, in the long grass, I saw a clump of flaming orange-colored milkweed, rare in that part of the State. I left the road and went around through a stretch of pasture that was always cropped short in summer, where the gaillardia came up year after year and matted over the ground with the deep, velvety red that is in Bokhara carpets. The country was empty and solitary except for the larks that Sunday morning, and it seemed to lift itself up to me and to come very close. The river was running strong for midsummer; heavy rains to the west of us had kept it full. I crossed the bridge and went upstream along the wooded shore to a pleasant dressing-room I knew among the dogwood bushes, all overgrown with wild grapevines. I began to undress for a swim. The girls would not be along yet. For the first time it occurred to me that I would be homesick for that river after I left it. The sandbars, with their clean white beaches and their little groves of willows and cottonwood seedlings, were a sort of No Man's Land, little newly-created worlds that belonged to the Black Hawk boys. Charley Harling and I had hunted through these woods, fished from the fallen logs, until I knew every inch of the river shores and had a friendly feeling for every bar and shallow. After my swim, while I was playing about indolently in the water, I heard the sound of hoofs and wheels on the bridge. I struck downstream and shouted, as the open spring wagon came into view on the middle span. They stopped the horse, and the two girls in the bottom of the cart stood up, steadying themselves by the shoulders of the two in front, so that they could see me better. They were charming up there, huddled together in the cart and peering down at me like curious deer when they come out of the thicket to drink. I found bottom near the bridge and stood up, waving to them. "How pretty you look!" I called. "So do you!" they shouted altogether, and broke into peals of laughter. Anna Hansen shook the reins and they drove on, while I zigzagged back to my inlet and clambered up behind an overhanging elm. I dried myself in the sun, and dressed slowly, reluctant to leave that green enclosure where the sunlight flickered so bright through the grapevine leaves and the woodpecker hammered away in the crooked elm that trailed out over the water. As I went along the road back to the bridge I kept picking off little pieces of scaly chalk from the dried water gullies, and breaking them up in my hands. When I came upon the Marshalls' delivery horse, tied in the shade, the girls had already taken their baskets and gone down the east road which wound through the sand and scrub. I could hear them calling to each other. The elder bushes did not grow back in the shady ravines between the bluffs, but in the hot, sandy bottoms along the stream, where their roots were always in moisture and their tops in the sun. The blossoms were unusually luxuriant and beautiful that summer. I followed a cattle path through the thick underbrush until I came to a slope that fell away abruptly to the water's edge. A great chunk of the shore had been bitten out by some spring freshet, and the scar was masked by elder bushes, growing down to the water in flowery terraces. I did not touch them. I was overcome by content and drowsiness and by the warm silence about me. There was no sound but the high, sing-song buzz of wild bees and the sunny gurgle of the water underneath. I peeped over the edge of the bank to see the little stream that made the noise; it flowed along perfectly clear over the sand and gravel, cut off from the muddy main current by a long sandbar. Down there, on the lower shelf of the bank, I saw Antonia, seated alone under the pagoda-like elders. She looked up when she heard me, and smiled, but I saw that she had been crying. I slid down into the soft sand beside her and asked her what was the matter. "It makes me homesick, Jimmy, this flower, this smell," she said softly. "We have this flower very much at home, in the old country. It always grew in our yard and my papa had a green bench and a table under the bushes. In summer, when they were in bloom, he used to sit there with his friend that played the trombone. When I was little I used to go down there to hear them talk--beautiful talk, like what I never hear in this country." "What did they talk about?" I asked her. She sighed and shook her head. "Oh, I don't know! About music, and the woods, and about God, and when they were young." She turned to me suddenly and looked into my eyes. "You think, Jimmy, that maybe my father's spirit can go back to those old places?" I told her about the feeling of her father's presence I had on that winter day when my grandparents had gone over to see his dead body and I was left alone in the house. I said I felt sure then that he was on his way back to his own country, and that even now, when I passed his grave, I always thought of him as being among the woods and fields that were so dear to him. Antonia had the most trusting, responsive eyes in the world; love and credulousness seemed to look out of them with open faces. "Why did n't you ever tell me that before? It makes me feel more sure for him." After a while she said: "You know, Jim, my father was different from my mother. He did not have to marry my mother, and all his brothers quarreled with him because he did. I used to hear the old people at home whisper about it. They said he could have paid my mother money, and not married her. But he was older than she was, and he was too kind to treat her like that. He lived in his mother's house, and she was a poor girl come in to do the work. After my father married her, my grandmother never let my mother come into her house again. When I went to my grandmother's funeral was the only time I was ever in my grandmother's house. Don't that seem strange?" While she talked, I lay back in the hot sand and looked up at the blue sky between the flat bouquets of elder. I could hear the bees humming and singing, but they stayed up in the sun above the flowers and did not come down into the shadow of the leaves. Antonia seemed to me that day exactly like the little girl who used to come to our house with Mr. Shimerda. "Some day, Tony, I am going over to your country, and I am going to the little town where you lived. Do you remember all about it?" "Jim," she said earnestly, "if I was put down there in the middle of the night, I could find my way all over that little town; and along the river to the next town, where my grandmother lived. My feet remember all the little paths through the woods, and where the big roots stick out to trip you. I ain't never forgot my own country." There was a crackling in the branches above us, and Lena Lingard peered down over the edge of the bank. "You lazy things!" she cried. "All this elder, and you two lying there! Did n't you hear us calling you?" Almost as flushed as she had been in my dream, she leaned over the edge of the bank and began to demolish our flowery pagoda. I had never seen her so energetic; she was panting with zeal, and the perspiration stood in drops on her short, yielding upper lip. I sprang to my feet and ran up the bank. It was noon now, and so hot that the dogwoods and scrub-oaks began to turn up the silvery under-side of their leaves, and all the foliage looked soft and wilted. I carried the lunch-basket to the top of one of the chalk bluffs, where even on the calmest days there was always a breeze. The flat-topped, twisted little oaks threw light shadows on the grass. Below us we could see the windings of the river, and Black Hawk, grouped among its trees, and, beyond, the rolling country, swelling gently until it met the sky. We could recognize familiar farmhouses and windmills. Each of the girls pointed out to me the direction in which her father's farm lay, and told me how many acres were in wheat that year and how many in corn. "My old folks," said Tiny Soderball, "have put in twenty acres of rye. They get it ground at the mill, and it makes nice bread. It seems like my mother ain't been so homesick, ever since father's raised rye flour for her." "It must have been a trial for our mothers," said Lena, "coming out here and having to do everything different. My mother had always lived in town. She says she started behind in farm-work, and never has caught up." "Yes, a new country's hard on the old ones, sometimes," said Anna thoughtfully. "My grandmother's getting feeble now, and her mind wanders. She's forgot about this country, and thinks she's at home in Norway. She keeps asking mother to take her down to the waterside and the fish market. She craves fish all the time. Whenever I go home I take her canned salmon and mackerel." "Mercy, it's hot!" Lena yawned. She was supine under a little oak, resting after the fury of her elder-hunting, and had taken off the high-heeled slippers she had been silly enough to wear. "Come here, Jim. You never got the sand out of your hair." She began to draw her fingers slowly through my hair. Antonia pushed her away. "You'll never get it out like that," she said sharply. She gave my head a rough touzling and finished me off with something like a box on the ear. "Lena, you ought n't to try to wear those slippers any more. They're too small for your feet. You'd better give them to me for Yulka." "All right," said Lena good-naturedly, tucking her white stockings under her skirt. "You get all Yulka's things, don't you? I wish father did n't have such bad luck with his farm machinery; then I could buy more things for my sisters. I'm going to get Mary a new coat this fall, if the sulky plough's never paid for!" Tiny asked her why she did n't wait until after Christmas, when coats would be cheaper. "What do you think of poor me?" she added; "with six at home, younger than I am? And they all think I'm rich, because when I go back to the country I'm dressed so fine!" She shrugged her shoulders. "But, you know, my weakness is playthings. I like to buy them playthings better than what they need." "I know how that is," said Anna. "When we first came here, and I was little, we were too poor to buy toys. I never got over the loss of a doll somebody gave me before we left Norway. A boy on the boat broke her, and I still hate him for it." "I guess after you got here you had plenty of live dolls to nurse, like me!" Lena remarked cynically. "Yes, the babies came along pretty fast, to be sure. But I never minded. I was fond of them all. The youngest one, that we did n't any of us want, is the one we love best now." Lena sighed. "Oh, the babies are all right; if only they don't come in winter. Ours nearly always did. I don't see how mother stood it. I tell you what girls," she sat up with sudden energy; "I'm going to get my mother out of that old sod house where she's lived so many years. The men will never do it. Johnnie, that's my oldest brother, he's wanting to get married now, and build a house for his girl instead of his mother. Mrs. Thomas says she thinks I can move to some other town pretty soon, and go into business for myself. If I don't get into business, I'll maybe marry a rich gambler." "That would be a poor way to get on," said Anna sarcastically. "I wish I could teach school, like Selma Kronn. Just think! She'll be the first Scandinavian girl to get a position in the High School. We ought to be proud of her." Selma was a studious girl, who had not much tolerance for giddy things like Tiny and Lena; but they always spoke of her with admiration. Tiny moved about restlessly, fanning herself with her straw hat. "If I was smart like her, I'd be at my books day and night. But she was born smart--and look how her father's trained her! He was something high up in the old country." "So was my mother's father," murmured Lena, "but that's all the good it does us! My father's father was smart, too, but he was wild. He married a Lapp. I guess that's what's the matter with me; they say Lapp blood will out." "A real Lapp, Lena?" I exclaimed. "The kind that wear skins?" "I don't know if she wore skins, but she was a Lapp all right, and his folks felt dreadful about it. He was sent up north on some Government job he had, and fell in with her. He would marry her." "But I thought Lapland women were fat and ugly, and had squint eyes, like Chinese?" I objected. "I don't know, maybe. There must be something mighty taking about the Lapp girls, though; mother says the Norwegians up north are always afraid their boys will run after them." In the afternoon, when the heat was less oppressive, we had a lively game of "Pussy Wants a Corner," on the flat bluff-top, with the little trees for bases. Lena was Pussy so often that she finally said she would n't play any more. We threw ourselves down on the grass, out of breath. "Jim," Antonia said dreamily, "I want you to tell the girls about how the Spanish first came here, like you and Charley Harling used to talk about. I've tried to tell them, but I leave out so much." They sat under a little oak, Tony resting against the trunk and the other girls leaning against her and each other, and listened to the little I was able to tell them about Coronado and his search for the Seven Golden Cities. At school we were taught that he had not got so far north as Nebraska, but had given up his quest and turned back somewhere in Kansas. But Charley Harling and I had a strong belief that he had been along this very river. A farmer in the county north of ours, when he was breaking sod, had turned up a metal stirrup of fine workmanship, and a sword with a Spanish inscription on the blade. He lent these relics to Mr. Harling, who brought them home with him. Charley and I scoured them, and they were on exhibition in the Harling office all summer. Father Kelly, the priest, had found the name of the Spanish maker on the sword, and an abbreviation that stood for the city of Cordova. "And that I saw with my own eyes," Antonia put in triumphantly. "So Jim and Charley were right, and the teachers were wrong!" The girls began to wonder among themselves. Why had the Spaniards come so far? What must this country have been like, then? Why had Coronado never gone back to Spain, to his riches and his castles and his king? I could n't tell them. I only knew the school books said he "died in the wilderness, of a broken heart." "More than him has done that," said Antonia sadly, and the girls murmured assent. We sat looking off across the country, watching the sun go down. The curly grass about us was on fire now. The bark of the oaks turned red as copper. There was a shimmer of gold on the brown river. Out in the stream the sandbars glittered like glass, and the light trembled in the willow thickets as if little flames were leaping among them. The breeze sank to stillness. In the ravine a ringdove mourned plaintively, and somewhere off in the bushes an owl hooted. The girls sat listless, leaning against each other. The long fingers of the sun touched their foreheads. Presently we saw a curious thing: There were no clouds, the sun was going down in a limpid, gold-washed sky. Just as the lower edge of the red disc rested on the high fields against the horizon, a great black figure suddenly appeared on the face of the sun. We sprang to our feet, straining our eyes toward it. In a moment we realized what it was. On some upland farm, a plough had been left standing in the field. The sun was sinking just behind it. Magnified across the distance by the horizontal light, it stood out against the sun, was exactly contained within the circle of the disc; the handles, the tongue, the share--black against the molten red. There it was, heroic in size, a picture writing on the sun. Even while we whispered about it, our vision disappeared; the ball dropped and dropped until the red tip went beneath the earth. The fields below us were dark, the sky was growing pale, and that forgotten plough had sunk back to its own littleness somewhere on the prairie.

After Commencement Jim begins studying Latin seriously for college. Only once during the summer does he take a break to go pick elders with the hired girls. Arriving at the river first and going swimming, he realizes he's going to miss Black Hawk and the country. The girls arrive when he's still in the water, and he gradually makes his way over to where they are. He comes up on Antonia by herself and finds her crying because a certain type of flower is making her homesick. When she asks whether he thinks her father is back in the old country, Jim tells her how he felt her father's spirit in the house the day he died, and Antonia feels better. She tells him how her father honorably married her mother, who was a servant, when she got pregnant and how her father's family never forgave the two of them. Jim is happy because Antonia seems exactly the same as she did when he first met her and he tells her he will one day visit her homeland. Lena appears, looking like she does in Jim's sexual dreams, and he leaps up to help her pick elders. In the hot afternoon, they all sit around and talk. Antonia becomes irritated when Lena behaves flirtatiously towards Jim. The girls discuss how it is difficult for older adults to make the transition to a new country and how difficult it is to be the oldest child when more babies keep arriving. They play a game called "Pussy Wants a Corner," and then Jim tells them about how Coronado the Spanish explorer came as far West as Black Hawk. As they sit in silence, the clouds disappear, and all of a sudden, they see a distant black figure on the horizon. Jumping up to see what it is, they realize that someone had left a plow standing in the field, and it looks molten red and glowing against the backdrop of the sun. The image only lasts for a moment as the sun continues to set.

Actus Secundus. Scena Prima. Enter a Carrier with a Lanterne in his hand. 1.Car. Heigh-ho, an't be not foure by the day, Ile be hang'd. Charles waine is ouer the new Chimney, and yet our horse not packt. What Ostler? Ost. Anon, anon 1.Car. I prethee Tom, beate Cuts Saddle, put a few Flockes in the point: the poore Iade is wrung in the withers, out of all cesse. Enter another Carrier. 2.Car. Pease and Beanes are as danke here as a Dog, and this is the next way to giue poore Iades the Bottes: This house is turned vpside downe since Robin the Ostler dyed 1.Car. Poore fellow neuer ioy'd since the price of oats rose, it was the death of him 2.Car. I thinke this is the most villanous house in al London rode for Fleas: I am stung like a Tench 1.Car. Like a Tench? There is ne're a King in Christendome, could be better bit, then I haue beene since the first Cocke 2.Car. Why, you will allow vs ne're a Iourden, and then we leake in your Chimney: and your Chamber-lye breeds Fleas like a Loach 1.Car. What Ostler, come away, and be hangd: come away 2.Car. I haue a Gammon of Bacon, and two razes of Ginger, to be deliuered as farre as Charing-crosse 1.Car. The Turkies in my Pannier are quite starued. What Ostler? A plague on thee, hast thou neuer an eye in thy head? Can'st not heare? And t'were not as good a deed as drinke, to break the pate of thee, I am a very Villaine. Come and be hang'd, hast no faith in thee? Enter Gads-hill. Gad. Good-morrow Carriers. What's a clocke? Car. I thinke it be two a clocke Gad. I prethee lend me thy Lanthorne to see my Gelding in the stable 1.Car. Nay soft I pray ye, I know a trick worth two of that Gad. I prethee lend me thine 2.Car. I, when, canst tell? Lend mee thy Lanthorne (quoth-a) marry Ile see thee hang'd first Gad. Sirra Carrier: What time do you mean to come to London? 2.Car. Time enough to goe to bed with a Candle, I warrant thee. Come neighbour Mugges, wee'll call vp the Gentlemen, they will along with company, for they haue great charge. Exeunt. Enter Chamberlaine. Gad. What ho, Chamberlaine? Cham. At hand quoth Pick-purse Gad. That's euen as faire, as at hand quoth the Chamberlaine: For thou variest no more from picking of Purses, then giuing direction, doth from labouring. Thou lay'st the plot, how Cham. Good morrow Master Gads-Hill, it holds currant that I told you yesternight. There's a Franklin in the wilde of Kent, hath brought three hundred Markes with him in Gold: I heard him tell it to one of his company last night at Supper; a kinde of Auditor, one that hath abundance of charge too (God knowes what) they are vp already, and call for Egges and Butter. They will away presently Gad. Sirra, if they meete not with S[aint]. Nicholas Clarks, Ile giue thee this necke Cham. No, Ile none of it: I prythee keep that for the Hangman, for I know thou worshipst S[aint]. Nicholas as truly as a man of falshood may Gad. What talkest thou to me of the Hangman? If I hang, Ile make a fat payre of Gallowes. For, if I hang, old Sir Iohn hangs with mee, and thou know'st hee's no Starueling. Tut, there are other Troians that y dream'st not of, the which (for sport sake) are content to doe the Profession some grace; that would (if matters should bee look'd into) for their owne Credit sake, make all Whole. I am ioyned with no Foot-land-Rakers, No Long-staffe six-penny strikers, none of these mad Mustachio-purple-hu'd-Maltwormes, but with Nobility, and Tranquilitie; Bourgomasters, and great Oneyers, such as can holde in, such as will strike sooner then speake; and speake sooner then drinke, and drinke sooner then pray: and yet I lye, for they pray continually vnto their Saint the Commonwealth; or rather, not to pray to her, but prey on her: for they ride vp & downe on her, and make hir their Boots Cham. What, the Commonwealth their Bootes? Will she hold out water in foule way? Gad. She will, she will; Iustice hath liquor'd her. We steale as in a Castle, cocksure: we haue the receit of Fernseede, we walke inuisible Cham. Nay, I thinke rather, you are more beholding to the Night, then to the Fernseed, for your walking inuisible Gad. Giue me thy hand. Thou shalt haue a share in our purpose, As I am a true man Cham. Nay, rather let mee haue it, as you are a false Theefe Gad. Goe too: Homo is a common name to all men. Bid the Ostler bring the Gelding out of the stable. Farewell, ye muddy Knaue. Exeunt.

At dawn in the yard of a roadside inn near Gads Hill, two Carriers pack up their horses and gear in preparation for a little road trip, Elizabethan style. The Carriers chit-chat about the usual kinds of things that concern sixteenth-century delivery men - the good-for-nothin' stable boy who can't seem to keep the horses' food dry, the flea problem at London inns, what to do when a motel doesn't offer a toilet , and so on. The Carriers also discuss the goods and supplies they're transporting . Gadshill , Falstaff's thieving buddy, enters and asks the Carriers to loan him a lantern so he can check on his horsey, it being so dark and all during the pre-dawn hours. "No way," say the Carriers - Gadshill's not the kind of fella' that returns things after he "borrows" them. The Carriers run off to wake up the gentlemen travelers staying at the inn - since these rich guys are carrying valuable luggage, it's likely they'll want to ride together for more safety. The Chamberlain enters and greets Gadshill - they joke about stealing purses. The Chamberlain tells Gadshill there's a wealthy franklin staying at the inn and he's travelling with a bunch of gold - the Chamberlain overheard him talking about it the night before at dinner. Gadshill thanks his super-shady pal for the tip - he can't wait to rob the franklin and his rich traveling companions. The two men joke about being hanged as thieves before Gadshill heads off to join Falstaff and company at Gads Hill.

ACT II. SCENE I. A seaport in Cyprus. An open place near the quay. Enter Montano and two Gentlemen. MONTANO. What from the cape can you discern at sea? FIRST GENTLEMAN. Nothing at all. It is a high-wrought flood; I cannot, 'twixt the heaven and the main, Descry a sail. MONTANO. Methinks the wind hath spoke aloud at land; A fuller blast ne'er shook our battlements. If it hath ruffian'd so upon the sea, What ribs of oak, when mountains melt on them, Can hold the mortise? What shall we hear of this? SECOND GENTLEMAN. A segregation of the Turkish fleet. For do but stand upon the foaming shore, The chidden billow seems to pelt the clouds; The wind-shaked surge, with high and monstrous mane, Seems to cast water on the burning bear, And quench the guards of the ever-fixed pole. I never did like molestation view On the enchafed flood. MONTANO. If that the Turkish fleet Be not enshelter'd and embay'd, they are drown'd; It is impossible to bear it out. Enter a third Gentleman. THIRD GENTLEMAN. News, lads! Our wars are done. The desperate tempest hath so bang'd the Turks, That their designment halts. A noble ship of Venice Hath seen a grievous wreck and sufferance On most part of their fleet. MONTANO. How? Is this true? THIRD GENTLEMAN. The ship is here put in, A Veronesa. Michael Cassio, Lieutenant to the warlike Moor, Othello, Is come on shore; the Moor himself at sea, And is in full commission here for Cyprus. MONTANO. I am glad on't; 'tis a worthy governor. THIRD GENTLEMAN. But this same Cassio, though he speak of comfort Touching the Turkish loss, yet he looks sadly And prays the Moor be safe; for they were parted With foul and violent tempest. MONTANO. Pray heavens he be, For I have served him, and the man commands Like a full soldier. Let's to the seaside, ho! As well to see the vessel that's come in As to throw out our eyes for brave Othello, Even till we make the main and the aerial blue An indistinct regard. THIRD GENTLEMAN. Come, let's do so, For every minute is expectancy Of more arrivance. Enter Cassio. CASSIO. Thanks, you the valiant of this warlike isle, That so approve the Moor! O, let the heavens Give him defense against the elements, For I have lost him on a dangerous sea. MONTANO. Is he well shipp'd? CASSIO. His bark is stoutly timber'd, and his pilot Of very expert and approved allowance; Therefore my hopes, not surfeited to death, Stand in bold cure. A cry within, "A sail, a sail, a sail!" Enter a fourth Gentleman. What noise? FOURTH GENTLEMAN. The town is empty; on the brow o' the sea Stand ranks of people, and they cry, "A sail!" CASSIO. My hopes do shape him for the governor. Guns heard. SECOND GENTLEMAN. They do discharge their shot of courtesy-- Our friends at least. CASSIO. I pray you, sir, go forth, And give us truth who 'tis that is arrived. SECOND GENTLEMAN. I shall. Exit. MONTANO. But, good lieutenant, is your general wived? CASSIO. Most fortunately: he hath achieved a maid That paragons description and wild fame, One that excels the quirks of blazoning pens, And in the essential vesture of creation Does tire the ingener. Re-enter second Gentleman. How now! who has put in? SECOND GENTLEMAN. 'Tis one Iago, ancient to the general. CASSIO. He has had most favorable and happy speed: Tempests themselves, high seas, and howling winds, The gutter'd rocks, and congregated sands, Traitors ensteep'd to clog the guiltless keel, As having sense of beauty, do omit Their mortal natures, letting go safely by The divine Desdemona. MONTANO. What is she? CASSIO. She that I spake of, our great captain's captain, Left in the conduct of the bold Iago, Whose footing here anticipates our thoughts A se'nnight's speed. Great Jove, Othello guard, And swell his sail with thine own powerful breath, That he may bless this bay with his tall ship, Make love's quick pants in Desdemona's arms, Give renew'd fire to our extincted spirits, And bring all Cyprus comfort. Enter Desdemona, Emilia Iago, Roderigo, and Attendants. O, behold, The riches of the ship is come on shore! Ye men of Cyprus, let her have your knees. Hall to thee, lady! And the grace of heaven, Before, behind thee, and on every hand, Enwheel thee round! DESDEMONA. I thank you, valiant Cassio. What tidings can you tell me of my lord? CASSIO. He is not yet arrived, nor know I aught But that he's well and will be shortly here. DESDEMONA. O, but I fear--How lost you company? CASSIO. The great contention of the sea and skies Parted our fellowship--But, hark! a sail. A cry within, "A sail, a sail!" Guns heard. SECOND GENTLEMAN. They give their greeting to the citadel; This likewise is a friend. CASSIO. See for the news. Exit Gentleman. Good ancient, you are welcome. [To Emilia.] Welcome, mistress. Let it not gall your patience, good Iago, That I extend my manners; 'tis my breeding That gives me this bold show of courtesy. Kisses her. IAGO. Sir, would she give you so much of her lips As of her tongue she oft bestows on me, You'ld have enough. DESDEMONA. Alas, she has no speech. IAGO. In faith, too much; I find it still when I have list to sleep. Marry, before your ladyship I grant, She puts her tongue a little in her heart And chides with thinking. EMILIA. You have little cause to say so. IAGO. Come on, come on. You are pictures out of doors, Bells in your parlors, wildcats in your kitchens, Saints in your injuries, devils being offended, Players in your housewifery, and housewives in your beds. DESDEMONA. O, fie upon thee, slanderer! IAGO. Nay, it is true, or else I am a Turk: You rise to play, and go to bed to work. EMILIA. You shall not write my praise. IAGO. No, let me not. DESDEMONA. What wouldst thou write of me, if thou shouldst praise me? IAGO. O gentle lady, do not put me to't, For I am nothing if not critical. DESDEMONA. Come on, assay--There's one gone to the harbor? IAGO. Ay, madam. DESDEMONA. I am not merry, but I do beguile The thing I am by seeming otherwise. Come, how wouldst thou praise me? IAGO. I am about it, but indeed my invention Comes from my pate as birdlime does from frieze; It plucks out brains and all. But my Muse labors, And thus she is deliver'd. If she be fair and wise, fairness and wit, The one's for use, the other useth it. DESDEMONA. Well praised! How if she be black and witty? IAGO. If she be black, and thereto have a wit, She'll find a white that shall her blackness fit. DESDEMONA. Worse and worse. EMILIA. How if fair and foolish? IAGO. She never yet was foolish that was fair, For even her folly help'd her to an heir. DESDEMONA. These are old fond paradoxes to make fools laugh i' the alehouse. What miserable praise hast thou for her that's foul and foolish? IAGO. There's none so foul and foolish thereunto, But does foul pranks which fair and wise ones do. DESDEMONA. O heavy ignorance! Thou praisest the worst best. But what praise couldst thou bestow on a deserving woman indeed, one that in the authority of her merit did justly put on the vouch of very malice itself? IAGO. She that was ever fair and never proud, Had tongue at will and yet was never loud, Never lack'd gold and yet went never gay, Fled from her wish and yet said, "Now I may"; She that, being anger'd, her revenge being nigh, Bade her wrong stay and her displeasure fly; She that in wisdom never was so frail To change the cod's head for the salmon's tail; She that could think and ne'er disclose her mind, See suitors following and not look behind; She was a wight, if ever such wight were-- DESDEMONA. To do what? IAGO. To suckle fools and chronicle small beer. DESDEMONA. O most lame and impotent conclusion! Do not learn of him, Emilia, though he be thy husband. How say you, Cassio? Is he not a most profane and liberal counselor? CASSIO. He speaks home, madam. You may relish him more in the soldier than in the scholar. IAGO. [Aside.] He takes her by the palm; ay, well said, whisper. With as little a web as this will I ensnare as great a fly as Cassio. Ay, smile upon her, do; I will gyve thee in thine own courtship. You say true; 'tis so, indeed. If such tricks as these strip you out of your lieutenantry, it had been better you had not kissed your three fingers so oft, which now again you are most apt to play the sir in. Very good. Well kissed! an excellent courtesy! 'tis so, indeed. Yet again your fingers to your lips? Would they were clyster-pipes for your sake! [Trumpet within.] The Moor! I know his trumpet. CASSIO. 'Tis truly so. DESDEMONA. Let's meet him and receive him. CASSIO. Lo, where he comes! Enter Othello and Attendants. OTHELLO. O my fair warrior! DESDEMONA. My dear Othello! OTHELLO. It gives me wonder great as my content To see you here before me. O my soul's joy! If after every tempest come such calms, May the winds blow till they have waken'd death! And let the laboring bark climb hills of seas Olympus-high, and duck again as low As hell's from heaven! If it were now to die, 'Twere now to be most happy; for I fear My soul hath her content so absolute That not another comfort like to this Succeeds in unknown fate. DESDEMONA. The heavens forbid But that our loves and comforts should increase, Even as our days do grow! OTHELLO. Amen to that, sweet powers! I cannot speak enough of this content; It stops me here; it is too much of joy. And this, and this, the greatest discords be Kisses her. That e'er our hearts shall make! IAGO. [Aside.] O, you are well tuned now! But I'll set down the pegs that make this music, As honest as I am. OTHELLO. Come, let us to the castle. News, friends: our wars are done, the Turks are drown'd. How does my old acquaintance of this isle? Honey, you shall be well desired in Cyprus; I have found great love amongst them. O my sweet, I prattle out of fashion, and I dote In mine own comforts. I prithee, good Iago, Go to the bay and disembark my coffers. Bring thou the master to the citadel; He is a good one, and his worthiness Does challenge much respect. Come, Desdemona, Once more well met at Cyprus. Exeunt all but Iago and Roderigo. IAGO. Do thou meet me presently at the harbor. Come hither. If thou be'st valiant--as they say base men being in love have then a nobility in their natures more than is native to them--list me. The lieutenant tonight watches on the court of guard. First, I must tell thee this: Desdemona is directly in love with him. RODERIGO. With him? Why, 'tis not possible. IAGO. Lay thy finger thus, and let thy soul be instructed. Mark me with what violence she first loved the Moor, but for bragging and telling her fantastical lies. And will she love him still for prating? Let not thy discreet heart think it. Her eye must be fed; and what delight shall she have to look on the devil? When the blood is made dull with the act of sport, there should be, again to inflame it and to give satiety a fresh appetite, loveliness in favor, sympathy in years, manners, and beauties-- all which the Moor is defective in. Now, for want of these required conveniences, her delicate tenderness will find itself abused, begin to heave the gorge, disrelish and abhor the Moor; very nature will instruct her in it and compel her to some second choice. Now sir, this granted--as it is a most pregnant and unforced position--who stands so eminently in the degree of this fortune as Cassio does? A knave very voluble; no further conscionable than in putting on the mere form of civil and humane seeming, for the better compass of his salt and most hidden loose affection? Why, none, why, none--a slipper and subtle knave, a finder out of occasions, that has an eye can stamp and counterfeit advantages, though true advantage never present itself--a devilish knave! Besides, the knave is handsome, young, and hath all those requisites in him that folly and green minds look after--a pestilent complete knave, and the woman hath found him already. RODERIGO. I cannot believe that in her; she's full of most blest condition. IAGO. Blest fig's-end! The wine she drinks is made of grapes. If she had been blest, she would never have loved the Moor. Blest pudding! Didst thou not see her paddle with the palm of his hand? Didst not mark that? RODERIGO. Yes, that I did; but that was but courtesy. IAGO. Lechery, by this hand; an index and obscure prologue to the history of lust and foul thoughts. They met so near with their lips that their breaths embraced together. Villainous thoughts, Roderigo! When these mutualities so marshal the way, hard at hand comes the master and main exercise, the incorporate conclusion. Pish! But, sir, be you ruled by me. I have brought you from Venice. Watch you tonight; for the command, I'll lay't upon you. Cassio knows you not. I'll not be far from you. Do you find some occasion to anger Cassio, either by speaking too loud, or tainting his discipline, or from what other course you please, which the time shall more favorably minister. RODERIGO. Well. IAGO. Sir, he is rash and very sudden in choler, and haply may strike at you. Provoke him, that he may; for even out of that will I cause these of Cyprus to mutiny, whose qualification shall come into no true taste again but by the displanting of Cassio. So shall you have a shorter journey to your desires by the means I shall then have to prefer them, and the impediment most profitably removed, without the which there were no expectation of our prosperity. RODERIGO. I will do this, if I can bring it to any opportunity. IAGO. I warrant thee. Meet me by and by at the citadel. I must fetch his necessaries ashore. Farewell. RODERIGO. Adieu. Exit. IAGO. That Cassio loves her, I do well believe it; That she loves him, 'tis apt and of great credit. The Moor, howbeit that I endure him not, Is of a constant, loving, noble nature, And I dare think he'll prove to Desdemona A most dear husband. Now, I do love her too, Not out of absolute lust, though peradventure I stand accountant for as great a sin, But partly led to diet my revenge, For that I do suspect the lusty Moor Hath leap'd into my seat; the thought whereof Doth like a poisonous mineral gnaw my inwards, And nothing can or shall content my soul Till I am even'd with him, wife for wife. Or failing so, yet that I put the Moor At least into a jealousy so strong That judgement cannot cure. Which thing to do, If this poor trash of Venice, whom I trash For his quick hunting, stand the putting on, I'll have our Michael Cassio on the hip, Abuse him to the Moor in the rank garb (For I fear Cassio with my nightcap too), Make the Moor thank me, love me, and reward me For making him egregiously an ass And practicing upon his peace and quiet Even to madness. 'Tis here, but yet confused: Knavery's plain face is never seen till used. Exit.

The ships of the Turks are miraculously destroyed in a storm before Othello and his forces can reach them. They land in Cyprus, on different ships, and Desdemona has arrived first. She greets Othello warmly. Iago pretends to be joyful as well, but he makes some cruel jokes, for which his wife Emilia, yells at him. Iago then speaks to Roderigo, who has sold all of his possessions and traveled to Cyprus, and convinces him that Desdemona is in love with Cassio, and Cassio should be fired from his position. Roderigo, sick with love, believes this, and Iago gains a powerful pawn.

He was bewildered. He had nothing to say. He was not even angry, but stood, with a glass of whiskey between his hands, trying to think what had led her to such a conclusion. She had chosen the moment before bed, when, in accordance with their bourgeois habit, she always dispensed drinks to the men. Freddy and Mr. Floyd were sure to retire with their glasses, while Cecil invariably lingered, sipping at his while she locked up the sideboard. "I am very sorry about it," she said; "I have carefully thought things over. We are too different. I must ask you to release me, and try to forget that there ever was such a foolish girl." It was a suitable speech, but she was more angry than sorry, and her voice showed it. "Different--how--how--" "I haven't had a really good education, for one thing," she continued, still on her knees by the sideboard. "My Italian trip came too late, and I am forgetting all that I learnt there. I shall never be able to talk to your friends, or behave as a wife of yours should." "I don't understand you. You aren't like yourself. You're tired, Lucy." "Tired!" she retorted, kindling at once. "That is exactly like you. You always think women don't mean what they say." "Well, you sound tired, as if something has worried you." "What if I do? It doesn't prevent me from realizing the truth. I can't marry you, and you will thank me for saying so some day." "You had that bad headache yesterday--All right"--for she had exclaimed indignantly: "I see it's much more than headaches. But give me a moment's time." He closed his eyes. "You must excuse me if I say stupid things, but my brain has gone to pieces. Part of it lives three minutes back, when I was sure that you loved me, and the other part--I find it difficult--I am likely to say the wrong thing." It struck her that he was not behaving so badly, and her irritation increased. She again desired a struggle, not a discussion. To bring on the crisis, she said: "There are days when one sees clearly, and this is one of them. Things must come to a breaking-point some time, and it happens to be to-day. If you want to know, quite a little thing decided me to speak to you--when you wouldn't play tennis with Freddy." "I never do play tennis," said Cecil, painfully bewildered; "I never could play. I don't understand a word you say." "You can play well enough to make up a four. I thought it abominably selfish of you." "No, I can't--well, never mind the tennis. Why couldn't you--couldn't you have warned me if you felt anything wrong? You talked of our wedding at lunch--at least, you let me talk." "I knew you wouldn't understand," said Lucy quite crossly. "I might have known there would have been these dreadful explanations. Of course, it isn't the tennis--that was only the last straw to all I have been feeling for weeks. Surely it was better not to speak until I felt certain." She developed this position. "Often before I have wondered if I was fitted for your wife--for instance, in London; and are you fitted to be my husband? I don't think so. You don't like Freddy, nor my mother. There was always a lot against our engagement, Cecil, but all our relations seemed pleased, and we met so often, and it was no good mentioning it until--well, until all things came to a point. They have to-day. I see clearly. I must speak. That's all." "I cannot think you were right," said Cecil gently. "I cannot tell why, but though all that you say sounds true, I feel that you are not treating me fairly. It's all too horrible." "What's the good of a scene?" "No good. But surely I have a right to hear a little more." He put down his glass and opened the window. From where she knelt, jangling her keys, she could see a slit of darkness, and, peering into it, as if it would tell him that "little more," his long, thoughtful face. "Don't open the window; and you'd better draw the curtain, too; Freddy or any one might be outside." He obeyed. "I really think we had better go to bed, if you don't mind. I shall only say things that will make me unhappy afterwards. As you say it is all too horrible, and it is no good talking." But to Cecil, now that he was about to lose her, she seemed each moment more desirable. He looked at her, instead of through her, for the first time since they were engaged. From a Leonardo she had become a living woman, with mysteries and forces of her own, with qualities that even eluded art. His brain recovered from the shock, and, in a burst of genuine devotion, he cried: "But I love you, and I did think you loved me!" "I did not," she said. "I thought I did at first. I am sorry, and ought to have refused you this last time, too." He began to walk up and down the room, and she grew more and more vexed at his dignified behaviour. She had counted on his being petty. It would have made things easier for her. By a cruel irony she was drawing out all that was finest in his disposition. "You don't love me, evidently. I dare say you are right not to. But it would hurt a little less if I knew why." "Because"--a phrase came to her, and she accepted it--"you're the sort who can't know any one intimately." A horrified look came into his eyes. "I don't mean exactly that. But you will question me, though I beg you not to, and I must say something. It is that, more or less. When we were only acquaintances, you let me be myself, but now you're always protecting me." Her voice swelled. "I won't be protected. I will choose for myself what is ladylike and right. To shield me is an insult. Can't I be trusted to face the truth but I must get it second-hand through you? A woman's place! You despise my mother--I know you do--because she's conventional and bothers over puddings; but, oh goodness!"--she rose to her feet--"conventional, Cecil, you're that, for you may understand beautiful things, but you don't know how to use them; and you wrap yourself up in art and books and music, and would try to wrap up me. I won't be stifled, not by the most glorious music, for people are more glorious, and you hide them from me. That's why I break off my engagement. You were all right as long as you kept to things, but when you came to people--" She stopped. There was a pause. Then Cecil said with great emotion: "It is true." "True on the whole," she corrected, full of some vague shame. "True, every word. It is a revelation. It is--I." "Anyhow, those are my reasons for not being your wife." He repeated: "'The sort that can know no one intimately.' It is true. I fell to pieces the very first day we were engaged. I behaved like a cad to Beebe and to your brother. You are even greater than I thought." She withdrew a step. "I'm not going to worry you. You are far too good to me. I shall never forget your insight; and, dear, I only blame you for this: you might have warned me in the early stages, before you felt you wouldn't marry me, and so have given me a chance to improve. I have never known you till this evening. I have just used you as a peg for my silly notions of what a woman should be. But this evening you are a different person: new thoughts--even a new voice--" "What do you mean by a new voice?" she asked, seized with incontrollable anger. "I mean that a new person seems speaking through you," said he. Then she lost her balance. She cried: "If you think I am in love with someone else, you are very much mistaken." "Of course I don't think that. You are not that kind, Lucy." "Oh, yes, you do think it. It's your old idea, the idea that has kept Europe back--I mean the idea that women are always thinking of men. If a girl breaks off her engagement, everyone says: 'Oh, she had some one else in her mind; she hopes to get someone else.' It's disgusting, brutal! As if a girl can't break it off for the sake of freedom." He answered reverently: "I may have said that in the past. I shall never say it again. You have taught me better." She began to redden, and pretended to examine the windows again. "Of course, there is no question of 'someone else' in this, no 'jilting' or any such nauseous stupidity. I beg your pardon most humbly if my words suggested that there was. I only meant that there was a force in you that I hadn't known of up till now." "All right, Cecil, that will do. Don't apologize to me. It was my mistake." "It is a question between ideals, yours and mine--pure abstract ideals, and yours are the nobler. I was bound up in the old vicious notions, and all the time you were splendid and new." His voice broke. "I must actually thank you for what you have done--for showing me what I really am. Solemnly, I thank you for showing me a true woman. Will you shake hands?" "Of course I will," said Lucy, twisting up her other hand in the curtains. "Good-night, Cecil. Good-bye. That's all right. I'm sorry about it. Thank you very much for your gentleness." "Let me light your candle, shall I?" They went into the hall. "Thank you. Good-night again. God bless you, Lucy!" "Good-bye, Cecil." She watched him steal up-stairs, while the shadows from three banisters passed over her face like the beat of wings. On the landing he paused strong in his renunciation, and gave her a look of memorable beauty. For all his culture, Cecil was an ascetic at heart, and nothing in his love became him like the leaving of it. She could never marry. In the tumult of her soul, that stood firm. Cecil believed in her; she must some day believe in herself. She must be one of the women whom she had praised so eloquently, who care for liberty and not for men; she must forget that George loved her, that George had been thinking through her and gained her this honourable release, that George had gone away into--what was it?--the darkness. She put out the lamp. It did not do to think, nor, for the matter of that, to feel. She gave up trying to understand herself, and joined the vast armies of the benighted, who follow neither the heart nor the brain, and march to their destiny by catch-words. The armies are full of pleasant and pious folk. But they have yielded to the only enemy that matters--the enemy within. They have sinned against passion and truth, and vain will be their strife after virtue. As the years pass, they are censured. Their pleasantry and their piety show cracks, their wit becomes cynicism, their unselfishness hypocrisy; they feel and produce discomfort wherever they go. They have sinned against Eros and against Pallas Athene, and not by any heavenly intervention, but by the ordinary course of nature, those allied deities will be avenged. Lucy entered this army when she pretended to George that she did not love him, and pretended to Cecil that she loved no one. The night received her, as it had received Miss Bartlett thirty years before.

This chapter details the somewhat awkward breakup of Lucy and Cecil. Surprisingly, Cecil takes it well. So well, in fact, that Lucy is irritated. Lucy allows herself to get upset, and, seeking an argument, attacks Cecil's attitude and opinions directly. At this last desperate moment, he actually feels something real and legitimate for Lucy - but it's too late. Lucy repeats George's anti-Cecil argument to Cecil himself, almost word for word. He is awestruck. Cecil finally realizes that his approach to Lucy and to women in general has been wrong all along. He apologizes for the wrongs he's done to her, then says that it's as though a new voice is speaking through her tonight. He's actually right - it's George's voice. Lucy is hyper-sensitive to this fact, and she immediately thinks he's accusing her of finding another man. She jumps down Cecil's throat and he apologizes. They calm down as much as possible and part civilly, even tenderly. Lucy, watching Cecil walk away, swears never to marry. The narrator ominously comments that Lucy has joined the ranks of those who deny themselves their true feelings...like Charlotte Bartlett.

Beginning the World The term had commenced, and my guardian found an intimation from Mr. Kenge that the cause would come on in two days. As I had sufficient hopes of the will to be in a flutter about it, Allan and I agreed to go down to the court that morning. Richard was extremely agitated and was so weak and low, though his illness was still of the mind, that my dear girl indeed had sore occasion to be supported. But she looked forward--a very little way now--to the help that was to come to her, and never drooped. It was at Westminster that the cause was to come on. It had come on there, I dare say, a hundred times before, but I could not divest myself of an idea that it MIGHT lead to some result now. We left home directly after breakfast to be at Westminster Hall in good time and walked down there through the lively streets--so happily and strangely it seemed!--together. As we were going along, planning what we should do for Richard and Ada, I heard somebody calling "Esther! My dear Esther! Esther!" And there was Caddy Jellyby, with her head out of the window of a little carriage which she hired now to go about in to her pupils (she had so many), as if she wanted to embrace me at a hundred yards' distance. I had written her a note to tell her of all that my guardian had done, but had not had a moment to go and see her. Of course we turned back, and the affectionate girl was in that state of rapture, and was so overjoyed to talk about the night when she brought me the flowers, and was so determined to squeeze my face (bonnet and all) between her hands, and go on in a wild manner altogether, calling me all kinds of precious names, and telling Allan I had done I don't know what for her, that I was just obliged to get into the little carriage and calm her down by letting her say and do exactly what she liked. Allan, standing at the window, was as pleased as Caddy; and I was as pleased as either of them; and I wonder that I got away as I did, rather than that I came off laughing, and red, and anything but tidy, and looking after Caddy, who looked after us out of the coach-window as long as she could see us. This made us some quarter of an hour late, and when we came to Westminster Hall we found that the day's business was begun. Worse than that, we found such an unusual crowd in the Court of Chancery that it was full to the door, and we could neither see nor hear what was passing within. It appeared to be something droll, for occasionally there was a laugh and a cry of "Silence!" It appeared to be something interesting, for every one was pushing and striving to get nearer. It appeared to be something that made the professional gentlemen very merry, for there were several young counsellors in wigs and whiskers on the outside of the crowd, and when one of them told the others about it, they put their hands in their pockets, and quite doubled themselves up with laughter, and went stamping about the pavement of the Hall. We asked a gentleman by us if he knew what cause was on. He told us Jarndyce and Jarndyce. We asked him if he knew what was doing in it. He said really, no he did not, nobody ever did, but as well as he could make out, it was over. Over for the day? we asked him. No, he said, over for good. Over for good! When we heard this unaccountable answer, we looked at one another quite lost in amazement. Could it be possible that the will had set things right at last and that Richard and Ada were going to be rich? It seemed too good to be true. Alas it was! Our suspense was short, for a break-up soon took place in the crowd, and the people came streaming out looking flushed and hot and bringing a quantity of bad air with them. Still they were all exceedingly amused and were more like people coming out from a farce or a juggler than from a court of justice. We stood aside, watching for any countenance we knew, and presently great bundles of paper began to be carried out--bundles in bags, bundles too large to be got into any bags, immense masses of papers of all shapes and no shapes, which the bearers staggered under, and threw down for the time being, anyhow, on the Hall pavement, while they went back to bring out more. Even these clerks were laughing. We glanced at the papers, and seeing Jarndyce and Jarndyce everywhere, asked an official-looking person who was standing in the midst of them whether the cause was over. Yes, he said, it was all up with it at last, and burst out laughing too. At this juncture we perceived Mr. Kenge coming out of court with an affable dignity upon him, listening to Mr. Vholes, who was deferential and carried his own bag. Mr. Vholes was the first to see us. "Here is Miss Summerson, sir," he said. "And Mr. Woodcourt." "Oh, indeed! Yes. Truly!" said Mr. Kenge, raising his hat to me with polished politeness. "How do you do? Glad to see you. Mr. Jarndyce is not here?" No. He never came there, I reminded him. "Really," returned Mr. Kenge, "it is as well that he is NOT here to-day, for his--shall I say, in my good friend's absence, his indomitable singularity of opinion?--might have been strengthened, perhaps; not reasonably, but might have been strengthened." "Pray what has been done to-day?" asked Allan. "I beg your pardon?" said Mr. Kenge with excessive urbanity. "What has been done to-day?" "What has been done," repeated Mr. Kenge. "Quite so. Yes. Why, not much has been done; not much. We have been checked--brought up suddenly, I would say--upon the--shall I term it threshold?" "Is this will considered a genuine document, sir?" said Allan. "Will you tell us that?" "Most certainly, if I could," said Mr. Kenge; "but we have not gone into that, we have not gone into that." "We have not gone into that," repeated Mr. Vholes as if his low inward voice were an echo. "You are to reflect, Mr. Woodcourt," observed Mr. Kenge, using his silver trowel persuasively and smoothingly, "that this has been a great cause, that this has been a protracted cause, that this has been a complex cause. Jarndyce and Jarndyce has been termed, not inaptly, a monument of Chancery practice." "And patience has sat upon it a long time," said Allan. "Very well indeed, sir," returned Mr. Kenge with a certain condescending laugh he had. "Very well! You are further to reflect, Mr. Woodcourt," becoming dignified almost to severity, "that on the numerous difficulties, contingencies, masterly fictions, and forms of procedure in this great cause, there has been expended study, ability, eloquence, knowledge, intellect, Mr. Woodcourt, high intellect. For many years, the--a--I would say the flower of the bar, and the--a--I would presume to add, the matured autumnal fruits of the woolsack--have been lavished upon Jarndyce and Jarndyce. If the public have the benefit, and if the country have the adornment, of this great grasp, it must be paid for in money or money's worth, sir." "Mr. Kenge," said Allan, appearing enlightened all in a moment. "Excuse me, our time presses. Do I understand that the whole estate is found to have been absorbed in costs?" "Hem! I believe so," returned Mr. Kenge. "Mr. Vholes, what do YOU say?" "I believe so," said Mr. Vholes. "And that thus the suit lapses and melts away?" "Probably," returned Mr. Kenge. "Mr. Vholes?" "Probably," said Mr. Vholes. "My dearest life," whispered Allan, "this will break Richard's heart!" There was such a shock of apprehension in his face, and he knew Richard so perfectly, and I too had seen so much of his gradual decay, that what my dear girl had said to me in the fullness of her foreboding love sounded like a knell in my ears. "In case you should be wanting Mr. C., sir," said Mr. Vholes, coming after us, "you'll find him in court. I left him there resting himself a little. Good day, sir; good day, Miss Summerson." As he gave me that slowly devouring look of his, while twisting up the strings of his bag before he hastened with it after Mr. Kenge, the benignant shadow of whose conversational presence he seemed afraid to leave, he gave one gasp as if he had swallowed the last morsel of his client, and his black buttoned-up unwholesome figure glided away to the low door at the end of the Hall. "My dear love," said Allan, "leave to me, for a little while, the charge you gave me. Go home with this intelligence and come to Ada's by and by!" I would not let him take me to a coach, but entreated him to go to Richard without a moment's delay and leave me to do as he wished. Hurrying home, I found my guardian and told him gradually with what news I had returned. "Little woman," said he, quite unmoved for himself, "to have done with the suit on any terms is a greater blessing than I had looked for. But my poor young cousins!" We talked about them all the morning and discussed what it was possible to do. In the afternoon my guardian walked with me to Symond's Inn and left me at the door. I went upstairs. When my darling heard my footsteps, she came out into the small passage and threw her arms round my neck, but she composed herself directly and said that Richard had asked for me several times. Allan had found him sitting in the corner of the court, she told me, like a stone figure. On being roused, he had broken away and made as if he would have spoken in a fierce voice to the judge. He was stopped by his mouth being full of blood, and Allan had brought him home. He was lying on a sofa with his eyes closed when I went in. There were restoratives on the table; the room was made as airy as possible, and was darkened, and was very orderly and quiet. Allan stood behind him watching him gravely. His face appeared to me to be quite destitute of colour, and now that I saw him without his seeing me, I fully saw, for the first time, how worn away he was. But he looked handsomer than I had seen him look for many a day. I sat down by his side in silence. Opening his eyes by and by, he said in a weak voice, but with his old smile, "Dame Durden, kiss me, my dear!" It was a great comfort and surprise to me to find him in his low state cheerful and looking forward. He was happier, he said, in our intended marriage than he could find words to tell me. My husband had been a guardian angel to him and Ada, and he blessed us both and wished us all the joy that life could yield us. I almost felt as if my own heart would have broken when I saw him take my husband's hand and hold it to his breast. We spoke of the future as much as possible, and he said several times that he must be present at our marriage if he could stand upon his feet. Ada would contrive to take him, somehow, he said. "Yes, surely, dearest Richard!" But as my darling answered him thus hopefully, so serene and beautiful, with the help that was to come to her so near--I knew--I knew! It was not good for him to talk too much, and when he was silent, we were silent too. Sitting beside him, I made a pretence of working for my dear, as he had always been used to joke about my being busy. Ada leaned upon his pillow, holding his head upon her arm. He dozed often, and whenever he awoke without seeing him, said first of all, "Where is Woodcourt?" Evening had come on when I lifted up my eyes and saw my guardian standing in the little hall. "Who is that, Dame Durden?" Richard asked me. The door was behind him, but he had observed in my face that some one was there. I looked to Allan for advice, and as he nodded "Yes," bent over Richard and told him. My guardian saw what passed, came softly by me in a moment, and laid his hand on Richard's. "Oh, sir," said Richard, "you are a good man, you are a good man!" and burst into tears for the first time. My guardian, the picture of a good man, sat down in my place, keeping his hand on Richard's. "My dear Rick," said he, "the clouds have cleared away, and it is bright now. We can see now. We were all bewildered, Rick, more or less. What matters! And how are you, my dear boy?" "I am very weak, sir, but I hope I shall be stronger. I have to begin the world." "Aye, truly; well said!" cried my guardian. "I will not begin it in the old way now," said Richard with a sad smile. "I have learned a lesson now, sir. It was a hard one, but you shall be assured, indeed, that I have learned it." "Well, well," said my guardian, comforting him; "well, well, well, dear boy!" "I was thinking, sir," resumed Richard, "that there is nothing on earth I should so much like to see as their house--Dame Durden's and Woodcourt's house. If I could be removed there when I begin to recover my strength, I feel as if I should get well there sooner than anywhere." "Why, so have I been thinking too, Rick," said my guardian, "and our little woman likewise; she and I have been talking of it this very day. I dare say her husband won't object. What do you think?" Richard smiled and lifted up his arm to touch him as he stood behind the head of the couch. "I say nothing of Ada," said Richard, "but I think of her, and have thought of her very much. Look at her! See her here, sir, bending over this pillow when she has so much need to rest upon it herself, my dear love, my poor girl!" He clasped her in his arms, and none of us spoke. He gradually released her, and she looked upon us, and looked up to heaven, and moved her lips. "When I get down to Bleak House," said Richard, "I shall have much to tell you, sir, and you will have much to show me. You will go, won't you?" "Undoubtedly, dear Rick." "Thank you; like you, like you," said Richard. "But it's all like you. They have been telling me how you planned it and how you remembered all Esther's familiar tastes and ways. It will be like coming to the old Bleak House again." "And you will come there too, I hope, Rick. I am a solitary man now, you know, and it will be a charity to come to me. A charity to come to me, my love!" he repeated to Ada as he gently passed his hand over her golden hair and put a lock of it to his lips. (I think he vowed within himself to cherish her if she were left alone.) "It was a troubled dream?" said Richard, clasping both my guardian's hands eagerly. "Nothing more, Rick; nothing more." "And you, being a good man, can pass it as such, and forgive and pity the dreamer, and be lenient and encouraging when he wakes?" "Indeed I can. What am I but another dreamer, Rick?" "I will begin the world!" said Richard with a light in his eyes. My husband drew a little nearer towards Ada, and I saw him solemnly lift up his hand to warn my guardian. "When shall I go from this place to that pleasant country where the old times are, where I shall have strength to tell what Ada has been to me, where I shall be able to recall my many faults and blindnesses, where I shall prepare myself to be a guide to my unborn child?" said Richard. "When shall I go?" "Dear Rick, when you are strong enough," returned my guardian. "Ada, my darling!" He sought to raise himself a little. Allan raised him so that she could hold him on her bosom, which was what he wanted. "I have done you many wrongs, my own. I have fallen like a poor stray shadow on your way, I have married you to poverty and trouble, I have scattered your means to the winds. You will forgive me all this, my Ada, before I begin the world?" A smile irradiated his face as she bent to kiss him. He slowly laid his face down upon her bosom, drew his arms closer round her neck, and with one parting sob began the world. Not this world, oh, not this! The world that sets this right. When all was still, at a late hour, poor crazed Miss Flite came weeping to me and told me she had given her birds their liberty.

"Beginning the World" Esther tells us that the term begins, and the Jarndyce and Jarndyce case comes up. On her way to court, Esther sees Caddy in a carriage and stops to talk. They are late for court, and there's much commotion when they finally arrive because Jarndyce and Jarndyce has ended for good. When they see Mr. Kenge and Mr. Vholes, they find out that the entire estate has been used up in legal costs. Woodcourt goes to see Richard, and Esther goes home to tell Mr. Jarndyce what has happened. Then they join Woodcourt at Richard and Ada's. When they arrive, they find out that Woodcourt had found Richard at the court, nearly unconscious in a corner. He tried to yell at the judge but had a mouth full of blood. Now at home, he is lying on the couch. Although all of them talk about the future, Esther knows he will die. Richard says he wants to see Woodcourt and Esther's house and that he must "begin the world. Then he dies. Later, Miss Flite comes over and tells Esther that she has freed all of her birds

Elizabeth related to Jane the next day, what had passed between Mr. Wickham and herself. Jane listened with astonishment and concern;--she knew not how to believe that Mr. Darcy could be so unworthy of Mr. Bingley's regard; and yet, it was not in her nature to question the veracity of a young man of such amiable appearance as Wickham.--The possibility of his having really endured such unkindness, was enough to interest all her tender feelings; and nothing therefore remained to be done, but to think well of them both, to defend the conduct of each, and throw into the account of accident or mistake, whatever could not be otherwise explained. "They have both," said she, "been deceived, I dare say, in some way or other, of which we can form no idea. Interested people have perhaps misrepresented each to the other. It is, in short, impossible for us to conjecture the causes or circumstances which may have alienated them, without actual blame on either side." "Very true, indeed;--and now, my dear Jane, what have you got to say in behalf of the interested people who have probably been concerned in the business?--Do clear _them_ too, or we shall be obliged to think ill of somebody." "Laugh as much as you chuse, but you will not laugh me out of my opinion. My dearest Lizzy, do but consider in what a disgraceful light it places Mr. Darcy, to be treating his father's favourite in such a manner,--one, whom his father had promised to provide for.--It is impossible. No man of common humanity, no man who had any value for his character, could be capable of it. Can his most intimate friends be so excessively deceived in him? oh! no." "I can much more easily believe Mr. Bingley's being imposed on, than that Mr. Wickham should invent such a history of himself as he gave me last night; names, facts, every thing mentioned without ceremony.--If it be not so, let Mr. Darcy contradict it. Besides, there was truth in his looks." "It is difficult indeed--it is distressing.--One does not know what to think." "I beg your pardon;--one knows exactly what to think." But Jane could think with certainty on only one point,--that Mr. Bingley, if he _had been_ imposed on, would have much to suffer when the affair became public. The two young ladies were summoned from the shrubbery where this conversation passed, by the arrival of some of the very persons of whom they had been speaking; Mr. Bingley and his sisters came to give their personal invitation for the long expected ball at Netherfield, which was fixed for the following Tuesday. The two ladies were delighted to see their dear friend again, called it an age since they had met, and repeatedly asked what she had been doing with herself since their separation. To the rest of the family they paid little attention; avoiding Mrs. Bennet as much as possible, saying not much to Elizabeth, and nothing at all to the others. They were soon gone again, rising from their seats with an activity which took their brother by surprise, and hurrying off as if eager to escape from Mrs. Bennet's civilities. The prospect of the Netherfield ball was extremely agreeable to every female of the family. Mrs. Bennet chose to consider it as given in compliment to her eldest daughter, and was particularly flattered by receiving the invitation from Mr. Bingley himself, instead of a ceremonious card. Jane pictured to herself a happy evening in the society of her two friends, and the attentions of their brother; and Elizabeth thought with pleasure of dancing a great deal with Mr. Wickham, and of seeing a confirmation of every thing in Mr. Darcy's looks and behaviour. The happiness anticipated by Catherine and Lydia, depended less on any single event, or any particular person, for though they each, like Elizabeth, meant to dance half the evening with Mr. Wickham, he was by no means the only partner who could satisfy them, and a ball was at any rate, a ball. And even Mary could assure her family that she had no disinclination for it. "While I can have my mornings to myself," said she, "it is enough.--I think it no sacrifice to join occasionally in evening engagements. Society has claims on us all; and I profess myself one of those who consider intervals of recreation and amusement as desirable for every body." Elizabeth's spirits were so high on the occasion, that though she did not often speak unnecessarily to Mr. Collins, she could not help asking him whether he intended to accept Mr. Bingley's invitation, and if he did, whether he would think it proper to join in the evening's amusement; and she was rather surprised to find that he entertained no scruple whatever on that head, and was very far from dreading a rebuke either from the Archbishop, or Lady Catherine de Bourgh, by venturing to dance. "I am by no means of opinion, I assure you," said he, "that a ball of this kind, given by a young man of character, to respectable people, can have any evil tendency; and I am so far from objecting to dancing myself that I shall hope to be honoured with the hands of all my fair cousins in the course of the evening, and I take this opportunity of soliciting yours, Miss Elizabeth, for the two first dances especially,--a preference which I trust my cousin Jane will attribute to the right cause, and not to any disrespect for her." Elizabeth felt herself completely taken in. She had fully proposed being engaged by Wickham for those very dances:--and to have Mr. Collins instead! her liveliness had been never worse timed. There was no help for it however. Mr. Wickham's happiness and her own was per force delayed a little longer, and Mr. Collins's proposal accepted with as good a grace as she could. She was not the better pleased with his gallantry, from the idea it suggested of something more.--It now first struck her, that _she_ was selected from among her sisters as worthy of being the mistress of Hunsford Parsonage, and of assisting to form a quadrille table at Rosings, in the absence of more eligible visitors. The idea soon reached to conviction, as she observed his increasing civilities toward herself, and heard his frequent attempt at a compliment on her wit and vivacity; and though more astonished than gratified herself, by this effect of her charms, it was not long before her mother gave her to understand that the probability of their marriage was exceedingly agreeable to _her_. Elizabeth however did not chuse to take the hint, being well aware that a serious dispute must be the consequence of any reply. Mr. Collins might never make the offer, and till he did, it was useless to quarrel about him. If there had not been a Netherfield ball to prepare for and talk of, the younger Miss Bennets would have been in a pitiable state at this time, for from the day of the invitation, to the day of the ball, there was such a succession of rain as prevented their walking to Meryton once. No aunt, no officers, no news could be sought after;--the very shoe-roses for Netherfield were got by proxy. Even Elizabeth might have found some trial of her patience in weather, which totally suspended the improvement of her acquaintance with Mr. Wickham; and nothing less than a dance on Tuesday, could have made such a Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday, endurable to Kitty and Lydia.

Elizabeth discloses to Jane everything that she has learned from Wickham. Jane wisely says that there are two sides to every story. A ball is announced at Netherfield, and Mr. Bingley and his sisters call on the Bennets to issue an invitation. Mr. Collins asks Elizabeth for the first two dances. Elizabeth accepts grudgingly, for she had hoped to dance with Wickham. For the next few days, the girls are confined indoors because of the rains, but they eagerly await the Netherfield ball.

Nothing makes a prince so much esteemed as great enterprises and setting a fine example. We have in our time Ferdinand of Aragon, the present King of Spain. He can almost be called a new prince, because he has risen, by fame and glory, from being an insignificant king to be the foremost king in Christendom; and if you will consider his deeds you will find them all great and some of them extraordinary. In the beginning of his reign he attacked Granada, and this enterprise was the foundation of his dominions. He did this quietly at first and without any fear of hindrance, for he held the minds of the barons of Castile occupied in thinking of the war and not anticipating any innovations; thus they did not perceive that by these means he was acquiring power and authority over them. He was able with the money of the Church and of the people to sustain his armies, and by that long war to lay the foundation for the military skill which has since distinguished him. Further, always using religion as a plea, so as to undertake greater schemes, he devoted himself with pious cruelty to driving out and clearing his kingdom of the Moors; nor could there be a more admirable example, nor one more rare. Under this same cloak he assailed Africa, he came down on Italy, he has finally attacked France; and thus his achievements and designs have always been great, and have kept the minds of his people in suspense and admiration and occupied with the issue of them. And his actions have arisen in such a way, one out of the other, that men have never been given time to work steadily against him. Again, it much assists a prince to set unusual examples in internal affairs, similar to those which are related of Messer Bernabo da Milano, who, when he had the opportunity, by any one in civil life doing some extraordinary thing, either good or bad, would take some method of rewarding or punishing him, which would be much spoken about. And a prince ought, above all things, always endeavour in every action to gain for himself the reputation of being a great and remarkable man. A prince is also respected when he is either a true friend or a downright enemy, that is to say, when, without any reservation, he declares himself in favour of one party against the other; which course will always be more advantageous than standing neutral; because if two of your powerful neighbours come to blows, they are of such a character that, if one of them conquers, you have either to fear him or not. In either case it will always be more advantageous for you to declare yourself and to make war strenuously; because, in the first case, if you do not declare yourself, you will invariably fall a prey to the conqueror, to the pleasure and satisfaction of him who has been conquered, and you will have no reasons to offer, nor anything to protect or to shelter you. Because he who conquers does not want doubtful friends who will not aid him in the time of trial; and he who loses will not harbour you because you did not willingly, sword in hand, court his fate. Antiochus went into Greece, being sent for by the Aetolians to drive out the Romans. He sent envoys to the Achaeans, who were friends of the Romans, exhorting them to remain neutral; and on the other hand the Romans urged them to take up arms. This question came to be discussed in the council of the Achaeans, where the legate of Antiochus urged them to stand neutral. To this the Roman legate answered: "As for that which has been said, that it is better and more advantageous for your state not to interfere in our war, nothing can be more erroneous; because by not interfering you will be left, without favour or consideration, the guerdon of the conqueror." Thus it will always happen that he who is not your friend will demand your neutrality, whilst he who is your friend will entreat you to declare yourself with arms. And irresolute princes, to avoid present dangers, generally follow the neutral path, and are generally ruined. But when a prince declares himself gallantly in favour of one side, if the party with whom he allies himself conquers, although the victor may be powerful and may have him at his mercy, yet he is indebted to him, and there is established a bond of amity; and men are never so shameless as to become a monument of ingratitude by oppressing you. Victories after all are never so complete that the victor must not show some regard, especially to justice. But if he with whom you ally yourself loses, you may be sheltered by him, and whilst he is able he may aid you, and you become companions on a fortune that may rise again. In the second case, when those who fight are of such a character that you have no anxiety as to who may conquer, so much the more is it greater prudence to be allied, because you assist at the destruction of one by the aid of another who, if he had been wise, would have saved him; and conquering, as it is impossible that he should not do with your assistance, he remains at your discretion. And here it is to be noted that a prince ought to take care never to make an alliance with one more powerful than himself for the purposes of attacking others, unless necessity compels him, as is said above; because if he conquers you are at his discretion, and princes ought to avoid as much as possible being at the discretion of any one. The Venetians joined with France against the Duke of Milan, and this alliance, which caused their ruin, could have been avoided. But when it cannot be avoided, as happened to the Florentines when the Pope and Spain sent armies to attack Lombardy, then in such a case, for the above reasons, the prince ought to favour one of the parties. Never let any Government imagine that it can choose perfectly safe courses; rather let it expect to have to take very doubtful ones, because it is found in ordinary affairs that one never seeks to avoid one trouble without running into another; but prudence consists in knowing how to distinguish the character of troubles, and for choice to take the lesser evil. A prince ought also to show himself a patron of ability, and to honour the proficient in every art. At the same time he should encourage his citizens to practise their callings peaceably, both in commerce and agriculture, and in every other following, so that the one should not be deterred from improving his possessions for fear lest they be taken away from him or another from opening up trade for fear of taxes; but the prince ought to offer rewards to whoever wishes to do these things and designs in any way to honour his city or state. Further, he ought to entertain the people with festivals and spectacles at convenient seasons of the year; and as every city is divided into guilds or into societies,(*) he ought to hold such bodies in esteem, and associate with them sometimes, and show himself an example of courtesy and liberality; nevertheless, always maintaining the majesty of his rank, for this he must never consent to abate in anything. (*) "Guilds or societies," "in arti o in tribu." "Arti" were craft or trade guilds, cf. Florio: "Arte . . . a whole company of any trade in any city or corporation town." The guilds of Florence are most admirably described by Mr Edgcumbe Staley in his work on the subject (Methuen, 1906). Institutions of a somewhat similar character, called "artel," exist in Russia to-day, cf. Sir Mackenzie Wallace's "Russia," ed. 1905: "The sons . . . were always during the working season members of an artel. In some of the larger towns there are artels of a much more complex kind-- permanent associations, possessing large capital, and pecuniarily responsible for the acts of the individual members." The word "artel," despite its apparent similarity, has, Mr Aylmer Maude assures me, no connection with "ars" or "arte." Its root is that of the verb "rotisya," to bind oneself by an oath; and it is generally admitted to be only another form of "rota," which now signifies a "regimental company." In both words the underlying idea is that of a body of men united by an oath. "Tribu" were possibly gentile groups, united by common descent, and included individuals connected by marriage. Perhaps our words "sects" or "clans" would be most appropriate.

Nothing enhances a ruler's reputation more than undertaking great conquests. Ferdinand of Spain's career provides a good example. He had attacked Granada; driven the Moors out of Spain; and attacked Africa, Italy, and France. These activities kept his subjects amazed and preoccupied, so that no one had time to do anything against him. With regard to internal affairs, princes should always find noteworthy ways to reward or punish any extraordinary actions. Rulers must never remain neutral. If neighboring rulers fight, you must take sides, because if you do not, the winner will threaten you, and the loser will not befriend you. Whether or not your ally wins, he will be grateful to you. However, if you can avoid it, you should never ally with someone more powerful than yourself, because if he wins, you may be in his power. A prince should show that he loves talent and rewards it. He should encourage his citizens to prosper in their occupations. He should keep the people entertained with festivals at appropriate times. And he should give attention to the various civic groups, attending some of their activities, but without appearing undignified.

She had read "Paul and Virginia," and she had dreamed of the little bamboo-house, the nigger Domingo, the dog Fidele, but above all of the sweet friendship of some dear little brother, who seeks red fruit for you on trees taller than steeples, or who runs barefoot over the sand, bringing you a bird's nest. When she was thirteen, her father himself took her to town to place her in the convent. They stopped at an inn in the St. Gervais quarter, where, at their supper, they used painted plates that set forth the story of Mademoiselle de la Valliere. The explanatory legends, chipped here and there by the scratching of knives, all glorified religion, the tendernesses of the heart, and the pomps of court. Far from being bored at first at the convent, she took pleasure in the society of the good sisters, who, to amuse her, took her to the chapel, which one entered from the refectory by a long corridor. She played very little during recreation hours, knew her catechism well, and it was she who always answered Monsieur le Vicaire's difficult questions. Living thus, without ever leaving the warm atmosphere of the classrooms, and amid these pale-faced women wearing rosaries with brass crosses, she was softly lulled by the mystic languor exhaled in the perfumes of the altar, the freshness of the holy water, and the lights of the tapers. Instead of attending to mass, she looked at the pious vignettes with their azure borders in her book, and she loved the sick lamb, the sacred heart pierced with sharp arrows, or the poor Jesus sinking beneath the cross he carries. She tried, by way of mortification, to eat nothing a whole day. She puzzled her head to find some vow to fulfil. When she went to confession, she invented little sins in order that she might stay there longer, kneeling in the shadow, her hands joined, her face against the grating beneath the whispering of the priest. The comparisons of betrothed, husband, celestial lover, and eternal marriage, that recur in sermons, stirred within her soul depths of unexpected sweetness. In the evening, before prayers, there was some religious reading in the study. On week-nights it was some abstract of sacred history or the Lectures of the Abbe Frayssinous, and on Sundays passages from the "Genie du Christianisme," as a recreation. How she listened at first to the sonorous lamentations of its romantic melancholies reechoing through the world and eternity! If her childhood had been spent in the shop-parlour of some business quarter, she might perhaps have opened her heart to those lyrical invasions of Nature, which usually come to us only through translation in books. But she knew the country too well; she knew the lowing of cattle, the milking, the ploughs. Accustomed to calm aspects of life, she turned, on the contrary, to those of excitement. She loved the sea only for the sake of its storms, and the green fields only when broken up by ruins. She wanted to get some personal profit out of things, and she rejected as useless all that did not contribute to the immediate desires of her heart, being of a temperament more sentimental than artistic, looking for emotions, not landscapes. At the convent there was an old maid who came for a week each month to mend the linen. Patronized by the clergy, because she belonged to an ancient family of noblemen ruined by the Revolution, she dined in the refectory at the table of the good sisters, and after the meal had a bit of chat with them before going back to her work. The girls often slipped out from the study to go and see her. She knew by heart the love songs of the last century, and sang them in a low voice as she stitched away. She told stories, gave them news, went errands in the town, and on the sly lent the big girls some novel, that she always carried in the pockets of her apron, and of which the good lady herself swallowed long chapters in the intervals of her work. They were all love, lovers, sweethearts, persecuted ladies fainting in lonely pavilions, postilions killed at every stage, horses ridden to death on every page, sombre forests, heartaches, vows, sobs, tears and kisses, little skiffs by moonlight, nightingales in shady groves, "gentlemen" brave as lions, gentle as lambs, virtuous as no one ever was, always well dressed, and weeping like fountains. For six months, then, Emma, at fifteen years of age, made her hands dirty with books from old lending libraries. Through Walter Scott, later on, she fell in love with historical events, dreamed of old chests, guard-rooms and minstrels. She would have liked to live in some old manor-house, like those long-waisted chatelaines who, in the shade of pointed arches, spent their days leaning on the stone, chin in hand, watching a cavalier with white plume galloping on his black horse from the distant fields. At this time she had a cult for Mary Stuart and enthusiastic veneration for illustrious or unhappy women. Joan of Arc, Heloise, Agnes Sorel, the beautiful Ferroniere, and Clemence Isaure stood out to her like comets in the dark immensity of heaven, where also were seen, lost in shadow, and all unconnected, St. Louis with his oak, the dying Bayard, some cruelties of Louis XI, a little of St. Bartholomew's Day, the plume of the Bearnais, and always the remembrance of the plates painted in honour of Louis XIV. In the music class, in the ballads she sang, there was nothing but little angels with golden wings, madonnas, lagunes, gondoliers;-mild compositions that allowed her to catch a glimpse athwart the obscurity of style and the weakness of the music of the attractive phantasmagoria of sentimental realities. Some of her companions brought "keepsakes" given them as new year's gifts to the convent. These had to be hidden; it was quite an undertaking; they were read in the dormitory. Delicately handling the beautiful satin bindings, Emma looked with dazzled eyes at the names of the unknown authors, who had signed their verses for the most part as counts or viscounts. She trembled as she blew back the tissue paper over the engraving and saw it folded in two and fall gently against the page. Here behind the balustrade of a balcony was a young man in a short cloak, holding in his arms a young girl in a white dress wearing an alms-bag at her belt; or there were nameless portraits of English ladies with fair curls, who looked at you from under their round straw hats with their large clear eyes. Some there were lounging in their carriages, gliding through parks, a greyhound bounding along in front of the equipage driven at a trot by two midget postilions in white breeches. Others, dreaming on sofas with an open letter, gazed at the moon through a slightly open window half draped by a black curtain. The naive ones, a tear on their cheeks, were kissing doves through the bars of a Gothic cage, or, smiling, their heads on one side, were plucking the leaves of a marguerite with their taper fingers, that curved at the tips like peaked shoes. And you, too, were there, Sultans with long pipes reclining beneath arbours in the arms of Bayaderes; Djiaours, Turkish sabres, Greek caps; and you especially, pale landscapes of dithyrambic lands, that often show us at once palm trees and firs, tigers on the right, a lion to the left, Tartar minarets on the horizon; the whole framed by a very neat virgin forest, and with a great perpendicular sunbeam trembling in the water, where, standing out in relief like white excoriations on a steel-grey ground, swans are swimming about. And the shade of the argand lamp fastened to the wall above Emma's head lighted up all these pictures of the world, that passed before her one by one in the silence of the dormitory, and to the distant noise of some belated carriage rolling over the Boulevards. When her mother died she cried much the first few days. She had a funeral picture made with the hair of the deceased, and, in a letter sent to the Bertaux full of sad reflections on life, she asked to be buried later on in the same grave. The goodman thought she must be ill, and came to see her. Emma was secretly pleased that she had reached at a first attempt the rare ideal of pale lives, never attained by mediocre hearts. She let herself glide along with Lamartine meanderings, listened to harps on lakes, to all the songs of dying swans, to the falling of the leaves, the pure virgins ascending to heaven, and the voice of the Eternal discoursing down the valleys. She wearied of it, would not confess it, continued from habit, and at last was surprised to feel herself soothed, and with no more sadness at heart than wrinkles on her brow. The good nuns, who had been so sure of her vocation, perceived with great astonishment that Mademoiselle Rouault seemed to be slipping from them. They had indeed been so lavish to her of prayers, retreats, novenas, and sermons, they had so often preached the respect due to saints and martyrs, and given so much good advice as to the modesty of the body and the salvation of her soul, that she did as tightly reined horses; she pulled up short and the bit slipped from her teeth. This nature, positive in the midst of its enthusiasms, that had loved the church for the sake of the flowers, and music for the words of the songs, and literature for its passional stimulus, rebelled against the mysteries of faith as it grew irritated by discipline, a thing antipathetic to her constitution. When her father took her from school, no one was sorry to see her go. The Lady Superior even thought that she had latterly been somewhat irreverent to the community. Emma, at home once more, first took pleasure in looking after the servants, then grew disgusted with the country and missed her convent. When Charles came to the Bertaux for the first time, she thought herself quite disillusioned, with nothing more to learn, and nothing more to feel. But the uneasiness of her new position, or perhaps the disturbance caused by the presence of this man, had sufficed to make her believe that she at last felt that wondrous passion which, till then, like a great bird with rose-coloured wings, hung in the splendour of the skies of poesy; and now she could not think that the calm in which she lived was the happiness she had dreamed.

This chapter provides the details of Emma's life up to her marriage. At the age of thirteen she became a boarder at a convent in the city of Rouen. She was a quick student and enjoyed life in the convent. The mysticism of the church appealed to her romantic temperament which was "more sentimental than artistic. An old spinster wash lady at the convent who had been a member of the aristocracy before the Revolution enthralled the girls with tales of the past and provided them with novels featuring romantic tales set in exotic locales. Emma took quickly to the notions in the novels. The idyllic pictures of heartsick maidens pining for their lovers deeply affected her. After her mother died she mourned profusely but gradually found that her sadness was contrived. Although she had initially loved the convent and the trappings of religious life she balked at the discipline and neither she nor the nuns were too disappointed when she left the school. She quickly tired of life on her father's farm, however, and when Charles appeared she thought her chance for true romantic happiness had arrived. The drab reality of the little house in Tostes, however, fails to match her idea of romance

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

On waking up the next morning, Elinor finds Marianne sobbing and writing a letter to Willoughby. Since Marianne refuses to reveal anything to her sister, Elinor leaves her alone. After breakfast, Marianne receives a letter from Willoughby. The letter creates even more pain for Marianne than did his behavior at the party. Willoughby denies ever having loved Marianne and returns all the letters she had written him in the past, as well as the lock of hair he had taken from her. Elinor reads the letter and condemns Willoughby for his heartlessness. She also reads the three letters Marianne had written earlier, in which she professed her love for Willoughby and expressed her eagerness to meet him. Marianne feels that others might have poisoned Willoughby's mind against her. However, she is not able to excuse his hypocrisy and indifference. Weighed down by sorrow, she expresses a desire to go back to Barton to meet her mother. Elinor asks her to wait for some more time.

'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."'

We fast forward to Jim's new career as a water-clerk, which is off to a good start. Jim's employer has even sent a letter to Marlow praising Jim. But then Marlow receives another letter saying that Jim has quit and is gone. Yet another letter arrives from Jim explaining that he quit because the second engineer from the Patna showed up. Jim had to flee to keep his story under wraps. Luckily, he gets a job with ship chandlers Egstrom and Blake, who both like him a lot. Unfortunately, Jim's little problem just won't go away. The Patna scandal comes up in conversation, and a captain named O'Brien goes on a rant about it. This prompts a shamed Jim to run away yet again. Egstrom and Marlow discuss the situation, and both are frustrated with Jim, whom they find stubborn and impulsive.

Mrs. Elton was first seen at church: but though devotion might be interrupted, curiosity could not be satisfied by a bride in a pew, and it must be left for the visits in form which were then to be paid, to settle whether she were very pretty indeed, or only rather pretty, or not pretty at all. Emma had feelings, less of curiosity than of pride or propriety, to make her resolve on not being the last to pay her respects; and she made a point of Harriet's going with her, that the worst of the business might be gone through as soon as possible. She could not enter the house again, could not be in the same room to which she had with such vain artifice retreated three months ago, to lace up her boot, without _recollecting_. A thousand vexatious thoughts would recur. Compliments, charades, and horrible blunders; and it was not to be supposed that poor Harriet should not be recollecting too; but she behaved very well, and was only rather pale and silent. The visit was of course short; and there was so much embarrassment and occupation of mind to shorten it, that Emma would not allow herself entirely to form an opinion of the lady, and on no account to give one, beyond the nothing-meaning terms of being "elegantly dressed, and very pleasing." She did not really like her. She would not be in a hurry to find fault, but she suspected that there was no elegance;--ease, but not elegance.-- She was almost sure that for a young woman, a stranger, a bride, there was too much ease. Her person was rather good; her face not unpretty; but neither feature, nor air, nor voice, nor manner, were elegant. Emma thought at least it would turn out so. As for Mr. Elton, his manners did not appear--but no, she would not permit a hasty or a witty word from herself about his manners. It was an awkward ceremony at any time to be receiving wedding visits, and a man had need be all grace to acquit himself well through it. The woman was better off; she might have the assistance of fine clothes, and the privilege of bashfulness, but the man had only his own good sense to depend on; and when she considered how peculiarly unlucky poor Mr. Elton was in being in the same room at once with the woman he had just married, the woman he had wanted to marry, and the woman whom he had been expected to marry, she must allow him to have the right to look as little wise, and to be as much affectedly, and as little really easy as could be. "Well, Miss Woodhouse," said Harriet, when they had quitted the house, and after waiting in vain for her friend to begin; "Well, Miss Woodhouse, (with a gentle sigh,) what do you think of her?--Is not she very charming?" There was a little hesitation in Emma's answer. "Oh! yes--very--a very pleasing young woman." "I think her beautiful, quite beautiful." "Very nicely dressed, indeed; a remarkably elegant gown." "I am not at all surprized that he should have fallen in love." "Oh! no--there is nothing to surprize one at all.--A pretty fortune; and she came in his way." "I dare say," returned Harriet, sighing again, "I dare say she was very much attached to him." "Perhaps she might; but it is not every man's fate to marry the woman who loves him best. Miss Hawkins perhaps wanted a home, and thought this the best offer she was likely to have." "Yes," said Harriet earnestly, "and well she might, nobody could ever have a better. Well, I wish them happy with all my heart. And now, Miss Woodhouse, I do not think I shall mind seeing them again. He is just as superior as ever;--but being married, you know, it is quite a different thing. No, indeed, Miss Woodhouse, you need not be afraid; I can sit and admire him now without any great misery. To know that he has not thrown himself away, is such a comfort!--She does seem a charming young woman, just what he deserves. Happy creature! He called her 'Augusta.' How delightful!" When the visit was returned, Emma made up her mind. She could then see more and judge better. From Harriet's happening not to be at Hartfield, and her father's being present to engage Mr. Elton, she had a quarter of an hour of the lady's conversation to herself, and could composedly attend to her; and the quarter of an hour quite convinced her that Mrs. Elton was a vain woman, extremely well satisfied with herself, and thinking much of her own importance; that she meant to shine and be very superior, but with manners which had been formed in a bad school, pert and familiar; that all her notions were drawn from one set of people, and one style of living; that if not foolish she was ignorant, and that her society would certainly do Mr. Elton no good. Harriet would have been a better match. If not wise or refined herself, she would have connected him with those who were; but Miss Hawkins, it might be fairly supposed from her easy conceit, had been the best of her own set. The rich brother-in-law near Bristol was the pride of the alliance, and his place and his carriages were the pride of him. The very first subject after being seated was Maple Grove, "My brother Mr. Suckling's seat;"--a comparison of Hartfield to Maple Grove. The grounds of Hartfield were small, but neat and pretty; and the house was modern and well-built. Mrs. Elton seemed most favourably impressed by the size of the room, the entrance, and all that she could see or imagine. "Very like Maple Grove indeed!--She was quite struck by the likeness!--That room was the very shape and size of the morning-room at Maple Grove; her sister's favourite room."--Mr. Elton was appealed to.--"Was not it astonishingly like?--She could really almost fancy herself at Maple Grove." "And the staircase--You know, as I came in, I observed how very like the staircase was; placed exactly in the same part of the house. I really could not help exclaiming! I assure you, Miss Woodhouse, it is very delightful to me, to be reminded of a place I am so extremely partial to as Maple Grove. I have spent so many happy months there! (with a little sigh of sentiment). A charming place, undoubtedly. Every body who sees it is struck by its beauty; but to me, it has been quite a home. Whenever you are transplanted, like me, Miss Woodhouse, you will understand how very delightful it is to meet with any thing at all like what one has left behind. I always say this is quite one of the evils of matrimony." Emma made as slight a reply as she could; but it was fully sufficient for Mrs. Elton, who only wanted to be talking herself. "So extremely like Maple Grove! And it is not merely the house--the grounds, I assure you, as far as I could observe, are strikingly like. The laurels at Maple Grove are in the same profusion as here, and stand very much in the same way--just across the lawn; and I had a glimpse of a fine large tree, with a bench round it, which put me so exactly in mind! My brother and sister will be enchanted with this place. People who have extensive grounds themselves are always pleased with any thing in the same style." Emma doubted the truth of this sentiment. She had a great idea that people who had extensive grounds themselves cared very little for the extensive grounds of any body else; but it was not worth while to attack an error so double-dyed, and therefore only said in reply, "When you have seen more of this country, I am afraid you will think you have overrated Hartfield. Surry is full of beauties." "Oh! yes, I am quite aware of that. It is the garden of England, you know. Surry is the garden of England." "Yes; but we must not rest our claims on that distinction. Many counties, I believe, are called the garden of England, as well as Surry." "No, I fancy not," replied Mrs. Elton, with a most satisfied smile. "I never heard any county but Surry called so." Emma was silenced. "My brother and sister have promised us a visit in the spring, or summer at farthest," continued Mrs. Elton; "and that will be our time for exploring. While they are with us, we shall explore a great deal, I dare say. They will have their barouche-landau, of course, which holds four perfectly; and therefore, without saying any thing of _our_ carriage, we should be able to explore the different beauties extremely well. They would hardly come in their chaise, I think, at that season of the year. Indeed, when the time draws on, I shall decidedly recommend their bringing the barouche-landau; it will be so very much preferable. When people come into a beautiful country of this sort, you know, Miss Woodhouse, one naturally wishes them to see as much as possible; and Mr. Suckling is extremely fond of exploring. We explored to King's-Weston twice last summer, in that way, most delightfully, just after their first having the barouche-landau. You have many parties of that kind here, I suppose, Miss Woodhouse, every summer?" "No; not immediately here. We are rather out of distance of the very striking beauties which attract the sort of parties you speak of; and we are a very quiet set of people, I believe; more disposed to stay at home than engage in schemes of pleasure." "Ah! there is nothing like staying at home for real comfort. Nobody can be more devoted to home than I am. I was quite a proverb for it at Maple Grove. Many a time has Selina said, when she has been going to Bristol, 'I really cannot get this girl to move from the house. I absolutely must go in by myself, though I hate being stuck up in the barouche-landau without a companion; but Augusta, I believe, with her own good-will, would never stir beyond the park paling.' Many a time has she said so; and yet I am no advocate for entire seclusion. I think, on the contrary, when people shut themselves up entirely from society, it is a very bad thing; and that it is much more advisable to mix in the world in a proper degree, without living in it either too much or too little. I perfectly understand your situation, however, Miss Woodhouse--(looking towards Mr. Woodhouse), Your father's state of health must be a great drawback. Why does not he try Bath?--Indeed he should. Let me recommend Bath to you. I assure you I have no doubt of its doing Mr. Woodhouse good." "My father tried it more than once, formerly; but without receiving any benefit; and Mr. Perry, whose name, I dare say, is not unknown to you, does not conceive it would be at all more likely to be useful now." "Ah! that's a great pity; for I assure you, Miss Woodhouse, where the waters do agree, it is quite wonderful the relief they give. In my Bath life, I have seen such instances of it! And it is so cheerful a place, that it could not fail of being of use to Mr. Woodhouse's spirits, which, I understand, are sometimes much depressed. And as to its recommendations to _you_, I fancy I need not take much pains to dwell on them. The advantages of Bath to the young are pretty generally understood. It would be a charming introduction for you, who have lived so secluded a life; and I could immediately secure you some of the best society in the place. A line from me would bring you a little host of acquaintance; and my particular friend, Mrs. Partridge, the lady I have always resided with when in Bath, would be most happy to shew you any attentions, and would be the very person for you to go into public with." It was as much as Emma could bear, without being impolite. The idea of her being indebted to Mrs. Elton for what was called an _introduction_--of her going into public under the auspices of a friend of Mrs. Elton's--probably some vulgar, dashing widow, who, with the help of a boarder, just made a shift to live!--The dignity of Miss Woodhouse, of Hartfield, was sunk indeed! She restrained herself, however, from any of the reproofs she could have given, and only thanked Mrs. Elton coolly; "but their going to Bath was quite out of the question; and she was not perfectly convinced that the place might suit her better than her father." And then, to prevent farther outrage and indignation, changed the subject directly. "I do not ask whether you are musical, Mrs. Elton. Upon these occasions, a lady's character generally precedes her; and Highbury has long known that you are a superior performer." "Oh! no, indeed; I must protest against any such idea. A superior performer!--very far from it, I assure you. Consider from how partial a quarter your information came. I am doatingly fond of music--passionately fond;--and my friends say I am not entirely devoid of taste; but as to any thing else, upon my honour my performance is _mediocre_ to the last degree. You, Miss Woodhouse, I well know, play delightfully. I assure you it has been the greatest satisfaction, comfort, and delight to me, to hear what a musical society I am got into. I absolutely cannot do without music. It is a necessary of life to me; and having always been used to a very musical society, both at Maple Grove and in Bath, it would have been a most serious sacrifice. I honestly said as much to Mr. E. when he was speaking of my future home, and expressing his fears lest the retirement of it should be disagreeable; and the inferiority of the house too--knowing what I had been accustomed to--of course he was not wholly without apprehension. When he was speaking of it in that way, I honestly said that _the_ _world_ I could give up--parties, balls, plays--for I had no fear of retirement. Blessed with so many resources within myself, the world was not necessary to _me_. I could do very well without it. To those who had no resources it was a different thing; but my resources made me quite independent. And as to smaller-sized rooms than I had been used to, I really could not give it a thought. I hoped I was perfectly equal to any sacrifice of that description. Certainly I had been accustomed to every luxury at Maple Grove; but I did assure him that two carriages were not necessary to my happiness, nor were spacious apartments. 'But,' said I, 'to be quite honest, I do not think I can live without something of a musical society. I condition for nothing else; but without music, life would be a blank to me.'" "We cannot suppose," said Emma, smiling, "that Mr. Elton would hesitate to assure you of there being a _very_ musical society in Highbury; and I hope you will not find he has outstepped the truth more than may be pardoned, in consideration of the motive." "No, indeed, I have no doubts at all on that head. I am delighted to find myself in such a circle. I hope we shall have many sweet little concerts together. I think, Miss Woodhouse, you and I must establish a musical club, and have regular weekly meetings at your house, or ours. Will not it be a good plan? If _we_ exert ourselves, I think we shall not be long in want of allies. Something of that nature would be particularly desirable for _me_, as an inducement to keep me in practice; for married women, you know--there is a sad story against them, in general. They are but too apt to give up music." "But you, who are so extremely fond of it--there can be no danger, surely?" "I should hope not; but really when I look around among my acquaintance, I tremble. Selina has entirely given up music--never touches the instrument--though she played sweetly. And the same may be said of Mrs. Jeffereys--Clara Partridge, that was--and of the two Milmans, now Mrs. Bird and Mrs. James Cooper; and of more than I can enumerate. Upon my word it is enough to put one in a fright. I used to be quite angry with Selina; but really I begin now to comprehend that a married woman has many things to call her attention. I believe I was half an hour this morning shut up with my housekeeper." "But every thing of that kind," said Emma, "will soon be in so regular a train--" "Well," said Mrs. Elton, laughing, "we shall see." Emma, finding her so determined upon neglecting her music, had nothing more to say; and, after a moment's pause, Mrs. Elton chose another subject. "We have been calling at Randalls," said she, "and found them both at home; and very pleasant people they seem to be. I like them extremely. Mr. Weston seems an excellent creature--quite a first-rate favourite with me already, I assure you. And _she_ appears so truly good--there is something so motherly and kind-hearted about her, that it wins upon one directly. She was your governess, I think?" Emma was almost too much astonished to answer; but Mrs. Elton hardly waited for the affirmative before she went on. "Having understood as much, I was rather astonished to find her so very lady-like! But she is really quite the gentlewoman." "Mrs. Weston's manners," said Emma, "were always particularly good. Their propriety, simplicity, and elegance, would make them the safest model for any young woman." "And who do you think came in while we were there?" Emma was quite at a loss. The tone implied some old acquaintance--and how could she possibly guess? "Knightley!" continued Mrs. Elton; "Knightley himself!--Was not it lucky?--for, not being within when he called the other day, I had never seen him before; and of course, as so particular a friend of Mr. E.'s, I had a great curiosity. 'My friend Knightley' had been so often mentioned, that I was really impatient to see him; and I must do my caro sposo the justice to say that he need not be ashamed of his friend. Knightley is quite the gentleman. I like him very much. Decidedly, I think, a very gentleman-like man." Happily, it was now time to be gone. They were off; and Emma could breathe. "Insufferable woman!" was her immediate exclamation. "Worse than I had supposed. Absolutely insufferable! Knightley!--I could not have believed it. Knightley!--never seen him in her life before, and call him Knightley!--and discover that he is a gentleman! A little upstart, vulgar being, with her Mr. E., and her _caro_ _sposo_, and her resources, and all her airs of pert pretension and underbred finery. Actually to discover that Mr. Knightley is a gentleman! I doubt whether he will return the compliment, and discover her to be a lady. I could not have believed it! And to propose that she and I should unite to form a musical club! One would fancy we were bosom friends! And Mrs. Weston!--Astonished that the person who had brought me up should be a gentlewoman! Worse and worse. I never met with her equal. Much beyond my hopes. Harriet is disgraced by any comparison. Oh! what would Frank Churchill say to her, if he were here? How angry and how diverted he would be! Ah! there I am--thinking of him directly. Always the first person to be thought of! How I catch myself out! Frank Churchill comes as regularly into my mind!"-- All this ran so glibly through her thoughts, that by the time her father had arranged himself, after the bustle of the Eltons' departure, and was ready to speak, she was very tolerably capable of attending. "Well, my dear," he deliberately began, "considering we never saw her before, she seems a very pretty sort of young lady; and I dare say she was very much pleased with you. She speaks a little too quick. A little quickness of voice there is which rather hurts the ear. But I believe I am nice; I do not like strange voices; and nobody speaks like you and poor Miss Taylor. However, she seems a very obliging, pretty-behaved young lady, and no doubt will make him a very good wife. Though I think he had better not have married. I made the best excuses I could for not having been able to wait on him and Mrs. Elton on this happy occasion; I said that I hoped I _should_ in the course of the summer. But I ought to have gone before. Not to wait upon a bride is very remiss. Ah! it shews what a sad invalid I am! But I do not like the corner into Vicarage Lane." "I dare say your apologies were accepted, sir. Mr. Elton knows you." "Yes: but a young lady--a bride--I ought to have paid my respects to her if possible. It was being very deficient." "But, my dear papa, you are no friend to matrimony; and therefore why should you be so anxious to pay your respects to a _bride_? It ought to be no recommendation to _you_. It is encouraging people to marry if you make so much of them." "No, my dear, I never encouraged any body to marry, but I would always wish to pay every proper attention to a lady--and a bride, especially, is never to be neglected. More is avowedly due to _her_. A bride, you know, my dear, is always the first in company, let the others be who they may." "Well, papa, if this is not encouragement to marry, I do not know what is. And I should never have expected you to be lending your sanction to such vanity-baits for poor young ladies." "My dear, you do not understand me. This is a matter of mere common politeness and good-breeding, and has nothing to do with any encouragement to people to marry." Emma had done. Her father was growing nervous, and could not understand _her_. Her mind returned to Mrs. Elton's offences, and long, very long, did they occupy her.

Mr. Elton is married, and Emma does not want to be the last to visit Mrs. Elton, so she soon visits, taking Harriet. After the short visit Emma is sure she does not like Mrs. Elton, as she is not elegant. Harriet says that she thinks she will not mind seeing Mr. and Mrs. Elton together as she thinks Mrs. Elton is charming. When Mrs. Elton returns Emma's visit, Emma is even more convinced that she does not like her. She thinks that she is vain and satisfied with herself. She could not talk enough of her brother-in-law, Mr. Suckling, and his home, Maple Grove, as this is the high pride of her life. She goes on and on about Maple Grove, and about how her sister and brother-in-law will be visiting. Mrs. Elton also suggests that Emma go to Bath, and that she could give her introductions to the society there. The idea that she would be indebted to Mrs. Elton for introductions is almost more than Emma can bear. Mrs. Elton then suggests that she and Emma start a musical society in Highbury, and Emma tries to change the subject. Emma is also offended that Mrs. Elton says she is surprised at Mrs. Weston's being a gentlewoman when she was Emma's governess and that she calls Mr. Knightley just 'Knightley. After Mrs. Elton has gone, Emma thinks much about her offences

CHAPTER X Lull'd in the countless chambers of the brain, Our thoughts are link'd by many a hidden chain: Awake but one, and lo! what myriads rise! Each stamps its image as the other flies! PLEASURES OF MEMORY Emily pursued her journey, without any accident, along the plains of Languedoc towards the north-west; and, on this her return to Tholouse, which she had last left with Madame Montoni, she thought much on the melancholy fate of her aunt, who, but for her own imprudence, might now have been living in happiness there! Montoni, too, often rose to her fancy, such as she had seen him in his days of triumph, bold, spirited and commanding; such also as she had since beheld him in his days of vengeance; and now, only a few short months had passed--and he had no longer the power, or the will to afflict;--he had become a clod of earth, and his life was vanished like a shadow! Emily could have wept at his fate, had she not remembered his crimes; for that of her unfortunate aunt she did weep, and all sense of her errors was overcome by the recollection of her misfortunes. Other thoughts and other emotions succeeded, as Emily drew near the well-known scenes of her early love, and considered, that Valancourt was lost to her and to himself, for ever. At length, she came to the brow of the hill, whence, on her departure for Italy, she had given a farewell look to this beloved landscape, amongst whose woods and fields she had so often walked with Valancourt, and where he was then to inhabit, when she would be far, far away! She saw, once more, that chain of the Pyrenees, which overlooked La Vallee, rising, like faint clouds, on the horizon. 'There, too, is Gascony, extended at their feet!' said she, 'O my father,--my mother! And there, too, is the Garonne!' she added, drying the tears, that obscured her sight,--'and Tholouse, and my aunt's mansion--and the groves in her garden!--O my friends! are ye all lost to me--must I never, never see ye more!' Tears rushed again to her eyes, and she continued to weep, till an abrupt turn in the road had nearly occasioned the carriage to overset, when, looking up, she perceived another part of the well-known scene around Tholouse, and all the reflections and anticipations, which she had suffered, at the moment, when she bade it last adieu, came with recollected force to her heart. She remembered how anxiously she had looked forward to the futurity, which was to decide her happiness concerning Valancourt, and what depressing fears had assailed her; the very words she had uttered, as she withdrew her last look from the prospect, came to her memory. 'Could I but be certain,' she had then said, 'that I should ever return, and that Valancourt would still live for me--I should go in peace!' Now, that futurity, so anxiously anticipated, was arrived, she was returned--but what a dreary blank appeared!--Valancourt no longer lived for her! She had no longer even the melancholy satisfaction of contemplating his image in her heart, for he was no longer the same Valancourt she had cherished there--the solace of many a mournful hour, the animating friend, that had enabled her to bear up against the oppression of Montoni--the distant hope, that had beamed over her gloomy prospect! On perceiving this beloved idea to be an illusion of her own creation, Valancourt seemed to be annihilated, and her soul sickened at the blank, that remained. His marriage with a rival, even his death, she thought she could have endured with more fortitude, than this discovery; for then, amidst all her grief, she could have looked in secret upon the image of goodness, which her fancy had drawn of him, and comfort would have mingled with her suffering! Drying her tears, she looked, once more, upon the landscape, which had excited them, and perceived, that she was passing the very bank, where she had taken leave of Valancourt, on the morning of her departure from Tholouse, and she now saw him, through her returning tears, such as he had appeared, when she looked from the carriage to give him a last adieu--saw him leaning mournfully against the high trees, and remembered the fixed look of mingled tenderness and anguish, with which he had then regarded her. This recollection was too much for her heart, and she sunk back in the carriage, nor once looked up, till it stopped at the gates of what was now her own mansion. These being opened, and by the servant, to whose care the chateau had been entrusted, the carriage drove into the court, where, alighting, she hastily passed through the great hall, now silent and solitary, to a large oak parlour, the common sitting room of the late Madame Montoni, where, instead of being received by M. Quesnel, she found a letter from him, informing her that business of consequence had obliged him to leave Tholouse two days before. Emily was, upon the whole, not sorry to be spared his presence, since his abrupt departure appeared to indicate the same indifference, with which he had formerly regarded her. This letter informed her, also, of the progress he had made in the settlement of her affairs, and concluded with directions, concerning the forms of some business, which remained for her to transact. But M. Quesnel's unkindness did not long occupy her thoughts, which returned the remembrance of the persons she had been accustomed to see in this mansion, and chiefly of the ill-guided and unfortunate Madame Montoni. In the room, where she now sat, she had breakfasted with her on the morning of their departure for Italy; and the view of it brought most forcibly to her recollection all she had herself suffered, at that time, and the many gay expectations, which her aunt had formed, respecting the journey before her. While Emily's mind was thus engaged, her eyes wandered unconsciously to a large window, that looked upon the garden, and here new memorials of the past spoke to her heart, for she saw extended before her the very avenue, in which she had parted with Valancourt, on the eve of her journey; and all the anxiety, the tender interest he had shewn, concerning her future happiness, his earnest remonstrances against her committing herself to the power of Montoni, and the truth of his affection, came afresh to her memory. At this moment, it appeared almost impossible, that Valancourt could have become unworthy of her regard, and she doubted all that she had lately heard to his disadvantage, and even his own words, which had confirmed Count De Villefort's report of him. Overcome by the recollections, which the view of this avenue occasioned, she turned abruptly from the window, and sunk into a chair beside it, where she sat, given up to grief, till the entrance of Annette, with coffee, aroused her. 'Dear madam, how melancholy this place looks now,' said Annette, 'to what it used to do! It is dismal coming home, when there is nobody to welcome one!' This was not the moment, in which Emily could bear the remark; her tears fell again, and, as soon as she had taken the coffee, she retired to her apartment, where she endeavoured to repose her fatigued spirits. But busy memory would still supply her with the visions of former times: she saw Valancourt interesting and benevolent, as he had been wont to appear in the days of their early love, and, amidst the scenes, where she had believed that they should sometimes pass their years together!--but, at length, sleep closed these afflicting scenes from her view. On the following morning, serious occupation recovered her from such melancholy reflections; for, being desirous of quitting Tholouse, and of hastening on to La Vallee, she made some enquiries into the condition of the estate, and immediately dispatched a part of the necessary business concerning it, according to the directions of Mons. Quesnel. It required a strong effort to abstract her thoughts from other interests sufficiently to attend to this, but she was rewarded for her exertions by again experiencing, that employment is the surest antidote to sorrow. This day was devoted entirely to business; and, among other concerns, she employed means to learn the situation of all her poor tenants, that she might relieve their wants, or confirm their comforts. In the evening, her spirits were so much strengthened, that she thought she could bear to visit the gardens, where she had so often walked with Valancourt; and, knowing, that, if she delayed to do so, their scenes would only affect her the more, whenever they should be viewed, she took advantage of the present state of her mind, and entered them. Passing hastily the gate leading from the court into the gardens, she hurried up the great avenue, scarcely permitting her memory to dwell for a moment on the circumstance of her having here parted with Valancourt, and soon quitted this for other walks less interesting to her heart. These brought her, at length, to the flight of steps, that led from the lower garden to the terrace, on seeing which, she became agitated, and hesitated whether to ascend, but, her resolution returning, she proceeded. 'Ah!' said Emily, as she ascended, 'these are the same high trees, that used to wave over the terrace, and these the same flowery thickets--the liburnum, the wild rose, and the cerinthe--which were wont to grow beneath them! Ah! and there, too, on that bank, are the very plants, which Valancourt so carefully reared!--O, when last I saw them!'--she checked the thought, but could not restrain her tears, and, after walking slowly on for a few moments, her agitation, upon the view of this well-known scene, increased so much, that she was obliged to stop, and lean upon the wall of the terrace. It was a mild, and beautiful evening. The sun was setting over the extensive landscape, to which his beams, sloping from beneath a dark cloud, that overhung the west, gave rich and partial colouring, and touched the tufted summits of the groves, that rose from the garden below, with a yellow gleam. Emily and Valancourt had often admired together this scene, at the same hour; and it was exactly on this spot, that, on the night preceding her departure for Italy, she had listened to his remonstrances against the journey, and to the pleadings of passionate affection. Some observations, which she made on the landscape, brought this to her remembrance, and with it all the minute particulars of that conversation;--the alarming doubts he had expressed concerning Montoni, doubts, which had since been fatally confirmed; the reasons and entreaties he had employed to prevail with her to consent to an immediate marriage; the tenderness of his love, the paroxysms of this grief, and the conviction that he had repeatedly expressed, that they should never meet again in happiness! All these circumstances rose afresh to her mind, and awakened the various emotions she had then suffered. Her tenderness for Valancourt became as powerful as in the moments, when she thought, that she was parting with him and happiness together, and when the strength of her mind had enabled her to triumph over present suffering, rather than to deserve the reproach of her conscience by engaging in a clandestine marriage.--'Alas!' said Emily, as these recollections came to her mind, 'and what have I gained by the fortitude I then practised?--am I happy now?--He said, we should meet no more in happiness; but, O! he little thought his own misconduct would separate us, and lead to the very evil he then dreaded!' Her reflections increased her anguish, while she was compelled to acknowledge, that the fortitude she had formerly exerted, if it had not conducted her to happiness, had saved her from irretrievable misfortune--from Valancourt himself! But in these moments she could not congratulate herself on the prudence, that had saved her; she could only lament, with bitterest anguish, the circumstances, which had conspired to betray Valancourt into a course of life so different from that, which the virtues, the tastes, and the pursuits of his early years had promised; but she still loved him too well to believe, that his heart was even now depraved, though his conduct had been criminal. An observation, which had fallen from M. St. Aubert more than once, now occurred to her. 'This young man,' said he, speaking of Valancourt, 'has never been at Paris;' a remark, that had surprised her at the time it was uttered, but which she now understood, and she exclaimed sorrowfully, 'O Valancourt! if such a friend as my father had been with you at Paris--your noble, ingenuous nature would not have fallen!' The sun was now set, and, recalling her thoughts from their melancholy subject, she continued her walk; for the pensive shade of twilight was pleasing to her, and the nightingales from the surrounding groves began to answer each other in the long-drawn, plaintive note, which always touched her heart; while all the fragrance of the flowery thickets, that bounded the terrace, was awakened by the cool evening air, which floated so lightly among their leaves, that they scarcely trembled as it passed. Emily came, at length, to the steps of the pavilion, that terminated the terrace, and where her last interview with Valancourt, before her departure from Tholouse, had so unexpectedly taken place. The door was now shut, and she trembled, while she hesitated whether to open it; but her wish to see again a place, which had been the chief scene of her former happiness, at length overcoming her reluctance to encounter the painful regret it would renew, she entered. The room was obscured by a melancholy shade; but through the open lattices, darkened by the hanging foliage of the vines, appeared the dusky landscape, the Garonne reflecting the evening light, and the west still glowing. A chair was placed near one of the balconies, as if some person had been sitting there, but the other furniture of the pavilion remained exactly as usual, and Emily thought it looked as if it had not once been moved since she set out for Italy. The silent and deserted air of the place added solemnity to her emotions, for she heard only the low whisper of the breeze, as it shook the leaves of the vines, and the very faint murmur of the Garonne. She seated herself in a chair, near the lattice, and yielded to the sadness of her heart, while she recollected the circumstances of her parting interview with Valancourt, on this spot. It was here too, that she had passed some of the happiest hours of her life with him, when her aunt favoured the connection, for here she had often sat and worked, while he conversed, or read; and she now well remembered with what discriminating judgment, with what tempered energy, he used to repeat some of the sublimest passages of their favourite authors; how often he would pause to admire with her their excellence, and with what tender delight he would listen to her remarks, and correct her taste. 'And is it possible,' said Emily, as these recollections returned--'is it possible, that a mind, so susceptible of whatever is grand and beautiful, could stoop to low pursuits, and be subdued by frivolous temptations?' She remembered how often she had seen the sudden tear start in his eye, and had heard his voice tremble with emotion, while he related any great or benevolent action, or repeated a sentiment of the same character. 'And such a mind,' said she, 'such a heart, were to be sacrificed to the habits of a great city!' These recollections becoming too painful to be endured, she abruptly left the pavilion, and, anxious to escape from the memorials of her departed happiness, returned towards the chateau. As she passed along the terrace, she perceived a person, walking, with a slow step, and a dejected air, under the trees, at some distance. The twilight, which was now deep, would not allow her to distinguish who it was, and she imagined it to be one of the servants, till, the sound of her steps seeming to reach him, he turned half round, and she thought she saw Valancourt! Whoever it was, he instantly struck among the thickets on the left, and disappeared, while Emily, her eyes fixed on the place, whence he had vanished, and her frame trembling so excessively, that she could scarcely support herself, remained, for some moments, unable to quit the spot, and scarcely conscious of existence. With her recollection, her strength returned, and she hurried toward the house, where she did not venture to enquire who had been in the gardens, lest she should betray her emotion; and she sat down alone, endeavouring to recollect the figure, air and features of the person she had just seen. Her view of him, however, had been so transient, and the gloom had rendered it so imperfect, that she could remember nothing with exactness; yet the general appearance of his figure, and his abrupt departure, made her still believe, that this person was Valancourt. Sometimes, indeed, she thought, that her fancy, which had been occupied by the idea of him, had suggested his image to her uncertain sight: but this conjecture was fleeting. If it was himself whom she had seen, she wondered much, that he should be at Tholouse, and more, how he had gained admittance into the garden; but as often as her impatience prompted her to enquire whether any stranger had been admitted, she was restrained by an unwillingness to betray her doubts; and the evening was passed in anxious conjecture, and in efforts to dismiss the subject from her thoughts. But, these endeavours were ineffectual, and a thousand inconsistent emotions assailed her, whenever she fancied that Valancourt might be near her; now, she dreaded it to be true, and now she feared it to be false; and, while she constantly tried to persuade herself, that she wished the person, whom she had seen, might not be Valancourt, her heart as constantly contradicted her reason. The following day was occupied by the visits of several neighbouring families, formerly intimate with Madame Montoni, who came to condole with Emily on her death, to congratulate her upon the acquisition of these estates, and to enquire about Montoni, and concerning the strange reports they had heard of her own situation; all which was done with the utmost decorum, and the visitors departed with as much composure as they had arrived. Emily was wearied by these formalities, and disgusted by the subservient manners of many persons, who had thought her scarcely worthy of common attention, while she was believed to be a dependant on Madame Montoni. 'Surely,' said she, 'there is some magic in wealth, which can thus make persons pay their court to it, when it does not even benefit themselves. How strange it is, that a fool or a knave, with riches, should be treated with more respect by the world, than a good man, or a wise man in poverty!' It was evening, before she was left alone, and she then wished to have refreshed her spirits in the free air of her garden; but she feared to go thither, lest she should meet again the person, whom she had seen on the preceding night, and he should prove to be Valancourt. The suspense and anxiety she suffered, on this subject, she found all her efforts unable to controul, and her secret wish to see Valancourt once more, though unseen by him, powerfully prompted her to go, but prudence and a delicate pride restrained her, and she determined to avoid the possibility of throwing herself in his way, by forbearing to visit the gardens, for several days. When, after near a week, she again ventured thither, she made Annette her companion, and confined her walk to the lower grounds, but often started as the leaves rustled in the breeze, imagining, that some person was among the thickets; and, at the turn of every alley, she looked forward with apprehensive expectation. She pursued her walk thoughtfully and silently, for her agitation would not suffer her to converse with Annette, to whom, however, thought and silence were so intolerable, that she did not scruple at length to talk to her mistress. 'Dear madam,' said she, 'why do you start so? one would think you knew what has happened.' 'What has happened?' said Emily, in a faltering voice, and trying to command her emotion. 'The night before last, you know, madam'-- 'I know nothing, Annette,' replied her lady in a more hurried voice. 'The night before last, madam, there was a robber in the garden.' 'A robber!' said Emily, in an eager, yet doubting tone. 'I suppose he was a robber, madam. What else could he be?' 'Where did you see him, Annette?' rejoined Emily, looking round her, and turning back towards the chateau. 'It was not I that saw him, madam, it was Jean the gardener. It was twelve o'clock at night, and, as he was coming across the court to go the back way into the house, what should he see--but somebody walking in the avenue, that fronts the garden gate! So, with that, Jean guessed how it was, and he went into the house for his gun.' 'His gun!' exclaimed Emily. 'Yes, madam, his gun; and then he came out into the court to watch him. Presently, he sees him come slowly down the avenue, and lean over the garden gate, and look up at the house for a long time; and I warrant he examined it well, and settled what window he should break in at.' 'But the gun,' said Emily--'the gun!' 'Yes, madam, all in good time. Presently, Jean says, the robber opened the gate, and was coming into the court, and then he thought proper to ask him his business: so he called out again, and bade him say who he was, and what he wanted. But the man would do neither; but turned upon his heel, and passed into the garden again. Jean knew then well enough how it was, and so he fired after him.' 'Fired!' exclaimed Emily. 'Yes, madam, fired off his gun; but, Holy Virgin! what makes you look so pale, madam? The man was not killed,--I dare say; but if he was, his comrades carried him off: for, when Jean went in the morning, to look for the body, it was gone, and nothing to be seen but a track of blood on the ground. Jean followed it, that he might find out where the man got into the garden, but it was lost in the grass, and'-- Annette was interrupted: for Emily's spirits died away, and she would have fallen to the ground, if the girl had not caught her, and supported her to a bench, close to them. When, after a long absence, her senses returned, Emily desired to be led to her apartment; and, though she trembled with anxiety to enquire further on the subject of her alarm, she found herself too ill at present, to dare the intelligence which it was possible she might receive of Valancourt. Having dismissed Annette, that she might weep and think at liberty, she endeavoured to recollect the exact air of the person, whom she had seen on the terrace, and still her fancy gave her the figure of Valancourt. She had, indeed, scarcely a doubt, that it was he whom she had seen, and at whom the gardener had fired: for the manner of the latter person, as described by Annette, was not that of a robber; nor did it appear probable, that a robber would have come alone, to break into a house so spacious as this. When Emily thought herself sufficiently recovered, to listen to what Jean might have to relate, she sent for him; but he could inform her of no circumstance, that might lead to a knowledge of the person, who had been shot, or of the consequence of the wound; and, after severely reprimanding him, for having fired with bullets, and ordering diligent enquiry to be made in the neighbourhood for the discovery of the wounded person, she dismissed him, and herself remained in the same state of terrible suspense. All the tenderness she had ever felt for Valancourt, was recalled by the sense of his danger; and the more she considered the subject, the more her conviction strengthened, that it was he, who had visited the gardens, for the purpose of soothing the misery of disappointed affection, amidst the scenes of his former happiness. 'Dear madam,' said Annette, when she returned, 'I never saw you so affected before! I dare say the man is not killed.' Emily shuddered, and lamented bitterly the rashness of the gardener in having fired. 'I knew you would be angry enough about that, madam, or I should have told you before; and he knew so too; for, says he, "Annette, say nothing about this to my lady. She lies on the other side of the house, so did not hear the gun, perhaps; but she would be angry with me, if she knew, seeing there is blood. But then," says he, "how is one to keep the garden clear, if one is afraid to fire at a robber, when one sees him?"' 'No more of this,' said Emily, 'pray leave me.' Annette obeyed, and Emily returned to the agonizing considerations, that had assailed her before, but which she, at length, endeavoured to sooth by a new remark. If the stranger was Valancourt, it was certain he had come alone, and it appeared, therefore, that he had been able to quit the gardens, without assistance; a circumstance which did not seem probable, had his wound been dangerous. With this consideration, she endeavoured to support herself, during the enquiries, that were making by her servants in the neighbourhood; but day after day came, and still closed in uncertainty, concerning this affair: and Emily, suffering in silence, at length, drooped, and sunk under the pressure of her anxiety. She was attacked by a slow fever, and when she yielded to the persuasion of Annette to send for medical advice, the physicians prescribed little beside air, gentle exercise and amusement: but how was this last to be obtained? She, however, endeavoured to abstract her thoughts from the subject of her anxiety, by employing them in promoting that happiness in others, which she had lost herself; and, when the evening was fine, she usually took an airing, including in her ride the cottages of some of her tenants, on whose condition she made such observations, as often enabled her, unasked, to fulfil their wishes. Her indisposition and the business she engaged in, relative to this estate, had already protracted her stay at Tholouse, beyond the period she had formerly fixed for her departure to La Vallee; and now she was unwilling to leave the only place, where it seemed possible, that certainty could be obtained on the subject of her distress. But the time was come, when her presence was necessary at La Vallee, a letter from the Lady Blanche now informing her, that the Count and herself, being then at the chateau of the Baron St. Foix, purposed to visit her at La Vallee, on their way home, as soon as they should be informed of her arrival there. Blanche added, that they made this visit, with the hope of inducing her to return with them to Chateau-le-Blanc. Emily, having replied to the letter of her friend, and said that she should be at La Vallee in a few days, made hasty preparations for the journey; and, in thus leaving Tholouse, endeavoured to support herself with a belief, that, if any fatal accident had happened to Valancourt, she must in this interval have heard of it. On the evening before her departure, she went to take leave of the terrace and the pavilion. The day had been sultry, but a light shower, that fell just before sun-set, had cooled the air, and given that soft verdure to the woods and pastures, which is so refreshing to the eye; while the rain drops, still trembling on the shrubs, glittered in the last yellow gleam, that lighted up the scene, and the air was filled with fragrance, exhaled by the late shower, from herbs and flowers and from the earth itself. But the lovely prospect, which Emily beheld from the terrace, was no longer viewed by her with delight; she sighed deeply as her eye wandered over it, and her spirits were in a state of such dejection, that she could not think of her approaching return to La Vallee, without tears, and seemed to mourn again the death of her father, as if it had been an event of yesterday. Having reached the pavilion, she seated herself at the open lattice, and, while her eyes settled on the distant mountains, that overlooked Gascony, still gleaming on the horizon, though the sun had now left the plains below, 'Alas!' said she, 'I return to your long-lost scenes, but shall meet no more the parents, that were wont to render them delightful!--no more shall see the smile of welcome, or hear the well-known voice of fondness:--all will now be cold and silent in what was once my happy home.' Tears stole down her cheek, as the remembrance of what that home had been, returned to her; but, after indulging her sorrow for some time, she checked it, accusing herself of ingratitude in forgetting the friends, that she possessed, while she lamented those that were departed; and she, at length, left the pavilion and the terrace, without having observed a shadow of Valancourt or of any other person.

Em heads on over to Tholouse, moping over Valancourt the whole way. This is the kind of breakup that requires a few pints of Ben & Jerry's. Arriving at Tholouse is like taking a trip down memory lane with Valancourt. All Em can think about is the happy times they shared together. Just when she's getting particularly upset, she catches a glimpse of a familiar face on the terrace. It looks like Valancourt, it moves like Valancourt... and she's pretty convinced it is Valancourt. Probably-Valancourt hightails it off of the property before Em can react. Annette is chattering away to Em a few days later when she mentions that the gardener shot a robber in the garden the other night. Em's mind immediately flashes to the worst scenario. Could the "robber" be Valancourt? Apparently, the guy made it away without being killed. But there's definitely a track of blood on the ground. Things aren't looking good for guys who hang out in the bushes.

In his capacity as delicatessen vender, Jokubas Szedvilas had many acquaintances. Among these was one of the special policemen employed by Durham, whose duty it frequently was to pick out men for employment. Jokubas had never tried it, but he expressed a certainty that he could get some of his friends a job through this man. It was agreed, after consultation, that he should make the effort with old Antanas and with Jonas. Jurgis was confident of his ability to get work for himself, unassisted by any one. As we have said before, he was not mistaken in this. He had gone to Brown's and stood there not more than half an hour before one of the bosses noticed his form towering above the rest, and signaled to him. The colloquy which followed was brief and to the point: "Speak English?" "No; Lit-uanian." (Jurgis had studied this word carefully.) "Job?" "Je." (A nod.) "Worked here before?" "No 'stand." (Signals and gesticulations on the part of the boss. Vigorous shakes of the head by Jurgis.) "Shovel guts?" "No 'stand." (More shakes of the head.) "Zarnos. Pagaiksztis. Szluofa!" (Imitative motions.) "Je." "See door. Durys?" (Pointing.) "Je." "To-morrow, seven o'clock. Understand? Rytoj! Prieszpietys! Septyni!" "Dekui, tamistai!" (Thank you, sir.) And that was all. Jurgis turned away, and then in a sudden rush the full realization of his triumph swept over him, and he gave a yell and a jump, and started off on a run. He had a job! He had a job! And he went all the way home as if upon wings, and burst into the house like a cyclone, to the rage of the numerous lodgers who had just turned in for their daily sleep. Meantime Jokubas had been to see his friend the policeman, and received encouragement, so it was a happy party. There being no more to be done that day, the shop was left under the care of Lucija, and her husband sallied forth to show his friends the sights of Packingtown. Jokubas did this with the air of a country gentleman escorting a party of visitors over his estate; he was an old-time resident, and all these wonders had grown up under his eyes, and he had a personal pride in them. The packers might own the land, but he claimed the landscape, and there was no one to say nay to this. They passed down the busy street that led to the yards. It was still early morning, and everything was at its high tide of activity. A steady stream of employees was pouring through the gate--employees of the higher sort, at this hour, clerks and stenographers and such. For the women there were waiting big two-horse wagons, which set off at a gallop as fast as they were filled. In the distance there was heard again the lowing of the cattle, a sound as of a far-off ocean calling. They followed it, this time, as eager as children in sight of a circus menagerie--which, indeed, the scene a good deal resembled. They crossed the railroad tracks, and then on each side of the street were the pens full of cattle; they would have stopped to look, but Jokubas hurried them on, to where there was a stairway and a raised gallery, from which everything could be seen. Here they stood, staring, breathless with wonder. There is over a square mile of space in the yards, and more than half of it is occupied by cattle pens; north and south as far as the eye can reach there stretches a sea of pens. And they were all filled--so many cattle no one had ever dreamed existed in the world. Red cattle, black, white, and yellow cattle; old cattle and young cattle; great bellowing bulls and little calves not an hour born; meek-eyed milch cows and fierce, long-horned Texas steers. The sound of them here was as of all the barnyards of the universe; and as for counting them--it would have taken all day simply to count the pens. Here and there ran long alleys, blocked at intervals by gates; and Jokubas told them that the number of these gates was twenty-five thousand. Jokubas had recently been reading a newspaper article which was full of statistics such as that, and he was very proud as he repeated them and made his guests cry out with wonder. Jurgis too had a little of this sense of pride. Had he not just gotten a job, and become a sharer in all this activity, a cog in this marvelous machine? Here and there about the alleys galloped men upon horseback, booted, and carrying long whips; they were very busy, calling to each other, and to those who were driving the cattle. They were drovers and stock raisers, who had come from far states, and brokers and commission merchants, and buyers for all the big packing houses. Here and there they would stop to inspect a bunch of cattle, and there would be a parley, brief and businesslike. The buyer would nod or drop his whip, and that would mean a bargain; and he would note it in his little book, along with hundreds of others he had made that morning. Then Jokubas pointed out the place where the cattle were driven to be weighed, upon a great scale that would weigh a hundred thousand pounds at once and record it automatically. It was near to the east entrance that they stood, and all along this east side of the yards ran the railroad tracks, into which the cars were run, loaded with cattle. All night long this had been going on, and now the pens were full; by tonight they would all be empty, and the same thing would be done again. "And what will become of all these creatures?" cried Teta Elzbieta. "By tonight," Jokubas answered, "they will all be killed and cut up; and over there on the other side of the packing houses are more railroad tracks, where the cars come to take them away." There were two hundred and fifty miles of track within the yards, their guide went on to tell them. They brought about ten thousand head of cattle every day, and as many hogs, and half as many sheep--which meant some eight or ten million live creatures turned into food every year. One stood and watched, and little by little caught the drift of the tide, as it set in the direction of the packing houses. There were groups of cattle being driven to the chutes, which were roadways about fifteen feet wide, raised high above the pens. In these chutes the stream of animals was continuous; it was quite uncanny to watch them, pressing on to their fate, all unsuspicious a very river of death. Our friends were not poetical, and the sight suggested to them no metaphors of human destiny; they thought only of the wonderful efficiency of it all. The chutes into which the hogs went climbed high up--to the very top of the distant buildings; and Jokubas explained that the hogs went up by the power of their own legs, and then their weight carried them back through all the processes necessary to make them into pork. "They don't waste anything here," said the guide, and then he laughed and added a witticism, which he was pleased that his unsophisticated friends should take to be his own: "They use everything about the hog except the squeal." In front of Brown's General Office building there grows a tiny plot of grass, and this, you may learn, is the only bit of green thing in Packingtown; likewise this jest about the hog and his squeal, the stock in trade of all the guides, is the one gleam of humor that you will find there. After they had seen enough of the pens, the party went up the street, to the mass of buildings which occupy the center of the yards. These buildings, made of brick and stained with innumerable layers of Packingtown smoke, were painted all over with advertising signs, from which the visitor realized suddenly that he had come to the home of many of the torments of his life. It was here that they made those products with the wonders of which they pestered him so--by placards that defaced the landscape when he traveled, and by staring advertisements in the newspapers and magazines--by silly little jingles that he could not get out of his mind, and gaudy pictures that lurked for him around every street corner. Here was where they made Brown's Imperial Hams and Bacon, Brown's Dressed Beef, Brown's Excelsior Sausages! Here was the headquarters of Durham's Pure Leaf Lard, of Durham's Breakfast Bacon, Durham's Canned Beef, Potted Ham, Deviled Chicken, Peerless Fertilizer! Entering one of the Durham buildings, they found a number of other visitors waiting; and before long there came a guide, to escort them through the place. They make a great feature of showing strangers through the packing plants, for it is a good advertisement. But Ponas Jokubas whispered maliciously that the visitors did not see any more than the packers wanted them to. They climbed a long series of stairways outside of the building, to the top of its five or six stories. Here was the chute, with its river of hogs, all patiently toiling upward; there was a place for them to rest to cool off, and then through another passageway they went into a room from which there is no returning for hogs. It was a long, narrow room, with a gallery along it for visitors. At the head there was a great iron wheel, about twenty feet in circumference, with rings here and there along its edge. Upon both sides of this wheel there was a narrow space, into which came the hogs at the end of their journey; in the midst of them stood a great burly Negro, bare-armed and bare-chested. He was resting for the moment, for the wheel had stopped while men were cleaning up. In a minute or two, however, it began slowly to revolve, and then the men upon each side of it sprang to work. They had chains which they fastened about the leg of the nearest hog, and the other end of the chain they hooked into one of the rings upon the wheel. So, as the wheel turned, a hog was suddenly jerked off his feet and borne aloft. At the same instant the car was assailed by a most terrifying shriek; the visitors started in alarm, the women turned pale and shrank back. The shriek was followed by another, louder and yet more agonizing--for once started upon that journey, the hog never came back; at the top of the wheel he was shunted off upon a trolley, and went sailing down the room. And meantime another was swung up, and then another, and another, until there was a double line of them, each dangling by a foot and kicking in frenzy--and squealing. The uproar was appalling, perilous to the eardrums; one feared there was too much sound for the room to hold--that the walls must give way or the ceiling crack. There were high squeals and low squeals, grunts, and wails of agony; there would come a momentary lull, and then a fresh outburst, louder than ever, surging up to a deafening climax. It was too much for some of the visitors--the men would look at each other, laughing nervously, and the women would stand with hands clenched, and the blood rushing to their faces, and the tears starting in their eyes. Meantime, heedless of all these things, the men upon the floor were going about their work. Neither squeals of hogs nor tears of visitors made any difference to them; one by one they hooked up the hogs, and one by one with a swift stroke they slit their throats. There was a long line of hogs, with squeals and lifeblood ebbing away together; until at last each started again, and vanished with a splash into a huge vat of boiling water. It was all so very businesslike that one watched it fascinated. It was porkmaking by machinery, porkmaking by applied mathematics. And yet somehow the most matter-of-fact person could not help thinking of the hogs; they were so innocent, they came so very trustingly; and they were so very human in their protests--and so perfectly within their rights! They had done nothing to deserve it; and it was adding insult to injury, as the thing was done here, swinging them up in this cold-blooded, impersonal way, without a pretense of apology, without the homage of a tear. Now and then a visitor wept, to be sure; but this slaughtering machine ran on, visitors or no visitors. It was like some horrible crime committed in a dungeon, all unseen and unheeded, buried out of sight and of memory. One could not stand and watch very long without becoming philosophical, without beginning to deal in symbols and similes, and to hear the hog squeal of the universe. Was it permitted to believe that there was nowhere upon the earth, or above the earth, a heaven for hogs, where they were requited for all this suffering? Each one of these hogs was a separate creature. Some were white hogs, some were black; some were brown, some were spotted; some were old, some young; some were long and lean, some were monstrous. And each of them had an individuality of his own, a will of his own, a hope and a heart's desire; each was full of self-confidence, of self-importance, and a sense of dignity. And trusting and strong in faith he had gone about his business, the while a black shadow hung over him and a horrid Fate waited in his pathway. Now suddenly it had swooped upon him, and had seized him by the leg. Relentless, remorseless, it was; all his protests, his screams, were nothing to it--it did its cruel will with him, as if his wishes, his feelings, had simply no existence at all; it cut his throat and watched him gasp out his life. And now was one to believe that there was nowhere a god of hogs, to whom this hog personality was precious, to whom these hog squeals and agonies had a meaning? Who would take this hog into his arms and comfort him, reward him for his work well done, and show him the meaning of his sacrifice? Perhaps some glimpse of all this was in the thoughts of our humble-minded Jurgis, as he turned to go on with the rest of the party, and muttered: "Dieve--but I'm glad I'm not a hog!" The carcass hog was scooped out of the vat by machinery, and then it fell to the second floor, passing on the way through a wonderful machine with numerous scrapers, which adjusted themselves to the size and shape of the animal, and sent it out at the other end with nearly all of its bristles removed. It was then again strung up by machinery, and sent upon another trolley ride; this time passing between two lines of men, who sat upon a raised platform, each doing a certain single thing to the carcass as it came to him. One scraped the outside of a leg; another scraped the inside of the same leg. One with a swift stroke cut the throat; another with two swift strokes severed the head, which fell to the floor and vanished through a hole. Another made a slit down the body; a second opened the body wider; a third with a saw cut the breastbone; a fourth loosened the entrails; a fifth pulled them out--and they also slid through a hole in the floor. There were men to scrape each side and men to scrape the back; there were men to clean the carcass inside, to trim it and wash it. Looking down this room, one saw, creeping slowly, a line of dangling hogs a hundred yards in length; and for every yard there was a man, working as if a demon were after him. At the end of this hog's progress every inch of the carcass had been gone over several times; and then it was rolled into the chilling room, where it stayed for twenty-four hours, and where a stranger might lose himself in a forest of freezing hogs. Before the carcass was admitted here, however, it had to pass a government inspector, who sat in the doorway and felt of the glands in the neck for tuberculosis. This government inspector did not have the manner of a man who was worked to death; he was apparently not haunted by a fear that the hog might get by him before he had finished his testing. If you were a sociable person, he was quite willing to enter into conversation with you, and to explain to you the deadly nature of the ptomaines which are found in tubercular pork; and while he was talking with you you could hardly be so ungrateful as to notice that a dozen carcasses were passing him untouched. This inspector wore a blue uniform, with brass buttons, and he gave an atmosphere of authority to the scene, and, as it were, put the stamp of official approval upon the things which were done in Durham's. Jurgis went down the line with the rest of the visitors, staring open-mouthed, lost in wonder. He had dressed hogs himself in the forest of Lithuania; but he had never expected to live to see one hog dressed by several hundred men. It was like a wonderful poem to him, and he took it all in guilelessly--even to the conspicuous signs demanding immaculate cleanliness of the employees. Jurgis was vexed when the cynical Jokubas translated these signs with sarcastic comments, offering to take them to the secret rooms where the spoiled meats went to be doctored. The party descended to the next floor, where the various waste materials were treated. Here came the entrails, to be scraped and washed clean for sausage casings; men and women worked here in the midst of a sickening stench, which caused the visitors to hasten by, gasping. To another room came all the scraps to be "tanked," which meant boiling and pumping off the grease to make soap and lard; below they took out the refuse, and this, too, was a region in which the visitors did not linger. In still other places men were engaged in cutting up the carcasses that had been through the chilling rooms. First there were the "splitters," the most expert workmen in the plant, who earned as high as fifty cents an hour, and did not a thing all day except chop hogs down the middle. Then there were "cleaver men," great giants with muscles of iron; each had two men to attend him--to slide the half carcass in front of him on the table, and hold it while he chopped it, and then turn each piece so that he might chop it once more. His cleaver had a blade about two feet long, and he never made but one cut; he made it so neatly, too, that his implement did not smite through and dull itself--there was just enough force for a perfect cut, and no more. So through various yawning holes there slipped to the floor below--to one room hams, to another forequarters, to another sides of pork. One might go down to this floor and see the pickling rooms, where the hams were put into vats, and the great smoke rooms, with their airtight iron doors. In other rooms they prepared salt pork--there were whole cellars full of it, built up in great towers to the ceiling. In yet other rooms they were putting up meats in boxes and barrels, and wrapping hams and bacon in oiled paper, sealing and labeling and sewing them. From the doors of these rooms went men with loaded trucks, to the platform where freight cars were waiting to be filled; and one went out there and realized with a start that he had come at last to the ground floor of this enormous building. Then the party went across the street to where they did the killing of beef--where every hour they turned four or five hundred cattle into meat. Unlike the place they had left, all this work was done on one floor; and instead of there being one line of carcasses which moved to the workmen, there were fifteen or twenty lines, and the men moved from one to another of these. This made a scene of intense activity, a picture of human power wonderful to watch. It was all in one great room, like a circus amphitheater, with a gallery for visitors running over the center. Along one side of the room ran a narrow gallery, a few feet from the floor; into which gallery the cattle were driven by men with goads which gave them electric shocks. Once crowded in here, the creatures were prisoned, each in a separate pen, by gates that shut, leaving them no room to turn around; and while they stood bellowing and plunging, over the top of the pen there leaned one of the "knockers," armed with a sledge hammer, and watching for a chance to deal a blow. The room echoed with the thuds in quick succession, and the stamping and kicking of the steers. The instant the animal had fallen, the "knocker" passed on to another; while a second man raised a lever, and the side of the pen was raised, and the animal, still kicking and struggling, slid out to the "killing bed." Here a man put shackles about one leg, and pressed another lever, and the body was jerked up into the air. There were fifteen or twenty such pens, and it was a matter of only a couple of minutes to knock fifteen or twenty cattle and roll them out. Then once more the gates were opened, and another lot rushed in; and so out of each pen there rolled a steady stream of carcasses, which the men upon the killing beds had to get out of the way. The manner in which they did this was something to be seen and never forgotten. They worked with furious intensity, literally upon the run--at a pace with which there is nothing to be compared except a football game. It was all highly specialized labor, each man having his task to do; generally this would consist of only two or three specific cuts, and he would pass down the line of fifteen or twenty carcasses, making these cuts upon each. First there came the "butcher," to bleed them; this meant one swift stroke, so swift that you could not see it--only the flash of the knife; and before you could realize it, the man had darted on to the next line, and a stream of bright red was pouring out upon the floor. This floor was half an inch deep with blood, in spite of the best efforts of men who kept shoveling it through holes; it must have made the floor slippery, but no one could have guessed this by watching the men at work. The carcass hung for a few minutes to bleed; there was no time lost, however, for there were several hanging in each line, and one was always ready. It was let down to the ground, and there came the "headsman," whose task it was to sever the head, with two or three swift strokes. Then came the "floorsman," to make the first cut in the skin; and then another to finish ripping the skin down the center; and then half a dozen more in swift succession, to finish the skinning. After they were through, the carcass was again swung up; and while a man with a stick examined the skin, to make sure that it had not been cut, and another rolled it up and tumbled it through one of the inevitable holes in the floor, the beef proceeded on its journey. There were men to cut it, and men to split it, and men to gut it and scrape it clean inside. There were some with hose which threw jets of boiling water upon it, and others who removed the feet and added the final touches. In the end, as with the hogs, the finished beef was run into the chilling room, to hang its appointed time. The visitors were taken there and shown them, all neatly hung in rows, labeled conspicuously with the tags of the government inspectors--and some, which had been killed by a special process, marked with the sign of the kosher rabbi, certifying that it was fit for sale to the orthodox. And then the visitors were taken to the other parts of the building, to see what became of each particle of the waste material that had vanished through the floor; and to the pickling rooms, and the salting rooms, the canning rooms, and the packing rooms, where choice meat was prepared for shipping in refrigerator cars, destined to be eaten in all the four corners of civilization. Afterward they went outside, wandering about among the mazes of buildings in which was done the work auxiliary to this great industry. There was scarcely a thing needed in the business that Durham and Company did not make for themselves. There was a great steam power plant and an electricity plant. There was a barrel factory, and a boiler-repair shop. There was a building to which the grease was piped, and made into soap and lard; and then there was a factory for making lard cans, and another for making soap boxes. There was a building in which the bristles were cleaned and dried, for the making of hair cushions and such things; there was a building where the skins were dried and tanned, there was another where heads and feet were made into glue, and another where bones were made into fertilizer. No tiniest particle of organic matter was wasted in Durham's. Out of the horns of the cattle they made combs, buttons, hairpins, and imitation ivory; out of the shinbones and other big bones they cut knife and toothbrush handles, and mouthpieces for pipes; out of the hoofs they cut hairpins and buttons, before they made the rest into glue. From such things as feet, knuckles, hide clippings, and sinews came such strange and unlikely products as gelatin, isinglass, and phosphorus, bone black, shoe blacking, and bone oil. They had curled-hair works for the cattle tails, and a "wool pullery" for the sheepskins; they made pepsin from the stomachs of the pigs, and albumen from the blood, and violin strings from the ill-smelling entrails. When there was nothing else to be done with a thing, they first put it into a tank and got out of it all the tallow and grease, and then they made it into fertilizer. All these industries were gathered into buildings near by, connected by galleries and railroads with the main establishment; and it was estimated that they had handled nearly a quarter of a billion of animals since the founding of the plant by the elder Durham a generation and more ago. If you counted with it the other big plants--and they were now really all one--it was, so Jokubas informed them, the greatest aggregation of labor and capital ever gathered in one place. It employed thirty thousand men; it supported directly two hundred and fifty thousand people in its neighborhood, and indirectly it supported half a million. It sent its products to every country in the civilized world, and it furnished the food for no less than thirty million people! To all of these things our friends would listen open-mouthed--it seemed to them impossible of belief that anything so stupendous could have been devised by mortal man. That was why to Jurgis it seemed almost profanity to speak about the place as did Jokubas, skeptically; it was a thing as tremendous as the universe--the laws and ways of its working no more than the universe to be questioned or understood. All that a mere man could do, it seemed to Jurgis, was to take a thing like this as he found it, and do as he was told; to be given a place in it and a share in its wonderful activities was a blessing to be grateful for, as one was grateful for the sunshine and the rain. Jurgis was even glad that he had not seen the place before meeting with his triumph, for he felt that the size of it would have overwhelmed him. But now he had been admitted--he was a part of it all! He had the feeling that this whole huge establishment had taken him under its protection, and had become responsible for his welfare. So guileless was he, and ignorant of the nature of business, that he did not even realize that he had become an employee of Brown's, and that Brown and Durham were supposed by all the world to be deadly rivals--were even required to be deadly rivals by the law of the land, and ordered to try to ruin each other under penalty of fine and imprisonment!

Jokubas takes the family on a tour of Packingtown. They are amazed to see pens packed with tens of thousands of cattle, pigs, and sheep. The suffering of the animals, which will all be killed by the end of the day, daunts even Jurgis's optimism. But the flurry of human activity fills Jurgis with wonder. Jokubas notes sarcastically the signs regarding the sanitation rules. The government inspector who checks the slaughtered pigs for signs of tuberculosis often lets several carcasses go unchecked. Spoiled meat is specially doctored in secret before it is scattered among the rest of the meat in preparation for canning and packing

'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.'

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'. .

THE PHILOSOPHER Doctor Parcival was a large man with a drooping mouth covered by a yellow mustache. He always wore a dirty white waistcoat out of the pockets of which protruded a number of the kind of black cigars known as stogies. His teeth were black and irregular and there was something strange about his eyes. The lid of the left eye twitched; it fell down and snapped up; it was exactly as though the lid of the eye were a window shade and someone stood inside the doctor's head playing with the cord. Doctor Parcival had a liking for the boy, George Willard. It began when George had been working for a year on the Winesburg Eagle and the acquaintanceship was entirely a matter of the doctor's own making. In the late afternoon Will Henderson, owner and editor of the Eagle, went over to Tom Willy's saloon. Along an alleyway he went and slipping in at the back door of the saloon began drinking a drink made of a combination of sloe gin and soda water. Will Henderson was a sensualist and had reached the age of forty-five. He imagined the gin renewed the youth in him. Like most sensualists he enjoyed talking of women, and for an hour he lingered about gossiping with Tom Willy. The saloon keeper was a short, broad-shouldered man with peculiarly marked hands. That flaming kind of birthmark that sometimes paints with red the faces of men and women had touched with red Tom Willy's fingers and the backs of his hands. As he stood by the bar talking to Will Henderson he rubbed the hands together. As he grew more and more excited the red of his fingers deepened. It was as though the hands had been dipped in blood that had dried and faded. As Will Henderson stood at the bar looking at the red hands and talking of women, his assistant, George Willard, sat in the office of the Winesburg Eagle and listened to the talk of Doctor Parcival. Doctor Parcival appeared immediately after Will Henderson had disappeared. One might have supposed that the doctor had been watching from his office window and had seen the editor going along the alleyway. Coming in at the front door and finding himself a chair, he lighted one of the stogies and crossing his legs began to talk. He seemed intent upon convincing the boy of the advisability of adopting a line of conduct that he was himself unable to define. "If you have your eyes open you will see that although I call myself a doctor I have mighty few patients," he began. "There is a reason for that. It is not an accident and it is not because I do not know as much of medicine as anyone here. I do not want patients. The reason, you see, does not appear on the surface. It lies in fact in my character, which has, if you think about it, many strange turns. Why I want to talk to you of the matter I don't know. I might keep still and get more credit in your eyes. I have a desire to make you admire me, that's a fact. I don't know why. That's why I talk. It's very amusing, eh?" Sometimes the doctor launched into long tales concerning himself. To the boy the tales were very real and full of meaning. He began to admire the fat unclean-looking man and, in the afternoon when Will Henderson had gone, looked forward with keen interest to the doctor's coming. Doctor Parcival had been in Winesburg about five years. He came from Chicago and when he arrived was drunk and got into a fight with Albert Longworth, the baggageman. The fight concerned a trunk and ended by the doctor's being escorted to the village lockup. When he was released he rented a room above a shoe-repairing shop at the lower end of Main Street and put out the sign that announced himself as a doctor. Although he had but few patients and these of the poorer sort who were unable to pay, he seemed to have plenty of money for his needs. He slept in the office that was unspeakably dirty and dined at Biff Carter's lunch room in a small frame building opposite the railroad station. In the summer the lunch room was filled with flies and Biff Carter's white apron was more dirty than his floor. Doctor Parcival did not mind. Into the lunch room he stalked and deposited twenty cents upon the counter. "Feed me what you wish for that," he said laughing. "Use up food that you wouldn't otherwise sell. It makes no difference to me. I am a man of distinction, you see. Why should I concern myself with what I eat." The tales that Doctor Parcival told George Willard began nowhere and ended nowhere. Sometimes the boy thought they must all be inventions, a pack of lies. And then again he was convinced that they contained the very essence of truth. "I was a reporter like you here," Doctor Parcival began. "It was in a town in Iowa--or was it in Illinois? I don't remember and anyway it makes no difference. Perhaps I am trying to conceal my identity and don't want to be very definite. Have you ever thought it strange that I have money for my needs although I do nothing? I may have stolen a great sum of money or been involved in a murder before I came here. There is food for thought in that, eh? If you were a really smart newspaper reporter you would look me up. In Chicago there was a Doctor Cronin who was murdered. Have you heard of that? Some men murdered him and put him in a trunk. In the early morning they hauled the trunk across the city. It sat on the back of an express wagon and they were on the seat as unconcerned as anything. Along they went through quiet streets where everyone was asleep. The sun was just coming up over the lake. Funny, eh--just to think of them smoking pipes and chattering as they drove along as unconcerned as I am now. Perhaps I was one of those men. That would be a strange turn of things, now wouldn't it, eh?" Again Doctor Parcival began his tale: "Well, anyway there I was, a reporter on a paper just as you are here, running about and getting little items to print. My mother was poor. She took in washing. Her dream was to make me a Presbyterian minister and I was studying with that end in view. "My father had been insane for a number of years. He was in an asylum over at Dayton, Ohio. There you see I have let it slip out! All of this took place in Ohio, right here in Ohio. There is a clew if you ever get the notion of looking me up. "I was going to tell you of my brother. That's the object of all this. That's what I'm getting at. My brother was a railroad painter and had a job on the Big Four. You know that road runs through Ohio here. With other men he lived in a box car and away they went from town to town painting the railroad property-switches, crossing gates, bridges, and stations. "The Big Four paints its stations a nasty orange color. How I hated that color! My brother was always covered with it. On pay days he used to get drunk and come home wearing his paint-covered clothes and bringing his money with him. He did not give it to mother but laid it in a pile on our kitchen table. "About the house he went in the clothes covered with the nasty orange colored paint. I can see the picture. My mother, who was small and had red, sad-looking eyes, would come into the house from a little shed at the back. That's where she spent her time over the washtub scrubbing people's dirty clothes. In she would come and stand by the table, rubbing her eyes with her apron that was covered with soap-suds. "'Don't touch it! Don't you dare touch that money,' my brother roared, and then he himself took five or ten dollars and went tramping off to the saloons. When he had spent what he had taken he came back for more. He never gave my mother any money at all but stayed about until he had spent it all, a little at a time. Then he went back to his job with the painting crew on the railroad. After he had gone things began to arrive at our house, groceries and such things. Sometimes there would be a dress for mother or a pair of shoes for me. "Strange, eh? My mother loved my brother much more than she did me, although he never said a kind word to either of us and always raved up and down threatening us if we dared so much as touch the money that sometimes lay on the table three days. "We got along pretty well. I studied to be a minister and prayed. I was a regular ass about saying prayers. You should have heard me. When my father died I prayed all night, just as I did sometimes when my brother was in town drinking and going about buying the things for us. In the evening after supper I knelt by the table where the money lay and prayed for hours. When no one was looking I stole a dollar or two and put it in my pocket. That makes me laugh now but then it was terrible. It was on my mind all the time. I got six dollars a week from my job on the paper and always took it straight home to mother. The few dollars I stole from my brother's pile I spent on myself, you know, for trifles, candy and cigarettes and such things. "When my father died at the asylum over at Dayton, I went over there. I borrowed some money from the man for whom I worked and went on the train at night. It was raining. In the asylum they treated me as though I were a king. "The men who had jobs in the asylum had found out I was a newspaper reporter. That made them afraid. There had been some negligence, some carelessness, you see, when father was ill. They thought perhaps I would write it up in the paper and make a fuss. I never intended to do anything of the kind. "Anyway, in I went to the room where my father lay dead and blessed the dead body. I wonder what put that notion into my head. Wouldn't my brother, the painter, have laughed, though. There I stood over the dead body and spread out my hands. The superintendent of the asylum and some of his helpers came in and stood about looking sheepish. It was very amusing. I spread out my hands and said, 'Let peace brood over this carcass.' That's what I said." Jumping to his feet and breaking off the tale, Doctor Parcival began to walk up and down in the office of the Winesburg Eagle where George Willard sat listening. He was awkward and, as the office was small, continually knocked against things. "What a fool I am to be talking," he said. "That is not my object in coming here and forcing my acquaintanceship upon you. I have something else in mind. You are a reporter just as I was once and you have attracted my attention. You may end by becoming just such another fool. I want to warn you and keep on warning you. That's why I seek you out." Doctor Parcival began talking of George Willard's attitude toward men. It seemed to the boy that the man had but one object in view, to make everyone seem despicable. "I want to fill you with hatred and contempt so that you will be a superior being," he declared. "Look at my brother. There was a fellow, eh? He despised everyone, you see. You have no idea with what contempt he looked upon mother and me. And was he not our superior? You know he was. You have not seen him and yet I have made you feel that. I have given you a sense of it. He is dead. Once when he was drunk he lay down on the tracks and the car in which he lived with the other painters ran over him." * * * One day in August Doctor Parcival had an adventure in Winesburg. For a month George Willard had been going each morning to spend an hour in the doctor's office. The visits came about through a desire on the part of the doctor to read to the boy from the pages of a book he was in the process of writing. To write the book Doctor Parcival declared was the object of his coming to Winesburg to live. On the morning in August before the coming of the boy, an incident had happened in the doctor's office. There had been an accident on Main Street. A team of horses had been frightened by a train and had run away. A little girl, the daughter of a farmer, had been thrown from a buggy and killed. On Main Street everyone had become excited and a cry for doctors had gone up. All three of the active practitioners of the town had come quickly but had found the child dead. From the crowd someone had run to the office of Doctor Parcival who had bluntly refused to go down out of his office to the dead child. The useless cruelty of his refusal had passed unnoticed. Indeed, the man who had come up the stairway to summon him had hurried away without hearing the refusal. All of this, Doctor Parcival did not know and when George Willard came to his office he found the man shaking with terror. "What I have done will arouse the people of this town," he declared excitedly. "Do I not know human nature? Do I not know what will happen? Word of my refusal will be whispered about. Presently men will get together in groups and talk of it. They will come here. We will quarrel and there will be talk of hanging. Then they will come again bearing a rope in their hands." Doctor Parcival shook with fright. "I have a presentiment," he declared emphatically. "It may be that what I am talking about will not occur this morning. It may be put off until tonight but I will be hanged. Everyone will get excited. I will be hanged to a lamp-post on Main Street." Going to the door of his dirty office, Doctor Parcival looked timidly down the stairway leading to the street. When he returned the fright that had been in his eyes was beginning to be replaced by doubt. Coming on tiptoe across the room he tapped George Willard on the shoulder. "If not now, sometime," he whispered, shaking his head. "In the end I will be crucified, uselessly crucified." Doctor Parcival began to plead with George Willard. "You must pay attention to me," he urged. "If something happens perhaps you will be able to write the book that I may never get written. The idea is very simple, so simple that if you are not careful you will forget it. It is this--that everyone in the world is Christ and they are all crucified. That's what I want to say. Don't you forget that. Whatever happens, don't you dare let yourself forget."

Doctor Parcival is one of the strangest of the grotesques in Winesburg. The dirty, middle-aged misanthrope arrived in the Ohio town about five years before the narrative begins and opened a medical practice. During his years in Winesburg, however, he has had few patients, yet he doesn't seem to lack money. Perhaps, as he suggests to young George Willard, Doctor Parcival had been a murderer or a thief; George is never sure whether he should believe the doctor's stories. If what the physician says about his background is true, his life has been an unhappy one. His father died in an insane asylum, his mother had to take in washing to support Parcival , and his brother was a drunken railroad painter who treated the family with brutal contempt yet, paradoxically, bought them presents as if to show his love. Doctor Parcival urges George to be like the painter-brother, who was a "superior being" because he felt "hatred and contempt" for everyone. He himself apparently tries to follow this advice; he hates society -- he even refuses to treat a child who has been thrown from a buggy. The doctor thinks that his refusal will arouse the town's citizens to lynch him, but, ironically, they don't even notice his heartlessness. The event is important, however, for the doctor's fear for his life causes him to drop his mask of hatred long enough to tell George what he has been trying to say in the book he has been writing: "Everyone in the world is Christ and they are all crucified." This message suggests that all men are really loving and compassionate but are doomed to be misunderstood and, eventually, will be destroyed by society. "The Philosopher" reiterates several of the themes that have already been introduced in the first three chapters of Winesburg, Ohio. Again we encounter the theme of isolation, this time embodied in the lonely doctor who is ignored by the townspeople. Again there is the difficulty of communication and understanding between people; indeed, Doctor Parcival's message is that all men are misunderstood. Again young George Willard is used as a listener and urged to write what others aren't able to communicate. Again there is the difficulty of discerning appearance from reality; the motivations of Doctor Parcival are even more ambiguous than those of Wing Biddlebaum, Doctor Reefy, and Elizabeth Willard. Another similarity between this story and others by Anderson is the suggestiveness of the central character's name. A number of ancient legends concern a hero named Percival, Parsifal, or Parzival. The details of the legends vary, but usually the hero is the son of a widow living in poverty. As he grows to manhood, he undergoes various adventures. One popular episode involves an encounter with a maimed king whom the hero fails to heal. Other versions identify the hero as one of King Arthur's knights and tell of his search for the Holy Grail, the legendary cup which can cure mortal illness. The best known of these legends recounts that Percival had a glimpse of the Grail but not as clear a vision as did Sir Galahad, the purest of knights. Obviously, a number of these details seem to parallel Doctor Parcival's experiences -- the widowed mother, the failure as a healer, and the search for a divine vision -- but the correspondences are only suggestive, not overt or obvious. When one realizes, however, the significance of many of the names of Winesburg's characters, he suspects that the name "Parcival" was deliberately chosen by Anderson.

For a minute or two she stood looking at the house, and wondering what to do next, when suddenly a footman in livery came running out of the wood--(she considered him to be a footman because he was in livery: otherwise, judging by his face only, she would have called him a fish)--and rapped loudly at the door with his knuckles. It was opened by another footman in livery, with a round face, and large eyes like a frog; and both footmen, Alice noticed, had powdered hair that curled all over their heads. She felt very curious to know what it was all about, and crept a little way out of the wood to listen. The Fish-Footman began by producing from under his arm a great letter, nearly as large as himself, and this he handed over to the other, saying, in a solemn tone, 'For the Duchess. An invitation from the Queen to play croquet.' The Frog-Footman repeated, in the same solemn tone, only changing the order of the words a little, 'From the Queen. An invitation for the Duchess to play croquet.' Then they both bowed low, and their curls got entangled together. Alice laughed so much at this, that she had to run back into the wood for fear of their hearing her; and when she next peeped out the Fish-Footman was gone, and the other was sitting on the ground near the door, staring stupidly up into the sky. Alice went timidly up to the door, and knocked. 'There's no sort of use in knocking,' said the Footman, 'and that for two reasons. First, because I'm on the same side of the door as you are; secondly, because they're making such a noise inside, no one could possibly hear you.' And certainly there was a most extraordinary noise going on within--a constant howling and sneezing, and every now and then a great crash, as if a dish or kettle had been broken to pieces. 'Please, then,' said Alice, 'how am I to get in?' 'There might be some sense in your knocking,' the Footman went on without attending to her, 'if we had the door between us. For instance, if you were INSIDE, you might knock, and I could let you out, you know.' He was looking up into the sky all the time he was speaking, and this Alice thought decidedly uncivil. 'But perhaps he can't help it,' she said to herself; 'his eyes are so VERY nearly at the top of his head. But at any rate he might answer questions.--How am I to get in?' she repeated, aloud. 'I shall sit here,' the Footman remarked, 'till tomorrow--' At this moment the door of the house opened, and a large plate came skimming out, straight at the Footman's head: it just grazed his nose, and broke to pieces against one of the trees behind him. '--or next day, maybe,' the Footman continued in the same tone, exactly as if nothing had happened. 'How am I to get in?' asked Alice again, in a louder tone. 'ARE you to get in at all?' said the Footman. 'That's the first question, you know.' It was, no doubt: only Alice did not like to be told so. 'It's really dreadful,' she muttered to herself, 'the way all the creatures argue. It's enough to drive one crazy!' The Footman seemed to think this a good opportunity for repeating his remark, with variations. 'I shall sit here,' he said, 'on and off, for days and days.' 'But what am I to do?' said Alice. 'Anything you like,' said the Footman, and began whistling. 'Oh, there's no use in talking to him,' said Alice desperately: 'he's perfectly idiotic!' And she opened the door and went in. The door led right into a large kitchen, which was full of smoke from one end to the other: the Duchess was sitting on a three-legged stool in the middle, nursing a baby; the cook was leaning over the fire, stirring a large cauldron which seemed to be full of soup. 'There's certainly too much pepper in that soup!' Alice said to herself, as well as she could for sneezing. There was certainly too much of it in the air. Even the Duchess sneezed occasionally; and as for the baby, it was sneezing and howling alternately without a moment's pause. The only things in the kitchen that did not sneeze, were the cook, and a large cat which was sitting on the hearth and grinning from ear to ear. 'Please would you tell me,' said Alice, a little timidly, for she was not quite sure whether it was good manners for her to speak first, 'why your cat grins like that?' 'It's a Cheshire cat,' said the Duchess, 'and that's why. Pig!' She said the last word with such sudden violence that Alice quite jumped; but she saw in another moment that it was addressed to the baby, and not to her, so she took courage, and went on again:-- 'I didn't know that Cheshire cats always grinned; in fact, I didn't know that cats COULD grin.' 'They all can,' said the Duchess; 'and most of 'em do.' 'I don't know of any that do,' Alice said very politely, feeling quite pleased to have got into a conversation. 'You don't know much,' said the Duchess; 'and that's a fact.' Alice did not at all like the tone of this remark, and thought it would be as well to introduce some other subject of conversation. While she was trying to fix on one, the cook took the cauldron of soup off the fire, and at once set to work throwing everything within her reach at the Duchess and the baby--the fire-irons came first; then followed a shower of saucepans, plates, and dishes. The Duchess took no notice of them even when they hit her; and the baby was howling so much already, that it was quite impossible to say whether the blows hurt it or not. 'Oh, PLEASE mind what you're doing!' cried Alice, jumping up and down in an agony of terror. 'Oh, there goes his PRECIOUS nose'; as an unusually large saucepan flew close by it, and very nearly carried it off. 'If everybody minded their own business,' the Duchess said in a hoarse growl, 'the world would go round a deal faster than it does.' 'Which would NOT be an advantage,' said Alice, who felt very glad to get an opportunity of showing off a little of her knowledge. 'Just think of what work it would make with the day and night! You see the earth takes twenty-four hours to turn round on its axis--' 'Talking of axes,' said the Duchess, 'chop off her head!' Alice glanced rather anxiously at the cook, to see if she meant to take the hint; but the cook was busily stirring the soup, and seemed not to be listening, so she went on again: 'Twenty-four hours, I THINK; or is it twelve? I--' 'Oh, don't bother ME,' said the Duchess; 'I never could abide figures!' And with that she began nursing her child again, singing a sort of lullaby to it as she did so, and giving it a violent shake at the end of every line: 'Speak roughly to your little boy, And beat him when he sneezes: He only does it to annoy, Because he knows it teases.' CHORUS. (In which the cook and the baby joined):-- 'Wow! wow! wow!' While the Duchess sang the second verse of the song, she kept tossing the baby violently up and down, and the poor little thing howled so, that Alice could hardly hear the words:-- 'I speak severely to my boy, I beat him when he sneezes; For he can thoroughly enjoy The pepper when he pleases!' CHORUS. 'Wow! wow! wow!' 'Here! you may nurse it a bit, if you like!' the Duchess said to Alice, flinging the baby at her as she spoke. 'I must go and get ready to play croquet with the Queen,' and she hurried out of the room. The cook threw a frying-pan after her as she went out, but it just missed her. Alice caught the baby with some difficulty, as it was a queer-shaped little creature, and held out its arms and legs in all directions, 'just like a star-fish,' thought Alice. The poor little thing was snorting like a steam-engine when she caught it, and kept doubling itself up and straightening itself out again, so that altogether, for the first minute or two, it was as much as she could do to hold it. As soon as she had made out the proper way of nursing it, (which was to twist it up into a sort of knot, and then keep tight hold of its right ear and left foot, so as to prevent its undoing itself,) she carried it out into the open air. 'IF I don't take this child away with me,' thought Alice, 'they're sure to kill it in a day or two: wouldn't it be murder to leave it behind?' She said the last words out loud, and the little thing grunted in reply (it had left off sneezing by this time). 'Don't grunt,' said Alice; 'that's not at all a proper way of expressing yourself.' The baby grunted again, and Alice looked very anxiously into its face to see what was the matter with it. There could be no doubt that it had a VERY turn-up nose, much more like a snout than a real nose; also its eyes were getting extremely small for a baby: altogether Alice did not like the look of the thing at all. 'But perhaps it was only sobbing,' she thought, and looked into its eyes again, to see if there were any tears. No, there were no tears. 'If you're going to turn into a pig, my dear,' said Alice, seriously, 'I'll have nothing more to do with you. Mind now!' The poor little thing sobbed again (or grunted, it was impossible to say which), and they went on for some while in silence. Alice was just beginning to think to herself, 'Now, what am I to do with this creature when I get it home?' when it grunted again, so violently, that she looked down into its face in some alarm. This time there could be NO mistake about it: it was neither more nor less than a pig, and she felt that it would be quite absurd for her to carry it further. So she set the little creature down, and felt quite relieved to see it trot away quietly into the wood. 'If it had grown up,' she said to herself, 'it would have made a dreadfully ugly child: but it makes rather a handsome pig, I think.' And she began thinking over other children she knew, who might do very well as pigs, and was just saying to herself, 'if one only knew the right way to change them--' when she was a little startled by seeing the Cheshire Cat sitting on a bough of a tree a few yards off. The Cat only grinned when it saw Alice. It looked good-natured, she thought: still it had VERY long claws and a great many teeth, so she felt that it ought to be treated with respect. 'Cheshire Puss,' she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know whether it would like the name: however, it only grinned a little wider. 'Come, it's pleased so far,' thought Alice, and she went on. 'Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?' 'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat. 'I don't much care where--' said Alice. 'Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat. '--so long as I get SOMEWHERE,' Alice added as an explanation. 'Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat, 'if you only walk long enough.' Alice felt that this could not be denied, so she tried another question. 'What sort of people live about here?' 'In THAT direction,' the Cat said, waving its right paw round, 'lives a Hatter: and in THAT direction,' waving the other paw, 'lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they're both mad.' 'But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked. 'Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: 'we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.' 'How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice. 'You must be,' said the Cat, 'or you wouldn't have come here.' Alice didn't think that proved it at all; however, she went on 'And how do you know that you're mad?' 'To begin with,' said the Cat, 'a dog's not mad. You grant that?' 'I suppose so,' said Alice. 'Well, then,' the Cat went on, 'you see, a dog growls when it's angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad.' 'I call it purring, not growling,' said Alice. 'Call it what you like,' said the Cat. 'Do you play croquet with the Queen to-day?' 'I should like it very much,' said Alice, 'but I haven't been invited yet.' 'You'll see me there,' said the Cat, and vanished. Alice was not much surprised at this, she was getting so used to queer things happening. While she was looking at the place where it had been, it suddenly appeared again. 'By-the-bye, what became of the baby?' said the Cat. 'I'd nearly forgotten to ask.' 'It turned into a pig,' Alice quietly said, just as if it had come back in a natural way. 'I thought it would,' said the Cat, and vanished again. Alice waited a little, half expecting to see it again, but it did not appear, and after a minute or two she walked on in the direction in which the March Hare was said to live. 'I've seen hatters before,' she said to herself; 'the March Hare will be much the most interesting, and perhaps as this is May it won't be raving mad--at least not so mad as it was in March.' As she said this, she looked up, and there was the Cat again, sitting on a branch of a tree. 'Did you say pig, or fig?' said the Cat. 'I said pig,' replied Alice; 'and I wish you wouldn't keep appearing and vanishing so suddenly: you make one quite giddy.' 'All right,' said the Cat; and this time it vanished quite slowly, beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the grin, which remained some time after the rest of it had gone. 'Well! I've often seen a cat without a grin,' thought Alice; 'but a grin without a cat! It's the most curious thing I ever saw in my life!' She had not gone much farther before she came in sight of the house of the March Hare: she thought it must be the right house, because the chimneys were shaped like ears and the roof was thatched with fur. It was so large a house, that she did not like to go nearer till she had nibbled some more of the lefthand bit of mushroom, and raised herself to about two feet high: even then she walked up towards it rather timidly, saying to herself 'Suppose it should be raving mad after all! I almost wish I'd gone to see the Hatter instead!'

From the wood, Alice sees a fish in footman's livery approach the house and knock on the door. A similarly dressed frog answers the door and receives a letter inviting the Duchess to play croquet with the Queen. After the Fish Footman leaves, Alice approaches the Frog Footman, who sits on the ground staring stupidly up at the sky. Alice knocks at the door, but the Frog Footman explains that now that she is outside, no one will answer her knock since the people inside are making too much noise to hear her. He tells her he plans to sit there for days and seems unsurprised when the door opens a crack and a plate flies out and grazes his nose. Annoyed with his idiotic manner, Alice opens the door and finds herself in a kitchen. A Duchess nurses a baby, a grinning cat sits on the hearth, and a Cook stands at the stove, dumping pepper into a cauldron of soup. The pepper causes the Duchess and the baby to sneeze incessantly. Alice inquires why the cat grins and learns from the Duchess that it is a Cheshire Cat. Wondering aloud why a cat would grin at all, the Duchess insults Alice, telling her that she must not know very much. Meanwhile, the Cook hurls objects randomly at the Duchess and the baby, including fire-irons, saucepans, and plates. Alice tells the Cook to mind herself, and attempts to change the subject of conversation by bringing up the earth's axis. The Duchess mishears Alice, and thinking she is talking about axes, spontaneously shouts, "Chop off her head!" The Duchess starts to sing a nasty lullaby to the baby, roughly tussling it as she sings. Upon finishing, she flings the baby at Alice and hurries out of the room to prepare for croquet with the Queen. Alice takes the baby outside, only to discover that it is a pig. After she lets the pig toddle off, she encounters the Cheshire Cat again, grinning broadly as it rests on the bough of a tree. After inquiring of the Cheshire Cat where she might go next, he tells her that no matter where she goes she will end up somewhere. The Cheshire Cat arbitrarily suggests she visit the Mad Hatter and the March Hare, but warns her that they are both mad. When Alice responds that she does not want to be among mad people, he tells her that all people are mad, and if she is in Wonderland, she must be mad too. Alice attempts to press the point, but the Cheshire Cat changes the subject, telling Alice that it will see her at the Queen's croquet match later. The Cheshire Cat vanishes and reappears before fading to nothing but a disembodied grin, leaving Alice to travel onward to the March Hare's house. Upon discovering that the house is larger than she is, Alice consumes a portion of the Caterpillar's mushroom and grows to two feet tall.

All is going on as it was wont. The waves are hoarse with repetition of their mystery; the dust lies piled upon the shore; the sea-birds soar and hover; the winds and clouds go forth upon their trackless flight; the white arms beckon, in the moonlight, to the invisible country far away. With a tender melancholy pleasure, Florence finds herself again on the old ground so sadly trodden, yet so happily, and thinks of him in the quiet place, where he and she have many and many a time conversed together, with the water welling up about his couch. And now, as she sits pensive there, she hears in the wild low murmur of the sea, his little story told again, his very words repeated; and finds that all her life and hopes, and griefs, since--in the solitary house, and in the pageant it has changed to--have a portion in the burden of the marvellous song. And gentle Mr Toots, who wanders at a distance, looking wistfully towards the figure that he dotes upon, and has followed there, but cannot in his delicacy disturb at such a time, likewise hears the requiem of little Dombey on the waters, rising and falling in the lulls of their eternal madrigal in praise of Florence. Yes! and he faintly understands, poor Mr Toots, that they are saying something of a time when he was sensible of being brighter and not addle-brained; and the tears rising in his eyes when he fears that he is dull and stupid now, and good for little but to be laughed at, diminish his satisfaction in their soothing reminder that he is relieved from present responsibility to the Chicken, by the absence of that game head of poultry in the country, training (at Toots's cost) for his great mill with the Larkey Boy. But Mr Toots takes courage, when they whisper a kind thought to him; and by slow degrees and with many indecisive stoppages on the way, approaches Florence. Stammering and blushing, Mr Toots affects amazement when he comes near her, and says (having followed close on the carriage in which she travelled, every inch of the way from London, loving even to be choked by the dust of its wheels) that he never was so surprised in all his life. 'And you've brought Diogenes, too, Miss Dombey!' says Mr Toots, thrilled through and through by the touch of the small hand so pleasantly and frankly given him. No doubt Diogenes is there, and no doubt Mr Toots has reason to observe him, for he comes straightway at Mr Toots's legs, and tumbles over himself in the desperation with which he makes at him, like a very dog of Montargis. But he is checked by his sweet mistress. 'Down, Di, down. Don't you remember who first made us friends, Di? For shame!' Oh! Well may Di lay his loving cheek against her hand, and run off, and run back, and run round her, barking, and run headlong at anybody coming by, to show his devotion. Mr Toots would run headlong at anybody, too. A military gentleman goes past, and Mr Toots would like nothing better than to run at him, full tilt. 'Diogenes is quite in his native air, isn't he, Miss Dombey?' says Mr Toots. Florence assents, with a grateful smile. 'Miss Dombey,' says Mr Toots, 'beg your pardon, but if you would like to walk to Blimber's, I--I'm going there.' Florence puts her arm in that of Mr Toots without a word, and they walk away together, with Diogenes going on before. Mr Toots's legs shake under him; and though he is splendidly dressed, he feels misfits, and sees wrinkles, in the masterpieces of Burgess and Co., and wishes he had put on that brightest pair of boots. Doctor Blimber's house, outside, has as scholastic and studious an air as ever; and up there is the window where she used to look for the pale face, and where the pale face brightened when it saw her, and the wasted little hand waved kisses as she passed. The door is opened by the same weak-eyed young man, whose imbecility of grin at sight of Mr Toots is feebleness of character personified. They are shown into the Doctor's study, where blind Homer and Minerva give them audience as of yore, to the sober ticking of the great clock in the hall; and where the globes stand still in their accustomed places, as if the world were stationary too, and nothing in it ever perished in obedience to the universal law, that, while it keeps it on the roll, calls everything to earth. And here is Doctor Blimber, with his learned legs; and here is Mrs Blimber, with her sky-blue cap; and here Cornelia, with her sandy little row of curls, and her bright spectacles, still working like a sexton in the graves of languages. Here is the table upon which he sat forlorn and strange, the 'new boy' of the school; and hither comes the distant cooing of the old boys, at their old lives in the old room on the old principle! 'Toots,' says Doctor Blimber, 'I am very glad to see you, Toots.' Mr Toots chuckles in reply. 'Also to see you, Toots, in such good company,' says Doctor Blimber. Mr Toots, with a scarlet visage, explains that he has met Miss Dombey by accident, and that Miss Dombey wishing, like himself, to see the old place, they have come together. 'You will like,' says Doctor Blimber, 'to step among our young friends, Miss Dombey, no doubt. All fellow-students of yours, Toots, once. I think we have no new disciples in our little portico, my dear,' says Doctor Blimber to Cornelia, 'since Mr Toots left us.' 'Except Bitherstone,' returns Cornelia. 'Ay, truly,' says the Doctor. 'Bitherstone is new to Mr Toots.' New to Florence, too, almost; for, in the schoolroom, Bitherstone--no longer Master Bitherstone of Mrs Pipchin's--shows in collars and a neckcloth, and wears a watch. But Bitherstone, born beneath some Bengal star of ill-omen, is extremely inky; and his Lexicon has got so dropsical from constant reference, that it won't shut, and yawns as if it really could not bear to be so bothered. So does Bitherstone its master, forced at Doctor Blimber's highest pressure; but in the yawn of Bitherstone there is malice and snarl, and he has been heard to say that he wishes he could catch 'old Blimber' in India. He'd precious soon find himself carried up the country by a few of his (Bitherstone's) Coolies, and handed over to the Thugs; he can tell him that. Briggs is still grinding in the mill of knowledge; and Tozer, too; and Johnson, too; and all the rest; the older pupils being principally engaged in forgetting, with prodigious labour, everything they knew when they were younger. All are as polite and as pale as ever; and among them, Mr Feeder, B.A., with his bony hand and bristly head, is still hard at it; with his Herodotus stop on just at present, and his other barrels on a shelf behind him. A mighty sensation is created, even among these grave young gentlemen, by a visit from the emancipated Toots; who is regarded with a kind of awe, as one who has passed the Rubicon, and is pledged never to come back, and concerning the cut of whose clothes, and fashion of whose jewellery, whispers go about, behind hands; the bilious Bitherstone, who is not of Mr Toots's time, affecting to despise the latter to the smaller boys, and saying he knows better, and that he should like to see him coming that sort of thing in Bengal, where his mother had got an emerald belonging to him that was taken out of the footstool of a Rajah. Come now! Bewildering emotions are awakened also by the sight of Florence, with whom every young gentleman immediately falls in love, again; except, as aforesaid, the bilious Bitherstone, who declines to do so, out of contradiction. Black jealousies of Mr Toots arise, and Briggs is of opinion that he ain't so very old after all. But this disparaging insinuation is speedily made nought by Mr Toots saying aloud to Mr Feeder, B.A., 'How are you, Feeder?' and asking him to come and dine with him to-day at the Bedford; in right of which feats he might set up as Old Parr, if he chose, unquestioned. There is much shaking of hands, and much bowing, and a great desire on the part of each young gentleman to take Toots down in Miss Dombey's good graces; and then, Mr Toots having bestowed a chuckle on his old desk, Florence and he withdraw with Mrs Blimber and Cornelia; and Doctor Blimber is heard to observe behind them as he comes out last, and shuts the door, 'Gentlemen, we will now resume our studies,' For that and little else is what the Doctor hears the sea say, or has heard it saying all his life. Florence then steals away and goes upstairs to the old bedroom with Mrs Blimber and Cornelia; Mr Toots, who feels that neither he nor anybody else is wanted there, stands talking to the Doctor at the study-door, or rather hearing the Doctor talk to him, and wondering how he ever thought the study a great sanctuary, and the Doctor, with his round turned legs, like a clerical pianoforte, an awful man. Florence soon comes down and takes leave; Mr Toots takes leave; and Diogenes, who has been worrying the weak-eyed young man pitilessly all the time, shoots out at the door, and barks a glad defiance down the cliff; while Melia, and another of the Doctor's female domestics, looks out of an upper window, laughing 'at that there Toots,' and saying of Miss Dombey, 'But really though, now--ain't she like her brother, only prettier?' Mr Toots, who saw when Florence came down that there were tears upon her face, is desperately anxious and uneasy, and at first fears that he did wrong in proposing the visit. But he is soon relieved by her saying she is very glad to have been there again, and by her talking quite cheerfully about it all, as they walked on by the sea. What with the voices there, and her sweet voice, when they come near Mr Dombey's house, and Mr Toots must leave her, he is so enslaved that he has not a scrap of free-will left; when she gives him her hand at parting, he cannot let it go. 'Miss Dombey, I beg your pardon,' says Mr Toots, in a sad fluster, 'but if you would allow me to--to--' The smiling and unconscious look of Florence brings him to a dead stop. 'If you would allow me to--if you would not consider it a liberty, Miss Dombey, if I was to--without any encouragement at all, if I was to hope, you know,' says Mr Toots. Florence looks at him inquiringly. 'Miss Dombey,' says Mr Toots, who feels that he is in for it now, 'I really am in that state of adoration of you that I don't know what to do with myself. I am the most deplorable wretch. If it wasn't at the corner of the Square at present, I should go down on my knees, and beg and entreat of you, without any encouragement at all, just to let me hope that I may--may think it possible that you--' 'Oh, if you please, don't!' cries Florence, for the moment quite alarmed and distressed. 'Oh, pray don't, Mr Toots. Stop, if you please. Don't say any more. As a kindness and a favour to me, don't.' Mr Toots is dreadfully abashed, and his mouth opens. 'You have been so good to me,' says Florence, 'I am so grateful to you, I have such reason to like you for being a kind friend to me, and I do like you so much;' and here the ingenuous face smiles upon him with the pleasantest look of honesty in the world; 'that I am sure you are only going to say good-bye!' 'Certainly, Miss Dombey,' says Mr Toots, 'I--I--that's exactly what I mean. It's of no consequence.' 'Good-bye!' cries Florence. 'Good-bye, Miss Dombey!' stammers Mr Toots. 'I hope you won't think anything about it. It's--it's of no consequence, thank you. It's not of the least consequence in the world.' Poor Mr Toots goes home to his hotel in a state of desperation, locks himself into his bedroom, flings himself upon his bed, and lies there for a long time; as if it were of the greatest consequence, nevertheless. But Mr Feeder, B.A., is coming to dinner, which happens well for Mr Toots, or there is no knowing when he might get up again. Mr Toots is obliged to get up to receive him, and to give him hospitable entertainment. And the generous influence of that social virtue, hospitality (to make no mention of wine and good cheer), opens Mr Toots's heart, and warms him to conversation. He does not tell Mr Feeder, B.A., what passed at the corner of the Square; but when Mr Feeder asks him 'When it is to come off?' Mr Toots replies, 'that there are certain subjects'--which brings Mr Feeder down a peg or two immediately. Mr Toots adds, that he don't know what right Blimber had to notice his being in Miss Dombey's company, and that if he thought he meant impudence by it, he'd have him out, Doctor or no Doctor; but he supposes its only his ignorance. Mr Feeder says he has no doubt of it. Mr Feeder, however, as an intimate friend, is not excluded from the subject. Mr Toots merely requires that it should be mentioned mysteriously, and with feeling. After a few glasses of wine, he gives Miss Dombey's health, observing, 'Feeder, you have no idea of the sentiments with which I propose that toast.' Mr Feeder replies, 'Oh, yes, I have, my dear Toots; and greatly they redound to your honour, old boy.' Mr Feeder is then agitated by friendship, and shakes hands; and says, if ever Toots wants a brother, he knows where to find him, either by post or parcel. Mr Feeder like-wise says, that if he may advise, he would recommend Mr Toots to learn the guitar, or, at least the flute; for women like music, when you are paying your addresses to 'em, and he has found the advantage of it himself. This brings Mr Feeder, B.A., to the confession that he has his eye upon Cornelia Blimber. He informs Mr Toots that he don't object to spectacles, and that if the Doctor were to do the handsome thing and give up the business, why, there they are--provided for. He says it's his opinion that when a man has made a handsome sum by his business, he is bound to give it up; and that Cornelia would be an assistance in it which any man might be proud of. Mr Toots replies by launching wildly out into Miss Dombey's praises, and by insinuations that sometimes he thinks he should like to blow his brains out. Mr Feeder strongly urges that it would be a rash attempt, and shows him, as a reconcilement to existence, Cornelia's portrait, spectacles and all. Thus these quiet spirits pass the evening; and when it has yielded place to night, Mr Toots walks home with Mr Feeder, and parts with him at Doctor Blimber's door. But Mr Feeder only goes up the steps, and when Mr Toots is gone, comes down again, to stroll upon the beach alone, and think about his prospects. Mr Feeder plainly hears the waves informing him, as he loiters along, that Doctor Blimber will give up the business; and he feels a soft romantic pleasure in looking at the outside of the house, and thinking that the Doctor will first paint it, and put it into thorough repair. Mr Toots is likewise roaming up and down, outside the casket that contains his jewel; and in a deplorable condition of mind, and not unsuspected by the police, gazes at a window where he sees a light, and which he has no doubt is Florence's. But it is not, for that is Mrs Skewton's room; and while Florence, sleeping in another chamber, dreams lovingly, in the midst of the old scenes, and their old associations live again, the figure which in grim reality is substituted for the patient boy's on the same theatre, once more to connect it--but how differently!--with decay and death, is stretched there, wakeful and complaining. Ugly and haggard it lies upon its bed of unrest; and by it, in the terror of her unimpassioned loveliness--for it has terror in the sufferer's failing eyes--sits Edith. What do the waves say, in the stillness of the night, to them? 'Edith, what is that stone arm raised to strike me? Don't you see it?' 'There is nothing, mother, but your fancy.' 'But my fancy! Everything is my fancy. Look! Is it possible that you don't see it?' 'Indeed, mother, there is nothing. Should I sit unmoved, if there were any such thing there?' 'Unmoved?' looking wildly at her--'it's gone now--and why are you so unmoved? That is not my fancy, Edith. It turns me cold to see you sitting at my side.' 'I am sorry, mother.' 'Sorry! You seem always sorry. But it is not for me!' With that, she cries; and tossing her restless head from side to side upon her pillow, runs on about neglect, and the mother she has been, and the mother the good old creature was, whom they met, and the cold return the daughters of such mothers make. In the midst of her incoherence, she stops, looks at her daughter, cries out that her wits are going, and hides her face upon the bed. Edith, in compassion, bends over her and speaks to her. The sick old woman clutches her round the neck, and says, with a look of horror, 'Edith! we are going home soon; going back. You mean that I shall go home again?' 'Yes, mother, yes.' 'And what he said--what's-his-name, I never could remember names--Major--that dreadful word, when we came away--it's not true? Edith!' with a shriek and a stare, 'it's not that that is the matter with me.' Night after night, the lights burn in the window, and the figure lies upon the bed, and Edith sits beside it, and the restless waves are calling to them both the whole night long. Night after night, the waves are hoarse with repetition of their mystery; the dust lies piled upon the shore; the sea-birds soar and hover; the winds and clouds are on their trackless flight; the white arms beckon, in the moonlight, to the invisible country far away. And still the sick old woman looks into the corner, where the stone arm--part of a figure of some tomb, she says--is raised to strike her. At last it falls; and then a dumb old woman lies upon the bed, and she is crooked and shrunk up, and half of her is dead. Such is the figure, painted and patched for the sun to mock, that is drawn slowly through the crowd from day to day; looking, as it goes, for the good old creature who was such a mother, and making mouths as it peers among the crowd in vain. Such is the figure that is often wheeled down to the margin of the sea, and stationed there; but on which no wind can blow freshness, and for which the murmur of the ocean has no soothing word. She lies and listens to it by the hour; but its speech is dark and gloomy to her, and a dread is on her face, and when her eyes wander over the expanse, they see but a broad stretch of desolation between earth and heaven. Florence she seldom sees, and when she does, is angry with and mows at. Edith is beside her always, and keeps Florence away; and Florence, in her bed at night, trembles at the thought of death in such a shape, and often wakes and listens, thinking it has come. No one attends on her but Edith. It is better that few eyes should see her; and her daughter watches alone by the bedside. A shadow even on that shadowed face, a sharpening even of the sharpened features, and a thickening of the veil before the eyes into a pall that shuts out the dim world, is come. Her wandering hands upon the coverlet join feebly palm to palm, and move towards her daughter; and a voice not like hers, not like any voice that speaks our mortal language--says, 'For I nursed you!' Edith, without a tear, kneels down to bring her voice closer to the sinking head, and answers: 'Mother, can you hear me?' Staring wide, she tries to nod in answer. 'Can you recollect the night before I married?' The head is motionless, but it expresses somehow that she does. 'I told you then that I forgave your part in it, and prayed God to forgive my own. I told you that time past was at an end between us. I say so now, again. Kiss me, mother.' Edith touches the white lips, and for a moment all is still. A moment afterwards, her mother, with her girlish laugh, and the skeleton of the Cleopatra manner, rises in her bed. Draw the rose-coloured curtains. There is something else upon its flight besides the wind and clouds. Draw the rose-coloured curtains close! Intelligence of the event is sent to Mr Dombey in town, who waits upon Cousin Feenix (not yet able to make up his mind for Baden-Baden), who has just received it too. A good-natured creature like Cousin Feenix is the very man for a marriage or a funeral, and his position in the family renders it right that he should be consulted. 'Dombey,' said Cousin Feenix, 'upon my soul, I am very much shocked to see you on such a melancholy occasion. My poor aunt! She was a devilish lively woman.' Mr Dombey replies, 'Very much so.' 'And made up,' says Cousin Feenix, 'really young, you know, considering. I am sure, on the day of your marriage, I thought she was good for another twenty years. In point of fact, I said so to a man at Brooks's--little Billy Joper--you know him, no doubt--man with a glass in his eye?' Mr Dombey bows a negative. 'In reference to the obsequies,' he hints, 'whether there is any suggestion--' 'Well, upon my life,' says Cousin Feenix, stroking his chin, which he has just enough of hand below his wristbands to do; 'I really don't know. There's a Mausoleum down at my place, in the park, but I'm afraid it's in bad repair, and, in point of fact, in a devil of a state. But for being a little out at elbows, I should have had it put to rights; but I believe the people come and make pic-nic parties there inside the iron railings.' Mr Dombey is clear that this won't do. 'There's an uncommon good church in the village,' says Cousin Feenix, thoughtfully; 'pure specimen of the Anglo-Norman style, and admirably well sketched too by Lady Jane Finchbury--woman with tight stays--but they've spoilt it with whitewash, I understand, and it's a long journey.' 'Perhaps Brighton itself,' Mr Dombey suggests. 'Upon my honour, Dombey, I don't think we could do better,' says Cousin Feenix. 'It's on the spot, you see, and a very cheerful place.' 'And when,' hints Mr Dombey, 'would it be convenient?' 'I shall make a point,' says Cousin Feenix, 'of pledging myself for any day you think best. I shall have great pleasure (melancholy pleasure, of course) in following my poor aunt to the confines of the--in point of fact, to the grave,' says Cousin Feenix, failing in the other turn of speech. 'Would Monday do for leaving town?' says Mr Dombey. 'Monday would suit me to perfection,' replies Cousin Feenix. Therefore Mr Dombey arranges to take Cousin Feenix down on that day, and presently takes his leave, attended to the stairs by Cousin Feenix, who says, at parting, 'I'm really excessively sorry, Dombey, that you should have so much trouble about it;' to which Mr Dombey answers, 'Not at all.' At the appointed time, Cousin Feenix and Mr Dombey meet, and go down to Brighton, and representing, in their two selves, all the other mourners for the deceased lady's loss, attend her remains to their place of rest. Cousin Feenix, sitting in the mourning-coach, recognises innumerable acquaintances on the road, but takes no other notice of them, in decorum, than checking them off aloud, as they go by, for Mr Dombey's information, as 'Tom Johnson. Man with cork leg, from White's. What, are you here, Tommy? Foley on a blood mare. The Smalder girls'--and so forth. At the ceremony Cousin Feenix is depressed, observing, that these are the occasions to make a man think, in point of fact, that he is getting shaky; and his eyes are really moistened, when it is over. But he soon recovers; and so do the rest of Mrs Skewton's relatives and friends, of whom the Major continually tells the club that she never did wrap up enough; while the young lady with the back, who has so much trouble with her eyelids, says, with a little scream, that she must have been enormously old, and that she died of all kinds of horrors, and you mustn't mention it. So Edith's mother lies unmentioned of her dear friends, who are deaf to the waves that are hoarse with repetition of their mystery, and blind to the dust that is piled upon the shore, and to the white arms that are beckoning, in the moonlight, to the invisible country far away. But all goes on, as it was wont, upon the margin of the unknown sea; and Edith standing there alone, and listening to its waves, has dank weed cast up at her feet, to strew her path in life withal.

Mr. Toots comes to visit Florence at Brighton and they go to Dr. Blimber's school together. On the walk home, Toots begins to propose, but Florence tactfully cuts him off. That night Toots and Feeder have dinner together; Toots laments his unrequited love for Florence, and Feeder explains that he hopes to court Cornelia. Shortly thereafter, after an anguished illness, Mrs. Skewton dies. Cousin Feenix and Mr. Dombey go to Brighton, where she is buried

They finished supper, and while Mattie cleared the table Ethan went to look at the cows and then took a last turn about the house. The earth lay dark under a muffled sky and the air was so still that now and then he heard a lump of snow come thumping down from a tree far off on the edge of the wood-lot. When he returned to the kitchen Mattie had pushed up his chair to the stove and seated herself near the lamp with a bit of sewing. The scene was just as he had dreamed of it that morning. He sat down, drew his pipe from his pocket and stretched his feet to the glow. His hard day's work in the keen air made him feel at once lazy and light of mood, and he had a confused sense of being in another world, where all was warmth and harmony and time could bring no change. The only drawback to his complete well-being was the fact that he could not see Mattie from where he sat; but he was too indolent to move and after a moment he said: "Come over here and sit by the stove." Zeena's empty rocking-chair stood facing him. Mattie rose obediently, and seated herself in it. As her young brown head detached itself against the patch-work cushion that habitually framed his wife's gaunt countenance, Ethan had a momentary shock. It was almost as if the other face, the face of the superseded woman, had obliterated that of the intruder. After a moment Mattie seemed to be affected by the same sense of constraint. She changed her position, leaning forward to bend her head above her work, so that he saw only the foreshortened tip of her nose and the streak of red in her hair; then she slipped to her feet, saying "I can't see to sew," and went back to her chair by the lamp. Ethan made a pretext of getting up to replenish the stove, and when he returned to his seat he pushed it sideways that he might get a view of her profile and of the lamplight falling on her hands. The cat, who had been a puzzled observer of these unusual movements, jumped up into Zeena's chair, rolled itself into a ball, and lay watching them with narrowed eyes. Deep quiet sank on the room. The clock ticked above the dresser, a piece of charred wood fell now and then in the stove, and the faint sharp scent of the geraniums mingled with the odour of Ethan's smoke, which began to throw a blue haze about the lamp and to hang its greyish cobwebs in the shadowy corners of the room. All constraint had vanished between the two, and they began to talk easily and simply. They spoke of every-day things, of the prospect of snow, of the next church sociable, of the loves and quarrels of Starkfield. The commonplace nature of what they said produced in Ethan an illusion of long-established intimacy which no outburst of emotion could have given, and he set his imagination adrift on the fiction that they had always spent their evenings thus and would always go on doing so... "This is the night we were to have gone coasting, Matt," he said at length, with the rich sense, as he spoke, that they could go on any other night they chose, since they had all time before them. She smiled back at him. "I guess you forgot!" "No, I didn't forget; but it's as dark as Egypt outdoors. We might go to-morrow if there's a moon." She laughed with pleasure, her head tilted back, the lamplight sparkling on her lips and teeth. "That would be lovely, Ethan!" He kept his eyes fixed on her, marvelling at the way her face changed with each turn of their talk, like a wheat-field under a summer breeze. It was intoxicating to find such magic in his clumsy words, and he longed to try new ways of using it. "Would you be scared to go down the Corbury road with me on a night like this?" he asked. Her cheeks burned redder. "I ain't any more scared than you are!" "Well, I'd be scared, then; I wouldn't do it. That's an ugly corner down by the big elm. If a fellow didn't keep his eyes open he'd go plumb into it." He luxuriated in the sense of protection and authority which his words conveyed. To prolong and intensify the feeling he added: "I guess we're well enough here." She let her lids sink slowly, in the way he loved. "Yes, we're well enough here," she sighed. Her tone was so sweet that he took the pipe from his mouth and drew his chair up to the table. Leaning forward, he touched the farther end of the strip of brown stuff that she was hemming. "Say, Matt," he began with a smile, "what do you think I saw under the Varnum spruces, coming along home just now? I saw a friend of yours getting kissed." The words had been on his tongue all the evening, but now that he had spoken them they struck him as inexpressibly vulgar and out of place. Mattie blushed to the roots of her hair and pulled her needle rapidly twice or thrice through her work, insensibly drawing the end of it away from him. "I suppose it was Ruth and Ned," she said in a low voice, as though he had suddenly touched on something grave. Ethan had imagined that his allusion might open the way to the accepted pleasantries, and these perhaps in turn to a harmless caress, if only a mere touch on her hand. But now he felt as if her blush had set a flaming guard about her. He supposed it was his natural awkwardness that made him feel so. He knew that most young men made nothing at all of giving a pretty girl a kiss, and he remembered that the night before, when he had put his arm about Mattie, she had not resisted. But that had been out-of-doors, under the open irresponsible night. Now, in the warm lamplit room, with all its ancient implications of conformity and order, she seemed infinitely farther away from him and more unapproachable. To ease his constraint he said: "I suppose they'll be setting a date before long." "Yes. I shouldn't wonder if they got married some time along in the summer." She pronounced the word married as if her voice caressed it. It seemed a rustling covert leading to enchanted glades. A pang shot through Ethan, and he said, twisting away from her in his chair: "It'll be your turn next, I wouldn't wonder." She laughed a little uncertainly. "Why do you keep on saying that?" He echoed her laugh. "I guess I do it to get used to the idea." He drew up to the table again and she sewed on in silence, with dropped lashes, while he sat in fascinated contemplation of the way in which her hands went up and down above the strip of stuff, just as he had seen a pair of birds make short perpendicular flights over a nest they were building. At length, without turning her head or lifting her lids, she said in a low tone: "It's not because you think Zeena's got anything against me, is it?" His former dread started up full-armed at the suggestion. "Why, what do you mean?" he stammered. She raised distressed eyes to his, her work dropping on the table between them. "I don't know. I thought last night she seemed to have." "I'd like to know what," he growled. "Nobody can tell with Zeena." It was the first time they had ever spoken so openly of her attitude toward Mattie, and the repetition of the name seemed to carry it to the farther corners of the room and send it back to them in long repercussions of sound. Mattie waited, as if to give the echo time to drop, and then went on: "She hasn't said anything to you?" He shook his head. "No, not a word." She tossed the hair back from her forehead with a laugh. "I guess I'm just nervous, then. I'm not going to think about it any more." "Oh, no--don't let's think about it, Matt!" The sudden heat of his tone made her colour mount again, not with a rush, but gradually, delicately, like the reflection of a thought stealing slowly across her heart. She sat silent, her hands clasped on her work, and it seemed to him that a warm current flowed toward him along the strip of stuff that still lay unrolled between them. Cautiously he slid his hand palm-downward along the table till his finger-tips touched the end of the stuff. A faint vibration of her lashes seemed to show that she was aware of his gesture, and that it had sent a counter-current back to her; and she let her hands lie motionless on the other end of the strip. As they sat thus he heard a sound behind him and turned his head. The cat had jumped from Zeena's chair to dart at a mouse in the wainscot, and as a result of the sudden movement the empty chair had set up a spectral rocking. "She'll be rocking in it herself this time to-morrow," Ethan thought. "I've been in a dream, and this is the only evening we'll ever have together." The return to reality was as painful as the return to consciousness after taking an anaesthetic. His body and brain ached with indescribable weariness, and he could think of nothing to say or to do that should arrest the mad flight of the moments. His alteration of mood seemed to have communicated itself to Mattie. She looked up at him languidly, as though her lids were weighted with sleep and it cost her an effort to raise them. Her glance fell on his hand, which now completely covered the end of her work and grasped it as if it were a part of herself. He saw a scarcely perceptible tremor cross her face, and without knowing what he did he stooped his head and kissed the bit of stuff in his hold. As his lips rested on it he felt it glide slowly from beneath them, and saw that Mattie had risen and was silently rolling up her work. She fastened it with a pin, and then, finding her thimble and scissors, put them with the roll of stuff into the box covered with fancy paper which he had once brought to her from Bettsbridge. He stood up also, looking vaguely about the room. The clock above the dresser struck eleven. "Is the fire all right?" she asked in a low voice. He opened the door of the stove and poked aimlessly at the embers. When he raised himself again he saw that she was dragging toward the stove the old soap-box lined with carpet in which the cat made its bed. Then she recrossed the floor and lifted two of the geranium pots in her arms, moving them away from the cold window. He followed her and brought the other geraniums, the hyacinth bulbs in a cracked custard bowl and the German ivy trained over an old croquet hoop. When these nightly duties were performed there was nothing left to do but to bring in the tin candlestick from the passage, light the candle and blow out the lamp. Ethan put the candlestick in Mattie's hand and she went out of the kitchen ahead of him, the light that she carried before her making her dark hair look like a drift of mist on the moon. "Good night, Matt," he said as she put her foot on the first step of the stairs. She turned and looked at him a moment. "Good night, Ethan," she answered, and went up. When the door of her room had closed on her he remembered that he had not even touched her hand.

The meal is over. Mattie cleans up and Ethan does the final chores. The snow is coming down hard. The scene is just as he imagined it. Mattie by the fire, sewing, and he is now puffing the pipe, stretching the hard-working legs. Ethan can't see Mattie where she's sitting so he suggests that she sit in Zeena's chair. Actually Mattie gets up and sits in the chair. This turns out to a bad idea. It's almost as if as if Mattie turns into Zeena. Mattie also seems to feel uncomfortable about this arrangement and goes back to her initial position. Ethan steals glances at her from his spot. The cat takes over Zeena's chair. As the quiet sets in they relax and talk. Ethan reminds Mattie that they had a coasting date for tonight. Because there is no moon, they decide to postpone sledding for the following evening. Mattie is blushing furiously. Ethan asks her if she would be too afraid to sled with him on a moonless night. She says she's scared of nothing. He says that he is actually afraid. Sledding on a moonless night is a good way to die. In the dark there is no way to see the killer elm tree. Ethan decides to tell Mattie that he saw Ruth being kissed. All night he'd wanted to tell her, but regret was instant. It sounded rough and rude, and triggered more intense blushing from Mattie. She guesses quietly that he'd seen Ruth and Ned. Ethan had hoped he might get a kiss of his own that way, though he would have settled for the touch of her hand. His comments seem to have had the opposite effect. Ethan thinks he's unusually shy about these kinds of things. When they were in the open air together they were more free than now that they're indoors. Mattie and Ethan talk about Ned and Ruth, and how they are planning a summer wedding. Ethan then suggests that Mattie will be the next to wed. She wants to know why he keeps bringing that up. He says it's to help the reality of it sink in for him. Could it also be because Zeena has a problem with me? Mattie wants to know. Ethan seems irritated by her question and asks what she's talking about. She brings up Zeena's behavior the night before. Well, Ethan says he can't imagine why Zeena might have a problem with Mattie. This isn't reassuring to Mattie, and wants to know if Zeena said anything to Ethan about her. Ethan tries to reassure Mattie that Zeena has not said anything. He then begs her, tenderly, to change the topic. More blushing. The cat jumps out of Zeena's chair in pursuit of a mouse. On the coffee table rests the end of the piece of cloth Mattie is sewing. Ethan touches it and they seem to have some kind of psychic communication through the cloth. An image of Zeena back in her chair the next day captures Ethan. Mattie seems to pick up his anxiety over this. So Ethan, in a daze, kisses the end of the piece of cloth, with his eyes closed. When he opens his eyes Mattie is rolling up the piece of cloth and preparing to leave the room. Together they bring the geranium flowers away from the windows so they don't get frozen in the night. Ethan's candle in her hand, Mattie goes up stairs, telling him good night. The sound of Mattie's door closing reminds Ethan that "he had not even touched her hand" .

CHAPTER LIV STRASBOURG Fascination! Love gives thee all his love, energy and all his power of suffering unhappiness. It is only his enchanting pleasures, his sweet delights, which are outside thy sphere. When I saw her sleep I was made to say "With all her angelic beauty and her sweet weaknesses she is absolutely mine! There she is, quite in my power, such as Heaven made her in its pity in order to ravish a man's heart."--_Ode of Schiller_. Julien was compelled to spend eight days in Strasbourg and tried to distract himself by thoughts of military glory and patriotic devotion. Was he in love then? he could not tell, he only felt in his tortured soul that Mathilde was the absolute mistress both of his happiness and of his imagination. He needed all the energy of his character to keep himself from sinking into despair. It was out of his power to think of anything unconnected with mademoiselle de la Mole. His ambition and his simple personal successes had formerly distracted him from the sentiments which madame de Renal had inspired. Mathilde was all-absorbing; she loomed large over his whole future. Julien saw failure in every phase of that future. This same individual whom we remember to have been so presumptuous and haughty at Verrieres, had fallen into an excess of grotesque modesty. Three days ago he would only have been too pleased to have killed the abbe Castanede, and now, at Strasbourg, if a child had picked a quarrel with him he would have thought the child was in the right. In thinking again about the adversaries and enemies whom he had met in his life he always thought that he, Julien, had been in the wrong. The fact was that the same powerful imagination which had formerly been continuously employed in painting a successful future in the most brilliant colours had now been transformed into his implacable enemy. The absolute solicitude of a traveller's life increased the ascendancy of this sinister imagination. What a boon a friend would have been! But Julien said to himself, "Is there a single heart which beats with affection for me? And even if I did have a friend, would not honour enjoin me to eternal silence?" He was riding gloomily in the outskirts of Kehl; it is a market town on the banks of the Rhine and immortalised by Desaix and Gouvion Saint-Cyr. A German peasant showed him the little brooks, roads and islands of the Rhine, which have acquired a name through the courage of these great generals. Julien was guiding his horse with his left hand, while he held unfolded in his right the superb map which adorns the _Memoirs of the Marshal Saint Cyr_. A merry exclamation made him lift his head. It was the Prince Korasoff, that London friend of his, who had initiated him some months before into the elementary rules of high fatuity. Faithful to his great art, Korasoff, who had just arrived at Strasbourg, had been one hour in Kehl and had never read a single line in his whole life about the siege of 1796, began to explain it all to Julien. The German peasant looked at him in astonishment; for he knew enough French to appreciate the enormous blunders which the prince was making. Julien was a thousand leagues away from the peasant's thoughts. He was looking in astonishment at the handsome young man and admiring his grace in sitting a horse. "What a lucky temperament," he said to himself, "and how his trousers suit him and how elegantly his hair is cut! Alas, if I had been like him, it might have been that she would not have come to dislike me after loving me for three days." When the prince had finished his siege of Kehl, he said to Julien, "You look like a Trappist, you are carrying to excess that principle of gravity which I enjoined upon you in London. A melancholy manner cannot be good form. What is wanted is an air of boredom. If you are melancholy, it is because you lack something, because you have failed in something." "That means showing one's own inferiority; if, on the other hand you are bored, it is only what has made an unsuccessful attempt to please you, which is inferior. So realise, my dear friend, the enormity of your mistake." Julien tossed a crown to the gaping peasant who was listening to them. "Good," said the prince, "that shows grace and a noble disdain, very good!" And he put his horse to the gallop. Full of a stupid admiration, Julien followed him. "Ah! if I have been like that, she would not have preferred Croisenois to me!" The more his reason was offended by the grotesque affectations of the prince the more he despised himself for not having them. It was impossible for self-disgust to be carried further. The prince still finding him distinctly melancholy, said to him as they re-entered Strasbourg, "Come, my dear fellow, have you lost all your money, or perhaps you are in love with some little actress. "The Russians copy French manners, but always at an interval of fifty years. They have now reached the age of Louis XV." These jests about love brought the tears to Julien's eyes. "Why should I not consult this charming man," he suddenly said to himself. "Well, yes, my dear friend," he said to the prince, "you see in me a man who is very much in love and jilted into the bargain. A charming woman who lives in a neighbouring town has left me stranded here after three passionate days, and the change kills me." Using fictitious names, he described to the prince Mathilde's conduct and character. "You need not finish," said Korasoff. "In order to give you confidence in your doctor, I will finish the story you have confided to me. This young woman's husband enjoys an enormous income, or even more probably, she belongs herself to the high nobility of the district. She must be proud about something." Julien nodded his head, he had no longer the courage to speak. "Very good," said the prince, "here are three fairly bitter pills that you will take without delay. "1. See madame ----. What is her name, any way?" "Madame de Dubois." "What a name!" said the prince bursting into laughter. "But forgive me, you find it sublime. Your tactics must be to see Madame de Dubois every day; above all do not appear to be cold and piqued. Remember the great principle of your century: be the opposite of what is expected. Be exactly as you were the week before you were honoured by her favours." "Ah! I was calm enough then," exclaimed Julien in despair, "I thought I was taking pity on her...." "The moth is burning itself at the candle," continued the prince using a metaphor as old as the world. "1. You will see her every day. "2. You will pay court to a woman in her own set, but without manifesting a passion, do you understand? I do not disguise from you that your role is difficult; you are playing a part, and if she realises you are playing it you are lost." "She has so much intelligence and I have so little, I shall be lost," said Julien sadly. "No, you are only more in love than I thought. Madame de Dubois is preoccupied with herself as are all women who have been favoured by heaven either with too much pedigree or too much money. She contemplates herself instead of contemplating you, consequently she does not know you. During the two or three fits of love into which she managed to work herself for your especial benefit, she saw in you the hero of her dreams, and not the man you really are. "But, deuce take it, this is elementary, my dear Sorel, are you an absolute novice? "Oddslife! Let us go into this shop. Look at that charming black cravat, one would say it was made by John Anderson of Burlington Street. Be kind enough to take it and throw far away that awful black cord which you are wearing round your neck." "And now," continued the prince as they came out of the shop of the first hosier of Strasbourg, "what is the society in which madame de Dubois lives? Great God, what a name, don't be angry, my dear Sorel, I can't help it.... Now, whom are you going to pay court to?" "To an absolute prude, the daughter of an immensely rich stocking-merchant. She has the finest eyes in the world and they please me infinitely; she doubtless holds the highest place in the society of the district, but in the midst of all her greatness she blushes and becomes positively confused if anyone starts talking about trade or shops. And, unfortunately, her father was one of the best known merchants in Strasbourg." "So," said the prince with a laugh, "you are sure that when one talks about trade your fair lady thinks about herself and not about you. This silly weakness is divine and extremely useful, it will prevent you from yielding to a single moment's folly when near her sparkling eyes. Success is assured." Julien was thinking of madame the marechale de Fervaques who often came to the Hotel de la Mole. She was a beautiful foreigner who had married the marechal a year before his death. The one object of her whole life seemed to be to make people forget that she was the daughter of a manufacturer. In order to cut some figure in Paris she had placed herself at the head of the party of piety. Julien sincerely admired the prince; what would he not have given to have possessed his affectations! The conversation between the two friends was interminable. Korasoff was delighted: No Frenchman had ever listened to him for so long. "So I have succeeded at last," said the prince to himself complacently, "in getting a proper hearing and that too through giving lessons to my master." "So we are quite agreed," he repeated to Julien for the tenth time. "When you talk to the young beauty, I mean the daughter of the Strasbourg stocking merchant in the presence of madame de Dubois, not a trace of passion. But on the other hand be ardently passionate when you write. Reading a well-written love-letter is a prude's supremest pleasure. It is a moment of relaxation. She leaves off posing and dares to listen to her own heart; consequently two letters a day." "Never, never," said Julien despondently, "I would rather be ground in a mortar than make up three phrases. I am a corpse, my dear fellow, hope nothing from me. Let me die by the road side." "And who is talking about making up phrases? I have got six volumes of copied-out love-letters in my bag. I have letters to suit every variation of feminine character, including the most highly virtuous. Did not Kalisky pay court at Richmond-on-the-Thames at three leagues from London, you know, to the prettiest Quakeress in the whole of England?" Julien was less unhappy when he left his friend at two o'clock in the morning. The prince summoned a copyist on the following day, and two days afterwards Julien was the possessor of fifty-three carefully numbered love-letters intended for the most sublime and the most melancholy virtue. "The reason why there is not fifty-four," said the prince "is because Kalisky allowed himself to be dismissed. But what does it matter to you, if you are badly treated by the stocking-merchant's daughter since you only wish to produce an impression upon madame de Dubois' heart." They went out riding every day, the prince was mad on Julien. Not knowing how else to manifest his sudden friendship, he finished up by offering him the hand of one of his cousins, a rich Moscow heiress; "and once married," he added, "my influence and that cross of yours will get you made a Colonel within two years." "But that cross was not given me by Napoleon, far from it." "What does it matter?" said the prince, "didn't he invent it. It is still the first in Europe by a long way." Julien was on the point of accepting; but his duty called him back to the great personage. When he left Korasoff he promised to write. He received the answer to the secret note which he had brought, and posted towards Paris; but he had scarcely been alone for two successive days before leaving France, and Mathilde seemed a worse punishment than death. "I will not marry the millions Korasoff offers me," he said to himself, "and I will follow his advice. "After all the art of seduction is his speciality. He has thought about nothing else except that alone for more than fifteen years, for he is now thirty. "One can't say that he lacks intelligence; he is subtle and cunning; enthusiasm and poetry are impossible in such a character. He is an attorney: an additional reason for his not making a mistake. "I must do it, I will pay court to madame de Fervaques. "It is very likely she will bore me a little, but I will look at her beautiful eyes which are so like those other eyes which have loved me more than anyone in the world. "She is a foreigner; she is a new character to observe. "I feel mad, and as though I were going to the devil. I must follow the advice of a friend and not trust myself." 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. CHAPTER LVI MORAL LOVE There also was of course in Adeline That calm patrician polish in the address, Which ne'er can pass the equinoctial line Of anything which Nature would express; Just as a Mandarin finds nothing fine. At least his manner suffers not to guess That anything he views can greatly please. _Don Juan, c. xiii. st._ 84. "There is an element of madness in all this family's way of looking at things," thought the marechale; "they are infatuated with their young abbe, whose only accomplishment is to be a good listener, though his eyes are fine enough, it is true." Julien, on his side, found in the marechale's manners an almost perfect instance of that patrician calm which exhales a scrupulous politeness; and, what is more, announces at the same time the impossibility of any violent emotion. Madame de Fervaques would have been as much scandalised by any unexpected movement or any lack of self-control, as by a lack of dignity towards one's inferiors. She would have regarded the slightest symptom of sensibility as a kind of moral drunkenness which puts one to the blush and was extremely prejudicial to what a person of high rank owed to herself. Her great happiness was to talk of the king's last hunt; her favourite book, was the Memoirs of the Duke de Saint Simon, especially the genealogical part. Julien knew the place where the arrangement of the light suited madame de Fervaques' particular style of beauty. He got there in advance, but was careful to turn his chair in such a way as not to see Mathilde. Astonished one day at this consistent policy of hiding himself from her, she left the blue sofa and came to work by the little table near the marechale's armchair. Julien had a fairly close view of her over madame de Fervaques' hat. Those eyes, which were the arbiters of his fate, frightened him, and then hurled him violently out of his habitual apathy. He talked, and talked very well. He was speaking to the marechale, but his one aim was to produce an impression upon Mathilde's soul. He became so animated that eventually madame de Fervaques did not manage to understand a word he said. This was a prime merit. If it had occurred to Julien to follow it up by some phrases of German mysticism, lofty religion, and Jesuitism, the marechale would have immediately given him a rank among the superior men whose mission it was to regenerate the age. "Since he has bad enough taste," said mademoiselle de la Mole, "to talk so long and so ardently to madame de Fervaques, I shall not listen to him any more." She kept her resolution during the whole latter part of the evening, although she had difficulty in doing so. At midnight, when she took her mother's candle to accompany her to her room, madame de la Mole stopped on the staircase to enter into an exhaustive eulogy of Julien. Mathilde ended by losing her temper. She could not get to sleep. She felt calmed by this thought: "the very things which I despise in a man may none the less constitute a great merit in the eyes of the marechale." As for Julien, he had done something, he was less unhappy; his eyes chanced to fall on the Russian leather portfolio in which prince Korasoff had placed the fifty-three love letters which he had presented to him. Julien saw a note at the bottom of the first letter: No. 1 is sent eight days after the first meeting. "I am behind hand," exclaimed Julien. "It is quite a long time since I met madame de Fervaques." He immediately began to copy out this first love letter. It was a homily packed with moral platitudes and deadly dull. Julien was fortunate enough to fall asleep at the second page. Some hours afterwards he was surprised to see the broad daylight as he lent on his desk. The most painful moments in his life were those when he woke up every morning to realise his unhappiness. On this particular day he finished copying out his letter in a state verging on laughter. "Is it possible," he said to himself, "that there ever lived a young man who actually wrote like that." He counted several sentences of nine lines each. At the bottom of the original he noticed a pencilled note. "These letters are delivered personally, on horseback, black cravat, blue tail-coat. You give the letter to the porter with a contrite air; expression of profound melancholy. If you notice any chambermaid, dry your eyes furtively and speak to her." All this was duly carried out. "I am taking a very bold course!" thought Julien as he came out of the Hotel de Fervaques, "but all the worse for Korasoff. To think of daring to write to so virtuous a celebrity. I shall be treated with the utmost contempt, and nothing will amuse me more. It is really the only comedy that I can in any way appreciate. Yes, it will amuse me to load with ridicule that odious creature whom I call myself. If I believed in myself, I would commit some crime to distract myself." The moment when Julien brought his horse back to the stable was the happiest he had experienced for a whole month. Korasoff had expressly forbidden him to look at the mistress who had left him, on any pretext whatsoever. But the step of that horse, which she knew so well, and Julien's way of knocking on the stable door with his riding-whip to call a man, sometimes attracted Mathilde to behind the window-curtain. The muslin was so light that Julien could see through it. By looking under the brim of his hat in a certain way, he could get a view of Mathilde's figure without seeing her eyes. "Consequently," he said to himself, "she cannot see mine, and that is not really looking at her." In the evening madame de Fervaques behaved towards him, exactly as though she had never received the philosophic mystical and religious dissertation which he had given to her porter in the morning with so melancholy an air. Chance had shown Julien on the preceding day how to be eloquent; he placed himself in such a position that he could see Mathilde's eyes. She, on her side, left the blue sofa a minute after the marechale's arrival; this involved abandoning her usual associates. M. de Croisenois seemed overwhelmed by this new caprice: his palpable grief alleviated the awfulness of Julien's agony. This unexpected turn in his life made him talk like an angel, and inasmuch as a certain element of self-appreciation will insinuate itself even into those hearts which serve as a temple for the most august virtue, the marechale said to herself as she got into her carriage, "Madame de la Mole is right, this young priest has distinction. My presence must have overawed him at first. As a matter of fact, the whole tone of this house is very frivolous; I can see nothing but instances of virtue helped by oldness, and standing in great need of the chills of age. This young man must have managed to appreciate the difference; he writes well, but I fear very much that this request of his in his letter for me to enlighten him with my advice, is really nothing less than an, as yet, unconscious sentiment. "Nevertheless how many conversions have begun like that! What makes me consider this a good omen is the difference between his style and that of the young people whose letters I have had an opportunity of seeing. One cannot avoid recognising unction, profound seriousness, and much conviction in the prose of this young acolyte; he has no doubt the sweet virtue of a Massillon." CHAPTER LVII THE FINEST PLACES IN THE CHURCH Services! talents! merits! bah! belong to a coterie. _Telemaque_. The idea of a bishopric had thus become associated with the idea of Julien in the mind of a woman, who would sooner or later have at her disposal the finest places in the Church of France. This idea had not struck Julien at all; at the present time his thoughts were strictly limited to his actual unhappiness. Everything tended to intensify it. The sight of his room, for instance, had become unbearable. When he came back in the evening with his candle, each piece of furniture and each little ornament seemed to become articulate, and to announce harshly some new phase of his unhappiness. "I have a hard task before me today," he said to himself as he came in with a vivacity which he had not experienced for a long time; "let us hope that the second letter will be as boring as the first." It was more so. What he was copying seemed so absurd that he finished up by transcribing it line for line without thinking of the sense. "It is even more bombastic," he said to himself, "than those official documents of the treaty of Munster which my professor of diplomacy made me copy out at London." It was only then that he remembered madame de Fervaque's letters which he had forgotten to give back to the grave Spaniard Don Diego Bustos. He found them. They were really almost as nonsensical as those of the young Russian nobleman. Their vagueness was unlimited. It meant everything and nothing. "It's the AEolian harp of style," thought Julien. "The only real thing I see in the middle of all these lofty thoughts about annihilation, death, infinity, etc., is an abominable fear of ridicule." The monologue which we have just condensed was repeated for fifteen days on end. Falling off to sleep as he copied out a sort of commentary on the Apocalypse, going with a melancholy expression to deliver it the following day, taking his horse back to the stable in the hope of catching sight of Mathilde's dress, working, going in the evening to the opera on those evenings when madame de Fervaques did not come to the Hotel de la Mole, such were the monotonous events in Julien's life. His life had more interest, when madame la Fervaques visited the marquise; he could then catch a glimpse of Mathilde's eyes underneath a feather of the marechale's hat, and he would wax eloquent. His picturesque and sentimental phrases began to assume a style, which was both more striking and more elegant. He quite realised that what he said was absurd in Mathilde's eyes, but he wished to impress her by the elegance of his diction. "The falser my speeches are the more I ought to please," thought Julien, and he then had the abominable audacity to exaggerate certain elements in his own character. He soon appreciated that to avoid appearing vulgar in the eyes of the marechale it was necessary to eschew simple and rational ideas. He would continue on these lines, or would cut short his grand eloquence according as he saw appreciation or indifference in the eyes of the two great ladies whom he had set out to please. Taking it all round, his life was less awful than when his days were passed in inaction. "But," he said to himself one evening, "here I am copying out the fifteenth of these abominable dissertations; the first fourteen have been duly delivered to the marechale's porter. I shall have the honour of filling all the drawers in her escritoire. And yet she treats me as though I never wrote. What can be the end of all this? Will my constancy bore her as much as it does me? I must admit that that Russian friend of Korasoff's who was in love with the pretty Quakeress of Richmond, was a terrible man in his time; no one could be more overwhelming." Like all mediocre individuals, who chance to come into contact with the manoeuvres of a great general, Julien understood nothing of the attack executed by the young Russian on the heart of the young English girl. The only purpose of the first forty letters was to secure forgiveness for the boldness of writing at all. The sweet person, who perhaps lived a life of inordinate boredom, had to be induced to contract the habit of receiving letters, which were perhaps a little less insipid than her everyday life. One morning a letter was delivered to Julien. He recognised the arms of madame la Fervaques, and broke the seal with an eagerness which would have seemed impossible to him some days before. It was only an invitation to dinner. He rushed to prince Korasoffs instructions. Unfortunately the young Russian had taken it into his head to be as flippant as Dorat, just when he should have been simple and intelligible! Julien was not able to form any idea of the moral position which he ought to take up at the marechale's dinner. The salon was extremely magnificent and decorated like the gallery de Diane in the Tuileries with panelled oil-paintings. There were some light spots on these pictures. Julien learnt later that the mistress of the house had thought the subject somewhat lacking in decency and that she had had the pictures corrected. "What a moral century!" he thought. He noticed in this salon three of the persons who had been present at the drawing up of the secret note. One of them, my lord bishop of ---- the marechale's uncle had the disposition of the ecclesiastical patronage, and could, it was said, refuse his niece nothing. "What immense progress I have made," said Julien to himself with a melancholy smile, "and how indifferent I am to it. Here I am dining with the famous bishop of ----." The dinner was mediocre and the conversation wearisome. "It's like the small talk in a bad book," thought Julien. "All the greatest subjects of human thought are proudly tackled. After listening for three minutes one asks oneself which is greater--the speaker's bombast, or his abominable ignorance?" The reader has doubtless forgotten the little man of letters named Tanbeau, who was the nephew of the Academician, and intended to be professor, who seemed entrusted with the task of poisoning the salon of the Hotel de la Mole with his base calumnies. It was this little man who gave Julien the first inkling that though, madame de Fervaques did not answer, she might quite well take an indulgent view of the sentiment which dictated them. M. Tanbeau's sinister soul was lacerated by the thought of Julien's success; "but since, on the other hand, a man of merit cannot be in two places at the same time any more than a fool," said the future professor to himself, "if Sorel becomes the lover of the sublime marechale, she will obtain some lucrative position for him in the church, and I shall be rid of him in the Hotel de la Mole." M. the abbe Pirard addressed long sermons to Julien concerning his success at the hotel de Fervaques. There was a sectarian jealousy between the austere Jansenist and the salon of the virtuous marechale which was Jesuitical, reactionary, and monarchical. CHAPTER LVIII MANON LESCAUT Accordingly once he was thoroughly convinced of the asinine stupidity of the prior, he would usually succeed well enough by calling white black, and black white. _Lichtenberg_. The Russian instructions peremptorily forbade the writer from ever contradicting in conversation the recipient of the letters. No pretext could excuse any deviation from the role of that most ecstatic admiration. The letters were always based on that hypothesis. One evening at the opera, when in madame de Fervaques' box, Julien spoke of the ballet of _Manon Lescaut_ in the most enthusiastic terms. His only reason for talking in that strain was the fact that he thought it insignificant. The marechale said that the ballet was very inferior to the abbe Prevost's novel. "The idea," thought Julien, both surprised and amused, "of so highly virtuous a person praising a novel! Madame de Fervaques used to profess two or three times a week the most absolute contempt for those writers, who, by means of their insipid works, try to corrupt a youth which is, alas! only too inclined to the errors of the senses." "_Manon Lescaut_" continued the marechale, "is said to be one of the best of this immoral and dangerous type of book. The weaknesses and the deserved anguish of a criminal heart are, they say, portrayed with a truth which is not lacking in depth; a fact which does not prevent your Bonaparte from stating at St. Helena that it is simply a novel written for lackeys." The word Bonaparte restored to Julien all the activity of his mind. "They have tried to ruin me with the marechale; they have told her of my enthusiasm for Napoleon. This fact has sufficiently piqued her to make her yield to the temptation to make me feel it." This discovery amused him all the evening, and rendered him amusing. As he took leave of the marechale in the vestibule of the opera, she said to him, "Remember, monsieur, one must not like Bonaparte if you like me; at the best he can only be accepted as a necessity imposed by Providence. Besides, the man did not have a sufficiently supple soul to appreciate masterpieces of art." "When you like me," Julien kept on repeating to himself, "that means nothing or means everything. Here we have mysteries of language which are beyond us poor provincials." And he thought a great deal about madame de Renal, as he copied out an immense letter destined for the marechale. "How is it," she said to him the following day, with an assumed indifference which he thought was clumsily assumed, "that you talk to me about London and Richmond in a letter which you wrote last night, I think, when you came back from the opera?" Julien was very embarrassed. He had copied line by line without thinking about what he was writing, and had apparently forgotten to substitute Paris and Saint Cloud for the words London and Richmond which occurred in the original. He commenced two or three sentences, but found it impossible to finish them. He felt on the point of succumbing to a fit of idiotic laughter. Finally by picking his words he succeeded in formulating this inspiration: "Exalted as I was by the discussion of the most sublime and greatest interests of the human soul, my own soul may have been somewhat absent in my letter to you." "I am making an impression," he said to himself, "so I can spare myself the boredom of the rest of the evening." He left the Hotel de Fervaques at a run. In the evening he had another look at the original of the letter which he had copied out on the previous night, and soon came to the fatal place where the young Russian made mention of London and of Richmond. Julien was very astonished to find this letter almost tender. It had been the contrast between the apparent lightness of his conversation, and the sublime and almost apocalyptic profundity of his letters which had marked him out for favour. The marechale was particularly pleased by the longness of the sentences; this was very far from being that sprightly style which that immoral man Voltaire had brought into fashion. Although our hero made every possible human effort to eliminate from his conversation any symptom of good sense, it still preserved a certain anti-monarchical and blasphemous tinge which did not escape madame de Fervaques. Surrounded as she was by persons who, though eminently moral, had very often not a single idea during a whole evening, this lady was profoundly struck by anything resembling a novelty, but at the same time she thought she owed it to herself to be offended by it. She called this defect: Keeping the imprint of the lightness of the age. But such salons are only worth observing when one has a favour to procure. The reader doubtless shares all the ennui of the colourless life which Julien was leading. This period represents the steppes of our journey. Mademoiselle de la Mole needed to exercise her self-control to avoid thinking of Julien during the whole period filled by the de Fervaques episode. Her soul was a prey to violent battles; sometimes she piqued herself on despising that melancholy young man, but his conversation captivated her in spite of herself. She was particularly astonished by his absolute falseness. He did not say a single word to the marechale which was not a lie, or at any rate, an abominable travesty of his own way of thinking, which Mathilde knew so perfectly in every phase. This Machiavellianism impressed her. "What subtlety," she said to herself. "What a difference between the bombastic coxcombs, or the common rascals like Tanbeau who talk in the same strain." Nevertheless Julien went through awful days. It was only to accomplish the most painful of duties that he put in a daily appearance in the marechale's salon. The strain of playing a part ended by depriving his mind of all its strength. As he crossed each night the immense courtyard of the Hotel de Fervaques, it was only through sheer force in character and logic that he succeeded in keeping a little above the level of despair. "I overcame despair at the seminary," he said, "yet what an awful prospect I had then. I was then either going to make my fortune or come to grief just as I am now. I found myself obliged to pass all my life in intimate association with the most contemptible and disgusting things in the whole world. The following spring, just eleven short months later, I was perhaps the happiest of all young people of my own age." But very often all this fine logic proved unavailing against the awful reality. He saw Mathilde every day at breakfast and at dinner. He knew from the numerous letters which de la Mole dictated to him that she was on the eve of marrying de Croisenois. This charming man already called twice a day at the Hotel de la Mole; the jealous eye of a jilted lover was alive to every one of his movements. When he thought he had noticed that mademoiselle de la Mole was beginning to encourage her intended, Julien could not help looking tenderly at his pistols as he went up to his room. "Ah," he said to himself, "would it not be much wiser to take the marks out of my linen and to go into some solitary forest twenty leagues from Paris to put an end to this atrocious life? I should be unknown in the district, my death would remain a secret for a fortnight, and who would bother about me after a fortnight?" This reasoning was very logical. But on the following day a glimpse of Mathilde's arm between the sleeve of her dress and her glove sufficed to plunge our young philosopher into memories which, though agonising, none the less gave him a hold on life. "Well," he said to himself, "I will follow this Russian plan to the end. How will it all finish?" "So far as the marechale is concerned, after I have copied out these fifty-three letters, I shall not write any others. "As for Mathilde, these six weeks of painful acting will either leave her anger unchanged, or will win me a moment of reconciliation. Great God! I should die of happiness." And he could not finish his train of thought. After a long reverie he succeeded in taking up the thread of his argument. "In that case," he said to himself, "I should win one day of happiness, and after that her cruelties which are based, alas, on my lack of ability to please her will recommence. I should have nothing left to do, I should be ruined and lost for ever. With such a character as hers what guarantee can she give me? Alas! My manners are no doubt lacking in elegance, and my style of speech is heavy and monotonous. Great God, why am I myself?"

Smitten by love, Julien is unable to amuse himself in Strasbourg. He encounters his London friend, the Russian Prince Korasov, who befriends and undertakes to cheer him. The prince advises Julien how to proceed in his love affair with Mathilde. He must resort to inspiring jealousy in the woman he loves by courting another. The prince gives Julien a series of love letters with directions as to how and when they are to be delivered to the lady. Julien intends to court Mme. de Fervaques, a beautiful widow of a marshal of bourgeois lineage, a prude who is influential in the Congregation. Julien agrees to the stratagem. At the same time, he turns down an offer made by Korasov for the hand of the latter's cousin, a match that would facilitate a glorious military career for Julien in Russia. Upon returning to Paris, Julien asks advice of Altamira in his courting of Mme. de Fervaques. Altamira introduces him to Don Diego Bustos, who had unsuccessfully attempted to court this lady. From Bustos, Julien learns how to go about the conquest. At the Moles', Julien must exert much self-control to begin his campaign. Civil but not attentive to Mathilde, he seeks out Mme. de Fervaques and spends the evening in conversation with her. At the theater, his eyes remain fixed on Mme. de Fervaques. Upon seeing Julien again, Mathilde, who has sworn to forget him, to return to virtue, and to hasten her marriage to Croisenois, now reverses her position, seeing in Julien her real husband. Mathilde is consternated by Julien's indifference for her. Mme. de la Mole now looks upon Julien more favorably since he seems to be interested in Mme. de Fervaques. Julien copies the first letter and delivers it, following the directions of the prince. During his evening conversations, Julien places himself in such a way that he can observe Mathilde without being seen. Mme. de Fervaques is quite favorably impressed with Julien, in whose eloquence, metaphysical bent, and mystical preoccupation she thinks she sees the making of a great churchman. Two weeks and many letters later, Julien receives an invitation to dinner at the home of Mme. de Fervaques. Julien finds the dinner, the conversation, and the guests insipid. Tanbeau, his rival at the Hotel de la Mole, encourages him in his conquest of Mme. de Fervaques. One evening at the opera, Mme. de Fervaques intimates that whoever loves her must not love Napoleon. Julien interprets this as an avowal of a certain success in his campaign. Julien's carelessness in copying a letter almost causes Mme. de Fervaques to doubt his sincerity, but he succeeds in excusing the blunder. Mathilde is succumbing to his strategy. She admires his Machiavellianism in telling Mme. de Fervaques things he obviously does not believe. Mathilde's marriage with Croisenois is imminent, and Julien thinks again of suicide.

Scena Secunda. Drums: Flourish, and Colours. Enter Richard, Aumerle, Carlile, and Souldiers. Rich. Barkloughly Castle call you this at hand? Au. Yea, my Lord: how brooks your Grace the ayre, After your late tossing on the breaking Seas? Rich. Needs must I like it well: I weepe for ioy To stand vpon my Kingdome once againe. Deere Earth, I doe salute thee with my hand, Though Rebels wound thee with their Horses hoofes: As a long parted Mother with her Child, Playes fondly with her teares, and smiles in meeting; So weeping, smiling, greet I thee my Earth, And doe thee fauor with my Royall hands. Feed not thy Soueraignes Foe, my gentle Earth, Nor with thy Sweetes, comfort his rauenous sence: But let thy Spiders, that suck vp thy Venome, And heauie-gated Toades lye in their way, Doing annoyance to the trecherous feete, Which with vsurping steps doe trample thee. Yeeld stinging Nettles to mine Enemies; And when they from thy Bosome pluck a Flower, Guard it I prethee with a lurking Adder, Whose double tongue may with a mortall touch Throw death vpon thy Soueraignes Enemies. Mock not my sencelesse Coniuration, Lords; This Earth shall haue a feeling, and these Stones Proue armed Souldiers, ere her Natiue King Shall falter vnder foule Rebellious Armes Car. Feare not my Lord, that Power that made you King Hath power to keepe you King, in spight of all Aum. He meanes, my Lord, that we are too remisse, Whilest Bullingbrooke through our securitie, Growes strong and great, in substance and in friends Rich. Discomfortable Cousin, knowest thou not, That when the searching Eye of Heauen is hid Behind the Globe, that lights the lower World, Then Theeues and Robbers raunge abroad vnseene, In Murthers and in Out-rage bloody here: But when from vnder this Terrestriall Ball He fires the prowd tops of the Easterne Pines, And darts his Lightning through eu'ry guiltie hole, Then Murthers, Treasons, and detested sinnes (The Cloake of Night being pluckt from off their backs) Stand bare and naked, trembling at themselues. So when this Theefe, this Traytor Bullingbrooke, Who all this while hath reuell'd in the Night, Shall see vs rising in our Throne, the East, His Treasons will sit blushing in his face, Not able to endure the sight of Day; But selfe-affrighted, tremble at his sinne. Not all the Water in the rough rude Sea Can wash the Balme from an anoynted King; The breath of worldly men cannot depose The Deputie elected by the Lord: For euery man that Bullingbrooke hath prest, To lift shrewd Steele against our Golden Crowne, Heauen for his Richard hath in heauenly pay A glorious Angell: then if Angels fight, Weake men must fall, for Heauen still guards the right. Enter Salisbury. Welcome my Lord, how farre off lyes your Power? Salisb. Nor neere, nor farther off, my gracious Lord, Then this weake arme; discomfort guides my tongue, And bids me speake of nothing but despaire: One day too late, I feare (my Noble Lord) Hath clouded all thy happie dayes on Earth: Oh call backe Yesterday, bid Time returne, And thou shalt haue twelue thousand fighting men: To day, to day, vnhappie day too late Orethrowes thy Ioyes, Friends, Fortune, and thy State; For all the Welchmen hearing thou wert dead, Are gone to Bullingbrooke, disperst, and fled Aum. Comfort my Liege, why lookes your Grace so pale? Rich. But now the blood of twentie thousand men Did triumph in my face, and they are fled, And till so much blood thither come againe, Haue I not reason to looke pale, and dead? All Soules that will be safe, flye from my side, For Time hath set a blot vpon my pride Aum. Comfort my Liege, remember who you are Rich. I had forgot my selfe. Am I not King? Awake thou sluggard Maiestie, thou sleepest: Is not the Kings Name fortie thousand Names? Arme, arme my Name: a punie subiect strikes At thy great glory. Looke not to the ground, Ye Fauorites of a King: are wee not high? High be our thoughts: I know my Vnckle Yorke Hath Power enough to serue our turne. But who comes here? Enter Scroope. Scroope. More health and happinesse betide my Liege, Then can my care-tun'd tongue deliuer him Rich. Mine eare is open, and my heart prepar'd: The worst is worldly losse, thou canst vnfold: Say, Is my Kingdome lost? why 'twas my Care: And what losse is it to be rid of Care? Striues Bullingbrooke to be as Great as wee? Greater he shall not be: If hee serue God, Wee'l serue him too, and be his Fellow so. Reuolt our Subiects? That we cannot mend, They breake their Faith to God, as well as vs: Cry Woe, Destruction, Ruine, Losse, Decay, The worst is Death, and Death will haue his day Scroope. Glad am I, that your Highnesse is so arm'd To beare the tidings of Calamitie. Like an vnseasonable stormie day, Which make the Siluer Riuers drowne their Shores, As if the World were all dissolu'd to teares: So high, aboue his Limits, swells the Rage Of Bullingbrooke, couering your fearefull Land With hard bright Steele, and hearts harder then Steele: White Beares haue arm'd their thin and hairelesse Scalps Against thy Maiestie, and Boyes with Womens Voyces, Striue to speake bigge, and clap their female ioints In stiffe vnwieldie Armes: against thy Crowne Thy very Beads-men learne to bend their Bowes Of double fatall Eugh: against thy State Yea Distaffe-Women manage rustie Bills: Against thy Seat both young and old rebell, And all goes worse then I haue power to tell Rich. Too well, too well thou tell'st a Tale so ill. Where is the Earle of Wiltshire? where is Bagot? What is become of Bushie? where is Greene? That they haue let the dangerous Enemie Measure our Confines with such peacefull steps? If we preuaile, their heads shall pay for it. I warrant they haue made peace with Bullingbrooke Scroope. Peace haue they made with him indeede (my Lord.) Rich. Oh Villains, Vipers, damn'd without redemption, Dogges, easily woon to fawne on any man, Snakes in my heart blood warm'd, that sting my heart, Three Iudasses, each one thrice worse then Iudas, Would they make peace? terrible Hell make warre Vpon their spotted Soules for this Offence Scroope. Sweet Loue (I see) changing his propertie, Turnes to the sowrest, and most deadly hate: Againe vncurse their Soules; their peace is made With Heads, and not with Hands: those whom you curse Haue felt the worst of Deaths destroying hand, And lye full low, grau'd in the hollow ground Aum. Is Bushie, Greene, and the Earle of Wiltshire dead? Scroope. Yea, all of them at Bristow lost their heads Aum. Where is the Duke my Father with his Power? Rich. No matter where; of comfort no man speake: Let's talke of Graues, of Wormes, and Epitaphs, Make Dust our Paper, and with Raynie eyes Write Sorrow on the Bosome of the Earth. Let's chuse Executors, and talke of Wills: And yet not so; for what can we bequeath, Saue our deposed bodies to the ground? Our Lands, our Liues, and all are Bullingbrookes, And nothing can we call our owne, but Death, And that small Modell of the barren Earth, Which serues as Paste, and Couer to our Bones: For Heauens sake let vs sit vpon the ground, And tell sad stories of the death of Kings: How some haue been depos'd, some slaine in warre, Some haunted by the Ghosts they haue depos'd, Some poyson'd by their Wiues, some sleeping kill'd, All murther'd. For within the hollow Crowne That rounds the mortall Temples of a King, Keepes Death his Court, and there the Antique sits Scoffing his State, and grinning at his Pompe, Allowing him a breath, a little Scene, To Monarchize, be fear'd, and kill with lookes, Infusing him with selfe and vaine conceit, As if this Flesh, which walls about our Life, Were Brasse impregnable: and humor'd thus, Comes at the last, and with a little Pinne Bores through his Castle Walls, and farwell King. Couer your heads, and mock not flesh and blood With solemne Reuerence: throw away Respect, Tradition, Forme, and Ceremonious dutie, For you haue but mistooke me all this while: I liue with Bread like you, feele Want, Taste Griefe, need Friends: subiected thus, How can you say to me, I am a King? Carl. My Lord, wise men ne're waile their present woes, But presently preuent the wayes to waile: To feare the Foe, since feare oppresseth strength, Giues in your weakenesse, strength vnto your Foe; Feare, and be slaine, no worse can come to sight, And fight and die, is death destroying death, Where fearing, dying, payes death seruile breath Aum. My Father hath a Power, enquire of him; And learne to make a Body of a Limbe Rich. Thou chid'st me well: proud Bullingbrooke I come To change Blowes with thee, for our day of Doome: This ague fit of feare is ouer-blowne, An easie taske it is to winne our owne. Say Scroope, where lyes our Vnckle with his Power? Speake sweetly man, although thy lookes be sowre Scroope. Men iudge by the complexion of the Skie The state and inclination of the day; So may you by my dull and heauie Eye: My Tongue hath but a heauier Tale to say: I play the Torturer, by small and small To lengthen out the worst, that must be spoken. Your Vnckle Yorke is ioyn'd with Bullingbrooke, And all your Northerne Castles yeelded vp, And all your Southerne Gentlemen in Armes Vpon his Faction Rich. Thou hast said enough. Beshrew thee Cousin, which didst lead me forth Of that sweet way I was in, to despaire: What say you now? What comfort haue we now? By Heauen Ile hate him euerlastingly, That bids me be of comfort any more. Goe to Flint Castle, there Ile pine away, A King, Woes slaue, shall Kingly Woe obey: That Power I haue, discharge, and let 'em goe To eare the Land, that hath some hope to grow, For I haue none. Let no man speake againe To alter this, for counsaile is but vaine Aum. My Liege, one word Rich. He does me double wrong, That wounds me with the flatteries of his tongue. Discharge my followers: let them hence away, From Richards Night, to Bullingbrookes faire Day. Exeunt.

Arriving at Barkloughly Castle in Wales, Richard is happy to return to his kingdom. York's son, Aumerle, is present, as is the Bishop of Carlisle. He humbly addresses England with emotionally charged words. He salutes the "dear earth" of England and proclaims his intense affection for her: "As a long- parted mother with her child / Plays fondly with her tears and smiles in meeting, / So, weeping, smiling, greet I thee, my earth. . . " He commands the earth itself to launch an offensive against the rebel, Bolingbroke: "Throw death upon thy sovereign's enemies." The Bishop of Carlisle senses Richard's feeling of dread and comforts him with this remark: "Fear not, my lord: that power that made you king / Hath power to keep you king in spite of all." He urges Richard to take some concrete action and not wait for God to perform a miracle. Simply waiting for divine help amounts to a rejection of the "proffer'd means of succour and redress." Aumerle agrees with Carlisle's views and warns that Bolingbroke is growing stronger even as they speak. Richard, however, believes that God will protect him from Bolingbroke and his fellow rebels. The Lord of Salisbury arrives with the devastating news that the Welsh soldiers, believing the rumor of Richard's death to be true, have abandoned the cause. He laments that if Richard had returned a day earlier, he would have supplied him with twelve thousand soldiers. He says regretfully, "To-day, to-day, unhappy day too late, / O'erthrows thy joys, friends, fortune, and thy state." Richard falls into premature despair and reflects that everybody who desires to be safe has deserted his side because "time hath set a blot upon pride." Aumerle tries to rouse his spirits and urges him to behave in accordance with the dignity of his office. Richard regains his composure, but at this moment, Scroop enters bad news. He informs Richard that the entire populace has rebelled against him. He also confirms that Bushy and Green have "made peace" with Bolingbroke. Richard angrily denounces his former friends, who have chosen to desert him in a time of woe. Only after Richard stops raving is Scroop able to reveal that Bushy and Green have been executed by Bolingbroke. But it is too late. Richard has given himself up to the deadly sin of despair and launches into another poetic speech concerning "graves. . . worms, and epitaphs." He loses all hope and proposes that they sit on the ground, and "tell sad stories of the death of kings." Carlisle attempts to instill some confidence in Richard and says that it is foolishness to admit defeat before fighting. Undue fear of the enemy only results in strengthening the foe. Aumerle reminds Richard of the army under York. Richard immediately feels roused by Carlisle's admonition. However, Richard again falls into despair when Scroop says that he has a "heavier tale" to deliver, and he reveals that York has also defected to Bolingbroke's side and that all his northern castles have been seized. Richard sinks into abject despair. He announces his decision to seek refuge at Flint Castle where he will "pine away" and orders the dismissal of his soldiers so that they too may flee "from Richard's night to Bolingbroke's fair day."

SADLY discursive as I have already been, I must still further entreat the reader's patience, as I am about to string together, without any attempt at order, a few odds and ends of things not hitherto mentioned, but which are either curious in themselves or peculiar to the Typees. There was one singular custom observed in old Marheyo's domestic establishment, which often excited my surprise. Every night, before retiring, the inmates of the house gathered together on the mats, and so squatting upon their haunches, after the universal practice of these islanders, would commence a low, dismal and monotonous chant, accompanying the voice with the instrumental melody produced by two small half-rotten sticks tapped slowly together, a pair of which were held in the hands of each person present. Thus would they employ themselves for an hour or two, sometimes longer. Lying in the gloom which wrapped the further end of the house, I could not avoid looking at them, although the spectacle suggested nothing but unpleasant reflection. The flickering rays of the 'armor' nut just served to reveal their savage lineaments, without dispelling the darkness that hovered about them. Sometimes when, after falling into a kind of doze, and awaking suddenly in the midst of these doleful chantings, my eye would fall upon the wild-looking group engaged in their strange occupation, with their naked tattooed limbs, and shaven heads disposed in a circle, I was almost tempted to believe that I gazed upon a set of evil beings in the act of working at a frightful incantation. What was the meaning or purpose of this custom, whether it was practiced merely as a diversion, or whether it was a religious exercise, a sort of family prayers, I never could discover. The sounds produced by the natives on these occasions were of a most singular description; and had I not actually been present, I never would have believed that such curious noises could have been produced by human beings. To savages generally is imputed a guttural articulation. This however, is not always the case, especially among the inhabitants of the Polynesian Archipelago. The labial melody with which the Typee girls carry on an ordinary conversation, giving a musical prolongation to the final syllable of every sentence, and chirping out some of the words with a liquid, bird-like accent, was singularly pleasing. The men however, are not quite so harmonious in their utterance, and when excited upon any subject, would work themselves up into a sort of wordy paroxysm, during which all descriptions of rough-sided sounds were projected from their mouths, with a force and rapidity which was absolutely astonishing. . . . . . . . . Although these savages are remarkably fond of chanting, still they appear to have no idea whatever of singing, at least as the art is practised in other nations. I shall never forget the first time I happened to roar out a stave in the presence of noble Mehevi. It was a stanza from the 'Bavarian broom-seller'. His Typeean majesty, with all his court, gazed upon me in amazement, as if I had displayed some preternatural faculty which Heaven had denied to them. The King was delighted with the verse; but the chorus fairly transported him. At his solicitation I sang it again and again, and nothing could be more ludicrous than his vain attempts to catch the air and the words. The royal savage seemed to think that by screwing all the features of his face into the end of his nose he might possibly succeed in the undertaking, but it failed to answer the purpose; and in the end he gave it up, and consoled himself by listening to my repetition of the sounds fifty times over. Previous to Mehevi's making the discovery, I had never been aware that there was anything of the nightingale about me; but I was now promoted to the place of court-minstrel, in which capacity I was afterwards perpetually called upon to officiate. . . . . . . . . Besides the sticks and the drums, there are no other musical instruments among the Typees, except one which might appropriately be denominated a nasal flute. It is somewhat longer than an ordinary fife; is made of a beautiful scarlet-coloured reed; and has four or five stops, with a large hole near one end, which latter is held just beneath the left nostril. The other nostril being closed by a peculiar movement of the muscles about the nose, the breath is forced into the tube, and produces a soft dulcet sound which is varied by the fingers running at random over the stops. This is a favourite recreation with the females and one in which Fayaway greatly excelled. Awkward as such an instrument may appear, it was, in Fayaway's delicate little hands, one of the most graceful I have ever seen. A young lady, in the act of tormenting a guitar strung about her neck by a couple of yards of blue ribbon, is not half so engaging. . . . . . . . . Singing was not the only means I possessed of diverting the royal Mehevi and his easy-going subject. Nothing afforded them more pleasure than to see me go through the attitude of pugilistic encounter. As not one of the natives had soul enough in him to stand up like a man, and allow me to hammer away at him, for my own personal gratification and that of the king, I was necessitated to fight with an imaginary enemy, whom I invariably made to knock under to my superior prowess. Sometimes when this sorely battered shadow retreated precipitately towards a group of the savages, and, following him up, I rushed among them dealing my blows right and left, they would disperse in all directions much to the enjoyment of Mehevi, the chiefs, and themselves. The noble art of self-defence appeared to be regarded by them as the peculiar gift of the white man; and I make little doubt that they supposed armies of Europeans were drawn up provided with nothing else but bony fists and stout hearts, with which they set to in column, and pummelled one another at the word of command. . . . . . . . . One day, in company with Kory-Kory, I had repaired to the stream for the purpose of bathing, when I observed a woman sitting upon a rock in the midst of the current, and watching with the liveliest interest the gambols of something, which at first I took to be an uncommonly large species of frog that was sporting in the water near her. Attracted by the novelty of the sight, I waded towards the spot where she sat, and could hardly credit the evidence of my senses when I beheld a little infant, the period of whose birth could not have extended back many days, paddling about as if it had just risen to the surface, after being hatched into existence at the bottom. Occasionally, the delighted parent reached out her hand towards it, when the little thing, uttering a faint cry, and striking out its tiny limbs, would sidle for the rock, and the next moment be clasped to its mother's bosom. This was repeated again and again, the baby remaining in the stream about a minute at a time. Once or twice it made wry faces at swallowing a mouthful of water, and choked a spluttered as if on the point of strangling. At such times however, the mother snatched it up and by a process scarcely to be mentioned obliged it to eject the fluid. For several weeks afterwards I observed this woman bringing her child down to the stream regularly every day, in the cool of the morning and evening and treating it to a bath. No wonder that the South Sea Islanders are so amphibious a race, when they are thus launched into the water as soon as they see the light. I am convinced that it is as natural for a human being to swim as it is for a duck. And yet in civilized communities how many able-bodied individuals die, like so many drowning kittens, from the occurrence of the most trivial accidents! . . . . . . . . The long luxuriant and glossy tresses of the Typee damsels often attracted my admiration. A fine head of hair is the pride and joy of every woman's heart. Whether against the express will of Providence, it is twisted upon the crown of the head and there coiled away like a rope on a ship's deck; whether it be stuck behind the ears and hangs down like the swag of a small window-curtain; or whether it be permitted to flow over the shoulders in natural ringlets, it is always the pride of the owner, and the glory of the toilette. The Typee girls devote much of their time to the dressing of their fair and redundant locks. After bathing, as they sometimes do five or six times every day, the hair is carefully dried, and if they have been in the sea, invariably washed in fresh water, and anointed with a highly scented oil extracted from the meat of the cocoanut. This oil is obtained in great abundance by the following very simple process: A large vessel of wood, with holes perforated in the bottom, is filled with the pounded meat, and exposed to the rays of the sun. As the oleaginous matter exudes, it falls in drops through the apertures into a wide-mouthed calabash placed underneath. After a sufficient quantity has thus been collected, the oil undergoes a purifying process, and is then poured into the small spherical shells of the nuts of the moo-tree, which are hollowed out to receive it. These nuts are then hermetically sealed with a resinous gum, and the vegetable fragrance of their green rind soon imparts to the oil a delightful odour. After the lapse of a few weeks the exterior shell of the nuts becomes quite dry and hard, and assumes a beautiful carnation tint; and when opened they are found to be about two-thirds full of an ointment of a light yellow colour and diffusing the sweetest perfume. This elegant little odorous globe would not be out of place even upon the toilette of a queen. Its merits as a preparation for the hair are undeniable--it imparts to it a superb gloss and a silky fineness.

Each night before the Typees go to bed, they chant together. This chanting can last for several hours and everyone in the household is involved. Tommo never learns exactly what purpose this chanting is supposed to serve. He assumes that it is part of a Typee religious ritual. Even though they chant, however, the natives do not sing. The first time Tommo sings for Mehevi, Mehevi appears enchanted. The Typees are musical in other ways though. Some play a small flute that makes sound with air coming from the nose. Fayaway is a particularly gifted player of this flute. Sometimes Tommo pretends that he is boxing with people in order to entertain the chiefs. One day, Tommo sees a Typee mother teaching her young baby how to swim. He then realizes why Typees all are such good swimmers. They start as soon as they are born. The narrator then describes the technique for making the coconut oil that Typee women rub into their hair each day to make it luxurious. He greatly admires their tresses

"That boy is a perfect cyclops, isn't he?" said Amy one day, as Laurie clattered by on horseback, with a flourish of his whip as he passed. "How dare you say so, when he's got both his eyes? And very handsome ones they are, too," cried Jo, who resented any slighting remarks about her friend. "I didn't say anything about his eyes, and I don't see why you need fire up when I admire his riding." "Oh, my goodness! That little goose means a centaur, and she called him a Cyclops," exclaimed Jo, with a burst of laughter. "You needn't be so rude, it's only a 'lapse of lingy', as Mr. Davis says," retorted Amy, finishing Jo with her Latin. "I just wish I had a little of the money Laurie spends on that horse," she added, as if to herself, yet hoping her sisters would hear. "Why?" asked Meg kindly, for Jo had gone off in another laugh at Amy's second blunder. "I need it so much. I'm dreadfully in debt, and it won't be my turn to have the rag money for a month." "In debt, Amy? What do you mean?" And Meg looked sober. "Why, I owe at least a dozen pickled limes, and I can't pay them, you know, till I have money, for Marmee forbade my having anything charged at the shop." "Tell me all about it. Are limes the fashion now? It used to be pricking bits of rubber to make balls." And Meg tried to keep her countenance, Amy looked so grave and important. "Why, you see, the girls are always buying them, and unless you want to be thought mean, you must do it too. It's nothing but limes now, for everyone is sucking them in their desks in schooltime, and trading them off for pencils, bead rings, paper dolls, or something else, at recess. If one girl likes another, she gives her a lime. If she's mad with her, she eats one before her face, and doesn't offer even a suck. They treat by turns, and I've had ever so many but haven't returned them, and I ought for they are debts of honor, you know." "How much will pay them off and restore your credit?" asked Meg, taking out her purse. "A quarter would more than do it, and leave a few cents over for a treat for you. Don't you like limes?" "Not much. You may have my share. Here's the money. Make it last as long as you can, for it isn't very plenty, you know." "Oh, thank you! It must be so nice to have pocket money! I'll have a grand feast, for I haven't tasted a lime this week. I felt delicate about taking any, as I couldn't return them, and I'm actually suffering for one." Next day Amy was rather late at school, but could not resist the temptation of displaying, with pardonable pride, a moist brown-paper parcel, before she consigned it to the inmost recesses of her desk. During the next few minutes the rumor that Amy March had got twenty-four delicious limes (she ate one on the way) and was going to treat circulated through her 'set', and the attentions of her friends became quite overwhelming. Katy Brown invited her to her next party on the spot. Mary Kingsley insisted on lending her her watch till recess, and Jenny Snow, a satirical young lady, who had basely twitted Amy upon her limeless state, promptly buried the hatchet and offered to furnish answers to certain appalling sums. But Amy had not forgotten Miss Snow's cutting remarks about 'some persons whose noses were not too flat to smell other people's limes, and stuck-up people who were not too proud to ask for them', and she instantly crushed 'that Snow girl's' hopes by the withering telegram, "You needn't be so polite all of a sudden, for you won't get any." A distinguished personage happened to visit the school that morning, and Amy's beautifully drawn maps received praise, which honor to her foe rankled in the soul of Miss Snow, and caused Miss March to assume the airs of a studious young peacock. But, alas, alas! Pride goes before a fall, and the revengeful Snow turned the tables with disastrous success. No sooner had the guest paid the usual stale compliments and bowed himself out, than Jenny, under pretense of asking an important question, informed Mr. Davis, the teacher, that Amy March had pickled limes in her desk. Now Mr. Davis had declared limes a contraband article, and solemnly vowed to publicly ferrule the first person who was found breaking the law. This much-enduring man had succeeded in banishing chewing gum after a long and stormy war, had made a bonfire of the confiscated novels and newspapers, had suppressed a private post office, had forbidden distortions of the face, nicknames, and caricatures, and done all that one man could do to keep half a hundred rebellious girls in order. Boys are trying enough to human patience, goodness knows, but girls are infinitely more so, especially to nervous gentlemen with tyrannical tempers and no more talent for teaching than Dr. Blimber. Mr. Davis knew any quantity of Greek, Latin, algebra, and ologies of all sorts so he was called a fine teacher, and manners, morals, feelings, and examples were not considered of any particular importance. It was a most unfortunate moment for denouncing Amy, and Jenny knew it. Mr. Davis had evidently taken his coffee too strong that morning, there was an east wind, which always affected his neuralgia, and his pupils had not done him the credit which he felt he deserved. Therefore, to use the expressive, if not elegant, language of a schoolgirl, "He was as nervous as a witch and as cross as a bear". The word 'limes' was like fire to powder, his yellow face flushed, and he rapped on his desk with an energy which made Jenny skip to her seat with unusual rapidity. "Young ladies, attention, if you please!" At the stern order the buzz ceased, and fifty pairs of blue, black, gray, and brown eyes were obediently fixed upon his awful countenance. "Miss March, come to the desk." Amy rose to comply with outward composure, but a secret fear oppressed her, for the limes weighed upon her conscience. "Bring with you the limes you have in your desk," was the unexpected command which arrested her before she got out of her seat. "Don't take all." whispered her neighbor, a young lady of great presence of mind. Amy hastily shook out half a dozen and laid the rest down before Mr. Davis, feeling that any man possessing a human heart would relent when that delicious perfume met his nose. Unfortunately, Mr. Davis particularly detested the odor of the fashionable pickle, and disgust added to his wrath. "Is that all?" "Not quite," stammered Amy. "Bring the rest immediately." With a despairing glance at her set, she obeyed. "You are sure there are no more?" "I never lie, sir." "So I see. Now take these disgusting things two by two, and throw them out of the window." There was a simultaneous sigh, which created quite a little gust, as the last hope fled, and the treat was ravished from their longing lips. Scarlet with shame and anger, Amy went to and fro six dreadful times, and as each doomed couple, looking oh, so plump and juicy, fell from her reluctant hands, a shout from the street completed the anguish of the girls, for it told them that their feast was being exulted over by the little Irish children, who were their sworn foes. This--this was too much. All flashed indignant or appealing glances at the inexorable Davis, and one passionate lime lover burst into tears. As Amy returned from her last trip, Mr. Davis gave a portentous "Hem!" and said, in his most impressive manner... "Young ladies, you remember what I said to you a week ago. I am sorry this has happened, but I never allow my rules to be infringed, and I never break my word. Miss March, hold out your hand." Amy started, and put both hands behind her, turning on him an imploring look which pleaded for her better than the words she could not utter. She was rather a favorite with 'old Davis', as, of course, he was called, and it's my private belief that he would have broken his word if the indignation of one irrepressible young lady had not found vent in a hiss. That hiss, faint as it was, irritated the irascible gentleman, and sealed the culprit's fate. "Your hand, Miss March!" was the only answer her mute appeal received, and too proud to cry or beseech, Amy set her teeth, threw back her head defiantly, and bore without flinching several tingling blows on her little palm. They were neither many nor heavy, but that made no difference to her. For the first time in her life she had been struck, and the disgrace, in her eyes, was as deep as if he had knocked her down. "You will now stand on the platform till recess," said Mr. Davis, resolved to do the thing thoroughly, since he had begun. That was dreadful. It would have been bad enough to go to her seat, and see the pitying faces of her friends, or the satisfied ones of her few enemies, but to face the whole school, with that shame fresh upon her, seemed impossible, and for a second she felt as if she could only drop down where she stood, and break her heart with crying. A bitter sense of wrong and the thought of Jenny Snow helped her to bear it, and, taking the ignominious place, she fixed her eyes on the stove funnel above what now seemed a sea of faces, and stood there, so motionless and white that the girls found it hard to study with that pathetic figure before them. During the fifteen minutes that followed, the proud and sensitive little girl suffered a shame and pain which she never forgot. To others it might seem a ludicrous or trivial affair, but to her it was a hard experience, for during the twelve years of her life she had been governed by love alone, and a blow of that sort had never touched her before. The smart of her hand and the ache of her heart were forgotten in the sting of the thought, "I shall have to tell at home, and they will be so disappointed in me!" The fifteen minutes seemed an hour, but they came to an end at last, and the word 'Recess!' had never seemed so welcome to her before. "You can go, Miss March," said Mr. Davis, looking, as he felt, uncomfortable. He did not soon forget the reproachful glance Amy gave him, as she went, without a word to anyone, straight into the anteroom, snatched her things, and left the place "forever," as she passionately declared to herself. She was in a sad state when she got home, and when the older girls arrived, some time later, an indignation meeting was held at once. Mrs. March did not say much but looked disturbed, and comforted her afflicted little daughter in her tenderest manner. Meg bathed the insulted hand with glycerine and tears, Beth felt that even her beloved kittens would fail as a balm for griefs like this, Jo wrathfully proposed that Mr. Davis be arrested without delay, and Hannah shook her fist at the 'villain' and pounded potatoes for dinner as if she had him under her pestle. No notice was taken of Amy's flight, except by her mates, but the sharp-eyed demoiselles discovered that Mr. Davis was quite benignant in the afternoon, also unusually nervous. Just before school closed, Jo appeared, wearing a grim expression as she stalked up to the desk, and delivered a letter from her mother, then collected Amy's property, and departed, carefully scraping the mud from her boots on the door mat, as if she shook the dust of the place off her feet. "Yes, you can have a vacation from school, but I want you to study a little every day with Beth," said Mrs. March that evening. "I don't approve of corporal punishment, especially for girls. I dislike Mr. Davis's manner of teaching and don't think the girls you associate with are doing you any good, so I shall ask your father's advice before I send you anywhere else." "That's good! I wish all the girls would leave, and spoil his old school. It's perfectly maddening to think of those lovely limes," sighed Amy, with the air of a martyr. "I am not sorry you lost them, for you broke the rules, and deserved some punishment for disobedience," was the severe reply, which rather disappointed the young lady, who expected nothing but sympathy. "Do you mean you are glad I was disgraced before the whole school?" cried Amy. "I should not have chosen that way of mending a fault," replied her mother, "but I'm not sure that it won't do you more good than a bolder method. You are getting to be rather conceited, my dear, and it is quite time you set about correcting it. You have a good many little gifts and virtues, but there is no need of parading them, for conceit spoils the finest genius. There is not much danger that real talent or goodness will be overlooked long, even if it is, the consciousness of possessing and using it well should satisfy one, and the great charm of all power is modesty." "So it is!" cried Laurie, who was playing chess in a corner with Jo. "I knew a girl once, who had a really remarkable talent for music, and she didn't know it, never guessed what sweet little things she composed when she was alone, and wouldn't have believed it if anyone had told her." "I wish I'd known that nice girl. Maybe she would have helped me, I'm so stupid," said Beth, who stood beside him, listening eagerly. "You do know her, and she helps you better than anyone else could," answered Laurie, looking at her with such mischievous meaning in his merry black eyes that Beth suddenly turned very red, and hid her face in the sofa cushion, quite overcome by such an unexpected discovery. Jo let Laurie win the game to pay for that praise of her Beth, who could not be prevailed upon to play for them after her compliment. So Laurie did his best, and sang delightfully, being in a particularly lively humor, for to the Marches he seldom showed the moody side of his character. When he was gone, Amy, who had been pensive all evening, said suddenly, as if busy over some new idea, "Is Laurie an accomplished boy?" "Yes, he has had an excellent education, and has much talent. He will make a fine man, if not spoiled by petting," replied her mother. "And he isn't conceited, is he?" asked Amy. "Not in the least. That is why he is so charming and we all like him so much." "I see. It's nice to have accomplishments and be elegant, but not to show off or get perked up," said Amy thoughtfully. "These things are always seen and felt in a person's manner and conversations, if modestly used, but it is not necessary to display them," said Mrs. March. "Any more than it's proper to wear all your bonnets and gowns and ribbons at once, that folks may know you've got them," added Jo, and the lecture ended in a laugh.

While out one afternoon with her sisters, Amy laments about being poor to her sisters and they ask her why. She tells them that it is fashionable at her school for girls to share and give away limes to other girls. She so far, has excepted these gifts, but has not been able to return the favor. Meg gives her a quarter so she can buy limes to share the next day. Amy takes the limes to school and everyone is very excited that they will get to partake in her treat at recess. Amy's archenemy, Jenny Snow, found out about the limes, and informed their teacher, Mr. Davis. The previous week he had forbidden the limes. He made Amy throw them out the window, and then he slapped her on the palm with a ruler, and made her stand for fifteen minutes up in front of the entire class. Amy was so humiliated that at recess she went home and did not come back. Jo went to collect her things, and Mrs. March said that she would look into a different school for Amy because she did not believe in corporal punishment. Laurie while playing chess with Jo gave Beth a compliment on the music she had composed and she was extremely shocked and surprised that he knew she wrote music

CHAPTER VI. OF THE INHABITANTS OF LILLIPUT; THEIR LEARNING, LAWS, AND CUSTOMS; THE MANNER OF EDUCATING THEIR CHILDREN. THE AUTHOR'S WAY OF LIVING IN THAT COUNTRY. Although I intend to leave the description of this empire to a particular treatise, yet, in the meantime, I am content to gratify the curious reader with some general ideas. As the common size of the natives is somewhat under six inches high, so there is an exact proportion in all other animals, as well as plants and trees: for instance, the tallest horses and oxen are between four and five inches in height, the sheep an inch and a half, more or less; their geese about the bigness of a sparrow, and so the several gradations downwards, till you come to the smallest, which, to my sight, were almost invisible; but nature hath adapted the eyes of the Lilliputians to all objects proper for their view; they see with great exactness, but at no great distance. And, to show the sharpness of their sight, towards objects that are near, I have been much pleased with observing a cook pulling[29] a lark, which was not so large as a common fly; and a young girl threading an invisible needle with invisible silk. Their tallest trees are about seven feet high; I mean some of those in the great royal park, the tops whereof I could but just reach with my fist clenched. The other vegetables are in the same proportion; but this I leave to the reader's imagination. I shall say but little at present of their learning, which, for many ages, hath flourished in all its branches among them: but their manner of writing is very peculiar, being neither from the left to the right like the Europeans; nor from the right to the left, like the Arabians; nor from up to down, like the Chinese, but aslant, from one corner of the paper to the other, like ladies in England. They bury their dead with their heads directly downwards, because they hold an opinion, that in eleven thousand moons they are all to rise again, in which period the earth (which they conceive to be flat) will turn upside down, and by this means they shall, at the resurrection, be found ready, standing on their feet. The learned among them confess the absurdity of this doctrine, but the practice still continues, in compliance to the vulgar. There are some laws and customs in this empire very peculiar; and, if they were not so directly contrary to those of my own dear country, I should be tempted to say a little in their justification. It is only to be wished they were as well executed. The first I shall mention relates to informers. All crimes against the state are punished here with the utmost severity; but, if the person accused maketh his innocence plainly to appear upon his trial, the accuser is immediately put to an ignominious death; and, out of his goods, or lands, the innocent person is quadruply recompensed for the loss of his time, for the danger he underwent, for the hardship of his imprisonment, and for all the charges he hath been at in making his defence, or, if that fund be deficient, it is largely supplied by the crown. The emperor also confers on him some public mark of his favor, and proclamation is made of his innocence through the whole city. They look upon fraud as a greater crime than theft, and therefore seldom fail to punish it with death; for they allege, that care and vigilance, with a very common understanding, may preserve a man's goods from thieves, but honesty has no fence against superior cunning; and, since it is necessary that there should be a perpetual intercourse of buying and selling, and dealing upon credit, where fraud is permitted and connived at, or hath no law to punish it, the honest dealer is always undone, and the knave gets the advantage. I remember, when I was once interceding with the king for a criminal, who had wronged his master of a great sum of money, which he had received by order, and run away with, and happening to tell his majesty, by way of extenuation, that it was only a breach of trust, the emperor thought it monstrous in me, to offer as a defence the greatest aggravation of the crime; and, truly, I had little to say in return, farther than the common answer, that different nations had different customs; for, I confess, I was heartily ashamed. Although we usually call reward and punishment the two hinges upon which all government turns, yet I could never observe this maxim to be put in practice by any nation except that of Lilliput. Whoever can there bring sufficient proof that he hath strictly observed the laws of his country for seventy-three moons, hath a claim to certain privileges, according to his quality and condition of life, with a proportionable sum of out of a fund appropriated for that use; he likewise acquires the title of _snillpall_, or _legal_, which is added to his name, but doth not descend to his posterity. And these people thought it a prodigious defect of policy among us, when I told them that our laws were enforced only by penalties, without any mention of reward. It is upon this account that the image of Justice, in their courts of judicature, is formed with six eyes, two before, as many behind, and on each side one, to signify circumspection, with a bag of gold open in her right hand, and a sword sheath in her left, to show she was more disposed to reward than to punish. In choosing persons for all employments, they have more regard to good morals than to great abilities; for, since government is necessary to mankind, they believe that the common size of human understanding is fitted to some station or other, and that Providence never intended to make the management of public affairs a mystery, to be comprehended only by a few persons of sublime genius, of which there seldom are three born in an age; but they suppose truth, justice, temperance, and the like, to be in every man's power, the practice of which virtues, assisted by experience, and a good intention, would qualify any man for the service of his country, except where a course of study is required. But they thought the want of moral virtues was so far from being supplied by superior endowments of the mind, that employments could never be put into such dangerous hands as those of persons so qualified; and at least, that the mistakes committed by ignorance, in a virtuous disposition, would never be of such fatal consequences to the public weal as the practices of a man whose inclinations led him to be corrupt, and who had great abilities to manage, to multiply, and defend his corruptions. In like manner, the disbelief of a Divine Providence renders a man incapable of holding any public station; for, since kings avow themselves to be the deputies of Providence, the Lilliputians think nothing can be more absurd than for a prince to employ such men as disown the authority under which he acts. In relating these and the following laws, I would only be understood to mean the original institutions, and not the most scandalous corruptions into which these people are fallen, by the degenerate nature of man. For, as to that infamous practice of acquiring great employments by dancing on the ropes, or badges of favor and distinction by leaping over sticks, and creeping under them, the reader is to observe, that they were first introduced by the grandfather of the emperor, now reigning, and grew to the present height by the gradual increase of party and faction. Ingratitude is, among them, a capital crime, as we read it to have been in some other countries; for they reason thus, that whoever makes ill returns to his benefactor, must needs be a common enemy to the rest of mankind, from whom he hath received no obligation, and therefore such a man is not fit to live. Their notions relating to the duties of parents and children differ extremely from ours. Their opinion is, that parents are the last of all others to be trusted with the education of their own children; and, therefore, they have, in every town, public nurseries, where all parents, except cottagers and laborers, are obliged to send their infants of both sexes to be reared and educated, when they come to the age of twenty moons, at which time they are supposed to have some rudiments of docility. These schools are of several kinds, suited to different qualities, and to both sexes. They have certain professors, well skilled in preparing children for such a condition of life as befits the rank of their parents, and their own capacities as well as inclinations. I shall first say something of the male nurseries, and then of the female. The nurseries for males of noble or eminent birth are provided with grave and learned professors, and their several deputies. The clothes and food of the children are plain and simple. They are bred up in the principles of honor, justice, courage, modesty, clemency, religion, and love of their country; they are always employed in some business, except in the times of eating and sleeping, which are very short, and two hours for diversions, consisting of bodily exercises. They are dressed by men till four years of age, and then are obliged to dress themselves, although their quality be ever so great; and the women attendants, who are aged proportionably to ours at fifty, perform only the most menial offices. They are never suffered to converse with servants, but go together in smaller or greater numbers to take their diversions, and always in the presence of a professor, or one of his deputies; whereby they avoid those early bad impressions of folly and vice, to which our children are subject. Their parents are suffered to see them only twice a year; the visit to last but an hour; they are allowed to kiss the child at meeting and parting; but a professor, who always stands by on those occasions, will not suffer them to whisper, or use any fondling expressions, or bring any presents of toys, sweetmeats, and the like. The pension from each family, for the education and entertainment of a child, upon failure of due payment, is levied by the emperor's officers. The nurseries for children of ordinary gentlemen, merchants, traders, and handicrafts, are managed proportionally after the same manner; only those designed for trades are put out apprentices at eleven years old, whereas those persons of quality continue in their exercises till fifteen, which answers to twenty-one with us; but the confinement is gradually lessened for the last three years. In the female nurseries, the young girls of quality are educated much like the males, only they are dressed by orderly servants of their own sex; but always in the presence of a professor or deputy, till they come to dress themselves, which is at five years old. And if it be found that these nurses ever presume to entertain the girls with frightful or foolish stories, or the common follies practised by the chambermaids among us, they are publicly whipped thrice about the city, imprisoned for a year, and banished for life to the most desolate part of the country. Thus, the young ladies there are as much ashamed of being cowards and fools as the men, and despise all personal ornaments beyond decency and cleanliness: neither did I perceive any difference in their education, made by their difference of sex, only that the exercises of the women were not altogether so robust, and that some rules were given them relating to domestic life, and a smaller compass of learning was enjoined them: for their maxim is that, among people of quality, a wife should be always a reasonable and agreeable companion, because she cannot always be young. When the girls are twelve years old, which among them is the marriageable age, their parents or guardians take them home, with great expressions of gratitude to the professors, and seldom without tears of the young lady and her companions. In the nurseries of females of the meaner sort, the children are instructed in all kinds of works proper for their sex and their several degrees; those intended for apprentices are dismissed at seven years old, the rest are kept to eleven. The meaner[30] families who have children at these nurseries are obliged, besides their annual pension, which is as low as possible, to return to the steward of the nursery a small monthly share of their gettings, to be a portion[31] for the child; and, therefore, all parents are limited in their expenses by the law. For the Lilliputians think nothing can be more unjust than for people to leave the burden of supporting their children on the public. As to persons of quality, they give security to appropriate a certain sum for each child, suitable to their condition; and these funds are always managed with good husbandry and the most exact justice. The cottagers and laborers keep their children at home, their business being only to till and cultivate the earth, and therefore their education is of little consequence to the public; but the old and diseased among them are supported by hospitals; for begging is a trade unknown in this empire. And here it may perhaps divert the curious reader to give some account of my domestic,[32] and my manner of living in this country, during a residence of nine months and thirteen days. Having a head for mechanics, and being likewise forced by necessity, I had made for myself a table and chair, convenient enough, out of the largest trees in the royal park. Two hundred sempstresses were employed to make me shirts, and linen for my bed and table, all of the strongest and coarsest kind they could get; which, however, they were forced to quilt together in several folds, for the thickest was some degrees finer than lawn. Their linen is usually three inches wide, and three feet make a piece. The sempstresses took my measure as I lay on the ground, one standing at my neck, and another at my mid-leg, with a strong cord extended that each held by the end, while a third measured the length of the cord with a rule of an inch long. Then they measured my right thumb, and desired no more; for, by a mathematical computation, that twice round the thumb is once round the wrist, and so on to the neck and the waist, and by the help of my old shirt, which I displayed on the ground before them for a pattern, they fitted me exactly. Three hundred tailors were employed in the same manner to make me clothes; but they had another contrivance for taking my measure. I kneeled down, and they raised a ladder from the ground to my neck; upon this ladder one of them mounted, and let fall a plumb-line from my collar to the floor, which just answered the length of my coat; but my waist and arms I measured myself. When my clothes were finished, which was done in my house (for the largest of theirs would not have been able to hold them), they looked like the patchwork made by the ladies in England, only that mine were all of a color. [Illustration: "THREE HUNDRED TAILORS WERE EMPLOYED TO MAKE ME CLOTHES" P. 74.] I had three hundred cooks to dress my victuals, in little convenient huts built about my house, where they and their families lived, and prepared me two dishes a-piece. I took up twenty waiters in my hand, and placed them on the table; an hundred more attended below on the ground, some with dishes of meat, and some with barrels of wine and other liquors, flung on their shoulders; all of which the waiters above drew up, as I wanted, in a very ingenious manner, by certain cords, as we draw the bucket up a well in Europe. A dish of their meat was a good mouthful, and a barrel of their liquor a reasonable draught. Their mutton yields to ours, but their beef is excellent, I have had a sirloin so large that I have been forced to make three bites of it; but this is rare. My servants were astonished to see me eat it, bones and all, as in our country we do the leg of a lark. Their geese and turkeys I usually eat at a mouthful, and I must confess they far exceed ours. Of their smaller fowl, I could take up twenty or thirty at the end of my knife. One day his imperial majesty, being informed of my way of living, desired that himself and his royal consort, with the young princes of the blood of both sexes, might have the happiness, as he was pleased to call it, of dining with me. They came accordingly, and I placed them in chairs of state upon my table, just over against me, with their guards about them. Flimnap, the lord high treasurer, attended there likewise, with his white staff; and I observed he often looked on me with a sour countenance, which I would not seem to regard, but eat more than usual, in honor to my dear country, as well as to fill the court with admiration. I have some private reasons to believe that this visit from his majesty gave Flimnap an opportunity of doing me ill offices to his master. That minister had always been my secret enemy, though he outwardly caressed me more than was usual to the moroseness of his nature. He represented to the emperor the low condition of his treasury; that he was forced to take up money at a great discount; that exchequer bills[33] would not circulate under nine per cent, below par; that I had cost his majesty above a million and a half of _sprugs_ (their greatest gold coin, about the bigness of a spangle); and, upon the whole, that it would be advisable in the emperor to take the first fair occasion of dismissing me. [Illustration: "THE HAPPINESS ... OF DINING WITH ME." P. 76.] [Illustration] [Illustration]

"Several Contrivances of the Author to please the King and Queen. He shews his Skill in Musick. The King enquires into the State of Europe, which the Author relates to him. The King's Observations thereon. Gulliver salvages several of the king's hairs from his shaving cream and makes himself a comb. He then makes the seat of a chair from the queen's hair but refuses to sit on it because doing so would be insulting to her. He also makes Glumdalclitch a small purse. Gulliver spends the evening at a concert in Brobdingnag. For him the music is so loud that he cannot enjoy it unless his traveling box is brought as far away as possible and all of the windows and doors are closed. Gulliver often goes to see the king, who requests a detailed description of the government of England, which Gulliver relates. The king asks him many questions, challenging various aspects of the government and having particular difficulty with England's violent past. In the end the king concludes that the English are well below the Brobdingnagians, calling them "the most pernicious Race of Little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth

AT AN UPPER WINDOW It was very early the next morning--a time of sun and dew. The confused beginnings of many birds' songs spread into the healthy air, and the wan blue of the heaven was here and there coated with thin webs of incorporeal cloud which were of no effect in obscuring day. All the lights in the scene were yellow as to colour, and all the shadows were attenuated as to form. The creeping plants about the old manor-house were bowed with rows of heavy water drops, which had upon objects behind them the effect of minute lenses of high magnifying power. Just before the clock struck five Gabriel Oak and Coggan passed the village cross, and went on together to the fields. They were yet barely in view of their mistress's house, when Oak fancied he saw the opening of a casement in one of the upper windows. The two men were at this moment partially screened by an elder bush, now beginning to be enriched with black bunches of fruit, and they paused before emerging from its shade. A handsome man leaned idly from the lattice. He looked east and then west, in the manner of one who makes a first morning survey. The man was Sergeant Troy. His red jacket was loosely thrown on, but not buttoned, and he had altogether the relaxed bearing of a soldier taking his ease. Coggan spoke first, looking quietly at the window. "She has married him!" he said. Gabriel had previously beheld the sight, and he now stood with his back turned, making no reply. "I fancied we should know something to-day," continued Coggan. "I heard wheels pass my door just after dark--you were out somewhere." He glanced round upon Gabriel. "Good heavens above us, Oak, how white your face is; you look like a corpse!" "Do I?" said Oak, with a faint smile. "Lean on the gate: I'll wait a bit." "All right, all right." They stood by the gate awhile, Gabriel listlessly staring at the ground. His mind sped into the future, and saw there enacted in years of leisure the scenes of repentance that would ensue from this work of haste. That they were married he had instantly decided. Why had it been so mysteriously managed? It had become known that she had had a fearful journey to Bath, owing to her miscalculating the distance: that the horse had broken down, and that she had been more than two days getting there. It was not Bathsheba's way to do things furtively. With all her faults, she was candour itself. Could she have been entrapped? The union was not only an unutterable grief to him: it amazed him, notwithstanding that he had passed the preceding week in a suspicion that such might be the issue of Troy's meeting her away from home. Her quiet return with Liddy had to some extent dispersed the dread. Just as that imperceptible motion which appears like stillness is infinitely divided in its properties from stillness itself, so had his hope undistinguishable from despair differed from despair indeed. In a few minutes they moved on again towards the house. The sergeant still looked from the window. "Morning, comrades!" he shouted, in a cheery voice, when they came up. Coggan replied to the greeting. "Bain't ye going to answer the man?" he then said to Gabriel. "I'd say good morning--you needn't spend a hapenny of meaning upon it, and yet keep the man civil." Gabriel soon decided too that, since the deed was done, to put the best face upon the matter would be the greatest kindness to her he loved. "Good morning, Sergeant Troy," he returned, in a ghastly voice. "A rambling, gloomy house this," said Troy, smiling. "Why--they MAY not be married!" suggested Coggan. "Perhaps she's not there." Gabriel shook his head. The soldier turned a little towards the east, and the sun kindled his scarlet coat to an orange glow. "But it is a nice old house," responded Gabriel. "Yes--I suppose so; but I feel like new wine in an old bottle here. My notion is that sash-windows should be put throughout, and these old wainscoted walls brightened up a bit; or the oak cleared quite away, and the walls papered." "It would be a pity, I think." "Well, no. A philosopher once said in my hearing that the old builders, who worked when art was a living thing, had no respect for the work of builders who went before them, but pulled down and altered as they thought fit; and why shouldn't we? 'Creation and preservation don't do well together,' says he, 'and a million of antiquarians can't invent a style.' My mind exactly. I am for making this place more modern, that we may be cheerful whilst we can." The military man turned and surveyed the interior of the room, to assist his ideas of improvement in this direction. Gabriel and Coggan began to move on. "Oh, Coggan," said Troy, as if inspired by a recollection "do you know if insanity has ever appeared in Mr. Boldwood's family?" Jan reflected for a moment. "I once heard that an uncle of his was queer in his head, but I don't know the rights o't," he said. "It is of no importance," said Troy, lightly. "Well, I shall be down in the fields with you some time this week; but I have a few matters to attend to first. So good-day to you. We shall, of course, keep on just as friendly terms as usual. I'm not a proud man: nobody is ever able to say that of Sergeant Troy. However, what is must be, and here's half-a-crown to drink my health, men." Troy threw the coin dexterously across the front plot and over the fence towards Gabriel, who shunned it in its fall, his face turning to an angry red. Coggan twirled his eye, edged forward, and caught the money in its ricochet upon the road. "Very well--you keep it, Coggan," said Gabriel with disdain and almost fiercely. "As for me, I'll do without gifts from him!" "Don't show it too much," said Coggan, musingly. "For if he's married to her, mark my words, he'll buy his discharge and be our master here. Therefore 'tis well to say 'Friend' outwardly, though you say 'Troublehouse' within." "Well--perhaps it is best to be silent; but I can't go further than that. I can't flatter, and if my place here is only to be kept by smoothing him down, my place must be lost." A horseman, whom they had for some time seen in the distance, now appeared close beside them. "There's Mr. Boldwood," said Oak. "I wonder what Troy meant by his question." Coggan and Oak nodded respectfully to the farmer, just checked their paces to discover if they were wanted, and finding they were not stood back to let him pass on. The only signs of the terrible sorrow Boldwood had been combating through the night, and was combating now, were the want of colour in his well-defined face, the enlarged appearance of the veins in his forehead and temples, and the sharper lines about his mouth. The horse bore him away, and the very step of the animal seemed significant of dogged despair. Gabriel, for a minute, rose above his own grief in noticing Boldwood's. He saw the square figure sitting erect upon the horse, the head turned to neither side, the elbows steady by the hips, the brim of the hat level and undisturbed in its onward glide, until the keen edges of Boldwood's shape sank by degrees over the hill. To one who knew the man and his story there was something more striking in this immobility than in a collapse. The clash of discord between mood and matter here was forced painfully home to the heart; and, as in laughter there are more dreadful phases than in tears, so was there in the steadiness of this agonized man an expression deeper than a cry.

While walking past Bathsheba's house, Gabriel Oak and Jan Coggan see Sergeant Troy poke his head out of Bathsheba's window. Instantly, they both know that Bathsheba has married Troy. Troy sees them and makes some small talk about the house and the weather. This is all kind of like a knife in Oak's stomach. Seemingly out of nowhere, Troy asks Coggan whether there is any history of mental illness in Farmer Boldwood's family. Coggan says there might be some, though he's not sure why Troy is asking this. Oak is finding it difficult to speak to Troy, but Coggan warns him that Troy will soon be their new boss if he's married to Bathsheba. While Coggan and Oak walk away, they see Boldwood walking by himself. Oak suddenly realizes that his own grief is not even close to being as bad as Boldwood's.

It was near Christmas by the time all was settled: the season of general holiday approached. I now closed Morton school, taking care that the parting should not be barren on my side. Good fortune opens the hand as well as the heart wonderfully; and to give somewhat when we have largely received, is but to afford a vent to the unusual ebullition of the sensations. I had long felt with pleasure that many of my rustic scholars liked me, and when we parted, that consciousness was confirmed: they manifested their affection plainly and strongly. Deep was my gratification to find I had really a place in their unsophisticated hearts: I promised them that never a week should pass in future that I did not visit them, and give them an hour's teaching in their school. Mr. Rivers came up as, having seen the classes, now numbering sixty girls, file out before me, and locked the door, I stood with the key in my hand, exchanging a few words of special farewell with some half-dozen of my best scholars: as decent, respectable, modest, and well-informed young women as could be found in the ranks of the British peasantry. And that is saying a great deal; for after all, the British peasantry are the best taught, best mannered, most self-respecting of any in Europe: since those days I have seen paysannes and Bauerinnen; and the best of them seemed to me ignorant, coarse, and besotted, compared with my Morton girls. "Do you consider you have got your reward for a season of exertion?" asked Mr. Rivers, when they were gone. "Does not the consciousness of having done some real good in your day and generation give pleasure?" "Doubtless." "And you have only toiled a few months! Would not a life devoted to the task of regenerating your race be well spent?" "Yes," I said; "but I could not go on for ever so: I want to enjoy my own faculties as well as to cultivate those of other people. I must enjoy them now; don't recall either my mind or body to the school; I am out of it and disposed for full holiday." He looked grave. "What now? What sudden eagerness is this you evince? What are you going to do?" "To be active: as active as I can. And first I must beg you to set Hannah at liberty, and get somebody else to wait on you." "Do you want her?" "Yes, to go with me to Moor House. Diana and Mary will be at home in a week, and I want to have everything in order against their arrival." "I understand. I thought you were for flying off on some excursion. It is better so: Hannah shall go with you." "Tell her to be ready by to-morrow then; and here is the schoolroom key: I will give you the key of my cottage in the morning." He took it. "You give it up very gleefully," said he; "I don't quite understand your light-heartedness, because I cannot tell what employment you propose to yourself as a substitute for the one you are relinquishing. What aim, what purpose, what ambition in life have you now?" "My first aim will be to _clean down_ (do you comprehend the full force of the expression?)--to _clean down_ Moor House from chamber to cellar; my next to rub it up with bees-wax, oil, and an indefinite number of cloths, till it glitters again; my third, to arrange every chair, table, bed, carpet, with mathematical precision; afterwards I shall go near to ruin you in coals and peat to keep up good fires in every room; and lastly, the two days preceding that on which your sisters are expected will be devoted by Hannah and me to such a beating of eggs, sorting of currants, grating of spices, compounding of Christmas cakes, chopping up of materials for mince-pies, and solemnising of other culinary rites, as words can convey but an inadequate notion of to the uninitiated like you. My purpose, in short, is to have all things in an absolutely perfect state of readiness for Diana and Mary before next Thursday; and my ambition is to give them a beau-ideal of a welcome when they come." St. John smiled slightly: still he was dissatisfied. "It is all very well for the present," said he; "but seriously, I trust that when the first flush of vivacity is over, you will look a little higher than domestic endearments and household joys." "The best things the world has!" I interrupted. "No, Jane, no: this world is not the scene of fruition; do not attempt to make it so: nor of rest; do not turn slothful." "I mean, on the contrary, to be busy." "Jane, I excuse you for the present: two months' grace I allow you for the full enjoyment of your new position, and for pleasing yourself with this late-found charm of relationship; but _then_, I hope you will begin to look beyond Moor House and Morton, and sisterly society, and the selfish calm and sensual comfort of civilised affluence. I hope your energies will then once more trouble you with their strength." I looked at him with surprise. "St. John," I said, "I think you are almost wicked to talk so. I am disposed to be as content as a queen, and you try to stir me up to restlessness! To what end?" "To the end of turning to profit the talents which God has committed to your keeping; and of which He will surely one day demand a strict account. Jane, I shall watch you closely and anxiously--I warn you of that. And try to restrain the disproportionate fervour with which you throw yourself into commonplace home pleasures. Don't cling so tenaciously to ties of the flesh; save your constancy and ardour for an adequate cause; forbear to waste them on trite transient objects. Do you hear, Jane?" "Yes; just as if you were speaking Greek. I feel I have adequate cause to be happy, and I _will_ be happy. Goodbye!" Happy at Moor House I was, and hard I worked; and so did Hannah: she was charmed to see how jovial I could be amidst the bustle of a house turned topsy-turvy--how I could brush, and dust, and clean, and cook. And really, after a day or two of confusion worse confounded, it was delightful by degrees to invoke order from the chaos ourselves had made. I had previously taken a journey to S--- to purchase some new furniture: my cousins having given me _carte blanche_ to effect what alterations I pleased, and a sum having been set aside for that purpose. The ordinary sitting-room and bedrooms I left much as they were: for I knew Diana and Mary would derive more pleasure from seeing again the old homely tables, and chairs, and beds, than from the spectacle of the smartest innovations. Still some novelty was necessary, to give to their return the piquancy with which I wished it to be invested. Dark handsome new carpets and curtains, an arrangement of some carefully selected antique ornaments in porcelain and bronze, new coverings, and mirrors, and dressing-cases, for the toilet tables, answered the end: they looked fresh without being glaring. A spare parlour and bedroom I refurnished entirely, with old mahogany and crimson upholstery: I laid canvas on the passage, and carpets on the stairs. When all was finished, I thought Moor House as complete a model of bright modest snugness within, as it was, at this season, a specimen of wintry waste and desert dreariness without. The eventful Thursday at length came. They were expected about dark, and ere dusk fires were lit upstairs and below; the kitchen was in perfect trim; Hannah and I were dressed, and all was in readiness. St. John arrived first. I had entreated him to keep quite clear of the house till everything was arranged: and, indeed, the bare idea of the commotion, at once sordid and trivial, going on within its walls sufficed to scare him to estrangement. He found me in the kitchen, watching the progress of certain cakes for tea, then baking. Approaching the hearth, he asked, "If I was at last satisfied with housemaid's work?" I answered by inviting him to accompany me on a general inspection of the result of my labours. With some difficulty, I got him to make the tour of the house. He just looked in at the doors I opened; and when he had wandered upstairs and downstairs, he said I must have gone through a great deal of fatigue and trouble to have effected such considerable changes in so short a time: but not a syllable did he utter indicating pleasure in the improved aspect of his abode. This silence damped me. I thought perhaps the alterations had disturbed some old associations he valued. I inquired whether this was the case: no doubt in a somewhat crest-fallen tone. "Not at all; he had, on the contrary, remarked that I had scrupulously respected every association: he feared, indeed, I must have bestowed more thought on the matter than it was worth. How many minutes, for instance, had I devoted to studying the arrangement of this very room?--By-the-bye, could I tell him where such a book was?" I showed him the volume on the shelf: he took it down, and withdrawing to his accustomed window recess, he began to read it. Now, I did not like this, reader. St. John was a good man; but I began to feel he had spoken truth of himself when he said he was hard and cold. The humanities and amenities of life had no attraction for him--its peaceful enjoyments no charm. Literally, he lived only to aspire--after what was good and great, certainly; but still he would never rest, nor approve of others resting round him. As I looked at his lofty forehead, still and pale as a white stone--at his fine lineaments fixed in study--I comprehended all at once that he would hardly make a good husband: that it would be a trying thing to be his wife. I understood, as by inspiration, the nature of his love for Miss Oliver; I agreed with him that it was but a love of the senses. I comprehended how he should despise himself for the feverish influence it exercised over him; how he should wish to stifle and destroy it; how he should mistrust its ever conducting permanently to his happiness or hers. I saw he was of the material from which nature hews her heroes--Christian and Pagan--her lawgivers, her statesmen, her conquerors: a steadfast bulwark for great interests to rest upon; but, at the fireside, too often a cold cumbrous column, gloomy and out of place. "This parlour is not his sphere," I reflected: "the Himalayan ridge or Caffre bush, even the plague-cursed Guinea Coast swamp would suit him better. Well may he eschew the calm of domestic life; it is not his element: there his faculties stagnate--they cannot develop or appear to advantage. It is in scenes of strife and danger--where courage is proved, and energy exercised, and fortitude tasked--that he will speak and move, the leader and superior. A merry child would have the advantage of him on this hearth. He is right to choose a missionary's career--I see it now." "They are coming! they are coming!" cried Hannah, throwing open the parlour door. At the same moment old Carlo barked joyfully. Out I ran. It was now dark; but a rumbling of wheels was audible. Hannah soon had a lantern lit. The vehicle had stopped at the wicket; the driver opened the door: first one well-known form, then another, stepped out. In a minute I had my face under their bonnets, in contact first with Mary's soft cheek, then with Diana's flowing curls. They laughed--kissed me--then Hannah: patted Carlo, who was half wild with delight; asked eagerly if all was well; and being assured in the affirmative, hastened into the house. They were stiff with their long and jolting drive from Whitcross, and chilled with the frosty night air; but their pleasant countenances expanded to the cheerful firelight. While the driver and Hannah brought in the boxes, they demanded St. John. At this moment he advanced from the parlour. They both threw their arms round his neck at once. He gave each one quiet kiss, said in a low tone a few words of welcome, stood a while to be talked to, and then, intimating that he supposed they would soon rejoin him in the parlour, withdrew there as to a place of refuge. I had lit their candles to go upstairs, but Diana had first to give hospitable orders respecting the driver; this done, both followed me. They were delighted with the renovation and decorations of their rooms; with the new drapery, and fresh carpets, and rich tinted china vases: they expressed their gratification ungrudgingly. I had the pleasure of feeling that my arrangements met their wishes exactly, and that what I had done added a vivid charm to their joyous return home. Sweet was that evening. My cousins, full of exhilaration, were so eloquent in narrative and comment, that their fluency covered St. John's taciturnity: he was sincerely glad to see his sisters; but in their glow of fervour and flow of joy he could not sympathise. The event of the day--that is, the return of Diana and Mary--pleased him; but the accompaniments of that event, the glad tumult, the garrulous glee of reception irked him: I saw he wished the calmer morrow was come. In the very meridian of the night's enjoyment, about an hour after tea, a rap was heard at the door. Hannah entered with the intimation that "a poor lad was come, at that unlikely time, to fetch Mr. Rivers to see his mother, who was drawing away." "Where does she live, Hannah?" "Clear up at Whitcross Brow, almost four miles off, and moor and moss all the way." "Tell him I will go." "I'm sure, sir, you had better not. It's the worst road to travel after dark that can be: there's no track at all over the bog. And then it is such a bitter night--the keenest wind you ever felt. You had better send word, sir, that you will be there in the morning." But he was already in the passage, putting on his cloak; and without one objection, one murmur, he departed. It was then nine o'clock: he did not return till midnight. Starved and tired enough he was: but he looked happier than when he set out. He had performed an act of duty; made an exertion; felt his own strength to do and deny, and was on better terms with himself. I am afraid the whole of the ensuing week tried his patience. It was Christmas week: we took to no settled employment, but spent it in a sort of merry domestic dissipation. The air of the moors, the freedom of home, the dawn of prosperity, acted on Diana and Mary's spirits like some life-giving elixir: they were gay from morning till noon, and from noon till night. They could always talk; and their discourse, witty, pithy, original, had such charms for me, that I preferred listening to, and sharing in it, to doing anything else. St. John did not rebuke our vivacity; but he escaped from it: he was seldom in the house; his parish was large, the population scattered, and he found daily business in visiting the sick and poor in its different districts. One morning at breakfast, Diana, after looking a little pensive for some minutes, asked him, "If his plans were yet unchanged." "Unchanged and unchangeable," was the reply. And he proceeded to inform us that his departure from England was now definitively fixed for the ensuing year. "And Rosamond Oliver?" suggested Mary, the words seeming to escape her lips involuntarily: for no sooner had she uttered them, than she made a gesture as if wishing to recall them. St. John had a book in his hand--it was his unsocial custom to read at meals--he closed it, and looked up. "Rosamond Oliver," said he, "is about to be married to Mr. Granby, one of the best connected and most estimable residents in S-, grandson and heir to Sir Frederic Granby: I had the intelligence from her father yesterday." His sisters looked at each other and at me; we all three looked at him: he was serene as glass. "The match must have been got up hastily," said Diana: "they cannot have known each other long." "But two months: they met in October at the county ball at S-. But where there are no obstacles to a union, as in the present case, where the connection is in every point desirable, delays are unnecessary: they will be married as soon as S--- Place, which Sir Frederic gives up to them, can he refitted for their reception." The first time I found St. John alone after this communication, I felt tempted to inquire if the event distressed him: but he seemed so little to need sympathy, that, so far from venturing to offer him more, I experienced some shame at the recollection of what I had already hazarded. Besides, I was out of practice in talking to him: his reserve was again frozen over, and my frankness was congealed beneath it. He had not kept his promise of treating me like his sisters; he continually made little chilling differences between us, which did not at all tend to the development of cordiality: in short, now that I was acknowledged his kinswoman, and lived under the same roof with him, I felt the distance between us to be far greater than when he had known me only as the village schoolmistress. When I remembered how far I had once been admitted to his confidence, I could hardly comprehend his present frigidity. Such being the case, I felt not a little surprised when he raised his head suddenly from the desk over which he was stooping, and said-- "You see, Jane, the battle is fought and the victory won." Startled at being thus addressed, I did not immediately reply: after a moment's hesitation I answered-- "But are you sure you are not in the position of those conquerors whose triumphs have cost them too dear? Would not such another ruin you?" "I think not; and if I were, it does not much signify; I shall never be called upon to contend for such another. The event of the conflict is decisive: my way is now clear; I thank God for it!" So saying, he returned to his papers and his silence. As our mutual happiness (_i.e._, Diana's, Mary's, and mine) settled into a quieter character, and we resumed our usual habits and regular studies, St. John stayed more at home: he sat with us in the same room, sometimes for hours together. While Mary drew, Diana pursued a course of encyclopaedic reading she had (to my awe and amazement) undertaken, and I fagged away at German, he pondered a mystic lore of his own: that of some Eastern tongue, the acquisition of which he thought necessary to his plans. Thus engaged, he appeared, sitting in his own recess, quiet and absorbed enough; but that blue eye of his had a habit of leaving the outlandish- looking grammar, and wandering over, and sometimes fixing upon us, his fellow-students, with a curious intensity of observation: if caught, it would be instantly withdrawn; yet ever and anon, it returned searchingly to our table. I wondered what it meant: I wondered, too, at the punctual satisfaction he never failed to exhibit on an occasion that seemed to me of small moment, namely, my weekly visit to Morton school; and still more was I puzzled when, if the day was unfavourable, if there was snow, or rain, or high wind, and his sisters urged me not to go, he would invariably make light of their solicitude, and encourage me to accomplish the task without regard to the elements. "Jane is not such a weakling as you would make her," he would say: "she can bear a mountain blast, or a shower, or a few flakes of snow, as well as any of us. Her constitution is both sound and elastic;--better calculated to endure variations of climate than many more robust." And when I returned, sometimes a good deal tired, and not a little weather-beaten, I never dared complain, because I saw that to murmur would be to vex him: on all occasions fortitude pleased him; the reverse was a special annoyance. One afternoon, however, I got leave to stay at home, because I really had a cold. His sisters were gone to Morton in my stead: I sat reading Schiller; he, deciphering his crabbed Oriental scrolls. As I exchanged a translation for an exercise, I happened to look his way: there I found myself under the influence of the ever-watchful blue eye. How long it had been searching me through and through, and over and over, I cannot tell: so keen was it, and yet so cold, I felt for the moment superstitious--as if I were sitting in the room with something uncanny. "Jane, what are you doing?" "Learning German." "I want you to give up German and learn Hindostanee." "You are not in earnest?" "In such earnest that I must have it so: and I will tell you why." He then went on to explain that Hindostanee was the language he was himself at present studying; that, as he advanced, he was apt to forget the commencement; that it would assist him greatly to have a pupil with whom he might again and again go over the elements, and so fix them thoroughly in his mind; that his choice had hovered for some time between me and his sisters; but that he had fixed on me because he saw I could sit at a task the longest of the three. Would I do him this favour? I should not, perhaps, have to make the sacrifice long, as it wanted now barely three months to his departure. St. John was not a man to be lightly refused: you felt that every impression made on him, either for pain or pleasure, was deep-graved and permanent. I consented. When Diana and Mary returned, the former found her scholar transferred from her to her brother: she laughed, and both she and Mary agreed that St. John should never have persuaded them to such a step. He answered quietly-- "I know it." I found him a very patient, very forbearing, and yet an exacting master: he expected me to do a great deal; and when I fulfilled his expectations, he, in his own way, fully testified his approbation. By degrees, he acquired a certain influence over me that took away my liberty of mind: his praise and notice were more restraining than his indifference. I could no longer talk or laugh freely when he was by, because a tiresomely importunate instinct reminded me that vivacity (at least in me) was distasteful to him. I was so fully aware that only serious moods and occupations were acceptable, that in his presence every effort to sustain or follow any other became vain: I fell under a freezing spell. When he said "go," I went; "come," I came; "do this," I did it. But I did not love my servitude: I wished, many a time, he had continued to neglect me. One evening when, at bedtime, his sisters and I stood round him, bidding him good-night, he kissed each of them, as was his custom; and, as was equally his custom, he gave me his hand. Diana, who chanced to be in a frolicsome humour (_she_ was not painfully controlled by his will; for hers, in another way, was as strong), exclaimed-- "St. John! you used to call Jane your third sister, but you don't treat her as such: you should kiss her too." She pushed me towards him. I thought Diana very provoking, and felt uncomfortably confused; and while I was thus thinking and feeling, St. John bent his head; his Greek face was brought to a level with mine, his eyes questioned my eyes piercingly--he kissed me. There are no such things as marble kisses or ice kisses, or I should say my ecclesiastical cousin's salute belonged to one of these classes; but there may be experiment kisses, and his was an experiment kiss. When given, he viewed me to learn the result; it was not striking: I am sure I did not blush; perhaps I might have turned a little pale, for I felt as if this kiss were a seal affixed to my fetters. He never omitted the ceremony afterwards, and the gravity and quiescence with which I underwent it, seemed to invest it for him with a certain charm. As for me, I daily wished more to please him; but to do so, I felt daily more and more that I must disown half my nature, stifle half my faculties, wrest my tastes from their original bent, force myself to the adoption of pursuits for which I had no natural vocation. He wanted to train me to an elevation I could never reach; it racked me hourly to aspire to the standard he uplifted. The thing was as impossible as to mould my irregular features to his correct and classic pattern, to give to my changeable green eyes the sea-blue tint and solemn lustre of his own. Not his ascendancy alone, however, held me in thrall at present. Of late it had been easy enough for me to look sad: a cankering evil sat at my heart and drained my happiness at its source--the evil of suspense. Perhaps you think I had forgotten Mr. Rochester, reader, amidst these changes of place and fortune. Not for a moment. His idea was still with me, because it was not a vapour sunshine could disperse, nor a sand-traced effigy storms could wash away; it was a name graven on a tablet, fated to last as long as the marble it inscribed. The craving to know what had become of him followed me everywhere; when I was at Morton, I re-entered my cottage every evening to think of that; and now at Moor House, I sought my bedroom each night to brood over it. In the course of my necessary correspondence with Mr. Briggs about the will, I had inquired if he knew anything of Mr. Rochester's present residence and state of health; but, as St. John had conjectured, he was quite ignorant of all concerning him. I then wrote to Mrs. Fairfax, entreating information on the subject. I had calculated with certainty on this step answering my end: I felt sure it would elicit an early answer. I was astonished when a fortnight passed without reply; but when two months wore away, and day after day the post arrived and brought nothing for me, I fell a prey to the keenest anxiety. I wrote again: there was a chance of my first letter having missed. Renewed hope followed renewed effort: it shone like the former for some weeks, then, like it, it faded, flickered: not a line, not a word reached me. When half a year wasted in vain expectancy, my hope died out, and then I felt dark indeed. A fine spring shone round me, which I could not enjoy. Summer approached; Diana tried to cheer me: she said I looked ill, and wished to accompany me to the sea-side. This St. John opposed; he said I did not want dissipation, I wanted employment; my present life was too purposeless, I required an aim; and, I suppose, by way of supplying deficiencies, he prolonged still further my lessons in Hindostanee, and grew more urgent in requiring their accomplishment: and I, like a fool, never thought of resisting him--I could not resist him. One day I had come to my studies in lower spirits than usual; the ebb was occasioned by a poignantly felt disappointment. Hannah had told me in the morning there was a letter for me, and when I went down to take it, almost certain that the long-looked for tidings were vouchsafed me at last, I found only an unimportant note from Mr. Briggs on business. The bitter check had wrung from me some tears; and now, as I sat poring over the crabbed characters and flourishing tropes of an Indian scribe, my eyes filled again. St. John called me to his side to read; in attempting to do this my voice failed me: words were lost in sobs. He and I were the only occupants of the parlour: Diana was practising her music in the drawing-room, Mary was gardening--it was a very fine May day, clear, sunny, and breezy. My companion expressed no surprise at this emotion, nor did he question me as to its cause; he only said-- "We will wait a few minutes, Jane, till you are more composed." And while I smothered the paroxysm with all haste, he sat calm and patient, leaning on his desk, and looking like a physician watching with the eye of science an expected and fully understood crisis in a patient's malady. Having stifled my sobs, wiped my eyes, and muttered something about not being very well that morning, I resumed my task, and succeeded in completing it. St. John put away my books and his, locked his desk, and said-- "Now, Jane, you shall take a walk; and with me." "I will call Diana and Mary." "No; I want only one companion this morning, and that must be you. Put on your things; go out by the kitchen-door: take the road towards the head of Marsh Glen: I will join you in a moment." I know no medium: I never in my life have known any medium in my dealings with positive, hard characters, antagonistic to my own, between absolute submission and determined revolt. I have always faithfully observed the one, up to the very moment of bursting, sometimes with volcanic vehemence, into the other; and as neither present circumstances warranted, nor my present mood inclined me to mutiny, I observed careful obedience to St. John's directions; and in ten minutes I was treading the wild track of the glen, side by side with him. The breeze was from the west: it came over the hills, sweet with scents of heath and rush; the sky was of stainless blue; the stream descending the ravine, swelled with past spring rains, poured along plentiful and clear, catching golden gleams from the sun, and sapphire tints from the firmament. As we advanced and left the track, we trod a soft turf, mossy fine and emerald green, minutely enamelled with a tiny white flower, and spangled with a star-like yellow blossom: the hills, meantime, shut us quite in; for the glen, towards its head, wound to their very core. "Let us rest here," said St. John, as we reached the first stragglers of a battalion of rocks, guarding a sort of pass, beyond which the beck rushed down a waterfall; and where, still a little farther, the mountain shook off turf and flower, had only heath for raiment and crag for gem--where it exaggerated the wild to the savage, and exchanged the fresh for the frowning--where it guarded the forlorn hope of solitude, and a last refuge for silence. I took a seat: St. John stood near me. He looked up the pass and down the hollow; his glance wandered away with the stream, and returned to traverse the unclouded heaven which coloured it: he removed his hat, let the breeze stir his hair and kiss his brow. He seemed in communion with the genius of the haunt: with his eye he bade farewell to something. "And I shall see it again," he said aloud, "in dreams when I sleep by the Ganges: and again in a more remote hour--when another slumber overcomes me--on the shore of a darker stream!" Strange words of a strange love! An austere patriot's passion for his fatherland! He sat down; for half-an-hour we never spoke; neither he to me nor I to him: that interval past, he recommenced-- "Jane, I go in six weeks; I have taken my berth in an East Indiaman which sails on the 20th of June." "God will protect you; for you have undertaken His work," I answered. "Yes," said he, "there is my glory and joy. I am the servant of an infallible Master. I am not going out under human guidance, subject to the defective laws and erring control of my feeble fellow-worms: my king, my lawgiver, my captain, is the All-perfect. It seems strange to me that all round me do not burn to enlist under the same banner,--to join in the same enterprise." "All have not your powers, and it would be folly for the feeble to wish to march with the strong." "I do not speak to the feeble, or think of them: I address only such as are worthy of the work, and competent to accomplish it." "Those are few in number, and difficult to discover." "You say truly; but when found, it is right to stir them up--to urge and exhort them to the effort--to show them what their gifts are, and why they were given--to speak Heaven's message in their ear,--to offer them, direct from God, a place in the ranks of His chosen." "If they are really qualified for the task, will not their own hearts be the first to inform them of it?" I felt as if an awful charm was framing round and gathering over me: I trembled to hear some fatal word spoken which would at once declare and rivet the spell. "And what does _your_ heart say?" demanded St. John. "My heart is mute,--my heart is mute," I answered, struck and thrilled. "Then I must speak for it," continued the deep, relentless voice. "Jane, come with me to India: come as my helpmeet and fellow-labourer." The glen and sky spun round: the hills heaved! It was as if I had heard a summons from Heaven--as if a visionary messenger, like him of Macedonia, had enounced, "Come over and help us!" But I was no apostle,--I could not behold the herald,--I could not receive his call. "Oh, St. John!" I cried, "have some mercy!" I appealed to one who, in the discharge of what he believed his duty, knew neither mercy nor remorse. He continued-- "God and nature intended you for a missionary's wife. It is not personal, but mental endowments they have given you: you are formed for labour, not for love. A missionary's wife you must--shall be. You shall be mine: I claim you--not for my pleasure, but for my Sovereign's service." "I am not fit for it: I have no vocation," I said. He had calculated on these first objections: he was not irritated by them. Indeed, as he leaned back against the crag behind him, folded his arms on his chest, and fixed his countenance, I saw he was prepared for a long and trying opposition, and had taken in a stock of patience to last him to its close--resolved, however, that that close should be conquest for him. "Humility, Jane," said he, "is the groundwork of Christian virtues: you say right that you are not fit for the work. Who is fit for it? Or who, that ever was truly called, believed himself worthy of the summons? I, for instance, am but dust and ashes. With St. Paul, I acknowledge myself the chiefest of sinners; but I do not suffer this sense of my personal vileness to daunt me. I know my Leader: that He is just as well as mighty; and while He has chosen a feeble instrument to perform a great task, He will, from the boundless stores of His providence, supply the inadequacy of the means to the end. Think like me, Jane--trust like me. It is the Rock of Ages I ask you to lean on: do not doubt but it will bear the weight of your human weakness." "I do not understand a missionary life: I have never studied missionary labours." "There I, humble as I am, can give you the aid you want: I can set you your task from hour to hour; stand by you always; help you from moment to moment. This I could do in the beginning: soon (for I know your powers) you would be as strong and apt as myself, and would not require my help." "But my powers--where are they for this undertaking? I do not feel them. Nothing speaks or stirs in me while you talk. I am sensible of no light kindling--no life quickening--no voice counselling or cheering. Oh, I wish I could make you see how much my mind is at this moment like a rayless dungeon, with one shrinking fear fettered in its depths--the fear of being persuaded by you to attempt what I cannot accomplish!" "I have an answer for you--hear it. I have watched you ever since we first met: I have made you my study for ten months. I have proved you in that time by sundry tests: and what have I seen and elicited? In the village school I found you could perform well, punctually, uprightly, labour uncongenial to your habits and inclinations; I saw you could perform it with capacity and tact: you could win while you controlled. In the calm with which you learnt you had become suddenly rich, I read a mind clear of the vice of Demas:--lucre had no undue power over you. In the resolute readiness with which you cut your wealth into four shares, keeping but one to yourself, and relinquishing the three others to the claim of abstract justice, I recognised a soul that revelled in the flame and excitement of sacrifice. In the tractability with which, at my wish, you forsook a study in which you were interested, and adopted another because it interested me; in the untiring assiduity with which you have since persevered in it--in the unflagging energy and unshaken temper with which you have met its difficulties--I acknowledge the complement of the qualities I seek. Jane, you are docile, diligent, disinterested, faithful, constant, and courageous; very gentle, and very heroic: cease to mistrust yourself--I can trust you unreservedly. As a conductress of Indian schools, and a helper amongst Indian women, your assistance will be to me invaluable." My iron shroud contracted round me; persuasion advanced with slow sure step. Shut my eyes as I would, these last words of his succeeded in making the way, which had seemed blocked up, comparatively clear. My work, which had appeared so vague, so hopelessly diffuse, condensed itself as he proceeded, and assumed a definite form under his shaping hand. He waited for an answer. I demanded a quarter of an hour to think, before I again hazarded a reply. "Very willingly," he rejoined; and rising, he strode a little distance up the pass, threw himself down on a swell of heath, and there lay still. {He threw himself down on a swell of heath, and there lay still: p389.jpg} "I _can_ do what he wants me to do: I am forced to see and acknowledge that," I meditated,--"that is, if life be spared me. But I feel mine is not the existence to be long protracted under an Indian sun. What then? He does not care for that: when my time came to die, he would resign me, in all serenity and sanctity, to the God who gave me. The case is very plain before me. In leaving England, I should leave a loved but empty land--Mr. Rochester is not there; and if he were, what is, what can that ever be to me? My business is to live without him now: nothing so absurd, so weak as to drag on from day to day, as if I were waiting some impossible change in circumstances, which might reunite me to him. Of course (as St. John once said) I must seek another interest in life to replace the one lost: is not the occupation he now offers me truly the most glorious man can adopt or God assign? Is it not, by its noble cares and sublime results, the one best calculated to fill the void left by uptorn affections and demolished hopes? I believe I must say, Yes--and yet I shudder. Alas! If I join St. John, I abandon half myself: if I go to India, I go to premature death. And how will the interval between leaving England for India, and India for the grave, be filled? Oh, I know well! That, too, is very clear to my vision. By straining to satisfy St. John till my sinews ache, I _shall_ satisfy him--to the finest central point and farthest outward circle of his expectations. If I _do_ go with him--if I _do_ make the sacrifice he urges, I will make it absolutely: I will throw all on the altar--heart, vitals, the entire victim. He will never love me; but he shall approve me; I will show him energies he has not yet seen, resources he has never suspected. Yes, I can work as hard as he can, and with as little grudging. "Consent, then, to his demand is possible: but for one item--one dreadful item. It is--that he asks me to be his wife, and has no more of a husband's heart for me than that frowning giant of a rock, down which the stream is foaming in yonder gorge. He prizes me as a soldier would a good weapon; and that is all. Unmarried to him, this would never grieve me; but can I let him complete his calculations--coolly put into practice his plans--go through the wedding ceremony? Can I receive from him the bridal ring, endure all the forms of love (which I doubt not he would scrupulously observe) and know that the spirit was quite absent? Can I bear the consciousness that every endearment he bestows is a sacrifice made on principle? No: such a martyrdom would be monstrous. I will never undergo it. As his sister, I might accompany him--not as his wife: I will tell him so." I looked towards the knoll: there he lay, still as a prostrate column; his face turned to me: his eye beaming watchful and keen. He started to his feet and approached me. "I am ready to go to India, if I may go free." "Your answer requires a commentary," he said; "it is not clear." "You have hitherto been my adopted brother--I, your adopted sister: let us continue as such: you and I had better not marry." He shook his head. "Adopted fraternity will not do in this case. If you were my real sister it would be different: I should take you, and seek no wife. But as it is, either our union must be consecrated and sealed by marriage, or it cannot exist: practical obstacles oppose themselves to any other plan. Do you not see it, Jane? Consider a moment--your strong sense will guide you." I did consider; and still my sense, such as it was, directed me only to the fact that we did not love each other as man and wife should: and therefore it inferred we ought not to marry. I said so. "St. John," I returned, "I regard you as a brother--you, me as a sister: so let us continue." "We cannot--we cannot," he answered, with short, sharp determination: "it would not do. You have said you will go with me to India: remember--you have said that." "Conditionally." "Well--well. To the main point--the departure with me from England, the co-operation with me in my future labours--you do not object. You have already as good as put your hand to the plough: you are too consistent to withdraw it. You have but one end to keep in view--how the work you have undertaken can best be done. Simplify your complicated interests, feelings, thoughts, wishes, aims; merge all considerations in one purpose: that of fulfilling with effect--with power--the mission of your great Master. To do so, you must have a coadjutor: not a brother--that is a loose tie--but a husband. I, too, do not want a sister: a sister might any day be taken from me. I want a wife: the sole helpmeet I can influence efficiently in life, and retain absolutely till death." I shuddered as he spoke: I felt his influence in my marrow--his hold on my limbs. "Seek one elsewhere than in me, St. John: seek one fitted to you." "One fitted to my purpose, you mean--fitted to my vocation. Again I tell you it is not the insignificant private individual--the mere man, with the man's selfish senses--I wish to mate: it is the missionary." "And I will give the missionary my energies--it is all he wants--but not myself: that would be only adding the husk and shell to the kernel. For them he has no use: I retain them." "You cannot--you ought not. Do you think God will be satisfied with half an oblation? Will He accept a mutilated sacrifice? It is the cause of God I advocate: it is under His standard I enlist you. I cannot accept on His behalf a divided allegiance: it must be entire." "Oh! I will give my heart to God," I said. "_You_ do not want it." I will not swear, reader, that there was not something of repressed sarcasm both in the tone in which I uttered this sentence, and in the feeling that accompanied it. I had silently feared St. John till now, because I had not understood him. He had held me in awe, because he had held me in doubt. How much of him was saint, how much mortal, I could not heretofore tell: but revelations were being made in this conference: the analysis of his nature was proceeding before my eyes. I saw his fallibilities: I comprehended them. I understood that, sitting there where I did, on the bank of heath, and with that handsome form before me, I sat at the feet of a man, caring as I. The veil fell from his hardness and despotism. Having felt in him the presence of these qualities, I felt his imperfection and took courage. I was with an equal--one with whom I might argue--one whom, if I saw good, I might resist. He was silent after I had uttered the last sentence, and I presently risked an upward glance at his countenance. His eye, bent on me, expressed at once stern surprise and keen inquiry. "Is she sarcastic, and sarcastic to _me_!" it seemed to say. "What does this signify?" "Do not let us forget that this is a solemn matter," he said ere long; "one of which we may neither think nor talk lightly without sin. I trust, Jane, you are in earnest when you say you will serve your heart to God: it is all I want. Once wrench your heart from man, and fix it on your Maker, the advancement of that Maker's spiritual kingdom on earth will be your chief delight and endeavour; you will be ready to do at once whatever furthers that end. You will see what impetus would be given to your efforts and mine by our physical and mental union in marriage: the only union that gives a character of permanent conformity to the destinies and designs of human beings; and, passing over all minor caprices--all trivial difficulties and delicacies of feeling--all scruple about the degree, kind, strength or tenderness of mere personal inclination--you will hasten to enter into that union at once." "Shall I?" I said briefly; and I looked at his features, beautiful in their harmony, but strangely formidable in their still severity; at his brow, commanding but not open; at his eyes, bright and deep and searching, but never soft; at his tall imposing figure; and fancied myself in idea _his wife_. Oh! it would never do! As his curate, his comrade, all would be right: I would cross oceans with him in that capacity; toil under Eastern suns, in Asian deserts with him in that office; admire and emulate his courage and devotion and vigour; accommodate quietly to his masterhood; smile undisturbed at his ineradicable ambition; discriminate the Christian from the man: profoundly esteem the one, and freely forgive the other. I should suffer often, no doubt, attached to him only in this capacity: my body would be under rather a stringent yoke, but my heart and mind would be free. I should still have my unblighted self to turn to: my natural unenslaved feelings with which to communicate in moments of loneliness. There would be recesses in my mind which would be only mine, to which he never came, and sentiments growing there fresh and sheltered which his austerity could never blight, nor his measured warrior-march trample down: but as his wife--at his side always, and always restrained, and always checked--forced to keep the fire of my nature continually low, to compel it to burn inwardly and never utter a cry, though the imprisoned flame consumed vital after vital--_this_ would be unendurable. "St. John!" I exclaimed, when I had got so far in my meditation. "Well?" he answered icily. "I repeat I freely consent to go with you as your fellow-missionary, but not as your wife; I cannot marry you and become part of you." "A part of me you must become," he answered steadily; "otherwise the whole bargain is void. How can I, a man not yet thirty, take out with me to India a girl of nineteen, unless she be married to me? How can we be for ever together--sometimes in solitudes, sometimes amidst savage tribes--and unwed?" "Very well," I said shortly; "under the circumstances, quite as well as if I were either your real sister, or a man and a clergyman like yourself." "It is known that you are not my sister; I cannot introduce you as such: to attempt it would be to fasten injurious suspicions on us both. And for the rest, though you have a man's vigorous brain, you have a woman's heart and--it would not do." "It would do," I affirmed with some disdain, "perfectly well. I have a woman's heart, but not where you are concerned; for you I have only a comrade's constancy; a fellow-soldier's frankness, fidelity, fraternity, if you like; a neophyte's respect and submission to his hierophant: nothing more--don't fear." "It is what I want," he said, speaking to himself; "it is just what I want. And there are obstacles in the way: they must be hewn down. Jane, you would not repent marrying me--be certain of that; we _must_ be married. I repeat it: there is no other way; and undoubtedly enough of love would follow upon marriage to render the union right even in your eyes." "I scorn your idea of love," I could not help saying, as I rose up and stood before him, leaning my back against the rock. "I scorn the counterfeit sentiment you offer: yes, St. John, and I scorn you when you offer it." He looked at me fixedly, compressing his well-cut lips while he did so. Whether he was incensed or surprised, or what, it was not easy to tell: he could command his countenance thoroughly. "I scarcely expected to hear that expression from you," he said: "I think I have done and uttered nothing to deserve scorn." I was touched by his gentle tone, and overawed by his high, calm mien. "Forgive me the words, St. John; but it is your own fault that I have been roused to speak so unguardedly. You have introduced a topic on which our natures are at variance--a topic we should never discuss: the very name of love is an apple of discord between us. If the reality were required, what should we do? How should we feel? My dear cousin, abandon your scheme of marriage--forget it." "No," said he; "it is a long-cherished scheme, and the only one which can secure my great end: but I shall urge you no further at present. To-morrow, I leave home for Cambridge: I have many friends there to whom I should wish to say farewell. I shall be absent a fortnight--take that space of time to consider my offer: and do not forget that if you reject it, it is not me you deny, but God. Through my means, He opens to you a noble career; as my wife only can you enter upon it. Refuse to be my wife, and you limit yourself for ever to a track of selfish ease and barren obscurity. Tremble lest in that case you should be numbered with those who have denied the faith, and are worse than infidels!" He had done. Turning from me, he once more "Looked to river, looked to hill." But this time his feelings were all pent in his heart: I was not worthy to hear them uttered. As I walked by his side homeward, I read well in his iron silence all he felt towards me: the disappointment of an austere and despotic nature, which has met resistance where it expected submission--the disapprobation of a cool, inflexible judgment, which has detected in another feelings and views in which it has no power to sympathise: in short, as a man, he would have wished to coerce me into obedience: it was only as a sincere Christian he bore so patiently with my perversity, and allowed so long a space for reflection and repentance. That night, after he had kissed his sisters, he thought proper to forget even to shake hands with me, but left the room in silence. I--who, though I had no love, had much friendship for him--was hurt by the marked omission: so much hurt that tears started to my eyes. "I see you and St. John have been quarrelling, Jane," said Diana, "during your walk on the moor. But go after him; he is now lingering in the passage expecting you--he will make it up." I have not much pride under such circumstances: I would always rather be happy than dignified; and I ran after him--he stood at the foot of the stairs. "Good-night, St. John," said I. "Good-night, Jane," he replied calmly. "Then shake hands," I added. What a cold, loose touch, he impressed on my fingers! He was deeply displeased by what had occurred that day; cordiality would not warm, nor tears move him. No happy reconciliation was to be had with him--no cheering smile or generous word: but still the Christian was patient and placid; and when I asked him if he forgave me, he answered that he was not in the habit of cherishing the remembrance of vexation; that he had nothing to forgive, not having been offended. And with that answer he left me. I would much rather he had knocked me down.

Christmas has arrived and Jane is closing the Morton school. She is happy to discover that she is beloved by the girls and promises to visit the school for an hour each week. St. John asks Jane if she wouldn't like to dedicate her life to working with the poor, but she wants to enjoy herself, as well as cultivating others. Jane sets off for Moor House to prepare for the arrival of Diana and Mary. St. John shows a disappointing lack of interest in the renovations Jane has done at Moor House, but Diana and Mary ungrudgingly appreciate Jane's hard work. The women spend the week in "merry domestic dissipation," a pleasure St. John can't enjoy. He tells them Rosamond Oliver is to be married to a Mr. Granby, but the news doesn't seem to upset him. To Jane, St. John seems more distant than before they knew they were cousins. One day when Jane sits home with a cold, St. John suddenly asks her to give up German lessons and learn Hindustani, the language he is studying in preparation for his missionary work. Slowly, St. John takes more control over Jane, sucking away her freedom; she doesn't enjoy her new servitude. She is also stricken with sadness, because she is unable to discover what has happened to Rochester since she left him. Then St. John surprises her. In six weeks, St. John will leave for India, and he wants Jane to accompany him, as his wife. If she goes to India, Jane knows she'll die prematurely, but she agrees to go anyway -- if she can go as his sister, not his wife, because they don't love each other as husband and wife should. St. John insists on the marriage. After much discussion, they are unable to overcome the obstacle of the marriage issue, so St. John asks Jane to think about his proposal for a couple of weeks. He warns her that rejecting his proposal means rejecting God.

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.

They Arrive at the Monastery On a warm, clear day at the end of August, Fyodor Pavlovich and Ivan Karamazov arrive at the monastery for the meeting with Zosima. Pyotr Alexandrovich Miusov, the cousin of Fyodor Pavlovich's first wife who briefly adopted the young Dmitri, is with them, as is Kalganov, a young relative of Miusov's who is living with him while preparing to enter a university. None of the men knows much about religion. Miusov, an atheist, has not been in a church for three decades. The men look around the monastery curiously. Miusov detests Fyodor Pavlovich, who intentionally torments Miusov by mocking the monastery and pretending not to understand why Miusov, as an irreligious man, would care what the monks think of him. Miusov angrily chastises himself for letting Fyodor Pavlovich bother him, but Fyodor Pavlovich's crudeness and vulgarity are so exasperating to Miusov that he cannot control his irritation. Dmitri has not yet arrived, and the men are shown to Zosima's cell to wait. The little monk who escorts them tells them that they are all invited to lunch with the Father Superior of the monastery after their meeting

It was generally agreed in New York that the Countess Olenska had "lost her looks." She had appeared there first, in Newland Archer's boyhood, as a brilliantly pretty little girl of nine or ten, of whom people said that she "ought to be painted." Her parents had been continental wanderers, and after a roaming babyhood she had lost them both, and been taken in charge by her aunt, Medora Manson, also a wanderer, who was herself returning to New York to "settle down." Poor Medora, repeatedly widowed, was always coming home to settle down (each time in a less expensive house), and bringing with her a new husband or an adopted child; but after a few months she invariably parted from her husband or quarrelled with her ward, and, having got rid of her house at a loss, set out again on her wanderings. As her mother had been a Rushworth, and her last unhappy marriage had linked her to one of the crazy Chiverses, New York looked indulgently on her eccentricities; but when she returned with her little orphaned niece, whose parents had been popular in spite of their regrettable taste for travel, people thought it a pity that the pretty child should be in such hands. Every one was disposed to be kind to little Ellen Mingott, though her dusky red cheeks and tight curls gave her an air of gaiety that seemed unsuitable in a child who should still have been in black for her parents. It was one of the misguided Medora's many peculiarities to flout the unalterable rules that regulated American mourning, and when she stepped from the steamer her family were scandalised to see that the crape veil she wore for her own brother was seven inches shorter than those of her sisters-in-law, while little Ellen was in crimson merino and amber beads, like a gipsy foundling. But New York had so long resigned itself to Medora that only a few old ladies shook their heads over Ellen's gaudy clothes, while her other relations fell under the charm of her high colour and high spirits. She was a fearless and familiar little thing, who asked disconcerting questions, made precocious comments, and possessed outlandish arts, such as dancing a Spanish shawl dance and singing Neapolitan love-songs to a guitar. Under the direction of her aunt (whose real name was Mrs. Thorley Chivers, but who, having received a Papal title, had resumed her first husband's patronymic, and called herself the Marchioness Manson, because in Italy she could turn it into Manzoni) the little girl received an expensive but incoherent education, which included "drawing from the model," a thing never dreamed of before, and playing the piano in quintets with professional musicians. Of course no good could come of this; and when, a few years later, poor Chivers finally died in a madhouse, his widow (draped in strange weeds) again pulled up stakes and departed with Ellen, who had grown into a tall bony girl with conspicuous eyes. For some time no more was heard of them; then news came of Ellen's marriage to an immensely rich Polish nobleman of legendary fame, whom she had met at a ball at the Tuileries, and who was said to have princely establishments in Paris, Nice and Florence, a yacht at Cowes, and many square miles of shooting in Transylvania. She disappeared in a kind of sulphurous apotheosis, and when a few years later Medora again came back to New York, subdued, impoverished, mourning a third husband, and in quest of a still smaller house, people wondered that her rich niece had not been able to do something for her. Then came the news that Ellen's own marriage had ended in disaster, and that she was herself returning home to seek rest and oblivion among her kinsfolk. These things passed through Newland Archer's mind a week later as he watched the Countess Olenska enter the van der Luyden drawing-room on the evening of the momentous dinner. The occasion was a solemn one, and he wondered a little nervously how she would carry it off. She came rather late, one hand still ungloved, and fastening a bracelet about her wrist; yet she entered without any appearance of haste or embarrassment the drawing-room in which New York's most chosen company was somewhat awfully assembled. In the middle of the room she paused, looking about her with a grave mouth and smiling eyes; and in that instant Newland Archer rejected the general verdict on her looks. It was true that her early radiance was gone. The red cheeks had paled; she was thin, worn, a little older-looking than her age, which must have been nearly thirty. But there was about her the mysterious authority of beauty, a sureness in the carriage of the head, the movement of the eyes, which, without being in the least theatrical, struck his as highly trained and full of a conscious power. At the same time she was simpler in manner than most of the ladies present, and many people (as he heard afterward from Janey) were disappointed that her appearance was not more "stylish"--for stylishness was what New York most valued. It was, perhaps, Archer reflected, because her early vivacity had disappeared; because she was so quiet--quiet in her movements, her voice, and the tones of her low-pitched voice. New York had expected something a good deal more reasonant in a young woman with such a history. The dinner was a somewhat formidable business. Dining with the van der Luydens was at best no light matter, and dining there with a Duke who was their cousin was almost a religious solemnity. It pleased Archer to think that only an old New Yorker could perceive the shade of difference (to New York) between being merely a Duke and being the van der Luydens' Duke. New York took stray noblemen calmly, and even (except in the Struthers set) with a certain distrustful hauteur; but when they presented such credentials as these they were received with an old-fashioned cordiality that they would have been greatly mistaken in ascribing solely to their standing in Debrett. It was for just such distinctions that the young man cherished his old New York even while he smiled at it. The van der Luydens had done their best to emphasise the importance of the occasion. The du Lac Sevres and the Trevenna George II plate were out; so was the van der Luyden "Lowestoft" (East India Company) and the Dagonet Crown Derby. Mrs. van der Luyden looked more than ever like a Cabanel, and Mrs. Archer, in her grandmother's seed-pearls and emeralds, reminded her son of an Isabey miniature. All the ladies had on their handsomest jewels, but it was characteristic of the house and the occasion that these were mostly in rather heavy old-fashioned settings; and old Miss Lanning, who had been persuaded to come, actually wore her mother's cameos and a Spanish blonde shawl. The Countess Olenska was the only young woman at the dinner; yet, as Archer scanned the smooth plump elderly faces between their diamond necklaces and towering ostrich feathers, they struck him as curiously immature compared with hers. It frightened him to think what must have gone to the making of her eyes. The Duke of St. Austrey, who sat at his hostess's right, was naturally the chief figure of the evening. But if the Countess Olenska was less conspicuous than had been hoped, the Duke was almost invisible. Being a well-bred man he had not (like another recent ducal visitor) come to the dinner in a shooting-jacket; but his evening clothes were so shabby and baggy, and he wore them with such an air of their being homespun, that (with his stooping way of sitting, and the vast beard spreading over his shirt-front) he hardly gave the appearance of being in dinner attire. He was short, round-shouldered, sunburnt, with a thick nose, small eyes and a sociable smile; but he seldom spoke, and when he did it was in such low tones that, despite the frequent silences of expectation about the table, his remarks were lost to all but his neighbours. When the men joined the ladies after dinner the Duke went straight up to the Countess Olenska, and they sat down in a corner and plunged into animated talk. Neither seemed aware that the Duke should first have paid his respects to Mrs. Lovell Mingott and Mrs. Headly Chivers, and the Countess have conversed with that amiable hypochondriac, Mr. Urban Dagonet of Washington Square, who, in order to have the pleasure of meeting her, had broken through his fixed rule of not dining out between January and April. The two chatted together for nearly twenty minutes; then the Countess rose and, walking alone across the wide drawing-room, sat down at Newland Archer's side. It was not the custom in New York drawing-rooms for a lady to get up and walk away from one gentleman in order to seek the company of another. Etiquette required that she should wait, immovable as an idol, while the men who wished to converse with her succeeded each other at her side. But the Countess was apparently unaware of having broken any rule; she sat at perfect ease in a corner of the sofa beside Archer, and looked at him with the kindest eyes. "I want you to talk to me about May," she said. Instead of answering her he asked: "You knew the Duke before?" "Oh, yes--we used to see him every winter at Nice. He's very fond of gambling--he used to come to the house a great deal." She said it in the simplest manner, as if she had said: "He's fond of wild-flowers"; and after a moment she added candidly: "I think he's the dullest man I ever met." This pleased her companion so much that he forgot the slight shock her previous remark had caused him. It was undeniably exciting to meet a lady who found the van der Luydens' Duke dull, and dared to utter the opinion. He longed to question her, to hear more about the life of which her careless words had given him so illuminating a glimpse; but he feared to touch on distressing memories, and before he could think of anything to say she had strayed back to her original subject. "May is a darling; I've seen no young girl in New York so handsome and so intelligent. Are you very much in love with her?" Newland Archer reddened and laughed. "As much as a man can be." She continued to consider him thoughtfully, as if not to miss any shade of meaning in what he said, "Do you think, then, there is a limit?" "To being in love? If there is, I haven't found it!" She glowed with sympathy. "Ah--it's really and truly a romance?" "The most romantic of romances!" "How delightful! And you found it all out for yourselves--it was not in the least arranged for you?" Archer looked at her incredulously. "Have you forgotten," he asked with a smile, "that in our country we don't allow our marriages to be arranged for us?" A dusky blush rose to her cheek, and he instantly regretted his words. "Yes," she answered, "I'd forgotten. You must forgive me if I sometimes make these mistakes. I don't always remember that everything here is good that was--that was bad where I've come from." She looked down at her Viennese fan of eagle feathers, and he saw that her lips trembled. "I'm so sorry," he said impulsively; "but you ARE among friends here, you know." "Yes--I know. Wherever I go I have that feeling. That's why I came home. I want to forget everything else, to become a complete American again, like the Mingotts and Wellands, and you and your delightful mother, and all the other good people here tonight. Ah, here's May arriving, and you will want to hurry away to her," she added, but without moving; and her eyes turned back from the door to rest on the young man's face. The drawing-rooms were beginning to fill up with after-dinner guests, and following Madame Olenska's glance Archer saw May Welland entering with her mother. In her dress of white and silver, with a wreath of silver blossoms in her hair, the tall girl looked like a Diana just alight from the chase. "Oh," said Archer, "I have so many rivals; you see she's already surrounded. There's the Duke being introduced." "Then stay with me a little longer," Madame Olenska said in a low tone, just touching his knee with her plumed fan. It was the lightest touch, but it thrilled him like a caress. "Yes, let me stay," he answered in the same tone, hardly knowing what he said; but just then Mr. van der Luyden came up, followed by old Mr. Urban Dagonet. The Countess greeted them with her grave smile, and Archer, feeling his host's admonitory glance on him, rose and surrendered his seat. Madame Olenska held out her hand as if to bid him goodbye. "Tomorrow, then, after five--I shall expect you," she said; and then turned back to make room for Mr. Dagonet. "Tomorrow--" Archer heard himself repeating, though there had been no engagement, and during their talk she had given him no hint that she wished to see him again. As he moved away he saw Lawrence Lefferts, tall and resplendent, leading his wife up to be introduced; and heard Gertrude Lefferts say, as she beamed on the Countess with her large unperceiving smile: "But I think we used to go to dancing-school together when we were children--." Behind her, waiting their turn to name themselves to the Countess, Archer noticed a number of the recalcitrant couples who had declined to meet her at Mrs. Lovell Mingott's. As Mrs. Archer remarked: when the van der Luydens chose, they knew how to give a lesson. The wonder was that they chose so seldom. The young man felt a touch on his arm and saw Mrs. van der Luyden looking down on him from the pure eminence of black velvet and the family diamonds. "It was good of you, dear Newland, to devote yourself so unselfishly to Madame Olenska. I told your cousin Henry he must really come to the rescue." He was aware of smiling at her vaguely, and she added, as if condescending to his natural shyness: "I've never seen May looking lovelier. The Duke thinks her the handsomest girl in the room."

This chapter gives some background on Ellen1s past. Ellen1s parents had been avid travelers and they died early in Ellen1s life. She lived with her aunt Medora Manson who was sort of eccentric. She would dress Ellen in crimson merino and amber beads and did not allow her to mourn for her parents as long as was "proper". She was the only young woman present at the reception for the Duke. After dinner, to many people1s surprise, the Duke headed straight to Ellen where they talked for a while. Then, she left his side, and sat next to Newland. Ellen asks if Newland1s engagement to May was arranged or just sheerly romantic. Newland balks no marriages are arranged in America, he says. Upon getting up, she tells Newland that she expects him to visit her tomorrow after five PM. Then, there is a line of people ready to speak to Ellen; these are the same people that had rejected the invitation to meet her earlier.

Miller did not reach his destination without interruption. At one point a considerable stretch of the road was under repair, which made it necessary for him to travel slowly. His horse cast a shoe, and threatened to go lame; but in the course of time he arrived at the entrance gate of Belleview, entering which he struck into a private road, bordered by massive oaks, whose multitudinous branches, hung with long streamers of trailing moss, formed for much of the way a thick canopy above his head. It took him only a few minutes to traverse the quarter of a mile that lay between the entrance gate and the house itself. This old colonial plantation, rich in legendary lore and replete with historic distinction, had been in the Delamere family for nearly two hundred years. Along the bank of the river which skirted its domain the famous pirate Blackbeard had held high carnival, and was reputed to have buried much treasure, vague traditions of which still lingered among the negroes and poor-whites of the country roundabout. The beautiful residence, rising white and stately in a grove of ancient oaks, dated from 1750, and was built of brick which had been brought from England. Enlarged and improved from generation to generation, it stood, like a baronial castle, upon a slight eminence from which could be surveyed the large demesne still belonging to the estate, which had shrunk greatly from its colonial dimensions. While still embracing several thousand acres, part forest and part cleared land, it had not of late years been profitable; in spite of which Mr. Delamere, with the conservatism of his age and caste, had never been able to make up his mind to part with any considerable portion of it. His grandson, he imagined, could make the estate pay and yet preserve it in its integrity. Here, in pleasant weather, surrounded by the scenes which he loved, old Mr. Delamere spent much of the time during his declining years. Dr. Miller had once passed a day at Belleview, upon Mr. Delamere's invitation. For this old-fashioned gentleman, whose ideals not even slavery had been able to spoil, regarded himself as a trustee for the great public, which ought, in his opinion, to take as much pride as he in the contemplation of this historic landmark. In earlier years Mr. Delamere had been a practicing lawyer, and had numbered Miller's father among his clients. He had always been regarded as friendly to the colored people, and, until age and ill health had driven him from active life, had taken a lively interest in their advancement since the abolition of slavery. Upon the public opening of Miller's new hospital, he had made an effort to be present, and had made a little speech of approval and encouragement which had manifested his kindliness and given Miller much pleasure. It was with the consciousness, therefore, that he was approaching a friend, as well as Sandy's master, that Miller's mind was chiefly occupied as his tired horse, scenting the end of his efforts, bore him with a final burst of speed along the last few rods of the journey; for the urgency of Miller's errand, involving as it did the issues of life and death, did not permit him to enjoy the charm of mossy oak or forest reaches, or even to appreciate the noble front of Belleview House when it at last loomed up before him. "Well, William," said Mr. Delamere, as he gave his hand to Miller from the armchair in which he was seated under the broad and stately portico, "I didn't expect to see you out here. You'll excuse my not rising,--I'm none too firm on my legs. Did you see anything of my man Sandy back there on the road? He ought to have been here by nine o'clock, and it's now one. Sandy is punctuality itself, and I don't know how to account for his delay." Clearly there need be no time wasted in preliminaries. Mr. Delamere had gone directly to the subject in hand. "He will not be here to-day, sir," replied Miller. "I have come to you on his account." In a few words Miller stated the situation. "Preposterous!" exclaimed the old gentleman, with more vigor than Miller had supposed him to possess. "Sandy is absolutely incapable of such a crime as robbery, to say nothing of murder; and as for the rest, that is absurd upon the face of it! And so the poor old woman is dead! Well, well, well! she could not have lived much longer anyway; but Sandy did not kill her,--it's simply impossible! Why, _I_ raised that boy! He was born on my place. I'd as soon believe such a thing of my own grandson as of Sandy! No negro raised by a Delamere would ever commit such a crime. I really believe, William, that Sandy has the family honor of the Delameres quite as much at heart as I have. Just tell them I say Sandy is innocent, and it will be all right." "I'm afraid, sir," rejoined Miller, who kept his voice up so that the old gentleman could understand without having it suggested that Miller knew he was hard of hearing, "that you don't quite appreciate the situation. _I_ believe Sandy innocent; _you_ believe him innocent; but there are suspicious circumstances which do not explain themselves, and the white people of the city believe him guilty, and are going to lynch him before he has a chance to clear himself." "Why doesn't he explain the suspicious circumstances?" asked Mr. Delamere. "Sandy is truthful and can be believed. I would take Sandy's word as quickly as another man's oath." "He has no chance to explain," said Miller. "The case is prejudged. A crime has been committed. Sandy is charged with it. He is black, and therefore he is guilty. No colored lawyer would be allowed in the jail, if one should dare to go there. No white lawyer will intervene. He'll be lynched to-night, without judge, jury, or preacher, unless we can stave the thing off for a day or two." "Have you seen my grandson?" asked the old gentleman. "Is he not looking after Sandy?" "No, sir. It seems he went down the river this morning to fish, before the murder was discovered; no one knows just where he has gone, or at what hour he will return." "Well, then," said Mr. Delamere, rising from his chair with surprising vigor, "I shall have to go myself. No faithful servant of mine shall be hanged for a crime he didn't commit, so long as I have a voice to speak or a dollar to spend. There'll be no trouble after I get there, William. The people are naturally wrought up at such a crime. A fine old woman,--she had some detestable traits, and I was always afraid she wanted to marry me, but she was of an excellent family and had many good points,--an old woman of one of the best families, struck down by the hand of a murderer! You must remember, William, that blood is thicker than water, and that the provocation is extreme, and that a few hotheads might easily lose sight of the great principles involved and seek immediate vengeance, without too much discrimination. But they are good people, William, and when I have spoken, and they have an opportunity for the sober second thought, they will do nothing rashly, but will wait for the operation of the law, which will, of course, clear Sandy." "I'm sure I hope so," returned Miller. "Shall I try to drive you back, sir, or will you order your own carriage?" "My horses are fresher, William, and I'll have them brought around. You can take the reins, if you will,--I'm rather old to drive,--and my man will come behind with your buggy." In a few minutes they set out along the sandy road. Having two fresh horses, they made better headway than Miller had made coming out, and reached Wellington easily by three o'clock. "I think, William," said Mr. Delamere, as they drove into the town, "that I had first better talk with Sandy. He may be able to explain away the things that seem to connect him with this atrocious affair; and that will put me in a better position to talk to other people about it." Miller drove directly to the county jail. Thirty or forty white men, who seemed to be casually gathered near the door, closed up when the carriage approached. The sheriff, who had seen them from the inside, came to the outer door and spoke to the visitor through a grated wicket. "Mr. Wemyss," said Mr. Delamere, when he had made his way to the entrance with the aid of his cane, "I wish to see my servant, Sandy Campbell, who is said to be in your custody." The sheriff hesitated. Meantime there was some parleying in low tones among the crowd outside. No one interfered, however, and in a moment the door opened sufficiently to give entrance to the old gentleman, after which it closed quickly and clangorously behind him. Feeling no desire to linger in the locality, Miller, having seen his companion enter the jail, drove the carriage round to Mr. Delamere's house, and leaving it in charge of a servant with instructions to return for his master in a quarter of an hour, hastened to his own home to meet Watson and Josh and report the result of his efforts.

Miller hurries out to Belleview, the Delamere country estate that had been in the family for over two hundred years. He is in such a hurry that he does not have time to enjoy the beauty of the place or the grandness of the house. He enters and explains quickly the situation. Mr. Delamere is shocked that Sandy should be accused of such a crime. No negro raised by a Delamere would ever commit such a crime. I really believe. that Sandy has the family honor of the Delameres quite as much at heart as I have. Miller explains the urgency of the situation and that Sandy will be lynched this evening unless something is done. Delamere decides to go back to Wellington himself and see about the matter. He is sure that "there'll be no trouble after I get there. they are good people and when I have spoken, and they have an opportunity for the sober second thought, they will do nothing rashly, but will wait for the operation of the law, which will, of course, clear Sandy. They travel back to Wellington where Mr. Delamere enters the jail to talk directly with Sandy

BOOK V Meantime the Trojan cuts his wat'ry way, Fix'd on his voyage, thro' the curling sea; Then, casting back his eyes, with dire amaze, Sees on the Punic shore the mounting blaze. The cause unknown; yet his presaging mind The fate of Dido from the fire divin'd; He knew the stormy souls of womankind, What secret springs their eager passions move, How capable of death for injur'd love. Dire auguries from hence the Trojans draw; Till neither fires nor shining shores they saw. Now seas and skies their prospect only bound; An empty space above, a floating field around. But soon the heav'ns with shadows were o'erspread; A swelling cloud hung hov'ring o'er their head: Livid it look'd, the threat'ning of a storm: Then night and horror ocean's face deform. The pilot, Palinurus, cried aloud: "What gusts of weather from that gath'ring cloud My thoughts presage! Ere yet the tempest roars, Stand to your tackle, mates, and stretch your oars; Contract your swelling sails, and luff to wind." The frighted crew perform the task assign'd. Then, to his fearless chief: "Not Heav'n," said he, "Tho' Jove himself should promise Italy, Can stem the torrent of this raging sea. Mark how the shifting winds from west arise, And what collected night involves the skies! Nor can our shaken vessels live at sea, Much less against the tempest force their way. 'T is fate diverts our course, and fate we must obey. Not far from hence, if I observ'd aright The southing of the stars, and polar light, Sicilia lies, whose hospitable shores In safety we may reach with struggling oars." Aeneas then replied: "Too sure I find We strive in vain against the seas and wind: Now shift your sails; what place can please me more Than what you promise, the Sicilian shore, Whose hallow'd earth Anchises' bones contains, And where a prince of Trojan lineage reigns?" The course resolv'd, before the western wind They scud amain, and make the port assign'd. Meantime Acestes, from a lofty stand, Beheld the fleet descending on the land; And, not unmindful of his ancient race, Down from the cliff he ran with eager pace, And held the hero in a strict embrace. Of a rough Libyan bear the spoils he wore, And either hand a pointed jav'lin bore. His mother was a dame of Dardan blood; His sire Crinisus, a Sicilian flood. He welcomes his returning friends ashore With plenteous country cates and homely store. Now, when the following morn had chas'd away The flying stars, and light restor'd the day, Aeneas call'd the Trojan troops around, And thus bespoke them from a rising ground: "Offspring of heav'n, divine Dardanian race! The sun, revolving thro' th' ethereal space, The shining circle of the year has fill'd, Since first this isle my father's ashes held: And now the rising day renews the year; A day for ever sad, for ever dear. This would I celebrate with annual games, With gifts on altars pil'd, and holy flames, Tho' banish'd to Gaetulia's barren sands, Caught on the Grecian seas, or hostile lands: But since this happy storm our fleet has driv'n (Not, as I deem, without the will of Heav'n) Upon these friendly shores and flow'ry plains, Which hide Anchises and his blest remains, Let us with joy perform his honors due, And pray for prosp'rous winds, our voyage to renew; Pray, that in towns and temples of our own, The name of great Anchises may be known, And yearly games may spread the gods' renown. Our sports Acestes, of the Trojan race, With royal gifts ordain'd, is pleas'd to grace: Two steers on ev'ry ship the king bestows; His gods and ours shall share your equal vows. Besides, if, nine days hence, the rosy morn Shall with unclouded light the skies adorn, That day with solemn sports I mean to grace: Light galleys on the seas shall run a wat'ry race; Some shall in swiftness for the goal contend, And others try the twanging bow to bend; The strong, with iron gauntlets arm'd, shall stand Oppos'd in combat on the yellow sand. Let all be present at the games prepar'd, And joyful victors wait the just reward. But now assist the rites, with garlands crown'd." He said, and first his brows with myrtle bound. Then Helymus, by his example led, And old Acestes, each adorn'd his head; Thus young Ascanius, with a sprightly grace, His temples tied, and all the Trojan race. Aeneas then advanc'd amidst the train, By thousands follow'd thro' the flow'ry plain, To great Anchises' tomb; which when he found, He pour'd to Bacchus, on the hallow'd ground, Two bowls of sparkling wine, of milk two more, And two (from offer'd bulls) of purple gore, With roses then the sepulcher he strow'd And thus his father's ghost bespoke aloud: "Hail, O ye holy manes! hail again, Paternal ashes, now review'd in vain! The gods permitted not, that you, with me, Should reach the promis'd shores of Italy, Or Tiber's flood, what flood soe'er it be." Scarce had he finish'd, when, with speckled pride, A serpent from the tomb began to glide; His hugy bulk on sev'n high volumes roll'd; Blue was his breadth of back, but streak'd with scaly gold: Thus riding on his curls, he seem'd to pass A rolling fire along, and singe the grass. More various colors thro' his body run, Than Iris when her bow imbibes the sun. Betwixt the rising altars, and around, The sacred monster shot along the ground; With harmless play amidst the bowls he pass'd, And with his lolling tongue assay'd the taste: Thus fed with holy food, the wondrous guest Within the hollow tomb retir'd to rest. The pious prince, surpris'd at what he view'd, The fun'ral honors with more zeal renew'd, Doubtful if this place's genius were, Or guardian of his father's sepulcher. Five sheep, according to the rites, he slew; As many swine, and steers of sable hue; New gen'rous wine he from the goblets pour'd. And call'd his father's ghost, from hell restor'd. The glad attendants in long order come, Off'ring their gifts at great Anchises' tomb: Some add more oxen: some divide the spoil; Some place the chargers on the grassy soil; Some blow the fires, and offered entrails broil. Now came the day desir'd. The skies were bright With rosy luster of the rising light: The bord'ring people, rous'd by sounding fame Of Trojan feasts and great Acestes' name, The crowded shore with acclamations fill, Part to behold, and part to prove their skill. And first the gifts in public view they place, Green laurel wreaths, and palm, the victors' grace: Within the circle, arms and tripods lie, Ingots of gold and silver, heap'd on high, And vests embroider'd, of the Tyrian dye. The trumpet's clangor then the feast proclaims, And all prepare for their appointed games. Four galleys first, which equal rowers bear, Advancing, in the wat'ry lists appear. The speedy Dolphin, that outstrips the wind, Bore Mnestheus, author of the Memmian kind: Gyas the vast Chimaera's bulk commands, Which rising, like a tow'ring city stands; Three Trojans tug at ev'ry lab'ring oar; Three banks in three degrees the sailors bore; Beneath their sturdy strokes the billows roar. Sergesthus, who began the Sergian race, In the great Centaur took the leading place; Cloanthus on the sea-green Scylla stood, From whom Cluentius draws his Trojan blood. Far in the sea, against the foaming shore, There stands a rock: the raging billows roar Above his head in storms; but, when 't is clear, Uncurl their ridgy backs, and at his foot appear. In peace below the gentle waters run; The cormorants above lie basking in the sun. On this the hero fix'd an oak in sight, The mark to guide the mariners aright. To bear with this, the seamen stretch their oars; Then round the rock they steer, and seek the former shores. The lots decide their place. Above the rest, Each leader shining in his Tyrian vest; The common crew with wreaths of poplar boughs Their temples crown, and shade their sweaty brows: Besmear'd with oil, their naked shoulders shine. All take their seats, and wait the sounding sign: They gripe their oars; and ev'ry panting breast Is rais'd by turns with hope, by turns with fear depress'd. The clangor of the trumpet gives the sign; At once they start, advancing in a line: With shouts the sailors rend the starry skies; Lash'd with their oars, the smoky billows rise; Sparkles the briny main, and the vex'd ocean fries. Exact in time, with equal strokes they row: At once the brushing oars and brazen prow Dash up the sandy waves, and ope the depths below. Not fiery coursers, in a chariot race, Invade the field with half so swift a pace; Not the fierce driver with more fury lends The sounding lash, and, ere the stroke descends, Low to the wheels his pliant body bends. The partial crowd their hopes and fears divide, And aid with eager shouts the favor'd side. Cries, murmurs, clamors, with a mixing sound, From woods to woods, from hills to hills rebound. Amidst the loud applauses of the shore, Gyas outstripp'd the rest, and sprung before: Cloanthus, better mann'd, pursued him fast, But his o'er-masted galley check'd his haste. The Centaur and the Dolphin brush the brine With equal oars, advancing in a line; And now the mighty Centaur seems to lead, And now the speedy Dolphin gets ahead; Now board to board the rival vessels row, The billows lave the skies, and ocean groans below. They reach'd the mark. Proud Gyas and his train In triumph rode, the victors of the main; But, steering round, he charg'd his pilot stand More close to shore, and skim along the sand- "Let others bear to sea!" Menoetes heard; But secret shelves too cautiously he fear'd, And, fearing, sought the deep; and still aloof he steer'd. With louder cries the captain call'd again: "Bear to the rocky shore, and shun the main." He spoke, and, speaking, at his stern he saw The bold Cloanthus near the shelvings draw. Betwixt the mark and him the Scylla stood, And in a closer compass plow'd the flood. He pass'd the mark; and, wheeling, got before: Gyas blasphem'd the gods, devoutly swore, Cried out for anger, and his hair he tore. Mindless of others' lives (so high was grown His rising rage) and careless of his own, The trembling dotard to the deck he drew; Then hoisted up, and overboard he threw: This done, he seiz'd the helm; his fellows cheer'd, Turn'd short upon the shelfs, and madly steer'd. Hardly his head the plunging pilot rears, Clogg'd with his clothes, and cumber'd with his years: Now dropping wet, he climbs the cliff with pain. The crowd, that saw him fall and float again, Shout from the distant shore; and loudly laugh'd, To see his heaving breast disgorge the briny draught. The following Centaur, and the Dolphin's crew, Their vanish'd hopes of victory renew; While Gyas lags, they kindle in the race, To reach the mark. Sergesthus takes the place; Mnestheus pursues; and while around they wind, Comes up, not half his galley's length behind; Then, on the deck, amidst his mates appear'd, And thus their drooping courage he cheer'd: "My friends, and Hector's followers heretofore, Exert your vigor; tug the lab'ring oar; Stretch to your strokes, my still unconquer'd crew, Whom from the flaming walls of Troy I drew. In this, our common int'rest, let me find That strength of hand, that courage of the mind, As when you stemm'd the strong Malean flood, And o'er the Syrtes' broken billows row'd. I seek not now the foremost palm to gain; Tho' yet- but, ah! that haughty wish is vain! Let those enjoy it whom the gods ordain. But to be last, the lags of all the race!- Redeem yourselves and me from that disgrace." Now, one and all, they tug amain; they row At the full stretch, and shake the brazen prow. The sea beneath 'em sinks; their lab'ring sides Are swell'd, and sweat runs gutt'ring down in tides. Chance aids their daring with unhop'd success; Sergesthus, eager with his beak to press Betwixt the rival galley and the rock, Shuts up th' unwieldly Centaur in the lock. The vessel struck; and, with the dreadful shock, Her oars she shiver'd, and her head she broke. The trembling rowers from their banks arise, And, anxious for themselves, renounce the prize. With iron poles they heave her off the shores, And gather from the sea their floating oars. The crew of Mnestheus, with elated minds, Urge their success, and call the willing winds; Then ply their oars, and cut their liquid way In larger compass on the roomy sea. As, when the dove her rocky hold forsakes, Rous'd in a fright, her sounding wings she shakes; The cavern rings with clatt'ring; out she flies, And leaves her callow care, and cleaves the skies: At first she flutters; but at length she springs To smoother flight, and shoots upon her wings: So Mnestheus in the Dolphin cuts the sea; And, flying with a force, that force assists his way. Sergesthus in the Centaur soon he pass'd, Wedg'd in the rocky shoals, and sticking fast. In vain the victor he with cries implores, And practices to row with shatter'd oars. Then Mnestheus bears with Gyas, and outflies: The ship, without a pilot, yields the prize. Unvanquish'd Scylla now alone remains; Her he pursues, and all his vigor strains. Shouts from the fav'ring multitude arise; Applauding Echo to the shouts replies; Shouts, wishes, and applause run rattling thro' the skies. These clamors with disdain the Scylla heard, Much grudg'd the praise, but more the robb'd reward: Resolv'd to hold their own, they mend their pace, All obstinate to die, or gain the race. Rais'd with success, the Dolphin swiftly ran; For they can conquer, who believe they can. Both urge their oars, and fortune both supplies, And both perhaps had shar'd an equal prize; When to the seas Cloanthus holds his hands, And succor from the wat'ry pow'rs demands: "Gods of the liquid realms, on which I row! If, giv'n by you, the laurel bind my brow, Assist to make me guilty of my vow! A snow-white bull shall on your shore be slain; His offer'd entrails cast into the main, And ruddy wine, from golden goblets thrown, Your grateful gift and my return shall own." The choir of nymphs, and Phorcus, from below, With virgin Panopea, heard his vow; And old Portunus, with his breadth of hand, Push'd on, and sped the galley to the land. Swift as a shaft, or winged wind, she flies, And, darting to the port, obtains the prize. The herald summons all, and then proclaims Cloanthus conqu'ror of the naval games. The prince with laurel crowns the victor's head, And three fat steers are to his vessel led, The ship's reward; with gen'rous wine beside, And sums of silver, which the crew divide. The leaders are distinguish'd from the rest; The victor honor'd with a nobler vest, Where gold and purple strive in equal rows, And needlework its happy cost bestows. There Ganymede is wrought with living art, Chasing thro' Ida's groves the trembling hart: Breathless he seems, yet eager to pursue; When from aloft descends, in open view, The bird of Jove, and, sousing on his prey, With crooked talons bears the boy away. In vain, with lifted hands and gazing eyes, His guards behold him soaring thro' the skies, And dogs pursue his flight with imitated cries. Mnestheus the second victor was declar'd; And, summon'd there, the second prize he shard. A coat of mail, brave Demoleus bore, More brave Aeneas from his shoulders tore, In single combat on the Trojan shore: This was ordain'd for Mnestheus to possess; In war for his defense, for ornament in peace. Rich was the gift, and glorious to behold, But yet so pond'rous with its plates of gold, That scarce two servants could the weight sustain; Yet, loaded thus, Demoleus o'er the plain Pursued and lightly seiz'd the Trojan train. The third, succeeding to the last reward, Two goodly bowls of massy silver shar'd, With figures prominent, and richly wrought, And two brass caldrons from Dodona brought. Thus all, rewarded by the hero's hands, Their conqu'ring temples bound with purple bands; And now Sergesthus, clearing from the rock, Brought back his galley shatter'd with the shock. Forlorn she look'd, without an aiding oar, And, houted by the vulgar, made to shore. As when a snake, surpris'd upon the road, Is crush'd athwart her body by the load Of heavy wheels; or with a mortal wound Her belly bruis'd, and trodden to the ground: In vain, with loosen'd curls, she crawls along; Yet, fierce above, she brandishes her tongue; Glares with her eyes, and bristles with her scales; But, groveling in the dust, her parts unsound she trails: So slowly to the port the Centaur tends, But, what she wants in oars, with sails amends. Yet, for his galley sav'd, the grateful prince Is pleas'd th' unhappy chief to recompense. Pholoe, the Cretan slave, rewards his care, Beauteous herself, with lovely twins as fair. From thence his way the Trojan hero bent Into the neighb'ring plain, with mountains pent, Whose sides were shaded with surrounding wood. Full in the midst of this fair valley stood A native theater, which, rising slow By just degrees, o'erlook'd the ground below. High on a sylvan throne the leader sate; A num'rous train attend in solemn state. Here those that in the rapid course delight, Desire of honor and the prize invite. The rival runners without order stand; The Trojans mix'd with the Sicilian band. First Nisus, with Euryalus, appears; Euryalus a boy of blooming years, With sprightly grace and equal beauty crown'd; Nisus, for friendship to the youth renown'd. Diores next, of Priam's royal race, Then Salius joined with Patron, took their place; (But Patron in Arcadia had his birth, And Salius his from Arcananian earth;) Then two Sicilian youths- the names of these, Swift Helymus, and lovely Panopes: Both jolly huntsmen, both in forest bred, And owning old Acestes for their head; With sev'ral others of ignobler name, Whom time has not deliver'd o'er to fame. To these the hero thus his thoughts explain'd, In words which gen'ral approbation gain'd: "One common largess is for all design'd, (The vanquish'd and the victor shall be join'd,) Two darts of polish'd steel and Gnosian wood, A silver-studded ax, alike bestow'd. The foremost three have olive wreaths decreed: The first of these obtains a stately steed, Adorn'd with trappings; and the next in fame, The quiver of an Amazonian dame, With feather'd Thracian arrows well supplied: A golden belt shall gird his manly side, Which with a sparkling diamond shall be tied. The third this Grecian helmet shall content." He said. To their appointed base they went; With beating hearts th' expected sign receive, And, starting all at once, the barrier leave. Spread out, as on the winged winds, they flew, And seiz'd the distant goal with greedy view. Shot from the crowd, swift Nisus all o'erpass'd; Nor storms, nor thunder, equal half his haste. The next, but tho' the next, yet far disjoin'd, Came Salius, and Euryalus behind; Then Helymus, whom young Diores plied, Step after step, and almost side by side, His shoulders pressing; and, in longer space, Had won, or left at least a dubious race. Now, spent, the goal they almost reach at last, When eager Nisus, hapless in his haste, Slipp'd first, and, slipping, fell upon the plain, Soak'd with the blood of oxen newly slain. The careless victor had not mark'd his way; But, treading where the treach'rous puddle lay, His heels flew up; and on the grassy floor He fell, besmear'd with filth and holy gore. Not mindless then, Euryalus, of thee, Nor of the sacred bonds of amity, He strove th' immediate rival's hope to cross, And caught the foot of Salius as he rose. So Salius lay extended on the plain; Euryalus springs out, the prize to gain, And leaves the crowd: applauding peals attend The victor to the goal, who vanquish'd by his friend. Next Helymus; and then Diores came, By two misfortunes made the third in fame. But Salius enters, and, exclaiming loud For justice, deafens and disturbs the crowd; Urges his cause may in the court be heard; And pleads the prize is wrongfully conferr'd. But favor for Euryalus appears; His blooming beauty, with his tender tears, Had brib'd the judges for the promis'd prize. Besides, Diores fills the court with cries, Who vainly reaches at the last reward, If the first palm on Salius be conferr'd. Then thus the prince: "Let no disputes arise: Where fortune plac'd it, I award the prize. But fortune's errors give me leave to mend, At least to pity my deserving friend." He said, and, from among the spoils, he draws (Pond'rous with shaggy mane and golden paws) A lion's hide: to Salius this he gives. Nisus with envy sees the gift, and grieves. "If such rewards to vanquish'd men are due." He said, "and falling is to rise by you, What prize may Nisus from your bounty claim, Who merited the first rewards and fame? In falling, both an equal fortune tried; Would fortune for my fall so well provide!" With this he pointed to his face, and show'd His hand and all his habit smear'd with blood. Th' indulgent father of the people smil'd, And caus'd to be produc'd an ample shield, Of wondrous art, by Didymaon wrought, Long since from Neptune's bars in triumph brought. This giv'n to Nisus, he divides the rest, And equal justice in his gifts express'd. The race thus ended, and rewards bestow'd, Once more the prince bespeaks th' attentive crowd: "If there he here whose dauntless courage dare In gauntlet-fight, with limbs and body bare, His opposite sustain in open view, Stand forth the champion, and the games renew. Two prizes I propose, and thus divide: A bull with gilded horns, and fillets tied, Shall be the portion of the conqu'ring chief; A sword and helm shall cheer the loser's grief." Then haughty Dares in the lists appears; Stalking he strides, his head erected bears: His nervous arms the weighty gauntlet wield, And loud applauses echo thro' the field. Dares alone in combat us'd to stand The match of mighty Paris, hand to hand; The same, at Hector's fun'rals, undertook Gigantic Butes, of th' Amycian stock, And, by the stroke of his resistless hand, Stretch'd the vast bulk upon the yellow sand. Such Dares was; and such he strode along, And drew the wonder of the gazing throng. His brawny back and ample breast he shows, His lifted arms around his head he throws, And deals in whistling air his empty blows. His match is sought; but, thro' the trembling band, Not one dares answer to the proud demand. Presuming of his force, with sparkling eyes Already he devours the promis'd prize. He claims the bull with awless insolence, And having seiz'd his horns, accosts the prince: "If none my matchless valor dares oppose, How long shall Dares wait his dastard foes? Permit me, chief, permit without delay, To lead this uncontended gift away." The crowd assents, and with redoubled cries For the proud challenger demands the prize. Acestes, fir'd with just disdain, to see The palm usurp'd without a victory, Reproach'd Entellus thus, who sate beside, And heard and saw, unmov'd, the Trojan's pride: "Once, but in vain, a champion of renown, So tamely can you bear the ravish'd crown, A prize in triumph borne before your sight, And shun, for fear, the danger of the fight? Where is our Eryx now, the boasted name, The god who taught your thund'ring arm the game? Where now your baffled honor? Where the spoil That fill'd your house, and fame that fill'd our isle?" Entellus, thus: "My soul is still the same, Unmov'd with fear, and mov'd with martial fame; But my chill blood is curdled in my veins, And scarce the shadow of a man remains. O could I turn to that fair prime again, That prime of which this boaster is so vain, The brave, who this decrepid age defies, Should feel my force, without the promis'd prize." He said; and, rising at the word, he threw Two pond'rous gauntlets down in open view; Gauntlets which Eryx wont in fight to wield, And sheathe his hands with in the listed field. With fear and wonder seiz'd, the crowd beholds The gloves of death, with sev'n distinguish'd folds Of tough bull hides; the space within is spread With iron, or with loads of heavy lead: Dares himself was daunted at the sight, Renounc'd his challenge, and refus'd to fight. Astonish'd at their weight, the hero stands, And pois'd the pond'rous engines in his hands. "What had your wonder," said Entellus, "been, Had you the gauntlets of Alcides seen, Or view'd the stern debate on this unhappy green! These which I bear your brother Eryx bore, Still mark'd with batter'd brains and mingled gore. With these he long sustain'd th' Herculean arm; And these I wielded while my blood was warm, This languish'd frame while better spirits fed, Ere age unstrung my nerves, or time o'ersnow'd my head. But if the challenger these arms refuse, And cannot wield their weight, or dare not use; If great Aeneas and Acestes join In his request, these gauntlets I resign; Let us with equal arms perform the fight, And let him leave to fear, since I resign my right." This said, Entellus for the strife prepares; Stripp'd of his quilted coat, his body bares; Compos'd of mighty bones and brawn he stands, A goodly tow'ring object on the sands. Then just Aeneas equal arms supplied, Which round their shoulders to their wrists they tied. Both on the tiptoe stand, at full extent, Their arms aloft, their bodies inly bent; Their heads from aiming blows they bear afar; With clashing gauntlets then provoke the war. One on his youth and pliant limbs relies; One on his sinews and his giant size. The last is stiff with age, his motion slow; He heaves for breath, he staggers to and fro, And clouds of issuing smoke his nostrils loudly blow. Yet equal in success, they ward, they strike; Their ways are diff'rent, but their art alike. Before, behind, the blows are dealt; around Their hollow sides the rattling thumps resound. A storm of strokes, well meant, with fury flies, And errs about their temples, ears, and eyes. Nor always errs; for oft the gauntlet draws A sweeping stroke along the crackling jaws. Heavy with age, Entellus stands his ground, But with his warping body wards the wound. His hand and watchful eye keep even pace; While Dares traverses and shifts his place, And, like a captain who beleaguers round Some strong-built castle on a rising ground, Views all th' approaches with observing eyes: This and that other part in vain he tries, And more on industry than force relies. With hands on high, Entellus threats the foe; But Dares watch'd the motion from below, And slipp'd aside, and shunn'd the long descending blow. Entellus wastes his forces on the wind, And, thus deluded of the stroke design'd, Headlong and heavy fell; his ample breast And weighty limbs his ancient mother press'd. So falls a hollow pine, that long had stood On Ida's height, or Erymanthus' wood, Torn from the roots. The diff'ring nations rise, And shouts and mingled murmurs rend the skies, Acestus runs with eager haste, to raise The fall'n companion of his youthful days. Dauntless he rose, and to the fight return'd; With shame his glowing cheeks, his eyes with fury burn'd. Disdain and conscious virtue fir'd his breast, And with redoubled force his foe he press'd. He lays on load with either hand, amain, And headlong drives the Trojan o'er the plain; Nor stops, nor stays; nor rest nor breath allows; But storms of strokes descend about his brows, A rattling tempest, and a hail of blows. But now the prince, who saw the wild increase Of wounds, commands the combatants to cease, And bounds Entellus' wrath, and bids the peace. First to the Trojan, spent with toil, he came, And sooth'd his sorrow for the suffer'd shame. "What fury seiz'd my friend? The gods," said he, "To him propitious, and averse to thee, Have giv'n his arm superior force to thine. 'T is madness to contend with strength divine." The gauntlet fight thus ended, from the shore His faithful friends unhappy Dares bore: His mouth and nostrils pour'd a purple flood, And pounded teeth came rushing with his blood. Faintly he stagger'd thro' the hissing throng, And hung his head, and trail'd his legs along. The sword and casque are carried by his train; But with his foe the palm and ox remain. The champion, then, before Aeneas came, Proud of his prize, but prouder of his fame: "O goddess-born, and you, Dardanian host, Mark with attention, and forgive my boast; Learn what I was, by what remains; and know From what impending fate you sav'd my foe." Sternly he spoke, and then confronts the bull; And, on his ample forehead aiming full, The deadly stroke, descending, pierc'd the skull. Down drops the beast, nor needs a second wound, But sprawls in pangs of death, and spurns the ground. Then, thus: "In Dares' stead I offer this. Eryx, accept a nobler sacrifice; Take the last gift my wither'd arms can yield: Thy gauntlets I resign, and here renounce the field." This done, Aeneas orders, for the close, The strife of archers with contending bows. The mast Sergesthus' shatter'd galley bore With his own hands he raises on the shore. A flutt'ring dove upon the top they tie, The living mark at which their arrows fly. The rival archers in a line advance, Their turn of shooting to receive from chance. A helmet holds their names; the lots are drawn: On the first scroll was read Hippocoon. The people shout. Upon the next was found Young Mnestheus, late with naval honors crown'd. The third contain'd Eurytion's noble name, Thy brother, Pandarus, and next in fame, Whom Pallas urg'd the treaty to confound, And send among the Greeks a feather'd wound. Acestes in the bottom last remain'd, Whom not his age from youthful sports restrain'd. Soon all with vigor bend their trusty bows, And from the quiver each his arrow chose. Hippocoon's was the first: with forceful sway It flew, and, whizzing, cut the liquid way. Fix'd in the mast the feather'd weapon stands: The fearful pigeon flutters in her bands, And the tree trembled, and the shouting cries Of the pleas'd people rend the vaulted skies. Then Mnestheus to the head his arrow drove, With lifted eyes, and took his aim above, But made a glancing shot, and missed the dove; Yet miss'd so narrow, that he cut the cord Which fasten'd by the foot the flitting bird. The captive thus releas'd, away she flies, And beats with clapping wings the yielding skies. His bow already bent, Eurytion stood; And, having first invok'd his brother god, His winged shaft with eager haste he sped. The fatal message reach'd her as she fled: She leaves her life aloft; she strikes the ground, And renders back the weapon in the wound. Acestes, grudging at his lot, remains, Without a prize to gratify his pains. Yet, shooting upward, sends his shaft, to show An archer's art, and boast his twanging bow. The feather'd arrow gave a dire portent, And latter augurs judge from this event. Chaf'd by the speed, it fir'd; and, as it flew, A trail of following flames ascending drew: Kindling they mount, and mark the shiny way; Across the skies as falling meteors play, And vanish into wind, or in a blaze decay. The Trojans and Sicilians wildly stare, And, trembling, turn their wonder into pray'r. The Dardan prince put on a smiling face, And strain'd Acestes with a close embrace; Then, hon'ring him with gifts above the rest, Turn'd the bad omen, nor his fears confess'd. "The gods," said he, "this miracle have wrought, And order'd you the prize without the lot. Accept this goblet, rough with figur'd gold, Which Thracian Cisseus gave my sire of old: This pledge of ancient amity receive, Which to my second sire I justly give." He said, and, with the trumpets' cheerful sound, Proclaim'd him victor, and with laurel-crown'd. Nor good Eurytion envied him the prize, Tho' he transfix'd the pigeon in the skies. Who cut the line, with second gifts was grac'd; The third was his whose arrow pierc'd the mast. The chief, before the games were wholly done, Call'd Periphantes, tutor to his son, And whisper'd thus: "With speed Ascanius find; And, if his childish troop be ready join'd, On horseback let him grace his grandsire's day, And lead his equals arm'd in just array." He said; and, calling out, the cirque he clears. The crowd withdrawn, an open plain appears. And now the noble youths, of form divine, Advance before their fathers, in a line; The riders grace the steeds; the steeds with glory shine. Thus marching on in military pride, Shouts of applause resound from side to side. Their casques adorn'd with laurel wreaths they wear, Each brandishing aloft a cornel spear. Some at their backs their gilded quivers bore; Their chains of burnish'd gold hung down before. Three graceful troops they form'd upon the green; Three graceful leaders at their head were seen; Twelve follow'd ev'ry chief, and left a space between. The first young Priam led; a lovely boy, Whose grandsire was th' unhappy king of Troy; His race in after times was known to fame, New honors adding to the Latian name; And well the royal boy his Thracian steed became. White were the fetlocks of his feet before, And on his front a snowy star he bore. Then beauteous Atys, with Iulus bred, Of equal age, the second squadron led. The last in order, but the first in place, First in the lovely features of his face, Rode fair Ascanius on a fiery steed, Queen Dido's gift, and of the Tyrian breed. Sure coursers for the rest the king ordains, With golden bits adorn'd, and purple reins. The pleas'd spectators peals of shouts renew, And all the parents in the children view; Their make, their motions, and their sprightly grace, And hopes and fears alternate in their face. Th' unfledg'd commanders and their martial train First make the circuit of the sandy plain Around their sires, and, at th' appointed sign, Drawn up in beauteous order, form a line. The second signal sounds, the troop divides In three distinguish'd parts, with three distinguish'd guides Again they close, and once again disjoin; In troop to troop oppos'd, and line to line. They meet; they wheel; they throw their darts afar With harmless rage and well-dissembled war. Then in a round the mingled bodies run: Flying they follow, and pursuing shun; Broken, they break; and, rallying, they renew In other forms the military shew. At last, in order, undiscern'd they join, And march together in a friendly line. And, as the Cretan labyrinth of old, With wand'ring ways and many a winding fold, Involv'd the weary feet, without redress, In a round error, which denied recess; So fought the Trojan boys in warlike play, Turn'd and return'd, and still a diff'rent way. Thus dolphins in the deep each other chase In circles, when they swim around the wat'ry race. This game, these carousels, Ascanius taught; And, building Alba, to the Latins brought; Shew'd what he learn'd: the Latin sires impart To their succeeding sons the graceful art; From these imperial Rome receiv'd the game, Which Troy, the youths the Trojan troop, they name. Thus far the sacred sports they celebrate: But Fortune soon resum'd her ancient hate; For, while they pay the dead his annual dues, Those envied rites Saturnian Juno views; And sends the goddess of the various bow, To try new methods of revenge below; Supplies the winds to wing her airy way, Where in the port secure the navy lay. Swiftly fair Iris down her arch descends, And, undiscern'd, her fatal voyage ends. She saw the gath'ring crowd; and, gliding thence, The desart shore, and fleet without defense. The Trojan matrons, on the sands alone, With sighs and tears Anchises' death bemoan; Then, turning to the sea their weeping eyes, Their pity to themselves renews their cries. "Alas!" said one, "what oceans yet remain For us to sail! what labors to sustain!" All take the word, and, with a gen'ral groan, Implore the gods for peace, and places of their own. The goddess, great in mischief, views their pains, And in a woman's form her heav'nly limbs restrains. In face and shape old Beroe she became, Doryclus' wife, a venerable dame, Once blest with riches, and a mother's name. Thus chang'd, amidst the crying crowd she ran, Mix'd with the matrons, and these words began: "O wretched we, whom not the Grecian pow'r, Nor flames, destroy'd, in Troy's unhappy hour! O wretched we, reserv'd by cruel fate, Beyond the ruins of the sinking state! Now sev'n revolving years are wholly run, Since this improsp'rous voyage we begun; Since, toss'd from shores to shores, from lands to lands, Inhospitable rocks and barren sands, Wand'ring in exile thro' the stormy sea, We search in vain for flying Italy. Now cast by fortune on this kindred land, What should our rest and rising walls withstand, Or hinder here to fix our banish'd band? O country lost, and gods redeem'd in vain, If still in endless exile we remain! Shall we no more the Trojan walls renew, Or streams of some dissembled Simois view! Haste, join with me, th' unhappy fleet consume! Cassandra bids; and I declare her doom. In sleep I saw her; she supplied my hands (For this I more than dreamt) with flaming brands: 'With these,' said she, 'these wand'ring ships destroy: These are your fatal seats, and this your Troy.' Time calls you now; the precious hour employ: Slack not the good presage, while Heav'n inspires Our minds to dare, and gives the ready fires. See! Neptune's altars minister their brands: The god is pleas'd; the god supplies our hands." Then from the pile a flaming fire she drew, And, toss'd in air, amidst the galleys threw. Wrapp'd in amaze, the matrons wildly stare: Then Pyrgo, reverenc'd for her hoary hair, Pyrgo, the nurse of Priam's num'rous race: "No Beroe this, tho' she belies her face! What terrors from her frowning front arise! Behold a goddess in her ardent eyes! What rays around her heav'nly face are seen! Mark her majestic voice, and more than mortal mien! Beroe but now I left, whom, pin'd with pain, Her age and anguish from these rites detain," She said. The matrons, seiz'd with new amaze, Roll their malignant eyes, and on the navy gaze. They fear, and hope, and neither part obey: They hope the fated land, but fear the fatal way. The goddess, having done her task below, Mounts up on equal wings, and bends her painted bow. Struck with the sight, and seiz'd with rage divine, The matrons prosecute their mad design: They shriek aloud; they snatch, with impious hands, The food of altars; fires and flaming brands. Green boughs and saplings, mingled in their haste, And smoking torches, on the ships they cast. The flame, unstopp'd at first, more fury gains, And Vulcan rides at large with loosen'd reins: Triumphant to the painted sterns he soars, And seizes, in this way, the banks and crackling oars. Eumelus was the first the news to bear, While yet they crowd the rural theater. Then, what they hear, is witness'd by their eyes: A storm of sparkles and of flames arise. Ascanius took th' alarm, while yet he led His early warriors on his prancing steed, And, spurring on, his equals soon o'erpass'd; Nor could his frighted friends reclaim his haste. Soon as the royal youth appear'd in view, He sent his voice before him as he flew: "What madness moves you, matrons, to destroy The last remainders of unhappy Troy! Not hostile fleets, but your own hopes, you burn, And on your friends your fatal fury turn. Behold your own Ascanius!" While he said, He drew his glitt'ring helmet from his head, In which the youths to sportful arms he led. By this, Aeneas and his train appear; And now the women, seiz'd with shame and fear, Dispers'd, to woods and caverns take their flight, Abhor their actions, and avoid the light; Their friends acknowledge, and their error find, And shake the goddess from their alter'd mind. Not so the raging fires their fury cease, But, lurking in the seams, with seeming peace, Work on their way amid the smold'ring tow, Sure in destruction, but in motion slow. The silent plague thro' the green timber eats, And vomits out a tardy flame by fits. Down to the keels, and upward to the sails, The fire descends, or mounts, but still prevails; Nor buckets pour'd, nor strength of human hand, Can the victorious element withstand. The pious hero rends his robe, and throws To heav'n his hands, and with his hands his vows. "O Jove," he cried, "if pray'rs can yet have place; If thou abhorr'st not all the Dardan race; If any spark of pity still remain; If gods are gods, and not invok'd in vain; Yet spare the relics of the Trojan train! Yet from the flames our burning vessels free, Or let thy fury fall alone on me! At this devoted head thy thunder throw, And send the willing sacrifice below!" Scarce had he said, when southern storms arise: From pole to pole the forky lightning flies; Loud rattling shakes the mountains and the plain; Heav'n bellies downward, and descends in rain. Whole sheets of water from the clouds are sent, Which, hissing thro' the planks, the flames prevent, And stop the fiery pest. Four ships alone Burn to the waist, and for the fleet atone. But doubtful thoughts the hero's heart divide; If he should still in Sicily reside, Forgetful of his fates, or tempt the main, In hope the promis'd Italy to gain. Then Nautes, old and wise, to whom alone The will of Heav'n by Pallas was foreshown; Vers'd in portents, experienc'd, and inspir'd To tell events, and what the fates requir'd; Thus while he stood, to neither part inclin'd, With cheerful words reliev'd his lab'ring mind: "O goddess-born, resign'd in ev'ry state, With patience bear, with prudence push your fate. By suff'ring well, our Fortune we subdue; Fly when she frowns, and, when she calls, pursue. Your friend Acestes is of Trojan kind; To him disclose the secrets of your mind: Trust in his hands your old and useless train; Too num'rous for the ships which yet remain: The feeble, old, indulgent of their ease, The dames who dread the dangers of the seas, With all the dastard crew, who dare not stand The shock of battle with your foes by land. Here you may build a common town for all, And, from Acestes' name, Acesta call." The reasons, with his friend's experience join'd, Encourag'd much, but more disturb'd his mind. 'T was dead of night; when to his slumb'ring eyes His father's shade descended from the skies, And thus he spoke: "O more than vital breath, Lov'd while I liv'd, and dear ev'n after death; O son, in various toils and troubles toss'd, The King of Heav'n employs my careful ghost On his commands: the god, who sav'd from fire Your flaming fleet, and heard your just desire. The wholesome counsel of your friend receive, And here the coward train and woman leave: The chosen youth, and those who nobly dare, Transport, to tempt the dangers of the war. The stern Italians will their courage try; Rough are their manners, and their minds are high. But first to Pluto's palace you shall go, And seek my shade among the blest below: For not with impious ghosts my soul remains, Nor suffers with the damn'd perpetual pains, But breathes the living air of soft Elysian plains. The chaste Sibylla shall your steps convey, And blood of offer'd victims free the way. There shall you know what realms the gods assign, And learn the fates and fortunes of your line. But now, farewell! I vanish with the night, And feel the blast of heav'n's approaching light." He said, and mix'd with shades, and took his airy flight. "Whither so fast?" the filial duty cried; "And why, ah why, the wish'd embrace denied?" He said, and rose; as holy zeal inspires, He rakes hot embers, and renews the fires; His country gods and Vesta then adores With cakes and incense, and their aid implores. Next, for his friends and royal host he sent, Reveal'd his vision, and the gods' intent, With his own purpose. All, without delay, The will of Jove, and his desires obey. They list with women each degenerate name, Who dares not hazard life for future fame. These they cashier: the brave remaining few, Oars, banks, and cables, half consum'd, renew. The prince designs a city with the plow; The lots their sev'ral tenements allow. This part is nam'd from Ilium, that from Troy, And the new king ascends the throne with joy; A chosen senate from the people draws; Appoints the judges, and ordains the laws. Then, on the top of Eryx, they begin A rising temple to the Paphian queen. Anchises, last, is honor'd as a god; A priest is added, annual gifts bestow'd, And groves are planted round his blest abode. Nine days they pass in feasts, their temples crown'd; And fumes of incense in the fanes abound. Then from the south arose a gentle breeze That curl'd the smoothness of the glassy seas; The rising winds a ruffling gale afford, And call the merry mariners aboard. Now loud laments along the shores resound, Of parting friends in close embraces bound. The trembling women, the degenerate train, Who shunn'd the frightful dangers of the main, Ev'n those desire to sail, and take their share Of the rough passage and the promis'd war: Whom good Aeneas cheers, and recommends To their new master's care his fearful friends. On Eryx's altars three fat calves he lays; A lamb new-fallen to the stormy seas; Then slips his haulsers, and his anchors weighs. High on the deck the godlike hero stands, With olive crown'd, a charger in his hands; Then cast the reeking entrails in the brine, And pour'd the sacrifice of purple wine. Fresh gales arise; with equal strokes they vie, And brush the buxom seas, and o'er the billows fly. Meantime the mother goddess, full of fears, To Neptune thus address'd, with tender tears: "The pride of Jove's imperious queen, the rage, The malice which no suff'rings can assuage, Compel me to these pray'rs; since neither fate, Nor time, nor pity, can remove her hate: Ev'n Jove is thwarted by his haughty wife; Still vanquish'd, yet she still renews the strife. As if 't were little to consume the town Which aw'd the world, and wore th' imperial crown, She prosecutes the ghost of Troy with pains, And gnaws, ev'n to the bones, the last remains. Let her the causes of her hatred tell; But you can witness its effects too well. You saw the storm she rais'd on Libyan floods, That mix'd the mounting billows with the clouds; When, bribing Aeolus, she shook the main, And mov'd rebellion in your wat'ry reign. With fury she possess'd the Dardan dames, To burn their fleet with execrable flames, And forc'd Aeneas, when his ships were lost, To leave his foll'wers on a foreign coast. For what remains, your godhead I implore, And trust my son to your protecting pow'r. If neither Jove's nor Fate's decree withstand, Secure his passage to the Latian land." Then thus the mighty Ruler of the Main: "What may not Venus hope from Neptune's reign? My kingdom claims your birth; my late defense Of your indanger'd fleet may claim your confidence. Nor less by land than sea my deeds declare How much your lov'd Aeneas is my care. Thee, Xanthus, and thee, Simois, I attest. Your Trojan troops when proud Achilles press'd, And drove before him headlong on the plain, And dash'd against the walls the trembling train; When floods were fill'd with bodies of the slain; When crimson Xanthus, doubtful of his way, Stood up on ridges to behold the sea; (New heaps came tumbling in, and chok'd his way;) When your Aeneas fought, but fought with odds Of force unequal, and unequal gods; I spread a cloud before the victor's sight, Sustain'd the vanquish'd, and secur'd his flight; Ev'n then secur'd him, when I sought with joy The vow'd destruction of ungrateful Troy. My will's the same: fair goddess, fear no more, Your fleet shall safely gain the Latian shore; Their lives are giv'n; one destin'd head alone Shall perish, and for multitudes atone." Thus having arm'd with hopes her anxious mind, His finny team Saturnian Neptune join'd, Then adds the foamy bridle to their jaws, And to the loosen'd reins permits the laws. High on the waves his azure car he guides; Its axles thunder, and the sea subsides, And the smooth ocean rolls her silent tides. The tempests fly before their father's face, Trains of inferior gods his triumph grace, And monster whales before their master play, And choirs of Tritons crowd the wat'ry way. The marshal'd pow'rs in equal troops divide To right and left; the gods his better side Inclose, and on the worse the Nymphs and Nereids ride. Now smiling hope, with sweet vicissitude, Within the hero's mind his joys renew'd. He calls to raise the masts, the sheets display; The cheerful crew with diligence obey; They scud before the wind, and sail in open sea. Ahead of all the master pilot steers; And, as he leads, the following navy veers. The steeds of Night had travel'd half the sky, The drowsy rowers on their benches lie, When the soft God of Sleep, with easy flight, Descends, and draws behind a trail of light. Thou, Palinurus, art his destin'd prey; To thee alone he takes his fatal way. Dire dreams to thee, and iron sleep, he bears; And, lighting on thy prow, the form of Phorbas wears. Then thus the traitor god began his tale: "The winds, my friend, inspire a pleasing gale; The ships, without thy care, securely sail. Now steal an hour of sweet repose; and I Will take the rudder and thy room supply." To whom the yawning pilot, half asleep: "Me dost thou bid to trust the treach'rous deep, The harlot smiles of her dissembling face, And to her faith commit the Trojan race? Shall I believe the Siren South again, And, oft betray'd, not know the monster main?" He said: his fasten'd hands the rudder keep, And, fix'd on heav'n, his eyes repel invading sleep. The god was wroth, and at his temples threw A branch in Lethe dipp'd, and drunk with Stygian dew: The pilot, vanquish'd by the pow'r divine, Soon clos'd his swimming eyes, and lay supine. Scarce were his limbs extended at their length, The god, insulting with superior strength, Fell heavy on him, plung'd him in the sea, And, with the stern, the rudder tore away. Headlong he fell, and, struggling in the main, Cried out for helping hands, but cried in vain. The victor daemon mounts obscure in air, While the ship sails without the pilot's care. On Neptune's faith the floating fleet relies; But what the man forsook, the god supplies, And o'er the dang'rous deep secure the navy flies; Glides by the Sirens' cliffs, a shelfy coast, Long infamous for ships and sailors lost, And white with bones. Th' impetuous ocean roars, And rocks rebellow from the sounding shores. The watchful hero felt the knocks, and found The tossing vessel sail'd on shoaly ground. Sure of his pilot's loss, he takes himself The helm, and steers aloof, and shuns the shelf. Inly he griev'd, and, groaning from the breast, Deplor'd his death; and thus his pain express'd: "For faith repos'd on seas, and on the flatt'ring sky, Thy naked corpse is doom'd on shores unknown to lie."

Thus far unaware of Dido's tragic demise, Aeneas stands aboard his ship, watching the city of Carthage burn in the distance. When the fleet reaches open water, Palinurus, the pilot, calls out to Aeneas that the wind has shifted; they will not yet be able to sail to Italy. Aeneas replies that struggling against the winds is useless, so they should seek shelter in the Sicilian town of Drepanum, where his father is buried and his friend Acestes lives. Acestes greets the voyagers joyfully and offers them shelter and food. Aeneas realizes upon docking that it has been one year since the death of his father, so he orders a series of competitions to commemorate his passing. First, however, the Trojans offer sacrifices to Anchises. The moment that Aeneas calls out to his father, an enormous serpent crawls out of Anchises's shrine, tastes the feast that has been laid out, and returns harmlessly to the tomb. The men believe the serpent is the spirit of Anchises, and they resume the rites. First, Aeneas calls for a boat race. Four boats are selected, with four captains to man them: Mnestheus, Gyas, Sergestus, and Cloanthus. The boats are to race out to an island in the ocean, where they will find an ilex branch that will signal them to turn around. Virgil offers a detailed description of the race, with all four captains determined to win at any cost. Cloanthus is the victor, though Aeneas offers prizes to all four captains - even to Sergestus, the loser, who receives a female slave as compensation for his humiliation. The next competition is a footrace. The first two Trojans to enter the race are Nisus and Euryalus . Although Nisus initially has a strong lead, he slips in sacrificial blood and falls. He trips up Salius, who was in second place, so that his friend Euryalus will win. Aeneas, the "best of fathers" , is such a fair leader that he again gives all the men prizes, so that Nisus is not punished for having slipped and Salius is not punished for having been tripped. Next, Aeneas calls for a boxing match. The enormous, young Dares enters immediately but can find no one brave enough to challenge him. Finally, after much urging, the legendary Entellus enters the match. It is a battle between youth and experience, and it is the latter who ultimately emerges victorious. Aeneas, in the end, must intervene and tell Dares to give up so that the younger man is not killed in the fight. The final event is an archery competition, in which all the men must attempt to shoot a dove out of the air. This competition is most noteworthy because Acestes's arrow bursts into flames and disintegrates, which the men interpret as a powerful omen. Following this event, Aeneas calls for Ascanius, who is permitted to come out with his friends and "show himself in arms" . This is a great honor for the young man, in essence marking his coming-of-age. The happy festivities take a turn for the worse when Juno intervenes to cause dissent among the Trojan women, many of whom are tired of traveling and wish to settle in Drepanum. She appears to them in the guise of Beroe, an elderly woman, and urges them to set fire to the Trojan ships so that they will be unable to continue their journey. When the goddess reveals her true shape, the women are stunned into action, and they light the ships aflame. Fortunately, Aeneas notices the burning ships in time to appeal to Jupiter. Jupiter takes pity on the Trojans and sends a thunderstorm that saves all of the ships except four. That night, Anchises's shade appears to Aeneas in a dream, urging him to take the bravest of his group with him to Italy. First, however, Anchises tells Aeneas to travel to Dis, in order to seek a meeting with him in the underworld. Upon awakening, Aeneas calls his companions together and tells them that anyone who wishes to remain behind - those who do not seek "great fame" - may do so. Aeneas founds a city to be reigned over by Acestes, and he uses a plow to separate it into two districts named Troy and Ilium. In the meantime Venus, distressed by Juno's unending efforts to harm the Trojans, appeals to Neptune, asking the god of the sea to help the fleet reach its destination safely. Neptune replies that he will watch over the Trojans and that only one man will be lost. Thus, after the Trojans set out to sea once again, the god of sleep enchants Palinurus, the pilot: his eyelids grow heavy, he relaxes his limbs, and he falls, in a deep sleep, into the dark ocean. Book V ends with Aeneas mourning the loss of his friend.

The Miss Alans did go to Greece, but they went by themselves. They alone of this little company will double Malea and plough the waters of the Saronic gulf. They alone will visit Athens and Delphi, and either shrine of intellectual song--that upon the Acropolis, encircled by blue seas; that under Parnassus, where the eagles build and the bronze charioteer drives undismayed towards infinity. Trembling, anxious, cumbered with much digestive bread, they did proceed to Constantinople, they did go round the world. The rest of us must be contented with a fair, but a less arduous, goal. Italiam petimus: we return to the Pension Bertolini. George said it was his old room. "No, it isn't," said Lucy; "because it is the room I had, and I had your father's room. I forget why; Charlotte made me, for some reason." He knelt on the tiled floor, and laid his face in her lap. "George, you baby, get up." "Why shouldn't I be a baby?" murmured George. Unable to answer this question, she put down his sock, which she was trying to mend, and gazed out through the window. It was evening and again the spring. "Oh, bother Charlotte," she said thoughtfully. "What can such people be made of?" "Same stuff as parsons are made of." "Nonsense!" "Quite right. It is nonsense." "Now you get up off the cold floor, or you'll be starting rheumatism next, and you stop laughing and being so silly." "Why shouldn't I laugh?" he asked, pinning her with his elbows, and advancing his face to hers. "What's there to cry at? Kiss me here." He indicated the spot where a kiss would be welcome. He was a boy after all. When it came to the point, it was she who remembered the past, she into whose soul the iron had entered, she who knew whose room this had been last year. It endeared him to her strangely that he should be sometimes wrong. "Any letters?" he asked. "Just a line from Freddy." "Now kiss me here; then here." Then, threatened again with rheumatism, he strolled to the window, opened it (as the English will), and leant out. There was the parapet, there the river, there to the left the beginnings of the hills. The cab-driver, who at once saluted him with the hiss of a serpent, might be that very Phaethon who had set this happiness in motion twelve months ago. A passion of gratitude--all feelings grow to passions in the South--came over the husband, and he blessed the people and the things who had taken so much trouble about a young fool. He had helped himself, it is true, but how stupidly! All the fighting that mattered had been done by others--by Italy, by his father, by his wife. "Lucy, you come and look at the cypresses; and the church, whatever its name is, still shows." "San Miniato. I'll just finish your sock." "Signorino, domani faremo uno giro," called the cabman, with engaging certainty. George told him that he was mistaken; they had no money to throw away on driving. And the people who had not meant to help--the Miss Lavishes, the Cecils, the Miss Bartletts! Ever prone to magnify Fate, George counted up the forces that had swept him into this contentment. "Anything good in Freddy's letter?" "Not yet." His own content was absolute, but hers held bitterness: the Honeychurches had not forgiven them; they were disgusted at her past hypocrisy; she had alienated Windy Corner, perhaps for ever. "What does he say?" "Silly boy! He thinks he's being dignified. He knew we should go off in the spring--he has known it for six months--that if mother wouldn't give her consent we should take the thing into our own hands. They had fair warning, and now he calls it an elopement. Ridiculous boy--" "Signorino, domani faremo uno giro--" "But it will all come right in the end. He has to build us both up from the beginning again. I wish, though, that Cecil had not turned so cynical about women. He has, for the second time, quite altered. Why will men have theories about women? I haven't any about men. I wish, too, that Mr. Beebe--" "You may well wish that." "He will never forgive us--I mean, he will never be interested in us again. I wish that he did not influence them so much at Windy Corner. I wish he hadn't--But if we act the truth, the people who really love us are sure to come back to us in the long run." "Perhaps." Then he said more gently: "Well, I acted the truth--the only thing I did do--and you came back to me. So possibly you know." He turned back into the room. "Nonsense with that sock." He carried her to the window, so that she, too, saw all the view. They sank upon their knees, invisible from the road, they hoped, and began to whisper one another's names. Ah! it was worth while; it was the great joy that they had expected, and countless little joys of which they had never dreamt. They were silent. "Signorino, domani faremo--" "Oh, bother that man!" But Lucy remembered the vendor of photographs and said, "No, don't be rude to him." Then with a catching of her breath, she murmured: "Mr. Eager and Charlotte, dreadful frozen Charlotte. How cruel she would be to a man like that!" "Look at the lights going over the bridge." "But this room reminds me of Charlotte. How horrible to grow old in Charlotte's way! To think that evening at the rectory that she shouldn't have heard your father was in the house. For she would have stopped me going in, and he was the only person alive who could have made me see sense. You couldn't have made me. When I am very happy"--she kissed him--"I remember on how little it all hangs. If Charlotte had only known, she would have stopped me going in, and I should have gone to silly Greece, and become different for ever." "But she did know," said George; "she did see my father, surely. He said so." "Oh, no, she didn't see him. She was upstairs with old Mrs. Beebe, don't you remember, and then went straight to the church. She said so." George was obstinate again. "My father," said he, "saw her, and I prefer his word. He was dozing by the study fire, and he opened his eyes, and there was Miss Bartlett. A few minutes before you came in. She was turning to go as he woke up. He didn't speak to her." Then they spoke of other things--the desultory talk of those who have been fighting to reach one another, and whose reward is to rest quietly in each other's arms. It was long ere they returned to Miss Bartlett, but when they did her behaviour seemed more interesting. George, who disliked any darkness, said: "It's clear that she knew. Then, why did she risk the meeting? She knew he was there, and yet she went to church." They tried to piece the thing together. As they talked, an incredible solution came into Lucy's mind. She rejected it, and said: "How like Charlotte to undo her work by a feeble muddle at the last moment." But something in the dying evening, in the roar of the river, in their very embrace warned them that her words fell short of life, and George whispered: "Or did she mean it?" "Mean what?" "Signorino, domani faremo uno giro--" Lucy bent forward and said with gentleness: "Lascia, prego, lascia. Siamo sposati." "Scusi tanto, signora," he replied in tones as gentle and whipped up his horse. "Buona sera--e grazie." "Niente." The cabman drove away singing. "Mean what, George?" He whispered: "Is it this? Is this possible? I'll put a marvel to you. That your cousin has always hoped. That from the very first moment we met, she hoped, far down in her mind, that we should be like this--of course, very far down. That she fought us on the surface, and yet she hoped. I can't explain her any other way. Can you? Look how she kept me alive in you all the summer; how she gave you no peace; how month after month she became more eccentric and unreliable. The sight of us haunted her--or she couldn't have described us as she did to her friend. There are details--it burnt. I read the book afterwards. She is not frozen, Lucy, she is not withered up all through. She tore us apart twice, but in the rectory that evening she was given one more chance to make us happy. We can never make friends with her or thank her. But I do believe that, far down in her heart, far below all speech and behaviour, she is glad." "It is impossible," murmured Lucy, and then, remembering the experiences of her own heart, she said: "No--it is just possible." Youth enwrapped them; the song of Phaethon announced passion requited, love attained. But they were conscious of a love more mysterious than this. The song died away; they heard the river, bearing down the snows of winter into the Mediterranean.

Chapter 20 is titled "The End of the Middle Ages" because it marks the beginning of Lucy's Renaissance, her rebirth as a happily married woman. The Miss Alans go to Greece, but they go alone. Lucy and George, newly married, go back to the Pension Bertolini in Florence, where they first met. George has his head in Lucy's lap and is being silly and childish, which endears him to Lucy. He gets up to look out the window at the view, feeling full of gratitude that he is here with Lucy, and thinking of all the people who helped him to get there. Lucy's happiness is less complete. All of Windy Corner is upset, and Freddy has written an indignant letter protesting their "elopement. The two have had to marry without Mrs. Honeychurch's consent. Cecil has grown cynical about women, and Mr. Beebe still has not forgiven them. George and Lucy can only hope that if they act the truth, people who really love them will come back to them in the end. A carriage driver pesters them from the street below, trying to sell them on a ride in the countryside. Lucy thinks of Charlotte, and how rude she would be to such a man. She grows cross thinking of Charlotte and how her cousin had tried to ruin her happiness with George. George stops her. On the day that Lucy spoke to Mr. Emerson, Charlotte had known very well that the old man was in the Rectory, and yet she did not stop Lucy. It even seemed, on reflection, that Charlotte had deliberately arranged it so that Lucy would talk to Mr. Emerson. Charlotte, deep down, could have been hoping for them to be together all along, although she objected on the surface. At the Rectory she had given them one last chance to be happy. Lucy rejects the idea, but then decides that "it is just possible. The two of them are enwrapped in youthful love, but as they contemplate the mystery of how they came together, they are conscious of something deeper and more mysterious than this--a love eternal as the river outside their window.

ACT V. Scene I. Elsinore. A churchyard. Enter two Clowns, [with spades and pickaxes]. Clown. Is she to be buried in Christian burial when she wilfully seeks her own salvation? Other. I tell thee she is; therefore make her grave straight. The crowner hath sate on her, and finds it Christian burial. Clown. How can that be, unless she drown'd herself in her own defence? Other. Why, 'tis found so. Clown. It must be se offendendo; it cannot be else. For here lies the point: if I drown myself wittingly, it argues an act; and an act hath three branches-it is to act, to do, and to perform; argal, she drown'd herself wittingly. Other. Nay, but hear you, Goodman Delver! Clown. Give me leave. Here lies the water; good. Here stands the man; good. If the man go to this water and drown himself, it is, will he nill he, he goes- mark you that. But if the water come to him and drown him, he drowns not himself. Argal, he that is not guilty of his own death shortens not his own life. Other. But is this law? Clown. Ay, marry, is't- crowner's quest law. Other. Will you ha' the truth an't? If this had not been a gentlewoman, she should have been buried out o' Christian burial. Clown. Why, there thou say'st! And the more pity that great folk should have count'nance in this world to drown or hang themselves more than their even-Christian. Come, my spade! There is no ancient gentlemen but gard'ners, ditchers, and grave-makers. They hold up Adam's profession. Other. Was he a gentleman? Clown. 'A was the first that ever bore arms. Other. Why, he had none. Clown. What, art a heathen? How dost thou understand the Scripture? The Scripture says Adam digg'd. Could he dig without arms? I'll put another question to thee. If thou answerest me not to the purpose, confess thyself- Other. Go to! Clown. What is he that builds stronger than either the mason, the shipwright, or the carpenter? Other. The gallows-maker; for that frame outlives a thousand tenants. Clown. I like thy wit well, in good faith. The gallows does well. But how does it well? It does well to those that do ill. Now, thou dost ill to say the gallows is built stronger than the church. Argal, the gallows may do well to thee. To't again, come! Other. Who builds stronger than a mason, a shipwright, or a carpenter? Clown. Ay, tell me that, and unyoke. Other. Marry, now I can tell! Clown. To't. Other. Mass, I cannot tell. Enter Hamlet and Horatio afar off. Clown. Cudgel thy brains no more about it, for your dull ass will not mend his pace with beating; and when you are ask'd this question next, say 'a grave-maker.' The houses he makes lasts till doomsday. Go, get thee to Yaughan; fetch me a stoup of liquor. [Exit Second Clown.] [Clown digs and] sings. In youth when I did love, did love, Methought it was very sweet; To contract- O- the time for- a- my behove, O, methought there- a- was nothing- a- meet. Ham. Has this fellow no feeling of his business, that he sings at grave-making? Hor. Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness. Ham. 'Tis e'en so. The hand of little employment hath the daintier sense. Clown. (sings) But age with his stealing steps Hath clawed me in his clutch, And hath shipped me intil the land, As if I had never been such. [Throws up a skull.] Ham. That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once. How the knave jowls it to the ground,as if 'twere Cain's jawbone, that did the first murther! This might be the pate of a Politician, which this ass now o'erreaches; one that would circumvent God, might it not? Hor. It might, my lord. Ham. Or of a courtier, which could say 'Good morrow, sweet lord! How dost thou, good lord?' This might be my Lord Such-a-one, that prais'd my Lord Such-a-one's horse when he meant to beg it- might it not? Hor. Ay, my lord. Ham. Why, e'en so! and now my Lady Worm's, chapless, and knock'd about the mazzard with a sexton's spade. Here's fine revolution, and we had the trick to see't. Did these bones cost no more the breeding but to play at loggets with 'em? Mine ache to think on't. Clown. (Sings) A pickaxe and a spade, a spade, For and a shrouding sheet; O, a Pit of clay for to be made For such a guest is meet. Throws up [another skull]. Ham. There's another. Why may not that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddits now, his quillets, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks? Why does he suffer this rude knave now to knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him of his action of battery? Hum! This fellow might be in's time a great buyer of land, with his statutes, his recognizances, his fines, his double vouchers, his recoveries. Is this the fine of his fines, and the recovery of his recoveries, to have his fine pate full of fine dirt? Will his vouchers vouch him no more of his purchases, and double ones too, than the length and breadth of a pair of indentures? The very conveyances of his lands will scarcely lie in this box; and must th' inheritor himself have no more, ha? Hor. Not a jot more, my lord. Ham. Is not parchment made of sheepskins? Hor. Ay, my lord, And of calveskins too. Ham. They are sheep and calves which seek out assurance in that. I will speak to this fellow. Whose grave's this, sirrah? Clown. Mine, sir. [Sings] O, a pit of clay for to be made For such a guest is meet. Ham. I think it be thine indeed, for thou liest in't. Clown. You lie out on't, sir, and therefore 'tis not yours. For my part, I do not lie in't, yet it is mine. Ham. Thou dost lie in't, to be in't and say it is thine. 'Tis for the dead, not for the quick; therefore thou liest. Clown. 'Tis a quick lie, sir; 'twill away again from me to you. Ham. What man dost thou dig it for? Clown. For no man, sir. Ham. What woman then? Clown. For none neither. Ham. Who is to be buried in't? Clown. One that was a woman, sir; but, rest her soul, she's dead. Ham. How absolute the knave is! We must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us. By the Lord, Horatio, this three years I have taken note of it, the age is grown so picked that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier he galls his kibe.- How long hast thou been a grave-maker? Clown. Of all the days i' th' year, I came to't that day that our last king Hamlet overcame Fortinbras. Ham. How long is that since? Clown. Cannot you tell that? Every fool can tell that. It was the very day that young Hamlet was born- he that is mad, and sent into England. Ham. Ay, marry, why was be sent into England? Clown. Why, because 'a was mad. 'A shall recover his wits there; or, if 'a do not, 'tis no great matter there. Ham. Why? Clown. 'Twill not he seen in him there. There the men are as mad as he. Ham. How came he mad? Clown. Very strangely, they say. Ham. How strangely? Clown. Faith, e'en with losing his wits. Ham. Upon what ground? Clown. Why, here in Denmark. I have been sexton here, man and boy thirty years. Ham. How long will a man lie i' th' earth ere he rot? Clown. Faith, if 'a be not rotten before 'a die (as we have many pocky corses now-a-days that will scarce hold the laying in, I will last you some eight year or nine year. A tanner will last you nine year. Ham. Why he more than another? Clown. Why, sir, his hide is so tann'd with his trade that 'a will keep out water a great while; and your water is a sore decayer of your whoreson dead body. Here's a skull now. This skull hath lien you i' th' earth three-and-twenty years. Ham. Whose was it? Clown. A whoreson, mad fellow's it was. Whose do you think it was? Ham. Nay, I know not. Clown. A pestilence on him for a mad rogue! 'A pour'd a flagon of Rhenish on my head once. This same skull, sir, was Yorick's skull, the King's jester. Ham. This? Clown. E'en that. Ham. Let me see. [Takes the skull.] Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio. A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times. And now how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kiss'd I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? Quite chap- fall'n? Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come. Make her laugh at that. Prithee, Horatio, tell me one thing. Hor. What's that, my lord? Ham. Dost thou think Alexander look'd o' this fashion i' th' earth? Hor. E'en so. Ham. And smelt so? Pah! [Puts down the skull.] Hor. E'en so, my lord. Ham. To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander till he find it stopping a bunghole? Hor. 'Twere to consider too curiously, to consider so. Ham. No, faith, not a jot; but to follow him thither with modesty enough, and likelihood to lead it; as thus: Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth into dust; the dust is earth; of earth we make loam; and why of that loam (whereto he was converted) might they not stop a beer barrel? Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away. O, that that earth which kept the world in awe Should patch a wall t' expel the winter's flaw! But soft! but soft! aside! Here comes the King- Enter [priests with] a coffin [in funeral procession], King, Queen, Laertes, with Lords attendant.] The Queen, the courtiers. Who is this they follow? And with such maimed rites? This doth betoken The corse they follow did with desp'rate hand Fordo it own life. 'Twas of some estate. Couch we awhile, and mark. [Retires with Horatio.] Laer. What ceremony else? Ham. That is Laertes, A very noble youth. Mark. Laer. What ceremony else? Priest. Her obsequies have been as far enlarg'd As we have warranty. Her death was doubtful; And, but that great command o'ersways the order, She should in ground unsanctified have lodg'd Till the last trumpet. For charitable prayers, Shards, flints, and pebbles should be thrown on her. Yet here she is allow'd her virgin rites, Her maiden strewments, and the bringing home Of bell and burial. Laer. Must there no more be done? Priest. No more be done. We should profane the service of the dead To sing a requiem and such rest to her As to peace-parted souls. Laer. Lay her i' th' earth; And from her fair and unpolluted flesh May violets spring! I tell thee, churlish priest, A minist'ring angel shall my sister be When thou liest howling. Ham. What, the fair Ophelia? Queen. Sweets to the sweet! Farewell. [Scatters flowers.] I hop'd thou shouldst have been my Hamlet's wife; I thought thy bride-bed to have deck'd, sweet maid, And not have strew'd thy grave. Laer. O, treble woe Fall ten times treble on that cursed head Whose wicked deed thy most ingenious sense Depriv'd thee of! Hold off the earth awhile, Till I have caught her once more in mine arms. Leaps in the grave. Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead Till of this flat a mountain you have made T' o'ertop old Pelion or the skyish head Of blue Olympus. Ham. [comes forward] What is he whose grief Bears such an emphasis? whose phrase of sorrow Conjures the wand'ring stars, and makes them stand Like wonder-wounded hearers? This is I, Hamlet the Dane. [Leaps in after Laertes. Laer. The devil take thy soul! [Grapples with him]. Ham. Thou pray'st not well. I prithee take thy fingers from my throat; For, though I am not splenitive and rash, Yet have I in me something dangerous, Which let thy wisdom fear. Hold off thy hand! King. Pluck them asunder. Queen. Hamlet, Hamlet! All. Gentlemen! Hor. Good my lord, be quiet. [The Attendants part them, and they come out of the grave.] Ham. Why, I will fight with him upon this theme Until my eyelids will no longer wag. Queen. O my son, what theme? Ham. I lov'd Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers Could not (with all their quantity of love) Make up my sum. What wilt thou do for her? King. O, he is mad, Laertes. Queen. For love of God, forbear him! Ham. 'Swounds, show me what thou't do. Woo't weep? woo't fight? woo't fast? woo't tear thyself? Woo't drink up esill? eat a crocodile? I'll do't. Dost thou come here to whine? To outface me with leaping in her grave? Be buried quick with her, and so will I. And if thou prate of mountains, let them throw Millions of acres on us, till our ground, Singeing his pate against the burning zone, Make Ossa like a wart! Nay, an thou'lt mouth, I'll rant as well as thou. Queen. This is mere madness; And thus a while the fit will work on him. Anon, as patient as the female dove When that her golden couplets are disclos'd, His silence will sit drooping. Ham. Hear you, sir! What is the reason that you use me thus? I lov'd you ever. But it is no matter. Let Hercules himself do what he may, The cat will mew, and dog will have his day. Exit. King. I pray thee, good Horatio, wait upon him. Exit Horatio. [To Laertes] Strengthen your patience in our last night's speech. We'll put the matter to the present push.- Good Gertrude, set some watch over your son.- This grave shall have a living monument. An hour of quiet shortly shall we see; Till then in patience our proceeding be. Exeunt.

Two gravediggers are in a cemetery, discussing the Christian burial accorded to Ophelia. Though her funeral is not allowed in the church, she has been given a plot in its graveyard. As they work, the gravediggers are clownish, telling one another riddles and making jokes. Hamlet and Horatio enter as one gravedigger begins to sing happily. Hamlet watches as the gravedigger picks up a skull from the grave and throws it on the ground. Hamlet's thoughts turn to the inevitability of death; he imagines the people whose bones now lie in the graveyard and wonders what kind of lives they led. When Hamlet talks to one of the gravediggers, he learns that some of the bones belong to Yorick, the old court jester. Hamlet reminisces about the fact that Yorick had often shown him affection, carrying him on his back; Though he once had the power to make everyone in the court happy, the old jester is now nothing but a pile of bones. Hamlet is impressed with the leveling force of death. As the funeral procession approaches, Hamlet and Horatio retire some distance away from the grave in order to observe and not be seen. Hamlet is quick to notice that the burial is for somebody who has committed suicide, for there are no religious rites of a Christian funeral and no requiem is sung. Hamlet then spies Laertes, who commands the coffin to be lowered in the pit. He says that when the casket is covered with mud, violets are sure to grow from it. He also claims that his beloved sister will still be an angel of virtue when the priest himself lies howling for mercy. Next, the Queen bids Ophelia farewell, scattering flowers on her grave and remarking that she always wanted Ophelia and Hamlet to marry. Then, overcome with grief, Laertes jumps in the grave with his sister and calls out to the gravedigger to bury him as well. Hamlet is overcome with sorrow over Ophelia's death and joins Laertes in the grave. When the two men argue, they are restrained by Claudius and Gertrude. As Hamlet leaves, Claudius slyly indicates to Laertes that his opportunity for revenge is almost at hand.

"Here!" cried Alice. She jumped up in such a hurry that she tipped over the jury-box, upsetting all the jurymen on to the heads of the crowd below. "Oh, I _beg_ your pardon!" she exclaimed in a tone of great dismay. "The trial cannot proceed," said the King, "until all the jurymen are back in their proper places--_all_," he repeated with great emphasis, looking hard at Alice. "What do you know about this business?" the King said to Alice. "Nothing whatever," said Alice. The King then read from his book: "Rule forty-two. _All persons more than a mile high to leave the court_." "_I'm_ not a mile high," said Alice. "Nearly two miles high," said the Queen. [Illustration] "Well, I sha'n't go, at any rate," said Alice. The King turned pale and shut his note-book hastily. "Consider your verdict," he said to the jury, in a low, trembling voice. "There's more evidence to come yet, please Your Majesty," said the White Rabbit, jumping up in a great hurry. "This paper has just been picked up. It seems to be a letter written by the prisoner to--to somebody." He unfolded the paper as he spoke and added, "It isn't a letter, after all; it's a set of verses." "Please, Your Majesty," said the Knave, "I didn't write it and they can't prove that I did; there's no name signed at the end." "You _must_ have meant some mischief, or else you'd have signed your name like an honest man," said the King. There was a general clapping of hands at this. "Read them," he added, turning to the White Rabbit. There was dead silence in the court whilst the White Rabbit read out the verses. "That's the most important piece of evidence we've heard yet," said the King. "_I_ don't believe there's an atom of meaning in it," ventured Alice. "If there's no meaning in it," said the King, "that saves a world of trouble, you know, as we needn't try to find any. Let the jury consider their verdict." "No, no!" said the Queen. "Sentence first--verdict afterwards." "Stuff and nonsense!" said Alice loudly. "The idea of having the sentence first!" "Hold your tongue!" said the Queen, turning purple. "I won't!" said Alice. "Off with her head!" the Queen shouted at the top of her voice. Nobody moved. "Who cares for _you_?" said Alice (she had grown to her full size by this time). "You're nothing but a pack of cards!" At this, the whole pack rose up in the air and came flying down upon her; she gave a little scream, half of fright and half of anger, and tried to beat them off, and found herself lying on the bank, with her head in the lap of her sister, who was gently brushing away some dead leaves that had fluttered down from the trees upon her face. "Wake up, Alice dear!" said her sister. "Why, what a long sleep you've had!" "Oh, I've had such a curious dream!" said Alice. And she told her sister, as well as she could remember them, all these strange adventures of hers that you have just been reading about. Alice got up and ran off, thinking while she ran, as well she might, what a wonderful dream it had been.

In this chapter the Turtle describes a kind of line dance which is acted out between many assorted sea creatures each paired with a lobster for a partner. However, the principle part of this chapter is actually devoted to the Song sung during the quadrille. After singing the song of the Lobster-Quadrille, the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon speak with Alice. Finally the conversation comes around to Alice and she tells them her journeys up to that point. The story is stopped when Alice gets to the part about her misremembering "Old Father William." The Turtle asks her to try and repeat something else so he can see if everything is coming out wrong. They ask her to repeat a rhyme called "'Tis the voice of the sluggard." It all comes out wrong, so the Mock Turtle demands that it be explained. But Alice has no clue what it all means when it comes out so strangely. So, Alice finally stops her reciting and asks the Turtle to sing her a song, which he does. He sings "Turtle Soup." The chapter is finally cut short, part way through the Turtle's song, by an announcement. In the distance someone calls out "The trial is beginning!" Even without the Mock Turtle crying all of the time this would still be a very sad chapter. Basically this chapter is concerned with what has been lost. It's about the past, and about memory. The Mock Turtle seems to be equating his student days, his childhood, with the time when he was a Real Turtle. Now, as an adult, he doesn't feel as though he is alive or real anymore. The chapter ends with that very gruesome song about Turtle Soup. It is very strange because up to this point the great taboo of Wonderland for Alice is the discussion of eating animals because all of the animals don't want to face their own mortality. Now, however, it seems that the Mock Turtle feels an overpowering sense of nostalgia for his childhood and therefore is a bit obsessed with death as his only alternative. It seems to him that nothing makes much sense anymore, now that he is out of school. The fact that Alice can't seem to even remember her school lessons properly makes matters more pointed for the Turtle, making him feel even more alone perhaps.

ACT III. SCENE I. Before the castle. Enter Cassio and some Musicians. CASSIO. Masters, play here, I will content your pains; Something that's brief; and bid "Good morrow, general." Music. Enter Clown. CLOWN. Why, masters, have your instruments been in Naples, that they speak i' the nose thus? FIRST MUSICIAN. How, sir, how? CLOWN. Are these, I pray you, wind instruments? FIRST MUSICIAN. Ay, marry, are they, sir. CLOWN. O, thereby hangs a tail. FIRST MUSICIAN. Whereby hangs a tale, sir? CLOWN. Marry, sir, by many a wind instrument that I know. But, masters, here's money for you; and the general so likes your music, that he desires you, for love's sake, to make no more noise with it. FIRST MUSICIAN. Well, sir, we will not. CLOWN. If you have any music that may not be heard, to't again; but, as they say, to hear music the general does not greatly care. FIRST MUSICIAN. We have none such, sir. CLOWN. Then put up your pipes in your bag, for I'll away. Go, vanish into air, away! Exeunt Musicians. CASSIO. Dost thou hear, my honest friend? CLOWN. No, I hear not your honest friend; I hear you. CASSIO. Prithee, keep up thy quillets. There's a poor piece of gold for thee. If the gentlewoman that attends the general's wife be stirring, tell her there's one Cassio entreats her a little favor of speech. Wilt thou do this? CLOWN. She is stirring, sir. If she will stir hither, I shall seem to notify unto her. CASSIO. Do, good my friend. Exit Clown. Enter Iago. In happy time, Iago. IAGO. You have not been abed, then? CASSIO. Why, no; the day had broke Before we parted. I have made bold, Iago, To send in to your wife. My suit to her Is that she will to virtuous Desdemona Procure me some access. IAGO. I'll send her to you presently; And I'll devise a mean to draw the Moor Out of the way, that your converse and business May be more free. CASSIO. I humbly thank you for't. [Exit Iago.] I never knew A Florentine more kind and honest. Enter Emilia. EMILIA. Good morrow, good lieutenant. I am sorry For your displeasure, but all will sure be well. The general and his wife are talking of it, And she speaks for you stoutly. The Moor replies That he you hurt is of great fame in Cyprus And great affinity and that in wholesome wisdom He might not but refuse you; but he protests he loves you And needs no other suitor but his likings To take the safest occasion by the front To bring you in again. CASSIO. Yet, I beseech you, If you think fit, or that it may be done, Give me advantage of some brief discourse With Desdemona alone. EMILIA. Pray you, come in. I will bestow you where you shall have time To speak your bosom freely. CASSIO. I am much bound to you. Exeunt.

Cassio, eager to please, has sent some musicians to play, badly, in hopes of winning back Othello's good favor. Othello's clown comes out and asks the players why their instruments sound so nasal. Next, the Clown insults the musicians by comparing the noise from their instruments to...well, farts. Get it? Wind instruments, breaking wind? Then he tells them that Othello likes their music so much he wants them to stop making noise with it. Of course, if they have any music that can't be heard , they're welcome to play it. The musicians say they don't have any music like that, so he sends them away. Cassio asks him if Emilia is up yet. Just then, Iago enters and is shocked to see Cassio hasn't yet gone to bed. Cassio says he's already sent for Emilia, and Iago promises to send her to Cassio post-haste, so she can hear his plea and make it to Desdemona. In the meantime, Iago promises to lure Othello away from Desdemona, so Cassio can speak with her freely. Iago exits to do more evil master-planning. After Cassio praises Iago for his kindness and honesty, Emilia enters and reports that Desdemona is already pleading to Othello on Cassio's behalf. Othello worries that Montano, Cassio's victim, is kind of a big deal in Cyprus, though Othello has decided that his liking for Cassio should be enough to overcome the fact that Cassio has wronged the wrong guy. Cassio asks Emilia if perhaps he might speak to Desdemona alone. Emilia goes to see if she can arrange such a meeting.

It was already late at night, and as dark as it ever would be at that season of the year (and that is to say, it was still pretty bright), when Hoseason clapped his head into the round-house door. "Here," said he, "come out and see if ye can pilot." "Is this one of your tricks?" asked Alan. "Do I look like tricks?" cries the captain. "I have other things to think of--my brig's in danger!" By the concerned look of his face, and, above all, by the sharp tones in which he spoke of his brig, it was plain to both of us he was in deadly earnest; and so Alan and I, with no great fear of treachery, stepped on deck. The sky was clear; it blew hard, and was bitter cold; a great deal of daylight lingered; and the moon, which was nearly full, shone brightly. The brig was close hauled, so as to round the southwest corner of the Island of Mull, the hills of which (and Ben More above them all, with a wisp of mist upon the top of it) lay full upon the lar-board bow. Though it was no good point of sailing for the Covenant, she tore through the seas at a great rate, pitching and straining, and pursued by the westerly swell. Altogether it was no such ill night to keep the seas in; and I had begun to wonder what it was that sat so heavily upon the captain, when the brig rising suddenly on the top of a high swell, he pointed and cried to us to look. Away on the lee bow, a thing like a fountain rose out of the moonlit sea, and immediately after we heard a low sound of roaring. "What do ye call that?" asked the captain, gloomily. "The sea breaking on a reef," said Alan. "And now ye ken where it is; and what better would ye have?" "Ay," said Hoseason, "if it was the only one." And sure enough, just as he spoke there came a second fountain farther to the south. "There!" said Hoseason. "Ye see for yourself. If I had kent of these reefs, if I had had a chart, or if Shuan had been spared, it's not sixty guineas, no, nor six hundred, would have made me risk my brig in sic a stoneyard! But you, sir, that was to pilot us, have ye never a word?" "I'm thinking," said Alan, "these'll be what they call the Torran Rocks." "Are there many of them?" says the captain. "Truly, sir, I am nae pilot," said Alan; "but it sticks in my mind there are ten miles of them." Mr. Riach and the captain looked at each other. "There's a way through them, I suppose?" said the captain. "Doubtless," said Alan, "but where? But it somehow runs in my mind once more that it is clearer under the land." "So?" said Hoseason. "We'll have to haul our wind then, Mr. Riach; we'll have to come as near in about the end of Mull as we can take her, sir; and even then we'll have the land to kep the wind off us, and that stoneyard on our lee. Well, we're in for it now, and may as well crack on." With that he gave an order to the steersman, and sent Riach to the foretop. There were only five men on deck, counting the officers; these being all that were fit (or, at least, both fit and willing) for their work. So, as I say, it fell to Mr. Riach to go aloft, and he sat there looking out and hailing the deck with news of all he saw. "The sea to the south is thick," he cried; and then, after a while, "it does seem clearer in by the land." "Well, sir," said Hoseason to Alan, "we'll try your way of it. But I think I might as well trust to a blind fiddler. Pray God you're right." "Pray God I am!" says Alan to me. "But where did I hear it? Well, well, it will be as it must." As we got nearer to the turn of the land the reefs began to be sown here and there on our very path; and Mr. Riach sometimes cried down to us to change the course. Sometimes, indeed, none too soon; for one reef was so close on the brig's weather board that when a sea burst upon it the lighter sprays fell upon her deck and wetted us like rain. The brightness of the night showed us these perils as clearly as by day, which was, perhaps, the more alarming. It showed me, too, the face of the captain as he stood by the steersman, now on one foot, now on the other, and sometimes blowing in his hands, but still listening and looking and as steady as steel. Neither he nor Mr. Riach had shown well in the fighting; but I saw they were brave in their own trade, and admired them all the more because I found Alan very white. "Ochone, David," says he, "this is no the kind of death I fancy!" "What, Alan!" I cried, "you're not afraid?" "No," said he, wetting his lips, "but you'll allow, yourself, it's a cold ending." By this time, now and then sheering to one side or the other to avoid a reef, but still hugging the wind and the land, we had got round Iona and begun to come alongside Mull. The tide at the tail of the land ran very strong, and threw the brig about. Two hands were put to the helm, and Hoseason himself would sometimes lend a help; and it was strange to see three strong men throw their weight upon the tiller, and it (like a living thing) struggle against and drive them back. This would have been the greater danger had not the sea been for some while free of obstacles. Mr. Riach, besides, announced from the top that he saw clear water ahead. "Ye were right," said Hoseason to Alan. "Ye have saved the brig, sir. I'll mind that when we come to clear accounts." And I believe he not only meant what he said, but would have done it; so high a place did the Covenant hold in his affections. But this is matter only for conjecture, things having gone otherwise than he forecast. "Keep her away a point," sings out Mr. Riach. "Reef to windward!" And just at the same time the tide caught the brig, and threw the wind out of her sails. She came round into the wind like a top, and the next moment struck the reef with such a dunch as threw us all flat upon the deck, and came near to shake Mr. Riach from his place upon the mast. I was on my feet in a minute. The reef on which we had struck was close in under the southwest end of Mull, off a little isle they call Earraid, which lay low and black upon the larboard. Sometimes the swell broke clean over us; sometimes it only ground the poor brig upon the reef, so that we could hear her beat herself to pieces; and what with the great noise of the sails, and the singing of the wind, and the flying of the spray in the moonlight, and the sense of danger, I think my head must have been partly turned, for I could scarcely understand the things I saw. Presently I observed Mr. Riach and the seamen busy round the skiff, and, still in the same blank, ran over to assist them; and as soon as I set my hand to work, my mind came clear again. It was no very easy task, for the skiff lay amidships and was full of hamper, and the breaking of the heavier seas continually forced us to give over and hold on; but we all wrought like horses while we could. Meanwhile such of the wounded as could move came clambering out of the fore-scuttle and began to help; while the rest that lay helpless in their bunks harrowed me with screaming and begging to be saved. The captain took no part. It seemed he was struck stupid. He stood holding by the shrouds, talking to himself and groaning out aloud whenever the ship hammered on the rock. His brig was like wife and child to him; he had looked on, day by day, at the mishandling of poor Ransome; but when it came to the brig, he seemed to suffer along with her. All the time of our working at the boat, I remember only one other thing: that I asked Alan, looking across at the shore, what country it was; and he answered, it was the worst possible for him, for it was a land of the Campbells. We had one of the wounded men told off to keep a watch upon the seas and cry us warning. Well, we had the boat about ready to be launched, when this man sang out pretty shrill: "For God's sake, hold on!" We knew by his tone that it was something more than ordinary; and sure enough, there followed a sea so huge that it lifted the brig right up and canted her over on her beam. Whether the cry came too late, or my hold was too weak, I know not; but at the sudden tilting of the ship I was cast clean over the bulwarks into the sea. I went down, and drank my fill, and then came up, and got a blink of the moon, and then down again. They say a man sinks a third time for good. I cannot be made like other folk, then; for I would not like to write how often I went down, or how often I came up again. All the while, I was being hurled along, and beaten upon and choked, and then swallowed whole; and the thing was so distracting to my wits, that I was neither sorry nor afraid. Presently, I found I was holding to a spar, which helped me somewhat. And then all of a sudden I was in quiet water, and began to come to myself. It was the spare yard I had got hold of, and I was amazed to see how far I had travelled from the brig. I hailed her, indeed; but it was plain she was already out of cry. She was still holding together; but whether or not they had yet launched the boat, I was too far off and too low down to see. While I was hailing the brig, I spied a tract of water lying between us where no great waves came, but which yet boiled white all over and bristled in the moon with rings and bubbles. Sometimes the whole tract swung to one side, like the tail of a live serpent; sometimes, for a glimpse, it would all disappear and then boil up again. What it was I had no guess, which for the time increased my fear of it; but I now know it must have been the roost or tide race, which had carried me away so fast and tumbled me about so cruelly, and at last, as if tired of that play, had flung out me and the spare yard upon its landward margin. I now lay quite becalmed, and began to feel that a man can die of cold as well as of drowning. The shores of Earraid were close in; I could see in the moonlight the dots of heather and the sparkling of the mica in the rocks. "Well," thought I to myself, "if I cannot get as far as that, it's strange!" I had no skill of swimming, Essen Water being small in our neighbourhood; but when I laid hold upon the yard with both arms, and kicked out with both feet, I soon begun to find that I was moving. Hard work it was, and mortally slow; but in about an hour of kicking and splashing, I had got well in between the points of a sandy bay surrounded by low hills. The sea was here quite quiet; there was no sound of any surf; the moon shone clear; and I thought in my heart I had never seen a place so desert and desolate. But it was dry land; and when at last it grew so shallow that I could leave the yard and wade ashore upon my feet, I cannot tell if I was more tired or more grateful. Both, at least, I was: tired as I never was before that night; and grateful to God as I trust I have been often, though never with more cause.

The Loss of the Brig Hoseason comes to the Round-House and informs Alan and David that something is wrong. He asks them to come up, and points to several large rocks in the distance. Alan identifies them as the Torran Rocks, a series of large boulders that just out of the sea and pose a danger to ships. Alan is not sure, but he thinks there are fewer rocks closer to shore. Hoseason swings the ship closer to the shore, off the islet of Earraid, and just as the Covenant seems like it will make it through, the ship strikes a reef. The men scramble to try and prepare a lifeboat, but David gets washed overboard. He grabs a piece of wood and hangs on until he is thrown up on the shore, thanking God that he is alive

GOVINDA Together with other monks, Govinda used to spend the time of rest between pilgrimages in the pleasure-grove, which the courtesan Kamala had given to the followers of Gotama for a gift. He heard talk of an old ferryman, who lived one day's journey away by the river, and who was regarded as a wise man by many. When Govinda went back on his way, he chose the path to the ferry, eager to see the ferryman. Because, though he had lived his entire life by the rules, though he was also looked upon with veneration by the younger monks on account of his age and his modesty, the restlessness and the searching still had not perished from his heart. He came to the river and asked the old man to ferry him over, and when they got off the boat on the other side, he said to the old man: "You're very good to us monks and pilgrims, you have already ferried many of us across the river. Aren't you too, ferryman, a searcher for the right path?" Quoth Siddhartha, smiling from his old eyes: "Do you call yourself a searcher, oh venerable one, though you are already of an old in years and are wearing the robe of Gotama's monks?" "It's true, I'm old," spoke Govinda, "but I haven't stopped searching. Never I'll stop searching, this seems to be my destiny. You too, so it seems to me, have been searching. Would you like to tell me something, oh honourable one?" Quoth Siddhartha: "What should I possibly have to tell you, oh venerable one? Perhaps that you're searching far too much? That in all that searching, you don't find the time for finding?" "How come?" asked Govinda. "When someone is searching," said Siddhartha, "then it might easily happen that the only thing his eyes still see is that what he searches for, that he is unable to find anything, to let anything enter his mind, because he always thinks of nothing but the object of his search, because he has a goal, because he is obsessed by the goal. Searching means: having a goal. But finding means: being free, being open, having no goal. You, oh venerable one, are perhaps indeed a searcher, because, striving for your goal, there are many things you don't see, which are directly in front of your eyes." "I don't quite understand yet," asked Govinda, "what do you mean by this?" Quoth Siddhartha: "A long time ago, oh venerable one, many years ago, you've once before been at this river and have found a sleeping man by the river, and have sat down with him to guard his sleep. But, oh Govinda, you did not recognise the sleeping man." Astonished, as if he had been the object of a magic spell, the monk looked into the ferryman's eyes. "Are you Siddhartha?" he asked with a timid voice. "I wouldn't have recognised you this time as well! From my heart, I'm greeting you, Siddhartha; from my heart, I'm happy to see you once again! You've changed a lot, my friend.--And so you've now become a ferryman?" In a friendly manner, Siddhartha laughed. "A ferryman, yes. Many people, Govinda, have to change a lot, have to wear many a robe, I am one of those, my dear. Be welcome, Govinda, and spend the night in my hut." Govinda stayed the night in the hut and slept on the bed which used to be Vasudeva's bed. Many questions he posed to the friend of his youth, many things Siddhartha had to tell him from his life. When in the next morning the time had come to start the day's journey, Govinda said, not without hesitation, these words: "Before I'll continue on my path, Siddhartha, permit me to ask one more question. Do you have a teaching? Do you have a faith, or a knowledge, you follow, which helps you to live and to do right?" Quoth Siddhartha: "You know, my dear, that I already as a young man, in those days when we lived with the penitents in the forest, started to distrust teachers and teachings and to turn my back to them. I have stuck with this. Nevertheless, I have had many teachers since then. A beautiful courtesan has been my teacher for a long time, and a rich merchant was my teacher, and some gamblers with dice. Once, even a follower of Buddha, travelling on foot, has been my teacher; he sat with me when I had fallen asleep in the forest, on the pilgrimage. I've also learned from him, I'm also grateful to him, very grateful. But most of all, I have learned here from this river and from my predecessor, the ferryman Vasudeva. He was a very simple person, Vasudeva, he was no thinker, but he knew what is necessary just as well as Gotama, he was a perfect man, a saint." Govinda said: "Still, oh Siddhartha, you love a bit to mock people, as it seems to me. I believe in you and know that you haven't followed a teacher. But haven't you found something by yourself, though you've found no teachings, you still found certain thoughts, certain insights, which are your own and which help you to live? If you would like to tell me some of these, you would delight my heart." Quoth Siddhartha: "I've had thoughts, yes, and insight, again and again. Sometimes, for an hour or for an entire day, I have felt knowledge in me, as one would feel life in one's heart. There have been many thoughts, but it would be hard for me to convey them to you. Look, my dear Govinda, this is one of my thoughts, which I have found: wisdom cannot be passed on. Wisdom which a wise man tries to pass on to someone always sounds like foolishness." "Are you kidding?" asked Govinda. "I'm not kidding. I'm telling you what I've found. Knowledge can be conveyed, but not wisdom. It can be found, it can be lived, it is possible to be carried by it, miracles can be performed with it, but it cannot be expressed in words and taught. This was what I, even as a young man, sometimes suspected, what has driven me away from the teachers. I have found a thought, Govinda, which you'll again regard as a joke or foolishness, but which is my best thought. It says: The opposite of every truth is just as true! That's like this: any truth can only be expressed and put into words when it is one-sided. Everything is one-sided which can be thought with thoughts and said with words, it's all one-sided, all just one half, all lacks completeness, roundness, oneness. When the exalted Gotama spoke in his teachings of the world, he had to divide it into Sansara and Nirvana, into deception and truth, into suffering and salvation. It cannot be done differently, there is no other way for him who wants to teach. But the world itself, what exists around us and inside of us, is never one-sided. A person or an act is never entirely Sansara or entirely Nirvana, a person is never entirely holy or entirely sinful. It does really seem like this, because we are subject to deception, as if time was something real. Time is not real, Govinda, I have experienced this often and often again. And if time is not real, then the gap which seems to be between the world and the eternity, between suffering and blissfulness, between evil and good, is also a deception." "How come?" asked Govinda timidly. "Listen well, my dear, listen well! The sinner, which I am and which you are, is a sinner, but in times to come he will be Brahma again, he will reach the Nirvana, will be Buddha--and now see: these 'times to come' are a deception, are only a parable! The sinner is not on his way to become a Buddha, he is not in the process of developing, though our capacity for thinking does not know how else to picture these things. No, within the sinner is now and today already the future Buddha, his future is already all there, you have to worship in him, in you, in everyone the Buddha which is coming into being, the possible, the hidden Buddha. The world, my friend Govinda, is not imperfect, or on a slow path towards perfection: no, it is perfect in every moment, all sin already carries the divine forgiveness in itself, all small children already have the old person in themselves, all infants already have death, all dying people the eternal life. It is not possible for any person to see how far another one has already progressed on his path; in the robber and dice-gambler, the Buddha is waiting; in the Brahman, the robber is waiting. In deep meditation, there is the possibility to put time out of existence, to see all life which was, is, and will be as if it was simultaneous, and there everything is good, everything is perfect, everything is Brahman. Therefore, I see whatever exists as good, death is to me like life, sin like holiness, wisdom like foolishness, everything has to be as it is, everything only requires my consent, only my willingness, my loving agreement, to be good for me, to do nothing but work for my benefit, to be unable to ever harm me. I have experienced on my body and on my soul that I needed sin very much, I needed lust, the desire for possessions, vanity, and needed the most shameful despair, in order to learn how to give up all resistance, in order to learn how to love the world, in order to stop comparing it to some world I wished, I imagined, some kind of perfection I had made up, but to leave it as it is and to love it and to enjoy being a part of it.--These, oh Govinda, are some of the thoughts which have come into my mind." Siddhartha bent down, picked up a stone from the ground, and weighed it in his hand. "This here," he said playing with it, "is a stone, and will, after a certain time, perhaps turn into soil, and will turn from soil into a plant or animal or human being. In the past, I would have said: This stone is just a stone, it is worthless, it belongs to the world of the Maja; but because it might be able to become also a human being and a spirit in the cycle of transformations, therefore I also grant it importance. Thus, I would perhaps have thought in the past. But today I think: this stone is a stone, it is also animal, it is also god, it is also Buddha, I do not venerate and love it because it could turn into this or that, but rather because it is already and always everything-- and it is this very fact, that it is a stone, that it appears to me now and today as a stone, this is why I love it and see worth and purpose in each of its veins and cavities, in the yellow, in the gray, in the hardness, in the sound it makes when I knock at it, in the dryness or wetness of its surface. There are stones which feel like oil or soap, and others like leaves, others like sand, and every one is special and prays the Om in its own way, each one is Brahman, but simultaneously and just as much it is a stone, is oily or juicy, and this is this very fact which I like and regard as wonderful and worthy of worship.--But let me speak no more of this. The words are not good for the secret meaning, everything always becomes a bit different, as soon as it is put into words, gets distorted a bit, a bit silly--yes, and this is also very good, and I like it a lot, I also very much agree with this, that this what is one man's treasure and wisdom always sounds like foolishness to another person." Govinda listened silently. "Why have you told me this about the stone?" he asked hesitantly after a pause. "I did it without any specific intention. Or perhaps what I meant was, that love this very stone, and the river, and all these things we are looking at and from which we can learn. I can love a stone, Govinda, and also a tree or a piece of bark. This are things, and things can be loved. But I cannot love words. Therefore, teachings are no good for me, they have no hardness, no softness, no colours, no edges, no smell, no taste, they have nothing but words. Perhaps it are these which keep you from finding peace, perhaps it are the many words. Because salvation and virtue as well, Sansara and Nirvana as well, are mere words, Govinda. There is no thing which would be Nirvana; there is just the word Nirvana." Quoth Govinda: "Not just a word, my friend, is Nirvana. It is a thought." Siddhartha continued: "A thought, it might be so. I must confess to you, my dear: I don't differentiate much between thoughts and words. To be honest, I also have no high opinion of thoughts. I have a better opinion of things. Here on this ferry-boat, for instance, a man has been my predecessor and teacher, a holy man, who has for many years simply believed in the river, nothing else. He had noticed that the river's spoke to him, he learned from it, it educated and taught him, the river seemed to be a god to him, for many years he did not know that every wind, every cloud, every bird, every beetle was just as divine and knows just as much and can teach just as much as the worshipped river. But when this holy man went into the forests, he knew everything, knew more than you and me, without teachers, without books, only because he had believed in the river." Govinda said: "But is that what you call `things', actually something real, something which has existence? Isn't it just a deception of the Maja, just an image and illusion? Your stone, your tree, your river-- are they actually a reality?" "This too," spoke Siddhartha, "I do not care very much about. Let the things be illusions or not, after all I would then also be an illusion, and thus they are always like me. This is what makes them so dear and worthy of veneration for me: they are like me. Therefore, I can love them. And this is now a teaching you will laugh about: love, oh Govinda, seems to me to be the most important thing of all. To thoroughly understand the world, to explain it, to despise it, may be the thing great thinkers do. But I'm only interested in being able to love the world, not to despise it, not to hate it and me, to be able to look upon it and me and all beings with love and admiration and great respect." "This I understand," spoke Govinda. "But this very thing was discovered by the exalted one to be a deception. He commands benevolence, clemency, sympathy, tolerance, but not love; he forbade us to tie our heart in love to earthly things." "I know it," said Siddhartha; his smile shone golden. "I know it, Govinda. And behold, with this we are right in the middle of the thicket of opinions, in the dispute about words. For I cannot deny, my words of love are in a contradiction, a seeming contradiction with Gotama's words. For this very reason, I distrust in words so much, for I know, this contradiction is a deception. I know that I am in agreement with Gotama. How should he not know love, he, who has discovered all elements of human existence in their transitoriness, in their meaninglessness, and yet loved people thus much, to use a long, laborious life only to help them, to teach them! Even with him, even with your great teacher, I prefer the thing over the words, place more importance on his acts and life than on his speeches, more on the gestures of his hand than his opinions. Not in his speech, not in his thoughts, I see his greatness, only in his actions, in his life." For a long time, the two old men said nothing. Then spoke Govinda, while bowing for a farewell: "I thank you, Siddhartha, for telling me some of your thoughts. They are partially strange thoughts, not all have been instantly understandable to me. This being as it may, I thank you, and I wish you to have calm days." (But secretly he thought to himself: This Siddhartha is a bizarre person, he expresses bizarre thoughts, his teachings sound foolish. So differently sound the exalted one's pure teachings, clearer, purer, more comprehensible, nothing strange, foolish, or silly is contained in them. But different from his thoughts seemed to me Siddhartha's hands and feet, his eyes, his forehead, his breath, his smile, his greeting, his walk. Never again, after our exalted Gotama has become one with the Nirvana, never since then have I met a person of whom I felt: this is a holy man! Only him, this Siddhartha, I have found to be like this. May his teachings be strange, may his words sound foolish; out of his gaze and his hand, his skin and his hair, out of every part of him shines a purity, shines a calmness, shines a cheerfulness and mildness and holiness, which I have seen in no other person since the final death of our exalted teacher.) As Govinda thought like this, and there was a conflict in his heart, he once again bowed to Siddhartha, drawn by love. Deeply he bowed to him who was calmly sitting. "Siddhartha," he spoke, "we have become old men. It is unlikely for one of us to see the other again in this incarnation. I see, beloved, that you have found peace. I confess that I haven't found it. Tell me, oh honourable one, one more word, give me something on my way which I can grasp, which I can understand! Give me something to be with me on my path. It is often hard, my path, often dark, Siddhartha." Siddhartha said nothing and looked at him with the ever unchanged, quiet smile. Govinda stared at his face, with fear, with yearning, suffering, and the eternal search was visible in his look, eternal not-finding. Siddhartha saw it and smiled. "Bend down to me!" he whispered quietly in Govinda's ear. "Bend down to me! Like this, even closer! Very close! Kiss my forehead, Govinda!" But while Govinda with astonishment, and yet drawn by great love and expectation, obeyed his words, bent down closely to him and touched his forehead with his lips, something miraculous happened to him. While his thoughts were still dwelling on Siddhartha's wondrous words, while he was still struggling in vain and with reluctance to think away time, to imagine Nirvana and Sansara as one, while even a certain contempt for the words of his friend was fighting in him against an immense love and veneration, this happened to him: He no longer saw the face of his friend Siddhartha, instead he saw other faces, many, a long sequence, a flowing river of faces, of hundreds, of thousands, which all came and disappeared, and yet all seemed to be there simultaneously, which all constantly changed and renewed themselves, and which were still all Siddhartha. He saw the face of a fish, a carp, with an infinitely painfully opened mouth, the face of a dying fish, with fading eyes--he saw the face of a new-born child, red and full of wrinkles, distorted from crying--he saw the face of a murderer, he saw him plunging a knife into the body of another person--he saw, in the same second, this criminal in bondage, kneeling and his head being chopped off by the executioner with one blow of his sword--he saw the bodies of men and women, naked in positions and cramps of frenzied love--he saw corpses stretched out, motionless, cold, void-- he saw the heads of animals, of boars, of crocodiles, of elephants, of bulls, of birds--he saw gods, saw Krishna, saw Agni--he saw all of these figures and faces in a thousand relationships with one another, each one helping the other, loving it, hating it, destroying it, giving re-birth to it, each one was a will to die, a passionately painful confession of transitoriness, and yet none of them died, each one only transformed, was always re-born, received evermore a new face, without any time having passed between the one and the other face--and all of these figures and faces rested, flowed, generated themselves, floated along and merged with each other, and they were all constantly covered by something thin, without individuality of its own, but yet existing, like a thin glass or ice, like a transparent skin, a shell or mold or mask of water, and this mask was smiling, and this mask was Siddhartha's smiling face, which he, Govinda, in this very same moment touched with his lips. And, Govinda saw it like this, this smile of the mask, this smile of oneness above the flowing forms, this smile of simultaneousness above the thousand births and deaths, this smile of Siddhartha was precisely the same, was precisely of the same kind as the quiet, delicate, impenetrable, perhaps benevolent, perhaps mocking, wise, thousand-fold smile of Gotama, the Buddha, as he had seen it himself with great respect a hundred times. Like this, Govinda knew, the perfected ones are smiling. Not knowing any more whether time existed, whether the vision had lasted a second or a hundred years, not knowing any more whether there existed a Siddhartha, a Gotama, a me and a you, feeling in his innermost self as if he had been wounded by a divine arrow, the injury of which tasted sweet, being enchanted and dissolved in his innermost self, Govinda still stood for a little while bent over Siddhartha's quiet face, which he had just kissed, which had just been the scene of all manifestations, all transformations, all existence. The face was unchanged, after under its surface the depth of the thousandfoldness had closed up again, he smiled silently, smiled quietly and softly, perhaps very benevolently, perhaps very mockingly, precisely as he used to smile, the exalted one. Deeply, Govinda bowed; tears he knew nothing of, ran down his old face; like a fire burnt the feeling of the most intimate love, the humblest veneration in his heart. Deeply, he bowed, touching the ground, before him who was sitting motionlessly, whose smile reminded him of everything he had ever loved in his life, what had ever been valuable and holy to him in his life.

Govinda is still traveling with the men in yellow robes. They look up to him now because he's wise and old, but Govinda is still unsatisfied and seeks enlightenment. Govinda hears about this wise ferryman and decides to go talk to him. That ferryman is Siddhartha. Govinda doesn't realize this. Siddhartha tells Govinda that because he is orienting himself toward a single goal, he is missing everything. Okay we know that's counter-intuitive. Siddhartha is arguing that because Govinda is focused so much on the search, he cannot find what he is searching for. Mull that over. Siddhartha identifies himself to Govinda. Govinda is startled. The following morning, Govinda questions Siddhartha about whether he follows a doctrine. Siddhartha explains that although he has had many teachers, he follows no doctrine. Siddhartha explains his belief that although knowledge can be communicated, wisdom cannot. He argues that in every truth, the opposite is also true, that time is illusory, that suffering is necessary to learning, and that there is no division between the world and perfection. Siddhartha uses a stone as an example for Govinda. The stone, because of its profound stone-like nature, is everything. And everything is enough. Siddhartha does not dwell on ideas, and does not fight to understand reality. Although Siddhartha's words contradict Gotama Buddha's, that doesn't matter. Words are meaningless. Huh? Govinda is confused. Before leaving, he asks Siddhartha for any final words of wisdom. Siddhartha tells Govinda to kiss him on the forehead. Govinda kisses his friend's forehead and suddenly sees a continuous, unending stream of faces and people and images of painful and joyous things all shifting into one another. After kissing Siddhartha, he is unsure if a single second or eternity has passed. Govinda identifies Siddhartha's smiling, radiant face as that of the Buddha and bows down in veneration.

THE BIRTH OF AN AMBITION All day the girl had walked steadily, her bare feet comforted by the warm dust, shunning the pebbles, never finding sham stones in the way, making friends with the path--that would always be Johnnie. From the little high-hung valley in the remote fastnesses of the Unakas where she was born, Johnnie Consadine was walking down to Cottonville, the factory town on the outskirts of Watauga, to find work. Sometimes the road wound a little upward for a quarter of a mile or so; but the general tendency was persistently down. In the gray dawn of Sunday morning she had stepped from the door of that room where the three beds occupied three corners, and a rude table was rigged in the fourth. It might almost seem that the same hounds were quarrelling under the floor that had scrambled there eighteen years before when she was born. At first the way was entirely familiar to her. It passed few habitations, and of those the dwellers were not yet abroad, since it was scarce day. As time went on she got to the little settlement at the foot of the first mountain, and had to explain to everybody her destination and ambition. Beyond this, she stopped occasionally for direction, she met more people; yet she was still in the heart of the mountains when noon found her, and she crept up a wayside bank and sat down alone to eat her bite of corn pone. Guided by the instinct--or the wood-craft--of the mountain born and bred, she had sought out one of the hermit springs of beautiful freestone water that hide in these solitudes. When she had slaked her thirst at its little ice-cold chalice, she raised her head with a low exclamation of rapture. There, growing and blowing beside the cool thread of water which trickled from the spring, was a stately pink moccasin flower. She knelt and gazed at it with folded hands, as one before a shrine. What is it in the sweeping dignity of these pointed, oval, parallel-veined leaves, sheathed one within another, the clean column of the bloom stalk rising a foot and a half perhaps above, and at its tip the wonderful pink, dreaming Buddha of the forest, that so commands the heart? It was not entirely the beauty of the softly glowing orchid that charmed Johnnie Consadine's eyes; it was the significance of the flower. Somehow the finding this rare, shy thing decking her path toward labour and enterprise spoke to her soul of success. For a long time she knelt, her bright uncovered head dappled by a ray of sunlight which filtered through the deep, cool green above her, her face bent, her eyes brooding, as though she prayed. When she had finished her dinner of corn pone and fried pork, she rose and parted with almost reverent fingers the pink wonder from its stalk, sought out a coarse, clean handkerchief from her bundle and, steeping it in the icy water of the spring, lapped it around her treasure. Not often in her eighteen summers had she found so fine a specimen. Then she took up her journey, comforted and strangely elated. "Looks like it was waiting right there to tell me howdy," she murmured to herself. The keynote of Johnnie Consadine's character was aspiration. In her cabin home the wings of desire were clipped, because she must needs put her passionate young soul into the longing for food, to quiet the cravings of a healthy stomach, which generally clamoured from one blackberry season to the other; the longing for shoes, when her feet were frostbitten; the yet more urgent wish to feed the little ones she loved; the pressing demand, when the water-bucket gave out and they had to pack water in a tin tomato can with a string bail; the dull ache of mortification when she became old enough to understand their position as the borrowing Passmores. Yet all human desire is sacred, and of God; to desire--to want--to aspire--thus shall the individual be saved; and surely in this is the salvation of the race. And Johnnie felt vaguely that at last she was going out into a world where she should learn what to desire and how to desire it. Now as she tramped she was conning over her present plans. Again she saw the cabin at home in that pitchy black which precedes the first leavening of dawn, and herself getting up to start early on the long walk. Her mother would get up too, and that was foolish. She saw the slight figure stooping to rake together the embers in the broad chimney's throat that the coffee-pot might be set on. She remonstrated with the little mother, saying that she aimed not to disturb anybody--not even Uncle Pros. "Uncle Pros!" Laurella echoed from the hearthstone, where she sat on her heels, like a little girl playing at mud-pies. Johnnie smiled at the memory of how her mother laughed over the suggestion, with a drawing of slant brows above big, tragic dark eyes, a look of suffering from the mirth which adds the crown to joyousness. "Your Uncle Pros he got a revelation 'long 'bout midnight as to just whar that thar silver mine is that's been dodgin' him for more'n forty year. He come a-shakin' me by the shoulder--like I reckon he's done fifty times ef he's done it once--and telling me that he's off to make all our fortunes inside of a week. He said if you still would go down to that thar old fool cotton mill and hire out, to name it to you that Shade Buckheath would stand some watchin'. Your Uncle Pros has got sense--in streaks. Why in the world you'll pike out and go to work in a cotton mill is more than I can cipher." "To take care of you and the children," the girl had said, standing tall and straight, deep-bosomed and red-lipped, laughing back at her little mother. "Somebody's got to take care of you-all, and I just love to be the one." Laurella Consadine, commonly called in mountain fashion by her maiden name of Laurella Passmore, scrambled to her feet and tossed the dark curls out of her eyes. "Aw--law--huh!" she returned carelessly. "We'll get along; we always have. How do you reckon I made out before you was born, you great big somebody? What's the matter with you? Did you fail to borry a frock for the dance over at Rainy Gap? Try again, honey--I'll bet S'lomy Buckheath would lend you one o' her'n." That was it; borrowing--borrowing--borrowing till they were known as the borrowing Passmores and became the jest of the neighbourhood. "No, I couldn't stand it," the girl justified herself. "I had obliged to get out and go where money could be earned--me, that's big and stout and able." And sighingly--yet light-heartedly, for with Laurella Consadine and Johnnie there was always the quaint suggestion of a little girl with a doll quite too big for her--the mother let her go. It had been just so when Johnnie would have her time for every term of the "old field hollerin' school," where she learned to read and write; even when she persisted in going to Rainy Gap where some charitably inclined northern church maintained a little school, and pushed her education to dizzy heights that to mountain vision appeared "plumb foolish." That morning she had cautioned her mother to be careful lest they waken the children, for if the little ones roused and began, as the mountain phrase has it, "takin' on," she scarcely knew how she should find heart to leave them. The children--there was the thing that drove. Four small brothers and sisters there were; with little Deanie, the youngest, to make the painfully strong plea of recent babyhood. Consadine, who never could earn money, and used to be from home following one wild scheme or another most of the time, was gone these two years upon his last dubious, adventurous journey; there was not even his intermittent assistance to depend upon. Johnnie was the man of the family, and she shouldered her burden bravely, declaring to herself that she would yet have a chance, which the little ones could share. She had kissed her mother, picked up her bundle and got as far as the door, when there came a spat of bare feet meeting the floor, a pattering rush, and Deanie's short arms went around her knees, almost tripping her up. "I wasn't 'sleep--I was 'wake the whole time," whispered the baby, lifting a warm, pursed mouth for a kiss. "Deanie'll be good an' let you go, Sis' Johnnie. An' then when you get down thar whar it's all so sightly, you'll send for Deanie, 'cause deed and double you couldn't live without her, now could ye?" And she looked craftily up into the face bent above her, bravely choking back the tears that wanted to drown her long speech. Johnnie dropped her bundle and caught up the child, crushing the warm, soft, yielding little form against her breast in a very passion of tenderness. "Deed and double I couldn't," she whispered back. "Sister's goin' to earn money, and Deanie shall have plenty of good things to eat next winter, and some shoes. She shan't be housed up every time it snows. Sis's goin' to--" She broke off abruptly and kissed the small face with vehemence. "Good-bye," she managed to whisper, as she set the baby down and turned to her mother. The kindling touch of that farewell warmed her resolution yet. She was not going down to Cottonville to work in the mill merely; she was going into the Storehouse of Possibilities, to find and buy a chance in the world for these poor little souls who could never have it otherwise. Before she kissed her mother, took up her bundle and trudged away in the chill, gray dawn, she declared an intention to come home and pay back every one to whom they were under obligations. Now her face dimpled as she remembered the shriek of dismay Laurella sent after her. "Good land, Johnnie Consadine! If you start in to pay off all the borryin's of the Passmore family since you was born, you'll ruin us--that's what you'll do--you'll ruin us." These things acted themselves over and over in Johnnie's mind as, throughout the fresh April afternoon, her long, free, rhythmic step, its morning vigour undiminished, swung the miles behind her; still present in thought when, away down in Render's Gap, she settled herself on a rock by the wayside where a little stream crossed the road, to wash her feet and put on the shoes which she had up to this time carried with her bundle. "I reckon I must be near enough town to need 'em," she said regretfully, as she drew the big, shapeless, cowhide affairs on her slim, brown, carefully washed and dried feet, and with a leathern thong laced down a wide, stiff tongue. She had earned the money for these shoes picking blackberries at ten cents the gallon, and Uncle Pros had bought them at the store at Bledsoe according to his own ideas. "Get 'em big enough and there won't be any fussin' about the fit," the old man explained his theory: and indeed the fit of those shoes on Johnnie's feet was not a thing to fuss over--it was past considering. The sun was westering; the Gap began to be in shadow, although the point at which she sat was well above the valley. The girl was all at once aware that she was tired and a little timid of what lay before her. She had written to Shade Buckheath, a neighbour's boy with whom she had gone to school, now employed as a mechanic or loom-fixer in one of the cotton mills, and from whom she had received a reply saying that she could get work in Cottonville if she would come down. Mavity Bence, who had given Johnnie her first clothes, was a weaver in the Hardwick mill at Cottonville, Watauga's milling suburb; her father, Gideon Himes, with whom Shade Buckheath learned his trade, was a skilled mechanic, and had worked as a loom-fixer for a while. At present he was keeping a boarding-house for the hands, and it was here Johnnie was to find lodging. Shade himself was reported to be doing extremely well. He had promised in his letter that if Johnnie came on a Sunday evening he would walk up the road a piece and meet her. She now began to hope that he would come. Then, waiting for him, she forgot him, and set herself to imagine what work in the cotton mill and life in town would be like. To Shade Buckheath, strolling up the road, in the expansiveness of his holiday mood and the dignity of his Sunday suit, the first sight of Johnnie came with a little unwelcome shock. He had left her in the mountains a tall, thin, sandy-haired girl in the growing age. He got his first sight of her profile relieved against the green of the wayside bank, with a bunch of blooming azaleas starring its verdure behind her bright head. He was not artist enough to appreciate the picture at its value; he simply had the sudden resentful feeling of one who has asked for a hen and been offered a bird of paradise. She was tall and lithe and strong; her thick, fair hair, without being actually curly, seemed to be so vehemently alive that it rippled a bit in its length, as a swift-flowing brook does over a stone. It rose up around her brow in a roll that was almost the fashionable coiffure. Those among whom she had been bred, laconically called the colour red; but in fact it was only too deep a gold to be quite yellow. Johnnie's face, even in repose, was always potentially joyous. The clear, wide, gray eyes, under their arching brows, the mobile lips, held as it were the smile in solution; when one addressed her it broke swiftly into being, the pink lips lifting adorably above the white teeth, the long fringed eyes crinkling deliciously about the corners. Johnnie loved to laugh, and the heart of any reasonable being was instantly moved to give her cause. For himself, the young man was a prevalent type among his people. Brown, well built, light on his feet, with heavy black hair growing low on his forehead, and long blackish-gray eyes, there was something Latin in the grace of his movements and in his glance. Life ran strong in Shade Buckheath. He stepped with an independent stride that was almost a swagger, and already felt himself a successful man; but that one of the tribe of borrowing Passmores should presume to such opulence of charm struck him as well-nigh impudent. The pure outlines of Johnnie's features, their aristocratic mould, the ruddy gold of her rich, clustering hair, those were things it seemed to him a good mill-hand might well have dispensed with. Then the girl turned, saw him, and flashed him a swift smile of greeting. "It's mighty kind of you to come up and meet me," she said, getting to her feet a little awkwardly on account of the shoes, and picking up her bundle. "I 'lowed you might get lost," bantered the young fellow, not offering to carry the packet as they trudged away side by side. "How's everybody back on Unaka? Has your Uncle Pros found his silver mine yet?" "No," returned Johnnie seriously, "but he's lookin' for it." Shade threw back his head and laughed so long and loud that it would have been embarrassing to any one less sound and sweet-natured than this girl. "I reckon he is," said Buckheath. "I reckon Pros Passmore will be lookin' for that silver mine when Gabriel blows. It runs in the family, don't it?" Johnnie looked at him and shook her head. "You've been learnin' town ways, haven't you?" she asked simply. "You mean my makin' game of the Passmores?" he inquired coolly. "No, I never learned that in the settlement; I learned it in the mountains. I just forgot your name was Passmore, that's all," he added sarcastically. "Are you goin' to get mad about it?" Johnnie had put on her slat sunbonnet and pulled it down so he could not see her face. "No," she returned evenly, "I'm not goin' to get mad at anything. And my name's not Passmore, either. My name is Consadine, and I aim to be called that. Uncle Pros Passmore is my mother's uncle, and one of the best men that ever lived, I reckon. If all the folks he's nursed in sickness or laid out in death was numbered over it would be a-many a one; and I never heard him take any credit to himself for anything he did. Why, Shade, the last three years of your father's life Uncle Pros didn't dare hunt his silver mine much, because your father was paralysed and had to have close waitin' on, and--and there wasn't nobody but Uncle Pros, since all his boys was gone and--" "Oh, say it. Speak out," urged Shade hardily. "You mean that all us chaps had cut out and left the old man, and there wasn't a cent of money to pay anybody, and no one but Pros Passmore would 'a' been fool enough to do such hard work without pay. Well, I reckon you're about right. You and me come of a mighty poor nation of folks; but I'm goin' to make my pile and have my share, if lookin' out for number one'll do it." Johnnie turned and regarded him curiously. It was characteristic of the mountain girl, and of her people, that she had not on first meeting stared, village fashion, at his brave attire; and she seemed now concerned only with the man himself. "I reckon you'll get it," she said meditatively. "I reckon you will. Sometimes I think we always get just what we deserve in this here world, and that the only safe way is to try to deserve something good. I hope I didn't say too much for Uncle Pros; but he's so easy and say-nothin' himself, that I just couldn't bear to hear you laughin' at him and not answer you." "I declare, you're plenty funny!" Buckheath burst put boisterously. "No, I ain't mad at you. I kind o' like you for stickin' up for the old man. You and me'll get along, I reckon." As they moved forward, the man and the girl fell into more general chat, the feeling of irritation at Johnnie's beauty, her superior air, growing rather than diminishing in the young fellow's mind. How dare Pros Passmore's grandniece carry a bright head so high, and flash such glances of liquid fire at her questioner? Shade looked sidewise sometimes at his companion as he asked the news of their mutual friends, and she answered. Yet when he got, along with her mild responses, one of those glances, he was himself strangely subdued by it, and fain to prop his leaning prejudices by contrasting her scant print gown, her slat sunbonnet, and cowhide shoes with the apparel of the humblest in the village which they were approaching.

A neatly-dressed lieutenant returns to the station with squad of ragged police, asks where the chief is, but gets no answer. He turns to dolling out punishments to prisoners--fines to some, cleaning out bathrooms and cells to others. Think we'd prefer the former. The police chief enters, complaining of a toothache and of a fugitive priest the Governor is upset about. The chief shows the lieutenant an old picture of the priest at a First Communion party, looking happy, safe, and respected--a recipient of all the good things in life. The lieutenant is none too pleased. He's never met him, but he totally hates this priest and what he symbolizes. Houston, I think we've got our primary antagonist! The lieutenant and the chief discuss what's known about the priest's movements: that he tried to escape on a boat, but missed it by chance. That he'd slipped through the net of the Red Shirts--a group set up to purge Mexico of the Catholic religion. Also that his parish was in Concepcion, that he was born in Carmen, and that he can pass for a gringo . Their conversation turns to a wanted bank robber and murderer out of America named James Calver who might seek to hide in their area. The lieutenant argues that the priest does more harm than the murderous thief. He proposes to the chief a means of catching the fugitive cleric: taking a hostage from every village in the state and killing the hostage if the villagers don't report the priest if he comes. The chief likes the idea. The lieutenant returns home, infuriated that people still believe in God. His certainty lies elsewhere: in a dying universe without purpose. He despises those who cannot face this reality. Even more, he hates the whole network of religion, which he believes is run by careerist hypocrites who live well by spreading deceits. The scene switches to a mother reading a smuggled story about a martyr to her two daughters--six and ten--and her son of fourteen. The girls are engrossed in the pious tale of a boy named Juan, but the boy is irritated. Juan is a little too perfect to believe. The boy asks his mother if Juan is a saint. His mother answers that he will be one day, along with the other martyrs. The boy then asks about Padre Jose, who has apparently told him that he's more a martyr than the rest. The mother chastises him for mentioning the despicable "traitor to God," as she calls the Padre Jose. He asks instead whether the priest who came to see them is like Juan. She says "No," but clarifies that he's not despicable like Padre Jose. The youngest girl says the priest smelt funny. After the story has ended and the children are out of earshot, the mother tells her husband that she's worried about the boy because saintliness doesn't interest him like it does the girls. She's also upset because he asks questions about the whisky priest, whom they hid. The husband surmises that if they hadn't hid the priest, he'd have been captured and shot, and she'd be reading a sanitized story about him to the children. She thinks this is silly. The scene concludes with the husband saying that the Church is Padre Jose and the whisky priest, and if they don't like it, then they must leave it. The wife says she would rather die. The husband concurs, but says they have to go on living as best they can. In the final scene of the chapter, Padre Jose, an old priest who had forsaken the priesthood and married so he wouldn't be killed, looks at the stars. He's called to bed by his wife. As he's leaving the patio for the bedroom, several children across the way mimic his wife's plea, mocking his weakness and his shame.

When we arrived at the Berkeley Hotel, Van Helsing found a telegram waiting for him:-- "Am coming up by train. Jonathan at Whitby. Important news.--MINA HARKER." The Professor was delighted. "Ah, that wonderful Madam Mina," he said, "pearl among women! She arrive, but I cannot stay. She must go to your house, friend John. You must meet her at the station. Telegraph her _en route_, so that she may be prepared." When the wire was despatched he had a cup of tea; over it he told me of a diary kept by Jonathan Harker when abroad, and gave me a typewritten copy of it, as also of Mrs. Harker's diary at Whitby. "Take these," he said, "and study them well. When I have returned you will be master of all the facts, and we can then better enter on our inquisition. Keep them safe, for there is in them much of treasure. You will need all your faith, even you who have had such an experience as that of to-day. What is here told," he laid his hand heavily and gravely on the packet of papers as he spoke, "may be the beginning of the end to you and me and many another; or it may sound the knell of the Un-Dead who walk the earth. Read all, I pray you, with the open mind; and if you can add in any way to the story here told do so, for it is all-important. You have kept diary of all these so strange things; is it not so? Yes! Then we shall go through all these together when we meet." He then made ready for his departure, and shortly after drove off to Liverpool Street. I took my way to Paddington, where I arrived about fifteen minutes before the train came in. The crowd melted away, after the bustling fashion common to arrival platforms; and I was beginning to feel uneasy, lest I might miss my guest, when a sweet-faced, dainty-looking girl stepped up to me, and, after a quick glance, said: "Dr. Seward, is it not?" "And you are Mrs. Harker!" I answered at once; whereupon she held out her hand. "I knew you from the description of poor dear Lucy; but----" She stopped suddenly, and a quick blush overspread her face. The blush that rose to my own cheeks somehow set us both at ease, for it was a tacit answer to her own. I got her luggage, which included a typewriter, and we took the Underground to Fenchurch Street, after I had sent a wire to my housekeeper to have a sitting-room and bedroom prepared at once for Mrs. Harker. In due time we arrived. She knew, of course, that the place was a lunatic asylum, but I could see that she was unable to repress a shudder when we entered. She told me that, if she might, she would come presently to my study, as she had much to say. So here I am finishing my entry in my phonograph diary whilst I await her. As yet I have not had the chance of looking at the papers which Van Helsing left with me, though they lie open before me. I must get her interested in something, so that I may have an opportunity of reading them. She does not know how precious time is, or what a task we have in hand. I must be careful not to frighten her. Here she is! _Mina Harker's Journal._ _29 September._--After I had tidied myself, I went down to Dr. Seward's study. At the door I paused a moment, for I thought I heard him talking with some one. As, however, he had pressed me to be quick, I knocked at the door, and on his calling out, "Come in," I entered. To my intense surprise, there was no one with him. He was quite alone, and on the table opposite him was what I knew at once from the description to be a phonograph. I had never seen one, and was much interested. "I hope I did not keep you waiting," I said; "but I stayed at the door as I heard you talking, and thought there was some one with you." "Oh," he replied with a smile, "I was only entering my diary." "Your diary?" I asked him in surprise. "Yes," he answered. "I keep it in this." As he spoke he laid his hand on the phonograph. I felt quite excited over it, and blurted out:-- "Why, this beats even shorthand! May I hear it say something?" "Certainly," he replied with alacrity, and stood up to put it in train for speaking. Then he paused, and a troubled look overspread his face. "The fact is," he began awkwardly, "I only keep my diary in it; and as it is entirely--almost entirely--about my cases, it may be awkward--that is, I mean----" He stopped, and I tried to help him out of his embarrassment:-- "You helped to attend dear Lucy at the end. Let me hear how she died; for all that I know of her, I shall be very grateful. She was very, very dear to me." To my surprise, he answered, with a horrorstruck look in his face:-- "Tell you of her death? Not for the wide world!" "Why not?" I asked, for some grave, terrible feeling was coming over me. Again he paused, and I could see that he was trying to invent an excuse. At length he stammered out:-- "You see, I do not know how to pick out any particular part of the diary." Even while he was speaking an idea dawned upon him, and he said with unconscious simplicity, in a different voice, and with the naivete of a child: "That's quite true, upon my honour. Honest Indian!" I could not but smile, at which he grimaced. "I gave myself away that time!" he said. "But do you know that, although I have kept the diary for months past, it never once struck me how I was going to find any particular part of it in case I wanted to look it up?" By this time my mind was made up that the diary of a doctor who attended Lucy might have something to add to the sum of our knowledge of that terrible Being, and I said boldly:-- "Then, Dr. Seward, you had better let me copy it out for you on my typewriter." He grew to a positively deathly pallor as he said:-- "No! no! no! For all the world, I wouldn't let you know that terrible story!" Then it was terrible; my intuition was right! For a moment I thought, and as my eyes ranged the room, unconsciously looking for something or some opportunity to aid me, they lit on a great batch of typewriting on the table. His eyes caught the look in mine, and, without his thinking, followed their direction. As they saw the parcel he realised my meaning. "You do not know me," I said. "When you have read those papers--my own diary and my husband's also, which I have typed--you will know me better. I have not faltered in giving every thought of my own heart in this cause; but, of course, you do not know me--yet; and I must not expect you to trust me so far." He is certainly a man of noble nature; poor dear Lucy was right about him. He stood up and opened a large drawer, in which were arranged in order a number of hollow cylinders of metal covered with dark wax, and said:-- "You are quite right. I did not trust you because I did not know you. But I know you now; and let me say that I should have known you long ago. I know that Lucy told you of me; she told me of you too. May I make the only atonement in my power? Take the cylinders and hear them--the first half-dozen of them are personal to me, and they will not horrify you; then you will know me better. Dinner will by then be ready. In the meantime I shall read over some of these documents, and shall be better able to understand certain things." He carried the phonograph himself up to my sitting-room and adjusted it for me. Now I shall learn something pleasant, I am sure; for it will tell me the other side of a true love episode of which I know one side already.... _Dr. Seward's Diary._ _29 September._--I was so absorbed in that wonderful diary of Jonathan Harker and that other of his wife that I let the time run on without thinking. Mrs. Harker was not down when the maid came to announce dinner, so I said: "She is possibly tired; let dinner wait an hour," and I went on with my work. I had just finished Mrs. Harker's diary, when she came in. She looked sweetly pretty, but very sad, and her eyes were flushed with crying. This somehow moved me much. Of late I have had cause for tears, God knows! but the relief of them was denied me; and now the sight of those sweet eyes, brightened with recent tears, went straight to my heart. So I said as gently as I could:-- "I greatly fear I have distressed you." "Oh, no, not distressed me," she replied, "but I have been more touched than I can say by your grief. That is a wonderful machine, but it is cruelly true. It told me, in its very tones, the anguish of your heart. It was like a soul crying out to Almighty God. No one must hear them spoken ever again! See, I have tried to be useful. I have copied out the words on my typewriter, and none other need now hear your heart beat, as I did." "No one need ever know, shall ever know," I said in a low voice. She laid her hand on mine and said very gravely:-- "Ah, but they must!" "Must! But why?" I asked. "Because it is a part of the terrible story, a part of poor dear Lucy's death and all that led to it; because in the struggle which we have before us to rid the earth of this terrible monster we must have all the knowledge and all the help which we can get. I think that the cylinders which you gave me contained more than you intended me to know; but I can see that there are in your record many lights to this dark mystery. You will let me help, will you not? I know all up to a certain point; and I see already, though your diary only took me to 7 September, how poor Lucy was beset, and how her terrible doom was being wrought out. Jonathan and I have been working day and night since Professor Van Helsing saw us. He is gone to Whitby to get more information, and he will be here to-morrow to help us. We need have no secrets amongst us; working together and with absolute trust, we can surely be stronger than if some of us were in the dark." She looked at me so appealingly, and at the same time manifested such courage and resolution in her bearing, that I gave in at once to her wishes. "You shall," I said, "do as you like in the matter. God forgive me if I do wrong! There are terrible things yet to learn of; but if you have so far travelled on the road to poor Lucy's death, you will not be content, I know, to remain in the dark. Nay, the end--the very end--may give you a gleam of peace. Come, there is dinner. We must keep one another strong for what is before us; we have a cruel and dreadful task. When you have eaten you shall learn the rest, and I shall answer any questions you ask--if there be anything which you do not understand, though it was apparent to us who were present." _Mina Harker's Journal._ _29 September._--After dinner I came with Dr. Seward to his study. He brought back the phonograph from my room, and I took my typewriter. He placed me in a comfortable chair, and arranged the phonograph so that I could touch it without getting up, and showed me how to stop it in case I should want to pause. Then he very thoughtfully took a chair, with his back to me, so that I might be as free as possible, and began to read. I put the forked metal to my ears and listened. When the terrible story of Lucy's death, and--and all that followed, was done, I lay back in my chair powerless. Fortunately I am not of a fainting disposition. When Dr. Seward saw me he jumped up with a horrified exclamation, and hurriedly taking a case-bottle from a cupboard, gave me some brandy, which in a few minutes somewhat restored me. My brain was all in a whirl, and only that there came through all the multitude of horrors, the holy ray of light that my dear, dear Lucy was at last at peace, I do not think I could have borne it without making a scene. It is all so wild, and mysterious, and strange that if I had not known Jonathan's experience in Transylvania I could not have believed. As it was, I didn't know what to believe, and so got out of my difficulty by attending to something else. I took the cover off my typewriter, and said to Dr. Seward:-- "Let me write this all out now. We must be ready for Dr. Van Helsing when he comes. I have sent a telegram to Jonathan to come on here when he arrives in London from Whitby. In this matter dates are everything, and I think that if we get all our material ready, and have every item put in chronological order, we shall have done much. You tell me that Lord Godalming and Mr. Morris are coming too. Let us be able to tell him when they come." He accordingly set the phonograph at a slow pace, and I began to typewrite from the beginning of the seventh cylinder. I used manifold, and so took three copies of the diary, just as I had done with all the rest. It was late when I got through, but Dr. Seward went about his work of going his round of the patients; when he had finished he came back and sat near me, reading, so that I did not feel too lonely whilst I worked. How good and thoughtful he is; the world seems full of good men--even if there _are_ monsters in it. Before I left him I remembered what Jonathan put in his diary of the Professor's perturbation at reading something in an evening paper at the station at Exeter; so, seeing that Dr. Seward keeps his newspapers, I borrowed the files of "The Westminster Gazette" and "The Pall Mall Gazette," and took them to my room. I remember how much "The Dailygraph" and "The Whitby Gazette," of which I had made cuttings, helped us to understand the terrible events at Whitby when Count Dracula landed, so I shall look through the evening papers since then, and perhaps I shall get some new light. I am not sleepy, and the work will help to keep me quiet. _Dr. Seward's Diary._ _30 September._--Mr. Harker arrived at nine o'clock. He had got his wife's wire just before starting. He is uncommonly clever, if one can judge from his face, and full of energy. If this journal be true--and judging by one's own wonderful experiences, it must be--he is also a man of great nerve. That going down to the vault a second time was a remarkable piece of daring. After reading his account of it I was prepared to meet a good specimen of manhood, but hardly the quiet, business-like gentleman who came here to-day. * * * * * _Later._--After lunch Harker and his wife went back to their own room, and as I passed a while ago I heard the click of the typewriter. They are hard at it. Mrs. Harker says that they are knitting together in chronological order every scrap of evidence they have. Harker has got the letters between the consignee of the boxes at Whitby and the carriers in London who took charge of them. He is now reading his wife's typescript of my diary. I wonder what they make out of it. Here it is.... Strange that it never struck me that the very next house might be the Count's hiding-place! Goodness knows that we had enough clues from the conduct of the patient Renfield! The bundle of letters relating to the purchase of the house were with the typescript. Oh, if we had only had them earlier we might have saved poor Lucy! Stop; that way madness lies! Harker has gone back, and is again collating his material. He says that by dinner-time they will be able to show a whole connected narrative. He thinks that in the meantime I should see Renfield, as hitherto he has been a sort of index to the coming and going of the Count. I hardly see this yet, but when I get at the dates I suppose I shall. What a good thing that Mrs. Harker put my cylinders into type! We never could have found the dates otherwise.... I found Renfield sitting placidly in his room with his hands folded, smiling benignly. At the moment he seemed as sane as any one I ever saw. I sat down and talked with him on a lot of subjects, all of which he treated naturally. He then, of his own accord, spoke of going home, a subject he has never mentioned to my knowledge during his sojourn here. In fact, he spoke quite confidently of getting his discharge at once. I believe that, had I not had the chat with Harker and read the letters and the dates of his outbursts, I should have been prepared to sign for him after a brief time of observation. As it is, I am darkly suspicious. All those outbreaks were in some way linked with the proximity of the Count. What then does this absolute content mean? Can it be that his instinct is satisfied as to the vampire's ultimate triumph? Stay; he is himself zooephagous, and in his wild ravings outside the chapel door of the deserted house he always spoke of "master." This all seems confirmation of our idea. However, after a while I came away; my friend is just a little too sane at present to make it safe to probe him too deep with questions. He might begin to think, and then--! So I came away. I mistrust these quiet moods of his; so I have given the attendant a hint to look closely after him, and to have a strait-waistcoat ready in case of need. _Jonathan Harker's Journal._ _29 September, in train to London._--When I received Mr. Billington's courteous message that he would give me any information in his power I thought it best to go down to Whitby and make, on the spot, such inquiries as I wanted. It was now my object to trace that horrid cargo of the Count's to its place in London. Later, we may be able to deal with it. Billington junior, a nice lad, met me at the station, and brought me to his father's house, where they had decided that I must stay the night. They are hospitable, with true Yorkshire hospitality: give a guest everything, and leave him free to do as he likes. They all knew that I was busy, and that my stay was short, and Mr. Billington had ready in his office all the papers concerning the consignment of boxes. It gave me almost a turn to see again one of the letters which I had seen on the Count's table before I knew of his diabolical plans. Everything had been carefully thought out, and done systematically and with precision. He seemed to have been prepared for every obstacle which might be placed by accident in the way of his intentions being carried out. To use an Americanism, he had "taken no chances," and the absolute accuracy with which his instructions were fulfilled, was simply the logical result of his care. I saw the invoice, and took note of it: "Fifty cases of common earth, to be used for experimental purposes." Also the copy of letter to Carter Paterson, and their reply; of both of these I got copies. This was all the information Mr. Billington could give me, so I went down to the port and saw the coastguards, the Customs officers and the harbour-master. They had all something to say of the strange entry of the ship, which is already taking its place in local tradition; but no one could add to the simple description "Fifty cases of common earth." I then saw the station-master, who kindly put me in communication with the men who had actually received the boxes. Their tally was exact with the list, and they had nothing to add except that the boxes were "main and mortal heavy," and that shifting them was dry work. One of them added that it was hard lines that there wasn't any gentleman "such-like as yourself, squire," to show some sort of appreciation of their efforts in a liquid form; another put in a rider that the thirst then generated was such that even the time which had elapsed had not completely allayed it. Needless to add, I took care before leaving to lift, for ever and adequately, this source of reproach. * * * * * _30 September._--The station-master was good enough to give me a line to his old companion the station-master at King's Cross, so that when I arrived there in the morning I was able to ask him about the arrival of the boxes. He, too, put me at once in communication with the proper officials, and I saw that their tally was correct with the original invoice. The opportunities of acquiring an abnormal thirst had been here limited; a noble use of them had, however, been made, and again I was compelled to deal with the result in an _ex post facto_ manner. From thence I went on to Carter Paterson's central office, where I met with the utmost courtesy. They looked up the transaction in their day-book and letter-book, and at once telephoned to their King's Cross office for more details. By good fortune, the men who did the teaming were waiting for work, and the official at once sent them over, sending also by one of them the way-bill and all the papers connected with the delivery of the boxes at Carfax. Here again I found the tally agreeing exactly; the carriers' men were able to supplement the paucity of the written words with a few details. These were, I shortly found, connected almost solely with the dusty nature of the job, and of the consequent thirst engendered in the operators. On my affording an opportunity, through the medium of the currency of the realm, of the allaying, at a later period, this beneficial evil, one of the men remarked:-- "That 'ere 'ouse, guv'nor, is the rummiest I ever was in. Blyme! but it ain't been touched sence a hundred years. There was dust that thick in the place that you might have slep' on it without 'urtin' of yer bones; an' the place was that neglected that yer might 'ave smelled ole Jerusalem in it. But the ole chapel--that took the cike, that did! Me and my mate, we thort we wouldn't never git out quick enough. Lor', I wouldn't take less nor a quid a moment to stay there arter dark." Having been in the house, I could well believe him; but if he knew what I know, he would, I think, have raised his terms. Of one thing I am now satisfied: that _all_ the boxes which arrived at Whitby from Varna in the _Demeter_ were safely deposited in the old chapel at Carfax. There should be fifty of them there, unless any have since been removed--as from Dr. Seward's diary I fear. I shall try to see the carter who took away the boxes from Carfax when Renfield attacked them. By following up this clue we may learn a good deal. * * * * * _Later._--Mina and I have worked all day, and we have put all the papers into order. _Mina Harker's Journal_ _30 September._--I am so glad that I hardly know how to contain myself. It is, I suppose, the reaction from the haunting fear which I have had: that this terrible affair and the reopening of his old wound might act detrimentally on Jonathan. I saw him leave for Whitby with as brave a face as I could, but I was sick with apprehension. The effort has, however, done him good. He was never so resolute, never so strong, never so full of volcanic energy, as at present. It is just as that dear, good Professor Van Helsing said: he is true grit, and he improves under strain that would kill a weaker nature. He came back full of life and hope and determination; we have got everything in order for to-night. I feel myself quite wild with excitement. I suppose one ought to pity any thing so hunted as is the Count. That is just it: this Thing is not human--not even beast. To read Dr. Seward's account of poor Lucy's death, and what followed, is enough to dry up the springs of pity in one's heart. * * * * * _Later._--Lord Godalming and Mr. Morris arrived earlier than we expected. Dr. Seward was out on business, and had taken Jonathan with him, so I had to see them. It was to me a painful meeting, for it brought back all poor dear Lucy's hopes of only a few months ago. Of course they had heard Lucy speak of me, and it seemed that Dr. Van Helsing, too, has been quite "blowing my trumpet," as Mr. Morris expressed it. Poor fellows, neither of them is aware that I know all about the proposals they made to Lucy. They did not quite know what to say or do, as they were ignorant of the amount of my knowledge; so they had to keep on neutral subjects. However, I thought the matter over, and came to the conclusion that the best thing I could do would be to post them in affairs right up to date. I knew from Dr. Seward's diary that they had been at Lucy's death--her real death--and that I need not fear to betray any secret before the time. So I told them, as well as I could, that I had read all the papers and diaries, and that my husband and I, having typewritten them, had just finished putting them in order. I gave them each a copy to read in the library. When Lord Godalming got his and turned it over--it does make a pretty good pile--he said:-- "Did you write all this, Mrs. Harker?" I nodded, and he went on:-- "I don't quite see the drift of it; but you people are all so good and kind, and have been working so earnestly and so energetically, that all I can do is to accept your ideas blindfold and try to help you. I have had one lesson already in accepting facts that should make a man humble to the last hour of his life. Besides, I know you loved my poor Lucy--" Here he turned away and covered his face with his hands. I could hear the tears in his voice. Mr. Morris, with instinctive delicacy, just laid a hand for a moment on his shoulder, and then walked quietly out of the room. I suppose there is something in woman's nature that makes a man free to break down before her and express his feelings on the tender or emotional side without feeling it derogatory to his manhood; for when Lord Godalming found himself alone with me he sat down on the sofa and gave way utterly and openly. I sat down beside him and took his hand. I hope he didn't think it forward of me, and that if he ever thinks of it afterwards he never will have such a thought. There I wrong him; I _know_ he never will--he is too true a gentleman. I said to him, for I could see that his heart was breaking:-- "I loved dear Lucy, and I know what she was to you, and what you were to her. She and I were like sisters; and now she is gone, will you not let me be like a sister to you in your trouble? I know what sorrows you have had, though I cannot measure the depth of them. If sympathy and pity can help in your affliction, won't you let me be of some little service--for Lucy's sake?" In an instant the poor dear fellow was overwhelmed with grief. It seemed to me that all that he had of late been suffering in silence found a vent at once. He grew quite hysterical, and raising his open hands, beat his palms together in a perfect agony of grief. He stood up and then sat down again, and the tears rained down his cheeks. I felt an infinite pity for him, and opened my arms unthinkingly. With a sob he laid his head on my shoulder and cried like a wearied child, whilst he shook with emotion. We women have something of the mother in us that makes us rise above smaller matters when the mother-spirit is invoked; I felt this big sorrowing man's head resting on me, as though it were that of the baby that some day may lie on my bosom, and I stroked his hair as though he were my own child. I never thought at the time how strange it all was. After a little bit his sobs ceased, and he raised himself with an apology, though he made no disguise of his emotion. He told me that for days and nights past--weary days and sleepless nights--he had been unable to speak with any one, as a man must speak in his time of sorrow. There was no woman whose sympathy could be given to him, or with whom, owing to the terrible circumstance with which his sorrow was surrounded, he could speak freely. "I know now how I suffered," he said, as he dried his eyes, "but I do not know even yet--and none other can ever know--how much your sweet sympathy has been to me to-day. I shall know better in time; and believe me that, though I am not ungrateful now, my gratitude will grow with my understanding. You will let me be like a brother, will you not, for all our lives--for dear Lucy's sake?" "For dear Lucy's sake," I said as we clasped hands. "Ay, and for your own sake," he added, "for if a man's esteem and gratitude are ever worth the winning, you have won mine to-day. If ever the future should bring to you a time when you need a man's help, believe me, you will not call in vain. God grant that no such time may ever come to you to break the sunshine of your life; but if it should ever come, promise me that you will let me know." He was so earnest, and his sorrow was so fresh, that I felt it would comfort him, so I said:-- "I promise." As I came along the corridor I saw Mr. Morris looking out of a window. He turned as he heard my footsteps. "How is Art?" he said. Then noticing my red eyes, he went on: "Ah, I see you have been comforting him. Poor old fellow! he needs it. No one but a woman can help a man when he is in trouble of the heart; and he had no one to comfort him." He bore his own trouble so bravely that my heart bled for him. I saw the manuscript in his hand, and I knew that when he read it he would realise how much I knew; so I said to him:-- "I wish I could comfort all who suffer from the heart. Will you let me be your friend, and will you come to me for comfort if you need it? You will know, later on, why I speak." He saw that I was in earnest, and stooping, took my hand, and raising it to his lips, kissed it. It seemed but poor comfort to so brave and unselfish a soul, and impulsively I bent over and kissed him. The tears rose in his eyes, and there was a momentary choking in his throat; he said quite calmly:-- "Little girl, you will never regret that true-hearted kindness, so long as ever you live!" Then he went into the study to his friend. "Little girl!"--the very words he had used to Lucy, and oh, but he proved himself a friend!

Dr. Seward continues to note in his diary. Mina Harker telegrams that she is coming by train and she has important news. Van Helsing, who is a great admirer of her, is delighted. She arrives and stays in the asylum. Dr. Seward shows her his phonograph, and she is fascinated by it. She tells them that Jonathan has seen Dracula. Jonathan arrives on September 30, and they try to trace Dracula. Renfield's reaction make Dr. Seward realize that the next door house is Count Draculas, which is confirmed by Jonathan, who has done the sale of purchase Arthur Holmwood and Quincey Morris join in the pursuit of Dracula.

White Fang landed from the steamer in San Francisco. He was appalled. Deep in him, below any reasoning process or act of consciousness, he had associated power with godhead. And never had the white men seemed such marvellous gods as now, when he trod the slimy pavement of San Francisco. The log cabins he had known were replaced by towering buildings. The streets were crowded with perils--waggons, carts, automobiles; great, straining horses pulling huge trucks; and monstrous cable and electric cars hooting and clanging through the midst, screeching their insistent menace after the manner of the lynxes he had known in the northern woods. All this was the manifestation of power. Through it all, behind it all, was man, governing and controlling, expressing himself, as of old, by his mastery over matter. It was colossal, stunning. White Fang was awed. Fear sat upon him. As in his cubhood he had been made to feel his smallness and puniness on the day he first came in from the Wild to the village of Grey Beaver, so now, in his full-grown stature and pride of strength, he was made to feel small and puny. And there were so many gods! He was made dizzy by the swarming of them. The thunder of the streets smote upon his ears. He was bewildered by the tremendous and endless rush and movement of things. As never before, he felt his dependence on the love-master, close at whose heels he followed, no matter what happened never losing sight of him. But White Fang was to have no more than a nightmare vision of the city--an experience that was like a bad dream, unreal and terrible, that haunted him for long after in his dreams. He was put into a baggage-car by the master, chained in a corner in the midst of heaped trunks and valises. Here a squat and brawny god held sway, with much noise, hurling trunks and boxes about, dragging them in through the door and tossing them into the piles, or flinging them out of the door, smashing and crashing, to other gods who awaited them. And here, in this inferno of luggage, was White Fang deserted by the master. Or at least White Fang thought he was deserted, until he smelled out the master's canvas clothes-bags alongside of him, and proceeded to mount guard over them. "'Bout time you come," growled the god of the car, an hour later, when Weedon Scott appeared at the door. "That dog of yourn won't let me lay a finger on your stuff." White Fang emerged from the car. He was astonished. The nightmare city was gone. The car had been to him no more than a room in a house, and when he had entered it the city had been all around him. In the interval the city had disappeared. The roar of it no longer dinned upon his ears. Before him was smiling country, streaming with sunshine, lazy with quietude. But he had little time to marvel at the transformation. He accepted it as he accepted all the unaccountable doings and manifestations of the gods. It was their way. There was a carriage waiting. A man and a woman approached the master. The woman's arms went out and clutched the master around the neck--a hostile act! The next moment Weedon Scott had torn loose from the embrace and closed with White Fang, who had become a snarling, raging demon. "It's all right, mother," Scott was saying as he kept tight hold of White Fang and placated him. "He thought you were going to injure me, and he wouldn't stand for it. It's all right. It's all right. He'll learn soon enough." "And in the meantime I may be permitted to love my son when his dog is not around," she laughed, though she was pale and weak from the fright. She looked at White Fang, who snarled and bristled and glared malevolently. "He'll have to learn, and he shall, without postponement," Scott said. He spoke softly to White Fang until he had quieted him, then his voice became firm. "Down, sir! Down with you!" This had been one of the things taught him by the master, and White Fang obeyed, though he lay down reluctantly and sullenly. "Now, mother." Scott opened his arms to her, but kept his eyes on White Fang. "Down!" he warned. "Down!" White Fang, bristling silently, half-crouching as he rose, sank back and watched the hostile act repeated. But no harm came of it, nor of the embrace from the strange man-god that followed. Then the clothes-bags were taken into the carriage, the strange gods and the love-master followed, and White Fang pursued, now running vigilantly behind, now bristling up to the running horses and warning them that he was there to see that no harm befell the god they dragged so swiftly across the earth. At the end of fifteen minutes, the carriage swung in through a stone gateway and on between a double row of arched and interlacing walnut trees. On either side stretched lawns, their broad sweep broken here and there by great sturdy-limbed oaks. In the near distance, in contrast with the young-green of the tended grass, sunburnt hay-fields showed tan and gold; while beyond were the tawny hills and upland pastures. From the head of the lawn, on the first soft swell from the valley-level, looked down the deep-porched, many-windowed house. Little opportunity was given White Fang to see all this. Hardly had the carriage entered the grounds, when he was set upon by a sheep-dog, bright- eyed, sharp-muzzled, righteously indignant and angry. It was between him and the master, cutting him off. White Fang snarled no warning, but his hair bristled as he made his silent and deadly rush. This rush was never completed. He halted with awkward abruptness, with stiff fore-legs bracing himself against his momentum, almost sitting down on his haunches, so desirous was he of avoiding contact with the dog he was in the act of attacking. It was a female, and the law of his kind thrust a barrier between. For him to attack her would require nothing less than a violation of his instinct. But with the sheep-dog it was otherwise. Being a female, she possessed no such instinct. On the other hand, being a sheep-dog, her instinctive fear of the Wild, and especially of the wolf, was unusually keen. White Fang was to her a wolf, the hereditary marauder who had preyed upon her flocks from the time sheep were first herded and guarded by some dim ancestor of hers. And so, as he abandoned his rush at her and braced himself to avoid the contact, she sprang upon him. He snarled involuntarily as he felt her teeth in his shoulder, but beyond this made no offer to hurt her. He backed away, stiff-legged with self-consciousness, and tried to go around her. He dodged this way and that, and curved and turned, but to no purpose. She remained always between him and the way he wanted to go. "Here, Collie!" called the strange man in the carriage. Weedon Scott laughed. "Never mind, father. It is good discipline. White Fang will have to learn many things, and it's just as well that he begins now. He'll adjust himself all right." The carriage drove on, and still Collie blocked White Fang's way. He tried to outrun her by leaving the drive and circling across the lawn but she ran on the inner and smaller circle, and was always there, facing him with her two rows of gleaming teeth. Back he circled, across the drive to the other lawn, and again she headed him off. The carriage was bearing the master away. White Fang caught glimpses of it disappearing amongst the trees. The situation was desperate. He essayed another circle. She followed, running swiftly. And then, suddenly, he turned upon her. It was his old fighting trick. Shoulder to shoulder, he struck her squarely. Not only was she overthrown. So fast had she been running that she rolled along, now on her back, now on her side, as she struggled to stop, clawing gravel with her feet and crying shrilly her hurt pride and indignation. White Fang did not wait. The way was clear, and that was all he had wanted. She took after him, never ceasing her outcry. It was the straightaway now, and when it came to real running, White Fang could teach her things. She ran frantically, hysterically, straining to the utmost, advertising the effort she was making with every leap: and all the time White Fang slid smoothly away from her silently, without effort, gliding like a ghost over the ground. As he rounded the house to the _porte-cochere_, he came upon the carriage. It had stopped, and the master was alighting. At this moment, still running at top speed, White Fang became suddenly aware of an attack from the side. It was a deer-hound rushing upon him. White Fang tried to face it. But he was going too fast, and the hound was too close. It struck him on the side; and such was his forward momentum and the unexpectedness of it, White Fang was hurled to the ground and rolled clear over. He came out of the tangle a spectacle of malignancy, ears flattened back, lips writhing, nose wrinkling, his teeth clipping together as the fangs barely missed the hound's soft throat. The master was running up, but was too far away; and it was Collie that saved the hound's life. Before White Fang could spring in and deliver the fatal stroke, and just as he was in the act of springing in, Collie arrived. She had been out-manoeuvred and out-run, to say nothing of her having been unceremoniously tumbled in the gravel, and her arrival was like that of a tornado--made up of offended dignity, justifiable wrath, and instinctive hatred for this marauder from the Wild. She struck White Fang at right angles in the midst of his spring, and again he was knocked off his feet and rolled over. The next moment the master arrived, and with one hand held White Fang, while the father called off the dogs. "I say, this is a pretty warm reception for a poor lone wolf from the Arctic," the master said, while White Fang calmed down under his caressing hand. "In all his life he's only been known once to go off his feet, and here he's been rolled twice in thirty seconds." The carriage had driven away, and other strange gods had appeared from out the house. Some of these stood respectfully at a distance; but two of them, women, perpetrated the hostile act of clutching the master around the neck. White Fang, however, was beginning to tolerate this act. No harm seemed to come of it, while the noises the gods made were certainly not threatening. These gods also made overtures to White Fang, but he warned them off with a snarl, and the master did likewise with word of mouth. At such times White Fang leaned in close against the master's legs and received reassuring pats on the head. The hound, under the command, "Dick! Lie down, sir!" had gone up the steps and lain down to one side of the porch, still growling and keeping a sullen watch on the intruder. Collie had been taken in charge by one of the woman-gods, who held arms around her neck and petted and caressed her; but Collie was very much perplexed and worried, whining and restless, outraged by the permitted presence of this wolf and confident that the gods were making a mistake. All the gods started up the steps to enter the house. White Fang followed closely at the master's heels. Dick, on the porch, growled, and White Fang, on the steps, bristled and growled back. "Take Collie inside and leave the two of them to fight it out," suggested Scott's father. "After that they'll be friends." "Then White Fang, to show his friendship, will have to be chief mourner at the funeral," laughed the master. The elder Scott looked incredulously, first at White Fang, then at Dick, and finally at his son. "You mean . . .?" Weedon nodded his head. "I mean just that. You'd have a dead Dick inside one minute--two minutes at the farthest." He turned to White Fang. "Come on, you wolf. It's you that'll have to come inside." White Fang walked stiff-legged up the steps and across the porch, with tail rigidly erect, keeping his eyes on Dick to guard against a flank attack, and at the same time prepared for whatever fierce manifestation of the unknown that might pounce out upon him from the interior of the house. But no thing of fear pounced out, and when he had gained the inside he scouted carefully around, looking at it and finding it not. Then he lay down with a contented grunt at the master's feet, observing all that went on, ever ready to spring to his feet and fight for life with the terrors he felt must lurk under the trap-roof of the dwelling.

When White Fang reaches San Francisco, he is chained in a cage and put on a baggage cart; he is amazed at the sight of the tall buildings, crowded streets, and horse carts. When they arrive at Scott's country home, they are greeted by Scott's mother, who warmly embraces her son. White Fang sees this as a hostile act and starts to snarl at Scott's mother. Scott has to control the wolf-dog. When White Fang finally goes off to explore his new home, he encounters Collie, the indignant sheepdog, and is attacked by the deerhound, Dick. These animals have no reason to fear White Fang.

<CHAPTER> CX Christmas that year falling on Thursday, the shop was to close for four days: Philip wrote to his uncle asking whether it would be convenient for him to spend the holidays at the vicarage. He received an answer from Mrs. Foster, saying that Mr. Carey was not well enough to write himself, but wished to see his nephew and would be glad if he came down. She met Philip at the door, and when she shook hands with him, said: "You'll find him changed since you was here last, sir; but you'll pretend you don't notice anything, won't you, sir? He's that nervous about himself." Philip nodded, and she led him into the dining-room. "Here's Mr. Philip, sir." The Vicar of Blackstable was a dying man. There was no mistaking that when you looked at the hollow cheeks and the shrunken body. He sat huddled in the arm-chair, with his head strangely thrown back, and a shawl over his shoulders. He could not walk now without the help of sticks, and his hands trembled so that he could only feed himself with difficulty. "He can't last long now," thought Philip, as he looked at him. "How d'you think I'm looking?" asked the Vicar. "D'you think I've changed since you were here last?" "I think you look stronger than you did last summer." "It was the heat. That always upsets me." Mr. Carey's history of the last few months consisted in the number of weeks he had spent in his bed-room and the number of weeks he had spent downstairs. He had a hand-bell by his side and while he talked he rang it for Mrs. Foster, who sat in the next room ready to attend to his wants, to ask on what day of the month he had first left his room. "On the seventh of November, sir." Mr. Carey looked at Philip to see how he took the information. "But I eat well still, don't I, Mrs. Foster?" "Yes, sir, you've got a wonderful appetite." "I don't seem to put on flesh though." Nothing interested him now but his health. He was set upon one thing indomitably and that was living, just living, notwithstanding the monotony of his life and the constant pain which allowed him to sleep only when he was under the influence of morphia. "It's terrible, the amount of money I have to spend on doctor's bills." He tinkled his bell again. "Mrs. Foster, show Master Philip the chemist's bill." Patiently she took it off the chimney-piece and handed it to Philip. "That's only one month. I was wondering if as you're doctoring yourself you couldn't get me the drugs cheaper. I thought of getting them down from the stores, but then there's the postage." Though apparently taking so little interest in him that he did not trouble to inquire what Phil was doing, he seemed glad to have him there. He asked how long he could stay, and when Philip told him he must leave on Tuesday morning, expressed a wish that the visit might have been longer. He told him minutely all his symptoms and repeated what the doctor had said of him. He broke off to ring his bell, and when Mrs. Foster came in, said: "Oh, I wasn't sure if you were there. I only rang to see if you were." When she had gone he explained to Philip that it made him uneasy if he was not certain that Mrs. Foster was within earshot; she knew exactly what to do with him if anything happened. Philip, seeing that she was tired and that her eyes were heavy from want of sleep, suggested that he was working her too hard. "Oh, nonsense," said the Vicar, "she's as strong as a horse." And when next she came in to give him his medicine he said to her: "Master Philip says you've got too much to do, Mrs. Foster. You like looking after me, don't you?" "Oh, I don't mind, sir. I want to do everything I can." Presently the medicine took effect and Mr. Carey fell asleep. Philip went into the kitchen and asked Mrs. Foster whether she could stand the work. He saw that for some months she had had little peace. "Well, sir, what can I do?" she answered. "The poor old gentleman's so dependent on me, and, although he is troublesome sometimes, you can't help liking him, can you? I've been here so many years now, I don't know what I shall do when he comes to go." Philip saw that she was really fond of the old man. She washed and dressed him, gave him his food, and was up half a dozen times in the night; for she slept in the next room to his and whenever he awoke he tinkled his little bell till she came in. He might die at any moment, but he might live for months. It was wonderful that she should look after a stranger with such patient tenderness, and it was tragic and pitiful that she should be alone in the world to care for him. It seemed to Philip that the religion which his uncle had preached all his life was now of no more than formal importance to him: every Sunday the curate came and administered to him Holy Communion, and he often read his Bible; but it was clear that he looked upon death with horror. He believed that it was the gateway to life everlasting, but he did not want to enter upon that life. In constant pain, chained to his chair and having given up the hope of ever getting out into the open again, like a child in the hands of a woman to whom he paid wages, he clung to the world he knew. In Philip's head was a question he could not ask, because he was aware that his uncle would never give any but a conventional answer: he wondered whether at the very end, now that the machine was painfully wearing itself out, the clergyman still believed in immortality; perhaps at the bottom of his soul, not allowed to shape itself into words in case it became urgent, was the conviction that there was no God and after this life nothing. On the evening of Boxing Day Philip sat in the dining-room with his uncle. He had to start very early next morning in order to get to the shop by nine, and he was to say good-night to Mr. Carey then. The Vicar of Blackstable was dozing and Philip, lying on the sofa by the window, let his book fall on his knees and looked idly round the room. He asked himself how much the furniture would fetch. He had walked round the house and looked at the things he had known from his childhood; there were a few pieces of china which might go for a decent price and Philip wondered if it would be worth while to take them up to London; but the furniture was of the Victorian order, of mahogany, solid and ugly; it would go for nothing at an auction. There were three or four thousand books, but everyone knew how badly they sold, and it was not probable that they would fetch more than a hundred pounds. Philip did not know how much his uncle would leave, and he reckoned out for the hundredth time what was the least sum upon which he could finish the curriculum at the hospital, take his degree, and live during the time he wished to spend on hospital appointments. He looked at the old man, sleeping restlessly: there was no humanity left in that shrivelled face; it was the face of some queer animal. Philip thought how easy it would be to finish that useless life. He had thought it each evening when Mrs. Foster prepared for his uncle the medicine which was to give him an easy night. There were two bottles: one contained a drug which he took regularly, and the other an opiate if the pain grew unendurable. This was poured out for him and left by his bed-side. He generally took it at three or four in the morning. It would be a simple thing to double the dose; he would die in the night, and no one would suspect anything; for that was how Doctor Wigram expected him to die. The end would be painless. Philip clenched his hands as he thought of the money he wanted so badly. A few more months of that wretched life could matter nothing to the old man, but the few more months meant everything to him: he was getting to the end of his endurance, and when he thought of going back to work in the morning he shuddered with horror. His heart beat quickly at the thought which obsessed him, and though he made an effort to put it out of his mind he could not. It would be so easy, so desperately easy. He had no feeling for the old man, he had never liked him; he had been selfish all his life, selfish to his wife who adored him, indifferent to the boy who had been put in his charge; he was not a cruel man, but a stupid, hard man, eaten up with a small sensuality. It would be easy, desperately easy. Philip did not dare. He was afraid of remorse; it would be no good having the money if he regretted all his life what he had done. Though he had told himself so often that regret was futile, there were certain things that came back to him occasionally and worried him. He wished they were not on his conscience. His uncle opened his eyes; Philip was glad, for he looked a little more human then. He was frankly horrified at the idea that had come to him, it was murder that he was meditating; and he wondered if other people had such thoughts or whether he was abnormal and depraved. He supposed he could not have done it when it came to the point, but there the thought was, constantly recurring: if he held his hand it was from fear. His uncle spoke. "You're not looking forward to my death, Philip?" Philip felt his heart beat against his chest. "Good heavens, no." "That's a good boy. I shouldn't like you to do that. You'll get a little bit of money when I pass away, but you mustn't look forward to it. It wouldn't profit you if you did." He spoke in a low voice, and there was a curious anxiety in his tone. It sent a pang into Philip's heart. He wondered what strange insight might have led the old man to surmise what strange desires were in Philip's mind. "I hope you'll live for another twenty years," he said. "Oh, well, I can't expect to do that, but if I take care of myself I don't see why I shouldn't last another three or four." He was silent for a while, and Philip found nothing to say. Then, as if he had been thinking it all over, the old man spoke again. "Everyone has the right to live as long as he can." Philip wanted to distract his mind. "By the way, I suppose you never hear from Miss Wilkinson now?" "Yes, I had a letter some time this year. She's married, you know." "Really?" "Yes, she married a widower. I believe they're quite comfortable." </CHAPTER> <CHAPTER> CXI Next day Philip began work again, but the end which he expected within a few weeks did not come. The weeks passed into months. The winter wore away, and in the parks the trees burst into bud and into leaf. A terrible lassitude settled upon Philip. Time was passing, though it went with such heavy feet, and he thought that his youth was going and soon he would have lost it and nothing would have been accomplished. His work seemed more aimless now that there was the certainty of his leaving it. He became skilful in the designing of costumes, and though he had no inventive faculty acquired quickness in the adaptation of French fashions to the English market. Sometimes he was not displeased with his drawings, but they always bungled them in the execution. He was amused to notice that he suffered from a lively irritation when his ideas were not adequately carried out. He had to walk warily. Whenever he suggested something original Mr. Sampson turned it down: their customers did not want anything outre, it was a very respectable class of business, and when you had a connection of that sort it wasn't worth while taking liberties with it. Once or twice he spoke sharply to Philip; he thought the young man was getting a bit above himself, because Philip's ideas did not always coincide with his own. "You jolly well take care, my fine young fellow, or one of these days you'll find yourself in the street." Philip longed to give him a punch on the nose, but he restrained himself. After all it could not possibly last much longer, and then he would be done with all these people for ever. Sometimes in comic desperation he cried out that his uncle must be made of iron. What a constitution! The ills he suffered from would have killed any decent person twelve months before. When at last the news came that the Vicar was dying Philip, who had been thinking of other things, was taken by surprise. It was in July, and in another fortnight he was to have gone for his holiday. He received a letter from Mrs. Foster to say the doctor did not give Mr. Carey many days to live, and if Philip wished to see him again he must come at once. Philip went to the buyer and told him he wanted to leave. Mr. Sampson was a decent fellow, and when he knew the circumstances made no difficulties. Philip said good-bye to the people in his department; the reason of his leaving had spread among them in an exaggerated form, and they thought he had come into a fortune. Mrs. Hodges had tears in her eyes when she shook hands with him. "I suppose we shan't often see you again," she said. "I'm glad to get away from Lynn's," he answered. It was strange, but he was actually sorry to leave these people whom he thought he had loathed, and when he drove away from the house in Harrington Street it was with no exultation. He had so anticipated the emotions he would experience on this occasion that now he felt nothing: he was as unconcerned as though he were going for a few days' holiday. "I've got a rotten nature," he said to himself. "I look forward to things awfully, and then when they come I'm always disappointed." He reached Blackstable early in the afternoon. Mrs. Foster met him at the door, and her face told him that his uncle was not yet dead. "He's a little better today," she said. "He's got a wonderful constitution." She led him into the bed-room where Mr. Carey lay on his back. He gave Philip a slight smile, in which was a trace of satisfied cunning at having circumvented his enemy once more. "I thought it was all up with me yesterday," he said, in an exhausted voice. "They'd all given me up, hadn't you, Mrs. Foster?" "You've got a wonderful constitution, there's no denying that." "There's life in the old dog yet." Mrs. Foster said that the Vicar must not talk, it would tire him; she treated him like a child, with kindly despotism; and there was something childish in the old man's satisfaction at having cheated all their expectations. It struck him at once that Philip had been sent for, and he was amused that he had been brought on a fool's errand. If he could only avoid another of his heart attacks he would get well enough in a week or two; and he had had the attacks several times before; he always felt as if he were going to die, but he never did. They all talked of his constitution, but they none of them knew how strong it was. "Are you going to stay a day or two?" He asked Philip, pretending to believe he had come down for a holiday. "I was thinking of it," Philip answered cheerfully. "A breath of sea-air will do you good." Presently Dr. Wigram came, and after he had seen the Vicar talked with Philip. He adopted an appropriate manner. "I'm afraid it is the end this time, Philip," he said. "It'll be a great loss to all of us. I've known him for five-and-thirty years." "He seems well enough now," said Philip. "I'm keeping him alive on drugs, but it can't last. It was dreadful these last two days, I thought he was dead half a dozen times." The doctor was silent for a minute or two, but at the gate he said suddenly to Philip: "Has Mrs. Foster said anything to you?" "What d'you mean?" "They're very superstitious, these people: she's got hold of an idea that he's got something on his mind, and he can't die till he gets rid of it; and he can't bring himself to confess it." Philip did not answer, and the doctor went on. "Of course it's nonsense. He's led a very good life, he's done his duty, he's been a good parish priest, and I'm sure we shall all miss him; he can't have anything to reproach himself with. I very much doubt whether the next vicar will suit us half so well." For several days Mr. Carey continued without change. His appetite which had been excellent left him, and he could eat little. Dr. Wigram did not hesitate now to still the pain of the neuritis which tormented him; and that, with the constant shaking of his palsied limbs, was gradually exhausting him. His mind remained clear. Philip and Mrs. Foster nursed him between them. She was so tired by the many months during which she had been attentive to all his wants that Philip insisted on sitting up with the patient so that she might have her night's rest. He passed the long hours in an arm-chair so that he should not sleep soundly, and read by the light of shaded candles The Thousand and One Nights. He had not read them since he was a little boy, and they brought back his childhood to him. Sometimes he sat and listened to the silence of the night. When the effects of the opiate wore off Mr. Carey grew restless and kept him constantly busy. At last, early one morning, when the birds were chattering noisily in the trees, he heard his name called. He went up to the bed. Mr. Carey was lying on his back, with his eyes looking at the ceiling; he did not turn them on Philip. Philip saw that sweat was on his forehead, and he took a towel and wiped it. "Is that you, Philip?" the old man asked. Philip was startled because the voice was suddenly changed. It was hoarse and low. So would a man speak if he was cold with fear. "Yes, d'you want anything?" There was a pause, and still the unseeing eyes stared at the ceiling. Then a twitch passed over the face. "I think I'm going to die," he said. "Oh, what nonsense!" cried Philip. "You're not going to die for years." Two tears were wrung from the old man's eyes. They moved Philip horribly. His uncle had never betrayed any particular emotion in the affairs of life; and it was dreadful to see them now, for they signified a terror that was unspeakable. "Send for Mr. Simmonds," he said. "I want to take the Communion." Mr. Simmonds was the curate. "Now?" asked Philip. "Soon, or else it'll be too late." Philip went to awake Mrs. Foster, but it was later than he thought and she was up already. He told her to send the gardener with a message, and he went back to his uncle's room. "Have you sent for Mr. Simmonds?" "Yes." There was a silence. Philip sat by the bed-side, and occasionally wiped the sweating forehead. "Let me hold your hand, Philip," the old man said at last. Philip gave him his hand and he clung to it as to life, for comfort in his extremity. Perhaps he had never really loved anyone in all his days, but now he turned instinctively to a human being. His hand was wet and cold. It grasped Philip's with feeble, despairing energy. The old man was fighting with the fear of death. And Philip thought that all must go through that. Oh, how monstrous it was, and they could believe in a God that allowed his creatures to suffer such a cruel torture! He had never cared for his uncle, and for two years he had longed every day for his death; but now he could not overcome the compassion that filled his heart. What a price it was to pay for being other than the beasts! They remained in silence broken only once by a low inquiry from Mr. Carey. "Hasn't he come yet?" At last the housekeeper came in softly to say that Mr. Simmonds was there. He carried a bag in which were his surplice and his hood. Mrs. Foster brought the communion plate. Mr. Simmonds shook hands silently with Philip, and then with professional gravity went to the sick man's side. Philip and the maid went out of the room. Philip walked round the garden all fresh and dewy in the morning. The birds were singing gaily. The sky was blue, but the air, salt-laden, was sweet and cool. The roses were in full bloom. The green of the trees, the green of the lawns, was eager and brilliant. Philip walked, and as he walked he thought of the mystery which was proceeding in that bedroom. It gave him a peculiar emotion. Presently Mrs. Foster came out to him and said that his uncle wished to see him. The curate was putting his things back into the black bag. The sick man turned his head a little and greeted him with a smile. Philip was astonished, for there was a change in him, an extraordinary change; his eyes had no longer the terror-stricken look, and the pinching of his face had gone: he looked happy and serene. "I'm quite prepared now," he said, and his voice had a different tone in it. "When the Lord sees fit to call me I am ready to give my soul into his hands." Philip did not speak. He could see that his uncle was sincere. It was almost a miracle. He had taken the body and blood of his Savior, and they had given him strength so that he no longer feared the inevitable passage into the night. He knew he was going to die: he was resigned. He only said one thing more: "I shall rejoin my dear wife." It startled Philip. He remembered with what a callous selfishness his uncle had treated her, how obtuse he had been to her humble, devoted love. The curate, deeply moved, went away and Mrs. Foster, weeping, accompanied him to the door. Mr. Carey, exhausted by his effort, fell into a light doze, and Philip sat down by the bed and waited for the end. The morning wore on, and the old man's breathing grew stertorous. The doctor came and said he was dying. He was unconscious and he pecked feebly at the sheets; he was restless and he cried out. Dr. Wigram gave him a hypodermic injection. "It can't do any good now, he may die at any moment." The doctor looked at his watch and then at the patient. Philip saw that it was one o'clock. Dr. Wigram was thinking of his dinner. "It's no use your waiting," he said. "There's nothing I can do," said the doctor. When he was gone Mrs. Foster asked Philip if he would go to the carpenter, who was also the undertaker, and tell him to send up a woman to lay out the body. "You want a little fresh air," she said, "it'll do you good." The undertaker lived half a mile away. When Philip gave him his message, he said: "When did the poor old gentleman die?" Philip hesitated. It occurred to him that it would seem brutal to fetch a woman to wash the body while his uncle still lived, and he wondered why Mrs. Foster had asked him to come. They would think he was in a great hurry to kill the old man off. He thought the undertaker looked at him oddly. He repeated the question. It irritated Philip. It was no business of his. "When did the Vicar pass away?" Philip's first impulse was to say that it had just happened, but then it would seem inexplicable if the sick man lingered for several hours. He reddened and answered awkwardly. "Oh, he isn't exactly dead yet." The undertaker looked at him in perplexity, and he hurried to explain. "Mrs. Foster is all alone and she wants a woman there. You understood, don't you? He may be dead by now." The undertaker nodded. "Oh, yes, I see. I'll send someone up at once." When Philip got back to the vicarage he went up to the bed-room. Mrs. Foster rose from her chair by the bed-side. "He's just as he was when you left," she said. She went down to get herself something to eat, and Philip watched curiously the process of death. There was nothing human now in the unconscious being that struggled feebly. Sometimes a muttered ejaculation issued from the loose mouth. The sun beat down hotly from a cloudless sky, but the trees in the garden were pleasant and cool. It was a lovely day. A bluebottle buzzed against the windowpane. Suddenly there was a loud rattle, it made Philip start, it was horribly frightening; a movement passed through the limbs and the old man was dead. The machine had run down. The bluebottle buzzed, buzzed noisily against the windowpane. </CHAPTER>

of Chapters CX and CXI . Philip spends the Christmas holidays with his uncle, who is dying. Philip has to keep pretending that his uncle looks good, but Mr. Carey is completely helpless and cared for by his housekeeper, Mrs. Foster. Philip thinks it strange that his uncle has been preaching eternal life for decades and yet is afraid to die. He looks around the house, gauging the worth of every item for sale. He thinks how easy it would be to kill the old man with an overdose of medicine and he is horrified that he had such an idea. His uncle, intuiting his thought, tells him he must not look forward to his death or it will not profit him. Philip hears that Miss Wilkinson has married, and he feels the loss of his own youth without the accomplishment he thought he would have by now. . In the summer he receives a letter that his uncle is actually dying, and he hurries to Blackstable. The doctor says he is keeping him alive on drugs, but it can't last. The housekeeper thinks that something is on his mind, and he won't let go until he has confessed. Finally, his uncle asks to have final communion. He holds Philip's hand in fear. Philip is overcome with compassion. The vicar, Mr. Simmonds, comes to give communion, and to hear a final confession. Philip is astonished, for afterwards, his uncle is serene and happy. It seems a miracle to him. His uncle dies in peace.

Sometimes we walked, sometimes ran; and as it drew on to morning, walked ever the less and ran the more. Though, upon its face, that country appeared to be a desert, yet there were huts and houses of the people, of which we must have passed more than twenty, hidden in quiet places of the hills. When we came to one of these, Alan would leave me in the way, and go himself and rap upon the side of the house and speak awhile at the window with some sleeper awakened. This was to pass the news; which, in that country, was so much of a duty that Alan must pause to attend to it even while fleeing for his life; and so well attended to by others, that in more than half of the houses where we called they had heard already of the murder. In the others, as well as I could make out (standing back at a distance and hearing a strange tongue), the news was received with more of consternation than surprise. For all our hurry, day began to come in while we were still far from any shelter. It found us in a prodigious valley, strewn with rocks and where ran a foaming river. Wild mountains stood around it; there grew there neither grass nor trees; and I have sometimes thought since then, that it may have been the valley called Glencoe, where the massacre was in the time of King William. But for the details of our itinerary, I am all to seek; our way lying now by short cuts, now by great detours; our pace being so hurried, our time of journeying usually by night; and the names of such places as I asked and heard being in the Gaelic tongue and the more easily forgotten. The first peep of morning, then, showed us this horrible place, and I could see Alan knit his brow. "This is no fit place for you and me," he said. "This is a place they're bound to watch." And with that he ran harder than ever down to the water-side, in a part where the river was split in two among three rocks. It went through with a horrid thundering that made my belly quake; and there hung over the lynn a little mist of spray. Alan looked neither to the right nor to the left, but jumped clean upon the middle rock and fell there on his hands and knees to check himself, for that rock was small and he might have pitched over on the far side. I had scarce time to measure the distance or to understand the peril before I had followed him, and he had caught and stopped me. So there we stood, side by side upon a small rock slippery with spray, a far broader leap in front of us, and the river dinning upon all sides. When I saw where I was, there came on me a deadly sickness of fear, and I put my hand over my eyes. Alan took me and shook me; I saw he was speaking, but the roaring of the falls and the trouble of my mind prevented me from hearing; only I saw his face was red with anger, and that he stamped upon the rock. The same look showed me the water raging by, and the mist hanging in the air: and with that I covered my eyes again and shuddered. The next minute Alan had set the brandy bottle to my lips, and forced me to drink about a gill, which sent the blood into my head again. Then, putting his hands to his mouth, and his mouth to my ear, he shouted, "Hang or drown!" and turning his back upon me, leaped over the farther branch of the stream, and landed safe. I was now alone upon the rock, which gave me the more room; the brandy was singing in my ears; I had this good example fresh before me, and just wit enough to see that if I did not leap at once, I should never leap at all. I bent low on my knees and flung myself forth, with that kind of anger of despair that has sometimes stood me in stead of courage. Sure enough, it was but my hands that reached the full length; these slipped, caught again, slipped again; and I was sliddering back into the lynn, when Alan seized me, first by the hair, then by the collar, and with a great strain dragged me into safety. Never a word he said, but set off running again for his life, and I must stagger to my feet and run after him. I had been weary before, but now I was sick and bruised, and partly drunken with the brandy; I kept stumbling as I ran, I had a stitch that came near to overmaster me; and when at last Alan paused under a great rock that stood there among a number of others, it was none too soon for David Balfour. A great rock I have said; but by rights it was two rocks leaning together at the top, both some twenty feet high, and at the first sight inaccessible. Even Alan (though you may say he had as good as four hands) failed twice in an attempt to climb them; and it was only at the third trial, and then by standing on my shoulders and leaping up with such force as I thought must have broken my collar-bone, that he secured a lodgment. Once there, he let down his leathern girdle; and with the aid of that and a pair of shallow footholds in the rock, I scrambled up beside him. Then I saw why we had come there; for the two rocks, being both somewhat hollow on the top and sloping one to the other, made a kind of dish or saucer, where as many as three or four men might have lain hidden. All this while Alan had not said a word, and had run and climbed with such a savage, silent frenzy of hurry, that I knew that he was in mortal fear of some miscarriage. Even now we were on the rock he said nothing, nor so much as relaxed the frowning look upon his face; but clapped flat down, and keeping only one eye above the edge of our place of shelter scouted all round the compass. The dawn had come quite clear; we could see the stony sides of the valley, and its bottom, which was bestrewed with rocks, and the river, which went from one side to another, and made white falls; but nowhere the smoke of a house, nor any living creature but some eagles screaming round a cliff. Then at last Alan smiled. "Ay" said he, "now we have a chance;" and then looking at me with some amusement, "Ye're no very gleg* at the jumping," said he. * Brisk. At this I suppose I coloured with mortification, for he added at once, "Hoots! small blame to ye! To be feared of a thing and yet to do it, is what makes the prettiest kind of a man. And then there was water there, and water's a thing that dauntons even me. No, no," said Alan, "it's no you that's to blame, it's me." I asked him why. "Why," said he, "I have proved myself a gomeral this night. For first of all I take a wrong road, and that in my own country of Appin; so that the day has caught us where we should never have been; and thanks to that, we lie here in some danger and mair discomfort. And next (which is the worst of the two, for a man that has been so much among the heather as myself) I have come wanting a water-bottle, and here we lie for a long summer's day with naething but neat spirit. Ye may think that a small matter; but before it comes night, David, ye'll give me news of it." I was anxious to redeem my character, and offered, if he would pour out the brandy, to run down and fill the bottle at the river. "I wouldnae waste the good spirit either," says he. "It's been a good friend to you this night; or in my poor opinion, ye would still be cocking on yon stone. And what's mair," says he, "ye may have observed (you that's a man of so much penetration) that Alan Breck Stewart was perhaps walking quicker than his ordinar'." "You!" I cried, "you were running fit to burst." "Was I so?" said he. "Well, then, ye may depend upon it, there was nae time to be lost. And now here is enough said; gang you to your sleep, lad, and I'll watch." Accordingly, I lay down to sleep; a little peaty earth had drifted in between the top of the two rocks, and some bracken grew there, to be a bed to me; the last thing I heard was still the crying of the eagles. I dare say it would be nine in the morning when I was roughly awakened, and found Alan's hand pressed upon my mouth. "Wheesht!" he whispered. "Ye were snoring." "Well," said I, surprised at his anxious and dark face, "and why not?" He peered over the edge of the rock, and signed to me to do the like. It was now high day, cloudless, and very hot. The valley was as clear as in a picture. About half a mile up the water was a camp of red-coats; a big fire blazed in their midst, at which some were cooking; and near by, on the top of a rock about as high as ours, there stood a sentry, with the sun sparkling on his arms. All the way down along the river-side were posted other sentries; here near together, there widelier scattered; some planted like the first, on places of command, some on the ground level and marching and counter-marching, so as to meet half-way. Higher up the glen, where the ground was more open, the chain of posts was continued by horse-soldiers, whom we could see in the distance riding to and fro. Lower down, the infantry continued; but as the stream was suddenly swelled by the confluence of a considerable burn, they were more widely set, and only watched the fords and stepping-stones. I took but one look at them, and ducked again into my place. It was strange indeed to see this valley, which had lain so solitary in the hour of dawn, bristling with arms and dotted with the red coats and breeches. "Ye see," said Alan, "this was what I was afraid of, Davie: that they would watch the burn-side. They began to come in about two hours ago, and, man! but ye're a grand hand at the sleeping! We're in a narrow place. If they get up the sides of the hill, they could easy spy us with a glass; but if they'll only keep in the foot of the valley, we'll do yet. The posts are thinner down the water; and, come night, we'll try our hand at getting by them." "And what are we to do till night?" I asked. "Lie here," says he, "and birstle." That one good Scotch word, "birstle," was indeed the most of the story of the day that we had now to pass. You are to remember that we lay on the bare top of a rock, like scones upon a girdle; the sun beat upon us cruelly; the rock grew so heated, a man could scarce endure the touch of it; and the little patch of earth and fern, which kept cooler, was only large enough for one at a time. We took turn about to lie on the naked rock, which was indeed like the position of that saint that was martyred on a gridiron; and it ran in my mind how strange it was, that in the same climate and at only a few days' distance, I should have suffered so cruelly, first from cold upon my island and now from heat upon this rock. All the while we had no water, only raw brandy for a drink, which was worse than nothing; but we kept the bottle as cool as we could, burying it in the earth, and got some relief by bathing our breasts and temples. The soldiers kept stirring all day in the bottom of the valley, now changing guard, now in patrolling parties hunting among the rocks. These lay round in so great a number, that to look for men among them was like looking for a needle in a bottle of hay; and being so hopeless a task, it was gone about with the less care. Yet we could see the soldiers pike their bayonets among the heather, which sent a cold thrill into my vitals; and they would sometimes hang about our rock, so that we scarce dared to breathe. It was in this way that I first heard the right English speech; one fellow as he went by actually clapping his hand upon the sunny face of the rock on which we lay, and plucking it off again with an oath. "I tell you it's 'ot," says he; and I was amazed at the clipping tones and the odd sing-song in which he spoke, and no less at that strange trick of dropping out the letter "h." To be sure, I had heard Ransome; but he had taken his ways from all sorts of people, and spoke so imperfectly at the best, that I set down the most of it to childishness. My surprise was all the greater to hear that manner of speaking in the mouth of a grown man; and indeed I have never grown used to it; nor yet altogether with the English grammar, as perhaps a very critical eye might here and there spy out even in these memoirs. The tediousness and pain of these hours upon the rock grew only the greater as the day went on; the rock getting still the hotter and the sun fiercer. There were giddiness, and sickness, and sharp pangs like rheumatism, to be supported. I minded then, and have often minded since, on the lines in our Scotch psalm:-- "The moon by night thee shall not smite, Nor yet the sun by day;" and indeed it was only by God's blessing that we were neither of us sun-smitten. At last, about two, it was beyond men's bearing, and there was now temptation to resist, as well as pain to thole. For the sun being now got a little into the west, there came a patch of shade on the east side of our rock, which was the side sheltered from the soldiers. "As well one death as another," said Alan, and slipped over the edge and dropped on the ground on the shadowy side. I followed him at once, and instantly fell all my length, so weak was I and so giddy with that long exposure. Here, then, we lay for an hour or two, aching from head to foot, as weak as water, and lying quite naked to the eye of any soldier who should have strolled that way. None came, however, all passing by on the other side; so that our rock continued to be our shield even in this new position. Presently we began again to get a little strength; and as the soldiers were now lying closer along the river-side, Alan proposed that we should try a start. I was by this time afraid of but one thing in the world; and that was to be set back upon the rock; anything else was welcome to me; so we got ourselves at once in marching order, and began to slip from rock to rock one after the other, now crawling flat on our bellies in the shade, now making a run for it, heart in mouth. The soldiers, having searched this side of the valley after a fashion, and being perhaps somewhat sleepy with the sultriness of the afternoon, had now laid by much of their vigilance, and stood dozing at their posts or only kept a look-out along the banks of the river; so that in this way, keeping down the valley and at the same time towards the mountains, we drew steadily away from their neighbourhood. But the business was the most wearing I had ever taken part in. A man had need of a hundred eyes in every part of him, to keep concealed in that uneven country and within cry of so many and scattered sentries. When we must pass an open place, quickness was not all, but a swift judgment not only of the lie of the whole country, but of the solidity of every stone on which we must set foot; for the afternoon was now fallen so breathless that the rolling of a pebble sounded abroad like a pistol shot, and would start the echo calling among the hills and cliffs. By sundown we had made some distance, even by our slow rate of progress, though to be sure the sentry on the rock was still plainly in our view. But now we came on something that put all fears out of season; and that was a deep rushing burn, that tore down, in that part, to join the glen river. At the sight of this we cast ourselves on the ground and plunged head and shoulders in the water; and I cannot tell which was the more pleasant, the great shock as the cool stream went over us, or the greed with which we drank of it. We lay there (for the banks hid us), drank again and again, bathed our chests, let our wrists trail in the running water till they ached with the chill; and at last, being wonderfully renewed, we got out the meal-bag and made drammach in the iron pan. This, though it is but cold water mingled with oatmeal, yet makes a good enough dish for a hungry man; and where there are no means of making fire, or (as in our case) good reason for not making one, it is the chief stand-by of those who have taken to the heather. As soon as the shadow of the night had fallen, we set forth again, at first with the same caution, but presently with more boldness, standing our full height and stepping out at a good pace of walking. The way was very intricate, lying up the steep sides of mountains and along the brows of cliffs; clouds had come in with the sunset, and the night was dark and cool; so that I walked without much fatigue, but in continual fear of falling and rolling down the mountains, and with no guess at our direction. The moon rose at last and found us still on the road; it was in its last quarter, and was long beset with clouds; but after awhile shone out and showed me many dark heads of mountains, and was reflected far underneath us on the narrow arm of a sea-loch. At this sight we both paused: I struck with wonder to find myself so high and walking (as it seemed to me) upon clouds; Alan to make sure of his direction. Seemingly he was well pleased, and he must certainly have judged us out of ear-shot of all our enemies; for throughout the rest of our night-march he beguiled the way with whistling of many tunes, warlike, merry, plaintive; reel tunes that made the foot go faster; tunes of my own south country that made me fain to be home from my adventures; and all these, on the great, dark, desert mountains, making company upon the way.

During the night, they moved quickly, mostly running as dawn approached. Alan would pause occasionally at a house in order to keep his neighbors updated. When the sun rose, the two were in the middle of a valley, quite visible. The valley appeared empty but Alan ran on, coming soon to a stream. He leapt onto a rock in the middle of the river, followed shortly by David. David looked at the wide berth between them and the other side and became overwhelmed by fear. Alan tried to encourage David but saw that he may never move. Forcing David to drink some brandy, Alan then lifted himself up and leapt across. David, tipsy from the liquor, knew he must jump immediately. He took a giant jump, but only reached the shore with his fingertips. Barely grasping on, David was finally pulled onto land by Alan. Alan instantly began running again. He slowed under a great rock, giving David a chance to breath. He then hitched himself up onto the rock by stepping on David's shoulders. From there, he was able to help David up. Once on top, David was able to see a sunken area in which the men could lie and be hidden from sight. Alan finally relaxed and teased David about his jumping abilities. He said however that he was to blame for their predicament. Because of Alan losing his way during the night, they had been in the open valley at dawn. Also, he had forgotten to bring water with them and had only the brandy. Alan told David that he could sleep first. Hours later, David was awakened abruptly by the feel of Alan's hand across his face. He had been snoring. David did not care but upon sitting up, noticed the large amount of red coated soldiers scattered across the valley. Because of the proximity of the soldiers, David and Alan were forced to lie flat upon the rocks as silently as possible. In the sunlight, the rock became so hot that only the little area of peat and moss on the rock stayed cool. Only one man could fit on this, so they took turns lying on the burning rock surface. The heat was unbearable and the hot rum did not help. Sometimes, the red coats came close enough to touch the rock. Finally, as the afternoon came, a shadow crept across the land and allowed the men to slip down behind the rock into the shade. As the soldiers moved closer to the riverside, Alan and David slipped away along the other side of the valley. It was slow moving but when the sun went down they were able to stand upright and travel faster. They reached a river and lay happily in it, drinking the water. Much refreshed, they continued until Alan was sure enough of their safety that he whistled tunes as they walked.

'Now, indeed, I seemed in a worse case than before. Hitherto, except during my night's anguish at the loss of the Time Machine, I had felt a sustaining hope of ultimate escape, but that hope was staggered by these new discoveries. Hitherto I had merely thought myself impeded by the childish simplicity of the little people, and by some unknown forces which I had only to understand to overcome; but there was an altogether new element in the sickening quality of the Morlocks--a something inhuman and malign. Instinctively I loathed them. Before, I had felt as a man might feel who had fallen into a pit: my concern was with the pit and how to get out of it. Now I felt like a beast in a trap, whose enemy would come upon him soon. 'The enemy I dreaded may surprise you. It was the darkness of the new moon. Weena had put this into my head by some at first incomprehensible remarks about the Dark Nights. It was not now such a very difficult problem to guess what the coming Dark Nights might mean. The moon was on the wane: each night there was a longer interval of darkness. And I now understood to some slight degree at least the reason of the fear of the little Upper-world people for the dark. I wondered vaguely what foul villainy it might be that the Morlocks did under the new moon. I felt pretty sure now that my second hypothesis was all wrong. The Upper-world people might once have been the favoured aristocracy, and the Morlocks their mechanical servants: but that had long since passed away. The two species that had resulted from the evolution of man were sliding down towards, or had already arrived at, an altogether new relationship. The Eloi, like the Carolingian kings, had decayed to a mere beautiful futility. They still possessed the earth on sufferance: since the Morlocks, subterranean for innumerable generations, had come at last to find the daylit surface intolerable. And the Morlocks made their garments, I inferred, and maintained them in their habitual needs, perhaps through the survival of an old habit of service. They did it as a standing horse paws with his foot, or as a man enjoys killing animals in sport: because ancient and departed necessities had impressed it on the organism. But, clearly, the old order was already in part reversed. The Nemesis of the delicate ones was creeping on apace. Ages ago, thousands of generations ago, man had thrust his brother man out of the ease and the sunshine. And now that brother was coming back changed! Already the Eloi had begun to learn one old lesson anew. They were becoming reacquainted with Fear. And suddenly there came into my head the memory of the meat I had seen in the Under-world. It seemed odd how it floated into my mind: not stirred up as it were by the current of my meditations, but coming in almost like a question from outside. I tried to recall the form of it. I had a vague sense of something familiar, but I could not tell what it was at the time. 'Still, however helpless the little people in the presence of their mysterious Fear, I was differently constituted. I came out of this age of ours, this ripe prime of the human race, when Fear does not paralyse and mystery has lost its terrors. I at least would defend myself. Without further delay I determined to make myself arms and a fastness where I might sleep. With that refuge as a base, I could face this strange world with some of that confidence I had lost in realizing to what creatures night by night I lay exposed. I felt I could never sleep again until my bed was secure from them. I shuddered with horror to think how they must already have examined me. 'I wandered during the afternoon along the valley of the Thames, but found nothing that commended itself to my mind as inaccessible. All the buildings and trees seemed easily practicable to such dexterous climbers as the Morlocks, to judge by their wells, must be. Then the tall pinnacles of the Palace of Green Porcelain and the polished gleam of its walls came back to my memory; and in the evening, taking Weena like a child upon my shoulder, I went up the hills towards the south-west. The distance, I had reckoned, was seven or eight miles, but it must have been nearer eighteen. I had first seen the place on a moist afternoon when distances are deceptively diminished. In addition, the heel of one of my shoes was loose, and a nail was working through the sole--they were comfortable old shoes I wore about indoors--so that I was lame. And it was already long past sunset when I came in sight of the palace, silhouetted black against the pale yellow of the sky. 'Weena had been hugely delighted when I began to carry her, but after a while she desired me to let her down, and ran along by the side of me, occasionally darting off on either hand to pick flowers to stick in my pockets. My pockets had always puzzled Weena, but at the last she had concluded that they were an eccentric kind of vase for floral decoration. At least she utilized them for that purpose. And that reminds me! In changing my jacket I found...' The Time Traveller paused, put his hand into his pocket, and silently placed two withered flowers, not unlike very large white mallows, upon the little table. Then he resumed his narrative. 'As the hush of evening crept over the world and we proceeded over the hill crest towards Wimbledon, Weena grew tired and wanted to return to the house of grey stone. But I pointed out the distant pinnacles of the Palace of Green Porcelain to her, and contrived to make her understand that we were seeking a refuge there from her Fear. You know that great pause that comes upon things before the dusk? Even the breeze stops in the trees. To me there is always an air of expectation about that evening stillness. The sky was clear, remote, and empty save for a few horizontal bars far down in the sunset. Well, that night the expectation took the colour of my fears. In that darkling calm my senses seemed preternaturally sharpened. I fancied I could even feel the hollowness of the ground beneath my feet: could, indeed, almost see through it the Morlocks on their ant-hill going hither and thither and waiting for the dark. In my excitement I fancied that they would receive my invasion of their burrows as a declaration of war. And why had they taken my Time Machine? 'So we went on in the quiet, and the twilight deepened into night. The clear blue of the distance faded, and one star after another came out. The ground grew dim and the trees black. Weena's fears and her fatigue grew upon her. I took her in my arms and talked to her and caressed her. Then, as the darkness grew deeper, she put her arms round my neck, and, closing her eyes, tightly pressed her face against my shoulder. So we went down a long slope into a valley, and there in the dimness I almost walked into a little river. This I waded, and went up the opposite side of the valley, past a number of sleeping houses, and by a statue--a Faun, or some such figure, _minus_ the head. Here too were acacias. So far I had seen nothing of the Morlocks, but it was yet early in the night, and the darker hours before the old moon rose were still to come. 'From the brow of the next hill I saw a thick wood spreading wide and black before me. I hesitated at this. I could see no end to it, either to the right or the left. Feeling tired--my feet, in particular, were very sore--I carefully lowered Weena from my shoulder as I halted, and sat down upon the turf. I could no longer see the Palace of Green Porcelain, and I was in doubt of my direction. I looked into the thickness of the wood and thought of what it might hide. Under that dense tangle of branches one would be out of sight of the stars. Even were there no other lurking danger--a danger I did not care to let my imagination loose upon--there would still be all the roots to stumble over and the tree-boles to strike against. 'I was very tired, too, after the excitements of the day; so I decided that I would not face it, but would pass the night upon the open hill. 'Weena, I was glad to find, was fast asleep. I carefully wrapped her in my jacket, and sat down beside her to wait for the moonrise. The hill-side was quiet and deserted, but from the black of the wood there came now and then a stir of living things. Above me shone the stars, for the night was very clear. I felt a certain sense of friendly comfort in their twinkling. All the old constellations had gone from the sky, however: that slow movement which is imperceptible in a hundred human lifetimes, had long since rearranged them in unfamiliar groupings. But the Milky Way, it seemed to me, was still the same tattered streamer of star-dust as of yore. Southward (as I judged it) was a very bright red star that was new to me; it was even more splendid than our own green Sirius. And amid all these scintillating points of light one bright planet shone kindly and steadily like the face of an old friend. 'Looking at these stars suddenly dwarfed my own troubles and all the gravities of terrestrial life. I thought of their unfathomable distance, and the slow inevitable drift of their movements out of the unknown past into the unknown future. I thought of the great precessional cycle that the pole of the earth describes. Only forty times had that silent revolution occurred during all the years that I had traversed. And during these few revolutions all the activity, all the traditions, the complex organizations, the nations, languages, literatures, aspirations, even the mere memory of Man as I knew him, had been swept out of existence. Instead were these frail creatures who had forgotten their high ancestry, and the white Things of which I went in terror. Then I thought of the Great Fear that was between the two species, and for the first time, with a sudden shiver, came the clear knowledge of what the meat I had seen might be. Yet it was too horrible! I looked at little Weena sleeping beside me, her face white and starlike under the stars, and forthwith dismissed the thought. 'Through that long night I held my mind off the Morlocks as well as I could, and whiled away the time by trying to fancy I could find signs of the old constellations in the new confusion. The sky kept very clear, except for a hazy cloud or so. No doubt I dozed at times. Then, as my vigil wore on, came a faintness in the eastward sky, like the reflection of some colourless fire, and the old moon rose, thin and peaked and white. And close behind, and overtaking it, and overflowing it, the dawn came, pale at first, and then growing pink and warm. No Morlocks had approached us. Indeed, I had seen none upon the hill that night. And in the confidence of renewed day it almost seemed to me that my fear had been unreasonable. I stood up and found my foot with the loose heel swollen at the ankle and painful under the heel; so I sat down again, took off my shoes, and flung them away. 'I awakened Weena, and we went down into the wood, now green and pleasant instead of black and forbidding. We found some fruit wherewith to break our fast. We soon met others of the dainty ones, laughing and dancing in the sunlight as though there was no such thing in nature as the night. And then I thought once more of the meat that I had seen. I felt assured now of what it was, and from the bottom of my heart I pitied this last feeble rill from the great flood of humanity. Clearly, at some time in the Long-Ago of human decay the Morlocks' food had run short. Possibly they had lived on rats and such-like vermin. Even now man is far less discriminating and exclusive in his food than he was--far less than any monkey. His prejudice against human flesh is no deep-seated instinct. And so these inhuman sons of men----! I tried to look at the thing in a scientific spirit. After all, they were less human and more remote than our cannibal ancestors of three or four thousand years ago. And the intelligence that would have made this state of things a torment had gone. Why should I trouble myself? These Eloi were mere fatted cattle, which the ant-like Morlocks preserved and preyed upon--probably saw to the breeding of. And there was Weena dancing at my side! 'Then I tried to preserve myself from the horror that was coming upon me, by regarding it as a rigorous punishment of human selfishness. Man had been content to live in ease and delight upon the labours of his fellow-man, had taken Necessity as his watchword and excuse, and in the fullness of time Necessity had come home to him. I even tried a Carlyle-like scorn of this wretched aristocracy in decay. But this attitude of mind was impossible. However great their intellectual degradation, the Eloi had kept too much of the human form not to claim my sympathy, and to make me perforce a sharer in their degradation and their Fear. 'I had at that time very vague ideas as to the course I should pursue. My first was to secure some safe place of refuge, and to make myself such arms of metal or stone as I could contrive. That necessity was immediate. In the next place, I hoped to procure some means of fire, so that I should have the weapon of a torch at hand, for nothing, I knew, would be more efficient against these Morlocks. Then I wanted to arrange some contrivance to break open the doors of bronze under the White Sphinx. I had in mind a battering ram. I had a persuasion that if I could enter those doors and carry a blaze of light before me I should discover the Time Machine and escape. I could not imagine the Morlocks were strong enough to move it far away. Weena I had resolved to bring with me to our own time. And turning such schemes over in my mind I pursued our way towards the building which my fancy had chosen as our dwelling.

The TT feels hopeless in his fight against the Morlocks, whom he despises. As the moon wanes and the nights have longer periods of darkness, Weena talks about the "Dark Nights. The TT begins to understand why the Eloi fear the darkness, though he does not know what kind of "foul villainy" the Morlocks practice at night. He revises his hypothesis: while the Eloi and Morlocks may have once had a master-slave relationship, now the Morlocks are growing in power while the Eloi are fearful. He thinks about the meat he had seen the Morlocks consume, though he is not sure why the image comes into his mind. The TT decides he will defend himself fearlessly against the Morlocks. First he must find weapons and a safe place to sleep. The only place he can think of is the Palace of Green Porcelain. He starts off the long trek with Weena. As night comes on, he gets lost and decides to rest on a hill while Weena sleeps. In the morning, they have fruit with some other Eloi, and the TT comes up with a new theory about the Morlocks: they breed the Eloi like cattle for food. He tries to think of this as just desserts for the ruling class for having lived off the working class for so long, but he cannot lose his sympathy for the human-like Eloi. The TT comes up with a plan. First, he will find a safe shelter. Then he will use a torch as a weapon against the Morlocks. Finally, he will acquire some kind of battering-ram to break open the pedestal under the White Sphinx, where he imagines the Time Machine is still kept. He also plans to bring Weena back to his own time. He and Weena make their way to the Palace of Green Porcelain.

MORE EDUCATION With twenty-five dollars in his hand, Henry felt like a millionaire as he edged through the crowd to the gate. "That's the boy," he heard many a person say when he was forced to hold his silver cup in view out of harm's way. When Dr. McAllister drove into his yard he found a boy washing the concrete drives as calmly as if nothing had happened. He chuckled quietly, for he had stopped at the Fair Grounds for a few minutes himself, and held a little conversation with the score-keeper. When Henry faithfully repeated the list of winners, however, he said nothing about it. "What are you going to do with the prize?" queried Dr. McAllister. "Put it in the savings bank, I guess," replied Henry. "Have you an account?" asked his friend. "No, but Jess says it's high time we started one." "Good for Jess," said the doctor absently. "I remember an old uncle of mine who put two hundred dollars in the savings bank and forgot all about it. He left it in there till he died, and it came to me. It amounted to sixteen hundred dollars." "Whew!" said Henry. "He left it alone for over forty years, you see," explained Dr. McAllister. When Henry arrived at his little home in the woods with the twenty-five dollars (for he never thought of putting it in the bank before Jess saw it), he found a delicious lunch waiting for him. Jess had boiled the little vegetables in clear water, and the moment they were done she had drained off the water in a remarkable drainer, and heaped them on the biggest dish with melted butter on top. His family almost forgot to eat while Henry recounted the details of the exciting race. And when he showed them the silver cup and the money they actually did stop eating, hungry as they were. "I said my name was Henry James," repeated Henry. "That's all right. So it is," affirmed Jess. "It's clever, too. You can use that name for your bank book." "So I can!" said Henry, delighted. "I'll put it in the bank this very afternoon. And by the way, I brought something for dinner tonight." Jess looked in the bag. There were a dozen smooth, brown potatoes. "I know how to cook those," said Jess, nodding her head wisely. "You just wait!" "Can't wait, hardly," Henry called back as he went to work. When he had gone, Benny frolicked around noisily with the dog. "Benny," Jess exclaimed suddenly, as she hung her dish towels up to dry, "it's high time you learned to read." "No school _now_," said Benny hopefully. "No, but I can teach you. If I only had a primer!" "Let's make one," suggested Violet, shaking her hair back. "We have saved all the wrapping paper off the bundles, you know." Jess was staring off into space, as she always did when she had a bright idea. "Violet," she cried at last, "remember those chips? We could whittle out letters like type--make each letter backwards, you know." "And stamp them on paper!" finished Violet. "There would be only twenty-six in all. It wouldn't be awfully hard," said Jess. "We wouldn't bother with capitals." "What could we use for ink?" Violet wondered, wrinkling her forehead. "Blackberry juice!" cried Jess. The two girls clapped their hands. "Won't Henry be surprised when he finds that Benny can read?" Now from this conversation Benny gathered that this type-business would take his sisters quite a while to prepare. So he was not much worried about his part of the work. In fact, he sorted out chips very cheerfully and watched his teachers with interest as they dug carefully around the letters with the two knives. "We'll teach him two words to begin with," said Jess. "Then we won't have to make the whole alphabet at once. Let's begin to teach him _see_." "That's easy," agreed Violet. "And then we won't have to make but two letters, _s_ and _e_." "And the other word will be _me_," cried Jess. "So only three pieces of type in all, Violet." Jess cut the wiggly _s_, because she had the better knife, while Violet struggled with the _e_. Then Jess cut a wonderful _m_ while Violet sewed the primer down the back, and gathered a cupful of blackberries. As she sat by, crushing the juice from the berries with a stick, Jess planned the ink pad. "We'll have to use a small piece of the wash-cloth, I'm afraid," she said at last. But finally they were obliged to cut off only the uneven bits of cloth which hung around the edges. These they used for stuffing for the pad, and covered them with a pocket which Violet carefully ripped from her apron. When this was sewed firmly into place, and put into a small saucer, Jess poured on the purple juice. Even Benny came up on his hands and knees to watch her stamp the first _s_. It came out beautifully on the first page of the primer, purple and clean-cut. The _e_ was almost as good, and as for the _m_, Jess' hand shook with pure pride as she stamped it evenly on the page. At last the two words were completed. In fact, they were done long before Benny had the slightest idea his sisters were ready for him. He came willingly enough for his first lesson, but he could not tell the two words apart. "Don't you see, Benny?" Jess explained patiently. "This one with the wiggly _s_ says _see_?" But Benny did not "see." "I'll tell you, Jess," said Violet at last. "Let's print each word again on a separate card. That's the way they do at school. And then let him point to _see_." The girls did this, using squares of stiff brown paper. Then they called Benny. Very carefully, Jess explained again which word said _see_, hissing like a huge snake to show him how the _s_ sounded. Then she mixed the cards and said encouragingly, "Now, Benny, point to _s-s-s-ee_." Benny did not move. He sat with his finger on his lip. But the children were nearly petrified with astonishment to see Watch cock his head on one side and gravely put his paw on the center of the word! Now, this was only an accident. Watch did not really know one of the words from the other. But Benny thought he did. And was he going to let a dog get ahead of him? Not Benny! In less time than it takes to tell it, Benny had learned both words perfectly. "Good old Watch," said Jess. "It isn't really hard at all," said Benny. "Is it, Watch?" During all this experiment Jess had not forgotten her dinner. When you are living outdoors all the time you do not forget things like that. In fact both girls had learned to tell the time very accurately by the sun. Jess started up a beautiful little fire of cones. As they turned into red-hot ashes and began to topple over one by one into the glowing pile, Jess laughed delightedly. She had already scrubbed the smooth potatoes and dried them carefully. She now poked them one by one into the glowing ashes with a stick from a birch tree. Whenever a potato lit up dangerously she gave it a poke into a new position. And when Henry found her, she was just rolling the charred balls out onto the flat stones. "Burned 'em up?" queried Henry. "Burned, nothing!" cried Jess energetically. "You just wait!" "Can't wait, hardly," replied Henry smiling. "You said that a long time ago," said Benny. "Well, isn't it true?" demanded Henry, rolling his brother over on the pine needles. "Come," said Violet breathlessly, forgetting to ring the bell. "Hold them with leaves," directed Jess, "because they're terribly hot. Knock them on the side and scoop them out with a spoon and put butter on top." The children did as the little cook requested, sprinkled on a little salt from the salt shaker, and took a taste. "Ah!" said Henry. "It's good," said Benny blissfully. It was about the most successful meal of all, in fact. When the children in later years recalled their different feasts, they always came back to the baked potatoes roasted in the ashes of the pine cones. Henry said it was because they were poked with a black-birch stick. Benny said it was because Jess nearly burned them up. Jess herself said maybe it was the remarkable salt shaker which had to stand on its head always, because there was no floor to it. After supper the children still were not too sleepy to show Henry the new primer, and allow Benny to display his first reading lesson. Henry, greatly taken with the idea, sat up until it was almost dark, chipping out the remaining letters of the alphabet. If you should ever care to see this interesting primer, which was finally ten pages in length, you might examine this faithful copy of its first page, which required four days for its completion: [Illustration: page 1 See me See me O O See me Come Come to me Come to see me cat rat ] Henry always insisted that the rat's tail was too long, but Jess said his knife must have slipped when he was making the _a_, so they were even, after all.

Days go by. The children keep finding garbage treasures; Henry continues to work for Dr. Moore. Very exciting news: Henry buys Benny some new socks. The girls make Benny a stuffed bear from his old socks. Benny wants his bear to have a long tail even though bears don't have long tails. Whatever, Benny--you do you. The bear is finished, and Benny names it Stockings because that's the old-fashioned word for socks. Jessie gives Benny a haircut, so Benny decides to cut Watch the dog's hair. This does not go well. When he shows Jessie and Violet Watch's haircut, they laugh and laugh. Watch is a really good sport about it. Violet is laughing so hard she cries--but then she keeps crying and won't stop. Turns out she's not hysterical; she's sick. Jessie puts Violet to bed in the boxcar. Her forehead is really hot. Henry comes home, and he and Jessie discuss taking Violet to the hospital. Trouble is, they're worried it will put their grandfather on their trail. Violet is shaking all over, so Jessie covers her with pine needles. Let's give her points for trying. Henry decides that Violet should see Dr. Moore, so he runs into town. Dr. Moore drives back to the boxcar without asking where to go, and when he parks the car, he finds the boxcar straightaway. Odd, isn't it? Dr. Moore decides to take Violet back to his place. Once there, he puts her to bed, and Mrs. Moore and the cook tend to her. Don't worry--the other children are going to stay at Dr. Moore's, too. Violet is so ill that Dr. Moore stays up with her all night. In the morning, a man comes to see Dr. Moore. He mumbles something about $5,000, so we can guess he is Mr. Alden. While the man waits for the doctor, Benny keeps him entertained. Benny also tells the man that his sister Violet is ill. Benny and Mr. Alden are getting along really well. Benny asks Mr. Alden if he has a dog, but Mr. Alden's dog is dead. Bummer. Oh, here's Watch the dog, very much alive. Hi, Watch. Dr. Moore comes in and sends Benny off to play. The doctor tells Mr. Alden that Benny is his grandchild, and Mr. Alden seems excited but confused. Now, Dr. Moore tells Mr. Alden about Henry. Mr. Alden is stoked because he remembers Henry from Field Day.

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

When Alyosha arrives at Madame Khokhlakov's at Lise's urgent request, Madame Khokhlakov is a nervous wreck. She's been immobilized by swollen foot for the past three weeks, but that hasn't stopped her from getting all dressed up. Madame Khokhlakov's latest tizzy is over an anonymous article that's appeared in a newspaper called Rumors, which sounds a bit like a 19th-century version of PeopleUS Weekly. or Someone has written horrible things about events in their town - which the narrator finally names as Skotoprigonyevsk. This anonymous author has claimed that Dmitri has flirted with a certain unnamed society lady - i.e., Madame Khokhlakov - who has gone so far as to offer him 3,000 roubles two hours before the murder to run away with her. He spurned her, however, and it is implied that he preferred to kill his father rather than spend his life in Siberia with this unnamed society lady. Madame Khokhlakov is convinced that it's about her, and that it's by Rakitin. Rakitin is jealous because she rejected him and is pursuing a flirtation with Perkhotin, the young official to whom Dmitri pawned his pistols. Rakitin had written a silly little poem about her foot, and she and Perkhotin had laughed over it. Madame Khokhlakov also informs Alyosha, to his surprise, that Ivan has visited Lise. After Ivan's visit, Lise has been terribly upset. Their conversation is interrupted when Perkhotin enters, and Alyosha leaves for Lise's room.

XXXV. HEARTACHE. Whatever his motive might have been, Laurie studied to some purpose that year, for he graduated with honor, and gave the Latin oration with the grace of a Phillips and the eloquence of a Demosthenes, so his friends said. They were all there, his grandfather,--oh, so proud!--Mr. and Mrs. March, John and Meg, Jo and Beth, and all exulted over him with the sincere admiration which boys make light of at the time, but fail to win from the world by any after-triumphs. "I've got to stay for this confounded supper, but I shall be home early to-morrow; you'll come and meet me as usual, girls?" Laurie said, as he put the sisters into the carriage after the joys of the day were over. He said "girls," but he meant Jo, for she was the only one who kept up the old custom; she had not the heart to refuse her splendid, successful boy anything, and answered warmly,-- "I'll come, Teddy, rain or shine, and march before you, playing '_Hail the conquering hero comes_,' on a jews-harp." Laurie thanked her with a look that made her think, in a sudden panic, "Oh, deary me! I know he'll say something, and then what shall I do?" Evening meditation and morning work somewhat allayed her fears, and having decided that she wouldn't be vain enough to think people were going to propose when she had given them every reason to know what her answer would be, she set forth at the appointed time, hoping Teddy wouldn't do anything to make her hurt his poor little feelings. A call at Meg's, and a refreshing sniff and sip at the Daisy and Demijohn, still further fortified her for the _tête-à-tête_, but when she saw a stalwart figure looming in the distance, she had a strong desire to turn about and run away. "Where's the jews-harp, Jo?" cried Laurie, as soon as he was within speaking distance. "I forgot it;" and Jo took heart again, for that salutation could not be called lover-like. She always used to take his arm on these occasions; now she did not, and he made no complaint, which was a bad sign, but talked on rapidly about all sorts of far-away subjects, till they turned from the road into the little path that led homeward through the grove. Then he walked more slowly, suddenly lost his fine flow of language, and, now and then, a dreadful pause occurred. To rescue the conversation from one of the wells of silence into which it kept falling, Jo said hastily,-- "Now you must have a good long holiday!" "I intend to." Something in his resolute tone made Jo look up quickly to find him looking down at her with an expression that assured her the dreaded moment had come, and made her put out her hand with an imploring,-- "No, Teddy, please don't!" "I will, and you _must_ hear me. It's no use, Jo; we've got to have it out, and the sooner the better for both of us," he answered, getting flushed and excited all at once. "Say what you like, then; I'll listen," said Jo, with a desperate sort of patience. Laurie was a young lover, but he was in earnest, and meant to "have it out," if he died in the attempt; so he plunged into the subject with characteristic impetuosity, saying in a voice that _would_ get choky now and then, in spite of manful efforts to keep it steady,-- "I've loved you ever since I've known you, Jo; couldn't help it, you've been so good to me. I've tried to show it, but you wouldn't let me; now I'm going to make you hear, and give me an answer, for I _can't_ go on so any longer." "I wanted to save you this; I thought you'd understand--" began Jo, finding it a great deal harder than she expected. "I know you did; but girls are so queer you never know what they mean. They say No when they mean Yes, and drive a man out of his wits just for the fun of it," returned Laurie, entrenching himself behind an undeniable fact. "_I_ don't. I never wanted to make you care for me so, and I went away to keep you from it if I could." "I thought so; it was like you, but it was no use. I only loved you all the more, and I worked hard to please you, and I gave up billiards and everything you didn't like, and waited and never complained, for I hoped you'd love me, though I'm not half good enough--" here there was a choke that couldn't be controlled, so he decapitated buttercups while he cleared his "confounded throat." "Yes, you are; you're a great deal too good for me, and I'm so grateful to you, and so proud and fond of you, I don't see why I can't love you as you want me to. I've tried, but I can't change the feeling, and it would be a lie to say I do when I don't." "Really, truly, Jo?" He stopped short, and caught both her hands as he put his question with a look that she did not soon forget. "Really, truly, dear." They were in the grove now, close by the stile; and when the last words fell reluctantly from Jo's lips, Laurie dropped her hands and turned as if to go on, but for once in his life that fence was too much for him; so he just laid his head down on the mossy post, and stood so still that Jo was frightened. [Illustration: He laid his head down on the mossy post] "O Teddy, I'm so sorry, so desperately sorry, I could kill myself if it would do any good! I wish you wouldn't take it so hard. I can't help it; you know it's impossible for people to make themselves love other people if they don't," cried Jo inelegantly but remorsefully, as she softly patted his shoulder, remembering the time when he had comforted her so long ago. "They do sometimes," said a muffled voice from the post. "I don't believe it's the right sort of love, and I'd rather not try it," was the decided answer. There was a long pause, while a blackbird sung blithely on the willow by the river, and the tall grass rustled in the wind. Presently Jo said very soberly, as she sat down on the step of the stile,-- "Laurie, I want to tell you something." He started as if he had been shot, threw up his head, and cried out, in a fierce tone-- "_Don't_ tell me that, Jo; I can't bear it now!" "Tell what?" she asked, wondering at his violence. "That you love that old man." "What old man?" demanded Jo, thinking he must mean his grandfather. "That devilish Professor you were always writing about. If you say you love him, I know I shall do something desperate;" and he looked as if he would keep his word, as he clenched his hands, with a wrathful spark in his eyes. Jo wanted to laugh, but restrained herself, and said warmly, for she, too, was getting excited with all this,-- "Don't swear, Teddy! He isn't old, nor anything bad, but good and kind, and the best friend I've got, next to you. Pray, don't fly into a passion; I want to be kind, but I know I shall get angry if you abuse my Professor. I haven't the least idea of loving him or anybody else." "But you will after a while, and then what will become of me?" "You'll love some one else too, like a sensible boy, and forget all this trouble." "I _can't_ love any one else; and I'll never forget you, Jo, never! never!" with a stamp to emphasize his passionate words. "What _shall_ I do with him?" sighed Jo, finding that emotions were more unmanageable than she expected. "You haven't heard what I wanted to tell you. Sit down and listen; for indeed I want to do right and make you happy," she said, hoping to soothe him with a little reason, which proved that she knew nothing about love. Seeing a ray of hope in that last speech, Laurie threw himself down on the grass at her feet, leaned his arm on the lower step of the stile, and looked up at her with an expectant face. Now that arrangement was not conducive to calm speech or clear thought on Jo's part; for how _could_ she say hard things to her boy while he watched her with eyes full of love and longing, and lashes still wet with the bitter drop or two her hardness of heart had wrung from him? She gently turned his head away, saying, as she stroked the wavy hair which had been allowed to grow for her sake,--how touching that was, to be sure!-- "I agree with mother that you and I are not suited to each other, because our quick tempers and strong wills would probably make us very miserable, if we were so foolish as to--" Jo paused a little over the last word, but Laurie uttered it with a rapturous expression,-- "Marry,--no, we shouldn't! If you loved me, Jo, I should be a perfect saint, for you could make me anything you like." "No, I can't. I've tried it and failed, and I won't risk our happiness by such a serious experiment. We don't agree and we never shall; so we'll be good friends all our lives, but we won't go and do anything rash." "Yes, we will if we get the chance," muttered Laurie rebelliously. "Now do be reasonable, and take a sensible view of the case," implored Jo, almost at her wit's end. "I won't be reasonable; I don't want to take what you call 'a sensible view;' it won't help me, and it only makes you harder. I don't believe you've got any heart." "I wish I hadn't!" There was a little quiver in Jo's voice, and, thinking it a good omen, Laurie turned round, bringing all his persuasive powers to bear as he said, in the wheedlesome tone that had never been so dangerously wheedlesome before,-- "Don't disappoint us, dear! Every one expects it. Grandpa has set his heart upon it, your people like it, and I can't get on without you. Say you will, and let's be happy. Do, do!" Not until months afterward did Jo understand how she had the strength of mind to hold fast to the resolution she had made when she decided that she did not love her boy, and never could. It was very hard to do, but she did it, knowing that delay was both useless and cruel. "I can't say 'Yes' truly, so I won't say it at all. You'll see that I'm right, by and by, and thank me for it"--she began solemnly. "I'll be hanged if I do!" and Laurie bounced up off the grass, burning with indignation at the bare idea. "Yes, you will!" persisted Jo; "you'll get over this after a while, and find some lovely, accomplished girl, who will adore you, and make a fine mistress for your fine house. I shouldn't. I'm homely and awkward and odd and old, and you'd be ashamed of me, and we should quarrel,--we can't help it even now, you see,--and I shouldn't like elegant society and you would, and you'd hate my scribbling, and I couldn't get on without it, and we should be unhappy, and wish we hadn't done it, and everything would be horrid!" "Anything more?" asked Laurie, finding it hard to listen patiently to this prophetic burst. "Nothing more, except that I don't believe I shall ever marry. I'm happy as I am, and love my liberty too well to be in any hurry to give it up for any mortal man." "I know better!" broke in Laurie. "You think so now; but there'll come a time when you _will_ care for somebody, and you'll love him tremendously, and live and die for him. I know you will, it's your way, and I shall have to stand by and see it;" and the despairing lover cast his hat upon the ground with a gesture that would have seemed comical, if his face had not been so tragical. "Yes, I _will_ live and die for him, if he ever comes and makes me love him in spite of myself, and you must do the best you can!" cried Jo, losing patience with poor Teddy. "I've done my best, but you _won't_ be reasonable, and it's selfish of you to keep teasing for what I can't give. I shall always be fond of you, very fond indeed, as a friend, but I'll never marry you; and the sooner you believe it, the better for both of us,--so now!" That speech was like fire to gunpowder. Laurie looked at her a minute as if he did not quite know what to do with himself, then turned sharply away, saying, in a desperate sort of tone,-- "You'll be sorry some day, Jo." "Oh, where are you going?" she cried, for his face frightened her. "To the devil!" was the consoling answer. For a minute Jo's heart stood still, as he swung himself down the bank, toward the river; but it takes much folly, sin, or misery to send a young man to a violent death, and Laurie was not one of the weak sort who are conquered by a single failure. He had no thought of a melodramatic plunge, but some blind instinct led him to fling hat and coat into his boat, and row away with all his might, making better time up the river than he had done in many a race. Jo drew a long breath and unclasped her hands as she watched the poor fellow trying to outstrip the trouble which he carried in his heart. "That will do him good, and he'll come home in such a tender, penitent state of mind, that I sha'n't dare to see him," she said; adding, as she went slowly home, feeling as if she had murdered some innocent thing, and buried it under the leaves,-- "Now I must go and prepare Mr. Laurence to be very kind to my poor boy. I wish he'd love Beth; perhaps he may, in time, but I begin to think I was mistaken about her. Oh dear! how can girls like to have lovers and refuse them. I think it's dreadful." Being sure that no one could do it so well as herself, she went straight to Mr. Laurence, told the hard story bravely through, and then broke down, crying so dismally over her own insensibility that the kind old gentleman, though sorely disappointed, did not utter a reproach. He found it difficult to understand how any girl could help loving Laurie, and hoped she would change her mind, but he knew even better than Jo that love cannot be forced, so he shook his head sadly, and resolved to carry his boy out of harm's way; for Young Impetuosity's parting words to Jo disturbed him more than he would confess. When Laurie came home, dead tired, but quite composed, his grandfather met him as if he knew nothing, and kept up the delusion very successfully for an hour or two. But when they sat together in the twilight, the time they used to enjoy so much, it was hard work for the old man to ramble on as usual, and harder still for the young one to listen to praises of the last year's success, which to him now seemed love's labor lost. He bore it as long as he could, then went to his piano, and began to play. The windows were open; and Jo, walking in the garden with Beth, for once understood music better than her sister, for he played the "Sonata Pathétique," and played it as he never did before. "That's very fine, I dare say, but it's sad enough to make one cry; give us something gayer, lad," said Mr. Laurence, whose kind old heart was full of sympathy, which he longed to show, but knew not how. Laurie dashed into a livelier strain, played stormily for several minutes, and would have got through bravely, if, in a momentary lull, Mrs. March's voice had not been heard calling,-- "Jo, dear, come in; I want you." Just what Laurie longed to say, with a different meaning! As he listened, he lost his place; the music ended with a broken chord, and the musician sat silent in the dark. "I can't stand this," muttered the old gentleman. Up he got, groped his way to the piano, laid a kind hand on either of the broad shoulders, and said, as gently as a woman,-- "I know, my boy, I know." No answer for an instant; then Laurie asked sharply,-- "Who told you?" "Jo herself." "Then there's an end of it!" and he shook off his grandfather's hands with an impatient motion; for, though grateful for the sympathy, his man's pride could not bear a man's pity. "Not quite; I want to say one thing, and then there shall be an end of it," returned Mr. Laurence, with unusual mildness. "You won't care to stay at home just now, perhaps?" "I don't intend to run away from a girl. Jo can't prevent my seeing her, and I shall stay and do it as long as I like," interrupted Laurie, in a defiant tone. "Not if you are the gentleman I think you. I'm disappointed, but the girl can't help it; and the only thing left for you to do is to go away for a time. Where will you go?" "Anywhere. I don't care what becomes of me;" and Laurie got up, with a reckless laugh, that grated on his grandfather's ear. "Take it like a man, and don't do anything rash, for God's sake. Why not go abroad, as you planned, and forget it?" "I can't." "But you've been wild to go, and I promised you should when you got through college." "Ah, but I didn't mean to go alone!" and Laurie walked fast through the room, with an expression which it was well his grandfather did not see. "I don't ask you to go alone; there's some one ready and glad to go with you, anywhere in the world." "Who, sir?" stopping to listen. "Myself." Laurie came back as quickly as he went, and put out his hand, saying huskily,-- "I'm a selfish brute; but--you know--grandfather--" "Lord help me, yes, I do know, for I've been through it all before, once in my own young days, and then with your father. Now, my dear boy, just sit quietly down, and hear my plan. It's all settled, and can be carried out at once," said Mr. Laurence, keeping hold of the young man, as if fearful that he would break away, as his father had done before him. "Well, sir, what is it?" and Laurie sat down, without a sign of interest in face or voice. "There is business in London that needs looking after; I meant you should attend to it; but I can do it better myself, and things here will get on very well with Brooke to manage them. My partners do almost everything; I'm merely holding on till you take my place, and can be off at any time." "But you hate travelling, sir; I can't ask it of you at your age," began Laurie, who was grateful for the sacrifice, but much preferred to go alone, if he went at all. The old gentleman knew that perfectly well, and particularly desired to prevent it; for the mood in which he found his grandson assured him that it would not be wise to leave him to his own devices. So, stifling a natural regret at the thought of the home comforts he would leave behind him, he said stoutly,-- "Bless your soul, I'm not superannuated yet. I quite enjoy the idea; it will do me good, and my old bones won't suffer, for travelling nowadays is almost as easy as sitting in a chair." A restless movement from Laurie suggested that _his_ chair was not easy, or that he did not like the plan, and made the old man add hastily,-- "I don't mean to be a marplot or a burden; I go because I think you'd feel happier than if I was left behind. I don't intend to gad about with you, but leave you free to go where you like, while I amuse myself in my own way. I've friends in London and Paris, and should like to visit them; meantime you can go to Italy, Germany, Switzerland, where you will, and enjoy pictures, music, scenery, and adventures to your heart's content." Now, Laurie felt just then that his heart was entirely broken, and the world a howling wilderness; but at the sound of certain words which the old gentleman artfully introduced into his closing sentence, the broken heart gave an unexpected leap, and a green oasis or two suddenly appeared in the howling wilderness. He sighed, and then said, in a spiritless tone,-- "Just as you like, sir; it doesn't matter where I go or what I do." "It does to me, remember that, my lad; I give you entire liberty, but I trust you to make an honest use of it. Promise me that, Laurie." "Anything you like, sir." "Good," thought the old gentleman. "You don't care now, but there'll come a time when that promise will keep you out of mischief, or I'm much mistaken." Being an energetic individual, Mr. Laurence struck while the iron was hot; and before the blighted being recovered spirit enough to rebel, they were off. During the time necessary for preparation, Laurie bore himself as young gentlemen usually do in such cases. He was moody, irritable, and pensive by turns; lost his appetite, neglected his dress, and devoted much time to playing tempestuously on his piano; avoided Jo, but consoled himself by staring at her from his window, with a tragical face that haunted her dreams by night, and oppressed her with a heavy sense of guilt by day. Unlike some sufferers, he never spoke of his unrequited passion, and would allow no one, not even Mrs. March, to attempt consolation or offer sympathy. On some accounts, this was a relief to his friends; but the weeks before his departure were very uncomfortable, and every one rejoiced that the "poor, dear fellow was going away to forget his trouble, and come home happy." Of course, he smiled darkly at their delusion, but passed it by, with the sad superiority of one who knew that his fidelity, like his love, was unalterable. When the parting came he affected high spirits, to conceal certain inconvenient emotions which seemed inclined to assert themselves. This gayety did not impose upon anybody, but they tried to look as if it did, for his sake, and he got on very well till Mrs. March kissed him, with a whisper full of motherly solicitude; then, feeling that he was going very fast, he hastily embraced them all round, not forgetting the afflicted Hannah, and ran downstairs as if for his life. Jo followed a minute after to wave her hand to him if he looked round. He did look round, came back, put his arms about her, as she stood on the step above him, and looked up at her with a face that made his short appeal both eloquent and pathetic. "O Jo, can't you?" [Illustration: O Jo, can't you?] "Teddy, dear, I wish I could!" That was all, except a little pause; then Laurie straightened himself up, said "It's all right, never mind," and went away without another word. Ah, but it wasn't all right, and Jo _did_ mind; for while the curly head lay on her arm a minute after her hard answer, she felt as if she had stabbed her dearest friend; and when he left her without a look behind him, she knew that the boy Laurie never would come again. [Illustration: Tail-piece]

Laurie studies hard and graduates with honor. The Marches and Brookes attend his graduation. Laurie has to stay in his college town for a graduation dinner, while his family and friends return home. He hands Jo into her carriage and asks her to come meet him when he arrives the next morning. Jo notices the way Laurie is looking at her and starts to worry about his feelings. The next day, Jo has decided that she's just being vain. She stops at Meg's house and plays with her niece and nephew on her way to meet Laurie. Jo and Laurie begin walking home together. Laurie talks about all kinds of things and seems distracted. There's an awkward pause, and then Jo asks Laurie not to say the things he's about to. Laurie insists that Jo hear out his proposal. Jo agrees to listen. Laurie declares that he's loved Jo ever since he first met her. Jo is upset and says she was trying to spare Laurie this scene. Laurie says that women are contrary and say no when they mean yes, so he's never been sure of how she felt. Jo says that she's never been the kind of person who said one thing and meant another. Jo tells Laurie that she went away to try and stop his feelings for her from developing. He says that he knew that, but it was no use, and he worked hard in college just to please her. Jo says that Laurie is too good for her and that she doesn't know why she can't love him, but that she just can't. Laurie stops completely still and rests his head on a fence post. Jo is frightened by how depressed he seems and starts apologizing, explaining that she would love him if she could, but love isn't something you can force. Jo says she has something to tell Laurie. Laurie gets angry because he thinks that she's going to say she's in love with Professor Bhaer. Jo defends the professor against Laurie's insults, but says that she doesn't love him either - that she doesn't have romantic feelings for anyone. Jo convinces Laurie to calm down and listen to her. She says that she agrees with her mother that she and Laurie aren't suited for one another - they both have serious tempers! Laurie promises to be calm and saint-like if Jo agrees to marry him. Jo says that's ridiculous and they would never be happy together. Laurie asks Jo to marry him so that they don't disappoint his grandfather, who really wants them to get together. Jo continues to refuse - she can't give Laurie a genuine "yes," so she won't give him any kind of yes. Jo tells Laurie that he will get over her and find a more elegant woman who would make a better wife for him as a rich man. She says that she doesn't think she'll ever get married. Laurie is angry. He says that he knows someday Jo will fall in love with someone, very passionately, and he can't bear to watch. Jo finally loses her patience and says that maybe she will love someone else someday, but she's done her best to do right by Laurie. They can always be friends, she says, but nothing else. Laurie says that Jo's going to be sorry one day and storms off. Jo watches as Laurie stomps off to the river and leaps into his boat and starts rowing away violently. She's relieved, because she thinks the exercise will help him calm down. Jo goes to Mr. Laurence and tells him what has happened. The old man cries, but he doesn't get mad at her. He knows that you can't force love. Mr. Laurence resolves to take Laurie away from the town to give him time to recover. Laurie comes home, tired but calm. He and his grandfather behave as if nothing has happened. Then Laurie goes to the piano and starts playing sad, pathetic music. Mr. Laurence asks Laurie to play something more cheerful. Laurie tries to, but then he hears Mrs. March calling for Jo next door and breaks off. Mr. Laurence goes over to Laurie and puts comforting hands on his shoulders. He explains that he knows what happened. Mr. Laurence suggests that Laurie take a trip abroad and try to forget about Jo. He offers to go with his grandson so that they can have some special family bonding time. Mr. Laurence explains his plan a little more. He wants Laurie to take care of some business for him in London. In the meantime, John Brooke can look after their affairs at home. Laurie starts to feel guilty, because he knows his grandfather doesn't like to travel and is making a sacrifice for him. Mr. Laurence says that he's not going to be a burden - he'll stay in London and Paris and let Laurie travel around Europe independently, seeing museums and hearing amazing music. Laurie agrees, but his heart isn't in it. Mr. Laurence makes him promise to use his liberty honestly. This is nineteenth-century code for "don't take a mistress or lose all your money gambling like an idiot or become an alcoholic." Mr. Laurence and his grandson leave town shortly afterward. As Laurie says goodbye to the March family, he asks Jo one more time if she can bring herself to marry him. She says that she wishes she could, but no. Laurie leaves, and Jo feels terrible. She knows he'll never be the same.

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.

Tess returns to Marlott, where a turnpike-keeper tells how John Durbeyfield's daughter has married a gentleman farmer and the Durbeyfields have since been celebrating. Tess attempts to arrive at home unobserved, but cannot. She sees a girl whom she knew from school and claims that her husband is now away at business. When Tess arrives at home, she admits to her mother that she told Angel about her past. Tess claims that she could not so sin against him, but Joan replies that she sinned enough to marry him first. Tess finds that there is no place for her at home anymore; her old bed is now used by two of the younger children. Her father is a foot-haggler now, having sold his second horse. When John finds out what has happened to Tess, he laments the humiliation he will receive, and claims that he will put an end to himself. Tess decides to stay only a few days, and receives a letter from Angel informing her that he had gone to the north of England to look for a farm. Tess uses this as a reason to leave Marlott, claiming that she will join Angel. Before she leaves, she gives half of the fifty pounds Angel has given her to her mother, as a slight return for the humiliation she had brought upon them.

ACT THIRD. The room at the TESMANS'. The curtains are drawn over the middle doorway, and also over the glass door. The lamp, half turned down, and with a shade over it, is burning on the table. In the stove, the door of which stands open, there has been a fire, which is now nearly burnt out. MRS. ELVSTED, wrapped in a large shawl, and with her feet upon a foot-rest, sits close to the stove, sunk back in the arm-chair. HEDDA, fully dressed, lies sleeping upon the sofa, with a sofa-blanket over her. MRS. ELVSTED. [After a pause, suddenly sits up in her chair, and listens eagerly. Then she sinks back again wearily, moaning to herself.] Not yet!--Oh God--oh God--not yet! BERTA slips cautiously in by the hall door. She has a letter in her hand. MRS. ELVSTED. [Turns and whispers eagerly.] Well--has any one come? BERTA. [Softly.] Yes, a girl has just brought this letter. MRS. ELVSTED. [Quickly, holding out her hand.] A letter! Give it to me! BERTA. No, it's for Dr. Tesman, ma'am. MRS. ELVSTED. Oh, indeed. BERTA. It was Miss Tesman's servant that brought it. I'll lay it here on the table. MRS. ELVSTED. Yes, do. BERTA. [Laying down the letter.] I think I had better put out the lamp. It's smoking. MRS. ELVSTED. Yes, put it out. It must soon be daylight now. BERTA. [Putting out the lamp.] It is daylight already, ma'am. MRS. ELVSTED. Yes, broad day! And no one come back yet--! BERTA. Lord bless you, ma'am--I guessed how it would be. MRS. ELVSTED. You guessed? BERTA. Yes, when I saw that a certain person had come back to town--and that he went off with them. For we've heard enough about that gentleman before now. MRS. ELVSTED. Don't speak so loud. You will waken Mrs. Tesman. BERTA. [Looks towards the sofa and sighs.] No, no--let her sleep, poor thing. Shan't I put some wood on the fire? MRS. ELVSTED. Thanks, not for me. BERTA. Oh, very well. [She goes softly out by the hall door. HEDDA. [Is wakened by the shutting of the door, and looks up.] What's that--? MRS. ELVSTED. It was only the servant. HEDDA. [Looking about her.] Oh, we're here--! Yes, now I remember. [Sits erect upon the sofa, stretches herself, and rubs her eyes.] What o'clock is it, Thea? MRS. ELVSTED. [Looks at her watch.] It's past seven. HEDDA. When did Tesman come home? MRS. ELVSTED. He has not come. HEDDA. Not come home yet? MRS. ELVSTED. [Rising.] No one has come. HEDDA. Think of our watching and waiting here till four in the morning-- MRS. ELVSTED. [Wringing her hands.] And how I watched and waited for him! HEDDA. [Yawns, and says with her hand before her mouth.] Well well--we might have spared ourselves the trouble. MRS. ELVSTED. Did you get a little sleep? HEDDA. Oh yes; I believe I have slept pretty well. Have you not? MRS. ELVSTED. Not for a moment. I couldn't, Hedda!--not to save my life. HEDDA. [Rises and goes towards her.] There there there! There's nothing to be so alarmed about. I understand quite well what has happened. MRS. ELVSTED. Well, what do you think? Won't you tell me? HEDDA. Why, of course it has been a very late affair at Judge Brack's-- MRS. ELVSTED. Yes, yes--that is clear enough. But all the same-- HEDDA. And then, you see, Tesman hasn't cared to come home and ring us up in the middle of the night. [Laughing.] Perhaps he wasn't inclined to show himself either--immediately after a jollification. MRS. ELVSTED. But in that case--where can he have gone? HEDDA. Of course he has gone to his Aunts' and slept there. They have his old room ready for him. MRS. ELVSTED. No, he can't be with them for a letter has just come for him from Miss Tesman. There it lies. HEDDA. Indeed? [Looks at the address.] Why yes, it's addressed in Aunt Julia's hand. Well then, he has remained at Judge Brack's. And as for Eilert Lovborg--he is sitting, with vine-leaves in his hair, reading his manuscript. MRS. ELVSTED. Oh, Hedda, you are just saying things you don't believe a bit. HEDDA. You really are a little blockhead, Thea. MRS. ELVSTED. Oh yes, I suppose I am. HEDDA. And how mortally tired you look. MRS. ELVSTED. Yes, I am mortally tired. HEDDA. Well then, you must do as I tell you. You must go into my room and lie down for a little while. MRS. ELVSTED. Oh no, no--I shouldn't be able to sleep. HEDDA. I am sure you would. MRS. ELVSTED. Well, but you husband is certain to come soon now; and then I want to know at once-- HEDDA. I shall take care to let you know when he comes. MRS. ELVSTED. Do you promise me, Hedda? HEDDA. Yes, rely upon me. Just you go in and have a sleep in the meantime. MRS. ELVSTED. Thanks; then I'll try. [She goes off to the inner room. [HEDDA goes up to the glass door and draws back the curtains. The broad daylight streams into the room. Then she takes a little hand-glass from the writing-table, looks at herself in it, and arranges her hair. Next she goes to the hall door and presses the bell-button. BERTA presently appears at the hall door. BERTA. Did you want anything, ma'am? HEDDA. Yes; you must put some more wood in the stove. I am shivering. BERTA. Bless me--I'll make up the fire at once. [She rakes the embers together and lays a piece of wood upon them; then stops and listens.] That was a ring at the front door, ma'am. HEDDA. Then go to the door. I will look after the fire. BERTA. It'll soon burn up. [She goes out by the hall door. [HEDDA kneels on the foot-rest and lays some more pieces of wood in the stove. After a short pause, GEORGE TESMAN enters from the hall. He steals on tiptoe towards the middle doorway and is about to slip through the curtains. HEDDA. [At the stove, without looking up.] Good morning. TESMAN. [Turns.] Hedda! [Approaching her.] Good heavens--are you up so early? Eh? HEDDA. Yes, I am up very early this morning. TESMAN. And I never doubted you were still sound asleep! Fancy that, Hedda! HEDDA. Don't speak so loud. Mrs. Elvsted is resting in my room. TESMAN. Has Mrs. Elvsted been here all night? HEDDA. Yes, since no one came to fetch her. TESMAN. Ah, to be sure. HEDDA. [Closes the door of the stove and rises.] Well, did you enjoy yourselves at Judge Brack's? TESMAN. Have you been anxious about me? Eh? HEDDA. No, I should never think of being anxious. But I asked if you had enjoyed yourself. TESMAN. Oh yes,--for once in a way. Especially the beginning of the evening; for then Eilert read me part of his book. We arrived more than an hour too early--fancy that! And Brack had all sorts of arrangements to make--so Eilert read to me. HEDDA. [Seating herself by the table on the right.] Well? Tell me then-- TESMAN. [Sitting on a footstool near the stove.] Oh, Hedda, you can't conceive what a book that is going to be! I believe it is one of the most remarkable things that have ever been written. Fancy that! HEDDA. Yes yes; I don't care about that-- TESMAN. I must make a confession to you, Hedda. When he had finished reading--a horrid feeling came over me. HEDDA. A horrid feeling? TESMAN. I felt jealous of Eilert for having had it in him to write such a book. Only think, Hedda! HEDDA. Yes, yes, I am thinking! TESMAN. And then how pitiful to think that he--with all his gifts--should be irreclaimable, after all. HEDDA. I suppose you mean that he has more courage than the rest? TESMAN. No, not at all--I mean that he is incapable of taking his pleasure in moderation. HEDDA. And what came of it all--in the end? TESMAN. Well, to tell the truth, I think it might best be described as an orgie, Hedda. HEDDA. Had he vine-leaves in his hair? TESMAN. Vine-leaves? No, I saw nothing of the sort. But he made a long, rambling speech in honour of the woman who had inspired him in his work--that was the phrase he used. HEDDA. Did he name her? TESMAN. No, he didn't; but I can't help thinking he meant Mrs. Elvsted. You may be sure he did. HEDDA. Well--where did you part from him? TESMAN. On the way to town. We broke up--the last of us at any rate--all together; and Brack came with us to get a breath of fresh air. And then, you see, we agreed to take Eilert home; for he had had far more than was good for him. HEDDA. I daresay. TESMAN. But now comes the strange part of it, Hedda; or, I should rather say, the melancholy part of it. I declare I am almost ashamed--on Eilert's account--to tell you-- HEDDA. Oh, go on--! TESMAN. Well, as we were getting near town, you see, I happened to drop a little behind the others. Only for a minute or two--fancy that! HEDDA. Yes yes yes, but--? TESMAN. And then, as I hurried after them--what do you think I found by the wayside? Eh? HEDDA. Oh, how should I know! TESMAN. You mustn't speak of it to a soul, Hedda! Do you hear! Promise me, for Eilert's sake. [Draws a parcel, wrapped in paper, from his coat pocket.] Fancy, dear--I found this. HEDDA. Is not that the parcel he had with him yesterday? TESMAN. Yes, it is the whole of his precious, irreplaceable manuscript! And he had gone and lost it, and knew nothing about it. Only fancy, Hedda! So deplorably-- HEDDA. But why did you not give him back the parcel at once? TESMAN. I didn't dare to--in the state he was then in-- HEDDA. Did you not tell any of the others that you had found it? TESMAN. Oh, far from it! You can surely understand that, for Eilert's sake, I wouldn't do that. HEDDA. So no one knows that Eilert Lovborg's manuscript is in your possession? TESMAN. No. And no one must know it. HEDDA. Then what did you say to him afterwards? TESMAN. I didn't talk to him again at all; for when we got in among the streets, he and two or three of the others gave us the slip and disappeared. Fancy that! HEDDA. Indeed! They must have taken him home then. TESMAN. Yes, so it would appear. And Brack, too, left us. HEDDA. And what have you been doing with yourself since? TESMAN. Well, I and some of the others went home with one of the party, a jolly fellow, and took our morning coffee with him; or perhaps I should rather call it our night coffee--eh? But now, when I have rested a little, and given Eilert, poor fellow, time to have his sleep out, I must take this back to him. HEDDA. [Holds out her hand for the packet.] No--don't give it to him! Not in such a hurry, I mean. Let me read it first. TESMAN. No, my dearest Hedda, I mustn't, I really mustn't. HEDDA. You must not? TESMAN. No--for you can imagine what a state of despair he will be in when he wakens and misses the manuscript. He has no copy of it, you must know! He told me so. HEDDA. [Looking searchingly at him.] Can such a thing not be reproduced? Written over again? TESMAN. No, I don't think that would be possible. For the inspiration, you see-- HEDDA. Yes, yes--I suppose it depends on that--[Lightly.] But, by-the-bye --here is a letter for you. TESMAN. Fancy--! HEDDA. [Handing it to him.] It came early this morning. TESMAN. It's from Aunt Julia! What can it be? [He lays the packet on the other footstool, opens the letter, runs his eye through it, and jumps up.] Oh, Hedda--she says that poor Aunt Rina is dying! HEDDA. Well, we were prepared for that. TESMAN. And that if I want to see her again, I must make haste. I'll run in to them at once. HEDDA. [Suppressing a smile.] Will you run? TESMAN. Oh, my dearest Hedda--if you could only make up your mind to come with me! Just think! HEDDA. [Rises and says wearily, repelling the idea.] No, no don't ask me. I will not look upon sickness and death. I loathe all sorts of ugliness. TESMAN. Well, well, then--! [Bustling around.] My hat--? My overcoat--? Oh, in the hall--. I do hope I mayn't come too late, Hedda! Eh? HEDDA. Oh, if you run-- [BERTA appears at the hall door. BERTA. Judge Brack is at the door, and wishes to know if he may come in. TESMAN. At this time! No, I can't possibly see him. HEDDA. But I can. [To BERTA.] Ask Judge Brack to come in. [BERTA goes out. HEDDA. [Quickly, whispering.] The parcel, Tesman! [She snatches it up from the stool. TESMAN. Yes, give it to me! HEDDA. No, no, I will keep it till you come back. [She goes to the writing-table and places it in the bookcase. TESMAN stands in a flurry of haste, and cannot get his gloves on. JUDGE BRACK enters from the hall. HEDDA. [Nodding to him.] You are an early bird, I must say. BRACK. Yes, don't you think so! [To TESMAN.] Are you on the move, too? TESMAN. Yes, I must rush of to my aunts'. Fancy--the invalid one is lying at death's door, poor creature. BRACK. Dear me, is she indeed? Then on no account let me detain you. At such a critical moment-- TESMAN. Yes, I must really rush-- Good-bye! Good-bye! [He hastens out by the hall door. HEDDA. [Approaching.] You seem to have made a particularly lively night of it at your rooms, Judge Brack. BRACK. I assure you I have not had my clothes off, Mrs. Hedda. HEDDA. Not you, either? BRACK. No, as you may see. But what has Tesman been telling you of the night's adventures? HEDDA. Oh, some tiresome story. Only that they went and had coffee somewhere or other. BRACK. I have heard about that coffee-party already. Eilert Lovborg was not with them, I fancy? HEDDA. No, they had taken him home before that. BRACK. Tesman too? HEDDA. No, but some of the others, he said. BRACK. [Smiling.] George Tesman is really an ingenuous creature, Mrs. Hedda. HEDDA. Yes, heaven knows he is. Then is there something behind all this? BRACK. Yes, perhaps there may be. HEDDA. Well then, sit down, my dear Judge, and tell your story in comfort. [She seats herself to the left of the table. BRACK sits near her, at the long side of the table. HEDDA. Now then? BRACK. I had special reasons for keeping track of my guests--last night. HEDDA. Of Eilert Lovborg among the rest, perhaps? BRACK. Frankly, yes. HEDDA. Now you make me really curious-- BRACK. Do you know where he and one or two of the others finished the night, Mrs. Hedda? HEDDA. If it is not quite unmentionable, tell me. BRACK. Oh no, it's not at all unmentionable. Well, they put in an appearance at a particularly animated soiree. HEDDA. Of the lively kind? BRACK. Of the very liveliest-- HEDDA. Tell me more of this, Judge Brack-- BRACK. Lovborg, as well as the others, had been invited in advance. I knew all about it. But he had declined the invitation; for now, as you know, he has become a new man. HEDDA. Up at the Elvsteds', yes. But he went after all, then? BRACK. Well, you see, Mrs. Hedda--unhappily the spirit moved him at my rooms last evening-- HEDDA. Yes, I hear he found inspiration. BRACK. Pretty violent inspiration. Well, I fancy that altered his purpose; for we menfolk are unfortunately not always so firm in our principles as we ought to be. HEDDA. Oh, I am sure you are an exception, Judge Brack. But as to Lovborg--? BRACK. To make a long story short--he landed at last in Mademoiselle Diana's rooms. HEDDA. Mademoiselle Diana's? BRACK. It was Mademoiselle Diana that was giving the soiree, to a select circle of her admirers and her lady friends. HEDDA. Is she a red-haired woman? BRACK. Precisely. HEDDA. A sort of a--singer? BRACK. Oh yes--in her leisure moments. And moreover a mighty huntress--of men--Mrs. Hedda. You have no doubt heard of her. Eilert Lovborg was one of her most enthusiastic protectors--in the days of his glory. HEDDA. And how did all this end? BRACK. Far from amicably, it appears. After a most tender meeting, they seem to have come to blows-- HEDDA. Lovborg and she? BRACK. Yes. He accused her or her friends of having robbed him. He declared that his pocket-book had disappeared--and other things as well. In short, he seems to have made a furious disturbance. HEDDA. And what came of it all? BRACK. It came to a general scrimmage, in which the ladies as well as the gentlemen took part. Fortunately the police at last appeared on the scene. HEDDA. The police too? BRACK. Yes. I fancy it will prove a costly frolic for Eilert Lovborg, crazy being that he is. HEDDA. How so? BRACK. He seems to have made a violent resistance--to have hit one of the constables on the head and torn the coat off his back. So they had to march him off to the police-station with the rest. HEDDA. How have you learnt all this? BRACK. From the police themselves. HEDDA. [Gazing straight before her.] So that is what happened. Then he had no vine-leaves in his hair. BRACK. Vine-leaves, Mrs. Hedda? HEDDA. [Changing her tone.] But tell me now, Judge--what is your real reason for tracking out Eilert Lovborg's movements so carefully? BRACK. In the first place, it could not be entirely indifferent to me if it should appear in the police-court that he came straight from my house. HEDDA. Will the matter come into court then? BRACK. Of course. However, I should scarcely have troubled so much about that. But I thought that, as a friend of the family, it was my duty to supply you and Tesman with a full account of his nocturnal exploits. HEDDA. Why so, Judge Brack? BRACK. Why, because I have a shrewd suspicion that he intends to use you as a sort of blind. HEDDA. Oh, how can you think such a thing! BRACK. Good heavens, Mrs. Hedda--we have eyes in our head. Mark my words! This Mrs. Elvsted will be in no hurry to leave town again. HEDDA. Well, even if there should be anything between them, I suppose there are plenty of other places where they could meet. BRACK. Not a single home. Henceforth, as before, every respectable house will be closed against Eilert Lovborg. HEDDA. And so ought mine to be, you mean? BRACK. Yes. I confess it would be more than painful to me if this personage were to be made free of your house. How superfluous, how intrusive, he would be, if he were to force his way into-- HEDDA. --into the triangle? BRACK. Precisely. It would simply mean that I should find myself homeless. HEDDA. [Looks at him with a smile.] So you want to be the one cock in the basket(12)--that is your aim. BRACK. [Nods slowly and lowers his voice.] Yes, that is my aim. And for that I will fight--with every weapon I can command. HEDDA. [Her smile vanishing.] I see you are a dangerous person--when it comes to the point. BRACK. Do you think so? HEDDA. I am beginning to think so. And I am exceedingly glad to think--that you have no sort of hold over me. BRACK. [Laughing equivocally.] Well well, Mrs. Hedda--perhaps you are right there. If I had, who knows what I might be capable of? HEDDA. Come come now, Judge Brack! That sounds almost like a threat. BRACK. [Rising.] Oh, not at all! The triangle, you know, ought, if possible, to be spontaneously constructed. HEDDA. There I agree with you. BRACK. Well, now I have said all I had to say; and I had better be getting back to town. Good-bye, Mrs. Hedda. [He goes towards the glass door. HEDDA. [Rising.] Are you going through the garden? BRACK. Yes, it's a short cut for me. HEDDA. And then it is a back way, too. BRACK. Quite so. I have no objection to back ways. They may be piquant enough at times. HEDDA. When there is ball practice going on, you mean? BRACK. [In the doorway, laughing to her.] Oh, people don't shoot their tame poultry, I fancy. HEDDA. [Also laughing.] Oh no, when there is only one cock in the basket-- [They exchange laughing nods of farewell. He goes. She closes the door behind him. [HEDDA, who has become quite serious, stands for a moment looking out. Presently she goes and peeps through the curtain over the middle doorway. Then she goes to the writing-table, takes LOVBORG'S packet out of the bookcase, and is on the point of looking through its contents. BERTA is heard speaking loudly in the hall. HEDDA turns and listens. Then she hastily locks up the packet in the drawer, and lays the key on the inkstand. EILERT LOVBORG, with his greatcoat on and his hat in his hand, tears open the hall door. He looks somewhat confused and irritated. LOVBORG. [Looking towards the hall.] and I tell you I must and will come in! There! [He closes the door, turns, sees HEDDA, at once regains his self- control, and bows. HEDDA. [At the writing-table.] Well, Mr Lovborg, this is rather a late hour to call for Thea. LOVBORG. You mean rather an early hour to call on you. Pray pardon me. HEDDA. How do you know that she is still here? LOVBORG. They told me at her lodgings that she had been out all night. HEDDA. [Going to the oval table.] Did you notice anything about the people of the house when they said that? LOVBORG. [Looks inquiringly at her.] Notice anything about them? HEDDA. I mean, did they seem to think it odd? LOVBORG. [Suddenly understanding.] Oh yes, of course! I am dragging her down with me! However, I didn't notice anything.--I suppose Tesman is not up yet. HEDDA. No--I think not-- LOVBORG. When did he come home? HEDDA. Very late. LOVBORG. Did he tell you anything? HEDDA. Yes, I gathered that you had had an exceedingly jolly evening at Judge Brack's. LOVBORG. Nothing more? HEDDA. I don't think so. However, I was so dreadfully sleepy-- MRS. ELVSTED enters through the curtains of the middle doorway. MRS. ELVSTED. [Going towards him.] Ah, Lovborg! At last--! LOVBORG. Yes, at last. And too late! MRS. ELVSTED. [Looks anxiously at him.] What is too late? LOVBORG. Everything is too late now. It is all over with me. MRS. ELVSTED. Oh no, no--don't say that! LOVBORG. You will say the same when you hear-- MRS. ELVSTED. I won't hear anything! HEDDA. Perhaps you would prefer to talk to her alone? If so, I will leave you. LOVBORG. No, stay--you too. I beg you to stay. MRS. ELVSTED. Yes, but I won't hear anything, I tell you. LOVBORG. It is not last night's adventures that I want to talk about. MRS. ELVSTED. What is it then--? LOVBORG. I want to say that now our ways must part. MRS. ELVSTED. Part! HEDDA. [Involuntarily.] I knew it! LOVBORG. You can be of no more service to me, Thea. MRS. ELVSTED. How can you stand there and say that! No more service to you! Am I not to help you now, as before? Are we not to go on working together? LOVBORG. Henceforward I shall do no work. MRS. ELVSTED. [Despairingly.] Then what am I to do with my life? LOVBORG. You must try to live your life as if you had never know me. MRS. ELVSTED. But you know I cannot do that! LOVBORG. Try if you cannot, Thea. You must go home again-- MRS. ELVSTED. [In vehement protest.] Never in this world! Where you are, there will I be also! I will not let myself be driven away like this! I will remain here! I will be with you when the book appears. HEDDA. [Half aloud, in suspense.] Ah yes--the book! LOVBORG. [Looks at her.] My book and Thea's; for that is what it is. MRS. ELVSTED. Yes, I feel that it is. And that is why I have a right to be with you when it appears! I will see with my own eyes how respect and honour pour in upon you afresh. And the happiness--the happiness--oh, I must share it with you! LOVBORG. Thea--our book will never appear. HEDDA. Ah! MRS. ELVSTED. Never appear! LOVBORG. Can never appear. MRS. ELVSTED. [In agonised foreboding.] Lovborg--what have you done with the manuscript? HEDDA. [Looks anxiously at him.] Yes, the manuscript--? MRS. ELVSTED. Where is it? LOVBORG. The manuscript--. Well then--I have torn the manuscript into a thousand pieces. MRS. ELVSTED. [Shrieks.] Oh no, no--! HEDDA. [Involuntarily.] But that's not-- LOVBORG. [Looks at her.] Not true, you think? HEDDA. [Collecting herself.] Oh well, of course--since you say so. But it sounded so improbable-- LOVBORG. It is true, all the same. MRS. ELVSTED. [Wringing her hands.] Oh God--oh God, Hedda--torn his own work to pieces! LOVBORG. I have torn my own life to pieces. So why should I not tear my life-work too--? MRS. ELVSTED. And you did this last night? LOVBORG. Yes, I tell you! Tore it into a thousand pieces--and scattered them on the fiord--far out. There there is cool sea-water at any rate--let them drift upon it--drift with the current and the wind. And then presently they will sink--deeper and deeper--as I shall, Thea. MRS. ELVSTED. Do you know, Lovborg, that what you have done with the book--I shall think of it to my dying day as though you had killed a little child. LOVBORG. Yes, you are right. It is a sort of child-murder. MRS. ELVSTED. How could you, then--! Did not the child belong to me too? HEDDA. [Almost inaudibly.] Ah, the child-- MRS. ELVSTED. [Breathing heavily.] It is all over then. Well well, now I will go, Hedda. HEDDA. But you are not going away from town? MRS. ELVSTED. Oh, I don't know what I shall do. I see nothing but darkness before me. [She goes out by the hall door. HEDDA. [Stands waiting for a moment.] So you are not going to see her home, Mr. Lovborg? LOVBORG. I? Through the streets? Would you have people see her walking with me? HEDDA. Of course I don't know what else may have happened last night. But is it so utterly irretrievable? LOVBORG. It will not end with last night--I know that perfectly well. And the thing is that now I have no taste for that sort of life either. I won't begin it anew. She has broken my courage and my power of braving life out. HEDDA. [Looking straight before her.] So that pretty little fool has had her fingers in a man's destiny. [Looks at him.] But all the same, how could you treat her so heartlessly. LOVBORG. Oh, don't say that I was heartless! HEDDA. To go and destroy what has filled her whole soul for months and years! You do not call that heartless! LOVBORG. To you I can tell the truth, Hedda. HEDDA. The truth? LOVBORG. First promise me--give me your word--that what I now confide in you Thea shall never know. HEDDA. I give you my word. LOVBORG. Good. Then let me tell you that what I said just now was untrue. HEDDA. About the manuscript? LOVBORG. Yes. I have not torn it to pieces--nor thrown it into the fiord. HEDDA. No, no--. But--where is it then? LOVBORG. I have destroyed it none the less--utterly destroyed it, Hedda! HEDDA. I don't understand. LOVBORG. Thea said that what I had done seemed to her like a child-murder. HEDDA. Yes, so she said. LOVBORG. But to kill his child--that is not the worst thing a father can do to it. HEDDA. Not the worst? LOVBORG. Suppose now, Hedda, that a man--in the small hours of the morning--came home to his child's mother after a night of riot and debauchery, and said: "Listen--I have been here and there--in this place and in that. And I have taken our child with--to this place and to that. And I have lost the child--utterly lost it. The devil knows into what hands it may have fallen--who may have had their clutches on it." HEDDA. Well--but when all is said and done, you know--this was only a book-- LOVBORG. Thea's pure soul was in that book. HEDDA. Yes, so I understand. LOVBORG. And you can understand, too, that for her and me together no future is possible. HEDDA. What path do you mean to take then? LOVBORG. None. I will only try to make an end of it all--the sooner the better. HEDDA. [A step nearer him.] Eilert Lovborg--listen to me.--Will you not try to--to do it beautifully? LOVBORG. Beautifully? [Smiling.] With vine-leaves in my hair, as you used to dream in the old days--? HEDDA. No, no. I have lost my faith in the vine-leaves. But beautifully nevertheless! For once in a way!--Good-bye! You must go now--and do not come here any more. LOVBORG. Good-bye, Mrs. Tesman. And give George Tesman my love. [He is on the point of going. HEDDA. No, wait! I must give you a memento to take with you. [She goes to the writing-table and opens the drawer and the pistol-case; then returns to LOVBORG with one of the pistols. LOVBORG. [Looks at her.] This? Is this the memento? HEDDA. [Nodding slowly.] Do you recognise it? It was aimed at you once. LOVBORG. You should have used it then. HEDDA. Take it--and do you use it now. LOVBORG. [Puts the pistol in his breast pocket.] Thanks! HEDDA. And beautifully, Eilert Lovborg. Promise me that! LOVBORG. Good-bye, Hedda Gabler. [He goes out by the hall door. [HEDDA listens for a moment at the door. Then she goes up to the writing-table, takes out the packet of manuscript, peeps under the cover, draws a few of the sheets half out, and looks at them. Next she goes over and seats herself in the arm-chair beside the stove, with the packet in her lap. Presently she opens the stove door, and then the packet. HEDDA. [Throws one of the quires into the fire and whispers to herself.] Now I am burning your child, Thea!--Burning it, curly-locks! [Throwing one or two more quires into the stove.] Your child and Eilert Lovborg's. [Throws the rest in.] I am burning--I am burning your child.

The curtain rises on the Tesman's home the next morning. The male revelers have still not returned from Brack's bachelor party; Mrs. Elvsted is anxiously keeping vigil in a chair, while Hedda is sleeping on a couch. Berte enters with a letter and an offer to put more wood on the fire, which offer Mrs. Elvsted declines. Hedda is awakened when Berte shuts the door on her way out, and the two women discuss the men's failure to return. Hedda suspects they are too ashamed to show themselves after a night of wild merrymaking, and that her husband is sleeping at his aunts'. Mrs. Elvsted tells Hedda, however, that such cannot be the case, since Berte has just brought a letter from Aunt Juliane for Tesman. Hedda sends Mrs. Elvsted to Hedda's room to try and sleep, promising to let her know the moment that Lovborg arrives. Hedda tells Berte that she will add more wood to the fire for herself. Tesman finally arrives, his attempt at a surreptitious entrance foiled by his alert wife. He tells Hedda that, as part of the night's proceedings, Lovborg read to the party from his new book, which promises to be an outstanding work. Tesman confesses to a certain amount of envy at Lovborg's accomplishment, even though he believes the other man to be "beyond hope of reform, all the same." He describes Lovborg's subsequent behavior during the night as "almost... an orgy," mentioning that Lovborg rambled on at length about "the woman who had inspired him" . He also relates how the drunken Lovborg carelessly dropped his manuscript in the gutter. Tesman retrieved it, and plans to return it to Lovborg once he has sobered; however, Hedda convinces Tesman to give the manuscript to her. Hedda gives Tesman the letter from Aunt Juliane, in which Juliane relates that her sister Rina is about to die. Panicked and frantic, Tesman prepares to go to his aunts' home, exchanging a brief greeting with Brack as the latter arrives. Hedda asks Brack for more details of the bachelor party. He tells her that Lovborg and a few other guests went to "a particularly animated soiree" at the salon of one Mademoiselle Diana, whom Brack describes as a "mighty huntress" of men, and, indeed, someone with whom Lovborg was once involved. When Diana accused Lovborg of stealing from her, however, the soiree ended in a row, requiring police intervention. Lovborg violently resisted police action; Brack believes a court case against Lovborg is pending, and that the man so recently hailed as a promising example of reform will once more find himself shunned by polite, "decent" society. Hedda points out that this situation is, of course, to Brack's advantage: he can now continue to be "the only cock in the yard," without Lovborg as a rival for her attention. After Brack leaves, Lovborg arrives, quite agitated, demanding entrance to the Tesman home. Mrs. Elvsted, now awake from her rest, is demonstrably relieved to see Lovborg. She protests Lovborg's declarations that he has been ruined, and she reacts with shock and anger when Lovborg breaks off his relationship with her. She demands to know whether she can continue to be his partner and source of inspiration, telling Hedda that she feels as though she and Lovborg practically wrote his new book together; indeed, that the book is like their child. Lovborg confesses to Mrs. Elvsted that he does not have the manuscript, but he chooses to lie about its fate, stating that he has torn it to pieces. Mrs. Elvsted departs in deep sadness, claiming that she believes Lovborg has as good as killed their child, and that nothing but darkness now awaits her. Hedda accuses Lovborg of treating Mrs. Elvsted callously. Lovborg confides in Hedda that he lied about the manuscript's fate, but he does not tell her what she already know. Instead, he says that he is actually doing Mrs. Elvsted a kindness, by sparing her the unpleasantness that is to come for him. Hedda asks if Lovborg could not, instead, spare Mrs. Elvsted in a beautiful rather than a callous way. Before Lovborg departs, Hedda gives him one of her pistols--the one she once had trained on him, years before--as a remembrance. After Lovborg departs, Hedda feeds his manuscript, incapable of being rewritten as it was, into the fire.

The old man had gained the street corner, before he began to recover the effect of Toby Crackit's intelligence. He had relaxed nothing of his unusual speed; but was still pressing onward, in the same wild and disordered manner, when the sudden dashing past of a carriage: and a boisterous cry from the foot passengers, who saw his danger: drove him back upon the pavement. Avoiding, as much as was possible, all the main streets, and skulking only through the by-ways and alleys, he at length emerged on Snow Hill. Here he walked even faster than before; nor did he linger until he had again turned into a court; when, as if conscious that he was now in his proper element, he fell into his usual shuffling pace, and seemed to breathe more freely. Near to the spot on which Snow Hill and Holborn Hill meet, opens, upon the right hand as you come out of the City, a narrow and dismal alley, leading to Saffron Hill. In its filthy shops are exposed for sale huge bunches of second-hand silk handkerchiefs, of all sizes and patterns; for here reside the traders who purchase them from pick-pockets. Hundreds of these handkerchiefs hang dangling from pegs outside the windows or flaunting from the door-posts; and the shelves, within, are piled with them. Confined as the limits of Field Lane are, it has its barber, its coffee-shop, its beer-shop, and its fried-fish warehouse. It is a commercial colony of itself: the emporium of petty larceny: visited at early morning, and setting-in of dusk, by silent merchants, who traffic in dark back-parlours, and who go as strangely as they come. Here, the clothesman, the shoe-vamper, and the rag-merchant, display their goods, as sign-boards to the petty thief; here, stores of old iron and bones, and heaps of mildewy fragments of woollen-stuff and linen, rust and rot in the grimy cellars. It was into this place that the Jew turned. He was well known to the sallow denizens of the lane; for such of them as were on the look-out to buy or sell, nodded, familiarly, as he passed along. He replied to their salutations in the same way; but bestowed no closer recognition until he reached the further end of the alley; when he stopped, to address a salesman of small stature, who had squeezed as much of his person into a child's chair as the chair would hold, and was smoking a pipe at his warehouse door. 'Why, the sight of you, Mr. Fagin, would cure the hoptalmy!' said this respectable trader, in acknowledgment of the Jew's inquiry after his health. 'The neighbourhood was a little too hot, Lively,' said Fagin, elevating his eyebrows, and crossing his hands upon his shoulders. 'Well, I've heerd that complaint of it, once or twice before,' replied the trader; 'but it soon cools down again; don't you find it so?' Fagin nodded in the affirmative. Pointing in the direction of Saffron Hill, he inquired whether any one was up yonder to-night. 'At the Cripples?' inquired the man. The Jew nodded. 'Let me see,' pursued the merchant, reflecting. 'Yes, there's some half-dozen of 'em gone in, that I knows. I don't think your friend's there.' 'Sikes is not, I suppose?' inquired the Jew, with a disappointed countenance. '_Non istwentus_, as the lawyers say,' replied the little man, shaking his head, and looking amazingly sly. 'Have you got anything in my line to-night?' 'Nothing to-night,' said the Jew, turning away. 'Are you going up to the Cripples, Fagin?' cried the little man, calling after him. 'Stop! I don't mind if I have a drop there with you!' But as the Jew, looking back, waved his hand to intimate that he preferred being alone; and, moreover, as the little man could not very easily disengage himself from the chair; the sign of the Cripples was, for a time, bereft of the advantage of Mr. Lively's presence. By the time he had got upon his legs, the Jew had disappeared; so Mr. Lively, after ineffectually standing on tiptoe, in the hope of catching sight of him, again forced himself into the little chair, and, exchanging a shake of the head with a lady in the opposite shop, in which doubt and mistrust were plainly mingled, resumed his pipe with a grave demeanour. The Three Cripples, or rather the Cripples; which was the sign by which the establishment was familiarly known to its patrons: was the public-house in which Mr. Sikes and his dog have already figured. Merely making a sign to a man at the bar, Fagin walked straight upstairs, and opening the door of a room, and softly insinuating himself into the chamber, looked anxiously about: shading his eyes with his hand, as if in search of some particular person. The room was illuminated by two gas-lights; the glare of which was prevented by the barred shutters, and closely-drawn curtains of faded red, from being visible outside. The ceiling was blackened, to prevent its colour from being injured by the flaring of the lamps; and the place was so full of dense tobacco smoke, that at first it was scarcely possible to discern anything more. By degrees, however, as some of it cleared away through the open door, an assemblage of heads, as confused as the noises that greeted the ear, might be made out; and as the eye grew more accustomed to the scene, the spectator gradually became aware of the presence of a numerous company, male and female, crowded round a long table: at the upper end of which, sat a chairman with a hammer of office in his hand; while a professional gentleman with a bluish nose, and his face tied up for the benefit of a toothache, presided at a jingling piano in a remote corner. As Fagin stepped softly in, the professional gentleman, running over the keys by way of prelude, occasioned a general cry of order for a song; which having subsided, a young lady proceeded to entertain the company with a ballad in four verses, between each of which the accompanyist played the melody all through, as loud as he could. When this was over, the chairman gave a sentiment, after which, the professional gentleman on the chairman's right and left volunteered a duet, and sang it, with great applause. It was curious to observe some faces which stood out prominently from among the group. There was the chairman himself, (the landlord of the house,) a coarse, rough, heavy built fellow, who, while the songs were proceeding, rolled his eyes hither and thither, and, seeming to give himself up to joviality, had an eye for everything that was done, and an ear for everything that was said--and sharp ones, too. Near him were the singers: receiving, with professional indifference, the compliments of the company, and applying themselves, in turn, to a dozen proffered glasses of spirits and water, tendered by their more boisterous admirers; whose countenances, expressive of almost every vice in almost every grade, irresistibly attracted the attention, by their very repulsiveness. Cunning, ferocity, and drunkeness in all its stages, were there, in their strongest aspect; and women: some with the last lingering tinge of their early freshness almost fading as you looked: others with every mark and stamp of their sex utterly beaten out, and presenting but one loathsome blank of profligacy and crime; some mere girls, others but young women, and none past the prime of life; formed the darkest and saddest portion of this dreary picture. Fagin, troubled by no grave emotions, looked eagerly from face to face while these proceedings were in progress; but apparently without meeting that of which he was in search. Succeeding, at length, in catching the eye of the man who occupied the chair, he beckoned to him slightly, and left the room, as quietly as he had entered it. 'What can I do for you, Mr. Fagin?' inquired the man, as he followed him out to the landing. 'Won't you join us? They'll be delighted, every one of 'em.' The Jew shook his head impatiently, and said in a whisper, 'Is _he_ here?' 'No,' replied the man. 'And no news of Barney?' inquired Fagin. 'None,' replied the landlord of the Cripples; for it was he. 'He won't stir till it's all safe. Depend on it, they're on the scent down there; and that if he moved, he'd blow upon the thing at once. He's all right enough, Barney is, else I should have heard of him. I'll pound it, that Barney's managing properly. Let him alone for that.' 'Will _he_ be here to-night?' asked the Jew, laying the same emphasis on the pronoun as before. 'Monks, do you mean?' inquired the landlord, hesitating. 'Hush!' said the Jew. 'Yes.' 'Certain,' replied the man, drawing a gold watch from his fob; 'I expected him here before now. If you'll wait ten minutes, he'll be--' 'No, no,' said the Jew, hastily; as though, however desirous he might be to see the person in question, he was nevertheless relieved by his absence. 'Tell him I came here to see him; and that he must come to me to-night. No, say to-morrow. As he is not here, to-morrow will be time enough.' 'Good!' said the man. 'Nothing more?' 'Not a word now,' said the Jew, descending the stairs. 'I say,' said the other, looking over the rails, and speaking in a hoarse whisper; 'what a time this would be for a sell! I've got Phil Barker here: so drunk, that a boy might take him!' 'Ah! But it's not Phil Barker's time,' said the Jew, looking up. 'Phil has something more to do, before we can afford to part with him; so go back to the company, my dear, and tell them to lead merry lives--_while they last_. Ha! ha! ha!' The landlord reciprocated the old man's laugh; and returned to his guests. The Jew was no sooner alone, than his countenance resumed its former expression of anxiety and thought. After a brief reflection, he called a hack-cabriolet, and bade the man drive towards Bethnal Green. He dismissed him within some quarter of a mile of Mr. Sikes's residence, and performed the short remainder of the distance, on foot. 'Now,' muttered the Jew, as he knocked at the door, 'if there is any deep play here, I shall have it out of you, my girl, cunning as you are.' She was in her room, the woman said. Fagin crept softly upstairs, and entered it without any previous ceremony. The girl was alone; lying with her head upon the table, and her hair straggling over it. 'She has been drinking,' thought the Jew, cooly, 'or perhaps she is only miserable.' The old man turned to close the door, as he made this reflection; the noise thus occasioned, roused the girl. She eyed his crafty face narrowly, as she inquired to his recital of Toby Crackit's story. When it was concluded, she sank into her former attitude, but spoke not a word. She pushed the candle impatiently away; and once or twice as she feverishly changed her position, shuffled her feet upon the ground; but this was all. During the silence, the Jew looked restlessly about the room, as if to assure himself that there were no appearances of Sikes having covertly returned. Apparently satisfied with his inspection, he coughed twice or thrice, and made as many efforts to open a conversation; but the girl heeded him no more than if he had been made of stone. At length he made another attempt; and rubbing his hands together, said, in his most conciliatory tone, 'And where should you think Bill was now, my dear?' The girl moaned out some half intelligible reply, that she could not tell; and seemed, from the smothered noise that escaped her, to be crying. 'And the boy, too,' said the Jew, straining his eyes to catch a glimpse of her face. 'Poor leetle child! Left in a ditch, Nance; only think!' 'The child,' said the girl, suddenly looking up, 'is better where he is, than among us; and if no harm comes to Bill from it, I hope he lies dead in the ditch and that his young bones may rot there.' 'What!' cried the Jew, in amazement. 'Ay, I do,' returned the girl, meeting his gaze. 'I shall be glad to have him away from my eyes, and to know that the worst is over. I can't bear to have him about me. The sight of him turns me against myself, and all of you.' 'Pooh!' said the Jew, scornfully. 'You're drunk.' 'Am I?' cried the girl bitterly. 'It's no fault of yours, if I am not! You'd never have me anything else, if you had your will, except now;--the humour doesn't suit you, doesn't it?' 'No!' rejoined the Jew, furiously. 'It does not.' 'Change it, then!' responded the girl, with a laugh. 'Change it!' exclaimed the Jew, exasperated beyond all bounds by his companion's unexpected obstinacy, and the vexation of the night, 'I _will_ change it! Listen to me, you drab. Listen to me, who with six words, can strangle Sikes as surely as if I had his bull's throat between my fingers now. If he comes back, and leaves the boy behind him; if he gets off free, and dead or alive, fails to restore him to me; murder him yourself if you would have him escape Jack Ketch. And do it the moment he sets foot in this room, or mind me, it will be too late!' 'What is all this?' cried the girl involuntarily. 'What is it?' pursued Fagin, mad with rage. 'When the boy's worth hundreds of pounds to me, am I to lose what chance threw me in the way of getting safely, through the whims of a drunken gang that I could whistle away the lives of! And me bound, too, to a born devil that only wants the will, and has the power to, to--' Panting for breath, the old man stammered for a word; and in that instant checked the torrent of his wrath, and changed his whole demeanour. A moment before, his clenched hands had grasped the air; his eyes had dilated; and his face grown livid with passion; but now, he shrunk into a chair, and, cowering together, trembled with the apprehension of having himself disclosed some hidden villainy. After a short silence, he ventured to look round at his companion. He appeared somewhat reassured, on beholding her in the same listless attitude from which he had first roused her. 'Nancy, dear!' croaked the Jew, in his usual voice. 'Did you mind me, dear?' 'Don't worry me now, Fagin!' replied the girl, raising her head languidly. 'If Bill has not done it this time, he will another. He has done many a good job for you, and will do many more when he can; and when he can't he won't; so no more about that.' 'Regarding this boy, my dear?' said the Jew, rubbing the palms of his hands nervously together. 'The boy must take his chance with the rest,' interrupted Nancy, hastily; 'and I say again, I hope he is dead, and out of harm's way, and out of yours,--that is, if Bill comes to no harm. And if Toby got clear off, Bill's pretty sure to be safe; for Bill's worth two of Toby any time.' 'And about what I was saying, my dear?' observed the Jew, keeping his glistening eye steadily upon her. 'You must say it all over again, if it's anything you want me to do,' rejoined Nancy; 'and if it is, you had better wait till to-morrow. You put me up for a minute; but now I'm stupid again.' Fagin put several other questions: all with the same drift of ascertaining whether the girl had profited by his unguarded hints; but, she answered them so readily, and was withal so utterly unmoved by his searching looks, that his original impression of her being more than a trifle in liquor, was confirmed. Nancy, indeed, was not exempt from a failing which was very common among the Jew's female pupils; and in which, in their tenderer years, they were rather encouraged than checked. Her disordered appearance, and a wholesale perfume of Geneva which pervaded the apartment, afforded strong confirmatory evidence of the justice of the Jew's supposition; and when, after indulging in the temporary display of violence above described, she subsided, first into dullness, and afterwards into a compound of feelings: under the influence of which she shed tears one minute, and in the next gave utterance to various exclamations of 'Never say die!' and divers calculations as to what might be the amount of the odds so long as a lady or gentleman was happy, Mr. Fagin, who had had considerable experience of such matters in his time, saw, with great satisfaction, that she was very far gone indeed. Having eased his mind by this discovery; and having accomplished his twofold object of imparting to the girl what he had, that night, heard, and of ascertaining, with his own eyes, that Sikes had not returned, Mr. Fagin again turned his face homeward: leaving his young friend asleep, with her head upon the table. It was within an hour of midnight. The weather being dark, and piercing cold, he had no great temptation to loiter. The sharp wind that scoured the streets, seemed to have cleared them of passengers, as of dust and mud, for few people were abroad, and they were to all appearance hastening fast home. It blew from the right quarter for the Jew, however, and straight before it he went: trembling, and shivering, as every fresh gust drove him rudely on his way. He had reached the corner of his own street, and was already fumbling in his pocket for the door-key, when a dark figure emerged from a projecting entrance which lay in deep shadow, and, crossing the road, glided up to him unperceived. 'Fagin!' whispered a voice close to his ear. 'Ah!' said the Jew, turning quickly round, 'is that--' 'Yes!' interrupted the stranger. 'I have been lingering here these two hours. Where the devil have you been?' 'On your business, my dear,' replied the Jew, glancing uneasily at his companion, and slackening his pace as he spoke. 'On your business all night.' 'Oh, of course!' said the stranger, with a sneer. 'Well; and what's come of it?' 'Nothing good,' said the Jew. 'Nothing bad, I hope?' said the stranger, stopping short, and turning a startled look on his companion. The Jew shook his head, and was about to reply, when the stranger, interrupting him, motioned to the house, before which they had by this time arrived: remarking, that he had better say what he had got to say, under cover: for his blood was chilled with standing about so long, and the wind blew through him. Fagin looked as if he could have willingly excused himself from taking home a visitor at that unseasonable hour; and, indeed, muttered something about having no fire; but his companion repeating his request in a peremptory manner, he unlocked the door, and requested him to close it softly, while he got a light. 'It's as dark as the grave,' said the man, groping forward a few steps. 'Make haste!' 'Shut the door,' whispered Fagin from the end of the passage. As he spoke, it closed with a loud noise. 'That wasn't my doing,' said the other man, feeling his way. 'The wind blew it to, or it shut of its own accord: one or the other. Look sharp with the light, or I shall knock my brains out against something in this confounded hole.' Fagin stealthily descended the kitchen stairs. After a short absence, he returned with a lighted candle, and the intelligence that Toby Crackit was asleep in the back room below, and that the boys were in the front one. Beckoning the man to follow him, he led the way upstairs. 'We can say the few words we've got to say in here, my dear,' said the Jew, throwing open a door on the first floor; 'and as there are holes in the shutters, and we never show lights to our neighbours, we'll set the candle on the stairs. There!' With those words, the Jew, stooping down, placed the candle on an upper flight of stairs, exactly opposite to the room door. This done, he led the way into the apartment; which was destitute of all movables save a broken arm-chair, and an old couch or sofa without covering, which stood behind the door. Upon this piece of furniture, the stranger sat himself with the air of a weary man; and the Jew, drawing up the arm-chair opposite, they sat face to face. It was not quite dark; the door was partially open; and the candle outside, threw a feeble reflection on the opposite wall. They conversed for some time in whispers. Though nothing of the conversation was distinguishable beyond a few disjointed words here and there, a listener might easily have perceived that Fagin appeared to be defending himself against some remarks of the stranger; and that the latter was in a state of considerable irritation. They might have been talking, thus, for a quarter of an hour or more, when Monks--by which name the Jew had designated the strange man several times in the course of their colloquy--said, raising his voice a little, 'I tell you again, it was badly planned. Why not have kept him here among the rest, and made a sneaking, snivelling pickpocket of him at once?' 'Only hear him!' exclaimed the Jew, shrugging his shoulders. 'Why, do you mean to say you couldn't have done it, if you had chosen?' demanded Monks, sternly. 'Haven't you done it, with other boys, scores of times? If you had had patience for a twelvemonth, at most, couldn't you have got him convicted, and sent safely out of the kingdom; perhaps for life?' 'Whose turn would that have served, my dear?' inquired the Jew humbly. 'Mine,' replied Monks. 'But not mine,' said the Jew, submissively. 'He might have become of use to me. When there are two parties to a bargain, it is only reasonable that the interests of both should be consulted; is it, my good friend?' 'What then?' demanded Monks. 'I saw it was not easy to train him to the business,' replied the Jew; 'he was not like other boys in the same circumstances.' 'Curse him, no!' muttered the man, 'or he would have been a thief, long ago.' 'I had no hold upon him to make him worse,' pursued the Jew, anxiously watching the countenance of his companion. 'His hand was not in. I had nothing to frighten him with; which we always must have in the beginning, or we labour in vain. What could I do? Send him out with the Dodger and Charley? We had enough of that, at first, my dear; I trembled for us all.' '_That_ was not my doing,' observed Monks. 'No, no, my dear!' renewed the Jew. 'And I don't quarrel with it now; because, if it had never happened, you might never have clapped eyes on the boy to notice him, and so led to the discovery that it was him you were looking for. Well! I got him back for you by means of the girl; and then _she_ begins to favour him.' 'Throttle the girl!' said Monks, impatiently. 'Why, we can't afford to do that just now, my dear,' replied the Jew, smiling; 'and, besides, that sort of thing is not in our way; or, one of these days, I might be glad to have it done. I know what these girls are, Monks, well. As soon as the boy begins to harden, she'll care no more for him, than for a block of wood. You want him made a thief. If he is alive, I can make him one from this time; and, if--if--' said the Jew, drawing nearer to the other,--'it's not likely, mind,--but if the worst comes to the worst, and he is dead--' 'It's no fault of mine if he is!' interposed the other man, with a look of terror, and clasping the Jew's arm with trembling hands. 'Mind that. Fagin! I had no hand in it. Anything but his death, I told you from the first. I won't shed blood; it's always found out, and haunts a man besides. If they shot him dead, I was not the cause; do you hear me? Fire this infernal den! What's that?' 'What!' cried the Jew, grasping the coward round the body, with both arms, as he sprung to his feet. 'Where?' 'Yonder! replied the man, glaring at the opposite wall. 'The shadow! I saw the shadow of a woman, in a cloak and bonnet, pass along the wainscot like a breath!' The Jew released his hold, and they rushed tumultuously from the room. The candle, wasted by the draught, was standing where it had been placed. It showed them only the empty staircase, and their own white faces. They listened intently: a profound silence reigned throughout the house. 'It's your fancy,' said the Jew, taking up the light and turning to his companion. 'I'll swear I saw it!' replied Monks, trembling. 'It was bending forward when I saw it first; and when I spoke, it darted away.' The Jew glanced contemptuously at the pale face of his associate, and, telling him he could follow, if he pleased, ascended the stairs. They looked into all the rooms; they were cold, bare, and empty. They descended into the passage, and thence into the cellars below. The green damp hung upon the low walls; the tracks of the snail and slug glistened in the light of the candle; but all was still as death. 'What do you think now?' said the Jew, when they had regained the passage. 'Besides ourselves, there's not a creature in the house except Toby and the boys; and they're safe enough. See here!' As a proof of the fact, the Jew drew forth two keys from his pocket; and explained, that when he first went downstairs, he had locked them in, to prevent any intrusion on the conference. This accumulated testimony effectually staggered Mr. Monks. His protestations had gradually become less and less vehement as they proceeded in their search without making any discovery; and, now, he gave vent to several very grim laughs, and confessed it could only have been his excited imagination. He declined any renewal of the conversation, however, for that night: suddenly remembering that it was past one o'clock. And so the amiable couple parted.

Fagin rushes into a pub called the Three Cripples to look for a man named Monks. Not finding him, he hurries to Sikes's residence. At Sikes's residence, he finds Nancy, who, in a drunken stupor, reports that Sikes is hiding. Fagin relates Oliver's misfortune, and Nancy cries that she hopes Oliver is dead, because she believes that living with Fagin is worse than death. Fagin replies that Oliver is worth hundreds of pounds to him. He returns to his house to find Monks waiting for him. Monks asks why Fagin has chosen to send Oliver out on such a mission rather than make the boy into a simple pickpocket. It becomes clear that Monks has some interest in Oliver. Monks was looking for Oliver and saw him the day Oliver was arrested. Moreover, Fagin notes that Monks wants Oliver to be made into a hardened thief. Monks becomes alarmed, thinking he sees the shadow of a woman. The two stop talking and leave Fagin's house

ACT III. Scene I. Leonato's orchard. [Enter Hero and two Gentlewomen, Margaret and Ursula.] Hero. Good Margaret, run thee to the parlour. There shalt thou find my cousin Beatrice Proposing with the Prince and Claudio. Whisper her ear and tell her, I and Ursley Walk in the orchard, and our whole discourse Is all of her. Say that thou overheard'st us; And bid her steal into the pleached bower, Where honeysuckles, ripened by the sun, Forbid the sun to enter--like favourites, Made proud by princes, that advance their pride Against that power that bred it. There will she hide her To listen our propose. This is thy office. Bear thee well in it and leave us alone. Marg. I'll make her come, I warrant you, presently. [Exit.] Hero. Now, Ursula, when Beatrice doth come, As we do trace this alley up and down, Our talk must only be of Benedick. When I do name him, let it be thy part To praise him more than ever man did merit. My talk to thee must be how Benedick Is sick in love with Beatrice. Of this matter Is little Cupid's crafty arrow made, That only wounds by hearsay. [Enter Beatrice.] Now begin; For look where Beatrice like a lapwing runs Close by the ground, to hear our conference. [Beatrice hides in the arbour]. Urs. The pleasant'st angling is to see the fish Cut with her golden oars the silver stream And greedily devour the treacherous bait. So angle we for Beatrice, who even now Is couched in the woodbine coverture. Fear you not my part of the dialogue. Hero. Then go we near her, that her ear lose nothing Of the false sweet bait that we lay for it. [They approach the arbour.] No, truly, Ursula, she is too disdainful. I know her spirits are as coy and wild As haggards of the rock. Urs. But are you sure That Benedick loves Beatrice so entirely? Hero. So says the Prince, and my new-trothed lord. Urs. And did they bid you tell her of it, madam? Hero. They did entreat me to acquaint her of it; But I persuaded them, if they lov'd Benedick, To wish him wrestle with affection And never to let Beatrice know of it. Urs. Why did you so? Doth not the gentleman Deserve as full, as fortunate a bed As ever Beatrice shall couch upon? Hero. O god of love! I know he doth deserve As much as may be yielded to a man: But Nature never fram'd a woman's heart Of prouder stuff than that of Beatrice. Disdain and scorn ride sparkling in her eyes, Misprizing what they look on; and her wit Values itself so highly that to her All matter else seems weak. She cannot love, Nor take no shape nor project of affection, She is so self-endeared. Urs. Sure I think so; And therefore certainly it were not good She knew his love, lest she'll make sport at it. Hero. Why, you speak truth. I never yet saw man, How wise, how noble, young, how rarely featur'd, But she would spell him backward. If fair-fac'd, She would swear the gentleman should be her sister; If black, why, Nature, drawing of an antic, Made a foul blot; if tall, a lance ill-headed; If low, an agate very vilely cut; If speaking, why, a vane blown with all winds; If silent, why, a block moved with none. So turns she every man the wrong side out And never gives to truth and virtue that Which simpleness and merit purchaseth. Urs. Sure, sure, such carping is not commendable. Hero. No, not to be so odd, and from all fashions, As Beatrice is, cannot be commendable. But who dare tell her so? If I should speak, She would mock me into air; O, she would laugh me Out of myself, press me to death with wit! Therefore let Benedick, like cover'd fire, Consume away in sighs, waste inwardly. It were a better death than die with mocks, Which is as bad as die with tickling. Urs. Yet tell her of it. Hear what she will say. Hero. No; rather I will go to Benedick And counsel him to fight against his passion. And truly, I'll devise some honest slanders To stain my cousin with. One doth not know How much an ill word may empoison liking. Urs. O, do not do your cousin such a wrong! She cannot be so much without true judgment (Having so swift and excellent a wit As she is priz'd to have) as to refuse So rare a gentleman as Signior Benedick. Hero. He is the only man of Italy, Always excepted my dear Claudio. Urs. I pray you be not angry with me, madam, Speaking my fancy: Signior Benedick, For shape, for bearing, argument, and valour, Goes foremost in report through Italy. Hero. Indeed he hath an excellent good name. Urs. His excellence did earn it ere he had it. When are you married, madam? Hero. Why, every day to-morrow! Come, go in. I'll show thee some attires, and have thy counsel Which is the best to furnish me to-morrow. [They walk away.] Urs. She's lim'd, I warrant you! We have caught her, madam. Hero. If it prove so, then loving goes by haps; Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps. [Exeunt Hero and Ursula.] [Beatrice advances from the arbour.] Beat. What fire is in mine ears? Can this be true? Stand I condemn'd for pride and scorn so much? Contempt, farewell! and maiden pride, adieu! No glory lives behind the back of such. And, Benedick, love on; I will requite thee, Taming my wild heart to thy loving hand. If thou dost love, my kindness shall incite thee To bind our loves up in a holy band; For others say thou dost deserve, and I Believe it better than reportingly. [Exit.]

Hero has lain a similar trap for Beatrice, assisted by her maid, Ursula. Beatrice overhears a conversation wherein Hero and Ursula reveal that Benedick is in love with Beatrice and is even pining for her. Beatrice regrets her previous attitude towards him and decides to reciprocate his feelings.

Actus Secundus. Scene 1. Enter Leonato, his brother, his wife, Hero his daughter, and Beatrice his neece, and a kinsman. Leonato. Was not Count Iohn here at supper? Brother. I saw him not Beatrice. How tartly that Gentleman lookes, I neuer can see him, but I am heart-burn'd an howre after Hero. He is of a very melancholy disposition Beatrice. Hee were an excellent man that were made iust in the mid-way betweene him and Benedicke, the one is too like an image and saies nothing, and the other too like my Ladies eldest sonne, euermore tatling Leon. Then halfe signior Benedicks tongue in Count Iohns mouth, and halfe Count Iohns melancholy in Signior Benedicks face Beat. With a good legge, and a good foot vnckle, and money enough in his purse, such a man would winne any woman in the world, if he could get her good will Leon. By my troth Neece, thou wilt neuer get thee a husband, if thou be so shrewd of thy tongue Brother. Infaith shee's too curst Beat. Too curst is more then curst, I shall lessen Gods sending that way: for it is said, God sends a curst Cow short hornes, but to a Cow too curst he sends none Leon. So, by being too curst, God will send you no hornes Beat. Iust, if he send me no husband, for the which blessing, I am at him vpon my knees euery morning and euening: Lord, I could not endure a husband with a beard on his face, I had rather lie in the woollen Leonato. You may light vpon a husband that hath no beard Beatrice. What should I doe with him? dresse him in my apparell, and make him my waiting gentlewoman? he that hath a beard, is more then a youth: and he that hath no beard, is lesse then a man: and hee that is more then a youth, is not for mee: and he that is lesse then a man, I am not for him: therefore I will euen take sixepence in earnest of the Berrord, and leade his Apes into hell Leon. Well then, goe you into hell Beat. No, but to the gate, and there will the Deuill meete mee like an old Cuckold with hornes on his head, and say, get you to heauen Beatrice, get you to heauen, heere's no place for you maids, so deliuer I vp my Apes, and away to S[aint]. Peter: for the heauens, hee shewes mee where the Batchellers sit, and there liue wee as merry as the day is long Brother. Well neece, I trust you will be rul'd by your father Beatrice. Yes faith, it is my cosens dutie to make curtsie, and say, as it please you: but yet for all that cosin, let him be a handsome fellow, or else make an other cursie, and say, father, as it please me Leonato. Well neece, I hope to see you one day fitted with a husband Beatrice. Not till God make men of some other mettall then earth, would it not grieue a woman to be ouermastred with a peece of valiant dust: to make account of her life to a clod of waiward marle? no vnckle, ile none: Adams sonnes are my brethren, and truly I hold it a sinne to match in my kinred Leon. Daughter, remember what I told you, if the Prince doe solicit you in that kinde, you know your answere Beatrice. The fault will be in the musicke cosin, if you be not woed in good time: if the Prince bee too important, tell him there is measure in euery thing, & so dance out the answere, for heare me Hero, wooing, wedding, & repenting, is as a Scotch jigge, a measure, and a cinquepace: the first suite is hot and hasty like a Scotch jigge (and full as fantasticall) the wedding manerly modest, (as a measure) full of state & aunchentry, and then comes repentance, and with his bad legs falls into the cinquepace faster and faster, till he sinkes into his graue Leonato. Cosin you apprehend passing shrewdly Beatrice. I haue a good eye vnckle, I can see a Church by daylight Leon. The reuellers are entring brother, make good roome. Enter Prince, Pedro, Claudio, and Benedicke, and Balthasar, or dumbe Iohn, Maskers with a drum. Pedro. Lady, will you walke about with your friend? Hero. So you walke softly, and looke sweetly, and say nothing, I am yours for the walke, and especially when I walke away Pedro. With me in your company Hero. I may say so when I please Pedro. And when please you to say so? Hero. When I like your fauour, for God defend the Lute should be like the case Pedro. My visor is Philemons roofe, within the house is Loue Hero. Why then your visor should be thatcht Pedro. Speake low if you speake Loue Bene. Well, I would you did like me Mar. So would not I for your owne sake, for I haue manie ill qualities Bene. Which is one? Mar. I say my prayers alowd Ben. I loue you the better, the hearers may cry Amen Mar. God match me with a good dauncer Balt. Amen Mar. And God keepe him out of my sight when the daunce is done: answer Clarke Balt. No more words, the Clarke is answered Vrsula. I know you well enough, you are Signior Anthonio Anth. At a word, I am not Vrsula. I know you by the wagling of your head Anth. To tell you true, I counterfet him Vrsu. You could neuer doe him so ill well, vnlesse you were the very man: here's his dry hand vp & down, you are he, you are he Anth. At a word I am not Vrsula. Come, come, doe you thinke I doe not know you by your excellent wit? can vertue hide it selfe? goe to mumme, you are he, graces will appeare, and there's an end Beat. Will you not tell me who told you so? Bene. No, you shall pardon me Beat. Nor will you not tell me who you are? Bened. Not now Beat. That I was disdainfull, and that I had my good wit out of the hundred merry tales: well, this was Signior Benedicke that said so Bene. What's he? Beat. I am sure you know him well enough Bene. Not I, beleeue me Beat. Did he neuer make you laugh? Bene. I pray you what is he? Beat. Why he is the Princes ieaster, a very dull foole, onely his gift is, in deuising impossible slanders, none but Libertines delight in him, and the commendation is not in his witte, but in his villanie, for hee both pleaseth men and angers them, and then they laugh at him, and beat him: I am sure he is in the Fleet, I would he had boorded me Bene. When I know the Gentleman, Ile tell him what you say Beat. Do, do, hee'l but breake a comparison or two on me, which peraduenture (not markt, or not laugh'd at) strikes him into melancholly, and then there's a Partridge wing saued, for the foole will eate no supper that night. We must follow the Leaders Ben. In euery good thing Bea. Nay, if they leade to any ill, I will leaue them at the next turning. Exeunt. Musicke for the dance. Iohn. Sure my brother is amorous on Hero, and hath withdrawne her father to breake with him about it: the Ladies follow her, and but one visor remaines Borachio. And that is Claudio, I know him by his bearing Iohn. Are not you signior Benedicke? Clau. You know me well, I am hee Iohn. Signior, you are verie neere my Brother in his loue, he is enamor'd on Hero, I pray you disswade him from her, she is no equall for his birth: you may do the part of an honest man in it Claudio. How know you he loues her? Iohn. I heard him sweare his affection Bor. So did I too, and he swore he would marrie her to night Iohn. Come, let vs to the banquet. Ex. manet Clau. Clau. Thus answere I in name of Benedicke, But heare these ill newes with the eares of Claudio: 'Tis certaine so, the Prince woes for himselfe: Friendship is constant in all other things, Saue in the Office and affaires of loue: Therefore all hearts in loue vse their owne tongues. Let euerie eye negotiate for it selfe, And trust no Agent: for beautie is a witch, Against whose charmes, faith melteth into blood: This is an accident of hourely proofe, Which I mistrusted not. Farewell therefore Hero. Enter Benedicke. Ben. Count Claudio Clau. Yea, the same Ben. Come, will you goe with me? Clau. Whither? Ben. Euen to the next Willow, about your own businesse, Count. What fashion will you weare the Garland off? About your necke, like an Vsurers chaine? Or vnder your arme, like a Lieutenants scarfe? You must weare it one way, for the Prince hath got your Hero Clau . I wish him ioy of her Ben. Why that's spoken like an honest Drouier, so they sel Bullockes: but did you thinke the Prince wold haue serued you thus? Clau. I pray you leaue me Ben. Ho now you strike like the blindman, 'twas the boy that stole your meate, and you'l beat the post Clau. If it will not be, Ile leaue you. Enter. Ben. Alas poore hurt fowle, now will he creepe into sedges: But that my Ladie Beatrice should know me, & not know me: the Princes foole! Hah? It may be I goe vnder that title, because I am merrie: yea but so I am apt to do my selfe wrong: I am not so reputed, it is the base (though bitter) disposition of Beatrice, that putt's the world into her person, and so giues me out: well, Ile be reuenged as I may. Enter the Prince. Pedro. Now Signior, where's the Count, did you see him? Bene. Troth my Lord, I haue played the part of Lady Fame, I found him heere as melancholy as a Lodge in a Warren, I told him, and I thinke, told him true, that your grace had got the will of this young Lady, and I offered him my company to a willow tree, either to make him a garland, as being forsaken, or to binde him a rod, as being worthy to be whipt Pedro. To be whipt, what's his fault? Bene. The flat transgression of a Schoole-boy, who being ouer-ioyed with finding a birds nest, shewes it his companion, and he steales it Pedro. Wilt thou make a trust, a transgression? the transgression is in the stealer Ben. Yet it had not been amisse the rod had beene made, and the garland too, for the garland he might haue worne himselfe, and the rod hee might haue bestowed on you, who (as I take it) haue stolne his birds nest Pedro. I will but teach them to sing, and restore them to the owner Bene. If their singing answer your saying, by my faith you say honestly Pedro. The Lady Beatrice hath a quarrell to you, the Gentleman that daunst with her, told her shee is much wrong'd by you Bene. O she misusde me past the indurance of a block: an oake but with one greene leafe on it, would haue answered her: my very visor began to assume life, and scold with her: shee told mee, not thinking I had beene my selfe, that I was the Princes Iester, and that I was duller then a great thaw, hudling iest vpon iest, with such impossible conueiance vpon me, that I stood like a man at a marke, with a whole army shooting at me: shee speakes poynyards, and euery word stabbes: if her breath were as terrible as terminations, there were no liuing neere her, she would infect to the north starre: I would not marry her, though she were indowed with all that Adam had left him before he transgrest, she would haue made Hercules haue turnd spit, yea, and haue cleft his club to make the fire too: come, talke not of her, you shall finde her the infernall Ate in good apparell. I would to God some scholler would coniure her, for certainely while she is heere, a man may liue as quiet in hell, as in a sanctuary, and people sinne vpon purpose, because they would goe thither, so indeed all disquiet, horror, and perturbation followes her. Enter Claudio and Beatrice, Leonato, Hero. Pedro. Looke heere she comes Bene. Will your Grace command mee any seruice to the worlds end? I will goe on the slightest arrand now to the Antypodes that you can deuise to send me on: I will fetch you a tooth-picker now from the furthest inch of Asia: bring you the length of Prester Iohns foot: fetch you a hayre off the great Chams beard: doe you any embassage to the Pigmies, rather then hould three words conference, with this Harpy: you haue no employment for me? Pedro. None, but to desire your good company Bene. O God sir, heeres a dish I loue not, I cannot indure this Lady tongue. Enter. Pedr. Come Lady, come, you haue lost the heart of Signior Benedicke Beatr. Indeed my Lord, hee lent it me a while, and I gaue him vse for it, a double heart for a single one, marry once before he wonne it of mee, with false dice, therefore your Grace may well say I haue lost it Pedro. You haue put him downe Lady, you haue put him downe Beat. So I would not he should do me, my Lord, lest I should prooue the mother of fooles: I haue brought Count Claudio, whom you sent me to seeke Pedro. Why how now Count, wherfore are you sad? Claud. Not sad my Lord Pedro. How then? sicke? Claud. Neither, my Lord Beat. The Count is neither sad, nor sicke, nor merry, nor well: but ciuill Count, ciuill as an Orange, and something of a iealous complexion Pedro. Ifaith Lady, I thinke your blazon to be true. though Ile be sworne, if hee be so, his conceit is false: heere Claudio, I haue wooed in thy name, and faire Hero is won, I haue broke with her father, and his good will obtained, name the day of marriage, and God giue thee ioy Leona. Count, take of me my daughter, and with her my fortunes: his grace hath made the match, & all grace say, Amen to it Beatr. Speake Count, tis your Qu Claud. Silence is the perfectest Herault of ioy, I were but little happy if I could say, how much? Lady, as you are mine, I am yours, I giue away my selfe for you, and doat vpon the exchange Beat. Speake cosin, or (if you cannot) stop his mouth with a kisse, and let not him speake neither Pedro. In faith Lady you haue a merry heart Beatr. Yea my Lord I thanke it, poore foole it keepes on the windy side of Care, my coosin tells him in his eare that he is in my heart Clau. And so she doth coosin Beat. Good Lord for alliance: thus goes euery one to the world but I, and I am sun-burn'd, I may sit in a corner and cry, heigh ho for a husband Pedro. Lady Beatrice, I will get you one Beat. I would rather haue one of your fathers getting: hath your Grace ne're a brother like you? your father got excellent husbands, if a maid could come by them Prince. Will you haue me? Lady Beat. No, my Lord, vnlesse I might haue another for working-daies, your Grace is too costly to weare euerie day: but I beseech your Grace pardon mee, I was borne to speake all mirth, and no matter Prince. Your silence most offends me, and to be merry, best becomes you, for out of question, you were born in a merry howre Beatr. No sure my Lord, my Mother cried, but then there was a starre daunst, and vnder that was I borne: cosins God giue you ioy Leonato. Neece, will you looke to those things I told you of? Beat. I cry you mercy Vncle, by your Graces pardon. Exit Beatrice. Prince. By my troth a pleasant spirited Lady Leon. There's little of the melancholy element in her my Lord, she is neuer sad, but when she sleepes, and not euer sad then: for I haue heard my daughter say, she hath often dreamt of vnhappinesse, and wakt her selfe with laughing Pedro. Shee cannot indure to heare tell of a husband Leonato. O, by no meanes, she mocks all her wooers out of suite Prince. She were an excellent wife for Benedick Leonato. O Lord, my Lord, if they were but a weeke married, they would talke themselues madde Prince. Counte Claudio, when meane you to goe to Church? Clau. To morrow my Lord, Time goes on crutches, till Loue haue all his rites Leonato. Not till monday, my deare sonne, which is hence a iust seuen night, and a time too briefe too, to haue all things answer minde Prince. Come, you shake the head at so long a breathing, but I warrant thee Claudio, the time shall not goe dully by vs, I will in the interim, vndertake one of Hercules labors, which is, to bring Signior Benedicke and the Lady Beatrice into a mountaine of affection, th' one with th' other, I would faine haue it a match, and I doubt not but to fashion it, if you three will but minister such assistance as I shall giue you direction Leonato. My Lord, I am for you, though it cost mee ten nights watchings Claud. And I my Lord Prin. And you to gentle Hero? Hero. I will doe any modest office, my Lord, to helpe my cosin to a good husband Prin. And Benedick is not the vnhopefullest husband that I know: thus farre can I praise him, hee is of a noble straine, of approued valour, and confirm'd honesty, I will teach you how to humour your cosin, that shee shall fall in loue with Benedicke, and I, with your two helpes, will so practise on Benedicke, that in despight of his quicke wit, and his queasie stomacke, hee shall fall in loue with Beatrice: if wee can doe this, Cupid is no longer an Archer, his glory shall be ours, for wee are the onely louegods, goe in with me, and I will tell you my drift. Enter. Scene 2. Enter Iohn and Borachio. Ioh. It is so, the Count Claudio shal marry the daughter of Leonato Bora. Yea my Lord, but I can crosse it Iohn. Any barre, any crosse, any impediment, will be medicinable to me, I am sicke in displeasure to him, and whatsoeuer comes athwart his affection, ranges euenly with mine, how canst thou crosse this marriage? Bor. Not honestly my Lord, but so couertly, that no dishonesty shall appeare in me Iohn. Shew me breefely how Bor. I thinke I told your Lordship a yeere since, how much I am in the fauour of Margaret, the waiting gentlewoman to Hero Iohn. I remember Bor. I can at any vnseasonable instant of the night, appoint her to looke out at her Ladies chamber window Iohn. What life is in that, to be the death of this marriage? Bor. The poyson of that lies in you to temper, goe you to the Prince your brother, spare not to tell him, that hee hath wronged his Honor in marrying the renowned Claudio, whose estimation do you mightily hold vp, to a contaminated stale, such a one as Hero Iohn. What proofe shall I make of that? Bor. Proofe enough, to misuse the Prince, to vexe Claudio, to vndoe Hero, and kill Leonato, looke you for any other issue? Iohn. Onely to despight them, I will endeauour any thing Bor. Goe then, finde me a meete howre, to draw on Pedro and the Count Claudio alone, tell them that you know that Hero loues me, intend a kinde of zeale both to the Prince and Claudio (as in a loue of your brothers honor who hath made this match) and his friends reputation, who is thus like to be cosen'd with the semblance of a maid, that you haue discouer'd thus: they will scarcely beleeue this without triall: offer them instances which shall beare no lesse likelihood, than to see mee at her chamber window, heare me call Margaret, Hero; heare Margaret terme me Claudio, and bring them to see this the very night before the intended wedding, for in the meane time, I will so fashion the matter, that Hero shall be absent, and there shall appeare such seeming truths of Heroes disloyaltie, that iealousie shall be cal'd assurance, and all the preparation ouerthrowne Iohn. Grow this to what aduerse issue it can, I will put it in practise: be cunning in the working this, and thy fee is a thousand ducates Bor. Be thou constant in the accusation, and my cunning shall not shame me Iohn. I will presentlie goe learne their day of marriage. Enter. Scene 3. Enter Benedicke alone. Bene. Boy Boy. Signior Bene. In my chamber window lies a booke, bring it hither to me in the orchard Boy. I am heere already sir. Enter. Bene. I know that, but I would haue thee hence, and heere againe. I doe much wonder, that one man seeing how much another man is a foole, when he dedicates his behauiours to loue, will after hee hath laught at such shallow follies in others, become the argument of his owne scorne, by falling in loue, & such a man is Claudio. I haue known when there was no musicke with him but the drum and the fife, and now had hee rather heare the taber and the pipe: I haue knowne when he would haue walkt ten mile afoot, to see a good armor, and now will he lie ten nights awake caruing the fashion of a new dublet: he was wont to speake plaine, & to the purpose (like an honest man & a souldier) and now is he turn'd orthography, his words are a very fantasticall banquet, iust so many strange dishes: may I be so conuerted, & see with these eyes? I cannot tell, I thinke not: I will not bee sworne, but loue may transforme me to an oyster, but Ile take my oath on it, till he haue made an oyster of me, he shall neuer make me such a foole: one woman is faire, yet I am well: another is wise, yet I am well: another vertuous, yet I am well: but till all graces be in one woman, one woman shall not come in my grace: rich shee shall be, that's certaine: wise, or Ile none: vertuous, or Ile neuer cheapen her: faire, or Ile neuer looke on her: milde, or come not neere me: Noble, or not for an Angell: of good discourse: an excellent Musitian, and her haire shal be of what colour it please God, hah! the Prince and Monsieur Loue, I will hide me in the Arbor. Enter Prince, Leonato, Claudio, and Iacke Wilson. Prin. Come, shall we heare this musicke? Claud. Yea my good Lord: how still the euening is. As husht on purpose to grace harmonie Prin. See you where Benedicke hath hid himselfe? Clau. O very well my Lord: the musicke ended, Wee'll fit the kid-foxe with a penny worth Prince. Come Balthasar, wee'll heare that song again Balth. O good my Lord, taxe not so bad a voyce, To slander musicke any more then once Prin. It is the witnesse still of excellency, To slander Musicke any more then once Prince. It is the witnesse still of excellencie, To put a strange face on his owne perfection, I pray thee sing, and let me woe no more Balth. Because you talke of wooing, I will sing, Since many a wooer doth commence his suit, To her he thinkes not worthy, yet he wooes, Yet will he sweare he loues Prince. Nay pray thee come, Or if thou wilt hold longer argument, Doe it in notes Balth. Note this before my notes, Theres not a note of mine that's worth the noting Prince. Why these are very crotchets that he speaks, Note notes forsooth, and nothing Bene. Now diuine aire, now is his soule rauisht, is it not strange that sheepes guts should hale soules out of mens bodies? well, a horne for my money when all's done. The Song. Sigh no more Ladies, sigh no more, Men were deceiuers euer, One foote in Sea, and one on shore, To one thing constant neuer, Then sigh not so, but let them goe, And be you blithe and bonnie, Conuerting all your sounds of woe, Into hey nony nony. Sing no more ditties, sing no moe, Of dumps so dull and heauy, The fraud of men were euer so, Since summer first was leauy, Then sigh not so, &c Prince. By my troth a good song Balth. And an ill singer, my Lord Prince. Ha, no, no faith, thou singst well enough for a shift Ben. And he had been a dog that should haue howld thus, they would haue hang'd him, and I pray God his bad voyce bode no mischiefe, I had as liefe haue heard the night-rauen, come what plague could haue come after it Prince. Yea marry, dost thou heare Balthasar? I pray thee get vs some excellent musick: for to morrow night we would haue it at the Lady Heroes chamber window Balth. The best I can, my Lord. Exit Balthasar. Prince. Do so, farewell. Come hither Leonato, what was it you told me of to day, that your Niece Beatrice was in loue with signior Benedicke? Cla. O I, stalke on, stalke on, the foule sits. I did neuer thinke that Lady would haue loued any man Leon. No, nor I neither, but most wonderful, that she should so dote on Signior Benedicke, whom shee hath in all outward behauiours seemed euer to abhorre Bene. Is't possible? sits the winde in that corner? Leo. By my troth my Lord, I cannot tell what to thinke of it, but that she loues him with an inraged affection, it is past the infinite of thought Prince. May be she doth but counterfeit Claud. Faith like enough Leon. O God! counterfeit? there was neuer counterfeit of passion, came so neere the life of passion as she discouers it Prince. Why what effects of passion shewes she? Claud. Baite the hooke well, this fish will bite Leon. What effects my Lord? shee will sit you, you heard my daughter tell you how Clau. She did indeed Prince. How, how I pray you? you amaze me, I would haue thought her spirit had beene inuincible against all assaults of affection Leo. I would haue sworne it had, my Lord, especially against Benedicke Bene. I should thinke this a gull, but that the whitebearded fellow speakes it: knauery cannot sure hide himselfe in such reuerence Claud. He hath tane th' infection, hold it vp Prince. Hath shee made her affection known to Benedicke: Leonato. No, and sweares she neuer will, that's her torment Claud. 'Tis true indeed, so your daughter saies: shall I, saies she, that haue so oft encountred him with scorne, write to him that I loue him? Leo. This saies shee now when shee is beginning to write to him, for shee'll be vp twenty times a night, and there will she sit in her smocke, till she haue writ a sheet of paper: my daughter tells vs all Clau. Now you talke of a sheet of paper, I remember a pretty iest your daughter told vs of Leon. O when she had writ it, & was reading it ouer, she found Benedicke and Beatrice betweene the sheete Clau. That Leon. O she tore the letter into a thousand halfpence, raild at her self, that she should be so immodest to write, to one that shee knew would flout her: I measure him, saies she, by my owne spirit, for I should flout him if hee writ to mee, yea though I loue him, I should Clau. Then downe vpon her knees she falls, weepes, sobs, beates her heart, teares her hayre, praies, curses, O sweet Benedicke, God giue me patience Leon. She doth indeed, my daughter saies so, and the extasie hath so much ouerborne her, that my daughter is somtime afeard she will doe a desperate out-rage to her selfe, it is very true Prince. It were good that Benedicke knew of it by some other, if she will not discouer it Clau. To what end? he would but make a sport of it, and torment the poore Lady worse Prin. And he should, it were an almes to hang him, shee's an excellent sweet Lady, and (out of all suspition,) she is vertuous Claudio. And she is exceeding wise Prince. In euery thing, but in louing Benedicke Leon. O my Lord, wisedome and bloud combating in so tender a body, we haue ten proofes to one, that bloud hath the victory, I am sorry for her, as I haue iust cause, being her Vncle, and her Guardian Prince. I would shee had bestowed this dotage on mee, I would haue daft all other respects, and made her halfe my selfe: I pray you tell Benedicke of it, and heare what he will say Leon. Were it good thinke you? Clau. Hero thinkes surely she wil die, for she saies she will die, if hee loue her not, and shee will die ere shee make her loue knowne, and she will die if hee wooe her, rather than shee will bate one breath of her accustomed crossenesse Prince. She doth well, if she should make tender of her loue, 'tis very possible hee'l scorne it, for the man (as you know all) hath a contemptible spirit Clau. He is a very proper man Prin. He hath indeed a good outward happines Clau. 'Fore God, and in my minde very wise Prin. He doth indeed shew some sparkes that are like wit Leon. And I take him to be valiant Prin. As Hector, I assure you, and in the managing of quarrels you may see hee is wise, for either hee auoydes them with great discretion, or vndertakes them with a Christian-like feare Leon. If hee doe feare God, a must necessarilie keepe peace, if hee breake the peace, hee ought to enter into a quarrell with feare and trembling Prin. And so will he doe, for the man doth fear God, howsoeuer it seemes not in him, by some large ieasts hee will make: well, I am sorry for your niece, shall we goe see Benedicke, and tell him of her loue Claud. Neuer tell him, my Lord, let her weare it out with good counsell Leon. Nay that's impossible, she may weare her heart out first Prin. Well, we will heare further of it by your daughter, let it coole the while, I loue Benedicke well, and I could wish he would modestly examine himselfe, to see how much he is vnworthy to haue so good a Lady Leon. My Lord, will you walke? dinner is ready Clau. If he do not doat on her vpon this, I wil neuer trust my expectation Prin. Let there be the same Net spread for her, and that must your daughter and her gentlewoman carry: the sport will be, when they hold one an opinion of anothers dotage, and no such matter, that's the Scene that I would see, which will be meerely a dumbe shew: let vs send her to call him into dinner. Exeunt. Bene. This can be no tricke, the conference was sadly borne, they haue the truth of this from Hero, they seeme to pittie the Lady: it seemes her affections haue the full bent: loue me? why it must be requited: I heare how I am censur'd, they say I will beare my selfe proudly, if I perceiue the loue come from her: they say too, that she will rather die than giue any signe of affection: I did neuer thinke to marry, I must not seeme proud, happy are they that heare their detractions, and can put them to mending: they say the Lady is faire, 'tis a truth, I can beare them witnesse: and vertuous, tis so, I cannot reprooue it, and wise, but for louing me, by my troth it is no addition to her witte, nor no great argument of her folly; for I wil be horribly in loue with her, I may chance haue some odde quirkes and remnants of witte broken on mee, because I haue rail'd so long against marriage: but doth not the appetite alter? a man loues the meat in his youth, that he cannot indure in his age. Shall quips and sentences, and these paper bullets of the braine awe a man from the careere of his humour? No, the world must be peopled. When I said I would die a batcheler, I did not think I should liue till I were maried, here comes Beatrice: by this day, shee's a faire Lady, I doe spie some markes of loue in her. Enter Beatrice. Beat. Against my wil I am sent to bid you come in to dinner Bene. Faire Beatrice, I thanke you for your paines Beat. I tooke no more paines for those thankes, then you take paines to thanke me, if it had been painefull, I would not haue come Bene. You take pleasure then in the message Beat. Yea iust so much as you may take vpon a kniues point, and choake a daw withall: you haue no stomacke signior, fare you well. Enter. Bene. Ha, against my will I am sent to bid you come into dinner: there's a double meaning in that: I tooke no more paines for those thankes then you took paines to thanke me, that's as much as to say, any paines that I take for you is as easie as thankes: if I do not take pitty of her I am a villaine, if I doe not loue her I am a Iew, I will goe get her picture. Enter.

Hostess Quickly and Fang, a London officer, prepare to confront Falstaff. Falstaff owes Hostess Quickly a considerable sum of money. He has also promised to marry the Hostess, and has never made good on his word. Falstaff enters with Bardolph and a page. Fang tries to arrest Falstaff, and a verbal bout ensues. Amidst the commotion, the Lord Chief Justice enters. He demands to hear both sides of the story, and Hostess Quickly tells him that Falstaff owes her money and himself ; she lent him the money after he promised to marry her. Falstaff accuses the woman of madness, but the Lord Chief Justice knows Falstaff well enough to know that the woman is telling the truth. He tells Falstaff that he should pay the money and offer apologies. Falstaff refuses, and takes the woman aside for a private word. Master Gower, a messenger, enters. The King and Prince Hal are near; Gower gives the chief justice a document with the rest of the news. Meanwhile, Falstaff is convincing poor Hostess Quickly to drop the charges and lend him another ten pounds. After the matter with Quickly is resolved, Falstaff asks the Chief Justice to tell him what is apace. The King is going against Northumberland and the Archbishop of York with fifteen hundred foot and five hundred horse. Falstaff invites Gower and then the Chief Justice to dinner. Both men decline, the Chief Justice reminding Falstaff that he should not be loitering. Falstaff is supposed to be recruiting men in all the counties on the way to his destination. Falstaff makes no apologies for his way of life. Scene Two: Enter Poins and Prince Hal. Hal admits that he is tired and wants beer; they have a playful conversation about the distance between nobility and the needs of the body. We learn that King Henry is very sick; on that subject, Hal says at first that he is not sad. A moment later, he says that he is very sad. But he does not weep; he asks Poins to confess what he would think if Hal did weep. Poins says he would think the prince a hypocrite; he has been roguish and attached to Falstaff. He has been a disobedient son all his father's life, and tears now would be hypocritical. For fear of looking a hypocrite, the prince hides his sorrow. The prince makes this confession lightly, half-joking and half-serious. Bardolph enters with Falstaff's page. They bring a letter to Hal from Falstaff; the letter is written in a casual, familiar, and irreverent style. Hal and Poins laugh disapprovingly at Falstaff's presumptions. On learning that Falstaff is dining at Eastcheap, they decide to steal upon him and observe him covertly. Poins suggests that they disguise themselves as waiters. Scene Three: Northumberland, his wife, and Harry Percy's widow discuss the upcoming war. Hotspur's widow begs the earl to remain at home and not commit his forces; before, he failed to commit forces to help his own son. She reasons that if there was no reason before for committing troops, then there is no reason now. She praises her dead husband's virtues, speaking of how he was model and inspiration to all his troops. If he failed to help his son, Northumberland should not help now. Northumberland insists he must get involved, but his wife also thinks that they should take refuge in Scotland until a more advantageous time. Hotspur's widow suggests waiting to see which way the tide turns. Northumberland is persuaded. Scene Four: As Sir John Falstaff complains about the food, one waiter tells the other that Prince Hal and Poins are going to take their clothes so they can observe Falstaff covertly. Hostess Quickly and Doll Tearsheet enter, and Falstaff and Doll Tearsheet almost immediately begin to insult each other. But after Quickly's intercession, Doll Tearsheet suggests a truce since Falstaff will soon be going off to war. A drawer enters and announces that Pistol has come calling on Sir John, and over Quickly's objections Falstaff has the drawer let Pistol in. After his arrival, Pistol almost immediately insults Doll Tearsheet. Doll Tearsheet's replies infuriate Pistol, who draws his sword. The situation escalates, different people trying to intercede, until Pistol and Falstaff fight. Bardolph takes Pistol to throw him outside; when he returns he reports that Pistol has been wounded. Doll Tearsheet is impressed by Falstaff's actions, and she praises and pampers him. She asks Falstaff when he will be allowed to stop fighting, so he can take care of his old, tired body. Hal and Poins enter behind them, disguised as waiters. Doll Tearsheet asks about Prince Hal and Poins, and Falstaff says horrible things about both of them. Hal and Poins, watching, quietly mock Falstaff and become increasingly angry. As Sir John prepares to go to bed with Doll Tearsheet, Hal and Poins confont him. He immediately becomes ingratiating. Falstaff says that he defamed the Prince and Poins in the presence of the wicked so that the wicked would not seek to be near the Prince; in this way, he has protected Hal from bad company. Hal and Poins trap Falstaff, asking if everyone in the room is wicked. Falstaff says that they are. Messengers arrive suddenly: Prince Hal and Falstaff are summoned to war. The men exit, as the women bid tearful farewells. At the last minute, Bardolph calls back for Doll Tearsheet to come to Falstaff for a quick, last-minute meeting.

Half dead of that inconceivable anguish which the rolling of a ship produces, one-half of the passengers were not even sensible of the danger. The other half shrieked and prayed. The sheets were rent, the masts broken, the vessel gaped. Work who would, no one heard, no one commanded. The Anabaptist being upon deck bore a hand; when a brutish sailor struck him roughly and laid him sprawling; but with the violence of the blow he himself tumbled head foremost overboard, and stuck upon a piece of the broken mast. Honest James ran to his assistance, hauled him up, and from the effort he made was precipitated into the sea in sight of the sailor, who left him to perish, without deigning to look at him. Candide drew near and saw his benefactor, who rose above the water one moment and was then swallowed up for ever. He was just going to jump after him, but was prevented by the philosopher Pangloss, who demonstrated to him that the Bay of Lisbon had been made on purpose for the Anabaptist to be drowned. While he was proving this _a priori_, the ship foundered; all perished except Pangloss, Candide, and that brutal sailor who had drowned the good Anabaptist. The villain swam safely to the shore, while Pangloss and Candide were borne thither upon a plank. As soon as they recovered themselves a little they walked toward Lisbon. They had some money left, with which they hoped to save themselves from starving, after they had escaped drowning. Scarcely had they reached the city, lamenting the death of their benefactor, when they felt the earth tremble under their feet. The sea swelled and foamed in the harbour, and beat to pieces the vessels riding at anchor. Whirlwinds of fire and ashes covered the streets and public places; houses fell, roofs were flung upon the pavements, and the pavements were scattered. Thirty thousand inhabitants of all ages and sexes were crushed under the ruins.[4] The sailor, whistling and swearing, said there was booty to be gained here. "What can be the _sufficient reason_ of this phenomenon?" said Pangloss. "This is the Last Day!" cried Candide. The sailor ran among the ruins, facing death to find money; finding it, he took it, got drunk, and having slept himself sober, purchased the favours of the first good-natured wench whom he met on the ruins of the destroyed houses, and in the midst of the dying and the dead. Pangloss pulled him by the sleeve. "My friend," said he, "this is not right. You sin against the _universal reason_; you choose your time badly." "S'blood and fury!" answered the other; "I am a sailor and born at Batavia. Four times have I trampled upon the crucifix in four voyages to Japan[5]; a fig for thy universal reason." Some falling stones had wounded Candide. He lay stretched in the street covered with rubbish. "Alas!" said he to Pangloss, "get me a little wine and oil; I am dying." "This concussion of the earth is no new thing," answered Pangloss. "The city of Lima, in America, experienced the same convulsions last year; the same cause, the same effects; there is certainly a train of sulphur under ground from Lima to Lisbon." "Nothing more probable," said Candide; "but for the love of God a little oil and wine." "How, probable?" replied the philosopher. "I maintain that the point is capable of being demonstrated." Candide fainted away, and Pangloss fetched him some water from a neighbouring fountain. The following day they rummaged among the ruins and found provisions, with which they repaired their exhausted strength. After this they joined with others in relieving those inhabitants who had escaped death. Some, whom they had succoured, gave them as good a dinner as they could in such disastrous circumstances; true, the repast was mournful, and the company moistened their bread with tears; but Pangloss consoled them, assuring them that things could not be otherwise. "For," said he, "all that is is for the best. If there is a volcano at Lisbon it cannot be elsewhere. It is impossible that things should be other than they are; for everything is right." A little man dressed in black, Familiar of the Inquisition, who sat by him, politely took up his word and said: "Apparently, then, sir, you do not believe in original sin; for if all is for the best there has then been neither Fall nor punishment." "I humbly ask your Excellency's pardon," answered Pangloss, still more politely; "for the Fall and curse of man necessarily entered into the system of the best of worlds." "Sir," said the Familiar, "you do not then believe in liberty?" "Your Excellency will excuse me," said Pangloss; "liberty is consistent with absolute necessity, for it was necessary we should be free; for, in short, the determinate will----" Pangloss was in the middle of his sentence, when the Familiar beckoned to his footman, who gave him a glass of wine from Porto or Opporto.

A furious storm overtakes Candide's ship on its way to Lisbon. Jacques tries to save a sailor who has almost fallen overboard. He saves the sailor but falls overboard himself, and the sailor does nothing to help him. The ship sinks, and Pangloss, Candide, and the sailor are the only survivors. They reach shore and walk toward Lisbon. Lisbon has just experienced a terrible earthquake and is in ruins. The sailor finds some money in the ruins and promptly gets drunk and pays a woman for sex. Meanwhile the groans of dying and buried victims rise from the ruins. Pangloss and Candide help the wounded, and Pangloss comforts the victims by telling them the earthquake is for the best. One of the officers of the Inquisition accuses Pangloss of heresy because an optimist cannot possibly believe in original sin. The fall and punishment of man, the Catholic Inquisitor claims, prove that everything is not for the best. Through some rather twisted logic, Pangloss attempts to defend his theory

I. Five Years Later Tellson's Bank by Temple Bar was an old-fashioned place, even in the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty. It was very small, very dark, very ugly, very incommodious. It was an old-fashioned place, moreover, in the moral attribute that the partners in the House were proud of its smallness, proud of its darkness, proud of its ugliness, proud of its incommodiousness. They were even boastful of its eminence in those particulars, and were fired by an express conviction that, if it were less objectionable, it would be less respectable. This was no passive belief, but an active weapon which they flashed at more convenient places of business. Tellson's (they said) wanted no elbow-room, Tellson's wanted no light, Tellson's wanted no embellishment. Noakes and Co.'s might, or Snooks Brothers' might; but Tellson's, thank Heaven--! Any one of these partners would have disinherited his son on the question of rebuilding Tellson's. In this respect the House was much on a par with the Country; which did very often disinherit its sons for suggesting improvements in laws and customs that had long been highly objectionable, but were only the more respectable. Thus it had come to pass, that Tellson's was the triumphant perfection of inconvenience. After bursting open a door of idiotic obstinacy with a weak rattle in its throat, you fell into Tellson's down two steps, and came to your senses in a miserable little shop, with two little counters, where the oldest of men made your cheque shake as if the wind rustled it, while they examined the signature by the dingiest of windows, which were always under a shower-bath of mud from Fleet-street, and which were made the dingier by their own iron bars proper, and the heavy shadow of Temple Bar. If your business necessitated your seeing "the House," you were put into a species of Condemned Hold at the back, where you meditated on a misspent life, until the House came with its hands in its pockets, and you could hardly blink at it in the dismal twilight. Your money came out of, or went into, wormy old wooden drawers, particles of which flew up your nose and down your throat when they were opened and shut. Your bank-notes had a musty odour, as if they were fast decomposing into rags again. Your plate was stowed away among the neighbouring cesspools, and evil communications corrupted its good polish in a day or two. Your deeds got into extemporised strong-rooms made of kitchens and sculleries, and fretted all the fat out of their parchments into the banking-house air. Your lighter boxes of family papers went up-stairs into a Barmecide room, that always had a great dining-table in it and never had a dinner, and where, even in the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty, the first letters written to you by your old love, or by your little children, were but newly released from the horror of being ogled through the windows, by the heads exposed on Temple Bar with an insensate brutality and ferocity worthy of Abyssinia or Ashantee. But indeed, at that time, putting to death was a recipe much in vogue with all trades and professions, and not least of all with Tellson's. Death is Nature's remedy for all things, and why not Legislation's? Accordingly, the forger was put to Death; the utterer of a bad note was put to Death; the unlawful opener of a letter was put to Death; the purloiner of forty shillings and sixpence was put to Death; the holder of a horse at Tellson's door, who made off with it, was put to Death; the coiner of a bad shilling was put to Death; the sounders of three-fourths of the notes in the whole gamut of Crime, were put to Death. Not that it did the least good in the way of prevention--it might almost have been worth remarking that the fact was exactly the reverse--but, it cleared off (as to this world) the trouble of each particular case, and left nothing else connected with it to be looked after. Thus, Tellson's, in its day, like greater places of business, its contemporaries, had taken so many lives, that, if the heads laid low before it had been ranged on Temple Bar instead of being privately disposed of, they would probably have excluded what little light the ground floor had, in a rather significant manner. Cramped in all kinds of dim cupboards and hutches at Tellson's, the oldest of men carried on the business gravely. When they took a young man into Tellson's London house, they hid him somewhere till he was old. They kept him in a dark place, like a cheese, until he had the full Tellson flavour and blue-mould upon him. Then only was he permitted to be seen, spectacularly poring over large books, and casting his breeches and gaiters into the general weight of the establishment. Outside Tellson's--never by any means in it, unless called in--was an odd-job-man, an occasional porter and messenger, who served as the live sign of the house. He was never absent during business hours, unless upon an errand, and then he was represented by his son: a grisly urchin of twelve, who was his express image. People understood that Tellson's, in a stately way, tolerated the odd-job-man. The house had always tolerated some person in that capacity, and time and tide had drifted this person to the post. His surname was Cruncher, and on the youthful occasion of his renouncing by proxy the works of darkness, in the easterly parish church of Hounsditch, he had received the added appellation of Jerry. The scene was Mr. Cruncher's private lodging in Hanging-sword-alley, Whitefriars: the time, half-past seven of the clock on a windy March morning, Anno Domini seventeen hundred and eighty. (Mr. Cruncher himself always spoke of the year of our Lord as Anna Dominoes: apparently under the impression that the Christian era dated from the invention of a popular game, by a lady who had bestowed her name upon it.) Mr. Cruncher's apartments were not in a savoury neighbourhood, and were but two in number, even if a closet with a single pane of glass in it might be counted as one. But they were very decently kept. Early as it was, on the windy March morning, the room in which he lay abed was already scrubbed throughout; and between the cups and saucers arranged for breakfast, and the lumbering deal table, a very clean white cloth was spread. Mr. Cruncher reposed under a patchwork counterpane, like a Harlequin at home. At first, he slept heavily, but, by degrees, began to roll and surge in bed, until he rose above the surface, with his spiky hair looking as if it must tear the sheets to ribbons. At which juncture, he exclaimed, in a voice of dire exasperation: "Bust me, if she ain't at it agin!" A woman of orderly and industrious appearance rose from her knees in a corner, with sufficient haste and trepidation to show that she was the person referred to. "What!" said Mr. Cruncher, looking out of bed for a boot. "You're at it agin, are you?" After hailing the morn with this second salutation, he threw a boot at the woman as a third. It was a very muddy boot, and may introduce the odd circumstance connected with Mr. Cruncher's domestic economy, that, whereas he often came home after banking hours with clean boots, he often got up next morning to find the same boots covered with clay. "What," said Mr. Cruncher, varying his apostrophe after missing his mark--"what are you up to, Aggerawayter?" "I was only saying my prayers." "Saying your prayers! You're a nice woman! What do you mean by flopping yourself down and praying agin me?" "I was not praying against you; I was praying for you." "You weren't. And if you were, I won't be took the liberty with. Here! your mother's a nice woman, young Jerry, going a praying agin your father's prosperity. You've got a dutiful mother, you have, my son. You've got a religious mother, you have, my boy: going and flopping herself down, and praying that the bread-and-butter may be snatched out of the mouth of her only child." Master Cruncher (who was in his shirt) took this very ill, and, turning to his mother, strongly deprecated any praying away of his personal board. "And what do you suppose, you conceited female," said Mr. Cruncher, with unconscious inconsistency, "that the worth of _your_ prayers may be? Name the price that you put _your_ prayers at!" "They only come from the heart, Jerry. They are worth no more than that." "Worth no more than that," repeated Mr. Cruncher. "They ain't worth much, then. Whether or no, I won't be prayed agin, I tell you. I can't afford it. I'm not a going to be made unlucky by _your_ sneaking. If you must go flopping yourself down, flop in favour of your husband and child, and not in opposition to 'em. If I had had any but a unnat'ral wife, and this poor boy had had any but a unnat'ral mother, I might have made some money last week instead of being counter-prayed and countermined and religiously circumwented into the worst of luck. B-u-u-ust me!" said Mr. Cruncher, who all this time had been putting on his clothes, "if I ain't, what with piety and one blowed thing and another, been choused this last week into as bad luck as ever a poor devil of a honest tradesman met with! Young Jerry, dress yourself, my boy, and while I clean my boots keep a eye upon your mother now and then, and if you see any signs of more flopping, give me a call. For, I tell you," here he addressed his wife once more, "I won't be gone agin, in this manner. I am as rickety as a hackney-coach, I'm as sleepy as laudanum, my lines is strained to that degree that I shouldn't know, if it wasn't for the pain in 'em, which was me and which somebody else, yet I'm none the better for it in pocket; and it's my suspicion that you've been at it from morning to night to prevent me from being the better for it in pocket, and I won't put up with it, Aggerawayter, and what do you say now!" Growling, in addition, such phrases as "Ah! yes! You're religious, too. You wouldn't put yourself in opposition to the interests of your husband and child, would you? Not you!" and throwing off other sarcastic sparks from the whirling grindstone of his indignation, Mr. Cruncher betook himself to his boot-cleaning and his general preparation for business. In the meantime, his son, whose head was garnished with tenderer spikes, and whose young eyes stood close by one another, as his father's did, kept the required watch upon his mother. He greatly disturbed that poor woman at intervals, by darting out of his sleeping closet, where he made his toilet, with a suppressed cry of "You are going to flop, mother. --Halloa, father!" and, after raising this fictitious alarm, darting in again with an undutiful grin. Mr. Cruncher's temper was not at all improved when he came to his breakfast. He resented Mrs. Cruncher's saying grace with particular animosity. "Now, Aggerawayter! What are you up to? At it again?" His wife explained that she had merely "asked a blessing." "Don't do it!" said Mr. Crunches looking about, as if he rather expected to see the loaf disappear under the efficacy of his wife's petitions. "I ain't a going to be blest out of house and home. I won't have my wittles blest off my table. Keep still!" Exceedingly red-eyed and grim, as if he had been up all night at a party which had taken anything but a convivial turn, Jerry Cruncher worried his breakfast rather than ate it, growling over it like any four-footed inmate of a menagerie. Towards nine o'clock he smoothed his ruffled aspect, and, presenting as respectable and business-like an exterior as he could overlay his natural self with, issued forth to the occupation of the day. It could scarcely be called a trade, in spite of his favourite description of himself as "a honest tradesman." His stock consisted of a wooden stool, made out of a broken-backed chair cut down, which stool, young Jerry, walking at his father's side, carried every morning to beneath the banking-house window that was nearest Temple Bar: where, with the addition of the first handful of straw that could be gleaned from any passing vehicle to keep the cold and wet from the odd-job-man's feet, it formed the encampment for the day. On this post of his, Mr. Cruncher was as well known to Fleet-street and the Temple, as the Bar itself,--and was almost as in-looking. Encamped at a quarter before nine, in good time to touch his three-cornered hat to the oldest of men as they passed in to Tellson's, Jerry took up his station on this windy March morning, with young Jerry standing by him, when not engaged in making forays through the Bar, to inflict bodily and mental injuries of an acute description on passing boys who were small enough for his amiable purpose. Father and son, extremely like each other, looking silently on at the morning traffic in Fleet-street, with their two heads as near to one another as the two eyes of each were, bore a considerable resemblance to a pair of monkeys. The resemblance was not lessened by the accidental circumstance, that the mature Jerry bit and spat out straw, while the twinkling eyes of the youthful Jerry were as restlessly watchful of him as of everything else in Fleet-street. The head of one of the regular indoor messengers attached to Tellson's establishment was put through the door, and the word was given: "Porter wanted!" "Hooray, father! Here's an early job to begin with!" Having thus given his parent God speed, young Jerry seated himself on the stool, entered on his reversionary interest in the straw his father had been chewing, and cogitated. "Al-ways rusty! His fingers is al-ways rusty!" muttered young Jerry. "Where does my father get all that iron rust from? He don't get no iron rust here!"

Five Years Later The second book opens with a description of the venerable Tellson's Bank. Its darkness and discomfort are much beloved by those who work there. Indeed, their conviction that it should remain inconvenient and deteriorating is so strong that they would have disinherited a son who disagreed with them. Jerry Cruncher, who delivered the message on horseback to Mr. Lorry, serves as an odd job man for Tellson's. He lives in Whitefriars in a tiny apartment kept immaculate by his wife. He abuses this wife roundly for kneeling to pray, insinuating that her prayers interfere with the success of his business. He enlists the aid of his admiring son to prevent Mrs. Cruncher from praying against him. When she tries to pray, her son reveals her transgression to his father. The young Cruncher follows his father to work, and he wonders where the rust on the straw his father is chewing comes from. His job at Tellson's does not involve rust, yet Jerry Cruncher is always rusty

Though now the middle of December, there had yet been no weather to prevent the young ladies from tolerably regular exercise; and on the morrow, Emma had a charitable visit to pay to a poor sick family, who lived a little way out of Highbury. Their road to this detached cottage was down Vicarage Lane, a lane leading at right angles from the broad, though irregular, main street of the place; and, as may be inferred, containing the blessed abode of Mr. Elton. A few inferior dwellings were first to be passed, and then, about a quarter of a mile down the lane rose the Vicarage, an old and not very good house, almost as close to the road as it could be. It had no advantage of situation; but had been very much smartened up by the present proprietor; and, such as it was, there could be no possibility of the two friends passing it without a slackened pace and observing eyes.--Emma's remark was-- "There it is. There go you and your riddle-book one of these days."--Harriet's was-- "Oh, what a sweet house!--How very beautiful!--There are the yellow curtains that Miss Nash admires so much." "I do not often walk this way _now_," said Emma, as they proceeded, "but _then_ there will be an inducement, and I shall gradually get intimately acquainted with all the hedges, gates, pools and pollards of this part of Highbury." Harriet, she found, had never in her life been inside the Vicarage, and her curiosity to see it was so extreme, that, considering exteriors and probabilities, Emma could only class it, as a proof of love, with Mr. Elton's seeing ready wit in her. "I wish we could contrive it," said she; "but I cannot think of any tolerable pretence for going in;--no servant that I want to inquire about of his housekeeper--no message from my father." She pondered, but could think of nothing. After a mutual silence of some minutes, Harriet thus began again-- "I do so wonder, Miss Woodhouse, that you should not be married, or going to be married! so charming as you are!"-- Emma laughed, and replied, "My being charming, Harriet, is not quite enough to induce me to marry; I must find other people charming--one other person at least. And I am not only, not going to be married, at present, but have very little intention of ever marrying at all." "Ah!--so you say; but I cannot believe it." "I must see somebody very superior to any one I have seen yet, to be tempted; Mr. Elton, you know, (recollecting herself,) is out of the question: and I do _not_ wish to see any such person. I would rather not be tempted. I cannot really change for the better. If I were to marry, I must expect to repent it." "Dear me!--it is so odd to hear a woman talk so!"-- "I have none of the usual inducements of women to marry. Were I to fall in love, indeed, it would be a different thing! but I never have been in love; it is not my way, or my nature; and I do not think I ever shall. And, without love, I am sure I should be a fool to change such a situation as mine. Fortune I do not want; employment I do not want; consequence I do not want: I believe few married women are half as much mistress of their husband's house as I am of Hartfield; and never, never could I expect to be so truly beloved and important; so always first and always right in any man's eyes as I am in my father's." "But then, to be an old maid at last, like Miss Bates!" "That is as formidable an image as you could present, Harriet; and if I thought I should ever be like Miss Bates! so silly--so satisfied--so smiling--so prosing--so undistinguishing and unfastidious--and so apt to tell every thing relative to every body about me, I would marry to-morrow. But between _us_, I am convinced there never can be any likeness, except in being unmarried." "But still, you will be an old maid! and that's so dreadful!" "Never mind, Harriet, I shall not be a poor old maid; and it is poverty only which makes celibacy contemptible to a generous public! A single woman, with a very narrow income, must be a ridiculous, disagreeable old maid! the proper sport of boys and girls, but a single woman, of good fortune, is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant as any body else. And the distinction is not quite so much against the candour and common sense of the world as appears at first; for a very narrow income has a tendency to contract the mind, and sour the temper. Those who can barely live, and who live perforce in a very small, and generally very inferior, society, may well be illiberal and cross. This does not apply, however, to Miss Bates; she is only too good natured and too silly to suit me; but, in general, she is very much to the taste of every body, though single and though poor. Poverty certainly has not contracted her mind: I really believe, if she had only a shilling in the world, she would be very likely to give away sixpence of it; and nobody is afraid of her: that is a great charm." "Dear me! but what shall you do? how shall you employ yourself when you grow old?" "If I know myself, Harriet, mine is an active, busy mind, with a great many independent resources; and I do not perceive why I should be more in want of employment at forty or fifty than one-and-twenty. Woman's usual occupations of hand and mind will be as open to me then as they are now; or with no important variation. If I draw less, I shall read more; if I give up music, I shall take to carpet-work. And as for objects of interest, objects for the affections, which is in truth the great point of inferiority, the want of which is really the great evil to be avoided in _not_ marrying, I shall be very well off, with all the children of a sister I love so much, to care about. There will be enough of them, in all probability, to supply every sort of sensation that declining life can need. There will be enough for every hope and every fear; and though my attachment to none can equal that of a parent, it suits my ideas of comfort better than what is warmer and blinder. My nephews and nieces!--I shall often have a niece with me." "Do you know Miss Bates's niece? That is, I know you must have seen her a hundred times--but are you acquainted?" "Oh! yes; we are always forced to be acquainted whenever she comes to Highbury. By the bye, _that_ is almost enough to put one out of conceit with a niece. Heaven forbid! at least, that I should ever bore people half so much about all the Knightleys together, as she does about Jane Fairfax. One is sick of the very name of Jane Fairfax. Every letter from her is read forty times over; her compliments to all friends go round and round again; and if she does but send her aunt the pattern of a stomacher, or knit a pair of garters for her grandmother, one hears of nothing else for a month. I wish Jane Fairfax very well; but she tires me to death." They were now approaching the cottage, and all idle topics were superseded. Emma was very compassionate; and the distresses of the poor were as sure of relief from her personal attention and kindness, her counsel and her patience, as from her purse. She understood their ways, could allow for their ignorance and their temptations, had no romantic expectations of extraordinary virtue from those for whom education had done so little; entered into their troubles with ready sympathy, and always gave her assistance with as much intelligence as good-will. In the present instance, it was sickness and poverty together which she came to visit; and after remaining there as long as she could give comfort or advice, she quitted the cottage with such an impression of the scene as made her say to Harriet, as they walked away, "These are the sights, Harriet, to do one good. How trifling they make every thing else appear!--I feel now as if I could think of nothing but these poor creatures all the rest of the day; and yet, who can say how soon it may all vanish from my mind?" "Very true," said Harriet. "Poor creatures! one can think of nothing else." "And really, I do not think the impression will soon be over," said Emma, as she crossed the low hedge, and tottering footstep which ended the narrow, slippery path through the cottage garden, and brought them into the lane again. "I do not think it will," stopping to look once more at all the outward wretchedness of the place, and recall the still greater within. "Oh! dear, no," said her companion. They walked on. The lane made a slight bend; and when that bend was passed, Mr. Elton was immediately in sight; and so near as to give Emma time only to say farther, "Ah! Harriet, here comes a very sudden trial of our stability in good thoughts. Well, (smiling,) I hope it may be allowed that if compassion has produced exertion and relief to the sufferers, it has done all that is truly important. If we feel for the wretched, enough to do all we can for them, the rest is empty sympathy, only distressing to ourselves." Harriet could just answer, "Oh! dear, yes," before the gentleman joined them. The wants and sufferings of the poor family, however, were the first subject on meeting. He had been going to call on them. His visit he would now defer; but they had a very interesting parley about what could be done and should be done. Mr. Elton then turned back to accompany them. "To fall in with each other on such an errand as this," thought Emma; "to meet in a charitable scheme; this will bring a great increase of love on each side. I should not wonder if it were to bring on the declaration. It must, if I were not here. I wish I were anywhere else." Anxious to separate herself from them as far as she could, she soon afterwards took possession of a narrow footpath, a little raised on one side of the lane, leaving them together in the main road. But she had not been there two minutes when she found that Harriet's habits of dependence and imitation were bringing her up too, and that, in short, they would both be soon after her. This would not do; she immediately stopped, under pretence of having some alteration to make in the lacing of her half-boot, and stooping down in complete occupation of the footpath, begged them to have the goodness to walk on, and she would follow in half a minute. They did as they were desired; and by the time she judged it reasonable to have done with her boot, she had the comfort of farther delay in her power, being overtaken by a child from the cottage, setting out, according to orders, with her pitcher, to fetch broth from Hartfield. To walk by the side of this child, and talk to and question her, was the most natural thing in the world, or would have been the most natural, had she been acting just then without design; and by this means the others were still able to keep ahead, without any obligation of waiting for her. She gained on them, however, involuntarily: the child's pace was quick, and theirs rather slow; and she was the more concerned at it, from their being evidently in a conversation which interested them. Mr. Elton was speaking with animation, Harriet listening with a very pleased attention; and Emma, having sent the child on, was beginning to think how she might draw back a little more, when they both looked around, and she was obliged to join them. Mr. Elton was still talking, still engaged in some interesting detail; and Emma experienced some disappointment when she found that he was only giving his fair companion an account of the yesterday's party at his friend Cole's, and that she was come in herself for the Stilton cheese, the north Wiltshire, the butter, the celery, the beet-root, and all the dessert. "This would soon have led to something better, of course," was her consoling reflection; "any thing interests between those who love; and any thing will serve as introduction to what is near the heart. If I could but have kept longer away!" They now walked on together quietly, till within view of the vicarage pales, when a sudden resolution, of at least getting Harriet into the house, made her again find something very much amiss about her boot, and fall behind to arrange it once more. She then broke the lace off short, and dexterously throwing it into a ditch, was presently obliged to entreat them to stop, and acknowledged her inability to put herself to rights so as to be able to walk home in tolerable comfort. "Part of my lace is gone," said she, "and I do not know how I am to contrive. I really am a most troublesome companion to you both, but I hope I am not often so ill-equipped. Mr. Elton, I must beg leave to stop at your house, and ask your housekeeper for a bit of ribband or string, or any thing just to keep my boot on." Mr. Elton looked all happiness at this proposition; and nothing could exceed his alertness and attention in conducting them into his house and endeavouring to make every thing appear to advantage. The room they were taken into was the one he chiefly occupied, and looking forwards; behind it was another with which it immediately communicated; the door between them was open, and Emma passed into it with the housekeeper to receive her assistance in the most comfortable manner. She was obliged to leave the door ajar as she found it; but she fully intended that Mr. Elton should close it. It was not closed, however, it still remained ajar; but by engaging the housekeeper in incessant conversation, she hoped to make it practicable for him to chuse his own subject in the adjoining room. For ten minutes she could hear nothing but herself. It could be protracted no longer. She was then obliged to be finished, and make her appearance. The lovers were standing together at one of the windows. It had a most favourable aspect; and, for half a minute, Emma felt the glory of having schemed successfully. But it would not do; he had not come to the point. He had been most agreeable, most delightful; he had told Harriet that he had seen them go by, and had purposely followed them; other little gallantries and allusions had been dropt, but nothing serious. "Cautious, very cautious," thought Emma; "he advances inch by inch, and will hazard nothing till he believes himself secure." Still, however, though every thing had not been accomplished by her ingenious device, she could not but flatter herself that it had been the occasion of much present enjoyment to both, and must be leading them forward to the great event.

Emma takes Harriet with her on a visit a poor family. They pause to swoon over Mr. Elton's house. After congratulating Harriet on her future prospects, Emma declares that she never plans to marry. After all, she's got the best house in town already - what more could she want? It's not like she'll ever fall in love! Harriet is aghast at Emma's declaration. Emma, an old maid? Horror of horrors!! In twenty years, she'll be like Miss Bates! Emma explains that the difference between Miss Bates and herself is money. Cash makes just about anything possible - even being an old maid. They arrive at the poor family's home. Emma deals with the poor honestly, kindly, and sympathetically. She doesn't even expect them to do more for themselves than they can actually do. She just helps where she's needed. Strange? Well, not really. Emma seems to have a knack for dealing with people who are worse off than she is. Harriet stands around for awhile. On the way home, Emma and Harriet run into Mr. Elton. Emma fakes an untied shoe to let Harriet have Mr. Elton all to herself - but they only end up talking about what Mr. Elton had for dinner. He's a fascinating guy. Desperate to make something happen, Emma breaks her shoelace. Unable to walk any further, she begs Mr. Elton to take them to his house. He's delighted to agree. Harriet and Emma trek to Mr. Elton's house. Emma tries to leave Harriet alone with Mr. Elton, but not much happens. Emma's a bit frustrated - Harriet doesn't seem to be making the most of her opportunities.

As it would be, by no means, seemly in a humble author to keep so mighty a personage as a beadle waiting, with his back to the fire, and the skirts of his coat gathered up under his arms, until such time as it might suit his pleasure to relieve him; and as it would still less become his station, or his gallantry to involve in the same neglect a lady on whom that beadle had looked with an eye of tenderness and affection, and in whose ear he had whispered sweet words, which, coming from such a quarter, might well thrill the bosom of maid or matron of whatsoever degree; the historian whose pen traces these words--trusting that he knows his place, and that he entertains a becoming reverence for those upon earth to whom high and important authority is delegated--hastens to pay them that respect which their position demands, and to treat them with all that duteous ceremony which their exalted rank, and (by consequence) great virtues, imperatively claim at his hands. Towards this end, indeed, he had purposed to introduce, in this place, a dissertation touching the divine right of beadles, and elucidative of the position, that a beadle can do no wrong: which could not fail to have been both pleasurable and profitable to the right-minded reader but which he is unfortunately compelled, by want of time and space, to postpone to some more convenient and fitting opportunity; on the arrival of which, he will be prepared to show, that a beadle properly constituted: that is to say, a parochial beadle, attached to a parochial workhouse, and attending in his official capacity the parochial church: is, in right and virtue of his office, possessed of all the excellences and best qualities of humanity; and that to none of those excellences, can mere companies' beadles, or court-of-law beadles, or even chapel-of-ease beadles (save the last, and they in a very lowly and inferior degree), lay the remotest sustainable claim. Mr. Bumble had re-counted the teaspoons, re-weighed the sugar-tongs, made a closer inspection of the milk-pot, and ascertained to a nicety the exact condition of the furniture, down to the very horse-hair seats of the chairs; and had repeated each process full half a dozen times; before he began to think that it was time for Mrs. Corney to return. Thinking begets thinking; as there were no sounds of Mrs. Corney's approach, it occured to Mr. Bumble that it would be an innocent and virtuous way of spending the time, if he were further to allay his curiousity by a cursory glance at the interior of Mrs. Corney's chest of drawers. Having listened at the keyhole, to assure himself that nobody was approaching the chamber, Mr. Bumble, beginning at the bottom, proceeded to make himself acquainted with the contents of the three long drawers: which, being filled with various garments of good fashion and texture, carefully preserved between two layers of old newspapers, speckled with dried lavender: seemed to yield him exceeding satisfaction. Arriving, in course of time, at the right-hand corner drawer (in which was the key), and beholding therein a small padlocked box, which, being shaken, gave forth a pleasant sound, as of the chinking of coin, Mr. Bumble returned with a stately walk to the fireplace; and, resuming his old attitude, said, with a grave and determined air, 'I'll do it!' He followed up this remarkable declaration, by shaking his head in a waggish manner for ten minutes, as though he were remonstrating with himself for being such a pleasant dog; and then, he took a view of his legs in profile, with much seeming pleasure and interest. He was still placidly engaged in this latter survey, when Mrs. Corney, hurrying into the room, threw herself, in a breathless state, on a chair by the fireside, and covering her eyes with one hand, placed the other over her heart, and gasped for breath. 'Mrs. Corney,' said Mr. Bumble, stooping over the matron, 'what is this, ma'am? Has anything happened, ma'am? Pray answer me: I'm on--on--' Mr. Bumble, in his alarm, could not immediately think of the word 'tenterhooks,' so he said 'broken bottles.' 'Oh, Mr. Bumble!' cried the lady, 'I have been so dreadfully put out!' 'Put out, ma'am!' exclaimed Mr. Bumble; 'who has dared to--? I know!' said Mr. Bumble, checking himself, with native majesty, 'this is them wicious paupers!' 'It's dreadful to think of!' said the lady, shuddering. 'Then _don't_ think of it, ma'am,' rejoined Mr. Bumble. 'I can't help it,' whimpered the lady. 'Then take something, ma'am,' said Mr. Bumble soothingly. 'A little of the wine?' 'Not for the world!' replied Mrs. Corney. 'I couldn't,--oh! The top shelf in the right-hand corner--oh!' Uttering these words, the good lady pointed, distractedly, to the cupboard, and underwent a convulsion from internal spasms. Mr. Bumble rushed to the closet; and, snatching a pint green-glass bottle from the shelf thus incoherently indicated, filled a tea-cup with its contents, and held it to the lady's lips. 'I'm better now,' said Mrs. Corney, falling back, after drinking half of it. Mr. Bumble raised his eyes piously to the ceiling in thankfulness; and, bringing them down again to the brim of the cup, lifted it to his nose. 'Peppermint,' exclaimed Mrs. Corney, in a faint voice, smiling gently on the beadle as she spoke. 'Try it! There's a little--a little something else in it.' Mr. Bumble tasted the medicine with a doubtful look; smacked his lips; took another taste; and put the cup down empty. 'It's very comforting,' said Mrs. Corney. 'Very much so indeed, ma'am,' said the beadle. As he spoke, he drew a chair beside the matron, and tenderly inquired what had happened to distress her. 'Nothing,' replied Mrs. Corney. 'I am a foolish, excitable, weak creetur.' 'Not weak, ma'am,' retorted Mr. Bumble, drawing his chair a little closer. 'Are you a weak creetur, Mrs. Corney?' 'We are all weak creeturs,' said Mrs. Corney, laying down a general principle. 'So we are,' said the beadle. Nothing was said on either side, for a minute or two afterwards. By the expiration of that time, Mr. Bumble had illustrated the position by removing his left arm from the back of Mrs. Corney's chair, where it had previously rested, to Mrs. Corney's apron-string, round which it gradually became entwined. 'We are all weak creeturs,' said Mr. Bumble. Mrs. Corney sighed. 'Don't sigh, Mrs. Corney,' said Mr. Bumble. 'I can't help it,' said Mrs. Corney. And she sighed again. 'This is a very comfortable room, ma'am,' said Mr. Bumble looking round. 'Another room, and this, ma'am, would be a complete thing.' 'It would be too much for one,' murmured the lady. 'But not for two, ma'am,' rejoined Mr. Bumble, in soft accents. 'Eh, Mrs. Corney?' Mrs. Corney drooped her head, when the beadle said this; the beadle drooped his, to get a view of Mrs. Corney's face. Mrs. Corney, with great propriety, turned her head away, and released her hand to get at her pocket-handkerchief; but insensibly replaced it in that of Mr. Bumble. 'The board allows you coals, don't they, Mrs. Corney?' inquired the beadle, affectionately pressing her hand. 'And candles,' replied Mrs. Corney, slightly returning the pressure. 'Coals, candles, and house-rent free,' said Mr. Bumble. 'Oh, Mrs. Corney, what an Angel you are!' The lady was not proof against this burst of feeling. She sank into Mr. Bumble's arms; and that gentleman in his agitation, imprinted a passionate kiss upon her chaste nose. 'Such porochial perfection!' exclaimed Mr. Bumble, rapturously. 'You know that Mr. Slout is worse to-night, my fascinator?' 'Yes,' replied Mrs. Corney, bashfully. 'He can't live a week, the doctor says,' pursued Mr. Bumble. 'He is the master of this establishment; his death will cause a wacancy; that wacancy must be filled up. Oh, Mrs. Corney, what a prospect this opens! What a opportunity for a jining of hearts and housekeepings!' Mrs. Corney sobbed. 'The little word?' said Mr. Bumble, bending over the bashful beauty. 'The one little, little, little word, my blessed Corney?' 'Ye--ye--yes!' sighed out the matron. 'One more,' pursued the beadle; 'compose your darling feelings for only one more. When is it to come off?' Mrs. Corney twice essayed to speak: and twice failed. At length summoning up courage, she threw her arms around Mr. Bumble's neck, and said, it might be as soon as ever he pleased, and that he was 'a irresistible duck.' Matters being thus amicably and satisfactorily arranged, the contract was solemnly ratified in another teacupful of the peppermint mixture; which was rendered the more necessary, by the flutter and agitation of the lady's spirits. While it was being disposed of, she acquainted Mr. Bumble with the old woman's decease. 'Very good,' said that gentleman, sipping his peppermint; 'I'll call at Sowerberry's as I go home, and tell him to send to-morrow morning. Was it that as frightened you, love?' 'It wasn't anything particular, dear,' said the lady evasively. 'It must have been something, love,' urged Mr. Bumble. 'Won't you tell your own B.?' 'Not now,' rejoined the lady; 'one of these days. After we're married, dear.' 'After we're married!' exclaimed Mr. Bumble. 'It wasn't any impudence from any of them male paupers as--' 'No, no, love!' interposed the lady, hastily. 'If I thought it was,' continued Mr. Bumble; 'if I thought as any one of 'em had dared to lift his wulgar eyes to that lovely countenance--' 'They wouldn't have dared to do it, love,' responded the lady. 'They had better not!' said Mr. Bumble, clenching his fist. 'Let me see any man, porochial or extra-porochial, as would presume to do it; and I can tell him that he wouldn't do it a second time!' Unembellished by any violence of gesticulation, this might have seemed no very high compliment to the lady's charms; but, as Mr. Bumble accompanied the threat with many warlike gestures, she was much touched with this proof of his devotion, and protested, with great admiration, that he was indeed a dove. The dove then turned up his coat-collar, and put on his cocked hat; and, having exchanged a long and affectionate embrace with his future partner, once again braved the cold wind of the night: merely pausing, for a few minutes, in the male paupers' ward, to abuse them a little, with the view of satisfying himself that he could fill the office of workhouse-master with needful acerbity. Assured of his qualifications, Mr. Bumble left the building with a light heart, and bright visions of his future promotion: which served to occupy his mind until he reached the shop of the undertaker. Now, Mr. and Mrs. Sowerberry having gone out to tea and supper: and Noah Claypole not being at any time disposed to take upon himself a greater amount of physical exertion than is necessary to a convenient performance of the two functions of eating and drinking, the shop was not closed, although it was past the usual hour of shutting-up. Mr. Bumble tapped with his cane on the counter several times; but, attracting no attention, and beholding a light shining through the glass-window of the little parlour at the back of the shop, he made bold to peep in and see what was going forward; and when he saw what was going forward, he was not a little surprised. The cloth was laid for supper; the table was covered with bread and butter, plates and glasses; a porter-pot and a wine-bottle. At the upper end of the table, Mr. Noah Claypole lolled negligently in an easy-chair, with his legs thrown over one of the arms: an open clasp-knife in one hand, and a mass of buttered bread in the other. Close beside him stood Charlotte, opening oysters from a barrel: which Mr. Claypole condescended to swallow, with remarkable avidity. A more than ordinary redness in the region of the young gentleman's nose, and a kind of fixed wink in his right eye, denoted that he was in a slight degree intoxicated; these symptoms were confirmed by the intense relish with which he took his oysters, for which nothing but a strong appreciation of their cooling properties, in cases of internal fever, could have sufficiently accounted. 'Here's a delicious fat one, Noah, dear!' said Charlotte; 'try him, do; only this one.' 'What a delicious thing is a oyster!' remarked Mr. Claypole, after he had swallowed it. 'What a pity it is, a number of 'em should ever make you feel uncomfortable; isn't it, Charlotte?' 'It's quite a cruelty,' said Charlotte. 'So it is,' acquiesced Mr. Claypole. 'An't yer fond of oysters?' 'Not overmuch,' replied Charlotte. 'I like to see you eat 'em, Noah dear, better than eating 'em myself.' 'Lor!' said Noah, reflectively; 'how queer!' 'Have another,' said Charlotte. 'Here's one with such a beautiful, delicate beard!' 'I can't manage any more,' said Noah. 'I'm very sorry. Come here, Charlotte, and I'll kiss yer.' 'What!' said Mr. Bumble, bursting into the room. 'Say that again, sir.' Charlotte uttered a scream, and hid her face in her apron. Mr. Claypole, without making any further change in his position than suffering his legs to reach the ground, gazed at the beadle in drunken terror. 'Say it again, you wile, owdacious fellow!' said Mr. Bumble. 'How dare you mention such a thing, sir? And how dare you encourage him, you insolent minx? Kiss her!' exclaimed Mr. Bumble, in strong indignation. 'Faugh!' 'I didn't mean to do it!' said Noah, blubbering. 'She's always a-kissing of me, whether I like it, or not.' 'Oh, Noah,' cried Charlotte, reproachfully. 'Yer are; yer know yer are!' retorted Noah. 'She's always a-doin' of it, Mr. Bumble, sir; she chucks me under the chin, please, sir; and makes all manner of love!' 'Silence!' cried Mr. Bumble, sternly. 'Take yourself downstairs, ma'am. Noah, you shut up the shop; say another word till your master comes home, at your peril; and, when he does come home, tell him that Mr. Bumble said he was to send a old woman's shell after breakfast to-morrow morning. Do you hear sir? Kissing!' cried Mr. Bumble, holding up his hands. 'The sin and wickedness of the lower orders in this porochial district is frightful! If Parliament don't take their abominable courses under consideration, this country's ruined, and the character of the peasantry gone for ever!' With these words, the beadle strode, with a lofty and gloomy air, from the undertaker's premises. And now that we have accompanied him so far on his road home, and have made all necessary preparations for the old woman's funeral, let us set on foot a few inquires after young Oliver Twist, and ascertain whether he be still lying in the ditch where Toby Crackit left him.

This chapter returns us to Mr. Bumble, who has been waiting patiently in Mrs. Corney's room all this time. He's counted all the silver several times, and decides it's time to go through the drawers of her dresser. He finds clothes tidily folded, and a locked box that jingles with coins when shaken. Mr. Bumble is very pleased, and declares, "I'll do it!" . Mrs. Corney comes back in all flustered, and Mr. Bumble blames the paupers, as usual. To calm her down, he gives her some peppermint something-or-other--she doesn't say what's in it, but we're guessing it's booze. He asks what upset her, and she says that she's "a weak creetur" . Mr. Bumble takes the opportunity to start hitting on her again, so he says he's weak, too, and starts fiddling with her apron string . Mr. Bumble's final come-on is, "The board allow you coals, don't they, Mrs Corney? Coals, candles, and house-rent free. Oh, Mrs. Corney, what an angel you are!" . Mrs. Corney can't resist such a charmer, and allows Mr. Bumble to kiss her on the nose. Mr. Bumble has it all planned out: Mr. Slout, the master of the workhouse, is dying, and Mr. Bumble will be able to take his place, marry Mrs. Corney, and live with her there in her comfy rooms. Mrs. Corney is totally smitten, and calls him "an irresistible duck" . Having arranged all that, Mr. Bumble asks what upset Mrs. Corney earlier. She says she'll tell him after they're married. After going on a jealous rant for a moment , Mr. Bumble is satisfied, and heads off to Mr. Sowerberry's house. He gets there to find Mr. and Mrs. Sowerberry out to dinner, and Noah drunk in the parlor, eating oysters as fast as Charlotte can shell them for him. Noah offers to kiss Charlotte, and Mr. Bumble bursts in to break it up. Of course, Noah is terrified, and blames it all on Charlotte, saying she's always kissing him whether he wants to be smooched or not. Mr. Bumble gives them a lecture on the evils of kissing and what it leads to , and then leaves an order for old Sally's coffin and marches home.

As the Miss Dashwoods entered the drawing-room of the park the next day, at one door, Mrs. Palmer came running in at the other, looking as good humoured and merry as before. She took them all most affectionately by the hand, and expressed great delight in seeing them again. "I am so glad to see you!" said she, seating herself between Elinor and Marianne, "for it is so bad a day I was afraid you might not come, which would be a shocking thing, as we go away again tomorrow. We must go, for the Westons come to us next week you know. It was quite a sudden thing our coming at all, and I knew nothing of it till the carriage was coming to the door, and then Mr. Palmer asked me if I would go with him to Barton. He is so droll! He never tells me any thing! I am so sorry we cannot stay longer; however we shall meet again in town very soon, I hope." They were obliged to put an end to such an expectation. "Not go to town!" cried Mrs. Palmer, with a laugh, "I shall be quite disappointed if you do not. I could get the nicest house in the world for you, next door to ours, in Hanover-square. You must come, indeed. I am sure I shall be very happy to chaperon you at any time till I am confined, if Mrs. Dashwood should not like to go into public." They thanked her; but were obliged to resist all her entreaties. "Oh, my love," cried Mrs. Palmer to her husband, who just then entered the room--"you must help me to persuade the Miss Dashwoods to go to town this winter." Her love made no answer; and after slightly bowing to the ladies, began complaining of the weather. "How horrid all this is!" said he. "Such weather makes every thing and every body disgusting. Dullness is as much produced within doors as without, by rain. It makes one detest all one's acquaintance. What the devil does Sir John mean by not having a billiard room in his house? How few people know what comfort is! Sir John is as stupid as the weather." The rest of the company soon dropt in. "I am afraid, Miss Marianne," said Sir John, "you have not been able to take your usual walk to Allenham today." Marianne looked very grave and said nothing. "Oh, don't be so sly before us," said Mrs. Palmer; "for we know all about it, I assure you; and I admire your taste very much, for I think he is extremely handsome. We do not live a great way from him in the country, you know. Not above ten miles, I dare say." "Much nearer thirty," said her husband. "Ah, well! there is not much difference. I never was at his house; but they say it is a sweet pretty place." "As vile a spot as I ever saw in my life," said Mr. Palmer. Marianne remained perfectly silent, though her countenance betrayed her interest in what was said. "Is it very ugly?" continued Mrs. Palmer--"then it must be some other place that is so pretty I suppose." When they were seated in the dining room, Sir John observed with regret that they were only eight all together. "My dear," said he to his lady, "it is very provoking that we should be so few. Why did not you ask the Gilberts to come to us today?" "Did not I tell you, Sir John, when you spoke to me about it before, that it could not be done? They dined with us last." "You and I, Sir John," said Mrs. Jennings, "should not stand upon such ceremony." "Then you would be very ill-bred," cried Mr. Palmer. "My love you contradict every body," said his wife with her usual laugh. "Do you know that you are quite rude?" "I did not know I contradicted any body in calling your mother ill-bred." "Ay, you may abuse me as you please," said the good-natured old lady, "you have taken Charlotte off my hands, and cannot give her back again. So there I have the whip hand of you." Charlotte laughed heartily to think that her husband could not get rid of her; and exultingly said, she did not care how cross he was to her, as they must live together. It was impossible for any one to be more thoroughly good-natured, or more determined to be happy than Mrs. Palmer. The studied indifference, insolence, and discontent of her husband gave her no pain; and when he scolded or abused her, she was highly diverted. "Mr. Palmer is so droll!" said she, in a whisper, to Elinor. "He is always out of humour." Elinor was not inclined, after a little observation, to give him credit for being so genuinely and unaffectedly ill-natured or ill-bred as he wished to appear. His temper might perhaps be a little soured by finding, like many others of his sex, that through some unaccountable bias in favour of beauty, he was the husband of a very silly woman,--but she knew that this kind of blunder was too common for any sensible man to be lastingly hurt by it.-- It was rather a wish of distinction, she believed, which produced his contemptuous treatment of every body, and his general abuse of every thing before him. It was the desire of appearing superior to other people. The motive was too common to be wondered at; but the means, however they might succeed by establishing his superiority in ill-breeding, were not likely to attach any one to him except his wife. "Oh, my dear Miss Dashwood," said Mrs. Palmer soon afterwards, "I have got such a favour to ask of you and your sister. Will you come and spend some time at Cleveland this Christmas? Now, pray do,--and come while the Westons are with us. You cannot think how happy I shall be! It will be quite delightful!--My love," applying to her husband, "don't you long to have the Miss Dashwoods come to Cleveland?" "Certainly," he replied, with a sneer--"I came into Devonshire with no other view." "There now,"--said his lady, "you see Mr. Palmer expects you; so you cannot refuse to come." They both eagerly and resolutely declined her invitation. "But indeed you must and shall come. I am sure you will like it of all things. The Westons will be with us, and it will be quite delightful. You cannot think what a sweet place Cleveland is; and we are so gay now, for Mr. Palmer is always going about the country canvassing against the election; and so many people came to dine with us that I never saw before, it is quite charming! But, poor fellow! it is very fatiguing to him! for he is forced to make every body like him." Elinor could hardly keep her countenance as she assented to the hardship of such an obligation. "How charming it will be," said Charlotte, "when he is in Parliament!--won't it? How I shall laugh! It will be so ridiculous to see all his letters directed to him with an M.P.--But do you know, he says, he will never frank for me? He declares he won't. Don't you, Mr. Palmer?" Mr. Palmer took no notice of her. "He cannot bear writing, you know," she continued--"he says it is quite shocking." "No," said he, "I never said any thing so irrational. Don't palm all your abuses of languages upon me." "There now; you see how droll he is. This is always the way with him! Sometimes he won't speak to me for half a day together, and then he comes out with something so droll--all about any thing in the world." She surprised Elinor very much as they returned into the drawing-room, by asking her whether she did not like Mr. Palmer excessively. "Certainly," said Elinor; "he seems very agreeable." "Well--I am so glad you do. I thought you would, he is so pleasant; and Mr. Palmer is excessively pleased with you and your sisters I can tell you, and you can't think how disappointed he will be if you don't come to Cleveland.--I can't imagine why you should object to it." Elinor was again obliged to decline her invitation; and by changing the subject, put a stop to her entreaties. She thought it probable that as they lived in the same county, Mrs. Palmer might be able to give some more particular account of Willoughby's general character, than could be gathered from the Middletons' partial acquaintance with him; and she was eager to gain from any one, such a confirmation of his merits as might remove the possibility of fear from Marianne. She began by inquiring if they saw much of Mr. Willoughby at Cleveland, and whether they were intimately acquainted with him. "Oh dear, yes; I know him extremely well," replied Mrs. Palmer;--"Not that I ever spoke to him, indeed; but I have seen him for ever in town. Somehow or other I never happened to be staying at Barton while he was at Allenham. Mama saw him here once before;--but I was with my uncle at Weymouth. However, I dare say we should have seen a great deal of him in Somersetshire, if it had not happened very unluckily that we should never have been in the country together. He is very little at Combe, I believe; but if he were ever so much there, I do not think Mr. Palmer would visit him, for he is in the opposition, you know, and besides it is such a way off. I know why you inquire about him, very well; your sister is to marry him. I am monstrous glad of it, for then I shall have her for a neighbour you know." "Upon my word," replied Elinor, "you know much more of the matter than I do, if you have any reason to expect such a match." "Don't pretend to deny it, because you know it is what every body talks of. I assure you I heard of it in my way through town." "My dear Mrs. Palmer!" "Upon my honour I did.--I met Colonel Brandon Monday morning in Bond-street, just before we left town, and he told me of it directly." "You surprise me very much. Colonel Brandon tell you of it! Surely you must be mistaken. To give such intelligence to a person who could not be interested in it, even if it were true, is not what I should expect Colonel Brandon to do." "But I do assure you it was so, for all that, and I will tell you how it happened. When we met him, he turned back and walked with us; and so we began talking of my brother and sister, and one thing and another, and I said to him, 'So, Colonel, there is a new family come to Barton cottage, I hear, and mama sends me word they are very pretty, and that one of them is going to be married to Mr. Willoughby of Combe Magna. Is it true, pray? for of course you must know, as you have been in Devonshire so lately.'" "And what did the Colonel say?" "Oh--he did not say much; but he looked as if he knew it to be true, so from that moment I set it down as certain. It will be quite delightful, I declare! When is it to take place?" "Mr. Brandon was very well I hope?" "Oh! yes, quite well; and so full of your praises, he did nothing but say fine things of you." "I am flattered by his commendation. He seems an excellent man; and I think him uncommonly pleasing." "So do I.--He is such a charming man, that it is quite a pity he should be so grave and so dull. Mama says HE was in love with your sister too.-- I assure you it was a great compliment if he was, for he hardly ever falls in love with any body." "Is Mr. Willoughby much known in your part of Somersetshire?" said Elinor. "Oh! yes, extremely well; that is, I do not believe many people are acquainted with him, because Combe Magna is so far off; but they all think him extremely agreeable I assure you. Nobody is more liked than Mr. Willoughby wherever he goes, and so you may tell your sister. She is a monstrous lucky girl to get him, upon my honour; not but that he is much more lucky in getting her, because she is so very handsome and agreeable, that nothing can be good enough for her. However, I don't think her hardly at all handsomer than you, I assure you; for I think you both excessively pretty, and so does Mr. Palmer too I am sure, though we could not get him to own it last night." Mrs. Palmer's information respecting Willoughby was not very material; but any testimony in his favour, however small, was pleasing to her. "I am so glad we are got acquainted at last," continued Charlotte.--"And now I hope we shall always be great friends. You can't think how much I longed to see you! It is so delightful that you should live at the cottage! Nothing can be like it, to be sure! And I am so glad your sister is going to be well married! I hope you will be a great deal at Combe Magna. It is a sweet place, by all accounts." "You have been long acquainted with Colonel Brandon, have not you?" "Yes, a great while; ever since my sister married.-- He was a particular friend of Sir John's. I believe," she added in a low voice, "he would have been very glad to have had me, if he could. Sir John and Lady Middleton wished it very much. But mama did not think the match good enough for me, otherwise Sir John would have mentioned it to the Colonel, and we should have been married immediately." "Did not Colonel Brandon know of Sir John's proposal to your mother before it was made? Had he never owned his affection to yourself?" "Oh, no; but if mama had not objected to it, I dare say he would have liked it of all things. He had not seen me then above twice, for it was before I left school. However, I am much happier as I am. Mr. Palmer is the kind of man I like." The Palmers returned to Cleveland the next day, and the two families at Barton were again left to entertain each other. But this did not last long; Elinor had hardly got their last visitors out of her head, had hardly done wondering at Charlotte's being so happy without a cause, at Mr. Palmer's acting so simply, with good abilities, and at the strange unsuitableness which often existed between husband and wife, before Sir John's and Mrs. Jennings's active zeal in the cause of society, procured her some other new acquaintance to see and observe. In a morning's excursion to Exeter, they had met with two young ladies, whom Mrs. Jennings had the satisfaction of discovering to be her relations, and this was enough for Sir John to invite them directly to the park, as soon as their present engagements at Exeter were over. Their engagements at Exeter instantly gave way before such an invitation, and Lady Middleton was thrown into no little alarm on the return of Sir John, by hearing that she was very soon to receive a visit from two girls whom she had never seen in her life, and of whose elegance,--whose tolerable gentility even, she could have no proof; for the assurances of her husband and mother on that subject went for nothing at all. Their being her relations too made it so much the worse; and Mrs. Jennings's attempts at consolation were therefore unfortunately founded, when she advised her daughter not to care about their being so fashionable; because they were all cousins and must put up with one another. As it was impossible, however, now to prevent their coming, Lady Middleton resigned herself to the idea of it, with all the philosophy of a well-bred woman, contenting herself with merely giving her husband a gentle reprimand on the subject five or six times every day. The young ladies arrived: their appearance was by no means ungenteel or unfashionable. Their dress was very smart, their manners very civil, they were delighted with the house, and in raptures with the furniture, and they happened to be so doatingly fond of children that Lady Middleton's good opinion was engaged in their favour before they had been an hour at the Park. She declared them to be very agreeable girls indeed, which for her ladyship was enthusiastic admiration. Sir John's confidence in his own judgment rose with this animated praise, and he set off directly for the cottage to tell the Miss Dashwoods of the Miss Steeles' arrival, and to assure them of their being the sweetest girls in the world. From such commendation as this, however, there was not much to be learned; Elinor well knew that the sweetest girls in the world were to be met with in every part of England, under every possible variation of form, face, temper and understanding. Sir John wanted the whole family to walk to the Park directly and look at his guests. Benevolent, philanthropic man! It was painful to him even to keep a third cousin to himself. "Do come now," said he--"pray come--you must come--I declare you shall come--You can't think how you will like them. Lucy is monstrous pretty, and so good humoured and agreeable! The children are all hanging about her already, as if she was an old acquaintance. And they both long to see you of all things, for they have heard at Exeter that you are the most beautiful creatures in the world; and I have told them it is all very true, and a great deal more. You will be delighted with them I am sure. They have brought the whole coach full of playthings for the children. How can you be so cross as not to come? Why they are your cousins, you know, after a fashion. YOU are my cousins, and they are my wife's, so you must be related." But Sir John could not prevail. He could only obtain a promise of their calling at the Park within a day or two, and then left them in amazement at their indifference, to walk home and boast anew of their attractions to the Miss Steeles, as he had been already boasting of the Miss Steeles to them. When their promised visit to the Park and consequent introduction to these young ladies took place, they found in the appearance of the eldest, who was nearly thirty, with a very plain and not a sensible face, nothing to admire; but in the other, who was not more than two or three and twenty, they acknowledged considerable beauty; her features were pretty, and she had a sharp quick eye, and a smartness of air, which though it did not give actual elegance or grace, gave distinction to her person.-- Their manners were particularly civil, and Elinor soon allowed them credit for some kind of sense, when she saw with what constant and judicious attention they were making themselves agreeable to Lady Middleton. With her children they were in continual raptures, extolling their beauty, courting their notice, and humouring their whims; and such of their time as could be spared from the importunate demands which this politeness made on it, was spent in admiration of whatever her ladyship was doing, if she happened to be doing any thing, or in taking patterns of some elegant new dress, in which her appearance the day before had thrown them into unceasing delight. Fortunately for those who pay their court through such foibles, a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her cousins submitted. She saw their sashes untied, their hair pulled about their ears, their work-bags searched, and their knives and scissors stolen away, and felt no doubt of its being a reciprocal enjoyment. It suggested no other surprise than that Elinor and Marianne should sit so composedly by, without claiming a share in what was passing. "John is in such spirits today!" said she, on his taking Miss Steeles's pocket handkerchief, and throwing it out of window--"He is full of monkey tricks." And soon afterwards, on the second boy's violently pinching one of the same lady's fingers, she fondly observed, "How playful William is!" "And here is my sweet little Annamaria," she added, tenderly caressing a little girl of three years old, who had not made a noise for the last two minutes; "And she is always so gentle and quiet--Never was there such a quiet little thing!" But unfortunately in bestowing these embraces, a pin in her ladyship's head dress slightly scratching the child's neck, produced from this pattern of gentleness such violent screams, as could hardly be outdone by any creature professedly noisy. The mother's consternation was excessive; but it could not surpass the alarm of the Miss Steeles, and every thing was done by all three, in so critical an emergency, which affection could suggest as likely to assuage the agonies of the little sufferer. She was seated in her mother's lap, covered with kisses, her wound bathed with lavender-water, by one of the Miss Steeles, who was on her knees to attend her, and her mouth stuffed with sugar plums by the other. With such a reward for her tears, the child was too wise to cease crying. She still screamed and sobbed lustily, kicked her two brothers for offering to touch her, and all their united soothings were ineffectual till Lady Middleton luckily remembering that in a scene of similar distress last week, some apricot marmalade had been successfully applied for a bruised temple, the same remedy was eagerly proposed for this unfortunate scratch, and a slight intermission of screams in the young lady on hearing it, gave them reason to hope that it would not be rejected.-- She was carried out of the room therefore in her mother's arms, in quest of this medicine, and as the two boys chose to follow, though earnestly entreated by their mother to stay behind, the four young ladies were left in a quietness which the room had not known for many hours. "Poor little creatures!" said Miss Steele, as soon as they were gone. "It might have been a very sad accident." "Yet I hardly know how," cried Marianne, "unless it had been under totally different circumstances. But this is the usual way of heightening alarm, where there is nothing to be alarmed at in reality." "What a sweet woman Lady Middleton is!" said Lucy Steele. Marianne was silent; it was impossible for her to say what she did not feel, however trivial the occasion; and upon Elinor therefore the whole task of telling lies when politeness required it, always fell. She did her best when thus called on, by speaking of Lady Middleton with more warmth than she felt, though with far less than Miss Lucy. "And Sir John too," cried the elder sister, "what a charming man he is!" Here too, Miss Dashwood's commendation, being only simple and just, came in without any eclat. She merely observed that he was perfectly good humoured and friendly. "And what a charming little family they have! I never saw such fine children in my life.--I declare I quite doat upon them already, and indeed I am always distractedly fond of children." "I should guess so," said Elinor, with a smile, "from what I have witnessed this morning." "I have a notion," said Lucy, "you think the little Middletons rather too much indulged; perhaps they may be the outside of enough; but it is so natural in Lady Middleton; and for my part, I love to see children full of life and spirits; I cannot bear them if they are tame and quiet." "I confess," replied Elinor, "that while I am at Barton Park, I never think of tame and quiet children with any abhorrence." A short pause succeeded this speech, which was first broken by Miss Steele, who seemed very much disposed for conversation, and who now said rather abruptly, "And how do you like Devonshire, Miss Dashwood? I suppose you were very sorry to leave Sussex." In some surprise at the familiarity of this question, or at least of the manner in which it was spoken, Elinor replied that she was. "Norland is a prodigious beautiful place, is not it?" added Miss Steele. "We have heard Sir John admire it excessively," said Lucy, who seemed to think some apology necessary for the freedom of her sister. "I think every one MUST admire it," replied Elinor, "who ever saw the place; though it is not to be supposed that any one can estimate its beauties as we do." "And had you a great many smart beaux there? I suppose you have not so many in this part of the world; for my part, I think they are a vast addition always." "But why should you think," said Lucy, looking ashamed of her sister, "that there are not as many genteel young men in Devonshire as Sussex?" "Nay, my dear, I'm sure I don't pretend to say that there an't. I'm sure there's a vast many smart beaux in Exeter; but you know, how could I tell what smart beaux there might be about Norland; and I was only afraid the Miss Dashwoods might find it dull at Barton, if they had not so many as they used to have. But perhaps you young ladies may not care about the beaux, and had as lief be without them as with them. For my part, I think they are vastly agreeable, provided they dress smart and behave civil. But I can't bear to see them dirty and nasty. Now there's Mr. Rose at Exeter, a prodigious smart young man, quite a beau, clerk to Mr. Simpson, you know, and yet if you do but meet him of a morning, he is not fit to be seen.-- I suppose your brother was quite a beau, Miss Dashwood, before he married, as he was so rich?" "Upon my word," replied Elinor, "I cannot tell you, for I do not perfectly comprehend the meaning of the word. But this I can say, that if he ever was a beau before he married, he is one still for there is not the smallest alteration in him." "Oh! dear! one never thinks of married men's being beaux--they have something else to do." "Lord! Anne," cried her sister, "you can talk of nothing but beaux;--you will make Miss Dashwood believe you think of nothing else." And then to turn the discourse, she began admiring the house and the furniture. This specimen of the Miss Steeles was enough. The vulgar freedom and folly of the eldest left her no recommendation, and as Elinor was not blinded by the beauty, or the shrewd look of the youngest, to her want of real elegance and artlessness, she left the house without any wish of knowing them better. Not so the Miss Steeles.--They came from Exeter, well provided with admiration for the use of Sir John Middleton, his family, and all his relations, and no niggardly proportion was now dealt out to his fair cousins, whom they declared to be the most beautiful, elegant, accomplished, and agreeable girls they had ever beheld, and with whom they were particularly anxious to be better acquainted.-- And to be better acquainted therefore, Elinor soon found was their inevitable lot, for as Sir John was entirely on the side of the Miss Steeles, their party would be too strong for opposition, and that kind of intimacy must be submitted to, which consists of sitting an hour or two together in the same room almost every day. Sir John could do no more; but he did not know that any more was required: to be together was, in his opinion, to be intimate, and while his continual schemes for their meeting were effectual, he had not a doubt of their being established friends. To do him justice, he did every thing in his power to promote their unreserve, by making the Miss Steeles acquainted with whatever he knew or supposed of his cousins' situations in the most delicate particulars,--and Elinor had not seen them more than twice, before the eldest of them wished her joy on her sister's having been so lucky as to make a conquest of a very smart beau since she came to Barton. "'Twill be a fine thing to have her married so young to be sure," said she, "and I hear he is quite a beau, and prodigious handsome. And I hope you may have as good luck yourself soon,--but perhaps you may have a friend in the corner already." Elinor could not suppose that Sir John would be more nice in proclaiming his suspicions of her regard for Edward, than he had been with respect to Marianne; indeed it was rather his favourite joke of the two, as being somewhat newer and more conjectural; and since Edward's visit, they had never dined together without his drinking to her best affections with so much significancy and so many nods and winks, as to excite general attention. The letter F--had been likewise invariably brought forward, and found productive of such countless jokes, that its character as the wittiest letter in the alphabet had been long established with Elinor. The Miss Steeles, as she expected, had now all the benefit of these jokes, and in the eldest of them they raised a curiosity to know the name of the gentleman alluded to, which, though often impertinently expressed, was perfectly of a piece with her general inquisitiveness into the concerns of their family. But Sir John did not sport long with the curiosity which he delighted to raise, for he had at least as much pleasure in telling the name, as Miss Steele had in hearing it. "His name is Ferrars," said he, in a very audible whisper; "but pray do not tell it, for it's a great secret." "Ferrars!" repeated Miss Steele; "Mr. Ferrars is the happy man, is he? What! your sister-in-law's brother, Miss Dashwood? a very agreeable young man to be sure; I know him very well." "How can you say so, Anne?" cried Lucy, who generally made an amendment to all her sister's assertions. "Though we have seen him once or twice at my uncle's, it is rather too much to pretend to know him very well." Elinor heard all this with attention and surprise. "And who was this uncle? Where did he live? How came they acquainted?" She wished very much to have the subject continued, though she did not chuse to join in it herself; but nothing more of it was said, and for the first time in her life, she thought Mrs. Jennings deficient either in curiosity after petty information, or in a disposition to communicate it. The manner in which Miss Steele had spoken of Edward, increased her curiosity; for it struck her as being rather ill-natured, and suggested the suspicion of that lady's knowing, or fancying herself to know something to his disadvantage.--But her curiosity was unavailing, for no farther notice was taken of Mr. Ferrars's name by Miss Steele when alluded to, or even openly mentioned by Sir John.

At Barton Park the next day, Charlotte Palmer laughed and talked as foolishly as ever, and her husband was so consistently rude that Elinor concluded that "his general abuse of everything before him . . . was the desire of appearing superior to other people." Charlotte was very friendly to the girls, however, and invited them for Christmas -- which Elinor declined. The Palmers returned to their home, "and the two families at Barton were again left to entertain each other." Their isolation didn't last long, however, for during an excursion to Exeter, Sir John met two young ladies, Anne and Lucy Steele, whom Mrs. Jennings discovered to be relatives of hers. He promptly invited them to Barton Hall, where they made themselves highly agreeable to Lady Middleton by flattering her and her children excessively. Elinor and Marianne found the older Miss Steele very vulgar and free in her speech, and Lucy, the younger, lacking in "real elegance and artlessness." Elinor left the house "without any wish of knowing them better." But Sir John was "entirely on the side of the Misses Steele," who were "particularly anxious to be better acquainted" with the Dashwoods. Thus he threw the young ladies together every day. Marianne was teased about Willoughby, and Sir John hinted at a romance between Elinor and Ferrars. On hearing Edward's name, Anne Steele announced that she knew Edward "very well" but was contradicted by Lucy, who declared, "Though we have seen him once or twice at my uncle's, it is rather too much to pretend to know him very well." For once Elinor wished Mrs. Jennings or Sir John would pursue the subject so she could find out more about the uncle and Edward's connection with him. But to her dismay, the subject was dropped.

Waking When Maggie was gone to sleep, Stephen, weary too with his unaccustomed amount of rowing, and with the intense inward life of the last twelve hours, but too restless to sleep, walked and lounged about the deck with his cigar far on into midnight, not seeing the dark water, hardly conscious there were stars, living only in the near and distant future. At last fatigue conquered restlessness, and he rolled himself up in a piece of tarpaulin on the deck near Maggie's feet. She had fallen asleep before nine, and had been sleeping for six hours before the faintest hint of a midsummer daybreak was discernible. She awoke from that vivid dreaming which makes the margin of our deeper rest. She was in a boat on the wide water with Stephen, and in the gathering darkness something like a star appeared, that grew and grew till they saw it was the Virgin seated in St. Ogg's boat, and it came nearer and nearer, till they saw the Virgin was Lucy and the boatman was Philip,--no, not Philip, but her brother, who rowed past without looking at her; and she rose to stretch out her arms and call to him, and their own boat turned over with the movement, and they began to sink, till with one spasm of dread she seemed to awake, and find she was a child again in the parlor at evening twilight, and Tom was not really angry. From the soothed sense of that false waking she passed to the real waking,--to the plash of water against the vessel, and the sound of a footstep on the deck, and the awful starlit sky. There was a moment of utter bewilderment before her mind could get disentangled from the confused web of dreams; but soon the whole terrible truth urged itself upon her. Stephen was not by her now; she was alone with her own memory and her own dread. The irrevocable wrong that must blot her life had been committed; she had brought sorrow into the lives of others,--into the lives that were knit up with hers by trust and love. The feeling of a few short weeks had hurried her into the sins her nature had most recoiled from,--breach of faith and cruel selfishness; she had rent the ties that had given meaning to duty, and had made herself an outlawed soul, with no guide but the wayward choice of her own passion. And where would that lead her? Where had it led her now? She had said she would rather die than fall into that temptation. She felt it now,--now that the consequences of such a fall had come before the outward act was completed. There was at least this fruit from all her years of striving after the highest and best,--that her soul though betrayed, beguiled, ensnared, could never deliberately consent to a choice of the lower. And a choice of what? O God! not a choice of joy, but of conscious cruelty and hardness; for could she ever cease to see before her Lucy and Philip, with their murdered trust and hopes? Her life with Stephen could have no sacredness; she must forever sink and wander vaguely, driven by uncertain impulse; for she had let go the clue of life,--that clue which once in the far-off years her young need had clutched so strongly. She had renounced all delights then, before she knew them, before they had come within her reach. Philip had been right when he told her that she knew nothing of renunciation; she had thought it was quiet ecstasy; she saw it face to face now,--that sad, patient, loving strength which holds the clue of life,--and saw that the thorns were forever pressing on its brow. The yesterday, which could never be revoked,--if she could have changed it now for any length of inward silent endurance, she would have bowed beneath that cross with a sense of rest. Day break came and the reddening eastern light, while her past life was grasping her in this way, with that tightening clutch which comes in the last moments of possible rescue. She could see Stephen now lying on the deck still fast asleep, and with the sight of him there came a wave of anguish that found its way in a long-suppressed sob. The worst bitterness of parting--the thought that urged the sharpest inward cry for help--was the pain it must give to _him_. But surmounting everything was the horror at her own possible failure, the dread lest her conscience should be benumbed again, and not rise to energy till it was too late. Too late! it was too late already not to have caused misery; too late for everything, perhaps, but to rush away from the last act of baseness,--the tasting of joys that were wrung from crushed hearts. The sun was rising now, and Maggie started up with the sense that a day of resistance was beginning for her. Her eyelashes were still wet with tears, as, with her shawl over her head, she sat looking at the slowly rounding sun. Something roused Stephen too, and getting up from his hard bed, he came to sit beside her. The sharp instinct of anxious love saw something to give him alarm in the very first glance. He had a hovering dread of some resistance in Maggie's nature that he would be unable to overcome. He had the uneasy consciousness that he had robbed her of perfect freedom yesterday; there was too much native honor in him, for him not to feel that, if her will should recoil, his conduct would have been odious, and she would have a right to reproach him. But Maggie did not feel that right; she was too conscious of fatal weakness in herself, too full of the tenderness that comes with the foreseen need for inflicting a wound. She let him take her hand when he came to sit down beside her, and smiled at him, only with rather a sad glance; she could say nothing to pain him till the moment of possible parting was nearer. And so they drank their cup of coffee together, and walked about the deck, and heard the captain's assurance that they should be in at Mudport by five o'clock, each with an inward burthen; but in him it was an undefined fear, which he trusted to the coming hours to dissipate; in her it was a definite resolve on which she was trying silently to tighten her hold. Stephen was continually, through the morning, expressing his anxiety at the fatigue and discomfort she was suffering, and alluded to landing and to the change of motion and repose she would have in a carriage, wanting to assure himself more completely by presupposing that everything would be as he had arranged it. For a long while Maggie contented herself with assuring him that she had had a good night's rest, and that she didn't mind about being on the vessel,--it was not like being on the open sea, it was only a little less pleasant than being in a boat on the Floss. But a suppressed resolve will betray itself in the eyes, and Stephen became more and more uneasy as the day advanced, under the sense that Maggie had entirely lost her passiveness. He longed, but did not dare, to speak of their marriage, of where they would go after it, and the steps he would take to inform his father, and the rest, of what had happened. He longed to assure himself of a tacit assent from her. But each time he looked at her, he gathered a stronger dread of the new, quiet sadness with which she met his eyes. And they were more and more silent. "Here we are in sight of Mudport," he said at last. "Now, dearest," he added, turning toward her with a look that was half beseeching, "the worst part of your fatigue is over. On the land we can command swiftness. In another hour and a half we shall be in a chaise together, and that will seem rest to you after this." Maggie felt it was time to speak; it would only be unkind now to assent by silence. She spoke in the lowest tone, as he had done, but with distinct decision. "We shall not be together; we shall have parted." The blood rushed to Stephen's face. "We shall not," he said. "I'll die first." It was as he had dreaded--there was a struggle coming. But neither of them dared to say another word till the boat was let down, and they were taken to the landing-place. Here there was a cluster of gazers and passengers awaiting the departure of the steamboat to St. Ogg's. Maggie had a dim sense, when she had landed, and Stephen was hurrying her along on his arm, that some one had advanced toward her from that cluster as if he were coming to speak to her. But she was hurried along, and was indifferent to everything but the coming trial. A porter guided them to the nearest inn and posting-house, and Stephen gave the order for the chaise as they passed through the yard. Maggie took no notice of this, and only said, "Ask them to show us into a room where we can sit down." When they entered, Maggie did not sit down, and Stephen, whose face had a desperate determination in it, was about to ring the bell, when she said, in a firm voice,-- "I'm not going; we must part here." "Maggie," he said, turning round toward her, and speaking in the tones of a man who feels a process of torture beginning, "do you mean to kill me? What is the use of it now? The whole thing is done." "No, it is not done," said Maggie. "Too much is done,--more than we can ever remove the trace of. But I will go no farther. Don't try to prevail with me again. I couldn't choose yesterday." What was he to do? He dared not go near her; her anger might leap out, and make a new barrier. He walked backward and forward in maddening perplexity. "Maggie," he said at last, pausing before her, and speaking in a tone of imploring wretchedness, "have some pity--hear me--forgive me for what I did yesterday. I will obey you now; I will do nothing without your full consent. But don't blight our lives forever by a rash perversity that can answer no good purpose to any one, that can only create new evils. Sit down, dearest; wait--think what you are going to do. Don't treat me as if you couldn't trust me." He had chosen the most effective appeal; but Maggie's will was fixed unswervingly on the coming wrench. She had made up her mind to suffer. "We must not wait," she said, in a low but distinct voice; "we must part at once." "We _can't_ part, Maggie," said Stephen, more impetuously. "I can't bear it. What is the use of inflicting that misery on me? The blow--whatever it may have been--has been struck now. Will it help any one else that you should drive me mad?" "I will not begin any future, even for you," said Maggie, tremulously, "with a deliberate consent to what ought not to have been. What I told you at Basset I feel now; I would rather have died than fall into this temptation. It would have been better if we had parted forever then. But we must part now." "We will _not_ part," Stephen burst out, instinctively placing his back against the door, forgetting everything he had said a few moments before; "I will not endure it. You'll make me desperate; I sha'n't know what I do." Maggie trembled. She felt that the parting could not be effected suddenly. She must rely on a slower appeal to Stephen's better self; she must be prepared for a harder task than that of rushing away while resolution was fresh. She sat down. Stephen, watching her with that look of desperation which had come over him like a lurid light, approached slowly from the door, seated himself close beside her, and grasped her hand. Her heart beat like the heart of a frightened bird; but this direct opposition helped her. She felt her determination growing stronger. "Remember what you felt weeks ago," she began, with beseeching earnestness; "remember what we both felt,--that we owed ourselves to others, and must conquer every inclination which could make us false to that debt. We have failed to keep our resolutions; but the wrong remains the same." "No, it does _not_ remain the same," said Stephen. "We have proved that it was impossible to keep our resolutions. We have proved that the feeling which draws us toward each other is too strong to be overcome. That natural law surmounts every other; we can't help what it clashes with." "It is not so, Stephen; I'm quite sure that is wrong. I have tried to think it again and again; but I see, if we judged in that way, there would be a warrant for all treachery and cruelty; we should justify breaking the most sacred ties that can ever be formed on earth. If the past is not to bind us, where can duty lie? We should have no law but the inclination of the moment." "But there are ties that can't be kept by mere resolution," said Stephen, starting up and walking about again. "What is outward faithfulness? Would they have thanked us for anything so hollow as constancy without love?" Maggie did not answer immediately. She was undergoing an inward as well as an outward contest. At last she said, with a passionate assertion of her conviction, as much against herself as against him,-- "That seems right--at first; but when I look further, I'm sure it is _not_ right. Faithfulness and constancy mean something else besides doing what is easiest and pleasantest to ourselves. They mean renouncing whatever is opposed to the reliance others have in us,--whatever would cause misery to those whom the course of our lives has made dependent on us. If we--if I had been better, nobler, those claims would have been so strongly present with me,--I should have felt them pressing on my heart so continually, just as they do now in the moments when my conscience is awake,--that the opposite feeling would never have grown in me, as it has done; it would have been quenched at once, I should have prayed for help so earnestly, I should have rushed away as we rush from hideous danger. I feel no excuse for myself, none. I should never have failed toward Lucy and Philip as I have done, if I had not been weak, selfish, and hard,--able to think of their pain without a pain to myself that would have destroyed all temptation. Oh, what is Lucy feeling now? She believed in me--she loved me--she was so good to me. Think of her----" Maggie's voice was getting choked as she uttered these last words. "I _can't_ think of her," said Stephen, stamping as if with pain. "I can think of nothing but you, Maggie. You demand of a man what is impossible. I felt that once; but I can't go back to it now. And where is the use of _your_ thinking of it, except to torture me? You can't save them from pain now; you can only tear yourself from me, and make my life worthless to me. And even if we could go back, and both fulfil our engagements,--if that were possible now,--it would be hateful, horrible, to think of your ever being Philip's wife,--of your ever being the wife of a man you didn't love. We have both been rescued from a mistake." A deep flush came over Maggie's face, and she couldn't speak. Stephen saw this. He sat down again, taking her hand in his, and looking at her with passionate entreaty. "Maggie! Dearest! If you love me, you are mine. Who can have so great a claim on you as I have? My life is bound up in your love. There is nothing in the past that can annul our right to each other; it is the first time we have either of us loved with our whole heart and soul." Maggie was still silent for a little while, looking down. Stephen was in a flutter of new hope; he was going to triumph. But she raised her eyes and met his with a glance that was filled with the anguish of regret, not with yielding. "No, not with my whole heart and soul, Stephen," she said with timid resolution. "I have never consented to it with my whole mind. There are memories, and affections, and longings after perfect goodness, that have such a strong hold on me; they would never quit me for long; they would come back and be pain to me--repentance. I couldn't live in peace if I put the shadow of a wilful sin between myself and God. I have caused sorrow already--I know--I feel it; but I have never deliberately consented to it; I have never said, 'They shall suffer, that I may have joy.' It has never been my will to marry you; if you were to win consent from the momentary triumph of my feeling for you, you would not have my whole soul. If I could wake back again into the time before yesterday, I would choose to be true to my calmer affections, and live without the joy of love." Stephen loosed her hand, and rising impatiently, walked up and down the room in suppressed rage. "Good God!" he burst out at last, "what a miserable thing a woman's love is to a man's! I could commit crimes for you,--and you can balance and choose in that way. But you _don't_ love me; if you had a tithe of the feeling for me that I have for you, it would be impossible to you to think for a moment of sacrificing me. But it weighs nothing with you that you are robbing me of _my_ life's happiness." Maggie pressed her fingers together almost convulsively as she held them clasped on her lap. A great terror was upon her, as if she were ever and anon seeing where she stood by great flashes of lightning, and then again stretched forth her hands in the darkness. "No, I don't sacrifice you--I couldn't sacrifice you," she said, as soon as she could speak again; "but I can't believe in a good for you, that I feel, that we both feel, is a wrong toward others. We can't choose happiness either for ourselves or for another; we can't tell where that will lie. We can only choose whether we will indulge ourselves in the present moment, or whether we will renounce that, for the sake of obeying the divine voice within us,--for the sake of being true to all the motives that sanctify our lives. I know this belief is hard; it has slipped away from me again and again; but I have felt that if I let it go forever, I should have no light through the darkness of this life." "But, Maggie," said Stephen, seating himself by her again, "is it possible you don't see that what happened yesterday has altered the whole position of things? What infatuation is it, what obstinate prepossession, that blinds you to that? It is too late to say what we might have done or what we ought to have done. Admitting the very worst view of what has been done, it is a fact we must act on now; our position is altered; the right course is no longer what it was before. We must accept our own actions and start afresh from them. Suppose we had been married yesterday? It is nearly the same thing. The effect on others would not have been different. It would only have made this difference to ourselves," Stephen added bitterly, "that you might have acknowledged then that your tie to me was stronger than to others." Again a deep flush came over Maggie's face, and she was silent. Stephen thought again that he was beginning to prevail,--he had never yet believed that he should _not_ prevail; there are possibilities which our minds shrink from too completely for us to fear them. "Dearest," he said, in his deepest, tenderest tone, leaning toward her, and putting his arm round her, "you _are_ mine now,--the world believes it; duty must spring out of that now. "In a few hours you will be legally mine, and those who had claims on us will submit,--they will see that there was a force which declared against their claims." Maggie's eyes opened wide in one terrified look at the face that was close to hers, and she started up, pale again. "Oh, I can't do it," she said, in a voice almost of agony; "Stephen, don't ask me--don't urge me. I can't argue any longer,--I don't know what is wise; but my heart will not let me do it. I see,--I feel their trouble now; it is as if it were branded on my mind. _I_ have suffered, and had no one to pity me; and now I have made others suffer. It would never leave me; it would embitter your love to me. I _do_ care for Philip--in a different way; I remember all we said to each other; I know how he thought of me as the one promise of his life. He was given to me that I might make his lot less hard; and I have forsaken him. And Lucy--she has been deceived; she who trusted me more than any one. I cannot marry you; I cannot take a good for myself that has been wrung out of their misery. It is not the force that ought to rule us,--this that we feel for each other; it would rend me away from all that my past life has made dear and holy to me. I can't set out on a fresh life, and forget that; I must go back to it, and cling to it, else I shall feel as if there were nothing firm beneath my feet." "Good God, Maggie!" said Stephen, rising too and grasping her arm, "you rave. How can you go back without marrying me? You don't know what will be said, dearest. You see nothing as it really is." "Yes, I do. But they will believe me. I will confess everything. Lucy will believe me--she will forgive you, and--and--oh, _some_ good will come by clinging to the right. Dear, dear Stephen, let me go!--don't drag me into deeper remorse. My whole soul has never consented; it does not consent now." Stephen let go her arm, and sank back on his chair, half-stunned by despairing rage. He was silent a few moments, not looking at her; while her eyes were turned toward him yearningly, in alarm at this sudden change. At last he said, still without looking at her,-- "Go, then,--leave me; don't torture me any longer,--I can't bear it." Involuntarily she leaned toward him and put out her hand to touch his. But he shrank from it as if it had been burning iron, and said again,-- "Leave me." Maggie was not conscious of a decision as she turned away from that gloomy averted face, and walked out of the room; it was like an automatic action that fulfils a forgotten intention. What came after? A sense of stairs descended as if in a dream, of flagstones, of a chaise and horses standing, then a street, and a turning into another street where a stage-coach was standing, taking in passengers, and the darting thought that that coach would take her away, perhaps toward home. But she could ask nothing yet; she only got into the coach. Home--where her mother and brother were, Philip, Lucy, the scene of her very cares and trials--was the haven toward which her mind tended; the sanctuary where sacred relics lay, where she would be rescued from more falling. The thought of Stephen was like a horrible throbbing pain, which yet, as such pains do, seemed to urge all other thoughts into activity. But among her thoughts, what others would say and think of her conduct was hardly present. Love and deep pity and remorseful anguish left no room for that. The coach was taking her to York, farther away from home; but she did not learn that until she was set down in the old city at midnight. It was no matter; she could sleep there, and start home the next day. She had her purse in her pocket, with all her money in it,--a bank-note and a sovereign; she had kept it in her pocket from forgetfulness, after going out to make purchases the day before yesterday. Did she lie down in the gloomy bedroom of the old inn that night with her will bent unwaveringly on the path of penitent sacrifice? The great struggles of life are not so easy as that; the great problems of life are not so clear. In the darkness of that night she saw Stephen's face turned toward her in passionate, reproachful misery; she lived through again all the tremulous delights of his presence with her that made existence an easy floating in a stream of joy, instead of a quiet resolved endurance and effort. The love she had renounced came back upon her with a cruel charm; she felt herself opening her arms to receive it once more; and then it seemed to slip away and fade and vanish, leaving only the dying sound of a deep, thrilling voice that said, "Gone, forever gone." Book VII _The Final Rescue_

Maggie awakes from a dream that she has been on the water with Stephen and has seen the boat of St. Ogg with the Virgin seated in it. The Virgin becomes Lucy and the boatman Philip and then Tom, who rows past without looking. She calls to him, and they begin to sink. She dreams she wakes as a child, then wakes to reality. She feels that she has committed an "irrevocable wrong," and that life with Stephen "could have no sacredness." She sees Stephen asleep on the deck close to her, and she feels that the worst bitterness is the pain she must give to him. To delay that as long as possible, she says nothing of parting until they come to Mudport. When Maggie says she must return, Stephen vows to die first. They go into an inn and Stephen orders a carriage, but Maggie insists that they must part. Stephen tries to tell her that it is too late, that whatever damage will be done is done already, and that "constancy without love" is useless. But Maggie argues that the past must bind them, and that she could not live at peace with herself if she were to commit a willful sin. Stephen cries that her love is nothing, for he could commit crimes for her, while she is robbing him of his "life's happiness." She rejects his argument that their position has changed since the previous day, for the fact that she has made others suffer would embitter their love. Stephen says she does not know what will be said when she returns, but Maggie replies that Lucy and Philip will believe her. Stephen lets her go at last, angry for the moment. Maggie gets into a coach, but it takes her farther from home. She spends the night at York, half-sick with anguish, intending to start home the next day.

On the forenoon of the second day, coming to the top of a hill, I saw all the country fall away before me down to the sea; and in the midst of this descent, on a long ridge, the city of Edinburgh smoking like a kiln. There was a flag upon the castle, and ships moving or lying anchored in the firth; both of which, for as far away as they were, I could distinguish clearly; and both brought my country heart into my mouth. Presently after, I came by a house where a shepherd lived, and got a rough direction for the neighbourhood of Cramond; and so, from one to another, worked my way to the westward of the capital by Colinton, till I came out upon the Glasgow road. And there, to my great pleasure and wonder, I beheld a regiment marching to the fifes, every foot in time; an old red-faced general on a grey horse at the one end, and at the other the company of Grenadiers, with their Pope's-hats. The pride of life seemed to mount into my brain at the sight of the red coats and the hearing of that merry music. A little farther on, and I was told I was in Cramond parish, and began to substitute in my inquiries the name of the house of Shaws. It was a word that seemed to surprise those of whom I sought my way. At first I thought the plainness of my appearance, in my country habit, and that all dusty from the road, consorted ill with the greatness of the place to which I was bound. But after two, or maybe three, had given me the same look and the same answer, I began to take it in my head there was something strange about the Shaws itself. The better to set this fear at rest, I changed the form of my inquiries; and spying an honest fellow coming along a lane on the shaft of his cart, I asked him if he had ever heard tell of a house they called the house of Shaws. He stopped his cart and looked at me, like the others. "Ay" said he. "What for?" "It's a great house?" I asked. "Doubtless," says he. "The house is a big, muckle house." "Ay," said I, "but the folk that are in it?" "Folk?" cried he. "Are ye daft? There's nae folk there--to call folk." "What?" say I; "not Mr. Ebenezer?" "Ou, ay" says the man; "there's the laird, to be sure, if it's him you're wanting. What'll like be your business, mannie?" "I was led to think that I would get a situation," I said, looking as modest as I could. "What?" cries the carter, in so sharp a note that his very horse started; and then, "Well, mannie," he added, "it's nane of my affairs; but ye seem a decent-spoken lad; and if ye'll take a word from me, ye'll keep clear of the Shaws." The next person I came across was a dapper little man in a beautiful white wig, whom I saw to be a barber on his rounds; and knowing well that barbers were great gossips, I asked him plainly what sort of a man was Mr. Balfour of the Shaws. "Hoot, hoot, hoot," said the barber, "nae kind of a man, nae kind of a man at all;" and began to ask me very shrewdly what my business was; but I was more than a match for him at that, and he went on to his next customer no wiser than he came. I cannot well describe the blow this dealt to my illusions. The more indistinct the accusations were, the less I liked them, for they left the wider field to fancy. What kind of a great house was this, that all the parish should start and stare to be asked the way to it? or what sort of a gentleman, that his ill-fame should be thus current on the wayside? If an hour's walking would have brought me back to Essendean, I had left my adventure then and there, and returned to Mr. Campbell's. But when I had come so far a way already, mere shame would not suffer me to desist till I had put the matter to the touch of proof; I was bound, out of mere self-respect, to carry it through; and little as I liked the sound of what I heard, and slow as I began to travel, I still kept asking my way and still kept advancing. It was drawing on to sundown when I met a stout, dark, sour-looking woman coming trudging down a hill; and she, when I had put my usual question, turned sharp about, accompanied me back to the summit she had just left, and pointed to a great bulk of building standing very bare upon a green in the bottom of the next valley. The country was pleasant round about, running in low hills, pleasantly watered and wooded, and the crops, to my eyes, wonderfully good; but the house itself appeared to be a kind of ruin; no road led up to it; no smoke arose from any of the chimneys; nor was there any semblance of a garden. My heart sank. "That!" I cried. The woman's face lit up with a malignant anger. "That is the house of Shaws!" she cried. "Blood built it; blood stopped the building of it; blood shall bring it down. See here!" she cried again--"I spit upon the ground, and crack my thumb at it! Black be its fall! If ye see the laird, tell him what ye hear; tell him this makes the twelve hunner and nineteen time that Jennet Clouston has called down the curse on him and his house, byre and stable, man, guest, and master, wife, miss, or bairn--black, black be their fall!" And the woman, whose voice had risen to a kind of eldritch sing-song, turned with a skip, and was gone. I stood where she left me, with my hair on end. In those days folk still believed in witches and trembled at a curse; and this one, falling so pat, like a wayside omen, to arrest me ere I carried out my purpose, took the pith out of my legs. I sat me down and stared at the house of Shaws. The more I looked, the pleasanter that country-side appeared; being all set with hawthorn bushes full of flowers; the fields dotted with sheep; a fine flight of rooks in the sky; and every sign of a kind soil and climate; and yet the barrack in the midst of it went sore against my fancy. Country folk went by from the fields as I sat there on the side of the ditch, but I lacked the spirit to give them a good-e'en. At last the sun went down, and then, right up against the yellow sky, I saw a scroll of smoke go mounting, not much thicker, as it seemed to me, than the smoke of a candle; but still there it was, and meant a fire, and warmth, and cookery, and some living inhabitant that must have lit it; and this comforted my heart. So I set forward by a little faint track in the grass that led in my direction. It was very faint indeed to be the only way to a place of habitation; yet I saw no other. Presently it brought me to stone uprights, with an unroofed lodge beside them, and coats of arms upon the top. A main entrance it was plainly meant to be, but never finished; instead of gates of wrought iron, a pair of hurdles were tied across with a straw rope; and as there were no park walls, nor any sign of avenue, the track that I was following passed on the right hand of the pillars, and went wandering on toward the house. The nearer I got to that, the drearier it appeared. It seemed like the one wing of a house that had never been finished. What should have been the inner end stood open on the upper floors, and showed against the sky with steps and stairs of uncompleted masonry. Many of the windows were unglazed, and bats flew in and out like doves out of a dove-cote. The night had begun to fall as I got close; and in three of the lower windows, which were very high up and narrow, and well barred, the changing light of a little fire began to glimmer. Was this the palace I had been coming to? Was it within these walls that I was to seek new friends and begin great fortunes? Why, in my father's house on Essen-Waterside, the fire and the bright lights would show a mile away, and the door open to a beggar's knock! I came forward cautiously, and giving ear as I came, heard some one rattling with dishes, and a little dry, eager cough that came in fits; but there was no sound of speech, and not a dog barked. The door, as well as I could see it in the dim light, was a great piece of wood all studded with nails; and I lifted my hand with a faint heart under my jacket, and knocked once. Then I stood and waited. The house had fallen into a dead silence; a whole minute passed away, and nothing stirred but the bats overhead. I knocked again, and hearkened again. By this time my ears had grown so accustomed to the quiet, that I could hear the ticking of the clock inside as it slowly counted out the seconds; but whoever was in that house kept deadly still, and must have held his breath. I was in two minds whether to run away; but anger got the upper hand, and I began instead to rain kicks and buffets on the door, and to shout out aloud for Mr. Balfour. I was in full career, when I heard the cough right overhead, and jumping back and looking up, beheld a man's head in a tall nightcap, and the bell mouth of a blunderbuss, at one of the first-storey windows. "It's loaded," said a voice. "I have come here with a letter," I said, "to Mr. Ebenezer Balfour of Shaws. Is he here?" "From whom is it?" asked the man with the blunderbuss. "That is neither here nor there," said I, for I was growing very wroth. "Well," was the reply, "ye can put it down upon the doorstep, and be off with ye." "I will do no such thing," I cried. "I will deliver it into Mr. Balfour's hands, as it was meant I should. It is a letter of introduction." "A what?" cried the voice, sharply. I repeated what I had said. "Who are ye, yourself?" was the next question, after a considerable pause. "I am not ashamed of my name," said I. "They call me David Balfour." At that, I made sure the man started, for I heard the blunderbuss rattle on the window-sill; and it was after quite a long pause, and with a curious change of voice, that the next question followed: "Is your father dead?" I was so much surprised at this, that I could find no voice to answer, but stood staring. "Ay," the man resumed, "he'll be dead, no doubt; and that'll be what brings ye chapping to my door." Another pause, and then defiantly, "Well, man," he said, "I'll let ye in;" and he disappeared from the window.

The novel opens with David Balfour's narration of his adventures. On a June morning in 1751, after the death of his father, David leaves the place of his birth to go in search of fortune. The minister of Essendean, Mr. Campbell, comes forward to bid him good-bye. He also hands over to David a letter written by his father, Alexander Balfour; the letter is addressed to Alexander's brother, Ebenezer, asking him to look after David. The clergyman asks the boy to go to Cramond, near Edinburgh, to meet his uncle and deliver the letter. He also advises the boy to adjust to the ways of his uncle and to follow the rules of his household. He then gives David the money left behind by his father and three gifts from himself and his wife. The first gift is a shilling, the second a Bible, and the third a yellow paper containing the remedy for sickness and injury . Accepting the gifts, David bids good-bye to Mr. Campbell and leaves for his new home.

How will you know the pitch of that great bell Too large for you to stir? Let but a flute Play 'neath the fine-mixed metal listen close Till the right note flows forth, a silvery rill. Then shall the huge bell tremble--then the mass With myriad waves concurrent shall respond In low soft unison. Lydgate that evening spoke to Miss Vincy of Mrs. Casaubon, and laid some emphasis on the strong feeling she appeared to have for that formal studious man thirty years older than herself. "Of course she is devoted to her husband," said Rosamond, implying a notion of necessary sequence which the scientific man regarded as the prettiest possible for a woman; but she was thinking at the same time that it was not so very melancholy to be mistress of Lowick Manor with a husband likely to die soon. "Do you think her very handsome?" "She certainly is handsome, but I have not thought about it," said Lydgate. "I suppose it would be unprofessional," said Rosamond, dimpling. "But how your practice is spreading! You were called in before to the Chettams, I think; and now, the Casaubons." "Yes," said Lydgate, in a tone of compulsory admission. "But I don't really like attending such people so well as the poor. The cases are more monotonous, and one has to go through more fuss and listen more deferentially to nonsense." "Not more than in Middlemarch," said Rosamond. "And at least you go through wide corridors and have the scent of rose-leaves everywhere." "That is true, Mademoiselle de Montmorenci," said Lydgate, just bending his head to the table and lifting with his fourth finger her delicate handkerchief which lay at the mouth of her reticule, as if to enjoy its scent, while he looked at her with a smile. But this agreeable holiday freedom with which Lydgate hovered about the flower of Middlemarch, could not continue indefinitely. It was not more possible to find social isolation in that town than elsewhere, and two people persistently flirting could by no means escape from "the various entanglements, weights, blows, clashings, motions, by which things severally go on." Whatever Miss Vincy did must be remarked, and she was perhaps the more conspicuous to admirers and critics because just now Mrs. Vincy, after some struggle, had gone with Fred to stay a little while at Stone Court, there being no other way of at once gratifying old Featherstone and keeping watch against Mary Garth, who appeared a less tolerable daughter-in-law in proportion as Fred's illness disappeared. Aunt Bulstrode, for example, came a little oftener into Lowick Gate to see Rosamond, now she was alone. For Mrs. Bulstrode had a true sisterly feeling for her brother; always thinking that he might have married better, but wishing well to the children. Now Mrs. Bulstrode had a long-standing intimacy with Mrs. Plymdale. They had nearly the same preferences in silks, patterns for underclothing, china-ware, and clergymen; they confided their little troubles of health and household management to each other, and various little points of superiority on Mrs. Bulstrode's side, namely, more decided seriousness, more admiration for mind, and a house outside the town, sometimes served to give color to their conversation without dividing them--well-meaning women both, knowing very little of their own motives. Mrs. Bulstrode, paying a morning visit to Mrs. Plymdale, happened to say that she could not stay longer, because she was going to see poor Rosamond. "Why do you say 'poor Rosamond'?" said Mrs. Plymdale, a round-eyed sharp little woman, like a tamed falcon. "She is so pretty, and has been brought up in such thoughtlessness. The mother, you know, had always that levity about her, which makes me anxious for the children." "Well, Harriet, if I am to speak my mind," said Mrs. Plymdale, with emphasis, "I must say, anybody would suppose you and Mr. Bulstrode would be delighted with what has happened, for you have done everything to put Mr. Lydgate forward." "Selina, what do you mean?" said Mrs. Bulstrode, in genuine surprise. "Not but what I am truly thankful for Ned's sake," said Mrs. Plymdale. "He could certainly better afford to keep such a wife than some people can; but I should wish him to look elsewhere. Still a mother has anxieties, and some young men would take to a bad life in consequence. Besides, if I was obliged to speak, I should say I was not fond of strangers coming into a town." "I don't know, Selina," said Mrs. Bulstrode, with a little emphasis in her turn. "Mr. Bulstrode was a stranger here at one time. Abraham and Moses were strangers in the land, and we are told to entertain strangers. And especially," she added, after a slight pause, "when they are unexceptionable." "I was not speaking in a religious sense, Harriet. I spoke as a mother." "Selina, I am sure you have never heard me say anything against a niece of mine marrying your son." "Oh, it is pride in Miss Vincy--I am sure it is nothing else," said Mrs. Plymdale, who had never before given all her confidence to "Harriet" on this subject. "No young man in Middlemarch was good enough for her: I have heard her mother say as much. That is not a Christian spirit, I think. But now, from all I hear, she has found a man as proud as herself." "You don't mean that there is anything between Rosamond and Mr. Lydgate?" said Mrs. Bulstrode, rather mortified at finding out her own ignorance. "Is it possible you don't know, Harriet?" "Oh, I go about so little; and I am not fond of gossip; I really never hear any. You see so many people that I don't see. Your circle is rather different from ours." "Well, but your own niece and Mr. Bulstrode's great favorite--and yours too, I am sure, Harriet! I thought, at one time, you meant him for Kate, when she is a little older." "I don't believe there can be anything serious at present," said Mrs. Bulstrode. "My brother would certainly have told me." "Well, people have different ways, but I understand that nobody can see Miss Vincy and Mr. Lydgate together without taking them to be engaged. However, it is not my business. Shall I put up the pattern of mittens?" After this Mrs. Bulstrode drove to her niece with a mind newly weighted. She was herself handsomely dressed, but she noticed with a little more regret than usual that Rosamond, who was just come in and met her in walking-dress, was almost as expensively equipped. Mrs. Bulstrode was a feminine smaller edition of her brother, and had none of her husband's low-toned pallor. She had a good honest glance and used no circumlocution. "You are alone, I see, my dear," she said, as they entered the drawing-room together, looking round gravely. Rosamond felt sure that her aunt had something particular to say, and they sat down near each other. Nevertheless, the quilling inside Rosamond's bonnet was so charming that it was impossible not to desire the same kind of thing for Kate, and Mrs. Bulstrode's eyes, which were rather fine, rolled round that ample quilled circuit, while she spoke. "I have just heard something about you that has surprised me very much, Rosamond." "What is that, aunt?" Rosamond's eyes also were roaming over her aunt's large embroidered collar. "I can hardly believe it--that you should be engaged without my knowing it--without your father's telling me." Here Mrs. Bulstrode's eyes finally rested on Rosamond's, who blushed deeply, and said-- "I am not engaged, aunt." "How is it that every one says so, then--that it is the town's talk?" "The town's talk is of very little consequence, I think," said Rosamond, inwardly gratified. "Oh, my dear, be more thoughtful; don't despise your neighbors so. Remember you are turned twenty-two now, and you will have no fortune: your father, I am sure, will not be able to spare you anything. Mr. Lydgate is very intellectual and clever; I know there is an attraction in that. I like talking to such men myself; and your uncle finds him very useful. But the profession is a poor one here. To be sure, this life is not everything; but it is seldom a medical man has true religious views--there is too much pride of intellect. And you are not fit to marry a poor man. "Mr. Lydgate is not a poor man, aunt. He has very high connections." "He told me himself he was poor." "That is because he is used to people who have a high style of living." "My dear Rosamond, _you_ must not think of living in high style." Rosamond looked down and played with her reticule. She was not a fiery young lady and had no sharp answers, but she meant to live as she pleased. "Then it is really true?" said Mrs. Bulstrode, looking very earnestly at her niece. "You are thinking of Mr. Lydgate--there is some understanding between you, though your father doesn't know. Be open, my dear Rosamond: Mr. Lydgate has really made you an offer?" Poor Rosamond's feelings were very unpleasant. She had been quite easy as to Lydgate's feeling and intention, but now when her aunt put this question she did not like being unable to say Yes. Her pride was hurt, but her habitual control of manner helped her. "Pray excuse me, aunt. I would rather not speak on the subject." "You would not give your heart to a man without a decided prospect, I trust, my dear. And think of the two excellent offers I know of that you have refused!--and one still within your reach, if you will not throw it away. I knew a very great beauty who married badly at last, by doing so. Mr. Ned Plymdale is a nice young man--some might think good-looking; and an only son; and a large business of that kind is better than a profession. Not that marrying is everything. I would have you seek first the kingdom of God. But a girl should keep her heart within her own power." "I should never give it to Mr. Ned Plymdale, if it were. I have already refused him. If I loved, I should love at once and without change," said Rosamond, with a great sense of being a romantic heroine, and playing the part prettily. "I see how it is, my dear," said Mrs. Bulstrode, in a melancholy voice, rising to go. "You have allowed your affections to be engaged without return." "No, indeed, aunt," said Rosamond, with emphasis. "Then you are quite confident that Mr. Lydgate has a serious attachment to you?" Rosamond's cheeks by this time were persistently burning, and she felt much mortification. She chose to be silent, and her aunt went away all the more convinced. Mr. Bulstrode in things worldly and indifferent was disposed to do what his wife bade him, and she now, without telling her reasons, desired him on the next opportunity to find out in conversation with Mr. Lydgate whether he had any intention of marrying soon. The result was a decided negative. Mr. Bulstrode, on being cross-questioned, showed that Lydgate had spoken as no man would who had any attachment that could issue in matrimony. Mrs. Bulstrode now felt that she had a serious duty before her, and she soon managed to arrange a tete-a-tete with Lydgate, in which she passed from inquiries about Fred Vincy's health, and expressions of her sincere anxiety for her brother's large family, to general remarks on the dangers which lay before young people with regard to their settlement in life. Young men were often wild and disappointing, making little return for the money spent on them, and a girl was exposed to many circumstances which might interfere with her prospects. "Especially when she has great attractions, and her parents see much company," said Mrs. Bulstrode "Gentlemen pay her attention, and engross her all to themselves, for the mere pleasure of the moment, and that drives off others. I think it is a heavy responsibility, Mr. Lydgate, to interfere with the prospects of any girl." Here Mrs. Bulstrode fixed her eyes on him, with an unmistakable purpose of warning, if not of rebuke. "Clearly," said Lydgate, looking at her--perhaps even staring a little in return. "On the other hand, a man must be a great coxcomb to go about with a notion that he must not pay attention to a young lady lest she should fall in love with him, or lest others should think she must." "Oh, Mr. Lydgate, you know well what your advantages are. You know that our young men here cannot cope with you. Where you frequent a house it may militate very much against a girl's making a desirable settlement in life, and prevent her from accepting offers even if they are made." Lydgate was less flattered by his advantage over the Middlemarch Orlandos than he was annoyed by the perception of Mrs. Bulstrode's meaning. She felt that she had spoken as impressively as it was necessary to do, and that in using the superior word "militate" she had thrown a noble drapery over a mass of particulars which were still evident enough. Lydgate was fuming a little, pushed his hair back with one hand, felt curiously in his waistcoat-pocket with the other, and then stooped to beckon the tiny black spaniel, which had the insight to decline his hollow caresses. It would not have been decent to go away, because he had been dining with other guests, and had just taken tea. But Mrs. Bulstrode, having no doubt that she had been understood, turned the conversation. Solomon's Proverbs, I think, have omitted to say, that as the sore palate findeth grit, so an uneasy consciousness heareth innuendoes. The next day Mr. Farebrother, parting from Lydgate in the street, supposed that they should meet at Vincy's in the evening. Lydgate answered curtly, no--he had work to do--he must give up going out in the evening. "What! you are going to get lashed to the mast, eh, and are stopping your ears?" said the Vicar. "Well, if you don't mean to be won by the sirens, you are right to take precautions in time." A few days before, Lydgate would have taken no notice of these words as anything more than the Vicar's usual way of putting things. They seemed now to convey an innuendo which confirmed the impression that he had been making a fool of himself and behaving so as to be misunderstood: not, he believed, by Rosamond herself; she, he felt sure, took everything as lightly as he intended it. She had an exquisite tact and insight in relation to all points of manners; but the people she lived among were blunderers and busybodies. However, the mistake should go no farther. He resolved--and kept his resolution--that he would not go to Mr. Vincy's except on business. Rosamond became very unhappy. The uneasiness first stirred by her aunt's questions grew and grew till at the end of ten days that she had not seen Lydgate, it grew into terror at the blank that might possibly come--into foreboding of that ready, fatal sponge which so cheaply wipes out the hopes of mortals. The world would have a new dreariness for her, as a wilderness that a magician's spells had turned for a little while into a garden. She felt that she was beginning to know the pang of disappointed love, and that no other man could be the occasion of such delightful aerial building as she had been enjoying for the last six months. Poor Rosamond lost her appetite and felt as forlorn as Ariadne--as a charming stage Ariadne left behind with all her boxes full of costumes and no hope of a coach. There are many wonderful mixtures in the world which are all alike called love, and claim the privileges of a sublime rage which is an apology for everything (in literature and the drama). Happily Rosamond did not think of committing any desperate act: she plaited her fair hair as beautifully as usual, and kept herself proudly calm. Her most cheerful supposition was that her aunt Bulstrode had interfered in some way to hinder Lydgate's visits: everything was better than a spontaneous indifference in him. Any one who imagines ten days too short a time--not for falling into leanness, lightness, or other measurable effects of passion, but--for the whole spiritual circuit of alarmed conjecture and disappointment, is ignorant of what can go on in the elegant leisure of a young lady's mind. On the eleventh day, however, Lydgate when leaving Stone Court was requested by Mrs. Vincy to let her husband know that there was a marked change in Mr. Featherstone's health, and that she wished him to come to Stone Court on that day. Now Lydgate might have called at the warehouse, or might have written a message on a leaf of his pocket-book and left it at the door. Yet these simple devices apparently did not occur to him, from which we may conclude that he had no strong objection to calling at the house at an hour when Mr. Vincy was not at home, and leaving the message with Miss Vincy. A man may, from various motives, decline to give his company, but perhaps not even a sage would be gratified that nobody missed him. It would be a graceful, easy way of piecing on the new habits to the old, to have a few playful words with Rosamond about his resistance to dissipation, and his firm resolve to take long fasts even from sweet sounds. It must be confessed, also, that momentary speculations as to all the possible grounds for Mrs. Bulstrode's hints had managed to get woven like slight clinging hairs into the more substantial web of his thoughts. Miss Vincy was alone, and blushed so deeply when Lydgate came in that he felt a corresponding embarrassment, and instead of any playfulness, he began at once to speak of his reason for calling, and to beg her, almost formally, to deliver the message to her father. Rosamond, who at the first moment felt as if her happiness were returning, was keenly hurt by Lydgate's manner; her blush had departed, and she assented coldly, without adding an unnecessary word, some trivial chain-work which she had in her hands enabling her to avoid looking at Lydgate higher than his chin. In all failures, the beginning is certainly the half of the whole. After sitting two long moments while he moved his whip and could say nothing, Lydgate rose to go, and Rosamond, made nervous by her struggle between mortification and the wish not to betray it, dropped her chain as if startled, and rose too, mechanically. Lydgate instantaneously stooped to pick up the chain. When he rose he was very near to a lovely little face set on a fair long neck which he had been used to see turning about under the most perfect management of self-contented grace. But as he raised his eyes now he saw a certain helpless quivering which touched him quite newly, and made him look at Rosamond with a questioning flash. At this moment she was as natural as she had ever been when she was five years old: she felt that her tears had risen, and it was no use to try to do anything else than let them stay like water on a blue flower or let them fall over her cheeks, even as they would. That moment of naturalness was the crystallizing feather-touch: it shook flirtation into love. Remember that the ambitious man who was looking at those Forget-me-nots under the water was very warm-hearted and rash. He did not know where the chain went; an idea had thrilled through the recesses within him which had a miraculous effect in raising the power of passionate love lying buried there in no sealed sepulchre, but under the lightest, easily pierced mould. His words were quite abrupt and awkward; but the tone made them sound like an ardent, appealing avowal. "What is the matter? you are distressed. Tell me, pray." Rosamond had never been spoken to in such tones before. I am not sure that she knew what the words were: but she looked at Lydgate and the tears fell over her cheeks. There could have been no more complete answer than that silence, and Lydgate, forgetting everything else, completely mastered by the outrush of tenderness at the sudden belief that this sweet young creature depended on him for her joy, actually put his arms round her, folding her gently and protectingly--he was used to being gentle with the weak and suffering--and kissed each of the two large tears. This was a strange way of arriving at an understanding, but it was a short way. Rosamond was not angry, but she moved backward a little in timid happiness, and Lydgate could now sit near her and speak less incompletely. Rosamond had to make her little confession, and he poured out words of gratitude and tenderness with impulsive lavishment. In half an hour he left the house an engaged man, whose soul was not his own, but the woman's to whom he had bound himself. He came again in the evening to speak with Mr. Vincy, who, just returned from Stone Court, was feeling sure that it would not be long before he heard of Mr. Featherstone's demise. The felicitous word "demise," which had seasonably occurred to him, had raised his spirits even above their usual evening pitch. The right word is always a power, and communicates its definiteness to our action. Considered as a demise, old Featherstone's death assumed a merely legal aspect, so that Mr. Vincy could tap his snuff-box over it and be jovial, without even an intermittent affectation of solemnity; and Mr. Vincy hated both solemnity and affectation. Who was ever awe struck about a testator, or sang a hymn on the title to real property? Mr. Vincy was inclined to take a jovial view of all things that evening: he even observed to Lydgate that Fred had got the family constitution after all, and would soon be as fine a fellow as ever again; and when his approbation of Rosamond's engagement was asked for, he gave it with astonishing facility, passing at once to general remarks on the desirableness of matrimony for young men and maidens, and apparently deducing from the whole the appropriateness of a little more punch.

Up to this point Lydgate had enjoyed a light flirtation with Rosamond, unaware that she wished for anything else. Now, Mrs. Vincy move with Fred to Featherstone's house, for a change of air. Rosamond is alone in the daytime and there are gossips about her meetings with Lydgate all over Middlemarch. Her friend to Mrs. Bulstrode conveys this. That pious lady cross-examines Rosamond and warns off Lydgate. Rosamond is left feeling frustrated and sat at the end of her dreams. When Lydgate calls with a message from her mother about Featherstones worsening condition, he finds her disturbed and tearful. At this, his warm sentiments are deeply stirred and he is swept away by the moment. When he leaves, they are already engaged to be married. He calls on Vincy later. The gentleman is so happy to know Featherstone is dying that he gives the engaged couple his blessing without any fuss.

She put the letter into her pocket and offered her visitor a smile of welcome, exhibiting no trace of discomposure and half surprised at her coolness. "They told me you were out here," said Lord Warburton; "and as there was no one in the drawing-room and it's really you that I wish to see, I came out with no more ado." Isabel had got up; she felt a wish, for the moment, that he should not sit down beside her. "I was just going indoors." "Please don't do that; it's much jollier here; I've ridden over from Lockleigh; it's a lovely day." His smile was peculiarly friendly and pleasing, and his whole person seemed to emit that radiance of good-feeling and good fare which had formed the charm of the girl's first impression of him. It surrounded him like a zone of fine June weather. "We'll walk about a little then," said Isabel, who could not divest herself of the sense of an intention on the part of her visitor and who wished both to elude the intention and to satisfy her curiosity about it. It had flashed upon her vision once before, and it had given her on that occasion, as we know, a certain alarm. This alarm was composed of several elements, not all of which were disagreeable; she had indeed spent some days in analysing them and had succeeded in separating the pleasant part of the idea of Lord Warburton's "making up" to her from the painful. It may appear to some readers that the young lady was both precipitate and unduly fastidious; but the latter of these facts, if the charge be true, may serve to exonerate her from the discredit of the former. She was not eager to convince herself that a territorial magnate, as she had heard Lord Warburton called, was smitten with her charms; the fact of a declaration from such a source carrying with it really more questions than it would answer. She had received a strong impression of his being a "personage," and she had occupied herself in examining the image so conveyed. At the risk of adding to the evidence of her self-sufficiency it must be said that there had been moments when this possibility of admiration by a personage represented to her an aggression almost to the degree of an affront, quite to the degree of an inconvenience. She had never yet known a personage; there had been no personages, in this sense, in her life; there were probably none such at all in her native land. When she had thought of individual eminence she had thought of it on the basis of character and wit--of what one might like in a gentleman's mind and in his talk. She herself was a character--she couldn't help being aware of that; and hitherto her visions of a completed consciousness had concerned themselves largely with moral images--things as to which the question would be whether they pleased her sublime soul. Lord Warburton loomed up before her, largely and brightly, as a collection of attributes and powers which were not to be measured by this simple rule, but which demanded a different sort of appreciation--an appreciation that the girl, with her habit of judging quickly and freely, felt she lacked patience to bestow. He appeared to demand of her something that no one else, as it were, had presumed to do. What she felt was that a territorial, a political, a social magnate had conceived the design of drawing her into the system in which he rather invidiously lived and moved. A certain instinct, not imperious, but persuasive, told her to resist--murmured to her that virtually she had a system and an orbit of her own. It told her other things besides--things which both contradicted and confirmed each other; that a girl might do much worse than trust herself to such a man and that it would be very interesting to see something of his system from his own point of view; that on the other hand, however, there was evidently a great deal of it which she should regard only as a complication of every hour, and that even in the whole there was something stiff and stupid which would make it a burden. Furthermore there was a young man lately come from America who had no system at all, but who had a character of which it was useless for her to try to persuade herself that the impression on her mind had been light. The letter she carried in her pocket all sufficiently reminded her of the contrary. Smile not, however, I venture to repeat, at this simple young woman from Albany who debated whether she should accept an English peer before he had offered himself and who was disposed to believe that on the whole she could do better. She was a person of great good faith, and if there was a great deal of folly in her wisdom those who judge her severely may have the satisfaction of finding that, later, she became consistently wise only at the cost of an amount of folly which will constitute almost a direct appeal to charity. Lord Warburton seemed quite ready to walk, to sit or to do anything that Isabel should propose, and he gave her this assurance with his usual air of being particularly pleased to exercise a social virtue. But he was, nevertheless, not in command of his emotions, and as he strolled beside her for a moment, in silence, looking at her without letting her know it, there was something embarrassed in his glance and his misdirected laughter. Yes, assuredly--as we have touched on the point, we may return to it for a moment again--the English are the most romantic people in the world and Lord Warburton was about to give an example of it. He was about to take a step which would astonish all his friends and displease a great many of them, and which had superficially nothing to recommend it. The young lady who trod the turf beside him had come from a queer country across the sea which he knew a good deal about; her antecedents, her associations were very vague to his mind except in so far as they were generic, and in this sense they showed as distinct and unimportant. Miss Archer had neither a fortune nor the sort of beauty that justifies a man to the multitude, and he calculated that he had spent about twenty-six hours in her company. He had summed up all this--the perversity of the impulse, which had declined to avail itself of the most liberal opportunities to subside, and the judgement of mankind, as exemplified particularly in the more quickly-judging half of it: he had looked these things well in the face and then had dismissed them from his thoughts. He cared no more for them than for the rosebud in his buttonhole. It is the good fortune of a man who for the greater part of a lifetime has abstained without effort from making himself disagreeable to his friends, that when the need comes for such a course it is not discredited by irritating associations. "I hope you had a pleasant ride," said Isabel, who observed her companion's hesitancy. "It would have been pleasant if for nothing else than that it brought me here." "Are you so fond of Gardencourt?" the girl asked, more and more sure that he meant to make some appeal to her; wishing not to challenge him if he hesitated, and yet to keep all the quietness of her reason if he proceeded. It suddenly came upon her that her situation was one which a few weeks ago she would have deemed deeply romantic: the park of an old English country-house, with the foreground embellished by a "great" (as she supposed) nobleman in the act of making love to a young lady who, on careful inspection, should be found to present remarkable analogies with herself. But if she was now the heroine of the situation she succeeded scarcely the less in looking at it from the outside. "I care nothing for Gardencourt," said her companion. "I care only for you." "You've known me too short a time to have a right to say that, and I can't believe you're serious." These words of Isabel's were not perfectly sincere, for she had no doubt whatever that he himself was. They were simply a tribute to the fact, of which she was perfectly aware, that those he had just uttered would have excited surprise on the part of a vulgar world. And, moreover, if anything beside the sense she had already acquired that Lord Warburton was not a loose thinker had been needed to convince her, the tone in which he replied would quite have served the purpose. "One's right in such a matter is not measured by the time, Miss Archer; it's measured by the feeling itself. If I were to wait three months it would make no difference; I shall not be more sure of what I mean than I am to-day. Of course I've seen you very little, but my impression dates from the very first hour we met. I lost no time, I fell in love with you then. It was at first sight, as the novels say; I know now that's not a fancy-phrase, and I shall think better of novels for evermore. Those two days I spent here settled it; I don't know whether you suspected I was doing so, but I paid-mentally speaking I mean--the greatest possible attention to you. Nothing you said, nothing you did, was lost upon me. When you came to Lockleigh the other day--or rather when you went away--I was perfectly sure. Nevertheless I made up my mind to think it over and to question myself narrowly. I've done so; all these days I've done nothing else. I don't make mistakes about such things; I'm a very judicious animal. I don't go off easily, but when I'm touched, it's for life. It's for life, Miss Archer, it's for life," Lord Warburton repeated in the kindest, tenderest, pleasantest voice Isabel had ever heard, and looking at her with eyes charged with the light of a passion that had sifted itself clear of the baser parts of emotion--the heat, the violence, the unreason--and that burned as steadily as a lamp in a windless place. By tacit consent, as he talked, they had walked more and more slowly, and at last they stopped and he took her hand. "Ah, Lord Warburton, how little you know me!" Isabel said very gently. Gently too she drew her hand away. "Don't taunt me with that; that I don't know you better makes me unhappy enough already; it's all my loss. But that's what I want, and it seems to me I'm taking the best way. If you'll be my wife, then I shall know you, and when I tell you all the good I think of you you'll not be able to say it's from ignorance." "If you know me little I know you even less," said Isabel. "You mean that, unlike yourself, I may not improve on acquaintance? Ah, of course that's very possible. But think, to speak to you as I do, how determined I must be to try and give satisfaction! You do like me rather, don't you?" "I like you very much, Lord Warburton," she answered; and at this moment she liked him immensely. "I thank you for saying that; it shows you don't regard me as a stranger. I really believe I've filled all the other relations of life very creditably, and I don't see why I shouldn't fill this one--in which I offer myself to you--seeing that I care so much more about it. Ask the people who know me well; I've friends who'll speak for me." "I don't need the recommendation of your friends," said Isabel. "Ah now, that's delightful of you. You believe in me yourself." "Completely," Isabel declared. She quite glowed there, inwardly, with the pleasure of feeling she did. The light in her companion's eyes turned into a smile, and he gave a long exhalation of joy. "If you're mistaken, Miss Archer, let me lose all I possess!" She wondered whether he meant this for a reminder that he was rich, and, on the instant, felt sure that he didn't. He was thinking that, as he would have said himself; and indeed he might safely leave it to the memory of any interlocutor, especially of one to whom he was offering his hand. Isabel had prayed that she might not be agitated, and her mind was tranquil enough, even while she listened and asked herself what it was best she should say, to indulge in this incidental criticism. What she should say, had she asked herself? Her foremost wish was to say something if possible not less kind than what he had said to her. His words had carried perfect conviction with them; she felt she did, all so mysteriously, matter to him. "I thank you more than I can say for your offer," she returned at last. "It does me great honour." "Ah, don't say that!" he broke out. "I was afraid you'd say something like that. I don't see what you've to do with that sort of thing. I don't see why you should thank me--it's I who ought to thank you for listening to me: a man you know so little coming down on you with such a thumper! Of course it's a great question; I must tell you that I'd rather ask it than have it to answer myself. But the way you've listened--or at least your having listened at all--gives me some hope." "Don't hope too much," Isabel said. "Oh Miss Archer!" her companion murmured, smiling again, in his seriousness, as if such a warning might perhaps be taken but as the play of high spirits, the exuberance of elation. "Should you be greatly surprised if I were to beg you not to hope at all?" Isabel asked. "Surprised? I don't know what you mean by surprise. It wouldn't be that; it would be a feeling very much worse." Isabel walked on again; she was silent for some minutes. "I'm very sure that, highly as I already think of you, my opinion of you, if I should know you well, would only rise. But I'm by no means sure that you wouldn't be disappointed. And I say that not in the least out of conventional modesty; it's perfectly sincere." "I'm willing to risk it, Miss Archer," her companion replied. "It's a great question, as you say. It's a very difficult question." "I don't expect you of course to answer it outright. Think it over as long as may be necessary. If I can gain by waiting I'll gladly wait a long time. Only remember that in the end my dearest happiness depends on your answer." "I should be very sorry to keep you in suspense," said Isabel. "Oh, don't mind. I'd much rather have a good answer six months hence than a bad one to-day." "But it's very probable that even six months hence I shouldn't be able to give you one that you'd think good." "Why not, since you really like me?" "Ah, you must never doubt that," said Isabel. "Well then, I don't see what more you ask!" "It's not what I ask; it's what I can give. I don't think I should suit you; I really don't think I should." "You needn't worry about that. That's my affair. You needn't be a better royalist than the king." "It's not only that," said Isabel; "but I'm not sure I wish to marry any one." "Very likely you don't. I've no doubt a great many women begin that way," said his lordship, who, be it averred, did not in the least believe in the axiom he thus beguiled his anxiety by uttering. "But they're frequently persuaded." "Ah, that's because they want to be!" And Isabel lightly laughed. Her suitor's countenance fell, and he looked at her for a while in silence. "I'm afraid it's my being an Englishman that makes you hesitate," he said presently. "I know your uncle thinks you ought to marry in your own country." Isabel listened to this assertion with some interest; it had never occurred to her that Mr. Touchett was likely to discuss her matrimonial prospects with Lord Warburton. "Has he told you that?" "I remember his making the remark. He spoke perhaps of Americans generally." "He appears himself to have found it very pleasant to live in England." Isabel spoke in a manner that might have seemed a little perverse, but which expressed both her constant perception of her uncle's outward felicity and her general disposition to elude any obligation to take a restricted view. It gave her companion hope, and he immediately cried with warmth: "Ah, my dear Miss Archer, old England's a very good sort of country, you know! And it will be still better when we've furbished it up a little." "Oh, don't furbish it, Lord Warburton--, leave it alone. I like it this way." "Well then, if you like it, I'm more and more unable to see your objection to what I propose." "I'm afraid I can't make you understand." "You ought at least to try. I've a fair intelligence. Are you afraid--afraid of the climate? We can easily live elsewhere, you know. You can pick out your climate, the whole world over." These words were uttered with a breadth of candour that was like the embrace of strong arms--that was like the fragrance straight in her face, and by his clean, breathing lips, of she knew not what strange gardens, what charged airs. She would have given her little finger at that moment to feel strongly and simply the impulse to answer: "Lord Warburton, it's impossible for me to do better in this wonderful world, I think, than commit myself, very gratefully, to your loyalty." But though she was lost in admiration of her opportunity she managed to move back into the deepest shade of it, even as some wild, caught creature in a vast cage. The "splendid" security so offered her was not the greatest she could conceive. What she finally bethought herself of saying was something very different--something that deferred the need of really facing her crisis. "Don't think me unkind if I ask you to say no more about this to-day." "Certainly, certainly!" her companion cried. "I wouldn't bore you for the world." "You've given me a great deal to think about, and I promise you to do it justice." "That's all I ask of you, of course--and that you'll remember how absolutely my happiness is in your hands." Isabel listened with extreme respect to this admonition, but she said after a minute: "I must tell you that what I shall think about is some way of letting you know that what you ask is impossible--letting you know it without making you miserable." "There's no way to do that, Miss Archer. I won't say that if you refuse me you'll kill me; I shall not die of it. But I shall do worse; I shall live to no purpose." "You'll live to marry a better woman than I." "Don't say that, please," said Lord Warburton very gravely. "That's fair to neither of us." "To marry a worse one then." "If there are better women than you I prefer the bad ones. That's all I can say," he went on with the same earnestness. "There's no accounting for tastes." His gravity made her feel equally grave, and she showed it by again requesting him to drop the subject for the present. "I'll speak to you myself--very soon. Perhaps I shall write to you." "At your convenience, yes," he replied. "Whatever time you take, it must seem to me long, and I suppose I must make the best of that." "I shall not keep you in suspense; I only want to collect my mind a little." He gave a melancholy sigh and stood looking at her a moment, with his hands behind him, giving short nervous shakes to his hunting-crop. "Do you know I'm very much afraid of it--of that remarkable mind of yours?" Our heroine's biographer can scarcely tell why, but the question made her start and brought a conscious blush to her cheek. She returned his look a moment, and then with a note in her voice that might almost have appealed to his compassion, "So am I, my lord!" she oddly exclaimed. His compassion was not stirred, however; all he possessed of the faculty of pity was needed at home. "Ah! be merciful, be merciful," he murmured. "I think you had better go," said Isabel. "I'll write to you." "Very good; but whatever you write I'll come and see you, you know." And then he stood reflecting, his eyes fixed on the observant countenance of Bunchie, who had the air of having understood all that had been said and of pretending to carry off the indiscretion by a simulated fit of curiosity as to the roots of an ancient oak. "There's one thing more," he went on. "You know, if you don't like Lockleigh--if you think it's damp or anything of that sort--you need never go within fifty miles of it. It's not damp, by the way; I've had the house thoroughly examined; it's perfectly safe and right. But if you shouldn't fancy it you needn't dream of living in it. There's no difficulty whatever about that; there are plenty of houses. I thought I'd just mention it; some people don't like a moat, you know. Good-bye." "I adore a moat," said Isabel. "Good-bye." He held out his hand, and she gave him hers a moment--a moment long enough for him to bend his handsome bared head and kiss it. Then, still agitating, in his mastered emotion, his implement of the chase, he walked rapidly away. He was evidently much upset. Isabel herself was upset, but she had not been affected as she would have imagined. What she felt was not a great responsibility, a great difficulty of choice; it appeared to her there had been no choice in the question. She couldn't marry Lord Warburton; the idea failed to support any enlightened prejudice in favour of the free exploration of life that she had hitherto entertained or was now capable of entertaining. She must write this to him, she must convince him, and that duty was comparatively simple. But what disturbed her, in the sense that it struck her with wonderment, was this very fact that it cost her so little to refuse a magnificent "chance." With whatever qualifications one would, Lord Warburton had offered her a great opportunity; the situation might have discomforts, might contain oppressive, might contain narrowing elements, might prove really but a stupefying anodyne; but she did her sex no injustice in believing that nineteen women out of twenty would have accommodated themselves to it without a pang. Why then upon her also should it not irresistibly impose itself? Who was she, what was she, that she should hold herself superior? What view of life, what design upon fate, what conception of happiness, had she that pretended to be larger than these large these fabulous occasions? If she wouldn't do such a thing as that then she must do great things, she must do something greater. Poor Isabel found ground to remind herself from time to time that she must not be too proud, and nothing could be more sincere than her prayer to be delivered from such a danger: the isolation and loneliness of pride had for her mind the horror of a desert place. If it had been pride that interfered with her accepting Lord Warburton such a betise was singularly misplaced; and she was so conscious of liking him that she ventured to assure herself it was the very softness, and the fine intelligence, of sympathy. She liked him too much to marry him, that was the truth; something assured her there was a fallacy somewhere in the glowing logic of the proposition--as he saw it--even though she mightn't put her very finest finger-point on it; and to inflict upon a man who offered so much a wife with a tendency to criticise would be a peculiarly discreditable act. She had promised him she would consider his question, and when, after he had left her, she wandered back to the bench where he had found her and lost herself in meditation, it might have seemed that she was keeping her vow. But this was not the case; she was wondering if she were not a cold, hard, priggish person, and, on her at last getting up and going rather quickly back to the house, felt, as she had said to her friend, really frightened at herself.

Isabel stands, not wanting Lord Warburton to sit with her. They begin taking a stroll. It's clear that Lord Warburton has something specific on his mind. Surprise! Lord Warburton professes his love for Isabel. He asks her to marry him. Isabel reflects on how romantic and perfect the moment would have seemed to her three months ago. Right now, though, she's just not into it. Isabel promises Lord Warburton that she will consider his proposal, and not take too long before giving him an answer. Lord Warburton confesses that he's afraid of Isabel's mind. Isabel admits that she is, too. Forlorn, Lord Warburton tells Isabel that they don't have to live at Lockleigh if she doesn't like the moat - they can go anywhere. Overcome with disappointment, he leaves. Isabel, left alone again, knows that she won't marry Lord Warburton. Reflecting upon her choice, Isabel fears for herself.

For a while sheer anger mastered me; it was as if he had during her life struck Lucy on the face. I smote the table hard and rose up as I said to him:-- "Dr. Van Helsing, are you mad?" He raised his head and looked at me, and somehow the tenderness of his face calmed me at once. "Would I were!" he said. "Madness were easy to bear compared with truth like this. Oh, my friend, why, think you, did I go so far round, why take so long to tell you so simple a thing? Was it because I hate you and have hated you all my life? Was it because I wished to give you pain? Was it that I wanted, now so late, revenge for that time when you saved my life, and from a fearful death? Ah no!" "Forgive me," said I. He went on:-- "My friend, it was because I wished to be gentle in the breaking to you, for I know you have loved that so sweet lady. But even yet I do not expect you to believe. It is so hard to accept at once any abstract truth, that we may doubt such to be possible when we have always believed the 'no' of it; it is more hard still to accept so sad a concrete truth, and of such a one as Miss Lucy. To-night I go to prove it. Dare you come with me?" This staggered me. A man does not like to prove such a truth; Byron excepted from the category, jealousy. "And prove the very truth he most abhorred." He saw my hesitation, and spoke:-- "The logic is simple, no madman's logic this time, jumping from tussock to tussock in a misty bog. If it be not true, then proof will be relief; at worst it will not harm. If it be true! Ah, there is the dread; yet very dread should help my cause, for in it is some need of belief. Come, I tell you what I propose: first, that we go off now and see that child in the hospital. Dr. Vincent, of the North Hospital, where the papers say the child is, is friend of mine, and I think of yours since you were in class at Amsterdam. He will let two scientists see his case, if he will not let two friends. We shall tell him nothing, but only that we wish to learn. And then----" "And then?" He took a key from his pocket and held it up. "And then we spend the night, you and I, in the churchyard where Lucy lies. This is the key that lock the tomb. I had it from the coffin-man to give to Arthur." My heart sank within me, for I felt that there was some fearful ordeal before us. I could do nothing, however, so I plucked up what heart I could and said that we had better hasten, as the afternoon was passing.... We found the child awake. It had had a sleep and taken some food, and altogether was going on well. Dr. Vincent took the bandage from its throat, and showed us the punctures. There was no mistaking the similarity to those which had been on Lucy's throat. They were smaller, and the edges looked fresher; that was all. We asked Vincent to what he attributed them, and he replied that it must have been a bite of some animal, perhaps a rat; but, for his own part, he was inclined to think that it was one of the bats which are so numerous on the northern heights of London. "Out of so many harmless ones," he said, "there may be some wild specimen from the South of a more malignant species. Some sailor may have brought one home, and it managed to escape; or even from the Zooelogical Gardens a young one may have got loose, or one be bred there from a vampire. These things do occur, you know. Only ten days ago a wolf got out, and was, I believe, traced up in this direction. For a week after, the children were playing nothing but Red Riding Hood on the Heath and in every alley in the place until this 'bloofer lady' scare came along, since when it has been quite a gala-time with them. Even this poor little mite, when he woke up to-day, asked the nurse if he might go away. When she asked him why he wanted to go, he said he wanted to play with the 'bloofer lady.'" "I hope," said Van Helsing, "that when you are sending the child home you will caution its parents to keep strict watch over it. These fancies to stray are most dangerous; and if the child were to remain out another night, it would probably be fatal. But in any case I suppose you will not let it away for some days?" "Certainly not, not for a week at least; longer if the wound is not healed." Our visit to the hospital took more time than we had reckoned on, and the sun had dipped before we came out. When Van Helsing saw how dark it was, he said:-- "There is no hurry. It is more late than I thought. Come, let us seek somewhere that we may eat, and then we shall go on our way." We dined at "Jack Straw's Castle" along with a little crowd of bicyclists and others who were genially noisy. About ten o'clock we started from the inn. It was then very dark, and the scattered lamps made the darkness greater when we were once outside their individual radius. The Professor had evidently noted the road we were to go, for he went on unhesitatingly; but, as for me, I was in quite a mixup as to locality. As we went further, we met fewer and fewer people, till at last we were somewhat surprised when we met even the patrol of horse police going their usual suburban round. At last we reached the wall of the churchyard, which we climbed over. With some little difficulty--for it was very dark, and the whole place seemed so strange to us--we found the Westenra tomb. The Professor took the key, opened the creaky door, and standing back, politely, but quite unconsciously, motioned me to precede him. There was a delicious irony in the offer, in the courtliness of giving preference on such a ghastly occasion. My companion followed me quickly, and cautiously drew the door to, after carefully ascertaining that the lock was a falling, and not a spring, one. In the latter case we should have been in a bad plight. Then he fumbled in his bag, and taking out a matchbox and a piece of candle, proceeded to make a light. The tomb in the day-time, and when wreathed with fresh flowers, had looked grim and gruesome enough; but now, some days afterwards, when the flowers hung lank and dead, their whites turning to rust and their greens to browns; when the spider and the beetle had resumed their accustomed dominance; when time-discoloured stone, and dust-encrusted mortar, and rusty, dank iron, and tarnished brass, and clouded silver-plating gave back the feeble glimmer of a candle, the effect was more miserable and sordid than could have been imagined. It conveyed irresistibly the idea that life--animal life--was not the only thing which could pass away. Van Helsing went about his work systematically. Holding his candle so that he could read the coffin plates, and so holding it that the sperm dropped in white patches which congealed as they touched the metal, he made assurance of Lucy's coffin. Another search in his bag, and he took out a turnscrew. "What are you going to do?" I asked. "To open the coffin. You shall yet be convinced." Straightway he began taking out the screws, and finally lifted off the lid, showing the casing of lead beneath. The sight was almost too much for me. It seemed to be as much an affront to the dead as it would have been to have stripped off her clothing in her sleep whilst living; I actually took hold of his hand to stop him. He only said: "You shall see," and again fumbling in his bag, took out a tiny fret-saw. Striking the turnscrew through the lead with a swift downward stab, which made me wince, he made a small hole, which was, however, big enough to admit the point of the saw. I had expected a rush of gas from the week-old corpse. We doctors, who have had to study our dangers, have to become accustomed to such things, and I drew back towards the door. But the Professor never stopped for a moment; he sawed down a couple of feet along one side of the lead coffin, and then across, and down the other side. Taking the edge of the loose flange, he bent it back towards the foot of the coffin, and holding up the candle into the aperture, motioned to me to look. I drew near and looked. The coffin was empty. It was certainly a surprise to me, and gave me a considerable shock, but Van Helsing was unmoved. He was now more sure than ever of his ground, and so emboldened to proceed in his task. "Are you satisfied now, friend John?" he asked. I felt all the dogged argumentativeness of my nature awake within me as I answered him:-- "I am satisfied that Lucy's body is not in that coffin; but that only proves one thing." "And what is that, friend John?" "That it is not there." "That is good logic," he said, "so far as it goes. But how do you--how can you--account for it not being there?" "Perhaps a body-snatcher," I suggested. "Some of the undertaker's people may have stolen it." I felt that I was speaking folly, and yet it was the only real cause which I could suggest. The Professor sighed. "Ah well!" he said, "we must have more proof. Come with me." He put on the coffin-lid again, gathered up all his things and placed them in the bag, blew out the light, and placed the candle also in the bag. We opened the door, and went out. Behind us he closed the door and locked it. He handed me the key, saying: "Will you keep it? You had better be assured." I laughed--it was not a very cheerful laugh, I am bound to say--as I motioned him to keep it. "A key is nothing," I said; "there may be duplicates; and anyhow it is not difficult to pick a lock of that kind." He said nothing, but put the key in his pocket. Then he told me to watch at one side of the churchyard whilst he would watch at the other. I took up my place behind a yew-tree, and I saw his dark figure move until the intervening headstones and trees hid it from my sight. It was a lonely vigil. Just after I had taken my place I heard a distant clock strike twelve, and in time came one and two. I was chilled and unnerved, and angry with the Professor for taking me on such an errand and with myself for coming. I was too cold and too sleepy to be keenly observant, and not sleepy enough to betray my trust so altogether I had a dreary, miserable time. Suddenly, as I turned round, I thought I saw something like a white streak, moving between two dark yew-trees at the side of the churchyard farthest from the tomb; at the same time a dark mass moved from the Professor's side of the ground, and hurriedly went towards it. Then I too moved; but I had to go round headstones and railed-off tombs, and I stumbled over graves. The sky was overcast, and somewhere far off an early cock crew. A little way off, beyond a line of scattered juniper-trees, which marked the pathway to the church, a white, dim figure flitted in the direction of the tomb. The tomb itself was hidden by trees, and I could not see where the figure disappeared. I heard the rustle of actual movement where I had first seen the white figure, and coming over, found the Professor holding in his arms a tiny child. When he saw me he held it out to me, and said:-- "Are you satisfied now?" "No," I said, in a way that I felt was aggressive. "Do you not see the child?" "Yes, it is a child, but who brought it here? And is it wounded?" I asked. "We shall see," said the Professor, and with one impulse we took our way out of the churchyard, he carrying the sleeping child. When we had got some little distance away, we went into a clump of trees, and struck a match, and looked at the child's throat. It was without a scratch or scar of any kind. "Was I right?" I asked triumphantly. "We were just in time," said the Professor thankfully. We had now to decide what we were to do with the child, and so consulted about it. If we were to take it to a police-station we should have to give some account of our movements during the night; at least, we should have had to make some statement as to how we had come to find the child. So finally we decided that we would take it to the Heath, and when we heard a policeman coming, would leave it where he could not fail to find it; we would then seek our way home as quickly as we could. All fell out well. At the edge of Hampstead Heath we heard a policeman's heavy tramp, and laying the child on the pathway, we waited and watched until he saw it as he flashed his lantern to and fro. We heard his exclamation of astonishment, and then we went away silently. By good chance we got a cab near the "Spaniards," and drove to town. I cannot sleep, so I make this entry. But I must try to get a few hours' sleep, as Van Helsing is to call for me at noon. He insists that I shall go with him on another expedition. * * * * * _27 September._--It was two o'clock before we found a suitable opportunity for our attempt. The funeral held at noon was all completed, and the last stragglers of the mourners had taken themselves lazily away, when, looking carefully from behind a clump of alder-trees, we saw the sexton lock the gate after him. We knew then that we were safe till morning did we desire it; but the Professor told me that we should not want more than an hour at most. Again I felt that horrid sense of the reality of things, in which any effort of imagination seemed out of place; and I realised distinctly the perils of the law which we were incurring in our unhallowed work. Besides, I felt it was all so useless. Outrageous as it was to open a leaden coffin, to see if a woman dead nearly a week were really dead, it now seemed the height of folly to open the tomb again, when we knew, from the evidence of our own eyesight, that the coffin was empty. I shrugged my shoulders, however, and rested silent, for Van Helsing had a way of going on his own road, no matter who remonstrated. He took the key, opened the vault, and again courteously motioned me to precede. The place was not so gruesome as last night, but oh, how unutterably mean-looking when the sunshine streamed in. Van Helsing walked over to Lucy's coffin, and I followed. He bent over and again forced back the leaden flange; and then a shock of surprise and dismay shot through me. There lay Lucy, seemingly just as we had seen her the night before her funeral. She was, if possible, more radiantly beautiful than ever; and I could not believe that she was dead. The lips were red, nay redder than before; and on the cheeks was a delicate bloom. "Is this a juggle?" I said to him. "Are you convinced now?" said the Professor in response, and as he spoke he put over his hand, and in a way that made me shudder, pulled back the dead lips and showed the white teeth. "See," he went on, "see, they are even sharper than before. With this and this"--and he touched one of the canine teeth and that below it--"the little children can be bitten. Are you of belief now, friend John?" Once more, argumentative hostility woke within me. I _could_ not accept such an overwhelming idea as he suggested; so, with an attempt to argue of which I was even at the moment ashamed, I said:-- "She may have been placed here since last night." "Indeed? That is so, and by whom?" "I do not know. Some one has done it." "And yet she has been dead one week. Most peoples in that time would not look so." I had no answer for this, so was silent. Van Helsing did not seem to notice my silence; at any rate, he showed neither chagrin nor triumph. He was looking intently at the face of the dead woman, raising the eyelids and looking at the eyes, and once more opening the lips and examining the teeth. Then he turned to me and said:-- "Here, there is one thing which is different from all recorded; here is some dual life that is not as the common. She was bitten by the vampire when she was in a trance, sleep-walking--oh, you start; you do not know that, friend John, but you shall know it all later--and in trance could he best come to take more blood. In trance she died, and in trance she is Un-Dead, too. So it is that she differ from all other. Usually when the Un-Dead sleep at home"--as he spoke he made a comprehensive sweep of his arm to designate what to a vampire was "home"--"their face show what they are, but this so sweet that was when she not Un-Dead she go back to the nothings of the common dead. There is no malign there, see, and so it make hard that I must kill her in her sleep." This turned my blood cold, and it began to dawn upon me that I was accepting Van Helsing's theories; but if she were really dead, what was there of terror in the idea of killing her? He looked up at me, and evidently saw the change in my face, for he said almost joyously:-- "Ah, you believe now?" I answered: "Do not press me too hard all at once. I am willing to accept. How will you do this bloody work?" "I shall cut off her head and fill her mouth with garlic, and I shall drive a stake through her body." It made me shudder to think of so mutilating the body of the woman whom I had loved. And yet the feeling was not so strong as I had expected. I was, in fact, beginning to shudder at the presence of this being, this Un-Dead, as Van Helsing called it, and to loathe it. Is it possible that love is all subjective, or all objective? I waited a considerable time for Van Helsing to begin, but he stood as if wrapped in thought. Presently he closed the catch of his bag with a snap, and said:-- "I have been thinking, and have made up my mind as to what is best. If I did simply follow my inclining I would do now, at this moment, what is to be done; but there are other things to follow, and things that are thousand times more difficult in that them we do not know. This is simple. She have yet no life taken, though that is of time; and to act now would be to take danger from her for ever. But then we may have to want Arthur, and how shall we tell him of this? If you, who saw the wounds on Lucy's throat, and saw the wounds so similar on the child's at the hospital; if you, who saw the coffin empty last night and full to-day with a woman who have not change only to be more rose and more beautiful in a whole week, after she die--if you know of this and know of the white figure last night that brought the child to the churchyard, and yet of your own senses you did not believe, how, then, can I expect Arthur, who know none of those things, to believe? He doubted me when I took him from her kiss when she was dying. I know he has forgiven me because in some mistaken idea I have done things that prevent him say good-bye as he ought; and he may think that in some more mistaken idea this woman was buried alive; and that in most mistake of all we have killed her. He will then argue back that it is we, mistaken ones, that have killed her by our ideas; and so he will be much unhappy always. Yet he never can be sure; and that is the worst of all. And he will sometimes think that she he loved was buried alive, and that will paint his dreams with horrors of what she must have suffered; and again, he will think that we may be right, and that his so beloved was, after all, an Un-Dead. No! I told him once, and since then I learn much. Now, since I know it is all true, a hundred thousand times more do I know that he must pass through the bitter waters to reach the sweet. He, poor fellow, must have one hour that will make the very face of heaven grow black to him; then we can act for good all round and send him peace. My mind is made up. Let us go. You return home for to-night to your asylum, and see that all be well. As for me, I shall spend the night here in this churchyard in my own way. To-morrow night you will come to me to the Berkeley Hotel at ten of the clock. I shall send for Arthur to come too, and also that so fine young man of America that gave his blood. Later we shall all have work to do. I come with you so far as Piccadilly and there dine, for I must be back here before the sun set." So we locked the tomb and came away, and got over the wall of the churchyard, which was not much of a task, and drove back to Piccadilly. _Note left by Van Helsing in his portmanteau, Berkeley Hotel directed to John Seward, M. D._ (Not delivered.) "_27 September._ "Friend John,-- "I write this in case anything should happen. I go alone to watch in that churchyard. It pleases me that the Un-Dead, Miss Lucy, shall not leave to-night, that so on the morrow night she may be more eager. Therefore I shall fix some things she like not--garlic and a crucifix--and so seal up the door of the tomb. She is young as Un-Dead, and will heed. Moreover, these are only to prevent her coming out; they may not prevail on her wanting to get in; for then the Un-Dead is desperate, and must find the line of least resistance, whatsoever it may be. I shall be at hand all the night from sunset till after the sunrise, and if there be aught that may be learned I shall learn it. For Miss Lucy or from her, I have no fear; but that other to whom is there that she is Un-Dead, he have now the power to seek her tomb and find shelter. He is cunning, as I know from Mr. Jonathan and from the way that all along he have fooled us when he played with us for Miss Lucy's life, and we lost; and in many ways the Un-Dead are strong. He have always the strength in his hand of twenty men; even we four who gave our strength to Miss Lucy it also is all to him. Besides, he can summon his wolf and I know not what. So if it be that he come thither on this night he shall find me; but none other shall--until it be too late. But it may be that he will not attempt the place. There is no reason why he should; his hunting ground is more full of game than the churchyard where the Un-Dead woman sleep, and the one old man watch. "Therefore I write this in case.... Take the papers that are with this, the diaries of Harker and the rest, and read them, and then find this great Un-Dead, and cut off his head and burn his heart or drive a stake through it, so that the world may rest from him. "If it be so, farewell. "VAN HELSING." _Dr. Seward's Diary._ _28 September._--It is wonderful what a good night's sleep will do for one. Yesterday I was almost willing to accept Van Helsing's monstrous ideas; but now they seem to start out lurid before me as outrages on common sense. I have no doubt that he believes it all. I wonder if his mind can have become in any way unhinged. Surely there must be _some_ rational explanation of all these mysterious things. Is it possible that the Professor can have done it himself? He is so abnormally clever that if he went off his head he would carry out his intent with regard to some fixed idea in a wonderful way. I am loath to think it, and indeed it would be almost as great a marvel as the other to find that Van Helsing was mad; but anyhow I shall watch him carefully. I may get some light on the mystery. * * * * * _29 September, morning._.... Last night, at a little before ten o'clock, Arthur and Quincey came into Van Helsing's room; he told us all that he wanted us to do, but especially addressing himself to Arthur, as if all our wills were centred in his. He began by saying that he hoped we would all come with him too, "for," he said, "there is a grave duty to be done there. You were doubtless surprised at my letter?" This query was directly addressed to Lord Godalming. "I was. It rather upset me for a bit. There has been so much trouble around my house of late that I could do without any more. I have been curious, too, as to what you mean. Quincey and I talked it over; but the more we talked, the more puzzled we got, till now I can say for myself that I'm about up a tree as to any meaning about anything." "Me too," said Quincey Morris laconically. "Oh," said the Professor, "then you are nearer the beginning, both of you, than friend John here, who has to go a long way back before he can even get so far as to begin." It was evident that he recognised my return to my old doubting frame of mind without my saying a word. Then, turning to the other two, he said with intense gravity:-- "I want your permission to do what I think good this night. It is, I know, much to ask; and when you know what it is I propose to do you will know, and only then, how much. Therefore may I ask that you promise me in the dark, so that afterwards, though you may be angry with me for a time--I must not disguise from myself the possibility that such may be--you shall not blame yourselves for anything." "That's frank anyhow," broke in Quincey. "I'll answer for the Professor. I don't quite see his drift, but I swear he's honest; and that's good enough for me." "I thank you, sir," said Van Helsing proudly. "I have done myself the honour of counting you one trusting friend, and such endorsement is dear to me." He held out a hand, which Quincey took. Then Arthur spoke out:-- "Dr. Van Helsing, I don't quite like to 'buy a pig in a poke,' as they say in Scotland, and if it be anything in which my honour as a gentleman or my faith as a Christian is concerned, I cannot make such a promise. If you can assure me that what you intend does not violate either of these two, then I give my consent at once; though for the life of me, I cannot understand what you are driving at." "I accept your limitation," said Van Helsing, "and all I ask of you is that if you feel it necessary to condemn any act of mine, you will first consider it well and be satisfied that it does not violate your reservations." "Agreed!" said Arthur; "that is only fair. And now that the _pourparlers_ are over, may I ask what it is we are to do?" "I want you to come with me, and to come in secret, to the churchyard at Kingstead." Arthur's face fell as he said in an amazed sort of way:-- "Where poor Lucy is buried?" The Professor bowed. Arthur went on: "And when there?" "To enter the tomb!" Arthur stood up. "Professor, are you in earnest; or it is some monstrous joke? Pardon me, I see that you are in earnest." He sat down again, but I could see that he sat firmly and proudly, as one who is on his dignity. There was silence until he asked again:-- "And when in the tomb?" "To open the coffin." "This is too much!" he said, angrily rising again. "I am willing to be patient in all things that are reasonable; but in this--this desecration of the grave--of one who----" He fairly choked with indignation. The Professor looked pityingly at him. "If I could spare you one pang, my poor friend," he said, "God knows I would. But this night our feet must tread in thorny paths; or later, and for ever, the feet you love must walk in paths of flame!" Arthur looked up with set white face and said:-- "Take care, sir, take care!" "Would it not be well to hear what I have to say?" said Van Helsing. "And then you will at least know the limit of my purpose. Shall I go on?" "That's fair enough," broke in Morris. After a pause Van Helsing went on, evidently with an effort:-- "Miss Lucy is dead; is it not so? Yes! Then there can be no wrong to her. But if she be not dead----" Arthur jumped to his feet. "Good God!" he cried. "What do you mean? Has there been any mistake; has she been buried alive?" He groaned in anguish that not even hope could soften. "I did not say she was alive, my child; I did not think it. I go no further than to say that she might be Un-Dead." "Un-Dead! Not alive! What do you mean? Is this all a nightmare, or what is it?" "There are mysteries which men can only guess at, which age by age they may solve only in part. Believe me, we are now on the verge of one. But I have not done. May I cut off the head of dead Miss Lucy?" "Heavens and earth, no!" cried Arthur in a storm of passion. "Not for the wide world will I consent to any mutilation of her dead body. Dr. Van Helsing, you try me too far. What have I done to you that you should torture me so? What did that poor, sweet girl do that you should want to cast such dishonour on her grave? Are you mad that speak such things, or am I mad to listen to them? Don't dare to think more of such a desecration; I shall not give my consent to anything you do. I have a duty to do in protecting her grave from outrage; and, by God, I shall do it!" Van Helsing rose up from where he had all the time been seated, and said, gravely and sternly:-- "My Lord Godalming, I, too, have a duty to do, a duty to others, a duty to you, a duty to the dead; and, by God, I shall do it! All I ask you now is that you come with me, that you look and listen; and if when later I make the same request you do not be more eager for its fulfilment even than I am, then--then I shall do my duty, whatever it may seem to me. And then, to follow of your Lordship's wishes I shall hold myself at your disposal to render an account to you, when and where you will." His voice broke a little, and he went on with a voice full of pity:-- "But, I beseech you, do not go forth in anger with me. In a long life of acts which were often not pleasant to do, and which sometimes did wring my heart, I have never had so heavy a task as now. Believe me that if the time comes for you to change your mind towards me, one look from you will wipe away all this so sad hour, for I would do what a man can to save you from sorrow. Just think. For why should I give myself so much of labour and so much of sorrow? I have come here from my own land to do what I can of good; at the first to please my friend John, and then to help a sweet young lady, whom, too, I came to love. For her--I am ashamed to say so much, but I say it in kindness--I gave what you gave; the blood of my veins; I gave it, I, who was not, like you, her lover, but only her physician and her friend. I gave to her my nights and days--before death, after death; and if my death can do her good even now, when she is the dead Un-Dead, she shall have it freely." He said this with a very grave, sweet pride, and Arthur was much affected by it. He took the old man's hand and said in a broken voice:-- "Oh, it is hard to think of it, and I cannot understand; but at least I shall go with you and wait."

Seward is appalled by Van Helsing's suggestion that Lucy is in some way responsible for the rash of wounded children. However, due to his respect for the elder doctor, he accompanies Van Helsing on his investigation. The two men visit one of the wounded children and find that the marks on the child's neck are identical to Lucy's. That night, Seward and Van Helsing proceed to Lucy's tomb, open the coffin, and find it empty. Seward suggests that a grave robber might have taken the corpse, but Van Helsing instructs him to keep watch at one side of the churchyard. Near dawn, Seward witnesses a "white streak" moving between the trees. He and Van Helsing approach and find a child lying nearby, but Seward still refuses to believe that Lucy is responsible for any wrongdoing. Only after they return to Lucy's tomb, finding her restored to her coffin and "radiantly beautiful," does Seward feel the "horrid sense of the reality of things. Van Helsing explains that Lucy belongs to the "Un-Dead" and insists that she must be decapitated, her mouth filled with garlic, and a stake driven through her heart. The two men meet with Arthur Holmwood and Quincey Morris, and Van Helsing explains what must be done. Holmwood is opposed to mutilating his fiancee's corpse, but finally agrees to accompany them to the graveyard

IN THE ENEMY'S CAMP The red glare of the torch lighting up the interior of the blockhouse showed me the worst of my apprehensions realized. The pirates were in possession of the house and stores; there was the cask of cognac, there were the pork and bread, as before; and, what tenfold increased my horror, not a sign of any prisoner. I could only judge that all had perished, and my heart smote me sorely that I had not been there to perish with them. There were six of the buccaneers, all told; not another man was left alive. Five of them were on their feet, flushed and swollen, suddenly called out of the first sleep of drunkenness. The sixth had only risen upon his elbow; he was deadly pale, and the blood-stained bandage round his head told that he had recently been wounded, and still more recently dressed. I remembered the man who had been shot and run back among the woods in the great attack, and doubted not that this was he. The parrot sat, preening her plumage, on Long John's shoulder. He himself, I thought, looked somewhat paler and more stern than I was used to. He still wore his fine broadcloth suit in which he had fulfilled his mission, but it was bitterly the worse for wear, daubed with clay and torn with sharp briers of the wood. "So," said he, "here's Jim Hawkins, shiver my timbers! dropped in, like, eh? Well, come, I take that friendly." And thereupon he sat down across the brandy-cask, and began to fill a pipe. "Give me the loan of a link, Dick," said he; and then, when he had a good light, "That'll do, my lad," he added, "stick the glim in the wood heap; and you, gentlemen, bring yourselves to!--you needn't stand up for Mr. Hawkins; _he'll_ excuse you, you may lay to that. And so, Jim"--stopping the tobacco--"here you are, and quite a pleasant surprise for poor old John. I see you were smart when first I set my eyes on you, but this here gets away from me clean, it do." To all this, as may be well supposed, I made no answer. They had set me with my back against the wall, and I stood there, looking Silver in the face, pluckily enough, I hope, to all outward appearance, but with black despair in my heart. Silver took a whiff or two of his pipe with great composure, and then ran on again: "Now, you see, Jim, so be as you _are_ here," says he, "I'll give you a piece of my mind. I've always liked you, I have, for a lad of spirit, and the picter of my own self when I was young and handsome. I always wanted you to jine and take your share, and die a gentleman, and now, my cock, you've got to. Cap'n Smollett's a fine seaman, as I'll own up to any day, but stiff on discipline. 'Dooty is dooty,' says he, and right he is. Just you keep clear of the cap'n. The doctor himself is gone dead again you--'ungrateful scamp' was what he said; and the short and long of the whole story is about here: You can't go back to your own lot, for they won't have you; and, without you start a third ship's company all by yourself, which might be lonely, you'll have to jine with Cap'n Silver." So far so good. My friends, then, were still alive, and though I partly believed the truth of Silver's statement, that the cabin party were incensed at me for my desertion, I was more relieved than distressed by what I heard. "I don't say nothing as to your being in our hands," continued Silver, "though there you are, and you may lay to it. I'm all for argyment; I never seen good come out o' threatening. If you like the service, well, you'll jine; and if you don't, Jim, why, you're free to answer no--free and welcome, shipmate; and if fairer can be said by mortal seaman, shiver my sides!" "Am I to answer, then?" I asked, with a very tremulous voice. Through all this sneering talk I was made to feel the threat of death that overhung me, and my cheeks burned and my heart beat painfully in my breast. "Lad," said Silver, "no one's a-pressing of you. Take your bearings. None of us won't hurry you, mate; time goes so pleasant in your company, you see." "Well," says I, growing a bit bolder, "if I'm to choose, I declare I have a right to know what's what, and why you're here, and where my friends are." "Wot's wot?" repeated one of the buccaneers, in a deep growl. "Ah, he'd be a lucky one as knowed that!" "You'll, perhaps, batten down your hatches till you're spoke to, my friend," cried Silver, truculently, to this speaker. And then, in his first gracious tones, he replied to me: "Yesterday morning, Mr. Hawkins," said he, "in the dogwatch, down came Doctor Livesey with a flag of truce. Says he: 'Cap'n Silver, you're sold out. Ship's gone!' Well, maybe we'd been taking a glass, and a song to help it round. I won't say no. Leastways, none of us had looked out. We looked out, and, by thunder! the old ship was gone. I never seen a pack o' fools look fishier; and you may lay to that, if I tells you that I looked the fishiest. 'Well,' says the doctor, 'let's bargain.' We bargained, him and I, and here we are; stores, brandy, blockhouse, the firewood you was thoughtful enough to cut, and, in a manner of speaking, the whole blessed boat, from crosstrees to keelson. As for them, they've tramped; I don't know where's they are." He drew again quietly at his pipe. "And lest you should take it into that head of yours," he went on, "that you was included in the treaty, here's the last word that was said: 'How many are you,' says I, 'to leave?' 'Four,' says he--'four, and one of us wounded. As for that boy, I don't know where he is, confound him,' says he, 'nor I don't much care. We're about sick of him.' These was his words." "Is that all?" I asked. "Well, it's all you're to hear, my son," returned Silver. "And now I am to choose?" "And now you are to choose, and you may lay to that," said Silver. "Well," said I, "I am not such a fool but I know pretty well what I have to look for. Let the worst come to the worst, it's little I care. I've seen too many die since I fell in with you. But there's a thing or two I have to tell you," I said, and by this time I was quite excited; "and the first is this: Here you are, in a bad way; ship lost, treasure lost, men lost; your whole business gone to wreck; and if you want to know who did it--it was I! I was in the apple barrel the night we sighted land, and I heard you, John, and you, Dick Johnson, and Hands, who is now at the bottom of the sea, and told every word you said before the hour was out. And as for the schooner, it was I who cut her cable, and it was I who killed the men you had aboard of her, and it was I who brought her where you'll never see her more, not one of you. The laugh's on my side; I've had the top of this business from the first; I no more fear you than I fear a fly. Kill me, if you please, or spare me. But one thing I'll say, and no more; if you spare me, bygones are bygones, and when you fellows are in court for piracy, I'll save you all I can. It is for you to choose. Kill another and do yourselves no good, or spare me and keep a witness to save you from the gallows." I stopped, for, I tell you, I was out of breath, and, to my wonder, not a man of them moved, but all sat staring at me like as many sheep. And while they were still staring I broke out again: "And now, Mr. Silver," I said, "I believe you're the best man here, and if things go to the worst, I'll take it kind of you to let the doctor know the way I took it." "I'll bear it in mind," said Silver, with an accent so curious that I could not, for the life of me, decide whether he were laughing at my request or had been favorably affected by my courage. "I'll put one to that," cried the old mahogany-faced seaman--Morgan by name--whom I had seen in Long John's public-house upon the quays of Bristol. "It was him that knowed Black Dog." "Well, and see here," added the sea-cook, "I'll put another again to that, by thunder! for it was this same boy that faked the chart from Billy Bones. First and last we've split upon Jim Hawkins!" "Then here goes!" said Morgan, with an oath. And he sprang up, drawing his knife as if he had been twenty. "Avast, there!" cried Silver. "Who are you, Tom Morgan? Maybe you thought you were captain here, perhaps. By the powers, but I'll teach you better! Cross me and you'll go where many a good man's gone before you, first and last, these thirty year back--some to the yardarm, shiver my sides! and some by the board, and all to feed the fishes. There's never a man looked me between the eyes and seen a good day a'terward, Tom Morgan, you may lay to that." Morgan paused, but a hoarse murmur rose from the others. "Tom's right," said one. "I stood hazing long enough from one," added another. "I'll be hanged if I'll be hazed by you, John Silver." "Did any of you gentlemen want to have it out with _me_?" roared Silver, bending far forward from his position on the keg, with his pipe still glowing in his right hand. "Put a name on what you're at; you ain't dumb, I reckon. Him that wants shall get it. Have I lived this many years to have a son of a rum puncheon cock his hat athwart my hawser at the latter end of it? You know the way; you're all gentlemen o' fortune, by your account. Well, I'm ready. Take a cutlass, him that dares, and I'll see the color of his inside, crutch and all, before that pipe's empty." Not a man stirred; not a man answered. "That's your sort, is it?" he added, returning his pipe to his mouth. "Well, you're a gay lot to look at, any way. Not worth much to fight, you ain't. P'r'aps you can understand King George's English. I'm cap'n here by 'lection. I'm cap'n here because I'm the best man by a long sea-mile. You won't fight, as gentlemen o' fortune should; then, by thunder, you'll obey, and you may lay to it! I like that boy, now; I never seen a better boy than that. He's more a man than any pair of rats of you in this here house, and what I say is this: Let me see him that'll lay a hand on him--that's what I say, and you may lay to it." There was a long pause after this. I stood straight up against the wall, my heart still going like a sledgehammer, but with a ray of hope now shining in my bosom. Silver leant back against the wall, his arms crossed, his pipe in the corner of his mouth, as calm as though he had been in church; yet his eye kept wandering furtively, and he kept the tail of it on his unruly followers. They, on their part, drew gradually together toward the far end of the blockhouse, and the low hiss of their whispering sounded in my ears continuously, like a stream. One after another they would look up, and the red light of the torch would fall for a second on their nervous faces; but it was not toward me, it was toward Silver that they turned their eyes. "You seem to have a lot to say," remarked Silver, spitting far into the air. "Pipe up and let me hear it, or lay to." "Ax your pardon, sir," returned one of the men; "you're pretty free with some of the rules, maybe you'll kindly keep an eye upon the rest. This crew's dissatisfied; this crew don't vally bullying a marlinspike; this crew has its rights like other crews, I'll make so free as that; and by your own rules I take it we can talk together. I ax your pardon, sir, acknowledging you for to be capting at this present, but I claim my right and steps outside for a council." And with an elaborate sea-salute this fellow, a long, ill-looking, yellow-eyed man of five-and-thirty, stepped coolly toward the door and disappeared out of the house. One after another the rest followed his example, each making a salute as he passed, each adding some apology. "According to rules," said one. "Foc's'le council," said Morgan. And so with one remark or another, all marched out and left Silver and me alone with the torch. The sea-cook instantly removed his pipe. "Now, look you here, Jim Hawkins," he said in a steady whisper that was no more than audible, "you're within half a plank of death, and, what's a long sight worse, of torture. They're going to throw me off. But you mark, I stand by you through thick and thin. I didn't mean to; no, not till you spoke up. I was about desperate to lose that much blunt, and be hanged into the bargain. But I see you was the right sort. I says to myself: You stand by Hawkins, John, and Hawkins'll stand by you. You're his last card, and by the living thunder, John, he's yours! Back to back, says I. You save your witness and he'll save your neck!" I began dimly to understand. "You mean all's lost?" I asked. "Ay, by gum, I do!" he answered. "Ship gone, neck gone--that's the size of it. Once I looked into that bay, Jim Hawkins, and seen no schooner--well, I'm tough, but I gave out. As for that lot and their council, mark me, they're outright fools and cowards. I'll save your life--if so be as I can--from them. But see here, Jim--tit for tat--you save Long John from swinging." I was bewildered; it seemed a thing so hopeless he was asking--he, the old buccaneer, the ringleader throughout. "What I can do, that I'll do," I said. "It's a bargain!" cried Long John. "You speak up plucky, and by thunder, I've a chance." He hobbled to the torch, where it stood propped among the firewood, and took a fresh light to his pipe. "Understand me, Jim," he said, returning. "I've a head on my shoulders, I have. I'm on squire's side now. I know you've got that ship safe somewheres. How you done it I don't know, but safe it is. I guess Hands and O'Brien turned soft. I never much believed in neither of _them_. Now you mark me. I ask no questions, nor I won't let others. I know when a game's up, I do; and I know a lad that's stanch. Ah, you that's young--you and me might have done a power of good together!" He drew some cognac from the cask into a tin cannikin. "Will you taste, messmate?" he asked, and when I had refused, "Well, I'll take a drain myself, Jim," said he. "I need a caulker, for there's trouble on hand. And, talking o' trouble, why did that doctor give me the chart, Jim?" My face expressed a wonder so unaffected that he saw the needlessness of further questions. "Ah, well, he did, though," said he. "And there's something under that, no doubt--something, surely, under that, Jim--bad or good." And he took another swallow of the brandy, shaking his great fair head like a man who looks forward to the worst.

Jim finds the stockade with all its provisions under the control of Silver and his men. Jim assumes that Captain Smollet and his men are dead and wishes he could have joined them. There were six buccaneers in the camp and one of them is severely injured. As the torch lights up the interior of the stockade, Silver recognizes Jim. He welcomes Jim, sarcastically to his camp. Taking a swig of alcohol, he tells Jim that he had always liked Jim for his youthful spirit. He informs Jim that Captain Smollet and the doctor had written him off as an ungrateful lad who caused trouble. Silver asks Jim to join him. Jim is relieved to hear that his friends are still alive. When Jim is allowed to speak, he asks Silver about his friends. Silver recounts the past evenings happenings when Dr. Livesey had approached them with a flag of truce asking for food, brandy and firewood, after which they disappeared Silver reiterates the fact that they didn't care about Jim. When Jim is asked to choose between Silver and the Squire, Jim tells him about everything. From overhearing the conversation at the apple barrel to cutting the ship loose. He says that the laugh is on his side and that Silver is free to kill him. Silver and his men are startled to hear Jim. They realize that he is the lad who grabbed the chart from Billy Bones and also the one who knew Black Dog. When Morgan charges at Jim with a knife, Silver stops him. When two other pirates support Tom Morgans move to kill Jim, Silver is quick to cut them in the middle like an experienced Captain. Silver tells them that Jim was more a man than any of them. After a long pause, when Silver asks them if they had to say anything to say, they express their dissatisfaction. One by one they walk out of the house leaving Silver and Jim alone. Silver makes Jim aware of the situation. He tells him that the men were against him and that they have to stick together thereafter. Silver asks Jim to save him from the gallows in exchange of Jims safety. Jim is perplexed, and Silver goes on to tell him that he was now on the Squires side and had never trusted his men. Jim is again confused when he asks him the reason for the Doctor giving him the original treasure map. Jim does not understand and stares at him in confusion.