Anthony Trollope

“ For years this hatred had been very strong; how strong can hardly be understood by those who never recognise the fact that there had been, so to say, no mingling of the conquered and the conquerors, no process of assimilation between the Italian vassals and their German masters.
Venice as a city was as purely Italian as though its barracks were filled with no Hungarian long-legged soldiers, and its cafés crowded with no white-coated Austrian officers. ”

“ So the old gentleman and Fred walked up Museum Street and had their conversation on the pavement. “I am Mr. Burnaby, for whose book you made an index,” said the old man.
Mr. Burnaby was an author well-known in those days, and Fred, in the midst of his misfortunes, felt that he was honoured by the visit.{75}
“I was sorry that my index did not suit you,” said Fred.
“It did not suit at all,” said Mr. Burnaby. “Indeed it was no index. An index should comprise no more than words and figures. Your index conveyed opinions, and almost criticism.” ”

“ He, Herr Crippel the musician, could never make himself look like that; he could make no slightest approach to that outward triumph. But then, he could play the zither, and Fritz Planken could only play with his cane! He would do what he could! He would play his best! He had once almost resolved to get up and declare that he was too tired that evening to do justice to his instrument. But there was an insolence of success about his rival’s hat and trousers which spirited him on to the fight. He struck his zither again, and they who understood him and his zither knew that he was in earnest. ”

“ Then her uncle spoke to her somewhat gravely.
“You’re a good girl, Nora,—a dear good girl. I think I understand your thoughts on this matter, and I love you for them. But I doubt whether there be any necessity for you to make this sacrifice. A marriage should be a gala festival according to the means of the people married, and the bridegroom has a right to expect that his bride shall come to him fairly arrayed, and bright with wedding trappings. I think we can do, my pet, without robbing you of your little braveries.” ”

“ It was a most unusual sight, for lanterns were not common down in Malachi’s Cove. Down came the lantern rather slowly,—much more slowly than she was in the habit of descending, and then through the gloom she saw the figure of a man standing at the bottom of the path. She went up to him, and saw that it was Mr. Gunliffe, the father.
“Is that Mally?” said Gunliffe.
“Yes, it is Mally; and how is Barty, Mr. Gunliffe?”{194}
“You must come to ’un yourself, now at once,” said the farmer. “He won’t sleep a wink till he’s seed you. You must not say but you’ll come.” ”

“ How many among us, when we give, give from off our own backs, and from out of our own mouths? Who can say that he has sacrificed a want of his own; that he has abandoned a comfort; that he has worn a threadbare coat, when coats with their gloss on have been his customary wear; that he has fared roughly on cold scraps, whereas a well-spread board has been his usual daily practice? He who has done so has thrown in his two mites, and for him will charity produce her double blessing.
Nora thought that it was not well in her uncle to tell her that he could do without her wedding clothes. ”

“ Where is the woman whom one touch of romance will not soften, though she be ever so impervious to argument? Tom could sit up stairs with his mother and his betrothed, and tell them stories of the gallantry of the South,—of the sacrifices women were making, and of the deeds men were doing,—and they would listen and smile and caress his hand, and all for awhile would be pleasant; while the old major did not dare to speak before them of his Southern hopes. ”

“ Herr Crippel, will you come to Sperl’s to-morrow?”
“No; you would not dance with me, and I should not care to see you dance with anyone else.”
“But I will dance with you.”
“And Planken will be there?”
“Yes, Fritz will be there. He is always there; I cannot help that.”
“No, Lotta; I will not go to Sperl’s. I will tell you a little secret. At forty-five one is too old for Sperl’s.”
“There are men there every Sunday over fifty—over sixty, I am sure.”
“They are men different in their ways of life from me, my dear. No, I will not go to Sperl’s. When will you come and see my mother?” ”

“ Give me the country in which the humanitarian principle is so exercised that no one shall be degraded by the receipt of charity. It seems to me that you like poor people here in England that you may gratify yourselves by giving them, not as much to eat as they want, but just enough to keep their skins from falling off their bones. Charity may have its double blessing, but it may also have its double curse.”
“Not charity, Mr. Frew,” said Mrs. Granger. ”

“ Will you consent?”
“By the body of Bacchus, what is this you say?” said the other, drawing his arm away, and looking up into the German’s face.
“Simply that she has consented and your mother. Are you willing that I should be your brother?”
“This is madness,” said Carlo Pepé.
“On their part, you mean?”
“Yes, and on yours. Were there nothing else to prevent it, how could there be marriage between us when this war is coming?”
“I do not believe in the war; that is, I do not believe in war between us and Italy. No war can affect you here in Venice. ”

“ Dear young ladies, it is thus that men always speak of you when they first see you on board ship! She was disconsolate, sick at heart, and ill at ease in body also. She did not like the sea. She did not in the least like the grumpy gentleman in whose hands she was placed; she did not, especially, like the grumpy gentleman’s wife; and she altogether hated the grumpy gentleman’s daughter, who was the partner of her berth. That young lady had been very sick and very selfish; and Miss Viner had been very sick also, and perhaps equally selfish. ”

“ And he knew how to earn a large income with the full approbation of his fellow-citizens. I had always hated him since the day on which he had driven Miss Gledd home; but I had generally attributed my hatred to the manner in which he wore his hat on one side. I confess I had often felt amazed that Miss Gledd should have so far encouraged him. I think I may at any rate declare that he would not have been accepted in London,—not accepted for much! And yet Hannibal Hoskins was not a bad fellow. His true devotion to Ophelia Gledd proved that. ”

“ Every now and then we have even spoke of the inaction of this side or of that, as though the drawn battles which have lasted for days, in which men have perished by tens of thousands, could be renewed as might the old German battles, in which an Austrian general would be ever retreating with infinite skill and military efficacy. For constancy, for blood, for hard determination to win at any cost of life or material, history has known no such battles as these. That the South have fought the best as regards skill no man can doubt. ”

“ Wickham Webb lived in a grand house near Hyde Park, and poor Fred was badly off for good clothes.
“Your coat does not look at all amiss,” his wife said to him, comforting him; “and as for a hat, why don’t you buy a new one?”
“I sha’n’t breakfast in my hat,” said Fred; “but look here;” and Fred exhibited his shoes.
“Get a new pair,” said Mary.
“No,” said he; “I’ve sworn to have nothing new till I’ve earned the money. Mr. Webb won’t expect to see me very bright, I dare say. When a man writes to beg for employment, it must naturally be supposed that he will be rather seedy about his clothes.” ”

“ Young lovers, and especially young women, are more subject to control, and are less inclined to imagine that all things should go as they would have them. Nina, when she was made to understand that the war was come, that her brother was leaving her and her mother and Venice, that he might fight for them, that an Austrian must for the time be regarded as an enemy in that house, resolved with a slow, melancholy firmness that she would accept the circumstances of her destiny. ”

“ The work, however, is going on, and if the war which has come and passed has not swallowed everything appertaining to Austria into its maw, the ugly remnants of destruction will be soon carted away, and the old glacis{4} will be made bright with broad pavements, and gilded railings, and well-built lofty mansions, and gardens beautiful with shrubs, and beautiful with turf also, if Austrian patience can make turf to grow beneath an Austrian sky. ”

“ Those who are indifferent will go on feasting the same as ever. You can’t make a sacrifice obligatory.”
“It would be no sacrifice if you did,” said Nora, still thinking of her wedding clothes.
“I doubt whether sacrifices ever do any real good,” said Frederick F. Frew.
“Oh, Fred!” said Nora.
“We have rather high authority as to the benefit of self-denial,” said the parson.
“A man who can’t sacrifice himself must be selfish,” said Bobby; “and we are all agreed to hate selfish people.”
“And what about the widow’s mite?” said Mrs. Granger. ”

“ Nora was almost angry with her lover, whom she regarded as stronger and more clever than any of her uncle’s family, but tyrannical and sometimes overbearing in the use of his strength. One by one her aunt and cousin left the room, and she was left alone with him. He had taken up a newspaper as a refuge in his wrath, for in truth he did not like the manner in which his allusions to his own country were generally treated at the parsonage. There are Englishmen who think that every man differing with them is bound to bet with them on any point in dispute. ”

“ Girls dance and men smoke, and there is eating and drinking, and everybody is as well behaved as though there was a protecting phalanx of dowagers sitting round the walls of the saloon. There are no dowagers, though there may probably be a policeman somewhere about the place. To a stranger it is very remarkable that there is so little of what we call flirting;—almost none of it. It would seem that to the girls dancing is so much a matter of business, that here at Sperl’s they can think of nothing else. ”

“ But it was not known, till the autumn was near at hand, that Venetia had, in fact, been surrendered. There were rumours, but men in Venice doubted these rumours; and women, who knew that their husbands had been beaten, could not believe that success was to be the result of such calamities.
There were weeks in which came no news from Carlo Pepé to the women in the Campo San Luca, and then came simply tidings that he had been wounded.{279}
“I shall see my son never again,” said the widow in her ecstasy of misery. ”

“ Mr. Granger might be a slow politician, but he was a practical man, understanding the things immediately around him; and they all were aware, Frederic F. Frew with the rest of them, that he was right when he bade his wife keep the fire well hot beneath the kitchen boiler.
“Isn’t it almost wicked to be married in such a time as this?” It was much later in the evening when Nora, still troubled in her mind about her widow’s mite, whispered these words into her lover’s ears. ”

“ Granger, and some slight suspicion of an eagerly-removed tear in the parson’s eye; but this, at any rate, was certain, that the wedding-clothes were not missed. When they all sat down to their breakfast in the parsonage dining-room, that little matter had come to be clean forgotten. No one knew, not even the Misses Foster, that there was anything extraordinary in their garb. Indeed, as to all gay apparel, we may say that we only miss it by comparison. It is very sad to be the wearer of the only frock-coat in company, to carry the one solitary black silk handkerchief at a dinner-party. ”

“ The ladies were the Signora Pepé and her daughter, and the men were Carlo Pepé and his brother-in-law, Hubert von Vincke. It was but a poor fête, this family breakfast at an obscure inn, but it was intended as a gala feast to mark the last day of Nina’s Italian life.
To-morrow, very early in the morning, she was to leave Venice for Trieste,—so early that it would be necessary that she should be on board this very night.
“My child,” said the Signora, “do not say so; you will never cease to be Italian. Surely, Hubert, she may still call herself Venetian?” ”

“ Are you going to have a morning lovers’ walk with Frederic Franklin?”
“Frederic Franklin, as you choose to call him, uncle,”{224} said Nora, “never comes out of his room much before breakfast time. And it’s raining hard.”
“Such a lover as he is ought not to mind rain.”
“But I should mind it, very much. But, uncle, I want to speak to you, very seriously. I have been making up my mind about something.”
“There’s nothing wrong; is there, my dear?”
“No; there’s nothing very wrong. It is not exactly about anything being wrong. ”

“ As much could not be said for Tom’s quick military advancement. But this could be said for them in the South,—that unless they did make their generals in this way, they would hardly have any generals at all, and General Reckenthorpe, as he so quickly became,—General Tom as they used to call him in Kentucky,—recommended himself specially to the Confederate leaders by the warmth and eagerness with which he had come among them. The name of the old man so well known throughout the Union, who had ever loved the South without hating the North, would have been a tower of strength to them. ”

“ Forrest, there is no jest.”
“With your feelings a poorhouse in England would be better than a palace in Peru.”
“An English workhouse would be better, but an English poorhouse is not open to me. You do not know what it is to have friends—no, not friends, but people belonging to you—just so near as to make your respectability a matter of interest to them, but not so near that they should care for your happiness. ”

“ None of those old death-doomed generals of Europe, whom we have learned to hate for the cold-blooded energy of their trade,—Tilly, Gustavus Adolphus, Frederic, or Napoleon,—none of these ever left so many carcasses to the kites as have the Johnsons, Jacksons, and Hookers of the American armies, who come and go so fast that they are almost forgotten before the armies they have led have melted into clay. ”

“ There are citizens of the stars and stripes, who find their way everywhere—and, alas! perhaps, now also citizens of the new Southern flag, with the palmetto leaf. And there are Englishmen of every shade and class, and Englishwomen also.
It is constantly the case that women are doomed to make the long voyage alone. Some are going out to join their husbands, some to find a husband, some few peradventure to leave a husband. ”