“ This arrangement was kept of course a profound secret from Saluzzo. On recovering from his dumps, the malicious pressure of his hand, and the rosy smile which accompanied it, broke like morning on his memory. It is strange what a power of self-deception the mind possesses. When a lover has long wished to gain his mistress’s affections, picturing to himself the possible awakening of love in her breast, and all the nes of his future happiness, the images of his fancy grow so vivid, that he cannot persuade himself they are unreal. ”

“ The maid was by no means one of the most timid of her sex; but she was terrified beyond expression, lonely as she was, at this unexpected apparition. Uttering a loud scream, she flew out like an arrow at a side door, and hurried to the chamber of her master and mistress. Scarcely had she awakened them, and communicated to the whole family some portion of the fright with which she was herself overwhelmed, when the spectre, enveloped in a shroud, and with a face of deathlike paleness, made its appearance, and sat down in a chair in the bed-room, without their having observed how it entered. ”

“ My cousin Vieilleville is here to relieve you of the charge I have so unwillingly imposed upon you; and you know how indecorous it would be to prefer the protection of a stranger to so near a relation. My steward will reckon with yours at Paris for any expense you may have incurred on my account. The debt of gratitude I owe you I never can hope to pay.” And here the innate devil of coquetry resumed its sway as her spirits rose. “I leave my heart in your keeping, fair Sir. Take good care of it.” Saluzzo was too well aware of his own powers to dream of coping with Vieilleville. ”

“ It is the very key-stone to polite society; it is the open sesame to the highest honours both in church and state. Look at any individual making his entrée into a drawing-room, where there is a circle in the slightest degree distinguished for taste and elegance. Is it his coat, his waistcoat, his shirt, his inexpressibles, his silk stocking, or his shoe, to which the glass of the critic, or the soft eye of beauty, is principally directed? No! it is none of these. It is the cravat that instantaneously stamps the character of its wearer. ”

“ I have never succeeded. Every year I have put a quantity of rose-trees into vases; the greater number perished; and I have never been able to offer one rose to my mother.’ So little did I know of the culture of flowers, as to be perfectly ignorant that it was possible to have roses in winter; but from the moment that I understood that it might be, without a miracle, and that incessant attention only was necessary, I promised myself, that this year the first of January should not pass without Amelia’s offering her mother a rose tree in blow. ”

“ And you, Sir Marquis! What is your pleasure?” Saluzzo had too sincere a respect for his ungainly body to hazard it against Vieilleville. “I will marry no woman by constraint,” he muttered, “If she do not affect me, I can do without her.” As Vieilleville passed through the antechamber, one of the judges accosted him in a low voice. “You have saved yourself a six months’ work, worse than the corvée, by this wager of battle. The marquis had a list of forty interrogations for the lady, in which every word she ever spoke to himself or servants, every pressure of his hand, was enumerated.” ”

“ I was passionately in love; and you all know, I hope, that when love takes possession of a young head, adieu to every thing else; there is no room for any other thought. My table was covered with folios of all colours, quires of paper of all sizes, journals of all species, catalogues of books, in short, of all that one finds on a professor’s table: but of the whole circle of science, I had for some time studied only the article Rose, whether in the Encyclopaedia, the botanical books, or all the gardeners’ calendars that I could meet with. ”

“ Poor Ponto is much to be pitied.—Either having a cold in his nose, or having ante-breakfasted by stealth on a red herring, he can scent nothing short of a badger; and, every other field, he starts in horror, shame, and amazement, to hear himself, without having attended to his points, inclosed in a whirring covey. He is still duly taken between those inexorable knees; out comes the speck and span new dog-whip, heavy enough for a horse; and the yowl of the patient is heard over the whole parish. Mothers press their yet unchastised infants to their breasts ”

“ From that hour Angling is no more a mere delightful day-dream, haunted by the dim hopes of imaginary minnows, but a reality—an art—a science—of which the flaxen headed school-boy feels himself to be master—a mystery in which he has been initiated, and off he goes now, all alone, in the power of successful passion, to the distant brook—brook a mile off—with fields, and hedges, and single trees, and little groves, and a huge forest of six acres, between him and the house in which he is boarded or was born! ”

“ What man on earth would not turn away from him in disgust? The very poodle would snap at his heels, and the large tortoise-shell cat upon the hearth-rug would elevate her back into the form of an arch, bristle up her tail like a brush, and spit at him with sentiments of manifest indignation. Ladies would shrink from the contamination of his approach, and the dearest friend he had in the world would cut him dead upon the spot. He might, perhaps, be a man of genius; but what is the value of genius to a person ignorant of the “Art of Tying the Cravat?” ”

“ To see him whisking and wavering in the air, to behold the vacant carcase, from which the life is newly dislodged, shifting between earth and heaven, the sport of every gust; like a weathercock, serving to show from which point the wind blows; like a maukin, fit only to scare away birds; like a nest left to swing upon a bough when the bird is flown; these are uses to which we cannot, without a mixture of spleen and contempt, behold the human carcase reduced. We string up dogs, foxes, bats, moles, weasels. Man surely deserves a steadier death. ”

“ Maurice put his hand to the collar of his cloak, and thought he heard a noise like the rustling of paper. He hastened back to Marie and the town clerk, and told them of his adventure.
‘Just heaven!’ cried Waldau, ‘it must be so. You remember your late father, Maurice, and his eternal apprehensions, which all the locks in the world could not have quieted. You know, too, that he was often obliged to come to this city for the purpose of receiving large sums of money. What would a suspicious man do in such a case? ”

“ Tis the fourteenth of September, and lo! a pointer at his heels—Ponto of course—a game bag like a beggar’s wallet by his side—destined to be at eve as full of charity—and all the paraphernalia of an accomplished sportsman. Proud, were she to see the sight, would be the mother that bore him the heart of that old sportsman, his daddy, would leap for joy! The chained mastiff in the yard yowls his admiration, the servant lassies uplift the pane of their garret, and, with suddenly withdrawn blushes, titter their delight in their rich paper curls and pure night-clothes. ”

“ The slightest indication is eagerly caught at as a proof of their reality. A thousand proofs of dislike are effaced from recollection by one kind look. This holds true even with such questionable passions as that of Saluzzo. He paid a daily visit to Marie Mont-Jean, still trusting that although one visit afforded no room for hope, the next might. In vain: the Prince of Roche-sur-Yonne was always there before him, managed to remain longer, and engrossed all the conversation and kind looks of the lady. ”

“ Did I not find it one fine day hanging up before the shop of my neighbour, the old clothesman, who told me he bought it of a porter? and what would become of the bills for twenty thousand florins which are sewed up in it, if I had not bought them at the exorbitant price of three silver pieces? There, take your own; keep it more safely for the future, and thank heaven for having preserved the life of your father’s nurse.’
Maurice embraces the old woman, who receives the praises and thanks of every body present. ”

“ The posterior pouch of the jacket, yet unstained by blood, yawns to receive her—and in she goes plump, paws, ears, body, feet, fud and all—while Luath, all the way home to the Mams, keeps snoking at the red drops oozing through—for well he knows in summer’s heat and winter’s cold, the smell of pussie, whether sitting beneath a tuft of withered grass on the brae, or burrowed beneath a snow wreath. A hare, we certainly must say, in spite of haughtier sportsman’s scorn is, when sitting, a most satisfactory shot. ”

“ A farmer makes offer of a colley, who from numbering among his paternal ancestors a Spanish pointer, is quite a Don in his way among the chirpers, and has been known in a turnip-field to stand in an attitude very similar to that of setting. Luath has no objection to a frolic over the fields, and plays the part of Ponto to perfection. At last he catches sight of a covey basking, and leaping in upon them, open-mouthed, dispatches them right and left, even like the famous dog Billy, killing rats in the pit at Westminster. ”

“ But, oh! the bliss of solitary fruition, when there is none to interrupt you—none to compete with you—none to express stupid amazement at the extent of your godlike appetite, or to bring back your thoughts, by some obtrusive remark, to the vulgar affairs of an unsubstantial world!—Behold! the milky nectar is crimsoned by the roseate fruit! Heavens! what a flavour! and there is not another human being near to intrude upon the sacred intensity of your joy! Painter—poet—philosopher—where is your beau-ideal—happiness? ”

“ It is a sad thing to have a mind and body that are no match for each other. Jacob’s outward man would have been highly gratified at the exhibition of these things; but the spirit of the parson was too mighty within, and spurned every offer, and the body was compelled to obey. So the horse that was borrowed of the squire was ordered out, and Jacob Philpot mounted and rode on his way in excessive irritation, growling vehemently at the insult and indignity which had been committed against the “cloth” in general, and his own person in particular. ”

“ Amelia’s heart was agitated; she was as much grieved that it was I who had killed Robin, as that he was dead.—‘Poor Robin,’ said she, drying a tear, ‘he was rather too fond of running out; before leaving home, I had put on his collar that he might not be lost—he had always been brought back to me. The ring must have slipped under his collar. I hastily drew on my glove, and never missed it till I was at supper. ”

“ At these parties, a strange and talented group never failed to present themselves. All were men of genius, but exhibited, in their respective persons, proofs of the amazing rancour that subsists between genius and gentility. Among them was a lively Irishman, named O’Blarney, a reporter for the daily press, with sandy hair, a nose that turned up like a fish-hook, and a mouth which, from its extensive dimensions, afforded the most copious facilities for grinning. ”

“ The turnip-fields are bright green with hope and expectation—and coveys are couching on lazy beds beneath the potatoe shaw. Every high hedge, ditch-guarded on either side, shelters its own brood—imagination hears the whirr shaking the dew-drops from the broom on the brae—and first one bird and then another, and then the remaining number, in itself no contemptible covey, seems to fancy’s ear to spring single, or in clouds, from the coppice brushwood, with here and there an intercepting standard tree. ”

“ But the small brown and white marten wheeling through below the bridge, or along the many holed red sand bank, is admitted by all boys to be fair game—and still more, the long-winged legless black devilet, that, if it falls to the ground, cannot rise again and therefore screams wheeling round the corners and battlements of towers and castles, or far out even of cannon-shot, gambols in companies of hundreds, and regiments of a thousand, aloft in the evening ether, within the orbit of the eagle’s flight. ”

“ A band of music which the marquis had engaged at Lyons, aided, by its soft plaintive melodies, to give a melancholy character to her reflections. She thought of her indiscretion, of the toils from which she was not yet free, of the slanders and calumnies to which she might be exposed. The careless innocence of a young woman may lead her into conduct, to look upon which impresses her with a tormenting consciousness of sullied purity, although not one criminal thought has ruffled her white mind. It was thus with Marie. ”

“ It is his foot which does every thing. It is in the foot that we must seek and find the stamp of man’s original dignity. In the foot? Yes, Sir, in the foot. Look at the footman, who smiles at your surprise—is it not the foot which supports the head? Does not the foot express anger and indignation? In Spain, all matters of love and gallantry begin with the foot. The foot, in China, plays the first part. ”

“ It is nearly as impossible a thing as we know, to borrow a dog about the time the Sun has reached his meridian, on the First day of the Partridges. Ponto by this time has sneaked, unseen by human eye, into his kennel, and coiled himself up into the arms of tired Nature’s sweet restorer, balmy sleep. ”