Justine

“ In the paroxysm of excited curiosity, passion and jealousy, a woman makes no calculations, takes no observations. She simply wishes to know the whole truth.
And Justine is delighted: she sees her mistress compromising herself with her, and she espouses her passion, her dread, her fears and her suspicions, with terrible friendship. Justine and Caroline hold councils and have secret interviews. ”

“ She sighed again, and turned on Justine a glance charged with conjugal experience.
Justine had sunk into the window-seat, her thin hands clasping her knee, in the attitude habitual to her meditative moments. "Perhaps not," she assented; "but I don't know that I should care for a man who made life easy; I should want some one who made it interesting."
Bessy met this with a pitying exclamation. "Don't imagine you invented that! Every girl thinks it. Afterwards she finds out that it's much pleasanter to be thought interesting herself." ”

“ 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 goodness? 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 guile, and yet she has committed a murder.”
Soon after we heard that the poor victim had expressed a desire to see my cousin. ”

“ 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. ”

“ She was by nature very curious, and Justine’s narrative gave her some pleasant and exciting thrills.
“I could make a splendid story out of this and frighten Flora so that she would scream,” thought Augusta to herself. “It is such fun frightening people, particularly in the dark, or just when you are going to bed. I do wish I could sleep at the Asprays’ house next week. However, that is not to be thought of.”
“Now, miss,” said Justine, “there is only one thing more of any importance to-day. Do you see these keys?”
“Yes,” said Augusta. “Why, these are Aunt Jessie’s special private keys.” ”

“ Instead of reproaching her, he preferred to forget, and in so doing acted wisely; for in Justine, as long as she lived, he found a devoted friend and a sure counsellor, on whose sympathy and advice he was always able to rely, and a companion whose irrepressible gaiety was proof against all the troubles and anxieties of both family and professional life. But his generosity went no further. If friendship had survived Justine's last infidelity, love had not. "Fly from love as from the greatest of all evils," he wrote to his friend at Strasburg ”

“ For the moment she was more concerned with Bessy's fate than with her own—her poor friend seemed to have so much more at stake, and so much less strength to bring to the defence of her happiness. Justine was always saved from any excess of self-compassion by the sense, within herself, of abounding forces of growth and self-renewal, as though from every lopped aspiration a fresh shoot of energy must spring ”

“ Justine ended, not by a full understanding of the fact that man is naturally polygamous; but little by little, through channels undiscerned even by herself, the idea came to her that, if the man she loved could find pleasure in the society of other women, it was because she was less attractive than they. It was this that brought her patience, the more readily even in that, at her first paroxysm, Mistrial, a trifle alarmed lest she might leave him, had caught her in his arms, and sworn in a whisper breathed in her ear, that of all the world he loved her best. ”

“ There was no denying Justine's right to call Jud husband. Celeste saw her every hope slipping away as she listened to the story of the courtship and marriage in the little country lane. She knew now that she had never been a wife, and she knew that she had to live all the rest of her life beneath an ugly shadow. Whatever were her thoughts of the man who had so basely wronged her, she kept them to herself. ”

“ Justine shook her head mournfully. “I do not fear to die,” she said; “that pang is past. God raises my weakness and gives me courage to endure the worst. I leave a sad and bitter world; and if you remember me and think of me as of one unjustly condemned, I am resigned to the fate awaiting me. Learn from me, dear lady, to submit in patience to the will of heaven!” ”

“ “Justine, you may remember, was a great favourite of yours; 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: ”

“ Justine is a genuine maid for an actress, a woman of thirty stamped by the small-pox with innumerable dimples, in which the loves are far from sporting: she is as brown as opium, has a good deal of leg and not much body, gummy eyes, and a tournure to match. She would like to have Benoit marry her, but at this unexpected suggestion, Benoit asked for his discharge. Such is the portrait of the domestic tyrant enthroned by Caroline’s jealousy. ”

“ Justine's suggestion that she should humble herself still farther to Amherst merely left in Bessy's mind a rankling sense of being misunderstood and undervalued by those to whom she turned in her extremity, and she said to herself, in a phrase that sounded well in her own ears, that sooner or later every woman must learn to fight her battles alone. ”

“ Most marriages are a patch-work of jarring tastes and ill-assorted ambitions—if here and there, for a moment, two colours blend, two textures are the same, so much the better for the pattern! Justine, certainly, could foresee in reunion no positive happiness for either of her friends; but she saw positive disaster for Bessy in separation from her husband....
Suddenly she rose from her chair by the falling fire, and crossed over to the writing-table. She would write to Amherst herself—she would tell him to come. ”

“ And the beauty of it (in every sense of the word) was that the Countess rather backed me up in my vagaries than otherwise, until at last Justine lost all patience and vowed that if I did not retire into the anteroom and leave her alone with her mistress for a few minutes, I should go back to my own room as I deserved.
"Now, she's jealous, throw her on the bed, Ernest," ordered the Countess, "and do her over at once. I shall be delighted to see two such handsome persons playing the Adam and Eve game: besides, I've got a little tickler here to increase the fun and add to our enjoyment." ”

“ I am an unnatural mother,—I am base,—I am infamous,—I am afraid,—I have not the courage of my crime. No, no, I will not! I will not! I will brave all, the return of my husband, the shame, ay, death itself, but I will not be separated for ever from my child; nothing but death shall separate us,—there is time enough yet Justine is coming. ”

“ There were moments when Justine thought Amherst hard to Bessy, as she suspected that he had once been hard to his mother—as the leader of men must perhaps always be hard to the hampering sex. Yet she did justice to his efforts to accept the irretrievable, and to waken in his wife some capacity for sharing in his minor interests, since she had none of her own with which to fill their days. ”

“ Adversity has a deft hand at gathering loose strands of impulse into character, and Justine's early contact with different phases of experience had given her a fairly clear view of life in the round, what might be called a sound working topography of its relative heights and depths. ”

“ Society devotes itself desperately to discovering the secret of this enigma. Madame de Fischtaminel makes fun of Adolphe who goes home in a rage, has a scene with Caroline and discharges Justine.
This produces such an effect upon Justine, that she falls sick, and takes to her bed. Caroline observes to her husband, that it would be awkward to turn a girl in Justine’s condition into the street, a girl who is so much attached to them, too, and who has been with them sine their marriage. ”

“ It was strange to have marriage urged on her by a woman who had twice failed to find happiness in it—strange, and yet how vivid a sign that, even to a nature absorbed in its personal demands, not happiness but completeness is the inmost craving! "A life of your own"—that was what even Bessy, in her [p 233] obscure way, felt to be best worth suffering for. And how was a spirit like Justine's, thrilling with youth and sympathy, to conceive of an isolated existence as the final answer to that craving? ”

“ Such threats, as a rule, no longer move the feminine imagination; yet Justine's pity for all forms of weakness made her recognize, in the very heat of her contempt for Wyant, that his reproaches were not the mere cry of wounded vanity but the appeal of a nature conscious of its lack of recuperative power. ”

“ Why shouldn’t I help you? Even though you are a servant, you are a fellow-creature. There! lie down on this little bed; there is lots of time—it is not two o’clock yet.”
So Augusta waited on Justine, and soothed and comforted her, and made her forget her headache; and when at last she left the house the good woman said to herself that a dearer and nicer young lady than Miss Gussie never walked the earth. ”

“ Janet was the shorter of the two, so at every return from his voyages he found out she had grown considerably, and as Rose was pale, he dwelt much on her blooming looks. Now that they burst upon him dressed, thanks to Madame Justine's supervision, in very becoming costumes, excited by the amusements of the day, and flushed with the delight of seeing him—he looked at them with the profoundest admiration, and when they left the room to take off their finery, he turned to his wife and said, "Well, old lady, those are not bad looking girls, by any means. ”

“ But a precocious experience of life had taught her that emotions too strong for the nature containing them turn, by some law of spiritual chemistry, into a rankling poison; and she had therefore resigned herself to serving as a kind of outlet for Bessy's pent-up discontent. It was not that her friend's grievance appealed to her personal sympathies; she had learned enough of the situation to give her moral assent unreservedly to the other side. But it was characteristic of Justine that where she sympathized least she sometimes pitied most. ”

“ Salisbury said, with fervor. "They know their place," she added neatly.
"The men could be butlers and gardeners and coachmen," pursued Justine.
"Yes, and with a lot of finely trained colored women in the market, where would you girls from the college be?" the other woman asked, not without a spice of mischievous enjoyment.
"We would be a finer type of servant, for more fastidious people," Justine scored by answering soberly. "You could hardly expect a colored girl to take the responsibility of much actual managing, I should suppose. ”

“ She was really sorry in one respect; but she had become afraid of the Squire. He asked such point-blank questions. His suspicions were wide awake and veering to the truth. He was another danger in her situation, and she felt Justine to be all she could manage. Mrs. Atheling and Kate being gone, her visits to the Vyner house could naturally cease; and, as the winter was nearly over, she could arrange some other place for her meetings with Cecil North. Indeed, he had already joined her in a few early morning gallops; and, besides which, she reflected, “Love always finds out a way.” ”

“ The comedy entitled Alexis et Justine, by the same authors, produced on January 17, 1785, was for Madame Dugazon, who played the part of Justine, the occasion of another triumph, which Grimm records in these terms:
“Madame Dugazon has just developed a new kind of talent in the rôle of Justine. It was difficult to unite to this degree the most lively and the most passionate sensibility with a naïveté the most sweet and the most attractive. This charming actress has been truly eloquent in the scene of the second act with M. de Longpré. ”

“ As the distinction grew clearer, Justine trembled to think that she had so nearly pledged herself, without the excuse of love, to a man whose failings she could judge so lucidly.... But had she ever really thought of marrying Wyant? While she continued to talk with Amherst such a possibility became more and more remote, till she began to feel it was no more [p 275] than a haunting dream. But her promise to see Wyant the next day reminded her of the nearness of her peril. ”

“ That was grand; but I feared to be caught before I could leave Lyons, so I resolved to disguise myself, and then if they followed I should escape them. Often at school I have played girl-parts, because I am small, and have as yet no beard. So Justine dressed me in the skirt, cloak and hat of her granddaughter. ”