Madame Fosco

“ It is certainly time you and my wife had some help in nursing. I think I may be the means of offering you that help. Circumstances have happened which will oblige Madame Fosco to travel to London either to-morrow or the day after. She will go away in the morning and return at night, and she will bring back with her, to relieve you, a nurse of excellent conduct and capacity, who is now disengaged. The woman is known to my wife as a person to be trusted. Before she comes here say nothing about her, if you please, to the doctor, because he will look with an evil eye on any nurse of my providing. ”

“ The mention of the Count’s name, and the discovery that he and his wife are likely to meet the bride and bridegroom on the continent, puts Laura’s marriage, for the first time, in a distinctly favourable light. It is likely to be the means of healing a family feud. Hitherto Madame Fosco has chosen to forget her obligations as Laura’s aunt out of sheer spite against the late Mr. ”

“ They brought two guests with them, Count Fosco and his wife, Laura's aunt. He is immensely fat, with a face like that of the great Napoleon, and eyes which have an extraordinary power. In spite of his size, he treads as softly as a cat. His manners are perfect. He never says a hard word to his wife; but, none the less, he rules her with a rod of iron. She is absolutely his slave, obedient to the slightest expression of his eyes. He manages Sir Percival as he manages his wife; and, indeed, all of us. He inquired to-day whether there were any Italian gentlemen in the neighbourhood. ”

“ Count Fosco was an educated gentleman and the pleasure of life was his purpose; crime and intrigue were his recreations. Andy Johnson was a good business man and wealth producer; murder was the direction in which his private understanding of personal disagreements was exercised and vented. Some men turn to poker playing, which is as wasteful as murder and not half as dignified. Count Fosco is the villain par excellence of novels. I do not remember what he did, because “The Woman in White” is the best novel in the world to read gluttonously at a sitting and then forget absolutely. ”

“ He struck no dramatic attitudes. “The world is mine oyster!” is not said by real men bent on terrible deeds. Count Fosco is the perfect villain, and also the perfect criminal, inasmuch as he not only acts naturally, but deliberately determines the action instead of being drawn into it or having it forced upon him.
He was a highly cultivated type of Andy Johnson, inasmuch as crime with him was not a life purpose, but what is called in business a “side-line.” All of us have our hobbies; the closely confined clerk goes home and roots up his yard to plant flower bulbs or cabbage plants ”

“ I might interpret a soul if I were a Raphael or a Fra Angelico—as it is, it will never look like her.”
“Nonsense! Rose is very human; don’t put her on too high a pedestal, my dear,” his mother counselled wisely; “you are too sensitive, too imaginative. Fox would never make the mistake of treating a woman like a saint on a pillar!”
Allestree made an inarticulate sound and rose also. “Fox—no!” he said a little bitterly; “Fox could make love to Saint Catherine without offending her; he’s one of the men whom women love!” ”

“ It was difficult to look at this charming woman without being affected by her beauty. M. Floçon was a Frenchman, gallant and impressionable; yet he steeled his heart. A detective must beware of sentiment, and he seemed to see something insidious in this appeal, which he resented.
“Madame, it is useless,” he answered gruffly. “I do not make the law; I have only to support it. Every good citizen is bound to that.”
“I trust I am a good citizen,” said the Countess, with a wan smile, but very wearily. ”

“ Rose came forward with a blushing but eager welcome, but Fox stood in a moment of awkwardness which both vexed and amused the woman. Men have no resources, she thought bitterly.
As for him he experienced a shock of dismay; he was trying to shake off a vague feeling which possessed him that he had no right to be there, that he owed allegiance still to Margaret, that her look, her manner, her very presence demanded it while, in fact, she had long ago forfeited all claims upon him. ”

“ She proposed, and zealously promoted, the course of lectures on Italian literature which Foscolo delivered in 1823. Mr. Stewart Rose was another of his real and anxious friends; and Foscolo's acknowledged talents, and the interest excited by his exile, facilitated their endeavours. His lectures were numerously attended, and brought him a thousand pounds;—a small sum, if on it he was to found a sufficient income to maintain him for the rest of his life; a large one to an Italian, accustomed to look on a few hundred crowns as riches. ”

“ What had she read in the kindled [76] sympathy of that look at Rose Temple? She bit her lip, staring into the mirror with haggard eyes. Could he give her up? She, who knew so much of the brutal egotism of which a man can be capable, she who had seen such a nature as White’s revealed in the scorching intimacy of married life,—dared she picture Fox as unselfish enough to be still true to her, to content himself with comforting her wretchedness when love and youth and beauty—beauty such as she had never worn—might be his? Her sore heart throbbed passionately in her bosom. ”

“ The house itself, without being ruinous, is huge and desolate; but its vast cool halls are a pleasant refuge against the heats of mid-day. Here Foscolo studied through the morning, varying his life by spending his evenings with the family of count Giovio, a man of education and learning, whose young and gay family served to dissipate the fumes of melancholy in which the poet was rather fond of indulging. ”

“ No more one-night stands in dreary little towns, Miss Fuschia Fleming, but long engagements, crowded houses, enormous box-office receipts, wildly enthusiastic audiences. Can't you hear and see them? New York, London, Paris for you!"
"Oh-h!" Fuschia was herself again. She exhaled rapture in an ecstatic sigh. She rose. It is impossible to sit in moments of such high exultation. She positively seemed to soar, to tread on clouds. It was growing late and chill. Almost every one had left the garden, only a few absorbed groups remained. Fuschia was an actress. Self-expression was a necessity to her. ”

“ And we all know also, from continual experience, the new need which lurks behind the formation of images. Ugo Foscolo has a love-affair with the Countess Arese; he knows with what sort of love and with what sort of woman he has to do, as can be proved from the letters he wrote, which are to be read in print. ”

“ Giuseppe Pecchio, in his Life of Foscolo, speaks of her with great enthusiasm: "I saw her," he writes, "several times after she was married, when, at a private theatre, she took the part of Isabella in the 'Filippo' of Alfieri; and I still remember, with pleasure, her dignified action and her expressive countenance, which filled the audience with enthusiasm, and carried their feelings along with her."
This attachment was not fortunate; and Foscolo suffered all the throes of disappointment and grief. Violent in all his feelings, love possessed his heart like a burning fire ”

“ Know, then, that I love, with all the enthusiasm of a first passion, the most beautiful woman of her time—that she is the only daughter of the proudest senator in Venice—that she is no stranger to your family, and now resides within a league of us. Her name is Laura Foscari; and she is, alas! the destined and unwilling bride of the opulent Ercole Barozzo, governor of Candia. ”

“ His sorrowing daughter, while she obeys, returns the affection of her passionate, adoring lover; her destined husband become jealous, her father uneasy; and Ortis, called upon by duty and friendship, absents himself from her society: he travels to Florence, to Milan, to Genoa; and then, hearing of Teresa's marriage, retraces his steps to the Euganean hills, the abode of his mistress, and fulfils his long-nurtured intention of putting an end to his existence. The slight differences between this story and "Werter" are founded on Foscolo's own attachment, before alluded to. ”

“ But if some other girl here in the town took a fancy to her brass crucifix, her agate heart or her velvet ribbon, she would make them over to her at once, glad to give happiness, for she lives by generous impulses. So La Fosseuse was loved and pitied and despised by turns. Everything in her nature was a cause of suffering to her—her indolence, her kindness of heart, her coquetry; for she is coquettish, dainty, and inquisitive, in short, she is a woman; she is as simple as a child, and, like a child, she is carried away by her tastes and her impressions. ”

“ She had therefore determined to find a wife for Franco, at once, in order to avert all danger. She had sought for a girl who should be rich, but not too rich; of noble, but not too noble birth; intelligent, but not too intelligent. Having discovered one of the right sort, she suggested her to Franco who flew into a rage, and declared he had no desire to marry. The answer had a very suspicious ring, and she redoubled her vigilance, watching every movement of her grandson and of that "Madam Trap," that being the pleasing title she had bestowed upon Signorina Luisa Rigey. ”

“ Foscarini.
’Tis infamy
To you, if I remain!
Teresa.
You shall not go.
What is a name to me? Stay—I’ll reveal
All—all to Contarini; I will plead
Even at his feet! He’ll hear me, and will save you!
Foscarini.
You know him not; he’d spurn you, and his slaves
Would scoff at you. No—no—I choose my death,
Rather than your disgrace!
Teresa (clinging to him.)
Break not my hold!
I caused thy danger—I alone! I’ll shield thee
With my entwining arms. They shall not strike—
Or if they do—mine—mine—shall be the death! [Pg 206]
Foscarini. ”

“ He took a house in South Bank, Regent's Park, which he named Digamma Cottage—from his having contributed to the Quarterly Review an article on the Digamma—and fitted it up in extravagant style.
Foscolo could scarcely live at peace with anybody, and, as the result of one of his numerous altercations, he had to fight a duel. "We are," Lady Dacre wrote to Murray (December 1823) , "to have the whole of Foscolo's duel to-morrow. He tells me that it is not about a 'Fair lady': thank heaven!" ”

“ Old as she was, she felt the indescribable spell of Fox’s genius, and knowing her son’s heart as she did, she foresaw difficulties in the way of his happiness if his cousin should forget his old love and find a new one. Much as she had desired and endeavored to break up the unfortunate intimacy between Fox and the Whites, she had not foreseen that her own son’s happiness might be, in a way, dependent on Margaret’s power to hold her place in the regard of her early lover. ”

“ And here the infamy of bringing forward two little girls to do the work of base and vulgar charlatanism, appears in all its revolting character. The eldest of the children was then but nine years old. Had she been dressed in accordance with her tender age, it would have taken only very slight observation to detect the secret of the “rappings.” Those persons now living, who were present at this and at other public exhibitions of Spiritualism at that time, will easily remember that Margaret and Catherine Fox appeared on a platform in long gowns, as if they had been full-grown women. ”

“ The light from the lobby, brilliantly illuminating the space beneath the awning, outlined her as sharply as a silhouette against the darkness, and her figure,—she was a young and slender girl,—was thrown into high relief; the quiet elegance of her dress, the [10] sables on her shoulders, as well as the large picture hat which framed her face, being merely superfluous accessories to beauty of a type at once unusual and spiritual.
Fox, startled out of a revery which was largely pervaded by the personality of another woman, could not but observe this radiant picture ”

“ Apart from its impressive style, the book is weak and unwholesome, but it powerfully depicts an unquestionable tendency of the age, and as such has a right to live, apart from its influence on Leopardi, George Sand, and other more recent writers of genius. Foscolo's melancholy, fretful and egotistic as it is, is not pessimism; is not grounded in the nature of things, but is always remediable by a change in external circumstances. ”

“ FOSCOLO, UGO (1778-1827) , Italian writer, was born at Zante in the Ionian Isles on the 26th of January 1778. On the death of his father, a physician at Spalatro, in Dalmatia, the family removed to Venice, and in the University of Padua Foscolo prosecuted the studies begun in the Dalmatian grammar school. The fact that amongst his Paduan masters was the abbé Cesarotti, whose version of Ossian had made that work highly popular in Italy, was not without influence on Foscolo’s literary tastes, and his early knowledge of modern facilitated his studies in ancient Greek. ”

“ Fox stood still, rooted to the spot, his mind darkened by the fierce tumult of feeling which clamored against fate and against Margaret. She had broken with him long ago, what right had she to thrust herself into his life? Then the picture of her in her forlorn grief, in her appeal [207] to him, came back with an abruptness which wrung a groan from his lips. What man, so placed as he, could fling her unhappy love in her face?
And Rose? What she believed of him, shaping her thoughts by that stern old moralist her father, it was not difficult to imagine! ”