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all_chapterized_books/1130-chapters/9.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra/section_8_part_0.txt

The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra.act ii.scene iv

act ii, scene iv

{"name": "Act II, Scene iv", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210116191009/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/antony-cleopatra/summary/act-ii-scene-iv", "summary": "Lepidus meets with Maecenas and Agrippa. They are to gather their troops and meet together at Mount Misenum, where they'll face off with Pompey's army. Lepidus has some other stuff to do, so he'll be there two days later than the other men.", "analysis": ""}

SCENE IV. Rome. A street Enter LEPIDUS, MAECENAS, and AGRIPPA LEPIDUS. Trouble yourselves no further. Pray you hasten Your generals after. AGRIPPA. Sir, Mark Antony Will e'en but kiss Octavia, and we'll follow. LEPIDUS. Till I shall see you in your soldier's dress, Which will become you both, farewell. MAECENAS. We shall, As I conceive the journey, be at th' Mount Before you, Lepidus. LEPIDUS. Your way is shorter; My purposes do draw me much about. You'll win two days upon me. BOTH. Sir, good success! LEPIDUS. Farewell. Exeunt

Act II, Scene iv

https://web.archive.org/web/20210116191009/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/antony-cleopatra/summary/act-ii-scene-iv

Lepidus meets with Maecenas and Agrippa. They are to gather their troops and meet together at Mount Misenum, where they'll face off with Pompey's army. Lepidus has some other stuff to do, so he'll be there two days later than the other men.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/05.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_4_part_0.txt

Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 5

chapter 5

{"name": "Phase I: \"The Maiden,\" Chapter Five", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210424232301/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary/chapter-5", "summary": "Tess's guilt over having contributed to the death of Prince makes her more open to her mother's proposal that she go to the rich Mrs. D'Urberville. She's willing to visit her as a distant relation, but reluctant to ask for money. Tess would rather try to get work somewhere, but since her mother is so set on it, Tess agrees. Still, she tells her mother it is \"silly\" to think of the rich Mrs. D'Urberville setting Tess up with a rich man. The next day, Tess takes a passing cart to get to Trantridge, where \"the vague and mysterious Mrs. D'Urberville\" lived . As she leaves the village of Marlott, she looks back, and reflects on the childhood she's spent there. The narrator describes scenes of Tess with her girlish friends playing in the grass; he then describes Tess's growing \"Malthusian vexation\" that her parents should continue having so many children . Historical side note: The expression \"Malthusian vexation\" could use some explanation. Thomas Malthus was a political economist and philosopher who wrote an influential book called Essay on the Principle of Population in 1803. In it, he argues for the control of population growth through celibacy, because if the poorer classes continued to reproduce at the rate they were going, they would just perpetuate the cycle of poverty and starvation--they were reproducing faster than the food supply could support them. So Tess's \"Malthusian vexation\" refers to this consciousness that her parents were producing more little mouths than they were capable of feeding. Back to the story: Tess, the narrator informs us, is better educated and more sensible than either of her parents, and as she has gotten older, more and more of the family responsibilities have fallen to her. So it's a \"matter of course\" that she should be the one to go on the first visit to the rich D'Urbervilles. She climbs off of the cart and starts walking in the direction of the D'Urberville house, called The Slopes. The Slopes is a modern country house, without any farmland associated with it, or any tenants--it is intended for \"enjoyment pure and simple\" . The house itself, she finds, is almost new, but is set within a big piece of forest called The Chase--a reminder of the ancient and \"Druidical\" forest that once covered that whole region. Everything on the estate, from the stables to the greenhouses, is shiny and new--not at all what Tess expected. She begins to feel hesitant again. The narrator explains something of the history of the D'Urbervilles, or Stoke-D'Urbervilles, \"as they at first called themselves\" . Mrs. D'Urberville's husband, Simon Stoke made his fortune as \"an honest merchant in the North\" of England . He felt the need to change his name--the narrator doesn't explain why--and spends a while going through old family names in the British Museum before choosing \"D'Urberville\" as being appropriately old and aristocratic. And, importantly, there were no modern branches of that family--the name had virtually died out. So the rich branch of the D'Urberville family isn't related to the Durbeyfields at all, but of course Tess's parents don't realize that. They have no idea, the narrator tells us, that it's possible to change your name, or to choose an ancient name because you liked the sound of it at the British Museum. Tess is standing on the edge of the lawn hesitating when a tall young man comes out of a tent that's pitched on the lawn. He's smoking a cigarette, and has a curly black moustache . He greets her with, \"Well, my big Beauty, what can I do for you?\" . Tess doesn't know what to say, so he adds that his name is Mr. D'Urberville, and asks if she's there to see him, or his mother. She says she'd like to see his mother, but Mr. D'Urberville answers that that would be impossible, as his mother is an invalid and cannot see visitors. He asks what the business is. Tess becomes embarrassed--her errand seems ridiculous now. She stammers that her mother had sent her to say that they were of the same family. He at first assumes that she's part of his father's family, the Stokes, but of course she corrects him, and he glosses over his slip. She says that, since she can't visit his mother, she'll just catch the cart back to Marlott on its way back. He reminds her that the cart won't be by for some hours, and suggests that he show her around the grounds and garden before she goes. He calls her his \"pretty Coz\" , which is a Shakespearean shortening of \"Cousin.\" Tess feels encouraged by this--she thinks he's acknowledging her as a relation. But she still wants to cut the visit as short as possible. But the young man is pushy enough that she feels that it would be rude to refuse. He takes her through the fruit garden, and feeds her strawberries, much to Tess's embarrassment--she says she would rather feed herself. But he insists. When she can't eat any more, he fills a basket for her, and then cuts her roses and pins them to her hat and dress, and piles more onto her basket. Finally, he looks at his watch, and suggests that they have something to eat before she has to catch her cart back to Marlott. They eat in the big tent as though they were at a medieval tournament. He smokes, and watches her eat with evident enjoyment, and the narrator tells us his first name: Alec. The narrator describes Tess's \"innocence\" of the \"tragic mischief\" Alec would cause her as she sits \"munching\" . As Alec walks Tess back to the road where she'll meet the cart, he asks her name, and for more particulars about her family. Tess explains about Prince. Alec says he'll try to do something, and that his mother will surely be able to find work for her. He concludes with the reminder that she is not really a D'Urberville, but a Durbeyfield--\"quite another name\" . Tess proudly answers that she \"wishes for no better\" name . Alec almost kisses her as they part, but thinks better of it, and lets her go. The narrator says that if Tess had realized the importance of this first meeting, she might have questioned the injustice of her fate, especially since Alec is so clearly the wrong man. The right man had seen her, but she had left no definite impression on him yet. The narrator doesn't say which man that is, but we're left to guess that it was the young man named Angel who didn't dance with her at the club-walking. The narrator then questions the bad planning of the universe, and shakes his fist at the tragic frequency of missed connections. Then Alec D'Urberville went back into his tent on the lawn, looks very pleased, and thinks about what a \"charming girl\" Tess is.", "analysis": ""}

The haggling business, which had mainly depended on the horse, became disorganized forthwith. Distress, if not penury, loomed in the distance. Durbeyfield was what was locally called a slack-twisted fellow; he had good strength to work at times; but the times could not be relied on to coincide with the hours of requirement; and, having been unaccustomed to the regular toil of the day-labourer, he was not particularly persistent when they did so coincide. Tess, meanwhile, as the one who had dragged her parents into this quagmire, was silently wondering what she could do to help them out of it; and then her mother broached her scheme. "We must take the ups wi' the downs, Tess," said she; "and never could your high blood have been found out at a more called-for moment. You must try your friends. Do ye know that there is a very rich Mrs d'Urberville living on the outskirts o' The Chase, who must be our relation? You must go to her and claim kin, and ask for some help in our trouble." "I shouldn't care to do that," says Tess. "If there is such a lady, 'twould be enough for us if she were friendly--not to expect her to give us help." "You could win her round to do anything, my dear. Besides, perhaps there's more in it than you know of. I've heard what I've heard, good-now." The oppressive sense of the harm she had done led Tess to be more deferential than she might otherwise have been to the maternal wish; but she could not understand why her mother should find such satisfaction in contemplating an enterprise of, to her, such doubtful profit. Her mother might have made inquiries, and have discovered that this Mrs d'Urberville was a lady of unequalled virtues and charity. But Tess's pride made the part of poor relation one of particular distaste to her. "I'd rather try to get work," she murmured. "Durbeyfield, you can settle it," said his wife, turning to where he sat in the background. "If you say she ought to go, she will go." "I don't like my children going and making themselves beholden to strange kin," murmured he. "I'm the head of the noblest branch o' the family, and I ought to live up to it." His reasons for staying away were worse to Tess than her own objections to going. "Well, as I killed the horse, mother," she said mournfully, "I suppose I ought to do something. I don't mind going and seeing her, but you must leave it to me about asking for help. And don't go thinking about her making a match for me--it is silly." "Very well said, Tess!" observed her father sententiously. "Who said I had such a thought?" asked Joan. "I fancy it is in your mind, mother. But I'll go." Rising early next day she walked to the hill-town called Shaston, and there took advantage of a van which twice in the week ran from Shaston eastward to Chaseborough, passing near Trantridge, the parish in which the vague and mysterious Mrs d'Urberville had her residence. Tess Durbeyfield's route on this memorable morning lay amid the north-eastern undulations of the Vale in which she had been born, and in which her life had unfolded. The Vale of Blackmoor was to her the world, and its inhabitants the races thereof. From the gates and stiles of Marlott she had looked down its length in the wondering days of infancy, and what had been mystery to her then was not much less than mystery to her now. She had seen daily from her chamber-window towers, villages, faint white mansions; above all, the town of Shaston standing majestically on its height; its windows shining like lamps in the evening sun. She had hardly ever visited the place, only a small tract even of the Vale and its environs being known to her by close inspection. Much less had she been far outside the valley. Every contour of the surrounding hills was as personal to her as that of her relatives' faces; but for what lay beyond, her judgment was dependent on the teaching of the village school, where she had held a leading place at the time of her leaving, a year or two before this date. In those early days she had been much loved by others of her own sex and age, and had used to be seen about the village as one of three--all nearly of the same year--walking home from school side by side; Tess the middle one--in a pink print pinafore, of a finely reticulated pattern, worn over a stuff frock that had lost its original colour for a nondescript tertiary--marching on upon long stalky legs, in tight stockings which had little ladder-like holes at the knees, torn by kneeling in the roads and banks in search of vegetable and mineral treasures; her then earth-coloured hair hanging like pot-hooks; the arms of the two outside girls resting round the waist of Tess; her arms on the shoulders of the two supporters. As Tess grew older, and began to see how matters stood, she felt quite a Malthusian towards her mother for thoughtlessly giving her so many little sisters and brothers, when it was such a trouble to nurse and provide for them. Her mother's intelligence was that of a happy child: Joan Durbeyfield was simply an additional one, and that not the eldest, to her own long family of waiters on Providence. However, Tess became humanely beneficent towards the small ones, and to help them as much as possible she used, as soon as she left school, to lend a hand at haymaking or harvesting on neighbouring farms; or, by preference, at milking or butter-making processes, which she had learnt when her father had owned cows; and being deft-fingered it was a kind of work in which she excelled. Every day seemed to throw upon her young shoulders more of the family burdens, and that Tess should be the representative of the Durbeyfields at the d'Urberville mansion came as a thing of course. In this instance it must be admitted that the Durbeyfields were putting their fairest side outward. She alighted from the van at Trantridge Cross, and ascended on foot a hill in the direction of the district known as The Chase, on the borders of which, as she had been informed, Mrs d'Urberville's seat, The Slopes, would be found. It was not a manorial home in the ordinary sense, with fields, and pastures, and a grumbling farmer, out of whom the owner had to squeeze an income for himself and his family by hook or by crook. It was more, far more; a country-house built for enjoyment pure and simple, with not an acre of troublesome land attached to it beyond what was required for residential purposes, and for a little fancy farm kept in hand by the owner, and tended by a bailiff. The crimson brick lodge came first in sight, up to its eaves in dense evergreens. Tess thought this was the mansion itself till, passing through the side wicket with some trepidation, and onward to a point at which the drive took a turn, the house proper stood in full view. It was of recent erection--indeed almost new--and of the same rich red colour that formed such a contrast with the evergreens of the lodge. Far behind the corner of the house--which rose like a geranium bloom against the subdued colours around--stretched the soft azure landscape of The Chase--a truly venerable tract of forest land, one of the few remaining woodlands in England of undoubted primaeval date, wherein Druidical mistletoe was still found on aged oaks, and where enormous yew-trees, not planted by the hand of man grew as they had grown when they were pollarded for bows. All this sylvan antiquity, however, though visible from The Slopes, was outside the immediate boundaries of the estate. Everything on this snug property was bright, thriving, and well kept; acres of glass-houses stretched down the inclines to the copses at their feet. Everything looked like money--like the last coin issued from the Mint. The stables, partly screened by Austrian pines and evergreen oaks, and fitted with every late appliance, were as dignified as Chapels-of-Ease. On the extensive lawn stood an ornamental tent, its door being towards her. Simple Tess Durbeyfield stood at gaze, in a half-alarmed attitude, on the edge of the gravel sweep. Her feet had brought her onward to this point before she had quite realized where she was; and now all was contrary to her expectation. "I thought we were an old family; but this is all new!" she said, in her artlessness. She wished that she had not fallen in so readily with her mother's plans for "claiming kin," and had endeavoured to gain assistance nearer home. The d'Urbervilles--or Stoke-d'Urbervilles, as they at first called themselves--who owned all this, were a somewhat unusual family to find in such an old-fashioned part of the country. Parson Tringham had spoken truly when he said that our shambling John Durbeyfield was the only really lineal representative of the old d'Urberville family existing in the county, or near it; he might have added, what he knew very well, that the Stoke-d'Urbervilles were no more d'Urbervilles of the true tree then he was himself. Yet it must be admitted that this family formed a very good stock whereon to regraft a name which sadly wanted such renovation. When old Mr Simon Stoke, latterly deceased, had made his fortune as an honest merchant (some said money-lender) in the North, he decided to settle as a county man in the South of England, out of hail of his business district; and in doing this he felt the necessity of recommencing with a name that would not too readily identify him with the smart tradesman of the past, and that would be less commonplace than the original bald, stark words. Conning for an hour in the British Museum the pages of works devoted to extinct, half-extinct, obscured, and ruined families appertaining to the quarter of England in which he proposed to settle, he considered that _d'Urberville_ looked and sounded as well as any of them: and d'Urberville accordingly was annexed to his own name for himself and his heirs eternally. Yet he was not an extravagant-minded man in this, and in constructing his family tree on the new basis was duly reasonable in framing his inter-marriages and aristocratic links, never inserting a single title above a rank of strict moderation. Of this work of imagination poor Tess and her parents were naturally in ignorance--much to their discomfiture; indeed, the very possibility of such annexations was unknown to them; who supposed that, though to be well-favoured might be the gift of fortune, a family name came by nature. Tess still stood hesitating like a bather about to make his plunge, hardly knowing whether to retreat or to persevere, when a figure came forth from the dark triangular door of the tent. It was that of a tall young man, smoking. He had an almost swarthy complexion, with full lips, badly moulded, though red and smooth, above which was a well-groomed black moustache with curled points, though his age could not be more than three- or four-and-twenty. Despite the touches of barbarism in his contours, there was a singular force in the gentleman's face, and in his bold rolling eye. "Well, my Beauty, what can I do for you?" said he, coming forward. And perceiving that she stood quite confounded: "Never mind me. I am Mr d'Urberville. Have you come to see me or my mother?" This embodiment of a d'Urberville and a namesake differed even more from what Tess had expected than the house and grounds had differed. She had dreamed of an aged and dignified face, the sublimation of all the d'Urberville lineaments, furrowed with incarnate memories representing in hieroglyphic the centuries of her family's and England's history. But she screwed herself up to the work in hand, since she could not get out of it, and answered-- "I came to see your mother, sir." "I am afraid you cannot see her--she is an invalid," replied the present representative of the spurious house; for this was Mr Alec, the only son of the lately deceased gentleman. "Cannot I answer your purpose? What is the business you wish to see her about?" "It isn't business--it is--I can hardly say what!" "Pleasure?" "Oh no. Why, sir, if I tell you, it will seem--" Tess's sense of a certain ludicrousness in her errand was now so strong that, notwithstanding her awe of him, and her general discomfort at being here, her rosy lips curved towards a smile, much to the attraction of the swarthy Alexander. "It is so very foolish," she stammered; "I fear can't tell you!" "Never mind; I like foolish things. Try again, my dear," said he kindly. "Mother asked me to come," Tess continued; "and, indeed, I was in the mind to do so myself likewise. But I did not think it would be like this. I came, sir, to tell you that we are of the same family as you." "Ho! Poor relations?" "Yes." "Stokes?" "No; d'Urbervilles." "Ay, ay; I mean d'Urbervilles." "Our names are worn away to Durbeyfield; but we have several proofs that we are d'Urbervilles. Antiquarians hold we are,--and--and we have an old seal, marked with a ramping lion on a shield, and a castle over him. And we have a very old silver spoon, round in the bowl like a little ladle, and marked with the same castle. But it is so worn that mother uses it to stir the pea-soup." "A castle argent is certainly my crest," said he blandly. "And my arms a lion rampant." "And so mother said we ought to make ourselves beknown to you--as we've lost our horse by a bad accident, and are the oldest branch o' the family." "Very kind of your mother, I'm sure. And I, for one, don't regret her step." Alec looked at Tess as he spoke, in a way that made her blush a little. "And so, my pretty girl, you've come on a friendly visit to us, as relations?" "I suppose I have," faltered Tess, looking uncomfortable again. "Well--there's no harm in it. Where do you live? What are you?" She gave him brief particulars; and responding to further inquiries told him that she was intending to go back by the same carrier who had brought her. "It is a long while before he returns past Trantridge Cross. Supposing we walk round the grounds to pass the time, my pretty Coz?" Tess wished to abridge her visit as much as possible; but the young man was pressing, and she consented to accompany him. He conducted her about the lawns, and flower-beds, and conservatories; and thence to the fruit-garden and greenhouses, where he asked her if she liked strawberries. "Yes," said Tess, "when they come." "They are already here." D'Urberville began gathering specimens of the fruit for her, handing them back to her as he stooped; and, presently, selecting a specially fine product of the "British Queen" variety, he stood up and held it by the stem to her mouth. "No--no!" she said quickly, putting her fingers between his hand and her lips. "I would rather take it in my own hand." "Nonsense!" he insisted; and in a slight distress she parted her lips and took it in. They had spent some time wandering desultorily thus, Tess eating in a half-pleased, half-reluctant state whatever d'Urberville offered her. When she could consume no more of the strawberries he filled her little basket with them; and then the two passed round to the rose-trees, whence he gathered blossoms and gave her to put in her bosom. She obeyed like one in a dream, and when she could affix no more he himself tucked a bud or two into her hat, and heaped her basket with others in the prodigality of his bounty. At last, looking at his watch, he said, "Now, by the time you have had something to eat, it will be time for you to leave, if you want to catch the carrier to Shaston. Come here, and I'll see what grub I can find." Stoke d'Urberville took her back to the lawn and into the tent, where he left her, soon reappearing with a basket of light luncheon, which he put before her himself. It was evidently the gentleman's wish not to be disturbed in this pleasant _tete-a-tete_ by the servantry. "Do you mind my smoking?" he asked. "Oh, not at all, sir." He watched her pretty and unconscious munching through the skeins of smoke that pervaded the tent, and Tess Durbeyfield did not divine, as she innocently looked down at the roses in her bosom, that there behind the blue narcotic haze was potentially the "tragic mischief" of her drama--one who stood fair to be the blood-red ray in the spectrum of her young life. She had an attribute which amounted to a disadvantage just now; and it was this that caused Alec d'Urberville's eyes to rivet themselves upon her. It was a luxuriance of aspect, a fulness of growth, which made her appear more of a woman than she really was. She had inherited the feature from her mother without the quality it denoted. It had troubled her mind occasionally, till her companions had said that it was a fault which time would cure. She soon had finished her lunch. "Now I am going home, sir," she said, rising. "And what do they call you?" he asked, as he accompanied her along the drive till they were out of sight of the house. "Tess Durbeyfield, down at Marlott." "And you say your people have lost their horse?" "I--killed him!" she answered, her eyes filling with tears as she gave particulars of Prince's death. "And I don't know what to do for father on account of it!" "I must think if I cannot do something. My mother must find a berth for you. But, Tess, no nonsense about 'd'Urberville';--'Durbeyfield' only, you know--quite another name." "I wish for no better, sir," said she with something of dignity. For a moment--only for a moment--when they were in the turning of the drive, between the tall rhododendrons and conifers, before the lodge became visible, he inclined his face towards her as if--but, no: he thought better of it, and let her go. Thus the thing began. Had she perceived this meeting's import she might have asked why she was doomed to be seen and coveted that day by the wrong man, and not by some other man, the right and desired one in all respects--as nearly as humanity can supply the right and desired; yet to him who amongst her acquaintance might have approximated to this kind, she was but a transient impression, half forgotten. In the ill-judged execution of the well-judged plan of things the call seldom produces the comer, the man to love rarely coincides with the hour for loving. Nature does not often say "See!" to her poor creature at a time when seeing can lead to happy doing; or reply "Here!" to a body's cry of "Where?" till the hide-and-seek has become an irksome, outworn game. We may wonder whether at the acme and summit of the human progress these anachronisms will be corrected by a finer intuition, a closer interaction of the social machinery than that which now jolts us round and along; but such completeness is not to be prophesied, or even conceived as possible. Enough that in the present case, as in millions, it was not the two halves of a perfect whole that confronted each other at the perfect moment; a missing counterpart wandered independently about the earth waiting in crass obtuseness till the late time came. Out of which maladroit delay sprang anxieties, disappointments, shocks, catastrophes, and passing-strange destinies. When d'Urberville got back to the tent he sat down astride on a chair, reflecting, with a pleased gleam in his face. Then he broke into a loud laugh. "Well, I'm damned! What a funny thing! Ha-ha-ha! And what a crumby girl!"

Phase I: "The Maiden," Chapter Five

https://web.archive.org/web/20210424232301/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary/chapter-5

Tess's guilt over having contributed to the death of Prince makes her more open to her mother's proposal that she go to the rich Mrs. D'Urberville. She's willing to visit her as a distant relation, but reluctant to ask for money. Tess would rather try to get work somewhere, but since her mother is so set on it, Tess agrees. Still, she tells her mother it is "silly" to think of the rich Mrs. D'Urberville setting Tess up with a rich man. The next day, Tess takes a passing cart to get to Trantridge, where "the vague and mysterious Mrs. D'Urberville" lived . As she leaves the village of Marlott, she looks back, and reflects on the childhood she's spent there. The narrator describes scenes of Tess with her girlish friends playing in the grass; he then describes Tess's growing "Malthusian vexation" that her parents should continue having so many children . Historical side note: The expression "Malthusian vexation" could use some explanation. Thomas Malthus was a political economist and philosopher who wrote an influential book called Essay on the Principle of Population in 1803. In it, he argues for the control of population growth through celibacy, because if the poorer classes continued to reproduce at the rate they were going, they would just perpetuate the cycle of poverty and starvation--they were reproducing faster than the food supply could support them. So Tess's "Malthusian vexation" refers to this consciousness that her parents were producing more little mouths than they were capable of feeding. Back to the story: Tess, the narrator informs us, is better educated and more sensible than either of her parents, and as she has gotten older, more and more of the family responsibilities have fallen to her. So it's a "matter of course" that she should be the one to go on the first visit to the rich D'Urbervilles. She climbs off of the cart and starts walking in the direction of the D'Urberville house, called The Slopes. The Slopes is a modern country house, without any farmland associated with it, or any tenants--it is intended for "enjoyment pure and simple" . The house itself, she finds, is almost new, but is set within a big piece of forest called The Chase--a reminder of the ancient and "Druidical" forest that once covered that whole region. Everything on the estate, from the stables to the greenhouses, is shiny and new--not at all what Tess expected. She begins to feel hesitant again. The narrator explains something of the history of the D'Urbervilles, or Stoke-D'Urbervilles, "as they at first called themselves" . Mrs. D'Urberville's husband, Simon Stoke made his fortune as "an honest merchant in the North" of England . He felt the need to change his name--the narrator doesn't explain why--and spends a while going through old family names in the British Museum before choosing "D'Urberville" as being appropriately old and aristocratic. And, importantly, there were no modern branches of that family--the name had virtually died out. So the rich branch of the D'Urberville family isn't related to the Durbeyfields at all, but of course Tess's parents don't realize that. They have no idea, the narrator tells us, that it's possible to change your name, or to choose an ancient name because you liked the sound of it at the British Museum. Tess is standing on the edge of the lawn hesitating when a tall young man comes out of a tent that's pitched on the lawn. He's smoking a cigarette, and has a curly black moustache . He greets her with, "Well, my big Beauty, what can I do for you?" . Tess doesn't know what to say, so he adds that his name is Mr. D'Urberville, and asks if she's there to see him, or his mother. She says she'd like to see his mother, but Mr. D'Urberville answers that that would be impossible, as his mother is an invalid and cannot see visitors. He asks what the business is. Tess becomes embarrassed--her errand seems ridiculous now. She stammers that her mother had sent her to say that they were of the same family. He at first assumes that she's part of his father's family, the Stokes, but of course she corrects him, and he glosses over his slip. She says that, since she can't visit his mother, she'll just catch the cart back to Marlott on its way back. He reminds her that the cart won't be by for some hours, and suggests that he show her around the grounds and garden before she goes. He calls her his "pretty Coz" , which is a Shakespearean shortening of "Cousin." Tess feels encouraged by this--she thinks he's acknowledging her as a relation. But she still wants to cut the visit as short as possible. But the young man is pushy enough that she feels that it would be rude to refuse. He takes her through the fruit garden, and feeds her strawberries, much to Tess's embarrassment--she says she would rather feed herself. But he insists. When she can't eat any more, he fills a basket for her, and then cuts her roses and pins them to her hat and dress, and piles more onto her basket. Finally, he looks at his watch, and suggests that they have something to eat before she has to catch her cart back to Marlott. They eat in the big tent as though they were at a medieval tournament. He smokes, and watches her eat with evident enjoyment, and the narrator tells us his first name: Alec. The narrator describes Tess's "innocence" of the "tragic mischief" Alec would cause her as she sits "munching" . As Alec walks Tess back to the road where she'll meet the cart, he asks her name, and for more particulars about her family. Tess explains about Prince. Alec says he'll try to do something, and that his mother will surely be able to find work for her. He concludes with the reminder that she is not really a D'Urberville, but a Durbeyfield--"quite another name" . Tess proudly answers that she "wishes for no better" name . Alec almost kisses her as they part, but thinks better of it, and lets her go. The narrator says that if Tess had realized the importance of this first meeting, she might have questioned the injustice of her fate, especially since Alec is so clearly the wrong man. The right man had seen her, but she had left no definite impression on him yet. The narrator doesn't say which man that is, but we're left to guess that it was the young man named Angel who didn't dance with her at the club-walking. The narrator then questions the bad planning of the universe, and shakes his fist at the tragic frequency of missed connections. Then Alec D'Urberville went back into his tent on the lawn, looks very pleased, and thinks about what a "charming girl" Tess is.

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/174-chapters/15.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Picture of Dorian Gray/section_7_part_1.txt

The Picture of Dorian Gray.chapter 15

chapter 15

{"name": "Chapter 15", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210228142327/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/doriangray/section8/", "summary": "That evening, Dorian goes to a dinner party, at which he flirts with bored noblewomen. Reflecting on his calm demeanor, he feels \"keenly the terrible pleasure of a double life. Lady Narborough, the hostess, discusses the sad life of her daughter, who lives in a region of the countryside that has not witnessed a scandal since the time of Queen Elizabeth. Dorian finds the party tedious and brightens only when he learns Lord Henry will be in attendance. During dinner, after Lord Henry has arrived, Dorian finds it impossible to eat. Lord Henry asks him what is the matter. Lady Narborough suggests that Dorian is in love, though Dorian assures her that she is wrong. The party-goers talk wittily about marriage, and the ladies then leave the gentlemen to their \"politics and scandal. Lord Henry and Dorian discuss a party to be held at Dorian's country estate. Lord Henry then casually asks about Dorian's whereabouts the night before; Dorian's calm facade cracks a bit and he snaps out a strange, defensive response. Rather than join the women upstairs, Dorian decides to go home early. Once Dorian arrives home, he retrieves Basil's belongings from the wall compartment and burns them. He goes to an ornate cabinet and, opening one of its drawers, draws out a canister of opium. At midnight, he dresses in common clothes and hires a coach to bring him to a London neighborhood where the city's opium dens prosper", "analysis": "Chapters Fifteeen-Sixteen When Lord Henry alludes to the \"in de siecle\" in Chapter Fifteen, he refers more to the sensibilities that flourished in the 1890s than the chronological time period. In this decade, many people in continental Europe and England felt an unshakable sense of discontent. The values that once seemed to structure life and give it meaning were apparently lost. Two main reasons for this disenchantment were linked to the public functions of art and morality, which, in Victorian England, seemed inextricably connected. Art, it was thought, should function as a moral barometer; to the minds of many, this dictum left room for only the most restrictive morals and the most unimaginative art. The term \"fin de siecle\" therefore came to describe a mode of thinking that sought to escape this disenchantment and restore beauty to art and reshape public understandings of morality. In a way, though Dorian lives a life very much in tune with fin-de-siecle thinking, he rejects Victorian morals in favor of self-determined ethics based on pleasure and experience, and he retains--and is tortured by--a very Victorian mind-set. Indeed, by viewing the painting of himself as \"the most magical of mirrors,\" Dorian disavows the tenets of aestheticism that demand that art be completely freed of its connection to morality. The picture becomes the gauge by which Dorian measures his downfall and serves as a constant reminder of the sins that plague his conscience. If we understand Dorian as a victim of this Victorian circumstance, we can read his drastic course of action in a more sympathetic light. Indeed, by Chapter Sixteen, he is a man desperate to forget the sins for which he believes he can never be forgiven. As he sinks into the sordidness of the London docks and their opium dens, he reflects: Ugliness was the one reality. The coarse brawl, the loathsome den, the crude violence of disordered life, the very vileness of thief and outcast, were more vivid, in their intense actuality of impression, than all the gracious shapes of Art, the dreamy shadows of Song. Here, Dorian's thoughts echo French poets like Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud, who believed that the description of intense experience was the key to true beauty, even when the experience itself was something sordid, ugly, or grotesque. Indeed, in this trip to the opium den, Dorian intends to do nothing less than \"cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul.\" Of course, what Dorian finds in the opium den has a far less curative effect than he hopes. The presence of Adrian Singleton, a young man whose downfall and subsequent drug addiction is at least partially Dorian's fault, pains Dorian's conscience and makes it impossible for him to \"escape from himself.\" The reintroduction of James Vane makes this idea of escape quite literal. The avenging brother is, admittedly, a rather weak plot device that Wilde added to his 1891 revision of the novel. If Dorian fears and wishes to escape from himself, we can consider James the physical incarnation of that fear: James exists to precipitate the troubled Dorian's final breakdown."}

That evening, at eight-thirty, exquisitely dressed and wearing a large button-hole of Parma violets, Dorian Gray was ushered into Lady Narborough's drawing-room by bowing servants. His forehead was throbbing with maddened nerves, and he felt wildly excited, but his manner as he bent over his hostess's hand was as easy and graceful as ever. Perhaps one never seems so much at one's ease as when one has to play a part. Certainly no one looking at Dorian Gray that night could have believed that he had passed through a tragedy as horrible as any tragedy of our age. Those finely shaped fingers could never have clutched a knife for sin, nor those smiling lips have cried out on God and goodness. He himself could not help wondering at the calm of his demeanour, and for a moment felt keenly the terrible pleasure of a double life. It was a small party, got up rather in a hurry by Lady Narborough, who was a very clever woman with what Lord Henry used to describe as the remains of really remarkable ugliness. She had proved an excellent wife to one of our most tedious ambassadors, and having buried her husband properly in a marble mausoleum, which she had herself designed, and married off her daughters to some rich, rather elderly men, she devoted herself now to the pleasures of French fiction, French cookery, and French _esprit_ when she could get it. Dorian was one of her especial favourites, and she always told him that she was extremely glad she had not met him in early life. "I know, my dear, I should have fallen madly in love with you," she used to say, "and thrown my bonnet right over the mills for your sake. It is most fortunate that you were not thought of at the time. As it was, our bonnets were so unbecoming, and the mills were so occupied in trying to raise the wind, that I never had even a flirtation with anybody. However, that was all Narborough's fault. He was dreadfully short-sighted, and there is no pleasure in taking in a husband who never sees anything." Her guests this evening were rather tedious. The fact was, as she explained to Dorian, behind a very shabby fan, one of her married daughters had come up quite suddenly to stay with her, and, to make matters worse, had actually brought her husband with her. "I think it is most unkind of her, my dear," she whispered. "Of course I go and stay with them every summer after I come from Homburg, but then an old woman like me must have fresh air sometimes, and besides, I really wake them up. You don't know what an existence they lead down there. It is pure unadulterated country life. They get up early, because they have so much to do, and go to bed early, because they have so little to think about. There has not been a scandal in the neighbourhood since the time of Queen Elizabeth, and consequently they all fall asleep after dinner. You shan't sit next either of them. You shall sit by me and amuse me." Dorian murmured a graceful compliment and looked round the room. Yes: it was certainly a tedious party. Two of the people he had never seen before, and the others consisted of Ernest Harrowden, one of those middle-aged mediocrities so common in London clubs who have no enemies, but are thoroughly disliked by their friends; Lady Ruxton, an overdressed woman of forty-seven, with a hooked nose, who was always trying to get herself compromised, but was so peculiarly plain that to her great disappointment no one would ever believe anything against her; Mrs. Erlynne, a pushing nobody, with a delightful lisp and Venetian-red hair; Lady Alice Chapman, his hostess's daughter, a dowdy dull girl, with one of those characteristic British faces that, once seen, are never remembered; and her husband, a red-cheeked, white-whiskered creature who, like so many of his class, was under the impression that inordinate joviality can atone for an entire lack of ideas. He was rather sorry he had come, till Lady Narborough, looking at the great ormolu gilt clock that sprawled in gaudy curves on the mauve-draped mantelshelf, exclaimed: "How horrid of Henry Wotton to be so late! I sent round to him this morning on chance and he promised faithfully not to disappoint me." It was some consolation that Harry was to be there, and when the door opened and he heard his slow musical voice lending charm to some insincere apology, he ceased to feel bored. But at dinner he could not eat anything. Plate after plate went away untasted. Lady Narborough kept scolding him for what she called "an insult to poor Adolphe, who invented the _menu_ specially for you," and now and then Lord Henry looked across at him, wondering at his silence and abstracted manner. From time to time the butler filled his glass with champagne. He drank eagerly, and his thirst seemed to increase. "Dorian," said Lord Henry at last, as the _chaud-froid_ was being handed round, "what is the matter with you to-night? You are quite out of sorts." "I believe he is in love," cried Lady Narborough, "and that he is afraid to tell me for fear I should be jealous. He is quite right. I certainly should." "Dear Lady Narborough," murmured Dorian, smiling, "I have not been in love for a whole week--not, in fact, since Madame de Ferrol left town." "How you men can fall in love with that woman!" exclaimed the old lady. "I really cannot understand it." "It is simply because she remembers you when you were a little girl, Lady Narborough," said Lord Henry. "She is the one link between us and your short frocks." "She does not remember my short frocks at all, Lord Henry. But I remember her very well at Vienna thirty years ago, and how _decolletee_ she was then." "She is still _decolletee_," he answered, taking an olive in his long fingers; "and when she is in a very smart gown she looks like an _edition de luxe_ of a bad French novel. She is really wonderful, and full of surprises. Her capacity for family affection is extraordinary. When her third husband died, her hair turned quite gold from grief." "How can you, Harry!" cried Dorian. "It is a most romantic explanation," laughed the hostess. "But her third husband, Lord Henry! You don't mean to say Ferrol is the fourth?" "Certainly, Lady Narborough." "I don't believe a word of it." "Well, ask Mr. Gray. He is one of her most intimate friends." "Is it true, Mr. Gray?" "She assures me so, Lady Narborough," said Dorian. "I asked her whether, like Marguerite de Navarre, she had their hearts embalmed and hung at her girdle. She told me she didn't, because none of them had had any hearts at all." "Four husbands! Upon my word that is _trop de zele_." "_Trop d'audace_, I tell her," said Dorian. "Oh! she is audacious enough for anything, my dear. And what is Ferrol like? I don't know him." "The husbands of very beautiful women belong to the criminal classes," said Lord Henry, sipping his wine. Lady Narborough hit him with her fan. "Lord Henry, I am not at all surprised that the world says that you are extremely wicked." "But what world says that?" asked Lord Henry, elevating his eyebrows. "It can only be the next world. This world and I are on excellent terms." "Everybody I know says you are very wicked," cried the old lady, shaking her head. Lord Henry looked serious for some moments. "It is perfectly monstrous," he said, at last, "the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true." "Isn't he incorrigible?" cried Dorian, leaning forward in his chair. "I hope so," said his hostess, laughing. "But really, if you all worship Madame de Ferrol in this ridiculous way, I shall have to marry again so as to be in the fashion." "You will never marry again, Lady Narborough," broke in Lord Henry. "You were far too happy. When a woman marries again, it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs." "Narborough wasn't perfect," cried the old lady. "If he had been, you would not have loved him, my dear lady," was the rejoinder. "Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our intellects. You will never ask me to dinner again after saying this, I am afraid, Lady Narborough, but it is quite true." "Of course it is true, Lord Henry. If we women did not love you for your defects, where would you all be? Not one of you would ever be married. You would be a set of unfortunate bachelors. Not, however, that that would alter you much. Nowadays all the married men live like bachelors, and all the bachelors like married men." "_Fin de siecle_," murmured Lord Henry. "_Fin du globe_," answered his hostess. "I wish it were _fin du globe_," said Dorian with a sigh. "Life is a great disappointment." "Ah, my dear," cried Lady Narborough, putting on her gloves, "don't tell me that you have exhausted life. When a man says that one knows that life has exhausted him. Lord Henry is very wicked, and I sometimes wish that I had been; but you are made to be good--you look so good. I must find you a nice wife. Lord Henry, don't you think that Mr. Gray should get married?" "I am always telling him so, Lady Narborough," said Lord Henry with a bow. "Well, we must look out for a suitable match for him. I shall go through Debrett carefully to-night and draw out a list of all the eligible young ladies." "With their ages, Lady Narborough?" asked Dorian. "Of course, with their ages, slightly edited. But nothing must be done in a hurry. I want it to be what _The Morning Post_ calls a suitable alliance, and I want you both to be happy." "What nonsense people talk about happy marriages!" exclaimed Lord Henry. "A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her." "Ah! what a cynic you are!" cried the old lady, pushing back her chair and nodding to Lady Ruxton. "You must come and dine with me soon again. You are really an admirable tonic, much better than what Sir Andrew prescribes for me. You must tell me what people you would like to meet, though. I want it to be a delightful gathering." "I like men who have a future and women who have a past," he answered. "Or do you think that would make it a petticoat party?" "I fear so," she said, laughing, as she stood up. "A thousand pardons, my dear Lady Ruxton," she added, "I didn't see you hadn't finished your cigarette." "Never mind, Lady Narborough. I smoke a great deal too much. I am going to limit myself, for the future." "Pray don't, Lady Ruxton," said Lord Henry. "Moderation is a fatal thing. Enough is as bad as a meal. More than enough is as good as a feast." Lady Ruxton glanced at him curiously. "You must come and explain that to me some afternoon, Lord Henry. It sounds a fascinating theory," she murmured, as she swept out of the room. "Now, mind you don't stay too long over your politics and scandal," cried Lady Narborough from the door. "If you do, we are sure to squabble upstairs." The men laughed, and Mr. Chapman got up solemnly from the foot of the table and came up to the top. Dorian Gray changed his seat and went and sat by Lord Henry. Mr. Chapman began to talk in a loud voice about the situation in the House of Commons. He guffawed at his adversaries. The word _doctrinaire_--word full of terror to the British mind--reappeared from time to time between his explosions. An alliterative prefix served as an ornament of oratory. He hoisted the Union Jack on the pinnacles of thought. The inherited stupidity of the race--sound English common sense he jovially termed it--was shown to be the proper bulwark for society. A smile curved Lord Henry's lips, and he turned round and looked at Dorian. "Are you better, my dear fellow?" he asked. "You seemed rather out of sorts at dinner." "I am quite well, Harry. I am tired. That is all." "You were charming last night. The little duchess is quite devoted to you. She tells me she is going down to Selby." "She has promised to come on the twentieth." "Is Monmouth to be there, too?" "Oh, yes, Harry." "He bores me dreadfully, almost as much as he bores her. She is very clever, too clever for a woman. She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness. It is the feet of clay that make the gold of the image precious. Her feet are very pretty, but they are not feet of clay. White porcelain feet, if you like. They have been through the fire, and what fire does not destroy, it hardens. She has had experiences." "How long has she been married?" asked Dorian. "An eternity, she tells me. I believe, according to the peerage, it is ten years, but ten years with Monmouth must have been like eternity, with time thrown in. Who else is coming?" "Oh, the Willoughbys, Lord Rugby and his wife, our hostess, Geoffrey Clouston, the usual set. I have asked Lord Grotrian." "I like him," said Lord Henry. "A great many people don't, but I find him charming. He atones for being occasionally somewhat overdressed by being always absolutely over-educated. He is a very modern type." "I don't know if he will be able to come, Harry. He may have to go to Monte Carlo with his father." "Ah! what a nuisance people's people are! Try and make him come. By the way, Dorian, you ran off very early last night. You left before eleven. What did you do afterwards? Did you go straight home?" Dorian glanced at him hurriedly and frowned. "No, Harry," he said at last, "I did not get home till nearly three." "Did you go to the club?" "Yes," he answered. Then he bit his lip. "No, I don't mean that. I didn't go to the club. I walked about. I forget what I did.... How inquisitive you are, Harry! You always want to know what one has been doing. I always want to forget what I have been doing. I came in at half-past two, if you wish to know the exact time. I had left my latch-key at home, and my servant had to let me in. If you want any corroborative evidence on the subject, you can ask him." Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. "My dear fellow, as if I cared! Let us go up to the drawing-room. No sherry, thank you, Mr. Chapman. Something has happened to you, Dorian. Tell me what it is. You are not yourself to-night." "Don't mind me, Harry. I am irritable, and out of temper. I shall come round and see you to-morrow, or next day. Make my excuses to Lady Narborough. I shan't go upstairs. I shall go home. I must go home." "All right, Dorian. I dare say I shall see you to-morrow at tea-time. The duchess is coming." "I will try to be there, Harry," he said, leaving the room. As he drove back to his own house, he was conscious that the sense of terror he thought he had strangled had come back to him. Lord Henry's casual questioning had made him lose his nerve for the moment, and he wanted his nerve still. Things that were dangerous had to be destroyed. He winced. He hated the idea of even touching them. Yet it had to be done. He realized that, and when he had locked the door of his library, he opened the secret press into which he had thrust Basil Hallward's coat and bag. A huge fire was blazing. He piled another log on it. The smell of the singeing clothes and burning leather was horrible. It took him three-quarters of an hour to consume everything. At the end he felt faint and sick, and having lit some Algerian pastilles in a pierced copper brazier, he bathed his hands and forehead with a cool musk-scented vinegar. Suddenly he started. His eyes grew strangely bright, and he gnawed nervously at his underlip. Between two of the windows stood a large Florentine cabinet, made out of ebony and inlaid with ivory and blue lapis. He watched it as though it were a thing that could fascinate and make afraid, as though it held something that he longed for and yet almost loathed. His breath quickened. A mad craving came over him. He lit a cigarette and then threw it away. His eyelids drooped till the long fringed lashes almost touched his cheek. But he still watched the cabinet. At last he got up from the sofa on which he had been lying, went over to it, and having unlocked it, touched some hidden spring. A triangular drawer passed slowly out. His fingers moved instinctively towards it, dipped in, and closed on something. It was a small Chinese box of black and gold-dust lacquer, elaborately wrought, the sides patterned with curved waves, and the silken cords hung with round crystals and tasselled in plaited metal threads. He opened it. Inside was a green paste, waxy in lustre, the odour curiously heavy and persistent. He hesitated for some moments, with a strangely immobile smile upon his face. Then shivering, though the atmosphere of the room was terribly hot, he drew himself up and glanced at the clock. It was twenty minutes to twelve. He put the box back, shutting the cabinet doors as he did so, and went into his bedroom. As midnight was striking bronze blows upon the dusky air, Dorian Gray, dressed commonly, and with a muffler wrapped round his throat, crept quietly out of his house. In Bond Street he found a hansom with a good horse. He hailed it and in a low voice gave the driver an address. The man shook his head. "It is too far for me," he muttered. "Here is a sovereign for you," said Dorian. "You shall have another if you drive fast." "All right, sir," answered the man, "you will be there in an hour," and after his fare had got in he turned his horse round and drove rapidly towards the river.

Chapter 15

https://web.archive.org/web/20210228142327/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/doriangray/section8/

That evening, Dorian goes to a dinner party, at which he flirts with bored noblewomen. Reflecting on his calm demeanor, he feels "keenly the terrible pleasure of a double life. Lady Narborough, the hostess, discusses the sad life of her daughter, who lives in a region of the countryside that has not witnessed a scandal since the time of Queen Elizabeth. Dorian finds the party tedious and brightens only when he learns Lord Henry will be in attendance. During dinner, after Lord Henry has arrived, Dorian finds it impossible to eat. Lord Henry asks him what is the matter. Lady Narborough suggests that Dorian is in love, though Dorian assures her that she is wrong. The party-goers talk wittily about marriage, and the ladies then leave the gentlemen to their "politics and scandal. Lord Henry and Dorian discuss a party to be held at Dorian's country estate. Lord Henry then casually asks about Dorian's whereabouts the night before; Dorian's calm facade cracks a bit and he snaps out a strange, defensive response. Rather than join the women upstairs, Dorian decides to go home early. Once Dorian arrives home, he retrieves Basil's belongings from the wall compartment and burns them. He goes to an ornate cabinet and, opening one of its drawers, draws out a canister of opium. At midnight, he dresses in common clothes and hires a coach to bring him to a London neighborhood where the city's opium dens prosper

Chapters Fifteeen-Sixteen When Lord Henry alludes to the "in de siecle" in Chapter Fifteen, he refers more to the sensibilities that flourished in the 1890s than the chronological time period. In this decade, many people in continental Europe and England felt an unshakable sense of discontent. The values that once seemed to structure life and give it meaning were apparently lost. Two main reasons for this disenchantment were linked to the public functions of art and morality, which, in Victorian England, seemed inextricably connected. Art, it was thought, should function as a moral barometer; to the minds of many, this dictum left room for only the most restrictive morals and the most unimaginative art. The term "fin de siecle" therefore came to describe a mode of thinking that sought to escape this disenchantment and restore beauty to art and reshape public understandings of morality. In a way, though Dorian lives a life very much in tune with fin-de-siecle thinking, he rejects Victorian morals in favor of self-determined ethics based on pleasure and experience, and he retains--and is tortured by--a very Victorian mind-set. Indeed, by viewing the painting of himself as "the most magical of mirrors," Dorian disavows the tenets of aestheticism that demand that art be completely freed of its connection to morality. The picture becomes the gauge by which Dorian measures his downfall and serves as a constant reminder of the sins that plague his conscience. If we understand Dorian as a victim of this Victorian circumstance, we can read his drastic course of action in a more sympathetic light. Indeed, by Chapter Sixteen, he is a man desperate to forget the sins for which he believes he can never be forgiven. As he sinks into the sordidness of the London docks and their opium dens, he reflects: Ugliness was the one reality. The coarse brawl, the loathsome den, the crude violence of disordered life, the very vileness of thief and outcast, were more vivid, in their intense actuality of impression, than all the gracious shapes of Art, the dreamy shadows of Song. Here, Dorian's thoughts echo French poets like Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud, who believed that the description of intense experience was the key to true beauty, even when the experience itself was something sordid, ugly, or grotesque. Indeed, in this trip to the opium den, Dorian intends to do nothing less than "cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul." Of course, what Dorian finds in the opium den has a far less curative effect than he hopes. The presence of Adrian Singleton, a young man whose downfall and subsequent drug addiction is at least partially Dorian's fault, pains Dorian's conscience and makes it impossible for him to "escape from himself." The reintroduction of James Vane makes this idea of escape quite literal. The avenging brother is, admittedly, a rather weak plot device that Wilde added to his 1891 revision of the novel. If Dorian fears and wishes to escape from himself, we can consider James the physical incarnation of that fear: James exists to precipitate the troubled Dorian's final breakdown.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/44747-chapters/47.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_46_part_0.txt

The Red and the Black.part 2.chapter 17

part 2, chapter 17

{"name": "Part 2, Chapter 17", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-2-chapter-17", "summary": "Mathilde doesn't come to dinner the day after having sex with Julien. She sees him in the drawing room later that night, but doesn't look at him. Three days go by and Mathilde avoids him. Finally, he follows her into the garden and demands her attention. She is cold and bitter toward him. Julien admits to himself that he's actually in love with Mathilde. He decides to leave for his trip to Languedoc after all. He goes to the de La Moles' library to tell his employer he's leaving. He finds Mathilde there instead and argues with her. She says she's sorry she gave her virginity to the first young man who came along. This wounds Julien's pride badly. Julien grabs an old sword off the wall, intending to kill Mathilde. He recovers his senses before doing it, though. She's impressed by his boldness, since this is the kind of gesture a crazed lover would make in one of her novels. She realizes that she's falling for him again. After Mathilde has run off, the Marquis walks into the library and hears about Julien's departure. He says the he needs Julien to stick around for other business, though.", "analysis": ""}

CHAPTER XLVII AN OLD SWORD I now mean to be serious; it is time Since laughter now-a-days is deemed too serious. A jest at vice by virtues called a crime. _Don Juan, c. xiii._ She did not appear at dinner. She came for a minute into the salon in the evening, but did not look at Julien. He considered this behaviour strange, "but," he thought, "I do not know their usages. She will give me some good reason for all this." None the less he was a prey to the most extreme curiosity; he studied the expression of Mathilde's features; he was bound to own to himself that she looked cold and malicious. It was evidently not the same woman who on the proceeding night had had, or pretended to have, transports of happiness which were too extravagant to be genuine. The day after, and the subsequent day she showed the same coldness; she did not look at him, she did not notice his existence. Julien was devoured by the keenest anxiety and was a thousand leagues removed from that feeling of triumph which had been his only emotion on the first day. "Can it be by chance," he said to himself, "a return to virtue?" But this was a very bourgeois word to apply to the haughty Mathilde. "Placed in an ordinary position in life she would disbelieve in religion," thought Julien, "she only likes it in so far as it is very useful to the interests of her class." But perhaps she may as a mere matter of delicacy be keenly reproaching herself for the mistake which she has committed. Julien believed that he was her first lover. "But," he said to himself at other moments, "I must admit that there is no trace of naivety, simplicity, or tenderness in her own demeanour; I have never seen her more haughty, can she despise me? It would be worthy of her to reproach herself simply because of my low birth, for what she has done for me." While Julien, full of those preconceived ideas which he had found in books and in his memories of Verrieres, was chasing the phantom of a tender mistress, who from the minute when she has made her lover happy no longer thinks of her own existence, Mathilde's vanity was infuriated against him. As for the last two months she had no longer been bored, she was not frightened of boredom; consequently, without being able to have the slightest suspicion of it, Julien had lost his greatest advantage. "I have given myself a master," said mademoiselle de la Mole to herself, a prey to the blackest sorrow. "Luckily he is honour itself, but if I offend his vanity, he will revenge himself by making known the nature of our relations." Mathilde had never had a lover, and though passing through a stage of life which affords some tender illusions even to the coldest souls, she fell a prey to the most bitter reflections. "He has an immense dominion over me since his reign is one of terror, and he is capable, if I provoke him, of punishing me with an awful penalty." This idea alone was enough to induce mademoiselle de la Mole to insult him. Courage was the primary quality in her character. The only thing which could give her any thrill and cure her from a fundamental and chronically recurring ennui was the idea that she was staking her entire existence on a single throw. As mademoiselle de la Mole obstinately refused to look at him, Julien on the third day in spite of her evident objection, followed her into the billiard-room after dinner. "Well, sir, you think you have acquired some very strong rights over me?" she said to him with scarcely controlled anger, "since you venture to speak to me, in spite of my very clearly manifested wish? Do you know that no one in the world has had such effrontery?" The dialogue of these two lovers was incomparably humourous. Without suspecting it, they were animated by mutual sentiments of the most vivid hate. As neither the one nor the other had a meekly patient character, while they were both disciples of good form, they soon came to informing each other quite clearly that they would break for ever. "I swear eternal secrecy to you," said Julien. "I should like to add that I would never address a single word to you, were it not that a marked change might perhaps jeopardise your reputation." He saluted respectfully and left. He accomplished easily enough what he believed to be a duty; he was very far from thinking himself much in love with mademoiselle de la Mole. He had certainly not loved her three days before, when he had been hidden in the big mahogany cupboard. But the moment that he found himself estranged from her for ever his mood underwent a complete and rapid change. His memory tortured him by going over the least details in that night, which had as a matter of fact left him so cold. In the very night that followed this announcement of a final rupture, Julien almost went mad at being obliged to own to himself that he loved mademoiselle de la Mole. This discovery was followed by awful struggles: all his emotions were overwhelmed. Two days later, instead of being haughty towards M. de Croisenois, he could have almost burst out into tears and embraced him. His habituation to unhappiness gave him a gleam of commonsense, he decided to leave for Languedoc, packed his trunk and went to the post. He felt he would faint, when on arriving at the office of the mails, he was told that by a singular chance there was a place in the Toulouse mail. He booked it and returned to the Hotel de la Mole to announce his departure to the marquis. M. de la Mole had gone out. More dead than alive Julien went into the library to wait for him. What was his emotion when he found mademoiselle de la Mole there. As she saw him come, she assumed a malicious expression which it was impossible to mistake. In his unhappiness and surprise Julien lost his head and was weak enough to say to her in a tone of the most heartfelt tenderness. "So you love me no more." "I am horrified at having given myself to the first man who came along," said Mathilde crying with rage against herself. "The first man who came along," cried Julien, and he made for an old mediaeval sword which was kept in the library as a curiosity. His grief--which he thought was at its maximum at the moment when he had spoken to mademoiselle de la Mole--had been rendered a hundred times more intense by the tears of shame which he saw her shedding. He would have been the happiest of men if he had been able to kill her. When he was on the point of drawing the sword with some difficulty from its ancient scabbard, Mathilde, rendered happy by so novel a sensation, advanced proudly towards him, her tears were dry. The thought of his benefactor--the marquis de la Mole--presented itself vividly to Julien. "Shall I kill his daughter?" he said to himself, "how horrible." He made a movement to throw down the sword. "She will certainly," he thought, "burst out laughing at the sight of such a melodramatic pose:" that idea was responsible for his regaining all his self-possession. He looked curiously at the blade of the old sword as though he had been looking for some spot of rust, then put it back in the scabbard and replaced it with the utmost tranquillity on the gilt bronze nail from which it hung. The whole manoeuvre, which towards the end was very slow, lasted quite a minute; mademoiselle de la Mole looked at him in astonishment. "So I have been on the verge of being killed by my lover," she said to herself. This idea transported her into the palmiest days of the age of Charles IX. and of Henri III. She stood motionless before Julien, who had just replaced the sword; she looked at him with eyes whose hatred had disappeared. It must be owned that she was very fascinating at this moment, certainly no woman looked less like a Parisian doll (this expression symbolised Julien's great objection to the women of this city). "I shall relapse into some weakness for him," thought Mathilde; "it is quite likely that he will think himself my lord and master after a relapse like that at the very moment that I have been talking to him so firmly." She ran away. "By heaven, she is pretty said Julien as he watched her run and that's the creature who threw herself into my arms with so much passion scarcely a week ago ... and to think that those moments will never come back? And that it's my fault, to think of my being lacking in appreciation at the very moment when I was doing something so extraordinarily interesting! I must own that I was born with a very dull and unfortunate character." The marquis appeared; Julien hastened to announce his departure. "Where to?" said M. de la Mole. "For Languedoc." "No, if you please, you are reserved for higher destinies. If you leave it will be for the North.... In military phraseology I actually confine you in the hotel. You will compel me to be never more than two or three hours away. I may have need of you at any moment." Julien bowed and retired without a word, leaving the marquis in a state of great astonishment. He was incapable of speaking. He shut himself up in his room. He was there free to exaggerate to himself all the awfulness of his fate. "So," he thought, "I cannot even get away. God knows how many days the marquis will keep me in Paris. Great God, what will become of me, and not a friend whom I can consult? The abbe Pirard will never let me finish my first sentence, while the comte Altamira will propose enlisting me in some conspiracy. And yet I am mad; I feel it, I am mad. Who will be able to guide me, what will become of me?"

Part 2, Chapter 17

https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-2-chapter-17

Mathilde doesn't come to dinner the day after having sex with Julien. She sees him in the drawing room later that night, but doesn't look at him. Three days go by and Mathilde avoids him. Finally, he follows her into the garden and demands her attention. She is cold and bitter toward him. Julien admits to himself that he's actually in love with Mathilde. He decides to leave for his trip to Languedoc after all. He goes to the de La Moles' library to tell his employer he's leaving. He finds Mathilde there instead and argues with her. She says she's sorry she gave her virginity to the first young man who came along. This wounds Julien's pride badly. Julien grabs an old sword off the wall, intending to kill Mathilde. He recovers his senses before doing it, though. She's impressed by his boldness, since this is the kind of gesture a crazed lover would make in one of her novels. She realizes that she's falling for him again. After Mathilde has run off, the Marquis walks into the library and hears about Julien's departure. He says the he needs Julien to stick around for other business, though.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/174-chapters/12.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Picture of Dorian Gray/section_11_part_0.txt

The Picture of Dorian Gray.chapter 12

chapter 12

{"name": "Chapter 12", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210304030722/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/picture-dorian-gray/summary/chapter-12", "summary": "It's the night before Dorian's thirty-eighth birthday, and he's walking home from dinner at Lord Henry's. He runs into Basil, who's walking in the other direction, suitcase in hand. He pretends not to see him, but Basil notices. Dorian feels strangely apprehensive. Basil apparently just came from Dorian's house, where he'd been waiting for hours. Dorian makes an excuse for ignoring Basil and asks where he's off to. Basil's plan it to leave England for half a year and hang out in Paris until he's painted a masterpiece. The pair reaches Dorian's house, and Basil invites himself in, saying that he's got something to say to Dorian. Dorian vaguely tries to get Basil to leave, but Basil isn't to be stopped--he's got everything he needs for his trip, so he's in no rush. The two men settle in Dorian's library, and Basil gets down to business: he wants to talk to Dorian about Dorian. Basil lays it all out there--though Basil himself can't believe that someone as innocent looking and beautiful as Dorian could commit any crimes, Dorian's name has been dragged through the mud, and pretty much everyone else in London either loathes him or fears him. Rumor has it that he's ruined the lives of loads of young women and men in various ways. Dorian revolts, saying that people gossip about how he's ruined so many of his ex-friends, but it's actually their fault--he just brings out tendencies that are already innate in people . Dorian then tries to blame it all on English society... kind of a lame excuse. But Basil's not done--he continues to enumerate the horrible things he's heard about Dorian, who has apparently even ruined the reputation of poor Lady Gwendolen, Henry's sister. We wonder how Lord Henry feels about that. Gravely, Basil says he thought he knew Dorian, but he obviously doesn't, for he can't see into Dorian's soul. For obvious reasons, this comment really gets to Dorian. He laughs bitterly, and announces that Basil will see his soul tonight, since it's his own work. Uh oh--this can't possibly end up well for Basil. Dorian is excited--and insane! He can't wait to show the portrait to Basil, and hopes that the painter will feel bad for what he's done. Basil is understandably frightened. He begs Dorian to simply answer one question--are all these charges against him true? Dorian smiles contemptuously, and lures Basil upstairs, saying that he has a diary in which he records all of his actions . Basil agrees to go with him. Cue ominous organ music...", "analysis": ""}

It was on the ninth of November, the eve of his own thirty-eighth birthday, as he often remembered afterwards. He was walking home about eleven o'clock from Lord Henry's, where he had been dining, and was wrapped in heavy furs, as the night was cold and foggy. At the corner of Grosvenor Square and South Audley Street, a man passed him in the mist, walking very fast and with the collar of his grey ulster turned up. He had a bag in his hand. Dorian recognized him. It was Basil Hallward. A strange sense of fear, for which he could not account, came over him. He made no sign of recognition and went on quickly in the direction of his own house. But Hallward had seen him. Dorian heard him first stopping on the pavement and then hurrying after him. In a few moments, his hand was on his arm. "Dorian! What an extraordinary piece of luck! I have been waiting for you in your library ever since nine o'clock. Finally I took pity on your tired servant and told him to go to bed, as he let me out. I am off to Paris by the midnight train, and I particularly wanted to see you before I left. I thought it was you, or rather your fur coat, as you passed me. But I wasn't quite sure. Didn't you recognize me?" "In this fog, my dear Basil? Why, I can't even recognize Grosvenor Square. I believe my house is somewhere about here, but I don't feel at all certain about it. I am sorry you are going away, as I have not seen you for ages. But I suppose you will be back soon?" "No: I am going to be out of England for six months. I intend to take a studio in Paris and shut myself up till I have finished a great picture I have in my head. However, it wasn't about myself I wanted to talk. Here we are at your door. Let me come in for a moment. I have something to say to you." "I shall be charmed. But won't you miss your train?" said Dorian Gray languidly as he passed up the steps and opened the door with his latch-key. The lamplight struggled out through the fog, and Hallward looked at his watch. "I have heaps of time," he answered. "The train doesn't go till twelve-fifteen, and it is only just eleven. In fact, I was on my way to the club to look for you, when I met you. You see, I shan't have any delay about luggage, as I have sent on my heavy things. All I have with me is in this bag, and I can easily get to Victoria in twenty minutes." Dorian looked at him and smiled. "What a way for a fashionable painter to travel! A Gladstone bag and an ulster! Come in, or the fog will get into the house. And mind you don't talk about anything serious. Nothing is serious nowadays. At least nothing should be." Hallward shook his head, as he entered, and followed Dorian into the library. There was a bright wood fire blazing in the large open hearth. The lamps were lit, and an open Dutch silver spirit-case stood, with some siphons of soda-water and large cut-glass tumblers, on a little marqueterie table. "You see your servant made me quite at home, Dorian. He gave me everything I wanted, including your best gold-tipped cigarettes. He is a most hospitable creature. I like him much better than the Frenchman you used to have. What has become of the Frenchman, by the bye?" Dorian shrugged his shoulders. "I believe he married Lady Radley's maid, and has established her in Paris as an English dressmaker. Anglomania is very fashionable over there now, I hear. It seems silly of the French, doesn't it? But--do you know?--he was not at all a bad servant. I never liked him, but I had nothing to complain about. One often imagines things that are quite absurd. He was really very devoted to me and seemed quite sorry when he went away. Have another brandy-and-soda? Or would you like hock-and-seltzer? I always take hock-and-seltzer myself. There is sure to be some in the next room." "Thanks, I won't have anything more," said the painter, taking his cap and coat off and throwing them on the bag that he had placed in the corner. "And now, my dear fellow, I want to speak to you seriously. Don't frown like that. You make it so much more difficult for me." "What is it all about?" cried Dorian in his petulant way, flinging himself down on the sofa. "I hope it is not about myself. I am tired of myself to-night. I should like to be somebody else." "It is about yourself," answered Hallward in his grave deep voice, "and I must say it to you. I shall only keep you half an hour." Dorian sighed and lit a cigarette. "Half an hour!" he murmured. "It is not much to ask of you, Dorian, and it is entirely for your own sake that I am speaking. I think it right that you should know that the most dreadful things are being said against you in London." "I don't wish to know anything about them. I love scandals about other people, but scandals about myself don't interest me. They have not got the charm of novelty." "They must interest you, Dorian. Every gentleman is interested in his good name. You don't want people to talk of you as something vile and degraded. Of course, you have your position, and your wealth, and all that kind of thing. But position and wealth are not everything. Mind you, I don't believe these rumours at all. At least, I can't believe them when I see you. Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face. It cannot be concealed. People talk sometimes of secret vices. There are no such things. If a wretched man has a vice, it shows itself in the lines of his mouth, the droop of his eyelids, the moulding of his hands even. Somebody--I won't mention his name, but you know him--came to me last year to have his portrait done. I had never seen him before, and had never heard anything about him at the time, though I have heard a good deal since. He offered an extravagant price. I refused him. There was something in the shape of his fingers that I hated. I know now that I was quite right in what I fancied about him. His life is dreadful. But you, Dorian, with your pure, bright, innocent face, and your marvellous untroubled youth--I can't believe anything against you. And yet I see you very seldom, and you never come down to the studio now, and when I am away from you, and I hear all these hideous things that people are whispering about you, I don't know what to say. Why is it, Dorian, that a man like the Duke of Berwick leaves the room of a club when you enter it? Why is it that so many gentlemen in London will neither go to your house or invite you to theirs? You used to be a friend of Lord Staveley. I met him at dinner last week. Your name happened to come up in conversation, in connection with the miniatures you have lent to the exhibition at the Dudley. Staveley curled his lip and said that you might have the most artistic tastes, but that you were a man whom no pure-minded girl should be allowed to know, and whom no chaste woman should sit in the same room with. I reminded him that I was a friend of yours, and asked him what he meant. He told me. He told me right out before everybody. It was horrible! Why is your friendship so fatal to young men? There was that wretched boy in the Guards who committed suicide. You were his great friend. There was Sir Henry Ashton, who had to leave England with a tarnished name. You and he were inseparable. What about Adrian Singleton and his dreadful end? What about Lord Kent's only son and his career? I met his father yesterday in St. James's Street. He seemed broken with shame and sorrow. What about the young Duke of Perth? What sort of life has he got now? What gentleman would associate with him?" "Stop, Basil. You are talking about things of which you know nothing," said Dorian Gray, biting his lip, and with a note of infinite contempt in his voice. "You ask me why Berwick leaves a room when I enter it. It is because I know everything about his life, not because he knows anything about mine. With such blood as he has in his veins, how could his record be clean? You ask me about Henry Ashton and young Perth. Did I teach the one his vices, and the other his debauchery? If Kent's silly son takes his wife from the streets, what is that to me? If Adrian Singleton writes his friend's name across a bill, am I his keeper? I know how people chatter in England. The middle classes air their moral prejudices over their gross dinner-tables, and whisper about what they call the profligacies of their betters in order to try and pretend that they are in smart society and on intimate terms with the people they slander. In this country, it is enough for a man to have distinction and brains for every common tongue to wag against him. And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite." "Dorian," cried Hallward, "that is not the question. England is bad enough I know, and English society is all wrong. That is the reason why I want you to be fine. You have not been fine. One has a right to judge of a man by the effect he has over his friends. Yours seem to lose all sense of honour, of goodness, of purity. You have filled them with a madness for pleasure. They have gone down into the depths. You led them there. Yes: you led them there, and yet you can smile, as you are smiling now. And there is worse behind. I know you and Harry are inseparable. Surely for that reason, if for none other, you should not have made his sister's name a by-word." "Take care, Basil. You go too far." "I must speak, and you must listen. You shall listen. When you met Lady Gwendolen, not a breath of scandal had ever touched her. Is there a single decent woman in London now who would drive with her in the park? Why, even her children are not allowed to live with her. Then there are other stories--stories that you have been seen creeping at dawn out of dreadful houses and slinking in disguise into the foulest dens in London. Are they true? Can they be true? When I first heard them, I laughed. I hear them now, and they make me shudder. What about your country-house and the life that is led there? Dorian, you don't know what is said about you. I won't tell you that I don't want to preach to you. I remember Harry saying once that every man who turned himself into an amateur curate for the moment always began by saying that, and then proceeded to break his word. I do want to preach to you. I want you to lead such a life as will make the world respect you. I want you to have a clean name and a fair record. I want you to get rid of the dreadful people you associate with. Don't shrug your shoulders like that. Don't be so indifferent. You have a wonderful influence. Let it be for good, not for evil. They say that you corrupt every one with whom you become intimate, and that it is quite sufficient for you to enter a house for shame of some kind to follow after. I don't know whether it is so or not. How should I know? But it is said of you. I am told things that it seems impossible to doubt. Lord Gloucester was one of my greatest friends at Oxford. He showed me a letter that his wife had written to him when she was dying alone in her villa at Mentone. Your name was implicated in the most terrible confession I ever read. I told him that it was absurd--that I knew you thoroughly and that you were incapable of anything of the kind. Know you? I wonder do I know you? Before I could answer that, I should have to see your soul." "To see my soul!" muttered Dorian Gray, starting up from the sofa and turning almost white from fear. "Yes," answered Hallward gravely, and with deep-toned sorrow in his voice, "to see your soul. But only God can do that." A bitter laugh of mockery broke from the lips of the younger man. "You shall see it yourself, to-night!" he cried, seizing a lamp from the table. "Come: it is your own handiwork. Why shouldn't you look at it? You can tell the world all about it afterwards, if you choose. Nobody would believe you. If they did believe you, they would like me all the better for it. I know the age better than you do, though you will prate about it so tediously. Come, I tell you. You have chattered enough about corruption. Now you shall look on it face to face." There was the madness of pride in every word he uttered. He stamped his foot upon the ground in his boyish insolent manner. He felt a terrible joy at the thought that some one else was to share his secret, and that the man who had painted the portrait that was the origin of all his shame was to be burdened for the rest of his life with the hideous memory of what he had done. "Yes," he continued, coming closer to him and looking steadfastly into his stern eyes, "I shall show you my soul. You shall see the thing that you fancy only God can see." Hallward started back. "This is blasphemy, Dorian!" he cried. "You must not say things like that. They are horrible, and they don't mean anything." "You think so?" He laughed again. "I know so. As for what I said to you to-night, I said it for your good. You know I have been always a stanch friend to you." "Don't touch me. Finish what you have to say." A twisted flash of pain shot across the painter's face. He paused for a moment, and a wild feeling of pity came over him. After all, what right had he to pry into the life of Dorian Gray? If he had done a tithe of what was rumoured about him, how much he must have suffered! Then he straightened himself up, and walked over to the fire-place, and stood there, looking at the burning logs with their frostlike ashes and their throbbing cores of flame. "I am waiting, Basil," said the young man in a hard clear voice. He turned round. "What I have to say is this," he cried. "You must give me some answer to these horrible charges that are made against you. If you tell me that they are absolutely untrue from beginning to end, I shall believe you. Deny them, Dorian, deny them! Can't you see what I am going through? My God! don't tell me that you are bad, and corrupt, and shameful." Dorian Gray smiled. There was a curl of contempt in his lips. "Come upstairs, Basil," he said quietly. "I keep a diary of my life from day to day, and it never leaves the room in which it is written. I shall show it to you if you come with me." "I shall come with you, Dorian, if you wish it. I see I have missed my train. That makes no matter. I can go to-morrow. But don't ask me to read anything to-night. All I want is a plain answer to my question." "That shall be given to you upstairs. I could not give it here. You will not have to read long."

Chapter 12

https://web.archive.org/web/20210304030722/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/picture-dorian-gray/summary/chapter-12

It's the night before Dorian's thirty-eighth birthday, and he's walking home from dinner at Lord Henry's. He runs into Basil, who's walking in the other direction, suitcase in hand. He pretends not to see him, but Basil notices. Dorian feels strangely apprehensive. Basil apparently just came from Dorian's house, where he'd been waiting for hours. Dorian makes an excuse for ignoring Basil and asks where he's off to. Basil's plan it to leave England for half a year and hang out in Paris until he's painted a masterpiece. The pair reaches Dorian's house, and Basil invites himself in, saying that he's got something to say to Dorian. Dorian vaguely tries to get Basil to leave, but Basil isn't to be stopped--he's got everything he needs for his trip, so he's in no rush. The two men settle in Dorian's library, and Basil gets down to business: he wants to talk to Dorian about Dorian. Basil lays it all out there--though Basil himself can't believe that someone as innocent looking and beautiful as Dorian could commit any crimes, Dorian's name has been dragged through the mud, and pretty much everyone else in London either loathes him or fears him. Rumor has it that he's ruined the lives of loads of young women and men in various ways. Dorian revolts, saying that people gossip about how he's ruined so many of his ex-friends, but it's actually their fault--he just brings out tendencies that are already innate in people . Dorian then tries to blame it all on English society... kind of a lame excuse. But Basil's not done--he continues to enumerate the horrible things he's heard about Dorian, who has apparently even ruined the reputation of poor Lady Gwendolen, Henry's sister. We wonder how Lord Henry feels about that. Gravely, Basil says he thought he knew Dorian, but he obviously doesn't, for he can't see into Dorian's soul. For obvious reasons, this comment really gets to Dorian. He laughs bitterly, and announces that Basil will see his soul tonight, since it's his own work. Uh oh--this can't possibly end up well for Basil. Dorian is excited--and insane! He can't wait to show the portrait to Basil, and hopes that the painter will feel bad for what he's done. Basil is understandably frightened. He begs Dorian to simply answer one question--are all these charges against him true? Dorian smiles contemptuously, and lures Basil upstairs, saying that he has a diary in which he records all of his actions . Basil agrees to go with him. Cue ominous organ music...

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/1756-chapters/act_iv.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Uncle Vanya/section_3_part_0.txt

Uncle Vanya.act iv

act iv

{"name": "Act IV", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180409044821/http://www.gradesaver.com/uncle-vanya/study-guide/summary-act-iv", "summary": "It is evening. The scene is Vanya's room, which is also the estate office. There is a map of Africa, a small table for Astrov, and a cage with a starling. Telegin and Marina are sitting in the office, discussing how Serebryakov and Helen are going to live in Kharkov. They both think this is a good thing, especially after Vanya's disgraceful behavior. Marina is looking forward to things going back to normal. Telegin sighs that he is looking forward to this. Marina smiles at Telegin when the old man confesses he hid the pistol in the cellar. Vanya and Astrov enter. Vanya is irritable, and orders Marina and Telegin out. They comply. Vanya tells Astrov to leave; Astrov says that he will, and with pleasure, but only when Vanya gives him back what is his. Vanya is confused, but Astrov stubbornly stands his ground. Vanya rues the fact that he missed the professor twice, and Astrov asks why he didn't just shoot himself if he had to shoot someone. Vanya shrugs. He wonders if they think he is mad, for he just tried to kill someone and he isn't arrested or in jail. He sneers that people can dress themselves up as professors or marry old men, yet no one thinks they are mad. He looks at Astrov and tells him that he saw him kiss Helen. Astrov admits this and thumbs his nose at Vanya. He calls Vanya an old clown and says he simply has no sense. Vanya hangs his head and says that the feeling of shame he has is worse than pain. He wonders what he is to do. Astrov replies that he can do nothing. Vanya laments his age and how he is to live the rest of the years of his life. He wishes that he could wake up one day with a fresh start. Astrov is annoyed with him and states that both of their lives are hopeless. Vanya points to his own chest and asks for something. Astrov shouts at him to shut up, but then more gently says that their only hope is to have pleasant visions once they're in their graves. He and Vanya are the only civilized people in their district, but the parochial existence ruined them and \"poisoned our blood and we've become as second-rate as the rest of them\" . After a moment, Astrov repeats his claim that Vanya took something from him: a bottle of morphia out of his medical case. If Vanya wants to do himself in, he might as well go into the woods and shoot himself, but Astrov can't have people thinking he gave Vanya the bottle. Sonya enters, and Astrov tells her she needs to tell her uncle to give him back the morphia. She looks at Vanya and asks if he took it, then moves toward him and tells him affectionately that he has to give it back. He cannot give into despair; he should be patient. She weeps and holds his hands; Vanya gives in and returns the bottle, saying he must get back to work. Helen enters and tells Vanya that Serebryakov wants a word with him. Vanya and Sonya depart. Helen gives Astrov her hand and says goodbye. Astrov asks her once more about the forest reservation tomorrow; she tells him flatly that it is ended and they are leaving. Astrov makes an impatient gesture and says she has nothing else to do, no object in life, and no occupations; thus, she ought to stay in this rather romantic place. Helen replies that he is absurd, but that she will remember him fondly because he is interesting and different from the others. They shake hands and Astrov says that, yes, she had better leave. She and her husband riled up the place and infected them all with their idleness. Astrov jokes that they bring havoc wherever they go. Helen picks up a pencil and says she will take it to remember him by. He is amused that they will never see each other again. Helen kisses him on the cheek, then impulsively kisses him on the lips and wishes him happiness. Everyone else enters. Serebryakov wishes Vanya the best, and they formally kiss three times in parting. Everyone in the group exchanges farewells, and Serebryakov urges them to get down to work. Helen kisses Vanya on the head and leaves. Serebryakov follows, asking Telegin to get their carriage. Vanya starts rifling through his papers, commenting that he is depressed and must get to work immediately. Outside bells sound, and Astrov comments that they are gone. Marina enters and sits down to knit a sock. Sonya enters and tells her uncle they should get to work. She lights the lamp and sighs that she is sad that they've gone. She and Vanya start to work. Astrov comments that it is quiet and peaceful here, and Marina suggests that he should stay. He says he cannot, and at that moment a laborer comes in and says his carriage is ready. Sonya stands to say goodbye and asks when he will return. He replies that he won't return any earlier than next summer. Marina offers him some vodka; he takes it and then leaves. Outside, harness bells are heard and Marina comments that Astrov is gone. Telegin strums quietly on his guitar while Sonya and Vanya write. Vanya tells his niece that he is so depressed. She looks at him with compassion and says that life will go on. It will be long, tiring, and they will never have peace; beyond the grave, though, they will know that although they wept, suffered, and their lot was bitter, God will pity them and they will have another life of beauty, light, and joy. Sonya kneels before her uncle and tells him softly multiple times that they will have peace, they will see the angels, they will experience a flood of mercy, and they will have a calm, gentle, and sweet life. Vanya hasn't had any happiness yet, but he will in the future. Sonya reaches up to wipe his tears away and tells him again that they will find peace.", "analysis": "The fourth and final act of Uncle Vanya is, to say the least, anticlimactic ). Helen stays faithful to Serebryakov, and both of them depart the estate. Serebryakov is just as shortsighted, pompous, and self-absorbed as he was prior to his departure, and Helen is just as bored and unhappy. Helen and Astrov kiss, but it is perfunctory and passionless. The unmarried Sonya returns to work, as do Marina and Telegin. Astrov leaves for the season, just as simultaneously hopeful and cynical as he was earlier. As for Vanya, he has further revealed himself to be ridiculous. His complaints, his demonization of Serebryakov, his lack of personal insight, his attempt to seduce Helen, and the attempted murder \"make him comically pathetic rather than tragically heroic,\" as critic Geoffrey Borny writes. His exclamation that he could have been the inimitable Schopenhauer or Dostoevsky ultimately comes across as petulant and inane rather than as a legitimate woe. Overall, no one seems to have learned any lessons or decided to alter their current state of existence. Critic Jane Anderson writes, \" must live without the illusions of their hopes. Each must once again take up the stifling trifles of daily life to distract themselves from their lives of quiet desperation.\" Chekhov himself once wrote, \"In spite of all my attempts at being serious, the result is noting; with me the serious always alternates with the trivial.\" Critic John Weston lauds the confluence of serious and trivial, and he doesn't lay the blame entirely at the characters' feet. He writes, \"it is not so much the personal defects of character that cause unhappiness as it is the pressures and tensions of everyday country life created by economic and social conditions of the time. It is the boring, stupefying, and vulgar life in the country which drags down intelligent people like Astrov and Uncle Vanya and Sonya and Serebryakov to the level of pettiness and selfishness.\" Finally, Sonya's speech to Vanya merits analysis. She imitates the sentiments Marina conveyed to Astrov at the beginning of the play--that God will remember them. For Sonya, life is indeed hard work with little recognition, but it is the hope of an afterlife that sustains her. She tells her uncle, \"In the world beyond the grave we shall say we have wept and suffered, that our lot was harsh and bitter, and God will have pity on us. And you and I, Uncle, shall behold a life which is bright and beautiful and splendid\" . Sonya's religious faith allows her to genuinely comfort her uncle, as well as to prop herself up after learning that Astrov does not love her. Sadly, though, there is no evidence that Vanya shares his niece's faith. He merely sobs while she tries to comfort him. Borny notes, \"Sonya's long speech of faith at the end of the play is undercut by the fact that she is preaching to the unconverted. Vanya appears to have little faith in the existence of Sonya's God, and even though he has now resumed working, he no longer has faith in the value of work.\" Vanya will most likely get back to a place where he finds value in work, but it may take a long time and will be liable to disruption again."}

ACT IV VOITSKI'S bedroom, which is also his office. A table stands near the window; on it are ledgers, letter scales, and papers of every description. Near by stands a smaller table belonging to ASTROFF, with his paints and drawing materials. On the wall hangs a cage containing a starling. There is also a map of Africa on the wall, obviously of no use to anybody. There is a large sofa covered with buckram. A door to the left leads into an inner room; one to the right leads into the front hall, and before this door lies a mat for the peasants with their muddy boots to stand on. It is an autumn evening. The silence is profound. TELEGIN and MARINA are sitting facing one another, winding wool. TELEGIN. Be quick, Marina, or we shall be called away to say good-bye before you have finished. The carriage has already been ordered. MARINA. [Trying to wind more quickly] I am a little tired. TELEGIN. They are going to Kharkoff to live. MARINA. They do well to go. TELEGIN. They have been frightened. The professor's wife won't stay here an hour longer. "If we are going at all, let's be off," says she, "we shall go to Kharkoff and look about us, and then we can send for our things." They are travelling light. It seems, Marina, that fate has decreed for them not to live here. MARINA. And quite rightly. What a storm they have just raised! It was shameful! TELEGIN. It was indeed. The scene was worthy of the brush of Aibazofski. MARINA. I wish I'd never laid eyes on them. [A pause] Now we shall have things as they were again: tea at eight, dinner at one, and supper in the evening; everything in order as decent folks, as Christians like to have it. [Sighs] It is a long time since I have eaten noodles. TELEGIN. Yes, we haven't had noodles for ages. [A pause] Not for ages. As I was going through the village this morning, Marina, one of the shop-keepers called after me, "Hi! you hanger-on!" I felt it bitterly. MARINA. Don't pay the least attention to them, master; we are all dependents on God. You and Sonia and all of us. Every one must work, no one can sit idle. Where is Sonia? TELEGIN. In the garden with the doctor, looking for Ivan. They fear he may lay violent hands on himself. MARINA. Where is his pistol? TELEGIN. [Whispers] I hid it in the cellar. VOITSKI and ASTROFF come in. VOITSKI. Leave me alone! [To MARINA and TELEGIN] Go away! Go away and leave me to myself, if but for an hour. I won't have you watching me like this! TELEGIN. Yes, yes, Vanya. [He goes out on tiptoe.] MARINA. The gander cackles; ho! ho! ho! [She gathers up her wool and goes out.] VOITSKI. Leave me by myself! ASTROFF. I would, with the greatest pleasure. I ought to have gone long ago, but I shan't leave you until you have returned what you took from me. VOITSKI. I took nothing from you. ASTROFF. I am not jesting, don't detain me, I really must go. VOITSKI. I took nothing of yours. ASTROFF. You didn't? Very well, I shall have to wait a little longer, and then you will have to forgive me if I resort to force. We shall have to bind you and search you. I mean what I say. VOITSKI. Do as you please. [A pause] Oh, to make such a fool of myself! To shoot twice and miss him both times! I shall never forgive myself. ASTROFF. When the impulse came to shoot, it would have been as well had you put a bullet through your own head. VOITSKI. [Shrugging his shoulders] Strange! I attempted murder, and am not going to be arrested or brought to trial. That means they think me mad. [With a bitter laugh] Me! I am mad, and those who hide their worthlessness, their dullness, their crying heartlessness behind a professor's mask, are sane! Those who marry old men and then deceive them under the noses of all, are sane! I saw you kiss her; I saw you in each other's arms! ASTROFF. Yes, sir, I did kiss her; so there. [He puts his thumb to his nose.] VOITSKI. [His eyes on the door] No, it is the earth that is mad, because she still bears us on her breast. ASTROFF. That is nonsense. VOITSKI. Well? Am I not a madman, and therefore irresponsible? Haven't I the right to talk nonsense? ASTROFF. This is a farce! You are not mad; you are simply a ridiculous fool. I used to think every fool was out of his senses, but now I see that lack of sense is a man's normal state, and you are perfectly normal. VOITSKI. [Covers his face with his hands] Oh! If you knew how ashamed I am! These piercing pangs of shame are like nothing on earth. [In an agonised voice] I can't endure them! [He leans against the table] What can I do? What can I do? ASTROFF. Nothing. VOITSKI. You must tell me something! Oh, my God! I am forty-seven years old. I may live to sixty; I still have thirteen years before me; an eternity! How shall I be able to endure life for thirteen years? What shall I do? How can I fill them? Oh, don't you see? [He presses ASTROFF'S hand convulsively] Don't you see, if only I could live the rest of my life in some new way! If I could only wake some still, bright morning and feel that life had begun again; that the past was forgotten and had vanished like smoke. [He weeps] Oh, to begin life anew! Tell me, tell me how to begin. ASTROFF. [Crossly] What nonsense! What sort of a new life can you and I look forward to? We can have no hope. VOITSKI. None? ASTROFF. None. Of that I am convinced. VOITSKI. Tell me what to do. [He puts his hand to his heart] I feel such a burning pain here. ASTROFF. [Shouts angrily] Stop! [Then, more gently] It may be that posterity, which will despise us for our blind and stupid lives, will find some road to happiness; but we--you and I--have but one hope, the hope that we may be visited by visions, perhaps by pleasant ones, as we lie resting in our graves. [Sighing] Yes, brother, there were only two respectable, intelligent men in this county, you and I. Ten years or so of this life of ours, this miserable life, have sucked us under, and we have become as contemptible and petty as the rest. But don't try to talk me out of my purpose! Give me what you took from me, will you? VOITSKI. I took nothing from you. ASTROFF. You took a little bottle of morphine out of my medicine-case. [A pause] Listen! If you are positively determined to make an end to yourself, go into the woods and shoot yourself there. Give up the morphine, or there will be a lot of talk and guesswork; people will think I gave it to you. I don't fancy having to perform a post-mortem on you. Do you think I should find it interesting? SONIA comes in. VOITSKI. Leave me alone. ASTROFF. [To SONIA] Sonia, your uncle has stolen a bottle of morphine out of my medicine-case and won't give it up. Tell him that his behaviour is--well, unwise. I haven't time, I must be going. SONIA. Uncle Vanya, did you take the morphine? ASTROFF. Yes, he took it. [A pause] I am absolutely sure. SONIA. Give it up! Why do you want to frighten us? [Tenderly] Give it up, Uncle Vanya! My misfortune is perhaps even greater than yours, but I am not plunged in despair. I endure my sorrow, and shall endure it until my life comes to a natural end. You must endure yours, too. [A pause] Give it up! Dear, darling Uncle Vanya. Give it up! [She weeps] You are so good, I am sure you will have pity on us and give it up. You must endure your sorrow, Uncle Vanya; you must endure it. VOITSKI takes a bottle from the drawer of the table and hands it to ASTROFF. VOITSKI. There it is! [To SONIA] And now, we must get to work at once; we must do something, or else I shall not be able to endure it. SONIA. Yes, yes, to work! As soon as we have seen them off we shall go to work. [She nervously straightens out the papers on the table] Everything is in a muddle! ASTROFF. [Putting the bottle in his case, which he straps together] Now I can be off. HELENA comes in. HELENA. Are you here, Ivan? We are starting in a moment. Go to Alexander, he wants to speak to you. SONIA. Go, Uncle Vanya. [She takes VOITSKI 'S arm] Come, you and papa must make peace; that is absolutely necessary. SONIA and VOITSKI go out. HELENA. I am going away. [She gives ASTROFF her hand] Good-bye. ASTROFF. So soon? HELENA. The carriage is waiting. ASTROFF. Good-bye. HELENA. You promised me you would go away yourself to-day. ASTROFF. I have not forgotten. I am going at once. [A pause] Were you frightened? Was it so terrible? HELENA. Yes. ASTROFF. Couldn't you stay? Couldn't you? To-morrow--in the forest-- HELENA. No. It is all settled, and that is why I can look you so bravely in the face. Our departure is fixed. One thing I must ask of you: don't think too badly of me; I should like you to respect me. ASTROFF. Ah! [With an impatient gesture] Stay, I implore you! Confess that there is nothing for you to do in this world. You have no object in life; there is nothing to occupy your attention, and sooner or later your feelings must master you. It is inevitable. It would be better if it happened not in Kharkoff or in Kursk, but here, in nature's lap. It would then at least be poetical, even beautiful. Here you have the forests, the houses half in ruins that Turgenieff writes of. HELENA. How comical you are! I am angry with you and yet I shall always remember you with pleasure. You are interesting and original. You and I will never meet again, and so I shall tell you--why should I conceal it?--that I am just a little in love with you. Come, one more last pressure of our hands, and then let us part good friends. Let us not bear each other any ill will. ASTROFF. [Pressing her hand] Yes, go. [Thoughtfully] You seem to be sincere and good, and yet there is something strangely disquieting about all your personality. No sooner did you arrive here with your husband than every one whom you found busy and actively creating something was forced to drop his work and give himself up for the whole summer to your husband's gout and yourself. You and he have infected us with your idleness. I have been swept off my feet; I have not put my hand to a thing for weeks, during which sickness has been running its course unchecked among the people, and the peasants have been pasturing their cattle in my woods and young plantations. Go where you will, you and your husband will always carry destruction in your train. I am joking of course, and yet I am strangely sure that had you stayed here we should have been overtaken by the most immense desolation. I would have gone to my ruin, and you--you would not have prospered. So go! E finita la comedia! HELENA. [Snatching a pencil off ASTROFF'S table, and hiding it with a quick movement] I shall take this pencil for memory! ASTROFF. How strange it is. We meet, and then suddenly it seems that we must part forever. That is the way in this world. As long as we are alone, before Uncle Vanya comes in with a bouquet--allow me--to kiss you good-bye--may I? [He kisses her on the cheek] So! Splendid! HELENA. I wish you every happiness. [She glances about her] For once in my life, I shall! and scorn the consequences! [She kisses him impetuously, and they quickly part] I must go. ASTROFF. Yes, go. If the carriage is there, then start at once. [They stand listening.] ASTROFF. E finita! VOITSKI, SEREBRAKOFF, MME. VOITSKAYA with her book, TELEGIN, and SONIA come in. SEREBRAKOFF. [To VOITSKI] Shame on him who bears malice for the past. I have gone through so much in the last few hours that I feel capable of writing a whole treatise on the conduct of life for the instruction of posterity. I gladly accept your apology, and myself ask your forgiveness. [He kisses VOITSKI three times.] HELENA embraces SONIA. SEREBRAKOFF. [Kissing MME. VOITSKAYA'S hand] Mother! MME. VOITSKAYA. [Kissing him] Have your picture taken, Alexander, and send me one. You know how dear you are to me. TELEGIN. Good-bye, your Excellency. Don't forget us. SEREBRAKOFF. [Kissing his daughter] Good-bye, good-bye all. [Shaking hands with ASTROFF] Many thanks for your pleasant company. I have a deep regard for your opinions and your enthusiasm, but let me, as an old man, give one word of advice at parting: do something, my friend! Work! Do something! [They all bow] Good luck to you all. [He goes out followed by MME. VOITSKAYA and SONIA.] VOITSKI [Kissing HELENA'S hand fervently] Good-bye--forgive me. I shall never see you again! HELENA. [Touched] Good-bye, dear boy. She lightly kisses his head as he bends over her hand, and goes out. ASTROFF. Tell them to bring my carriage around too, Waffles. TELEGIN. All right, old man. ASTROFF and VOITSKI are left behind alone. ASTROFF collects his paints and drawing materials on the table and packs them away in a box. ASTROFF. Why don't you go to see them off? VOITSKI. Let them go! I--I can't go out there. I feel too sad. I must go to work on something at once. To work! To work! He rummages through his papers on the table. A pause. The tinkling of bells is heard as the horses trot away. ASTROFF. They have gone! The professor, I suppose, is glad to go. He couldn't be tempted back now by a fortune. MARINA comes in. MARINA. They have gone. [She sits down in an arm-chair and knits her stocking.] SONIA comes in wiping her eyes. SONIA. They have gone. God be with them. [To her uncle] And now, Uncle Vanya, let us do something! VOITSKI. To work! To work! SONIA. It is long, long, since you and I have sat together at this table. [She lights a lamp on the table] No ink! [She takes the inkstand to the cupboard and fills it from an ink-bottle] How sad it is to see them go! MME. VOITSKAYA comes slowly in. MME. VOITSKAYA. They have gone. She sits down and at once becomes absorbed in her book. SONIA sits down at the table and looks through an account book. SONIA. First, Uncle Vanya, let us write up the accounts. They are in a dreadful state. Come, begin. You take one and I will take the other. VOITSKI. In account with [They sit silently writing.] MARINA. [Yawning] The sand-man has come. ASTROFF. How still it is. Their pens scratch, the cricket sings; it is so warm and comfortable. I hate to go. [The tinkling of bells is heard.] ASTROFF. My carriage has come. There now remains but to say good-bye to you, my friends, and to my table here, and then--away! [He puts the map into the portfolio.] MARINA. Don't hurry away; sit a little longer with us. ASTROFF. Impossible. VOITSKI. [Writing] And carry forward from the old debt two seventy-five-- WORKMAN comes in. WORKMAN. Your carriage is waiting, sir. ASTROFF. All right. [He hands the WORKMAN his medicine-case, portfolio, and box] Look out, don't crush the portfolio! WORKMAN. Very well, sir. SONIA. When shall we see you again? ASTROFF. Hardly before next summer. Probably not this winter, though, of course, if anything should happen you will let me know. [He shakes hands with them] Thank you for your kindness, for your hospitality, for everything! [He goes up to MARINA and kisses her head] Good-bye, old nurse! MARINA. Are you going without your tea? ASTROFF. I don't want any, nurse. MARINA. Won't you have a drop of vodka? ASTROFF. [Hesitatingly] Yes, I might. MARINA goes out. ASTROFF. [After a pause] My off-wheeler has gone lame for some reason. I noticed it yesterday when Peter was taking him to water. VOITSKI. You should have him re-shod. ASTROFF. I shall have to go around by the blacksmith's on my way home. It can't be avoided. [He stands looking up at the map of Africa hanging on the wall] I suppose it is roasting hot in Africa now. VOITSKI. Yes, I suppose it is. MARINA comes back carrying a tray on which are a glass of vodka and a piece of bread. MARINA. Help yourself. ASTROFF drinks MARINA. To your good health! [She bows deeply] Eat your bread with it. ASTROFF. No, I like it so. And now, good-bye. [To MARINA] You needn't come out to see me off, nurse. He goes out. SONIA follows him with a candle to light him to the carriage. MARINA sits down in her armchair. VOITSKI. [Writing] On the 2d of February, twenty pounds of butter; on the 16th, twenty pounds of butter again. Buckwheat flour--[A pause. Bells are heard tinkling.] MARINA. He has gone. [A pause.] SONIA comes in and sets the candle stick on the table. SONIA. He has gone. VOITSKI. [Adding and writing] Total, fifteen--twenty-five-- SONIA sits down and begins to write. [Yawning] Oh, ho! The Lord have mercy. TELEGIN comes in on tiptoe, sits down near the door, and begins to tune his guitar. VOITSKI. [To SONIA, stroking her hair] Oh, my child, I am miserable; if you only knew how miserable I am! SONIA. What can we do? We must live our lives. [A pause] Yes, we shall live, Uncle Vanya. We shall live through the long procession of days before us, and through the long evenings; we shall patiently bear the trials that fate imposes on us; we shall work for others without rest, both now and when we are old; and when our last hour comes we shall meet it humbly, and there, beyond the grave, we shall say that we have suffered and wept, that our life was bitter, and God will have pity on us. Ah, then dear, dear Uncle, we shall see that bright and beautiful life; we shall rejoice and look back upon our sorrow here; a tender smile--and--we shall rest. I have faith, Uncle, fervent, passionate faith. [SONIA kneels down before her uncle and lays her head on his hands. She speaks in a weary voice] We shall rest. [TELEGIN plays softly on the guitar] We shall rest. We shall hear the angels. We shall see heaven shining like a jewel. We shall see all evil and all our pain sink away in the great compassion that shall enfold the world. Our life will be as peaceful and tender and sweet as a caress. I have faith; I have faith. [She wipes away her tears] My poor, poor Uncle Vanya, you are crying! [Weeping] You have never known what happiness was, but wait, Uncle Vanya, wait! We shall rest. [She embraces him] We shall rest. [The WATCHMAN'S rattle is heard in the garden; TELEGIN plays softly; MME. VOITSKAYA writes something on the margin of her pamphlet; MARINA knits her stocking] We shall rest. The curtain slowly falls.

Act IV

https://web.archive.org/web/20180409044821/http://www.gradesaver.com/uncle-vanya/study-guide/summary-act-iv

It is evening. The scene is Vanya's room, which is also the estate office. There is a map of Africa, a small table for Astrov, and a cage with a starling. Telegin and Marina are sitting in the office, discussing how Serebryakov and Helen are going to live in Kharkov. They both think this is a good thing, especially after Vanya's disgraceful behavior. Marina is looking forward to things going back to normal. Telegin sighs that he is looking forward to this. Marina smiles at Telegin when the old man confesses he hid the pistol in the cellar. Vanya and Astrov enter. Vanya is irritable, and orders Marina and Telegin out. They comply. Vanya tells Astrov to leave; Astrov says that he will, and with pleasure, but only when Vanya gives him back what is his. Vanya is confused, but Astrov stubbornly stands his ground. Vanya rues the fact that he missed the professor twice, and Astrov asks why he didn't just shoot himself if he had to shoot someone. Vanya shrugs. He wonders if they think he is mad, for he just tried to kill someone and he isn't arrested or in jail. He sneers that people can dress themselves up as professors or marry old men, yet no one thinks they are mad. He looks at Astrov and tells him that he saw him kiss Helen. Astrov admits this and thumbs his nose at Vanya. He calls Vanya an old clown and says he simply has no sense. Vanya hangs his head and says that the feeling of shame he has is worse than pain. He wonders what he is to do. Astrov replies that he can do nothing. Vanya laments his age and how he is to live the rest of the years of his life. He wishes that he could wake up one day with a fresh start. Astrov is annoyed with him and states that both of their lives are hopeless. Vanya points to his own chest and asks for something. Astrov shouts at him to shut up, but then more gently says that their only hope is to have pleasant visions once they're in their graves. He and Vanya are the only civilized people in their district, but the parochial existence ruined them and "poisoned our blood and we've become as second-rate as the rest of them" . After a moment, Astrov repeats his claim that Vanya took something from him: a bottle of morphia out of his medical case. If Vanya wants to do himself in, he might as well go into the woods and shoot himself, but Astrov can't have people thinking he gave Vanya the bottle. Sonya enters, and Astrov tells her she needs to tell her uncle to give him back the morphia. She looks at Vanya and asks if he took it, then moves toward him and tells him affectionately that he has to give it back. He cannot give into despair; he should be patient. She weeps and holds his hands; Vanya gives in and returns the bottle, saying he must get back to work. Helen enters and tells Vanya that Serebryakov wants a word with him. Vanya and Sonya depart. Helen gives Astrov her hand and says goodbye. Astrov asks her once more about the forest reservation tomorrow; she tells him flatly that it is ended and they are leaving. Astrov makes an impatient gesture and says she has nothing else to do, no object in life, and no occupations; thus, she ought to stay in this rather romantic place. Helen replies that he is absurd, but that she will remember him fondly because he is interesting and different from the others. They shake hands and Astrov says that, yes, she had better leave. She and her husband riled up the place and infected them all with their idleness. Astrov jokes that they bring havoc wherever they go. Helen picks up a pencil and says she will take it to remember him by. He is amused that they will never see each other again. Helen kisses him on the cheek, then impulsively kisses him on the lips and wishes him happiness. Everyone else enters. Serebryakov wishes Vanya the best, and they formally kiss three times in parting. Everyone in the group exchanges farewells, and Serebryakov urges them to get down to work. Helen kisses Vanya on the head and leaves. Serebryakov follows, asking Telegin to get their carriage. Vanya starts rifling through his papers, commenting that he is depressed and must get to work immediately. Outside bells sound, and Astrov comments that they are gone. Marina enters and sits down to knit a sock. Sonya enters and tells her uncle they should get to work. She lights the lamp and sighs that she is sad that they've gone. She and Vanya start to work. Astrov comments that it is quiet and peaceful here, and Marina suggests that he should stay. He says he cannot, and at that moment a laborer comes in and says his carriage is ready. Sonya stands to say goodbye and asks when he will return. He replies that he won't return any earlier than next summer. Marina offers him some vodka; he takes it and then leaves. Outside, harness bells are heard and Marina comments that Astrov is gone. Telegin strums quietly on his guitar while Sonya and Vanya write. Vanya tells his niece that he is so depressed. She looks at him with compassion and says that life will go on. It will be long, tiring, and they will never have peace; beyond the grave, though, they will know that although they wept, suffered, and their lot was bitter, God will pity them and they will have another life of beauty, light, and joy. Sonya kneels before her uncle and tells him softly multiple times that they will have peace, they will see the angels, they will experience a flood of mercy, and they will have a calm, gentle, and sweet life. Vanya hasn't had any happiness yet, but he will in the future. Sonya reaches up to wipe his tears away and tells him again that they will find peace.

The fourth and final act of Uncle Vanya is, to say the least, anticlimactic ). Helen stays faithful to Serebryakov, and both of them depart the estate. Serebryakov is just as shortsighted, pompous, and self-absorbed as he was prior to his departure, and Helen is just as bored and unhappy. Helen and Astrov kiss, but it is perfunctory and passionless. The unmarried Sonya returns to work, as do Marina and Telegin. Astrov leaves for the season, just as simultaneously hopeful and cynical as he was earlier. As for Vanya, he has further revealed himself to be ridiculous. His complaints, his demonization of Serebryakov, his lack of personal insight, his attempt to seduce Helen, and the attempted murder "make him comically pathetic rather than tragically heroic," as critic Geoffrey Borny writes. His exclamation that he could have been the inimitable Schopenhauer or Dostoevsky ultimately comes across as petulant and inane rather than as a legitimate woe. Overall, no one seems to have learned any lessons or decided to alter their current state of existence. Critic Jane Anderson writes, " must live without the illusions of their hopes. Each must once again take up the stifling trifles of daily life to distract themselves from their lives of quiet desperation." Chekhov himself once wrote, "In spite of all my attempts at being serious, the result is noting; with me the serious always alternates with the trivial." Critic John Weston lauds the confluence of serious and trivial, and he doesn't lay the blame entirely at the characters' feet. He writes, "it is not so much the personal defects of character that cause unhappiness as it is the pressures and tensions of everyday country life created by economic and social conditions of the time. It is the boring, stupefying, and vulgar life in the country which drags down intelligent people like Astrov and Uncle Vanya and Sonya and Serebryakov to the level of pettiness and selfishness." Finally, Sonya's speech to Vanya merits analysis. She imitates the sentiments Marina conveyed to Astrov at the beginning of the play--that God will remember them. For Sonya, life is indeed hard work with little recognition, but it is the hope of an afterlife that sustains her. She tells her uncle, "In the world beyond the grave we shall say we have wept and suffered, that our lot was harsh and bitter, and God will have pity on us. And you and I, Uncle, shall behold a life which is bright and beautiful and splendid" . Sonya's religious faith allows her to genuinely comfort her uncle, as well as to prop herself up after learning that Astrov does not love her. Sadly, though, there is no evidence that Vanya shares his niece's faith. He merely sobs while she tries to comfort him. Borny notes, "Sonya's long speech of faith at the end of the play is undercut by the fact that she is preaching to the unconverted. Vanya appears to have little faith in the existence of Sonya's God, and even though he has now resumed working, he no longer has faith in the value of work." Vanya will most likely get back to a place where he finds value in work, but it may take a long time and will be liable to disruption again.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/44747-chapters/49.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_48_part_0.txt

The Red and the Black.part 2.chapter 19

part 2, chapter 19

{"name": "Part 2, Chapter 19", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-2-chapter-19", "summary": "Mathilde finds Julien gross now, although she tries to figure out why she ever would have slept with him to begin with. She keeps trying to think of what a great young man he is, but then she remembers how foolishly he told her he loved her. While sketching one afternoon, Mathilde catches herself drawing a portrait of Julien. She thinks it's a sign, since she had no conscious awareness of what she was drawing. Later that night, Mathilde goes to the opera and hears a song about someone loving so much that it makes them crazy. She goes home and plays the song on the piano over and over, thinking about how glorious it is to be in love. Nonetheless, she feels that the best thing for her ego is to treat Julien like garbage. So that's what she does. Meanwhile, Julien doubts himself more and more. For the first time, he starts to wonder whether he's as great a man as he thinks he is. He even thinks about committing suicide. One night, Julien runs out to garden and uses the ladder to sneak up into Mathilde's room again. Once he's in the room, Mathilde jumps out of bed and runs into his arms. After they've had sex again, Mathilde cuts off a bunch of her hair and gives it to him as a reminder that she is his slave. She asks him to show her the hair if she ever steps out of line in the future. Julien hugs her one last time and scampers away. The next morning, Mathilde styles her hair in a way that hides that massive chunk she's cut off. Again though, she loses interest in him and doesn't give him the time of day.", "analysis": ""}

CHAPTER XLIX THE OPERA BOUFFE How the spring of love resembleth The uncertain glory of an April day, Which now shows all the beauty of the sun, And by and by a cloud takes all away.--_Shakespeare_. Engrossed by thoughts of her future and the singular role which she hoped to play, Mathilde soon came to miss the dry metaphysical conversations which she had often had with Julien. Fatigued by these lofty thoughts she would sometimes also miss those moments of happiness which she had found by his side; these last memories were not unattended by remorse which at certain times even overwhelmed her. "But one may have a weakness," she said to herself, "a girl like I am should only forget herself for a man of real merit; they will not say that it is his pretty moustache or his skill in horsemanship which have fascinated me, but rather his deep discussions on the future of France and his ideas on the analogy between the events which are going to burst upon us and the English revolution of 1688." "I have been seduced," she answered in her remorse. "I am a weak woman, but at least I have not been led astray like a doll by exterior advantages." "If there is a revolution why should not Julien Sorel play the role of Roland and I the role of Madame Roland? I prefer that part to Madame de Stael's; the immorality of my conduct will constitute an obstacle in this age of ours. I will certainly not let them reproach me with an act of weakness; I should die of shame." Mathilde's reveries were not all as grave, one must admit, as the thoughts which we have just transcribed. She would look at Julien and find a charming grace in his slightest action. "I have doubtless," she would say, "succeeded in destroying in him the very faintest idea he had of any one else's rights." "The air of unhappiness and deep passion with which the poor boy declared his love to me eight days ago proves it; I must own it was very extraordinary of me to manifest anger at words in which there shone so much respect and so much of passion. Am I not his real wife? Those words of his were quite natural, and I must admit, were really very nice. Julien still continued to love me, even after those eternal conversations in which I had only spoken to him (cruelly enough I admit), about those weaknesses of love which the boredom of the life I lead had inspired me for those young society men of whom he is so jealous. Ah, if he only knew what little danger I have to fear from them; how withered and stereotyped they seem to me in comparison with him." While indulging in these reflections Mathilde made a random pencil sketch of a profile on a page of her album. One of the profiles she had just finished surprised and delighted her. It had a striking resemblance to Julien. "It is the voice of heaven. That's one of the miracles of love," she cried ecstatically; "Without suspecting it, I have drawn his portrait." She fled to her room, shut herself up in it, and with much application made strenuous endeavours to draw Julien's portrait, but she was unable to succeed; the profile she had traced at random still remained the most like him. Mathilde was delighted with it. She saw in it a palpable proof of the grand passion. She only left her album very late when the marquise had her called to go to the Italian Opera. Her one idea was to catch sight of Julien, so that she might get her mother to request him to keep them company. He did not appear, and the ladies had only ordinary vulgar creatures in their box. During the first act of the opera, Mathilde dreamt of the man she loved with all the ecstasies of the most vivid passion; but a love-maxim in the second act sung it must be owned to a melody worthy of Cimarosa pierced her heart. The heroine of the opera said "You must punish me for the excessive adoration which I feel for him. I love him too much." From the moment that Mathilde heard this sublime song everything in the world ceased to exist. She was spoken to, she did not answer; her mother reprimanded her, she could scarcely bring herself to look at her. Her ecstasy reached a state of exultation and passion analogous to the most violent transports which Julien had felt for her for some days. The divinely graceful melody to which the maxim, which seemed to have such a striking application to her own position, was sung, engrossed all the minutes when she was not actually thinking of Julien. Thanks to her love for music she was on this particular evening like madame de Renal always was, when she thought of Julien. Love of the head has doubtless more intelligence than true love, but it only has moments of enthusiasm. It knows itself too well, it sits in judgment on itself incessantly; far from distracting thought it is made by sheer force of thought. On returning home Mathilde, in spite of madame de la Mole's remonstrances, pretended to have a fever and spent a part of the night in going over this melody on her piano. She sang the words of the celebrated air which had so fascinated her:-- Devo punirmi, devo punirmi. Se troppo amai, etc. As the result of this night of madness, she imagined that she had succeeded in triumphing over her love. This page will be prejudicial in more than one way to the unfortunate author. Frigid souls will accuse him of indecency. But the young ladies who shine in the Paris salons have no right to feel insulted at the supposition that one of their number might be liable to those transports of madness which have been degrading the character of Mathilde. That character is purely imaginary, and is even drawn quite differently from that social code which will guarantee so distinguished a place in the world's history to nineteenth century civilization. The young girls who have adorned this winter's balls are certainly not lacking in prudence. I do not think either that they can be accused of being unduly scornful of a brilliant fortune, horses, fine estates and all the guarantees of a pleasant position in society. Far from finding these advantages simply equivalent to boredom, they usually concentrate on them their most constant desires and and devote to them such passion as their hearts possess. Nor again is it love which is the dominant principle in the career of young men who, like Julien, are gifted with some talent; they attach themselves with an irresistible grip to some coterie, and when the coterie succeeds all the good things of society are rained upon them. Woe to the studious man who belongs to no coterie, even his smallest and most doubtful successes will constitute a grievance, and lofty virtue will rob him and triumph. Yes, monsieur, a novel is a mirror which goes out on a highway. Sometimes it reflects the azure of the heavens, sometimes the mire of the pools of mud on the way, and the man who carries this mirror in his knapsack is forsooth to be accused by you of being immoral! His mirror shows the mire, and you accuse the mirror! Rather accuse the main road where the mud is, or rather the inspector of roads who allows the water to accumulate and the mud to form. Now that it is quite understood that Mathilde's character is impossible in our own age, which is as discreet as it is virtuous, I am less frightened of offence by continuing the history of the follies of this charming girl. During the whole of the following day she looked out for opportunities of convincing herself of her triumph over her mad passion. Her great aim was to displease Julien in everything; but not one of his movements escaped her. Julien was too unhappy, and above all too agitated to appreciate so complicated a stratagem of passion. Still less was he capable of seeing how favourable it really was to him. He was duped by it. His unhappiness had perhaps never been so extreme. His actions were so little controlled by his intellect that if some mournful philosopher had said to him, "Think how to exploit as quickly as you can those symptoms which promise to be favourable to you. In this kind of head-love which is seen at Paris, the same mood cannot last more than two days," he would not have understood him. But however ecstatic he might feel, Julien was a man of honour. Discretion was his first duty. He appreciated it. Asking advice, describing his agony to the first man who came along would have constituted a happiness analogous to that of the unhappy man who, when traversing a burning desert receives from heaven a drop of icy water. He realised the danger, was frightened of answering an indiscreet question by a torrent of tears, and shut himself up in his own room. He saw Mathilde walking in the garden for a long time. When she at last left it, he went down there and approached the rose bush from which she had taken a flower. The night was dark and he could abandon himself to his unhappiness without fear of being seen. It was obvious to him that mademoiselle de la Mole loved one of those young officers with whom she had chatted so gaily. She had loved him, but she had realised his little merit, "and as a matter of fact I had very little," Julien said to himself with full conviction. "Taking me all round I am a very dull, vulgar person, very boring to others and quite unbearable to myself." He was mortally disgusted with all his good qualities, and with all the things which he had once loved so enthusiastically; and it was when his imagination was in this distorted condition that he undertook to judge life by means of its aid. This mistake is typical of a superior man. The idea of suicide presented itself to him several times; the idea was full of charm, and like a delicious rest; because it was the glass of iced water offered to the wretch dying of thirst and heat in the desert. "My death will increase the contempt she has for me," he exclaimed. "What a memory I should leave her." Courage is the only resource of a human being who has fallen into this last abyss of unhappiness. Julien did not have sufficient genius to say to himself, "I must dare," but as he looked at the window of Mathilde's room he saw through the blinds that she was putting out her light. He conjured up that charming room which he had seen, alas! once in his whole life. His imagination did not go any further. One o'clock struck. Hearing the stroke of the clock and saying to himself, "I will climb up the ladder," scarcely took a moment. It was the flash of genius, good reasons crowded on his mind. "May I be more fortunate than before," he said to himself. He ran to the ladder. The gardener had chained it up. With the help of the cock of one of his little pistols which he broke, Julien, who for the time being was animated by a superhuman force, twisted one of the links of the chain which held the ladder. He was master of it in a few minutes, and placed it against Mathilde's window. "She will be angry and riddle me with scornful words! What does it matter? I will give her a kiss, one last kiss. I will go up to my room and kill myself ... my lips will touch her cheek before I die." He flew up the ladder and knocked at the blind; Mathilde heard him after some minutes and tried to open the blind but the ladder was in the way. Julien hung to the iron hook intending to keep the blind open, and at the imminent risk of falling down, gave the ladder a violent shake which moved it a little. Mathilde was able to open the blind. He threw himself into the window more dead than alive. "So it is you, dear," she said as she rushed into his arms. * * * * * The excess of Julien's happiness was indescribable. Mathilde's almost equalled his own. She talked against herself to him and denounced herself. "Punish me for my awful pride," she said to him, clasping him in her arms so tightly as almost to choke him. "You are my master, dear, I am your slave. I must ask your pardon on my knees for having tried to rebel." She left his arms to fall at his feet. "Yes," she said to him, still intoxicated with happiness and with love, "you are my master, reign over me for ever. When your slave tries to revolt, punish her severely." In another moment she tore herself from his arms, and lit a candle, and it was only by a supreme effort that Julien could prevent her from cutting off a whole tress of her hair. "I want to remind myself," she said to him, "that I am your handmaid. If I am ever led astray again by my abominable pride, show me this hair and say, 'It is not a question of the emotion which your soul may be feeling at present, you have sworn to obey, obey on your honour.'" But it is wiser to suppress the description of so intense a transport of delirious happiness. Julien's unselfishness was equal to his happiness. "I must go down by the ladder," he said to Mathilde, when he saw the dawn of day appear from the quarter of the east over the distant chimneys beyond the garden. "The sacrifice that I impose on myself is worthy of you. I deprive myself of some hours of the most astonishing happiness that a human soul can savour, but it is a sacrifice I make for the sake of your reputation. If you know my heart you will appreciate how violent is the strain to which I am putting myself. Will you always be to me what you are now? But honour speaks, it suffices. Let me tell you that since our last interview, thieves have not been the only object of suspicion. M. de la Mole has set a guard in the garden. M. Croisenois is surrounded by spies: they know what he does every night." Mathilde burst out laughing at this idea. Her mother and a chamber-maid were woken up, they suddenly began to speak to her through the door. Julien looked at her, she grew pale as she scolded the chamber-maid, and she did not deign to speak to her mother. "But suppose they think of opening the window, they will see the ladder," Julien said to her. He clasped her again in his arms, rushed on to the ladder, and slid, rather than climbed down; he was on the ground in a moment. Three seconds after the ladder was in the avenue of pines, and Mathilde's honour was saved. Julien returned to his room and found that he was bleeding and almost naked. He had wounded himself in sliding down in that dare-devil way. Extreme happiness had made him regain all the energy of his character. If twenty men had presented themselves it would have proved at this moment only an additional pleasure to have attacked them unaided. Happily his military prowess was not put to the proof. He laid the ladder in its usual place and replaced the chain which held it. He did not forget to efface the mark which the ladder had left on the bed of exotic flowers under Mathilde's window. As he was moving his hand over the soft ground in the darkness and satisfying himself that the mark had entirely disappeared, he felt something fall down on his hands. It was a whole tress of Mathilde's hair which she had cut off and thrown down to him. She was at the window. "That's what your servant sends you," she said to him in a fairly loud voice, "It is the sign of eternal gratitude. I renounce the exercise of my reason, be my master." Julien was quite overcome and was on the point of going to fetch the ladder again and climbing back into her room. Finally reason prevailed. Getting back into the hotel from the garden was not easy. He succeeded in forcing the door of a cellar. Once in the house he was obliged to break through the door of his room as silently as possible. In his agitation he had left in the little room which he had just abandoned so rapidly, the key which was in the pocket of his coat. "I only hope she thinks of hiding that fatal trophy," he thought. Finally fatigue prevailed over happiness, and as the sun was rising he fell into a deep sleep. The breakfast bell only just managed to wake him up. He appeared in the dining-room. Shortly afterwards Mathilde came in. Julien's pride felt deliciously flattered as he saw the love which shone in the eyes of this beautiful creature who was surrounded by so much homage; but soon his discretion had occasion to be alarmed. Making an excuse of the little time that she had had to do her hair, Mathilde had arranged it in such a way that Julien could see at the first glance the full extent of the sacrifice that she had made for his sake, by cutting off her hair on the previous night. If it had been possible to spoil so beautiful a face by anything whatsoever, Mathilde would have succeeded in doing it. A whole tress of her beautiful blonde hair was cut off to within half an inch of the scalp. Mathilde's whole manner during breakfast was in keeping with this initial imprudence. One might have said that she had made a specific point of trying to inform the whole world of her mad passion for Julien. Happily on this particular day M. de la Mole and the marquis were very much concerned about an approaching bestowal of "blue ribbons" which was going to take place, and in which M. de Chaulnes was not comprised. Towards the end of the meal, Mathilde, who was talking to Julien, happened to call him "My Master." He blushed up to the whites of his eyes. Mathilde was not left alone for an instant that day, whether by chance or the deliberate policy of madame de la Mole. In the evening when she passed from the dining-room into the salon, however, she managed to say to Julien: "You may be thinking I am making an excuse, but mamma has just decided that one of her women is to spend the night in my room." This day passed with lightning rapidity. Julien was at the zenith of happiness. At seven o'clock in the morning of the following day he installed himself in the library. He hoped the mademoiselle de la Mole would deign to appear there; he had written her an interminable letter. He only saw her several hours afterwards at breakfast. Her hair was done to-day with the very greatest care; a marvellous art had managed to hide the place where the hair had been cut. She looked at Julien once or twice, but her eyes were polite and calm, and there was no question of calling him "My Master." Julien's astonishment prevented him from breathing--Mathilde was reproaching herself for all she had done for him. After mature reflection, she had come to the conclusion that he was a person who, though not absolutely commonplace, was yet not sufficiently different from the common ruck to deserve all the strange follies that she had ventured for his sake. To sum up she did not give love a single thought; on this particular day she was tired of loving. As for Julien, his emotions were those of a child of sixteen. He was a successive prey to awful doubt, astonishment and despair during this breakfast which he thought would never end. As soon as he could decently get up from the table, he flew rather than ran to the stable, saddled his horse himself, and galloped off. "I must kill my heart through sheer force of physical fatigue," he said to himself as he galloped through the Meudon woods. "What have I done, what have I said to deserve a disgrace like this?" "I must do nothing and say nothing to-day," he thought as he re-entered the hotel. "I must be as dead physically as I am morally." Julien saw nothing any more, it was only his corpse which kept moving.

Part 2, Chapter 19

https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-2-chapter-19

Mathilde finds Julien gross now, although she tries to figure out why she ever would have slept with him to begin with. She keeps trying to think of what a great young man he is, but then she remembers how foolishly he told her he loved her. While sketching one afternoon, Mathilde catches herself drawing a portrait of Julien. She thinks it's a sign, since she had no conscious awareness of what she was drawing. Later that night, Mathilde goes to the opera and hears a song about someone loving so much that it makes them crazy. She goes home and plays the song on the piano over and over, thinking about how glorious it is to be in love. Nonetheless, she feels that the best thing for her ego is to treat Julien like garbage. So that's what she does. Meanwhile, Julien doubts himself more and more. For the first time, he starts to wonder whether he's as great a man as he thinks he is. He even thinks about committing suicide. One night, Julien runs out to garden and uses the ladder to sneak up into Mathilde's room again. Once he's in the room, Mathilde jumps out of bed and runs into his arms. After they've had sex again, Mathilde cuts off a bunch of her hair and gives it to him as a reminder that she is his slave. She asks him to show her the hair if she ever steps out of line in the future. Julien hugs her one last time and scampers away. The next morning, Mathilde styles her hair in a way that hides that massive chunk she's cut off. Again though, she loses interest in him and doesn't give him the time of day.

pinkmonkey

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/42.txt

finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_15_part_4.txt

Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 41

chapter 41

{"name": "CHAPTER 41", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820050202/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmTessD48.asp", "summary": "After leaving home, Tess finds only irregular work as a dairymaid, except during harvest time. As winter approaches, she can barely make ends meet and must use some of the money Angel has left her. Since her parents believe she is living comfortably with her new husband again, they ask her for financial help, for their cottage is in serious need of repairs. She sends them the last of her money. In November, Tess heads to the farm where Marian is working, hoping to find employment for herself there. Along the way, she meets the same man whom Angel had struck. When pursued by him, she hides in the woods and wishes she were dead.", "analysis": "Notes Tess sends the last of her money to her needy parents. Since she is too proud to approach Angel's parents for help, she travels upland, hoping to find work. She is miserable, lonely, and tormented. When she sees the pathetic sight of some pheasants writhing in pain, she identifies with them. To relieve them of their suffering, she kills them with her hands"}

From the foregoing events of the winter-time let us press on to an October day, more than eight months subsequent to the parting of Clare and Tess. We discover the latter in changed conditions; instead of a bride with boxes and trunks which others bore, we see her a lonely woman with a basket and a bundle in her own porterage, as at an earlier time when she was no bride; instead of the ample means that were projected by her husband for her comfort through this probationary period, she can produce only a flattened purse. After again leaving Marlott, her home, she had got through the spring and summer without any great stress upon her physical powers, the time being mainly spent in rendering light irregular service at dairy-work near Port-Bredy to the west of the Blackmoor Valley, equally remote from her native place and from Talbothays. She preferred this to living on his allowance. Mentally she remained in utter stagnation, a condition which the mechanical occupation rather fostered than checked. Her consciousness was at that other dairy, at that other season, in the presence of the tender lover who had confronted her there--he who, the moment she had grasped him to keep for her own, had disappeared like a shape in a vision. The dairy-work lasted only till the milk began to lessen, for she had not met with a second regular engagement as at Talbothays, but had done duty as a supernumerary only. However, as harvest was now beginning, she had simply to remove from the pasture to the stubble to find plenty of further occupation, and this continued till harvest was done. Of the five-and-twenty pounds which had remained to her of Clare's allowance, after deducting the other half of the fifty as a contribution to her parents for the trouble and expense to which she had put them, she had as yet spent but little. But there now followed an unfortunate interval of wet weather, during which she was obliged to fall back upon her sovereigns. She could not bear to let them go. Angel had put them into her hand, had obtained them bright and new from his bank for her; his touch had consecrated them to souvenirs of himself--they appeared to have had as yet no other history than such as was created by his and her own experiences--and to disperse them was like giving away relics. But she had to do it, and one by one they left her hands. She had been compelled to send her mother her address from time to time, but she concealed her circumstances. When her money had almost gone a letter from her mother reached her. Joan stated that they were in dreadful difficulty; the autumn rains had gone through the thatch of the house, which required entire renewal; but this could not be done because the previous thatching had never been paid for. New rafters and a new ceiling upstairs also were required, which, with the previous bill, would amount to a sum of twenty pounds. As her husband was a man of means, and had doubtless returned by this time, could she not send them the money? Tess had thirty pounds coming to her almost immediately from Angel's bankers, and, the case being so deplorable, as soon as the sum was received she sent the twenty as requested. Part of the remainder she was obliged to expend in winter clothing, leaving only a nominal sum for the whole inclement season at hand. When the last pound had gone, a remark of Angel's that whenever she required further resources she was to apply to his father, remained to be considered. But the more Tess thought of the step, the more reluctant was she to take it. The same delicacy, pride, false shame, whatever it may be called, on Clare's account, which had led her to hide from her own parents the prolongation of the estrangement, hindered her owning to his that she was in want after the fair allowance he had left her. They probably despised her already; how much more they would despise her in the character of a mendicant! The consequence was that by no effort could the parson's daughter-in-law bring herself to let him know her state. Her reluctance to communicate with her husband's parents might, she thought, lessen with the lapse of time; but with her own the reverse obtained. On her leaving their house after the short visit subsequent to her marriage they were under the impression that she was ultimately going to join her husband; and from that time to the present she had done nothing to disturb their belief that she was awaiting his return in comfort, hoping against hope that his journey to Brazil would result in a short stay only, after which he would come to fetch her, or that he would write for her to join him; in any case that they would soon present a united front to their families and the world. This hope she still fostered. To let her parents know that she was a deserted wife, dependent, now that she had relieved their necessities, on her own hands for a living, after the _eclat_ of a marriage which was to nullify the collapse of the first attempt, would be too much indeed. The set of brilliants returned to her mind. Where Clare had deposited them she did not know, and it mattered little, if it were true that she could only use and not sell them. Even were they absolutely hers it would be passing mean to enrich herself by a legal title to them which was not essentially hers at all. Meanwhile her husband's days had been by no means free from trial. At this moment he was lying ill of fever in the clay lands near Curitiba in Brazil, having been drenched with thunder-storms and persecuted by other hardships, in common with all the English farmers and farm-labourers who, just at this time, were deluded into going thither by the promises of the Brazilian Government, and by the baseless assumption that those frames which, ploughing and sowing on English uplands, had resisted all the weathers to whose moods they had been born, could resist equally well all the weathers by which they were surprised on Brazilian plains. To return. Thus it happened that when the last of Tess's sovereigns had been spent she was unprovided with others to take their place, while on account of the season she found it increasingly difficult to get employment. Not being aware of the rarity of intelligence, energy, health, and willingness in any sphere of life, she refrained from seeking an indoor occupation; fearing towns, large houses, people of means and social sophistication, and of manners other than rural. From that direction of gentility Black Care had come. Society might be better than she supposed from her slight experience of it. But she had no proof of this, and her instinct in the circumstances was to avoid its purlieus. The small dairies to the west, beyond Port-Bredy, in which she had served as supernumerary milkmaid during the spring and summer required no further aid. Room would probably have been made for her at Talbothays, if only out of sheer compassion; but comfortable as her life had been there, she could not go back. The anti-climax would be too intolerable; and her return might bring reproach upon her idolized husband. She could not have borne their pity, and their whispered remarks to one another upon her strange situation; though she would almost have faced a knowledge of her circumstances by every individual there, so long as her story had remained isolated in the mind of each. It was the interchange of ideas about her that made her sensitiveness wince. Tess could not account for this distinction; she simply knew that she felt it. She was now on her way to an upland farm in the centre of the county, to which she had been recommended by a wandering letter which had reached her from Marian. Marian had somehow heard that Tess was separated from her husband--probably through Izz Huett--and the good-natured and now tippling girl, deeming Tess in trouble, had hastened to notify to her former friend that she herself had gone to this upland spot after leaving the dairy, and would like to see her there, where there was room for other hands, if it was really true that she worked again as of old. With the shortening of the days all hope of obtaining her husband's forgiveness began to leave her; and there was something of the habitude of the wild animal in the unreflecting instinct with which she rambled on--disconnecting herself by littles from her eventful past at every step, obliterating her identity, giving no thought to accidents or contingencies which might make a quick discovery of her whereabouts by others of importance to her own happiness, if not to theirs. Among the difficulties of her lonely position not the least was the attention she excited by her appearance, a certain bearing of distinction, which she had caught from Clare, being superadded to her natural attractiveness. Whilst the clothes lasted which had been prepared for her marriage, these casual glances of interest caused her no inconvenience, but as soon as she was compelled to don the wrapper of a fieldwoman, rude words were addressed to her more than once; but nothing occurred to cause her bodily fear till a particular November afternoon. She had preferred the country west of the River Brit to the upland farm for which she was now bound, because, for one thing, it was nearer to the home of her husband's father; and to hover about that region unrecognized, with the notion that she might decide to call at the Vicarage some day, gave her pleasure. But having once decided to try the higher and drier levels, she pressed back eastward, marching afoot towards the village of Chalk-Newton, where she meant to pass the night. The lane was long and unvaried, and, owing to the rapid shortening of the days, dusk came upon her before she was aware. She had reached the top of a hill down which the lane stretched its serpentine length in glimpses, when she heard footsteps behind her back, and in a few moments she was overtaken by a man. He stepped up alongside Tess and said-- "Good night, my pretty maid": to which she civilly replied. The light still remaining in the sky lit up her face, though the landscape was nearly dark. The man turned and stared hard at her. "Why, surely, it is the young wench who was at Trantridge awhile-- young Squire d'Urberville's friend? I was there at that time, though I don't live there now." She recognized in him the well-to-do boor whom Angel had knocked down at the inn for addressing her coarsely. A spasm of anguish shot through her, and she returned him no answer. "Be honest enough to own it, and that what I said in the town was true, though your fancy-man was so up about it--hey, my sly one? You ought to beg my pardon for that blow of his, considering." Still no answer came from Tess. There seemed only one escape for her hunted soul. She suddenly took to her heels with the speed of the wind, and, without looking behind her, ran along the road till she came to a gate which opened directly into a plantation. Into this she plunged, and did not pause till she was deep enough in its shade to be safe against any possibility of discovery. Under foot the leaves were dry, and the foliage of some holly bushes which grew among the deciduous trees was dense enough to keep off draughts. She scraped together the dead leaves till she had formed them into a large heap, making a sort of nest in the middle. Into this Tess crept. Such sleep as she got was naturally fitful; she fancied she heard strange noises, but persuaded herself that they were caused by the breeze. She thought of her husband in some vague warm clime on the other side of the globe, while she was here in the cold. Was there another such a wretched being as she in the world? Tess asked herself; and, thinking of her wasted life, said, "All is vanity." She repeated the words mechanically, till she reflected that this was a most inadequate thought for modern days. Solomon had thought as far as that more than two thousand years ago; she herself, though not in the van of thinkers, had got much further. If all were only vanity, who would mind it? All was, alas, worse than vanity--injustice, punishment, exaction, death. The wife of Angel Clare put her hand to her brow, and felt its curve, and the edges of her eye-sockets perceptible under the soft skin, and thought as she did so that a time would come when that bone would be bare. "I wish it were now," she said. In the midst of these whimsical fancies she heard a new strange sound among the leaves. It might be the wind; yet there was scarcely any wind. Sometimes it was a palpitation, sometimes a flutter; sometimes it was a sort of gasp or gurgle. Soon she was certain that the noises came from wild creatures of some kind, the more so when, originating in the boughs overhead, they were followed by the fall of a heavy body upon the ground. Had she been ensconced here under other and more pleasant conditions she would have become alarmed; but, outside humanity, she had at present no fear. Day at length broke in the sky. When it had been day aloft for some little while it became day in the wood. Directly the assuring and prosaic light of the world's active hours had grown strong, she crept from under her hillock of leaves, and looked around boldly. Then she perceived what had been going on to disturb her. The plantation wherein she had taken shelter ran down at this spot into a peak, which ended it hitherward, outside the hedge being arable ground. Under the trees several pheasants lay about, their rich plumage dabbled with blood; some were dead, some feebly twitching a wing, some staring up at the sky, some pulsating quickly, some contorted, some stretched out--all of them writhing in agony, except the fortunate ones whose tortures had ended during the night by the inability of nature to bear more. Tess guessed at once the meaning of this. The birds had been driven down into this corner the day before by some shooting-party; and while those that had dropped dead under the shot, or had died before nightfall, had been searched for and carried off, many badly wounded birds had escaped and hidden themselves away, or risen among the thick boughs, where they had maintained their position till they grew weaker with loss of blood in the night-time, when they had fallen one by one as she had heard them. She had occasionally caught glimpses of these men in girlhood, looking over hedges, or peeping through bushes, and pointing their guns, strangely accoutred, a bloodthirsty light in their eyes. She had been told that, rough and brutal as they seemed just then, they were not like this all the year round, but were, in fact, quite civil persons save during certain weeks of autumn and winter, when, like the inhabitants of the Malay Peninsula, they ran amuck, and made it their purpose to destroy life--in this case harmless feathered creatures, brought into being by artificial means solely to gratify these propensities--at once so unmannerly and so unchivalrous towards their weaker fellows in Nature's teeming family. With the impulse of a soul who could feel for kindred sufferers as much as for herself, Tess's first thought was to put the still living birds out of their torture, and to this end with her own hands she broke the necks of as many as she could find, leaving them to lie where she had found them till the game-keepers should come--as they probably would come--to look for them a second time. "Poor darlings--to suppose myself the most miserable being on earth in the sight o' such misery as yours!" she exclaimed, her tears running down as she killed the birds tenderly. "And not a twinge of bodily pain about me! I be not mangled, and I be not bleeding, and I have two hands to feed and clothe me." She was ashamed of herself for her gloom of the night, based on nothing more tangible than a sense of condemnation under an arbitrary law of society which had no foundation in Nature.

CHAPTER 41

https://web.archive.org/web/20180820050202/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmTessD48.asp

After leaving home, Tess finds only irregular work as a dairymaid, except during harvest time. As winter approaches, she can barely make ends meet and must use some of the money Angel has left her. Since her parents believe she is living comfortably with her new husband again, they ask her for financial help, for their cottage is in serious need of repairs. She sends them the last of her money. In November, Tess heads to the farm where Marian is working, hoping to find employment for herself there. Along the way, she meets the same man whom Angel had struck. When pursued by him, she hides in the woods and wishes she were dead.

Notes Tess sends the last of her money to her needy parents. Since she is too proud to approach Angel's parents for help, she travels upland, hoping to find work. She is miserable, lonely, and tormented. When she sees the pathetic sight of some pheasants writhing in pain, she identifies with them. To relieve them of their suffering, she kills them with her hands

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/chapters_47_to_48.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Sense and Sensibility/section_32_part_0.txt

Sense and Sensibility.chapters 47-48

chapters 47-48

{"name": "Chapters 47-48", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101060302/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/s/sense-and-sensibility/summary-and-analysis/chapters-4748", "summary": "Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters discussed Willoughby. Mrs. Dashwood \"was sorry for him; she wished him happy.\" But she could never like him as well as she had. Elinor declared that Willoughby was basically selfish and that he never could have been happy with Marianne because of the poverty they would have certainly been reduced to. The family settled down quietly at Barton Cottage, and Elinor was impatient for news of Edward: \"She had heard nothing of him since her leaving London, nothing new, of his plans, nothing certain even of his present abode.\" Then one day their man-servant returned from an errand to Exeter and said, \"I suppose you know, ma'am, that Mr. Ferrars is married.\" He said that he had seen Lucy Steele in a chaise at the door of an inn and that Mr. Ferrars was \"leaning back in it, but he did not look up.\" Lucy told the man she had married and would visit the Dashwoods shortly. That evening, the family was thoughtful and silent. Mrs. Dashwood realized that she had been so engrossed with Marianne's suffering that she had forgotten \"that in Elinor she might have a daughter suffering almost as much, certainly with less self-provocation, and greater fortitude.\" Elinor longed for more news of Edward and hoped for Colonel Brandon's arrival to give it to her. One day a man rode up to the house on horseback and all approached the door to welcome whom they believed to be the colonel. However, the visitor, looking nervous and embarrassed, was Edward. After an awkward silence, Elinor asked him of the health of Mrs. Edward Ferrars. Edward blushed and informed the company that their groom had seen his brother Robert. All were astonished and Elinor \"almost ran out of the room, and as soon as the door was closed, burst into tears of joy.\" Edward, sensing her emotion, \"fell into a reverie\" and hurried out towards the village.", "analysis": "Note the difference in grammatical usage; in modern English, \"each\" is regarded as singular and should be followed by a singular possessive adjective. But Austen uses the plural in the expression \"each felt their own error. Elinor shows herself to be as capable of emotion as her sister. But the feelings she allows people to see are quite appropriately happy ones."}

Mrs. Dashwood did not hear unmoved the vindication of her former favourite. She rejoiced in his being cleared from some part of his imputed guilt;--she was sorry for him;--she wished him happy. But the feelings of the past could not be recalled.--Nothing could restore him with a faith unbroken--a character unblemished, to Marianne. Nothing could do away the knowledge of what the latter had suffered through his means, nor remove the guilt of his conduct towards Eliza. Nothing could replace him, therefore, in her former esteem, nor injure the interests of Colonel Brandon. Had Mrs. Dashwood, like her daughter, heard Willoughby's story from himself--had she witnessed his distress, and been under the influence of his countenance and his manner, it is probable that her compassion would have been greater. But it was neither in Elinor's power, nor in her wish, to rouse such feelings in another, by her retailed explanation, as had at first been called forth in herself. Reflection had given calmness to her judgment, and sobered her own opinion of Willoughby's deserts;--she wished, therefore, to declare only the simple truth, and lay open such facts as were really due to his character, without any embellishment of tenderness to lead the fancy astray. In the evening, when they were all three together, Marianne began voluntarily to speak of him again;--but that it was not without an effort, the restless, unquiet thoughtfulness in which she had been for some time previously sitting--her rising colour, as she spoke,--and her unsteady voice, plainly shewed. "I wish to assure you both," said she, "that I see every thing--as you can desire me to do." Mrs. Dashwood would have interrupted her instantly with soothing tenderness, had not Elinor, who really wished to hear her sister's unbiased opinion, by an eager sign, engaged her silence. Marianne slowly continued-- "It is a great relief to me--what Elinor told me this morning--I have now heard exactly what I wished to hear."--For some moments her voice was lost; but recovering herself, she added, and with greater calmness than before--"I am now perfectly satisfied, I wish for no change. I never could have been happy with him, after knowing, as sooner or later I must have known, all this.--I should have had no confidence, no esteem. Nothing could have done it away to my feelings." "I know it--I know it," cried her mother. "Happy with a man of libertine practices!--With one who so injured the peace of the dearest of our friends, and the best of men!--No--my Marianne has not a heart to be made happy with such a man!--Her conscience, her sensitive conscience, would have felt all that the conscience of her husband ought to have felt." Marianne sighed, and repeated, "I wish for no change." "You consider the matter," said Elinor, "exactly as a good mind and a sound understanding must consider it; and I dare say you perceive, as well as myself, not only in this, but in many other circumstances, reason enough to be convinced that your marriage must have involved you in many certain troubles and disappointments, in which you would have been poorly supported by an affection, on his side, much less certain. Had you married, you must have been always poor. His expensiveness is acknowledged even by himself, and his whole conduct declares that self-denial is a word hardly understood by him. His demands and your inexperience together, on a small, very small income, must have brought on distresses which would not be the LESS grievous to you, from having been entirely unknown and unthought of before. YOUR sense of honour and honesty would have led you, I know, when aware of your situation, to attempt all the economy that would appear to you possible: and, perhaps, as long as your frugality retrenched only on your own comfort, you might have been suffered to practice it, but beyond that--and how little could the utmost of your single management do to stop the ruin which had begun before your marriage?-- Beyond THAT, had you endeavoured, however reasonably, to abridge HIS enjoyments, is it not to be feared, that instead of prevailing on feelings so selfish to consent to it, you would have lessened your own influence on his heart, and made him regret the connection which had involved him in such difficulties?" Marianne's lips quivered, and she repeated the word "Selfish?" in a tone that implied--"do you really think him selfish?" "The whole of his behaviour," replied Elinor, "from the beginning to the end of the affair, has been grounded on selfishness. It was selfishness which first made him sport with your affections; which afterwards, when his own were engaged, made him delay the confession of it, and which finally carried him from Barton. His own enjoyment, or his own ease, was, in every particular, his ruling principle." "It is very true. MY happiness never was his object." "At present," continued Elinor, "he regrets what he has done. And why does he regret it?--Because he finds it has not answered towards himself. It has not made him happy. His circumstances are now unembarrassed--he suffers from no evil of that kind; and he thinks only that he has married a woman of a less amiable temper than yourself. But does it follow that had he married you, he would have been happy?--The inconveniences would have been different. He would then have suffered under the pecuniary distresses which, because they are removed, he now reckons as nothing. He would have had a wife of whose temper he could make no complaint, but he would have been always necessitous--always poor; and probably would soon have learned to rank the innumerable comforts of a clear estate and good income as of far more importance, even to domestic happiness, than the mere temper of a wife." "I have not a doubt of it," said Marianne; "and I have nothing to regret--nothing but my own folly." "Rather say your mother's imprudence, my child," said Mrs. Dashwood; "SHE must be answerable." Marianne would not let her proceed;--and Elinor, satisfied that each felt their own error, wished to avoid any survey of the past that might weaken her sister's spirits; she, therefore, pursuing the first subject, immediately continued, "One observation may, I think, be fairly drawn from the whole of the story--that all Willoughby's difficulties have arisen from the first offence against virtue, in his behaviour to Eliza Williams. That crime has been the origin of every lesser one, and of all his present discontents." Marianne assented most feelingly to the remark; and her mother was led by it to an enumeration of Colonel Brandon's injuries and merits, warm as friendship and design could unitedly dictate. Her daughter did not look, however, as if much of it were heard by her. Elinor, according to her expectation, saw on the two or three following days, that Marianne did not continue to gain strength as she had done; but while her resolution was unsubdued, and she still tried to appear cheerful and easy, her sister could safely trust to the effect of time upon her health. Margaret returned, and the family were again all restored to each other, again quietly settled at the cottage; and if not pursuing their usual studies with quite so much vigour as when they first came to Barton, at least planning a vigorous prosecution of them in future. Elinor grew impatient for some tidings of Edward. She had heard nothing of him since her leaving London, nothing new of his plans, nothing certain even of his present abode. Some letters had passed between her and her brother, in consequence of Marianne's illness; and in the first of John's, there had been this sentence:-- "We know nothing of our unfortunate Edward, and can make no enquiries on so prohibited a subject, but conclude him to be still at Oxford;" which was all the intelligence of Edward afforded her by the correspondence, for his name was not even mentioned in any of the succeeding letters. She was not doomed, however, to be long in ignorance of his measures. Their man-servant had been sent one morning to Exeter on business; and when, as he waited at table, he had satisfied the inquiries of his mistress as to the event of his errand, this was his voluntary communication-- "I suppose you know, ma'am, that Mr. Ferrars is married." Marianne gave a violent start, fixed her eyes upon Elinor, saw her turning pale, and fell back in her chair in hysterics. Mrs. Dashwood, whose eyes, as she answered the servant's inquiry, had intuitively taken the same direction, was shocked to perceive by Elinor's countenance how much she really suffered, and a moment afterwards, alike distressed by Marianne's situation, knew not on which child to bestow her principal attention. The servant, who saw only that Miss Marianne was taken ill, had sense enough to call one of the maids, who, with Mrs. Dashwood's assistance, supported her into the other room. By that time, Marianne was rather better, and her mother leaving her to the care of Margaret and the maid, returned to Elinor, who, though still much disordered, had so far recovered the use of her reason and voice as to be just beginning an inquiry of Thomas, as to the source of his intelligence. Mrs. Dashwood immediately took all that trouble on herself; and Elinor had the benefit of the information without the exertion of seeking it. "Who told you that Mr. Ferrars was married, Thomas?" "I see Mr. Ferrars myself, ma'am, this morning in Exeter, and his lady too, Miss Steele as was. They was stopping in a chaise at the door of the New London Inn, as I went there with a message from Sally at the Park to her brother, who is one of the post-boys. I happened to look up as I went by the chaise, and so I see directly it was the youngest Miss Steele; so I took off my hat, and she knew me and called to me, and inquired after you, ma'am, and the young ladies, especially Miss Marianne, and bid me I should give her compliments and Mr. Ferrars's, their best compliments and service, and how sorry they was they had not time to come on and see you, but they was in a great hurry to go forwards, for they was going further down for a little while, but howsever, when they come back, they'd make sure to come and see you." "But did she tell you she was married, Thomas?" "Yes, ma'am. She smiled, and said how she had changed her name since she was in these parts. She was always a very affable and free-spoken young lady, and very civil behaved. So, I made free to wish her joy." "Was Mr. Ferrars in the carriage with her?" "Yes, ma'am, I just see him leaning back in it, but he did not look up;--he never was a gentleman much for talking." Elinor's heart could easily account for his not putting himself forward; and Mrs. Dashwood probably found the same explanation. "Was there no one else in the carriage?" "No, ma'am, only they two." "Do you know where they came from?" "They come straight from town, as Miss Lucy--Mrs. Ferrars told me." "And are they going farther westward?" "Yes, ma'am--but not to bide long. They will soon be back again, and then they'd be sure and call here." Mrs. Dashwood now looked at her daughter; but Elinor knew better than to expect them. She recognised the whole of Lucy in the message, and was very confident that Edward would never come near them. She observed in a low voice, to her mother, that they were probably going down to Mr. Pratt's, near Plymouth. Thomas's intelligence seemed over. Elinor looked as if she wished to hear more. "Did you see them off, before you came away?" "No, ma'am--the horses were just coming out, but I could not bide any longer; I was afraid of being late." "Did Mrs. Ferrars look well?" "Yes, ma'am, she said how she was very well; and to my mind she was always a very handsome young lady--and she seemed vastly contented." Mrs. Dashwood could think of no other question, and Thomas and the tablecloth, now alike needless, were soon afterwards dismissed. Marianne had already sent to say, that she should eat nothing more. Mrs. Dashwood's and Elinor's appetites were equally lost, and Margaret might think herself very well off, that with so much uneasiness as both her sisters had lately experienced, so much reason as they had often had to be careless of their meals, she had never been obliged to go without her dinner before. When the dessert and the wine were arranged, and Mrs. Dashwood and Elinor were left by themselves, they remained long together in a similarity of thoughtfulness and silence. Mrs. Dashwood feared to hazard any remark, and ventured not to offer consolation. She now found that she had erred in relying on Elinor's representation of herself; and justly concluded that every thing had been expressly softened at the time, to spare her from an increase of unhappiness, suffering as she then had suffered for Marianne. She found that she had been misled by the careful, the considerate attention of her daughter, to think the attachment, which once she had so well understood, much slighter in reality, than she had been wont to believe, or than it was now proved to be. She feared that under this persuasion she had been unjust, inattentive, nay, almost unkind, to her Elinor;--that Marianne's affliction, because more acknowledged, more immediately before her, had too much engrossed her tenderness, and led her away to forget that in Elinor she might have a daughter suffering almost as much, certainly with less self-provocation, and greater fortitude. Elinor now found the difference between the expectation of an unpleasant event, however certain the mind may be told to consider it, and certainty itself. She now found, that in spite of herself, she had always admitted a hope, while Edward remained single, that something would occur to prevent his marrying Lucy; that some resolution of his own, some mediation of friends, or some more eligible opportunity of establishment for the lady, would arise to assist the happiness of all. But he was now married; and she condemned her heart for the lurking flattery, which so much heightened the pain of the intelligence. That he should be married soon, before (as she imagined) he could be in orders, and consequently before he could be in possession of the living, surprised her a little at first. But she soon saw how likely it was that Lucy, in her self-provident care, in her haste to secure him, should overlook every thing but the risk of delay. They were married, married in town, and now hastening down to her uncle's. What had Edward felt on being within four miles from Barton, on seeing her mother's servant, on hearing Lucy's message! They would soon, she supposed, be settled at Delaford.--Delaford,--that place in which so much conspired to give her an interest; which she wished to be acquainted with, and yet desired to avoid. She saw them in an instant in their parsonage-house; saw in Lucy, the active, contriving manager, uniting at once a desire of smart appearance with the utmost frugality, and ashamed to be suspected of half her economical practices;--pursuing her own interest in every thought, courting the favour of Colonel Brandon, of Mrs. Jennings, and of every wealthy friend. In Edward--she knew not what she saw, nor what she wished to see;--happy or unhappy,--nothing pleased her; she turned away her head from every sketch of him. Elinor flattered herself that some one of their connections in London would write to them to announce the event, and give farther particulars,--but day after day passed off, and brought no letter, no tidings. Though uncertain that any one were to blame, she found fault with every absent friend. They were all thoughtless or indolent. "When do you write to Colonel Brandon, ma'am?" was an inquiry which sprung from the impatience of her mind to have something going on. "I wrote to him, my love, last week, and rather expect to see, than to hear from him again. I earnestly pressed his coming to us, and should not be surprised to see him walk in today or tomorrow, or any day." This was gaining something, something to look forward to. Colonel Brandon must have some information to give. Scarcely had she so determined it, when the figure of a man on horseback drew her eyes to the window. He stopt at their gate. It was a gentleman, it was Colonel Brandon himself. Now she could hear more; and she trembled in expectation of it. But--it was NOT Colonel Brandon--neither his air--nor his height. Were it possible, she must say it must be Edward. She looked again. He had just dismounted;--she could not be mistaken,--it WAS Edward. She moved away and sat down. "He comes from Mr. Pratt's purposely to see us. I WILL be calm; I WILL be mistress of myself." In a moment she perceived that the others were likewise aware of the mistake. She saw her mother and Marianne change colour; saw them look at herself, and whisper a few sentences to each other. She would have given the world to be able to speak--and to make them understand that she hoped no coolness, no slight, would appear in their behaviour to him;--but she had no utterance, and was obliged to leave all to their own discretion. Not a syllable passed aloud. They all waited in silence for the appearance of their visitor. His footsteps were heard along the gravel path; in a moment he was in the passage, and in another he was before them. His countenance, as he entered the room, was not too happy, even for Elinor. His complexion was white with agitation, and he looked as if fearful of his reception, and conscious that he merited no kind one. Mrs. Dashwood, however, conforming, as she trusted, to the wishes of that daughter, by whom she then meant in the warmth of her heart to be guided in every thing, met with a look of forced complacency, gave him her hand, and wished him joy. He coloured, and stammered out an unintelligible reply. Elinor's lips had moved with her mother's, and, when the moment of action was over, she wished that she had shaken hands with him too. But it was then too late, and with a countenance meaning to be open, she sat down again and talked of the weather. Marianne had retreated as much as possible out of sight, to conceal her distress; and Margaret, understanding some part, but not the whole of the case, thought it incumbent on her to be dignified, and therefore took a seat as far from him as she could, and maintained a strict silence. When Elinor had ceased to rejoice in the dryness of the season, a very awful pause took place. It was put an end to by Mrs. Dashwood, who felt obliged to hope that he had left Mrs. Ferrars very well. In a hurried manner, he replied in the affirmative. Another pause. Elinor resolving to exert herself, though fearing the sound of her own voice, now said, "Is Mrs. Ferrars at Longstaple?" "At Longstaple!" he replied, with an air of surprise.-- "No, my mother is in town." "I meant," said Elinor, taking up some work from the table, "to inquire for Mrs. EDWARD Ferrars." She dared not look up;--but her mother and Marianne both turned their eyes on him. He coloured, seemed perplexed, looked doubtingly, and, after some hesitation, said,-- "Perhaps you mean--my brother--you mean Mrs.--Mrs. ROBERT Ferrars." "Mrs. Robert Ferrars!"--was repeated by Marianne and her mother in an accent of the utmost amazement;--and though Elinor could not speak, even HER eyes were fixed on him with the same impatient wonder. He rose from his seat, and walked to the window, apparently from not knowing what to do; took up a pair of scissors that lay there, and while spoiling both them and their sheath by cutting the latter to pieces as he spoke, said, in a hurried voice, "Perhaps you do not know--you may not have heard that my brother is lately married to--to the youngest--to Miss Lucy Steele." His words were echoed with unspeakable astonishment by all but Elinor, who sat with her head leaning over her work, in a state of such agitation as made her hardly know where she was. "Yes," said he, "they were married last week, and are now at Dawlish." Elinor could sit it no longer. She almost ran out of the room, and as soon as the door was closed, burst into tears of joy, which at first she thought would never cease. Edward, who had till then looked any where, rather than at her, saw her hurry away, and perhaps saw--or even heard, her emotion; for immediately afterwards he fell into a reverie, which no remarks, no inquiries, no affectionate address of Mrs. Dashwood could penetrate, and at last, without saying a word, quitted the room, and walked out towards the village--leaving the others in the greatest astonishment and perplexity on a change in his situation, so wonderful and so sudden;--a perplexity which they had no means of lessening but by their own conjectures.

Chapters 47-48

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101060302/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/s/sense-and-sensibility/summary-and-analysis/chapters-4748

Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters discussed Willoughby. Mrs. Dashwood "was sorry for him; she wished him happy." But she could never like him as well as she had. Elinor declared that Willoughby was basically selfish and that he never could have been happy with Marianne because of the poverty they would have certainly been reduced to. The family settled down quietly at Barton Cottage, and Elinor was impatient for news of Edward: "She had heard nothing of him since her leaving London, nothing new, of his plans, nothing certain even of his present abode." Then one day their man-servant returned from an errand to Exeter and said, "I suppose you know, ma'am, that Mr. Ferrars is married." He said that he had seen Lucy Steele in a chaise at the door of an inn and that Mr. Ferrars was "leaning back in it, but he did not look up." Lucy told the man she had married and would visit the Dashwoods shortly. That evening, the family was thoughtful and silent. Mrs. Dashwood realized that she had been so engrossed with Marianne's suffering that she had forgotten "that in Elinor she might have a daughter suffering almost as much, certainly with less self-provocation, and greater fortitude." Elinor longed for more news of Edward and hoped for Colonel Brandon's arrival to give it to her. One day a man rode up to the house on horseback and all approached the door to welcome whom they believed to be the colonel. However, the visitor, looking nervous and embarrassed, was Edward. After an awkward silence, Elinor asked him of the health of Mrs. Edward Ferrars. Edward blushed and informed the company that their groom had seen his brother Robert. All were astonished and Elinor "almost ran out of the room, and as soon as the door was closed, burst into tears of joy." Edward, sensing her emotion, "fell into a reverie" and hurried out towards the village.

Note the difference in grammatical usage; in modern English, "each" is regarded as singular and should be followed by a singular possessive adjective. But Austen uses the plural in the expression "each felt their own error. Elinor shows herself to be as capable of emotion as her sister. But the feelings she allows people to see are quite appropriately happy ones.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/107-chapters/51.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Far From the Madding Crowd/section_50_part_0.txt

Far From the Madding Crowd.chapter 51

chapter 51

{"name": "Chapter 51", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-51", "summary": "Gabriel Oak turns out to be too busy with fair business to escort Bathsheba home as planned, so she decides to drive alone in her cart. Unfortunately, she gets caught leaving by Boldwood, and the man insists on escorting her the whole way home... alone. Hurray. Boldwood is tired of beating around the bush, so he flat out asks Bathsheba if she would ever consider marrying him again. She says she's not really interested, but Boldwood isn't one to take no for an answer. She tells him that the only reason she'd ever marry him would be out of a sense that she owed him something, but she'll never love him. Finally, he gets her to promise him that by Christmas, she'll be able to commit to marrying him, even if it's a six or seven year engagement. As the next few weeks go by, Bathsheba decides that she needs to confide in someone about her dilemma. She talks to Gabriel Oak about it and admits that she'll never love Boldwood. She's afraid that if she refuses him, though, she'll be responsible for driving him literally insane. Oak simply says that it's not fair to marry someone you don't love, but Bathsheba keeps insisting that it's more complicated than that. Bathsheba says she likes talking to Oak about love because it's something he's not an expert in. He tells her, however, that she shouldn't be so sure about this. As she walks away, Bathsheba resents the fact that for all of her romance with Troy and Boldwood, Oak has never once tried to throw his hat back into the ring. Not that she would have accepted him. She just wished she had the opportunity to say no to him. Oh, jeez. Bathsheba is such a diva.", "analysis": ""}

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.

Chapter 51

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-51

Gabriel Oak turns out to be too busy with fair business to escort Bathsheba home as planned, so she decides to drive alone in her cart. Unfortunately, she gets caught leaving by Boldwood, and the man insists on escorting her the whole way home... alone. Hurray. Boldwood is tired of beating around the bush, so he flat out asks Bathsheba if she would ever consider marrying him again. She says she's not really interested, but Boldwood isn't one to take no for an answer. She tells him that the only reason she'd ever marry him would be out of a sense that she owed him something, but she'll never love him. Finally, he gets her to promise him that by Christmas, she'll be able to commit to marrying him, even if it's a six or seven year engagement. As the next few weeks go by, Bathsheba decides that she needs to confide in someone about her dilemma. She talks to Gabriel Oak about it and admits that she'll never love Boldwood. She's afraid that if she refuses him, though, she'll be responsible for driving him literally insane. Oak simply says that it's not fair to marry someone you don't love, but Bathsheba keeps insisting that it's more complicated than that. Bathsheba says she likes talking to Oak about love because it's something he's not an expert in. He tells her, however, that she shouldn't be so sure about this. As she walks away, Bathsheba resents the fact that for all of her romance with Troy and Boldwood, Oak has never once tried to throw his hat back into the ring. Not that she would have accepted him. She just wished she had the opportunity to say no to him. Oh, jeez. Bathsheba is such a diva.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/33.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_3_part_9.txt

Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 33

chapter 33

{"name": "Chapter 33", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410060617/https://www.gradesaver.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/study-guide/summary-phase-4-chapters-25-34", "summary": "Angel wishes to spend a day with Tess away from the dairy before the wedding, thus they spend a day in the nearest town on Christmas Eve. While in town, others remark that she is a comely maid, although a Trantridge man thinks that he recognizes her. He thinks that she was once a woman of ill repute. That night, Angel has a dream that he fought with the man who insulted Tess. This is the last thing required for Tess to turn the scale of her indecision. Tess writes on four pages a succinct narrative of those events of years before and slips it under his door. The next morning, Angel meets her at the bottom of the stairs and kisses her as warmly as ever. Tess feels that her doubts were childish and he may have forgiven her. On the wedding day, Tess finds in Angel's room the note under the carpet, unopened and never seen. Tess attempts to tell Angel once more, but she does not. On the way to the church, Tess believes that she has seen the carriage before. Angel tells Tess the legend of the d'Urberville Coach, the superstition of the county that a certain d'Urberville who committed a dreadful crime in his family coach. Supposedly, members of the d'Urberville family see the coach at certain times, but Angel refuses to tell Tess when. Tess marries Angel, but feels that she is somewhat more truly Mrs. Alexander d'Urberville. When she finds herself alone, Tess prays. Although she tries to pray to God, she in fact prays to Angel. As the two leave Talbothays, Tess advises Angel to kiss her three roommates one more time. On their way out of Talbothays, they see an afternoon crow.", "analysis": "Tess averts the disaster that her reputation provides twice in this chapter. For the first time since leaving Marlott, Tess confronts her past when a Trantridge man recognizes her and believes her to be a woman with a tarnished reputation. Although Angel defends her, he does so without conceiving that the man's accusations against Tess may contain any truth. Tess averts a second disaster when Angel seems to respond favorably to the letter that Tess writes to him. Angel behaves as if nothing has troubled him the next morning after he has supposedly read the letter, and says nothing of its subject; his reaction, as Hardy foreshadows and eventually explains by the end of the chapter, stems from having not read the letter at all. The realization that Angel has not read the letter concerning Tess's past serves as a turning point. The anxiety and guilt that Tess has felt in previous chapters has been internalized. After this point on the wedding day, Hardy gives this anxiety physical manifestation through several symbols of foreboding. The appearance of an afternoon crow is a conventional sign foreshadowing ill omens, while Tess's vision of the d'Urberville coach foreshadows tragedy particular to her ancestors. This further bolsters the theme of Tess's inability to escape her d'Urberville past. Although now married to Angel Clare, Tess Durbeyfield cannot fully repudiate her ancestry and personal history"}

Angel felt that he would like to spend a day with her before the wedding, somewhere away from the dairy, as a last jaunt in her company while there were yet mere lover and mistress; a romantic day, in circumstances that would never be repeated; with that other and greater day beaming close ahead of them. During the preceding week, therefore, he suggested making a few purchases in the nearest town, and they started together. Clare's life at the dairy had been that of a recluse in respect the world of his own class. For months he had never gone near a town, and, requiring no vehicle, had never kept one, hiring the dairyman's cob or gig if he rode or drove. They went in the gig that day. And then for the first time in their lives they shopped as partners in one concern. It was Christmas Eve, with its loads a holly and mistletoe, and the town was very full of strangers who had come in from all parts of the country on account of the day. Tess paid the penalty of walking about with happiness superadded to beauty on her countenance by being much stared at as she moved amid them on his arm. In the evening they returned to the inn at which they had put up, and Tess waited in the entry while Angel went to see the horse and gig brought to the door. The general sitting-room was full of guests, who were continually going in and out. As the door opened and shut each time for the passage of these, the light within the parlour fell full upon Tess's face. Two men came out and passed by her among the rest. One of them had stared her up and down in surprise, and she fancied he was a Trantridge man, though that village lay so many miles off that Trantridge folk were rarities here. "A comely maid that," said the other. "True, comely enough. But unless I make a great mistake--" And he negatived the remainder of the definition forthwith. Clare had just returned from the stable-yard, and, confronting the man on the threshold, heard the words, and saw the shrinking of Tess. The insult to her stung him to the quick, and before he had considered anything at all he struck the man on the chin with the full force of his fist, sending him staggering backwards into the passage. The man recovered himself, and seemed inclined to come on, and Clare, stepping outside the door, put himself in a posture of defence. But his opponent began to think better of the matter. He looked anew at Tess as he passed her, and said to Clare-- "I beg pardon, sir; 'twas a complete mistake. I thought she was another woman, forty miles from here." Clare, feeling then that he had been too hasty, and that he was, moreover, to blame for leaving her standing in an inn-passage, did what he usually did in such cases, gave the man five shillings to plaster the blow; and thus they parted, bidding each other a pacific good night. As soon as Clare had taken the reins from the ostler, and the young couple had driven off, the two men went in the other direction. "And was it a mistake?" said the second one. "Not a bit of it. But I didn't want to hurt the gentleman's feelings--not I." In the meantime the lovers were driving onward. "Could we put off our wedding till a little later?" Tess asked in a dry dull voice. "I mean if we wished?" "No, my love. Calm yourself. Do you mean that the fellow may have time to summon me for assault?" he asked good-humouredly. "No--I only meant--if it should have to be put off." What she meant was not very clear, and he directed her to dismiss such fancies from her mind, which she obediently did as well as she could. But she was grave, very grave, all the way home; till she thought, "We shall go away, a very long distance, hundreds of miles from these parts, and such as this can never happen again, and no ghost of the past reach there." They parted tenderly that night on the landing, and Clare ascended to his attic. Tess sat up getting on with some little requisites, lest the few remaining days should not afford sufficient time. While she sat she heard a noise in Angel's room overhead, a sound of thumping and struggling. Everybody else in the house was asleep, and in her anxiety lest Clare should be ill she ran up and knocked at his door, and asked him what was the matter. "Oh, nothing, dear," he said from within. "I am so sorry I disturbed you! But the reason is rather an amusing one: I fell asleep and dreamt that I was fighting that fellow again who insulted you, and the noise you heard was my pummelling away with my fists at my portmanteau, which I pulled out to-day for packing. I am occasionally liable to these freaks in my sleep. Go to bed and think of it no more." This was the last drachm required to turn the scale of her indecision. Declare the past to him by word of mouth she could not; but there was another way. She sat down and wrote on the four pages of a note-sheet a succinct narrative of those events of three or four years ago, put it into an envelope, and directed it to Clare. Then, lest the flesh should again be weak, she crept upstairs without any shoes and slipped the note under his door. Her night was a broken one, as it well might be, and she listened for the first faint noise overhead. It came, as usual; he descended, as usual. She descended. He met her at the bottom of the stairs and kissed her. Surely it was as warmly as ever! He looked a little disturbed and worn, she thought. But he said not a word to her about her revelation, even when they were alone. Could he have had it? Unless he began the subject she felt that she could say nothing. So the day passed, and it was evident that whatever he thought he meant to keep to himself. Yet he was frank and affectionate as before. Could it be that her doubts were childish? that he forgave her; that he loved her for what she was, just as she was, and smiled at her disquiet as at a foolish nightmare? Had he really received her note? She glanced into his room, and could see nothing of it. It might be that he forgave her. But even if he had not received it she had a sudden enthusiastic trust that he surely would forgive her. Every morning and night he was the same, and thus New Year's Eve broke--the wedding day. The lovers did not rise at milking-time, having through the whole of this last week of their sojourn at the dairy been accorded something of the position of guests, Tess being honoured with a room of her own. When they arrived downstairs at breakfast-time they were surprised to see what effects had been produced in the large kitchen for their glory since they had last beheld it. At some unnatural hour of the morning the dairyman had caused the yawning chimney-corner to be whitened, and the brick hearth reddened, and a blazing yellow damask blower to be hung across the arch in place of the old grimy blue cotton one with a black sprig pattern which had formerly done duty there. This renovated aspect of what was the focus indeed of the room on a full winter morning threw a smiling demeanour over the whole apartment. "I was determined to do summat in honour o't", said the dairyman. "And as you wouldn't hear of my gieing a rattling good randy wi' fiddles and bass-viols complete, as we should ha' done in old times, this was all I could think o' as a noiseless thing." Tess's friends lived so far off that none could conveniently have been present at the ceremony, even had any been asked; but as a fact nobody was invited from Marlott. As for Angel's family, he had written and duly informed them of the time, and assured them that he would be glad to see one at least of them there for the day if he would like to come. His brothers had not replied at all, seeming to be indignant with him; while his father and mother had written a rather sad letter, deploring his precipitancy in rushing into marriage, but making the best of the matter by saying that, though a dairywoman was the last daughter-in-law they could have expected, their son had arrived at an age which he might be supposed to be the best judge. This coolness in his relations distressed Clare less than it would have done had he been without the grand card with which he meant to surprise them ere long. To produce Tess, fresh from the dairy, as a d'Urberville and a lady, he had felt to be temerarious and risky; hence he had concealed her lineage till such time as, familiarized with worldly ways by a few months' travel and reading with him, he could take her on a visit to his parents and impart the knowledge while triumphantly producing her as worthy of such an ancient line. It was a pretty lover's dream, if no more. Perhaps Tess's lineage had more value for himself than for anybody in the world beside. Her perception that Angel's bearing towards her still remained in no whit altered by her own communication rendered Tess guiltily doubtful if he could have received it. She rose from breakfast before he had finished, and hastened upstairs. It had occurred to her to look once more into the queer gaunt room which had been Clare's den, or rather eyrie, for so long, and climbing the ladder she stood at the open door of the apartment, regarding and pondering. She stooped to the threshold of the doorway, where she had pushed in the note two or three days earlier in such excitement. The carpet reached close to the sill, and under the edge of the carpet she discerned the faint white margin of the envelope containing her letter to him, which he obviously had never seen, owing to her having in her haste thrust it beneath the carpet as well as beneath the door. With a feeling of faintness she withdrew the letter. There it was--sealed up, just as it had left her hands. The mountain had not yet been removed. She could not let him read it now, the house being in full bustle of preparation; and descending to her own room she destroyed the letter there. She was so pale when he saw her again that he felt quite anxious. The incident of the misplaced letter she had jumped at as if it prevented a confession; but she knew in her conscience that it need not; there was still time. Yet everything was in a stir; there was coming and going; all had to dress, the dairyman and Mrs Crick having been asked to accompany them as witnesses; and reflection or deliberate talk was well-nigh impossible. The only minute Tess could get to be alone with Clare was when they met upon the landing. "I am so anxious to talk to you--I want to confess all my faults and blunders!" she said with attempted lightness. "No, no--we can't have faults talked of--you must be deemed perfect to-day at least, my Sweet!" he cried. "We shall have plenty of time, hereafter, I hope, to talk over our failings. I will confess mine at the same time." "But it would be better for me to do it now, I think, so that you could not say--" "Well, my quixotic one, you shall tell me anything--say, as soon as we are settled in our lodging; not now. I, too, will tell you my faults then. But do not let us spoil the day with them; they will be excellent matter for a dull time." "Then you don't wish me to, dearest?" "I do not, Tessy, really." The hurry of dressing and starting left no time for more than this. Those words of his seemed to reassure her on further reflection. She was whirled onward through the next couple of critical hours by the mastering tide of her devotion to him, which closed up further meditation. Her one desire, so long resisted, to make herself his, to call him her lord, her own--then, if necessary, to die--had at last lifted her up from her plodding reflective pathway. In dressing, she moved about in a mental cloud of many-coloured idealities, which eclipsed all sinister contingencies by its brightness. The church was a long way off, and they were obliged to drive, particularly as it was winter. A closed carriage was ordered from a roadside inn, a vehicle which had been kept there ever since the old days of post-chaise travelling. It had stout wheel-spokes, and heavy felloes a great curved bed, immense straps and springs, and a pole like a battering-ram. The postilion was a venerable "boy" of sixty--a martyr to rheumatic gout, the result of excessive exposure in youth, counter-acted by strong liquors--who had stood at inn-doors doing nothing for the whole five-and-twenty years that had elapsed since he had no longer been required to ride professionally, as if expecting the old times to come back again. He had a permanent running wound on the outside of his right leg, originated by the constant bruisings of aristocratic carriage-poles during the many years that he had been in regular employ at the King's Arms, Casterbridge. Inside this cumbrous and creaking structure, and behind this decayed conductor, the _partie carree_ took their seats--the bride and bridegroom and Mr and Mrs Crick. Angel would have liked one at least of his brothers to be present as groomsman, but their silence after his gentle hint to that effect by letter had signified that they did not care to come. They disapproved of the marriage, and could not be expected to countenance it. Perhaps it was as well that they could not be present. They were not worldly young fellows, but fraternizing with dairy-folk would have struck unpleasantly upon their biased niceness, apart from their views of the match. Upheld by the momentum of the time, Tess knew nothing of this, did not see anything, did not know the road they were taking to the church. She knew that Angel was close to her; all the rest was a luminous mist. She was a sort of celestial person, who owed her being to poetry--one of those classical divinities Clare was accustomed to talk to her about when they took their walks together. The marriage being by licence there were only a dozen or so of people in the church; had there been a thousand they would have produced no more effect upon her. They were at stellar distances from her present world. In the ecstatic solemnity with which she swore her faith to him the ordinary sensibilities of sex seemed a flippancy. At a pause in the service, while they were kneeling together, she unconsciously inclined herself towards him, so that her shoulder touched his arm; she had been frightened by a passing thought, and the movement had been automatic, to assure herself that he was really there, and to fortify her belief that his fidelity would be proof against all things. Clare knew that she loved him--every curve of her form showed that-- but he did not know at that time the full depth of her devotion, its single-mindedness, its meekness; what long-suffering it guaranteed, what honesty, what endurance, what good faith. As they came out of church the ringers swung the bells off their rests, and a modest peal of three notes broke forth--that limited amount of expression having been deemed sufficient by the church builders for the joys of such a small parish. Passing by the tower with her husband on the path to the gate she could feel the vibrant air humming round them from the louvred belfry in the circle of sound, and it matched the highly-charged mental atmosphere in which she was living. This condition of mind, wherein she felt glorified by an irradiation not her own, like the angel whom St John saw in the sun, lasted till the sound of the church bells had died away, and the emotions of the wedding-service had calmed down. Her eyes could dwell upon details more clearly now, and Mr and Mrs Crick having directed their own gig to be sent for them, to leave the carriage to the young couple, she observed the build and character of that conveyance for the first time. Sitting in silence she regarded it long. "I fancy you seem oppressed, Tessy," said Clare. "Yes," she answered, putting her hand to her brow. "I tremble at many things. It is all so serious, Angel. Among other things I seem to have seen this carriage before, to be very well acquainted with it. It is very odd--I must have seen it in a dream." "Oh--you have heard the legend of the d'Urberville Coach--that well-known superstition of this county about your family when they were very popular here; and this lumbering old thing reminds you of it." "I have never heard of it to my knowledge," said she. "What is the legend--may I know it?" "Well--I would rather not tell it in detail just now. A certain d'Urberville of the sixteenth or seventeenth century committed a dreadful crime in his family coach; and since that time members of the family see or hear the old coach whenever--But I'll tell you another day--it is rather gloomy. Evidently some dim knowledge of it has been brought back to your mind by the sight of this venerable caravan." "I don't remember hearing it before," she murmured. "Is it when we are going to die, Angel, that members of my family see it, or is it when we have committed a crime?" "Now, Tess!" He silenced her by a kiss. By the time they reached home she was contrite and spiritless. She was Mrs Angel Clare, indeed, but had she any moral right to the name? Was she not more truly Mrs Alexander d'Urberville? Could intensity of love justify what might be considered in upright souls as culpable reticence? She knew not what was expected of women in such cases; and she had no counsellor. However, when she found herself alone in her room for a few minutes--the last day this on which she was ever to enter it--she knelt down and prayed. She tried to pray to God, but it was her husband who really had her supplication. Her idolatry of this man was such that she herself almost feared it to be ill-omened. She was conscious of the notion expressed by Friar Laurence: "These violent delights have violent ends." It might be too desperate for human conditions--too rank, to wild, too deadly. "O my love, why do I love you so!" she whispered there alone; "for she you love is not my real self, but one in my image; the one I might have been!" Afternoon came, and with it the hour for departure. They had decided to fulfil the plan of going for a few days to the lodgings in the old farmhouse near Wellbridge Mill, at which he meant to reside during his investigation of flour processes. At two o'clock there was nothing left to do but to start. All the servantry of the dairy were standing in the red-brick entry to see them go out, the dairyman and his wife following to the door. Tess saw her three chamber-mates in a row against the wall, pensively inclining their heads. She had much questioned if they would appear at the parting moment; but there they were, stoical and staunch to the last. She knew why the delicate Retty looked so fragile, and Izz so tragically sorrowful, and Marian so blank; and she forgot her own dogging shadow for a moment in contemplating theirs. She impulsively whispered to him-- "Will you kiss 'em all, once, poor things, for the first and last time?" Clare had not the least objection to such a farewell formality--which was all that it was to him--and as he passed them he kissed them in succession where they stood, saying "Goodbye" to each as he did so. When they reached the door Tess femininely glanced back to discern the effect of that kiss of charity; there was no triumph in her glance, as there might have been. If there had it would have disappeared when she saw how moved the girls all were. The kiss had obviously done harm by awakening feelings they were trying to subdue. Of all this Clare was unconscious. Passing on to the wicket-gate he shook hands with the dairyman and his wife, and expressed his last thanks to them for their attentions; after which there was a moment of silence before they had moved off. It was interrupted by the crowing of a cock. The white one with the rose comb had come and settled on the palings in front of the house, within a few yards of them, and his notes thrilled their ears through, dwindling away like echoes down a valley of rocks. "Oh?" said Mrs Crick. "An afternoon crow!" Two men were standing by the yard gate, holding it open. "That's bad," one murmured to the other, not thinking that the words could be heard by the group at the door-wicket. The cock crew again--straight towards Clare. "Well!" said the dairyman. "I don't like to hear him!" said Tess to her husband. "Tell the man to drive on. Goodbye, goodbye!" The cock crew again. "Hoosh! Just you be off, sir, or I'll twist your neck!" said the dairyman with some irritation, turning to the bird and driving him away. And to his wife as they went indoors: "Now, to think o' that just to-day! I've not heard his crow of an afternoon all the year afore." "It only means a change in the weather," said she; "not what you think: 'tis impossible!"

Chapter 33

https://web.archive.org/web/20210410060617/https://www.gradesaver.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/study-guide/summary-phase-4-chapters-25-34

Angel wishes to spend a day with Tess away from the dairy before the wedding, thus they spend a day in the nearest town on Christmas Eve. While in town, others remark that she is a comely maid, although a Trantridge man thinks that he recognizes her. He thinks that she was once a woman of ill repute. That night, Angel has a dream that he fought with the man who insulted Tess. This is the last thing required for Tess to turn the scale of her indecision. Tess writes on four pages a succinct narrative of those events of years before and slips it under his door. The next morning, Angel meets her at the bottom of the stairs and kisses her as warmly as ever. Tess feels that her doubts were childish and he may have forgiven her. On the wedding day, Tess finds in Angel's room the note under the carpet, unopened and never seen. Tess attempts to tell Angel once more, but she does not. On the way to the church, Tess believes that she has seen the carriage before. Angel tells Tess the legend of the d'Urberville Coach, the superstition of the county that a certain d'Urberville who committed a dreadful crime in his family coach. Supposedly, members of the d'Urberville family see the coach at certain times, but Angel refuses to tell Tess when. Tess marries Angel, but feels that she is somewhat more truly Mrs. Alexander d'Urberville. When she finds herself alone, Tess prays. Although she tries to pray to God, she in fact prays to Angel. As the two leave Talbothays, Tess advises Angel to kiss her three roommates one more time. On their way out of Talbothays, they see an afternoon crow.

Tess averts the disaster that her reputation provides twice in this chapter. For the first time since leaving Marlott, Tess confronts her past when a Trantridge man recognizes her and believes her to be a woman with a tarnished reputation. Although Angel defends her, he does so without conceiving that the man's accusations against Tess may contain any truth. Tess averts a second disaster when Angel seems to respond favorably to the letter that Tess writes to him. Angel behaves as if nothing has troubled him the next morning after he has supposedly read the letter, and says nothing of its subject; his reaction, as Hardy foreshadows and eventually explains by the end of the chapter, stems from having not read the letter at all. The realization that Angel has not read the letter concerning Tess's past serves as a turning point. The anxiety and guilt that Tess has felt in previous chapters has been internalized. After this point on the wedding day, Hardy gives this anxiety physical manifestation through several symbols of foreboding. The appearance of an afternoon crow is a conventional sign foreshadowing ill omens, while Tess's vision of the d'Urberville coach foreshadows tragedy particular to her ancestors. This further bolsters the theme of Tess's inability to escape her d'Urberville past. Although now married to Angel Clare, Tess Durbeyfield cannot fully repudiate her ancestry and personal history

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/45.txt

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Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 44

chapter 44

{"name": "Phase V: \"The Woman Pays,\" Chapter Forty-Four", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210424232301/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary/chapter-44", "summary": "Tess begins to think again about contacting Angel's parents at Emminster Vicarage. After all, why had she not heard from Angel? Was he really indifferent to her, as his proposal to Izz would suggest? Or was he sick and dying? Sunday is the only day she has off, so she resolves to walk to the vicarage from the farm on the first Sunday when the roads are clear of snow, leaving early in the morning. Marian and Izz know that she's going, and help her to dress up prettily before she leaves. It's a very far walk, and Tess's hopes droop as she gets tired. Once Tess arrives in the village, she stashes her walking boots in a bush and puts on her nice pretty shoes. She rings the bell on the vicarage door, but no one answers--they're all at church, including the servants. She knows she'll just have to wait until they get back. As she's walking back to the main street, the service lets out and the congregation pours out into the street around her. Everyone stares at her, so she hurries through the crowd to find a place to rest for a while--she doesn't want to appear on the Clares' doorstep until after they've had a chance to eat lunch. Two young men are walking together in the same direction, and she hears them call after a young woman--her name is Mercy Chant. Tess recognizes the name--it's the young woman Angel was supposed to marry. Before the young men catch up with Mercy, she overhears them discussing Angel's hasty marriage to a dairymaid. The men catch up with Mercy, and reach the top of the hill where Tess had stashed her boots just before. Cuthbert Clare, one of the two brothers, spots the boots, and pulls them out. They assume that the boots must have been left by a beggar, who wanted to get more sympathy by begging in bare feet, so they take the boots with them to give to a more deserving poor person. Tess doesn't say anything, and cries to herself under her veil. She thinks there's no way she can go to the vicarage to ask for help now. This is a mistake--she shouldn't have judged Angel's father by his brothers. His father would have pitied her and helped her. She walks back towards the farm slowly, pausing frequently to rest. On her way back, she passes through a village in which a lay preacher is giving a sermon. She overhears part of it: the man is saying that he used to be a sinner, but he found the light, and all that. Tess is shocked--the man's voice sounds exactly like Alec D'Urberville's.", "analysis": ""}

By the disclosure in the barn her thoughts were led anew in the direction which they had taken more than once of late--to the distant Emminster Vicarage. It was through her husband's parents that she had been charged to send a letter to Clare if she desired; and to write to them direct if in difficulty. But that sense of her having morally no claim upon him had always led Tess to suspend her impulse to send these notes; and to the family at the Vicarage, therefore, as to her own parents since her marriage, she was virtually non-existent. This self-effacement in both directions had been quite in consonance with her independent character of desiring nothing by way of favour or pity to which she was not entitled on a fair consideration of her deserts. She had set herself to stand or fall by her qualities, and to waive such merely technical claims upon a strange family as had been established for her by the flimsy fact of a member of that family, in a season of impulse, writing his name in a church-book beside hers. But now that she was stung to a fever by Izz's tale, there was a limit to her powers of renunciation. Why had her husband not written to her? He had distinctly implied that he would at least let her know of the locality to which he had journeyed; but he had not sent a line to notify his address. Was he really indifferent? But was he ill? Was it for her to make some advance? Surely she might summon the courage of solicitude, call at the Vicarage for intelligence, and express her grief at his silence. If Angel's father were the good man she had heard him represented to be, he would be able to enter into her heart-starved situation. Her social hardships she could conceal. To leave the farm on a week-day was not in her power; Sunday was the only possible opportunity. Flintcomb-Ash being in the middle of the cretaceous tableland over which no railway had climbed as yet, it would be necessary to walk. And the distance being fifteen miles each way she would have to allow herself a long day for the undertaking by rising early. A fortnight later, when the snow had gone, and had been followed by a hard black frost, she took advantage of the state of the roads to try the experiment. At four o'clock that Sunday morning she came downstairs and stepped out into the starlight. The weather was still favourable, the ground ringing under her feet like an anvil. Marian and Izz were much interested in her excursion, knowing that the journey concerned her husband. Their lodgings were in a cottage a little further along the lane, but they came and assisted Tess in her departure, and argued that she should dress up in her very prettiest guise to captivate the hearts of her parents-in-law; though she, knowing of the austere and Calvinistic tenets of old Mr Clare, was indifferent, and even doubtful. A year had now elapsed since her sad marriage, but she had preserved sufficient draperies from the wreck of her then full wardrobe to clothe her very charmingly as a simple country girl with no pretensions to recent fashion; a soft gray woollen gown, with white crape quilling against the pink skin of her face and neck, and a black velvet jacket and hat. "'Tis a thousand pities your husband can't see 'ee now--you do look a real beauty!" said Izz Huett, regarding Tess as she stood on the threshold between the steely starlight without and the yellow candlelight within. Izz spoke with a magnanimous abandonment of herself to the situation; she could not be--no woman with a heart bigger than a hazel-nut could be--antagonistic to Tess in her presence, the influence which she exercised over those of her own sex being of a warmth and strength quite unusual, curiously overpowering the less worthy feminine feelings of spite and rivalry. With a final tug and touch here, and a slight brush there, they let her go; and she was absorbed into the pearly air of the fore-dawn. They heard her footsteps tap along the hard road as she stepped out to her full pace. Even Izz hoped she would win, and, though without any particular respect for her own virtue, felt glad that she had been prevented wronging her friend when momentarily tempted by Clare. It was a year ago, all but a day, that Clare had married Tess, and only a few days less than a year that he had been absent from her. Still, to start on a brisk walk, and on such an errand as hers, on a dry clear wintry morning, through the rarefied air of these chalky hogs'-backs, was not depressing; and there is no doubt that her dream at starting was to win the heart of her mother-in-law, tell her whole history to that lady, enlist her on her side, and so gain back the truant. In time she reached the edge of the vast escarpment below which stretched the loamy Vale of Blackmoor, now lying misty and still in the dawn. Instead of the colourless air of the uplands, the atmosphere down there was a deep blue. Instead of the great enclosures of a hundred acres in which she was now accustomed to toil, there were little fields below her of less than half-a-dozen acres, so numerous that they looked from this height like the meshes of a net. Here the landscape was whitey-brown; down there, as in Froom Valley, it was always green. Yet it was in that vale that her sorrow had taken shape, and she did not love it as formerly. Beauty to her, as to all who have felt, lay not in the thing, but in what the thing symbolized. Keeping the Vale on her right, she steered steadily westward; passing above the Hintocks, crossing at right-angles the high-road from Sherton-Abbas to Casterbridge, and skirting Dogbury Hill and High-Stoy, with the dell between them called "The Devil's Kitchen". Still following the elevated way she reached Cross-in-Hand, where the stone pillar stands desolate and silent, to mark the site of a miracle, or murder, or both. Three miles further she cut across the straight and deserted Roman road called Long-Ash Lane; leaving which as soon as she reached it she dipped down a hill by a transverse lane into the small town or village of Evershead, being now about halfway over the distance. She made a halt here, and breakfasted a second time, heartily enough--not at the Sow-and-Acorn, for she avoided inns, but at a cottage by the church. The second half of her journey was through a more gentle country, by way of Benvill Lane. But as the mileage lessened between her and the spot of her pilgrimage, so did Tess's confidence decrease, and her enterprise loom out more formidably. She saw her purpose in such staring lines, and the landscape so faintly, that she was sometimes in danger of losing her way. However, about noon she paused by a gate on the edge of the basin in which Emminster and its Vicarage lay. The square tower, beneath which she knew that at that moment the Vicar and his congregation were gathered, had a severe look in her eyes. She wished that she had somehow contrived to come on a week-day. Such a good man might be prejudiced against a woman who had chosen Sunday, never realizing the necessities of her case. But it was incumbent upon her to go on now. She took off the thick boots in which she had walked thus far, put on her pretty thin ones of patent leather, and, stuffing the former into the hedge by the gatepost where she might readily find them again, descended the hill; the freshness of colour she had derived from the keen air thinning away in spite of her as she drew near the parsonage. Tess hoped for some accident that might favour her, but nothing favoured her. The shrubs on the Vicarage lawn rustled uncomfortably in the frosty breeze; she could not feel by any stretch of imagination, dressed to her highest as she was, that the house was the residence of near relations; and yet nothing essential, in nature or emotion, divided her from them: in pains, pleasures, thoughts, birth, death, and after-death, they were the same. She nerved herself by an effort, entered the swing-gate, and rang the door-bell. The thing was done; there could be no retreat. No; the thing was not done. Nobody answered to her ringing. The effort had to be risen to and made again. She rang a second time, and the agitation of the act, coupled with her weariness after the fifteen miles' walk, led her to support herself while she waited by resting her hand on her hip and her elbow against the wall of the porch. The wind was so nipping that the ivy-leaves had become wizened and gray, each tapping incessantly upon its neighbour with a disquieting stir of her nerves. A piece of blood-stained paper, caught up from some meat-buyer's dust-heap, beat up and down the road without the gate; too flimsy to rest, too heavy to fly away; and a few straws kept it company. The second peal had been louder, and still nobody came. Then she walked out of the porch, opened the gate, and passed through. And though she looked dubiously at the house-front as if inclined to return, it was with a breath of relied that she closed the gate. A feeling haunted her that she might have been recognized (though how she could not tell), and orders been given not to admit her. Tess went as far as the corner. She had done all she could do; but determined not to escape present trepidation at the expense of future distress, she walked back again quite past the house, looking up at all the windows. Ah--the explanation was that they were all at church, every one. She remembered her husband saying that his father always insisted upon the household, servants included, going to morning-service, and, as a consequence, eating cold food when they came home. It was, therefore, only necessary to wait till the service was over. She would not make herself conspicuous by waiting on the spot, and she started to get past the church into the lane. But as she reached the churchyard-gate the people began pouring out, and Tess found herself in the midst of them. The Emminster congregation looked at her as only a congregation of small country-townsfolk walking home at its leisure can look at a woman out of the common whom it perceives to be a stranger. She quickened her pace, and ascended the road by which she had come, to find a retreat between its hedges till the Vicar's family should have lunched, and it might be convenient for them to receive her. She soon distanced the churchgoers, except two youngish men, who, linked arm-in-arm, were beating up behind her at a quick step. As they drew nearer she could hear their voices engaged in earnest discourse, and, with the natural quickness of a woman in her situation, did not fail to recognize in those noises the quality of her husband's tones. The pedestrians were his two brothers. Forgetting all her plans, Tess's one dread was lest they should overtake her now, in her disorganized condition, before she was prepared to confront them; for though she felt that they could not identify her, she instinctively dreaded their scrutiny. The more briskly they walked, the more briskly walked she. They were plainly bent upon taking a short quick stroll before going indoors to lunch or dinner, to restore warmth to limbs chilled with sitting through a long service. Only one person had preceded Tess up the hill--a ladylike young woman, somewhat interesting, though, perhaps, a trifle _guindee_ and prudish. Tess had nearly overtaken her when the speed of her brothers-in-law brought them so nearly behind her back that she could hear every word of their conversation. They said nothing, however, which particularly interested her till, observing the young lady still further in front, one of them remarked, "There is Mercy Chant. Let us overtake her." Tess knew the name. It was the woman who had been destined for Angel's life-companion by his and her parents, and whom he probably would have married but for her intrusive self. She would have known as much without previous information if she had waited a moment, for one of the brothers proceeded to say: "Ah! poor Angel, poor Angel! I never see that nice girl without more and more regretting his precipitancy in throwing himself away upon a dairymaid, or whatever she may be. It is a queer business, apparently. Whether she has joined him yet or not I don't know; but she had not done so some months ago when I heard from him." "I can't say. He never tells me anything nowadays. His ill-considered marriage seems to have completed that estrangement from me which was begun by his extraordinary opinions." Tess beat up the long hill still faster; but she could not outwalk them without exciting notice. At last they outsped her altogether, and passed her by. The young lady still further ahead heard their footsteps and turned. Then there was a greeting and a shaking of hands, and the three went on together. They soon reached the summit of the hill, and, evidently intending this point to be the limit of their promenade, slackened pace and turned all three aside to the gate whereat Tess had paused an hour before that time to reconnoitre the town before descending into it. During their discourse one of the clerical brothers probed the hedge carefully with his umbrella, and dragged something to light. "Here's a pair of old boots," he said. "Thrown away, I suppose, by some tramp or other." "Some imposter who wished to come into the town barefoot, perhaps, and so excite our sympathies," said Miss Chant. "Yes, it must have been, for they are excellent walking-boots--by no means worn out. What a wicked thing to do! I'll carry them home for some poor person." Cuthbert Clare, who had been the one to find them, picked them up for her with the crook of his stick; and Tess's boots were appropriated. She, who had heard this, walked past under the screen of her woollen veil till, presently looking back, she perceived that the church party had left the gate with her boots and retreated down the hill. Thereupon our heroine resumed her walk. Tears, blinding tears, were running down her face. She knew that it was all sentiment, all baseless impressibility, which had caused her to read the scene as her own condemnation; nevertheless she could not get over it; she could not contravene in her own defenceless person all those untoward omens. It was impossible to think of returning to the Vicarage. Angel's wife felt almost as if she had been hounded up that hill like a scorned thing by those--to her--superfine clerics. Innocently as the slight had been inflicted, it was somewhat unfortunate that she had encountered the sons and not the father, who, despite his narrowness, was far less starched and ironed than they, and had to the full the gift of charity. As she again thought of her dusty boots she almost pitied those habiliments for the quizzing to which they had been subjected, and felt how hopeless life was for their owner. "Ah!" she said, still sighing in pity of herself, "THEY didn't know that I wore those over the roughest part of the road to save these pretty ones HE bought for me--no--they did not know it! And they didn't think that HE chose the colour o' my pretty frock--no--how could they? If they had known perhaps they would not have cared, for they don't care much for him, poor thing!" Then she grieved for the beloved man whose conventional standard of judgement had caused her all these latter sorrows; and she went her way without knowing that the greatest misfortune of her life was this feminine loss of courage at the last and critical moment through her estimating her father-in-law by his sons. Her present condition was precisely one which would have enlisted the sympathies of old Mr and Mrs Clare. Their hearts went out of them at a bound towards extreme cases, when the subtle mental troubles of the less desperate among mankind failed to win their interest or regard. In jumping at Publicans and Sinners they would forget that a word might be said for the worries of Scribes and Pharisees; and this defect or limitation might have recommended their own daughter-in-law to them at this moment as a fairly choice sort of lost person for their love. Thereupon she began to plod back along the road by which she had come not altogether full of hope, but full of a conviction that a crisis in her life was approaching. No crisis, apparently, had supervened; and there was nothing left for her to do but to continue upon that starve-acre farm till she could again summon courage to face the Vicarage. She did, indeed, take sufficient interest in herself to throw up her veil on this return journey, as if to let the world see that she could at least exhibit a face such as Mercy Chant could not show. But it was done with a sorry shake of the head. "It is nothing--it is nothing!" she said. "Nobody loves it; nobody sees it. Who cares about the looks of a castaway like me!" Her journey back was rather a meander than a march. It had no sprightliness, no purpose; only a tendency. Along the tedious length of Benvill Lane she began to grow tired, and she leant upon gates and paused by milestones. She did not enter any house till, at the seventh or eighth mile, she descended the steep long hill below which lay the village or townlet of Evershead, where in the morning she had breakfasted with such contrasting expectations. The cottage by the church, in which she again sat down, was almost the first at that end of the village, and while the woman fetched her some milk from the pantry, Tess, looking down the street, perceived that the place seemed quite deserted. "The people are gone to afternoon service, I suppose?" she said. "No, my dear," said the old woman. "'Tis too soon for that; the bells hain't strook out yet. They be all gone to hear the preaching in yonder barn. A ranter preaches there between the services--an excellent, fiery, Christian man, they say. But, Lord, I don't go to hear'n! What comes in the regular way over the pulpit is hot enough for I." Tess soon went onward into the village, her footsteps echoing against the houses as though it were a place of the dead. Nearing the central part, her echoes were intruded on by other sounds; and seeing the barn not far off the road, she guessed these to be the utterances of the preacher. His voice became so distinct in the still clear air that she could soon catch his sentences, though she was on the closed side of the barn. The sermon, as might be expected, was of the extremest antinomian type; on justification by faith, as expounded in the theology of St Paul. This fixed idea of the rhapsodist was delivered with animated enthusiasm, in a manner entirely declamatory, for he had plainly no skill as a dialectician. Although Tess had not heard the beginning of the address, she learnt what the text had been from its constant iteration-- "O foolish galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?" Tess was all the more interested, as she stood listening behind, in finding that the preacher's doctrine was a vehement form of the view of Angel's father, and her interest intensified when the speaker began to detail his own spiritual experiences of how he had come by those views. He had, he said, been the greatest of sinners. He had scoffed; he had wantonly associated with the reckless and the lewd. But a day of awakening had come, and, in a human sense, it had been brought about mainly by the influence of a certain clergyman, whom he had at first grossly insulted; but whose parting words had sunk into his heart, and had remained there, till by the grace of Heaven they had worked this change in him, and made him what they saw him. But more startling to Tess than the doctrine had been the voice, which, impossible as it seemed, was precisely that of Alec d'Urberville. Her face fixed in painful suspense, she came round to the front of the barn, and passed before it. The low winter sun beamed directly upon the great double-doored entrance on this side; one of the doors being open, so that the rays stretched far in over the threshing-floor to the preacher and his audience, all snugly sheltered from the northern breeze. The listeners were entirely villagers, among them being the man whom she had seen carrying the red paint-pot on a former memorable occasion. But her attention was given to the central figure, who stood upon some sacks of corn, facing the people and the door. The three o'clock sun shone full upon him, and the strange enervating conviction that her seducer confronted her, which had been gaining ground in Tess ever since she had heard his words distinctly, was at last established as a fact indeed. END OF PHASE THE FIFTH Phase the Sixth: The Convert

Phase V: "The Woman Pays," Chapter Forty-Four

https://web.archive.org/web/20210424232301/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary/chapter-44

Tess begins to think again about contacting Angel's parents at Emminster Vicarage. After all, why had she not heard from Angel? Was he really indifferent to her, as his proposal to Izz would suggest? Or was he sick and dying? Sunday is the only day she has off, so she resolves to walk to the vicarage from the farm on the first Sunday when the roads are clear of snow, leaving early in the morning. Marian and Izz know that she's going, and help her to dress up prettily before she leaves. It's a very far walk, and Tess's hopes droop as she gets tired. Once Tess arrives in the village, she stashes her walking boots in a bush and puts on her nice pretty shoes. She rings the bell on the vicarage door, but no one answers--they're all at church, including the servants. She knows she'll just have to wait until they get back. As she's walking back to the main street, the service lets out and the congregation pours out into the street around her. Everyone stares at her, so she hurries through the crowd to find a place to rest for a while--she doesn't want to appear on the Clares' doorstep until after they've had a chance to eat lunch. Two young men are walking together in the same direction, and she hears them call after a young woman--her name is Mercy Chant. Tess recognizes the name--it's the young woman Angel was supposed to marry. Before the young men catch up with Mercy, she overhears them discussing Angel's hasty marriage to a dairymaid. The men catch up with Mercy, and reach the top of the hill where Tess had stashed her boots just before. Cuthbert Clare, one of the two brothers, spots the boots, and pulls them out. They assume that the boots must have been left by a beggar, who wanted to get more sympathy by begging in bare feet, so they take the boots with them to give to a more deserving poor person. Tess doesn't say anything, and cries to herself under her veil. She thinks there's no way she can go to the vicarage to ask for help now. This is a mistake--she shouldn't have judged Angel's father by his brothers. His father would have pitied her and helped her. She walks back towards the farm slowly, pausing frequently to rest. On her way back, she passes through a village in which a lay preacher is giving a sermon. She overhears part of it: the man is saying that he used to be a sinner, but he found the light, and all that. Tess is shocked--the man's voice sounds exactly like Alec D'Urberville's.

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/1232-chapters/21.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Prince/section_8_part_2.txt

The Prince.chapter xxi

chapter xxi

{"name": "Chapter XXI", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210303115306/https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/prince/section9/", "summary": "What a Prince Must Do to Be Esteemed Great enterprises and noble examples are two ways for a prince to earn prestige. Examples of great campaigns include those of King Ferdinand of Spain, who skillfully used his military to attack Granada, Africa, Italy, and France. These campaigns focused his people's attention and prevented attacks against Ferdinand. Nobility can be achieved by the grand public display of rewards and punishments. Above all, princes should win a reputation for being men of outstanding ability. A prince can also win prestige by declaring himself an ally of one side of a conflict. Neutrality alienates both the victor and the loser. The victor sees the neutral prince as a doubtful friend; the loser sees the neutral prince as weak coward. Someone who is not your friend will always request that you remain neutral, while a true friend will always ask you for your armed support. A prince can escape short-term danger through neutrality, but at the cost of long-term grief. Instead, a prince should boldly declare support for one side. If the prince allies with someone stronger than himself, and this ally wins, then the prince protects himself through the alliance, because the victor will feel an obligation to the prince. If this stronger ally loses, at least the prince will win the protection and shelter of the ally. If the prince is stronger than either opponent, an alliance essentially means the destruction of one side through the help of another. If possible, a prince should avoid siding with an ally whose power is greater than his own. Victory in this situation will only put the prince at mercy of that ally. However, sometimes such an alliance is unavoidable. Because of these instances, a prince should never believe that a completely safe course exists. Instead, he should assess the risks presented by all options and choose the least risky course of action. A prudent prince can assess threats and accept the lesser evil. A prince should encourage his citizens to excel in their occupations, and live their lives in peace. Thus, a prince should never discourage or excessively tax private acquisition or prosperous commerce. Instead, a prince should reward those who contribute to the overall prosperity of the state. Such rewards might include annual city-wide festivals and personal visits with guilds and family groups", "analysis": ""}

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.

Chapter XXI

https://web.archive.org/web/20210303115306/https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/prince/section9/

What a Prince Must Do to Be Esteemed Great enterprises and noble examples are two ways for a prince to earn prestige. Examples of great campaigns include those of King Ferdinand of Spain, who skillfully used his military to attack Granada, Africa, Italy, and France. These campaigns focused his people's attention and prevented attacks against Ferdinand. Nobility can be achieved by the grand public display of rewards and punishments. Above all, princes should win a reputation for being men of outstanding ability. A prince can also win prestige by declaring himself an ally of one side of a conflict. Neutrality alienates both the victor and the loser. The victor sees the neutral prince as a doubtful friend; the loser sees the neutral prince as weak coward. Someone who is not your friend will always request that you remain neutral, while a true friend will always ask you for your armed support. A prince can escape short-term danger through neutrality, but at the cost of long-term grief. Instead, a prince should boldly declare support for one side. If the prince allies with someone stronger than himself, and this ally wins, then the prince protects himself through the alliance, because the victor will feel an obligation to the prince. If this stronger ally loses, at least the prince will win the protection and shelter of the ally. If the prince is stronger than either opponent, an alliance essentially means the destruction of one side through the help of another. If possible, a prince should avoid siding with an ally whose power is greater than his own. Victory in this situation will only put the prince at mercy of that ally. However, sometimes such an alliance is unavoidable. Because of these instances, a prince should never believe that a completely safe course exists. Instead, he should assess the risks presented by all options and choose the least risky course of action. A prudent prince can assess threats and accept the lesser evil. A prince should encourage his citizens to excel in their occupations, and live their lives in peace. Thus, a prince should never discourage or excessively tax private acquisition or prosperous commerce. Instead, a prince should reward those who contribute to the overall prosperity of the state. Such rewards might include annual city-wide festivals and personal visits with guilds and family groups

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/107-chapters/48.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Far From the Madding Crowd/section_47_part_0.txt

Far From the Madding Crowd.chapter 48

chapter 48

{"name": "Chapter 48", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-48", "summary": "Bathsheba doesn't know what to make of her husband's disappearance. The more time goes by, the stranger she feels. In her mind, she belongs to him, and she can't imagine why he wouldn't come home to claim her. Her pride makes it very hard to admit to herself that Troy loved another woman more than her. The first Saturday after Troy's disappearance, Bathsheba goes to Casterbridge alone on business. While she's at the market, she overhears someone asking about her. The man says that he has to deliver the terrible news that her husband is drowned. She can't believe her ears, and she faints before anything else is said. At this same moment, Boldwood is standing behind her, and he catches her in his arms as she falls. What a concidence, eh? It turns out that someone on the coast found Troy's clothes on the beach. Another person saw him getting pulled out to sea by a riptide. But no one saw the sailors save Troy's bacon. Boldwood carries Bathsheba to a nearby hotel. When she regains consciousness, she demands to go home. Boldwood can only think about how wonderful it was to hold her in his arms. Oh, jeepers. Bathsheba is barely home for an hour before Liddy knocks on her bedroom door and says that she'll need a black dress for mourning. Bathsheba won't hear of it, though, because she doesn't believe that Troy is actually dead. After all, they never found his body. Bathsheba's confidence in Troy's survival starts to wane when she sees the announcement of his death in the paper that week and reads the eyewitness account of the person who saw him struggling out at sea. Worse yet, she starts to wonder if Troy killed himself on purpose to be with Fanny. When it's time for her to collect Troy's clothes, she opens his pocket watch and finds the lock of Fanny Robin's hair still inside it. Figuring that it's best that Troy and Fanny are now together, she holds Fanny's lock of hair over the fire, then snatches it back at the last second to remember Fanny by.", "analysis": ""}

DOUBTS ARISE--DOUBTS LINGER Bathsheba underwent the enlargement of her husband's absence from hours to days with a slight feeling of surprise, and a slight feeling of relief; yet neither sensation rose at any time far above the level commonly designated as indifference. She belonged to him: the certainties of that position were so well defined, and the reasonable probabilities of its issue so bounded that she could not speculate on contingencies. Taking no further interest in herself as a splendid woman, she acquired the indifferent feelings of an outsider in contemplating her probable fate as a singular wretch; for Bathsheba drew herself and her future in colours that no reality could exceed for darkness. Her original vigorous pride of youth had sickened, and with it had declined all her anxieties about coming years, since anxiety recognizes a better and a worse alternative, and Bathsheba had made up her mind that alternatives on any noteworthy scale had ceased for her. Soon, or later--and that not very late--her husband would be home again. And then the days of their tenancy of the Upper Farm would be numbered. There had originally been shown by the agent to the estate some distrust of Bathsheba's tenure as James Everdene's successor, on the score of her sex, and her youth, and her beauty; but the peculiar nature of her uncle's will, his own frequent testimony before his death to her cleverness in such a pursuit, and her vigorous marshalling of the numerous flocks and herds which came suddenly into her hands before negotiations were concluded, had won confidence in her powers, and no further objections had been raised. She had latterly been in great doubt as to what the legal effects of her marriage would be upon her position; but no notice had been taken as yet of her change of name, and only one point was clear--that in the event of her own or her husband's inability to meet the agent at the forthcoming January rent-day, very little consideration would be shown, and, for that matter, very little would be deserved. Once out of the farm, the approach of poverty would be sure. Hence Bathsheba lived in a perception that her purposes were broken off. She was not a woman who could hope on without good materials for the process, differing thus from the less far-sighted and energetic, though more petted ones of the sex, with whom hope goes on as a sort of clockwork which the merest food and shelter are sufficient to wind up; and perceiving clearly that her mistake had been a fatal one, she accepted her position, and waited coldly for the end. The first Saturday after Troy's departure she went to Casterbridge alone, a journey she had not before taken since her marriage. On this Saturday Bathsheba was passing slowly on foot through the crowd of rural business-men gathered as usual in front of the market-house, who were as usual gazed upon by the burghers with feelings that those healthy lives were dearly paid for by exclusion from possible aldermanship, when a man, who had apparently been following her, said some words to another on her left hand. Bathsheba's ears were keen as those of any wild animal, and she distinctly heard what the speaker said, though her back was towards him. "I am looking for Mrs. Troy. Is that she there?" "Yes; that's the young lady, I believe," said the the person addressed. "I have some awkward news to break to her. Her husband is drowned." As if endowed with the spirit of prophecy, Bathsheba gasped out, "No, it is not true; it cannot be true!" Then she said and heard no more. The ice of self-command which had latterly gathered over her was broken, and the currents burst forth again, and overwhelmed her. A darkness came into her eyes, and she fell. But not to the ground. A gloomy man, who had been observing her from under the portico of the old corn-exchange when she passed through the group without, stepped quickly to her side at the moment of her exclamation, and caught her in his arms as she sank down. "What is it?" said Boldwood, looking up at the bringer of the big news, as he supported her. "Her husband was drowned this week while bathing in Lulwind Cove. A coastguardsman found his clothes, and brought them into Budmouth yesterday." Thereupon a strange fire lighted up Boldwood's eye, and his face flushed with the suppressed excitement of an unutterable thought. Everybody's glance was now centred upon him and the unconscious Bathsheba. He lifted her bodily off the ground, and smoothed down the folds of her dress as a child might have taken a storm-beaten bird and arranged its ruffled plumes, and bore her along the pavement to the King's Arms Inn. Here he passed with her under the archway into a private room; and by the time he had deposited--so lothly--the precious burden upon a sofa, Bathsheba had opened her eyes. Remembering all that had occurred, she murmured, "I want to go home!" Boldwood left the room. He stood for a moment in the passage to recover his senses. The experience had been too much for his consciousness to keep up with, and now that he had grasped it it had gone again. For those few heavenly, golden moments she had been in his arms. What did it matter about her not knowing it? She had been close to his breast; he had been close to hers. He started onward again, and sending a woman to her, went out to ascertain all the facts of the case. These appeared to be limited to what he had already heard. He then ordered her horse to be put into the gig, and when all was ready returned to inform her. He found that, though still pale and unwell, she had in the meantime sent for the Budmouth man who brought the tidings, and learnt from him all there was to know. Being hardly in a condition to drive home as she had driven to town, Boldwood, with every delicacy of manner and feeling, offered to get her a driver, or to give her a seat in his phaeton, which was more comfortable than her own conveyance. These proposals Bathsheba gently declined, and the farmer at once departed. About half-an-hour later she invigorated herself by an effort, and took her seat and the reins as usual--in external appearance much as if nothing had happened. She went out of the town by a tortuous back street, and drove slowly along, unconscious of the road and the scene. The first shades of evening were showing themselves when Bathsheba reached home, where, silently alighting and leaving the horse in the hands of the boy, she proceeded at once upstairs. Liddy met her on the landing. The news had preceded Bathsheba to Weatherbury by half-an-hour, and Liddy looked inquiringly into her mistress's face. Bathsheba had nothing to say. She entered her bedroom and sat by the window, and thought and thought till night enveloped her, and the extreme lines only of her shape were visible. Somebody came to the door, knocked, and opened it. "Well, what is it, Liddy?" she said. "I was thinking there must be something got for you to wear," said Liddy, with hesitation. "What do you mean?" "Mourning." "No, no, no," said Bathsheba, hurriedly. "But I suppose there must be something done for poor--" "Not at present, I think. It is not necessary." "Why not, ma'am?" "Because he's still alive." "How do you know that?" said Liddy, amazed. "I don't know it. But wouldn't it have been different, or shouldn't I have heard more, or wouldn't they have found him, Liddy?--or--I don't know how it is, but death would have been different from how this is. I am perfectly convinced that he is still alive!" Bathsheba remained firm in this opinion till Monday, when two circumstances conjoined to shake it. The first was a short paragraph in the local newspaper, which, beyond making by a methodizing pen formidable presumptive evidence of Troy's death by drowning, contained the important testimony of a young Mr. Barker, M.D., of Budmouth, who spoke to being an eyewitness of the accident, in a letter to the editor. In this he stated that he was passing over the cliff on the remoter side of the cove just as the sun was setting. At that time he saw a bather carried along in the current outside the mouth of the cove, and guessed in an instant that there was but a poor chance for him unless he should be possessed of unusual muscular powers. He drifted behind a projection of the coast, and Mr. Barker followed along the shore in the same direction. But by the time that he could reach an elevation sufficiently great to command a view of the sea beyond, dusk had set in, and nothing further was to be seen. The other circumstance was the arrival of his clothes, when it became necessary for her to examine and identify them--though this had virtually been done long before by those who inspected the letters in his pockets. It was so evident to her in the midst of her agitation that Troy had undressed in the full conviction of dressing again almost immediately, that the notion that anything but death could have prevented him was a perverse one to entertain. Then Bathsheba said to herself that others were assured in their opinion; strange that she should not be. A strange reflection occurred to her, causing her face to flush. Suppose that Troy had followed Fanny into another world. Had he done this intentionally, yet contrived to make his death appear like an accident? Nevertheless, this thought of how the apparent might differ from the real--made vivid by her bygone jealousy of Fanny, and the remorse he had shown that night--did not blind her to the perception of a likelier difference, less tragic, but to herself far more disastrous. When alone late that evening beside a small fire, and much calmed down, Bathsheba took Troy's watch into her hand, which had been restored to her with the rest of the articles belonging to him. She opened the case as he had opened it before her a week ago. There was the little coil of pale hair which had been as the fuze to this great explosion. "He was hers and she was his; they should be gone together," she said. "I am nothing to either of them, and why should I keep her hair?" She took it in her hand, and held it over the fire. "No--I'll not burn it--I'll keep it in memory of her, poor thing!" she added, snatching back her hand.

Chapter 48

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-48

Bathsheba doesn't know what to make of her husband's disappearance. The more time goes by, the stranger she feels. In her mind, she belongs to him, and she can't imagine why he wouldn't come home to claim her. Her pride makes it very hard to admit to herself that Troy loved another woman more than her. The first Saturday after Troy's disappearance, Bathsheba goes to Casterbridge alone on business. While she's at the market, she overhears someone asking about her. The man says that he has to deliver the terrible news that her husband is drowned. She can't believe her ears, and she faints before anything else is said. At this same moment, Boldwood is standing behind her, and he catches her in his arms as she falls. What a concidence, eh? It turns out that someone on the coast found Troy's clothes on the beach. Another person saw him getting pulled out to sea by a riptide. But no one saw the sailors save Troy's bacon. Boldwood carries Bathsheba to a nearby hotel. When she regains consciousness, she demands to go home. Boldwood can only think about how wonderful it was to hold her in his arms. Oh, jeepers. Bathsheba is barely home for an hour before Liddy knocks on her bedroom door and says that she'll need a black dress for mourning. Bathsheba won't hear of it, though, because she doesn't believe that Troy is actually dead. After all, they never found his body. Bathsheba's confidence in Troy's survival starts to wane when she sees the announcement of his death in the paper that week and reads the eyewitness account of the person who saw him struggling out at sea. Worse yet, she starts to wonder if Troy killed himself on purpose to be with Fanny. When it's time for her to collect Troy's clothes, she opens his pocket watch and finds the lock of Fanny Robin's hair still inside it. Figuring that it's best that Troy and Fanny are now together, she holds Fanny's lock of hair over the fire, then snatches it back at the last second to remember Fanny by.

pinkmonkey

all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/16.txt

finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Lord Jim/section_15_part_0.txt

Lord Jim.chapter 16

chapter 16

{"name": "Chapter 16", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820051943/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmLordJim24.asp", "summary": "Marlow jumps forward in time in this chapter to tell the reader that in the future Jim again becomes a man who is trusted, loved, and admired. He is allowed another chance, and he proves himself honorably. He performs a brave act that allows him to cancel out his guilt about the Patna. Marlow is brought back to the present when Jim comes inside again. He seems ready to talk. After asking Marlow for a cigarette and hearing the noise of thunder, Jim breaks the ice by saying that the monsoon has come rather early. Jim then remarks that he must get \"it\" back again. Marlow understands that Jim is referring to his honor, but Jim does not want to talk about it. He flings down his cigarette and bids Marlow good-bye. Marlow urges him to stay for dinner, telling him that the storm outside is very bad.", "analysis": "Notes This is an important chapter in the book. The storm that rages outside is a perfect objective correlative of Jim's emotional state. The chapter is important because it gathers many threads of the story. As Marlow studies the troubled and silent Jim, he feels a new sense of closeness and responsibility towards his young friend. He asks Jim how he will support himself in the future, but Jim refuses to think about such things or answer Marlow. The humiliation that Jim feels over his loss of honor is seen clearly. Marlow understands Jim's guilt and his shamefulness for his treacherous act of desertion. He also understands that Jim will have trouble forgiving himself. As the young sailor displays his agony in a romantic, melancholy fashion, the storm that rages inside him is equivalent to the storm that rages outside. The darkness that pervades the chapter hints that Jim is groping in the dark for a new chance to regain his lost honor. Marlow flashes ahead to tell that Jim will meet with success in the future. He will be able to perform an act of bravery that helps him to forgive himself."}

'The time was coming when I should see him loved, trusted, admired, with a legend of strength and prowess forming round his name as though he had been the stuff of a hero. It's true--I assure you; as true as I'm sitting here talking about him in vain. He, on his side, had that faculty of beholding at a hint the face of his desire and the shape of his dream, without which the earth would know no lover and no adventurer. He captured much honour and an Arcadian happiness (I won't say anything about innocence) in the bush, and it was as good to him as the honour and the Arcadian happiness of the streets to another man. Felicity, felicity--how shall I say it?--is quaffed out of a golden cup in every latitude: the flavour is with you--with you alone, and you can make it as intoxicating as you please. He was of the sort that would drink deep, as you may guess from what went before. I found him, if not exactly intoxicated, then at least flushed with the elixir at his lips. He had not obtained it at once. There had been, as you know, a period of probation amongst infernal ship-chandlers, during which he had suffered and I had worried about--about--my trust--you may call it. I don't know that I am completely reassured now, after beholding him in all his brilliance. That was my last view of him--in a strong light, dominating, and yet in complete accord with his surroundings--with the life of the forests and with the life of men. I own that I was impressed, but I must admit to myself that after all this is not the lasting impression. He was protected by his isolation, alone of his own superior kind, in close touch with Nature, that keeps faith on such easy terms with her lovers. But I cannot fix before my eye the image of his safety. I shall always remember him as seen through the open door of my room, taking, perhaps, too much to heart the mere consequences of his failure. I am pleased, of course, that some good--and even some splendour--came out of my endeavours; but at times it seems to me it would have been better for my peace of mind if I had not stood between him and Chester's confoundedly generous offer. I wonder what his exuberant imagination would have made of Walpole islet--that most hopelessly forsaken crumb of dry land on the face of the waters. It is not likely I would ever have heard, for I must tell you that Chester, after calling at some Australian port to patch up his brig-rigged sea-anachronism, steamed out into the Pacific with a crew of twenty-two hands all told, and the only news having a possible bearing upon the mystery of his fate was the news of a hurricane which is supposed to have swept in its course over the Walpole shoals, a month or so afterwards. Not a vestige of the Argonauts ever turned up; not a sound came out of the waste. Finis! The Pacific is the most discreet of live, hot-tempered oceans: the chilly Antarctic can keep a secret too, but more in the manner of a grave. 'And there is a sense of blessed finality in such discretion, which is what we all more or less sincerely are ready to admit--for what else is it that makes the idea of death supportable? End! Finis! the potent word that exorcises from the house of life the haunting shadow of fate. This is what--notwithstanding the testimony of my eyes and his own earnest assurances--I miss when I look back upon Jim's success. While there's life there is hope, truly; but there is fear too. I don't mean to say that I regret my action, nor will I pretend that I can't sleep o' nights in consequence; still, the idea obtrudes itself that he made so much of his disgrace while it is the guilt alone that matters. He was not--if I may say so--clear to me. He was not clear. And there is a suspicion he was not clear to himself either. There were his fine sensibilities, his fine feelings, his fine longings--a sort of sublimated, idealised selfishness. He was--if you allow me to say so--very fine; very fine--and very unfortunate. A little coarser nature would not have borne the strain; it would have had to come to terms with itself--with a sigh, with a grunt, or even with a guffaw; a still coarser one would have remained invulnerably ignorant and completely uninteresting. 'But he was too interesting or too unfortunate to be thrown to the dogs, or even to Chester. I felt this while I sat with my face over the paper and he fought and gasped, struggling for his breath in that terribly stealthy way, in my room; I felt it when he rushed out on the verandah as if to fling himself over--and didn't; I felt it more and more all the time he remained outside, faintly lighted on the background of night, as if standing on the shore of a sombre and hopeless sea. 'An abrupt heavy rumble made me lift my head. The noise seemed to roll away, and suddenly a searching and violent glare fell on the blind face of the night. The sustained and dazzling flickers seemed to last for an unconscionable time. The growl of the thunder increased steadily while I looked at him, distinct and black, planted solidly upon the shores of a sea of light. At the moment of greatest brilliance the darkness leaped back with a culminating crash, and he vanished before my dazzled eyes as utterly as though he had been blown to atoms. A blustering sigh passed; furious hands seemed to tear at the shrubs, shake the tops of the trees below, slam doors, break window-panes, all along the front of the building. He stepped in, closing the door behind him, and found me bending over the table: my sudden anxiety as to what he would say was very great, and akin to a fright. "May I have a cigarette?" he asked. I gave a push to the box without raising my head. "I want--want--tobacco," he muttered. I became extremely buoyant. "Just a moment." I grunted pleasantly. He took a few steps here and there. "That's over," I heard him say. A single distant clap of thunder came from the sea like a gun of distress. "The monsoon breaks up early this year," he remarked conversationally, somewhere behind me. This encouraged me to turn round, which I did as soon as I had finished addressing the last envelope. He was smoking greedily in the middle of the room, and though he heard the stir I made, he remained with his back to me for a time. '"Come--I carried it off pretty well," he said, wheeling suddenly. "Something's paid off--not much. I wonder what's to come." His face did not show any emotion, only it appeared a little darkened and swollen, as though he had been holding his breath. He smiled reluctantly as it were, and went on while I gazed up at him mutely. . . . "Thank you, though--your room--jolly convenient--for a chap--badly hipped." . . . The rain pattered and swished in the garden; a water-pipe (it must have had a hole in it) performed just outside the window a parody of blubbering woe with funny sobs and gurgling lamentations, interrupted by jerky spasms of silence. . . . "A bit of shelter," he mumbled and ceased. 'A flash of faded lightning darted in through the black framework of the windows and ebbed out without any noise. I was thinking how I had best approach him (I did not want to be flung off again) when he gave a little laugh. "No better than a vagabond now" . . . the end of the cigarette smouldered between his fingers . . . "without a single--single," he pronounced slowly; "and yet . . ." He paused; the rain fell with redoubled violence. "Some day one's bound to come upon some sort of chance to get it all back again. Must!" he whispered distinctly, glaring at my boots. 'I did not even know what it was he wished so much to regain, what it was he had so terribly missed. It might have been so much that it was impossible to say. A piece of ass's skin, according to Chester. . . . He looked up at me inquisitively. "Perhaps. If life's long enough," I muttered through my teeth with unreasonable animosity. "Don't reckon too much on it." '"Jove! I feel as if nothing could ever touch me," he said in a tone of sombre conviction. "If this business couldn't knock me over, then there's no fear of there being not enough time to--climb out, and . . ." He looked upwards. 'It struck me that it is from such as he that the great army of waifs and strays is recruited, the army that marches down, down into all the gutters of the earth. As soon as he left my room, that "bit of shelter," he would take his place in the ranks, and begin the journey towards the bottomless pit. I at least had no illusions; but it was I, too, who a moment ago had been so sure of the power of words, and now was afraid to speak, in the same way one dares not move for fear of losing a slippery hold. It is when we try to grapple with another man's intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible, wavering, and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun. It is as if loneliness were a hard and absolute condition of existence; the envelope of flesh and blood on which our eyes are fixed melts before the outstretched hand, and there remains only the capricious, unconsolable, and elusive spirit that no eye can follow, no hand can grasp. It was the fear of losing him that kept me silent, for it was borne upon me suddenly and with unaccountable force that should I let him slip away into the darkness I would never forgive myself. '"Well. Thanks--once more. You've been--er--uncommonly--really there's no word to . . . Uncommonly! I don't know why, I am sure. I am afraid I don't feel as grateful as I would if the whole thing hadn't been so brutally sprung on me. Because at bottom . . . you, yourself . . ." He stuttered. '"Possibly," I struck in. He frowned. '"All the same, one is responsible." He watched me like a hawk. '"And that's true, too," I said. '"Well. I've gone with it to the end, and I don't intend to let any man cast it in my teeth without--without--resenting it." He clenched his fist. '"There's yourself," I said with a smile--mirthless enough, God knows--but he looked at me menacingly. "That's my business," he said. An air of indomitable resolution came and went upon his face like a vain and passing shadow. Next moment he looked a dear good boy in trouble, as before. He flung away the cigarette. "Good-bye," he said, with the sudden haste of a man who had lingered too long in view of a pressing bit of work waiting for him; and then for a second or so he made not the slightest movement. The downpour fell with the heavy uninterrupted rush of a sweeping flood, with a sound of unchecked overwhelming fury that called to one's mind the images of collapsing bridges, of uprooted trees, of undermined mountains. No man could breast the colossal and headlong stream that seemed to break and swirl against the dim stillness in which we were precariously sheltered as if on an island. The perforated pipe gurgled, choked, spat, and splashed in odious ridicule of a swimmer fighting for his life. "It is raining," I remonstrated, "and I . . ." "Rain or shine," he began brusquely, checked himself, and walked to the window. "Perfect deluge," he muttered after a while: he leaned his forehead on the glass. "It's dark, too." '"Yes, it is very dark," I said. 'He pivoted on his heels, crossed the room, and had actually opened the door leading into the corridor before I leaped up from my chair. "Wait," I cried, "I want you to . . ." "I can't dine with you again to-night," he flung at me, with one leg out of the room already. "I haven't the slightest intention to ask you," I shouted. At this he drew back his foot, but remained mistrustfully in the very doorway. I lost no time in entreating him earnestly not to be absurd; to come in and shut the door.'

Chapter 16

https://web.archive.org/web/20180820051943/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmLordJim24.asp

Marlow jumps forward in time in this chapter to tell the reader that in the future Jim again becomes a man who is trusted, loved, and admired. He is allowed another chance, and he proves himself honorably. He performs a brave act that allows him to cancel out his guilt about the Patna. Marlow is brought back to the present when Jim comes inside again. He seems ready to talk. After asking Marlow for a cigarette and hearing the noise of thunder, Jim breaks the ice by saying that the monsoon has come rather early. Jim then remarks that he must get "it" back again. Marlow understands that Jim is referring to his honor, but Jim does not want to talk about it. He flings down his cigarette and bids Marlow good-bye. Marlow urges him to stay for dinner, telling him that the storm outside is very bad.

Notes This is an important chapter in the book. The storm that rages outside is a perfect objective correlative of Jim's emotional state. The chapter is important because it gathers many threads of the story. As Marlow studies the troubled and silent Jim, he feels a new sense of closeness and responsibility towards his young friend. He asks Jim how he will support himself in the future, but Jim refuses to think about such things or answer Marlow. The humiliation that Jim feels over his loss of honor is seen clearly. Marlow understands Jim's guilt and his shamefulness for his treacherous act of desertion. He also understands that Jim will have trouble forgiving himself. As the young sailor displays his agony in a romantic, melancholy fashion, the storm that rages inside him is equivalent to the storm that rages outside. The darkness that pervades the chapter hints that Jim is groping in the dark for a new chance to regain his lost honor. Marlow flashes ahead to tell that Jim will meet with success in the future. He will be able to perform an act of bravery that helps him to forgive himself.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/5.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Brothers Karamazov/section_4_part_0.txt

The Brothers Karamazov.book 1.chapter 5

book 1, chapter 5

{"name": "Book 1, Chapter 5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-1-chapter-5", "summary": "Alyosha's mentor at the monastery is the spiritual figurehead, Zosima. As his elder, Zosima has complete control over Alyosha. The idea is that through obedience to his elder, Alyosha will be able to gain mastery over himself and attain religious illumination. Meanwhile, relations between Dmitri and Fyodor have become so bad that Fyodor, half in jest, suggests that they settle it through a meeting with Zosima. Dmitri agrees, and so does his former guardian Pyotr Miusov, who happens to be suing the monastery over a forest. Ivan, who functions as a mediator between Dmitri and Fyodor, is also coming. Alyosha is filled with foreboding at the prospect of this meeting, and he's particularly concerned that his father is going to cause another scandal.", "analysis": ""}

Chapter V. Elders Some of my readers may imagine that my young man was a sickly, ecstatic, poorly developed creature, a pale, consumptive dreamer. On the contrary, Alyosha was at this time a well-grown, red-cheeked, clear-eyed lad of nineteen, radiant with health. He was very handsome, too, graceful, moderately tall, with hair of a dark brown, with a regular, rather long, oval-shaped face, and wide-set dark gray, shining eyes; he was very thoughtful, and apparently very serene. I shall be told, perhaps, that red cheeks are not incompatible with fanaticism and mysticism; but I fancy that Alyosha was more of a realist than any one. Oh! no doubt, in the monastery he fully believed in miracles, but, to my thinking, miracles are never a stumbling-block to the realist. It is not miracles that dispose realists to belief. The genuine realist, if he is an unbeliever, will always find strength and ability to disbelieve in the miraculous, and if he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact he would rather disbelieve his own senses than admit the fact. Even if he admits it, he admits it as a fact of nature till then unrecognized by him. Faith does not, in the realist, spring from the miracle but the miracle from faith. If the realist once believes, then he is bound by his very realism to admit the miraculous also. The Apostle Thomas said that he would not believe till he saw, but when he did see he said, "My Lord and my God!" Was it the miracle forced him to believe? Most likely not, but he believed solely because he desired to believe and possibly he fully believed in his secret heart even when he said, "I do not believe till I see." I shall be told, perhaps, that Alyosha was stupid, undeveloped, had not finished his studies, and so on. That he did not finish his studies is true, but to say that he was stupid or dull would be a great injustice. I'll simply repeat what I have said above. He entered upon this path only because, at that time, it alone struck his imagination and presented itself to him as offering an ideal means of escape for his soul from darkness to light. Add to that that he was to some extent a youth of our last epoch--that is, honest in nature, desiring the truth, seeking for it and believing in it, and seeking to serve it at once with all the strength of his soul, seeking for immediate action, and ready to sacrifice everything, life itself, for it. Though these young men unhappily fail to understand that the sacrifice of life is, in many cases, the easiest of all sacrifices, and that to sacrifice, for instance, five or six years of their seething youth to hard and tedious study, if only to multiply tenfold their powers of serving the truth and the cause they have set before them as their goal--such a sacrifice is utterly beyond the strength of many of them. The path Alyosha chose was a path going in the opposite direction, but he chose it with the same thirst for swift achievement. As soon as he reflected seriously he was convinced of the existence of God and immortality, and at once he instinctively said to himself: "I want to live for immortality, and I will accept no compromise." In the same way, if he had decided that God and immortality did not exist, he would at once have become an atheist and a socialist. For socialism is not merely the labor question, it is before all things the atheistic question, the question of the form taken by atheism to-day, the question of the tower of Babel built without God, not to mount to heaven from earth but to set up heaven on earth. Alyosha would have found it strange and impossible to go on living as before. It is written: "Give all that thou hast to the poor and follow Me, if thou wouldst be perfect." Alyosha said to himself: "I can't give two roubles instead of 'all,' and only go to mass instead of 'following Him.' " Perhaps his memories of childhood brought back our monastery, to which his mother may have taken him to mass. Perhaps the slanting sunlight and the holy image to which his poor "crazy" mother had held him up still acted upon his imagination. Brooding on these things he may have come to us perhaps only to see whether here he could sacrifice all or only "two roubles," and in the monastery he met this elder. I must digress to explain what an "elder" is in Russian monasteries, and I am sorry that I do not feel very competent to do so. I will try, however, to give a superficial account of it in a few words. Authorities on the subject assert that the institution of "elders" is of recent date, not more than a hundred years old in our monasteries, though in the orthodox East, especially in Sinai and Athos, it has existed over a thousand years. It is maintained that it existed in ancient times in Russia also, but through the calamities which overtook Russia--the Tartars, civil war, the interruption of relations with the East after the destruction of Constantinople--this institution fell into oblivion. It was revived among us towards the end of last century by one of the great "ascetics," as they called him, Paissy Velitchkovsky, and his disciples. But to this day it exists in few monasteries only, and has sometimes been almost persecuted as an innovation in Russia. It flourished especially in the celebrated Kozelski Optin Monastery. When and how it was introduced into our monastery I cannot say. There had already been three such elders and Zossima was the last of them. But he was almost dying of weakness and disease, and they had no one to take his place. The question for our monastery was an important one, for it had not been distinguished by anything in particular till then: they had neither relics of saints, nor wonder-working ikons, nor glorious traditions, nor historical exploits. It had flourished and been glorious all over Russia through its elders, to see and hear whom pilgrims had flocked for thousands of miles from all parts. What was such an elder? An elder was one who took your soul, your will, into his soul and his will. When you choose an elder, you renounce your own will and yield it to him in complete submission, complete self- abnegation. This novitiate, this terrible school of abnegation, is undertaken voluntarily, in the hope of self-conquest, of self-mastery, in order, after a life of obedience, to attain perfect freedom, that is, from self; to escape the lot of those who have lived their whole life without finding their true selves in themselves. This institution of elders is not founded on theory, but was established in the East from the practice of a thousand years. The obligations due to an elder are not the ordinary "obedience" which has always existed in our Russian monasteries. The obligation involves confession to the elder by all who have submitted themselves to him, and to the indissoluble bond between him and them. The story is told, for instance, that in the early days of Christianity one such novice, failing to fulfill some command laid upon him by his elder, left his monastery in Syria and went to Egypt. There, after great exploits, he was found worthy at last to suffer torture and a martyr's death for the faith. When the Church, regarding him as a saint, was burying him, suddenly, at the deacon's exhortation, "Depart all ye unbaptized," the coffin containing the martyr's body left its place and was cast forth from the church, and this took place three times. And only at last they learnt that this holy man had broken his vow of obedience and left his elder, and, therefore, could not be forgiven without the elder's absolution in spite of his great deeds. Only after this could the funeral take place. This, of course, is only an old legend. But here is a recent instance. A monk was suddenly commanded by his elder to quit Athos, which he loved as a sacred place and a haven of refuge, and to go first to Jerusalem to do homage to the Holy Places and then to go to the north to Siberia: "There is the place for thee and not here." The monk, overwhelmed with sorrow, went to the OEcumenical Patriarch at Constantinople and besought him to release him from his obedience. But the Patriarch replied that not only was he unable to release him, but there was not and could not be on earth a power which could release him except the elder who had himself laid that duty upon him. In this way the elders are endowed in certain cases with unbounded and inexplicable authority. That is why in many of our monasteries the institution was at first resisted almost to persecution. Meantime the elders immediately began to be highly esteemed among the people. Masses of the ignorant people as well as men of distinction flocked, for instance, to the elders of our monastery to confess their doubts, their sins, and their sufferings, and ask for counsel and admonition. Seeing this, the opponents of the elders declared that the sacrament of confession was being arbitrarily and frivolously degraded, though the continual opening of the heart to the elder by the monk or the layman had nothing of the character of the sacrament. In the end, however, the institution of elders has been retained and is becoming established in Russian monasteries. It is true, perhaps, that this instrument which had stood the test of a thousand years for the moral regeneration of a man from slavery to freedom and to moral perfectibility may be a two-edged weapon and it may lead some not to humility and complete self-control but to the most Satanic pride, that is, to bondage and not to freedom. The elder Zossima was sixty-five. He came of a family of landowners, had been in the army in early youth, and served in the Caucasus as an officer. He had, no doubt, impressed Alyosha by some peculiar quality of his soul. Alyosha lived in the cell of the elder, who was very fond of him and let him wait upon him. It must be noted that Alyosha was bound by no obligation and could go where he pleased and be absent for whole days. Though he wore the monastic dress it was voluntarily, not to be different from others. No doubt he liked to do so. Possibly his youthful imagination was deeply stirred by the power and fame of his elder. It was said that so many people had for years past come to confess their sins to Father Zossima and to entreat him for words of advice and healing, that he had acquired the keenest intuition and could tell from an unknown face what a new-comer wanted, and what was the suffering on his conscience. He sometimes astounded and almost alarmed his visitors by his knowledge of their secrets before they had spoken a word. Alyosha noticed that many, almost all, went in to the elder for the first time with apprehension and uneasiness, but came out with bright and happy faces. Alyosha was particularly struck by the fact that Father Zossima was not at all stern. On the contrary, he was always almost gay. The monks used to say that he was more drawn to those who were more sinful, and the greater the sinner the more he loved him. There were, no doubt, up to the end of his life, among the monks some who hated and envied him, but they were few in number and they were silent, though among them were some of great dignity in the monastery, one, for instance, of the older monks distinguished for his strict keeping of fasts and vows of silence. But the majority were on Father Zossima's side and very many of them loved him with all their hearts, warmly and sincerely. Some were almost fanatically devoted to him, and declared, though not quite aloud, that he was a saint, that there could be no doubt of it, and, seeing that his end was near, they anticipated miracles and great glory to the monastery in the immediate future from his relics. Alyosha had unquestioning faith in the miraculous power of the elder, just as he had unquestioning faith in the story of the coffin that flew out of the church. He saw many who came with sick children or relatives and besought the elder to lay hands on them and to pray over them, return shortly after--some the next day--and, falling in tears at the elder's feet, thank him for healing their sick. Whether they had really been healed or were simply better in the natural course of the disease was a question which did not exist for Alyosha, for he fully believed in the spiritual power of his teacher and rejoiced in his fame, in his glory, as though it were his own triumph. His heart throbbed, and he beamed, as it were, all over when the elder came out to the gates of the hermitage into the waiting crowd of pilgrims of the humbler class who had flocked from all parts of Russia on purpose to see the elder and obtain his blessing. They fell down before him, wept, kissed his feet, kissed the earth on which he stood, and wailed, while the women held up their children to him and brought him the sick "possessed with devils." The elder spoke to them, read a brief prayer over them, blessed them, and dismissed them. Of late he had become so weak through attacks of illness that he was sometimes unable to leave his cell, and the pilgrims waited for him to come out for several days. Alyosha did not wonder why they loved him so, why they fell down before him and wept with emotion merely at seeing his face. Oh! he understood that for the humble soul of the Russian peasant, worn out by grief and toil, and still more by the everlasting injustice and everlasting sin, his own and the world's, it was the greatest need and comfort to find some one or something holy to fall down before and worship. "Among us there is sin, injustice, and temptation, but yet, somewhere on earth there is some one holy and exalted. He has the truth; he knows the truth; so it is not dead upon the earth; so it will come one day to us, too, and rule over all the earth according to the promise." Alyosha knew that this was just how the people felt and even reasoned. He understood it, but that the elder Zossima was this saint and custodian of God's truth--of that he had no more doubt than the weeping peasants and the sick women who held out their children to the elder. The conviction that after his death the elder would bring extraordinary glory to the monastery was even stronger in Alyosha than in any one there, and, of late, a kind of deep flame of inner ecstasy burnt more and more strongly in his heart. He was not at all troubled at this elder's standing as a solitary example before him. "No matter. He is holy. He carries in his heart the secret of renewal for all: that power which will, at last, establish truth on the earth, and all men will be holy and love one another, and there will be no more rich nor poor, no exalted nor humbled, but all will be as the children of God, and the true Kingdom of Christ will come." That was the dream in Alyosha's heart. The arrival of his two brothers, whom he had not known till then, seemed to make a great impression on Alyosha. He more quickly made friends with his half-brother Dmitri (though he arrived later) than with his own brother Ivan. He was extremely interested in his brother Ivan, but when the latter had been two months in the town, though they had met fairly often, they were still not intimate. Alyosha was naturally silent, and he seemed to be expecting something, ashamed about something, while his brother Ivan, though Alyosha noticed at first that he looked long and curiously at him, seemed soon to have left off thinking of him. Alyosha noticed it with some embarrassment. He ascribed his brother's indifference at first to the disparity of their age and education. But he also wondered whether the absence of curiosity and sympathy in Ivan might be due to some other cause entirely unknown to him. He kept fancying that Ivan was absorbed in something--something inward and important--that he was striving towards some goal, perhaps very hard to attain, and that that was why he had no thought for him. Alyosha wondered, too, whether there was not some contempt on the part of the learned atheist for him--a foolish novice. He knew for certain that his brother was an atheist. He could not take offense at this contempt, if it existed; yet, with an uneasy embarrassment which he did not himself understand, he waited for his brother to come nearer to him. Dmitri used to speak of Ivan with the deepest respect and with a peculiar earnestness. From him Alyosha learnt all the details of the important affair which had of late formed such a close and remarkable bond between the two elder brothers. Dmitri's enthusiastic references to Ivan were the more striking in Alyosha's eyes since Dmitri was, compared with Ivan, almost uneducated, and the two brothers were such a contrast in personality and character that it would be difficult to find two men more unlike. It was at this time that the meeting, or, rather gathering of the members of this inharmonious family took place in the cell of the elder who had such an extraordinary influence on Alyosha. The pretext for this gathering was a false one. It was at this time that the discord between Dmitri and his father seemed at its acutest stage and their relations had become insufferably strained. Fyodor Pavlovitch seems to have been the first to suggest, apparently in joke, that they should all meet in Father Zossima's cell, and that, without appealing to his direct intervention, they might more decently come to an understanding under the conciliating influence of the elder's presence. Dmitri, who had never seen the elder, naturally supposed that his father was trying to intimidate him, but, as he secretly blamed himself for his outbursts of temper with his father on several recent occasions, he accepted the challenge. It must be noted that he was not, like Ivan, staying with his father, but living apart at the other end of the town. It happened that Pyotr Alexandrovitch Miuesov, who was staying in the district at the time, caught eagerly at the idea. A Liberal of the forties and fifties, a freethinker and atheist, he may have been led on by boredom or the hope of frivolous diversion. He was suddenly seized with the desire to see the monastery and the holy man. As his lawsuit with the monastery still dragged on, he made it the pretext for seeing the Superior, in order to attempt to settle it amicably. A visitor coming with such laudable intentions might be received with more attention and consideration than if he came from simple curiosity. Influences from within the monastery were brought to bear on the elder, who of late had scarcely left his cell, and had been forced by illness to deny even his ordinary visitors. In the end he consented to see them, and the day was fixed. "Who has made me a judge over them?" was all he said, smilingly, to Alyosha. Alyosha was much perturbed when he heard of the proposed visit. Of all the wrangling, quarrelsome party, Dmitri was the only one who could regard the interview seriously. All the others would come from frivolous motives, perhaps insulting to the elder. Alyosha was well aware of that. Ivan and Miuesov would come from curiosity, perhaps of the coarsest kind, while his father might be contemplating some piece of buffoonery. Though he said nothing, Alyosha thoroughly understood his father. The boy, I repeat, was far from being so simple as every one thought him. He awaited the day with a heavy heart. No doubt he was always pondering in his mind how the family discord could be ended. But his chief anxiety concerned the elder. He trembled for him, for his glory, and dreaded any affront to him, especially the refined, courteous irony of Miuesov and the supercilious half-utterances of the highly educated Ivan. He even wanted to venture on warning the elder, telling him something about them, but, on second thoughts, said nothing. He only sent word the day before, through a friend, to his brother Dmitri, that he loved him and expected him to keep his promise. Dmitri wondered, for he could not remember what he had promised, but he answered by letter that he would do his utmost not to let himself be provoked "by vileness," but that, although he had a deep respect for the elder and for his brother Ivan, he was convinced that the meeting was either a trap for him or an unworthy farce. "Nevertheless I would rather bite out my tongue than be lacking in respect to the sainted man whom you reverence so highly," he wrote in conclusion. Alyosha was not greatly cheered by the letter.

Book 1, Chapter 5

https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-1-chapter-5

Alyosha's mentor at the monastery is the spiritual figurehead, Zosima. As his elder, Zosima has complete control over Alyosha. The idea is that through obedience to his elder, Alyosha will be able to gain mastery over himself and attain religious illumination. Meanwhile, relations between Dmitri and Fyodor have become so bad that Fyodor, half in jest, suggests that they settle it through a meeting with Zosima. Dmitri agrees, and so does his former guardian Pyotr Miusov, who happens to be suing the monastery over a forest. Ivan, who functions as a mediator between Dmitri and Fyodor, is also coming. Alyosha is filled with foreboding at the prospect of this meeting, and he's particularly concerned that his father is going to cause another scandal.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1232-chapters/04.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Prince/section_4_part_0.txt

The Prince.chapter 4

chapter 4

{"name": "Chapter 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210420060055/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/prince-machiavelli/summary/chapter-4", "summary": "Now you're thinking: didn't Alexander the Great get land quickly and hold on to it even after his death? And weren't you just saying how difficult it is to hold on to new lands, Machiavelli? Well, there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for that. There are two ways to govern a monarchy: by a king and non-elected barons or by a king and his appointed ministers. In the second one, the king is more powerful since he's the only person who has real power. Turkey is one example of this kind of government. Because the king has all the power, a country like Turkey is pretty hard to conquer. There are no barons to help you by turning against the king. But on the plus side, once you do take over, ruling is a piece of cake because there are no barons to try to challenge you. On the other hand, we have places like France, where there's a king and barons that go back a long time. It's super easy to get into one of these places, since a baron somewhere is probably pissed at the king and wants him gone. The problem is, those same barons can turn against you after the old king is gone, so it's hard to hold on to these sorts of kingdoms. Back to Alexander. Why was it easy to keep his lands? You guessed it: they were like Turkey and had no barons to complicate things.", "analysis": ""}

Considering the difficulties which men have had to hold to a newly acquired state, some might wonder how, seeing that Alexander the Great became the master of Asia in a few years, and died whilst it was scarcely settled (whence it might appear reasonable that the whole empire would have rebelled), nevertheless his successors maintained themselves, and had to meet no other difficulty than that which arose among themselves from their own ambitions. I answer that the principalities of which one has record are found to be governed in two different ways; either by a prince, with a body of servants, who assist him to govern the kingdom as ministers by his favour and permission; or by a prince and barons, who hold that dignity by antiquity of blood and not by the grace of the prince. Such barons have states and their own subjects, who recognize them as lords and hold them in natural affection. Those states that are governed by a prince and his servants hold their prince in more consideration, because in all the country there is no one who is recognized as superior to him, and if they yield obedience to another they do it as to a minister and official, and they do not bear him any particular affection. The examples of these two governments in our time are the Turk and the King of France. The entire monarchy of the Turk is governed by one lord, the others are his servants; and, dividing his kingdom into sanjaks, he sends there different administrators, and shifts and changes them as he chooses. But the King of France is placed in the midst of an ancient body of lords, acknowledged by their own subjects, and beloved by them; they have their own prerogatives, nor can the king take these away except at his peril. Therefore, he who considers both of these states will recognize great difficulties in seizing the state of the Turk, but, once it is conquered, great ease in holding it. The causes of the difficulties in seizing the kingdom of the Turk are that the usurper cannot be called in by the princes of the kingdom, nor can he hope to be assisted in his designs by the revolt of those whom the lord has around him. This arises from the reasons given above; for his ministers, being all slaves and bondmen, can only be corrupted with great difficulty, and one can expect little advantage from them when they have been corrupted, as they cannot carry the people with them, for the reasons assigned. Hence, he who attacks the Turk must bear in mind that he will find him united, and he will have to rely more on his own strength than on the revolt of others; but, if once the Turk has been conquered, and routed in the field in such a way that he cannot replace his armies, there is nothing to fear but the family of this prince, and, this being exterminated, there remains no one to fear, the others having no credit with the people; and as the conqueror did not rely on them before his victory, so he ought not to fear them after it. The contrary happens in kingdoms governed like that of France, because one can easily enter there by gaining over some baron of the kingdom, for one always finds malcontents and such as desire a change. Such men, for the reasons given, can open the way into the state and render the victory easy; but if you wish to hold it afterwards, you meet with infinite difficulties, both from those who have assisted you and from those you have crushed. Nor is it enough for you to have exterminated the family of the prince, because the lords that remain make themselves the heads of fresh movements against you, and as you are unable either to satisfy or exterminate them, that state is lost whenever time brings the opportunity. Now if you will consider what was the nature of the government of Darius, you will find it similar to the kingdom of the Turk, and therefore it was only necessary for Alexander, first to overthrow him in the field, and then to take the country from him. After which victory, Darius being killed, the state remained secure to Alexander, for the above reasons. And if his successors had been united they would have enjoyed it securely and at their ease, for there were no tumults raised in the kingdom except those they provoked themselves. But it is impossible to hold with such tranquillity states constituted like that of France. Hence arose those frequent rebellions against the Romans in Spain, France, and Greece, owing to the many principalities there were in these states, of which, as long as the memory of them endured, the Romans always held an insecure possession; but with the power and long continuance of the empire the memory of them passed away, and the Romans then became secure possessors. And when fighting afterwards amongst themselves, each one was able to attach to himself his own parts of the country, according to the authority he had assumed there; and the family of the former lord being exterminated, none other than the Romans were acknowledged. When these things are remembered no one will marvel at the ease with which Alexander held the Empire of Asia, or at the difficulties which others have had to keep an acquisition, such as Pyrrhus and many more; this is not occasioned by the little or abundance of ability in the conqueror, but by the want of uniformity in the subject state.

Chapter 4

https://web.archive.org/web/20210420060055/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/prince-machiavelli/summary/chapter-4

Now you're thinking: didn't Alexander the Great get land quickly and hold on to it even after his death? And weren't you just saying how difficult it is to hold on to new lands, Machiavelli? Well, there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for that. There are two ways to govern a monarchy: by a king and non-elected barons or by a king and his appointed ministers. In the second one, the king is more powerful since he's the only person who has real power. Turkey is one example of this kind of government. Because the king has all the power, a country like Turkey is pretty hard to conquer. There are no barons to help you by turning against the king. But on the plus side, once you do take over, ruling is a piece of cake because there are no barons to try to challenge you. On the other hand, we have places like France, where there's a king and barons that go back a long time. It's super easy to get into one of these places, since a baron somewhere is probably pissed at the king and wants him gone. The problem is, those same barons can turn against you after the old king is gone, so it's hard to hold on to these sorts of kingdoms. Back to Alexander. Why was it easy to keep his lands? You guessed it: they were like Turkey and had no barons to complicate things.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/107-chapters/13.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Far From the Madding Crowd/section_12_part_0.txt

Far From the Madding Crowd.chapter 13

chapter 13

{"name": "Chapter 13", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-13", "summary": "Liddy and Bathsheba are hanging out. Liddy asks Bathsheba if she noticed Farmer Boldwood at church that week, since her pew is directly opposite his. Liddy finds it amazing that Boldwood never once looked at Liddy throughout the entire church service. At this moment, Bathsheba remembers a Valentines Day card she bought. She was going to send it to a little boy, to cheer him up. But just as she's about to address it, Liddy thinks out loud how fun it would be to send it anonymously to Farmer Boldwood. This idea gives Bathsheba pause. Eventually, Bathsheba talks herself into doing it. Worse yet, she decides to seal the letter with a wax stamp that says, \"Marry Me\" on it. Bathsheba is the queen of head games, and this letter is really going to mess with Boldwood's noggin. The narrator tells us that Bathsheba has no clue what she's getting into when she sends off the letter. We partially believe that.", "analysis": ""}

SORTES SANCTORUM--THE VALENTINE It was Sunday afternoon in the farmhouse, on the thirteenth of February. Dinner being over, Bathsheba, for want of a better companion, had asked Liddy to come and sit with her. The mouldy pile was dreary in winter-time before the candles were lighted and the shutters closed; the atmosphere of the place seemed as old as the walls; every nook behind the furniture had a temperature of its own, for the fire was not kindled in this part of the house early in the day; and Bathsheba's new piano, which was an old one in other annals, looked particularly sloping and out of level on the warped floor before night threw a shade over its less prominent angles and hid the unpleasantness. Liddy, like a little brook, though shallow, was always rippling; her presence had not so much weight as to task thought, and yet enough to exercise it. On the table lay an old quarto Bible, bound in leather. Liddy looking at it said,-- "Did you ever find out, miss, who you are going to marry by means of the Bible and key?" "Don't be so foolish, Liddy. As if such things could be." "Well, there's a good deal in it, all the same." "Nonsense, child." "And it makes your heart beat fearful. Some believe in it; some don't; I do." "Very well, let's try it," said Bathsheba, bounding from her seat with that total disregard of consistency which can be indulged in towards a dependent, and entering into the spirit of divination at once. "Go and get the front door key." Liddy fetched it. "I wish it wasn't Sunday," she said, on returning. "Perhaps 'tis wrong." "What's right week days is right Sundays," replied her mistress in a tone which was a proof in itself. The book was opened--the leaves, drab with age, being quite worn away at much-read verses by the forefingers of unpractised readers in former days, where they were moved along under the line as an aid to the vision. The special verse in the Book of Ruth was sought out by Bathsheba, and the sublime words met her eye. They slightly thrilled and abashed her. It was Wisdom in the abstract facing Folly in the concrete. Folly in the concrete blushed, persisted in her intention, and placed the key on the book. A rusty patch immediately upon the verse, caused by previous pressure of an iron substance thereon, told that this was not the first time the old volume had been used for the purpose. "Now keep steady, and be silent," said Bathsheba. The verse was repeated; the book turned round; Bathsheba blushed guiltily. "Who did you try?" said Liddy curiously. "I shall not tell you." "Did you notice Mr. Boldwood's doings in church this morning, miss?" Liddy continued, adumbrating by the remark the track her thoughts had taken. "No, indeed," said Bathsheba, with serene indifference. "His pew is exactly opposite yours, miss." "I know it." "And you did not see his goings on!" "Certainly I did not, I tell you." Liddy assumed a smaller physiognomy, and shut her lips decisively. This move was unexpected, and proportionately disconcerting. "What did he do?" Bathsheba said perforce. "Didn't turn his head to look at you once all the service." "Why should he?" again demanded her mistress, wearing a nettled look. "I didn't ask him to." "Oh no. But everybody else was noticing you; and it was odd he didn't. There, 'tis like him. Rich and gentlemanly, what does he care?" Bathsheba dropped into a silence intended to express that she had opinions on the matter too abstruse for Liddy's comprehension, rather than that she had nothing to say. "Dear me--I had nearly forgotten the valentine I bought yesterday," she exclaimed at length. "Valentine! who for, miss?" said Liddy. "Farmer Boldwood?" It was the single name among all possible wrong ones that just at this moment seemed to Bathsheba more pertinent than the right. "Well, no. It is only for little Teddy Coggan. I have promised him something, and this will be a pretty surprise for him. Liddy, you may as well bring me my desk and I'll direct it at once." Bathsheba took from her desk a gorgeously illuminated and embossed design in post-octavo, which had been bought on the previous market-day at the chief stationer's in Casterbridge. In the centre was a small oval enclosure; this was left blank, that the sender might insert tender words more appropriate to the special occasion than any generalities by a printer could possibly be. "Here's a place for writing," said Bathsheba. "What shall I put?" "Something of this sort, I should think," returned Liddy promptly:-- "The rose is red, The violet blue, Carnation's sweet, And so are you." "Yes, that shall be it. It just suits itself to a chubby-faced child like him," said Bathsheba. She inserted the words in a small though legible handwriting; enclosed the sheet in an envelope, and dipped her pen for the direction. "What fun it would be to send it to the stupid old Boldwood, and how he would wonder!" said the irrepressible Liddy, lifting her eyebrows, and indulging in an awful mirth on the verge of fear as she thought of the moral and social magnitude of the man contemplated. Bathsheba paused to regard the idea at full length. Boldwood's had begun to be a troublesome image--a species of Daniel in her kingdom who persisted in kneeling eastward when reason and common sense said that he might just as well follow suit with the rest, and afford her the official glance of admiration which cost nothing at all. She was far from being seriously concerned about his nonconformity. Still, it was faintly depressing that the most dignified and valuable man in the parish should withhold his eyes, and that a girl like Liddy should talk about it. So Liddy's idea was at first rather harassing than piquant. "No, I won't do that. He wouldn't see any humour in it." "He'd worry to death," said the persistent Liddy. "Really, I don't care particularly to send it to Teddy," remarked her mistress. "He's rather a naughty child sometimes." "Yes--that he is." "Let's toss as men do," said Bathsheba, idly. "Now then, head, Boldwood; tail, Teddy. No, we won't toss money on a Sunday, that would be tempting the devil indeed." "Toss this hymn-book; there can't be no sinfulness in that, miss." "Very well. Open, Boldwood--shut, Teddy. No; it's more likely to fall open. Open, Teddy--shut, Boldwood." The book went fluttering in the air and came down shut. Bathsheba, a small yawn upon her mouth, took the pen, and with off-hand serenity directed the missive to Boldwood. "Now light a candle, Liddy. Which seal shall we use? Here's a unicorn's head--there's nothing in that. What's this?--two doves--no. It ought to be something extraordinary, ought it not, Liddy? Here's one with a motto--I remember it is some funny one, but I can't read it. We'll try this, and if it doesn't do we'll have another." A large red seal was duly affixed. Bathsheba looked closely at the hot wax to discover the words. "Capital!" she exclaimed, throwing down the letter frolicsomely. "'Twould upset the solemnity of a parson and clerke too." Liddy looked at the words of the seal, and read-- "MARRY ME." The same evening the letter was sent, and was duly sorted in Casterbridge post-office that night, to be returned to Weatherbury again in the morning. So very idly and unreflectingly was this deed done. Of love as a spectacle Bathsheba had a fair knowledge; but of love subjectively she knew nothing.

Chapter 13

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-13

Liddy and Bathsheba are hanging out. Liddy asks Bathsheba if she noticed Farmer Boldwood at church that week, since her pew is directly opposite his. Liddy finds it amazing that Boldwood never once looked at Liddy throughout the entire church service. At this moment, Bathsheba remembers a Valentines Day card she bought. She was going to send it to a little boy, to cheer him up. But just as she's about to address it, Liddy thinks out loud how fun it would be to send it anonymously to Farmer Boldwood. This idea gives Bathsheba pause. Eventually, Bathsheba talks herself into doing it. Worse yet, she decides to seal the letter with a wax stamp that says, "Marry Me" on it. Bathsheba is the queen of head games, and this letter is really going to mess with Boldwood's noggin. The narrator tells us that Bathsheba has no clue what she's getting into when she sends off the letter. We partially believe that.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/13.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Lord Jim/section_12_part_0.txt

Lord Jim.chapter 13

chapter 13

{"name": "Chapter 13", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210118112654/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/lord-jim/summary/chapter-13", "summary": "As the French lieutenant wraps up his story about rescuing the Patna, he assesses Jim's situation and the significance of Jim's actions. By the way, we learn that this conversation took place three years after Jim's trial, at which point Jim was working as a water-clerk. This reminds Marlow of another one-time water-clerk named Bob Stanton, who drowned while trying to rescue a woman from a sinking ship. We now interrupt this digression to bring you back to Jim and Marlow's conversation. We go back to the night of Jim and Marlow's conversation. Jim is going to be sentenced the next day, so Marlow offers him some cash to skip town, just as Captain Brierly suggested. But Jim is more moral than Marlow gives him credit for. He refuses and insists on seeing the trial through to the end. The pair parts awkwardly, and Jim runs off into the night.", "analysis": ""}

'After these words, and without a change of attitude, he, so to speak, submitted himself passively to a state of silence. I kept him company; and suddenly, but not abruptly, as if the appointed time had arrived for his moderate and husky voice to come out of his immobility, he pronounced, "Mon Dieu! how the time passes!" Nothing could have been more commonplace than this remark; but its utterance coincided for me with a moment of vision. It's extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut, with dull ears, with dormant thoughts. Perhaps it's just as well; and it may be that it is this very dullness that makes life to the incalculable majority so supportable and so welcome. Nevertheless, there can be but few of us who had never known one of these rare moments of awakening when we see, hear, understand ever so much--everything--in a flash--before we fall back again into our agreeable somnolence. I raised my eyes when he spoke, and I saw him as though I had never seen him before. I saw his chin sunk on his breast, the clumsy folds of his coat, his clasped hands, his motionless pose, so curiously suggestive of his having been simply left there. Time had passed indeed: it had overtaken him and gone ahead. It had left him hopelessly behind with a few poor gifts: the iron-grey hair, the heavy fatigue of the tanned face, two scars, a pair of tarnished shoulder-straps; one of those steady, reliable men who are the raw material of great reputations, one of those uncounted lives that are buried without drums and trumpets under the foundations of monumental successes. "I am now third lieutenant of the Victorieuse" (she was the flagship of the French Pacific squadron at the time), he said, detaching his shoulders from the wall a couple of inches to introduce himself. I bowed slightly on my side of the table, and told him I commanded a merchant vessel at present anchored in Rushcutters' Bay. He had "remarked" her,--a pretty little craft. He was very civil about it in his impassive way. I even fancy he went the length of tilting his head in compliment as he repeated, breathing visibly the while, "Ah, yes. A little craft painted black--very pretty--very pretty (tres coquet)." After a time he twisted his body slowly to face the glass door on our right. "A dull town (triste ville)," he observed, staring into the street. It was a brilliant day; a southerly buster was raging, and we could see the passers-by, men and women, buffeted by the wind on the sidewalks, the sunlit fronts of the houses across the road blurred by the tall whirls of dust. "I descended on shore," he said, "to stretch my legs a little, but . . ." He didn't finish, and sank into the depths of his repose. "Pray--tell me," he began, coming up ponderously, "what was there at the bottom of this affair--precisely (au juste)? It is curious. That dead man, for instance--and so on." '"There were living men too," I said; "much more curious." '"No doubt, no doubt," he agreed half audibly, then, as if after mature consideration, murmured, "Evidently." I made no difficulty in communicating to him what had interested me most in this affair. It seemed as though he had a right to know: hadn't he spent thirty hours on board the Patna--had he not taken the succession, so to speak, had he not done "his possible"? He listened to me, looking more priest-like than ever, and with what--probably on account of his downcast eyes--had the appearance of devout concentration. Once or twice he elevated his eyebrows (but without raising his eyelids), as one would say "The devil!" Once he calmly exclaimed, "Ah, bah!" under his breath, and when I had finished he pursed his lips in a deliberate way and emitted a sort of sorrowful whistle. 'In any one else it might have been an evidence of boredom, a sign of indifference; but he, in his occult way, managed to make his immobility appear profoundly responsive, and as full of valuable thoughts as an egg is of meat. What he said at last was nothing more than a "Very interesting," pronounced politely, and not much above a whisper. Before I got over my disappointment he added, but as if speaking to himself, "That's it. That _is_ it." His chin seemed to sink lower on his breast, his body to weigh heavier on his seat. I was about to ask him what he meant, when a sort of preparatory tremor passed over his whole person, as a faint ripple may be seen upon stagnant water even before the wind is felt. "And so that poor young man ran away along with the others," he said, with grave tranquillity. 'I don't know what made me smile: it is the only genuine smile of mine I can remember in connection with Jim's affair. But somehow this simple statement of the matter sounded funny in French. . . . "S'est enfui avec les autres," had said the lieutenant. And suddenly I began to admire the discrimination of the man. He had made out the point at once: he did get hold of the only thing I cared about. I felt as though I were taking professional opinion on the case. His imperturbable and mature calmness was that of an expert in possession of the facts, and to whom one's perplexities are mere child's-play. "Ah! The young, the young," he said indulgently. "And after all, one does not die of it." "Die of what?" I asked swiftly. "Of being afraid." He elucidated his meaning and sipped his drink. 'I perceived that the three last fingers of his wounded hand were stiff and could not move independently of each other, so that he took up his tumbler with an ungainly clutch. "One is always afraid. One may talk, but . . ." He put down the glass awkwardly. . . . "The fear, the fear--look you--it is always there." . . . He touched his breast near a brass button, on the very spot where Jim had given a thump to his own when protesting that there was nothing the matter with his heart. I suppose I made some sign of dissent, because he insisted, "Yes! yes! One talks, one talks; this is all very fine; but at the end of the reckoning one is no cleverer than the next man--and no more brave. Brave! This is always to be seen. I have rolled my hump (roule ma bosse)," he said, using the slang expression with imperturbable seriousness, "in all parts of the world; I have known brave men--famous ones! Allez!" . . . He drank carelessly. . . . "Brave--you conceive--in the Service--one has got to be--the trade demands it (le metier veut ca). Is it not so?" he appealed to me reasonably. "Eh bien! Each of them--I say each of them, if he were an honest man--bien entendu--would confess that there is a point--there is a point--for the best of us--there is somewhere a point when you let go everything (vous lachez tout). And you have got to live with that truth--do you see? Given a certain combination of circumstances, fear is sure to come. Abominable funk (un trac epouvantable). And even for those who do not believe this truth there is fear all the same--the fear of themselves. Absolutely so. Trust me. Yes. Yes. . . . At my age one knows what one is talking about--que diable!" . . . He had delivered himself of all this as immovably as though he had been the mouthpiece of abstract wisdom, but at this point he heightened the effect of detachment by beginning to twirl his thumbs slowly. "It's evident--parbleu!" he continued; "for, make up your mind as much as you like, even a simple headache or a fit of indigestion (un derangement d'estomac) is enough to . . . Take me, for instance--I have made my proofs. Eh bien! I, who am speaking to you, once . . ." 'He drained his glass and returned to his twirling. "No, no; one does not die of it," he pronounced finally, and when I found he did not mean to proceed with the personal anecdote, I was extremely disappointed; the more so as it was not the sort of story, you know, one could very well press him for. I sat silent, and he too, as if nothing could please him better. Even his thumbs were still now. Suddenly his lips began to move. "That is so," he resumed placidly. "Man is born a coward (L'homme est ne poltron). It is a difficulty--parbleu! It would be too easy other vise. But habit--habit--necessity--do you see?--the eye of others--voila. One puts up with it. And then the example of others who are no better than yourself, and yet make good countenance. . . ." 'His voice ceased. '"That young man--you will observe--had none of these inducements--at least at the moment," I remarked. 'He raised his eyebrows forgivingly: "I don't say; I don't say. The young man in question might have had the best dispositions--the best dispositions," he repeated, wheezing a little. '"I am glad to see you taking a lenient view," I said. "His own feeling in the matter was--ah!--hopeful, and . . ." 'The shuffle of his feet under the table interrupted me. He drew up his heavy eyelids. Drew up, I say--no other expression can describe the steady deliberation of the act--and at last was disclosed completely to me. I was confronted by two narrow grey circlets, like two tiny steel rings around the profound blackness of the pupils. The sharp glance, coming from that massive body, gave a notion of extreme efficiency, like a razor-edge on a battle-axe. "Pardon," he said punctiliously. His right hand went up, and he swayed forward. "Allow me . . . I contended that one may get on knowing very well that one's courage does not come of itself (ne vient pas tout seul). There's nothing much in that to get upset about. One truth the more ought not to make life impossible. . . . But the honour--the honour, monsieur! . . . The honour . . . that is real--that is! And what life may be worth when" . . . he got on his feet with a ponderous impetuosity, as a startled ox might scramble up from the grass . . . "when the honour is gone--ah ca! par exemple--I can offer no opinion. I can offer no opinion--because--monsieur--I know nothing of it." 'I had risen too, and, trying to throw infinite politeness into our attitudes, we faced each other mutely, like two china dogs on a mantelpiece. Hang the fellow! he had pricked the bubble. The blight of futility that lies in wait for men's speeches had fallen upon our conversation, and made it a thing of empty sounds. "Very well," I said, with a disconcerted smile; "but couldn't it reduce itself to not being found out?" He made as if to retort readily, but when he spoke he had changed his mind. "This, monsieur, is too fine for me--much above me--I don't think about it." He bowed heavily over his cap, which he held before him by the peak, between the thumb and the forefinger of his wounded hand. I bowed too. We bowed together: we scraped our feet at each other with much ceremony, while a dirty specimen of a waiter looked on critically, as though he had paid for the performance. "Serviteur," said the Frenchman. Another scrape. "Monsieur" . . . "Monsieur." . . . The glass door swung behind his burly back. I saw the southerly buster get hold of him and drive him down wind with his hand to his head, his shoulders braced, and the tails of his coat blown hard against his legs. 'I sat down again alone and discouraged--discouraged about Jim's case. If you wonder that after more than three years it had preserved its actuality, you must know that I had seen him only very lately. I had come straight from Samarang, where I had loaded a cargo for Sydney: an utterly uninteresting bit of business,--what Charley here would call one of my rational transactions,--and in Samarang I had seen something of Jim. He was then working for De Jongh, on my recommendation. Water-clerk. "My representative afloat," as De Jongh called him. You can't imagine a mode of life more barren of consolation, less capable of being invested with a spark of glamour--unless it be the business of an insurance canvasser. Little Bob Stanton--Charley here knew him well--had gone through that experience. The same who got drowned afterwards trying to save a lady's-maid in the Sephora disaster. A case of collision on a hazy morning off the Spanish coast--you may remember. All the passengers had been packed tidily into the boats and shoved clear of the ship, when Bob sheered alongside again and scrambled back on deck to fetch that girl. How she had been left behind I can't make out; anyhow, she had gone completely crazy--wouldn't leave the ship--held to the rail like grim death. The wrestling-match could be seen plainly from the boats; but poor Bob was the shortest chief mate in the merchant service, and the woman stood five feet ten in her shoes and was as strong as a horse, I've been told. So it went on, pull devil, pull baker, the wretched girl screaming all the time, and Bob letting out a yell now and then to warn his boat to keep well clear of the ship. One of the hands told me, hiding a smile at the recollection, "It was for all the world, sir, like a naughty youngster fighting with his mother." The same old chap said that "At the last we could see that Mr. Stanton had given up hauling at the gal, and just stood by looking at her, watchful like. We thought afterwards he must've been reckoning that, maybe, the rush of water would tear her away from the rail by-and-by and give him a show to save her. We daren't come alongside for our life; and after a bit the old ship went down all on a sudden with a lurch to starboard--plop. The suck in was something awful. We never saw anything alive or dead come up." Poor Bob's spell of shore-life had been one of the complications of a love affair, I believe. He fondly hoped he had done with the sea for ever, and made sure he had got hold of all the bliss on earth, but it came to canvassing in the end. Some cousin of his in Liverpool put up to it. He used to tell us his experiences in that line. He made us laugh till we cried, and, not altogether displeased at the effect, undersized and bearded to the waist like a gnome, he would tiptoe amongst us and say, "It's all very well for you beggars to laugh, but my immortal soul was shrivelled down to the size of a parched pea after a week of that work." I don't know how Jim's soul accommodated itself to the new conditions of his life--I was kept too busy in getting him something to do that would keep body and soul together--but I am pretty certain his adventurous fancy was suffering all the pangs of starvation. It had certainly nothing to feed upon in this new calling. It was distressing to see him at it, though he tackled it with a stubborn serenity for which I must give him full credit. I kept my eye on his shabby plodding with a sort of notion that it was a punishment for the heroics of his fancy--an expiation for his craving after more glamour than he could carry. He had loved too well to imagine himself a glorious racehorse, and now he was condemned to toil without honour like a costermonger's donkey. He did it very well. He shut himself in, put his head down, said never a word. Very well; very well indeed--except for certain fantastic and violent outbreaks, on the deplorable occasions when the irrepressible Patna case cropped up. Unfortunately that scandal of the Eastern seas would not die out. And this is the reason why I could never feel I had done with Jim for good. 'I sat thinking of him after the French lieutenant had left, not, however, in connection with De Jongh's cool and gloomy backshop, where we had hurriedly shaken hands not very long ago, but as I had seen him years before in the last flickers of the candle, alone with me in the long gallery of the Malabar House, with the chill and the darkness of the night at his back. The respectable sword of his country's law was suspended over his head. To-morrow--or was it to-day? (midnight had slipped by long before we parted)--the marble-faced police magistrate, after distributing fines and terms of imprisonment in the assault-and-battery case, would take up the awful weapon and smite his bowed neck. Our communion in the night was uncommonly like a last vigil with a condemned man. He was guilty too. He was guilty--as I had told myself repeatedly, guilty and done for; nevertheless, I wished to spare him the mere detail of a formal execution. I don't pretend to explain the reasons of my desire--I don't think I could; but if you haven't got a sort of notion by this time, then I must have been very obscure in my narrative, or you too sleepy to seize upon the sense of my words. I don't defend my morality. There was no morality in the impulse which induced me to lay before him Brierly's plan of evasion--I may call it--in all its primitive simplicity. There were the rupees--absolutely ready in my pocket and very much at his service. Oh! a loan; a loan of course--and if an introduction to a man (in Rangoon) who could put some work in his way . . . Why! with the greatest pleasure. I had pen, ink, and paper in my room on the first floor And even while I was speaking I was impatient to begin the letter--day, month, year, 2.30 A.M. . . . for the sake of our old friendship I ask you to put some work in the way of Mr. James So-and-so, in whom, &c., &c. . . . I was even ready to write in that strain about him. If he had not enlisted my sympathies he had done better for himself--he had gone to the very fount and origin of that sentiment he had reached the secret sensibility of my egoism. I am concealing nothing from you, because were I to do so my action would appear more unintelligible than any man's action has the right to be, and--in the second place--to-morrow you will forget my sincerity along with the other lessons of the past. In this transaction, to speak grossly and precisely, I was the irreproachable man; but the subtle intentions of my immorality were defeated by the moral simplicity of the criminal. No doubt he was selfish too, but his selfishness had a higher origin, a more lofty aim. I discovered that, say what I would, he was eager to go through the ceremony of execution, and I didn't say much, for I felt that in argument his youth would tell against me heavily: he believed where I had already ceased to doubt. There was something fine in the wildness of his unexpressed, hardly formulated hope. "Clear out! Couldn't think of it," he said, with a shake of the head. "I make you an offer for which I neither demand nor expect any sort of gratitude," I said; "you shall repay the money when convenient, and . . ." "Awfully good of you," he muttered without looking up. I watched him narrowly: the future must have appeared horribly uncertain to him; but he did not falter, as though indeed there had been nothing wrong with his heart. I felt angry--not for the first time that night. "The whole wretched business," I said, "is bitter enough, I should think, for a man of your kind . . ." "It is, it is," he whispered twice, with his eyes fixed on the floor. It was heartrending. He towered above the light, and I could see the down on his cheek, the colour mantling warm under the smooth skin of his face. Believe me or not, I say it was outrageously heartrending. It provoked me to brutality. "Yes," I said; "and allow me to confess that I am totally unable to imagine what advantage you can expect from this licking of the dregs." "Advantage!" he murmured out of his stillness. "I am dashed if I do," I said, enraged. "I've been trying to tell you all there is in it," he went on slowly, as if meditating something unanswerable. "But after all, it is _my_ trouble." I opened my mouth to retort, and discovered suddenly that I'd lost all confidence in myself; and it was as if he too had given me up, for he mumbled like a man thinking half aloud. "Went away . . . went into hospitals. . . . Not one of them would face it. . . . They! . . ." He moved his hand slightly to imply disdain. "But I've got to get over this thing, and I mustn't shirk any of it or . . . I won't shirk any of it." He was silent. He gazed as though he had been haunted. His unconscious face reflected the passing expressions of scorn, of despair, of resolution--reflected them in turn, as a magic mirror would reflect the gliding passage of unearthly shapes. He lived surrounded by deceitful ghosts, by austere shades. "Oh! nonsense, my dear fellow," I began. He had a movement of impatience. "You don't seem to understand," he said incisively; then looking at me without a wink, "I may have jumped, but I don't run away." "I meant no offence," I said; and added stupidly, "Better men than you have found it expedient to run, at times." He coloured all over, while in my confusion I half-choked myself with my own tongue. "Perhaps so," he said at last, "I am not good enough; I can't afford it. I am bound to fight this thing down--I am fighting it now." I got out of my chair and felt stiff all over. The silence was embarrassing, and to put an end to it I imagined nothing better but to remark, "I had no idea it was so late," in an airy tone. . . . "I dare say you have had enough of this," he said brusquely: "and to tell you the truth"--he began to look round for his hat--"so have I." 'Well! he had refused this unique offer. He had struck aside my helping hand; he was ready to go now, and beyond the balustrade the night seemed to wait for him very still, as though he had been marked down for its prey. I heard his voice. "Ah! here it is." He had found his hat. For a few seconds we hung in the wind. "What will you do after--after . . ." I asked very low. "Go to the dogs as likely as not," he answered in a gruff mutter. I had recovered my wits in a measure, and judged best to take it lightly. "Pray remember," I said, "that I should like very much to see you again before you go." "I don't know what's to prevent you. The damned thing won't make me invisible," he said with intense bitterness,--"no such luck." And then at the moment of taking leave he treated me to a ghastly muddle of dubious stammers and movements, to an awful display of hesitations. God forgive him--me! He had taken it into his fanciful head that I was likely to make some difficulty as to shaking hands. It was too awful for words. I believe I shouted suddenly at him as you would bellow to a man you saw about to walk over a cliff; I remember our voices being raised, the appearance of a miserable grin on his face, a crushing clutch on my hand, a nervous laugh. The candle spluttered out, and the thing was over at last, with a groan that floated up to me in the dark. He got himself away somehow. The night swallowed his form. He was a horrible bungler. Horrible. I heard the quick crunch-crunch of the gravel under his boots. He was running. Absolutely running, with nowhere to go to. And he was not yet four-and-twenty.'

Chapter 13

https://web.archive.org/web/20210118112654/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/lord-jim/summary/chapter-13

As the French lieutenant wraps up his story about rescuing the Patna, he assesses Jim's situation and the significance of Jim's actions. By the way, we learn that this conversation took place three years after Jim's trial, at which point Jim was working as a water-clerk. This reminds Marlow of another one-time water-clerk named Bob Stanton, who drowned while trying to rescue a woman from a sinking ship. We now interrupt this digression to bring you back to Jim and Marlow's conversation. We go back to the night of Jim and Marlow's conversation. Jim is going to be sentenced the next day, so Marlow offers him some cash to skip town, just as Captain Brierly suggested. But Jim is more moral than Marlow gives him credit for. He refuses and insists on seeing the trial through to the end. The pair parts awkwardly, and Jim runs off into the night.

pinkmonkey

all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/05.txt

finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Sense and Sensibility/section_4_part_0.txt

Sense and Sensibility.chapter 5

chapter 5

{"name": "Chapter 5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820034609/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmSenseSensibility19.asp", "summary": "Mrs. Dashwood and her children are still living in Norland Estate because they are not able to find suitable accommodations elsewhere. Mrs. Dashwood hopes that her stepson will provide them with financial support. In the meantime, Fanny's brother pays the family a visit. His charming manners and grace win Elinor's heart. Mrs. Dashwood is happy for her daughter and hopes for a match between the two. But Marianne is not impressed by Edward Ferrars, as he does not fit the image of a dashing young man, which is her personal idea of a worthy suitor.", "analysis": "Notes Jane Austen here introduces one of the main characters in the novel. Edward Ferrars is Fanny's brother, but unlike her, he is courteous, refined and good-natured. His 'quiet and unassuming' manner win the approval of both Mrs. Dashwood and Elinor, but Marianne has reservations about him. As far as Marianne is concerned, he does not excite romantic feelings. In any case, Fanny, Edward Ferrars' sister, is likely to sabotage a relationship between him and Elinor. Mrs. Dashwood and Marianne resemble each other in their thinking. Both of them jump to the conclusion that Edward will marry Elinor, and they start imagining the future without Elinor. CHAPTER 4 Summary Marianne expresses her opinion about Edward to her sister, but Elinor does not agree with her views. Elinor considers Edward to be a good human being, reserved by nature but refined in taste. When Marianne becomes aware of Elinor's feelings for Edward, she decides to try to love him as a brother. In the meantime, Fanny takes note of the growing friendship between Edward and Elinor and warns Mrs. Dashwood against it. Mrs. Dashwood is offended and resolves to find a new home at the earliest possible convenience. Shortly afterwards, she receives a letter from her cousin, Sir John Middleton, who offers her a house at Barton Estate in Devonshire. The offer sounds reasonable. The Dashwood ladies start planning to move away from Norland. Notes Chapter 4 demonstrates the difference in the attitudes of Elinor and Marianne. Elinor carefully analyzes the character of Edward and approves of his manner and tastes, while Marianne shows her prejudice against Edward because he does not conform to her view of an ideal man. Elinor is rational, while Marianne is romantic. The affair between Edward and Elinor is cut short due to the interference of Fanny. This incident foreshadows future events, which will create obstacles to their happiness. Elinor displays maturity by agreeing to move from Norland to Devonshire. She likes Edward and would have loved to keep his company, but in order to maintain their prestige, she consents to her mother's decision to leave Norland. She is pragmatic and considers the option to move to Barton as the best possible course under the present circumstances. CHAPTER 5 Summary Mrs. Dashwood informs John and Fanny about her decision to move to Barton, in Devonshire. John Dashwood expresses concern about their going to such a distant place. Nevertheless, preparations begin for the journey. After taking Elinor's advice, Mrs. Dashwood sells off their carriage and keeps only three servants. They send their furniture and servants ahead so that their house will be ready for immediate occupation. After bidding farewell to John and Fanny, they set off for their new home. Notes Elinor acts as the head of the family by giving helpful suggestions to her mother. She assesses their situation and advises her mother to dispose of the carriage and some of the servants, as it would not be financially viable for them to retain them. Elinor is the only member of the family who clearly understands their changed status, and she believes in living within their means. In contrast to Elinor, Marianne is engrossed in her own thoughts. She does not participate actively in the preparations, but passionately declares her fondness for Norland before departing. She sheds tears and remarks poetically, \"Dear, dear Norland! when shall I cease to regret you--when learn to feel a home elsewhere?\""}

No sooner was her answer dispatched, than Mrs. Dashwood indulged herself in the pleasure of announcing to her son-in-law and his wife that she was provided with a house, and should incommode them no longer than till every thing were ready for her inhabiting it. They heard her with surprise. Mrs. John Dashwood said nothing; but her husband civilly hoped that she would not be settled far from Norland. She had great satisfaction in replying that she was going into Devonshire.--Edward turned hastily towards her, on hearing this, and, in a voice of surprise and concern, which required no explanation to her, repeated, "Devonshire! Are you, indeed, going there? So far from hence! And to what part of it?" She explained the situation. It was within four miles northward of Exeter. "It is but a cottage," she continued, "but I hope to see many of my friends in it. A room or two can easily be added; and if my friends find no difficulty in travelling so far to see me, I am sure I will find none in accommodating them." She concluded with a very kind invitation to Mr. and Mrs. John Dashwood to visit her at Barton; and to Edward she gave one with still greater affection. Though her late conversation with her daughter-in-law had made her resolve on remaining at Norland no longer than was unavoidable, it had not produced the smallest effect on her in that point to which it principally tended. To separate Edward and Elinor was as far from being her object as ever; and she wished to show Mrs. John Dashwood, by this pointed invitation to her brother, how totally she disregarded her disapprobation of the match. Mr. John Dashwood told his mother again and again how exceedingly sorry he was that she had taken a house at such a distance from Norland as to prevent his being of any service to her in removing her furniture. He really felt conscientiously vexed on the occasion; for the very exertion to which he had limited the performance of his promise to his father was by this arrangement rendered impracticable.-- The furniture was all sent around by water. It chiefly consisted of household linen, plate, china, and books, with a handsome pianoforte of Marianne's. Mrs. John Dashwood saw the packages depart with a sigh: she could not help feeling it hard that as Mrs. Dashwood's income would be so trifling in comparison with their own, she should have any handsome article of furniture. Mrs. Dashwood took the house for a twelvemonth; it was ready furnished, and she might have immediate possession. No difficulty arose on either side in the agreement; and she waited only for the disposal of her effects at Norland, and to determine her future household, before she set off for the west; and this, as she was exceedingly rapid in the performance of everything that interested her, was soon done.--The horses which were left her by her husband had been sold soon after his death, and an opportunity now offering of disposing of her carriage, she agreed to sell that likewise at the earnest advice of her eldest daughter. For the comfort of her children, had she consulted only her own wishes, she would have kept it; but the discretion of Elinor prevailed. HER wisdom too limited the number of their servants to three; two maids and a man, with whom they were speedily provided from amongst those who had formed their establishment at Norland. The man and one of the maids were sent off immediately into Devonshire, to prepare the house for their mistress's arrival; for as Lady Middleton was entirely unknown to Mrs. Dashwood, she preferred going directly to the cottage to being a visitor at Barton Park; and she relied so undoubtingly on Sir John's description of the house, as to feel no curiosity to examine it herself till she entered it as her own. Her eagerness to be gone from Norland was preserved from diminution by the evident satisfaction of her daughter-in-law in the prospect of her removal; a satisfaction which was but feebly attempted to be concealed under a cold invitation to her to defer her departure. Now was the time when her son-in-law's promise to his father might with particular propriety be fulfilled. Since he had neglected to do it on first coming to the estate, their quitting his house might be looked on as the most suitable period for its accomplishment. But Mrs. Dashwood began shortly to give over every hope of the kind, and to be convinced, from the general drift of his discourse, that his assistance extended no farther than their maintenance for six months at Norland. He so frequently talked of the increasing expenses of housekeeping, and of the perpetual demands upon his purse, which a man of any consequence in the world was beyond calculation exposed to, that he seemed rather to stand in need of more money himself than to have any design of giving money away. In a very few weeks from the day which brought Sir John Middleton's first letter to Norland, every thing was so far settled in their future abode as to enable Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters to begin their journey. Many were the tears shed by them in their last adieus to a place so much beloved. "Dear, dear Norland!" said Marianne, as she wandered alone before the house, on the last evening of their being there; "when shall I cease to regret you!--when learn to feel a home elsewhere!--Oh! happy house, could you know what I suffer in now viewing you from this spot, from whence perhaps I may view you no more!--And you, ye well-known trees!--but you will continue the same.--No leaf will decay because we are removed, nor any branch become motionless although we can observe you no longer!--No; you will continue the same; unconscious of the pleasure or the regret you occasion, and insensible of any change in those who walk under your shade!--But who will remain to enjoy you?"

Chapter 5

https://web.archive.org/web/20180820034609/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmSenseSensibility19.asp

Mrs. Dashwood and her children are still living in Norland Estate because they are not able to find suitable accommodations elsewhere. Mrs. Dashwood hopes that her stepson will provide them with financial support. In the meantime, Fanny's brother pays the family a visit. His charming manners and grace win Elinor's heart. Mrs. Dashwood is happy for her daughter and hopes for a match between the two. But Marianne is not impressed by Edward Ferrars, as he does not fit the image of a dashing young man, which is her personal idea of a worthy suitor.

Notes Jane Austen here introduces one of the main characters in the novel. Edward Ferrars is Fanny's brother, but unlike her, he is courteous, refined and good-natured. His 'quiet and unassuming' manner win the approval of both Mrs. Dashwood and Elinor, but Marianne has reservations about him. As far as Marianne is concerned, he does not excite romantic feelings. In any case, Fanny, Edward Ferrars' sister, is likely to sabotage a relationship between him and Elinor. Mrs. Dashwood and Marianne resemble each other in their thinking. Both of them jump to the conclusion that Edward will marry Elinor, and they start imagining the future without Elinor. CHAPTER 4 Summary Marianne expresses her opinion about Edward to her sister, but Elinor does not agree with her views. Elinor considers Edward to be a good human being, reserved by nature but refined in taste. When Marianne becomes aware of Elinor's feelings for Edward, she decides to try to love him as a brother. In the meantime, Fanny takes note of the growing friendship between Edward and Elinor and warns Mrs. Dashwood against it. Mrs. Dashwood is offended and resolves to find a new home at the earliest possible convenience. Shortly afterwards, she receives a letter from her cousin, Sir John Middleton, who offers her a house at Barton Estate in Devonshire. The offer sounds reasonable. The Dashwood ladies start planning to move away from Norland. Notes Chapter 4 demonstrates the difference in the attitudes of Elinor and Marianne. Elinor carefully analyzes the character of Edward and approves of his manner and tastes, while Marianne shows her prejudice against Edward because he does not conform to her view of an ideal man. Elinor is rational, while Marianne is romantic. The affair between Edward and Elinor is cut short due to the interference of Fanny. This incident foreshadows future events, which will create obstacles to their happiness. Elinor displays maturity by agreeing to move from Norland to Devonshire. She likes Edward and would have loved to keep his company, but in order to maintain their prestige, she consents to her mother's decision to leave Norland. She is pragmatic and considers the option to move to Barton as the best possible course under the present circumstances. CHAPTER 5 Summary Mrs. Dashwood informs John and Fanny about her decision to move to Barton, in Devonshire. John Dashwood expresses concern about their going to such a distant place. Nevertheless, preparations begin for the journey. After taking Elinor's advice, Mrs. Dashwood sells off their carriage and keeps only three servants. They send their furniture and servants ahead so that their house will be ready for immediate occupation. After bidding farewell to John and Fanny, they set off for their new home. Notes Elinor acts as the head of the family by giving helpful suggestions to her mother. She assesses their situation and advises her mother to dispose of the carriage and some of the servants, as it would not be financially viable for them to retain them. Elinor is the only member of the family who clearly understands their changed status, and she believes in living within their means. In contrast to Elinor, Marianne is engrossed in her own thoughts. She does not participate actively in the preparations, but passionately declares her fondness for Norland before departing. She sheds tears and remarks poetically, "Dear, dear Norland! when shall I cease to regret you--when learn to feel a home elsewhere?"

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/35.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Sense and Sensibility/section_3_part_5.txt

Sense and Sensibility.chapter 35

chapter 35

{"name": "Chapter 35", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210419170735/https://www.gradesaver.com/sense-and-sensibility/study-guide/summary-chapters-31-40", "summary": "Elinor wishes no connection with Mrs. Ferrars after seeing her rudeness, and is somewhat glad that because she cannot marry Edward, she will never have to suffer Mrs. Ferrars' company. Lucy is overjoyed at the greater civility with which Mrs. Ferrars treated her, though this \"civility\" amounted to little more than not insulting Lucy. Lucy comes over to speak with Elinor, which annoys Elinor; unfortunately, Edward calls while Lucy is still there, which creates a very awkward situation among the group. Elinor recovers herself and dutifully plays the hostess, though Lucy watches her like a hawk. Elinor leaves them to fetch Marianne; Marianne is exceptionally happy to see him, since she thinks his visit will please her sister. Edward soon decides to leave, and Lucy soon follows. Marianne is upset at her sister for showing little affection for Edward while he was there, but Elinor knows how little she could say to him, with jealous Lucy sitting right there.", "analysis": "If Lucy seemed merely jealous before, here she exposes a more vicious side; she comes to Elinor to gloat over what she sees as her success with Mrs. Ferrars, and to rejoice in being in Edward's company a great deal in the near future. Lucy may be silly and without sense, but she is rather conniving as well; she abuses her acquaintance with Elinor to try and win out over her by making Elinor jealous. There is a great deal of dramatic irony in the scene with Edward and the three women; Edward does not know that Elinor is aware of the engagement, and so feels guilty and falls silent. Marianne believes that Edward loves only Elinor, and so discounts Lucy and tries to encourage Edward and Elinor. And Lucy has absolutely no idea that Edward, if he were free to choose, would choose Elinor over her; although she is jealous, she is also arrogantly assured of being foremost in Edward's affections"}

Elinor's curiosity to see Mrs. Ferrars was satisfied.-- She had found in her every thing that could tend to make a farther connection between the families undesirable.-- She had seen enough of her pride, her meanness, and her determined prejudice against herself, to comprehend all the difficulties that must have perplexed the engagement, and retarded the marriage, of Edward and herself, had he been otherwise free;--and she had seen almost enough to be thankful for her OWN sake, that one greater obstacle preserved her from suffering under any other of Mrs. Ferrars's creation, preserved her from all dependence upon her caprice, or any solicitude for her good opinion. Or at least, if she did not bring herself quite to rejoice in Edward's being fettered to Lucy, she determined, that had Lucy been more amiable, she OUGHT to have rejoiced. She wondered that Lucy's spirits could be so very much elevated by the civility of Mrs. Ferrars;--that her interest and her vanity should so very much blind her as to make the attention which seemed only paid her because she was NOT ELINOR, appear a compliment to herself--or to allow her to derive encouragement from a preference only given her, because her real situation was unknown. But that it was so, had not only been declared by Lucy's eyes at the time, but was declared over again the next morning more openly, for at her particular desire, Lady Middleton set her down in Berkeley Street on the chance of seeing Elinor alone, to tell her how happy she was. The chance proved a lucky one, for a message from Mrs. Palmer soon after she arrived, carried Mrs. Jennings away. "My dear friend," cried Lucy, as soon as they were by themselves, "I come to talk to you of my happiness. Could anything be so flattering as Mrs. Ferrars's way of treating me yesterday? So exceeding affable as she was!--You know how I dreaded the thoughts of seeing her;--but the very moment I was introduced, there was such an affability in her behaviour as really should seem to say, she had quite took a fancy to me. Now was not it so?-- You saw it all; and was not you quite struck with it?" "She was certainly very civil to you." "Civil!--Did you see nothing but only civility?-- I saw a vast deal more. Such kindness as fell to the share of nobody but me!--No pride, no hauteur, and your sister just the same--all sweetness and affability!" Elinor wished to talk of something else, but Lucy still pressed her to own that she had reason for her happiness; and Elinor was obliged to go on.-- "Undoubtedly, if they had known your engagement," said she, "nothing could be more flattering than their treatment of you;--but as that was not the case"-- "I guessed you would say so,"--replied Lucy quickly--"but there was no reason in the world why Mrs. Ferrars should seem to like me, if she did not, and her liking me is every thing. You shan't talk me out of my satisfaction. I am sure it will all end well, and there will be no difficulties at all, to what I used to think. Mrs. Ferrars is a charming woman, and so is your sister. They are both delightful women, indeed!--I wonder I should never hear you say how agreeable Mrs. Dashwood was!" To this Elinor had no answer to make, and did not attempt any. "Are you ill, Miss Dashwood?--you seem low--you don't speak;--sure you an't well." "I never was in better health." "I am glad of it with all my heart; but really you did not look it. I should be sorry to have YOU ill; you, that have been the greatest comfort to me in the world!--Heaven knows what I should have done without your friendship."-- Elinor tried to make a civil answer, though doubting her own success. But it seemed to satisfy Lucy, for she directly replied, "Indeed I am perfectly convinced of your regard for me, and next to Edward's love, it is the greatest comfort I have.--Poor Edward!--But now there is one good thing, we shall be able to meet, and meet pretty often, for Lady Middleton's delighted with Mrs. Dashwood, so we shall be a good deal in Harley Street, I dare say, and Edward spends half his time with his sister--besides, Lady Middleton and Mrs. Ferrars will visit now;--and Mrs. Ferrars and your sister were both so good to say more than once, they should always be glad to see me.-- They are such charming women!--I am sure if ever you tell your sister what I think of her, you cannot speak too high." But Elinor would not give her any encouragement to hope that she SHOULD tell her sister. Lucy continued. "I am sure I should have seen it in a moment, if Mrs. Ferrars had took a dislike to me. If she had only made me a formal courtesy, for instance, without saying a word, and never after had took any notice of me, and never looked at me in a pleasant way--you know what I mean--if I had been treated in that forbidding sort of way, I should have gave it all up in despair. I could not have stood it. For where she DOES dislike, I know it is most violent." Elinor was prevented from making any reply to this civil triumph, by the door's being thrown open, the servant's announcing Mr. Ferrars, and Edward's immediately walking in. It was a very awkward moment; and the countenance of each shewed that it was so. They all looked exceedingly foolish; and Edward seemed to have as great an inclination to walk out of the room again, as to advance farther into it. The very circumstance, in its unpleasantest form, which they would each have been most anxious to avoid, had fallen on them.--They were not only all three together, but were together without the relief of any other person. The ladies recovered themselves first. It was not Lucy's business to put herself forward, and the appearance of secrecy must still be kept up. She could therefore only LOOK her tenderness, and after slightly addressing him, said no more. But Elinor had more to do; and so anxious was she, for his sake and her own, to do it well, that she forced herself, after a moment's recollection, to welcome him, with a look and manner that were almost easy, and almost open; and another struggle, another effort still improved them. She would not allow the presence of Lucy, nor the consciousness of some injustice towards herself, to deter her from saying that she was happy to see him, and that she had very much regretted being from home, when he called before in Berkeley Street. She would not be frightened from paying him those attentions which, as a friend and almost a relation, were his due, by the observant eyes of Lucy, though she soon perceived them to be narrowly watching her. Her manners gave some re-assurance to Edward, and he had courage enough to sit down; but his embarrassment still exceeded that of the ladies in a proportion, which the case rendered reasonable, though his sex might make it rare; for his heart had not the indifference of Lucy's, nor could his conscience have quite the ease of Elinor's. Lucy, with a demure and settled air, seemed determined to make no contribution to the comfort of the others, and would not say a word; and almost every thing that WAS said, proceeded from Elinor, who was obliged to volunteer all the information about her mother's health, their coming to town, &c. which Edward ought to have inquired about, but never did. Her exertions did not stop here; for she soon afterwards felt herself so heroically disposed as to determine, under pretence of fetching Marianne, to leave the others by themselves; and she really did it, and THAT in the handsomest manner, for she loitered away several minutes on the landing-place, with the most high-minded fortitude, before she went to her sister. When that was once done, however, it was time for the raptures of Edward to cease; for Marianne's joy hurried her into the drawing-room immediately. Her pleasure in seeing him was like every other of her feelings, strong in itself, and strongly spoken. She met him with a hand that would be taken, and a voice that expressed the affection of a sister. "Dear Edward!" she cried, "this is a moment of great happiness!--This would almost make amends for every thing!" Edward tried to return her kindness as it deserved, but before such witnesses he dared not say half what he really felt. Again they all sat down, and for a moment or two all were silent; while Marianne was looking with the most speaking tenderness, sometimes at Edward and sometimes at Elinor, regretting only that their delight in each other should be checked by Lucy's unwelcome presence. Edward was the first to speak, and it was to notice Marianne's altered looks, and express his fear of her not finding London agree with her. "Oh, don't think of me!" she replied with spirited earnestness, though her eyes were filled with tears as she spoke, "don't think of MY health. Elinor is well, you see. That must be enough for us both." This remark was not calculated to make Edward or Elinor more easy, nor to conciliate the good will of Lucy, who looked up at Marianne with no very benignant expression. "Do you like London?" said Edward, willing to say any thing that might introduce another subject. "Not at all. I expected much pleasure in it, but I have found none. The sight of you, Edward, is the only comfort it has afforded; and thank Heaven! you are what you always were!" She paused--no one spoke. "I think, Elinor," she presently added, "we must employ Edward to take care of us in our return to Barton. In a week or two, I suppose, we shall be going; and, I trust, Edward will not be very unwilling to accept the charge." Poor Edward muttered something, but what it was, nobody knew, not even himself. But Marianne, who saw his agitation, and could easily trace it to whatever cause best pleased herself, was perfectly satisfied, and soon talked of something else. "We spent such a day, Edward, in Harley Street yesterday! So dull, so wretchedly dull!--But I have much to say to you on that head, which cannot be said now." And with this admirable discretion did she defer the assurance of her finding their mutual relatives more disagreeable than ever, and of her being particularly disgusted with his mother, till they were more in private. "But why were you not there, Edward?--Why did you not come?" "I was engaged elsewhere." "Engaged! But what was that, when such friends were to be met?" "Perhaps, Miss Marianne," cried Lucy, eager to take some revenge on her, "you think young men never stand upon engagements, if they have no mind to keep them, little as well as great." Elinor was very angry, but Marianne seemed entirely insensible of the sting; for she calmly replied, "Not so, indeed; for, seriously speaking, I am very sure that conscience only kept Edward from Harley Street. And I really believe he HAS the most delicate conscience in the world; the most scrupulous in performing every engagement, however minute, and however it may make against his interest or pleasure. He is the most fearful of giving pain, of wounding expectation, and the most incapable of being selfish, of any body I ever saw. Edward, it is so, and I will say it. What! are you never to hear yourself praised!--Then you must be no friend of mine; for those who will accept of my love and esteem, must submit to my open commendation." The nature of her commendation, in the present case, however, happened to be particularly ill-suited to the feelings of two thirds of her auditors, and was so very unexhilarating to Edward, that he very soon got up to go away. "Going so soon!" said Marianne; "my dear Edward, this must not be." And drawing him a little aside, she whispered her persuasion that Lucy could not stay much longer. But even this encouragement failed, for he would go; and Lucy, who would have outstaid him, had his visit lasted two hours, soon afterwards went away. "What can bring her here so often?" said Marianne, on her leaving them. "Could not she see that we wanted her gone!--how teazing to Edward!" "Why so?--we were all his friends, and Lucy has been the longest known to him of any. It is but natural that he should like to see her as well as ourselves." Marianne looked at her steadily, and said, "You know, Elinor, that this is a kind of talking which I cannot bear. If you only hope to have your assertion contradicted, as I must suppose to be the case, you ought to recollect that I am the last person in the world to do it. I cannot descend to be tricked out of assurances, that are not really wanted." She then left the room; and Elinor dared not follow her to say more, for bound as she was by her promise of secrecy to Lucy, she could give no information that would convince Marianne; and painful as the consequences of her still continuing in an error might be, she was obliged to submit to it. All that she could hope, was that Edward would not often expose her or himself to the distress of hearing Marianne's mistaken warmth, nor to the repetition of any other part of the pain that had attended their recent meeting--and this she had every reason to expect.

Chapter 35

https://web.archive.org/web/20210419170735/https://www.gradesaver.com/sense-and-sensibility/study-guide/summary-chapters-31-40

Elinor wishes no connection with Mrs. Ferrars after seeing her rudeness, and is somewhat glad that because she cannot marry Edward, she will never have to suffer Mrs. Ferrars' company. Lucy is overjoyed at the greater civility with which Mrs. Ferrars treated her, though this "civility" amounted to little more than not insulting Lucy. Lucy comes over to speak with Elinor, which annoys Elinor; unfortunately, Edward calls while Lucy is still there, which creates a very awkward situation among the group. Elinor recovers herself and dutifully plays the hostess, though Lucy watches her like a hawk. Elinor leaves them to fetch Marianne; Marianne is exceptionally happy to see him, since she thinks his visit will please her sister. Edward soon decides to leave, and Lucy soon follows. Marianne is upset at her sister for showing little affection for Edward while he was there, but Elinor knows how little she could say to him, with jealous Lucy sitting right there.

If Lucy seemed merely jealous before, here she exposes a more vicious side; she comes to Elinor to gloat over what she sees as her success with Mrs. Ferrars, and to rejoice in being in Edward's company a great deal in the near future. Lucy may be silly and without sense, but she is rather conniving as well; she abuses her acquaintance with Elinor to try and win out over her by making Elinor jealous. There is a great deal of dramatic irony in the scene with Edward and the three women; Edward does not know that Elinor is aware of the engagement, and so feels guilty and falls silent. Marianne believes that Edward loves only Elinor, and so discounts Lucy and tries to encourage Edward and Elinor. And Lucy has absolutely no idea that Edward, if he were free to choose, would choose Elinor over her; although she is jealous, she is also arrogantly assured of being foremost in Edward's affections

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/38.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Brothers Karamazov/section_7_part_2.txt

The Brothers Karamazov.book 5.chapter 7

book 5, chapter 7

{"name": "book 5, Chapter 7", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section8/", "summary": "\"It's Always Interesting to Talk with an Intelligent Man\" Ivan suspects that Smerdyakov has told Dmitri about Grushenka's secret signs specifically to place Fyodor Pavlovich in danger. But Ivan is determined to leave for Moscow as planned the following morning, even though Smerdyakov asks him to go to a city that is not so far away. The next morning, Fyodor Pavlovich too asks Ivan not to leave for Moscow. Instead, he wants Ivan to go to a nearby village to sell a plot of wood on Fyodor Pavlovich's behalf. Ivan reluctantly agrees. After he leaves, Smerdyakov falls down a staircase and has the epileptic seizure he has feared. He is confined to his bed, leaving Fyodor Pavlovich alone. The old man waits gleefully for Grushenka, whom he is certain will come to him tonight.", "analysis": "These chapters foreshadow Smerdyakov's eventual murder of Fyodor Pavlovich. Although Smerdyakov appears to be worried about Fyodor Pavlovich, his concern only serves to mask his deeper malice, and everything he does in this chapter lays the groundwork for killing his father the next night. He tells Ivan that Dmitri knows Grushenka's secret knock purportedly because he is worried about Fyodor Pavlovich, but really because he wants suspicion to be cast on Dmitri so that Dmitri will be blamed when Fyodor Pavlovich's body is found. He warns Ivan about his fear of an impending epileptic seizure ostensibly as proof of his fear for Fyodor Pavlovich, but really because he wants to prepare his own alibi for the night of the murder. After all, if he is a bedridden epileptic incapacitated in the aftermath of a seizure, he is hardly capable of a murder. But as we see in Chapter 7, Smerdyakov is capable of faking a seizure so convincingly that everyone around him is fooled. These chapters are thus full of foreshadowing, as every detail--from Grigory's habit of taking a narcotic medicine to Ivan's impending departure for Moscow--sets the scene for, and builds tension toward, Fyodor Pavlovich's death. The complex combination of disgust and attraction that characterizes Ivan's relationship with Smerdyakov manifests both Ivan's hatred of human nature and his dissatisfaction with his own philosophy. When Ivan discusses philosophy with Smerdyakov, the conflicting forces in his character become clear. Ivan is excited at Smerdyakov's interest, disgusted with Smerdyakov's manner, and unhappy with himself for providing a hostile figure like Smerdyakov with an amoral philosophy that might justify anything Smerdyakov wants to do. Smerdyakov's ingratiating behavior toward Ivan results from his realization that Ivan loathes Fyodor Pavlovich. He believes that Ivan is, on an unconscious level, using him to kill Fyodor Pavlovich. He thinks Ivan is preparing him by giving him a new moral outlook in which, because God does not play a role, there is no good or evil, and taking a life is not morally different from saving one. Ivan's influence on Smerdyakov presents the philosophical difficulty in determining guilt for a crime. Ivan's repeated insistence that people are not responsible for one another suggests that he is morally and psychologically free of guilt for Smerdyakov's actions, no matter how much influence he may have exerted. On the one hand, if Ivan really believes everything he says about the absence of good and evil and the meaninglessness of responsibility, then he should have no cause to feel guilty about Fyodor Pavlovich's death. On the other hand, if he does not really believe in his own argument, then the complicity he exhibits here will force him to confront the fact that he is partially to blame for the murder of his hated father. Dostoevsky does not show us the outcome of this philosophical question in these chapters, but Zosima has insisted that all people are responsible for the sins of all other people, and Ivan has insisted just the opposite"}

Chapter VII. "It's Always Worth While Speaking To A Clever Man" And in the same nervous frenzy, too, he spoke. Meeting Fyodor Pavlovitch in the drawing-room directly he went in, he shouted to him, waving his hands, "I am going upstairs to my room, not in to you. Good-by!" and passed by, trying not even to look at his father. Very possibly the old man was too hateful to him at that moment; but such an unceremonious display of hostility was a surprise even to Fyodor Pavlovitch. And the old man evidently wanted to tell him something at once and had come to meet him in the drawing-room on purpose. Receiving this amiable greeting, he stood still in silence and with an ironical air watched his son going upstairs, till he passed out of sight. "What's the matter with him?" he promptly asked Smerdyakov, who had followed Ivan. "Angry about something. Who can tell?" the valet muttered evasively. "Confound him! Let him be angry then. Bring in the samovar, and get along with you. Look sharp! No news?" Then followed a series of questions such as Smerdyakov had just complained of to Ivan, all relating to his expected visitor, and these questions we will omit. Half an hour later the house was locked, and the crazy old man was wandering along through the rooms in excited expectation of hearing every minute the five knocks agreed upon. Now and then he peered out into the darkness, seeing nothing. It was very late, but Ivan was still awake and reflecting. He sat up late that night, till two o'clock. But we will not give an account of his thoughts, and this is not the place to look into that soul--its turn will come. And even if one tried, it would be very hard to give an account of them, for there were no thoughts in his brain, but something very vague, and, above all, intense excitement. He felt himself that he had lost his bearings. He was fretted, too, by all sorts of strange and almost surprising desires; for instance, after midnight he suddenly had an intense irresistible inclination to go down, open the door, go to the lodge and beat Smerdyakov. But if he had been asked why, he could not have given any exact reason, except perhaps that he loathed the valet as one who had insulted him more gravely than any one in the world. On the other hand, he was more than once that night overcome by a sort of inexplicable humiliating terror, which he felt positively paralyzed his physical powers. His head ached and he was giddy. A feeling of hatred was rankling in his heart, as though he meant to avenge himself on some one. He even hated Alyosha, recalling the conversation he had just had with him. At moments he hated himself intensely. Of Katerina Ivanovna he almost forgot to think, and wondered greatly at this afterwards, especially as he remembered perfectly that when he had protested so valiantly to Katerina Ivanovna that he would go away next day to Moscow, something had whispered in his heart, "That's nonsense, you are not going, and it won't be so easy to tear yourself away as you are boasting now." Remembering that night long afterwards, Ivan recalled with peculiar repulsion how he had suddenly got up from the sofa and had stealthily, as though he were afraid of being watched, opened the door, gone out on the staircase and listened to Fyodor Pavlovitch stirring down below, had listened a long while--some five minutes--with a sort of strange curiosity, holding his breath while his heart throbbed. And why he had done all this, why he was listening, he could not have said. That "action" all his life afterwards he called "infamous," and at the bottom of his heart, he thought of it as the basest action of his life. For Fyodor Pavlovitch himself he felt no hatred at that moment, but was simply intensely curious to know how he was walking down there below and what he must be doing now. He wondered and imagined how he must be peeping out of the dark windows and stopping in the middle of the room, listening, listening--for some one to knock. Ivan went out on to the stairs twice to listen like this. About two o'clock when everything was quiet, and even Fyodor Pavlovitch had gone to bed, Ivan had got into bed, firmly resolved to fall asleep at once, as he felt fearfully exhausted. And he did fall asleep at once, and slept soundly without dreams, but waked early, at seven o'clock, when it was broad daylight. Opening his eyes, he was surprised to feel himself extraordinarily vigorous. He jumped up at once and dressed quickly; then dragged out his trunk and began packing immediately. His linen had come back from the laundress the previous morning. Ivan positively smiled at the thought that everything was helping his sudden departure. And his departure certainly was sudden. Though Ivan had said the day before (to Katerina Ivanovna, Alyosha, and Smerdyakov) that he was leaving next day, yet he remembered that he had no thought of departure when he went to bed, or, at least, had not dreamed that his first act in the morning would be to pack his trunk. At last his trunk and bag were ready. It was about nine o'clock when Marfa Ignatyevna came in with her usual inquiry, "Where will your honor take your tea, in your own room or downstairs?" He looked almost cheerful, but there was about him, about his words and gestures, something hurried and scattered. Greeting his father affably, and even inquiring specially after his health, though he did not wait to hear his answer to the end, he announced that he was starting off in an hour to return to Moscow for good, and begged him to send for the horses. His father heard this announcement with no sign of surprise, and forgot in an unmannerly way to show regret at losing him. Instead of doing so, he flew into a great flutter at the recollection of some important business of his own. "What a fellow you are! Not to tell me yesterday! Never mind; we'll manage it all the same. Do me a great service, my dear boy. Go to Tchermashnya on the way. It's only to turn to the left from the station at Volovya, only another twelve versts and you come to Tchermashnya." "I'm sorry, I can't. It's eighty versts to the railway and the train starts for Moscow at seven o'clock to-night. I can only just catch it." "You'll catch it to-morrow or the day after, but to-day turn off to Tchermashnya. It won't put you out much to humor your father! If I hadn't had something to keep me here, I would have run over myself long ago, for I've some business there in a hurry. But here I ... it's not the time for me to go now.... You see, I've two pieces of copse land there. The Maslovs, an old merchant and his son, will give eight thousand for the timber. But last year I just missed a purchaser who would have given twelve. There's no getting any one about here to buy it. The Maslovs have it all their own way. One has to take what they'll give, for no one here dare bid against them. The priest at Ilyinskoe wrote to me last Thursday that a merchant called Gorstkin, a man I know, had turned up. What makes him valuable is that he is not from these parts, so he is not afraid of the Maslovs. He says he will give me eleven thousand for the copse. Do you hear? But he'll only be here, the priest writes, for a week altogether, so you must go at once and make a bargain with him." "Well, you write to the priest; he'll make the bargain." "He can't do it. He has no eye for business. He is a perfect treasure, I'd give him twenty thousand to take care of for me without a receipt; but he has no eye for business, he is a perfect child, a crow could deceive him. And yet he is a learned man, would you believe it? This Gorstkin looks like a peasant, he wears a blue kaftan, but he is a regular rogue. That's the common complaint. He is a liar. Sometimes he tells such lies that you wonder why he is doing it. He told me the year before last that his wife was dead and that he had married another, and would you believe it, there was not a word of truth in it? His wife has never died at all, she is alive to this day and gives him a beating twice a week. So what you have to find out is whether he is lying or speaking the truth, when he says he wants to buy it and would give eleven thousand." "I shall be no use in such a business. I have no eye either." "Stay, wait a bit! You will be of use, for I will tell you the signs by which you can judge about Gorstkin. I've done business with him a long time. You see, you must watch his beard; he has a nasty, thin, red beard. If his beard shakes when he talks and he gets cross, it's all right, he is saying what he means, he wants to do business. But if he strokes his beard with his left hand and grins--he is trying to cheat you. Don't watch his eyes, you won't find out anything from his eyes, he is a deep one, a rogue--but watch his beard! I'll give you a note and you show it to him. He's called Gorstkin, though his real name is Lyagavy(4); but don't call him so, he will be offended. If you come to an understanding with him, and see it's all right, write here at once. You need only write: 'He's not lying.' Stand out for eleven thousand; one thousand you can knock off, but not more. Just think! there's a difference between eight thousand and eleven thousand. It's as good as picking up three thousand; it's not so easy to find a purchaser, and I'm in desperate need of money. Only let me know it's serious, and I'll run over and fix it up. I'll snatch the time somehow. But what's the good of my galloping over, if it's all a notion of the priest's? Come, will you go?" "Oh, I can't spare the time. You must excuse me." "Come, you might oblige your father. I shan't forget it. You've no heart, any of you--that's what it is? What's a day or two to you? Where are you going now--to Venice? Your Venice will keep another two days. I would have sent Alyosha, but what use is Alyosha in a thing like that? I send you just because you are a clever fellow. Do you suppose I don't see that? You know nothing about timber, but you've got an eye. All that is wanted is to see whether the man is in earnest. I tell you, watch his beard--if his beard shakes you know he is in earnest." "You force me to go to that damned Tchermashnya yourself, then?" cried Ivan, with a malignant smile. Fyodor Pavlovitch did not catch, or would not catch, the malignancy, but he caught the smile. "Then you'll go, you'll go? I'll scribble the note for you at once." "I don't know whether I shall go. I don't know. I'll decide on the way." "Nonsense! Decide at once. My dear fellow, decide! If you settle the matter, write me a line; give it to the priest and he'll send it on to me at once. And I won't delay you more than that. You can go to Venice. The priest will give you horses back to Volovya station." The old man was quite delighted. He wrote the note, and sent for the horses. A light lunch was brought in, with brandy. When Fyodor Pavlovitch was pleased, he usually became expansive, but to-day he seemed to restrain himself. Of Dmitri, for instance, he did not say a word. He was quite unmoved by the parting, and seemed, in fact, at a loss for something to say. Ivan noticed this particularly. "He must be bored with me," he thought. Only when accompanying his son out on to the steps, the old man began to fuss about. He would have kissed him, but Ivan made haste to hold out his hand, obviously avoiding the kiss. His father saw it at once, and instantly pulled himself up. "Well, good luck to you, good luck to you!" he repeated from the steps. "You'll come again some time or other? Mind you do come. I shall always be glad to see you. Well, Christ be with you!" Ivan got into the carriage. "Good-by, Ivan! Don't be too hard on me!" the father called for the last time. The whole household came out to take leave--Smerdyakov, Marfa and Grigory. Ivan gave them ten roubles each. When he had seated himself in the carriage, Smerdyakov jumped up to arrange the rug. "You see ... I am going to Tchermashnya," broke suddenly from Ivan. Again, as the day before, the words seemed to drop of themselves, and he laughed, too, a peculiar, nervous laugh. He remembered it long after. "It's a true saying then, that 'it's always worth while speaking to a clever man,' " answered Smerdyakov firmly, looking significantly at Ivan. The carriage rolled away. Nothing was clear in Ivan's soul, but he looked eagerly around him at the fields, at the hills, at the trees, at a flock of geese flying high overhead in the bright sky. And all of a sudden he felt very happy. He tried to talk to the driver, and he felt intensely interested in an answer the peasant made him; but a minute later he realized that he was not catching anything, and that he had not really even taken in the peasant's answer. He was silent, and it was pleasant even so. The air was fresh, pure and cool, the sky bright. The images of Alyosha and Katerina Ivanovna floated into his mind. But he softly smiled, blew softly on the friendly phantoms, and they flew away. "There's plenty of time for them," he thought. They reached the station quickly, changed horses, and galloped to Volovya. "Why is it worth while speaking to a clever man? What did he mean by that?" The thought seemed suddenly to clutch at his breathing. "And why did I tell him I was going to Tchermashnya?" They reached Volovya station. Ivan got out of the carriage, and the drivers stood round him bargaining over the journey of twelve versts to Tchermashnya. He told them to harness the horses. He went into the station house, looked round, glanced at the overseer's wife, and suddenly went back to the entrance. "I won't go to Tchermashnya. Am I too late to reach the railway by seven, brothers?" "We shall just do it. Shall we get the carriage out?" "At once. Will any one of you be going to the town to-morrow?" "To be sure. Mitri here will." "Can you do me a service, Mitri? Go to my father's, to Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, and tell him I haven't gone to Tchermashnya. Can you?" "Of course I can. I've known Fyodor Pavlovitch a long time." "And here's something for you, for I dare say he won't give you anything," said Ivan, laughing gayly. "You may depend on it he won't." Mitya laughed too. "Thank you, sir. I'll be sure to do it." At seven o'clock Ivan got into the train and set off to Moscow "Away with the past. I've done with the old world for ever, and may I have no news, no echo, from it. To a new life, new places and no looking back!" But instead of delight his soul was filled with such gloom, and his heart ached with such anguish, as he had never known in his life before. He was thinking all the night. The train flew on, and only at daybreak, when he was approaching Moscow, he suddenly roused himself from his meditation. "I am a scoundrel," he whispered to himself. Fyodor Pavlovitch remained well satisfied at having seen his son off. For two hours afterwards he felt almost happy, and sat drinking brandy. But suddenly something happened which was very annoying and unpleasant for every one in the house, and completely upset Fyodor Pavlovitch's equanimity at once. Smerdyakov went to the cellar for something and fell down from the top of the steps. Fortunately, Marfa Ignatyevna was in the yard and heard him in time. She did not see the fall, but heard his scream--the strange, peculiar scream, long familiar to her--the scream of the epileptic falling in a fit. They could not tell whether the fit had come on him at the moment he was descending the steps, so that he must have fallen unconscious, or whether it was the fall and the shock that had caused the fit in Smerdyakov, who was known to be liable to them. They found him at the bottom of the cellar steps, writhing in convulsions and foaming at the mouth. It was thought at first that he must have broken something--an arm or a leg--and hurt himself, but "God had preserved him," as Marfa Ignatyevna expressed it--nothing of the kind had happened. But it was difficult to get him out of the cellar. They asked the neighbors to help and managed it somehow. Fyodor Pavlovitch himself was present at the whole ceremony. He helped, evidently alarmed and upset. The sick man did not regain consciousness; the convulsions ceased for a time, but then began again, and every one concluded that the same thing would happen, as had happened a year before, when he accidentally fell from the garret. They remembered that ice had been put on his head then. There was still ice in the cellar, and Marfa Ignatyevna had some brought up. In the evening, Fyodor Pavlovitch sent for Doctor Herzenstube, who arrived at once. He was a most estimable old man, and the most careful and conscientious doctor in the province. After careful examination, he concluded that the fit was a very violent one and might have serious consequences; that meanwhile he, Herzenstube, did not fully understand it, but that by to-morrow morning, if the present remedies were unavailing, he would venture to try something else. The invalid was taken to the lodge, to a room next to Grigory's and Marfa Ignatyevna's. Then Fyodor Pavlovitch had one misfortune after another to put up with that day. Marfa Ignatyevna cooked the dinner, and the soup, compared with Smerdyakov's, was "no better than dish-water," and the fowl was so dried up that it was impossible to masticate it. To her master's bitter, though deserved, reproaches, Marfa Ignatyevna replied that the fowl was a very old one to begin with, and that she had never been trained as a cook. In the evening there was another trouble in store for Fyodor Pavlovitch; he was informed that Grigory, who had not been well for the last three days, was completely laid up by his lumbago. Fyodor Pavlovitch finished his tea as early as possible and locked himself up alone in the house. He was in terrible excitement and suspense. That evening he reckoned on Grushenka's coming almost as a certainty. He had received from Smerdyakov that morning an assurance "that she had promised to come without fail." The incorrigible old man's heart throbbed with excitement; he paced up and down his empty rooms listening. He had to be on the alert. Dmitri might be on the watch for her somewhere, and when she knocked on the window (Smerdyakov had informed him two days before that he had told her where and how to knock) the door must be opened at once. She must not be a second in the passage, for fear--which God forbid!--that she should be frightened and run away. Fyodor Pavlovitch had much to think of, but never had his heart been steeped in such voluptuous hopes. This time he could say almost certainly that she would come!

book 5, Chapter 7

https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section8/

"It's Always Interesting to Talk with an Intelligent Man" Ivan suspects that Smerdyakov has told Dmitri about Grushenka's secret signs specifically to place Fyodor Pavlovich in danger. But Ivan is determined to leave for Moscow as planned the following morning, even though Smerdyakov asks him to go to a city that is not so far away. The next morning, Fyodor Pavlovich too asks Ivan not to leave for Moscow. Instead, he wants Ivan to go to a nearby village to sell a plot of wood on Fyodor Pavlovich's behalf. Ivan reluctantly agrees. After he leaves, Smerdyakov falls down a staircase and has the epileptic seizure he has feared. He is confined to his bed, leaving Fyodor Pavlovich alone. The old man waits gleefully for Grushenka, whom he is certain will come to him tonight.

These chapters foreshadow Smerdyakov's eventual murder of Fyodor Pavlovich. Although Smerdyakov appears to be worried about Fyodor Pavlovich, his concern only serves to mask his deeper malice, and everything he does in this chapter lays the groundwork for killing his father the next night. He tells Ivan that Dmitri knows Grushenka's secret knock purportedly because he is worried about Fyodor Pavlovich, but really because he wants suspicion to be cast on Dmitri so that Dmitri will be blamed when Fyodor Pavlovich's body is found. He warns Ivan about his fear of an impending epileptic seizure ostensibly as proof of his fear for Fyodor Pavlovich, but really because he wants to prepare his own alibi for the night of the murder. After all, if he is a bedridden epileptic incapacitated in the aftermath of a seizure, he is hardly capable of a murder. But as we see in Chapter 7, Smerdyakov is capable of faking a seizure so convincingly that everyone around him is fooled. These chapters are thus full of foreshadowing, as every detail--from Grigory's habit of taking a narcotic medicine to Ivan's impending departure for Moscow--sets the scene for, and builds tension toward, Fyodor Pavlovich's death. The complex combination of disgust and attraction that characterizes Ivan's relationship with Smerdyakov manifests both Ivan's hatred of human nature and his dissatisfaction with his own philosophy. When Ivan discusses philosophy with Smerdyakov, the conflicting forces in his character become clear. Ivan is excited at Smerdyakov's interest, disgusted with Smerdyakov's manner, and unhappy with himself for providing a hostile figure like Smerdyakov with an amoral philosophy that might justify anything Smerdyakov wants to do. Smerdyakov's ingratiating behavior toward Ivan results from his realization that Ivan loathes Fyodor Pavlovich. He believes that Ivan is, on an unconscious level, using him to kill Fyodor Pavlovich. He thinks Ivan is preparing him by giving him a new moral outlook in which, because God does not play a role, there is no good or evil, and taking a life is not morally different from saving one. Ivan's influence on Smerdyakov presents the philosophical difficulty in determining guilt for a crime. Ivan's repeated insistence that people are not responsible for one another suggests that he is morally and psychologically free of guilt for Smerdyakov's actions, no matter how much influence he may have exerted. On the one hand, if Ivan really believes everything he says about the absence of good and evil and the meaninglessness of responsibility, then he should have no cause to feel guilty about Fyodor Pavlovich's death. On the other hand, if he does not really believe in his own argument, then the complicity he exhibits here will force him to confront the fact that he is partially to blame for the murder of his hated father. Dostoevsky does not show us the outcome of this philosophical question in these chapters, but Zosima has insisted that all people are responsible for the sins of all other people, and Ivan has insisted just the opposite

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/94.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Brothers Karamazov/section_15_part_1.txt

The Brothers Karamazov.epilogue.chapter 1

chapter 1

{"name": "Chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section16/", "summary": "Plans to Save Mitya Katerina has brought the raving Ivan back to her house, and Alyosha visits them there after the trial. Katerina is torn with regret over her betrayal of Dmitri at the trial, but she says an ironclad plan is in place for his escape. In order to free him, however, Alyosha will have to play a part. Alyosha agrees to do whatever is necessary to secure Dmitri's freedom", "analysis": ""}

EPILOGUE Chapter I. Plans For Mitya's Escape Very early, at nine o'clock in the morning, five days after the trial, Alyosha went to Katerina Ivanovna's to talk over a matter of great importance to both of them, and to give her a message. She sat and talked to him in the very room in which she had once received Grushenka. In the next room Ivan Fyodorovitch lay unconscious in a high fever. Katerina Ivanovna had immediately after the scene at the trial ordered the sick and unconscious man to be carried to her house, disregarding the inevitable gossip and general disapproval of the public. One of the two relations who lived with her had departed to Moscow immediately after the scene in court, the other remained. But if both had gone away, Katerina Ivanovna would have adhered to her resolution, and would have gone on nursing the sick man and sitting by him day and night. Varvinsky and Herzenstube were attending him. The famous doctor had gone back to Moscow, refusing to give an opinion as to the probable end of the illness. Though the doctors encouraged Katerina Ivanovna and Alyosha, it was evident that they could not yet give them positive hopes of recovery. Alyosha came to see his sick brother twice a day. But this time he had specially urgent business, and he foresaw how difficult it would be to approach the subject, yet he was in great haste. He had another engagement that could not be put off for that same morning, and there was need of haste. They had been talking for a quarter of an hour. Katerina Ivanovna was pale and terribly fatigued, yet at the same time in a state of hysterical excitement. She had a presentiment of the reason why Alyosha had come to her. "Don't worry about his decision," she said, with confident emphasis to Alyosha. "One way or another he is bound to come to it. He must escape. That unhappy man, that hero of honor and principle--not he, not Dmitri Fyodorovitch, but the man lying the other side of that door, who has sacrificed himself for his brother," Katya added, with flashing eyes--"told me the whole plan of escape long ago. You know he has already entered into negotiations.... I've told you something already.... You see, it will probably come off at the third _etape_ from here, when the party of prisoners is being taken to Siberia. Oh, it's a long way off yet. Ivan Fyodorovitch has already visited the superintendent of the third _etape_. But we don't know yet who will be in charge of the party, and it's impossible to find that out so long beforehand. To-morrow perhaps I will show you in detail the whole plan which Ivan Fyodorovitch left me on the eve of the trial in case of need.... That was when--do you remember?--you found us quarreling. He had just gone down-stairs, but seeing you I made him come back; do you remember? Do you know what we were quarreling about then?" "No, I don't," said Alyosha. "Of course he did not tell you. It was about that plan of escape. He had told me the main idea three days before, and we began quarreling about it at once and quarreled for three days. We quarreled because, when he told me that if Dmitri Fyodorovitch were convicted he would escape abroad with that creature, I felt furious at once--I can't tell you why, I don't know myself why.... Oh, of course, I was furious then about that creature, and that she, too, should go abroad with Dmitri!" Katerina Ivanovna exclaimed suddenly, her lips quivering with anger. "As soon as Ivan Fyodorovitch saw that I was furious about that woman, he instantly imagined I was jealous of Dmitri and that I still loved Dmitri. That is how our first quarrel began. I would not give an explanation, I could not ask forgiveness. I could not bear to think that such a man could suspect me of still loving that ... and when I myself had told him long before that I did not love Dmitri, that I loved no one but him! It was only resentment against that creature that made me angry with him. Three days later, on the evening you came, he brought me a sealed envelope, which I was to open at once, if anything happened to him. Oh, he foresaw his illness! He told me that the envelope contained the details of the escape, and that if he died or was taken dangerously ill, I was to save Mitya alone. Then he left me money, nearly ten thousand--those notes to which the prosecutor referred in his speech, having learnt from some one that he had sent them to be changed. I was tremendously impressed to find that Ivan Fyodorovitch had not given up his idea of saving his brother, and was confiding this plan of escape to me, though he was still jealous of me and still convinced that I loved Mitya. Oh, that was a sacrifice! No, you cannot understand the greatness of such self-sacrifice, Alexey Fyodorovitch. I wanted to fall at his feet in reverence, but I thought at once that he would take it only for my joy at the thought of Mitya's being saved (and he certainly would have imagined that!), and I was so exasperated at the mere possibility of such an unjust thought on his part that I lost my temper again, and instead of kissing his feet, flew into a fury again! Oh, I am unhappy! It's my character, my awful, unhappy character! Oh, you will see, I shall end by driving him, too, to abandon me for another with whom he can get on better, like Dmitri. But ... no, I could not bear it, I should kill myself. And when you came in then, and when I called to you and told him to come back, I was so enraged by the look of contempt and hatred he turned on me that--do you remember?--I cried out to you that it was he, he alone who had persuaded me that his brother Dmitri was a murderer! I said that malicious thing on purpose to wound him again. He had never, never persuaded me that his brother was a murderer. On the contrary, it was I who persuaded him! Oh, my vile temper was the cause of everything! I paved the way to that hideous scene at the trial. He wanted to show me that he was an honorable man, and that, even if I loved his brother, he would not ruin him for revenge or jealousy. So he came to the court ... I am the cause of it all, I alone am to blame!" Katya never had made such confessions to Alyosha before, and he felt that she was now at that stage of unbearable suffering when even the proudest heart painfully crushes its pride and falls vanquished by grief. Oh, Alyosha knew another terrible reason of her present misery, though she had carefully concealed it from him during those days since the trial; but it would have been for some reason too painful to him if she had been brought so low as to speak to him now about that. She was suffering for her "treachery" at the trial, and Alyosha felt that her conscience was impelling her to confess it to him, to him, Alyosha, with tears and cries and hysterical writhings on the floor. But he dreaded that moment and longed to spare her. It made the commission on which he had come even more difficult. He spoke of Mitya again. "It's all right, it's all right, don't be anxious about him!" she began again, sharply and stubbornly. "All that is only momentary, I know him, I know his heart only too well. You may be sure he will consent to escape. It's not as though it would be immediately; he will have time to make up his mind to it. Ivan Fyodorovitch will be well by that time and will manage it all himself, so that I shall have nothing to do with it. Don't be anxious; he will consent to run away. He has agreed already: do you suppose he would give up that creature? And they won't let her go to him, so he is bound to escape. It's you he's most afraid of, he is afraid you won't approve of his escape on moral grounds. But you must generously _allow_ it, if your sanction is so necessary," Katya added viciously. She paused and smiled. "He talks about some hymn," she went on again, "some cross he has to bear, some duty; I remember Ivan Fyodorovitch told me a great deal about it, and if you knew how he talked!" Katya cried suddenly, with feeling she could not repress, "if you knew how he loved that wretched man at the moment he told me, and how he hated him, perhaps, at the same moment. And I heard his story and his tears with sneering disdain. Brute! Yes, I am a brute. I am responsible for his fever. But that man in prison is incapable of suffering," Katya concluded irritably. "Can such a man suffer? Men like him never suffer!" There was a note of hatred and contemptuous repulsion in her words. And yet it was she who had betrayed him. "Perhaps because she feels how she's wronged him she hates him at moments," Alyosha thought to himself. He hoped that it was only "at moments." In Katya's last words he detected a challenging note, but he did not take it up. "I sent for you this morning to make you promise to persuade him yourself. Or do you, too, consider that to escape would be dishonorable, cowardly, or something ... unchristian, perhaps?" Katya added, even more defiantly. "Oh, no. I'll tell him everything," muttered Alyosha. "He asks you to come and see him to-day," he blurted out suddenly, looking her steadily in the face. She started, and drew back a little from him on the sofa. "Me? Can that be?" she faltered, turning pale. "It can and ought to be!" Alyosha began emphatically, growing more animated. "He needs you particularly just now. I would not have opened the subject and worried you, if it were not necessary. He is ill, he is beside himself, he keeps asking for you. It is not to be reconciled with you that he wants you, but only that you would go and show yourself at his door. So much has happened to him since that day. He realizes that he has injured you beyond all reckoning. He does not ask your forgiveness--'It's impossible to forgive me,' he says himself--but only that you would show yourself in his doorway." "It's so sudden...." faltered Katya. "I've had a presentiment all these days that you would come with that message. I knew he would ask me to come. It's impossible!" "Let it be impossible, but do it. Only think, he realizes for the first time how he has wounded you, the first time in his life; he had never grasped it before so fully. He said, 'If she refuses to come I shall be unhappy all my life.' Do you hear? though he is condemned to penal servitude for twenty years, he is still planning to be happy--is not that piteous? Think--you must visit him; though he is ruined, he is innocent," broke like a challenge from Alyosha. "His hands are clean, there is no blood on them! For the sake of his infinite sufferings in the future visit him now. Go, greet him on his way into the darkness--stand at his door, that is all.... You ought to do it, you ought to!" Alyosha concluded, laying immense stress on the word "ought." "I ought to ... but I cannot...." Katya moaned. "He will look at me.... I can't." "Your eyes ought to meet. How will you live all your life, if you don't make up your mind to do it now?" "Better suffer all my life." "You ought to go, you ought to go," Alyosha repeated with merciless emphasis. "But why to-day, why at once?... I can't leave our patient--" "You can for a moment. It will only be a moment. If you don't come, he will be in delirium by to-night. I would not tell you a lie; have pity on him!" "Have pity on _me!_" Katya said, with bitter reproach, and she burst into tears. "Then you will come," said Alyosha firmly, seeing her tears. "I'll go and tell him you will come directly." "No, don't tell him so on any account," cried Katya in alarm. "I will come, but don't tell him beforehand, for perhaps I may go, but not go in.... I don't know yet--" Her voice failed her. She gasped for breath. Alyosha got up to go. "And what if I meet any one?" she said suddenly, in a low voice, turning white again. "That's just why you must go now, to avoid meeting any one. There will be no one there, I can tell you that for certain. We will expect you," he concluded emphatically, and went out of the room.

Chapter 1

https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section16/

Plans to Save Mitya Katerina has brought the raving Ivan back to her house, and Alyosha visits them there after the trial. Katerina is torn with regret over her betrayal of Dmitri at the trial, but she says an ironclad plan is in place for his escape. In order to free him, however, Alyosha will have to play a part. Alyosha agrees to do whatever is necessary to secure Dmitri's freedom

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/19.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Sense and Sensibility/section_13_part_0.txt

Sense and Sensibility.chapter 19

chapter 19

{"name": "Chapter 19", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101060302/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/s/sense-and-sensibility/summary-and-analysis/chapter-19", "summary": "Edward began to enjoy his stay but insisted he had to leave at the end of the week, although it was evident he had no special place to go. Mrs. Dashwood tried to cheer him by assuring him that, in time, his mother would make him independent. But Edward only replied, \"I think that I may defy many months to produce any good to me.\" After his departure, Elinor was bewildered and upset but \"busily employed herself the whole day,\" for she didn't want to disturb her family or increase her own grief. Marianne could not understand her sister's calmness; she believed that if Elinor really cared for Edward, she could not be so controlled. Under her cool exterior, however, Elinor thought about Edward a lot. One morning she was roused from her thoughts by Sir John's knock at the window. He brought his wife, Mrs. Jennings, and the latter's youngest daughter and husband. Mrs. Palmer, \"several years younger than Lady Middleton and totally unlike her in every respect,\" chattered and laughed incessantly while her husband ignored her and read the newspaper. Sir John insisted that Elinor and Marianne spend the next day at Barton Park, and for fear of being rude they were forced to accept. After his departure, Marianne complained about having to see so much of the Middletons, but Elinor reminded her that a few weeks ago she felt differently: \"The alteration is not in them, if their parties are grown tedious and dull. We must look for the change elsewhere.\"", "analysis": "In this chapter, there is considerable emphasis on the dullness and banality of social visits. Marianne resents being invited so often to Barton Park. \"The rent of this cottage is said to be low,\" she says, \"but we have it on very hard terms, if we are to dine at the Park whenever any one is staying either with them or with us.\" The contrast between the two sisters can be markedly noticed in their respective reactions to two similar situations -- the enigmatic departures of their suitors. While Marianne cares little for the feelings of her family and wishes only to indulge her own romantic sensibilities, Elinor, not wishing to cause pain to those around her, affects a calm demeanor. However, she is affected greatly by Edward's strange behavior, and one of the only consolations to his departure is the ring he wears, which she believes contains a lock of her hair."}

Edward remained a week at the cottage; he was earnestly pressed by Mrs. Dashwood to stay longer; but, as if he were bent only on self-mortification, he seemed resolved to be gone when his enjoyment among his friends was at the height. His spirits, during the last two or three days, though still very unequal, were greatly improved--he grew more and more partial to the house and environs--never spoke of going away without a sigh--declared his time to be wholly disengaged--even doubted to what place he should go when he left them--but still, go he must. Never had any week passed so quickly--he could hardly believe it to be gone. He said so repeatedly; other things he said too, which marked the turn of his feelings and gave the lie to his actions. He had no pleasure at Norland; he detested being in town; but either to Norland or London, he must go. He valued their kindness beyond any thing, and his greatest happiness was in being with them. Yet, he must leave them at the end of a week, in spite of their wishes and his own, and without any restraint on his time. Elinor placed all that was astonishing in this way of acting to his mother's account; and it was happy for her that he had a mother whose character was so imperfectly known to her, as to be the general excuse for every thing strange on the part of her son. Disappointed, however, and vexed as she was, and sometimes displeased with his uncertain behaviour to herself, she was very well disposed on the whole to regard his actions with all the candid allowances and generous qualifications, which had been rather more painfully extorted from her, for Willoughby's service, by her mother. His want of spirits, of openness, and of consistency, were most usually attributed to his want of independence, and his better knowledge of Mrs. Ferrars's disposition and designs. The shortness of his visit, the steadiness of his purpose in leaving them, originated in the same fettered inclination, the same inevitable necessity of temporizing with his mother. The old well-established grievance of duty against will, parent against child, was the cause of all. She would have been glad to know when these difficulties were to cease, this opposition was to yield,--when Mrs. Ferrars would be reformed, and her son be at liberty to be happy. But from such vain wishes she was forced to turn for comfort to the renewal of her confidence in Edward's affection, to the remembrance of every mark of regard in look or word which fell from him while at Barton, and above all to that flattering proof of it which he constantly wore round his finger. "I think, Edward," said Mrs. Dashwood, as they were at breakfast the last morning, "you would be a happier man if you had any profession to engage your time and give an interest to your plans and actions. Some inconvenience to your friends, indeed, might result from it--you would not be able to give them so much of your time. But (with a smile) you would be materially benefited in one particular at least--you would know where to go when you left them." "I do assure you," he replied, "that I have long thought on this point, as you think now. It has been, and is, and probably will always be a heavy misfortune to me, that I have had no necessary business to engage me, no profession to give me employment, or afford me any thing like independence. But unfortunately my own nicety, and the nicety of my friends, have made me what I am, an idle, helpless being. We never could agree in our choice of a profession. I always preferred the church, as I still do. But that was not smart enough for my family. They recommended the army. That was a great deal too smart for me. The law was allowed to be genteel enough; many young men, who had chambers in the Temple, made a very good appearance in the first circles, and drove about town in very knowing gigs. But I had no inclination for the law, even in this less abstruse study of it, which my family approved. As for the navy, it had fashion on its side, but I was too old when the subject was first started to enter it--and, at length, as there was no necessity for my having any profession at all, as I might be as dashing and expensive without a red coat on my back as with one, idleness was pronounced on the whole to be most advantageous and honourable, and a young man of eighteen is not in general so earnestly bent on being busy as to resist the solicitations of his friends to do nothing. I was therefore entered at Oxford and have been properly idle ever since." "The consequence of which, I suppose, will be," said Mrs. Dashwood, "since leisure has not promoted your own happiness, that your sons will be brought up to as many pursuits, employments, professions, and trades as Columella's." "They will be brought up," said he, in a serious accent, "to be as unlike myself as is possible. In feeling, in action, in condition, in every thing." "Come, come; this is all an effusion of immediate want of spirits, Edward. You are in a melancholy humour, and fancy that any one unlike yourself must be happy. But remember that the pain of parting from friends will be felt by every body at times, whatever be their education or state. Know your own happiness. You want nothing but patience--or give it a more fascinating name, call it hope. Your mother will secure to you, in time, that independence you are so anxious for; it is her duty, and it will, it must ere long become her happiness to prevent your whole youth from being wasted in discontent. How much may not a few months do?" "I think," replied Edward, "that I may defy many months to produce any good to me." This desponding turn of mind, though it could not be communicated to Mrs. Dashwood, gave additional pain to them all in the parting, which shortly took place, and left an uncomfortable impression on Elinor's feelings especially, which required some trouble and time to subdue. But as it was her determination to subdue it, and to prevent herself from appearing to suffer more than what all her family suffered on his going away, she did not adopt the method so judiciously employed by Marianne, on a similar occasion, to augment and fix her sorrow, by seeking silence, solitude and idleness. Their means were as different as their objects, and equally suited to the advancement of each. Elinor sat down to her drawing-table as soon as he was out of the house, busily employed herself the whole day, neither sought nor avoided the mention of his name, appeared to interest herself almost as much as ever in the general concerns of the family, and if, by this conduct, she did not lessen her own grief, it was at least prevented from unnecessary increase, and her mother and sisters were spared much solicitude on her account. Such behaviour as this, so exactly the reverse of her own, appeared no more meritorious to Marianne, than her own had seemed faulty to her. The business of self-command she settled very easily;--with strong affections it was impossible, with calm ones it could have no merit. That her sister's affections WERE calm, she dared not deny, though she blushed to acknowledge it; and of the strength of her own, she gave a very striking proof, by still loving and respecting that sister, in spite of this mortifying conviction. Without shutting herself up from her family, or leaving the house in determined solitude to avoid them, or lying awake the whole night to indulge meditation, Elinor found every day afforded her leisure enough to think of Edward, and of Edward's behaviour, in every possible variety which the different state of her spirits at different times could produce,--with tenderness, pity, approbation, censure, and doubt. There were moments in abundance, when, if not by the absence of her mother and sisters, at least by the nature of their employments, conversation was forbidden among them, and every effect of solitude was produced. Her mind was inevitably at liberty; her thoughts could not be chained elsewhere; and the past and the future, on a subject so interesting, must be before her, must force her attention, and engross her memory, her reflection, and her fancy. From a reverie of this kind, as she sat at her drawing-table, she was roused one morning, soon after Edward's leaving them, by the arrival of company. She happened to be quite alone. The closing of the little gate, at the entrance of the green court in front of the house, drew her eyes to the window, and she saw a large party walking up to the door. Amongst them were Sir John and Lady Middleton and Mrs. Jennings, but there were two others, a gentleman and lady, who were quite unknown to her. She was sitting near the window, and as soon as Sir John perceived her, he left the rest of the party to the ceremony of knocking at the door, and stepping across the turf, obliged her to open the casement to speak to him, though the space was so short between the door and the window, as to make it hardly possible to speak at one without being heard at the other. "Well," said he, "we have brought you some strangers. How do you like them?" "Hush! they will hear you." "Never mind if they do. It is only the Palmers. Charlotte is very pretty, I can tell you. You may see her if you look this way." As Elinor was certain of seeing her in a couple of minutes, without taking that liberty, she begged to be excused. "Where is Marianne? Has she run away because we are come? I see her instrument is open." "She is walking, I believe." They were now joined by Mrs. Jennings, who had not patience enough to wait till the door was opened before she told HER story. She came hallooing to the window, "How do you do, my dear? How does Mrs. Dashwood do? And where are your sisters? What! all alone! you will be glad of a little company to sit with you. I have brought my other son and daughter to see you. Only think of their coming so suddenly! I thought I heard a carriage last night, while we were drinking our tea, but it never entered my head that it could be them. I thought of nothing but whether it might not be Colonel Brandon come back again; so I said to Sir John, I do think I hear a carriage; perhaps it is Colonel Brandon come back again"-- Elinor was obliged to turn from her, in the middle of her story, to receive the rest of the party; Lady Middleton introduced the two strangers; Mrs. Dashwood and Margaret came down stairs at the same time, and they all sat down to look at one another, while Mrs. Jennings continued her story as she walked through the passage into the parlour, attended by Sir John. Mrs. Palmer was several years younger than Lady Middleton, and totally unlike her in every respect. She was short and plump, had a very pretty face, and the finest expression of good humour in it that could possibly be. Her manners were by no means so elegant as her sister's, but they were much more prepossessing. She came in with a smile, smiled all the time of her visit, except when she laughed, and smiled when she went away. Her husband was a grave looking young man of five or six and twenty, with an air of more fashion and sense than his wife, but of less willingness to please or be pleased. He entered the room with a look of self-consequence, slightly bowed to the ladies, without speaking a word, and, after briefly surveying them and their apartments, took up a newspaper from the table, and continued to read it as long as he staid. Mrs. Palmer, on the contrary, who was strongly endowed by nature with a turn for being uniformly civil and happy, was hardly seated before her admiration of the parlour and every thing in it burst forth. "Well! what a delightful room this is! I never saw anything so charming! Only think, Mama, how it is improved since I was here last! I always thought it such a sweet place, ma'am! (turning to Mrs. Dashwood) but you have made it so charming! Only look, sister, how delightful every thing is! How I should like such a house for myself! Should not you, Mr. Palmer?" Mr. Palmer made her no answer, and did not even raise his eyes from the newspaper. "Mr. Palmer does not hear me," said she, laughing; "he never does sometimes. It is so ridiculous!" This was quite a new idea to Mrs. Dashwood; she had never been used to find wit in the inattention of any one, and could not help looking with surprise at them both. Mrs. Jennings, in the meantime, talked on as loud as she could, and continued her account of their surprise, the evening before, on seeing their friends, without ceasing till every thing was told. Mrs. Palmer laughed heartily at the recollection of their astonishment, and every body agreed, two or three times over, that it had been quite an agreeable surprise. "You may believe how glad we all were to see them," added Mrs. Jennings, leaning forward towards Elinor, and speaking in a low voice as if she meant to be heard by no one else, though they were seated on different sides of the room; "but, however, I can't help wishing they had not travelled quite so fast, nor made such a long journey of it, for they came all round by London upon account of some business, for you know (nodding significantly and pointing to her daughter) it was wrong in her situation. I wanted her to stay at home and rest this morning, but she would come with us; she longed so much to see you all!" Mrs. Palmer laughed, and said it would not do her any harm. "She expects to be confined in February," continued Mrs. Jennings. Lady Middleton could no longer endure such a conversation, and therefore exerted herself to ask Mr. Palmer if there was any news in the paper. "No, none at all," he replied, and read on. "Here comes Marianne," cried Sir John. "Now, Palmer, you shall see a monstrous pretty girl." He immediately went into the passage, opened the front door, and ushered her in himself. Mrs. Jennings asked her, as soon as she appeared, if she had not been to Allenham; and Mrs. Palmer laughed so heartily at the question, as to show she understood it. Mr. Palmer looked up on her entering the room, stared at her some minutes, and then returned to his newspaper. Mrs. Palmer's eye was now caught by the drawings which hung round the room. She got up to examine them. "Oh! dear, how beautiful these are! Well! how delightful! Do but look, mama, how sweet! I declare they are quite charming; I could look at them for ever." And then sitting down again, she very soon forgot that there were any such things in the room. When Lady Middleton rose to go away, Mr. Palmer rose also, laid down the newspaper, stretched himself and looked at them all around. "My love, have you been asleep?" said his wife, laughing. He made her no answer; and only observed, after again examining the room, that it was very low pitched, and that the ceiling was crooked. He then made his bow, and departed with the rest. Sir John had been very urgent with them all to spend the next day at the park. Mrs. Dashwood, who did not chuse to dine with them oftener than they dined at the cottage, absolutely refused on her own account; her daughters might do as they pleased. But they had no curiosity to see how Mr. and Mrs. Palmer ate their dinner, and no expectation of pleasure from them in any other way. They attempted, therefore, likewise, to excuse themselves; the weather was uncertain, and not likely to be good. But Sir John would not be satisfied--the carriage should be sent for them and they must come. Lady Middleton too, though she did not press their mother, pressed them. Mrs. Jennings and Mrs. Palmer joined their entreaties, all seemed equally anxious to avoid a family party; and the young ladies were obliged to yield. "Why should they ask us?" said Marianne, as soon as they were gone. "The rent of this cottage is said to be low; but we have it on very hard terms, if we are to dine at the park whenever any one is staying either with them, or with us." "They mean no less to be civil and kind to us now," said Elinor, "by these frequent invitations, than by those which we received from them a few weeks ago. The alteration is not in them, if their parties are grown tedious and dull. We must look for the change elsewhere."

Chapter 19

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101060302/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/s/sense-and-sensibility/summary-and-analysis/chapter-19

Edward began to enjoy his stay but insisted he had to leave at the end of the week, although it was evident he had no special place to go. Mrs. Dashwood tried to cheer him by assuring him that, in time, his mother would make him independent. But Edward only replied, "I think that I may defy many months to produce any good to me." After his departure, Elinor was bewildered and upset but "busily employed herself the whole day," for she didn't want to disturb her family or increase her own grief. Marianne could not understand her sister's calmness; she believed that if Elinor really cared for Edward, she could not be so controlled. Under her cool exterior, however, Elinor thought about Edward a lot. One morning she was roused from her thoughts by Sir John's knock at the window. He brought his wife, Mrs. Jennings, and the latter's youngest daughter and husband. Mrs. Palmer, "several years younger than Lady Middleton and totally unlike her in every respect," chattered and laughed incessantly while her husband ignored her and read the newspaper. Sir John insisted that Elinor and Marianne spend the next day at Barton Park, and for fear of being rude they were forced to accept. After his departure, Marianne complained about having to see so much of the Middletons, but Elinor reminded her that a few weeks ago she felt differently: "The alteration is not in them, if their parties are grown tedious and dull. We must look for the change elsewhere."

In this chapter, there is considerable emphasis on the dullness and banality of social visits. Marianne resents being invited so often to Barton Park. "The rent of this cottage is said to be low," she says, "but we have it on very hard terms, if we are to dine at the Park whenever any one is staying either with them or with us." The contrast between the two sisters can be markedly noticed in their respective reactions to two similar situations -- the enigmatic departures of their suitors. While Marianne cares little for the feelings of her family and wishes only to indulge her own romantic sensibilities, Elinor, not wishing to cause pain to those around her, affects a calm demeanor. However, she is affected greatly by Edward's strange behavior, and one of the only consolations to his departure is the ring he wears, which she believes contains a lock of her hair.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/107-chapters/62.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Far From the Madding Crowd/section_54_part_0.txt

Far From the Madding Crowd.chapter 55

chapter 55

{"name": "Chapter 55", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-55", "summary": "Three months after Boldwood's Christmas party, we hear about how Boldwood's trial has been going. The guy's only hope for survival is to be declared insane. A few of Bathsheba's workmen are chatting about whether Boldwood will be given a death sentence. While the trial is happening, some new evidence is found in Boldwood's home. Or to put it another way, there are tons of coats and scarves and other lady's clothing found in boxes marked \"Bathsheba Boldwood,\" meaning that Boldwood's fantasies of marrying her were completely obsessive. This, of course, becomes a topic of discussion in the town for weeks afterward. The people use this evidence to petition for Boldwood's cause. The man's execution date has been set. But only one day before Boldwood's date with death, he gets pardoned for being insane.", "analysis": ""}

THE MARCH FOLLOWING--"BATHSHEBA BOLDWOOD" We pass rapidly on into the month of March, to a breezy day without sunshine, frost, or dew. On Yalbury Hill, about midway between Weatherbury and Casterbridge, where the turnpike road passes over the crest, a numerous concourse of people had gathered, the eyes of the greater number being frequently stretched afar in a northerly direction. The groups consisted of a throng of idlers, a party of javelin-men, and two trumpeters, and in the midst were carriages, one of which contained the high sheriff. With the idlers, many of whom had mounted to the top of a cutting formed for the road, were several Weatherbury men and boys--among others Poorgrass, Coggan, and Cain Ball. At the end of half-an-hour a faint dust was seen in the expected quarter, and shortly after a travelling-carriage, bringing one of the two judges on the Western Circuit, came up the hill and halted on the top. The judge changed carriages whilst a flourish was blown by the big-cheeked trumpeters, and a procession being formed of the vehicles and javelin-men, they all proceeded towards the town, excepting the Weatherbury men, who as soon as they had seen the judge move off returned home again to their work. "Joseph, I seed you squeezing close to the carriage," said Coggan, as they walked. "Did ye notice my lord judge's face?" "I did," said Poorgrass. "I looked hard at en, as if I would read his very soul; and there was mercy in his eyes--or to speak with the exact truth required of us at this solemn time, in the eye that was towards me." "Well, I hope for the best," said Coggan, "though bad that must be. However, I shan't go to the trial, and I'd advise the rest of ye that bain't wanted to bide away. 'Twill disturb his mind more than anything to see us there staring at him as if he were a show." "The very thing I said this morning," observed Joseph, "'Justice is come to weigh him in the balances,' I said in my reflectious way, 'and if he's found wanting, so be it unto him,' and a bystander said 'Hear, hear! A man who can talk like that ought to be heard.' But I don't like dwelling upon it, for my few words are my few words, and not much; though the speech of some men is rumoured abroad as though by nature formed for such." "So 'tis, Joseph. And now, neighbours, as I said, every man bide at home." The resolution was adhered to; and all waited anxiously for the news next day. Their suspense was diverted, however, by a discovery which was made in the afternoon, throwing more light on Boldwood's conduct and condition than any details which had preceded it. That he had been from the time of Greenhill Fair until the fatal Christmas Eve in excited and unusual moods was known to those who had been intimate with him; but nobody imagined that there had shown in him unequivocal symptoms of the mental derangement which Bathsheba and Oak, alone of all others and at different times, had momentarily suspected. In a locked closet was now discovered an extraordinary collection of articles. There were several sets of ladies' dresses in the piece, of sundry expensive materials; silks and satins, poplins and velvets, all of colours which from Bathsheba's style of dress might have been judged to be her favourites. There were two muffs, sable and ermine. Above all there was a case of jewellery, containing four heavy gold bracelets and several lockets and rings, all of fine quality and manufacture. These things had been bought in Bath and other towns from time to time, and brought home by stealth. They were all carefully packed in paper, and each package was labelled "Bathsheba Boldwood," a date being subjoined six years in advance in every instance. These somewhat pathetic evidences of a mind crazed with care and love were the subject of discourse in Warren's malt-house when Oak entered from Casterbridge with tidings of sentence. He came in the afternoon, and his face, as the kiln glow shone upon it, told the tale sufficiently well. Boldwood, as every one supposed he would do, had pleaded guilty, and had been sentenced to death. The conviction that Boldwood had not been morally responsible for his later acts now became general. Facts elicited previous to the trial had pointed strongly in the same direction, but they had not been of sufficient weight to lead to an order for an examination into the state of Boldwood's mind. It was astonishing, now that a presumption of insanity was raised, how many collateral circumstances were remembered to which a condition of mental disease seemed to afford the only explanation--among others, the unprecedented neglect of his corn stacks in the previous summer. A petition was addressed to the Home Secretary, advancing the circumstances which appeared to justify a request for a reconsideration of the sentence. It was not "numerously signed" by the inhabitants of Casterbridge, as is usual in such cases, for Boldwood had never made many friends over the counter. The shops thought it very natural that a man who, by importing direct from the producer, had daringly set aside the first great principle of provincial existence, namely that God made country villages to supply customers to county towns, should have confused ideas about the Decalogue. The prompters were a few merciful men who had perhaps too feelingly considered the facts latterly unearthed, and the result was that evidence was taken which it was hoped might remove the crime in a moral point of view, out of the category of wilful murder, and lead it to be regarded as a sheer outcome of madness. The upshot of the petition was waited for in Weatherbury with solicitous interest. The execution had been fixed for eight o'clock on a Saturday morning about a fortnight after the sentence was passed, and up to Friday afternoon no answer had been received. At that time Gabriel came from Casterbridge Gaol, whither he had been to wish Boldwood good-bye, and turned down a by-street to avoid the town. When past the last house he heard a hammering, and lifting his bowed head he looked back for a moment. Over the chimneys he could see the upper part of the gaol entrance, rich and glowing in the afternoon sun, and some moving figures were there. They were carpenters lifting a post into a vertical position within the parapet. He withdrew his eyes quickly, and hastened on. It was dark when he reached home, and half the village was out to meet him. "No tidings," Gabriel said, wearily. "And I'm afraid there's no hope. I've been with him more than two hours." "Do ye think he REALLY was out of his mind when he did it?" said Smallbury. "I can't honestly say that I do," Oak replied. "However, that we can talk of another time. Has there been any change in mistress this afternoon?" "None at all." "Is she downstairs?" "No. And getting on so nicely as she was too. She's but very little better now again than she was at Christmas. She keeps on asking if you be come, and if there's news, till one's wearied out wi' answering her. Shall I go and say you've come?" "No," said Oak. "There's a chance yet; but I couldn't stay in town any longer--after seeing him too. So Laban--Laban is here, isn't he?" "Yes," said Tall. "What I've arranged is, that you shall ride to town the last thing to-night; leave here about nine, and wait a while there, getting home about twelve. If nothing has been received by eleven to-night, they say there's no chance at all." "I do so hope his life will be spared," said Liddy. "If it is not, she'll go out of her mind too. Poor thing; her sufferings have been dreadful; she deserves anybody's pity." "Is she altered much?" said Coggan. "If you haven't seen poor mistress since Christmas, you wouldn't know her," said Liddy. "Her eyes are so miserable that she's not the same woman. Only two years ago she was a romping girl, and now she's this!" Laban departed as directed, and at eleven o'clock that night several of the villagers strolled along the road to Casterbridge and awaited his arrival--among them Oak, and nearly all the rest of Bathsheba's men. Gabriel's anxiety was great that Boldwood might be saved, even though in his conscience he felt that he ought to die; for there had been qualities in the farmer which Oak loved. At last, when they all were weary the tramp of a horse was heard in the distance-- First dead, as if on turf it trode, Then, clattering on the village road In other pace than forth he yode. "We shall soon know now, one way or other." said Coggan, and they all stepped down from the bank on which they had been standing into the road, and the rider pranced into the midst of them. "Is that you, Laban?" said Gabriel. "Yes--'tis come. He's not to die. 'Tis confinement during Her Majesty's pleasure." "Hurrah!" said Coggan, with a swelling heart. "God's above the devil yet!"

Chapter 55

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-55

Three months after Boldwood's Christmas party, we hear about how Boldwood's trial has been going. The guy's only hope for survival is to be declared insane. A few of Bathsheba's workmen are chatting about whether Boldwood will be given a death sentence. While the trial is happening, some new evidence is found in Boldwood's home. Or to put it another way, there are tons of coats and scarves and other lady's clothing found in boxes marked "Bathsheba Boldwood," meaning that Boldwood's fantasies of marrying her were completely obsessive. This, of course, becomes a topic of discussion in the town for weeks afterward. The people use this evidence to petition for Boldwood's cause. The man's execution date has been set. But only one day before Boldwood's date with death, he gets pardoned for being insane.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/44747-chapters/43.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_42_part_0.txt

The Red and the Black.part 2.chapter 13

part 2, chapter 13

{"name": "Part 2, Chapter 13", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-2-chapter-13", "summary": "Julien drops in on a conversation between Mathilde and Norbert, who are speaking about him. They fall silent, and he wonders for a moment if they're conspiring to make fun of him. While doing some business for the Marquis de La Mole, Julien realizes that some of the man's private books are going missing. The books are especially racy, and Julien knows it's not Norbert who's taking them. It must be Mathilde. Julien learns that he'll have to make a trip to a place called Languedoc. He smiles to think that while he's gone, he'll know that he is first in Mathilde's heart. One night while walking, Mathilde grips him by the arm and tells him to expect a letter from her that night. An hour later, Julien receives a letter that plainly declares Mathilde's love for him. He decides to put off his trip to Languedoc. He revels in the fact that he, such a poor young man, has bested all the richest noblemen in Paris. Julien worries that he might be walking into a trap if he tries to visit Mathilde. After all, he has been shot at before for visiting a woman's bedroom. So he decides to send his letter from Mathilde to his buddy Fouqe for safekeeping, just in case something happens to him.", "analysis": ""}

CHAPTER XLIII A PLOT Disconnected remarks, casual meetings, become transformed in the eyes of an imaginative man into the most convincing proofs, if he has any fire in his temperament.--_Schiller_. The following day he again caught Norbert and his sister talking about him. A funereal silence was established on his arrival as on the previous day. His suspicions were now unbounded. "Can these charming young people have started to make fun of me? I must own this is much more probable, much more natural than any suggested passion on the part of mademoiselle de La Mole for a poor devil of a secretary. In the first place, have those people got any passions at all? Mystification is their strong point. They are jealous of my poor little superiority in speaking. Being jealous again is one of their weaknesses. On that basis everything is explicable. Mademoiselle de La Mole simply wants to persuade me that she is marking me out for special favour in order to show me off to her betrothed?" This cruel suspicion completely changed Julien's psychological condition. The idea found in his heart a budding love which it had no difficulty in destroying. This love was only founded on Mathilde's rare beauty, or rather on her queenly manners and her admirable dresses. Julien was still a parvenu in this respect. We are assured that there is nothing equal to a pretty society women for dazzling a peasant who is at the same time a man of intellect, when he is admitted to first class society. It had not been Mathilde's character which had given Julien food for dreams in the days that had just passed. He had sufficient sense to realise that he knew nothing about her character. All he saw of it might be merely superficial. For instance, Mathilde would not have missed mass on Sunday for anything in the world. She accompanied her mother there nearly every time. If when in the salon of the Hotel de La Mole some indiscreet man forgot where he was, and indulged in the remotest allusion to any jest against the real or supposed interests of Church or State, Mathilde immediately assumed an icy seriousness. Her previously arch expression re-assumed all the impassive haughtiness of an old family portrait. But Julien had assured himself that she always had one or two of Voltaire's most philosophic volumes in her room. He himself would often steal some tomes of that fine edition which was so magnificently bound. By moving each volume a little distance from the one next to it he managed to hide the absence of the one he took away, but he soon noticed that someone else was reading Voltaire. He had recourse to a trick worthy of the seminary and placed some pieces of hair on those volumes which he thought were likely to interest mademoiselle de La Mole. They disappeared for whole weeks. M. de La Mole had lost patience with his bookseller, who always sent him all the spurious memoirs, and had instructed Julien to buy all the new books, which were at all stimulating. But in order to prevent the poison spreading over the household, the secretary was ordered to place the books in a little book-case that stood in the marquis's own room. He was soon quite certain that although the new books were hostile to the interests of both State and Church, they very quickly disappeared. It was certainly not Norbert who read them. Julien attached undue importance to this discovery, and attributed to mademoiselle de la Mole a Machiavellian role. This seeming depravity constituted a charm in his eyes, the one moral charm, in fact, which she possessed. He was led into this extravagance by his boredom with hypocrisy and moral platitudes. It was more a case of his exciting his own imagination than of his being swept away by his love. It was only after he had abandoned himself to reveries about the elegance of mademoiselle de la Mole's figure, the excellent taste of he dress, the whiteness of her hand, the beauty of her arm, the _disinvoltura_ of all her movements, that he began to find himself in love. Then in order to complete the charm he thought her a Catherine de' Medici. Nothing was too deep or too criminal for the character which he ascribed to her. She was the ideal of the Maslons, the Frilairs, and the Castanedes whom he had admired so much in his youth. To put it shortly, she represented in his eyes the Paris ideal. Could anything possibly be more humorous than believing in the depth or in the depravity of the Parisian character? It is impossible that this _trio_ is making fun of me thought Julien. The reader knows little of his character if he has not begun already to imagine his cold and gloomy expression when he answered Mathilde's looks. A bitter irony rebuffed those assurances of friendship which the astonished mademoiselle de la Mole ventured to hazard on two or three occasions. Piqued by this sudden eccentricity, the heart of this young girl, though naturally cold, bored and intellectual, became as impassioned as it was naturally capable of being. But there was also a large element of pride in Mathilde's character, and the birth of a sentiment which made all her happiness dependent on another, was accompanied by a gloomy melancholy. Julien had derived sufficient advantage from his stay in Paris to appreciate that this was not the frigid melancholy of ennui. Instead of being keen as she had been on at homes, theatres, and all kinds of distractions, she now shunned them. Music sung by Frenchmen bored Mathilde to death, yet Julien, who always made a point of being present when the audience came out of the Opera, noticed that she made a point of getting taken there as often as she could. He thought he noticed that she had lost a little of that brilliant neatness of touch which used to be manifest in everything she did. She would sometimes answer her friends with jests rendered positively outrageous through the sheer force of their stinging energy. He thought that she made a special butt of the marquis de Croisenois. That young man must be desperately in love with money not to give the go-by to that girl, however rich she maybe, thought Julien. And as for himself, indignant at these outrages on masculine self-respect, he redoubled his frigidity towards her. Sometimes he went so far as to answer her with scant courtesy. In spite of his resolution not to become the dupe of Mathilde's signs of interest, these manifestations were so palpable on certain days, and Julien, whose eyes were beginning to be opened, began to find her so pretty, that he was sometimes embarrassed. "These young people of society will score in the long run by their skill and their coolness over my inexperience," he said to himself. "I must leave and put an end to all this." The marquis had just entrusted him with the administration of a number of small estates and houses which he possessed in Lower Languedoc. A journey was necessary; M. de la Mole reluctantly consented. Julien had become his other self, except in those matters which concerned his political career. "So, when we come to balance the account," Julien said to himself, as he prepared his departure, "they have not caught me. Whether the jests that mademoiselle de la Mole made to those gentlemen are real, or whether they were only intended to inspire me with confidence, they have simply amused me. "If there is no conspiracy against the carpenter's son, mademoiselle de la Mole is an enigma, but at any rate, she is quite as much an enigma for the marquis de Croisenois as she is to me. Yesterday, for instance, her bad temper was very real, and I had the pleasure of seeing her snub, thanks to her favour for me, a young man who is as noble and as rich as I am a poor scoundrel of a plebeian. That is my finest triumph; it will divert me in my post-chaise as I traverse the Languedoc plains." He had kept his departure a secret, but Mathilde knew, even better than he did himself, that he was going to leave Paris the following day for a long time. She developed a maddening headache, which was rendered worse by the stuffy salon. She walked a great deal in the garden, and persecuted Norbert, the marquis de Croisenois, Caylus, de Luz, and some other young men who had dined at the Hotel de la Mole, to such an extent by her mordant witticisms, that she drove them to take their leave. She kept looking at Julien in a strange way. "Perhaps that look is a pose," thought Julien, "but how about that hurried breathing and all that agitation? Bah," he said to himself, "who am I to judge of such things? We are dealing with the cream of Parisian sublimity and subtlety. As for that hurried breathing which was on the point of affecting me, she no doubt studied it with Leontine Fay, whom she likes so much." They were left alone; the conversation was obviously languishing. "No, Julien has no feeling for me," said Mathilde to herself, in a state of real unhappiness. As he was taking leave of her she took his arm violently. "You will receive a letter from me this evening," she said to him in a voice that was so changed that its tone was scarcely recognisable. This circumstance affected Julien immediately. "My father," she continued, "has a proper regard for the services you render him. You must not leave to-morrow; find an excuse." And she ran away. Her figure was charming. It was impossible to have a prettier foot. She ran with a grace which fascinated Julien, but will the reader guess what he began to think about after she had finally left him? He felt wounded by the imperious tone with which she had said the words, "you must." Louis XV. too, when on his death-bed, had been keenly irritated by the words "you must," which had been tactlessly pronounced by his first physician, and yet Louis XV. was not a parvenu. An hour afterwards a footman gave Julien a letter. It was quite simply a declaration of love. "The style is too affected," said Julien to himself, as he endeavoured to control by his literary criticism the joy which was spreading over his cheeks and forcing him to smile in spite of himself. At last his passionate exultation was too strong to be controlled. "So I," he suddenly exclaimed, "I, the poor peasant, get a declaration of love from a great lady." "As for myself, I haven't done so badly," he added, restraining his joy as much as he could. "I have managed to preserve my self-respect. I did not say that I loved her." He began to study the formation of the letters. Mademoiselle de la Mole had a pretty little English handwriting. He needed some concrete occupation to distract him from a joy which verged on delirium. "Your departure forces me to speak.... I could not bear not to see you again." A thought had just struck Julien like a new discovery. It interrupted his examination of Mathilde's letter, and redoubled his joy. "So I score over the marquis de Croisenois," he exclaimed. "Yes, I who could only talk seriously! And he is so handsome. He has a moustache and a charming uniform. He always manages to say something witty and clever just at the psychological moment." Julien experienced a delightful minute. He was wandering at random in the garden, mad with happiness. Afterwards he went up to his desk, and had himself ushered in to the marquis de la Mole, who was fortunately still in. He showed him several stamped papers which had come from Normandy, and had no difficulty in convincing him that he was obliged to put off his departure for Languedoc in order to look after the Normandy lawsuits. "I am very glad that you are not going," said the marquis to him, when they had finished talking business. "I like seeing you." Julien went out; the words irritated him. "And I--I am going to seduce his daughter! and perhaps render impossible that marriage with the marquis de Croisenois to which the marquis looks forward with such delight. If he does not get made a duke, at any rate his daughter will have a coronet." Julien thought of leaving for Languedoc in spite of Mathilde's letter, and in spite of the explanation he had just given to the marquis. This flash of virtue quickly disappeared. "How kind it is of me," he said to himself, "me ... a plebeian, takes pity on a family of this rank! Yes, me, whom the duke of Chaulnes calls a servant! How does the marquis manage to increase his immense fortune? By selling stock when he picks up information at the castle that there will be a panic of a _coup d'etat_ on the following day. And shall I, who have been flung down into the lowest class by a cruel providence--I, whom providence has given a noble heart but not an income of a thousand francs, that is to say, not enough to buy bread with, literally not enough to buy bread with--shall I refuse a pleasure that presents itself? A limpid fountain which will quench my thirst in this scorching desert of mediocrity which I am traversing with such difficulty! Upon my word, I am not such a fool! Each man for himself in that desert of egoism which is called life." And he remembered certain disdainful looks which madame de la Mole, and especially her lady friends, had favoured him with. The pleasure of scoring over the marquis de Croisenois completed the rout of this echo of virtue. "How I should like to make him angry," said Julien. "With what confidence would I give him a sword thrust now!" And he went through the segoon thrust. "Up till now I have been a mere usher, who exploited basely the little courage he had. After this letter I am his equal. "Yes," he slowly said to himself, with an infinite pleasure, "the merits of the marquis and myself have been weighed in the balance, and it is the poor carpenter from the Jura who turns the scale. "Good!" he exclaimed, "this is how I shall sign my answer. Don't imagine, mademoiselle de la Mole, that I am forgetting my place. I will make you realise and fully appreciate that it is for a carpenter's son that you are betraying a descendant of the famous Guy de Croisenois who followed St. Louis to the Crusade." Julien was unable to control his joy. He was obliged to go down into the garden. He had locked himself in his room, but he found it too narrow to breathe in. "To think of it being me, the poor peasant from the Jura," he kept on repeating to himself, "to think of it being me who am eternally condemned to wear this gloomy black suit! Alas twenty years ago I would have worn a uniform like they do! In those days a man like me either got killed or became a general at thirty-six. The letter which he held clenched in his hand gave him a heroic pose and stature. Nowadays, it is true, if one sticks to this black suit, one gets at forty an income of a hundred thousand francs and the blue ribbon like my lord bishop of Beauvais. "Well," he said to himself with a Mephistophelian smile, "I have more brains than they. I am shrewd enough to choose the uniform of my century. And he felt a quickening of his ambition and of his attachment to his ecclesiastical dress. What cardinals of even lower birth than mine have not succeeded in governing! My compatriot Granvelle, for instance." Julien's agitation became gradually calmed! Prudence emerged to the top. He said to himself like his master Tartuffe whose part he knew by heart: Je puis croire ces mots, un artifice honnete. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Je ne me firai point a des propos si doux, Qu'un peu de ses faveurs apres quoi je soupire Ne vienne m'assurer tout ce qu'ils m'ont pudire. _Tartuffe, act iv. Scene v_. "Tartuffe, too, was ruined by a woman, and he was as good as most men.... My answer may be shown.... and the way out of that is this," he added pronouncing his words slowly with an intonation of deliberate and restrained ferocity. "We will begin by quoting the most vivid passages from the letter of the sublime Mathilde." "Quite so, but M. de Croisenois' lackeys will hurl themselves upon me and snatch the original away." "No, they won't, for I am well armed, and as we know I am accustomed to firing on lackeys." "Well, suppose one of them has courage, and hurls himself upon me. He has been promised a hundred napoleons. I kill him, or wound him, good, that's what they want. I shall be thrown into prison legally. I shall be had up in the police court and the judges will send me with all justice and all equity to keep Messieurs Fontan and Magalon company in Poissy. There I shall be landed in the middle of four hundred scoundrels.... And am I to have the slightest pity on these people," he exclaimed getting up impetuously! "Do they show any to persons of the third estate when they have them in their power!" With these words his gratitude to M. de la Mole, which had been in spite of himself torturing his conscience up to this time, breathed its last. "Softly, gentlemen, I follow this little Machiavellian trick, the abbe Maslon or M. Castanede of the seminary could not have done better. You will take the provocative letter away from me and I shall exemplify the second volume of Colonel Caron at Colmar." "One moment, gentlemen, I will send the fatal letter in a well-sealed packet to M. the abbe Pirard to take care of. He's an honest man, a Jansenist, and consequently incorruptible. Yes, but he will open the letters.... Fouque is the man to whom I must send it." We must admit that Julien's expression was awful, his countenance ghastly; it breathed unmitigated criminality. It represented the unhappy man at war with all society. "To arms," exclaimed Julien. And he bounded up the flight of steps of the hotel with one stride. He entered the stall of the street scrivener; he frightened him. "Copy this," he said, giving him mademoiselle de la Mole's letter. While the scrivener was working, he himself wrote to Fouque. He asked him to take care of a valuable deposit. "But he said to himself," breaking in upon his train of thought, "the secret service of the post-office will open my letter, and will give you gentlemen the one you are looking for ... not quite, gentlemen." He went and bought an enormous Bible from a Protestant bookseller, skillfully hid Mathilde's letter in the cover, and packed it all up. His parcel left by the diligence addressed to one of Fouque's workmen, whose name was known to nobody at Paris. This done, he returned to the Hotel de la Mole, joyous and buoyant. Now it's our turn he exclaimed as he locked himself into the room and threw off his coat. "What! mademoiselle," he wrote to Mathilde, "is it mademoiselle de la Mole who gets Arsene her father's lackey to hand an only too flattering letter to a poor carpenter from the Jura, in order no doubt to make fun of his simplicity?" And he copied out the most explicit phrases in the letter which he had just received. His own letter would have done honour to the diplomatic prudence of M. the Chevalier de Beauvoisis. It was still only ten o'clock when Julien entered the Italian opera, intoxicated with happiness and that feeling of his own power which was so novel for a poor devil like him. He heard his friend Geronimo sing. Music had never exalted him to such a pitch.

Part 2, Chapter 13

https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-2-chapter-13

Julien drops in on a conversation between Mathilde and Norbert, who are speaking about him. They fall silent, and he wonders for a moment if they're conspiring to make fun of him. While doing some business for the Marquis de La Mole, Julien realizes that some of the man's private books are going missing. The books are especially racy, and Julien knows it's not Norbert who's taking them. It must be Mathilde. Julien learns that he'll have to make a trip to a place called Languedoc. He smiles to think that while he's gone, he'll know that he is first in Mathilde's heart. One night while walking, Mathilde grips him by the arm and tells him to expect a letter from her that night. An hour later, Julien receives a letter that plainly declares Mathilde's love for him. He decides to put off his trip to Languedoc. He revels in the fact that he, such a poor young man, has bested all the richest noblemen in Paris. Julien worries that he might be walking into a trap if he tries to visit Mathilde. After all, he has been shot at before for visiting a woman's bedroom. So he decides to send his letter from Mathilde to his buddy Fouqe for safekeeping, just in case something happens to him.

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finished_summaries/novelguide/Tess of the d'Urbervilles/section_1_part_2.txt

Tess of the d'Urbervilles.chapter ii

chapter ii

{"name": "Chapter II", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210213065711/https://www.novelguide.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summaries/phase1-chapter1-11", "summary": "Meanwhile, young Tess Durbeyfield is taking part in a traditional parade with other village women. Dressed in white they walk to the village green to dance. Her father's carriage passes and when the women jeer Tess feels humiliated. While they dance, three young men arrive. The two older brothers continue on their ramble through the Vale of Blackmoor but the younger, named Angel Clare, stops. He chooses a dancing partner but has to leave soon, but not before seeing Tess, who is somewhat offended that he didn't choose her. As he runs off he regrets not asking her to dance", "analysis": ""}

The village of Marlott lay amid the north-eastern undulations of the beautiful Vale of Blakemore, or Blackmoor, aforesaid, an engirdled and secluded region, for the most part untrodden as yet by tourist or landscape-painter, though within a four hours' journey from London. It is a vale whose acquaintance is best made by viewing it from the summits of the hills that surround it--except perhaps during the droughts of summer. An unguided ramble into its recesses in bad weather is apt to engender dissatisfaction with its narrow, tortuous, and miry ways. This fertile and sheltered tract of country, in which the fields are never brown and the springs never dry, is bounded on the south by the bold chalk ridge that embraces the prominences of Hambledon Hill, Bulbarrow, Nettlecombe-Tout, Dogbury, High Stoy, and Bubb Down. The traveller from the coast, who, after plodding northward for a score of miles over calcareous downs and corn-lands, suddenly reaches the verge of one of these escarpments, is surprised and delighted to behold, extended like a map beneath him, a country differing absolutely from that which he has passed through. Behind him the hills are open, the sun blazes down upon fields so large as to give an unenclosed character to the landscape, the lanes are white, the hedges low and plashed, the atmosphere colourless. Here, in the valley, the world seems to be constructed upon a smaller and more delicate scale; the fields are mere paddocks, so reduced that from this height their hedgerows appear a network of dark green threads overspreading the paler green of the grass. The atmosphere beneath is languorous, and is so tinged with azure that what artists call the middle distance partakes also of that hue, while the horizon beyond is of the deepest ultramarine. Arable lands are few and limited; with but slight exceptions the prospect is a broad rich mass of grass and trees, mantling minor hills and dales within the major. Such is the Vale of Blackmoor. The district is of historic, no less than of topographical interest. The Vale was known in former times as the Forest of White Hart, from a curious legend of King Henry III's reign, in which the killing by a certain Thomas de la Lynd of a beautiful white hart which the king had run down and spared, was made the occasion of a heavy fine. In those days, and till comparatively recent times, the country was densely wooded. Even now, traces of its earlier condition are to be found in the old oak copses and irregular belts of timber that yet survive upon its slopes, and the hollow-trunked trees that shade so many of its pastures. The forests have departed, but some old customs of their shades remain. Many, however, linger only in a metamorphosed or disguised form. The May-Day dance, for instance, was to be discerned on the afternoon under notice, in the guise of the club revel, or "club-walking," as it was there called. It was an interesting event to the younger inhabitants of Marlott, though its real interest was not observed by the participators in the ceremony. Its singularity lay less in the retention of a custom of walking in procession and dancing on each anniversary than in the members being solely women. In men's clubs such celebrations were, though expiring, less uncommon; but either the natural shyness of the softer sex, or a sarcastic attitude on the part of male relatives, had denuded such women's clubs as remained (if any other did) or this their glory and consummation. The club of Marlott alone lived to uphold the local Cerealia. It had walked for hundreds of years, if not as benefit-club, as votive sisterhood of some sort; and it walked still. The banded ones were all dressed in white gowns--a gay survival from Old Style days, when cheerfulness and May-time were synonyms--days before the habit of taking long views had reduced emotions to a monotonous average. Their first exhibition of themselves was in a processional march of two and two round the parish. Ideal and real clashed slightly as the sun lit up their figures against the green hedges and creeper-laced house-fronts; for, though the whole troop wore white garments, no two whites were alike among them. Some approached pure blanching; some had a bluish pallor; some worn by the older characters (which had possibly lain by folded for many a year) inclined to a cadaverous tint, and to a Georgian style. In addition to the distinction of a white frock, every woman and girl carried in her right hand a peeled willow wand, and in her left a bunch of white flowers. The peeling of the former, and the selection of the latter, had been an operation of personal care. There were a few middle-aged and even elderly women in the train, their silver-wiry hair and wrinkled faces, scourged by time and trouble, having almost a grotesque, certainly a pathetic, appearance in such a jaunty situation. In a true view, perhaps, there was more to be gathered and told of each anxious and experienced one, to whom the years were drawing nigh when she should say, "I have no pleasure in them," than of her juvenile comrades. But let the elder be passed over here for those under whose bodices the life throbbed quick and warm. The young girls formed, indeed, the majority of the band, and their heads of luxuriant hair reflected in the sunshine every tone of gold, and black, and brown. Some had beautiful eyes, others a beautiful nose, others a beautiful mouth and figure: few, if any, had all. A difficulty of arranging their lips in this crude exposure to public scrutiny, an inability to balance their heads, and to dissociate self-consciousness from their features, was apparent in them, and showed that they were genuine country girls, unaccustomed to many eyes. And as each and all of them were warmed without by the sun, so each had a private little sun for her soul to bask in; some dream, some affection, some hobby, at least some remote and distant hope which, though perhaps starving to nothing, still lived on, as hopes will. They were all cheerful, and many of them merry. They came round by The Pure Drop Inn, and were turning out of the high road to pass through a wicket-gate into the meadows, when one of the women said-- "The Load-a-Lord! Why, Tess Durbeyfield, if there isn't thy father riding hwome in a carriage!" A young member of the band turned her head at the exclamation. She was a fine and handsome girl--not handsomer than some others, possibly--but her mobile peony mouth and large innocent eyes added eloquence to colour and shape. She wore a red ribbon in her hair, and was the only one of the white company who could boast of such a pronounced adornment. As she looked round Durbeyfield was seen moving along the road in a chaise belonging to The Pure Drop, driven by a frizzle-headed brawny damsel with her gown-sleeves rolled above her elbows. This was the cheerful servant of that establishment, who, in her part of factotum, turned groom and ostler at times. Durbeyfield, leaning back, and with his eyes closed luxuriously, was waving his hand above his head, and singing in a slow recitative-- "I've-got-a-gr't-family-vault-at-Kingsbere--and knighted-forefathers-in-lead-coffins-there!" The clubbists tittered, except the girl called Tess--in whom a slow heat seemed to rise at the sense that her father was making himself foolish in their eyes. "He's tired, that's all," she said hastily, "and he has got a lift home, because our own horse has to rest to-day." "Bless thy simplicity, Tess," said her companions. "He's got his market-nitch. Haw-haw!" "Look here; I won't walk another inch with you, if you say any jokes about him!" Tess cried, and the colour upon her cheeks spread over her face and neck. In a moment her eyes grew moist, and her glance drooped to the ground. Perceiving that they had really pained her they said no more, and order again prevailed. Tess's pride would not allow her to turn her head again, to learn what her father's meaning was, if he had any; and thus she moved on with the whole body to the enclosure where there was to be dancing on the green. By the time the spot was reached she has recovered her equanimity, and tapped her neighbour with her wand and talked as usual. Tess Durbeyfield at this time of her life was a mere vessel of emotion untinctured by experience. The dialect was on her tongue to some extent, despite the village school: the characteristic intonation of that dialect for this district being the voicing approximately rendered by the syllable UR, probably as rich an utterance as any to be found in human speech. The pouted-up deep red mouth to which this syllable was native had hardly as yet settled into its definite shape, and her lower lip had a way of thrusting the middle of her top one upward, when they closed together after a word. Phases of her childhood lurked in her aspect still. As she walked along to-day, for all her bouncing handsome womanliness, you could sometimes see her twelfth year in her cheeks, or her ninth sparkling from her eyes; and even her fifth would flit over the curves of her mouth now and then. Yet few knew, and still fewer considered this. A small minority, mainly strangers, would look long at her in casually passing by, and grow momentarily fascinated by her freshness, and wonder if they would ever see her again: but to almost everybody she was a fine and picturesque country girl, and no more. Nothing was seen or heard further of Durbeyfield in his triumphal chariot under the conduct of the ostleress, and the club having entered the allotted space, dancing began. As there were no men in the company, the girls danced at first with each other, but when the hour for the close of labour drew on, the masculine inhabitants of the village, together with other idlers and pedestrians, gathered round the spot, and appeared inclined to negotiate for a partner. Among these on-lookers were three young men of a superior class, carrying small knapsacks strapped to their shoulders, and stout sticks in their hands. Their general likeness to each other, and their consecutive ages, would almost have suggested that they might be, what in fact they were, brothers. The eldest wore the white tie, high waistcoat, and thin-brimmed hat of the regulation curate; the second was the normal undergraduate; the appearance of the third and youngest would hardly have been sufficient to characterize him; there was an uncribbed, uncabined aspect in his eyes and attire, implying that he had hardly as yet found the entrance to his professional groove. That he was a desultory tentative student of something and everything might only have been predicted of him. These three brethren told casual acquaintance that they were spending their Whitsun holidays in a walking tour through the Vale of Blackmoor, their course being south-westerly from the town of Shaston on the north-east. They leant over the gate by the highway, and inquired as to the meaning of the dance and the white-frocked maids. The two elder of the brothers were plainly not intending to linger more than a moment, but the spectacle of a bevy of girls dancing without male partners seemed to amuse the third, and make him in no hurry to move on. He unstrapped his knapsack, put it, with his stick, on the hedge-bank, and opened the gate. "What are you going to do, Angel?" asked the eldest. "I am inclined to go and have a fling with them. Why not all of us--just for a minute or two--it will not detain us long?" "No--no; nonsense!" said the first. "Dancing in public with a troop of country hoydens--suppose we should be seen! Come along, or it will be dark before we get to Stourcastle, and there's no place we can sleep at nearer than that; besides, we must get through another chapter of _A Counterblast to Agnosticism_ before we turn in, now I have taken the trouble to bring the book." "All right--I'll overtake you and Cuthbert in five minutes; don't stop; I give my word that I will, Felix." The two elder reluctantly left him and walked on, taking their brother's knapsack to relieve him in following, and the youngest entered the field. "This is a thousand pities," he said gallantly, to two or three of the girls nearest him, as soon as there was a pause in the dance. "Where are your partners, my dears?" "They've not left off work yet," answered one of the boldest. "They'll be here by and by. Till then, will you be one, sir?" "Certainly. But what's one among so many!" "Better than none. 'Tis melancholy work facing and footing it to one of your own sort, and no clipsing and colling at all. Now, pick and choose." "'Ssh--don't be so for'ard!" said a shyer girl. The young man, thus invited, glanced them over, and attempted some discrimination; but, as the group were all so new to him, he could not very well exercise it. He took almost the first that came to hand, which was not the speaker, as she had expected; nor did it happen to be Tess Durbeyfield. Pedigree, ancestral skeletons, monumental record, the d'Urberville lineaments, did not help Tess in her life's battle as yet, even to the extent of attracting to her a dancing-partner over the heads of the commonest peasantry. So much for Norman blood unaided by Victorian lucre. The name of the eclipsing girl, whatever it was, has not been handed down; but she was envied by all as the first who enjoyed the luxury of a masculine partner that evening. Yet such was the force of example that the village young men, who had not hastened to enter the gate while no intruder was in the way, now dropped in quickly, and soon the couples became leavened with rustic youth to a marked extent, till at length the plainest woman in the club was no longer compelled to foot it on the masculine side of the figure. The church clock struck, when suddenly the student said that he must leave--he had been forgetting himself--he had to join his companions. As he fell out of the dance his eyes lighted on Tess Durbeyfield, whose own large orbs wore, to tell the truth, the faintest aspect of reproach that he had not chosen her. He, too, was sorry then that, owing to her backwardness, he had not observed her; and with that in his mind he left the pasture. On account of his long delay he started in a flying-run down the lane westward, and had soon passed the hollow and mounted the next rise. He had not yet overtaken his brothers, but he paused to get breath, and looked back. He could see the white figures of the girls in the green enclosure whirling about as they had whirled when he was among them. They seemed to have quite forgotten him already. All of them, except, perhaps, one. This white shape stood apart by the hedge alone. From her position he knew it to be the pretty maiden with whom he had not danced. Trifling as the matter was, he yet instinctively felt that she was hurt by his oversight. He wished that he had asked her; he wished that he had inquired her name. She was so modest, so expressive, she had looked so soft in her thin white gown that he felt he had acted stupidly. However, it could not be helped, and turning, and bending himself to a rapid walk, he dismissed the subject from his mind.

Chapter II

https://web.archive.org/web/20210213065711/https://www.novelguide.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summaries/phase1-chapter1-11

Meanwhile, young Tess Durbeyfield is taking part in a traditional parade with other village women. Dressed in white they walk to the village green to dance. Her father's carriage passes and when the women jeer Tess feels humiliated. While they dance, three young men arrive. The two older brothers continue on their ramble through the Vale of Blackmoor but the younger, named Angel Clare, stops. He chooses a dancing partner but has to leave soon, but not before seeing Tess, who is somewhat offended that he didn't choose her. As he runs off he regrets not asking her to dance

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/44747-chapters/17.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_16_part_0.txt

The Red and the Black.part 1.chapter 17

part 1, chapter 17

{"name": "Part 1, Chapter 17", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-1-chapter-17", "summary": "One evening, Julien hangs out alone with Madame de Renal and watches the sunset. He thinks out loud about how poor his upbringing was. Madame frowns at this because she doesn't like to be reminded that she's sleeping with a peasant. Julien begins to ask Madame how things work in the upper class world. The more he learns, the more he realizes how ignorant he is of high society. He especially learns about local politics and how certain men get put in certain positions of authority. Madame is confident that some day, Julien will become a great man.", "analysis": ""}

CHAPTER XVII THE FIRST DEPUTY Oh, how this spring of love resembleth The uncertain glory of an April day, Which now shows all the beauty of the sun, And by and by a cloud takes all away. _Two Gentlemen of Verona._ One evening when the sun was setting, and he was sitting near his love, at the bottom of the orchard, far from all intruders, he meditated deeply. "Will such sweet moments" he said to himself "last for ever?" His soul was engrossed in the difficulty of deciding on a calling. He lamented that great attack of unhappiness which comes at the end of childhood and spoils the first years of youth in those who are not rich. "Ah!" he exclaimed, "was not Napoleon the heaven-sent saviour for young Frenchmen? Who is to replace him? What will those unfortunate youths do without him, who, even though they are richer than I am, have only just the few crowns necessary to procure an education for themselves, but have not at the age of twenty enough money to buy a man and advance themselves in their career." "Whatever one does," he added, with a deep sigh, "this fatal memory will always prevent our being happy." He suddenly saw Madame de Renal frown. She assumed a cold and disdainful air. She thought his way of looking at things typical of a servant. Brought up as she was with the idea that she was very rich, she took it for granted that Julien was so also. She loved him a thousand times more than life and set no store by money. Julien was far from guessing these ideas, but that frown brought him back to earth. He had sufficient presence of mind to manipulate his phrases, and to give the noble lady who was sitting so near him on the grass seat to understand that the words he had just repeated had been heard by him during his journey to his friend the wood merchant. It was the logic of infidels. "Well, have nothing to do with those people," said Madame de Renal, still keeping a little of that icy air which had suddenly succeeded an expression of the warmest tenderness. This frown, or rather his remorse for his own imprudence, was the first check to the illusion which was transporting Julien. He said to himself, "She is good and sweet, she has a great fancy for me, but she has been brought up in the enemy's camp. They must be particularly afraid of that class of men of spirit who, after a good education, have not enough money to take up a career. What would become of those nobles if we had an opportunity of fighting them with equal arms. Suppose me, for example, mayor of Verrieres, and as well meaning and honest as M. de Renal is at bottom. What short shrift I should make of the vicaire, M. Valenod and all their jobberies! How justice would triumph in Verrieres. It is not their talents which would stop me. They are always fumbling about." That day Julien's happiness almost became permanent. Our hero lacked the power of daring to be sincere. He ought to have had the courage to have given battle, and on the spot; Madame de Renal had been astonished by Julien's phrase, because the men in her circle kept on repeating that the return of Robespierre was essentially possible by reason of those over-educated young persons of the lower classes. Madame de Renal's coldness lasted a longish time, and struck Julien as marked. The reason was that the fear that she had said something in some way or other disagreeable to him, succeeded her annoyance for his own breach of taste. This unhappiness was vividly reflected in those features which looked so pure and so naive when she was happy and away from intruders. Julien no longer dared to surrender himself to his dreams. Growing calmer and less infatuated, he considered that it was imprudent to go and see Madame de Renal in her room. It was better for her to come to him. If a servant noticed her going about the house, a dozen different excuses could explain it. But this arrangement had also its inconveniences. Julien had received from Fouque some books, which he, as a theology student would never have dared to ask for in a bookshop. He only dared to open them at night. He would often have found it much more convenient not to be interrupted by a visit, the very waiting for which had even on the evening before the little scene in the orchard completely destroyed his mood for reading. He had Madame de Renal to thank for understanding books in quite a new way. He had dared to question her on a number of little things, the ignorance of which cuts quite short the intellectual progress of any young man born out of society, however much natural genius one may choose to ascribe to him. This education given through sheer love by a woman who was extremely ignorant, was a piece of luck. Julien managed to get a clear insight into society such as it is to-day. His mind was not bewildered by the narration of what it had been once, two thousand years ago, or even sixty years ago, in the time of Voltaire and Louis XV. The scales fell from his eyes to his inexpressible joy, and he understood at last what was going on in Verrieres. In the first place there were the very complicated intrigues which had been woven for the last two years around the prefect of Besancon. They were backed up by letters from Paris, written by the cream of the aristocracy. The scheme was to make M. de Moirod (he was the most devout man in the district) the first and not the second deputy of the mayor of Verrieres. He had for a competitor a very rich manufacturer whom it was essential to push back into the place of second deputy. Julien understood at last the innuendoes which he had surprised, when the high society of the locality used to come and dine at M. de Renal's. This privileged society was deeply concerned with the choice of a first deputy, while the rest of the town, and above all, the Liberals, did not even suspect its possibility. The factor which made the matter important was that, as everybody knows, the east side of the main street of Verrieres has to be put more than nine feet back since that street has become a royal route. Now if M. de Moirod, who had three houses liable to have their frontage put back, succeeded in becoming first deputy and consequently mayor in the event of M. de Renal being elected to the chamber, he would shut his eyes, and it would be possible to make little imperceptible repairs in the houses projecting on to the public road, as the result of which they would last a hundred years. In spite of the great piety and proved integrity of M. de Moirod, everyone was certain that he would prove amenable, because he had a great many children. Among the houses liable to have their frontage put back nine belonged to the cream of Verrieres society. In Julien's eyes this intrigue was much more important than the history of the battle of Fontenoy, whose name he now came across for the first time in one of the books which Fouque had sent him. There had been many things which had astonished Julien since the time five years ago when he had started going to the cure's in the evening. But discretion and humility of spirit being the primary qualities of a theological student, it had always been impossible for him to put questions. One day Madame de Renal was giving an order to her husband's valet who was Julien's enemy. "But, Madame, to-day is the last Friday in the month," the man answered in a rather strange manner. "Go," said Madame de Renal. "Well," said Julien, "I suppose he's going to go to that corn shop which was once a church, and has recently been restored to religion, but what is he going to do there? That's one of the mysteries which I have never been able to fathom." "It's a very literary institution, but a very curious one," answered Madame de Renal. "Women are not admitted to it. All I know is, that everybody uses the second person singular. This servant, for instance, will go and meet M. Valenod there, and the haughty prig will not be a bit offended at hearing himself addressed by Saint-Jean in that familiar way, and will answer him in the same way. If you are keen on knowing what takes place, I will ask M. de Maugiron and M. Valenod for details. We pay twenty francs for each servant, to prevent their cutting our throats one fine day." Time flew. The memory of his mistress's charms distracted Julien from his black ambition. The necessity of refraining from mentioning gloomy or intellectual topics since they both belonged to opposing parties, added, without his suspecting it, to the happiness which he owed her, and to the dominion which she acquired over him. On the occasions when the presence of the precocious children reduced them to speaking the language of cold reason, Julien looking at her with eyes sparkling with love, would listen with complete docility to her explanations of the world as it is. Frequently, in the middle of an account of some cunning piece of jobbery, with reference to a road or a contract, Madame de Renal's mind would suddenly wander to the very point of delirium. Julien found it necessary to scold her. She indulged when with him in the same intimate gestures which she used with her own children. The fact was that there were days when she deceived herself that she loved him like her own child. Had she not repeatedly to answer his naive questions about a thousand simple things that a well-born child of fifteen knows quite well? An instant afterwards she would admire him like her master. His genius would even go so far as to frighten her. She thought she should see more clearly every day the future great man in this young abbe. She saw him Pope; she saw him first minister like Richelieu. "Shall I live long enough to see you in your glory?" she said to Julien. "There is room for a great man; church and state have need of one."

Part 1, Chapter 17

https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-1-chapter-17

One evening, Julien hangs out alone with Madame de Renal and watches the sunset. He thinks out loud about how poor his upbringing was. Madame frowns at this because she doesn't like to be reminded that she's sleeping with a peasant. Julien begins to ask Madame how things work in the upper class world. The more he learns, the more he realizes how ignorant he is of high society. He especially learns about local politics and how certain men get put in certain positions of authority. Madame is confident that some day, Julien will become a great man.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/44747-chapters/57.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_56_part_0.txt

The Red and the Black.part 2.chapter 27

part 2, chapter 27

{"name": "Part 2, Chapter 27", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-2-chapter-27", "summary": "Weeks go by and Julien keeps sending Madame Fervaques all the letters Prince Korasoff gave him. He's not sure if his plan is working, but he sticks with it. One of Julien's enemies, Monsieur Tanbeau, is jealous of the success he's clearly having with Madame Fervaques. He assumes that Julien is angling for a promotion in the church, which Madame has the power to grant him. But either way, Tanbeau half-hopes that Julien will be promoted so he'll leave the de La Mole house.", "analysis": ""}

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.

Part 2, Chapter 27

https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-2-chapter-27

Weeks go by and Julien keeps sending Madame Fervaques all the letters Prince Korasoff gave him. He's not sure if his plan is working, but he sticks with it. One of Julien's enemies, Monsieur Tanbeau, is jealous of the success he's clearly having with Madame Fervaques. He assumes that Julien is angling for a promotion in the church, which Madame has the power to grant him. But either way, Tanbeau half-hopes that Julien will be promoted so he'll leave the de La Mole house.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/30.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Sense and Sensibility/section_20_part_0.txt

Sense and Sensibility.chapter 30

chapter 30

{"name": "Chapter 30", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101060302/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/s/sense-and-sensibility/summary-and-analysis/chapter-30", "summary": "When Mrs. Jennings returned from a drive, she sought Marianne and Elinor at once, telling them she had heard that Willoughby was to be married very soon. She was so genuinely grieved for Marianne that she showed her every possible kindness: \"Marianne was to have the best place by the fire, was to be tempted to eat by every delicacy in the house.\" Sad though she felt, Elinor could not help but be amused by their hostess' \"endeavours to cure a disappointment in love, by a variety of sweetmeat and olives, and a good fire.\" Mrs. Jennings told Elinor that Willoughby's fiancee, Miss Grey, was very rich and that her guardians \"would not be sorry to have her married.\" Elinor ventured the hope that no one would talk about Marianne's shattered romance: \"It would be unnecessary, I am sure, for you to caution Mrs. Palmer and Sir John against ever naming Mr. Willoughby, or making the slightest allusion to what has passed, before my sister.\" Mrs. Jennings assured her that nothing would be said and went on to hope that Marianne would turn to Colonel Brandon: \"He will have her at last; aye, that he will.\" Later, Colonel Brandon called. He told Elinor that he had overheard two ladies talking in a shop. One of them was Mrs. Ellison, Miss Grey's guardian. She told her friend that \"everything was now finally settled.\" Miss Grey was to marry Mr. Willoughby, and \"as soon as the ceremony was over, they were to go to Coombe Magna, his seat in Somersetshire.\"", "analysis": "Here we get more examples of Mrs. Jennings' warm, lovable nature. Although often tactless and crude, she is genuinely kind and generous to Elinor and Marianne and is sincerely upset by Marianne's unhappiness. In this chapter, her efforts to mend Marianne's broken heart with sweetmeat, olives, and wine cannot help but amuse Elinor, although they also touch her, as they do the reader. Mrs. Jennings, who likes nothing better than a romance and is of a warm and happy disposition, immediately begins to see a silver lining in the clouds. She eagerly reminds Elinor that \"'tis a true saying about an ill-wind\" and expects that Colonel Brandon will now be more favorably received by Marianne."}

Mrs. Jennings came immediately to their room on her return, and without waiting to have her request of admittance answered, opened the door and walked in with a look of real concern. "How do you do my dear?"--said she in a voice of great compassion to Marianne, who turned away her face without attempting to answer. "How is she, Miss Dashwood?--Poor thing! she looks very bad.-- No wonder. Ay, it is but too true. He is to be married very soon--a good-for-nothing fellow! I have no patience with him. Mrs. Taylor told me of it half an hour ago, and she was told it by a particular friend of Miss Grey herself, else I am sure I should not have believed it; and I was almost ready to sink as it was. Well, said I, all I can say is, that if this be true, he has used a young lady of my acquaintance abominably ill, and I wish with all my soul his wife may plague his heart out. And so I shall always say, my dear, you may depend on it. I have no notion of men's going on in this way; and if ever I meet him again, I will give him such a dressing as he has not had this many a day. But there is one comfort, my dear Miss Marianne; he is not the only young man in the world worth having; and with your pretty face you will never want admirers. Well, poor thing! I won't disturb her any longer, for she had better have her cry out at once and have done with. The Parrys and Sandersons luckily are coming tonight you know, and that will amuse her." She then went away, walking on tiptoe out of the room, as if she supposed her young friend's affliction could be increased by noise. Marianne, to the surprise of her sister, determined on dining with them. Elinor even advised her against it. But "no, she would go down; she could bear it very well, and the bustle about her would be less." Elinor, pleased to have her governed for a moment by such a motive, though believing it hardly possible that she could sit out the dinner, said no more; and adjusting her dress for her as well as she could, while Marianne still remained on the bed, was ready to assist her into the dining room as soon as they were summoned to it. When there, though looking most wretchedly, she ate more and was calmer than her sister had expected. Had she tried to speak, or had she been conscious of half Mrs. Jennings's well-meant but ill-judged attentions to her, this calmness could not have been maintained; but not a syllable escaped her lips; and the abstraction of her thoughts preserved her in ignorance of every thing that was passing before her. Elinor, who did justice to Mrs. Jennings's kindness, though its effusions were often distressing, and sometimes almost ridiculous, made her those acknowledgments, and returned her those civilities, which her sister could not make or return for herself. Their good friend saw that Marianne was unhappy, and felt that every thing was due to her which might make her at all less so. She treated her therefore, with all the indulgent fondness of a parent towards a favourite child on the last day of its holidays. Marianne was to have the best place by the fire, was to be tempted to eat by every delicacy in the house, and to be amused by the relation of all the news of the day. Had not Elinor, in the sad countenance of her sister, seen a check to all mirth, she could have been entertained by Mrs. Jennings's endeavours to cure a disappointment in love, by a variety of sweetmeats and olives, and a good fire. As soon, however, as the consciousness of all this was forced by continual repetition on Marianne, she could stay no longer. With a hasty exclamation of Misery, and a sign to her sister not to follow her, she directly got up and hurried out of the room. "Poor soul!" cried Mrs. Jennings, as soon as she was gone, "how it grieves me to see her! And I declare if she is not gone away without finishing her wine! And the dried cherries too! Lord! nothing seems to do her any good. I am sure if I knew of any thing she would like, I would send all over the town for it. Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such things!--" "The lady then--Miss Grey I think you called her--is very rich?" "Fifty thousand pounds, my dear. Did you ever see her? a smart, stylish girl they say, but not handsome. I remember her aunt very well, Biddy Henshawe; she married a very wealthy man. But the family are all rich together. Fifty thousand pounds! and by all accounts, it won't come before it's wanted; for they say he is all to pieces. No wonder! dashing about with his curricle and hunters! Well, it don't signify talking; but when a young man, be who he will, comes and makes love to a pretty girl, and promises marriage, he has no business to fly off from his word only because he grows poor, and a richer girl is ready to have him. Why don't he, in such a case, sell his horses, let his house, turn off his servants, and make a thorough reform at once? I warrant you, Miss Marianne would have been ready to wait till matters came round. But that won't do now-a-days; nothing in the way of pleasure can ever be given up by the young men of this age." "Do you know what kind of a girl Miss Grey is? Is she said to be amiable?" "I never heard any harm of her; indeed I hardly ever heard her mentioned; except that Mrs. Taylor did say this morning, that one day Miss Walker hinted to her, that she believed Mr. and Mrs. Ellison would not be sorry to have Miss Grey married, for she and Mrs. Ellison could never agree."-- "And who are the Ellisons?" "Her guardians, my dear. But now she is of age and may choose for herself; and a pretty choice she has made!--What now," after pausing a moment--"your poor sister is gone to her own room, I suppose, to moan by herself. Is there nothing one can get to comfort her? Poor dear, it seems quite cruel to let her be alone. Well, by-and-by we shall have a few friends, and that will amuse her a little. What shall we play at? She hates whist I know; but is there no round game she cares for?" "Dear ma'am, this kindness is quite unnecessary. Marianne, I dare say, will not leave her room again this evening. I shall persuade her if I can to go early to bed, for I am sure she wants rest." "Aye, I believe that will be best for her. Let her name her own supper, and go to bed. Lord! no wonder she has been looking so bad and so cast down this last week or two, for this matter I suppose has been hanging over her head as long as that. And so the letter that came today finished it! Poor soul! I am sure if I had had a notion of it, I would not have joked her about it for all my money. But then you know, how should I guess such a thing? I made sure of its being nothing but a common love letter, and you know young people like to be laughed at about them. Lord! how concerned Sir John and my daughters will be when they hear it! If I had my senses about me I might have called in Conduit Street in my way home, and told them of it. But I shall see them tomorrow." "It would be unnecessary I am sure, for you to caution Mrs. Palmer and Sir John against ever naming Mr. Willoughby, or making the slightest allusion to what has passed, before my sister. Their own good-nature must point out to them the real cruelty of appearing to know any thing about it when she is present; and the less that may ever be said to myself on the subject, the more my feelings will be spared, as you my dear madam will easily believe." "Oh! Lord! yes, that I do indeed. It must be terrible for you to hear it talked of; and as for your sister, I am sure I would not mention a word about it to her for the world. You saw I did not all dinner time. No more would Sir John, nor my daughters, for they are all very thoughtful and considerate; especially if I give them a hint, as I certainly will. For my part, I think the less that is said about such things, the better, the sooner 'tis blown over and forgot. And what does talking ever do you know?" "In this affair it can only do harm; more so perhaps than in many cases of a similar kind, for it has been attended by circumstances which, for the sake of every one concerned in it, make it unfit to become the public conversation. I must do THIS justice to Mr. Willoughby--he has broken no positive engagement with my sister." "Law, my dear! Don't pretend to defend him. No positive engagement indeed! after taking her all over Allenham House, and fixing on the very rooms they were to live in hereafter!" Elinor, for her sister's sake, could not press the subject farther, and she hoped it was not required of her for Willoughby's; since, though Marianne might lose much, he could gain very little by the enforcement of the real truth. After a short silence on both sides, Mrs. Jennings, with all her natural hilarity, burst forth again. "Well, my dear, 'tis a true saying about an ill-wind, for it will be all the better for Colonel Brandon. He will have her at last; aye, that he will. Mind me, now, if they an't married by Mid-summer. Lord! how he'll chuckle over this news! I hope he will come tonight. It will be all to one a better match for your sister. Two thousand a year without debt or drawback--except the little love-child, indeed; aye, I had forgot her; but she may be 'prenticed out at a small cost, and then what does it signify? Delaford is a nice place, I can tell you; exactly what I call a nice old fashioned place, full of comforts and conveniences; quite shut in with great garden walls that are covered with the best fruit-trees in the country; and such a mulberry tree in one corner! Lord! how Charlotte and I did stuff the only time we were there! Then, there is a dove-cote, some delightful stew-ponds, and a very pretty canal; and every thing, in short, that one could wish for; and, moreover, it is close to the church, and only a quarter of a mile from the turnpike-road, so 'tis never dull, for if you only go and sit up in an old yew arbour behind the house, you may see all the carriages that pass along. Oh! 'tis a nice place! A butcher hard by in the village, and the parsonage-house within a stone's throw. To my fancy, a thousand times prettier than Barton Park, where they are forced to send three miles for their meat, and have not a neighbour nearer than your mother. Well, I shall spirit up the Colonel as soon as I can. One shoulder of mutton, you know, drives another down. If we CAN but put Willoughby out of her head!" "Ay, if we can do THAT, Ma'am," said Elinor, "we shall do very well with or without Colonel Brandon." And then rising, she went away to join Marianne, whom she found, as she expected, in her own room, leaning, in silent misery, over the small remains of a fire, which, till Elinor's entrance, had been her only light. "You had better leave me," was all the notice that her sister received from her. "I will leave you," said Elinor, "if you will go to bed." But this, from the momentary perverseness of impatient suffering, she at first refused to do. Her sister's earnest, though gentle persuasion, however, soon softened her to compliance, and Elinor saw her lay her aching head on the pillow, and as she hoped, in a way to get some quiet rest before she left her. In the drawing-room, whither she then repaired, she was soon joined by Mrs. Jennings, with a wine-glass, full of something, in her hand. "My dear," said she, entering, "I have just recollected that I have some of the finest old Constantia wine in the house that ever was tasted, so I have brought a glass of it for your sister. My poor husband! how fond he was of it! Whenever he had a touch of his old colicky gout, he said it did him more good than any thing else in the world. Do take it to your sister." "Dear Ma'am," replied Elinor, smiling at the difference of the complaints for which it was recommended, "how good you are! But I have just left Marianne in bed, and, I hope, almost asleep; and as I think nothing will be of so much service to her as rest, if you will give me leave, I will drink the wine myself." Mrs. Jennings, though regretting that she had not been five minutes earlier, was satisfied with the compromise; and Elinor, as she swallowed the chief of it, reflected, that though its effects on a colicky gout were, at present, of little importance to her, its healing powers, on a disappointed heart might be as reasonably tried on herself as on her sister. Colonel Brandon came in while the party were at tea, and by his manner of looking round the room for Marianne, Elinor immediately fancied that he neither expected nor wished to see her there, and, in short, that he was already aware of what occasioned her absence. Mrs. Jennings was not struck by the same thought; for soon after his entrance, she walked across the room to the tea-table where Elinor presided, and whispered-- "The Colonel looks as grave as ever you see. He knows nothing of it; do tell him, my dear." He shortly afterwards drew a chair close to hers, and, with a look which perfectly assured her of his good information, inquired after her sister. "Marianne is not well," said she. "She has been indisposed all day, and we have persuaded her to go to bed." "Perhaps, then," he hesitatingly replied, "what I heard this morning may be--there may be more truth in it than I could believe possible at first." "What did you hear?" "That a gentleman, whom I had reason to think--in short, that a man, whom I KNEW to be engaged--but how shall I tell you? If you know it already, as surely you must, I may be spared." "You mean," answered Elinor, with forced calmness, "Mr. Willoughby's marriage with Miss Grey. Yes, we DO know it all. This seems to have been a day of general elucidation, for this very morning first unfolded it to us. Mr. Willoughby is unfathomable! Where did you hear it?" "In a stationer's shop in Pall Mall, where I had business. Two ladies were waiting for their carriage, and one of them was giving the other an account of the intended match, in a voice so little attempting concealment, that it was impossible for me not to hear all. The name of Willoughby, John Willoughby, frequently repeated, first caught my attention; and what followed was a positive assertion that every thing was now finally settled respecting his marriage with Miss Grey--it was no longer to be a secret--it would take place even within a few weeks, with many particulars of preparations and other matters. One thing, especially, I remember, because it served to identify the man still more:--as soon as the ceremony was over, they were to go to Combe Magna, his seat in Somersetshire. My astonishment!--but it would be impossible to describe what I felt. The communicative lady I learnt, on inquiry, for I stayed in the shop till they were gone, was a Mrs. Ellison, and that, as I have been since informed, is the name of Miss Grey's guardian." "It is. But have you likewise heard that Miss Grey has fifty thousand pounds? In that, if in any thing, we may find an explanation." "It may be so; but Willoughby is capable--at least I think"--he stopped a moment; then added in a voice which seemed to distrust itself, "And your sister--how did she--" "Her sufferings have been very severe. I have only to hope that they may be proportionately short. It has been, it is a most cruel affliction. Till yesterday, I believe, she never doubted his regard; and even now, perhaps--but I am almost convinced that he never was really attached to her. He has been very deceitful! and, in some points, there seems a hardness of heart about him." "Ah!" said Colonel Brandon, "there is, indeed! But your sister does not--I think you said so--she does not consider quite as you do?" "You know her disposition, and may believe how eagerly she would still justify him if she could." He made no answer; and soon afterwards, by the removal of the tea-things, and the arrangement of the card parties, the subject was necessarily dropped. Mrs. Jennings, who had watched them with pleasure while they were talking, and who expected to see the effect of Miss Dashwood's communication, in such an instantaneous gaiety on Colonel Brandon's side, as might have become a man in the bloom of youth, of hope and happiness, saw him, with amazement, remain the whole evening more serious and thoughtful than usual.

Chapter 30

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101060302/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/s/sense-and-sensibility/summary-and-analysis/chapter-30

When Mrs. Jennings returned from a drive, she sought Marianne and Elinor at once, telling them she had heard that Willoughby was to be married very soon. She was so genuinely grieved for Marianne that she showed her every possible kindness: "Marianne was to have the best place by the fire, was to be tempted to eat by every delicacy in the house." Sad though she felt, Elinor could not help but be amused by their hostess' "endeavours to cure a disappointment in love, by a variety of sweetmeat and olives, and a good fire." Mrs. Jennings told Elinor that Willoughby's fiancee, Miss Grey, was very rich and that her guardians "would not be sorry to have her married." Elinor ventured the hope that no one would talk about Marianne's shattered romance: "It would be unnecessary, I am sure, for you to caution Mrs. Palmer and Sir John against ever naming Mr. Willoughby, or making the slightest allusion to what has passed, before my sister." Mrs. Jennings assured her that nothing would be said and went on to hope that Marianne would turn to Colonel Brandon: "He will have her at last; aye, that he will." Later, Colonel Brandon called. He told Elinor that he had overheard two ladies talking in a shop. One of them was Mrs. Ellison, Miss Grey's guardian. She told her friend that "everything was now finally settled." Miss Grey was to marry Mr. Willoughby, and "as soon as the ceremony was over, they were to go to Coombe Magna, his seat in Somersetshire."

Here we get more examples of Mrs. Jennings' warm, lovable nature. Although often tactless and crude, she is genuinely kind and generous to Elinor and Marianne and is sincerely upset by Marianne's unhappiness. In this chapter, her efforts to mend Marianne's broken heart with sweetmeat, olives, and wine cannot help but amuse Elinor, although they also touch her, as they do the reader. Mrs. Jennings, who likes nothing better than a romance and is of a warm and happy disposition, immediately begins to see a silver lining in the clouds. She eagerly reminds Elinor that "'tis a true saying about an ill-wind" and expects that Colonel Brandon will now be more favorably received by Marianne.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/18.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Lord Jim/section_17_part_0.txt

Lord Jim.chapter 18

chapter 18

{"name": "Chapter 18", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210118112654/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/lord-jim/summary/chapter-18", "summary": "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.", "analysis": ""}

'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."'

Chapter 18

https://web.archive.org/web/20210118112654/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/lord-jim/summary/chapter-18

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.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/04.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Sense and Sensibility/section_3_part_0.txt

Sense and Sensibility.chapter 4

chapter 4

{"name": "Chapter 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210421140324/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/sense-and-sensibility/summary/chapter-4", "summary": "Marianne takes it upon herself to investigate Elinor's real feelings for the potential addition to the family. Marianne doesn't think much of Edward's taste or aesthetic sensibilities, but Elinor steps up to defend him. It's pretty clear that Elinor really does have the hots for Edward. She admits that he's not exactly a debonair heart-throb, but she knows him so well now that she finds him handsome and lovable. Marianne tries to get Elinor to admit that the pair are engaged - her sister will only go so far as to say that she likes and admires Edward . However, given his circumstances and the demands of his family, Elinor isn't sure that their marriage would be allowed. This is big news to Marianne - she and her mother had been sure the couple was secretly engaged already. However, Marianne is still more optimistic than her cautious sister. Fanny herself intervenes behind the scenes, and talks to Mrs. Dashwood about the affair - she makes it quite clear that any such marriage would be highly undesirable to the Ferrars clan. Mrs. Dashwood is understandably offended. Fortunately, an opportunity to move away from Norland and away from Fanny arises. A distant relation, Sir John Middleton, writes to offer the Dashwood ladies a cottage on his estate, Barton Park, in far away Devonshire. Mrs. Dashwood writes to Sir John, agreeing to take the cottage.", "analysis": ""}

"What a pity it is, Elinor," said Marianne, "that Edward should have no taste for drawing." "No taste for drawing!" replied Elinor, "why should you think so? He does not draw himself, indeed, but he has great pleasure in seeing the performances of other people, and I assure you he is by no means deficient in natural taste, though he has not had opportunities of improving it. Had he ever been in the way of learning, I think he would have drawn very well. He distrusts his own judgment in such matters so much, that he is always unwilling to give his opinion on any picture; but he has an innate propriety and simplicity of taste, which in general direct him perfectly right." Marianne was afraid of offending, and said no more on the subject; but the kind of approbation which Elinor described as excited in him by the drawings of other people, was very far from that rapturous delight, which, in her opinion, could alone be called taste. Yet, though smiling within herself at the mistake, she honoured her sister for that blind partiality to Edward which produced it. "I hope, Marianne," continued Elinor, "you do not consider him as deficient in general taste. Indeed, I think I may say that you cannot, for your behaviour to him is perfectly cordial, and if THAT were your opinion, I am sure you could never be civil to him." Marianne hardly knew what to say. She would not wound the feelings of her sister on any account, and yet to say what she did not believe was impossible. At length she replied: "Do not be offended, Elinor, if my praise of him is not in every thing equal to your sense of his merits. I have not had so many opportunities of estimating the minuter propensities of his mind, his inclinations and tastes, as you have; but I have the highest opinion in the world of his goodness and sense. I think him every thing that is worthy and amiable." "I am sure," replied Elinor, with a smile, "that his dearest friends could not be dissatisfied with such commendation as that. I do not perceive how you could express yourself more warmly." Marianne was rejoiced to find her sister so easily pleased. "Of his sense and his goodness," continued Elinor, "no one can, I think, be in doubt, who has seen him often enough to engage him in unreserved conversation. The excellence of his understanding and his principles can be concealed only by that shyness which too often keeps him silent. You know enough of him to do justice to his solid worth. But of his minuter propensities, as you call them you have from peculiar circumstances been kept more ignorant than myself. He and I have been at times thrown a good deal together, while you have been wholly engrossed on the most affectionate principle by my mother. I have seen a great deal of him, have studied his sentiments and heard his opinion on subjects of literature and taste; and, upon the whole, I venture to pronounce that his mind is well-informed, enjoyment of books exceedingly great, his imagination lively, his observation just and correct, and his taste delicate and pure. His abilities in every respect improve as much upon acquaintance as his manners and person. At first sight, his address is certainly not striking; and his person can hardly be called handsome, till the expression of his eyes, which are uncommonly good, and the general sweetness of his countenance, is perceived. At present, I know him so well, that I think him really handsome; or at least, almost so. What say you, Marianne?" "I shall very soon think him handsome, Elinor, if I do not now. When you tell me to love him as a brother, I shall no more see imperfection in his face, than I now do in his heart." Elinor started at this declaration, and was sorry for the warmth she had been betrayed into, in speaking of him. She felt that Edward stood very high in her opinion. She believed the regard to be mutual; but she required greater certainty of it to make Marianne's conviction of their attachment agreeable to her. She knew that what Marianne and her mother conjectured one moment, they believed the next--that with them, to wish was to hope, and to hope was to expect. She tried to explain the real state of the case to her sister. "I do not attempt to deny," said she, "that I think very highly of him--that I greatly esteem, that I like him." Marianne here burst forth with indignation-- "Esteem him! Like him! Cold-hearted Elinor! Oh! worse than cold-hearted! Ashamed of being otherwise. Use those words again, and I will leave the room this moment." Elinor could not help laughing. "Excuse me," said she; "and be assured that I meant no offence to you, by speaking, in so quiet a way, of my own feelings. Believe them to be stronger than I have declared; believe them, in short, to be such as his merit, and the suspicion--the hope of his affection for me may warrant, without imprudence or folly. But farther than this you must not believe. I am by no means assured of his regard for me. There are moments when the extent of it seems doubtful; and till his sentiments are fully known, you cannot wonder at my wishing to avoid any encouragement of my own partiality, by believing or calling it more than it is. In my heart I feel little--scarcely any doubt of his preference. But there are other points to be considered besides his inclination. He is very far from being independent. What his mother really is we cannot know; but, from Fanny's occasional mention of her conduct and opinions, we have never been disposed to think her amiable; and I am very much mistaken if Edward is not himself aware that there would be many difficulties in his way, if he were to wish to marry a woman who had not either a great fortune or high rank." Marianne was astonished to find how much the imagination of her mother and herself had outstripped the truth. "And you really are not engaged to him!" said she. "Yet it certainly soon will happen. But two advantages will proceed from this delay. I shall not lose you so soon, and Edward will have greater opportunity of improving that natural taste for your favourite pursuit which must be so indispensably necessary to your future felicity. Oh! if he should be so far stimulated by your genius as to learn to draw himself, how delightful it would be!" Elinor had given her real opinion to her sister. She could not consider her partiality for Edward in so prosperous a state as Marianne had believed it. There was, at times, a want of spirits about him which, if it did not denote indifference, spoke of something almost as unpromising. A doubt of her regard, supposing him to feel it, need not give him more than inquietude. It would not be likely to produce that dejection of mind which frequently attended him. A more reasonable cause might be found in the dependent situation which forbade the indulgence of his affection. She knew that his mother neither behaved to him so as to make his home comfortable at present, nor to give him any assurance that he might form a home for himself, without strictly attending to her views for his aggrandizement. With such a knowledge as this, it was impossible for Elinor to feel easy on the subject. She was far from depending on that result of his preference of her, which her mother and sister still considered as certain. Nay, the longer they were together the more doubtful seemed the nature of his regard; and sometimes, for a few painful minutes, she believed it to be no more than friendship. But, whatever might really be its limits, it was enough, when perceived by his sister, to make her uneasy, and at the same time, (which was still more common,) to make her uncivil. She took the first opportunity of affronting her mother-in-law on the occasion, talking to her so expressively of her brother's great expectations, of Mrs. Ferrars's resolution that both her sons should marry well, and of the danger attending any young woman who attempted to DRAW HIM IN; that Mrs. Dashwood could neither pretend to be unconscious, nor endeavor to be calm. She gave her an answer which marked her contempt, and instantly left the room, resolving that, whatever might be the inconvenience or expense of so sudden a removal, her beloved Elinor should not be exposed another week to such insinuations. In this state of her spirits, a letter was delivered to her from the post, which contained a proposal particularly well timed. It was the offer of a small house, on very easy terms, belonging to a relation of her own, a gentleman of consequence and property in Devonshire. The letter was from this gentleman himself, and written in the true spirit of friendly accommodation. He understood that she was in need of a dwelling; and though the house he now offered her was merely a cottage, he assured her that everything should be done to it which she might think necessary, if the situation pleased her. He earnestly pressed her, after giving the particulars of the house and garden, to come with her daughters to Barton Park, the place of his own residence, from whence she might judge, herself, whether Barton Cottage, for the houses were in the same parish, could, by any alteration, be made comfortable to her. He seemed really anxious to accommodate them and the whole of his letter was written in so friendly a style as could not fail of giving pleasure to his cousin; more especially at a moment when she was suffering under the cold and unfeeling behaviour of her nearer connections. She needed no time for deliberation or inquiry. Her resolution was formed as she read. The situation of Barton, in a county so far distant from Sussex as Devonshire, which, but a few hours before, would have been a sufficient objection to outweigh every possible advantage belonging to the place, was now its first recommendation. To quit the neighbourhood of Norland was no longer an evil; it was an object of desire; it was a blessing, in comparison of the misery of continuing her daughter-in-law's guest; and to remove for ever from that beloved place would be less painful than to inhabit or visit it while such a woman was its mistress. She instantly wrote Sir John Middleton her acknowledgment of his kindness, and her acceptance of his proposal; and then hastened to shew both letters to her daughters, that she might be secure of their approbation before her answer were sent. Elinor had always thought it would be more prudent for them to settle at some distance from Norland, than immediately amongst their present acquaintance. On THAT head, therefore, it was not for her to oppose her mother's intention of removing into Devonshire. The house, too, as described by Sir John, was on so simple a scale, and the rent so uncommonly moderate, as to leave her no right of objection on either point; and, therefore, though it was not a plan which brought any charm to her fancy, though it was a removal from the vicinity of Norland beyond her wishes, she made no attempt to dissuade her mother from sending a letter of acquiescence.

Chapter 4

https://web.archive.org/web/20210421140324/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/sense-and-sensibility/summary/chapter-4

Marianne takes it upon herself to investigate Elinor's real feelings for the potential addition to the family. Marianne doesn't think much of Edward's taste or aesthetic sensibilities, but Elinor steps up to defend him. It's pretty clear that Elinor really does have the hots for Edward. She admits that he's not exactly a debonair heart-throb, but she knows him so well now that she finds him handsome and lovable. Marianne tries to get Elinor to admit that the pair are engaged - her sister will only go so far as to say that she likes and admires Edward . However, given his circumstances and the demands of his family, Elinor isn't sure that their marriage would be allowed. This is big news to Marianne - she and her mother had been sure the couple was secretly engaged already. However, Marianne is still more optimistic than her cautious sister. Fanny herself intervenes behind the scenes, and talks to Mrs. Dashwood about the affair - she makes it quite clear that any such marriage would be highly undesirable to the Ferrars clan. Mrs. Dashwood is understandably offended. Fortunately, an opportunity to move away from Norland and away from Fanny arises. A distant relation, Sir John Middleton, writes to offer the Dashwood ladies a cottage on his estate, Barton Park, in far away Devonshire. Mrs. Dashwood writes to Sir John, agreeing to take the cottage.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/16.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_15_part_0.txt

Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 16

chapter 16

{"name": "Phase III: \"The Rally,\" Chapter Sixteen", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210424232301/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary/chapter-16", "summary": "Tess is traveling from her home town of Marlott to the town where the dairy farm is. It's been just over two years since she returned from Trantridge. Tess hitches a ride part of the way with a farmer in a cart, even though she can tell he only offered her a lift because she's pretty. Tess feels a connection to the country here, because it was the country of her \"useless ancestors\" . The first thing Tess notices about this valley, as compared to the Vale of Blackmoor where she's grown up, is that the fields and farms are larger. She also notices that the air seems lighter, and that lifts her mood. The narrator reminds us that Tess is only just twenty years old, and that she's hardly finished developing , so it's no wonder that she should find joy in the physical pleasure of sunshine and a beautiful view, despite her tragic history. Tess goes down the hill into the valley, and isn't sure which way to turn. She hears someone calling to the nearby herd of cattle, and the cows turn to enter a gate. Tess follows the cows, which are going in to be milked. The cows that kick and move around while being milked are put in stalls in the barn, while the better behaved ones wait in rows in the middle of the yard.", "analysis": ""}

On a thyme-scented, bird-hatching morning in May, between two and three years after the return from Trantridge--silent, reconstructive years for Tess Durbeyfield--she left her home for the second time. Having packed up her luggage so that it could be sent to her later, she started in a hired trap for the little town of Stourcastle, through which it was necessary to pass on her journey, now in a direction almost opposite to that of her first adventuring. On the curve of the nearest hill she looked back regretfully at Marlott and her father's house, although she had been so anxious to get away. Her kindred dwelling there would probably continue their daily lives as heretofore, with no great diminution of pleasure in their consciousness, although she would be far off, and they deprived of her smile. In a few days the children would engage in their games as merrily as ever, without the sense of any gap left by her departure. This leaving of the younger children she had decided to be for the best; were she to remain they would probably gain less good by her precepts than harm by her example. She went through Stourcastle without pausing and onward to a junction of highways, where she could await a carrier's van that ran to the south-west; for the railways which engirdled this interior tract of country had never yet struck across it. While waiting, however, there came along a farmer in his spring cart, driving approximately in the direction that she wished to pursue. Though he was a stranger to her she accepted his offer of a seat beside him, ignoring that its motive was a mere tribute to her countenance. He was going to Weatherbury, and by accompanying him thither she could walk the remainder of the distance instead of travelling in the van by way of Casterbridge. Tess did not stop at Weatherbury, after this long drive, further than to make a slight nondescript meal at noon at a cottage to which the farmer recommended her. Thence she started on foot, basket in hand, to reach the wide upland of heath dividing this district from the low-lying meads of a further valley in which the dairy stood that was the aim and end of her day's pilgrimage. Tess had never before visited this part of the country, and yet she felt akin to the landscape. Not so very far to the left of her she could discern a dark patch in the scenery, which inquiry confirmed her in supposing to be trees marking the environs of Kingsbere--in the church of which parish the bones of her ancestors--her useless ancestors--lay entombed. She had no admiration for them now; she almost hated them for the dance they had led her; not a thing of all that had been theirs did she retain but the old seal and spoon. "Pooh--I have as much of mother as father in me!" she said. "All my prettiness comes from her, and she was only a dairymaid." The journey over the intervening uplands and lowlands of Egdon, when she reached them, was a more troublesome walk than she had anticipated, the distance being actually but a few miles. It was two hours, owing to sundry wrong turnings, ere she found herself on a summit commanding the long-sought-for vale, the Valley of the Great Dairies, the valley in which milk and butter grew to rankness, and were produced more profusely, if less delicately, than at her home--the verdant plain so well watered by the river Var or Froom. It was intrinsically different from the Vale of Little Dairies, Blackmoor Vale, which, save during her disastrous sojourn at Trantridge, she had exclusively known till now. The world was drawn to a larger pattern here. The enclosures numbered fifty acres instead of ten, the farmsteads were more extended, the groups of cattle formed tribes hereabout; there only families. These myriads of cows stretching under her eyes from the far east to the far west outnumbered any she had ever seen at one glance before. The green lea was speckled as thickly with them as a canvas by Van Alsloot or Sallaert with burghers. The ripe hue of the red and dun kine absorbed the evening sunlight, which the white-coated animals returned to the eye in rays almost dazzling, even at the distant elevation on which she stood. The bird's-eye perspective before her was not so luxuriantly beautiful, perhaps, as that other one which she knew so well; yet it was more cheering. It lacked the intensely blue atmosphere of the rival vale, and its heavy soils and scents; the new air was clear, bracing, ethereal. The river itself, which nourished the grass and cows of these renowned dairies, flowed not like the streams in Blackmoor. Those were slow, silent, often turbid; flowing over beds of mud into which the incautious wader might sink and vanish unawares. The Froom waters were clear as the pure River of Life shown to the Evangelist, rapid as the shadow of a cloud, with pebbly shallows that prattled to the sky all day long. There the water-flower was the lily; the crow-foot here. Either the change in the quality of the air from heavy to light, or the sense of being amid new scenes where there were no invidious eyes upon her, sent up her spirits wonderfully. Her hopes mingled with the sunshine in an ideal photosphere which surrounded her as she bounded along against the soft south wind. She heard a pleasant voice in every breeze, and in every bird's note seemed to lurk a joy. Her face had latterly changed with changing states of mind, continually fluctuating between beauty and ordinariness, according as the thoughts were gay or grave. One day she was pink and flawless; another pale and tragical. When she was pink she was feeling less than when pale; her more perfect beauty accorded with her less elevated mood; her more intense mood with her less perfect beauty. It was her best face physically that was now set against the south wind. The irresistible, universal, automatic tendency to find sweet pleasure somewhere, which pervades all life, from the meanest to the highest, had at length mastered Tess. Being even now only a young woman of twenty, one who mentally and sentimentally had not finished growing, it was impossible that any event should have left upon her an impression that was not in time capable of transmutation. And thus her spirits, and her thankfulness, and her hopes, rose higher and higher. She tried several ballads, but found them inadequate; till, recollecting the psalter that her eyes had so often wandered over of a Sunday morning before she had eaten of the tree of knowledge, she chanted: "O ye Sun and Moon ... O ye Stars ... ye Green Things upon the Earth ... ye Fowls of the Air ... Beasts and Cattle ... Children of Men ... bless ye the Lord, praise Him and magnify Him for ever!" She suddenly stopped and murmured: "But perhaps I don't quite know the Lord as yet." And probably the half-unconscious rhapsody was a Fetishistic utterance in a Monotheistic setting; women whose chief companions are the forms and forces of outdoor Nature retain in their souls far more of the Pagan fantasy of their remote forefathers than of the systematized religion taught their race at later date. However, Tess found at least approximate expression for her feelings in the old _Benedicite_ that she had lisped from infancy; and it was enough. Such high contentment with such a slight initial performance as that of having started towards a means of independent living was a part of the Durbeyfield temperament. Tess really wished to walk uprightly, while her father did nothing of the kind; but she resembled him in being content with immediate and small achievements, and in having no mind for laborious effort towards such petty social advancement as could alone be effected by a family so heavily handicapped as the once powerful d'Urbervilles were now. There was, it might be said, the energy of her mother's unexpended family, as well as the natural energy of Tess's years, rekindled after the experience which had so overwhelmed her for the time. Let the truth be told--women do as a rule live through such humiliations, and regain their spirits, and again look about them with an interested eye. While there's life there's hope is a conviction not so entirely unknown to the "betrayed" as some amiable theorists would have us believe. Tess Durbeyfield, then, in good heart, and full of zest for life, descended the Egdon slopes lower and lower towards the dairy of her pilgrimage. The marked difference, in the final particular, between the rival vales now showed itself. The secret of Blackmoor was best discovered from the heights around; to read aright the valley before her it was necessary to descend into its midst. When Tess had accomplished this feat she found herself to be standing on a carpeted level, which stretched to the east and west as far as the eye could reach. The river had stolen from the higher tracts and brought in particles to the vale all this horizontal land; and now, exhausted, aged, and attenuated, lay serpentining along through the midst of its former spoils. Not quite sure of her direction, Tess stood still upon the hemmed expanse of verdant flatness, like a fly on a billiard-table of indefinite length, and of no more consequence to the surroundings than that fly. The sole effect of her presence upon the placid valley so far had been to excite the mind of a solitary heron, which, after descending to the ground not far from her path, stood with neck erect, looking at her. Suddenly there arose from all parts of the lowland a prolonged and repeated call--"Waow! waow! waow!" From the furthest east to the furthest west the cries spread as if by contagion, accompanied in some cases by the barking of a dog. It was not the expression of the valley's consciousness that beautiful Tess had arrived, but the ordinary announcement of milking-time--half-past four o'clock, when the dairymen set about getting in the cows. The red and white herd nearest at hand, which had been phlegmatically waiting for the call, now trooped towards the steading in the background, their great bags of milk swinging under them as they walked. Tess followed slowly in their rear, and entered the barton by the open gate through which they had entered before her. Long thatched sheds stretched round the enclosure, their slopes encrusted with vivid green moss, and their eaves supported by wooden posts rubbed to a glossy smoothness by the flanks of infinite cows and calves of bygone years, now passed to an oblivion almost inconceivable in its profundity. Between the post were ranged the milchers, each exhibiting herself at the present moment to a whimsical eye in the rear as a circle on two stalks, down the centre of which a switch moved pendulum-wise; while the sun, lowering itself behind this patient row, threw their shadows accurately inwards upon the wall. Thus it threw shadows of these obscure and homely figures every evening with as much care over each contour as if it had been the profile of a court beauty on a palace wall; copied them as diligently as it had copied Olympian shapes on marble _facades_ long ago, or the outline of Alexander, Caesar, and the Pharaohs. They were the less restful cows that were stalled. Those that would stand still of their own will were milked in the middle of the yard, where many of such better behaved ones stood waiting now--all prime milchers, such as were seldom seen out of this valley, and not always within it; nourished by the succulent feed which the water-meads supplied at this prime season of the year. Those of them that were spotted with white reflected the sunshine in dazzling brilliancy, and the polished brass knobs of their horns glittered with something of military display. Their large-veined udders hung ponderous as sandbags, the teats sticking out like the legs of a gipsy's crock; and as each animal lingered for her turn to arrive the milk oozed forth and fell in drops to the ground.

Phase III: "The Rally," Chapter Sixteen

https://web.archive.org/web/20210424232301/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary/chapter-16

Tess is traveling from her home town of Marlott to the town where the dairy farm is. It's been just over two years since she returned from Trantridge. Tess hitches a ride part of the way with a farmer in a cart, even though she can tell he only offered her a lift because she's pretty. Tess feels a connection to the country here, because it was the country of her "useless ancestors" . The first thing Tess notices about this valley, as compared to the Vale of Blackmoor where she's grown up, is that the fields and farms are larger. She also notices that the air seems lighter, and that lifts her mood. The narrator reminds us that Tess is only just twenty years old, and that she's hardly finished developing , so it's no wonder that she should find joy in the physical pleasure of sunshine and a beautiful view, despite her tragic history. Tess goes down the hill into the valley, and isn't sure which way to turn. She hears someone calling to the nearby herd of cattle, and the cows turn to enter a gate. Tess follows the cows, which are going in to be milked. The cows that kick and move around while being milked are put in stalls in the barn, while the better behaved ones wait in rows in the middle of the yard.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/107-chapters/29.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Far from the Madding Crowd/section_28_part_0.txt

Far from the Madding Crowd.chapter 29

chapter 29

{"name": "Chapter 29", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101052914/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary-and-analysis/chapter-29", "summary": "\"Bathsheba loved Troy in the way that only self-reliant women love when they abandon their self-reliance. When a strong woman recklessly throws away her strength she is worse than a weak woman who has never had any strength to throw away. One source of her inadequacy is the novelty of the occasion. She had never had practice in making the best of such a condition. Weakness is doubly weak by being new.\" Bathsheba had talked of Boldwood to Liddy, but she spoke to no one of Troy. Gabriel, however, noticed and sorrowed over this new infatuation. He decided to talk with Bathsheba, basing his appeal on her unfairness to Boldwood. Oak met Bathsheba one evening when she went for a walk. He spoke of bad characters in the neighborhood, wishing to imply that Troy was one of them. He said that in the absence of Boldwood, who would normally protect her, he thought it advisable to take on this role himself. Bathsheba assured him that no wedding with Boldwood was in prospect; she said she had given the farmer no answer. Gabriel cited Troy's unworthiness. He considered him to be a man without conscience and on a downward course in life. Bathsheba countered his arguments. Oak begged her to be discreet: \"Bathsheba, dear mistress, this I beg you to consider -- that, both to keep yourself well honoured among the workfolk, and in common generosity to an honourable man who loves you as well as I, you should be more discreet in your bearing towards this soldier.\" Again Bathsheba wanted to dismiss Oak for meddling, and again he agreed to go, but only if she were to hire a good bailiff. When she refused to do so, Gabriel refused to leave the farm. Then, \"as a woman,\" she asked him to leave her alone. Gabriel saw her meet Troy but, not wishing to eavesdrop, he left. Troy had told Bathsheba that he attended church secretly, entering by the side door. Gabriel, doubting Troy's truthfulness, checked this door; he found it overgrown with ivy and therefore impossible to enter.", "analysis": "We admire Gabriel for his honesty, fairness, and courage in confronting Bathsheba with her dalliance with Troy. Oak is almost certain that she will not heed him, but he deems it his duty to speak. We understand his point of view when his lack of faith in Troy's veracity is corroborated."}

PARTICULARS OF A TWILIGHT WALK We now see the element of folly distinctly mingling with the many varying particulars which made up the character of Bathsheba Everdene. It was almost foreign to her intrinsic nature. Introduced as lymph on the dart of Eros, it eventually permeated and coloured her whole constitution. Bathsheba, though she had too much understanding to be entirely governed by her womanliness, had too much womanliness to use her understanding to the best advantage. Perhaps in no minor point does woman astonish her helpmate more than in the strange power she possesses of believing cajoleries that she knows to be false--except, indeed, in that of being utterly sceptical on strictures that she knows to be true. Bathsheba loved Troy in the way that only self-reliant women love when they abandon their self-reliance. When a strong woman recklessly throws away her strength she is worse than a weak woman who has never had any strength to throw away. One source of her inadequacy is the novelty of the occasion. She has never had practice in making the best of such a condition. Weakness is doubly weak by being new. Bathsheba was not conscious of guile in this matter. Though in one sense a woman of the world, it was, after all, that world of daylight coteries and green carpets wherein cattle form the passing crowd and winds the busy hum; where a quiet family of rabbits or hares lives on the other side of your party-wall, where your neighbour is everybody in the tything, and where calculation is confined to market-days. Of the fabricated tastes of good fashionable society she knew but little, and of the formulated self-indulgence of bad, nothing at all. Had her utmost thoughts in this direction been distinctly worded (and by herself they never were), they would only have amounted to such a matter as that she felt her impulses to be pleasanter guides than her discretion. Her love was entire as a child's, and though warm as summer it was fresh as spring. Her culpability lay in her making no attempt to control feeling by subtle and careful inquiry into consequences. She could show others the steep and thorny way, but "reck'd not her own rede." And Troy's deformities lay deep down from a woman's vision, whilst his embellishments were upon the very surface; thus contrasting with homely Oak, whose defects were patent to the blindest, and whose virtues were as metals in a mine. The difference between love and respect was markedly shown in her conduct. Bathsheba had spoken of her interest in Boldwood with the greatest freedom to Liddy, but she had only communed with her own heart concerning Troy. All this infatuation Gabriel saw, and was troubled thereby from the time of his daily journey a-field to the time of his return, and on to the small hours of many a night. That he was not beloved had hitherto been his great sorrow; that Bathsheba was getting into the toils was now a sorrow greater than the first, and one which nearly obscured it. It was a result which paralleled the oft-quoted observation of Hippocrates concerning physical pains. That is a noble though perhaps an unpromising love which not even the fear of breeding aversion in the bosom of the one beloved can deter from combating his or her errors. Oak determined to speak to his mistress. He would base his appeal on what he considered her unfair treatment of Farmer Boldwood, now absent from home. An opportunity occurred one evening when she had gone for a short walk by a path through the neighbouring cornfields. It was dusk when Oak, who had not been far a-field that day, took the same path and met her returning, quite pensively, as he thought. The wheat was now tall, and the path was narrow; thus the way was quite a sunken groove between the embowing thicket on either side. Two persons could not walk abreast without damaging the crop, and Oak stood aside to let her pass. "Oh, is it Gabriel?" she said. "You are taking a walk too. Good-night." "I thought I would come to meet you, as it is rather late," said Oak, turning and following at her heels when she had brushed somewhat quickly by him. "Thank you, indeed, but I am not very fearful." "Oh no; but there are bad characters about." "I never meet them." Now Oak, with marvellous ingenuity, had been going to introduce the gallant sergeant through the channel of "bad characters." But all at once the scheme broke down, it suddenly occurring to him that this was rather a clumsy way, and too barefaced to begin with. He tried another preamble. "And as the man who would naturally come to meet you is away from home, too--I mean Farmer Boldwood--why, thinks I, I'll go," he said. "Ah, yes." She walked on without turning her head, and for many steps nothing further was heard from her quarter than the rustle of her dress against the heavy corn-ears. Then she resumed rather tartly-- "I don't quite understand what you meant by saying that Mr. Boldwood would naturally come to meet me." "I meant on account of the wedding which they say is likely to take place between you and him, miss. Forgive my speaking plainly." "They say what is not true." she returned quickly. "No marriage is likely to take place between us." Gabriel now put forth his unobscured opinion, for the moment had come. "Well, Miss Everdene," he said, "putting aside what people say, I never in my life saw any courting if his is not a courting of you." Bathsheba would probably have terminated the conversation there and then by flatly forbidding the subject, had not her conscious weakness of position allured her to palter and argue in endeavours to better it. "Since this subject has been mentioned," she said very emphatically, "I am glad of the opportunity of clearing up a mistake which is very common and very provoking. I didn't definitely promise Mr. Boldwood anything. I have never cared for him. I respect him, and he has urged me to marry him. But I have given him no distinct answer. As soon as he returns I shall do so; and the answer will be that I cannot think of marrying him." "People are full of mistakes, seemingly." "They are." "The other day they said you were trifling with him, and you almost proved that you were not; lately they have said that you be not, and you straightway begin to show--" "That I am, I suppose you mean." "Well, I hope they speak the truth." "They do, but wrongly applied. I don't trifle with him; but then, I have nothing to do with him." Oak was unfortunately led on to speak of Boldwood's rival in a wrong tone to her after all. "I wish you had never met that young Sergeant Troy, miss," he sighed. Bathsheba's steps became faintly spasmodic. "Why?" she asked. "He is not good enough for 'ee." "Did any one tell you to speak to me like this?" "Nobody at all." "Then it appears to me that Sergeant Troy does not concern us here," she said, intractably. "Yet I must say that Sergeant Troy is an educated man, and quite worthy of any woman. He is well born." "His being higher in learning and birth than the ruck o' soldiers is anything but a proof of his worth. It show's his course to be down'ard." "I cannot see what this has to do with our conversation. Mr. Troy's course is not by any means downward; and his superiority IS a proof of his worth!" "I believe him to have no conscience at all. And I cannot help begging you, miss, to have nothing to do with him. Listen to me this once--only this once! I don't say he's such a bad man as I have fancied--I pray to God he is not. But since we don't exactly know what he is, why not behave as if he MIGHT be bad, simply for your own safety? Don't trust him, mistress; I ask you not to trust him so." "Why, pray?" "I like soldiers, but this one I do not like," he said, sturdily. "His cleverness in his calling may have tempted him astray, and what is mirth to the neighbours is ruin to the woman. When he tries to talk to 'ee again, why not turn away with a short 'Good day'; and when you see him coming one way, turn the other. When he says anything laughable, fail to see the point and don't smile, and speak of him before those who will report your talk as 'that fantastical man,' or 'that Sergeant What's-his-name.' 'That man of a family that has come to the dogs.' Don't be unmannerly towards en, but harmless-uncivil, and so get rid of the man." No Christmas robin detained by a window-pane ever pulsed as did Bathsheba now. "I say--I say again--that it doesn't become you to talk about him. Why he should be mentioned passes me quite!" she exclaimed desperately. "I know this, th-th-that he is a thoroughly conscientious man--blunt sometimes even to rudeness--but always speaking his mind about you plain to your face!" "Oh." "He is as good as anybody in this parish! He is very particular, too, about going to church--yes, he is!" "I am afeard nobody saw him there. I never did, certainly." "The reason of that is," she said eagerly, "that he goes in privately by the old tower door, just when the service commences, and sits at the back of the gallery. He told me so." This supreme instance of Troy's goodness fell upon Gabriel ears like the thirteenth stroke of crazy clock. It was not only received with utter incredulity as regarded itself, but threw a doubt on all the assurances that had preceded it. Oak was grieved to find how entirely she trusted him. He brimmed with deep feeling as he replied in a steady voice, the steadiness of which was spoilt by the palpableness of his great effort to keep it so:-- "You know, mistress, that I love you, and shall love you always. I only mention this to bring to your mind that at any rate I would wish to do you no harm: beyond that I put it aside. I have lost in the race for money and good things, and I am not such a fool as to pretend to 'ee now I am poor, and you have got altogether above me. But Bathsheba, dear mistress, this I beg you to consider--that, both to keep yourself well honoured among the workfolk, and in common generosity to an honourable man who loves you as well as I, you should be more discreet in your bearing towards this soldier." "Don't, don't, don't!" she exclaimed, in a choking voice. "Are ye not more to me than my own affairs, and even life!" he went on. "Come, listen to me! I am six years older than you, and Mr. Boldwood is ten years older than I, and consider--I do beg of 'ee to consider before it is too late--how safe you would be in his hands!" Oak's allusion to his own love for her lessened, to some extent, her anger at his interference; but she could not really forgive him for letting his wish to marry her be eclipsed by his wish to do her good, any more than for his slighting treatment of Troy. "I wish you to go elsewhere," she commanded, a paleness of face invisible to the eye being suggested by the trembling words. "Do not remain on this farm any longer. I don't want you--I beg you to go!" "That's nonsense," said Oak, calmly. "This is the second time you have pretended to dismiss me; and what's the use o' it?" "Pretended! You shall go, sir--your lecturing I will not hear! I am mistress here." "Go, indeed--what folly will you say next? Treating me like Dick, Tom and Harry when you know that a short time ago my position was as good as yours! Upon my life, Bathsheba, it is too barefaced. You know, too, that I can't go without putting things in such a strait as you wouldn't get out of I can't tell when. Unless, indeed, you'll promise to have an understanding man as bailiff, or manager, or something. I'll go at once if you'll promise that." "I shall have no bailiff; I shall continue to be my own manager," she said decisively. "Very well, then; you should be thankful to me for biding. How would the farm go on with nobody to mind it but a woman? But mind this, I don't wish 'ee to feel you owe me anything. Not I. What I do, I do. Sometimes I say I should be as glad as a bird to leave the place--for don't suppose I'm content to be a nobody. I was made for better things. However, I don't like to see your concerns going to ruin, as they must if you keep in this mind.... I hate taking my own measure so plain, but, upon my life, your provoking ways make a man say what he wouldn't dream of at other times! I own to being rather interfering. But you know well enough how it is, and who she is that I like too well, and feel too much like a fool about to be civil to her!" It is more than probable that she privately and unconsciously respected him a little for this grim fidelity, which had been shown in his tone even more than in his words. At any rate she murmured something to the effect that he might stay if he wished. She said more distinctly, "Will you leave me alone now? I don't order it as a mistress--I ask it as a woman, and I expect you not to be so uncourteous as to refuse." "Certainly I will, Miss Everdene," said Gabriel, gently. He wondered that the request should have come at this moment, for the strife was over, and they were on a most desolate hill, far from every human habitation, and the hour was getting late. He stood still and allowed her to get far ahead of him till he could only see her form upon the sky. A distressing explanation of this anxiety to be rid of him at that point now ensued. A figure apparently rose from the earth beside her. The shape beyond all doubt was Troy's. Oak would not be even a possible listener, and at once turned back till a good two hundred yards were between the lovers and himself. Gabriel went home by way of the churchyard. In passing the tower he thought of what she had said about the sergeant's virtuous habit of entering the church unperceived at the beginning of service. Believing that the little gallery door alluded to was quite disused, he ascended the external flight of steps at the top of which it stood, and examined it. The pale lustre yet hanging in the north-western heaven was sufficient to show that a sprig of ivy had grown from the wall across the door to a length of more than a foot, delicately tying the panel to the stone jamb. It was a decisive proof that the door had not been opened at least since Troy came back to Weatherbury.

Chapter 29

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101052914/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary-and-analysis/chapter-29

"Bathsheba loved Troy in the way that only self-reliant women love when they abandon their self-reliance. When a strong woman recklessly throws away her strength she is worse than a weak woman who has never had any strength to throw away. One source of her inadequacy is the novelty of the occasion. She had never had practice in making the best of such a condition. Weakness is doubly weak by being new." Bathsheba had talked of Boldwood to Liddy, but she spoke to no one of Troy. Gabriel, however, noticed and sorrowed over this new infatuation. He decided to talk with Bathsheba, basing his appeal on her unfairness to Boldwood. Oak met Bathsheba one evening when she went for a walk. He spoke of bad characters in the neighborhood, wishing to imply that Troy was one of them. He said that in the absence of Boldwood, who would normally protect her, he thought it advisable to take on this role himself. Bathsheba assured him that no wedding with Boldwood was in prospect; she said she had given the farmer no answer. Gabriel cited Troy's unworthiness. He considered him to be a man without conscience and on a downward course in life. Bathsheba countered his arguments. Oak begged her to be discreet: "Bathsheba, dear mistress, this I beg you to consider -- that, both to keep yourself well honoured among the workfolk, and in common generosity to an honourable man who loves you as well as I, you should be more discreet in your bearing towards this soldier." Again Bathsheba wanted to dismiss Oak for meddling, and again he agreed to go, but only if she were to hire a good bailiff. When she refused to do so, Gabriel refused to leave the farm. Then, "as a woman," she asked him to leave her alone. Gabriel saw her meet Troy but, not wishing to eavesdrop, he left. Troy had told Bathsheba that he attended church secretly, entering by the side door. Gabriel, doubting Troy's truthfulness, checked this door; he found it overgrown with ivy and therefore impossible to enter.

We admire Gabriel for his honesty, fairness, and courage in confronting Bathsheba with her dalliance with Troy. Oak is almost certain that she will not heed him, but he deems it his duty to speak. We understand his point of view when his lack of faith in Troy's veracity is corroborated.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/107-chapters/63.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Far From the Madding Crowd/section_55_part_0.txt

Far From the Madding Crowd.chapter 56

chapter 56

{"name": "Chapter 56", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-56", "summary": "As the spring turns to summer, Bathsheba's bad mood slowly lifts. She still spends most of her time alone, though. She visits her husband's grave one day, and smiles at the fact that he now lies right next to his true love, Fanny Robin. The two of them even share a tombstone. Then she starts to cry uncontrollably. When she turns back, she finds that Gabriel Oak is standing behind her. She wipes her tears and asks if he's going into the church. He answers that he is indeed. Mr. Oak apologizes for bringing up a business matter, but he feels that he needs to tell her right away that he will soon leave England to live in California. Bathsheba begs him not to leave, but he says that there's no longer anything for him in Weatherbury. She awaits his departure with total dread, since now she'll barely have anyone left, especially no one as loyal as Gabriel. She also notices that in the weeks leading up to his departure, he starts to walk the other way whenever he sees her coming on a path. When she finally receives a letter saying that he is about to go, Bathsheba starts to cry bitter tears. Finally, she forgets her pride and goes to his house in the evening, even though it's not appropriate for a single woman to go to a single man's place at night. She complains one last time about how he's leaving her all alone. He simply answers that if she doesn't want him to leave, he won't. She just has to ask him to stay. Finally, Gabriel comes out and says that now that he has inherited Boldwood's farm , he thinks he's rich enough to marry Bathsheba. And after just a little more hemming and hawing, Bathsheba and Oak decide to get married. If she'd only said yes at the beginning of the book, she could have saved everyone a lot of trouble.", "analysis": ""}

BEAUTY IN LONELINESS--AFTER ALL Bathsheba revived with the spring. The utter prostration that had followed the low fever from which she had suffered diminished perceptibly when all uncertainty upon every subject had come to an end. But she remained alone now for the greater part of her time, and stayed in the house, or at furthest went into the garden. She shunned every one, even Liddy, and could be brought to make no confidences, and to ask for no sympathy. As the summer drew on she passed more of her time in the open air, and began to examine into farming matters from sheer necessity, though she never rode out or personally superintended as at former times. One Friday evening in August she walked a little way along the road and entered the village for the first time since the sombre event of the preceding Christmas. None of the old colour had as yet come to her cheek, and its absolute paleness was heightened by the jet black of her gown, till it appeared preternatural. When she reached a little shop at the other end of the place, which stood nearly opposite to the churchyard, Bathsheba heard singing inside the church, and she knew that the singers were practising. She crossed the road, opened the gate, and entered the graveyard, the high sills of the church windows effectually screening her from the eyes of those gathered within. Her stealthy walk was to the nook wherein Troy had worked at planting flowers upon Fanny Robin's grave, and she came to the marble tombstone. A motion of satisfaction enlivened her face as she read the complete inscription. First came the words of Troy himself:-- ERECTED BY FRANCIS TROY IN BELOVED MEMORY OF FANNY ROBIN, WHO DIED OCTOBER 9, 18--, AGED 20 YEARS Underneath this was now inscribed in new letters:-- IN THE SAME GRAVE LIE THE REMAINS OF THE AFORESAID FRANCIS TROY, WHO DIED DECEMBER 24TH, 18--, AGED 26 YEARS Whilst she stood and read and meditated the tones of the organ began again in the church, and she went with the same light step round to the porch and listened. The door was closed, and the choir was learning a new hymn. Bathsheba was stirred by emotions which latterly she had assumed to be altogether dead within her. The little attenuated voices of the children brought to her ear in distinct utterance the words they sang without thought or comprehension-- Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom, Lead Thou me on. Bathsheba's feeling was always to some extent dependent upon her whim, as is the case with many other women. Something big came into her throat and an uprising to her eyes--and she thought that she would allow the imminent tears to flow if they wished. They did flow and plenteously, and one fell upon the stone bench beside her. Once that she had begun to cry for she hardly knew what, she could not leave off for crowding thoughts she knew too well. She would have given anything in the world to be, as those children were, unconcerned at the meaning of their words, because too innocent to feel the necessity for any such expression. All the impassioned scenes of her brief experience seemed to revive with added emotion at that moment, and those scenes which had been without emotion during enactment had emotion then. Yet grief came to her rather as a luxury than as the scourge of former times. Owing to Bathsheba's face being buried in her hands she did not notice a form which came quietly into the porch, and on seeing her, first moved as if to retreat, then paused and regarded her. Bathsheba did not raise her head for some time, and when she looked round her face was wet, and her eyes drowned and dim. "Mr. Oak," exclaimed she, disconcerted, "how long have you been here?" "A few minutes, ma'am," said Oak, respectfully. "Are you going in?" said Bathsheba; and there came from within the church as from a prompter-- I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears, Pride ruled my will: remember not past years. "I was," said Gabriel. "I am one of the bass singers, you know. I have sung bass for several months." "Indeed: I wasn't aware of that. I'll leave you, then." Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile, sang the children. "Don't let me drive you away, mistress. I think I won't go in to-night." "Oh no--you don't drive me away." Then they stood in a state of some embarrassment, Bathsheba trying to wipe her dreadfully drenched and inflamed face without his noticing her. At length Oak said, "I've not seen you--I mean spoken to you--since ever so long, have I?" But he feared to bring distressing memories back, and interrupted himself with: "Were you going into church?" "No," she said. "I came to see the tombstone privately--to see if they had cut the inscription as I wished. Mr. Oak, you needn't mind speaking to me, if you wish to, on the matter which is in both our minds at this moment." "And have they done it as you wished?" said Oak. "Yes. Come and see it, if you have not already." So together they went and read the tomb. "Eight months ago!" Gabriel murmured when he saw the date. "It seems like yesterday to me." "And to me as if it were years ago--long years, and I had been dead between. And now I am going home, Mr. Oak." Oak walked after her. "I wanted to name a small matter to you as soon as I could," he said, with hesitation. "Merely about business, and I think I may just mention it now, if you'll allow me." "Oh yes, certainly." "It is that I may soon have to give up the management of your farm, Mrs. Troy. The fact is, I am thinking of leaving England--not yet, you know--next spring." "Leaving England!" she said, in surprise and genuine disappointment. "Why, Gabriel, what are you going to do that for?" "Well, I've thought it best," Oak stammered out. "California is the spot I've had in my mind to try." "But it is understood everywhere that you are going to take poor Mr. Boldwood's farm on your own account." "I've had the refusal o' it 'tis true; but nothing is settled yet, and I have reasons for giving up. I shall finish out my year there as manager for the trustees, but no more." "And what shall I do without you? Oh, Gabriel, I don't think you ought to go away. You've been with me so long--through bright times and dark times--such old friends as we are--that it seems unkind almost. I had fancied that if you leased the other farm as master, you might still give a helping look across at mine. And now going away!" "I would have willingly." "Yet now that I am more helpless than ever you go away!" "Yes, that's the ill fortune o' it," said Gabriel, in a distressed tone. "And it is because of that very helplessness that I feel bound to go. Good afternoon, ma'am" he concluded, in evident anxiety to get away, and at once went out of the churchyard by a path she could follow on no pretence whatever. Bathsheba went home, her mind occupied with a new trouble, which being rather harassing than deadly was calculated to do good by diverting her from the chronic gloom of her life. She was set thinking a great deal about Oak and of his wish to shun her; and there occurred to Bathsheba several incidents of her latter intercourse with him, which, trivial when singly viewed, amounted together to a perceptible disinclination for her society. It broke upon her at length as a great pain that her last old disciple was about to forsake her and flee. He who had believed in her and argued on her side when all the rest of the world was against her, had at last like the others become weary and neglectful of the old cause, and was leaving her to fight her battles alone. Three weeks went on, and more evidence of his want of interest in her was forthcoming. She noticed that instead of entering the small parlour or office where the farm accounts were kept, and waiting, or leaving a memorandum as he had hitherto done during her seclusion, Oak never came at all when she was likely to be there, only entering at unseasonable hours when her presence in that part of the house was least to be expected. Whenever he wanted directions he sent a message, or note with neither heading nor signature, to which she was obliged to reply in the same offhand style. Poor Bathsheba began to suffer now from the most torturing sting of all--a sensation that she was despised. The autumn wore away gloomily enough amid these melancholy conjectures, and Christmas-day came, completing a year of her legal widowhood, and two years and a quarter of her life alone. On examining her heart it appeared beyond measure strange that the subject of which the season might have been supposed suggestive--the event in the hall at Boldwood's--was not agitating her at all; but instead, an agonizing conviction that everybody abjured her--for what she could not tell--and that Oak was the ringleader of the recusants. Coming out of church that day she looked round in hope that Oak, whose bass voice she had heard rolling out from the gallery overhead in a most unconcerned manner, might chance to linger in her path in the old way. There he was, as usual, coming down the path behind her. But on seeing Bathsheba turn, he looked aside, and as soon as he got beyond the gate, and there was the barest excuse for a divergence, he made one, and vanished. The next morning brought the culminating stroke; she had been expecting it long. It was a formal notice by letter from him that he should not renew his engagement with her for the following Lady-day. Bathsheba actually sat and cried over this letter most bitterly. She was aggrieved and wounded that the possession of hopeless love from Gabriel, which she had grown to regard as her inalienable right for life, should have been withdrawn just at his own pleasure in this way. She was bewildered too by the prospect of having to rely on her own resources again: it seemed to herself that she never could again acquire energy sufficient to go to market, barter, and sell. Since Troy's death Oak had attended all sales and fairs for her, transacting her business at the same time with his own. What should she do now? Her life was becoming a desolation. So desolate was Bathsheba this evening, that in an absolute hunger for pity and sympathy, and miserable in that she appeared to have outlived the only true friendship she had ever owned, she put on her bonnet and cloak and went down to Oak's house just after sunset, guided on her way by the pale primrose rays of a crescent moon a few days old. A lively firelight shone from the window, but nobody was visible in the room. She tapped nervously, and then thought it doubtful if it were right for a single woman to call upon a bachelor who lived alone, although he was her manager, and she might be supposed to call on business without any real impropriety. Gabriel opened the door, and the moon shone upon his forehead. "Mr. Oak," said Bathsheba, faintly. "Yes; I am Mr. Oak," said Gabriel. "Who have I the honour--O how stupid of me, not to know you, mistress!" "I shall not be your mistress much longer, shall I Gabriel?" she said, in pathetic tones. "Well, no. I suppose--But come in, ma'am. Oh--and I'll get a light," Oak replied, with some awkwardness. "No; not on my account." "It is so seldom that I get a lady visitor that I'm afraid I haven't proper accommodation. Will you sit down, please? Here's a chair, and there's one, too. I am sorry that my chairs all have wood seats, and are rather hard, but I--was thinking of getting some new ones." Oak placed two or three for her. "They are quite easy enough for me." So down she sat, and down sat he, the fire dancing in their faces, and upon the old furniture, all a-sheenen Wi' long years o' handlen, [3] [Footnote 3: W. Barnes] that formed Oak's array of household possessions, which sent back a dancing reflection in reply. It was very odd to these two persons, who knew each other passing well, that the mere circumstance of their meeting in a new place and in a new way should make them so awkward and constrained. In the fields, or at her house, there had never been any embarrassment; but now that Oak had become the entertainer their lives seemed to be moved back again to the days when they were strangers. "You'll think it strange that I have come, but--" "Oh no; not at all." "But I thought--Gabriel, I have been uneasy in the belief that I have offended you, and that you are going away on that account. It grieved me very much and I couldn't help coming." "Offended me! As if you could do that, Bathsheba!" "Haven't I?" she asked, gladly. "But, what are you going away for else?" "I am not going to emigrate, you know; I wasn't aware that you would wish me not to when I told 'ee or I shouldn't ha' thought of doing it," he said, simply. "I have arranged for Little Weatherbury Farm and shall have it in my own hands at Lady-day. You know I've had a share in it for some time. Still, that wouldn't prevent my attending to your business as before, hadn't it been that things have been said about us." "What?" said Bathsheba, in surprise. "Things said about you and me! What are they?" "I cannot tell you." "It would be wiser if you were to, I think. You have played the part of mentor to me many times, and I don't see why you should fear to do it now." "It is nothing that you have done, this time. The top and tail o't is this--that I am sniffing about here, and waiting for poor Boldwood's farm, with a thought of getting you some day." "Getting me! What does that mean?" "Marrying of 'ee, in plain British. You asked me to tell, so you mustn't blame me." Bathsheba did not look quite so alarmed as if a cannon had been discharged by her ear, which was what Oak had expected. "Marrying me! I didn't know it was that you meant," she said, quietly. "Such a thing as that is too absurd--too soon--to think of, by far!" "Yes; of course, it is too absurd. I don't desire any such thing; I should think that was plain enough by this time. Surely, surely you be the last person in the world I think of marrying. It is too absurd, as you say." "'Too--s-s-soon' were the words I used." "I must beg your pardon for correcting you, but you said, 'too absurd,' and so do I." "I beg your pardon too!" she returned, with tears in her eyes. "'Too soon' was what I said. But it doesn't matter a bit--not at all--but I only meant, 'too soon.' Indeed, I didn't, Mr. Oak, and you must believe me!" Gabriel looked her long in the face, but the firelight being faint there was not much to be seen. "Bathsheba," he said, tenderly and in surprise, and coming closer: "if I only knew one thing--whether you would allow me to love you and win you, and marry you after all--if I only knew that!" "But you never will know," she murmured. "Why?" "Because you never ask." "Oh--Oh!" said Gabriel, with a low laugh of joyousness. "My own dear--" "You ought not to have sent me that harsh letter this morning," she interrupted. "It shows you didn't care a bit about me, and were ready to desert me like all the rest of them! It was very cruel of you, considering I was the first sweetheart that you ever had, and you were the first I ever had; and I shall not forget it!" "Now, Bathsheba, was ever anybody so provoking," he said, laughing. "You know it was purely that I, as an unmarried man, carrying on a business for you as a very taking young woman, had a proper hard part to play--more particular that people knew I had a sort of feeling for 'ee; and I fancied, from the way we were mentioned together, that it might injure your good name. Nobody knows the heat and fret I have been caused by it." "And was that all?" "All." "Oh, how glad I am I came!" she exclaimed, thankfully, as she rose from her seat. "I have thought so much more of you since I fancied you did not want even to see me again. But I must be going now, or I shall be missed. Why Gabriel," she said, with a slight laugh, as they went to the door, "it seems exactly as if I had come courting you--how dreadful!" "And quite right too," said Oak. "I've danced at your skittish heels, my beautiful Bathsheba, for many a long mile, and many a long day; and it is hard to begrudge me this one visit." He accompanied her up the hill, explaining to her the details of his forthcoming tenure of the other farm. They spoke very little of their mutual feeling; pretty phrases and warm expressions being probably unnecessary between such tried friends. Theirs was that substantial affection which arises (if any arises at all) when the two who are thrown together begin first by knowing the rougher sides of each other's character, and not the best till further on, the romance growing up in the interstices of a mass of hard prosaic reality. This good-fellowship--_camaraderie_--usually occurring through similarity of pursuits, is unfortunately seldom superadded to love between the sexes, because men and women associate, not in their labours, but in their pleasures merely. Where, however, happy circumstance permits its development, the compounded feeling proves itself to be the only love which is strong as death--that love which many waters cannot quench, nor the floods drown, beside which the passion usually called by the name is evanescent as steam.

Chapter 56

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-56

As the spring turns to summer, Bathsheba's bad mood slowly lifts. She still spends most of her time alone, though. She visits her husband's grave one day, and smiles at the fact that he now lies right next to his true love, Fanny Robin. The two of them even share a tombstone. Then she starts to cry uncontrollably. When she turns back, she finds that Gabriel Oak is standing behind her. She wipes her tears and asks if he's going into the church. He answers that he is indeed. Mr. Oak apologizes for bringing up a business matter, but he feels that he needs to tell her right away that he will soon leave England to live in California. Bathsheba begs him not to leave, but he says that there's no longer anything for him in Weatherbury. She awaits his departure with total dread, since now she'll barely have anyone left, especially no one as loyal as Gabriel. She also notices that in the weeks leading up to his departure, he starts to walk the other way whenever he sees her coming on a path. When she finally receives a letter saying that he is about to go, Bathsheba starts to cry bitter tears. Finally, she forgets her pride and goes to his house in the evening, even though it's not appropriate for a single woman to go to a single man's place at night. She complains one last time about how he's leaving her all alone. He simply answers that if she doesn't want him to leave, he won't. She just has to ask him to stay. Finally, Gabriel comes out and says that now that he has inherited Boldwood's farm , he thinks he's rich enough to marry Bathsheba. And after just a little more hemming and hawing, Bathsheba and Oak decide to get married. If she'd only said yes at the beginning of the book, she could have saved everyone a lot of trouble.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/44747-chapters/53.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_52_part_0.txt

The Red and the Black.part 2.chapter 23

part 2, chapter 23

{"name": "Part 2, Chapter 23", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-2-chapter-23", "summary": "Julien wants to get on with his secret mission, but the men at the meeting just keep talking about the future of France. Every single one of them seems to have a different vision for what France should be like. When Julien and the Marquis de La Mole leave the meeting at three a.m., the marquis is embarrassed by how foolish some of the \"great\" men of France sounded at the meeting. He makes Julien promise never to breathe a word about the meeting to anyone. The next day, Julien is given a fake passport and pushed into a carriage. Julien gets stopped quickly on his trip, since there are apparently no horses available at his next stop. Julien thinks that something about the situation doesn't smell right. Julien meets up with an Italian singer who tells him that the whole horse situation is bogus. The man from their inn sent his horses across town to make it look like he doesn't have any. It's clear that someone knows about Julien. Julien is wakened from his sleep that night by two men rummaging through his room. They're looking for a letter, but little do they know that what they're looking for exists only inside Julien's head. Julien grips his pistols and wants to kill them, but just waits until they leave. Julien continues on his journey and meets up with the Duke whom he's supposed to deliver the \"letter\" in his head to. After the duke listens to his message, he tells Julien to take the next train out of town and to return on the twenty-second of the month and meet the duke in a special cafe.", "analysis": ""}

CHAPTER LIII THE CLERGY, THE FORESTS, LIBERTY The first law of every being, is to preserve itself and live. You sow hemlock, and expect to see ears of corn ripen.--_Machiavelli_. The great personage continued. One could see that he knew his subject. He proceeded to expound the following great truths with a soft and tempered eloquence with which Julien was inordinately delighted:-- "1. England has not a guinea to help us with; economy and Hume are the fashion there. Even the saints will not give us any money, and M. Brougham will make fun of us. "2. The impossibility of getting the kings of Europe to embark on more than two campaigns without English gold; two campaigns will not be enough to dispose of the middle classes. "3. The necessity of forming an armed party in France. Without this, the monarchical principle in Europe will not risk even two campaigns. "The fourth point which I venture to suggest to you, as self-evident, is this: "The impossibility of forming an armed party in France without the clergy. I am bold enough to tell you this because I will prove it to you, gentlemen. You must make every sacrifice for the clergy. "Firstly, because as it is occupied with its mission by day and by night, and guided by highly capable men established far from these storms at three hundred leagues from your frontiers----" "Ah, Rome, Rome!" exclaimed the master of the house. "Yes, monsieur, Rome," replied the Cardinal haughtily. "Whatever more or less ingenious jokes may have been the fashion when you were young, I have no hesitation in saying that in 1830 it is only the clergy, under the guidance of Rome, who has the ear of the lower classes. "Fifty thousand priests repeat the same words on the day appointed by their chiefs, and the people--who after all provide soldiers--will be more touched by the voices of its priests than by all the versifying in the whole world." (This personality provoked some murmurs.) "The clergy has a genius superior to yours," went on the cardinal raising his voice. "All the progress that has been made towards this essential point of having an armed party in France has been made by us." At this juncture facts were introduced. "Who used eighty thousand rifles in Vendee?" etc., etc. "So long as the clergy is without its forests it is helpless. At the first war the minister of finance will write to his agents that there is no money to be had except for the cure. At bottom France does not believe, and she loves war. Whoever gives her war will be doubly popular, for making war is, to use a vulgar phrase, the same as starving the Jesuits; making war means delivering those monsters of pride--the men of France--from the menace of foreign intervention." The cardinal had a favourable hearing. "M. de Nerval," he said, "will have to leave the ministry, his name irritates and to no purpose." At these words everybody got up and talked at the same time. "I will be sent away again," thought Julien, but the sapient president himself had forgotten both the presence and existence of Julien. All eyes were turned upon a man whom Julien recognised. It was M. de Nerval, the prime minister, whom he had seen at M. the duc de Retz's ball. The disorder was at its height, as the papers say when they talk of the Chamber. At the end of a long quarter of an hour a little quiet was established. Then M. de Nerval got up and said in an apostolic tone and a singular voice: "I will not go so far as to say that I do not set great store on being a minister. "It has been demonstrated to me, gentlemen, that my name will double the forces of the Jacobins by making many moderates divide against us. I should therefore be willing to retire; but the ways of the Lord are only visible to a small number; but," he added, looking fixedly at the cardinal, "I have a mission. Heaven has said: 'You will either loose your head on the scaffold or you will re-establish the monarchy of France and reduce the Chambers to the condition of the parliament of Louis XV.,' and that, gentlemen, I shall do." He finished his speech, sat down, and there was a long silence. "What a good actor," thought Julien. He made his usual mistake of ascribing too much intelligence to the people. Excited by the debates of so lively an evening, and above all by the sincerity of the discussion, M. de Nerval did at this moment believe in his mission. This man had great courage, but at the same time no sense. During the silence that followed the impressive words, "I shall do it," midnight struck. Julien thought that the striking of the clock had in it a certain element of funereal majesty. He felt moved. The discussion was soon resumed with increasing energy, and above all with an incredible naivety. "These people will have me poisoned," thought Julien at times. "How can they say such things before a plebian." They were still talking when two o'clock struck. The master of the house had been sleeping for some time. M. de la Mole was obliged to ring for new candles. M. de Nerval, the minister, had left at the quarter to two, but not without having repeatedly studied Julien's face in a mirror which was at the minister's side. His departure had seemed to put everybody at their ease. While they were bringing new candles, the man in the waistcoats, whispered to his neighbour: "God knows what that man will say to the king. He may throw ridicule upon us and spoil our future." "One must own that he must possess an unusual self-assurance, not to say impudence, to put in an appearance here There were signs of it before he became a minister; but a portfolio changes everything and swamps all a man's interests; he must have felt its effect." The minister had scarcely left before the general of Buonaparte closed his eyes. He now talked of his health and his wounds, consulted his watch, and went away. "I will wager," said the man in the waistcoats, "that the general is running after the minister; he will apologise for having been here and pretend that he is our leader." "Let us now deliberate, gentlemen," said the president, after the sleepy servants had finished bringing and lighting new candles. "Let us leave off trying to persuade each other. Let us think of the contents of the note which will be read by our friends outside in forty-eight hours from now. We have heard ministers spoken of. Now that M. de Nerval has left us, we are at liberty to say 'what we do care for ministers.'" The cardinal gave a subtle smile of approval. "Nothing is easier it seems to me than summing up our position," said the young bishop of Agde, with the restrained concentrated fire of the most exalted fanaticism. He had kept silent up to this time; his eye, which Julien had noticed as being soft and calm at the beginning, had become fiery during the first hour of the discussion. His soul was now bubbling over like lava from Vesuvius. "England only made one mistake from 1806 to 1814," he said, "and that was in not taking direct and personal measures against Napoleon. As soon as that man had made dukes and chamberlains, as soon as he had re-established the throne, the mission that God had entrusted to him was finished. The only thing to do with him was to sacrifice him. The scriptures teach us in more than one place how to make an end of tyrants" (at this point there were several Latin quotations). "To-day, gentlemen, it is not a man who has to be sacrificed, it is Paris. What is the use of arming your five hundred men in each department, a hazardous and interminable enterprise? What is the good of involving France in a matter which is personal to Paris? Paris alone has done the evil, with its journals and it salons. Let the new Babylon perish. "We must bring to an end the conflict between the church and Paris. Such a catastrophe would even be in the worldly interests of the throne. Why did not Paris dare to whisper a word under Buonaparte? Ask the cannon of Saint-Roch?" Julien did not leave with M. de la Mole before three o'clock in the morning. The marquis seemed tired and ashamed. For the first time in his life in conversation with Julien, his tone was plaintive. He asked him for his word never to reveal the excesses of zeal, that was his expression, of which chance had just made him a witness. "Only mention it to our foreign friend, if he seriously insists on knowing what our young madmen are like. What does it matter to them if a state is overthrown, they will become cardinals and will take refuge in Rome. As for us, we shall be massacred by the peasants in our chateaus." The secret note into which the marquis condensed Julien's full report of twenty-six pages was not ready before a quarter to five. "I am dead tired," said the marquis, "as is quite obvious from the lack of clearness at the end of this note; I am more dissatisfied with it than with anything I ever did in my whole life. Look here, my friend," he added, "go and rest for some hours, and as I am frightened you might be kidnapped, I shall lock you up in your room." The marquis took Julien on the following day to a lonely chateau at a good distance from Paris. There were strange guests there whom Julien thought were priests. He was given a passport which was made out in a fictitious name, but indicated the real destination of his journey, which he had always pretended not to know. He got into a carriage alone. The marquis had no anxiety on the score of his memory. Julien had recited the secret note to him several times but he was very apprehensive of his being intercepted. "Above all, mind you look like a coxcomb who is simply travelling to kill time," he said affectionately to him when he was leaving the salon. "Perhaps there was more than one treacherous brother in this evening's meeting." The journey was quick and very melancholy. Julien had scarcely got out of the marquis's sight before he forgot his secret note and his mission, and only thought about Mathilde's disdain. At a village some leagues beyond Metz, the postmaster came and told him that there were no horses. It was ten o'clock in the evening. Julien was very annoyed and asked for supper. He walked in front of the door and gradually without being noticed passed into the stable-yard. He did not see any horses there. "That man looked strange though," thought Julien to himself. "He was scrutinizing me with his brutal eyes." As one sees he was beginning to be slightly sceptical of all he heard. He thought of escaping after supper, and in order to learn at any rate something about the surrounding country, he left his room to go and warm himself at the kitchen fire. He was overjoyed to find there the celebrated singer, signor Geronimo. The Neopolitan was ensconced in an armchair which he had had brought near the fire. He was groaning aloud, and was speaking more to himself than to the twenty dumbfounded German peasants who surrounded him. "Those people will be my ruin," he cried to Julien, "I have promised to sing to-morrow at Mayence. Seven sovereign princes have gone there to hear me. Let us go and take the air," he added, meaningly. When he had gone a hundred yards down the road, and it was impossible to be overheard, he said to Julien: "Do you know the real truth, the postmaster is a scoundrel. When I went out for a walk I gave twenty sous to a little ragamuffin who told me everything. There are twelve horses in the stable at the other end of the village. They want to stop some courier." "Really," said Julien innocently. Discovering the fraud was not enough; the thing was to get away, but Geronimo and his friends could not succeed in doing this. "Let us wait for daybreak," said the singer at last, "they are mistrustful of us. It is perhaps you or me whom they suspect. We will order a good breakfast to-morrow morning, we will go for a walk while they are getting it ready, we will then escape, we will hire horses, and gain the next station." "And how about your luggage?" said Julien, who thought perhaps Geronimo himself might have been sent to intercept him. They had to have supper and go to bed. Julien was still in his first sleep when he was woken up with a start by the voices of two persons who were speaking in his room with utmost freedom. He recognised the postmaster armed with a dark lantern. The light was turned on the carriage-seat which Julien had had taken up into his room. Beside the postmaster was a man who was calmly searching the open seat. Julien could see nothing except the sleeves of his coat which were black and very tight. "It's a cassock," he said to himself and he softly seized the little pistol which he had placed under his pillow. "Don't be frightened of his waking up, cure," said the postmaster, "the wine that has been served him was the stuff prepared by yourself." "I can't find any trace of papers," answered the cure. "A lot of linen and essences, pommades, and vanities. It's a young man of the world on pleasure bent. The other one who effects an Italian accent is more likely to be the emissary." The men approached Julien to search the pockets of his travelling coat. He felt very tempted to kill them for thieves. Nothing could be safer in its consequences. He was very desirous of doing so.... "I should only be a fool," he said to himself, "I should compromise my mission." "He is not a diplomatist," said the priest after searching his coat. He went away and did well to do so. "It will be a bad business for him," Julien was saying to himself, "if he touches me in my bed. He may have quite well come to stab me, and I won't put up with that." The cure turned his head, Julien half opened his eyes. He was inordinately astonished, he was the abbe Castanede. As a matter of fact, although these two persons had made a point of talking in a fairly low voice, he had thought from the first that he recognised one of the voices. Julien was seized with an inordinate desire to purge the earth of one of its most cowardly villains; "But my mission," he said to himself. The cure and his acolyte went out. A quarter of an hour afterwards Julien pretended to have just woken up. He called out and woke up the whole house. "I am poisoned," he exclaimed, "I am suffering horribly!" He wanted an excuse to go to Geronimo's help. He found him half suffocated by the laudanum that had been contained in the wine. Julien had been apprehensive of some trick of this character and had supped on some chocolate which he had brought from Paris. He could not wake Geronimo up sufficiently to induce him to leave. "If they were to give me the whole kingdom of Naples," said the singer, "I would not now give up the pleasure of sleeping." "But the seven sovereign princes?" "Let them wait." Julien left alone, and arrived at the house of the great personage without other incident. He wasted a whole morning in vainly soliciting an audience. Fortunately about four o'clock the duke wanted to take the air. Julien saw him go out on foot and he did not hesitate to ask him for alms. When at two yards' distance from the great personage he pulled out the Marquis de la Mole's watch and exhibited it ostentatiously. "_Follow me at a distance_," said the man without looking at him. At a quarter of a league's distance the duke suddenly entered a little _coffee-house_. It was in a room of this low class inn that Julien had the honour of reciting his four pages to the duke. When he had finished he was told to "_start again and go more slowly_." The prince took notes. "Reach the next posting station on foot. Leave your luggage and your carriage here. Get to Strasbourg as best you can and at half-past twelve on the twenty-second of the month (it was at present the tenth) come to this same coffee-house. Do not leave for half-an-hour. Silence!" These were the only words which Julien heard. They sufficed to inspire him with the highest admiration. "That is the way," he thought, "that real business is done; what would this great statesman say if he were to listen to the impassioned ranters heard three days ago?" Julien took two days to reach Strasbourg. He thought he would have nothing to do there. He made a great detour. "If that devil of an abbe Castanede has recognised me he is not the kind of man to loose track of me easily.... And how he would revel in making a fool of me, and causing my mission to fail." Fortunately the abbe Castanede, who was chief of the congregational police on all the northern frontier had not recognised him. And the Strasbourg Jesuits, although very zealous, never gave a thought to observing Julien, who with his cross and his blue tail-coat looked like a young military man, very much engrossed in his own personal appearance.

Part 2, Chapter 23

https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-2-chapter-23

Julien wants to get on with his secret mission, but the men at the meeting just keep talking about the future of France. Every single one of them seems to have a different vision for what France should be like. When Julien and the Marquis de La Mole leave the meeting at three a.m., the marquis is embarrassed by how foolish some of the "great" men of France sounded at the meeting. He makes Julien promise never to breathe a word about the meeting to anyone. The next day, Julien is given a fake passport and pushed into a carriage. Julien gets stopped quickly on his trip, since there are apparently no horses available at his next stop. Julien thinks that something about the situation doesn't smell right. Julien meets up with an Italian singer who tells him that the whole horse situation is bogus. The man from their inn sent his horses across town to make it look like he doesn't have any. It's clear that someone knows about Julien. Julien is wakened from his sleep that night by two men rummaging through his room. They're looking for a letter, but little do they know that what they're looking for exists only inside Julien's head. Julien grips his pistols and wants to kill them, but just waits until they leave. Julien continues on his journey and meets up with the Duke whom he's supposed to deliver the "letter" in his head to. After the duke listens to his message, he tells Julien to take the next train out of town and to return on the twenty-second of the month and meet the duke in a special cafe.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/107-chapters/09.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Far from the Madding Crowd/section_8_part_0.txt

Far from the Madding Crowd.chapter 9

chapter 9

{"name": "Chapter 9", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101052914/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary-and-analysis/chapter-9", "summary": "Bathsheba's home, which \"presented itself as a hoary building, of the early stage of Classic Renaissance,\" was once the manorial hall of a small estate. Ornate stone pilasters, finials, and other Gothic features adorned it. All the outlines were softened by a mossy growth. The entire complex of buildings was mellowed, and its new function, as a farmhouse, seemed to have turned it front to rear, reversing its focus. Within, the floors, at present uncarpeted, creaked and sagged. Bathsheba and her maid-companion, Liddy, were in one of the upper rooms, sorting the belongings of the former owner. Liddy was the old maltster's great-granddaughter, and \"her face was a prominent advertisement of the light-hearted English country girl.\" Maryann Money could be heard scrubbing, and Mrs. Coggan was busy in the kitchen. A horse tramped up the footpath, and the women were thrown into confusion when they saw that the rider was a gentleman. He knocked, and the responsibility for answering the door was delegated from one to another. Eventually Mrs. Coggan, flour-covered, opened it and announced Mr. Boldwood. Bathsheba could not see him, said Mrs. Coggan, for she was \"dusting bottles sir, and is quite a object.\" Boldwood explained that he was merely inquiring as to whether Fanny had been found. Later, the girls told Bathsheba that Boldwood was a gentleman farmer, a forty-year-old bachelor. He had befriended Fanny and had sent her to school. Then he had gotten her the position with Bathsheba's uncle. Boldwood, they agreed, was kind, but \"never was such a hopeless man for a woman!\" He had resisted all female attempts to ensnare him. Bathsheba, in a petulant mood, told Maryann that she should long since have been married off. The girl agreed: \"But what between the poor men I won't have, and the rich men who won't have me, I stand as a pelican in the wilderness!\" To Liddy's question, \"Did anybody ever want to marry you, miss?\" Bathsheba answered, \"A man wanted to once.\" But \"he wasn't quite good enough\" for her. At this point, a file of employees was seen arriving.", "analysis": "To describe the manor house, Hardy draws on the terminology of architecture, with which he is professionally conversant. He adds the mellowed tones of a painter's appreciation and creates the venerable, musty atmosphere of the estate. This is our first meeting with the gossiping female servants; they are as absorbing as their male counterparts in the previous chapter. Into this preserve comes the very masculine Boldwood. Through conversation with busybody Liddy, Bathsheba learns about him. He is fond of children , but impervious to womanly charms and wiles."}

THE HOMESTEAD--A VISITOR--HALF-CONFIDENCES By daylight, the bower of Oak's new-found mistress, Bathsheba Everdene, presented itself as a hoary building, of the early stage of Classic Renaissance as regards its architecture, and of a proportion which told at a glance that, as is so frequently the case, it had once been the memorial hall upon a small estate around it, now altogether effaced as a distinct property, and merged in the vast tract of a non-resident landlord, which comprised several such modest demesnes. Fluted pilasters, worked from the solid stone, decorated its front, and above the roof the chimneys were panelled or columnar, some coped gables with finials and like features still retaining traces of their Gothic extraction. Soft brown mosses, like faded velveteen, formed cushions upon the stone tiling, and tufts of the houseleek or sengreen sprouted from the eaves of the low surrounding buildings. A gravel walk leading from the door to the road in front was encrusted at the sides with more moss--here it was a silver-green variety, the nut-brown of the gravel being visible to the width of only a foot or two in the centre. This circumstance, and the generally sleepy air of the whole prospect here, together with the animated and contrasting state of the reverse facade, suggested to the imagination that on the adaptation of the building for farming purposes the vital principle of the house had turned round inside its body to face the other way. Reversals of this kind, strange deformities, tremendous paralyses, are often seen to be inflicted by trade upon edifices--either individual or in the aggregate as streets and towns--which were originally planned for pleasure alone. Lively voices were heard this morning in the upper rooms, the main staircase to which was of hard oak, the balusters, heavy as bed-posts, being turned and moulded in the quaint fashion of their century, the handrail as stout as a parapet-top, and the stairs themselves continually twisting round like a person trying to look over his shoulder. Going up, the floors above were found to have a very irregular surface, rising to ridges, sinking into valleys; and being just then uncarpeted, the face of the boards was seen to be eaten into innumerable vermiculations. Every window replied by a clang to the opening and shutting of every door, a tremble followed every bustling movement, and a creak accompanied a walker about the house, like a spirit, wherever he went. In the room from which the conversation proceeded Bathsheba and her servant-companion, Liddy Smallbury, were to be discovered sitting upon the floor, and sorting a complication of papers, books, bottles, and rubbish spread out thereon--remnants from the household stores of the late occupier. Liddy, the maltster's great-granddaughter, was about Bathsheba's equal in age, and her face was a prominent advertisement of the light-hearted English country girl. The beauty her features might have lacked in form was amply made up for by perfection of hue, which at this winter-time was the softened ruddiness on a surface of high rotundity that we meet with in a Terburg or a Gerard Douw; and, like the presentations of those great colourists, it was a face which kept well back from the boundary between comeliness and the ideal. Though elastic in nature she was less daring than Bathsheba, and occasionally showed some earnestness, which consisted half of genuine feeling, and half of mannerliness superadded by way of duty. Through a partly-opened door the noise of a scrubbing-brush led up to the charwoman, Maryann Money, a person who for a face had a circular disc, furrowed less by age than by long gazes of perplexity at distant objects. To think of her was to get good-humoured; to speak of her was to raise the image of a dried Normandy pippin. "Stop your scrubbing a moment," said Bathsheba through the door to her. "I hear something." Maryann suspended the brush. The tramp of a horse was apparent, approaching the front of the building. The paces slackened, turned in at the wicket, and, what was most unusual, came up the mossy path close to the door. The door was tapped with the end of a crop or stick. "What impertinence!" said Liddy, in a low voice. "To ride up the footpath like that! Why didn't he stop at the gate? Lord! 'Tis a gentleman! I see the top of his hat." "Be quiet!" said Bathsheba. The further expression of Liddy's concern was continued by aspect instead of narrative. "Why doesn't Mrs. Coggan go to the door?" Bathsheba continued. Rat-tat-tat-tat resounded more decisively from Bathsheba's oak. "Maryann, you go!" said she, fluttering under the onset of a crowd of romantic possibilities. "Oh ma'am--see, here's a mess!" The argument was unanswerable after a glance at Maryann. "Liddy--you must," said Bathsheba. Liddy held up her hands and arms, coated with dust from the rubbish they were sorting, and looked imploringly at her mistress. "There--Mrs. Coggan is going!" said Bathsheba, exhaling her relief in the form of a long breath which had lain in her bosom a minute or more. The door opened, and a deep voice said-- "Is Miss Everdene at home?" "I'll see, sir," said Mrs. Coggan, and in a minute appeared in the room. "Dear, what a thirtover place this world is!" continued Mrs. Coggan (a wholesome-looking lady who had a voice for each class of remark according to the emotion involved; who could toss a pancake or twirl a mop with the accuracy of pure mathematics, and who at this moment showed hands shaggy with fragments of dough and arms encrusted with flour). "I am never up to my elbows, Miss, in making a pudding but one of two things do happen--either my nose must needs begin tickling, and I can't live without scratching it, or somebody knocks at the door. Here's Mr. Boldwood wanting to see you, Miss Everdene." A woman's dress being a part of her countenance, and any disorder in the one being of the same nature with a malformation or wound in the other, Bathsheba said at once-- "I can't see him in this state. Whatever shall I do?" Not-at-homes were hardly naturalized in Weatherbury farmhouses, so Liddy suggested--"Say you're a fright with dust, and can't come down." "Yes--that sounds very well," said Mrs. Coggan, critically. "Say I can't see him--that will do." Mrs. Coggan went downstairs, and returned the answer as requested, adding, however, on her own responsibility, "Miss is dusting bottles, sir, and is quite a object--that's why 'tis." "Oh, very well," said the deep voice indifferently. "All I wanted to ask was, if anything had been heard of Fanny Robin?" "Nothing, sir--but we may know to-night. William Smallbury is gone to Casterbridge, where her young man lives, as is supposed, and the other men be inquiring about everywhere." The horse's tramp then recommenced and retreated, and the door closed. "Who is Mr. Boldwood?" said Bathsheba. "A gentleman-farmer at Little Weatherbury." "Married?" "No, miss." "How old is he?" "Forty, I should say--very handsome--rather stern-looking--and rich." "What a bother this dusting is! I am always in some unfortunate plight or other," Bathsheba said, complainingly. "Why should he inquire about Fanny?" "Oh, because, as she had no friends in her childhood, he took her and put her to school, and got her her place here under your uncle. He's a very kind man that way, but Lord--there!" "What?" "Never was such a hopeless man for a woman! He's been courted by sixes and sevens--all the girls, gentle and simple, for miles round, have tried him. Jane Perkins worked at him for two months like a slave, and the two Miss Taylors spent a year upon him, and he cost Farmer Ives's daughter nights of tears and twenty pounds' worth of new clothes; but Lord--the money might as well have been thrown out of the window." A little boy came up at this moment and looked in upon them. This child was one of the Coggans, who, with the Smallburys, were as common among the families of this district as the Avons and Derwents among our rivers. He always had a loosened tooth or a cut finger to show to particular friends, which he did with an air of being thereby elevated above the common herd of afflictionless humanity--to which exhibition people were expected to say "Poor child!" with a dash of congratulation as well as pity. "I've got a pen-nee!" said Master Coggan in a scanning measure. "Well--who gave it you, Teddy?" said Liddy. "Mis-terr Bold-wood! He gave it to me for opening the gate." "What did he say?" "He said, 'Where are you going, my little man?' and I said, 'To Miss Everdene's please,' and he said, 'She is a staid woman, isn't she, my little man?' and I said, 'Yes.'" "You naughty child! What did you say that for?" "'Cause he gave me the penny!" "What a pucker everything is in!" said Bathsheba, discontentedly when the child had gone. "Get away, Maryann, or go on with your scrubbing, or do something! You ought to be married by this time, and not here troubling me!" "Ay, mistress--so I did. But what between the poor men I won't have, and the rich men who won't have me, I stand as a pelican in the wilderness!" "Did anybody ever want to marry you miss?" Liddy ventured to ask when they were again alone. "Lots of 'em, I daresay?" Bathsheba paused, as if about to refuse a reply, but the temptation to say yes, since it was really in her power was irresistible by aspiring virginity, in spite of her spleen at having been published as old. "A man wanted to once," she said, in a highly experienced tone, and the image of Gabriel Oak, as the farmer, rose before her. "How nice it must seem!" said Liddy, with the fixed features of mental realization. "And you wouldn't have him?" "He wasn't quite good enough for me." "How sweet to be able to disdain, when most of us are glad to say, 'Thank you!' I seem I hear it. 'No, sir--I'm your better.' or 'Kiss my foot, sir; my face is for mouths of consequence.' And did you love him, miss?" "Oh, no. But I rather liked him." "Do you now?" "Of course not--what footsteps are those I hear?" Liddy looked from a back window into the courtyard behind, which was now getting low-toned and dim with the earliest films of night. A crooked file of men was approaching the back door. The whole string of trailing individuals advanced in the completest balance of intention, like the remarkable creatures known as Chain Salpae, which, distinctly organized in other respects, have one will common to a whole family. Some were, as usual, in snow-white smock-frocks of Russia duck, and some in whitey-brown ones of drabbet--marked on the wrists, breasts, backs, and sleeves with honeycomb-work. Two or three women in pattens brought up the rear. "The Philistines be upon us," said Liddy, making her nose white against the glass. "Oh, very well. Maryann, go down and keep them in the kitchen till I am dressed, and then show them in to me in the hall."

Chapter 9

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101052914/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary-and-analysis/chapter-9

Bathsheba's home, which "presented itself as a hoary building, of the early stage of Classic Renaissance," was once the manorial hall of a small estate. Ornate stone pilasters, finials, and other Gothic features adorned it. All the outlines were softened by a mossy growth. The entire complex of buildings was mellowed, and its new function, as a farmhouse, seemed to have turned it front to rear, reversing its focus. Within, the floors, at present uncarpeted, creaked and sagged. Bathsheba and her maid-companion, Liddy, were in one of the upper rooms, sorting the belongings of the former owner. Liddy was the old maltster's great-granddaughter, and "her face was a prominent advertisement of the light-hearted English country girl." Maryann Money could be heard scrubbing, and Mrs. Coggan was busy in the kitchen. A horse tramped up the footpath, and the women were thrown into confusion when they saw that the rider was a gentleman. He knocked, and the responsibility for answering the door was delegated from one to another. Eventually Mrs. Coggan, flour-covered, opened it and announced Mr. Boldwood. Bathsheba could not see him, said Mrs. Coggan, for she was "dusting bottles sir, and is quite a object." Boldwood explained that he was merely inquiring as to whether Fanny had been found. Later, the girls told Bathsheba that Boldwood was a gentleman farmer, a forty-year-old bachelor. He had befriended Fanny and had sent her to school. Then he had gotten her the position with Bathsheba's uncle. Boldwood, they agreed, was kind, but "never was such a hopeless man for a woman!" He had resisted all female attempts to ensnare him. Bathsheba, in a petulant mood, told Maryann that she should long since have been married off. The girl agreed: "But what between the poor men I won't have, and the rich men who won't have me, I stand as a pelican in the wilderness!" To Liddy's question, "Did anybody ever want to marry you, miss?" Bathsheba answered, "A man wanted to once." But "he wasn't quite good enough" for her. At this point, a file of employees was seen arriving.

To describe the manor house, Hardy draws on the terminology of architecture, with which he is professionally conversant. He adds the mellowed tones of a painter's appreciation and creates the venerable, musty atmosphere of the estate. This is our first meeting with the gossiping female servants; they are as absorbing as their male counterparts in the previous chapter. Into this preserve comes the very masculine Boldwood. Through conversation with busybody Liddy, Bathsheba learns about him. He is fond of children , but impervious to womanly charms and wiles.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/1232-chapters/11.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/The Prince/section_3_part_2.txt

The Prince.chapter xi

chapter xi

{"name": "Chapter XI", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210417004655/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-prince/study-guide/summary-section-4-chapters-x-xi", "summary": "\"Of Ecclesiastical States,\" primarily concerns the Papal States. Religious bodies politic are, in general, easy to hold onto; religion itself sustains them, and they hardly need to be defended or governed. Still, the Church had a hard time securing power in Italy, largely because popes tended to only live for ten years or so - not enough time to exact any lasting change. Moreover, Rome was divided by hostile factions, most prominently the Orsini and Colonna families. Today, Machiavelli notes, the papacy awes France, and was able to kick King Louis out of Italy and \"ruin the Venetians at the same time. How did this happen. It really began, Machiavelli argues, with Pope Alexander VI. Alexander strategically used his son Cesare Borgia to strengthen his own power. Admittedly, Alexander likely intended only to give his son more power; but the moves wound up strengthening the papacy, and as a result Rome emerged as more united, and less threatened by factions. Pope Julius continued Alexander's efforts. He took Bologna, crushed the Venetians, ran the French out of Italy, and kept Orsini and Colonna weak. Machiavelli concludes his chapter by mentioning the current pope, Leo. These are the reasons,\" he writes, \"why his present holiness Pope Leo has found the papacy so strong; and we may hope that as his predecessors made it great by force of arms, he by his generosity and countless other talents will make it even greater and more to be revered", "analysis": "Leo was a Medici, and Machiavelli's compliment of him is obviously half-hearted; it seems to barely disguise Machiavelli's contempt for the Church. It is not for nothing that Machiavelli is so often dubbed a \"secular\" humanist: his focus on the free will of princes, the ways in which their own characters and decisions dictate the success or failure of their reigns, implicitly rejects any notion of divine rule. But The Prince was written for a Medici, in part as a way of currying favor with the family, and Machiavelli therefore had to be sure to refer to Pope Leo only in glowing terms. And yet, when one compares his praise of the pope to his praise of other political leaders, the former pales in comparison. The \"countless other talents\" are not enumerated, and there is more emphasis on the greatness of \"predecessors\" than on that of the Pope himself. It is also intriguing that Machiavelli should follow a chapter explicitly devoted to fortifying cities and other such military matters with one on ecclesiastical states - which, he notes, find such strength in religion that they hardly need to be unified or defended by force. \"These are the only princes,\" Machiavelli notes, \"who have states that they do not defend and subjects that they do not govern; the states, though undefended, are never taken from them, and the subjects, though ungoverned, neither protest, not try to break away, nor could revolt if they had a mind to.\" Machiavelli continues with a dismissal of such states, though admittedly \"happy and safe governments,\" as undeserving of his interest: \"But since they are ruled by a heavenly providence to which human reason cannot reach, I shall say nothing of them. Instituted as they are by God, and sustained by him, it would be a rash and imprudent man who ventured to discuss them.\" Machiavelli is drawing a clear distinction between that which men can control and that which they cannot - a topic that he delves into at greater length later in The Prince. For now, there is much to be considered in his assertion that the subjects of an ecclesiastical state could not \"revolt if they had a mind to.\" Why not? On the one hand, Machiavelli implicitly accepts the Church as a purveyor of divinity; these states are indeed \"instituted\" by God, and are thus beyond analysis. On the other hand, his earlier examination of various popes' political maneuvers and the machinations at play within the Church belies such an uncritical view. There also remains the following question: does Machiavelli distance himself from the Church as a subject of analysis and critique because it is divine and therefore beyond fault, or because he is uninterested in it? The focus of so much of The Prince - and a prevalent theme throughout the Renaissance - is reason. Machiavelli continually refers to the \"prudent\" prince; he outlines the choices that face a prince, and addresses decisions as if he were speaking of medicine - even going so far as to compare pre-emptive war to a doctor treating a malady before it has time to grow and worsen. Power, for Machiavelli, can be attained purely through the faculties of the mind. Yes, armies are necessary, friends in high places can help, and luck plays a role, but it takes reason to determine what kind of army to use, to know when and when not to rely on friends, to know who to trust, and to know how to harness the vicissitudes of fortune. When Machiavelli writes that \"human reason\" cannot reach a certain state or kingdom, he therefore may be delivering a not-so-veiled insult not to religion itself, but to the state. These hints are buttressed by Machiavelli's other writings. In his famous Discorsi, for example, Machiavelli lambasts the Church's role in politics, bemoaning its decadence and writing, \"And certainly, if the Christian religion had from the beginning been maintained according to the principles of its founder, the Christian states and republics would be much more united and happy than in fact they are.\" At the same time, Machiavelli does argue that religion deserves an importance place in society. To his mind, however, the Church abuses its status, and is guilty moreover of what is to him a cardinal sin: keeping Italy divided and stalling her unification."}

It only remains now to speak of ecclesiastical principalities, touching which all difficulties are prior to getting possession, because they are acquired either by capacity or good fortune, and they can be held without either; for they are sustained by the ancient ordinances of religion, which are so all-powerful, and of such a character that the principalities may be held no matter how their princes behave and live. These princes alone have states and do not defend them; and they have subjects and do not rule them; and the states, although unguarded, are not taken from them, and the subjects, although not ruled, do not care, and they have neither the desire nor the ability to alienate themselves. Such principalities only are secure and happy. But being upheld by powers, to which the human mind cannot reach, I shall speak no more of them, because, being exalted and maintained by God, it would be the act of a presumptuous and rash man to discuss them. Nevertheless, if any one should ask of me how comes it that the Church has attained such greatness in temporal power, seeing that from Alexander backwards the Italian potentates (not only those who have been called potentates, but every baron and lord, though the smallest) have valued the temporal power very slightly--yet now a king of France trembles before it, and it has been able to drive him from Italy, and to ruin the Venetians--although this may be very manifest, it does not appear to me superfluous to recall it in some measure to memory. Before Charles, King of France, passed into Italy,(*) this country was under the dominion of the Pope, the Venetians, the King of Naples, the Duke of Milan, and the Florentines. These potentates had two principal anxieties: the one, that no foreigner should enter Italy under arms; the other, that none of themselves should seize more territory. Those about whom there was the most anxiety were the Pope and the Venetians. To restrain the Venetians the union of all the others was necessary, as it was for the defence of Ferrara; and to keep down the Pope they made use of the barons of Rome, who, being divided into two factions, Orsini and Colonnesi, had always a pretext for disorder, and, standing with arms in their hands under the eyes of the Pontiff, kept the pontificate weak and powerless. And although there might arise sometimes a courageous pope, such as Sixtus, yet neither fortune nor wisdom could rid him of these annoyances. And the short life of a pope is also a cause of weakness; for in the ten years, which is the average life of a pope, he can with difficulty lower one of the factions; and if, so to speak, one people should almost destroy the Colonnesi, another would arise hostile to the Orsini, who would support their opponents, and yet would not have time to ruin the Orsini. This was the reason why the temporal powers of the pope were little esteemed in Italy. (*) Charles VIII invaded Italy in 1494. Alexander the Sixth arose afterwards, who of all the pontiffs that have ever been showed how a pope with both money and arms was able to prevail; and through the instrumentality of the Duke Valentino, and by reason of the entry of the French, he brought about all those things which I have discussed above in the actions of the duke. And although his intention was not to aggrandize the Church, but the duke, nevertheless, what he did contributed to the greatness of the Church, which, after his death and the ruin of the duke, became the heir to all his labours. Pope Julius came afterwards and found the Church strong, possessing all the Romagna, the barons of Rome reduced to impotence, and, through the chastisements of Alexander, the factions wiped out; he also found the way open to accumulate money in a manner such as had never been practised before Alexander's time. Such things Julius not only followed, but improved upon, and he intended to gain Bologna, to ruin the Venetians, and to drive the French out of Italy. All of these enterprises prospered with him, and so much the more to his credit, inasmuch as he did everything to strengthen the Church and not any private person. He kept also the Orsini and Colonnesi factions within the bounds in which he found them; and although there was among them some mind to make disturbance, nevertheless he held two things firm: the one, the greatness of the Church, with which he terrified them; and the other, not allowing them to have their own cardinals, who caused the disorders among them. For whenever these factions have their cardinals they do not remain quiet for long, because cardinals foster the factions in Rome and out of it, and the barons are compelled to support them, and thus from the ambitions of prelates arise disorders and tumults among the barons. For these reasons his Holiness Pope Leo(*) found the pontificate most powerful, and it is to be hoped that, if others made it great in arms, he will make it still greater and more venerated by his goodness and infinite other virtues.

Chapter XI

https://web.archive.org/web/20210417004655/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-prince/study-guide/summary-section-4-chapters-x-xi

"Of Ecclesiastical States," primarily concerns the Papal States. Religious bodies politic are, in general, easy to hold onto; religion itself sustains them, and they hardly need to be defended or governed. Still, the Church had a hard time securing power in Italy, largely because popes tended to only live for ten years or so - not enough time to exact any lasting change. Moreover, Rome was divided by hostile factions, most prominently the Orsini and Colonna families. Today, Machiavelli notes, the papacy awes France, and was able to kick King Louis out of Italy and "ruin the Venetians at the same time. How did this happen. It really began, Machiavelli argues, with Pope Alexander VI. Alexander strategically used his son Cesare Borgia to strengthen his own power. Admittedly, Alexander likely intended only to give his son more power; but the moves wound up strengthening the papacy, and as a result Rome emerged as more united, and less threatened by factions. Pope Julius continued Alexander's efforts. He took Bologna, crushed the Venetians, ran the French out of Italy, and kept Orsini and Colonna weak. Machiavelli concludes his chapter by mentioning the current pope, Leo. These are the reasons," he writes, "why his present holiness Pope Leo has found the papacy so strong; and we may hope that as his predecessors made it great by force of arms, he by his generosity and countless other talents will make it even greater and more to be revered

Leo was a Medici, and Machiavelli's compliment of him is obviously half-hearted; it seems to barely disguise Machiavelli's contempt for the Church. It is not for nothing that Machiavelli is so often dubbed a "secular" humanist: his focus on the free will of princes, the ways in which their own characters and decisions dictate the success or failure of their reigns, implicitly rejects any notion of divine rule. But The Prince was written for a Medici, in part as a way of currying favor with the family, and Machiavelli therefore had to be sure to refer to Pope Leo only in glowing terms. And yet, when one compares his praise of the pope to his praise of other political leaders, the former pales in comparison. The "countless other talents" are not enumerated, and there is more emphasis on the greatness of "predecessors" than on that of the Pope himself. It is also intriguing that Machiavelli should follow a chapter explicitly devoted to fortifying cities and other such military matters with one on ecclesiastical states - which, he notes, find such strength in religion that they hardly need to be unified or defended by force. "These are the only princes," Machiavelli notes, "who have states that they do not defend and subjects that they do not govern; the states, though undefended, are never taken from them, and the subjects, though ungoverned, neither protest, not try to break away, nor could revolt if they had a mind to." Machiavelli continues with a dismissal of such states, though admittedly "happy and safe governments," as undeserving of his interest: "But since they are ruled by a heavenly providence to which human reason cannot reach, I shall say nothing of them. Instituted as they are by God, and sustained by him, it would be a rash and imprudent man who ventured to discuss them." Machiavelli is drawing a clear distinction between that which men can control and that which they cannot - a topic that he delves into at greater length later in The Prince. For now, there is much to be considered in his assertion that the subjects of an ecclesiastical state could not "revolt if they had a mind to." Why not? On the one hand, Machiavelli implicitly accepts the Church as a purveyor of divinity; these states are indeed "instituted" by God, and are thus beyond analysis. On the other hand, his earlier examination of various popes' political maneuvers and the machinations at play within the Church belies such an uncritical view. There also remains the following question: does Machiavelli distance himself from the Church as a subject of analysis and critique because it is divine and therefore beyond fault, or because he is uninterested in it? The focus of so much of The Prince - and a prevalent theme throughout the Renaissance - is reason. Machiavelli continually refers to the "prudent" prince; he outlines the choices that face a prince, and addresses decisions as if he were speaking of medicine - even going so far as to compare pre-emptive war to a doctor treating a malady before it has time to grow and worsen. Power, for Machiavelli, can be attained purely through the faculties of the mind. Yes, armies are necessary, friends in high places can help, and luck plays a role, but it takes reason to determine what kind of army to use, to know when and when not to rely on friends, to know who to trust, and to know how to harness the vicissitudes of fortune. When Machiavelli writes that "human reason" cannot reach a certain state or kingdom, he therefore may be delivering a not-so-veiled insult not to religion itself, but to the state. These hints are buttressed by Machiavelli's other writings. In his famous Discorsi, for example, Machiavelli lambasts the Church's role in politics, bemoaning its decadence and writing, "And certainly, if the Christian religion had from the beginning been maintained according to the principles of its founder, the Christian states and republics would be much more united and happy than in fact they are." At the same time, Machiavelli does argue that religion deserves an importance place in society. To his mind, however, the Church abuses its status, and is guilty moreover of what is to him a cardinal sin: keeping Italy divided and stalling her unification.

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/26.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Brothers Karamazov/section_4_part_2.txt

The Brothers Karamazov.book 4.chapter 2

book 4, chapter 2

{"name": "book 4, Chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section5/", "summary": "At His Father's Alyosha returns home, where he encounters Fyodor Pavlovich scheming about the future. Fyodor Pavlovich tells Alyosha that he plans to live for many years and intends to remain a sensualist until he dies, when his only lover will be death. He says that he will eventually be too old to attract young women, however, and so he will need a great deal of money to lure them into his bed. He also insinuates that Ivan is trying to seduce Katerina in order to make Dmitri marry Grushenka. Should Ivan be successful, Fyodor Pavlovich says, Fyodor Pavlovich himself would be unable to marry Grushenka, and Ivan would ensure that his part of the Karamazov fortune would not be left to Fyodor Pavlovich's new wife. Fyodor Pavlovich recognizes his own wickedness, and Alyosha replies that he is not evil; he is just twisted", "analysis": ""}

Chapter II. At His Father's First of all, Alyosha went to his father. On the way he remembered that his father had insisted the day before that he should come without his brother Ivan seeing him. "Why so?" Alyosha wondered suddenly. "Even if my father has something to say to me alone, why should I go in unseen? Most likely in his excitement yesterday he meant to say something different," he decided. Yet he was very glad when Marfa Ignatyevna, who opened the garden gate to him (Grigory, it appeared, was ill in bed in the lodge), told him in answer to his question that Ivan Fyodorovitch had gone out two hours ago. "And my father?" "He is up, taking his coffee," Marfa answered somewhat dryly. Alyosha went in. The old man was sitting alone at the table wearing slippers and a little old overcoat. He was amusing himself by looking through some accounts, rather inattentively however. He was quite alone in the house, for Smerdyakov too had gone out marketing. Though he had got up early and was trying to put a bold face on it, he looked tired and weak. His forehead, upon which huge purple bruises had come out during the night, was bandaged with a red handkerchief; his nose too had swollen terribly in the night, and some smaller bruises covered it in patches, giving his whole face a peculiarly spiteful and irritable look. The old man was aware of this, and turned a hostile glance on Alyosha as he came in. "The coffee is cold," he cried harshly; "I won't offer you any. I've ordered nothing but a Lenten fish soup to-day, and I don't invite any one to share it. Why have you come?" "To find out how you are," said Alyosha. "Yes. Besides, I told you to come yesterday. It's all of no consequence. You need not have troubled. But I knew you'd come poking in directly." He said this with almost hostile feeling. At the same time he got up and looked anxiously in the looking-glass (perhaps for the fortieth time that morning) at his nose. He began, too, binding his red handkerchief more becomingly on his forehead. "Red's better. It's just like the hospital in a white one," he observed sententiously. "Well, how are things over there? How is your elder?" "He is very bad; he may die to-day," answered Alyosha. But his father had not listened, and had forgotten his own question at once. "Ivan's gone out," he said suddenly. "He is doing his utmost to carry off Mitya's betrothed. That's what he is staying here for," he added maliciously, and, twisting his mouth, looked at Alyosha. "Surely he did not tell you so?" asked Alyosha. "Yes, he did, long ago. Would you believe it, he told me three weeks ago? You don't suppose he too came to murder me, do you? He must have had some object in coming." "What do you mean? Why do you say such things?" said Alyosha, troubled. "He doesn't ask for money, it's true, but yet he won't get a farthing from me. I intend living as long as possible, you may as well know, my dear Alexey Fyodorovitch, and so I need every farthing, and the longer I live, the more I shall need it," he continued, pacing from one corner of the room to the other, keeping his hands in the pockets of his loose greasy overcoat made of yellow cotton material. "I can still pass for a man at five and fifty, but I want to pass for one for another twenty years. As I get older, you know, I shan't be a pretty object. The wenches won't come to me of their own accord, so I shall want my money. So I am saving up more and more, simply for myself, my dear son Alexey Fyodorovitch. You may as well know. For I mean to go on in my sins to the end, let me tell you. For sin is sweet; all abuse it, but all men live in it, only others do it on the sly, and I openly. And so all the other sinners fall upon me for being so simple. And your paradise, Alexey Fyodorovitch, is not to my taste, let me tell you that; and it's not the proper place for a gentleman, your paradise, even if it exists. I believe that I fall asleep and don't wake up again, and that's all. You can pray for my soul if you like. And if you don't want to, don't, damn you! That's my philosophy. Ivan talked well here yesterday, though we were all drunk. Ivan is a conceited coxcomb, but he has no particular learning ... nor education either. He sits silent and smiles at one without speaking--that's what pulls him through." Alyosha listened to him in silence. "Why won't he talk to me? If he does speak, he gives himself airs. Your Ivan is a scoundrel! And I'll marry Grushenka in a minute if I want to. For if you've money, Alexey Fyodorovitch, you have only to want a thing and you can have it. That's what Ivan is afraid of, he is on the watch to prevent me getting married and that's why he is egging on Mitya to marry Grushenka himself. He hopes to keep me from Grushenka by that (as though I should leave him my money if I don't marry her!). Besides if Mitya marries Grushenka, Ivan will carry off his rich betrothed, that's what he's reckoning on! He is a scoundrel, your Ivan!" "How cross you are! It's because of yesterday; you had better lie down," said Alyosha. "There! you say that," the old man observed suddenly, as though it had struck him for the first time, "and I am not angry with you. But if Ivan said it, I should be angry with him. It is only with you I have good moments, else you know I am an ill-natured man." "You are not ill-natured, but distorted," said Alyosha with a smile. "Listen. I meant this morning to get that ruffian Mitya locked up and I don't know now what I shall decide about it. Of course in these fashionable days fathers and mothers are looked upon as a prejudice, but even now the law does not allow you to drag your old father about by the hair, to kick him in the face in his own house, and brag of murdering him outright--all in the presence of witnesses. If I liked, I could crush him and could have him locked up at once for what he did yesterday." "Then you don't mean to take proceedings?" "Ivan has dissuaded me. I shouldn't care about Ivan, but there's another thing." And bending down to Alyosha, he went on in a confidential half-whisper. "If I send the ruffian to prison, she'll hear of it and run to see him at once. But if she hears that he has beaten me, a weak old man, within an inch of my life, she may give him up and come to me.... For that's her way, everything by contraries. I know her through and through! Won't you have a drop of brandy? Take some cold coffee and I'll pour a quarter of a glass of brandy into it, it's delicious, my boy." "No, thank you. I'll take that roll with me if I may," said Alyosha, and taking a halfpenny French roll he put it in the pocket of his cassock. "And you'd better not have brandy, either," he suggested apprehensively, looking into the old man's face. "You are quite right, it irritates my nerves instead of soothing them. Only one little glass. I'll get it out of the cupboard." He unlocked the cupboard, poured out a glass, drank it, then locked the cupboard and put the key back in his pocket. "That's enough. One glass won't kill me." "You see you are in a better humor now," said Alyosha, smiling. "Um! I love you even without the brandy, but with scoundrels I am a scoundrel. Ivan is not going to Tchermashnya--why is that? He wants to spy how much I give Grushenka if she comes. They are all scoundrels! But I don't recognize Ivan, I don't know him at all. Where does he come from? He is not one of us in soul. As though I'd leave him anything! I shan't leave a will at all, you may as well know. And I'll crush Mitya like a beetle. I squash black-beetles at night with my slipper; they squelch when you tread on them. And your Mitya will squelch too. _Your_ Mitya, for you love him. Yes, you love him and I am not afraid of your loving him. But if Ivan loved him I should be afraid for myself at his loving him. But Ivan loves nobody. Ivan is not one of us. People like Ivan are not our sort, my boy. They are like a cloud of dust. When the wind blows, the dust will be gone.... I had a silly idea in my head when I told you to come to-day; I wanted to find out from you about Mitya. If I were to hand him over a thousand or maybe two now, would the beggarly wretch agree to take himself off altogether for five years or, better still, thirty-five, and without Grushenka, and give her up once for all, eh?" "I--I'll ask him," muttered Alyosha. "If you would give him three thousand, perhaps he--" "That's nonsense! You needn't ask him now, no need! I've changed my mind. It was a nonsensical idea of mine. I won't give him anything, not a penny, I want my money myself," cried the old man, waving his hand. "I'll crush him like a beetle without it. Don't say anything to him or else he will begin hoping. There's nothing for you to do here, you needn't stay. Is that betrothed of his, Katerina Ivanovna, whom he has kept so carefully hidden from me all this time, going to marry him or not? You went to see her yesterday, I believe?" "Nothing will induce her to abandon him." "There you see how dearly these fine young ladies love a rake and a scoundrel. They are poor creatures I tell you, those pale young ladies, very different from--Ah, if I had his youth and the looks I had then (for I was better-looking than he at eight and twenty) I'd have been a conquering hero just as he is. He is a low cad! But he shan't have Grushenka, anyway, he shan't! I'll crush him!" His anger had returned with the last words. "You can go. There's nothing for you to do here to-day," he snapped harshly. Alyosha went up to say good-by to him, and kissed him on the shoulder. "What's that for?" The old man was a little surprised. "We shall see each other again, or do you think we shan't?" "Not at all, I didn't mean anything." "Nor did I, I did not mean anything," said the old man, looking at him. "Listen, listen," he shouted after him, "make haste and come again and I'll have a fish soup for you, a fine one, not like to-day. Be sure to come! Come to-morrow, do you hear, to-morrow!" And as soon as Alyosha had gone out of the door, he went to the cupboard again and poured out another half-glass. "I won't have more!" he muttered, clearing his throat, and again he locked the cupboard and put the key in his pocket. Then he went into his bedroom, lay down on the bed, exhausted, and in one minute he was asleep.

book 4, Chapter 2

https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section5/

At His Father's Alyosha returns home, where he encounters Fyodor Pavlovich scheming about the future. Fyodor Pavlovich tells Alyosha that he plans to live for many years and intends to remain a sensualist until he dies, when his only lover will be death. He says that he will eventually be too old to attract young women, however, and so he will need a great deal of money to lure them into his bed. He also insinuates that Ivan is trying to seduce Katerina in order to make Dmitri marry Grushenka. Should Ivan be successful, Fyodor Pavlovich says, Fyodor Pavlovich himself would be unable to marry Grushenka, and Ivan would ensure that his part of the Karamazov fortune would not be left to Fyodor Pavlovich's new wife. Fyodor Pavlovich recognizes his own wickedness, and Alyosha replies that he is not evil; he is just twisted

pinkmonkey

all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/30.txt

finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Sense and Sensibility/section_29_part_0.txt

Sense and Sensibility.chapter 30

chapter 30

{"name": "Chapter 30", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820034609/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmSenseSensibility45.asp", "summary": "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.", "analysis": "Notes Jane Austen convincingly portrays a woman passionately in love, one who has been thwarted by her lover. Marianne is shattered by Willoughby's attitude. Unable to suppress her feelings, she writes one more letter to him, asking him to justify his behavior during the previous evening. Willoughby's reply wounds her tortured heart all the more. He neither expresses regret nor apologizes for his behavior at the party. His words express only cruelty. Marianne's last hope fails. She breaks down in front of her sister and asks her to take her home. She wants to go away from the city, which has given her nothing but anxiety and pain. Elinor, who generally excuses people for their lapses, finds Willoughby's behavior atrocious. He has used her sister shamelessly and discarded her at his convenience. She condemns him for his villainy. Again, her response is entirely justified. CHAPTER 30 Summary The news spreads like wild fire. Mrs. Jennings, returning back from her visit, gives them the news about Willoughby's engagement to Miss Grey. She takes pity on Marianne and tries to soothe her wounded heart. In the evening, during dinner, she gives more information about Miss Grey. Willoughby's fiancee is a fashionable and wealthy woman, inheriting fifty thousand pounds; but she is common in her looks. The news distresses Marianne all the more. Shortly afterwards, Colonel Brandon enters the scene. He has also heard about Willoughby and his engagement. He shows his concern for Marianne and inquires about her reaction. Notes Mrs. Jennings is one of the most likeable characters in this novel. She loves teasing young people in love, but at the same time, is sympathetic to those who have been wronged by love. Her generous heart goes out to Marianne. She curses Willoughby and consoles Marianne. However, her concern for Marianne is an added irritant: by fussing over the girl, Mrs. Jennings only increases her agitation. But the old lady is quite unaware of this. The chapter relates how news spreads like wild fire, thanks to the women busy in gossiping. Just a short while after Marianne and Elinor learn of Willoughby's engagement, Mrs. Jennings comes home with the news: \"Mrs. Taylor told me of it half an hour ago, and she was told it by a particular friend of Miss Grey herself, else I am sure I would not have believed it.\" The old lady also provides all the details about Miss Grey. In the evening Colonel Brandon comes to share the news he has heard in a stationer's shop in Pall Mall. He reveals, \"Two ladies were waiting for their carriage, and one of them was giving the other an account of the intended match, in a voice so little attempting concealment, that it was impossible for me not to hear all.\" This also hints that the Colonel is a gentleman who does not pursue gossip. CHAPTER 31 Summary Elinor tries her best to lift Marianne from her depression by talking to her. Shortly afterwards, they receive a letter from their mother. Mrs. Dashwood, unaware of the recent developments, asks Marianne to explain her relationship with Willoughby. Her letter, full of wishes and hope, moves Marianne, who wants to go see her mother all the more. Colonel Brandon calls on them again. He recounts his past to Elinor. He also talks about Eliza Brandon and her daughter, Miss Williams. He relates how Willoughby had once played with the girl's heart, and after managing to seduce her, had left her in the lurch. Notes Marianne is still in love with Willoughby and nurtures a hope that he may repent and come back to her. Thus, when Mrs. Jennings brings a letter for them, Marianne imagines it to be a letter of repentance from Willoughby. Marianne is emotional and prejudiced. She does not take kindly to Mrs. Jennings' genuine sympathy or generosity. In her opinion, all that the old lady wants is \"gossip, and she only likes me now because I supply it. \" She also considers Colonel Brandon as an intruder who enjoys interfering in others' affairs. She remarks: \"A man who has nothing to do with his own time, has no conscience in his intrusion on that of others.\" Marianne lacks a mature understanding of human nature. Immersed in her own sorrow, she fails to notice the genuine concern that others may have. Colonel Brandon clears the suspicions regarding his reputation by revealing his past to Elinor. Miss Williams is not his natural daughter, as most people imagine, but Eliza Brandon's. He had once loved Eliza Brandon, but she was forced to marry his brother. The marriage was unhappy, and Eliza had several extra- marital affairs. Colonel Brandon ultimately became the guardian of Eliza Williams, the daughter that resulted from the first of these affairs. His love for Marianne makes him confide in Elinor. He also exposes the deceptive nature and base character of Willoughby. Willoughby behaved in a disreputable manner with Miss Williams but has refused to acknowledge his mistake. He deserves to be punished, but the Colonel has been generous enough to pardon him."}

Mrs. Jennings came immediately to their room on her return, and without waiting to have her request of admittance answered, opened the door and walked in with a look of real concern. "How do you do my dear?"--said she in a voice of great compassion to Marianne, who turned away her face without attempting to answer. "How is she, Miss Dashwood?--Poor thing! she looks very bad.-- No wonder. Ay, it is but too true. He is to be married very soon--a good-for-nothing fellow! I have no patience with him. Mrs. Taylor told me of it half an hour ago, and she was told it by a particular friend of Miss Grey herself, else I am sure I should not have believed it; and I was almost ready to sink as it was. Well, said I, all I can say is, that if this be true, he has used a young lady of my acquaintance abominably ill, and I wish with all my soul his wife may plague his heart out. And so I shall always say, my dear, you may depend on it. I have no notion of men's going on in this way; and if ever I meet him again, I will give him such a dressing as he has not had this many a day. But there is one comfort, my dear Miss Marianne; he is not the only young man in the world worth having; and with your pretty face you will never want admirers. Well, poor thing! I won't disturb her any longer, for she had better have her cry out at once and have done with. The Parrys and Sandersons luckily are coming tonight you know, and that will amuse her." She then went away, walking on tiptoe out of the room, as if she supposed her young friend's affliction could be increased by noise. Marianne, to the surprise of her sister, determined on dining with them. Elinor even advised her against it. But "no, she would go down; she could bear it very well, and the bustle about her would be less." Elinor, pleased to have her governed for a moment by such a motive, though believing it hardly possible that she could sit out the dinner, said no more; and adjusting her dress for her as well as she could, while Marianne still remained on the bed, was ready to assist her into the dining room as soon as they were summoned to it. When there, though looking most wretchedly, she ate more and was calmer than her sister had expected. Had she tried to speak, or had she been conscious of half Mrs. Jennings's well-meant but ill-judged attentions to her, this calmness could not have been maintained; but not a syllable escaped her lips; and the abstraction of her thoughts preserved her in ignorance of every thing that was passing before her. Elinor, who did justice to Mrs. Jennings's kindness, though its effusions were often distressing, and sometimes almost ridiculous, made her those acknowledgments, and returned her those civilities, which her sister could not make or return for herself. Their good friend saw that Marianne was unhappy, and felt that every thing was due to her which might make her at all less so. She treated her therefore, with all the indulgent fondness of a parent towards a favourite child on the last day of its holidays. Marianne was to have the best place by the fire, was to be tempted to eat by every delicacy in the house, and to be amused by the relation of all the news of the day. Had not Elinor, in the sad countenance of her sister, seen a check to all mirth, she could have been entertained by Mrs. Jennings's endeavours to cure a disappointment in love, by a variety of sweetmeats and olives, and a good fire. As soon, however, as the consciousness of all this was forced by continual repetition on Marianne, she could stay no longer. With a hasty exclamation of Misery, and a sign to her sister not to follow her, she directly got up and hurried out of the room. "Poor soul!" cried Mrs. Jennings, as soon as she was gone, "how it grieves me to see her! And I declare if she is not gone away without finishing her wine! And the dried cherries too! Lord! nothing seems to do her any good. I am sure if I knew of any thing she would like, I would send all over the town for it. Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such things!--" "The lady then--Miss Grey I think you called her--is very rich?" "Fifty thousand pounds, my dear. Did you ever see her? a smart, stylish girl they say, but not handsome. I remember her aunt very well, Biddy Henshawe; she married a very wealthy man. But the family are all rich together. Fifty thousand pounds! and by all accounts, it won't come before it's wanted; for they say he is all to pieces. No wonder! dashing about with his curricle and hunters! Well, it don't signify talking; but when a young man, be who he will, comes and makes love to a pretty girl, and promises marriage, he has no business to fly off from his word only because he grows poor, and a richer girl is ready to have him. Why don't he, in such a case, sell his horses, let his house, turn off his servants, and make a thorough reform at once? I warrant you, Miss Marianne would have been ready to wait till matters came round. But that won't do now-a-days; nothing in the way of pleasure can ever be given up by the young men of this age." "Do you know what kind of a girl Miss Grey is? Is she said to be amiable?" "I never heard any harm of her; indeed I hardly ever heard her mentioned; except that Mrs. Taylor did say this morning, that one day Miss Walker hinted to her, that she believed Mr. and Mrs. Ellison would not be sorry to have Miss Grey married, for she and Mrs. Ellison could never agree."-- "And who are the Ellisons?" "Her guardians, my dear. But now she is of age and may choose for herself; and a pretty choice she has made!--What now," after pausing a moment--"your poor sister is gone to her own room, I suppose, to moan by herself. Is there nothing one can get to comfort her? Poor dear, it seems quite cruel to let her be alone. Well, by-and-by we shall have a few friends, and that will amuse her a little. What shall we play at? She hates whist I know; but is there no round game she cares for?" "Dear ma'am, this kindness is quite unnecessary. Marianne, I dare say, will not leave her room again this evening. I shall persuade her if I can to go early to bed, for I am sure she wants rest." "Aye, I believe that will be best for her. Let her name her own supper, and go to bed. Lord! no wonder she has been looking so bad and so cast down this last week or two, for this matter I suppose has been hanging over her head as long as that. And so the letter that came today finished it! Poor soul! I am sure if I had had a notion of it, I would not have joked her about it for all my money. But then you know, how should I guess such a thing? I made sure of its being nothing but a common love letter, and you know young people like to be laughed at about them. Lord! how concerned Sir John and my daughters will be when they hear it! If I had my senses about me I might have called in Conduit Street in my way home, and told them of it. But I shall see them tomorrow." "It would be unnecessary I am sure, for you to caution Mrs. Palmer and Sir John against ever naming Mr. Willoughby, or making the slightest allusion to what has passed, before my sister. Their own good-nature must point out to them the real cruelty of appearing to know any thing about it when she is present; and the less that may ever be said to myself on the subject, the more my feelings will be spared, as you my dear madam will easily believe." "Oh! Lord! yes, that I do indeed. It must be terrible for you to hear it talked of; and as for your sister, I am sure I would not mention a word about it to her for the world. You saw I did not all dinner time. No more would Sir John, nor my daughters, for they are all very thoughtful and considerate; especially if I give them a hint, as I certainly will. For my part, I think the less that is said about such things, the better, the sooner 'tis blown over and forgot. And what does talking ever do you know?" "In this affair it can only do harm; more so perhaps than in many cases of a similar kind, for it has been attended by circumstances which, for the sake of every one concerned in it, make it unfit to become the public conversation. I must do THIS justice to Mr. Willoughby--he has broken no positive engagement with my sister." "Law, my dear! Don't pretend to defend him. No positive engagement indeed! after taking her all over Allenham House, and fixing on the very rooms they were to live in hereafter!" Elinor, for her sister's sake, could not press the subject farther, and she hoped it was not required of her for Willoughby's; since, though Marianne might lose much, he could gain very little by the enforcement of the real truth. After a short silence on both sides, Mrs. Jennings, with all her natural hilarity, burst forth again. "Well, my dear, 'tis a true saying about an ill-wind, for it will be all the better for Colonel Brandon. He will have her at last; aye, that he will. Mind me, now, if they an't married by Mid-summer. Lord! how he'll chuckle over this news! I hope he will come tonight. It will be all to one a better match for your sister. Two thousand a year without debt or drawback--except the little love-child, indeed; aye, I had forgot her; but she may be 'prenticed out at a small cost, and then what does it signify? Delaford is a nice place, I can tell you; exactly what I call a nice old fashioned place, full of comforts and conveniences; quite shut in with great garden walls that are covered with the best fruit-trees in the country; and such a mulberry tree in one corner! Lord! how Charlotte and I did stuff the only time we were there! Then, there is a dove-cote, some delightful stew-ponds, and a very pretty canal; and every thing, in short, that one could wish for; and, moreover, it is close to the church, and only a quarter of a mile from the turnpike-road, so 'tis never dull, for if you only go and sit up in an old yew arbour behind the house, you may see all the carriages that pass along. Oh! 'tis a nice place! A butcher hard by in the village, and the parsonage-house within a stone's throw. To my fancy, a thousand times prettier than Barton Park, where they are forced to send three miles for their meat, and have not a neighbour nearer than your mother. Well, I shall spirit up the Colonel as soon as I can. One shoulder of mutton, you know, drives another down. If we CAN but put Willoughby out of her head!" "Ay, if we can do THAT, Ma'am," said Elinor, "we shall do very well with or without Colonel Brandon." And then rising, she went away to join Marianne, whom she found, as she expected, in her own room, leaning, in silent misery, over the small remains of a fire, which, till Elinor's entrance, had been her only light. "You had better leave me," was all the notice that her sister received from her. "I will leave you," said Elinor, "if you will go to bed." But this, from the momentary perverseness of impatient suffering, she at first refused to do. Her sister's earnest, though gentle persuasion, however, soon softened her to compliance, and Elinor saw her lay her aching head on the pillow, and as she hoped, in a way to get some quiet rest before she left her. In the drawing-room, whither she then repaired, she was soon joined by Mrs. Jennings, with a wine-glass, full of something, in her hand. "My dear," said she, entering, "I have just recollected that I have some of the finest old Constantia wine in the house that ever was tasted, so I have brought a glass of it for your sister. My poor husband! how fond he was of it! Whenever he had a touch of his old colicky gout, he said it did him more good than any thing else in the world. Do take it to your sister." "Dear Ma'am," replied Elinor, smiling at the difference of the complaints for which it was recommended, "how good you are! But I have just left Marianne in bed, and, I hope, almost asleep; and as I think nothing will be of so much service to her as rest, if you will give me leave, I will drink the wine myself." Mrs. Jennings, though regretting that she had not been five minutes earlier, was satisfied with the compromise; and Elinor, as she swallowed the chief of it, reflected, that though its effects on a colicky gout were, at present, of little importance to her, its healing powers, on a disappointed heart might be as reasonably tried on herself as on her sister. Colonel Brandon came in while the party were at tea, and by his manner of looking round the room for Marianne, Elinor immediately fancied that he neither expected nor wished to see her there, and, in short, that he was already aware of what occasioned her absence. Mrs. Jennings was not struck by the same thought; for soon after his entrance, she walked across the room to the tea-table where Elinor presided, and whispered-- "The Colonel looks as grave as ever you see. He knows nothing of it; do tell him, my dear." He shortly afterwards drew a chair close to hers, and, with a look which perfectly assured her of his good information, inquired after her sister. "Marianne is not well," said she. "She has been indisposed all day, and we have persuaded her to go to bed." "Perhaps, then," he hesitatingly replied, "what I heard this morning may be--there may be more truth in it than I could believe possible at first." "What did you hear?" "That a gentleman, whom I had reason to think--in short, that a man, whom I KNEW to be engaged--but how shall I tell you? If you know it already, as surely you must, I may be spared." "You mean," answered Elinor, with forced calmness, "Mr. Willoughby's marriage with Miss Grey. Yes, we DO know it all. This seems to have been a day of general elucidation, for this very morning first unfolded it to us. Mr. Willoughby is unfathomable! Where did you hear it?" "In a stationer's shop in Pall Mall, where I had business. Two ladies were waiting for their carriage, and one of them was giving the other an account of the intended match, in a voice so little attempting concealment, that it was impossible for me not to hear all. The name of Willoughby, John Willoughby, frequently repeated, first caught my attention; and what followed was a positive assertion that every thing was now finally settled respecting his marriage with Miss Grey--it was no longer to be a secret--it would take place even within a few weeks, with many particulars of preparations and other matters. One thing, especially, I remember, because it served to identify the man still more:--as soon as the ceremony was over, they were to go to Combe Magna, his seat in Somersetshire. My astonishment!--but it would be impossible to describe what I felt. The communicative lady I learnt, on inquiry, for I stayed in the shop till they were gone, was a Mrs. Ellison, and that, as I have been since informed, is the name of Miss Grey's guardian." "It is. But have you likewise heard that Miss Grey has fifty thousand pounds? In that, if in any thing, we may find an explanation." "It may be so; but Willoughby is capable--at least I think"--he stopped a moment; then added in a voice which seemed to distrust itself, "And your sister--how did she--" "Her sufferings have been very severe. I have only to hope that they may be proportionately short. It has been, it is a most cruel affliction. Till yesterday, I believe, she never doubted his regard; and even now, perhaps--but I am almost convinced that he never was really attached to her. He has been very deceitful! and, in some points, there seems a hardness of heart about him." "Ah!" said Colonel Brandon, "there is, indeed! But your sister does not--I think you said so--she does not consider quite as you do?" "You know her disposition, and may believe how eagerly she would still justify him if she could." He made no answer; and soon afterwards, by the removal of the tea-things, and the arrangement of the card parties, the subject was necessarily dropped. Mrs. Jennings, who had watched them with pleasure while they were talking, and who expected to see the effect of Miss Dashwood's communication, in such an instantaneous gaiety on Colonel Brandon's side, as might have become a man in the bloom of youth, of hope and happiness, saw him, with amazement, remain the whole evening more serious and thoughtful than usual.

Chapter 30

https://web.archive.org/web/20180820034609/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmSenseSensibility45.asp

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.

Notes Jane Austen convincingly portrays a woman passionately in love, one who has been thwarted by her lover. Marianne is shattered by Willoughby's attitude. Unable to suppress her feelings, she writes one more letter to him, asking him to justify his behavior during the previous evening. Willoughby's reply wounds her tortured heart all the more. He neither expresses regret nor apologizes for his behavior at the party. His words express only cruelty. Marianne's last hope fails. She breaks down in front of her sister and asks her to take her home. She wants to go away from the city, which has given her nothing but anxiety and pain. Elinor, who generally excuses people for their lapses, finds Willoughby's behavior atrocious. He has used her sister shamelessly and discarded her at his convenience. She condemns him for his villainy. Again, her response is entirely justified. CHAPTER 30 Summary The news spreads like wild fire. Mrs. Jennings, returning back from her visit, gives them the news about Willoughby's engagement to Miss Grey. She takes pity on Marianne and tries to soothe her wounded heart. In the evening, during dinner, she gives more information about Miss Grey. Willoughby's fiancee is a fashionable and wealthy woman, inheriting fifty thousand pounds; but she is common in her looks. The news distresses Marianne all the more. Shortly afterwards, Colonel Brandon enters the scene. He has also heard about Willoughby and his engagement. He shows his concern for Marianne and inquires about her reaction. Notes Mrs. Jennings is one of the most likeable characters in this novel. She loves teasing young people in love, but at the same time, is sympathetic to those who have been wronged by love. Her generous heart goes out to Marianne. She curses Willoughby and consoles Marianne. However, her concern for Marianne is an added irritant: by fussing over the girl, Mrs. Jennings only increases her agitation. But the old lady is quite unaware of this. The chapter relates how news spreads like wild fire, thanks to the women busy in gossiping. Just a short while after Marianne and Elinor learn of Willoughby's engagement, Mrs. Jennings comes home with the news: "Mrs. Taylor told me of it half an hour ago, and she was told it by a particular friend of Miss Grey herself, else I am sure I would not have believed it." The old lady also provides all the details about Miss Grey. In the evening Colonel Brandon comes to share the news he has heard in a stationer's shop in Pall Mall. He reveals, "Two ladies were waiting for their carriage, and one of them was giving the other an account of the intended match, in a voice so little attempting concealment, that it was impossible for me not to hear all." This also hints that the Colonel is a gentleman who does not pursue gossip. CHAPTER 31 Summary Elinor tries her best to lift Marianne from her depression by talking to her. Shortly afterwards, they receive a letter from their mother. Mrs. Dashwood, unaware of the recent developments, asks Marianne to explain her relationship with Willoughby. Her letter, full of wishes and hope, moves Marianne, who wants to go see her mother all the more. Colonel Brandon calls on them again. He recounts his past to Elinor. He also talks about Eliza Brandon and her daughter, Miss Williams. He relates how Willoughby had once played with the girl's heart, and after managing to seduce her, had left her in the lurch. Notes Marianne is still in love with Willoughby and nurtures a hope that he may repent and come back to her. Thus, when Mrs. Jennings brings a letter for them, Marianne imagines it to be a letter of repentance from Willoughby. Marianne is emotional and prejudiced. She does not take kindly to Mrs. Jennings' genuine sympathy or generosity. In her opinion, all that the old lady wants is "gossip, and she only likes me now because I supply it. " She also considers Colonel Brandon as an intruder who enjoys interfering in others' affairs. She remarks: "A man who has nothing to do with his own time, has no conscience in his intrusion on that of others." Marianne lacks a mature understanding of human nature. Immersed in her own sorrow, she fails to notice the genuine concern that others may have. Colonel Brandon clears the suspicions regarding his reputation by revealing his past to Elinor. Miss Williams is not his natural daughter, as most people imagine, but Eliza Brandon's. He had once loved Eliza Brandon, but she was forced to marry his brother. The marriage was unhappy, and Eliza had several extra- marital affairs. Colonel Brandon ultimately became the guardian of Eliza Williams, the daughter that resulted from the first of these affairs. His love for Marianne makes him confide in Elinor. He also exposes the deceptive nature and base character of Willoughby. Willoughby behaved in a disreputable manner with Miss Williams but has refused to acknowledge his mistake. He deserves to be punished, but the Colonel has been generous enough to pardon him.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/chapters_3_to_5.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Lord Jim/section_2_part_0.txt

Lord Jim.chapters 3-5

chapters 3-5

{"name": "Chapters 3-5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210215030710/https://www.novelguide.com/lord-jim/summaries/chapter3-5", "summary": "Four and Five . In Chapter Three, the calm of the waters and the array of the sleeping passengers are described. Jim does not see 'the shadow of the coming event'; the only shadow on the sea is that of the black smoke coming from the funnel. Jim thinks of how steady the ship goes and imagines valorous deeds: 'He loved these dreams and the success of his imaginary achievements'; 'they were the best parts of life, its secret truth, its hidden reality.' . . The skipper comes over to him noiselessly in his pajamas and with his sleeping jacket flung open. The skipper looks over the charts sleepily and Jim responds with deference to a remark he makes, but this figure 'fixed itself in his memory forever as the incarnation of everything vile and base that lurks in the world we love.' The second engineer appears and complains about the heat below deck; he seems to be drunk. He has had a drink of the chief engineer's brandy. . . Jim has only ten minutes left of his watch and wants to go below deck. He thinks the skipper and second engineer 'did not belong to the world of heroic adventure', but they do not bother him as he thinks of himself as being different. As the second engineer explains he is not drunk, he tumbles and Jim and the skipper stagger too. The ship appears to rise a few inches throughout its whole length and then settles back to the smooth surface of the sea. The quivering stops and the faint noise of thunder ceases. . . Chapter Four begins a month or so later at an official inquiry. Jim tries to tell the truth and says the ship 'went over whatever it was as easy as a snake crawling over a stick'. He then tells the assessor he checked to see if the ship was damaged, on the skipper's orders, and called to no one to avoid creating a panic. He explains how he opened the forepeak hatch and heard water splashing, so knew there was a big hole below the water line. The skipper then struck the engineer and told him to turn the engines off. Jim is anxious to make it clear that he wants to be precise and his mind 'positively flew round and round the serried circle of facts that had surged up all about him to cut him off from the rest of his kind'. In the intervals between his answers, his eyes rest on a white man sitting apart from the others who occasionally looks at him as though he can see something past Jim's shoulder. Jim thinks he recognizes him, but they have never spoken to each other; Jim has spoken to nobody for days, 'like a wayfarer lost in the wilderness'. The man watching seems to be aware of Jim's 'hopeless difficulty'. The man, Marlow, shows himself willing to remember Jim, 'later on, many times, in distant parts of the world'. . . In Chapter Five, the focus moves to Marlow and how he thinks of himself as having a guardian angel and a familiar devil. It is the devil that lets him in for such things as going to the inquiry and is the cause of the effect he has of loosening men's tongues. He tells his dinner companions about the inquiry and how everybody connected with working on the sea was there as 'the affair had been notorious for days'. . . The narrative moves back in time again as Marlow recounts standing outside the harbour offices one fine morning and sees four men walking towards him. He recognizes one as the skipper of the Patna. The skipper visits Captain Elliott and Marlow is able to hear the Captain shouting at him. Marlow sees the skipper come back outside and notes that one of the men makes no movement and just stares into the sunshine. Marlow wonders if he is silly or callous. The skipper talks to Marlow about how the Captain has just called him a hound and has taken his certificate . Marlow looks at Jim again and notes his likeable appearance. He thinks of him as the sort of fellow one would leave in charge on deck. He should know this as he has 'turned out enough youngsters' to the craft of the sea. This thought of trusting him gives him the horrors, though, as this would not be safe. . . The skipper hails a 'gharry' and drives off. A clerk comes out for the men and the second engineer says he will not be bullied by 'a cocky half-bred little quill-driver' . A few days later, Marlow visits one of his men in the hospital and encounters the chief engineer there. Marlow sits by his bed in the hope of finding out 'some profound and redeeming cause' for what happened, but sees now he was hoping for the impossible. He wants to find the shadow of an excuse for the young man , but thinks this is looking for a miracle. The engineer asks Marlow what he can see under the bed. Marlow replies 'nothing', but the engineer says if he were to look he would see a million pink toads. He then begins screaming and says they are trampling on him. As Marlow leaves, he is told the engineer has delirium tremens of the worst kind and will not be able to attend the inquiry. .", "analysis": "Four and Five . Chapter Four recounts some of the events at the official inquiry as Jim is left to explain what has happened on the Patna. As well as shifting back and forth in time without any detailed exposition, Conrad also gives only small chunks of information as to the course of events that night on the Patna and the readers are teased into imagining disaster. In Chapter Five, for example, the readers are informed that Marlow wanted the 'miracle' of finding an excuse for Jim, as though he has committed an unforgiveable crime. This is made ambiguous, however, as it would be a miracle for the engineer to tell Marlow anything sensible considering the level of his delirium tremens."}

A marvellous stillness pervaded the world, and the stars, together with the serenity of their rays, seemed to shed upon the earth the assurance of everlasting security. The young moon recurved, and shining low in the west, was like a slender shaving thrown up from a bar of gold, and the Arabian Sea, smooth and cool to the eye like a sheet of ice, extended its perfect level to the perfect circle of a dark horizon. The propeller turned without a check, as though its beat had been part of the scheme of a safe universe; and on each side of the Patna two deep folds of water, permanent and sombre on the unwrinkled shimmer, enclosed within their straight and diverging ridges a few white swirls of foam bursting in a low hiss, a few wavelets, a few ripples, a few undulations that, left behind, agitated the surface of the sea for an instant after the passage of the ship, subsided splashing gently, calmed down at last into the circular stillness of water and sky with the black speck of the moving hull remaining everlastingly in its centre. Jim on the bridge was penetrated by the great certitude of unbounded safety and peace that could be read on the silent aspect of nature like the certitude of fostering love upon the placid tenderness of a mother's face. Below the roof of awnings, surrendered to the wisdom of white men and to their courage, trusting the power of their unbelief and the iron shell of their fire-ship, the pilgrims of an exacting faith slept on mats, on blankets, on bare planks, on every deck, in all the dark corners, wrapped in dyed cloths, muffled in soiled rags, with their heads resting on small bundles, with their faces pressed to bent forearms: the men, the women, the children; the old with the young, the decrepit with the lusty--all equal before sleep, death's brother. A draught of air, fanned from forward by the speed of the ship, passed steadily through the long gloom between the high bulwarks, swept over the rows of prone bodies; a few dim flames in globe-lamps were hung short here and there under the ridge-poles, and in the blurred circles of light thrown down and trembling slightly to the unceasing vibration of the ship appeared a chin upturned, two closed eyelids, a dark hand with silver rings, a meagre limb draped in a torn covering, a head bent back, a naked foot, a throat bared and stretched as if offering itself to the knife. The well-to-do had made for their families shelters with heavy boxes and dusty mats; the poor reposed side by side with all they had on earth tied up in a rag under their heads; the lone old men slept, with drawn-up legs, upon their prayer-carpets, with their hands over their ears and one elbow on each side of the face; a father, his shoulders up and his knees under his forehead, dozed dejectedly by a boy who slept on his back with tousled hair and one arm commandingly extended; a woman covered from head to foot, like a corpse, with a piece of white sheeting, had a naked child in the hollow of each arm; the Arab's belongings, piled right aft, made a heavy mound of broken outlines, with a cargo-lamp swung above, and a great confusion of vague forms behind: gleams of paunchy brass pots, the foot-rest of a deck-chair, blades of spears, the straight scabbard of an old sword leaning against a heap of pillows, the spout of a tin coffee-pot. The patent log on the taffrail periodically rang a single tinkling stroke for every mile traversed on an errand of faith. Above the mass of sleepers a faint and patient sigh at times floated, the exhalation of a troubled dream; and short metallic clangs bursting out suddenly in the depths of the ship, the harsh scrape of a shovel, the violent slam of a furnace-door, exploded brutally, as if the men handling the mysterious things below had their breasts full of fierce anger: while the slim high hull of the steamer went on evenly ahead, without a sway of her bare masts, cleaving continuously the great calm of the waters under the inaccessible serenity of the sky. Jim paced athwart, and his footsteps in the vast silence were loud to his own ears, as if echoed by the watchful stars: his eyes, roaming about the line of the horizon, seemed to gaze hungrily into the unattainable, and did not see the shadow of the coming event. The only shadow on the sea was the shadow of the black smoke pouring heavily from the funnel its immense streamer, whose end was constantly dissolving in the air. Two Malays, silent and almost motionless, steered, one on each side of the wheel, whose brass rim shone fragmentarily in the oval of light thrown out by the binnacle. Now and then a hand, with black fingers alternately letting go and catching hold of revolving spokes, appeared in the illumined part; the links of wheel-chains ground heavily in the grooves of the barrel. Jim would glance at the compass, would glance around the unattainable horizon, would stretch himself till his joints cracked, with a leisurely twist of the body, in the very excess of well-being; and, as if made audacious by the invincible aspect of the peace, he felt he cared for nothing that could happen to him to the end of his days. From time to time he glanced idly at a chart pegged out with four drawing-pins on a low three-legged table abaft the steering-gear case. The sheet of paper portraying the depths of the sea presented a shiny surface under the light of a bull's-eye lamp lashed to a stanchion, a surface as level and smooth as the glimmering surface of the waters. Parallel rulers with a pair of dividers reposed on it; the ship's position at last noon was marked with a small black cross, and the straight pencil-line drawn firmly as far as Perim figured the course of the ship--the path of souls towards the holy place, the promise of salvation, the reward of eternal life--while the pencil with its sharp end touching the Somali coast lay round and still like a naked ship's spar floating in the pool of a sheltered dock. 'How steady she goes,' thought Jim with wonder, with something like gratitude for this high peace of sea and sky. At such times his thoughts would be full of valorous deeds: he loved these dreams and the success of his imaginary achievements. They were the best parts of life, its secret truth, its hidden reality. They had a gorgeous virility, the charm of vagueness, they passed before him with an heroic tread; they carried his soul away with them and made it drunk with the divine philtre of an unbounded confidence in itself. There was nothing he could not face. He was so pleased with the idea that he smiled, keeping perfunctorily his eyes ahead; and when he happened to glance back he saw the white streak of the wake drawn as straight by the ship's keel upon the sea as the black line drawn by the pencil upon the chart. The ash-buckets racketed, clanking up and down the stoke-hold ventilators, and this tin-pot clatter warned him the end of his watch was near. He sighed with content, with regret as well at having to part from that serenity which fostered the adventurous freedom of his thoughts. He was a little sleepy too, and felt a pleasurable languor running through every limb as though all the blood in his body had turned to warm milk. His skipper had come up noiselessly, in pyjamas and with his sleeping-jacket flung wide open. Red of face, only half awake, the left eye partly closed, the right staring stupid and glassy, he hung his big head over the chart and scratched his ribs sleepily. There was something obscene in the sight of his naked flesh. His bared breast glistened soft and greasy as though he had sweated out his fat in his sleep. He pronounced a professional remark in a voice harsh and dead, resembling the rasping sound of a wood-file on the edge of a plank; the fold of his double chin hung like a bag triced up close under the hinge of his jaw. Jim started, and his answer was full of deference; but the odious and fleshy figure, as though seen for the first time in a revealing moment, fixed itself in his memory for ever as the incarnation of everything vile and base that lurks in the world we love: in our own hearts we trust for our salvation, in the men that surround us, in the sights that fill our eyes, in the sounds that fill our ears, and in the air that fills our lungs. The thin gold shaving of the moon floating slowly downwards had lost itself on the darkened surface of the waters, and the eternity beyond the sky seemed to come down nearer to the earth, with the augmented glitter of the stars, with the more profound sombreness in the lustre of the half-transparent dome covering the flat disc of an opaque sea. The ship moved so smoothly that her onward motion was imperceptible to the senses of men, as though she had been a crowded planet speeding through the dark spaces of ether behind the swarm of suns, in the appalling and calm solitudes awaiting the breath of future creations. 'Hot is no name for it down below,' said a voice. Jim smiled without looking round. The skipper presented an unmoved breadth of back: it was the renegade's trick to appear pointedly unaware of your existence unless it suited his purpose to turn at you with a devouring glare before he let loose a torrent of foamy, abusive jargon that came like a gush from a sewer. Now he emitted only a sulky grunt; the second engineer at the head of the bridge-ladder, kneading with damp palms a dirty sweat-rag, unabashed, continued the tale of his complaints. The sailors had a good time of it up here, and what was the use of them in the world he would be blowed if he could see. The poor devils of engineers had to get the ship along anyhow, and they could very well do the rest too; by gosh they--'Shut up!' growled the German stolidly. 'Oh yes! Shut up--and when anything goes wrong you fly to us, don't you?' went on the other. He was more than half cooked, he expected; but anyway, now, he did not mind how much he sinned, because these last three days he had passed through a fine course of training for the place where the bad boys go when they die--b'gosh, he had--besides being made jolly well deaf by the blasted racket below. The durned, compound, surface-condensing, rotten scrap-heap rattled and banged down there like an old deck-winch, only more so; and what made him risk his life every night and day that God made amongst the refuse of a breaking-up yard flying round at fifty-seven revolutions, was more than _he_ could tell. He must have been born reckless, b'gosh. He . . . 'Where did you get drink?' inquired the German, very savage; but motionless in the light of the binnacle, like a clumsy effigy of a man cut out of a block of fat. Jim went on smiling at the retreating horizon; his heart was full of generous impulses, and his thought was contemplating his own superiority. 'Drink!' repeated the engineer with amiable scorn: he was hanging on with both hands to the rail, a shadowy figure with flexible legs. 'Not from you, captain. You're far too mean, b'gosh. You would let a good man die sooner than give him a drop of schnapps. That's what you Germans call economy. Penny wise, pound foolish.' He became sentimental. The chief had given him a four-finger nip about ten o'clock--'only one, s'elp me!'--good old chief; but as to getting the old fraud out of his bunk--a five-ton crane couldn't do it. Not it. Not to-night anyhow. He was sleeping sweetly like a little child, with a bottle of prime brandy under his pillow. From the thick throat of the commander of the Patna came a low rumble, on which the sound of the word schwein fluttered high and low like a capricious feather in a faint stir of air. He and the chief engineer had been cronies for a good few years--serving the same jovial, crafty, old Chinaman, with horn-rimmed goggles and strings of red silk plaited into the venerable grey hairs of his pigtail. The quay-side opinion in the Patna's home-port was that these two in the way of brazen peculation 'had done together pretty well everything you can think of.' Outwardly they were badly matched: one dull-eyed, malevolent, and of soft fleshy curves; the other lean, all hollows, with a head long and bony like the head of an old horse, with sunken cheeks, with sunken temples, with an indifferent glazed glance of sunken eyes. He had been stranded out East somewhere--in Canton, in Shanghai, or perhaps in Yokohama; he probably did not care to remember himself the exact locality, nor yet the cause of his shipwreck. He had been, in mercy to his youth, kicked quietly out of his ship twenty years ago or more, and it might have been so much worse for him that the memory of the episode had in it hardly a trace of misfortune. Then, steam navigation expanding in these seas and men of his craft being scarce at first, he had 'got on' after a sort. He was eager to let strangers know in a dismal mumble that he was 'an old stager out here.' When he moved, a skeleton seemed to sway loose in his clothes; his walk was mere wandering, and he was given to wander thus around the engine-room skylight, smoking, without relish, doctored tobacco in a brass bowl at the end of a cherrywood stem four feet long, with the imbecile gravity of a thinker evolving a system of philosophy from the hazy glimpse of a truth. He was usually anything but free with his private store of liquor; but on that night he had departed from his principles, so that his second, a weak-headed child of Wapping, what with the unexpectedness of the treat and the strength of the stuff, had become very happy, cheeky, and talkative. The fury of the New South Wales German was extreme; he puffed like an exhaust-pipe, and Jim, faintly amused by the scene, was impatient for the time when he could get below: the last ten minutes of the watch were irritating like a gun that hangs fire; those men did not belong to the world of heroic adventure; they weren't bad chaps though. Even the skipper himself . . . His gorge rose at the mass of panting flesh from which issued gurgling mutters, a cloudy trickle of filthy expressions; but he was too pleasurably languid to dislike actively this or any other thing. The quality of these men did not matter; he rubbed shoulders with them, but they could not touch him; he shared the air they breathed, but he was different. . . . Would the skipper go for the engineer? . . . The life was easy and he was too sure of himself--too sure of himself to . . . The line dividing his meditation from a surreptitious doze on his feet was thinner than a thread in a spider's web. The second engineer was coming by easy transitions to the consideration of his finances and of his courage. 'Who's drunk? I? No, no, captain! That won't do. You ought to know by this time the chief ain't free-hearted enough to make a sparrow drunk, b'gosh. I've never been the worse for liquor in my life; the stuff ain't made yet that would make _me_ drunk. I could drink liquid fire against your whisky peg for peg, b'gosh, and keep as cool as a cucumber. If I thought I was drunk I would jump overboard--do away with myself, b'gosh. I would! Straight! And I won't go off the bridge. Where do you expect me to take the air on a night like this, eh? On deck amongst that vermin down there? Likely--ain't it! And I am not afraid of anything you can do.' The German lifted two heavy fists to heaven and shook them a little without a word. 'I don't know what fear is,' pursued the engineer, with the enthusiasm of sincere conviction. 'I am not afraid of doing all the bloomin' work in this rotten hooker, b'gosh! And a jolly good thing for you that there are some of us about the world that aren't afraid of their lives, or where would you be--you and this old thing here with her plates like brown paper--brown paper, s'elp me? It's all very fine for you--you get a power of pieces out of her one way and another; but what about me--what do I get? A measly hundred and fifty dollars a month and find yourself. I wish to ask you respectfully--respectfully, mind--who wouldn't chuck a dratted job like this? 'Tain't safe, s'elp me, it ain't! Only I am one of them fearless fellows . . .' He let go the rail and made ample gestures as if demonstrating in the air the shape and extent of his valour; his thin voice darted in prolonged squeaks upon the sea, he tiptoed back and forth for the better emphasis of utterance, and suddenly pitched down head-first as though he had been clubbed from behind. He said 'Damn!' as he tumbled; an instant of silence followed upon his screeching: Jim and the skipper staggered forward by common accord, and catching themselves up, stood very stiff and still gazing, amazed, at the undisturbed level of the sea. Then they looked upwards at the stars. What had happened? The wheezy thump of the engines went on. Had the earth been checked in her course? They could not understand; and suddenly the calm sea, the sky without a cloud, appeared formidably insecure in their immobility, as if poised on the brow of yawning destruction. The engineer rebounded vertically full length and collapsed again into a vague heap. This heap said 'What's that?' in the muffled accents of profound grief. A faint noise as of thunder, of thunder infinitely remote, less than a sound, hardly more than a vibration, passed slowly, and the ship quivered in response, as if the thunder had growled deep down in the water. The eyes of the two Malays at the wheel glittered towards the white men, but their dark hands remained closed on the spokes. The sharp hull driving on its way seemed to rise a few inches in succession through its whole length, as though it had become pliable, and settled down again rigidly to its work of cleaving the smooth surface of the sea. Its quivering stopped, and the faint noise of thunder ceased all at once, as though the ship had steamed across a narrow belt of vibrating water and of humming air. A month or so afterwards, when Jim, in answer to pointed questions, tried to tell honestly the truth of this experience, he said, speaking of the ship: 'She went over whatever it was as easy as a snake crawling over a stick.' The illustration was good: the questions were aiming at facts, and the official Inquiry was being held in the police court of an Eastern port. He stood elevated in the witness-box, with burning cheeks in a cool lofty room: the big framework of punkahs moved gently to and fro high above his head, and from below many eyes were looking at him out of dark faces, out of white faces, out of red faces, out of faces attentive, spellbound, as if all these people sitting in orderly rows upon narrow benches had been enslaved by the fascination of his voice. It was very loud, it rang startling in his own ears, it was the only sound audible in the world, for the terribly distinct questions that extorted his answers seemed to shape themselves in anguish and pain within his breast,--came to him poignant and silent like the terrible questioning of one's conscience. Outside the court the sun blazed--within was the wind of great punkahs that made you shiver, the shame that made you burn, the attentive eyes whose glance stabbed. The face of the presiding magistrate, clean shaved and impassible, looked at him deadly pale between the red faces of the two nautical assessors. The light of a broad window under the ceiling fell from above on the heads and shoulders of the three men, and they were fiercely distinct in the half-light of the big court-room where the audience seemed composed of staring shadows. They wanted facts. Facts! They demanded facts from him, as if facts could explain anything! 'After you had concluded you had collided with something floating awash, say a water-logged wreck, you were ordered by your captain to go forward and ascertain if there was any damage done. Did you think it likely from the force of the blow?' asked the assessor sitting to the left. He had a thin horseshoe beard, salient cheek-bones, and with both elbows on the desk clasped his rugged hands before his face, looking at Jim with thoughtful blue eyes; the other, a heavy, scornful man, thrown back in his seat, his left arm extended full length, drummed delicately with his finger-tips on a blotting-pad: in the middle the magistrate upright in the roomy arm-chair, his head inclined slightly on the shoulder, had his arms crossed on his breast and a few flowers in a glass vase by the side of his inkstand. 'I did not,' said Jim. 'I was told to call no one and to make no noise for fear of creating a panic. I thought the precaution reasonable. I took one of the lamps that were hung under the awnings and went forward. After opening the forepeak hatch I heard splashing in there. I lowered then the lamp the whole drift of its lanyard, and saw that the forepeak was more than half full of water already. I knew then there must be a big hole below the water-line.' He paused. 'Yes,' said the big assessor, with a dreamy smile at the blotting-pad; his fingers played incessantly, touching the paper without noise. 'I did not think of danger just then. I might have been a little startled: all this happened in such a quiet way and so very suddenly. I knew there was no other bulkhead in the ship but the collision bulkhead separating the forepeak from the forehold. I went back to tell the captain. I came upon the second engineer getting up at the foot of the bridge-ladder: he seemed dazed, and told me he thought his left arm was broken; he had slipped on the top step when getting down while I was forward. He exclaimed, "My God! That rotten bulkhead'll give way in a minute, and the damned thing will go down under us like a lump of lead." He pushed me away with his right arm and ran before me up the ladder, shouting as he climbed. His left arm hung by his side. I followed up in time to see the captain rush at him and knock him down flat on his back. He did not strike him again: he stood bending over him and speaking angrily but quite low. I fancy he was asking him why the devil he didn't go and stop the engines, instead of making a row about it on deck. I heard him say, "Get up! Run! fly!" He swore also. The engineer slid down the starboard ladder and bolted round the skylight to the engine-room companion which was on the port side. He moaned as he ran. . . .' He spoke slowly; he remembered swiftly and with extreme vividness; he could have reproduced like an echo the moaning of the engineer for the better information of these men who wanted facts. After his first feeling of revolt he had come round to the view that only a meticulous precision of statement would bring out the true horror behind the appalling face of things. The facts those men were so eager to know had been visible, tangible, open to the senses, occupying their place in space and time, requiring for their existence a fourteen-hundred-ton steamer and twenty-seven minutes by the watch; they made a whole that had features, shades of expression, a complicated aspect that could be remembered by the eye, and something else besides, something invisible, a directing spirit of perdition that dwelt within, like a malevolent soul in a detestable body. He was anxious to make this clear. This had not been a common affair, everything in it had been of the utmost importance, and fortunately he remembered everything. He wanted to go on talking for truth's sake, perhaps for his own sake also; and while his utterance was deliberate, his mind positively flew round and round the serried circle of facts that had surged up all about him to cut him off from the rest of his kind: it was like a creature that, finding itself imprisoned within an enclosure of high stakes, dashes round and round, distracted in the night, trying to find a weak spot, a crevice, a place to scale, some opening through which it may squeeze itself and escape. This awful activity of mind made him hesitate at times in his speech. . . . 'The captain kept on moving here and there on the bridge; he seemed calm enough, only he stumbled several times; and once as I stood speaking to him he walked right into me as though he had been stone-blind. He made no definite answer to what I had to tell. He mumbled to himself; all I heard of it were a few words that sounded like "confounded steam!" and "infernal steam!"--something about steam. I thought . . .' He was becoming irrelevant; a question to the point cut short his speech, like a pang of pain, and he felt extremely discouraged and weary. He was coming to that, he was coming to that--and now, checked brutally, he had to answer by yes or no. He answered truthfully by a curt 'Yes, I did'; and fair of face, big of frame, with young, gloomy eyes, he held his shoulders upright above the box while his soul writhed within him. He was made to answer another question so much to the point and so useless, then waited again. His mouth was tastelessly dry, as though he had been eating dust, then salt and bitter as after a drink of sea-water. He wiped his damp forehead, passed his tongue over parched lips, felt a shiver run down his back. The big assessor had dropped his eyelids, and drummed on without a sound, careless and mournful; the eyes of the other above the sunburnt, clasped fingers seemed to glow with kindliness; the magistrate had swayed forward; his pale face hovered near the flowers, and then dropping sideways over the arm of his chair, he rested his temple in the palm of his hand. The wind of the punkahs eddied down on the heads, on the dark-faced natives wound about in voluminous draperies, on the Europeans sitting together very hot and in drill suits that seemed to fit them as close as their skins, and holding their round pith hats on their knees; while gliding along the walls the court peons, buttoned tight in long white coats, flitted rapidly to and fro, running on bare toes, red-sashed, red turban on head, as noiseless as ghosts, and on the alert like so many retrievers. Jim's eyes, wandering in the intervals of his answers, rested upon a white man who sat apart from the others, with his face worn and clouded, but with quiet eyes that glanced straight, interested and clear. Jim answered another question and was tempted to cry out, 'What's the good of this! what's the good!' He tapped with his foot slightly, bit his lip, and looked away over the heads. He met the eyes of the white man. The glance directed at him was not the fascinated stare of the others. It was an act of intelligent volition. Jim between two questions forgot himself so far as to find leisure for a thought. This fellow--ran the thought--looks at me as though he could see somebody or something past my shoulder. He had come across that man before--in the street perhaps. He was positive he had never spoken to him. For days, for many days, he had spoken to no one, but had held silent, incoherent, and endless converse with himself, like a prisoner alone in his cell or like a wayfarer lost in a wilderness. At present he was answering questions that did not matter though they had a purpose, but he doubted whether he would ever again speak out as long as he lived. The sound of his own truthful statements confirmed his deliberate opinion that speech was of no use to him any longer. That man there seemed to be aware of his hopeless difficulty. Jim looked at him, then turned away resolutely, as after a final parting. And later on, many times, in distant parts of the world, Marlow showed himself willing to remember Jim, to remember him at length, in detail and audibly. Perhaps it would be after dinner, on a verandah draped in motionless foliage and crowned with flowers, in the deep dusk speckled by fiery cigar-ends. The elongated bulk of each cane-chair harboured a silent listener. Now and then a small red glow would move abruptly, and expanding light up the fingers of a languid hand, part of a face in profound repose, or flash a crimson gleam into a pair of pensive eyes overshadowed by a fragment of an unruffled forehead; and with the very first word uttered Marlow's body, extended at rest in the seat, would become very still, as though his spirit had winged its way back into the lapse of time and were speaking through his lips from the past. 'Oh yes. I attended the inquiry,' he would say, 'and to this day I haven't left off wondering why I went. I am willing to believe each of us has a guardian angel, if you fellows will concede to me that each of us has a familiar devil as well. I want you to own up, because I don't like to feel exceptional in any way, and I know I have him--the devil, I mean. I haven't seen him, of course, but I go upon circumstantial evidence. He is there right enough, and, being malicious, he lets me in for that kind of thing. What kind of thing, you ask? Why, the inquiry thing, the yellow-dog thing--you wouldn't think a mangy, native tyke would be allowed to trip up people in the verandah of a magistrate's court, would you?--the kind of thing that by devious, unexpected, truly diabolical ways causes me to run up against men with soft spots, with hard spots, with hidden plague spots, by Jove! and loosens their tongues at the sight of me for their infernal confidences; as though, forsooth, I had no confidences to make to myself, as though--God help me!--I didn't have enough confidential information about myself to harrow my own soul till the end of my appointed time. And what I have done to be thus favoured I want to know. I declare I am as full of my own concerns as the next man, and I have as much memory as the average pilgrim in this valley, so you see I am not particularly fit to be a receptacle of confessions. Then why? Can't tell--unless it be to make time pass away after dinner. Charley, my dear chap, your dinner was extremely good, and in consequence these men here look upon a quiet rubber as a tumultuous occupation. They wallow in your good chairs and think to themselves, "Hang exertion. Let that Marlow talk." 'Talk? So be it. And it's easy enough to talk of Master Jim, after a good spread, two hundred feet above the sea-level, with a box of decent cigars handy, on a blessed evening of freshness and starlight that would make the best of us forget we are only on sufferance here and got to pick our way in cross lights, watching every precious minute and every irremediable step, trusting we shall manage yet to go out decently in the end--but not so sure of it after all--and with dashed little help to expect from those we touch elbows with right and left. Of course there are men here and there to whom the whole of life is like an after-dinner hour with a cigar; easy, pleasant, empty, perhaps enlivened by some fable of strife to be forgotten before the end is told--before the end is told--even if there happens to be any end to it. 'My eyes met his for the first time at that inquiry. You must know that everybody connected in any way with the sea was there, because the affair had been notorious for days, ever since that mysterious cable message came from Aden to start us all cackling. I say mysterious, because it was so in a sense though it contained a naked fact, about as naked and ugly as a fact can well be. The whole waterside talked of nothing else. First thing in the morning as I was dressing in my state-room, I would hear through the bulkhead my Parsee Dubash jabbering about the Patna with the steward, while he drank a cup of tea, by favour, in the pantry. No sooner on shore I would meet some acquaintance, and the first remark would be, "Did you ever hear of anything to beat this?" and according to his kind the man would smile cynically, or look sad, or let out a swear or two. Complete strangers would accost each other familiarly, just for the sake of easing their minds on the subject: every confounded loafer in the town came in for a harvest of drinks over this affair: you heard of it in the harbour office, at every ship-broker's, at your agent's, from whites, from natives, from half-castes, from the very boatmen squatting half naked on the stone steps as you went up--by Jove! There was some indignation, not a few jokes, and no end of discussions as to what had become of them, you know. This went on for a couple of weeks or more, and the opinion that whatever was mysterious in this affair would turn out to be tragic as well, began to prevail, when one fine morning, as I was standing in the shade by the steps of the harbour office, I perceived four men walking towards me along the quay. I wondered for a while where that queer lot had sprung from, and suddenly, I may say, I shouted to myself, "Here they are!" 'There they were, sure enough, three of them as large as life, and one much larger of girth than any living man has a right to be, just landed with a good breakfast inside of them from an outward-bound Dale Line steamer that had come in about an hour after sunrise. There could be no mistake; I spotted the jolly skipper of the Patna at the first glance: the fattest man in the whole blessed tropical belt clear round that good old earth of ours. Moreover, nine months or so before, I had come across him in Samarang. His steamer was loading in the Roads, and he was abusing the tyrannical institutions of the German empire, and soaking himself in beer all day long and day after day in De Jongh's back-shop, till De Jongh, who charged a guilder for every bottle without as much as the quiver of an eyelid, would beckon me aside, and, with his little leathery face all puckered up, declare confidentially, "Business is business, but this man, captain, he make me very sick. Tfui!" 'I was looking at him from the shade. He was hurrying on a little in advance, and the sunlight beating on him brought out his bulk in a startling way. He made me think of a trained baby elephant walking on hind-legs. He was extravagantly gorgeous too--got up in a soiled sleeping-suit, bright green and deep orange vertical stripes, with a pair of ragged straw slippers on his bare feet, and somebody's cast-off pith hat, very dirty and two sizes too small for him, tied up with a manilla rope-yarn on the top of his big head. You understand a man like that hasn't the ghost of a chance when it comes to borrowing clothes. Very well. On he came in hot haste, without a look right or left, passed within three feet of me, and in the innocence of his heart went on pelting upstairs into the harbour office to make his deposition, or report, or whatever you like to call it. 'It appears he addressed himself in the first instance to the principal shipping-master. Archie Ruthvel had just come in, and, as his story goes, was about to begin his arduous day by giving a dressing-down to his chief clerk. Some of you might have known him--an obliging little Portuguese half-caste with a miserably skinny neck, and always on the hop to get something from the shipmasters in the way of eatables--a piece of salt pork, a bag of biscuits, a few potatoes, or what not. One voyage, I recollect, I tipped him a live sheep out of the remnant of my sea-stock: not that I wanted him to do anything for me--he couldn't, you know--but because his childlike belief in the sacred right to perquisites quite touched my heart. It was so strong as to be almost beautiful. The race--the two races rather--and the climate . . . However, never mind. I know where I have a friend for life. 'Well, Ruthvel says he was giving him a severe lecture--on official morality, I suppose--when he heard a kind of subdued commotion at his back, and turning his head he saw, in his own words, something round and enormous, resembling a sixteen-hundred-weight sugar-hogshead wrapped in striped flannelette, up-ended in the middle of the large floor space in the office. He declares he was so taken aback that for quite an appreciable time he did not realise the thing was alive, and sat still wondering for what purpose and by what means that object had been transported in front of his desk. The archway from the ante-room was crowded with punkah-pullers, sweepers, police peons, the coxswain and crew of the harbour steam-launch, all craning their necks and almost climbing on each other's backs. Quite a riot. By that time the fellow had managed to tug and jerk his hat clear of his head, and advanced with slight bows at Ruthvel, who told me the sight was so discomposing that for some time he listened, quite unable to make out what that apparition wanted. It spoke in a voice harsh and lugubrious but intrepid, and little by little it dawned upon Archie that this was a development of the Patna case. He says that as soon as he understood who it was before him he felt quite unwell--Archie is so sympathetic and easily upset--but pulled himself together and shouted "Stop! I can't listen to you. You must go to the Master Attendant. I can't possibly listen to you. Captain Elliot is the man you want to see. This way, this way." He jumped up, ran round that long counter, pulled, shoved: the other let him, surprised but obedient at first, and only at the door of the private office some sort of animal instinct made him hang back and snort like a frightened bullock. "Look here! what's up? Let go! Look here!" Archie flung open the door without knocking. "The master of the Patna, sir," he shouts. "Go in, captain." He saw the old man lift his head from some writing so sharp that his nose-nippers fell off, banged the door to, and fled to his desk, where he had some papers waiting for his signature: but he says the row that burst out in there was so awful that he couldn't collect his senses sufficiently to remember the spelling of his own name. Archie's the most sensitive shipping-master in the two hemispheres. He declares he felt as though he had thrown a man to a hungry lion. No doubt the noise was great. I heard it down below, and I have every reason to believe it was heard clear across the Esplanade as far as the band-stand. Old father Elliot had a great stock of words and could shout--and didn't mind who he shouted at either. He would have shouted at the Viceroy himself. As he used to tell me: "I am as high as I can get; my pension is safe. I've a few pounds laid by, and if they don't like my notions of duty I would just as soon go home as not. I am an old man, and I have always spoken my mind. All I care for now is to see my girls married before I die." He was a little crazy on that point. His three daughters were awfully nice, though they resembled him amazingly, and on the mornings he woke up with a gloomy view of their matrimonial prospects the office would read it in his eye and tremble, because, they said, he was sure to have somebody for breakfast. However, that morning he did not eat the renegade, but, if I may be allowed to carry on the metaphor, chewed him up very small, so to speak, and--ah! ejected him again. 'Thus in a very few moments I saw his monstrous bulk descend in haste and stand still on the outer steps. He had stopped close to me for the purpose of profound meditation: his large purple cheeks quivered. He was biting his thumb, and after a while noticed me with a sidelong vexed look. The other three chaps that had landed with him made a little group waiting at some distance. There was a sallow-faced, mean little chap with his arm in a sling, and a long individual in a blue flannel coat, as dry as a chip and no stouter than a broomstick, with drooping grey moustaches, who looked about him with an air of jaunty imbecility. The third was an upstanding, broad-shouldered youth, with his hands in his pockets, turning his back on the other two who appeared to be talking together earnestly. He stared across the empty Esplanade. A ramshackle gharry, all dust and venetian blinds, pulled up short opposite the group, and the driver, throwing up his right foot over his knee, gave himself up to the critical examination of his toes. The young chap, making no movement, not even stirring his head, just stared into the sunshine. This was my first view of Jim. He looked as unconcerned and unapproachable as only the young can look. There he stood, clean-limbed, clean-faced, firm on his feet, as promising a boy as the sun ever shone on; and, looking at him, knowing all he knew and a little more too, I was as angry as though I had detected him trying to get something out of me by false pretences. He had no business to look so sound. I thought to myself--well, if this sort can go wrong like that . . . and I felt as though I could fling down my hat and dance on it from sheer mortification, as I once saw the skipper of an Italian barque do because his duffer of a mate got into a mess with his anchors when making a flying moor in a roadstead full of ships. I asked myself, seeing him there apparently so much at ease--is he silly? is he callous? He seemed ready to start whistling a tune. And note, I did not care a rap about the behaviour of the other two. Their persons somehow fitted the tale that was public property, and was going to be the subject of an official inquiry. "That old mad rogue upstairs called me a hound," said the captain of the Patna. I can't tell whether he recognised me--I rather think he did; but at any rate our glances met. He glared--I smiled; hound was the very mildest epithet that had reached me through the open window. "Did he?" I said from some strange inability to hold my tongue. He nodded, bit his thumb again, swore under his breath: then lifting his head and looking at me with sullen and passionate impudence--"Bah! the Pacific is big, my friendt. You damned Englishmen can do your worst; I know where there's plenty room for a man like me: I am well aguaindt in Apia, in Honolulu, in . . ." He paused reflectively, while without effort I could depict to myself the sort of people he was "aguaindt" with in those places. I won't make a secret of it that I had been "aguaindt" with not a few of that sort myself. There are times when a man must act as though life were equally sweet in any company. I've known such a time, and, what's more, I shan't now pretend to pull a long face over my necessity, because a good many of that bad company from want of moral--moral--what shall I say?--posture, or from some other equally profound cause, were twice as instructive and twenty times more amusing than the usual respectable thief of commerce you fellows ask to sit at your table without any real necessity--from habit, from cowardice, from good-nature, from a hundred sneaking and inadequate reasons. '"You Englishmen are all rogues," went on my patriotic Flensborg or Stettin Australian. I really don't recollect now what decent little port on the shores of the Baltic was defiled by being the nest of that precious bird. "What are you to shout? Eh? You tell me? You no better than other people, and that old rogue he make Gottam fuss with me." His thick carcass trembled on its legs that were like a pair of pillars; it trembled from head to foot. "That's what you English always make--make a tam' fuss--for any little thing, because I was not born in your tam' country. Take away my certificate. Take it. I don't want the certificate. A man like me don't want your verfluchte certificate. I shpit on it." He spat. "I vill an Amerigan citizen begome," he cried, fretting and fuming and shuffling his feet as if to free his ankles from some invisible and mysterious grasp that would not let him get away from that spot. He made himself so warm that the top of his bullet head positively smoked. Nothing mysterious prevented me from going away: curiosity is the most obvious of sentiments, and it held me there to see the effect of a full information upon that young fellow who, hands in pockets, and turning his back upon the sidewalk, gazed across the grass-plots of the Esplanade at the yellow portico of the Malabar Hotel with the air of a man about to go for a walk as soon as his friend is ready. That's how he looked, and it was odious. I waited to see him overwhelmed, confounded, pierced through and through, squirming like an impaled beetle--and I was half afraid to see it too--if you understand what I mean. Nothing more awful than to watch a man who has been found out, not in a crime but in a more than criminal weakness. The commonest sort of fortitude prevents us from becoming criminals in a legal sense; it is from weakness unknown, but perhaps suspected, as in some parts of the world you suspect a deadly snake in every bush--from weakness that may lie hidden, watched or unwatched, prayed against or manfully scorned, repressed or maybe ignored more than half a lifetime, not one of us is safe. We are snared into doing things for which we get called names, and things for which we get hanged, and yet the spirit may well survive--survive the condemnation, survive the halter, by Jove! And there are things--they look small enough sometimes too--by which some of us are totally and completely undone. I watched the youngster there. I liked his appearance; I knew his appearance; he came from the right place; he was one of us. He stood there for all the parentage of his kind, for men and women by no means clever or amusing, but whose very existence is based upon honest faith, and upon the instinct of courage. I don't mean military courage, or civil courage, or any special kind of courage. I mean just that inborn ability to look temptations straight in the face--a readiness unintellectual enough, goodness knows, but without pose--a power of resistance, don't you see, ungracious if you like, but priceless--an unthinking and blessed stiffness before the outward and inward terrors, before the might of nature and the seductive corruption of men--backed by a faith invulnerable to the strength of facts, to the contagion of example, to the solicitation of ideas. Hang ideas! They are tramps, vagabonds, knocking at the back-door of your mind, each taking a little of your substance, each carrying away some crumb of that belief in a few simple notions you must cling to if you want to live decently and would like to die easy! 'This has nothing to do with Jim, directly; only he was outwardly so typical of that good, stupid kind we like to feel marching right and left of us in life, of the kind that is not disturbed by the vagaries of intelligence and the perversions of--of nerves, let us say. He was the kind of fellow you would, on the strength of his looks, leave in charge of the deck--figuratively and professionally speaking. I say I would, and I ought to know. Haven't I turned out youngsters enough in my time, for the service of the Red Rag, to the craft of the sea, to the craft whose whole secret could be expressed in one short sentence, and yet must be driven afresh every day into young heads till it becomes the component part of every waking thought--till it is present in every dream of their young sleep! The sea has been good to me, but when I remember all these boys that passed through my hands, some grown up now and some drowned by this time, but all good stuff for the sea, I don't think I have done badly by it either. Were I to go home to-morrow, I bet that before two days passed over my head some sunburnt young chief mate would overtake me at some dock gateway or other, and a fresh deep voice speaking above my hat would ask: "Don't you remember me, sir? Why! little So-and-so. Such and such a ship. It was my first voyage." And I would remember a bewildered little shaver, no higher than the back of this chair, with a mother and perhaps a big sister on the quay, very quiet but too upset to wave their handkerchiefs at the ship that glides out gently between the pier-heads; or perhaps some decent middle-aged father who had come early with his boy to see him off, and stays all the morning, because he is interested in the windlass apparently, and stays too long, and has got to scramble ashore at last with no time at all to say good-bye. The mud pilot on the poop sings out to me in a drawl, "Hold her with the check line for a moment, Mister Mate. There's a gentleman wants to get ashore. . . . Up with you, sir. Nearly got carried off to Talcahuano, didn't you? Now's your time; easy does it. . . . All right. Slack away again forward there." The tugs, smoking like the pit of perdition, get hold and churn the old river into fury; the gentleman ashore is dusting his knees--the benevolent steward has shied his umbrella after him. All very proper. He has offered his bit of sacrifice to the sea, and now he may go home pretending he thinks nothing of it; and the little willing victim shall be very sea-sick before next morning. By-and-by, when he has learned all the little mysteries and the one great secret of the craft, he shall be fit to live or die as the sea may decree; and the man who had taken a hand in this fool game, in which the sea wins every toss, will be pleased to have his back slapped by a heavy young hand, and to hear a cheery sea-puppy voice: "Do you remember me, sir? The little So-and-so." 'I tell you this is good; it tells you that once in your life at least you had gone the right way to work. I have been thus slapped, and I have winced, for the slap was heavy, and I have glowed all day long and gone to bed feeling less lonely in the world by virtue of that hearty thump. Don't I remember the little So-and-so's! I tell you I ought to know the right kind of looks. I would have trusted the deck to that youngster on the strength of a single glance, and gone to sleep with both eyes--and, by Jove! it wouldn't have been safe. There are depths of horror in that thought. He looked as genuine as a new sovereign, but there was some infernal alloy in his metal. How much? The least thing--the least drop of something rare and accursed; the least drop!--but he made you--standing there with his don't-care-hang air--he made you wonder whether perchance he were nothing more rare than brass. 'I couldn't believe it. I tell you I wanted to see him squirm for the honour of the craft. The other two no-account chaps spotted their captain, and began to move slowly towards us. They chatted together as they strolled, and I did not care any more than if they had not been visible to the naked eye. They grinned at each other--might have been exchanging jokes, for all I know. I saw that with one of them it was a case of a broken arm; and as to the long individual with grey moustaches he was the chief engineer, and in various ways a pretty notorious personality. They were nobodies. They approached. The skipper gazed in an inanimate way between his feet: he seemed to be swollen to an unnatural size by some awful disease, by the mysterious action of an unknown poison. He lifted his head, saw the two before him waiting, opened his mouth with an extraordinary, sneering contortion of his puffed face--to speak to them, I suppose--and then a thought seemed to strike him. His thick, purplish lips came together without a sound, he went off in a resolute waddle to the gharry and began to jerk at the door-handle with such a blind brutality of impatience that I expected to see the whole concern overturned on its side, pony and all. The driver, shaken out of his meditation over the sole of his foot, displayed at once all the signs of intense terror, and held with both hands, looking round from his box at this vast carcass forcing its way into his conveyance. The little machine shook and rocked tumultuously, and the crimson nape of that lowered neck, the size of those straining thighs, the immense heaving of that dingy, striped green-and-orange back, the whole burrowing effort of that gaudy and sordid mass, troubled one's sense of probability with a droll and fearsome effect, like one of those grotesque and distinct visions that scare and fascinate one in a fever. He disappeared. I half expected the roof to split in two, the little box on wheels to burst open in the manner of a ripe cotton-pod--but it only sank with a click of flattened springs, and suddenly one venetian blind rattled down. His shoulders reappeared, jammed in the small opening; his head hung out, distended and tossing like a captive balloon, perspiring, furious, spluttering. He reached for the gharry-wallah with vicious flourishes of a fist as dumpy and red as a lump of raw meat. He roared at him to be off, to go on. Where? Into the Pacific, perhaps. The driver lashed; the pony snorted, reared once, and darted off at a gallop. Where? To Apia? To Honolulu? He had 6000 miles of tropical belt to disport himself in, and I did not hear the precise address. A snorting pony snatched him into "Ewigkeit" in the twinkling of an eye, and I never saw him again; and, what's more, I don't know of anybody that ever had a glimpse of him after he departed from my knowledge sitting inside a ramshackle little gharry that fled round the corner in a white smother of dust. He departed, disappeared, vanished, absconded; and absurdly enough it looked as though he had taken that gharry with him, for never again did I come across a sorrel pony with a slit ear and a lackadaisical Tamil driver afflicted by a sore foot. The Pacific is indeed big; but whether he found a place for a display of his talents in it or not, the fact remains he had flown into space like a witch on a broomstick. The little chap with his arm in a sling started to run after the carriage, bleating, "Captain! I say, Captain! I sa-a-ay!"--but after a few steps stopped short, hung his head, and walked back slowly. At the sharp rattle of the wheels the young fellow spun round where he stood. He made no other movement, no gesture, no sign, and remained facing in the new direction after the gharry had swung out of sight. 'All this happened in much less time than it takes to tell, since I am trying to interpret for you into slow speech the instantaneous effect of visual impressions. Next moment the half-caste clerk, sent by Archie to look a little after the poor castaways of the Patna, came upon the scene. He ran out eager and bareheaded, looking right and left, and very full of his mission. It was doomed to be a failure as far as the principal person was concerned, but he approached the others with fussy importance, and, almost immediately, found himself involved in a violent altercation with the chap that carried his arm in a sling, and who turned out to be extremely anxious for a row. He wasn't going to be ordered about--"not he, b'gosh." He wouldn't be terrified with a pack of lies by a cocky half-bred little quill-driver. He was not going to be bullied by "no object of that sort," if the story were true "ever so"! He bawled his wish, his desire, his determination to go to bed. "If you weren't a God-forsaken Portuguee," I heard him yell, "you would know that the hospital is the right place for me." He pushed the fist of his sound arm under the other's nose; a crowd began to collect; the half-caste, flustered, but doing his best to appear dignified, tried to explain his intentions. I went away without waiting to see the end. 'But it so happened that I had a man in the hospital at the time, and going there to see about him the day before the opening of the Inquiry, I saw in the white men's ward that little chap tossing on his back, with his arm in splints, and quite light-headed. To my great surprise the other one, the long individual with drooping white moustache, had also found his way there. I remembered I had seen him slinking away during the quarrel, in a half prance, half shuffle, and trying very hard not to look scared. He was no stranger to the port, it seems, and in his distress was able to make tracks straight for Mariani's billiard-room and grog-shop near the bazaar. That unspeakable vagabond, Mariani, who had known the man and had ministered to his vices in one or two other places, kissed the ground, in a manner of speaking, before him, and shut him up with a supply of bottles in an upstairs room of his infamous hovel. It appears he was under some hazy apprehension as to his personal safety, and wished to be concealed. However, Mariani told me a long time after (when he came on board one day to dun my steward for the price of some cigars) that he would have done more for him without asking any questions, from gratitude for some unholy favour received very many years ago--as far as I could make out. He thumped twice his brawny chest, rolled enormous black-and-white eyes glistening with tears: "Antonio never forget--Antonio never forget!" What was the precise nature of the immoral obligation I never learned, but be it what it may, he had every facility given him to remain under lock and key, with a chair, a table, a mattress in a corner, and a litter of fallen plaster on the floor, in an irrational state of funk, and keeping up his pecker with such tonics as Mariani dispensed. This lasted till the evening of the third day, when, after letting out a few horrible screams, he found himself compelled to seek safety in flight from a legion of centipedes. He burst the door open, made one leap for dear life down the crazy little stairway, landed bodily on Mariani's stomach, picked himself up, and bolted like a rabbit into the streets. The police plucked him off a garbage-heap in the early morning. At first he had a notion they were carrying him off to be hanged, and fought for liberty like a hero, but when I sat down by his bed he had been very quiet for two days. His lean bronzed head, with white moustaches, looked fine and calm on the pillow, like the head of a war-worn soldier with a child-like soul, had it not been for a hint of spectral alarm that lurked in the blank glitter of his glance, resembling a nondescript form of a terror crouching silently behind a pane of glass. He was so extremely calm, that I began to indulge in the eccentric hope of hearing something explanatory of the famous affair from his point of view. Why I longed to go grubbing into the deplorable details of an occurrence which, after all, concerned me no more than as a member of an obscure body of men held together by a community of inglorious toil and by fidelity to a certain standard of conduct, I can't explain. You may call it an unhealthy curiosity if you like; but I have a distinct notion I wished to find something. Perhaps, unconsciously, I hoped I would find that something, some profound and redeeming cause, some merciful explanation, some convincing shadow of an excuse. I see well enough now that I hoped for the impossible--for the laying of what is the most obstinate ghost of man's creation, of the uneasy doubt uprising like a mist, secret and gnawing like a worm, and more chilling than the certitude of death--the doubt of the sovereign power enthroned in a fixed standard of conduct. It is the hardest thing to stumble against; it is the thing that breeds yelling panics and good little quiet villainies; it's the true shadow of calamity. Did I believe in a miracle? and why did I desire it so ardently? Was it for my own sake that I wished to find some shadow of an excuse for that young fellow whom I had never seen before, but whose appearance alone added a touch of personal concern to the thoughts suggested by the knowledge of his weakness--made it a thing of mystery and terror--like a hint of a destructive fate ready for us all whose youth--in its day--had resembled his youth? I fear that such was the secret motive of my prying. I was, and no mistake, looking for a miracle. The only thing that at this distance of time strikes me as miraculous is the extent of my imbecility. I positively hoped to obtain from that battered and shady invalid some exorcism against the ghost of doubt. I must have been pretty desperate too, for, without loss of time, after a few indifferent and friendly sentences which he answered with languid readiness, just as any decent sick man would do, I produced the word Patna wrapped up in a delicate question as in a wisp of floss silk. I was delicate selfishly; I did not want to startle him; I had no solicitude for him; I was not furious with him and sorry for him: his experience was of no importance, his redemption would have had no point for me. He had grown old in minor iniquities, and could no longer inspire aversion or pity. He repeated Patna? interrogatively, seemed to make a short effort of memory, and said: "Quite right. I am an old stager out here. I saw her go down." I made ready to vent my indignation at such a stupid lie, when he added smoothly, "She was full of reptiles." 'This made me pause. What did he mean? The unsteady phantom of terror behind his glassy eyes seemed to stand still and look into mine wistfully. "They turned me out of my bunk in the middle watch to look at her sinking," he pursued in a reflective tone. His voice sounded alarmingly strong all at once. I was sorry for my folly. There was no snowy-winged coif of a nursing sister to be seen flitting in the perspective of the ward; but away in the middle of a long row of empty iron bedsteads an accident case from some ship in the Roads sat up brown and gaunt with a white bandage set rakishly on the forehead. Suddenly my interesting invalid shot out an arm thin like a tentacle and clawed my shoulder. "Only my eyes were good enough to see. I am famous for my eyesight. That's why they called me, I expect. None of them was quick enough to see her go, but they saw that she was gone right enough, and sang out together--like this." . . . A wolfish howl searched the very recesses of my soul. "Oh! make 'im dry up," whined the accident case irritably. "You don't believe me, I suppose," went on the other, with an air of ineffable conceit. "I tell you there are no such eyes as mine this side of the Persian Gulf. Look under the bed." 'Of course I stooped instantly. I defy anybody not to have done so. "What can you see?" he asked. "Nothing," I said, feeling awfully ashamed of myself. He scrutinised my face with wild and withering contempt. "Just so," he said, "but if I were to look I could see--there's no eyes like mine, I tell you." Again he clawed, pulling at me downwards in his eagerness to relieve himself by a confidential communication. "Millions of pink toads. There's no eyes like mine. Millions of pink toads. It's worse than seeing a ship sink. I could look at sinking ships and smoke my pipe all day long. Why don't they give me back my pipe? I would get a smoke while I watched these toads. The ship was full of them. They've got to be watched, you know." He winked facetiously. The perspiration dripped on him off my head, my drill coat clung to my wet back: the afternoon breeze swept impetuously over the row of bedsteads, the stiff folds of curtains stirred perpendicularly, rattling on brass rods, the covers of empty beds blew about noiselessly near the bare floor all along the line, and I shivered to the very marrow. The soft wind of the tropics played in that naked ward as bleak as a winter's gale in an old barn at home. "Don't you let him start his hollering, mister," hailed from afar the accident case in a distressed angry shout that came ringing between the walls like a quavering call down a tunnel. The clawing hand hauled at my shoulder; he leered at me knowingly. "The ship was full of them, you know, and we had to clear out on the strict Q.T.," he whispered with extreme rapidity. "All pink. All pink--as big as mastiffs, with an eye on the top of the head and claws all round their ugly mouths. Ough! Ough!" Quick jerks as of galvanic shocks disclosed under the flat coverlet the outlines of meagre and agitated legs; he let go my shoulder and reached after something in the air; his body trembled tensely like a released harp-string; and while I looked down, the spectral horror in him broke through his glassy gaze. Instantly his face of an old soldier, with its noble and calm outlines, became decomposed before my eyes by the corruption of stealthy cunning, of an abominable caution and of desperate fear. He restrained a cry--"Ssh! what are they doing now down there?" he asked, pointing to the floor with fantastic precautions of voice and gesture, whose meaning, borne upon my mind in a lurid flash, made me very sick of my cleverness. "They are all asleep," I answered, watching him narrowly. That was it. That's what he wanted to hear; these were the exact words that could calm him. He drew a long breath. "Ssh! Quiet, steady. I am an old stager out here. I know them brutes. Bash in the head of the first that stirs. There's too many of them, and she won't swim more than ten minutes." He panted again. "Hurry up," he yelled suddenly, and went on in a steady scream: "They are all awake--millions of them. They are trampling on me! Wait! Oh, wait! I'll smash them in heaps like flies. Wait for me! Help! H-e-elp!" An interminable and sustained howl completed my discomfiture. I saw in the distance the accident case raise deplorably both his hands to his bandaged head; a dresser, aproned to the chin showed himself in the vista of the ward, as if seen in the small end of a telescope. I confessed myself fairly routed, and without more ado, stepping out through one of the long windows, escaped into the outside gallery. The howl pursued me like a vengeance. I turned into a deserted landing, and suddenly all became very still and quiet around me, and I descended the bare and shiny staircase in a silence that enabled me to compose my distracted thoughts. Down below I met one of the resident surgeons who was crossing the courtyard and stopped me. "Been to see your man, Captain? I think we may let him go to-morrow. These fools have no notion of taking care of themselves, though. I say, we've got the chief engineer of that pilgrim ship here. A curious case. D.T.'s of the worst kind. He has been drinking hard in that Greek's or Italian's grog-shop for three days. What can you expect? Four bottles of that kind of brandy a day, I am told. Wonderful, if true. Sheeted with boiler-iron inside I should think. The head, ah! the head, of course, gone, but the curious part is there's some sort of method in his raving. I am trying to find out. Most unusual--that thread of logic in such a delirium. Traditionally he ought to see snakes, but he doesn't. Good old tradition's at a discount nowadays. Eh! His--er--visions are batrachian. Ha! ha! No, seriously, I never remember being so interested in a case of jim-jams before. He ought to be dead, don't you know, after such a festive experiment. Oh! he is a tough object. Four-and-twenty years of the tropics too. You ought really to take a peep at him. Noble-looking old boozer. Most extraordinary man I ever met--medically, of course. Won't you?" 'I have been all along exhibiting the usual polite signs of interest, but now assuming an air of regret I murmured of want of time, and shook hands in a hurry. "I say," he cried after me; "he can't attend that inquiry. Is his evidence material, you think?" '"Not in the least," I called back from the gateway.'

Chapters 3-5

https://web.archive.org/web/20210215030710/https://www.novelguide.com/lord-jim/summaries/chapter3-5

Four and Five . In Chapter Three, the calm of the waters and the array of the sleeping passengers are described. Jim does not see 'the shadow of the coming event'; the only shadow on the sea is that of the black smoke coming from the funnel. Jim thinks of how steady the ship goes and imagines valorous deeds: 'He loved these dreams and the success of his imaginary achievements'; 'they were the best parts of life, its secret truth, its hidden reality.' . . The skipper comes over to him noiselessly in his pajamas and with his sleeping jacket flung open. The skipper looks over the charts sleepily and Jim responds with deference to a remark he makes, but this figure 'fixed itself in his memory forever as the incarnation of everything vile and base that lurks in the world we love.' The second engineer appears and complains about the heat below deck; he seems to be drunk. He has had a drink of the chief engineer's brandy. . . Jim has only ten minutes left of his watch and wants to go below deck. He thinks the skipper and second engineer 'did not belong to the world of heroic adventure', but they do not bother him as he thinks of himself as being different. As the second engineer explains he is not drunk, he tumbles and Jim and the skipper stagger too. The ship appears to rise a few inches throughout its whole length and then settles back to the smooth surface of the sea. The quivering stops and the faint noise of thunder ceases. . . Chapter Four begins a month or so later at an official inquiry. Jim tries to tell the truth and says the ship 'went over whatever it was as easy as a snake crawling over a stick'. He then tells the assessor he checked to see if the ship was damaged, on the skipper's orders, and called to no one to avoid creating a panic. He explains how he opened the forepeak hatch and heard water splashing, so knew there was a big hole below the water line. The skipper then struck the engineer and told him to turn the engines off. Jim is anxious to make it clear that he wants to be precise and his mind 'positively flew round and round the serried circle of facts that had surged up all about him to cut him off from the rest of his kind'. In the intervals between his answers, his eyes rest on a white man sitting apart from the others who occasionally looks at him as though he can see something past Jim's shoulder. Jim thinks he recognizes him, but they have never spoken to each other; Jim has spoken to nobody for days, 'like a wayfarer lost in the wilderness'. The man watching seems to be aware of Jim's 'hopeless difficulty'. The man, Marlow, shows himself willing to remember Jim, 'later on, many times, in distant parts of the world'. . . In Chapter Five, the focus moves to Marlow and how he thinks of himself as having a guardian angel and a familiar devil. It is the devil that lets him in for such things as going to the inquiry and is the cause of the effect he has of loosening men's tongues. He tells his dinner companions about the inquiry and how everybody connected with working on the sea was there as 'the affair had been notorious for days'. . . The narrative moves back in time again as Marlow recounts standing outside the harbour offices one fine morning and sees four men walking towards him. He recognizes one as the skipper of the Patna. The skipper visits Captain Elliott and Marlow is able to hear the Captain shouting at him. Marlow sees the skipper come back outside and notes that one of the men makes no movement and just stares into the sunshine. Marlow wonders if he is silly or callous. The skipper talks to Marlow about how the Captain has just called him a hound and has taken his certificate . Marlow looks at Jim again and notes his likeable appearance. He thinks of him as the sort of fellow one would leave in charge on deck. He should know this as he has 'turned out enough youngsters' to the craft of the sea. This thought of trusting him gives him the horrors, though, as this would not be safe. . . The skipper hails a 'gharry' and drives off. A clerk comes out for the men and the second engineer says he will not be bullied by 'a cocky half-bred little quill-driver' . A few days later, Marlow visits one of his men in the hospital and encounters the chief engineer there. Marlow sits by his bed in the hope of finding out 'some profound and redeeming cause' for what happened, but sees now he was hoping for the impossible. He wants to find the shadow of an excuse for the young man , but thinks this is looking for a miracle. The engineer asks Marlow what he can see under the bed. Marlow replies 'nothing', but the engineer says if he were to look he would see a million pink toads. He then begins screaming and says they are trampling on him. As Marlow leaves, he is told the engineer has delirium tremens of the worst kind and will not be able to attend the inquiry. .

Four and Five . Chapter Four recounts some of the events at the official inquiry as Jim is left to explain what has happened on the Patna. As well as shifting back and forth in time without any detailed exposition, Conrad also gives only small chunks of information as to the course of events that night on the Patna and the readers are teased into imagining disaster. In Chapter Five, for example, the readers are informed that Marlow wanted the 'miracle' of finding an excuse for Jim, as though he has committed an unforgiveable crime. This is made ambiguous, however, as it would be a miracle for the engineer to tell Marlow anything sensible considering the level of his delirium tremens.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/31.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Sense and Sensibility/section_21_part_0.txt

Sense and Sensibility.chapter 31

chapter 31

{"name": "Chapter 31", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101060302/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/s/sense-and-sensibility/summary-and-analysis/chapter-31", "summary": "Mrs. Jennings continued her good services, all of which were unappreciated by Marianne, who felt that the woman was using her as a source of gossip. When she came to Marianne's room, glowing, with a letter which she believed would cheer the girl, Marianne assumed the correspondence was from Willoughby, and her distress was heightened when she realized it was but from her mother. What was worse, her mother spoke continually of Willoughby with the greatest confidence in his good intentions. Marianne longed to go home, but Elinor persuaded her to wait for their mother's advice. Elinor started a letter to her mother but was interrupted by the arrival of Colonel Brandon, who was very desirous of finding Elinor alone. Warning her that she would find him \"a very awkward narrator,\" he began to tell her about Eliza, a girl who \"in some measure\" resembled Marianne. Eliza, an orphan and wealthy, was under the guardianship of Colonel Brandon's father, who was a close relative and grew up with him in his home. They planned to elope, but a housemaid betrayed them, and, at seventeen, against her inclination, Eliza was married to Colonel Brandon's older brother. This was done so that her large income could save the Brandon estate, which had gone to his older brother. He treated her badly, and after two years they were divorced. Eliza was then seduced by one man after another. After serving in the East Indies for three years, Colonel Brandon came home and began to search for her. He at last found her a consumptive, \"so altered -- so faded -- worn down by acute suffering of every kind!\" He did all he could for her and \"was with her in her last moments.\" Eliza left her only child, three-year-old Eliza, in his charge. He put her in a good school, visited her whenever he could, and often had her to stay at Delaford. Twelve months ago, she had asked permission to go to Bath with a friend. There she had disappeared, and it was eight months before Colonel Brandon found what had happened to her. He received a letter -- the same letter which had caused him to leave Barton Park so abruptly on the day of the planned excursion to Whitwell. She had been seduced by Mr. Willoughby, who \"had left her, promising to return; he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.\" At present she lived in the country with the child who was the product of that event. Colonel Brandon had challenged Willoughby to a duel, but neither had been wounded, \"and the meeting, therefore, never got abroad.\" He told Elinor to tell Marianne whatever she saw fit. \"You must know best what will be its effect.\"", "analysis": "In this chapter, Jane Austen makes use of one of the conventions seen commonly in the novels of that period -- the inset story. The story of the young woman ruined by a ruthless young man was always popular. The seduction usually happened at a seaside resort, as here, in Bath. As we learn more and more about Willoughby, he appears to be a totally different person from the man who courted Marianne at Barton Park. Both men, the good and the evil Willoughby, are not convincing, for they are both extreme."}

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.

Chapter 31

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101060302/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/s/sense-and-sensibility/summary-and-analysis/chapter-31

Mrs. Jennings continued her good services, all of which were unappreciated by Marianne, who felt that the woman was using her as a source of gossip. When she came to Marianne's room, glowing, with a letter which she believed would cheer the girl, Marianne assumed the correspondence was from Willoughby, and her distress was heightened when she realized it was but from her mother. What was worse, her mother spoke continually of Willoughby with the greatest confidence in his good intentions. Marianne longed to go home, but Elinor persuaded her to wait for their mother's advice. Elinor started a letter to her mother but was interrupted by the arrival of Colonel Brandon, who was very desirous of finding Elinor alone. Warning her that she would find him "a very awkward narrator," he began to tell her about Eliza, a girl who "in some measure" resembled Marianne. Eliza, an orphan and wealthy, was under the guardianship of Colonel Brandon's father, who was a close relative and grew up with him in his home. They planned to elope, but a housemaid betrayed them, and, at seventeen, against her inclination, Eliza was married to Colonel Brandon's older brother. This was done so that her large income could save the Brandon estate, which had gone to his older brother. He treated her badly, and after two years they were divorced. Eliza was then seduced by one man after another. After serving in the East Indies for three years, Colonel Brandon came home and began to search for her. He at last found her a consumptive, "so altered -- so faded -- worn down by acute suffering of every kind!" He did all he could for her and "was with her in her last moments." Eliza left her only child, three-year-old Eliza, in his charge. He put her in a good school, visited her whenever he could, and often had her to stay at Delaford. Twelve months ago, she had asked permission to go to Bath with a friend. There she had disappeared, and it was eight months before Colonel Brandon found what had happened to her. He received a letter -- the same letter which had caused him to leave Barton Park so abruptly on the day of the planned excursion to Whitwell. She had been seduced by Mr. Willoughby, who "had left her, promising to return; he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her." At present she lived in the country with the child who was the product of that event. Colonel Brandon had challenged Willoughby to a duel, but neither had been wounded, "and the meeting, therefore, never got abroad." He told Elinor to tell Marianne whatever she saw fit. "You must know best what will be its effect."

In this chapter, Jane Austen makes use of one of the conventions seen commonly in the novels of that period -- the inset story. The story of the young woman ruined by a ruthless young man was always popular. The seduction usually happened at a seaside resort, as here, in Bath. As we learn more and more about Willoughby, he appears to be a totally different person from the man who courted Marianne at Barton Park. Both men, the good and the evil Willoughby, are not convincing, for they are both extreme.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/04.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Lord Jim/section_3_part_0.txt

Lord Jim.chapter 4

chapter 4

{"name": "Chapter 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219145744/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/l/lord-jim/summary-and-analysis/chapter-4", "summary": "The narrative resumes a month or so later, and we are now in the police court of an Eastern port. An official hearing was called to investigate \"the Patna incident\" in an attempt to determine what struck the ship and what happened on board after the mysterious collision that night. Standing in a box above the hot, packed courtroom, Jim was the only white member of the Patna's crew to answer to the panel of inquiry. His answers were obviously painful and difficult, and he shivered, his mind flying. Slowly, in fragments and half-statements of memory, Jim explained to the panel that he tried to determine that night if any damage had been done to the ship; he remembered that he immediately realized that the hatch in the front of the ship was rapidly filling with water. Clearly, there was a hole in the bottom of the ship. Only one wall kept the ship from being flooded, and if that wall broke, they were doomed. In shock, yet strangely calm, he went to warn the captain, and he met the second engineer, who was complaining about a broken arm. Jim explained what had happened, and the engineer dashed toward the captain, shouting and swearing in panic. The captain silenced him and sent him below to shut off the hot engines before the icy water broke against them. Lost in futility and frustration and wiping his damp forehead, Jim unexpectedly saw a \"distinctive looking\" white man in the room, sitting apart. His face was worn and clouded, but his eyes were \"straight, interested, and clear.\" Jim had seen this man before -- he was sure of it -- and this man seemed \"to be aware of hopeless difficulty.\"", "analysis": "This chapter shifts to sometime later. Here, the reader could be justifiably confused about the time, the place, the purpose of the \"inquiry,\" and the indistinct introduction of a strange man called Marlow. Throughout these first four chapters, we see Jim through the omniscient narrator as a magnificent physical specimen endowed with an \"exquisite sensibility,\" a man who dreams of \"valorous deeds\" and who lives on an idealistic level. Later, we will realize that this view is ironic: here, for example, Jim is on trial at a court of inquiry, and he is filled with horror and shame, and yet we don't know the reason why. Jim is forced, we hear, to give facts -- even though facts do not answer the essential questions: \"They wanted facts. Facts. They demanded facts of him, as if facts could explain anything.\" Meantime, Jim knew that \"only a meticulous precision of statement would bring out the true horror behind the appalling face of things.\" Jim's realizations, by the very nature of the language, imply that something horrible has happened, yet the reader is still essentially in the dark as to the nature of Jim's \"horror\" and his \"shame.\" In summary, the first four chapters have presented, from an omniscient view, Jim's early life and training for the sea, his dreams of performing acts of courage and heroism, an important chance to be a hero during his sea training, the voyage on the Patna until some unexplained misfortune strikes, and Jim's being tried for some unknown but horrible and shameful act."}

A month or so afterwards, when Jim, in answer to pointed questions, tried to tell honestly the truth of this experience, he said, speaking of the ship: 'She went over whatever it was as easy as a snake crawling over a stick.' The illustration was good: the questions were aiming at facts, and the official Inquiry was being held in the police court of an Eastern port. He stood elevated in the witness-box, with burning cheeks in a cool lofty room: the big framework of punkahs moved gently to and fro high above his head, and from below many eyes were looking at him out of dark faces, out of white faces, out of red faces, out of faces attentive, spellbound, as if all these people sitting in orderly rows upon narrow benches had been enslaved by the fascination of his voice. It was very loud, it rang startling in his own ears, it was the only sound audible in the world, for the terribly distinct questions that extorted his answers seemed to shape themselves in anguish and pain within his breast,--came to him poignant and silent like the terrible questioning of one's conscience. Outside the court the sun blazed--within was the wind of great punkahs that made you shiver, the shame that made you burn, the attentive eyes whose glance stabbed. The face of the presiding magistrate, clean shaved and impassible, looked at him deadly pale between the red faces of the two nautical assessors. The light of a broad window under the ceiling fell from above on the heads and shoulders of the three men, and they were fiercely distinct in the half-light of the big court-room where the audience seemed composed of staring shadows. They wanted facts. Facts! They demanded facts from him, as if facts could explain anything! 'After you had concluded you had collided with something floating awash, say a water-logged wreck, you were ordered by your captain to go forward and ascertain if there was any damage done. Did you think it likely from the force of the blow?' asked the assessor sitting to the left. He had a thin horseshoe beard, salient cheek-bones, and with both elbows on the desk clasped his rugged hands before his face, looking at Jim with thoughtful blue eyes; the other, a heavy, scornful man, thrown back in his seat, his left arm extended full length, drummed delicately with his finger-tips on a blotting-pad: in the middle the magistrate upright in the roomy arm-chair, his head inclined slightly on the shoulder, had his arms crossed on his breast and a few flowers in a glass vase by the side of his inkstand. 'I did not,' said Jim. 'I was told to call no one and to make no noise for fear of creating a panic. I thought the precaution reasonable. I took one of the lamps that were hung under the awnings and went forward. After opening the forepeak hatch I heard splashing in there. I lowered then the lamp the whole drift of its lanyard, and saw that the forepeak was more than half full of water already. I knew then there must be a big hole below the water-line.' He paused. 'Yes,' said the big assessor, with a dreamy smile at the blotting-pad; his fingers played incessantly, touching the paper without noise. 'I did not think of danger just then. I might have been a little startled: all this happened in such a quiet way and so very suddenly. I knew there was no other bulkhead in the ship but the collision bulkhead separating the forepeak from the forehold. I went back to tell the captain. I came upon the second engineer getting up at the foot of the bridge-ladder: he seemed dazed, and told me he thought his left arm was broken; he had slipped on the top step when getting down while I was forward. He exclaimed, "My God! That rotten bulkhead'll give way in a minute, and the damned thing will go down under us like a lump of lead." He pushed me away with his right arm and ran before me up the ladder, shouting as he climbed. His left arm hung by his side. I followed up in time to see the captain rush at him and knock him down flat on his back. He did not strike him again: he stood bending over him and speaking angrily but quite low. I fancy he was asking him why the devil he didn't go and stop the engines, instead of making a row about it on deck. I heard him say, "Get up! Run! fly!" He swore also. The engineer slid down the starboard ladder and bolted round the skylight to the engine-room companion which was on the port side. He moaned as he ran. . . .' He spoke slowly; he remembered swiftly and with extreme vividness; he could have reproduced like an echo the moaning of the engineer for the better information of these men who wanted facts. After his first feeling of revolt he had come round to the view that only a meticulous precision of statement would bring out the true horror behind the appalling face of things. The facts those men were so eager to know had been visible, tangible, open to the senses, occupying their place in space and time, requiring for their existence a fourteen-hundred-ton steamer and twenty-seven minutes by the watch; they made a whole that had features, shades of expression, a complicated aspect that could be remembered by the eye, and something else besides, something invisible, a directing spirit of perdition that dwelt within, like a malevolent soul in a detestable body. He was anxious to make this clear. This had not been a common affair, everything in it had been of the utmost importance, and fortunately he remembered everything. He wanted to go on talking for truth's sake, perhaps for his own sake also; and while his utterance was deliberate, his mind positively flew round and round the serried circle of facts that had surged up all about him to cut him off from the rest of his kind: it was like a creature that, finding itself imprisoned within an enclosure of high stakes, dashes round and round, distracted in the night, trying to find a weak spot, a crevice, a place to scale, some opening through which it may squeeze itself and escape. This awful activity of mind made him hesitate at times in his speech. . . . 'The captain kept on moving here and there on the bridge; he seemed calm enough, only he stumbled several times; and once as I stood speaking to him he walked right into me as though he had been stone-blind. He made no definite answer to what I had to tell. He mumbled to himself; all I heard of it were a few words that sounded like "confounded steam!" and "infernal steam!"--something about steam. I thought . . .' He was becoming irrelevant; a question to the point cut short his speech, like a pang of pain, and he felt extremely discouraged and weary. He was coming to that, he was coming to that--and now, checked brutally, he had to answer by yes or no. He answered truthfully by a curt 'Yes, I did'; and fair of face, big of frame, with young, gloomy eyes, he held his shoulders upright above the box while his soul writhed within him. He was made to answer another question so much to the point and so useless, then waited again. His mouth was tastelessly dry, as though he had been eating dust, then salt and bitter as after a drink of sea-water. He wiped his damp forehead, passed his tongue over parched lips, felt a shiver run down his back. The big assessor had dropped his eyelids, and drummed on without a sound, careless and mournful; the eyes of the other above the sunburnt, clasped fingers seemed to glow with kindliness; the magistrate had swayed forward; his pale face hovered near the flowers, and then dropping sideways over the arm of his chair, he rested his temple in the palm of his hand. The wind of the punkahs eddied down on the heads, on the dark-faced natives wound about in voluminous draperies, on the Europeans sitting together very hot and in drill suits that seemed to fit them as close as their skins, and holding their round pith hats on their knees; while gliding along the walls the court peons, buttoned tight in long white coats, flitted rapidly to and fro, running on bare toes, red-sashed, red turban on head, as noiseless as ghosts, and on the alert like so many retrievers. Jim's eyes, wandering in the intervals of his answers, rested upon a white man who sat apart from the others, with his face worn and clouded, but with quiet eyes that glanced straight, interested and clear. Jim answered another question and was tempted to cry out, 'What's the good of this! what's the good!' He tapped with his foot slightly, bit his lip, and looked away over the heads. He met the eyes of the white man. The glance directed at him was not the fascinated stare of the others. It was an act of intelligent volition. Jim between two questions forgot himself so far as to find leisure for a thought. This fellow--ran the thought--looks at me as though he could see somebody or something past my shoulder. He had come across that man before--in the street perhaps. He was positive he had never spoken to him. For days, for many days, he had spoken to no one, but had held silent, incoherent, and endless converse with himself, like a prisoner alone in his cell or like a wayfarer lost in a wilderness. At present he was answering questions that did not matter though they had a purpose, but he doubted whether he would ever again speak out as long as he lived. The sound of his own truthful statements confirmed his deliberate opinion that speech was of no use to him any longer. That man there seemed to be aware of his hopeless difficulty. Jim looked at him, then turned away resolutely, as after a final parting. And later on, many times, in distant parts of the world, Marlow showed himself willing to remember Jim, to remember him at length, in detail and audibly. Perhaps it would be after dinner, on a verandah draped in motionless foliage and crowned with flowers, in the deep dusk speckled by fiery cigar-ends. The elongated bulk of each cane-chair harboured a silent listener. Now and then a small red glow would move abruptly, and expanding light up the fingers of a languid hand, part of a face in profound repose, or flash a crimson gleam into a pair of pensive eyes overshadowed by a fragment of an unruffled forehead; and with the very first word uttered Marlow's body, extended at rest in the seat, would become very still, as though his spirit had winged its way back into the lapse of time and were speaking through his lips from the past.

Chapter 4

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219145744/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/l/lord-jim/summary-and-analysis/chapter-4

The narrative resumes a month or so later, and we are now in the police court of an Eastern port. An official hearing was called to investigate "the Patna incident" in an attempt to determine what struck the ship and what happened on board after the mysterious collision that night. Standing in a box above the hot, packed courtroom, Jim was the only white member of the Patna's crew to answer to the panel of inquiry. His answers were obviously painful and difficult, and he shivered, his mind flying. Slowly, in fragments and half-statements of memory, Jim explained to the panel that he tried to determine that night if any damage had been done to the ship; he remembered that he immediately realized that the hatch in the front of the ship was rapidly filling with water. Clearly, there was a hole in the bottom of the ship. Only one wall kept the ship from being flooded, and if that wall broke, they were doomed. In shock, yet strangely calm, he went to warn the captain, and he met the second engineer, who was complaining about a broken arm. Jim explained what had happened, and the engineer dashed toward the captain, shouting and swearing in panic. The captain silenced him and sent him below to shut off the hot engines before the icy water broke against them. Lost in futility and frustration and wiping his damp forehead, Jim unexpectedly saw a "distinctive looking" white man in the room, sitting apart. His face was worn and clouded, but his eyes were "straight, interested, and clear." Jim had seen this man before -- he was sure of it -- and this man seemed "to be aware of hopeless difficulty."

This chapter shifts to sometime later. Here, the reader could be justifiably confused about the time, the place, the purpose of the "inquiry," and the indistinct introduction of a strange man called Marlow. Throughout these first four chapters, we see Jim through the omniscient narrator as a magnificent physical specimen endowed with an "exquisite sensibility," a man who dreams of "valorous deeds" and who lives on an idealistic level. Later, we will realize that this view is ironic: here, for example, Jim is on trial at a court of inquiry, and he is filled with horror and shame, and yet we don't know the reason why. Jim is forced, we hear, to give facts -- even though facts do not answer the essential questions: "They wanted facts. Facts. They demanded facts of him, as if facts could explain anything." Meantime, Jim knew that "only a meticulous precision of statement would bring out the true horror behind the appalling face of things." Jim's realizations, by the very nature of the language, imply that something horrible has happened, yet the reader is still essentially in the dark as to the nature of Jim's "horror" and his "shame." In summary, the first four chapters have presented, from an omniscient view, Jim's early life and training for the sea, his dreams of performing acts of courage and heroism, an important chance to be a hero during his sea training, the voyage on the Patna until some unexplained misfortune strikes, and Jim's being tried for some unknown but horrible and shameful act.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/107-chapters/41.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Far from the Madding Crowd/section_40_part_0.txt

Far from the Madding Crowd.chapter 41

chapter 41

{"name": "Chapter 41", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101052914/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary-and-analysis/chapter-41", "summary": "Troy asked Bathsheba for money but would not say why he needed it. Bathsheba commented that his mysterious manner worried her. Troy responded: \"Such strait-waistcoating as you treat me to is not becoming in you at so early a date.\" He warned her not to pry too far. Bathsheba said she felt that their romance was already at an end. Troy said, \"All romances end at marriage.\" After more bickering, she gave him twenty pounds from her household money. He opened the back of his watch, and she saw a small coil of yellow hair. Troy admitted that it belonged to a young girl he had once planned to marry. Bathsheba was jealous, but Troy remained unmoved, saying prophetically, \"I can't help how things fall out . . . upon my heart, women will be the death of me!\" He left Bathsheba to her chagrin. \"She had never taken kindly to the idea of marriage . . . as did the majority of women. . . . In the turmoil of her anxiety for her lover she had agreed to marry him; but the perception that had accompanied her happiest hours . . . was rather that of self-sacrifice than of promotion and honour.\" Next morning, Bathsheba rode out to inspect the farm. When she returned for breakfast, she learned that Troy had gone to Casterbridge. She left on another tour of inspection, \"finding herself preceded in forethought by Gabriel Oak, for whom she began to entertain the genuine friendship of a sister.\" She saw him across the fields, and saw also that Boldwood was approaching him. The two men talked earnestly, then called to Poorgrass and spoke with him. Later Poorgrass came toward her and \"set down his barrow, and putting upon himself the refined aspect that a conversation with a lady required, spoke. . . . 'You'll never see Fanny Robin no more. . . . because she's dead in the Union.\"' Poorgrass speculated that the cause of death was a general weakness of constitution: \"She . . . could stand no hardship, even when I knowed her, and 'a went like a candle-snoff, so 'tis said. . . . Mr. Boldwood is going to send a waggon at three this afternoon to fetch her home here and bury her.' \"'Indeed I shall not let Mr. Boldwood do any such thing -- I shall do it! Fanny was my uncle's servant . . . she belongs to me.'\" Bathsheba arranged for a wagon to be filled with evergreens and flowers to cover the coffin. Later, Bathsheba questioned Liddy about Fanny. Fanny's hair had been golden. Troy had said he knew the soldier who was Fanny's friend \"as well as he knew himself.\" They had served in the same regiment, and \"there wasn't a man in the regiment he liked better.\"", "analysis": "This involved chapter has many undercurrents. Along with Bathsheba, we try to ascertain the facts. Boldwood, Oak, and Poorgrass are preoccupied and reluctant to talk with Bathsheba. They evade her questions. Liddy rambles on, suggesting things that Bathsheba is not yet willing to face, and so Bathsheba angrily silences her."}

SUSPICION--FANNY IS SENT FOR Bathsheba said very little to her husband all that evening of their return from market, and he was not disposed to say much to her. He exhibited the unpleasant combination of a restless condition with a silent tongue. The next day, which was Sunday, passed nearly in the same manner as regarded their taciturnity, Bathsheba going to church both morning and afternoon. This was the day before the Budmouth races. In the evening Troy said, suddenly-- "Bathsheba, could you let me have twenty pounds?" Her countenance instantly sank. "Twenty pounds?" she said. "The fact is, I want it badly." The anxiety upon Troy's face was unusual and very marked. It was a culmination of the mood he had been in all the day. "Ah! for those races to-morrow." Troy for the moment made no reply. Her mistake had its advantages to a man who shrank from having his mind inspected as he did now. "Well, suppose I do want it for races?" he said, at last. "Oh, Frank!" Bathsheba replied, and there was such a volume of entreaty in the words. "Only such a few weeks ago you said that I was far sweeter than all your other pleasures put together, and that you would give them all up for me; and now, won't you give up this one, which is more a worry than a pleasure? Do, Frank. Come, let me fascinate you by all I can do--by pretty words and pretty looks, and everything I can think of--to stay at home. Say yes to your wife--say yes!" The tenderest and softest phases of Bathsheba's nature were prominent now--advanced impulsively for his acceptance, without any of the disguises and defences which the wariness of her character when she was cool too frequently threw over them. Few men could have resisted the arch yet dignified entreaty of the beautiful face, thrown a little back and sideways in the well known attitude that expresses more than the words it accompanies, and which seems to have been designed for these special occasions. Had the woman not been his wife, Troy would have succumbed instantly; as it was, he thought he would not deceive her longer. "The money is not wanted for racing debts at all," he said. "What is it for?" she asked. "You worry me a great deal by these mysterious responsibilities, Frank." Troy hesitated. He did not now love her enough to allow himself to be carried too far by her ways. Yet it was necessary to be civil. "You wrong me by such a suspicious manner," he said. "Such strait-waistcoating as you treat me to is not becoming in you at so early a date." "I think that I have a right to grumble a little if I pay," she said, with features between a smile and a pout. "Exactly; and, the former being done, suppose we proceed to the latter. Bathsheba, fun is all very well, but don't go too far, or you may have cause to regret something." She reddened. "I do that already," she said, quickly. "What do you regret?" "That my romance has come to an end." "All romances end at marriage." "I wish you wouldn't talk like that. You grieve me to my soul by being smart at my expense." "You are dull enough at mine. I believe you hate me." "Not you--only your faults. I do hate them." "'Twould be much more becoming if you set yourself to cure them. Come, let's strike a balance with the twenty pounds, and be friends." She gave a sigh of resignation. "I have about that sum here for household expenses. If you must have it, take it." "Very good. Thank you. I expect I shall have gone away before you are in to breakfast to-morrow." "And must you go? Ah! there was a time, Frank, when it would have taken a good many promises to other people to drag you away from me. You used to call me darling, then. But it doesn't matter to you how my days are passed now." "I must go, in spite of sentiment." Troy, as he spoke, looked at his watch, and, apparently actuated by _non lucendo_ principles, opened the case at the back, revealing, snugly stowed within it, a small coil of hair. Bathsheba's eyes had been accidentally lifted at that moment, and she saw the action and saw the hair. She flushed in pain and surprise, and some words escaped her before she had thought whether or not it was wise to utter them. "A woman's curl of hair!" she said. "Oh, Frank, whose is that?" Troy had instantly closed his watch. He carelessly replied, as one who cloaked some feelings that the sight had stirred. "Why, yours, of course. Whose should it be? I had quite forgotten that I had it." "What a dreadful fib, Frank!" "I tell you I had forgotten it!" he said, loudly. "I don't mean that--it was yellow hair." "Nonsense." "That's insulting me. I know it was yellow. Now whose was it? I want to know." "Very well--I'll tell you, so make no more ado. It is the hair of a young woman I was going to marry before I knew you." "You ought to tell me her name, then." "I cannot do that." "Is she married yet?" "No." "Is she alive?" "Yes." "Is she pretty?" "Yes." "It is wonderful how she can be, poor thing, under such an awful affliction!" "Affliction--what affliction?" he inquired, quickly. "Having hair of that dreadful colour." "Oh--ho--I like that!" said Troy, recovering himself. "Why, her hair has been admired by everybody who has seen her since she has worn it loose, which has not been long. It is beautiful hair. People used to turn their heads to look at it, poor girl!" "Pooh! that's nothing--that's nothing!" she exclaimed, in incipient accents of pique. "If I cared for your love as much as I used to I could say people had turned to look at mine." "Bathsheba, don't be so fitful and jealous. You knew what married life would be like, and shouldn't have entered it if you feared these contingencies." Troy had by this time driven her to bitterness: her heart was big in her throat, and the ducts to her eyes were painfully full. Ashamed as she was to show emotion, at last she burst out:-- "This is all I get for loving you so well! Ah! when I married you your life was dearer to me than my own. I would have died for you--how truly I can say that I would have died for you! And now you sneer at my foolishness in marrying you. O! is it kind to me to throw my mistake in my face? Whatever opinion you may have of my wisdom, you should not tell me of it so mercilessly, now that I am in your power." "I can't help how things fall out," said Troy; "upon my heart, women will be the death of me!" "Well you shouldn't keep people's hair. You'll burn it, won't you, Frank?" Frank went on as if he had not heard her. "There are considerations even before my consideration for you; reparations to be made--ties you know nothing of. If you repent of marrying, so do I." Trembling now, she put her hand upon his arm, saying, in mingled tones of wretchedness and coaxing, "I only repent it if you don't love me better than any woman in the world! I don't otherwise, Frank. You don't repent because you already love somebody better than you love me, do you?" "I don't know. Why do you say that?" "You won't burn that curl. You like the woman who owns that pretty hair--yes; it is pretty--more beautiful than my miserable black mane! Well, it is no use; I can't help being ugly. You must like her best, if you will!" "Until to-day, when I took it from a drawer, I have never looked upon that bit of hair for several months--that I am ready to swear." "But just now you said 'ties'; and then--that woman we met?" "'Twas the meeting with her that reminded me of the hair." "Is it hers, then?" "Yes. There, now that you have wormed it out of me, I hope you are content." "And what are the ties?" "Oh! that meant nothing--a mere jest." "A mere jest!" she said, in mournful astonishment. "Can you jest when I am so wretchedly in earnest? Tell me the truth, Frank. I am not a fool, you know, although I am a woman, and have my woman's moments. Come! treat me fairly," she said, looking honestly and fearlessly into his face. "I don't want much; bare justice--that's all! Ah! once I felt I could be content with nothing less than the highest homage from the husband I should choose. Now, anything short of cruelty will content me. Yes! the independent and spirited Bathsheba is come to this!" "For Heaven's sake don't be so desperate!" Troy said, snappishly, rising as he did so, and leaving the room. Directly he had gone, Bathsheba burst into great sobs--dry-eyed sobs, which cut as they came, without any softening by tears. But she determined to repress all evidences of feeling. She was conquered; but she would never own it as long as she lived. Her pride was indeed brought low by despairing discoveries of her spoliation by marriage with a less pure nature than her own. She chafed to and fro in rebelliousness, like a caged leopard; her whole soul was in arms, and the blood fired her face. Until she had met Troy, Bathsheba had been proud of her position as a woman; it had been a glory to her to know that her lips had been touched by no man's on earth--that her waist had never been encircled by a lover's arm. She hated herself now. In those earlier days she had always nourished a secret contempt for girls who were the slaves of the first good-looking young fellow who should choose to salute them. She had never taken kindly to the idea of marriage in the abstract as did the majority of women she saw about her. In the turmoil of her anxiety for her lover she had agreed to marry him; but the perception that had accompanied her happiest hours on this account was rather that of self-sacrifice than of promotion and honour. Although she scarcely knew the divinity's name, Diana was the goddess whom Bathsheba instinctively adored. That she had never, by look, word, or sign, encouraged a man to approach her--that she had felt herself sufficient to herself, and had in the independence of her girlish heart fancied there was a certain degradation in renouncing the simplicity of a maiden existence to become the humbler half of an indifferent matrimonial whole--were facts now bitterly remembered. Oh, if she had never stooped to folly of this kind, respectable as it was, and could only stand again, as she had stood on the hill at Norcombe, and dare Troy or any other man to pollute a hair of her head by his interference! The next morning she rose earlier than usual, and had the horse saddled for her ride round the farm in the customary way. When she came in at half-past eight--their usual hour for breakfasting--she was informed that her husband had risen, taken his breakfast, and driven off to Casterbridge with the gig and Poppet. After breakfast she was cool and collected--quite herself in fact--and she rambled to the gate, intending to walk to another quarter of the farm, which she still personally superintended as well as her duties in the house would permit, continually, however, finding herself preceded in forethought by Gabriel Oak, for whom she began to entertain the genuine friendship of a sister. Of course, she sometimes thought of him in the light of an old lover, and had momentary imaginings of what life with him as a husband would have been like; also of life with Boldwood under the same conditions. But Bathsheba, though she could feel, was not much given to futile dreaming, and her musings under this head were short and entirely confined to the times when Troy's neglect was more than ordinarily evident. She saw coming up the road a man like Mr. Boldwood. It was Mr. Boldwood. Bathsheba blushed painfully, and watched. The farmer stopped when still a long way off, and held up his hand to Gabriel Oak, who was in a footpath across the field. The two men then approached each other and seemed to engage in earnest conversation. Thus they continued for a long time. Joseph Poorgrass now passed near them, wheeling a barrow of apples up the hill to Bathsheba's residence. Boldwood and Gabriel called to him, spoke to him for a few minutes, and then all three parted, Joseph immediately coming up the hill with his barrow. Bathsheba, who had seen this pantomime with some surprise, experienced great relief when Boldwood turned back again. "Well, what's the message, Joseph?" she said. He set down his barrow, and, putting upon himself the refined aspect that a conversation with a lady required, spoke to Bathsheba over the gate. "You'll never see Fanny Robin no more--use nor principal--ma'am." "Why?" "Because she's dead in the Union." "Fanny dead--never!" "Yes, ma'am." "What did she die from?" "I don't know for certain; but I should be inclined to think it was from general neshness of constitution. She was such a limber maid that 'a could stand no hardship, even when I knowed her, and 'a went like a candle-snoff, so 'tis said. She was took bad in the morning, and, being quite feeble and worn out, she died in the evening. She belongs by law to our parish; and Mr. Boldwood is going to send a waggon at three this afternoon to fetch her home here and bury her." "Indeed I shall not let Mr. Boldwood do any such thing--I shall do it! Fanny was my uncle's servant, and, although I only knew her for a couple of days, she belongs to me. How very, very sad this is!--the idea of Fanny being in a workhouse." Bathsheba had begun to know what suffering was, and she spoke with real feeling.... "Send across to Mr. Boldwood's, and say that Mrs. Troy will take upon herself the duty of fetching an old servant of the family.... We ought not to put her in a waggon; we'll get a hearse." "There will hardly be time, ma'am, will there?" "Perhaps not," she said, musingly. "When did you say we must be at the door--three o'clock?" "Three o'clock this afternoon, ma'am, so to speak it." "Very well--you go with it. A pretty waggon is better than an ugly hearse, after all. Joseph, have the new spring waggon with the blue body and red wheels, and wash it very clean. And, Joseph--" "Yes, ma'am." "Carry with you some evergreens and flowers to put upon her coffin--indeed, gather a great many, and completely bury her in them. Get some boughs of laurustinus, and variegated box, and yew, and boy's-love; ay, and some bunches of chrysanthemum. And let old Pleasant draw her, because she knew him so well." "I will, ma'am. I ought to have said that the Union, in the form of four labouring men, will meet me when I gets to our churchyard gate, and take her and bury her according to the rites of the Board of Guardians, as by law ordained." "Dear me--Casterbridge Union--and is Fanny come to this?" said Bathsheba, musing. "I wish I had known of it sooner. I thought she was far away. How long has she lived there?" "On'y been there a day or two." "Oh!--then she has not been staying there as a regular inmate?" "No. She first went to live in a garrison-town t'other side o' Wessex, and since then she's been picking up a living at seampstering in Melchester for several months, at the house of a very respectable widow-woman who takes in work of that sort. She only got handy the Union-house on Sunday morning 'a b'lieve, and 'tis supposed here and there that she had traipsed every step of the way from Melchester. Why she left her place, I can't say, for I don't know; and as to a lie, why, I wouldn't tell it. That's the short of the story, ma'am." "Ah-h!" No gem ever flashed from a rosy ray to a white one more rapidly than changed the young wife's countenance whilst this word came from her in a long-drawn breath. "Did she walk along our turnpike-road?" she said, in a suddenly restless and eager voice. "I believe she did.... Ma'am, shall I call Liddy? You bain't well, ma'am, surely? You look like a lily--so pale and fainty!" "No; don't call her; it is nothing. When did she pass Weatherbury?" "Last Saturday night." "That will do, Joseph; now you may go." "Certainly, ma'am." "Joseph, come hither a moment. What was the colour of Fanny Robin's hair?" "Really, mistress, now that 'tis put to me so judge-and-jury like, I can't call to mind, if ye'll believe me!" "Never mind; go on and do what I told you. Stop--well no, go on." She turned herself away from him, that he might no longer notice the mood which had set its sign so visibly upon her, and went indoors with a distressing sense of faintness and a beating brow. About an hour after, she heard the noise of the waggon and went out, still with a painful consciousness of her bewildered and troubled look. Joseph, dressed in his best suit of clothes, was putting in the horse to start. The shrubs and flowers were all piled in the waggon, as she had directed; Bathsheba hardly saw them now. "Died of what? did you say, Joseph?" "I don't know, ma'am." "Are you quite sure?" "Yes, ma'am, quite sure." "Sure of what?" "I'm sure that all I know is that she arrived in the morning and died in the evening without further parley. What Oak and Mr. Boldwood told me was only these few words. 'Little Fanny Robin is dead, Joseph,' Gabriel said, looking in my face in his steady old way. I was very sorry, and I said, 'Ah!--and how did she come to die?' 'Well, she's dead in Casterbridge Union,' he said, 'and perhaps 'tisn't much matter about how she came to die. She reached the Union early Sunday morning, and died in the afternoon--that's clear enough.' Then I asked what she'd been doing lately, and Mr. Boldwood turned round to me then, and left off spitting a thistle with the end of his stick. He told me about her having lived by seampstering in Melchester, as I mentioned to you, and that she walked therefrom at the end of last week, passing near here Saturday night in the dusk. They then said I had better just name a hint of her death to you, and away they went. Her death might have been brought on by biding in the night wind, you know, ma'am; for people used to say she'd go off in a decline: she used to cough a good deal in winter time. However, 'tisn't much odds to us about that now, for 'tis all over." "Have you heard a different story at all?" She looked at him so intently that Joseph's eyes quailed. "Not a word, mistress, I assure 'ee!" he said. "Hardly anybody in the parish knows the news yet." "I wonder why Gabriel didn't bring the message to me himself. He mostly makes a point of seeing me upon the most trifling errand." These words were merely murmured, and she was looking upon the ground. "Perhaps he was busy, ma'am," Joseph suggested. "And sometimes he seems to suffer from things upon his mind, connected with the time when he was better off than 'a is now. 'A's rather a curious item, but a very understanding shepherd, and learned in books." "Did anything seem upon his mind whilst he was speaking to you about this?" "I cannot but say that there did, ma'am. He was terrible down, and so was Farmer Boldwood." "Thank you, Joseph. That will do. Go on now, or you'll be late." Bathsheba, still unhappy, went indoors again. In the course of the afternoon she said to Liddy, who had been informed of the occurrence, "What was the colour of poor Fanny Robin's hair? Do you know? I cannot recollect--I only saw her for a day or two." "It was light, ma'am; but she wore it rather short, and packed away under her cap, so that you would hardly notice it. But I have seen her let it down when she was going to bed, and it looked beautiful then. Real golden hair." "Her young man was a soldier, was he not?" "Yes. In the same regiment as Mr. Troy. He says he knew him very well." "What, Mr. Troy says so? How came he to say that?" "One day I just named it to him, and asked him if he knew Fanny's young man. He said, 'Oh yes, he knew the young man as well as he knew himself, and that there wasn't a man in the regiment he liked better.'" "Ah! Said that, did he?" "Yes; and he said there was a strong likeness between himself and the other young man, so that sometimes people mistook them--" "Liddy, for Heaven's sake stop your talking!" said Bathsheba, with the nervous petulance that comes from worrying perceptions.

Chapter 41

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101052914/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary-and-analysis/chapter-41

Troy asked Bathsheba for money but would not say why he needed it. Bathsheba commented that his mysterious manner worried her. Troy responded: "Such strait-waistcoating as you treat me to is not becoming in you at so early a date." He warned her not to pry too far. Bathsheba said she felt that their romance was already at an end. Troy said, "All romances end at marriage." After more bickering, she gave him twenty pounds from her household money. He opened the back of his watch, and she saw a small coil of yellow hair. Troy admitted that it belonged to a young girl he had once planned to marry. Bathsheba was jealous, but Troy remained unmoved, saying prophetically, "I can't help how things fall out . . . upon my heart, women will be the death of me!" He left Bathsheba to her chagrin. "She had never taken kindly to the idea of marriage . . . as did the majority of women. . . . In the turmoil of her anxiety for her lover she had agreed to marry him; but the perception that had accompanied her happiest hours . . . was rather that of self-sacrifice than of promotion and honour." Next morning, Bathsheba rode out to inspect the farm. When she returned for breakfast, she learned that Troy had gone to Casterbridge. She left on another tour of inspection, "finding herself preceded in forethought by Gabriel Oak, for whom she began to entertain the genuine friendship of a sister." She saw him across the fields, and saw also that Boldwood was approaching him. The two men talked earnestly, then called to Poorgrass and spoke with him. Later Poorgrass came toward her and "set down his barrow, and putting upon himself the refined aspect that a conversation with a lady required, spoke. . . . 'You'll never see Fanny Robin no more. . . . because she's dead in the Union."' Poorgrass speculated that the cause of death was a general weakness of constitution: "She . . . could stand no hardship, even when I knowed her, and 'a went like a candle-snoff, so 'tis said. . . . Mr. Boldwood is going to send a waggon at three this afternoon to fetch her home here and bury her.' "'Indeed I shall not let Mr. Boldwood do any such thing -- I shall do it! Fanny was my uncle's servant . . . she belongs to me.'" Bathsheba arranged for a wagon to be filled with evergreens and flowers to cover the coffin. Later, Bathsheba questioned Liddy about Fanny. Fanny's hair had been golden. Troy had said he knew the soldier who was Fanny's friend "as well as he knew himself." They had served in the same regiment, and "there wasn't a man in the regiment he liked better."

This involved chapter has many undercurrents. Along with Bathsheba, we try to ascertain the facts. Boldwood, Oak, and Poorgrass are preoccupied and reluctant to talk with Bathsheba. They evade her questions. Liddy rambles on, suggesting things that Bathsheba is not yet willing to face, and so Bathsheba angrily silences her.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/44747-chapters/67.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_66_part_0.txt

The Red and the Black.part 2.chapter 37

part 2, chapter 37

{"name": "Part 2, Chapter 37", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-2-chapter-37", "summary": "Julien's old friend Father Chelan visits him. The man calls him a monster. His old buddy Fouqe comes and tells him he has a good chance of avoiding the death penalty in court, since Madame de Renal survived. Fouqe also offers to sell everything he owns to bribe Julien's way out of prison. Nonetheless, Julien tells every lawyer who visits him that he tried to kill Madame and that it was premeditated. If he lied, he could probably get off. But he won't.", "analysis": ""}

CHAPTER LXVII A TURRET The tomb of a friend.--_Sterne_. He heard a loud noise in the corridor. It was not the time when the gaoler usually came up to his prison. The osprey flew away with a shriek. The door opened, and the venerable cure Chelan threw himself into his arms. He was trembling all over and had his stick in his hands. "Great God! Is it possible, my child--I ought to say monster?" The good old man could not add a single word. Julien was afraid he would fall down. He was obliged to lead him to a chair. The hand of time lay heavy on this man who had once been so active. He seemed to Julien the mere shadow of his former self. When he had regained his breath, he said, "It was only the day before yesterday that I received your letter from Strasbourg with your five hundred francs for the poor of Verrieres. They brought it to me in the mountains at Liveru where I am living in retirement with my nephew Jean. Yesterday I learnt of the catastrophe.... Heavens, is it possible?" And the old man left off weeping. He did not seem to have any ideas left, but added mechanically, "You will have need of your five hundred francs, I will bring them back to you." "I need to see you, my father," exclaimed Julien, really touched. "I have money, anyway." But he could not obtain any coherent answer. From time to time, M. Chelan shed some tears which coursed silently down his cheeks. He then looked at Julien, and was quite dazed when he saw him kiss his hands and carry them to his lips. That face which had once been so vivid, and which had once portrayed with such vigour the most noble emotions was now sunk in a perpetual apathy. A kind of peasant came soon to fetch the old man. "You must not fatigue him," he said to Julien, who understood that he was the nephew. This visit left Julien plunged in a cruel unhappiness which found no vent in tears. Everything seemed to him gloomy and disconsolate. He felt his heart frozen in his bosom. This moment was the cruellest which he had experienced since the crime. He had just seen death and seen it in all its ugliness. All his illusions about greatness of soul and nobility of character had been dissipated like a cloud before the hurricane. This awful plight lasted several hours. After moral poisoning, physical remedies and champagne are necessary. Julien would have considered himself a coward to have resorted to them. "What a fool I am," he exclaimed, towards the end of the horrible day that he had spent entirely in walking up and down his narrow turret. "It's only, if I had been going to die like anybody else, that the sight of that poor old man would have had any right to have thrown me into this awful fit of sadness: but a rapid death in the flower of my age simply puts me beyond the reach of such awful senility." In spite of all his argumentation, Julien felt as touched as any weak-minded person would have been, and consequently felt unhappy as the result of the visit. He no longer had any element of rugged greatness, or any Roman virtue. Death appeared to him at a great height and seemed a less easy proposition. "This is what I shall take for my thermometer," he said to himself. "To-night I am ten degrees below the courage requisite for guillotine-point level. I had that courage this morning. Anyway, what does it matter so long as it comes back to me at the necessary moment?" This thermometer idea amused him and finally managed to distract him. When he woke up the next day he was ashamed of the previous day. "My happiness and peace of mind are at stake." He almost made up his mind to write to the Procureur-General to request that no one should be admitted to see him. "And how about Fouque," he thought? "If he takes it upon himself to come to Besancon, his grief will be immense." It had perhaps been two months since he had given Fouque a thought. "I was a great fool at Strasbourg. My thoughts did not go beyond my coat-collar. He was much engrossed by the memory of Fouque, which left him more and more touched. He walked nervously about. Here I am, clearly twenty degrees below death point.... If this weakness increases, it will be better for me to kill myself. What joy for the abbe Maslon, and the Valenods, if I die like an usher." Fouque arrived. The good, simple man, was distracted by grief. His one idea, so far as he had any at all, was to sell all he possessed in order to bribe the gaoler and secure Julien's escape. He talked to him at length of M. de Lavalette's escape. "You pain me," Julien said to him. "M. de Lavalette was innocent--I am guilty. Though you did not mean to, you made me think of the difference...." "But is it true? What? were you going to sell all you possessed?" said Julien, suddenly becoming mistrustful and observant. Fouque was delighted at seeing his friend answer his obsessing idea, and detailed at length, and within a hundred francs, what he would get for each of his properties. "What a sublime effort for a small country land-owner," thought Julien. "He is ready to sacrifice for me the fruits of all the economies, and all the little semi-swindling tricks which I used to be ashamed of when I saw him practice them." "None of the handsome young people whom I saw in the Hotel de la Mole, and who read Rene, would have any of his ridiculous weaknesses: but, except those who are very young and who have also inherited riches and are ignorant of the value of money, which of all those handsome Parisians would be capable of such a sacrifice?" All Fouque's mistakes in French and all his common gestures seemed to disappear. He threw himself into his arms. Never have the provinces in comparison with Paris received so fine a tribute. Fouque was so delighted with the momentary enthusiasm which he read in his friend's eyes that he took it for consent to the flight. This view of the sublime recalled to Julien all the strength that the apparition of M. Chelan had made him lose. He was still very young; but in my view he was a fine specimen. Instead of his character passing from tenderness to cunning, as is the case with the majority of men, age would have given him that kindness of heart which is easily melted ... but what avail these vain prophecies. The interrogations became more frequent in spite of all the efforts of Julien, who always endeavoured by his answers to shorten the whole matter. "I killed, or at any rate, I wished to occasion death, and I did so with premeditation," he would repeat every day. But the judge was a pedant above everything. Julien's confessions had no effect in curtailing the interrogations. The judge's conceit was wounded. Julien did not know that they had wanted to transfer him into an awful cell, and that it was only, thanks to Fouque's efforts, that he was allowed to keep his pretty room at the top of a hundred and eighty steps. M. the abbe de Frilair was one of the important customers who entrusted Fouque with the purveying of their firewood. The good tradesmen managed to reach the all powerful grand vicar. M. de Frilair informed him, to his unspeakable delight, that he was so touched by Julien's good qualities, and by the services which he had formerly rendered to the seminary, that he intended to recommend him to the judges. Fouque thought he saw a hope of saving his friend, and as he went out, bowing down to the ground, requested M. the grand vicar, to distribute a sum of ten louis in masses to entreat the acquittal of the accused. Fouque was making a strange mistake. M. de Frilair was very far from being a Valenod. He refused, and even tried to make the good peasant understand that he would do better to keep his money. Seeing that it was impossible to be clear without being indiscreet, he advised him to give that sum as alms for the use of the poor prisoners, who, in point of fact, were destitute of everything. "This Julien is a singular person, his action is unintelligible," thought M. de Frilair, "and I ought to find nothing unintelligible. Perhaps it will be possible to make a martyr of him.... In any case, I shall get to the bottom of the matter, and shall perhaps find an opportunity of putting fear into the heart of that madame de Renal who has no respect for us, and at the bottom detests me.... Perhaps I might be able to utilise all this as a means of a brilliant reconciliation with M. de la Mole, who has a weakness for the little seminarist." The settlement of the lawsuit had been signed some weeks previously, and the abbe Pirard had left Besancon after having duly mentioned Julien's mysterious birth, on the very day when the unhappy man tried to assassinate madame de Renal in the church of Verrieres. There was only one disagreeable event between himself and his death which Julien anticipated. He consulted Fouque concerning his idea of writing to M. the Procureur-General asking to be exempt from all visits. This horror at the sight of a father, above all at a moment like this, deeply shocked the honest middle-class heart of the wood merchant. He thought he understood why so many people had a passionate hatred for his friend. He concealed his feelings out of respect for misfortune. "In any case," he answered coldly, "such an order for privacy would not be applied to your father."

Part 2, Chapter 37

https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-2-chapter-37

Julien's old friend Father Chelan visits him. The man calls him a monster. His old buddy Fouqe comes and tells him he has a good chance of avoiding the death penalty in court, since Madame de Renal survived. Fouqe also offers to sell everything he owns to bribe Julien's way out of prison. Nonetheless, Julien tells every lawyer who visits him that he tried to kill Madame and that it was premeditated. If he lied, he could probably get off. But he won't.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/1232-chapters/06.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/The Prince/section_4_part_0.txt

The Prince.chapter 6

chapter 6

{"name": "Chapter 6", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201108110625/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/p/the-prince/summary-and-analysis/chapter-6", "summary": "The difficulty a new prince will have will depend on his ability. Private citizens become princes either through luck or through ability, but it is best not to trust luck. Those who become prince through their own strength have difficulty gaining power, but keep it easily. Establishing new states is always troublesome, because everyone who was happy under the old order will oppose change, and most people will not support new things until they have seen them work. The question is whether innovators must rely on others in order to succeed, or whether they can rely on their own forces. Armed prophets succeed, but unarmed prophets must fail. The people are fickle, and when they no longer believe in you, you must force them to believe.", "analysis": "Chapter 6 elaborates on a theme begun in Chapter 5--that of personal ability. The Italian word Machiavelli uses is virtu, which does not have an exact English equivalent. He uses this word to mean many things, but usually not \"virtue,\" which in English implies goodness and moral behavior. Virtu is closer in meaning to the Latin word for masculine strength, virtus, from which English gets the word \"virility.\" Exactly what Machiavelli means by virtu is a subject of debate among scholars. Virtu can be ability, skill, energy, forcefulness, strength, ingenuity, courage, or determination. Virtu is the quality that distinguishes successful princes--or more accurately, successful innovators and conquerors. The examples Machiavelli provides are all legendary founders of great civilizations. When they found opportunities, they had the virtu to make the most of them. Machiavelli makes a point of observing, however, that virtu without opportunity to use it is wasted, but without virtu, opportunity is wasted. The other theme of this chapter concerns the use of force. Machiavelli assumes that force or violence is an integral part of the state, and a ruler cannot do without it as a tool of government. He observes that after your followers lose faith in your innovative schemes, you must force them to have faith, or at least, to act as if they do by obeying you. His comment about unarmed prophets is based on the meteoric rise and fall of Savonarola, whose career Machiavelli had observed, and whose failure had led to the reestablishment of the Florentine republic in which Machiavelli served. Glossary Moses prophet and lawgiver who led the Israelites out of captivity in Egypt, as recounted in the Biblical book of Exodus. Cyrus \"the Great,\" founder of the Persian Empire, beginning with his conquest of the Medes . Romulus with his brother Remus, the legendary founders of Rome. Theseus legendary hero of Athens who killed the Minotaur, a half-man, half-bull monster, in the Labyrinth of Crete. Savonarola Girolamo Savonarola . Dominican monk, charismatic preacher, and reformer. Hiero also called Hieron II, King of Syracuse . He was made commander of the Syracusan army and was so successful that he was elected king by the citizens."}

Let no one be surprised if, in speaking of entirely new principalities as I shall do, I adduce the highest examples both of prince and of state; because men, walking almost always in paths beaten by others, and following by imitation their deeds, are yet unable to keep entirely to the ways of others or attain to the power of those they imitate. A wise man ought always to follow the paths beaten by great men, and to imitate those who have been supreme, so that if his ability does not equal theirs, at least it will savour of it. Let him act like the clever archers who, designing to hit the mark which yet appears too far distant, and knowing the limits to which the strength of their bow attains, take aim much higher than the mark, not to reach by their strength or arrow to so great a height, but to be able with the aid of so high an aim to hit the mark they wish to reach. I say, therefore, that in entirely new principalities, where there is a new prince, more or less difficulty is found in keeping them, accordingly as there is more or less ability in him who has acquired the state. Now, as the fact of becoming a prince from a private station presupposes either ability or fortune, it is clear that one or other of these things will mitigate in some degree many difficulties. Nevertheless, he who has relied least on fortune is established the strongest. Further, it facilitates matters when the prince, having no other state, is compelled to reside there in person. But to come to those who, by their own ability and not through fortune, have risen to be princes, I say that Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, Theseus, and such like are the most excellent examples. And although one may not discuss Moses, he having been a mere executor of the will of God, yet he ought to be admired, if only for that favour which made him worthy to speak with God. But in considering Cyrus and others who have acquired or founded kingdoms, all will be found admirable; and if their particular deeds and conduct shall be considered, they will not be found inferior to those of Moses, although he had so great a preceptor. And in examining their actions and lives one cannot see that they owed anything to fortune beyond opportunity, which brought them the material to mould into the form which seemed best to them. Without that opportunity their powers of mind would have been extinguished, and without those powers the opportunity would have come in vain. It was necessary, therefore, to Moses that he should find the people of Israel in Egypt enslaved and oppressed by the Egyptians, in order that they should be disposed to follow him so as to be delivered out of bondage. It was necessary that Romulus should not remain in Alba, and that he should be abandoned at his birth, in order that he should become King of Rome and founder of the fatherland. It was necessary that Cyrus should find the Persians discontented with the government of the Medes, and the Medes soft and effeminate through their long peace. Theseus could not have shown his ability had he not found the Athenians dispersed. These opportunities, therefore, made those men fortunate, and their high ability enabled them to recognize the opportunity whereby their country was ennobled and made famous. Those who by valorous ways become princes, like these men, acquire a principality with difficulty, but they keep it with ease. The difficulties they have in acquiring it rise in part from the new rules and methods which they are forced to introduce to establish their government and its security. And it ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things, because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them. Thus it happens that whenever those who are hostile have the opportunity to attack they do it like partisans, whilst the others defend lukewarmly, in such wise that the prince is endangered along with them. It is necessary, therefore, if we desire to discuss this matter thoroughly, to inquire whether these innovators can rely on themselves or have to depend on others: that is to say, whether, to consummate their enterprise, have they to use prayers or can they use force? In the first instance they always succeed badly, and never compass anything; but when they can rely on themselves and use force, then they are rarely endangered. Hence it is that all armed prophets have conquered, and the unarmed ones have been destroyed. Besides the reasons mentioned, the nature of the people is variable, and whilst it is easy to persuade them, it is difficult to fix them in that persuasion. And thus it is necessary to take such measures that, when they believe no longer, it may be possible to make them believe by force. If Moses, Cyrus, Theseus, and Romulus had been unarmed they could not have enforced their constitutions for long--as happened in our time to Fra Girolamo Savonarola, who was ruined with his new order of things immediately the multitude believed in him no longer, and he had no means of keeping steadfast those who believed or of making the unbelievers to believe. Therefore such as these have great difficulties in consummating their enterprise, for all their dangers are in the ascent, yet with ability they will overcome them; but when these are overcome, and those who envied them their success are exterminated, they will begin to be respected, and they will continue afterwards powerful, secure, honoured, and happy. To these great examples I wish to add a lesser one; still it bears some resemblance to them, and I wish it to suffice me for all of a like kind: it is Hiero the Syracusan.(*) This man rose from a private station to be Prince of Syracuse, nor did he, either, owe anything to fortune but opportunity; for the Syracusans, being oppressed, chose him for their captain, afterwards he was rewarded by being made their prince. He was of so great ability, even as a private citizen, that one who writes of him says he wanted nothing but a kingdom to be a king. This man abolished the old soldiery, organized the new, gave up old alliances, made new ones; and as he had his own soldiers and allies, on such foundations he was able to build any edifice: thus, whilst he had endured much trouble in acquiring, he had but little in keeping. (*) Hiero II, born about 307 B.C., died 216 B.C.

Chapter 6

https://web.archive.org/web/20201108110625/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/p/the-prince/summary-and-analysis/chapter-6

The difficulty a new prince will have will depend on his ability. Private citizens become princes either through luck or through ability, but it is best not to trust luck. Those who become prince through their own strength have difficulty gaining power, but keep it easily. Establishing new states is always troublesome, because everyone who was happy under the old order will oppose change, and most people will not support new things until they have seen them work. The question is whether innovators must rely on others in order to succeed, or whether they can rely on their own forces. Armed prophets succeed, but unarmed prophets must fail. The people are fickle, and when they no longer believe in you, you must force them to believe.

Chapter 6 elaborates on a theme begun in Chapter 5--that of personal ability. The Italian word Machiavelli uses is virtu, which does not have an exact English equivalent. He uses this word to mean many things, but usually not "virtue," which in English implies goodness and moral behavior. Virtu is closer in meaning to the Latin word for masculine strength, virtus, from which English gets the word "virility." Exactly what Machiavelli means by virtu is a subject of debate among scholars. Virtu can be ability, skill, energy, forcefulness, strength, ingenuity, courage, or determination. Virtu is the quality that distinguishes successful princes--or more accurately, successful innovators and conquerors. The examples Machiavelli provides are all legendary founders of great civilizations. When they found opportunities, they had the virtu to make the most of them. Machiavelli makes a point of observing, however, that virtu without opportunity to use it is wasted, but without virtu, opportunity is wasted. The other theme of this chapter concerns the use of force. Machiavelli assumes that force or violence is an integral part of the state, and a ruler cannot do without it as a tool of government. He observes that after your followers lose faith in your innovative schemes, you must force them to have faith, or at least, to act as if they do by obeying you. His comment about unarmed prophets is based on the meteoric rise and fall of Savonarola, whose career Machiavelli had observed, and whose failure had led to the reestablishment of the Florentine republic in which Machiavelli served. Glossary Moses prophet and lawgiver who led the Israelites out of captivity in Egypt, as recounted in the Biblical book of Exodus. Cyrus "the Great," founder of the Persian Empire, beginning with his conquest of the Medes . Romulus with his brother Remus, the legendary founders of Rome. Theseus legendary hero of Athens who killed the Minotaur, a half-man, half-bull monster, in the Labyrinth of Crete. Savonarola Girolamo Savonarola . Dominican monk, charismatic preacher, and reformer. Hiero also called Hieron II, King of Syracuse . He was made commander of the Syracusan army and was so successful that he was elected king by the citizens.

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/23042-chapters/8.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Tempest/section_8_part_0.txt

The Tempest.act iv.scene i

act iv, scene i

{"name": "Act IV, scene i", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210131162607/https://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/tempest/section9/", "summary": "Prospero gives his blessing to Ferdinand and Miranda, warning Ferdinand only that he take care not to break Miranda's \"virgin-knot\" before the wedding has been solemnized . Ferdinand promises to comply. Prospero then calls in Ariel and asks him to summon spirits to perform a masque for Ferdinand and Miranda. Soon, three spirits appear in the shapes of the mythological figures of Iris , Juno , and Ceres . This trio performs a masque celebrating the lovers' engagement. First, Iris enters and asks Ceres to appear at Juno's wish, to celebrate \"a contract of true love.\" Ceres appears, and then Juno enters. Juno and Ceres together bless the couple, with Juno wishing them honor and riches, and Ceres wishing them natural prosperity and plenty. The spectacle awes Ferdinand and he says that he would like to live on the island forever, with Prospero as his father and Miranda as his wife. Juno and Ceres send Iris to fetch some nymphs and reapers to perform a country dance. Just as this dance begins, however, Prospero startles suddenly and then sends the spirits away. Prospero, who had forgotten about Caliban's plot against him, suddenly remembers that the hour nearly has come for Caliban and the conspirators to make their attempt on his life. Our revels now are ended. These our actors,As I foretold you, were all spirits, andAre melted into air, into thin air;And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,The solemn temples, the great globe itself,Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve;And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuffAs dreams are made on, and our little lifeIs rounded with a sleep. Prospero's apparent anger alarms Ferdinand and Miranda, but Prospero assures the young couple that his consternation is largely a result of his age; he says that a walk will soothe him. Prospero makes a short speech about the masque, saying that the world itself is as insubstantial as a play, and that human beings are \"such stuff / As dreams are made on.\" Ferdinand and Miranda leave Prospero to himself, and the old enchanter immediately summons Ariel, who seems to have made a mistake by not reminding Prospero of Caliban's plot before the beginning of the masque. Prospero now asks Ariel to tell him again what the three conspirators are up to, and Ariel tells him of the men's drunken scheme to steal Prospero's book and kill him. Ariel reports that he used his music to lead these men through rough and prickly briars and then into a filthy pond. Prospero thanks his trusty spirit, and the two set a trap for the three would-be assassins. On a clothesline in Prospero's cell, Prospero and Ariel hang an array of fine apparel for the men to attempt to steal, after which they render themselves invisible. Caliban, Trinculo, and Stephano enter, wet from the filthy pond. The fine clothing immediately distracts Stephano and Trinculo. They want to steal it, despite the protests of Caliban, who wants to stick to the plan and kill Prospero. Stephano and Trinculo ignore him. Soon after they touch the clothing, there is \"A noise of hunters\" . A pack of spirits in the shape of hounds, set on by Ariel and Prospero, drives the thieves out.", "analysis": "Analysis The wedding of Ferdinand and Miranda draws near. Thus, Act IV, scene i explores marriage from several different angles. Prospero and Ferdinand's surprisingly coarse discussion of Miranda's virginity at the beginning of the scene serves to emphasize the disparity in knowledge and experience between Miranda and her future husband. Prospero has kept his daughter extremely innocent. As a result, Ferdinand's vulgar description of the pleasures of the wedding-bed reminds the audience that the end of Miranda's innocence is now imminent. Her wedding-night will come, she will lose her virginity, and she will be in some way changed. This discussion is a blunt reminder that change is inevitable and that Miranda will soon give herself, in an entirely new way, to a man besides her father. Though Prospero somewhat perfunctorily initiates and participates in the sexual discussion, he also seems to be affected by it. In the later parts of the scene, he makes unprecedented comments on the transitory nature of life and on his own old age. Very likely, the prospect of Miranda's marriage and growing up calls these ideas to his mind. After the discussion of sexuality, Prospero introduces the masque, which moves the exploration of marriage to the somewhat more comfortable realms of society and family. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, masques were popular forms of entertainment in England. Masques featured masked actors performing allegorical, often highly ritualized stories drawn from mythology and folklore. Prospero's masque features Juno, the symbol of marriage and family life in Roman mythology, and Ceres, the symbol of agriculture, and thus of nature, growth, prosperity, and rebirth, all notions intimately connected to marriage. The united blessing of the union by Juno and Ceres is a blessing on the couple that wishes them prosperity and wealth while explicitly tying their marriage to notions of social propriety and harmony with the Earth. In this way, marriage is subtly glorified as both the foundation of society and as part of the natural order of things, given the accord between marriage and nature in Ceres' speech. Interestingly, Juno and Ceres de-emphasize the role of love, personal feeling, and sexuality in marriage, choosing instead to focus on marriage's place in the social and natural orders. When Ceres wonders to Iris where Venus and Cupid, the deities of love and sex, are, she says that she hopes not to see them because their lustful powers caused Pluto, god of the underworld, to kidnap Persephone, Ceres's daughter . Iris assures Ceres that Venus and Cupid are nowhere in sight. Venus and Cupid had hoped to foil the purity of the impending union, \"but in vain\" . Ceres, Juno, and Iris have kept the gods of lust at bay; it seems that, through his masque, Prospero is trying to suppress entirely the lasciviousness of Ferdinand's tone when he discusses Miranda's virginity. In almost all of Shakespeare's comedies, marriage is used as a symbol of a harmonious and healthy social order. In these plays, misunderstandings erupt, conflicts break out, and at the end, love triumphs and marriage sets everything right. The Tempest, a romance, is not exactly a comedy. However, it is deeply concerned with the social order, both in terms of the explicit conflict of the play and in terms of the play's constant exploration of the master-servant dynamic, especially when the dynamic appears unsettled or discordant. One reason Shakespeare might shift the focus of the play to marriage at this point is to prepare the audience for the mending of the disrupted social order that takes place at the end of the story. Calling upon all the social and dramatic associations of marriage, and underscoring them heavily with the solemnity of the masque, Shakespeare creates a sense that, even though the play's major conflict is still unresolved, the world of the play is beginning to heal itself. What is interesting about this technique is that the sense of healing has little to do with anything intrinsic to the characters themselves. Throughout this scene, Ferdinand seems unduly coarse, Miranda merely a threatened innocent, and Prospero somewhat weary and sad. But the fact of marriage itself, as it is presented in the masque, is enough to settle the turbulent waters of the story. After this detailed exploration of marriage, the culmination of Caliban's plot against Prospero occurs merely as a moment of comic relief, exposing the weaknesses of Stephano and Trinculo and giving the conspirators their just desserts. Any hint of sympathy we may have had for Caliban earlier in the play has vanished, partly because Caliban's behavior has been vicious and degraded, but also because Prospero has become more appealing. Prospero has come to seem more fully human because of his poignant feelings for his daughter and his discussion of his old age. As a result, he is far easier to identify with than he was in the first Act. Simply by accenting aspects of character we have already seen, namely Prospero's love for Miranda and the conspirators' absurd incompetence, Shakespeare substantially rehabilitates Prospero in the eyes of the audience. We can cheer wholeheartedly for Prospero in his humorous defeat of Caliban now; this is one of the first really uncomplicated moments in the play. After this moment, Prospero becomes easier to sympathize with as the rest of the story unfolds."}

ACT IV. SCENE I. _Before PROSPERO'S cell._ _Enter PROSPERO, FERDINAND, and MIRANDA._ _Pros._ If I have too austerely punish'd you, Your compensation makes amends; for I Have given you here a third of mine own life, Or that for which I live; who once again I tender to thy hand: all thy vexations 5 Were but my trials of thy love, and thou Hast strangely stood the test: here, afore Heaven, I ratify this my rich gift. O Ferdinand, Do not smile at me that I boast her off, For thou shalt find she will outstrip all praise, 10 And make it halt behind her. _Fer._ I do believe it Against an oracle. _Pros._ Then, as my gift, and thine own acquisition Worthily purchased, take my daughter: but If thou dost break her virgin-knot before 15 All sanctimonious ceremonies may With full and holy rite be minister'd, No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall To make this contract grow; but barren hate, Sour-eyed disdain and discord shall bestrew 20 The union of your bed with weeds so loathly That you shall hate it both: therefore take heed, As Hymen's lamps shall light you. _Fer._ As I hope For quiet days, fair issue and long life, With such love as 'tis now, the murkiest den, 25 The most opportune place, the strong'st suggestion Our worser Genius can, shall never melt Mine honour into lust, to take away The edge of that day's celebration When I shall think, or Phoebus' steeds are founder'd, 30 Or Night kept chain'd below. _Pros._ Fairly spoke. Sit, then, and talk with her; she is thine own. What, Ariel! my industrious servant, Ariel! _Enter ARIEL._ _Ari._ What would my potent master? here I am. _Pros._ Thou and thy meaner fellows your last service 35 Did worthily perform; and I must use you In such another trick. Go bring the rabble, O'er whom I give thee power, here to this place: Incite them to quick motion; for I must Bestow upon the eyes of this young couple 40 Some vanity of mine art: it is my promise, And they expect it from me. _Ari._ Presently? _Pros._ Ay, with a twink. _Ari._ Before you can say, 'come,' and 'go,' And breathe twice, and cry, 'so, so,' 45 Each one, tripping on his toe, Will be here with mop and mow. Do you love me, master? no? _Pros._ Dearly, my delicate Ariel. Do not approach Till thou dost hear me call. _Ari._ Well, I conceive. [_Exit._ 50 _Pros._ Look thou be true; do not give dalliance Too much the rein: the strongest oaths are straw To the fire i' the blood: be more abstemious, Or else, good night your vow! _Fer._ I warrant you, sir; The white cold virgin snow upon my heart 55 Abates the ardour of my liver. _Pros._ Well. Now come, my Ariel! bring a corollary, Rather than want a spirit: appear, and pertly! No tongue! all eyes! be silent. [_Soft music._ _Enter IRIS._ _Iris._ Ceres, most bounteous lady, thy rich leas 60 Of wheat, rye, barley, vetches, oats, and pease; Thy turfy mountains, where live nibbling sheep, And flat meads thatch'd with stover, them to keep; Thy banks with pioned and twilled brims, Which spongy April at thy best betrims, 65 To make cold nymphs chaste crowns; and thy broom-groves, Whose shadow the dismissed bachelor loves, Being lass-lorn; thy pole-clipt vineyard; And thy sea-marge, sterile and rocky-hard, Where thou thyself dost air;--the queen o' the sky, 70 Whose watery arch and messenger am I, Bids thee leave these; and with her sovereign grace, Here on this grass-plot, in this very place, To come and sport:--her peacocks fly amain: Approach, rich Ceres, her to entertain. 75 _Enter CERES._ _Cer._ Hail, many-colour'd messenger, that ne'er Dost disobey the wife of Jupiter; Who, with thy saffron wings, upon my flowers Diffusest honey-drops, refreshing showers; And with each end of thy blue bow dost crown 80 My bosky acres and my unshrubb'd down, Rich scarf to my proud earth;--why hath thy queen Summon'd me hither, to this short-grass'd green? _Iris._ A contract of true love to celebrate; And some donation freely to estate 85 On the blest lovers. _Cer._ Tell me, heavenly bow, If Venus or her son, as thou dost know, Do now attend the queen? Since they did plot The means that dusky Dis my daughter got, Her and her blind boy's scandal'd company 90 I have forsworn. _Iris._ Of her society Be not afraid: I met her Deity Cutting the clouds towards Paphos, and her son Dove-drawn with her. Here thought they to have done Some wanton charm upon this man and maid, 95 Whose vows are, that no bed-right shall be paid Till Hymen's torch be lighted: but in vain; Mars's hot minion is returned again; Her waspish-headed son has broke his arrows, Swears he will shoot no more, but play with sparrows, 100 And be a boy right out. _Cer._ High'st queen of state, Great Juno, comes; I know her by her gait. _Enter JUNO._ _Juno._ How does my bounteous sister? Go with me To bless this twain, that they may prosperous be, And honour'd in their issue. [_They sing:_ 105 _Juno._ Honour, riches, marriage-blessing, Long continuance, and increasing, Hourly joys be still upon you! Juno sings her blessings on you. _Cer._ Earth's increase, foison plenty, 110 Barns and garners never empty; Vines with clustering bunches growing; Plants with goodly burthen bowing; Spring come to you at the farthest In the very end of harvest! 115 Scarcity and want shall shun you; Ceres' blessing so is on you. _Fer._ This is a most majestic vision, and Harmonious charmingly. May I be bold To think these spirits? _Pros._ Spirits, which by mine art 120 I have from their confines call'd to enact My present fancies. _Fer._ Let me live here ever; So rare a wonder'd father and a wife Makes this place Paradise. [_Juno and Ceres whisper, and send Iris on employment._ _Pros._ Sweet, now, silence! Juno and Ceres whisper seriously; 125 There's something else to do: hush, and be mute, Or else our spell is marr'd. _Iris._ You nymphs, call'd Naiads, of the windring brooks, With your sedged crowns and ever-harmless looks, Leave your crisp channels, and on this green land 130 Answer your summons; Juno does command: Come, temperate nymphs, and help to celebrate A contract of true love; be not too late. _Enter certain Nymphs._ You sunburnt sicklemen, of August weary, Come hither from the furrow, and be merry: 135 Make holiday; your rye-straw hats put on, And these fresh nymphs encounter every one In country footing. _Enter certain Reapers, properly habited: they join with the Nymphs in a graceful dance; towards the end whereof PROSPERO starts suddenly, and speaks; after which, to a strange, hollow, and confused noise, they heavily vanish._ _Pros._ [_Aside_] I had forgot that foul conspiracy Of the beast Caliban and his confederates 140 Against my life: the minute of their plot Is almost come. [_To the Spirits._] Well done! avoid; no more! _Fer._ This is strange: your father's in some passion That works him strongly. _Mir._ Never till this day Saw I him touch'd with anger so distemper'd. 145 _Pros._ You do look, my son, in a moved sort, As if you were dismay'd: be cheerful, sir. Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits, and Are melted into air, into thin air: 150 And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, 155 Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on; and our little life Is rounded with a sleep. Sir, I am vex'd; Bear with my weakness; my old brain is troubled: Be not disturb'd with my infirmity: 160 If you be pleased, retire into my cell, And there repose: a turn or two I'll walk, To still my beating mind. _Fer._ _Mir._ We wish your peace. [_Exeunt._ _Pros._ Come with a thought. I thank thee, Ariel: come. _Enter ARIEL._ _Ari._ Thy thoughts I cleave to. What's thy pleasure? 165 _Pros._ Spirit, We must prepare to meet with Caliban. _Ari._ Ay, my commander: when I presented Ceres, I thought to have told thee of it; but I fear'd Lest I might anger thee. _Pros._ Say again, where didst thou leave these varlets? 170 _Ari._ I told you, sir, they were red-hot with drinking; So full of valour that they smote the air For breathing in their faces; beat the ground For kissing of their feet; yet always bending Towards their project. Then I beat my tabor; 175 At which, like unback'd colts, they prick'd their ears, Advanced their eyelids, lifted up their noses As they smelt music: so I charm'd their ears, That, calf-like, they my lowing follow'd through Tooth'd briers, sharp furzes, pricking goss, and thorns, 180 Which enter'd their frail shins: at last I left them I' the filthy-mantled pool beyond your cell, There dancing up to the chins, that the foul lake O'erstunk their feet. _Pros._ This was well done, my bird. Thy shape invisible retain thou still: 185 The trumpery in my house, go bring it hither, For stale to catch these thieves. _Ari._ I go, I go. [_Exit._ _Pros._ A devil, a born devil, on whose nature Nurture can never stick; on whom my pains, Humanely taken, all, all lost, quite lost; 190 And as with age his body uglier grows, So his mind cankers. I will plague them all, Even to roaring. _Re-enter ARIEL, loaden with glistering apparel, &c._ Come, hang them on this line. _PROSPERO and ARIEL remain, invisible. Enter CALIBAN, STEPHANO, and TRINCULO, all wet._ _Cal._ Pray you, tread softly, that the blind mole may not Hear a foot fall: we now are near his cell. 195 _Ste._ Monster, your fairy, which you say is a harmless fairy, has done little better than played the Jack with us. _Trin._ Monster, I do smell all horse-piss; at which my nose is in great indignation. _Ste._ So is mine. Do you hear, monster? If I should 200 take a displeasure against you, look you,-- _Trin._ Thou wert but a lost monster. _Cal._ Good my lord, give me thy favour still. Be patient, for the prize I'll bring thee to Shall hoodwink this mischance: therefore speak softly. 205 All's hush'd as midnight yet. _Trin._ Ay, but to lose our bottles in the pool,-- _Ste._ There is not only disgrace and dishonour in that, monster, but an infinite loss. _Trin._ That's more to me than my wetting: yet this is 210 your harmless fairy, monster. _Ste._ I will fetch off my bottle, though I be o'er ears for my labour. _Cal._ Prithee, my king, be quiet. See'st thou here, This is the mouth o' the cell: no noise, and enter. 215 Do that good mischief which may make this island Thine own for ever, and I, thy Caliban, For aye thy foot-licker. _Ste._ Give me thy hand. I do begin to have bloody thoughts. 220 _Trin._ O King Stephano! O peer! O worthy Stephano! look what a wardrobe here is for thee! _Cal._ Let it alone, thou fool; it is but trash. _Trin._ O, ho, monster! we know what belongs to a frippery. O King Stephano! 225 _Ste._ Put off that gown, Trinculo; by this hand, I'll have that gown. _Trin._ Thy Grace shall have it. _Cal._ The dropsy drown this fool! what do you mean To dote thus on such luggage? Let's alone, 230 And do the murder first: if he awake, From toe to crown he'll fill our skins with pinches, Make us strange stuff. _Ste._ Be you quiet, monster. Mistress line, is not this my jerkin? Now is the jerkin under the line: now, jerkin, 235 you are like to lose your hair, and prove a bald jerkin. _Trin._ Do, do: we steal by line and level, an't like your Grace. _Ste._ I thank thee for that jest; here's a garment for't: wit shall not go unrewarded while I am king of this country. 240 'Steal by line and level' is an excellent pass of pate; there's another garment for't. _Trin._ Monster, come, put some lime upon your fingers, and away with the rest. _Cal._ I will have none on't: we shall lose our time, 245 And all be turn'd to barnacles, or to apes With foreheads villanous low. _Ste._ Monster, lay-to your fingers: help to bear this away where my hogshead of wine is, or I'll turn you out of my kingdom: go to, carry this. 250 _Trin._ And this. _Ste._ Ay, and this. _A noise of hunters heard. Enter divers Spirits, in shape of dogs and hounds, and hunt them about, PROSPERO and ARIEL setting them on._ _Pros._ Hey, Mountain, hey! _Ari._ Silver! there it goes, Silver! _Pros._ Fury, fury! there, Tyrant, there! hark, hark! 255 [_Cal., Ste., and Trin. are driven out._ Go charge my goblins that they grind their joints With dry convulsions; shorten up their sinews With aged cramps; and more pinch-spotted make them Then pard or cat o' mountain. _Ari._ Hark, they roar! _Pros._ Let them be hunted soundly. At this hour 260 Lie at my mercy all mine enemies: Shortly shall all my labours end, and thou Shalt have the air at freedom: for a little Follow, and do me service. [_Exeunt._ Notes: IV, 1. 3: _a third_] _a thread_ Theobald. _the thread_ Williams conj. 4: _who_] _whom_ Pope. 7: _test_] F1. _rest_ F2 F3 F4. 9: _off_] F2 F3 F4. _of_ F1. 11: _do_] om. Pope. 13: _gift_] Rowe. _guest_ Ff. 14: _but_] F1. om. F2 F3 F4. 25: _'tis_] _is_ Capell. 30: _Phoebus'_] _Phoebus_ F1. _Phoedus_ F2 F3. _Phoeduus_ F4. 34: SCENE II. Pope. 41: _vanity_] _rarity_ S. Walker conj. 48: _no_?] _no_. Rowe. 53: _abstemious_] _abstenious_ F1. 60: SCENE III. A MASQUE. Pope.] _thy_] F1. _the_ F2 F3 F4. 64: _pioned_] _pionied_ Warburton. _peonied_ Steevens. _twilled_] _tulip'd_ Rowe. _tilled_ Capell (Holt conj.). _lilied_ Steevens.] 66: _broom-groves_] _brown groves_ Hanmer. 68: _pole-clipt_] _pale-clipt_ Hanmer. 72: After this line Ff. have the stage direction, '_Juno descends._' 74: _her_] Rowe. _here_ Ff. 83: _short-grass'd_] F3 F4. _short gras'd_ F1 F2. _short-grass_ Pope. 96: _bed-right_] _bed-rite_ Singer. 101: _High'st_] _High_ Pope. 102: Enter JUNO] om. Ff. 110: Cer.] Theobald. om. Ff. _foison_] F1 _and foison_ F2 F3 F4. 114: _Spring_] _Rain_ Collier MS. 119: _charmingly_] _charming lay_ Hanmer. _charming lays_ Warburton. _Harmoniously charming_ Steevens conj. 121: _from their_] F1. _from all their_ F2 F3 F4. 123: _wife_] F1 (var.). Rowe. _wise_ F1 (var.) F2 F3 F4. 124: _Makes_] _make_ Pope. _sweet, now, silence_] _now, silence, sweet_ Hanmer. 124: In Ff. the stage direction [Juno, &c. follows line 127. Capell made the change. 128: _windring_] _winding_ Rowe. _wand'ring_ Steevens. 129: _sedged_] _sedge_ Collier MS. 136: _holiday_] _holly day_ F1 F2 F3. _holy-day_ F4. 139: SCENE IV. Pope. 143: _This is_] _This'_ (for This 's) S. Walker conj.] _strange_] _most strange_ Hanmer. 145: Ff put a comma after _anger_. Warburton omitted it. 146: _do_] om. Pope. See note (XVI). 151: _this_] F1. _their_ F2 F3 F4. _th' air visions_ Warburton. 156: _rack_] F3 F4. _racke_ F1 F2. _track_ Hanmer. _wreck_ Dyce (Malone conj.). 163: _your_] F1 F2 F3. _you_ F4. 164: _I thank thee, Ariel: come._] _I thank you:--Ariel, come._ Theobald. 169: _Lest_] F4. _Least_ F1 F2 F3. 170: _Say again_] _Well, say again_ Capell. 180: _furzes_] Rowe. _firzes_ Ff. 181: _shins_] _skins_ Warburton conj. (note, V. 1. p. 87). 182: _filthy-mantled_] _filthy mantled_ Ff. _filth-ymantled_ Steevens conj. 184: _feet_] _fear_ Spedding conj. 190: _all, all_] _are all_ Malone conj. 193: _them on_ Rowe. _on them_ Ff. Prospero ... invisible. Theobald, Capell. om. Ff. 194: SCENE V. Pope. 230: _Let's alone_] _Let's along_ Theobald. _Let it alone_ Hanmer. _Let 't alone_ Collier. See note (XVII). 246: _to apes_] om. _to_ Pope. 255: Stage direction added by Theobald. 256: _they_] F1 F3 F4. _thou_ F2. 261: _Lie_] Rowe. _lies_ Ff.

Act IV, scene i

https://web.archive.org/web/20210131162607/https://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/tempest/section9/

Prospero gives his blessing to Ferdinand and Miranda, warning Ferdinand only that he take care not to break Miranda's "virgin-knot" before the wedding has been solemnized . Ferdinand promises to comply. Prospero then calls in Ariel and asks him to summon spirits to perform a masque for Ferdinand and Miranda. Soon, three spirits appear in the shapes of the mythological figures of Iris , Juno , and Ceres . This trio performs a masque celebrating the lovers' engagement. First, Iris enters and asks Ceres to appear at Juno's wish, to celebrate "a contract of true love." Ceres appears, and then Juno enters. Juno and Ceres together bless the couple, with Juno wishing them honor and riches, and Ceres wishing them natural prosperity and plenty. The spectacle awes Ferdinand and he says that he would like to live on the island forever, with Prospero as his father and Miranda as his wife. Juno and Ceres send Iris to fetch some nymphs and reapers to perform a country dance. Just as this dance begins, however, Prospero startles suddenly and then sends the spirits away. Prospero, who had forgotten about Caliban's plot against him, suddenly remembers that the hour nearly has come for Caliban and the conspirators to make their attempt on his life. Our revels now are ended. These our actors,As I foretold you, were all spirits, andAre melted into air, into thin air;And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,The solemn temples, the great globe itself,Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve;And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuffAs dreams are made on, and our little lifeIs rounded with a sleep. Prospero's apparent anger alarms Ferdinand and Miranda, but Prospero assures the young couple that his consternation is largely a result of his age; he says that a walk will soothe him. Prospero makes a short speech about the masque, saying that the world itself is as insubstantial as a play, and that human beings are "such stuff / As dreams are made on." Ferdinand and Miranda leave Prospero to himself, and the old enchanter immediately summons Ariel, who seems to have made a mistake by not reminding Prospero of Caliban's plot before the beginning of the masque. Prospero now asks Ariel to tell him again what the three conspirators are up to, and Ariel tells him of the men's drunken scheme to steal Prospero's book and kill him. Ariel reports that he used his music to lead these men through rough and prickly briars and then into a filthy pond. Prospero thanks his trusty spirit, and the two set a trap for the three would-be assassins. On a clothesline in Prospero's cell, Prospero and Ariel hang an array of fine apparel for the men to attempt to steal, after which they render themselves invisible. Caliban, Trinculo, and Stephano enter, wet from the filthy pond. The fine clothing immediately distracts Stephano and Trinculo. They want to steal it, despite the protests of Caliban, who wants to stick to the plan and kill Prospero. Stephano and Trinculo ignore him. Soon after they touch the clothing, there is "A noise of hunters" . A pack of spirits in the shape of hounds, set on by Ariel and Prospero, drives the thieves out.

Analysis The wedding of Ferdinand and Miranda draws near. Thus, Act IV, scene i explores marriage from several different angles. Prospero and Ferdinand's surprisingly coarse discussion of Miranda's virginity at the beginning of the scene serves to emphasize the disparity in knowledge and experience between Miranda and her future husband. Prospero has kept his daughter extremely innocent. As a result, Ferdinand's vulgar description of the pleasures of the wedding-bed reminds the audience that the end of Miranda's innocence is now imminent. Her wedding-night will come, she will lose her virginity, and she will be in some way changed. This discussion is a blunt reminder that change is inevitable and that Miranda will soon give herself, in an entirely new way, to a man besides her father. Though Prospero somewhat perfunctorily initiates and participates in the sexual discussion, he also seems to be affected by it. In the later parts of the scene, he makes unprecedented comments on the transitory nature of life and on his own old age. Very likely, the prospect of Miranda's marriage and growing up calls these ideas to his mind. After the discussion of sexuality, Prospero introduces the masque, which moves the exploration of marriage to the somewhat more comfortable realms of society and family. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, masques were popular forms of entertainment in England. Masques featured masked actors performing allegorical, often highly ritualized stories drawn from mythology and folklore. Prospero's masque features Juno, the symbol of marriage and family life in Roman mythology, and Ceres, the symbol of agriculture, and thus of nature, growth, prosperity, and rebirth, all notions intimately connected to marriage. The united blessing of the union by Juno and Ceres is a blessing on the couple that wishes them prosperity and wealth while explicitly tying their marriage to notions of social propriety and harmony with the Earth. In this way, marriage is subtly glorified as both the foundation of society and as part of the natural order of things, given the accord between marriage and nature in Ceres' speech. Interestingly, Juno and Ceres de-emphasize the role of love, personal feeling, and sexuality in marriage, choosing instead to focus on marriage's place in the social and natural orders. When Ceres wonders to Iris where Venus and Cupid, the deities of love and sex, are, she says that she hopes not to see them because their lustful powers caused Pluto, god of the underworld, to kidnap Persephone, Ceres's daughter . Iris assures Ceres that Venus and Cupid are nowhere in sight. Venus and Cupid had hoped to foil the purity of the impending union, "but in vain" . Ceres, Juno, and Iris have kept the gods of lust at bay; it seems that, through his masque, Prospero is trying to suppress entirely the lasciviousness of Ferdinand's tone when he discusses Miranda's virginity. In almost all of Shakespeare's comedies, marriage is used as a symbol of a harmonious and healthy social order. In these plays, misunderstandings erupt, conflicts break out, and at the end, love triumphs and marriage sets everything right. The Tempest, a romance, is not exactly a comedy. However, it is deeply concerned with the social order, both in terms of the explicit conflict of the play and in terms of the play's constant exploration of the master-servant dynamic, especially when the dynamic appears unsettled or discordant. One reason Shakespeare might shift the focus of the play to marriage at this point is to prepare the audience for the mending of the disrupted social order that takes place at the end of the story. Calling upon all the social and dramatic associations of marriage, and underscoring them heavily with the solemnity of the masque, Shakespeare creates a sense that, even though the play's major conflict is still unresolved, the world of the play is beginning to heal itself. What is interesting about this technique is that the sense of healing has little to do with anything intrinsic to the characters themselves. Throughout this scene, Ferdinand seems unduly coarse, Miranda merely a threatened innocent, and Prospero somewhat weary and sad. But the fact of marriage itself, as it is presented in the masque, is enough to settle the turbulent waters of the story. After this detailed exploration of marriage, the culmination of Caliban's plot against Prospero occurs merely as a moment of comic relief, exposing the weaknesses of Stephano and Trinculo and giving the conspirators their just desserts. Any hint of sympathy we may have had for Caliban earlier in the play has vanished, partly because Caliban's behavior has been vicious and degraded, but also because Prospero has become more appealing. Prospero has come to seem more fully human because of his poignant feelings for his daughter and his discussion of his old age. As a result, he is far easier to identify with than he was in the first Act. Simply by accenting aspects of character we have already seen, namely Prospero's love for Miranda and the conspirators' absurd incompetence, Shakespeare substantially rehabilitates Prospero in the eyes of the audience. We can cheer wholeheartedly for Prospero in his humorous defeat of Caliban now; this is one of the first really uncomplicated moments in the play. After this moment, Prospero becomes easier to sympathize with as the rest of the story unfolds.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/43.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_41_part_0.txt

Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 42

chapter 42

{"name": "Phase V: \"The Woman Pays,\" Chapter Forty-Two", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210424232301/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary/chapter-42", "summary": "The next day, several more young men bother her with compliments about her good looks. So Tess decides to try to make herself ugly, and clips off her eyebrows and ties a handkerchief around her face as though she had a toothache. This has the desired effect--now when she passes men on the road, they mumble to each other about what an ugly girl she is. Tess arrives at the place where Marian has been working, and is happy to see her, even though it's clear that Marian's fallen on hard times, too. Marian is surprised at Tess's appearance, since she's married to a gentleman and all. Marian assumes that whatever's wrong, it must be the fault of something outside both Tess and Angel, since she won't admit that either of them has any real faults. Marian offers to help Tess to get a job at the farm where she's working, even though it's tough work and not much fun. Tess doesn't really care what she does, so long as Marian agrees not to tell anyone about Angel--Tess doesn't want Angel's name to be associated with farm labor. Tess signs an agreement with the farmer's wife to stay and work until \"Old Lady Day\" . She sends a letter to her parents telling them where she's living, but not how poor she is--she's afraid that they'd think badly of Angel if they knew.", "analysis": ""}

It was now broad day, and she started again, emerging cautiously upon the highway. But there was no need for caution; not a soul was at hand, and Tess went onward with fortitude, her recollection of the birds' silent endurance of their night of agony impressing upon her the relativity of sorrows and the tolerable nature of her own, if she could once rise high enough to despise opinion. But that she could not do so long as it was held by Clare. She reached Chalk-Newton, and breakfasted at an inn, where several young men were troublesomely complimentary to her good looks. Somehow she felt hopeful, for was it not possible that her husband also might say these same things to her even yet? She was bound to take care of herself on the chance of it, and keep off these casual lovers. To this end Tess resolved to run no further risks from her appearance. As soon as she got out of the village she entered a thicket and took from her basket one of the oldest field-gowns, which she had never put on even at the dairy--never since she had worked among the stubble at Marlott. She also, by a felicitous thought, took a handkerchief from her bundle and tied it round her face under her bonnet, covering her chin and half her cheeks and temples, as if she were suffering from toothache. Then with her little scissors, by the aid of a pocket looking-glass, she mercilessly nipped her eyebrows off, and thus insured against aggressive admiration, she went on her uneven way. "What a mommet of a maid!" said the next man who met her to a companion. Tears came into her eyes for very pity of herself as she heard him. "But I don't care!" she said. "O no--I don't care! I'll always be ugly now, because Angel is not here, and I have nobody to take care of me. My husband that was is gone away, and never will love me any more; but I love him just the same, and hate all other men, and like to make 'em think scornfully of me!" Thus Tess walks on; a figure which is part of the landscape; a fieldwoman pure and simple, in winter guise; a gray serge cape, a red woollen cravat, a stuff skirt covered by a whitey-brown rough wrapper, and buff-leather gloves. Every thread of that old attire has become faded and thin under the stroke of raindrops, the burn of sunbeams, and the stress of winds. There is no sign of young passion in her now-- The maiden's mouth is cold . . . Fold over simple fold Binding her head. Inside this exterior, over which the eye might have roved as over a thing scarcely percipient, almost inorganic, there was the record of a pulsing life which had learnt too well, for its years, of the dust and ashes of things, of the cruelty of lust and the fragility of love. Next day the weather was bad, but she trudged on, the honesty, directness, and impartiality of elemental enmity disconcerting her but little. Her object being a winter's occupation and a winter's home, there was no time to lose. Her experience of short hirings had been such that she was determined to accept no more. Thus she went forward from farm to farm in the direction of the place whence Marian had written to her, which she determined to make use of as a last shift only, its rumoured stringencies being the reverse of tempting. First she inquired for the lighter kinds of employment, and, as acceptance in any variety of these grew hopeless, applied next for the less light, till, beginning with the dairy and poultry tendance that she liked best, she ended with the heavy and course pursuits which she liked least--work on arable land: work of such roughness, indeed, as she would never have deliberately voluteered for. Towards the second evening she reached the irregular chalk table-land or plateau, bosomed with semi-globular tumuli--as if Cybele the Many-breasted were supinely extended there--which stretched between the valley of her birth and the valley of her love. Here the air was dry and cold, and the long cart-roads were blown white and dusty within a few hours after rain. There were few trees, or none, those that would have grown in the hedges being mercilessly plashed down with the quickset by the tenant-farmers, the natural enemies of tree, bush, and brake. In the middle distance ahead of her she could see the summits of Bulbarrow and of Nettlecombe Tout, and they seemed friendly. They had a low and unassuming aspect from this upland, though as approached on the other side from Blackmoor in her childhood they were as lofty bastions against the sky. Southerly, at many miles' distance, and over the hills and ridges coastward, she could discern a surface like polished steel: it was the English Channel at a point far out towards France. Before her, in a slight depression, were the remains of a village. She had, in fact, reached Flintcomb-Ash, the place of Marian's sojourn. There seemed to be no help for it; hither she was doomed to come. The stubborn soil around her showed plainly enough that the kind of labour in demand here was of the roughest kind; but it was time to rest from searching, and she resolved to stay, particularly as it began to rain. At the entrance to the village was a cottage whose gable jutted into the road, and before applying for a lodging she stood under its shelter, and watched the evening close in. "Who would think I was Mrs Angel Clare!" she said. The wall felt warm to her back and shoulders, and she found that immediately within the gable was the cottage fireplace, the heat of which came through the bricks. She warmed her hands upon them, and also put her cheek--red and moist with the drizzle--against their comforting surface. The wall seemed to be the only friend she had. She had so little wish to leave it that she could have stayed there all night. Tess could hear the occupants of the cottage--gathered together after their day's labour--talking to each other within, and the rattle of their supper-plates was also audible. But in the village-street she had seen no soul as yet. The solitude was at last broken by the approach of one feminine figure, who, though the evening was cold, wore the print gown and the tilt-bonnet of summer time. Tess instinctively thought it might be Marian, and when she came near enough to be distinguishable in the gloom, surely enough it was she. Marian was even stouter and redder in the face than formerly, and decidedly shabbier in attire. At any previous period of her existence Tess would hardly have cared to renew the acquaintance in such conditions; but her loneliness was excessive, and she responded readily to Marian's greeting. Marian was quite respectful in her inquiries, but seemed much moved by the fact that Tess should still continue in no better condition than at first; though she had dimly heard of the separation. "Tess--Mrs Clare--the dear wife of dear he! And is it really so bad as this, my child? Why is your cwomely face tied up in such a way? Anybody been beating 'ee? Not HE?" "No, no, no! I merely did it not to be clipsed or colled, Marian." She pulled off in disgust a bandage which could suggest such wild thoughts. "And you've got no collar on" (Tess had been accustomed to wear a little white collar at the dairy). "I know it, Marian." "You've lost it travelling." "I've not lost it. The truth is, I don't care anything about my looks; and so I didn't put it on." "And you don't wear your wedding-ring?" "Yes, I do; but not in public. I wear it round my neck on a ribbon. I don't wish people to think who I am by marriage, or that I am married at all; it would be so awkward while I lead my present life." Marian paused. "But you BE a gentleman's wife; and it seems hardly fair that you should live like this!" "O yes it is, quite fair; though I am very unhappy." "Well, well. HE married you--and you can be unhappy!" "Wives are unhappy sometimes; from no fault of their husbands--from their own." "You've no faults, deary; that I'm sure of. And he's none. So it must be something outside ye both." "Marian, dear Marian, will you do me a good turn without asking questions? My husband has gone abroad, and somehow I have overrun my allowance, so that I have to fall back upon my old work for a time. Do not call me Mrs Clare, but Tess, as before. Do they want a hand here?" "O yes; they'll take one always, because few care to come. 'Tis a starve-acre place. Corn and swedes are all they grow. Though I be here myself, I feel 'tis a pity for such as you to come." "But you used to be as good a dairywoman as I." "Yes; but I've got out o' that since I took to drink. Lord, that's the only comfort I've got now! If you engage, you'll be set swede-hacking. That's what I be doing; but you won't like it." "O--anything! Will you speak for me?" "You will do better by speaking for yourself." "Very well. Now, Marian, remember--nothing about HIM if I get the place. I don't wish to bring his name down to the dirt." Marian, who was really a trustworthy girl though of coarser grain than Tess, promised anything she asked. "This is pay-night," she said, "and if you were to come with me you would know at once. I be real sorry that you are not happy; but 'tis because he's away, I know. You couldn't be unhappy if he were here, even if he gie'd ye no money--even if he used you like a drudge." "That's true; I could not!" They walked on together and soon reached the farmhouse, which was almost sublime in its dreariness. There was not a tree within sight; there was not, at this season, a green pasture--nothing but fallow and turnips everywhere, in large fields divided by hedges plashed to unrelieved levels. Tess waited outside the door of the farmhouse till the group of workfolk had received their wages, and then Marian introduced her. The farmer himself, it appeared, was not at home, but his wife, who represented him this evening, made no objection to hiring Tess, on her agreeing to remain till Old Lady-Day. Female field-labour was seldom offered now, and its cheapness made it profitable for tasks which women could perform as readily as men. Having signed the agreement, there was nothing more for Tess to do at present than to get a lodging, and she found one in the house at whose gable-wall she had warmed herself. It was a poor subsistence that she had ensured, but it would afford a shelter for the winter at any rate. That night she wrote to inform her parents of her new address, in case a letter should arrive at Marlott from her husband. But she did not tell them of the sorriness of her situation: it might have brought reproach upon him.

Phase V: "The Woman Pays," Chapter Forty-Two

https://web.archive.org/web/20210424232301/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary/chapter-42

The next day, several more young men bother her with compliments about her good looks. So Tess decides to try to make herself ugly, and clips off her eyebrows and ties a handkerchief around her face as though she had a toothache. This has the desired effect--now when she passes men on the road, they mumble to each other about what an ugly girl she is. Tess arrives at the place where Marian has been working, and is happy to see her, even though it's clear that Marian's fallen on hard times, too. Marian is surprised at Tess's appearance, since she's married to a gentleman and all. Marian assumes that whatever's wrong, it must be the fault of something outside both Tess and Angel, since she won't admit that either of them has any real faults. Marian offers to help Tess to get a job at the farm where she's working, even though it's tough work and not much fun. Tess doesn't really care what she does, so long as Marian agrees not to tell anyone about Angel--Tess doesn't want Angel's name to be associated with farm labor. Tess signs an agreement with the farmer's wife to stay and work until "Old Lady Day" . She sends a letter to her parents telling them where she's living, but not how poor she is--she's afraid that they'd think badly of Angel if they knew.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/1756-chapters/act_ii.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Uncle Vanya/section_1_part_0.txt

Uncle Vanya.act ii

act ii

{"name": "Act II", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180409044821/http://www.gradesaver.com/uncle-vanya/study-guide/summary-act-ii", "summary": "Serebryakov and Helen doze in the dining room that evening. Serebryakov wakes with a start and grumbles that he feels excruciating pain in his left leg; he thinks that it's probably rheumatism, not gout. He laments the repulsiveness of old age and how no one can stand the sight of him. Helen sighs that his old age is not their fault. He responds bitterly that she is a young and beautiful woman and he is an old man; he says that he clearly understands that she is just waiting for him to free her by dying. Helen responds that she feels faint and asks him to stop talking, which he finds amusing since he is the old one. Helen tears up and asks what he wants from her, and he responds that he does not want anything. He adds that if it were Vanya Voynitsky or his mother talking everyone would listen, but people think that he is boring and disgusting. Helen gets up and shuts the window because it looks like there will be rain. Serebryakov continues to complain about giving his life to scholarship only to end up exiled here, \"watching others succeed and going in fear of death\" . Helen simply says that in a few years she will be old too. Sonya enters, chiding her father for not seeing Astrov. Serebryakov is unrepentant and calls the doctor a crackpot. Sonya sits down. She explains that she does not like him acting like a child and treating her poorly. Vanya enters and comments on the storm. He announces that he is here to relieve the women, and Serebryakov bursts out that he does not want to be left alone with Vanya because the man will talk his head off. He urges Vanya to leave as well--they can talk about their past friendship another time. Vanya scoffs at this. Marina enters and Sonya tells her she ought to get some rest. The old woman lovingly helps Serebryakov up and out of bed. Sonya joins them. Helen says to Vanya that she cannot stand her husband, and Vanya agrees that the old man is wearying. He thinks that Helen and her husband have disrupted the whole house, but she advises him that he is the one who must step in and make peace. He bends to kiss her hand and bemoans his sorry, wasted life. Helen pulls her hand away. Vanya asks her angrily what she is waiting for, but she accuses him of just being drunk. She becomes annoyed and leaves. Alone, Vanya muses that he should have pursued her ten years ago when she was 17 and he was 37, but now he is too old and a fool. He should have never idolized the professor and worked to keep the estate for him; the professor once seemed like a god, but now his work is revealed for what it actually is: meaningless. Astrov enters with Telegin, the latter carrying a guitar. Astrov, a bit tipsy, tells Telegin to play. Telegin strums the instrument. Astrov meanders about, asking where the ladies are, complimenting Helen's beauty, and asking wryly if Vanya loves her. When Vanya says that she is a friend, Astrov laughs that a woman can only be a man's friend once she passes through the roles of acquaintance and mistress. When Vanya disagrees, Astrov laughs about his own bumptiousness and impudence and how he feels in this moment that he can actually do something and change things for the better. When Sonya enters, Astrov and Telegin leave to get more to drink. Sonya chastises her uncle for drinking so much and focusing more on illusions than actual work. She sees the tears in his eyes, though, and becomes concerned when he starts to lament the loss of his dear sister. He departs sadly. Sonya goes to Astrov and tells him to stop encouraging her uncle to drink. Astrov agrees, and then says he is getting ready to depart tomorrow once the rain is gone. Sonya asks if he wants something to eat, and he admits he does. Astrov complains about the difficulty of being in this house with these people, and that even the beautiful Helen is vexing because she has no responsibilities and is too idle. Sonya asks if he is satisfied with life; he responds that he generally is, but that provincial and parochial Russian life is stultifying and his private life is dull. Sonya wonders if he cares for anyone and he states that he does not, for the peasants are all the same and all these friends of theirs are stupid and petty even though they are educated. He reaches for a drink, and Sonya softly asks him not to. He gives her his word that he will not: he will remain sober until the end of his days. Astrov tells Sonya that he does not think he could grow fond of anyone anymore, but even as he starts to think about Helen he shudders, remembering a patient who died under chloroform. Sonya haltingly asks him how he would respond if she had a friend or younger sister who loved him. He shrugs and says he'd make it clear he couldn't love her; then he bids Sonya goodbye and leaves. Alone, Sonya feels a thrill of happiness even though she does not know his true feelings. She is upset that she is not beautiful, but she still has hope. Helen enters and opens the windows to let the fresh air in. She asks Sonya if they can be friends, not enemies, and Sonya happily complies. They embrace. Sonya cries a bit, and Helen is moved to do so as well. She explains to Sonya that she did marry Serebryakov for love and because he was an attractive and public figure, but that clearly it was not real love. She apologizes to Sonya, but Sonya just asks if Helen wishes she were married to someone younger. Helen laughs and says of course. She then asks Sonya about the doctor, and when Sonya confesses, Helen compliments the doctor's vision and brilliance. She wises Sonya happiness and says sadly that, as for herself, she is inconsequential and unhappy. Sonya is happy now and tears up with joy. She asks Helen to play something on the piano and Helen is excited to do so; Sonya runs out to ask her father if this can happen, and he reports back that he said no.", "analysis": "In Act II, Chekhov provides a window into Serebryakov and Helen's stultifying marriage and how each of their particular issues makes them feel alone within that union. Serebryakov is old and unwell--but, as he rejects the doctor's attention, he is partially blameworthy for the latter. He knows the others dislike him and comments, \"I've only to open my mouth and everyone starts feeling miserable. Even my voice disgusts you. All right, I'm disgusting, I'm selfish, I'm a tyrant\" . He also knows that he is old and \" every moment regretting past\" . Helen offers no solace because she doesn't love him, and her youth and beauty continually remind him of what he does not possess. On the other hand, he claims \"I'm the only person who's happy and enjoys life\" ; he also lives in a bubble of sorts that precludes him from understanding the suffering of others . As for Helen, it is certainly possible to feel sympathy for her. She confides in Sonya that she did marry Serebryakov for love but that it was not real love and now she is deeply unhappy. As a woman, she has no real place except the home, and she is valued primarily for her looks, not her intellect. She seeks human connection but rarely achieves it. The only thing that brings any light to her eyes is music, but when she asks Soya to ask Serebryakov if it is okay for her to play the piano, Serebryakov says no. She wants to believe in art again, but her marriage makes this impossible. Critic Jane Anderson writes of this moment, \" are offered the possibility of art, but this opportunity is repeatedly devalued.\" Ultimately, though, Helen indulges in her boredom, desire for flattery and attention, and complaining. She quickly becomes flustered and dismissive, and puts her own needs above everyone else's. It is no wonder that she has no interest in Astrov's maps depicting the loss of forests and the concomitant deleterious effects on the Russian people: she does not see beyond herself. Chekov makes Astrov the most nuanced character, especially in this act. First, he vacillates between hope and despair, and between the problems of the short-term and the hope of the long-term. He delights in planting a tree, obsesses over losing a patient, complains about peasants and educated people alike, and commits himself to his profession even though it often wears him down. He does not seem to believe in an afterlife but he \"continues to behave in a manner that takes into account future generations\" and \"retains his faith in the idea of creating a better future for humanity,\" as critic Geoffrey Borny writes. When Astrov speaks about forestry in Act I and Act III, he does so in a passionate, irony-free manner. He is often honest when other characters constantly lie to themselves and others. He mocks Vanya but also tries to comfort him. He is gentle with Marina and kind to Sonya, especially after he finds out she has feelings for him. His behavior towards Helen is a bit more problematic, but we will discuss that in the next analysis. In this second act, Chekhov reaffirms that his play is essentially about nothing--or, rather, lots of little nothings. There are big emotions here, but they are cloaked in trivialities and self-obsession. Critic Ronald Hingley notes that it is easier to say what Chekhov's plays are not about than what they are about. While Chekhov's drama has a notably new depiction of mankind, \"to him--or so he appears to imply--human affairs were flatter, duller, less eventful, less heroic than they were to earlier playwrights.\" Uncle Vanya is not a grand tragedy or a harmonious comedy because \"human existence is more pointless, more frustrating, less heroic, less satisfying than members of his audience may privately conceive.\" However, the plays were phenomenally popular with turn-of-the-century theatergoers because they delighted in the \"real\" world onstage and the recognizable dynamics between characters."}

ACT II The dining-room of SEREBRAKOFF'S house. It is night. The tapping of the WATCHMAN'S rattle is heard in the garden. SEREBRAKOFF is dozing in an arm-chair by an open window and HELENA is sitting beside him, also half asleep. SEREBRAKOFF. [Rousing himself] Who is here? Is it you, Sonia? HELENA. It is I. SEREBRAKOFF. Oh, it is you, Nelly. This pain is intolerable. HELENA. Your shawl has slipped down. [She wraps up his legs in the shawl] Let me shut the window. SEREBRAKOFF. No, leave it open; I am suffocating. I dreamt just now that my left leg belonged to some one else, and it hurt so that I woke. I don't believe this is gout, it is more like rheumatism. What time is it? HELENA. Half past twelve. [A pause.] SEREBRAKOFF. I want you to look for Batushka's works in the library to-morrow. I think we have him. HELENA. What is that? SEREBRAKOFF. Look for Batushka to-morrow morning; we used to have him, I remember. Why do I find it so hard to breathe? HELENA. You are tired; this is the second night you have had no sleep. SEREBRAKOFF. They say that Turgenieff got angina of the heart from gout. I am afraid I am getting angina too. Oh, damn this horrible, accursed old age! Ever since I have been old I have been hateful to myself, and I am sure, hateful to you all as well. HELENA. You speak as if we were to blame for your being old. SEREBRAKOFF. I am more hateful to you than to any one. HELENA gets up and walks away from him, sitting down at a distance. SEREBRAKOFF. You are quite right, of course. I am not an idiot; I can understand you. You are young and healthy and beautiful, and longing for life, and I am an old dotard, almost a dead man already. Don't I know it? Of course I see that it is foolish for me to live so long, but wait! I shall soon set you all free. My life cannot drag on much longer. HELENA. You are overtaxing my powers of endurance. Be quiet, for God's sake! SEREBRAKOFF. It appears that, thanks to me, everybody's power of endurance is being overtaxed; everybody is miserable, only I am blissfully triumphant. Oh, yes, of course! HELENA. Be quiet! You are torturing me. SEREBRAKOFF. I torture everybody. Of course. HELENA. [Weeping] This is unbearable! Tell me, what is it you want me to do? SEREBRAKOFF. Nothing. HELENA. Then be quiet, please. SEREBRAKOFF. It is funny that everybody listens to Ivan and his old idiot of a mother, but the moment I open my lips you all begin to feel ill-treated. You can't even stand the sound of my voice. Even if I am hateful, even if I am a selfish tyrant, haven't I the right to be one at my age? Haven't I deserved it? Haven't I, I ask you, the right to be respected, now that I am old? HELENA. No one is disputing your rights. [The window slams in the wind] The wind is rising, I must shut the window. [She shuts it] We shall have rain in a moment. Your rights have never been questioned by anybody. The WATCHMAN in the garden sounds his rattle. SEREBRAKOFF. I have spent my life working in the interests of learning. I am used to my library and the lecture hall and to the esteem and admiration of my colleagues. Now I suddenly find myself plunged in this wilderness, condemned to see the same stupid people from morning till night and listen to their futile conversation. I want to live; I long for success and fame and the stir of the world, and here I am in exile! Oh, it is dreadful to spend every moment grieving for the lost past, to see the success of others and sit here with nothing to do but to fear death. I cannot stand it! It is more than I can bear. And you will not even forgive me for being old! HELENA. Wait, have patience; I shall be old myself in four or five years. SONIA comes in. SONIA. Father, you sent for Dr. Astroff, and now when he comes you refuse to see him. It is not nice to give a man so much trouble for nothing. SEREBRAKOFF. What do I care about your Astroff? He understands medicine about as well as I understand astronomy. SONIA. We can't send for the whole medical faculty, can we, to treat your gout? SEREBRAKOFF. I won't talk to that madman! SONIA. Do as you please. It's all the same to me. [She sits down.] SEREBRAKOFF. What time is it? HELENA. One o'clock. SEREBRAKOFF. It is stifling in here. Sonia, hand me that bottle on the table. SONIA. Here it is. [She hands him a bottle of medicine.] SEREBRAKOFF. [Crossly] No, not that one! Can't you understand me? Can't I ask you to do a thing? SONIA. Please don't be captious with me. Some people may like it, but you must spare me, if you please, because I don't. Besides, I haven't the time; we are cutting the hay to-morrow and I must get up early. VOITSKI comes in dressed in a long gown and carrying a candle. VOITSKI. A thunderstorm is coming up. [The lightning flashes] There it is! Go to bed, Helena and Sonia. I have come to take your place. SEREBRAKOFF. [Frightened] No, n-o, no! Don't leave me alone with him! Oh, don't. He will begin to lecture me. VOITSKI. But you must give them a little rest. They have not slept for two nights. SEREBRAKOFF. Then let them go to bed, but you go away too! Thank you. I implore you to go. For the sake of our former friendship do not protest against going. We will talk some other time---- VOITSKI. Our former friendship! Our former---- SONIA. Hush, Uncle Vanya! SEREBRAKOFF. [To his wife] My darling, don't leave me alone with him. He will begin to lecture me. VOITSKI. This is ridiculous. MARINA comes in carrying a candle. SONIA. You must go to bed, nurse, it is late. MARINA. I haven't cleared away the tea things. Can't go to bed yet. SEREBRAKOFF. No one can go to bed. They are all worn out, only I enjoy perfect happiness. MARINA. [Goes up to SEREBRAKOFF and speaks tenderly] What's the matter, master? Does it hurt? My own legs are aching too, oh, so badly. [Arranges his shawl about his legs] You have had this illness such a long time. Sonia's dead mother used to stay awake with you too, and wear herself out for you. She loved you dearly. [A pause] Old people want to be pitied as much as young ones, but nobody cares about them somehow. [She kisses SEREBRAKOFF'S shoulder] Come, master, let me give you some linden-tea and warm your poor feet for you. I shall pray to God for you. SEREBRAKOFF. [Touched] Let us go, Marina. MARINA. My own feet are aching so badly, oh, so badly! [She and SONIA lead SEREBRAKOFF out] Sonia's mother used to wear herself out with sorrow and weeping. You were still little and foolish then, Sonia. Come, come, master. SEREBRAKOFF, SONIA and MARINA go out. HELENA. I am absolutely exhausted by him, and can hardly stand. VOITSKI. You are exhausted by him, and I am exhausted by my own self. I have not slept for three nights. HELENA. Something is wrong in this house. Your mother hates everything but her pamphlets and the professor; the professor is vexed, he won't trust me, and fears you; Sonia is angry with her father, and with me, and hasn't spoken to me for two weeks; I am at the end of my strength, and have come near bursting into tears at least twenty times to-day. Something is wrong in this house. VOITSKI. Leave speculating alone. HELENA. You are cultured and intelligent, Ivan, and you surely understand that the world is not destroyed by villains and conflagrations, but by hate and malice and all this spiteful tattling. It is your duty to make peace, and not to growl at everything. VOITSKI. Help me first to make peace with myself. My darling! [Seizes her hand.] HELENA. Let go! [She drags her hand away] Go away! VOITSKI. Soon the rain will be over, and all nature will sigh and awake refreshed. Only I am not refreshed by the storm. Day and night the thought haunts me like a fiend, that my life is lost for ever. My past does not count, because I frittered it away on trifles, and the present has so terribly miscarried! What shall I do with my life and my love? What is to become of them? This wonderful feeling of mine will be wasted and lost as a ray of sunlight is lost that falls into a dark chasm, and my life will go with it. HELENA. I am as it were benumbed when you speak to me of your love, and I don't know how to answer you. Forgive me, I have nothing to say to you. [She tries to go out] Good-night! VOITSKI. [Barring the way] If you only knew how I am tortured by the thought that beside me in this house is another life that is being lost forever--it is yours! What are you waiting for? What accursed philosophy stands in your way? Oh, understand, understand---- HELENA. [Looking at him intently] Ivan, you are drunk! VOITSKI. Perhaps. Perhaps. HELENA. Where is the doctor? VOITSKI. In there, spending the night with me. Perhaps I am drunk, perhaps I am; nothing is impossible. HELENA. Have you just been drinking together? Why do you do that? VOITSKI. Because in that way I get a taste of life. Let me do it, Helena! HELENA. You never used to drink, and you never used to talk so much. Go to bed, I am tired of you. VOITSKI. [Falling on his knees before her] My sweetheart, my beautiful one---- HELENA. [Angrily] Leave me alone! Really, this has become too disagreeable. HELENA goes out. A pause. VOITSKI [Alone] She is gone! I met her first ten years ago, at her sister's house, when she was seventeen and I was thirty-seven. Why did I not fall in love with her then and propose to her? It would have been so easy! And now she would have been my wife. Yes, we would both have been waked to-night by the thunderstorm, and she would have been frightened, but I would have held her in my arms and whispered: "Don't be afraid! I am here." Oh, enchanting dream, so sweet that I laugh to think of it. [He laughs] But my God! My head reels! Why am I so old? Why won't she understand me? I hate all that rhetoric of hers, that morality of indolence, that absurd talk about the destruction of the world----[A pause] Oh, how I have been deceived! For years I have worshipped that miserable gout-ridden professor. Sonia and I have squeezed this estate dry for his sake. We have bartered our butter and curds and peas like misers, and have never kept a morsel for ourselves, so that we could scrape enough pennies together to send to him. I was proud of him and of his learning; I received all his words and writings as inspired, and now? Now he has retired, and what is the total of his life? A blank! He is absolutely unknown, and his fame has burst like a soap-bubble. I have been deceived; I see that now, basely deceived. ASTROFF comes in. He has his coat on, but is without his waistcoat or collar, and is slightly drunk. TELEGIN follows him, carrying a guitar. ASTROFF. Play! TELEGIN. But every one is asleep. ASTROFF. Play! TELEGIN begins to play softly. ASTROFF. Are you alone here? No women about? [Sings with his arms akimbo.] "The hut is cold, the fire is dead; Where shall the master lay his head?" The thunderstorm woke me. It was a heavy shower. What time is it? VOITSKI. The devil only knows. ASTROFF. I thought I heard Helena's voice. VOITSKI. She was here a moment ago. ASTROFF. What a beautiful woman! [Looking at the medicine bottles on the table] Medicine, is it? What a variety we have; prescriptions from Moscow, from Kharkoff, from Tula! Why, he has been pestering all the towns of Russia with his gout! Is he ill, or simply shamming? VOITSKI. He is really ill. ASTROFF. What is the matter with you to-night? You seem sad. Is it because you are sorry for the professor? VOITSKI. Leave me alone. ASTROFF. Or in love with the professor's wife? VOITSKI. She is my friend. ASTROFF. Already? VOITSKI. What do you mean by "already"? ASTROFF. A woman can only become a man's friend after having first been his acquaintance and then his beloved--then she becomes his friend. VOITSKI. What vulgar philosophy! ASTROFF. What do you mean? Yes, I must confess I am getting vulgar, but then, you see, I am drunk. I usually only drink like this once a month. At such times my audacity and temerity know no bounds. I feel capable of anything. I attempt the most difficult operations and do them magnificently. The most brilliant plans for the future take shape in my head. I am no longer a poor fool of a doctor, but mankind's greatest benefactor. I evolve my own system of philosophy and all of you seem to crawl at my feet like so many insects or microbes. [To TELEGIN] Play, Waffles! TELEGIN. My dear boy, I would with all my heart, but do listen to reason; everybody in the house is asleep. ASTROFF. Play! TELEGIN plays softly. ASTROFF. I want a drink. Come, we still have some brandy left. And then, as soon as it is day, you will come home with me. [He sees SONIA, who comes in at that moment.] ASTROFF. I beg your pardon, I have no collar on. [He goes out quickly, followed by TELEGIN.] SONIA. Uncle Vanya, you and the doctor have been drinking! The good fellows have been getting together! It is all very well for him, he has always done it, but why do you follow his example? It looks dreadfully at your age. VOITSKI. Age has nothing to do with it. When real life is wanting one must create an illusion. It is better than nothing. SONIA. Our hay is all cut and rotting in these daily rains, and here you are busy creating illusions! You have given up the farm altogether. I have done all the work alone until I am at the end of my strength--[Frightened] Uncle! Your eyes are full of tears! VOITSKI. Tears? Nonsense, there are no tears in my eyes. You looked at me then just as your dead mother used to, my darling--[He eagerly kisses her face and hands] My sister, my dearest sister, where are you now? Ah, if you only knew, if you only knew! SONIA. If she only knew what, Uncle? VOITSKI. My heart is bursting. It is awful. No matter, though. I must go. [He goes out.] SONIA. [Knocks at the door] Dr. Astroff! Are you awake? Please come here for a minute. ASTROFF. [Behind the door] In a moment. He appears in a few seconds. He has put on his collar and waistcoat. ASTROFF. What do you want? SONIA. Drink as much as you please yourself if you don't find it revolting, but I implore you not to let my uncle do it. It is bad for him. ASTROFF. Very well; we won't drink any more. I am going home at once. That is settled. It will be dawn by the time the horses are harnessed. SONIA. It is still raining; wait till morning. ASTROFF. The storm is blowing over. This is only the edge of it. I must go. And please don't ask me to come and see your father any more. I tell him he has gout, and he says it is rheumatism. I tell him to lie down, and he sits up. To-day he refused to see me at all. SONIA. He has been spoilt. [She looks in the sideboard] Won't you have a bite to eat? ASTROFF. Yes, please. I believe I will. SONIA. I love to eat at night. I am sure we shall find something in here. They say that he has made a great many conquests in his life, and that the women have spoiled him. Here is some cheese for you. [They stand eating by the sideboard.] ASTROFF. I haven't eaten anything to-day. Your father has a very difficult nature. [He takes a bottle out of the sideboard] May I? [He pours himself a glass of vodka] We are alone here, and I can speak frankly. Do you know, I could not stand living in this house for even a month? This atmosphere would stifle me. There is your father, entirely absorbed in his books, and his gout; there is your Uncle Vanya with his hypochondria, your grandmother, and finally, your step-mother-- SONIA. What about her? ASTROFF. A human being should be entirely beautiful: the face, the clothes, the mind, the thoughts. Your step-mother is, of course, beautiful to look at, but don't you see? She does nothing but sleep and eat and walk and bewitch us, and that is all. She has no responsibilities, everything is done for her--am I not right? And an idle life can never be a pure one. [A pause] However, I may be judging her too severely. Like your Uncle Vanya, I am discontented, and so we are both grumblers. SONIA. Aren't you satisfied with life? ASTROFF. I like life as life, but I hate and despise it in a little Russian country village, and as far as my own personal life goes, by heaven! there is absolutely no redeeming feature about it. Haven't you noticed if you are riding through a dark wood at night and see a little light shining ahead, how you forget your fatigue and the darkness and the sharp twigs that whip your face? I work, that you know--as no one else in the country works. Fate beats me on without rest; at times I suffer unendurably and I see no light ahead. I have no hope; I do not like people. It is long since I have loved any one. SONIA. You love no one? ASTROFF. Not a soul. I only feel a sort of tenderness for your old nurse for old-times' sake. The peasants are all alike; they are stupid and live in dirt, and the educated people are hard to get along with. One gets tired of them. All our good friends are petty and shallow and see no farther than their own noses; in one word, they are dull. Those that have brains are hysterical, devoured with a mania for self-analysis. They whine, they hate, they pick faults everywhere with unhealthy sharpness. They sneak up to me sideways, look at me out of a corner of the eye, and say: "That man is a lunatic," "That man is a wind-bag." Or, if they don't know what else to label me with, they say I am strange. I like the woods; that is strange. I don't eat meat; that is strange, too. Simple, natural relations between man and man or man and nature do not exist. [He tries to go out; SONIA prevents him.] SONIA. I beg you, I implore you, not to drink any more! ASTROFF. Why not? SONIA. It is so unworthy of you. You are well-bred, your voice is sweet, you are even--more than any one I know--handsome. Why do you want to resemble the common people that drink and play cards? Oh, don't, I beg you! You always say that people do not create anything, but only destroy what heaven has given them. Why, oh, why, do you destroy yourself? Oh, don't, I implore you not to! I entreat you! ASTROFF. [Gives her his hand] I won't drink any more. SONIA. Promise me. ASTROFF. I give you my word of honour. SONIA. [Squeezing his hand] Thank you. ASTROFF. I have done with it. You see, I am perfectly sober again, and so I shall stay till the end of my life. [He looks his watch] But, as I was saying, life holds nothing for me; my race is run. I am old, I am tired, I am trivial; my sensibilities are dead. I could never attach myself to any one again. I love no one, and never shall! Beauty alone has the power to touch me still. I am deeply moved by it. Helena could turn my head in a day if she wanted to, but that is not love, that is not affection-- [He shudders and covers his face with his hands.] SONIA. What is it? ASTROFF. Nothing. During Lent one of my patients died under chloroform. SONIA. It is time to forget that. [A pause] Tell me, doctor, if I had a friend or a younger sister, and if you knew that she, well--loved you, what would you do? ASTROFF. [Shrugging his shoulders] I don't know. I don't think I should do anything. I should make her understand that I could not return her love--however, my mind is not bothered about those things now. I must start at once if I am ever to get off. Good-bye, my dear girl. At this rate we shall stand here talking till morning. [He shakes hands with her] I shall go out through the sitting-room, because I am afraid your uncle might detain me. [He goes out.] SONIA. [Alone] Not a word! His heart and soul are still locked from me, and yet for some reason I am strangely happy. I wonder why? [She laughs with pleasure] I told him that he was well-bred and handsome and that his voice was sweet. Was that a mistake? I can still feel his voice vibrating in the air; it caresses me. [Wringing her hands] Oh! how terrible it is to be plain! I am plain, I know it. As I came out of church last Sunday I overheard a woman say, "She is a dear, noble girl, but what a pity she is so ugly!" So ugly! HELENA comes in and throws open the window. HELENA. The storm is over. What delicious air! [A pause] Where is the doctor? SONIA. He has gone. [A pause.] HELENA. Sonia! SONIA. Yes? HELENA. How much longer are you going to sulk at me? We have not hurt each other. Why not be friends? We have had enough of this. SONIA. I myself--[She embraces HELENA] Let us make peace. HELENA. With all my heart. [They are both moved.] SONIA. Has papa gone to bed? HELENA. No, he is sitting up in the drawing-room. Heaven knows what reason you and I had for not speaking to each other for weeks. [Sees the open sideboard] Who left the sideboard open? SONIA. Dr. Astroff has just had supper. HELENA. There is some wine. Let us seal our friendship. SONIA. Yes, let us. HELENA. Out of one glass. [She fills a wine-glass] So, we are friends, are we? SONIA. Yes. [They drink and kiss each other] I have long wanted to make friends, but somehow, I was ashamed to. [She weeps.] HELENA. Why are you crying? SONIA. I don't know. It is nothing. HELENA. There, there, don't cry. [She weeps] Silly! Now I am crying too. [A pause] You are angry with me because I seem to have married your father for his money, but don't believe the gossip you hear. I swear to you I married him for love. I was fascinated by his fame and learning. I know now that it was not real love, but it seemed real at the time. I am innocent, and yet your clever, suspicious eyes have been punishing me for an imaginary crime ever since my marriage. SONIA. Peace, peace! Let us forget the past. HELENA. You must not look so at people. It is not becoming to you. You must trust people, or life becomes impossible. SONIA. Tell me truly, as a friend, are you happy? HELENA. Truly, no. SONIA. I knew it. One more question: do you wish your husband were young? HELENA. What a child you are! Of course I do. Go on, ask something else. SONIA. Do you like the doctor? HELENA. Yes, very much indeed. SONIA. [Laughing] I have a stupid face, haven't I? He has just gone out, and his voice is still in my ears; I hear his step; I see his face in the dark window. Let me say all I have in my heart! But no, I cannot speak of it so loudly. I am ashamed. Come to my room and let me tell you there. I seem foolish to you, don't I? Talk to me of him. HELENA. What can I say? SONIA. He is clever. He can do everything. He can cure the sick, and plant woods. HELENA. It is not a question of medicine and woods, my dear, he is a man of genius. Do you know what that means? It means he is brave, profound, and of clear insight. He plants a tree and his mind travels a thousand years into the future, and he sees visions of the happiness of the human race. People like him are rare and should be loved. What if he does drink and act roughly at times? A man of genius cannot be a saint in Russia. There he lives, cut off from the world by cold and storm and endless roads of bottomless mud, surrounded by a rough people who are crushed by poverty and disease, his life one continuous struggle, with never a day's respite; how can a man live like that for forty years and keep himself sober and unspotted? [Kissing SONIA] I wish you happiness with all my heart; you deserve it. [She gets up] As for me, I am a worthless, futile woman. I have always been futile; in music, in love, in my husband's house--in a word, in everything. When you come to think of it, Sonia, I am really very, very unhappy. [Walks excitedly up and down] Happiness can never exist for me in this world. Never. Why do you laugh? SONIA. [Laughing and covering her face with her hands] I am so happy, so happy! HELENA. I want to hear music. I might play a little. SONIA. Oh, do, do! [She embraces her] I could not possibly go to sleep now. Do play! HELENA. Yes, I will. Your father is still awake. Music irritates him when he is ill, but if he says I may, then I shall play a little. Go, Sonia, and ask him. SONIA. Very well. [She goes out. The WATCHMAN'S rattle is heard in the garden.] HELENA. It is long since I have heard music. And now, I shall sit and play, and weep like a fool. [Speaking out of the window] Is that you rattling out there, Ephim? VOICE OF THE WATCHMAN. It is I. HELENA. Don't make such a noise. Your master is ill. VOICE OF THE WATCHMAN. I am going away this minute. [Whistles a tune.] SONIA. [Comes back] He says, no. The curtain falls.

Act II

https://web.archive.org/web/20180409044821/http://www.gradesaver.com/uncle-vanya/study-guide/summary-act-ii

Serebryakov and Helen doze in the dining room that evening. Serebryakov wakes with a start and grumbles that he feels excruciating pain in his left leg; he thinks that it's probably rheumatism, not gout. He laments the repulsiveness of old age and how no one can stand the sight of him. Helen sighs that his old age is not their fault. He responds bitterly that she is a young and beautiful woman and he is an old man; he says that he clearly understands that she is just waiting for him to free her by dying. Helen responds that she feels faint and asks him to stop talking, which he finds amusing since he is the old one. Helen tears up and asks what he wants from her, and he responds that he does not want anything. He adds that if it were Vanya Voynitsky or his mother talking everyone would listen, but people think that he is boring and disgusting. Helen gets up and shuts the window because it looks like there will be rain. Serebryakov continues to complain about giving his life to scholarship only to end up exiled here, "watching others succeed and going in fear of death" . Helen simply says that in a few years she will be old too. Sonya enters, chiding her father for not seeing Astrov. Serebryakov is unrepentant and calls the doctor a crackpot. Sonya sits down. She explains that she does not like him acting like a child and treating her poorly. Vanya enters and comments on the storm. He announces that he is here to relieve the women, and Serebryakov bursts out that he does not want to be left alone with Vanya because the man will talk his head off. He urges Vanya to leave as well--they can talk about their past friendship another time. Vanya scoffs at this. Marina enters and Sonya tells her she ought to get some rest. The old woman lovingly helps Serebryakov up and out of bed. Sonya joins them. Helen says to Vanya that she cannot stand her husband, and Vanya agrees that the old man is wearying. He thinks that Helen and her husband have disrupted the whole house, but she advises him that he is the one who must step in and make peace. He bends to kiss her hand and bemoans his sorry, wasted life. Helen pulls her hand away. Vanya asks her angrily what she is waiting for, but she accuses him of just being drunk. She becomes annoyed and leaves. Alone, Vanya muses that he should have pursued her ten years ago when she was 17 and he was 37, but now he is too old and a fool. He should have never idolized the professor and worked to keep the estate for him; the professor once seemed like a god, but now his work is revealed for what it actually is: meaningless. Astrov enters with Telegin, the latter carrying a guitar. Astrov, a bit tipsy, tells Telegin to play. Telegin strums the instrument. Astrov meanders about, asking where the ladies are, complimenting Helen's beauty, and asking wryly if Vanya loves her. When Vanya says that she is a friend, Astrov laughs that a woman can only be a man's friend once she passes through the roles of acquaintance and mistress. When Vanya disagrees, Astrov laughs about his own bumptiousness and impudence and how he feels in this moment that he can actually do something and change things for the better. When Sonya enters, Astrov and Telegin leave to get more to drink. Sonya chastises her uncle for drinking so much and focusing more on illusions than actual work. She sees the tears in his eyes, though, and becomes concerned when he starts to lament the loss of his dear sister. He departs sadly. Sonya goes to Astrov and tells him to stop encouraging her uncle to drink. Astrov agrees, and then says he is getting ready to depart tomorrow once the rain is gone. Sonya asks if he wants something to eat, and he admits he does. Astrov complains about the difficulty of being in this house with these people, and that even the beautiful Helen is vexing because she has no responsibilities and is too idle. Sonya asks if he is satisfied with life; he responds that he generally is, but that provincial and parochial Russian life is stultifying and his private life is dull. Sonya wonders if he cares for anyone and he states that he does not, for the peasants are all the same and all these friends of theirs are stupid and petty even though they are educated. He reaches for a drink, and Sonya softly asks him not to. He gives her his word that he will not: he will remain sober until the end of his days. Astrov tells Sonya that he does not think he could grow fond of anyone anymore, but even as he starts to think about Helen he shudders, remembering a patient who died under chloroform. Sonya haltingly asks him how he would respond if she had a friend or younger sister who loved him. He shrugs and says he'd make it clear he couldn't love her; then he bids Sonya goodbye and leaves. Alone, Sonya feels a thrill of happiness even though she does not know his true feelings. She is upset that she is not beautiful, but she still has hope. Helen enters and opens the windows to let the fresh air in. She asks Sonya if they can be friends, not enemies, and Sonya happily complies. They embrace. Sonya cries a bit, and Helen is moved to do so as well. She explains to Sonya that she did marry Serebryakov for love and because he was an attractive and public figure, but that clearly it was not real love. She apologizes to Sonya, but Sonya just asks if Helen wishes she were married to someone younger. Helen laughs and says of course. She then asks Sonya about the doctor, and when Sonya confesses, Helen compliments the doctor's vision and brilliance. She wises Sonya happiness and says sadly that, as for herself, she is inconsequential and unhappy. Sonya is happy now and tears up with joy. She asks Helen to play something on the piano and Helen is excited to do so; Sonya runs out to ask her father if this can happen, and he reports back that he said no.

In Act II, Chekhov provides a window into Serebryakov and Helen's stultifying marriage and how each of their particular issues makes them feel alone within that union. Serebryakov is old and unwell--but, as he rejects the doctor's attention, he is partially blameworthy for the latter. He knows the others dislike him and comments, "I've only to open my mouth and everyone starts feeling miserable. Even my voice disgusts you. All right, I'm disgusting, I'm selfish, I'm a tyrant" . He also knows that he is old and " every moment regretting past" . Helen offers no solace because she doesn't love him, and her youth and beauty continually remind him of what he does not possess. On the other hand, he claims "I'm the only person who's happy and enjoys life" ; he also lives in a bubble of sorts that precludes him from understanding the suffering of others . As for Helen, it is certainly possible to feel sympathy for her. She confides in Sonya that she did marry Serebryakov for love but that it was not real love and now she is deeply unhappy. As a woman, she has no real place except the home, and she is valued primarily for her looks, not her intellect. She seeks human connection but rarely achieves it. The only thing that brings any light to her eyes is music, but when she asks Soya to ask Serebryakov if it is okay for her to play the piano, Serebryakov says no. She wants to believe in art again, but her marriage makes this impossible. Critic Jane Anderson writes of this moment, " are offered the possibility of art, but this opportunity is repeatedly devalued." Ultimately, though, Helen indulges in her boredom, desire for flattery and attention, and complaining. She quickly becomes flustered and dismissive, and puts her own needs above everyone else's. It is no wonder that she has no interest in Astrov's maps depicting the loss of forests and the concomitant deleterious effects on the Russian people: she does not see beyond herself. Chekov makes Astrov the most nuanced character, especially in this act. First, he vacillates between hope and despair, and between the problems of the short-term and the hope of the long-term. He delights in planting a tree, obsesses over losing a patient, complains about peasants and educated people alike, and commits himself to his profession even though it often wears him down. He does not seem to believe in an afterlife but he "continues to behave in a manner that takes into account future generations" and "retains his faith in the idea of creating a better future for humanity," as critic Geoffrey Borny writes. When Astrov speaks about forestry in Act I and Act III, he does so in a passionate, irony-free manner. He is often honest when other characters constantly lie to themselves and others. He mocks Vanya but also tries to comfort him. He is gentle with Marina and kind to Sonya, especially after he finds out she has feelings for him. His behavior towards Helen is a bit more problematic, but we will discuss that in the next analysis. In this second act, Chekhov reaffirms that his play is essentially about nothing--or, rather, lots of little nothings. There are big emotions here, but they are cloaked in trivialities and self-obsession. Critic Ronald Hingley notes that it is easier to say what Chekhov's plays are not about than what they are about. While Chekhov's drama has a notably new depiction of mankind, "to him--or so he appears to imply--human affairs were flatter, duller, less eventful, less heroic than they were to earlier playwrights." Uncle Vanya is not a grand tragedy or a harmonious comedy because "human existence is more pointless, more frustrating, less heroic, less satisfying than members of his audience may privately conceive." However, the plays were phenomenally popular with turn-of-the-century theatergoers because they delighted in the "real" world onstage and the recognizable dynamics between characters.

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/32.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Brothers Karamazov/section_5_part_2.txt

The Brothers Karamazov.book 5.chapter 1

book 5, chapter 1

{"name": "book 5, Chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section6/", "summary": "A Betrothal Back at Madame Khokhlakov's house, Alyosha discovers that Katerina has come down with a fever, apparently due to her intense humiliation over Dmitri's decision to leave her. Alyosha talks with Lise and tells her about his failure to convince the captain to take Katerina's money. Deeply moved by Alyosha's gentle wisdom, Lise suddenly admits that her love letter was sincere. Alyosha also loves Lise, and the two young people begin to plan their marriage. Alyosha also confesses that he deceived Lise about the letter. He refused to give it back to her, not because he did not have it with him, as he claimed, but because it was too important to him to give up. As Alyosha leaves, Madame Khokhlakov stops him. She has listened in on his conversation with Lise, and says that she is bitterly unhappy at the thought of his marriage to Lise. Madame Khokhlakov implies that Lise has been increasingly unreliable and difficult lately. When the daughter marries, she says, the mother has nothing to look forward to but death. Alyosha tries to calm her by telling her that the marriage will not take place for at least another year and a half, but when she presses him to show her Lise's letter, he refuses outright", "analysis": ""}

Book V. Pro And Contra Chapter I. The Engagement Madame Hohlakov was again the first to meet Alyosha. She was flustered; something important had happened. Katerina Ivanovna's hysterics had ended in a fainting fit, and then "a terrible, awful weakness had followed, she lay with her eyes turned up and was delirious. Now she was in a fever. They had sent for Herzenstube; they had sent for the aunts. The aunts were already here, but Herzenstube had not yet come. They were all sitting in her room, waiting. She was unconscious now, and what if it turned to brain fever!" Madame Hohlakov looked gravely alarmed. "This is serious, serious," she added at every word, as though nothing that had happened to her before had been serious. Alyosha listened with distress, and was beginning to describe his adventures, but she interrupted him at the first words. She had not time to listen. She begged him to sit with Lise and wait for her there. "Lise," she whispered almost in his ear, "Lise has greatly surprised me just now, dear Alexey Fyodorovitch. She touched me, too, and so my heart forgives her everything. Only fancy, as soon as you had gone, she began to be truly remorseful for having laughed at you to-day and yesterday, though she was not laughing at you, but only joking. But she was seriously sorry for it, almost ready to cry, so that I was quite surprised. She has never been really sorry for laughing at me, but has only made a joke of it. And you know she is laughing at me every minute. But this time she was in earnest. She thinks a great deal of your opinion, Alexey Fyodorovitch, and don't take offense or be wounded by her if you can help it. I am never hard upon her, for she's such a clever little thing. Would you believe it? She said just now that you were a friend of her childhood, 'the greatest friend of her childhood'--just think of that--'greatest friend'--and what about me? She has very strong feelings and memories, and, what's more, she uses these phrases, most unexpected words, which come out all of a sudden when you least expect them. She spoke lately about a pine-tree, for instance: there used to be a pine-tree standing in our garden in her early childhood. Very likely it's standing there still; so there's no need to speak in the past tense. Pine-trees are not like people, Alexey Fyodorovitch, they don't change quickly. 'Mamma,' she said, 'I remember this pine-tree as in a dream,' only she said something so original about it that I can't repeat it. Besides, I've forgotten it. Well, good-by! I am so worried I feel I shall go out of my mind. Ah! Alexey Fyodorovitch, I've been out of my mind twice in my life. Go to Lise, cheer her up, as you always can so charmingly. Lise," she cried, going to her door, "here I've brought you Alexey Fyodorovitch, whom you insulted so. He is not at all angry, I assure you; on the contrary, he is surprised that you could suppose so." "_Merci, maman._ Come in, Alexey Fyodorovitch." Alyosha went in. Lise looked rather embarrassed, and at once flushed crimson. She was evidently ashamed of something, and, as people always do in such cases, she began immediately talking of other things, as though they were of absorbing interest to her at the moment. "Mamma has just told me all about the two hundred roubles, Alexey Fyodorovitch, and your taking them to that poor officer ... and she told me all the awful story of how he had been insulted ... and you know, although mamma muddles things ... she always rushes from one thing to another ... I cried when I heard. Well, did you give him the money and how is that poor man getting on?" "The fact is I didn't give it to him, and it's a long story," answered Alyosha, as though he, too, could think of nothing but his regret at having failed, yet Lise saw perfectly well that he, too, looked away, and that he, too, was trying to talk of other things. Alyosha sat down to the table and began to tell his story, but at the first words he lost his embarrassment and gained the whole of Lise's attention as well. He spoke with deep feeling, under the influence of the strong impression he had just received, and he succeeded in telling his story well and circumstantially. In old days in Moscow he had been fond of coming to Lise and describing to her what had just happened to him, what he had read, or what he remembered of his childhood. Sometimes they had made day-dreams and woven whole romances together--generally cheerful and amusing ones. Now they both felt suddenly transported to the old days in Moscow, two years before. Lise was extremely touched by his story. Alyosha described Ilusha with warm feeling. When he finished describing how the luckless man trampled on the money, Lise could not help clasping her hands and crying out: "So you didn't give him the money! So you let him run away! Oh, dear, you ought to have run after him!" "No, Lise; it's better I didn't run after him," said Alyosha, getting up from his chair and walking thoughtfully across the room. "How so? How is it better? Now they are without food and their case is hopeless?" "Not hopeless, for the two hundred roubles will still come to them. He'll take the money to-morrow. To-morrow he will be sure to take it," said Alyosha, pacing up and down, pondering. "You see, Lise," he went on, stopping suddenly before her, "I made one blunder, but that, even that, is all for the best." "What blunder, and why is it for the best?" "I'll tell you. He is a man of weak and timorous character; he has suffered so much and is very good-natured. I keep wondering why he took offense so suddenly, for I assure you, up to the last minute, he did not know that he was going to trample on the notes. And I think now that there was a great deal to offend him ... and it could not have been otherwise in his position.... To begin with, he was sore at having been so glad of the money in my presence and not having concealed it from me. If he had been pleased, but not so much; if he had not shown it; if he had begun affecting scruples and difficulties, as other people do when they take money, he might still endure to take it. But he was too genuinely delighted, and that was mortifying. Ah, Lise, he is a good and truthful man--that's the worst of the whole business. All the while he talked, his voice was so weak, so broken, he talked so fast, so fast, he kept laughing such a laugh, or perhaps he was crying--yes, I am sure he was crying, he was so delighted--and he talked about his daughters--and about the situation he could get in another town.... And when he had poured out his heart, he felt ashamed at having shown me his inmost soul like that. So he began to hate me at once. He is one of those awfully sensitive poor people. What had made him feel most ashamed was that he had given in too soon and accepted me as a friend, you see. At first he almost flew at me and tried to intimidate me, but as soon as he saw the money he had begun embracing me; he kept touching me with his hands. This must have been how he came to feel it all so humiliating, and then I made that blunder, a very important one. I suddenly said to him that if he had not money enough to move to another town, we would give it to him, and, indeed, I myself would give him as much as he wanted out of my own money. That struck him all at once. Why, he thought, did I put myself forward to help him? You know, Lise, it's awfully hard for a man who has been injured, when other people look at him as though they were his benefactors.... I've heard that; Father Zossima told me so. I don't know how to put it, but I have often seen it myself. And I feel like that myself, too. And the worst of it was that though he did not know, up to the very last minute, that he would trample on the notes, he had a kind of presentiment of it, I am sure of that. That's just what made him so ecstatic, that he had that presentiment.... And though it's so dreadful, it's all for the best. In fact, I believe nothing better could have happened." "Why, why could nothing better have happened?" cried Lise, looking with great surprise at Alyosha. "Because if he had taken the money, in an hour after getting home, he would be crying with mortification, that's just what would have happened. And most likely he would have come to me early to-morrow, and perhaps have flung the notes at me and trampled upon them as he did just now. But now he has gone home awfully proud and triumphant, though he knows he has 'ruined himself.' So now nothing could be easier than to make him accept the two hundred roubles by to-morrow, for he has already vindicated his honor, tossed away the money, and trampled it under foot.... He couldn't know when he did it that I should bring it to him again to-morrow, and yet he is in terrible need of that money. Though he is proud of himself now, yet even to-day he'll be thinking what a help he has lost. He will think of it more than ever at night, will dream of it, and by to-morrow morning he may be ready to run to me to ask forgiveness. It's just then that I'll appear. 'Here, you are a proud man,' I shall say: 'you have shown it; but now take the money and forgive us!' And then he will take it!" Alyosha was carried away with joy as he uttered his last words, "And then he will take it!" Lise clapped her hands. "Ah, that's true! I understand that perfectly now. Ah, Alyosha, how do you know all this? So young and yet he knows what's in the heart.... I should never have worked it out." "The great thing now is to persuade him that he is on an equal footing with us, in spite of his taking money from us," Alyosha went on in his excitement, "and not only on an equal, but even on a higher footing." " 'On a higher footing' is charming, Alexey Fyodorovitch; but go on, go on!" "You mean there isn't such an expression as 'on a higher footing'; but that doesn't matter because--" "Oh, no, of course it doesn't matter. Forgive me, Alyosha, dear.... You know, I scarcely respected you till now--that is I respected you but on an equal footing; but now I shall begin to respect you on a higher footing. Don't be angry, dear, at my joking," she put in at once, with strong feeling. "I am absurd and small, but you, you! Listen, Alexey Fyodorovitch. Isn't there in all our analysis--I mean your analysis ... no, better call it ours--aren't we showing contempt for him, for that poor man--in analyzing his soul like this, as it were, from above, eh? In deciding so certainly that he will take the money?" "No, Lise, it's not contempt," Alyosha answered, as though he had prepared himself for the question. "I was thinking of that on the way here. How can it be contempt when we are all like him, when we are all just the same as he is? For you know we are just the same, no better. If we are better, we should have been just the same in his place.... I don't know about you, Lise, but I consider that I have a sordid soul in many ways, and his soul is not sordid; on the contrary, full of fine feeling.... No, Lise, I have no contempt for him. Do you know, Lise, my elder told me once to care for most people exactly as one would for children, and for some of them as one would for the sick in hospitals." "Ah, Alexey Fyodorovitch, dear, let us care for people as we would for the sick!" "Let us, Lise; I am ready. Though I am not altogether ready in myself. I am sometimes very impatient and at other times I don't see things. It's different with you." "Ah, I don't believe it! Alexey Fyodorovitch, how happy I am!" "I am so glad you say so, Lise." "Alexey Fyodorovitch, you are wonderfully good, but you are sometimes sort of formal.... And yet you are not a bit formal really. Go to the door, open it gently, and see whether mamma is listening," said Lise, in a nervous, hurried whisper. Alyosha went, opened the door, and reported that no one was listening. "Come here, Alexey Fyodorovitch," Lise went on, flushing redder and redder. "Give me your hand--that's right. I have to make a great confession, I didn't write to you yesterday in joke, but in earnest," and she hid her eyes with her hand. It was evident that she was greatly ashamed of the confession. Suddenly she snatched his hand and impulsively kissed it three times. "Ah, Lise, what a good thing!" cried Alyosha joyfully. "You know, I was perfectly sure you were in earnest." "Sure? Upon my word!" She put aside his hand, but did not leave go of it, blushing hotly, and laughing a little happy laugh. "I kiss his hand and he says, 'What a good thing!' " But her reproach was undeserved. Alyosha, too, was greatly overcome. "I should like to please you always, Lise, but I don't know how to do it," he muttered, blushing too. "Alyosha, dear, you are cold and rude. Do you see? He has chosen me as his wife and is quite settled about it. He is sure I was in earnest. What a thing to say! Why, that's impertinence--that's what it is." "Why, was it wrong of me to feel sure?" Alyosha asked, laughing suddenly. "Ah, Alyosha, on the contrary, it was delightfully right," cried Lise, looking tenderly and happily at him. Alyosha stood still, holding her hand in his. Suddenly he stooped down and kissed her on her lips. "Oh, what are you doing?" cried Lise. Alyosha was terribly abashed. "Oh, forgive me if I shouldn't.... Perhaps I'm awfully stupid.... You said I was cold, so I kissed you.... But I see it was stupid." Lise laughed, and hid her face in her hands. "And in that dress!" she ejaculated in the midst of her mirth. But she suddenly ceased laughing and became serious, almost stern. "Alyosha, we must put off kissing. We are not ready for that yet, and we shall have a long time to wait," she ended suddenly. "Tell me rather why you who are so clever, so intellectual, so observant, choose a little idiot, an invalid like me? Ah, Alyosha, I am awfully happy, for I don't deserve you a bit." "You do, Lise. I shall be leaving the monastery altogether in a few days. If I go into the world, I must marry. I know that. _He_ told me to marry, too. Whom could I marry better than you--and who would have me except you? I have been thinking it over. In the first place, you've known me from a child and you've a great many qualities I haven't. You are more light- hearted than I am; above all, you are more innocent than I am. I have been brought into contact with many, many things already.... Ah, you don't know, but I, too, am a Karamazov. What does it matter if you do laugh and make jokes, and at me, too? Go on laughing. I am so glad you do. You laugh like a little child, but you think like a martyr." "Like a martyr? How?" "Yes, Lise, your question just now: whether we weren't showing contempt for that poor man by dissecting his soul--that was the question of a sufferer.... You see, I don't know how to express it, but any one who thinks of such questions is capable of suffering. Sitting in your invalid chair you must have thought over many things already." "Alyosha, give me your hand. Why are you taking it away?" murmured Lise in a failing voice, weak with happiness. "Listen, Alyosha. What will you wear when you come out of the monastery? What sort of suit? Don't laugh, don't be angry, it's very, very important to me." "I haven't thought about the suit, Lise; but I'll wear whatever you like." "I should like you to have a dark blue velvet coat, a white pique waistcoat, and a soft gray felt hat.... Tell me, did you believe that I didn't care for you when I said I didn't mean what I wrote?" "No, I didn't believe it." "Oh, you insupportable person, you are incorrigible." "You see, I knew that you--seemed to care for me, but I pretended to believe that you didn't care for me to make it--easier for you." "That makes it worse! Worse and better than all! Alyosha, I am awfully fond of you. Just before you came this morning, I tried my fortune. I decided I would ask you for my letter, and if you brought it out calmly and gave it to me (as might have been expected from you) it would mean that you did not love me at all, that you felt nothing, and were simply a stupid boy, good for nothing, and that I am ruined. But you left the letter at home and that cheered me. You left it behind on purpose, so as not to give it back, because you knew I would ask for it? That was it, wasn't it?" "Ah, Lise, it was not so a bit. The letter is with me now, and it was this morning, in this pocket. Here it is." Alyosha pulled the letter out laughing, and showed it her at a distance. "But I am not going to give it to you. Look at it from here." "Why, then you told a lie? You, a monk, told a lie!" "I told a lie if you like," Alyosha laughed, too. "I told a lie so as not to give you back the letter. It's very precious to me," he added suddenly, with strong feeling, and again he flushed. "It always will be, and I won't give it up to any one!" Lise looked at him joyfully. "Alyosha," she murmured again, "look at the door. Isn't mamma listening?" "Very well, Lise, I'll look; but wouldn't it be better not to look? Why suspect your mother of such meanness?" "What meanness? As for her spying on her daughter, it's her right, it's not meanness!" cried Lise, firing up. "You may be sure, Alexey Fyodorovitch, that when I am a mother, if I have a daughter like myself I shall certainly spy on her!" "Really, Lise? That's not right." "Oh, my goodness! What has meanness to do with it? If she were listening to some ordinary worldly conversation, it would be meanness, but when her own daughter is shut up with a young man.... Listen, Alyosha, do you know I shall spy upon you as soon as we are married, and let me tell you I shall open all your letters and read them, so you may as well be prepared." "Yes, of course, if so--" muttered Alyosha, "only it's not right." "Ah, how contemptuous! Alyosha, dear, we won't quarrel the very first day. I'd better tell you the whole truth. Of course, it's very wrong to spy on people, and, of course, I am not right and you are, only I shall spy on you all the same." "Do, then; you won't find out anything," laughed Alyosha. "And, Alyosha, will you give in to me? We must decide that too." "I shall be delighted to, Lise, and certain to, only not in the most important things. Even if you don't agree with me, I shall do my duty in the most important things." "That's right; but let me tell you I am ready to give in to you not only in the most important matters, but in everything. And I am ready to vow to do so now--in everything, and for all my life!" cried Lise fervently, "and I'll do it gladly, gladly! What's more, I'll swear never to spy on you, never once, never to read one of your letters. For you are right and I am not. And though I shall be awfully tempted to spy, I know that I won't do it since you consider it dishonorable. You are my conscience now.... Listen, Alexey Fyodorovitch, why have you been so sad lately--both yesterday and to-day? I know you have a lot of anxiety and trouble, but I see you have some special grief besides, some secret one, perhaps?" "Yes, Lise, I have a secret one, too," answered Alyosha mournfully. "I see you love me, since you guessed that." "What grief? What about? Can you tell me?" asked Lise with timid entreaty. "I'll tell you later, Lise--afterwards," said Alyosha, confused. "Now you wouldn't understand it perhaps--and perhaps I couldn't explain it." "I know your brothers and your father are worrying you, too." "Yes, my brothers too," murmured Alyosha, pondering. "I don't like your brother Ivan, Alyosha," said Lise suddenly. He noticed this remark with some surprise, but did not answer it. "My brothers are destroying themselves," he went on, "my father, too. And they are destroying others with them. It's 'the primitive force of the Karamazovs,' as Father Paissy said the other day, a crude, unbridled, earthly force. Does the spirit of God move above that force? Even that I don't know. I only know that I, too, am a Karamazov.... Me a monk, a monk! Am I a monk, Lise? You said just now that I was." "Yes, I did." "And perhaps I don't even believe in God." "You don't believe? What is the matter?" said Lise quietly and gently. But Alyosha did not answer. There was something too mysterious, too subjective in these last words of his, perhaps obscure to himself, but yet torturing him. "And now on the top of it all, my friend, the best man in the world, is going, is leaving the earth! If you knew, Lise, how bound up in soul I am with him! And then I shall be left alone.... I shall come to you, Lise.... For the future we will be together." "Yes, together, together! Henceforward we shall be always together, all our lives! Listen, kiss me, I allow you." Alyosha kissed her. "Come, now go. Christ be with you!" and she made the sign of the cross over him. "Make haste back to _him_ while he is alive. I see I've kept you cruelly. I'll pray to-day for him and you. Alyosha, we shall be happy! Shall we be happy, shall we?" "I believe we shall, Lise." Alyosha thought it better not to go in to Madame Hohlakov and was going out of the house without saying good-by to her. But no sooner had he opened the door than he found Madame Hohlakov standing before him. From the first word Alyosha guessed that she had been waiting on purpose to meet him. "Alexey Fyodorovitch, this is awful. This is all childish nonsense and ridiculous. I trust you won't dream--It's foolishness, nothing but foolishness!" she said, attacking him at once. "Only don't tell her that," said Alyosha, "or she will be upset, and that's bad for her now." "Sensible advice from a sensible young man. Am I to understand that you only agreed with her from compassion for her invalid state, because you didn't want to irritate her by contradiction?" "Oh, no, not at all. I was quite serious in what I said," Alyosha declared stoutly. "To be serious about it is impossible, unthinkable, and in the first place I shall never be at home to you again, and I shall take her away, you may be sure of that." "But why?" asked Alyosha. "It's all so far off. We may have to wait another year and a half." "Ah, Alexey Fyodorovitch, that's true, of course, and you'll have time to quarrel and separate a thousand times in a year and a half. But I am so unhappy! Though it's such nonsense, it's a great blow to me. I feel like Famusov in the last scene of _Sorrow from Wit_. You are Tchatsky and she is Sofya, and, only fancy, I've run down to meet you on the stairs, and in the play the fatal scene takes place on the staircase. I heard it all; I almost dropped. So this is the explanation of her dreadful night and her hysterics of late! It means love to the daughter but death to the mother. I might as well be in my grave at once. And a more serious matter still, what is this letter she has written? Show it me at once, at once!" "No, there's no need. Tell me, how is Katerina Ivanovna now? I must know." "She still lies in delirium; she has not regained consciousness. Her aunts are here; but they do nothing but sigh and give themselves airs. Herzenstube came, and he was so alarmed that I didn't know what to do for him. I nearly sent for a doctor to look after him. He was driven home in my carriage. And on the top of it all, you and this letter! It's true nothing can happen for a year and a half. In the name of all that's holy, in the name of your dying elder, show me that letter, Alexey Fyodorovitch. I'm her mother. Hold it in your hand, if you like, and I will read it so." "No, I won't show it to you. Even if she sanctioned it, I wouldn't. I am coming to-morrow, and if you like, we can talk over many things, but now good-by!" And Alyosha ran downstairs and into the street.

book 5, Chapter 1

https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section6/

A Betrothal Back at Madame Khokhlakov's house, Alyosha discovers that Katerina has come down with a fever, apparently due to her intense humiliation over Dmitri's decision to leave her. Alyosha talks with Lise and tells her about his failure to convince the captain to take Katerina's money. Deeply moved by Alyosha's gentle wisdom, Lise suddenly admits that her love letter was sincere. Alyosha also loves Lise, and the two young people begin to plan their marriage. Alyosha also confesses that he deceived Lise about the letter. He refused to give it back to her, not because he did not have it with him, as he claimed, but because it was too important to him to give up. As Alyosha leaves, Madame Khokhlakov stops him. She has listened in on his conversation with Lise, and says that she is bitterly unhappy at the thought of his marriage to Lise. Madame Khokhlakov implies that Lise has been increasingly unreliable and difficult lately. When the daughter marries, she says, the mother has nothing to look forward to but death. Alyosha tries to calm her by telling her that the marriage will not take place for at least another year and a half, but when she presses him to show her Lise's letter, he refuses outright

pinkmonkey

all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/10.txt

finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Sense and Sensibility/section_9_part_0.txt

Sense and Sensibility.chapter 10

chapter 10

{"name": "Chapter 10", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820034609/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmSenseSensibility24.asp", "summary": "This chapter gives an extended character sketch of Mrs. Jennings. Wealthy and contented, she is anxious to see young men and women settled in life. Thus, when she spots Colonel Brandon admiring Marianne as she is playing the piano, she immediately pairs them up as a suitable couple. She voices her thoughts aloud to both Brandon and Marianne. While the Colonel ignores her remarks, Marianne expresses shock at the suggestion. She rejects the Colonel on the basis of his age and his reserved temperament. Elinor, though, does not agree with her sister.", "analysis": "Notes Mrs. Jennings is a typical matron: she delights in making matches between eligible men and women. She is happy to gain the acquaintance of the Dashwood girls. When she observes the Colonel admiring Marianne's talent, she concludes that Brandon is in love with the girl. She amuses herself by teasing both Marianne and the Colonel. Austen once again points out the difference in the attitudes of the two sisters. Elinor, with her better judgment, is able to assess the merits of Brandon and finds him an eligible bachelor. Marianne, fed on romantic literature, does not find the Colonel exciting enough to capture her heart. She discards the idea of him as a match for herself because he is twice her age and does not display vigor and enthusiasm. CHAPTER 9 Summary The Dashwoods settle down to a life of peace and contentment. They keep themselves occupied, and John Middleton visits them frequently. One morning, while Mrs. Dashwood and Elinor are engaged in the household duties, Marianne and Margaret venture out to explore the countryside. They get carried away by the beauty of the natural surroundings and start climbing up a hill, despite the rough weather. Suddenly it starts raining, and they head towards home. Marianne misses her step, twists her ankle and falls down. A gentleman riding by takes pity on her and carries her to her house. He introduces himself as Willoughby, from Allenham. He impresses everyone with his appearance and charming manners, and Marianne is smitten. Later in the day, when John Middleton pays them a visit, the family floods him with questions about Willoughby. Sir John talks favorably of the dashing young man. Notes The theme of love is developed. Jane Austen convincingly constructs a situation in which Marianne gets to meet the 'hero' of her dreams. Elinor has already met a good man; it is time for Marianne to find her partner. Marianne's accident, and her rescue by a knight in shining armor, resembles a scene from a fairy tale or romantic fiction. Marianne is overpowered by the striking appearance and charming manners of Willoughby. He is everything Marianne has wanted in a man: he is handsome, dashing and chivalrous. The chapter thus introduces another main character. Willoughby is a man with charm and vitality; he easily impresses beautiful girls like Marianne. His imposing presence is in direct contrast to the subdued character of the Colonel. John Middleton feels sorry for the Colonel and hopes that Marianne will realize his worth. CHAPTER 10 Summary Chapter 10 highlights the character of Willoughby and places him in further contrast to Colonel Brandon. Willoughby slowly but surely captures Marianne's heart with his enchanting ways. He also wins the approval of Mrs. Dashwood. Only Elinor is restrained in her praise for him. She is able to gauge Colonel Brandon's true feelings for Marianne, and thus feels sorry for him. She also feels hurt by the manner in which both Willoughby and Marianne ridicule the Colonel. Notes Marianne finds Willoughby an ideal suitor and is happy to seek his favor. However, Elinor is able to see through his superficial conduct. She observes that he is impulsive, prejudiced and opinionated, much like her sister. He speaks before he thinks, and he thoughtlessly hurts the Colonel's feelings with his careless remarks. Austen reveals Elinor's maturity by having her analyze the characters of Willoughby and the Colonel. She understands the real worth of the Colonel and values his sentiments. She considers him to be \"a sensible man, well-bred, well-informed, of gentle address, and--an amiable heart. \" She ranks him higher as a man than Willoughby. This chapter hints at the fate of Marianne in the hands of Willoughby. Elinor, as Austen's mouthpiece, conveys her apprehension about this shallow and ostentatious man."}

Marianne's preserver, as Margaret, with more elegance than precision, styled Willoughby, called at the cottage early the next morning to make his personal enquiries. He was received by Mrs. Dashwood with more than politeness; with a kindness which Sir John's account of him and her own gratitude prompted; and every thing that passed during the visit tended to assure him of the sense, elegance, mutual affection, and domestic comfort of the family to whom accident had now introduced him. Of their personal charms he had not required a second interview to be convinced. Miss Dashwood had a delicate complexion, regular features, and a remarkably pretty figure. Marianne was still handsomer. Her form, though not so correct as her sister's, in having the advantage of height, was more striking; and her face was so lovely, that when in the common cant of praise, she was called a beautiful girl, truth was less violently outraged than usually happens. Her skin was very brown, but, from its transparency, her complexion was uncommonly brilliant; her features were all good; her smile was sweet and attractive; and in her eyes, which were very dark, there was a life, a spirit, an eagerness, which could hardily be seen without delight. From Willoughby their expression was at first held back, by the embarrassment which the remembrance of his assistance created. But when this passed away, when her spirits became collected, when she saw that to the perfect good-breeding of the gentleman, he united frankness and vivacity, and above all, when she heard him declare, that of music and dancing he was passionately fond, she gave him such a look of approbation as secured the largest share of his discourse to herself for the rest of his stay. It was only necessary to mention any favourite amusement to engage her to talk. She could not be silent when such points were introduced, and she had neither shyness nor reserve in their discussion. They speedily discovered that their enjoyment of dancing and music was mutual, and that it arose from a general conformity of judgment in all that related to either. Encouraged by this to a further examination of his opinions, she proceeded to question him on the subject of books; her favourite authors were brought forward and dwelt upon with so rapturous a delight, that any young man of five and twenty must have been insensible indeed, not to become an immediate convert to the excellence of such works, however disregarded before. Their taste was strikingly alike. The same books, the same passages were idolized by each--or if any difference appeared, any objection arose, it lasted no longer than till the force of her arguments and the brightness of her eyes could be displayed. He acquiesced in all her decisions, caught all her enthusiasm; and long before his visit concluded, they conversed with the familiarity of a long-established acquaintance. "Well, Marianne," said Elinor, as soon as he had left them, "for ONE morning I think you have done pretty well. You have already ascertained Mr. Willoughby's opinion in almost every matter of importance. You know what he thinks of Cowper and Scott; you are certain of his estimating their beauties as he ought, and you have received every assurance of his admiring Pope no more than is proper. But how is your acquaintance to be long supported, under such extraordinary despatch of every subject for discourse? You will soon have exhausted each favourite topic. Another meeting will suffice to explain his sentiments on picturesque beauty, and second marriages, and then you can have nothing farther to ask."-- "Elinor," cried Marianne, "is this fair? is this just? are my ideas so scanty? But I see what you mean. I have been too much at my ease, too happy, too frank. I have erred against every common-place notion of decorum; I have been open and sincere where I ought to have been reserved, spiritless, dull, and deceitful--had I talked only of the weather and the roads, and had I spoken only once in ten minutes, this reproach would have been spared." "My love," said her mother, "you must not be offended with Elinor--she was only in jest. I should scold her myself, if she were capable of wishing to check the delight of your conversation with our new friend."-- Marianne was softened in a moment. Willoughby, on his side, gave every proof of his pleasure in their acquaintance, which an evident wish of improving it could offer. He came to them every day. To enquire after Marianne was at first his excuse; but the encouragement of his reception, to which every day gave greater kindness, made such an excuse unnecessary before it had ceased to be possible, by Marianne's perfect recovery. She was confined for some days to the house; but never had any confinement been less irksome. Willoughby was a young man of good abilities, quick imagination, lively spirits, and open, affectionate manners. He was exactly formed to engage Marianne's heart, for with all this, he joined not only a captivating person, but a natural ardour of mind which was now roused and increased by the example of her own, and which recommended him to her affection beyond every thing else. His society became gradually her most exquisite enjoyment. They read, they talked, they sang together; his musical talents were considerable; and he read with all the sensibility and spirit which Edward had unfortunately wanted. In Mrs. Dashwood's estimation he was as faultless as in Marianne's; and Elinor saw nothing to censure in him but a propensity, in which he strongly resembled and peculiarly delighted her sister, of saying too much what he thought on every occasion, without attention to persons or circumstances. In hastily forming and giving his opinion of other people, in sacrificing general politeness to the enjoyment of undivided attention where his heart was engaged, and in slighting too easily the forms of worldly propriety, he displayed a want of caution which Elinor could not approve, in spite of all that he and Marianne could say in its support. Marianne began now to perceive that the desperation which had seized her at sixteen and a half, of ever seeing a man who could satisfy her ideas of perfection, had been rash and unjustifiable. Willoughby was all that her fancy had delineated in that unhappy hour and in every brighter period, as capable of attaching her; and his behaviour declared his wishes to be in that respect as earnest, as his abilities were strong. Her mother too, in whose mind not one speculative thought of their marriage had been raised, by his prospect of riches, was led before the end of a week to hope and expect it; and secretly to congratulate herself on having gained two such sons-in-law as Edward and Willoughby. Colonel Brandon's partiality for Marianne, which had so early been discovered by his friends, now first became perceptible to Elinor, when it ceased to be noticed by them. Their attention and wit were drawn off to his more fortunate rival; and the raillery which the other had incurred before any partiality arose, was removed when his feelings began really to call for the ridicule so justly annexed to sensibility. Elinor was obliged, though unwillingly, to believe that the sentiments which Mrs. Jennings had assigned him for her own satisfaction, were now actually excited by her sister; and that however a general resemblance of disposition between the parties might forward the affection of Mr. Willoughby, an equally striking opposition of character was no hindrance to the regard of Colonel Brandon. She saw it with concern; for what could a silent man of five and thirty hope, when opposed to a very lively one of five and twenty? and as she could not even wish him successful, she heartily wished him indifferent. She liked him--in spite of his gravity and reserve, she beheld in him an object of interest. His manners, though serious, were mild; and his reserve appeared rather the result of some oppression of spirits than of any natural gloominess of temper. Sir John had dropped hints of past injuries and disappointments, which justified her belief of his being an unfortunate man, and she regarded him with respect and compassion. Perhaps she pitied and esteemed him the more because he was slighted by Willoughby and Marianne, who, prejudiced against him for being neither lively nor young, seemed resolved to undervalue his merits. "Brandon is just the kind of man," said Willoughby one day, when they were talking of him together, "whom every body speaks well of, and nobody cares about; whom all are delighted to see, and nobody remembers to talk to." "That is exactly what I think of him," cried Marianne. "Do not boast of it, however," said Elinor, "for it is injustice in both of you. He is highly esteemed by all the family at the park, and I never see him myself without taking pains to converse with him." "That he is patronised by YOU," replied Willoughby, "is certainly in his favour; but as for the esteem of the others, it is a reproach in itself. Who would submit to the indignity of being approved by such a woman as Lady Middleton and Mrs. Jennings, that could command the indifference of any body else?" "But perhaps the abuse of such people as yourself and Marianne will make amends for the regard of Lady Middleton and her mother. If their praise is censure, your censure may be praise, for they are not more undiscerning, than you are prejudiced and unjust." "In defence of your protege you can even be saucy." "My protege, as you call him, is a sensible man; and sense will always have attractions for me. Yes, Marianne, even in a man between thirty and forty. He has seen a great deal of the world; has been abroad, has read, and has a thinking mind. I have found him capable of giving me much information on various subjects; and he has always answered my inquiries with readiness of good-breeding and good nature." "That is to say," cried Marianne contemptuously, "he has told you, that in the East Indies the climate is hot, and the mosquitoes are troublesome." "He WOULD have told me so, I doubt not, had I made any such inquiries, but they happened to be points on which I had been previously informed." "Perhaps," said Willoughby, "his observations may have extended to the existence of nabobs, gold mohrs, and palanquins." "I may venture to say that HIS observations have stretched much further than your candour. But why should you dislike him?" "I do not dislike him. I consider him, on the contrary, as a very respectable man, who has every body's good word, and nobody's notice; who, has more money than he can spend, more time than he knows how to employ, and two new coats every year." "Add to which," cried Marianne, "that he has neither genius, taste, nor spirit. That his understanding has no brilliancy, his feelings no ardour, and his voice no expression." "You decide on his imperfections so much in the mass," replied Elinor, "and so much on the strength of your own imagination, that the commendation I am able to give of him is comparatively cold and insipid. I can only pronounce him to be a sensible man, well-bred, well-informed, of gentle address, and, I believe, possessing an amiable heart." "Miss Dashwood," cried Willoughby, "you are now using me unkindly. You are endeavouring to disarm me by reason, and to convince me against my will. But it will not do. You shall find me as stubborn as you can be artful. I have three unanswerable reasons for disliking Colonel Brandon; he threatened me with rain when I wanted it to be fine; he has found fault with the hanging of my curricle, and I cannot persuade him to buy my brown mare. If it will be any satisfaction to you, however, to be told, that I believe his character to be in other respects irreproachable, I am ready to confess it. And in return for an acknowledgment, which must give me some pain, you cannot deny me the privilege of disliking him as much as ever."

Chapter 10

https://web.archive.org/web/20180820034609/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmSenseSensibility24.asp

This chapter gives an extended character sketch of Mrs. Jennings. Wealthy and contented, she is anxious to see young men and women settled in life. Thus, when she spots Colonel Brandon admiring Marianne as she is playing the piano, she immediately pairs them up as a suitable couple. She voices her thoughts aloud to both Brandon and Marianne. While the Colonel ignores her remarks, Marianne expresses shock at the suggestion. She rejects the Colonel on the basis of his age and his reserved temperament. Elinor, though, does not agree with her sister.

Notes Mrs. Jennings is a typical matron: she delights in making matches between eligible men and women. She is happy to gain the acquaintance of the Dashwood girls. When she observes the Colonel admiring Marianne's talent, she concludes that Brandon is in love with the girl. She amuses herself by teasing both Marianne and the Colonel. Austen once again points out the difference in the attitudes of the two sisters. Elinor, with her better judgment, is able to assess the merits of Brandon and finds him an eligible bachelor. Marianne, fed on romantic literature, does not find the Colonel exciting enough to capture her heart. She discards the idea of him as a match for herself because he is twice her age and does not display vigor and enthusiasm. CHAPTER 9 Summary The Dashwoods settle down to a life of peace and contentment. They keep themselves occupied, and John Middleton visits them frequently. One morning, while Mrs. Dashwood and Elinor are engaged in the household duties, Marianne and Margaret venture out to explore the countryside. They get carried away by the beauty of the natural surroundings and start climbing up a hill, despite the rough weather. Suddenly it starts raining, and they head towards home. Marianne misses her step, twists her ankle and falls down. A gentleman riding by takes pity on her and carries her to her house. He introduces himself as Willoughby, from Allenham. He impresses everyone with his appearance and charming manners, and Marianne is smitten. Later in the day, when John Middleton pays them a visit, the family floods him with questions about Willoughby. Sir John talks favorably of the dashing young man. Notes The theme of love is developed. Jane Austen convincingly constructs a situation in which Marianne gets to meet the 'hero' of her dreams. Elinor has already met a good man; it is time for Marianne to find her partner. Marianne's accident, and her rescue by a knight in shining armor, resembles a scene from a fairy tale or romantic fiction. Marianne is overpowered by the striking appearance and charming manners of Willoughby. He is everything Marianne has wanted in a man: he is handsome, dashing and chivalrous. The chapter thus introduces another main character. Willoughby is a man with charm and vitality; he easily impresses beautiful girls like Marianne. His imposing presence is in direct contrast to the subdued character of the Colonel. John Middleton feels sorry for the Colonel and hopes that Marianne will realize his worth. CHAPTER 10 Summary Chapter 10 highlights the character of Willoughby and places him in further contrast to Colonel Brandon. Willoughby slowly but surely captures Marianne's heart with his enchanting ways. He also wins the approval of Mrs. Dashwood. Only Elinor is restrained in her praise for him. She is able to gauge Colonel Brandon's true feelings for Marianne, and thus feels sorry for him. She also feels hurt by the manner in which both Willoughby and Marianne ridicule the Colonel. Notes Marianne finds Willoughby an ideal suitor and is happy to seek his favor. However, Elinor is able to see through his superficial conduct. She observes that he is impulsive, prejudiced and opinionated, much like her sister. He speaks before he thinks, and he thoughtlessly hurts the Colonel's feelings with his careless remarks. Austen reveals Elinor's maturity by having her analyze the characters of Willoughby and the Colonel. She understands the real worth of the Colonel and values his sentiments. She considers him to be "a sensible man, well-bred, well-informed, of gentle address, and--an amiable heart. " She ranks him higher as a man than Willoughby. This chapter hints at the fate of Marianne in the hands of Willoughby. Elinor, as Austen's mouthpiece, conveys her apprehension about this shallow and ostentatious man.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1130-chapters/34.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra/section_33_part_0.txt

The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra.act iv.scene ix

act iv, scene ix

{"name": "Act IV, Scene ix", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210116191009/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/antony-cleopatra/summary/act-iv-scene-ix", "summary": "Back at Caesar's camp, a sentry and his company are on watch when they overhear Enobarbus railing privately against himself. He hopes to die because he's deserted Antony. Enobarbus begs Antony to forgive him, though he wants the world to remember him as a traitor and a fugitive. Then Enobarbus cries out and is silent, prompting the sentries to go look at him. They find he has fainted. No, wait, he's dead. They decide to bear his body to the court of guard, as he's an important man, and they hope he might arise still, though it's clear to the audience that he's died of his own grief.", "analysis": ""}

SCENE IX. CAESAR'S camp Enter a CENTURION and his company; ENOBARBUS follows CENTURION. If we be not reliev'd within this hour, We must return to th' court of guard. The night Is shiny, and they say we shall embattle By th' second hour i' th' morn. FIRST WATCH. This last day was A shrewd one to's. ENOBARBUS. O, bear me witness, night- SECOND WATCH. What man is this? FIRST WATCH. Stand close and list him. ENOBARBUS. Be witness to me, O thou blessed moon, When men revolted shall upon record Bear hateful memory, poor Enobarbus did Before thy face repent! CENTURION. Enobarbus? SECOND WATCH. Peace! Hark further. ENOBARBUS. O sovereign mistress of true melancholy, The poisonous damp of night disponge upon me, That life, a very rebel to my will, May hang no longer on me. Throw my heart Against the flint and hardness of my fault, Which, being dried with grief, will break to powder, And finish all foul thoughts. O Antony, Nobler than my revolt is infamous, Forgive me in thine own particular, But let the world rank me in register A master-leaver and a fugitive! O Antony! O Antony! [Dies] FIRST WATCH. Let's speak to him. CENTURION. Let's hear him, for the things he speaks May concern Caesar. SECOND WATCH. Let's do so. But he sleeps. CENTURION. Swoons rather; for so bad a prayer as his Was never yet for sleep. FIRST WATCH. Go we to him. SECOND WATCH. Awake, sir, awake; speak to us. FIRST WATCH. Hear you, sir? CENTURION. The hand of death hath raught him. [Drums afar off ] Hark! the drums Demurely wake the sleepers. Let us bear him To th' court of guard; he is of note. Our hour Is fully out. SECOND WATCH. Come on, then; He may recover yet. Exeunt with the body ACT_4|SC_10

Act IV, Scene ix

https://web.archive.org/web/20210116191009/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/antony-cleopatra/summary/act-iv-scene-ix

Back at Caesar's camp, a sentry and his company are on watch when they overhear Enobarbus railing privately against himself. He hopes to die because he's deserted Antony. Enobarbus begs Antony to forgive him, though he wants the world to remember him as a traitor and a fugitive. Then Enobarbus cries out and is silent, prompting the sentries to go look at him. They find he has fainted. No, wait, he's dead. They decide to bear his body to the court of guard, as he's an important man, and they hope he might arise still, though it's clear to the audience that he's died of his own grief.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/10.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Brothers Karamazov/section_9_part_0.txt

The Brothers Karamazov.book 2.chapter 5

book 2, chapter 5

{"name": "Book 2, Chapter 5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-2-chapter-5", "summary": "When Zosima returns to his cell, Fyodor is relishing his attacks on Miusov, who flatters himself as an intellectual in the enlightened, European style . The conversation turns to Ivan's recent editorial on the ecclesiastical courts, the one that caused such a scandal before he left Moscow to return to his father's home. Ivan argues that the ecclesiastical courts should take over the state courts because only they can reform criminals by providing them with a moral guide, something the state courts can't do. Miusov, who at first considers Ivan an intellectual like himself, agrees with Ivan's argument at this point because he thinks it's almost socialistic: that is, the state disappears as Russia moves toward a utopian society. But Ivan explains that the state disappears only to be replaced by the Church. Miusov vehemently disagrees with this religious turn in Ivan's argument and accuses him of \"Ultramontanism.\" But Father Paissy is in wholehearted agreement. Just then, Dmitri arrives.", "analysis": ""}

Chapter V. So Be It! So Be It! The elder's absence from his cell had lasted for about twenty-five minutes. It was more than half-past twelve, but Dmitri, on whose account they had all met there, had still not appeared. But he seemed almost to be forgotten, and when the elder entered the cell again, he found his guests engaged in eager conversation. Ivan and the two monks took the leading share in it. Miuesov, too, was trying to take a part, and apparently very eagerly, in the conversation. But he was unsuccessful in this also. He was evidently in the background, and his remarks were treated with neglect, which increased his irritability. He had had intellectual encounters with Ivan before and he could not endure a certain carelessness Ivan showed him. "Hitherto at least I have stood in the front ranks of all that is progressive in Europe, and here the new generation positively ignores us," he thought. Fyodor Pavlovitch, who had given his word to sit still and be quiet, had actually been quiet for some time, but he watched his neighbor Miuesov with an ironical little smile, obviously enjoying his discomfiture. He had been waiting for some time to pay off old scores, and now he could not let the opportunity slip. Bending over his shoulder he began teasing him again in a whisper. "Why didn't you go away just now, after the 'courteously kissing'? Why did you consent to remain in such unseemly company? It was because you felt insulted and aggrieved, and you remained to vindicate yourself by showing off your intelligence. Now you won't go till you've displayed your intellect to them." "You again?... On the contrary, I'm just going." "You'll be the last, the last of all to go!" Fyodor Pavlovitch delivered him another thrust, almost at the moment of Father Zossima's return. The discussion died down for a moment, but the elder, seating himself in his former place, looked at them all as though cordially inviting them to go on. Alyosha, who knew every expression of his face, saw that he was fearfully exhausted and making a great effort. Of late he had been liable to fainting fits from exhaustion. His face had the pallor that was common before such attacks, and his lips were white. But he evidently did not want to break up the party. He seemed to have some special object of his own in keeping them. What object? Alyosha watched him intently. "We are discussing this gentleman's most interesting article," said Father Iosif, the librarian, addressing the elder, and indicating Ivan. "He brings forward much that is new, but I think the argument cuts both ways. It is an article written in answer to a book by an ecclesiastical authority on the question of the ecclesiastical court, and the scope of its jurisdiction." "I'm sorry I have not read your article, but I've heard of it," said the elder, looking keenly and intently at Ivan. "He takes up a most interesting position," continued the Father Librarian. "As far as Church jurisdiction is concerned he is apparently quite opposed to the separation of Church from State." "That's interesting. But in what sense?" Father Zossima asked Ivan. The latter, at last, answered him, not condescendingly, as Alyosha had feared, but with modesty and reserve, with evident goodwill and apparently without the slightest _arriere-pensee_. "I start from the position that this confusion of elements, that is, of the essential principles of Church and State, will, of course, go on for ever, in spite of the fact that it is impossible for them to mingle, and that the confusion of these elements cannot lead to any consistent or even normal results, for there is falsity at the very foundation of it. Compromise between the Church and State in such questions as, for instance, jurisdiction, is, to my thinking, impossible in any real sense. My clerical opponent maintains that the Church holds a precise and defined position in the State. I maintain, on the contrary, that the Church ought to include the whole State, and not simply to occupy a corner in it, and, if this is, for some reason, impossible at present, then it ought, in reality, to be set up as the direct and chief aim of the future development of Christian society!" "Perfectly true," Father Paissy, the silent and learned monk, assented with fervor and decision. "The purest Ultramontanism!" cried Miuesov impatiently, crossing and recrossing his legs. "Oh, well, we have no mountains," cried Father Iosif, and turning to the elder he continued: "Observe the answer he makes to the following 'fundamental and essential' propositions of his opponent, who is, you must note, an ecclesiastic. First, that 'no social organization can or ought to arrogate to itself power to dispose of the civic and political rights of its members.' Secondly, that 'criminal and civil jurisdiction ought not to belong to the Church, and is inconsistent with its nature, both as a divine institution and as an organization of men for religious objects,' and, finally, in the third place, 'the Church is a kingdom not of this world.' " "A most unworthy play upon words for an ecclesiastic!" Father Paissy could not refrain from breaking in again. "I have read the book which you have answered," he added, addressing Ivan, "and was astounded at the words 'the Church is a kingdom not of this world.' If it is not of this world, then it cannot exist on earth at all. In the Gospel, the words 'not of this world' are not used in that sense. To play with such words is indefensible. Our Lord Jesus Christ came to set up the Church upon earth. The Kingdom of Heaven, of course, is not of this world, but in Heaven; but it is only entered through the Church which has been founded and established upon earth. And so a frivolous play upon words in such a connection is unpardonable and improper. The Church is, in truth, a kingdom and ordained to rule, and in the end must undoubtedly become the kingdom ruling over all the earth. For that we have the divine promise." He ceased speaking suddenly, as though checking himself. After listening attentively and respectfully Ivan went on, addressing the elder with perfect composure and as before with ready cordiality: "The whole point of my article lies in the fact that during the first three centuries Christianity only existed on earth in the Church and was nothing but the Church. When the pagan Roman Empire desired to become Christian, it inevitably happened that, by becoming Christian, it included the Church but remained a pagan State in very many of its departments. In reality this was bound to happen. But Rome as a State retained too much of the pagan civilization and culture, as, for example, in the very objects and fundamental principles of the State. The Christian Church entering into the State could, of course, surrender no part of its fundamental principles--the rock on which it stands--and could pursue no other aims than those which have been ordained and revealed by God Himself, and among them that of drawing the whole world, and therefore the ancient pagan State itself, into the Church. In that way (that is, with a view to the future) it is not the Church that should seek a definite position in the State, like 'every social organization,' or as 'an organization of men for religious purposes' (as my opponent calls the Church), but, on the contrary, every earthly State should be, in the end, completely transformed into the Church and should become nothing else but a Church, rejecting every purpose incongruous with the aims of the Church. All this will not degrade it in any way or take from its honor and glory as a great State, nor from the glory of its rulers, but only turns it from a false, still pagan, and mistaken path to the true and rightful path, which alone leads to the eternal goal. This is why the author of the book _On the Foundations of Church Jurisdiction_ would have judged correctly if, in seeking and laying down those foundations, he had looked upon them as a temporary compromise inevitable in our sinful and imperfect days. But as soon as the author ventures to declare that the foundations which he predicates now, part of which Father Iosif just enumerated, are the permanent, essential, and eternal foundations, he is going directly against the Church and its sacred and eternal vocation. That is the gist of my article." "That is, in brief," Father Paissy began again, laying stress on each word, "according to certain theories only too clearly formulated in the nineteenth century, the Church ought to be transformed into the State, as though this would be an advance from a lower to a higher form, so as to disappear into it, making way for science, for the spirit of the age, and civilization. And if the Church resists and is unwilling, some corner will be set apart for her in the State, and even that under control--and this will be so everywhere in all modern European countries. But Russian hopes and conceptions demand not that the Church should pass as from a lower into a higher type into the State, but, on the contrary, that the State should end by being worthy to become only the Church and nothing else. So be it! So be it!" "Well, I confess you've reassured me somewhat," Miuesov said smiling, again crossing his legs. "So far as I understand, then, the realization of such an ideal is infinitely remote, at the second coming of Christ. That's as you please. It's a beautiful Utopian dream of the abolition of war, diplomacy, banks, and so on--something after the fashion of socialism, indeed. But I imagined that it was all meant seriously, and that the Church might be _now_ going to try criminals, and sentence them to beating, prison, and even death." "But if there were none but the ecclesiastical court, the Church would not even now sentence a criminal to prison or to death. Crime and the way of regarding it would inevitably change, not all at once of course, but fairly soon," Ivan replied calmly, without flinching. "Are you serious?" Miuesov glanced keenly at him. "If everything became the Church, the Church would exclude all the criminal and disobedient, and would not cut off their heads," Ivan went on. "I ask you, what would become of the excluded? He would be cut off then not only from men, as now, but from Christ. By his crime he would have transgressed not only against men but against the Church of Christ. This is so even now, of course, strictly speaking, but it is not clearly enunciated, and very, very often the criminal of to-day compromises with his conscience: 'I steal,' he says, 'but I don't go against the Church. I'm not an enemy of Christ.' That's what the criminal of to-day is continually saying to himself, but when the Church takes the place of the State it will be difficult for him, in opposition to the Church all over the world, to say: 'All men are mistaken, all in error, all mankind are the false Church. I, a thief and murderer, am the only true Christian Church.' It will be very difficult to say this to himself; it requires a rare combination of unusual circumstances. Now, on the other side, take the Church's own view of crime: is it not bound to renounce the present almost pagan attitude, and to change from a mechanical cutting off of its tainted member for the preservation of society, as at present, into completely and honestly adopting the idea of the regeneration of the man, of his reformation and salvation?" "What do you mean? I fail to understand again," Miuesov interrupted. "Some sort of dream again. Something shapeless and even incomprehensible. What is excommunication? What sort of exclusion? I suspect you are simply amusing yourself, Ivan Fyodorovitch." "Yes, but you know, in reality it is so now," said the elder suddenly, and all turned to him at once. "If it were not for the Church of Christ there would be nothing to restrain the criminal from evil-doing, no real chastisement for it afterwards; none, that is, but the mechanical punishment spoken of just now, which in the majority of cases only embitters the heart; and not the real punishment, the only effectual one, the only deterrent and softening one, which lies in the recognition of sin by conscience." "How is that, may one inquire?" asked Miuesov, with lively curiosity. "Why," began the elder, "all these sentences to exile with hard labor, and formerly with flogging also, reform no one, and what's more, deter hardly a single criminal, and the number of crimes does not diminish but is continually on the increase. You must admit that. Consequently the security of society is not preserved, for, although the obnoxious member is mechanically cut off and sent far away out of sight, another criminal always comes to take his place at once, and often two of them. If anything does preserve society, even in our time, and does regenerate and transform the criminal, it is only the law of Christ speaking in his conscience. It is only by recognizing his wrong-doing as a son of a Christian society--that is, of the Church--that he recognizes his sin against society--that is, against the Church. So that it is only against the Church, and not against the State, that the criminal of to-day can recognize that he has sinned. If society, as a Church, had jurisdiction, then it would know when to bring back from exclusion and to reunite to itself. Now the Church having no real jurisdiction, but only the power of moral condemnation, withdraws of her own accord from punishing the criminal actively. She does not excommunicate him but simply persists in motherly exhortation of him. What is more, the Church even tries to preserve all Christian communion with the criminal. She admits him to church services, to the holy sacrament, gives him alms, and treats him more as a captive than as a convict. And what would become of the criminal, O Lord, if even the Christian society--that is, the Church--were to reject him even as the civil law rejects him and cuts him off? What would become of him if the Church punished him with her excommunication as the direct consequence of the secular law? There could be no more terrible despair, at least for a Russian criminal, for Russian criminals still have faith. Though, who knows, perhaps then a fearful thing would happen, perhaps the despairing heart of the criminal would lose its faith and then what would become of him? But the Church, like a tender, loving mother, holds aloof from active punishment herself, as the sinner is too severely punished already by the civil law, and there must be at least some one to have pity on him. The Church holds aloof, above all, because its judgment is the only one that contains the truth, and therefore cannot practically and morally be united to any other judgment even as a temporary compromise. She can enter into no compact about that. The foreign criminal, they say, rarely repents, for the very doctrines of to-day confirm him in the idea that his crime is not a crime, but only a reaction against an unjustly oppressive force. Society cuts him off completely by a force that triumphs over him mechanically and (so at least they say of themselves in Europe) accompanies this exclusion with hatred, forgetfulness, and the most profound indifference as to the ultimate fate of the erring brother. In this way, it all takes place without the compassionate intervention of the Church, for in many cases there are no churches there at all, for though ecclesiastics and splendid church buildings remain, the churches themselves have long ago striven to pass from Church into State and to disappear in it completely. So it seems at least in Lutheran countries. As for Rome, it was proclaimed a State instead of a Church a thousand years ago. And so the criminal is no longer conscious of being a member of the Church and sinks into despair. If he returns to society, often it is with such hatred that society itself instinctively cuts him off. You can judge for yourself how it must end. In many cases it would seem to be the same with us, but the difference is that besides the established law courts we have the Church too, which always keeps up relations with the criminal as a dear and still precious son. And besides that, there is still preserved, though only in thought, the judgment of the Church, which though no longer existing in practice is still living as a dream for the future, and is, no doubt, instinctively recognized by the criminal in his soul. What was said here just now is true too, that is, that if the jurisdiction of the Church were introduced in practice in its full force, that is, if the whole of the society were changed into the Church, not only the judgment of the Church would have influence on the reformation of the criminal such as it never has now, but possibly also the crimes themselves would be incredibly diminished. And there can be no doubt that the Church would look upon the criminal and the crime of the future in many cases quite differently and would succeed in restoring the excluded, in restraining those who plan evil, and in regenerating the fallen. It is true," said Father Zossima, with a smile, "the Christian society now is not ready and is only resting on some seven righteous men, but as they are never lacking, it will continue still unshaken in expectation of its complete transformation from a society almost heathen in character into a single universal and all-powerful Church. So be it, so be it! Even though at the end of the ages, for it is ordained to come to pass! And there is no need to be troubled about times and seasons, for the secret of the times and seasons is in the wisdom of God, in His foresight, and His love. And what in human reckoning seems still afar off, may by the Divine ordinance be close at hand, on the eve of its appearance. And so be it, so be it!" "So be it, so be it!" Father Paissy repeated austerely and reverently. "Strange, extremely strange!" Miuesov pronounced, not so much with heat as with latent indignation. "What strikes you as so strange?" Father Iosif inquired cautiously. "Why, it's beyond anything!" cried Miuesov, suddenly breaking out; "the State is eliminated and the Church is raised to the position of the State. It's not simply Ultramontanism, it's arch-Ultramontanism! It's beyond the dreams of Pope Gregory the Seventh!" "You are completely misunderstanding it," said Father Paissy sternly. "Understand, the Church is not to be transformed into the State. That is Rome and its dream. That is the third temptation of the devil. On the contrary, the State is transformed into the Church, will ascend and become a Church over the whole world--which is the complete opposite of Ultramontanism and Rome, and your interpretation, and is only the glorious destiny ordained for the Orthodox Church. This star will arise in the east!" Miuesov was significantly silent. His whole figure expressed extraordinary personal dignity. A supercilious and condescending smile played on his lips. Alyosha watched it all with a throbbing heart. The whole conversation stirred him profoundly. He glanced casually at Rakitin, who was standing immovable in his place by the door listening and watching intently though with downcast eyes. But from the color in his cheeks Alyosha guessed that Rakitin was probably no less excited, and he knew what caused his excitement. "Allow me to tell you one little anecdote, gentlemen," Miuesov said impressively, with a peculiarly majestic air. "Some years ago, soon after the _coup d'etat_ of December, I happened to be calling in Paris on an extremely influential personage in the Government, and I met a very interesting man in his house. This individual was not precisely a detective but was a sort of superintendent of a whole regiment of political detectives--a rather powerful position in its own way. I was prompted by curiosity to seize the opportunity of conversation with him. And as he had not come as a visitor but as a subordinate official bringing a special report, and as he saw the reception given me by his chief, he deigned to speak with some openness, to a certain extent only, of course. He was rather courteous than open, as Frenchmen know how to be courteous, especially to a foreigner. But I thoroughly understood him. The subject was the socialist revolutionaries who were at that time persecuted. I will quote only one most curious remark dropped by this person. 'We are not particularly afraid,' said he, 'of all these socialists, anarchists, infidels, and revolutionists; we keep watch on them and know all their goings on. But there are a few peculiar men among them who believe in God and are Christians, but at the same time are socialists. These are the people we are most afraid of. They are dreadful people! The socialist who is a Christian is more to be dreaded than a socialist who is an atheist.' The words struck me at the time, and now they have suddenly come back to me here, gentlemen." "You apply them to us, and look upon us as socialists?" Father Paissy asked directly, without beating about the bush. But before Pyotr Alexandrovitch could think what to answer, the door opened, and the guest so long expected, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, came in. They had, in fact, given up expecting him, and his sudden appearance caused some surprise for a moment.

Book 2, Chapter 5

https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-2-chapter-5

When Zosima returns to his cell, Fyodor is relishing his attacks on Miusov, who flatters himself as an intellectual in the enlightened, European style . The conversation turns to Ivan's recent editorial on the ecclesiastical courts, the one that caused such a scandal before he left Moscow to return to his father's home. Ivan argues that the ecclesiastical courts should take over the state courts because only they can reform criminals by providing them with a moral guide, something the state courts can't do. Miusov, who at first considers Ivan an intellectual like himself, agrees with Ivan's argument at this point because he thinks it's almost socialistic: that is, the state disappears as Russia moves toward a utopian society. But Ivan explains that the state disappears only to be replaced by the Church. Miusov vehemently disagrees with this religious turn in Ivan's argument and accuses him of "Ultramontanism." But Father Paissy is in wholehearted agreement. Just then, Dmitri arrives.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/44.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Sense and Sensibility/section_30_part_0.txt

Sense and Sensibility.chapter 44

chapter 44

{"name": "Chapter 44", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101060302/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/s/sense-and-sensibility/summary-and-analysis/chapter-44", "summary": "Arriving in a great state of agitation, Willoughby persuaded Elinor to listen to his story. He told her that, at first, he had not been serious about his involvement with Marianne and looked at it as only a boost to his ego. But he fell in love with her and decided to become engaged to her. However, the day before his intended proposal, Mrs. Smith, his relative, discovered how badly he had treated Colonel Brandon's ward and offered to forgive him if he would marry the girl. He refused and decided to marry the wealthy Sophia. He declared that he had been tortured for his wrongdoing. The letter which he had written to Marianne had been composed by his fiancee, now his wife, who had forced him to copy it after she had snatched Marianne's letter from him and read it. Sir John Middleton had met him the night before and told him of Marianne's morbid condition. Since he still loved her, he had rushed to Cleveland to exonerate himself with her before she died. He was joyous to learn this wasn't necessary, but being already there, he wanted to clear himself with Elinor.", "analysis": "Elinor again shows us her generous nature by allowing the wretched Willoughby to tell her his story and afterwards by feeling genuine compassion for the man who has hurt her sister so terribly. Willoughby has been the cause of his own troubles and is forced to live with the results of his mistakes. His wife Sophia is painted by him to be selfish and evil tempered. She married Willoughby knowing he didn't care for her. Willoughby is well aware that he sacrificed any hope of domestic happiness for great wealth. Elinor understands him and pities him."}

Elinor, starting back with a look of horror at the sight of him, obeyed the first impulse of her heart in turning instantly to quit the room, and her hand was already on the lock, when its action was suspended by his hastily advancing, and saying, in a voice rather of command than supplication, "Miss Dashwood, for half an hour--for ten minutes--I entreat you to stay." "No, sir," she replied with firmness, "I shall NOT stay. Your business cannot be with ME. The servants, I suppose, forgot to tell you that Mr. Palmer was not in the house." "Had they told me," he cried with vehemence, "that Mr. Palmer and all his relations were at the devil, it would not have turned me from the door. My business is with you, and only you." "With me!"--in the utmost amazement--"well, sir,--be quick--and if you can--less violent." "Sit down, and I will be both." She hesitated; she knew not what to do. The possibility of Colonel Brandon's arriving and finding her there, came across her. But she had promised to hear him, and her curiosity no less than her honor was engaged. After a moment's recollection, therefore, concluding that prudence required dispatch, and that her acquiescence would best promote it, she walked silently towards the table, and sat down. He took the opposite chair, and for half a minute not a word was said by either. "Pray be quick, sir,"--said Elinor, impatiently;--"I have no time to spare." He was sitting in an attitude of deep meditation, and seemed not to hear her. "Your sister," said he, with abruptness, a moment afterwards--"is out of danger. I heard it from the servant. God be praised!--But is it true? is it really true?" Elinor would not speak. He repeated the inquiry with yet greater eagerness. "For God's sake tell me, is she out of danger, or is she not?" "We hope she is." He rose up, and walked across the room. "Had I known as much half an hour ago--But since I AM here,"--speaking with a forced vivacity as he returned to his seat--"what does it signify?--For once, Miss Dashwood--it will be the last time, perhaps--let us be cheerful together.--I am in a fine mood for gaiety.-- Tell me honestly"--a deeper glow overspreading his cheeks--"do you think me most a knave or a fool?" Elinor looked at him with greater astonishment than ever. She began to think that he must be in liquor;--the strangeness of such a visit, and of such manners, seemed no otherwise intelligible; and with this impression she immediately rose, saying, "Mr. Willoughby, I advise you at present to return to Combe--I am not at leisure to remain with you longer.-- Whatever your business may be with me, it will be better recollected and explained to-morrow." "I understand you," he replied, with an expressive smile, and a voice perfectly calm; "yes, I am very drunk.-- A pint of porter with my cold beef at Marlborough was enough to over-set me." "At Marlborough!"--cried Elinor, more and more at a loss to understand what he would be at. "Yes,--I left London this morning at eight o'clock, and the only ten minutes I have spent out of my chaise since that time procured me a nuncheon at Marlborough." The steadiness of his manner, and the intelligence of his eye as he spoke, convincing Elinor, that whatever other unpardonable folly might bring him to Cleveland, he was not brought there by intoxication, she said, after a moment's recollection, "Mr. Willoughby, you OUGHT to feel, and I certainly DO--that after what has passed--your coming here in this manner, and forcing yourself upon my notice, requires a very particular excuse.--What is it, that you mean by it?"-- "I mean,"--said he, with serious energy--"if I can, to make you hate me one degree less than you do NOW. I mean to offer some kind of explanation, some kind of apology, for the past; to open my whole heart to you, and by convincing you, that though I have been always a blockhead, I have not been always a rascal, to obtain something like forgiveness from Ma--from your sister." "Is this the real reason of your coming?" "Upon my soul it is,"--was his answer, with a warmth which brought all the former Willoughby to her remembrance, and in spite of herself made her think him sincere. "If that is all, you may be satisfied already,--for Marianne DOES--she has LONG forgiven you." "Has she?"--he cried, in the same eager tone.-- "Then she has forgiven me before she ought to have done it. But she shall forgive me again, and on more reasonable grounds.--NOW will you listen to me?" Elinor bowed her assent. "I do not know," said he, after a pause of expectation on her side, and thoughtfulness on his own,--"how YOU may have accounted for my behaviour to your sister, or what diabolical motive you may have imputed to me.-- Perhaps you will hardly think the better of me,--it is worth the trial however, and you shall hear every thing. When I first became intimate in your family, I had no other intention, no other view in the acquaintance than to pass my time pleasantly while I was obliged to remain in Devonshire, more pleasantly than I had ever done before. Your sister's lovely person and interesting manners could not but please me; and her behaviour to me almost from the first, was of a kind--It is astonishing, when I reflect on what it was, and what SHE was, that my heart should have been so insensible! But at first I must confess, my vanity only was elevated by it. Careless of her happiness, thinking only of my own amusement, giving way to feelings which I had always been too much in the habit of indulging, I endeavoured, by every means in my power, to make myself pleasing to her, without any design of returning her affection." Miss Dashwood, at this point, turning her eyes on him with the most angry contempt, stopped him, by saying, "It is hardly worth while, Mr. Willoughby, for you to relate, or for me to listen any longer. Such a beginning as this cannot be followed by any thing.-- Do not let me be pained by hearing any thing more on the subject." "I insist on you hearing the whole of it," he replied, "My fortune was never large, and I had always been expensive, always in the habit of associating with people of better income than myself. Every year since my coming of age, or even before, I believe, had added to my debts; and though the death of my old cousin, Mrs. Smith, was to set me free; yet that event being uncertain, and possibly far distant, it had been for some time my intention to re-establish my circumstances by marrying a woman of fortune. To attach myself to your sister, therefore, was not a thing to be thought of;--and with a meanness, selfishness, cruelty--which no indignant, no contemptuous look, even of yours, Miss Dashwood, can ever reprobate too much--I was acting in this manner, trying to engage her regard, without a thought of returning it.--But one thing may be said for me: even in that horrid state of selfish vanity, I did not know the extent of the injury I meditated, because I did not THEN know what it was to love. But have I ever known it?--Well may it be doubted; for, had I really loved, could I have sacrificed my feelings to vanity, to avarice?--or, what is more, could I have sacrificed hers?-- But I have done it. To avoid a comparative poverty, which her affection and her society would have deprived of all its horrors, I have, by raising myself to affluence, lost every thing that could make it a blessing." "You did then," said Elinor, a little softened, "believe yourself at one time attached to her?" "To have resisted such attractions, to have withstood such tenderness!--Is there a man on earth who could have done it?--Yes, I found myself, by insensible degrees, sincerely fond of her; and the happiest hours of my life were what I spent with her when I felt my intentions were strictly honourable, and my feelings blameless. Even THEN, however, when fully determined on paying my addresses to her, I allowed myself most improperly to put off, from day to day, the moment of doing it, from an unwillingness to enter into an engagement while my circumstances were so greatly embarrassed. I will not reason here--nor will I stop for YOU to expatiate on the absurdity, and the worse than absurdity, of scrupling to engage my faith where my honour was already bound. The event has proved, that I was a cunning fool, providing with great circumspection for a possible opportunity of making myself contemptible and wretched for ever. At last, however, my resolution was taken, and I had determined, as soon as I could engage her alone, to justify the attentions I had so invariably paid her, and openly assure her of an affection which I had already taken such pains to display. But in the interim--in the interim of the very few hours that were to pass, before I could have an opportunity of speaking with her in private--a circumstance occurred--an unlucky circumstance, to ruin all my resolution, and with it all my comfort. A discovery took place,"--here he hesitated and looked down.--"Mrs. Smith had somehow or other been informed, I imagine by some distant relation, whose interest it was to deprive me of her favour, of an affair, a connection--but I need not explain myself farther," he added, looking at her with an heightened colour and an enquiring eye--"your particular intimacy--you have probably heard the whole story long ago." "I have," returned Elinor, colouring likewise, and hardening her heart anew against any compassion for him, "I have heard it all. And how you will explain away any part of your guilt in that dreadful business, I confess is beyond my comprehension." "Remember," cried Willoughby, "from whom you received the account. Could it be an impartial one? I acknowledge that her situation and her character ought to have been respected by me. I do not mean to justify myself, but at the same time cannot leave you to suppose that I have nothing to urge--that because she was injured she was irreproachable, and because I was a libertine, SHE must be a saint. If the violence of her passions, the weakness of her understanding--I do not mean, however, to defend myself. Her affection for me deserved better treatment, and I often, with great self-reproach, recall the tenderness which, for a very short time, had the power of creating any return. I wish--I heartily wish it had never been. But I have injured more than herself; and I have injured one, whose affection for me--(may I say it?) was scarcely less warm than hers; and whose mind--Oh! how infinitely superior!"-- "Your indifference, however, towards that unfortunate girl--I must say it, unpleasant to me as the discussion of such a subject may well be--your indifference is no apology for your cruel neglect of her. Do not think yourself excused by any weakness, any natural defect of understanding on her side, in the wanton cruelty so evident on yours. You must have known, that while you were enjoying yourself in Devonshire pursuing fresh schemes, always gay, always happy, she was reduced to the extremest indigence." "But, upon my soul, I did NOT know it," he warmly replied; "I did not recollect that I had omitted to give her my direction; and common sense might have told her how to find it out." "Well, sir, and what said Mrs. Smith?" "She taxed me with the offence at once, and my confusion may be guessed. The purity of her life, the formality of her notions, her ignorance of the world--every thing was against me. The matter itself I could not deny, and vain was every endeavour to soften it. She was previously disposed, I believe, to doubt the morality of my conduct in general, and was moreover discontented with the very little attention, the very little portion of my time that I had bestowed on her, in my present visit. In short, it ended in a total breach. By one measure I might have saved myself. In the height of her morality, good woman! she offered to forgive the past, if I would marry Eliza. That could not be--and I was formally dismissed from her favour and her house. The night following this affair--I was to go the next morning--was spent by me in deliberating on what my future conduct should be. The struggle was great--but it ended too soon. My affection for Marianne, my thorough conviction of her attachment to me--it was all insufficient to outweigh that dread of poverty, or get the better of those false ideas of the necessity of riches, which I was naturally inclined to feel, and expensive society had increased. I had reason to believe myself secure of my present wife, if I chose to address her, and I persuaded myself to think that nothing else in common prudence remained for me to do. A heavy scene however awaited me, before I could leave Devonshire;--I was engaged to dine with you on that very day; some apology was therefore necessary for my breaking this engagement. But whether I should write this apology, or deliver it in person, was a point of long debate. To see Marianne, I felt, would be dreadful, and I even doubted whether I could see her again, and keep to my resolution. In that point, however, I undervalued my own magnanimity, as the event declared; for I went, I saw her, and saw her miserable, and left her miserable--and left her hoping never to see her again." "Why did you call, Mr. Willoughby?" said Elinor, reproachfully; "a note would have answered every purpose.-- Why was it necessary to call?" "It was necessary to my own pride. I could not bear to leave the country in a manner that might lead you, or the rest of the neighbourhood, to suspect any part of what had really passed between Mrs. Smith and myself--and I resolved therefore on calling at the cottage, in my way to Honiton. The sight of your dear sister, however, was really dreadful; and, to heighten the matter, I found her alone. You were all gone I do not know where. I had left her only the evening before, so fully, so firmly resolved within my self on doing right! A few hours were to have engaged her to me for ever; and I remember how happy, how gay were my spirits, as I walked from the cottage to Allenham, satisfied with myself, delighted with every body! But in this, our last interview of friendship, I approached her with a sense of guilt that almost took from me the power of dissembling. Her sorrow, her disappointment, her deep regret, when I told her that I was obliged to leave Devonshire so immediately--I never shall forget it--united too with such reliance, such confidence in me!--Oh, God!--what a hard-hearted rascal I was!" They were both silent for a few moments. Elinor first spoke. "Did you tell her that you should soon return?" "I do not know what I told her," he replied, impatiently; "less than was due to the past, beyond a doubt, and in all likelihood much more than was justified by the future. I cannot think of it.--It won't do.--Then came your dear mother to torture me farther, with all her kindness and confidence. Thank Heaven! it DID torture me. I was miserable. Miss Dashwood, you cannot have an idea of the comfort it gives me to look back on my own misery. I owe such a grudge to myself for the stupid, rascally folly of my own heart, that all my past sufferings under it are only triumph and exultation to me now. Well, I went, left all that I loved, and went to those to whom, at best, I was only indifferent. My journey to town--travelling with my own horses, and therefore so tediously--no creature to speak to--my own reflections so cheerful--when I looked forward every thing so inviting!--when I looked back at Barton, the picture so soothing!--oh, it was a blessed journey!" He stopped. "Well, sir," said Elinor, who, though pitying him, grew impatient for his departure, "and this is all?" "Ah!--no,--have you forgot what passed in town?-- That infamous letter--Did she shew it you?" "Yes, I saw every note that passed." "When the first of hers reached me (as it immediately did, for I was in town the whole time,) what I felt is--in the common phrase, not to be expressed; in a more simple one--perhaps too simple to raise any emotion--my feelings were very, very painful.--Every line, every word was--in the hackneyed metaphor which their dear writer, were she here, would forbid--a dagger to my heart. To know that Marianne was in town was--in the same language--a thunderbolt.--Thunderbolts and daggers!--what a reproof would she have given me!--her taste, her opinions--I believe they are better known to me than my own,--and I am sure they are dearer." Elinor's heart, which had undergone many changes in the course of this extraordinary conversation, was now softened again;--yet she felt it her duty to check such ideas in her companion as the last. "This is not right, Mr. Willoughby.--Remember that you are married. Relate only what in your conscience you think necessary for me to hear." "Marianne's note, by assuring me that I was still as dear to her as in former days, that in spite of the many, many weeks we had been separated, she was as constant in her own feelings, and as full of faith in the constancy of mine as ever, awakened all my remorse. I say awakened, because time and London, business and dissipation, had in some measure quieted it, and I had been growing a fine hardened villain, fancying myself indifferent to her, and chusing to fancy that she too must have become indifferent to me; talking to myself of our past attachment as a mere idle, trifling business, shrugging up my shoulders in proof of its being so, and silencing every reproach, overcoming every scruple, by secretly saying now and then, 'I shall be heartily glad to hear she is well married.'-- But this note made me know myself better. I felt that she was infinitely dearer to me than any other woman in the world, and that I was using her infamously. But every thing was then just settled between Miss Grey and me. To retreat was impossible. All that I had to do, was to avoid you both. I sent no answer to Marianne, intending by that to preserve myself from her farther notice; and for some time I was even determined not to call in Berkeley Street;--but at last, judging it wiser to affect the air of a cool, common acquaintance than anything else, I watched you all safely out of the house one morning, and left my name." "Watched us out of the house!" "Even so. You would be surprised to hear how often I watched you, how often I was on the point of falling in with you. I have entered many a shop to avoid your sight, as the carriage drove by. Lodging as I did in Bond Street, there was hardly a day in which I did not catch a glimpse of one or other of you; and nothing but the most constant watchfulness on my side, a most invariably prevailing desire to keep out of your sight, could have separated us so long. I avoided the Middletons as much as possible, as well as everybody else who was likely to prove an acquaintance in common. Not aware of their being in town, however, I blundered on Sir John, I believe, the first day of his coming, and the day after I had called at Mrs. Jennings's. He asked me to a party, a dance at his house in the evening.--Had he NOT told me as an inducement that you and your sister were to be there, I should have felt it too certain a thing, to trust myself near him. The next morning brought another short note from Marianne--still affectionate, open, artless, confiding--everything that could make MY conduct most hateful. I could not answer it. I tried--but could not frame a sentence. But I thought of her, I believe, every moment of the day. If you CAN pity me, Miss Dashwood, pity my situation as it was THEN. With my head and heart full of your sister, I was forced to play the happy lover to another woman!--Those three or four weeks were worse than all. Well, at last, as I need not tell you, you were forced on me; and what a sweet figure I cut!--what an evening of agony it was!-- Marianne, beautiful as an angel on one side, calling me Willoughby in such a tone!--Oh, God!--holding out her hand to me, asking me for an explanation, with those bewitching eyes fixed in such speaking solicitude on my face!--and Sophia, jealous as the devil on the other hand, looking all that was--Well, it does not signify; it is over now.-- Such an evening!--I ran away from you all as soon as I could; but not before I had seen Marianne's sweet face as white as death.--THAT was the last, last look I ever had of her;--the last manner in which she appeared to me. It was a horrid sight!--yet when I thought of her to-day as really dying, it was a kind of comfort to me to imagine that I knew exactly how she would appear to those, who saw her last in this world. She was before me, constantly before me, as I travelled, in the same look and hue." A short pause of mutual thoughtfulness succeeded. Willoughby first rousing himself, broke it thus: "Well, let me make haste and be gone. Your sister is certainly better, certainly out of danger?" "We are assured of it." "Your poor mother, too!--doting on Marianne." "But the letter, Mr. Willoughby, your own letter; have you any thing to say about that?" "Yes, yes, THAT in particular. Your sister wrote to me again, you know, the very next morning. You saw what she said. I was breakfasting at the Ellisons,--and her letter, with some others, was brought to me there from my lodgings. It happened to catch Sophia's eye before it caught mine--and its size, the elegance of the paper, the hand-writing altogether, immediately gave her a suspicion. Some vague report had reached her before of my attachment to some young lady in Devonshire, and what had passed within her observation the preceding evening had marked who the young lady was, and made her more jealous than ever. Affecting that air of playfulness, therefore, which is delightful in a woman one loves, she opened the letter directly, and read its contents. She was well paid for her impudence. She read what made her wretched. Her wretchedness I could have borne, but her passion--her malice--At all events it must be appeased. And, in short--what do you think of my wife's style of letter-writing?--delicate--tender--truly feminine--was it not?" "Your wife!--The letter was in your own hand-writing." "Yes, but I had only the credit of servilely copying such sentences as I was ashamed to put my name to. The original was all her own--her own happy thoughts and gentle diction. But what could I do!--we were engaged, every thing in preparation, the day almost fixed--But I am talking like a fool. Preparation!--day!--In honest words, her money was necessary to me, and in a situation like mine, any thing was to be done to prevent a rupture. And after all, what did it signify to my character in the opinion of Marianne and her friends, in what language my answer was couched?--It must have been only to one end. My business was to declare myself a scoundrel, and whether I did it with a bow or a bluster was of little importance.-- 'I am ruined for ever in their opinion--' said I to myself--'I am shut out for ever from their society, they already think me an unprincipled fellow, this letter will only make them think me a blackguard one.' Such were my reasonings, as, in a sort of desperate carelessness, I copied my wife's words, and parted with the last relics of Marianne. Her three notes--unluckily they were all in my pocketbook, or I should have denied their existence, and hoarded them for ever--I was forced to put them up, and could not even kiss them. And the lock of hair--that too I had always carried about me in the same pocket-book, which was now searched by Madam with the most ingratiating virulence,--the dear lock--all, every memento was torn from me." "You are very wrong, Mr. Willoughby, very blamable," said Elinor, while her voice, in spite of herself, betrayed her compassionate emotion; "you ought not to speak in this way, either of Mrs. Willoughby or my sister. You had made your own choice. It was not forced on you. Your wife has a claim to your politeness, to your respect, at least. She must be attached to you, or she would not have married you. To treat her with unkindness, to speak of her slightingly is no atonement to Marianne--nor can I suppose it a relief to your own conscience." "Do not talk to me of my wife," said he with a heavy sigh.-- "She does not deserve your compassion.--She knew I had no regard for her when we married.--Well, married we were, and came down to Combe Magna to be happy, and afterwards returned to town to be gay.--And now do you pity me, Miss Dashwood?--or have I said all this to no purpose?-- Am I--be it only one degree--am I less guilty in your opinion than I was before?--My intentions were not always wrong. Have I explained away any part of my guilt?" "Yes, you have certainly removed something--a little.-- You have proved yourself, on the whole, less faulty than I had believed you. You have proved your heart less wicked, much less wicked. But I hardly know--the misery that you have inflicted--I hardly know what could have made it worse." "Will you repeat to your sister when she is recovered, what I have been telling you?--Let me be a little lightened too in her opinion as well as in yours. You tell me that she has forgiven me already. Let me be able to fancy that a better knowledge of my heart, and of my present feelings, will draw from her a more spontaneous, more natural, more gentle, less dignified, forgiveness. Tell her of my misery and my penitence--tell her that my heart was never inconstant to her, and if you will, that at this moment she is dearer to me than ever." "I will tell her all that is necessary to what may comparatively be called, your justification. But you have not explained to me the particular reason of your coming now, nor how you heard of her illness." "Last night, in Drury Lane lobby, I ran against Sir John Middleton, and when he saw who I was--for the first time these two months--he spoke to me.--That he had cut me ever since my marriage, I had seen without surprise or resentment. Now, however, his good-natured, honest, stupid soul, full of indignation against me, and concern for your sister, could not resist the temptation of telling me what he knew ought to--though probably he did not think it WOULD--vex me horridly. As bluntly as he could speak it, therefore, he told me that Marianne Dashwood was dying of a putrid fever at Cleveland--a letter that morning received from Mrs. Jennings declared her danger most imminent--the Palmers are all gone off in a fright, &c.--I was too much shocked to be able to pass myself off as insensible even to the undiscerning Sir John. His heart was softened in seeing mine suffer; and so much of his ill-will was done away, that when we parted, he almost shook me by the hand while he reminded me of an old promise about a pointer puppy. What I felt on hearing that your sister was dying--and dying too, believing me the greatest villain upon earth, scorning, hating me in her latest moments--for how could I tell what horrid projects might not have been imputed? ONE person I was sure would represent me as capable of any thing-- What I felt was dreadful!--My resolution was soon made, and at eight o'clock this morning I was in my carriage. Now you know all." Elinor made no answer. Her thoughts were silently fixed on the irreparable injury which too early an independence and its consequent habits of idleness, dissipation, and luxury, had made in the mind, the character, the happiness, of a man who, to every advantage of person and talents, united a disposition naturally open and honest, and a feeling, affectionate temper. The world had made him extravagant and vain--Extravagance and vanity had made him cold-hearted and selfish. Vanity, while seeking its own guilty triumph at the expense of another, had involved him in a real attachment, which extravagance, or at least its offspring, necessity, had required to be sacrificed. Each faulty propensity in leading him to evil, had led him likewise to punishment. The attachment, from which against honour, against feeling, against every better interest he had outwardly torn himself, now, when no longer allowable, governed every thought; and the connection, for the sake of which he had, with little scruple, left her sister to misery, was likely to prove a source of unhappiness to himself of a far more incurable nature. From a reverie of this kind she was recalled at the end of some minutes by Willoughby, who, rousing himself from a reverie at least equally painful, started up in preparation for going, and said-- "There is no use in staying here; I must be off." "Are you going back to town?" "No--to Combe Magna. I have business there; from thence to town in a day or two. Good bye." He held out his hand. She could not refuse to give him hers;--he pressed it with affection. "And you DO think something better of me than you did?"--said he, letting it fall, and leaning against the mantel-piece as if forgetting he was to go. Elinor assured him that she did;--that she forgave, pitied, wished him well--was even interested in his happiness--and added some gentle counsel as to the behaviour most likely to promote it. His answer was not very encouraging. "As to that," said he, "I must rub through the world as well as I can. Domestic happiness is out of the question. If, however, I am allowed to think that you and yours feel an interest in my fate and actions, it may be the means--it may put me on my guard--at least, it may be something to live for. Marianne to be sure is lost to me for ever. Were I even by any blessed chance at liberty again--" Elinor stopped him with a reproof. "Well,"--he replied--"once more good bye. I shall now go away and live in dread of one event." "What do you mean?" "Your sister's marriage." "You are very wrong. She can never be more lost to you than she is now." "But she will be gained by some one else. And if that some one should be the very he whom, of all others, I could least bear--but I will not stay to rob myself of all your compassionate goodwill, by shewing that where I have most injured I can least forgive. Good bye,--God bless you!" And with these words, he almost ran out of the room.

Chapter 44

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101060302/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/s/sense-and-sensibility/summary-and-analysis/chapter-44

Arriving in a great state of agitation, Willoughby persuaded Elinor to listen to his story. He told her that, at first, he had not been serious about his involvement with Marianne and looked at it as only a boost to his ego. But he fell in love with her and decided to become engaged to her. However, the day before his intended proposal, Mrs. Smith, his relative, discovered how badly he had treated Colonel Brandon's ward and offered to forgive him if he would marry the girl. He refused and decided to marry the wealthy Sophia. He declared that he had been tortured for his wrongdoing. The letter which he had written to Marianne had been composed by his fiancee, now his wife, who had forced him to copy it after she had snatched Marianne's letter from him and read it. Sir John Middleton had met him the night before and told him of Marianne's morbid condition. Since he still loved her, he had rushed to Cleveland to exonerate himself with her before she died. He was joyous to learn this wasn't necessary, but being already there, he wanted to clear himself with Elinor.

Elinor again shows us her generous nature by allowing the wretched Willoughby to tell her his story and afterwards by feeling genuine compassion for the man who has hurt her sister so terribly. Willoughby has been the cause of his own troubles and is forced to live with the results of his mistakes. His wife Sophia is painted by him to be selfish and evil tempered. She married Willoughby knowing he didn't care for her. Willoughby is well aware that he sacrificed any hope of domestic happiness for great wealth. Elinor understands him and pities him.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/174-chapters/16.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Picture of Dorian Gray/section_15_part_0.txt

The Picture of Dorian Gray.chapter 16

chapter 16

{"name": "Chapter 16", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210304030722/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/picture-dorian-gray/summary/chapter-16", "summary": "Dorian's cab ride takes him to a sketchy part of town. Along the way, he can't help but mull over the words Henry told him when they first met--the only way to cure the soul is to give in to the senses. The best way he can think of to do that is to buy forgetfulness with opium. Dorian's conscience is really getting to him, and so is his opium craving. Finally, way out in the middle of nowhere, the cab deposits Dorian in a horrifying quarter of the city. He walks through the hideous, poverty-stricken streets for a while, then turns in at a shabby old house. Inside, he encounters some creepy characters, including his old friend, Adrian Singleton, one of the young men Basil accused him of ruining. Adrian is in a bad state--he doesn't care about anything but opium. Dorian is disgusted; he asks Adrian to accompany him to another opium den, but he refuses. The pair is accosted by two beggar women, one of whom seems to know Dorian. He's revolted, and throws some money at her to make her go away. Dorian gets ready to leave, but, before he goes, he tells Adrian to write to him if he needs anything --could he possibly feel bad about ruining the guy's life? As Dorian leaves, the beggar woman laughs and calls him \"the devil's bargain\" . He yells back at her, and she mockingly calls him \"Prince Charming.\" A sailor in the background leaps up when he hears this nickname, and follows Dorian out. Dorian walks along the waterfront through the rain, and he ponders Adrian's downfall. Could it really be his fault? Was Basil actually right, or all his former friends responsible for their own failures? He decides that the latter is true, and he bears no responsibility. Dorian hurries on, but is suddenly seized by a mysterious figure. He finds himself pushed against a wall, a gun at his head. The assailant accuses Dorian of ruining Sibyl Vane's life--it turns out that he's James Vane, back from Australia after all these years. He is the sailor that overheard Dorian called \"Prince Charming,\" which he remembers to be her nickname for him. Dorian panics and tries to deny it, but James is determined to kill him before he flees the country aboard a ship for India. Suddenly, a brain wave hits Dorian--he asks how long ago Sibyl died. It was eighteen years ago, and, when he tells James to look at his face in the light, the vengeful sailor realizes that the man he's looking at can't be more than twenty. James is horrified by what he thinks is a terrible mistake--he's convinced he almost killed an innocent boy. James lets Dorian go, and he walks away, unharmed. The beggar woman from the opium den creeps up to James, and asks why he didn't go through with the murder. He tells her that Dorian wasn't the man he was looking for--he's too young. She only laughs, and tells him that it's been eighteen years since \"Prince Charming\" ruined her life... rumor has it that he sold his soul to the devil for eternal youth. James curses and rushes to look for Dorian--but he's gone.", "analysis": ""}

A cold rain began to fall, and the blurred street-lamps looked ghastly in the dripping mist. The public-houses were just closing, and dim men and women were clustering in broken groups round their doors. From some of the bars came the sound of horrible laughter. In others, drunkards brawled and screamed. Lying back in the hansom, with his hat pulled over his forehead, Dorian Gray watched with listless eyes the sordid shame of the great city, and now and then he repeated to himself the words that Lord Henry had said to him on the first day they had met, "To cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul." Yes, that was the secret. He had often tried it, and would try it again now. There were opium dens where one could buy oblivion, dens of horror where the memory of old sins could be destroyed by the madness of sins that were new. The moon hung low in the sky like a yellow skull. From time to time a huge misshapen cloud stretched a long arm across and hid it. The gas-lamps grew fewer, and the streets more narrow and gloomy. Once the man lost his way and had to drive back half a mile. A steam rose from the horse as it splashed up the puddles. The sidewindows of the hansom were clogged with a grey-flannel mist. "To cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul!" How the words rang in his ears! His soul, certainly, was sick to death. Was it true that the senses could cure it? Innocent blood had been spilled. What could atone for that? Ah! for that there was no atonement; but though forgiveness was impossible, forgetfulness was possible still, and he was determined to forget, to stamp the thing out, to crush it as one would crush the adder that had stung one. Indeed, what right had Basil to have spoken to him as he had done? Who had made him a judge over others? He had said things that were dreadful, horrible, not to be endured. On and on plodded the hansom, going slower, it seemed to him, at each step. He thrust up the trap and called to the man to drive faster. The hideous hunger for opium began to gnaw at him. His throat burned and his delicate hands twitched nervously together. He struck at the horse madly with his stick. The driver laughed and whipped up. He laughed in answer, and the man was silent. The way seemed interminable, and the streets like the black web of some sprawling spider. The monotony became unbearable, and as the mist thickened, he felt afraid. Then they passed by lonely brickfields. The fog was lighter here, and he could see the strange, bottle-shaped kilns with their orange, fanlike tongues of fire. A dog barked as they went by, and far away in the darkness some wandering sea-gull screamed. The horse stumbled in a rut, then swerved aside and broke into a gallop. After some time they left the clay road and rattled again over rough-paven streets. Most of the windows were dark, but now and then fantastic shadows were silhouetted against some lamplit blind. He watched them curiously. They moved like monstrous marionettes and made gestures like live things. He hated them. A dull rage was in his heart. As they turned a corner, a woman yelled something at them from an open door, and two men ran after the hansom for about a hundred yards. The driver beat at them with his whip. It is said that passion makes one think in a circle. Certainly with hideous iteration the bitten lips of Dorian Gray shaped and reshaped those subtle words that dealt with soul and sense, till he had found in them the full expression, as it were, of his mood, and justified, by intellectual approval, passions that without such justification would still have dominated his temper. From cell to cell of his brain crept the one thought; and the wild desire to live, most terrible of all man's appetites, quickened into force each trembling nerve and fibre. Ugliness that had once been hateful to him because it made things real, became dear to him now for that very reason. Ugliness was the one reality. The coarse brawl, the loathsome den, the crude violence of disordered life, the very vileness of thief and outcast, were more vivid, in their intense actuality of impression, than all the gracious shapes of art, the dreamy shadows of song. They were what he needed for forgetfulness. In three days he would be free. Suddenly the man drew up with a jerk at the top of a dark lane. Over the low roofs and jagged chimney-stacks of the houses rose the black masts of ships. Wreaths of white mist clung like ghostly sails to the yards. "Somewhere about here, sir, ain't it?" he asked huskily through the trap. Dorian started and peered round. "This will do," he answered, and having got out hastily and given the driver the extra fare he had promised him, he walked quickly in the direction of the quay. Here and there a lantern gleamed at the stern of some huge merchantman. The light shook and splintered in the puddles. A red glare came from an outward-bound steamer that was coaling. The slimy pavement looked like a wet mackintosh. He hurried on towards the left, glancing back now and then to see if he was being followed. In about seven or eight minutes he reached a small shabby house that was wedged in between two gaunt factories. In one of the top-windows stood a lamp. He stopped and gave a peculiar knock. After a little time he heard steps in the passage and the chain being unhooked. The door opened quietly, and he went in without saying a word to the squat misshapen figure that flattened itself into the shadow as he passed. At the end of the hall hung a tattered green curtain that swayed and shook in the gusty wind which had followed him in from the street. He dragged it aside and entered a long low room which looked as if it had once been a third-rate dancing-saloon. Shrill flaring gas-jets, dulled and distorted in the fly-blown mirrors that faced them, were ranged round the walls. Greasy reflectors of ribbed tin backed them, making quivering disks of light. The floor was covered with ochre-coloured sawdust, trampled here and there into mud, and stained with dark rings of spilled liquor. Some Malays were crouching by a little charcoal stove, playing with bone counters and showing their white teeth as they chattered. In one corner, with his head buried in his arms, a sailor sprawled over a table, and by the tawdrily painted bar that ran across one complete side stood two haggard women, mocking an old man who was brushing the sleeves of his coat with an expression of disgust. "He thinks he's got red ants on him," laughed one of them, as Dorian passed by. The man looked at her in terror and began to whimper. At the end of the room there was a little staircase, leading to a darkened chamber. As Dorian hurried up its three rickety steps, the heavy odour of opium met him. He heaved a deep breath, and his nostrils quivered with pleasure. When he entered, a young man with smooth yellow hair, who was bending over a lamp lighting a long thin pipe, looked up at him and nodded in a hesitating manner. "You here, Adrian?" muttered Dorian. "Where else should I be?" he answered, listlessly. "None of the chaps will speak to me now." "I thought you had left England." "Darlington is not going to do anything. My brother paid the bill at last. George doesn't speak to me either.... I don't care," he added with a sigh. "As long as one has this stuff, one doesn't want friends. I think I have had too many friends." Dorian winced and looked round at the grotesque things that lay in such fantastic postures on the ragged mattresses. The twisted limbs, the gaping mouths, the staring lustreless eyes, fascinated him. He knew in what strange heavens they were suffering, and what dull hells were teaching them the secret of some new joy. They were better off than he was. He was prisoned in thought. Memory, like a horrible malady, was eating his soul away. From time to time he seemed to see the eyes of Basil Hallward looking at him. Yet he felt he could not stay. The presence of Adrian Singleton troubled him. He wanted to be where no one would know who he was. He wanted to escape from himself. "I am going on to the other place," he said after a pause. "On the wharf?" "Yes." "That mad-cat is sure to be there. They won't have her in this place now." Dorian shrugged his shoulders. "I am sick of women who love one. Women who hate one are much more interesting. Besides, the stuff is better." "Much the same." "I like it better. Come and have something to drink. I must have something." "I don't want anything," murmured the young man. "Never mind." Adrian Singleton rose up wearily and followed Dorian to the bar. A half-caste, in a ragged turban and a shabby ulster, grinned a hideous greeting as he thrust a bottle of brandy and two tumblers in front of them. The women sidled up and began to chatter. Dorian turned his back on them and said something in a low voice to Adrian Singleton. A crooked smile, like a Malay crease, writhed across the face of one of the women. "We are very proud to-night," she sneered. "For God's sake don't talk to me," cried Dorian, stamping his foot on the ground. "What do you want? Money? Here it is. Don't ever talk to me again." Two red sparks flashed for a moment in the woman's sodden eyes, then flickered out and left them dull and glazed. She tossed her head and raked the coins off the counter with greedy fingers. Her companion watched her enviously. "It's no use," sighed Adrian Singleton. "I don't care to go back. What does it matter? I am quite happy here." "You will write to me if you want anything, won't you?" said Dorian, after a pause. "Perhaps." "Good night, then." "Good night," answered the young man, passing up the steps and wiping his parched mouth with a handkerchief. Dorian walked to the door with a look of pain in his face. As he drew the curtain aside, a hideous laugh broke from the painted lips of the woman who had taken his money. "There goes the devil's bargain!" she hiccoughed, in a hoarse voice. "Curse you!" he answered, "don't call me that." She snapped her fingers. "Prince Charming is what you like to be called, ain't it?" she yelled after him. The drowsy sailor leaped to his feet as she spoke, and looked wildly round. The sound of the shutting of the hall door fell on his ear. He rushed out as if in pursuit. Dorian Gray hurried along the quay through the drizzling rain. His meeting with Adrian Singleton had strangely moved him, and he wondered if the ruin of that young life was really to be laid at his door, as Basil Hallward had said to him with such infamy of insult. He bit his lip, and for a few seconds his eyes grew sad. Yet, after all, what did it matter to him? One's days were too brief to take the burden of another's errors on one's shoulders. Each man lived his own life and paid his own price for living it. The only pity was one had to pay so often for a single fault. One had to pay over and over again, indeed. In her dealings with man, destiny never closed her accounts. There are moments, psychologists tell us, when the passion for sin, or for what the world calls sin, so dominates a nature that every fibre of the body, as every cell of the brain, seems to be instinct with fearful impulses. Men and women at such moments lose the freedom of their will. They move to their terrible end as automatons move. Choice is taken from them, and conscience is either killed, or, if it lives at all, lives but to give rebellion its fascination and disobedience its charm. For all sins, as theologians weary not of reminding us, are sins of disobedience. When that high spirit, that morning star of evil, fell from heaven, it was as a rebel that he fell. Callous, concentrated on evil, with stained mind, and soul hungry for rebellion, Dorian Gray hastened on, quickening his step as he went, but as he darted aside into a dim archway, that had served him often as a short cut to the ill-famed place where he was going, he felt himself suddenly seized from behind, and before he had time to defend himself, he was thrust back against the wall, with a brutal hand round his throat. He struggled madly for life, and by a terrible effort wrenched the tightening fingers away. In a second he heard the click of a revolver, and saw the gleam of a polished barrel, pointing straight at his head, and the dusky form of a short, thick-set man facing him. "What do you want?" he gasped. "Keep quiet," said the man. "If you stir, I shoot you." "You are mad. What have I done to you?" "You wrecked the life of Sibyl Vane," was the answer, "and Sibyl Vane was my sister. She killed herself. I know it. Her death is at your door. I swore I would kill you in return. For years I have sought you. I had no clue, no trace. The two people who could have described you were dead. I knew nothing of you but the pet name she used to call you. I heard it to-night by chance. Make your peace with God, for to-night you are going to die." Dorian Gray grew sick with fear. "I never knew her," he stammered. "I never heard of her. You are mad." "You had better confess your sin, for as sure as I am James Vane, you are going to die." There was a horrible moment. Dorian did not know what to say or do. "Down on your knees!" growled the man. "I give you one minute to make your peace--no more. I go on board to-night for India, and I must do my job first. One minute. That's all." Dorian's arms fell to his side. Paralysed with terror, he did not know what to do. Suddenly a wild hope flashed across his brain. "Stop," he cried. "How long ago is it since your sister died? Quick, tell me!" "Eighteen years," said the man. "Why do you ask me? What do years matter?" "Eighteen years," laughed Dorian Gray, with a touch of triumph in his voice. "Eighteen years! Set me under the lamp and look at my face!" James Vane hesitated for a moment, not understanding what was meant. Then he seized Dorian Gray and dragged him from the archway. Dim and wavering as was the wind-blown light, yet it served to show him the hideous error, as it seemed, into which he had fallen, for the face of the man he had sought to kill had all the bloom of boyhood, all the unstained purity of youth. He seemed little more than a lad of twenty summers, hardly older, if older indeed at all, than his sister had been when they had parted so many years ago. It was obvious that this was not the man who had destroyed her life. He loosened his hold and reeled back. "My God! my God!" he cried, "and I would have murdered you!" Dorian Gray drew a long breath. "You have been on the brink of committing a terrible crime, my man," he said, looking at him sternly. "Let this be a warning to you not to take vengeance into your own hands." "Forgive me, sir," muttered James Vane. "I was deceived. A chance word I heard in that damned den set me on the wrong track." "You had better go home and put that pistol away, or you may get into trouble," said Dorian, turning on his heel and going slowly down the street. James Vane stood on the pavement in horror. He was trembling from head to foot. After a little while, a black shadow that had been creeping along the dripping wall moved out into the light and came close to him with stealthy footsteps. He felt a hand laid on his arm and looked round with a start. It was one of the women who had been drinking at the bar. "Why didn't you kill him?" she hissed out, putting haggard face quite close to his. "I knew you were following him when you rushed out from Daly's. You fool! You should have killed him. He has lots of money, and he's as bad as bad." "He is not the man I am looking for," he answered, "and I want no man's money. I want a man's life. The man whose life I want must be nearly forty now. This one is little more than a boy. Thank God, I have not got his blood upon my hands." The woman gave a bitter laugh. "Little more than a boy!" she sneered. "Why, man, it's nigh on eighteen years since Prince Charming made me what I am." "You lie!" cried James Vane. She raised her hand up to heaven. "Before God I am telling the truth," she cried. "Before God?" "Strike me dumb if it ain't so. He is the worst one that comes here. They say he has sold himself to the devil for a pretty face. It's nigh on eighteen years since I met him. He hasn't changed much since then. I have, though," she added, with a sickly leer. "You swear this?" "I swear it," came in hoarse echo from her flat mouth. "But don't give me away to him," she whined; "I am afraid of him. Let me have some money for my night's lodging." He broke from her with an oath and rushed to the corner of the street, but Dorian Gray had disappeared. When he looked back, the woman had vanished also.

Chapter 16

https://web.archive.org/web/20210304030722/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/picture-dorian-gray/summary/chapter-16

Dorian's cab ride takes him to a sketchy part of town. Along the way, he can't help but mull over the words Henry told him when they first met--the only way to cure the soul is to give in to the senses. The best way he can think of to do that is to buy forgetfulness with opium. Dorian's conscience is really getting to him, and so is his opium craving. Finally, way out in the middle of nowhere, the cab deposits Dorian in a horrifying quarter of the city. He walks through the hideous, poverty-stricken streets for a while, then turns in at a shabby old house. Inside, he encounters some creepy characters, including his old friend, Adrian Singleton, one of the young men Basil accused him of ruining. Adrian is in a bad state--he doesn't care about anything but opium. Dorian is disgusted; he asks Adrian to accompany him to another opium den, but he refuses. The pair is accosted by two beggar women, one of whom seems to know Dorian. He's revolted, and throws some money at her to make her go away. Dorian gets ready to leave, but, before he goes, he tells Adrian to write to him if he needs anything --could he possibly feel bad about ruining the guy's life? As Dorian leaves, the beggar woman laughs and calls him "the devil's bargain" . He yells back at her, and she mockingly calls him "Prince Charming." A sailor in the background leaps up when he hears this nickname, and follows Dorian out. Dorian walks along the waterfront through the rain, and he ponders Adrian's downfall. Could it really be his fault? Was Basil actually right, or all his former friends responsible for their own failures? He decides that the latter is true, and he bears no responsibility. Dorian hurries on, but is suddenly seized by a mysterious figure. He finds himself pushed against a wall, a gun at his head. The assailant accuses Dorian of ruining Sibyl Vane's life--it turns out that he's James Vane, back from Australia after all these years. He is the sailor that overheard Dorian called "Prince Charming," which he remembers to be her nickname for him. Dorian panics and tries to deny it, but James is determined to kill him before he flees the country aboard a ship for India. Suddenly, a brain wave hits Dorian--he asks how long ago Sibyl died. It was eighteen years ago, and, when he tells James to look at his face in the light, the vengeful sailor realizes that the man he's looking at can't be more than twenty. James is horrified by what he thinks is a terrible mistake--he's convinced he almost killed an innocent boy. James lets Dorian go, and he walks away, unharmed. The beggar woman from the opium den creeps up to James, and asks why he didn't go through with the murder. He tells her that Dorian wasn't the man he was looking for--he's too young. She only laughs, and tells him that it's been eighteen years since "Prince Charming" ruined her life... rumor has it that he sold his soul to the devil for eternal youth. James curses and rushes to look for Dorian--but he's gone.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/79.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Brothers Karamazov/section_78_part_0.txt

The Brothers Karamazov.book 11.chapter 10

book 11, chapter 10

{"name": "Book 11, Chapter 10", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-11-chapter-10", "summary": "Alyosha explains to his brother that Maria Kondratievna had rushed over an hour ago to tell him that Smerdyakov had hanged himself. Alyosha had hurried back to her cottage to discover Smerdyakov still hanging, and a brief suicide note left on the table. Alyosha then went straight to the police commissioner to tell him the news, before arriving at Ivan's. Alyosha remarks that Ivan looks ill, and Ivan mysteriously states that he already knew that Smerdyakov had hanged himself. Ivan seems to think it's very significant that the wet towel he had wrapped around his head in the previous chapter is lying folded and unused next to his dressing table. Ivan then raves to Alyosha that \"he\" was here. They had even talked about Smerdyakov's suicide and Ivan's plan to confess his dealings with Smerdyakov at the trial the next day. The devil had scoffed at Ivan's plan as being born of pride, a need for praise for his noble defense of Dmitri. Ivan continues to rave about how everyone - Katerina, Lise, even Alyosha - despises him. Over the next two hours he becomes more and more delirious and falls asleep on the couch. Alyosha lies next to him and prays.", "analysis": ""}

Chapter X. "It Was He Who Said That" Alyosha coming in told Ivan that a little over an hour ago Marya Kondratyevna had run to his rooms and informed him Smerdyakov had taken his own life. "I went in to clear away the samovar and he was hanging on a nail in the wall." On Alyosha's inquiring whether she had informed the police, she answered that she had told no one, "but I flew straight to you, I've run all the way." She seemed perfectly crazy, Alyosha reported, and was shaking like a leaf. When Alyosha ran with her to the cottage, he found Smerdyakov still hanging. On the table lay a note: "I destroy my life of my own will and desire, so as to throw no blame on any one." Alyosha left the note on the table and went straight to the police captain and told him all about it. "And from him I've come straight to you," said Alyosha, in conclusion, looking intently into Ivan's face. He had not taken his eyes off him while he told his story, as though struck by something in his expression. "Brother," he cried suddenly, "you must be terribly ill. You look and don't seem to understand what I tell you." "It's a good thing you came," said Ivan, as though brooding, and not hearing Alyosha's exclamation. "I knew he had hanged himself." "From whom?" "I don't know. But I knew. Did I know? Yes, he told me. He told me so just now." Ivan stood in the middle of the room, and still spoke in the same brooding tone, looking at the ground. "Who is _he_?" asked Alyosha, involuntarily looking round. "He's slipped away." Ivan raised his head and smiled softly. "He was afraid of you, of a dove like you. You are a 'pure cherub.' Dmitri calls you a cherub. Cherub!... the thunderous rapture of the seraphim. What are seraphim? Perhaps a whole constellation. But perhaps that constellation is only a chemical molecule. There's a constellation of the Lion and the Sun. Don't you know it?" "Brother, sit down," said Alyosha in alarm. "For goodness' sake, sit down on the sofa! You are delirious; put your head on the pillow, that's right. Would you like a wet towel on your head? Perhaps it will do you good." "Give me the towel: it's here on the chair. I just threw it down there." "It's not here. Don't worry yourself. I know where it is--here," said Alyosha, finding a clean towel, folded up and unused, by Ivan's dressing- table in the other corner of the room. Ivan looked strangely at the towel: recollection seemed to come back to him for an instant. "Stay"--he got up from the sofa--"an hour ago I took that new towel from there and wetted it. I wrapped it round my head and threw it down here ... How is it it's dry? There was no other." "You put that towel on your head?" asked Alyosha. "Yes, and walked up and down the room an hour ago ... Why have the candles burnt down so? What's the time?" "Nearly twelve." "No, no, no!" Ivan cried suddenly. "It was not a dream. He was here; he was sitting here, on that sofa. When you knocked at the window, I threw a glass at him ... this one. Wait a minute. I was asleep last time, but this dream was not a dream. It has happened before. I have dreams now, Alyosha ... yet they are not dreams, but reality. I walk about, talk and see ... though I am asleep. But he was sitting here, on that sofa there.... He is frightfully stupid, Alyosha, frightfully stupid." Ivan laughed suddenly and began pacing about the room. "Who is stupid? Of whom are you talking, brother?" Alyosha asked anxiously again. "The devil! He's taken to visiting me. He's been here twice, almost three times. He taunted me with being angry at his being a simple devil and not Satan, with scorched wings, in thunder and lightning. But he is not Satan: that's a lie. He is an impostor. He is simply a devil--a paltry, trivial devil. He goes to the baths. If you undressed him, you'd be sure to find he had a tail, long and smooth like a Danish dog's, a yard long, dun color.... Alyosha, you are cold. You've been in the snow. Would you like some tea? What? Is it cold? Shall I tell her to bring some? _C'est a ne pas mettre un chien dehors._..." Alyosha ran to the washing-stand, wetted the towel, persuaded Ivan to sit down again, and put the wet towel round his head. He sat down beside him. "What were you telling me just now about Lise?" Ivan began again. (He was becoming very talkative.) "I like Lise. I said something nasty about her. It was a lie. I like her ... I am afraid for Katya to-morrow. I am more afraid of her than of anything. On account of the future. She will cast me off to-morrow and trample me under foot. She thinks that I am ruining Mitya from jealousy on her account! Yes, she thinks that! But it's not so. To-morrow the cross, but not the gallows. No, I shan't hang myself. Do you know, I can never commit suicide, Alyosha. Is it because I am base? I am not a coward. Is it from love of life? How did I know that Smerdyakov had hanged himself? Yes, it was _he_ told me so." "And you are quite convinced that there has been some one here?" asked Alyosha. "Yes, on that sofa in the corner. You would have driven him away. You did drive him away: he disappeared when you arrived. I love your face, Alyosha. Did you know that I loved your face? And _he_ is myself, Alyosha. All that's base in me, all that's mean and contemptible. Yes, I am a romantic. He guessed it ... though it's a libel. He is frightfully stupid; but it's to his advantage. He has cunning, animal cunning--he knew how to infuriate me. He kept taunting me with believing in him, and that was how he made me listen to him. He fooled me like a boy. He told me a great deal that was true about myself, though. I should never have owned it to myself. Do you know, Alyosha," Ivan added in an intensely earnest and confidential tone, "I should be awfully glad to think that it was _he_ and not I." "He has worn you out," said Alyosha, looking compassionately at his brother. "He's been teasing me. And you know he does it so cleverly, so cleverly. 'Conscience! What is conscience? I make it up for myself. Why am I tormented by it? From habit. From the universal habit of mankind for the seven thousand years. So let us give it up, and we shall be gods.' It was he said that, it was he said that!" "And not you, not you?" Alyosha could not help crying, looking frankly at his brother. "Never mind him, anyway; have done with him and forget him. And let him take with him all that you curse now, and never come back!" "Yes, but he is spiteful. He laughed at me. He was impudent, Alyosha," Ivan said, with a shudder of offense. "But he was unfair to me, unfair to me about lots of things. He told lies about me to my face. 'Oh, you are going to perform an act of heroic virtue: to confess you murdered your father, that the valet murdered him at your instigation.' " "Brother," Alyosha interposed, "restrain yourself. It was not you murdered him. It's not true!" "That's what he says, he, and he knows it. 'You are going to perform an act of heroic virtue, and you don't believe in virtue; that's what tortures you and makes you angry, that's why you are so vindictive.' He said that to me about me and he knows what he says." "It's you say that, not he," exclaimed Alyosha mournfully, "and you say it because you are ill and delirious, tormenting yourself." "No, he knows what he says. 'You are going from pride,' he says. 'You'll stand up and say it was I killed him, and why do you writhe with horror? You are lying! I despise your opinion, I despise your horror!' He said that about me. 'And do you know you are longing for their praise--"he is a criminal, a murderer, but what a generous soul; he wanted to save his brother and he confessed." ' That's a lie, Alyosha!" Ivan cried suddenly, with flashing eyes. "I don't want the low rabble to praise me, I swear I don't! That's a lie! That's why I threw the glass at him and it broke against his ugly face." "Brother, calm yourself, stop!" Alyosha entreated him. "Yes, he knows how to torment one. He's cruel," Ivan went on, unheeding. "I had an inkling from the first what he came for. 'Granting that you go through pride, still you had a hope that Smerdyakov might be convicted and sent to Siberia, and Mitya would be acquitted, while you would only be punished with moral condemnation' ('Do you hear?' he laughed then)--'and some people will praise you. But now Smerdyakov's dead, he has hanged himself, and who'll believe you alone? But yet you are going, you are going, you'll go all the same, you've decided to go. What are you going for now?' That's awful, Alyosha. I can't endure such questions. Who dare ask me such questions?" "Brother," interposed Alyosha--his heart sank with terror, but he still seemed to hope to bring Ivan to reason--"how could he have told you of Smerdyakov's death before I came, when no one knew of it and there was no time for any one to know of it?" "He told me," said Ivan firmly, refusing to admit a doubt. "It was all he did talk about, if you come to that. 'And it would be all right if you believed in virtue,' he said. 'No matter if they disbelieve you, you are going for the sake of principle. But you are a little pig like Fyodor Pavlovitch, and what do you want with virtue? Why do you want to go meddling if your sacrifice is of no use to any one? Because you don't know yourself why you go! Oh, you'd give a great deal to know yourself why you go! And can you have made up your mind? You've not made up your mind. You'll sit all night deliberating whether to go or not. But you will go; you know you'll go. You know that whichever way you decide, the decision does not depend on you. You'll go because you won't dare not to go. Why won't you dare? You must guess that for yourself. That's a riddle for you!' He got up and went away. You came and he went. He called me a coward, Alyosha! _Le mot de l'enigme_ is that I am a coward. 'It is not for such eagles to soar above the earth.' It was he added that--he! And Smerdyakov said the same. He must be killed! Katya despises me. I've seen that for a month past. Even Lise will begin to despise me! 'You are going in order to be praised.' That's a brutal lie! And you despise me too, Alyosha. Now I am going to hate you again! And I hate the monster, too! I hate the monster! I don't want to save the monster. Let him rot in Siberia! He's begun singing a hymn! Oh, to-morrow I'll go, stand before them, and spit in their faces!" He jumped up in a frenzy, flung off the towel, and fell to pacing up and down the room again. Alyosha recalled what he had just said. "I seem to be sleeping awake.... I walk, I speak, I see, but I am asleep." It seemed to be just like that now. Alyosha did not leave him. The thought passed through his mind to run for a doctor, but he was afraid to leave his brother alone: there was no one to whom he could leave him. By degrees Ivan lost consciousness completely at last. He still went on talking, talking incessantly, but quite incoherently, and even articulated his words with difficulty. Suddenly he staggered violently; but Alyosha was in time to support him. Ivan let him lead him to his bed. Alyosha undressed him somehow and put him to bed. He sat watching over him for another two hours. The sick man slept soundly, without stirring, breathing softly and evenly. Alyosha took a pillow and lay down on the sofa, without undressing. As he fell asleep he prayed for Mitya and Ivan. He began to understand Ivan's illness. "The anguish of a proud determination. An earnest conscience!" God, in Whom he disbelieved, and His truth were gaining mastery over his heart, which still refused to submit. "Yes," the thought floated through Alyosha's head as it lay on the pillow, "yes, if Smerdyakov is dead, no one will believe Ivan's evidence; but he will go and give it." Alyosha smiled softly. "God will conquer!" he thought. "He will either rise up in the light of truth, or ... he'll perish in hate, revenging on himself and on every one his having served the cause he does not believe in," Alyosha added bitterly, and again he prayed for Ivan.

Book 11, Chapter 10

https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-11-chapter-10

Alyosha explains to his brother that Maria Kondratievna had rushed over an hour ago to tell him that Smerdyakov had hanged himself. Alyosha had hurried back to her cottage to discover Smerdyakov still hanging, and a brief suicide note left on the table. Alyosha then went straight to the police commissioner to tell him the news, before arriving at Ivan's. Alyosha remarks that Ivan looks ill, and Ivan mysteriously states that he already knew that Smerdyakov had hanged himself. Ivan seems to think it's very significant that the wet towel he had wrapped around his head in the previous chapter is lying folded and unused next to his dressing table. Ivan then raves to Alyosha that "he" was here. They had even talked about Smerdyakov's suicide and Ivan's plan to confess his dealings with Smerdyakov at the trial the next day. The devil had scoffed at Ivan's plan as being born of pride, a need for praise for his noble defense of Dmitri. Ivan continues to rave about how everyone - Katerina, Lise, even Alyosha - despises him. Over the next two hours he becomes more and more delirious and falls asleep on the couch. Alyosha lies next to him and prays.

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/95.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Brothers Karamazov/section_15_part_2.txt

The Brothers Karamazov.epilogue.chapter 2

chapter 2

{"name": "Chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section16/", "summary": "For a Moment the Lie Became the Truth Alyosha visits Dmitri in prison and tells him about the plan for his escape. Though Dmitri longs to be redeemed by suffering, and has, in a sense, accepted the idea of his punishment, he agrees to the escape plan so that he will be able to remain with Grushenka. He will have to flee to America, but he says he will not spend his entire life away from Russia. One day, he will return. Katerina arrives. She and Dmitri reconcile, and Katerina tells him that she never truly believed him to be guilty. Grushenka arrives, and when Katerina begs for her forgiveness as well, Grushenka refuses to forgive her. Katerina runs from the room. Dmitri reproaches Grushenka, and Alyosha tells him sternly that he has no right to be critical of her. Alyosha then runs after Katerina. She says that she cannot blame Grushenka for not forgiving her", "analysis": ""}

Chapter II. For A Moment The Lie Becomes Truth He hurried to the hospital where Mitya was lying now. The day after his fate was determined, Mitya had fallen ill with nervous fever, and was sent to the prison division of the town hospital. But at the request of several persons (Alyosha, Madame Hohlakov, Lise, etc.), Doctor Varvinsky had put Mitya not with other prisoners, but in a separate little room, the one where Smerdyakov had been. It is true that there was a sentinel at the other end of the corridor, and there was a grating over the window, so that Varvinsky could be at ease about the indulgence he had shown, which was not quite legal, indeed; but he was a kind-hearted and compassionate young man. He knew how hard it would be for a man like Mitya to pass at once so suddenly into the society of robbers and murderers, and that he must get used to it by degrees. The visits of relations and friends were informally sanctioned by the doctor and overseer, and even by the police captain. But only Alyosha and Grushenka had visited Mitya. Rakitin had tried to force his way in twice, but Mitya persistently begged Varvinsky not to admit him. Alyosha found him sitting on his bed in a hospital dressing-gown, rather feverish, with a towel, soaked in vinegar and water, on his head. He looked at Alyosha as he came in with an undefined expression, but there was a shade of something like dread discernible in it. He had become terribly preoccupied since the trial; sometimes he would be silent for half an hour together, and seemed to be pondering something heavily and painfully, oblivious of everything about him. If he roused himself from his brooding and began to talk, he always spoke with a kind of abruptness and never of what he really wanted to say. He looked sometimes with a face of suffering at his brother. He seemed to be more at ease with Grushenka than with Alyosha. It is true, he scarcely spoke to her at all, but as soon as she came in, his whole face lighted up with joy. Alyosha sat down beside him on the bed in silence. This time Mitya was waiting for Alyosha in suspense, but he did not dare ask him a question. He felt it almost unthinkable that Katya would consent to come, and at the same time he felt that if she did not come, something inconceivable would happen. Alyosha understood his feelings. "Trifon Borissovitch," Mitya began nervously, "has pulled his whole inn to pieces, I am told. He's taken up the flooring, pulled apart the planks, split up all the gallery, I am told. He is seeking treasure all the time--the fifteen hundred roubles which the prosecutor said I'd hidden there. He began playing these tricks, they say, as soon as he got home. Serve him right, the swindler! The guard here told me yesterday; he comes from there." "Listen," began Alyosha. "She will come, but I don't know when. Perhaps to-day, perhaps in a few days, that I can't tell. But she will come, she will, that's certain." Mitya started, would have said something, but was silent. The news had a tremendous effect on him. It was evident that he would have liked terribly to know what had been said, but he was again afraid to ask. Something cruel and contemptuous from Katya would have cut him like a knife at that moment. "This was what she said among other things; that I must be sure to set your conscience at rest about escaping. If Ivan is not well by then she will see to it all herself." "You've spoken of that already," Mitya observed musingly. "And you have repeated it to Grusha," observed Alyosha. "Yes," Mitya admitted. "She won't come this morning." He looked timidly at his brother. "She won't come till the evening. When I told her yesterday that Katya was taking measures, she was silent, but she set her mouth. She only whispered, 'Let her!' She understood that it was important. I did not dare to try her further. She understands now, I think, that Katya no longer cares for me, but loves Ivan." "Does she?" broke from Alyosha. "Perhaps she does not. Only she is not coming this morning," Mitya hastened to explain again; "I asked her to do something for me. You know, Ivan is superior to all of us. He ought to live, not us. He will recover." "Would you believe it, though Katya is alarmed about him, she scarcely doubts of his recovery," said Alyosha. "That means that she is convinced he will die. It's because she is frightened she's so sure he will get well." "Ivan has a strong constitution, and I, too, believe there's every hope that he will get well," Alyosha observed anxiously. "Yes, he will get well. But she is convinced that he will die. She has a great deal of sorrow to bear..." A silence followed. A grave anxiety was fretting Mitya. "Alyosha, I love Grusha terribly," he said suddenly in a shaking voice, full of tears. "They won't let her go out there to you," Alyosha put in at once. "And there is something else I wanted to tell you," Mitya went on, with a sudden ring in his voice. "If they beat me on the way or out there, I won't submit to it. I shall kill some one, and shall be shot for it. And this will be going on for twenty years! They speak to me rudely as it is. I've been lying here all night, passing judgment on myself. I am not ready! I am not able to resign myself. I wanted to sing a 'hymn'; but if a guard speaks rudely to me, I have not the strength to bear it. For Grusha I would bear anything ... anything except blows.... But she won't be allowed to come there." Alyosha smiled gently. "Listen, brother, once for all," he said. "This is what I think about it. And you know that I would not tell you a lie. Listen: you are not ready, and such a cross is not for you. What's more, you don't need such a martyr's cross when you are not ready for it. If you had murdered our father, it would grieve me that you should reject your punishment. But you are innocent, and such a cross is too much for you. You wanted to make yourself another man by suffering. I say, only remember that other man always, all your life and wherever you go; and that will be enough for you. Your refusal of that great cross will only serve to make you feel all your life an even greater duty, and that constant feeling will do more to make you a new man, perhaps, than if you went there. For there you would not endure it and would repine, and perhaps at last would say: 'I am quits.' The lawyer was right about that. Such heavy burdens are not for all men. For some they are impossible. These are my thoughts about it, if you want them so much. If other men would have to answer for your escape, officers or soldiers, then I would not have 'allowed' you," smiled Alyosha. "But they declare--the superintendent of that _etape_ told Ivan himself--that if it's well managed there will be no great inquiry, and that they can get off easily. Of course, bribing is dishonest even in such a case, but I can't undertake to judge about it, because if Ivan and Katya commissioned me to act for you, I know I should go and give bribes. I must tell you the truth. And so I can't judge of your own action. But let me assure you that I shall never condemn you. And it would be a strange thing if I could judge you in this. Now I think I've gone into everything." "But I do condemn myself!" cried Mitya. "I shall escape, that was settled apart from you; could Mitya Karamazov do anything but run away? But I shall condemn myself, and I will pray for my sin for ever. That's how the Jesuits talk, isn't it? Just as we are doing?" "Yes." Alyosha smiled gently. "I love you for always telling the whole truth and never hiding anything," cried Mitya, with a joyful laugh. "So I've caught my Alyosha being Jesuitical. I must kiss you for that. Now listen to the rest; I'll open the other side of my heart to you. This is what I planned and decided. If I run away, even with money and a passport, and even to America, I should be cheered up by the thought that I am not running away for pleasure, not for happiness, but to another exile as bad, perhaps, as Siberia. It is as bad, Alyosha, it is! I hate that America, damn it, already. Even though Grusha will be with me. Just look at her; is she an American? She is Russian, Russian to the marrow of her bones; she will be homesick for the mother country, and I shall see every hour that she is suffering for my sake, that she has taken up that cross for me. And what harm has she done? And how shall I, too, put up with the rabble out there, though they may be better than I, every one of them? I hate that America already! And though they may be wonderful at machinery, every one of them, damn them, they are not of my soul. I love Russia, Alyosha, I love the Russian God, though I am a scoundrel myself. I shall choke there!" he exclaimed, his eyes suddenly flashing. His voice was trembling with tears. "So this is what I've decided, Alyosha, listen," he began again, mastering his emotion. "As soon as I arrive there with Grusha, we will set to work at once on the land, in solitude, somewhere very remote, with wild bears. There must be some remote parts even there. I am told there are still Redskins there, somewhere, on the edge of the horizon. So to the country of the _Last of the Mohicans_, and there we'll tackle the grammar at once, Grusha and I. Work and grammar--that's how we'll spend three years. And by that time we shall speak English like any Englishman. And as soon as we've learnt it--good-by to America! We'll run here to Russia as American citizens. Don't be uneasy--we would not come to this little town. We'd hide somewhere, a long way off, in the north or in the south. I shall be changed by that time, and she will, too, in America. The doctors shall make me some sort of wart on my face--what's the use of their being so mechanical!--or else I'll put out one eye, let my beard grow a yard, and I shall turn gray, fretting for Russia. I dare say they won't recognize us. And if they do, let them send us to Siberia. I don't care. It will show it's our fate. We'll work on the land here, too, somewhere in the wilds, and I'll make up as an American all my life. But we shall die on our own soil. That's my plan, and it shan't be altered. Do you approve?" "Yes," said Alyosha, not wanting to contradict him. Mitya paused for a minute and said suddenly: "And how they worked it up at the trial! Didn't they work it up!" "If they had not, you would have been convicted just the same," said Alyosha, with a sigh. "Yes, people are sick of me here! God bless them, but it's hard," Mitya moaned miserably. Again there was silence for a minute. "Alyosha, put me out of my misery at once!" he exclaimed suddenly. "Tell me, is she coming now, or not? Tell me? What did she say? How did she say it?" "She said she would come, but I don't know whether she will come to-day. It's hard for her, you know," Alyosha looked timidly at his brother. "I should think it is hard for her! Alyosha, it will drive me out of my mind. Grusha keeps looking at me. She understands. My God, calm my heart: what is it I want? I want Katya! Do I understand what I want? It's the headstrong, evil Karamazov spirit! No, I am not fit for suffering. I am a scoundrel, that's all one can say." "Here she is!" cried Alyosha. At that instant Katya appeared in the doorway. For a moment she stood still, gazing at Mitya with a dazed expression. He leapt impulsively to his feet, and a scared look came into his face. He turned pale, but a timid, pleading smile appeared on his lips at once, and with an irresistible impulse he held out both hands to Katya. Seeing it, she flew impetuously to him. She seized him by the hands, and almost by force made him sit down on the bed. She sat down beside him, and still keeping his hands pressed them violently. Several times they both strove to speak, but stopped short and again gazed speechless with a strange smile, their eyes fastened on one another. So passed two minutes. "Have you forgiven me?" Mitya faltered at last, and at the same moment turning to Alyosha, his face working with joy, he cried, "Do you hear what I am asking, do you hear?" "That's what I loved you for, that you are generous at heart!" broke from Katya. "My forgiveness is no good to you, nor yours to me; whether you forgive me or not, you will always be a sore place in my heart, and I in yours--so it must be...." She stopped to take breath. "What have I come for?" she began again with nervous haste: "to embrace your feet, to press your hands like this, till it hurts--you remember how in Moscow I used to squeeze them--to tell you again that you are my god, my joy, to tell you that I love you madly," she moaned in anguish, and suddenly pressed his hand greedily to her lips. Tears streamed from her eyes. Alyosha stood speechless and confounded; he had never expected what he was seeing. "Love is over, Mitya!" Katya began again, "but the past is painfully dear to me. Know that you will always be so. But now let what might have been come true for one minute," she faltered, with a drawn smile, looking into his face joyfully again. "You love another woman, and I love another man, and yet I shall love you for ever, and you will love me; do you know that? Do you hear? Love me, love me all your life!" she cried, with a quiver almost of menace in her voice. "I shall love you, and ... do you know, Katya," Mitya began, drawing a deep breath at each word, "do you know, five days ago, that same evening, I loved you.... When you fell down and were carried out ... All my life! So it will be, so it will always be--" So they murmured to one another frantic words, almost meaningless, perhaps not even true, but at that moment it was all true, and they both believed what they said implicitly. "Katya," cried Mitya suddenly, "do you believe I murdered him? I know you don't believe it now, but then ... when you gave evidence.... Surely, surely you did not believe it!" "I did not believe it even then. I've never believed it. I hated you, and for a moment I persuaded myself. While I was giving evidence I persuaded myself and believed it, but when I'd finished speaking I left off believing it at once. Don't doubt that! I have forgotten that I came here to punish myself," she said, with a new expression in her voice, quite unlike the loving tones of a moment before. "Woman, yours is a heavy burden," broke, as it were, involuntarily from Mitya. "Let me go," she whispered. "I'll come again. It's more than I can bear now." She was getting up from her place, but suddenly uttered a loud scream and staggered back. Grushenka walked suddenly and noiselessly into the room. No one had expected her. Katya moved swiftly to the door, but when she reached Grushenka, she stopped suddenly, turned as white as chalk and moaned softly, almost in a whisper: "Forgive me!" Grushenka stared at her and, pausing for an instant, in a vindictive, venomous voice, answered: "We are full of hatred, my girl, you and I! We are both full of hatred! As though we could forgive one another! Save him, and I'll worship you all my life." "You won't forgive her!" cried Mitya, with frantic reproach. "Don't be anxious, I'll save him for you!" Katya whispered rapidly, and she ran out of the room. "And you could refuse to forgive her when she begged your forgiveness herself?" Mitya exclaimed bitterly again. "Mitya, don't dare to blame her; you have no right to!" Alyosha cried hotly. "Her proud lips spoke, not her heart," Grushenka brought out in a tone of disgust. "If she saves you I'll forgive her everything--" She stopped speaking, as though suppressing something. She could not yet recover herself. She had come in, as appeared afterwards, accidentally, with no suspicion of what she would meet. "Alyosha, run after her!" Mitya cried to his brother; "tell her ... I don't know ... don't let her go away like this!" "I'll come to you again at nightfall," said Alyosha, and he ran after Katya. He overtook her outside the hospital grounds. She was walking fast, but as soon as Alyosha caught her up she said quickly: "No, before that woman I can't punish myself! I asked her forgiveness because I wanted to punish myself to the bitter end. She would not forgive me.... I like her for that!" she added, in an unnatural voice, and her eyes flashed with fierce resentment. "My brother did not expect this in the least," muttered Alyosha. "He was sure she would not come--" "No doubt. Let us leave that," she snapped. "Listen: I can't go with you to the funeral now. I've sent them flowers. I think they still have money. If necessary, tell them I'll never abandon them.... Now leave me, leave me, please. You are late as it is--the bells are ringing for the service.... Leave me, please!"

Chapter 2

https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section16/

For a Moment the Lie Became the Truth Alyosha visits Dmitri in prison and tells him about the plan for his escape. Though Dmitri longs to be redeemed by suffering, and has, in a sense, accepted the idea of his punishment, he agrees to the escape plan so that he will be able to remain with Grushenka. He will have to flee to America, but he says he will not spend his entire life away from Russia. One day, he will return. Katerina arrives. She and Dmitri reconcile, and Katerina tells him that she never truly believed him to be guilty. Grushenka arrives, and when Katerina begs for her forgiveness as well, Grushenka refuses to forgive her. Katerina runs from the room. Dmitri reproaches Grushenka, and Alyosha tells him sternly that he has no right to be critical of her. Alyosha then runs after Katerina. She says that she cannot blame Grushenka for not forgiving her

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/107-chapters/03.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Far From the Madding Crowd/section_2_part_0.txt

Far From the Madding Crowd.chapter 3

chapter 3

{"name": "Chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-3", "summary": "Farmer Oak decides to take a walk down to his pretty young neighbor's plantation to see if she's around. He remembers the woman saying that she lost her hat the day before, so he decides to try and find it. He soon does, and takes it back to his hut. Soon, the young owner comes around looking for it. He's about to leave his hut to return it, but he pauses when he sees the girl turn around on her horse and lie flat across its back to ride underneath some low-hanging branches. It's a really impressive bit of riding. Then, after looking around to see if anyone's watching, she gets back up onto the saddle and straddles it man-style and rides away. An hour later, the girl rides past again, this time riding sidesaddle. By this point, Oak is convinced that she's the most desirable woman in the world. Finally, Oak comes up to her and says he found a hat. He asks if it's hers . But he can't go and confess to spying on her, can he? Unfortunately, he gives himself away by mentioning the exact time she lost it. Way to be slick, Oak. He also mentions that he saw her riding toward the mill. This embarrasses the young woman, who probably doesn't like the idea of anyone seeing her ride astride, because it was mannish and improper. Then the two of them don't see one another for a few days. But one evening, Farmer Oak returns to his little hut. It's cold outside, so he heaps a bunch of fuel onto his fire. He falls asleep before opening the smoke vents, though, and nearly dies of smoke inhalation. He only survives because the young woman sees the smoke and pulls him to safety. He learns that she came because she heard his dog howling. He tells her that he'd like to know her name, now that she has saved his life. But she says if he wants to know it, he should ask someone else. She doesn't believe that the two of them will ever have much to do with one another. While he thanks her, the young woman offers him the opportunity to hold her hand. He compliments it on how smooth and beautiful it is, especially considering that wintertime. She then offers him the opportunity to kiss her hand if he wants to. He tells her that kissing her hand hadn't even crossed his mind, but that he will totally kiss her hand if she wants him to. Then, she pulls her hand away because he has had the nerve to tell her he wasn't already thinking of kissing it. You following all of this? There are some serious flirty head games going on. She runs out of the hut and tells him that it's now his turn to go out and figure out what her name is.", "analysis": ""}

A GIRL ON HORSEBACK--CONVERSATION The sluggish day began to break. Even its position terrestrially is one of the elements of a new interest, and for no particular reason save that the incident of the night had occurred there Oak went again into the plantation. Lingering and musing here, he heard the steps of a horse at the foot of the hill, and soon there appeared in view an auburn pony with a girl on its back, ascending by the path leading past the cattle-shed. She was the young woman of the night before. Gabriel instantly thought of the hat she had mentioned as having lost in the wind; possibly she had come to look for it. He hastily scanned the ditch and after walking about ten yards along it found the hat among the leaves. Gabriel took it in his hand and returned to his hut. Here he ensconced himself, and peeped through the loophole in the direction of the rider's approach. She came up and looked around--then on the other side of the hedge. Gabriel was about to advance and restore the missing article when an unexpected performance induced him to suspend the action for the present. The path, after passing the cowshed, bisected the plantation. It was not a bridle-path--merely a pedestrian's track, and the boughs spread horizontally at a height not greater than seven feet above the ground, which made it impossible to ride erect beneath them. The girl, who wore no riding-habit, looked around for a moment, as if to assure herself that all humanity was out of view, then dexterously dropped backwards flat upon the pony's back, her head over its tail, her feet against its shoulders, and her eyes to the sky. The rapidity of her glide into this position was that of a kingfisher--its noiselessness that of a hawk. Gabriel's eyes had scarcely been able to follow her. The tall lank pony seemed used to such doings, and ambled along unconcerned. Thus she passed under the level boughs. The performer seemed quite at home anywhere between a horse's head and its tail, and the necessity for this abnormal attitude having ceased with the passage of the plantation, she began to adopt another, even more obviously convenient than the first. She had no side-saddle, and it was very apparent that a firm seat upon the smooth leather beneath her was unattainable sideways. Springing to her accustomed perpendicular like a bowed sapling, and satisfying herself that nobody was in sight, she seated herself in the manner demanded by the saddle, though hardly expected of the woman, and trotted off in the direction of Tewnell Mill. Oak was amused, perhaps a little astonished, and hanging up the hat in his hut, went again among his ewes. An hour passed, the girl returned, properly seated now, with a bag of bran in front of her. On nearing the cattle-shed she was met by a boy bringing a milking-pail, who held the reins of the pony whilst she slid off. The boy led away the horse, leaving the pail with the young woman. Soon soft spirts alternating with loud spirts came in regular succession from within the shed, the obvious sounds of a person milking a cow. Gabriel took the lost hat in his hand, and waited beside the path she would follow in leaving the hill. She came, the pail in one hand, hanging against her knee. The left arm was extended as a balance, enough of it being shown bare to make Oak wish that the event had happened in the summer, when the whole would have been revealed. There was a bright air and manner about her now, by which she seemed to imply that the desirability of her existence could not be questioned; and this rather saucy assumption failed in being offensive because a beholder felt it to be, upon the whole, true. Like exceptional emphasis in the tone of a genius, that which would have made mediocrity ridiculous was an addition to recognised power. It was with some surprise that she saw Gabriel's face rising like the moon behind the hedge. The adjustment of the farmer's hazy conceptions of her charms to the portrait of herself she now presented him with was less a diminution than a difference. The starting-point selected by the judgment was her height. She seemed tall, but the pail was a small one, and the hedge diminutive; hence, making allowance for error by comparison with these, she could have been not above the height to be chosen by women as best. All features of consequence were severe and regular. It may have been observed by persons who go about the shires with eyes for beauty, that in Englishwoman a classically-formed face is seldom found to be united with a figure of the same pattern, the highly-finished features being generally too large for the remainder of the frame; that a graceful and proportionate figure of eight heads usually goes off into random facial curves. Without throwing a Nymphean tissue over a milkmaid, let it be said that here criticism checked itself as out of place, and looked at her proportions with a long consciousness of pleasure. From the contours of her figure in its upper part, she must have had a beautiful neck and shoulders; but since her infancy nobody had ever seen them. Had she been put into a low dress she would have run and thrust her head into a bush. Yet she was not a shy girl by any means; it was merely her instinct to draw the line dividing the seen from the unseen higher than they do it in towns. That the girl's thoughts hovered about her face and form as soon as she caught Oak's eyes conning the same page was natural, and almost certain. The self-consciousness shown would have been vanity if a little more pronounced, dignity if a little less. Rays of male vision seem to have a tickling effect upon virgin faces in rural districts; she brushed hers with her hand, as if Gabriel had been irritating its pink surface by actual touch, and the free air of her previous movements was reduced at the same time to a chastened phase of itself. Yet it was the man who blushed, the maid not at all. "I found a hat," said Oak. "It is mine," said she, and, from a sense of proportion, kept down to a small smile an inclination to laugh distinctly: "it flew away last night." "One o'clock this morning?" "Well--it was." She was surprised. "How did you know?" she said. "I was here." "You are Farmer Oak, are you not?" "That or thereabouts. I'm lately come to this place." "A large farm?" she inquired, casting her eyes round, and swinging back her hair, which was black in the shaded hollows of its mass; but it being now an hour past sunrise the rays touched its prominent curves with a colour of their own. "No; not large. About a hundred." (In speaking of farms the word "acres" is omitted by the natives, by analogy to such old expressions as "a stag of ten.") "I wanted my hat this morning," she went on. "I had to ride to Tewnell Mill." "Yes you had." "How do you know?" "I saw you." "Where?" she inquired, a misgiving bringing every muscle of her lineaments and frame to a standstill. "Here--going through the plantation, and all down the hill," said Farmer Oak, with an aspect excessively knowing with regard to some matter in his mind, as he gazed at a remote point in the direction named, and then turned back to meet his colloquist's eyes. A perception caused him to withdraw his own eyes from hers as suddenly as if he had been caught in a theft. Recollection of the strange antics she had indulged in when passing through the trees was succeeded in the girl by a nettled palpitation, and that by a hot face. It was a time to see a woman redden who was not given to reddening as a rule; not a point in the milkmaid but was of the deepest rose-colour. From the Maiden's Blush, through all varieties of the Provence down to the Crimson Tuscany, the countenance of Oak's acquaintance quickly graduated; whereupon he, in considerateness, turned away his head. The sympathetic man still looked the other way, and wondered when she would recover coolness sufficient to justify him in facing her again. He heard what seemed to be the flitting of a dead leaf upon the breeze, and looked. She had gone away. With an air between that of Tragedy and Comedy Gabriel returned to his work. Five mornings and evenings passed. The young woman came regularly to milk the healthy cow or to attend to the sick one, but never allowed her vision to stray in the direction of Oak's person. His want of tact had deeply offended her--not by seeing what he could not help, but by letting her know that he had seen it. For, as without law there is no sin, without eyes there is no indecorum; and she appeared to feel that Gabriel's espial had made her an indecorous woman without her own connivance. It was food for great regret with him; it was also a _contretemps_ which touched into life a latent heat he had experienced in that direction. The acquaintanceship might, however, have ended in a slow forgetting, but for an incident which occurred at the end of the same week. One afternoon it began to freeze, and the frost increased with evening, which drew on like a stealthy tightening of bonds. It was a time when in cottages the breath of the sleepers freezes to the sheets; when round the drawing-room fire of a thick-walled mansion the sitters' backs are cold, even whilst their faces are all aglow. Many a small bird went to bed supperless that night among the bare boughs. As the milking-hour drew near, Oak kept his usual watch upon the cowshed. At last he felt cold, and shaking an extra quantity of bedding round the yearling ewes he entered the hut and heaped more fuel upon the stove. The wind came in at the bottom of the door, and to prevent it Oak laid a sack there and wheeled the cot round a little more to the south. Then the wind spouted in at a ventilating hole--of which there was one on each side of the hut. Gabriel had always known that when the fire was lighted and the door closed one of these must be kept open--that chosen being always on the side away from the wind. Closing the slide to windward, he turned to open the other; on second thoughts the farmer considered that he would first sit down leaving both closed for a minute or two, till the temperature of the hut was a little raised. He sat down. His head began to ache in an unwonted manner, and, fancying himself weary by reason of the broken rests of the preceding nights, Oak decided to get up, open the slide, and then allow himself to fall asleep. He fell asleep, however, without having performed the necessary preliminary. How long he remained unconscious Gabriel never knew. During the first stages of his return to perception peculiar deeds seemed to be in course of enactment. His dog was howling, his head was aching fearfully--somebody was pulling him about, hands were loosening his neckerchief. On opening his eyes he found that evening had sunk to dusk in a strange manner of unexpectedness. The young girl with the remarkably pleasant lips and white teeth was beside him. More than this--astonishingly more--his head was upon her lap, his face and neck were disagreeably wet, and her fingers were unbuttoning his collar. "Whatever is the matter?" said Oak, vacantly. She seemed to experience mirth, but of too insignificant a kind to start enjoyment. "Nothing now," she answered, "since you are not dead. It is a wonder you were not suffocated in this hut of yours." "Ah, the hut!" murmured Gabriel. "I gave ten pounds for that hut. But I'll sell it, and sit under thatched hurdles as they did in old times, and curl up to sleep in a lock of straw! It played me nearly the same trick the other day!" Gabriel, by way of emphasis, brought down his fist upon the floor. "It was not exactly the fault of the hut," she observed in a tone which showed her to be that novelty among women--one who finished a thought before beginning the sentence which was to convey it. "You should, I think, have considered, and not have been so foolish as to leave the slides closed." "Yes I suppose I should," said Oak, absently. He was endeavouring to catch and appreciate the sensation of being thus with her, his head upon her dress, before the event passed on into the heap of bygone things. He wished she knew his impressions; but he would as soon have thought of carrying an odour in a net as of attempting to convey the intangibilities of his feeling in the coarse meshes of language. So he remained silent. She made him sit up, and then Oak began wiping his face and shaking himself like a Samson. "How can I thank 'ee?" he said at last, gratefully, some of the natural rusty red having returned to his face. "Oh, never mind that," said the girl, smiling, and allowing her smile to hold good for Gabriel's next remark, whatever that might prove to be. "How did you find me?" "I heard your dog howling and scratching at the door of the hut when I came to the milking (it was so lucky, Daisy's milking is almost over for the season, and I shall not come here after this week or the next). The dog saw me, and jumped over to me, and laid hold of my skirt. I came across and looked round the hut the very first thing to see if the slides were closed. My uncle has a hut like this one, and I have heard him tell his shepherd not to go to sleep without leaving a slide open. I opened the door, and there you were like dead. I threw the milk over you, as there was no water, forgetting it was warm, and no use." "I wonder if I should have died?" Gabriel said, in a low voice, which was rather meant to travel back to himself than to her. "Oh no!" the girl replied. She seemed to prefer a less tragic probability; to have saved a man from death involved talk that should harmonise with the dignity of such a deed--and she shunned it. "I believe you saved my life, Miss--I don't know your name. I know your aunt's, but not yours." "I would just as soon not tell it--rather not. There is no reason either why I should, as you probably will never have much to do with me." "Still, I should like to know." "You can inquire at my aunt's--she will tell you." "My name is Gabriel Oak." "And mine isn't. You seem fond of yours in speaking it so decisively, Gabriel Oak." "You see, it is the only one I shall ever have, and I must make the most of it." "I always think mine sounds odd and disagreeable." "I should think you might soon get a new one." "Mercy!--how many opinions you keep about you concerning other people, Gabriel Oak." "Well, Miss--excuse the words--I thought you would like them. But I can't match you, I know, in mapping out my mind upon my tongue. I never was very clever in my inside. But I thank you. Come, give me your hand." She hesitated, somewhat disconcerted at Oak's old-fashioned earnest conclusion to a dialogue lightly carried on. "Very well," she said, and gave him her hand, compressing her lips to a demure impassivity. He held it but an instant, and in his fear of being too demonstrative, swerved to the opposite extreme, touching her fingers with the lightness of a small-hearted person. "I am sorry," he said the instant after. "What for?" "Letting your hand go so quick." "You may have it again if you like; there it is." She gave him her hand again. Oak held it longer this time--indeed, curiously long. "How soft it is--being winter time, too--not chapped or rough or anything!" he said. "There--that's long enough," said she, though without pulling it away. "But I suppose you are thinking you would like to kiss it? You may if you want to." "I wasn't thinking of any such thing," said Gabriel, simply; "but I will--" "That you won't!" She snatched back her hand. Gabriel felt himself guilty of another want of tact. "Now find out my name," she said, teasingly; and withdrew.

Chapter 3

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-3

Farmer Oak decides to take a walk down to his pretty young neighbor's plantation to see if she's around. He remembers the woman saying that she lost her hat the day before, so he decides to try and find it. He soon does, and takes it back to his hut. Soon, the young owner comes around looking for it. He's about to leave his hut to return it, but he pauses when he sees the girl turn around on her horse and lie flat across its back to ride underneath some low-hanging branches. It's a really impressive bit of riding. Then, after looking around to see if anyone's watching, she gets back up onto the saddle and straddles it man-style and rides away. An hour later, the girl rides past again, this time riding sidesaddle. By this point, Oak is convinced that she's the most desirable woman in the world. Finally, Oak comes up to her and says he found a hat. He asks if it's hers . But he can't go and confess to spying on her, can he? Unfortunately, he gives himself away by mentioning the exact time she lost it. Way to be slick, Oak. He also mentions that he saw her riding toward the mill. This embarrasses the young woman, who probably doesn't like the idea of anyone seeing her ride astride, because it was mannish and improper. Then the two of them don't see one another for a few days. But one evening, Farmer Oak returns to his little hut. It's cold outside, so he heaps a bunch of fuel onto his fire. He falls asleep before opening the smoke vents, though, and nearly dies of smoke inhalation. He only survives because the young woman sees the smoke and pulls him to safety. He learns that she came because she heard his dog howling. He tells her that he'd like to know her name, now that she has saved his life. But she says if he wants to know it, he should ask someone else. She doesn't believe that the two of them will ever have much to do with one another. While he thanks her, the young woman offers him the opportunity to hold her hand. He compliments it on how smooth and beautiful it is, especially considering that wintertime. She then offers him the opportunity to kiss her hand if he wants to. He tells her that kissing her hand hadn't even crossed his mind, but that he will totally kiss her hand if she wants him to. Then, she pulls her hand away because he has had the nerve to tell her he wasn't already thinking of kissing it. You following all of this? There are some serious flirty head games going on. She runs out of the hut and tells him that it's now his turn to go out and figure out what her name is.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/51.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Tess of the d'Urbervilles/section_6_part_6.txt

Tess of the d'Urbervilles.chapter l

chapter l

{"name": "Chapter L", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210213065711/https://www.novelguide.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summaries/phase6-chapter45-52", "summary": "Back in Marlott, Tess takes over the household duties and grows food for the family on a piece of community land. One evening Alec yet again approaches, disguised as a farmer. He compares her to Eve in the garden and himself to \"the Other one,\" or the tempting snake. He begs her once again to allow him to help her and, although she is tempted, she refuses, and he leaves in anger. Tess's father dies, and the family faces eviction. Also, the neighbors are upset because \"the village had to be kept pure\"", "analysis": ""}

She plunged into the chilly equinoctial darkness as the clock struck ten, for her fifteen miles' walk under the steely stars. In lonely districts night is a protection rather than a danger to a noiseless pedestrian, and knowing this, Tess pursued the nearest course along by-lanes that she would almost have feared in the day-time; but marauders were wanting now, and spectral fears were driven out of her mind by thoughts of her mother. Thus she proceeded mile after mile, ascending and descending till she came to Bulbarrow, and about midnight looked from that height into the abyss of chaotic shade which was all that revealed itself of the vale on whose further side she was born. Having already traversed about five miles on the upland, she had now some ten or eleven in the lowland before her journey would be finished. The winding road downwards became just visible to her under the wan starlight as she followed it, and soon she paced a soil so contrasting with that above it that the difference was perceptible to the tread and to the smell. It was the heavy clay land of Blackmoor Vale, and a part of the Vale to which turnpike-roads had never penetrated. Superstitions linger longest on these heavy soils. Having once been forest, at this shadowy time it seemed to assert something of its old character, the far and the near being blended, and every tree and tall hedge making the most of its presence. The harts that had been hunted here, the witches that had been pricked and ducked, the green-spangled fairies that "whickered" at you as you passed;--the place teemed with beliefs in them still, and they formed an impish multitude now. At Nuttlebury she passed the village inn, whose sign creaked in response to the greeting of her footsteps, which not a human soul heard but herself. Under the thatched roofs her mind's eye beheld relaxed tendons and flaccid muscles, spread out in the darkness beneath coverlets made of little purple patchwork squares, and undergoing a bracing process at the hands of sleep for renewed labour on the morrow, as soon as a hint of pink nebulosity appeared on Hambledon Hill. At three she turned the last corner of the maze of lanes she had threaded, and entered Marlott, passing the field in which as a club-girl she had first seen Angel Clare, when he had not danced with her; the sense of disappointment remained with her yet. In the direction of her mother's house she saw a light. It came from the bedroom window, and a branch waved in front of it and made it wink at her. As soon as she could discern the outline of the house--newly thatched with her money--it had all its old effect upon Tess's imagination. Part of her body and life it ever seemed to be; the slope of its dormers, the finish of its gables, the broken courses of brick which topped the chimney, all had something in common with her personal character. A stupefaction had come into these features, to her regard; it meant the illness of her mother. She opened the door so softly as to disturb nobody; the lower room was vacant, but the neighbour who was sitting up with her mother came to the top of the stairs, and whispered that Mrs Durbeyfield was no better, though she was sleeping just then. Tess prepared herself a breakfast, and then took her place as nurse in her mother's chamber. In the morning, when she contemplated the children, they had all a curiously elongated look; although she had been away little more than a year, their growth was astounding; and the necessity of applying herself heart and soul to their needs took her out of her own cares. Her father's ill-health was the same indefinite kind, and he sat in his chair as usual. But the day after her arrival he was unusually bright. He had a rational scheme for living, and Tess asked him what it was. "I'm thinking of sending round to all the old antiqueerians in this part of England," he said, "asking them to subscribe to a fund to maintain me. I'm sure they'd see it as a romantical, artistical, and proper thing to do. They spend lots o' money in keeping up old ruins, and finding the bones o' things, and such like; and living remains must be more interesting to 'em still, if they only knowed of me. Would that somebody would go round and tell 'em what there is living among 'em, and they thinking nothing of him! If Pa'son Tringham, who discovered me, had lived, he'd ha' done it, I'm sure." Tess postponed her arguments on this high project till she had grappled with pressing matters in hand, which seemed little improved by her remittances. When indoor necessities had been eased, she turned her attention to external things. It was now the season for planting and sowing; many gardens and allotments of the villagers had already received their spring tillage; but the garden and the allotment of the Durbeyfields were behindhand. She found, to her dismay, that this was owing to their having eaten all the seed potatoes,--that last lapse of the improvident. At the earliest moment she obtained what others she could procure, and in a few days her father was well enough to see to the garden, under Tess's persuasive efforts: while she herself undertook the allotment-plot which they rented in a field a couple of hundred yards out of the village. She liked doing it after the confinement of the sick chamber, where she was not now required by reason of her mother's improvement. Violent motion relieved thought. The plot of ground was in a high, dry, open enclosure, where there were forty or fifty such pieces, and where labour was at its briskest when the hired labour of the day had ended. Digging began usually at six o'clock and extended indefinitely into the dusk or moonlight. Just now heaps of dead weeds and refuse were burning on many of the plots, the dry weather favouring their combustion. One fine day Tess and 'Liza-Lu worked on here with their neighbours till the last rays of the sun smote flat upon the white pegs that divided the plots. As soon as twilight succeeded to sunset the flare of the couch-grass and cabbage-stalk fires began to light up the allotments fitfully, their outlines appearing and disappearing under the dense smoke as wafted by the wind. When a fire glowed, banks of smoke, blown level along the ground, would themselves become illuminated to an opaque lustre, screening the workpeople from one another; and the meaning of the "pillar of a cloud", which was a wall by day and a light by night, could be understood. As evening thickened, some of the gardening men and women gave over for the night, but the greater number remained to get their planting done, Tess being among them, though she sent her sister home. It was on one of the couch-burning plots that she laboured with her fork, its four shining prongs resounding against the stones and dry clods in little clicks. Sometimes she was completely involved in the smoke of her fire; then it would leave her figure free, irradiated by the brassy glare from the heap. She was oddly dressed to-night, and presented a somewhat staring aspect, her attire being a gown bleached by many washings, with a short black jacket over it, the effect of the whole being that of a wedding and funeral guest in one. The women further back wore white aprons, which, with their pale faces, were all that could be seen of them in the gloom, except when at moments they caught a flash from the flames. Westward, the wiry boughs of the bare thorn hedge which formed the boundary of the field rose against the pale opalescence of the lower sky. Above, Jupiter hung like a full-blown jonquil, so bright as almost to throw a shade. A few small nondescript stars were appearing elsewhere. In the distance a dog barked, and wheels occasionally rattled along the dry road. Still the prongs continued to click assiduously, for it was not late; and though the air was fresh and keen there was a whisper of spring in it that cheered the workers on. Something in the place, the hours, the crackling fires, the fantastic mysteries of light and shade, made others as well as Tess enjoy being there. Nightfall, which in the frost of winter comes as a fiend and in the warmth of summer as a lover, came as a tranquillizer on this March day. Nobody looked at his or her companions. The eyes of all were on the soil as its turned surface was revealed by the fires. Hence as Tess stirred the clods and sang her foolish little songs with scarce now a hope that Clare would ever hear them, she did not for a long time notice the person who worked nearest to her--a man in a long smockfrock who, she found, was forking the same plot as herself, and whom she supposed her father had sent there to advance the work. She became more conscious of him when the direction of his digging brought him closer. Sometimes the smoke divided them; then it swerved, and the two were visible to each other but divided from all the rest. Tess did not speak to her fellow-worker, nor did he speak to her. Nor did she think of him further than to recollect that he had not been there when it was broad daylight, and that she did not know him as any one of the Marlott labourers, which was no wonder, her absences having been so long and frequent of late years. By-and-by he dug so close to her that the fire-beams were reflected as distinctly from the steel prongs of his fork as from her own. On going up to the fire to throw a pitch of dead weeds upon it, she found that he did the same on the other side. The fire flared up, and she beheld the face of d'Urberville. The unexpectedness of his presence, the grotesqueness of his appearance in a gathered smockfrock, such as was now worn only by the most old-fashioned of the labourers, had a ghastly comicality that chilled her as to its bearing. D'Urberville emitted a low, long laugh. "If I were inclined to joke, I should say, How much this seems like Paradise!" he remarked whimsically, looking at her with an inclined head. "What do you say?" she weakly asked. "A jester might say this is just like Paradise. You are Eve, and I am the old Other One come to tempt you in the disguise of an inferior animal. I used to be quite up in that scene of Milton's when I was theological. Some of it goes-- "'Empress, the way is ready, and not long, Beyond a row of myrtles... ... If thou accept My conduct, I can bring thee thither soon.' 'Lead then,' said Eve. "And so on. My dear Tess, I am only putting this to you as a thing that you might have supposed or said quite untruly, because you think so badly of me." "I never said you were Satan, or thought it. I don't think of you in that way at all. My thoughts of you are quite cold, except when you affront me. What, did you come digging here entirely because of me?" "Entirely. To see you; nothing more. The smockfrock, which I saw hanging for sale as I came along, was an afterthought, that I mightn't be noticed. I come to protest against your working like this." "But I like doing it--it is for my father." "Your engagement at the other place is ended?" "Yes." "Where are you going to next? To join your dear husband?" She could not bear the humiliating reminder. "O--I don't know!" she said bitterly. "I have no husband!" "It is quite true--in the sense you mean. But you have a friend, and I have determined that you shall be comfortable in spite of yourself. When you get down to your house you will see what I have sent there for you." "O, Alec, I wish you wouldn't give me anything at all! I cannot take it from you! I don't like--it is not right!" "It IS right!" he cried lightly. "I am not going to see a woman whom I feel so tenderly for as I do for you in trouble without trying to help her." "But I am very well off! I am only in trouble about--about--not about living at all!" She turned, and desperately resumed her digging, tears dripping upon the fork-handle and upon the clods. "About the children--your brothers and sisters," he resumed. "I've been thinking of them." Tess's heart quivered--he was touching her in a weak place. He had divined her chief anxiety. Since returning home her soul had gone out to those children with an affection that was passionate. "If your mother does not recover, somebody ought to do something for them; since your father will not be able to do much, I suppose?" "He can with my assistance. He must!" "And with mine." "No, sir!" "How damned foolish this is!" burst out d'Urberville. "Why, he thinks we are the same family; and will be quite satisfied!" "He don't. I've undeceived him." "The more fool you!" D'Urberville in anger retreated from her to the hedge, where he pulled off the long smockfrock which had disguised him; and rolling it up and pushing it into the couch-fire, went away. Tess could not get on with her digging after this; she felt restless; she wondered if he had gone back to her father's house; and taking the fork in her hand proceeded homewards. Some twenty yards from the house she was met by one of her sisters. "O, Tessy--what do you think! 'Liza-Lu is a-crying, and there's a lot of folk in the house, and mother is a good deal better, but they think father is dead!" The child realized the grandeur of the news; but not as yet its sadness, and stood looking at Tess with round-eyed importance till, beholding the effect produced upon her, she said-- "What, Tess, shan't we talk to father never no more?" "But father was only a little bit ill!" exclaimed Tess distractedly. 'Liza-Lu came up. "He dropped down just now, and the doctor who was there for mother said there was no chance for him, because his heart was growed in." Yes; the Durbeyfield couple had changed places; the dying one was out of danger, and the indisposed one was dead. The news meant even more than it sounded. Her father's life had a value apart from his personal achievements, or perhaps it would not have had much. It was the last of the three lives for whose duration the house and premises were held under a lease; and it had long been coveted by the tenant-farmer for his regular labourers, who were stinted in cottage accommodation. Moreover, "liviers" were disapproved of in villages almost as much as little freeholders, because of their independence of manner, and when a lease determined it was never renewed. Thus the Durbeyfields, once d'Urbervilles, saw descending upon them the destiny which, no doubt, when they were among the Olympians of the county, they had caused to descend many a time, and severely enough, upon the heads of such landless ones as they themselves were now. So do flux and reflux--the rhythm of change--alternate and persist in everything under the sky.

Chapter L

https://web.archive.org/web/20210213065711/https://www.novelguide.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summaries/phase6-chapter45-52

Back in Marlott, Tess takes over the household duties and grows food for the family on a piece of community land. One evening Alec yet again approaches, disguised as a farmer. He compares her to Eve in the garden and himself to "the Other one," or the tempting snake. He begs her once again to allow him to help her and, although she is tempted, she refuses, and he leaves in anger. Tess's father dies, and the family faces eviction. Also, the neighbors are upset because "the village had to be kept pure"

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1130-chapters/12.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra/section_11_part_0.txt

The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra.act ii.scene vii

act ii, scene vii

{"name": "Act II, Scene vii", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210116191009/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/antony-cleopatra/summary/act-ii-scene-vii", "summary": "Back at Pompey's ship, the former enemies are all making merry together. The servants note that Lepidus is wasted, and the others tease him. He's clearly not as great as the others, and hangs on like a third wheel. Antony and Lepidus have a long exchange about life in Egypt, and Lepidus is really interested in Egyptian pyramids, snakes, and crocodiles. Meanwhile, Pompey's man Menas has been whispering in his ear to get him away from the table. Pompey finally gets up to hear what the man won't tell him in his ear. Menas proposes that he cut the boat from the dock, and murder the three drunken triumvirs. This would make Pompey ruler of their shares of the world. Pompey laments on hearing the plan: while he would've been glad if Menas had done it without asking, now that Menas has told him, he has to admit the murders would be dishonorable. He tells Menas to go back to drinking, and forget the whole thing. Menas is angry and vows to leave Pompey's service becausethe man won't answer opportunity when it knocks him about the head. Meanwhile, Lepidus has to be carried out from too much drinking, and the remaining men dance the \"Egyptian bacchanals.\" Hand-holding, singing, and drinking continues late into the night. Eventually, Caesar leaves and Antony stays on Pompey's boat. Enobarbus stays with Menas.", "analysis": ""}

SCENE VII. On board POMPEY'S galley, off Misenum Music plays. Enter two or three SERVANTS with a banquet FIRST SERVANT. Here they'll be, man. Some o' their plants are ill-rooted already; the least wind i' th' world will blow them down. SECOND SERVANT. Lepidus is high-colour'd. FIRST SERVANT. They have made him drink alms-drink. SECOND SERVANT. As they pinch one another by the disposition, he cries out 'No more!'; reconciles them to his entreaty and himself to th' drink. FIRST SERVANT. But it raises the greater war between him and his discretion. SECOND SERVANT. Why, this it is to have a name in great men's fellowship. I had as lief have a reed that will do me no service as a partizan I could not heave. FIRST SERVANT. To be call'd into a huge sphere, and not to be seen to move in't, are the holes where eyes should be, which pitifully disaster the cheeks. A sennet sounded. Enter CAESAR, ANTONY, LEPIDUS, POMPEY, AGRIPPA, MAECENAS, ENOBARBUS, MENAS, with other CAPTAINS ANTONY. [To CAESAR] Thus do they, sir: they take the flow o' th' Nile By certain scales i' th' pyramid; they know By th' height, the lowness, or the mean, if dearth Or foison follow. The higher Nilus swells The more it promises; as it ebbs, the seedsman Upon the slime and ooze scatters his grain, And shortly comes to harvest. LEPIDUS. Y'have strange serpents there. ANTONY. Ay, Lepidus. LEPIDUS. Your serpent of Egypt is bred now of your mud by the operation of your sun; so is your crocodile. ANTONY. They are so. POMPEY. Sit- and some wine! A health to Lepidus! LEPIDUS. I am not so well as I should be, but I'll ne'er out. ENOBARBUS. Not till you have slept. I fear me you'll be in till then. LEPIDUS. Nay, certainly, I have heard the Ptolemies' pyramises are very goodly things. Without contradiction I have heard that. MENAS. [Aside to POMPEY] Pompey, a word. POMPEY. [Aside to MENAS] Say in mine ear; what is't? MENAS. [Aside to POMPEY] Forsake thy seat, I do beseech thee, Captain, And hear me speak a word. POMPEY. [ Whispers in's ear ] Forbear me till anon- This wine for Lepidus! LEPIDUS. What manner o' thing is your crocodile? ANTONY. It is shap'd, sir, like itself, and it is as broad as it hath breadth; it is just so high as it is, and moves with it own organs. It lives by that which nourisheth it, and the elements once out of it, it transmigrates. LEPIDUS. What colour is it of? ANTONY. Of it own colour too. LEPIDUS. 'Tis a strange serpent. ANTONY. 'Tis so. And the tears of it are wet. CAESAR. Will this description satisfy him? ANTONY. With the health that Pompey gives him, else he is a very epicure. POMPEY. [Aside to MENAS] Go, hang, sir, hang! Tell me of that! Away! Do as I bid you.- Where's this cup I call'd for? MENAS. [Aside to POMPEY] If for the sake of merit thou wilt hear me, Rise from thy stool. POMPEY. [Aside to MENAS] I think th'art mad. [Rises and walks aside] The matter? MENAS. I have ever held my cap off to thy fortunes. POMPEY. Thou hast serv'd me with much faith. What's else to say?- Be jolly, lords. ANTONY. These quicksands, Lepidus, Keep off them, for you sink. MENAS. Wilt thou be lord of all the world? POMPEY. What say'st thou? MENAS. Wilt thou be lord of the whole world? That's twice. POMPEY. How should that be? MENAS. But entertain it, And though you think me poor, I am the man Will give thee all the world. POMPEY. Hast thou drunk well? MENAS. No, Pompey, I have kept me from the cup. Thou art, if thou dar'st be, the earthly Jove; Whate'er the ocean pales or sky inclips Is thine, if thou wilt ha't. POMPEY. Show me which way. MENAS. These three world-sharers, these competitors, Are in thy vessel. Let me cut the cable; And when we are put off, fall to their throats. All there is thine. POMPEY. Ah, this thou shouldst have done, And not have spoke on't. In me 'tis villainy: In thee't had been good service. Thou must know 'Tis not my profit that does lead mine honour: Mine honour, it. Repent that e'er thy tongue Hath so betray'd thine act. Being done unknown, I should have found it afterwards well done, But must condemn it now. Desist, and drink. MENAS. [Aside] For this, I'll never follow thy pall'd fortunes more. Who seeks, and will not take when once 'tis offer'd, Shall never find it more. POMPEY. This health to Lepidus! ANTONY. Bear him ashore. I'll pledge it for him, Pompey. ENOBARBUS. Here's to thee, Menas! MENAS. Enobarbus, welcome! POMPEY. Fill till the cup be hid. ENOBARBUS. There's a strong fellow, Menas. [Pointing to the servant who carries off LEPIDUS] MENAS. Why? ENOBARBUS. 'A bears the third part of the world, man; see'st not? MENAS. The third part, then, is drunk. Would it were all, That it might go on wheels! ENOBARBUS. Drink thou; increase the reels. MENAS. Come. POMPEY. This is not yet an Alexandrian feast. ANTONY. It ripens towards it. Strike the vessels, ho! Here's to Caesar! CAESAR. I could well forbear't. It's monstrous labour when I wash my brain And it grows fouler. ANTONY. Be a child o' th' time. CAESAR. Possess it, I'll make answer. But I had rather fast from all four days Than drink so much in one. ENOBARBUS. [To ANTONY] Ha, my brave emperor! Shall we dance now the Egyptian Bacchanals And celebrate our drink? POMPEY. Let's ha't, good soldier. ANTONY. Come, let's all take hands, Till that the conquering wine hath steep'd our sense In soft and delicate Lethe. ENOBARBUS. All take hands. Make battery to our ears with the loud music, The while I'll place you; then the boy shall sing; The holding every man shall bear as loud As his strong sides can volley. [Music plays. ENOBARBUS places them hand in hand] THE SONG Come, thou monarch of the vine, Plumpy Bacchus with pink eyne! In thy fats our cares be drown'd, With thy grapes our hairs be crown'd. Cup us till the world go round, Cup us till the world go round! CAESAR. What would you more? Pompey, good night. Good brother, Let me request you off; our graver business Frowns at this levity. Gentle lords, let's part; You see we have burnt our cheeks. Strong Enobarb Is weaker than the wine, and mine own tongue Splits what it speaks. The wild disguise hath almost Antick'd us all. What needs more words? Good night. Good Antony, your hand. POMPEY. I'll try you on the shore. ANTONY. And shall, sir. Give's your hand. POMPEY. O Antony, You have my father's house- but what? We are friends. Come, down into the boat. ENOBARBUS. Take heed you fall not. Exeunt all but ENOBARBUS and MENAS Menas, I'll not on shore. MENAS. No, to my cabin. These drums! these trumpets, flutes! what! Let Neptune hear we bid a loud farewell To these great fellows. Sound and be hang'd, sound out! [Sound a flourish, with drums] ENOBARBUS. Hoo! says 'a. There's my cap. MENAS. Hoo! Noble Captain, come. Exeunt ACT_3|SC_1

Act II, Scene vii

https://web.archive.org/web/20210116191009/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/antony-cleopatra/summary/act-ii-scene-vii

Back at Pompey's ship, the former enemies are all making merry together. The servants note that Lepidus is wasted, and the others tease him. He's clearly not as great as the others, and hangs on like a third wheel. Antony and Lepidus have a long exchange about life in Egypt, and Lepidus is really interested in Egyptian pyramids, snakes, and crocodiles. Meanwhile, Pompey's man Menas has been whispering in his ear to get him away from the table. Pompey finally gets up to hear what the man won't tell him in his ear. Menas proposes that he cut the boat from the dock, and murder the three drunken triumvirs. This would make Pompey ruler of their shares of the world. Pompey laments on hearing the plan: while he would've been glad if Menas had done it without asking, now that Menas has told him, he has to admit the murders would be dishonorable. He tells Menas to go back to drinking, and forget the whole thing. Menas is angry and vows to leave Pompey's service becausethe man won't answer opportunity when it knocks him about the head. Meanwhile, Lepidus has to be carried out from too much drinking, and the remaining men dance the "Egyptian bacchanals." Hand-holding, singing, and drinking continues late into the night. Eventually, Caesar leaves and Antony stays on Pompey's boat. Enobarbus stays with Menas.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/14328-chapters/book_v.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/The Consolation of Philosophy/section_4_part_0.txt

The Consolation of Philosophy.book v

book v

{"name": "Book V", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201128165942/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-consolation-of-philosophy/study-guide/summary-book-v", "summary": "Now Boethius has decided that Philosophy's arguments must be true, but he still questions, \"What are we to make of chance?\" Chance, or random occurrence without any sequence of causes, cannot exist in the mind of God as Philosophy has described it. \"If God imposes order on things,\" Boethius says to Philosophy, \"then there is no opportunity for random events.\" Philosophy answers that any chance event that occurs had its own set of hidden causes, whether or not they are perceived by human beings. Whether or not these causes appear to have relation to each other, they are nevertheless governed by Providence. Boethius then asks how can there be free will in this close-knit chain of events. To this Philosophy asserts that there must indeed be free will, because no rational nature could exist without it. Judgment and the ability to choose are inherent in a rational nature. The more rational a person is, and the more they choose virtue and the pursuit of true happiness in God, the freer that person is. If a person is wicked or enslaved to vice, that person becomes progressively less and less free, and controlled by vice and error. Here Philosophy returns to the subject of the mind of God, and his one act of knowing everything that has occurred, past and present. Just because God knows what a person with free will is going to choose, doesn't mean that he directed it. God knows all things before they happen, but he doesn't interfere with the free will of human beings. Boethius protests, saying that these two things are oppositional. How can God know about something before it happens, but therefore not control or direct the free choices of human beings? Philosophy enters into another long explanation of the mind of God. God does not \"know\" the world in the same way that human beings do. God is outside of time, so he doesn't view the world in a progression of events. For God no future event is uncertain, no past event forgotten. God knows the world in one single act, which includes knowledge of all the choices of all human beings from the beginning of the world to the end. Therefore he doesn't influence these choices, but he knew of them as part of the whole foreknowledge of the world perceived in one single instance. This raises the problem of the efficacy of prayer, but Philosophy counsels that prayer is the one way of communicating with God. Even if the future is already ordained we still must strive to join ourselves with our Creator through prayer. We are temporal creatures, and we can only understand things in a temporal way. This doesn't mean we can't participate in eternity by striving to be one with God. Philosophy says that it is still important to strive for virtue, for God is always watching and judging. That the world has already happened for God is a mystery to us, but we are temporal and cannot hope to fully understand eternity.", "analysis": "This last book of The Consolation of Philosophy raises the most questions of any of the books of The Consolation of Philosophy. The idea of foreknowledge and Providence have been debated for centuries. This argument was even referred to in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. There is no reason to believe that this debate will cease anytime soon. What is at issue is a central philosophical question of whether or not the world is predetermined or subject to chance. Philosophy walks a middle ground here, saying that God knows all things since he perceives the world in one instance of knowing, but in that instance of knowing he didn't force the choices of all the people in the world. He just knows how it happened, all at once. Since there is no logical way to support this argument, the idea of the single instant of knowing must be taken as given. Boethius has set up the arguments in the previous books so that this is the only possible solution. He gives credit to Aristotle for this idea, but the preceding arguments and proofs are all his own. Providence is the ordering of all things by God, and he had a plan for his world, but he didn't necessarily influence the choices of the people in it. Fate is simply the events that must occur because, for God, the whole world including all future people and events has already happened. Philosophy is right to call it a mystery. Free will is very important in this Book because it is a necessary component of Catholic faith. If there were no free will there would be no accountability for sin on earth, and sin is held accountable and confession, and possibly punishment, are necessary for redemption. Boethius had to reconcile the idea of free will to the idea of Providence in order to remain orthodox. The passages about the wicked being less free than the virtuous are also a part of the free will argument. If the wicked have free will, then can their choices could be considered as valid as the choices the virtuous make? Not so, says Philosophy, for their choices come to be controlled by their vices, not by their sound judgment. The more evil a human being becomes, the less free and less human he or she becomes. The subject of prayer comes up at the end of this book. If God knows all things, then what is the use of praying to him? Philosophy admonishes Boethius that he should not cut off the one communication conduit he has with God. Prayer is a path to virtue, and the book ends with Philosophy advising Boethius to cultivate virtue as much as possible since God sees and is the judge of all things. The difficulties with this ordering of the world are plain to a modern reader. For example, even if God does know everything that happens on earth in one instant, he, in his omniscience, can still intervene and could guide the evil towards good if he chose. This would destroy free will, but would it also take away from the idea that God is also all good? If he could prevent someone from turning down the path of evil, why doesn't he? Free will must be retained, in order to make human beings accountable for their actions and not merely puppets of God. Also, the lack of substance of evil means that God isn't allowing evil to happen, because evil doesn't really exist. Much depends on faith in these five Books of Boethius, but many logical arguments are contained in it, too. Boethius seems to strain for orthodoxy at times, but that doesn't make the philosophy any less brilliant, or the \"consolation\" any less real. Again, a modern reader must never forget the context of Boethius' work: he is in a desperate position, striving for a dollop of happiness amidst misery. If his work contains logical fallacies and shortcomings, so be it - the object is consolation, and that object, it seems, is achieved."}

<CHAPTER> BOOK V. I. She ceased, and was about to pass on in her discourse to the exposition of other matters, when I break in and say: 'Excellent is thine exhortation, and such as well beseemeth thy high authority; but I am even now experiencing one of the many difficulties which, as thou saidst but now, beset the question of providence. I want to know whether thou deemest that there is any such thing as chance at all, and, if so, what it is.' Then she made answer: 'I am anxious to fulfil my promise completely, and open to thee a way of return to thy native land. As for these matters, though very useful to know, they are yet a little removed from the path of our design, and I fear lest digressions should fatigue thee, and thou shouldst find thyself unequal to completing the direct journey to our goal.' 'Have no fear for that,' said I. 'It is rest to me to learn, where learning brings delight so exquisite, especially when thy argument has been built up on all sides with undoubted conviction, and no place is left for uncertainty in what follows.' She made answer: 'I will accede to thy request;' and forthwith she thus began: 'If chance be defined as a result produced by random movement without any link of causal connection, I roundly affirm that there is no such thing as chance at all, and consider the word to be altogether without meaning, except as a symbol of the thing designated. What place can be left for random action, when God constraineth all things to order? For "ex nihilo nihil" is sound doctrine which none of the ancients gainsaid, although they used it of material substance, not of the efficient principle; this they laid down as a kind of basis for all their reasonings concerning nature. Now, if a thing arise without causes, it will appear to have arisen from nothing. But if this cannot be, neither is it possible for there to be chance in accordance with the definition just given.' 'Well,' said I, 'is there, then, nothing which can properly be called chance or accident, or is there something to which these names are appropriate, though its nature is dark to the vulgar?' 'Our good Aristotle,' says she, 'has defined it concisely in his "Physics," and closely in accordance with the truth.' 'How, pray?' said I. 'Thus,' says she: 'Whenever something is done for the sake of a particular end, and for certain reasons some other result than that designed ensues, this is called chance; for instance, if a man is digging the earth for tillage, and finds a mass of buried gold. Now, such a find is regarded as accidental; yet it is not "ex nihilo," for it has its proper causes, the unforeseen and unexpected concurrence of which has brought the chance about. For had not the cultivator been digging, had not the man who hid the money buried it in that precise spot, the gold would not have been found. These, then, are the reasons why the find is a chance one, in that it results from causes which met together and concurred, not from any intention on the part of the discoverer. Since neither he who buried the gold nor he who worked in the field _intended_ that the money should be found, but, as I said, it _happened_ by coincidence that one dug where the other buried the treasure. We may, then, define chance as being an unexpected result flowing from a concurrence of causes where the several factors had some definite end. But the meeting and concurrence of these causes arises from that inevitable chain of order which, flowing from the fountain-head of Providence, disposes all things in their due time and place.' SONG I. CHANCE. In the rugged Persian highlands, Where the masters of the bow Skill to feign a flight, and, fleeing, Hurl their darts and pierce the foe; There the Tigris and Euphrates At one source[O] their waters blend, Soon to draw apart, and plainward Each its separate way to wend. When once more their waters mingle In a channel deep and wide, All the flotsam comes together That is borne upon the tide: Ships, and trunks of trees, uprooted In the torrent's wild career, Meet, as 'mid the swirling waters Chance their random way may steer. Yet the shelving of the channel And the flowing water's force Guides each movement, and determines Every floating fragment's course. Thus, where'er the drift of hazard Seems most unrestrained to flow, Chance herself is reined and bitted, And the curb of law doth know. FOOTNOTES: [O] This is not, of course, literally true, though the Tigris and Euphrates rise in the same mountain district. II. 'I am following needfully,' said I, 'and I agree that it is as thou sayest. But in this series of linked causes is there any freedom left to our will, or does the chain of fate bind also the very motions of our souls?' 'There is freedom,' said she; 'nor, indeed, can any creature be rational, unless he be endowed with free will. For that which hath the natural use of reason has the faculty of discriminative judgment, and of itself distinguishes what is to be shunned or desired. Now, everyone seeks what he judges desirable, and avoids what he thinks should be shunned. Wherefore, beings endowed with reason possess also the faculty of free choice and refusal. But I suppose this faculty not equal alike in all. The higher Divine essences possess a clear-sighted judgment, an uncorrupt will, and an effective power of accomplishing their wishes. Human souls must needs be comparatively free while they abide in the contemplation of the Divine mind, less free when they pass into bodily form, and still less, again, when they are enwrapped in earthly members. But when they are given over to vices, and fall from the possession of their proper reason, then indeed their condition is utter slavery. For when they let their gaze fall from the light of highest truth to the lower world where darkness reigns, soon ignorance blinds their vision; they are disturbed by baneful affections, by yielding and assenting to which they help to promote the slavery in which they are involved, and are in a manner led captive by reason of their very liberty. Yet He who seeth all things from eternity beholdeth these things with the eyes of His providence, and assigneth to each what is predestined for it by its merits: '"All things surveying, all things overhearing.'" SONG II. THE TRUE SUN. Homer with mellifluous tongue Phoebus' glorious light hath sung, Hymning high his praise; Yet _his_ feeble rays Ocean's hollows may not brighten, Nor earth's central gloom enlighten. But the might of Him, who skilled This great universe to build, Is not thus confined; Not earth's solid rind, Nor night's blackest canopy, Baffle His all-seeing eye. All that is, hath been, shall be, In one glance's compass, He Limitless descries; And, save His, no eyes All the world survey--no, none! _Him_, then, truly name the Sun. III. Then said I: 'But now I am once more perplexed by a problem yet more difficult.' 'And what is that?' said she; 'yet, in truth, I can guess what it is that troubles you.' 'It seems,' said I, 'too much of a paradox and a contradiction that God should know all things, and yet there should be free will. For if God foresees everything, and can in no wise be deceived, that which providence foresees to be about to happen must necessarily come to pass. Wherefore, if from eternity He foreknows not only what men will do, but also their designs and purposes, there can be no freedom of the will, seeing that nothing can be done, nor can any sort of purpose be entertained, save such as a Divine providence, incapable of being deceived, has perceived beforehand. For if the issues can be turned aside to some other end than that foreseen by providence, there will not then be any sure foreknowledge of the future, but uncertain conjecture instead, and to think this of God I deem impiety. 'Moreover, I do not approve the reasoning by which some think to solve this puzzle. For they say that it is not because God has foreseen the coming of an event that _therefore_ it is sure to come to pass, but, conversely, because something is about to come to pass, it cannot be hidden from Divine providence; and accordingly the necessity passes to the opposite side, and it is not that what is foreseen must necessarily come to pass, but that what is about to come to pass must necessarily be foreseen. But this is just as if the matter in debate were, which is cause and which effect--whether foreknowledge of the future cause of the necessity, or the necessity of the future of the foreknowledge. But we need not be at the pains of demonstrating that, whatsoever be the order of the causal sequence, the occurrence of things foreseen is necessary, even though the foreknowledge of future events does not in itself impose upon them the necessity of their occurrence. For example, if a man be seated, the supposition of his being seated is necessarily true; and, conversely, if the supposition of his being seated is true, because he is really seated, he must necessarily be sitting. So, in either case, there is some necessity involved--in this latter case, the necessity of the fact; in the former, of the truth of the statement. But in both cases the sitter is not therefore seated because the opinion is true, but rather the opinion is true because antecedently he was sitting as a matter of fact. Thus, though the cause of the truth of the opinion comes from the other side,[P] yet there is a necessity on both sides alike. We can obviously reason similarly in the case of providence and the future. Even if future events are foreseen because they are about to happen, and do not come to pass because they are foreseen, still, all the same, there is a necessity, both that they should be foreseen by God as about to come to pass, and that when they are foreseen they should happen, and this is sufficient for the destruction of free will. However, it is preposterous to speak of the occurrence of events in time as the cause of eternal foreknowledge. And yet if we believe that God foresees future events because they are about to come to pass, what is it but to think that the occurrence of events is the cause of His supreme providence? Further, just as when I _know_ that anything is, that thing _necessarily_ is, so when I know that anything will be, it will _necessarily_ be. It follows, then, that things foreknown come to pass inevitably. 'Lastly, to think of a thing as being in any way other than what it is, is not only not knowledge, but it is false opinion widely different from the truth of knowledge. Consequently, if anything is about to be, and yet its occurrence is not certain and necessary, how can anyone foreknow that it will occur? For just as knowledge itself is free from all admixture of falsity, so any conception drawn from knowledge cannot be other than as it is conceived. For this, indeed, is the cause why knowledge is free from falsehood, because of necessity each thing must correspond exactly with the knowledge which grasps its nature. In what way, then, are we to suppose that God foreknows these uncertainties as about to come to pass? For if He thinks of events which possibly may not happen at all as inevitably destined to come to pass, He is deceived; and this it is not only impious to believe, but even so much as to express in words. If, on the other hand, He sees them in the future as they are in such a sense as to know that they may equally come to pass or not, what sort of foreknowledge is this which comprehends nothing certain nor fixed? What better is this than the absurd vaticination of Teiresias? '"Whate'er I say Shall either come to pass--or not." In that case, too, in what would Divine providence surpass human opinion if it holds for uncertain things the occurrence of which is uncertain, even as men do? But if at that perfectly sure Fountain-head of all things no shadow of uncertainty can possibly be found, then the occurrence of those things which He has surely foreknown as coming is certain. Wherefore there can be no freedom in human actions and designs; but the Divine mind, which foresees all things without possibility of mistake, ties and binds them down to one only issue. But this admission once made, what an upset of human affairs manifestly ensues! Vainly are rewards and punishments proposed for the good and bad, since no free and voluntary motion of the will has deserved either one or the other; nay, the punishment of the wicked and the reward of the righteous, which is now esteemed the perfection of justice, will seem the most flagrant injustice, since men are determined either way not by their own proper volition, but by the necessity of what must surely be. And therefore neither virtue nor vice is anything, but rather good and ill desert are confounded together without distinction. Moreover, seeing that the whole course of events is deduced from providence, and nothing is left free to human design, it comes to pass that our vices also are referred to the Author of all good--a thought than which none more abominable can possibly be conceived. Again, no ground is left for hope or prayer, since how can we hope for blessings, or pray for mercy, when every object of desire depends upon the links of an unalterable chain of causation? Gone, then, is the one means of intercourse between God and man--the communion of hope and prayer--if it be true that we ever earn the inestimable recompense of the Divine favour at the price of a due humility; for this is the one way whereby men seem able to hold communion with God, and are joined to that unapproachable light by the very act of supplication, even before they obtain their petitions. Then, since these things can scarcely be believed to have any efficacy, if the necessity of future events be admitted, what means will there be whereby we may be brought near and cleave to Him who is the supreme Head of all? Wherefore it needs must be that the human race, even as thou didst erstwhile declare in song, parted and dissevered from its Source, should fall to ruin.' FOOTNOTES: [P] _I.e._, the necessity of the truth of the statement from the fact. SONG III. TRUTH'S PARADOXES. Why does a strange discordance break The ordered scheme's fair harmony? Hath God decreed 'twixt truth and truth There may such lasting warfare be, That truths, each severally plain, We strive to reconcile in vain? Or is the discord not in truth, Since truth is self consistent ever? But, close in fleshly wrappings held, The blinded mind of man can never Discern--so faint her taper shines-- The subtle chain that all combines? Ah! then why burns man's restless mind Truth's hidden portals to unclose? Knows he already what he seeks? Why toil to seek it, if he knows? Yet, haply if he knoweth not, Why blindly seek he knows not what?[Q] Who for a good he knows not sighs? Who can an unknown end pursue? How find? How e'en when haply found Hail that strange form he never knew? Or is it that man's inmost soul Once knew each part and knew the whole? Now, though by fleshly vapours dimmed, Not all forgot her visions past; For while the several parts are lost, To the one whole she cleaveth fast; Whence he who yearns the truth to find Is neither sound of sight nor blind. For neither does he know in full, Nor is he reft of knowledge quite; But, holding still to what is left, He gropes in the uncertain light, And by the part that still survives To win back all he bravely strives. FOOTNOTES: [Q] Compare Plato, 'Meno,' 80; Jowett, vol. ii., pp. 39, 40. IV. Then said she: 'This debate about providence is an old one, and is vigorously discussed by Cicero in his "Divination"; thou also hast long and earnestly pondered the problem, yet no one has had diligence and perseverance enough to find a solution. And the reason of this obscurity is that the movement of human reasoning cannot cope with the simplicity of the Divine foreknowledge; for if a conception of its nature could in any wise be framed, no shadow of uncertainty would remain. With a view of making this at last clear and plain, I will begin by considering the arguments by which thou art swayed. First, I inquire into the reasons why thou art dissatisfied with the solution proposed, which is to the effect that, seeing the fact of foreknowledge is not thought the cause of the necessity of future events, foreknowledge is not to be deemed any hindrance to the freedom of the will. Now, surely the sole ground on which thou arguest the necessity of the future is that things which are foreknown cannot fail to come to pass. But if, as thou wert ready to acknowledge just now, the fact of foreknowledge imposes no necessity on things future, what reason is there for supposing the results of voluntary action constrained to a fixed issue? Suppose, for the sake of argument, and to see what follows, we assume that there is no foreknowledge. Are willed actions, then, tied down to any necessity in _this_ case?' 'Certainly not.' 'Let us assume foreknowledge again, but without its involving any actual necessity; the freedom of the will, I imagine, will remain in complete integrity. But thou wilt say that, even although the foreknowledge is not the necessity of the future event's occurrence, yet it is a sign that it will necessarily happen. Granted; but in this case it is plain that, even if there had been no foreknowledge, the issues would have been inevitably certain. For a sign only indicates something which is, does not bring to pass that of which it is the sign. We require to show beforehand that all things, without exception, happen of necessity in order that a preconception may be a sign of this necessity. Otherwise, if there is no such universal necessity, neither can any preconception be a sign of a necessity which exists not. Manifestly, too, a proof established on firm grounds of reason must be drawn not from signs and loose general arguments, but from suitable and necessary causes. But how can it be that things foreseen should ever fail to come to pass? Why, this is to suppose us to believe that the events which providence foresees to be coming were not about to happen, instead of our supposing that, although they should come to pass, yet there was no necessity involved in their own nature compelling their occurrence. Take an illustration that will help to convey my meaning. There are many things which we see taking place before our eyes--the movements of charioteers, for instance, in guiding and turning their cars, and so on. Now, is any one of these movements compelled by any necessity?' 'No; certainly not. There would be no efficacy in skill if all motions took place perforce.' 'Then, things which in taking place are free from any necessity as to their being in the present must also, before they take place, be about to happen without necessity. Wherefore there are things which will come to pass, the occurrence of which is perfectly free from necessity. At all events, I imagine that no one will deny that things now taking place were about to come to pass before they were actually happening. Such things, however much foreknown, are in their occurrence _free_. For even as knowledge of things present imports no necessity into things that are taking place, so foreknowledge of the future imports none into things that are about to come. But this, thou wilt say, is the very point in dispute--whether any foreknowing is possible of things whose occurrence is not necessary. For here there seems to thee a contradiction, and, if they are foreseen, their necessity follows; whereas if there is no necessity, they can by no means be foreknown; and thou thinkest that nothing can be grasped as known unless it is certain, but if things whose occurrence is uncertain are foreknown as certain, this is the very mist of opinion, not the truth of knowledge. For to think of things otherwise than as they are, thou believest to be incompatible with the soundness of knowledge. 'Now, the cause of the mistake is this--that men think that all knowledge is cognized purely by the nature and efficacy of the thing known. Whereas the case is the very reverse: all that is known is grasped not conformably to its own efficacy, but rather conformably to the faculty of the knower. An example will make this clear: the roundness of a body is recognised in one way by sight, in another by touch. Sight looks upon it from a distance as a whole by a simultaneous reflection of rays; touch grasps the roundness piecemeal, by contact and attachment to the surface, and by actual movement round the periphery itself. Man himself, likewise, is viewed in one way by Sense, in another by Imagination, in another way, again, by Thought, in another by pure Intelligence. Sense judges figure clothed in material substance, Imagination figure alone without matter. Thought transcends this again, and by its contemplation of universals considers the type itself which is contained in the individual. The eye of Intelligence is yet more exalted; for overpassing the sphere of the universal, it will behold absolute form itself by the pure force of the mind's vision. Wherein the main point to be considered is this: the higher faculty of comprehension embraces the lower, while the lower cannot rise to the higher. For Sense has no efficacy beyond matter, nor can Imagination behold universal ideas, nor Thought embrace pure form; but Intelligence, looking down, as it were, from its higher standpoint in its intuition of form, discriminates also the several elements which underlie it; but it comprehends them in the same way as it comprehends that form itself, which could be cognized by no other than itself. For it cognizes the universal of Thought, the figure of Imagination, and the matter of Sense, without employing Thought, Imagination, or Sense, but surveying all things, so to speak, under the aspect of pure form by a single flash of intuition. Thought also, in considering the universal, embraces images and sense-impressions without resorting to Imagination or Sense. For it is Thought which has thus defined the universal from its conceptual point of view: "Man is a two-legged animal endowed with reason." This is indeed a universal notion, yet no one is ignorant that the _thing_ is imaginable and presentable to Sense, because Thought considers it not by Imagination or Sense, but by means of rational conception. Imagination, too, though its faculty of viewing and forming representations is founded upon the senses, nevertheless surveys sense-impressions without calling in Sense, not in the way of Sense-perception, but of Imagination. See'st thou, then, how all things in cognizing use rather their own faculty than the faculty of the things which they cognize? Nor is this strange; for since every judgment is the act of the judge, it is necessary that each should accomplish its task by its own, not by another's power.' SONG IV. A PSYCHOLOGICAL FALLACY. [R] From the Porch's murky depths Comes a doctrine sage, That doth liken living mind To a written page; Since all knowledge comes through Sense, Graven by Experience. 'As,' say they, 'the pen its marks Curiously doth trace On the smooth unsullied white Of the paper's face, So do outer things impress Images on consciousness.' But if verily the mind Thus all passive lies; If no living power within Its own force supplies; If it but reflect again, Like a glass, things false and vain-- Whence the wondrous faculty That perceives and knows, That in one fair ordered scheme Doth the world dispose; Grasps each whole that Sense presents, Or breaks into elements? So divides and recombines, And in changeful wise Now to low descends, and now To the height doth rise; Last in inward swift review Strictly sifts the false and true? Of these ample potencies Fitter cause, I ween, Were Mind's self than marks impressed By the outer scene. Yet the body through the sense Stirs the soul's intelligence. When light flashes on the eye, Or sound strikes the ear, Mind aroused to due response Makes the message clear; And the dumb external signs With the hidden forms combines. FOOTNOTES: [R] A criticism of the doctrine of the mind as a blank sheet of paper on which experience writes, as held by the Stoics in anticipation of Locke. See Zeller, 'Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics,' Reichel's translation, p. 76. V. 'Now, although in the case of bodies endowed with sentiency the qualities of external objects affect the sense-organs, and the activity of mind is preceded by a bodily affection which calls forth the mind's action upon itself, and stimulates the forms till that moment lying inactive within, yet, I say, if in these bodies endowed with sentiency the mind is not inscribed by mere passive affection, but of its own efficacy discriminates the impressions furnished to the body, how much more do intelligences free from all bodily affections employ in their discrimination their own mental activities instead of conforming to external objects? So on these principles various modes of cognition belong to distinct and different substances. For to creatures void of motive power--shell-fish and other such creatures which cling to rocks and grow there--belongs Sense alone, void of all other modes of gaining knowledge; to beasts endowed with movement, in whom some capacity of seeking and shunning seems to have arisen, Imagination also. Thought pertains only to the human race, as Intelligence to Divinity alone; hence it follows that that form of knowledge exceeds the rest which of its own nature cognizes not only its proper object, but the objects of the other forms of knowledge also. But what if Sense and Imagination were to gainsay Thought, and declare that universal which Thought deems itself to behold to be nothing? For the object of Sense and Imagination cannot be universal; so that either the judgment of Reason is true and there is no sense-object, or, since they know full well that many objects are presented to Sense and Imagination, the conception of Reason, which looks on that which is perceived by Sense and particular as if it were a something "universal," is empty of content. Suppose, further, that Reason maintains in reply that it does indeed contemplate the object of both Sense and Imagination under the form of universality, while Sense and Imagination cannot aspire to the knowledge of the universal, since their cognizance cannot go beyond bodily figures, and that in the cognition of reality we ought rather to trust the stronger and more perfect faculty of judgment. In a dispute of this sort, should not we, in whom is planted the faculty of reasoning as well as of imagining and perceiving, espouse the cause of Reason? 'In like manner is it that human reason thinks that Divine Intelligence cannot see the future except after the fashion in which its own knowledge is obtained. For thy contention is, if events do not appear to involve certain and necessary issues, they cannot be foreseen as certainly about to come to pass. There is, then, no foreknowledge of such events; or, if we can ever bring ourselves to believe that there is, there can be nothing which does not happen of necessity. If, however, we could have some part in the judgment of the Divine mind, even as we participate in Reason, we should think it perfectly just that human Reason should submit itself to the Divine mind, no less than we judged that Imagination and Sense ought to yield to Reason. Wherefore let us soar, if we can, to the heights of that Supreme Intelligence; for there Reason will see what in itself it cannot look upon; and that is in what way things whose occurrence is not certain may yet be seen in a sure and definite foreknowledge; and that this foreknowledge is not conjecture, but rather knowledge in its supreme simplicity, free of all limits and restrictions.' SONG V. THE UPWARD LOOK. In what divers shapes and fashions do the creatures great and small Over wide earth's teeming surface skim, or scud, or walk, or crawl! Some with elongated body sweep the ground, and, as they move, Trail perforce with writhing belly in the dust a sinuous groove; Some, on light wing upward soaring, swiftly do the winds divide, And through heaven's ample spaces in free motion smoothly glide; These earth's solid surface pressing, with firm paces onward rove, Ranging through the verdant meadows, crouching in the woodland grove. Great and wondrous is their variance! Yet in all the head low-bent Dulls the soul and blunts the senses, though their forms be different. Man alone, erect, aspiring, lifts his forehead to the skies, And in upright posture steadfast seems earth's baseness to despise. If with earth not all besotted, to this parable give ear, Thou whose gaze is fixed on heaven, who thy face on high dost rear: Lift thy soul, too, heavenward; haply lest it stain its heavenly worth, And thine eyes alone look upward, while thy mind cleaves to the earth! VI. 'Since, then, as we lately proved, everything that is known is cognized not in accordance with its own nature, but in accordance with the nature of the faculty that comprehends it, let us now contemplate, as far as lawful, the character of the Divine essence, that we may be able to understand also the nature of its knowledge. 'God is eternal; in this judgment all rational beings agree. Let us, then, consider what eternity is. For this word carries with it a revelation alike of the Divine nature and of the Divine knowledge. Now, eternity is the possession of endless life whole and perfect at a single moment. What this is becomes more clear and manifest from a comparison with things temporal. For whatever lives in time is a present proceeding from the past to the future, and there is nothing set in time which can embrace the whole space of its life together. To-morrow's state it grasps not yet, while it has already lost yesterday's; nay, even in the life of to-day ye live no longer than one brief transitory moment. Whatever, therefore, is subject to the condition of time, although, as Aristotle deemed of the world, it never have either beginning or end, and its life be stretched to the whole extent of time's infinity, it yet is not such as rightly to be thought eternal. For it does not include and embrace the whole space of infinite life at once, but has no present hold on things to come, not yet accomplished. Accordingly, that which includes and possesses the whole fulness of unending life at once, from which nothing future is absent, from which nothing past has escaped, this is rightly called eternal; this must of necessity be ever present to itself in full self-possession, and hold the infinity of movable time in an abiding present. Wherefore they deem not rightly who imagine that on Plato's principles the created world is made co-eternal with the Creator, because they are told that he believed the world to have had no beginning in time,[S] and to be destined never to come to an end. For it is one thing for existence to be endlessly prolonged, which was what Plato ascribed to the world, another for the whole of an endless life to be embraced in the present, which is manifestly a property peculiar to the Divine mind. Nor need God appear earlier in mere duration of time to created things, but only prior in the unique simplicity of His nature. For the infinite progression of things in time copies this immediate existence in the present of the changeless life, and when it cannot succeed in equalling it, declines from movelessness into motion, and falls away from the simplicity of a perpetual present to the infinite duration of the future and the past; and since it cannot possess the whole fulness of its life together, for the very reason that in a manner it never ceases to be, it seems, up to a certain point, to rival that which it cannot complete and express by attaching itself indifferently to any present moment of time, however swift and brief; and since this bears some resemblance to that ever-abiding present, it bestows on everything to which it is assigned the semblance of existence. But since it cannot abide, it hurries along the infinite path of time, and the result has been that it continues by ceaseless movement the life the completeness of which it could not embrace while it stood still. So, if we are minded to give things their right names, we shall follow Plato in saying that God indeed is eternal, but the world everlasting. 'Since, then, every mode of judgment comprehends its objects conformably to its own nature, and since God abides for ever in an eternal present, His knowledge, also transcending all movement of time, dwells in the simplicity of its own changeless present, and, embracing the whole infinite sweep of the past and of the future, contemplates all that falls within its simple cognition as if it were now taking place. And therefore, if thou wilt carefully consider that immediate presentment whereby it discriminates all things, thou wilt more rightly deem it not foreknowledge as of something future, but knowledge of a moment that never passes. For this cause the name chosen to describe it is not prevision, but providence, because, since utterly removed in nature from things mean and trivial, its outlook embraces all things as from some lofty height. Why, then, dost thou insist that the things which are surveyed by the Divine eye are involved in necessity, whereas clearly men impose no necessity on things which they see? Does the act of vision add any necessity to the things which thou seest before thy eyes?' 'Assuredly not.' 'And yet, if we may without unfitness compare God's present and man's, just as ye see certain things in this your temporary present, so does He see all things in His eternal present. Wherefore this Divine anticipation changes not the natures and properties of things, and it beholds things present before it, just as they will hereafter come to pass in time. Nor does it confound things in its judgment, but in the one mental view distinguishes alike what will come necessarily and what without necessity. For even as ye, when at one and the same time ye see a man walking on the earth and the sun rising in the sky, distinguish between the two, though one glance embraces both, and judge the former voluntary, the latter necessary action: so also the Divine vision in its universal range of view does in no wise confuse the characters of the things which are present to its regard, though future in respect of time. Whence it follows that when it perceives that something will come into existence, and yet is perfectly aware that this is unbound by any necessity, its apprehension is not opinion, but rather knowledge based on truth. And if to this thou sayest that what God sees to be about to come to pass cannot fail to come to pass, and that what cannot fail to come to pass happens of necessity, and wilt tie me down to this word necessity, I will acknowledge that thou affirmest a most solid truth, but one which scarcely anyone can approach to who has not made the Divine his special study. For my answer would be that the same future event is necessary from the standpoint of Divine knowledge, but when considered in its own nature it seems absolutely free and unfettered. So, then, there are two necessities--one simple, as that men are necessarily mortal; the other conditioned, as that, if you know that someone is walking, he must necessarily be walking. For that which is known cannot indeed be otherwise than as it is known to be, and yet this fact by no means carries with it that other simple necessity. For the former necessity is not imposed by the thing's own proper nature, but by the addition of a condition. No necessity compels one who is voluntarily walking to go forward, although it is necessary for him to go forward at the moment of walking. In the same way, then, if Providence sees anything as present, that must necessarily be, though it is bound by no necessity of nature. Now, God views as present those coming events which happen of free will. These, accordingly, from the standpoint of the Divine vision are made necessary conditionally on the Divine cognizance; viewed, however, in themselves, they desist not from the absolute freedom naturally theirs. Accordingly, without doubt, all things will come to pass which God foreknows as about to happen, but of these certain proceed of free will; and though these happen, yet by the fact of their existence they do not lose their proper nature, in virtue of which before they happened it was really possible that they might not have come to pass. 'What difference, then, does the denial of necessity make, since, through their being conditioned by Divine knowledge, they come to pass as if they were in all respects under the compulsion of necessity? This difference, surely, which we saw in the case of the instances I formerly took, the sun's rising and the man's walking; which at the moment of their occurrence could not but be taking place, and yet one of them before it took place was necessarily obliged to be, while the other was not so at all. So likewise the things which to God are present without doubt exist, but some of them come from the necessity of things, others from the power of the agent. Quite rightly, then, have we said that these things are necessary if viewed from the standpoint of the Divine knowledge; but if they are considered in themselves, they are free from the bonds of necessity, even as everything which is accessible to sense, regarded from the standpoint of Thought, is universal, but viewed in its own nature particular. "But," thou wilt say, "if it is in my power to change my purpose, I shall make void providence, since I shall perchance change something which comes within its foreknowledge." My answer is: Thou canst indeed turn aside thy purpose; but since the truth of providence is ever at hand to see that thou canst, and whether thou dost, and whither thou turnest thyself, thou canst not avoid the Divine foreknowledge, even as thou canst not escape the sight of a present spectator, although of thy free will thou turn thyself to various actions. Wilt thou, then, say: "Shall the Divine knowledge be changed at my discretion, so that, when I will this or that, providence changes its knowledge correspondingly?" 'Surely not.' 'True, for the Divine vision anticipates all that is coming, and transforms and reduces it to the form of its own present knowledge, and varies not, as thou deemest, in its foreknowledge, alternating to this or that, but in a single flash it forestalls and includes thy mutations without altering. And this ever-present comprehension and survey of all things God has received, not from the issue of future events, but from the simplicity of His own nature. Hereby also is resolved the objection which a little while ago gave thee offence--that our doings in the future were spoken of as if supplying the cause of God's knowledge. For this faculty of knowledge, embracing all things in its immediate cognizance, has itself fixed the bounds of all things, yet itself owes nothing to what comes after. 'And all this being so, the freedom of man's will stands unshaken, and laws are not unrighteous, since their rewards and punishments are held forth to wills unbound by any necessity. God, who foreknoweth all things, still looks down from above, and the ever-present eternity of His vision concurs with the future character of all our acts, and dispenseth to the good rewards, to the bad punishments. Our hopes and prayers also are not fixed on God in vain, and when they are rightly directed cannot fail of effect. Therefore, withstand vice, practise virtue, lift up your souls to right hopes, offer humble prayers to Heaven. Great is the necessity of righteousness laid upon you if ye will not hide it from yourselves, seeing that all your actions are done before the eyes of a Judge who seeth all things.' FOOTNOTES: [S] Plato expressly states the opposite in the 'Timaeus' (28B), though possibly there the account of the beginning of the world in time is to be understood figuratively, not literally. See Jowett, vol. iii., pp. 448, 449 (3rd edit.). </CHAPTER>

Book V

https://web.archive.org/web/20201128165942/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-consolation-of-philosophy/study-guide/summary-book-v

Now Boethius has decided that Philosophy's arguments must be true, but he still questions, "What are we to make of chance?" Chance, or random occurrence without any sequence of causes, cannot exist in the mind of God as Philosophy has described it. "If God imposes order on things," Boethius says to Philosophy, "then there is no opportunity for random events." Philosophy answers that any chance event that occurs had its own set of hidden causes, whether or not they are perceived by human beings. Whether or not these causes appear to have relation to each other, they are nevertheless governed by Providence. Boethius then asks how can there be free will in this close-knit chain of events. To this Philosophy asserts that there must indeed be free will, because no rational nature could exist without it. Judgment and the ability to choose are inherent in a rational nature. The more rational a person is, and the more they choose virtue and the pursuit of true happiness in God, the freer that person is. If a person is wicked or enslaved to vice, that person becomes progressively less and less free, and controlled by vice and error. Here Philosophy returns to the subject of the mind of God, and his one act of knowing everything that has occurred, past and present. Just because God knows what a person with free will is going to choose, doesn't mean that he directed it. God knows all things before they happen, but he doesn't interfere with the free will of human beings. Boethius protests, saying that these two things are oppositional. How can God know about something before it happens, but therefore not control or direct the free choices of human beings? Philosophy enters into another long explanation of the mind of God. God does not "know" the world in the same way that human beings do. God is outside of time, so he doesn't view the world in a progression of events. For God no future event is uncertain, no past event forgotten. God knows the world in one single act, which includes knowledge of all the choices of all human beings from the beginning of the world to the end. Therefore he doesn't influence these choices, but he knew of them as part of the whole foreknowledge of the world perceived in one single instance. This raises the problem of the efficacy of prayer, but Philosophy counsels that prayer is the one way of communicating with God. Even if the future is already ordained we still must strive to join ourselves with our Creator through prayer. We are temporal creatures, and we can only understand things in a temporal way. This doesn't mean we can't participate in eternity by striving to be one with God. Philosophy says that it is still important to strive for virtue, for God is always watching and judging. That the world has already happened for God is a mystery to us, but we are temporal and cannot hope to fully understand eternity.

This last book of The Consolation of Philosophy raises the most questions of any of the books of The Consolation of Philosophy. The idea of foreknowledge and Providence have been debated for centuries. This argument was even referred to in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. There is no reason to believe that this debate will cease anytime soon. What is at issue is a central philosophical question of whether or not the world is predetermined or subject to chance. Philosophy walks a middle ground here, saying that God knows all things since he perceives the world in one instance of knowing, but in that instance of knowing he didn't force the choices of all the people in the world. He just knows how it happened, all at once. Since there is no logical way to support this argument, the idea of the single instant of knowing must be taken as given. Boethius has set up the arguments in the previous books so that this is the only possible solution. He gives credit to Aristotle for this idea, but the preceding arguments and proofs are all his own. Providence is the ordering of all things by God, and he had a plan for his world, but he didn't necessarily influence the choices of the people in it. Fate is simply the events that must occur because, for God, the whole world including all future people and events has already happened. Philosophy is right to call it a mystery. Free will is very important in this Book because it is a necessary component of Catholic faith. If there were no free will there would be no accountability for sin on earth, and sin is held accountable and confession, and possibly punishment, are necessary for redemption. Boethius had to reconcile the idea of free will to the idea of Providence in order to remain orthodox. The passages about the wicked being less free than the virtuous are also a part of the free will argument. If the wicked have free will, then can their choices could be considered as valid as the choices the virtuous make? Not so, says Philosophy, for their choices come to be controlled by their vices, not by their sound judgment. The more evil a human being becomes, the less free and less human he or she becomes. The subject of prayer comes up at the end of this book. If God knows all things, then what is the use of praying to him? Philosophy admonishes Boethius that he should not cut off the one communication conduit he has with God. Prayer is a path to virtue, and the book ends with Philosophy advising Boethius to cultivate virtue as much as possible since God sees and is the judge of all things. The difficulties with this ordering of the world are plain to a modern reader. For example, even if God does know everything that happens on earth in one instant, he, in his omniscience, can still intervene and could guide the evil towards good if he chose. This would destroy free will, but would it also take away from the idea that God is also all good? If he could prevent someone from turning down the path of evil, why doesn't he? Free will must be retained, in order to make human beings accountable for their actions and not merely puppets of God. Also, the lack of substance of evil means that God isn't allowing evil to happen, because evil doesn't really exist. Much depends on faith in these five Books of Boethius, but many logical arguments are contained in it, too. Boethius seems to strain for orthodoxy at times, but that doesn't make the philosophy any less brilliant, or the "consolation" any less real. Again, a modern reader must never forget the context of Boethius' work: he is in a desperate position, striving for a dollop of happiness amidst misery. If his work contains logical fallacies and shortcomings, so be it - the object is consolation, and that object, it seems, is achieved.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/19.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Sense and Sensibility/section_1_part_9.txt

Sense and Sensibility.chapter 19

chapter 19

{"name": "Chapter 19", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210419170735/https://www.gradesaver.com/sense-and-sensibility/study-guide/summary-chapters-11-20", "summary": "Edward stays with them for a week, and has a much better time there than at Norland or in London; still, he rejects Mrs. Dashwood's invitation to stay longer, since he feels he must leave. Edward laments that he has no occupation to take up his time, and again shows that he is unhappy in his current state. He takes his leave shortly after, and his unhappiness pains Elinor; she wishes he could be helped out of it, but is also hurt that his old affection seems to have been shaken. Elinor does not wallow in her grief at this, but busies herself about the house and tries not to appear disturbed. Sir John and Mrs. Jennings come to the cottage to introduce Mrs. Jennings' other daughter, Mrs. Palmer, and her husband to the family. Mrs. Palmer is much like her mother, very merry and chatty, whereas her husband is completely silent and not sociable at all. The girls are invited up to the house to dine with the party, though they expect no great joy in the company of Mr. and Mrs. Palmer; still, they have to accept, as Sir John is a gracious host and they can't possibly refuse him.", "analysis": "Marianne and Elinor are again shown to be foils in their responses to misfortune in their love lives; Elinor does the opposite of Marianne, keeping herself from feeling too much grief, and distracts herself by taking up other activities. However, Elinor's good sense and discipline does not mean that she feels any less than Marianne does, just that she expresses and conducts herself differently. This chapter shows a certain confrontation between the gossipy mirth of Mrs. Jennings and her daughter, and the propriety, and perhaps even unsociability, shown by Lady Middleton and Mr. Palmer. Manners throughout the party vary, and this makes the society that they form somewhat uneasy, and a little unpleasant, for Elinor and Marianne. Still, the girls are powerless to defy the rules of hospitality, as their indebtedness to the graciousness of Sir John means that they are obliged to accept his invitations, whether they wish to or not"}

Edward remained a week at the cottage; he was earnestly pressed by Mrs. Dashwood to stay longer; but, as if he were bent only on self-mortification, he seemed resolved to be gone when his enjoyment among his friends was at the height. His spirits, during the last two or three days, though still very unequal, were greatly improved--he grew more and more partial to the house and environs--never spoke of going away without a sigh--declared his time to be wholly disengaged--even doubted to what place he should go when he left them--but still, go he must. Never had any week passed so quickly--he could hardly believe it to be gone. He said so repeatedly; other things he said too, which marked the turn of his feelings and gave the lie to his actions. He had no pleasure at Norland; he detested being in town; but either to Norland or London, he must go. He valued their kindness beyond any thing, and his greatest happiness was in being with them. Yet, he must leave them at the end of a week, in spite of their wishes and his own, and without any restraint on his time. Elinor placed all that was astonishing in this way of acting to his mother's account; and it was happy for her that he had a mother whose character was so imperfectly known to her, as to be the general excuse for every thing strange on the part of her son. Disappointed, however, and vexed as she was, and sometimes displeased with his uncertain behaviour to herself, she was very well disposed on the whole to regard his actions with all the candid allowances and generous qualifications, which had been rather more painfully extorted from her, for Willoughby's service, by her mother. His want of spirits, of openness, and of consistency, were most usually attributed to his want of independence, and his better knowledge of Mrs. Ferrars's disposition and designs. The shortness of his visit, the steadiness of his purpose in leaving them, originated in the same fettered inclination, the same inevitable necessity of temporizing with his mother. The old well-established grievance of duty against will, parent against child, was the cause of all. She would have been glad to know when these difficulties were to cease, this opposition was to yield,--when Mrs. Ferrars would be reformed, and her son be at liberty to be happy. But from such vain wishes she was forced to turn for comfort to the renewal of her confidence in Edward's affection, to the remembrance of every mark of regard in look or word which fell from him while at Barton, and above all to that flattering proof of it which he constantly wore round his finger. "I think, Edward," said Mrs. Dashwood, as they were at breakfast the last morning, "you would be a happier man if you had any profession to engage your time and give an interest to your plans and actions. Some inconvenience to your friends, indeed, might result from it--you would not be able to give them so much of your time. But (with a smile) you would be materially benefited in one particular at least--you would know where to go when you left them." "I do assure you," he replied, "that I have long thought on this point, as you think now. It has been, and is, and probably will always be a heavy misfortune to me, that I have had no necessary business to engage me, no profession to give me employment, or afford me any thing like independence. But unfortunately my own nicety, and the nicety of my friends, have made me what I am, an idle, helpless being. We never could agree in our choice of a profession. I always preferred the church, as I still do. But that was not smart enough for my family. They recommended the army. That was a great deal too smart for me. The law was allowed to be genteel enough; many young men, who had chambers in the Temple, made a very good appearance in the first circles, and drove about town in very knowing gigs. But I had no inclination for the law, even in this less abstruse study of it, which my family approved. As for the navy, it had fashion on its side, but I was too old when the subject was first started to enter it--and, at length, as there was no necessity for my having any profession at all, as I might be as dashing and expensive without a red coat on my back as with one, idleness was pronounced on the whole to be most advantageous and honourable, and a young man of eighteen is not in general so earnestly bent on being busy as to resist the solicitations of his friends to do nothing. I was therefore entered at Oxford and have been properly idle ever since." "The consequence of which, I suppose, will be," said Mrs. Dashwood, "since leisure has not promoted your own happiness, that your sons will be brought up to as many pursuits, employments, professions, and trades as Columella's." "They will be brought up," said he, in a serious accent, "to be as unlike myself as is possible. In feeling, in action, in condition, in every thing." "Come, come; this is all an effusion of immediate want of spirits, Edward. You are in a melancholy humour, and fancy that any one unlike yourself must be happy. But remember that the pain of parting from friends will be felt by every body at times, whatever be their education or state. Know your own happiness. You want nothing but patience--or give it a more fascinating name, call it hope. Your mother will secure to you, in time, that independence you are so anxious for; it is her duty, and it will, it must ere long become her happiness to prevent your whole youth from being wasted in discontent. How much may not a few months do?" "I think," replied Edward, "that I may defy many months to produce any good to me." This desponding turn of mind, though it could not be communicated to Mrs. Dashwood, gave additional pain to them all in the parting, which shortly took place, and left an uncomfortable impression on Elinor's feelings especially, which required some trouble and time to subdue. But as it was her determination to subdue it, and to prevent herself from appearing to suffer more than what all her family suffered on his going away, she did not adopt the method so judiciously employed by Marianne, on a similar occasion, to augment and fix her sorrow, by seeking silence, solitude and idleness. Their means were as different as their objects, and equally suited to the advancement of each. Elinor sat down to her drawing-table as soon as he was out of the house, busily employed herself the whole day, neither sought nor avoided the mention of his name, appeared to interest herself almost as much as ever in the general concerns of the family, and if, by this conduct, she did not lessen her own grief, it was at least prevented from unnecessary increase, and her mother and sisters were spared much solicitude on her account. Such behaviour as this, so exactly the reverse of her own, appeared no more meritorious to Marianne, than her own had seemed faulty to her. The business of self-command she settled very easily;--with strong affections it was impossible, with calm ones it could have no merit. That her sister's affections WERE calm, she dared not deny, though she blushed to acknowledge it; and of the strength of her own, she gave a very striking proof, by still loving and respecting that sister, in spite of this mortifying conviction. Without shutting herself up from her family, or leaving the house in determined solitude to avoid them, or lying awake the whole night to indulge meditation, Elinor found every day afforded her leisure enough to think of Edward, and of Edward's behaviour, in every possible variety which the different state of her spirits at different times could produce,--with tenderness, pity, approbation, censure, and doubt. There were moments in abundance, when, if not by the absence of her mother and sisters, at least by the nature of their employments, conversation was forbidden among them, and every effect of solitude was produced. Her mind was inevitably at liberty; her thoughts could not be chained elsewhere; and the past and the future, on a subject so interesting, must be before her, must force her attention, and engross her memory, her reflection, and her fancy. From a reverie of this kind, as she sat at her drawing-table, she was roused one morning, soon after Edward's leaving them, by the arrival of company. She happened to be quite alone. The closing of the little gate, at the entrance of the green court in front of the house, drew her eyes to the window, and she saw a large party walking up to the door. Amongst them were Sir John and Lady Middleton and Mrs. Jennings, but there were two others, a gentleman and lady, who were quite unknown to her. She was sitting near the window, and as soon as Sir John perceived her, he left the rest of the party to the ceremony of knocking at the door, and stepping across the turf, obliged her to open the casement to speak to him, though the space was so short between the door and the window, as to make it hardly possible to speak at one without being heard at the other. "Well," said he, "we have brought you some strangers. How do you like them?" "Hush! they will hear you." "Never mind if they do. It is only the Palmers. Charlotte is very pretty, I can tell you. You may see her if you look this way." As Elinor was certain of seeing her in a couple of minutes, without taking that liberty, she begged to be excused. "Where is Marianne? Has she run away because we are come? I see her instrument is open." "She is walking, I believe." They were now joined by Mrs. Jennings, who had not patience enough to wait till the door was opened before she told HER story. She came hallooing to the window, "How do you do, my dear? How does Mrs. Dashwood do? And where are your sisters? What! all alone! you will be glad of a little company to sit with you. I have brought my other son and daughter to see you. Only think of their coming so suddenly! I thought I heard a carriage last night, while we were drinking our tea, but it never entered my head that it could be them. I thought of nothing but whether it might not be Colonel Brandon come back again; so I said to Sir John, I do think I hear a carriage; perhaps it is Colonel Brandon come back again"-- Elinor was obliged to turn from her, in the middle of her story, to receive the rest of the party; Lady Middleton introduced the two strangers; Mrs. Dashwood and Margaret came down stairs at the same time, and they all sat down to look at one another, while Mrs. Jennings continued her story as she walked through the passage into the parlour, attended by Sir John. Mrs. Palmer was several years younger than Lady Middleton, and totally unlike her in every respect. She was short and plump, had a very pretty face, and the finest expression of good humour in it that could possibly be. Her manners were by no means so elegant as her sister's, but they were much more prepossessing. She came in with a smile, smiled all the time of her visit, except when she laughed, and smiled when she went away. Her husband was a grave looking young man of five or six and twenty, with an air of more fashion and sense than his wife, but of less willingness to please or be pleased. He entered the room with a look of self-consequence, slightly bowed to the ladies, without speaking a word, and, after briefly surveying them and their apartments, took up a newspaper from the table, and continued to read it as long as he staid. Mrs. Palmer, on the contrary, who was strongly endowed by nature with a turn for being uniformly civil and happy, was hardly seated before her admiration of the parlour and every thing in it burst forth. "Well! what a delightful room this is! I never saw anything so charming! Only think, Mama, how it is improved since I was here last! I always thought it such a sweet place, ma'am! (turning to Mrs. Dashwood) but you have made it so charming! Only look, sister, how delightful every thing is! How I should like such a house for myself! Should not you, Mr. Palmer?" Mr. Palmer made her no answer, and did not even raise his eyes from the newspaper. "Mr. Palmer does not hear me," said she, laughing; "he never does sometimes. It is so ridiculous!" This was quite a new idea to Mrs. Dashwood; she had never been used to find wit in the inattention of any one, and could not help looking with surprise at them both. Mrs. Jennings, in the meantime, talked on as loud as she could, and continued her account of their surprise, the evening before, on seeing their friends, without ceasing till every thing was told. Mrs. Palmer laughed heartily at the recollection of their astonishment, and every body agreed, two or three times over, that it had been quite an agreeable surprise. "You may believe how glad we all were to see them," added Mrs. Jennings, leaning forward towards Elinor, and speaking in a low voice as if she meant to be heard by no one else, though they were seated on different sides of the room; "but, however, I can't help wishing they had not travelled quite so fast, nor made such a long journey of it, for they came all round by London upon account of some business, for you know (nodding significantly and pointing to her daughter) it was wrong in her situation. I wanted her to stay at home and rest this morning, but she would come with us; she longed so much to see you all!" Mrs. Palmer laughed, and said it would not do her any harm. "She expects to be confined in February," continued Mrs. Jennings. Lady Middleton could no longer endure such a conversation, and therefore exerted herself to ask Mr. Palmer if there was any news in the paper. "No, none at all," he replied, and read on. "Here comes Marianne," cried Sir John. "Now, Palmer, you shall see a monstrous pretty girl." He immediately went into the passage, opened the front door, and ushered her in himself. Mrs. Jennings asked her, as soon as she appeared, if she had not been to Allenham; and Mrs. Palmer laughed so heartily at the question, as to show she understood it. Mr. Palmer looked up on her entering the room, stared at her some minutes, and then returned to his newspaper. Mrs. Palmer's eye was now caught by the drawings which hung round the room. She got up to examine them. "Oh! dear, how beautiful these are! Well! how delightful! Do but look, mama, how sweet! I declare they are quite charming; I could look at them for ever." And then sitting down again, she very soon forgot that there were any such things in the room. When Lady Middleton rose to go away, Mr. Palmer rose also, laid down the newspaper, stretched himself and looked at them all around. "My love, have you been asleep?" said his wife, laughing. He made her no answer; and only observed, after again examining the room, that it was very low pitched, and that the ceiling was crooked. He then made his bow, and departed with the rest. Sir John had been very urgent with them all to spend the next day at the park. Mrs. Dashwood, who did not chuse to dine with them oftener than they dined at the cottage, absolutely refused on her own account; her daughters might do as they pleased. But they had no curiosity to see how Mr. and Mrs. Palmer ate their dinner, and no expectation of pleasure from them in any other way. They attempted, therefore, likewise, to excuse themselves; the weather was uncertain, and not likely to be good. But Sir John would not be satisfied--the carriage should be sent for them and they must come. Lady Middleton too, though she did not press their mother, pressed them. Mrs. Jennings and Mrs. Palmer joined their entreaties, all seemed equally anxious to avoid a family party; and the young ladies were obliged to yield. "Why should they ask us?" said Marianne, as soon as they were gone. "The rent of this cottage is said to be low; but we have it on very hard terms, if we are to dine at the park whenever any one is staying either with them, or with us." "They mean no less to be civil and kind to us now," said Elinor, "by these frequent invitations, than by those which we received from them a few weeks ago. The alteration is not in them, if their parties are grown tedious and dull. We must look for the change elsewhere."

Chapter 19

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Edward stays with them for a week, and has a much better time there than at Norland or in London; still, he rejects Mrs. Dashwood's invitation to stay longer, since he feels he must leave. Edward laments that he has no occupation to take up his time, and again shows that he is unhappy in his current state. He takes his leave shortly after, and his unhappiness pains Elinor; she wishes he could be helped out of it, but is also hurt that his old affection seems to have been shaken. Elinor does not wallow in her grief at this, but busies herself about the house and tries not to appear disturbed. Sir John and Mrs. Jennings come to the cottage to introduce Mrs. Jennings' other daughter, Mrs. Palmer, and her husband to the family. Mrs. Palmer is much like her mother, very merry and chatty, whereas her husband is completely silent and not sociable at all. The girls are invited up to the house to dine with the party, though they expect no great joy in the company of Mr. and Mrs. Palmer; still, they have to accept, as Sir John is a gracious host and they can't possibly refuse him.

Marianne and Elinor are again shown to be foils in their responses to misfortune in their love lives; Elinor does the opposite of Marianne, keeping herself from feeling too much grief, and distracts herself by taking up other activities. However, Elinor's good sense and discipline does not mean that she feels any less than Marianne does, just that she expresses and conducts herself differently. This chapter shows a certain confrontation between the gossipy mirth of Mrs. Jennings and her daughter, and the propriety, and perhaps even unsociability, shown by Lady Middleton and Mr. Palmer. Manners throughout the party vary, and this makes the society that they form somewhat uneasy, and a little unpleasant, for Elinor and Marianne. Still, the girls are powerless to defy the rules of hospitality, as their indebtedness to the graciousness of Sir John means that they are obliged to accept his invitations, whether they wish to or not

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/chapters_7_to_8.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Sense and Sensibility/section_5_part_0.txt

Sense and Sensibility.chapters 7-8

chapters 7-8

{"name": "Chapters 7-8", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101060302/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/s/sense-and-sensibility/summary-and-analysis/chapters-78", "summary": "On the following day, the Dashwoods dined at Barton Park. There they met Mrs. Jennings, Lady Middleton's mother, and Colonel Brandon, a friend of Sir John. Sir John apologized for not having a larger circle of people to greet them. Lacking interests of their own, the Middletons were used to entertaining profusely, with multitudes of people and much noise. During the evening, Marianne entertained at the piano and was \"highly applauded,\" although Sir John and Lady Middleton actually paid no attention to her performance. Colonel Brandon listened quietly, \"and she felt a respect for him on the occasion which the others had reasonably forfeited by their shameless want of taste.\" Mrs. Jennings liked nothing better than to matchmake, and she teased the girls about the suitors she imagined them to have had at Norland Park. She persisted in saying that Colonel Brandon was \"very much in love with Marianne Dashwood.\" But Marianne was horrified at the idea. To her mother's and Elinor's amusement, she saw the colonel as \"an old bachelor,\" long past romance. He was thirty-five. Marianne was actually concerned with the progress of her sister's romance. To her mother, she admitted that she was afraid Edward Ferrars must be ill; otherwise he would have come to visit Elinor in the two weeks since they had left. Mrs. Dashwood replied that she did not expect Edward so soon: \"If I have felt any anxiety at all on the subject, it has been in recollecting my invitation, when I talked of his coming to Barton.\" But Marianne cannot understand the strange behavior of either member of the pair. Edward had seemed to show no desire to be alone with Elinor before they left, and Elinor showed none of the traditional signs of lovesickness: \"When is she dejected or melancholy? When does she try to avoid society, or appear restless in it?\"", "analysis": "Marianne's sensibility shows up amusingly in these chapters. She respects Colonel Brandon because he listens to her performance while the others show \"horrible insensibility.\" But she finds him wanting because his pleasure in music does not amount to \"that ecstatic delight which alone could sympathize with her own.\" Because he speaks of flannel waistcoats, she sees him as old and rheumatic, and feels that any woman interested in someone his age could only expect occupation as a nurse. Elinor is rightly amused by this, observing, \"Had he been only in a violent fever, you would not have despised him half so much. Confess, Marianne, is not there something interesting to you in the flushed cheek, hollow eye, and quick pulse of a fever?\" This refers to the standard description of a man in love."}

Barton Park was about half a mile from the cottage. The ladies had passed near it in their way along the valley, but it was screened from their view at home by the projection of a hill. The house was large and handsome; and the Middletons lived in a style of equal hospitality and elegance. The former was for Sir John's gratification, the latter for that of his lady. They were scarcely ever without some friends staying with them in the house, and they kept more company of every kind than any other family in the neighbourhood. It was necessary to the happiness of both; for however dissimilar in temper and outward behaviour, they strongly resembled each other in that total want of talent and taste which confined their employments, unconnected with such as society produced, within a very narrow compass. Sir John was a sportsman, Lady Middleton a mother. He hunted and shot, and she humoured her children; and these were their only resources. Lady Middleton had the advantage of being able to spoil her children all the year round, while Sir John's independent employments were in existence only half the time. Continual engagements at home and abroad, however, supplied all the deficiencies of nature and education; supported the good spirits of Sir John, and gave exercise to the good breeding of his wife. Lady Middleton piqued herself upon the elegance of her table, and of all her domestic arrangements; and from this kind of vanity was her greatest enjoyment in any of their parties. But Sir John's satisfaction in society was much more real; he delighted in collecting about him more young people than his house would hold, and the noisier they were the better was he pleased. He was a blessing to all the juvenile part of the neighbourhood, for in summer he was for ever forming parties to eat cold ham and chicken out of doors, and in winter his private balls were numerous enough for any young lady who was not suffering under the unsatiable appetite of fifteen. The arrival of a new family in the country was always a matter of joy to him, and in every point of view he was charmed with the inhabitants he had now procured for his cottage at Barton. The Miss Dashwoods were young, pretty, and unaffected. It was enough to secure his good opinion; for to be unaffected was all that a pretty girl could want to make her mind as captivating as her person. The friendliness of his disposition made him happy in accommodating those, whose situation might be considered, in comparison with the past, as unfortunate. In showing kindness to his cousins therefore he had the real satisfaction of a good heart; and in settling a family of females only in his cottage, he had all the satisfaction of a sportsman; for a sportsman, though he esteems only those of his sex who are sportsmen likewise, is not often desirous of encouraging their taste by admitting them to a residence within his own manor. Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters were met at the door of the house by Sir John, who welcomed them to Barton Park with unaffected sincerity; and as he attended them to the drawing room repeated to the young ladies the concern which the same subject had drawn from him the day before, at being unable to get any smart young men to meet them. They would see, he said, only one gentleman there besides himself; a particular friend who was staying at the park, but who was neither very young nor very gay. He hoped they would all excuse the smallness of the party, and could assure them it should never happen so again. He had been to several families that morning in hopes of procuring some addition to their number, but it was moonlight and every body was full of engagements. Luckily Lady Middleton's mother had arrived at Barton within the last hour, and as she was a very cheerful agreeable woman, he hoped the young ladies would not find it so very dull as they might imagine. The young ladies, as well as their mother, were perfectly satisfied with having two entire strangers of the party, and wished for no more. Mrs. Jennings, Lady Middleton's mother, was a good-humoured, merry, fat, elderly woman, who talked a great deal, seemed very happy, and rather vulgar. She was full of jokes and laughter, and before dinner was over had said many witty things on the subject of lovers and husbands; hoped they had not left their hearts behind them in Sussex, and pretended to see them blush whether they did or not. Marianne was vexed at it for her sister's sake, and turned her eyes towards Elinor to see how she bore these attacks, with an earnestness which gave Elinor far more pain than could arise from such common-place raillery as Mrs. Jennings's. Colonel Brandon, the friend of Sir John, seemed no more adapted by resemblance of manner to be his friend, than Lady Middleton was to be his wife, or Mrs. Jennings to be Lady Middleton's mother. He was silent and grave. His appearance however was not unpleasing, in spite of his being in the opinion of Marianne and Margaret an absolute old bachelor, for he was on the wrong side of five and thirty; but though his face was not handsome, his countenance was sensible, and his address was particularly gentlemanlike. There was nothing in any of the party which could recommend them as companions to the Dashwoods; but the cold insipidity of Lady Middleton was so particularly repulsive, that in comparison of it the gravity of Colonel Brandon, and even the boisterous mirth of Sir John and his mother-in-law was interesting. Lady Middleton seemed to be roused to enjoyment only by the entrance of her four noisy children after dinner, who pulled her about, tore her clothes, and put an end to every kind of discourse except what related to themselves. In the evening, as Marianne was discovered to be musical, she was invited to play. The instrument was unlocked, every body prepared to be charmed, and Marianne, who sang very well, at their request went through the chief of the songs which Lady Middleton had brought into the family on her marriage, and which perhaps had lain ever since in the same position on the pianoforte, for her ladyship had celebrated that event by giving up music, although by her mother's account, she had played extremely well, and by her own was very fond of it. Marianne's performance was highly applauded. Sir John was loud in his admiration at the end of every song, and as loud in his conversation with the others while every song lasted. Lady Middleton frequently called him to order, wondered how any one's attention could be diverted from music for a moment, and asked Marianne to sing a particular song which Marianne had just finished. Colonel Brandon alone, of all the party, heard her without being in raptures. He paid her only the compliment of attention; and she felt a respect for him on the occasion, which the others had reasonably forfeited by their shameless want of taste. His pleasure in music, though it amounted not to that ecstatic delight which alone could sympathize with her own, was estimable when contrasted against the horrible insensibility of the others; and she was reasonable enough to allow that a man of five and thirty might well have outlived all acuteness of feeling and every exquisite power of enjoyment. She was perfectly disposed to make every allowance for the colonel's advanced state of life which humanity required. Mrs. Jennings was a widow with an ample jointure. She had only two daughters, both of whom she had lived to see respectably married, and she had now therefore nothing to do but to marry all the rest of the world. In the promotion of this object she was zealously active, as far as her ability reached; and missed no opportunity of projecting weddings among all the young people of her acquaintance. She was remarkably quick in the discovery of attachments, and had enjoyed the advantage of raising the blushes and the vanity of many a young lady by insinuations of her power over such a young man; and this kind of discernment enabled her soon after her arrival at Barton decisively to pronounce that Colonel Brandon was very much in love with Marianne Dashwood. She rather suspected it to be so, on the very first evening of their being together, from his listening so attentively while she sang to them; and when the visit was returned by the Middletons' dining at the cottage, the fact was ascertained by his listening to her again. It must be so. She was perfectly convinced of it. It would be an excellent match, for HE was rich, and SHE was handsome. Mrs. Jennings had been anxious to see Colonel Brandon well married, ever since her connection with Sir John first brought him to her knowledge; and she was always anxious to get a good husband for every pretty girl. The immediate advantage to herself was by no means inconsiderable, for it supplied her with endless jokes against them both. At the park she laughed at the colonel, and in the cottage at Marianne. To the former her raillery was probably, as far as it regarded only himself, perfectly indifferent; but to the latter it was at first incomprehensible; and when its object was understood, she hardly knew whether most to laugh at its absurdity, or censure its impertinence, for she considered it as an unfeeling reflection on the colonel's advanced years, and on his forlorn condition as an old bachelor. Mrs. Dashwood, who could not think a man five years younger than herself, so exceedingly ancient as he appeared to the youthful fancy of her daughter, ventured to clear Mrs. Jennings from the probability of wishing to throw ridicule on his age. "But at least, Mama, you cannot deny the absurdity of the accusation, though you may not think it intentionally ill-natured. Colonel Brandon is certainly younger than Mrs. Jennings, but he is old enough to be MY father; and if he were ever animated enough to be in love, must have long outlived every sensation of the kind. It is too ridiculous! When is a man to be safe from such wit, if age and infirmity will not protect him?" "Infirmity!" said Elinor, "do you call Colonel Brandon infirm? I can easily suppose that his age may appear much greater to you than to my mother; but you can hardly deceive yourself as to his having the use of his limbs!" "Did not you hear him complain of the rheumatism? and is not that the commonest infirmity of declining life?" "My dearest child," said her mother, laughing, "at this rate you must be in continual terror of MY decay; and it must seem to you a miracle that my life has been extended to the advanced age of forty." "Mama, you are not doing me justice. I know very well that Colonel Brandon is not old enough to make his friends yet apprehensive of losing him in the course of nature. He may live twenty years longer. But thirty-five has nothing to do with matrimony." "Perhaps," said Elinor, "thirty-five and seventeen had better not have any thing to do with matrimony together. But if there should by any chance happen to be a woman who is single at seven and twenty, I should not think Colonel Brandon's being thirty-five any objection to his marrying HER." "A woman of seven and twenty," said Marianne, after pausing a moment, "can never hope to feel or inspire affection again, and if her home be uncomfortable, or her fortune small, I can suppose that she might bring herself to submit to the offices of a nurse, for the sake of the provision and security of a wife. In his marrying such a woman therefore there would be nothing unsuitable. It would be a compact of convenience, and the world would be satisfied. In my eyes it would be no marriage at all, but that would be nothing. To me it would seem only a commercial exchange, in which each wished to be benefited at the expense of the other." "It would be impossible, I know," replied Elinor, "to convince you that a woman of seven and twenty could feel for a man of thirty-five anything near enough to love, to make him a desirable companion to her. But I must object to your dooming Colonel Brandon and his wife to the constant confinement of a sick chamber, merely because he chanced to complain yesterday (a very cold damp day) of a slight rheumatic feel in one of his shoulders." "But he talked of flannel waistcoats," said Marianne; "and with me a flannel waistcoat is invariably connected with aches, cramps, rheumatisms, and every species of ailment that can afflict the old and the feeble." "Had he been only in a violent fever, you would not have despised him half so much. Confess, Marianne, is not there something interesting to you in the flushed cheek, hollow eye, and quick pulse of a fever?" Soon after this, upon Elinor's leaving the room, "Mama," said Marianne, "I have an alarm on the subject of illness which I cannot conceal from you. I am sure Edward Ferrars is not well. We have now been here almost a fortnight, and yet he does not come. Nothing but real indisposition could occasion this extraordinary delay. What else can detain him at Norland?" "Had you any idea of his coming so soon?" said Mrs. Dashwood. "I had none. On the contrary, if I have felt any anxiety at all on the subject, it has been in recollecting that he sometimes showed a want of pleasure and readiness in accepting my invitation, when I talked of his coming to Barton. Does Elinor expect him already?" "I have never mentioned it to her, but of course she must." "I rather think you are mistaken, for when I was talking to her yesterday of getting a new grate for the spare bedchamber, she observed that there was no immediate hurry for it, as it was not likely that the room would be wanted for some time." "How strange this is! what can be the meaning of it! But the whole of their behaviour to each other has been unaccountable! How cold, how composed were their last adieus! How languid their conversation the last evening of their being together! In Edward's farewell there was no distinction between Elinor and me: it was the good wishes of an affectionate brother to both. Twice did I leave them purposely together in the course of the last morning, and each time did he most unaccountably follow me out of the room. And Elinor, in quitting Norland and Edward, cried not as I did. Even now her self-command is invariable. When is she dejected or melancholy? When does she try to avoid society, or appear restless and dissatisfied in it?"

Chapters 7-8

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101060302/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/s/sense-and-sensibility/summary-and-analysis/chapters-78

On the following day, the Dashwoods dined at Barton Park. There they met Mrs. Jennings, Lady Middleton's mother, and Colonel Brandon, a friend of Sir John. Sir John apologized for not having a larger circle of people to greet them. Lacking interests of their own, the Middletons were used to entertaining profusely, with multitudes of people and much noise. During the evening, Marianne entertained at the piano and was "highly applauded," although Sir John and Lady Middleton actually paid no attention to her performance. Colonel Brandon listened quietly, "and she felt a respect for him on the occasion which the others had reasonably forfeited by their shameless want of taste." Mrs. Jennings liked nothing better than to matchmake, and she teased the girls about the suitors she imagined them to have had at Norland Park. She persisted in saying that Colonel Brandon was "very much in love with Marianne Dashwood." But Marianne was horrified at the idea. To her mother's and Elinor's amusement, she saw the colonel as "an old bachelor," long past romance. He was thirty-five. Marianne was actually concerned with the progress of her sister's romance. To her mother, she admitted that she was afraid Edward Ferrars must be ill; otherwise he would have come to visit Elinor in the two weeks since they had left. Mrs. Dashwood replied that she did not expect Edward so soon: "If I have felt any anxiety at all on the subject, it has been in recollecting my invitation, when I talked of his coming to Barton." But Marianne cannot understand the strange behavior of either member of the pair. Edward had seemed to show no desire to be alone with Elinor before they left, and Elinor showed none of the traditional signs of lovesickness: "When is she dejected or melancholy? When does she try to avoid society, or appear restless in it?"

Marianne's sensibility shows up amusingly in these chapters. She respects Colonel Brandon because he listens to her performance while the others show "horrible insensibility." But she finds him wanting because his pleasure in music does not amount to "that ecstatic delight which alone could sympathize with her own." Because he speaks of flannel waistcoats, she sees him as old and rheumatic, and feels that any woman interested in someone his age could only expect occupation as a nurse. Elinor is rightly amused by this, observing, "Had he been only in a violent fever, you would not have despised him half so much. Confess, Marianne, is not there something interesting to you in the flushed cheek, hollow eye, and quick pulse of a fever?" This refers to the standard description of a man in love.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/11.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Sense and Sensibility/section_1_part_11.txt

Sense and Sensibility.chapter xi

chapter xi

{"name": "Chapter XI", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201020004256/https://www.novelguide.com/sense-and-sensibility/summaries/volume1-chapter1-11", "summary": "Sir John Middleton begins to hold balls at Barton Park. Willoughby and Marianne are always invited. They are completely absorbed in each other. Elinor tries to persuade Marianne to behave with more reserve, but without success. Marianne devotes herself to Willoughby and is no longer homesick for Norland. Elinor misses Norland because Edward is there. She forms a friendship with Colonel Brandon. Colonel Brandon talks with her about Marianne's not believing in second attachments. Elinor explains that Marianne has the romantic notion that second attachments are unpardonable, in spite of the fact that their own father had two wives and Marianne is the child of the second. Colonel Brandon does not wish to see Marianne outgrow her romantic prejudices. He says that she reminds him of a lady he used to know, who sadly was forced into a better acquaintance with the ways of the world. He breaks off his story abruptly. Elinor guesses that he was in love with this woman and that the affair ended badly.", "analysis": "Analysis of Chapters I-XI. The theme of \"sense\" versus \"sensibility\" is introduced in the characters of Elinor and Marianne. Each is a foil, or contrast, to the other. Elinor is sensible, practical, and cautious , while Marianne is romantic and impetuous. The dividing line, however, is not absolute, and the sisters do have qualities in common: both have loving hearts and intelligence. But their ways of responding to the world, to other people, and to the trials and tribulations of their lives, are different. Both Marianne and her mother , being full of \"sensibility,\" are incapable of feeling any close attachment to a person without declaring it to be love. Marianne accuses Elinor of being cold-hearted because Elinor talks of liking and esteeming Edward. But in fact, Elinor, in keeping her feelings reserved until she is sure that Edward returns them, is showing a prudence that her mother and sister lack. Marianne's lack of prudence and care for herself is symbolized by her venturing out in uncertain weather and taking a \"false step\" that makes her fall over. She is rescued by Willoughby. While on one hand his actions are admirable and appear heroic to Marianne, they can also be seen as taking advantage of a young girl's vulnerability at a moment of weakness. This is exactly what he proceeds to do on an emotional level in future chapters. He selfishly pursues the attraction he feels for Marianne without taking due care of her feelings. Marianne, lacking her sister's practicality in relationships, takes no care to find out what Willoughby's intentions are or whether he is free to marry her. She simply trusts to her heart's promptings and openly returns Willoughby's apparent affection. Marianne and Elinor respond to emotional stress very differently. After the family's move to Barton Cottage, Marianne expects Elinor to sink into dejection because she is missing Edward, and she also expects Edward to visit Elinor at Barton soon after the family's arrival there. On both accounts she is disappointed, because Elinor and Edward are more cautious with their feelings than is Marianne. Elinor does not yet know Edward's true feelings for her, and Edward holds back from making any declaration. Elinor and Edward are careful of their own hearts as well as of other people's, in a way that Marianne is not. A contrast is drawn between Marianne's two admirers, Colonel Brandon and Willoughby. While Colonel Brandon treats everyone with respect, Willoughby speaks slightingly of Colonel Brandon, apparently with a desire to amuse. While Colonel Brandon keeps his feelings for Marianne largely hidden, Willoughby admires her as openly as she admires him. At this point, Willoughby appears to resemble Marianne in being a person of \"sensibility,\" sharing her strong passions and opinions about music, literature, and people. It remains to be seen whether he shares Marianne's loving and constant heart. This is a source of suspense in the novel and reflects a common theme in Austen's work: the epistemological question of how one person can know another. What is certain at this point in the novel is that Willoughby perfectly fulfils Marianne's fantasy of her ideal husband. She says in Chapter III, \"I could not be happy with a man whose taste did not in every point coincide with my own. He must enter into all my feelings; the same books, the same music must charm us both. Willoughby is this man, and her enchantment with him makes her overlook the more solid qualities of Colonel Brandon, whom she characterizes as old and lacking in \"spirit\" and \"fire\". One of the major themes of the novel, primogeniture and inheritance, is introduced from the novel's beginning. Primogeniture is the tradition by which the first-born offspring inherits the entire estate of a parent. In practice, this is usually male-line primogeniture; hence, if the offspring of a marriage are all daughters, then the estate passes to the nearest male relative. The novel reflects the extreme importance of primogeniture in the society of Austen's time. It defined a person's life, prospects, and choice of marriage partner. The Dashwood women are reduced to genteel poverty simply because they are female. After Henry Dashwood's death, through the whim of \"the old Gentleman\" backed up by male-line primogeniture, Norland Park goes to Henry's son John. This is in spite of the fact that John does not need more wealth and yet the Dashwood women are in severe need after the death of their father. The Dashwood women are reliant on the charity of John, which is not forthcoming because of the meanness of John's wife Fanny. Their next hope, and the only way out of their predicament, is that the Dashwood daughters will make a good marriage. Primogeniture also plays a large part in the fortunes of Edward Ferrars, who at the novel's beginning is the eldest son of a rich man, and therefore a good marriage prospect. Old Mr. Ferrars left all his wealth to his wife, and Mrs. Ferrars can choose where it goes after her. Old Mr. Ferrars was evidently not influenced by the tradition of male-line primogeniture that afflicted the old Gentleman. Although primogeniture can be liberating in that it can set a man up in wealth for the rest of his life, it can also be tyrannical and restrictive. Edward Ferrars cannot marry whom he chooses; if he displeases his mother through his choice of wife, he risks being disinherited. When Mrs. Ferrars finds out that Edward is engaged to the penniless Lucy Steele, she does indeed disinherit him. This, in principle, liberates Edward to marry whom he wishes, though in practice, it would not be possible for him to marry anyone because he could not afford to support them. Edward is only rescued by his fortunate association with his wealthy benefactor, Colonel Brandon, who gives him a living. A deliberate contrast is drawn between two parallel sets of benefactor/beneficiary relationships: Willoughby and his elderly female relative Mrs. Smith, and Edward and Mrs. Ferrars. But there is an important difference. While Mrs. Ferrars disinherits Edward from avaricious motives, Willoughby's elderly relative later disinherits Willoughby on moral grounds, because she disapproves of his irresponsible liaison with Colonel Brandon's daughter. Whereas Edward is liberated from the influence of a malign mother, Willoughby deserts the influence of a benign and morally upright woman. Austen appears to be suggesting that the leverage of inheritance can be used for good or evil ends, and that losing an inheritance can be spiritually liberating or spiritually tragic. Another theme of the novel is familial duty. Austen shows that relatedness does not necessarily equate with familial duty. Though it is clear that John Dashwood has a moral duty to look after his stepmother and half-sisters after the death of his father, he is easily persuaded by his selfish wife that he has no duty at all to them. As it transpires, a distant relative, Sir John Middleton, is far more generous to the women than is John Dashwood. The gap between the expectation of how a character should act from the moral point of view and how they do act is typical of Austen's irony. The irony is underscored by the narrator's tongue-in-cheek summary of John's intentions at the end of Chapter II: \"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. So warped has John's moral perspective become as a result of his wife's influence, that he is able to conclude that it would be wrong to help the Dashwood women at all. The symbolism of hunting, which pervades the novel, is introduced in this section. The reader's first sight of Willoughby as he appears just in time to rescue Marianne is as he is out shooting game with his dogs. Just as Willoughby hunts animals, he also hunts Marianne; while he does not kill her, he does do great harm to her emotional well-being. In hunting as in love, Willoughby is a predator"}

Little had Mrs. Dashwood or her daughters imagined when they first came into Devonshire, that so many engagements would arise to occupy their time as shortly presented themselves, or that they should have such frequent invitations and such constant visitors as to leave them little leisure for serious employment. Yet such was the case. When Marianne was recovered, the schemes of amusement at home and abroad, which Sir John had been previously forming, were put into execution. The private balls at the park then began; and parties on the water were made and accomplished as often as a showery October would allow. In every meeting of the kind Willoughby was included; and the ease and familiarity which naturally attended these parties were exactly calculated to give increasing intimacy to his acquaintance with the Dashwoods, to afford him opportunity of witnessing the excellencies of Marianne, of marking his animated admiration of her, and of receiving, in her behaviour to himself, the most pointed assurance of her affection. Elinor could not be surprised at their attachment. She only wished that it were less openly shewn; and once or twice did venture to suggest the propriety of some self-command to Marianne. But Marianne abhorred all concealment where no real disgrace could attend unreserve; and to aim at the restraint of sentiments which were not in themselves illaudable, appeared to her not merely an unnecessary effort, but a disgraceful subjection of reason to common-place and mistaken notions. Willoughby thought the same; and their behaviour at all times, was an illustration of their opinions. When he was present she had no eyes for any one else. Every thing he did, was right. Every thing he said, was clever. If their evenings at the park were concluded with cards, he cheated himself and all the rest of the party to get her a good hand. If dancing formed the amusement of the night, they were partners for half the time; and when obliged to separate for a couple of dances, were careful to stand together and scarcely spoke a word to any body else. Such conduct made them of course most exceedingly laughed at; but ridicule could not shame, and seemed hardly to provoke them. Mrs. Dashwood entered into all their feelings with a warmth which left her no inclination for checking this excessive display of them. To her it was but the natural consequence of a strong affection in a young and ardent mind. This was the season of happiness to Marianne. Her heart was devoted to Willoughby, and the fond attachment to Norland, which she brought with her from Sussex, was more likely to be softened than she had thought it possible before, by the charms which his society bestowed on her present home. Elinor's happiness was not so great. Her heart was not so much at ease, nor her satisfaction in their amusements so pure. They afforded her no companion that could make amends for what she had left behind, nor that could teach her to think of Norland with less regret than ever. Neither Lady Middleton nor Mrs. Jennings could supply to her the conversation she missed; although the latter was an everlasting talker, and from the first had regarded her with a kindness which ensured her a large share of her discourse. She had already repeated her own history to Elinor three or four times; and had Elinor's memory been equal to her means of improvement, she might have known very early in their acquaintance all the particulars of Mr. Jennings's last illness, and what he said to his wife a few minutes before he died. Lady Middleton was more agreeable than her mother only in being more silent. Elinor needed little observation to perceive that her reserve was a mere calmness of manner with which sense had nothing to do. Towards her husband and mother she was the same as to them; and intimacy was therefore neither to be looked for nor desired. She had nothing to say one day that she had not said the day before. Her insipidity was invariable, for even her spirits were always the same; and though she did not oppose the parties arranged by her husband, provided every thing were conducted in style and her two eldest children attended her, she never appeared to receive more enjoyment from them than she might have experienced in sitting at home;--and so little did her presence add to the pleasure of the others, by any share in their conversation, that they were sometimes only reminded of her being amongst them by her solicitude about her troublesome boys. In Colonel Brandon alone, of all her new acquaintance, did Elinor find a person who could in any degree claim the respect of abilities, excite the interest of friendship, or give pleasure as a companion. Willoughby was out of the question. Her admiration and regard, even her sisterly regard, was all his own; but he was a lover; his attentions were wholly Marianne's, and a far less agreeable man might have been more generally pleasing. Colonel Brandon, unfortunately for himself, had no such encouragement to think only of Marianne, and in conversing with Elinor he found the greatest consolation for the indifference of her sister. Elinor's compassion for him increased, as she had reason to suspect that the misery of disappointed love had already been known to him. This suspicion was given by some words which accidentally dropped from him one evening at the park, when they were sitting down together by mutual consent, while the others were dancing. His eyes were fixed on Marianne, and, after a silence of some minutes, he said, with a faint smile, "Your sister, I understand, does not approve of second attachments." "No," replied Elinor, "her opinions are all romantic." "Or rather, as I believe, she considers them impossible to exist." "I believe she does. But how she contrives it without reflecting on the character of her own father, who had himself two wives, I know not. A few years however will settle her opinions on the reasonable basis of common sense and observation; and then they may be more easy to define and to justify than they now are, by any body but herself." "This will probably be the case," he replied; "and yet there is something so amiable in the prejudices of a young mind, that one is sorry to see them give way to the reception of more general opinions." "I cannot agree with you there," said Elinor. "There are inconveniences attending such feelings as Marianne's, which all the charms of enthusiasm and ignorance of the world cannot atone for. Her systems have all the unfortunate tendency of setting propriety at nought; and a better acquaintance with the world is what I look forward to as her greatest possible advantage." After a short pause he resumed the conversation by saying,-- "Does your sister make no distinction in her objections against a second attachment? or is it equally criminal in every body? Are those who have been disappointed in their first choice, whether from the inconstancy of its object, or the perverseness of circumstances, to be equally indifferent during the rest of their lives?" "Upon my word, I am not acquainted with the minutiae of her principles. I only know that I never yet heard her admit any instance of a second attachment's being pardonable." "This," said he, "cannot hold; but a change, a total change of sentiments--No, no, do not desire it; for when the romantic refinements of a young mind are obliged to give way, how frequently are they succeeded by such opinions as are but too common, and too dangerous! I speak from experience. I once knew a lady who in temper and mind greatly resembled your sister, who thought and judged like her, but who from an inforced change--from a series of unfortunate circumstances"-- Here he stopt suddenly; appeared to think that he had said too much, and by his countenance gave rise to conjectures, which might not otherwise have entered Elinor's head. The lady would probably have passed without suspicion, had he not convinced Miss Dashwood that what concerned her ought not to escape his lips. As it was, it required but a slight effort of fancy to connect his emotion with the tender recollection of past regard. Elinor attempted no more. But Marianne, in her place, would not have done so little. The whole story would have been speedily formed under her active imagination; and every thing established in the most melancholy order of disastrous love.

Chapter XI

https://web.archive.org/web/20201020004256/https://www.novelguide.com/sense-and-sensibility/summaries/volume1-chapter1-11

Sir John Middleton begins to hold balls at Barton Park. Willoughby and Marianne are always invited. They are completely absorbed in each other. Elinor tries to persuade Marianne to behave with more reserve, but without success. Marianne devotes herself to Willoughby and is no longer homesick for Norland. Elinor misses Norland because Edward is there. She forms a friendship with Colonel Brandon. Colonel Brandon talks with her about Marianne's not believing in second attachments. Elinor explains that Marianne has the romantic notion that second attachments are unpardonable, in spite of the fact that their own father had two wives and Marianne is the child of the second. Colonel Brandon does not wish to see Marianne outgrow her romantic prejudices. He says that she reminds him of a lady he used to know, who sadly was forced into a better acquaintance with the ways of the world. He breaks off his story abruptly. Elinor guesses that he was in love with this woman and that the affair ended badly.

Analysis of Chapters I-XI. The theme of "sense" versus "sensibility" is introduced in the characters of Elinor and Marianne. Each is a foil, or contrast, to the other. Elinor is sensible, practical, and cautious , while Marianne is romantic and impetuous. The dividing line, however, is not absolute, and the sisters do have qualities in common: both have loving hearts and intelligence. But their ways of responding to the world, to other people, and to the trials and tribulations of their lives, are different. Both Marianne and her mother , being full of "sensibility," are incapable of feeling any close attachment to a person without declaring it to be love. Marianne accuses Elinor of being cold-hearted because Elinor talks of liking and esteeming Edward. But in fact, Elinor, in keeping her feelings reserved until she is sure that Edward returns them, is showing a prudence that her mother and sister lack. Marianne's lack of prudence and care for herself is symbolized by her venturing out in uncertain weather and taking a "false step" that makes her fall over. She is rescued by Willoughby. While on one hand his actions are admirable and appear heroic to Marianne, they can also be seen as taking advantage of a young girl's vulnerability at a moment of weakness. This is exactly what he proceeds to do on an emotional level in future chapters. He selfishly pursues the attraction he feels for Marianne without taking due care of her feelings. Marianne, lacking her sister's practicality in relationships, takes no care to find out what Willoughby's intentions are or whether he is free to marry her. She simply trusts to her heart's promptings and openly returns Willoughby's apparent affection. Marianne and Elinor respond to emotional stress very differently. After the family's move to Barton Cottage, Marianne expects Elinor to sink into dejection because she is missing Edward, and she also expects Edward to visit Elinor at Barton soon after the family's arrival there. On both accounts she is disappointed, because Elinor and Edward are more cautious with their feelings than is Marianne. Elinor does not yet know Edward's true feelings for her, and Edward holds back from making any declaration. Elinor and Edward are careful of their own hearts as well as of other people's, in a way that Marianne is not. A contrast is drawn between Marianne's two admirers, Colonel Brandon and Willoughby. While Colonel Brandon treats everyone with respect, Willoughby speaks slightingly of Colonel Brandon, apparently with a desire to amuse. While Colonel Brandon keeps his feelings for Marianne largely hidden, Willoughby admires her as openly as she admires him. At this point, Willoughby appears to resemble Marianne in being a person of "sensibility," sharing her strong passions and opinions about music, literature, and people. It remains to be seen whether he shares Marianne's loving and constant heart. This is a source of suspense in the novel and reflects a common theme in Austen's work: the epistemological question of how one person can know another. What is certain at this point in the novel is that Willoughby perfectly fulfils Marianne's fantasy of her ideal husband. She says in Chapter III, "I could not be happy with a man whose taste did not in every point coincide with my own. He must enter into all my feelings; the same books, the same music must charm us both. Willoughby is this man, and her enchantment with him makes her overlook the more solid qualities of Colonel Brandon, whom she characterizes as old and lacking in "spirit" and "fire". One of the major themes of the novel, primogeniture and inheritance, is introduced from the novel's beginning. Primogeniture is the tradition by which the first-born offspring inherits the entire estate of a parent. In practice, this is usually male-line primogeniture; hence, if the offspring of a marriage are all daughters, then the estate passes to the nearest male relative. The novel reflects the extreme importance of primogeniture in the society of Austen's time. It defined a person's life, prospects, and choice of marriage partner. The Dashwood women are reduced to genteel poverty simply because they are female. After Henry Dashwood's death, through the whim of "the old Gentleman" backed up by male-line primogeniture, Norland Park goes to Henry's son John. This is in spite of the fact that John does not need more wealth and yet the Dashwood women are in severe need after the death of their father. The Dashwood women are reliant on the charity of John, which is not forthcoming because of the meanness of John's wife Fanny. Their next hope, and the only way out of their predicament, is that the Dashwood daughters will make a good marriage. Primogeniture also plays a large part in the fortunes of Edward Ferrars, who at the novel's beginning is the eldest son of a rich man, and therefore a good marriage prospect. Old Mr. Ferrars left all his wealth to his wife, and Mrs. Ferrars can choose where it goes after her. Old Mr. Ferrars was evidently not influenced by the tradition of male-line primogeniture that afflicted the old Gentleman. Although primogeniture can be liberating in that it can set a man up in wealth for the rest of his life, it can also be tyrannical and restrictive. Edward Ferrars cannot marry whom he chooses; if he displeases his mother through his choice of wife, he risks being disinherited. When Mrs. Ferrars finds out that Edward is engaged to the penniless Lucy Steele, she does indeed disinherit him. This, in principle, liberates Edward to marry whom he wishes, though in practice, it would not be possible for him to marry anyone because he could not afford to support them. Edward is only rescued by his fortunate association with his wealthy benefactor, Colonel Brandon, who gives him a living. A deliberate contrast is drawn between two parallel sets of benefactor/beneficiary relationships: Willoughby and his elderly female relative Mrs. Smith, and Edward and Mrs. Ferrars. But there is an important difference. While Mrs. Ferrars disinherits Edward from avaricious motives, Willoughby's elderly relative later disinherits Willoughby on moral grounds, because she disapproves of his irresponsible liaison with Colonel Brandon's daughter. Whereas Edward is liberated from the influence of a malign mother, Willoughby deserts the influence of a benign and morally upright woman. Austen appears to be suggesting that the leverage of inheritance can be used for good or evil ends, and that losing an inheritance can be spiritually liberating or spiritually tragic. Another theme of the novel is familial duty. Austen shows that relatedness does not necessarily equate with familial duty. Though it is clear that John Dashwood has a moral duty to look after his stepmother and half-sisters after the death of his father, he is easily persuaded by his selfish wife that he has no duty at all to them. As it transpires, a distant relative, Sir John Middleton, is far more generous to the women than is John Dashwood. The gap between the expectation of how a character should act from the moral point of view and how they do act is typical of Austen's irony. The irony is underscored by the narrator's tongue-in-cheek summary of John's intentions at the end of Chapter II: "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. So warped has John's moral perspective become as a result of his wife's influence, that he is able to conclude that it would be wrong to help the Dashwood women at all. The symbolism of hunting, which pervades the novel, is introduced in this section. The reader's first sight of Willoughby as he appears just in time to rescue Marianne is as he is out shooting game with his dogs. Just as Willoughby hunts animals, he also hunts Marianne; while he does not kill her, he does do great harm to her emotional well-being. In hunting as in love, Willoughby is a predator

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/44.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Sense and Sensibility/section_4_part_4.txt

Sense and Sensibility.chapter 44

chapter 44

{"name": "Chapter 44", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210419170735/https://www.gradesaver.com/sense-and-sensibility/study-guide/summary-chapters-41-50", "summary": "Elinor is horrified at seeing Willoughby there, and shocked when he says his only business is with her. Willoughby asks if Marianne is recovering, and Elinor says she is; Willoughby says he is there to explain himself and gain some forgiveness, if he can. Willoughby says he led Marianne on out of vanity, and didn't know that she actually loved him; he finally began to love her as well, and would have proposed to her, had his aunt, Mrs. Smith, not annulled his legacy, and left him with heavy debts. Willoughby also tries to excuse himself for seducing and dumping Miss Williams, Colonel Brandon's ward, although he is making poor excuses for his truly inexcusable behavior. Apparently, he also avoided them while they were in town, and watched them to make sure he wouldn't stumble on them accidentally. He also says that the letter he sent Marianne was written by his wife, again attempting to excuse his cruel behavior. By saying that he also has no regard for his wife, and still loves Marianne, he attempts to gain Elinor's compassion; Elinor's opinion of him is somewhat bettered in being assured that he did, and still does, have affection for Marianne. Elinor cannot think him a total blackguard since he has been heavily punished for all his mistakes, and now must endure a loveless marriage for the sake of money; Willoughby leaves with this assurance, lamenting that Marianne is lost to him forever.", "analysis": "The reintroduction of Willoughby seems particularly designed to prove him as callow and cruel as his behavior to Marianne in London suggested. He is little like he was at Barton, and indeed seems like a pure villain at first; there could not be any greater contrast between his former appearance, and how he is acting to Elinor when he tries to make light of his completely irresponsible behavior. He does become somewhat more sympathetic through the course of the conversation, as flashes of sincerity become apparent, and his continuing regard for Marianne is confirmed. Elinor may be right, in believing that he would be of a character wholly as open and good as Marianne's, had he been possessed with less vanity and less tendency toward idleness and irresponsibility. But, Willoughby has been punished and deserves all of this punishment, although with his present bitterness there is perhaps little hope of him amending his character. Willoughby's cryptic statement about Marianne soon marrying someone he \"could least bear\" obviously is meant to foreshadow a union between Marianne and Colonel Brandon. However, how Willoughby would be able to guess at this is a mystery. The Colonel is certainly as resolved on Marianne as he always was, and has proved his honor, and his regard for her and her family, repeatedly. Although Marianne has not yet come to love or appreciate the Colonel, this final appearance of Willoughby will probably finally put her grief from her mind, and perhaps prepare her to accept the honorable affections of the Colonel"}

Elinor, starting back with a look of horror at the sight of him, obeyed the first impulse of her heart in turning instantly to quit the room, and her hand was already on the lock, when its action was suspended by his hastily advancing, and saying, in a voice rather of command than supplication, "Miss Dashwood, for half an hour--for ten minutes--I entreat you to stay." "No, sir," she replied with firmness, "I shall NOT stay. Your business cannot be with ME. The servants, I suppose, forgot to tell you that Mr. Palmer was not in the house." "Had they told me," he cried with vehemence, "that Mr. Palmer and all his relations were at the devil, it would not have turned me from the door. My business is with you, and only you." "With me!"--in the utmost amazement--"well, sir,--be quick--and if you can--less violent." "Sit down, and I will be both." She hesitated; she knew not what to do. The possibility of Colonel Brandon's arriving and finding her there, came across her. But she had promised to hear him, and her curiosity no less than her honor was engaged. After a moment's recollection, therefore, concluding that prudence required dispatch, and that her acquiescence would best promote it, she walked silently towards the table, and sat down. He took the opposite chair, and for half a minute not a word was said by either. "Pray be quick, sir,"--said Elinor, impatiently;--"I have no time to spare." He was sitting in an attitude of deep meditation, and seemed not to hear her. "Your sister," said he, with abruptness, a moment afterwards--"is out of danger. I heard it from the servant. God be praised!--But is it true? is it really true?" Elinor would not speak. He repeated the inquiry with yet greater eagerness. "For God's sake tell me, is she out of danger, or is she not?" "We hope she is." He rose up, and walked across the room. "Had I known as much half an hour ago--But since I AM here,"--speaking with a forced vivacity as he returned to his seat--"what does it signify?--For once, Miss Dashwood--it will be the last time, perhaps--let us be cheerful together.--I am in a fine mood for gaiety.-- Tell me honestly"--a deeper glow overspreading his cheeks--"do you think me most a knave or a fool?" Elinor looked at him with greater astonishment than ever. She began to think that he must be in liquor;--the strangeness of such a visit, and of such manners, seemed no otherwise intelligible; and with this impression she immediately rose, saying, "Mr. Willoughby, I advise you at present to return to Combe--I am not at leisure to remain with you longer.-- Whatever your business may be with me, it will be better recollected and explained to-morrow." "I understand you," he replied, with an expressive smile, and a voice perfectly calm; "yes, I am very drunk.-- A pint of porter with my cold beef at Marlborough was enough to over-set me." "At Marlborough!"--cried Elinor, more and more at a loss to understand what he would be at. "Yes,--I left London this morning at eight o'clock, and the only ten minutes I have spent out of my chaise since that time procured me a nuncheon at Marlborough." The steadiness of his manner, and the intelligence of his eye as he spoke, convincing Elinor, that whatever other unpardonable folly might bring him to Cleveland, he was not brought there by intoxication, she said, after a moment's recollection, "Mr. Willoughby, you OUGHT to feel, and I certainly DO--that after what has passed--your coming here in this manner, and forcing yourself upon my notice, requires a very particular excuse.--What is it, that you mean by it?"-- "I mean,"--said he, with serious energy--"if I can, to make you hate me one degree less than you do NOW. I mean to offer some kind of explanation, some kind of apology, for the past; to open my whole heart to you, and by convincing you, that though I have been always a blockhead, I have not been always a rascal, to obtain something like forgiveness from Ma--from your sister." "Is this the real reason of your coming?" "Upon my soul it is,"--was his answer, with a warmth which brought all the former Willoughby to her remembrance, and in spite of herself made her think him sincere. "If that is all, you may be satisfied already,--for Marianne DOES--she has LONG forgiven you." "Has she?"--he cried, in the same eager tone.-- "Then she has forgiven me before she ought to have done it. But she shall forgive me again, and on more reasonable grounds.--NOW will you listen to me?" Elinor bowed her assent. "I do not know," said he, after a pause of expectation on her side, and thoughtfulness on his own,--"how YOU may have accounted for my behaviour to your sister, or what diabolical motive you may have imputed to me.-- Perhaps you will hardly think the better of me,--it is worth the trial however, and you shall hear every thing. When I first became intimate in your family, I had no other intention, no other view in the acquaintance than to pass my time pleasantly while I was obliged to remain in Devonshire, more pleasantly than I had ever done before. Your sister's lovely person and interesting manners could not but please me; and her behaviour to me almost from the first, was of a kind--It is astonishing, when I reflect on what it was, and what SHE was, that my heart should have been so insensible! But at first I must confess, my vanity only was elevated by it. Careless of her happiness, thinking only of my own amusement, giving way to feelings which I had always been too much in the habit of indulging, I endeavoured, by every means in my power, to make myself pleasing to her, without any design of returning her affection." Miss Dashwood, at this point, turning her eyes on him with the most angry contempt, stopped him, by saying, "It is hardly worth while, Mr. Willoughby, for you to relate, or for me to listen any longer. Such a beginning as this cannot be followed by any thing.-- Do not let me be pained by hearing any thing more on the subject." "I insist on you hearing the whole of it," he replied, "My fortune was never large, and I had always been expensive, always in the habit of associating with people of better income than myself. Every year since my coming of age, or even before, I believe, had added to my debts; and though the death of my old cousin, Mrs. Smith, was to set me free; yet that event being uncertain, and possibly far distant, it had been for some time my intention to re-establish my circumstances by marrying a woman of fortune. To attach myself to your sister, therefore, was not a thing to be thought of;--and with a meanness, selfishness, cruelty--which no indignant, no contemptuous look, even of yours, Miss Dashwood, can ever reprobate too much--I was acting in this manner, trying to engage her regard, without a thought of returning it.--But one thing may be said for me: even in that horrid state of selfish vanity, I did not know the extent of the injury I meditated, because I did not THEN know what it was to love. But have I ever known it?--Well may it be doubted; for, had I really loved, could I have sacrificed my feelings to vanity, to avarice?--or, what is more, could I have sacrificed hers?-- But I have done it. To avoid a comparative poverty, which her affection and her society would have deprived of all its horrors, I have, by raising myself to affluence, lost every thing that could make it a blessing." "You did then," said Elinor, a little softened, "believe yourself at one time attached to her?" "To have resisted such attractions, to have withstood such tenderness!--Is there a man on earth who could have done it?--Yes, I found myself, by insensible degrees, sincerely fond of her; and the happiest hours of my life were what I spent with her when I felt my intentions were strictly honourable, and my feelings blameless. Even THEN, however, when fully determined on paying my addresses to her, I allowed myself most improperly to put off, from day to day, the moment of doing it, from an unwillingness to enter into an engagement while my circumstances were so greatly embarrassed. I will not reason here--nor will I stop for YOU to expatiate on the absurdity, and the worse than absurdity, of scrupling to engage my faith where my honour was already bound. The event has proved, that I was a cunning fool, providing with great circumspection for a possible opportunity of making myself contemptible and wretched for ever. At last, however, my resolution was taken, and I had determined, as soon as I could engage her alone, to justify the attentions I had so invariably paid her, and openly assure her of an affection which I had already taken such pains to display. But in the interim--in the interim of the very few hours that were to pass, before I could have an opportunity of speaking with her in private--a circumstance occurred--an unlucky circumstance, to ruin all my resolution, and with it all my comfort. A discovery took place,"--here he hesitated and looked down.--"Mrs. Smith had somehow or other been informed, I imagine by some distant relation, whose interest it was to deprive me of her favour, of an affair, a connection--but I need not explain myself farther," he added, looking at her with an heightened colour and an enquiring eye--"your particular intimacy--you have probably heard the whole story long ago." "I have," returned Elinor, colouring likewise, and hardening her heart anew against any compassion for him, "I have heard it all. And how you will explain away any part of your guilt in that dreadful business, I confess is beyond my comprehension." "Remember," cried Willoughby, "from whom you received the account. Could it be an impartial one? I acknowledge that her situation and her character ought to have been respected by me. I do not mean to justify myself, but at the same time cannot leave you to suppose that I have nothing to urge--that because she was injured she was irreproachable, and because I was a libertine, SHE must be a saint. If the violence of her passions, the weakness of her understanding--I do not mean, however, to defend myself. Her affection for me deserved better treatment, and I often, with great self-reproach, recall the tenderness which, for a very short time, had the power of creating any return. I wish--I heartily wish it had never been. But I have injured more than herself; and I have injured one, whose affection for me--(may I say it?) was scarcely less warm than hers; and whose mind--Oh! how infinitely superior!"-- "Your indifference, however, towards that unfortunate girl--I must say it, unpleasant to me as the discussion of such a subject may well be--your indifference is no apology for your cruel neglect of her. Do not think yourself excused by any weakness, any natural defect of understanding on her side, in the wanton cruelty so evident on yours. You must have known, that while you were enjoying yourself in Devonshire pursuing fresh schemes, always gay, always happy, she was reduced to the extremest indigence." "But, upon my soul, I did NOT know it," he warmly replied; "I did not recollect that I had omitted to give her my direction; and common sense might have told her how to find it out." "Well, sir, and what said Mrs. Smith?" "She taxed me with the offence at once, and my confusion may be guessed. The purity of her life, the formality of her notions, her ignorance of the world--every thing was against me. The matter itself I could not deny, and vain was every endeavour to soften it. She was previously disposed, I believe, to doubt the morality of my conduct in general, and was moreover discontented with the very little attention, the very little portion of my time that I had bestowed on her, in my present visit. In short, it ended in a total breach. By one measure I might have saved myself. In the height of her morality, good woman! she offered to forgive the past, if I would marry Eliza. That could not be--and I was formally dismissed from her favour and her house. The night following this affair--I was to go the next morning--was spent by me in deliberating on what my future conduct should be. The struggle was great--but it ended too soon. My affection for Marianne, my thorough conviction of her attachment to me--it was all insufficient to outweigh that dread of poverty, or get the better of those false ideas of the necessity of riches, which I was naturally inclined to feel, and expensive society had increased. I had reason to believe myself secure of my present wife, if I chose to address her, and I persuaded myself to think that nothing else in common prudence remained for me to do. A heavy scene however awaited me, before I could leave Devonshire;--I was engaged to dine with you on that very day; some apology was therefore necessary for my breaking this engagement. But whether I should write this apology, or deliver it in person, was a point of long debate. To see Marianne, I felt, would be dreadful, and I even doubted whether I could see her again, and keep to my resolution. In that point, however, I undervalued my own magnanimity, as the event declared; for I went, I saw her, and saw her miserable, and left her miserable--and left her hoping never to see her again." "Why did you call, Mr. Willoughby?" said Elinor, reproachfully; "a note would have answered every purpose.-- Why was it necessary to call?" "It was necessary to my own pride. I could not bear to leave the country in a manner that might lead you, or the rest of the neighbourhood, to suspect any part of what had really passed between Mrs. Smith and myself--and I resolved therefore on calling at the cottage, in my way to Honiton. The sight of your dear sister, however, was really dreadful; and, to heighten the matter, I found her alone. You were all gone I do not know where. I had left her only the evening before, so fully, so firmly resolved within my self on doing right! A few hours were to have engaged her to me for ever; and I remember how happy, how gay were my spirits, as I walked from the cottage to Allenham, satisfied with myself, delighted with every body! But in this, our last interview of friendship, I approached her with a sense of guilt that almost took from me the power of dissembling. Her sorrow, her disappointment, her deep regret, when I told her that I was obliged to leave Devonshire so immediately--I never shall forget it--united too with such reliance, such confidence in me!--Oh, God!--what a hard-hearted rascal I was!" They were both silent for a few moments. Elinor first spoke. "Did you tell her that you should soon return?" "I do not know what I told her," he replied, impatiently; "less than was due to the past, beyond a doubt, and in all likelihood much more than was justified by the future. I cannot think of it.--It won't do.--Then came your dear mother to torture me farther, with all her kindness and confidence. Thank Heaven! it DID torture me. I was miserable. Miss Dashwood, you cannot have an idea of the comfort it gives me to look back on my own misery. I owe such a grudge to myself for the stupid, rascally folly of my own heart, that all my past sufferings under it are only triumph and exultation to me now. Well, I went, left all that I loved, and went to those to whom, at best, I was only indifferent. My journey to town--travelling with my own horses, and therefore so tediously--no creature to speak to--my own reflections so cheerful--when I looked forward every thing so inviting!--when I looked back at Barton, the picture so soothing!--oh, it was a blessed journey!" He stopped. "Well, sir," said Elinor, who, though pitying him, grew impatient for his departure, "and this is all?" "Ah!--no,--have you forgot what passed in town?-- That infamous letter--Did she shew it you?" "Yes, I saw every note that passed." "When the first of hers reached me (as it immediately did, for I was in town the whole time,) what I felt is--in the common phrase, not to be expressed; in a more simple one--perhaps too simple to raise any emotion--my feelings were very, very painful.--Every line, every word was--in the hackneyed metaphor which their dear writer, were she here, would forbid--a dagger to my heart. To know that Marianne was in town was--in the same language--a thunderbolt.--Thunderbolts and daggers!--what a reproof would she have given me!--her taste, her opinions--I believe they are better known to me than my own,--and I am sure they are dearer." Elinor's heart, which had undergone many changes in the course of this extraordinary conversation, was now softened again;--yet she felt it her duty to check such ideas in her companion as the last. "This is not right, Mr. Willoughby.--Remember that you are married. Relate only what in your conscience you think necessary for me to hear." "Marianne's note, by assuring me that I was still as dear to her as in former days, that in spite of the many, many weeks we had been separated, she was as constant in her own feelings, and as full of faith in the constancy of mine as ever, awakened all my remorse. I say awakened, because time and London, business and dissipation, had in some measure quieted it, and I had been growing a fine hardened villain, fancying myself indifferent to her, and chusing to fancy that she too must have become indifferent to me; talking to myself of our past attachment as a mere idle, trifling business, shrugging up my shoulders in proof of its being so, and silencing every reproach, overcoming every scruple, by secretly saying now and then, 'I shall be heartily glad to hear she is well married.'-- But this note made me know myself better. I felt that she was infinitely dearer to me than any other woman in the world, and that I was using her infamously. But every thing was then just settled between Miss Grey and me. To retreat was impossible. All that I had to do, was to avoid you both. I sent no answer to Marianne, intending by that to preserve myself from her farther notice; and for some time I was even determined not to call in Berkeley Street;--but at last, judging it wiser to affect the air of a cool, common acquaintance than anything else, I watched you all safely out of the house one morning, and left my name." "Watched us out of the house!" "Even so. You would be surprised to hear how often I watched you, how often I was on the point of falling in with you. I have entered many a shop to avoid your sight, as the carriage drove by. Lodging as I did in Bond Street, there was hardly a day in which I did not catch a glimpse of one or other of you; and nothing but the most constant watchfulness on my side, a most invariably prevailing desire to keep out of your sight, could have separated us so long. I avoided the Middletons as much as possible, as well as everybody else who was likely to prove an acquaintance in common. Not aware of their being in town, however, I blundered on Sir John, I believe, the first day of his coming, and the day after I had called at Mrs. Jennings's. He asked me to a party, a dance at his house in the evening.--Had he NOT told me as an inducement that you and your sister were to be there, I should have felt it too certain a thing, to trust myself near him. The next morning brought another short note from Marianne--still affectionate, open, artless, confiding--everything that could make MY conduct most hateful. I could not answer it. I tried--but could not frame a sentence. But I thought of her, I believe, every moment of the day. If you CAN pity me, Miss Dashwood, pity my situation as it was THEN. With my head and heart full of your sister, I was forced to play the happy lover to another woman!--Those three or four weeks were worse than all. Well, at last, as I need not tell you, you were forced on me; and what a sweet figure I cut!--what an evening of agony it was!-- Marianne, beautiful as an angel on one side, calling me Willoughby in such a tone!--Oh, God!--holding out her hand to me, asking me for an explanation, with those bewitching eyes fixed in such speaking solicitude on my face!--and Sophia, jealous as the devil on the other hand, looking all that was--Well, it does not signify; it is over now.-- Such an evening!--I ran away from you all as soon as I could; but not before I had seen Marianne's sweet face as white as death.--THAT was the last, last look I ever had of her;--the last manner in which she appeared to me. It was a horrid sight!--yet when I thought of her to-day as really dying, it was a kind of comfort to me to imagine that I knew exactly how she would appear to those, who saw her last in this world. She was before me, constantly before me, as I travelled, in the same look and hue." A short pause of mutual thoughtfulness succeeded. Willoughby first rousing himself, broke it thus: "Well, let me make haste and be gone. Your sister is certainly better, certainly out of danger?" "We are assured of it." "Your poor mother, too!--doting on Marianne." "But the letter, Mr. Willoughby, your own letter; have you any thing to say about that?" "Yes, yes, THAT in particular. Your sister wrote to me again, you know, the very next morning. You saw what she said. I was breakfasting at the Ellisons,--and her letter, with some others, was brought to me there from my lodgings. It happened to catch Sophia's eye before it caught mine--and its size, the elegance of the paper, the hand-writing altogether, immediately gave her a suspicion. Some vague report had reached her before of my attachment to some young lady in Devonshire, and what had passed within her observation the preceding evening had marked who the young lady was, and made her more jealous than ever. Affecting that air of playfulness, therefore, which is delightful in a woman one loves, she opened the letter directly, and read its contents. She was well paid for her impudence. She read what made her wretched. Her wretchedness I could have borne, but her passion--her malice--At all events it must be appeased. And, in short--what do you think of my wife's style of letter-writing?--delicate--tender--truly feminine--was it not?" "Your wife!--The letter was in your own hand-writing." "Yes, but I had only the credit of servilely copying such sentences as I was ashamed to put my name to. The original was all her own--her own happy thoughts and gentle diction. But what could I do!--we were engaged, every thing in preparation, the day almost fixed--But I am talking like a fool. Preparation!--day!--In honest words, her money was necessary to me, and in a situation like mine, any thing was to be done to prevent a rupture. And after all, what did it signify to my character in the opinion of Marianne and her friends, in what language my answer was couched?--It must have been only to one end. My business was to declare myself a scoundrel, and whether I did it with a bow or a bluster was of little importance.-- 'I am ruined for ever in their opinion--' said I to myself--'I am shut out for ever from their society, they already think me an unprincipled fellow, this letter will only make them think me a blackguard one.' Such were my reasonings, as, in a sort of desperate carelessness, I copied my wife's words, and parted with the last relics of Marianne. Her three notes--unluckily they were all in my pocketbook, or I should have denied their existence, and hoarded them for ever--I was forced to put them up, and could not even kiss them. And the lock of hair--that too I had always carried about me in the same pocket-book, which was now searched by Madam with the most ingratiating virulence,--the dear lock--all, every memento was torn from me." "You are very wrong, Mr. Willoughby, very blamable," said Elinor, while her voice, in spite of herself, betrayed her compassionate emotion; "you ought not to speak in this way, either of Mrs. Willoughby or my sister. You had made your own choice. It was not forced on you. Your wife has a claim to your politeness, to your respect, at least. She must be attached to you, or she would not have married you. To treat her with unkindness, to speak of her slightingly is no atonement to Marianne--nor can I suppose it a relief to your own conscience." "Do not talk to me of my wife," said he with a heavy sigh.-- "She does not deserve your compassion.--She knew I had no regard for her when we married.--Well, married we were, and came down to Combe Magna to be happy, and afterwards returned to town to be gay.--And now do you pity me, Miss Dashwood?--or have I said all this to no purpose?-- Am I--be it only one degree--am I less guilty in your opinion than I was before?--My intentions were not always wrong. Have I explained away any part of my guilt?" "Yes, you have certainly removed something--a little.-- You have proved yourself, on the whole, less faulty than I had believed you. You have proved your heart less wicked, much less wicked. But I hardly know--the misery that you have inflicted--I hardly know what could have made it worse." "Will you repeat to your sister when she is recovered, what I have been telling you?--Let me be a little lightened too in her opinion as well as in yours. You tell me that she has forgiven me already. Let me be able to fancy that a better knowledge of my heart, and of my present feelings, will draw from her a more spontaneous, more natural, more gentle, less dignified, forgiveness. Tell her of my misery and my penitence--tell her that my heart was never inconstant to her, and if you will, that at this moment she is dearer to me than ever." "I will tell her all that is necessary to what may comparatively be called, your justification. But you have not explained to me the particular reason of your coming now, nor how you heard of her illness." "Last night, in Drury Lane lobby, I ran against Sir John Middleton, and when he saw who I was--for the first time these two months--he spoke to me.--That he had cut me ever since my marriage, I had seen without surprise or resentment. Now, however, his good-natured, honest, stupid soul, full of indignation against me, and concern for your sister, could not resist the temptation of telling me what he knew ought to--though probably he did not think it WOULD--vex me horridly. As bluntly as he could speak it, therefore, he told me that Marianne Dashwood was dying of a putrid fever at Cleveland--a letter that morning received from Mrs. Jennings declared her danger most imminent--the Palmers are all gone off in a fright, &c.--I was too much shocked to be able to pass myself off as insensible even to the undiscerning Sir John. His heart was softened in seeing mine suffer; and so much of his ill-will was done away, that when we parted, he almost shook me by the hand while he reminded me of an old promise about a pointer puppy. What I felt on hearing that your sister was dying--and dying too, believing me the greatest villain upon earth, scorning, hating me in her latest moments--for how could I tell what horrid projects might not have been imputed? ONE person I was sure would represent me as capable of any thing-- What I felt was dreadful!--My resolution was soon made, and at eight o'clock this morning I was in my carriage. Now you know all." Elinor made no answer. Her thoughts were silently fixed on the irreparable injury which too early an independence and its consequent habits of idleness, dissipation, and luxury, had made in the mind, the character, the happiness, of a man who, to every advantage of person and talents, united a disposition naturally open and honest, and a feeling, affectionate temper. The world had made him extravagant and vain--Extravagance and vanity had made him cold-hearted and selfish. Vanity, while seeking its own guilty triumph at the expense of another, had involved him in a real attachment, which extravagance, or at least its offspring, necessity, had required to be sacrificed. Each faulty propensity in leading him to evil, had led him likewise to punishment. The attachment, from which against honour, against feeling, against every better interest he had outwardly torn himself, now, when no longer allowable, governed every thought; and the connection, for the sake of which he had, with little scruple, left her sister to misery, was likely to prove a source of unhappiness to himself of a far more incurable nature. From a reverie of this kind she was recalled at the end of some minutes by Willoughby, who, rousing himself from a reverie at least equally painful, started up in preparation for going, and said-- "There is no use in staying here; I must be off." "Are you going back to town?" "No--to Combe Magna. I have business there; from thence to town in a day or two. Good bye." He held out his hand. She could not refuse to give him hers;--he pressed it with affection. "And you DO think something better of me than you did?"--said he, letting it fall, and leaning against the mantel-piece as if forgetting he was to go. Elinor assured him that she did;--that she forgave, pitied, wished him well--was even interested in his happiness--and added some gentle counsel as to the behaviour most likely to promote it. His answer was not very encouraging. "As to that," said he, "I must rub through the world as well as I can. Domestic happiness is out of the question. If, however, I am allowed to think that you and yours feel an interest in my fate and actions, it may be the means--it may put me on my guard--at least, it may be something to live for. Marianne to be sure is lost to me for ever. Were I even by any blessed chance at liberty again--" Elinor stopped him with a reproof. "Well,"--he replied--"once more good bye. I shall now go away and live in dread of one event." "What do you mean?" "Your sister's marriage." "You are very wrong. She can never be more lost to you than she is now." "But she will be gained by some one else. And if that some one should be the very he whom, of all others, I could least bear--but I will not stay to rob myself of all your compassionate goodwill, by shewing that where I have most injured I can least forgive. Good bye,--God bless you!" And with these words, he almost ran out of the room.

Chapter 44

https://web.archive.org/web/20210419170735/https://www.gradesaver.com/sense-and-sensibility/study-guide/summary-chapters-41-50

Elinor is horrified at seeing Willoughby there, and shocked when he says his only business is with her. Willoughby asks if Marianne is recovering, and Elinor says she is; Willoughby says he is there to explain himself and gain some forgiveness, if he can. Willoughby says he led Marianne on out of vanity, and didn't know that she actually loved him; he finally began to love her as well, and would have proposed to her, had his aunt, Mrs. Smith, not annulled his legacy, and left him with heavy debts. Willoughby also tries to excuse himself for seducing and dumping Miss Williams, Colonel Brandon's ward, although he is making poor excuses for his truly inexcusable behavior. Apparently, he also avoided them while they were in town, and watched them to make sure he wouldn't stumble on them accidentally. He also says that the letter he sent Marianne was written by his wife, again attempting to excuse his cruel behavior. By saying that he also has no regard for his wife, and still loves Marianne, he attempts to gain Elinor's compassion; Elinor's opinion of him is somewhat bettered in being assured that he did, and still does, have affection for Marianne. Elinor cannot think him a total blackguard since he has been heavily punished for all his mistakes, and now must endure a loveless marriage for the sake of money; Willoughby leaves with this assurance, lamenting that Marianne is lost to him forever.

The reintroduction of Willoughby seems particularly designed to prove him as callow and cruel as his behavior to Marianne in London suggested. He is little like he was at Barton, and indeed seems like a pure villain at first; there could not be any greater contrast between his former appearance, and how he is acting to Elinor when he tries to make light of his completely irresponsible behavior. He does become somewhat more sympathetic through the course of the conversation, as flashes of sincerity become apparent, and his continuing regard for Marianne is confirmed. Elinor may be right, in believing that he would be of a character wholly as open and good as Marianne's, had he been possessed with less vanity and less tendency toward idleness and irresponsibility. But, Willoughby has been punished and deserves all of this punishment, although with his present bitterness there is perhaps little hope of him amending his character. Willoughby's cryptic statement about Marianne soon marrying someone he "could least bear" obviously is meant to foreshadow a union between Marianne and Colonel Brandon. However, how Willoughby would be able to guess at this is a mystery. The Colonel is certainly as resolved on Marianne as he always was, and has proved his honor, and his regard for her and her family, repeatedly. Although Marianne has not yet come to love or appreciate the Colonel, this final appearance of Willoughby will probably finally put her grief from her mind, and perhaps prepare her to accept the honorable affections of the Colonel

pinkmonkey

all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/46.txt

finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Sense and Sensibility/section_45_part_0.txt

Sense and Sensibility.chapter 46

chapter 46

{"name": "Chapter 46", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820034609/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmSenseSensibility61.asp", "summary": "Willoughby pours out his heart to Elinor. He had heard about Marianne's illness and thus decided to undertake a journey to Cleveland. He insists on talking extensively to Elinor. He tells her about his genuine affection for Marianne. In the beginning he had the intention of only flirting with her, since he had wanted to marry a wealthy girl. His dalliance with Marianne had to be cut short because of Mrs. Smith. The old lady had insisted that Willoughby marry Miss Williams, and when he had refused to obey her order, she had disowned him. Hence, Willoughby had to leave for London. In the city he had met Miss Grey, who is wealthy, and had become engaged to her. Marianne's letter had reached the hand of his fiancee, who had made him write the offensive letter to Marianne, whose heart was broken. Willoughby concludes his tale with regret at marrying the wealthy but cold Miss Grey.", "analysis": "Notes Willoughby arrives at Cleveland in order to clear his conscience because he has feared that Marianne might die from this strange illness. He portrays himself as a pitiable creature, dominated by a rich but cruel wife. He tries to justify his actions with Miss Williams and professes love for Marianne. At the end of his emotional tale, he still appears as a heartless man who has deceived two innocent girls. Even Elinor, who possesses a generous heart, fails to excuse him for his wrongs. She also condemns his criticism of his wife. She considers his behavior unpardonable and allows him to relate his tale only out of a sense of courtesy. CHAPTER 45 Summary After Willoughby leaves, Elinor continues to think about what he has told her. Elinor's generous heart sympathizes with Willoughby's plight, even though she considers him selfish in the ultimate analysis. She is one of the few characters prepared to listen to Willoughby after all that he has done. Mrs. Dashwood arrives in great agony. Elinor relieves her of her anxiety by informing her immediately about Marianne's recovery. Nevertheless, Mrs. Dashwood rushes in to meet her sick daughter. Marianne is delighted to see her mother. After their reunion, Mrs. Dashwood reveals to Elinor that Colonel Brandon has confessed his love for Marianne and his desire to marry her. She thinks highly of Brandon and is glad about the prospect of her daughter becoming his wife. Notes Elinor, aware of her mother's anxiety, informs her immediately about Marianne's recovery, thus sparing the elderly lady from further agony. She also offers solace to her mother. Mrs. Dashwood is like Marianne in her temperament. She is sensitive, emotional and judgmental. She criticizes Willoughby and praises Brandon because the Colonel has professed his love for Marianne. She attributes exaggerated defects and merits to Willoughby and Brandon respectively, according to the changed circumstances. Mrs. Dashwood even finds fault with Willoughby's appearance and manners because he has rejected her daughter. CHAPTER 46 Summary Marianne recovers steadily. She is grateful to the Colonel for taking the trouble of bringing her mother to Cleveland, and at such short notice. Brandon is overwhelmed by the attention she gives him. He arranges a special carriage to take the family to Barton and prepares to leave for Delaford. Marianne bears the journey well and becomes emotional upon reaching Barton. At home, she devises a program to keep herself occupied. Elinor is relieved to see her sister's renewed zest for life. One day, as they go out for a walk, Marianne takes Elinor to the spot where she fell and where Willoughby rescued her. Elinor informs Marianne of Willoughby's visit to Cleveland and relates his tale of confession. Marianne is moved to tears and asks Elinor to share the facts with her mother as well. Notes The chapter presents a mature Marianne. She appears confident and cheerful. She withstands the pressures of the journey with a smile. She is thankful to those who have helped her to recover. She is courteous enough to express her gratitude to the Colonel. She also shows a desire to make the best of her life. At Barton, she resolves to utilize her time by reading, practicing music and appreciating the beauty of nature through walks. She wants to forget the past and start life anew. Her sincere desire is to divert her mind from thoughts of Willoughby \"by religion, by reason, by constant employment.\" Marianne regrets her past behavior with friends and acquaintances. Her days of sickness have made her contemplative: she emerges from the illness a different person. She resolves to understand and appreciate the views of the people around her. Elinor, who had been burdened with Willoughby's story, finally gets the opportunity to reveal it to Marianne: when Marianne asks Elinor to gauge the true feelings of Willoughby for her, Elinor relates Willoughby's confession to her. Marianne is moved to tears after hearing the story, but at the same time, she is relieved to hear the facts."}

Marianne's illness, though weakening in its kind, had not been long enough to make her recovery slow; and with youth, natural strength, and her mother's presence in aid, it proceeded so smoothly as to enable her to remove, within four days after the arrival of the latter, into Mrs. Palmer's dressing-room. When there, at her own particular request, for she was impatient to pour forth her thanks to him for fetching her mother, Colonel Brandon was invited to visit her. His emotion on entering the room, in seeing her altered looks, and in receiving the pale hand which she immediately held out to him, was such, as, in Elinor's conjecture, must arise from something more than his affection for Marianne, or the consciousness of its being known to others; and she soon discovered in his melancholy eye and varying complexion as he looked at her sister, the probable recurrence of many past scenes of misery to his mind, brought back by that resemblance between Marianne and Eliza already acknowledged, and now strengthened by the hollow eye, the sickly skin, the posture of reclining weakness, and the warm acknowledgment of peculiar obligation. Mrs. Dashwood, not less watchful of what passed than her daughter, but with a mind very differently influenced, and therefore watching to very different effect, saw nothing in the Colonel's behaviour but what arose from the most simple and self-evident sensations, while in the actions and words of Marianne she persuaded herself to think that something more than gratitude already dawned. At the end of another day or two, Marianne growing visibly stronger every twelve hours, Mrs. Dashwood, urged equally by her own and her daughter's wishes, began to talk of removing to Barton. On HER measures depended those of her two friends; Mrs. Jennings could not quit Cleveland during the Dashwoods' stay; and Colonel Brandon was soon brought, by their united request, to consider his own abode there as equally determinate, if not equally indispensable. At his and Mrs. Jennings's united request in return, Mrs. Dashwood was prevailed on to accept the use of his carriage on her journey back, for the better accommodation of her sick child; and the Colonel, at the joint invitation of Mrs. Dashwood and Mrs. Jennings, whose active good-nature made her friendly and hospitable for other people as well as herself, engaged with pleasure to redeem it by a visit at the cottage, in the course of a few weeks. The day of separation and departure arrived; and Marianne, after taking so particular and lengthened a leave of Mrs. Jennings, one so earnestly grateful, so full of respect and kind wishes as seemed due to her own heart from a secret acknowledgment of past inattention, and bidding Colonel Brandon farewell with a cordiality of a friend, was carefully assisted by him into the carriage, of which he seemed anxious that she should engross at least half. Mrs. Dashwood and Elinor then followed, and the others were left by themselves, to talk of the travellers, and feel their own dullness, till Mrs. Jennings was summoned to her chaise to take comfort in the gossip of her maid for the loss of her two young companions; and Colonel Brandon immediately afterwards took his solitary way to Delaford. The Dashwoods were two days on the road, and Marianne bore her journey on both, without essential fatigue. Every thing that the most zealous affection, the most solicitous care could do to render her comfortable, was the office of each watchful companion, and each found their reward in her bodily ease, and her calmness of spirits. To Elinor, the observation of the latter was particularly grateful. She, who had seen her week after week so constantly suffering, oppressed by anguish of heart which she had neither courage to speak of, nor fortitude to conceal, now saw with a joy, which no other could equally share, an apparent composure of mind, which, in being the result as she trusted of serious reflection, must eventually lead her to contentment and cheerfulness. As they approached Barton, indeed, and entered on scenes of which every field and every tree brought some peculiar, some painful recollection, she grew silent and thoughtful, and turning away her face from their notice, sat earnestly gazing through the window. But here, Elinor could neither wonder nor blame; and when she saw, as she assisted Marianne from the carriage, that she had been crying, she saw only an emotion too natural in itself to raise any thing less tender than pity, and in its unobtrusiveness entitled to praise. In the whole of her subsequent manner, she traced the direction of a mind awakened to reasonable exertion; for no sooner had they entered their common sitting-room, than Marianne turned her eyes around it with a look of resolute firmness, as if determined at once to accustom herself to the sight of every object with which the remembrance of Willoughby could be connected.--She said little, but every sentence aimed at cheerfulness, and though a sigh sometimes escaped her, it never passed away without the atonement of a smile. After dinner she would try her piano-forte. She went to it; but the music on which her eye first rested was an opera, procured for her by Willoughby, containing some of their favourite duets, and bearing on its outward leaf her own name in his hand-writing.--That would not do.--She shook her head, put the music aside, and after running over the keys for a minute, complained of feebleness in her fingers, and closed the instrument again; declaring however with firmness as she did so, that she should in future practice much. The next morning produced no abatement in these happy symptoms. On the contrary, with a mind and body alike strengthened by rest, she looked and spoke with more genuine spirit, anticipating the pleasure of Margaret's return, and talking of the dear family party which would then be restored, of their mutual pursuits and cheerful society, as the only happiness worth a wish. "When the weather is settled, and I have recovered my strength," said she, "we will take long walks together every day. We will walk to the farm at the edge of the down, and see how the children go on; we will walk to Sir John's new plantations at Barton Cross, and the Abbeyland; and we will often go to the old ruins of the Priory, and try to trace its foundations as far as we are told they once reached. I know we shall be happy. I know the summer will pass happily away. I mean never to be later in rising than six, and from that time till dinner I shall divide every moment between music and reading. I have formed my plan, and am determined to enter on a course of serious study. Our own library is too well known to me, to be resorted to for any thing beyond mere amusement. But there are many works well worth reading at the Park; and there are others of more modern production which I know I can borrow of Colonel Brandon. By reading only six hours a-day, I shall gain in the course of a twelve-month a great deal of instruction which I now feel myself to want." Elinor honoured her for a plan which originated so nobly as this; though smiling to see the same eager fancy which had been leading her to the extreme of languid indolence and selfish repining, now at work in introducing excess into a scheme of such rational employment and virtuous self-control. Her smile however changed to a sigh when she remembered that promise to Willoughby was yet unfulfilled, and feared she had that to communicate which might again unsettle the mind of Marianne, and ruin at least for a time this fair prospect of busy tranquillity. Willing therefore to delay the evil hour, she resolved to wait till her sister's health were more secure, before she appointed it. But the resolution was made only to be broken. Marianne had been two or three days at home, before the weather was fine enough for an invalid like herself to venture out. But at last a soft, genial morning appeared; such as might tempt the daughter's wishes and the mother's confidence; and Marianne, leaning on Elinor's arm, was authorised to walk as long as she could without fatigue, in the lane before the house. The sisters set out at a pace, slow as the feebleness of Marianne in an exercise hitherto untried since her illness required;--and they had advanced only so far beyond the house as to admit a full view of the hill, the important hill behind, when pausing with her eyes turned towards it, Marianne calmly said, "There, exactly there,"--pointing with one hand, "on that projecting mound,--there I fell; and there I first saw Willoughby." Her voice sunk with the word, but presently reviving she added, "I am thankful to find that I can look with so little pain on the spot!--shall we ever talk on that subject, Elinor?"--hesitatingly it was said.--"Or will it be wrong?--I can talk of it now, I hope, as I ought to do."-- Elinor tenderly invited her to be open. "As for regret," said Marianne, "I have done with that, as far as HE is concerned. I do not mean to talk to you of what my feelings have been for him, but what they are NOW.--At present, if I could be satisfied on one point, if I could be allowed to think that he was not ALWAYS acting a part, not ALWAYS deceiving me;--but above all, if I could be assured that he never was so VERY wicked as my fears have sometimes fancied him, since the story of that unfortunate girl"-- She stopt. Elinor joyfully treasured her words as she answered, "If you could be assured of that, you think you should be easy." "Yes. My peace of mind is doubly involved in it;--for not only is it horrible to suspect a person, who has been what HE has been to ME, of such designs,--but what must it make me appear to myself?--What in a situation like mine, but a most shamefully unguarded affection could expose me to"-- "How then," asked her sister, "would you account for his behaviour?" "I would suppose him,--Oh, how gladly would I suppose him, only fickle, very, very fickle." Elinor said no more. She was debating within herself on the eligibility of beginning her story directly, or postponing it till Marianne were in stronger health;--and they crept on for a few minutes in silence. "I am not wishing him too much good," said Marianne at last with a sigh, "when I wish his secret reflections may be no more unpleasant than my own. He will suffer enough in them." "Do you compare your conduct with his?" "No. I compare it with what it ought to have been; I compare it with yours." "Our situations have borne little resemblance." "They have borne more than our conduct.--Do not, my dearest Elinor, let your kindness defend what I know your judgment must censure. My illness has made me think-- It has given me leisure and calmness for serious recollection. Long before I was enough recovered to talk, I was perfectly able to reflect. I considered the past: I saw in my own behaviour, since the beginning of our acquaintance with him last autumn, nothing but a series of imprudence towards myself, and want of kindness to others. I saw that my own feelings had prepared my sufferings, and that my want of fortitude under them had almost led me to the grave. My illness, I well knew, had been entirely brought on by myself by such negligence of my own health, as I had felt even at the time to be wrong. Had I died,--it would have been self-destruction. I did not know my danger till the danger was removed; but with such feelings as these reflections gave me, I wonder at my recovery,--wonder that the very eagerness of my desire to live, to have time for atonement to my God, and to you all, did not kill me at once. Had I died,--in what peculiar misery should I have left you, my nurse, my friend, my sister!--You, who had seen all the fretful selfishness of my latter days; who had known all the murmurings of my heart!--How should I have lived in YOUR remembrance!--My mother too! How could you have consoled her!--I cannot express my own abhorrence of myself. Whenever I looked towards the past, I saw some duty neglected, or some failing indulged. Every body seemed injured by me. The kindness, the unceasing kindness of Mrs. Jennings, I had repaid with ungrateful contempt. To the Middletons, to the Palmers, the Steeles, to every common acquaintance even, I had been insolent and unjust; with a heart hardened against their merits, and a temper irritated by their very attention.--To John, to Fanny,--yes, even to them, little as they deserve, I had given less than their due. But you,--you above all, above my mother, had been wronged by me. I, and only I, knew your heart and its sorrows; yet to what did it influence me?--not to any compassion that could benefit you or myself.--Your example was before me; but to what avail?--Was I more considerate of you and your comfort? Did I imitate your forbearance, or lessen your restraints, by taking any part in those offices of general complaisance or particular gratitude which you had hitherto been left to discharge alone?--No;--not less when I knew you to be unhappy, than when I had believed you at ease, did I turn away from every exertion of duty or friendship; scarcely allowing sorrow to exist but with me, regretting only THAT heart which had deserted and wronged me, and leaving you, for whom I professed an unbounded affection, to be miserable for my sake." Here ceased the rapid flow of her self-reproving spirit; and Elinor, impatient to soothe, though too honest to flatter, gave her instantly that praise and support which her frankness and her contrition so well deserved. Marianne pressed her hand and replied, "You are very good.--The future must be my proof. I have laid down my plan, and if I am capable of adhering to it--my feelings shall be governed and my temper improved. They shall no longer worry others, nor torture myself. I shall now live solely for my family. You, my mother, and Margaret, must henceforth be all the world to me; you will share my affections entirely between you. From you, from my home, I shall never again have the smallest incitement to move; and if I do mix in other society, it will be only to shew that my spirit is humbled, my heart amended, and that I can practise the civilities, the lesser duties of life, with gentleness and forbearance. As for Willoughby--to say that I shall soon or that I shall ever forget him, would be idle. His remembrance can be overcome by no change of circumstances or opinions. But it shall be regulated, it shall be checked by religion, by reason, by constant employment." She paused--and added in a low voice, "If I could but know HIS heart, everything would become easy." Elinor, who had now been for some time reflecting on the propriety or impropriety of speedily hazarding her narration, without feeling at all nearer decision than at first, heard this; and perceiving that as reflection did nothing, resolution must do all, soon found herself leading to the fact. She managed the recital, as she hoped, with address; prepared her anxious listener with caution; related simply and honestly the chief points on which Willoughby grounded his apology; did justice to his repentance, and softened only his protestations of present regard. Marianne said not a word.--She trembled, her eyes were fixed on the ground, and her lips became whiter than even sickness had left them. A thousand inquiries sprung up from her heart, but she dared not urge one. She caught every syllable with panting eagerness; her hand, unknowingly to herself, closely pressed her sister's, and tears covered her cheeks. Elinor, dreading her being tired, led her towards home; and till they reached the door of the cottage, easily conjecturing what her curiosity must be though no question was suffered to speak it, talked of nothing but Willoughby, and their conversation together; and was carefully minute in every particular of speech and look, where minuteness could be safely indulged. As soon as they entered the house, Marianne with a kiss of gratitude and these two words just articulate through her tears, "Tell mama," withdrew from her sister and walked slowly up stairs. Elinor would not attempt to disturb a solitude so reasonable as what she now sought; and with a mind anxiously pre-arranging its result, and a resolution of reviving the subject again, should Marianne fail to do it, she turned into the parlour to fulfill her parting injunction.

Chapter 46

https://web.archive.org/web/20180820034609/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmSenseSensibility61.asp

Willoughby pours out his heart to Elinor. He had heard about Marianne's illness and thus decided to undertake a journey to Cleveland. He insists on talking extensively to Elinor. He tells her about his genuine affection for Marianne. In the beginning he had the intention of only flirting with her, since he had wanted to marry a wealthy girl. His dalliance with Marianne had to be cut short because of Mrs. Smith. The old lady had insisted that Willoughby marry Miss Williams, and when he had refused to obey her order, she had disowned him. Hence, Willoughby had to leave for London. In the city he had met Miss Grey, who is wealthy, and had become engaged to her. Marianne's letter had reached the hand of his fiancee, who had made him write the offensive letter to Marianne, whose heart was broken. Willoughby concludes his tale with regret at marrying the wealthy but cold Miss Grey.

Notes Willoughby arrives at Cleveland in order to clear his conscience because he has feared that Marianne might die from this strange illness. He portrays himself as a pitiable creature, dominated by a rich but cruel wife. He tries to justify his actions with Miss Williams and professes love for Marianne. At the end of his emotional tale, he still appears as a heartless man who has deceived two innocent girls. Even Elinor, who possesses a generous heart, fails to excuse him for his wrongs. She also condemns his criticism of his wife. She considers his behavior unpardonable and allows him to relate his tale only out of a sense of courtesy. CHAPTER 45 Summary After Willoughby leaves, Elinor continues to think about what he has told her. Elinor's generous heart sympathizes with Willoughby's plight, even though she considers him selfish in the ultimate analysis. She is one of the few characters prepared to listen to Willoughby after all that he has done. Mrs. Dashwood arrives in great agony. Elinor relieves her of her anxiety by informing her immediately about Marianne's recovery. Nevertheless, Mrs. Dashwood rushes in to meet her sick daughter. Marianne is delighted to see her mother. After their reunion, Mrs. Dashwood reveals to Elinor that Colonel Brandon has confessed his love for Marianne and his desire to marry her. She thinks highly of Brandon and is glad about the prospect of her daughter becoming his wife. Notes Elinor, aware of her mother's anxiety, informs her immediately about Marianne's recovery, thus sparing the elderly lady from further agony. She also offers solace to her mother. Mrs. Dashwood is like Marianne in her temperament. She is sensitive, emotional and judgmental. She criticizes Willoughby and praises Brandon because the Colonel has professed his love for Marianne. She attributes exaggerated defects and merits to Willoughby and Brandon respectively, according to the changed circumstances. Mrs. Dashwood even finds fault with Willoughby's appearance and manners because he has rejected her daughter. CHAPTER 46 Summary Marianne recovers steadily. She is grateful to the Colonel for taking the trouble of bringing her mother to Cleveland, and at such short notice. Brandon is overwhelmed by the attention she gives him. He arranges a special carriage to take the family to Barton and prepares to leave for Delaford. Marianne bears the journey well and becomes emotional upon reaching Barton. At home, she devises a program to keep herself occupied. Elinor is relieved to see her sister's renewed zest for life. One day, as they go out for a walk, Marianne takes Elinor to the spot where she fell and where Willoughby rescued her. Elinor informs Marianne of Willoughby's visit to Cleveland and relates his tale of confession. Marianne is moved to tears and asks Elinor to share the facts with her mother as well. Notes The chapter presents a mature Marianne. She appears confident and cheerful. She withstands the pressures of the journey with a smile. She is thankful to those who have helped her to recover. She is courteous enough to express her gratitude to the Colonel. She also shows a desire to make the best of her life. At Barton, she resolves to utilize her time by reading, practicing music and appreciating the beauty of nature through walks. She wants to forget the past and start life anew. Her sincere desire is to divert her mind from thoughts of Willoughby "by religion, by reason, by constant employment." Marianne regrets her past behavior with friends and acquaintances. Her days of sickness have made her contemplative: she emerges from the illness a different person. She resolves to understand and appreciate the views of the people around her. Elinor, who had been burdened with Willoughby's story, finally gets the opportunity to reveal it to Marianne: when Marianne asks Elinor to gauge the true feelings of Willoughby for her, Elinor relates Willoughby's confession to her. Marianne is moved to tears after hearing the story, but at the same time, she is relieved to hear the facts.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/44747-chapters/part_2_chapters_1_to_4.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/The Red and the Black/section_9_part_0.txt

The Red and the Black.part 2.chapters 1-4

chapters 1-4

{"name": "Chapters 1-4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201128052739/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/r/the-red-and-the-black/summary-and-analysis/part-2-chapters-14", "summary": "Julien's voyage to Paris is enlivened by the conversation of his fellow travelers -- a Bonapartist, former friend of M. de Renal, and a newly formed liberal, Saint-Giraud, who is fleeing the pettiness and intrigue of provincial life for the calm of Paris. The latter had sought peace in the provinces, but because he refused to take sides in the great debate between ultras and liberals, he was persecuted by both. The conversation reflects their opposing political views: Saint-Giraud maintains that the present disorder is due to Napoleon's desire to revive the monarchy. Such strong argumentation does not prevent Julien, upon his arrival in Paris, from making a pilgrimage to Napoleon's palace at Malmaison. Pirard describes to him in detail the new life he will lead at the home of the Marquis de la Mole. Pirard warns Julien of what to expect from this aristocratic and haughty family. Chapter 2 is devoted to Julien's arrival and few days in the Mole household. He is first presented to the marquis, who has him outfitted and finds it necessary, in order to improve Julien's grace, to have him take dancing lessons. Invited for dinner in the salon, Julien meets Mme. de la Mole and Mathilde. The latter he finds uninteresting and even unattractive in comparison to Mme. de Renal. He finds Norbert, the marquis' son, charming. At dinner, Julien succeeds in making a favorable impression by his knowledge of the classical writers. Julien takes his working post in the library, where the vast array of books dazzles and inspires him. Mlle. de la Mole enters to smuggle out a copy of Voltaire, and this encounter strengthens Julien's impression of her as a cold-hearted, uninteresting woman. Norbert, on the other hand, continues to delight Julien by his kindness, and he accepts Norbert's invitation to go riding. A mishap while riding is later related at dinner, and Julien's good grace and innocence in the avowal of his awkwardness cause the marquis to look favorably upon him and incite the curiosity of Mathilde. Further equestrian attempts on Julien's part elicit the remark from Norbert at dinner that Julien is very courageous. Julien's many mishaps are especially relished by the servants of the household. Chapter 4 describes a typical evening in the salon of the Mole family. Julien reacts as violently to what he witnesses as he did in the Verrieres home of Valenod, and the scenes are, in fact, similar. Court at the Mole's is strongly reminiscent in its sterility of the court of Louis XVI. There reigns an air of decorum, politeness, and cruelty. Only insignificant subjects are discussed, nothing controversial, and the barrenness of the conversation inevitably leads to calumny, derision, and mockery by those in favor with M. de la Mole, directed at those out of his favor. Admitting to Pirard how distasteful he finds these evenings, Julien is overheard by Mathilde, who admires this courage and sincerity.", "analysis": "Stendhal loses no opportunity to further the education of Julien, rendering, at the same time, a view of the political situation of the period. Julien would seem by nature and inclination to be a liberal, although he frequents only ultra milieus: the Renals and the Moles. Julien is, in fact, an opportunist -- he has no allegiance except to himself and to others of the \"happy few\" who befriend and love him. The only reaction that Julien registers at this revelatory discussion during the coach journey is one of astonishment, and Napoleon remains his idol. Saint-Giraud's situation is an ironic preview of what Julien's future holds, but in reverse. Saint-Giraud is returning to Paris after having vainly sought peace in the provinces. He apparently considers Paris as the lesser of the two evils. Julien will follow the reverse route -- arriving at the same conclusion: present happiness is not appreciated. The scene is an effective transition between the scenes of action from another point of view. It indicates that France's lamentable situation during the Restoration is localized neither in Paris nor in the provinces-it is ubiquitous. We have seen corruption and compromise as it operates on the local level, in the grass-roots, then in the seminary, where the purveyors of weakness are formed. Now we will witness the motor source of France's sickness in the aristocratic and ecclesiastical powers in Paris. Note the father-function of Pirard, whose kind intervention will minimize Julien's chances of being ridiculous in the Mole household. Although the other members of the Mole family are cruelly and concisely described by Pirard, Mathilde is only briefly mentioned at this point. Compare Julien's wary but self-assured air upon introduction to the Mole household to his awkwardness and intimidated state upon arrival at the Renal home, fifteen months before. Stendhal tells us that Julien has come to expect the worst from people; therefore, he is not easily intimidated. Note, however, how astutely Stendhal renders, almost in passing, a psychologically convincing detail describing Julien's manner of confronting a new situation, where he must find some weakness in his adversary, the discovery of which will bolster Julien's own confidence. It seems to Julien that M. de la Mole's wig is much too thick. Thanks to this observation, he is not at all intimidated. That is, observing no matter how slight a deficiency in a superior, Julien is able to derive confidence from it. At dinner, his self-assurance does not falter this time because he decides that Mathilde de la Mole will never be a woman in his eyes. Mathilde takes an interest in Julien for the first time in Chapter 3, and it is his uniqueness and candor, in contrast to the stereotyped characters to whom she is accustomed, that will constitute much of the basis of her interest and subsequent love for Julien. Julien must undergo a social metamorphosis as part of his education, and learning to ride a horse is part of this training. Stendhal notes, at the end of the chapter, that Julien already feels himself to be an outsider in this family, the customs and manners of which are strange to him. This concluding remark serves as a transition to the subject matter of the following chapter. Stendhal benefits from Julien's role of outsider to view the sterility of this social institution, the aristocratic salon of 1830. Pirard's austere presence and conspicuous isolation contrast with the habitues' obsequious conduct, their superficial and docile character, as they mingle and assume their roles in their respective sub-circles Julien does not fail to note this contrast. Julien's violent disapproval of the cruel derision of merit, especially by his rival secretary, Tanbeau, is reminiscent of his reaction at the Valenod's dinner party. It is by means of this device that Stendhal elicits the reader's sympathy for his hero: Stendhal satirizes Julien's adversaries through ridicule; the reader, therefore, naturally allies himself with Julien. Admitted as a silent spectator into Mathilde's circle, Julien observes her suitors, the most favored of whom is the Count de Croisenois. In passing, Stendhal observes that Mathilde admires Julien's courage in denouncing this type of social gathering to Pirard -- a second hint at the future relationship of Julien and Mathilde. The description of the salon no doubt inspired Proust in his own vivid and satirical depiction of early twentieth-century salon mores. It was Proust, incidentally, who first called attention to the recurrent theme of \"high places\" in the works of Stendhal."}

CHAPTER XXXI THE PLEASURES OF THE COUNTRY O rus quando ego te aspiciam?--_Horace_ "You've no doubt come to wait for the Paris mail, Monsieur," said the host of an inn where he had stopped to breakfast. "To-day or to-morrow, it matters little," said Julien. The mail arrived while he was still posing as indifferent. There were two free places. "Why! it's you my poor Falcoz," said the traveller who was coming from the Geneva side to the one who was getting in at the same time as Julien. "I thought you were settled in the outskirts of Lyons," said Falcoz, "in a delicious valley near the Rhone." "Nicely settled! I am running away." "What! you are running away? you Saint Giraud! Have you, who look so virtuous, committed some crime?" said Falcoz with a smile. "On my faith it comes to the same thing. I am running away from the abominable life which one leads in the provinces. I like the freshness of the woods and the country tranquillity, as you know. You have often accused me of being romantic. I don't want to hear politics talked as long as I live, and politics are hounding me out." "But what party do you belong to?" "To none and that's what ruins me. That's all there is to be said about my political life--I like music and painting. A good book is an event for me. I am going to be forty-four. How much longer have I got to live? Fifteen--twenty--thirty years at the outside. Well, I want the ministers in thirty years' time to be a little cleverer than those of to-day but quite as honest. The history of England serves as a mirror for our own future. There will always be a king who will try to increase his prerogative. The ambition of becoming a deputy, the fame of Mirabeau and the hundreds of thousand francs which he won for himself will always prevent the rich people in the province from going to sleep: they will call that being Liberal and loving the people. The desire of becoming a peer or a gentleman of the chamber will always win over the ultras. On the ship of state every one is anxious to take over the steering because it is well paid. Will there be never a poor little place for the simple passenger?" "Is it the last elections which are forcing you out of the province?" "My misfortune goes further back. Four years ago I was forty and possessed 500,000 francs. I am four years older to-day and probably 50,000 francs to the bad, as I shall lose that sum on the sale of my chateau of Monfleury in a superb position near the Rhone. "At Paris I was tired of that perpetual comedy which is rendered obligatory by what you call nineteenth-century civilisation. I thirsted for good nature and simplicity. I bought an estate in the mountains near the Rhine, there was no more beautiful place under the heavens. "The village clergyman and the gentry of the locality pay me court for six months; I invite them to dinner; I have left Paris, I tell them, so as to avoid talking politics or hearing politics talked for the rest of my life. As you know I do not subscribe to any paper, the less letters the postman brought me the happier I was. "That did not suit the vicar's book. I was soon the victim of a thousand unreasonable requests, annoyances, etc. I wished to give two or three hundred francs a year to the poor, I was asked to give it to the Paris associations, that of Saint Joseph, that of the Virgin, etc. I refused. I was then insulted in a hundred ways. I was foolish enough to be upset by it. I could not go out in the morning to enjoy the beauty of our mountain without finding some annoyance which distracted me from my reveries and recalled unpleasantly both men and their wickedness. On the Rogation processions, for instance whose chanting I enjoy (it is probably a Greek melody) they will not bless my fields because, says the clergyman, they belong to an infidel. A cow dies belonging to a devout old peasant woman. She says the reason is the neighbourhood of a pond which belongs to my infidel self, a philosopher coming from Paris, and eight days afterwards I find my fish in agonies poisoned by lime. Intrigue in all its forms envelops me. The justice of the peace, who is an honest man, but frightened of losing his place, always decides against me. The peace of the country proved a hell for me. Once they saw that I was abandoned by the vicar, the head of the village congregation, and that I was not supported by the retired captain who was the head of the Liberals they all fell upon me, down to the mason whom I had supported for a year, down to the very wheel-wright who wanted to cheat me with impunity over the repairing of my ploughs. "In order to find some support, and to win at any rate some of my law suits I became a Liberal, but, as you say, those damned elections come along. They asked me for my vote." "For an unknown man?" "Not at all, for a man whom I knew only too well. I refused. It was terribly imprudent. From that moment I had the Liberals on my hands as well, and my position became intolerable. I believe that if the vicar had got it into his head to accuse me of assassinating my servant, there would be twenty witnesses of the two parties who would swear that they had seen me committing the crime." "You mean to say you want to live in the country without pandering to the passions of your neighbours, without even listening to their gossip. What a mistake!" "It is rectified at last. Monfleury is for sale. I will lose 50,000 francs if necessary, but I am over-joyed I am leaving that hell of hypocrisy and annoyance. I am going to look for solitude and rustic peace in the only place where those things are to be found in France, on a fourth storey looking on to the Champs-Elysees; and, moreover, I am actually deliberating if I shall not commence my political career by giving consecrated bread to the parish in the Roule quarter." "All this would not have happened under Bonaparte," said Falcoz with eyes shining with rage and sorrow. "Very good, but why didn't your Bonaparte manage to keep his position? Everything which I suffer to-day is his work." At this point Julien's attention was redoubled. He had realised from the first word that the Bonapartist Falcoz was the old boyhood friend of M. de Renal, who had been repudiated by him in 1816, and that the philosopher Saint-Giraud must be the brother of that chief of the prefecture of----who managed to get the houses of the municipality knocked down to him at a cheap price. "And all this is the work of your Bonaparte. An honest man, aged forty, and possessed of five hundred thousand francs however inoffensive he is, cannot settle in the provinces and find peace there; those priests and nobles of his will turn him out." "Oh don't talk evil of him," exclaimed Falcoz. "France was never so high in the esteem of the nations as during the thirteen years of his reign; then every single act was great." "Your emperor, devil take him," replied the man of forty-four, "was only great on his battle fields and when he reorganised the finances about 1802. What is the meaning of all his conduct since then? What with his chamberlains, his pomp, and his receptions in the Tuileries, he has simply provided a new edition of all the monarchical tomfoolery. It was a revised edition and might possibly have lasted for a century or two. The nobles and the priests wish to go back to the old one, but they did not have the iron hand necessary to impose it on the public." "Yes, that's just how an old printer would talk." "Who has turned me out of my estate?" continued the printer, angrily. "The priests, whom Napoleon called back by his Concordat instead of treating them like the State treats doctors, barristers, and astronomers, simply seeing in them ordinary citizens, and not bothering about the particular calling by which they are trying to earn their livelihood. Should we be saddled with these insolent gentlemen today, if your Bonaparte had not created barons and counts? No, they were out of fashion. Next to the priests, it's the little country nobility who have annoyed me the most, and compelled me to become a Liberal." The conversation was endless. The theme will occupy France for another half-century. As Saint-Giraud kept always repeating that it was impossible to live in the provinces, Julien timidly suggested the case of M. de Renal. "Zounds, young man, you're a nice one," exclaimed Falcoz. "He turned spider so as not to be fly, and a terrible spider into the bargain. But I see that he is beaten by that man Valenod. Do you know that scoundrel? He's the villain of the piece. What will your M. de Renal say if he sees himself turned out one of these fine days, and Valenod put in his place?" "He will be left to brood over his crimes," said Saint-Giraud. "Do you know Verrieres, young man? Well, Bonaparte, heaven confound him! Bonaparte and his monarchical tomfoolery rendered possible the reign of the Renals and the Chelans, which brought about the reign of the Valenods and the Maslons." This conversation, with its gloomy politics, astonished Julien and distracted him from his delicious reveries. He appreciated but little the first sight of Paris as perceived in the distance. The castles in the air he had built about his future had to struggle with the still present memory of the twenty-four hours that he had just passed in Verrieres. He vowed that he would never abandon his mistress's children, and that he would leave everything in order to protect them, if the impertinence of the priests brought about a republic and the persecution of the nobles. What would have happened on the night of his arrival in Verrieres if, at the moment when he had leant his ladder against the casement of Madame de Renal's bedroom he had found that room occupied by a stranger or by M. de Renal? But how delicious, too, had been those first two hours when his sweetheart had been sincerely anxious to send him away and he had pleaded his cause, sitting down by her in the darkness! A soul like Julien's is haunted by such memories for a lifetime. The rest of the interview was already becoming merged in the first period of their love, fourteen months previous. Julien was awakened from his deep meditation by the stopping of the coach. They had just entered the courtyard of the Post in the Rue Rousseau. "I want to go to La Malmaison," he said to a cabriolet which approached. "At this time, Monsieur--what for?" "What's that got to do with you? Get on." Every real passion only thinks about itself. That is why, in my view, passions are ridiculous at Paris, where one's neighbour always insists on one's considering him a great deal. I shall refrain from recounting Julien's ecstasy at La Malmaison. He wept. What! in spite of those wretched white walls, built this very year, which cut the path up into bits? Yes, monsieur, for Julien, as for posterity, there was nothing to choose between Arcole, Saint Helena, and La Malmaison. In the evening, Julien hesitated a great deal before going to the theatre. He had strange ideas about that place of perdition. A deep distrust prevented him from admiring actual Paris. He was only affected by the monuments left behind by his hero. "So here I am in the centre of intrigue and hypocrisy. Here reign the protectors of the abbe de Frilair." On the evening of the third day his curiosity got the better of his plan of seeing everything before presenting himself to the abbe Pirard. The abbe explained to him coldly the kind of life which he was to expect at M. de la Mole's. "If you do not prove useful to him at the end of some months you will go back to the seminary, but not in disgrace. You will live in the house of the marquis, who is one of the greatest seigneurs of France. You will wear black, but like a man who is in mourning, and not like an ecclesiastic. I insist on your following your theological studies three days a week in a seminary where I will introduce you. Every day at twelve o'clock you will establish yourself in the marquis's library; he counts on making use of you in drafting letters concerning his lawsuits and other matters. The marquis will scribble on the margin of each letter he gets the kind of answer which is required. I have assured him that at the end of three months you will be so competent to draft the answers, that out of every dozen you hand to the marquis for signature, he will be able to sign eight or nine. In the evening, at eight o'clock, you will tidy up his bureau, and at ten you will be free. "It may be," continued the abbe Pirard, "that some old lady or some smooth-voiced man will hint at immense advantages, or will crudely offer you gold, to show him the letters which the marquis has received." "Ah, monsieur," exclaimed Julien, blushing. "It is singular," said the abbe with a bitter smile, "that poor as you are, and after a year at a seminary, you still have any of this virtuous indignation left. You must have been very blind." "Can it be that blood will tell," muttered the abbe in a whisper, as though speaking to himself. "The singular thing is," he added, looking at Julien, "that the marquis knows you--I don't know how. He will give you a salary of a hundred louis to commence with. He is a man who only acts by his whim. That is his weakness. He will quarrel with you about the most childish matters. If he is satisfied, your wages may rise in consequence up to eight thousand francs. "But you realise," went on the abbe, sourly, "that he is not giving you all this money simply on account of your personal charm. The thing is to prove yourself useful. If I were in your place I would talk very little, and I would never talk about what I know nothing about. "Oh, yes," said the abbe, "I have made some enquiries for you. I was forgetting M. de la Mole's family. He has two children--a daughter and a son of nineteen, eminently elegant--the kind of madman who never knows to-day what he will do to-morrow. He has spirit and valour; he has been through the Spanish war. The marquis hopes, I don't know why, that you will become a friend of the young count Norbert. I told him that you were a great classic, and possibly he reckons on your teaching his son some ready-made phrases about Cicero and Virgil. "If I were you, I should never allow that handsome young man to make fun of me, and before I accepted his advances, which you will find perfectly polite but a little ironical, I would make him repeat them more than once. "I will not hide from you the fact that the young count de La Mole is bound to despise you at first, because you are nothing more than a little bourgeois. His grandfather belonged to the court, and had the honour of having his head cut off in the Place de Greve on the 26th April, 1574, on account of a political intrigue. "As for you, you are the son of a carpenter of Verrieres, and what is more, in receipt of his father's wages. Ponder well over these differences, and look up the family history in Moreri. All the flatterers who dine at their house make from time to time what they call delicate allusions to it. "Be careful of how you answer the pleasantries of M. the count de La Mole, chief of a squadron of hussars, and a future peer of France, and don't come and complain to me later on." "It seems to me," said Julien, blushing violently, "that I ought not even to answer a man who despises me." "You have no idea of his contempt. It will only manifest itself by inflated compliments. If you were a fool, you might be taken in by it. If you want to make your fortune, you ought to let yourself be taken in by it." "Shall I be looked upon as ungrateful," said Julien, "if I return to my little cell Number 108 when I find that all this no longer suits me?" "All the toadies of the house will no doubt calumniate you," said the abbe, "but I myself will come to the rescue. Adsum qui feci. I will say that I am responsible for that resolution." Julien was overwhelmed by the bitter and almost vindictive tone which he noticed in M. Pirard; that tone completely infected his last answer. The fact is that the abbe had a conscientious scruple about loving Julien, and it was with a kind of religious fear that he took so direct a part in another's life. "You will also see," he added with the same bad grace, as though accomplishing a painful duty, "you also will see Madame the marquise de La Mole. She is a big blonde woman about forty, devout, perfectly polite, and even more insignificant. She is the daughter of the old Duke de Chaulnes so well known for his aristocratic prejudices. This great lady is a kind of synopsis in high relief of all the fundamental characteristics of women of her rank. She does not conceal for her own part that the possession of ancestors who went through the crusades is the sole advantage which she respects. Money only comes a long way afterwards. Does that astonish you? We are no longer in the provinces, my friend. "You will see many great lords in her salon talk about our princes in a tone of singular flippancy. As for Madame de la Mole, she lowers her voice out of respect every time she mentions the name of a Prince, and above all the name of a Princess. I would not advise you to say in her hearing that Philip II. or Henry VII. were monsters. They were kings, a fact which gives them indisputable rights to the respect of creatures without birth like you and me. Nevertheless," added M. Pirard, "we are priests, for she will take you for one; that being our capacity, she considers us as spiritual valets necessary for her salvation." "Monsieur," said Julien, "I do not think I shall be long at Paris." "Good, but remember that no man of our class can make his fortune except through the great lords. With that indefinable element in your character, at any rate I think it is, you will be persecuted if you do not make your fortune. There is no middle course for you, make no mistake about it; people see that they do not give you pleasure when they speak to you; in a social country like this you are condemned to unhappiness if you do not succeed in winning respect." "What would have become of you at Besancon without this whim of the marquis de la Mole? One day you will realise the extraordinary extent of what he has done for you, and if you are not a monster you will be eternally grateful to him and his family. How many poor abbes more learned than you have lived years at Paris on the fifteen sous they got for their mass and their ten sous they got for their dissertations in the Sorbonne. Remember what I told you last winter about the first years of that bad man Cardinal Dubois. Are you proud enough by chance to think yourself more talented than he was? "Take, for instance, a quiet and average man like myself; I reckoned on dying in my seminary. I was childish enough to get attached to it. Well I was on the point of being turned out, when I handed in my resignation. You know what my fortune consisted of. I had five hundred and twenty francs capital neither more nor less, not a friend, scarcely two or three acquaintances. M. de la Mole, whom I had never seen, extricated me from that quandary. He only had to say the word and I was given a living where the parishioners are well-to-do people above all crude vices, and where the income puts me to shame, it is so disproportionate to my work. I refrained from talking to you all this time simply to enable you to find your level a bit. "One word more, I have the misfortune to be irritable. It is possible that you and I will cease to be on speaking terms. "If the airs of the marquise or the spiteful pleasantries of her son make the house absolutely intolerable for you I advise you to finish your studies in some seminary thirty leagues from Paris and rather north than south. There is more civilisation in the north, and, he added lowering his voice, I must admit that the nearness of the Paris papers puts fear into our petty tyrants. "If we continue to find pleasure in each other's society and if the marquis's house does not suit you, I will offer you the post of my curate, and will go equal shares with you in what I get from the living. I owe you that and even more, he added interrupting Julien's thanks, for the extraordinary offer which you made me at Besancon. If instead of having five hundred and twenty francs I had had nothing you would have saved me." The abbe's voice had lost its tone of cruelty, Julien was ashamed to feel tears in his eyes. He was desperately anxious to throw himself into his friend's arms. He could not help saying to him in the most manly manner he could assume: "I was hated by my father from the cradle; it was one of my great misfortunes, but I shall no longer complain of my luck, I have found another father in you, monsieur." "That is good, that is good," said the embarrassed abbe, then suddenly remembering quite appropriately a seminary platitude "you must never say luck, my child, always say providence." The fiacre stopped. The coachman lifted up the bronze knocker of an immense door. It was the Hotel de la Mole, and to prevent the passers by having any doubt on the subject these words could be read in black marble over the door. This affectation displeased Julien. "They are so frightened of the Jacobins. They see a Robespierre and his tumbril behind every head. Their panic is often gloriously grotesque and they advertise their house like this so that in the event of a rising the rabble can recognise it and loot it." He communicated his thought to the abbe Pirard. "Yes, poor child, you will soon be my curate. What a dreadful idea you have got into your head." "Nothing could be simpler," said Julien. The gravity of the porter, and above all, the cleanness of the the court, struck him with admiration. It was fine sunshine. "What magnificent architecture," he said to his friend. The hotel in question was one of those buildings of the Faubourg Saint-Germain with a flat facade built about the time of Voltaire's death. At no other period had fashion and beauty been so far from one another. CHAPTER XXXII ENTRY INTO SOCIETY Ludicrous and pathetic memory: the first drawing-room where one appeared alone and without support at the age of eighteen! the look of a woman sufficed to intimidate me. The more I wished to please the more clumsy I became. I evolved the most unfounded ideas about everything. I would either abandon myself without any reason, or I would regard a man as an enemy simply because he had looked at me with a serious air; but all the same, in the middle of the unhappiness of my timidity, how beautiful did I find a beautiful day--_Kant_. Julien stopped in amazement in the middle of the courtyard. "Pull yourself together," said the abbe Pirard. "You get horrible ideas into your head, besides you are only a child. What has happened to the nil mirari of Horace (no enthusiasm) remember that when they see you established here this crowd of lackeys will make fun of you. They will see in you an equal who has been unjustly placed above them; and, under a masquerade of good advice and a desire to help you, they will try to make you fall into some gross blunder." "Let them do their worst," said Julien biting his lip, and he became as distrustful as ever. The salons on the first storey which our gentlemen went through before reaching the marquis' study, would have seemed to you, my reader, as gloomy as they were magnificent. If they had been given to you just as they were, you would have refused to live in them. This was the domain of yawning and melancholy reasoning. They redoubled Julien's rapture. "How can any one be unhappy?" he thought, "who lives in so splendid an abode." Finally our gentlemen arrived at the ugliest rooms in this superb suite. There was scarcely any light. They found there a little keen man with a lively eye and a blonde wig. The abbe turned round to Julien and presented him. It was the marquis. Julien had much difficulty in recognising him, he found his manner was so polite. It was no longer the grand seigneur with that haughty manner of the abbey of Bray-le-Haut. Julien thought that his wig had much too many hairs. As the result of this opinion he was not at all intimidated. The descendant of the friend of Henry III. seemed to him at first of a rather insignificant appearance. He was extremely thin and very restless, but he soon noticed that the marquis had a politeness which was even more pleasant to his listener than that of the Bishop of Besancon himself. The audience only lasted three minutes. As they went out the abbe said to Julien, "You looked at the marquis just as you would have looked at a picture. I am not a great expert in what these people here call politeness. You will soon know more about it than I do, but really the boldness of your looks seemed scarcely polite." They had got back into the fiacre. The driver stopped near the boulevard; the abbe ushered Julien into a suite of large rooms. Julien noticed that there was no furniture. He was looking at the magnificent gilded clock representing a subject which he thought very indecent, when a very elegant gentleman approached him with a smiling air. Julien bowed slightly. The gentleman smiled and put his hand on his shoulder. Julien shuddered and leapt back, he reddened with rage. The abbe Pirard, in spite of his gravity, laughed till the tears came into his eyes. The gentleman was a tailor. "I give you your liberty for two days," said the abbe as they went out. "You cannot be introduced before then to Madame de la Mole. Any one else would watch over you as if you were a young girl during these first few moments of your life in this new Babylon. Get ruined at once if you have got to be ruined, and I will be rid of my own weakness of being fond of you. The day after to-morrow this tailor will bring you two suits, you will give the man who tries them on five francs. Apart from that don't let these Parisians hear the sound of your voice. If you say a word they will manage somehow to make fun of you. They have a talent for it. Come and see me the day after to-morrow at noon.... Go and ruin yourself.... I was forgetting, go and order boots and a hat at these addresses." Julien scrutinised the handwriting of the addresses. "It's the marquis's hand," said the abbe; "he is an energetic man who foresees everything, and prefers doing to ordering. He is taking you into his house, so that you may spare him that kind of trouble. Will you have enough brains to execute efficiently all the instructions which he will give you with scarcely a word of explanation? The future will show, look after yourself." Julien entered the shops indicated by the addresses without saying a single word. He observed that he was received with respect, and that the bootmaker as he wrote his name down in the ledger put M. de Sorel. When he was in the Cemetery of Pere La Chaise a very obliging gentleman, and what is more, one who was Liberal in his views, suggested that he should show Julien the tomb of Marshal Ney which a sagacious statecraft had deprived of the honour of an epitaph, but when he left this Liberal, who with tears in his eyes almost clasped him in his arms, Julien was without his watch. Enriched by this experience two days afterwards he presented himself to the abbe Pirard, who looked at him for a long time. "Perhaps you are going to become a fop," said the abbe to him severely. Julien looked like a very young man in full mourning; as a matter of fact, he looked very well, but the good abbe was too provincial himself to see that Julien still carried his shoulders in that particular way which signifies in the provinces both elegance and importance. When the marquis saw Julien his opinion of his graces differed so radically from that of the good abbe as he said, "Would you have any objection to M. le Sorel taking some dancing lessons?" The abbe was thunderstruck. "No," he answered at last. "Julien is not a priest." The marquis went up the steps of a little secret staircase two at a time, and installed our hero in a pretty attic which looked out on the big garden of the hotel. He asked him how many shirts he had got at the linen drapers. "Two," answered Julien, intimidated at seeing so great a lord condescend to such details. "Very good," replied the marquis quite seriously, and with a certain curt imperiousness which gave Julien food for thought. "Very good, get twenty-two more shirts. Here are your first quarter's wages." As he went down from the attic the marquis called an old man. "Arsene," he said to him, "you will serve M. Sorel." A few minutes afterwards Julien found himself alone in a magnificent library. It was a delicious moment. To prevent his emotion being discovered he went and hid in a little dark corner. From there he contemplated with rapture the brilliant backs of the books. "I shall be able to read all these," he said to himself. "How can I fail to like it here? M. de Renal would have thought himself dishonoured for ever by doing one-hundredth part of what the Marquis de la Mole has just done for me. "But let me have a look at the copies I have to make." Having finished this work Julien ventured to approach the books. He almost went mad with joy as he opened an edition of Voltaire. He ran and opened the door of the library to avoid being surprised. He then indulged in the luxury of opening each of the eighty volumes. They were magnificently bound and were the masterpiece of the best binder in London. It was even more than was required to raise Julien's admiration to the maximum. An hour afterwards the marquis came in and was surprised to notice that Julien spelt cela with two "ll" cella. "Is all that the abbe told me of his knowledge simply a fairy tale?" The marquis was greatly discouraged and gently said to him, "You are not sure of your spelling?" "That is true," said Julien without thinking in the least of the injustice that he was doing to himself. He was overcome by the kindness of the marquis which recalled to him through sheer force of contrast the superciliousness of M. de Renal. "This trial of the little Franc-comtois abbe is waste of time," thought the marquis, "but I had such great need of a reliable man." "You spell cela with one 'l,'" said the marquis to him, "and when you have finished your copies look the words whose spelling you are not sure of up in the dictionary." The marquis sent for him at six o'clock. He looked at Julien's boots with manifest pain. "I am sorry for a mistake I made. I did not tell you that you must dress every day at half-past five." Julien looked at him but did not understand. "I mean to say put on stockings. Arsene will remind you. To-day I will make your apologies." As he finished the sentence M. de la Mole escorted Julien into a salon resplendent with gilding. On similar occasions M. de Renal always made a point of doubling his pace so as to have the privilege of being the first to pass the threshold. His former employer's petty vanity caused Julien to tread on the marquis's feet and hurt him a great deal because of his gout. "So he is clumsy to the bargain," he said to himself. He presented him to a woman of high stature and of imposing appearance. It was the marquise. Julien thought that her manner was impertinent, and that she was a little like Madame de Maugiron, the wife of the sub-prefect of the arrondissement of Verrieres when she was present at the Saint-Charles dinner. Rendered somewhat nervous by the extreme magnificence of the salon Julien did not hear what M. de la Mole was saying. The marquise scarcely deigned to look at him. There were several men there, among whom Julien recognised with an inexpressible pleasure the young bishop of Agde who had deigned to speak to him some months before at the ceremony of Bray-le-Haut. This young prelate was doubtless frightened by the tender look which the timidity of Julien fixed on him, and did not bother to recognise "the provincial." The men assembled in this salon seemed to Julien to have a certain element of gloom and constraint. Conversation takes place in a low voice in Paris and little details are not exaggerated. A handsome young man with moustaches, came in about half-past six. He was very pale, and had a very small head. "You always keep us waiting" said the marquise, as he kissed her hand. Julien realised that it was the Count de la Mole. From the very first he thought he was charming. "Is it possible," he said to himself "that this is the man whose offensive jests are going to drive me out of the house." As the result of scrutinising count Norbert, Julien noticed that he was in boots and spurs. "And I have got to be in shoes just like an inferior apparently." They sat down at table, Julien heard the marquise raising her voice a little and saying something severe. Almost simultaneously he noticed an extremely blonde and very well developed young person who had just sat down opposite him. Nevertheless she made no appeal to him. Looking at her attentively he thought that he had never seen such beautiful eyes, although they betokened a great coldness of soul. Subsequently Julien thought that, though they looked bored and sceptical, they were conscious of the duty of being impressive. "Madame de Renal of course had very fine eyes" he said to himself, "she used to be universally complimented on them, but they had nothing in common with these." Julien did not know enough of society to appreciate that it was the fire of repartee which from time to time gave their brilliancy to the eyes of Mademoiselle Mathilde (for that was the name he heard her called by). When Madame de Renal's eyes became animated, it was with the fire of passion, or as the result of a generous indignation on hearing of some evil deed. Towards the end of the meal Julien found a word to express Mademoiselle de la Mole's type of beauty. Her eyes are scintillating, he said to himself. Apart from her eyes she was cruelly like her mother, whom he liked less and less, and he ceased looking at her. By way of compensation he thought Count Norbert admirable in every respect. Julien was so fascinated that the idea never occurred to him of being jealous, and hating him because he was richer and of nobler birth than he was himself. Julien thought that the marquis looked bored. About the second course he said to his son: "Norbert, I ask all your good offices for M. Julien Sorel, whom I have just taken into my staff and of whom I hope to make a man _si cella se peut_." "He is my secretary," said the marquis to his neighbour, "and he spells cela with two ll's." Everybody looked at Julien, who bowed to Norbert in a manner that was slightly too marked, but speaking generally they were satisfied with his expression. The marquis must have spoken about the kind of education which Julien had received for one of the guests tackled him on Horace. "It was just by talking about Horace that I succeeded with the bishop of Besancon," said Julien to himself. Apparently that is the only author they know. From that instant he was master of himself. This transition was rendered easy because he had just decided that he would never look upon Madamoiselle de la Mole as a woman after his own taste. Since the seminary he had the lowest opinion of men, and was not to be easily intimidated by them. He would have enjoyed all his self-possession if the dining-room had been furnished with less magnificence. It was, as a matter of fact, two mirrors each eight feet high in which he would look from time to time at the man who was speaking to him about Horace, which continued to impress him. His phrases were not too long for a provincial, he had fine eyes whose brilliancy was doubled by his quavering timidity, or by his happy bashfulness when he had given a good answer. They found him pleasant. This kind of examination gave a little interest to a solemn dinner. The marquis signed to Julien's questioner to press him sharply. "Can he possibly know something?" he thought. Julien answered and thought out new ideas. He lost sufficient of his nervousness, not indeed to exhibit any wit, for that is impossible for any one ignorant of the special language which is used in Paris, but to show himself possessed of ideas which, though presented out of place and ungracefully, were yet original. They saw that he knew Latin perfectly. Julien's adversary was a member of the Academy Inscriptions who chanced to know Latin. He found Julien a very good humanist, was not frightened of making him feel uncomfortable, and really tried to embarrass him. In the heat of the controversy Julien eventually forgot the magnificent furniture of the dining-room. He managed to expound theories concerning the Latin poets which his questioner had never read of anywhere. Like an honest man, he gave the young secretary all due credit for them. As luck would have it, they started a discussion on the question of whether Horace was poor or rich, a good humoured and careless voluptuary who made verses to amuse himself, like Chapelle the friend of Moliere and de la Fontaine, or a poor devil of a poet laureate who wrote odes for the king's birthday like Southey, the accuser of Lord Byron. They talked about the state of society under Augustus and under George IV. At both periods the aristocracy was all-powerful, but, while at Rome it was despoiled of its power by Maecenas who was only a simple knight, it had in England reduced George IV practically to the position of a Venetian doge. This discussion seemed to lift the marquis out of that state of bored torpor in which he had been plunged at the beginning of the dinner. Julien found meaningless such modern names as Southey, Lord Byron, and George IV, which he now heard pronounced for the first time. But every one noticed that whenever the conversation dealt with events that had taken place in Rome and about which knowledge could be obtained by a perusal of the works of Horace, Martial or Tacitus, etc., he showed an indisputable superiority. Julien coolly appropriated several ideas which he had learnt from the bishop of Besancon in the historic conversation which he had had with that prelate. These ideas were not the least appreciated. When every one was tired of talking about poets the marquise, who always made it a rule to admire whatever amused her husband, deigned to look at Julien. "Perhaps an educated man lies hid beneath the clumsy manners of this young abbe," said the Academician who happened to be near the marquise. Julien caught a few words of what he said. Ready-made phrases suited the intellect of the mistress of the house quite well. She adopted this one about Julien, and was very pleased with herself for having invited the academician to dinner. "He has amused M. de la Mole" she thought. CHAPTER XXXIII THE FIRST STEPS This immense valley, filled with brilliant lights and so many thousands of men dazzles my sight. No one knows me. All are superior to me. I lose my head. _Poemi dell' av. REINA_. Julien was copying letters in the library very early the next day when Mademoiselle Mathilde came in by a little dummy door very well masked by the backs of the books. While Julien was admiring the device, Mademoiselle Mathilde seemed astonished and somewhat annoyed at finding him there: Julien saw that she was in curl-papers and had a hard, haughty, and masculine expression. Mademoiselle de la Mole had the habit of surreptitiously stealing books from her father's library. Julien's presence rendered this morning's journey abortive, a fact which annoyed her all the more as she had come to fetch the second volume of Voltaire's _Princess of Babylon_, a worthy climax to one of the most eminently monarchical and religious educations which the convent of the Sacred Heart had ever provided. This poor girl of nineteen already required some element of spiciness in order to get up an interest in a novel. Count Norbert put in an appearance in the library about three o'clock. He had come to study a paper so as to be able to talk politics in the evening, and was very glad to meet Julien, whose existence he had forgotten. He was charming, and offered him a ride on horseback. "My father will excuse us until dinner." Julien appreciated the us and thought it charming. "Great heavens! M. le Comte," said Julien, "if it were a question of felling an eighty-foot tree or hewing it out and making it into planks I would acquit myself all right, I daresay, but as for riding a horse, I haven't done such a thing six times in my life." "Well, this will be the seventh," said Norbert. As a matter of fact, Julien remembered the king of ----'s entry into Verrieres, and thought he rode extremely well. But as they were returning from the Bois de Boulogne he fell right in the middle of the Rue du Bac, as he suddenly tried to get out of the way of a cabriolet, and was spattered all over with mud. It was lucky that he had two suits. The marquis, wishing to favour him with a few words at dinner, asked him for news of his excursion. Norbert began immediately to answer him in general terms. "M. le Comte is extremely kind to me," answered Julien. "I thank him for it, and I fully appreciate it. He was good enough to have the quietest and prettiest horse given to me, but after all he could not tie me on to it, and owing to the lack of that precaution, I had a fall right in the middle of that long street near the bridge. Madame Mathilde made a futile effort to hide a burst of laughter, and subsequently was indiscreet enough to ask for details. Julien acquitted himself with much simplicity. He had grace without knowing it. "I prophesy favourably about that little priest," said the marquis to the academician. "Think of a provincial being simple over a matter like that. Such a thing has never been witnessed before, and will never be witnessed again; and what is more, he describes his misfortune before ladies." Julien put his listeners so thoroughly at their ease over his misfortune that at the end of the dinner, when the general conversation had gone off on to another subject, Mademoiselle Mathilde asked her brother some questions over the details of the unfortunate occurrence. As she put numerous questions, and as Julien met her eyes several times, he ventured to answer himself, although the questions had not been addressed to him, and all three of them finished up by laughing just as though they had all been inhabitants of some village in the depths of a forest. On the following day Julien attended two theology lectures, and then came back to copy out about twenty letters. He found a young man, who though very carefully dressed, had a mean appearance and an envious expression, established near him in the library. The marquis entered, "What are you doing here, M. Tanbeau?" he said severely to the new-comer. "I thought--" answered the young man, with a base smile. "No, monsieur, you thought nothing of the kind. This is a try-on, but it is an unfortunate one." Young Tanbeau got up in a rage and disappeared. He was a nephew of the academician who was a friend of Madame de la Mole, and intended to take up the profession of letters. The academician had induced the marquis to take him as a secretary. Tanbeau used to work in a separate room, but having heard of the favour that was vouchsafed to Julien he wished to share it, and he had gone this morning and established his desk in the library. At four o'clock Julien ventured, after a little hesitation, to present himself to Count Norbert. The latter was on the point of going riding, and being a man of perfect politeness felt embarrassed. "I think," he said to Julien, "that you had better go to the riding school, and after a few weeks, I shall be charmed to ride with you." "I should like to have the honour of thanking you for the kindness which you have shewn me. Believe me, monsieur," added Julien very seriously, "that I appreciate all I owe you. If your horse has not been hurt by the reason of my clumsiness of yesterday, and if it is free I should like to ride it this afternoon." "Well, upon my word, my dear Sorel, you do so at your own risk and peril; kindly assume that I have put forth all the objections required by prudence. As a matter of fact it is four o'clock, we have no time to lose." As soon as Julien was on horseback, he said to the young count, "What must one do not to fall off?" "Lots of things," answered Norbert, bursting into laughter. "Keep your body back for instance." Julien put his horse to the trot. They were at the Place Louis XVI. "Oh, you foolhardy youngster," said Norbert "there are too many carriages here, and they are driven by careless drivers into the bargain. Once you are on the ground their tilburies will run over your body, they will not risk spoiling their horses' mouths by pulling up short." Norbert saw Julien twenty times on the point of tumbling, but in the end the excursion finished without misadventure. As they came back the young count said to his sister, "Allow me to introduce a dashing dare-devil." When he talked to his father over the dinner from one end of the table to the other, he did justice to Julien's courage. It was the only thing one could possibly praise about his style of riding. The young count had heard in the morning the men who groomed the horses in the courtyard making Julien's fall an opportunity for the most outrageous jokes at his expense. In spite of so much kindness Julien soon felt himself completely isolated in this family. All their customs seemed strange to him, and he was cognizant of none of them. His blunders were the delight of the valets. The abbe Pirard had left for his living. "If Julien is a weak reed, let him perish. If he is a man of spirit, let him get out of his difficulties all alone," he thought. CHAPTER XXXIV THE HOTEL DE LA MOLE What is he doing here? Will he like it there? Will he try to please?--_Ronsard_. If everything in the aristocratic salon of the Hotel de la Mole seemed strange to Julien, that pale young man in his black suit seemed in his turn very strange to those persons who deigned to notice him. Madame de la Mole suggested to her husband that he should send him off on some business on those days when they had certain persons to dinner. "I wish to carry the experiment to its logical conclusion," answered the marquis. "The abbe Pirard contends that we are wrong in crushing the self-respect of the people whom we allow around us. _One can only lean on what resists_. The only thing against this man is his unknown face, apart from that he is a deaf mute." "If I am to know my way about," said Julien to himself. "I must write down the names of the persons whom I see come to the salon together with a few words on their character." He put at the head of the list five or six friends of the house who took every opportunity of paying court to him, believing that he was protected by a whim of the marquis. They were poor dull devils. But it must be said in praise of this class of men, such as they are found to-day in the salons of the aristocracy, that every one did not find them equally tame. One of them was now allowing himself to be bullied by the marquis, who was venting his irritation at a harsh remark which had been addressed to him by the marquise. The masters of the house were too proud or too prone to boredom; they were too much used to finding their only distraction in the addressing of insults, to enable them to expect true friends. But, except on rainy days and in rare moments of savage boredom, they always showed themselves perfectly polite. If the five or six toadies who manifested so paternal an affection towards Julien had deserted the Hotel de la Mole, the marquise would have been exposed to long spells of solitude, and in the eyes of women of that class, solitude is awful, it is the symbol of _disgrace_. The marquis was charming to his wife. He saw that her salon was sufficiently furnished, though not with peers, for he did not think his new colleagues were sufficiently noble to come to his house as friends, or sufficiently amusing to be admitted as inferiors. It was only later that Julien fathomed these secrets. The governing policy of a household, though it forms the staple of conversation in bourgeois families, is only alluded to in families of the class of that of the marquis in moments of distress. So paramount even in this bored century is the necessity of amusing one's self, that even on the days of dinner-parties the marquis had scarcely left the salon before all the guests ran away. Provided that one did not make any jests about either God or the priests or the king or the persons in office, or the artists who enjoyed the favour of the court, or of anything that was established, provided that one did not praise either Beranger or the opposition papers, or Voltaire or Rousseau or anything which involved any element of free speech, provided that above all that one never talked politics, one could discuss everything with freedom. There is no income of a hundred thousand crowns a year and no blue ribbon which could sustain a contest against such a code of salon etiquette. The slightest live idea appeared a crudity. In spite of the prevailing good form, perfect politeness, and desire to please, _ennui_ was visible in every face. The young people who came to pay their calls were frightened of speaking of anything which might make them suspected of thinking or of betraying that they had read something prohibited, and relapsed into silence after a few elegant phrases about Rossini and the weather. Julien noticed that the conversation was usually kept alive by two viscounts and five barons whom M. de la Mole had known at the time of the emigration. These gentlemen enjoyed an income of from six to eight hundred thousand francs. Four swore by the _Quotidienne_ and three by the _Gazette de France_. One of them had every day some anecdote to tell about the Chateau, in which he made lavish use of the word _admirable_. Julien noticed that he had five crosses, the others as a rule only had three. By way of compensation six footmen in livery were to be seen in the ante-room, and during the whole evening ices or tea were served every quarter-of-an-hour, while about midnight there was a kind of supper with champagne. This was the reason that sometimes induced Julien to stay till the end. Apart from this he could scarcely understand why any one could bring himself to take seriously the ordinary conversation in this magnificently gilded salon. Sometimes he would look at the talkers to see if they themselves were not making fun of what they were saying. "My M. de Maistre, whom I know by heart," he thought, "has put it a hundred times better, and all the same he is pretty boring." Julien was not the only one to appreciate this stifling moral atmosphere. Some consoled themselves by taking a great quantity of ices, others by the pleasure of saying all the rest of the evening, "I have just come from the Hotel de la Mole where I learnt that Russia, etc." Julien learnt from one of the toadies that scarcely six months ago madame de la Mole had rewarded more than twenty years of assiduous attention by promoting the poor baron Le Bourguignon, who had been a sub-prefect since the restoration, to the rank of prefect. This great event had whetted the zeal of all these gentlemen. Previously there were few things to which they would have objected, now they objected to nothing. There was rarely any overt lack of consideration, but Julien had already caught at meals two or three little short dialogues between the marquis and his wife which were cruel to those who were seated near them. These noble personages did not conceal their sincere contempt for everyone who was not sprung from people who were entitled to ride in the carriages of the king. Julien noticed that the word crusade was the only word which gave their face an expression of deep seriousness akin to respect. Their ordinary respect had always a touch of condescension. In the middle of this magnificence and this boredom Julien was interested in nothing except M. de la Mole. He was delighted to hear him protest one day that he had had nothing to do with the promotion of that poor Le Bourguignon, it was an attention to the marquise. Julien knew the truth from the abbe Pirard. The abbe was working in the marquis's library with Julien one morning at the eternal de Frilair lawsuit. "Monsieur," said Julien suddenly, "is dining every day with madame la marquise one of my duties or a special favour that they show to me?" "It's a special honour," replied the scandalised abbe. "M. the Academician, who has been cultivating the family for fifteen years, has never been able to obtain so much for his M. Tanbeau." "I find it, sir, the most painful part of my employment. I was less bored at the seminary. Some times I see even mademoiselle de la Mole yawn, and yet she ought to be accustomed to the social charms of the friends of the house. I am frightened of falling asleep. As a favour, obtain permission for me to go and get a forty sous' dinner in some obscure inn." The abbe who was a true snob, was very appreciative of the honour of dining with a great lord. While he was endeavouring to get Julien to understand this point of view a slight noise made them turn round. Julien saw mademoiselle de la Mole listening. He reddened. She had come to fetch a book and had heard everything. She began to entertain some respect for Julien. "He has not been born servile," she thought, "like that old abbe. Heavens, how ugly he is." At dinner Julien did not venture to look at mademoiselle de la Mole but she was kind enough to speak to him. They were expecting a lot of visitors that day and she asked him to stay. The young girls of Paris are not at all fond of persons of a certain age, especially when they are slovenly. Julien did not need much penetration to realise that the colleagues of M. le Bourguignon who remained in the salon had the privilege of being the ordinary butt of mademoiselle de la Mole's jokes. On this particular day, whether or not by reason of some affectation on her part, she proved cruel to bores. Mademoiselle de la Mole was the centre of a little knot which used to form nearly every evening behind the marquise's immense arm-chair. There were to be found there the marquis de Croisenois, the comte de Caylus, the vicomte de Luz and two or three other young officers, the friends of Norbert or his sister. These gentlemen used to sit down on a large blue sofa. At the end of the sofa, opposite the part where the brilliant Mathilde was sitting, Julien sat in silence on a little, rather low straw chair. This modest position was envied by all the toadies; Norbert kept his father's young secretary in countenance by speaking to him, or mentioning him by name once or twice in the evening. On this particular occasion mademoiselle de la Mole asked him what was the height of the mountain on which the citadel of Besancon is planted. Julien had never any idea if this mountain was higher or lower than Montmartre. He often laughed heartily at what was said in this little knot, but he felt himself incapable of inventing anything analagous. It was like a strange language which he understood but could not speak. On this particular day Matilde's friends manifested a continuous hostility to the visitors who came into the vast salon. The friends of the house were the favoured victims at first, inasmuch as they were better known. You can form your opinion as to whether Julien paid attention; everything interested him, both the substance of things and the manner of making fun of them. "And there is M. Descoulis," said Matilde; "he doesn't wear a wig any more. Does he want to get a prefectship through sheer force of genius? He is displaying that bald forehead which he says is filled with lofty thoughts." "He is a man who knows the whole world," said the marquis de Croisenois. "He also goes to my uncle the cardinal's. He is capable of cultivating a falsehood with each of his friends for years on end, and he has two or three hundred friends. He knows how to nurse friendship, that is his talent. He will go out, just as you see him, in the worst winter weather, and be at the door of one of his friends by seven o'clock in the morning. "He quarrels from time to time and he writes seven or eight letters for each quarrel. Then he has a reconciliation and he writes seven or eight letters to express his bursts of friendship. But he shines most brilliantly in the frank and sincere expansiveness of the honest man who keeps nothing up his sleeve. This manoeuvre is brought into play when he has some favour to ask. One of my uncle's grand vicars is very good at telling the life of M. Descoulis since the restoration. I will bring him to you." "Bah! I don't believe all that, it's professional jealousy among the lower classes," said the comte de Caylus. "M. Descoulis will live in history," replied the marquis. "He brought about the restoration together with the abbe de Pradt and messieurs de Talleyrand and Pozzo di Borgo." "That man has handled millions," said Norbert, "and I can't conceive why he should come here to swallow my father's epigrams which are frequently atrocious. 'How many times have you betrayed your friends, my dear Descoulis?' he shouted at him one day from one end of the table to the other." "But is it true that he has played the traitor?" asked mademoiselle de la Mole. "Who has not played the traitor?" "Why!" said the comte de Caylus to Norbert, "do you have that celebrated Liberal, M. Sainclair, in your house. What the devil's he come here for? I must go up to him and speak to him and make him speak. He is said to be so clever." "But how will your mother receive him?" said M. de Croisenois. "He has such extravagant, generous and independent ideas." "Look," said mademoiselle de la Mole, "look at the independent man who bows down to the ground to M. Descoulis while he grabs hold of his hand. I almost thought he was going to put it to his lips." "Descoulis must stand better with the powers that be than we thought," answered M. de Croisenois. "Sainclair comes here in order to get into the academy," said Norbert. "See how he bows to the baron L----, Croisenois." "It would be less base to kneel down," replied M. de Luz. "My dear Sorel," said Norbert, "you are extremely smart, but you come from the mountains. Mind you never bow like that great poet is doing, even to God the Father." "Ah there's a really witty man, M. the Baron Baton," said mademoiselle de la Mole, imitating a little the voice of the flunkey who had just announced him. "I think that even your servants make fun of him. What a name Baron Baton," said M. de Caylus. "What's in a name?" he said to us the other day, went on Matilde. "Imagine the Duke de Bouillon announced for the first time. So far as I am concerned the public only need to get used to me." "Julien left the vicinity of the sofa." Still insufficiently appreciative of the charming subtleties of a delicate raillery to laugh at a joke, he considered that a jest ought to have some logical foundation. He saw nothing in these young peoples' conversation except a vein of universal scandal-mongering and was shocked by it. His provincial or English prudery went so far as to detect envy in it, though in this he was certainly mistaken. "Count Norbert," he said to himself, "who has had to make three drafts for a twenty-line letter to his colonel would be only too glad to have written once in his whole life one page as good as M. Sainclair." Julien approached successively the several groups and attracted no attention by reason of his lack of importance. He followed the Baron Baton from a distance and tried to hear him. This witty man appeared nervous and Julien did not see him recover his equanimity before he had hit upon three or four stinging phrases. Julien thought that this kind of wit had great need of space. The Baron could not make epigrams. He needed at least four sentences of six lines each, in order to be brilliant. "That man argues, he does not talk," said someone behind Julien. He turned round and reddened with pleasure when he heard the name of the comte Chalvet. He was the subtlest man of the century. Julien had often found his name in the _Memorial of St. Helena_ and in the portions of history dictated by Napoleon. The diction of comte Chalvet was laconic, his phrases were flashes of lightning--just, vivid, deep. If he talked about any matter the conversation immediately made a step forward; he imported facts into it; it was a pleasure to hear him. In politics, however, he was a brazen cynic. "I am independent, I am," he was saying to a gentleman with three stars, of whom apparently he was making fun. "Why insist on my having to-day the same opinion I had six weeks ago. In that case my opinion would be my master." Four grave young men who were standing round scowled; these gentlemen did not like flippancy. The comte saw that he had gone too far. Luckily he perceived the honest M. Balland, a veritable hypocrite of honesty. The count began to talk to him; people closed up, for they realised that poor Balland was going to be the next victim. M. Balland, although he was horribly ugly and his first steps in the world were almost unmentionable, had by dint of his morals and his morality married a very rich wife who had died; he subsequently married a second very rich one who was never seen in society. He enjoyed, in all humility, an income of sixty thousand francs, and had his own flatterers. Comte Chalvet talked to him pitilessly about all this. There was soon a circle of thirty persons around them. Everybody was smiling, including the solemn young men who were the hope of the century. "Why does he come to M. de la Mole where he is obviously only a laughing stock?" thought Julien. He approached the abbe Pirard to ask him. M. Balland made his escape. "Good," said Norbert, "there is one of the spies of my father gone; there is only the little limping Napier left." "Can that be the key of the riddle?" thought Julien, "but if so, why does the marquis receive M. Balland?" The stern abbe Pirard was scowling in a corner of the salon listening to the lackeys announcing the names. "This is nothing more than a den," he was saying like another Basil, "I see none but shady people come in." As a matter of fact the severe abbe did not know what constitutes high society. But his friends the Jansenites, had given him some very precise notions about those men who only get into society by reason of their extreme subtlety in the service of all parties, or of their monstrous wealth. For some minutes that evening he answered Julien's eager questions fully and freely, and then suddenly stopped short grieved at having always to say ill of every one, and thinking he was guilty of a sin. Bilious Jansenist as he was, and believing as he did in the duty of Christian charity, his life was a perpetual conflict. "How strange that abbe Pirard looks," said mademoiselle de la Mole, as Julien came near the sofa. Julien felt irritated, but she was right all the same. M. Pirard was unquestionably the most honest man in the salon, but his pimply face, which was suffering from the stings of conscience, made him look hideous at this particular moment. "Trust physiognomy after this," thought Julien, "it is only when the delicate conscience of the abbe Pirard is reproaching him for some trifling lapse that he looks so awful; while the expression of that notorious spy Napier shows a pure and tranquil happiness." The abbe Pirard, however, had made great concessions to his party. He had taken a servant, and was very well dressed. Julien noticed something strange in the salon, it was that all eyes were being turned towards the door, and there was a semi silence. The flunkey was announcing the famous Barron Tolly, who had just become publicly conspicuous by reason of the elections. Julien came forward and had a very good view of him. The baron had been the president of an electoral college; he had the brilliant idea of spiriting away the little squares of paper which contained the votes of one of the parties. But to make up for it he replaced them by an equal number of other little pieces of paper containing a name agreeable to himself. This drastic manoeuvre had been noticed by some of the voters, who had made an immediate point of congratulating the Baron de Tolly. The good fellow was still pale from this great business. Malicious persons had pronounced the word galleys. M. de la Mole received him coldly. The poor Baron made his escape. "If he leaves us so quickly it's to go to M. Comte's,"[1] said Comte Chalvet and everyone laughed. Little Tanbeau was trying to win his spurs by talking to some silent noblemen and some intriguers who, though shady, were all men of wit, and were on this particular night in great force in M. de la Mole's salon (for he was mentioned for a place in the ministry). If he had not yet any subtlety of perception he made up for it as one will see by the energy of his words. "Why not sentence that man to ten years' imprisonment," he was saying at the moment when Julien approached his knot. "Those reptiles should be confined in the bottom of a dungeon, they ought to languish to death in gaol, otherwise their venom will grow and become more dangerous. What is the good of sentencing him to a fine of a thousand crowns? He is poor, so be it, all the better, but his party will pay for him. What the case required was a five hundred francs fine and ten years in a dungeon." "Well to be sure, who is the monster they are speaking about?" thought Julien who was viewing with amazement the vehement tone and hysterical gestures of his colleague. At this moment the thin, drawn, little face of the academician's nephew was hideous. Julien soon learnt that they were talking of the greatest poet of the century. "You monster," Julien exclaimed half aloud, while tears of generosity moistened his eyes. "You little rascal," he thought, "I will pay you out for this." "Yet," he thought, "those are the unborn hopes of the party of which the marquis is one of the chiefs. How many crosses and how many sinecures would that celebrated man whom he is now defaming have accumulated if he had sold himself--I won't say to the mediocre ministry of M. de Nerval--but to one of those reasonably honest ministries which we have seen follow each other in succession." The abbe Pirard motioned to Julien from some distance off; M. de la Mole had just said something to him. But when Julien, who was listening at the moment with downcast eyes to the lamentations of the bishop, had at length got free and was able to get near his friend, he found him monopolised by the abominable little Tanbeau. The little beast hated him as the cause of Julien's favour with the marquis, and was now making up to him. "_When will death deliver us from that aged rottenness_," it was in these words of a biblical energy that the little man of letters was now talking of the venerable Lord Holland. His merit consisted in an excellent knowledge of the biography of living men, and he had just made a rapid review of all the men who could aspire to some influence under the reign of the new King of England. The abbe Pirard passed in to an adjacent salon. Julien followed him. "I warn you the marquis does not like scribblers, it is his only prejudice. Know Latin and Greek if you can manage it, the history of the Egyptians, Persians, etc., he will honour and protect you as a learned man. But don't write a page of French, especially on serious matters which are above your position in society, or he will call you a scribbler and take you for a scoundrel. How is it that living as you do in the hotel of a great lord you don't know the Duke de Castries' epigram on Alembert and Rousseau: 'the fellow wants to reason about everything and hasn't got an income of a thousand crowns'!" "Everything leaks out here," thought Julien, "just like the seminary." He had written eight or six fairly drastic pages. It was a kind of historical eulogy of the old surgeon-major who had, he said, made a man of him. "The little note book," said Julien to himself, "has always been locked." He went up to his room, burnt his manuscript and returned to the salon. The brilliant scoundrels had left it, only the men with the stars were left. Seven or eight very aristocratic ladies, very devout, very affected, and of from thirty to thirty-five years of age, were grouped round the table that the servants had just brought in ready served. The brilliant marechale de Fervaques came in apologising for the lateness of the hour. It was more than midnight: she went and sat down near the marquise. Julien was deeply touched, she had the eyes and the expression of madame de Renal. Mademoiselle de la Mole's circle was still full of people. She was engaged with her friends in making fun of the unfortunate comte de Thaler. He was the only son of that celebrated Jew who was famous for the riches that he had won by lending money to kings to make war on the peoples. The Jew had just died leaving his son an income of one hundred thousand crowns a month, and a name that was only too well known. This strange position required either a simple character or force of will power. Unfortunately the comte was simply a fellow who was inflated by all kinds of pretensions which had been suggested to him by all his toadies. M. de Caylus asserted that they had induced him to make up his mind to ask for the hand of mademoiselle de la Mole, to whom the marquis de Croisenois, who would be a duke with a hundred thousand francs a year, was paying his attentions. "Oh, do not accuse him of having a mind," said Norbert pitifully. Will-power was what the poor comte de Thaler lacked most of all. So far as this side of his character went he was worthy of being a king. He would take council from everybody, but he never had the courage to follow any advice to the bitter end. "His physiognomy would be sufficient in itself," mademoiselle de la Mole was fond of saying, "to have inspired her with a holy joy." It was a singular mixture of anxiety and disappointment, but from time to time one could distinguish gusts of self-importance, and above all that trenchant tone suited to the richest man in France, especially when he had nothing to be ashamed of in his personal appearance and was not yet thirty-six. "He is timidly insolent," M. de Croisenois would say. The comte de Caylus, Norbert, and two or three moustachioed young people made fun of him to their heart's content without him suspecting it, and finally packed him off as one o'clock struck. "Are those your famous Arab horses waiting for you at the door in this awful weather?" said Norbert to him. "No, it is a new pair which are much cheaper," said M. de Thaler. "The horse on the left cost me five thousand francs, while the one on the right is only worth one hundred louis, but I would ask you to believe me when I say that I only have him out at night. His trot you see is exactly like the other ones." Norbert's remark made the comte think it was good form for a man like him to make a hobby of his horses, and that he must not let them get wet. He went away, and the other gentleman left a minute afterwards making fun of him all the time. "So," thought Julien as he heard them laugh on the staircase, "I have the privilege of seeing the exact opposite of my own situation. I have not got twenty louis a year and I found myself side by side with a man who has twenty louis an hour and they made fun of him. Seeing a sight like that cures one of envy." [1] celebrated conjuror.

Chapters 1-4

https://web.archive.org/web/20201128052739/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/r/the-red-and-the-black/summary-and-analysis/part-2-chapters-14

Julien's voyage to Paris is enlivened by the conversation of his fellow travelers -- a Bonapartist, former friend of M. de Renal, and a newly formed liberal, Saint-Giraud, who is fleeing the pettiness and intrigue of provincial life for the calm of Paris. The latter had sought peace in the provinces, but because he refused to take sides in the great debate between ultras and liberals, he was persecuted by both. The conversation reflects their opposing political views: Saint-Giraud maintains that the present disorder is due to Napoleon's desire to revive the monarchy. Such strong argumentation does not prevent Julien, upon his arrival in Paris, from making a pilgrimage to Napoleon's palace at Malmaison. Pirard describes to him in detail the new life he will lead at the home of the Marquis de la Mole. Pirard warns Julien of what to expect from this aristocratic and haughty family. Chapter 2 is devoted to Julien's arrival and few days in the Mole household. He is first presented to the marquis, who has him outfitted and finds it necessary, in order to improve Julien's grace, to have him take dancing lessons. Invited for dinner in the salon, Julien meets Mme. de la Mole and Mathilde. The latter he finds uninteresting and even unattractive in comparison to Mme. de Renal. He finds Norbert, the marquis' son, charming. At dinner, Julien succeeds in making a favorable impression by his knowledge of the classical writers. Julien takes his working post in the library, where the vast array of books dazzles and inspires him. Mlle. de la Mole enters to smuggle out a copy of Voltaire, and this encounter strengthens Julien's impression of her as a cold-hearted, uninteresting woman. Norbert, on the other hand, continues to delight Julien by his kindness, and he accepts Norbert's invitation to go riding. A mishap while riding is later related at dinner, and Julien's good grace and innocence in the avowal of his awkwardness cause the marquis to look favorably upon him and incite the curiosity of Mathilde. Further equestrian attempts on Julien's part elicit the remark from Norbert at dinner that Julien is very courageous. Julien's many mishaps are especially relished by the servants of the household. Chapter 4 describes a typical evening in the salon of the Mole family. Julien reacts as violently to what he witnesses as he did in the Verrieres home of Valenod, and the scenes are, in fact, similar. Court at the Mole's is strongly reminiscent in its sterility of the court of Louis XVI. There reigns an air of decorum, politeness, and cruelty. Only insignificant subjects are discussed, nothing controversial, and the barrenness of the conversation inevitably leads to calumny, derision, and mockery by those in favor with M. de la Mole, directed at those out of his favor. Admitting to Pirard how distasteful he finds these evenings, Julien is overheard by Mathilde, who admires this courage and sincerity.

Stendhal loses no opportunity to further the education of Julien, rendering, at the same time, a view of the political situation of the period. Julien would seem by nature and inclination to be a liberal, although he frequents only ultra milieus: the Renals and the Moles. Julien is, in fact, an opportunist -- he has no allegiance except to himself and to others of the "happy few" who befriend and love him. The only reaction that Julien registers at this revelatory discussion during the coach journey is one of astonishment, and Napoleon remains his idol. Saint-Giraud's situation is an ironic preview of what Julien's future holds, but in reverse. Saint-Giraud is returning to Paris after having vainly sought peace in the provinces. He apparently considers Paris as the lesser of the two evils. Julien will follow the reverse route -- arriving at the same conclusion: present happiness is not appreciated. The scene is an effective transition between the scenes of action from another point of view. It indicates that France's lamentable situation during the Restoration is localized neither in Paris nor in the provinces-it is ubiquitous. We have seen corruption and compromise as it operates on the local level, in the grass-roots, then in the seminary, where the purveyors of weakness are formed. Now we will witness the motor source of France's sickness in the aristocratic and ecclesiastical powers in Paris. Note the father-function of Pirard, whose kind intervention will minimize Julien's chances of being ridiculous in the Mole household. Although the other members of the Mole family are cruelly and concisely described by Pirard, Mathilde is only briefly mentioned at this point. Compare Julien's wary but self-assured air upon introduction to the Mole household to his awkwardness and intimidated state upon arrival at the Renal home, fifteen months before. Stendhal tells us that Julien has come to expect the worst from people; therefore, he is not easily intimidated. Note, however, how astutely Stendhal renders, almost in passing, a psychologically convincing detail describing Julien's manner of confronting a new situation, where he must find some weakness in his adversary, the discovery of which will bolster Julien's own confidence. It seems to Julien that M. de la Mole's wig is much too thick. Thanks to this observation, he is not at all intimidated. That is, observing no matter how slight a deficiency in a superior, Julien is able to derive confidence from it. At dinner, his self-assurance does not falter this time because he decides that Mathilde de la Mole will never be a woman in his eyes. Mathilde takes an interest in Julien for the first time in Chapter 3, and it is his uniqueness and candor, in contrast to the stereotyped characters to whom she is accustomed, that will constitute much of the basis of her interest and subsequent love for Julien. Julien must undergo a social metamorphosis as part of his education, and learning to ride a horse is part of this training. Stendhal notes, at the end of the chapter, that Julien already feels himself to be an outsider in this family, the customs and manners of which are strange to him. This concluding remark serves as a transition to the subject matter of the following chapter. Stendhal benefits from Julien's role of outsider to view the sterility of this social institution, the aristocratic salon of 1830. Pirard's austere presence and conspicuous isolation contrast with the habitues' obsequious conduct, their superficial and docile character, as they mingle and assume their roles in their respective sub-circles Julien does not fail to note this contrast. Julien's violent disapproval of the cruel derision of merit, especially by his rival secretary, Tanbeau, is reminiscent of his reaction at the Valenod's dinner party. It is by means of this device that Stendhal elicits the reader's sympathy for his hero: Stendhal satirizes Julien's adversaries through ridicule; the reader, therefore, naturally allies himself with Julien. Admitted as a silent spectator into Mathilde's circle, Julien observes her suitors, the most favored of whom is the Count de Croisenois. In passing, Stendhal observes that Mathilde admires Julien's courage in denouncing this type of social gathering to Pirard -- a second hint at the future relationship of Julien and Mathilde. The description of the salon no doubt inspired Proust in his own vivid and satirical depiction of early twentieth-century salon mores. It was Proust, incidentally, who first called attention to the recurrent theme of "high places" in the works of Stendhal.

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/40.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Brothers Karamazov/section_8_part_3.txt

The Brothers Karamazov.book 6.chapter 2

book 6, chapter 2

{"name": "book 6, Chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section9/", "summary": "From the Life of the Hieromonk and Elder Zosima, Departed in God, Composed from His Own Words by Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov Zosima says that he holds Alyosha very dear to his heart because Alyosha reminds him of his older brother, who was a great spiritual influence on him. Zosima's brother was a critic of religion until he came down with consumption at the age of seventeen, at which point he underwent a powerful spiritual change. In the months before he died, he talked continually about loving God's creation and all living things. Zosima says that, in addition to his brother, the greatest influence on his life has been the Bible. But he did not discover the Bible until he was a grown man. In fact, he was a military officer, rather like Dmitri. When the woman Zosima loved married another man, Zosima challenged him to a duel and planned to kill him. But when he woke up on the morning of the duel, he saw the beauty of the world and remembered his brother's commandment to love all living things. He did not back out of the duel, however. Instead, he allowed the other man to take the first shot, and then fell to his knees and began to beg for his forgiveness. Zosima quickly left the army and decided to become a monk. Zosima tells of one night in the past when he received a mysterious visitor, a prominent philanthropist. After asking Zosima about his conversion, and after paying him several more visits, the philanthropist confesses a great crime. He says that he once killed a woman he loved, and another man was arrested for the crime. The man who was arrested died before his trial, and the philanthropist was free. But he tells Zosima that, despite his success in life and his loving family, he has never been satisfied, because he has always longed to make a confession. Zosima encourages him to confess to the people, and after a great deal of soul-searching, the man agrees. He holds a huge birthday party, and, in front of all his guests, reads a statement of guilt. But no one believes him. It is decided that he has gone mad. Soon after, the man falls ill, and Zosima visits him at his deathbed. There, the man tells Zosima that he almost killed Zosima after he confessed his crime. But God, he says, defeated the devil in his heart. A week later, the man died, and Zosima has kept his secret until now", "analysis": ""}

Chapter II. The Duel _(c) Recollections of Father Zossima's Youth before he became a Monk. The Duel_ I spent a long time, almost eight years, in the military cadet school at Petersburg, and in the novelty of my surroundings there, many of my childish impressions grew dimmer, though I forgot nothing. I picked up so many new habits and opinions that I was transformed into a cruel, absurd, almost savage creature. A surface polish of courtesy and society manners I did acquire together with the French language. But we all, myself included, looked upon the soldiers in our service as cattle. I was perhaps worse than the rest in that respect, for I was so much more impressionable than my companions. By the time we left the school as officers, we were ready to lay down our lives for the honor of the regiment, but no one of us had any knowledge of the real meaning of honor, and if any one had known it, he would have been the first to ridicule it. Drunkenness, debauchery and devilry were what we almost prided ourselves on. I don't say that we were bad by nature, all these young men were good fellows, but they behaved badly, and I worst of all. What made it worse for me was that I had come into my own money, and so I flung myself into a life of pleasure, and plunged headlong into all the recklessness of youth. I was fond of reading, yet strange to say, the Bible was the one book I never opened at that time, though I always carried it about with me, and I was never separated from it; in very truth I was keeping that book "for the day and the hour, for the month and the year," though I knew it not. After four years of this life, I chanced to be in the town of K. where our regiment was stationed at the time. We found the people of the town hospitable, rich and fond of entertainments. I met with a cordial reception everywhere, as I was of a lively temperament and was known to be well off, which always goes a long way in the world. And then a circumstance happened which was the beginning of it all. I formed an attachment to a beautiful and intelligent young girl of noble and lofty character, the daughter of people much respected. They were well-to-do people of influence and position. They always gave me a cordial and friendly reception. I fancied that the young lady looked on me with favor and my heart was aflame at such an idea. Later on I saw and fully realized that I perhaps was not so passionately in love with her at all, but only recognized the elevation of her mind and character, which I could not indeed have helped doing. I was prevented, however, from making her an offer at the time by my selfishness, I was loath to part with the allurements of my free and licentious bachelor life in the heyday of my youth, and with my pockets full of money. I did drop some hint as to my feelings however, though I put off taking any decisive step for a time. Then, all of a sudden, we were ordered off for two months to another district. On my return two months later, I found the young lady already married to a rich neighboring landowner, a very amiable man, still young though older than I was, connected with the best Petersburg society, which I was not, and of excellent education, which I also was not. I was so overwhelmed at this unexpected circumstance that my mind was positively clouded. The worst of it all was that, as I learned then, the young landowner had been a long while betrothed to her, and I had met him indeed many times in her house, but blinded by my conceit I had noticed nothing. And this particularly mortified me; almost everybody had known all about it, while I knew nothing. I was filled with sudden irrepressible fury. With flushed face I began recalling how often I had been on the point of declaring my love to her, and as she had not attempted to stop me or to warn me, she must, I concluded, have been laughing at me all the time. Later on, of course, I reflected and remembered that she had been very far from laughing at me; on the contrary, she used to turn off any love-making on my part with a jest and begin talking of other subjects; but at that moment I was incapable of reflecting and was all eagerness for revenge. I am surprised to remember that my wrath and revengeful feelings were extremely repugnant to my own nature, for being of an easy temper, I found it difficult to be angry with any one for long, and so I had to work myself up artificially and became at last revolting and absurd. I waited for an opportunity and succeeded in insulting my "rival" in the presence of a large company. I insulted him on a perfectly extraneous pretext, jeering at his opinion upon an important public event--it was in the year 1826(5)--and my jeer was, so people said, clever and effective. Then I forced him to ask for an explanation, and behaved so rudely that he accepted my challenge in spite of the vast inequality between us, as I was younger, a person of no consequence, and of inferior rank. I learned afterwards for a fact that it was from a jealous feeling on his side also that my challenge was accepted; he had been rather jealous of me on his wife's account before their marriage; he fancied now that if he submitted to be insulted by me and refused to accept my challenge, and if she heard of it, she might begin to despise him and waver in her love for him. I soon found a second in a comrade, an ensign of our regiment. In those days though duels were severely punished, yet dueling was a kind of fashion among the officers--so strong and deeply rooted will a brutal prejudice sometimes be. It was the end of June, and our meeting was to take place at seven o'clock the next day on the outskirts of the town--and then something happened that in very truth was the turning-point of my life. In the evening, returning home in a savage and brutal humor, I flew into a rage with my orderly Afanasy, and gave him two blows in the face with all my might, so that it was covered with blood. He had not long been in my service and I had struck him before, but never with such ferocious cruelty. And, believe me, though it's forty years ago, I recall it now with shame and pain. I went to bed and slept for about three hours; when I waked up the day was breaking. I got up--I did not want to sleep any more--I went to the window--opened it, it looked out upon the garden; I saw the sun rising; it was warm and beautiful, the birds were singing. "What's the meaning of it?" I thought. "I feel in my heart as it were something vile and shameful. Is it because I am going to shed blood? No," I thought, "I feel it's not that. Can it be that I am afraid of death, afraid of being killed? No, that's not it, that's not it at all."... And all at once I knew what it was: it was because I had beaten Afanasy the evening before! It all rose before my mind, it all was as it were repeated over again; he stood before me and I was beating him straight on the face and he was holding his arms stiffly down, his head erect, his eyes fixed upon me as though on parade. He staggered at every blow and did not even dare to raise his hands to protect himself. That is what a man has been brought to, and that was a man beating a fellow creature! What a crime! It was as though a sharp dagger had pierced me right through. I stood as if I were struck dumb, while the sun was shining, the leaves were rejoicing and the birds were trilling the praise of God.... I hid my face in my hands, fell on my bed and broke into a storm of tears. And then I remembered my brother Markel and what he said on his death-bed to his servants: "My dear ones, why do you wait on me, why do you love me, am I worth your waiting on me?" "Yes, am I worth it?" flashed through my mind. "After all what am I worth, that another man, a fellow creature, made in the likeness and image of God, should serve me?" For the first time in my life this question forced itself upon me. He had said, "Mother, my little heart, in truth we are each responsible to all for all, it's only that men don't know this. If they knew it, the world would be a paradise at once." "God, can that too be false?" I thought as I wept. "In truth, perhaps, I am more than all others responsible for all, a greater sinner than all men in the world." And all at once the whole truth in its full light appeared to me; what was I going to do? I was going to kill a good, clever, noble man, who had done me no wrong, and by depriving his wife of happiness for the rest of her life, I should be torturing and killing her too. I lay thus in my bed with my face in the pillow, heedless how the time was passing. Suddenly my second, the ensign, came in with the pistols to fetch me. "Ah," said he, "it's a good thing you are up already, it's time we were off, come along!" I did not know what to do and hurried to and fro undecided; we went out to the carriage, however. "Wait here a minute," I said to him. "I'll be back directly, I have forgotten my purse." And I ran back alone, to Afanasy's little room. "Afanasy," I said, "I gave you two blows on the face yesterday, forgive me," I said. He started as though he were frightened, and looked at me; and I saw that it was not enough, and on the spot, in my full officer's uniform, I dropped at his feet and bowed my head to the ground. "Forgive me," I said. Then he was completely aghast. "Your honor ... sir, what are you doing? Am I worth it?" And he burst out crying as I had done before, hid this face in his hands, turned to the window and shook all over with his sobs. I flew out to my comrade and jumped into the carriage. "Ready," I cried. "Have you ever seen a conqueror?" I asked him. "Here is one before you." I was in ecstasy, laughing and talking all the way, I don't remember what about. He looked at me. "Well, brother, you are a plucky fellow, you'll keep up the honor of the uniform, I can see." So we reached the place and found them there, waiting us. We were placed twelve paces apart; he had the first shot. I stood gayly, looking him full in the face; I did not twitch an eyelash, I looked lovingly at him, for I knew what I would do. His shot just grazed my cheek and ear. "Thank God," I cried, "no man has been killed," and I seized my pistol, turned back and flung it far away into the wood. "That's the place for you," I cried. I turned to my adversary. "Forgive me, young fool that I am, sir," I said, "for my unprovoked insult to you and for forcing you to fire at me. I am ten times worse than you and more, maybe. Tell that to the person whom you hold dearest in the world." I had no sooner said this than they all three shouted at me. "Upon my word," cried my adversary, annoyed, "if you did not want to fight, why did not you let me alone?" "Yesterday I was a fool, to-day I know better," I answered him gayly. "As to yesterday, I believe you, but as for to-day, it is difficult to agree with your opinion," said he. "Bravo," I cried, clapping my hands. "I agree with you there too. I have deserved it!" "Will you shoot, sir, or not?" "No, I won't," I said; "if you like, fire at me again, but it would be better for you not to fire." The seconds, especially mine, were shouting too: "Can you disgrace the regiment like this, facing your antagonist and begging his forgiveness! If I'd only known this!" I stood facing them all, not laughing now. "Gentlemen," I said, "is it really so wonderful in these days to find a man who can repent of his stupidity and publicly confess his wrongdoing?" "But not in a duel," cried my second again. "That's what's so strange," I said. "For I ought to have owned my fault as soon as I got here, before he had fired a shot, before leading him into a great and deadly sin; but we have made our life so grotesque, that to act in that way would have been almost impossible, for only after I have faced his shot at the distance of twelve paces could my words have any significance for him, and if I had spoken before, he would have said, 'He is a coward, the sight of the pistols has frightened him, no use to listen to him.' Gentlemen," I cried suddenly, speaking straight from my heart, "look around you at the gifts of God, the clear sky, the pure air, the tender grass, the birds; nature is beautiful and sinless, and we, only we, are sinful and foolish, and we don't understand that life is heaven, for we have only to understand that and it will at once be fulfilled in all its beauty, we shall embrace each other and weep." I would have said more but I could not; my voice broke with the sweetness and youthful gladness of it, and there was such bliss in my heart as I had never known before in my life. "All this as rational and edifying," said my antagonist, "and in any case you are an original person." "You may laugh," I said to him, laughing too, "but afterwards you will approve of me." "Oh, I am ready to approve of you now," said he; "will you shake hands? for I believe you are genuinely sincere." "No," I said, "not now, later on when I have grown worthier and deserve your esteem, then shake hands and you will do well." We went home, my second upbraiding me all the way, while I kissed him. All my comrades heard of the affair at once and gathered together to pass judgment on me the same day. "He has disgraced the uniform," they said; "let him resign his commission." Some stood up for me: "He faced the shot," they said. "Yes, but he was afraid of his other shot and begged for forgiveness." "If he had been afraid of being shot, he would have shot his own pistol first before asking forgiveness, while he flung it loaded into the forest. No, there's something else in this, something original." I enjoyed listening and looking at them. "My dear friends and comrades," said I, "don't worry about my resigning my commission, for I have done so already. I have sent in my papers this morning and as soon as I get my discharge I shall go into a monastery--it's with that object I am leaving the regiment." When I had said this every one of them burst out laughing. "You should have told us of that first, that explains everything, we can't judge a monk." They laughed and could not stop themselves, and not scornfully, but kindly and merrily. They all felt friendly to me at once, even those who had been sternest in their censure, and all the following month, before my discharge came, they could not make enough of me. "Ah, you monk," they would say. And every one said something kind to me, they began trying to dissuade me, even to pity me: "What are you doing to yourself?" "No," they would say, "he is a brave fellow, he faced fire and could have fired his own pistol too, but he had a dream the night before that he should become a monk, that's why he did it." It was the same thing with the society of the town. Till then I had been kindly received, but had not been the object of special attention, and now all came to know me at once and invited me; they laughed at me, but they loved me. I may mention that although everybody talked openly of our duel, the authorities took no notice of it, because my antagonist was a near relation of our general, and as there had been no bloodshed and no serious consequences, and as I resigned my commission, they took it as a joke. And I began then to speak aloud and fearlessly, regardless of their laughter, for it was always kindly and not spiteful laughter. These conversations mostly took place in the evenings, in the company of ladies; women particularly liked listening to me then and they made the men listen. "But how can I possibly be responsible for all?" every one would laugh in my face. "Can I, for instance, be responsible for you?" "You may well not know it," I would answer, "since the whole world has long been going on a different line, since we consider the veriest lies as truth and demand the same lies from others. Here I have for once in my life acted sincerely and, well, you all look upon me as a madman. Though you are friendly to me, yet, you see, you all laugh at me." "But how can we help being friendly to you?" said my hostess, laughing. The room was full of people. All of a sudden the young lady rose, on whose account the duel had been fought and whom only lately I had intended to be my future wife. I had not noticed her coming into the room. She got up, came to me and held out her hand. "Let me tell you," she said, "that I am the first not to laugh at you, but on the contrary I thank you with tears and express my respect for you for your action then." Her husband, too, came up and then they all approached me and almost kissed me. My heart was filled with joy, but my attention was especially caught by a middle-aged man who came up to me with the others. I knew him by name already, but had never made his acquaintance nor exchanged a word with him till that evening. _(d) The Mysterious Visitor_ He had long been an official in the town; he was in a prominent position, respected by all, rich and had a reputation for benevolence. He subscribed considerable sums to the almshouse and the orphan asylum; he was very charitable, too, in secret, a fact which only became known after his death. He was a man of about fifty, almost stern in appearance and not much given to conversation. He had been married about ten years and his wife, who was still young, had borne him three children. Well, I was sitting alone in my room the following evening, when my door suddenly opened and this gentleman walked in. I must mention, by the way, that I was no longer living in my former quarters. As soon as I resigned my commission, I took rooms with an old lady, the widow of a government clerk. My landlady's servant waited upon me, for I had moved into her rooms simply because on my return from the duel I had sent Afanasy back to the regiment, as I felt ashamed to look him in the face after my last interview with him. So prone is the man of the world to be ashamed of any righteous action. "I have," said my visitor, "with great interest listened to you speaking in different houses the last few days and I wanted at last to make your personal acquaintance, so as to talk to you more intimately. Can you, dear sir, grant me this favor?" "I can, with the greatest pleasure, and I shall look upon it as an honor." I said this, though I felt almost dismayed, so greatly was I impressed from the first moment by the appearance of this man. For though other people had listened to me with interest and attention, no one had come to me before with such a serious, stern and concentrated expression. And now he had come to see me in my own rooms. He sat down. "You are, I see, a man of great strength of character," he said; "as you have dared to serve the truth, even when by doing so you risked incurring the contempt of all." "Your praise is, perhaps, excessive," I replied. "No, it's not excessive," he answered; "believe me, such a course of action is far more difficult than you think. It is that which has impressed me, and it is only on that account that I have come to you," he continued. "Tell me, please, that is if you are not annoyed by my perhaps unseemly curiosity, what were your exact sensations, if you can recall them, at the moment when you made up your mind to ask forgiveness at the duel. Do not think my question frivolous; on the contrary, I have in asking the question a secret motive of my own, which I will perhaps explain to you later on, if it is God's will that we should become more intimately acquainted." All the while he was speaking, I was looking at him straight into the face and I felt all at once a complete trust in him and great curiosity on my side also, for I felt that there was some strange secret in his soul. "You ask what were my exact sensations at the moment when I asked my opponent's forgiveness," I answered; "but I had better tell you from the beginning what I have not yet told any one else." And I described all that had passed between Afanasy and me, and how I had bowed down to the ground at his feet. "From that you can see for yourself," I concluded, "that at the time of the duel it was easier for me, for I had made a beginning already at home, and when once I had started on that road, to go farther along it was far from being difficult, but became a source of joy and happiness." I liked the way he looked at me as he listened. "All that," he said, "is exceedingly interesting. I will come to see you again and again." And from that time forth he came to see me nearly every evening. And we should have become greater friends, if only he had ever talked of himself. But about himself he scarcely ever said a word, yet continually asked me about myself. In spite of that I became very fond of him and spoke with perfect frankness to him about all my feelings; "for," thought I, "what need have I to know his secrets, since I can see without that that he is a good man? Moreover, though he is such a serious man and my senior, he comes to see a youngster like me and treats me as his equal." And I learned a great deal that was profitable from him, for he was a man of lofty mind. "That life is heaven," he said to me suddenly, "that I have long been thinking about"; and all at once he added, "I think of nothing else indeed." He looked at me and smiled. "I am more convinced of it than you are, I will tell you later why." I listened to him and thought that he evidently wanted to tell me something. "Heaven," he went on, "lies hidden within all of us--here it lies hidden in me now, and if I will it, it will be revealed to me to-morrow and for all time." I looked at him; he was speaking with great emotion and gazing mysteriously at me, as if he were questioning me. "And that we are all responsible to all for all, apart from our own sins, you were quite right in thinking that, and it is wonderful how you could comprehend it in all its significance at once. And in very truth, so soon as men understand that, the Kingdom of Heaven will be for them not a dream, but a living reality." "And when," I cried out to him bitterly, "when will that come to pass? and will it ever come to pass? Is not it simply a dream of ours?" "What then, you don't believe it," he said. "You preach it and don't believe it yourself. Believe me, this dream, as you call it, will come to pass without doubt; it will come, but not now, for every process has its law. It's a spiritual, psychological process. To transform the world, to recreate it afresh, men must turn into another path psychologically. Until you have become really, in actual fact, a brother to every one, brotherhood will not come to pass. No sort of scientific teaching, no kind of common interest, will ever teach men to share property and privileges with equal consideration for all. Every one will think his share too small and they will be always envying, complaining and attacking one another. You ask when it will come to pass; it will come to pass, but first we have to go through the period of isolation." "What do you mean by isolation?" I asked him. "Why, the isolation that prevails everywhere, above all in our age--it has not fully developed, it has not reached its limit yet. For every one strives to keep his individuality as apart as possible, wishes to secure the greatest possible fullness of life for himself; but meantime all his efforts result not in attaining fullness of life but self-destruction, for instead of self-realization he ends by arriving at complete solitude. All mankind in our age have split up into units, they all keep apart, each in his own groove; each one holds aloof, hides himself and hides what he has, from the rest, and he ends by being repelled by others and repelling them. He heaps up riches by himself and thinks, 'How strong I am now and how secure,' and in his madness he does not understand that the more he heaps up, the more he sinks into self-destructive impotence. For he is accustomed to rely upon himself alone and to cut himself off from the whole; he has trained himself not to believe in the help of others, in men and in humanity, and only trembles for fear he should lose his money and the privileges that he has won for himself. Everywhere in these days men have, in their mockery, ceased to understand that the true security is to be found in social solidarity rather than in isolated individual effort. But this terrible individualism must inevitably have an end, and all will suddenly understand how unnaturally they are separated from one another. It will be the spirit of the time, and people will marvel that they have sat so long in darkness without seeing the light. And then the sign of the Son of Man will be seen in the heavens.... But, until then, we must keep the banner flying. Sometimes even if he has to do it alone, and his conduct seems to be crazy, a man must set an example, and so draw men's souls out of their solitude, and spur them to some act of brotherly love, that the great idea may not die." Our evenings, one after another, were spent in such stirring and fervent talk. I gave up society and visited my neighbors much less frequently. Besides, my vogue was somewhat over. I say this, not as blame, for they still loved me and treated me good-humoredly, but there's no denying that fashion is a great power in society. I began to regard my mysterious visitor with admiration, for besides enjoying his intelligence, I began to perceive that he was brooding over some plan in his heart, and was preparing himself perhaps for a great deed. Perhaps he liked my not showing curiosity about his secret, not seeking to discover it by direct question nor by insinuation. But I noticed at last, that he seemed to show signs of wanting to tell me something. This had become quite evident, indeed, about a month after he first began to visit me. "Do you know," he said to me once, "that people are very inquisitive about us in the town and wonder why I come to see you so often. But let them wonder, for _soon all will be explained_." Sometimes an extraordinary agitation would come over him, and almost always on such occasions he would get up and go away. Sometimes he would fix a long piercing look upon me, and I thought, "He will say something directly now." But he would suddenly begin talking of something ordinary and familiar. He often complained of headache too. One day, quite unexpectedly indeed, after he had been talking with great fervor a long time, I saw him suddenly turn pale, and his face worked convulsively, while he stared persistently at me. "What's the matter?" I said; "do you feel ill?"--he had just been complaining of headache. "I ... do you know ... I murdered some one." He said this and smiled with a face as white as chalk. "Why is it he is smiling?" The thought flashed through my mind before I realized anything else. I too turned pale. "What are you saying?" I cried. "You see," he said, with a pale smile, "how much it has cost me to say the first word. Now I have said it, I feel I've taken the first step and shall go on." For a long while I could not believe him, and I did not believe him at that time, but only after he had been to see me three days running and told me all about it. I thought he was mad, but ended by being convinced, to my great grief and amazement. His crime was a great and terrible one. Fourteen years before, he had murdered the widow of a landowner, a wealthy and handsome young woman who had a house in our town. He fell passionately in love with her, declared his feeling and tried to persuade her to marry him. But she had already given her heart to another man, an officer of noble birth and high rank in the service, who was at that time away at the front, though she was expecting him soon to return. She refused his offer and begged him not to come and see her. After he had ceased to visit her, he took advantage of his knowledge of the house to enter at night through the garden by the roof, at great risk of discovery. But, as often happens, a crime committed with extraordinary audacity is more successful than others. Entering the garret through the skylight, he went down the ladder, knowing that the door at the bottom of it was sometimes, through the negligence of the servants, left unlocked. He hoped to find it so, and so it was. He made his way in the dark to her bedroom, where a light was burning. As though on purpose, both her maids had gone off to a birthday-party in the same street, without asking leave. The other servants slept in the servants' quarters or in the kitchen on the ground-floor. His passion flamed up at the sight of her asleep, and then vindictive, jealous anger took possession of his heart, and like a drunken man, beside himself, he thrust a knife into her heart, so that she did not even cry out. Then with devilish and criminal cunning he contrived that suspicion should fall on the servants. He was so base as to take her purse, to open her chest with keys from under her pillow, and to take some things from it, doing it all as it might have been done by an ignorant servant, leaving valuable papers and taking only money. He took some of the larger gold things, but left smaller articles that were ten times as valuable. He took with him, too, some things for himself as remembrances, but of that later. Having done this awful deed, he returned by the way he had come. Neither the next day, when the alarm was raised, nor at any time after in his life, did any one dream of suspecting that he was the criminal. No one indeed knew of his love for her, for he was always reserved and silent and had no friend to whom he would have opened his heart. He was looked upon simply as an acquaintance, and not a very intimate one, of the murdered woman, as for the previous fortnight he had not even visited her. A serf of hers called Pyotr was at once suspected, and every circumstance confirmed the suspicion. The man knew--indeed his mistress did not conceal the fact--that having to send one of her serfs as a recruit she had decided to send him, as he had no relations and his conduct was unsatisfactory. People had heard him angrily threatening to murder her when he was drunk in a tavern. Two days before her death, he had run away, staying no one knew where in the town. The day after the murder, he was found on the road leading out of the town, dead drunk, with a knife in his pocket, and his right hand happened to be stained with blood. He declared that his nose had been bleeding, but no one believed him. The maids confessed that they had gone to a party and that the street-door had been left open till they returned. And a number of similar details came to light, throwing suspicion on the innocent servant. They arrested him, and he was tried for the murder; but a week after the arrest, the prisoner fell sick of a fever and died unconscious in the hospital. There the matter ended and the judges and the authorities and every one in the town remained convinced that the crime had been committed by no one but the servant who had died in the hospital. And after that the punishment began. My mysterious visitor, now my friend, told me that at first he was not in the least troubled by pangs of conscience. He was miserable a long time, but not for that reason; only from regret that he had killed the woman he loved, that she was no more, that in killing her he had killed his love, while the fire of passion was still in his veins. But of the innocent blood he had shed, of the murder of a fellow creature, he scarcely thought. The thought that his victim might have become the wife of another man was insupportable to him, and so, for a long time, he was convinced in his conscience that he could not have acted otherwise. At first he was worried at the arrest of the servant, but his illness and death soon set his mind at rest, for the man's death was apparently (so he reflected at the time) not owing to his arrest or his fright, but a chill he had taken on the day he ran away, when he had lain all night dead drunk on the damp ground. The theft of the money and other things troubled him little, for he argued that the theft had not been committed for gain but to avert suspicion. The sum stolen was small, and he shortly afterwards subscribed the whole of it, and much more, towards the funds for maintaining an almshouse in the town. He did this on purpose to set his conscience at rest about the theft, and it's a remarkable fact that for a long time he really was at peace--he told me this himself. He entered then upon a career of great activity in the service, volunteered for a difficult and laborious duty, which occupied him two years, and being a man of strong will almost forgot the past. Whenever he recalled it, he tried not to think of it at all. He became active in philanthropy too, founded and helped to maintain many institutions in the town, did a good deal in the two capitals, and in both Moscow and Petersburg was elected a member of philanthropic societies. At last, however, he began brooding over the past, and the strain of it was too much for him. Then he was attracted by a fine and intelligent girl and soon after married her, hoping that marriage would dispel his lonely depression, and that by entering on a new life and scrupulously doing his duty to his wife and children, he would escape from old memories altogether. But the very opposite of what he expected happened. He began, even in the first month of his marriage, to be continually fretted by the thought, "My wife loves me--but what if she knew?" When she first told him that she would soon bear him a child, he was troubled. "I am giving life, but I have taken life." Children came. "How dare I love them, teach and educate them, how can I talk to them of virtue? I have shed blood." They were splendid children, he longed to caress them; "and I can't look at their innocent candid faces, I am unworthy." At last he began to be bitterly and ominously haunted by the blood of his murdered victim, by the young life he had destroyed, by the blood that cried out for vengeance. He had begun to have awful dreams. But, being a man of fortitude, he bore his suffering a long time, thinking: "I shall expiate everything by this secret agony." But that hope, too, was vain; the longer it went on, the more intense was his suffering. He was respected in society for his active benevolence, though every one was overawed by his stern and gloomy character. But the more he was respected, the more intolerable it was for him. He confessed to me that he had thoughts of killing himself. But he began to be haunted by another idea--an idea which he had at first regarded as impossible and unthinkable, though at last it got such a hold on his heart that he could not shake it off. He dreamed of rising up, going out and confessing in the face of all men that he had committed murder. For three years this dream had pursued him, haunting him in different forms. At last he believed with his whole heart that if he confessed his crime, he would heal his soul and would be at peace for ever. But this belief filled his heart with terror, for how could he carry it out? And then came what happened at my duel. "Looking at you, I have made up my mind." I looked at him. "Is it possible," I cried, clasping my hands, "that such a trivial incident could give rise to such a resolution in you?" "My resolution has been growing for the last three years," he answered, "and your story only gave the last touch to it. Looking at you, I reproached myself and envied you." He said this to me almost sullenly. "But you won't be believed," I observed; "it's fourteen years ago." "I have proofs, great proofs. I shall show them." Then I cried and kissed him. "Tell me one thing, one thing," he said (as though it all depended upon me), "my wife, my children! My wife may die of grief, and though my children won't lose their rank and property, they'll be a convict's children and for ever! And what a memory, what a memory of me I shall leave in their hearts!" I said nothing. "And to part from them, to leave them for ever? It's for ever, you know, for ever!" I sat still and repeated a silent prayer. I got up at last, I felt afraid. "Well?" He looked at me. "Go!" said I, "confess. Everything passes, only the truth remains. Your children will understand, when they grow up, the nobility of your resolution." He left me that time as though he had made up his mind. Yet for more than a fortnight afterwards, he came to me every evening, still preparing himself, still unable to bring himself to the point. He made my heart ache. One day he would come determined and say fervently: "I know it will be heaven for me, heaven, the moment I confess. Fourteen years I've been in hell. I want to suffer. I will take my punishment and begin to live. You can pass through the world doing wrong, but there's no turning back. Now I dare not love my neighbor nor even my own children. Good God, my children will understand, perhaps, what my punishment has cost me and will not condemn me! God is not in strength but in truth." "All will understand your sacrifice," I said to him, "if not at once, they will understand later; for you have served truth, the higher truth, not of the earth." And he would go away seeming comforted, but next day he would come again, bitter, pale, sarcastic. "Every time I come to you, you look at me so inquisitively as though to say, 'He has still not confessed!' Wait a bit, don't despise me too much. It's not such an easy thing to do, as you would think. Perhaps I shall not do it at all. You won't go and inform against me then, will you?" And far from looking at him with indiscreet curiosity, I was afraid to look at him at all. I was quite ill from anxiety, and my heart was full of tears. I could not sleep at night. "I have just come from my wife," he went on. "Do you understand what the word 'wife' means? When I went out, the children called to me, 'Good-by, father, make haste back to read _The Children's Magazine_ with us.' No, you don't understand that! No one is wise from another man's woe." His eyes were glittering, his lips were twitching. Suddenly he struck the table with his fist so that everything on it danced--it was the first time he had done such a thing, he was such a mild man. "But need I?" he exclaimed, "must I? No one has been condemned, no one has been sent to Siberia in my place, the man died of fever. And I've been punished by my sufferings for the blood I shed. And I shan't be believed, they won't believe my proofs. Need I confess, need I? I am ready to go on suffering all my life for the blood I have shed, if only my wife and children may be spared. Will it be just to ruin them with me? Aren't we making a mistake? What is right in this case? And will people recognize it, will they appreciate it, will they respect it?" "Good Lord!" I thought to myself, "he is thinking of other people's respect at such a moment!" And I felt so sorry for him then, that I believe I would have shared his fate if it could have comforted him. I saw he was beside himself. I was aghast, realizing with my heart as well as my mind what such a resolution meant. "Decide my fate!" he exclaimed again. "Go and confess," I whispered to him. My voice failed me, but I whispered it firmly. I took up the New Testament from the table, the Russian translation, and showed him the Gospel of St. John, chapter xii. verse 24: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." I had just been reading that verse when he came in. He read it. "That's true," he said, but he smiled bitterly. "It's terrible the things you find in those books," he said, after a pause. "It's easy enough to thrust them upon one. And who wrote them? Can they have been written by men?" "The Holy Spirit wrote them," said I. "It's easy for you to prate," he smiled again, this time almost with hatred. I took the book again, opened it in another place and showed him the Epistle to the Hebrews, chapter x. verse 31. He read: "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." He read it and simply flung down the book. He was trembling all over. "An awful text," he said. "There's no denying you've picked out fitting ones." He rose from the chair. "Well!" he said, "good-by, perhaps I shan't come again ... we shall meet in heaven. So I have been for fourteen years 'in the hands of the living God,' that's how one must think of those fourteen years. To-morrow I will beseech those hands to let me go." I wanted to take him in my arms and kiss him, but I did not dare--his face was contorted and somber. He went away. "Good God," I thought, "what has he gone to face!" I fell on my knees before the ikon and wept for him before the Holy Mother of God, our swift defender and helper. I was half an hour praying in tears, and it was late, about midnight. Suddenly I saw the door open and he came in again. I was surprised. "Where have you been?" I asked him. "I think," he said, "I've forgotten something ... my handkerchief, I think.... Well, even if I've not forgotten anything, let me stay a little." He sat down. I stood over him. "You sit down, too," said he. I sat down. We sat still for two minutes; he looked intently at me and suddenly smiled--I remembered that--then he got up, embraced me warmly and kissed me. "Remember," he said, "how I came to you a second time. Do you hear, remember it!" And he went out. "To-morrow," I thought. And so it was. I did not know that evening that the next day was his birthday. I had not been out for the last few days, so I had no chance of hearing it from any one. On that day he always had a great gathering, every one in the town went to it. It was the same this time. After dinner he walked into the middle of the room, with a paper in his hand--a formal declaration to the chief of his department who was present. This declaration he read aloud to the whole assembly. It contained a full account of the crime, in every detail. "I cut myself off from men as a monster. God has visited me," he said in conclusion. "I want to suffer for my sin!" Then he brought out and laid on the table all the things he had been keeping for fourteen years, that he thought would prove his crime, the jewels belonging to the murdered woman which he had stolen to divert suspicion, a cross and a locket taken from her neck with a portrait of her betrothed in the locket, her notebook and two letters; one from her betrothed, telling her that he would soon be with her, and her unfinished answer left on the table to be sent off next day. He carried off these two letters--what for? Why had he kept them for fourteen years afterwards instead of destroying them as evidence against him? And this is what happened: every one was amazed and horrified, every one refused to believe it and thought that he was deranged, though all listened with intense curiosity. A few days later it was fully decided and agreed in every house that the unhappy man was mad. The legal authorities could not refuse to take the case up, but they too dropped it. Though the trinkets and letters made them ponder, they decided that even if they did turn out to be authentic, no charge could be based on those alone. Besides, she might have given him those things as a friend, or asked him to take care of them for her. I heard afterwards, however, that the genuineness of the things was proved by the friends and relations of the murdered woman, and that there was no doubt about them. Yet nothing was destined to come of it, after all. Five days later, all had heard that he was ill and that his life was in danger. The nature of his illness I can't explain, they said it was an affection of the heart. But it became known that the doctors had been induced by his wife to investigate his mental condition also, and had come to the conclusion that it was a case of insanity. I betrayed nothing, though people ran to question me. But when I wanted to visit him, I was for a long while forbidden to do so, above all by his wife. "It's you who have caused his illness," she said to me; "he was always gloomy, but for the last year people noticed that he was peculiarly excited and did strange things, and now you have been the ruin of him. Your preaching has brought him to this; for the last month he was always with you." Indeed, not only his wife but the whole town were down upon me and blamed me. "It's all your doing," they said. I was silent and indeed rejoiced at heart, for I saw plainly God's mercy to the man who had turned against himself and punished himself. I could not believe in his insanity. They let me see him at last, he insisted upon saying good-by to me. I went in to him and saw at once, that not only his days, but his hours were numbered. He was weak, yellow, his hands trembled, he gasped for breath, but his face was full of tender and happy feeling. "It is done!" he said. "I've long been yearning to see you, why didn't you come?" I did not tell him that they would not let me see him. "God has had pity on me and is calling me to Himself. I know I am dying, but I feel joy and peace for the first time after so many years. There was heaven in my heart from the moment I had done what I had to do. Now I dare to love my children and to kiss them. Neither my wife nor the judges, nor any one has believed it. My children will never believe it either. I see in that God's mercy to them. I shall die, and my name will be without a stain for them. And now I feel God near, my heart rejoices as in Heaven ... I have done my duty." He could not speak, he gasped for breath, he pressed my hand warmly, looking fervently at me. We did not talk for long, his wife kept peeping in at us. But he had time to whisper to me: "Do you remember how I came back to you that second time, at midnight? I told you to remember it. You know what I came back for? I came to kill you!" I started. "I went out from you then into the darkness, I wandered about the streets, struggling with myself. And suddenly I hated you so that I could hardly bear it. Now, I thought, he is all that binds me, and he is my judge. I can't refuse to face my punishment to-morrow, for he knows all. It was not that I was afraid you would betray me (I never even thought of that), but I thought, 'How can I look him in the face if I don't confess?' And if you had been at the other end of the earth, but alive, it would have been all the same, the thought was unendurable that you were alive knowing everything and condemning me. I hated you as though you were the cause, as though you were to blame for everything. I came back to you then, remembering that you had a dagger lying on your table. I sat down and asked you to sit down, and for a whole minute I pondered. If I had killed you, I should have been ruined by that murder even if I had not confessed the other. But I didn't think about that at all, and I didn't want to think of it at that moment. I only hated you and longed to revenge myself on you for everything. The Lord vanquished the devil in my heart. But let me tell you, you were never nearer death." A week later he died. The whole town followed him to the grave. The chief priest made a speech full of feeling. All lamented the terrible illness that had cut short his days. But all the town was up in arms against me after the funeral, and people even refused to see me. Some, at first a few and afterwards more, began indeed to believe in the truth of his story, and they visited me and questioned me with great interest and eagerness, for man loves to see the downfall and disgrace of the righteous. But I held my tongue, and very shortly after, I left the town, and five months later by God's grace I entered upon the safe and blessed path, praising the unseen finger which had guided me so clearly to it. But I remember in my prayer to this day, the servant of God, Mihail, who suffered so greatly.

book 6, Chapter 2

https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section9/

From the Life of the Hieromonk and Elder Zosima, Departed in God, Composed from His Own Words by Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov Zosima says that he holds Alyosha very dear to his heart because Alyosha reminds him of his older brother, who was a great spiritual influence on him. Zosima's brother was a critic of religion until he came down with consumption at the age of seventeen, at which point he underwent a powerful spiritual change. In the months before he died, he talked continually about loving God's creation and all living things. Zosima says that, in addition to his brother, the greatest influence on his life has been the Bible. But he did not discover the Bible until he was a grown man. In fact, he was a military officer, rather like Dmitri. When the woman Zosima loved married another man, Zosima challenged him to a duel and planned to kill him. But when he woke up on the morning of the duel, he saw the beauty of the world and remembered his brother's commandment to love all living things. He did not back out of the duel, however. Instead, he allowed the other man to take the first shot, and then fell to his knees and began to beg for his forgiveness. Zosima quickly left the army and decided to become a monk. Zosima tells of one night in the past when he received a mysterious visitor, a prominent philanthropist. After asking Zosima about his conversion, and after paying him several more visits, the philanthropist confesses a great crime. He says that he once killed a woman he loved, and another man was arrested for the crime. The man who was arrested died before his trial, and the philanthropist was free. But he tells Zosima that, despite his success in life and his loving family, he has never been satisfied, because he has always longed to make a confession. Zosima encourages him to confess to the people, and after a great deal of soul-searching, the man agrees. He holds a huge birthday party, and, in front of all his guests, reads a statement of guilt. But no one believes him. It is decided that he has gone mad. Soon after, the man falls ill, and Zosima visits him at his deathbed. There, the man tells Zosima that he almost killed Zosima after he confessed his crime. But God, he says, defeated the devil in his heart. A week later, the man died, and Zosima has kept his secret until now

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/12915-chapters/7.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The White Devil/section_6_part_0.txt

The White Devil.act 3.scene 3

act 3, scene 3

{"name": "Act 3, Scene 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210510044810/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/the-white-devil/summary/act-3-scene-3", "summary": "Flamineo, Marcello, and Lodovico enter. Distracted and pretending to be mad, Flamineo talks to himself. He talks about human suffering, and pretends to regret serving Brachiano. The Savoy Ambassador enters and tries to comfort him, but Flamineo says it means nothing. He argues with the French Ambassador, who thinks that Vittoria's guilt was proved. Flamineo accuses him of being bribed and corrupted. He laments that religion gets mixed up in politics, and says he wishes he was Jewish. Marcello, being an Anti-Semite, says there are too many Jews. Flamineo says there are not enough--proved by the fact that so many Christians needed to become usurers . He exits, and Lodovico says, in an aside, that he knows Flamineo was Brachiano's henchman and wants to wind him up. Flamineo re-enters. Flamineo criticizes Lodovico for returning to Rome without being pardoned--he's still officially banished. He and Lodovico exchange colorful curses. Lodovico tells Flamineo of Isabella's death, and Flamineo pretends to grieve. He and Lodovico talk about joining together in mourning and melancholia, and pledge to live unkempt, lice-infected lives of grief. Sounds...fun? Antonelli and Gasparo enter and tell Lodovico that the Pope, on his deathbed, has officially pardoned Lodovico. Lodovico ditches the silly mourning plan, explaining he was joking around. Flamineo says he's going back on his word and Lodovico calls Vittoria a \"damnable whore.\" Lodovico laughs at Flamineo, who hits him. Marcello gets mad at Lodovico. He and Flamineo leave. Lodovico regrets that he didn't murder Flamineo, and says he's going to go drink some wine.", "analysis": ""}

SCENE III Enter Flamineo as distracted, Marcello, and Lodovico Flam. We endure the strokes like anvils or hard steel, Till pain itself make us no pain to feel. Who shall do me right now? is this the end of service? I'd rather go weed garlic; travel through France, and be mine own ostler; wear sheep-skin linings, or shoes that stink of blacking; be entered into the list of the forty thousand pedlars in Poland. [Enter Savoy Ambassador.] Would I had rotted in some surgeon's house at Venice, built upon the pox as well as one pines, ere I had served Brachiano! Savoy Ambass. You must have comfort. Flam. Your comfortable words are like honey: they relish well in your mouth that 's whole, but in mine that 's wounded, they go down as if the sting of the bee were in them. Oh, they have wrought their purpose cunningly, as if they would not seem to do it of malice! In this a politician imitates the devil, as the devil imitates a canon; wheresoever he comes to do mischief, he comes with his backside towards you. Enter French Ambassador Fr. Ambass. The proofs are evident. Flam. Proof! 'twas corruption. O gold, what a god art thou! and O man, what a devil art thou to be tempted by that cursed mineral! Your diversivolent lawyer, mark him! knaves turn informers, as maggots turn to flies, you may catch gudgeons with either. A cardinal! I would he would hear me: there 's nothing so holy but money will corrupt and putrity it, like victual under the line. [Enter English Ambassador.] You are happy in England, my lord; here they sell justice with those weights they press men to death with. O horrible salary! Eng. Ambass. Fie, fie, Flamineo. Flam. Bells ne'er ring well, till they are at their full pitch; and I hope yon cardinal shall never have the grace to pray well, till he come to the scaffold. If they were racked now to know the confederacy: but your noblemen are privileged from the rack; and well may, for a little thing would pull some of them a-pieces afore they came to their arraignment. Religion, oh, how it is commeddled with policy! The first blood shed in the world happened about religion. Would I were a Jew! Marc. Oh, there are too many! Flam. You are deceived; there are not Jews enough, priests enough, nor gentlemen enough. Marc. How? Flam. I 'll prove it; for if there were Jews enough, so many Christians would not turn usurers; if priests enough, one should not have six benefices; and if gentlemen enough, so many early mushrooms, whose best growth sprang from a live by begging: be thou one of them practise the art of Wolner in England, to swallow all 's given thee: and yet let one purgation make thee as hungry again as fellows that work in a saw-pit. I 'll go hear the screech-owl. [Exit. Lodo. This was Brachiano's pander; and 'tis strange That in such open, and apparent guilt Of his adulterous sister, he dare utter So scandalous a passion. I must wind him. Re-enter Flamineo. Flam. How dares this banish'd count return to Rome, His pardon not yet purchas'd! I have heard The deceased duchess gave him pension, And that he came along from Padua I' th' train of the young prince. There 's somewhat in 't: Physicians, that cure poisons, still do work With counter-poisons. Marc. Mark this strange encounter. Flam. The god of melancholy turn thy gall to poison, And let the stigmatic wrinkles in thy face, Like to the boisterous waves in a rough tide, One still overtake another. Lodo. I do thank thee, And I do wish ingeniously for thy sake, The dog-days all year long. Flam. How croaks the raven? Is our good duchess dead? Lodo. Dead. Flam. O fate! Misfortune comes like the coroner's business Huddle upon huddle. Lodo. Shalt thou and I join housekeeping? Flam. Yes, content: Let 's be unsociably sociable. Lodo. Sit some three days together, and discourse? Flam. Only with making faces; Lie in our clothes. Lodo. With faggots for our pillows. Flam. And be lousy. Lodo. In taffeta linings, that 's genteel melancholy; Sleep all day. Flam. Yes; and, like your melancholic hare, Feed after midnight. [Enter Antonelli and Gasparo. We are observed: see how yon couple grieve. Lodo. What a strange creature is a laughing fool! As if man were created to no use But only to show his teeth. Flam. I 'll tell thee what, It would do well instead of looking-glasses, To set one's face each morning by a saucer Of a witch's congeal'd blood. Lodo. Precious rogue! We'll never part. Flam. Never, till the beggary of courtiers, The discontent of churchmen, want of soldiers, And all the creatures that hang manacled, Worse than strappadoed, on the lowest felly Of fortune's wheel, be taught, in our two lives, To scorn that world which life of means deprives. Ant. My lord, I bring good news. The Pope, on 's death bed, At th' earnest suit of the great Duke of Florence, Hath sign'd your pardon, and restor'd unto you---- Lodo. I thank you for your news. Look up again, Flamineo, see my pardon. Flam. Why do you laugh? There was no such condition in our covenant. Lodo. Why? Flam. You shall not seem a happier man than I: You know our vow, sir; if you will be merry, Do it i' th' like posture, as if some great man Sat while his enemy were executed: Though it be very lechery unto thee, Do 't with a crabbed politician's face. Lodo. Your sister is a damnable whore. Flam. Ha! Lodo. Look you, I spake that laughing. Flam. Dost ever think to speak again? Lodo. Do you hear? Wilt sell me forty ounces of her blood To water a mandrake? Flam. Poor lord, you did vow To live a lousy creature. Lodo. Yes. Flam. Like one That had for ever forfeited the daylight, By being in debt. Lodo. Ha, ha! Flam. I do not greatly wonder you do break, Your lordship learn'd 't long since. But I 'll tell you. Lodo. What? Flam. And 't shall stick by you. Lodo. I long for it. Flam. This laughter scurvily becomes your face: If you will not be melancholy, be angry. [Strikes him. See, now I laugh too. Marc. You are to blame: I 'll force you hence. Lodo. Unhand me. [Exeunt Marcello and Flamineo. That e'er I should be forc'd to right myself, Upon a pander! Ant. My lord. Lodo. H' had been as good met with his fist a thunderbolt. Gas. How this shows! Lodo. Ud's death! how did my sword miss him? These rogues that are most weary of their lives Still 'scape the greatest dangers. A pox upon him; all his reputation, Nay, all the goodness of his family, Is not worth half this earthquake: I learn'd it of no fencer to shake thus: Come, I 'll forget him, and go drink some wine. [Exeunt.

Act 3, Scene 3

https://web.archive.org/web/20210510044810/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/the-white-devil/summary/act-3-scene-3

Flamineo, Marcello, and Lodovico enter. Distracted and pretending to be mad, Flamineo talks to himself. He talks about human suffering, and pretends to regret serving Brachiano. The Savoy Ambassador enters and tries to comfort him, but Flamineo says it means nothing. He argues with the French Ambassador, who thinks that Vittoria's guilt was proved. Flamineo accuses him of being bribed and corrupted. He laments that religion gets mixed up in politics, and says he wishes he was Jewish. Marcello, being an Anti-Semite, says there are too many Jews. Flamineo says there are not enough--proved by the fact that so many Christians needed to become usurers . He exits, and Lodovico says, in an aside, that he knows Flamineo was Brachiano's henchman and wants to wind him up. Flamineo re-enters. Flamineo criticizes Lodovico for returning to Rome without being pardoned--he's still officially banished. He and Lodovico exchange colorful curses. Lodovico tells Flamineo of Isabella's death, and Flamineo pretends to grieve. He and Lodovico talk about joining together in mourning and melancholia, and pledge to live unkempt, lice-infected lives of grief. Sounds...fun? Antonelli and Gasparo enter and tell Lodovico that the Pope, on his deathbed, has officially pardoned Lodovico. Lodovico ditches the silly mourning plan, explaining he was joking around. Flamineo says he's going back on his word and Lodovico calls Vittoria a "damnable whore." Lodovico laughs at Flamineo, who hits him. Marcello gets mad at Lodovico. He and Flamineo leave. Lodovico regrets that he didn't murder Flamineo, and says he's going to go drink some wine.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/20.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_19_part_0.txt

Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 20

chapter 20

{"name": "Phase III: \"The Rally,\" Chapter Twenty", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210424232301/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary/chapter-20", "summary": "Time passes at the dairy. Everyone's enjoying the summer weather. Tess and Angel are studying each other day by day--but not quite in love yet. Tess is happier now than she's ever been in recent memory. She and Angel see each other frequently--often they're the first ones up. And dairy farmers have to get up really early in the morning. We're talking 3:30 a.m. Being the first ones up makes them feel like they're the only two people in the world. They're like Adam and Eve. He calls her \"Artemis\" and \"Demeter\" , but she prefers to be called Tess . In the pale light of the early morning, Tess's beauty seems almost supernatural to Angel, and he seems the same to her. But then their solitude would be ended by the arrival of the other milkmen and milkmaids, and the milking would begin.", "analysis": ""}

The season developed and matured. Another year's instalment of flowers, leaves, nightingales, thrushes, finches, and such ephemeral creatures, took up their positions where only a year ago others had stood in their place when these were nothing more than germs and inorganic particles. Rays from the sunrise drew forth the buds and stretched them into long stalks, lifted up sap in noiseless streams, opened petals, and sucked out scents in invisible jets and breathings. Dairyman Crick's household of maids and men lived on comfortably, placidly, even merrily. Their position was perhaps the happiest of all positions in the social scale, being above the line at which neediness ends, and below the line at which the _convenances_ begin to cramp natural feelings, and the stress of threadbare modishness makes too little of enough. Thus passed the leafy time when arborescence seems to be the one thing aimed at out of doors. Tess and Clare unconsciously studied each other, ever balanced on the edge of a passion, yet apparently keeping out of it. All the while they were converging, under an irresistible law, as surely as two streams in one vale. Tess had never in her recent life been so happy as she was now, possibly never would be so happy again. She was, for one thing, physically and mentally suited among these new surroundings. The sapling which had rooted down to a poisonous stratum on the spot of its sowing had been transplanted to a deeper soil. Moreover she, and Clare also, stood as yet on the debatable land between predilection and love; where no profundities have been reached; no reflections have set in, awkwardly inquiring, "Whither does this new current tend to carry me? What does it mean to my future? How does it stand towards my past?" Tess was the merest stray phenomenon to Angel Clare as yet--a rosy, warming apparition which had only just acquired the attribute of persistence in his consciousness. So he allowed his mind to be occupied with her, deeming his preoccupation to be no more than a philosopher's regard of an exceedingly novel, fresh, and interesting specimen of womankind. They met continually; they could not help it. They met daily in that strange and solemn interval, the twilight of the morning, in the violet or pink dawn; for it was necessary to rise early, so very early, here. Milking was done betimes; and before the milking came the skimming, which began at a little past three. It usually fell to the lot of some one or other of them to wake the rest, the first being aroused by an alarm-clock; and, as Tess was the latest arrival, and they soon discovered that she could be depended upon not to sleep though the alarm as others did, this task was thrust most frequently upon her. No sooner had the hour of three struck and whizzed, than she left her room and ran to the dairyman's door; then up the ladder to Angel's, calling him in a loud whisper; then woke her fellow-milkmaids. By the time that Tess was dressed Clare was downstairs and out in the humid air. The remaining maids and the dairyman usually gave themselves another turn on the pillow, and did not appear till a quarter of an hour later. The gray half-tones of daybreak are not the gray half-tones of the day's close, though the degree of their shade may be the same. In the twilight of the morning, light seems active, darkness passive; in the twilight of evening it is the darkness which is active and crescent, and the light which is the drowsy reverse. Being so often--possibly not always by chance--the first two persons to get up at the dairy-house, they seemed to themselves the first persons up of all the world. In these early days of her residence here Tess did not skim, but went out of doors at once after rising, where he was generally awaiting her. The spectral, half-compounded, aqueous light which pervaded the open mead impressed them with a feeling of isolation, as if they were Adam and Eve. At this dim inceptive stage of the day Tess seemed to Clare to exhibit a dignified largeness both of disposition and physique, an almost regnant power, possibly because he knew that at that preternatural time hardly any woman so well endowed in person as she was likely to be walking in the open air within the boundaries of his horizon; very few in all England. Fair women are usually asleep at mid-summer dawns. She was close at hand, and the rest were nowhere. The mixed, singular, luminous gloom in which they walked along together to the spot where the cows lay often made him think of the Resurrection hour. He little thought that the Magdalen might be at his side. Whilst all the landscape was in neutral shade his companion's face, which was the focus of his eyes, rising above the mist stratum, seemed to have a sort of phosphorescence upon it. She looked ghostly, as if she were merely a soul at large. In reality her face, without appearing to do so, had caught the cold gleam of day from the north-east; his own face, though he did not think of it, wore the same aspect to her. It was then, as has been said, that she impressed him most deeply. She was no longer the milkmaid, but a visionary essence of woman--a whole sex condensed into one typical form. He called her Artemis, Demeter, and other fanciful names half teasingly, which she did not like because she did not understand them. "Call me Tess," she would say askance; and he did. Then it would grow lighter, and her features would become simply feminine; they had changed from those of a divinity who could confer bliss to those of a being who craved it. At these non-human hours they could get quite close to the waterfowl. Herons came, with a great bold noise as of opening doors and shutters, out of the boughs of a plantation which they frequented at the side of the mead; or, if already on the spot, hardily maintained their standing in the water as the pair walked by, watching them by moving their heads round in a slow, horizontal, passionless wheel, like the turn of puppets by clockwork. They could then see the faint summer fogs in layers, woolly, level, and apparently no thicker than counterpanes, spread about the meadows in detached remnants of small extent. On the gray moisture of the grass were marks where the cows had lain through the night--dark-green islands of dry herbage the size of their carcasses, in the general sea of dew. From each island proceeded a serpentine trail, by which the cow had rambled away to feed after getting up, at the end of which trail they found her; the snoring puff from her nostrils, when she recognized them, making an intenser little fog of her own amid the prevailing one. Then they drove the animals back to the barton, or sat down to milk them on the spot, as the case might require. Or perhaps the summer fog was more general, and the meadows lay like a white sea, out of which the scattered trees rose like dangerous rocks. Birds would soar through it into the upper radiance, and hang on the wing sunning themselves, or alight on the wet rails subdividing the mead, which now shone like glass rods. Minute diamonds of moisture from the mist hung, too, upon Tess's eyelashes, and drops upon her hair, like seed pearls. When the day grew quite strong and commonplace these dried off her; moreover, Tess then lost her strange and ethereal beauty; her teeth, lips, and eyes scintillated in the sunbeams and she was again the dazzlingly fair dairymaid only, who had to hold her own against the other women of the world. About this time they would hear Dairyman Crick's voice, lecturing the non-resident milkers for arriving late, and speaking sharply to old Deborah Fyander for not washing her hands. "For Heaven's sake, pop thy hands under the pump, Deb! Upon my soul, if the London folk only knowed of thee and thy slovenly ways, they'd swaller their milk and butter more mincing than they do a'ready; and that's saying a good deal." The milking progressed, till towards the end Tess and Clare, in common with the rest, could hear the heavy breakfast table dragged out from the wall in the kitchen by Mrs Crick, this being the invariable preliminary to each meal; the same horrible scrape accompanying its return journey when the table had been cleared.

Phase III: "The Rally," Chapter Twenty

https://web.archive.org/web/20210424232301/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary/chapter-20

Time passes at the dairy. Everyone's enjoying the summer weather. Tess and Angel are studying each other day by day--but not quite in love yet. Tess is happier now than she's ever been in recent memory. She and Angel see each other frequently--often they're the first ones up. And dairy farmers have to get up really early in the morning. We're talking 3:30 a.m. Being the first ones up makes them feel like they're the only two people in the world. They're like Adam and Eve. He calls her "Artemis" and "Demeter" , but she prefers to be called Tess . In the pale light of the early morning, Tess's beauty seems almost supernatural to Angel, and he seems the same to her. But then their solitude would be ended by the arrival of the other milkmen and milkmaids, and the milking would begin.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1232-chapters/21.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Prince/section_21_part_0.txt

The Prince.chapter 21

chapter 21

{"name": "Chapter 21", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210420060055/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/prince-machiavelli/summary/chapter-21", "summary": "How do you get respect as a ruler? By winning wars. Look at the King of Spain. He was once just a wimp, but now he's the most famous king in Europe. War not your thing? Too bad. But you can also handle your nation's domestic affairs awesomely, and that will work, too. Also, you need to be a genuine friend and enemy. What Machiavelli means by that is, if two of your neighbors are fighting, you have to take sides. If you don't, then the winner will come after you and the loser won't help you at all. If win, you get spoils; if you lose, you can plot your revenge together. A ruler should also give prizes to overachievers, lower taxes, promote small businesses, and give people parties. Also, show up from time to time. That way, everyone will remember how awesome and yet authoritative you are. Yep. This part seems just silly to us, like Machiavelli had to fill up the end of the chapter to meet his word count.", "analysis": ""}

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.

Chapter 21

https://web.archive.org/web/20210420060055/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/prince-machiavelli/summary/chapter-21

How do you get respect as a ruler? By winning wars. Look at the King of Spain. He was once just a wimp, but now he's the most famous king in Europe. War not your thing? Too bad. But you can also handle your nation's domestic affairs awesomely, and that will work, too. Also, you need to be a genuine friend and enemy. What Machiavelli means by that is, if two of your neighbors are fighting, you have to take sides. If you don't, then the winner will come after you and the loser won't help you at all. If win, you get spoils; if you lose, you can plot your revenge together. A ruler should also give prizes to overachievers, lower taxes, promote small businesses, and give people parties. Also, show up from time to time. That way, everyone will remember how awesome and yet authoritative you are. Yep. This part seems just silly to us, like Machiavelli had to fill up the end of the chapter to meet his word count.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1130-chapters/18.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra/section_17_part_0.txt

The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra.act iii.scene vi

act iii, scene vi

{"name": "Act III, Scene vi", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210116191009/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/antony-cleopatra/summary/act-iii-scene-vi", "summary": "In Rome, Caesar fills us in on Antony's wickedness. He reports that when in Alexandria, Antony chilled out on gold thrones in the marketplace, in full public view, with Cleopatra, Julius Caesar's son by Cleopatra, and her children by Antony. There he declared her Queen of Egypt and added Syria, Cyprus, and a dash of Lydia to the bounty for good measure. Further, he added areas for the children to rule. All the while, Cleopatra was dressed up as the goddess Isis. Caesar believes this information will turn the people against Antony. He thinks he can win the support of these people even though Antony's been making some accusations against him, in particular claiming that he was wrongly left out of the spoils gained from defeating Pompey, and that Lepidus shouldn't have been unseated. Caesar says he's already sent a reply to Antony, insisting that Lepidus had grown too cruel and needed to be overturned and that he'd share his spoils of war with Antony if Antony would do the same. Caesar feels comfortable doing this, as he assumes Antony would never share his bounty. It's a crooked deal both ways. Octavia enters. Caesar is upset that she arrived with so little fanfare. Octavia says she came of her own free will, after hearing her brother would make war against her husband. Caesar cuts her short. It's clear to him that Antony got Octavia out of the way so he could go back to Cleopatra, and further, that the pair is collecting the kings of the east to wage war against Caesar and Rome. Caesar claims that he was holding back on making war on Antony for Octavia's sake, but now that she's here, they can be certain Antony has betrayed them both. Octavia seems uncertain.", "analysis": ""}

SCENE VI. Rome. CAESAR'S house Enter CAESAR, AGRIPPA, and MAECENAS CAESAR. Contemning Rome, he has done all this and more In Alexandria. Here's the manner of't: I' th' market-place, on a tribunal silver'd, Cleopatra and himself in chairs of gold Were publicly enthron'd; at the feet sat Caesarion, whom they call my father's son, And all the unlawful issue that their lust Since then hath made between them. Unto her He gave the stablishment of Egypt; made her Of lower Syria, Cyprus, Lydia, Absolute queen. MAECENAS. This in the public eye? CAESAR. I' th' common show-place, where they exercise. His sons he there proclaim'd the kings of kings: Great Media, Parthia, and Armenia, He gave to Alexander; to Ptolemy he assign'd Syria, Cilicia, and Phoenicia. She In th' habiliments of the goddess Isis That day appear'd; and oft before gave audience, As 'tis reported, so. MAECENAS. Let Rome be thus Inform'd. AGRIPPA. Who, queasy with his insolence Already, will their good thoughts call from him. CAESAR. The people knows it, and have now receiv'd His accusations. AGRIPPA. Who does he accuse? CAESAR. Caesar; and that, having in Sicily Sextus Pompeius spoil'd, we had not rated him His part o' th' isle. Then does he say he lent me Some shipping, unrestor'd. Lastly, he frets That Lepidus of the triumvirate Should be depos'd; and, being, that we detain All his revenue. AGRIPPA. Sir, this should be answer'd. CAESAR. 'Tis done already, and messenger gone. I have told him Lepidus was grown too cruel, That he his high authority abus'd, And did deserve his change. For what I have conquer'd I grant him part; but then, in his Armenia And other of his conquer'd kingdoms, Demand the like. MAECENAS. He'll never yield to that. CAESAR. Nor must not then be yielded to in this. Enter OCTAVIA, with her train OCTAVIA. Hail, Caesar, and my lord! hail, most dear Caesar! CAESAR. That ever I should call thee cast-away! OCTAVIA. You have not call'd me so, nor have you cause. CAESAR. Why have you stol'n upon us thus? You come not Like Caesar's sister. The wife of Antony Should have an army for an usher, and The neighs of horse to tell of her approach Long ere she did appear. The trees by th' way Should have borne men, and expectation fainted, Longing for what it had not. Nay, the dust Should have ascended to the roof of heaven, Rais'd by your populous troops. But you are come A market-maid to Rome, and have prevented The ostentation of our love, which left unshown Is often left unlov'd. We should have met you By sea and land, supplying every stage With an augmented greeting. OCTAVIA. Good my lord, To come thus was I not constrain'd, but did it On my free will. My lord, Mark Antony, Hearing that you prepar'd for war, acquainted My grieved ear withal; whereon I begg'd His pardon for return. CAESAR. Which soon he granted, Being an obstruct 'tween his lust and him. OCTAVIA. Do not say so, my lord. CAESAR. I have eyes upon him, And his affairs come to me on the wind. Where is he now? OCTAVIA. My lord, in Athens. CAESAR. No, my most wronged sister: Cleopatra Hath nodded him to her. He hath given his empire Up to a whore, who now are levying The kings o' th' earth for war. He hath assembled Bocchus, the king of Libya; Archelaus Of Cappadocia; Philadelphos, king Of Paphlagonia; the Thracian king, Adallas; King Manchus of Arabia; King of Pont; Herod of Jewry; Mithridates, king Of Comagene; Polemon and Amyntas, The kings of Mede and Lycaonia, with More larger list of sceptres. OCTAVIA. Ay me most wretched, That have my heart parted betwixt two friends, That does afflict each other! CAESAR. Welcome hither. Your letters did withhold our breaking forth, Till we perceiv'd both how you were wrong led And we in negligent danger. Cheer your heart; Be you not troubled with the time, which drives O'er your content these strong necessities, But let determin'd things to destiny Hold unbewail'd their way. Welcome to Rome; Nothing more dear to me. You are abus'd Beyond the mark of thought, and the high gods, To do you justice, make their ministers Of us and those that love you. Best of comfort, And ever welcome to us. AGRIPPA. Welcome, lady. MAECENAS. Welcome, dear madam. Each heart in Rome does love and pity you; Only th' adulterous Antony, most large In his abominations, turns you off, And gives his potent regiment to a trull That noises it against us. OCTAVIA. Is it so, sir? CAESAR. Most certain. Sister, welcome. Pray you Be ever known to patience. My dear'st sister! Exeunt ACT_3|SC_7

Act III, Scene vi

https://web.archive.org/web/20210116191009/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/antony-cleopatra/summary/act-iii-scene-vi

In Rome, Caesar fills us in on Antony's wickedness. He reports that when in Alexandria, Antony chilled out on gold thrones in the marketplace, in full public view, with Cleopatra, Julius Caesar's son by Cleopatra, and her children by Antony. There he declared her Queen of Egypt and added Syria, Cyprus, and a dash of Lydia to the bounty for good measure. Further, he added areas for the children to rule. All the while, Cleopatra was dressed up as the goddess Isis. Caesar believes this information will turn the people against Antony. He thinks he can win the support of these people even though Antony's been making some accusations against him, in particular claiming that he was wrongly left out of the spoils gained from defeating Pompey, and that Lepidus shouldn't have been unseated. Caesar says he's already sent a reply to Antony, insisting that Lepidus had grown too cruel and needed to be overturned and that he'd share his spoils of war with Antony if Antony would do the same. Caesar feels comfortable doing this, as he assumes Antony would never share his bounty. It's a crooked deal both ways. Octavia enters. Caesar is upset that she arrived with so little fanfare. Octavia says she came of her own free will, after hearing her brother would make war against her husband. Caesar cuts her short. It's clear to him that Antony got Octavia out of the way so he could go back to Cleopatra, and further, that the pair is collecting the kings of the east to wage war against Caesar and Rome. Caesar claims that he was holding back on making war on Antony for Octavia's sake, but now that she's here, they can be certain Antony has betrayed them both. Octavia seems uncertain.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/24.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_2_part_9.txt

Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 24

chapter 24

{"name": "Chapter 24", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410060617/https://www.gradesaver.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/study-guide/summary-phase-3-chapters-16-24", "summary": "The summer air is stagnant and enervating at the dairy now, as heavy scents weigh upon them. To Tess, Angel's face has a real vitality and warmth. Tess becomes aware that he is observing her. As they milk a cow, Angel finally jumps up and clasps Tess in his arms. She is taken completely by surprise, and yields to his embrace with unreflecting inevitability. He begs for forgiveness, but Tess merely says that the cow is angry and will kick over the milk. Tess begins to cry, but Angel declares that he loves her. Something occurs between them that changes the pivot of the universe for their two natures, something which the dairyman would have despised as a practical man. A veil has been whisked aside, for a short time or for a long.", "analysis": "What has been obvious yet never stated in the preceding chapters becomes explicit in this chapter, as Angel makes his first physical advance on Tess and professes his love for her. His declaration of love is abrupt and oddly out of place, for he kisses her as they milk a cow, yet is the culmination of the tension that has built between the two characters. Even when Angel kisses her, he does so as an expression of love and not, as Alec did, as an expression of simple lust. This declaration of love is a pivotal event, as Hardy comments, yet even here the happiness of there love seems incredibly short-lived. Hardy reminds the reader that Tess' and Angel's outlooks will have a new horizon, \"for a short time or for a long,\" thus indicating that whatever change occurred will be a temporary one"}

Amid the oozing fatness and warm ferments of the Froom Vale, at a season when the rush of juices could almost be heard below the hiss of fertilization, it was impossible that the most fanciful love should not grow passionate. The ready bosoms existing there were impregnated by their surroundings. July passed over their heads, and the Thermidorean weather which came in its wake seemed an effort on the part of Nature to match the state of hearts at Talbothays Dairy. The air of the place, so fresh in the spring and early summer, was stagnant and enervating now. Its heavy scents weighed upon them, and at mid-day the landscape seemed lying in a swoon. Ethiopic scorchings browned the upper slopes of the pastures, but there was still bright green herbage here where the watercourses purled. And as Clare was oppressed by the outward heats, so was he burdened inwardly by waxing fervour of passion for the soft and silent Tess. The rains having passed, the uplands were dry. The wheels of the dairyman's spring-cart, as he sped home from market, licked up the pulverized surface of the highway, and were followed by white ribands of dust, as if they had set a thin powder-train on fire. The cows jumped wildly over the five-barred barton-gate, maddened by the gad-fly; Dairyman Crick kept his shirt-sleeves permanently rolled up from Monday to Saturday; open windows had no effect in ventilation without open doors, and in the dairy-garden the blackbirds and thrushes crept about under the currant-bushes, rather in the manner of quadrupeds than of winged creatures. The flies in the kitchen were lazy, teasing, and familiar, crawling about in the unwonted places, on the floors, into drawers, and over the backs of the milkmaids' hands. Conversations were concerning sunstroke; while butter-making, and still more butter-keeping, was a despair. They milked entirely in the meads for coolness and convenience, without driving in the cows. During the day the animals obsequiously followed the shadow of the smallest tree as it moved round the stem with the diurnal roll; and when the milkers came they could hardly stand still for the flies. On one of these afternoons four or five unmilked cows chanced to stand apart from the general herd, behind the corner of a hedge, among them being Dumpling and Old Pretty, who loved Tess's hands above those of any other maid. When she rose from her stool under a finished cow, Angel Clare, who had been observing her for some time, asked her if she would take the aforesaid creatures next. She silently assented, and with her stool at arm's length, and the pail against her knee, went round to where they stood. Soon the sound of Old Pretty's milk fizzing into the pail came through the hedge, and then Angel felt inclined to go round the corner also, to finish off a hard-yielding milcher who had strayed there, he being now as capable of this as the dairyman himself. All the men, and some of the women, when milking, dug their foreheads into the cows and gazed into the pail. But a few--mainly the younger ones--rested their heads sideways. This was Tess Durbeyfield's habit, her temple pressing the milcher's flank, her eyes fixed on the far end of the meadow with the quiet of one lost in meditation. She was milking Old Pretty thus, and the sun chancing to be on the milking-side, it shone flat upon her pink-gowned form and her white curtain-bonnet, and upon her profile, rendering it keen as a cameo cut from the dun background of the cow. She did not know that Clare had followed her round, and that he sat under his cow watching her. The stillness of her head and features was remarkable: she might have been in a trance, her eyes open, yet unseeing. Nothing in the picture moved but Old Pretty's tail and Tess's pink hands, the latter so gently as to be a rhythmic pulsation only, as if they were obeying a reflex stimulus, like a beating heart. How very lovable her face was to him. Yet there was nothing ethereal about it; all was real vitality, real warmth, real incarnation. And it was in her mouth that this culminated. Eyes almost as deep and speaking he had seen before, and cheeks perhaps as fair; brows as arched, a chin and throat almost as shapely; her mouth he had seen nothing to equal on the face of the earth. To a young man with the least fire in him that little upward lift in the middle of her red top lip was distracting, infatuating, maddening. He had never before seen a woman's lips and teeth which forced upon his mind with such persistent iteration the old Elizabethan simile of roses filled with snow. Perfect, he, as a lover, might have called them off-hand. But no--they were not perfect. And it was the touch of the imperfect upon the would-be perfect that gave the sweetness, because it was that which gave the humanity. Clare had studied the curves of those lips so many times that he could reproduce them mentally with ease: and now, as they again confronted him, clothed with colour and life, they sent an _aura_ over his flesh, a breeze through his nerves, which well nigh produced a qualm; and actually produced, by some mysterious physiological process, a prosaic sneeze. She then became conscious that he was observing her; but she would not show it by any change of position, though the curious dream-like fixity disappeared, and a close eye might easily have discerned that the rosiness of her face deepened, and then faded till only a tinge of it was left. The influence that had passed into Clare like an excitation from the sky did not die down. Resolutions, reticences, prudences, fears, fell back like a defeated battalion. He jumped up from his seat, and, leaving his pail to be kicked over if the milcher had such a mind, went quickly towards the desire of his eyes, and, kneeling down beside her, clasped her in his arms. Tess was taken completely by surprise, and she yielded to his embrace with unreflecting inevitableness. Having seen that it was really her lover who had advanced, and no one else, her lips parted, and she sank upon him in her momentary joy, with something very like an ecstatic cry. He had been on the point of kissing that too tempting mouth, but he checked himself, for tender conscience' sake. "Forgive me, Tess dear!" he whispered. "I ought to have asked. I--did not know what I was doing. I do not mean it as a liberty. I am devoted to you, Tessy, dearest, in all sincerity!" Old Pretty by this time had looked round, puzzled; and seeing two people crouching under her where, by immemorial custom, there should have been only one, lifted her hind leg crossly. "She is angry--she doesn't know what we mean--she'll kick over the milk!" exclaimed Tess, gently striving to free herself, her eyes concerned with the quadruped's actions, her heart more deeply concerned with herself and Clare. She slipped up from her seat, and they stood together, his arm still encircling her. Tess's eyes, fixed on distance, began to fill. "Why do you cry, my darling?" he said. "O--I don't know!" she murmured. As she saw and felt more clearly the position she was in she became agitated and tried to withdraw. "Well, I have betrayed my feeling, Tess, at last," said he, with a curious sigh of desperation, signifying unconsciously that his heart had outrun his judgement. "That I--love you dearly and truly I need not say. But I--it shall go no further now--it distresses you--I am as surprised as you are. You will not think I have presumed upon your defencelessness--been too quick and unreflecting, will you?" "N'--I can't tell." He had allowed her to free herself; and in a minute or two the milking of each was resumed. Nobody had beheld the gravitation of the two into one; and when the dairyman came round by that screened nook a few minutes later, there was not a sign to reveal that the markedly sundered pair were more to each other than mere acquaintance. Yet in the interval since Crick's last view of them something had occurred which changed the pivot of the universe for their two natures; something which, had he known its quality, the dairyman would have despised, as a practical man; yet which was based upon a more stubborn and resistless tendency than a whole heap of so-called practicalities. A veil had been whisked aside; the tract of each one's outlook was to have a new horizon thenceforward--for a short time or for a long. END OF PHASE THE THIRD Phase the Fourth: The Consequence

Chapter 24

https://web.archive.org/web/20210410060617/https://www.gradesaver.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/study-guide/summary-phase-3-chapters-16-24

The summer air is stagnant and enervating at the dairy now, as heavy scents weigh upon them. To Tess, Angel's face has a real vitality and warmth. Tess becomes aware that he is observing her. As they milk a cow, Angel finally jumps up and clasps Tess in his arms. She is taken completely by surprise, and yields to his embrace with unreflecting inevitability. He begs for forgiveness, but Tess merely says that the cow is angry and will kick over the milk. Tess begins to cry, but Angel declares that he loves her. Something occurs between them that changes the pivot of the universe for their two natures, something which the dairyman would have despised as a practical man. A veil has been whisked aside, for a short time or for a long.

What has been obvious yet never stated in the preceding chapters becomes explicit in this chapter, as Angel makes his first physical advance on Tess and professes his love for her. His declaration of love is abrupt and oddly out of place, for he kisses her as they milk a cow, yet is the culmination of the tension that has built between the two characters. Even when Angel kisses her, he does so as an expression of love and not, as Alec did, as an expression of simple lust. This declaration of love is a pivotal event, as Hardy comments, yet even here the happiness of there love seems incredibly short-lived. Hardy reminds the reader that Tess' and Angel's outlooks will have a new horizon, "for a short time or for a long," thus indicating that whatever change occurred will be a temporary one

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/23042-chapters/4.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Tempest/section_3_part_0.txt

The Tempest.act 2.scene 2

act 2, scene 2

{"name": "Act 2, Scene 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210411014001/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tempest/summary/act-2-scene-2", "summary": "On another part of the island, Caliban is busy fetching wood and cursing Prospero for the mean things he does to Caliban, like sending spirits to torment him while he works. As Caliban complains of apes that chatter at and bite him, hedgehogs that prick his feet, and snakes that hiss him to madness, Trinculo enters, and Caliban assumes the stranger is another one of Prospero's nasty spirits. Trinculo, a jester and member of the shipwrecked group, wanders alone searching for cover, should another storm come. He spots Caliban, and seeing he is maybe a man or a fish , immediately thinks of how people in England would pay to see an odd thing like this. Then he decides Caliban's deformed shape is simply that of a native islander recently hit by lightning. Brain Snack: In sixteenth and seventeenth-century England , people paid money to see American Indians who had been brought over from the New World and were exhibited like circus animals. Hearing more thunder, Trinculo immediately jumps under Caliban's cape, seeking shelter. Just then, Stefano, the drunken butler, wanders in singing saucy songs about which women will put out for sailors, and which women won't. Surprised at seeing Caliban as a four legged creature , Stefano announces he did not escape drowning to fall to savages. Caliban, thinking Stefano is another of Prospero's spirits, cries out. Stefano is shocked that this four-legged monster knows his own language, and thinks the monster suffers from some fever. Stefano will give the monster a drink to ease him, but also hopes he might drunkenly tame the monster and lure him back to Naples as a present for a European emperor. Stefano makes Caliban drink wine from his flask; the still scared and hiding Trinculo thinks he recognizes Stefano's voice and calls out to him. Finally, after some silly nonsense, Stefano and Trinculo discover each other, and Caliban realizes the two are not spirits, but must be gods, what with the celestial liquor Stefano carries. Stefano doesn't deny it, and drunkenly claims that he was the man in the moon until recently, when he fell down. Caliban, steadily drinking, swears himself to be Stefano's servant and agrees to show his new master the best stuff of the island. Stefano and Trinculo, drunk and sure everyone else is dead, are happy to be kings of this island, with Caliban as their subject. Caliban, now also drunk, is happy to be free of Prospero's tyranny .", "analysis": ""}

SCENE II. _Another part of the island._ _Enter CALIBAN with a burden of wood. A noise of thunder heard._ _Cal._ All the infections that the sun sucks up From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall, and make him By inch-meal a disease! His spirits hear me, And yet I needs must curse. But they'll nor pinch, Fright me with urchin-shows, pitch me i' the mire, 5 Nor lead me, like a firebrand, in the dark Out of my way, unless he bid 'em: but For every trifle are they set upon me; Sometime like apes, that mow and chatter at me, And after bite me; then like hedgehogs, which 10 Lie tumbling in my barefoot way, and mount Their pricks at my footfall; sometime am I All wound with adders, who with cloven tongues Do hiss me into madness. _Enter TRINCULO._ Lo, now, lo! Here comes a spirit of his, and to torment me 15 For bringing wood in slowly. I'll fall flat; Perchance he will not mind me. _Trin._ Here's neither bush nor shrub, to bear off any weather at all, and another storm brewing; I hear it sing i' the wind: yond same black cloud, yond huge one, looks 20 like a foul bombard that would shed his liquor. If it should thunder as it did before, I know not where to hide my head: yond same cloud cannot choose but fall by pailfuls. What have we here? a man or a fish? dead or alive? A fish: he smells like a fish; a very ancient and fish-like smell; a kind 25 of not of the newest Poor-John. A strange fish! Were I in England now, as once I was, and had but this fish painted, not a holiday fool there but would give a piece of silver: there would this monster make a man; any strange beast there makes a man: when they will not give a doit to 30 relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian. Legged like a man! and his fins like arms! Warm o' my troth! I do now let loose my opinion; hold it no longer: this is no fish, but an islander, that hath lately suffered by a thunderbolt. [_Thunder._] Alas, the storm is come 35 again! my best way is to creep under his gaberdine; there is no other shelter hereabout: misery acquaints a man with strange bed-fellows. I will here shroud till the dregs of the storm be past. _Enter STEPHANO, singing: a bottle in his hand._ _Ste._ I shall no more to sea, to sea, 40 Here shall I die a-shore,-- This is a very scurvy tune to sing at a man's funeral: well, here's my comfort. [_Drinks._ [_Sings._ The master, the swabber, the boatswain, and I, The gunner, and his mate, 45 Loved Mall, Meg, and Marian, and Margery, But none of us cared for Kate; For she had a tongue with a tang, Would cry to a sailor, Go hang! She loved not the savour of tar nor of pitch; 50 Yet a tailor might scratch her where'er she did itch. Then, to sea, boys, and let her go hang! This is a scurvy tune too: but here's my comfort. [_Drinks._ _Cal._ Do not torment me:--O! _Ste._ What's the matter? Have we devils here? Do 55 you put tricks upon 's with savages and men of Ind, ha? I have not scaped drowning, to be afeard now of your four legs; for it hath been said, As proper a man as ever went on four legs cannot make him give ground; and it shall be said so again, while Stephano breathes at's nostrils. 60 _Cal._ The spirit torments me:--O! _Ste._ This is some monster of the isle with four legs, who hath got, as I take it, an ague. Where the devil should he learn our language? I will give him some relief, if it be but for that. If I can recover him, and keep him tame, and 65 get to Naples with him, he's a present for any emperor that ever trod on neat's-leather. _Cal._ Do not torment me, prithee; I'll bring my wood home faster. _Ste._ He's in his fit now, and does not talk after the 70 wisest. He shall taste of my bottle: if he have never drunk wine afore, it will go near to remove his fit. If I can recover him, and keep him tame, I will not take too much for him; he shall pay for him that hath him, and that soundly. _Cal._ Thou dost me yet but little hurt; thou wilt anon, I 75 know it by thy trembling: now Prosper works upon thee. _Ste._ Come on your ways; open your mouth; here is that which will give language to you, cat: open your mouth; this will shake your shaking, I can tell you, and that soundly: you cannot tell who's your friend: open your chaps again. 80 _Trin._ I should know that voice: it should be--but he is drowned; and these are devils:--O defend me! _Ste._ Four legs and two voices,--a most delicate monster! His forward voice, now, is to speak well of his friend; his backward voice is to utter foul speeches and to detract. 85 If all the wine in my bottle will recover him, I will help his ague. Come:--Amen! I will pour some in thy other mouth. _Trin._ Stephano! _Ste._ Doth thy other mouth call me? Mercy, mercy! 90 This is a devil, and no monster: I will leave him; I have no long spoon. _Trin._ Stephano! If thou beest Stephano, touch me, and speak to me; for I am Trinculo,--be not afeard,--thy good friend Trinculo. 95 _Ste._ If thou beest Trinculo, come forth: I'll pull thee by the lesser legs: if any be Trinculo's legs, these are they. Thou art very Trinculo indeed! How earnest thou to be the siege of this moon-calf? can he vent Trinculos? _Trin._ I took him to be killed with a thunder-stroke. 100 But art thou not drowned, Stephano? I hope, now, thou art not drowned. Is the storm overblown? I hid me under the dead moon-calf's gaberdine for fear of the storm. And art thou living, Stephano? O Stephano, two Neapolitans scaped! 105 _Ste._ Prithee, do not turn me about; my stomach is not constant. _Cal._ [_aside_] These be fine things, an if they be not sprites. That's a brave god, and bears celestial liquor: I will kneel to him. 110 _Ste._ How didst thou 'scape? How camest thou hither? swear, by this bottle, how thou camest hither. I escaped upon a butt of sack, which the sailors heaved o'erboard, by this bottle! which I made of the bark of a tree with mine own hands, since I was cast ashore. 115 _Cal._ I'll swear, upon that bottle, to be thy true subject; for the liquor is not earthly. _Ste._ Here; swear, then, how thou escapedst. _Trin._ Swum ashore, man, like a duck: I can swim like a duck, I'll be sworn. 120 _Ste._ Here, kiss the book. Though thou canst swim like a duck, thou art made like a goose. _Trin._ O Stephano, hast any more of this? _Ste._ The whole butt, man: my cellar is in a rock by the sea-side, where my wine is hid. How now, moon-calf! 125 how does thine ague? _Cal._ Hast thou not dropp'd from heaven? _Ste._ Out o' the moon, I do assure thee: I was the man i' the moon when time was. _Cal._ I have seen thee in her, and I do adore thee: 130 My mistress show'd me thee, and thy dog, and thy bush. _Ste._ Come, swear to that; kiss the book: I will furnish it anon with new contents: swear. _Trin._ By this good light, this is a very shallow monster! I afeard of him! A very weak monster! The 135 man i' the moon! A most poor credulous monster! Well drawn, monster, in good sooth! _Cal._ I'll show thee every fertile inch o' th' island; And I will kiss thy foot: I prithee, be my god. _Trin._ By this light, a most perfidious and drunken 140 monster! when's god's asleep, he'll rob his bottle. _Cal._ I'll kiss thy foot; I'll swear myself thy subject. _Ste._ Come on, then; down, and swear. _Trin._ I shall laugh myself to death at this puppy-headed monster. A most scurvy monster! I could find in 145 my heart to beat him,-- _Ste._ Come, kiss. _Trin._ But that the poor monster's in drink: an abominable monster! _Cal._ I'll show thee the best springs; I'll pluck thee berries; 150 I'll fish for thee, and get thee wood enough. A plague upon the tyrant that I serve! I'll bear him no more sticks, but follow thee, Thou wondrous man. _Trin._ A most ridiculous monster, to make a wonder 155 of a poor drunkard! _Cal._ I prithee, let me bring thee where crabs grow; And I with my long nails will dig thee pig-nuts; Show thee a jay's nest, and instruct thee how To snare the nimble marmoset; I'll bring thee 160 To clustering filberts, and sometimes I'll get thee Young scamels from the rock. Wilt thou go with me? _Ste._ I prithee now, lead the way, without any more talking. Trinculo, the king and all our company else being drowned, we will inherit here: here; bear my bottle: fellow 165 Trinculo, we'll fill him by and by again. _Cal. sings drunkenly._] Farewell, master; farewell, farewell! _Trin._ A howling monster; a drunken monster! _Cal._ No more dams I'll make for fish; Nor fetch in firing 170 At requiring; Nor scrape trencher, nor wash dish: 'Ban, 'Ban, Cacaliban Has a new master:--get a new man. Freedom, hey-day! hey-day, freedom! freedom, hey-day, 175 freedom! _Ste._ O brave monster! Lead the way. [_Exeunt._ Notes: II, 2. 4: _nor_] F1 F2. _not_ F3 F4. 15: _and_] _now_ Pope. _sent_ Edd. conj. (so Dryden). 21: _foul_] _full_ Upton conj. 35: [Thunder] Capell. 38: _dregs_] _drench_ Collier MS. 40: SCENE III. Pope. [a bottle in his hand] Capell.] 46: _and Marian_] _Mirian_ Pope. 56: _savages_] _salvages_ Ff. 60: _at's nostrils_] Edd. _at 'nostrils_ F1. _at nostrils_ F2 F3 F4. _at his nostrils_ Pope. 78: _you, cat_] _you Cat_ Ff. _a cat_ Hanmer. _your cat_ Edd. conj. 84: _well_] F1 om. F2 F3 F4. 115, 116: Steevens prints as verse, _I'll ... thy True ... earthly._ 118: _swear, then, how thou escapedst_] _swear then: how escapedst thou?_ Pope. 119: _Swum_] _Swom_ Ff. 131: _and thy dog, and thy bush_] _thy dog and bush_ Steevens. 133: _new_] F1. _the new_ F2 F3 F4. 135: _weak_] F1. _shallow_ F2 F3 F4. 138: _island_] F1. _isle_ F2 F3 F4. 150-154, 157-162, printed as verse by Pope (after Dryden). 162: _scamels_] _shamois_ Theobald. _seamalls, stannels_ id. conj. 163: Ste.] F1. Cal. F2 F3 F4. 165: Before _here; bear my bottle_ Capell inserts [To Cal.]. See note (XII). 172: _trencher_] Pope (after Dryden). _trenchering_ Ff. 175: _hey-day_] Rowe. _high-day_ Ff.

Act 2, Scene 2

https://web.archive.org/web/20210411014001/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tempest/summary/act-2-scene-2

On another part of the island, Caliban is busy fetching wood and cursing Prospero for the mean things he does to Caliban, like sending spirits to torment him while he works. As Caliban complains of apes that chatter at and bite him, hedgehogs that prick his feet, and snakes that hiss him to madness, Trinculo enters, and Caliban assumes the stranger is another one of Prospero's nasty spirits. Trinculo, a jester and member of the shipwrecked group, wanders alone searching for cover, should another storm come. He spots Caliban, and seeing he is maybe a man or a fish , immediately thinks of how people in England would pay to see an odd thing like this. Then he decides Caliban's deformed shape is simply that of a native islander recently hit by lightning. Brain Snack: In sixteenth and seventeenth-century England , people paid money to see American Indians who had been brought over from the New World and were exhibited like circus animals. Hearing more thunder, Trinculo immediately jumps under Caliban's cape, seeking shelter. Just then, Stefano, the drunken butler, wanders in singing saucy songs about which women will put out for sailors, and which women won't. Surprised at seeing Caliban as a four legged creature , Stefano announces he did not escape drowning to fall to savages. Caliban, thinking Stefano is another of Prospero's spirits, cries out. Stefano is shocked that this four-legged monster knows his own language, and thinks the monster suffers from some fever. Stefano will give the monster a drink to ease him, but also hopes he might drunkenly tame the monster and lure him back to Naples as a present for a European emperor. Stefano makes Caliban drink wine from his flask; the still scared and hiding Trinculo thinks he recognizes Stefano's voice and calls out to him. Finally, after some silly nonsense, Stefano and Trinculo discover each other, and Caliban realizes the two are not spirits, but must be gods, what with the celestial liquor Stefano carries. Stefano doesn't deny it, and drunkenly claims that he was the man in the moon until recently, when he fell down. Caliban, steadily drinking, swears himself to be Stefano's servant and agrees to show his new master the best stuff of the island. Stefano and Trinculo, drunk and sure everyone else is dead, are happy to be kings of this island, with Caliban as their subject. Caliban, now also drunk, is happy to be free of Prospero's tyranny .

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/107-chapters/20.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Far from the Madding Crowd/section_19_part_0.txt

Far from the Madding Crowd.chapter 20

chapter 20

{"name": "Chapter 20", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101052914/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary-and-analysis/chapter-20", "summary": "Bathsheba, though not in love, nevertheless realized that Boldwood was an eligible bachelor. \"He is so disinterested and kind to offer me all that I can desire,\" she thought. \"Yet Farmer Boldwood,\" the author informs us, \"whether by nature kind or the reverse to kind, did not exercise kindness here. The rarest offerings of the purest loves are but a self-indulgence, and no generosity at all.\" Bathsheba was not eager to be married, nor had the novelty of being a landowner begun to wear off. \"Bathsheba's was an impulsive nature under a deliberative aspect. An Elizabeth in brain, and a Mary Stuart in spirit.\" Next day, Bathsheba saw Gabriel grinding shears. Cainy Ball was turning the handle of Gabriel's grindstone, but Bathsheba sent him on an errand, offering to sharpen while Gabriel turned the stone. She did not do well, and Gabriel took her hands to show her the proper angle for holding the blades. Meanwhile, she attempted to find out about the men's comments on her meeting with Boldwood. Oak admitted the men had spoken of the prospect of a marriage. When she asked Gabriel to contradict them, he refused to lie for her. He told her that her conduct was unworthy of a thoughtful woman. Bathsheba became sarcastic, saying his attitude might be due to her refusal of him. To this, Gabriel replied that he had long since stopped thinking about the possibility of marrying her. He repeated that it was wrong for her to trifle with Boldwood. Angrily, Bathsheba dismissed Oak as of the end of the week. Gabriel preferred going at once. \" 'Go at once then, in Heaven's name!' said she, her eyes flashing at his, though never meeting them. 'Don't let me ever see your face any more.'\" Gabriel agreed. \"And he took his shears, and went away from her in placid dignity, as Moses left the presence of Pharaoh.\"", "analysis": "Hardy has interpolated his own views on marriage motives and an intensive psychological study of Bathsheba; the chapter invites careful reading. Bathsheba resents Gabriel's frankness, after having sought it, and even more she resents his statement that he no longer wishes to marry her. The equanimity with which he accepts dismissal enrages her. We know that when Gabriel's helpfulness, on which she has come to rely, is no longer available, she will rue her rashness. The minute detail with which Hardy draws his characters is exemplified in this passage: \"It may have been a peculiarity -- at any rate it was a fact -- that when Bathsheba was swayed by an emotion of an earthy sort her lower lip trembled; when by a refined emotion, her upper or heavenward one. Her nether lip quivered now.\""}

PERPLEXITY--GRINDING THE SHEARS--A QUARREL "He is so disinterested and kind to offer me all that I can desire," Bathsheba mused. Yet Farmer Boldwood, whether by nature kind or the reverse to kind, did not exercise kindness, here. The rarest offerings of the purest loves are but a self-indulgence, and no generosity at all. Bathsheba, not being the least in love with him, was eventually able to look calmly at his offer. It was one which many women of her own station in the neighbourhood, and not a few of higher rank, would have been wild to accept and proud to publish. In every point of view, ranging from politic to passionate, it was desirable that she, a lonely girl, should marry, and marry this earnest, well-to-do, and respected man. He was close to her doors: his standing was sufficient: his qualities were even supererogatory. Had she felt, which she did not, any wish whatever for the married state in the abstract, she could not reasonably have rejected him, being a woman who frequently appealed to her understanding for deliverance from her whims. Boldwood as a means to marriage was unexceptionable: she esteemed and liked him, yet she did not want him. It appears that ordinary men take wives because possession is not possible without marriage, and that ordinary women accept husbands because marriage is not possible without possession; with totally differing aims the method is the same on both sides. But the understood incentive on the woman's part was wanting here. Besides, Bathsheba's position as absolute mistress of a farm and house was a novel one, and the novelty had not yet begun to wear off. But a disquiet filled her which was somewhat to her credit, for it would have affected few. Beyond the mentioned reasons with which she combated her objections, she had a strong feeling that, having been the one who began the game, she ought in honesty to accept the consequences. Still the reluctance remained. She said in the same breath that it would be ungenerous not to marry Boldwood, and that she couldn't do it to save her life. Bathsheba's was an impulsive nature under a deliberative aspect. An Elizabeth in brain and a Mary Stuart in spirit, she often performed actions of the greatest temerity with a manner of extreme discretion. Many of her thoughts were perfect syllogisms; unluckily they always remained thoughts. Only a few were irrational assumptions; but, unfortunately, they were the ones which most frequently grew into deeds. The next day to that of the declaration she found Gabriel Oak at the bottom of her garden, grinding his shears for the sheep-shearing. All the surrounding cottages were more or less scenes of the same operation; the scurr of whetting spread into the sky from all parts of the village as from an armoury previous to a campaign. Peace and war kiss each other at their hours of preparation--sickles, scythes, shears, and pruning-hooks, ranking with swords, bayonets, and lances, in their common necessity for point and edge. Cainy Ball turned the handle of Gabriel's grindstone, his head performing a melancholy see-saw up and down with each turn of the wheel. Oak stood somewhat as Eros is represented when in the act of sharpening his arrows: his figure slightly bent, the weight of his body thrown over on the shears, and his head balanced side-ways, with a critical compression of the lips and contraction of the eyelids to crown the attitude. His mistress came up and looked upon them in silence for a minute or two; then she said-- "Cain, go to the lower mead and catch the bay mare. I'll turn the winch of the grindstone. I want to speak to you, Gabriel." Cain departed, and Bathsheba took the handle. Gabriel had glanced up in intense surprise, quelled its expression, and looked down again. Bathsheba turned the winch, and Gabriel applied the shears. The peculiar motion involved in turning a wheel has a wonderful tendency to benumb the mind. It is a sort of attenuated variety of Ixion's punishment, and contributes a dismal chapter to the history of gaols. The brain gets muddled, the head grows heavy, and the body's centre of gravity seems to settle by degrees in a leaden lump somewhere between the eyebrows and the crown. Bathsheba felt the unpleasant symptoms after two or three dozen turns. "Will you turn, Gabriel, and let me hold the shears?" she said. "My head is in a whirl, and I can't talk." Gabriel turned. Bathsheba then began, with some awkwardness, allowing her thoughts to stray occasionally from her story to attend to the shears, which required a little nicety in sharpening. "I wanted to ask you if the men made any observations on my going behind the sedge with Mr. Boldwood yesterday?" "Yes, they did," said Gabriel. "You don't hold the shears right, miss--I knew you wouldn't know the way--hold like this." He relinquished the winch, and inclosing her two hands completely in his own (taking each as we sometimes slap a child's hand in teaching him to write), grasped the shears with her. "Incline the edge so," he said. Hands and shears were inclined to suit the words, and held thus for a peculiarly long time by the instructor as he spoke. "That will do," exclaimed Bathsheba. "Loose my hands. I won't have them held! Turn the winch." Gabriel freed her hands quietly, retired to his handle, and the grinding went on. "Did the men think it odd?" she said again. "Odd was not the idea, miss." "What did they say?" "That Farmer Boldwood's name and your own were likely to be flung over pulpit together before the year was out." "I thought so by the look of them! Why, there's nothing in it. A more foolish remark was never made, and I want you to contradict it! that's what I came for." Gabriel looked incredulous and sad, but between his moments of incredulity, relieved. "They must have heard our conversation," she continued. "Well, then, Bathsheba!" said Oak, stopping the handle, and gazing into her face with astonishment. "Miss Everdene, you mean," she said, with dignity. "I mean this, that if Mr. Boldwood really spoke of marriage, I bain't going to tell a story and say he didn't to please you. I have already tried to please you too much for my own good!" Bathsheba regarded him with round-eyed perplexity. She did not know whether to pity him for disappointed love of her, or to be angry with him for having got over it--his tone being ambiguous. "I said I wanted you just to mention that it was not true I was going to be married to him," she murmured, with a slight decline in her assurance. "I can say that to them if you wish, Miss Everdene. And I could likewise give an opinion to 'ee on what you have done." "I daresay. But I don't want your opinion." "I suppose not," said Gabriel bitterly, and going on with his turning, his words rising and falling in a regular swell and cadence as he stooped or rose with the winch, which directed them, according to his position, perpendicularly into the earth, or horizontally along the garden, his eyes being fixed on a leaf upon the ground. With Bathsheba a hastened act was a rash act; but, as does not always happen, time gained was prudence insured. It must be added, however, that time was very seldom gained. At this period the single opinion in the parish on herself and her doings that she valued as sounder than her own was Gabriel Oak's. And the outspoken honesty of his character was such that on any subject, even that of her love for, or marriage with, another man, the same disinterestedness of opinion might be calculated on, and be had for the asking. Thoroughly convinced of the impossibility of his own suit, a high resolve constrained him not to injure that of another. This is a lover's most stoical virtue, as the lack of it is a lover's most venial sin. Knowing he would reply truly she asked the question, painful as she must have known the subject would be. Such is the selfishness of some charming women. Perhaps it was some excuse for her thus torturing honesty to her own advantage, that she had absolutely no other sound judgment within easy reach. "Well, what is your opinion of my conduct," she said, quietly. "That it is unworthy of any thoughtful, and meek, and comely woman." In an instant Bathsheba's face coloured with the angry crimson of a Danby sunset. But she forbore to utter this feeling, and the reticence of her tongue only made the loquacity of her face the more noticeable. The next thing Gabriel did was to make a mistake. "Perhaps you don't like the rudeness of my reprimanding you, for I know it is rudeness; but I thought it would do good." She instantly replied sarcastically-- "On the contrary, my opinion of you is so low, that I see in your abuse the praise of discerning people!" "I am glad you don't mind it, for I said it honestly and with every serious meaning." "I see. But, unfortunately, when you try not to speak in jest you are amusing--just as when you wish to avoid seriousness you sometimes say a sensible word." It was a hard hit, but Bathsheba had unmistakably lost her temper, and on that account Gabriel had never in his life kept his own better. He said nothing. She then broke out-- "I may ask, I suppose, where in particular my unworthiness lies? In my not marrying you, perhaps!" "Not by any means," said Gabriel quietly. "I have long given up thinking of that matter." "Or wishing it, I suppose," she said; and it was apparent that she expected an unhesitating denial of this supposition. Whatever Gabriel felt, he coolly echoed her words-- "Or wishing it either." A woman may be treated with a bitterness which is sweet to her, and with a rudeness which is not offensive. Bathsheba would have submitted to an indignant chastisement for her levity had Gabriel protested that he was loving her at the same time; the impetuosity of passion unrequited is bearable, even if it stings and anathematizes--there is a triumph in the humiliation, and a tenderness in the strife. This was what she had been expecting, and what she had not got. To be lectured because the lecturer saw her in the cold morning light of open-shuttered disillusion was exasperating. He had not finished, either. He continued in a more agitated voice:-- "My opinion is (since you ask it) that you are greatly to blame for playing pranks upon a man like Mr. Boldwood, merely as a pastime. Leading on a man you don't care for is not a praiseworthy action. And even, Miss Everdene, if you seriously inclined towards him, you might have let him find it out in some way of true loving-kindness, and not by sending him a valentine's letter." Bathsheba laid down the shears. "I cannot allow any man to--to criticise my private conduct!" she exclaimed. "Nor will I for a minute. So you'll please leave the farm at the end of the week!" It may have been a peculiarity--at any rate it was a fact--that when Bathsheba was swayed by an emotion of an earthly sort her lower lip trembled: when by a refined emotion, her upper or heavenward one. Her nether lip quivered now. "Very well, so I will," said Gabriel calmly. He had been held to her by a beautiful thread which it pained him to spoil by breaking, rather than by a chain he could not break. "I should be even better pleased to go at once," he added. "Go at once then, in Heaven's name!" said she, her eyes flashing at his, though never meeting them. "Don't let me see your face any more." "Very well, Miss Everdene--so it shall be." And he took his shears and went away from her in placid dignity, as Moses left the presence of Pharaoh.

Chapter 20

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101052914/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary-and-analysis/chapter-20

Bathsheba, though not in love, nevertheless realized that Boldwood was an eligible bachelor. "He is so disinterested and kind to offer me all that I can desire," she thought. "Yet Farmer Boldwood," the author informs us, "whether by nature kind or the reverse to kind, did not exercise kindness here. The rarest offerings of the purest loves are but a self-indulgence, and no generosity at all." Bathsheba was not eager to be married, nor had the novelty of being a landowner begun to wear off. "Bathsheba's was an impulsive nature under a deliberative aspect. An Elizabeth in brain, and a Mary Stuart in spirit." Next day, Bathsheba saw Gabriel grinding shears. Cainy Ball was turning the handle of Gabriel's grindstone, but Bathsheba sent him on an errand, offering to sharpen while Gabriel turned the stone. She did not do well, and Gabriel took her hands to show her the proper angle for holding the blades. Meanwhile, she attempted to find out about the men's comments on her meeting with Boldwood. Oak admitted the men had spoken of the prospect of a marriage. When she asked Gabriel to contradict them, he refused to lie for her. He told her that her conduct was unworthy of a thoughtful woman. Bathsheba became sarcastic, saying his attitude might be due to her refusal of him. To this, Gabriel replied that he had long since stopped thinking about the possibility of marrying her. He repeated that it was wrong for her to trifle with Boldwood. Angrily, Bathsheba dismissed Oak as of the end of the week. Gabriel preferred going at once. " 'Go at once then, in Heaven's name!' said she, her eyes flashing at his, though never meeting them. 'Don't let me ever see your face any more.'" Gabriel agreed. "And he took his shears, and went away from her in placid dignity, as Moses left the presence of Pharaoh."

Hardy has interpolated his own views on marriage motives and an intensive psychological study of Bathsheba; the chapter invites careful reading. Bathsheba resents Gabriel's frankness, after having sought it, and even more she resents his statement that he no longer wishes to marry her. The equanimity with which he accepts dismissal enrages her. We know that when Gabriel's helpfulness, on which she has come to rely, is no longer available, she will rue her rashness. The minute detail with which Hardy draws his characters is exemplified in this passage: "It may have been a peculiarity -- at any rate it was a fact -- that when Bathsheba was swayed by an emotion of an earthy sort her lower lip trembled; when by a refined emotion, her upper or heavenward one. Her nether lip quivered now."

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1130-chapters/32.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra/section_31_part_0.txt

The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra.act iv.scene vii

act iv, scene vii

{"name": "Act IV, Scene vii", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210116191009/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/antony-cleopatra/summary/act-iv-scene-vii", "summary": "On the battlefield between the camps, Agrippa calls his men to retreat, as they've overestimated their strength. Antony confers with a wounded soldier, Scarus. Caesar's side is clearly beat, and Antony, calm, promises to reward his men for their high spirits, even more for their valor, and even more for being the only people to not ditch him for Caesar.", "analysis": ""}

SCENE VII. Field of battle between the camps Alarum. Drums and trumpets. Enter AGRIPPA and others AGRIPPA. Retire. We have engag'd ourselves too far. Caesar himself has work, and our oppression Exceeds what we expected. Exeunt Alarums. Enter ANTONY, and SCARUS wounded SCARUS. O my brave Emperor, this is fought indeed! Had we done so at first, we had droven them home With clouts about their heads. ANTONY. Thou bleed'st apace. SCARUS. I had a wound here that was like a T, But now 'tis made an H. ANTONY. They do retire. SCARUS. We'll beat'em into bench-holes. I have yet Room for six scotches more. Enter EROS EROS. They are beaten, sir, and our advantage serves For a fair victory. SCARUS. Let us score their backs And snatch 'em up, as we take hares, behind. 'Tis sport to maul a runner. ANTONY. I will reward thee Once for thy sprightly comfort, and tenfold For thy good valour. Come thee on. SCARUS. I'll halt after. Exeunt ACT_4|SC_8

Act IV, Scene vii

https://web.archive.org/web/20210116191009/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/antony-cleopatra/summary/act-iv-scene-vii

On the battlefield between the camps, Agrippa calls his men to retreat, as they've overestimated their strength. Antony confers with a wounded soldier, Scarus. Caesar's side is clearly beat, and Antony, calm, promises to reward his men for their high spirits, even more for their valor, and even more for being the only people to not ditch him for Caesar.

pinkmonkey

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/40.txt

finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_15_part_2.txt

Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 39

chapter 39

{"name": "CHAPTER 39", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820050202/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmTessD48.asp", "summary": "Angel goes home three weeks after his marriage and tells his parents that he plans to go to Brazil without his wife; however, he does not indicate to them that he and Tess have actually separated. They are curious about his plans and disappointed that they will not meet their daughter-in-law before Angel departs. Angel says he will stay in Brazil only for a year; after his return, they can meet Tess. They do not question Angel about his reasons for making the trip to South America; they merely accept his decision. Before departing Emminster, Angel deposits the jewels for safe- keeping and arranges for a sum of money to be sent to Tess in the future.", "analysis": "Notes Like Tess, Angel deceives his parents, not telling them the depth of his separation from Tess. They wonder why he is going to Brazil, but do not question him. Since they are unable to meet his new wife, they do question their son about her, especially in terms of her morals and chastity. Mr. Clare even reads \"The Words of King Lemuel,'' which praises purity in a wife. Angel feels uneasy and embittered by the conversation with his mother and father. He cannot lie to his parents and praise the worthiness of his wife; he simply remains silent. Angel regrets that, like him, his parents are deceived by Tess"}

It was three weeks after the marriage that Clare found himself descending the hill which led to the well-known parsonage of his father. With his downward course the tower of the church rose into the evening sky in a manner of inquiry as to why he had come; and no living person in the twilighted town seemed to notice him, still less to expect him. He was arriving like a ghost, and the sound of his own footsteps was almost an encumbrance to be got rid of. The picture of life had changed for him. Before this time he had known it but speculatively; now he thought he knew it as a practical man; though perhaps he did not, even yet. Nevertheless humanity stood before him no longer in the pensive sweetness of Italian art, but in the staring and ghastly attitudes of a Wiertz Museum, and with the leer of a study by Van Beers. His conduct during these first weeks had been desultory beyond description. After mechanically attempting to pursue his agricultural plans as though nothing unusual had happened, in the manner recommended by the great and wise men of all ages, he concluded that very few of those great and wise men had ever gone so far outside themselves as to test the feasibility of their counsel. "This is the chief thing: be not perturbed," said the Pagan moralist. That was just Clare's own opinion. But he was perturbed. "Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid," said the Nazarene. Clare chimed in cordially; but his heart was troubled all the same. How he would have liked to confront those two great thinkers, and earnestly appeal to them as fellow-man to fellow-men, and ask them to tell him their method! His mood transmuted itself into a dogged indifference till at length he fancied he was looking on his own existence with the passive interest of an outsider. He was embittered by the conviction that all this desolation had been brought about by the accident of her being a d'Urberville. When he found that Tess came of that exhausted ancient line, and was not of the new tribes from below, as he had fondly dreamed, why had he not stoically abandoned her in fidelity to his principles? This was what he had got by apostasy, and his punishment was deserved. Then he became weary and anxious, and his anxiety increased. He wondered if he had treated her unfairly. He ate without knowing that he ate, and drank without tasting. As the hours dropped past, as the motive of each act in the long series of bygone days presented itself to his view, he perceived how intimately the notion of having Tess as a dear possession was mixed up with all his schemes and words and ways. In going hither and thither he observed in the outskirts of a small town a red-and-blue placard setting forth the great advantages of the Empire of Brazil as a field for the emigrating agriculturist. Land was offered there on exceptionally advantageous terms. Brazil somewhat attracted him as a new idea. Tess could eventually join him there, and perhaps in that country of contrasting scenes and notions and habits the conventions would not be so operative which made life with her seem impracticable to him here. In brief he was strongly inclined to try Brazil, especially as the season for going thither was just at hand. With this view he was returning to Emminster to disclose his plan to his parents, and to make the best explanation he could make of arriving without Tess, short of revealing what had actually separated them. As he reached the door the new moon shone upon his face, just as the old one had done in the small hours of that morning when he had carried his wife in his arms across the river to the graveyard of the monks; but his face was thinner now. Clare had given his parents no warning of his visit, and his arrival stirred the atmosphere of the Vicarage as the dive of the kingfisher stirs a quiet pool. His father and mother were both in the drawing-room, but neither of his brothers was now at home. Angel entered, and closed the door quietly behind him. "But--where's your wife, dear Angel?" cried his mother. "How you surprise us!" "She is at her mother's--temporarily. I have come home rather in a hurry because I've decided to go to Brazil." "Brazil! Why they are all Roman Catholics there surely!" "Are they? I hadn't thought of that." But even the novelty and painfulness of his going to a Papistical land could not displace for long Mr and Mrs Clare's natural interest in their son's marriage. "We had your brief note three weeks ago announcing that it had taken place," said Mrs Clare, "and your father sent your godmother's gift to her, as you know. Of course it was best that none of us should be present, especially as you preferred to marry her from the dairy, and not at her home, wherever that may be. It would have embarrassed you, and given us no pleasure. Your bothers felt that very strongly. Now it is done we do not complain, particularly if she suits you for the business you have chosen to follow instead of the ministry of the Gospel. ... Yet I wish I could have seen her first, Angel, or have known a little more about her. We sent her no present of our own, not knowing what would best give her pleasure, but you must suppose it only delayed. Angel, there is no irritation in my mind or your father's against you for this marriage; but we have thought it much better to reserve our liking for your wife till we could see her. And now you have not brought her. It seems strange. What has happened?" He replied that it had been thought best by them that she should to go her parents' home for the present, whilst he came there. "I don't mind telling you, dear mother," he said, "that I always meant to keep her away from this house till I should feel she could come with credit to you. But this idea of Brazil is quite a recent one. If I do go it will be unadvisable for me to take her on this my first journey. She will remain at her mother's till I come back." "And I shall not see her before you start?" He was afraid they would not. His original plan had been, as he had said, to refrain from bringing her there for some little while--not to wound their prejudices--feelings--in any way; and for other reasons he had adhered to it. He would have to visit home in the course of a year, if he went out at once; and it would be possible for them to see her before he started a second time--with her. A hastily prepared supper was brought in, and Clare made further exposition of his plans. His mother's disappointment at not seeing the bride still remained with her. Clare's late enthusiasm for Tess had infected her through her maternal sympathies, till she had almost fancied that a good thing could come out of Nazareth--a charming woman out of Talbothays Dairy. She watched her son as he ate. "Cannot you describe her? I am sure she is very pretty, Angel." "Of that there can be no question!" he said, with a zest which covered its bitterness. "And that she is pure and virtuous goes without question?" "Pure and virtuous, of course, she is." "I can see her quite distinctly. You said the other day that she was fine in figure; roundly built; had deep red lips like Cupid's bow; dark eyelashes and brows, an immense rope of hair like a ship's cable; and large eyes violety-bluey-blackish." "I did, mother." "I quite see her. And living in such seclusion she naturally had scarce ever seen any young man from the world without till she saw you." "Scarcely." "You were her first love?" "Of course." "There are worse wives than these simple, rosy-mouthed, robust girls of the farm. Certainly I could have wished--well, since my son is to be an agriculturist, it is perhaps but proper that his wife should have been accustomed to an outdoor life." His father was less inquisitive; but when the time came for the chapter from the Bible which was always read before evening prayers, the Vicar observed to Mrs Clare-- "I think, since Angel has come, that it will be more appropriate to read the thirty-first of Proverbs than the chapter which we should have had in the usual course of our reading?" "Yes, certainly," said Mrs Clare. "The words of King Lemuel" (she could cite chapter and verse as well as her husband). "My dear son, your father has decided to read us the chapter in Proverbs in praise of a virtuous wife. We shall not need to be reminded to apply the words to the absent one. May Heaven shield her in all her ways!" A lump rose in Clare's throat. The portable lectern was taken out from the corner and set in the middle of the fireplace, the two old servants came in, and Angel's father began to read at the tenth verse of the aforesaid chapter-- "Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies. She riseth while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household. She girdeth her loins with strength and strengtheneth her arms. She perceiveth that her merchandise is good; her candle goeth not out by night. She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness. Her children arise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her. Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all." When prayers were over, his mother said-- "I could not help thinking how very aptly that chapter your dear father read applied, in some of its particulars, to the woman you have chosen. The perfect woman, you see, was a working woman; not an idler; not a fine lady; but one who used her hands and her head and her heart for the good of others. 'Her children arise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her. Many daughters have done virtuously, but she excelleth them all.' Well, I wish I could have seen her, Angel. Since she is pure and chaste, she would have been refined enough for me." Clare could bear this no longer. His eyes were full of tears, which seemed like drops of molten lead. He bade a quick good night to these sincere and simple souls whom he loved so well; who knew neither the world, the flesh, nor the devil in their own hearts, only as something vague and external to themselves. He went to his own chamber. His mother followed him, and tapped at his door. Clare opened it to discover her standing without, with anxious eyes. "Angel," she asked, "is there something wrong that you go away so soon? I am quite sure you are not yourself." "I am not, quite, mother," said he. "About her? Now, my son, I know it is that--I know it is about her! Have you quarrelled in these three weeks?" "We have not exactly quarrelled," he said. "But we have had a difference--" "Angel--is she a young woman whose history will bear investigation?" With a mother's instinct Mrs Clare had put her finger on the kind of trouble that would cause such a disquiet as seemed to agitate her son. "She is spotless!" he replied; and felt that if it had sent him to eternal hell there and then he would have told that lie. "Then never mind the rest. After all, there are few purer things in nature then an unsullied country maid. Any crudeness of manner which may offend your more educated sense at first, will, I am sure, disappear under the influence or your companionship and tuition." Such terrible sarcasm of blind magnanimity brought home to Clare the secondary perception that he had utterly wrecked his career by this marriage, which had not been among his early thoughts after the disclosure. True, on his own account he cared very little about his career; but he had wished to make it at least a respectable one on account of his parents and brothers. And now as he looked into the candle its flame dumbly expressed to him that it was made to shine on sensible people, and that it abhorred lighting the face of a dupe and a failure. When his agitation had cooled he would be at moments incensed with his poor wife for causing a situation in which he was obliged to practise deception on his parents. He almost talked to her in his anger, as if she had been in the room. And then her cooing voice, plaintive in expostulation, disturbed the darkness, the velvet touch of her lips passed over his brow, and he could distinguish in the air the warmth of her breath. This night the woman of his belittling deprecations was thinking how great and good her husband was. But over them both there hung a deeper shade than the shade which Angel Clare perceived, namely, the shade of his own limitations. With all his attempted independence of judgement this advanced and well-meaning young man, a sample product of the last five-and-twenty years, was yet the slave to custom and conventionality when surprised back into his early teachings. No prophet had told him, and he was not prophet enough to tell himself, that essentially this young wife of his was as deserving of the praise of King Lemuel as any other woman endowed with the same dislike of evil, her moral value having to be reckoned not by achievement but by tendency. Moreover, the figure near at hand suffers on such occasion, because it shows up its sorriness without shade; while vague figures afar off are honoured, in that their distance makes artistic virtues of their stains. In considering what Tess was not, he overlooked what she was, and forgot that the defective can be more than the entire.

CHAPTER 39

https://web.archive.org/web/20180820050202/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmTessD48.asp

Angel goes home three weeks after his marriage and tells his parents that he plans to go to Brazil without his wife; however, he does not indicate to them that he and Tess have actually separated. They are curious about his plans and disappointed that they will not meet their daughter-in-law before Angel departs. Angel says he will stay in Brazil only for a year; after his return, they can meet Tess. They do not question Angel about his reasons for making the trip to South America; they merely accept his decision. Before departing Emminster, Angel deposits the jewels for safe- keeping and arranges for a sum of money to be sent to Tess in the future.

Notes Like Tess, Angel deceives his parents, not telling them the depth of his separation from Tess. They wonder why he is going to Brazil, but do not question him. Since they are unable to meet his new wife, they do question their son about her, especially in terms of her morals and chastity. Mr. Clare even reads "The Words of King Lemuel,'' which praises purity in a wife. Angel feels uneasy and embittered by the conversation with his mother and father. He cannot lie to his parents and praise the worthiness of his wife; he simply remains silent. Angel regrets that, like him, his parents are deceived by Tess

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/44747-chapters/part_2_chapters_33_to_35.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/The Red and the Black/section_18_part_0.txt

The Red and the Black.part 2.chapters 33-35

chapters 33-35

{"name": "Chapters 33-35", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201128052739/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/r/the-red-and-the-black/summary-and-analysis/part-2-chapters-3335", "summary": "After reading Mathilde's letter, the marquis is beside himself with rage and hurls every insult at Julien. Julien offers to commit suicide or to be killed by the marquis' men. He goes to Pirard for advice. Mathilde learns of Julien's suicide note and resolutely tells her father that if Julien dies, she dies, and that she will appear as Julien's widow to society. When Julien returns to Paris, Mathilde convinces him to leave and to let her manage her father. The latter only shows indecision. Mathilde refuses to negotiate other than on the condition of a marriage with Julien, heedless of what their future might be. In a moment of tenderness, the marquis gives shares worth 10,000 francs to Mathilde for Julien. Julien stays with Pirard, who has become Mathilde's best ally in trying to convince the marquis of the necessity of a public marriage. The marquis cannot bring himself to act. He alternately envisions Julien's accidental death, then entertains the wise counsel of Pirard. Above all, he refuses to believe that his ambition for Mathilde's brilliant future has been thwarted. Mathilde has been seeing Julien almost daily at Pirard's. Finally, the marquis gives the couple an estate in Languedoc as a means to put off making a final decision. By letter, Mathilde begs her father's permission to marry Julien. This causes the marquis to consider the possibility of protecting Julien, of helping him to build a brilliant career. He has a doubt, however, about Julien's sincerity. Has he merely used Mathilde as a means to get ahead in society? Rather than give his permission for the marriage, he gives Julien a title and a commission in the army. Mathilde replies by trying to bargain. She will not communicate news of the title to Julien unless her father agrees to the marriage. The marquis refuses categorically and demands that Julien leave for Strasbourg or all will be rescinded. Julien prepares to leave for Strasbourg. Pirard explains how the marquis has bought Frilair's silence in order to gain acceptance of the fictitious noble ancestry he has devised for Julien. For five days the latter is in Strasbourg, where his calm dignified bearing, elegance, daring, and ability with arms inspire admiration in his men. Then a letter from Mathilde arrives announcing that all is lost and calling for Julien's immediate return to Paris. There Julien learns that the marquis has inquired of Mme. de Renal about Julien's past. The answer she has written confirms the fears of the marquis. The letter accuses Julien of making a practice of insinuating himself into respectable families, of seducing the womenfolk, then of ruining them. Julien leaves immediately for Verrieres, arriving on a Sunday morning. He buys revolvers, goes to the church, and shoots Mme. de Renal.", "analysis": "In a crisis, Julien's women are able to act more efficaciously than he is. Mme. de Renal resolutely initiated the deception of her husband; Mathilde confronts her father successfully. She is more resolute than her father and turns his indecision to her advantage. The passivity that Stendhal bestows on Julien provides the opportunity for enjoyment of maternal affection that the premature death of Stendhal's own mother denied him. Twice in Chapter 33 Stendhal describes Julien's conduct as tartuffian. As a defense against the marquis' anger, Julien tries to justify his action, all the while expressing his gratitude to the marquis. Then, Julien adopts the required air of contrition to confess his situation to Pirard in the hope of getting advice. In Julien's initial confrontation with the marquis, the only solution the former can hit upon is suicide, or letting himself be killed, a solution he doubtlessly offers without reflection. The thought of his \"son\" comes to him for the first time, however, and this thought checks his willingness to be killed. Julien plays an extremely passive role in Chapters 33 and 34. Chapter 34 narrates the give and take between Mathilde and her father. He sits in irresolution; Mathilde presses him by letter. The marquis grants a concession, and this encourages Mathilde to ask for more. Another concession is forthcoming from her father, rather than a definitive action that would condone their marriage. Although the marquis is more sympathetically treated by Stendhal than was M. de Renal, both have the same role in the author's playing out of his Oedipus complex. The marquis' doubting of Julien's motivation is a preparation for the event that will bring about the latter's downfall. A parallel development to this preparation, however, is the momentary \"taste\" of success that Stendhal will allow his hero to have. Stendhal will accord a title and a regiment to Julien. This is typical treatment by Stendhal of his superior beings. They are not destined for a permanent, commonplace happiness, which would, in fact, become vile to them. Note that Julien already seems far away from the action. His thoughts are absorbed completely by the future of his child. Stendhal begins attenuating Julien's love for Mathilde, and his ambition is reappearing. Stendhal mentions Julien's ambition twice in this chapter. Julien's joy is boundless at the news that he is an officer of the Hussars. He is aware, however, of the ephemeral nature of this goal attained, as he remarks that his story has reached its climax. Julien still misunderstands situations, however, as he attributes his success to himself alone. He has succeeded in making himself loved by this monster of pride. And he summarizes his present situation astutely when he muses that Mathilde cannot live without him, nor M. de la Mole without her. How many events, and of what moment, Stendhal crowds into Chapter 35. He moves Julien to the pinnacle of success, lets him revel in this glory for the duration of one page, then precipitates events that will divest him of this worldly glory and ultimately destroy him. The marquis has again been Julien's fairy godfather who conjures up the illusion of success and glory, then takes it from him abruptly. The scene sketched by Stendhal of Julien in all his equestrian glory evokes briefly the same scene in Part I where Julien played a role in the honor guard. The scenes have in common their illusory nature: Then, Julien was merely in the costume of a soldier; now, the abrupt ending of the real role makes its very existence seem doubtful. Proof of the fact that Julien himself almost believes in his fictitious nobility is furnished by the letter he sends to Chelan, together with money to be distributed to the poor. This is the noble gesture of an aristocrat. Julien wants to believe in his nobility since he would not consider himself a monster if Sorel, a man whom he despises, were not his father. In this way, the tragic contradiction he has been forced to live -- a superior soul stifled by mediocrity would be reconciled. Happiness, for the superior being, is simply not available except in small, almost unbearable doses. The proximity of Stendhal to his hero is again underlined. Stendhal is self-demanding, almost masochistic, and his hero, to whom he denies happiness, is superior because of the denial. We have noted that Stendhal has already begun to exclude Julien's intimate reactions. This tendency is even more pronounced in Chapter 35 as Julien returns hurriedly to Paris, learns what the catastrophe is, takes to the road again, arrives in Verrieres, arms himself, and shoots Mme. de Renal. It is partially Stendhal's reserve, his timidity, his refusal to let himself be seen that has dictated his attitude in narrating these events almost devoid of reference to the psychology that prompts Julien to act. This ambiguity has given rise to a literary debate that continues to our day. Is this act, the attempted murder of Mme. de Renal, consistent with the character of Julien? Is Stendhal betraying that psychology in an effort to remain faithful to the historical episode that inspired the novel, and is the denouement therefore artificial? Here are some of the critics' views. Emile Faguet, noted nineteenth-century critic, saw Julien as committing a senseless act that contradicts his character as established by Stendhal. Faguet denies Stendhal a great degree of intelligence, moreover. He sees Julien as the ruthless, ambitious man, coldly calculating and of unshakable will. The character thus conceived, continues Faguet, Julien should have realized that within a short time the marquis, already having accepted many compromises, would have reversed his decision and sanctioned the marriage. Julien seems to have forgotten that he is master of the situation. The denouement, concludes Faguet, seems a little more false than is permitted. Another critic, M. Henri Rambaud, defends Faguet's interpretation, seeing Julien simply as the \"arriviste\" type. These critics would see, therefore, the rapidity and incomplete nature of the narration of these events as evidence of Stendhal's dilemma, his avowal, by omission, of the contradiction he was creating in Julien's character. On the other hand, the critic Henri Martineau sees this act and the dry, sketched narration leading to it as logical given the character of Julien. Here is the extremely sensitive, impetuous hero who has throughout the novel attempted, with varying degrees of success, to submit his spontaneity to the discipline of self-control, to disguise his true feelings by hypocrisy. Such a type is capable, as his past conduct has shown, of seeing his discipline thwarted by the sudden eruption of his passion. When this occurs, the act is but the next movement from its inspiration. Therefore, Stendhal is obliged to reduce the narration to its barest elements, to get Julien there, to have him commit the act. The narration reflects the motivation: Julien is in a semi-somnambulistic state. He has but one idea -- revenge on Mme. de Renal -- and any other detail would be extraneous. And why does Julien want revenge? Herein lies the psychological insight of Stendhal. Julien both hates and loves Mme. de Renal. He has never reached the end of his love for her, yet she has apparently deliberately lied about his conduct. She has ruined his success. His pride and sense of honor have also been wounded. He must avenge himself. Julien's sudden awakening after the act, his long sleep in the jail resulting from excessive tension -- these, argues Martineau, are proof that Julien has acted consistently with his character. Note the scene of the attempted murder. Julien is unable, at first, to fire on Mme. de Renal because he recognizes her. The bell rings at that moment marking the Elevation of the Host. Mme. de Renal bows her head, and he no longer recognizes her so clearly. He fires. Only when she ceases to exist momentarily, as herself, defined as an individual whom he loves, is he capable of the act. The ringing of the bell might be instrumental also in the very commission of the act. Its abrupt occurrence, followed by another action, the bowing of heads, calls for another: the firing of the pistol. This would constitute a sort of demotivation of the act, reminiscent of Gide's attempts to produce the gratuitous act in Les Caves du Vatican and of Camus' scene in L'Etranger, where Meursault through the complicity of things -- -- the sun's reflection, heat -- fires on the Arab. Here, there is a \"chain of events,\" one producing another, an inexorable rhythm created thereby, to which Julien almost involuntarily and mechanically contributes."}

CHAPTER LXIII THE HELL OF WEAKNESS A clumsy lapidary, in cutting this diamond, deprived it of some of its most brilliant facets. In the middle ages, nay, even under Richelieu, the Frenchman had _force of will_.--_Mirabeau_. Julien found the marquis furious. For perhaps the first time in his life this nobleman showed bad form. He loaded Julien with all the insults that came to his lips. Our hero was astonished, and his patience was tried, but his gratitude remained unshaken. "The poor man now sees the annihilation, in a single minute, of all the fine plans which he has long cherished in his heart. But I owe it to him to answer. My silence tends to increase his anger." The part of Tartuffe supplied the answer; "I am not an angel.... I served you well; you paid me generously.... I was grateful, but I am twenty-two.... Only you and that charming person understood my thoughts in this household." "Monster," exclaimed the marquis. "Charming! Charming, to be sure! The day when you found her charming you ought to have fled." "I tried to. It was then that I asked permission to leave for Languedoc." Tired of stampeding about and overcome by his grief, the marquis threw himself into an arm-chair. Julien heard him whispering to himself, "No, no, he is not a wicked man." "No, I am not, towards you," exclaimed Julien, falling on his knees. But he felt extremely ashamed of this manifestation, and very quickly got up again. The marquis was really transported. When he saw this movement, he began again to load him with abominable insults, which were worthy of the driver of a fiacre. The novelty of these oaths perhaps acted as a distraction. "What! is my daughter to go by the name of madame Sorel? What! is my daughter not to be a duchess?" Each time that these two ideas presented themselves in all their clearness M. de la Mole was a prey to torture, and lost all power over the movements of his mind. Julien was afraid of being beaten. In his lucid intervals, when he was beginning to get accustomed to his unhappiness, the marquis addressed to Julien reproaches which were reasonable enough. "You should have fled, sir," he said to him. "Your duty was to flee. You are the lowest of men." Julien approached the table and wrote: "I have found my life unbearable for a long time; I am putting an end to it. I request monsieur the marquis to accept my apologies (together with the expression of my infinite gratitude) for any embarrassment that may be occasioned by my death in his hotel." "Kindly run your eye over this paper, M. the marquis," said Julien. "Kill me, or have me killed by your valet. It is one o'clock in the morning. I will go and walk in the garden in the direction of the wall at the bottom." "Go to the devil," cried the marquis, as he went away. "I understand," thought Julien. "He would not be sorry if I were to spare his valet the trouble of killing me.... "Let him kill me, if he likes; it is a satisfaction which I offer him.... But, by heaven, I love life. I owe it to my son." This idea, which had not previously presented itself with so much definiteness to his imagination, completely engrossed him during his walk after the first few minutes which he had spent thinking about his danger. This novel interest turned him into a prudent man. "I need advice as to how to behave towards this infuriated man.... He is devoid of reason; he is capable of everything. Fouque is too far away; besides, he would not understand the emotions of a heart like the marquis's." "Count Altamira ... am I certain of eternal silence? My request for advice must not be a fresh step which will raise still further complications. Alas! I have no one left but the gloomy abbe Pirard. His mind is crabbed by Jansenism.... A damned Jesuit would know the world, and would be more in my line. M. Pirard is capable of beating me at the very mention of my crime." The genius of Tartuffe came to Julien's help. "Well, I will go and confess to him." This was his final resolution after having walked about in the garden for two good hours. He no longer thought about being surprised by a gun shot. He was feeling sleepy. Very early the next day, Julien was several leagues away from Paris and knocked at the door of the severe Jansenist. He found to his great astonishment that he was not unduly surprised at his confidence. "I ought perhaps to reproach myself," said the abbe, who seemed more anxious than irritated. "I thought I guessed that love. My affection for you, my unhappy boy, prevented me from warning the father." "What will he do?" said Julien keenly. At that moment he loved the abbe, and would have found a scene between them very painful. "I see three alternatives," continued Julien. "M. de la Mole can have me put to death," and he mentioned the suicide letter which he had left with the Marquis; (2) "He can get Count Norbert to challenge me to a duel, and shoot at me point blank." "You would accept?" said the abbe furiously as he got up. "You do not let me finish. I should certainly never fire upon my benefactor's son. (3) He can send me away. If he says go to Edinburgh or New York, I will obey him. They can then conceal mademoiselle de la Mole's condition, but I will never allow them to suppress my son." "Have no doubt about it, that will be the first thought of that depraved man." At Paris, Mathilde was in despair. She had seen her father about seven o'clock. He had shown her Julien's letter. She feared that he might have considered it noble to put an end to his life; "and without my permission?" she said to herself with a pain due solely to her anger. "If he dies I shall die," she said to her father. "It will be you who will be the cause of his death.... Perhaps you will rejoice at it but I swear by his shades that I shall at once go into mourning, and shall publicly appear as _Madame the widow Sorel_, I shall send out my invitations, you can count on it.... You will find me neither pusillanimous nor cowardly." Her love went to the point of madness. M. de la Mole was flabbergasted in his turn. He began to regard what had happened with a certain amount of logic. Mathilde did not appear at breakfast. The marquis felt an immense weight off his mind, and was particularly flattered when he noticed that she had said nothing to her mother. Julien was dismounting from his horse. Mathilde had him called and threw herself into his arms almost beneath the very eyes of her chambermaid. Julien was not very appreciative of this transport. He had come away from his long consultation with the abbe Pirard in a very diplomatic and calculating mood. The calculation of possibilities had killed his imagination. Mathilde told him, with tears in her eyes, that she had read his suicide letter. "My father may change his mind; do me the favour of leaving for Villequier this very minute. Mount your horse again, and leave the hotel before they get up from table." When Julien's coldness and astonishment showed no sign of abatement, she burst into tears. "Let me manage our affairs," she exclaimed ecstatically, as she clasped him in her arms. "You know, dear, it is not of my own free will that I separate from you. Write under cover to my maid. Address it in a strange hand-writing, I will write volumes to you. Adieu, flee." This last word wounded Julien, but he none the less obeyed. "It will be fatal," he thought "if, in their most gracious moments these aristocrats manage to shock me." Mathilde firmly opposed all her father's prudent plans. She would not open negotiations on any other basis except this. She was to be Madame Sorel, and was either to live with her husband in poverty in Switzerland, or with her father in Paris. She rejected absolutely the suggestion of a secret accouchement. "In that case I should begin to be confronted with a prospect of calumny and dishonour. I shall go travelling with my husband two months after the marriage, and it will be easy to pretend that my son was born at a proper time." This firmness though at first received with violent fits of anger, eventually made the marquis hesitate. "Here," he said to his daughter in a moment of emotion, "is a gift of ten thousand francs a year. Send it to your Julien, and let him quickly make it impossible for me to retract it." In order to obey Mathilde, whose imperious temper he well knew, Julien had travelled forty useless leagues; he was superintending the accounts of the farmers at Villequier. This act of benevolence on the part of the marquis occasioned his return. He went and asked asylum of the abbe Pirard, who had become Mathilde's most useful ally during his absence. Every time that he was questioned by the marquis, he would prove to him that any other course except public marriage would be a crime in the eyes of God. "And happily," added the abbe, "worldly wisdom is in this instance in agreement with religion. Could one, in view of Mdlle. de la Mole's passionate character, rely for a minute on her keeping any secret which she did not herself wish to preserve? If one does not reconcile oneself to the frankness of a public marriage, society will concern itself much longer with this strange mesalliance__. Everything must be said all at once without either the appearance or the reality of the slightest mystery." "It is true," said the marquis pensively. Two or three friends of M. de la Mole were of the same opinion as the abbe Pirard. The great obstacle in their view was Mathilde's decided character. But in spite of all these fine arguments the marquis's soul could not reconcile itself to giving up all hopes of a coronet for his daughter. He ransacked his memory and his imagination for all the variations of knavery and duplicity which had been feasible in his youth. Yielding to necessity and having fear of the law seemed absurd and humiliating for a man in his position. He was paying dearly now for the luxury of those enchanting dreams concerning the future of his cherished daughter in which he had indulged for the last ten years. "Who could have anticipated it?" he said to himself. "A girl of so proud a character, of so lofty a disposition, who is even prouder than I am of the name she bears? A girl whose hand has already been asked for by all the cream of the nobility of France." "We must give up all faith in prudence. This age is made to confound everything. We are marching towards chaos." CHAPTER LXIV A MAN OF INTELLECT The prefect said to himself as he rode along the highway on horseback, "why should I not be a minister, a president of the council, a duke? This is how I should make war.... By these means I should have all the reformers put in irons."--_The Globe_. No argument will succeed in destroying the paramount influence of ten years of agreeable dreaming. The marquis thought it illogical to be angry, but could not bring himself to forgive. "If only this Julien could die by accident," he sometimes said to himself. It was in this way that his depressed imagination found a certain relief in running after the most absurd chimaeras. They paralysed the influence of the wise arguments of the abbe Pirard. A month went by in this way without negotiations advancing one single stage. The marquis had in this family matter, just as he had in politics, brilliant ideas over which he would be enthusiastic for two or three days. And then a line of tactics would fail to please him because it was based on sound arguments, while arguments only found favour in his eyes in so far as they were based on his favourite plan. He would work for three days with all the ardour and enthusiasm of a poet on bringing matters to a certain stage; on the following day he would not give it a thought. Julien was at first disconcerted by the slowness of the marquis; but, after some weeks, he began to surmise that M. de La Mole had no definite plan with regard to this matter. Madame de La Mole and the whole household believed that Julien was travelling in the provinces in connection with the administration of the estates; he was in hiding in the parsonage of the abbe Pirard and saw Mathilde every day; every morning she would spend an hour with her father, but they would sometimes go for weeks on end without talking of the matter which engrossed all their thoughts. "I don't want to know where the man is," said the marquis to her one day. "Send him this letter." Mathilde read: "The Languedoc estates bring in 20,600 francs. I give 10,600 francs to my daughter, and 10,000 francs to M. Julien Sorel. It is understood that I give the actual estates. Tell the notary to draw up two separate deeds of gift, and to bring them to me to-morrow, after this there are to be no more relations between us. Ah, Monsieur, could I have expected all this? The marquis de La Mole." "I thank you very much," said Mathilde gaily. "We will go and settle in the Chateau d'Aiguillon, between Agen and Marmande. The country is said to be as beautiful as Italy." This gift was an extreme surprise to Julien. He was no longer the cold, severe man whom we have hitherto known. His thoughts were engrossed in advance by his son's destiny. This unexpected fortune, substantial as it was for a man as poor as himself, made him ambitious. He pictured a time when both his wife and himself would have an income of 36,000 francs. As for Mathilde, all her emotions were concentrated on her adoration for her husband, for that was the name by which her pride insisted on calling Julien. Her one great ambition was to secure the recognition of her marriage. She passed her time in exaggerating to herself the consummate prudence which she had manifested in linking her fate to that of a superior man. The idea of personal merit became a positive craze with her. Julien's almost continuous absence, coupled with the complications of business matters and the little time available in which to talk love, completed the good effect produced by the wise tactics which Julien had previously discovered. Mathilde finished by losing patience at seeing so little of the man whom she had come really to love. In a moment of irritation she wrote to her father and commenced her letter like Othello: "My very choice is sufficient proof that I have preferred Julien to all the advantages which society offered to the daughter of the marquis de la Mole. Such pleasures, based as they are on prestige and petty vanity mean nothing to me. It is now nearly six weeks since I have lived separated from my husband. That is sufficient to manifest my respect for yourself. Before next Thursday I shall leave the paternal house. Your acts of kindness have enriched us. No one knows my secret except the venerable abbe Pirard. I shall go to him: he will marry us, and an hour after the ceremony we shall be on the road to Languedoc, and we will never appear again in Paris except by your instructions. But what cuts me to the quick is that all this will provide the subject matter for piquant anecdotes against me and against yourself. May not the epigrams of a foolish public compel our excellent Norbert to pick a quarrel with Julien, under such circumstances I know I should have no control over him. We should discover in his soul the mark of the rebel plebian. Oh father, I entreat you on my knees, come and be present at my marriage in M. Pirard's church next Thursday. It will blunt the sting of malignant scandal and will guarantee the life's happiness of your only daughter, and of that of my husband, etc., etc." This letter threw the marquis's soul into a strange embarrassment. He must at last take a definite line. All his little habits: all his vulgar friends had lost their influence. In these strange circumstances the great lines of his character, which had been formed by the events of his youth, reassumed all their original force. The misfortunes of the emigration had made him into an imaginative man. After having enjoyed for two years an immense fortune and all the distinctions of the court, 1790 had flung him into the awful miseries of the emigration. This hard schooling had changed the character of a spirit of twenty-two. In essence, he was not so much dominated by his present riches as encamped in their midst. But that very imagination which had preserved his soul from the taint of avarice, had made him a victim of a mad passion for seeing his daughter decorated by a fine title. During the six weeks which had just elapsed, the marquis had felt at times impelled by a caprice for making Julien rich. He considered poverty mean, humiliating for himself, M. de la Mole, and impossible in his daughter's husband; he was ready to lavish money. On the next day his imagination would go off on another tack, and he would think that Julien would read between the lines of this financial generosity, change his name, exile himself to America, and write to Mathilde that he was dead for her. M. de la Mole imagined this letter written, and went so far as to follow its effect on his daughter's character. The day when he was awakened from these highly youthful dreams by Mathilde's actual letter after he had been thinking for along time of killing Julien or securing his disappearance he was dreaming of building up a brilliant position for him. He would make him take the name of one of his estates, and why should he not make him inherit a peerage? His father-in-law, M. the duke de Chaulnes, had, since the death of his own son in Spain, frequently spoken to him about his desire to transmit his title to Norbert.... "One cannot help owning that Julien has a singular aptitude for affairs, had boldness, and is possibly even brilliant," said the marquis to himself ... "but I detect at the root of his character a certain element which alarms me. He produces the same impression upon everyone, consequently there must be something real in it," and the more difficult this reality was to seize hold of, the more it alarmed the imaginative mind of the old marquis. "My daughter expressed the same point very neatly the other day (in a suppressed letter). "Julien has not joined any salon or any coterie. He has nothing to support himself against me, and has absolutely no resource if I abandon him. Now is that ignorance of the actual state of society? I have said to him two or three times, the only real and profitable candidature is the candidature of the salons. "No, he has not the adroit, cunning genius of an attorney who never loses a minute or an opportunity. He is very far from being a character like Louis XL. On the other hand, I have seen him quote the most ungenerous maxims ... it is beyond me. Can it be that he simply repeats these maxims in order to use them as a _dam_ against his passions? "However, one thing comes to the surface; he cannot bear contempt, that's my hold on him. "He has not, it is true, the religious reverence for high birth. He does not instinctively respect us.... That is wrong; but after all, the only things which are supposed to make the soul of a seminary student impatient are lack of enjoyment and lack of money. He is quite different, and cannot stand contempt at any price." Pressed as he was by his daughter's letter, M. de la Mole realised the necessity for making up his mind. "After all, the great question is this:--Did Julien's audacity go to the point of setting out to make advances to my daughter because he knows I love her more than anything else in the world, and because I have an income of a hundred thousand crowns?" Mathilde protests to the contrary.... "No, monsieur Julien, that is a point on which I am not going to be under any illusion. "Is it really a case of spontaneous and authentic love? or is it just a vulgar desire to raise himself to a fine position? Mathilde is far-seeing; she appreciated from the first that this suspicion might ruin him with me--hence that confession of hers. It was she who took upon herself to love him the first. "The idea of a girl of so proud a character so far forgetting herself as to make physical advances! To think of pressing his arm in the garden in the evening! How horrible! As though there were not a hundred other less unseemly ways of notifying him that he was the object of her favour. "_Qui s'excuse s'accuse_; I distrust Mathilde." The marquis's reasoning was more conclusive to-day than it was usually. Nevertheless, force of habit prevailed, and he resolved to gain time by writing to his daughter, for a correspondence was being carried on between one wing of the hotel and the other. M. de la Mole did not dare to discuss matters with Mathilde and to see her face to face. He was frightened of clinching the whole matter by yielding suddenly. "Mind you commit no new acts of madness; here is a commission of lieutenant of Hussars for M. the chevalier, Julien Sorel de la Vernaye. You see what I am doing for him. Do not irritate me. Do not question me. Let him leave within twenty-four hours and present himself at Strasbourg where his regiment is. Here is an order on my banker. Obey me." Mathilde's love and joy were unlimited. She wished to profit by her victory and immediately replied. "If M. de la Vernaye knew all that you are good enough to do for him, he would be overwhelmed with gratitude and be at your feet. But amidst all this generosity, my father has forgotten me; your daughter's honour is in peril. An indiscretion may produce an everlasting blot which an income of twenty thousand crowns could not put right. I will only send the commission to M. de la Vernaye if you give me your word that my marriage will be publicly celebrated at Villequier in the course of next month. Shortly after that period, which I entreat you not to prolong, your daughter will only be able to appear in public under the name of Madame de la Vernaye. How I thank you, dear papa, for having saved me from the name of Sorel, etc., etc." The reply was unexpected: "Obey or I retract everything. Tremble, you imprudent young girl. I do not yet know what your Julien is, and you yourself know less than I. Let him leave for Strasbourg, and try to act straightly. I will notify him from here of my wishes within a fortnight." Mathilde was astonished by this firm answer. _I do not know Julien_. These words threw her into a reverie which soon finished in the most fascinating suppositions; but she believed in their truth. My Julien's intellect is not clothed in the petty mean uniform of the salons, and my father refuses to believe in his superiority by reason of the very fact which proves it. All the same, if I do not obey this whim of his, I see the possibility of a public scene; a scandal would lower my position in society, and might render me less fascinating in Julien's eyes. After the scandal ... ten years of poverty; and the only thing which can prevent marrying for merit becoming ridiculous is the most brilliant wealth. If I live far away from my father, he is old and may forget me.... Norbert will marry some clever, charming woman; old Louis XIV. was seduced by the duchess of Burgundy. She decided to obey, but refrained from communicating her father's letter to Julien. It might perhaps have been that ferocious character driven to some act of madness. Julien's joy was unlimited when she informed him in the evening that he was a lieutenant of Hussars. Its extent can be imagined from the fact that this had constituted the ambition of his whole life, and also from the passion which he now had for his son. The change of name struck him with astonishment. "After all," he thought, "I have got to the end of my romance, and I deserve all the credit. I have managed to win the love of that monster of pride," he added, looking at Mathilde. "Her father cannot live without her, nor she without me." CHAPTER LXV A STORM My God, give me mediocrity.--_Mirabeau_. His mind was engrossed; he only half answered the eager tenderness that she showed to him. He remained gloomy and taciturn. He had never seemed so great and so adorable in Mathilde's eyes. She was apprehensive of some subtle twist of his pride which would spoil the whole situation. She saw the abbe Pirard come to the hotel nearly every morning. Might not Julien have divined something of her father's intentions through him? Might not the marquis himself have written to him in a momentary caprice. What was the explanation of Julien's stern manner following on so great a happiness? She did not dare to question. She did not _dare_--she--Mathilde! From that moment her feelings for Julien contained a certain vague and unexpected element which was almost panic. This arid soul experienced all the passion possible in an individual who has been brought up amid that excessive civilisation which Paris so much admires. Early on the following day Julien was at the house of the abbe Pirard. Some post-horses were arriving in the courtyard with a dilapidated chaise which had been hired at a neighbouring station. "A vehicle like that is out of fashion," said the stern abbe to him morosely. "Here are twenty thousand francs which M. de la Mole makes you a gift of. He insists on your spending them within a year, but at the same time wants you to try to look as little ridiculous as possible." (The priest regarded flinging away so substantial a sum on a young man as simply an opportunity for sin). "The marquis adds this: 'M. Julien de la Vernaye will have received this money from his father, whom it is needless to call by any other name. M. de la Vernaye will perhaps think it proper to give a present to M. Sorel, a carpenter of Verrieres, who cared for him in his childhood....' I can undertake that commission," added the abbe. "I have at last prevailed upon M. de la Mole to come to a settlement with that Jesuit, the abbe de Frilair. His influence is unquestionably too much for us. The complete recognition of your high birth on the part of this man, who is in fact the governor of B---- will be one of the unwritten terms of the arrangement." Julien could no longer control his ecstasy. He embraced the abbe. He saw himself recognised. "For shame," said M. Pirard, pushing him away. "What is the meaning of this worldly vanity? As for Sorel and his sons, I will offer them in my own name a yearly allowance of five hundred francs, which will be paid to each of them as long as I am satisfied with them." Julien was already cold and haughty. He expressed his thanks, but in the vaguest terms which bound him to nothing. "Could it be possible," he said to himself, "that I am the natural son of some great nobleman who was exiled to our mountains by the terrible Napoleon?" This idea seemed less and less improbable every minute.... "My hatred of my father would be a proof of this.... In that case, I should not be an unnatural monster after all." A few days after this soliloquy the Fifteenth Regiment of Hussars, which was one of the most brilliant in the army, was being reviewed on the parade ground of Strasbourg. M. the chevalier de La Vernaye sat the finest horse in Alsace, which had cost him six thousand francs. He was received as a lieutenant, though he had never been sub-lieutenant except on the rolls of a regiment of which he had never heard. His impassive manner, his stern and almost malicious eyes, his pallor, and his invariable self-possession, founded his reputation from the very first day. Shortly afterwards his perfect and calculated politeness, and his skill at shooting and fencing, of which, though without any undue ostentation, he made his comrades aware, did away with all idea of making fun of him openly. After hesitating for five or six days, the public opinion of the regiment declared itself in his favour. "This young man has everything," said the facetious old officers, "except youth." Julien wrote from Strasbourg to the old cure of Verrieres, M. Chelan, who was now verging on extreme old age. "You will have learnt, with a joy of which I have no doubt, of the events which have induced my family to enrich me. Here are five hundred francs which I request you to distribute quietly, and without any mention of my name, among those unfortunate ones who are now poor as I myself was once, and whom you will doubtless help as you once helped me." Julien was intoxicated with ambition, and not with vanity. He nevertheless devoted a great part of his time to attending to his external appearance. His horses, his uniform, his orderlies' liveries, were all kept with a correctness which would have done credit to the punctiliousness of a great English nobleman. He had scarcely been made a lieutenant as a matter of favour (and that only two days ago) than he began to calculate that if he was to become commander-in-chief at thirty, like all the great generals, then he must be more than a lieutenant at twenty-three at the latest. He thought about nothing except fame and his son. It was in the midst of the ecstasies of the most reinless ambition that he was surprised by the arrival of a young valet from the Hotel de la Mole, who had come with a letter. "All is lost," wrote Mathilde to him: "Rush here as quickly as possible, sacrifice everything, desert if necessary. As soon as you have arrived, wait for me in a fiacre near the little garden door, near No. ---- of the street ---- I will come and speak to you: I shall perhaps be able to introduce you into the garden. All is lost, and I am afraid there is no way out; count on me; you will find me staunch and firm in adversity. I love you." A few minutes afterwards, Julien obtained a furlough from the colonel, and left Strasbourg at full gallop. But the awful anxiety which devoured him did not allow him to continue this method of travel beyond Metz. He flung himself into a post-chaise, and arrived with an almost incredible rapidity at the indicated spot, near the little garden door of the Hotel de la Mole. The door opened, and Mathilde, oblivious of all human conventions, rushed into his arms. Fortunately, it was only five o'clock in the morning, and the street was still deserted. "All is lost. My father, fearing my tears, left Thursday night. Nobody knows where for? But here is his letter: read it." She climbed into the fiacre with Julien. "I could forgive everything except the plan of seducing you because you are rich. That, unhappy girl, is the awful truth. I give you my word of honour that I will never consent to a marriage with that man. I will guarantee him an income of 10,000 francs if he will live far away beyond the French frontiers, or better still, in America. Read the letter which I have just received in answer to the enquiries which I have made. The impudent scoundrel had himself requested me to write to madame de Renal. I will never read a single line you write concerning that man. I feel a horror for both Paris and yourself. I urge you to cover what is bound to happen with the utmost secrecy. Be frank, have nothing more to do with the vile man, and you will find again the father you have lost." "Where is Madame de Renal's letter?" said Julien coldly. "Here it is. I did not want to shew it to you before you were prepared for it." LETTER "My duties to the sacred cause of religion and morality, oblige me, monsieur, to take the painful course which I have just done with regard to yourself: an infallible principle orders me to do harm to my neighbour at the present moment, but only in order to avoid an even greater scandal. My sentiment of duty must overcome the pain which I experience. It is only too true, monsieur, that the conduct of the person about whom you ask me to tell you the whole truth may seem incredible or even honest. It may possibly be considered proper to hide or to disguise part of the truth: that would be in accordance with both prudence and religion. But the conduct about which you desire information has been in fact reprehensible to the last degree, and more than I can say. Poor and greedy as the man is, it is only by the aid of the most consummate hypocrisy, and by seducing a weak and unhappy woman, that he has endeavoured to make a career for himself and become someone in the world. It is part of my painful duty to add that I am obliged to believe that M. Julien has no religious principles. I am driven conscientiously to think that one of his methods of obtaining success in any household is to try to seduce the woman who commands the principal influence. His one great object, in spite of his show of disinterestedness, and his stock-in-trade of phrases out of novels, is to succeed in doing what he likes with the master of the household and his fortune. He leaves behind him unhappiness and eternal remorse, etc., etc., etc." This extremely long letter, which was almost blotted out by tears, was certainly in madame de Renal's handwriting; it was even written with more than ordinary care. "I cannot blame M. de la Mole," said Julien, "after he had finished it. He is just and prudent. What father would give his beloved daughter to such a man? Adieu!" Julien jumped out of the fiacre and rushed to his post-chaise, which had stopped at the end of the street. Mathilde, whom he had apparently forgotten, took a few steps as though to follow him, but the looks she received from the tradesmen, who were coming out on the thresholds of their shops, and who knew who she was, forced her to return precipitately to the garden. Julien had left for Verrieres. During that rapid journey he was unable to write to Mathilde as he had intended. His hand could only form illegible characters on the paper. He arrived at Verrieres on a Sunday morning. He entered the shop of the local gunsmith, who overwhelmed him with congratulations on his recent good fortune. It constituted the news of the locality. Julien had much difficulty in making him understand that he wanted a pair of pistols. At his request the gunsmith loaded the pistols. The three peals sounded; it is a well-known signal in the villages of France, and after the various ringings in the morning announces the immediate commencement of Mass. Julien entered the new church of Verrieres. All the lofty windows of the building were veiled with crimson curtains. Julien found himself some spaces behind the pew of madame de Renal. It seemed to him that she was praying fervently The sight of the woman whom he had loved so much made Julien's arm tremble so violently that he was at first unable to execute his project. "I cannot," he said to himself. "It is a physical impossibility." At that moment the young priest, who was officiating at the Mass, rang the bell for the elevation of the host. Madame de Renal lowered her head, which, for a moment became entirely hidden by the folds of her shawl. Julien did not see her features so distinctly: he aimed a pistol shot at her, and missed her: he aimed a second shot, she fell.

Chapters 33-35

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After reading Mathilde's letter, the marquis is beside himself with rage and hurls every insult at Julien. Julien offers to commit suicide or to be killed by the marquis' men. He goes to Pirard for advice. Mathilde learns of Julien's suicide note and resolutely tells her father that if Julien dies, she dies, and that she will appear as Julien's widow to society. When Julien returns to Paris, Mathilde convinces him to leave and to let her manage her father. The latter only shows indecision. Mathilde refuses to negotiate other than on the condition of a marriage with Julien, heedless of what their future might be. In a moment of tenderness, the marquis gives shares worth 10,000 francs to Mathilde for Julien. Julien stays with Pirard, who has become Mathilde's best ally in trying to convince the marquis of the necessity of a public marriage. The marquis cannot bring himself to act. He alternately envisions Julien's accidental death, then entertains the wise counsel of Pirard. Above all, he refuses to believe that his ambition for Mathilde's brilliant future has been thwarted. Mathilde has been seeing Julien almost daily at Pirard's. Finally, the marquis gives the couple an estate in Languedoc as a means to put off making a final decision. By letter, Mathilde begs her father's permission to marry Julien. This causes the marquis to consider the possibility of protecting Julien, of helping him to build a brilliant career. He has a doubt, however, about Julien's sincerity. Has he merely used Mathilde as a means to get ahead in society? Rather than give his permission for the marriage, he gives Julien a title and a commission in the army. Mathilde replies by trying to bargain. She will not communicate news of the title to Julien unless her father agrees to the marriage. The marquis refuses categorically and demands that Julien leave for Strasbourg or all will be rescinded. Julien prepares to leave for Strasbourg. Pirard explains how the marquis has bought Frilair's silence in order to gain acceptance of the fictitious noble ancestry he has devised for Julien. For five days the latter is in Strasbourg, where his calm dignified bearing, elegance, daring, and ability with arms inspire admiration in his men. Then a letter from Mathilde arrives announcing that all is lost and calling for Julien's immediate return to Paris. There Julien learns that the marquis has inquired of Mme. de Renal about Julien's past. The answer she has written confirms the fears of the marquis. The letter accuses Julien of making a practice of insinuating himself into respectable families, of seducing the womenfolk, then of ruining them. Julien leaves immediately for Verrieres, arriving on a Sunday morning. He buys revolvers, goes to the church, and shoots Mme. de Renal.

In a crisis, Julien's women are able to act more efficaciously than he is. Mme. de Renal resolutely initiated the deception of her husband; Mathilde confronts her father successfully. She is more resolute than her father and turns his indecision to her advantage. The passivity that Stendhal bestows on Julien provides the opportunity for enjoyment of maternal affection that the premature death of Stendhal's own mother denied him. Twice in Chapter 33 Stendhal describes Julien's conduct as tartuffian. As a defense against the marquis' anger, Julien tries to justify his action, all the while expressing his gratitude to the marquis. Then, Julien adopts the required air of contrition to confess his situation to Pirard in the hope of getting advice. In Julien's initial confrontation with the marquis, the only solution the former can hit upon is suicide, or letting himself be killed, a solution he doubtlessly offers without reflection. The thought of his "son" comes to him for the first time, however, and this thought checks his willingness to be killed. Julien plays an extremely passive role in Chapters 33 and 34. Chapter 34 narrates the give and take between Mathilde and her father. He sits in irresolution; Mathilde presses him by letter. The marquis grants a concession, and this encourages Mathilde to ask for more. Another concession is forthcoming from her father, rather than a definitive action that would condone their marriage. Although the marquis is more sympathetically treated by Stendhal than was M. de Renal, both have the same role in the author's playing out of his Oedipus complex. The marquis' doubting of Julien's motivation is a preparation for the event that will bring about the latter's downfall. A parallel development to this preparation, however, is the momentary "taste" of success that Stendhal will allow his hero to have. Stendhal will accord a title and a regiment to Julien. This is typical treatment by Stendhal of his superior beings. They are not destined for a permanent, commonplace happiness, which would, in fact, become vile to them. Note that Julien already seems far away from the action. His thoughts are absorbed completely by the future of his child. Stendhal begins attenuating Julien's love for Mathilde, and his ambition is reappearing. Stendhal mentions Julien's ambition twice in this chapter. Julien's joy is boundless at the news that he is an officer of the Hussars. He is aware, however, of the ephemeral nature of this goal attained, as he remarks that his story has reached its climax. Julien still misunderstands situations, however, as he attributes his success to himself alone. He has succeeded in making himself loved by this monster of pride. And he summarizes his present situation astutely when he muses that Mathilde cannot live without him, nor M. de la Mole without her. How many events, and of what moment, Stendhal crowds into Chapter 35. He moves Julien to the pinnacle of success, lets him revel in this glory for the duration of one page, then precipitates events that will divest him of this worldly glory and ultimately destroy him. The marquis has again been Julien's fairy godfather who conjures up the illusion of success and glory, then takes it from him abruptly. The scene sketched by Stendhal of Julien in all his equestrian glory evokes briefly the same scene in Part I where Julien played a role in the honor guard. The scenes have in common their illusory nature: Then, Julien was merely in the costume of a soldier; now, the abrupt ending of the real role makes its very existence seem doubtful. Proof of the fact that Julien himself almost believes in his fictitious nobility is furnished by the letter he sends to Chelan, together with money to be distributed to the poor. This is the noble gesture of an aristocrat. Julien wants to believe in his nobility since he would not consider himself a monster if Sorel, a man whom he despises, were not his father. In this way, the tragic contradiction he has been forced to live -- a superior soul stifled by mediocrity would be reconciled. Happiness, for the superior being, is simply not available except in small, almost unbearable doses. The proximity of Stendhal to his hero is again underlined. Stendhal is self-demanding, almost masochistic, and his hero, to whom he denies happiness, is superior because of the denial. We have noted that Stendhal has already begun to exclude Julien's intimate reactions. This tendency is even more pronounced in Chapter 35 as Julien returns hurriedly to Paris, learns what the catastrophe is, takes to the road again, arrives in Verrieres, arms himself, and shoots Mme. de Renal. It is partially Stendhal's reserve, his timidity, his refusal to let himself be seen that has dictated his attitude in narrating these events almost devoid of reference to the psychology that prompts Julien to act. This ambiguity has given rise to a literary debate that continues to our day. Is this act, the attempted murder of Mme. de Renal, consistent with the character of Julien? Is Stendhal betraying that psychology in an effort to remain faithful to the historical episode that inspired the novel, and is the denouement therefore artificial? Here are some of the critics' views. Emile Faguet, noted nineteenth-century critic, saw Julien as committing a senseless act that contradicts his character as established by Stendhal. Faguet denies Stendhal a great degree of intelligence, moreover. He sees Julien as the ruthless, ambitious man, coldly calculating and of unshakable will. The character thus conceived, continues Faguet, Julien should have realized that within a short time the marquis, already having accepted many compromises, would have reversed his decision and sanctioned the marriage. Julien seems to have forgotten that he is master of the situation. The denouement, concludes Faguet, seems a little more false than is permitted. Another critic, M. Henri Rambaud, defends Faguet's interpretation, seeing Julien simply as the "arriviste" type. These critics would see, therefore, the rapidity and incomplete nature of the narration of these events as evidence of Stendhal's dilemma, his avowal, by omission, of the contradiction he was creating in Julien's character. On the other hand, the critic Henri Martineau sees this act and the dry, sketched narration leading to it as logical given the character of Julien. Here is the extremely sensitive, impetuous hero who has throughout the novel attempted, with varying degrees of success, to submit his spontaneity to the discipline of self-control, to disguise his true feelings by hypocrisy. Such a type is capable, as his past conduct has shown, of seeing his discipline thwarted by the sudden eruption of his passion. When this occurs, the act is but the next movement from its inspiration. Therefore, Stendhal is obliged to reduce the narration to its barest elements, to get Julien there, to have him commit the act. The narration reflects the motivation: Julien is in a semi-somnambulistic state. He has but one idea -- revenge on Mme. de Renal -- and any other detail would be extraneous. And why does Julien want revenge? Herein lies the psychological insight of Stendhal. Julien both hates and loves Mme. de Renal. He has never reached the end of his love for her, yet she has apparently deliberately lied about his conduct. She has ruined his success. His pride and sense of honor have also been wounded. He must avenge himself. Julien's sudden awakening after the act, his long sleep in the jail resulting from excessive tension -- these, argues Martineau, are proof that Julien has acted consistently with his character. Note the scene of the attempted murder. Julien is unable, at first, to fire on Mme. de Renal because he recognizes her. The bell rings at that moment marking the Elevation of the Host. Mme. de Renal bows her head, and he no longer recognizes her so clearly. He fires. Only when she ceases to exist momentarily, as herself, defined as an individual whom he loves, is he capable of the act. The ringing of the bell might be instrumental also in the very commission of the act. Its abrupt occurrence, followed by another action, the bowing of heads, calls for another: the firing of the pistol. This would constitute a sort of demotivation of the act, reminiscent of Gide's attempts to produce the gratuitous act in Les Caves du Vatican and of Camus' scene in L'Etranger, where Meursault through the complicity of things -- -- the sun's reflection, heat -- fires on the Arab. Here, there is a "chain of events," one producing another, an inexorable rhythm created thereby, to which Julien almost involuntarily and mechanically contributes.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/1232-chapters/15.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/The Prince/section_5_part_1.txt

The Prince.chapter xv

chapter xv

{"name": "Chapter XV", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210417004655/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-prince/study-guide/summary-section-6-chapters-xv-xix", "summary": "\"On the Reasons Why Men Are Praised or Blamed - Especially Princes,\" Machiavelli argues that a prince should be good as long as that goodness is politically useful. It is impossible for a prince to be perfect and to exercise all virtues; therefore, he should not worry about guarding against vices that will not cost him his state. He should avoid those vices that lead to the kind of disgrace that could precipitate a fall from power, but while he should try to avoid those vices that are not as damaging, if he cannot prevent them, he is allowed to indulge them", "analysis": "If The Prince is often characterized as a treatise on unscrupulous politics and a manual of ruthless power games, Chapter XV, \"On the Reasons Why Men Are Praised or Blamed - Especially Princes,\" is a particularly crucial chapter. It is here that Machiavelli directly addresses the question that has been bubbling underneath the surface of his book thus far - namely, to what extent does being good matter? Machiavelli's answer: as long as it contributes to holding onto power. The key notion here is that good is a relative concept; surface virtuosity, of the kind often showcased by rulers, is often but a disguise, and the greatest good lies in the end - the all-inclusive goal of maintaining the state and securing the reins of power. In other words, good is good insofar as it is politically expedient. The categorical crumbles in the face of efficiency, for the latter is the only true barometer. The ends justify the means, and utilitarianism is the dominant mode of reasoning. If a prince needs to indulge a vice to save his state, so be it. \"For if you look at matters carefully,\" Machiavelli writes, \"you will see that something resembling virtue, if you follow it, may be your ruin, while something resembling vice will lead, if you follow it, to your security and well-being.\" One might compare this argument to the thrust of Chapter XIII, \"On Those Who Have Become Princes By Crime,\" which measures when and to what extent a prince's cruelty can be justified. Machiavelli is arguing something far more complex than a call to disregard morality. His example of the generous prince begins as a seemingly hard-lined argument and emerges as a humanist consideration of the faults of man. A prince should not be miserly just for the sake of it; miserliness, by resulting in the safeguarding of funds and greater financial security, winds up helping the people in quite direct ways. It is up to the prince to see beyond short-run desires and superficial appearances and to not give away money he cannot afford to spend just to put on a lovable face and to curry favor, but instead to weather the occasional criticism and plan for the future. It is all about the greater good. Machiavelli sublimates the individualistic treatment of the prince as solitary agent into a larger view of society as contingent on long-term planning and sacrifice. The Prince reads here as less a how-to for the aspiring prince than a social manifesto; Machiavelli puts faith in the people's judgment, arguing that they will come around to loving the miserly prince who saves money out of necessity. As in his earlier distinctions between the common people and the nobles, he emerges as more of a populist and democrat than popular conceptions of The Prince tend to allow for. That said, Chapter XVII, \"On Cruelty and Clemency,\" presents a thoroughly pessimistic view of humanity. Men are inherently \"rotten,\" Machiavelli argues, explaining that they are \"ungrateful, fickle, liars and deceivers, fearful of danger and greedy for gain.\" For this reason, it is safer for a prince to be feared than to be loved: \"love is link of obligation which men, because they are rotten, will break any time they think doing so serves their advantage.\" Fear, on the other hand, \"involves dread of punishment, from which they can never escape.\" As always, Machiavelli tempers what seems at first like a thoroughly cynical position, noting that moderation is the key, and that a prince should try to make himself feared in a way that does not make him hated. More specifically, he should only shed blood when he has good reason to, he should not confiscate property, and he should keep his hands off his subjects' women. Certain lines cannot be crossed. As Machiavelli writes a few pages later, a prince \"should be ready to enter on evil if he has to,\" but he must have to. In any case, virtues are often difficult to define; they are only virtuous insofar as they help people. Virtue for its own sake can be harmful, and for a prince to possess and exercise all virtues at all times is a mistake. Appearances are a different matter: the masses are impressed by the superficial appearance of things so long as the prince's ends are achieved. It matters little, therefore, who the prince really is. Machiavelli closes Chapter XVIII with a reference that deserves mention. \"A certain prince of our own time,\" he writes, \"whom it's just as well not to name, preaches nothing but peace and mutual trust, yet he is the determined enemy of both.\" This seems to be a condemnation, but Machiavelli continues: \"if on several different occasions he had observed either, he would have lost both his reputation and his throne.\" The prince in question is Ferdinand of Spain, and the passage is something of a swipe at him. The first line suggests untempered scorn, while the second modifies this position and recasts Ferdinand as an example of how hypocrisy can be useful. These last few words are perhaps the veil Machiavelli uses to hide a more acute criticism of Ferdinand, who secured his power through often bloodthirsty tactics, expelling the Muslims and Jews from Spain, waging war, and persecuting the masses. These repellent maneuvers, Machiavelli is forced to admit, did work. We can sense here the writer having reached a sort of theoretical impasse: how to both condemn and praise? How to reconcile a need for human goodness with the demands of power and the vicissitudes of international relations? Ferdinand provides a particularly difficult case, since Machiavelli, writing of him as a \"determined enemy\" of peace and trust, seems to disapprove of him, while his own writings provide a framework whereby Ferdinand's actions are thoroughly justifiable. What is perhaps most important is that Machiavelli faces Ferdinand head-on. Contradictions may abound as Machiavelli maps out his philosophy, but he seems to implicitly acknowledge this. The Prince is more than a simplistic argument for cold-heartedness in politics, and these chapters reflect Machiavelli's efforts to grapple with the various problems his more cynical positions engender."}

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.

Chapter XV

https://web.archive.org/web/20210417004655/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-prince/study-guide/summary-section-6-chapters-xv-xix

"On the Reasons Why Men Are Praised or Blamed - Especially Princes," Machiavelli argues that a prince should be good as long as that goodness is politically useful. It is impossible for a prince to be perfect and to exercise all virtues; therefore, he should not worry about guarding against vices that will not cost him his state. He should avoid those vices that lead to the kind of disgrace that could precipitate a fall from power, but while he should try to avoid those vices that are not as damaging, if he cannot prevent them, he is allowed to indulge them

If The Prince is often characterized as a treatise on unscrupulous politics and a manual of ruthless power games, Chapter XV, "On the Reasons Why Men Are Praised or Blamed - Especially Princes," is a particularly crucial chapter. It is here that Machiavelli directly addresses the question that has been bubbling underneath the surface of his book thus far - namely, to what extent does being good matter? Machiavelli's answer: as long as it contributes to holding onto power. The key notion here is that good is a relative concept; surface virtuosity, of the kind often showcased by rulers, is often but a disguise, and the greatest good lies in the end - the all-inclusive goal of maintaining the state and securing the reins of power. In other words, good is good insofar as it is politically expedient. The categorical crumbles in the face of efficiency, for the latter is the only true barometer. The ends justify the means, and utilitarianism is the dominant mode of reasoning. If a prince needs to indulge a vice to save his state, so be it. "For if you look at matters carefully," Machiavelli writes, "you will see that something resembling virtue, if you follow it, may be your ruin, while something resembling vice will lead, if you follow it, to your security and well-being." One might compare this argument to the thrust of Chapter XIII, "On Those Who Have Become Princes By Crime," which measures when and to what extent a prince's cruelty can be justified. Machiavelli is arguing something far more complex than a call to disregard morality. His example of the generous prince begins as a seemingly hard-lined argument and emerges as a humanist consideration of the faults of man. A prince should not be miserly just for the sake of it; miserliness, by resulting in the safeguarding of funds and greater financial security, winds up helping the people in quite direct ways. It is up to the prince to see beyond short-run desires and superficial appearances and to not give away money he cannot afford to spend just to put on a lovable face and to curry favor, but instead to weather the occasional criticism and plan for the future. It is all about the greater good. Machiavelli sublimates the individualistic treatment of the prince as solitary agent into a larger view of society as contingent on long-term planning and sacrifice. The Prince reads here as less a how-to for the aspiring prince than a social manifesto; Machiavelli puts faith in the people's judgment, arguing that they will come around to loving the miserly prince who saves money out of necessity. As in his earlier distinctions between the common people and the nobles, he emerges as more of a populist and democrat than popular conceptions of The Prince tend to allow for. That said, Chapter XVII, "On Cruelty and Clemency," presents a thoroughly pessimistic view of humanity. Men are inherently "rotten," Machiavelli argues, explaining that they are "ungrateful, fickle, liars and deceivers, fearful of danger and greedy for gain." For this reason, it is safer for a prince to be feared than to be loved: "love is link of obligation which men, because they are rotten, will break any time they think doing so serves their advantage." Fear, on the other hand, "involves dread of punishment, from which they can never escape." As always, Machiavelli tempers what seems at first like a thoroughly cynical position, noting that moderation is the key, and that a prince should try to make himself feared in a way that does not make him hated. More specifically, he should only shed blood when he has good reason to, he should not confiscate property, and he should keep his hands off his subjects' women. Certain lines cannot be crossed. As Machiavelli writes a few pages later, a prince "should be ready to enter on evil if he has to," but he must have to. In any case, virtues are often difficult to define; they are only virtuous insofar as they help people. Virtue for its own sake can be harmful, and for a prince to possess and exercise all virtues at all times is a mistake. Appearances are a different matter: the masses are impressed by the superficial appearance of things so long as the prince's ends are achieved. It matters little, therefore, who the prince really is. Machiavelli closes Chapter XVIII with a reference that deserves mention. "A certain prince of our own time," he writes, "whom it's just as well not to name, preaches nothing but peace and mutual trust, yet he is the determined enemy of both." This seems to be a condemnation, but Machiavelli continues: "if on several different occasions he had observed either, he would have lost both his reputation and his throne." The prince in question is Ferdinand of Spain, and the passage is something of a swipe at him. The first line suggests untempered scorn, while the second modifies this position and recasts Ferdinand as an example of how hypocrisy can be useful. These last few words are perhaps the veil Machiavelli uses to hide a more acute criticism of Ferdinand, who secured his power through often bloodthirsty tactics, expelling the Muslims and Jews from Spain, waging war, and persecuting the masses. These repellent maneuvers, Machiavelli is forced to admit, did work. We can sense here the writer having reached a sort of theoretical impasse: how to both condemn and praise? How to reconcile a need for human goodness with the demands of power and the vicissitudes of international relations? Ferdinand provides a particularly difficult case, since Machiavelli, writing of him as a "determined enemy" of peace and trust, seems to disapprove of him, while his own writings provide a framework whereby Ferdinand's actions are thoroughly justifiable. What is perhaps most important is that Machiavelli faces Ferdinand head-on. Contradictions may abound as Machiavelli maps out his philosophy, but he seems to implicitly acknowledge this. The Prince is more than a simplistic argument for cold-heartedness in politics, and these chapters reflect Machiavelli's efforts to grapple with the various problems his more cynical positions engender.

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/chapters_3_to_5.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/Lord Jim/section_1_part_0.txt

Lord Jim.chapters 3-5

chapters 3 - 5

{"name": "Chapters 3 - 5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210126121516/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/lordjim/section2/", "summary": "The Patna continues toward Mecca through an impossibly still night. The passengers are asleep and Jim is on watch, imagining heroic deeds as usual. The ship's captain, a tremendously obese and violent \"New South Wales German,\" argues with the second engineer, who is drunk. A sudden impact shakes the ship, pitching the engineer forward and nearly knocking Jim and the captain off their feet. The impact is followed only by silence and a rumbling shake of the ship. The narrative suddenly skips ahead a month to a courtroom, where an inquest is being held. Jim is on the stand recounting the events of that night. He recalls that he was sent below to examine the ship for damage following the impact, which, it is mentioned, is thought to have been with a floating shipwreck. Jim tells the court that he found the hold filling with water and that he then realized that there must be \"a big hole below the waterline. \" On his way to examine the bulkhead, which divides sections of the hold, he encountered the second engineer, who had broken his arm falling from a ladder. Jim enters into a detailed, impressionistic account of subsequent events, but he is quickly cut off by the court, which wants only \"yes or no\" answers in their search for the \"facts.\" As he testifies, Jim notices \"a white man who apart from the others, with his face worn and clouded, but with quiet eyes,\" who is watching him intently. Jim senses that the man understands his predicament . We find out that this man is Marlow, who will narrate a good bit of the story, and who will \"later on, many times, in distant parts of the world. . .show. . .himself willing to remember Jim, to remember him at length, in detail and audibly. \" In other words, Marlow is to be the keeper of Jim's story. The narrative shifts again, to Marlow, on a verandah after dinner, recounting Jim's story to a group of silent listeners. Marlow admits to his audience that he's not sure why he attended the inquiry, except for the fact that the Patna \"affair\" had become \"notorious\" in the maritime community of that part of the world, and everyone who could came to the trial. Marlow tells his listeners that he himself saw the rescued crew of the Patna arrive in port and report to the harbor office to make a deposition. He digresses for a moment, detailing the repulsive appearance of the crew, particularly the captain, who was wearing someone else's pajamas, and then digresses still further to offer an account of his acquaintance with the harbormaster's clerk, which has no real relevance to the story except to reveal something of Marlow's character: he once gave the clerk a generous tip, he says, because the man's \"childlike belief in the sacred right to perquisites quite touched heart.\" Marlow looked on as the Patna's crew argued with the harbormaster, and it is then that he first noticed Jim, who stood out from the rest of the debased bunch. Marlow immediately fixed on Jim as \"one of us,\" a tag that will be repeated throughout the novel. The crew, after disputing with the harbormaster for a few moments longer, disappeared into a series of rickshaws. The second engineer, with his broken arm, went to the hospital, where Marlow, going to see an injured member of his own crew, encountered him a few days later. Another member of the Patna's crew, a man with a long, drooping mustache, was also in the hospital, in the throes of delirium and hallucinations after a long drinking binge that began when he reached port. Marlow interrogated him, and was told by the man that he saw the Patna go down with his own eyes. He then rambles on about the reptiles on board the ship and the pink toads that are under his hospital bed. Marlow was asked by one of the doctors, as he left the hospital, if the man's testimony would be material to the inquiry. Marlow tells him it would not.", "analysis": "Commentary The narrative continues to play games with time, jumping between the collision on board the Patna, the inquiry into the collision, and events between the crew's rescue and the inquiry. Note that a great deal of information is still not available to the reader: What did the ship hit? Why did the crew need to be rescued? Why is an inquiry being held into the crew's behavior? And, most critically, who is Marlow, and why is he so interested in Jim? The reader is put in the same position as the crew of the Patna following the impact: something important has just happened, but we're not sure what it is, and the consequences are entirely unclear. Jim theorizes that the Patna has an enormous gouge \"below the waterline,\" but he is unable to see the damage threatening his ship, as it is hidden at the bottom of a dark, flooded compartment below the deck. Just as it is only the flooding that is apparent to Jim, it is only the aftermath of a major, still-unknown event that is visible to the reader: an injured man, a man who has drunk himself into hallucinations, and a trial, for a crime still a mystery to us. The inquiry introduces Marlow , and also serves to highlight his curious interest in Jim by way of contrast. The inquiry is interested in \"fact,\" so much so that the magistrate presiding tells Jim to curtail his explanations and reminiscences and get to the point.\" Yes or no\" answers are what the court wants, but perhaps, as Marlow's presence suggests, the issues at hand require a more subtle form of inquiry. Marlow fixates on Jim's status as \"one of us,\" but what does this phrase mean? Marlow and Jim are both sailors, but so are the men who seem to have Jim on trial . Marlow initially offers us the explanation that he is interested in Jim because he is \"outwardly so typical of that good, stupid kind we like to feel marching right and left of us in life\"; in other words, he claims to pity Jim in a way, and to feel an urge to protect him. Later, though, Marlow gives a more complicated reason for his interest, saying that he \"would have trusted the deck to that youngster on the strength of a single glance, and gone to sleep with both eyes --and, by Jove! it wouldn't have been safe.\" He preliminarily concludes that Jim fascinates him because \"he look as genuine as a new sovereign, but there some infernal alloy in his metal. \" What does this mean, and why does Marlow so deeply identify with Jim? We still don't know why it wouldn't be safe to trust Jim with a ship nor why Jim should be considered \"infernal.\" Above all, who is this Marlow, and how is it that he has access to every part of Jim's story? Marlow is the consummate storyteller, as we see in the hypothetical setup at the end of Chapter 4 and the beginning of Chapter 5. He reorders the material at hand to maximize suspense and create meaningful juxtapositions and omissions. Most of all, he offers a record of his own involvement with and reaction to Jim's story. Marlow constructs himself as an alternate hero, an intellectual hero who is not only Jim's best reader, but also his best representative, his best hope for a continued place in the world's memory. Pay attention to Marlow's encounter with the alcoholic crewman from the Patna. This is a novel filled with coincidences and parallel structures, and this is a plot device that will recur. Coincidence is an important idea in this novel. Marlow's eventual ability to piece together all of Jim's story is due to chance meetings, mutual acquaintances, and the similarity in their occupations. He takes an interest in Jim and makes an effort to learn about him over time, but he is aided by sheer luck and some mysterious circumstances, in a part of the world where distances are great and \"civilization\" is still minimal. What does coincidence mean in Lord Jim? It is not evidence of providential design or predestined fate; rather, coincidence highlights Jim's representative quality--he is, in some way, \"one of\" all of \"us.\" It also emphasizes Jim's inability to escape his past, a fact which will assume great importance in the closing chapters of the novel; despite moving thousands of miles away from white civilization and several years forward in time, Jim is never quite able to escape whatever it is that happened on the Patna. The role of coincidence thus also suggests lingering overtones of Victorian moral codes, under which nothing goes unpunished, nothing is forgiven. Watch for repeating structures and coincidences in the plot, and look particularly for parallels between the two major episodes."}

A marvellous stillness pervaded the world, and the stars, together with the serenity of their rays, seemed to shed upon the earth the assurance of everlasting security. The young moon recurved, and shining low in the west, was like a slender shaving thrown up from a bar of gold, and the Arabian Sea, smooth and cool to the eye like a sheet of ice, extended its perfect level to the perfect circle of a dark horizon. The propeller turned without a check, as though its beat had been part of the scheme of a safe universe; and on each side of the Patna two deep folds of water, permanent and sombre on the unwrinkled shimmer, enclosed within their straight and diverging ridges a few white swirls of foam bursting in a low hiss, a few wavelets, a few ripples, a few undulations that, left behind, agitated the surface of the sea for an instant after the passage of the ship, subsided splashing gently, calmed down at last into the circular stillness of water and sky with the black speck of the moving hull remaining everlastingly in its centre. Jim on the bridge was penetrated by the great certitude of unbounded safety and peace that could be read on the silent aspect of nature like the certitude of fostering love upon the placid tenderness of a mother's face. Below the roof of awnings, surrendered to the wisdom of white men and to their courage, trusting the power of their unbelief and the iron shell of their fire-ship, the pilgrims of an exacting faith slept on mats, on blankets, on bare planks, on every deck, in all the dark corners, wrapped in dyed cloths, muffled in soiled rags, with their heads resting on small bundles, with their faces pressed to bent forearms: the men, the women, the children; the old with the young, the decrepit with the lusty--all equal before sleep, death's brother. A draught of air, fanned from forward by the speed of the ship, passed steadily through the long gloom between the high bulwarks, swept over the rows of prone bodies; a few dim flames in globe-lamps were hung short here and there under the ridge-poles, and in the blurred circles of light thrown down and trembling slightly to the unceasing vibration of the ship appeared a chin upturned, two closed eyelids, a dark hand with silver rings, a meagre limb draped in a torn covering, a head bent back, a naked foot, a throat bared and stretched as if offering itself to the knife. The well-to-do had made for their families shelters with heavy boxes and dusty mats; the poor reposed side by side with all they had on earth tied up in a rag under their heads; the lone old men slept, with drawn-up legs, upon their prayer-carpets, with their hands over their ears and one elbow on each side of the face; a father, his shoulders up and his knees under his forehead, dozed dejectedly by a boy who slept on his back with tousled hair and one arm commandingly extended; a woman covered from head to foot, like a corpse, with a piece of white sheeting, had a naked child in the hollow of each arm; the Arab's belongings, piled right aft, made a heavy mound of broken outlines, with a cargo-lamp swung above, and a great confusion of vague forms behind: gleams of paunchy brass pots, the foot-rest of a deck-chair, blades of spears, the straight scabbard of an old sword leaning against a heap of pillows, the spout of a tin coffee-pot. The patent log on the taffrail periodically rang a single tinkling stroke for every mile traversed on an errand of faith. Above the mass of sleepers a faint and patient sigh at times floated, the exhalation of a troubled dream; and short metallic clangs bursting out suddenly in the depths of the ship, the harsh scrape of a shovel, the violent slam of a furnace-door, exploded brutally, as if the men handling the mysterious things below had their breasts full of fierce anger: while the slim high hull of the steamer went on evenly ahead, without a sway of her bare masts, cleaving continuously the great calm of the waters under the inaccessible serenity of the sky. Jim paced athwart, and his footsteps in the vast silence were loud to his own ears, as if echoed by the watchful stars: his eyes, roaming about the line of the horizon, seemed to gaze hungrily into the unattainable, and did not see the shadow of the coming event. The only shadow on the sea was the shadow of the black smoke pouring heavily from the funnel its immense streamer, whose end was constantly dissolving in the air. Two Malays, silent and almost motionless, steered, one on each side of the wheel, whose brass rim shone fragmentarily in the oval of light thrown out by the binnacle. Now and then a hand, with black fingers alternately letting go and catching hold of revolving spokes, appeared in the illumined part; the links of wheel-chains ground heavily in the grooves of the barrel. Jim would glance at the compass, would glance around the unattainable horizon, would stretch himself till his joints cracked, with a leisurely twist of the body, in the very excess of well-being; and, as if made audacious by the invincible aspect of the peace, he felt he cared for nothing that could happen to him to the end of his days. From time to time he glanced idly at a chart pegged out with four drawing-pins on a low three-legged table abaft the steering-gear case. The sheet of paper portraying the depths of the sea presented a shiny surface under the light of a bull's-eye lamp lashed to a stanchion, a surface as level and smooth as the glimmering surface of the waters. Parallel rulers with a pair of dividers reposed on it; the ship's position at last noon was marked with a small black cross, and the straight pencil-line drawn firmly as far as Perim figured the course of the ship--the path of souls towards the holy place, the promise of salvation, the reward of eternal life--while the pencil with its sharp end touching the Somali coast lay round and still like a naked ship's spar floating in the pool of a sheltered dock. 'How steady she goes,' thought Jim with wonder, with something like gratitude for this high peace of sea and sky. At such times his thoughts would be full of valorous deeds: he loved these dreams and the success of his imaginary achievements. They were the best parts of life, its secret truth, its hidden reality. They had a gorgeous virility, the charm of vagueness, they passed before him with an heroic tread; they carried his soul away with them and made it drunk with the divine philtre of an unbounded confidence in itself. There was nothing he could not face. He was so pleased with the idea that he smiled, keeping perfunctorily his eyes ahead; and when he happened to glance back he saw the white streak of the wake drawn as straight by the ship's keel upon the sea as the black line drawn by the pencil upon the chart. The ash-buckets racketed, clanking up and down the stoke-hold ventilators, and this tin-pot clatter warned him the end of his watch was near. He sighed with content, with regret as well at having to part from that serenity which fostered the adventurous freedom of his thoughts. He was a little sleepy too, and felt a pleasurable languor running through every limb as though all the blood in his body had turned to warm milk. His skipper had come up noiselessly, in pyjamas and with his sleeping-jacket flung wide open. Red of face, only half awake, the left eye partly closed, the right staring stupid and glassy, he hung his big head over the chart and scratched his ribs sleepily. There was something obscene in the sight of his naked flesh. His bared breast glistened soft and greasy as though he had sweated out his fat in his sleep. He pronounced a professional remark in a voice harsh and dead, resembling the rasping sound of a wood-file on the edge of a plank; the fold of his double chin hung like a bag triced up close under the hinge of his jaw. Jim started, and his answer was full of deference; but the odious and fleshy figure, as though seen for the first time in a revealing moment, fixed itself in his memory for ever as the incarnation of everything vile and base that lurks in the world we love: in our own hearts we trust for our salvation, in the men that surround us, in the sights that fill our eyes, in the sounds that fill our ears, and in the air that fills our lungs. The thin gold shaving of the moon floating slowly downwards had lost itself on the darkened surface of the waters, and the eternity beyond the sky seemed to come down nearer to the earth, with the augmented glitter of the stars, with the more profound sombreness in the lustre of the half-transparent dome covering the flat disc of an opaque sea. The ship moved so smoothly that her onward motion was imperceptible to the senses of men, as though she had been a crowded planet speeding through the dark spaces of ether behind the swarm of suns, in the appalling and calm solitudes awaiting the breath of future creations. 'Hot is no name for it down below,' said a voice. Jim smiled without looking round. The skipper presented an unmoved breadth of back: it was the renegade's trick to appear pointedly unaware of your existence unless it suited his purpose to turn at you with a devouring glare before he let loose a torrent of foamy, abusive jargon that came like a gush from a sewer. Now he emitted only a sulky grunt; the second engineer at the head of the bridge-ladder, kneading with damp palms a dirty sweat-rag, unabashed, continued the tale of his complaints. The sailors had a good time of it up here, and what was the use of them in the world he would be blowed if he could see. The poor devils of engineers had to get the ship along anyhow, and they could very well do the rest too; by gosh they--'Shut up!' growled the German stolidly. 'Oh yes! Shut up--and when anything goes wrong you fly to us, don't you?' went on the other. He was more than half cooked, he expected; but anyway, now, he did not mind how much he sinned, because these last three days he had passed through a fine course of training for the place where the bad boys go when they die--b'gosh, he had--besides being made jolly well deaf by the blasted racket below. The durned, compound, surface-condensing, rotten scrap-heap rattled and banged down there like an old deck-winch, only more so; and what made him risk his life every night and day that God made amongst the refuse of a breaking-up yard flying round at fifty-seven revolutions, was more than _he_ could tell. He must have been born reckless, b'gosh. He . . . 'Where did you get drink?' inquired the German, very savage; but motionless in the light of the binnacle, like a clumsy effigy of a man cut out of a block of fat. Jim went on smiling at the retreating horizon; his heart was full of generous impulses, and his thought was contemplating his own superiority. 'Drink!' repeated the engineer with amiable scorn: he was hanging on with both hands to the rail, a shadowy figure with flexible legs. 'Not from you, captain. You're far too mean, b'gosh. You would let a good man die sooner than give him a drop of schnapps. That's what you Germans call economy. Penny wise, pound foolish.' He became sentimental. The chief had given him a four-finger nip about ten o'clock--'only one, s'elp me!'--good old chief; but as to getting the old fraud out of his bunk--a five-ton crane couldn't do it. Not it. Not to-night anyhow. He was sleeping sweetly like a little child, with a bottle of prime brandy under his pillow. From the thick throat of the commander of the Patna came a low rumble, on which the sound of the word schwein fluttered high and low like a capricious feather in a faint stir of air. He and the chief engineer had been cronies for a good few years--serving the same jovial, crafty, old Chinaman, with horn-rimmed goggles and strings of red silk plaited into the venerable grey hairs of his pigtail. The quay-side opinion in the Patna's home-port was that these two in the way of brazen peculation 'had done together pretty well everything you can think of.' Outwardly they were badly matched: one dull-eyed, malevolent, and of soft fleshy curves; the other lean, all hollows, with a head long and bony like the head of an old horse, with sunken cheeks, with sunken temples, with an indifferent glazed glance of sunken eyes. He had been stranded out East somewhere--in Canton, in Shanghai, or perhaps in Yokohama; he probably did not care to remember himself the exact locality, nor yet the cause of his shipwreck. He had been, in mercy to his youth, kicked quietly out of his ship twenty years ago or more, and it might have been so much worse for him that the memory of the episode had in it hardly a trace of misfortune. Then, steam navigation expanding in these seas and men of his craft being scarce at first, he had 'got on' after a sort. He was eager to let strangers know in a dismal mumble that he was 'an old stager out here.' When he moved, a skeleton seemed to sway loose in his clothes; his walk was mere wandering, and he was given to wander thus around the engine-room skylight, smoking, without relish, doctored tobacco in a brass bowl at the end of a cherrywood stem four feet long, with the imbecile gravity of a thinker evolving a system of philosophy from the hazy glimpse of a truth. He was usually anything but free with his private store of liquor; but on that night he had departed from his principles, so that his second, a weak-headed child of Wapping, what with the unexpectedness of the treat and the strength of the stuff, had become very happy, cheeky, and talkative. The fury of the New South Wales German was extreme; he puffed like an exhaust-pipe, and Jim, faintly amused by the scene, was impatient for the time when he could get below: the last ten minutes of the watch were irritating like a gun that hangs fire; those men did not belong to the world of heroic adventure; they weren't bad chaps though. Even the skipper himself . . . His gorge rose at the mass of panting flesh from which issued gurgling mutters, a cloudy trickle of filthy expressions; but he was too pleasurably languid to dislike actively this or any other thing. The quality of these men did not matter; he rubbed shoulders with them, but they could not touch him; he shared the air they breathed, but he was different. . . . Would the skipper go for the engineer? . . . The life was easy and he was too sure of himself--too sure of himself to . . . The line dividing his meditation from a surreptitious doze on his feet was thinner than a thread in a spider's web. The second engineer was coming by easy transitions to the consideration of his finances and of his courage. 'Who's drunk? I? No, no, captain! That won't do. You ought to know by this time the chief ain't free-hearted enough to make a sparrow drunk, b'gosh. I've never been the worse for liquor in my life; the stuff ain't made yet that would make _me_ drunk. I could drink liquid fire against your whisky peg for peg, b'gosh, and keep as cool as a cucumber. If I thought I was drunk I would jump overboard--do away with myself, b'gosh. I would! Straight! And I won't go off the bridge. Where do you expect me to take the air on a night like this, eh? On deck amongst that vermin down there? Likely--ain't it! And I am not afraid of anything you can do.' The German lifted two heavy fists to heaven and shook them a little without a word. 'I don't know what fear is,' pursued the engineer, with the enthusiasm of sincere conviction. 'I am not afraid of doing all the bloomin' work in this rotten hooker, b'gosh! And a jolly good thing for you that there are some of us about the world that aren't afraid of their lives, or where would you be--you and this old thing here with her plates like brown paper--brown paper, s'elp me? It's all very fine for you--you get a power of pieces out of her one way and another; but what about me--what do I get? A measly hundred and fifty dollars a month and find yourself. I wish to ask you respectfully--respectfully, mind--who wouldn't chuck a dratted job like this? 'Tain't safe, s'elp me, it ain't! Only I am one of them fearless fellows . . .' He let go the rail and made ample gestures as if demonstrating in the air the shape and extent of his valour; his thin voice darted in prolonged squeaks upon the sea, he tiptoed back and forth for the better emphasis of utterance, and suddenly pitched down head-first as though he had been clubbed from behind. He said 'Damn!' as he tumbled; an instant of silence followed upon his screeching: Jim and the skipper staggered forward by common accord, and catching themselves up, stood very stiff and still gazing, amazed, at the undisturbed level of the sea. Then they looked upwards at the stars. What had happened? The wheezy thump of the engines went on. Had the earth been checked in her course? They could not understand; and suddenly the calm sea, the sky without a cloud, appeared formidably insecure in their immobility, as if poised on the brow of yawning destruction. The engineer rebounded vertically full length and collapsed again into a vague heap. This heap said 'What's that?' in the muffled accents of profound grief. A faint noise as of thunder, of thunder infinitely remote, less than a sound, hardly more than a vibration, passed slowly, and the ship quivered in response, as if the thunder had growled deep down in the water. The eyes of the two Malays at the wheel glittered towards the white men, but their dark hands remained closed on the spokes. The sharp hull driving on its way seemed to rise a few inches in succession through its whole length, as though it had become pliable, and settled down again rigidly to its work of cleaving the smooth surface of the sea. Its quivering stopped, and the faint noise of thunder ceased all at once, as though the ship had steamed across a narrow belt of vibrating water and of humming air. A month or so afterwards, when Jim, in answer to pointed questions, tried to tell honestly the truth of this experience, he said, speaking of the ship: 'She went over whatever it was as easy as a snake crawling over a stick.' The illustration was good: the questions were aiming at facts, and the official Inquiry was being held in the police court of an Eastern port. He stood elevated in the witness-box, with burning cheeks in a cool lofty room: the big framework of punkahs moved gently to and fro high above his head, and from below many eyes were looking at him out of dark faces, out of white faces, out of red faces, out of faces attentive, spellbound, as if all these people sitting in orderly rows upon narrow benches had been enslaved by the fascination of his voice. It was very loud, it rang startling in his own ears, it was the only sound audible in the world, for the terribly distinct questions that extorted his answers seemed to shape themselves in anguish and pain within his breast,--came to him poignant and silent like the terrible questioning of one's conscience. Outside the court the sun blazed--within was the wind of great punkahs that made you shiver, the shame that made you burn, the attentive eyes whose glance stabbed. The face of the presiding magistrate, clean shaved and impassible, looked at him deadly pale between the red faces of the two nautical assessors. The light of a broad window under the ceiling fell from above on the heads and shoulders of the three men, and they were fiercely distinct in the half-light of the big court-room where the audience seemed composed of staring shadows. They wanted facts. Facts! They demanded facts from him, as if facts could explain anything! 'After you had concluded you had collided with something floating awash, say a water-logged wreck, you were ordered by your captain to go forward and ascertain if there was any damage done. Did you think it likely from the force of the blow?' asked the assessor sitting to the left. He had a thin horseshoe beard, salient cheek-bones, and with both elbows on the desk clasped his rugged hands before his face, looking at Jim with thoughtful blue eyes; the other, a heavy, scornful man, thrown back in his seat, his left arm extended full length, drummed delicately with his finger-tips on a blotting-pad: in the middle the magistrate upright in the roomy arm-chair, his head inclined slightly on the shoulder, had his arms crossed on his breast and a few flowers in a glass vase by the side of his inkstand. 'I did not,' said Jim. 'I was told to call no one and to make no noise for fear of creating a panic. I thought the precaution reasonable. I took one of the lamps that were hung under the awnings and went forward. After opening the forepeak hatch I heard splashing in there. I lowered then the lamp the whole drift of its lanyard, and saw that the forepeak was more than half full of water already. I knew then there must be a big hole below the water-line.' He paused. 'Yes,' said the big assessor, with a dreamy smile at the blotting-pad; his fingers played incessantly, touching the paper without noise. 'I did not think of danger just then. I might have been a little startled: all this happened in such a quiet way and so very suddenly. I knew there was no other bulkhead in the ship but the collision bulkhead separating the forepeak from the forehold. I went back to tell the captain. I came upon the second engineer getting up at the foot of the bridge-ladder: he seemed dazed, and told me he thought his left arm was broken; he had slipped on the top step when getting down while I was forward. He exclaimed, "My God! That rotten bulkhead'll give way in a minute, and the damned thing will go down under us like a lump of lead." He pushed me away with his right arm and ran before me up the ladder, shouting as he climbed. His left arm hung by his side. I followed up in time to see the captain rush at him and knock him down flat on his back. He did not strike him again: he stood bending over him and speaking angrily but quite low. I fancy he was asking him why the devil he didn't go and stop the engines, instead of making a row about it on deck. I heard him say, "Get up! Run! fly!" He swore also. The engineer slid down the starboard ladder and bolted round the skylight to the engine-room companion which was on the port side. He moaned as he ran. . . .' He spoke slowly; he remembered swiftly and with extreme vividness; he could have reproduced like an echo the moaning of the engineer for the better information of these men who wanted facts. After his first feeling of revolt he had come round to the view that only a meticulous precision of statement would bring out the true horror behind the appalling face of things. The facts those men were so eager to know had been visible, tangible, open to the senses, occupying their place in space and time, requiring for their existence a fourteen-hundred-ton steamer and twenty-seven minutes by the watch; they made a whole that had features, shades of expression, a complicated aspect that could be remembered by the eye, and something else besides, something invisible, a directing spirit of perdition that dwelt within, like a malevolent soul in a detestable body. He was anxious to make this clear. This had not been a common affair, everything in it had been of the utmost importance, and fortunately he remembered everything. He wanted to go on talking for truth's sake, perhaps for his own sake also; and while his utterance was deliberate, his mind positively flew round and round the serried circle of facts that had surged up all about him to cut him off from the rest of his kind: it was like a creature that, finding itself imprisoned within an enclosure of high stakes, dashes round and round, distracted in the night, trying to find a weak spot, a crevice, a place to scale, some opening through which it may squeeze itself and escape. This awful activity of mind made him hesitate at times in his speech. . . . 'The captain kept on moving here and there on the bridge; he seemed calm enough, only he stumbled several times; and once as I stood speaking to him he walked right into me as though he had been stone-blind. He made no definite answer to what I had to tell. He mumbled to himself; all I heard of it were a few words that sounded like "confounded steam!" and "infernal steam!"--something about steam. I thought . . .' He was becoming irrelevant; a question to the point cut short his speech, like a pang of pain, and he felt extremely discouraged and weary. He was coming to that, he was coming to that--and now, checked brutally, he had to answer by yes or no. He answered truthfully by a curt 'Yes, I did'; and fair of face, big of frame, with young, gloomy eyes, he held his shoulders upright above the box while his soul writhed within him. He was made to answer another question so much to the point and so useless, then waited again. His mouth was tastelessly dry, as though he had been eating dust, then salt and bitter as after a drink of sea-water. He wiped his damp forehead, passed his tongue over parched lips, felt a shiver run down his back. The big assessor had dropped his eyelids, and drummed on without a sound, careless and mournful; the eyes of the other above the sunburnt, clasped fingers seemed to glow with kindliness; the magistrate had swayed forward; his pale face hovered near the flowers, and then dropping sideways over the arm of his chair, he rested his temple in the palm of his hand. The wind of the punkahs eddied down on the heads, on the dark-faced natives wound about in voluminous draperies, on the Europeans sitting together very hot and in drill suits that seemed to fit them as close as their skins, and holding their round pith hats on their knees; while gliding along the walls the court peons, buttoned tight in long white coats, flitted rapidly to and fro, running on bare toes, red-sashed, red turban on head, as noiseless as ghosts, and on the alert like so many retrievers. Jim's eyes, wandering in the intervals of his answers, rested upon a white man who sat apart from the others, with his face worn and clouded, but with quiet eyes that glanced straight, interested and clear. Jim answered another question and was tempted to cry out, 'What's the good of this! what's the good!' He tapped with his foot slightly, bit his lip, and looked away over the heads. He met the eyes of the white man. The glance directed at him was not the fascinated stare of the others. It was an act of intelligent volition. Jim between two questions forgot himself so far as to find leisure for a thought. This fellow--ran the thought--looks at me as though he could see somebody or something past my shoulder. He had come across that man before--in the street perhaps. He was positive he had never spoken to him. For days, for many days, he had spoken to no one, but had held silent, incoherent, and endless converse with himself, like a prisoner alone in his cell or like a wayfarer lost in a wilderness. At present he was answering questions that did not matter though they had a purpose, but he doubted whether he would ever again speak out as long as he lived. The sound of his own truthful statements confirmed his deliberate opinion that speech was of no use to him any longer. That man there seemed to be aware of his hopeless difficulty. Jim looked at him, then turned away resolutely, as after a final parting. And later on, many times, in distant parts of the world, Marlow showed himself willing to remember Jim, to remember him at length, in detail and audibly. Perhaps it would be after dinner, on a verandah draped in motionless foliage and crowned with flowers, in the deep dusk speckled by fiery cigar-ends. The elongated bulk of each cane-chair harboured a silent listener. Now and then a small red glow would move abruptly, and expanding light up the fingers of a languid hand, part of a face in profound repose, or flash a crimson gleam into a pair of pensive eyes overshadowed by a fragment of an unruffled forehead; and with the very first word uttered Marlow's body, extended at rest in the seat, would become very still, as though his spirit had winged its way back into the lapse of time and were speaking through his lips from the past. 'Oh yes. I attended the inquiry,' he would say, 'and to this day I haven't left off wondering why I went. I am willing to believe each of us has a guardian angel, if you fellows will concede to me that each of us has a familiar devil as well. I want you to own up, because I don't like to feel exceptional in any way, and I know I have him--the devil, I mean. I haven't seen him, of course, but I go upon circumstantial evidence. He is there right enough, and, being malicious, he lets me in for that kind of thing. What kind of thing, you ask? Why, the inquiry thing, the yellow-dog thing--you wouldn't think a mangy, native tyke would be allowed to trip up people in the verandah of a magistrate's court, would you?--the kind of thing that by devious, unexpected, truly diabolical ways causes me to run up against men with soft spots, with hard spots, with hidden plague spots, by Jove! and loosens their tongues at the sight of me for their infernal confidences; as though, forsooth, I had no confidences to make to myself, as though--God help me!--I didn't have enough confidential information about myself to harrow my own soul till the end of my appointed time. And what I have done to be thus favoured I want to know. I declare I am as full of my own concerns as the next man, and I have as much memory as the average pilgrim in this valley, so you see I am not particularly fit to be a receptacle of confessions. Then why? Can't tell--unless it be to make time pass away after dinner. Charley, my dear chap, your dinner was extremely good, and in consequence these men here look upon a quiet rubber as a tumultuous occupation. They wallow in your good chairs and think to themselves, "Hang exertion. Let that Marlow talk." 'Talk? So be it. And it's easy enough to talk of Master Jim, after a good spread, two hundred feet above the sea-level, with a box of decent cigars handy, on a blessed evening of freshness and starlight that would make the best of us forget we are only on sufferance here and got to pick our way in cross lights, watching every precious minute and every irremediable step, trusting we shall manage yet to go out decently in the end--but not so sure of it after all--and with dashed little help to expect from those we touch elbows with right and left. Of course there are men here and there to whom the whole of life is like an after-dinner hour with a cigar; easy, pleasant, empty, perhaps enlivened by some fable of strife to be forgotten before the end is told--before the end is told--even if there happens to be any end to it. 'My eyes met his for the first time at that inquiry. You must know that everybody connected in any way with the sea was there, because the affair had been notorious for days, ever since that mysterious cable message came from Aden to start us all cackling. I say mysterious, because it was so in a sense though it contained a naked fact, about as naked and ugly as a fact can well be. The whole waterside talked of nothing else. First thing in the morning as I was dressing in my state-room, I would hear through the bulkhead my Parsee Dubash jabbering about the Patna with the steward, while he drank a cup of tea, by favour, in the pantry. No sooner on shore I would meet some acquaintance, and the first remark would be, "Did you ever hear of anything to beat this?" and according to his kind the man would smile cynically, or look sad, or let out a swear or two. Complete strangers would accost each other familiarly, just for the sake of easing their minds on the subject: every confounded loafer in the town came in for a harvest of drinks over this affair: you heard of it in the harbour office, at every ship-broker's, at your agent's, from whites, from natives, from half-castes, from the very boatmen squatting half naked on the stone steps as you went up--by Jove! There was some indignation, not a few jokes, and no end of discussions as to what had become of them, you know. This went on for a couple of weeks or more, and the opinion that whatever was mysterious in this affair would turn out to be tragic as well, began to prevail, when one fine morning, as I was standing in the shade by the steps of the harbour office, I perceived four men walking towards me along the quay. I wondered for a while where that queer lot had sprung from, and suddenly, I may say, I shouted to myself, "Here they are!" 'There they were, sure enough, three of them as large as life, and one much larger of girth than any living man has a right to be, just landed with a good breakfast inside of them from an outward-bound Dale Line steamer that had come in about an hour after sunrise. There could be no mistake; I spotted the jolly skipper of the Patna at the first glance: the fattest man in the whole blessed tropical belt clear round that good old earth of ours. Moreover, nine months or so before, I had come across him in Samarang. His steamer was loading in the Roads, and he was abusing the tyrannical institutions of the German empire, and soaking himself in beer all day long and day after day in De Jongh's back-shop, till De Jongh, who charged a guilder for every bottle without as much as the quiver of an eyelid, would beckon me aside, and, with his little leathery face all puckered up, declare confidentially, "Business is business, but this man, captain, he make me very sick. Tfui!" 'I was looking at him from the shade. He was hurrying on a little in advance, and the sunlight beating on him brought out his bulk in a startling way. He made me think of a trained baby elephant walking on hind-legs. He was extravagantly gorgeous too--got up in a soiled sleeping-suit, bright green and deep orange vertical stripes, with a pair of ragged straw slippers on his bare feet, and somebody's cast-off pith hat, very dirty and two sizes too small for him, tied up with a manilla rope-yarn on the top of his big head. You understand a man like that hasn't the ghost of a chance when it comes to borrowing clothes. Very well. On he came in hot haste, without a look right or left, passed within three feet of me, and in the innocence of his heart went on pelting upstairs into the harbour office to make his deposition, or report, or whatever you like to call it. 'It appears he addressed himself in the first instance to the principal shipping-master. Archie Ruthvel had just come in, and, as his story goes, was about to begin his arduous day by giving a dressing-down to his chief clerk. Some of you might have known him--an obliging little Portuguese half-caste with a miserably skinny neck, and always on the hop to get something from the shipmasters in the way of eatables--a piece of salt pork, a bag of biscuits, a few potatoes, or what not. One voyage, I recollect, I tipped him a live sheep out of the remnant of my sea-stock: not that I wanted him to do anything for me--he couldn't, you know--but because his childlike belief in the sacred right to perquisites quite touched my heart. It was so strong as to be almost beautiful. The race--the two races rather--and the climate . . . However, never mind. I know where I have a friend for life. 'Well, Ruthvel says he was giving him a severe lecture--on official morality, I suppose--when he heard a kind of subdued commotion at his back, and turning his head he saw, in his own words, something round and enormous, resembling a sixteen-hundred-weight sugar-hogshead wrapped in striped flannelette, up-ended in the middle of the large floor space in the office. He declares he was so taken aback that for quite an appreciable time he did not realise the thing was alive, and sat still wondering for what purpose and by what means that object had been transported in front of his desk. The archway from the ante-room was crowded with punkah-pullers, sweepers, police peons, the coxswain and crew of the harbour steam-launch, all craning their necks and almost climbing on each other's backs. Quite a riot. By that time the fellow had managed to tug and jerk his hat clear of his head, and advanced with slight bows at Ruthvel, who told me the sight was so discomposing that for some time he listened, quite unable to make out what that apparition wanted. It spoke in a voice harsh and lugubrious but intrepid, and little by little it dawned upon Archie that this was a development of the Patna case. He says that as soon as he understood who it was before him he felt quite unwell--Archie is so sympathetic and easily upset--but pulled himself together and shouted "Stop! I can't listen to you. You must go to the Master Attendant. I can't possibly listen to you. Captain Elliot is the man you want to see. This way, this way." He jumped up, ran round that long counter, pulled, shoved: the other let him, surprised but obedient at first, and only at the door of the private office some sort of animal instinct made him hang back and snort like a frightened bullock. "Look here! what's up? Let go! Look here!" Archie flung open the door without knocking. "The master of the Patna, sir," he shouts. "Go in, captain." He saw the old man lift his head from some writing so sharp that his nose-nippers fell off, banged the door to, and fled to his desk, where he had some papers waiting for his signature: but he says the row that burst out in there was so awful that he couldn't collect his senses sufficiently to remember the spelling of his own name. Archie's the most sensitive shipping-master in the two hemispheres. He declares he felt as though he had thrown a man to a hungry lion. No doubt the noise was great. I heard it down below, and I have every reason to believe it was heard clear across the Esplanade as far as the band-stand. Old father Elliot had a great stock of words and could shout--and didn't mind who he shouted at either. He would have shouted at the Viceroy himself. As he used to tell me: "I am as high as I can get; my pension is safe. I've a few pounds laid by, and if they don't like my notions of duty I would just as soon go home as not. I am an old man, and I have always spoken my mind. All I care for now is to see my girls married before I die." He was a little crazy on that point. His three daughters were awfully nice, though they resembled him amazingly, and on the mornings he woke up with a gloomy view of their matrimonial prospects the office would read it in his eye and tremble, because, they said, he was sure to have somebody for breakfast. However, that morning he did not eat the renegade, but, if I may be allowed to carry on the metaphor, chewed him up very small, so to speak, and--ah! ejected him again. 'Thus in a very few moments I saw his monstrous bulk descend in haste and stand still on the outer steps. He had stopped close to me for the purpose of profound meditation: his large purple cheeks quivered. He was biting his thumb, and after a while noticed me with a sidelong vexed look. The other three chaps that had landed with him made a little group waiting at some distance. There was a sallow-faced, mean little chap with his arm in a sling, and a long individual in a blue flannel coat, as dry as a chip and no stouter than a broomstick, with drooping grey moustaches, who looked about him with an air of jaunty imbecility. The third was an upstanding, broad-shouldered youth, with his hands in his pockets, turning his back on the other two who appeared to be talking together earnestly. He stared across the empty Esplanade. A ramshackle gharry, all dust and venetian blinds, pulled up short opposite the group, and the driver, throwing up his right foot over his knee, gave himself up to the critical examination of his toes. The young chap, making no movement, not even stirring his head, just stared into the sunshine. This was my first view of Jim. He looked as unconcerned and unapproachable as only the young can look. There he stood, clean-limbed, clean-faced, firm on his feet, as promising a boy as the sun ever shone on; and, looking at him, knowing all he knew and a little more too, I was as angry as though I had detected him trying to get something out of me by false pretences. He had no business to look so sound. I thought to myself--well, if this sort can go wrong like that . . . and I felt as though I could fling down my hat and dance on it from sheer mortification, as I once saw the skipper of an Italian barque do because his duffer of a mate got into a mess with his anchors when making a flying moor in a roadstead full of ships. I asked myself, seeing him there apparently so much at ease--is he silly? is he callous? He seemed ready to start whistling a tune. And note, I did not care a rap about the behaviour of the other two. Their persons somehow fitted the tale that was public property, and was going to be the subject of an official inquiry. "That old mad rogue upstairs called me a hound," said the captain of the Patna. I can't tell whether he recognised me--I rather think he did; but at any rate our glances met. He glared--I smiled; hound was the very mildest epithet that had reached me through the open window. "Did he?" I said from some strange inability to hold my tongue. He nodded, bit his thumb again, swore under his breath: then lifting his head and looking at me with sullen and passionate impudence--"Bah! the Pacific is big, my friendt. You damned Englishmen can do your worst; I know where there's plenty room for a man like me: I am well aguaindt in Apia, in Honolulu, in . . ." He paused reflectively, while without effort I could depict to myself the sort of people he was "aguaindt" with in those places. I won't make a secret of it that I had been "aguaindt" with not a few of that sort myself. There are times when a man must act as though life were equally sweet in any company. I've known such a time, and, what's more, I shan't now pretend to pull a long face over my necessity, because a good many of that bad company from want of moral--moral--what shall I say?--posture, or from some other equally profound cause, were twice as instructive and twenty times more amusing than the usual respectable thief of commerce you fellows ask to sit at your table without any real necessity--from habit, from cowardice, from good-nature, from a hundred sneaking and inadequate reasons. '"You Englishmen are all rogues," went on my patriotic Flensborg or Stettin Australian. I really don't recollect now what decent little port on the shores of the Baltic was defiled by being the nest of that precious bird. "What are you to shout? Eh? You tell me? You no better than other people, and that old rogue he make Gottam fuss with me." His thick carcass trembled on its legs that were like a pair of pillars; it trembled from head to foot. "That's what you English always make--make a tam' fuss--for any little thing, because I was not born in your tam' country. Take away my certificate. Take it. I don't want the certificate. A man like me don't want your verfluchte certificate. I shpit on it." He spat. "I vill an Amerigan citizen begome," he cried, fretting and fuming and shuffling his feet as if to free his ankles from some invisible and mysterious grasp that would not let him get away from that spot. He made himself so warm that the top of his bullet head positively smoked. Nothing mysterious prevented me from going away: curiosity is the most obvious of sentiments, and it held me there to see the effect of a full information upon that young fellow who, hands in pockets, and turning his back upon the sidewalk, gazed across the grass-plots of the Esplanade at the yellow portico of the Malabar Hotel with the air of a man about to go for a walk as soon as his friend is ready. That's how he looked, and it was odious. I waited to see him overwhelmed, confounded, pierced through and through, squirming like an impaled beetle--and I was half afraid to see it too--if you understand what I mean. Nothing more awful than to watch a man who has been found out, not in a crime but in a more than criminal weakness. The commonest sort of fortitude prevents us from becoming criminals in a legal sense; it is from weakness unknown, but perhaps suspected, as in some parts of the world you suspect a deadly snake in every bush--from weakness that may lie hidden, watched or unwatched, prayed against or manfully scorned, repressed or maybe ignored more than half a lifetime, not one of us is safe. We are snared into doing things for which we get called names, and things for which we get hanged, and yet the spirit may well survive--survive the condemnation, survive the halter, by Jove! And there are things--they look small enough sometimes too--by which some of us are totally and completely undone. I watched the youngster there. I liked his appearance; I knew his appearance; he came from the right place; he was one of us. He stood there for all the parentage of his kind, for men and women by no means clever or amusing, but whose very existence is based upon honest faith, and upon the instinct of courage. I don't mean military courage, or civil courage, or any special kind of courage. I mean just that inborn ability to look temptations straight in the face--a readiness unintellectual enough, goodness knows, but without pose--a power of resistance, don't you see, ungracious if you like, but priceless--an unthinking and blessed stiffness before the outward and inward terrors, before the might of nature and the seductive corruption of men--backed by a faith invulnerable to the strength of facts, to the contagion of example, to the solicitation of ideas. Hang ideas! They are tramps, vagabonds, knocking at the back-door of your mind, each taking a little of your substance, each carrying away some crumb of that belief in a few simple notions you must cling to if you want to live decently and would like to die easy! 'This has nothing to do with Jim, directly; only he was outwardly so typical of that good, stupid kind we like to feel marching right and left of us in life, of the kind that is not disturbed by the vagaries of intelligence and the perversions of--of nerves, let us say. He was the kind of fellow you would, on the strength of his looks, leave in charge of the deck--figuratively and professionally speaking. I say I would, and I ought to know. Haven't I turned out youngsters enough in my time, for the service of the Red Rag, to the craft of the sea, to the craft whose whole secret could be expressed in one short sentence, and yet must be driven afresh every day into young heads till it becomes the component part of every waking thought--till it is present in every dream of their young sleep! The sea has been good to me, but when I remember all these boys that passed through my hands, some grown up now and some drowned by this time, but all good stuff for the sea, I don't think I have done badly by it either. Were I to go home to-morrow, I bet that before two days passed over my head some sunburnt young chief mate would overtake me at some dock gateway or other, and a fresh deep voice speaking above my hat would ask: "Don't you remember me, sir? Why! little So-and-so. Such and such a ship. It was my first voyage." And I would remember a bewildered little shaver, no higher than the back of this chair, with a mother and perhaps a big sister on the quay, very quiet but too upset to wave their handkerchiefs at the ship that glides out gently between the pier-heads; or perhaps some decent middle-aged father who had come early with his boy to see him off, and stays all the morning, because he is interested in the windlass apparently, and stays too long, and has got to scramble ashore at last with no time at all to say good-bye. The mud pilot on the poop sings out to me in a drawl, "Hold her with the check line for a moment, Mister Mate. There's a gentleman wants to get ashore. . . . Up with you, sir. Nearly got carried off to Talcahuano, didn't you? Now's your time; easy does it. . . . All right. Slack away again forward there." The tugs, smoking like the pit of perdition, get hold and churn the old river into fury; the gentleman ashore is dusting his knees--the benevolent steward has shied his umbrella after him. All very proper. He has offered his bit of sacrifice to the sea, and now he may go home pretending he thinks nothing of it; and the little willing victim shall be very sea-sick before next morning. By-and-by, when he has learned all the little mysteries and the one great secret of the craft, he shall be fit to live or die as the sea may decree; and the man who had taken a hand in this fool game, in which the sea wins every toss, will be pleased to have his back slapped by a heavy young hand, and to hear a cheery sea-puppy voice: "Do you remember me, sir? The little So-and-so." 'I tell you this is good; it tells you that once in your life at least you had gone the right way to work. I have been thus slapped, and I have winced, for the slap was heavy, and I have glowed all day long and gone to bed feeling less lonely in the world by virtue of that hearty thump. Don't I remember the little So-and-so's! I tell you I ought to know the right kind of looks. I would have trusted the deck to that youngster on the strength of a single glance, and gone to sleep with both eyes--and, by Jove! it wouldn't have been safe. There are depths of horror in that thought. He looked as genuine as a new sovereign, but there was some infernal alloy in his metal. How much? The least thing--the least drop of something rare and accursed; the least drop!--but he made you--standing there with his don't-care-hang air--he made you wonder whether perchance he were nothing more rare than brass. 'I couldn't believe it. I tell you I wanted to see him squirm for the honour of the craft. The other two no-account chaps spotted their captain, and began to move slowly towards us. They chatted together as they strolled, and I did not care any more than if they had not been visible to the naked eye. They grinned at each other--might have been exchanging jokes, for all I know. I saw that with one of them it was a case of a broken arm; and as to the long individual with grey moustaches he was the chief engineer, and in various ways a pretty notorious personality. They were nobodies. They approached. The skipper gazed in an inanimate way between his feet: he seemed to be swollen to an unnatural size by some awful disease, by the mysterious action of an unknown poison. He lifted his head, saw the two before him waiting, opened his mouth with an extraordinary, sneering contortion of his puffed face--to speak to them, I suppose--and then a thought seemed to strike him. His thick, purplish lips came together without a sound, he went off in a resolute waddle to the gharry and began to jerk at the door-handle with such a blind brutality of impatience that I expected to see the whole concern overturned on its side, pony and all. The driver, shaken out of his meditation over the sole of his foot, displayed at once all the signs of intense terror, and held with both hands, looking round from his box at this vast carcass forcing its way into his conveyance. The little machine shook and rocked tumultuously, and the crimson nape of that lowered neck, the size of those straining thighs, the immense heaving of that dingy, striped green-and-orange back, the whole burrowing effort of that gaudy and sordid mass, troubled one's sense of probability with a droll and fearsome effect, like one of those grotesque and distinct visions that scare and fascinate one in a fever. He disappeared. I half expected the roof to split in two, the little box on wheels to burst open in the manner of a ripe cotton-pod--but it only sank with a click of flattened springs, and suddenly one venetian blind rattled down. His shoulders reappeared, jammed in the small opening; his head hung out, distended and tossing like a captive balloon, perspiring, furious, spluttering. He reached for the gharry-wallah with vicious flourishes of a fist as dumpy and red as a lump of raw meat. He roared at him to be off, to go on. Where? Into the Pacific, perhaps. The driver lashed; the pony snorted, reared once, and darted off at a gallop. Where? To Apia? To Honolulu? He had 6000 miles of tropical belt to disport himself in, and I did not hear the precise address. A snorting pony snatched him into "Ewigkeit" in the twinkling of an eye, and I never saw him again; and, what's more, I don't know of anybody that ever had a glimpse of him after he departed from my knowledge sitting inside a ramshackle little gharry that fled round the corner in a white smother of dust. He departed, disappeared, vanished, absconded; and absurdly enough it looked as though he had taken that gharry with him, for never again did I come across a sorrel pony with a slit ear and a lackadaisical Tamil driver afflicted by a sore foot. The Pacific is indeed big; but whether he found a place for a display of his talents in it or not, the fact remains he had flown into space like a witch on a broomstick. The little chap with his arm in a sling started to run after the carriage, bleating, "Captain! I say, Captain! I sa-a-ay!"--but after a few steps stopped short, hung his head, and walked back slowly. At the sharp rattle of the wheels the young fellow spun round where he stood. He made no other movement, no gesture, no sign, and remained facing in the new direction after the gharry had swung out of sight. 'All this happened in much less time than it takes to tell, since I am trying to interpret for you into slow speech the instantaneous effect of visual impressions. Next moment the half-caste clerk, sent by Archie to look a little after the poor castaways of the Patna, came upon the scene. He ran out eager and bareheaded, looking right and left, and very full of his mission. It was doomed to be a failure as far as the principal person was concerned, but he approached the others with fussy importance, and, almost immediately, found himself involved in a violent altercation with the chap that carried his arm in a sling, and who turned out to be extremely anxious for a row. He wasn't going to be ordered about--"not he, b'gosh." He wouldn't be terrified with a pack of lies by a cocky half-bred little quill-driver. He was not going to be bullied by "no object of that sort," if the story were true "ever so"! He bawled his wish, his desire, his determination to go to bed. "If you weren't a God-forsaken Portuguee," I heard him yell, "you would know that the hospital is the right place for me." He pushed the fist of his sound arm under the other's nose; a crowd began to collect; the half-caste, flustered, but doing his best to appear dignified, tried to explain his intentions. I went away without waiting to see the end. 'But it so happened that I had a man in the hospital at the time, and going there to see about him the day before the opening of the Inquiry, I saw in the white men's ward that little chap tossing on his back, with his arm in splints, and quite light-headed. To my great surprise the other one, the long individual with drooping white moustache, had also found his way there. I remembered I had seen him slinking away during the quarrel, in a half prance, half shuffle, and trying very hard not to look scared. He was no stranger to the port, it seems, and in his distress was able to make tracks straight for Mariani's billiard-room and grog-shop near the bazaar. That unspeakable vagabond, Mariani, who had known the man and had ministered to his vices in one or two other places, kissed the ground, in a manner of speaking, before him, and shut him up with a supply of bottles in an upstairs room of his infamous hovel. It appears he was under some hazy apprehension as to his personal safety, and wished to be concealed. However, Mariani told me a long time after (when he came on board one day to dun my steward for the price of some cigars) that he would have done more for him without asking any questions, from gratitude for some unholy favour received very many years ago--as far as I could make out. He thumped twice his brawny chest, rolled enormous black-and-white eyes glistening with tears: "Antonio never forget--Antonio never forget!" What was the precise nature of the immoral obligation I never learned, but be it what it may, he had every facility given him to remain under lock and key, with a chair, a table, a mattress in a corner, and a litter of fallen plaster on the floor, in an irrational state of funk, and keeping up his pecker with such tonics as Mariani dispensed. This lasted till the evening of the third day, when, after letting out a few horrible screams, he found himself compelled to seek safety in flight from a legion of centipedes. He burst the door open, made one leap for dear life down the crazy little stairway, landed bodily on Mariani's stomach, picked himself up, and bolted like a rabbit into the streets. The police plucked him off a garbage-heap in the early morning. At first he had a notion they were carrying him off to be hanged, and fought for liberty like a hero, but when I sat down by his bed he had been very quiet for two days. His lean bronzed head, with white moustaches, looked fine and calm on the pillow, like the head of a war-worn soldier with a child-like soul, had it not been for a hint of spectral alarm that lurked in the blank glitter of his glance, resembling a nondescript form of a terror crouching silently behind a pane of glass. He was so extremely calm, that I began to indulge in the eccentric hope of hearing something explanatory of the famous affair from his point of view. Why I longed to go grubbing into the deplorable details of an occurrence which, after all, concerned me no more than as a member of an obscure body of men held together by a community of inglorious toil and by fidelity to a certain standard of conduct, I can't explain. You may call it an unhealthy curiosity if you like; but I have a distinct notion I wished to find something. Perhaps, unconsciously, I hoped I would find that something, some profound and redeeming cause, some merciful explanation, some convincing shadow of an excuse. I see well enough now that I hoped for the impossible--for the laying of what is the most obstinate ghost of man's creation, of the uneasy doubt uprising like a mist, secret and gnawing like a worm, and more chilling than the certitude of death--the doubt of the sovereign power enthroned in a fixed standard of conduct. It is the hardest thing to stumble against; it is the thing that breeds yelling panics and good little quiet villainies; it's the true shadow of calamity. Did I believe in a miracle? and why did I desire it so ardently? Was it for my own sake that I wished to find some shadow of an excuse for that young fellow whom I had never seen before, but whose appearance alone added a touch of personal concern to the thoughts suggested by the knowledge of his weakness--made it a thing of mystery and terror--like a hint of a destructive fate ready for us all whose youth--in its day--had resembled his youth? I fear that such was the secret motive of my prying. I was, and no mistake, looking for a miracle. The only thing that at this distance of time strikes me as miraculous is the extent of my imbecility. I positively hoped to obtain from that battered and shady invalid some exorcism against the ghost of doubt. I must have been pretty desperate too, for, without loss of time, after a few indifferent and friendly sentences which he answered with languid readiness, just as any decent sick man would do, I produced the word Patna wrapped up in a delicate question as in a wisp of floss silk. I was delicate selfishly; I did not want to startle him; I had no solicitude for him; I was not furious with him and sorry for him: his experience was of no importance, his redemption would have had no point for me. He had grown old in minor iniquities, and could no longer inspire aversion or pity. He repeated Patna? interrogatively, seemed to make a short effort of memory, and said: "Quite right. I am an old stager out here. I saw her go down." I made ready to vent my indignation at such a stupid lie, when he added smoothly, "She was full of reptiles." 'This made me pause. What did he mean? The unsteady phantom of terror behind his glassy eyes seemed to stand still and look into mine wistfully. "They turned me out of my bunk in the middle watch to look at her sinking," he pursued in a reflective tone. His voice sounded alarmingly strong all at once. I was sorry for my folly. There was no snowy-winged coif of a nursing sister to be seen flitting in the perspective of the ward; but away in the middle of a long row of empty iron bedsteads an accident case from some ship in the Roads sat up brown and gaunt with a white bandage set rakishly on the forehead. Suddenly my interesting invalid shot out an arm thin like a tentacle and clawed my shoulder. "Only my eyes were good enough to see. I am famous for my eyesight. That's why they called me, I expect. None of them was quick enough to see her go, but they saw that she was gone right enough, and sang out together--like this." . . . A wolfish howl searched the very recesses of my soul. "Oh! make 'im dry up," whined the accident case irritably. "You don't believe me, I suppose," went on the other, with an air of ineffable conceit. "I tell you there are no such eyes as mine this side of the Persian Gulf. Look under the bed." 'Of course I stooped instantly. I defy anybody not to have done so. "What can you see?" he asked. "Nothing," I said, feeling awfully ashamed of myself. He scrutinised my face with wild and withering contempt. "Just so," he said, "but if I were to look I could see--there's no eyes like mine, I tell you." Again he clawed, pulling at me downwards in his eagerness to relieve himself by a confidential communication. "Millions of pink toads. There's no eyes like mine. Millions of pink toads. It's worse than seeing a ship sink. I could look at sinking ships and smoke my pipe all day long. Why don't they give me back my pipe? I would get a smoke while I watched these toads. The ship was full of them. They've got to be watched, you know." He winked facetiously. The perspiration dripped on him off my head, my drill coat clung to my wet back: the afternoon breeze swept impetuously over the row of bedsteads, the stiff folds of curtains stirred perpendicularly, rattling on brass rods, the covers of empty beds blew about noiselessly near the bare floor all along the line, and I shivered to the very marrow. The soft wind of the tropics played in that naked ward as bleak as a winter's gale in an old barn at home. "Don't you let him start his hollering, mister," hailed from afar the accident case in a distressed angry shout that came ringing between the walls like a quavering call down a tunnel. The clawing hand hauled at my shoulder; he leered at me knowingly. "The ship was full of them, you know, and we had to clear out on the strict Q.T.," he whispered with extreme rapidity. "All pink. All pink--as big as mastiffs, with an eye on the top of the head and claws all round their ugly mouths. Ough! Ough!" Quick jerks as of galvanic shocks disclosed under the flat coverlet the outlines of meagre and agitated legs; he let go my shoulder and reached after something in the air; his body trembled tensely like a released harp-string; and while I looked down, the spectral horror in him broke through his glassy gaze. Instantly his face of an old soldier, with its noble and calm outlines, became decomposed before my eyes by the corruption of stealthy cunning, of an abominable caution and of desperate fear. He restrained a cry--"Ssh! what are they doing now down there?" he asked, pointing to the floor with fantastic precautions of voice and gesture, whose meaning, borne upon my mind in a lurid flash, made me very sick of my cleverness. "They are all asleep," I answered, watching him narrowly. That was it. That's what he wanted to hear; these were the exact words that could calm him. He drew a long breath. "Ssh! Quiet, steady. I am an old stager out here. I know them brutes. Bash in the head of the first that stirs. There's too many of them, and she won't swim more than ten minutes." He panted again. "Hurry up," he yelled suddenly, and went on in a steady scream: "They are all awake--millions of them. They are trampling on me! Wait! Oh, wait! I'll smash them in heaps like flies. Wait for me! Help! H-e-elp!" An interminable and sustained howl completed my discomfiture. I saw in the distance the accident case raise deplorably both his hands to his bandaged head; a dresser, aproned to the chin showed himself in the vista of the ward, as if seen in the small end of a telescope. I confessed myself fairly routed, and without more ado, stepping out through one of the long windows, escaped into the outside gallery. The howl pursued me like a vengeance. I turned into a deserted landing, and suddenly all became very still and quiet around me, and I descended the bare and shiny staircase in a silence that enabled me to compose my distracted thoughts. Down below I met one of the resident surgeons who was crossing the courtyard and stopped me. "Been to see your man, Captain? I think we may let him go to-morrow. These fools have no notion of taking care of themselves, though. I say, we've got the chief engineer of that pilgrim ship here. A curious case. D.T.'s of the worst kind. He has been drinking hard in that Greek's or Italian's grog-shop for three days. What can you expect? Four bottles of that kind of brandy a day, I am told. Wonderful, if true. Sheeted with boiler-iron inside I should think. The head, ah! the head, of course, gone, but the curious part is there's some sort of method in his raving. I am trying to find out. Most unusual--that thread of logic in such a delirium. Traditionally he ought to see snakes, but he doesn't. Good old tradition's at a discount nowadays. Eh! His--er--visions are batrachian. Ha! ha! No, seriously, I never remember being so interested in a case of jim-jams before. He ought to be dead, don't you know, after such a festive experiment. Oh! he is a tough object. Four-and-twenty years of the tropics too. You ought really to take a peep at him. Noble-looking old boozer. Most extraordinary man I ever met--medically, of course. Won't you?" 'I have been all along exhibiting the usual polite signs of interest, but now assuming an air of regret I murmured of want of time, and shook hands in a hurry. "I say," he cried after me; "he can't attend that inquiry. Is his evidence material, you think?" '"Not in the least," I called back from the gateway.'

Chapters 3 - 5

https://web.archive.org/web/20210126121516/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/lordjim/section2/

The Patna continues toward Mecca through an impossibly still night. The passengers are asleep and Jim is on watch, imagining heroic deeds as usual. The ship's captain, a tremendously obese and violent "New South Wales German," argues with the second engineer, who is drunk. A sudden impact shakes the ship, pitching the engineer forward and nearly knocking Jim and the captain off their feet. The impact is followed only by silence and a rumbling shake of the ship. The narrative suddenly skips ahead a month to a courtroom, where an inquest is being held. Jim is on the stand recounting the events of that night. He recalls that he was sent below to examine the ship for damage following the impact, which, it is mentioned, is thought to have been with a floating shipwreck. Jim tells the court that he found the hold filling with water and that he then realized that there must be "a big hole below the waterline. " On his way to examine the bulkhead, which divides sections of the hold, he encountered the second engineer, who had broken his arm falling from a ladder. Jim enters into a detailed, impressionistic account of subsequent events, but he is quickly cut off by the court, which wants only "yes or no" answers in their search for the "facts." As he testifies, Jim notices "a white man who apart from the others, with his face worn and clouded, but with quiet eyes," who is watching him intently. Jim senses that the man understands his predicament . We find out that this man is Marlow, who will narrate a good bit of the story, and who will "later on, many times, in distant parts of the world. . .show. . .himself willing to remember Jim, to remember him at length, in detail and audibly. " In other words, Marlow is to be the keeper of Jim's story. The narrative shifts again, to Marlow, on a verandah after dinner, recounting Jim's story to a group of silent listeners. Marlow admits to his audience that he's not sure why he attended the inquiry, except for the fact that the Patna "affair" had become "notorious" in the maritime community of that part of the world, and everyone who could came to the trial. Marlow tells his listeners that he himself saw the rescued crew of the Patna arrive in port and report to the harbor office to make a deposition. He digresses for a moment, detailing the repulsive appearance of the crew, particularly the captain, who was wearing someone else's pajamas, and then digresses still further to offer an account of his acquaintance with the harbormaster's clerk, which has no real relevance to the story except to reveal something of Marlow's character: he once gave the clerk a generous tip, he says, because the man's "childlike belief in the sacred right to perquisites quite touched heart." Marlow looked on as the Patna's crew argued with the harbormaster, and it is then that he first noticed Jim, who stood out from the rest of the debased bunch. Marlow immediately fixed on Jim as "one of us," a tag that will be repeated throughout the novel. The crew, after disputing with the harbormaster for a few moments longer, disappeared into a series of rickshaws. The second engineer, with his broken arm, went to the hospital, where Marlow, going to see an injured member of his own crew, encountered him a few days later. Another member of the Patna's crew, a man with a long, drooping mustache, was also in the hospital, in the throes of delirium and hallucinations after a long drinking binge that began when he reached port. Marlow interrogated him, and was told by the man that he saw the Patna go down with his own eyes. He then rambles on about the reptiles on board the ship and the pink toads that are under his hospital bed. Marlow was asked by one of the doctors, as he left the hospital, if the man's testimony would be material to the inquiry. Marlow tells him it would not.

Commentary The narrative continues to play games with time, jumping between the collision on board the Patna, the inquiry into the collision, and events between the crew's rescue and the inquiry. Note that a great deal of information is still not available to the reader: What did the ship hit? Why did the crew need to be rescued? Why is an inquiry being held into the crew's behavior? And, most critically, who is Marlow, and why is he so interested in Jim? The reader is put in the same position as the crew of the Patna following the impact: something important has just happened, but we're not sure what it is, and the consequences are entirely unclear. Jim theorizes that the Patna has an enormous gouge "below the waterline," but he is unable to see the damage threatening his ship, as it is hidden at the bottom of a dark, flooded compartment below the deck. Just as it is only the flooding that is apparent to Jim, it is only the aftermath of a major, still-unknown event that is visible to the reader: an injured man, a man who has drunk himself into hallucinations, and a trial, for a crime still a mystery to us. The inquiry introduces Marlow , and also serves to highlight his curious interest in Jim by way of contrast. The inquiry is interested in "fact," so much so that the magistrate presiding tells Jim to curtail his explanations and reminiscences and get to the point." Yes or no" answers are what the court wants, but perhaps, as Marlow's presence suggests, the issues at hand require a more subtle form of inquiry. Marlow fixates on Jim's status as "one of us," but what does this phrase mean? Marlow and Jim are both sailors, but so are the men who seem to have Jim on trial . Marlow initially offers us the explanation that he is interested in Jim because he is "outwardly so typical of that good, stupid kind we like to feel marching right and left of us in life"; in other words, he claims to pity Jim in a way, and to feel an urge to protect him. Later, though, Marlow gives a more complicated reason for his interest, saying that he "would have trusted the deck to that youngster on the strength of a single glance, and gone to sleep with both eyes --and, by Jove! it wouldn't have been safe." He preliminarily concludes that Jim fascinates him because "he look as genuine as a new sovereign, but there some infernal alloy in his metal. " What does this mean, and why does Marlow so deeply identify with Jim? We still don't know why it wouldn't be safe to trust Jim with a ship nor why Jim should be considered "infernal." Above all, who is this Marlow, and how is it that he has access to every part of Jim's story? Marlow is the consummate storyteller, as we see in the hypothetical setup at the end of Chapter 4 and the beginning of Chapter 5. He reorders the material at hand to maximize suspense and create meaningful juxtapositions and omissions. Most of all, he offers a record of his own involvement with and reaction to Jim's story. Marlow constructs himself as an alternate hero, an intellectual hero who is not only Jim's best reader, but also his best representative, his best hope for a continued place in the world's memory. Pay attention to Marlow's encounter with the alcoholic crewman from the Patna. This is a novel filled with coincidences and parallel structures, and this is a plot device that will recur. Coincidence is an important idea in this novel. Marlow's eventual ability to piece together all of Jim's story is due to chance meetings, mutual acquaintances, and the similarity in their occupations. He takes an interest in Jim and makes an effort to learn about him over time, but he is aided by sheer luck and some mysterious circumstances, in a part of the world where distances are great and "civilization" is still minimal. What does coincidence mean in Lord Jim? It is not evidence of providential design or predestined fate; rather, coincidence highlights Jim's representative quality--he is, in some way, "one of" all of "us." It also emphasizes Jim's inability to escape his past, a fact which will assume great importance in the closing chapters of the novel; despite moving thousands of miles away from white civilization and several years forward in time, Jim is never quite able to escape whatever it is that happened on the Patna. The role of coincidence thus also suggests lingering overtones of Victorian moral codes, under which nothing goes unpunished, nothing is forgiven. Watch for repeating structures and coincidences in the plot, and look particularly for parallels between the two major episodes.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/26.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Sense and Sensibility/section_2_part_6.txt

Sense and Sensibility.chapter 26

chapter 26

{"name": "Chapter 26", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210419170735/https://www.gradesaver.com/sense-and-sensibility/study-guide/summary-chapters-21-30", "summary": "Elinor finds the company of Mrs. Jennings somewhat awkward, given a lack of things in common and the brevity of their acquaintance, but she is cheered that Marianne is obviously looking forward to the chance of seeing Willoughby. Elinor however is determined to figure out what Willoughby's intentions are, as she is not entirely assured that he is good. Elinor also has to make up for Marianne's coldness toward Mrs. Jennings, by being sociable and kind all the time. They find Mrs. Jennings' house in town very comfortable, and Marianne immediately writes and sends a letter for Willoughby. Marianne is convinced by a knock that Willoughby has come, and is very disappointed when it is Colonel Brandon; he does not stay long, and is upset at being slighted by Marianne. Marianne is more upset when several days pass with no word from Willoughby, and Elinor becomes worried about their relationship.", "analysis": "Austen writes with a sense of urgency regarding Willoughby and Marianne's relationship; within a \"very short time,\" discoveries will be made that can either strengthen or destroy their attachment. Austen creates a bit of suspense through Marianne's hopeful expectation that Willoughby will come any second; the reader, too, becomes anxious to see him, since so much is still in doubt"}

Elinor could not find herself in the carriage with Mrs. Jennings, and beginning a journey to London under her protection, and as her guest, without wondering at her own situation, so short had their acquaintance with that lady been, so wholly unsuited were they in age and disposition, and so many had been her objections against such a measure only a few days before! But these objections had all, with that happy ardour of youth which Marianne and her mother equally shared, been overcome or overlooked; and Elinor, in spite of every occasional doubt of Willoughby's constancy, could not witness the rapture of delightful expectation which filled the whole soul and beamed in the eyes of Marianne, without feeling how blank was her own prospect, how cheerless her own state of mind in the comparison, and how gladly she would engage in the solicitude of Marianne's situation to have the same animating object in view, the same possibility of hope. A short, a very short time however must now decide what Willoughby's intentions were; in all probability he was already in town. Marianne's eagerness to be gone declared her dependence on finding him there; and Elinor was resolved not only upon gaining every new light as to his character which her own observation or the intelligence of others could give her, but likewise upon watching his behaviour to her sister with such zealous attention, as to ascertain what he was and what he meant, before many meetings had taken place. Should the result of her observations be unfavourable, she was determined at all events to open the eyes of her sister; should it be otherwise, her exertions would be of a different nature--she must then learn to avoid every selfish comparison, and banish every regret which might lessen her satisfaction in the happiness of Marianne. They were three days on their journey, and Marianne's behaviour as they travelled was a happy specimen of what future complaisance and companionableness to Mrs. Jennings might be expected to be. She sat in silence almost all the way, wrapt in her own meditations, and scarcely ever voluntarily speaking, except when any object of picturesque beauty within their view drew from her an exclamation of delight exclusively addressed to her sister. To atone for this conduct therefore, Elinor took immediate possession of the post of civility which she had assigned herself, behaved with the greatest attention to Mrs. Jennings, talked with her, laughed with her, and listened to her whenever she could; and Mrs. Jennings on her side treated them both with all possible kindness, was solicitous on every occasion for their ease and enjoyment, and only disturbed that she could not make them choose their own dinners at the inn, nor extort a confession of their preferring salmon to cod, or boiled fowls to veal cutlets. They reached town by three o'clock the third day, glad to be released, after such a journey, from the confinement of a carriage, and ready to enjoy all the luxury of a good fire. The house was handsome, and handsomely fitted up, and the young ladies were immediately put in possession of a very comfortable apartment. It had formerly been Charlotte's, and over the mantelpiece still hung a landscape in coloured silks of her performance, in proof of her having spent seven years at a great school in town to some effect. As dinner was not to be ready in less than two hours from their arrival, Elinor determined to employ the interval in writing to her mother, and sat down for that purpose. In a few moments Marianne did the same. "I am writing home, Marianne," said Elinor; "had not you better defer your letter for a day or two?" "I am NOT going to write to my mother," replied Marianne, hastily, and as if wishing to avoid any farther inquiry. Elinor said no more; it immediately struck her that she must then be writing to Willoughby; and the conclusion which as instantly followed was, that, however mysteriously they might wish to conduct the affair, they must be engaged. This conviction, though not entirely satisfactory, gave her pleasure, and she continued her letter with greater alacrity. Marianne's was finished in a very few minutes; in length it could be no more than a note; it was then folded up, sealed, and directed with eager rapidity. Elinor thought she could distinguish a large W in the direction; and no sooner was it complete than Marianne, ringing the bell, requested the footman who answered it to get that letter conveyed for her to the two-penny post. This decided the matter at once. Her spirits still continued very high; but there was a flutter in them which prevented their giving much pleasure to her sister, and this agitation increased as the evening drew on. She could scarcely eat any dinner, and when they afterwards returned to the drawing room, seemed anxiously listening to the sound of every carriage. It was a great satisfaction to Elinor that Mrs. Jennings, by being much engaged in her own room, could see little of what was passing. The tea things were brought in, and already had Marianne been disappointed more than once by a rap at a neighbouring door, when a loud one was suddenly heard which could not be mistaken for one at any other house, Elinor felt secure of its announcing Willoughby's approach, and Marianne, starting up, moved towards the door. Every thing was silent; this could not be borne many seconds; she opened the door, advanced a few steps towards the stairs, and after listening half a minute, returned into the room in all the agitation which a conviction of having heard him would naturally produce; in the ecstasy of her feelings at that instant she could not help exclaiming, "Oh, Elinor, it is Willoughby, indeed it is!" and seemed almost ready to throw herself into his arms, when Colonel Brandon appeared. It was too great a shock to be borne with calmness, and she immediately left the room. Elinor was disappointed too; but at the same time her regard for Colonel Brandon ensured his welcome with her; and she felt particularly hurt that a man so partial to her sister should perceive that she experienced nothing but grief and disappointment in seeing him. She instantly saw that it was not unnoticed by him, that he even observed Marianne as she quitted the room, with such astonishment and concern, as hardly left him the recollection of what civility demanded towards herself. "Is your sister ill?" said he. Elinor answered in some distress that she was, and then talked of head-aches, low spirits, and over fatigues; and of every thing to which she could decently attribute her sister's behaviour. He heard her with the most earnest attention, but seeming to recollect himself, said no more on the subject, and began directly to speak of his pleasure at seeing them in London, making the usual inquiries about their journey, and the friends they had left behind. In this calm kind of way, with very little interest on either side, they continued to talk, both of them out of spirits, and the thoughts of both engaged elsewhere. Elinor wished very much to ask whether Willoughby were then in town, but she was afraid of giving him pain by any enquiry after his rival; and at length, by way of saying something, she asked if he had been in London ever since she had seen him last. "Yes," he replied, with some embarrassment, "almost ever since; I have been once or twice at Delaford for a few days, but it has never been in my power to return to Barton." This, and the manner in which it was said, immediately brought back to her remembrance all the circumstances of his quitting that place, with the uneasiness and suspicions they had caused to Mrs. Jennings, and she was fearful that her question had implied much more curiosity on the subject than she had ever felt. Mrs. Jennings soon came in. "Oh! Colonel," said she, with her usual noisy cheerfulness, "I am monstrous glad to see you--sorry I could not come before--beg your pardon, but I have been forced to look about me a little, and settle my matters; for it is a long while since I have been at home, and you know one has always a world of little odd things to do after one has been away for any time; and then I have had Cartwright to settle with-- Lord, I have been as busy as a bee ever since dinner! But pray, Colonel, how came you to conjure out that I should be in town today?" "I had the pleasure of hearing it at Mr. Palmer's, where I have been dining." "Oh, you did; well, and how do they all do at their house? How does Charlotte do? I warrant you she is a fine size by this time." "Mrs. Palmer appeared quite well, and I am commissioned to tell you, that you will certainly see her to-morrow." "Ay, to be sure, I thought as much. Well, Colonel, I have brought two young ladies with me, you see--that is, you see but one of them now, but there is another somewhere. Your friend, Miss Marianne, too--which you will not be sorry to hear. I do not know what you and Mr. Willoughby will do between you about her. Ay, it is a fine thing to be young and handsome. Well! I was young once, but I never was very handsome--worse luck for me. However, I got a very good husband, and I don't know what the greatest beauty can do more. Ah! poor man! he has been dead these eight years and better. But Colonel, where have you been to since we parted? And how does your business go on? Come, come, let's have no secrets among friends." He replied with his accustomary mildness to all her inquiries, but without satisfying her in any. Elinor now began to make the tea, and Marianne was obliged to appear again. After her entrance, Colonel Brandon became more thoughtful and silent than he had been before, and Mrs. Jennings could not prevail on him to stay long. No other visitor appeared that evening, and the ladies were unanimous in agreeing to go early to bed. Marianne rose the next morning with recovered spirits and happy looks. The disappointment of the evening before seemed forgotten in the expectation of what was to happen that day. They had not long finished their breakfast before Mrs. Palmer's barouche stopped at the door, and in a few minutes she came laughing into the room: so delighted to see them all, that it was hard to say whether she received most pleasure from meeting her mother or the Miss Dashwoods again. So surprised at their coming to town, though it was what she had rather expected all along; so angry at their accepting her mother's invitation after having declined her own, though at the same time she would never have forgiven them if they had not come! "Mr. Palmer will be so happy to see you," said she; "What do you think he said when he heard of your coming with Mama? I forget what it was now, but it was something so droll!" After an hour or two spent in what her mother called comfortable chat, or in other words, in every variety of inquiry concerning all their acquaintance on Mrs. Jennings's side, and in laughter without cause on Mrs. Palmer's, it was proposed by the latter that they should all accompany her to some shops where she had business that morning, to which Mrs. Jennings and Elinor readily consented, as having likewise some purchases to make themselves; and Marianne, though declining it at first was induced to go likewise. Wherever they went, she was evidently always on the watch. In Bond Street especially, where much of their business lay, her eyes were in constant inquiry; and in whatever shop the party were engaged, her mind was equally abstracted from every thing actually before them, from all that interested and occupied the others. Restless and dissatisfied every where, her sister could never obtain her opinion of any article of purchase, however it might equally concern them both: she received no pleasure from anything; was only impatient to be at home again, and could with difficulty govern her vexation at the tediousness of Mrs. Palmer, whose eye was caught by every thing pretty, expensive, or new; who was wild to buy all, could determine on none, and dawdled away her time in rapture and indecision. It was late in the morning before they returned home; and no sooner had they entered the house than Marianne flew eagerly up stairs, and when Elinor followed, she found her turning from the table with a sorrowful countenance, which declared that no Willoughby had been there. "Has no letter been left here for me since we went out?" said she to the footman who then entered with the parcels. She was answered in the negative. "Are you quite sure of it?" she replied. "Are you certain that no servant, no porter has left any letter or note?" The man replied that none had. "How very odd!" said she, in a low and disappointed voice, as she turned away to the window. "How odd, indeed!" repeated Elinor within herself, regarding her sister with uneasiness. "If she had not known him to be in town she would not have written to him, as she did; she would have written to Combe Magna; and if he is in town, how odd that he should neither come nor write! Oh! my dear mother, you must be wrong in permitting an engagement between a daughter so young, a man so little known, to be carried on in so doubtful, so mysterious a manner! I long to inquire; and how will MY interference be borne." She determined, after some consideration, that if appearances continued many days longer as unpleasant as they now were, she would represent in the strongest manner to her mother the necessity of some serious enquiry into the affair. Mrs. Palmer and two elderly ladies of Mrs. Jennings's intimate acquaintance, whom she had met and invited in the morning, dined with them. The former left them soon after tea to fulfill her evening engagements; and Elinor was obliged to assist in making a whist table for the others. Marianne was of no use on these occasions, as she would never learn the game; but though her time was therefore at her own disposal, the evening was by no means more productive of pleasure to her than to Elinor, for it was spent in all the anxiety of expectation and the pain of disappointment. She sometimes endeavoured for a few minutes to read; but the book was soon thrown aside, and she returned to the more interesting employment of walking backwards and forwards across the room, pausing for a moment whenever she came to the window, in hopes of distinguishing the long-expected rap.

Chapter 26

https://web.archive.org/web/20210419170735/https://www.gradesaver.com/sense-and-sensibility/study-guide/summary-chapters-21-30

Elinor finds the company of Mrs. Jennings somewhat awkward, given a lack of things in common and the brevity of their acquaintance, but she is cheered that Marianne is obviously looking forward to the chance of seeing Willoughby. Elinor however is determined to figure out what Willoughby's intentions are, as she is not entirely assured that he is good. Elinor also has to make up for Marianne's coldness toward Mrs. Jennings, by being sociable and kind all the time. They find Mrs. Jennings' house in town very comfortable, and Marianne immediately writes and sends a letter for Willoughby. Marianne is convinced by a knock that Willoughby has come, and is very disappointed when it is Colonel Brandon; he does not stay long, and is upset at being slighted by Marianne. Marianne is more upset when several days pass with no word from Willoughby, and Elinor becomes worried about their relationship.

Austen writes with a sense of urgency regarding Willoughby and Marianne's relationship; within a "very short time," discoveries will be made that can either strengthen or destroy their attachment. Austen creates a bit of suspense through Marianne's hopeful expectation that Willoughby will come any second; the reader, too, becomes anxious to see him, since so much is still in doubt

pinkmonkey

all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/09.txt

finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Sense and Sensibility/section_8_part_0.txt

Sense and Sensibility.chapter 9

chapter 9

{"name": "Chapter 9", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820034609/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmSenseSensibility24.asp", "summary": "This chapter gives an extended character sketch of Mrs. Jennings. Wealthy and contented, she is anxious to see young men and women settled in life. Thus, when she spots Colonel Brandon admiring Marianne as she is playing the piano, she immediately pairs them up as a suitable couple. She voices her thoughts aloud to both Brandon and Marianne. While the Colonel ignores her remarks, Marianne expresses shock at the suggestion. She rejects the Colonel on the basis of his age and his reserved temperament. Elinor, though, does not agree with her sister.", "analysis": "Notes Mrs. Jennings is a typical matron: she delights in making matches between eligible men and women. She is happy to gain the acquaintance of the Dashwood girls. When she observes the Colonel admiring Marianne's talent, she concludes that Brandon is in love with the girl. She amuses herself by teasing both Marianne and the Colonel. Austen once again points out the difference in the attitudes of the two sisters. Elinor, with her better judgment, is able to assess the merits of Brandon and finds him an eligible bachelor. Marianne, fed on romantic literature, does not find the Colonel exciting enough to capture her heart. She discards the idea of him as a match for herself because he is twice her age and does not display vigor and enthusiasm. CHAPTER 9 Summary The Dashwoods settle down to a life of peace and contentment. They keep themselves occupied, and John Middleton visits them frequently. One morning, while Mrs. Dashwood and Elinor are engaged in the household duties, Marianne and Margaret venture out to explore the countryside. They get carried away by the beauty of the natural surroundings and start climbing up a hill, despite the rough weather. Suddenly it starts raining, and they head towards home. Marianne misses her step, twists her ankle and falls down. A gentleman riding by takes pity on her and carries her to her house. He introduces himself as Willoughby, from Allenham. He impresses everyone with his appearance and charming manners, and Marianne is smitten. Later in the day, when John Middleton pays them a visit, the family floods him with questions about Willoughby. Sir John talks favorably of the dashing young man. Notes The theme of love is developed. Jane Austen convincingly constructs a situation in which Marianne gets to meet the 'hero' of her dreams. Elinor has already met a good man; it is time for Marianne to find her partner. Marianne's accident, and her rescue by a knight in shining armor, resembles a scene from a fairy tale or romantic fiction. Marianne is overpowered by the striking appearance and charming manners of Willoughby. He is everything Marianne has wanted in a man: he is handsome, dashing and chivalrous. The chapter thus introduces another main character. Willoughby is a man with charm and vitality; he easily impresses beautiful girls like Marianne. His imposing presence is in direct contrast to the subdued character of the Colonel. John Middleton feels sorry for the Colonel and hopes that Marianne will realize his worth. CHAPTER 10 Summary Chapter 10 highlights the character of Willoughby and places him in further contrast to Colonel Brandon. Willoughby slowly but surely captures Marianne's heart with his enchanting ways. He also wins the approval of Mrs. Dashwood. Only Elinor is restrained in her praise for him. She is able to gauge Colonel Brandon's true feelings for Marianne, and thus feels sorry for him. She also feels hurt by the manner in which both Willoughby and Marianne ridicule the Colonel. Notes Marianne finds Willoughby an ideal suitor and is happy to seek his favor. However, Elinor is able to see through his superficial conduct. She observes that he is impulsive, prejudiced and opinionated, much like her sister. He speaks before he thinks, and he thoughtlessly hurts the Colonel's feelings with his careless remarks. Austen reveals Elinor's maturity by having her analyze the characters of Willoughby and the Colonel. She understands the real worth of the Colonel and values his sentiments. She considers him to be \"a sensible man, well-bred, well-informed, of gentle address, and--an amiable heart. \" She ranks him higher as a man than Willoughby. This chapter hints at the fate of Marianne in the hands of Willoughby. Elinor, as Austen's mouthpiece, conveys her apprehension about this shallow and ostentatious man."}

The Dashwoods were now settled at Barton with tolerable comfort to themselves. The house and the garden, with all the objects surrounding them, were now become familiar, and the ordinary pursuits which had given to Norland half its charms were engaged in again with far greater enjoyment than Norland had been able to afford, since the loss of their father. Sir John Middleton, who called on them every day for the first fortnight, and who was not in the habit of seeing much occupation at home, could not conceal his amazement on finding them always employed. Their visitors, except those from Barton Park, were not many; for, in spite of Sir John's urgent entreaties that they would mix more in the neighbourhood, and repeated assurances of his carriage being always at their service, the independence of Mrs. Dashwood's spirit overcame the wish of society for her children; and she was resolute in declining to visit any family beyond the distance of a walk. There were but few who could be so classed; and it was not all of them that were attainable. About a mile and a half from the cottage, along the narrow winding valley of Allenham, which issued from that of Barton, as formerly described, the girls had, in one of their earliest walks, discovered an ancient respectable looking mansion which, by reminding them a little of Norland, interested their imagination and made them wish to be better acquainted with it. But they learnt, on enquiry, that its possessor, an elderly lady of very good character, was unfortunately too infirm to mix with the world, and never stirred from home. The whole country about them abounded in beautiful walks. The high downs which invited them from almost every window of the cottage to seek the exquisite enjoyment of air on their summits, were a happy alternative when the dirt of the valleys beneath shut up their superior beauties; and towards one of these hills did Marianne and Margaret one memorable morning direct their steps, attracted by the partial sunshine of a showery sky, and unable longer to bear the confinement which the settled rain of the two preceding days had occasioned. The weather was not tempting enough to draw the two others from their pencil and their book, in spite of Marianne's declaration that the day would be lastingly fair, and that every threatening cloud would be drawn off from their hills; and the two girls set off together. They gaily ascended the downs, rejoicing in their own penetration at every glimpse of blue sky; and when they caught in their faces the animating gales of a high south-westerly wind, they pitied the fears which had prevented their mother and Elinor from sharing such delightful sensations. "Is there a felicity in the world," said Marianne, "superior to this?--Margaret, we will walk here at least two hours." Margaret agreed, and they pursued their way against the wind, resisting it with laughing delight for about twenty minutes longer, when suddenly the clouds united over their heads, and a driving rain set full in their face.-- Chagrined and surprised, they were obliged, though unwillingly, to turn back, for no shelter was nearer than their own house. One consolation however remained for them, to which the exigence of the moment gave more than usual propriety; it was that of running with all possible speed down the steep side of the hill which led immediately to their garden gate. They set off. Marianne had at first the advantage, but a false step brought her suddenly to the ground; and Margaret, unable to stop herself to assist her, was involuntarily hurried along, and reached the bottom in safety. A gentleman carrying a gun, with two pointers playing round him, was passing up the hill and within a few yards of Marianne, when her accident happened. He put down his gun and ran to her assistance. She had raised herself from the ground, but her foot had been twisted in her fall, and she was scarcely able to stand. The gentleman offered his services; and perceiving that her modesty declined what her situation rendered necessary, took her up in his arms without farther delay, and carried her down the hill. Then passing through the garden, the gate of which had been left open by Margaret, he bore her directly into the house, whither Margaret was just arrived, and quitted not his hold till he had seated her in a chair in the parlour. Elinor and her mother rose up in amazement at their entrance, and while the eyes of both were fixed on him with an evident wonder and a secret admiration which equally sprung from his appearance, he apologized for his intrusion by relating its cause, in a manner so frank and so graceful that his person, which was uncommonly handsome, received additional charms from his voice and expression. Had he been even old, ugly, and vulgar, the gratitude and kindness of Mrs. Dashwood would have been secured by any act of attention to her child; but the influence of youth, beauty, and elegance, gave an interest to the action which came home to her feelings. She thanked him again and again; and, with a sweetness of address which always attended her, invited him to be seated. But this he declined, as he was dirty and wet. Mrs. Dashwood then begged to know to whom she was obliged. His name, he replied, was Willoughby, and his present home was at Allenham, from whence he hoped she would allow him the honour of calling tomorrow to enquire after Miss Dashwood. The honour was readily granted, and he then departed, to make himself still more interesting, in the midst of a heavy rain. His manly beauty and more than common gracefulness were instantly the theme of general admiration, and the laugh which his gallantry raised against Marianne received particular spirit from his exterior attractions.-- Marianne herself had seen less of his Mama the rest, for the confusion which crimsoned over her face, on his lifting her up, had robbed her of the power of regarding him after their entering the house. But she had seen enough of him to join in all the admiration of the others, and with an energy which always adorned her praise. His person and air were equal to what her fancy had ever drawn for the hero of a favourite story; and in his carrying her into the house with so little previous formality, there was a rapidity of thought which particularly recommended the action to her. Every circumstance belonging to him was interesting. His name was good, his residence was in their favourite village, and she soon found out that of all manly dresses a shooting-jacket was the most becoming. Her imagination was busy, her reflections were pleasant, and the pain of a sprained ankle was disregarded. Sir John called on them as soon as the next interval of fair weather that morning allowed him to get out of doors; and Marianne's accident being related to him, he was eagerly asked whether he knew any gentleman of the name of Willoughby at Allenham. "Willoughby!" cried Sir John; "what, is HE in the country? That is good news however; I will ride over tomorrow, and ask him to dinner on Thursday." "You know him then," said Mrs. Dashwood. "Know him! to be sure I do. Why, he is down here every year." "And what sort of a young man is he?" "As good a kind of fellow as ever lived, I assure you. A very decent shot, and there is not a bolder rider in England." "And is that all you can say for him?" cried Marianne, indignantly. "But what are his manners on more intimate acquaintance? What his pursuits, his talents, and genius?" Sir John was rather puzzled. "Upon my soul," said he, "I do not know much about him as to all THAT. But he is a pleasant, good humoured fellow, and has got the nicest little black bitch of a pointer I ever saw. Was she out with him today?" But Marianne could no more satisfy him as to the colour of Mr. Willoughby's pointer, than he could describe to her the shades of his mind. "But who is he?" said Elinor. "Where does he come from? Has he a house at Allenham?" On this point Sir John could give more certain intelligence; and he told them that Mr. Willoughby had no property of his own in the country; that he resided there only while he was visiting the old lady at Allenham Court, to whom he was related, and whose possessions he was to inherit; adding, "Yes, yes, he is very well worth catching I can tell you, Miss Dashwood; he has a pretty little estate of his own in Somersetshire besides; and if I were you, I would not give him up to my younger sister, in spite of all this tumbling down hills. Miss Marianne must not expect to have all the men to herself. Brandon will be jealous, if she does not take care." "I do not believe," said Mrs. Dashwood, with a good humoured smile, "that Mr. Willoughby will be incommoded by the attempts of either of MY daughters towards what you call CATCHING him. It is not an employment to which they have been brought up. Men are very safe with us, let them be ever so rich. I am glad to find, however, from what you say, that he is a respectable young man, and one whose acquaintance will not be ineligible." "He is as good a sort of fellow, I believe, as ever lived," repeated Sir John. "I remember last Christmas at a little hop at the park, he danced from eight o'clock till four, without once sitting down." "Did he indeed?" cried Marianne with sparkling eyes, "and with elegance, with spirit?" "Yes; and he was up again at eight to ride to covert." "That is what I like; that is what a young man ought to be. Whatever be his pursuits, his eagerness in them should know no moderation, and leave him no sense of fatigue." "Aye, aye, I see how it will be," said Sir John, "I see how it will be. You will be setting your cap at him now, and never think of poor Brandon." "That is an expression, Sir John," said Marianne, warmly, "which I particularly dislike. I abhor every common-place phrase by which wit is intended; and 'setting one's cap at a man,' or 'making a conquest,' are the most odious of all. Their tendency is gross and illiberal; and if their construction could ever be deemed clever, time has long ago destroyed all its ingenuity." Sir John did not much understand this reproof; but he laughed as heartily as if he did, and then replied, "Ay, you will make conquests enough, I dare say, one way or other. Poor Brandon! he is quite smitten already, and he is very well worth setting your cap at, I can tell you, in spite of all this tumbling about and spraining of ankles."

Chapter 9

https://web.archive.org/web/20180820034609/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmSenseSensibility24.asp

This chapter gives an extended character sketch of Mrs. Jennings. Wealthy and contented, she is anxious to see young men and women settled in life. Thus, when she spots Colonel Brandon admiring Marianne as she is playing the piano, she immediately pairs them up as a suitable couple. She voices her thoughts aloud to both Brandon and Marianne. While the Colonel ignores her remarks, Marianne expresses shock at the suggestion. She rejects the Colonel on the basis of his age and his reserved temperament. Elinor, though, does not agree with her sister.

Notes Mrs. Jennings is a typical matron: she delights in making matches between eligible men and women. She is happy to gain the acquaintance of the Dashwood girls. When she observes the Colonel admiring Marianne's talent, she concludes that Brandon is in love with the girl. She amuses herself by teasing both Marianne and the Colonel. Austen once again points out the difference in the attitudes of the two sisters. Elinor, with her better judgment, is able to assess the merits of Brandon and finds him an eligible bachelor. Marianne, fed on romantic literature, does not find the Colonel exciting enough to capture her heart. She discards the idea of him as a match for herself because he is twice her age and does not display vigor and enthusiasm. CHAPTER 9 Summary The Dashwoods settle down to a life of peace and contentment. They keep themselves occupied, and John Middleton visits them frequently. One morning, while Mrs. Dashwood and Elinor are engaged in the household duties, Marianne and Margaret venture out to explore the countryside. They get carried away by the beauty of the natural surroundings and start climbing up a hill, despite the rough weather. Suddenly it starts raining, and they head towards home. Marianne misses her step, twists her ankle and falls down. A gentleman riding by takes pity on her and carries her to her house. He introduces himself as Willoughby, from Allenham. He impresses everyone with his appearance and charming manners, and Marianne is smitten. Later in the day, when John Middleton pays them a visit, the family floods him with questions about Willoughby. Sir John talks favorably of the dashing young man. Notes The theme of love is developed. Jane Austen convincingly constructs a situation in which Marianne gets to meet the 'hero' of her dreams. Elinor has already met a good man; it is time for Marianne to find her partner. Marianne's accident, and her rescue by a knight in shining armor, resembles a scene from a fairy tale or romantic fiction. Marianne is overpowered by the striking appearance and charming manners of Willoughby. He is everything Marianne has wanted in a man: he is handsome, dashing and chivalrous. The chapter thus introduces another main character. Willoughby is a man with charm and vitality; he easily impresses beautiful girls like Marianne. His imposing presence is in direct contrast to the subdued character of the Colonel. John Middleton feels sorry for the Colonel and hopes that Marianne will realize his worth. CHAPTER 10 Summary Chapter 10 highlights the character of Willoughby and places him in further contrast to Colonel Brandon. Willoughby slowly but surely captures Marianne's heart with his enchanting ways. He also wins the approval of Mrs. Dashwood. Only Elinor is restrained in her praise for him. She is able to gauge Colonel Brandon's true feelings for Marianne, and thus feels sorry for him. She also feels hurt by the manner in which both Willoughby and Marianne ridicule the Colonel. Notes Marianne finds Willoughby an ideal suitor and is happy to seek his favor. However, Elinor is able to see through his superficial conduct. She observes that he is impulsive, prejudiced and opinionated, much like her sister. He speaks before he thinks, and he thoughtlessly hurts the Colonel's feelings with his careless remarks. Austen reveals Elinor's maturity by having her analyze the characters of Willoughby and the Colonel. She understands the real worth of the Colonel and values his sentiments. She considers him to be "a sensible man, well-bred, well-informed, of gentle address, and--an amiable heart. " She ranks him higher as a man than Willoughby. This chapter hints at the fate of Marianne in the hands of Willoughby. Elinor, as Austen's mouthpiece, conveys her apprehension about this shallow and ostentatious man.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/93.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Brothers Karamazov/section_92_part_0.txt

The Brothers Karamazov.book 12.chapter 14

book 12, chapter 14

{"name": "Book 12, Chapter 14", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-12-chapter-14", "summary": "The end of Fetyukovich's speech is greeted with loud applause from the courtroom. But Kirillovich is indignant and in his hurried response takes Fetyukovich to task for invoking the Gospel, for insulting Kirillovich's use of psychology, and for inventing fantastic and unbelievable explanations for Dmitri's and Smerdyakov's behavior. Fetyukovich responds to these accusations in a calm and reasonable way. The judge then asks Dmitri if he has anything to say. Dmitri again stresses his innocence and asks for the mercy of the court. The judge then briefly lectures the jury, the jury retires, and the audience in the courtroom discusses the speeches. After exactly an hour, the jury returns with a verdict: guilty of all charges, with no extenuating circumstances. Dmitri cries out and Grushenka screams. Dmitri is taken away. The sentencing is to take place the next day.", "analysis": ""}

Chapter XIV. The Peasants Stand Firm This was how Fetyukovitch concluded his speech, and the enthusiasm of the audience burst like an irresistible storm. It was out of the question to stop it: the women wept, many of the men wept too, even two important personages shed tears. The President submitted, and even postponed ringing his bell. The suppression of such an enthusiasm would be the suppression of something sacred, as the ladies cried afterwards. The orator himself was genuinely touched. And it was at this moment that Ippolit Kirillovitch got up to make certain objections. People looked at him with hatred. "What? What's the meaning of it? He positively dares to make objections," the ladies babbled. But if the whole world of ladies, including his wife, had protested he could not have been stopped at that moment. He was pale, he was shaking with emotion, his first phrases were even unintelligible, he gasped for breath, could hardly speak clearly, lost the thread. But he soon recovered himself. Of this new speech of his I will quote only a few sentences. "... I am reproached with having woven a romance. But what is this defense if not one romance on the top of another? All that was lacking was poetry. Fyodor Pavlovitch, while waiting for his mistress, tears open the envelope and throws it on the floor. We are even told what he said while engaged in this strange act. Is not this a flight of fancy? And what proof have we that he had taken out the money? Who heard what he said? The weak-minded idiot, Smerdyakov, transformed into a Byronic hero, avenging society for his illegitimate birth--isn't this a romance in the Byronic style? And the son who breaks into his father's house and murders him without murdering him is not even a romance--this is a sphinx setting us a riddle which he cannot solve himself. If he murdered him, he murdered him, and what's the meaning of his murdering him without having murdered him--who can make head or tail of this? "Then we are admonished that our tribune is a tribune of true and sound ideas and from this tribune of 'sound ideas' is heard a solemn declaration that to call the murder of a father 'parricide' is nothing but a prejudice! But if parricide is a prejudice, and if every child is to ask his father why he is to love him, what will become of us? What will become of the foundations of society? What will become of the family? Parricide, it appears, is only a bogy of Moscow merchants' wives. The most precious, the most sacred guarantees for the destiny and future of Russian justice are presented to us in a perverted and frivolous form, simply to attain an object--to obtain the justification of something which cannot be justified. 'Oh, crush him by mercy,' cries the counsel for the defense; but that's all the criminal wants, and to-morrow it will be seen how much he is crushed. And is not the counsel for the defense too modest in asking only for the acquittal of the prisoner? Why not found a charity in the honor of the parricide to commemorate his exploit among future generations? Religion and the Gospel are corrected--that's all mysticism, we are told, and ours is the only true Christianity which has been subjected to the analysis of reason and common sense. And so they set up before us a false semblance of Christ! 'What measure ye mete so it shall be meted unto you again,' cried the counsel for the defense, and instantly deduces that Christ teaches us to measure as it is measured to us--and this from the tribune of truth and sound sense! We peep into the Gospel only on the eve of making speeches, in order to dazzle the audience by our acquaintance with what is, anyway, a rather original composition, which may be of use to produce a certain effect--all to serve the purpose! But what Christ commands us is something very different: He bids us beware of doing this, because the wicked world does this, but we ought to forgive and to turn the other cheek, and not to measure to our persecutors as they measure to us. This is what our God has taught us and not that to forbid children to murder their fathers is a prejudice. And we will not from the tribune of truth and good sense correct the Gospel of our Lord, Whom the counsel for the defense deigns to call only 'the crucified lover of humanity,' in opposition to all orthodox Russia, which calls to Him, 'For Thou art our God!' " At this the President intervened and checked the over-zealous speaker, begging him not to exaggerate, not to overstep the bounds, and so on, as presidents always do in such cases. The audience, too, was uneasy. The public was restless: there were even exclamations of indignation. Fetyukovitch did not so much as reply; he only mounted the tribune to lay his hand on his heart and, with an offended voice, utter a few words full of dignity. He only touched again, lightly and ironically, on "romancing" and "psychology," and in an appropriate place quoted, "Jupiter, you are angry, therefore you are wrong," which provoked a burst of approving laughter in the audience, for Ippolit Kirillovitch was by no means like Jupiter. Then, _a propos_ of the accusation that he was teaching the young generation to murder their fathers, Fetyukovitch observed, with great dignity, that he would not even answer. As for the prosecutor's charge of uttering unorthodox opinions, Fetyukovitch hinted that it was a personal insinuation and that he had expected in this court to be secure from accusations "damaging to my reputation as a citizen and a loyal subject." But at these words the President pulled him up, too, and Fetyukovitch concluded his speech with a bow, amid a hum of approbation in the court. And Ippolit Kirillovitch was, in the opinion of our ladies, "crushed for good." Then the prisoner was allowed to speak. Mitya stood up, but said very little. He was fearfully exhausted, physically and mentally. The look of strength and independence with which he had entered in the morning had almost disappeared. He seemed as though he had passed through an experience that day, which had taught him for the rest of his life something very important he had not understood till then. His voice was weak, he did not shout as before. In his words there was a new note of humility, defeat and submission. "What am I to say, gentlemen of the jury? The hour of judgment has come for me, I feel the hand of God upon me! The end has come to an erring man! But, before God, I repeat to you, I am innocent of my father's blood! For the last time I repeat, it wasn't I killed him! I was erring, but I loved what is good. Every instant I strove to reform, but I lived like a wild beast. I thank the prosecutor, he told me many things about myself that I did not know; but it's not true that I killed my father, the prosecutor is mistaken. I thank my counsel, too. I cried listening to him; but it's not true that I killed my father, and he needn't have supposed it. And don't believe the doctors. I am perfectly sane, only my heart is heavy. If you spare me, if you let me go, I will pray for you. I will be a better man. I give you my word before God I will! And if you will condemn me, I'll break my sword over my head myself and kiss the pieces. But spare me, do not rob me of my God! I know myself, I shall rebel! My heart is heavy, gentlemen ... spare me!" He almost fell back in his place: his voice broke: he could hardly articulate the last phrase. Then the judges proceeded to put the questions and began to ask both sides to formulate their conclusions. But I will not describe the details. At last the jury rose to retire for consultation. The President was very tired, and so his last charge to the jury was rather feeble. "Be impartial, don't be influenced by the eloquence of the defense, but yet weigh the arguments. Remember that there is a great responsibility laid upon you," and so on and so on. The jury withdrew and the court adjourned. People could get up, move about, exchange their accumulated impressions, refresh themselves at the buffet. It was very late, almost one o'clock in the night, but nobody went away: the strain was so great that no one could think of repose. All waited with sinking hearts; though that is, perhaps, too much to say, for the ladies were only in a state of hysterical impatience and their hearts were untroubled. An acquittal, they thought, was inevitable. They all prepared themselves for a dramatic moment of general enthusiasm. I must own there were many among the men, too, who were convinced that an acquittal was inevitable. Some were pleased, others frowned, while some were simply dejected, not wanting him to be acquitted. Fetyukovitch himself was confident of his success. He was surrounded by people congratulating him and fawning upon him. "There are," he said to one group, as I was told afterwards, "there are invisible threads binding the counsel for the defense with the jury. One feels during one's speech if they are being formed. I was aware of them. They exist. Our cause is won. Set your mind at rest." "What will our peasants say now?" said one stout, cross-looking, pock- marked gentleman, a landowner of the neighborhood, approaching a group of gentlemen engaged in conversation. "But they are not all peasants. There are four government clerks among them." "Yes, there are clerks," said a member of the district council, joining the group. "And do you know that Nazaryev, the merchant with the medal, a juryman?" "What of him?" "He is a man with brains." "But he never speaks." "He is no great talker, but so much the better. There's no need for the Petersburg man to teach him: he could teach all Petersburg himself. He's the father of twelve children. Think of that!" "Upon my word, you don't suppose they won't acquit him?" one of our young officials exclaimed in another group. "They'll acquit him for certain," said a resolute voice. "It would be shameful, disgraceful, not to acquit him!" cried the official. "Suppose he did murder him--there are fathers and fathers! And, besides, he was in such a frenzy.... He really may have done nothing but swing the pestle in the air, and so knocked the old man down. But it was a pity they dragged the valet in. That was simply an absurd theory! If I'd been in Fetyukovitch's place, I should simply have said straight out: 'He murdered him; but he is not guilty, hang it all!' " "That's what he did, only without saying, 'Hang it all!' " "No, Mihail Semyonovitch, he almost said that, too," put in a third voice. "Why, gentlemen, in Lent an actress was acquitted in our town who had cut the throat of her lover's lawful wife." "Oh, but she did not finish cutting it." "That makes no difference. She began cutting it." "What did you think of what he said about children? Splendid, wasn't it?" "Splendid!" "And about mysticism, too!" "Oh, drop mysticism, do!" cried some one else; "think of Ippolit and his fate from this day forth. His wife will scratch his eyes out to-morrow for Mitya's sake." "Is she here?" "What an idea! If she'd been here she'd have scratched them out in court. She is at home with toothache. He he he!" "He he he!" In a third group: "I dare say they will acquit Mitenka, after all." "I should not be surprised if he turns the 'Metropolis' upside down to- morrow. He will be drinking for ten days!" "Oh, the devil!" "The devil's bound to have a hand in it. Where should he be if not here?" "Well, gentlemen, I admit it was eloquent. But still it's not the thing to break your father's head with a pestle! Or what are we coming to?" "The chariot! Do you remember the chariot?" "Yes; he turned a cart into a chariot!" "And to-morrow he will turn a chariot into a cart, just to suit his purpose." "What cunning chaps there are nowadays! Is there any justice to be had in Russia?" But the bell rang. The jury deliberated for exactly an hour, neither more nor less. A profound silence reigned in the court as soon as the public had taken their seats. I remember how the jurymen walked into the court. At last! I won't repeat the questions in order, and, indeed, I have forgotten them. I remember only the answer to the President's first and chief question: "Did the prisoner commit the murder for the sake of robbery and with premeditation?" (I don't remember the exact words.) There was a complete hush. The foreman of the jury, the youngest of the clerks, pronounced, in a clear, loud voice, amidst the deathlike stillness of the court: "Yes, guilty!" And the same answer was repeated to every question: "Yes, guilty!" and without the slightest extenuating comment. This no one had expected; almost every one had reckoned upon a recommendation to mercy, at least. The deathlike silence in the court was not broken--all seemed petrified: those who desired his conviction as well as those who had been eager for his acquittal. But that was only for the first instant, and it was followed by a fearful hubbub. Many of the men in the audience were pleased. Some were rubbing their hands with no attempt to conceal their joy. Those who disagreed with the verdict seemed crushed, shrugged their shoulders, whispered, but still seemed unable to realize this. But how shall I describe the state the ladies were in? I thought they would create a riot. At first they could scarcely believe their ears. Then suddenly the whole court rang with exclamations: "What's the meaning of it? What next?" They leapt up from their places. They seemed to fancy that it might be at once reconsidered and reversed. At that instant Mitya suddenly stood up and cried in a heartrending voice, stretching his hands out before him: "I swear by God and the dreadful Day of Judgment I am not guilty of my father's blood! Katya, I forgive you! Brothers, friends, have pity on the other woman!" He could not go on, and broke into a terrible sobbing wail that was heard all over the court in a strange, unnatural voice unlike his own. From the farthest corner at the back of the gallery came a piercing shriek--it was Grushenka. She had succeeded in begging admittance to the court again before the beginning of the lawyers' speeches. Mitya was taken away. The passing of the sentence was deferred till next day. The whole court was in a hubbub but I did not wait to hear. I only remember a few exclamations I heard on the steps as I went out. "He'll have a twenty years' trip to the mines!" "Not less." "Well, our peasants have stood firm." "And have done for our Mitya."

Book 12, Chapter 14

https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-12-chapter-14

The end of Fetyukovich's speech is greeted with loud applause from the courtroom. But Kirillovich is indignant and in his hurried response takes Fetyukovich to task for invoking the Gospel, for insulting Kirillovich's use of psychology, and for inventing fantastic and unbelievable explanations for Dmitri's and Smerdyakov's behavior. Fetyukovich responds to these accusations in a calm and reasonable way. The judge then asks Dmitri if he has anything to say. Dmitri again stresses his innocence and asks for the mercy of the court. The judge then briefly lectures the jury, the jury retires, and the audience in the courtroom discusses the speeches. After exactly an hour, the jury returns with a verdict: guilty of all charges, with no extenuating circumstances. Dmitri cries out and Grushenka screams. Dmitri is taken away. The sentencing is to take place the next day.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/174-chapters/13.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Picture of Dorian Gray/section_12_part_0.txt

The Picture of Dorian Gray.chapter 13

chapter 13

{"name": "Chapter 13", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210304030722/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/picture-dorian-gray/summary/chapter-13", "summary": "In the old schoolroom, Dorian asks Basil once more if he's sure he wants to see Dorian's secret. Basil confirms, but he's obviously uncomfortable--what are they doing in this dingy old room? Why would Dorian take him to this dreadful place? Basil thinks Dorian has lost it . Dorian flings off the covering from the painting, and Basil sees the horrible image that lies beneath. Basil is shocked, appalled, terrified, disgusted--basically, there aren't enough adjectives to contain his horror. He sees his own signature on the terrible picture, and he can tell that the subject is Dorian, but he can't believe his eyes. What could it possibly mean?! Dorian is eating all of this up; he's delighted by Basil's terror. He reminds Basil of the wish that he once made, that the portrait could grow old and he stay young... Basil remembers, but doesn't believe that it could possibly have happened . He tries to explain the portrait's transformation scientifically, but it's impossible. Basil is thoroughly disgusted by the image of the evil man in the portrait. If this is what Dorian's soul looks like, he says, all the grotesque stories about him must be true. He has the answer to his question. By now, both Basil and Dorian are upset--even Dorian is crying. Basil tries to capitalize upon this moment of vulnerability, and tells Dorian he must pray for forgiveness, but Dorian weakly says that it's too late. Basil pushes back, saying that Dorian's done enough evil--after all, the cursed portrait proves that. Dorian looks back at the portrait, and is suddenly filled with hate and rage for Basil. He seizes a knife and brutally stabs his former friend to death. Whoa. That was really sudden--we totally didn't expect it, and neither did Dorian. He's flustered, but he doesn't actually feel bad about the murder; he tries to emotionally disconnect from it. His primary concern is how to dispose of the body and avoid getting caught. Dorian realizes that since Basil was supposed to leave England, it'll probably be ages before anyone even notices that he's missing. Dorian has a sudden flash of inspiration--he makes his own alibi by sneaking out of the house, then ringing the doorbell to get back in, as though he's just coming home really late. When his valet lets him in, Dorian explains that he forgot his key, and has been out all night. Back in the library, Dorian thinks over the situation, and comes up with a solution, apparently in the person of someone named Alan Campbell.", "analysis": ""}

He passed out of the room and began the ascent, Basil Hallward following close behind. They walked softly, as men do instinctively at night. The lamp cast fantastic shadows on the wall and staircase. A rising wind made some of the windows rattle. When they reached the top landing, Dorian set the lamp down on the floor, and taking out the key, turned it in the lock. "You insist on knowing, Basil?" he asked in a low voice. "Yes." "I am delighted," he answered, smiling. Then he added, somewhat harshly, "You are the one man in the world who is entitled to know everything about me. You have had more to do with my life than you think"; and, taking up the lamp, he opened the door and went in. A cold current of air passed them, and the light shot up for a moment in a flame of murky orange. He shuddered. "Shut the door behind you," he whispered, as he placed the lamp on the table. Hallward glanced round him with a puzzled expression. The room looked as if it had not been lived in for years. A faded Flemish tapestry, a curtained picture, an old Italian _cassone_, and an almost empty book-case--that was all that it seemed to contain, besides a chair and a table. As Dorian Gray was lighting a half-burned candle that was standing on the mantelshelf, he saw that the whole place was covered with dust and that the carpet was in holes. A mouse ran scuffling behind the wainscoting. There was a damp odour of mildew. "So you think that it is only God who sees the soul, Basil? Draw that curtain back, and you will see mine." The voice that spoke was cold and cruel. "You are mad, Dorian, or playing a part," muttered Hallward, frowning. "You won't? Then I must do it myself," said the young man, and he tore the curtain from its rod and flung it on the ground. An exclamation of horror broke from the painter's lips as he saw in the dim light the hideous face on the canvas grinning at him. There was something in its expression that filled him with disgust and loathing. Good heavens! it was Dorian Gray's own face that he was looking at! The horror, whatever it was, had not yet entirely spoiled that marvellous beauty. There was still some gold in the thinning hair and some scarlet on the sensual mouth. The sodden eyes had kept something of the loveliness of their blue, the noble curves had not yet completely passed away from chiselled nostrils and from plastic throat. Yes, it was Dorian himself. But who had done it? He seemed to recognize his own brushwork, and the frame was his own design. The idea was monstrous, yet he felt afraid. He seized the lighted candle, and held it to the picture. In the left-hand corner was his own name, traced in long letters of bright vermilion. It was some foul parody, some infamous ignoble satire. He had never done that. Still, it was his own picture. He knew it, and he felt as if his blood had changed in a moment from fire to sluggish ice. His own picture! What did it mean? Why had it altered? He turned and looked at Dorian Gray with the eyes of a sick man. His mouth twitched, and his parched tongue seemed unable to articulate. He passed his hand across his forehead. It was dank with clammy sweat. The young man was leaning against the mantelshelf, watching him with that strange expression that one sees on the faces of those who are absorbed in a play when some great artist is acting. There was neither real sorrow in it nor real joy. There was simply the passion of the spectator, with perhaps a flicker of triumph in his eyes. He had taken the flower out of his coat, and was smelling it, or pretending to do so. "What does this mean?" cried Hallward, at last. His own voice sounded shrill and curious in his ears. "Years ago, when I was a boy," said Dorian Gray, crushing the flower in his hand, "you met me, flattered me, and taught me to be vain of my good looks. One day you introduced me to a friend of yours, who explained to me the wonder of youth, and you finished a portrait of me that revealed to me the wonder of beauty. In a mad moment that, even now, I don't know whether I regret or not, I made a wish, perhaps you would call it a prayer...." "I remember it! Oh, how well I remember it! No! the thing is impossible. The room is damp. Mildew has got into the canvas. The paints I used had some wretched mineral poison in them. I tell you the thing is impossible." "Ah, what is impossible?" murmured the young man, going over to the window and leaning his forehead against the cold, mist-stained glass. "You told me you had destroyed it." "I was wrong. It has destroyed me." "I don't believe it is my picture." "Can't you see your ideal in it?" said Dorian bitterly. "My ideal, as you call it..." "As you called it." "There was nothing evil in it, nothing shameful. You were to me such an ideal as I shall never meet again. This is the face of a satyr." "It is the face of my soul." "Christ! what a thing I must have worshipped! It has the eyes of a devil." "Each of us has heaven and hell in him, Basil," cried Dorian with a wild gesture of despair. Hallward turned again to the portrait and gazed at it. "My God! If it is true," he exclaimed, "and this is what you have done with your life, why, you must be worse even than those who talk against you fancy you to be!" He held the light up again to the canvas and examined it. The surface seemed to be quite undisturbed and as he had left it. It was from within, apparently, that the foulness and horror had come. Through some strange quickening of inner life the leprosies of sin were slowly eating the thing away. The rotting of a corpse in a watery grave was not so fearful. His hand shook, and the candle fell from its socket on the floor and lay there sputtering. He placed his foot on it and put it out. Then he flung himself into the rickety chair that was standing by the table and buried his face in his hands. "Good God, Dorian, what a lesson! What an awful lesson!" There was no answer, but he could hear the young man sobbing at the window. "Pray, Dorian, pray," he murmured. "What is it that one was taught to say in one's boyhood? 'Lead us not into temptation. Forgive us our sins. Wash away our iniquities.' Let us say that together. The prayer of your pride has been answered. The prayer of your repentance will be answered also. I worshipped you too much. I am punished for it. You worshipped yourself too much. We are both punished." Dorian Gray turned slowly around and looked at him with tear-dimmed eyes. "It is too late, Basil," he faltered. "It is never too late, Dorian. Let us kneel down and try if we cannot remember a prayer. Isn't there a verse somewhere, 'Though your sins be as scarlet, yet I will make them as white as snow'?" "Those words mean nothing to me now." "Hush! Don't say that. You have done enough evil in your life. My God! Don't you see that accursed thing leering at us?" Dorian Gray glanced at the picture, and suddenly an uncontrollable feeling of hatred for Basil Hallward came over him, as though it had been suggested to him by the image on the canvas, whispered into his ear by those grinning lips. The mad passions of a hunted animal stirred within him, and he loathed the man who was seated at the table, more than in his whole life he had ever loathed anything. He glanced wildly around. Something glimmered on the top of the painted chest that faced him. His eye fell on it. He knew what it was. It was a knife that he had brought up, some days before, to cut a piece of cord, and had forgotten to take away with him. He moved slowly towards it, passing Hallward as he did so. As soon as he got behind him, he seized it and turned round. Hallward stirred in his chair as if he was going to rise. He rushed at him and dug the knife into the great vein that is behind the ear, crushing the man's head down on the table and stabbing again and again. There was a stifled groan and the horrible sound of some one choking with blood. Three times the outstretched arms shot up convulsively, waving grotesque, stiff-fingered hands in the air. He stabbed him twice more, but the man did not move. Something began to trickle on the floor. He waited for a moment, still pressing the head down. Then he threw the knife on the table, and listened. He could hear nothing, but the drip, drip on the threadbare carpet. He opened the door and went out on the landing. The house was absolutely quiet. No one was about. For a few seconds he stood bending over the balustrade and peering down into the black seething well of darkness. Then he took out the key and returned to the room, locking himself in as he did so. The thing was still seated in the chair, straining over the table with bowed head, and humped back, and long fantastic arms. Had it not been for the red jagged tear in the neck and the clotted black pool that was slowly widening on the table, one would have said that the man was simply asleep. How quickly it had all been done! He felt strangely calm, and walking over to the window, opened it and stepped out on the balcony. The wind had blown the fog away, and the sky was like a monstrous peacock's tail, starred with myriads of golden eyes. He looked down and saw the policeman going his rounds and flashing the long beam of his lantern on the doors of the silent houses. The crimson spot of a prowling hansom gleamed at the corner and then vanished. A woman in a fluttering shawl was creeping slowly by the railings, staggering as she went. Now and then she stopped and peered back. Once, she began to sing in a hoarse voice. The policeman strolled over and said something to her. She stumbled away, laughing. A bitter blast swept across the square. The gas-lamps flickered and became blue, and the leafless trees shook their black iron branches to and fro. He shivered and went back, closing the window behind him. Having reached the door, he turned the key and opened it. He did not even glance at the murdered man. He felt that the secret of the whole thing was not to realize the situation. The friend who had painted the fatal portrait to which all his misery had been due had gone out of his life. That was enough. Then he remembered the lamp. It was a rather curious one of Moorish workmanship, made of dull silver inlaid with arabesques of burnished steel, and studded with coarse turquoises. Perhaps it might be missed by his servant, and questions would be asked. He hesitated for a moment, then he turned back and took it from the table. He could not help seeing the dead thing. How still it was! How horribly white the long hands looked! It was like a dreadful wax image. Having locked the door behind him, he crept quietly downstairs. The woodwork creaked and seemed to cry out as if in pain. He stopped several times and waited. No: everything was still. It was merely the sound of his own footsteps. When he reached the library, he saw the bag and coat in the corner. They must be hidden away somewhere. He unlocked a secret press that was in the wainscoting, a press in which he kept his own curious disguises, and put them into it. He could easily burn them afterwards. Then he pulled out his watch. It was twenty minutes to two. He sat down and began to think. Every year--every month, almost--men were strangled in England for what he had done. There had been a madness of murder in the air. Some red star had come too close to the earth.... And yet, what evidence was there against him? Basil Hallward had left the house at eleven. No one had seen him come in again. Most of the servants were at Selby Royal. His valet had gone to bed.... Paris! Yes. It was to Paris that Basil had gone, and by the midnight train, as he had intended. With his curious reserved habits, it would be months before any suspicions would be roused. Months! Everything could be destroyed long before then. A sudden thought struck him. He put on his fur coat and hat and went out into the hall. There he paused, hearing the slow heavy tread of the policeman on the pavement outside and seeing the flash of the bull's-eye reflected in the window. He waited and held his breath. After a few moments he drew back the latch and slipped out, shutting the door very gently behind him. Then he began ringing the bell. In about five minutes his valet appeared, half-dressed and looking very drowsy. "I am sorry to have had to wake you up, Francis," he said, stepping in; "but I had forgotten my latch-key. What time is it?" "Ten minutes past two, sir," answered the man, looking at the clock and blinking. "Ten minutes past two? How horribly late! You must wake me at nine to-morrow. I have some work to do." "All right, sir." "Did any one call this evening?" "Mr. Hallward, sir. He stayed here till eleven, and then he went away to catch his train." "Oh! I am sorry I didn't see him. Did he leave any message?" "No, sir, except that he would write to you from Paris, if he did not find you at the club." "That will do, Francis. Don't forget to call me at nine to-morrow." "No, sir." The man shambled down the passage in his slippers. Dorian Gray threw his hat and coat upon the table and passed into the library. For a quarter of an hour he walked up and down the room, biting his lip and thinking. Then he took down the Blue Book from one of the shelves and began to turn over the leaves. "Alan Campbell, 152, Hertford Street, Mayfair." Yes; that was the man he wanted.

Chapter 13

https://web.archive.org/web/20210304030722/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/picture-dorian-gray/summary/chapter-13

In the old schoolroom, Dorian asks Basil once more if he's sure he wants to see Dorian's secret. Basil confirms, but he's obviously uncomfortable--what are they doing in this dingy old room? Why would Dorian take him to this dreadful place? Basil thinks Dorian has lost it . Dorian flings off the covering from the painting, and Basil sees the horrible image that lies beneath. Basil is shocked, appalled, terrified, disgusted--basically, there aren't enough adjectives to contain his horror. He sees his own signature on the terrible picture, and he can tell that the subject is Dorian, but he can't believe his eyes. What could it possibly mean?! Dorian is eating all of this up; he's delighted by Basil's terror. He reminds Basil of the wish that he once made, that the portrait could grow old and he stay young... Basil remembers, but doesn't believe that it could possibly have happened . He tries to explain the portrait's transformation scientifically, but it's impossible. Basil is thoroughly disgusted by the image of the evil man in the portrait. If this is what Dorian's soul looks like, he says, all the grotesque stories about him must be true. He has the answer to his question. By now, both Basil and Dorian are upset--even Dorian is crying. Basil tries to capitalize upon this moment of vulnerability, and tells Dorian he must pray for forgiveness, but Dorian weakly says that it's too late. Basil pushes back, saying that Dorian's done enough evil--after all, the cursed portrait proves that. Dorian looks back at the portrait, and is suddenly filled with hate and rage for Basil. He seizes a knife and brutally stabs his former friend to death. Whoa. That was really sudden--we totally didn't expect it, and neither did Dorian. He's flustered, but he doesn't actually feel bad about the murder; he tries to emotionally disconnect from it. His primary concern is how to dispose of the body and avoid getting caught. Dorian realizes that since Basil was supposed to leave England, it'll probably be ages before anyone even notices that he's missing. Dorian has a sudden flash of inspiration--he makes his own alibi by sneaking out of the house, then ringing the doorbell to get back in, as though he's just coming home really late. When his valet lets him in, Dorian explains that he forgot his key, and has been out all night. Back in the library, Dorian thinks over the situation, and comes up with a solution, apparently in the person of someone named Alan Campbell.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/14328-chapters/book_v.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Consolation of Philosophy/section_10_part_0.txt

Consolation of Philosophy.book v

book v

{"name": "Summary of Book V Part I-VI", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210212221439/https://www.novelguide.com/consolation-of-philosophy/summaries/book5-parti-vi", "summary": "of Parts I and II Boethius tells Philosophy he wants her to go more deeply into the topic of chance. Is there such a thing as random chance ruling our lives? Perhaps that is how he ended up in prison. Philosophy says if you define chance as randomness, there is no such thing. If God is maintaining order, there cannot be something random happening someplace, for \"nothing comes out of nothing\" . Boethius replies, how about accidents? Philosophy mentions that Aristotle's definition of chance in his Physics is, something done with one purpose, but getting a different result than was intended. Yet, it is not chance, for there are hidden causes. It may be that multiple and conflicting causes are at work, outside of the intention of the doers. If you define chance as an unpredicted or unexpected event, then perhaps you can say yes, though the events are still under the rule of law. Boethius asks if there is such a thing as free will? Philosophy replies that there is freedom for rational creatures. Humans are rational and cannot exist without it. A rational creature must choose, though freedom may not be equal for all, depending on one's clarity. Humans are more free when they participate in the contemplation of God, and less free when they act out of bodily desires. If they are wicked, they are mere slaves to their own destructive will. These choices are all visible to the eye of Providence, which predestines award or punishment according to merit.", "analysis": "Commentary on Parts I and II Providence is the all-knowing vision of God in eternity, who sees past, present, and future at once. Humans have free will, and God, watching the choice from on high, is ready with the \"predestined\" reward or punishment. The person's fate is not actually predetermined by God but given by God as a natural consequence of the person's free will. Philosophy says there is no chance or accident. Whether or not we can see all the causes, everything works out in an orderly and just fashion. Summary of Parts III and IV Boethius is puzzled how there can be freedom of will if God already knows what we will do. If it is known, isn't it already decided then? It would not then be possible to change one's mind. Philosophy says that if something is to happen, it cannot be concealed from Providence. People wonder if foreknowledge of the future causes the future? How can God foreknow events that are still uncertain and being decided by an individual? If Providence is the same as certainty about the future, how meaningful is prayer, hope, and the relationship between God and human? Philosophy says this is an old debate, but human reasoning cannot understand \"the immediacy of divine foreknowledge\" . Free will is not hindered by God's foreknowledge, which is merely knowledge of what is about to happen. One can know something is going on without having any influence on it. It does not make what is happening inevitable. Seeing something and necessity are not the same thing. Different creatures have different abilities to know. Sense perception is the lowest faculty, common with animals. They only know things through their bodily senses. Imagination is a higher power because it does not depend on physical objects. Reason is higher still because it can understand the universal law by inference. The highest form of knowing is pure intelligence itself, and this intelligence sees the Idea or \"simple form\" in the mind of God . This highest knowing, only available to God, sees \"by a single glance of the mind\" . The lower kind of knowing cannot grasp the higher knowing. Commentary on Parts III and IV Philosophy gives a very important answer to Boethius's question about free will and Providence. It is a hotly debated question in philosophy about how God can know the future if humans have free will. What if they have not decided yet? There are those who believe that predestination is what is really going on, and humans only think they have free will. If God already knows, for instance, which souls will be saved, why should humans even bother trying to be good? It has been predetermined, like loaded dice. Philosophy tells Boethius it may seem like a paradox, but God's foreknowledge of how things will turn out does not interfere with human free will. She gives the answer that there are different forms of knowledge, and someone who has a lower ability cannot comprehend a higher ability. Animals, for instance, have sense perception, or knowing by the senses. Humans can go farther by imagining things that are not present. They can also use the mind to reason about the invisible laws of nature from inference. But an even higher knowledge like God's comes from pure intelligence, which knows everything at once without regard to time. Humans know in sequence, one thing at a time, in terms of past, present, and future, but God can know immediately what is going on everywhere. That does not mean God is interfering with us. Philosophy recites a poem about knowledge, explaining the passive model of the mind taught by the Stoics. Stoicism was a material philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium . Stoics thought the mind merely received sense impressions as on a wax tablet. As a Platonist, Boethius denied this model of knowledge. For him, the mind is spiritual and powerfully active, able to analyze and synthesize and know the truth beyond sense impression. Humans may not know like God knows, but they can participate with God in the divine nature of life through reason. Summary of Parts V and VI Philosophy continues the topic of different kinds of knowing. Reason belongs only to the human race, just as pure intelligence belongs to divinity. Divine intelligence comprehends the lower kinds of knowing, yet human reason refuses to believe that divine intelligence can see the future in a \"boundless immediacy\" . Eternity is the \"complete, simultaneous and perfect possession of everlasting life\" while those who live in time experience past, present, and future. Humans catch a fleeting and transitory glimpse of life only. To experience the whole of life in the present moment is characteristic of the mind of God. His knowledge transcends change. Commentary on Parts V and VI The book finishes with this discussion of God's foreknowledge. Philosophy ends her teaching to Boethius in prison with this point in order to give him faith in Providence. Are his suffering and imprisonment simply due to chance or evil? Or can he have faith that God has foreseen all and that even the death of Boethius will be part of the good, of God's providential foresight? God sees what is happening in a never-ending present moment. The divine gaze \"looks down on all things without disturbing their nature\" . If God is on high witnessing this fate for Boethius, then it is necessary for it to happen, though God is not causing it to happen. God is the \"spectator from on high of all things\" . Therefore, Philosophy concludes, \"Avoid vice . . . cultivate virtue; lift up your mind to the right kind of hope, and put forth humble prayers on high\" . She has comforted Boethius with the idea that God is near and part of our human nature. We are always free to be with God and part of the good, no matter what fate we are handed in the world by Fortune. Book V of Parts I and II Boethius tells Philosophy he wants her to go more deeply into the topic of chance. Is there such a thing as random chance ruling our lives? Perhaps that is how he ended up in prison. Philosophy says if you define chance as randomness, there is no such thing. If God is maintaining order, there cannot be something random happening someplace, for \"nothing comes out of nothing\" . Boethius replies, how about accidents? Philosophy mentions that Aristotle's definition of chance in his Physics is, something done with one purpose, but getting a different result than was intended. Yet, it is not chance, for there are hidden causes. It may be that multiple and conflicting causes are at work, outside of the intention of the doers. If you define chance as an unpredicted or unexpected event, then perhaps you can say yes, though the events are still under the rule of law. Boethius asks if there is such a thing as free will? Philosophy replies that there is freedom for rational creatures. Humans are rational and cannot exist without it. A rational creature must choose, though freedom may not be equal for all, depending on one's clarity. Humans are more free when they participate in the contemplation of God, and less free when they act out of bodily desires. If they are wicked, they are mere slaves to their own destructive will. These choices are all visible to the eye of Providence, which predestines award or punishment according to merit. Commentary on Parts I and II Commentary on Parts I and II Providence is the all-knowing vision of God in eternity, who sees past, present, and future at once. Humans have free will, and God, watching the choice from on high, is ready with the \"predestined\" reward or punishment. The person's fate is not actually predetermined by God but given by God as a natural consequence of the person's free will. Philosophy says there is no chance or accident. Whether or not we can see all the causes, everything works out in an orderly and just fashion. of Parts III and IV Boethius is puzzled how there can be freedom of will if God already knows what we will do. If it is known, isn't it already decided then? It would not then be possible to change one's mind. Philosophy says that if something is to happen, it cannot be concealed from Providence. People wonder if foreknowledge of the future causes the future? How can God foreknow events that are still uncertain and being decided by an individual? If Providence is the same as certainty about the future, how meaningful is prayer, hope, and the relationship between God and human? Philosophy says this is an old debate, but human reasoning cannot understand \"the immediacy of divine foreknowledge\" . Free will is not hindered by God's foreknowledge, which is merely knowledge of what is about to happen. One can know something is going on without having any influence on it. It does not make what is happening inevitable. Seeing something and necessity are not the same thing. Different creatures have different abilities to know. Sense perception is the lowest faculty, common with animals. They only know things through their bodily senses. Imagination is a higher power because it does not depend on physical objects. Reason is higher still because it can understand the universal law by inference. The highest form of knowing is pure intelligence itself, and this intelligence sees the Idea or \"simple form\" in the mind of God . This highest knowing, only available to God, sees \"by a single glance of the mind\" . The lower kind of knowing cannot grasp the higher knowing. Commentary on Parts III and IV Commentary on Parts III and IV Philosophy gives a very important answer to Boethius's question about free will and Providence. It is a hotly debated question in philosophy about how God can know the future if humans have free will. What if they have not decided yet? There are those who believe that predestination is what is really going on, and humans only think they have free will. If God already knows, for instance, which souls will be saved, why should humans even bother trying to be good? It has been predetermined, like loaded dice. Philosophy tells Boethius it may seem like a paradox, but God's foreknowledge of how things will turn out does not interfere with human free will. She gives the answer that there are different forms of knowledge, and someone who has a lower ability cannot comprehend a higher ability. Animals, for instance, have sense perception, or knowing by the senses. Humans can go farther by imagining things that are not present. They can also use the mind to reason about the invisible laws of nature from inference. But an even higher knowledge like God's comes from pure intelligence, which knows everything at once without regard to time. Humans know in sequence, one thing at a time, in terms of past, present, and future, but God can know immediately what is going on everywhere. That does not mean God is interfering with us. Philosophy recites a poem about knowledge, explaining the passive model of the mind taught by the Stoics. Stoicism was a material philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium . Stoics thought the mind merely received sense impressions as on a wax tablet. As a Platonist, Boethius denied this model of knowledge. For him, the mind is spiritual and powerfully active, able to analyze and synthesize and know the truth beyond sense impression. Humans may not know like God knows, but they can participate with God in the divine nature of life through reason. of Parts V and VI Philosophy continues the topic of different kinds of knowing. Reason belongs only to the human race, just as pure intelligence belongs to divinity. Divine intelligence comprehends the lower kinds of knowing, yet human reason refuses to believe that divine intelligence can see the future in a \"boundless immediacy\" . Eternity is the \"complete, simultaneous and perfect possession of everlasting life\" while those who live in time experience past, present, and future. Humans catch a fleeting and transitory glimpse of life only. To experience the whole of life in the present moment is characteristic of the mind of God. His knowledge transcends change. Commentary on Parts V and VI Commentary on Parts V and VI The book finishes with this discussion of God's foreknowledge. Philosophy ends her teaching to Boethius in prison with this point in order to give him faith in Providence. Are his suffering and imprisonment simply due to chance or evil? Or can he have faith that God has foreseen all and that even the death of Boethius will be part of the good, of God's providential foresight? God sees what is happening in a never-ending present moment. The divine gaze \"looks down on all things without disturbing their nature\" . If God is on high witnessing this fate for Boethius, then it is necessary for it to happen, though God is not causing it to happen. God is the \"spectator from on high of all things\" . Therefore, Philosophy concludes, \"Avoid vice . . . cultivate virtue; lift up your mind to the right kind of hope, and put forth humble prayers on high\" . She has comforted Boethius with the idea that God is near and part of our human nature. We are always free to be with God and part of the good, no matter what fate we are handed in the world by Fortune. Novel Author Boethius Novel Author Boethius"}

<CHAPTER> BOOK V. I. She ceased, and was about to pass on in her discourse to the exposition of other matters, when I break in and say: 'Excellent is thine exhortation, and such as well beseemeth thy high authority; but I am even now experiencing one of the many difficulties which, as thou saidst but now, beset the question of providence. I want to know whether thou deemest that there is any such thing as chance at all, and, if so, what it is.' Then she made answer: 'I am anxious to fulfil my promise completely, and open to thee a way of return to thy native land. As for these matters, though very useful to know, they are yet a little removed from the path of our design, and I fear lest digressions should fatigue thee, and thou shouldst find thyself unequal to completing the direct journey to our goal.' 'Have no fear for that,' said I. 'It is rest to me to learn, where learning brings delight so exquisite, especially when thy argument has been built up on all sides with undoubted conviction, and no place is left for uncertainty in what follows.' She made answer: 'I will accede to thy request;' and forthwith she thus began: 'If chance be defined as a result produced by random movement without any link of causal connection, I roundly affirm that there is no such thing as chance at all, and consider the word to be altogether without meaning, except as a symbol of the thing designated. What place can be left for random action, when God constraineth all things to order? For "ex nihilo nihil" is sound doctrine which none of the ancients gainsaid, although they used it of material substance, not of the efficient principle; this they laid down as a kind of basis for all their reasonings concerning nature. Now, if a thing arise without causes, it will appear to have arisen from nothing. But if this cannot be, neither is it possible for there to be chance in accordance with the definition just given.' 'Well,' said I, 'is there, then, nothing which can properly be called chance or accident, or is there something to which these names are appropriate, though its nature is dark to the vulgar?' 'Our good Aristotle,' says she, 'has defined it concisely in his "Physics," and closely in accordance with the truth.' 'How, pray?' said I. 'Thus,' says she: 'Whenever something is done for the sake of a particular end, and for certain reasons some other result than that designed ensues, this is called chance; for instance, if a man is digging the earth for tillage, and finds a mass of buried gold. Now, such a find is regarded as accidental; yet it is not "ex nihilo," for it has its proper causes, the unforeseen and unexpected concurrence of which has brought the chance about. For had not the cultivator been digging, had not the man who hid the money buried it in that precise spot, the gold would not have been found. These, then, are the reasons why the find is a chance one, in that it results from causes which met together and concurred, not from any intention on the part of the discoverer. Since neither he who buried the gold nor he who worked in the field _intended_ that the money should be found, but, as I said, it _happened_ by coincidence that one dug where the other buried the treasure. We may, then, define chance as being an unexpected result flowing from a concurrence of causes where the several factors had some definite end. But the meeting and concurrence of these causes arises from that inevitable chain of order which, flowing from the fountain-head of Providence, disposes all things in their due time and place.' SONG I. CHANCE. In the rugged Persian highlands, Where the masters of the bow Skill to feign a flight, and, fleeing, Hurl their darts and pierce the foe; There the Tigris and Euphrates At one source[O] their waters blend, Soon to draw apart, and plainward Each its separate way to wend. When once more their waters mingle In a channel deep and wide, All the flotsam comes together That is borne upon the tide: Ships, and trunks of trees, uprooted In the torrent's wild career, Meet, as 'mid the swirling waters Chance their random way may steer. Yet the shelving of the channel And the flowing water's force Guides each movement, and determines Every floating fragment's course. Thus, where'er the drift of hazard Seems most unrestrained to flow, Chance herself is reined and bitted, And the curb of law doth know. FOOTNOTES: [O] This is not, of course, literally true, though the Tigris and Euphrates rise in the same mountain district. II. 'I am following needfully,' said I, 'and I agree that it is as thou sayest. But in this series of linked causes is there any freedom left to our will, or does the chain of fate bind also the very motions of our souls?' 'There is freedom,' said she; 'nor, indeed, can any creature be rational, unless he be endowed with free will. For that which hath the natural use of reason has the faculty of discriminative judgment, and of itself distinguishes what is to be shunned or desired. Now, everyone seeks what he judges desirable, and avoids what he thinks should be shunned. Wherefore, beings endowed with reason possess also the faculty of free choice and refusal. But I suppose this faculty not equal alike in all. The higher Divine essences possess a clear-sighted judgment, an uncorrupt will, and an effective power of accomplishing their wishes. Human souls must needs be comparatively free while they abide in the contemplation of the Divine mind, less free when they pass into bodily form, and still less, again, when they are enwrapped in earthly members. But when they are given over to vices, and fall from the possession of their proper reason, then indeed their condition is utter slavery. For when they let their gaze fall from the light of highest truth to the lower world where darkness reigns, soon ignorance blinds their vision; they are disturbed by baneful affections, by yielding and assenting to which they help to promote the slavery in which they are involved, and are in a manner led captive by reason of their very liberty. Yet He who seeth all things from eternity beholdeth these things with the eyes of His providence, and assigneth to each what is predestined for it by its merits: '"All things surveying, all things overhearing.'" SONG II. THE TRUE SUN. Homer with mellifluous tongue Phoebus' glorious light hath sung, Hymning high his praise; Yet _his_ feeble rays Ocean's hollows may not brighten, Nor earth's central gloom enlighten. But the might of Him, who skilled This great universe to build, Is not thus confined; Not earth's solid rind, Nor night's blackest canopy, Baffle His all-seeing eye. All that is, hath been, shall be, In one glance's compass, He Limitless descries; And, save His, no eyes All the world survey--no, none! _Him_, then, truly name the Sun. III. Then said I: 'But now I am once more perplexed by a problem yet more difficult.' 'And what is that?' said she; 'yet, in truth, I can guess what it is that troubles you.' 'It seems,' said I, 'too much of a paradox and a contradiction that God should know all things, and yet there should be free will. For if God foresees everything, and can in no wise be deceived, that which providence foresees to be about to happen must necessarily come to pass. Wherefore, if from eternity He foreknows not only what men will do, but also their designs and purposes, there can be no freedom of the will, seeing that nothing can be done, nor can any sort of purpose be entertained, save such as a Divine providence, incapable of being deceived, has perceived beforehand. For if the issues can be turned aside to some other end than that foreseen by providence, there will not then be any sure foreknowledge of the future, but uncertain conjecture instead, and to think this of God I deem impiety. 'Moreover, I do not approve the reasoning by which some think to solve this puzzle. For they say that it is not because God has foreseen the coming of an event that _therefore_ it is sure to come to pass, but, conversely, because something is about to come to pass, it cannot be hidden from Divine providence; and accordingly the necessity passes to the opposite side, and it is not that what is foreseen must necessarily come to pass, but that what is about to come to pass must necessarily be foreseen. But this is just as if the matter in debate were, which is cause and which effect--whether foreknowledge of the future cause of the necessity, or the necessity of the future of the foreknowledge. But we need not be at the pains of demonstrating that, whatsoever be the order of the causal sequence, the occurrence of things foreseen is necessary, even though the foreknowledge of future events does not in itself impose upon them the necessity of their occurrence. For example, if a man be seated, the supposition of his being seated is necessarily true; and, conversely, if the supposition of his being seated is true, because he is really seated, he must necessarily be sitting. So, in either case, there is some necessity involved--in this latter case, the necessity of the fact; in the former, of the truth of the statement. But in both cases the sitter is not therefore seated because the opinion is true, but rather the opinion is true because antecedently he was sitting as a matter of fact. Thus, though the cause of the truth of the opinion comes from the other side,[P] yet there is a necessity on both sides alike. We can obviously reason similarly in the case of providence and the future. Even if future events are foreseen because they are about to happen, and do not come to pass because they are foreseen, still, all the same, there is a necessity, both that they should be foreseen by God as about to come to pass, and that when they are foreseen they should happen, and this is sufficient for the destruction of free will. However, it is preposterous to speak of the occurrence of events in time as the cause of eternal foreknowledge. And yet if we believe that God foresees future events because they are about to come to pass, what is it but to think that the occurrence of events is the cause of His supreme providence? Further, just as when I _know_ that anything is, that thing _necessarily_ is, so when I know that anything will be, it will _necessarily_ be. It follows, then, that things foreknown come to pass inevitably. 'Lastly, to think of a thing as being in any way other than what it is, is not only not knowledge, but it is false opinion widely different from the truth of knowledge. Consequently, if anything is about to be, and yet its occurrence is not certain and necessary, how can anyone foreknow that it will occur? For just as knowledge itself is free from all admixture of falsity, so any conception drawn from knowledge cannot be other than as it is conceived. For this, indeed, is the cause why knowledge is free from falsehood, because of necessity each thing must correspond exactly with the knowledge which grasps its nature. In what way, then, are we to suppose that God foreknows these uncertainties as about to come to pass? For if He thinks of events which possibly may not happen at all as inevitably destined to come to pass, He is deceived; and this it is not only impious to believe, but even so much as to express in words. If, on the other hand, He sees them in the future as they are in such a sense as to know that they may equally come to pass or not, what sort of foreknowledge is this which comprehends nothing certain nor fixed? What better is this than the absurd vaticination of Teiresias? '"Whate'er I say Shall either come to pass--or not." In that case, too, in what would Divine providence surpass human opinion if it holds for uncertain things the occurrence of which is uncertain, even as men do? But if at that perfectly sure Fountain-head of all things no shadow of uncertainty can possibly be found, then the occurrence of those things which He has surely foreknown as coming is certain. Wherefore there can be no freedom in human actions and designs; but the Divine mind, which foresees all things without possibility of mistake, ties and binds them down to one only issue. But this admission once made, what an upset of human affairs manifestly ensues! Vainly are rewards and punishments proposed for the good and bad, since no free and voluntary motion of the will has deserved either one or the other; nay, the punishment of the wicked and the reward of the righteous, which is now esteemed the perfection of justice, will seem the most flagrant injustice, since men are determined either way not by their own proper volition, but by the necessity of what must surely be. And therefore neither virtue nor vice is anything, but rather good and ill desert are confounded together without distinction. Moreover, seeing that the whole course of events is deduced from providence, and nothing is left free to human design, it comes to pass that our vices also are referred to the Author of all good--a thought than which none more abominable can possibly be conceived. Again, no ground is left for hope or prayer, since how can we hope for blessings, or pray for mercy, when every object of desire depends upon the links of an unalterable chain of causation? Gone, then, is the one means of intercourse between God and man--the communion of hope and prayer--if it be true that we ever earn the inestimable recompense of the Divine favour at the price of a due humility; for this is the one way whereby men seem able to hold communion with God, and are joined to that unapproachable light by the very act of supplication, even before they obtain their petitions. Then, since these things can scarcely be believed to have any efficacy, if the necessity of future events be admitted, what means will there be whereby we may be brought near and cleave to Him who is the supreme Head of all? Wherefore it needs must be that the human race, even as thou didst erstwhile declare in song, parted and dissevered from its Source, should fall to ruin.' FOOTNOTES: [P] _I.e._, the necessity of the truth of the statement from the fact. SONG III. TRUTH'S PARADOXES. Why does a strange discordance break The ordered scheme's fair harmony? Hath God decreed 'twixt truth and truth There may such lasting warfare be, That truths, each severally plain, We strive to reconcile in vain? Or is the discord not in truth, Since truth is self consistent ever? But, close in fleshly wrappings held, The blinded mind of man can never Discern--so faint her taper shines-- The subtle chain that all combines? Ah! then why burns man's restless mind Truth's hidden portals to unclose? Knows he already what he seeks? Why toil to seek it, if he knows? Yet, haply if he knoweth not, Why blindly seek he knows not what?[Q] Who for a good he knows not sighs? Who can an unknown end pursue? How find? How e'en when haply found Hail that strange form he never knew? Or is it that man's inmost soul Once knew each part and knew the whole? Now, though by fleshly vapours dimmed, Not all forgot her visions past; For while the several parts are lost, To the one whole she cleaveth fast; Whence he who yearns the truth to find Is neither sound of sight nor blind. For neither does he know in full, Nor is he reft of knowledge quite; But, holding still to what is left, He gropes in the uncertain light, And by the part that still survives To win back all he bravely strives. FOOTNOTES: [Q] Compare Plato, 'Meno,' 80; Jowett, vol. ii., pp. 39, 40. IV. Then said she: 'This debate about providence is an old one, and is vigorously discussed by Cicero in his "Divination"; thou also hast long and earnestly pondered the problem, yet no one has had diligence and perseverance enough to find a solution. And the reason of this obscurity is that the movement of human reasoning cannot cope with the simplicity of the Divine foreknowledge; for if a conception of its nature could in any wise be framed, no shadow of uncertainty would remain. With a view of making this at last clear and plain, I will begin by considering the arguments by which thou art swayed. First, I inquire into the reasons why thou art dissatisfied with the solution proposed, which is to the effect that, seeing the fact of foreknowledge is not thought the cause of the necessity of future events, foreknowledge is not to be deemed any hindrance to the freedom of the will. Now, surely the sole ground on which thou arguest the necessity of the future is that things which are foreknown cannot fail to come to pass. But if, as thou wert ready to acknowledge just now, the fact of foreknowledge imposes no necessity on things future, what reason is there for supposing the results of voluntary action constrained to a fixed issue? Suppose, for the sake of argument, and to see what follows, we assume that there is no foreknowledge. Are willed actions, then, tied down to any necessity in _this_ case?' 'Certainly not.' 'Let us assume foreknowledge again, but without its involving any actual necessity; the freedom of the will, I imagine, will remain in complete integrity. But thou wilt say that, even although the foreknowledge is not the necessity of the future event's occurrence, yet it is a sign that it will necessarily happen. Granted; but in this case it is plain that, even if there had been no foreknowledge, the issues would have been inevitably certain. For a sign only indicates something which is, does not bring to pass that of which it is the sign. We require to show beforehand that all things, without exception, happen of necessity in order that a preconception may be a sign of this necessity. Otherwise, if there is no such universal necessity, neither can any preconception be a sign of a necessity which exists not. Manifestly, too, a proof established on firm grounds of reason must be drawn not from signs and loose general arguments, but from suitable and necessary causes. But how can it be that things foreseen should ever fail to come to pass? Why, this is to suppose us to believe that the events which providence foresees to be coming were not about to happen, instead of our supposing that, although they should come to pass, yet there was no necessity involved in their own nature compelling their occurrence. Take an illustration that will help to convey my meaning. There are many things which we see taking place before our eyes--the movements of charioteers, for instance, in guiding and turning their cars, and so on. Now, is any one of these movements compelled by any necessity?' 'No; certainly not. There would be no efficacy in skill if all motions took place perforce.' 'Then, things which in taking place are free from any necessity as to their being in the present must also, before they take place, be about to happen without necessity. Wherefore there are things which will come to pass, the occurrence of which is perfectly free from necessity. At all events, I imagine that no one will deny that things now taking place were about to come to pass before they were actually happening. Such things, however much foreknown, are in their occurrence _free_. For even as knowledge of things present imports no necessity into things that are taking place, so foreknowledge of the future imports none into things that are about to come. But this, thou wilt say, is the very point in dispute--whether any foreknowing is possible of things whose occurrence is not necessary. For here there seems to thee a contradiction, and, if they are foreseen, their necessity follows; whereas if there is no necessity, they can by no means be foreknown; and thou thinkest that nothing can be grasped as known unless it is certain, but if things whose occurrence is uncertain are foreknown as certain, this is the very mist of opinion, not the truth of knowledge. For to think of things otherwise than as they are, thou believest to be incompatible with the soundness of knowledge. 'Now, the cause of the mistake is this--that men think that all knowledge is cognized purely by the nature and efficacy of the thing known. Whereas the case is the very reverse: all that is known is grasped not conformably to its own efficacy, but rather conformably to the faculty of the knower. An example will make this clear: the roundness of a body is recognised in one way by sight, in another by touch. Sight looks upon it from a distance as a whole by a simultaneous reflection of rays; touch grasps the roundness piecemeal, by contact and attachment to the surface, and by actual movement round the periphery itself. Man himself, likewise, is viewed in one way by Sense, in another by Imagination, in another way, again, by Thought, in another by pure Intelligence. Sense judges figure clothed in material substance, Imagination figure alone without matter. Thought transcends this again, and by its contemplation of universals considers the type itself which is contained in the individual. The eye of Intelligence is yet more exalted; for overpassing the sphere of the universal, it will behold absolute form itself by the pure force of the mind's vision. Wherein the main point to be considered is this: the higher faculty of comprehension embraces the lower, while the lower cannot rise to the higher. For Sense has no efficacy beyond matter, nor can Imagination behold universal ideas, nor Thought embrace pure form; but Intelligence, looking down, as it were, from its higher standpoint in its intuition of form, discriminates also the several elements which underlie it; but it comprehends them in the same way as it comprehends that form itself, which could be cognized by no other than itself. For it cognizes the universal of Thought, the figure of Imagination, and the matter of Sense, without employing Thought, Imagination, or Sense, but surveying all things, so to speak, under the aspect of pure form by a single flash of intuition. Thought also, in considering the universal, embraces images and sense-impressions without resorting to Imagination or Sense. For it is Thought which has thus defined the universal from its conceptual point of view: "Man is a two-legged animal endowed with reason." This is indeed a universal notion, yet no one is ignorant that the _thing_ is imaginable and presentable to Sense, because Thought considers it not by Imagination or Sense, but by means of rational conception. Imagination, too, though its faculty of viewing and forming representations is founded upon the senses, nevertheless surveys sense-impressions without calling in Sense, not in the way of Sense-perception, but of Imagination. See'st thou, then, how all things in cognizing use rather their own faculty than the faculty of the things which they cognize? Nor is this strange; for since every judgment is the act of the judge, it is necessary that each should accomplish its task by its own, not by another's power.' SONG IV. A PSYCHOLOGICAL FALLACY. [R] From the Porch's murky depths Comes a doctrine sage, That doth liken living mind To a written page; Since all knowledge comes through Sense, Graven by Experience. 'As,' say they, 'the pen its marks Curiously doth trace On the smooth unsullied white Of the paper's face, So do outer things impress Images on consciousness.' But if verily the mind Thus all passive lies; If no living power within Its own force supplies; If it but reflect again, Like a glass, things false and vain-- Whence the wondrous faculty That perceives and knows, That in one fair ordered scheme Doth the world dispose; Grasps each whole that Sense presents, Or breaks into elements? So divides and recombines, And in changeful wise Now to low descends, and now To the height doth rise; Last in inward swift review Strictly sifts the false and true? Of these ample potencies Fitter cause, I ween, Were Mind's self than marks impressed By the outer scene. Yet the body through the sense Stirs the soul's intelligence. When light flashes on the eye, Or sound strikes the ear, Mind aroused to due response Makes the message clear; And the dumb external signs With the hidden forms combines. FOOTNOTES: [R] A criticism of the doctrine of the mind as a blank sheet of paper on which experience writes, as held by the Stoics in anticipation of Locke. See Zeller, 'Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics,' Reichel's translation, p. 76. V. 'Now, although in the case of bodies endowed with sentiency the qualities of external objects affect the sense-organs, and the activity of mind is preceded by a bodily affection which calls forth the mind's action upon itself, and stimulates the forms till that moment lying inactive within, yet, I say, if in these bodies endowed with sentiency the mind is not inscribed by mere passive affection, but of its own efficacy discriminates the impressions furnished to the body, how much more do intelligences free from all bodily affections employ in their discrimination their own mental activities instead of conforming to external objects? So on these principles various modes of cognition belong to distinct and different substances. For to creatures void of motive power--shell-fish and other such creatures which cling to rocks and grow there--belongs Sense alone, void of all other modes of gaining knowledge; to beasts endowed with movement, in whom some capacity of seeking and shunning seems to have arisen, Imagination also. Thought pertains only to the human race, as Intelligence to Divinity alone; hence it follows that that form of knowledge exceeds the rest which of its own nature cognizes not only its proper object, but the objects of the other forms of knowledge also. But what if Sense and Imagination were to gainsay Thought, and declare that universal which Thought deems itself to behold to be nothing? For the object of Sense and Imagination cannot be universal; so that either the judgment of Reason is true and there is no sense-object, or, since they know full well that many objects are presented to Sense and Imagination, the conception of Reason, which looks on that which is perceived by Sense and particular as if it were a something "universal," is empty of content. Suppose, further, that Reason maintains in reply that it does indeed contemplate the object of both Sense and Imagination under the form of universality, while Sense and Imagination cannot aspire to the knowledge of the universal, since their cognizance cannot go beyond bodily figures, and that in the cognition of reality we ought rather to trust the stronger and more perfect faculty of judgment. In a dispute of this sort, should not we, in whom is planted the faculty of reasoning as well as of imagining and perceiving, espouse the cause of Reason? 'In like manner is it that human reason thinks that Divine Intelligence cannot see the future except after the fashion in which its own knowledge is obtained. For thy contention is, if events do not appear to involve certain and necessary issues, they cannot be foreseen as certainly about to come to pass. There is, then, no foreknowledge of such events; or, if we can ever bring ourselves to believe that there is, there can be nothing which does not happen of necessity. If, however, we could have some part in the judgment of the Divine mind, even as we participate in Reason, we should think it perfectly just that human Reason should submit itself to the Divine mind, no less than we judged that Imagination and Sense ought to yield to Reason. Wherefore let us soar, if we can, to the heights of that Supreme Intelligence; for there Reason will see what in itself it cannot look upon; and that is in what way things whose occurrence is not certain may yet be seen in a sure and definite foreknowledge; and that this foreknowledge is not conjecture, but rather knowledge in its supreme simplicity, free of all limits and restrictions.' SONG V. THE UPWARD LOOK. In what divers shapes and fashions do the creatures great and small Over wide earth's teeming surface skim, or scud, or walk, or crawl! Some with elongated body sweep the ground, and, as they move, Trail perforce with writhing belly in the dust a sinuous groove; Some, on light wing upward soaring, swiftly do the winds divide, And through heaven's ample spaces in free motion smoothly glide; These earth's solid surface pressing, with firm paces onward rove, Ranging through the verdant meadows, crouching in the woodland grove. Great and wondrous is their variance! Yet in all the head low-bent Dulls the soul and blunts the senses, though their forms be different. Man alone, erect, aspiring, lifts his forehead to the skies, And in upright posture steadfast seems earth's baseness to despise. If with earth not all besotted, to this parable give ear, Thou whose gaze is fixed on heaven, who thy face on high dost rear: Lift thy soul, too, heavenward; haply lest it stain its heavenly worth, And thine eyes alone look upward, while thy mind cleaves to the earth! VI. 'Since, then, as we lately proved, everything that is known is cognized not in accordance with its own nature, but in accordance with the nature of the faculty that comprehends it, let us now contemplate, as far as lawful, the character of the Divine essence, that we may be able to understand also the nature of its knowledge. 'God is eternal; in this judgment all rational beings agree. Let us, then, consider what eternity is. For this word carries with it a revelation alike of the Divine nature and of the Divine knowledge. Now, eternity is the possession of endless life whole and perfect at a single moment. What this is becomes more clear and manifest from a comparison with things temporal. For whatever lives in time is a present proceeding from the past to the future, and there is nothing set in time which can embrace the whole space of its life together. To-morrow's state it grasps not yet, while it has already lost yesterday's; nay, even in the life of to-day ye live no longer than one brief transitory moment. Whatever, therefore, is subject to the condition of time, although, as Aristotle deemed of the world, it never have either beginning or end, and its life be stretched to the whole extent of time's infinity, it yet is not such as rightly to be thought eternal. For it does not include and embrace the whole space of infinite life at once, but has no present hold on things to come, not yet accomplished. Accordingly, that which includes and possesses the whole fulness of unending life at once, from which nothing future is absent, from which nothing past has escaped, this is rightly called eternal; this must of necessity be ever present to itself in full self-possession, and hold the infinity of movable time in an abiding present. Wherefore they deem not rightly who imagine that on Plato's principles the created world is made co-eternal with the Creator, because they are told that he believed the world to have had no beginning in time,[S] and to be destined never to come to an end. For it is one thing for existence to be endlessly prolonged, which was what Plato ascribed to the world, another for the whole of an endless life to be embraced in the present, which is manifestly a property peculiar to the Divine mind. Nor need God appear earlier in mere duration of time to created things, but only prior in the unique simplicity of His nature. For the infinite progression of things in time copies this immediate existence in the present of the changeless life, and when it cannot succeed in equalling it, declines from movelessness into motion, and falls away from the simplicity of a perpetual present to the infinite duration of the future and the past; and since it cannot possess the whole fulness of its life together, for the very reason that in a manner it never ceases to be, it seems, up to a certain point, to rival that which it cannot complete and express by attaching itself indifferently to any present moment of time, however swift and brief; and since this bears some resemblance to that ever-abiding present, it bestows on everything to which it is assigned the semblance of existence. But since it cannot abide, it hurries along the infinite path of time, and the result has been that it continues by ceaseless movement the life the completeness of which it could not embrace while it stood still. So, if we are minded to give things their right names, we shall follow Plato in saying that God indeed is eternal, but the world everlasting. 'Since, then, every mode of judgment comprehends its objects conformably to its own nature, and since God abides for ever in an eternal present, His knowledge, also transcending all movement of time, dwells in the simplicity of its own changeless present, and, embracing the whole infinite sweep of the past and of the future, contemplates all that falls within its simple cognition as if it were now taking place. And therefore, if thou wilt carefully consider that immediate presentment whereby it discriminates all things, thou wilt more rightly deem it not foreknowledge as of something future, but knowledge of a moment that never passes. For this cause the name chosen to describe it is not prevision, but providence, because, since utterly removed in nature from things mean and trivial, its outlook embraces all things as from some lofty height. Why, then, dost thou insist that the things which are surveyed by the Divine eye are involved in necessity, whereas clearly men impose no necessity on things which they see? Does the act of vision add any necessity to the things which thou seest before thy eyes?' 'Assuredly not.' 'And yet, if we may without unfitness compare God's present and man's, just as ye see certain things in this your temporary present, so does He see all things in His eternal present. Wherefore this Divine anticipation changes not the natures and properties of things, and it beholds things present before it, just as they will hereafter come to pass in time. Nor does it confound things in its judgment, but in the one mental view distinguishes alike what will come necessarily and what without necessity. For even as ye, when at one and the same time ye see a man walking on the earth and the sun rising in the sky, distinguish between the two, though one glance embraces both, and judge the former voluntary, the latter necessary action: so also the Divine vision in its universal range of view does in no wise confuse the characters of the things which are present to its regard, though future in respect of time. Whence it follows that when it perceives that something will come into existence, and yet is perfectly aware that this is unbound by any necessity, its apprehension is not opinion, but rather knowledge based on truth. And if to this thou sayest that what God sees to be about to come to pass cannot fail to come to pass, and that what cannot fail to come to pass happens of necessity, and wilt tie me down to this word necessity, I will acknowledge that thou affirmest a most solid truth, but one which scarcely anyone can approach to who has not made the Divine his special study. For my answer would be that the same future event is necessary from the standpoint of Divine knowledge, but when considered in its own nature it seems absolutely free and unfettered. So, then, there are two necessities--one simple, as that men are necessarily mortal; the other conditioned, as that, if you know that someone is walking, he must necessarily be walking. For that which is known cannot indeed be otherwise than as it is known to be, and yet this fact by no means carries with it that other simple necessity. For the former necessity is not imposed by the thing's own proper nature, but by the addition of a condition. No necessity compels one who is voluntarily walking to go forward, although it is necessary for him to go forward at the moment of walking. In the same way, then, if Providence sees anything as present, that must necessarily be, though it is bound by no necessity of nature. Now, God views as present those coming events which happen of free will. These, accordingly, from the standpoint of the Divine vision are made necessary conditionally on the Divine cognizance; viewed, however, in themselves, they desist not from the absolute freedom naturally theirs. Accordingly, without doubt, all things will come to pass which God foreknows as about to happen, but of these certain proceed of free will; and though these happen, yet by the fact of their existence they do not lose their proper nature, in virtue of which before they happened it was really possible that they might not have come to pass. 'What difference, then, does the denial of necessity make, since, through their being conditioned by Divine knowledge, they come to pass as if they were in all respects under the compulsion of necessity? This difference, surely, which we saw in the case of the instances I formerly took, the sun's rising and the man's walking; which at the moment of their occurrence could not but be taking place, and yet one of them before it took place was necessarily obliged to be, while the other was not so at all. So likewise the things which to God are present without doubt exist, but some of them come from the necessity of things, others from the power of the agent. Quite rightly, then, have we said that these things are necessary if viewed from the standpoint of the Divine knowledge; but if they are considered in themselves, they are free from the bonds of necessity, even as everything which is accessible to sense, regarded from the standpoint of Thought, is universal, but viewed in its own nature particular. "But," thou wilt say, "if it is in my power to change my purpose, I shall make void providence, since I shall perchance change something which comes within its foreknowledge." My answer is: Thou canst indeed turn aside thy purpose; but since the truth of providence is ever at hand to see that thou canst, and whether thou dost, and whither thou turnest thyself, thou canst not avoid the Divine foreknowledge, even as thou canst not escape the sight of a present spectator, although of thy free will thou turn thyself to various actions. Wilt thou, then, say: "Shall the Divine knowledge be changed at my discretion, so that, when I will this or that, providence changes its knowledge correspondingly?" 'Surely not.' 'True, for the Divine vision anticipates all that is coming, and transforms and reduces it to the form of its own present knowledge, and varies not, as thou deemest, in its foreknowledge, alternating to this or that, but in a single flash it forestalls and includes thy mutations without altering. And this ever-present comprehension and survey of all things God has received, not from the issue of future events, but from the simplicity of His own nature. Hereby also is resolved the objection which a little while ago gave thee offence--that our doings in the future were spoken of as if supplying the cause of God's knowledge. For this faculty of knowledge, embracing all things in its immediate cognizance, has itself fixed the bounds of all things, yet itself owes nothing to what comes after. 'And all this being so, the freedom of man's will stands unshaken, and laws are not unrighteous, since their rewards and punishments are held forth to wills unbound by any necessity. God, who foreknoweth all things, still looks down from above, and the ever-present eternity of His vision concurs with the future character of all our acts, and dispenseth to the good rewards, to the bad punishments. Our hopes and prayers also are not fixed on God in vain, and when they are rightly directed cannot fail of effect. Therefore, withstand vice, practise virtue, lift up your souls to right hopes, offer humble prayers to Heaven. Great is the necessity of righteousness laid upon you if ye will not hide it from yourselves, seeing that all your actions are done before the eyes of a Judge who seeth all things.' FOOTNOTES: [S] Plato expressly states the opposite in the 'Timaeus' (28B), though possibly there the account of the beginning of the world in time is to be understood figuratively, not literally. See Jowett, vol. iii., pp. 448, 449 (3rd edit.). </CHAPTER>

Summary of Book V Part I-VI

https://web.archive.org/web/20210212221439/https://www.novelguide.com/consolation-of-philosophy/summaries/book5-parti-vi

of Parts I and II Boethius tells Philosophy he wants her to go more deeply into the topic of chance. Is there such a thing as random chance ruling our lives? Perhaps that is how he ended up in prison. Philosophy says if you define chance as randomness, there is no such thing. If God is maintaining order, there cannot be something random happening someplace, for "nothing comes out of nothing" . Boethius replies, how about accidents? Philosophy mentions that Aristotle's definition of chance in his Physics is, something done with one purpose, but getting a different result than was intended. Yet, it is not chance, for there are hidden causes. It may be that multiple and conflicting causes are at work, outside of the intention of the doers. If you define chance as an unpredicted or unexpected event, then perhaps you can say yes, though the events are still under the rule of law. Boethius asks if there is such a thing as free will? Philosophy replies that there is freedom for rational creatures. Humans are rational and cannot exist without it. A rational creature must choose, though freedom may not be equal for all, depending on one's clarity. Humans are more free when they participate in the contemplation of God, and less free when they act out of bodily desires. If they are wicked, they are mere slaves to their own destructive will. These choices are all visible to the eye of Providence, which predestines award or punishment according to merit.

Commentary on Parts I and II Providence is the all-knowing vision of God in eternity, who sees past, present, and future at once. Humans have free will, and God, watching the choice from on high, is ready with the "predestined" reward or punishment. The person's fate is not actually predetermined by God but given by God as a natural consequence of the person's free will. Philosophy says there is no chance or accident. Whether or not we can see all the causes, everything works out in an orderly and just fashion. Summary of Parts III and IV Boethius is puzzled how there can be freedom of will if God already knows what we will do. If it is known, isn't it already decided then? It would not then be possible to change one's mind. Philosophy says that if something is to happen, it cannot be concealed from Providence. People wonder if foreknowledge of the future causes the future? How can God foreknow events that are still uncertain and being decided by an individual? If Providence is the same as certainty about the future, how meaningful is prayer, hope, and the relationship between God and human? Philosophy says this is an old debate, but human reasoning cannot understand "the immediacy of divine foreknowledge" . Free will is not hindered by God's foreknowledge, which is merely knowledge of what is about to happen. One can know something is going on without having any influence on it. It does not make what is happening inevitable. Seeing something and necessity are not the same thing. Different creatures have different abilities to know. Sense perception is the lowest faculty, common with animals. They only know things through their bodily senses. Imagination is a higher power because it does not depend on physical objects. Reason is higher still because it can understand the universal law by inference. The highest form of knowing is pure intelligence itself, and this intelligence sees the Idea or "simple form" in the mind of God . This highest knowing, only available to God, sees "by a single glance of the mind" . The lower kind of knowing cannot grasp the higher knowing. Commentary on Parts III and IV Philosophy gives a very important answer to Boethius's question about free will and Providence. It is a hotly debated question in philosophy about how God can know the future if humans have free will. What if they have not decided yet? There are those who believe that predestination is what is really going on, and humans only think they have free will. If God already knows, for instance, which souls will be saved, why should humans even bother trying to be good? It has been predetermined, like loaded dice. Philosophy tells Boethius it may seem like a paradox, but God's foreknowledge of how things will turn out does not interfere with human free will. She gives the answer that there are different forms of knowledge, and someone who has a lower ability cannot comprehend a higher ability. Animals, for instance, have sense perception, or knowing by the senses. Humans can go farther by imagining things that are not present. They can also use the mind to reason about the invisible laws of nature from inference. But an even higher knowledge like God's comes from pure intelligence, which knows everything at once without regard to time. Humans know in sequence, one thing at a time, in terms of past, present, and future, but God can know immediately what is going on everywhere. That does not mean God is interfering with us. Philosophy recites a poem about knowledge, explaining the passive model of the mind taught by the Stoics. Stoicism was a material philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium . Stoics thought the mind merely received sense impressions as on a wax tablet. As a Platonist, Boethius denied this model of knowledge. For him, the mind is spiritual and powerfully active, able to analyze and synthesize and know the truth beyond sense impression. Humans may not know like God knows, but they can participate with God in the divine nature of life through reason. Summary of Parts V and VI Philosophy continues the topic of different kinds of knowing. Reason belongs only to the human race, just as pure intelligence belongs to divinity. Divine intelligence comprehends the lower kinds of knowing, yet human reason refuses to believe that divine intelligence can see the future in a "boundless immediacy" . Eternity is the "complete, simultaneous and perfect possession of everlasting life" while those who live in time experience past, present, and future. Humans catch a fleeting and transitory glimpse of life only. To experience the whole of life in the present moment is characteristic of the mind of God. His knowledge transcends change. Commentary on Parts V and VI The book finishes with this discussion of God's foreknowledge. Philosophy ends her teaching to Boethius in prison with this point in order to give him faith in Providence. Are his suffering and imprisonment simply due to chance or evil? Or can he have faith that God has foreseen all and that even the death of Boethius will be part of the good, of God's providential foresight? God sees what is happening in a never-ending present moment. The divine gaze "looks down on all things without disturbing their nature" . If God is on high witnessing this fate for Boethius, then it is necessary for it to happen, though God is not causing it to happen. God is the "spectator from on high of all things" . Therefore, Philosophy concludes, "Avoid vice . . . cultivate virtue; lift up your mind to the right kind of hope, and put forth humble prayers on high" . She has comforted Boethius with the idea that God is near and part of our human nature. We are always free to be with God and part of the good, no matter what fate we are handed in the world by Fortune. Book V of Parts I and II Boethius tells Philosophy he wants her to go more deeply into the topic of chance. Is there such a thing as random chance ruling our lives? Perhaps that is how he ended up in prison. Philosophy says if you define chance as randomness, there is no such thing. If God is maintaining order, there cannot be something random happening someplace, for "nothing comes out of nothing" . Boethius replies, how about accidents? Philosophy mentions that Aristotle's definition of chance in his Physics is, something done with one purpose, but getting a different result than was intended. Yet, it is not chance, for there are hidden causes. It may be that multiple and conflicting causes are at work, outside of the intention of the doers. If you define chance as an unpredicted or unexpected event, then perhaps you can say yes, though the events are still under the rule of law. Boethius asks if there is such a thing as free will? Philosophy replies that there is freedom for rational creatures. Humans are rational and cannot exist without it. A rational creature must choose, though freedom may not be equal for all, depending on one's clarity. Humans are more free when they participate in the contemplation of God, and less free when they act out of bodily desires. If they are wicked, they are mere slaves to their own destructive will. These choices are all visible to the eye of Providence, which predestines award or punishment according to merit. Commentary on Parts I and II Commentary on Parts I and II Providence is the all-knowing vision of God in eternity, who sees past, present, and future at once. Humans have free will, and God, watching the choice from on high, is ready with the "predestined" reward or punishment. The person's fate is not actually predetermined by God but given by God as a natural consequence of the person's free will. Philosophy says there is no chance or accident. Whether or not we can see all the causes, everything works out in an orderly and just fashion. of Parts III and IV Boethius is puzzled how there can be freedom of will if God already knows what we will do. If it is known, isn't it already decided then? It would not then be possible to change one's mind. Philosophy says that if something is to happen, it cannot be concealed from Providence. People wonder if foreknowledge of the future causes the future? How can God foreknow events that are still uncertain and being decided by an individual? If Providence is the same as certainty about the future, how meaningful is prayer, hope, and the relationship between God and human? Philosophy says this is an old debate, but human reasoning cannot understand "the immediacy of divine foreknowledge" . Free will is not hindered by God's foreknowledge, which is merely knowledge of what is about to happen. One can know something is going on without having any influence on it. It does not make what is happening inevitable. Seeing something and necessity are not the same thing. Different creatures have different abilities to know. Sense perception is the lowest faculty, common with animals. They only know things through their bodily senses. Imagination is a higher power because it does not depend on physical objects. Reason is higher still because it can understand the universal law by inference. The highest form of knowing is pure intelligence itself, and this intelligence sees the Idea or "simple form" in the mind of God . This highest knowing, only available to God, sees "by a single glance of the mind" . The lower kind of knowing cannot grasp the higher knowing. Commentary on Parts III and IV Commentary on Parts III and IV Philosophy gives a very important answer to Boethius's question about free will and Providence. It is a hotly debated question in philosophy about how God can know the future if humans have free will. What if they have not decided yet? There are those who believe that predestination is what is really going on, and humans only think they have free will. If God already knows, for instance, which souls will be saved, why should humans even bother trying to be good? It has been predetermined, like loaded dice. Philosophy tells Boethius it may seem like a paradox, but God's foreknowledge of how things will turn out does not interfere with human free will. She gives the answer that there are different forms of knowledge, and someone who has a lower ability cannot comprehend a higher ability. Animals, for instance, have sense perception, or knowing by the senses. Humans can go farther by imagining things that are not present. They can also use the mind to reason about the invisible laws of nature from inference. But an even higher knowledge like God's comes from pure intelligence, which knows everything at once without regard to time. Humans know in sequence, one thing at a time, in terms of past, present, and future, but God can know immediately what is going on everywhere. That does not mean God is interfering with us. Philosophy recites a poem about knowledge, explaining the passive model of the mind taught by the Stoics. Stoicism was a material philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium . Stoics thought the mind merely received sense impressions as on a wax tablet. As a Platonist, Boethius denied this model of knowledge. For him, the mind is spiritual and powerfully active, able to analyze and synthesize and know the truth beyond sense impression. Humans may not know like God knows, but they can participate with God in the divine nature of life through reason. of Parts V and VI Philosophy continues the topic of different kinds of knowing. Reason belongs only to the human race, just as pure intelligence belongs to divinity. Divine intelligence comprehends the lower kinds of knowing, yet human reason refuses to believe that divine intelligence can see the future in a "boundless immediacy" . Eternity is the "complete, simultaneous and perfect possession of everlasting life" while those who live in time experience past, present, and future. Humans catch a fleeting and transitory glimpse of life only. To experience the whole of life in the present moment is characteristic of the mind of God. His knowledge transcends change. Commentary on Parts V and VI Commentary on Parts V and VI The book finishes with this discussion of God's foreknowledge. Philosophy ends her teaching to Boethius in prison with this point in order to give him faith in Providence. Are his suffering and imprisonment simply due to chance or evil? Or can he have faith that God has foreseen all and that even the death of Boethius will be part of the good, of God's providential foresight? God sees what is happening in a never-ending present moment. The divine gaze "looks down on all things without disturbing their nature" . If God is on high witnessing this fate for Boethius, then it is necessary for it to happen, though God is not causing it to happen. God is the "spectator from on high of all things" . Therefore, Philosophy concludes, "Avoid vice . . . cultivate virtue; lift up your mind to the right kind of hope, and put forth humble prayers on high" . She has comforted Boethius with the idea that God is near and part of our human nature. We are always free to be with God and part of the good, no matter what fate we are handed in the world by Fortune. Novel Author Boethius Novel Author Boethius

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/28.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_3_part_4.txt

Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 28

chapter 28

{"name": "Chapter 28", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410060617/https://www.gradesaver.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/study-guide/summary-phase-4-chapters-25-34", "summary": "Tess's refusal does not permanently daunt Clare, knowing that the negative is often the preface to a later affirmative. Angel asks Tess if she loves another man, but she says that this is not the reason for her refusal. She says that it is for his own good. Tess wonders why nobody has told Angel the entirety of Tess's history. When Angel asks Tess once more, she tells him that she will tell him all about himself. She vows to tell him on Sunday. Tess feels that she cannot help giving in and marrying Angel, but feels that it is wrong and it may kill Angel when he finds out about her.", "analysis": "Hardy prolongs the conflict between Angel and Tess concerning marriage throughout this chapter, thus illustrating Angel's persistence and the intensity of his love for Tess. However, in equal measure this demonstrates the great extent to which Tess believes that her history prevents any possibility of happiness with Angel Clare. This persistence and intensity serve to demonstrate the inadequacy of Tess's refusal and inaction. Hardy demonstrates that her refusal stems from some sense of selfishness; Tess believes that she cannot be happy with Angel if he knows about her past, yet she cannot marry him without revealing such details"}

Her refusal, though unexpected, did not permanently daunt Clare. His experience of women was great enough for him to be aware that the negative often meant nothing more than the preface to the affirmative; and it was little enough for him not to know that in the manner of the present negative there lay a great exception to the dallyings of coyness. That she had already permitted him to make love to her he read as an additional assurance, not fully trowing that in the fields and pastures to "sigh gratis" is by no means deemed waste; love-making being here more often accepted inconsiderately and for its own sweet sake than in the carking, anxious homes of the ambitious, where a girl's craving for an establishment paralyzes her healthy thought of a passion as an end. "Tess, why did you say 'no' in such a positive way?" he asked her in the course of a few days. She started. "Don't ask me. I told you why--partly. I am not good enough--not worthy enough." "How? Not fine lady enough?" "Yes--something like that," murmured she. "Your friends would scorn me." "Indeed, you mistake them--my father and mother. As for my brothers, I don't care--" He clasped his fingers behind her back to keep her from slipping away. "Now--you did not mean it, sweet?--I am sure you did not! You have made me so restless that I cannot read, or play, or do anything. I am in no hurry, Tess, but I want to know--to hear from your own warm lips--that you will some day be mine--any time you may choose; but some day?" She could only shake her head and look away from him. Clare regarded her attentively, conned the characters of her face as if they had been hieroglyphics. The denial seemed real. "Then I ought not to hold you in this way--ought I? I have no right to you--no right to seek out where you are, or walk with you! Honestly, Tess, do you love any other man?" "How can you ask?" she said, with continued self-suppression. "I almost know that you do not. But then, why do you repulse me?" "I don't repulse you. I like you to--tell me you love me; and you may always tell me so as you go about with me--and never offend me." "But you will not accept me as a husband?" "Ah--that's different--it is for your good, indeed, my dearest! O, believe me, it is only for your sake! I don't like to give myself the great happiness o' promising to be yours in that way--because--because I am SURE I ought not to do it." "But you will make me happy!" "Ah--you think so, but you don't know!" At such times as this, apprehending the grounds of her refusal to be her modest sense of incompetence in matters social and polite, he would say that she was wonderfully well-informed and versatile--which was certainly true, her natural quickness and her admiration for him having led her to pick up his vocabulary, his accent, and fragments of his knowledge, to a surprising extent. After these tender contests and her victory she would go away by herself under the remotest cow, if at milking-time, or into the sedge or into her room, if at a leisure interval, and mourn silently, not a minute after an apparently phlegmatic negative. The struggle was so fearful; her own heart was so strongly on the side of his--two ardent hearts against one poor little conscience-- that she tried to fortify her resolution by every means in her power. She had come to Talbothays with a made-up mind. On no account could she agree to a step which might afterwards cause bitter rueing to her husband for his blindness in wedding her. And she held that what her conscience had decided for her when her mind was unbiassed ought not to be overruled now. "Why don't somebody tell him all about me?" she said. "It was only forty miles off--why hasn't it reached here? Somebody must know!" Yet nobody seemed to know; nobody told him. For two or three days no more was said. She guessed from the sad countenances of her chamber companions that they regarded her not only as the favourite, but as the chosen; but they could see for themselves that she did not put herself in his way. Tess had never before known a time in which the thread of her life was so distinctly twisted of two strands, positive pleasure and positive pain. At the next cheese-making the pair were again left alone together. The dairyman himself had been lending a hand; but Mr Crick, as well as his wife, seemed latterly to have acquired a suspicion of mutual interest between these two; though they walked so circumspectly that suspicion was but of the faintest. Anyhow, the dairyman left them to themselves. They were breaking up the masses of curd before putting them into the vats. The operation resembled the act of crumbling bread on a large scale; and amid the immaculate whiteness of the curds Tess Durbeyfield's hands showed themselves of the pinkness of the rose. Angel, who was filling the vats with his handful, suddenly ceased, and laid his hands flat upon hers. Her sleeves were rolled far above the elbow, and bending lower he kissed the inside vein of her soft arm. Although the early September weather was sultry, her arm, from her dabbling in the curds, was as cold and damp to his mouth as a new-gathered mushroom, and tasted of the whey. But she was such a sheaf of susceptibilities that her pulse was accelerated by the touch, her blood driven to her finder-ends, and the cool arms flushed hot. Then, as though her heart had said, "Is coyness longer necessary? Truth is truth between man and woman, as between man and man," she lifted her eyes and they beamed devotedly into his, as her lip rose in a tender half-smile. "Do you know why I did that, Tess?" he said. "Because you love me very much!" "Yes, and as a preliminary to a new entreaty." "Not AGAIN!" She looked a sudden fear that her resistance might break down under her own desire. "O, Tessy!" he went on, "I CANNOT think why you are so tantalizing. Why do you disappoint me so? You seem almost like a coquette, upon my life you do--a coquette of the first urban water! They blow hot and blow cold, just as you do, and it is the very last sort of thing to expect to find in a retreat like Talbothays. ... And yet, dearest," he quickly added, observing now the remark had cut her, "I know you to be the most honest, spotless creature that ever lived. So how can I suppose you a flirt? Tess, why don't you like the idea of being my wife, if you love me as you seem to do?" "I have never said I don't like the idea, and I never could say it; because--it isn't true!" The stress now getting beyond endurance, her lip quivered, and she was obliged to go away. Clare was so pained and perplexed that he ran after and caught her in the passage. "Tell me, tell me!" he said, passionately clasping her, in forgetfulness of his curdy hands: "do tell me that you won't belong to anybody but me!" "I will, I will tell you!" she exclaimed. "And I will give you a complete answer, if you will let me go now. I will tell you my experiences--all about myself--all!" "Your experiences, dear; yes, certainly; any number." He expressed assent in loving satire, looking into her face. "My Tess, no doubt, almost as many experiences as that wild convolvulus out there on the garden hedge, that opened itself this morning for the first time. Tell me anything, but don't use that wretched expression any more about not being worthy of me." "I will try--not! And I'll give you my reasons to-morrow--next week." "Say on Sunday?" "Yes, on Sunday." At last she got away, and did not stop in her retreat till she was in the thicket of pollard willows at the lower side of the barton, where she could be quite unseen. Here Tess flung herself down upon the rustling undergrowth of spear-grass, as upon a bed, and remained crouching in palpitating misery broken by momentary shoots of joy, which her fears about the ending could not altogether suppress. In reality, she was drifting into acquiescence. Every see-saw of her breath, every wave of her blood, every pulse singing in her ears, was a voice that joined with nature in revolt against her scrupulousness. Reckless, inconsiderate acceptance of him; to close with him at the altar, revealing nothing, and chancing discovery; to snatch ripe pleasure before the iron teeth of pain could have time to shut upon her: that was what love counselled; and in almost a terror of ecstasy Tess divined that, despite her many months of lonely self-chastisement, wrestlings, communings, schemes to lead a future of austere isolation, love's counsel would prevail. The afternoon advanced, and still she remained among the willows. She heard the rattle of taking down the pails from the forked stands; the "waow-waow!" which accompanied the getting together of the cows. But she did not go to the milking. They would see her agitation; and the dairyman, thinking the cause to be love alone, would good-naturedly tease her; and that harassment could not be borne. Her lover must have guessed her overwrought state, and invented some excuse for her non-appearance, for no inquiries were made or calls given. At half-past six the sun settled down upon the levels with the aspect of a great forge in the heavens; and presently a monstrous pumpkin-like moon arose on the other hand. The pollard willows, tortured out of their natural shape by incessant choppings, became spiny-haired monsters as they stood up against it. She went in and upstairs without a light. It was now Wednesday. Thursday came, and Angel looked thoughtfully at her from a distance, but intruded in no way upon her. The indoor milkmaids, Marian and the rest, seemed to guess that something definite was afoot, for they did not force any remarks upon her in the bedchamber. Friday passed; Saturday. To-morrow was the day. "I shall give way--I shall say yes--I shall let myself marry him--I cannot help it!" she jealously panted, with her hot face to the pillow that night, on hearing one of the other girls sigh his name in her sleep. "I can't bear to let anybody have him but me! Yet it is a wrong to him, and may kill him when he knows! O my heart--O--O--O!"

Chapter 28

https://web.archive.org/web/20210410060617/https://www.gradesaver.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/study-guide/summary-phase-4-chapters-25-34

Tess's refusal does not permanently daunt Clare, knowing that the negative is often the preface to a later affirmative. Angel asks Tess if she loves another man, but she says that this is not the reason for her refusal. She says that it is for his own good. Tess wonders why nobody has told Angel the entirety of Tess's history. When Angel asks Tess once more, she tells him that she will tell him all about himself. She vows to tell him on Sunday. Tess feels that she cannot help giving in and marrying Angel, but feels that it is wrong and it may kill Angel when he finds out about her.

Hardy prolongs the conflict between Angel and Tess concerning marriage throughout this chapter, thus illustrating Angel's persistence and the intensity of his love for Tess. However, in equal measure this demonstrates the great extent to which Tess believes that her history prevents any possibility of happiness with Angel Clare. This persistence and intensity serve to demonstrate the inadequacy of Tess's refusal and inaction. Hardy demonstrates that her refusal stems from some sense of selfishness; Tess believes that she cannot be happy with Angel if he knows about her past, yet she cannot marry him without revealing such details

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/107-chapters/25.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Far From the Madding Crowd/section_24_part_0.txt

Far From the Madding Crowd.chapter 25

chapter 25

{"name": "Chapter 25", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-25", "summary": "We start this chapter learning about Sergeant Troy, whom the narrator says is a man with a short memory and no concept of the future. Basically, he lives for the present... but not exactly in a good way. He never expects anything of life, so he's never disappointed. He's fairly honest with men, but he lies to women all the time. Deep down, Troy believes that if you treat women well they'll never be attracted to you: essentially that \"nice guys finish last.\" He comes over to her farm and starts helping out with some of the work. Bathsheba sees him and blushes as she walks by.", "analysis": ""}

THE NEW ACQUAINTANCE DESCRIBED Idiosyncrasy and vicissitude had combined to stamp Sergeant Troy as an exceptional being. He was a man to whom memories were an incumbrance, and anticipations a superfluity. Simply feeling, considering, and caring for what was before his eyes, he was vulnerable only in the present. His outlook upon time was as a transient flash of the eye now and then: that projection of consciousness into days gone by and to come, which makes the past a synonym for the pathetic and the future a word for circumspection, was foreign to Troy. With him the past was yesterday; the future, to-morrow; never, the day after. On this account he might, in certain lights, have been regarded as one of the most fortunate of his order. For it may be argued with great plausibility that reminiscence is less an endowment than a disease, and that expectation in its only comfortable form--that of absolute faith--is practically an impossibility; whilst in the form of hope and the secondary compounds, patience, impatience, resolve, curiosity, it is a constant fluctuation between pleasure and pain. Sergeant Troy, being entirely innocent of the practice of expectation, was never disappointed. To set against this negative gain there may have been some positive losses from a certain narrowing of the higher tastes and sensations which it entailed. But limitation of the capacity is never recognized as a loss by the loser therefrom: in this attribute moral or aesthetic poverty contrasts plausibly with material, since those who suffer do not mind it, whilst those who mind it soon cease to suffer. It is not a denial of anything to have been always without it, and what Troy had never enjoyed he did not miss; but, being fully conscious that what sober people missed he enjoyed, his capacity, though really less, seemed greater than theirs. He was moderately truthful towards men, but to women lied like a Cretan--a system of ethics above all others calculated to win popularity at the first flush of admission into lively society; and the possibility of the favour gained being transitory had reference only to the future. He never passed the line which divides the spruce vices from the ugly; and hence, though his morals had hardly been applauded, disapproval of them had frequently been tempered with a smile. This treatment had led to his becoming a sort of regrater of other men's gallantries, to his own aggrandizement as a Corinthian, rather than to the moral profit of his hearers. His reason and his propensities had seldom any reciprocating influence, having separated by mutual consent long ago: thence it sometimes happened that, while his intentions were as honourable as could be wished, any particular deed formed a dark background which threw them into fine relief. The sergeant's vicious phases being the offspring of impulse, and his virtuous phases of cool meditation, the latter had a modest tendency to be oftener heard of than seen. Troy was full of activity, but his activities were less of a locomotive than a vegetative nature; and, never being based upon any original choice of foundation or direction, they were exercised on whatever object chance might place in their way. Hence, whilst he sometimes reached the brilliant in speech because that was spontaneous, he fell below the commonplace in action, from inability to guide incipient effort. He had a quick comprehension and considerable force of character; but, being without the power to combine them, the comprehension became engaged with trivialities whilst waiting for the will to direct it, and the force wasted itself in useless grooves through unheeding the comprehension. He was a fairly well-educated man for one of middle class-- exceptionally well educated for a common soldier. He spoke fluently and unceasingly. He could in this way be one thing and seem another: for instance, he could speak of love and think of dinner; call on the husband to look at the wife; be eager to pay and intend to owe. The wondrous power of flattery in _passados_ at woman is a perception so universal as to be remarked upon by many people almost as automatically as they repeat a proverb, or say that they are Christians and the like, without thinking much of the enormous corollaries which spring from the proposition. Still less is it acted upon for the good of the complemental being alluded to. With the majority such an opinion is shelved with all those trite aphorisms which require some catastrophe to bring their tremendous meanings thoroughly home. When expressed with some amount of reflectiveness it seems co-ordinate with a belief that this flattery must be reasonable to be effective. It is to the credit of men that few attempt to settle the question by experiment, and it is for their happiness, perhaps, that accident has never settled it for them. Nevertheless, that a male dissembler who by deluging her with untenable fictions charms the female wisely, may acquire powers reaching to the extremity of perdition, is a truth taught to many by unsought and wringing occurrences. And some profess to have attained to the same knowledge by experiment as aforesaid, and jauntily continue their indulgence in such experiments with terrible effect. Sergeant Troy was one. He had been known to observe casually that in dealing with womankind the only alternative to flattery was cursing and swearing. There was no third method. "Treat them fairly, and you are a lost man." he would say. This person's public appearance in Weatherbury promptly followed his arrival there. A week or two after the shearing, Bathsheba, feeling a nameless relief of spirits on account of Boldwood's absence, approached her hayfields and looked over the hedge towards the haymakers. They consisted in about equal proportions of gnarled and flexuous forms, the former being the men, the latter the women, who wore tilt bonnets covered with nankeen, which hung in a curtain upon their shoulders. Coggan and Mark Clark were mowing in a less forward meadow, Clark humming a tune to the strokes of his scythe, to which Jan made no attempt to keep time with his. In the first mead they were already loading hay, the women raking it into cocks and windrows, and the men tossing it upon the waggon. From behind the waggon a bright scarlet spot emerged, and went on loading unconcernedly with the rest. It was the gallant sergeant, who had come haymaking for pleasure; and nobody could deny that he was doing the mistress of the farm real knight-service by this voluntary contribution of his labour at a busy time. As soon as she had entered the field Troy saw her, and sticking his pitchfork into the ground and picking up his crop or cane, he came forward. Bathsheba blushed with half-angry embarrassment, and adjusted her eyes as well as her feet to the direct line of her path.

Chapter 25

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-25

We start this chapter learning about Sergeant Troy, whom the narrator says is a man with a short memory and no concept of the future. Basically, he lives for the present... but not exactly in a good way. He never expects anything of life, so he's never disappointed. He's fairly honest with men, but he lies to women all the time. Deep down, Troy believes that if you treat women well they'll never be attracted to you: essentially that "nice guys finish last." He comes over to her farm and starts helping out with some of the work. Bathsheba sees him and blushes as she walks by.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/107-chapters/chapters_5_to_13.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Far from the Madding Crowd/section_1_part_0.txt

Far from the Madding Crowd.chapters 5-13

chapters 5-13

{"name": "Chapters 5-13", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210108004047/https://www.gradesaver.com/far-from-the-madding-crowd/study-guide/summary-chapters-5-13", "summary": "Shortly after he proposes, Gabriel learns that Bathsheba has moved away to the town of Weatherbury. One night, Gabriel awakens to the sound of the sheep bells, indicating that the herd is running quickly. He gets up and finds that the 200 sheep who were still pregnant have been driven off the edge of a cliff by his young and overeager sheepdog. This loss is a financial catastrophe for Gabriel, and he has to sell everything he owns in order to pay off his remaining debts. The story resumes in February, in the town of Casterbridge, where a gathering is taking place for men looking for work to meet with prospective employers. Gabriel is there, eager to find work as either a bailiff or shepherd, but no one seems to want to hire him. He learns that another hiring fair is taking place the following day at Shottsford and decides to walk there, a journey which will take him through the town of Weatherbury. Along the way, he becomes tired and climbs into a wagon parked by the road in order to rest, only to awaken and find that the wagon is in motion. After he discreetly slips out of the wagon, Gabriel notices that some crops of straw are on fire at a nearby farm and that the fire is threatening to spread. Gabriel joins in to help the farmworkers control the fire, taking charge of the situation and providing effective leadership. Two women, one of whom owns the farm, observe Gabriel's hard work and send a message to him thanking him. Hoping to take advantage of this gratitude, Gabriel goes to ask if the farmer would like to hire him as a shepherd, only to realize that the owner of the farm is Bathsheba, who has inherited it from her uncle. The other farmworkers encourage her to hire Gabriel, and she agrees. As Gabriel makes his way towards accommodations for the night, he encounters a young woman walking alone. She gives him directions, and then asks that he not tell anyone he has seen her. Concerned, Gabriel gives her a small sum of money and then continues on his way. He arrives at the pub where the other farmworkers have gathered and is greeted warmly since some of the older men used to know his father and grandfather. After Gabriel has left for his room, one of the farmworkers comes hurrying in to break the news that the man working as the bailiff at Bathsheba's farm has been caught stealing and was fired from his job. What's more, Fanny Robbins, a young servant, cannot be found, and given that she has seemed depressed recently, her disappearance is alarming to Bathsheba. Several of the farmworkers go back to the farmhouse to speak with Bathsheba. She instructs them to look for Fanny the next day, including asking the soldiers at Casterbridge, since there are rumors that one of them was wooing Fanny. The next morning, Bathsheba and her servant Liddy are busy with household chores when they are surprised by the arrival of Mr. Boldwood, a prosperous farmer. Bathsheba declines to see him, since she is not dressed appropriately and Boldwood explains to the servant that he has come to ask whether any information had surfaced about Fanny's disappearance. After Boldwood departs, the other female servants explain that he is well-respected but also the subject of speculation since he has never shown any interest in getting married. After she has gotten ready, Bathsheba meets with the farmworkers to distribute their wages. She announces that she is not going to hire a new bailiff and instead plans to manage the farm herself. She also asks whether anyone has learned any news about Fanny and is informed that the regiment of soldiers previously stationed at Casterbridge has moved on to the town of Melchester, and it is assumed that Fanny has gone there as well, following her sweetheart. Bathsheba's hands-on approach is furthered signaled when she goes to the corn market to display the products of her farm, and negotiate prices with potential buyers. At the market, she is the subject of much male attention, but is surprised to notice one handsome man who does not seem intrigued by her at all. After questioning Liddy, she learns that this man is the same Farmer Boldwood who had previously called upon her. On the day before Valentine's, Liddy and Bathsheba are idly passing time and the conversation again turns to Boldwood, who had not taken any notice of Bathsheba during church services. Bathsheba mentions a valentine she is going to send to a young boy who works on the farm, and Liddy playfully suggests sending it to Boldwood instead. Bathsheba is intrigued by the idea, since she is slightly annoyed that Boldwood has shown no interest in her. They use the equivalent of a coin toss to determine the plan, and then send the anonymous valentine to Boldwood. Meanwhile, in Melchester, Fanny throws a stone at the windows of the soldier's barracks to get the attention of her lover, Sergeant Frank Troy. Troy is surprised to see her, but Fanny is anxious to hear details about when their planned marriage will take place. Frank assures her that he does plan to marry her, but that the logistical details will cause a delay. He promises to come and visit Fanny in her new lodgings as soon as possible.", "analysis": "Whereas Gabriel begins the novel at a hopeful moment with bright prospects for the future, his fortune is abruptly reversed with the loss of his flock. The loss is all the more glaring because Gabriel is such a careful and conscientious man; despite all of his efforts, everything can still be swept away. Hardy had a profound respect for nature, and the way in which nature can be both bountiful and destructive. At a moment literally ripe with promise, when the ewes are pregnant and therefore on the verge of doubling Gabriel's flock, the scene becomes one of death and grotesque destruction rather than birth and regeneration. Perhaps because Gabriel is a man attuned to the cycles of nature and the inevitable balance between growth and loss, or perhaps because he has previous experience as a humble laborer, he accepts his loss stoically. When he is at the hiring fair, Gabriel is open to accepting work as either a bailiff or a shepherd, even though the two roles were significantly different in social status and pay. The difficulty Gabriel finds in locating work reflects one of the consequences of his attempt at social mobility. He seems underqualified to work as a bailiff on one hand, but now overqualified to go back to being a shepherd since he has experience of working his own farm. However, Gabriel's innate integrity and desire to do the right thing helps to set him on the path to restoring his career. He has no obligation to help with putting out the fire, but he naturally shows leadership and good judgement, and is rewarded by quickly earning the trust of the other workers. The fact that the other men take warmly to Gabriel because of the way he behaves during the fire, and because he has family ties to the area, shows how reputations were established in a pre-industrial era. While Gabriel is quickly accepted into the Everdene farm and the surrounding community, Bathsheba faces more serious challenges. It was somewhat unconventional for a woman to own a substantial property at this time, and still more unusual for her to actively manage it herself. A farm like Bathsheba's involved a substantial and time-consuming amount of effort to be run successfully, and, as quickly becomes evident, requires courage, keen intelligence, and business savvy. Bathsheba shows the same independent spirit that distinguished her when she was helping her aunt, even though the public attention she attracts clearly makes her somewhat uncomfortable. While Bathsheba's new authority and status gives her new freedoms, it also seems to make her reckless. She doesn't have any companions or advisors, and seems to depend on a friendship with Liddy to keep her from boredom. Bathsheba's decision to send the valentine to Boldwood is related to the new autonomy and power she wields once taking on the traditionally masculine role of farmer and manager. As Karin Koehler writes, \"She feels compelled to challenge Boldwood's emphatically masculine sense of self, and, prompted by Liddy's suggestion, intuits that her aim will be accomplished most effectively by a deliberate, aggressive subversion of sexual and gender norms\" . The two impulsive young women egg each other on, leading to the decision to send the valentine to Boldwood. While the prank would be somewhat expected from a maidservant like Liddy, as a landowner and business person, Bathsheba should act with more discretion and foresight. Particularly as a woman, her good reputation is paramount, and she risks jeopardizing it for a childish, lighthearted prank. Although on a very different scale, Bathsheba's impulsive action is paralleled by the risky choices Fanny makes as she follows her heart. As a working-class young woman who doesn't seem to have any family members, she is in a perilous position and can easily be manipulated by an unscrupulous man. Soldiers like Troy had a reputation for womanizing, facilitated by the fact that when the troops moved on, it was easy to discard any women they had pursued affairs with. Troy's vague and ambiguous statements about plans for his marriage hint that he may not in fact be committed to legitimizing his relationship with Fanny."}

DEPARTURE OF BATHSHEBA--A PASTORAL TRAGEDY The news which one day reached Gabriel, that Bathsheba Everdene had left the neighbourhood, had an influence upon him which might have surprised any who never suspected that the more emphatic the renunciation the less absolute its character. It may have been observed that there is no regular path for getting out of love as there is for getting in. Some people look upon marriage as a short cut that way, but it has been known to fail. Separation, which was the means that chance offered to Gabriel Oak by Bathsheba's disappearance, though effectual with people of certain humours, is apt to idealize the removed object with others--notably those whose affection, placid and regular as it may be, flows deep and long. Oak belonged to the even-tempered order of humanity, and felt the secret fusion of himself in Bathsheba to be burning with a finer flame now that she was gone--that was all. His incipient friendship with her aunt had been nipped by the failure of his suit, and all that Oak learnt of Bathsheba's movements was done indirectly. It appeared that she had gone to a place called Weatherbury, more than twenty miles off, but in what capacity--whether as a visitor, or permanently, he could not discover. Gabriel had two dogs. George, the elder, exhibited an ebony-tipped nose, surrounded by a narrow margin of pink flesh, and a coat marked in random splotches approximating in colour to white and slaty grey; but the grey, after years of sun and rain, had been scorched and washed out of the more prominent locks, leaving them of a reddish-brown, as if the blue component of the grey had faded, like the indigo from the same kind of colour in Turner's pictures. In substance it had originally been hair, but long contact with sheep seemed to be turning it by degrees into wool of a poor quality and staple. This dog had originally belonged to a shepherd of inferior morals and dreadful temper, and the result was that George knew the exact degrees of condemnation signified by cursing and swearing of all descriptions better than the wickedest old man in the neighbourhood. Long experience had so precisely taught the animal the difference between such exclamations as "Come in!" and "D---- ye, come in!" that he knew to a hair's breadth the rate of trotting back from the ewes' tails that each call involved, if a staggerer with the sheep crook was to be escaped. Though old, he was clever and trustworthy still. The young dog, George's son, might possibly have been the image of his mother, for there was not much resemblance between him and George. He was learning the sheep-keeping business, so as to follow on at the flock when the other should die, but had got no further than the rudiments as yet--still finding an insuperable difficulty in distinguishing between doing a thing well enough and doing it too well. So earnest and yet so wrong-headed was this young dog (he had no name in particular, and answered with perfect readiness to any pleasant interjection), that if sent behind the flock to help them on, he did it so thoroughly that he would have chased them across the whole county with the greatest pleasure if not called off or reminded when to stop by the example of old George. Thus much for the dogs. On the further side of Norcombe Hill was a chalk-pit, from which chalk had been drawn for generations, and spread over adjacent farms. Two hedges converged upon it in the form of a V, but without quite meeting. The narrow opening left, which was immediately over the brow of the pit, was protected by a rough railing. One night, when Farmer Oak had returned to his house, believing there would be no further necessity for his attendance on the down, he called as usual to the dogs, previously to shutting them up in the outhouse till next morning. Only one responded--old George; the other could not be found, either in the house, lane, or garden. Gabriel then remembered that he had left the two dogs on the hill eating a dead lamb (a kind of meat he usually kept from them, except when other food ran short), and concluding that the young one had not finished his meal, he went indoors to the luxury of a bed, which latterly he had only enjoyed on Sundays. It was a still, moist night. Just before dawn he was assisted in waking by the abnormal reverberation of familiar music. To the shepherd, the note of the sheep-bell, like the ticking of the clock to other people, is a chronic sound that only makes itself noticed by ceasing or altering in some unusual manner from the well-known idle twinkle which signifies to the accustomed ear, however distant, that all is well in the fold. In the solemn calm of the awakening morn that note was heard by Gabriel, beating with unusual violence and rapidity. This exceptional ringing may be caused in two ways--by the rapid feeding of the sheep bearing the bell, as when the flock breaks into new pasture, which gives it an intermittent rapidity, or by the sheep starting off in a run, when the sound has a regular palpitation. The experienced ear of Oak knew the sound he now heard to be caused by the running of the flock with great velocity. He jumped out of bed, dressed, tore down the lane through a foggy dawn, and ascended the hill. The forward ewes were kept apart from those among which the fall of lambs would be later, there being two hundred of the latter class in Gabriel's flock. These two hundred seemed to have absolutely vanished from the hill. There were the fifty with their lambs, enclosed at the other end as he had left them, but the rest, forming the bulk of the flock, were nowhere. Gabriel called at the top of his voice the shepherd's call: "Ovey, ovey, ovey!" Not a single bleat. He went to the hedge; a gap had been broken through it, and in the gap were the footprints of the sheep. Rather surprised to find them break fence at this season, yet putting it down instantly to their great fondness for ivy in winter-time, of which a great deal grew in the plantation, he followed through the hedge. They were not in the plantation. He called again: the valleys and farthest hills resounded as when the sailors invoked the lost Hylas on the Mysian shore; but no sheep. He passed through the trees and along the ridge of the hill. On the extreme summit, where the ends of the two converging hedges of which we have spoken were stopped short by meeting the brow of the chalk-pit, he saw the younger dog standing against the sky--dark and motionless as Napoleon at St. Helena. A horrible conviction darted through Oak. With a sensation of bodily faintness he advanced: at one point the rails were broken through, and there he saw the footprints of his ewes. The dog came up, licked his hand, and made signs implying that he expected some great reward for signal services rendered. Oak looked over the precipice. The ewes lay dead and dying at its foot--a heap of two hundred mangled carcasses, representing in their condition just now at least two hundred more. Oak was an intensely humane man: indeed, his humanity often tore in pieces any politic intentions of his which bordered on strategy, and carried him on as by gravitation. A shadow in his life had always been that his flock ended in mutton--that a day came and found every shepherd an arrant traitor to his defenseless sheep. His first feeling now was one of pity for the untimely fate of these gentle ewes and their unborn lambs. It was a second to remember another phase of the matter. The sheep were not insured. All the savings of a frugal life had been dispersed at a blow; his hopes of being an independent farmer were laid low--possibly for ever. Gabriel's energies, patience, and industry had been so severely taxed during the years of his life between eighteen and eight-and-twenty, to reach his present stage of progress that no more seemed to be left in him. He leant down upon a rail, and covered his face with his hands. Stupors, however, do not last for ever, and Farmer Oak recovered from his. It was as remarkable as it was characteristic that the one sentence he uttered was in thankfulness:-- "Thank God I am not married: what would SHE have done in the poverty now coming upon me!" Oak raised his head, and wondering what he could do, listlessly surveyed the scene. By the outer margin of the Pit was an oval pond, and over it hung the attenuated skeleton of a chrome-yellow moon which had only a few days to last--the morning star dogging her on the left hand. The pool glittered like a dead man's eye, and as the world awoke a breeze blew, shaking and elongating the reflection of the moon without breaking it, and turning the image of the star to a phosphoric streak upon the water. All this Oak saw and remembered. As far as could be learnt it appeared that the poor young dog, still under the impression that since he was kept for running after sheep, the more he ran after them the better, had at the end of his meal off the dead lamb, which may have given him additional energy and spirits, collected all the ewes into a corner, driven the timid creatures through the hedge, across the upper field, and by main force of worrying had given them momentum enough to break down a portion of the rotten railing, and so hurled them over the edge. George's son had done his work so thoroughly that he was considered too good a workman to live, and was, in fact, taken and tragically shot at twelve o'clock that same day--another instance of the untoward fate which so often attends dogs and other philosophers who follow out a train of reasoning to its logical conclusion, and attempt perfectly consistent conduct in a world made up so largely of compromise. Gabriel's farm had been stocked by a dealer--on the strength of Oak's promising look and character--who was receiving a percentage from the farmer till such time as the advance should be cleared off. Oak found that the value of stock, plant, and implements which were really his own would be about sufficient to pay his debts, leaving himself a free man with the clothes he stood up in, and nothing more. THE FAIR--THE JOURNEY--THE FIRE Two months passed away. We are brought on to a day in February, on which was held the yearly statute or hiring fair in the county-town of Casterbridge. At one end of the street stood from two to three hundred blithe and hearty labourers waiting upon Chance--all men of the stamp to whom labour suggests nothing worse than a wrestle with gravitation, and pleasure nothing better than a renunciation of the same. Among these, carters and waggoners were distinguished by having a piece of whip-cord twisted round their hats; thatchers wore a fragment of woven straw; shepherds held their sheep-crooks in their hands; and thus the situation required was known to the hirers at a glance. In the crowd was an athletic young fellow of somewhat superior appearance to the rest--in fact, his superiority was marked enough to lead several ruddy peasants standing by to speak to him inquiringly, as to a farmer, and to use "Sir" as a finishing word. His answer always was,-- "I am looking for a place myself--a bailiff's. Do ye know of anybody who wants one?" Gabriel was paler now. His eyes were more meditative, and his expression was more sad. He had passed through an ordeal of wretchedness which had given him more than it had taken away. He had sunk from his modest elevation as pastoral king into the very slime-pits of Siddim; but there was left to him a dignified calm he had never before known, and that indifference to fate which, though it often makes a villain of a man, is the basis of his sublimity when it does not. And thus the abasement had been exaltation, and the loss gain. In the morning a regiment of cavalry had left the town, and a sergeant and his party had been beating up for recruits through the four streets. As the end of the day drew on, and he found himself not hired, Gabriel almost wished that he had joined them, and gone off to serve his country. Weary of standing in the market-place, and not much minding the kind of work he turned his hand to, he decided to offer himself in some other capacity than that of bailiff. All the farmers seemed to be wanting shepherds. Sheep-tending was Gabriel's speciality. Turning down an obscure street and entering an obscurer lane, he went up to a smith's shop. "How long would it take you to make a shepherd's crook?" "Twenty minutes." "How much?" "Two shillings." He sat on a bench and the crook was made, a stem being given him into the bargain. He then went to a ready-made clothes' shop, the owner of which had a large rural connection. As the crook had absorbed most of Gabriel's money, he attempted, and carried out, an exchange of his overcoat for a shepherd's regulation smock-frock. This transaction having been completed, he again hurried off to the centre of the town, and stood on the kerb of the pavement, as a shepherd, crook in hand. Now that Oak had turned himself into a shepherd, it seemed that bailiffs were most in demand. However, two or three farmers noticed him and drew near. Dialogues followed, more or less in the subjoined form:-- "Where do you come from?" "Norcombe." "That's a long way. "Fifteen miles." "Who's farm were you upon last?" "My own." This reply invariably operated like a rumour of cholera. The inquiring farmer would edge away and shake his head dubiously. Gabriel, like his dog, was too good to be trustworthy, and he never made advance beyond this point. It is safer to accept any chance that offers itself, and extemporize a procedure to fit it, than to get a good plan matured, and wait for a chance of using it. Gabriel wished he had not nailed up his colours as a shepherd, but had laid himself out for anything in the whole cycle of labour that was required in the fair. It grew dusk. Some merry men were whistling and singing by the corn-exchange. Gabriel's hand, which had lain for some time idle in his smock-frock pocket, touched his flute which he carried there. Here was an opportunity for putting his dearly bought wisdom into practice. He drew out his flute and began to play "Jockey to the Fair" in the style of a man who had never known moment's sorrow. Oak could pipe with Arcadian sweetness, and the sound of the well-known notes cheered his own heart as well as those of the loungers. He played on with spirit, and in half an hour had earned in pence what was a small fortune to a destitute man. By making inquiries he learnt that there was another fair at Shottsford the next day. "How far is Shottsford?" "Ten miles t'other side of Weatherbury." Weatherbury! It was where Bathsheba had gone two months before. This information was like coming from night into noon. "How far is it to Weatherbury?" "Five or six miles." Bathsheba had probably left Weatherbury long before this time, but the place had enough interest attaching to it to lead Oak to choose Shottsford fair as his next field of inquiry, because it lay in the Weatherbury quarter. Moreover, the Weatherbury folk were by no means uninteresting intrinsically. If report spoke truly they were as hardy, merry, thriving, wicked a set as any in the whole county. Oak resolved to sleep at Weatherbury that night on his way to Shottsford, and struck out at once into the high road which had been recommended as the direct route to the village in question. The road stretched through water-meadows traversed by little brooks, whose quivering surfaces were braided along their centres, and folded into creases at the sides; or, where the flow was more rapid, the stream was pied with spots of white froth, which rode on in undisturbed serenity. On the higher levels the dead and dry carcasses of leaves tapped the ground as they bowled along helter-skelter upon the shoulders of the wind, and little birds in the hedges were rustling their feathers and tucking themselves in comfortably for the night, retaining their places if Oak kept moving, but flying away if he stopped to look at them. He passed by Yalbury Wood where the game-birds were rising to their roosts, and heard the crack-voiced cock-pheasants "cu-uck, cuck," and the wheezy whistle of the hens. By the time he had walked three or four miles every shape in the landscape had assumed a uniform hue of blackness. He descended Yalbury Hill and could just discern ahead of him a waggon, drawn up under a great over-hanging tree by the roadside. On coming close, he found there were no horses attached to it, the spot being apparently quite deserted. The waggon, from its position, seemed to have been left there for the night, for beyond about half a truss of hay which was heaped in the bottom, it was quite empty. Gabriel sat down on the shafts of the vehicle and considered his position. He calculated that he had walked a very fair proportion of the journey; and having been on foot since daybreak, he felt tempted to lie down upon the hay in the waggon instead of pushing on to the village of Weatherbury, and having to pay for a lodging. Eating his last slices of bread and ham, and drinking from the bottle of cider he had taken the precaution to bring with him, he got into the lonely waggon. Here he spread half of the hay as a bed, and, as well as he could in the darkness, pulled the other half over him by way of bed-clothes, covering himself entirely, and feeling, physically, as comfortable as ever he had been in his life. Inward melancholy it was impossible for a man like Oak, introspective far beyond his neighbours, to banish quite, whilst conning the present untoward page of his history. So, thinking of his misfortunes, amorous and pastoral, he fell asleep, shepherds enjoying, in common with sailors, the privilege of being able to summon the god instead of having to wait for him. On somewhat suddenly awaking, after a sleep of whose length he had no idea, Oak found that the waggon was in motion. He was being carried along the road at a rate rather considerable for a vehicle without springs, and under circumstances of physical uneasiness, his head being dandled up and down on the bed of the waggon like a kettledrum-stick. He then distinguished voices in conversation, coming from the forpart of the waggon. His concern at this dilemma (which would have been alarm, had he been a thriving man; but misfortune is a fine opiate to personal terror) led him to peer cautiously from the hay, and the first sight he beheld was the stars above him. Charles's Wain was getting towards a right angle with the Pole star, and Gabriel concluded that it must be about nine o'clock--in other words, that he had slept two hours. This small astronomical calculation was made without any positive effort, and whilst he was stealthily turning to discover, if possible, into whose hands he had fallen. Two figures were dimly visible in front, sitting with their legs outside the waggon, one of whom was driving. Gabriel soon found that this was the waggoner, and it appeared they had come from Casterbridge fair, like himself. A conversation was in progress, which continued thus:-- "Be as 'twill, she's a fine handsome body as far's looks be concerned. But that's only the skin of the woman, and these dandy cattle be as proud as a lucifer in their insides." "Ay--so 'a do seem, Billy Smallbury--so 'a do seem." This utterance was very shaky by nature, and more so by circumstance, the jolting of the waggon not being without its effect upon the speaker's larynx. It came from the man who held the reins. "She's a very vain feymell--so 'tis said here and there." "Ah, now. If so be 'tis like that, I can't look her in the face. Lord, no: not I--heh-heh-heh! Such a shy man as I be!" "Yes--she's very vain. 'Tis said that every night at going to bed she looks in the glass to put on her night-cap properly." "And not a married woman. Oh, the world!" "And 'a can play the peanner, so 'tis said. Can play so clever that 'a can make a psalm tune sound as well as the merriest loose song a man can wish for." "D'ye tell o't! A happy time for us, and I feel quite a new man! And how do she pay?" "That I don't know, Master Poorgrass." On hearing these and other similar remarks, a wild thought flashed into Gabriel's mind that they might be speaking of Bathsheba. There were, however, no grounds for retaining such a supposition, for the waggon, though going in the direction of Weatherbury, might be going beyond it, and the woman alluded to seemed to be the mistress of some estate. They were now apparently close upon Weatherbury and not to alarm the speakers unnecessarily, Gabriel slipped out of the waggon unseen. He turned to an opening in the hedge, which he found to be a gate, and mounting thereon, he sat meditating whether to seek a cheap lodging in the village, or to ensure a cheaper one by lying under some hay or corn-stack. The crunching jangle of the waggon died upon his ear. He was about to walk on, when he noticed on his left hand an unusual light--appearing about half a mile distant. Oak watched it, and the glow increased. Something was on fire. Gabriel again mounted the gate, and, leaping down on the other side upon what he found to be ploughed soil, made across the field in the exact direction of the fire. The blaze, enlarging in a double ratio by his approach and its own increase, showed him as he drew nearer the outlines of ricks beside it, lighted up to great distinctness. A rick-yard was the source of the fire. His weary face now began to be painted over with a rich orange glow, and the whole front of his smock-frock and gaiters was covered with a dancing shadow pattern of thorn-twigs--the light reaching him through a leafless intervening hedge--and the metallic curve of his sheep-crook shone silver-bright in the same abounding rays. He came up to the boundary fence, and stood to regain breath. It seemed as if the spot was unoccupied by a living soul. The fire was issuing from a long straw-stack, which was so far gone as to preclude a possibility of saving it. A rick burns differently from a house. As the wind blows the fire inwards, the portion in flames completely disappears like melting sugar, and the outline is lost to the eye. However, a hay or a wheat-rick, well put together, will resist combustion for a length of time, if it begins on the outside. This before Gabriel's eyes was a rick of straw, loosely put together, and the flames darted into it with lightning swiftness. It glowed on the windward side, rising and falling in intensity, like the coal of a cigar. Then a superincumbent bundle rolled down, with a whisking noise; flames elongated, and bent themselves about with a quiet roar, but no crackle. Banks of smoke went off horizontally at the back like passing clouds, and behind these burned hidden pyres, illuminating the semi-transparent sheet of smoke to a lustrous yellow uniformity. Individual straws in the foreground were consumed in a creeping movement of ruddy heat, as if they were knots of red worms, and above shone imaginary fiery faces, tongues hanging from lips, glaring eyes, and other impish forms, from which at intervals sparks flew in clusters like birds from a nest. Oak suddenly ceased from being a mere spectator by discovering the case to be more serious than he had at first imagined. A scroll of smoke blew aside and revealed to him a wheat-rick in startling juxtaposition with the decaying one, and behind this a series of others, composing the main corn produce of the farm; so that instead of the straw-stack standing, as he had imagined comparatively isolated, there was a regular connection between it and the remaining stacks of the group. Gabriel leapt over the hedge, and saw that he was not alone. The first man he came to was running about in a great hurry, as if his thoughts were several yards in advance of his body, which they could never drag on fast enough. "O, man--fire, fire! A good master and a bad servant is fire, fire!--I mane a bad servant and a good master. Oh, Mark Clark--come! And you, Billy Smallbury--and you, Maryann Money--and you, Jan Coggan, and Matthew there!" Other figures now appeared behind this shouting man and among the smoke, and Gabriel found that, far from being alone he was in a great company--whose shadows danced merrily up and down, timed by the jigging of the flames, and not at all by their owners' movements. The assemblage--belonging to that class of society which casts its thoughts into the form of feeling, and its feelings into the form of commotion--set to work with a remarkable confusion of purpose. "Stop the draught under the wheat-rick!" cried Gabriel to those nearest to him. The corn stood on stone staddles, and between these, tongues of yellow hue from the burning straw licked and darted playfully. If the fire once got UNDER this stack, all would be lost. "Get a tarpaulin--quick!" said Gabriel. A rick-cloth was brought, and they hung it like a curtain across the channel. The flames immediately ceased to go under the bottom of the corn-stack, and stood up vertical. "Stand here with a bucket of water and keep the cloth wet." said Gabriel again. The flames, now driven upwards, began to attack the angles of the huge roof covering the wheat-stack. "A ladder," cried Gabriel. "The ladder was against the straw-rick and is burnt to a cinder," said a spectre-like form in the smoke. Oak seized the cut ends of the sheaves, as if he were going to engage in the operation of "reed-drawing," and digging in his feet, and occasionally sticking in the stem of his sheep-crook, he clambered up the beetling face. He at once sat astride the very apex, and began with his crook to beat off the fiery fragments which had lodged thereon, shouting to the others to get him a bough and a ladder, and some water. Billy Smallbury--one of the men who had been on the waggon--by this time had found a ladder, which Mark Clark ascended, holding on beside Oak upon the thatch. The smoke at this corner was stifling, and Clark, a nimble fellow, having been handed a bucket of water, bathed Oak's face and sprinkled him generally, whilst Gabriel, now with a long beech-bough in one hand, in addition to his crook in the other, kept sweeping the stack and dislodging all fiery particles. On the ground the groups of villagers were still occupied in doing all they could to keep down the conflagration, which was not much. They were all tinged orange, and backed up by shadows of varying pattern. Round the corner of the largest stack, out of the direct rays of the fire, stood a pony, bearing a young woman on its back. By her side was another woman, on foot. These two seemed to keep at a distance from the fire, that the horse might not become restive. "He's a shepherd," said the woman on foot. "Yes--he is. See how his crook shines as he beats the rick with it. And his smock-frock is burnt in two holes, I declare! A fine young shepherd he is too, ma'am." "Whose shepherd is he?" said the equestrian in a clear voice. "Don't know, ma'am." "Don't any of the others know?" "Nobody at all--I've asked 'em. Quite a stranger, they say." The young woman on the pony rode out from the shade and looked anxiously around. "Do you think the barn is safe?" she said. "D'ye think the barn is safe, Jan Coggan?" said the second woman, passing on the question to the nearest man in that direction. "Safe-now--leastwise I think so. If this rick had gone the barn would have followed. 'Tis that bold shepherd up there that have done the most good--he sitting on the top o' rick, whizzing his great long-arms about like a windmill." "He does work hard," said the young woman on horseback, looking up at Gabriel through her thick woollen veil. "I wish he was shepherd here. Don't any of you know his name." "Never heard the man's name in my life, or seed his form afore." The fire began to get worsted, and Gabriel's elevated position being no longer required of him, he made as if to descend. "Maryann," said the girl on horseback, "go to him as he comes down, and say that the farmer wishes to thank him for the great service he has done." Maryann stalked off towards the rick and met Oak at the foot of the ladder. She delivered her message. "Where is your master the farmer?" asked Gabriel, kindling with the idea of getting employment that seemed to strike him now. "'Tisn't a master; 'tis a mistress, shepherd." "A woman farmer?" "Ay, 'a b'lieve, and a rich one too!" said a bystander. "Lately 'a came here from a distance. Took on her uncle's farm, who died suddenly. Used to measure his money in half-pint cups. They say now that she've business in every bank in Casterbridge, and thinks no more of playing pitch-and-toss sovereign than you and I, do pitch-halfpenny--not a bit in the world, shepherd." "That's she, back there upon the pony," said Maryann; "wi' her face a-covered up in that black cloth with holes in it." Oak, his features smudged, grimy, and undiscoverable from the smoke and heat, his smock-frock burnt into holes and dripping with water, the ash stem of his sheep-crook charred six inches shorter, advanced with the humility stern adversity had thrust upon him up to the slight female form in the saddle. He lifted his hat with respect, and not without gallantry: stepping close to her hanging feet he said in a hesitating voice,-- "Do you happen to want a shepherd, ma'am?" She lifted the wool veil tied round her face, and looked all astonishment. Gabriel and his cold-hearted darling, Bathsheba Everdene, were face to face. Bathsheba did not speak, and he mechanically repeated in an abashed and sad voice,-- "Do you want a shepherd, ma'am?" RECOGNITION--A TIMID GIRL Bathsheba withdrew into the shade. She scarcely knew whether most to be amused at the singularity of the meeting, or to be concerned at its awkwardness. There was room for a little pity, also for a very little exultation: the former at his position, the latter at her own. Embarrassed she was not, and she remembered Gabriel's declaration of love to her at Norcombe only to think she had nearly forgotten it. "Yes," she murmured, putting on an air of dignity, and turning again to him with a little warmth of cheek; "I do want a shepherd. But--" "He's the very man, ma'am," said one of the villagers, quietly. Conviction breeds conviction. "Ay, that 'a is," said a second, decisively. "The man, truly!" said a third, with heartiness. "He's all there!" said number four, fervidly. "Then will you tell him to speak to the bailiff," said Bathsheba. All was practical again now. A summer eve and loneliness would have been necessary to give the meeting its proper fulness of romance. The bailiff was pointed out to Gabriel, who, checking the palpitation within his breast at discovering that this Ashtoreth of strange report was only a modification of Venus the well-known and admired, retired with him to talk over the necessary preliminaries of hiring. The fire before them wasted away. "Men," said Bathsheba, "you shall take a little refreshment after this extra work. Will you come to the house?" "We could knock in a bit and a drop a good deal freer, Miss, if so be ye'd send it to Warren's Malthouse," replied the spokesman. Bathsheba then rode off into the darkness, and the men straggled on to the village in twos and threes--Oak and the bailiff being left by the rick alone. "And now," said the bailiff, finally, "all is settled, I think, about your coming, and I am going home-along. Good-night to ye, shepherd." "Can you get me a lodging?" inquired Gabriel. "That I can't, indeed," he said, moving past Oak as a Christian edges past an offertory-plate when he does not mean to contribute. "If you follow on the road till you come to Warren's Malthouse, where they are all gone to have their snap of victuals, I daresay some of 'em will tell you of a place. Good-night to ye, shepherd." The bailiff who showed this nervous dread of loving his neighbour as himself, went up the hill, and Oak walked on to the village, still astonished at the reencounter with Bathsheba, glad of his nearness to her, and perplexed at the rapidity with which the unpractised girl of Norcombe had developed into the supervising and cool woman here. But some women only require an emergency to make them fit for one. Obliged, to some extent, to forgo dreaming in order to find the way, he reached the churchyard, and passed round it under the wall where several ancient trees grew. There was a wide margin of grass along here, and Gabriel's footsteps were deadened by its softness, even at this indurating period of the year. When abreast of a trunk which appeared to be the oldest of the old, he became aware that a figure was standing behind it. Gabriel did not pause in his walk, and in another moment he accidentally kicked a loose stone. The noise was enough to disturb the motionless stranger, who started and assumed a careless position. It was a slim girl, rather thinly clad. "Good-night to you," said Gabriel, heartily. "Good-night," said the girl to Gabriel. The voice was unexpectedly attractive; it was the low and dulcet note suggestive of romance; common in descriptions, rare in experience. "I'll thank you to tell me if I'm in the way for Warren's Malthouse?" Gabriel resumed, primarily to gain the information, indirectly to get more of the music. "Quite right. It's at the bottom of the hill. And do you know--" The girl hesitated and then went on again. "Do you know how late they keep open the Buck's Head Inn?" She seemed to be won by Gabriel's heartiness, as Gabriel had been won by her modulations. "I don't know where the Buck's Head is, or anything about it. Do you think of going there to-night?" "Yes--" The woman again paused. There was no necessity for any continuance of speech, and the fact that she did add more seemed to proceed from an unconscious desire to show unconcern by making a remark, which is noticeable in the ingenuous when they are acting by stealth. "You are not a Weatherbury man?" she said, timorously. "I am not. I am the new shepherd--just arrived." "Only a shepherd--and you seem almost a farmer by your ways." "Only a shepherd," Gabriel repeated, in a dull cadence of finality. His thoughts were directed to the past, his eyes to the feet of the girl; and for the first time he saw lying there a bundle of some sort. She may have perceived the direction of his face, for she said coaxingly,-- "You won't say anything in the parish about having seen me here, will you--at least, not for a day or two?" "I won't if you wish me not to," said Oak. "Thank you, indeed," the other replied. "I am rather poor, and I don't want people to know anything about me." Then she was silent and shivered. "You ought to have a cloak on such a cold night," Gabriel observed. "I would advise 'ee to get indoors." "O no! Would you mind going on and leaving me? I thank you much for what you have told me." "I will go on," he said; adding hesitatingly,--"Since you are not very well off, perhaps you would accept this trifle from me. It is only a shilling, but it is all I have to spare." "Yes, I will take it," said the stranger gratefully. She extended her hand; Gabriel his. In feeling for each other's palm in the gloom before the money could be passed, a minute incident occurred which told much. Gabriel's fingers alighted on the young woman's wrist. It was beating with a throb of tragic intensity. He had frequently felt the same quick, hard beat in the femoral artery of his lambs when overdriven. It suggested a consumption too great of a vitality which, to judge from her figure and stature, was already too little. "What is the matter?" "Nothing." "But there is?" "No, no, no! Let your having seen me be a secret!" "Very well; I will. Good-night, again." "Good-night." The young girl remained motionless by the tree, and Gabriel descended into the village of Weatherbury, or Lower Longpuddle as it was sometimes called. He fancied that he had felt himself in the penumbra of a very deep sadness when touching that slight and fragile creature. But wisdom lies in moderating mere impressions, and Gabriel endeavoured to think little of this. THE MALTHOUSE--THE CHAT--NEWS Warren's Malthouse was enclosed by an old wall inwrapped with ivy, and though not much of the exterior was visible at this hour, the character and purposes of the building were clearly enough shown by its outline upon the sky. From the walls an overhanging thatched roof sloped up to a point in the centre, upon which rose a small wooden lantern, fitted with louvre-boards on all the four sides, and from these openings a mist was dimly perceived to be escaping into the night air. There was no window in front; but a square hole in the door was glazed with a single pane, through which red, comfortable rays now stretched out upon the ivied wall in front. Voices were to be heard inside. Oak's hand skimmed the surface of the door with fingers extended to an Elymas-the-Sorcerer pattern, till he found a leathern strap, which he pulled. This lifted a wooden latch, and the door swung open. The room inside was lighted only by the ruddy glow from the kiln mouth, which shone over the floor with the streaming horizontality of the setting sun, and threw upwards the shadows of all facial irregularities in those assembled around. The stone-flag floor was worn into a path from the doorway to the kiln, and into undulations everywhere. A curved settle of unplaned oak stretched along one side, and in a remote corner was a small bed and bedstead, the owner and frequent occupier of which was the maltster. This aged man was now sitting opposite the fire, his frosty white hair and beard overgrowing his gnarled figure like the grey moss and lichen upon a leafless apple-tree. He wore breeches and the laced-up shoes called ankle-jacks; he kept his eyes fixed upon the fire. Gabriel's nose was greeted by an atmosphere laden with the sweet smell of new malt. The conversation (which seemed to have been concerning the origin of the fire) immediately ceased, and every one ocularly criticised him to the degree expressed by contracting the flesh of their foreheads and looking at him with narrowed eyelids, as if he had been a light too strong for their sight. Several exclaimed meditatively, after this operation had been completed:-- "Oh, 'tis the new shepherd, 'a b'lieve." "We thought we heard a hand pawing about the door for the bobbin, but weren't sure 'twere not a dead leaf blowed across," said another. "Come in, shepherd; sure ye be welcome, though we don't know yer name." "Gabriel Oak, that's my name, neighbours." The ancient maltster sitting in the midst turned at this--his turning being as the turning of a rusty crane. "That's never Gable Oak's grandson over at Norcombe--never!" he said, as a formula expressive of surprise, which nobody was supposed for a moment to take literally. "My father and my grandfather were old men of the name of Gabriel," said the shepherd, placidly. "Thought I knowed the man's face as I seed him on the rick!--thought I did! And where be ye trading o't to now, shepherd?" "I'm thinking of biding here," said Mr. Oak. "Knowed yer grandfather for years and years!" continued the maltster, the words coming forth of their own accord as if the momentum previously imparted had been sufficient. "Ah--and did you!" "Knowed yer grandmother." "And her too!" "Likewise knowed yer father when he was a child. Why, my boy Jacob there and your father were sworn brothers--that they were sure--weren't ye, Jacob?" "Ay, sure," said his son, a young man about sixty-five, with a semi-bald head and one tooth in the left centre of his upper jaw, which made much of itself by standing prominent, like a milestone in a bank. "But 'twas Joe had most to do with him. However, my son William must have knowed the very man afore us--didn't ye, Billy, afore ye left Norcombe?" "No, 'twas Andrew," said Jacob's son Billy, a child of forty, or thereabouts, who manifested the peculiarity of possessing a cheerful soul in a gloomy body, and whose whiskers were assuming a chinchilla shade here and there. "I can mind Andrew," said Oak, "as being a man in the place when I was quite a child." "Ay--the other day I and my youngest daughter, Liddy, were over at my grandson's christening," continued Billy. "We were talking about this very family, and 'twas only last Purification Day in this very world, when the use-money is gied away to the second-best poor folk, you know, shepherd, and I can mind the day because they all had to traypse up to the vestry--yes, this very man's family." "Come, shepherd, and drink. 'Tis gape and swaller with us--a drap of sommit, but not of much account," said the maltster, removing from the fire his eyes, which were vermilion-red and bleared by gazing into it for so many years. "Take up the God-forgive-me, Jacob. See if 'tis warm, Jacob." Jacob stooped to the God-forgive-me, which was a two-handled tall mug standing in the ashes, cracked and charred with heat: it was rather furred with extraneous matter about the outside, especially in the crevices of the handles, the innermost curves of which may not have seen daylight for several years by reason of this encrustation thereon--formed of ashes accidentally wetted with cider and baked hard; but to the mind of any sensible drinker the cup was no worse for that, being incontestably clean on the inside and about the rim. It may be observed that such a class of mug is called a God-forgive-me in Weatherbury and its vicinity for uncertain reasons; probably because its size makes any given toper feel ashamed of himself when he sees its bottom in drinking it empty. Jacob, on receiving the order to see if the liquor was warm enough, placidly dipped his forefinger into it by way of thermometer, and having pronounced it nearly of the proper degree, raised the cup and very civilly attempted to dust some of the ashes from the bottom with the skirt of his smock-frock, because Shepherd Oak was a stranger. "A clane cup for the shepherd," said the maltster commandingly. "No--not at all," said Gabriel, in a reproving tone of considerateness. "I never fuss about dirt in its pure state, and when I know what sort it is." Taking the mug he drank an inch or more from the depth of its contents, and duly passed it to the next man. "I wouldn't think of giving such trouble to neighbours in washing up when there's so much work to be done in the world already." continued Oak in a moister tone, after recovering from the stoppage of breath which is occasioned by pulls at large mugs. "A right sensible man," said Jacob. "True, true; it can't be gainsaid!" observed a brisk young man--Mark Clark by name, a genial and pleasant gentleman, whom to meet anywhere in your travels was to know, to know was to drink with, and to drink with was, unfortunately, to pay for. "And here's a mouthful of bread and bacon that mis'ess have sent, shepherd. The cider will go down better with a bit of victuals. Don't ye chaw quite close, shepherd, for I let the bacon fall in the road outside as I was bringing it along, and may be 'tis rather gritty. There, 'tis clane dirt; and we all know what that is, as you say, and you bain't a particular man we see, shepherd." "True, true--not at all," said the friendly Oak. "Don't let your teeth quite meet, and you won't feel the sandiness at all. Ah! 'tis wonderful what can be done by contrivance!" "My own mind exactly, neighbour." "Ah, he's his grandfer's own grandson!--his grandfer were just such a nice unparticular man!" said the maltster. "Drink, Henry Fray--drink," magnanimously said Jan Coggan, a person who held Saint-Simonian notions of share and share alike where liquor was concerned, as the vessel showed signs of approaching him in its gradual revolution among them. Having at this moment reached the end of a wistful gaze into mid-air, Henry did not refuse. He was a man of more than middle age, with eyebrows high up in his forehead, who laid it down that the law of the world was bad, with a long-suffering look through his listeners at the world alluded to, as it presented itself to his imagination. He always signed his name "Henery"--strenuously insisting upon that spelling, and if any passing schoolmaster ventured to remark that the second "e" was superfluous and old-fashioned, he received the reply that "H-e-n-e-r-y" was the name he was christened and the name he would stick to--in the tone of one to whom orthographical differences were matters which had a great deal to do with personal character. Mr. Jan Coggan, who had passed the cup to Henery, was a crimson man with a spacious countenance and private glimmer in his eye, whose name had appeared on the marriage register of Weatherbury and neighbouring parishes as best man and chief witness in countless unions of the previous twenty years; he also very frequently filled the post of head godfather in baptisms of the subtly-jovial kind. "Come, Mark Clark--come. Ther's plenty more in the barrel," said Jan. "Ay--that I will, 'tis my only doctor," replied Mr. Clark, who, twenty years younger than Jan Coggan, revolved in the same orbit. He secreted mirth on all occasions for special discharge at popular parties. "Why, Joseph Poorgrass, ye han't had a drop!" said Mr. Coggan to a self-conscious man in the background, thrusting the cup towards him. "Such a modest man as he is!" said Jacob Smallbury. "Why, ye've hardly had strength of eye enough to look in our young mis'ess's face, so I hear, Joseph?" All looked at Joseph Poorgrass with pitying reproach. "No--I've hardly looked at her at all," simpered Joseph, reducing his body smaller whilst talking, apparently from a meek sense of undue prominence. "And when I seed her, 'twas nothing but blushes with me!" "Poor feller," said Mr. Clark. "'Tis a curious nature for a man," said Jan Coggan. "Yes," continued Joseph Poorgrass--his shyness, which was so painful as a defect, filling him with a mild complacency now that it was regarded as an interesting study. "'Twere blush, blush, blush with me every minute of the time, when she was speaking to me." "I believe ye, Joseph Poorgrass, for we all know ye to be a very bashful man." "'Tis a' awkward gift for a man, poor soul," said the maltster. "And how long have ye have suffered from it, Joseph?" [a] [Transcriber's note a: Alternate text, appears in all three editions on hand: "'Tis a' awkward gift for a man, poor soul," said the maltster. "And ye have suffered from it a long time, we know." "Ay, ever since..."] "Oh, ever since I was a boy. Yes--mother was concerned to her heart about it--yes. But 'twas all nought." "Did ye ever go into the world to try and stop it, Joseph Poorgrass?" "Oh ay, tried all sorts o' company. They took me to Greenhill Fair, and into a great gay jerry-go-nimble show, where there were women-folk riding round--standing upon horses, with hardly anything on but their smocks; but it didn't cure me a morsel. And then I was put errand-man at the Women's Skittle Alley at the back of the Tailor's Arms in Casterbridge. 'Twas a horrible sinful situation, and a very curious place for a good man. I had to stand and look ba'dy people in the face from morning till night; but 'twas no use--I was just as bad as ever after all. Blushes hev been in the family for generations. There, 'tis a happy providence that I be no worse." "True," said Jacob Smallbury, deepening his thoughts to a profounder view of the subject. "'Tis a thought to look at, that ye might have been worse; but even as you be, 'tis a very bad affliction for 'ee, Joseph. For ye see, shepherd, though 'tis very well for a woman, dang it all, 'tis awkward for a man like him, poor feller?" "'Tis--'tis," said Gabriel, recovering from a meditation. "Yes, very awkward for the man." "Ay, and he's very timid, too," observed Jan Coggan. "Once he had been working late at Yalbury Bottom, and had had a drap of drink, and lost his way as he was coming home-along through Yalbury Wood, didn't ye, Master Poorgrass?" "No, no, no; not that story!" expostulated the modest man, forcing a laugh to bury his concern. "--And so 'a lost himself quite," continued Mr. Coggan, with an impassive face, implying that a true narrative, like time and tide, must run its course and would respect no man. "And as he was coming along in the middle of the night, much afeared, and not able to find his way out of the trees nohow, 'a cried out, 'Man-a-lost! man-a-lost!' A owl in a tree happened to be crying 'Whoo-whoo-whoo!' as owls do, you know, shepherd" (Gabriel nodded), "and Joseph, all in a tremble, said, 'Joseph Poorgrass, of Weatherbury, sir!'" "No, no, now--that's too much!" said the timid man, becoming a man of brazen courage all of a sudden. "I didn't say SIR. I'll take my oath I didn't say 'Joseph Poorgrass o' Weatherbury, sir.' No, no; what's right is right, and I never said sir to the bird, knowing very well that no man of a gentleman's rank would be hollering there at that time o' night. 'Joseph Poorgrass of Weatherbury,'--that's every word I said, and I shouldn't ha' said that if 't hadn't been for Keeper Day's metheglin.... There, 'twas a merciful thing it ended where it did." The question of which was right being tacitly waived by the company, Jan went on meditatively:-- "And he's the fearfullest man, bain't ye, Joseph? Ay, another time ye were lost by Lambing-Down Gate, weren't ye, Joseph?" "I was," replied Poorgrass, as if there were some conditions too serious even for modesty to remember itself under, this being one. "Yes; that were the middle of the night, too. The gate would not open, try how he would, and knowing there was the Devil's hand in it, he kneeled down." "Ay," said Joseph, acquiring confidence from the warmth of the fire, the cider, and a perception of the narrative capabilities of the experience alluded to. "My heart died within me, that time; but I kneeled down and said the Lord's Prayer, and then the Belief right through, and then the Ten Commandments, in earnest prayer. But no, the gate wouldn't open; and then I went on with Dearly Beloved Brethren, and, thinks I, this makes four, and 'tis all I know out of book, and if this don't do it nothing will, and I'm a lost man. Well, when I got to Saying After Me, I rose from my knees and found the gate would open--yes, neighbours, the gate opened the same as ever." A meditation on the obvious inference was indulged in by all, and during its continuance each directed his vision into the ashpit, which glowed like a desert in the tropics under a vertical sun, shaping their eyes long and liny, partly because of the light, partly from the depth of the subject discussed. Gabriel broke the silence. "What sort of a place is this to live at, and what sort of a mis'ess is she to work under?" Gabriel's bosom thrilled gently as he thus slipped under the notice of the assembly the inner-most subject of his heart. "We d' know little of her--nothing. She only showed herself a few days ago. Her uncle was took bad, and the doctor was called with his world-wide skill; but he couldn't save the man. As I take it, she's going to keep on the farm. "That's about the shape o't, 'a b'lieve," said Jan Coggan. "Ay, 'tis a very good family. I'd as soon be under 'em as under one here and there. Her uncle was a very fair sort of man. Did ye know en, shepherd--a bachelor-man?" "Not at all." "I used to go to his house a-courting my first wife, Charlotte, who was his dairymaid. Well, a very good-hearted man were Farmer Everdene, and I being a respectable young fellow was allowed to call and see her and drink as much ale as I liked, but not to carry away any--outside my skin I mane of course." "Ay, ay, Jan Coggan; we know yer maning." "And so you see 'twas beautiful ale, and I wished to value his kindness as much as I could, and not to be so ill-mannered as to drink only a thimbleful, which would have been insulting the man's generosity--" "True, Master Coggan, 'twould so," corroborated Mark Clark. "--And so I used to eat a lot of salt fish afore going, and then by the time I got there I were as dry as a lime-basket--so thorough dry that that ale would slip down--ah, 'twould slip down sweet! Happy times! Heavenly times! Such lovely drunks as I used to have at that house! You can mind, Jacob? You used to go wi' me sometimes." "I can--I can," said Jacob. "That one, too, that we had at Buck's Head on a White Monday was a pretty tipple." "'Twas. But for a wet of the better class, that brought you no nearer to the horned man than you were afore you begun, there was none like those in Farmer Everdene's kitchen. Not a single damn allowed; no, not a bare poor one, even at the most cheerful moment when all were blindest, though the good old word of sin thrown in here and there at such times is a great relief to a merry soul." "True," said the maltster. "Nater requires her swearing at the regular times, or she's not herself; and unholy exclamations is a necessity of life." "But Charlotte," continued Coggan--"not a word of the sort would Charlotte allow, nor the smallest item of taking in vain.... Ay, poor Charlotte, I wonder if she had the good fortune to get into Heaven when 'a died! But 'a was never much in luck's way, and perhaps 'a went downwards after all, poor soul." "And did any of you know Miss Everdene's father and mother?" inquired the shepherd, who found some difficulty in keeping the conversation in the desired channel. "I knew them a little," said Jacob Smallbury; "but they were townsfolk, and didn't live here. They've been dead for years. Father, what sort of people were mis'ess' father and mother?" "Well," said the maltster, "he wasn't much to look at; but she was a lovely woman. He was fond enough of her as his sweetheart." "Used to kiss her scores and long-hundreds o' times, so 'twas said," observed Coggan. "He was very proud of her, too, when they were married, as I've been told," said the maltster. "Ay," said Coggan. "He admired her so much that he used to light the candle three times a night to look at her." "Boundless love; I shouldn't have supposed it in the universe!" murmured Joseph Poorgrass, who habitually spoke on a large scale in his moral reflections. "Well, to be sure," said Gabriel. "Oh, 'tis true enough. I knowed the man and woman both well. Levi Everdene--that was the man's name, sure. 'Man,' saith I in my hurry, but he were of a higher circle of life than that--'a was a gentleman-tailor really, worth scores of pounds. And he became a very celebrated bankrupt two or three times." "Oh, I thought he was quite a common man!" said Joseph. "Oh no, no! That man failed for heaps of money; hundreds in gold and silver." The maltster being rather short of breath, Mr. Coggan, after absently scrutinising a coal which had fallen among the ashes, took up the narrative, with a private twirl of his eye:-- "Well, now, you'd hardly believe it, but that man--our Miss Everdene's father--was one of the ficklest husbands alive, after a while. Understand? 'a didn't want to be fickle, but he couldn't help it. The pore feller were faithful and true enough to her in his wish, but his heart would rove, do what he would. He spoke to me in real tribulation about it once. 'Coggan,' he said, 'I could never wish for a handsomer woman than I've got, but feeling she's ticketed as my lawful wife, I can't help my wicked heart wandering, do what I will.' But at last I believe he cured it by making her take off her wedding-ring and calling her by her maiden name as they sat together after the shop was shut, and so 'a would get to fancy she was only his sweetheart, and not married to him at all. And as soon as he could thoroughly fancy he was doing wrong and committing the seventh, 'a got to like her as well as ever, and they lived on a perfect picture of mutel love." "Well, 'twas a most ungodly remedy," murmured Joseph Poorgrass; "but we ought to feel deep cheerfulness that a happy Providence kept it from being any worse. You see, he might have gone the bad road and given his eyes to unlawfulness entirely--yes, gross unlawfulness, so to say it." "You see," said Billy Smallbury, "The man's will was to do right, sure enough, but his heart didn't chime in." "He got so much better, that he was quite godly in his later years, wasn't he, Jan?" said Joseph Poorgrass. "He got himself confirmed over again in a more serious way, and took to saying 'Amen' almost as loud as the clerk, and he liked to copy comforting verses from the tombstones. He used, too, to hold the money-plate at Let Your Light so Shine, and stand godfather to poor little come-by-chance children; and he kept a missionary box upon his table to nab folks unawares when they called; yes, and he would box the charity-boys' ears, if they laughed in church, till they could hardly stand upright, and do other deeds of piety natural to the saintly inclined." "Ay, at that time he thought of nothing but high things," added Billy Smallbury. "One day Parson Thirdly met him and said, 'Good-Morning, Mister Everdene; 'tis a fine day!' 'Amen' said Everdene, quite absent-like, thinking only of religion when he seed a parson. Yes, he was a very Christian man." "Their daughter was not at all a pretty chiel at that time," said Henery Fray. "Never should have thought she'd have growed up such a handsome body as she is." "'Tis to be hoped her temper is as good as her face." "Well, yes; but the baily will have most to do with the business and ourselves. Ah!" Henery gazed into the ashpit, and smiled volumes of ironical knowledge. "A queer Christian, like the Devil's head in a cowl, [1] as the saying is," volunteered Mark Clark. [Footnote 1: This phrase is a conjectural emendation of the unintelligible expression, "as the Devil said to the Owl," used by the natives.] "He is," said Henery, implying that irony must cease at a certain point. "Between we two, man and man, I believe that man would as soon tell a lie Sundays as working-days--that I do so." "Good faith, you do talk!" said Gabriel. "True enough," said the man of bitter moods, looking round upon the company with the antithetic laughter that comes from a keener appreciation of the miseries of life than ordinary men are capable of. "Ah, there's people of one sort, and people of another, but that man--bless your souls!" Gabriel thought fit to change the subject. "You must be a very aged man, malter, to have sons growed mild and ancient," he remarked. "Father's so old that 'a can't mind his age, can ye, father?" interposed Jacob. "And he's growed terrible crooked too, lately," Jacob continued, surveying his father's figure, which was rather more bowed than his own. "Really one may say that father there is three-double." "Crooked folk will last a long while," said the maltster, grimly, and not in the best humour. "Shepherd would like to hear the pedigree of yer life, father-- wouldn't ye, shepherd?" "Ay that I should," said Gabriel with the heartiness of a man who had longed to hear it for several months. "What may your age be, malter?" The maltster cleared his throat in an exaggerated form for emphasis, and elongating his gaze to the remotest point of the ashpit, said, in the slow speech justifiable when the importance of a subject is so generally felt that any mannerism must be tolerated in getting at it, "Well, I don't mind the year I were born in, but perhaps I can reckon up the places I've lived at, and so get it that way. I bode at Upper Longpuddle across there" (nodding to the north) "till I were eleven. I bode seven at Kingsbere" (nodding to the east) "where I took to malting. I went therefrom to Norcombe, and malted there two-and-twenty years, and-two-and-twenty years I was there turnip-hoeing and harvesting. Ah, I knowed that old place, Norcombe, years afore you were thought of, Master Oak" (Oak smiled sincere belief in the fact). "Then I malted at Durnover four year, and four year turnip-hoeing; and I was fourteen times eleven months at Millpond St. Jude's" (nodding north-west-by-north). "Old Twills wouldn't hire me for more than eleven months at a time, to keep me from being chargeable to the parish if so be I was disabled. Then I was three year at Mellstock, and I've been here one-and-thirty year come Candlemas. How much is that?" "Hundred and seventeen," chuckled another old gentleman, given to mental arithmetic and little conversation, who had hitherto sat unobserved in a corner. "Well, then, that's my age," said the maltster, emphatically. "O no, father!" said Jacob. "Your turnip-hoeing were in the summer and your malting in the winter of the same years, and ye don't ought to count-both halves, father." "Chok' it all! I lived through the summers, didn't I? That's my question. I suppose ye'll say next I be no age at all to speak of?" "Sure we shan't," said Gabriel, soothingly. "Ye be a very old aged person, malter," attested Jan Coggan, also soothingly. "We all know that, and ye must have a wonderful talented constitution to be able to live so long, mustn't he, neighbours?" "True, true; ye must, malter, wonderful," said the meeting unanimously. The maltster, being now pacified, was even generous enough to voluntarily disparage in a slight degree the virtue of having lived a great many years, by mentioning that the cup they were drinking out of was three years older than he. While the cup was being examined, the end of Gabriel Oak's flute became visible over his smock-frock pocket, and Henery Fray exclaimed, "Surely, shepherd, I seed you blowing into a great flute by now at Casterbridge?" "You did," said Gabriel, blushing faintly. "I've been in great trouble, neighbours, and was driven to it. I used not to be so poor as I be now." "Never mind, heart!" said Mark Clark. "You should take it careless-like, shepherd, and your time will come. But we could thank ye for a tune, if ye bain't too tired?" "Neither drum nor trumpet have I heard since Christmas," said Jan Coggan. "Come, raise a tune, Master Oak!" "Ay, that I will," said Gabriel, pulling out his flute and putting it together. "A poor tool, neighbours; but such as I can do ye shall have and welcome." Oak then struck up "Jockey to the Fair," and played that sparkling melody three times through, accenting the notes in the third round in a most artistic and lively manner by bending his body in small jerks and tapping with his foot to beat time. "He can blow the flute very well--that 'a can," said a young married man, who having no individuality worth mentioning was known as "Susan Tall's husband." He continued, "I'd as lief as not be able to blow into a flute as well as that." "He's a clever man, and 'tis a true comfort for us to have such a shepherd," murmured Joseph Poorgrass, in a soft cadence. "We ought to feel full o' thanksgiving that he's not a player of ba'dy songs instead of these merry tunes; for 'twould have been just as easy for God to have made the shepherd a loose low man--a man of iniquity, so to speak it--as what he is. Yes, for our wives' and daughters' sakes we should feel real thanksgiving." "True, true,--real thanksgiving!" dashed in Mark Clark conclusively, not feeling it to be of any consequence to his opinion that he had only heard about a word and three-quarters of what Joseph had said. "Yes," added Joseph, beginning to feel like a man in the Bible; "for evil do thrive so in these times that ye may be as much deceived in the cleanest shaved and whitest shirted man as in the raggedest tramp upon the turnpike, if I may term it so." "Ay, I can mind yer face now, shepherd," said Henery Fray, criticising Gabriel with misty eyes as he entered upon his second tune. "Yes--now I see 'ee blowing into the flute I know 'ee to be the same man I see play at Casterbridge, for yer mouth were scrimped up and yer eyes a-staring out like a strangled man's--just as they be now." "'Tis a pity that playing the flute should make a man look such a scarecrow," observed Mr. Mark Clark, with additional criticism of Gabriel's countenance, the latter person jerking out, with the ghastly grimace required by the instrument, the chorus of "Dame Durden:"-- 'Twas Moll' and Bet', and Doll' and Kate', And Dor'-othy Drag'-gle Tail'. "I hope you don't mind that young man's bad manners in naming your features?" whispered Joseph to Gabriel. "Not at all," said Mr. Oak. "For by nature ye be a very handsome man, shepherd," continued Joseph Poorgrass, with winning sauvity. "Ay, that ye be, shepard," said the company. "Thank you very much," said Oak, in the modest tone good manners demanded, thinking, however, that he would never let Bathsheba see him playing the flute; in this resolve showing a discretion equal to that related to its sagacious inventress, the divine Minerva herself. "Ah, when I and my wife were married at Norcombe Church," said the old maltster, not pleased at finding himself left out of the subject, "we were called the handsomest couple in the neighbourhood--everybody said so." "Danged if ye bain't altered now, malter," said a voice with the vigour natural to the enunciation of a remarkably evident truism. It came from the old man in the background, whose offensiveness and spiteful ways were barely atoned for by the occasional chuckle he contributed to general laughs. "O no, no," said Gabriel. "Don't ye play no more shepherd" said Susan Tall's husband, the young married man who had spoken once before. "I must be moving and when there's tunes going on I seem as if hung in wires. If I thought after I'd left that music was still playing, and I not there, I should be quite melancholy-like." "What's yer hurry then, Laban?" inquired Coggan. "You used to bide as late as the latest." "Well, ye see, neighbours, I was lately married to a woman, and she's my vocation now, and so ye see--" The young man halted lamely. "New Lords new laws, as the saying is, I suppose," remarked Coggan. "Ay, 'a b'lieve--ha, ha!" said Susan Tall's husband, in a tone intended to imply his habitual reception of jokes without minding them at all. The young man then wished them good-night and withdrew. Henery Fray was the first to follow. Then Gabriel arose and went off with Jan Coggan, who had offered him a lodging. A few minutes later, when the remaining ones were on their legs and about to depart, Fray came back again in a hurry. Flourishing his finger ominously he threw a gaze teeming with tidings just where his eye alighted by accident, which happened to be in Joseph Poorgrass's face. "O--what's the matter, what's the matter, Henery?" said Joseph, starting back. "What's a-brewing, Henrey?" asked Jacob and Mark Clark. "Baily Pennyways--Baily Pennyways--I said so; yes, I said so!" "What, found out stealing anything?" "Stealing it is. The news is, that after Miss Everdene got home she went out again to see all was safe, as she usually do, and coming in found Baily Pennyways creeping down the granary steps with half a a bushel of barley. She fleed at him like a cat--never such a tomboy as she is--of course I speak with closed doors?" "You do--you do, Henery." "She fleed at him, and, to cut a long story short, he owned to having carried off five sack altogether, upon her promising not to persecute him. Well, he's turned out neck and crop, and my question is, who's going to be baily now?" The question was such a profound one that Henery was obliged to drink there and then from the large cup till the bottom was distinctly visible inside. Before he had replaced it on the table, in came the young man, Susan Tall's husband, in a still greater hurry. "Have ye heard the news that's all over parish?" "About Baily Pennyways?" "But besides that?" "No--not a morsel of it!" they replied, looking into the very midst of Laban Tall as if to meet his words half-way down his throat. "What a night of horrors!" murmured Joseph Poorgrass, waving his hands spasmodically. "I've had the news-bell ringing in my left ear quite bad enough for a murder, and I've seen a magpie all alone!" "Fanny Robin--Miss Everdene's youngest servant--can't be found. They've been wanting to lock up the door these two hours, but she isn't come in. And they don't know what to do about going to bed for fear of locking her out. They wouldn't be so concerned if she hadn't been noticed in such low spirits these last few days, and Maryann d' think the beginning of a crowner's inquest has happened to the poor girl." "Oh--'tis burned--'tis burned!" came from Joseph Poorgrass's dry lips. "No--'tis drowned!" said Tall. "Or 'tis her father's razor!" suggested Billy Smallbury, with a vivid sense of detail. "Well--Miss Everdene wants to speak to one or two of us before we go to bed. What with this trouble about the baily, and now about the girl, mis'ess is almost wild." They all hastened up the lane to the farmhouse, excepting the old maltster, whom neither news, fire, rain, nor thunder could draw from his hole. There, as the others' footsteps died away he sat down again and continued gazing as usual into the furnace with his red, bleared eyes. From the bedroom window above their heads Bathsheba's head and shoulders, robed in mystic white, were dimly seen extended into the air. "Are any of my men among you?" she said anxiously. "Yes, ma'am, several," said Susan Tall's husband. "To-morrow morning I wish two or three of you to make inquiries in the villages round if they have seen such a person as Fanny Robin. Do it quietly; there is no reason for alarm as yet. She must have left whilst we were all at the fire." "I beg yer pardon, but had she any young man courting her in the parish, ma'am?" asked Jacob Smallbury. "I don't know," said Bathsheba. "I've never heard of any such thing, ma'am," said two or three. "It is hardly likely, either," continued Bathsheba. "For any lover of hers might have come to the house if he had been a respectable lad. The most mysterious matter connected with her absence--indeed, the only thing which gives me serious alarm--is that she was seen to go out of the house by Maryann with only her indoor working gown on--not even a bonnet." "And you mean, ma'am, excusing my words, that a young woman would hardly go to see her young man without dressing up," said Jacob, turning his mental vision upon past experiences. "That's true--she would not, ma'am." "She had, I think, a bundle, though I couldn't see very well," said a female voice from another window, which seemed that of Maryann. "But she had no young man about here. Hers lives in Casterbridge, and I believe he's a soldier." "Do you know his name?" Bathsheba said. "No, mistress; she was very close about it." "Perhaps I might be able to find out if I went to Casterbridge barracks," said William Smallbury. "Very well; if she doesn't return to-morrow, mind you go there and try to discover which man it is, and see him. I feel more responsible than I should if she had had any friends or relations alive. I do hope she has come to no harm through a man of that kind.... And then there's this disgraceful affair of the bailiff--but I can't speak of him now." Bathsheba had so many reasons for uneasiness that it seemed she did not think it worth while to dwell upon any particular one. "Do as I told you, then," she said in conclusion, closing the casement. "Ay, ay, mistress; we will," they replied, and moved away. That night at Coggan's, Gabriel Oak, beneath the screen of closed eyelids, was busy with fancies, and full of movement, like a river flowing rapidly under its ice. Night had always been the time at which he saw Bathsheba most vividly, and through the slow hours of shadow he tenderly regarded her image now. It is rarely that the pleasures of the imagination will compensate for the pain of sleeplessness, but they possibly did with Oak to-night, for the delight of merely seeing her effaced for the time his perception of the great difference between seeing and possessing. He also thought of plans for fetching his few utensils and books from Norcombe. _The Young Man's Best Companion_, _The Farrier's Sure Guide_, _The Veterinary Surgeon_, _Paradise Lost_, _The Pilgrim's Progress_, _Robinson Crusoe_, Ash's _Dictionary_, and Walkingame's _Arithmetic_, constituted his library; and though a limited series, it was one from which he had acquired more sound information by diligent perusal than many a man of opportunities has done from a furlong of laden shelves. THE HOMESTEAD--A VISITOR--HALF-CONFIDENCES By daylight, the bower of Oak's new-found mistress, Bathsheba Everdene, presented itself as a hoary building, of the early stage of Classic Renaissance as regards its architecture, and of a proportion which told at a glance that, as is so frequently the case, it had once been the memorial hall upon a small estate around it, now altogether effaced as a distinct property, and merged in the vast tract of a non-resident landlord, which comprised several such modest demesnes. Fluted pilasters, worked from the solid stone, decorated its front, and above the roof the chimneys were panelled or columnar, some coped gables with finials and like features still retaining traces of their Gothic extraction. Soft brown mosses, like faded velveteen, formed cushions upon the stone tiling, and tufts of the houseleek or sengreen sprouted from the eaves of the low surrounding buildings. A gravel walk leading from the door to the road in front was encrusted at the sides with more moss--here it was a silver-green variety, the nut-brown of the gravel being visible to the width of only a foot or two in the centre. This circumstance, and the generally sleepy air of the whole prospect here, together with the animated and contrasting state of the reverse facade, suggested to the imagination that on the adaptation of the building for farming purposes the vital principle of the house had turned round inside its body to face the other way. Reversals of this kind, strange deformities, tremendous paralyses, are often seen to be inflicted by trade upon edifices--either individual or in the aggregate as streets and towns--which were originally planned for pleasure alone. Lively voices were heard this morning in the upper rooms, the main staircase to which was of hard oak, the balusters, heavy as bed-posts, being turned and moulded in the quaint fashion of their century, the handrail as stout as a parapet-top, and the stairs themselves continually twisting round like a person trying to look over his shoulder. Going up, the floors above were found to have a very irregular surface, rising to ridges, sinking into valleys; and being just then uncarpeted, the face of the boards was seen to be eaten into innumerable vermiculations. Every window replied by a clang to the opening and shutting of every door, a tremble followed every bustling movement, and a creak accompanied a walker about the house, like a spirit, wherever he went. In the room from which the conversation proceeded Bathsheba and her servant-companion, Liddy Smallbury, were to be discovered sitting upon the floor, and sorting a complication of papers, books, bottles, and rubbish spread out thereon--remnants from the household stores of the late occupier. Liddy, the maltster's great-granddaughter, was about Bathsheba's equal in age, and her face was a prominent advertisement of the light-hearted English country girl. The beauty her features might have lacked in form was amply made up for by perfection of hue, which at this winter-time was the softened ruddiness on a surface of high rotundity that we meet with in a Terburg or a Gerard Douw; and, like the presentations of those great colourists, it was a face which kept well back from the boundary between comeliness and the ideal. Though elastic in nature she was less daring than Bathsheba, and occasionally showed some earnestness, which consisted half of genuine feeling, and half of mannerliness superadded by way of duty. Through a partly-opened door the noise of a scrubbing-brush led up to the charwoman, Maryann Money, a person who for a face had a circular disc, furrowed less by age than by long gazes of perplexity at distant objects. To think of her was to get good-humoured; to speak of her was to raise the image of a dried Normandy pippin. "Stop your scrubbing a moment," said Bathsheba through the door to her. "I hear something." Maryann suspended the brush. The tramp of a horse was apparent, approaching the front of the building. The paces slackened, turned in at the wicket, and, what was most unusual, came up the mossy path close to the door. The door was tapped with the end of a crop or stick. "What impertinence!" said Liddy, in a low voice. "To ride up the footpath like that! Why didn't he stop at the gate? Lord! 'Tis a gentleman! I see the top of his hat." "Be quiet!" said Bathsheba. The further expression of Liddy's concern was continued by aspect instead of narrative. "Why doesn't Mrs. Coggan go to the door?" Bathsheba continued. Rat-tat-tat-tat resounded more decisively from Bathsheba's oak. "Maryann, you go!" said she, fluttering under the onset of a crowd of romantic possibilities. "Oh ma'am--see, here's a mess!" The argument was unanswerable after a glance at Maryann. "Liddy--you must," said Bathsheba. Liddy held up her hands and arms, coated with dust from the rubbish they were sorting, and looked imploringly at her mistress. "There--Mrs. Coggan is going!" said Bathsheba, exhaling her relief in the form of a long breath which had lain in her bosom a minute or more. The door opened, and a deep voice said-- "Is Miss Everdene at home?" "I'll see, sir," said Mrs. Coggan, and in a minute appeared in the room. "Dear, what a thirtover place this world is!" continued Mrs. Coggan (a wholesome-looking lady who had a voice for each class of remark according to the emotion involved; who could toss a pancake or twirl a mop with the accuracy of pure mathematics, and who at this moment showed hands shaggy with fragments of dough and arms encrusted with flour). "I am never up to my elbows, Miss, in making a pudding but one of two things do happen--either my nose must needs begin tickling, and I can't live without scratching it, or somebody knocks at the door. Here's Mr. Boldwood wanting to see you, Miss Everdene." A woman's dress being a part of her countenance, and any disorder in the one being of the same nature with a malformation or wound in the other, Bathsheba said at once-- "I can't see him in this state. Whatever shall I do?" Not-at-homes were hardly naturalized in Weatherbury farmhouses, so Liddy suggested--"Say you're a fright with dust, and can't come down." "Yes--that sounds very well," said Mrs. Coggan, critically. "Say I can't see him--that will do." Mrs. Coggan went downstairs, and returned the answer as requested, adding, however, on her own responsibility, "Miss is dusting bottles, sir, and is quite a object--that's why 'tis." "Oh, very well," said the deep voice indifferently. "All I wanted to ask was, if anything had been heard of Fanny Robin?" "Nothing, sir--but we may know to-night. William Smallbury is gone to Casterbridge, where her young man lives, as is supposed, and the other men be inquiring about everywhere." The horse's tramp then recommenced and retreated, and the door closed. "Who is Mr. Boldwood?" said Bathsheba. "A gentleman-farmer at Little Weatherbury." "Married?" "No, miss." "How old is he?" "Forty, I should say--very handsome--rather stern-looking--and rich." "What a bother this dusting is! I am always in some unfortunate plight or other," Bathsheba said, complainingly. "Why should he inquire about Fanny?" "Oh, because, as she had no friends in her childhood, he took her and put her to school, and got her her place here under your uncle. He's a very kind man that way, but Lord--there!" "What?" "Never was such a hopeless man for a woman! He's been courted by sixes and sevens--all the girls, gentle and simple, for miles round, have tried him. Jane Perkins worked at him for two months like a slave, and the two Miss Taylors spent a year upon him, and he cost Farmer Ives's daughter nights of tears and twenty pounds' worth of new clothes; but Lord--the money might as well have been thrown out of the window." A little boy came up at this moment and looked in upon them. This child was one of the Coggans, who, with the Smallburys, were as common among the families of this district as the Avons and Derwents among our rivers. He always had a loosened tooth or a cut finger to show to particular friends, which he did with an air of being thereby elevated above the common herd of afflictionless humanity--to which exhibition people were expected to say "Poor child!" with a dash of congratulation as well as pity. "I've got a pen-nee!" said Master Coggan in a scanning measure. "Well--who gave it you, Teddy?" said Liddy. "Mis-terr Bold-wood! He gave it to me for opening the gate." "What did he say?" "He said, 'Where are you going, my little man?' and I said, 'To Miss Everdene's please,' and he said, 'She is a staid woman, isn't she, my little man?' and I said, 'Yes.'" "You naughty child! What did you say that for?" "'Cause he gave me the penny!" "What a pucker everything is in!" said Bathsheba, discontentedly when the child had gone. "Get away, Maryann, or go on with your scrubbing, or do something! You ought to be married by this time, and not here troubling me!" "Ay, mistress--so I did. But what between the poor men I won't have, and the rich men who won't have me, I stand as a pelican in the wilderness!" "Did anybody ever want to marry you miss?" Liddy ventured to ask when they were again alone. "Lots of 'em, I daresay?" Bathsheba paused, as if about to refuse a reply, but the temptation to say yes, since it was really in her power was irresistible by aspiring virginity, in spite of her spleen at having been published as old. "A man wanted to once," she said, in a highly experienced tone, and the image of Gabriel Oak, as the farmer, rose before her. "How nice it must seem!" said Liddy, with the fixed features of mental realization. "And you wouldn't have him?" "He wasn't quite good enough for me." "How sweet to be able to disdain, when most of us are glad to say, 'Thank you!' I seem I hear it. 'No, sir--I'm your better.' or 'Kiss my foot, sir; my face is for mouths of consequence.' And did you love him, miss?" "Oh, no. But I rather liked him." "Do you now?" "Of course not--what footsteps are those I hear?" Liddy looked from a back window into the courtyard behind, which was now getting low-toned and dim with the earliest films of night. A crooked file of men was approaching the back door. The whole string of trailing individuals advanced in the completest balance of intention, like the remarkable creatures known as Chain Salpae, which, distinctly organized in other respects, have one will common to a whole family. Some were, as usual, in snow-white smock-frocks of Russia duck, and some in whitey-brown ones of drabbet--marked on the wrists, breasts, backs, and sleeves with honeycomb-work. Two or three women in pattens brought up the rear. "The Philistines be upon us," said Liddy, making her nose white against the glass. "Oh, very well. Maryann, go down and keep them in the kitchen till I am dressed, and then show them in to me in the hall." MISTRESS AND MEN Half-an-hour later Bathsheba, in finished dress, and followed by Liddy, entered the upper end of the old hall to find that her men had all deposited themselves on a long form and a settle at the lower extremity. She sat down at a table and opened the time-book, pen in her hand, with a canvas money-bag beside her. From this she poured a small heap of coin. Liddy chose a position at her elbow and began to sew, sometimes pausing and looking round, or, with the air of a privileged person, taking up one of the half-sovereigns lying before her and surveying it merely as a work of art, while strictly preventing her countenance from expressing any wish to possess it as money. "Now before I begin, men," said Bathsheba, "I have two matters to speak of. The first is that the bailiff is dismissed for thieving, and that I have formed a resolution to have no bailiff at all, but to manage everything with my own head and hands." The men breathed an audible breath of amazement. "The next matter is, have you heard anything of Fanny?" "Nothing, ma'am." "Have you done anything?" "I met Farmer Boldwood," said Jacob Smallbury, "and I went with him and two of his men, and dragged Newmill Pond, but we found nothing." "And the new shepherd have been to Buck's Head, by Yalbury, thinking she had gone there, but nobody had seed her," said Laban Tall. "Hasn't William Smallbury been to Casterbridge?" "Yes, ma'am, but he's not yet come home. He promised to be back by six." "It wants a quarter to six at present," said Bathsheba, looking at her watch. "I daresay he'll be in directly. Well, now then"--she looked into the book--"Joseph Poorgrass, are you there?" "Yes, sir--ma'am I mane," said the person addressed. "I be the personal name of Poorgrass." "And what are you?" "Nothing in my own eye. In the eye of other people--well, I don't say it; though public thought will out." "What do you do on the farm?" "I do do carting things all the year, and in seed time I shoots the rooks and sparrows, and helps at pig-killing, sir." "How much to you?" "Please nine and ninepence and a good halfpenny where 'twas a bad one, sir--ma'am I mane." "Quite correct. Now here are ten shillings in addition as a small present, as I am a new comer." Bathsheba blushed slightly at the sense of being generous in public, and Henery Fray, who had drawn up towards her chair, lifted his eyebrows and fingers to express amazement on a small scale. "How much do I owe you--that man in the corner--what's your name?" continued Bathsheba. "Matthew Moon, ma'am," said a singular framework of clothes with nothing of any consequence inside them, which advanced with the toes in no definite direction forwards, but turned in or out as they chanced to swing. "Matthew Mark, did you say?--speak out--I shall not hurt you," inquired the young farmer, kindly. "Matthew Moon, mem," said Henery Fray, correctingly, from behind her chair, to which point he had edged himself. "Matthew Moon," murmured Bathsheba, turning her bright eyes to the book. "Ten and twopence halfpenny is the sum put down to you, I see?" "Yes, mis'ess," said Matthew, as the rustle of wind among dead leaves. "Here it is, and ten shillings. Now the next--Andrew Randle, you are a new man, I hear. How come you to leave your last farm?" "P-p-p-p-p-pl-pl-pl-pl-l-l-l-l-ease, ma'am, p-p-p-p-pl-pl-pl-pl-please, ma'am-please'm-please'm--" "'A's a stammering man, mem," said Henery Fray in an undertone, "and they turned him away because the only time he ever did speak plain he said his soul was his own, and other iniquities, to the squire. 'A can cuss, mem, as well as you or I, but 'a can't speak a common speech to save his life." "Andrew Randle, here's yours--finish thanking me in a day or two. Temperance Miller--oh, here's another, Soberness--both women I suppose?" "Yes'm. Here we be, 'a b'lieve," was echoed in shrill unison. "What have you been doing?" "Tending thrashing-machine and wimbling haybonds, and saying 'Hoosh!' to the cocks and hens when they go upon your seeds, and planting Early Flourballs and Thompson's Wonderfuls with a dibble." "Yes--I see. Are they satisfactory women?" she inquired softly of Henery Fray. "Oh mem--don't ask me! Yielding women--as scarlet a pair as ever was!" groaned Henery under his breath. "Sit down." "Who, mem?" "Sit down." Joseph Poorgrass, in the background twitched, and his lips became dry with fear of some terrible consequences, as he saw Bathsheba summarily speaking, and Henery slinking off to a corner. "Now the next. Laban Tall, you'll stay on working for me?" "For you or anybody that pays me well, ma'am," replied the young married man. "True--the man must live!" said a woman in the back quarter, who had just entered with clicking pattens. "What woman is that?" Bathsheba asked. "I be his lawful wife!" continued the voice with greater prominence of manner and tone. This lady called herself five-and-twenty, looked thirty, passed as thirty-five, and was forty. She was a woman who never, like some newly married, showed conjugal tenderness in public, perhaps because she had none to show. "Oh, you are," said Bathsheba. "Well, Laban, will you stay on?" "Yes, he'll stay, ma'am!" said again the shrill tongue of Laban's lawful wife. "Well, he can speak for himself, I suppose." "Oh Lord, not he, ma'am! A simple tool. Well enough, but a poor gawkhammer mortal," the wife replied. "Heh-heh-heh!" laughed the married man with a hideous effort of appreciation, for he was as irrepressibly good-humoured under ghastly snubs as a parliamentary candidate on the hustings. The names remaining were called in the same manner. "Now I think I have done with you," said Bathsheba, closing the book and shaking back a stray twine of hair. "Has William Smallbury returned?" "No, ma'am." "The new shepherd will want a man under him," suggested Henery Fray, trying to make himself official again by a sideway approach towards her chair. "Oh--he will. Who can he have?" "Young Cain Ball is a very good lad," Henery said, "and Shepherd Oak don't mind his youth?" he added, turning with an apologetic smile to the shepherd, who had just appeared on the scene, and was now leaning against the doorpost with his arms folded. "No, I don't mind that," said Gabriel. "How did Cain come by such a name?" asked Bathsheba. "Oh you see, mem, his pore mother, not being a Scripture-read woman, made a mistake at his christening, thinking 'twas Abel killed Cain, and called en Cain, meaning Abel all the time. The parson put it right, but 'twas too late, for the name could never be got rid of in the parish. 'Tis very unfortunate for the boy." "It is rather unfortunate." "Yes. However, we soften it down as much as we can, and call him Cainy. Ah, pore widow-woman! she cried her heart out about it almost. She was brought up by a very heathen father and mother, who never sent her to church or school, and it shows how the sins of the parents are visited upon the children, mem." Mr. Fray here drew up his features to the mild degree of melancholy required when the persons involved in the given misfortune do not belong to your own family. "Very well then, Cainey Ball to be under-shepherd. And you quite understand your duties?--you I mean, Gabriel Oak?" "Quite well, I thank you, Miss Everdene," said Shepherd Oak from the doorpost. "If I don't, I'll inquire." Gabriel was rather staggered by the remarkable coolness of her manner. Certainly nobody without previous information would have dreamt that Oak and the handsome woman before whom he stood had ever been other than strangers. But perhaps her air was the inevitable result of the social rise which had advanced her from a cottage to a large house and fields. The case is not unexampled in high places. When, in the writings of the later poets, Jove and his family are found to have moved from their cramped quarters on the peak of Olympus into the wide sky above it, their words show a proportionate increase of arrogance and reserve. Footsteps were heard in the passage, combining in their character the qualities both of weight and measure, rather at the expense of velocity. (All.) "Here's Billy Smallbury come from Casterbridge." "And what's the news?" said Bathsheba, as William, after marching to the middle of the hall, took a handkerchief from his hat and wiped his forehead from its centre to its remoter boundaries. "I should have been sooner, miss," he said, "if it hadn't been for the weather." He then stamped with each foot severely, and on looking down his boots were perceived to be clogged with snow. "Come at last, is it?" said Henery. "Well, what about Fanny?" said Bathsheba. "Well, ma'am, in round numbers, she's run away with the soldiers," said William. "No; not a steady girl like Fanny!" "I'll tell ye all particulars. When I got to Casterbridge Barracks, they said, 'The Eleventh Dragoon-Guards be gone away, and new troops have come.' The Eleventh left last week for Melchester and onwards. The Route came from Government like a thief in the night, as is his nature to, and afore the Eleventh knew it almost, they were on the march. They passed near here." Gabriel had listened with interest. "I saw them go," he said. "Yes," continued William, "they pranced down the street playing 'The Girl I Left Behind Me,' so 'tis said, in glorious notes of triumph. Every looker-on's inside shook with the blows of the great drum to his deepest vitals, and there was not a dry eye throughout the town among the public-house people and the nameless women!" "But they're not gone to any war?" "No, ma'am; but they be gone to take the places of them who may, which is very close connected. And so I said to myself, Fanny's young man was one of the regiment, and she's gone after him. There, ma'am, that's it in black and white." "Did you find out his name?" "No; nobody knew it. I believe he was higher in rank than a private." Gabriel remained musing and said nothing, for he was in doubt. "Well, we are not likely to know more to-night, at any rate," said Bathsheba. "But one of you had better run across to Farmer Boldwood's and tell him that much." She then rose; but before retiring, addressed a few words to them with a pretty dignity, to which her mourning dress added a soberness that was hardly to be found in the words themselves. "Now mind, you have a mistress instead of a master. I don't yet know my powers or my talents in farming; but I shall do my best, and if you serve me well, so shall I serve you. Don't any unfair ones among you (if there are any such, but I hope not) suppose that because I'm a woman I don't understand the difference between bad goings-on and good." (All.) "No'm!" (Liddy.) "Excellent well said." "I shall be up before you are awake; I shall be afield before you are up; and I shall have breakfasted before you are afield. In short, I shall astonish you all." (All.) "Yes'm!" "And so good-night." (All.) "Good-night, ma'am." Then this small thesmothete stepped from the table, and surged out of the hall, her black silk dress licking up a few straws and dragging them along with a scratching noise upon the floor. Liddy, elevating her feelings to the occasion from a sense of grandeur, floated off behind Bathsheba with a milder dignity not entirely free from travesty, and the door was closed. OUTSIDE THE BARRACKS--SNOW--A MEETING For dreariness nothing could surpass a prospect in the outskirts of a certain town and military station, many miles north of Weatherbury, at a later hour on this same snowy evening--if that may be called a prospect of which the chief constituent was darkness. It was a night when sorrow may come to the brightest without causing any great sense of incongruity: when, with impressible persons, love becomes solicitousness, hope sinks to misgiving, and faith to hope: when the exercise of memory does not stir feelings of regret at opportunities for ambition that have been passed by, and anticipation does not prompt to enterprise. The scene was a public path, bordered on the left hand by a river, behind which rose a high wall. On the right was a tract of land, partly meadow and partly moor, reaching, at its remote verge, to a wide undulating upland. The changes of the seasons are less obtrusive on spots of this kind than amid woodland scenery. Still, to a close observer, they are just as perceptible; the difference is that their media of manifestation are less trite and familiar than such well-known ones as the bursting of the buds or the fall of the leaf. Many are not so stealthy and gradual as we may be apt to imagine in considering the general torpidity of a moor or waste. Winter, in coming to the country hereabout, advanced in well-marked stages, wherein might have been successively observed the retreat of the snakes, the transformation of the ferns, the filling of the pools, a rising of fogs, the embrowning by frost, the collapse of the fungi, and an obliteration by snow. This climax of the series had been reached to-night on the aforesaid moor, and for the first time in the season its irregularities were forms without features; suggestive of anything, proclaiming nothing, and without more character than that of being the limit of something else--the lowest layer of a firmament of snow. From this chaotic skyful of crowding flakes the mead and moor momentarily received additional clothing, only to appear momentarily more naked thereby. The vast arch of cloud above was strangely low, and formed as it were the roof of a large dark cavern, gradually sinking in upon its floor; for the instinctive thought was that the snow lining the heavens and that encrusting the earth would soon unite into one mass without any intervening stratum of air at all. We turn our attention to the left-hand characteristics; which were flatness in respect of the river, verticality in respect of the wall behind it, and darkness as to both. These features made up the mass. If anything could be darker than the sky, it was the wall, and if any thing could be gloomier than the wall it was the river beneath. The indistinct summit of the facade was notched and pronged by chimneys here and there, and upon its face were faintly signified the oblong shapes of windows, though only in the upper part. Below, down to the water's edge, the flat was unbroken by hole or projection. An indescribable succession of dull blows, perplexing in their regularity, sent their sound with difficulty through the fluffy atmosphere. It was a neighbouring clock striking ten. The bell was in the open air, and being overlaid with several inches of muffling snow, had lost its voice for the time. About this hour the snow abated: ten flakes fell where twenty had fallen, then one had the room of ten. Not long after a form moved by the brink of the river. By its outline upon the colourless background, a close observer might have seen that it was small. This was all that was positively discoverable, though it seemed human. The shape went slowly along, but without much exertion, for the snow, though sudden, was not as yet more than two inches deep. At this time some words were spoken aloud:-- "One. Two. Three. Four. Five." Between each utterance the little shape advanced about half a dozen yards. It was evident now that the windows high in the wall were being counted. The word "Five" represented the fifth window from the end of the wall. Here the spot stopped, and dwindled smaller. The figure was stooping. Then a morsel of snow flew across the river towards the fifth window. It smacked against the wall at a point several yards from its mark. The throw was the idea of a man conjoined with the execution of a woman. No man who had ever seen bird, rabbit, or squirrel in his childhood, could possibly have thrown with such utter imbecility as was shown here. Another attempt, and another; till by degrees the wall must have become pimpled with the adhering lumps of snow. At last one fragment struck the fifth window. The river would have been seen by day to be of that deep smooth sort which races middle and sides with the same gliding precision, any irregularities of speed being immediately corrected by a small whirlpool. Nothing was heard in reply to the signal but the gurgle and cluck of one of these invisible wheels--together with a few small sounds which a sad man would have called moans, and a happy man laughter--caused by the flapping of the waters against trifling objects in other parts of the stream. The window was struck again in the same manner. Then a noise was heard, apparently produced by the opening of the window. This was followed by a voice from the same quarter. "Who's there?" The tones were masculine, and not those of surprise. The high wall being that of a barrack, and marriage being looked upon with disfavour in the army, assignations and communications had probably been made across the river before to-night. "Is it Sergeant Troy?" said the blurred spot in the snow, tremulously. This person was so much like a mere shade upon the earth, and the other speaker so much a part of the building, that one would have said the wall was holding a conversation with the snow. "Yes," came suspiciously from the shadow. "What girl are you?" "Oh, Frank--don't you know me?" said the spot. "Your wife, Fanny Robin." "Fanny!" said the wall, in utter astonishment. "Yes," said the girl, with a half-suppressed gasp of emotion. There was something in the woman's tone which is not that of the wife, and there was a manner in the man which is rarely a husband's. The dialogue went on: "How did you come here?" "I asked which was your window. Forgive me!" "I did not expect you to-night. Indeed, I did not think you would come at all. It was a wonder you found me here. I am orderly to-morrow." "You said I was to come." "Well--I said that you might." "Yes, I mean that I might. You are glad to see me, Frank?" "Oh yes--of course." "Can you--come to me!" "My dear Fan, no! The bugle has sounded, the barrack gates are closed, and I have no leave. We are all of us as good as in the county gaol till to-morrow morning." "Then I shan't see you till then!" The words were in a faltering tone of disappointment. "How did you get here from Weatherbury?" "I walked--some part of the way--the rest by the carriers." "I am surprised." "Yes--so am I. And Frank, when will it be?" "What?" "That you promised." "I don't quite recollect." "O you do! Don't speak like that. It weighs me to the earth. It makes me say what ought to be said first by you." "Never mind--say it." "O, must I?--it is, when shall we be married, Frank?" "Oh, I see. Well--you have to get proper clothes." "I have money. Will it be by banns or license?" "Banns, I should think." "And we live in two parishes." "Do we? What then?" "My lodgings are in St. Mary's, and this is not. So they will have to be published in both." "Is that the law?" "Yes. O Frank--you think me forward, I am afraid! Don't, dear Frank--will you--for I love you so. And you said lots of times you would marry me, and--and--I--I--I--" "Don't cry, now! It is foolish. If I said so, of course I will." "And shall I put up the banns in my parish, and will you in yours?" "Yes" "To-morrow?" "Not to-morrow. We'll settle in a few days." "You have the permission of the officers?" "No, not yet." "O--how is it? You said you almost had before you left Casterbridge." "The fact is, I forgot to ask. Your coming like this is so sudden and unexpected." "Yes--yes--it is. It was wrong of me to worry you. I'll go away now. Will you come and see me to-morrow, at Mrs. Twills's, in North Street? I don't like to come to the Barracks. There are bad women about, and they think me one." "Quite, so. I'll come to you, my dear. Good-night." "Good-night, Frank--good-night!" And the noise was again heard of a window closing. The little spot moved away. When she passed the corner a subdued exclamation was heard inside the wall. "Ho--ho--Sergeant--ho--ho!" An expostulation followed, but it was indistinct; and it became lost amid a low peal of laughter, which was hardly distinguishable from the gurgle of the tiny whirlpools outside. FARMERS--A RULE--AN EXCEPTION The first public evidence of Bathsheba's decision to be a farmer in her own person and by proxy no more was her appearance the following market-day in the cornmarket at Casterbridge. The low though extensive hall, supported by beams and pillars, and latterly dignified by the name of Corn Exchange, was thronged with hot men who talked among each other in twos and threes, the speaker of the minute looking sideways into his auditor's face and concentrating his argument by a contraction of one eyelid during delivery. The greater number carried in their hands ground-ash saplings, using them partly as walking-sticks and partly for poking up pigs, sheep, neighbours with their backs turned, and restful things in general, which seemed to require such treatment in the course of their peregrinations. During conversations each subjected his sapling to great varieties of usage--bending it round his back, forming an arch of it between his two hands, overweighting it on the ground till it reached nearly a semicircle; or perhaps it was hastily tucked under the arm whilst the sample-bag was pulled forth and a handful of corn poured into the palm, which, after criticism, was flung upon the floor, an issue of events perfectly well known to half-a-dozen acute town-bred fowls which had as usual crept into the building unobserved, and waited the fulfilment of their anticipations with a high-stretched neck and oblique eye. Among these heavy yeomen a feminine figure glided, the single one of her sex that the room contained. She was prettily and even daintily dressed. She moved between them as a chaise between carts, was heard after them as a romance after sermons, was felt among them like a breeze among furnaces. It had required a little determination--far more than she had at first imagined--to take up a position here, for at her first entry the lumbering dialogues had ceased, nearly every face had been turned towards her, and those that were already turned rigidly fixed there. Two or three only of the farmers were personally known to Bathsheba, and to these she had made her way. But if she was to be the practical woman she had intended to show herself, business must be carried on, introductions or none, and she ultimately acquired confidence enough to speak and reply boldly to men merely known to her by hearsay. Bathsheba too had her sample-bags, and by degrees adopted the professional pour into the hand--holding up the grains in her narrow palm for inspection, in perfect Casterbridge manner. Something in the exact arch of her upper unbroken row of teeth, and in the keenly pointed corners of her red mouth when, with parted lips, she somewhat defiantly turned up her face to argue a point with a tall man, suggested that there was potentiality enough in that lithe slip of humanity for alarming exploits of sex, and daring enough to carry them out. But her eyes had a softness--invariably a softness--which, had they not been dark, would have seemed mistiness; as they were, it lowered an expression that might have been piercing to simple clearness. Strange to say of a woman in full bloom and vigor, she always allowed her interlocutors to finish their statements before rejoining with hers. In arguing on prices, she held to her own firmly, as was natural in a dealer, and reduced theirs persistently, as was inevitable in a woman. But there was an elasticity in her firmness which removed it from obstinacy, as there was a _naivete_ in her cheapening which saved it from meanness. Those of the farmers with whom she had no dealings (by far the greater part) were continually asking each other, "Who is she?" The reply would be-- "Farmer Everdene's niece; took on Weatherbury Upper Farm; turned away the baily, and swears she'll do everything herself." The other man would then shake his head. "Yes, 'tis a pity she's so headstrong," the first would say. "But we ought to be proud of her here--she lightens up the old place. 'Tis such a shapely maid, however, that she'll soon get picked up." It would be ungallant to suggest that the novelty of her engagement in such an occupation had almost as much to do with the magnetism as had the beauty of her face and movements. However, the interest was general, and this Saturday's _debut_ in the forum, whatever it may have been to Bathsheba as the buying and selling farmer, was unquestionably a triumph to her as the maiden. Indeed, the sensation was so pronounced that her instinct on two or three occasions was merely to walk as a queen among these gods of the fallow, like a little sister of a little Jove, and to neglect closing prices altogether. The numerous evidences of her power to attract were only thrown into greater relief by a marked exception. Women seem to have eyes in their ribbons for such matters as these. Bathsheba, without looking within a right angle of him, was conscious of a black sheep among the flock. It perplexed her first. If there had been a respectable minority on either side, the case would have been most natural. If nobody had regarded her, she would have taken the matter indifferently--such cases had occurred. If everybody, this man included, she would have taken it as a matter of course--people had done so before. But the smallness of the exception made the mystery. She soon knew thus much of the recusant's appearance. He was a gentlemanly man, with full and distinctly outlined Roman features, the prominences of which glowed in the sun with a bronze-like richness of tone. He was erect in attitude, and quiet in demeanour. One characteristic pre-eminently marked him--dignity. Apparently he had some time ago reached that entrance to middle age at which a man's aspect naturally ceases to alter for the term of a dozen years or so; and, artificially, a woman's does likewise. Thirty-five and fifty were his limits of variation--he might have been either, or anywhere between the two. It may be said that married men of forty are usually ready and generous enough to fling passing glances at any specimen of moderate beauty they may discern by the way. Probably, as with persons playing whist for love, the consciousness of a certain immunity under any circumstances from that worst possible ultimate, the having to pay, makes them unduly speculative. Bathsheba was convinced that this unmoved person was not a married man. When marketing was over, she rushed off to Liddy, who was waiting for her beside the yellow gig in which they had driven to town. The horse was put in, and on they trotted--Bathsheba's sugar, tea, and drapery parcels being packed behind, and expressing in some indescribable manner, by their colour, shape, and general lineaments, that they were that young lady-farmer's property, and the grocer's and draper's no more. "I've been through it, Liddy, and it is over. I shan't mind it again, for they will all have grown accustomed to seeing me there; but this morning it was as bad as being married--eyes everywhere!" "I knowed it would be," Liddy said. "Men be such a terrible class of society to look at a body." "But there was one man who had more sense than to waste his time upon me." The information was put in this form that Liddy might not for a moment suppose her mistress was at all piqued. "A very good-looking man," she continued, "upright; about forty, I should think. Do you know at all who he could be?" Liddy couldn't think. "Can't you guess at all?" said Bathsheba with some disappointment. "I haven't a notion; besides, 'tis no difference, since he took less notice of you than any of the rest. Now, if he'd taken more, it would have mattered a great deal." Bathsheba was suffering from the reverse feeling just then, and they bowled along in silence. A low carriage, bowling along still more rapidly behind a horse of unimpeachable breed, overtook and passed them. "Why, there he is!" she said. Liddy looked. "That! That's Farmer Boldwood--of course 'tis--the man you couldn't see the other day when he called." "Oh, Farmer Boldwood," murmured Bathsheba, and looked at him as he outstripped them. The farmer had never turned his head once, but with eyes fixed on the most advanced point along the road, passed as unconsciously and abstractedly as if Bathsheba and her charms were thin air. "He's an interesting man--don't you think so?" she remarked. "O yes, very. Everybody owns it," replied Liddy. "I wonder why he is so wrapt up and indifferent, and seemingly so far away from all he sees around him." "It is said--but not known for certain--that he met with some bitter disappointment when he was a young man and merry. A woman jilted him, they say." "People always say that--and we know very well women scarcely ever jilt men; 'tis the men who jilt us. I expect it is simply his nature to be so reserved." "Simply his nature--I expect so, miss--nothing else in the world." "Still, 'tis more romantic to think he has been served cruelly, poor thing'! Perhaps, after all, he has!" "Depend upon it he has. Oh yes, miss, he has! I feel he must have." "However, we are very apt to think extremes of people. I shouldn't wonder after all if it wasn't a little of both--just between the two--rather cruelly used and rather reserved." "Oh dear no, miss--I can't think it between the two!" "That's most likely." "Well, yes, so it is. I am convinced it is most likely. You may take my word, miss, that that's what's the matter with him." SORTES SANCTORUM--THE VALENTINE It was Sunday afternoon in the farmhouse, on the thirteenth of February. Dinner being over, Bathsheba, for want of a better companion, had asked Liddy to come and sit with her. The mouldy pile was dreary in winter-time before the candles were lighted and the shutters closed; the atmosphere of the place seemed as old as the walls; every nook behind the furniture had a temperature of its own, for the fire was not kindled in this part of the house early in the day; and Bathsheba's new piano, which was an old one in other annals, looked particularly sloping and out of level on the warped floor before night threw a shade over its less prominent angles and hid the unpleasantness. Liddy, like a little brook, though shallow, was always rippling; her presence had not so much weight as to task thought, and yet enough to exercise it. On the table lay an old quarto Bible, bound in leather. Liddy looking at it said,-- "Did you ever find out, miss, who you are going to marry by means of the Bible and key?" "Don't be so foolish, Liddy. As if such things could be." "Well, there's a good deal in it, all the same." "Nonsense, child." "And it makes your heart beat fearful. Some believe in it; some don't; I do." "Very well, let's try it," said Bathsheba, bounding from her seat with that total disregard of consistency which can be indulged in towards a dependent, and entering into the spirit of divination at once. "Go and get the front door key." Liddy fetched it. "I wish it wasn't Sunday," she said, on returning. "Perhaps 'tis wrong." "What's right week days is right Sundays," replied her mistress in a tone which was a proof in itself. The book was opened--the leaves, drab with age, being quite worn away at much-read verses by the forefingers of unpractised readers in former days, where they were moved along under the line as an aid to the vision. The special verse in the Book of Ruth was sought out by Bathsheba, and the sublime words met her eye. They slightly thrilled and abashed her. It was Wisdom in the abstract facing Folly in the concrete. Folly in the concrete blushed, persisted in her intention, and placed the key on the book. A rusty patch immediately upon the verse, caused by previous pressure of an iron substance thereon, told that this was not the first time the old volume had been used for the purpose. "Now keep steady, and be silent," said Bathsheba. The verse was repeated; the book turned round; Bathsheba blushed guiltily. "Who did you try?" said Liddy curiously. "I shall not tell you." "Did you notice Mr. Boldwood's doings in church this morning, miss?" Liddy continued, adumbrating by the remark the track her thoughts had taken. "No, indeed," said Bathsheba, with serene indifference. "His pew is exactly opposite yours, miss." "I know it." "And you did not see his goings on!" "Certainly I did not, I tell you." Liddy assumed a smaller physiognomy, and shut her lips decisively. This move was unexpected, and proportionately disconcerting. "What did he do?" Bathsheba said perforce. "Didn't turn his head to look at you once all the service." "Why should he?" again demanded her mistress, wearing a nettled look. "I didn't ask him to." "Oh no. But everybody else was noticing you; and it was odd he didn't. There, 'tis like him. Rich and gentlemanly, what does he care?" Bathsheba dropped into a silence intended to express that she had opinions on the matter too abstruse for Liddy's comprehension, rather than that she had nothing to say. "Dear me--I had nearly forgotten the valentine I bought yesterday," she exclaimed at length. "Valentine! who for, miss?" said Liddy. "Farmer Boldwood?" It was the single name among all possible wrong ones that just at this moment seemed to Bathsheba more pertinent than the right. "Well, no. It is only for little Teddy Coggan. I have promised him something, and this will be a pretty surprise for him. Liddy, you may as well bring me my desk and I'll direct it at once." Bathsheba took from her desk a gorgeously illuminated and embossed design in post-octavo, which had been bought on the previous market-day at the chief stationer's in Casterbridge. In the centre was a small oval enclosure; this was left blank, that the sender might insert tender words more appropriate to the special occasion than any generalities by a printer could possibly be. "Here's a place for writing," said Bathsheba. "What shall I put?" "Something of this sort, I should think," returned Liddy promptly:-- "The rose is red, The violet blue, Carnation's sweet, And so are you." "Yes, that shall be it. It just suits itself to a chubby-faced child like him," said Bathsheba. She inserted the words in a small though legible handwriting; enclosed the sheet in an envelope, and dipped her pen for the direction. "What fun it would be to send it to the stupid old Boldwood, and how he would wonder!" said the irrepressible Liddy, lifting her eyebrows, and indulging in an awful mirth on the verge of fear as she thought of the moral and social magnitude of the man contemplated. Bathsheba paused to regard the idea at full length. Boldwood's had begun to be a troublesome image--a species of Daniel in her kingdom who persisted in kneeling eastward when reason and common sense said that he might just as well follow suit with the rest, and afford her the official glance of admiration which cost nothing at all. She was far from being seriously concerned about his nonconformity. Still, it was faintly depressing that the most dignified and valuable man in the parish should withhold his eyes, and that a girl like Liddy should talk about it. So Liddy's idea was at first rather harassing than piquant. "No, I won't do that. He wouldn't see any humour in it." "He'd worry to death," said the persistent Liddy. "Really, I don't care particularly to send it to Teddy," remarked her mistress. "He's rather a naughty child sometimes." "Yes--that he is." "Let's toss as men do," said Bathsheba, idly. "Now then, head, Boldwood; tail, Teddy. No, we won't toss money on a Sunday, that would be tempting the devil indeed." "Toss this hymn-book; there can't be no sinfulness in that, miss." "Very well. Open, Boldwood--shut, Teddy. No; it's more likely to fall open. Open, Teddy--shut, Boldwood." The book went fluttering in the air and came down shut. Bathsheba, a small yawn upon her mouth, took the pen, and with off-hand serenity directed the missive to Boldwood. "Now light a candle, Liddy. Which seal shall we use? Here's a unicorn's head--there's nothing in that. What's this?--two doves--no. It ought to be something extraordinary, ought it not, Liddy? Here's one with a motto--I remember it is some funny one, but I can't read it. We'll try this, and if it doesn't do we'll have another." A large red seal was duly affixed. Bathsheba looked closely at the hot wax to discover the words. "Capital!" she exclaimed, throwing down the letter frolicsomely. "'Twould upset the solemnity of a parson and clerke too." Liddy looked at the words of the seal, and read-- "MARRY ME." The same evening the letter was sent, and was duly sorted in Casterbridge post-office that night, to be returned to Weatherbury again in the morning. So very idly and unreflectingly was this deed done. Of love as a spectacle Bathsheba had a fair knowledge; but of love subjectively she knew nothing.

Chapters 5-13

https://web.archive.org/web/20210108004047/https://www.gradesaver.com/far-from-the-madding-crowd/study-guide/summary-chapters-5-13

Shortly after he proposes, Gabriel learns that Bathsheba has moved away to the town of Weatherbury. One night, Gabriel awakens to the sound of the sheep bells, indicating that the herd is running quickly. He gets up and finds that the 200 sheep who were still pregnant have been driven off the edge of a cliff by his young and overeager sheepdog. This loss is a financial catastrophe for Gabriel, and he has to sell everything he owns in order to pay off his remaining debts. The story resumes in February, in the town of Casterbridge, where a gathering is taking place for men looking for work to meet with prospective employers. Gabriel is there, eager to find work as either a bailiff or shepherd, but no one seems to want to hire him. He learns that another hiring fair is taking place the following day at Shottsford and decides to walk there, a journey which will take him through the town of Weatherbury. Along the way, he becomes tired and climbs into a wagon parked by the road in order to rest, only to awaken and find that the wagon is in motion. After he discreetly slips out of the wagon, Gabriel notices that some crops of straw are on fire at a nearby farm and that the fire is threatening to spread. Gabriel joins in to help the farmworkers control the fire, taking charge of the situation and providing effective leadership. Two women, one of whom owns the farm, observe Gabriel's hard work and send a message to him thanking him. Hoping to take advantage of this gratitude, Gabriel goes to ask if the farmer would like to hire him as a shepherd, only to realize that the owner of the farm is Bathsheba, who has inherited it from her uncle. The other farmworkers encourage her to hire Gabriel, and she agrees. As Gabriel makes his way towards accommodations for the night, he encounters a young woman walking alone. She gives him directions, and then asks that he not tell anyone he has seen her. Concerned, Gabriel gives her a small sum of money and then continues on his way. He arrives at the pub where the other farmworkers have gathered and is greeted warmly since some of the older men used to know his father and grandfather. After Gabriel has left for his room, one of the farmworkers comes hurrying in to break the news that the man working as the bailiff at Bathsheba's farm has been caught stealing and was fired from his job. What's more, Fanny Robbins, a young servant, cannot be found, and given that she has seemed depressed recently, her disappearance is alarming to Bathsheba. Several of the farmworkers go back to the farmhouse to speak with Bathsheba. She instructs them to look for Fanny the next day, including asking the soldiers at Casterbridge, since there are rumors that one of them was wooing Fanny. The next morning, Bathsheba and her servant Liddy are busy with household chores when they are surprised by the arrival of Mr. Boldwood, a prosperous farmer. Bathsheba declines to see him, since she is not dressed appropriately and Boldwood explains to the servant that he has come to ask whether any information had surfaced about Fanny's disappearance. After Boldwood departs, the other female servants explain that he is well-respected but also the subject of speculation since he has never shown any interest in getting married. After she has gotten ready, Bathsheba meets with the farmworkers to distribute their wages. She announces that she is not going to hire a new bailiff and instead plans to manage the farm herself. She also asks whether anyone has learned any news about Fanny and is informed that the regiment of soldiers previously stationed at Casterbridge has moved on to the town of Melchester, and it is assumed that Fanny has gone there as well, following her sweetheart. Bathsheba's hands-on approach is furthered signaled when she goes to the corn market to display the products of her farm, and negotiate prices with potential buyers. At the market, she is the subject of much male attention, but is surprised to notice one handsome man who does not seem intrigued by her at all. After questioning Liddy, she learns that this man is the same Farmer Boldwood who had previously called upon her. On the day before Valentine's, Liddy and Bathsheba are idly passing time and the conversation again turns to Boldwood, who had not taken any notice of Bathsheba during church services. Bathsheba mentions a valentine she is going to send to a young boy who works on the farm, and Liddy playfully suggests sending it to Boldwood instead. Bathsheba is intrigued by the idea, since she is slightly annoyed that Boldwood has shown no interest in her. They use the equivalent of a coin toss to determine the plan, and then send the anonymous valentine to Boldwood. Meanwhile, in Melchester, Fanny throws a stone at the windows of the soldier's barracks to get the attention of her lover, Sergeant Frank Troy. Troy is surprised to see her, but Fanny is anxious to hear details about when their planned marriage will take place. Frank assures her that he does plan to marry her, but that the logistical details will cause a delay. He promises to come and visit Fanny in her new lodgings as soon as possible.

Whereas Gabriel begins the novel at a hopeful moment with bright prospects for the future, his fortune is abruptly reversed with the loss of his flock. The loss is all the more glaring because Gabriel is such a careful and conscientious man; despite all of his efforts, everything can still be swept away. Hardy had a profound respect for nature, and the way in which nature can be both bountiful and destructive. At a moment literally ripe with promise, when the ewes are pregnant and therefore on the verge of doubling Gabriel's flock, the scene becomes one of death and grotesque destruction rather than birth and regeneration. Perhaps because Gabriel is a man attuned to the cycles of nature and the inevitable balance between growth and loss, or perhaps because he has previous experience as a humble laborer, he accepts his loss stoically. When he is at the hiring fair, Gabriel is open to accepting work as either a bailiff or a shepherd, even though the two roles were significantly different in social status and pay. The difficulty Gabriel finds in locating work reflects one of the consequences of his attempt at social mobility. He seems underqualified to work as a bailiff on one hand, but now overqualified to go back to being a shepherd since he has experience of working his own farm. However, Gabriel's innate integrity and desire to do the right thing helps to set him on the path to restoring his career. He has no obligation to help with putting out the fire, but he naturally shows leadership and good judgement, and is rewarded by quickly earning the trust of the other workers. The fact that the other men take warmly to Gabriel because of the way he behaves during the fire, and because he has family ties to the area, shows how reputations were established in a pre-industrial era. While Gabriel is quickly accepted into the Everdene farm and the surrounding community, Bathsheba faces more serious challenges. It was somewhat unconventional for a woman to own a substantial property at this time, and still more unusual for her to actively manage it herself. A farm like Bathsheba's involved a substantial and time-consuming amount of effort to be run successfully, and, as quickly becomes evident, requires courage, keen intelligence, and business savvy. Bathsheba shows the same independent spirit that distinguished her when she was helping her aunt, even though the public attention she attracts clearly makes her somewhat uncomfortable. While Bathsheba's new authority and status gives her new freedoms, it also seems to make her reckless. She doesn't have any companions or advisors, and seems to depend on a friendship with Liddy to keep her from boredom. Bathsheba's decision to send the valentine to Boldwood is related to the new autonomy and power she wields once taking on the traditionally masculine role of farmer and manager. As Karin Koehler writes, "She feels compelled to challenge Boldwood's emphatically masculine sense of self, and, prompted by Liddy's suggestion, intuits that her aim will be accomplished most effectively by a deliberate, aggressive subversion of sexual and gender norms" . The two impulsive young women egg each other on, leading to the decision to send the valentine to Boldwood. While the prank would be somewhat expected from a maidservant like Liddy, as a landowner and business person, Bathsheba should act with more discretion and foresight. Particularly as a woman, her good reputation is paramount, and she risks jeopardizing it for a childish, lighthearted prank. Although on a very different scale, Bathsheba's impulsive action is paralleled by the risky choices Fanny makes as she follows her heart. As a working-class young woman who doesn't seem to have any family members, she is in a perilous position and can easily be manipulated by an unscrupulous man. Soldiers like Troy had a reputation for womanizing, facilitated by the fact that when the troops moved on, it was easy to discard any women they had pursued affairs with. Troy's vague and ambiguous statements about plans for his marriage hint that he may not in fact be committed to legitimizing his relationship with Fanny.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/40.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_38_part_0.txt

Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 39

chapter 39

{"name": "Phase V: \"The Woman Pays,\" Chapter Thirty-Nine", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210424232301/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary/chapter-39", "summary": "Three weeks after the wedding, Angel goes to visit his parents again. As he walks, he considers the last few weeks: all the philosophy he's ever read tells him that he shouldn't be disturbed by crises like this one, but he's pretty disturbed, anyway. How could he not be? He blames the whole thing on the fact that Tess is a D'Urberville. Why didn't he abandon her when he found that out? Now Angel is moving through life with a kind of passive indifference--he's just going through the motions, because he's incredibly depressed. Of course his parents want to know why he's come without his wife. He explains that she went to her parents' house, temporarily, while he goes to Brazil to see about setting up a farm there. Mrs. Clare is curious about Tess, and asks Angel a lot of questions. Angel gets agitated, especially when his father reads some Bible verses in praise of virtue in a wife. He leaves the table early to go to bed. His mother follows him after a few minutes, and asks him what's wrong. She guesses pretty easily that he's had some kind of quarrel with Tess. She asks if it has something to do with her past, but Angel replies, lying through his teeth, that Tess is \"spotless.\" The narrator points out that the real trouble was not with Tess, but with Angel, and his limitations. He's bound by conventional ideas about purity and virtue, and ignores Tess's innate purity because of the \"stain\" of her history.", "analysis": ""}

It was three weeks after the marriage that Clare found himself descending the hill which led to the well-known parsonage of his father. With his downward course the tower of the church rose into the evening sky in a manner of inquiry as to why he had come; and no living person in the twilighted town seemed to notice him, still less to expect him. He was arriving like a ghost, and the sound of his own footsteps was almost an encumbrance to be got rid of. The picture of life had changed for him. Before this time he had known it but speculatively; now he thought he knew it as a practical man; though perhaps he did not, even yet. Nevertheless humanity stood before him no longer in the pensive sweetness of Italian art, but in the staring and ghastly attitudes of a Wiertz Museum, and with the leer of a study by Van Beers. His conduct during these first weeks had been desultory beyond description. After mechanically attempting to pursue his agricultural plans as though nothing unusual had happened, in the manner recommended by the great and wise men of all ages, he concluded that very few of those great and wise men had ever gone so far outside themselves as to test the feasibility of their counsel. "This is the chief thing: be not perturbed," said the Pagan moralist. That was just Clare's own opinion. But he was perturbed. "Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid," said the Nazarene. Clare chimed in cordially; but his heart was troubled all the same. How he would have liked to confront those two great thinkers, and earnestly appeal to them as fellow-man to fellow-men, and ask them to tell him their method! His mood transmuted itself into a dogged indifference till at length he fancied he was looking on his own existence with the passive interest of an outsider. He was embittered by the conviction that all this desolation had been brought about by the accident of her being a d'Urberville. When he found that Tess came of that exhausted ancient line, and was not of the new tribes from below, as he had fondly dreamed, why had he not stoically abandoned her in fidelity to his principles? This was what he had got by apostasy, and his punishment was deserved. Then he became weary and anxious, and his anxiety increased. He wondered if he had treated her unfairly. He ate without knowing that he ate, and drank without tasting. As the hours dropped past, as the motive of each act in the long series of bygone days presented itself to his view, he perceived how intimately the notion of having Tess as a dear possession was mixed up with all his schemes and words and ways. In going hither and thither he observed in the outskirts of a small town a red-and-blue placard setting forth the great advantages of the Empire of Brazil as a field for the emigrating agriculturist. Land was offered there on exceptionally advantageous terms. Brazil somewhat attracted him as a new idea. Tess could eventually join him there, and perhaps in that country of contrasting scenes and notions and habits the conventions would not be so operative which made life with her seem impracticable to him here. In brief he was strongly inclined to try Brazil, especially as the season for going thither was just at hand. With this view he was returning to Emminster to disclose his plan to his parents, and to make the best explanation he could make of arriving without Tess, short of revealing what had actually separated them. As he reached the door the new moon shone upon his face, just as the old one had done in the small hours of that morning when he had carried his wife in his arms across the river to the graveyard of the monks; but his face was thinner now. Clare had given his parents no warning of his visit, and his arrival stirred the atmosphere of the Vicarage as the dive of the kingfisher stirs a quiet pool. His father and mother were both in the drawing-room, but neither of his brothers was now at home. Angel entered, and closed the door quietly behind him. "But--where's your wife, dear Angel?" cried his mother. "How you surprise us!" "She is at her mother's--temporarily. I have come home rather in a hurry because I've decided to go to Brazil." "Brazil! Why they are all Roman Catholics there surely!" "Are they? I hadn't thought of that." But even the novelty and painfulness of his going to a Papistical land could not displace for long Mr and Mrs Clare's natural interest in their son's marriage. "We had your brief note three weeks ago announcing that it had taken place," said Mrs Clare, "and your father sent your godmother's gift to her, as you know. Of course it was best that none of us should be present, especially as you preferred to marry her from the dairy, and not at her home, wherever that may be. It would have embarrassed you, and given us no pleasure. Your bothers felt that very strongly. Now it is done we do not complain, particularly if she suits you for the business you have chosen to follow instead of the ministry of the Gospel. ... Yet I wish I could have seen her first, Angel, or have known a little more about her. We sent her no present of our own, not knowing what would best give her pleasure, but you must suppose it only delayed. Angel, there is no irritation in my mind or your father's against you for this marriage; but we have thought it much better to reserve our liking for your wife till we could see her. And now you have not brought her. It seems strange. What has happened?" He replied that it had been thought best by them that she should to go her parents' home for the present, whilst he came there. "I don't mind telling you, dear mother," he said, "that I always meant to keep her away from this house till I should feel she could come with credit to you. But this idea of Brazil is quite a recent one. If I do go it will be unadvisable for me to take her on this my first journey. She will remain at her mother's till I come back." "And I shall not see her before you start?" He was afraid they would not. His original plan had been, as he had said, to refrain from bringing her there for some little while--not to wound their prejudices--feelings--in any way; and for other reasons he had adhered to it. He would have to visit home in the course of a year, if he went out at once; and it would be possible for them to see her before he started a second time--with her. A hastily prepared supper was brought in, and Clare made further exposition of his plans. His mother's disappointment at not seeing the bride still remained with her. Clare's late enthusiasm for Tess had infected her through her maternal sympathies, till she had almost fancied that a good thing could come out of Nazareth--a charming woman out of Talbothays Dairy. She watched her son as he ate. "Cannot you describe her? I am sure she is very pretty, Angel." "Of that there can be no question!" he said, with a zest which covered its bitterness. "And that she is pure and virtuous goes without question?" "Pure and virtuous, of course, she is." "I can see her quite distinctly. You said the other day that she was fine in figure; roundly built; had deep red lips like Cupid's bow; dark eyelashes and brows, an immense rope of hair like a ship's cable; and large eyes violety-bluey-blackish." "I did, mother." "I quite see her. And living in such seclusion she naturally had scarce ever seen any young man from the world without till she saw you." "Scarcely." "You were her first love?" "Of course." "There are worse wives than these simple, rosy-mouthed, robust girls of the farm. Certainly I could have wished--well, since my son is to be an agriculturist, it is perhaps but proper that his wife should have been accustomed to an outdoor life." His father was less inquisitive; but when the time came for the chapter from the Bible which was always read before evening prayers, the Vicar observed to Mrs Clare-- "I think, since Angel has come, that it will be more appropriate to read the thirty-first of Proverbs than the chapter which we should have had in the usual course of our reading?" "Yes, certainly," said Mrs Clare. "The words of King Lemuel" (she could cite chapter and verse as well as her husband). "My dear son, your father has decided to read us the chapter in Proverbs in praise of a virtuous wife. We shall not need to be reminded to apply the words to the absent one. May Heaven shield her in all her ways!" A lump rose in Clare's throat. The portable lectern was taken out from the corner and set in the middle of the fireplace, the two old servants came in, and Angel's father began to read at the tenth verse of the aforesaid chapter-- "Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies. She riseth while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household. She girdeth her loins with strength and strengtheneth her arms. She perceiveth that her merchandise is good; her candle goeth not out by night. She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness. Her children arise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her. Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all." When prayers were over, his mother said-- "I could not help thinking how very aptly that chapter your dear father read applied, in some of its particulars, to the woman you have chosen. The perfect woman, you see, was a working woman; not an idler; not a fine lady; but one who used her hands and her head and her heart for the good of others. 'Her children arise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her. Many daughters have done virtuously, but she excelleth them all.' Well, I wish I could have seen her, Angel. Since she is pure and chaste, she would have been refined enough for me." Clare could bear this no longer. His eyes were full of tears, which seemed like drops of molten lead. He bade a quick good night to these sincere and simple souls whom he loved so well; who knew neither the world, the flesh, nor the devil in their own hearts, only as something vague and external to themselves. He went to his own chamber. His mother followed him, and tapped at his door. Clare opened it to discover her standing without, with anxious eyes. "Angel," she asked, "is there something wrong that you go away so soon? I am quite sure you are not yourself." "I am not, quite, mother," said he. "About her? Now, my son, I know it is that--I know it is about her! Have you quarrelled in these three weeks?" "We have not exactly quarrelled," he said. "But we have had a difference--" "Angel--is she a young woman whose history will bear investigation?" With a mother's instinct Mrs Clare had put her finger on the kind of trouble that would cause such a disquiet as seemed to agitate her son. "She is spotless!" he replied; and felt that if it had sent him to eternal hell there and then he would have told that lie. "Then never mind the rest. After all, there are few purer things in nature then an unsullied country maid. Any crudeness of manner which may offend your more educated sense at first, will, I am sure, disappear under the influence or your companionship and tuition." Such terrible sarcasm of blind magnanimity brought home to Clare the secondary perception that he had utterly wrecked his career by this marriage, which had not been among his early thoughts after the disclosure. True, on his own account he cared very little about his career; but he had wished to make it at least a respectable one on account of his parents and brothers. And now as he looked into the candle its flame dumbly expressed to him that it was made to shine on sensible people, and that it abhorred lighting the face of a dupe and a failure. When his agitation had cooled he would be at moments incensed with his poor wife for causing a situation in which he was obliged to practise deception on his parents. He almost talked to her in his anger, as if she had been in the room. And then her cooing voice, plaintive in expostulation, disturbed the darkness, the velvet touch of her lips passed over his brow, and he could distinguish in the air the warmth of her breath. This night the woman of his belittling deprecations was thinking how great and good her husband was. But over them both there hung a deeper shade than the shade which Angel Clare perceived, namely, the shade of his own limitations. With all his attempted independence of judgement this advanced and well-meaning young man, a sample product of the last five-and-twenty years, was yet the slave to custom and conventionality when surprised back into his early teachings. No prophet had told him, and he was not prophet enough to tell himself, that essentially this young wife of his was as deserving of the praise of King Lemuel as any other woman endowed with the same dislike of evil, her moral value having to be reckoned not by achievement but by tendency. Moreover, the figure near at hand suffers on such occasion, because it shows up its sorriness without shade; while vague figures afar off are honoured, in that their distance makes artistic virtues of their stains. In considering what Tess was not, he overlooked what she was, and forgot that the defective can be more than the entire.

Phase V: "The Woman Pays," Chapter Thirty-Nine

https://web.archive.org/web/20210424232301/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary/chapter-39

Three weeks after the wedding, Angel goes to visit his parents again. As he walks, he considers the last few weeks: all the philosophy he's ever read tells him that he shouldn't be disturbed by crises like this one, but he's pretty disturbed, anyway. How could he not be? He blames the whole thing on the fact that Tess is a D'Urberville. Why didn't he abandon her when he found that out? Now Angel is moving through life with a kind of passive indifference--he's just going through the motions, because he's incredibly depressed. Of course his parents want to know why he's come without his wife. He explains that she went to her parents' house, temporarily, while he goes to Brazil to see about setting up a farm there. Mrs. Clare is curious about Tess, and asks Angel a lot of questions. Angel gets agitated, especially when his father reads some Bible verses in praise of virtue in a wife. He leaves the table early to go to bed. His mother follows him after a few minutes, and asks him what's wrong. She guesses pretty easily that he's had some kind of quarrel with Tess. She asks if it has something to do with her past, but Angel replies, lying through his teeth, that Tess is "spotless." The narrator points out that the real trouble was not with Tess, but with Angel, and his limitations. He's bound by conventional ideas about purity and virtue, and ignores Tess's innate purity because of the "stain" of her history.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/32.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Sense and Sensibility/section_31_part_0.txt

Sense and Sensibility.chapter 32

chapter 32

{"name": "Chapter 32", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210421140324/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/sense-and-sensibility/summary/chapter-32", "summary": "Elinor tells Colonel Brandon's tale to Marianne, and though it doesn't immediately make her feel any better, it does make her treat the Colonel more kindly. But rather than her mood improving, she becomes more dejected instead, musing over Willoughby's warped character. Mrs. Dashwood writes a series of melodramatic letters to her daughters, lamenting the situation. Mrs. Dashwood thinks it's better for Marianne to stay away from Barton, where she might be reminded of her good times with Willoughby. She commands her daughters therefore to stay in town, where, in all likelihood, they won't run into Willoughby. Anyway, Fanny and John will be in town soon, and Mrs. Dashwood thinks it might be good for her daughters to see their brother. Marianne agrees to follow her mother's advice, even though she'd expected to be encouraged to come home instead. At least, she thinks, Elinor will be able to see Edward. Elinor herself is worried about this very possibility. Elinor's warnings to Mrs. Jennings not to bring up Willoughby apparently worked, and nobody mentions him in front of Marianne. In private, though, nobody can stop talking about it. Sir John and Mrs. Palmer can't believe that Willoughby is such a villain - they'd liked him all along, and look how he repays them! Everyone vows to stay away from him. Mrs. Palmer responds by indignantly finding out all of the info on Willoughby's coming marriage, and sharing it with Elinor - a rather odd decision, we think. Lady Middleton even shows a small amount of attention by calling the whole thing \"a shocking matter.\" Privately, though, she decides that she will pay a visit to the future Mrs. Willoughby once they're married, since she'll be a lady of importance and elegance. Colonel Brandon continues to be a good friend, and Mrs. Jennings begins to wonder if he's transferred his affections to Elinor. Two weeks later, Willoughby is married. Elinor dutifully reports the news to Marianne, who takes it very hard. To make matters worse, the two Miss Steeles have arrived in London. Elinor is forced to see them, rather against her will. Lucy is delighted that Elinor is still in town, and tries to hint heavy-handedly that she would still like Elinor to try and intervene with John Dashwood to get the secret engagement approved. Miss Steele, as usual, is occupied with frivolous talk of a new beau, a certain unfortunate Dr. Davies. She's as silly as ever. Lucy is obviously disappointed to find that the Dashwoods will continue to be around for a while. Miss Steele then inquires after Marianne - Elinor makes an excuse for her sister, who disappeared when their visitors arrived. Miss Steele suggests that they go up and visit Marianne in her room, but is shot down.", "analysis": ""}

When the particulars of this conversation were repeated by Miss Dashwood to her sister, as they very soon were, the effect on her was not entirely such as the former had hoped to see. Not that Marianne appeared to distrust the truth of any part of it, for she listened to it all with the most steady and submissive attention, made neither objection nor remark, attempted no vindication of Willoughby, and seemed to shew by her tears that she felt it to be impossible. But though this behaviour assured Elinor that the conviction of this guilt WAS carried home to her mind, though she saw with satisfaction the effect of it, in her no longer avoiding Colonel Brandon when he called, in her speaking to him, even voluntarily speaking, with a kind of compassionate respect, and though she saw her spirits less violently irritated than before, she did not see her less wretched. Her mind did become settled, but it was settled in a gloomy dejection. She felt the loss of Willoughby's character yet more heavily than she had felt the loss of his heart; his seduction and desertion of Miss Williams, the misery of that poor girl, and the doubt of what his designs might ONCE have been on herself, preyed altogether so much on her spirits, that she could not bring herself to speak of what she felt even to Elinor; and, brooding over her sorrows in silence, gave more pain to her sister than could have been communicated by the most open and most frequent confession of them. To give the feelings or the language of Mrs. Dashwood on receiving and answering Elinor's letter would be only to give a repetition of what her daughters had already felt and said; of a disappointment hardly less painful than Marianne's, and an indignation even greater than Elinor's. Long letters from her, quickly succeeding each other, arrived to tell all that she suffered and thought; to express her anxious solicitude for Marianne, and entreat she would bear up with fortitude under this misfortune. Bad indeed must the nature of Marianne's affliction be, when her mother could talk of fortitude! mortifying and humiliating must be the origin of those regrets, which SHE could wish her not to indulge! Against the interest of her own individual comfort, Mrs. Dashwood had determined that it would be better for Marianne to be any where, at that time, than at Barton, where every thing within her view would be bringing back the past in the strongest and most afflicting manner, by constantly placing Willoughby before her, such as she had always seen him there. She recommended it to her daughters, therefore, by all means not to shorten their visit to Mrs. Jennings; the length of which, though never exactly fixed, had been expected by all to comprise at least five or six weeks. A variety of occupations, of objects, and of company, which could not be procured at Barton, would be inevitable there, and might yet, she hoped, cheat Marianne, at times, into some interest beyond herself, and even into some amusement, much as the ideas of both might now be spurned by her. From all danger of seeing Willoughby again, her mother considered her to be at least equally safe in town as in the country, since his acquaintance must now be dropped by all who called themselves her friends. Design could never bring them in each other's way: negligence could never leave them exposed to a surprise; and chance had less in its favour in the crowd of London than even in the retirement of Barton, where it might force him before her while paying that visit at Allenham on his marriage, which Mrs. Dashwood, from foreseeing at first as a probable event, had brought herself to expect as a certain one. She had yet another reason for wishing her children to remain where they were; a letter from her son-in-law had told her that he and his wife were to be in town before the middle of February, and she judged it right that they should sometimes see their brother. Marianne had promised to be guided by her mother's opinion, and she submitted to it therefore without opposition, though it proved perfectly different from what she wished and expected, though she felt it to be entirely wrong, formed on mistaken grounds, and that by requiring her longer continuance in London it deprived her of the only possible alleviation of her wretchedness, the personal sympathy of her mother, and doomed her to such society and such scenes as must prevent her ever knowing a moment's rest. But it was a matter of great consolation to her, that what brought evil to herself would bring good to her sister; and Elinor, on the other hand, suspecting that it would not be in her power to avoid Edward entirely, comforted herself by thinking, that though their longer stay would therefore militate against her own happiness, it would be better for Marianne than an immediate return into Devonshire. Her carefulness in guarding her sister from ever hearing Willoughby's name mentioned, was not thrown away. Marianne, though without knowing it herself, reaped all its advantage; for neither Mrs. Jennings, nor Sir John, nor even Mrs. Palmer herself, ever spoke of him before her. Elinor wished that the same forbearance could have extended towards herself, but that was impossible, and she was obliged to listen day after day to the indignation of them all. Sir John, could not have thought it possible. "A man of whom he had always had such reason to think well! Such a good-natured fellow! He did not believe there was a bolder rider in England! It was an unaccountable business. He wished him at the devil with all his heart. He would not speak another word to him, meet him where he might, for all the world! No, not if it were to be by the side of Barton covert, and they were kept watching for two hours together. Such a scoundrel of a fellow! such a deceitful dog! It was only the last time they met that he had offered him one of Folly's puppies! and this was the end of it!" Mrs. Palmer, in her way, was equally angry. "She was determined to drop his acquaintance immediately, and she was very thankful that she had never been acquainted with him at all. She wished with all her heart Combe Magna was not so near Cleveland; but it did not signify, for it was a great deal too far off to visit; she hated him so much that she was resolved never to mention his name again, and she should tell everybody she saw, how good-for-nothing he was." The rest of Mrs. Palmer's sympathy was shewn in procuring all the particulars in her power of the approaching marriage, and communicating them to Elinor. She could soon tell at what coachmaker's the new carriage was building, by what painter Mr. Willoughby's portrait was drawn, and at what warehouse Miss Grey's clothes might be seen. The calm and polite unconcern of Lady Middleton on the occasion was a happy relief to Elinor's spirits, oppressed as they often were by the clamorous kindness of the others. It was a great comfort to her to be sure of exciting no interest in ONE person at least among their circle of friends: a great comfort to know that there was ONE who would meet her without feeling any curiosity after particulars, or any anxiety for her sister's health. Every qualification is raised at times, by the circumstances of the moment, to more than its real value; and she was sometimes worried down by officious condolence to rate good-breeding as more indispensable to comfort than good-nature. Lady Middleton expressed her sense of the affair about once every day, or twice, if the subject occurred very often, by saying, "It is very shocking, indeed!" and by the means of this continual though gentle vent, was able not only to see the Miss Dashwoods from the first without the smallest emotion, but very soon to see them without recollecting a word of the matter; and having thus supported the dignity of her own sex, and spoken her decided censure of what was wrong in the other, she thought herself at liberty to attend to the interest of her own assemblies, and therefore determined (though rather against the opinion of Sir John) that as Mrs. Willoughby would at once be a woman of elegance and fortune, to leave her card with her as soon as she married. Colonel Brandon's delicate, unobtrusive enquiries were never unwelcome to Miss Dashwood. He had abundantly earned the privilege of intimate discussion of her sister's disappointment, by the friendly zeal with which he had endeavoured to soften it, and they always conversed with confidence. His chief reward for the painful exertion of disclosing past sorrows and present humiliations, was given in the pitying eye with which Marianne sometimes observed him, and the gentleness of her voice whenever (though it did not often happen) she was obliged, or could oblige herself to speak to him. THESE assured him that his exertion had produced an increase of good-will towards himself, and THESE gave Elinor hopes of its being farther augmented hereafter; but Mrs. Jennings, who knew nothing of all this, who knew only that the Colonel continued as grave as ever, and that she could neither prevail on him to make the offer himself, nor commission her to make it for him, began, at the end of two days, to think that, instead of Midsummer, they would not be married till Michaelmas, and by the end of a week that it would not be a match at all. The good understanding between the Colonel and Miss Dashwood seemed rather to declare that the honours of the mulberry-tree, the canal, and the yew arbour, would all be made over to HER; and Mrs. Jennings had, for some time ceased to think at all of Mrs. Ferrars. Early in February, within a fortnight from the receipt of Willoughby's letter, Elinor had the painful office of informing her sister that he was married. She had taken care to have the intelligence conveyed to herself, as soon as it was known that the ceremony was over, as she was desirous that Marianne should not receive the first notice of it from the public papers, which she saw her eagerly examining every morning. She received the news with resolute composure; made no observation on it, and at first shed no tears; but after a short time they would burst out, and for the rest of the day, she was in a state hardly less pitiable than when she first learnt to expect the event. The Willoughbys left town as soon as they were married; and Elinor now hoped, as there could be no danger of her seeing either of them, to prevail on her sister, who had never yet left the house since the blow first fell, to go out again by degrees as she had done before. About this time the two Miss Steeles, lately arrived at their cousin's house in Bartlett's Buildings, Holburn, presented themselves again before their more grand relations in Conduit and Berkeley Streets; and were welcomed by them all with great cordiality. Elinor only was sorry to see them. Their presence always gave her pain, and she hardly knew how to make a very gracious return to the overpowering delight of Lucy in finding her STILL in town. "I should have been quite disappointed if I had not found you here STILL," said she repeatedly, with a strong emphasis on the word. "But I always thought I SHOULD. I was almost sure you would not leave London yet awhile; though you TOLD me, you know, at Barton, that you should not stay above a MONTH. But I thought, at the time, that you would most likely change your mind when it came to the point. It would have been such a great pity to have went away before your brother and sister came. And now to be sure you will be in no hurry to be gone. I am amazingly glad you did not keep to YOUR WORD." Elinor perfectly understood her, and was forced to use all her self-command to make it appear that she did NOT. "Well, my dear," said Mrs. Jennings, "and how did you travel?" "Not in the stage, I assure you," replied Miss Steele, with quick exultation; "we came post all the way, and had a very smart beau to attend us. Dr. Davies was coming to town, and so we thought we'd join him in a post-chaise; and he behaved very genteelly, and paid ten or twelve shillings more than we did." "Oh, oh!" cried Mrs. Jennings; "very pretty, indeed! and the Doctor is a single man, I warrant you." "There now," said Miss Steele, affectedly simpering, "everybody laughs at me so about the Doctor, and I cannot think why. My cousins say they are sure I have made a conquest; but for my part I declare I never think about him from one hour's end to another. 'Lord! here comes your beau, Nancy,' my cousin said t'other day, when she saw him crossing the street to the house. My beau, indeed! said I--I cannot think who you mean. The Doctor is no beau of mine." "Aye, aye, that is very pretty talking--but it won't do--the Doctor is the man, I see." "No, indeed!" replied her cousin, with affected earnestness, "and I beg you will contradict it, if you ever hear it talked of." Mrs. Jennings directly gave her the gratifying assurance that she certainly would NOT, and Miss Steele was made completely happy. "I suppose you will go and stay with your brother and sister, Miss Dashwood, when they come to town," said Lucy, returning, after a cessation of hostile hints, to the charge. "No, I do not think we shall." "Oh, yes, I dare say you will." Elinor would not humour her by farther opposition. "What a charming thing it is that Mrs. Dashwood can spare you both for so long a time together!" "Long a time, indeed!" interposed Mrs. Jennings. "Why, their visit is but just begun!" Lucy was silenced. "I am sorry we cannot see your sister, Miss Dashwood," said Miss Steele. "I am sorry she is not well--" for Marianne had left the room on their arrival. "You are very good. My sister will be equally sorry to miss the pleasure of seeing you; but she has been very much plagued lately with nervous head-aches, which make her unfit for company or conversation." "Oh, dear, that is a great pity! but such old friends as Lucy and me!--I think she might see US; and I am sure we would not speak a word." Elinor, with great civility, declined the proposal. Her sister was perhaps laid down upon the bed, or in her dressing gown, and therefore not able to come to them. "Oh, if that's all," cried Miss Steele, "we can just as well go and see HER." Elinor began to find this impertinence too much for her temper; but she was saved the trouble of checking it, by Lucy's sharp reprimand, which now, as on many occasions, though it did not give much sweetness to the manners of one sister, was of advantage in governing those of the other.

Chapter 32

https://web.archive.org/web/20210421140324/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/sense-and-sensibility/summary/chapter-32

Elinor tells Colonel Brandon's tale to Marianne, and though it doesn't immediately make her feel any better, it does make her treat the Colonel more kindly. But rather than her mood improving, she becomes more dejected instead, musing over Willoughby's warped character. Mrs. Dashwood writes a series of melodramatic letters to her daughters, lamenting the situation. Mrs. Dashwood thinks it's better for Marianne to stay away from Barton, where she might be reminded of her good times with Willoughby. She commands her daughters therefore to stay in town, where, in all likelihood, they won't run into Willoughby. Anyway, Fanny and John will be in town soon, and Mrs. Dashwood thinks it might be good for her daughters to see their brother. Marianne agrees to follow her mother's advice, even though she'd expected to be encouraged to come home instead. At least, she thinks, Elinor will be able to see Edward. Elinor herself is worried about this very possibility. Elinor's warnings to Mrs. Jennings not to bring up Willoughby apparently worked, and nobody mentions him in front of Marianne. In private, though, nobody can stop talking about it. Sir John and Mrs. Palmer can't believe that Willoughby is such a villain - they'd liked him all along, and look how he repays them! Everyone vows to stay away from him. Mrs. Palmer responds by indignantly finding out all of the info on Willoughby's coming marriage, and sharing it with Elinor - a rather odd decision, we think. Lady Middleton even shows a small amount of attention by calling the whole thing "a shocking matter." Privately, though, she decides that she will pay a visit to the future Mrs. Willoughby once they're married, since she'll be a lady of importance and elegance. Colonel Brandon continues to be a good friend, and Mrs. Jennings begins to wonder if he's transferred his affections to Elinor. Two weeks later, Willoughby is married. Elinor dutifully reports the news to Marianne, who takes it very hard. To make matters worse, the two Miss Steeles have arrived in London. Elinor is forced to see them, rather against her will. Lucy is delighted that Elinor is still in town, and tries to hint heavy-handedly that she would still like Elinor to try and intervene with John Dashwood to get the secret engagement approved. Miss Steele, as usual, is occupied with frivolous talk of a new beau, a certain unfortunate Dr. Davies. She's as silly as ever. Lucy is obviously disappointed to find that the Dashwoods will continue to be around for a while. Miss Steele then inquires after Marianne - Elinor makes an excuse for her sister, who disappeared when their visitors arrived. Miss Steele suggests that they go up and visit Marianne in her room, but is shot down.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/43.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Tess of the d'Urbervilles/section_5_part_8.txt

Tess of the d'Urbervilles.chapter xlii

chapter xlii

{"name": "Chapter XLII", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210213065711/https://www.novelguide.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summaries/phase5-chapter35-44", "summary": "To counter the constant advances of men, on her journey to Flintcomb-Ash to join Marian Tess wears ugly clothes, covers her face and clips her eyebrows. The farm is hard with poor soil and Tess does not want to talk to the curious Marian, who now drinks habitually, about her husband", "analysis": ""}

It was now broad day, and she started again, emerging cautiously upon the highway. But there was no need for caution; not a soul was at hand, and Tess went onward with fortitude, her recollection of the birds' silent endurance of their night of agony impressing upon her the relativity of sorrows and the tolerable nature of her own, if she could once rise high enough to despise opinion. But that she could not do so long as it was held by Clare. She reached Chalk-Newton, and breakfasted at an inn, where several young men were troublesomely complimentary to her good looks. Somehow she felt hopeful, for was it not possible that her husband also might say these same things to her even yet? She was bound to take care of herself on the chance of it, and keep off these casual lovers. To this end Tess resolved to run no further risks from her appearance. As soon as she got out of the village she entered a thicket and took from her basket one of the oldest field-gowns, which she had never put on even at the dairy--never since she had worked among the stubble at Marlott. She also, by a felicitous thought, took a handkerchief from her bundle and tied it round her face under her bonnet, covering her chin and half her cheeks and temples, as if she were suffering from toothache. Then with her little scissors, by the aid of a pocket looking-glass, she mercilessly nipped her eyebrows off, and thus insured against aggressive admiration, she went on her uneven way. "What a mommet of a maid!" said the next man who met her to a companion. Tears came into her eyes for very pity of herself as she heard him. "But I don't care!" she said. "O no--I don't care! I'll always be ugly now, because Angel is not here, and I have nobody to take care of me. My husband that was is gone away, and never will love me any more; but I love him just the same, and hate all other men, and like to make 'em think scornfully of me!" Thus Tess walks on; a figure which is part of the landscape; a fieldwoman pure and simple, in winter guise; a gray serge cape, a red woollen cravat, a stuff skirt covered by a whitey-brown rough wrapper, and buff-leather gloves. Every thread of that old attire has become faded and thin under the stroke of raindrops, the burn of sunbeams, and the stress of winds. There is no sign of young passion in her now-- The maiden's mouth is cold . . . Fold over simple fold Binding her head. Inside this exterior, over which the eye might have roved as over a thing scarcely percipient, almost inorganic, there was the record of a pulsing life which had learnt too well, for its years, of the dust and ashes of things, of the cruelty of lust and the fragility of love. Next day the weather was bad, but she trudged on, the honesty, directness, and impartiality of elemental enmity disconcerting her but little. Her object being a winter's occupation and a winter's home, there was no time to lose. Her experience of short hirings had been such that she was determined to accept no more. Thus she went forward from farm to farm in the direction of the place whence Marian had written to her, which she determined to make use of as a last shift only, its rumoured stringencies being the reverse of tempting. First she inquired for the lighter kinds of employment, and, as acceptance in any variety of these grew hopeless, applied next for the less light, till, beginning with the dairy and poultry tendance that she liked best, she ended with the heavy and course pursuits which she liked least--work on arable land: work of such roughness, indeed, as she would never have deliberately voluteered for. Towards the second evening she reached the irregular chalk table-land or plateau, bosomed with semi-globular tumuli--as if Cybele the Many-breasted were supinely extended there--which stretched between the valley of her birth and the valley of her love. Here the air was dry and cold, and the long cart-roads were blown white and dusty within a few hours after rain. There were few trees, or none, those that would have grown in the hedges being mercilessly plashed down with the quickset by the tenant-farmers, the natural enemies of tree, bush, and brake. In the middle distance ahead of her she could see the summits of Bulbarrow and of Nettlecombe Tout, and they seemed friendly. They had a low and unassuming aspect from this upland, though as approached on the other side from Blackmoor in her childhood they were as lofty bastions against the sky. Southerly, at many miles' distance, and over the hills and ridges coastward, she could discern a surface like polished steel: it was the English Channel at a point far out towards France. Before her, in a slight depression, were the remains of a village. She had, in fact, reached Flintcomb-Ash, the place of Marian's sojourn. There seemed to be no help for it; hither she was doomed to come. The stubborn soil around her showed plainly enough that the kind of labour in demand here was of the roughest kind; but it was time to rest from searching, and she resolved to stay, particularly as it began to rain. At the entrance to the village was a cottage whose gable jutted into the road, and before applying for a lodging she stood under its shelter, and watched the evening close in. "Who would think I was Mrs Angel Clare!" she said. The wall felt warm to her back and shoulders, and she found that immediately within the gable was the cottage fireplace, the heat of which came through the bricks. She warmed her hands upon them, and also put her cheek--red and moist with the drizzle--against their comforting surface. The wall seemed to be the only friend she had. She had so little wish to leave it that she could have stayed there all night. Tess could hear the occupants of the cottage--gathered together after their day's labour--talking to each other within, and the rattle of their supper-plates was also audible. But in the village-street she had seen no soul as yet. The solitude was at last broken by the approach of one feminine figure, who, though the evening was cold, wore the print gown and the tilt-bonnet of summer time. Tess instinctively thought it might be Marian, and when she came near enough to be distinguishable in the gloom, surely enough it was she. Marian was even stouter and redder in the face than formerly, and decidedly shabbier in attire. At any previous period of her existence Tess would hardly have cared to renew the acquaintance in such conditions; but her loneliness was excessive, and she responded readily to Marian's greeting. Marian was quite respectful in her inquiries, but seemed much moved by the fact that Tess should still continue in no better condition than at first; though she had dimly heard of the separation. "Tess--Mrs Clare--the dear wife of dear he! And is it really so bad as this, my child? Why is your cwomely face tied up in such a way? Anybody been beating 'ee? Not HE?" "No, no, no! I merely did it not to be clipsed or colled, Marian." She pulled off in disgust a bandage which could suggest such wild thoughts. "And you've got no collar on" (Tess had been accustomed to wear a little white collar at the dairy). "I know it, Marian." "You've lost it travelling." "I've not lost it. The truth is, I don't care anything about my looks; and so I didn't put it on." "And you don't wear your wedding-ring?" "Yes, I do; but not in public. I wear it round my neck on a ribbon. I don't wish people to think who I am by marriage, or that I am married at all; it would be so awkward while I lead my present life." Marian paused. "But you BE a gentleman's wife; and it seems hardly fair that you should live like this!" "O yes it is, quite fair; though I am very unhappy." "Well, well. HE married you--and you can be unhappy!" "Wives are unhappy sometimes; from no fault of their husbands--from their own." "You've no faults, deary; that I'm sure of. And he's none. So it must be something outside ye both." "Marian, dear Marian, will you do me a good turn without asking questions? My husband has gone abroad, and somehow I have overrun my allowance, so that I have to fall back upon my old work for a time. Do not call me Mrs Clare, but Tess, as before. Do they want a hand here?" "O yes; they'll take one always, because few care to come. 'Tis a starve-acre place. Corn and swedes are all they grow. Though I be here myself, I feel 'tis a pity for such as you to come." "But you used to be as good a dairywoman as I." "Yes; but I've got out o' that since I took to drink. Lord, that's the only comfort I've got now! If you engage, you'll be set swede-hacking. That's what I be doing; but you won't like it." "O--anything! Will you speak for me?" "You will do better by speaking for yourself." "Very well. Now, Marian, remember--nothing about HIM if I get the place. I don't wish to bring his name down to the dirt." Marian, who was really a trustworthy girl though of coarser grain than Tess, promised anything she asked. "This is pay-night," she said, "and if you were to come with me you would know at once. I be real sorry that you are not happy; but 'tis because he's away, I know. You couldn't be unhappy if he were here, even if he gie'd ye no money--even if he used you like a drudge." "That's true; I could not!" They walked on together and soon reached the farmhouse, which was almost sublime in its dreariness. There was not a tree within sight; there was not, at this season, a green pasture--nothing but fallow and turnips everywhere, in large fields divided by hedges plashed to unrelieved levels. Tess waited outside the door of the farmhouse till the group of workfolk had received their wages, and then Marian introduced her. The farmer himself, it appeared, was not at home, but his wife, who represented him this evening, made no objection to hiring Tess, on her agreeing to remain till Old Lady-Day. Female field-labour was seldom offered now, and its cheapness made it profitable for tasks which women could perform as readily as men. Having signed the agreement, there was nothing more for Tess to do at present than to get a lodging, and she found one in the house at whose gable-wall she had warmed herself. It was a poor subsistence that she had ensured, but it would afford a shelter for the winter at any rate. That night she wrote to inform her parents of her new address, in case a letter should arrive at Marlott from her husband. But she did not tell them of the sorriness of her situation: it might have brought reproach upon him.

Chapter XLII

https://web.archive.org/web/20210213065711/https://www.novelguide.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summaries/phase5-chapter35-44

To counter the constant advances of men, on her journey to Flintcomb-Ash to join Marian Tess wears ugly clothes, covers her face and clips her eyebrows. The farm is hard with poor soil and Tess does not want to talk to the curious Marian, who now drinks habitually, about her husband

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/14328-chapters/book_ii.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/The Consolation of Philosophy/section_1_part_0.txt

The Consolation of Philosophy.book ii

book ii

{"name": "Book II", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201128165942/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-consolation-of-philosophy/study-guide/summary-book-ii", "summary": "At the beginning of Book II, Lady Philosophy has grown silent. She has become quiet so that Boethius, in his weakened spiritual state, entreats her to speak. She says that she has fully diagnosed the cause and nature of his condition, and will prepare the \"persuasive powers of sweet-tongued rhetoric,\" a power often abused by those who do not properly understand Philosophy, to gently heal him of his illness. Again, she reiterates that Boethius is pining away for his former good fortune, and the loss of which has corrupted his mind. She says that Boethius has been seduced by Fortune , and that in her many guises she has lured other people to their undoing, too. Again, Philosophy describes the capricious nature of Fortune, pointing out how the workings of Fortune are not to be considered tragic when they cause reversals for her former beneficiaries. Fortune's \"gifts\" are really loans, Philosophy reminds Boethius, and to return something that was only lent to you is not a loss and not something about which to grieve. Philosophy also implies that, while Boethius enjoyed Fortune's favors, he must have known that her gifts were not very important anyway. Boethius is reminded not only that he came into this world with none of Fortune's gifts, and he should never have become so attached to any of them that he could not lose them without grief. While Boethius acknowledges the logic of Philosophy's argument, he is not yet in a fit state to receive comfort from it. Here Philosophy reminds Boethius, somewhat to his pain so she does not dwell on it, that he was in this earthly life the luckiest of men. Though orphaned, he was adopted into the home of a very aristocratic and well-respected man, and he married into that same family. He has been blessed not only with a worthy and modest wife, but also two good sons. And he had the privilege of seeing those sons raised to the office of consul together. Boethius then complains that the worst part of this is the memory of his past good fortune. \"In all adversity of fortune, the most wretched kind is once to have been happy.\" Philosophy counters that the most precious gift from Fortune, Boethius's family, still exists unharmed. Compared to many, Fortune says, Boethius is still a very fortunate man. A debate ensues on the way happiness can be attained by a human being, for, it seems, even if a person has all the gifts of fortune, there is still anxiety and disquiet in his or her heart. Philosophy says that human happiness is impossible to achieve in earthly life. Happiness is not found in the temporal gifts of Fortune - not even in those most precious gifts of family. The discussion continues onto the nature of \"good\" in the things that the world considers \"good fortune,\" which are wealth, material possessions, power, and honor. Each of these things is said by Philosophy to be incapable of bestowing true happiness. Wealth is only of value when being transferred, and such has no value in itself. In addition, any acquisition of wealth is the taking away of wealth from someone else. The power of wealth is not something that is your own, but rather a function of that wealth, so then how can it make you happy? Honor and power can be bestowed upon you by someone who is not a fair judge of either, so these are not the path to happiness either. The beauty of Nature, too, is incapable of giving true happiness because we cannot take credit for Nature. It is entirely the construction of God, and therefore we can only admire it but cannot claim it for our own. If one desires fancy clothing, or a long line of servants, the good of either cannot be truly owned by the possessor, so they are not the path to happiness either. \"From all this it is obvious that not one of those things which you count among your blessings is in fact any blessing of yours at all.\" Philosophy says. The only things which a person may truly possess are the blessings of his or her own intellectual inquiry and soul. Since these are internal blessings, it is argued, they can never be taken away, and are wholly owned by the thinker. God, Philosophy says, made human beings to rule the Earth, but not to attempt to adorn themselves with inferior things. God has given humankind an intellect by which to inquire into philosophical things, not to concern themselves with goods which can only be inferior to the worth of their own minds. Add to this that the human soul is immortal, and cannot and never will be satisfied by a temporal happiness from earthly things, which would only last until the death of the body. Boethius counters that he never wanted any of the temporal blessings for his own sake. He is not an ambitious man, but only entered public life out of a sense of duty. But Lady Philosophy reminds Boethius that he did enjoy his honors, and, while they were well-deserved, it is important that everyone remembers that the gifts of Fortune are inconstant and can be easily taken away. After death, the soul will look back on what was so important in life and consider it to be insignificant. In this life, it is probably better for the soul to have bad fortune, for that does not enslave the soul as much as good fortune does. Philosophy relents slightly from her strict censure of Fortune's gifts near the end of Book II, when she says that bad fortune gives another great gift; the knowledge of one's true friends, the ones who truly love you. This wisdom, she says, could not be bought for any price while one had good fortune. She ends the book with a hymn about how love binds the earth together.", "analysis": "The beginning of Book II contains a subtle hint to the reader that Boethius was a spiritual and philosophical man before his honors and possessions were taken away by imprisonment. When Philosophy says that Boethius, in the favors of Fortune, had \"nothing much of value\" it is clear that Boethius has always had, or at least affected to have, a disdain for worldly things. A man who was born into a patrician family, with a famous name and extraordinary powers of intellect, who never wanted for money, and experienced royal favor and advancement for much of his life may well have had disdain for worldly possessions, honors, and achievements. This passage seems a little naA-ve unless considered within the context of Christianity. If Boethius were still a pagan Roman, the gifts of the goddess Fortuna would have been things to pray for, and, if received, things for which he would have given praise to the gods. But the teachings of Catholic Christianity were such that none of the gifts of Fortune were to be valued as much as the love of God and spiritual enlightenment. Boethius is espousing a wholly Christian position here, couched in the language of philosophy. The psychological progression of Boethius here is plain to see. He slowly allows his emotions to quieten, letting himself rest while he turns his thoughts back to the logic of Philosophy's argument. His sorrow is still acute and not assuaged, but he thinks he has possibly found the way to convince himself that his lot is not so bad. Boethius, throughout his life, was very interested in logic, and wrote several books on the subject. He believed wholeheartedly in its powers, and The Consolation of Philosophy can be viewed as a logical justification for much of Christian doctrine. The enshrinement of Symmachus, Boethius's father-in-law, and Boethius's wife, Rusticiana, as paragons of moral purity seem to give comfort to Boethius. Again, it is argued, however, that true happiness cannot be found in the temporal gifts of Fortune, not even in the love of one's family. While this idea is not necessarily one that would be agreed upon by modern psychology, it is essential to Christian belief. It is also indicative of the times in which Boethius lived. Not only could family be taken off quickly by disease or accident, but the uncertain political climate of Rome governed by the barbarian emperors also meant that the lives of one's family and friends were by no means assured. Placing total faith in and hanging one's happiness on one's loved ones was an easy way, Philosophy argues, to become quickly unhappy. The middle and end of Book II is one of Boethius's most powerful passages. He begins with his complaint that to have been happy and then be disgraced is more sorrowful than having never been happy. Boethius, though perhaps feeling this emotion sharply in his miserable imprisonment, surely knows the fallacy of this argument before he begins it. Philosophy sharply reminds him that one of the most precious gifts of Fortune, his family, is still intact, and therefore he should be happier than many men. Philosophy explains that he has lost nothing that he ever truly had, and she then enlightens Boethius on the \"good\" in earthly good things that was never truly good, because it was never truly possessed. Philosophy argues that even pleasures that seem obvious, such as the pleasure of having many servants to do our hard work, are not necessarily \"good\" - after all, when our servants do wrong we are responsible, but when they do right we cannot claim credit. This points to Philosophy's essential argument: a person cannot claim credit for the \"good\" he or she experiences in earthly life. This \"good\" depends on Fortune and not on human effort. Only attainment of philosophical wisdom in the mind can truly be called one's own. This argument may or may not convince many readers, but it is sound in many respects. It explains, especially in regard to wealth, the momentary satisfaction but enduring emptiness many people feel upon attaining certain goals of wealth or material possessions. Near the end of Book II Philosophy explains that most people mistake the \"good\" of inferior things for the true good: the good eternal things of the soul. It is a standard religious tenet of more than one faith, but the way Boethius couches it in terms of ownership is compelling. He particularly shines in his explanation of how most people attempt to adorn themselves with exterior, inferior \"goods\" while they neglect the greatest and only real good that they possess: their minds made in the image of their Creator. When human beings recognize their own nature as being Godlike, rather than earthly, that is when they \"tower above the rest of creation.\" All other goods, separate from the mind and the soul, are merely \"decoration\" that denigrates what it is decorating, because it does not belong to it. Some readers may find the argument about ownership to be too callous, and perhaps the rejection of Nature as a source of happiness is skewed, but the overall construction of the chapter is a convincing argument for spirituality. Some of this argument is based on Neo-Platonist principles of substance and belonging, which don't directly affect the argument but inform some of Boethius' language. Boethius tosses out phrases such as \"If every good is agreed to be more valuable than whatever it belongs to\" as if the reader, schooled in philosophy, would not dispute these statements or require explanation. Nevertheless, Book II is intense, convincing, and contains eight beautiful poems which explicate the text."}

<CHAPTER> BOOK II. I. Thereafter for awhile she remained silent; and when she had restored my flagging attention by a moderate pause in her discourse, she thus began: 'If I have thoroughly ascertained the character and causes of thy sickness, thou art pining with regretful longing for thy former fortune. It is the change, as thou deemest, of this fortune that hath so wrought upon thy mind. Well do I understand that Siren's manifold wiles, the fatal charm of the friendship she pretends for her victims, so long as she is scheming to entrap them--how she unexpectedly abandons them and leaves them overwhelmed with insupportable grief. Bethink thee of her nature, character, and deserts, and thou wilt soon acknowledge that in her thou hast neither possessed, nor hast thou lost, aught of any worth. Methinks I need not spend much pains in bringing this to thy mind, since, even when she was still with thee, even while she was caressing thee, thou usedst to assail her in manly terms, to rebuke her, with maxims drawn from my holy treasure-house. But all sudden changes of circumstances bring inevitably a certain commotion of spirit. Thus it hath come to pass that thou also for awhile hast been parted from thy mind's tranquillity. But it is time for thee to take and drain a draught, soft and pleasant to the taste, which, as it penetrates within, may prepare the way for stronger potions. Wherefore I call to my aid the sweet persuasiveness of Rhetoric, who then only walketh in the right way when she forsakes not my instructions, and Music, my handmaid, I bid to join with her singing, now in lighter, now in graver strain. 'What is it, then, poor mortal, that hath cast thee into lamentation and mourning? Some strange, unwonted sight, methinks, have thine eyes seen. Thou deemest Fortune to have changed towards thee; thou mistakest. Such ever were her ways, ever such her nature. Rather in her very mutability hath she preserved towards thee her true constancy. Such was she when she loaded thee with caresses, when she deluded thee with the allurements of a false happiness. Thou hast found out how changeful is the face of the blind goddess. She who still veils herself from others hath fully discovered to thee her whole character. If thou likest her, take her as she is, and do not complain. If thou abhorrest her perfidy, turn from her in disdain, renounce her, for baneful are her delusions. The very thing which is now the cause of thy great grief ought to have brought thee tranquillity. Thou hast been forsaken by one of whom no one can be sure that she will not forsake him. Or dost thou indeed set value on a happiness that is certain to depart? Again I ask, Is Fortune's presence dear to thee if she cannot be trusted to stay, and though she will bring sorrow when she is gone? Why, if she cannot be kept at pleasure, and if her flight overwhelms with calamity, what is this fleeting visitant but a token of coming trouble? Truly it is not enough to look only at what lies before the eyes; wisdom gauges the issues of things, and this same mutability, with its two aspects, makes the threats of Fortune void of terror, and her caresses little to be desired. Finally, thou oughtest to bear with whatever takes place within the boundaries of Fortune's demesne, when thou hast placed thy head beneath her yoke. But if thou wishest to impose a law of staying and departing on her whom thou hast of thine own accord chosen for thy mistress, art thou not acting wrongfully, art thou not embittering by impatience a lot which thou canst not alter? Didst thou commit thy sails to the winds, thou wouldst voyage not whither thy intention was to go, but whither the winds drave thee; didst thou entrust thy seed to the fields, thou wouldst set off the fruitful years against the barren. Thou hast resigned thyself to the sway of Fortune; thou must submit to thy mistress's caprices. What! art thou verily striving to stay the swing of the revolving wheel? Oh, stupidest of mortals, if it takes to standing still, it ceases to be the wheel of Fortune.' SONG I. FORTUNE'S MALICE. Mad Fortune sweeps along in wanton pride, Uncertain as Euripus' surging tide; Now tramples mighty kings beneath her feet; Now sets the conquered in the victor's seat. She heedeth not the wail of hapless woe, But mocks the griefs that from her mischief flow. Such is her sport; so proveth she her power; And great the marvel, when in one brief hour She shows her darling lifted high in bliss, Then headlong plunged in misery's abyss. II. 'Now I would fain also reason with thee a little in Fortune's own words. Do thou observe whether her contentions be just. "Man," she might say, "why dost thou pursue me with thy daily complainings? What wrong have I done thee? What goods of thine have I taken from thee? Choose an thou wilt a judge, and let us dispute before him concerning the rightful ownership of wealth and rank. If thou succeedest in showing that any one of these things is the true property of mortal man, I freely grant those things to be thine which thou claimest. When nature brought thee forth out of thy mother's womb, I took thee, naked and destitute as thou wast, I cherished thee with my substance, and, in the partiality of my favour for thee, I brought thee up somewhat too indulgently, and this it is which now makes thee rebellious against me. I surrounded thee with a royal abundance of all those things that are in my power. Now it is my pleasure to draw back my hand. Thou hast reason to thank me for the use of what was not thine own; thou hast no right to complain, as if thou hadst lost what was wholly thine. Why, then, dost bemoan thyself? I have done thee no violence. Wealth, honour, and all such things are placed under my control. My handmaidens know their mistress; with me they come, and at my going they depart. I might boldly affirm that if those things the loss of which thou lamentest had been thine, thou couldst never have lost them. Am I alone to be forbidden to do what I will with my own? Unrebuked, the skies now reveal the brightness of day, now shroud the daylight in the darkness of night; the year may now engarland the face of the earth with flowers and fruits, now disfigure it with storms and cold. The sea is permitted to invite with smooth and tranquil surface to-day, to-morrow to roughen with wave and storm. Shall man's insatiate greed bind _me_ to a constancy foreign to my character? This is my art, this the game I never cease to play. I turn the wheel that spins. I delight to see the high come down and the low ascend. Mount up, if thou wilt, but only on condition that thou wilt not think it a hardship to come down when the rules of my game require it. Wert thou ignorant of my character? Didst not know how Croesus, King of the Lydians, erstwhile the dreaded rival of Cyrus, was afterwards pitiably consigned to the flame of the pyre, and only saved by a shower sent from heaven? Has it 'scaped thee how Paullus paid a meed of pious tears to the misfortunes of King Perseus, his prisoner? What else do tragedies make such woeful outcry over save the overthrow of kingdoms by the indiscriminate strokes of Fortune? Didst thou not learn in thy childhood how there stand at the threshold of Zeus 'two jars,' 'the one full of blessings, the other of calamities'? How if thou hast drawn over-liberally from the good jar? What if not even now have I departed wholly from thee? What if this very mutability of mine is a just ground for hoping better things? But listen now, and cease to let thy heart consume away with fretfulness, nor expect to live on thine own terms in a realm that is common to all.' SONG II. MAN'S COVETOUSNESS. What though Plenty pour her gifts With a lavish hand, Numberless as are the stars, Countless as the sand, Will the race of man, content, Cease to murmur and lament? Nay, though God, all-bounteous, give Gold at man's desire-- Honours, rank, and fame--content Not a whit is nigher; But an all-devouring greed Yawns with ever-widening need. Then what bounds can e'er restrain This wild lust of having, When with each new bounty fed Grows the frantic craving? He is never rich whose fear Sees grim Want forever near. III. 'If Fortune should plead thus against thee, assuredly thou wouldst not have one word to offer in reply; or, if thou canst find any justification of thy complainings, thou must show what it is. I will give thee space to speak.' Then said I: 'Verily, thy pleas are plausible--yea, steeped in the honeyed sweetness of music and rhetoric. But their charm lasts only while they are sounding in the ear; the sense of his misfortunes lies deeper in the heart of the wretched. So, when the sound ceases to vibrate upon the air, the heart's indwelling sorrow is felt with renewed bitterness.' Then said she: 'It is indeed as thou sayest, for we have not yet come to the curing of thy sickness; as yet these are but lenitives conducing to the treatment of a malady hitherto obstinate. The remedies which go deep I will apply in due season. Nevertheless, to deprecate thy determination to be thought wretched, I ask thee, Hast thou forgotten the extent and bounds of thy felicity? I say nothing of how, when orphaned and desolate, thou wast taken into the care of illustrious men; how thou wast chosen for alliance with the highest in the state--and even before thou wert bound to their house by marriage, wert already dear to their love--which is the most precious of all ties. Did not all pronounce thee most happy in the virtues of thy wife, the splendid honours of her father, and the blessing of male issue? I pass over--for I care not to speak of blessings in which others also have shared--the distinctions often denied to age which thou enjoyedst in thy youth. I choose rather to come to the unparalleled culmination of thy good fortune. If the fruition of any earthly success has weight in the scale of happiness, can the memory of that splendour be swept away by any rising flood of troubles? That day when thou didst see thy two sons ride forth from home joint consuls, followed by a train of senators, and welcomed by the good-will of the people; when these two sat in curule chairs in the Senate-house, and thou by thy panegyric on the king didst earn the fame of eloquence and ability; when in the Circus, seated between the two consuls, thou didst glut the multitude thronging around with the triumphal largesses for which they looked--methinks thou didst cozen Fortune while she caressed thee, and made thee her darling. Thou didst bear off a boon which she had never before granted to any private person. Art thou, then, minded to cast up a reckoning with Fortune? Now for the first time she has turned a jealous glance upon thee. If thou compare the extent and bounds of thy blessings and misfortunes, thou canst not deny that thou art still fortunate. Or if thou esteem not thyself favoured by Fortune in that thy then seeming prosperity hath departed, deem not thyself wretched, since what thou now believest to be calamitous passeth also. What! art thou but now come suddenly and a stranger to the scene of this life? Thinkest thou there is any stability in human affairs, when man himself vanishes away in the swift course of time? It is true that there is little trust that the gifts of chance will abide; yet the last day of life is in a manner the death of all remaining Fortune. What difference, then, thinkest thou, is there, whether thou leavest her by dying, or she leave thee by fleeing away?' SONG III. ALL PASSES. When, in rosy chariot drawn, Phoebus 'gins to light the dawn, By his flaming beams assailed, Every glimmering star is paled. When the grove, by Zephyrs fed, With rose-blossom blushes red;-- Doth rude Auster breathe thereon, Bare it stands, its glory gone. Smooth and tranquil lies the deep While the winds are hushed in sleep. Soon, when angry tempests lash, Wild and high the billows dash. Thus if Nature's changing face Holds not still a moment's space, Fleeting deem man's fortunes; deem Bliss as transient as a dream. One law only standeth fast: Things created may not last. IV. Then said I: 'True are thine admonishings, thou nurse of all excellence; nor can I deny the wonder of my fortune's swift career. Yet it is this which chafes me the more cruelly in the recalling. For truly in adverse fortune the worst sting of misery is to _have been_ happy.' 'Well,' said she, 'if thou art paying the penalty of a mistaken belief, thou canst not rightly impute the fault to circumstances. If it is the felicity which Fortune gives that moves thee--mere name though it be--come reckon up with me how rich thou art in the number and weightiness of thy blessings. Then if, by the blessing of Providence, thou hast still preserved unto thee safe and inviolate that which, howsoever thou mightest reckon thy fortune, thou wouldst have thought thy most precious possession, what right hast thou to talk of ill-fortune whilst keeping all Fortune's better gifts? Yet Symmachus, thy wife's father--a man whose splendid character does honour to the human race--is safe and unharmed; and while he bewails thy wrongs, this rare nature, in whom wisdom and virtue are so nobly blended, is himself out of danger--a boon thou wouldst have been quick to purchase at the price of life itself. Thy wife yet lives, with her gentle disposition, her peerless modesty and virtue--this the epitome of all her graces, that she is the true daughter of her sire--she lives, I say, and for thy sake only preserves the breath of life, though she loathes it, and pines away in grief and tears for thy absence, wherein, if in naught else, I would allow some marring of thy felicity. What shall I say of thy sons and their consular dignity--how in them, so far as may be in youths of their age, the example of their father's and grandfather's character shines out? Since, then, the chief care of mortal man is to preserve his life, how happy art thou, couldst thou but recognise thy blessings, who possessest even now what no one doubts to be dearer than life! Wherefore, now dry thy tears. Fortune's hate hath not involved all thy dear ones; the stress of the storm that has assailed thee is not beyond measure intolerable, since there are anchors still holding firm which suffer thee not to lack either consolation in the present or hope for the future.' 'I pray that they still may hold. For while they still remain, however things may go, I shall ride out the storm. Yet thou seest how much is shorn of the splendour of my fortunes.' 'We are gaining a little ground,' said she, 'if there is something in thy lot wherewith thou art not yet altogether discontented. But I cannot stomach thy daintiness when thou complainest with such violence of grief and anxiety because thy happiness falls short of completeness. Why, who enjoys such settled felicity as not to have some quarrel with the circumstances of his lot? A troublous matter are the conditions of human bliss; either they are never realized in full, or never stay permanently. One has abundant riches, but is shamed by his ignoble birth. Another is conspicuous for his nobility, but through the embarrassments of poverty would prefer to be obscure. A third, richly endowed with both, laments the loneliness of an unwedded life. Another, though happily married, is doomed to childlessness, and nurses his wealth for a stranger to inherit. Yet another, blest with children, mournfully bewails the misdeeds of son or daughter. Wherefore, it is not easy for anyone to be at perfect peace with the circumstances of his lot. There lurks in each several portion something which they who experience it not know nothing of, but which makes the sufferer wince. Besides, the more favoured a man is by Fortune, the more fastidiously sensitive is he; and, unless all things answer to his whim, he is overwhelmed by the most trifling misfortunes, because utterly unschooled in adversity. So petty are the trifles which rob the most fortunate of perfect happiness! How many are there, dost thou imagine, who would think themselves nigh heaven, if but a small portion from the wreck of thy fortune should fall to them? This very place which thou callest exile is to them that dwell therein their native land. So true is it that nothing is wretched, but thinking makes it so, and conversely every lot is happy if borne with equanimity. Who is so blest by Fortune as not to wish to change his state, if once he gives rein to a rebellious spirit? With how many bitternesses is the sweetness of human felicity blent! And even if that sweetness seem to him to bring delight in the enjoying, yet he cannot keep it from departing when it will. How manifestly wretched, then, is the bliss of earthly fortune, which lasts not for ever with those whose temper is equable, and can give no perfect satisfaction to the anxious-minded! 'Why, then, ye children of mortality, seek ye from without that happiness whose seat is only within us? Error and ignorance bewilder you. I will show thee, in brief, the hinge on which perfect happiness turns. Is there anything more precious to thee than thyself? Nothing, thou wilt say. If, then, thou art master of thyself, thou wilt possess that which thou wilt never be willing to lose, and which Fortune cannot take from thee. And that thou mayst see that happiness cannot possibly consist in these things which are the sport of chance, reflect that, if happiness is the highest good of a creature living in accordance with reason, and if a thing which can in any wise be reft away is not the highest good, since that which cannot be taken away is better than it, it is plain that Fortune cannot aspire to bestow happiness by reason of its instability. And, besides, a man borne along by this transitory felicity must either know or not know its unstability. If he knows not, how poor is a happiness which depends on the blindness of ignorance! If he knows it, he needs must fear to lose a happiness whose loss he believes to be possible. Wherefore, a never-ceasing fear suffers him not to be happy. Or does he count the possibility of this loss a trifling matter? Insignificant, then, must be the good whose loss can be borne so equably. And, further, I know thee to be one settled in the belief that the souls of men certainly die not with them, and convinced thereof by numerous proofs; it is clear also that the felicity which Fortune bestows is brought to an end with the death of the body: therefore, it cannot be doubted but that, if happiness is conferred in this way, the whole human race sinks into misery when death brings the close of all. But if we know that many have sought the joy of happiness not through death only, but also through pain and suffering, how can life make men happy by its presence when it makes them not wretched by its loss?' SONG IV. THE GOLDEN MEAN. Who founded firm and sure Would ever live secure, In spite of storm and blast Immovable and fast; Whoso would fain deride The ocean's threatening tide;-- His dwelling should not seek On sands or mountain-peak. Upon the mountain's height The storm-winds wreak their spite: The shifting sands disdain Their burden to sustain. Do thou these perils flee, Fair though the prospect be, And fix thy resting-place On some low rock's sure base. Then, though the tempests roar, Seas thunder on the shore, Thou in thy stronghold blest And undisturbed shalt rest; Live all thy days serene, And mock the heavens' spleen. V. 'But since my reasonings begin to work a soothing effect within thy mind, methinks I may resort to remedies somewhat stronger. Come, suppose, now, the gifts of Fortune were not fleeting and transitory, what is there in them capable of ever becoming truly thine, or which does not lose value when looked at steadily and fairly weighed in the balance? Are riches, I pray thee, precious either through thy nature or in their own? What are they but mere gold and heaps of money? Yet these fine things show their quality better in the spending than in the hoarding; for I suppose 'tis plain that greed Alva's makes men hateful, while liberality brings fame. But that which is transferred to another cannot remain in one's own possession; and if that be so, then money is only precious when it is given away, and, by being transferred to others, ceases to be one's own. Again, if all the money in the world were heaped up in one man's possession, all others would be made poor. Sound fills the ears of many at the same time without being broken into parts, but your riches cannot pass to many without being lessened in the process. And when this happens, they must needs impoverish those whom they leave. How poor and cramped a thing, then, is riches, which more than one cannot possess as an unbroken whole, which falls not to any one man's lot without the impoverishment of everyone else! Or is it the glitter of gems that allures the eye? Yet, how rarely excellent soever may be their splendour, remember the flashing light is in the jewels, not in the man. Indeed, I greatly marvel at men's admiration of them; for what can rightly seem beautiful to a being endowed with life and reason, if it lack the movement and structure of life? And although such things do in the end take on them more beauty from their Maker's care and their own brilliancy, still they in no wise merit your admiration since their excellence is set at a lower grade than your own. 'Does the beauty of the fields delight you? Surely, yes; it is a beautiful part of a right beautiful whole. Fitly indeed do we at times enjoy the serene calm of the sea, admire the sky, the stars, the moon, the sun. Yet is any of these thy concern? Dost thou venture to boast thyself of the beauty of any one of them? Art _thou_ decked with spring's flowers? is it _thy_ fertility that swelleth in the fruits of autumn? Why art thou moved with empty transports? why embracest thou an alien excellence as thine own? Never will fortune make thine that which the nature of things has excluded from thy ownership. Doubtless the fruits of the earth are given for the sustenance of living creatures. But if thou art content to supply thy wants so far as suffices nature, there is no need to resort to fortune's bounty. Nature is content with few things, and with a very little of these. If thou art minded to force superfluities upon her when she is satisfied, that which thou addest will prove either unpleasant or harmful. But, now, thou thinkest it fine to shine in raiment of divers colours; yet--if, indeed, there is any pleasure in the sight of such things--it is the texture or the artist's skill which I shall admire. 'Or perhaps it is a long train of servants that makes thee happy? Why, if they behave viciously, they are a ruinous burden to thy house, and exceeding dangerous to their own master; while if they are honest, how canst thou count other men's virtue in the sum of thy possessions? From all which 'tis plainly proved that not one of these things which thou reckonest in the number of thy possessions is really thine. And if there is in them no beauty to be desired, why shouldst thou either grieve for their loss or find joy in their continued possession? While if they are beautiful in their own nature, what is that to thee? They would have been not less pleasing in themselves, though never included among thy possessions. For they derive not their preciousness from being counted in thy riches, but rather thou hast chosen to count them in thy riches because they seemed to thee precious. 'Then, what seek ye by all this noisy outcry about fortune? To chase away poverty, I ween, by means of abundance. And yet ye find the result just contrary. Why, this varied array of precious furniture needs more accessories for its protection; it is a true saying that they want most who possess most, and, conversely, they want very little who measure their abundance by nature's requirements, not by the superfluity of vain display. Have ye no good of your own implanted within you, that ye seek your good in things external and separate? Is the nature of things so reversed that a creature divine by right of reason can in no other way be splendid in his own eyes save by the possession of lifeless chattels? Yet, while other things are content with their own, ye who in your intellect are God-like seek from the lowest of things adornment for a nature of supreme excellence, and perceive not how great a wrong ye do your Maker. His will was that mankind should excel all things on earth. Ye thrust down your worth beneath the lowest of things. For if that in which each thing finds its good is plainly more precious than that whose good it is, by your own estimation ye put yourselves below the vilest of things, when ye deem these vile things to be your good: nor does this fall out undeservedly. Indeed, man is so constituted that he then only excels other things when he knows himself; but he is brought lower than the beasts if he lose this self-knowledge. For that other creatures should be ignorant of themselves is natural; in man it shows as a defect. How extravagant, then, is this error of yours, in thinking that anything can be embellished by adornments not its own. It cannot be. For if such accessories add any lustre, it is the accessories that get the praise, while that which they veil and cover remains in its pristine ugliness. And again I say, That is no _good_, which injures its possessor. Is this untrue? No, quite true, thou sayest. And yet riches have often hurt those that possessed them, since the worst of men, who are all the more covetous by reason of their wickedness, think none but themselves worthy to possess all the gold and gems the world contains. So thou, who now dreadest pike and sword, mightest have trolled a carol "in the robber's face," hadst thou entered the road of life with empty pockets. Oh, wondrous blessedness of perishable wealth, whose acquisition robs thee of security!' SONG V. THE FORMER AGE. Too blest the former age, their life Who in the fields contented led, And still, by luxury unspoiled, On frugal acorns sparely fed. No skill was theirs the luscious grape With honey's sweetness to confuse; Nor China's soft and sheeny silks T' empurple with brave Tyrian hues. The grass their wholesome couch, their drink The stream, their roof the pine's tall shade; Not theirs to cleave the deep, nor seek In strange far lands the spoils of trade. The trump of war was heard not yet, Nor soiled the fields by bloodshed's stain; For why should war's fierce madness arm When strife brought wound, but brought not gain? Ah! would our hearts might still return To following in those ancient ways. Alas! the greed of getting glows More fierce than Etna's fiery blaze. Woe, woe for him, whoe'er it was, Who first gold's hidden store revealed, And--perilous treasure-trove--dug out The gems that fain would be concealed! VI. 'What now shall I say of rank and power, whereby, because ye know not true power and dignity, ye hope to reach the sky? Yet, when rank and power have fallen to the worst of men, did ever an Etna, belching forth flame and fiery deluge, work such mischief? Verily, as I think, thou dost remember how thine ancestors sought to abolish the consular power, which had been the foundation of their liberties, on account of the overweening pride of the consuls, and how for that self-same pride they had already abolished the kingly title! And if, as happens but rarely, these prerogatives are conferred on virtuous men, it is only the virtue of those who exercise them that pleases. So it appears that honour cometh not to virtue from rank, but to rank from virtue. Look, too, at the nature of that power which ye find so attractive and glorious! Do ye never consider, ye creatures of earth, what ye are, and over whom ye exercise your fancied lordship? Suppose, now, that in the mouse tribe there should rise up one claiming rights and powers for himself above the rest, would ye not laugh consumedly? Yet if thou lookest to his body alone, what creature canst thou find more feeble than man, who oftentimes is killed by the bite of a fly, or by some insect creeping into the inner passage of his system! Yet what rights can one exercise over another, save only as regards the body, and that which is lower than the body--I mean fortune? What! wilt thou bind with thy mandates the free spirit? Canst thou force from its due tranquillity the mind that is firmly composed by reason? A tyrant thought to drive a man of free birth to reveal his accomplices in a conspiracy, but the prisoner bit off his tongue and threw it into the furious tyrant's face; thus, the tortures which the tyrant thought the instrument of his cruelty the sage made an opportunity for heroism. Moreover, what is there that one man can do to another which he himself may not have to undergo in his turn? We are told that Busiris, who used to kill his guests, was himself slain by his guest, Hercules. Regulus had thrown into bonds many of the Carthaginians whom he had taken in war; soon after he himself submitted his hands to the chains of the vanquished. Then, thinkest thou that man hath any power who cannot prevent another's being able to do to him what he himself can do to others? 'Besides, if there were any element of natural and proper good in rank and power, they would never come to the utterly bad, since opposites are not wont to be associated. Nature brooks not the union of contraries. So, seeing there is no doubt that wicked wretches are oftentimes set in high places, it is also clear that things which suffer association with the worst of men cannot be good in their own nature. Indeed, this judgment may with some reason be passed concerning all the gifts of fortune which fall so plentifully to all the most wicked. This ought also to be considered here, I think: No one doubts a man to be brave in whom he has observed a brave spirit residing. It is plain that one who is endowed with speed is swift-footed. So also music makes men musical, the healing art physicians, rhetoric public speakers. For each of these has naturally its own proper working; there is no confusion with the effects of contrary things--nay, even of itself it rejects what is incompatible. And yet wealth cannot extinguish insatiable greed, nor has power ever made him master of himself whom vicious lusts kept bound in indissoluble fetters; dignity conferred on the wicked not only fails to make them worthy, but contrarily reveals and displays their unworthiness. Why does it so happen? Because ye take pleasure in calling by false names things whose nature is quite incongruous thereto--by names which are easily proved false by the very effects of the things themselves; even so it is; these riches, that power, this dignity, are none of them rightly so called. Finally, we may draw the same conclusion concerning the whole sphere of Fortune, within which there is plainly nothing to be truly desired, nothing of intrinsic excellence; for she neither always joins herself to the good, nor does she make good men of those to whom she is united.' SONG VI. NERO'S INFAMY. We know what mischief dire he wrought-- Rome fired, the Fathers slain-- Whose hand with brother's slaughter wet A mother's blood did stain. No pitying tear his cheek bedewed, As on the corse he gazed; That mother's beauty, once so fair, A critic's voice appraised. Yet far and wide, from East to West, His sway the nations own; And scorching South and icy North Obey his will alone. Did, then, high power a curb impose On Nero's phrenzied will? Ah, woe when to the evil heart Is joined the sword to kill! VII. Then said I: 'Thou knowest thyself that ambition for worldly success hath but little swayed me. Yet I have desired opportunity for action, lest virtue, in default of exercise, should languish away.' Then she: 'This is that "last infirmity" which is able to allure minds which, though of noble quality, have not yet been moulded to any exquisite refinement by the perfecting of the virtues--I mean, the love of glory--and fame for high services rendered to the commonweal. And yet consider with me how poor and unsubstantial a thing this glory is! The whole of this earth's globe, as thou hast learnt from the demonstration of astronomy, compared with the expanse of heaven, is found no bigger than a point; that is to say, if measured by the vastness of heaven's sphere, it is held to occupy absolutely no space at all. Now, of this so insignificant portion of the universe, it is about a fourth part, as Ptolemy's proofs have taught us, which is inhabited by living creatures known to us. If from this fourth part you take away in thought all that is usurped by seas and marshes, or lies a vast waste of waterless desert, barely is an exceeding narrow area left for human habitation. You, then, who are shut in and prisoned in this merest fraction of a point's space, do ye take thought for the blazoning of your fame, for the spreading abroad of your renown? Why, what amplitude or magnificence has glory when confined to such narrow and petty limits? 'Besides, the straitened bounds of this scant dwelling-place are inhabited by many nations differing widely in speech, in usages, in mode of life; to many of these, from the difficulty of travel, from diversities of speech, from want of commercial intercourse, the fame not only of individual men, but even of cities, is unable to reach. Why, in Cicero's days, as he himself somewhere points out, the fame of the Roman Republic had not yet crossed the Caucasus, and yet by that time her name had grown formidable to the Parthians and other nations of those parts. Seest thou, then, how narrow, how confined, is the glory ye take pains to spread abroad and extend! Can the fame of a single Roman penetrate where the glory of the Roman name fails to pass? Moreover, the customs and institutions of different races agree not together, so that what is deemed praise worthy in one country is thought punishable in another. Wherefore, if any love the applause of fame, it shall not profit him to publish his name among many peoples. Then, each must be content to have the range of his glory limited to his own people; the splendid immortality of fame must be confined within the bounds of a single race. 'Once more, how many of high renown in their own times have been lost in oblivion for want of a record! Indeed, of what avail are written records even, which, with their authors, are overtaken by the dimness of age after a somewhat longer time? But ye, when ye think on future fame, fancy it an immortality that ye are begetting for yourselves. Why, if thou scannest the infinite spaces of eternity, what room hast thou left for rejoicing in the durability of thy name? Verily, if a single moment's space be compared with ten thousand years, it has a certain relative duration, however little, since each period is definite. But this same number of years--ay, and a number many times as great--cannot even be compared with endless duration; for, indeed, finite periods may in a sort be compared one with another, but a finite and an infinite never. So it comes to pass that fame, though it extend to ever so wide a space of years, if it be compared to never-lessening eternity, seems not short-lived merely, but altogether nothing. But as for you, ye know not how to act aright, unless it be to court the popular breeze, and win the empty applause of the multitude--nay, ye abandon the superlative worth of conscience and virtue, and ask a recompense from the poor words of others. Let me tell thee how wittily one did mock the shallowness of this sort of arrogance. A certain man assailed one who had put on the name of philosopher as a cloak to pride and vain-glory, not for the practice of real virtue, and added: "Now shall I know if thou art a philosopher if thou bearest reproaches calmly and patiently." The other for awhile affected to be patient, and, having endured to be abused, cried out derisively: "_Now_, do you see that I am a philosopher?" The other, with biting sarcasm, retorted: "I should have hadst thou held thy peace." Moreover, what concern have choice spirits--for it is of such men we speak, men who seek glory by virtue--what concern, I say, have these with fame after the dissolution of the body in death's last hour? For if men die wholly--which our reasonings forbid us to believe--there is no such thing as glory at all, since he to whom the glory is said to belong is altogether non-existent. But if the mind, conscious of its own rectitude, is released from its earthly prison, and seeks heaven in free flight, doth it not despise all earthly things when it rejoices in its deliverance from earthly bonds, and enters upon the joys of heaven?' SONG VII. GLORY MAY NOT LAST. Oh, let him, who pants for glory's guerdon, Deeming glory all in all, Look and see how wide the heaven expandeth, Earth's enclosing bounds how small! Shame it is, if your proud-swelling glory May not fill this narrow room! Why, then, strive so vainly, oh, ye proud ones! To escape your mortal doom? Though your name, to distant regions bruited, O'er the earth be widely spread, Though full many a lofty-sounding title On your house its lustre shed, Death at all this pomp and glory spurneth When his hour draweth nigh, Shrouds alike th' exalted and the humble, Levels lowest and most high. Where are now the bones of stanch Fabricius? Brutus, Cato--where are they? Lingering fame, with a few graven letters, Doth their empty name display. But to know the great dead is not given From a gilded name alone; Nay, ye all alike must lie forgotten, 'Tis not _you_ that fame makes known. Fondly do ye deem life's little hour Lengthened by fame's mortal breath; There but waits you--when this, too, is taken-- At the last a second death. VIII. 'But that thou mayst not think that I wage implacable warfare against Fortune, I own there is a time when the deceitful goddess serves men well--I mean when she reveals herself, uncovers her face, and confesses her true character. Perhaps thou dost not yet grasp my meaning. Strange is the thing I am trying to express, and for this cause I can scarce find words to make clear my thought. For truly I believe that Ill Fortune is of more use to men than Good Fortune. For Good Fortune, when she wears the guise of happiness, and most seems to caress, is always lying; Ill Fortune is always truthful, since, in changing, she shows her inconstancy. The one deceives, the other teaches; the one enchains the minds of those who enjoy her favour by the semblance of delusive good, the other delivers them by the knowledge of the frail nature of happiness. Accordingly, thou mayst see the one fickle, shifting as the breeze, and ever self-deceived; the other sober-minded, alert, and wary, by reason of the very discipline of adversity. Finally, Good Fortune, by her allurements, draws men far from the true good; Ill Fortune ofttimes draws men back to true good with grappling-irons. Again, should it be esteemed a trifling boon, thinkest thou, that this cruel, this odious Fortune hath discovered to thee the hearts of thy faithful friends--that other hid from thee alike the faces of the true friends and of the false, but in departing she hath taken away _her_ friends, and left thee _thine_? What price wouldst thou not have given for this service in the fulness of thy prosperity when thou seemedst to thyself fortunate? Cease, then, to seek the wealth thou hast lost, since in true friends thou hast found the most precious of all riches.' SONG VIII. LOVE IS LORD OF ALL. Why are Nature's changes bound To a fixed and ordered round? What to leagued peace hath bent Every warring element? Wherefore doth the rosy morn Rise on Phoebus' car upborne? Why should Phoebe rule the night, Led by Hesper's guiding light? What the power that doth restrain In his place the restless main, That within fixed bounds he keeps, Nor o'er earth in deluge sweeps? Love it is that holds the chains, Love o'er sea and earth that reigns; Love--whom else but sovereign Love?-- Love, high lord in heaven above! Yet should he his care remit, All that now so close is knit In sweet love and holy peace, Would no more from conflict cease, But with strife's rude shock and jar All the world's fair fabric mar. Tribes and nations Love unites By just treaty's sacred rites; Wedlock's bonds he sanctifies By affection's softest ties. Love appointeth, as is due, Faithful laws to comrades true-- Love, all-sovereign Love!--oh, then, Ye are blest, ye sons of men, If the love that rules the sky In your hearts is throned on high! </CHAPTER> BOOK III. TRUE HAPPINESS AND FALSE. SUMMARY CH. I. Boethius beseeches Philosophy to continue. She promises to lead him to true happiness.--CH. II. Happiness is the one end which all created beings seek. They aim variously at (_a_) wealth, or (_b_) rank, or (_c_) sovereignty, or (_d_) glory, or (_e_) pleasure, because they think thereby to attain either (_a_) contentment, (_b_) reverence, (_c_) power, (_d_) renown, or (_e_) gladness of heart, in one or other of which they severally imagine happiness to consist.--CH. III. Philosophy proceeds to consider whether happiness can really be secured in any of these ways, (_a_) So far from bringing contentment, riches only add to men's wants.--CH. IV. (_b_) High position cannot of itself win respect. Titles command no reverence in distant and barbarous lands. They even fall into contempt through lapse of time.--CH. V. (_c_) Sovereignty cannot even bestow safety. History tells of the downfall of kings and their ministers. Tyrants go in fear of their lives. --CH. VI. (_d_) Fame conferred on the unworthy is but disgrace. The splendour of noble birth is not a man's own, but his ancestors'.--CH. VII. (_e_) Pleasure begins in the restlessness of desire, and ends in repentance. Even the pure pleasures of home may turn to gall and bitterness.--CH. VIII. All fail, then, to give what they promise. There is, moreover, some accompanying evil involved in each of these aims. Beauty and bodily strength are likewise of little worth. In strength man is surpassed by the brutes; beauty is but outward show.--CH. IX. The source of men's error in following these phantoms of good is that _they break up and separate that which is in its nature one and indivisible_. Contentment, power, reverence, renown, and joy are essentially bound up one with the other, and, if they are to be attained at all, must be attained _together_. True happiness, if it can be found, will include them all. But it cannot be found among the perishable things hitherto considered.--CH. X. Such a happiness necessarily exists. Its seat is in God. Nay, God is very happiness, and in a manner, therefore, the happy man partakes also of the Divine nature. All other ends are relative to this good, since they are all pursued only for the sake of good; it is _good_ which is the sole ultimate end. And since the sole end is also happiness, it is plain that this good and happiness are in essence the same.--CH. XI. Unity is another aspect of goodness. Now, all things subsist so long only as they preserve the unity of their being; when they lose this unity, they perish. But the bent of nature forces all things (plants and inanimate things, as well as animals) to strive to continue in life. Therefore, all things desire unity, for unity is essential to life. But unity and goodness were shown to be the same. Therefore, good is proved to be the end towards which the whole universe tends.[E]--CH. XII. Boethius acknowledges that he is but recollecting truths he once knew. Philosophy goes on to show that it is goodness also by which the whole world is governed.[F] Boethius professes compunction for his former folly. But the paradox of evil is introduced, and he is once more perplexed. FOOTNOTES: [E] This solves the second of the points left in doubt at the end of bk. i., ch. vi. [F] This solves the third. No distinct account is given of the first, but an answer may be gathered from the general argument of bks. ii., iii., and iv.

Book II

https://web.archive.org/web/20201128165942/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-consolation-of-philosophy/study-guide/summary-book-ii

At the beginning of Book II, Lady Philosophy has grown silent. She has become quiet so that Boethius, in his weakened spiritual state, entreats her to speak. She says that she has fully diagnosed the cause and nature of his condition, and will prepare the "persuasive powers of sweet-tongued rhetoric," a power often abused by those who do not properly understand Philosophy, to gently heal him of his illness. Again, she reiterates that Boethius is pining away for his former good fortune, and the loss of which has corrupted his mind. She says that Boethius has been seduced by Fortune , and that in her many guises she has lured other people to their undoing, too. Again, Philosophy describes the capricious nature of Fortune, pointing out how the workings of Fortune are not to be considered tragic when they cause reversals for her former beneficiaries. Fortune's "gifts" are really loans, Philosophy reminds Boethius, and to return something that was only lent to you is not a loss and not something about which to grieve. Philosophy also implies that, while Boethius enjoyed Fortune's favors, he must have known that her gifts were not very important anyway. Boethius is reminded not only that he came into this world with none of Fortune's gifts, and he should never have become so attached to any of them that he could not lose them without grief. While Boethius acknowledges the logic of Philosophy's argument, he is not yet in a fit state to receive comfort from it. Here Philosophy reminds Boethius, somewhat to his pain so she does not dwell on it, that he was in this earthly life the luckiest of men. Though orphaned, he was adopted into the home of a very aristocratic and well-respected man, and he married into that same family. He has been blessed not only with a worthy and modest wife, but also two good sons. And he had the privilege of seeing those sons raised to the office of consul together. Boethius then complains that the worst part of this is the memory of his past good fortune. "In all adversity of fortune, the most wretched kind is once to have been happy." Philosophy counters that the most precious gift from Fortune, Boethius's family, still exists unharmed. Compared to many, Fortune says, Boethius is still a very fortunate man. A debate ensues on the way happiness can be attained by a human being, for, it seems, even if a person has all the gifts of fortune, there is still anxiety and disquiet in his or her heart. Philosophy says that human happiness is impossible to achieve in earthly life. Happiness is not found in the temporal gifts of Fortune - not even in those most precious gifts of family. The discussion continues onto the nature of "good" in the things that the world considers "good fortune," which are wealth, material possessions, power, and honor. Each of these things is said by Philosophy to be incapable of bestowing true happiness. Wealth is only of value when being transferred, and such has no value in itself. In addition, any acquisition of wealth is the taking away of wealth from someone else. The power of wealth is not something that is your own, but rather a function of that wealth, so then how can it make you happy? Honor and power can be bestowed upon you by someone who is not a fair judge of either, so these are not the path to happiness either. The beauty of Nature, too, is incapable of giving true happiness because we cannot take credit for Nature. It is entirely the construction of God, and therefore we can only admire it but cannot claim it for our own. If one desires fancy clothing, or a long line of servants, the good of either cannot be truly owned by the possessor, so they are not the path to happiness either. "From all this it is obvious that not one of those things which you count among your blessings is in fact any blessing of yours at all." Philosophy says. The only things which a person may truly possess are the blessings of his or her own intellectual inquiry and soul. Since these are internal blessings, it is argued, they can never be taken away, and are wholly owned by the thinker. God, Philosophy says, made human beings to rule the Earth, but not to attempt to adorn themselves with inferior things. God has given humankind an intellect by which to inquire into philosophical things, not to concern themselves with goods which can only be inferior to the worth of their own minds. Add to this that the human soul is immortal, and cannot and never will be satisfied by a temporal happiness from earthly things, which would only last until the death of the body. Boethius counters that he never wanted any of the temporal blessings for his own sake. He is not an ambitious man, but only entered public life out of a sense of duty. But Lady Philosophy reminds Boethius that he did enjoy his honors, and, while they were well-deserved, it is important that everyone remembers that the gifts of Fortune are inconstant and can be easily taken away. After death, the soul will look back on what was so important in life and consider it to be insignificant. In this life, it is probably better for the soul to have bad fortune, for that does not enslave the soul as much as good fortune does. Philosophy relents slightly from her strict censure of Fortune's gifts near the end of Book II, when she says that bad fortune gives another great gift; the knowledge of one's true friends, the ones who truly love you. This wisdom, she says, could not be bought for any price while one had good fortune. She ends the book with a hymn about how love binds the earth together.

The beginning of Book II contains a subtle hint to the reader that Boethius was a spiritual and philosophical man before his honors and possessions were taken away by imprisonment. When Philosophy says that Boethius, in the favors of Fortune, had "nothing much of value" it is clear that Boethius has always had, or at least affected to have, a disdain for worldly things. A man who was born into a patrician family, with a famous name and extraordinary powers of intellect, who never wanted for money, and experienced royal favor and advancement for much of his life may well have had disdain for worldly possessions, honors, and achievements. This passage seems a little naA-ve unless considered within the context of Christianity. If Boethius were still a pagan Roman, the gifts of the goddess Fortuna would have been things to pray for, and, if received, things for which he would have given praise to the gods. But the teachings of Catholic Christianity were such that none of the gifts of Fortune were to be valued as much as the love of God and spiritual enlightenment. Boethius is espousing a wholly Christian position here, couched in the language of philosophy. The psychological progression of Boethius here is plain to see. He slowly allows his emotions to quieten, letting himself rest while he turns his thoughts back to the logic of Philosophy's argument. His sorrow is still acute and not assuaged, but he thinks he has possibly found the way to convince himself that his lot is not so bad. Boethius, throughout his life, was very interested in logic, and wrote several books on the subject. He believed wholeheartedly in its powers, and The Consolation of Philosophy can be viewed as a logical justification for much of Christian doctrine. The enshrinement of Symmachus, Boethius's father-in-law, and Boethius's wife, Rusticiana, as paragons of moral purity seem to give comfort to Boethius. Again, it is argued, however, that true happiness cannot be found in the temporal gifts of Fortune, not even in the love of one's family. While this idea is not necessarily one that would be agreed upon by modern psychology, it is essential to Christian belief. It is also indicative of the times in which Boethius lived. Not only could family be taken off quickly by disease or accident, but the uncertain political climate of Rome governed by the barbarian emperors also meant that the lives of one's family and friends were by no means assured. Placing total faith in and hanging one's happiness on one's loved ones was an easy way, Philosophy argues, to become quickly unhappy. The middle and end of Book II is one of Boethius's most powerful passages. He begins with his complaint that to have been happy and then be disgraced is more sorrowful than having never been happy. Boethius, though perhaps feeling this emotion sharply in his miserable imprisonment, surely knows the fallacy of this argument before he begins it. Philosophy sharply reminds him that one of the most precious gifts of Fortune, his family, is still intact, and therefore he should be happier than many men. Philosophy explains that he has lost nothing that he ever truly had, and she then enlightens Boethius on the "good" in earthly good things that was never truly good, because it was never truly possessed. Philosophy argues that even pleasures that seem obvious, such as the pleasure of having many servants to do our hard work, are not necessarily "good" - after all, when our servants do wrong we are responsible, but when they do right we cannot claim credit. This points to Philosophy's essential argument: a person cannot claim credit for the "good" he or she experiences in earthly life. This "good" depends on Fortune and not on human effort. Only attainment of philosophical wisdom in the mind can truly be called one's own. This argument may or may not convince many readers, but it is sound in many respects. It explains, especially in regard to wealth, the momentary satisfaction but enduring emptiness many people feel upon attaining certain goals of wealth or material possessions. Near the end of Book II Philosophy explains that most people mistake the "good" of inferior things for the true good: the good eternal things of the soul. It is a standard religious tenet of more than one faith, but the way Boethius couches it in terms of ownership is compelling. He particularly shines in his explanation of how most people attempt to adorn themselves with exterior, inferior "goods" while they neglect the greatest and only real good that they possess: their minds made in the image of their Creator. When human beings recognize their own nature as being Godlike, rather than earthly, that is when they "tower above the rest of creation." All other goods, separate from the mind and the soul, are merely "decoration" that denigrates what it is decorating, because it does not belong to it. Some readers may find the argument about ownership to be too callous, and perhaps the rejection of Nature as a source of happiness is skewed, but the overall construction of the chapter is a convincing argument for spirituality. Some of this argument is based on Neo-Platonist principles of substance and belonging, which don't directly affect the argument but inform some of Boethius' language. Boethius tosses out phrases such as "If every good is agreed to be more valuable than whatever it belongs to" as if the reader, schooled in philosophy, would not dispute these statements or require explanation. Nevertheless, Book II is intense, convincing, and contains eight beautiful poems which explicate the text.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/10.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Sense and Sensibility/section_7_part_0.txt

Sense and Sensibility.chapter 10

chapter 10

{"name": "Chapter 10", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101060302/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/s/sense-and-sensibility/summary-and-analysis/chapter-10", "summary": "Willoughby called early next day, and he and Marianne had a long, lively conversation during which they discovered, to Marianne's rapture, that \"their taste was strikingly alike.\" Marianne was soon captivated by Willoughby, who came to visit every day: \"His society became gradually her most exquisite enjoyment. They read, they talked, they sang together.\" Mrs. Dashwood found Willoughby \"faultless.\" Elinor saw little to disapprove of in him except \"a propensity in which he strongly resembled and peculiarly delighted her sister, of saying too much what he thought on every occasion.\" In the meantime, Elinor began to notice Colonel Brandon's partiality for Marianne and was sorry for the older man. Hearing hints from Sir John about the colonel's \"past injuries and disappointments,\" she regarded him \"with respect and compassion.\" She saw that shielded by a mask of reserve was a strength of character that didn't deserve the censure that Willoughby and Marianne insisted on giving him. Elinor rebuked them, declaring him to be \"a sensible man, well-bred, well-informed, of gentle address . . . possessing an amiable heart.\" But they took her reproof lightly and continued to see the colonel as a subject for jesting.", "analysis": "In this chapter, Willoughby is presented with quiet humor as \"exactly formed to engage Marianne's heart.\" However, despite his apparent attributes, we are held back from liking him too much by the subtle censure of the author. He says too much, gives his opinion of other people \"hastily,\" and displays \"a want of caution\" which the eager Marianne enters into almost too willingly. Their criticism of Colonel Brandon is cruel, especially on Marianne's part since she has been given some indication of his favor towards her. It seems as if the couple is confusing what they believe to be their sincerity for what is actually flippancy. Elinor appears more and more to be the voice of the author. She is rarely satirized, in contrast to the constant parody of the others, and seems to possess a maturity which can serve as a guide for the behavior of all."}

Marianne's preserver, as Margaret, with more elegance than precision, styled Willoughby, called at the cottage early the next morning to make his personal enquiries. He was received by Mrs. Dashwood with more than politeness; with a kindness which Sir John's account of him and her own gratitude prompted; and every thing that passed during the visit tended to assure him of the sense, elegance, mutual affection, and domestic comfort of the family to whom accident had now introduced him. Of their personal charms he had not required a second interview to be convinced. Miss Dashwood had a delicate complexion, regular features, and a remarkably pretty figure. Marianne was still handsomer. Her form, though not so correct as her sister's, in having the advantage of height, was more striking; and her face was so lovely, that when in the common cant of praise, she was called a beautiful girl, truth was less violently outraged than usually happens. Her skin was very brown, but, from its transparency, her complexion was uncommonly brilliant; her features were all good; her smile was sweet and attractive; and in her eyes, which were very dark, there was a life, a spirit, an eagerness, which could hardily be seen without delight. From Willoughby their expression was at first held back, by the embarrassment which the remembrance of his assistance created. But when this passed away, when her spirits became collected, when she saw that to the perfect good-breeding of the gentleman, he united frankness and vivacity, and above all, when she heard him declare, that of music and dancing he was passionately fond, she gave him such a look of approbation as secured the largest share of his discourse to herself for the rest of his stay. It was only necessary to mention any favourite amusement to engage her to talk. She could not be silent when such points were introduced, and she had neither shyness nor reserve in their discussion. They speedily discovered that their enjoyment of dancing and music was mutual, and that it arose from a general conformity of judgment in all that related to either. Encouraged by this to a further examination of his opinions, she proceeded to question him on the subject of books; her favourite authors were brought forward and dwelt upon with so rapturous a delight, that any young man of five and twenty must have been insensible indeed, not to become an immediate convert to the excellence of such works, however disregarded before. Their taste was strikingly alike. The same books, the same passages were idolized by each--or if any difference appeared, any objection arose, it lasted no longer than till the force of her arguments and the brightness of her eyes could be displayed. He acquiesced in all her decisions, caught all her enthusiasm; and long before his visit concluded, they conversed with the familiarity of a long-established acquaintance. "Well, Marianne," said Elinor, as soon as he had left them, "for ONE morning I think you have done pretty well. You have already ascertained Mr. Willoughby's opinion in almost every matter of importance. You know what he thinks of Cowper and Scott; you are certain of his estimating their beauties as he ought, and you have received every assurance of his admiring Pope no more than is proper. But how is your acquaintance to be long supported, under such extraordinary despatch of every subject for discourse? You will soon have exhausted each favourite topic. Another meeting will suffice to explain his sentiments on picturesque beauty, and second marriages, and then you can have nothing farther to ask."-- "Elinor," cried Marianne, "is this fair? is this just? are my ideas so scanty? But I see what you mean. I have been too much at my ease, too happy, too frank. I have erred against every common-place notion of decorum; I have been open and sincere where I ought to have been reserved, spiritless, dull, and deceitful--had I talked only of the weather and the roads, and had I spoken only once in ten minutes, this reproach would have been spared." "My love," said her mother, "you must not be offended with Elinor--she was only in jest. I should scold her myself, if she were capable of wishing to check the delight of your conversation with our new friend."-- Marianne was softened in a moment. Willoughby, on his side, gave every proof of his pleasure in their acquaintance, which an evident wish of improving it could offer. He came to them every day. To enquire after Marianne was at first his excuse; but the encouragement of his reception, to which every day gave greater kindness, made such an excuse unnecessary before it had ceased to be possible, by Marianne's perfect recovery. She was confined for some days to the house; but never had any confinement been less irksome. Willoughby was a young man of good abilities, quick imagination, lively spirits, and open, affectionate manners. He was exactly formed to engage Marianne's heart, for with all this, he joined not only a captivating person, but a natural ardour of mind which was now roused and increased by the example of her own, and which recommended him to her affection beyond every thing else. His society became gradually her most exquisite enjoyment. They read, they talked, they sang together; his musical talents were considerable; and he read with all the sensibility and spirit which Edward had unfortunately wanted. In Mrs. Dashwood's estimation he was as faultless as in Marianne's; and Elinor saw nothing to censure in him but a propensity, in which he strongly resembled and peculiarly delighted her sister, of saying too much what he thought on every occasion, without attention to persons or circumstances. In hastily forming and giving his opinion of other people, in sacrificing general politeness to the enjoyment of undivided attention where his heart was engaged, and in slighting too easily the forms of worldly propriety, he displayed a want of caution which Elinor could not approve, in spite of all that he and Marianne could say in its support. Marianne began now to perceive that the desperation which had seized her at sixteen and a half, of ever seeing a man who could satisfy her ideas of perfection, had been rash and unjustifiable. Willoughby was all that her fancy had delineated in that unhappy hour and in every brighter period, as capable of attaching her; and his behaviour declared his wishes to be in that respect as earnest, as his abilities were strong. Her mother too, in whose mind not one speculative thought of their marriage had been raised, by his prospect of riches, was led before the end of a week to hope and expect it; and secretly to congratulate herself on having gained two such sons-in-law as Edward and Willoughby. Colonel Brandon's partiality for Marianne, which had so early been discovered by his friends, now first became perceptible to Elinor, when it ceased to be noticed by them. Their attention and wit were drawn off to his more fortunate rival; and the raillery which the other had incurred before any partiality arose, was removed when his feelings began really to call for the ridicule so justly annexed to sensibility. Elinor was obliged, though unwillingly, to believe that the sentiments which Mrs. Jennings had assigned him for her own satisfaction, were now actually excited by her sister; and that however a general resemblance of disposition between the parties might forward the affection of Mr. Willoughby, an equally striking opposition of character was no hindrance to the regard of Colonel Brandon. She saw it with concern; for what could a silent man of five and thirty hope, when opposed to a very lively one of five and twenty? and as she could not even wish him successful, she heartily wished him indifferent. She liked him--in spite of his gravity and reserve, she beheld in him an object of interest. His manners, though serious, were mild; and his reserve appeared rather the result of some oppression of spirits than of any natural gloominess of temper. Sir John had dropped hints of past injuries and disappointments, which justified her belief of his being an unfortunate man, and she regarded him with respect and compassion. Perhaps she pitied and esteemed him the more because he was slighted by Willoughby and Marianne, who, prejudiced against him for being neither lively nor young, seemed resolved to undervalue his merits. "Brandon is just the kind of man," said Willoughby one day, when they were talking of him together, "whom every body speaks well of, and nobody cares about; whom all are delighted to see, and nobody remembers to talk to." "That is exactly what I think of him," cried Marianne. "Do not boast of it, however," said Elinor, "for it is injustice in both of you. He is highly esteemed by all the family at the park, and I never see him myself without taking pains to converse with him." "That he is patronised by YOU," replied Willoughby, "is certainly in his favour; but as for the esteem of the others, it is a reproach in itself. Who would submit to the indignity of being approved by such a woman as Lady Middleton and Mrs. Jennings, that could command the indifference of any body else?" "But perhaps the abuse of such people as yourself and Marianne will make amends for the regard of Lady Middleton and her mother. If their praise is censure, your censure may be praise, for they are not more undiscerning, than you are prejudiced and unjust." "In defence of your protege you can even be saucy." "My protege, as you call him, is a sensible man; and sense will always have attractions for me. Yes, Marianne, even in a man between thirty and forty. He has seen a great deal of the world; has been abroad, has read, and has a thinking mind. I have found him capable of giving me much information on various subjects; and he has always answered my inquiries with readiness of good-breeding and good nature." "That is to say," cried Marianne contemptuously, "he has told you, that in the East Indies the climate is hot, and the mosquitoes are troublesome." "He WOULD have told me so, I doubt not, had I made any such inquiries, but they happened to be points on which I had been previously informed." "Perhaps," said Willoughby, "his observations may have extended to the existence of nabobs, gold mohrs, and palanquins." "I may venture to say that HIS observations have stretched much further than your candour. But why should you dislike him?" "I do not dislike him. I consider him, on the contrary, as a very respectable man, who has every body's good word, and nobody's notice; who, has more money than he can spend, more time than he knows how to employ, and two new coats every year." "Add to which," cried Marianne, "that he has neither genius, taste, nor spirit. That his understanding has no brilliancy, his feelings no ardour, and his voice no expression." "You decide on his imperfections so much in the mass," replied Elinor, "and so much on the strength of your own imagination, that the commendation I am able to give of him is comparatively cold and insipid. I can only pronounce him to be a sensible man, well-bred, well-informed, of gentle address, and, I believe, possessing an amiable heart." "Miss Dashwood," cried Willoughby, "you are now using me unkindly. You are endeavouring to disarm me by reason, and to convince me against my will. But it will not do. You shall find me as stubborn as you can be artful. I have three unanswerable reasons for disliking Colonel Brandon; he threatened me with rain when I wanted it to be fine; he has found fault with the hanging of my curricle, and I cannot persuade him to buy my brown mare. If it will be any satisfaction to you, however, to be told, that I believe his character to be in other respects irreproachable, I am ready to confess it. And in return for an acknowledgment, which must give me some pain, you cannot deny me the privilege of disliking him as much as ever."

Chapter 10

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101060302/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/s/sense-and-sensibility/summary-and-analysis/chapter-10

Willoughby called early next day, and he and Marianne had a long, lively conversation during which they discovered, to Marianne's rapture, that "their taste was strikingly alike." Marianne was soon captivated by Willoughby, who came to visit every day: "His society became gradually her most exquisite enjoyment. They read, they talked, they sang together." Mrs. Dashwood found Willoughby "faultless." Elinor saw little to disapprove of in him except "a propensity in which he strongly resembled and peculiarly delighted her sister, of saying too much what he thought on every occasion." In the meantime, Elinor began to notice Colonel Brandon's partiality for Marianne and was sorry for the older man. Hearing hints from Sir John about the colonel's "past injuries and disappointments," she regarded him "with respect and compassion." She saw that shielded by a mask of reserve was a strength of character that didn't deserve the censure that Willoughby and Marianne insisted on giving him. Elinor rebuked them, declaring him to be "a sensible man, well-bred, well-informed, of gentle address . . . possessing an amiable heart." But they took her reproof lightly and continued to see the colonel as a subject for jesting.

In this chapter, Willoughby is presented with quiet humor as "exactly formed to engage Marianne's heart." However, despite his apparent attributes, we are held back from liking him too much by the subtle censure of the author. He says too much, gives his opinion of other people "hastily," and displays "a want of caution" which the eager Marianne enters into almost too willingly. Their criticism of Colonel Brandon is cruel, especially on Marianne's part since she has been given some indication of his favor towards her. It seems as if the couple is confusing what they believe to be their sincerity for what is actually flippancy. Elinor appears more and more to be the voice of the author. She is rarely satirized, in contrast to the constant parody of the others, and seems to possess a maturity which can serve as a guide for the behavior of all.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/1.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Brothers Karamazov/section_0_part_0.txt

The Brothers Karamazov.book 1.chapter 1

book 1, chapter 1

{"name": "Book 1, Chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-1-chapter-1", "summary": "The novel opens with the narrator telling us that Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov is the third son of Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, who died a \"dark and tragic death\" thirteen years ago. Instead of going straight to this juicy bit, though, the narrator decides to go into everything leading up to the death. So buckle your seatbelts, 'cause it's going to take him, oh, several hundred pages. We learn that Fyodor is the scum of the earth who makes oodles of money and lives a scandalous lifestyle. He had his first son, Dmitri, by his first wife, Adelaida Ivanovna Miusov, who came from an aristocratic family and was apparently quite a catch. No one is sure why she eloped with him in the first place, but she ended up abandoning him and their son to run off to Petersburg with a seminarian. She died before Fyodor could chase her there. After her death, Fyodor made a scene around town, drinking, sobbing, and shouting in the streets.", "analysis": ""}

PART I Book I. The History Of A Family Chapter I. Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, a land owner well known in our district in his own day, and still remembered among us owing to his gloomy and tragic death, which happened thirteen years ago, and which I shall describe in its proper place. For the present I will only say that this "landowner"--for so we used to call him, although he hardly spent a day of his life on his own estate--was a strange type, yet one pretty frequently to be met with, a type abject and vicious and at the same time senseless. But he was one of those senseless persons who are very well capable of looking after their worldly affairs, and, apparently, after nothing else. Fyodor Pavlovitch, for instance, began with next to nothing; his estate was of the smallest; he ran to dine at other men's tables, and fastened on them as a toady, yet at his death it appeared that he had a hundred thousand roubles in hard cash. At the same time, he was all his life one of the most senseless, fantastical fellows in the whole district. I repeat, it was not stupidity--the majority of these fantastical fellows are shrewd and intelligent enough--but just senselessness, and a peculiar national form of it. He was married twice, and had three sons, the eldest, Dmitri, by his first wife, and two, Ivan and Alexey, by his second. Fyodor Pavlovitch's first wife, Adelaida Ivanovna, belonged to a fairly rich and distinguished noble family, also landowners in our district, the Miuesovs. How it came to pass that an heiress, who was also a beauty, and moreover one of those vigorous, intelligent girls, so common in this generation, but sometimes also to be found in the last, could have married such a worthless, puny weakling, as we all called him, I won't attempt to explain. I knew a young lady of the last "romantic" generation who after some years of an enigmatic passion for a gentleman, whom she might quite easily have married at any moment, invented insuperable obstacles to their union, and ended by throwing herself one stormy night into a rather deep and rapid river from a high bank, almost a precipice, and so perished, entirely to satisfy her own caprice, and to be like Shakespeare's Ophelia. Indeed, if this precipice, a chosen and favorite spot of hers, had been less picturesque, if there had been a prosaic flat bank in its place, most likely the suicide would never have taken place. This is a fact, and probably there have been not a few similar instances in the last two or three generations. Adelaida Ivanovna Miuesov's action was similarly, no doubt, an echo of other people's ideas, and was due to the irritation caused by lack of mental freedom. She wanted, perhaps, to show her feminine independence, to override class distinctions and the despotism of her family. And a pliable imagination persuaded her, we must suppose, for a brief moment, that Fyodor Pavlovitch, in spite of his parasitic position, was one of the bold and ironical spirits of that progressive epoch, though he was, in fact, an ill-natured buffoon and nothing more. What gave the marriage piquancy was that it was preceded by an elopement, and this greatly captivated Adelaida Ivanovna's fancy. Fyodor Pavlovitch's position at the time made him specially eager for any such enterprise, for he was passionately anxious to make a career in one way or another. To attach himself to a good family and obtain a dowry was an alluring prospect. As for mutual love it did not exist apparently, either in the bride or in him, in spite of Adelaida Ivanovna's beauty. This was, perhaps, a unique case of the kind in the life of Fyodor Pavlovitch, who was always of a voluptuous temper, and ready to run after any petticoat on the slightest encouragement. She seems to have been the only woman who made no particular appeal to his senses. Immediately after the elopement Adelaida Ivanovna discerned in a flash that she had no feeling for her husband but contempt. The marriage accordingly showed itself in its true colors with extraordinary rapidity. Although the family accepted the event pretty quickly and apportioned the runaway bride her dowry, the husband and wife began to lead a most disorderly life, and there were everlasting scenes between them. It was said that the young wife showed incomparably more generosity and dignity than Fyodor Pavlovitch, who, as is now known, got hold of all her money up to twenty-five thousand roubles as soon as she received it, so that those thousands were lost to her for ever. The little village and the rather fine town house which formed part of her dowry he did his utmost for a long time to transfer to his name, by means of some deed of conveyance. He would probably have succeeded, merely from her moral fatigue and desire to get rid of him, and from the contempt and loathing he aroused by his persistent and shameless importunity. But, fortunately, Adelaida Ivanovna's family intervened and circumvented his greediness. It is known for a fact that frequent fights took place between the husband and wife, but rumor had it that Fyodor Pavlovitch did not beat his wife but was beaten by her, for she was a hot-tempered, bold, dark-browed, impatient woman, possessed of remarkable physical strength. Finally, she left the house and ran away from Fyodor Pavlovitch with a destitute divinity student, leaving Mitya, a child of three years old, in her husband's hands. Immediately Fyodor Pavlovitch introduced a regular harem into the house, and abandoned himself to orgies of drunkenness. In the intervals he used to drive all over the province, complaining tearfully to each and all of Adelaida Ivanovna's having left him, going into details too disgraceful for a husband to mention in regard to his own married life. What seemed to gratify him and flatter his self-love most was to play the ridiculous part of the injured husband, and to parade his woes with embellishments. "One would think that you'd got a promotion, Fyodor Pavlovitch, you seem so pleased in spite of your sorrow," scoffers said to him. Many even added that he was glad of a new comic part in which to play the buffoon, and that it was simply to make it funnier that he pretended to be unaware of his ludicrous position. But, who knows, it may have been simplicity. At last he succeeded in getting on the track of his runaway wife. The poor woman turned out to be in Petersburg, where she had gone with her divinity student, and where she had thrown herself into a life of complete emancipation. Fyodor Pavlovitch at once began bustling about, making preparations to go to Petersburg, with what object he could not himself have said. He would perhaps have really gone; but having determined to do so he felt at once entitled to fortify himself for the journey by another bout of reckless drinking. And just at that time his wife's family received the news of her death in Petersburg. She had died quite suddenly in a garret, according to one story, of typhus, or as another version had it, of starvation. Fyodor Pavlovitch was drunk when he heard of his wife's death, and the story is that he ran out into the street and began shouting with joy, raising his hands to Heaven: "Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace," but others say he wept without restraint like a little child, so much so that people were sorry for him, in spite of the repulsion he inspired. It is quite possible that both versions were true, that he rejoiced at his release, and at the same time wept for her who released him. As a general rule, people, even the wicked, are much more naive and simple-hearted than we suppose. And we ourselves are, too.

Book 1, Chapter 1

https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-1-chapter-1

The novel opens with the narrator telling us that Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov is the third son of Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, who died a "dark and tragic death" thirteen years ago. Instead of going straight to this juicy bit, though, the narrator decides to go into everything leading up to the death. So buckle your seatbelts, 'cause it's going to take him, oh, several hundred pages. We learn that Fyodor is the scum of the earth who makes oodles of money and lives a scandalous lifestyle. He had his first son, Dmitri, by his first wife, Adelaida Ivanovna Miusov, who came from an aristocratic family and was apparently quite a catch. No one is sure why she eloped with him in the first place, but she ended up abandoning him and their son to run off to Petersburg with a seminarian. She died before Fyodor could chase her there. After her death, Fyodor made a scene around town, drinking, sobbing, and shouting in the streets.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/book_3_chapters_6_to_11.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/The Brothers Karamazov/section_4_part_0.txt

The Brothers Karamazov.book 3.chapters 6-11

book 3 chapters 6-11

{"name": "Book III: Chapters 6-11", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219142226/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/b/the-brothers-karamazov/summary-and-analysis/part-1-book-iii-chapters-611", "summary": "Arriving at the Karamazov house, Alyosha finds his father almost drunk but still at the table with Ivan. They are listening to old Grigory and Smerdyakov arguing, and it is at this point that we learn more about the bastard Karamazov son. Smerdyakov is rather taciturn, somewhat morose, and naturally resents his position. Strangely, however, he even resents his foster parents. Smerdyakov is an enigma, plagued by jealousy, hatred, and epilepsy. In the household, he works as a cook. Years ago old Fyodor sent him off to Moscow for training, and since he returned he has functioned only in that capacity. He is a trustworthy sort, all believe, regardless of his sullenness, for they remember that he once returned 300 rubles to Fyodor, which the old man lost while drunk. Smerdyakov, at present, is arguing with his foster father as Alyosha arrives. He asserts that it is permissible for a man to renounce his faith in God in order to save his life. To prove that man cannot function by faith alone, he says that no man has enough faith to tell a mountain to move to the sea. He thinks, therefore, that this is reason enough to realize that man may deny God to save his life and later ask for repentance. Curiously, throughout the argument, he seems particularly eager to please and impress Ivan. After Karamazov tires of the argument, he sends the servants away, but the conversation manages to return to the subject of religion. In answer to their father's queries, Ivan insists that there is no God. Further, he says, there is no immortality. Alyosha, of course, maintains that God does exist and that through Him man can gain immortality. Karamazov changes the subject. He talks now of women and begins a long, drunken, and cynical narration centering upon Alyosha's mother. The attack is depraved. Karamazov delights in mocking his late wife's religious beliefs. He is so vicious, in fact, that Alyosha collapses and succumbs to a seizure exactly like the one that Karamazov described as afflicting Alyosha's mother. Ivan bitterly reminds his drunken father that the woman of whom he has spoken so crudely was also Ivan's mother, and, for a moment, old Karamazov is confused, but recalls then that Ivan and Alyosha did indeed have the same mother. The two are attempting to revive Alyosha as Dmitri dashes into the house. Karamazov is startled and runs for protection. When he hears Dmitri shout that Grushenka is in the house, the old man grows even more excited and fearful. Dmitri runs frantically through the house trying to discover Grushenka, then returns to the dining room, where old Karamazov begins screaming that Dmitri has been stealing money from him. Dmitri seizes his father, flings him to the floor, and kicks him in the head; then, before leaving, he threatens to return and kill the old man, shouting, \"Beware, old man, beware of your dreams, because I have my dream too.\" And he dashes out to continue his search for Grushenka. After Ivan and Alyosha bandage their father's wounds and put him to bed, Alyosha remains with him for a while; then he leaves to go talk with Katerina Ivanovna. He stops in the yard and talks a bit with Ivan, and this is the first time that Ivan has been cordial to his brother. Alyosha arrives at Madame Hohlakov's home and asks for Katerina. The girl is anxious about Dmitri and promises to help save him, although he seems not to want her help; she is positive, though, that his infatuation for Grushenka will pass. Alyosha is greatly surprised to hear Katerina call Grushenka by name and is even more surprised when he discovers that Grushenka has been hiding behind a screen, listening to their conversation. Katerina explains that Grushenka has just confessed to her that she will soon be reunited with a man whom she has loved for five years. Obviously Katerina is overjoyed at the news, and, as she explains the new turn of events to Alyosha, she impulsively kisses and fondles Grushenka, calling her endearing names. She asks Grushenka to affirm what she has just said, but Grushenka surprises them all. She becomes capricious and says that she just might change her mind. She also informs Katerina that she does not return the embraces Katerina has bestowed upon her. Katerina fumes. She has humbled herself in gratitude before Grushenka and is furious at the girl's flippancy. She lashes out with stinging, angry insults, but Grushenka merely laughs and walks out, leaving Katerina in hysterics. Alyosha also leaves the house, but on the way out he is stopped by a maid, who gives him a letter. She tells him that it is from Lise. Alyosha continues on his way back to the monastery but is stopped once more, this time by Dmitri. His brother is lighthearted and seems wholly unconcerned about the earlier events of the evening. He listens now to Alyosha explain what has happened between Katerina and Grushenka and seems delighted. He laughs at Grushenka's actions and calls her affectionately his \"she-devil.\" But suddenly his face darkens and he moans that he is a scoundrel. Nothing, he swears to Alyosha, \"can compare in baseness with the dishonor which I bear now at this very minute on my breast.\" The events of the night have been unnerving. Back at the monastery, Alyosha receives more bad news: Zossima's condition has worsened; he has only a short time to live. Deeply saddened by his family's sorrows, Alyosha nevertheless decides to remain close to the elder, for this man is also his father. Having made his decision, he begins to prepare for bed, and then remembers Lise's letter and reads it. It is a love letter; she says that she loves Alyosha very much and hopes to marry him when she is old enough. She apologizes sincerely for making fun of the young priest and implores him to come visit her.", "analysis": "Dostoevsky carefully details in this book the special sort of characterization needed for the enigmatic Smerdyakov, the son who will murder Karamazov. We learn, for example, that he \"seemed to despise everybody,\" including his real father and also his foster father. It is clear that he could conceivably murder either one, and in cold blood. Furthermore, we learn that in childhood \"he was very fond of hanging cats,\" certainly a sadistic and perverse pastime. As a complement to his psychological ills, he is physically sick; epilepsy, a disease he inherited from his idiot mother, overtakes him on occasion. Of late, nervous fits have attacked him increasingly, and it is one of these attacks that he later shams as his alibi when his innocence is questioned. In his argument with Grigory, put forward to impress the intellectual Ivan, Smerdyakov uses the most basic semantic logic to prove his point. But the argument shows that he is interested in questions similar to those that disturb Ivan. In this way, Dostoevsky sets up conflicting emotions within Ivan. Because of their like interests, he is drawn to his half-brother, but at the same time, with a Dostoevskian duality of emotion, he is repulsed and sees him as a \"mean soul.\" The vulgarity of old Karamazov is once more emphasized in this section. This time, in the presence of Alyosha, he crudely ridicules his son's mother. This is a particularly painful scene because we have been told that Alyosha remembers his mother with deep love and respect. The father's attack, then, believably brings on Alyosha's convulsions. Karamazov commits a verbal murder on Alyosha's memories, and it is significant, following Alyosha's collapse, that Karamazov does not realize that the same woman gave birth to both Ivan and Alyosha. In other words, the two sons are so different that the old man has completely forgotten that they had the same mother. In Chapter 9, when Dmitri unleashes an uncontrollable fit of anguish and knocks down first Grigory and later his father, Dostoevsky is tempering our credence in Dmitri's being a potential murderer. Both father and son are victims of powerful emotions, and both are passionate sensualists; their antagonism and hatred has collided over the same woman. It is likely that such viciousness as we witness might result in murder. Even Alyosha realizes the possibility of parricide within his family when he questions Ivan as to a man's right to assess another man and decide whether or not he is worthy to live. Ivan too realizes the potential of parricide as it smolders, for he answers Alyosha that \"one reptile will devour the other.\" In Chapter 10, we are introduced finally to the beautiful and paradoxical Katerina Ivanovna. Several times we have heard of this lovely and haughty woman, willing to devote herself to Dmitri in spite of his barbarous forays. Now we see her. She refuses to accept Dmitri's breaking of their engagement. And her resolve is so extreme that she even humbles herself before Grushenka. As for Grushenka, she turns out to be far more interesting than gossip suggests. She may or may not be waiting for a scoundrel who deserted her five years earlier. His return, incidentally, precipitates the pivotal action of the novel. Grushenka's mercurial qualities are quite thorough; she is whimsical and mischievous and does seem as though she might be, as Dmitri laughingly tags her, a \"she-devil.\" She is more than a tease, however, and immediately after the murder she realizes that she, in large part, is to blame for keeping both Dmitri and his father in suspense as to what she actually intends for them. Dmitri's confession of baseness to Alyosha is in reference to his retention of the 1,500 rubles that he saved from the night of the Grushenka orgy; this money he has not yet returned to Katerina. And his keeping it burdens his scheme of values with far greater dishonor than the fact that he spent the other half of the sum. Later, this anguish of Dmitri's over the money he did not spend convinces many people that such a man could not commit a murder. At the monastery, Alyosha still does not know why Zossima has ordered him to go into the world. \"Here was peace. Here was holiness\"; one can easily lose one's way in the world, Alyosha realizes, and go astray. It is exactly for these reasons, though, that the elder has asked him to go into the world. Alyosha is the one person who will be able to walk through confusion and darkness and not lose his footing. At this moment, his father, Katerina, Lise, Dmitri, and Grushenka are all waiting to talk with him again; his life's work is among the people of the world, who need his quiet example of love and respect."}

Chapter VI. Smerdyakov He did in fact find his father still at table. Though there was a dining- room in the house, the table was laid as usual in the drawing-room, which was the largest room, and furnished with old-fashioned ostentation. The furniture was white and very old, upholstered in old, red, silky material. In the spaces between the windows there were mirrors in elaborate white and gilt frames, of old-fashioned carving. On the walls, covered with white paper, which was torn in many places, there hung two large portraits--one of some prince who had been governor of the district thirty years before, and the other of some bishop, also long since dead. In the corner opposite the door there were several ikons, before which a lamp was lighted at nightfall ... not so much for devotional purposes as to light the room. Fyodor Pavlovitch used to go to bed very late, at three or four o'clock in the morning, and would wander about the room at night or sit in an arm-chair, thinking. This had become a habit with him. He often slept quite alone in the house, sending his servants to the lodge; but usually Smerdyakov remained, sleeping on a bench in the hall. When Alyosha came in, dinner was over, but coffee and preserves had been served. Fyodor Pavlovitch liked sweet things with brandy after dinner. Ivan was also at table, sipping coffee. The servants, Grigory and Smerdyakov, were standing by. Both the gentlemen and the servants seemed in singularly good spirits. Fyodor Pavlovitch was roaring with laughter. Before he entered the room, Alyosha heard the shrill laugh he knew so well, and could tell from the sound of it that his father had only reached the good-humored stage, and was far from being completely drunk. "Here he is! Here he is!" yelled Fyodor Pavlovitch, highly delighted at seeing Alyosha. "Join us. Sit down. Coffee is a lenten dish, but it's hot and good. I don't offer you brandy, you're keeping the fast. But would you like some? No; I'd better give you some of our famous liqueur. Smerdyakov, go to the cupboard, the second shelf on the right. Here are the keys. Look sharp!" Alyosha began refusing the liqueur. "Never mind. If you won't have it, we will," said Fyodor Pavlovitch, beaming. "But stay--have you dined?" "Yes," answered Alyosha, who had in truth only eaten a piece of bread and drunk a glass of kvas in the Father Superior's kitchen. "Though I should be pleased to have some hot coffee." "Bravo, my darling! He'll have some coffee. Does it want warming? No, it's boiling. It's capital coffee: Smerdyakov's making. My Smerdyakov's an artist at coffee and at fish patties, and at fish soup, too. You must come one day and have some fish soup. Let me know beforehand.... But, stay; didn't I tell you this morning to come home with your mattress and pillow and all? Have you brought your mattress? He he he!" "No, I haven't," said Alyosha, smiling, too. "Ah, but you were frightened, you were frightened this morning, weren't you? There, my darling, I couldn't do anything to vex you. Do you know, Ivan, I can't resist the way he looks one straight in the face and laughs? It makes me laugh all over. I'm so fond of him. Alyosha, let me give you my blessing--a father's blessing." Alyosha rose, but Fyodor Pavlovitch had already changed his mind. "No, no," he said. "I'll just make the sign of the cross over you, for now. Sit still. Now we've a treat for you, in your own line, too. It'll make you laugh. Balaam's ass has begun talking to us here--and how he talks! How he talks!" Balaam's ass, it appeared, was the valet, Smerdyakov. He was a young man of about four and twenty, remarkably unsociable and taciturn. Not that he was shy or bashful. On the contrary, he was conceited and seemed to despise everybody. But we must pause to say a few words about him now. He was brought up by Grigory and Marfa, but the boy grew up "with no sense of gratitude," as Grigory expressed it; he was an unfriendly boy, and seemed to look at the world mistrustfully. In his childhood he was very fond of hanging cats, and burying them with great ceremony. He used to dress up in a sheet as though it were a surplice, and sang, and waved some object over the dead cat as though it were a censer. All this he did on the sly, with the greatest secrecy. Grigory caught him once at this diversion and gave him a sound beating. He shrank into a corner and sulked there for a week. "He doesn't care for you or me, the monster," Grigory used to say to Marfa, "and he doesn't care for any one. Are you a human being?" he said, addressing the boy directly. "You're not a human being. You grew from the mildew in the bath-house.(2) That's what you are." Smerdyakov, it appeared afterwards, could never forgive him those words. Grigory taught him to read and write, and when he was twelve years old, began teaching him the Scriptures. But this teaching came to nothing. At the second or third lesson the boy suddenly grinned. "What's that for?" asked Grigory, looking at him threateningly from under his spectacles. "Oh, nothing. God created light on the first day, and the sun, moon, and stars on the fourth day. Where did the light come from on the first day?" Grigory was thunderstruck. The boy looked sarcastically at his teacher. There was something positively condescending in his expression. Grigory could not restrain himself. "I'll show you where!" he cried, and gave the boy a violent slap on the cheek. The boy took the slap without a word, but withdrew into his corner again for some days. A week later he had his first attack of the disease to which he was subject all the rest of his life--epilepsy. When Fyodor Pavlovitch heard of it, his attitude to the boy seemed changed at once. Till then he had taken no notice of him, though he never scolded him, and always gave him a copeck when he met him. Sometimes, when he was in good humor, he would send the boy something sweet from his table. But as soon as he heard of his illness, he showed an active interest in him, sent for a doctor, and tried remedies, but the disease turned out to be incurable. The fits occurred, on an average, once a month, but at various intervals. The fits varied too, in violence: some were light and some were very severe. Fyodor Pavlovitch strictly forbade Grigory to use corporal punishment to the boy, and began allowing him to come upstairs to him. He forbade him to be taught anything whatever for a time, too. One day when the boy was about fifteen, Fyodor Pavlovitch noticed him lingering by the bookcase, and reading the titles through the glass. Fyodor Pavlovitch had a fair number of books--over a hundred--but no one ever saw him reading. He at once gave Smerdyakov the key of the bookcase. "Come, read. You shall be my librarian. You'll be better sitting reading than hanging about the courtyard. Come, read this," and Fyodor Pavlovitch gave him _Evenings in a Cottage near Dikanka_. He read a little but didn't like it. He did not once smile, and ended by frowning. "Why? Isn't it funny?" asked Fyodor Pavlovitch. Smerdyakov did not speak. "Answer, stupid!" "It's all untrue," mumbled the boy, with a grin. "Then go to the devil! You have the soul of a lackey. Stay, here's Smaragdov's _Universal History_. That's all true. Read that." But Smerdyakov did not get through ten pages of Smaragdov. He thought it dull. So the bookcase was closed again. Shortly afterwards Marfa and Grigory reported to Fyodor Pavlovitch that Smerdyakov was gradually beginning to show an extraordinary fastidiousness. He would sit before his soup, take up his spoon and look into the soup, bend over it, examine it, take a spoonful and hold it to the light. "What is it? A beetle?" Grigory would ask. "A fly, perhaps," observed Marfa. The squeamish youth never answered, but he did the same with his bread, his meat, and everything he ate. He would hold a piece on his fork to the light, scrutinize it microscopically, and only after long deliberation decide to put it in his mouth. "Ach! What fine gentlemen's airs!" Grigory muttered, looking at him. When Fyodor Pavlovitch heard of this development in Smerdyakov he determined to make him his cook, and sent him to Moscow to be trained. He spent some years there and came back remarkably changed in appearance. He looked extraordinarily old for his age. His face had grown wrinkled, yellow, and strangely emasculate. In character he seemed almost exactly the same as before he went away. He was just as unsociable, and showed not the slightest inclination for any companionship. In Moscow, too, as we heard afterwards, he had always been silent. Moscow itself had little interest for him; he saw very little there, and took scarcely any notice of anything. He went once to the theater, but returned silent and displeased with it. On the other hand, he came back to us from Moscow well dressed, in a clean coat and clean linen. He brushed his clothes most scrupulously twice a day invariably, and was very fond of cleaning his smart calf boots with a special English polish, so that they shone like mirrors. He turned out a first-rate cook. Fyodor Pavlovitch paid him a salary, almost the whole of which Smerdyakov spent on clothes, pomade, perfumes, and such things. But he seemed to have as much contempt for the female sex as for men; he was discreet, almost unapproachable, with them. Fyodor Pavlovitch began to regard him rather differently. His fits were becoming more frequent, and on the days he was ill Marfa cooked, which did not suit Fyodor Pavlovitch at all. "Why are your fits getting worse?" asked Fyodor Pavlovitch, looking askance at his new cook. "Would you like to get married? Shall I find you a wife?" But Smerdyakov turned pale with anger, and made no reply. Fyodor Pavlovitch left him with an impatient gesture. The great thing was that he had absolute confidence in his honesty. It happened once, when Fyodor Pavlovitch was drunk, that he dropped in the muddy courtyard three hundred-rouble notes which he had only just received. He only missed them next day, and was just hastening to search his pockets when he saw the notes lying on the table. Where had they come from? Smerdyakov had picked them up and brought them in the day before. "Well, my lad, I've never met any one like you," Fyodor Pavlovitch said shortly, and gave him ten roubles. We may add that he not only believed in his honesty, but had, for some reason, a liking for him, although the young man looked as morosely at him as at every one and was always silent. He rarely spoke. If it had occurred to any one to wonder at the time what the young man was interested in, and what was in his mind, it would have been impossible to tell by looking at him. Yet he used sometimes to stop suddenly in the house, or even in the yard or street, and would stand still for ten minutes, lost in thought. A physiognomist studying his face would have said that there was no thought in it, no reflection, but only a sort of contemplation. There is a remarkable picture by the painter Kramskoy, called "Contemplation." There is a forest in winter, and on a roadway through the forest, in absolute solitude, stands a peasant in a torn kaftan and bark shoes. He stands, as it were, lost in thought. Yet he is not thinking; he is "contemplating." If any one touched him he would start and look at one as though awakening and bewildered. It's true he would come to himself immediately; but if he were asked what he had been thinking about, he would remember nothing. Yet probably he has, hidden within himself, the impression which had dominated him during the period of contemplation. Those impressions are dear to him and no doubt he hoards them imperceptibly, and even unconsciously. How and why, of course, he does not know either. He may suddenly, after hoarding impressions for many years, abandon everything and go off to Jerusalem on a pilgrimage for his soul's salvation, or perhaps he will suddenly set fire to his native village, and perhaps do both. There are a good many "contemplatives" among the peasantry. Well, Smerdyakov was probably one of them, and he probably was greedily hoarding up his impressions, hardly knowing why. Chapter VII. The Controversy But Balaam's ass had suddenly spoken. The subject was a strange one. Grigory had gone in the morning to make purchases, and had heard from the shopkeeper Lukyanov the story of a Russian soldier which had appeared in the newspaper of that day. This soldier had been taken prisoner in some remote part of Asia, and was threatened with an immediate agonizing death if he did not renounce Christianity and follow Islam. He refused to deny his faith, and was tortured, flayed alive, and died, praising and glorifying Christ. Grigory had related the story at table. Fyodor Pavlovitch always liked, over the dessert after dinner, to laugh and talk, if only with Grigory. This afternoon he was in a particularly good-humored and expansive mood. Sipping his brandy and listening to the story, he observed that they ought to make a saint of a soldier like that, and to take his skin to some monastery. "That would make the people flock, and bring the money in." Grigory frowned, seeing that Fyodor Pavlovitch was by no means touched, but, as usual, was beginning to scoff. At that moment Smerdyakov, who was standing by the door, smiled. Smerdyakov often waited at table towards the end of dinner, and since Ivan's arrival in our town he had done so every day. "What are you grinning at?" asked Fyodor Pavlovitch, catching the smile instantly, and knowing that it referred to Grigory. "Well, my opinion is," Smerdyakov began suddenly and unexpectedly in a loud voice, "that if that laudable soldier's exploit was so very great there would have been, to my thinking, no sin in it if he had on such an emergency renounced, so to speak, the name of Christ and his own christening, to save by that same his life, for good deeds, by which, in the course of years to expiate his cowardice." "How could it not be a sin? You're talking nonsense. For that you'll go straight to hell and be roasted there like mutton," put in Fyodor Pavlovitch. It was at this point that Alyosha came in, and Fyodor Pavlovitch, as we have seen, was highly delighted at his appearance. "We're on your subject, your subject," he chuckled gleefully, making Alyosha sit down to listen. "As for mutton, that's not so, and there'll be nothing there for this, and there shouldn't be either, if it's according to justice," Smerdyakov maintained stoutly. "How do you mean 'according to justice'?" Fyodor Pavlovitch cried still more gayly, nudging Alyosha with his knee. "He's a rascal, that's what he is!" burst from Grigory. He looked Smerdyakov wrathfully in the face. "As for being a rascal, wait a little, Grigory Vassilyevitch," answered Smerdyakov with perfect composure. "You'd better consider yourself that, once I am taken prisoner by the enemies of the Christian race, and they demand from me to curse the name of God and to renounce my holy christening, I am fully entitled to act by my own reason, since there would be no sin in it." "But you've said that before. Don't waste words. Prove it," cried Fyodor Pavlovitch. "Soup-maker!" muttered Grigory contemptuously. "As for being a soup-maker, wait a bit, too, and consider for yourself, Grigory Vassilyevitch, without abusing me. For as soon as I say to those enemies, 'No, I'm not a Christian, and I curse my true God,' then at once, by God's high judgment, I become immediately and specially anathema accursed, and am cut off from the Holy Church, exactly as though I were a heathen, so that at that very instant, not only when I say it aloud, but when I think of saying it, before a quarter of a second has passed, I am cut off. Is that so or not, Grigory Vassilyevitch?" He addressed Grigory with obvious satisfaction, though he was really answering Fyodor Pavlovitch's questions, and was well aware of it, and intentionally pretending that Grigory had asked the questions. "Ivan," cried Fyodor Pavlovitch suddenly, "stoop down for me to whisper. He's got this all up for your benefit. He wants you to praise him. Praise him." Ivan listened with perfect seriousness to his father's excited whisper. "Stay, Smerdyakov, be quiet a minute," cried Fyodor Pavlovitch once more. "Ivan, your ear again." Ivan bent down again with a perfectly grave face. "I love you as I do Alyosha. Don't think I don't love you. Some brandy?" "Yes.--But you're rather drunk yourself," thought Ivan, looking steadily at his father. He was watching Smerdyakov with great curiosity. "You're anathema accursed, as it is," Grigory suddenly burst out, "and how dare you argue, you rascal, after that, if--" "Don't scold him, Grigory, don't scold him," Fyodor Pavlovitch cut him short. "You should wait, Grigory Vassilyevitch, if only a short time, and listen, for I haven't finished all I had to say. For at the very moment I become accursed, at that same highest moment, I become exactly like a heathen, and my christening is taken off me and becomes of no avail. Isn't that so?" "Make haste and finish, my boy," Fyodor Pavlovitch urged him, sipping from his wine-glass with relish. "And if I've ceased to be a Christian, then I told no lie to the enemy when they asked whether I was a Christian or not a Christian, seeing I had already been relieved by God Himself of my Christianity by reason of the thought alone, before I had time to utter a word to the enemy. And if I have already been discharged, in what manner and with what sort of justice can I be held responsible as a Christian in the other world for having denied Christ, when, through the very thought alone, before denying Him I had been relieved from my christening? If I'm no longer a Christian, then I can't renounce Christ, for I've nothing then to renounce. Who will hold an unclean Tatar responsible, Grigory Vassilyevitch, even in heaven, for not having been born a Christian? And who would punish him for that, considering that you can't take two skins off one ox? For God Almighty Himself, even if He did make the Tatar responsible, when he dies would give him the smallest possible punishment, I imagine (since he must be punished), judging that he is not to blame if he has come into the world an unclean heathen, from heathen parents. The Lord God can't surely take a Tatar and say he was a Christian? That would mean that the Almighty would tell a real untruth. And can the Lord of Heaven and earth tell a lie, even in one word?" Grigory was thunderstruck and looked at the orator, his eyes nearly starting out of his head. Though he did not clearly understand what was said, he had caught something in this rigmarole, and stood, looking like a man who has just hit his head against a wall. Fyodor Pavlovitch emptied his glass and went off into his shrill laugh. "Alyosha! Alyosha! What do you say to that! Ah, you casuist! He must have been with the Jesuits, somewhere, Ivan. Oh, you stinking Jesuit, who taught you? But you're talking nonsense, you casuist, nonsense, nonsense, nonsense. Don't cry, Grigory, we'll reduce him to smoke and ashes in a moment. Tell me this, O ass; you may be right before your enemies, but you have renounced your faith all the same in your own heart, and you say yourself that in that very hour you became anathema accursed. And if once you're anathema they won't pat you on the head for it in hell. What do you say to that, my fine Jesuit?" "There is no doubt that I have renounced it in my own heart, but there was no special sin in that. Or if there was sin, it was the most ordinary." "How's that the most ordinary?" "You lie, accursed one!" hissed Grigory. "Consider yourself, Grigory Vassilyevitch," Smerdyakov went on, staid and unruffled, conscious of his triumph, but, as it were, generous to the vanquished foe. "Consider yourself, Grigory Vassilyevitch; it is said in the Scripture that if you have faith, even as a mustard seed, and bid a mountain move into the sea, it will move without the least delay at your bidding. Well, Grigory Vassilyevitch, if I'm without faith and you have so great a faith that you are continually swearing at me, you try yourself telling this mountain, not to move into the sea for that's a long way off, but even to our stinking little river which runs at the bottom of the garden. You'll see for yourself that it won't budge, but will remain just where it is however much you shout at it, and that shows, Grigory Vassilyevitch, that you haven't faith in the proper manner, and only abuse others about it. Again, taking into consideration that no one in our day, not only you, but actually no one, from the highest person to the lowest peasant, can shove mountains into the sea--except perhaps some one man in the world, or, at most, two, and they most likely are saving their souls in secret somewhere in the Egyptian desert, so you wouldn't find them--if so it be, if all the rest have no faith, will God curse all the rest? that is, the population of the whole earth, except about two hermits in the desert, and in His well-known mercy will He not forgive one of them? And so I'm persuaded that though I may once have doubted I shall be forgiven if I shed tears of repentance." "Stay!" cried Fyodor Pavlovitch, in a transport of delight. "So you do suppose there are two who can move mountains? Ivan, make a note of it, write it down. There you have the Russian all over!" "You're quite right in saying it's characteristic of the people's faith," Ivan assented, with an approving smile. "You agree. Then it must be so, if you agree. It's true, isn't it, Alyosha? That's the Russian faith all over, isn't it?" "No, Smerdyakov has not the Russian faith at all," said Alyosha firmly and gravely. "I'm not talking about his faith. I mean those two in the desert, only that idea. Surely that's Russian, isn't it?" "Yes, that's purely Russian," said Alyosha smiling. "Your words are worth a gold piece, O ass, and I'll give it to you to-day. But as to the rest you talk nonsense, nonsense, nonsense. Let me tell you, stupid, that we here are all of little faith, only from carelessness, because we haven't time; things are too much for us, and, in the second place, the Lord God has given us so little time, only twenty-four hours in the day, so that one hasn't even time to get sleep enough, much less to repent of one's sins. While you have denied your faith to your enemies when you'd nothing else to think about but to show your faith! So I consider, brother, that it constitutes a sin." "Constitute a sin it may, but consider yourself, Grigory Vassilyevitch, that it only extenuates it, if it does constitute. If I had believed then in very truth, as I ought to have believed, then it really would have been sinful if I had not faced tortures for my faith, and had gone over to the pagan Mohammedan faith. But, of course, it wouldn't have come to torture then, because I should only have had to say at that instant to the mountain, 'Move and crush the tormentor,' and it would have moved and at the very instant have crushed him like a black-beetle, and I should have walked away as though nothing had happened, praising and glorifying God. But, suppose at that very moment I had tried all that, and cried to that mountain, 'Crush these tormentors,' and it hadn't crushed them, how could I have helped doubting, pray, at such a time, and at such a dread hour of mortal terror? And apart from that, I should know already that I could not attain to the fullness of the Kingdom of Heaven (for since the mountain had not moved at my word, they could not think very much of my faith up aloft, and there could be no very great reward awaiting me in the world to come). So why should I let them flay the skin off me as well, and to no good purpose? For, even though they had flayed my skin half off my back, even then the mountain would not have moved at my word or at my cry. And at such a moment not only doubt might come over one but one might lose one's reason from fear, so that one would not be able to think at all. And, therefore, how should I be particularly to blame if not seeing my advantage or reward there or here, I should, at least, save my skin. And so trusting fully in the grace of the Lord I should cherish the hope that I might be altogether forgiven." Chapter VIII. Over The Brandy The controversy was over. But, strange to say, Fyodor Pavlovitch, who had been so gay, suddenly began frowning. He frowned and gulped brandy, and it was already a glass too much. "Get along with you, Jesuits!" he cried to the servants. "Go away, Smerdyakov. I'll send you the gold piece I promised you to-day, but be off! Don't cry, Grigory. Go to Marfa. She'll comfort you and put you to bed. The rascals won't let us sit in peace after dinner," he snapped peevishly, as the servants promptly withdrew at his word. "Smerdyakov always pokes himself in now, after dinner. It's you he's so interested in. What have you done to fascinate him?" he added to Ivan. "Nothing whatever," answered Ivan. "He's pleased to have a high opinion of me; he's a lackey and a mean soul. Raw material for revolution, however, when the time comes." "For revolution?" "There will be others and better ones. But there will be some like him as well. His kind will come first, and better ones after." "And when will the time come?" "The rocket will go off and fizzle out, perhaps. The peasants are not very fond of listening to these soup-makers, so far." "Ah, brother, but a Balaam's ass like that thinks and thinks, and the devil knows where he gets to." "He's storing up ideas," said Ivan, smiling. "You see, I know he can't bear me, nor any one else, even you, though you fancy that he has a high opinion of you. Worse still with Alyosha, he despises Alyosha. But he doesn't steal, that's one thing, and he's not a gossip, he holds his tongue, and doesn't wash our dirty linen in public. He makes capital fish pasties too. But, damn him, is he worth talking about so much?" "Of course he isn't." "And as for the ideas he may be hatching, the Russian peasant, generally speaking, needs thrashing. That I've always maintained. Our peasants are swindlers, and don't deserve to be pitied, and it's a good thing they're still flogged sometimes. Russia is rich in birches. If they destroyed the forests, it would be the ruin of Russia. I stand up for the clever people. We've left off thrashing the peasants, we've grown so clever, but they go on thrashing themselves. And a good thing too. 'For with what measure ye mete it shall be measured to you again,' or how does it go? Anyhow, it will be measured. But Russia's all swinishness. My dear, if you only knew how I hate Russia.... That is, not Russia, but all this vice! But maybe I mean Russia. _Tout cela c'est de la cochonnerie_.... Do you know what I like? I like wit." "You've had another glass. That's enough." "Wait a bit. I'll have one more, and then another, and then I'll stop. No, stay, you interrupted me. At Mokroe I was talking to an old man, and he told me: 'There's nothing we like so much as sentencing girls to be thrashed, and we always give the lads the job of thrashing them. And the girl he has thrashed to-day, the young man will ask in marriage to-morrow. So it quite suits the girls, too,' he said. There's a set of de Sades for you! But it's clever, anyway. Shall we go over and have a look at it, eh? Alyosha, are you blushing? Don't be bashful, child. I'm sorry I didn't stay to dinner at the Superior's and tell the monks about the girls at Mokroe. Alyosha, don't be angry that I offended your Superior this morning. I lost my temper. If there is a God, if He exists, then, of course, I'm to blame, and I shall have to answer for it. But if there isn't a God at all, what do they deserve, your fathers? It's not enough to cut their heads off, for they keep back progress. Would you believe it, Ivan, that that lacerates my sentiments? No, you don't believe it as I see from your eyes. You believe what people say, that I'm nothing but a buffoon. Alyosha, do you believe that I'm nothing but a buffoon?" "No, I don't believe it." "And I believe you don't, and that you speak the truth. You look sincere and you speak sincerely. But not Ivan. Ivan's supercilious.... I'd make an end of your monks, though, all the same. I'd take all that mystic stuff and suppress it, once for all, all over Russia, so as to bring all the fools to reason. And the gold and the silver that would flow into the mint!" "But why suppress it?" asked Ivan. "That Truth may prevail. That's why." "Well, if Truth were to prevail, you know, you'd be the first to be robbed and suppressed." "Ah! I dare say you're right. Ah, I'm an ass!" burst out Fyodor Pavlovitch, striking himself lightly on the forehead. "Well, your monastery may stand then, Alyosha, if that's how it is. And we clever people will sit snug and enjoy our brandy. You know, Ivan, it must have been so ordained by the Almighty Himself. Ivan, speak, is there a God or not? Stay, speak the truth, speak seriously. Why are you laughing again?" "I'm laughing that you should have made a clever remark just now about Smerdyakov's belief in the existence of two saints who could move mountains." "Why, am I like him now, then?" "Very much." "Well, that shows I'm a Russian, too, and I have a Russian characteristic. And you may be caught in the same way, though you are a philosopher. Shall I catch you? What do you bet that I'll catch you to-morrow. Speak, all the same, is there a God, or not? Only, be serious. I want you to be serious now." "No, there is no God." "Alyosha, is there a God?" "There is." "Ivan, and is there immortality of some sort, just a little, just a tiny bit?" "There is no immortality either." "None at all?" "None at all." "There's absolute nothingness then. Perhaps there is just something? Anything is better than nothing!" "Absolute nothingness." "Alyosha, is there immortality?" "There is." "God and immortality?" "God and immortality. In God is immortality." "H'm! It's more likely Ivan's right. Good Lord! to think what faith, what force of all kinds, man has lavished for nothing, on that dream, and for how many thousand years. Who is it laughing at man? Ivan! For the last time, once for all, is there a God or not? I ask for the last time!" "And for the last time there is not." "Who is laughing at mankind, Ivan?" "It must be the devil," said Ivan, smiling. "And the devil? Does he exist?" "No, there's no devil either." "It's a pity. Damn it all, what wouldn't I do to the man who first invented God! Hanging on a bitter aspen tree would be too good for him." "There would have been no civilization if they hadn't invented God." "Wouldn't there have been? Without God?" "No. And there would have been no brandy either. But I must take your brandy away from you, anyway." "Stop, stop, stop, dear boy, one more little glass. I've hurt Alyosha's feelings. You're not angry with me, Alyosha? My dear little Alexey!" "No, I am not angry. I know your thoughts. Your heart is better than your head." "My heart better than my head, is it? Oh, Lord! And that from you. Ivan, do you love Alyosha?" "Yes." "You must love him" (Fyodor Pavlovitch was by this time very drunk). "Listen, Alyosha, I was rude to your elder this morning. But I was excited. But there's wit in that elder, don't you think, Ivan?" "Very likely." "There is, there is. _Il y a du Piron la-dedans._ He's a Jesuit, a Russian one, that is. As he's an honorable person there's a hidden indignation boiling within him at having to pretend and affect holiness." "But, of course, he believes in God." "Not a bit of it. Didn't you know? Why, he tells every one so, himself. That is, not every one, but all the clever people who come to him. He said straight out to Governor Schultz not long ago: '_Credo_, but I don't know in what.' " "Really?" "He really did. But I respect him. There's something of Mephistopheles about him, or rather of 'The hero of our time' ... Arbenin, or what's his name?... You see, he's a sensualist. He's such a sensualist that I should be afraid for my daughter or my wife if she went to confess to him. You know, when he begins telling stories.... The year before last he invited us to tea, tea with liqueur (the ladies send him liqueur), and began telling us about old times till we nearly split our sides.... Especially how he once cured a paralyzed woman. 'If my legs were not bad I know a dance I could dance you,' he said. What do you say to that? 'I've plenty of tricks in my time,' said he. He did Dernidov, the merchant, out of sixty thousand." "What, he stole it?" "He brought him the money as a man he could trust, saying, 'Take care of it for me, friend, there'll be a police search at my place to-morrow.' And he kept it. 'You have given it to the Church,' he declared. I said to him: 'You're a scoundrel,' I said. 'No,' said he, 'I'm not a scoundrel, but I'm broad-minded.' But that wasn't he, that was some one else. I've muddled him with some one else ... without noticing it. Come, another glass and that's enough. Take away the bottle, Ivan. I've been telling lies. Why didn't you stop me, Ivan, and tell me I was lying?" "I knew you'd stop of yourself." "That's a lie. You did it from spite, from simple spite against me. You despise me. You have come to me and despised me in my own house." "Well, I'm going away. You've had too much brandy." "I've begged you for Christ's sake to go to Tchermashnya for a day or two, and you don't go." "I'll go to-morrow if you're so set upon it." "You won't go. You want to keep an eye on me. That's what you want, spiteful fellow. That's why you won't go." The old man persisted. He had reached that state of drunkenness when the drunkard who has till then been inoffensive tries to pick a quarrel and to assert himself. "Why are you looking at me? Why do you look like that? Your eyes look at me and say, 'You ugly drunkard!' Your eyes are mistrustful. They're contemptuous.... You've come here with some design. Alyosha, here, looks at me and his eyes shine. Alyosha doesn't despise me. Alexey, you mustn't love Ivan." "Don't be ill-tempered with my brother. Leave off attacking him," Alyosha said emphatically. "Oh, all right. Ugh, my head aches. Take away the brandy, Ivan. It's the third time I've told you." He mused, and suddenly a slow, cunning grin spread over his face. "Don't be angry with a feeble old man, Ivan. I know you don't love me, but don't be angry all the same. You've nothing to love me for. You go to Tchermashnya. I'll come to you myself and bring you a present. I'll show you a little wench there. I've had my eye on her a long time. She's still running about bare-foot. Don't be afraid of bare-footed wenches--don't despise them--they're pearls!" And he kissed his hand with a smack. "To my thinking," he revived at once, seeming to grow sober the instant he touched on his favorite topic. "To my thinking ... Ah, you boys! You children, little sucking-pigs, to my thinking ... I never thought a woman ugly in my life--that's been my rule! Can you understand that? How could you understand it? You've milk in your veins, not blood. You're not out of your shells yet. My rule has been that you can always find something devilishly interesting in every woman that you wouldn't find in any other. Only, one must know how to find it, that's the point! That's a talent! To my mind there are no ugly women. The very fact that she is a woman is half the battle ... but how could you understand that? Even in _vieilles filles_, even in them you may discover something that makes you simply wonder that men have been such fools as to let them grow old without noticing them. Bare-footed girls or unattractive ones, you must take by surprise. Didn't you know that? You must astound them till they're fascinated, upset, ashamed that such a gentleman should fall in love with such a little slut. It's a jolly good thing that there always are and will be masters and slaves in the world, so there always will be a little maid- of-all-work and her master, and you know, that's all that's needed for happiness. Stay ... listen, Alyosha, I always used to surprise your mother, but in a different way. I paid no attention to her at all, but all at once, when the minute came, I'd be all devotion to her, crawl on my knees, kiss her feet, and I always, always--I remember it as though it were to-day--reduced her to that tinkling, quiet, nervous, queer little laugh. It was peculiar to her. I knew her attacks always used to begin like that. The next day she would begin shrieking hysterically, and this little laugh was not a sign of delight, though it made a very good counterfeit. That's the great thing, to know how to take every one. Once Belyavsky--he was a handsome fellow, and rich--used to like to come here and hang about her--suddenly gave me a slap in the face in her presence. And she--such a mild sheep--why, I thought she would have knocked me down for that blow. How she set on me! 'You're beaten, beaten now,' she said. 'You've taken a blow from him. You have been trying to sell me to him,' she said.... 'And how dared he strike you in my presence! Don't dare come near me again, never, never! Run at once, challenge him to a duel!'... I took her to the monastery then to bring her to her senses. The holy Fathers prayed her back to reason. But I swear, by God, Alyosha, I never insulted the poor crazy girl! Only once, perhaps, in the first year; then she was very fond of praying. She used to keep the feasts of Our Lady particularly and used to turn me out of her room then. I'll knock that mysticism out of her, thought I! 'Here,' said I, 'you see your holy image. Here it is. Here I take it down. You believe it's miraculous, but here, I'll spit on it directly and nothing will happen to me for it!'... When she saw it, good Lord! I thought she would kill me. But she only jumped up, wrung her hands, then suddenly hid her face in them, began trembling all over and fell on the floor ... fell all of a heap. Alyosha, Alyosha, what's the matter?" The old man jumped up in alarm. From the time he had begun speaking about his mother, a change had gradually come over Alyosha's face. He flushed crimson, his eyes glowed, his lips quivered. The old sot had gone spluttering on, noticing nothing, till the moment when something very strange happened to Alyosha. Precisely what he was describing in the crazy woman was suddenly repeated with Alyosha. He jumped up from his seat exactly as his mother was said to have done, wrung his hands, hid his face in them, and fell back in his chair, shaking all over in an hysterical paroxysm of sudden violent, silent weeping. His extraordinary resemblance to his mother particularly impressed the old man. "Ivan, Ivan! Water, quickly! It's like her, exactly as she used to be then, his mother. Spurt some water on him from your mouth, that's what I used to do to her. He's upset about his mother, his mother," he muttered to Ivan. "But she was my mother, too, I believe, his mother. Was she not?" said Ivan, with uncontrolled anger and contempt. The old man shrank before his flashing eyes. But something very strange had happened, though only for a second; it seemed really to have escaped the old man's mind that Alyosha's mother actually was the mother of Ivan too. "Your mother?" he muttered, not understanding. "What do you mean? What mother are you talking about? Was she?... Why, damn it! of course she was yours too! Damn it! My mind has never been so darkened before. Excuse me, why, I was thinking, Ivan.... He he he!" He stopped. A broad, drunken, half-senseless grin overspread his face. At that moment a fearful noise and clamor was heard in the hall, there were violent shouts, the door was flung open, and Dmitri burst into the room. The old man rushed to Ivan in terror. "He'll kill me! He'll kill me! Don't let him get at me!" he screamed, clinging to the skirt of Ivan's coat. Chapter IX. The Sensualists Grigory and Smerdyakov ran into the room after Dmitri. They had been struggling with him in the passage, refusing to admit him, acting on instructions given them by Fyodor Pavlovitch some days before. Taking advantage of the fact that Dmitri stopped a moment on entering the room to look about him, Grigory ran round the table, closed the double doors on the opposite side of the room leading to the inner apartments, and stood before the closed doors, stretching wide his arms, prepared to defend the entrance, so to speak, with the last drop of his blood. Seeing this, Dmitri uttered a scream rather than a shout and rushed at Grigory. "Then she's there! She's hidden there! Out of the way, scoundrel!" He tried to pull Grigory away, but the old servant pushed him back. Beside himself with fury, Dmitri struck out, and hit Grigory with all his might. The old man fell like a log, and Dmitri, leaping over him, broke in the door. Smerdyakov remained pale and trembling at the other end of the room, huddling close to Fyodor Pavlovitch. "She's here!" shouted Dmitri. "I saw her turn towards the house just now, but I couldn't catch her. Where is she? Where is she?" That shout, "She's here!" produced an indescribable effect on Fyodor Pavlovitch. All his terror left him. "Hold him! Hold him!" he cried, and dashed after Dmitri. Meanwhile Grigory had got up from the floor, but still seemed stunned. Ivan and Alyosha ran after their father. In the third room something was heard to fall on the floor with a ringing crash: it was a large glass vase--not an expensive one--on a marble pedestal which Dmitri had upset as he ran past it. "At him!" shouted the old man. "Help!" Ivan and Alyosha caught the old man and were forcibly bringing him back. "Why do you run after him? He'll murder you outright," Ivan cried wrathfully at his father. "Ivan! Alyosha! She must be here. Grushenka's here. He said he saw her himself, running." He was choking. He was not expecting Grushenka at the time, and the sudden news that she was here made him beside himself. He was trembling all over. He seemed frantic. "But you've seen for yourself that she hasn't come," cried Ivan. "But she may have come by that other entrance." "You know that entrance is locked, and you have the key." Dmitri suddenly reappeared in the drawing-room. He had, of course, found the other entrance locked, and the key actually was in Fyodor Pavlovitch's pocket. The windows of all the rooms were also closed, so Grushenka could not have come in anywhere nor have run out anywhere. "Hold him!" shrieked Fyodor Pavlovitch, as soon as he saw him again. "He's been stealing money in my bedroom." And tearing himself from Ivan he rushed again at Dmitri. But Dmitri threw up both hands and suddenly clutched the old man by the two tufts of hair that remained on his temples, tugged at them, and flung him with a crash on the floor. He kicked him two or three times with his heel in the face. The old man moaned shrilly. Ivan, though not so strong as Dmitri, threw his arms round him, and with all his might pulled him away. Alyosha helped him with his slender strength, holding Dmitri in front. "Madman! You've killed him!" cried Ivan. "Serve him right!" shouted Dmitri breathlessly. "If I haven't killed him, I'll come again and kill him. You can't protect him!" "Dmitri! Go away at once!" cried Alyosha commandingly. "Alexey! You tell me. It's only you I can believe; was she here just now, or not? I saw her myself creeping this way by the fence from the lane. I shouted, she ran away." "I swear she's not been here, and no one expected her." "But I saw her.... So she must ... I'll find out at once where she is.... Good-by, Alexey! Not a word to AEsop about the money now. But go to Katerina Ivanovna at once and be sure to say, 'He sends his compliments to you!' Compliments, his compliments! Just compliments and farewell! Describe the scene to her." Meanwhile Ivan and Grigory had raised the old man and seated him in an arm-chair. His face was covered with blood, but he was conscious and listened greedily to Dmitri's cries. He was still fancying that Grushenka really was somewhere in the house. Dmitri looked at him with hatred as he went out. "I don't repent shedding your blood!" he cried. "Beware, old man, beware of your dream, for I have my dream, too. I curse you, and disown you altogether." He ran out of the room. "She's here. She must be here. Smerdyakov! Smerdyakov!" the old man wheezed, scarcely audibly, beckoning to him with his finger. "No, she's not here, you old lunatic!" Ivan shouted at him angrily. "Here, he's fainting! Water! A towel! Make haste, Smerdyakov!" Smerdyakov ran for water. At last they got the old man undressed, and put him to bed. They wrapped a wet towel round his head. Exhausted by the brandy, by his violent emotion, and the blows he had received, he shut his eyes and fell asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow. Ivan and Alyosha went back to the drawing-room. Smerdyakov removed the fragments of the broken vase, while Grigory stood by the table looking gloomily at the floor. "Shouldn't you put a wet bandage on your head and go to bed, too?" Alyosha said to him. "We'll look after him. My brother gave you a terrible blow--on the head." "He's insulted me!" Grigory articulated gloomily and distinctly. "He's 'insulted' his father, not only you," observed Ivan with a forced smile. "I used to wash him in his tub. He's insulted me," repeated Grigory. "Damn it all, if I hadn't pulled him away perhaps he'd have murdered him. It wouldn't take much to do for AEsop, would it?" whispered Ivan to Alyosha. "God forbid!" cried Alyosha. "Why should He forbid?" Ivan went on in the same whisper, with a malignant grimace. "One reptile will devour the other. And serve them both right, too." Alyosha shuddered. "Of course I won't let him be murdered as I didn't just now. Stay here, Alyosha, I'll go for a turn in the yard. My head's begun to ache." Alyosha went to his father's bedroom and sat by his bedside behind the screen for about an hour. The old man suddenly opened his eyes and gazed for a long while at Alyosha, evidently remembering and meditating. All at once his face betrayed extraordinary excitement. "Alyosha," he whispered apprehensively, "where's Ivan?" "In the yard. He's got a headache. He's on the watch." "Give me that looking-glass. It stands over there. Give it me." Alyosha gave him a little round folding looking-glass which stood on the chest of drawers. The old man looked at himself in it; his nose was considerably swollen, and on the left side of his forehead there was a rather large crimson bruise. "What does Ivan say? Alyosha, my dear, my only son, I'm afraid of Ivan. I'm more afraid of Ivan than the other. You're the only one I'm not afraid of...." "Don't be afraid of Ivan either. He is angry, but he'll defend you." "Alyosha, and what of the other? He's run to Grushenka. My angel, tell me the truth, was she here just now or not?" "No one has seen her. It was a mistake. She has not been here." "You know Mitya wants to marry her, to marry her." "She won't marry him." "She won't. She won't. She won't. She won't on any account!" The old man fairly fluttered with joy, as though nothing more comforting could have been said to him. In his delight he seized Alyosha's hand and pressed it warmly to his heart. Tears positively glittered in his eyes. "That image of the Mother of God of which I was telling you just now," he said. "Take it home and keep it for yourself. And I'll let you go back to the monastery.... I was joking this morning, don't be angry with me. My head aches, Alyosha.... Alyosha, comfort my heart. Be an angel and tell me the truth!" "You're still asking whether she has been here or not?" Alyosha said sorrowfully. "No, no, no. I believe you. I'll tell you what it is: you go to Grushenka yourself, or see her somehow; make haste and ask her; see for yourself, which she means to choose, him or me. Eh? What? Can you?" "If I see her I'll ask her," Alyosha muttered, embarrassed. "No, she won't tell you," the old man interrupted, "she's a rogue. She'll begin kissing you and say that it's you she wants. She's a deceitful, shameless hussy. You mustn't go to her, you mustn't!" "No, father, and it wouldn't be suitable, it wouldn't be right at all." "Where was he sending you just now? He shouted 'Go' as he ran away." "To Katerina Ivanovna." "For money? To ask her for money?" "No. Not for money." "He's no money; not a farthing. I'll settle down for the night, and think things over, and you can go. Perhaps you'll meet her.... Only be sure to come to me to-morrow in the morning. Be sure to. I have a word to say to you to-morrow. Will you come?" "Yes." "When you come, pretend you've come of your own accord to ask after me. Don't tell any one I told you to. Don't say a word to Ivan." "Very well." "Good-by, my angel. You stood up for me, just now. I shall never forget it. I've a word to say to you to-morrow--but I must think about it." "And how do you feel now?" "I shall get up to-morrow and go out, perfectly well, perfectly well!" Crossing the yard Alyosha found Ivan sitting on the bench at the gateway. He was sitting writing something in pencil in his note-book. Alyosha told Ivan that their father had waked up, was conscious, and had let him go back to sleep at the monastery. "Alyosha, I should be very glad to meet you to-morrow morning," said Ivan cordially, standing up. His cordiality was a complete surprise to Alyosha. "I shall be at the Hohlakovs' to-morrow," answered Alyosha, "I may be at Katerina Ivanovna's, too, if I don't find her now." "But you're going to her now, anyway? For that 'compliments and farewell,' " said Ivan smiling. Alyosha was disconcerted. "I think I quite understand his exclamations just now, and part of what went before. Dmitri has asked you to go to her and say that he--well, in fact--takes his leave of her?" "Brother, how will all this horror end between father and Dmitri?" exclaimed Alyosha. "One can't tell for certain. Perhaps in nothing: it may all fizzle out. That woman is a beast. In any case we must keep the old man indoors and not let Dmitri in the house." "Brother, let me ask one thing more: has any man a right to look at other men and decide which is worthy to live?" "Why bring in the question of worth? The matter is most often decided in men's hearts on other grounds much more natural. And as for rights--who has not the right to wish?" "Not for another man's death?" "What even if for another man's death? Why lie to oneself since all men live so and perhaps cannot help living so. Are you referring to what I said just now--that one reptile will devour the other? In that case let me ask you, do you think me like Dmitri capable of shedding AEsop's blood, murdering him, eh?" "What are you saying, Ivan? Such an idea never crossed my mind. I don't think Dmitri is capable of it, either." "Thanks, if only for that," smiled Ivan. "Be sure, I should always defend him. But in my wishes I reserve myself full latitude in this case. Good-by till to-morrow. Don't condemn me, and don't look on me as a villain," he added with a smile. They shook hands warmly as they had never done before. Alyosha felt that his brother had taken the first step towards him, and that he had certainly done this with some definite motive. Chapter X. Both Together Alyosha left his father's house feeling even more exhausted and dejected in spirit than when he had entered it. His mind too seemed shattered and unhinged, while he felt that he was afraid to put together the disjointed fragments and form a general idea from all the agonizing and conflicting experiences of the day. He felt something bordering upon despair, which he had never known till then. Towering like a mountain above all the rest stood the fatal, insoluble question: How would things end between his father and his brother Dmitri with this terrible woman? Now he had himself been a witness of it, he had been present and seen them face to face. Yet only his brother Dmitri could be made unhappy, terribly, completely unhappy: there was trouble awaiting him. It appeared too that there were other people concerned, far more so than Alyosha could have supposed before. There was something positively mysterious in it, too. Ivan had made a step towards him, which was what Alyosha had been long desiring. Yet now he felt for some reason that he was frightened at it. And these women? Strange to say, that morning he had set out for Katerina Ivanovna's in the greatest embarrassment; now he felt nothing of the kind. On the contrary, he was hastening there as though expecting to find guidance from her. Yet to give her this message was obviously more difficult than before. The matter of the three thousand was decided irrevocably, and Dmitri, feeling himself dishonored and losing his last hope, might sink to any depth. He had, moreover, told him to describe to Katerina Ivanovna the scene which had just taken place with his father. It was by now seven o'clock, and it was getting dark as Alyosha entered the very spacious and convenient house in the High Street occupied by Katerina Ivanovna. Alyosha knew that she lived with two aunts. One of them, a woman of little education, was that aunt of her half-sister Agafya Ivanovna who had looked after her in her father's house when she came from boarding-school. The other aunt was a Moscow lady of style and consequence, though in straitened circumstances. It was said that they both gave way in everything to Katerina Ivanovna, and that she only kept them with her as chaperons. Katerina Ivanovna herself gave way to no one but her benefactress, the general's widow, who had been kept by illness in Moscow, and to whom she was obliged to write twice a week a full account of all her doings. When Alyosha entered the hall and asked the maid who opened the door to him to take his name up, it was evident that they were already aware of his arrival. Possibly he had been noticed from the window. At least, Alyosha heard a noise, caught the sound of flying footsteps and rustling skirts. Two or three women, perhaps, had run out of the room. Alyosha thought it strange that his arrival should cause such excitement. He was conducted however to the drawing-room at once. It was a large room, elegantly and amply furnished, not at all in provincial style. There were many sofas, lounges, settees, big and little tables. There were pictures on the walls, vases and lamps on the tables, masses of flowers, and even an aquarium in the window. It was twilight and rather dark. Alyosha made out a silk mantle thrown down on the sofa, where people had evidently just been sitting; and on a table in front of the sofa were two unfinished cups of chocolate, cakes, a glass saucer with blue raisins, and another with sweetmeats. Alyosha saw that he had interrupted visitors, and frowned. But at that instant the portiere was raised, and with rapid, hurrying footsteps Katerina Ivanovna came in, holding out both hands to Alyosha with a radiant smile of delight. At the same instant a servant brought in two lighted candles and set them on the table. "Thank God! At last you have come too! I've been simply praying for you all day! Sit down." Alyosha had been struck by Katerina Ivanovna's beauty when, three weeks before, Dmitri had first brought him, at Katerina Ivanovna's special request, to be introduced to her. There had been no conversation between them at that interview, however. Supposing Alyosha to be very shy, Katerina Ivanovna had talked all the time to Dmitri to spare him. Alyosha had been silent, but he had seen a great deal very clearly. He was struck by the imperiousness, proud ease, and self-confidence of the haughty girl. And all that was certain, Alyosha felt that he was not exaggerating it. He thought her great glowing black eyes were very fine, especially with her pale, even rather sallow, longish face. But in those eyes and in the lines of her exquisite lips there was something with which his brother might well be passionately in love, but which perhaps could not be loved for long. He expressed this thought almost plainly to Dmitri when, after the visit, his brother besought and insisted that he should not conceal his impressions on seeing his betrothed. "You'll be happy with her, but perhaps--not tranquilly happy." "Quite so, brother. Such people remain always the same. They don't yield to fate. So you think I shan't love her for ever." "No; perhaps you will love her for ever. But perhaps you won't always be happy with her." Alyosha had given his opinion at the time, blushing, and angry with himself for having yielded to his brother's entreaties and put such "foolish" ideas into words. For his opinion had struck him as awfully foolish immediately after he had uttered it. He felt ashamed too of having given so confident an opinion about a woman. It was with the more amazement that he felt now, at the first glance at Katerina Ivanovna as she ran in to him, that he had perhaps been utterly mistaken. This time her face was beaming with spontaneous good-natured kindliness, and direct warm-hearted sincerity. The "pride and haughtiness," which had struck Alyosha so much before, was only betrayed now in a frank, generous energy and a sort of bright, strong faith in herself. Alyosha realized at the first glance, at the first word, that all the tragedy of her position in relation to the man she loved so dearly was no secret to her; that she perhaps already knew everything, positively everything. And yet, in spite of that, there was such brightness in her face, such faith in the future. Alyosha felt at once that he had gravely wronged her in his thoughts. He was conquered and captivated immediately. Besides all this, he noticed at her first words that she was in great excitement, an excitement perhaps quite exceptional and almost approaching ecstasy. "I was so eager to see you, because I can learn from you the whole truth--from you and no one else." "I have come," muttered Alyosha confusedly, "I--he sent me." "Ah, he sent you! I foresaw that. Now I know everything--everything!" cried Katerina Ivanovna, her eyes flashing. "Wait a moment, Alexey Fyodorovitch, I'll tell you why I've been so longing to see you. You see, I know perhaps far more than you do yourself, and there's no need for you to tell me anything. I'll tell you what I want from you. I want to know your own last impression of him. I want you to tell me most directly, plainly, coarsely even (oh, as coarsely as you like!), what you thought of him just now and of his position after your meeting with him to-day. That will perhaps be better than if I had a personal explanation with him, as he does not want to come to me. Do you understand what I want from you? Now, tell me simply, tell me every word of the message he sent you with (I knew he would send you)." "He told me to give you his compliments--and to say that he would never come again--but to give you his compliments." "His compliments? Was that what he said--his own expression?" "Yes." "Accidentally perhaps he made a mistake in the word, perhaps he did not use the right word?" "No; he told me precisely to repeat that word. He begged me two or three times not to forget to say so." Katerina Ivanovna flushed hotly. "Help me now, Alexey Fyodorovitch. Now I really need your help. I'll tell you what I think, and you must simply say whether it's right or not. Listen! If he had sent me his compliments in passing, without insisting on your repeating the words, without emphasizing them, that would be the end of everything! But if he particularly insisted on those words, if he particularly told you not to forget to repeat them to me, then perhaps he was in excitement, beside himself. He had made his decision and was frightened at it. He wasn't walking away from me with a resolute step, but leaping headlong. The emphasis on that phrase may have been simply bravado." "Yes, yes!" cried Alyosha warmly. "I believe that is it." "And, if so, he's not altogether lost. I can still save him. Stay! Did he not tell you anything about money--about three thousand roubles?" "He did speak about it, and it's that more than anything that's crushing him. He said he had lost his honor and that nothing matters now," Alyosha answered warmly, feeling a rush of hope in his heart and believing that there really might be a way of escape and salvation for his brother. "But do you know about the money?" he added, and suddenly broke off. "I've known of it a long time; I telegraphed to Moscow to inquire, and heard long ago that the money had not arrived. He hadn't sent the money, but I said nothing. Last week I learnt that he was still in need of money. My only object in all this was that he should know to whom to turn, and who was his true friend. No, he won't recognize that I am his truest friend; he won't know me, and looks on me merely as a woman. I've been tormented all the week, trying to think how to prevent him from being ashamed to face me because he spent that three thousand. Let him feel ashamed of himself, let him be ashamed of other people's knowing, but not of my knowing. He can tell God everything without shame. Why is it he still does not understand how much I am ready to bear for his sake? Why, why doesn't he know me? How dare he not know me after all that has happened? I want to save him for ever. Let him forget me as his betrothed. And here he fears that he is dishonored in my eyes. Why, he wasn't afraid to be open with you, Alexey Fyodorovitch. How is it that I don't deserve the same?" The last words she uttered in tears. Tears gushed from her eyes. "I must tell you," Alyosha began, his voice trembling too, "what happened just now between him and my father." And he described the whole scene, how Dmitri had sent him to get the money, how he had broken in, knocked his father down, and after that had again specially and emphatically begged him to take his compliments and farewell. "He went to that woman," Alyosha added softly. "And do you suppose that I can't put up with that woman? Does he think I can't? But he won't marry her," she suddenly laughed nervously. "Could such a passion last for ever in a Karamazov? It's passion, not love. He won't marry her because she won't marry him." Again Katerina Ivanovna laughed strangely. "He may marry her," said Alyosha mournfully, looking down. "He won't marry her, I tell you. That girl is an angel. Do you know that? Do you know that?" Katerina Ivanovna exclaimed suddenly with extraordinary warmth. "She is one of the most fantastic of fantastic creatures. I know how bewitching she is, but I know too that she is kind, firm and noble. Why do you look at me like that, Alexey Fyodorovitch? Perhaps you are wondering at my words, perhaps you don't believe me? Agrafena Alexandrovna, my angel!" she cried suddenly to some one, peeping into the next room, "come in to us. This is a friend. This is Alyosha. He knows all about our affairs. Show yourself to him." "I've only been waiting behind the curtain for you to call me," said a soft, one might even say sugary, feminine voice. The portiere was raised and Grushenka herself, smiling and beaming, came up to the table. A violent revulsion passed over Alyosha. He fixed his eyes on her and could not take them off. Here she was, that awful woman, the "beast," as Ivan had called her half an hour before. And yet one would have thought the creature standing before him most simple and ordinary, a good-natured, kind woman, handsome certainly, but so like other handsome ordinary women! It is true she was very, very good-looking with that Russian beauty so passionately loved by many men. She was a rather tall woman, though a little shorter than Katerina Ivanovna, who was exceptionally tall. She had a full figure, with soft, as it were, noiseless, movements, softened to a peculiar over-sweetness, like her voice. She moved, not like Katerina Ivanovna, with a vigorous, bold step, but noiselessly. Her feet made absolutely no sound on the floor. She sank softly into a low chair, softly rustling her sumptuous black silk dress, and delicately nestling her milk-white neck and broad shoulders in a costly cashmere shawl. She was twenty-two years old, and her face looked exactly that age. She was very white in the face, with a pale pink tint on her cheeks. The modeling of her face might be said to be too broad, and the lower jaw was set a trifle forward. Her upper lip was thin, but the slightly prominent lower lip was at least twice as full, and looked pouting. But her magnificent, abundant dark brown hair, her sable-colored eyebrows and charming gray-blue eyes with their long lashes would have made the most indifferent person, meeting her casually in a crowd in the street, stop at the sight of her face and remember it long after. What struck Alyosha most in that face was its expression of childlike good nature. There was a childlike look in her eyes, a look of childish delight. She came up to the table, beaming with delight and seeming to expect something with childish, impatient, and confiding curiosity. The light in her eyes gladdened the soul--Alyosha felt that. There was something else in her which he could not understand, or would not have been able to define, and which yet perhaps unconsciously affected him. It was that softness, that voluptuousness of her bodily movements, that catlike noiselessness. Yet it was a vigorous, ample body. Under the shawl could be seen full broad shoulders, a high, still quite girlish bosom. Her figure suggested the lines of the Venus of Milo, though already in somewhat exaggerated proportions. That could be divined. Connoisseurs of Russian beauty could have foretold with certainty that this fresh, still youthful beauty would lose its harmony by the age of thirty, would "spread"; that the face would become puffy, and that wrinkles would very soon appear upon her forehead and round the eyes; the complexion would grow coarse and red perhaps--in fact, that it was the beauty of the moment, the fleeting beauty which is so often met with in Russian women. Alyosha, of course, did not think of this; but though he was fascinated, yet he wondered with an unpleasant sensation, and as it were regretfully, why she drawled in that way and could not speak naturally. She did so evidently feeling there was a charm in the exaggerated, honeyed modulation of the syllables. It was, of course, only a bad, underbred habit that showed bad education and a false idea of good manners. And yet this intonation and manner of speaking impressed Alyosha as almost incredibly incongruous with the childishly simple and happy expression of her face, the soft, babyish joy in her eyes. Katerina Ivanovna at once made her sit down in an arm- chair facing Alyosha, and ecstatically kissed her several times on her smiling lips. She seemed quite in love with her. "This is the first time we've met, Alexey Fyodorovitch," she said rapturously. "I wanted to know her, to see her. I wanted to go to her, but I'd no sooner expressed the wish than she came to me. I knew we should settle everything together--everything. My heart told me so--I was begged not to take the step, but I foresaw it would be a way out of the difficulty, and I was not mistaken. Grushenka has explained everything to me, told me all she means to do. She flew here like an angel of goodness and brought us peace and joy." "You did not disdain me, sweet, excellent young lady," drawled Grushenka in her sing-song voice, still with the same charming smile of delight. "Don't dare to speak to me like that, you sorceress, you witch! Disdain you! Here, I must kiss your lower lip once more. It looks as though it were swollen, and now it will be more so, and more and more. Look how she laughs, Alexey Fyodorovitch! It does one's heart good to see the angel." Alyosha flushed, and faint, imperceptible shivers kept running down him. "You make so much of me, dear young lady, and perhaps I am not at all worthy of your kindness." "Not worthy! She's not worthy of it!" Katerina Ivanovna cried again with the same warmth. "You know, Alexey Fyodorovitch, we're fanciful, we're self-willed, but proudest of the proud in our little heart. We're noble, we're generous, Alexey Fyodorovitch, let me tell you. We have only been unfortunate. We were too ready to make every sacrifice for an unworthy, perhaps, or fickle man. There was one man--one, an officer too, we loved him, we sacrificed everything to him. That was long ago, five years ago, and he has forgotten us, he has married. Now he is a widower, he has written, he is coming here, and, do you know, we've loved him, none but him, all this time, and we've loved him all our life! He will come, and Grushenka will be happy again. For the last five years she's been wretched. But who can reproach her, who can boast of her favor? Only that bedridden old merchant, but he is more like her father, her friend, her protector. He found her then in despair, in agony, deserted by the man she loved. She was ready to drown herself then, but the old merchant saved her--saved her!" "You defend me very kindly, dear young lady. You are in a great hurry about everything," Grushenka drawled again. "Defend you! Is it for me to defend you? Should I dare to defend you? Grushenka, angel, give me your hand. Look at that charming soft little hand, Alexey Fyodorovitch! Look at it! It has brought me happiness and has lifted me up, and I'm going to kiss it, outside and inside, here, here, here!" And three times she kissed the certainly charming, though rather fat, hand of Grushenka in a sort of rapture. She held out her hand with a charming musical, nervous little laugh, watched the "sweet young lady," and obviously liked having her hand kissed. "Perhaps there's rather too much rapture," thought Alyosha. He blushed. He felt a peculiar uneasiness at heart the whole time. "You won't make me blush, dear young lady, kissing my hand like this before Alexey Fyodorovitch." "Do you think I meant to make you blush?" said Katerina Ivanovna, somewhat surprised. "Ah, my dear, how little you understand me!" "Yes, and you too perhaps quite misunderstand me, dear young lady. Maybe I'm not so good as I seem to you. I've a bad heart; I will have my own way. I fascinated poor Dmitri Fyodorovitch that day simply for fun." "But now you'll save him. You've given me your word. You'll explain it all to him. You'll break to him that you have long loved another man, who is now offering you his hand." "Oh, no! I didn't give you my word to do that. It was you kept talking about that. I didn't give you my word." "Then I didn't quite understand you," said Katerina Ivanovna slowly, turning a little pale. "You promised--" "Oh, no, angel lady, I've promised nothing," Grushenka interrupted softly and evenly, still with the same gay and simple expression. "You see at once, dear young lady, what a willful wretch I am compared with you. If I want to do a thing I do it. I may have made you some promise just now. But now again I'm thinking: I may take to Mitya again. I liked him very much once--liked him for almost a whole hour. Now maybe I shall go and tell him to stay with me from this day forward. You see, I'm so changeable." "Just now you said--something quite different," Katerina Ivanovna whispered faintly. "Ah, just now! But, you know. I'm such a soft-hearted, silly creature. Only think what he's gone through on my account! What if when I go home I feel sorry for him? What then?" "I never expected--" "Ah, young lady, how good and generous you are compared with me! Now perhaps you won't care for a silly creature like me, now you know my character. Give me your sweet little hand, angelic lady," she said tenderly, and with a sort of reverence took Katerina Ivanovna's hand. "Here, dear young lady, I'll take your hand and kiss it as you did mine. You kissed mine three times, but I ought to kiss yours three hundred times to be even with you. Well, but let that pass. And then it shall be as God wills. Perhaps I shall be your slave entirely and want to do your bidding like a slave. Let it be as God wills, without any agreements and promises. What a sweet hand--what a sweet hand you have! You sweet young lady, you incredible beauty!" She slowly raised the hands to her lips, with the strange object indeed of "being even" with her in kisses. Katerina Ivanovna did not take her hand away. She listened with timid hope to the last words, though Grushenka's promise to do her bidding like a slave was very strangely expressed. She looked intently into her eyes; she still saw in those eyes the same simple-hearted, confiding expression, the same bright gayety. "She's perhaps too naive," thought Katerina Ivanovna, with a gleam of hope. Grushenka meanwhile seemed enthusiastic over the "sweet hand." She raised it deliberately to her lips. But she held it for two or three minutes near her lips, as though reconsidering something. "Do you know, angel lady," she suddenly drawled in an even more soft and sugary voice, "do you know, after all, I think I won't kiss your hand?" And she laughed a little merry laugh. "As you please. What's the matter with you?" said Katerina Ivanovna, starting suddenly. "So that you may be left to remember that you kissed my hand, but I didn't kiss yours." There was a sudden gleam in her eyes. She looked with awful intentness at Katerina Ivanovna. "Insolent creature!" cried Katerina Ivanovna, as though suddenly grasping something. She flushed all over and leapt up from her seat. Grushenka too got up, but without haste. "So I shall tell Mitya how you kissed my hand, but I didn't kiss yours at all. And how he will laugh!" "Vile slut! Go away!" "Ah, for shame, young lady! Ah, for shame! That's unbecoming for you, dear young lady, a word like that." "Go away! You're a creature for sale!" screamed Katerina Ivanovna. Every feature was working in her utterly distorted face. "For sale indeed! You used to visit gentlemen in the dusk for money once; you brought your beauty for sale. You see, I know." Katerina Ivanovna shrieked, and would have rushed at her, but Alyosha held her with all his strength. "Not a step, not a word! Don't speak, don't answer her. She'll go away--she'll go at once." At that instant Katerina Ivanovna's two aunts ran in at her cry, and with them a maid-servant. All hurried to her. "I will go away," said Grushenka, taking up her mantle from the sofa. "Alyosha, darling, see me home!" "Go away--go away, make haste!" cried Alyosha, clasping his hands imploringly. "Dear little Alyosha, see me home! I've got a pretty little story to tell you on the way. I got up this scene for your benefit, Alyosha. See me home, dear, you'll be glad of it afterwards." Alyosha turned away, wringing his hands. Grushenka ran out of the house, laughing musically. Katerina Ivanovna went into a fit of hysterics. She sobbed, and was shaken with convulsions. Every one fussed round her. "I warned you," said the elder of her aunts. "I tried to prevent your doing this. You're too impulsive. How could you do such a thing? You don't know these creatures, and they say she's worse than any of them. You are too self-willed." "She's a tigress!" yelled Katerina Ivanovna. "Why did you hold me, Alexey Fyodorovitch? I'd have beaten her--beaten her!" She could not control herself before Alyosha; perhaps she did not care to, indeed. "She ought to be flogged in public on a scaffold!" Alyosha withdrew towards the door. "But, my God!" cried Katerina Ivanovna, clasping her hands. "He! He! He could be so dishonorable, so inhuman! Why, he told that creature what happened on that fatal, accursed day! 'You brought your beauty for sale, dear young lady.' She knows it! Your brother's a scoundrel, Alexey Fyodorovitch." Alyosha wanted to say something, but he couldn't find a word. His heart ached. "Go away, Alexey Fyodorovitch! It's shameful, it's awful for me! To- morrow, I beg you on my knees, come to-morrow. Don't condemn me. Forgive me. I don't know what I shall do with myself now!" Alyosha walked out into the street reeling. He could have wept as she did. Suddenly he was overtaken by the maid. "The young lady forgot to give you this letter from Madame Hohlakov; it's been left with us since dinner-time." Alyosha took the little pink envelope mechanically and put it, almost unconsciously, into his pocket. Chapter XI. Another Reputation Ruined It was not much more than three-quarters of a mile from the town to the monastery. Alyosha walked quickly along the road, at that hour deserted. It was almost night, and too dark to see anything clearly at thirty paces ahead. There were cross-roads half-way. A figure came into sight under a solitary willow at the cross-roads. As soon as Alyosha reached the cross- roads the figure moved out and rushed at him, shouting savagely: "Your money or your life!" "So it's you, Mitya," cried Alyosha, in surprise, violently startled however. "Ha ha ha! You didn't expect me? I wondered where to wait for you. By her house? There are three ways from it, and I might have missed you. At last I thought of waiting here, for you had to pass here, there's no other way to the monastery. Come, tell me the truth. Crush me like a beetle. But what's the matter?" "Nothing, brother--it's the fright you gave me. Oh, Dmitri! Father's blood just now." (Alyosha began to cry, he had been on the verge of tears for a long time, and now something seemed to snap in his soul.) "You almost killed him--cursed him--and now--here--you're making jokes--'Your money or your life!' " "Well, what of that? It's not seemly--is that it? Not suitable in my position?" "No--I only--" "Stay. Look at the night. You see what a dark night, what clouds, what a wind has risen. I hid here under the willow waiting for you. And as God's above, I suddenly thought, why go on in misery any longer, what is there to wait for? Here I have a willow, a handkerchief, a shirt, I can twist them into a rope in a minute, and braces besides, and why go on burdening the earth, dishonoring it with my vile presence? And then I heard you coming--Heavens, it was as though something flew down to me suddenly. So there is a man, then, whom I love. Here he is, that man, my dear little brother, whom I love more than any one in the world, the only one I love in the world. And I loved you so much, so much at that moment that I thought, 'I'll fall on his neck at once.' Then a stupid idea struck me, to have a joke with you and scare you. I shouted, like a fool, 'Your money!' Forgive my foolery--it was only nonsense, and there's nothing unseemly in my soul.... Damn it all, tell me what's happened. What did she say? Strike me, crush me, don't spare me! Was she furious?" "No, not that.... There was nothing like that, Mitya. There--I found them both there." "Both? Whom?" "Grushenka at Katerina Ivanovna's." Dmitri was struck dumb. "Impossible!" he cried. "You're raving! Grushenka with her?" Alyosha described all that had happened from the moment he went in to Katerina Ivanovna's. He was ten minutes telling his story. He can't be said to have told it fluently and consecutively, but he seemed to make it clear, not omitting any word or action of significance, and vividly describing, often in one word, his own sensations. Dmitri listened in silence, gazing at him with a terrible fixed stare, but it was clear to Alyosha that he understood it all, and had grasped every point. But as the story went on, his face became not merely gloomy, but menacing. He scowled, he clenched his teeth, and his fixed stare became still more rigid, more concentrated, more terrible, when suddenly, with incredible rapidity, his wrathful, savage face changed, his tightly compressed lips parted, and Dmitri Fyodorovitch broke into uncontrolled, spontaneous laughter. He literally shook with laughter. For a long time he could not speak. "So she wouldn't kiss her hand! So she didn't kiss it; so she ran away!" he kept exclaiming with hysterical delight; insolent delight it might have been called, if it had not been so spontaneous. "So the other one called her tigress! And a tigress she is! So she ought to be flogged on a scaffold? Yes, yes, so she ought. That's just what I think; she ought to have been long ago. It's like this, brother, let her be punished, but I must get better first. I understand the queen of impudence. That's her all over! You saw her all over in that hand-kissing, the she-devil! She's magnificent in her own line! So she ran home? I'll go--ah--I'll run to her! Alyosha, don't blame me, I agree that hanging is too good for her." "But Katerina Ivanovna!" exclaimed Alyosha sorrowfully. "I see her, too! I see right through her, as I've never done before! It's a regular discovery of the four continents of the world, that is, of the five! What a thing to do! That's just like Katya, who was not afraid to face a coarse, unmannerly officer and risk a deadly insult on a generous impulse to save her father! But the pride, the recklessness, the defiance of fate, the unbounded defiance! You say that aunt tried to stop her? That aunt, you know, is overbearing, herself. She's the sister of the general's widow in Moscow, and even more stuck-up than she. But her husband was caught stealing government money. He lost everything, his estate and all, and the proud wife had to lower her colors, and hasn't raised them since. So she tried to prevent Katya, but she wouldn't listen to her! She thinks she can overcome everything, that everything will give way to her. She thought she could bewitch Grushenka if she liked, and she believed it herself: she plays a part to herself, and whose fault is it? Do you think she kissed Grushenka's hand first, on purpose, with a motive? No, she really was fascinated by Grushenka, that's to say, not by Grushenka, but by her own dream, her own delusion--because it was _her_ dream, _her_ delusion! Alyosha, darling, how did you escape from them, those women? Did you pick up your cassock and run? Ha ha ha!" "Brother, you don't seem to have noticed how you've insulted Katerina Ivanovna by telling Grushenka about that day. And she flung it in her face just now that she had gone to gentlemen in secret to sell her beauty! Brother, what could be worse than that insult?" What worried Alyosha more than anything was that, incredible as it seemed, his brother appeared pleased at Katerina Ivanovna's humiliation. "Bah!" Dmitri frowned fiercely, and struck his forehead with his hand. He only now realized it, though Alyosha had just told him of the insult, and Katerina Ivanovna's cry: "Your brother is a scoundrel!" "Yes, perhaps, I really did tell Grushenka about that 'fatal day,' as Katya calls it. Yes, I did tell her, I remember! It was that time at Mokroe. I was drunk, the gypsies were singing.... But I was sobbing. I was sobbing then, kneeling and praying to Katya's image, and Grushenka understood it. She understood it all then. I remember, she cried herself.... Damn it all! But it's bound to be so now.... Then she cried, but now 'the dagger in the heart'! That's how women are." He looked down and sank into thought. "Yes, I am a scoundrel, a thorough scoundrel!" he said suddenly, in a gloomy voice. "It doesn't matter whether I cried or not, I'm a scoundrel! Tell her I accept the name, if that's any comfort. Come, that's enough. Good-by. It's no use talking! It's not amusing. You go your way and I mine. And I don't want to see you again except as a last resource. Good- by, Alexey!" He warmly pressed Alyosha's hand, and still looking down, without raising his head, as though tearing himself away, turned rapidly towards the town. Alyosha looked after him, unable to believe he would go away so abruptly. "Stay, Alexey, one more confession to you alone!" cried Dmitri, suddenly turning back. "Look at me. Look at me well. You see here, here--there's terrible disgrace in store for me." (As he said "here," Dmitri struck his chest with his fist with a strange air, as though the dishonor lay precisely on his chest, in some spot, in a pocket, perhaps, or hanging round his neck.) "You know me now, a scoundrel, an avowed scoundrel, but let me tell you that I've never done anything before and never shall again, anything that can compare in baseness with the dishonor which I bear now at this very minute on my breast, here, here, which will come to pass, though I'm perfectly free to stop it. I can stop it or carry it through, note that. Well, let me tell you, I shall carry it through. I shan't stop it. I told you everything just now, but I didn't tell you this, because even I had not brass enough for it. I can still pull up; if I do, I can give back the full half of my lost honor to-morrow. But I shan't pull up. I shall carry out my base plan, and you can bear witness that I told you so beforehand. Darkness and destruction! No need to explain. You'll find out in due time. The filthy back-alley and the she- devil. Good-by. Don't pray for me, I'm not worth it. And there's no need, no need at all.... I don't need it! Away!" And he suddenly retreated, this time finally. Alyosha went towards the monastery. "What? I shall never see him again! What is he saying?" he wondered wildly. "Why, I shall certainly see him to-morrow. I shall look him up. I shall make a point of it. What does he mean?" ------------------------------------- He went round the monastery, and crossed the pine-wood to the hermitage. The door was opened to him, though no one was admitted at that hour. There was a tremor in his heart as he went into Father Zossima's cell. "Why, why, had he gone forth? Why had he sent him into the world? Here was peace. Here was holiness. But there was confusion, there was darkness in which one lost one's way and went astray at once...." In the cell he found the novice Porfiry and Father Paissy, who came every hour to inquire after Father Zossima. Alyosha learnt with alarm that he was getting worse and worse. Even his usual discourse with the brothers could not take place that day. As a rule every evening after service the monks flocked into Father Zossima's cell, and all confessed aloud their sins of the day, their sinful thoughts and temptations; even their disputes, if there had been any. Some confessed kneeling. The elder absolved, reconciled, exhorted, imposed penance, blessed, and dismissed them. It was against this general "confession" that the opponents of "elders" protested, maintaining that it was a profanation of the sacrament of confession, almost a sacrilege, though this was quite a different thing. They even represented to the diocesan authorities that such confessions attained no good object, but actually to a large extent led to sin and temptation. Many of the brothers disliked going to the elder, and went against their own will because every one went, and for fear they should be accused of pride and rebellious ideas. People said that some of the monks agreed beforehand, saying, "I'll confess I lost my temper with you this morning, and you confirm it," simply in order to have something to say. Alyosha knew that this actually happened sometimes. He knew, too, that there were among the monks some who deeply resented the fact that letters from relations were habitually taken to the elder, to be opened and read by him before those to whom they were addressed. It was assumed, of course, that all this was done freely, and in good faith, by way of voluntary submission and salutary guidance. But, in fact, there was sometimes no little insincerity, and much that was false and strained in this practice. Yet the older and more experienced of the monks adhered to their opinion, arguing that "for those who have come within these walls sincerely seeking salvation, such obedience and sacrifice will certainly be salutary and of great benefit; those, on the other hand, who find it irksome, and repine, are no true monks, and have made a mistake in entering the monastery--their proper place is in the world. Even in the temple one cannot be safe from sin and the devil. So it was no good taking it too much into account." "He is weaker, a drowsiness has come over him," Father Paissy whispered to Alyosha, as he blessed him. "It's difficult to rouse him. And he must not be roused. He waked up for five minutes, sent his blessing to the brothers, and begged their prayers for him at night. He intends to take the sacrament again in the morning. He remembered you, Alexey. He asked whether you had gone away, and was told that you were in the town. 'I blessed him for that work,' he said, 'his place is there, not here, for awhile.' Those were his words about you. He remembered you lovingly, with anxiety; do you understand how he honored you? But how is it that he has decided that you shall spend some time in the world? He must have foreseen something in your destiny! Understand, Alexey, that if you return to the world, it must be to do the duty laid upon you by your elder, and not for frivolous vanity and worldly pleasures." Father Paissy went out. Alyosha had no doubt that Father Zossima was dying, though he might live another day or two. Alyosha firmly and ardently resolved that in spite of his promises to his father, the Hohlakovs, and Katerina Ivanovna, he would not leave the monastery next day, but would remain with his elder to the end. His heart glowed with love, and he reproached himself bitterly for having been able for one instant to forget him whom he had left in the monastery on his deathbed, and whom he honored above every one in the world. He went into Father Zossima's bedroom, knelt down, and bowed to the ground before the elder, who slept quietly without stirring, with regular, hardly audible breathing and a peaceful face. Alyosha returned to the other room, where Father Zossima had received his guests in the morning. Taking off his boots, he lay down on the hard, narrow, leathern sofa, which he had long used as a bed, bringing nothing but a pillow. The mattress, about which his father had shouted to him that morning, he had long forgotten to lie on. He took off his cassock, which he used as a covering. But before going to bed, he fell on his knees and prayed a long time. In his fervent prayer he did not beseech God to lighten his darkness but only thirsted for the joyous emotion, which always visited his soul after the praise and adoration, of which his evening prayer usually consisted. That joy always brought him light untroubled sleep. As he was praying, he suddenly felt in his pocket the little pink note the servant had handed him as he left Katerina Ivanovna's. He was disturbed, but finished his prayer. Then, after some hesitation, he opened the envelope. In it was a letter to him, signed by Lise, the young daughter of Madame Hohlakov, who had laughed at him before the elder in the morning. "Alexey Fyodorovitch," she wrote, "I am writing to you without any one's knowledge, even mamma's, and I know how wrong it is. But I cannot live without telling you the feeling that has sprung up in my heart, and this no one but us two must know for a time. But how am I to say what I want so much to tell you? Paper, they say, does not blush, but I assure you it's not true and that it's blushing just as I am now, all over. Dear Alyosha, I love you, I've loved you from my childhood, since our Moscow days, when you were very different from what you are now, and I shall love you all my life. My heart has chosen you, to unite our lives, and pass them together till our old age. Of course, on condition that you will leave the monastery. As for our age we will wait for the time fixed by the law. By that time I shall certainly be quite strong, I shall be walking and dancing. There can be no doubt of that. "You see how I've thought of everything. There's only one thing I can't imagine: what you'll think of me when you read this. I'm always laughing and being naughty. I made you angry this morning, but I assure you before I took up my pen, I prayed before the Image of the Mother of God, and now I'm praying, and almost crying. "My secret is in your hands. When you come to-morrow, I don't know how I shall look at you. Ah, Alexey Fyodorovitch, what if I can't restrain myself like a silly and laugh when I look at you as I did to-day. You'll think I'm a nasty girl making fun of you, and you won't believe my letter. And so I beg you, dear one, if you've any pity for me, when you come to- morrow, don't look me straight in the face, for if I meet your eyes, it will be sure to make me laugh, especially as you'll be in that long gown. I feel cold all over when I think of it, so when you come, don't look at me at all for a time, look at mamma or at the window.... "Here I've written you a love-letter. Oh, dear, what have I done? Alyosha, don't despise me, and if I've done something very horrid and wounded you, forgive me. Now the secret of my reputation, ruined perhaps for ever, is in your hands. "I shall certainly cry to-day. Good-by till our meeting, our _awful_ meeting.--LISE. "P.S.--Alyosha! You must, must, must come!--LISE." Alyosha read the note in amazement, read it through twice, thought a little, and suddenly laughed a soft, sweet laugh. He started. That laugh seemed to him sinful. But a minute later he laughed again just as softly and happily. He slowly replaced the note in the envelope, crossed himself and lay down. The agitation in his heart passed at once. "God, have mercy upon all of them, have all these unhappy and turbulent souls in Thy keeping, and set them in the right path. All ways are Thine. Save them according to Thy wisdom. Thou art love. Thou wilt send joy to all!" Alyosha murmured, crossing himself, and falling into peaceful sleep.

Book III: Chapters 6-11

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219142226/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/b/the-brothers-karamazov/summary-and-analysis/part-1-book-iii-chapters-611

Arriving at the Karamazov house, Alyosha finds his father almost drunk but still at the table with Ivan. They are listening to old Grigory and Smerdyakov arguing, and it is at this point that we learn more about the bastard Karamazov son. Smerdyakov is rather taciturn, somewhat morose, and naturally resents his position. Strangely, however, he even resents his foster parents. Smerdyakov is an enigma, plagued by jealousy, hatred, and epilepsy. In the household, he works as a cook. Years ago old Fyodor sent him off to Moscow for training, and since he returned he has functioned only in that capacity. He is a trustworthy sort, all believe, regardless of his sullenness, for they remember that he once returned 300 rubles to Fyodor, which the old man lost while drunk. Smerdyakov, at present, is arguing with his foster father as Alyosha arrives. He asserts that it is permissible for a man to renounce his faith in God in order to save his life. To prove that man cannot function by faith alone, he says that no man has enough faith to tell a mountain to move to the sea. He thinks, therefore, that this is reason enough to realize that man may deny God to save his life and later ask for repentance. Curiously, throughout the argument, he seems particularly eager to please and impress Ivan. After Karamazov tires of the argument, he sends the servants away, but the conversation manages to return to the subject of religion. In answer to their father's queries, Ivan insists that there is no God. Further, he says, there is no immortality. Alyosha, of course, maintains that God does exist and that through Him man can gain immortality. Karamazov changes the subject. He talks now of women and begins a long, drunken, and cynical narration centering upon Alyosha's mother. The attack is depraved. Karamazov delights in mocking his late wife's religious beliefs. He is so vicious, in fact, that Alyosha collapses and succumbs to a seizure exactly like the one that Karamazov described as afflicting Alyosha's mother. Ivan bitterly reminds his drunken father that the woman of whom he has spoken so crudely was also Ivan's mother, and, for a moment, old Karamazov is confused, but recalls then that Ivan and Alyosha did indeed have the same mother. The two are attempting to revive Alyosha as Dmitri dashes into the house. Karamazov is startled and runs for protection. When he hears Dmitri shout that Grushenka is in the house, the old man grows even more excited and fearful. Dmitri runs frantically through the house trying to discover Grushenka, then returns to the dining room, where old Karamazov begins screaming that Dmitri has been stealing money from him. Dmitri seizes his father, flings him to the floor, and kicks him in the head; then, before leaving, he threatens to return and kill the old man, shouting, "Beware, old man, beware of your dreams, because I have my dream too." And he dashes out to continue his search for Grushenka. After Ivan and Alyosha bandage their father's wounds and put him to bed, Alyosha remains with him for a while; then he leaves to go talk with Katerina Ivanovna. He stops in the yard and talks a bit with Ivan, and this is the first time that Ivan has been cordial to his brother. Alyosha arrives at Madame Hohlakov's home and asks for Katerina. The girl is anxious about Dmitri and promises to help save him, although he seems not to want her help; she is positive, though, that his infatuation for Grushenka will pass. Alyosha is greatly surprised to hear Katerina call Grushenka by name and is even more surprised when he discovers that Grushenka has been hiding behind a screen, listening to their conversation. Katerina explains that Grushenka has just confessed to her that she will soon be reunited with a man whom she has loved for five years. Obviously Katerina is overjoyed at the news, and, as she explains the new turn of events to Alyosha, she impulsively kisses and fondles Grushenka, calling her endearing names. She asks Grushenka to affirm what she has just said, but Grushenka surprises them all. She becomes capricious and says that she just might change her mind. She also informs Katerina that she does not return the embraces Katerina has bestowed upon her. Katerina fumes. She has humbled herself in gratitude before Grushenka and is furious at the girl's flippancy. She lashes out with stinging, angry insults, but Grushenka merely laughs and walks out, leaving Katerina in hysterics. Alyosha also leaves the house, but on the way out he is stopped by a maid, who gives him a letter. She tells him that it is from Lise. Alyosha continues on his way back to the monastery but is stopped once more, this time by Dmitri. His brother is lighthearted and seems wholly unconcerned about the earlier events of the evening. He listens now to Alyosha explain what has happened between Katerina and Grushenka and seems delighted. He laughs at Grushenka's actions and calls her affectionately his "she-devil." But suddenly his face darkens and he moans that he is a scoundrel. Nothing, he swears to Alyosha, "can compare in baseness with the dishonor which I bear now at this very minute on my breast." The events of the night have been unnerving. Back at the monastery, Alyosha receives more bad news: Zossima's condition has worsened; he has only a short time to live. Deeply saddened by his family's sorrows, Alyosha nevertheless decides to remain close to the elder, for this man is also his father. Having made his decision, he begins to prepare for bed, and then remembers Lise's letter and reads it. It is a love letter; she says that she loves Alyosha very much and hopes to marry him when she is old enough. She apologizes sincerely for making fun of the young priest and implores him to come visit her.

Dostoevsky carefully details in this book the special sort of characterization needed for the enigmatic Smerdyakov, the son who will murder Karamazov. We learn, for example, that he "seemed to despise everybody," including his real father and also his foster father. It is clear that he could conceivably murder either one, and in cold blood. Furthermore, we learn that in childhood "he was very fond of hanging cats," certainly a sadistic and perverse pastime. As a complement to his psychological ills, he is physically sick; epilepsy, a disease he inherited from his idiot mother, overtakes him on occasion. Of late, nervous fits have attacked him increasingly, and it is one of these attacks that he later shams as his alibi when his innocence is questioned. In his argument with Grigory, put forward to impress the intellectual Ivan, Smerdyakov uses the most basic semantic logic to prove his point. But the argument shows that he is interested in questions similar to those that disturb Ivan. In this way, Dostoevsky sets up conflicting emotions within Ivan. Because of their like interests, he is drawn to his half-brother, but at the same time, with a Dostoevskian duality of emotion, he is repulsed and sees him as a "mean soul." The vulgarity of old Karamazov is once more emphasized in this section. This time, in the presence of Alyosha, he crudely ridicules his son's mother. This is a particularly painful scene because we have been told that Alyosha remembers his mother with deep love and respect. The father's attack, then, believably brings on Alyosha's convulsions. Karamazov commits a verbal murder on Alyosha's memories, and it is significant, following Alyosha's collapse, that Karamazov does not realize that the same woman gave birth to both Ivan and Alyosha. In other words, the two sons are so different that the old man has completely forgotten that they had the same mother. In Chapter 9, when Dmitri unleashes an uncontrollable fit of anguish and knocks down first Grigory and later his father, Dostoevsky is tempering our credence in Dmitri's being a potential murderer. Both father and son are victims of powerful emotions, and both are passionate sensualists; their antagonism and hatred has collided over the same woman. It is likely that such viciousness as we witness might result in murder. Even Alyosha realizes the possibility of parricide within his family when he questions Ivan as to a man's right to assess another man and decide whether or not he is worthy to live. Ivan too realizes the potential of parricide as it smolders, for he answers Alyosha that "one reptile will devour the other." In Chapter 10, we are introduced finally to the beautiful and paradoxical Katerina Ivanovna. Several times we have heard of this lovely and haughty woman, willing to devote herself to Dmitri in spite of his barbarous forays. Now we see her. She refuses to accept Dmitri's breaking of their engagement. And her resolve is so extreme that she even humbles herself before Grushenka. As for Grushenka, she turns out to be far more interesting than gossip suggests. She may or may not be waiting for a scoundrel who deserted her five years earlier. His return, incidentally, precipitates the pivotal action of the novel. Grushenka's mercurial qualities are quite thorough; she is whimsical and mischievous and does seem as though she might be, as Dmitri laughingly tags her, a "she-devil." She is more than a tease, however, and immediately after the murder she realizes that she, in large part, is to blame for keeping both Dmitri and his father in suspense as to what she actually intends for them. Dmitri's confession of baseness to Alyosha is in reference to his retention of the 1,500 rubles that he saved from the night of the Grushenka orgy; this money he has not yet returned to Katerina. And his keeping it burdens his scheme of values with far greater dishonor than the fact that he spent the other half of the sum. Later, this anguish of Dmitri's over the money he did not spend convinces many people that such a man could not commit a murder. At the monastery, Alyosha still does not know why Zossima has ordered him to go into the world. "Here was peace. Here was holiness"; one can easily lose one's way in the world, Alyosha realizes, and go astray. It is exactly for these reasons, though, that the elder has asked him to go into the world. Alyosha is the one person who will be able to walk through confusion and darkness and not lose his footing. At this moment, his father, Katerina, Lise, Dmitri, and Grushenka are all waiting to talk with him again; his life's work is among the people of the world, who need his quiet example of love and respect.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/2166-chapters/chapters_9_to_10.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/King Solomon's Mines/section_5_part_0.txt

King Solomon's Mines.chapters 9-10

chapters 9-10

{"name": "Chapters 9 and 10", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200804024551/https://www.gradesaver.com/king-solomons-mines/study-guide/summary-chapters-9-and-10", "summary": "As the party approaches the Kakuana capital of Loo, the land becomes lusher and more beautiful. Upon entering the city, Quatermain sees an amazing display of military might, for in Kakuanaland all men are soldiers. The men also see three precipitous mountain peaks about seventy miles away, which the Kakuanas call the \"Three Witches.\" In quiet conference, the men agree that this must be the site of King Solomon's diamond mine. Infadoos confirms this be relating how people of old came from distant lands to go to these mountains for something--he does not say what, but is satisfied to learn that Quatermain rightly asserts that it was to obtain shining stones. Infadoos explains that it is the Place of Death for the Kakuanas, where all their chiefs are buried upon death. In a mysterious turn, Umbopa also confirms that the diamonds are in the mines of the \"Three Witches,\" claiming that he dreamed it so it is true. He explains himself no further. The men arrive in Loo to find that they have a hut each prepared for them complete with tanned hide bed and food. Despite the lavish accommodations, the men insist on having their beds all moved to the same hut for safety purposes. The men then sleep through until the sun is high the next day. Infadoos arrives after their breakfast to bring word that the king, Twala, is ready to see the men. Quatermain cleverly delays their meeting with Twala to keep the king from thinking the white men are at his beck and call. When they arrive in Twala's enclosure, they find him surrounded by the Kakuana rank-and-file, numbering between seven and eight thousand men. Twala himself is an imposing figure, described as having cruel features and a less European look than many of the Kakuana. Twala's son, Scragga, was at his father's side, along with something Quatermain describes as a \"withered-up monkey\" . Twala begins the greeting ceremony, which consists of reverential call-and-response with his thousands of soldiers. During one of the silent intervals, a young soldier drops his shield. Angered at the disruption, Twala calls the man forward to be punished. As the slightest infraction at a ceremony honoring the king is punishable by death, Scragga is called upon to kill the offender, which he does by impaling him with his spear. Sir Henry becomes enraged and must be restrained by Quatermain, who sees the futility of Sir Henry's ire among so great a number of hostile men. Twala then addresses the travelers directly, addressing them as \"people from the stars\" but simultaneously challenging them by stating that the stars are far away and the men are here in his domain. Quatermain warns Twala against arrogance and reminds him of the \"speaking stick\" the he used in the sight of the king's son Scragga. Twala wants to see a demonstration of this power and offers one of his own men as the target. Quatermain insists that the white men will not kill except for food, and Twala again challenges their authority. Quatermain suggests that if the king would like a demonstration on a human being, Twala should offer himself or his son. This suggestion brings Twala up short, and the king agrees to the men's earlier request that an ox be brought for the demonstration. An ox is released, but Quatermain gives the shot to Sir Henry, insisting that the Kakuanas need to see that Alan Quatermain is not the only \"sorcerer\" among them. Sir Henry makes the shot and kills the ox, which is then butchered and served up in a feast that afternoon. The men then give Twala the gift of one of their Winchester repeating rifles, along with the admonition not to use the power it has on other men lest that same power destroy Twala himself. Gagool then begins a mad prophecy in which she claims to have seen white men come through here before, long before any of the other Kakuana can remember. She warns her people that the whites will return to \"devour\" them. She also points out to Sir Henry that, though he seeks one who is lost, no white man has set foot in Loo for generations. Following Gagool's prophecy, Twala declares that he is inclined to kill the men on the spot. Quatermain counters with the example of the ox--if they can kill an ox from afar, would Twala like to challenge their power? Twala agrees that he will leave the men alone for the time being and they may rest safely, but he makes no guarantees what he will decide come tomorrow. When the men reach their hut, Quatermain calls Infadoos inside for a private conversation. He observes that Twala is a cruel man, to which Infadoos agrees. He offers them further proof of Twala's cruelty tonight at the \"witch hunts,\" in which Gagool and her appointed witch-finders \"smell out\" those who think evil of the king. These targets inevitably turn out to be political rivals or wealthy men, either of whose deaths would benefit Twala. When asked why the people do not rebel against Twala, Infadoos replies that his son, Scragga, is even worse and would make a more terrible ruler. Infadoos bemoans the loss of Imotu and his son Ignosi; Umbopa suddenly interjects that Infadoos does not know Ignosi is truly dead. He takes up the tale of Ignosi and his mother from the point in Infadoos' account where mother and child fled to the mountains: they reached the Amazulu people, kin of the Kukuana, and stayed with them for many years. When Ignosi's mother died, the young man journeyed to the land of the white people to learn their wisdom. He learned and waited until the opportunity afforded itself to return to Kukuanaland with men seeking a lost brother. To Infadoos' incredulous retort, Umbopa replies, \"I am Ignosi, rightful king of the Kukuanas!\" As proof, Umbopa slips off his \"moocha\" and reveals the serpent tattoo found only on Kukuana royalty. The entire group is amazed at this revelation. Infadoos kneels before Umbopa, recognizing him as Ignosi, his rightful ruler. Umbopa/Ignosi swears Infadoos to loyalty, and then asks the white men to help him with his overthrow of Twala. He offers the men diamonds, but Sir Henry rejects the offer in favor of assisting Ignosi simply because Twala deserves to be destroyed. Good also joins the revolution: his only stipulation is that he be allowed to wear trousers. Quatermain, however, proclaims his mercenary nature and accepts the diamonds as payment; he then insists they also find Sir Henry's brother if at all possible. To this, Ignosi questions Infadoos for information and learns that there have been no white men in this land in Infadoos' lifetime. This news leads Sir Henry to conclude that his brother died somewhere along the way and never made it this far in his trek. When asked about his plan, Ignosi admits that he has none. Infadoos offers to sound out the various leaders of the tribe individually, for he believes many of the soldiers will turn against the vile Twala. Their plotting is interrupted by three emissaries from Twala, each bearing a shirt of shining chainmail and a battle-axe. These gifts to the white men demonstrate either Twala's pleasure or his fear in entertaining the white men in Loo. Infadoos suggests they wear the chainmail tonight at the witch-hunt. When asked about their origins, Infadoos admits that none of the living Kukuanas know how to fashion such armor or weapons--they have been handed down from their forefathers. The men rest until the full moon, at which time the population of Loo is called to Twala's enclosure for the witch-hunt. At the sight of twenty thousand men arranged in regiments, Quatermain asks Infadoos if this is the entire army. Infadoos tells him that this is only a third of the soldiers--another third remains outside the enclosure in case there is trouble during the ceremony, ten thousand more men are garrisoned at various outposts, and the rest man the kraals throughout the countryside. The silence of the soldiers astounds the men; Infadoos explains that they are solemn as each one faces the possibility of his own death this night. Twala arrives and seats himself at a central throne, then the witch hunt begins. Gagool leaps up from her place at Twala's feet and calls for the ceremony to start. At Twala's command, the soldiers begin a loud song covering the various phases of life, from young love to death. Then a group of aged, white-haired women, their faces painted in white and yellow stripes, come forth and declare their presence to Gagool. The old wise woman sets them loose upon the people to find those who think evil toward Twala. The women dance for a while, crying out their ability to locate the \"witches,\" then begin touching men with forked sticks. Each man touched is pinned by his neighbors and stabbed through the heart by Twala. To ensure death, each man speared is also clubbed violently on the head. Twala counts the victims and eventually reaches over one hundred. Gagool makes her way toward Quatermain's party, causing the men concern. She indicates that Umbopa is a witch and must die. The men stand their ground as Quatermain asks Twala to bow to the ancient laws of hospitality and let him live. When Twala insists that Umbopa must die, Quatermain levels his revolver at Twala and tells the people that if anyone touches Umbopa, their king will die. The outmaneuvered Twala then allows Umbopa to live--because of hospitality, he says, not out of fear. The ceremony comes to an abrupt end and the men return to their hut. There they await Infadoos.", "analysis": "Umbopa's hidden heritage comes out again in his seeming certainty that the diamond mines of Solomon reside near the Three Witches. His inscrutable statement only serves to make Quatermain more uncertain of the man, but nonetheless reminds the three white men of the ostensible goal of their quest. Interestingly, the Mines are considered prior to Sir Henry's query about his brother Neville--it seems as though the men have become distracted in more than one instance from their original designs. This lends an air of amazement to the land of Kukuanas, in that it can so overwhelm the men that they forget--for a time--their search for wealth or relations. Twala is introduced here as an antagonist. He is \"an enormous man with the most entirely repulsive countenance we had ever beheld. The lips were as thick as a Negro's, the nose was flat, it had but one gleaming black eye , and its whole expression was cruel and sensual to a degree\" All the qualities of the African male that Europeans see as negative are combined in Twala: he is harsh in his judgments and inhumanly large; also of note is that Twala is much darker-skinned than Umbopa or most of the other Kukuanas. Compared to Twala, Umbopa, Infadoos, and other \"friendly\" Kukuanas are closer to white in appearance. Prior to their audience with Twala, the white men assert their superiority by refusing to come immediately when Twala summons them. As Quatermain explains, \"It is always well, when dealing with uncivilized people, not to be in too great a hurry. They are apt to mistake politeness for awe or servility\" . By declaring the Kukuanas \"uncivilized,\" Quatermain contradicts his earlier assessment of them in chapter 8; clearly the European view of the African people is one full of contradictions, which Haggard subtly points out in his narrator's shortcomings. Twala, however, is subject to the same \"savage\" notions as other Kukuanas. Quatermain displays his prowess with the Winchester rifle and offers it to Twala as a gift, but with the caveat that should he use the weapon to take human life, it will instead destroy the king himself. That Quatermain uses the language of witchcraft when dealing with Twala demonstrates his self-important attitude: no non-European could understand the mechanism of a rifle and so will attribute its power to sorcery. Gagool is also introduced here, briefly. If Twala embodies all that is bad about the Kukuana man, Gagool represents all that is wrong with Kukuana femininity . Gagool is even more inhuman, described as a \"wizened monkey-like creature creeping up from the shadow of the hut\" . She is the type of the dangerous female, old where the ideal female is nubile, hideous where the female should be beautiful, and possessed of crafty intelligence and dark knowledge rather than the innocence of the feminine ideal. Gagool claims knowledge of previous white men, and declares that these newcomers will share their fate; since Infadoos has already proclaimed the white men strangers to this land for generations, this implies that Gagool has lived for several generations. Her place as a schemer behind the Kukuana throne even before Twala was born adds to this effect. Umbopa reveals himself to be the lost prince and rightful heir to the Kukuana throne. His moment of unveiling includes a re-naming: he is no longer Umbopa, but Ignosi, \"the lightning.\" Infadoos is convinced and plans to convince the other tribal leaders. It is clear that the political situation under Twala's rule, while dangerous, favors a change in leadership. Here social upheaval, moral justice, and fate come together to push Ignosi toward his birthright. To deepen the contrast between the two men, Haggard immediately has Twala hold his semi-regular \"witch hunt\" to find those among the Kukuanas who oppose him and eliminate them. While highlighting Twala's cruelty, this incident also \"mimes England's own early witch-hunts in the brutal manner by which the native seek out and destroy the supposed 'wicked ones'\" . The reader is faced with politically-motivated violence the like of which transcends race and time, so it is no surprise that Gagool would be at the center of this horrible ritual. The agents of the witch hunt are all women, \"most of them aged, for their white hair, ornamented with small bladders taken from fish, streamed out behind them. Their faces were painted in stripesof white and yellow; down their backs hung snake-skins, and round their waists rattled circlets of human bones\" . These are Gagool's acolytes, and as such take part in their priestess's denigration of the female element in the world. They bring destruction to otherwise strong and admirable men, suggesting the role of the female as a threat to masculinity and to true honor. Everyone knows the men chosen as \"wicked\" are in fact men who have been overheard criticizing Twala--nonetheless, the entire assembly ascribes the witch-finders' powers to supernatural rather than political sources. The body count rises to one-hundred; Twala's rituals are bloody and excessive. However, the high number of casualties also suggests that the leader's power base is not as stable as he would like--to find one hundred men among the tribe who have expressed doubts about Twala cannot help but suggest there are many, many more yet undiscovered. In addition, Gagool oversteps herself when she indicates Umbopa/Ignosi is one of the \"witches.\" Twala is forced to save his own life and save face by claiming the laws of hospitality forbid him to kill Ignosi as indicated. This turnabout serves as the first crack in Twala's wall of authority, since the people have now seen him admit that Gagool is not always correct in her assessments of \"witches.\""}

It will not be necessary for me to detail at length the incidents of our journey to Loo. It took two full days' travelling along Solomon's Great Road, which pursued its even course right into the heart of Kukuanaland. Suffice it to say that as we went the country seemed to grow richer and richer, and the kraals, with their wide surrounding belts of cultivation, more and more numerous. They were all built upon the same principles as the first camp which we had reached, and were guarded by ample garrisons of troops. Indeed, in Kukuanaland, as among the Germans, the Zulus, and the Masai, every able-bodied man is a soldier, so that the whole force of the nation is available for its wars, offensive or defensive. As we travelled we were overtaken by thousands of warriors hurrying up to Loo to be present at the great annual review and festival, and more splendid troops I never saw. At sunset on the second day, we stopped to rest awhile upon the summit of some heights over which the road ran, and there on a beautiful and fertile plain before us lay Loo itself. For a native town it is an enormous place, quite five miles round, I should say, with outlying kraals projecting from it, that serve on grand occasions as cantonments for the regiments, and a curious horseshoe-shaped hill, with which we were destined to become better acquainted, about two miles to the north. It is beautifully situated, and through the centre of the kraal, dividing it into two portions, runs a river, which appeared to be bridged in several places, the same indeed that we had seen from the slopes of Sheba's Breasts. Sixty or seventy miles away three great snow-capped mountains, placed at the points of a triangle, started out of the level plain. The conformation of these mountains is unlike that of Sheba's Breasts, being sheer and precipitous, instead of smooth and rounded. Infadoos saw us looking at them, and volunteered a remark. "The road ends there," he said, pointing to the mountains known among the Kukuanas as the "Three Witches." "Why does it end?" I asked. "Who knows?" he answered with a shrug; "the mountains are full of caves, and there is a great pit between them. It is there that the wise men of old time used to go to get whatever it was they came for to this country, and it is there now that our kings are buried in the Place of Death." "What was it they came for?" I asked eagerly. "Nay, I know not. My lords who have dropped from the Stars should know," he answered with a quick look. Evidently he knew more than he chose to say. "Yes," I went on, "you are right, in the Stars we learn many things. I have heard, for instance, that the wise men of old came to these mountains to find bright stones, pretty playthings, and yellow iron." "My lord is wise," he answered coldly; "I am but a child and cannot talk with my lord on such matters. My lord must speak with Gagool the old, at the king's place, who is wise even as my lord," and he went away. So soon as he was gone I turned to the others, and pointed out the mountains. "There are Solomon's diamond mines," I said. Umbopa was standing with them, apparently plunged in one of the fits of abstraction which were common to him, and caught my words. "Yes, Macumazahn," he put in, in Zulu, "the diamonds are surely there, and you shall have them, since you white men are so fond of toys and money." "How dost thou know that, Umbopa?" I asked sharply, for I did not like his mysterious ways. He laughed. "I dreamed it in the night, white men;" then he too turned on his heel and went. "Now what," said Sir Henry, "is our black friend driving at? He knows more than he chooses to say, that is clear. By the way, Quatermain, has he heard anything of--of my brother?" "Nothing; he has asked everyone he has become friendly with, but they all declare that no white man has ever been seen in the country before." "Do you suppose that he got here at all?" suggested Good; "we have only reached the place by a miracle; is it likely he could have reached it without the map?" "I don't know," said Sir Henry gloomily, "but somehow I think that I shall find him." Slowly the sun sank, then suddenly darkness rushed down on the land like a tangible thing. There was no breathing-space between the day and night, no soft transformation scene, for in these latitudes twilight does not exist. The change from day to night is as quick and as absolute as the change from life to death. The sun sank and the world was wreathed in shadows. But not for long, for see in the west there is a glow, then come rays of silver light, and at last the full and glorious moon lights up the plain and shoots its gleaming arrows far and wide, filling the earth with a faint refulgence. We stood and watched the lovely sight, whilst the stars grew pale before this chastened majesty, and felt our hearts lifted up in the presence of a beauty that I cannot describe. Mine has been a rough life, but there are a few things I am thankful to have lived for, and one of them is to have seen that moon shine over Kukuanaland. Presently our meditations were broken in upon by our polite friend Infadoos. "If my lords are rested we will journey on to Loo, where a hut is made ready for my lords to-night. The moon is now bright, so that we shall not fall by the way." We assented, and in an hour's time were at the outskirts of the town, of which the extent, mapped out as it was by thousands of camp fires, appeared absolutely endless. Indeed, Good, who is always fond of a bad joke, christened it "Unlimited Loo." Soon we came to a moat with a drawbridge, where we were met by the rattling of arms and the hoarse challenge of a sentry. Infadoos gave some password that I could not catch, which was met with a salute, and we passed on through the central street of the great grass city. After nearly half an hour's tramp, past endless lines of huts, Infadoos halted at last by the gate of a little group of huts which surrounded a small courtyard of powdered limestone, and informed us that these were to be our "poor" quarters. We entered, and found that a hut had been assigned to each of us. These huts were superior to any that we had yet seen, and in each was a most comfortable bed made of tanned skins, spread upon mattresses of aromatic grass. Food too was ready for us, and so soon as we had washed ourselves with water, which stood ready in earthenware jars, some young women of handsome appearance brought us roasted meats, and mealie cobs daintily served on wooden platters, and presented them to us with deep obeisances. We ate and drank, and then, the beds having been all moved into one hut by our request, a precaution at which the amiable young ladies smiled, we flung ourselves down to sleep, thoroughly wearied with our long journey. When we woke it was to find the sun high in the heavens, and the female attendants, who did not seem to be troubled by any false shame, already standing inside the hut, having been ordered to attend and help us to "make ready." "Make ready, indeed," growled Good; "when one has only a flannel shirt and a pair of boots, that does not take long. I wish you would ask them for my trousers, Quatermain." I asked accordingly, but was informed that these sacred relics had already been taken to the king, who would see us in the forenoon. Somewhat to their astonishment and disappointment, having requested the young ladies to step outside, we proceeded to make the best toilet of which the circumstances admitted. Good even went the length of again shaving the right side of his face; the left, on which now appeared a very fair crop of whiskers, we impressed upon him he must on no account touch. As for ourselves, we were contented with a good wash and combing our hair. Sir Henry's yellow locks were now almost upon his shoulders, and he looked more like an ancient Dane than ever, while my grizzled scrub was fully an inch long, instead of half an inch, which in a general way I considered my maximum length. By the time that we had eaten our breakfast, and smoked a pipe, a message was brought to us by no less a personage than Infadoos himself that Twala the king was ready to see us, if we would be pleased to come. We remarked in reply that we should prefer to wait till the sun was a little higher, we were yet weary with our journey, &c., &c. It is always well, when dealing with uncivilised people, not to be in too great a hurry. They are apt to mistake politeness for awe or servility. So, although we were quite as anxious to see Twala as Twala could be to see us, we sat down and waited for an hour, employing the interval in preparing such presents as our slender stock of goods permitted--namely, the Winchester rifle which had been used by poor Ventvoegel, and some beads. The rifle and ammunition we determined to present to his royal highness, and the beads were for his wives and courtiers. We had already given a few to Infadoos and Scragga, and found that they were delighted with them, never having seen such things before. At length we declared that we were ready, and guided by Infadoos, started off to the audience, Umbopa carrying the rifle and beads. After walking a few hundred yards we came to an enclosure, something like that surrounding the huts which had been allotted to us, only fifty times as big, for it could not have covered less than six or seven acres of ground. All round the outside fence stood a row of huts, which were the habitations of the king's wives. Exactly opposite the gateway, on the further side of the open space, was a very large hut, built by itself, in which his majesty resided. All the rest was open ground; that is to say, it would have been open had it not been filled by company after company of warriors, who were mustered there to the number of seven or eight thousand. These men stood still as statues as we advanced through them, and it would be impossible to give an adequate idea of the grandeur of the spectacle which they presented, with their waving plumes, their glancing spears, and iron-backed ox-hide shields. The space in front of the large hut was empty, but before it were placed several stools. On three of these, at a sign from Infadoos, we seated ourselves, Umbopa standing behind us. As for Infadoos, he took up a position by the door of the hut. So we waited for ten minutes or more in the midst of a dead silence, but conscious that we were the object of the concentrated gaze of some eight thousand pairs of eyes. It was a somewhat trying ordeal, but we carried it off as best we could. At length the door of the hut opened, and a gigantic figure, with a splendid tiger-skin karross flung over its shoulders, stepped out, followed by the boy Scragga, and what appeared to us to be a withered-up monkey, wrapped in a fur cloak. The figure seated itself upon a stool, Scragga took his stand behind it, and the withered-up monkey crept on all fours into the shade of the hut and squatted down. Still there was silence. Then the gigantic figure slipped off the karross and stood up before us, a truly alarming spectacle. It was that of an enormous man with the most entirely repulsive countenance we had ever beheld. This man's lips were as thick as a Negro's, the nose was flat, he had but one gleaming black eye, for the other was represented by a hollow in the face, and his whole expression was cruel and sensual to a degree. From the large head rose a magnificent plume of white ostrich feathers, his body was clad in a shirt of shining chain armour, whilst round the waist and right knee were the usual garnishes of white ox-tail. In his right hand was a huge spear, about the neck a thick torque of gold, and bound on the forehead shone dully a single and enormous uncut diamond. Still there was silence; but not for long. Presently the man, whom we rightly guessed to be the king, raised the great javelin in his hand. Instantly eight thousand spears were lifted in answer, and from eight thousand throats rang out the royal salute of "_Koom_." Three times this was repeated, and each time the earth shook with the noise, that can only be compared to the deepest notes of thunder. "Be humble, O people," piped out a thin voice which seemed to come from the monkey in the shade, "it is the king." "_It is the king_," boomed out the eight thousand throats in answer. "_Be humble, O people, it is the king._" Then there was silence again--dead silence. Presently, however, it was broken. A soldier on our left dropped his shield, which fell with a clatter on to the limestone flooring. Twala turned his one cold eye in the direction of the noise. "Come hither, thou," he said, in a cold voice. A fine young man stepped out of the ranks, and stood before him. "It was thy shield that fell, thou awkward dog. Wilt thou make me a reproach in the eyes of these strangers from the Stars? What hast thou to say for thyself?" We saw the poor fellow turn pale under his dusky skin. "It was by chance, O Calf of the Black Cow," he murmured. "Then it is a chance for which thou must pay. Thou hast made me foolish; prepare for death." "I am the king's ox," was the low answer. "Scragga," roared the king, "let me see how thou canst use thy spear. Kill me this blundering fool." Scragga stepped forward with an ill-favoured grin, and lifted his spear. The poor victim covered his eyes with his hand and stood still. As for us, we were petrified with horror. "Once, twice," he waved the spear, and then struck, ah! right home--the spear stood out a foot behind the soldier's back. He flung up his hands and dropped dead. From the multitude about us rose something like a murmur, it rolled round and round, and died away. The tragedy was finished; there lay the corpse, and we had not yet realised that it had been enacted. Sir Henry sprang up and swore a great oath, then, overpowered by the sense of silence, sat down again. "The thrust was a good one," said the king; "take him away." Four men stepped out of the ranks, and lifting the body of the murdered man, carried it thence. "Cover up the blood-stains, cover them up," piped out the thin voice that proceeded from the monkey-like figure; "the king's word is spoken, the king's doom is done!" Thereupon a girl came forward from behind the hut, bearing a jar filled with powdered lime, which she scattered over the red mark, blotting it from sight. Sir Henry meanwhile was boiling with rage at what had happened; indeed, it was with difficulty that we could keep him still. "Sit down, for heaven's sake," I whispered; "our lives depend on it." He yielded and remained quiet. Twala sat silent until the traces of the tragedy had been removed, then he addressed us. "White people," he said, "who come hither, whence I know not, and why I know not, greeting." "Greeting, Twala, King of the Kukuanas," I answered. "White people, whence come ye, and what seek ye?" "We come from the Stars, ask us not how. We come to see this land." "Ye journey from far to see a little thing. And that man with you," pointing to Umbopa, "does he also come from the Stars?" "Even so; there are people of thy colour in the heavens above; but ask not of matters too high for thee, Twala the king." "Ye speak with a loud voice, people of the Stars," Twala answered in a tone which I scarcely liked. "Remember that the Stars are far off, and ye are here. How if I make you as him whom they bore away?" I laughed out loud, though there was little laughter in my heart. "O king," I said, "be careful, walk warily over hot stones, lest thou shouldst burn thy feet; hold the spear by the handle, lest thou should cut thy hands. Touch but one hair of our heads, and destruction shall come upon thee. What, have not these"--pointing to Infadoos and Scragga, who, young villain that he was, was employed in cleaning the blood of the soldier off his spear--"told thee what manner of men we are? Hast thou seen the like of us?" and I pointed to Good, feeling quite sure that he had never seen anybody before who looked in the least like _him_ as he then appeared. "It is true, I have not," said the king, surveying Good with interest. "Have they not told thee how we strike with death from afar?" I went on. "They have told me, but I believe them not. Let me see you kill. Kill me a man among those who stand yonder"--and he pointed to the opposite side of the kraal--"and I will believe." "Nay," I answered; "we shed no blood of men except in just punishment; but if thou wilt see, bid thy servants drive in an ox through the kraal gates, and before he has run twenty paces I will strike him dead." "Nay," laughed the king, "kill me a man and I will believe." "Good, O king, so be it," I answered coolly; "do thou walk across the open space, and before thy feet reach the gate thou shalt be dead; or if thou wilt not, send thy son Scragga" (whom at that moment it would have given me much pleasure to shoot). On hearing this suggestion Scragga uttered a sort of howl, and bolted into the hut. Twala frowned majestically; the suggestion did not please him. "Let a young ox be driven in," he said. Two men at once departed, running swiftly. "Now, Sir Henry," said I, "do you shoot. I want to show this ruffian that I am not the only magician of the party." Sir Henry accordingly took his "express," and made ready. "I hope I shall make a good shot," he groaned. "You must," I answered. "If you miss with the first barrel, let him have the second. Sight for 150 yards, and wait till the beast turns broadside on." Then came a pause, until presently we caught sight of an ox running straight for the kraal gate. It came on through the gate, then, catching sight of the vast concourse of people, stopped stupidly, turned round, and bellowed. "Now's your time," I whispered. Up went the rifle. Bang! _thud_! and the ox was kicking on his back, shot in the ribs. The semi-hollow bullet had done its work well, and a sigh of astonishment went up from the assembled thousands. I turned round coolly-- "Have I lied, O king?" "Nay, white man, it is the truth," was the somewhat awed answer. "Listen, Twala," I went on. "Thou hast seen. Now know we come in peace, not in war. See," and I held up the Winchester repeater; "here is a hollow staff that shall enable thee to kill even as we kill, only I lay this charm upon it, thou shalt kill no man with it. If thou liftest it against a man, it shall kill thee. Stay, I will show thee. Bid a soldier step forty paces and place the shaft of a spear in the ground so that the flat blade looks towards us." In a few seconds it was done. "Now, see, I will break yonder spear." Taking a careful sight I fired. The bullet struck the flat of the spear, and shattered the blade into fragments. Again the sigh of astonishment went up. "Now, Twala, we give this magic tube to thee, and by-and-by I will show thee how to use it; but beware how thou turnest the magic of the Stars against a man of earth," and I handed him the rifle. The king took it very gingerly, and laid it down at his feet. As he did so I observed the wizened monkey-like figure creeping from the shadow of the hut. It crept on all fours, but when it reached the place where the king sat it rose upon its feet, and throwing the furry covering from its face, revealed a most extraordinary and weird countenance. Apparently it was that of a woman of great age so shrunken that in size it seemed no larger than the face of a year-old child, although made up of a number of deep and yellow wrinkles. Set in these wrinkles was a sunken slit, that represented the mouth, beneath which the chin curved outwards to a point. There was no nose to speak of; indeed, the visage might have been taken for that of a sun-dried corpse had it not been for a pair of large black eyes, still full of fire and intelligence, which gleamed and played under the snow-white eyebrows, and the projecting parchment-coloured skull, like jewels in a charnel-house. As for the head itself, it was perfectly bare, and yellow in hue, while its wrinkled scalp moved and contracted like the hood of a cobra. The figure to which this fearful countenance belonged, a countenance so fearful indeed that it caused a shiver of fear to pass through us as we gazed on it, stood still for a moment. Then suddenly it projected a skinny claw armed with nails nearly an inch long, and laying it on the shoulder of Twala the king, began to speak in a thin and piercing voice-- "Listen, O king! Listen, O warriors! Listen, O mountains and plains and rivers, home of the Kukuana race! Listen, O skies and sun, O rain and storm and mist! Listen, O men and women, O youths and maidens, and O ye babes unborn! Listen, all things that live and must die! Listen, all dead things that shall live again--again to die! Listen, the spirit of life is in me and I prophesy. I prophesy! I prophesy!" The words died away in a faint wail, and dread seemed to seize upon the hearts of all who heard them, including our own. This old woman was very terrible. "_Blood! blood! blood!_ rivers of blood; blood everywhere. I see it, I smell it, I taste it--it is salt! it runs red upon the ground, it rains down from the skies. "_Footsteps! footsteps! footsteps!_ the tread of the white man coming from afar. It shakes the earth; the earth trembles before her master. "Blood is good, the red blood is bright; there is no smell like the smell of new-shed blood. The lions shall lap it and roar, the vultures shall wash their wings in it and shriek with joy. "I am old! I am old! I have seen much blood; _ha, ha!_ but I shall see more ere I die, and be merry. How old am I, think ye? Your fathers knew me, and _their_ fathers knew me, and _their_ fathers' fathers' fathers. I have seen the white man and know his desires. I am old, but the mountains are older than I. Who made the great road, tell me? Who wrote the pictures on the rocks, tell me? Who reared up the three Silent Ones yonder, that gaze across the pit, tell me?" and she pointed towards the three precipitous mountains which we had noticed on the previous night. "Ye know not, but I know. It was a white people who were before ye are, who shall be when ye are not, who shall eat you up and destroy you. _Yea! yea! yea!_ "And what came they for, the White Ones, the Terrible Ones, the skilled in magic and all learning, the strong, the unswerving? What is that bright stone upon thy forehead, O king? Whose hands made the iron garments upon thy breast, O king? Ye know not, but I know. I the Old One, I the Wise One, I the _Isanusi_, the witch doctress!" Then she turned her bald vulture-head towards us. "What seek ye, white men of the Stars--ah, yes, of the Stars? Do ye seek a lost one? Ye shall not find him here. He is not here. Never for ages upon ages has a white foot pressed this land; never except once, and I remember that he left it but to die. Ye come for bright stones; I know it--I know it; ye shall find them when the blood is dry; but shall ye return whence ye came, or shall ye stop with me? _Ha! ha! ha!_ "And thou, thou with the dark skin and the proud bearing," and she pointed her skinny finger at Umbopa, "who art _thou_, and what seekest _thou_? Not stones that shine, not yellow metal that gleams, these thou leavest to 'white men from the Stars.' Methinks I know thee; methinks I can smell the smell of the blood in thy heart. Strip off the girdle--" Here the features of this extraordinary creature became convulsed, and she fell to the ground foaming in an epileptic fit, and was carried into the hut. The king rose up trembling, and waved his hand. Instantly the regiments began to file off, and in ten minutes, save for ourselves, the king, and a few attendants, the great space was left empty. "White people," he said, "it passes in my mind to kill you. Gagool has spoken strange words. What say ye?" I laughed. "Be careful, O king, we are not easy to slay. Thou hast seen the fate of the ox; wouldst thou be as the ox is?" The king frowned. "It is not well to threaten a king." "We threaten not, we speak what is true. Try to kill us, O king, and learn." The great savage put his hand to his forehead and thought. "Go in peace," he said at length. "To-night is the great dance. Ye shall see it. Fear not that I shall set a snare for you. To-morrow I will think." "It is well, O king," I answered unconcernedly, and then, accompanied by Infadoos, we rose and went back to our kraal. On reaching our hut I motioned to Infadoos to enter with us. "Now, Infadoos," I said, "we would speak with thee." "Let my lords say on." "It seems to us, Infadoos, that Twala the king is a cruel man." "It is so, my lords. Alas! the land cries out because of his cruelties. To-night ye shall see. It is the great witch-hunt, and many will be smelt out as wizards and slain. No man's life is safe. If the king covets a man's cattle, or a man's wife, or if he fears a man that he should excite a rebellion against him, then Gagool, whom ye saw, or some of the witch-finding women whom she has taught, will smell that man out as a wizard, and he will be killed. Many must die before the moon grows pale to-night. It is ever so. Perhaps I too shall be killed. As yet I have been spared because I am skilled in war, and am beloved by the soldiers; but I know not how long I have to live. The land groans at the cruelties of Twala the king; it is wearied of him and his red ways." "Then why is it, Infadoos, that the people do not cast him down?" "Nay, my lords, he is the king, and if he were killed Scragga would reign in his place, and the heart of Scragga is blacker than the heart of Twala his father. If Scragga were king his yoke upon our neck would be heavier than the yoke of Twala. If Imotu had never been slain, or if Ignosi his son had lived, it might have been otherwise; but they are both dead." "How knowest thou that Ignosi is dead?" said a voice behind us. We looked round astonished to see who spoke. It was Umbopa. "What meanest thou, boy?" asked Infadoos; "who told thee to speak?" "Listen, Infadoos," was the answer, "and I will tell thee a story. Years ago the king Imotu was killed in this country and his wife fled with the boy Ignosi. Is it not so?" "It is so." "It was said that the woman and her son died upon the mountains. Is it not so?" "It is even so." "Well, it came to pass that the mother and the boy Ignosi did not die. They crossed the mountains and were led by a tribe of wandering desert men across the sands beyond, till at last they came to water and grass and trees again." "How knowest thou this?" "Listen. They travelled on and on, many months' journey, till they reached a land where a people called the Amazulu, who also are of the Kukuana stock, live by war, and with them they tarried many years, till at length the mother died. Then the son Ignosi became a wanderer again, and journeyed into a land of wonders, where white people live, and for many more years he learned the wisdom of the white people." "It is a pretty story," said Infadoos incredulously. "For years he lived there working as a servant and a soldier, but holding in his heart all that his mother had told him of his own place, and casting about in his mind to find how he might journey thither to see his people and his father's house before he died. For long years he lived and waited, and at last the time came, as it ever comes to him who can wait for it, and he met some white men who would seek this unknown land, and joined himself to them. The white men started and travelled on and on, seeking for one who is lost. They crossed the burning desert, they crossed the snow-clad mountains, and at last reached the land of the Kukuanas, and there they found _thee_, O Infadoos." "Surely thou art mad to talk thus," said the astonished old soldier. "Thou thinkest so; see, I will show thee, O my uncle. "_I am Ignosi, rightful king of the Kukuanas!_" Then with a single movement Umbopa slipped off his "moocha" or girdle, and stood naked before us. "Look," he said; "what is this?" and he pointed to the picture of a great snake tattooed in blue round his middle, its tail disappearing into its open mouth just above where the thighs are set into the body. Infadoos looked, his eyes starting nearly out of his head. Then he fell upon his knees. "_Koom! Koom!_" he ejaculated; "it is my brother's son; it is the king." "Did I not tell thee so, my uncle? Rise; I am not yet the king, but with thy help, and with the help of these brave white men, who are my friends, I shall be. Yet the old witch Gagool was right, the land shall run with blood first, and hers shall run with it, if she has any and can die, for she killed my father with her words, and drove my mother forth. And now, Infadoos, choose thou. Wilt thou put thy hands between my hands and be my man? Wilt thou share the dangers that lie before me, and help me to overthrow this tyrant and murderer, or wilt thou not? Choose thou." The old man put his hand to his head and thought. Then he rose, and advancing to where Umbopa, or rather Ignosi, stood, he knelt before him, and took his hand. "Ignosi, rightful king of the Kukuanas, I put my hand between thy hands, and am thy man till death. When thou wast a babe I dandled thee upon my knees, now shall my old arm strike for thee and freedom." "It is well, Infadoos; if I conquer, thou shalt be the greatest man in the kingdom after its king. If I fail, thou canst only die, and death is not far off from thee. Rise, my uncle." "And ye, white men, will ye help me? What have I to offer you! The white stones! If I conquer and can find them, ye shall have as many as ye can carry hence. Will that suffice you?" I translated this remark. "Tell him," answered Sir Henry, "that he mistakes an Englishman. Wealth is good, and if it comes in our way we will take it; but a gentleman does not sell himself for wealth. Still, speaking for myself, I say this. I have always liked Umbopa, and so far as lies in me I will stand by him in this business. It will be very pleasant to me to try to square matters with that cruel devil Twala. What do you say, Good, and you, Quatermain?" "Well," said Good, "to adopt the language of hyperbole, in which all these people seem to indulge, you can tell him that a row is surely good, and warms the cockles of the heart, and that so far as I am concerned I'm his boy. My only stipulation is that he allows me to wear trousers." I translated the substance of these answers. "It is well, my friends," said Ignosi, late Umbopa; "and what sayest thou, Macumazahn, art thou also with me, old hunter, cleverer than a wounded buffalo?" I thought awhile and scratched my head. "Umbopa, or Ignosi," I said, "I don't like revolutions. I am a man of peace and a bit of a coward"--here Umbopa smiled--"but, on the other hand, I stick up for my friends, Ignosi. You have stuck to us and played the part of a man, and I will stick by you. But mind you, I am a trader, and have to make my living, so I accept your offer about those diamonds in case we should ever be in a position to avail ourselves of it. Another thing: we came, as you know, to look for Incubu's (Sir Henry's) lost brother. You must help us to find him." "That I will do," answered Ignosi. "Stay, Infadoos, by the sign of the snake about my middle, tell me the truth. Has any white man to thy knowledge set his foot within the land?" "None, O Ignosi." "If any white man had been seen or heard of, wouldst thou have known?" "I should certainly have known." "Thou hearest, Incubu," said Ignosi to Sir Henry; "he has not been here." "Well, well," said Sir Henry, with a sigh; "there it is; I suppose that he never got so far. Poor fellow, poor fellow! So it has all been for nothing. God's will be done." "Now for business," I put in, anxious to escape from a painful subject. "It is very well to be a king by right divine, Ignosi, but how dost thou propose to become a king indeed?" "Nay, I know not. Infadoos, hast thou a plan?" "Ignosi, Son of the Lightning," answered his uncle, "to-night is the great dance and witch-hunt. Many shall be smelt out and perish, and in the hearts of many others there will be grief and anguish and fury against the king Twala. When the dance is over, then I will speak to some of the great chiefs, who in turn, if I can win them over, will speak to their regiments. I shall speak to the chiefs softly at first, and bring them to see that thou art indeed the king, and I think that by to-morrow's light thou shalt have twenty thousand spears at thy command. And now I must go and think, and hear, and make ready. After the dance is done, if I am yet alive, and we are all alive, I will meet thee here, and we can talk. At the best there must be war." At this moment our conference was interrupted by the cry that messengers had come from the king. Advancing to the door of the hut we ordered that they should be admitted, and presently three men entered, each bearing a shining shirt of chain armour, and a magnificent battle-axe. "The gifts of my lord the king to the white men from the Stars!" said a herald who came with them. "We thank the king," I answered; "withdraw." The men went, and we examined the armour with great interest. It was the most wonderful chain work that either of us had ever seen. A whole coat fell together so closely that it formed a mass of links scarcely too big to be covered with both hands. "Do you make these things in this country, Infadoos?" I asked; "they are very beautiful." "Nay, my lord, they came down to us from our forefathers. We know not who made them, and there are but few left.[1] None but those of royal blood may be clad in them. They are magic coats through which no spear can pass, and those who wear them are well-nigh safe in the battle. The king is well pleased or much afraid, or he would not have sent these garments of steel. Clothe yourselves in them to-night, my lords." The remainder of that day we spent quietly, resting and talking over the situation, which was sufficiently exciting. At last the sun went down, the thousand watch fires glowed out, and through the darkness we heard the tramp of many feet and the clashing of hundreds of spears, as the regiments passed to their appointed places to be ready for the great dance. Then the full moon shone out in splendour, and as we stood watching her rays, Infadoos arrived, clad in his war dress, and accompanied by a guard of twenty men to escort us to the dance. As he recommended, we had already donned the shirts of chain armour which the king had sent us, putting them on under our ordinary clothing, and finding to our surprise that they were neither very heavy nor uncomfortable. These steel shirts, which evidently had been made for men of a very large stature, hung somewhat loosely upon Good and myself, but Sir Henry's fitted his magnificent frame like a glove. Then strapping our revolvers round our waists, and taking in our hands the battle-axes which the king had sent with the armour, we started. On arriving at the great kraal, where we had that morning been received by the king, we found that it was closely packed with some twenty thousand men arranged round it in regiments. These regiments were in turn divided into companies, and between each company ran a little path to allow space for the witch-finders to pass up and down. Anything more imposing than the sight that was presented by this vast and orderly concourse of armed men it is impossible to conceive. There they stood perfectly silent, and the moon poured her light upon the forest of their raised spears, upon their majestic forms, waving plumes, and the harmonious shading of their various-coloured shields. Wherever we looked were line upon line of dim faces surmounted by range upon range of shimmering spears. "Surely," I said to Infadoos, "the whole army is here?" "Nay, Macumazahn," he answered, "but a third of it. One third is present at this dance each year, another third is mustered outside in case there should be trouble when the killing begins, ten thousand more garrison the outposts round Loo, and the rest watch at the kraals in the country. Thou seest it is a great people." "They are very silent," said Good; and indeed the intense stillness among such a vast concourse of living men was almost overpowering. "What says Bougwan?" asked Infadoos. I translated. "Those over whom the shadow of Death is hovering are silent," he answered grimly. "Will many be killed?" "Very many." "It seems," I said to the others, "that we are going to assist at a gladiatorial show arranged regardless of expense." Sir Henry shivered, and Good said he wished that we could get out of it. "Tell me," I asked Infadoos, "are we in danger?" "I know not, my lords, I trust not; but do not seem afraid. If ye live through the night all may go well with you. The soldiers murmur against the king." All this while we had been advancing steadily towards the centre of the open space, in the midst of which were placed some stools. As we proceeded we perceived another small party coming from the direction of the royal hut. "It is the king Twala, Scragga his son, and Gagool the old; and see, with them are those who slay," said Infadoos, pointing to a little group of about a dozen gigantic and savage-looking men, armed with spears in one hand and heavy kerries in the other. The king seated himself upon the centre stool, Gagool crouched at his feet, and the others stood behind him. "Greeting, white lords," Twala cried, as we came up; "be seated, waste not precious time--the night is all too short for the deeds that must be done. Ye come in a good hour, and shall see a glorious show. Look round, white lords; look round," and he rolled his one wicked eye from regiment to regiment. "Can the Stars show you such a sight as this? See how they shake in their wickedness, all those who have evil in their hearts and fear the judgment of 'Heaven above.'" "_Begin! begin!_" piped Gagool, in her thin piercing voice; "the hyaenas are hungry, they howl for food. _Begin! begin!_" Then for a moment there was intense stillness, made horrible by a presage of what was to come. The king lifted his spear, and suddenly twenty thousand feet were raised, as though they belonged to one man, and brought down with a stamp upon the earth. This was repeated three times, causing the solid ground to shake and tremble. Then from a far point of the circle a solitary voice began a wailing song, of which the refrain ran something as follows:-- "_What is the lot of man born of woman?_" Back came the answer rolling out from every throat in that vast company-- "_Death!_" Gradually, however, the song was taken up by company after company, till the whole armed multitude were singing it, and I could no longer follow the words, except in so far as they appeared to represent various phases of human passions, fears, and joys. Now it seemed to be a love song, now a majestic swelling war chant, and last of all a death dirge ending suddenly in one heart-breaking wail that went echoing and rolling away in a volume of blood-curdling sound. Again silence fell upon the place, and again it was broken by the king lifting his hand. Instantly we heard a pattering of feet, and from out of the masses of warriors strange and awful figures appeared running towards us. As they drew near we saw that these were women, most of them aged, for their white hair, ornamented with small bladders taken from fish, streamed out behind them. Their faces were painted in stripes of white and yellow; down their backs hung snake-skins, and round their waists rattled circlets of human bones, while each held a small forked wand in her shrivelled hand. In all there were ten of them. When they arrived in front of us they halted, and one of them, pointing with her wand towards the crouching figure of Gagool, cried out-- "Mother, old mother, we are here." "_Good! good! good!_" answered that aged Iniquity. "Are your eyes keen, _Isanusis_ [witch doctresses], ye seers in dark places?" "Mother, they are keen." "_Good! good! good!_ Are your ears open, _Isanusis_, ye who hear words that come not from the tongue?" "Mother, they are open." "_Good! good! good!_ Are your senses awake, _Isanusis_--can ye smell blood, can ye purge the land of the wicked ones who compass evil against the king and against their neighbours? Are ye ready to do the justice of 'Heaven above,' ye whom I have taught, who have eaten of the bread of my wisdom, and drunk of the water of my magic?" "Mother, we can." "Then go! Tarry not, ye vultures; see, the slayers"--pointing to the ominous group of executioners behind--"make sharp their spears; the white men from afar are hungry to see. _Go!_" With a wild yell Gagool's horrid ministers broke away in every direction, like fragments from a shell, the dry bones round their waists rattling as they ran, and headed for various points of the dense human circle. We could not watch them all, so we fixed our eyes upon the _Isanusi_ nearest to us. When she came to within a few paces of the warriors she halted and began to dance wildly, turning round and round with an almost incredible rapidity, and shrieking out sentences such as "I smell him, the evil-doer!" "He is near, he who poisoned his mother!" "I hear the thoughts of him who thought evil of the king!" Quicker and quicker she danced, till she lashed herself into such a frenzy of excitement that the foam flew in specks from her gnashing jaws, till her eyes seemed to start from her head, and her flesh to quiver visibly. Suddenly she stopped dead and stiffened all over, like a pointer dog when he scents game, and then with outstretched wand she began to creep stealthily towards the soldiers before her. It seemed to us that as she came their stoicism gave way, and that they shrank from her. As for ourselves, we followed her movements with a horrible fascination. Presently, still creeping and crouching like a dog, the _Isanusi_ was before them. Then she halted and pointed, and again crept on a pace or two. Suddenly the end came. With a shriek she sprang in and touched a tall warrior with her forked wand. Instantly two of his comrades, those standing immediately next to him, seized the doomed man, each by one arm, and advanced with him towards the king. He did not resist, but we saw that he dragged his limbs as though they were paralysed, and that his fingers, from which the spear had fallen, were limp like those of a man newly dead. As he came, two of the villainous executioners stepped forward to meet him. Presently they met, and the executioners turned round, looking towards the king as though for orders. "_Kill!_" said the king. "_Kill!_" squeaked Gagool. "_Kill!_" re-echoed Scragga, with a hollow chuckle. Almost before the words were uttered the horrible dead was done. One man had driven his spear into the victim's heart, and to make assurance double sure, the other had dashed out his brains with a great club. "_One_," counted Twala the king, just like a black Madame Defarge, as Good said, and the body was dragged a few paces away and stretched out. Hardly was the thing done before another poor wretch was brought up, like an ox to the slaughter. This time we could see, from the leopard-skin cloak which he wore, that the man was a person of rank. Again the awful syllables were spoken, and the victim fell dead. "_Two_," counted the king. And so the deadly game went on, till about a hundred bodies were stretched in rows behind us. I have heard of the gladiatorial shows of the Caesars, and of the Spanish bull-fights, but I take the liberty of doubting if either of them could be half so horrible as this Kukuana witch-hunt. Gladiatorial shows and Spanish bull-fights at any rate contributed to the public amusement, which certainly was not the case here. The most confirmed sensation-monger would fight shy of sensation if he knew that it was well on the cards that he would, in his own proper person, be the subject of the next "event." Once we rose and tried to remonstrate, but were sternly repressed by Twala. "Let the law take its course, white men. These dogs are magicians and evil-doers; it is well that they should die," was the only answer vouchsafed to us. About half-past ten there was a pause. The witch-finders gathered themselves together, apparently exhausted with their bloody work, and we thought that the performance was done with. But it was not so, for presently, to our surprise, the ancient woman, Gagool, rose from her crouching position, and supporting herself with a stick, staggered off into the open space. It was an extraordinary sight to see this frightful vulture-headed old creature, bent nearly double with extreme age, gather strength by degrees, until at last she rushed about almost as actively as her ill-omened pupils. To and fro she ran, chanting to herself, till suddenly she made a dash at a tall man standing in front of one of the regiments, and touched him. As she did this a sort of groan went up from the regiment which evidently he commanded. But two of its officers seized him all the same, and brought him up for execution. We learned afterwards that he was a man of great wealth and importance, being indeed a cousin of the king. He was slain, and Twala counted one hundred and three. Then Gagool again sprang to and fro, gradually drawing nearer and nearer to ourselves. "Hang me if I don't believe she is going to try her games on us," ejaculated Good in horror. "Nonsense!" said Sir Henry. As for myself, when I saw that old fiend dancing nearer and nearer, my heart positively sank into my boots. I glanced behind us at the long rows of corpses, and shivered. Nearer and nearer waltzed Gagool, looking for all the world like an animated crooked stick or comma, her horrid eyes gleaming and glowing with a most unholy lustre. Nearer she came, and yet nearer, every creature in that vast assemblage watching her movements with intense anxiety. At last she stood still and pointed. "Which is it to be?" asked Sir Henry to himself. In a moment all doubts were at rest, for the old hag had rushed in and touched Umbopa, alias Ignosi, on the shoulder. "I smell him out," she shrieked. "Kill him, kill him, he is full of evil; kill him, the stranger, before blood flows from him. Slay him, O king." There was a pause, of which I instantly took advantage. "O king," I called out, rising from my seat, "this man is the servant of thy guests, he is their dog; whosoever sheds the blood of our dog sheds our blood. By the sacred law of hospitality I claim protection for him." "Gagool, mother of the witch-finders, has smelt him out; he must die, white men," was the sullen answer. "Nay, he shall not die," I replied; "he who tries to touch him shall die indeed." "Seize him!" roared Twala to the executioners; who stood round red to the eyes with the blood of their victims. They advanced towards us, and then hesitated. As for Ignosi, he clutched his spear, and raised it as though determined to sell his life dearly. "Stand back, ye dogs!" I shouted, "if ye would see to-morrow's light. Touch one hair of his head and your king dies," and I covered Twala with my revolver. Sir Henry and Good also drew their pistols, Sir Henry pointing his at the leading executioner, who was advancing to carry out the sentence, and Good taking a deliberate aim at Gagool. Twala winced perceptibly as my barrel came in a line with his broad chest. "Well," I said, "what is it to be, Twala?" Then he spoke. "Put away your magic tubes," he said; "ye have adjured me in the name of hospitality, and for that reason, but not from fear of what ye can do, I spare him. Go in peace." "It is well," I answered unconcernedly; "we are weary of slaughter, and would sleep. Is the dance ended?" "It is ended," Twala answered sulkily. "Let these dead dogs," pointing to the long rows of corpses, "be flung out to the hyaenas and the vultures," and he lifted his spear. Instantly the regiments began to defile through the kraal gateway in perfect silence, a fatigue party only remaining behind to drag away the corpses of those who had been sacrificed. Then we rose also, and making our salaam to his majesty, which he hardly deigned to acknowledge, we departed to our huts. "Well," said Sir Henry, as we sat down, having first lit a lamp of the sort used by the Kukuanas, of which the wick is made from the fibre of a species of palm leaf, and the oil from clarified hippopotamus fat, "well, I feel uncommonly inclined to be sick." "If I had any doubts about helping Umbopa to rebel against that infernal blackguard," put in Good, "they are gone now. It was as much as I could do to sit still while that slaughter was going on. I tried to keep my eyes shut, but they would open just at the wrong time. I wonder where Infadoos is. Umbopa, my friend, you ought to be grateful to us; your skin came near to having an air-hole made in it." "I am grateful, Bougwan," was Umbopa's answer, when I had translated, "and I shall not forget. As for Infadoos, he will be here by-and-by. We must wait." So we lit our pipes and waited. [1] In the Soudan swords and coats of mail are still worn by Arabs, whose ancestors must have stripped them from the bodies of Crusaders.--Editor.

Chapters 9 and 10

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As the party approaches the Kakuana capital of Loo, the land becomes lusher and more beautiful. Upon entering the city, Quatermain sees an amazing display of military might, for in Kakuanaland all men are soldiers. The men also see three precipitous mountain peaks about seventy miles away, which the Kakuanas call the "Three Witches." In quiet conference, the men agree that this must be the site of King Solomon's diamond mine. Infadoos confirms this be relating how people of old came from distant lands to go to these mountains for something--he does not say what, but is satisfied to learn that Quatermain rightly asserts that it was to obtain shining stones. Infadoos explains that it is the Place of Death for the Kakuanas, where all their chiefs are buried upon death. In a mysterious turn, Umbopa also confirms that the diamonds are in the mines of the "Three Witches," claiming that he dreamed it so it is true. He explains himself no further. The men arrive in Loo to find that they have a hut each prepared for them complete with tanned hide bed and food. Despite the lavish accommodations, the men insist on having their beds all moved to the same hut for safety purposes. The men then sleep through until the sun is high the next day. Infadoos arrives after their breakfast to bring word that the king, Twala, is ready to see the men. Quatermain cleverly delays their meeting with Twala to keep the king from thinking the white men are at his beck and call. When they arrive in Twala's enclosure, they find him surrounded by the Kakuana rank-and-file, numbering between seven and eight thousand men. Twala himself is an imposing figure, described as having cruel features and a less European look than many of the Kakuana. Twala's son, Scragga, was at his father's side, along with something Quatermain describes as a "withered-up monkey" . Twala begins the greeting ceremony, which consists of reverential call-and-response with his thousands of soldiers. During one of the silent intervals, a young soldier drops his shield. Angered at the disruption, Twala calls the man forward to be punished. As the slightest infraction at a ceremony honoring the king is punishable by death, Scragga is called upon to kill the offender, which he does by impaling him with his spear. Sir Henry becomes enraged and must be restrained by Quatermain, who sees the futility of Sir Henry's ire among so great a number of hostile men. Twala then addresses the travelers directly, addressing them as "people from the stars" but simultaneously challenging them by stating that the stars are far away and the men are here in his domain. Quatermain warns Twala against arrogance and reminds him of the "speaking stick" the he used in the sight of the king's son Scragga. Twala wants to see a demonstration of this power and offers one of his own men as the target. Quatermain insists that the white men will not kill except for food, and Twala again challenges their authority. Quatermain suggests that if the king would like a demonstration on a human being, Twala should offer himself or his son. This suggestion brings Twala up short, and the king agrees to the men's earlier request that an ox be brought for the demonstration. An ox is released, but Quatermain gives the shot to Sir Henry, insisting that the Kakuanas need to see that Alan Quatermain is not the only "sorcerer" among them. Sir Henry makes the shot and kills the ox, which is then butchered and served up in a feast that afternoon. The men then give Twala the gift of one of their Winchester repeating rifles, along with the admonition not to use the power it has on other men lest that same power destroy Twala himself. Gagool then begins a mad prophecy in which she claims to have seen white men come through here before, long before any of the other Kakuana can remember. She warns her people that the whites will return to "devour" them. She also points out to Sir Henry that, though he seeks one who is lost, no white man has set foot in Loo for generations. Following Gagool's prophecy, Twala declares that he is inclined to kill the men on the spot. Quatermain counters with the example of the ox--if they can kill an ox from afar, would Twala like to challenge their power? Twala agrees that he will leave the men alone for the time being and they may rest safely, but he makes no guarantees what he will decide come tomorrow. When the men reach their hut, Quatermain calls Infadoos inside for a private conversation. He observes that Twala is a cruel man, to which Infadoos agrees. He offers them further proof of Twala's cruelty tonight at the "witch hunts," in which Gagool and her appointed witch-finders "smell out" those who think evil of the king. These targets inevitably turn out to be political rivals or wealthy men, either of whose deaths would benefit Twala. When asked why the people do not rebel against Twala, Infadoos replies that his son, Scragga, is even worse and would make a more terrible ruler. Infadoos bemoans the loss of Imotu and his son Ignosi; Umbopa suddenly interjects that Infadoos does not know Ignosi is truly dead. He takes up the tale of Ignosi and his mother from the point in Infadoos' account where mother and child fled to the mountains: they reached the Amazulu people, kin of the Kukuana, and stayed with them for many years. When Ignosi's mother died, the young man journeyed to the land of the white people to learn their wisdom. He learned and waited until the opportunity afforded itself to return to Kukuanaland with men seeking a lost brother. To Infadoos' incredulous retort, Umbopa replies, "I am Ignosi, rightful king of the Kukuanas!" As proof, Umbopa slips off his "moocha" and reveals the serpent tattoo found only on Kukuana royalty. The entire group is amazed at this revelation. Infadoos kneels before Umbopa, recognizing him as Ignosi, his rightful ruler. Umbopa/Ignosi swears Infadoos to loyalty, and then asks the white men to help him with his overthrow of Twala. He offers the men diamonds, but Sir Henry rejects the offer in favor of assisting Ignosi simply because Twala deserves to be destroyed. Good also joins the revolution: his only stipulation is that he be allowed to wear trousers. Quatermain, however, proclaims his mercenary nature and accepts the diamonds as payment; he then insists they also find Sir Henry's brother if at all possible. To this, Ignosi questions Infadoos for information and learns that there have been no white men in this land in Infadoos' lifetime. This news leads Sir Henry to conclude that his brother died somewhere along the way and never made it this far in his trek. When asked about his plan, Ignosi admits that he has none. Infadoos offers to sound out the various leaders of the tribe individually, for he believes many of the soldiers will turn against the vile Twala. Their plotting is interrupted by three emissaries from Twala, each bearing a shirt of shining chainmail and a battle-axe. These gifts to the white men demonstrate either Twala's pleasure or his fear in entertaining the white men in Loo. Infadoos suggests they wear the chainmail tonight at the witch-hunt. When asked about their origins, Infadoos admits that none of the living Kukuanas know how to fashion such armor or weapons--they have been handed down from their forefathers. The men rest until the full moon, at which time the population of Loo is called to Twala's enclosure for the witch-hunt. At the sight of twenty thousand men arranged in regiments, Quatermain asks Infadoos if this is the entire army. Infadoos tells him that this is only a third of the soldiers--another third remains outside the enclosure in case there is trouble during the ceremony, ten thousand more men are garrisoned at various outposts, and the rest man the kraals throughout the countryside. The silence of the soldiers astounds the men; Infadoos explains that they are solemn as each one faces the possibility of his own death this night. Twala arrives and seats himself at a central throne, then the witch hunt begins. Gagool leaps up from her place at Twala's feet and calls for the ceremony to start. At Twala's command, the soldiers begin a loud song covering the various phases of life, from young love to death. Then a group of aged, white-haired women, their faces painted in white and yellow stripes, come forth and declare their presence to Gagool. The old wise woman sets them loose upon the people to find those who think evil toward Twala. The women dance for a while, crying out their ability to locate the "witches," then begin touching men with forked sticks. Each man touched is pinned by his neighbors and stabbed through the heart by Twala. To ensure death, each man speared is also clubbed violently on the head. Twala counts the victims and eventually reaches over one hundred. Gagool makes her way toward Quatermain's party, causing the men concern. She indicates that Umbopa is a witch and must die. The men stand their ground as Quatermain asks Twala to bow to the ancient laws of hospitality and let him live. When Twala insists that Umbopa must die, Quatermain levels his revolver at Twala and tells the people that if anyone touches Umbopa, their king will die. The outmaneuvered Twala then allows Umbopa to live--because of hospitality, he says, not out of fear. The ceremony comes to an abrupt end and the men return to their hut. There they await Infadoos.

Umbopa's hidden heritage comes out again in his seeming certainty that the diamond mines of Solomon reside near the Three Witches. His inscrutable statement only serves to make Quatermain more uncertain of the man, but nonetheless reminds the three white men of the ostensible goal of their quest. Interestingly, the Mines are considered prior to Sir Henry's query about his brother Neville--it seems as though the men have become distracted in more than one instance from their original designs. This lends an air of amazement to the land of Kukuanas, in that it can so overwhelm the men that they forget--for a time--their search for wealth or relations. Twala is introduced here as an antagonist. He is "an enormous man with the most entirely repulsive countenance we had ever beheld. The lips were as thick as a Negro's, the nose was flat, it had but one gleaming black eye , and its whole expression was cruel and sensual to a degree" All the qualities of the African male that Europeans see as negative are combined in Twala: he is harsh in his judgments and inhumanly large; also of note is that Twala is much darker-skinned than Umbopa or most of the other Kukuanas. Compared to Twala, Umbopa, Infadoos, and other "friendly" Kukuanas are closer to white in appearance. Prior to their audience with Twala, the white men assert their superiority by refusing to come immediately when Twala summons them. As Quatermain explains, "It is always well, when dealing with uncivilized people, not to be in too great a hurry. They are apt to mistake politeness for awe or servility" . By declaring the Kukuanas "uncivilized," Quatermain contradicts his earlier assessment of them in chapter 8; clearly the European view of the African people is one full of contradictions, which Haggard subtly points out in his narrator's shortcomings. Twala, however, is subject to the same "savage" notions as other Kukuanas. Quatermain displays his prowess with the Winchester rifle and offers it to Twala as a gift, but with the caveat that should he use the weapon to take human life, it will instead destroy the king himself. That Quatermain uses the language of witchcraft when dealing with Twala demonstrates his self-important attitude: no non-European could understand the mechanism of a rifle and so will attribute its power to sorcery. Gagool is also introduced here, briefly. If Twala embodies all that is bad about the Kukuana man, Gagool represents all that is wrong with Kukuana femininity . Gagool is even more inhuman, described as a "wizened monkey-like creature creeping up from the shadow of the hut" . She is the type of the dangerous female, old where the ideal female is nubile, hideous where the female should be beautiful, and possessed of crafty intelligence and dark knowledge rather than the innocence of the feminine ideal. Gagool claims knowledge of previous white men, and declares that these newcomers will share their fate; since Infadoos has already proclaimed the white men strangers to this land for generations, this implies that Gagool has lived for several generations. Her place as a schemer behind the Kukuana throne even before Twala was born adds to this effect. Umbopa reveals himself to be the lost prince and rightful heir to the Kukuana throne. His moment of unveiling includes a re-naming: he is no longer Umbopa, but Ignosi, "the lightning." Infadoos is convinced and plans to convince the other tribal leaders. It is clear that the political situation under Twala's rule, while dangerous, favors a change in leadership. Here social upheaval, moral justice, and fate come together to push Ignosi toward his birthright. To deepen the contrast between the two men, Haggard immediately has Twala hold his semi-regular "witch hunt" to find those among the Kukuanas who oppose him and eliminate them. While highlighting Twala's cruelty, this incident also "mimes England's own early witch-hunts in the brutal manner by which the native seek out and destroy the supposed 'wicked ones'" . The reader is faced with politically-motivated violence the like of which transcends race and time, so it is no surprise that Gagool would be at the center of this horrible ritual. The agents of the witch hunt are all women, "most of them aged, for their white hair, ornamented with small bladders taken from fish, streamed out behind them. Their faces were painted in stripesof white and yellow; down their backs hung snake-skins, and round their waists rattled circlets of human bones" . These are Gagool's acolytes, and as such take part in their priestess's denigration of the female element in the world. They bring destruction to otherwise strong and admirable men, suggesting the role of the female as a threat to masculinity and to true honor. Everyone knows the men chosen as "wicked" are in fact men who have been overheard criticizing Twala--nonetheless, the entire assembly ascribes the witch-finders' powers to supernatural rather than political sources. The body count rises to one-hundred; Twala's rituals are bloody and excessive. However, the high number of casualties also suggests that the leader's power base is not as stable as he would like--to find one hundred men among the tribe who have expressed doubts about Twala cannot help but suggest there are many, many more yet undiscovered. In addition, Gagool oversteps herself when she indicates Umbopa/Ignosi is one of the "witches." Twala is forced to save his own life and save face by claiming the laws of hospitality forbid him to kill Ignosi as indicated. This turnabout serves as the first crack in Twala's wall of authority, since the people have now seen him admit that Gagool is not always correct in her assessments of "witches."

cliffnotes

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finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Far from the Madding Crowd/section_52_part_0.txt

Far from the Madding Crowd.chapter 53

chapter 53

{"name": "Chapter 53", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101052914/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary-and-analysis/chapter-53", "summary": "A group of men congregated outside of Boldwood's house, watching the guests arrive and whispering rumors of Troy's reappearance. They were sure Bathsheba hadn't heard of it but weren't sure whether that was a good or bad omen. They sympathized with their mistress. Boldwood came out. Not noticing the watchers, he leaned on the gate, murmuring, \"I hope to God she'll come, or this night will be nothing but misery to me!\" A few minutes later, wheels were heard; Boldwood went to welcome Bathsheba. Tall, Smallbury, and Samway went to the malthouse. They saw Troy peeping in a window. \"The men, after recognizing Troy's features, withdrew across the orchard as quietly as they had come. The air was big with Bathsheba's fortunes to-night: every word everywhere concerned her.\" The men were unnerved by Troy's return and decided that they should warn Bathsheba. Laban was chosen to tell her but was reluctant; he entered Boldwood's house and left again. He couldn't bring himself to ruin everything. The men decided they had better all join together. Meanwhile, having stayed an hour and thus satisfied amenities, Bathsheba wished to leave. But before she could go, Boldwood found her and insisted on an answer to his proposal. Finally, she gave her promise: If she were truly a widow, she would not marry anyone, if not Boldwood. The man's restraint broke, and he told her of how he had suffered, of how much he loved her. Sobbing, Bathsheba finally agreed to marry him in six years. Boldwood gave her the ring. Bathsheba said it would be improper for her to wear it. When he persisted, she agreed to wear it just for the evening. Bathsheba descended from the little parlor to find the party somehow deadened. As one of her men stepped forward to talk to her, there was a knock at the door. Someone wished to speak to Mrs. Troy. Boldwood asked the man in; he was one of the few who did not recognize Troy. Bathsheba sank down at the base of the staircase, staring. Still unaware, Boldwood invited the stranger to have a drink. Troy strode in, turning down his collar and laughing. The truth suddenly dawned on Boldwood. Troy ordered Bathsheba to leave with him. She hesitated. Boldwood, in a strange voice, told her to go. Troy then pulled her roughly, and she screamed. There was a loud noise. Smoke filled the room. When Bathsheba had cried out, Boldwood's face had changed. He had taken a gun from the rack and had shot and killed Troy. He then attempted to shoot himself but was prevented by Samway. Boldwood said, \"There is another way for me to die.\" He kissed Bathsheba's hand, \"put on his hat, opened the door, and went into the darkness, nobody thinking of preventing him.\"", "analysis": "The action of this chapter is crowded and rapid. One event swiftly follows another, adding to the dramatic quality -- as Hardy well knew, having been in his earlier years a playwright. An atmosphere of inevitability surrounds the climax of the chapter. Once before Boldwood attempted to save Bathsheba from Troy, and when he found he was being tricked he had warned, \"I'll punish you yet!\" Since that time Boldwood's emotional instability has been made increasingly apparent. His determination to possess Bathsheba is that of a fanatic. Troy has changed little, and he is once again able to thwart Boldwood by trickery and deceit. Never a man of caution, he has ignored a premonition of disaster, and his dramatic gesture costs him his life. We may initially be shocked at Troy's murder, because the chapter has moved so quickly, but we are not really surprised by it once we pause to reflect."}

CONCURRITUR--HORAE MOMENTO Outside the front of Boldwood's house a group of men stood in the dark, with their faces towards the door, which occasionally opened and closed for the passage of some guest or servant, when a golden rod of light would stripe the ground for the moment and vanish again, leaving nothing outside but the glowworm shine of the pale lamp amid the evergreens over the door. "He was seen in Casterbridge this afternoon--so the boy said," one of them remarked in a whisper. "And I for one believe it. His body was never found, you know." "'Tis a strange story," said the next. "You may depend upon't that she knows nothing about it." "Not a word." "Perhaps he don't mean that she shall," said another man. "If he's alive and here in the neighbourhood, he means mischief," said the first. "Poor young thing: I do pity her, if 'tis true. He'll drag her to the dogs." "O no; he'll settle down quiet enough," said one disposed to take a more hopeful view of the case. "What a fool she must have been ever to have had anything to do with the man! She is so self-willed and independent too, that one is more minded to say it serves her right than pity her." "No, no. I don't hold with 'ee there. She was no otherwise than a girl mind, and how could she tell what the man was made of? If 'tis really true, 'tis too hard a punishment, and more than she ought to hae.--Hullo, who's that?" This was to some footsteps that were heard approaching. "William Smallbury," said a dim figure in the shades, coming up and joining them. "Dark as a hedge, to-night, isn't it? I all but missed the plank over the river ath'art there in the bottom--never did such a thing before in my life. Be ye any of Boldwood's workfolk?" He peered into their faces. "Yes--all o' us. We met here a few minutes ago." "Oh, I hear now--that's Sam Samway: thought I knowed the voice, too. Going in?" "Presently. But I say, William," Samway whispered, "have ye heard this strange tale?" "What--that about Sergeant Troy being seen, d'ye mean, souls?" said Smallbury, also lowering his voice. "Ay: in Casterbridge." "Yes, I have. Laban Tall named a hint of it to me but now--but I don't think it. Hark, here Laban comes himself, 'a b'lieve." A footstep drew near. "Laban?" "Yes, 'tis I," said Tall. "Have ye heard any more about that?" "No," said Tall, joining the group. "And I'm inclined to think we'd better keep quiet. If so be 'tis not true, 'twill flurry her, and do her much harm to repeat it; and if so be 'tis true, 'twill do no good to forestall her time o' trouble. God send that it mid be a lie, for though Henery Fray and some of 'em do speak against her, she's never been anything but fair to me. She's hot and hasty, but she's a brave girl who'll never tell a lie however much the truth may harm her, and I've no cause to wish her evil." "She never do tell women's little lies, that's true; and 'tis a thing that can be said of very few. Ay, all the harm she thinks she says to yer face: there's nothing underhand wi' her." They stood silent then, every man busied with his own thoughts, during which interval sounds of merriment could be heard within. Then the front door again opened, the rays streamed out, the well-known form of Boldwood was seen in the rectangular area of light, the door closed, and Boldwood walked slowly down the path. "'Tis master," one of the men whispered, as he neared them. "We'd better stand quiet--he'll go in again directly. He would think it unseemly o' us to be loitering here." Boldwood came on, and passed by the men without seeing them, they being under the bushes on the grass. He paused, leant over the gate, and breathed a long breath. They heard low words come from him. "I hope to God she'll come, or this night will be nothing but misery to me! Oh my darling, my darling, why do you keep me in suspense like this?" He said this to himself, and they all distinctly heard it. Boldwood remained silent after that, and the noise from indoors was again just audible, until, a few minutes later, light wheels could be distinguished coming down the hill. They drew nearer, and ceased at the gate. Boldwood hastened back to the door, and opened it; and the light shone upon Bathsheba coming up the path. Boldwood compressed his emotion to mere welcome: the men marked her light laugh and apology as she met him: he took her into the house; and the door closed again. "Gracious heaven, I didn't know it was like that with him!" said one of the men. "I thought that fancy of his was over long ago." "You don't know much of master, if you thought that," said Samway. "I wouldn't he should know we heard what 'a said for the world," remarked a third. "I wish we had told of the report at once," the first uneasily continued. "More harm may come of this than we know of. Poor Mr. Boldwood, it will be hard upon en. I wish Troy was in--Well, God forgive me for such a wish! A scoundrel to play a poor wife such tricks. Nothing has prospered in Weatherbury since he came here. And now I've no heart to go in. Let's look into Warren's for a few minutes first, shall us, neighbours?" Samway, Tall, and Smallbury agreed to go to Warren's, and went out at the gate, the remaining ones entering the house. The three soon drew near the malt-house, approaching it from the adjoining orchard, and not by way of the street. The pane of glass was illuminated as usual. Smallbury was a little in advance of the rest when, pausing, he turned suddenly to his companions and said, "Hist! See there." The light from the pane was now perceived to be shining not upon the ivied wall as usual, but upon some object close to the glass. It was a human face. "Let's come closer," whispered Samway; and they approached on tiptoe. There was no disbelieving the report any longer. Troy's face was almost close to the pane, and he was looking in. Not only was he looking in, but he appeared to have been arrested by a conversation which was in progress in the malt-house, the voices of the interlocutors being those of Oak and the maltster. "The spree is all in her honour, isn't it--hey?" said the old man. "Although he made believe 'tis only keeping up o' Christmas?" "I cannot say," replied Oak. "Oh 'tis true enough, faith. I cannot understand Farmer Boldwood being such a fool at his time of life as to ho and hanker after this woman in the way 'a do, and she not care a bit about en." The men, after recognizing Troy's features, withdrew across the orchard as quietly as they had come. The air was big with Bathsheba's fortunes to-night: every word everywhere concerned her. When they were quite out of earshot all by one instinct paused. "It gave me quite a turn--his face," said Tall, breathing. "And so it did me," said Samway. "What's to be done?" "I don't see that 'tis any business of ours," Smallbury murmured dubiously. "But it is! 'Tis a thing which is everybody's business," said Samway. "We know very well that master's on a wrong tack, and that she's quite in the dark, and we should let 'em know at once. Laban, you know her best--you'd better go and ask to speak to her." "I bain't fit for any such thing," said Laban, nervously. "I should think William ought to do it if anybody. He's oldest." "I shall have nothing to do with it," said Smallbury. "'Tis a ticklish business altogether. Why, he'll go on to her himself in a few minutes, ye'll see." "We don't know that he will. Come, Laban." "Very well, if I must I must, I suppose," Tall reluctantly answered. "What must I say?" "Just ask to see master." "Oh no; I shan't speak to Mr. Boldwood. If I tell anybody, 'twill be mistress." "Very well," said Samway. Laban then went to the door. When he opened it the hum of bustle rolled out as a wave upon a still strand--the assemblage being immediately inside the hall--and was deadened to a murmur as he closed it again. Each man waited intently, and looked around at the dark tree tops gently rocking against the sky and occasionally shivering in a slight wind, as if he took interest in the scene, which neither did. One of them began walking up and down, and then came to where he started from and stopped again, with a sense that walking was a thing not worth doing now. "I should think Laban must have seen mistress by this time," said Smallbury, breaking the silence. "Perhaps she won't come and speak to him." The door opened. Tall appeared, and joined them. "Well?" said both. "I didn't like to ask for her after all," Laban faltered out. "They were all in such a stir, trying to put a little spirit into the party. Somehow the fun seems to hang fire, though everything's there that a heart can desire, and I couldn't for my soul interfere and throw damp upon it--if 'twas to save my life, I couldn't!" "I suppose we had better all go in together," said Samway, gloomily. "Perhaps I may have a chance of saying a word to master." So the men entered the hall, which was the room selected and arranged for the gathering because of its size. The younger men and maids were at last just beginning to dance. Bathsheba had been perplexed how to act, for she was not much more than a slim young maid herself, and the weight of stateliness sat heavy upon her. Sometimes she thought she ought not to have come under any circumstances; then she considered what cold unkindness that would have been, and finally resolved upon the middle course of staying for about an hour only, and gliding off unobserved, having from the first made up her mind that she could on no account dance, sing, or take any active part in the proceedings. Her allotted hour having been passed in chatting and looking on, Bathsheba told Liddy not to hurry herself, and went to the small parlour to prepare for departure, which, like the hall, was decorated with holly and ivy, and well lighted up. Nobody was in the room, but she had hardly been there a moment when the master of the house entered. "Mrs. Troy--you are not going?" he said. "We've hardly begun!" "If you'll excuse me, I should like to go now." Her manner was restive, for she remembered her promise, and imagined what he was about to say. "But as it is not late," she added, "I can walk home, and leave my man and Liddy to come when they choose." "I've been trying to get an opportunity of speaking to you," said Boldwood. "You know perhaps what I long to say?" Bathsheba silently looked on the floor. "You do give it?" he said, eagerly. "What?" she whispered. "Now, that's evasion! Why, the promise. I don't want to intrude upon you at all, or to let it become known to anybody. But do give your word! A mere business compact, you know, between two people who are beyond the influence of passion." Boldwood knew how false this picture was as regarded himself; but he had proved that it was the only tone in which she would allow him to approach her. "A promise to marry me at the end of five years and three-quarters. You owe it to me!" "I feel that I do," said Bathsheba; "that is, if you demand it. But I am a changed woman--an unhappy woman--and not--not--" "You are still a very beautiful woman," said Boldwood. Honesty and pure conviction suggested the remark, unaccompanied by any perception that it might have been adopted by blunt flattery to soothe and win her. However, it had not much effect now, for she said, in a passionless murmur which was in itself a proof of her words: "I have no feeling in the matter at all. And I don't at all know what is right to do in my difficult position, and I have nobody to advise me. But I give my promise, if I must. I give it as the rendering of a debt, conditionally, of course, on my being a widow." "You'll marry me between five and six years hence?" "Don't press me too hard. I'll marry nobody else." "But surely you will name the time, or there's nothing in the promise at all?" "Oh, I don't know, pray let me go!" she said, her bosom beginning to rise. "I am afraid what to do! I want to be just to you, and to be that seems to be wronging myself, and perhaps it is breaking the commandments. There is considerable doubt of his death, and then it is dreadful; let me ask a solicitor, Mr. Boldwood, if I ought or no!" "Say the words, dear one, and the subject shall be dismissed; a blissful loving intimacy of six years, and then marriage--O Bathsheba, say them!" he begged in a husky voice, unable to sustain the forms of mere friendship any longer. "Promise yourself to me; I deserve it, indeed I do, for I have loved you more than anybody in the world! And if I said hasty words and showed uncalled-for heat of manner towards you, believe me, dear, I did not mean to distress you; I was in agony, Bathsheba, and I did not know what I said. You wouldn't let a dog suffer what I have suffered, could you but know it! Sometimes I shrink from your knowing what I have felt for you, and sometimes I am distressed that all of it you never will know. Be gracious, and give up a little to me, when I would give up my life for you!" The trimmings of her dress, as they quivered against the light, showed how agitated she was, and at last she burst out crying. "And you'll not--press me--about anything more--if I say in five or six years?" she sobbed, when she had power to frame the words. "Yes, then I'll leave it to time." She waited a moment. "Very well. I'll marry you in six years from this day, if we both live," she said solemnly. "And you'll take this as a token from me." Boldwood had come close to her side, and now he clasped one of her hands in both his own, and lifted it to his breast. "What is it? Oh I cannot wear a ring!" she exclaimed, on seeing what he held; "besides, I wouldn't have a soul know that it's an engagement! Perhaps it is improper? Besides, we are not engaged in the usual sense, are we? Don't insist, Mr. Boldwood--don't!" In her trouble at not being able to get her hand away from him at once, she stamped passionately on the floor with one foot, and tears crowded to her eyes again. "It means simply a pledge--no sentiment--the seal of a practical compact," he said more quietly, but still retaining her hand in his firm grasp. "Come, now!" And Boldwood slipped the ring on her finger. "I cannot wear it," she said, weeping as if her heart would break. "You frighten me, almost. So wild a scheme! Please let me go home!" "Only to-night: wear it just to-night, to please me!" Bathsheba sat down in a chair, and buried her face in her handkerchief, though Boldwood kept her hand yet. At length she said, in a sort of hopeless whisper-- "Very well, then, I will to-night, if you wish it so earnestly. Now loosen my hand; I will, indeed I will wear it to-night." "And it shall be the beginning of a pleasant secret courtship of six years, with a wedding at the end?" "It must be, I suppose, since you will have it so!" she said, fairly beaten into non-resistance. Boldwood pressed her hand, and allowed it to drop in her lap. "I am happy now," he said. "God bless you!" He left the room, and when he thought she might be sufficiently composed sent one of the maids to her. Bathsheba cloaked the effects of the late scene as she best could, followed the girl, and in a few moments came downstairs with her hat and cloak on, ready to go. To get to the door it was necessary to pass through the hall, and before doing so she paused on the bottom of the staircase which descended into one corner, to take a last look at the gathering. There was no music or dancing in progress just now. At the lower end, which had been arranged for the work-folk specially, a group conversed in whispers, and with clouded looks. Boldwood was standing by the fireplace, and he, too, though so absorbed in visions arising from her promise that he scarcely saw anything, seemed at that moment to have observed their peculiar manner, and their looks askance. "What is it you are in doubt about, men?" he said. One of them turned and replied uneasily: "It was something Laban heard of, that's all, sir." "News? Anybody married or engaged, born or dead?" inquired the farmer, gaily. "Tell it to us, Tall. One would think from your looks and mysterious ways that it was something very dreadful indeed." "Oh no, sir, nobody is dead," said Tall. "I wish somebody was," said Samway, in a whisper. "What do you say, Samway?" asked Boldwood, somewhat sharply. "If you have anything to say, speak out; if not, get up another dance." "Mrs. Troy has come downstairs," said Samway to Tall. "If you want to tell her, you had better do it now." "Do you know what they mean?" the farmer asked Bathsheba, across the room. "I don't in the least," said Bathsheba. There was a smart rapping at the door. One of the men opened it instantly, and went outside. "Mrs. Troy is wanted," he said, on returning. "Quite ready," said Bathsheba. "Though I didn't tell them to send." "It is a stranger, ma'am," said the man by the door. "A stranger?" she said. "Ask him to come in," said Boldwood. The message was given, and Troy, wrapped up to his eyes as we have seen him, stood in the doorway. There was an unearthly silence, all looking towards the newcomer. Those who had just learnt that he was in the neighbourhood recognized him instantly; those who did not were perplexed. Nobody noted Bathsheba. She was leaning on the stairs. Her brow had heavily contracted; her whole face was pallid, her lips apart, her eyes rigidly staring at their visitor. Boldwood was among those who did not notice that he was Troy. "Come in, come in!" he repeated, cheerfully, "and drain a Christmas beaker with us, stranger!" Troy next advanced into the middle of the room, took off his cap, turned down his coat-collar, and looked Boldwood in the face. Even then Boldwood did not recognize that the impersonator of Heaven's persistent irony towards him, who had once before broken in upon his bliss, scourged him, and snatched his delight away, had come to do these things a second time. Troy began to laugh a mechanical laugh: Boldwood recognized him now. Troy turned to Bathsheba. The poor girl's wretchedness at this time was beyond all fancy or narration. She had sunk down on the lowest stair; and there she sat, her mouth blue and dry, and her dark eyes fixed vacantly upon him, as if she wondered whether it were not all a terrible illusion. Then Troy spoke. "Bathsheba, I come here for you!" She made no reply. "Come home with me: come!" Bathsheba moved her feet a little, but did not rise. Troy went across to her. "Come, madam, do you hear what I say?" he said, peremptorily. A strange voice came from the fireplace--a voice sounding far off and confined, as if from a dungeon. Hardly a soul in the assembly recognized the thin tones to be those of Boldwood. Sudden despair had transformed him. "Bathsheba, go with your husband!" Nevertheless, she did not move. The truth was that Bathsheba was beyond the pale of activity--and yet not in a swoon. She was in a state of mental _gutta serena_; her mind was for the minute totally deprived of light at the same time no obscuration was apparent from without. Troy stretched out his hand to pull her her towards him, when she quickly shrank back. This visible dread of him seemed to irritate Troy, and he seized her arm and pulled it sharply. Whether his grasp pinched her, or whether his mere touch was the cause, was never known, but at the moment of his seizure she writhed, and gave a quick, low scream. The scream had been heard but a few seconds when it was followed by sudden deafening report that echoed through the room and stupefied them all. The oak partition shook with the concussion, and the place was filled with grey smoke. In bewilderment they turned their eyes to Boldwood. At his back, as stood before the fireplace, was a gun-rack, as is usual in farmhouses, constructed to hold two guns. When Bathsheba had cried out in her husband's grasp, Boldwood's face of gnashing despair had changed. The veins had swollen, and a frenzied look had gleamed in his eye. He had turned quickly, taken one of the guns, cocked it, and at once discharged it at Troy. Troy fell. The distance apart of the two men was so small that the charge of shot did not spread in the least, but passed like a bullet into his body. He uttered a long guttural sigh--there was a contraction--an extension--then his muscles relaxed, and he lay still. Boldwood was seen through the smoke to be now again engaged with the gun. It was double-barrelled, and he had, meanwhile, in some way fastened his hand-kerchief to the trigger, and with his foot on the other end was in the act of turning the second barrel upon himself. Samway his man was the first to see this, and in the midst of the general horror darted up to him. Boldwood had already twitched the handkerchief, and the gun exploded a second time, sending its contents, by a timely blow from Samway, into the beam which crossed the ceiling. "Well, it makes no difference!" Boldwood gasped. "There is another way for me to die." Then he broke from Samway, crossed the room to Bathsheba, and kissed her hand. He put on his hat, opened the door, and went into the darkness, nobody thinking of preventing him.

Chapter 53

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101052914/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary-and-analysis/chapter-53

A group of men congregated outside of Boldwood's house, watching the guests arrive and whispering rumors of Troy's reappearance. They were sure Bathsheba hadn't heard of it but weren't sure whether that was a good or bad omen. They sympathized with their mistress. Boldwood came out. Not noticing the watchers, he leaned on the gate, murmuring, "I hope to God she'll come, or this night will be nothing but misery to me!" A few minutes later, wheels were heard; Boldwood went to welcome Bathsheba. Tall, Smallbury, and Samway went to the malthouse. They saw Troy peeping in a window. "The men, after recognizing Troy's features, withdrew across the orchard as quietly as they had come. The air was big with Bathsheba's fortunes to-night: every word everywhere concerned her." The men were unnerved by Troy's return and decided that they should warn Bathsheba. Laban was chosen to tell her but was reluctant; he entered Boldwood's house and left again. He couldn't bring himself to ruin everything. The men decided they had better all join together. Meanwhile, having stayed an hour and thus satisfied amenities, Bathsheba wished to leave. But before she could go, Boldwood found her and insisted on an answer to his proposal. Finally, she gave her promise: If she were truly a widow, she would not marry anyone, if not Boldwood. The man's restraint broke, and he told her of how he had suffered, of how much he loved her. Sobbing, Bathsheba finally agreed to marry him in six years. Boldwood gave her the ring. Bathsheba said it would be improper for her to wear it. When he persisted, she agreed to wear it just for the evening. Bathsheba descended from the little parlor to find the party somehow deadened. As one of her men stepped forward to talk to her, there was a knock at the door. Someone wished to speak to Mrs. Troy. Boldwood asked the man in; he was one of the few who did not recognize Troy. Bathsheba sank down at the base of the staircase, staring. Still unaware, Boldwood invited the stranger to have a drink. Troy strode in, turning down his collar and laughing. The truth suddenly dawned on Boldwood. Troy ordered Bathsheba to leave with him. She hesitated. Boldwood, in a strange voice, told her to go. Troy then pulled her roughly, and she screamed. There was a loud noise. Smoke filled the room. When Bathsheba had cried out, Boldwood's face had changed. He had taken a gun from the rack and had shot and killed Troy. He then attempted to shoot himself but was prevented by Samway. Boldwood said, "There is another way for me to die." He kissed Bathsheba's hand, "put on his hat, opened the door, and went into the darkness, nobody thinking of preventing him."

The action of this chapter is crowded and rapid. One event swiftly follows another, adding to the dramatic quality -- as Hardy well knew, having been in his earlier years a playwright. An atmosphere of inevitability surrounds the climax of the chapter. Once before Boldwood attempted to save Bathsheba from Troy, and when he found he was being tricked he had warned, "I'll punish you yet!" Since that time Boldwood's emotional instability has been made increasingly apparent. His determination to possess Bathsheba is that of a fanatic. Troy has changed little, and he is once again able to thwart Boldwood by trickery and deceit. Never a man of caution, he has ignored a premonition of disaster, and his dramatic gesture costs him his life. We may initially be shocked at Troy's murder, because the chapter has moved so quickly, but we are not really surprised by it once we pause to reflect.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1232-chapters/06.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Prince/section_6_part_0.txt

The Prince.chapter 6

chapter 6

{"name": "Chapter 6", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210420060055/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/prince-machiavelli/summary/chapter-6", "summary": "Now on to totally new states with rulers who have never ruled before. In this case, whether things go good or bad is based on whether the new ruler is good at his job. True, there is some luck involved, but those guys who were just lucky didn't last long. Let's talk about those guys who weren't \"just lucky.\" Machiavelli starts talking about the big shots: Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, Theseus. These are some high-rolling, nation-building, founding fathers. These are not just lucky guys. Sure they had some luck to get where they are. But why do we remember them? Because they had talent. Just like any new ruler, these guys had a lot of trouble at first. The hardest thing is to establish a new type of government in an area, because everyone hates change at firstjust ask those people starting petitions to bring back the old Facebook. But the real question you have to ask is this: does the new ruler have his own army? If not, well, you're out of luck. None of these mythical greats like Moses relied on other people; they had armies backing them up and they weren't afraid to use them. Once all those people who didn't like you have been \"dealt with\" , you can rest easy and kick back in your new kingdom. All this time, Machiavelli has been talking about fancy old leaders, but he has a slightly less fancy modern-day example for all the people who will say that the examples are just fairy tales. Hiero, the King of Syracuse followed Machiavelli's recommendations to the letter. He was lucky at first and was made king because people seriously needed a leader. After that, it was all hard work. He got rid of the old army, made a new one, forged alliances, and broke off the old ones, so in the end he was only relying on his own power. No wonder he was able to keep his new lands, even though he was a regular dude.", "analysis": ""}

Let no one be surprised if, in speaking of entirely new principalities as I shall do, I adduce the highest examples both of prince and of state; because men, walking almost always in paths beaten by others, and following by imitation their deeds, are yet unable to keep entirely to the ways of others or attain to the power of those they imitate. A wise man ought always to follow the paths beaten by great men, and to imitate those who have been supreme, so that if his ability does not equal theirs, at least it will savour of it. Let him act like the clever archers who, designing to hit the mark which yet appears too far distant, and knowing the limits to which the strength of their bow attains, take aim much higher than the mark, not to reach by their strength or arrow to so great a height, but to be able with the aid of so high an aim to hit the mark they wish to reach. I say, therefore, that in entirely new principalities, where there is a new prince, more or less difficulty is found in keeping them, accordingly as there is more or less ability in him who has acquired the state. Now, as the fact of becoming a prince from a private station presupposes either ability or fortune, it is clear that one or other of these things will mitigate in some degree many difficulties. Nevertheless, he who has relied least on fortune is established the strongest. Further, it facilitates matters when the prince, having no other state, is compelled to reside there in person. But to come to those who, by their own ability and not through fortune, have risen to be princes, I say that Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, Theseus, and such like are the most excellent examples. And although one may not discuss Moses, he having been a mere executor of the will of God, yet he ought to be admired, if only for that favour which made him worthy to speak with God. But in considering Cyrus and others who have acquired or founded kingdoms, all will be found admirable; and if their particular deeds and conduct shall be considered, they will not be found inferior to those of Moses, although he had so great a preceptor. And in examining their actions and lives one cannot see that they owed anything to fortune beyond opportunity, which brought them the material to mould into the form which seemed best to them. Without that opportunity their powers of mind would have been extinguished, and without those powers the opportunity would have come in vain. It was necessary, therefore, to Moses that he should find the people of Israel in Egypt enslaved and oppressed by the Egyptians, in order that they should be disposed to follow him so as to be delivered out of bondage. It was necessary that Romulus should not remain in Alba, and that he should be abandoned at his birth, in order that he should become King of Rome and founder of the fatherland. It was necessary that Cyrus should find the Persians discontented with the government of the Medes, and the Medes soft and effeminate through their long peace. Theseus could not have shown his ability had he not found the Athenians dispersed. These opportunities, therefore, made those men fortunate, and their high ability enabled them to recognize the opportunity whereby their country was ennobled and made famous. Those who by valorous ways become princes, like these men, acquire a principality with difficulty, but they keep it with ease. The difficulties they have in acquiring it rise in part from the new rules and methods which they are forced to introduce to establish their government and its security. And it ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things, because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them. Thus it happens that whenever those who are hostile have the opportunity to attack they do it like partisans, whilst the others defend lukewarmly, in such wise that the prince is endangered along with them. It is necessary, therefore, if we desire to discuss this matter thoroughly, to inquire whether these innovators can rely on themselves or have to depend on others: that is to say, whether, to consummate their enterprise, have they to use prayers or can they use force? In the first instance they always succeed badly, and never compass anything; but when they can rely on themselves and use force, then they are rarely endangered. Hence it is that all armed prophets have conquered, and the unarmed ones have been destroyed. Besides the reasons mentioned, the nature of the people is variable, and whilst it is easy to persuade them, it is difficult to fix them in that persuasion. And thus it is necessary to take such measures that, when they believe no longer, it may be possible to make them believe by force. If Moses, Cyrus, Theseus, and Romulus had been unarmed they could not have enforced their constitutions for long--as happened in our time to Fra Girolamo Savonarola, who was ruined with his new order of things immediately the multitude believed in him no longer, and he had no means of keeping steadfast those who believed or of making the unbelievers to believe. Therefore such as these have great difficulties in consummating their enterprise, for all their dangers are in the ascent, yet with ability they will overcome them; but when these are overcome, and those who envied them their success are exterminated, they will begin to be respected, and they will continue afterwards powerful, secure, honoured, and happy. To these great examples I wish to add a lesser one; still it bears some resemblance to them, and I wish it to suffice me for all of a like kind: it is Hiero the Syracusan.(*) This man rose from a private station to be Prince of Syracuse, nor did he, either, owe anything to fortune but opportunity; for the Syracusans, being oppressed, chose him for their captain, afterwards he was rewarded by being made their prince. He was of so great ability, even as a private citizen, that one who writes of him says he wanted nothing but a kingdom to be a king. This man abolished the old soldiery, organized the new, gave up old alliances, made new ones; and as he had his own soldiers and allies, on such foundations he was able to build any edifice: thus, whilst he had endured much trouble in acquiring, he had but little in keeping. (*) Hiero II, born about 307 B.C., died 216 B.C.

Chapter 6

https://web.archive.org/web/20210420060055/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/prince-machiavelli/summary/chapter-6

Now on to totally new states with rulers who have never ruled before. In this case, whether things go good or bad is based on whether the new ruler is good at his job. True, there is some luck involved, but those guys who were just lucky didn't last long. Let's talk about those guys who weren't "just lucky." Machiavelli starts talking about the big shots: Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, Theseus. These are some high-rolling, nation-building, founding fathers. These are not just lucky guys. Sure they had some luck to get where they are. But why do we remember them? Because they had talent. Just like any new ruler, these guys had a lot of trouble at first. The hardest thing is to establish a new type of government in an area, because everyone hates change at firstjust ask those people starting petitions to bring back the old Facebook. But the real question you have to ask is this: does the new ruler have his own army? If not, well, you're out of luck. None of these mythical greats like Moses relied on other people; they had armies backing them up and they weren't afraid to use them. Once all those people who didn't like you have been "dealt with" , you can rest easy and kick back in your new kingdom. All this time, Machiavelli has been talking about fancy old leaders, but he has a slightly less fancy modern-day example for all the people who will say that the examples are just fairy tales. Hiero, the King of Syracuse followed Machiavelli's recommendations to the letter. He was lucky at first and was made king because people seriously needed a leader. After that, it was all hard work. He got rid of the old army, made a new one, forged alliances, and broke off the old ones, so in the end he was only relying on his own power. No wonder he was able to keep his new lands, even though he was a regular dude.

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/42.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Brothers Karamazov/section_9_part_1.txt

The Brothers Karamazov.book 7.chapter 1

book 7, chapter 1

{"name": "book 7, Chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section10/", "summary": "The Odor of Corruption Most people within the monastery share Alyosha's feeling that a great miracle will follow Zosima's death. After Zosima's body is prepared for burial, a large crowd gathers around it in anticipation of witnessing this hoped-for divine display. But rather than dazzling onlookers with a miracle, Zosima's corpse merely exudes a putrid stench as it quickly begins to decay. The monks are aghast, and many believe the stench to be an evil omen for the monastery. Zosima's enemies within the monastery rudely insist that this omen indicates that Zosima was morally flawed, not a saint but an evildoer in disguise. The people in the town who had breathlessly awaited a miracle are disgruntled and confused by this disparaging talk about the widely adored Zosima. Alyosha is frightened and disgusted, and he cannot understand why God would allow this humiliation to happen. Zosima's greatest enemy, the harsh and pious Ferapont, madly attempts to exorcise Zosima's cell of demons. He is ordered to leave the monastery, but unease reigns among the monks. Alyosha leaves as well, hoping to think things through in a quieter place", "analysis": ""}

PART III Book VII. Alyosha Chapter I. The Breath Of Corruption The body of Father Zossima was prepared for burial according to the established ritual. As is well known, the bodies of dead monks and hermits are not washed. In the words of the Church Ritual: "If any one of the monks depart in the Lord, the monk designated (that is, whose office it is) shall wipe the body with warm water, making first the sign of the cross with a sponge on the forehead of the deceased, on the breast, on the hands and feet and on the knees, and that is enough." All this was done by Father Paissy, who then clothed the deceased in his monastic garb and wrapped him in his cloak, which was, according to custom, somewhat slit to allow of its being folded about him in the form of a cross. On his head he put a hood with an eight-cornered cross. The hood was left open and the dead man's face was covered with black gauze. In his hands was put an ikon of the Saviour. Towards morning he was put in the coffin which had been made ready long before. It was decided to leave the coffin all day in the cell, in the larger room in which the elder used to receive his visitors and fellow monks. As the deceased was a priest and monk of the strictest rule, the Gospel, not the Psalter, had to be read over his body by monks in holy orders. The reading was begun by Father Iosif immediately after the requiem service. Father Paissy desired later on to read the Gospel all day and night over his dead friend, but for the present he, as well as the Father Superintendent of the Hermitage, was very busy and occupied, for something extraordinary, an unheard-of, even "unseemly" excitement and impatient expectation began to be apparent in the monks, and the visitors from the monastery hostels, and the crowds of people flocking from the town. And as time went on, this grew more and more marked. Both the Superintendent and Father Paissy did their utmost to calm the general bustle and agitation. When it was fully daylight, some people began bringing their sick, in most cases children, with them from the town--as though they had been waiting expressly for this moment to do so, evidently persuaded that the dead elder's remains had a power of healing, which would be immediately made manifest in accordance with their faith. It was only then apparent how unquestionably every one in our town had accepted Father Zossima during his lifetime as a great saint. And those who came were far from being all of the humbler classes. This intense expectation on the part of believers displayed with such haste, such openness, even with impatience and almost insistence, impressed Father Paissy as unseemly. Though he had long foreseen something of the sort, the actual manifestation of the feeling was beyond anything he had looked for. When he came across any of the monks who displayed this excitement, Father Paissy began to reprove them. "Such immediate expectation of something extraordinary," he said, "shows a levity, possible to worldly people but unseemly in us." But little attention was paid him and Father Paissy noticed it uneasily. Yet he himself (if the whole truth must be told), secretly at the bottom of his heart, cherished almost the same hopes and could not but be aware of it, though he was indignant at the too impatient expectation around him, and saw in it light-mindedness and vanity. Nevertheless, it was particularly unpleasant to him to meet certain persons, whose presence aroused in him great misgivings. In the crowd in the dead man's cell he noticed with inward aversion (for which he immediately reproached himself) the presence of Rakitin and of the monk from Obdorsk, who was still staying in the monastery. Of both of them Father Paissy felt for some reason suddenly suspicious--though, indeed, he might well have felt the same about others. The monk from Obdorsk was conspicuous as the most fussy in the excited crowd. He was to be seen everywhere; everywhere he was asking questions, everywhere he was listening, on all sides he was whispering with a peculiar, mysterious air. His expression showed the greatest impatience and even a sort of irritation. As for Rakitin, he, as appeared later, had come so early to the hermitage at the special request of Madame Hohlakov. As soon as that good-hearted but weak-minded woman, who could not herself have been admitted to the hermitage, waked and heard of the death of Father Zossima, she was overtaken with such intense curiosity that she promptly dispatched Rakitin to the hermitage, to keep a careful look out and report to her by letter every half-hour or so "_everything that takes place_." She regarded Rakitin as a most religious and devout young man. He was particularly clever in getting round people and assuming whatever part he thought most to their taste, if he detected the slightest advantage to himself from doing so. It was a bright, clear day, and many of the visitors were thronging about the tombs, which were particularly numerous round the church and scattered here and there about the hermitage. As he walked round the hermitage, Father Paissy remembered Alyosha and that he had not seen him for some time, not since the night. And he had no sooner thought of him than he at once noticed him in the farthest corner of the hermitage garden, sitting on the tombstone of a monk who had been famous long ago for his saintliness. He sat with his back to the hermitage and his face to the wall, and seemed to be hiding behind the tombstone. Going up to him, Father Paissy saw that he was weeping quietly but bitterly, with his face hidden in his hands, and that his whole frame was shaking with sobs. Father Paissy stood over him for a little. "Enough, dear son, enough, dear," he pronounced with feeling at last. "Why do you weep? Rejoice and weep not. Don't you know that this is the greatest of his days? Think only where he is now, at this moment!" Alyosha glanced at him, uncovering his face, which was swollen with crying like a child's, but turned away at once without uttering a word and hid his face in his hands again. "Maybe it is well," said Father Paissy thoughtfully; "weep if you must, Christ has sent you those tears." "Your touching tears are but a relief to your spirit and will serve to gladden your dear heart," he added to himself, walking away from Alyosha, and thinking lovingly of him. He moved away quickly, however, for he felt that he too might weep looking at him. Meanwhile the time was passing; the monastery services and the requiems for the dead followed in their due course. Father Paissy again took Father Iosif's place by the coffin and began reading the Gospel. But before three o'clock in the afternoon that something took place to which I alluded at the end of the last book, something so unexpected by all of us and so contrary to the general hope, that, I repeat, this trivial incident has been minutely remembered to this day in our town and all the surrounding neighborhood. I may add here, for myself personally, that I feel it almost repulsive to recall that event which caused such frivolous agitation and was such a stumbling-block to many, though in reality it was the most natural and trivial matter. I should, of course, have omitted all mention of it in my story, if it had not exerted a very strong influence on the heart and soul of the chief, though future, hero of my story, Alyosha, forming a crisis and turning-point in his spiritual development, giving a shock to his intellect, which finally strengthened it for the rest of his life and gave it a definite aim. And so, to return to our story. When before dawn they laid Father Zossima's body in the coffin and brought it into the front room, the question of opening the windows was raised among those who were around the coffin. But this suggestion made casually by some one was unanswered and almost unnoticed. Some of those present may perhaps have inwardly noticed it, only to reflect that the anticipation of decay and corruption from the body of such a saint was an actual absurdity, calling for compassion (if not a smile) for the lack of faith and the frivolity it implied. For they expected something quite different. And, behold, soon after midday there were signs of something, at first only observed in silence by those who came in and out and were evidently each afraid to communicate the thought in his mind. But by three o'clock those signs had become so clear and unmistakable, that the news swiftly reached all the monks and visitors in the hermitage, promptly penetrated to the monastery, throwing all the monks into amazement, and finally, in the shortest possible time, spread to the town, exciting every one in it, believers and unbelievers alike. The unbelievers rejoiced, and as for the believers some of them rejoiced even more than the unbelievers, for "men love the downfall and disgrace of the righteous," as the deceased elder had said in one of his exhortations. The fact is that a smell of decomposition began to come from the coffin, growing gradually more marked, and by three o'clock it was quite unmistakable. In all the past history of our monastery, no such scandal could be recalled, and in no other circumstances could such a scandal have been possible, as showed itself in unseemly disorder immediately after this discovery among the very monks themselves. Afterwards, even many years afterwards, some sensible monks were amazed and horrified, when they recalled that day, that the scandal could have reached such proportions. For in the past, monks of very holy life had died, God-fearing old men, whose saintliness was acknowledged by all, yet from their humble coffins, too, the breath of corruption had come, naturally, as from all dead bodies, but that had caused no scandal nor even the slightest excitement. Of course there had been, in former times, saints in the monastery whose memory was carefully preserved and whose relics, according to tradition, showed no signs of corruption. This fact was regarded by the monks as touching and mysterious, and the tradition of it was cherished as something blessed and miraculous, and as a promise, by God's grace, of still greater glory from their tombs in the future. One such, whose memory was particularly cherished, was an old monk, Job, who had died seventy years before at the age of a hundred and five. He had been a celebrated ascetic, rigid in fasting and silence, and his tomb was pointed out to all visitors on their arrival with peculiar respect and mysterious hints of great hopes connected with it. (That was the very tomb on which Father Paissy had found Alyosha sitting in the morning.) Another memory cherished in the monastery was that of the famous Father Varsonofy, who was only recently dead and had preceded Father Zossima in the eldership. He was reverenced during his lifetime as a crazy saint by all the pilgrims to the monastery. There was a tradition that both of these had lain in their coffins as though alive, that they had shown no signs of decomposition when they were buried and that there had been a holy light in their faces. And some people even insisted that a sweet fragrance came from their bodies. Yet, in spite of these edifying memories, it would be difficult to explain the frivolity, absurdity and malice that were manifested beside the coffin of Father Zossima. It is my private opinion that several different causes were simultaneously at work, one of which was the deeply-rooted hostility to the institution of elders as a pernicious innovation, an antipathy hidden deep in the hearts of many of the monks. Even more powerful was jealousy of the dead man's saintliness, so firmly established during his lifetime that it was almost a forbidden thing to question it. For though the late elder had won over many hearts, more by love than by miracles, and had gathered round him a mass of loving adherents, none the less, in fact, rather the more on that account he had awakened jealousy and so had come to have bitter enemies, secret and open, not only in the monastery but in the world outside it. He did no one any harm, but "Why do they think him so saintly?" And that question alone, gradually repeated, gave rise at last to an intense, insatiable hatred of him. That, I believe, was why many people were extremely delighted at the smell of decomposition which came so quickly, for not a day had passed since his death. At the same time there were some among those who had been hitherto reverently devoted to the elder, who were almost mortified and personally affronted by this incident. This was how the thing happened. As soon as signs of decomposition had begun to appear, the whole aspect of the monks betrayed their secret motives in entering the cell. They went in, stayed a little while and hastened out to confirm the news to the crowd of other monks waiting outside. Some of the latter shook their heads mournfully, but others did not even care to conceal the delight which gleamed unmistakably in their malignant eyes. And now no one reproached them for it, no one raised his voice in protest, which was strange, for the majority of the monks had been devoted to the dead elder. But it seemed as though God had in this case let the minority get the upper hand for a time. Visitors from outside, particularly of the educated class, soon went into the cell, too, with the same spying intent. Of the peasantry few went into the cell, though there were crowds of them at the gates of the hermitage. After three o'clock the rush of worldly visitors was greatly increased and this was no doubt owing to the shocking news. People were attracted who would not otherwise have come on that day and had not intended to come, and among them were some personages of high standing. But external decorum was still preserved and Father Paissy, with a stern face, continued firmly and distinctly reading aloud the Gospel, apparently not noticing what was taking place around him, though he had, in fact, observed something unusual long before. But at last the murmurs, first subdued but gradually louder and more confident, reached even him. "It shows God's judgment is not as man's," Father Paissy heard suddenly. The first to give utterance to this sentiment was a layman, an elderly official from the town, known to be a man of great piety. But he only repeated aloud what the monks had long been whispering. They had long before formulated this damning conclusion, and the worst of it was that a sort of triumphant satisfaction at that conclusion became more and more apparent every moment. Soon they began to lay aside even external decorum and almost seemed to feel they had a sort of right to discard it. "And for what reason can _this_ have happened," some of the monks said, at first with a show of regret; "he had a small frame and his flesh was dried up on his bones, what was there to decay?" "It must be a sign from heaven," others hastened to add, and their opinion was adopted at once without protest. For it was pointed out, too, that if the decomposition had been natural, as in the case of every dead sinner, it would have been apparent later, after a lapse of at least twenty-four hours, but this premature corruption "was in excess of nature," and so the finger of God was evident. It was meant for a sign. This conclusion seemed irresistible. Gentle Father Iosif, the librarian, a great favorite of the dead man's, tried to reply to some of the evil speakers that "this is not held everywhere alike," and that the incorruptibility of the bodies of the just was not a dogma of the Orthodox Church, but only an opinion, and that even in the most Orthodox regions, at Athos for instance, they were not greatly confounded by the smell of corruption, and there the chief sign of the glorification of the saved was not bodily incorruptibility, but the color of the bones when the bodies have lain many years in the earth and have decayed in it. "And if the bones are yellow as wax, that is the great sign that the Lord has glorified the dead saint, if they are not yellow but black, it shows that God has not deemed him worthy of such glory--that is the belief in Athos, a great place, where the Orthodox doctrine has been preserved from of old, unbroken and in its greatest purity," said Father Iosif in conclusion. But the meek Father's words had little effect and even provoked a mocking retort. "That's all pedantry and innovation, no use listening to it," the monks decided. "We stick to the old doctrine, there are all sorts of innovations nowadays, are we to follow them all?" added others. "We have had as many holy fathers as they had. There they are among the Turks, they have forgotten everything. Their doctrine has long been impure and they have no bells even," the most sneering added. Father Iosif walked away, grieving the more since he had put forward his own opinion with little confidence as though scarcely believing in it himself. He foresaw with distress that something very unseemly was beginning and that there were positive signs of disobedience. Little by little, all the sensible monks were reduced to silence like Father Iosif. And so it came to pass that all who loved the elder and had accepted with devout obedience the institution of the eldership were all at once terribly cast down and glanced timidly in one another's faces, when they met. Those who were hostile to the institution of elders, as a novelty, held up their heads proudly. "There was no smell of corruption from the late elder Varsonofy, but a sweet fragrance," they recalled malignantly. "But he gained that glory not because he was an elder, but because he was a holy man." And this was followed by a shower of criticism and even blame of Father Zossima. "His teaching was false; he taught that life is a great joy and not a vale of tears," said some of the more unreasonable. "He followed the fashionable belief, he did not recognize material fire in hell," others, still more unreasonable, added. "He was not strict in fasting, allowed himself sweet things, ate cherry jam with his tea, ladies used to send it to him. Is it for a monk of strict rule to drink tea?" could be heard among some of the envious. "He sat in pride," the most malignant declared vindictively; "he considered himself a saint and he took it as his due when people knelt before him." "He abused the sacrament of confession," the fiercest opponents of the institution of elders added in a malicious whisper. And among these were some of the oldest monks, strictest in their devotion, genuine ascetics, who had kept silent during the life of the deceased elder, but now suddenly unsealed their lips. And this was terrible, for their words had great influence on young monks who were not yet firm in their convictions. The monk from Obdorsk heard all this attentively, heaving deep sighs and nodding his head. "Yes, clearly Father Ferapont was right in his judgment yesterday," and at that moment Father Ferapont himself made his appearance, as though on purpose to increase the confusion. I have mentioned already that he rarely left his wooden cell by the apiary. He was seldom even seen at church and they overlooked this neglect on the ground of his craziness, and did not keep him to the rules binding on all the rest. But if the whole truth is to be told, they hardly had a choice about it. For it would have been discreditable to insist on burdening with the common regulations so great an ascetic, who prayed day and night (he even dropped asleep on his knees). If they had insisted, the monks would have said, "He is holier than all of us and he follows a rule harder than ours. And if he does not go to church, it's because he knows when he ought to; he has his own rule." It was to avoid the chance of these sinful murmurs that Father Ferapont was left in peace. As every one was aware, Father Ferapont particularly disliked Father Zossima. And now the news had reached him in his hut that "God's judgment is not the same as man's," and that something had happened which was "in excess of nature." It may well be supposed that among the first to run to him with the news was the monk from Obdorsk, who had visited him the evening before and left his cell terror-stricken. I have mentioned above, that though Father Paissy, standing firm and immovable reading the Gospel over the coffin, could not hear nor see what was passing outside the cell, he gauged most of it correctly in his heart, for he knew the men surrounding him, well. He was not shaken by it, but awaited what would come next without fear, watching with penetration and insight for the outcome of the general excitement. Suddenly an extraordinary uproar in the passage in open defiance of decorum burst on his ears. The door was flung open and Father Ferapont appeared in the doorway. Behind him there could be seen accompanying him a crowd of monks, together with many people from the town. They did not, however, enter the cell, but stood at the bottom of the steps, waiting to see what Father Ferapont would say or do. For they felt with a certain awe, in spite of their audacity, that he had not come for nothing. Standing in the doorway, Father Ferapont raised his arms, and under his right arm the keen inquisitive little eyes of the monk from Obdorsk peeped in. He alone, in his intense curiosity, could not resist running up the steps after Father Ferapont. The others, on the contrary, pressed farther back in sudden alarm when the door was noisily flung open. Holding his hands aloft, Father Ferapont suddenly roared: "Casting out I cast out!" and, turning in all directions, he began at once making the sign of the cross at each of the four walls and four corners of the cell in succession. All who accompanied Father Ferapont immediately understood his action. For they knew he always did this wherever he went, and that he would not sit down or say a word, till he had driven out the evil spirits. "Satan, go hence! Satan, go hence!" he repeated at each sign of the cross. "Casting out I cast out," he roared again. He was wearing his coarse gown girt with a rope. His bare chest, covered with gray hair, could be seen under his hempen shirt. His feet were bare. As soon as he began waving his arms, the cruel irons he wore under his gown could be heard clanking. Father Paissy paused in his reading, stepped forward and stood before him waiting. "What have you come for, worthy Father? Why do you offend against good order? Why do you disturb the peace of the flock?" he said at last, looking sternly at him. "What have I come for? You ask why? What is your faith?" shouted Father Ferapont crazily. "I've come here to drive out your visitors, the unclean devils. I've come to see how many have gathered here while I have been away. I want to sweep them out with a birch broom." "You cast out the evil spirit, but perhaps you are serving him yourself," Father Paissy went on fearlessly. "And who can say of himself 'I am holy'? Can you, Father?" "I am unclean, not holy. I would not sit in an arm-chair and would not have them bow down to me as an idol," thundered Father Ferapont. "Nowadays folk destroy the true faith. The dead man, your saint," he turned to the crowd, pointing with his finger to the coffin, "did not believe in devils. He gave medicine to keep off the devils. And so they have become as common as spiders in the corners. And now he has begun to stink himself. In that we see a great sign from God." The incident he referred to was this. One of the monks was haunted in his dreams and, later on, in waking moments, by visions of evil spirits. When in the utmost terror he confided this to Father Zossima, the elder had advised continual prayer and rigid fasting. But when that was of no use, he advised him, while persisting in prayer and fasting, to take a special medicine. Many persons were shocked at the time and wagged their heads as they talked over it--and most of all Father Ferapont, to whom some of the censorious had hastened to report this "extraordinary" counsel on the part of the elder. "Go away, Father!" said Father Paissy, in a commanding voice, "it's not for man to judge but for God. Perhaps we see here a 'sign' which neither you, nor I, nor any one of us is able to comprehend. Go, Father, and do not trouble the flock!" he repeated impressively. "He did not keep the fasts according to the rule and therefore the sign has come. That is clear and it's a sin to hide it," the fanatic, carried away by a zeal that outstripped his reason, would not be quieted. "He was seduced by sweetmeats, ladies brought them to him in their pockets, he sipped tea, he worshiped his belly, filling it with sweet things and his mind with haughty thoughts.... And for this he is put to shame...." "You speak lightly, Father." Father Paissy, too, raised his voice. "I admire your fasting and severities, but you speak lightly like some frivolous youth, fickle and childish. Go away, Father, I command you!" Father Paissy thundered in conclusion. "I will go," said Ferapont, seeming somewhat taken aback, but still as bitter. "You learned men! You are so clever you look down upon my humbleness. I came hither with little learning and here I have forgotten what I did know, God Himself has preserved me in my weakness from your subtlety." Father Paissy stood over him, waiting resolutely. Father Ferapont paused and, suddenly leaning his cheek on his hand despondently, pronounced in a sing-song voice, looking at the coffin of the dead elder: "To-morrow they will sing over him 'Our Helper and Defender'--a splendid anthem--and over me when I die all they'll sing will be 'What earthly joy'--a little canticle,"(6) he added with tearful regret. "You are proud and puffed up, this is a vain place!" he shouted suddenly like a madman, and with a wave of his hand he turned quickly and quickly descended the steps. The crowd awaiting him below wavered; some followed him at once and some lingered, for the cell was still open, and Father Paissy, following Father Ferapont on to the steps, stood watching him. But the excited old fanatic was not completely silenced. Walking twenty steps away, he suddenly turned towards the setting sun, raised both his arms and, as though some one had cut him down, fell to the ground with a loud scream. "My God has conquered! Christ has conquered the setting sun!" he shouted frantically, stretching up his hands to the sun, and falling face downwards on the ground, he sobbed like a little child, shaken by his tears and spreading out his arms on the ground. Then all rushed up to him; there were exclamations and sympathetic sobs ... a kind of frenzy seemed to take possession of them all. "This is the one who is a saint! This is the one who is a holy man!" some cried aloud, losing their fear. "This is he who should be an elder," others added malignantly. "He wouldn't be an elder ... he would refuse ... he wouldn't serve a cursed innovation ... he wouldn't imitate their foolery," other voices chimed in at once. And it is hard to say how far they might have gone, but at that moment the bell rang summoning them to service. All began crossing themselves at once. Father Ferapont, too, got up and crossing himself went back to his cell without looking round, still uttering exclamations which were utterly incoherent. A few followed him, but the greater number dispersed, hastening to service. Father Paissy let Father Iosif read in his place and went down. The frantic outcries of bigots could not shake him, but his heart was suddenly filled with melancholy for some special reason and he felt that. He stood still and suddenly wondered, "Why am I sad even to dejection?" and immediately grasped with surprise that his sudden sadness was due to a very small and special cause. In the crowd thronging at the entrance to the cell, he had noticed Alyosha and he remembered that he had felt at once a pang at heart on seeing him. "Can that boy mean so much to my heart now?" he asked himself, wondering. At that moment Alyosha passed him, hurrying away, but not in the direction of the church. Their eyes met. Alyosha quickly turned away his eyes and dropped them to the ground, and from the boy's look alone, Father Paissy guessed what a great change was taking place in him at that moment. "Have you, too, fallen into temptation?" cried Father Paissy. "Can you be with those of little faith?" he added mournfully. Alyosha stood still and gazed vaguely at Father Paissy, but quickly turned his eyes away again and again looked on the ground. He stood sideways and did not turn his face to Father Paissy, who watched him attentively. "Where are you hastening? The bell calls to service," he asked again, but again Alyosha gave no answer. "Are you leaving the hermitage? What, without asking leave, without asking a blessing?" Alyosha suddenly gave a wry smile, cast a strange, very strange, look at the Father to whom his former guide, the former sovereign of his heart and mind, his beloved elder, had confided him as he lay dying. And suddenly, still without speaking, waved his hand, as though not caring even to be respectful, and with rapid steps walked towards the gates away from the hermitage. "You will come back again!" murmured Father Paissy, looking after him with sorrowful surprise.

book 7, Chapter 1

https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section10/

The Odor of Corruption Most people within the monastery share Alyosha's feeling that a great miracle will follow Zosima's death. After Zosima's body is prepared for burial, a large crowd gathers around it in anticipation of witnessing this hoped-for divine display. But rather than dazzling onlookers with a miracle, Zosima's corpse merely exudes a putrid stench as it quickly begins to decay. The monks are aghast, and many believe the stench to be an evil omen for the monastery. Zosima's enemies within the monastery rudely insist that this omen indicates that Zosima was morally flawed, not a saint but an evildoer in disguise. The people in the town who had breathlessly awaited a miracle are disgruntled and confused by this disparaging talk about the widely adored Zosima. Alyosha is frightened and disgusted, and he cannot understand why God would allow this humiliation to happen. Zosima's greatest enemy, the harsh and pious Ferapont, madly attempts to exorcise Zosima's cell of demons. He is ordered to leave the monastery, but unease reigns among the monks. Alyosha leaves as well, hoping to think things through in a quieter place

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/51.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Brothers Karamazov/section_10_part_6.txt

The Brothers Karamazov.book 8.chapter 6

book 8, chapter 6

{"name": "book 8, Chapter 6", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section11/", "summary": "Here I Come. Dmitri leaves Perkhotin and travels to the place where Grushenka and her lover, a Polish officer, are staying. Dmitri is in a frenzy, and raves to the coachman who drives him that he knows he will go to hell, but that, from the depths of hell, he will continue to love and praise God", "analysis": ""}

Chapter VI. "I Am Coming, Too!" But Dmitri Fyodorovitch was speeding along the road. It was a little more than twenty versts to Mokroe, but Andrey's three horses galloped at such a pace that the distance might be covered in an hour and a quarter. The swift motion revived Mitya. The air was fresh and cool, there were big stars shining in the sky. It was the very night, and perhaps the very hour, in which Alyosha fell on the earth, and rapturously swore to love it for ever and ever. All was confusion, confusion, in Mitya's soul, but although many things were goading his heart, at that moment his whole being was yearning for her, his queen, to whom he was flying to look on her for the last time. One thing I can say for certain; his heart did not waver for one instant. I shall perhaps not be believed when I say that this jealous lover felt not the slightest jealousy of this new rival, who seemed to have sprung out of the earth. If any other had appeared on the scene, he would have been jealous at once, and would perhaps have stained his fierce hands with blood again. But as he flew through the night, he felt no envy, no hostility even, for the man who had been her first lover.... It is true he had not yet seen him. "Here there was no room for dispute: it was her right and his; this was her first love which, after five years, she had not forgotten; so she had loved him only for those five years, and I, how do I come in? What right have I? Step aside, Mitya, and make way! What am I now? Now everything is over apart from the officer--even if he had not appeared, everything would be over ..." These words would roughly have expressed his feelings, if he had been capable of reasoning. But he could not reason at that moment. His present plan of action had arisen without reasoning. At Fenya's first words, it had sprung from feeling, and been adopted in a flash, with all its consequences. And yet, in spite of his resolution, there was confusion in his soul, an agonizing confusion: his resolution did not give him peace. There was so much behind that tortured him. And it seemed strange to him, at moments, to think that he had written his own sentence of death with pen and paper: "I punish myself," and the paper was lying there in his pocket, ready; the pistol was loaded; he had already resolved how, next morning, he would meet the first warm ray of "golden-haired Phoebus." And yet he could not be quit of the past, of all that he had left behind and that tortured him. He felt that miserably, and the thought of it sank into his heart with despair. There was one moment when he felt an impulse to stop Andrey, to jump out of the cart, to pull out his loaded pistol, and to make an end of everything without waiting for the dawn. But that moment flew by like a spark. The horses galloped on, "devouring space," and as he drew near his goal, again the thought of her, of her alone, took more and more complete possession of his soul, chasing away the fearful images that had been haunting it. Oh, how he longed to look upon her, if only for a moment, if only from a distance! "She's now with _him_," he thought, "now I shall see what she looks like with him, her first love, and that's all I want." Never had this woman, who was such a fateful influence in his life, aroused such love in his breast, such new and unknown feeling, surprising even to himself, a feeling tender to devoutness, to self-effacement before her! "I will efface myself!" he said, in a rush of almost hysterical ecstasy. They had been galloping nearly an hour. Mitya was silent, and though Andrey was, as a rule, a talkative peasant, he did not utter a word, either. He seemed afraid to talk, he only whipped up smartly his three lean, but mettlesome, bay horses. Suddenly Mitya cried out in horrible anxiety: "Andrey! What if they're asleep?" This thought fell upon him like a blow. It had not occurred to him before. "It may well be that they're gone to bed, by now, Dmitri Fyodorovitch." Mitya frowned as though in pain. Yes, indeed ... he was rushing there ... with such feelings ... while they were asleep ... she was asleep, perhaps, there too.... An angry feeling surged up in his heart. "Drive on, Andrey! Whip them up! Look alive!" he cried, beside himself. "But maybe they're not in bed!" Andrey went on after a pause. "Timofey said they were a lot of them there--" "At the station?" "Not at the posting-station, but at Plastunov's, at the inn, where they let out horses, too." "I know. So you say there are a lot of them? How's that? Who are they?" cried Mitya, greatly dismayed at this unexpected news. "Well, Timofey was saying they're all gentlefolk. Two from our town--who they are I can't say--and there are two others, strangers, maybe more besides. I didn't ask particularly. They've set to playing cards, so Timofey said." "Cards?" "So, maybe they're not in bed if they're at cards. It's most likely not more than eleven." "Quicker, Andrey! Quicker!" Mitya cried again, nervously. "May I ask you something, sir?" said Andrey, after a pause. "Only I'm afraid of angering you, sir." "What is it?" "Why, Fenya threw herself at your feet just now, and begged you not to harm her mistress, and some one else, too ... so you see, sir-- It's I am taking you there ... forgive me, sir, it's my conscience ... maybe it's stupid of me to speak of it--" Mitya suddenly seized him by the shoulders from behind. "Are you a driver?" he asked frantically. "Yes, sir." "Then you know that one has to make way. What would you say to a driver who wouldn't make way for any one, but would just drive on and crush people? No, a driver mustn't run over people. One can't run over a man. One can't spoil people's lives. And if you have spoilt a life--punish yourself.... If only you've spoilt, if only you've ruined any one's life--punish yourself and go away." These phrases burst from Mitya almost hysterically. Though Andrey was surprised at him, he kept up the conversation. "That's right, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, you're quite right, one mustn't crush or torment a man, or any kind of creature, for every creature is created by God. Take a horse, for instance, for some folks, even among us drivers, drive anyhow. Nothing will restrain them, they just force it along." "To hell?" Mitya interrupted, and went off into his abrupt, short laugh. "Andrey, simple soul," he seized him by the shoulders again, "tell me, will Dmitri Fyodorovitch Karamazov go to hell, or not, what do you think?" "I don't know, darling, it depends on you, for you are ... you see, sir, when the Son of God was nailed on the Cross and died, He went straight down to hell from the Cross, and set free all sinners that were in agony. And the devil groaned, because he thought that he would get no more sinners in hell. And God said to him, then, 'Don't groan, for you shall have all the mighty of the earth, the rulers, the chief judges, and the rich men, and shall be filled up as you have been in all the ages till I come again.' Those were His very words ..." "A peasant legend! Capital! Whip up the left, Andrey!" "So you see, sir, who it is hell's for," said Andrey, whipping up the left horse, "but you're like a little child ... that's how we look on you ... and though you're hasty-tempered, sir, yet God will forgive you for your kind heart." "And you, do you forgive me, Andrey?" "What should I forgive you for, sir? You've never done me any harm." "No, for every one, for every one, you here alone, on the road, will you forgive me for every one? Speak, simple peasant heart!" "Oh, sir! I feel afraid of driving you, your talk is so strange." But Mitya did not hear. He was frantically praying and muttering to himself. "Lord, receive me, with all my lawlessness, and do not condemn me. Let me pass by Thy judgment ... do not condemn me, for I have condemned myself, do not condemn me, for I love Thee, O Lord. I am a wretch, but I love Thee. If Thou sendest me to hell, I shall love Thee there, and from there I shall cry out that I love Thee for ever and ever.... But let me love to the end.... Here and now for just five hours ... till the first light of Thy day ... for I love the queen of my soul ... I love her and I cannot help loving her. Thou seest my whole heart.... I shall gallop up, I shall fall before her and say, 'You are right to pass on and leave me. Farewell and forget your victim ... never fret yourself about me!' " "Mokroe!" cried Andrey, pointing ahead with his whip. Through the pale darkness of the night loomed a solid black mass of buildings, flung down, as it were, in the vast plain. The village of Mokroe numbered two thousand inhabitants, but at that hour all were asleep, and only here and there a few lights still twinkled. "Drive on, Andrey, I come!" Mitya exclaimed, feverishly. "They're not asleep," said Andrey again, pointing with his whip to the Plastunovs' inn, which was at the entrance to the village. The six windows, looking on the street, were all brightly lighted up. "They're not asleep," Mitya repeated joyously. "Quicker, Andrey! Gallop! Drive up with a dash! Set the bells ringing! Let all know that I have come. I'm coming! I'm coming, too!" Andrey lashed his exhausted team into a gallop, drove with a dash and pulled up his steaming, panting horses at the high flight of steps. Mitya jumped out of the cart just as the innkeeper, on his way to bed, peeped out from the steps curious to see who had arrived. "Trifon Borissovitch, is that you?" The innkeeper bent down, looked intently, ran down the steps, and rushed up to the guest with obsequious delight. "Dmitri Fyodorovitch, your honor! Do I see you again?" Trifon Borissovitch was a thick-set, healthy peasant, of middle height, with a rather fat face. His expression was severe and uncompromising, especially with the peasants of Mokroe, but he had the power of assuming the most obsequious countenance, when he had an inkling that it was to his interest. He dressed in Russian style, with a shirt buttoning down on one side, and a full-skirted coat. He had saved a good sum of money, but was for ever dreaming of improving his position. More than half the peasants were in his clutches, every one in the neighborhood was in debt to him. From the neighboring landowners he bought and rented lands which were worked by the peasants, in payment of debts which they could never shake off. He was a widower, with four grown-up daughters. One of them was already a widow and lived in the inn with her two children, his grandchildren, and worked for him like a charwoman. Another of his daughters was married to a petty official, and in one of the rooms of the inn, on the wall could be seen, among the family photographs, a miniature photograph of this official in uniform and official epaulettes. The two younger daughters used to wear fashionable blue or green dresses, fitting tight at the back, and with trains a yard long, on Church holidays or when they went to pay visits. But next morning they would get up at dawn, as usual, sweep out the rooms with a birch-broom, empty the slops, and clean up after lodgers. In spite of the thousands of roubles he had saved, Trifon Borissovitch was very fond of emptying the pockets of a drunken guest, and remembering that not a month ago he had, in twenty-four hours, made two if not three hundred roubles out of Dmitri, when he had come on his escapade with Grushenka, he met him now with eager welcome, scenting his prey the moment Mitya drove up to the steps. "Dmitri Fyodorovitch, dear sir, we see you once more!" "Stay, Trifon Borissovitch," began Mitya, "first and foremost, where is she?" "Agrafena Alexandrovna?" The inn-keeper understood at once, looking sharply into Mitya's face. "She's here, too ..." "With whom? With whom?" "Some strangers. One is an official gentleman, a Pole, to judge from his speech. He sent the horses for her from here; and there's another with him, a friend of his, or a fellow traveler, there's no telling. They're dressed like civilians." "Well, are they feasting? Have they money?" "Poor sort of a feast! Nothing to boast of, Dmitri Fyodorovitch." "Nothing to boast of? And who are the others?" "They're two gentlemen from the town.... They've come back from Tcherny, and are putting up here. One's quite a young gentleman, a relative of Mr. Miuesov, he must be, but I've forgotten his name ... and I expect you know the other, too, a gentleman called Maximov. He's been on a pilgrimage, so he says, to the monastery in the town. He's traveling with this young relation of Mr. Miuesov." "Is that all?" "Yes." "Stay, listen, Trifon Borissovitch. Tell me the chief thing: What of her? How is she?" "Oh, she's only just come. She's sitting with them." "Is she cheerful? Is she laughing?" "No, I think she's not laughing much. She's sitting quite dull. She's combing the young gentleman's hair." "The Pole--the officer?" "He's not young, and he's not an officer, either. Not him, sir. It's the young gentleman that's Mr. Miuesov's relation ... I've forgotten his name." "Kalganov." "That's it, Kalganov!" "All right. I'll see for myself. Are they playing cards?" "They have been playing, but they've left off. They've been drinking tea, the official gentleman asked for liqueurs." "Stay, Trifon Borissovitch, stay, my good soul, I'll see for myself. Now answer one more question: are the gypsies here?" "You can't have the gypsies now, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. The authorities have sent them away. But we've Jews that play the cymbals and the fiddle in the village, so one might send for them. They'd come." "Send for them. Certainly send for them!" cried Mitya. "And you can get the girls together as you did then, Marya especially, Stepanida, too, and Arina. Two hundred roubles for a chorus!" "Oh, for a sum like that I can get all the village together, though by now they're asleep. Are the peasants here worth such kindness, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, or the girls either? To spend a sum like that on such coarseness and rudeness! What's the good of giving a peasant a cigar to smoke, the stinking ruffian! And the girls are all lousy. Besides, I'll get my daughters up for nothing, let alone a sum like that. They've only just gone to bed, I'll give them a kick and set them singing for you. You gave the peasants champagne to drink the other day, e--ech!" For all his pretended compassion for Mitya, Trifon Borissovitch had hidden half a dozen bottles of champagne on that last occasion, and had picked up a hundred-rouble note under the table, and it had remained in his clutches. "Trifon Borissovitch, I sent more than one thousand flying last time I was here. Do you remember?" "You did send it flying. I may well remember. You must have left three thousand behind you." "Well, I've come to do the same again, do you see?" And he pulled out his roll of notes, and held them up before the innkeeper's nose. "Now, listen and remember. In an hour's time the wine will arrive, savories, pies, and sweets--bring them all up at once. That box Andrey has got is to be brought up at once, too. Open it, and hand champagne immediately. And the girls, we must have the girls, Marya especially." He turned to the cart and pulled out the box of pistols. "Here, Andrey, let's settle. Here's fifteen roubles for the drive, and fifty for vodka ... for your readiness, for your love.... Remember Karamazov!" "I'm afraid, sir," faltered Andrey. "Give me five roubles extra, but more I won't take. Trifon Borissovitch, bear witness. Forgive my foolish words ..." "What are you afraid of?" asked Mitya, scanning him. "Well, go to the devil, if that's it!" he cried, flinging him five roubles. "Now, Trifon Borissovitch, take me up quietly and let me first get a look at them, so that they don't see me. Where are they? In the blue room?" Trifon Borissovitch looked apprehensively at Mitya, but at once obediently did his bidding. Leading him into the passage, he went himself into the first large room, adjoining that in which the visitors were sitting, and took the light away. Then he stealthily led Mitya in, and put him in a corner in the dark, whence he could freely watch the company without being seen. But Mitya did not look long, and, indeed, he could not see them, he saw her, his heart throbbed violently, and all was dark before his eyes. She was sitting sideways to the table in a low chair, and beside her, on the sofa, was the pretty youth, Kalganov. She was holding his hand and seemed to be laughing, while he, seeming vexed and not looking at her, was saying something in a loud voice to Maximov, who sat the other side of the table, facing Grushenka. Maximov was laughing violently at something. On the sofa sat _he_, and on a chair by the sofa there was another stranger. The one on the sofa was lolling backwards, smoking a pipe, and Mitya had an impression of a stoutish, broad-faced, short little man, who was apparently angry about something. His friend, the other stranger, struck Mitya as extraordinarily tall, but he could make out nothing more. He caught his breath. He could not bear it for a minute, he put the pistol- case on a chest, and with a throbbing heart he walked, feeling cold all over, straight into the blue room to face the company. "Aie!" shrieked Grushenka, the first to notice him.

book 8, Chapter 6

https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section11/

Here I Come. Dmitri leaves Perkhotin and travels to the place where Grushenka and her lover, a Polish officer, are staying. Dmitri is in a frenzy, and raves to the coachman who drives him that he knows he will go to hell, but that, from the depths of hell, he will continue to love and praise God