Esmeralda

Esmeralda, by Frances Hodgson
Burnett

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Title: Esmeralda
Author: Frances Hodgson Burnett
Release Date: November 4, 2007 [EBook #23328]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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ESMERALDA ***

Produced by David Widger

ESMERALDA
By Frances Hodgson Burnett
Copyright, 1877

To begin, I am a Frenchman, a teacher of languages, and a poor
man,--necessarily a poor man, as the great world would say, or I should
not be a teacher of languages, and my wife a copyist of great pictures,
selling her copies at small prices. In our own eyes, it is true, we are not
so poor--my Clélie and I. Looking back upon our past we congratulate
ourselves upon our prosperous condition. There was a time when we
were poorer than we are now, and were not together, and were,
moreover, in London instead of in Paris. These were indeed calamities:
to be poor, to teach, to live apart, not even knowing each other--and in
England! In England we spent years; we instructed imbeciles of all
grades; we were chilled by east winds, and tortured by influenza; we
vainly strove to conciliate the appalling English; we were discouraged
and desolate. But this, thank le bon Dieu! is past. We are united; we
have our little apartment--upon the fifth floor, it is true, but still not
hopelessly far from the Champs Elysées. Clélie paints her little pictures,
or copies those of some greater artist, and finds sale for them. She is
not a great artist herself, and is charmingly conscious of the fact.
"At fifteen," she says, "I regretted that I was not a genius; at five and
twenty, I rejoice that I made the discovery so early, and so gave myself
time to become grateful for the small gifts bestowed upon me. Why
should I eat out my heart with envy? Is it not possible that I might be a
less clever woman than I am, and a less lucky one?"
On my part I have my pupils,--French pupils who take lessons in
English, German, or Italian; English or American pupils who generally
learn French, and, upon the whole, I do not suffer from lack of patrons.
It is my habit when Clélie is at work upon a copy in one of the great
galleries to accompany her to the scene of her labor in the morning and
call for her at noon, and, in accordance with this habit, I made my way
to the Louvre at midday upon one occasion three years ago.
I found my wife busy at her easel in the Grande Galerie, and when I
approached her and laid my hand upon her shoulder, as was my wont,
she looked up with a smile and spoke to me in a cautious undertone.
"I am glad," she said, "that you are not ten minutes later. Look at those

extraordinary people."
She still leaned back in her chair and looked up at me, but made, at the
same time, one of those indescribable movements of the head which a
clever woman can render so significant.
This slight gesture directed me at once to the extraordinary people to
whom she referred.
"Are they not truly wonderful?" she asked.
There were two of them, evidently father and daughter, and they sat
side by side upon a seat placed in an archway, and regarded hopelessly
one of the finest works in the gallery. The father was a person
undersized and elderly. His face was tanned and seamed, as if with
years of rough outdoor labor; the effect produced upon him by his
clothes was plainly one of actual suffering, both physical and mental.
His stiff hands refused to meet the efforts of his gloves to fit them; his
body shrank from his garments; if he had not been pathetic, he would
have been ridiculous. But he was pathetic. It was evident he was not so
attired of his own free will; that only a patient nature, inured by long
custom to discomfort, sustained him; that he was in the gallery under
protest; that he did not understand the paintings, and that they
perplexed--overwhelmed him.
The daughter it is almost impossible to describe, and yet I must attempt
to describe her. She had a slender and pretty figure; there were slight
marks of the sun on her face also, and, as in her father's case, the
richness of her dress was set at defiance by a strong element of
incongruousness. She had