St Ives | Page 4

where my tool slipped!
Yes, I am afraid you may go from one to another, and find a flaw in
everything. Failures for Sale should be on my signboard. I do not keep
a shop; I keep a Humorous Museum.' I cast a smiling glance about my
display, and then at her, and instantly became grave. 'Strange, is it not,'
I added, 'that a grown man and a soldier should be engaged upon such
trash, and a sad heart produce anything so funny to look at?'
An unpleasant voice summoned her at this moment by the name of
Flora, and she made a hasty purchase and rejoined her party.
A few days after she came again. But I must first tell you how she came
to be so frequent. Her aunt was one of those terrible British old maids,
of which the world has heard much; and having nothing whatever to do,
and a word or two of French, she had taken what she called an
INTEREST IN THE FRENCH PRISONERS. A big, bustling, bold old
lady, she flounced about our market-place with insufferable airs of
patronage and condescension. She bought, indeed, with liberality, but
her manner of studying us through a quizzing-glass, and playing
cicerone to her followers, acquitted us of any gratitude. She had a tail
behind her of heavy, obsequious old gentlemen, or dull, giggling
misses, to whom she appeared to be an oracle. 'This one can really
carve prettily: is he not a quiz with his big whiskers?' she would say.
'And this one,' indicating myself with her gold eye-glass, 'is, I assure
you, quite an oddity.' The oddity, you may be certain, ground his teeth.
She had a way of standing in our midst, nodding around, and
addressing us in what she imagined to be French: 'Bienne, hommes! ca
va bienne?' I took the freedom to reply in the same lingo: Bienne,

femme! ca va couci-couci tout d'meme, la bourgeoise!' And at that,
when we had all laughed with a little more heartiness than was entirely
civil, 'I told you he was quite an oddity!' says she in triumph. Needless
to say, these passages were before I had remarked the niece.
The aunt came on the day in question with a following rather more than
usually large, which she manoeuvred to and fro about the market and
lectured to at rather more than usual length, and with rather less than
her accustomed tact. I kept my eyes down, but they were ever fixed in
the same direction, quite in vain. The aunt came and went, and pulled
us out, and showed us off, like caged monkeys; but the niece kept
herself on the outskirts of the crowd and on the opposite side of the
courtyard, and departed at last as she had come, without a sign. Closely
as I had watched her, I could not say her eyes had ever rested on me for
an instant; and my heart was overwhelmed with bitterness and
blackness. I tore out her detested image; I felt I was done with her for
ever; I laughed at myself savagely, because I had thought to please;
when I lay down at night sleep forsook me, and I lay, and rolled, and
gloated on her charms, and cursed her insensibility, for half the night.
How trivial I thought her! and how trivial her sex! A man might be an
angel or an Apollo, and a mustard-coloured coat would wholly blind
them to his merits. I was a prisoner, a slave, a contemned and
despicable being, the butt of her sniggering countrymen. I would take
the lesson: no proud daughter of my foes should have the chance to
mock at me again; none in the future should have the chance to think I
had looked at her with admiration. You cannot imagine any one of a
more resolute and independent spirit, or whose bosom was more
wholly mailed with patriotic arrogance, than I. Before I dropped asleep,
I had remembered all the infamies of Britain, and debited them in an
overwhelming column to Flora.
The next day, as I sat in my place, I became conscious there was some
one standing near; and behold, it was herself! I kept my seat, at first in
the confusion of my mind, later on from policy; and she stood, and
leaned a little over me, as in pity. She was very still and timid; her
voice was low. Did I suffer in my captivity? she asked me. Had I to
complain of any hardship?
'Mademoiselle, I have not learned to complain,' said I. 'I am a soldier of
Napoleon.'

She sighed. 'At least you must regret La France,' said she, and coloured
a little as she pronounced the words, which she did with a pretty
strangeness of