Villette

scorned the ›bourgeoisie;‹) »and uncle de Bassompiere is quite reconciled. I don't mind his calling Alfred a ›nincompoop‹ – that's only his coarse Scotch breeding; and I believe Paulina envies me, and Dr. John is wild with jealousy – fit to blow his brains out – and I'm so happy! I really think I've hardly anything left to wish for – unless it be a carriage and a hotel, and – oh! I must introduce you to ›mon mari.‹ Alfred, come here!«
    And Alfred appeared from the inner salon, where he was talking to Madame Beck, receiving the blended felicitations and reprimands of that lady. I was presented under my various names: the Dragon, Diogenes, and Timon. The young Colonel was very polite. He made me a prettily-turned, neatly-worded apology, about the ghost-visits, etc., concluding with saying that »the best excuse for all his iniquities stood there!« pointing to his bride.
    And then the bride sent him back to Madame Beck, and she took me to herself, and proceeded literally to suffocate me with her unrestrained spirits, her girlish, giddy, wild nonsense. She showed her ring exultingly; she called herself Madame la Comtesse de Hamal, and asked how it sounded, a score of times. I said very little. I gave her only the crust and rind of my nature. No matter: she expected of me nothing better – she knew me too well to look for compliments – my dry gibes pleased her well enough, and the more impassible and prosaic my mien, the more merrily she laughed.
    Soon after his marriage, M. de Hamal was persuaded to leave the army as the surest way of weaning him from certain unprofitable associates and habits; a post of attaché was procured for him, and he and his young wife went abroad. I thought she would forget me now, but she did not. For many years, she kept up a capricious, fitful sort of correspondence. During the first year or two, it was only of herself and Alfred she wrote; then, Alfred faded in the background; herself and a certain new comer prevailed; one Alfred Fanshawe de Bassompierre de Hamal began to reign in his father's stead. There were great boastings about this personage, extravagant amplifications upon miracles of precocity, mixed with vehement objurgations against the phlegmatic incredulity with which I received them. I didn't know »what it was to be a mother:« »unfeeling thing that I was, the sensibilities of the maternal heart were Greek and Hebrew to me,« and so on. In due course of nature this young gentleman took his degrees in teething, measles, hooping-cough: that was a terrible time for me – the mama's letters became a perfect shout of affliction – never woman was so put upon by calamity: never human being stood in such need of sympathy. I was frightened at first, and wrote back pathetically; but I soon found out there was more cry than wool in the business, and relapsed into my natural cruel insensibility. As to the youthful sufferer, he weathered each storm like a hero. Five times was that youth »in articulo mortis,« and five times did he miraculously revive.
    In the course of years there arose ominous murmurings against Alfred the First; M. de Bassompierre had to be appealed to, debts had to be paid, some of them of that dismal and dingy order, called ›debts of honour;‹ ignoble plaints and difficulties became frequent. Under every cloud, no matter what its nature, Ginevra, as of old, called out lustily for sympathy and aid. She had no notion of meeting any distress single-handed. In some shape, from some quarter or other, she was pretty sure to obtain her will, and so she got on – fighting the battle of life by proxy, and, on the whole, suffering as little as any human being I have ever known.
     
     
Chapter XLI
Faubourg Clotilde
    Must I, ere I close, render some account of that Freedom and Renovation which I won on the fête-night? Must I tell how I and the two stalwart companions I brought home from the illuminated park bore the test of intimate acquaintance?
    I tried them the very next day. They had boasted their strength loudly when they reclaimed me from love and its bondage, but upon my demanding deeds, not words, some evidence of better comfort, some experience of a relieved life – Freedom excused himself, as for the present, impoverished and disabled to assist; and Renovation never spoke; he had died in the night suddenly.
    I had nothing left for it then but to trust secretly that conjecture might have hurried me too fast and too far, to sustain