nd where Longfellow showed
me one day an iron plate at the back of one of the fire-places, with
the rebus, the punning arms (_Armoiries parlantes_) of the Vassall
family: a vase with a sun above it, _Vas Sol_.

_Je suis mechante, ma chere_, as Madame de Sevigne wrote to her
daughter; _et cela m'a fait plaisir_, to suppress the nice little
anecdote which might have helped Lady Holland on so pleasantly just
at that juncture.

But, holding one's tongue because one chooses, and being compelled
to hold one's tongue by somebody else, is quite a different thing;
and I am not sure that the main reason of my dislike to Lady Holland
is not that I held my tongue to "spite her" during the whole course
of the last dinner-party to which Rogers invited me to meet her. The
party consisted of fewer men than women, and Lady ---- and myself
agreed to take each other down to dinner, which we did. Just,
however, as we were seating ourselves, Lady Holland called out from
the opposite side of the table, "No, no, ladies, I can't allow that;
I must have Mrs. Butler by me, if you please." Thus challenged, I
could not, without making a scene with Lady Holland, and beginning
the poet's banquet with a shock to everybody present, refuse her
very dictatorial behest; and therefore I left my friendly neighbor,
Lady ----, and went round to the place assigned me by the imperious
autocratess of the dinner-table: between herself and Dr. Allen ("the
gentle infidel," "Lady Holland's atheist," as he was familiarly
called by her familiars).

But though one man may take the mare to the water, no given number
of men can make her drink; so, having accepted my place, I
determined my complaisance should end there, and, in spite of all
Lady Holland's conversational efforts, and her final exclamation,
"Allen! do get Mrs. Butler to talk! We _really must_ make her talk!"
I held my peace, and kept the peace, which I could have done upon no
other conditions; but the unnatural and unwholesome effort disagreed
with me so dreadfully, that I have a return of dyspepsia whenever I
think of it, which I think justifies me in my dislike of Lady
Holland.... I do not feel inclined to attribute to any motive but a
kindly one, the attention Lady Holland showed my father during a
severe indisposition of his, not long after this; though, upon