iberality, 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