initial commit of ebook 7704HEADmain

5 files changed, 3710 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/7704.txt b/7704.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4d01acb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/7704.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,3694 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook My Novel, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Vol. 3
+#131 in our series by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
+copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
+this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
+
+This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
+Gutenberg file.  Please do not remove it.  Do not change or edit the
+header without written permission.
+
+Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
+eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file.  Included is
+important information about your specific rights and restrictions in
+how the file may be used.  You can also find out about how to make a
+donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
+
+
+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**EBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*****These EBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers*****
+
+
+Title: My Novel, Volume 3.
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+Release Date: March 2005  [EBook #7704]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on April 29, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY NOVEL, BY LYTTON, V3 ***
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK THIRD.
+
+
+INITIAL CHAPTER.
+
+SHOWING HOW MY NOVEL CAME TO BE CALLED "MY NOVEL."
+
+"I am not displeased with your novel, so far as it has gone," said my
+father, graciously; "though as for the Sermon--"  Here I trembled; but
+the ladies, Heaven bless them! had taken Parson Dale under their special
+protection; and observing that my father was puckering up his brows
+critically, they rushed forward boldly in defence of The Sermon, and Mr.
+Caxton was forced to beat a retreat.  However, like a skilful general,
+he renewed the assault upon outposts less gallantly guarded.  But as it
+is not my business to betray my weak points, I leave it to the ingenuity
+of cavillers to discover the places at which the Author of "Human Error"
+directed his great guns.
+
+"But," said the captain, "you are a lad of too much spirit, Pisistratus,
+to keep us always in the obscure country quarters of Hazeldean,--you will
+march us out into open service before you have done with us?"
+
+PISISTRATUS (magisterially, for he has been somewhat nettled by Mr.
+Caxton's remarks, and he puts on an air of dignity in order to awe away
+minor assailants).--"Yes, Captain Roland; not yet a while, but all in
+good time.  I have not stinted myself in canvas, and behind my foreground
+of the Hall and the Parsonage I propose hereafter to open some lengthened
+perspective of the varieties of English life--"
+
+MR. CAXTON.--"Hum!"
+
+BLANCHE (putting her hand on my father's lip).--"We shall know better the
+design, perhaps, when we know the title.  Pray, Mr. Author, what is the
+title?"
+
+MY MOTHER (with more animation than usual).--"Ay, Sisty, the title!"
+
+PISISTRATUS (startled).--"The title!  By the soul of Cervantes!  I have
+never yet thought of a title!"
+
+CAPTAIN ROLAND (solemnly).--"There is a great deal in a good title.  As a
+novel reader, I know that by experience."
+
+MR. SQUILLS.--"Certainly; there is not a catchpenny in the world but what
+goes down, if the title be apt and seductive.  Witness 'Old Parr's Life
+Pills.'  Sell by the thousand, Sir, when my 'Pills for Weak Stomachs,'
+which I believe to be just the same compound, never paid for the
+advertising."
+
+MR. CAXTON.--"Parr's Life Pills! a fine stroke of genius.  It is not
+every one who has a weak stomach, or time to attend to it if he have.
+But who would not swallow a pill to live to a hundred and fifty-two?"
+
+PISISTRATUS (stirring the fire in great excitement).--"My title! my
+title!--what shall be my title?"
+
+MR. CAXTON (thrusting his hand into his waistcoat, and in his most
+didactic of tones).--"From a remote period, the choice of a title has
+perplexed the scribbling portion of mankind.  We may guess how their
+invention has been racked by the strange contortions it has produced.  To
+begin with the Hebrews.  'The Lips of the Sleeping' (Labia Dormientium)--
+what book did you suppose that title to designate?--A Catalogue of
+Rabbinical Writers!  Again, imagine some young lady of old captivated by
+the sentimental title of 'The Pomegranate with its Flower,' and opening
+on a Treatise on the Jewish Ceremonials!  Let us turn to the Romans.
+Aulus Gellius commences his pleasant gossipping 'Noctes' with a list of
+the titles in fashion in his day.  For instance, 'The Muses' and 'The
+Veil,' 'The Cornucopia,' 'The Beehive,' and 'The Meadow.'  Some titles,
+indeed, were more truculent, and promised food to those who love to sup
+upon horrors,--such as 'The Torch,' 'The Poniard,' 'The Stiletto'--"
+
+PISISTRATUS (impatiently).--"Yes, sir, but to come to My Novel."
+
+MR. CAXTON (unheeding the interruption).--"You see you have a fine choice
+here, and of a nature pleasing, and not unfamiliar, to a classical
+reader; or you may borrow a hint from the early dramatic writers."
+
+PISISTRATUS (more hopefully).--"Ay, there is something in the Drama akin
+to the Novel.  Now, perhaps, I may catch an idea."
+
+MR. CAXTON.--"For instance, the author of the 'Curiosities of Literature'
+(from whom, by the way, I am plagiarizing much of the information I
+bestow upon you) tells us of a Spanish gentleman who wrote a Comedy, by
+which he intended to serve what he took for Moral Philosophy."
+
+PISISTRATUS (eagerly).--"Well, sir?"
+
+MR. CAXTON.---"And called it 'The Pain of the Sleep of the World.'"
+
+PISISTRATUS.--"Very comic, indeed, sir."
+
+MR. CAXTON.--"Grave things were then called Comedies, as old things are
+now called Novels.  Then there are all the titles of early Romance itself
+at your disposal,--'Theagenes and Chariclea' or 'The Ass' of Longus, or
+'The Golden Ass' of Apuleius, or the titles of Gothic Romance, such as
+'The most elegant, delicious, mellifluous, and delightful History of
+Perceforest, King of Great Britain.'"  And therewith my father ran over a
+list of names as long as the Directory, and about as amusing.
+
+"Well, to my taste," said my mother, "the novels I used to read when a
+girl (for I have not read many since, I am ashamed to say)--"
+
+MR. CAXTON.--"No, you need not be at all ashamed of it, Kitty."
+
+MY MOTHER (proceeding).--"Were much more inviting than any you mention,
+Austin."
+
+THE CAPTAIN.--"True."
+
+MR. SQUILLS.--"Certainly.  Nothing like them nowadays!"
+
+MY MOTHER.--"'Says she to her Neighbour, What?'"
+
+THE CAPTAIN.--"'The  Unknown,  or  the  Northern Gallery'--"
+
+MR. SQUILLS.--"'There is a Secret; Find it out!'"
+
+PISISTRATUS (pushed to the verge of human endurance, and upsetting tongs,
+poker, and fire-shovel).--" What nonsense you are talking, all of you!
+For Heaven's sake consider what an important matter we are called upon to
+decide.  It is not now the titles of those very respectable works which
+issued from the Minerva Press that I ask you to remember,--it is to
+invent a title for mine,--My Novel!"
+
+MR. CAXTON (clapping his hands gently).--"Excellent! capital!  Nothing
+can be better; simple, natural, pertinent, concise--"
+
+PISISTRATUS.--"What is it, sir, what is it?  Have you really thought of a
+title to My Novel?"
+
+MR. CAXTON.--"You have hit it yourself,--'My Novel.'  It is your Novel;
+people will know it is your Novel.  Turn and twist the English language
+as you will, be as allegorical as Hebrew, Greek, Roman, Fabulist, or
+Puritan, still, after all, it is your Novel, and nothing more nor less
+than your Novel."
+
+PISISTRATUS (thoughtfully, and sounding the words various ways).--"'My
+Novel!'--um-um!  'My Novel!' rather bold--and curt, eh?"
+
+MR. CAXTON.--"Add what you say you intend it to depict,--Varieties in
+English Life."
+
+MY MOTHER.--"'My Novel; or, Varieties in English Life'--I don't think it
+sounds amiss.  What say you, Roland?  Would it attract you in a
+catalogue?"
+
+My uncle hesitates, when Mr. Caxton exclaims imperiously.--"The thing is
+settled!  Don't disturb Camarina."
+
+SQUILLS.--"If it be not too great a liberty, pray who or what is
+Camarina?"
+
+MR. CAXTON.--"Camarina, Mr. Squills, was a lake, apt to be low, and then
+liable to be muddy; and 'Don't disturb Camarina' was a Greek proverb
+derived from an oracle of Apollo; and from that Greek proverb, no doubt,
+comes the origin of the injunction, 'Quieta non movere,' which became the
+favourite maxim of Sir Robert Walpole and Parson Dale.  The Greek line,
+Mr. Squills" (here my father's memory began to warm), "is preserved by
+Stephanus Byzantinus, 'De Urbibus,'
+
+     [Greek proverb]
+
+Zenobius explains it in his proverbs; Suidas repeats Zenobius; Lucian
+alludes to it; so does Virgil in the Third Book of the AEneid; and Silius
+Italicus imitates Virgil,--
+
+               "'Et cui non licitum fatis Camarina moveri.'
+
+"Parson Dale, as a clergyman and a scholar, had, no doubt, these
+authorities at his fingers' end.  And I wonder he did not quote them,"
+quoth my father; "but to be sure he is represented as a mild man, and so
+might not wish to humble the squire over-much in the presence of his
+family.  Meanwhile, My Novel is My Novel; and now that, that matter is
+settled, perhaps the tongs, poker, and shovel may be picked up, the
+children may go to bed, Blanche and Kitty may speculate apart upon the
+future dignities of the Neogilos,--taking care, nevertheless, to finish
+the new pinbefores he requires for the present; Roland may cast up his
+account book, Mr. Squills have his brandy and water, and all the world be
+comfortable, each in his own way.  Blanche, come away from the screen,
+get me my slippers, and leave Pisistratus to himself. [Greek line]--don't
+disturb Camarina.  You see, my dear," added my father kindly, as, after
+settling himself into his slippers, he detained Blanche's hand in his
+own,--"you see, my dear, every house has its Camarina.  Alan, who is a
+lazy animal, is quite content to let it alone; but woman, being the more
+active, bustling, curious creature, is always for giving it a sly stir."
+
+BLANCHE (with female dignity).--"I assure you, that if Pisistratus had
+not called me, I should not have--"
+
+MR. CAXTON (interrupting her, without lifting his eyes from the book he
+had already taken).--"Certainly you would not.  I am now in the midst of
+the great Oxford Controversy. [The same Greek proverb]--don't disturb
+Camarina."
+
+A dead silence for half-an-hour, at the end of which--
+
+PISISTRATUS (from behind the screen).--"Blanche, my dear, I want to
+consult you."
+
+Blanche does not stir.
+
+PISISTRATUS.--"Blanche, I say."  Blanche glances in triumph towards Mr.
+Caxton.
+
+MR. CAXTON (laying down his theological tract, and rubbing his spectacles
+mournfully).--"I hear him, child; I hear him.  I retract my vindication
+of man.  Oracles warn in vain: so long as there is a woman on the other
+side of the screen, it is all up with Camarina."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+It is greatly to be regretted that Mr. Stirn was not present at the
+parson's Discourse; but that valuable functionary was far otherwise
+engaged,--indeed, during the summer months he was rarely seen at the
+afternoon service.  Not that he cared for being preached at,--not he;
+Mr. Stirn would have snapped his fingers at the thunders of the Vatican.
+But the fact was, that Mr. Stirn chose to do a great deal of gratuitous
+business upon the day of rest.  The squire allowed all persons who chose
+to walk about the park on a Sunday; and many came from a distance to
+stroll by the lake, or recline under the elms.  These visitors were
+objects of great suspicion, nay, of positive annoyance, to Mr. Stirn--
+and, indeed, not altogether without reason, for we English have a natural
+love of liberty, which we are even more apt to display in the grounds of
+other people than in those which we cultivate ourselves.  Sometimes, to
+his inexpressible and fierce satisfaction, Mr. Stirn fell upon a knot of
+boys pelting the swans; sometimes he missed a young sapling, and found it
+in felonious hands, converted into a walking-stick; sometimes he caught a
+hulking fellow scrambling up the ha-ha to gather a nosegay for his
+sweetheart from one of poor Mrs. Hazeldean's pet parterres; not
+infrequently, indeed, when all the family were fairly at church, some
+curious impertinents forced or sneaked their way into the gardens, in
+order to peep in at the windows.  For these, and various other offences
+of like magnitude, Mr. Stirn had long, but vainly, sought to induce the
+squire to withdraw a permission so villanously abused.  But though there
+were times when Mr. Hazeldean grunted and growled, and swore "that he
+would shut up the park, and fill it [illegally] with mantraps and spring-
+guns," his anger always evaporated in words.  The park was still open to
+all the world on a Sunday; and that blessed day was therefore converted
+into a day of travail and wrath to Mr. Stirn.  But it was from the last
+chime of the afternoon-service bell until dusk that the spirit of this
+vigilant functionary was most perturbed; for, amidst the flocks that
+gathered from the little hamlets round to the voice of the pastor, there
+were always some stray sheep, or rather climbing, desultory, vagabond
+goats, who struck off in all perverse directions, as if for the special
+purpose of distracting the energetic watchfulness of Mr. Stirn.  As soon
+as church was over, if the day were fine, the whole park became a scene
+animated with red cloaks or lively shawls, Sunday waistcoats and hats
+stuck full of wildflowers--which last Mr. Stirn often stoutly maintained
+to be Mrs. Hazeldean's newest geraniums.  Now, on this Sunday,
+especially, there was an imperative call upon an extra exertion of
+vigilance on the part of the superintendent,--he had not only to detect
+ordinary depredators and trespassers; but, first, to discover the authors
+of the conspiracy against the stocks; and, secondly, to "make an
+example."
+
+He had begun his rounds, therefore, from the early morning; and just as
+the afternoon bell was sounding its final peal, he emerged upon the
+village green from a hedgerow, behind which he had been at watch to
+observe who had the most suspiciously gathered round the stocks.  At that
+moment the place was deserted.  At a distance, the superintendent saw the
+fast disappearing forms of some belated groups hastening towards the
+church; in front, the stocks stood staring at him mournfully from its
+four great eyes, which had been cleansed from the mud, but still looked
+bleared and stained with the inarks of the recent outrage.  Here Mr.
+Stirn paused, took off his hat, and wiped his brows.
+
+"If I had sum 'un to watch here," thought he, "while I takes a turn by
+the water-side, p'r'aps summat might come out; p'r'aps them as did it
+ben't gone to church, but will come sneaking round to look on their
+willany! as they says murderers are always led back to the place where
+they ha' left the body.  But in this here willage there ben't a man,
+woman, or child as has any consarn for squire or parish, barring myself."
+It was just as he arrived at that misanthropical conclusion that Mr.
+Stirn beheld Leonard Fairfield walking very fast from his own home.  The
+superintendent clapped on his hat, and stuck his right arm akimbo.
+"Hollo, you, sir," said he, as Lenny now came in hearing, "where be you
+going at that rate?"
+
+"Please, sir, I be going to church."
+
+"Stop, sir,--stop, Master Lenny.  Going to church!---why, the bell's
+done; and you knows the parson is very angry at them as comes in late,
+disturbing the congregation.  You can't go to church now!"
+
+"Please, sir--"
+
+"I says you can't go to church now.  You must learn to think a little of
+others, lad.  You sees how I sweats to serve the squire!  and you must
+serve him too.  Why, your mother's got the house and premishes almost
+rent-free; you ought to have a grateful heart, Leonard Fairfield, and
+feel for his honour!  Poor man! his heart is well-nigh bruk, I am sure,
+with the goings on."
+
+Leonard opened his innocent blue eyes, while Mr. Stirn dolorously wiped
+his own.
+
+"Look at that 'ere dumb cretur," said Stirn, suddenly, pointing to the
+stocks,--" look at it.  If it could speak, what would it say, Leonard
+Fairfield?  Answer me that! 'Damn the stocks,' indeed!"
+
+"It was very bad in them to write such naughty words," said Lenny,
+gravely.  "Mother was quite shocked when she heard of it this morning."
+
+MR. STIRN.--"I dare say she was, considering what she pays for the
+premishes;" (insinuatingly) "you does not know who did it,--eh, Lenny?"
+
+LENNY.--"No, sir; indeed I does not!"
+
+MR. STIRN.--"Well, you see, you can't go to church,--prayers half over
+by this time.  You recollex that I put them stocks under your
+'sponsibility,' and see the way you's done your duty by 'em!  I've half a
+mind to--"
+
+Mr. Stirn cast his eyes on the eyes of the stocks.  "Please, sir," began
+Lenny again, rather frightened.
+
+"No, I won't please; it ben't pleasing at all.  But I forgives you this
+time, only keep a sharp lookout, lad, in future.  Now you must stay here
+--no, there--under the hedge, and you watches if any persons comes to
+loiter about, or looks at the stocks, or laughs to hisself, while I go my
+rounds.  I shall be back either afore church is over or just arter; so
+you stay till I comes, and give me your report.  Be sharp, boy, or it
+will be worse for you and your mother; I can let the premishes for L4 a
+year more to-morrow."
+
+Concluding with that somewhat menacing and very significant remark, and
+not staying for an answer, Mr. Stirn waved his hand and walked off.
+
+Poor Lenny remained by the stocks, very much dejected, and greatly
+disliking the neighbourhood to which the was consigned.  At length he
+slowly crept off to the hedge, and sat himself down in the place of
+espionage pointed out to him.  Now, philosophers tell us that what is
+called the point of honour is a barbarous feudal prejudice.  Amongst the
+higher classes, wherein those feudal prejudices may be supposed to
+prevail, Lenny Fairfield's occupation would not have been considered
+peculiarly honourable; neither would it have seemed so to the more
+turbulent spirits among the humbler orders, who have a point of honour of
+their own, which consists in the adherence to each other in defiance of
+all lawful authority.  But to Lenny Fairfield, brought up much apart from
+other boys, and with a profound and grateful reverence for the squire
+instilled into all his habits of thought, notions of honour bounded
+themselves to simple honesty and straightforward truth; and as he
+cherished an unquestioning awe of order and constitutional authority, so
+it did not appear to him that there was anything derogatory and debasing
+in being thus set to watch for an offender.  On the contrary, as he began
+to reconcile himself to the loss of the church service, and to enjoy the
+cool of the summer shade and the occasional chirp of the birds, he got to
+look on the bright side of the commission to which he was deputed.  In
+youth, at least, everything has its bright side,--even the appointment of
+Protector to the Parish Stocks.  For the stocks itself Leonard had no
+affection, it is true; but he had no sympathy with its aggressors, and he
+could well conceive that the squire would be very much hurt at the
+revolutionary event of the night.  "So," thought poor Leonard in his
+simple heart,--"so, if I can serve his honour, by keeping off mischievous
+boys, or letting him know who did the thing, I'm sure it would be a proud
+day for Mother."  Then he began to consider that, however ungraciously
+Mr. Stirn had bestowed on him the appointment, still it was a compliment
+to him,--showed trust and confidence in him, picked him out from his
+contemporaries as the sober, moral, pattern boy; and Lenny had a great
+deal of pride in him, especially in matters of repute and character.
+
+All these things considered, I say, Leonard Fairfield reclined on his
+lurking-place, if not with positive delight and intoxicating rapture, at
+least with tolerable content and some complacency.
+
+Mr. Stirn might have been gone a quarter of an hour, when a boy came
+through a little gate in the park, just opposite to Lenny's retreat in
+the hedge, and, as if fatigued with walking, or oppressed by the heat of
+the day, paused on the green for a moment or so, and then advanced under
+the shade of the great tree which overhung the stocks.
+
+Lenny pricked up his ears, and peeped out jealously.
+
+He had never seen the boy before: it was a strange face to him.
+
+Leonard Fairfield was not fond of strangers; moreover, he had a vague
+belief that strangers were at the bottom of that desecration of the
+stocks.  The boy, then, was a stranger; but what was his rank?  Was he of
+that grade in society in which the natural offences are or are not
+consonant to, or harmonious with, outrages upon stocks?  On that Lenny
+Fairfield did not feel quite assured.  According to all the experience of
+the villager, the boy was not dressed like a young gentleman.  Leonard's
+notions of such aristocratic costume were naturally fashioned upon the
+model of Frank Hazeldean.  They represented to him a dazzling vision of
+snow-white trousers and beautiful blue coats and incomparable cravats.
+Now the dress of this stranger, though not that of a peasant or of a
+farmer, did not in any way correspond with Lenny's notion of the costume
+of a young gentleman.  It looked to him highly disreputable: the coat was
+covered with mud, and the hat was all manner of shapes, with a gap
+between the side and crown.
+
+Lenny was puzzled, till it suddenly occurred to him that the gate through
+which the boy had passed was in the direct path across the park from a
+small town, the inhabitants of which were in very bad odour at the Hall,
+--they had immemorially furnished the most daring poachers to the
+preserves, the most troublesome trespassers on the park, the most
+unprincipled orchard robbers, and the most disputatious asserters of
+various problematical rights of way, which, according to the Town, were
+public, and, according to the Hall, had been private since the Conquest.
+It was true that the same path led also directly from the squire's house,
+but it was not probable that the wearer of attire so equivocal had been
+visiting there.  All things considered, Lenny had no doubt in his mind
+but that the stranger was a shop-boy or 'prentice from the town of
+Thorndyke; and the notorious repute of that town, coupled with this
+presumption, made it probable that Lenny now saw before him one of the
+midnight desecrators of the stocks.  As if to confirm the suspicion,
+which passed through Lenny's mind with a rapidity wholly disproportionate
+to the number of lines it costs me to convey it, the boy, now standing
+right before the stocks, bent down and read that pithy anathema with
+which it was defaced.  And having read it, he repeated it aloud, and
+Lenny actually saw him smile,--such a smile! so disagreeable and
+sinister!  Lenny had never before seen the smile sardonic.
+
+But what were Lenny's pious horror and dismay when this ominous stranger
+fairly seated himself on the stocks, rested his heels profanely on the
+lids of two of the four round eyes, and taking out a pencil and a pocket-
+book, began to write.
+
+Was this audacious Unknown taking an inventory of the church and the Hall
+for the purposes of conflagration?  He looked at one and at the other,
+with a strange fixed stare as he wrote,--not keeping his eyes on the
+paper, as Lenny had been taught to do when he sat down to his copy-book.
+The fact is, that Randal Leslie was tired and faint, and he felt the
+shock of his fall the more, after the few paces he had walked, so that he
+was glad to rest himself a few moments; and he took that opportunity to
+write a line to Frank, to excuse himself for not calling again, intending
+to tear the leaf on which he wrote out of his pocket-book and leave it at
+the first cottage he passed, with instructions to take it to the Hall.
+
+While Randal was thus innocently engaged, Lenny came up to him, with the
+firm and measured pace of one who has resolved, cost what it may, to do
+his duty.  And as Lenny, though brave, was not ferocious, so the anger he
+felt and the suspicions he entertained only exhibited themselves in the
+following solemn appeal to the offender's sense of propriety,--"Ben't you
+ashamed of yourself?  Sitting on the squire's new stocks!  Do get up, and
+go along with you!"
+
+Randal turned round sharply; and though, at any other moment, he would
+have had sense enough to extricate himself very easily from his false
+position, yet /Nemo mortalium, etc/.  No one is always wise.  And Randal
+was in an exceedingly bad humour.  The affability towards his inferiors,
+for which I lately praised him, was entirely lost in the contempt for
+impertinent snobs natural to an insulted Etonian.
+
+Therefore, eying Lenny with great disdain, Randal answered briefly,--
+
+"You are an insolent young blackguard."
+
+So curt a rejoinder made Lenny's blood fly to his face.  Persuaded before
+that the intruder was some lawless apprentice or shop-lad, he was now
+more confirmed in that judgment, not only by language so uncivil, but by
+the truculent glance which accompanied it, and which certainly did not
+derive any imposing dignity from the mutilated, rakish, hang-dog, ruinous
+hat, under which it shot its sullen and menacing fire.
+
+Of all the various articles of which our male attire is composed, there
+is perhaps not one which has so much character and expression as the top
+covering.  A neat, well-brushed, short-napped, gentlemanlike hat, put on
+with a certain air, gives a distinction and respectability to the whole
+exterior; whereas, a broken, squashed, higgledy-piggledy sort of a hat,
+such as Randal Leslie had on, would go far towards transforming the
+stateliest gentleman who ever walked down St. James's Street into the
+ideal of a ruffianly scamp.
+
+Now, it is well known that there is nothing more antipathetic to your
+peasant-boy than a shop-boy.  Even on grand political occasions, the
+rural working-class can rarely be coaxed into sympathy with the trading
+town class.  Your true English peasant is always an aristocrat.
+Moreover, and irrespectively of this immemorial grudge of class, there is
+something peculiarly hostile in the relationship between boy and boy when
+their backs are once up, and they are alone on a quiet bit of green,--
+something of the game-cock feeling; something that tends to keep alive,
+in the population of this island (otherwise so lamblike and peaceful),
+the martial propensity to double the thumb tightly over the four fingers,
+and make what is called "a fist of it."  Dangerous symptoms of these
+mingled and aggressive sentiments were visible in Lenny Fairfield at the
+words and the look of the unprepossessing stranger.  And the stranger
+seemed aware of them; for his pale face grew more pale, and his sullen
+eye more fixed and more vigilant.
+
+"You get off them stocks," said Lenny, disdaining to reply to the coarse
+expressions bestowed on him; and, suiting the action to the word, he gave
+the intruder what he meant for a shove, but what Randal took for a blow.
+The Etonian sprang up, and the quickness of his movement, aided but by a
+slight touch of his hand, made Lenny lose his balance, and sent him neck-
+and-crop over the stocks.  Burning with rage, the young villager rose
+alertly, and, flying at Randal, struck out right and left.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Aid me, O ye Nine!  whom the incomparable Persius satirized his
+contemporaries for invoking, and then, all of a sudden, invoked on his
+own behalf,--aid me to describe that famous battle by the stocks, and in
+defence of the stocks, which was waged by the two representatives of
+Saxon and Norman England.  Here, sober support of law and duty and
+delegated trust,--/pro aris et focis/; there, haughty invasion and
+bellicose spirit of knighthood and that respect for name and person which
+we call "honour."  Here, too, hardy physical force,--there, skilful
+discipline.  Here--The Nine are as deaf as a post, and as cold as a
+stone!  Plague take the jades!  I can do better without them.
+
+Randal was a year or two older than Lenny, but he was not so tall nor so
+strong, nor even so active; and after the first blind rush, when the two
+boys paused, and drew back to breathe, Lenny, eying the slight form and
+hueless cheek of his opponent, and seeing blood trickling from Randal's
+lip, was seized with an instantaneous and generous remorse.  "It was not
+fair," he thought, "to fight one whom he could beat so easily."  So,
+retreating still farther, and letting his arms fall to his side, he said
+mildly, "There, let's have no more of it; but go home and be good."
+
+Randal Leslie had no remarkable degree of that constitutional quality
+called physical courage; but he had some of those moral qualities which
+supply its place.  He was proud, he was vindictive, he had high self-
+esteem, he had the destructive organ more than the combative,--what had
+once provoked his wrath it became his instinct to sweep away.  Therefore,
+though all his nerves were quivering, and hot tears were in his eyes, he
+approached Lenny with the sternness of a gladiator, and said between his
+teeth, which he set hard, choking back the sob of rage and pain,--
+
+"You have struck me--and you shall not stir from this ground till I have
+made you repent it.  Put up your hands,--defend yourself."
+
+Lenny mechanically obeyed; and he had good need of the admonition; for if
+before he had had the advantage, now that Randal had recovered the
+surprise to his nerves, the battle was not to the strong.
+
+Though Leslie had not been a fighting boy at Eton, still his temper had
+involved him in some conflicts when he was in the lower forms, and he had
+learned something of the art as well as the practice in pugilism,--an
+excellent thing too, I am barbarous enough to believe, and which I hope
+will never quite die out of our public schools.  Ah, many a young duke
+has been a better fellow for life from a fair set-to with a trader's son;
+and many a trader's son has learned to look a lord more manfully in the
+face on the hustings, from the recollection of the sound thrashing he
+once gave to some little Lord Leopold Dawdle.
+
+So Randal now brought his experience and art to bear; put aside those
+heavy roundabout blows, and darted in his own, quick and sharp, supplying
+to the natural feebleness of his arm the due momentum of pugilistic
+mechanics.  Ay, and the arm, too, was no longer so feeble; for strange is
+the strength that comes from passion and pluck!
+
+Poor Lenny, who had never fought before, was bewildered; his sensations
+grew so entangled that he could never recall them distinctly; he had a
+dim reminiscence of some breathless impotent rush, of a sudden blindness
+followed by quick flashes of intolerable light, of a deadly faintness,
+from which he was roused by sharp pangs--here--there--everywhere; and
+then all he could remember was, that he was lying on the ground, huddled
+up and panting hard, while his adversary bent over him with a countenance
+as dark and livid as Lara himself might have bent over the fallen Otho.
+For Randal Leslie was not one who, by impulse and nature, subscribed to
+the noble English maxim, "Never hit a foe when he is down;" and it cost
+him a strong, if brief, self-struggle not to set his heel on that
+prostrate form.  It was the mind, not the heart, that subdued the savage
+within him, as muttering something inwardly--certainly not Christian
+forgiveness--the victor turned gloomily away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Just at that precise moment, who should appear but Mr. Stirn!  For, in
+fact, being extremely anxious to get Lenny into disgrace, he had hoped
+that he should have found the young villager had shirked the commission
+intrusted to him; and the right-hand man had slily come back to see if
+that amiable expectation were realized.  He now beheld Lenny rising with
+some difficulty, still panting hard, and with hysterical sounds akin to
+what is vulgarly called blubbering, his fine new waistcoat sprinkled with
+his own blood, which flowed from his nose,--nose that seemed to Lenny
+Fairfield's feelings to be a nose no more, but a swollen, gigantic,
+mountainous Slawkenbergian excrescence; in fact, he felt all nose!
+Turning aghast from this spectacle, Mr. Stirn surveyed, with no more
+respect than Lenny had manifested, the stranger boy, who had again seated
+himself on the stocks (whether to recover his breath, or whether to show
+that his victory was consummated, and that he was in his rights of
+possession).  "Hollo," said Mr. Stirn, "what is all this?  What's the
+matter, Lenny, you blockhead?"
+
+"He will sit there," answered Lenny, in broken gasps, "and he has beat me
+because I would not let him; but I doesn't mind that," added the
+villager, trying hard to suppress his tears, "and I am ready again for
+him--that I am."
+
+"And what do you do lollopoping there on them blessed stocks?"
+
+"Looking at the landscape; out of my light, man!"
+
+This tone instantly inspired Mr. Stirn with misgivings: it was a tone so
+disrespectful to him that he was seized with involuntary respect; who but
+a gentleman could speak so to Mr. Stirn?
+
+"And may I ask who you be?" said Stirn, falteringly, and half inclined to
+touch his hat.  "What Is your name, pray?  What's your bizness?"
+
+"My name is Randal Leslie, and my business was to visit your master's
+family,--that is, if you are, as I guess from your manner, Mr.
+Hazeldean's ploughman!"
+
+So saying, Randal rose; and moving on a few paces, turned, and throwing
+half-a-crown on the road, said to Lenny, "Let that pay you for your
+bruises, and remember another time how you speak to a gentleman.  As for
+you, fellow,"--and he pointed his scornful hand towards Mr. Stirn, who,
+with his mouth open, and his hat now fairly off, stood bowing to the
+earth,--"as for you, give my compliments to Mr. Hazeldean, and say that
+when he does us the honour to visit us at Rood Hall, I trust that the
+manners of our villagers will make him ashamed of Hazeldean."
+
+Oh, my poor Squire!  Rood Hall ashamed of Hazeldean!  If that message had
+been delivered to you, you would never have looked up again!
+
+With those bitter words, Randal swung himself over the stile that led
+into the parson's glebe, and left Lenny Fairfield still feeling his nose,
+and Mr. Stirn still bowing to the earth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Randal Leslie had a very long walk home; he was bruised and sore from
+head to foot, and his mind was still more sore and more bruised than his
+body.  But if Randal Leslie had rested himself in the squire's gardens,
+without walking backwards and indulging in speculations suggested by
+Marat, and warranted by my Lord Bacon, he would have passed a most
+agreeable evening, and really availed himself of the squire's wealth by
+going home in the squire's carriage.  But because he chose to take so
+intellectual a view of property, he tumbled into a ditch; because he
+tumbled into a ditch, he spoiled his clothes; because he spoiled his
+clothes, he gave up his visit; because he gave up his visit, he got into
+the village green, and sat on the stocks with a hat that gave him the air
+of a fugitive from the treadmill; because he sat on the stocks--with that
+hat, and a cross face under it--he had been forced into the most
+discreditable squabble with a clodhopper, and was now limping home, at
+war with gods and men; ergo (this is a moral that will bear repetition),
+--ergo, when you walk in a rich man's grounds, be contented to enjoy what
+is yours, namely, the prospect,--I dare say you will enjoy it more than
+he does!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+If, in the simplicity of his heart and the crudity of his experience,
+Lenny Fairfield had conceived it probable that Mr. Stirn would address to
+him some words in approbation of his gallantry and in sympathy for his
+bruises, he soon found himself wofully mistaken.  That truly great man,
+worthy prime minister of Hazeldean, might perhaps pardon a dereliction
+from his orders, if such dereliction proved advantageous to the interests
+of the service, or redounded to the credit of the chief; but he was
+inexorable to that worst of diplomatic offences,--an ill-timed, stupid,
+over-zealous obedience to orders, which, if it established the devotion
+of the employee, got the employer into what is popularly called a scrape!
+And though, by those unversed in the intricacies of the human heart, and
+unacquainted with the especial hearts of prime ministers and right-hand
+men, it might have seemed natural that Mr. Stirn, as he stood still, hat
+in hand, in the middle of the road, stung, humbled, and exasperated by
+the mortification he had received from the lips of Randal Leslie, would
+have felt that that young gentleman was the proper object of his
+resentment, yet such a breach of all the etiquette of diplomatic life as
+resentment towards a superior power was the last idea that would have
+suggested itself to the profound intellect of the premier of Hazeldean.
+Still, as rage, like steam, must escape somewhere, Mr. Stirn, on feeling
+--as he afterwards expressed it to his wife--that his "buzzom was a
+burstin'," turned with the natural instinct of self-preservation to the
+safety-valve provided for the explosion; and the vapours within him
+rushed into vent upon Lenny Fairfield.  He clapped his hat on his head
+fiercely, and thus relieved his "buzzom."
+
+"You young willain! you howdaeious wiper! and so all this blessed Sabbath
+afternoon, when you ought to have been in church on your marrow-bones, a
+praying for your betters, you has been a fitting with a young gentleman,
+and a wisiter to your master, on the wery place of the parridge
+hinstitution that you was to guard and pertect; and a bloodying it all
+over, I declares, with your blaggard little nose!"  Thus saying, and as
+if to mend the matter, Mr. Stirn aimed an additional stroke at the
+offending member; but Lenny mechanically putting up both arms to defend
+his face, Mr. Stirn struck his knuckles against the large brass buttons
+that adorned the cuff of the boy's coat-sleeve,--an incident which
+considerably aggravated his indignation.  And Lenny, whose spirit was
+fairly roused at what the narrowness of his education conceived to be a
+signal injustice, placing the trunk of the tree between Mr. Stirn and
+himself, began that task of self-justification which it was equally
+impolitic to conceive and imprudent to execute, since, in such a case,
+to justify was to recriminate.
+
+"I wonder at you, Master Stirn,--if Mother could hear you!  You know it
+was you who would not let me go to church; it was you who told me to--"
+
+"Fit a young gentleman, and break the Sabbath," said Mr. Stirn,
+interrupting him with a withering sneer.  "Oh, yes!  I told you to
+disgrace his honour the squire, and me, and the parridge, and bring us
+all into trouble.  But the squire told me to make an example, and I
+will!"  With those words, quick as lightning flashed upon Mr. Stirn's
+mind the luminous idea of setting Lenny in the very stocks which he had
+too faithfully guarded.  Eureka! the "example" was before him!  Here he
+could gratify his long grudge against the pattern boy; here, by such a
+selection of the very best lad in the parish, he could strike terror into
+the worst; here he could appease the offended dignity of Randal Leslie;
+here was a practical apology to the squire for the affront put upon his
+young visitor; here, too, there was prompt obedience to the squire's own
+wish that the stocks should be provided as soon as possible with a
+tenant.  Suiting the action to the thought, Mr. Stirn made a rapid plunge
+at his victim, caught him by the skirt of his jacket; and in a few
+seconds more, the jaws of the stocks had opened, and Lenny Fairfield was
+thrust therein,--a sad spectacle of the reverses of fortune.  This done,
+and while the boy was too astounded, too stupefied, by the suddenness of
+the calamity, for the resistance he might otherwise have made,--nay, for
+more than a few inaudible words,--Mr. Stirn hurried from the spot, but
+not without first picking up and pocketing the half-crown designed for
+Lenny, and which, so great had been his first emotions, he had hitherto
+even almost forgotten.  He then made his way towards the church, with the
+intention to place himself close by the door, catch the squire as he came
+out, whisper to him what had passed, and lead him, with the whole
+congregation at his heels, to gaze upon the sacrifice offered up to the
+joint powers of Nemesis and Themis.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Unaffectedly I say it--upon the honour of a gentleman, and the reputation
+of an author,--unaffectedly I say it, no words of mine can do justice to
+the sensations experienced by Lenny Fairfield, as be sat alone in that
+place of penance.  He felt no more the physical pain of his bruises; the
+anguish of his mind stifled and overbore all corporeal suffering,--an
+anguish as great as the childish breast is capable of holding.
+
+For first and deepest of all, and earliest felt, was the burning sense
+of injustice.  He had, it might be with erring judgment, but with all
+honesty, earnestness, and zeal, executed the commission entrusted to him;
+he had stood forth manfully in discharge of his duty; he had fought for
+it, suffered for it, bled for it.  This was his reward!  Now in Lenny's
+mind there was pre-eminently that quality which distinguishes the Anglo
+Saxon race,--the sense of justice.  It was perhaps the strongest
+principle in his moral constitution; and the principle had never lost its
+virgin bloom and freshness by any of the minor acts of oppression and
+iniquity which boys of higher birth often suffer from harsh parents, or
+in tyrannical schools.  So that it was for the first time that that iron
+entered into his soul, and with it came its attendant feeling,--the
+wrathful, galling sense of impotence.  He had been wronged, and he had no
+means to right himself.  Then came another sensation, if not so deep, yet
+more smarting and envenomed for the time,--shame!  He, the good boy of
+all good boys; he, the pattern of the school, and the pride of the
+parson; he, whom the squire, in sight of all his contemporaries, had
+often singled out to slap on the back, and the grand squire's lady to pat
+on the head, with a smiling gratulation on his young and fair repute; he,
+who had already learned so dearly to prize the sweets of an honourable
+name,--he to be made, as it were, in the twinkling of an eye, a mark for
+opprobrium, a butt of scorn, a jeer, and a byword!  The streams of his
+life were poisoned at the fountain.  And then came a tenderer thought of
+his mother! of the shock this would be to her,--she who had already begun
+to look up to him as her stay and support; he bowed his head, and the
+tears, long suppressed, rolled down.
+
+Then he wrestled and struggled, and strove to wrench his limbs from that
+hateful bondage,--for he heard steps approaching.  And he began to
+picture to himself the arrival of all the villagers from church, the sad
+gaze of the parson, the bent brow of the squire, the idle, ill-suppressed
+titter of all the boys, jealous of his unspotted character,--character of
+which the original whiteness could never, never be restored!
+
+He would always be the boy who had sat in the stocks!  And the words
+uttered by the squire came back on his soul, like the voice of conscience
+in the ears of some doomed Macbeth: "A sad disgrace, Lenny,--you'll never
+be in such a quandary."  "Quandary"--the word was unfamiliar to him; it
+must mean something awfully discreditable.  The poor boy could have
+prayed for the earth to swallow him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+"Kettles and frying-pans! what has us here?" cried the tinker.
+
+This time Mr. Sprott was without his donkey; for it being Sunday, it is
+presumed that the donkey was enjoying his Sabbath on the common.  The
+tinker was in his Sunday's best, clean and smart, about to take his
+lounge in the park.
+
+Lenny Fairfield made no answer to the appeal.
+
+"You in the wood, my baby!  Well, that's the last sight I should ha'
+thought to see.  But we all lives to larn," added the tinker,
+sententiously.  "Who gave you them leggins?  Can't you speak, lad?"
+
+"Nick Stirn."
+
+"Nick Stirn!  Ay, I'd ha' ta'en my davy on that: and cos vy?"
+
+"'Cause I did as he told me, and fought a boy as was trespassing on these
+very stocks; and he beat me--but I don't care for that; and that boy was
+a young gentleman, and going to visit the squire; and so Nick Stirn--"
+Lenny stopped short, choked by rage and humiliation.
+
+"Augh," said the tinker, starting, "you fit with a young gentleman, did
+you?  Sorry to hear you confess that, my lad!  Sit there and be thankful
+you ha' got off so cheap.  'T is salt and battery to fit with your
+betters, and a Lunnon justice o' peace would have given you two months o'
+the treadmill.
+
+"But vy should you fit cos he trespassed on the stocks?  It ben't your
+natural side for fitting, I takes it."
+
+Lenny murmured something not very distinguishable about serving the
+squire, and doing as he was bid.
+
+"Oh, I sees, Lenny," interrupted the tinker, in a tone of great contempt,
+"you be one of those who would rayther 'unt with the 'ounds than run with
+the 'are!  You be's the good pattern boy, and would peach agin your own
+border to curry favour with the grand folks.  Fie, lad!  you be sarved
+right; stick by your border, then you'll be 'spected when you gets into
+trouble, and not be 'varsally 'spised,--as you'll be arter church-time!
+Vell, I can't be seen 'sorting with you, now you are in this d'rogotary
+fix; it might hurt my c'r'acter, both with them as built the stocks and
+them as wants to pull 'em down.  Old kettles to mend!  Vy, you makes me
+forgit the Sabbath!  Sarvent, my lad, and wish you well out of it;
+'specks to your mother, and say we can deal for the pan and shovel all
+the same for your misfortin."
+
+The tinker went his way.  Lenny's eye followed him with the sullenness of
+despair.  The tinker, like all the tribe of human comforters, had only
+watered the brambles to invigorate the prick of the horns.  Yes, if Lenny
+had been caught breaking the stocks, some at least would have pitied him;
+but to be incarcerated for defending them!  You might as well have
+expected that the widows and orphans of the Reign of Terror would have
+pitied Dr. Guillotin when he slid through the grooves of his own deadly
+machine.  And even the tinker, itinerant, ragamuffin vagabond as he was,
+felt ashamed to be found with the pattern boy!  Lenny's head sank again
+on his breast heavily, as if it had been of lead.  Some few minutes thus
+passed, when the unhappy prisoner became aware of the presence of another
+spectator to his shame; he heard no step, but he saw a shadow thrown over
+the sward.  He held his breath, and would not look up, with some vague
+idea that if he refused to see he might escape being seen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+"/Per Bacco/!" said Dr. Riccabocca, putting his hand on Lenny's shoulder,
+and bending down to look into his face,--"/per Bacco/!  my young friend,
+do you sit here from choice or necessity?"
+
+Lenny slightly shuddered, and winced under the touch of one whom he had
+hitherto regarded with a sort of superstitious abhorrence.
+
+"I fear," resumed Riccabocca, after waiting in vain for an answer to his
+question, "that though the situation is charming, you did not select it
+yourself.  What is this?"--and the irony of the tone vanished--"what is
+this, my poor boy?  You have been bleeding, and I see that those tears
+which you try to check come from a deep well.  Tell me, /povero fanciullo
+mio/" (the sweet Italian vowels, though Lenny did not understand them,
+sounded softly and soothingly),--"tell me, my child, how all this
+happened.  Perhaps I can help you; we have all erred,--we should all help
+each other."
+
+Lenny's heart, that just before had seemed bound in brass, found itself a
+way as the Italian spoke thus kindly, and the tears rushed down; but he
+again stopped them, and gulped out sturdily,--
+
+"I have not done no wrong; it ben't my fault,--and 't is that which kills
+me!" concluded Lenny, with a burst of energy.
+
+"You have not done wrong?  Then," said the philosopher, drawing out his
+pocket-handkerchief with great composure, and spreading it on the
+ground,--"then I may sit beside you.  I could only stoop pityingly over
+sin, but I can lie down on equal terms with misfortune."
+
+Lenny Fairfield did not quite comprehend the words, but enough of their
+general meaning was apparent to make him cast a grateful glance on the
+Italian.  Riccabocca resumed, as he adjusted the pocket-handkerchief, "I
+have a right to your confidence, my child, for I have been afflicted in
+my day; yet I too say with thee, 'I have not done wrong.' /Cospetto/!"
+(and here the doctor seated himself deliberately, resting one arm on the
+side column of the stocks, in familiar contact with the captive's
+shoulder, while his eye wandered over the lovely scene around)--
+"/Cospetto/! my prison, if they had caught me, would not have had so fair
+a look-out as this.  But, to be sure, it is all one; there are no ugly
+loves, and no handsome prisons."
+
+With that sententious maxim, which, indeed, he uttered in his native
+Italian, Riccabocca turned round and renewed his soothing invitations to
+confidence.  A friend in need is a friend indeed, even if he come in the
+guise of a Papist and wizard.  All Lenny's ancient dislike to the
+foreigner had gone, and he told him his little tale.
+
+Dr. Riccabocca was much too shrewd a man not to see exactly the motives
+which had induced Mr. Stirn to incarcerate his agent (barring only that
+of personal grudge, to which Lenny's account gave him no clew).  That a
+man high in office should make a scapegoat of his own watch-dog for an
+unlucky snap, or even an indiscreet bark, was nothing strange to the
+wisdom of the student of Machiavelli.  However, he set himself to the
+task of consolation with equal philosophy and tenderness.  He began by
+reminding, or rather informing, Leonard Fairfield of all the instances of
+illustrious men afflicted by the injustice of others that occurred to his
+own excellent memory.  He told him how the great Epictetus, when in
+slavery, had a master whose favourite amusement was pinching his leg,
+which, as the amusement ended in breaking that limb, was worse than the
+stocks.  He also told him the anecdote of Lenny's own gallant countryman,
+Admiral Byng, whose execution gave rise to Voltaire's celebrated
+witticism, "En Angleterre on tue un admiral pour encourager les autres."
+
+     ["In England they execute one admiral in order to encourage the
+     others."]
+
+Many other illustrations, still more pertinent to the case in point, his
+erudition supplied from the stores of history.  But on seeing that Lenny
+did not seem in the slightest degree consoled by these memorable
+examples, he shifted his ground, and reducing his logic to the strict
+/argumentum ad rem/, began to prove, first, that there was no disgrace at
+all in Lenny's present position, that every equitable person would
+recognize the tyranny of Stirn and the innocence of its victim; secondly,
+that if even here he were mistaken, for public opinion was not always
+righteous, what was public opinion after all?--"A breath, a puff," cried
+Dr. Riccabocca, "a thing without matter,--without length, breadth, or
+substance,--a shadow, a goblin of our own creating.  A man's own
+conscience is his sole tribunal, and he should care no more for that
+phantom 'opinion' than he should fear meeting a ghost if he crossed the
+churchyard at dark."
+
+Now, as Lenny did very much fear meeting a ghost if he crossed the
+churchyard at dark, the simile spoiled the argument, and he shook his
+head very mournfully.  Dr. Riccabocca, was about to enter into a third
+course of reasoning, which, had it come to an end, would doubtless have
+settled the matter, and reconciled Lenny to sitting in the stocks till
+doomsday, when the captive, with the quick ear and eye of terror and
+calamity, became conscious that church was over, that the congregation in
+a few seconds more would be flocking thitherwards.  He saw visionary hats
+and bonnets through the trees, which Riccabocca saw not, despite all the
+excellence of his spectacles; heard phantasmal rustlings and murmurings
+which Riccabocca heard not, despite all that theoretical experience in
+plots, stratagems, and treasons, which should have made the Italian's ear
+as fine as a conspirator's or a mole's.  And with another violent but
+vain effort at escape, the prisoner exclaimed,--
+
+"Oh, if I could but get out before they come!  Let me out, let me out!
+Oh, kind sir, have pity,--let me out!"
+
+"Diavolo!" said the philosopher, startled, "I wonder that I never thought
+of that before.  After all, I believe he has hit the right nail on the
+head," and, looking close, he perceived that though the partition of wood
+had hitched firmly into a sort of spring-clasp, which defied Lenny's
+unaided struggles, still it was not locked (for, indeed, the padlock and
+key were snug in the justice-room of the squire, who never dreamed that
+his orders would be executed so literally and summarily as to dispense
+with all formal appeal to himself).  As soon as Dr. Riccabocca made that
+discovery, it occurred to him that all the wisdom of all the schools that
+ever existed can't reconcile man or boy to a bad position--the moment
+there is a fair opportunity of letting him out of it.  Accordingly,
+without more ado, he lifted up the creaking board, and Lenny Fairfield
+darted forth like a bird from a cage, halted a moment as if for breath,
+or in joy; and then, taking at once to his heels, fled, as a hare to its
+form, fast to his mother's home.
+
+Dr. Riccabocca dropped the yawning wood into its place, picked up his
+handkerchief and restored it to his pocket; and then, with some
+curiosity, began to examine the nature of that place of duress which had
+caused so much painful emotion to its rescued victim.  "Man is a very
+irrational animal at best," quoth the sage, soliloquizing, "and is
+frightened by strange buggaboos!  'T is but a piece of wood!  how little
+it really injures!  And, after all, the holes are but rests to the legs,
+and keep the feet out of the dirt.  And this green bank to sit upon,
+under the shade of the elm-tree-verily the position must be more pleasant
+than otherwise!  I've a; great mind--"  Here the doctor looked around,
+and seeing the coast still clear, the oddest notion imaginable took
+possession of him; yet, not indeed a notion so odd, considered
+philosophically,--for all philosophy is based on practical experiment,--
+and Dr. Riccabocca felt an irresistible desire practically to experience
+what manner of thing that punishment of the stocks really was.  "I can
+but try! only for a moment," said he apologetically to his own
+expostulating sense of dignity.  "I have time to do it, before any one
+comes."  He lifted up the partition again: but stocks are built on the
+true principle of English law, and don't easily allow a man to criminate
+himself,--it was hard to get into them without the help of a friend.
+However, as we before noticed, obstacles only whetted Dr. Riccabocca's
+invention.  He looked round, and saw a withered bit of stick under the
+tree; this he inserted in the division of the stocks, somewhat in the
+manner in which boys place a stick under a sieve for the purpose of
+ensnaring sparrows; the fatal wood thus propped, Dr. Riceabocca sat
+gravely down on the bank, and thrust his feet through the apertures.
+
+"Nothing in it!" cried he, triumphantly, after a moment's deliberation.
+"The evil is only in idea.  Such is the boasted reason of mortals!"  With
+that reflection, nevertheless, he was about to withdraw his feet from
+their voluntary dilemma, when the crazy stick suddenly gave way and the
+partition fell back into its clasp.  Dr. Riceabocca was fairly caught,--
+"Facilis descensus--sed revocare gradum!"  True, his hands were at
+liberty, but his legs were so long that, being thus fixed, they kept the
+hands from the rescue; and as Dr. Riccabocca's form was by no means
+supple, and the twin parts of the wood stuck together with that firmness
+of adhesion which things newly painted possess, so, after some vain
+twists and contortions, in which he succeeded at length (not without a
+stretch of the sinews that made them crack again) in finding the clasp
+and breaking his nails thereon, the victim of his own rash experiment
+resigned himself to his fate.  Dr. Riceabocca was one of those men who
+never do things by halves.  When I say he resigned himself, I mean not
+only Christian but philosophical resignation.  The position was not quite
+so pleasant as, theoretically, he had deemed it; but he resolved to make
+himself as comfortable as he could.  At first, as is natural in all
+troubles to men who have grown familiar with that odoriferous comforter
+which Sir Walter Raleigh is said first to have bestowed upon the
+Caucasian races, the doctor made use of his hands to extract from his
+pocket his pipe, match-box, and tobacco-pouch.  After a few whiffs he
+would have been quite reconciled to his situation, but for the discovery
+that the sun had shifted its place in the heavens, and was no longer
+shaded from his face by the elm-tree.  The doctor again looked round, and
+perceived that his red silk umbrella, which he had laid aside when he had
+seated himself by Lenny, was within arm's reach.  Possessing himself of
+this treasure, he soon expanded its friendly folds.  And thus, doubly
+fortified within and without, under shade of the umbrella, and his pipe
+composedly between his lips, Dr. Riceabocca gazed on his own incarcerated
+legs, even with complacency.
+
+"'He who can despise all things,'" said he, in one of his native
+proverbs, "'possesses all things!'--if one despises freedom, one is free!
+This seat is as soft as a sofa!  I am not sure," he resumed,
+soliloquizing, after a pause,--"I am not sure that there is not something
+more witty than manly and philosophical in that national proverb of mine
+which I quoted to the fanciullo, 'that there are no handsome prisons'!
+Did not the son of that celebrated Frenchman, surnamed Bras de Fer, write
+a book not only to prove that adversities are more necessary than
+prosperities, but that among all adversities a prison is the most
+pleasant and profitable?  But is not this condition of mine, voluntarily
+and experimentally incurred, a type of my life?  Is it the first time
+that I have thrust myself into a hobble?  And if in a hobble of mine own
+choosing, why should I blame the gods?"
+
+Upon this, Dr. Riceabocca fell into a train of musing so remote from time
+and place, that in a few minutes he no more remembered that he was in the
+parish stocks than a lover remembers that flesh is grass, a miser that
+mammon is perishable, a philosopher that wisdom is vanity.  Dr.
+Riccabocca was in the clouds.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+The dullest dog that ever wrote a novel (and, /entre nous/, reader)--but
+let it go no further,--we have a good many dogs among the fraternity that
+are not Munitos might have seen with half an eye that the parson's
+discourse had produced a very genial and humanizing effect upon his
+audience.
+
+     [Munito was the name of a dog famous for his learning (a Porson of a
+     dog) at the date of my childhood.  There are no such dogs nowadays.]
+
+When all was over, and the congregation stood up to let Mr. Hazeldean
+and his family walk first down the aisle (for that was the custom at
+Hazeldean), moistened eyes glanced at the squire's sun-burned manly face,
+with a kindness that bespoke revived memory of many a generous benefit
+and ready service.  The head might be wrong now and then,--the heart was
+in the right place after all.  And the lady leaning on his arm came in
+for a large share of that gracious good feeling.  True, she now and then
+gave a little offence when the cottages were not so clean as she fancied
+they ought to be,--and poor folks don't like a liberty taken with their
+houses any more than the rich do; true that she was not quite so popular
+with the women as the squire was, for, if the husband went too often to
+the ale-house, she always laid the fault on the wife, and said, "No man
+would go out of doors for his comforts, if he had a smiling face and a
+clean hearth at his home;" whereas the squire maintained the more gallant
+opinion that "If Gill was a shrew, it was because Jack did not, as in
+duty bound, stop her mouth with a kiss!"  Still, notwithstanding these
+more obnoxious notions on her part, and a certain awe inspired by the
+stiff silk gown and the handsome aquiline nose, it was impossible,
+especially in the softened tempers of that Sunday afternoon, not to
+associate the honest, comely, beaming countenance of Mrs. Hazeldean with
+comfortable recollections of soups, jellies, and wine in sickness, loaves
+and blankets in winter, cheering words and ready visits in every little
+distress, and pretexts afforded by improvement in the grounds and gardens
+(improvements which, as the squire, who preferred productive labour,
+justly complained, "would never finish") for little timely jobs of work
+to some veteran grandsire, who still liked to earn a penny, or some ruddy
+urchin in a family that "came too fast."  Nor was Frank, as he walked a
+little behind, in the whitest of trousers and the stiffest of
+neckcloths,--with a look of suppressed roguery in his bright hazel eye,
+that contrasted his assumed stateliness of mien,--without his portion of
+the silent blessing.  Not that he had done anything yet to deserve it;
+but we all give youth so large a credit in the future.  As for Miss
+Jemima, her trifling foibles only rose from too soft and feminine a
+susceptibility, too ivy-like a yearning for some masculine oak whereon to
+entwine her tendrils; and so little confined to self was the natural
+lovingness of her disposition, that she had helped many a village lass to
+find a husband, by the bribe of a marriage gift from her own privy purse;
+notwithstanding the assurances with which she accompanied the marriage
+gift,--namely, that "the bridegroom would turn out like the rest of his
+ungrateful sex; but that it was a comfort to think that it would be all
+one in the approaching crash!"  So that she had her warm partisans,
+especially amongst the young; while the slim captain, on whose arm she
+rested her forefinger, was at least a civil-spoken gentleman, who had
+never done any harm, and who would doubtless do a deal of good if he
+belonged to the parish.  Nay, even the fat footman who came last, with
+the family Prayer-book, had his due share in the general association of
+neighbourly kindness between hall and hamlet.  Few were there present to
+whom he had not extended the right-hand of fellowship with a full horn of
+October in the clasp of it; and he was a Hazeldean man, too, born and
+bred, as two-thirds of the squire's household (now letting themselves out
+from their large pew under the gallery) were.
+
+On his part, too, you could see that the squire "was moved withal," and a
+little humbled moreover.  Instead of walking erect, and taking bow and
+courtesy as a matter of course, and of no meaning, he hung his head
+somewhat, and there was a slight blush on his cheek; and as he glanced
+upward and round him--shyly, as it were--and his eye met those friendly
+looks, it returned them with an earnestness that had in it something
+touching as well as cordial,--an eye that said, as well as eye could say,
+"I don't quite deserve it, I fear, neighbours; but I thank you for your
+good-will with my whole heart."  And so readily was that glance of the
+eye understood, that I think, if that scene had taken place out of doors
+instead of in the church, there would have been a hurrah as the squire
+passed out of sight.
+
+Scarcely had Mr. Hazeldean got clear of the churchyard, ere Mr. Stirn was
+whispering in his ear.  As Stirn whispered, the squire's face grew long,
+and his colour rose.  The congregation, now flocking out of the church,
+exchanged looks with each other; that ominous conjunction between squire
+and man chilled back all the effects of the parson's sermon.  The
+squire struck his cane violently into the ground.  "I would rather you
+had told me Black Bess had got the glanders.  A young gentleman, coming
+to visit my son, struck and insulted in Hazeldean; a young gentleman,--
+'s death, sir, a relation--his grandmother was a Hazeldean.  I do believe
+Jemima's right, and the world's coming to an end!  But Leonard Fairfield
+in the stocks!  What will the parson say?  and after such a sermon!
+'Rich man, respect the poor!'  And the good widow too; and poor Mark, who
+almost died in my arms!  Stirn, you have a heart of stone!  You
+confounded, lawless, merciless miscreant, who the deuce gave you the
+right to imprison man or boy in my parish of Hazeldean without trial,
+sentence, or warrant?  Run and let the boy out before any one sees him:
+run, or I shall--"
+
+The squire elevated the cane, and his eyes shot fire.  Mr. Stirn did not
+run, but he walked off very fast.  The squire drew back a few paces, and
+again took his wife's arm.  "Just wait a bit for the parson, while I talk
+to the congregation.  I want to stop 'em all, if I can, from going into
+the village; but how?"
+
+Frank heard, and replied readily,--"Give 'em some beer, sir."
+
+"Beer! on a Sunday!  For shame, Frank!" cried Mrs. Hazeldean.
+
+"Hold your tongue, Harry.  Thank you, Frank," said the squire, and his
+brow grew as clear as the blue sky above him.  I doubt if Riccabocca
+could have got him out of his dilemma with the same ease as Frank had
+done.
+
+"Halt there, my men,--lads and lasses too,--there, halt a bit.  Mrs.
+Fairfield, do you hear?--halt.  I think his reverence has given us a
+capital sermon.  Go up to the Great House all of you, and drink a glass
+to his health.  Frank, go with them, and tell Spruce to tap one of the
+casks kept for the haymakers.  Harry" (this in a whisper), "catch the
+parson, and tell him to come to me instantly."
+
+"My dear Hazeldean, what has happened?  You are mad."
+
+"Don't bother; do what I tell you."
+
+"But where is the parson to find you?"
+
+"Where? gadzooks, Mrs. H.,--at the stocks, to be sure!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+Dr. Riccabocca, awakened out of his revery by the sound of footsteps,
+was still so little sensible of the indignity of his position, that he
+enjoyed exceedingly, and with all the malice of his natural humour, the
+astonishment and stupor manifested by Stirn, when that functionary beheld
+the extraordinary substitute which fate and philosophy had found for
+Lenny Fairfield.  Instead of the weeping, crushed, broken-hearted captive
+whom he had reluctantly come to deliver, he stared speechless and aghast
+upon the grotesque but tranquil figure of the doctor enjoying his pipe,
+and cooling himself under his umbrella, with a sangfroid that was truly
+appalling and diabolical.  Indeed, considering that Stirn always
+suspected the Papisher of having had a hand in the whole of that black
+and midnight business, in which the stocks had been broken, bunged up,
+and consigned to perdition, and that the Papisher had the evil reputation
+of dabbling in the Black Art, the hocus-pocus way in which the Lenny he
+had incarcerated was transformed into the doctor he found, conjoined with
+the peculiarly strange eldrich and Mephistophelean physiognomy and person
+of Riccabocca, could not but strike a thrill of superstitious dismay into
+the breast of the parochial tyrant; while to his first confused and
+stammered exclamations and interrogatories, Riccabocca replied with so
+tragic an air, such ominous shakes of the head, such mysterious
+equivocating, long-worded sentences, that Stirn every moment felt more
+and more convinced that the boy had sold himself to the Powers of
+Darkness, and that he himself, prematurely and in the flesh, stood face
+to face with the Arch-Enemy.
+
+Mr. Stirn had not yet recovered his wonted intelligence, which, to do him
+justice, was usually prompt enough, when the squire, followed hard by the
+parson, arrived at the spot.  Indeed, Mrs. Hazeldean's report of the
+squire's urgent message, disturbed manner, and most unparalleled
+invitation to the parishioners, had given wings to Parson Dale's
+ordinarily slow and sedate movements.  And while the squire, sharing
+Stirn's amazement, beheld indeed a great pair of feet projecting from the
+stocks, and saw behind them the grave face of Dr. Riccabocca under the
+majestic shade of the umbrella, but not a vestige of the only being his
+mind could identify with the tenancy of the stocks, Mr. Dale, catching
+him by the arm, and panting hard, exclaimed with a petulance he had never
+before been known to display,--except at the whisttable,--
+
+"Mr. Hazeldean, Mr. Hazeldean, I am scandalized,--I am shocked at you.
+I can bear a great deal from you, sir, as I ought to do; but to ask my
+whole congregation, the moment after divine service, to go up and guzzle
+ale at the Hall, and drink my health, as if a clergyman's sermon had been
+a speech at a cattle-fair!  I am ashamed of you, and of the parish!  What
+on earth has come to you all?"
+
+"That's the very question I wish to Heaven I could answer," groaned the
+squire, quite mildly and pathetically,--"What on earth has come to us
+all?  Ask Stirn:" (then bursting out) "Stirn, you infernal rascal, don't
+you hear?  What on earth has come to us all?"
+
+"The Papisher is at the bottom of it, sir," said Stirn, provoked out of
+all temper.  "I does my duty, but I is but a mortal man, arter all."
+
+"A mortal fiddlestick!  Where's Leonard Fairfield, I say?"
+
+"Him knows best," answered Stirn, retreating mechanically for safety's
+sake behind the parson, and pointing to Dr. Riccabocca.  Hitherto, though
+both the squire and parson had indeed recognized the Italian, they had
+merely supposed him to be seated on the bank.  It never entered into
+their heads that so respectable and dignified a man could by any
+possibility be an inmate, compelled or voluntary, of the parish stocks.
+No, not even though, as I before said, the squire had seen, just under
+his nose, a very long pair of soles inserted in the apertures, that sight
+had only confused and bewildered him, unaccompanied, as it ought to have
+been, with the trunk and face of Lenny Fairfield.  Those soles seemed to
+him optical delusions, phantoms of the overheated brain; but now,
+catching hold of Stirn, while the parson in equal astonishment caught
+hold of him, the squire faltered out, "Well, this beats cock-fighting!
+The man's as mad as a March hare, and has taken Dr. Rickeybockey for
+Little Lenny!"
+
+"Perhaps," said the doctor, breaking silence with a bland smile, and
+attempting an inclination of the head as courteous as his position would
+permit,--"perhaps, if it be quite the same to you, before you proceed to
+explanations, you will just help me out of the stocks."
+
+The parson, despite his perplexity and anger, could not repress a smile,
+as he approached his learned friend, and bent down for the purpose of
+extricating him.
+
+"Lord love your reverence, you'd better not!" cried Mr. Stirn.  "Don't be
+tempted,--he only wants to get you into is claws.  I would not go a near
+him for all the--"
+
+The speech was interrupted by Dr. Riccabocca himself, who now, thanks to
+the parson, had risen into his full height, and half a head taller than
+all present--even than the tall squire--approached Mr. Stirn, with a
+gracious wave of the hand.  Mr. Stirn retreated rapidly towards the
+hedge, amidst the brambles of which he plunged himself incontinently.
+
+"I guess whom you take me for, Mr. Stirn," said the Italian, lifting his
+hat with his characteristic politeness.  "It is certainly a great honour;
+but you will know better one of these days, when the gentleman in
+question admits you to a personal interview in another--and a hotter
+world."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+"But how on earth did you get into my new stocks?" asked the squire,
+scratching his head.
+
+"My dear sir, Pliny the elder got into the crater of Mount Etna."
+
+"Did he, and what for?"
+
+"To try what it was like, I suppose," answered Riccabocca.  The squire
+burst out a laughing.
+
+"And so you got into the stocks to try what it was like.  Well, I can't
+wonder,--it is a very handsome pair of stocks," continued the squire,
+with a loving look at the object of his praise.  "Nobody need be ashamed
+of being seen in those stocks,--I'should not mind it myself."
+
+"We had better move on," said the parson, dryly, "or we shall have the
+whole village here presently, gazing on the lord of the manor in the same
+predicament as that from which we have just extricated the doctor.  Now,
+pray, what is the matter with Lenny Fairfield?  I can't understand a word
+of what has passed.  You don't mean to say that good Lenny Fairfield (who
+was absent from church, by the by) can have done anything to get into
+disgrace?"
+
+"Yes, he has though," cried the squire.  "Stirn, I say, Stirn!"  But
+Stirn had forced his way through the hedge and vanished.  Thus left to
+his own powers of narrative at secondhand, Mr. Hazeldean now told all he
+had to communicate,--the assault upon Randal Leslie, and the prompt
+punishment inflicted by Stirn; his own indignation at the affront to his
+young kinsman, and his good-natured merciful desire to save the culprit
+from public humiliation.
+
+The parson, mollified towards the rude and hasty invention of the beer-
+drinking, took the squire by the hand.  "Ah, Mr. Hazeldean, forgive me,"
+he said repentantly; "I ought to have known at once that it was only some
+ebullition of your heart that could stifle your sense of decorum.  But
+this is a sad story about Lenny brawling and fighting on the Sabbath-day.
+So unlike him, too.  I don't know what to make of it."
+
+"Like or unlike," said the squire, "it has been a gross insult to young
+Leslie, and looks all the worse because I and Audley are not just the
+best friends in the world.  I can't think what it is," continued Mr.
+Hazeldean, musingly; "but it seems that there must be always some
+association of fighting connected with that prim half-brother of mine.
+There was I, son of his own mother,--who might have been shot through the
+lungs, only the ball lodged in the shoulder! and now his wife's kinsman--
+my kinsman, too--grandmother a Hazeldean,--a hard-reading, sober lad, as
+I am given to understand, can't set his foot into the quietest parish in
+the three kingdoms, but what the mildest boy that ever was seen makes a
+rush at him like a mad bull.  It is FATALITY!" cried the squire,
+solemnly.
+
+"Ancient legend records similar instances of fatality in certain houses,"
+observed Riccabocca.  "There was the House of Pelops, and Polynices and
+Eteocles, the sons of OEdipus."
+
+"Pshaw!" said the parson; "but what's to be done?"
+
+"Done?" said the squire; "why, reparation must be made to young Leslie.
+And though I wished to spare Lenny, the young ruffian, a public disgrace
+--for your sake, Parson Dale, and Mrs. Fairfield's--yet a good caning in
+private--"
+
+"Stop, sir!" said Riccabocca, mildly, "and hear me."  The Italian then,
+with much feeling and considerable tact, pleaded the cause of his poor
+protege, and explained how Lenny's error arose only from mistaken zeal
+for the squire's service, and in the execution of the orders received
+from Mr. Stirn.
+
+"That alters the matter," said the squire, softened; "and all that is
+necessary now will be for him to make a proper apology to my kinsman."
+
+"Yes, that is just," rejoined the parson; "but I still don't learn how he
+got out of the stocks."
+
+Riccabocca then resumed his tale; and, after confessing his own principal
+share in Lenny's escape, drew a moving picture of the boy's shame and
+honest mortification.  "Let us march against Philip!" cried the Athenians
+when they heard Demosthenes--
+
+"Let us go at once and comfort the child!" cried the parson, before
+Riccabocca could finish.
+
+With that benevolent intention all three quickened their pace, and soon
+arrived at the widow's cottage.  But Lenny had caught sight of their
+approach through the window; and not doubting that, in spite of
+Riccabocca's intercession, the parson was come to upbraid and the squire
+to re-imprison, he darted out by the back way, got amongst the woods, and
+lay there perdu all the evening.  Nay, it was not till after dark that
+his mother--who sat wringing her hands in the little kitchen, and trying
+in vain to listen to the parson and Mrs. Dale, who (after sending in
+search of the fugitive) had kindly come to console the mother--heard a
+timid knock at the door and a nervous fumble at the latch.  She started
+up, opened the door, and Lenny sprang to her bosom, and there buried his
+face, sobbing aloud.
+
+"No harm, my boy," said the parson, tenderly; "you have nothing to fear,
+--all is explained and forgiven."
+
+Lenny looked up, and the veins on his forehead were much swollen.  "Sir,"
+said he, sturdily, "I don't want to be forgiven,--I ain't done no wrong.
+And--I've been disgraced--and I won't go to school, never no more."
+
+"Hush, Carry!" said the parson to his wife, who with the usual liveliness
+of her little temper, was about to expostulate.  "Good-night, Mrs.
+Fairfield.  I shall come and talk to you to-morrow, Lenny; by that time
+you will think better of it."
+
+The parson then conducted his wife home, and went up to the Hall to
+report Lenny's safe return; for the squire was very uneasy about him, and
+had even in person shared the search.  As soon as he heard Lenny was
+safe--"Well," said the squire," let him go the first thing in the morning
+to Rood Hall, to ask Master Leslie's pardon, and all will be right and
+smooth again."
+
+"A young villain!" cried Frank, with his cheeks the colour of scarlet;
+"to strike a gentleman and an Etonian, who had just been to call on me!
+But I wonder Randal let him off so well,--any other boy in the sixth form
+would have killed him!"
+
+"Frank," said the parson, sternly, "if we all had our deserts, what
+should be done to him who not only lets the sun go down on his own wrath,
+but strives with uncharitable breath to fan the dying embers of
+another's?"
+
+The clergyman here turned away from Frank, who bit his lip, and seemed
+abashed, while even his mother said not a word in his exculpation; for
+when the parson did reprove in that stern tone, the majesty of the Hall
+stood awed before the rebuke of the Church.  Catching Riccabocca's
+inquisitive eye, Mr. Dale drew aside the philosopher, and whispered to
+him his fears that it would be a very hard matter to induce Lenny to beg
+Randal Leslie's pardon, and that the proud stomach of the pattern-boy
+would not digest the stocks with as much ease as a long regimen of
+philosophy had enabled the sage to do.  This conference Miss Jemima soon
+interrupted by a direct appeal to the doctor respecting the number of
+years (even without any previous and more violent incident) that the
+world could possibly withstand its own wear and tear.
+
+"Ma'am," said the doctor, reluctantly summoned away to look at a passage
+in some prophetic periodical upon that interesting subject,--"ma'am, it
+is very hard that you should make one remember the end of the world,
+since, in conversing with you, one's natural temptation is to forget its
+existence."
+
+Miss Jemima's cheeks were suffused with a deeper scarlet than Frank's
+had been a few minutes before.  Certainly that deceitful, heartless
+compliment justified all her contempt for the male sex; and yet--such is
+human blindness--it went far to redeem all mankind in her credulous and
+too confiding soul.
+
+"He is about to propose," sighed Miss Jemima.
+
+"Giacomo," said Riccabocca, as he drew on his nightcap, and stepped
+majestically into the four-posted bed, "I think we shall get that boy for
+the garden now!"
+
+Thus each spurred his hobby, or drove her car, round the Hazeldean
+whirligig.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+Whatever, may be the ultimate success of Miss Jemima Hazeldean's designs
+upon Dr. Riccabocca, the Machiavellian sagacity with which the Italian
+had counted upon securing the services of Lenny Fairfield was speedily
+and triumphantly established by the result.  No voice of the parson's,
+charmed he ever so wisely, could persuade the peasant-boy to go and ask
+pardon of the young gentleman, to whom, because he had done as he was
+bid, he owed an agonizing defeat and a shameful incarceration; and, to
+Mrs. Dale's vexation, the widow took the boy's part.  She was deeply
+offended at the unjust disgrace Lenny had undergone in being put in the
+stocks; she shared his pride, and openly approved his spirit.  Nor was it
+without great difficulty that Lenny could be induced to resume his
+lessons at school,--nay, even to set foot beyond the precincts of his
+mother's holding.  The point of the school at last he yielded, though
+sullenly; and the parson thought it better to temporize as to the more
+unpalatable demand.  Unluckily, Lenny's apprehensions of the mockery that
+awaited him in the merciless world of his village were realized.  Though
+Stirn at first kept his own counsel the tinker blabbed the whole affair.
+And after the search instituted for Lenny on the fatal night, all attempt
+to hush up what had passed would have been impossible.  So then Stirn
+told his story, as the tinker had told his own; both tales were very
+unfavourable to Leonard Fairfield.  The pattern-boy had broken the
+Sabbath, fought with his betters, and been well mauled into the bargain;
+the village lad had sided with Stirn and the authorities in spying out
+the misdemeanours of his equals therefore Leonard Fairfield, in both
+capacities of degraded pattern-boy and baffled spy, could expect no
+mercy,--he was ridiculed in the one, and hated in the other.
+
+It is true that, in the presence of the schoolmaster and under the eye of
+Mr. Dale, no one openly gave vent to malignant feelings; but the moment
+those checks were removed, popular persecution bcgan.
+
+Some pointed and mowed at him, some cursed him for a sneak, and all
+shunned his society; voices were heard in the hedgerows, as he passed
+through the village at dusk, "Who was put into the stocks?--baa!"  "Who
+got a bloody nob for playing spy to Nick Stirn?--baa!"  To resist this
+species of aggression would have been a vain attempt for a wiser head and
+a colder temper than our poor pattern-boy's.  He took his resolution at
+once, and his mother approved it; and the second or third day after Dr.
+Riccabocca's return to the Casino, Lenny Fairfield presented himself on
+the terrace with a little bundle in his hand.  "Please, sir," said he to
+the doctor, who was sitting cross-legged on the balustrade, with his red
+silk umbrella over his head,--"please, sir, if you'll be good enough to
+take me now, and give me any hole to sleep in, I'll work for your honour
+night and day; and as for wages, Mother says, 'just suit yourself, sir.'"
+
+"My child," said the doctor, taking Lenny by the hand, and looking at him
+with the sagacious eye of a wizard, "I knew you would come! and Giacomo
+is already prepared for you!  As to wages, we'll talk of them by and by."
+
+Lenny being thus settled, his mother looked for some evenings on the
+vacant chair, where he had so long sat in the place of her beloved Mark;
+and the chair seemed so comfortless and desolate, thus left all to
+itself, that she could bear it no longer.
+
+Indeed the village had grown as distasteful to her as to Lenny,--perhaps
+more so; and one morning she hailed the steward as he was trotting his
+hog-maued cob beside the door, and bade him tell the squire that "she
+would take it very kind if he would let her off the six months' notice
+for the land and premises she held; there were plenty to step into the
+place at a much better rent."
+
+"You're a fool," said the good-natured steward; "and I'm very glad you
+did not speak to that fellow Stirn instead of to me.  You've been doing
+extremely well here, and have the place, I may say, for nothing."
+
+"Nothin' as to rent, sir, but a great deal as to feelin'," said the
+widow.  "And now Lenny has gone to work with the foreign gentleman, I
+should like to go and live near him."
+
+"Ah, yes, I heard Lenny had taken himself off to the Casino, more fool
+he; but, bless your heart, 't is no distance,--two miles or so.  Can't he
+come home every night after work?"
+
+"No, sir," exclaimed the widow, almost fiercely; "he sha'n't come home
+here, to be called bad names and jeered at!--he whom my dead good man was
+so fond and proud of.  No, sir; we poor folks have our feelings, as I
+said to Mrs. Dale, and as I will say to the squire hisself.  Not that I
+don't thank him for all favours,--he be a good gentleman if let alone;
+but he says he won't come near us till Lenny goes and axes pardin.
+Pardin for what, I should like to know?  Poor lamb!  I wish you could ha'
+seen his nose, sir,--as big as your two fists.  Ax pardin! if the squire
+had had such a nose as that, I don't think it's pardin he'd been ha'
+axing.  But I let the passion get the better of me,--I humbly beg you'll
+excuse it, sir.  I'm no schollard, as poor Mark was, and Lenny would have
+been, if the Lord had not visited us otherways.  Therefore just get the
+squire to let me go as soon as may be; and as for the bit o' hay and
+what's on the grounds and orchard, the new comer will no doubt settle
+that."
+
+The steward, finding no eloquence of his could induce the widow to
+relinquish her resolution, took her message to the squire.  Mr.
+Hazeldean, who was indeed really offended at the boy's obstinate refusal
+to make the /amende honorable/ to Randal Leslie, at first only bestowed a
+hearty curse or two on the pride and ingratitude both of mother and son.
+It may be supposed, however, that his second thoughts were more gentle,
+since that evening, though he did not go himself to the widow, he sent
+his "Harry."  Now, though Harry was sometimes austere and brusque enough
+on her own account, and in such business as might especially be
+transacted between herself and the cottagers, yet she never appeared as
+the delegate of her lord except in the capacity of a herald of peace and
+mediating angel.  It was with good heart, too, that she undertook this
+mission, since, as we have seen, both mother and son were great
+favourites of hers.  She entered the cottage with the friendliest beam
+in her bright blue eye, and it was with the softest tone of her frank
+cordial voice that she accosted the widow.  But she was no more
+successful than the steward had been.  The truth is, that I don't believe
+the haughtiest duke in the three kingdoms is really so proud as your
+plain English rural peasant, nor half so hard to propitiate and deal with
+when his sense of dignity is ruffled.  Nor are there many of my own
+literary brethren (thin-skinned creatures though we are) so sensitively
+alive to the Public Opinion, wisely despised by Dr. Riccabocca, as that
+same peasant.  He can endure a good deal of contumely sometimes, it is
+true, from his superiors (though, thank Heaven! that he rarely meets with
+unjustly); but to be looked down upon and mocked and pointed at by his
+own equals--his own little world--cuts him to the soul.  And if you can
+succeed in breaking this pride and destroying this sensitiveness, then he
+is a lost being.  He can never recover his self-esteem, and you have
+chucked him half-way--a stolid, inert, sullen victim--to the perdition of
+the prison or the convict-ship.
+
+Of this stuff was the nature both of the widow and her son.  Had the
+honey of Plato flowed from the tongue of Mrs. Hazeldean, it could not
+have turned into sweetness the bitter spirit upon which it descended.
+But Mrs. Hazeldean, though an excellent woman, was rather a bluff, plain-
+spoken one; and after all she had some little feeling for the son of a
+gentleman, and a decayed, fallen gentleman, who, even by Lenny's account,
+had been assailed without any intelligible provocation; nor could she,
+with her strong common-sense, attach all the importance which Mrs.
+Fairfield did to the unmannerly impertinence of a few young cubs, which
+she said truly, "would soon die away if no notice was taken of it."  The
+widow's mind was made up, and Mrs. Hazeldean departed,--with much chagrin
+and some displeasure.
+
+Mrs. Fairfield, however, tacitly understood that the request she had made
+was granted, and early one morning her door was found locked, the key
+left at a neighbour's to be given to the steward; and, on further
+inquiry, it was ascertained that her furniture and effects had been
+removed by the errand cart in the dead of the night.  Lenny had succeeded
+in finding a cottage on the road-side, not far from the Casino; and
+there, with a joyous face, he waited to welcome his mother to breakfast,
+and show how he had spent the night in arranging her furniture.
+
+"Parson!" cried the squire, when all this news came upon him, as he was
+walking arm in arm with Mr. Dale to inspect some proposed improvement in
+the Almshouse, "this is all your fault.  Why did you not go and talk to
+that brute of a boy and that dolt of a woman?  You've got 'soft sawder
+enough,' as Frank calls it in his new-fashioned slang."
+
+"As if I had not talked myself hoarse to both!" said the parson, in a
+tone of reproachful surprise at the accusation.  "But it was in vain!
+O Squire, if you had taken my advice about the stocks,--'quieta non
+movere'!"
+
+"Bother!" said the squire.  "I suppose I am to be held up as a tyrant, a
+Nero, a Richard the Third, or a Grand Inquisitor, merely for having
+things smart and tidy!  Stocks indeed!  Your friend Rickeybockey said he
+was never more comfortable in his life,--quite enjoyed sitting there.
+And what did not hurt Rickeybockey's dignity (a very gentlemanlike man he
+is, when he pleases) ought to be no such great matter to Master Leonard
+Fairfield.  But 't is no use talking!  What's to be done now?  The woman
+must not starve; and I'm sure she can't live out of Rickeybockey's wages
+to Lenny,--by the way, I hope he don't board the boy upon his and
+Jackeymo's leavings: I hear they dine upon newts and sticklebacks, faugh!
+I'll tell you what, Parson, now I think of it, at the back of the cottage
+which she has taken there are some fields of capital land just vacant.
+Rickeybockey wants to have 'em, and sounded me as to the rent when he was
+at the Hall.  I only half promised him the refusal.  And he must give up
+four or five acres of the best land round the cottage to the widow--just
+enough for her to manage--and she can keep a dairy.  If she want capital,
+I'll lend her some in your name,--only don't tell Stirn; and as for the
+rent--we'll talk of that when we see how she gets on, thankless,
+obstinate jade that she is!  You see," added the squire, as if he felt
+there was some apology due for this generosity to an object whom he
+professed to consider so ungrateful, "her husband was a faithful servant,
+and so--I wish you would not stand there staring me out of countenance,
+but go down to the woman at once, or Stirn will have let the land to
+Rickeybockey, as sure as a gun.  And hark ye, Dale, perhaps you can
+contrive, if the woman is so cursedly stiffbacked, not to say the land is
+mine, or that it is any favour I want to do her--or, in short, manage it
+as you can for the best."  Still even this charitable message failed.
+The widow knew that the land was the squire's, and worth a good L3 an
+acre.  "She thanked him humbly for that and all favours; but she could
+not afford to buy cows, and she did not wish to be beholden to any one
+for her living.  And Lenny was well off at Mr. Rickeybockey's, and coming
+on wonderfully in the garden way, and she did not doubt she could get
+some washing; at all events, her haystack would bring in a good bit of
+money, and she should do nicely, thank their honours."
+
+Nothing further could be done in the direct way, but the remark about the
+washing suggested some mode of indirectly benefiting the widow; and a
+little time afterwards, the sole laundress in that immediate
+neighbourhood happening to die, a hint from the squire obtained from the
+landlady of the inn opposite the Casino such custom as she had to bestow,
+which at times was not inconsiderable.  And what with Lenny's wages
+(whatever that mysterious item might be), the mother and son contrived to
+live without exhibiting any of those physical signs of fast and
+abstinence which Riccabocca and his valet gratuitously afforded to the
+student in animal anatomy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+Of all the wares and commodities in exchange and barter, wherein so
+mainly consists the civilization of our modern world, there is not one
+which is so carefully weighed, so accurately measured, so plumbed and
+gauged, so doled and scraped, so poured out in minima and balanced with
+scruples,--as that necessary of social commerce called "an apology"!  If
+the chemists were half so careful in vending their poisons, there would
+be a notable diminution in the yearly average of victims to arsenic and
+oxalic acid.  But, alas! in the matter of apology, it is not from the
+excess of the dose, but the timid, niggardly, miserly manner in which it
+is dispensed, that poor Humanity is hurried off to the Styx!  How many
+times does a life depend on the exact proportions of an apology!  Is it
+a hairbreadth too short to cover the scratch for which you want it?  Make
+your will,--you are a dead man!  A life do I say?--a hecatomb of lives!
+How many wars would have been prevented, how many thrones would be
+standing, dynasties flourishing, commonwealths brawling round a /bema/,
+or fitting out galleys for corn and cotton, if an inch or two more of
+apology had been added to the proffered ell!  But then that plaguy,
+jealous, suspicious, old vinegar-faced Honour, and her partner Pride--as
+penny-wise and pound-foolish a she-skinflint as herself--have the
+monopoly of the article.  And what with the time they lose in adjusting
+their spectacles, hunting in the precise shelf for the precise quality
+demanded, then (quality found) the haggling as to quantum,--considering
+whether it should be Apothecary's weight or Avoirdupois, or English
+measure or Flemish,--and, finally, the hullabuloo they make if the
+customer is not perfectly satisfied with the monstrous little he gets
+for his money, I don't wonder, for my part, how one loses temper and
+patience, and sends Pride, Honour, and Apology all to the devil.
+Aristophanes, in his comedy of "Peace," insinuates a beautiful allegory
+by only suffering that goddess, though in fact she is his heroine, to
+appear as a mute.  She takes care never to open her lips.  The shrewd
+Greek knew very well that she would cease to be Peace, if she once began
+to chatter.  Wherefore, O reader, if ever you find your pump under the
+iron heel of another man's boot, Heaven grant that you may hold your
+tongue, and not make things past all endurance and forgiveness by bawling
+out for an apology!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+But the squire and his son, Frank, were large-hearted generous creatures
+in the article of apology, as in all things less skimpingly dealt out.
+And seeing that Leonard Fairfield would offer no plaster to Randal
+Leslie, they made amends for his stinginess by their own prodigality.
+The squire accompanied his son to Rood Hall, and none of the family
+choosing to be at home, the squire in his own hand, and from his own
+head, indited and composed an epistle which might have satisfied all the
+wounds which the dignity of the Leslies had ever received.
+
+This letter of apology ended with a hearty request that Randal would come
+and spend a few days with his son.  Frank's epistle was to the same
+purport, only more Etonian and less legible.
+
+It was some days before Randal's replies to these epistles were received.
+The replies bore the address of a village near London; and stated that
+the writer was now reading with a tutor preparatory to entrance to
+Oxford, and could not, therefore, accept the invitation extended to him.
+
+For the rest, Randal expressed himself with good sense, though not with
+much generosity.  He excused his participation in the vulgarity of such a
+conflict by a bitter, but short allusion to the obstinacy and ignorance
+of the village boor; and did not do what you, my kind reader, certainly
+would have done under similar circumstances,--namely, intercede in behalf
+of a brave and unfortunate antagonist.  Most of us like a foe better
+after we have fought him,--that is, if we are the conquering party; this
+was not the case with Randal Leslie.  There, so far as the Etonian was
+concerned, the matter rested.  And the squire, irritated that he could
+not repair whatever wrong that young gentleman had sustained, no longer
+felt a pang of regret as he passed by Mrs. Fairfield's deserted cottage.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVl.
+
+Lenny Fairfield continued to give great satisfaction to his new
+employers, and to profit in many respects by the familiar kindness with
+which he was treated.  Riccabocca, who valued himself on penetrating into
+character, had from the first seen that much stuff of no common quality
+and texture was to be found in the disposition and mind of the English
+village boy.  On further acquaintance, he perceived that, under a child's
+innocent simplicity, there were the workings of an acuteness that
+required but development and direction.  He ascertained that the pattern-
+boy's progress at the village school proceeded from something more than
+mechanical docility and readiness of comprehension.  Lenny had a keen
+thirst for knowledge, and through all the disadvantages of birth and
+circumstance, there were the indications of that natural genius which
+converts disadvantages themselves into stimulants.  Still, with the germs
+of good qualities lay the embryos of those which, difficult to separate,
+and hard to destroy, often mar the produce of the soil.  With a
+remarkable and generous pride in self-repute, there was some
+stubbornness; with great sensibility to kindness, there was also strong
+reluctance to forgive affront.
+
+This mixed nature in an uncultivated peasant's breast interested
+Riccabocca, who, though long secluded from the commerce of mankind, still
+looked upon man as the most various and entertaining volume which
+philosophical research can explore.  He soon accustomed the boy to the
+tone of a conversation generally subtle and suggestive; and Lenny's
+language and ideas became insensibly less rustic and more refined.  Then
+Riccabocca selected from his library, small as it was, books that, though
+elementary, were of a higher cast than Lenny could have found within his
+reach at Hazeldean.  Riccabocca knew the English language well,--better
+in grammar, construction, and genius than many a not ill-educated
+Englishman; for he had studied it with the minuteness with which a
+scholar studies a dead language, and amidst his collection he had many of
+the books which had formerly served him for that purpose.  These were the
+first works he lent to Lenny.  Meanwhile Jackeymo imparted to the boy
+many secrets in practical gardening and minute husbandry, for at that day
+farming in England (some favoured counties and estates excepted) was far
+below the nicety to which the art has been immemorially carried in the
+north of Italy,--where, indeed, you may travel for miles and miles as
+through a series of market-gardens; so that, all these things considered,
+Leonard Fairfield might be said to have made a change for the better.
+Yet, in truth, and looking below the surface, that might be fair matter
+of doubt.  For the same reason which had induced the boy to fly his
+native village, he no longer repaired to the church of Hazeldean.  The
+old intimate intercourse between him and the parson became necessarily
+suspended, or bounded to an occasional kindly visit from the latter,--
+visits which grew more rare and less familiar, as he found his former
+pupil in no want of his services, and wholly deaf to his mild entreaties
+to forget and forgive the past, and come at least to his old seat in the
+parish church.  Lenny still went to church,--a church a long way off in
+another parish,--but the sermons did not do him the same good as Parson
+Dale's had done; and the clergyman, who had his own flock to attend to,
+did not condescend, as Parson Dale would have done, to explain what
+seemed obscure, and enforce what was profitable, in private talk, with
+that stray lamb from another's fold.
+
+Now I question much if all Dr. Riccabocca's maxims, though they were
+often very moral and generally very wise, served to expand the peasant
+boy's native good qualities, and correct his bad, half so well as the few
+simple words, not at all indebted to Machiavelli, which Leonard had once
+reverently listened to when he stood by Mark's elbow-chair, yielded up
+for the moment to the good parson, worthy to sit in it; for Mr. Dale had
+a heart in which all the fatherless of the parish found their place.  Nor
+was this loss of tender, intimate, spiritual lore so counterbalanced by
+the greater facilities for purely intellectual instruction as modern
+enlightenment might presume.  For, without disputing the advantage of
+knowledge in a general way, knowledge, in itself, is not friendly to
+content.  Its tendency, of course, is to increase the desires, to
+dissatisfy us with what is, in order to urge progress to what may be; and
+in that progress, what unnoticed martyrs among the many must fall baffled
+and crushed by the way!  To how large a number will be given desires they
+will never realize, dissatisfaction of the lot from which they will never
+rise!  Allons! one is viewing the dark side of the question.  It is all
+the fault of that confounded Riccabocca, who has already caused Lenny
+Fairfield to lean gloomily on his spade, and, after looking round and
+seeing no one near him, groan out querulously,--"And am I born to dig a
+potato ground?"
+
+Pardieu, my friend Lenny, if you live to be seventy, and ride in your
+carriage, and by the help of a dinner-pill digest a spoonful of curry,
+you may sigh to think what a relish there was in potatoes, roasted in
+ashes after you had digged them out of that ground with your own stout
+young hands.  Dig on, Lenny Fairfield, dig on!  Dr. Riccabocca will tell
+you that there was once an illustrious personage--[The Emperor
+Diocletian]--who made experience of two very different occupations,--one
+was ruling men, the other was planting cabbages; he thought planting
+cabbages much the pleasanter of the two!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIL
+
+Dr. Riccabocca had secured Lenny Fairfield, and might therefore be
+considered to have ridden his hobby in the great whirligig with
+adroitness and success.  But Miss Jemima was still driving round in her
+car, handling the reins, and flourishing the whip, without apparently
+having got an inch nearer to the flying form of Dr. Riccabocca.
+
+Indeed, that excellent and only too susceptible spinster, with all her
+experience of the villany of man, had never conceived the wretch to be so
+thoroughly beyond the reach of redemption as when Dr. Riccabocca took his
+leave, and once more interred himself amidst the solitudes of the Casino,
+and without having made any formal renunciation of his criminal celibacy.
+For some days she shut herself up in her own chamber, and brooded with
+more than her usual gloomy satisfaction on the certainty of the
+approaching crash.  Indeed, many signs of that universal calamity, which,
+while the visit of Riccabocca lasted, she had permitted herself to
+consider ambiguous, now became luminously apparent.  Even the newspaper,
+which during that credulous and happy period had given half a column to
+Births and Marriages, now bore an ominously long catalogue of Deaths; so
+that it seemed as if the whole population had lost heart, and had no
+chance of repairing its daily losses.  The leading article spoke, with
+the obscurity of a Pythian, of an impending CRISIS.  Monstrous turnips
+sprouted out from the paragraphs devoted to General News.  Cows bore
+calves with two heads, whales were stranded in the Humber, showers of
+frogs descended in the High Street of Cheltenham.
+
+All these symptoms of the world's decrepitude and consummation, which by
+the side of the fascinating Riccabocca might admit of some doubt as to
+their origin and cause, now, conjoined with the worst of all, namely, the
+frightfully progressive wickedness of man,--left to Miss Jemima no ray of
+hope save that afforded by the reflection that she could contemplate the
+wreck of matter without a single sentiment of regret.
+
+Mrs. Dale, however, by no means shared the despondency of her fair
+friend, and having gained access to Miss Jemima's chamber, succeeded,
+though not without difficulty, in her kindly attempts to cheer the
+drooping spirits of that female misanthropist.  Nor, in her benevolent
+desire to speed the car of Miss Jemima to its hymeneal goal, was Mrs.
+Dale so cruel towards her male friend, Dr. Riccabocca, as she seemed to
+her husband.  For Mrs. Dale was a woman of shrewdness and penetration, as
+most quick-tempered women are; and she knew that Miss Jemima was one of
+those excellent young ladies who are likely to value a husband in
+proportion to the difficulty of obtaining him.  In fact, my readers of
+both sexes must often have met, in the course of their experience, with
+that peculiar sort of feminine disposition, which requires the warmth of
+the conjugal hearth to develop all its native good qualities; nor is it
+to be blamed overmuch if, innocently aware of this tendency in its
+nature, it turns towards what is best fitted for its growth and
+improvement, by laws akin to those which make the sunflower turn to
+the sun, or the willow to the stream.  Ladies of this disposition,
+permanently thwarted in their affectionate bias, gradually languish
+away into intellectual inanition, or sprout out into those abnormal
+eccentricities which are classed under the general name of "oddity" or
+"character."  But once admitted to their proper soil, it is astonishing
+what healthful improvement takes place,--how the poor heart, before
+starved and stinted of nourishment, throws out its suckers, and bursts
+into bloom and fruit.  And thus many a belle from whom the beaux have
+stood aloof, only because the puppies think she could be had for the
+asking, they see afterwards settled down into true wife and fond mother,
+with amaze at their former disparagement, and a sigh at their blind
+hardness of heart.
+
+In all probability Mrs. Dale took this view of the subject; and
+certainly, in addition to all the hitherto dormant virtues which would be
+awakened in Miss Jemima when fairly Mrs. Riccabocca, she counted somewhat
+upon the mere worldly advantage which such a match would bestow upon the
+exile.  So respectable a connection with one of the oldest, wealthiest,
+and most popular families in the shire would in itself give him a
+position not to be despised by a poor stranger in the land; and though
+the interest of Miss Jemima's dowry might not be much, regarded in the
+light of English pounds (not Milanese lire), still it would suffice to
+prevent that gradual process of dematerialization which the lengthened
+diet upon minnows and sticklebacks had already made apparent in the fine
+and slow-evanishing form of the philosopher.
+
+Like all persons convinced of the expediency of a thing, Mrs. Dale saw
+nothing wanting but opportunities to insure its success.  And that these
+might be forthcoming she not only renewed with greater frequency, and
+more urgent instance than ever, her friendly invitations to Riccabocca to
+drink tea and spend the evening, but she so artfully chafed the squire on
+his sore point of hospitality, that the doctor received weekly a pressing
+solicitation to dine and sleep at the Hall.
+
+At first the Italian pished and grunted, and said /Cospetto/, and /Per
+Bacco/, and /Diavolo/, and tried to creep out of so much proffered
+courtesy.  But like all single gentlemen, he was a little under the
+tyrannical influence of his faithful servant; and Jackeymo, though he
+could bear starving as well as his master when necessary, still, when he
+had the option, preferred roast beef and plum-pudding.  Moreover, that
+vain and incautious confidence of Riccabocca touching the vast sum at his
+command, and with no heavier drawback than that of so amiable a lady as
+Miss Jemima--who had already shown him (Jackeymo) many little delicate
+attentions--had greatly whetted the cupidity which was in the servant's
+Italian nature,--a cupidity the more keen because, long debarred its
+legitimate exercise on his own mercenary interests, he carried it all to
+the account of his master's!
+
+Thus tempted by his enemy and betrayed by his servant, the unfortunate
+Riccabocca fell, though with eyes not unblinded, into the hospitable
+snares extended for the destruction of his--celibacy!  He went often to
+the Parsonage, often to the Hall, and by degrees the sweets of the social
+domestic life, long denied him, began to exercise their enervating charm
+upon the stoicism of our poor exile.  Frank had now returned to Eton.  An
+unexpected invitation had carried off Captain Higginbotham to pass a few
+weeks at Bath with a distant relation, who had lately returned from
+India, and who, as rich as Creesus, felt so estranged and solitary in his
+native isle that, when the captain "claimed kindred there," to his own
+amaze "he had his claims allowed;" while a very protracted sitting of
+parliament still delayed in London the squire's habitual visitors during
+the later summer; so that--a chasm thus made in his society--
+Mr. Hazeldean welcomed with no hollow cordiality the diversion or
+distraction he found in the foreigner's companionship.  Thus, with
+pleasure to all parties, and strong hopes to the two female conspirators,
+the intimacy between the Casino and Hall rapidly thickened; but still not
+a word resembling a distinct proposal did Dr. Riccabocca breathe.  And
+still, if such an idea obtruded itself on his mind, it was chased
+therefrom with so determined a Diavolo that perhaps, if not the end of
+the world, at least the end of Miss Jemima's tenure in it, might have
+approached and seen her still Miss Jemima, but for a certain letter with
+a foreign postmark that reached the doctor one Tuesday morning.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+The servant saw that something had gone wrong, and, under pretence of
+syringing the orange-trees, he lingered near his master, and peered
+through the sunny leaves upon Riccabocca's melancholy brows.
+
+The doctor sighed heavily.  Nor did he, as was his wont after some such
+sigh, mechanically take up that dear comforter the pipe.  But though the
+tobacco-pouch lay by his side on the balustrade, and the pipe stood
+against the wall between his knees, childlike lifting up its lips to the
+customary caress, he heeded neither the one nor the other, but laid the
+letter silently on his lap, and fixed his eyes upon the ground.
+
+"It must be bad news indeed!" thought Jackeymo, and desisted from his
+work.  Approaching his master, he took up the pipe and the tobacco-pouch,
+and filled the bowl slowly, glancing all the while towards that dark
+musing face on which, when abandoned by the expression of intellectual
+vivacity or the exquisite smile of Italian courtesy, the deep downward
+lines revealed the characters of sorrow.  Jackeymo did not venture to
+speak; but the continued silence of his master disturbed him much.  He
+laid that peculiar tinder which your smokers use upon the steel, and
+struck the spark,--still not a word, nor did Riccabocca stretch forth his
+hand.
+
+"I never knew him in this taking before," thought Jackeymo; and
+delicately he insinuated the neck of the pipe into the nerveless fingers
+of the band that lay supine on those quiet knees.  The pipe fell to the
+ground.
+
+Jackeymo crossed himself, and began praying to his sainted namesake with
+great fervour.
+
+The doctor rose slowly, and as if with effort; he walked once or twice to
+and fro the terrace; and then he halted abruptly and said,--
+
+"Friend!"
+
+"Blessed Monsignore San Giacomo, I knew thou wouldst hear me!" cried the
+servant; and he raised his master's hand to his lips, then abruptly
+turned away and wiped his eyes.
+
+"Friend," repeated Riccabocca, and this time with a tremulous emphasis,
+and in the softest tone of a voice never wholly without the music of the
+sweet South, "I would talk to thee of my child."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+"The letter, then, relates to the signorina.  She is well?"
+
+"Yes, she is well now.  She is in our native Italy."  Jackeymo raised his
+eyes involuntarily towards the orange-trees, and the morning breeze swept
+by and bore to him the odour of their blossoms.
+
+"Those are sweet even here, with care," said he, pointing to the trees.
+"I think I have said that before to the padrone."
+
+But Riccabocca was now looking again at the letter, and did not notice
+either the gesture or the remark of his servant.  "My aunt is no more!"
+said he, after a pause.
+
+"We will pray for her soul!" answered Jackeymo, solemnly.  "But she was
+very old, and had been a long time ailing.  Let it not grieve the padrone
+too keenly: at that age, and with those infirmities, death comes as a
+friend."
+
+"Peace be to her dust!" returned the Italian.  "If she had her faults, be
+they now forgotten forever; and in the hour of my danger and distress she
+sheltered my infant!  That shelter is destroyed.  This letter is from the
+priest, her confessor.  And the home of which my child is bereaved falls
+to the inheritance of my enemy."
+
+"Traitor!" muttered Jackeymo; and his right hand seemed to feel for the
+weapon which the Italians of lower rank often openly wear in their
+girdles.
+
+"The priest," resumed Riccabocca, calmly, "has rightly judged in removing
+my child as a guest from the house in which that traitor enters as lord."
+
+"And where is the signorina?"
+
+"With the poor priest.  See, Giacomo, here, here--this is her handwriting
+at the end of the letter,--the first lines she ever yet traced to me."
+
+Jackeymo took off his hat, and looked reverently on the large characters
+of a child's writing.  But large as they were, they seemed indistinct,
+for the paper was blistered with the child's tears; and on the place
+where they had not fallen, there was a round fresh moist stain of the
+tear that had dropped from the lids of the father.  Riccabocca renewed,
+"The priest recommends a convent."
+
+"To the devil with the priest!" cried the servant; then crossing himself
+rapidly, he added, "I did not mean that, Monsignore San Giacomo,--forgive
+me!  But your Excellency does not think of making a nun of his only
+child!"
+
+     [The title of Excellency does not, in Italian, necessarily express
+     any exalted rank, but is often given by servants to their masters.]
+
+"And yet why not?" said Riccabocca, mournfully; "what can I give her in
+the world?  Is the land of the stranger a better refuge than the home of
+peace in her native clime?"
+
+"In the land of the stranger beats her father's heart!"
+
+"And if that beat were stilled, what then?  Ill fares the life that a
+single death can bereave of all.  In a convent at least (and the priest's
+influence can obtain her that asylum amongst her equals and amidst her
+sex) she is safe from trial and from penury--to her grave!"
+
+"Penury!  Just see how rich we shall be when we take those fields at
+Michaelmas."
+
+"/Pazzie/!"--[Follies]--said Riccabocca, listlessly.  "Are these suns
+more serene than ours, or the soil more fertile?  Yet in our own Italy,
+saith the proverb, 'He who sows land reaps more care than corn.'  It were
+different," continued the father, after a pause, and in a more resolute
+tone, "if I had some independence, however small, to count on,--nay, if
+among all my tribe of dainty relatives there were but one female who
+would accompany Violante to the exile's hearth,--Ishmael had his Hagar.
+But how can we two rough-bearded men provide for all the nameless wants
+and cares of a frail female child?  And she has been so delicately
+reared,--the woman-child needs the fostering hand and tender eye of a
+woman."
+
+"And with a word," said Jackeymo, resolutely, "the padrone might secure
+to his child all that he needs to save her from the sepulchre of a
+convent; and ere the autumn leaves fall, she might be sitting on his
+knee.  Padrone, do not think that you can conceal from me the truth, that
+you love your child better than all things in the world,--now the Patria
+is as dead to you as the dust of your fathers,--and your heart-strings
+would crack with the effort to tear her from them, and consign her to a
+convent.  Padrone, never again to hear her voice, never again to see her
+face!  Those little arms that twined round your neck that dark night,
+when we fled fast for life and freedom, and you said, as you felt their
+clasp, 'Friend, all is not yet lost.'"
+
+"Giacomo!" exclaimed the father, reproachfully, and his voice seemed to
+choke him.  Riccabocca turned away, and walked restlessly to and fro the
+terrace; then, lifting his arms with a wild gesture, as he still
+continued his long irregular strides, he muttered, "Yes, Heaven is my
+witness that I could have borne reverse and banishment without a murmur,
+had I permitted myself that young partner in exile and privation.  Heaven
+is my witness that, if I hesitate now, it is because I would not listen
+to my own selfish heart.  Yet never, never to see her again,--my child!
+And it was but as the infant that I beheld her!  O friend, friend!" (and,
+stopping short with a burst of uncontrollable emotion, he bowed his head
+upon his servant's shoulder), "thou knowest what I have endured and
+suffered at my hearth, as in my country; the wrong, the perfidy, the--
+the--" His voice again failed him; be clung to his servant's breast, and
+his whole frame shook.
+
+"But your child, the innocent one--think now only of her!" faltered
+Giacomo, struggling with his own sobs.  "True, only of her," replied the
+exile, raising his face, "only of her.  Put aside thy thoughts for
+thyself, friend,--counsel me.  If I were to send for Violante, and if,
+transplanted to these keen airs, she drooped and died--Look, look, the
+priest says that she needs such tender care; or if I myself were summoned
+from the world, to leave her in it alone, friendless, homeless, breadless
+perhaps, at the age of woman's sharpest trial against temptation, would
+she not live to mourn the cruel egotism that closed on her infant
+innocence the gates of the House of God?"
+
+Jackeymo was appalled by this appeal; and indeed Riccabocca had never
+before thus reverently spoken of the cloister.  In his hours of
+philosophy, he was wont to sneer at monks and nuns, priesthood and
+superstition.  But now, in that hour of emotion, the Old Religion
+reclaimed her empire; and the sceptical world-wise man, thinking only
+of his child, spoke and felt with a child's simple faith.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+"But again I say," murmured Jackeymo, scarce audibly, and after a long
+silence, "if the padrone would make up his mind--to marry!"
+
+He expected that his master would start up in his customary indignation
+at such a suggestion,--nay, he might not have been sorry so to have
+changed the current of feeling; but the poor Italian only winced
+slightly, and mildly withdrawing himself from his servant's supporting
+arm, again paced the terrace, but this time quietly and in silence.  A
+quarter of an hour thus passed.  "Give me the pipe," said Dr. Riccabocca,
+passing into the belvidere.
+
+Jackeymo again struck the spark, and, wonderfully relieved at the
+padrone's return to the habitual adviser, mentally besought his sainted
+namesake to bestow a double portion of soothing wisdom on the benignant
+influences of the weed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+Dr. Riccabocca had been some little time in the solitude of the
+belvidere, when Lenny Fairfield, not knowing that his employer was
+therein, entered to lay down a book which the doctor had lent him, with
+injunctions to leave it on a certain table when done with.  Riccabocca
+looked up at the sound of the young peasant's step.
+
+"I beg your honour's pardon, I did not know--"
+
+"Never mind: lay the book there.  I wish to speak with you.  You look
+well, my child: this air agrees with you as well as that of Hazeldean?"
+
+"Oh, yes, Sir!"
+
+"Yet it is higher ground,--more exposed?"
+
+"That can hardly be, sir," said Lenny; "there are many plants grow here
+which don't flourish at the squire's.  The hill yonder keeps off the east
+wind, and the place lays to the south."
+
+"Lies, not lays, Lenny.  What are the principal complaints in these
+parts?"
+
+"Eh, sir?"
+
+"I mean what maladies, what diseases?"
+
+"I never heard tell of any, sir, except the rheumatism."
+
+"No low fevers, no consumption?"
+
+"Never heard of them, sir."
+
+Riccabocca drew a long breath, as if relieved.  "That seems a very kind
+family at the Hall."
+
+"I have nothing to say against it," answered Lenny, bluntly.  "I have not
+been treated justly.  But as that book says, sir, 'It is not every one
+who comes into the world with a silver spoon in his mouth.'"
+
+Little thought the doctor that those wise maxims may leave sore thoughts
+behind them!  He was too occupied with the subject most at his own heart
+to think then of what was in Lenny Fairfield's.
+
+"Yes; a kind, English domestic family.  Did you see much of Miss
+Hazeldean?"
+
+"Not so much as of the Lady."
+
+"Is she liked in the village, think you?"
+
+"Miss Jemima?  Yes.  She never did harm.  Her little dog bit me once,--
+she did not ask me to beg its pardon, she asked mine!  She's a very nice
+young lady; the girls say she is very affable; and," added Lenny, with a
+smile, "there are always more weddings going on when she is down at the
+Hall."
+
+"Oh!" said Riccabocca.  Then, after a long whiff, "Did you ever see her
+play with the little children?  Is she fond of children, do you think?"
+
+"Lord, sir, you guess everything!  She's never so pleased as when she's
+playing with the babies."
+
+"Humph!" grunted Riccabocca.  "Babies! well, that's woman-like.  I don't
+mean exactly babies, but when they're older,--little girls?"
+
+"Indeed, Sir, I dare say; but," said Lenny, primly, "I never as yet kept
+company with the little girls."
+
+"Quite right, Lenny; be equally discreet all your life.  Mrs. Dale is
+very intimate with Miss Hazeldean,--more than with the squire's lady.
+Why is that, think you?"
+
+"Well, sir," said Leonard, shrewdly, "Mrs. Dale has her little tempers,
+though she's a very good lady; and Madame Hazeldean is rather high, and
+has a spirit.  But Miss Jemima is so soft: any one could live with Miss
+Jemima, as Joe and the servants say at the Hall."
+
+"Indeed! get my hat out of the parlour, and--just bring a clothes-brush,
+Lenny.  A fine sunny day for a walk."
+
+After this most mean and dishonourable inquisition into the character
+and popular repute of Miss Hazeldean, Signor Riccabocca seemed as much
+cheered up and elated as if he had committed some very noble action; and
+he walked forth in the direction of the Hall with a far lighter and
+livelier step than that with which he had paced the terrace.
+
+"Monsignore San Giacomo, by thy help and the pipe's, the padrone shall
+have his child!" muttered the servant, looking up from the garden.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+Yet Dr. Riccabocca was not rash.  The man who wants his wedding-garment
+to fit him must allow plenty of time for the measure.  But from that day,
+the Italian notably changed his manner towards Miss Hazeldean.  He ceased
+that profusion of compliment in which he had hitherto carried off in
+safety all serious meaning.  For indeed the doctor considered that
+compliments to a single gentleman were what the inky liquid it dispenses
+is to the cuttle-fish, that by obscuring the water sails away from its
+enemy.  Neither did he, as before, avoid prolonged conversations with the
+young lady, and contrive to escape from all solitary rambles by her side.
+On the contrary, he now sought every occasion to be in her society; and
+entirely dropping the language of gallantry, he assumed something of the
+earnest tone of friendship.  He bent down his intellect to examine and
+plumb her own.  To use a very homely simile, he blew away that froth
+which there is on the surface of mere acquaintanceships, especially with
+the opposite sex; and which, while it lasts, scarce allows you to
+distinguish between small beer and double X.  Apparently Dr. Riccabocca
+was satisfied with his scrutiny,--at all events under that froth there
+was no taste of bitter.  The Italian might not find any great strength of
+intellect in Miss Jemima, but he found that, disentangled from many
+little whims and foibles,--which he had himself the sense to perceive
+were harmless enough if they lasted, and not so absolutely constitutional
+but what they might be removed by a tender hand,--Miss Hazeldean had
+quite enough sense to comprehend the plain duties of married life; and if
+the sense could fail, it found a substitute in good old homely English
+principles, and the instincts of amiable, kindly feelings.
+
+I know not how it is, but your very clever man never seems to care so
+much as your less gifted mortals for cleverness in his helpmate.  Your
+scholars and poets and ministers of state are more often than not found
+assorted with exceedingly humdrum, good sort of women, and apparently
+like them all the better for their deficiencies.  Just see how happily
+Racine lived with his wife, and what an angel he thought her, and yet she
+had never read his plays.  Certainly Goethe never troubled the lady who
+called him "Mr. Privy Councillor" with whims about "monads," and
+speculations on colour, nor those stiff metaphysical problems on which
+one breaks one's shins in the Second Past of the "Faust."  Probably it
+may be that such great geniuses--knowing that, as compared with
+themselves, there is little difference between your clever woman and your
+humdrum woman--merge at once all minor distinctions, relinquish all
+attempts at sympathy in hard intellectual pursuits, and are quite
+satisfied to establish that tie which, after all, best resists wear and
+tear,--namely, the tough household bond between one human heart and
+another.
+
+At all events, this, I suspect, was the reasoning of Dr. Riccabocca, when
+one morning, after a long walk with Miss Hazeldean, he muttered to
+himself,--
+
+                              "Duro con duro
+                    Non fete mai buon muro,"--
+
+which may bear the paraphrase, "Bricks without mortar would make a very
+bad wall."  There was quite enough in Miss Jemima's disposition to make
+excellent mortar: the doctor took the bricks to himself.
+
+When his examination was concluded, our philosopher symbolically evinced
+the result he had arrived at by a very simple proceeding on his part,
+which would have puzzled you greatly if you had not paused, and meditated
+thereon, till you saw all that it implied. /Dr. Riccabocca, took of his
+spectacles!/  He wiped them carefully, put them into their shagreen case,
+and locked them in his bureau,--that is to say, he left off wearing his
+spectacles.
+
+You will observe that there was a wonderful depth of meaning in that
+critical symptom, whether it be regarded as a sign outward, positive, and
+explicit, or a sign metaphysical, mystical, and esoteric.  For, as to the
+last, it denoted that the task of the spectacles was over; that, when a
+philosopher has made up his mind to marry, it is better henceforth to be
+shortsighted--nay, even somewhat purblind--than to be always scrutinizing
+the domestic felicity, to which he is about to resign himself, through a
+pair of cold, unillusory barnacles.  As for the things beyond the hearth,
+if he cannot see without spectacles, is he not about to ally to his own
+defective vision a good sharp pair of eyes, never at fault where his
+interests are concerned?  On the other hand, regarded positively,
+categorically, and explicitly, Dr. Roccabocca, by laying aside those
+spectacles, signified that he was about to commence that happy initiation
+of courtship when every man, be he ever so much a philosopher, wishes to
+look as young and as handsome as time and nature will allow.  Vain task
+to speed the soft language of the eyes through the medium of those glassy
+interpreters!  I remember, for my own part, that once, on a visit to the
+town of Adelaide, I--Pisistratus Caxton--was in great danger of falling
+in love,--with a young lady, too, who would have brought me a very good
+fortune,--when she suddenly produced from her reticule a very neat pair
+of No. 4, set in tortoiseshell, and fixing upon me their Gorgon gaze,
+froze the astonished Cupid into stone!  And I hold it a great proof of
+the wisdom of Riccabocca, and of his vast experience in mankind, that he
+was not above the consideration of what your pseudo-sages would have
+regarded as foppish and ridiculous trifles.  It argued all the better for
+that happiness which is our being's end and aim that in condescending to
+play the lover, he put those unbecoming petrifiers under lock and key.
+
+And certainly, now the spectacles were abandoned, it was impossible to
+deny that the Italian had remarkably handsome eyes.  Even through the
+spectacles, or lifted a little above them, they were always bright and
+expressive; but without those adjuncts, the blaze was softer and more
+tempered: they had that look which the French call veloute, or velvety;
+and he appeared altogether ten years younger.  If our Ulysses, thus
+rejuvenated by his Minerva, has not fully made up his mind to make a
+Penelope of Miss Jemima, all I can say is, that he is worse than
+Polyphemus, who was only an Anthropophagos,--
+
+He preys upon the weaker sex, and is a Gynopophagite!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+"And you commission me, then, to speak to our dear Jemima?" said Mrs.
+Dale, joyfully, and without any bitterness whatever in that "dear."
+
+DR. RICCABOCCA.--"Nay, before speaking to Miss Hazeldean, it would surely
+be proper to know how far my addresses would be acceptable to the
+family."
+
+MRS. DALE.--"Ah!"
+
+DR. RICCAROCCA.--"The squire is of course the head of the family."
+
+MRS. DALE (absent and distraite).--"The squire--yes, very true--quite
+proper."  (Then, looking up, and with naivete) "Can you believe me?  I
+never thought of the squire.  And he is such an odd man, and has so many
+English prejudices, that really--dear me, how vexatious that it should
+never once have occurred to me that Mr. Hazeldean had a voice in the
+matter!  Indeed, the relationship is so distant, it is not like being her
+father; and Jemima is of age, and can do as she pleases; and--but, as you
+say, it is quite proper that he should be consulted as the head of the
+family."
+
+DR. RICCASOCCA.--"And you think that the Squire of Hazeldean might reject
+my alliance!  Pshaw!  that's a grand word indeed,--I mean, that he might
+object very reasonably to his cousin's marriage with a foreigner, of whom
+he can know nothing, except that which in all countries is disreputable,
+and is said in this to be criminal,--poverty."
+
+MRS. DALE (kindly)--"You misjudge us poor English people, and you wrong
+the squire, Heaven bless him! for we were poor enough when he singled out
+my husband from a hundred for the minister of his parish, for his
+neighbour and his friend.  I will speak to him fearlessly--"
+
+DR. RICCABOCCA.---"And frankly.  And now I have used that word, let me go
+on with the confession which your kindly readiness, my fair friend,
+somewhat interrupted.  I said that if I might presume to think my
+addresses would be acceptable to Miss Hazeldean and her family, I was too
+sensible of her amiable qualities not to--not to--"
+
+MRS. DALE (with demure archness).--"Not to be the happiest of men,--
+that's the customary English phrase, Doctor."
+
+RICCABOCCA (gallantly).--"There cannot be a better.  But," continued he,
+seriously, "I wish it first to be understood that I have--been married
+before!"
+
+MRS. DALE (astonished).--"Married before!"
+
+RICCABOCCA.--"And that I have an only child, dear to me,--inexpressibly
+dear.  That child, a daughter, has hitherto lived abroad; circumstances
+now render it desirable that she should make her home with me; and I own
+fairly that nothing has so attached me to Miss Hazeldean, nor so induced
+my desire for our matrimonial connection, as my belief that she has the
+heart and the temper to become a kind mother to my little one."
+
+MRS. DALE (with feeling and warmth).--"You judge her rightly there."
+
+RICCABOCCA.--"Now, in pecuniary matters, as you may conjecture from my
+mode of life, I have nothing to offer to Miss Hazeldean correspondent
+with her own fortune, whatever that may be!"
+
+MRS. DALE.--"That difficulty is obviated by settling Miss Hazeldean's
+fortune on herself, which is customary in such cases."
+
+Dr. Riccabocca's face lengthened.  "And my child, then?" said he,
+feelingly.  There was something in that appeal so alien from all sordid
+and merely personal mercenary motives, that Mrs. Dale could not have had
+the heart to make the very rational suggestion, "But that child is not
+Jemima's, and you may have children by her."
+
+She was touched, and replied hesitatingly, "But from what you and Jemima
+may jointly possess you can save something annually,--you can insure your
+life for your child.  We did so when our poor child whom we lost was
+born" (the tears rushed into Mrs. Dale's eyes); "and I fear that Charles
+still insures his life for my sake, though Heaven knows that--that--"
+
+The tears burst out.  That little heart, quick and petulant though it
+was, had not a fibre of the elastic muscular tissues which are mercifully
+bestowed on the hearts of predestined widows.  Dr. Riccabocca could not
+pursue the subject of life insurances further.  But the idea--which had
+never occurred to the foreigner before, though so familiar with us
+English people when only possessed of a life income--pleased him greatly.
+I will do him the justice to say that he preferred it to the thought of
+actually appropriating to himself and to his child a portion of Miss
+Hazeldean's dower.
+
+Shortly afterwards he took his leave, and Mrs. Dale hastened to seek her
+husband in his study, inform him of the success of her matrimonial
+scheme, and consult him as to the chance of the squire's acquiescence
+therein.  "You see," said she, hesitatingly, "though the squire might be
+glad to see Jemima married to some Englishman, yet if he asks who and
+what is this Dr. Riccabocca, how am I to answer him?"
+
+"You should have thought of that before," said Mr. Dale, with unwonted
+asperity; "and, indeed, if I had ever believed anything serious could
+come out of what seemed to me so absurd, I should long since have
+requested you not to interfere in such matters.  Good heavens!" continued
+the parson, changing colour, "if we should have assisted, underhand as it
+were, to introduce into the family of a man to whom we owe so much a
+connection that he would dislike, how base we should be, how ungrateful!"
+
+Poor Mrs. Dale was frightened by this speech, and still more by her
+husband's consternation and displeasure.  To do Mrs. Dale justice,
+whenever her mild partner was really either grieved or offended, her
+little temper vanished,--she became as meek as a lamb.  As soon as she
+recovered the first shock she experienced, she hastened to dissipate the
+parson's apprehensions.  She assured him that she was convinced that,
+if the squire disapproved of Riccabocca's pretensions, the Italian would
+withdraw them at once, and Miss Hazeldean would never know of his
+proposals.  Therefore, in that case, no harm would be done.
+
+This assurance, coinciding with Mr. Dale's convictions as to Riccabocca's
+scruples on the point of honour, tended much to compose the good man; and
+if he did not, as my reader of the gentler sex would expect from him,
+feel alarm lest Miss Jemima's affections should have been irretrievably
+engaged, and her happiness thus put in jeopardy by the squire's refusal,
+it was not that the parson wanted tenderness of heart, but experience in
+womankind; and he believed, very erroneously, that Miss Jemima Hazeldean
+was not one upon whom a disappointment of that kind would produce a
+lasting impression.  Therefore Mr. Dale, after a pause of consideration,
+said kindly,--
+
+"Well, don't vex yourself,--and I was to blame quite as much as you.
+But, indeed, I should have thought it easier for the squire to have
+transplanted one of his tall cedars into his kitchen-garden than for you
+to inveigle Dr. Riccabocca into matrimonial intentions.  But a man who
+could voluntarily put himself into the parish stocks for the sake of
+experiment must be capable of anything!  However, I think it better that
+I, rather than yourself, should speak to the squire, and I will go at
+once."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+The parson put on the shovel-hat, which--conjoined with other details in
+his dress peculiarly clerical, and already, even then, beginning to be
+out of fashion with Churchmen--had served to fix upon him emphatically
+the dignified but antiquated style and cognomen of "Parson;" and took his
+way towards the Home Farm, at which he expected to find the squire.  But
+he had scarcely entered upon the village green when he beheld Mr.
+Hazeldean, leaning both hands on his stick, and gazing intently upon the
+parish stocks.  Now, sorry am I to say that, ever since the Hegira of
+Lenny and his mother, the Anti-Stockian and Revolutionary spirit in
+Hazeldean, which the memorable homily of our parson had a while averted
+or suspended, had broken forth afresh.  For though while Lenny was
+present to be mowed and jeered at, there had been no pity for him, yet no
+sooner was he removed from the scene of trial than a universal compassion
+for the barbarous usage he had received produced what is called "the
+reaction of public opinion."  Not that those who had mowed and jeered
+repented them of their mockery, or considered themselves in the slightest
+degree the cause of his expatriation.  No; they, with the rest of the
+villagers, laid all the blame upon the stocks.  It was not to be expected
+that a lad of such exemplary character could be thrust into that place of
+ignominy, and not be sensible to the affront.  And who, in the whole
+village, was safe, if such goings-on and puttings-in were to be tolerated
+in silence, and at the expense of the very best and quietest lad the
+village had ever known?  Thus, a few days after the widow's departure,
+the stocks was again the object of midnight desecration: it was bedaubed
+and bescratched, it was hacked and hewed, it was scrawled over with pithy
+lamentations for Lenny, and laconic execrations on tyrants.  Night after
+night new inscriptions appeared, testifying the sarcastic wit and the
+vindictive sentiment of the parish.  And perhaps the stocks was only
+spared from axe and bonfire by the convenience it afforded to the malice
+of the disaffected: it became the Pasquin of Hazeldean.
+
+As disaffection naturally produces a correspondent vigour in authority,
+so affairs had been lately administered with greater severity than had
+been hitherto wont in the easy rule of the squire and his predecessors.
+Suspected persons were naturally marked out by Mr. Stirn, and reported to
+his employer, who, too proud or too pained to charge them openly with
+ingratitude, at first only passed them by in his walks with a silent and
+stiff inclination of his head; and afterwards, gradually yielding to the
+baleful influence of Stirn, the squire grumbled forth "that he did not
+see why he should be always putting himself out of his way to show
+kindness to those who made such a return.  There ought to be a difference
+between the good and the bad."  Encouraged by this admission, Stirn had
+conducted himself towards the suspected parties, and their whole kith and
+kin, with the iron-handed justice that belonged to his character.  For
+some, habitual donations of milk from the dairy and vegetables from the
+gardens were surlily suspended; others were informed that their pigs were
+always trespassing on the woods in search of acorns, or that they were
+violating the Game Laws in keeping lurchers.  A beer-house, popular in
+the neighbourhood, but of late resorted to over-much by the grievance-
+mongers (and no wonder, since they had become the popular party), was
+threatened with an application to the magistrates for the withdrawal of
+its license.  Sundry old women, whose grandsons were notoriously ill-
+disposed towards the stocks, were interdicted from gathering dead sticks
+under the avenues, on pretence that they broke down the live boughs; and,
+what was more obnoxious to the younger members of the parish than most
+other retaliatory measures, three chestnut-trees, one walnut, and two
+cherry-trees, standing at the bottom of the Park, and which had, from
+time immemorial, been given up to the youth of Hazeldean, were now
+solemnly placed under the general defence of "private property."  And the
+crier had announced that, henceforth, all depredators on the fruit trees
+in Copse Hollow would be punished with the utmost rigour of the law.
+Stirn, indeed, recommended much more stringent proceedings than all these
+indications of a change of policy, which, he averred, would soon bring
+the parish to its senses,--such as discontinuing many little jobs of
+unprofitable work that employed the surplus labour of the village.  But
+there the squire, falling into the department and under the benigner
+influence of his Harry, was as yet not properly hardened.  When it came
+to a question that affected the absolute quantity of loaves to be
+consumed by the graceless mouths that fed upon him, the milk of human
+kindness--with which Providence has so bountifully supplied that class of
+the mammalia called the "Bucolic," and of which our squire had an extra
+"yield"--burst forth, and washed away all the indignation of the harsher
+Adam.
+
+Still your policy of half-measures, which irritates without crushing its
+victims, which flaps an exasperated wasp-nest with a silk pocket-
+handkerchief, instead of blowing it up with a match and train, is rarely
+successful; and after three or four other and much guiltier victims than
+Lenny had been incarcerated in the stocks, the parish of Hazeldean was
+ripe for any enormity.  Pestilent Jacobinical tracts, conceived and
+composed in the sinks of manufacturing towns, found their way into the
+popular beer-house,--Heaven knows how, though the tinker was suspected of
+being the disseminator by all but Stirn, who still, in a whisper, accused
+the Papishers.  And, finally, there appeared amongst the other graphic
+embellishments which the poor stocks had received, the rude gravure of a
+gentleman in a broad-brimmed hat and top-boots, suspended from a gibbet,
+with the inscription beneath, "A warnin to hall tirans--mind your hi!---
+sighnde Captin sTraw."
+
+It was upon this significant and emblematic portraiture that the squire
+was gazing when the parson joined him.  "Well, Parson," said Mr.
+Hazeldean, with a smile which he meant to be pleasant and easy, but which
+was exceedingly bitter and grim, "I wish you joy of your flock,--you see
+they have just hanged me in effigy!"
+
+The parson stared, and though greatly shocked, smothered his emotion; and
+attempted, with the wisdom of the serpent and the mildness of the dove,
+to find another original for the effigy.
+
+"It is very bad," quoth he, "but not so bad as all that, Squire; that's
+not the shape of your bat.  It is evidently meant for Mr. Stirn."
+
+"Do you think so?" said the squire, softened.  "Yet the top-boots--Stirn
+never wears top-boots."
+
+"No more do you, except in the hunting-field.  If you look again, those
+are not tops, they are leggings,--Stirn wears leggings.  Besides, that
+flourish, which is meant for a nose, is a kind of hook, like Stirn's;
+whereas your nose--though by no means a snub--rather turns up than not,
+as the Apollo's does, according to the plaster cast in Riccabocca's
+parlour."
+
+"Poor Stirn!" said the squire, in a tone that evinced complacency, not
+unmingled with compassion, "that's what a man gets in this world by being
+a faithful servant, and doing his duty with zeal for his employer.  But
+you see things have come to a strange pass, and the question now is, what
+course to pursue.  The miscreants hitherto have defied all vigilance, and
+Stirn recommends the employment of a regular nightwatch, with a lanthorn
+and bludgeon."
+
+"That may protect the stocks certainly; but will it keep those detestable
+tracts out of the beer-house?"
+
+"We shall shut the beer-house up the next sessions."
+
+"The tracts will break out elsewhere,--the humour's in the blood!"
+
+"I've half a mind to run off to Brighton or Leamingtongood hunting at
+Leamington--for a year, just to let the rogues see how they can get on
+without me!"
+
+The squire's lip trembled.
+
+"My dear Mr. Hazeldean," said the parson, taking his friend's hand, "I
+don't want to parade my superior wisdom; but, if you had taken my advice,
+'quieta non movere!'  Was there ever a parish so peaceable as this, or a
+country gentleman so beloved as you were, before you undertook the task
+which has dethroned kings and ruined States,--that of wantonly meddling
+with antiquity, whether for the purpose of uncalled-for repairs, or the
+revival of obsolete uses."
+
+At this rebuke, the squire did not manifest his constitutional tendencies
+to choler; but he replied almost meekly, "If it were to do again, faith,
+I would leave the parish to the enjoyment of the shabbiest pair of stocks
+that ever disgraced a village.  Certainly I meant it for the best,--an
+ornament to the green; however, now the stocks is rebuilt, the stocks
+must be supported.  Will Hazeldean is not the man to give way to a set of
+thankless rapscallions."
+
+"I think," said the parson, "that you will allow that the House of Tudor,
+whatever its faults, was a determined, resolute dynasty enough,--high-
+hearted and strong-headed.  A Tudor would never have fallen into the same
+calamities as the poor Stuart did!"
+
+"What the plague has the House of Tudor got to do with my stocks?"
+
+"A great deal.  Henry VIII. found a subsidy so unpopular that he gave it
+up; and the people, in return, allowed him to cut off as many heads as he
+pleased, besides those in his own family.  Good Queen Bess, who, I know,
+is your idol in history--"
+
+"To be sure!--she knighted my ancestor at Tilbury Fort."
+
+"Good Queen Bess struggled hard to maintain a certain monopoly; she saw
+it would not do, and she surrendered it with that frank heartiness which
+becomes a sovereign, and makes surrender a grace."
+
+"Ha! and you would have me give up the stocks?"
+
+"I would much rather the stocks had remained as it was before you touched
+it; but, as it is, if you could find a good plausible pretext--and there
+is an excellent one at hand,--the sternest kings open prisons, and grant
+favours, upon joyful occasions.  Now a marriage in the royal family is of
+course a joyful occasion!  and so it should be in that of the King of
+Hazeldean."  Admire that artful turn in the parson's eloquence!---it was
+worthy of Riccabocca himself.  Indeed, Mr. Dale had profited much by his
+companionship with that Machiavellian intellect.
+
+"A marriage,--yes; but Frank has only just got into coattails!"
+
+"I did not allude to Frank, but to your cousin Jemima!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+The squire staggered as if the breath had been knocked out of him, and,
+for want of a better seat, sat down on the stocks.  All the female heads
+in the neighbouring cottages peered, themselves unseen, through the
+casements.  What could the squire be about?  What new mischief did he
+meditate?  Did he mean to fortify the stocks?  Old Gaffer Solomons, who
+had an indefinite idea of the lawful power of squires, and who had been
+for the last ten minutes at watch on his threshold, shook his head and
+said, "Them as a cut out the mon a hanging, as a put it in the squire's
+head!"
+
+"Put what?" asked his grand-daughter.
+
+"The gallus!" answered Solomons,--"he be a going to have it hung from the
+great elfin-tree.  And the parson, good mon, is a quoting Scripter agin
+it; you see he's a taking off his gloves, and a putting his two han's
+together, as he do when he pray for the sick, Jeany."
+
+That description of the parson's mien and manner, which with his usual
+niceness of observation, Gaffer Solomons thus sketched off, will convey
+to you some idea of the earnestness with which the parson pleaded the
+cause he had undertaken to advocate.  He dwelt much upon the sense of
+propriety which the foreigner had evinced in requesting that the squire
+might be consulted before any formal communication to his cousin; and he
+repeated Mrs. Dale's assurance, that such were Riccabocca's high standard
+of honour and belief in the sacred rights of hospitality, that, if the
+squire withheld his consent to his proposals, the parson was convinced
+that the Italian would instantly retract them.  Now, considering that
+Miss Hazeldean was, to say the least, come to years of discretion, and
+the squire had long since placed her property entirely at her own
+disposal, Mr. Hazeldean was forced to acquiesce in the parson's corollary
+remark, "That this was a delicacy which could not be expected from every
+English pretender to the lady's hand."  Seeing that he had so far cleared
+the ground, the parson went on to intimate, though with great tact, that
+since Miss Jemima would probably marry sooner or later (and, indeed, that
+the squire could not wish to prevent her), it might be better for all
+parties concerned that it should be with some one who, though a
+foreigner, was settled in the neighbourhood, and of whose character what
+was known was certainly favourable, rather than run the hazard of her
+being married for her money by some adventurer, or Irish fortune-hunter,
+at the watering-places she yearly visited.  Then he touched lightly on
+Riccabocca's agreeable and companionable qualities; and concluded with a
+skilful peroration upon the excellent occasion the wedding would afford
+to reconcile Hall and parish, by making a voluntary holocaust of the
+stocks.
+
+As he concluded, the squire's brow, before thoughtful, though not sullen,
+cleared up benignly.  To say truth, the squire was dying to get rid of
+the stocks, if he could but do so handsomely and with dignity; and had
+all the stars in the astrological horoscope conjoined together to give
+Miss Jemima "assurance of a husband," they could not so have served her
+with the squire as that conjunction between the altar and the stocks
+which the parson had effected!
+
+Accordingly, when Mr. Dale had come to an end, the squire replied, with
+great placidity and good sense, "That Mr. Rickeybockey had behaved very
+much like a gentleman, and that he was very much obliged to him; that he
+[the squire] had no right to interfere in the matter, further than with
+his advice; that Jemima was old enough to choose for herself, and that,
+as the parson had implied, after all she might go farther and fare
+worse,--indeed, the farther she went (that is, the longer she waited) the
+worse she was likely to fare.  I own, for my part," continued the squire,
+"that though I like Rickeybockey very much, I never suspected that Jemima
+was caught with his long face; but there's no accounting for tastes.  My
+Harry, indeed, was more shrewd, and gave me many a hint, for which I only
+laughed at her.  Still I ought to have thought it looked queer when
+Mounseer took to disguising himself by leaving off his glasses, ha, ha!
+I wonder what Harry will say; let's go and talk to her."
+
+The parson, rejoiced at this easy way of taking the matter, hooked his
+arm into the squire's, and they walked amicably towards the Hall.  But on
+coming first into the gardens they found Mrs. Hazeldean herself, clipping
+dead leaves or fading flowers from her rose-trees.  The squire stole
+slyly behind her, and startled her in her turn by putting his arm round
+her waist, and saluting her smooth cheek with one of his hearty kisses;
+which, by the way, from some association of ideas, was a conjugal freedom
+that he usually indulged whenever a wedding was going on in the village.
+
+"Fie, William!" said Mrs. Hazeldean, coyly, and blushing as she saw the
+parson.  "Well, who's going to be married now?"
+
+"Lord!  was there ever such a woman?--she's guessed it!" cried the
+squire, in great admiration.  "Tell her all about it, Parson."
+
+The parson obeyed.
+
+Mrs. Hazeldean, as the reader may suppose, showed much less surprise than
+her husband had done; but she took the news graciously, and made much the
+same answer as that which had occurred to the squire, only with somewhat
+more qualification and reserve.  "Signor Riccabocca had behaved very
+handsomely; and though a daughter of the Hazeldeans of Hazeldean might
+expect a much better marriage in a worldly point of view, yet as the lady
+in question had deferred finding one so long, it would be equally idle
+and impertinent now to quarrel with her choice,--if indeed she should
+decide on accepting Signor Riccabocca.  As for fortune, that was a
+consideration for the two contracting parties.  Still, it ought, to be
+pointed out to Miss Jemima that the interest of her fortune would afford
+but a very small income.  That Dr. Riccabocca was a widower was another
+matter for deliberation; and it seemed rather suspicious that he should
+have been hitherto so close upon all matters connected with his former
+life.  Certainly his manners were in his favour, and as long as he was
+merely an acquaintance, and at most a tenant, no one had a right to
+institute inquiries of a strictly private nature; but that, when he was
+about to marry a Hazeldean of Hazeldean, it became the squire at least to
+know a little more about him,--who and what he was.  Why did he leave his
+own country?  English people went abroad to save: no foreigner would
+choose England as a country in which to save money!  She supposed that a
+foreign doctor was no very great things; probably he had been a professor
+in some Italian university.  At all events, if the squire interfered at
+all, it was on such points that he should request information."
+
+"My clear madam," said the parson, "what you say is extremely just.
+As to the causes which have induced our friend to expatriate himself,
+I think we need not look far for them.  He is evidently one of the many
+Italian refugees whom political disturbances have driven to a land of
+which it is the boast to receive all exiles of whatever party.  For his
+respectability of birth and family he certainly ought to obtain some
+vouchers.  And if that be the only objection, I trust we may soon
+congratulate Miss Hazeldean on a marriage with a man who, though
+certainly very poor, has borne privations without a murmur; has preferred
+all hardship to debt; has scorned to attempt betraying the young lady
+into any clandestine connection; who, in short, has shown himself so
+upright and honest, that I hope my dear Mr. Hazeldean will forgive him
+if he is only a doctor--probably of Laws--and not, as most foreigners
+pretend to be, a marquis or a baron at least."
+
+"As to that," cried the squire, "It is the best thing I know about
+Rickeybockey that he don't attempt to humbug us by any such foreign
+trumpery.  Thank Heaven, the Hazeldeans of Hazeldean were never tuft-
+hunters and title-mongers; and if I never ran after an English lord, I
+should certainly be devilishly ashamed of a brother-in-law whom I was
+forced to call markee or count!  I should feel sure he was a courier,
+or runaway valley-de-sham.  Turn up your nose at a doctor, indeed,
+Harry!--pshaw, good English style that!  Doctor! my aunt married a Doctor
+of Divinity--excellent man--wore a wig and was made a dean!  So long as
+Rickeybockey is not a doctor of physic, I don't care a button.  If he's
+that, indeed, it would be suspicious; because, you see, those foreign
+doctors of physic are quacks, and tell fortunes, and go about on a stage
+with a Merry-Andrew."
+
+"Lord!  Hazeldean, where on earth did you pick up that idea?" said Harry,
+laughing.
+
+"Pick it up!--why, I saw a fellow myself at the cattle fair last year--
+when I was buying short-horns--with a red waistcoat and a cocked hat,
+a little like the parson's shovel.  He called himself Dr. Phoscophornio,
+and sold pills.  The Merry-Andrew was the funniest creature, in salmon-
+coloured tights, turned head over heels, and said he came from Timbuctoo.
+No, no: if Rickeybockey's a physic Doctor, we shall have Jemima in a pink
+tinsel dress tramping about the country in a caravan!"
+
+At this notion both the squire and his wife laughed so heartily that the
+parson felt the thing was settled, and slipped away, with the intention
+of making his report to Riccabocca.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+It was with a slight disturbance of his ordinary suave and well-bred
+equanimity that the Italian received the information that he need
+apprehend no obstacle to his suit from the insular prejudices or the
+worldly views of the lady's family.  Not that he was mean and cowardly
+enough to recoil from the near and unclouded prospect of that felicity
+which he had left off his glasses to behold with unblinking, naked eyes,
+--no, there his mind was made up; but he had met in life with much that
+inclines a man towards misanthropy, and he was touched not only by the
+interest in his welfare testified by a heretical priest, but by the
+generosity with which he was admitted into a well-born and wealthy
+family, despite his notorious poverty and his foreign descent.  He
+conceded the propriety of the only stipulation, which was conveyed to him
+by the parson with all the delicacy that became one long professionally
+habituated to deal with the subtler susceptibilities of mankind,--namely,
+that, amongst Riccabocca's friends or kindred, some person should be
+found whose report would confirm the persuasion of his respectability
+entertained by his neighbours,--he assented, I say, to the propriety of
+this condition; but it was not with alacrity and eagerness.  His brow
+became clouded.  The parson hastened to assure him that the squire was
+not a man /qui stupet in titulis/,--["Who was besotted with titles."]--
+that he neither expected nor desired to find an origin and rank for his
+brother-in-law above that decent mediocrity of condition to which it was
+evident from Riccabocca's breeding and accomplishments he could easily
+establish his claim.  "And though," said he, smiling, "the squire is a
+warm politician in his own country, and would never see his sister again,
+I fear, if she married some convicted enemy of our happy constitution,
+yet for foreign politics he does not care a straw; so that if, as I
+suspect, your exile arises from some quarrel with your government,--
+which, being foreign, he takes for granted must be insupportable,--he
+would but consider you as he would a Saxon who fled from the iron hand of
+William the Conqueror, or a Lancastrian expelled by the Yorkists in our
+Wars of the Roses."
+
+The Italian smiled.  "Mr. Hazeldean shall be satisfied," said he, simply.
+"I see, by the squire's newspaper, that an English gentleman who knew me
+in my own country has just arrived in London.  I will write to him for a
+testimonial, at least to my probity and character.  Probably he may be
+known to you by name,--nay, he must be, for he was a distinguished
+officer in the late war.  I allude to Lord L'Estrange."
+
+The parson started.
+
+"You know Lord L'Estrange?--profligate, bad man, I fear."
+
+"Profligate! bad!" exclaimed Riccabocca.  "Well, calumnious as the world
+is, I should never have thought that such expressions would be applied to
+one who, though I knew him but little,--knew him chiefly by the service
+he once rendered to me,--first taught me to love and revere the English
+name!"
+
+"He may be changed since--" the parson paused.
+
+"Since when?" asked Riccabocca, with evident curiosity.  Mr. Dale seemed
+embarrassed.  "Excuse me," said he, "it is many years ago; and in short
+the opinion I then formed of the nobleman you named was based upon
+circumstances which I cannot communicate."
+
+The punctilious Italian bowed in silence, but he still looked as if he
+should have liked to prosecute inquiry.
+
+After a pause he said, "Whatever your impression respecting Lord
+L'Estrange, there is nothing, I suppose, which would lead you to doubt
+his honour, or reject his testimonial in my favour?"
+
+"According to fashionable morality," said Mr. Dale, rather precisely,
+"I know of nothing that could induce me to suppose that Lord L'Estrange
+would not, in this instance, speak the truth.  And he has unquestionably
+a high reputation as a soldier, and a considerable position in the
+world."  Therewith the parson took his leave.  A few days afterwards, Dr.
+Riccabocca inclosed to the squire, in a blank envelope, a letter he had
+received from Harley L'Estrange.  It was evidently intended for the
+squire's eye, and to serve as a voucher for the Italian's respectability;
+but this object was fulfilled, not in the coarse form of a direct
+testimonial, but with a tact and delicacy which seemed to show more than
+the fine breeding to be expected from one in Lord L'Estrange's station.
+It evinced that most exquisite of all politeness which comes from the
+heart; a certain tone of affectionate respect (which even the homely
+sense of the squire felt, intuitively, proved far more in favour of
+Riccabocca than the most elaborate certificate of his qualities and
+antecedents) pervaded the whole, and would have sufficed in itself to
+remove all scruples from a mind much more suspicious and exacting than
+that of the Squire of Hazeldean.  But, to and behold!  an obstacle now
+occurred to the parson, of which he ought to have thought long before,--
+namely, the Papistical religion of the Italian.  Dr. Riccabocca was
+professedly a Roman Catholic.  He so little obtruded that fact--and,
+indeed, had assented so readily to any animadversions upon the
+superstition and priestcraft which, according to Protestants, are the
+essential characteristics of Papistical communities--that it was not
+till the hymeneal torch, which brings all faults to light, was fairly
+illumined for the altar, that the remembrance of a faith so cast into the
+shade burst upon the conscience of the parson.  The first idea that then
+occurred to him was the proper and professional one,--namely, the
+conversion of Dr. Riccabocca.  He hastened to his study, took down from
+his shelves long neglected volumes of controversial divinity, armed
+himself with an arsenal of authorities, arguments, and texts; then,
+seizing the shovel-hat, posted off to the Casino.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+The parson burst upon the philosopher like an avalanche!  He was so full
+of his subject that he could not let it out in prudent driblets.  No, he
+went souse upon the astounded Riccabocca--
+
+                                   "Tremendo
+                    Jupiter ipse rueus tumultu."
+
+The sage--shrinking deeper into his armchair, and drawing his dressing-
+robe more closely round him--suffered the parson to talk for three
+quarters of an hour, till indeed he had thoroughly proved his case; and,
+like Brutus, "paused for a reply."
+
+Then said Riccabocca mildly: "In much of what you have urged so ably, and
+so suddenly, I am inclined to agree.  But base is the man who formally
+forswears the creed he has inherited from his fathers, and professed
+since the cradle up to years of maturity, when the change presents itself
+in the guise of a bribe; when, for such is human nature, he can hardly
+distinguish or disentangle the appeal to his reason from the lure to his
+interests,--here a text, and there a dowry!--here Protestantism,  there
+Jemima!  Own,  my friend, that the soberest casuist would see double
+under the inebriating effects produced by so mixing his polemical
+liquors.  Appeal, my good Mr. Dale, from Philip drunken to Philip sober!
+--from Riccabocca intoxicated with the assurance of your excellent lady,
+that he is about to be 'the happiest of men,' to Riccabocca accustomed to
+his happiness, and carrying it off with the seasoned equability of one
+grown familiar with stimulants,--in a word, appeal from Riccabocca the
+wooer to Riccabocca the spouse.  I may be convertible, but conversion is
+a slow progress; courtship should be a quick one,--ask Miss Jemima.
+/Finalmente/, marry me first, and convert me afterwards!"
+
+"You take this too jestingly," began the parson; "and I don't see why,
+with your excellent understanding, truths so plain and obvious should not
+strike you at once."
+
+"Truths," interrupted Riccabocca, profoundly, "are the slowest growing
+things in the world!  It took fifteen hundred years from the date of the
+Christian era to produce your own Luther, and then he flung his Bible at
+Satan (I have seen the mark made by the book on the wall of his prison in
+Germany), besides running off with a nun, which no Protestant clergyman
+would think it proper and right to do nowadays."  Then he added, with
+seriousness, "Look you, my dear sir, I should lose my own esteem if I
+were even to listen to you now with becoming attention,--now, I say,
+when you hint that the creed I have professed may be in the way of my
+advantage.  If so, I must keep the creed and resign the advantage.  But
+if, as I trust not only as a Christian but a man of honour, you will
+defer this discussion, I will promise to listen to you hereafter; and
+though, to say truth, I believe that you will not convert me, I will
+promise you faithfully never to interfere with my wife's religion."
+
+"And any children you may have?"
+
+"Children!" said Dr. Riccabocca, recoiling; "you are not contented with
+firing your pocket-pistol right in my face! you must also pepper me all
+over with small shot.  Children! well, if they are girls, let them follow
+the faith of their mother; and if boys, while in childhood, let them be
+contented with learning to be Christians; and when they grow into men,
+let them choose for themselves which is the best form for the practice of
+the great principles which all sects have in common."
+
+"But," began Mr. Dale again, pulling a large book from his pocket.
+
+Dr. Riccabocca flung open the window, and jumped out of it.
+
+It was the rapidest and most dastardly flight you could possibly
+conceive; but it was a great compliment to the argumentative powers of
+the parson, and he felt it as such.  Nevertheless, Mr. Dale thought it
+right to have a long conversation, both with the squire and Miss Jemima
+herself, upon the subject which his intended convert had so ignominiously
+escaped.
+
+The squire, though a great foe to Popery, politically considered, had
+also quite as great a hatred to renegades and apostates.  And in his
+heart he would have despised Riccabocca if he could have thrown off his
+religion as easily as he had done his spectacles.  Therefore he said
+simply, "Well, it is certainly a great pity that Rickeybockey is not of
+the Church of England; though, I take it, that would be unreasonable to
+expect in a man born and bred under the nose of the Inquisition" (the
+squire firmly believed that the Inquisition was in full force in all the
+Italian States, with whips, racks, and thumbscrews; and, indeed, his
+chief information of Italy was gathered from a perusal he had given in
+early youth to "The One-Handed Monk"); "but I think he speaks very
+fairly, on the whole, as to his wife and children.  And the thing's gone
+too far now to retract.  It's all your fault for not thinking of it
+before; and I've now just made up my mind as to the course to pursue
+respecting the d---d stocks!"
+
+As for Miss Jemima, the parson left her with a pious thanksgiving that
+Riccabocca at least was a Christian, and not a Pagan, Mahometan, or Jew!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+There is that in a wedding which appeals to a universal sympathy.  No
+other event in the lives of their superiors in rank creates an equal
+sensation amongst the humbler classes.
+
+From the moment the news that Miss Jemima was to be married had spread
+throughout the village, all the old affection for the squire and his
+House burst forth the stronger for its temporary suspension.  Who could
+think of the stocks in such a season?  The stocks were swept out of
+fashion,--hunted from remembrance as completely as the question of Repeal
+or the thought of Rebellion from the warm Irish heart, when the fair
+young face of the Royal Wife beamed on the sister isle.
+
+Again cordial courtesies were dropped at the thresholds by which the
+squire passed to his own farm; again the sunburned brows uncovered--no
+more with sullen ceremony--were smoothed into cheerful gladness at his
+nod.  Nay, the little ones began again to assemble at their ancient
+rendezvous by the stocks, as if either familiarized with the phenomenon,
+or convinced that, in the general sentiment of good-will, its powers of
+evil were annulled.
+
+The squire tasted once more the sweets of the only popularity which is
+much worth having, and the loss of which a wise man would reasonably
+deplore,--namely, the popularity which arises from a persuasion of our
+goodness, and a reluctance to recall our faults.  Like all blessings, the
+more sensibly felt from previous interruption, the squire enjoyed this
+restored popularity with an exhilarated sense of existence; his stout
+heart beat more vigorously; his stalwart step trod more lightly; his
+comely English face looked comelier and more English than ever,--you
+would have been a merrier man for a week to have come within hearing of
+his jovial laugh.
+
+He felt grateful to Jemima and to Riccabocca as the special agents of
+Providence in this general /integratio amoris/.  To have looked at him,
+you would suppose that it was the squire who was going to be married a
+second time to his Harry!
+
+One may well conceive that such would have been an inauspicious moment
+for Parson Dale's theological scruples to have stopped that marriage,
+chilled all the sunshine it diffused over the village, seen himself
+surrounded again by long sulky visages,--I verily believe, though a
+better friend of Church and State never stood on a hustings, that, rather
+than court such a revulsion, the squire would have found jesuitical
+excuses for the marriage if Riccabocca had been discovered to be the Pope
+in disguise!  As for the stocks, its fate was now irrevocably sealed.  In
+short, the marriage was concluded,--first privately, according to the
+bridegrooms creed, by a Roman Catholic clergyman, who lived in a town
+some miles off, and next publicly in the village church of Hazeldean.
+
+It was the heartiest rural wedding!  Village girls strewed flowers on the
+way; a booth was placed amidst the prettiest scenery of the Park on the
+margin of the lake--for there was to be a dance later in the day.  Even
+Mr. Stirn--no, Mr. Stirn was not present; so much happiness would have
+been the death of him!  And the Papisher too, who had conjured Lenny out
+of the stocks nay, who had himself sat in the stocks for the very purpose
+of bringing them into contempt,--the Papisher! he had a lief Miss Jemima
+had married the devil!  Indeed he was persuaded that, in point of fact,
+it was all one and the same.  Therefore Mr. Stirn had asked leave to go
+and attend his uncle the pawnbroker, about to undergo a torturing
+operation for the stone!  Frank was there, summoned from Eton for the
+occasion--having grown two inches taller since he left--for the one inch
+of which nature was to be thanked, for the other a new pair of
+resplendent Wellingtons.  But the boy's joy was less apparent than that
+of others.  For Jemima, was a special favourite with him, as she would
+have been with all boys,--for she was always kind and gentle, and made
+him many pretty presents whenever she came from the watering-places; and
+Frank knew that he should miss her sadly, and thought she had made a very
+queer choice.
+
+Captain Higginbotham had been invited; but to the astonishment of Jemima,
+he had replied to the invitation by a letter to herself, marked "private
+and confidential."
+
+"She must have long known," said the letter, "of his devoted attachment
+to her! motives of delicacy, arising from the narrowness of his income
+and the magnanimity of his sentiments, had alone prevented his formal
+proposals; but now that he was informed (he could scarcely believe his
+senses or command his passions) that her relations wished to force her
+into a BARBAROUS marriage with a foreigner of MOST FORBIDDING APPEARANCE,
+and most abject circumstances, he lost not a moment in laying at her feet
+his own hand and fortune.  And he did this the more confidently, inasmuch
+as he could not but be aware of Miss Jemima's SECRET feelings towards
+him, while he was proud and happy to say, that his dear and distinguished
+cousin, Mr. Sharpe Currie, had honoured him with a warmth of regard which
+justified the most brilliant EXPECTATIONS,--likely to be soon realized,
+as his eminent relative had contracted a very bad liver complaint in the
+service of his country, and could not last long!"
+
+In all the years they had known each other, Miss Jemima, strange as it
+may appear, had never once suspected the captain of any other feelings
+to her than those of a brother.  To say that she was not gratified by
+learning her mistake would be to say that she was more than woman.
+Indeed, it must have been a source of no ignoble triumph to think that
+she could prove her disinterested affection to her dear Riccabocca by a
+prompt rejection of this more brilliant offer.  She couched the
+rejection, it is true, in the most soothing terms.  But the captain
+evidently considered himself ill used; he did not reply to the letter,
+and did not come to the wedding.
+
+To let the reader into a secret, never known to Miss Jemima, Captain
+Higginbotham was much less influenced by Cupid than by Plutus in the
+offer he had made.  The captain was one of that class of gentlemen who
+read their accounts by those corpse-lights, or will-o'-the-wisps, called
+expectations.  Ever since the squire's grandfather had left him--then in
+short clothes--a legacy of L500, the captain had peopled the future with
+expectations!  He talked of his expectations as a man talks of shares in
+a Tontine; they might fluctuate a little,--be now up and now down,--but
+it was morally impossible, if he lived on, but that he should be a
+millionnaire one of these days.  Now, though Miss Jemima was a good
+fifteen years younger than himself, yet she always stood for a good round
+sum in the ghostly books of the captain.  She was an expectation to the
+full amount of her L4000, seeing that Frank was an only child, and it
+would be carrying coals to Newcastle to leave him anything.
+
+Rather than see so considerable a cipher suddenly sponged out of his
+visionary ledger, rather than so much money should vanish clean out of
+the family, Captain Higginbotham had taken what he conceived, if a
+desperate, at least a certain, step for the preservation of his property.
+If the golden horn could not be had without the heifer, why, he must take
+the heifer into the bargain.  He had never formed to himself an idea that
+a heifer so gentle would toss and fling him over.  The blow was stunning.
+But no one compassionates the misfortunes of the covetous, though few
+perhaps are in greater need of compassion.  And leaving poor Captain
+Higginbotham to retrieve his illusory fortunes as he best may among "the
+expectations" which gathered round the form of Mr. Sharpe Currie, who was
+the crossest old tyrant imaginable, and never allowed at his table any
+dishes not compounded with rice, which played Old Nick with the captain's
+constitutional functions, I return to the wedding at Hazeldean, just in
+time to see the bridegroom--who looked singularly well on the occasion--
+hand the bride (who, between sunshiny tears and affectionate smiles, was
+really a very interesting and even a pretty bride, as brides go) into a
+carriage which the squire had presented to them, and depart on the
+orthodox nuptial excursion amidst the blessings of the assembled crowd.
+
+It may be thought strange by the unreflective that these rural spectators
+should so have approved and blessed the marriage of a Hazeldean of
+Hazeldean with a poor, outlandish, long-haired foreigner; but besides
+that Riccabocca, after all, had become one of the neighbourhood, and was
+proverbially "a civil-spoken gentleman," it is generally noticeable that
+on wedding occasions the bride so monopolizes interest, curiosity, and
+admiration that the bridegroom himself goes for little or nothing.  He is
+merely the passive agent in the affair,--the unregarded cause of the
+general satisfaction.  It was not Riccabocca himself that they approved
+and blessed,--it was the gentleman in the white waistcoat who had made
+Miss Jemima Madam Rickeybockey!
+
+Leaning on his wife's arm (for it was a habit of the squire to lean on
+his wife's arm rather than she on his, when he was specially pleased; and
+there was something touching in the sight of that strong sturdy frame
+thus insensibly, in hours of happiness, seeking dependence on the frail
+arm of woman),--leaning, I say, on his wife's arm, the squire, about the
+hour of sunset, walked down to the booth by the lake.
+
+All the parish-young and old, man, woman, and childwere assembled there,
+and their faces seemed to bear one family likeness, in the common emotion
+which animated all, as they turned to his frank, fatherly smile.  Squire
+Hazeldean stood at the head of the long table: he filled a horn with ale
+from the brimming tankard beside him.  Then he looked round, and lifted
+his hand to request silence; and ascending the chair, rose in full view
+of all.  Every one felt that the squire was about to make a speech, and
+the earnestness of the attention was proportioned to the rarity of the
+event; for (though he was not unpractised in the oratory of the hustings)
+only thrice before had the squire made what could fairly be called "a
+speech" to the villagers of Hazeldean,--once on a kindred festive
+occasion, when he had presented to them his bride; once in a contested
+election for the shire, in which he took more than ordinary interest, and
+was not quite so sober as he ought to have been; once in a time of great
+agricultural distress, when in spite of reduction of rents, the farmers
+had been compelled to discard a large number of their customary
+labourers, and when the squire had said, "I have given up keeping the
+hounds because I want to make a fine piece of water (that was the origin
+of the lake), and to drain all the low lands round the Park.  Let every
+man who wants work come to me!"  And that sad year the parish rates of
+Hazeldean were not a penny the heavier.
+
+Now, for the fourth time, the squire rose, and thus he spoke,--at his
+right hand, Harry; at his left, Frank; at the bottom of the table, as
+vice-president, Parson Dale, his little wife behind him, only obscurely
+seen.  She cried readily, and her handkerchief was already before her
+eyes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+THE SQUIRE'S SPEECH.
+
+"Friends and neighbours, I thank you kindly for coming round me this day,
+and for showing so much interest in me and mine.  My cousin was not born
+amongst you as I was, but you have known her from a child.  It is a
+familiar face, and one that never frowned, which you will miss at your
+cottage doors, as I and mine will miss it long in the old Hall--"
+
+Here there was a sob from some of the women, and nothing was seen of Mrs.
+Dale but the white handkerchief.  The squire himself paused, and brushed
+away a tear with the back of his hand.  Then he resumed, with a sudden
+change of voice that was electrical,--
+
+"For we none of us prize a blessing till we have lost it!  Now, friends
+and neighbours, a little time ago, it seemed as if some ill-will had
+crept into the village,--ill-will between you and me, neighbours!--why,
+that is not like Hazeldean!"
+
+The audience hung their heads!  You never saw people look so thoroughly
+ashamed of themselves.  The squire proceeded,--
+
+"I don't say it was all your fault; perhaps it was mine."
+
+"Noa, noa, noa," burst forth in a general chorus.
+
+"Nay, friends," continued the squire, humbly, and in one of those
+illustrative aphorisms which, if less subtle than Riccabocca's, were more
+within reach of the popular comprehension,--"nay, we are all human, and
+every man has his hobby; sometimes he breaks in the hobby, and sometimes
+the hobby, if it is very hard in the mouth, breaks in him.  One man's
+hobby has an ill habit of always stopping at the public house!
+[Laughter.]  Another man's hobby refuses to stir a peg beyond the door
+where some buxom lass patted its neck the week before,--a hobby I rode
+pretty often when I went courting my good wife here!  [Much laughter and
+applause.]  Others have a lazy hobby that there's no getting on; others,
+a runaway hobby that there's no stopping: but to cut the matter short, my
+favourite hobby, as you well know, is always trotted out to any place on
+my property which seems to want the eye and hand of the master.  I hate,"
+cried the squire, warming, "to see things neglected and decayed, and
+going to the dogs!  This land we live in is a good mother to us, and we
+can't do too much for her.  It is very true, neighbours, that I owe her a
+good many acres, and ought to speak well of her; but what then?  I live
+amongst you, and what I take from the rent with one hand, I divide
+amongst you with the other.  [Low but assenting murmurs.]  Now the more I
+improve my property, the more mouths it feeds.  My great-grandfather kept
+a Field-book in which were entered not only the names of all the farmers
+and the quantity of land they held, but the average number of the
+labourers each employed.  My grandfather and father followed his example:
+I have done the same.  I find, neighbours, that our rents have doubled
+since my great-grandfather began to make the book.  Ay,--but there are
+more than four times the number of labourers employed on the estate, and
+at much better wages too!  Well, my men, that says a great deal in favour
+of improving property, and not letting it go to the dogs.  [Applause.]
+And therefore, neighbours, you will kindly excuse my bobby: it carries
+grist to your mill.  [Reiterated applause.]  Well, but you will say,
+'What's the squire driving at?'  Why this, my friends: There was only one
+worn-out, dilapidated, tumble-down thing in the parish of Hazeldean, and
+it became an eyesore to me; so I saddled my hobby, and rode at it.  Oh,
+ho! you know what I mean now!  Yes, but, neighbours, you need not have
+taken it so to heart.  That was a scurvy trick of some of you to hang me
+in effigy, as they call it."
+
+"It warn't you," cried a voice in the crowd, "it war Nick Stirn."
+
+The squire recognized the voice of the tinker; but though he now guessed
+at the ringleader, on that day of general amnesty he had the prudence and
+magnanimity not to say, "Stand forth, Sprott: thou art the man."  Yet his
+gallant English spirit would not suffer him to come off at the expense of
+his servant.
+
+"If it was Nick Stirn you meant," said he, gravely, "more shame for you.
+It showed some pluck to hang the master; but to hang the poor servant,
+who only thought to do his duty, careless of what ill-will it brought
+upon him, was a shabby trick,--so little like the lads of Hazeldean, that
+I suspect the man who taught it to them was never born in the parish.
+But let bygones be bygones.  One thing is clear,--you don't take kindly
+to my new pair of stocks!  The stocks has been a stumbling-block and a
+grievance, and there's no denying that we went on very pleasantly without
+it.  I may also say that, in spite of it, we have been coming together
+again lately.  And I can't tell you what good it did me to see your
+children playing again on the green, and your honest faces, in spite of
+the stocks, and those diabolical tracts you've been reading lately,
+lighted up at the thought that something pleasant was going on at the
+Hall.  Do you know, neighbours, you put me in mind of an old story which,
+besides applying to the parish, all who are married, and all who intend
+to marry, will do well to recollect.  A worthy couple, named John and
+Joan, had lived happily together many a long year, till one unlucky day
+they bought a new bolster.  Joan said the bolster was too hard, and John
+that it was too soft.  So, of course, they quarrelled.  After sulking all
+day, they agreed to put the bolster between them at night."  (Roars of
+laughter amongst the men; the women did not know which way to look,
+except, indeed, Mrs. Hazeldean, who, though she was more than usually
+rosy, maintained her innocent genial smile, as much as to say, "There is
+no harm in the squire's jests.")  The orator resumed, "After they had
+thus lain apart for a little time, very silent and sullen, John sneezed.
+'God bless you!' says Joan, over the bolster.  'Did you say God bless
+me?' cries John, 'then here goes the bolster!'"
+
+Prolonged laughter and tumultuous applause.
+
+"Friends and neighbours," said the squire, when silence was restored, and
+lifting the horn of ale, "I have the pleasure to inform you that I have.
+ordered the stocks to be taken down, and made into a bench for the
+chimney-nook of our old friend Gaffer Solomons yonder.  But mind me,
+lads, if ever you make the parish regret the loss of the stocks, and the
+overseers come to me with long faces, and say, 'The stocks must be
+rebuilded,' why--"  Here from all the youth of the village rose so
+deprecating a clamour, that the squire would have been the most burgling
+orator in the world, if he said a word further on the subject.  He
+elevated the horn over his head--"Why, that's my old Hazeldean again!
+Health and long life to you all!"
+
+The tinker had sneaked out of the assembly, and did not show his face in
+the village for the next six months.  And as to those poisonous tracts,
+in spite of their salubrious labels, "The Poor Man's Friend," or "The
+Rights of Labour," you could no more have found one of them lurking in
+the drawers of the kitchen dressers in Hazeldean than you would have
+found the deadly nightshade on the flower-stands in the drawing-room of
+the Hall.  As for the revolutionary beerhouse, there was no need to apply
+to the magistrates to shut it up,--it shut itself up before the week was
+out.
+
+O young head of the great House of Hapsburg, what a Hazeldean you might
+have made of Hungary!  What a "Moriamur pro rege nostro!" would have rung
+in your infant reign,--if you had made such a speech as the squire's!
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY NOVEL, BY LYTTON, V3 ***
+
+****** This file should be named 7704.txt or 7704.zip ******
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger
+
+Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we usually do not
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance
+of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
+Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections,
+even years after the official publication date.
+
+Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til
+midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
+The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at
+Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
+preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
+and editing by those who wish to do so.
+
+Most people start at our Web sites at:
+https://gutenberg.org or
+http://promo.net/pg
+
+These Web sites include award-winning information about Project
+Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new
+eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!).
+
+
+Those of you who want to download any eBook before announcement
+can get to them as follows, and just download by date.  This is
+also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the
+indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an
+announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.
+
+http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03 or
+ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext03
+
+Or /etext02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90
+
+Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want,
+as it appears in our Newsletters.
+
+
+Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
+
+We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
+time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
+to get any eBook selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
+searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.   Our
+projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If the value
+per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
+million dollars per hour in 2002 as we release over 100 new text
+files per month:  1240 more eBooks in 2001 for a total of 4000+
+We are already on our way to trying for 2000 more eBooks in 2002
+If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total
+will reach over half a trillion eBooks given away by year's end.
+
+The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away 1 Trillion eBooks!
+This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
+which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.
+
+Here is the briefest record of our progress (* means estimated):
+
+eBooks Year Month
+
+    1  1971 July
+   10  1991 January
+  100  1994 January
+ 1000  1997 August
+ 1500  1998 October
+ 2000  1999 December
+ 2500  2000 December
+ 3000  2001 November
+ 4000  2001 October/November
+ 6000  2002 December*
+ 9000  2003 November*
+10000  2004 January*
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created
+to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people
+and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut,
+Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois,
+Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts,
+Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New
+Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio,
+Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South
+Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West
+Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
+
+We have filed in all 50 states now, but these are the only ones
+that have responded.
+
+As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list
+will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states.
+Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state.
+
+In answer to various questions we have received on this:
+
+We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally
+request donations in all 50 states.  If your state is not listed and
+you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have,
+just ask.
+
+While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are
+not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting
+donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to
+donate.
+
+International donations are accepted, but we don't know ANYTHING about
+how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made
+deductible, and don't have the staff to handle it even if there are
+ways.
+
+Donations by check or money order may be sent to:
+
+Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+PMB 113
+1739 University Ave.
+Oxford, MS 38655-4109
+
+Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment
+method other than by check or money order.
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by
+the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN
+[Employee Identification Number] 64-622154.  Donations are
+tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law.  As fund-raising
+requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be
+made and fund-raising will begin in the additional states.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+You can get up to date donation information online at:
+
+https://www.gutenberg.org/donation.html
+
+
+***
+
+If you can't reach Project Gutenberg,
+you can always email directly to:
+
+Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
+
+Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message.
+
+We would prefer to send you information by email.
+
+
+**The Legal Small Print**
+
+
+(Three Pages)
+
+***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS**START***
+Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers.
+They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
+your copy of this eBook, even if you got it for free from
+someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
+fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
+disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how
+you may distribute copies of this eBook if you want to.
+
+*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS EBOOK
+By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+eBook, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
+this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive
+a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this eBook by
+sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
+you got it from. If you received this eBook on a physical
+medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
+
+ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM EBOOKS
+This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBooks,
+is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart
+through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project").
+Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
+on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
+distribute it in the United States without permission and
+without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth
+below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this eBook
+under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
+
+Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market
+any commercial products without permission.
+
+To create these eBooks, the Project expends considerable
+efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
+works. Despite these efforts, the Project's eBooks and any
+medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other
+things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
+disk or other eBook medium, a computer virus, or computer
+codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
+But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
+[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may
+receive this eBook from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook) disclaims
+all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
+legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
+UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
+INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
+OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
+POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
+
+If you discover a Defect in this eBook within 90 days of
+receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
+you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
+time to the person you received it from. If you received it
+on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
+such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
+copy. If you received it electronically, such person may
+choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
+receive it electronically.
+
+THIS EBOOK IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
+TO THE EBOOK OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
+PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+
+Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
+the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
+above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
+may have other legal rights.
+
+INDEMNITY
+You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation,
+and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated
+with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
+texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including
+legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the
+following that you do or cause:  [1] distribution of this eBook,
+[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the eBook,
+or [3] any Defect.
+
+DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
+You may distribute copies of this eBook electronically, or by
+disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
+"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
+or:
+
+[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
+     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
+     eBook or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
+     if you wish, distribute this eBook in machine readable
+     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
+     including any form resulting from conversion by word
+     processing or hypertext software, but only so long as
+     *EITHER*:
+
+     [*]  The eBook, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
+          does *not* contain characters other than those
+          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
+          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
+          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
+          author, and additional characters may be used to
+          indicate hypertext links; OR
+
+     [*]  The eBook may be readily converted by the reader at
+          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
+          form by the program that displays the eBook (as is
+          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
+          OR
+
+     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
+          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
+          eBook in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
+          or other equivalent proprietary form).
+
+[2]  Honor the eBook refund and replacement provisions of this
+     "Small Print!" statement.
+
+[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the
+     gross profits you derive calculated using the method you
+     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
+     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
+     payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation"
+     the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were
+     legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
+     periodic) tax return.  Please contact us beforehand to
+     let us know your plans and to work out the details.
+
+WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
+Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of
+public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed
+in machine readable form.
+
+The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time,
+public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses.
+Money should be paid to the:
+"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or
+software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at:
+hart@pobox.com
+
+[Portions of this eBook's header and trailer may be reprinted only
+when distributed free of all fees.  Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 by
+Michael S. Hart.  Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be
+used in any sales of Project Gutenberg eBooks or other materials be
+they hardware or software or any other related product without
+express permission.]
+
+*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS*Ver.02/11/02*END*
diff --git a/7704.zip b/7704.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4119631
--- /dev/null
+++ b/7704.zip
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c98b3e7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #7704 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7704)