At moments I did wish that his suspicions had been better founded. There were times when I would have given my right hand to possess the treasures he ascribed to me. He deserved condign punishment for his testy crotchets. I could have gloried in bringing home to him his worst apprehensions astoundingly realized. I could have exulted to burst on his vision, confront and confound his “lunettes,” one blaze of acquirements. Oh! why did nobody undertake to make me clever while I was young enough to learn, that I might, by one grand, sudden, inhuman revelation—one cold, cruel, overwhelming triumph—have for ever crushed the mocking spirit out of Paul Carl David Emanuel!
Alas! no such feat was in my power. To-day, as usual, his quotations fell ineffectual: he soon shifted his ground.
“Women of intellect” was his next theme: here he was at home. A “woman of intellect,” it appeared, was a sort of “lusus naturae,” a luckless accident, a thing for which there was neither place nor use in creation, wanted neither as wife nor worker. Beauty anticipated her in the first office. He believed in his soul that lovely, placid, and passive feminine mediocrity was the only pillow on which manly thought and sense could find rest for its aching temples; and as to work, male mind alone could work to any good practical result—hein?
This “hein?” was a note of interrogation intended to draw from me contradiction or objection. However, I only said—“Cela ne me regarde pas: je ne m’en soucie pas;” and presently added—“May I go, Monsieur? They have rung the bell for the second déjeuner” (i.e. luncheon).
“What of that? You are not hungry?”
“Indeed I was,” I said; “I had had nothing since breakfast, at seven, and should have nothing till dinner, at five, if I missed this bell.”
“Well, he was in the same plight, but I might share with him.”
And he broke in two the “brioche” intended for his own refreshment, and gave me half. Truly his bark was worse than his bite; but the really formidable attack was yet to come. While eating his cake, I could not forbear expressing my secret wish that I really knew all of which he accused me.
“Did I sincerely feel myself to be an ignoramus?” he asked, in a softened tone.
If I had replied meekly by an unqualified affirmative, I believe he would have stretched out his hand, and we should have been friends on the spot, but I answered—