To join the gentle to the rude![20]
that can have coupled so unharmonizing a pair. Hymen, with all the little active sinister devils in his train, that yoke together, pell mell, for life, hobbling age with bounding youth; choleric violence with trembling timidity; haggard care with thoughtless merriment;—Hymen himself, that marrying little lawyer, who takes upon him to unite what is most discordant, and to tie together all that is most heterogeneous; even he, though provided with what is, so justly, called a licence, for binding together what nature itself seems to sunder; he, even he, I assert, never buckled in the same noose, two beings so completely and equally dissimilar, both without and within. Since such, however, has been the ordinance of these fantastic workers of wonders, will you let me ask, in what capacity it has pleased their impships to conjure you hither?'
Juliet hesitated, and looked ashamed to answer.
'You are not, I hope,' cried he, fixing upon her his keen eyes, 'one of those ill-starred damsels, whose task, in the words of Madame de Maintenon, is to 'amuse the unamuseable?' You are not, I hope, ...' he stopt, as if seeking a phrase, and then, rather faintly, added, 'her companion?'
'Her humble servant, Sir!' with a forced smile, said Juliet; 'and yet, humbled as I feel myself in that capacity, not humble enough for its calls!'
The smiles of the old Baronet vanished in a moment, and an expression of extreme severity took their place. 'She uses you ill, then?' he indignantly cried, and, grasping the knobs of his two crutches, he struck their points against the floor, with a heaviness that made the little building shake, ejaculating, in a hoarse inward voice, 'Curse her!'
Juliet stared at him, affrighted by his violence.
'Can it be possible,' he cried, 'that so execrable a fate should be reserved for so exquisite a piece of workmanship? Sweet witch! were I but ten years younger, I would snatch you from her infernal claws!—or rather, could I cut off twenty;—yet even then the disparity would be too great!—thirty years younger,—or perhaps forty,—my hand and fortune should teach that Fury her distance!'
Juliet, surprised, and doubting whether what dropt from him were escaped sincerity, or purposed irony, looked with so serious a perplexity, that, struck and ashamed, he checked himself; and recovering his usually polite equanimity, smiled at his own warmth, saying, 'Don't be alarmed, I beg! Don't imagine that I shall forget myself; nor want to hurry away, lest my animation should be dangerous! The heat that, at five-and-twenty, might have fired me into a fever, now raises but a kindly glow, that stops, or keeps off stagnation. The little sprites, who hover around me, though they often mischievously spur my poor fruitless wishes, always take care, by seasonable twitches, in some vulnerable gouty part, to twirl me from the regions of hope and romance, to very sober real life!'
Fearful of appearing distrustful, Juliet looked satisfied, and again he went on.