[426] This also has, in matters not political, the "charming and useful" side. It would be very unpleasant if she always saw all sides of all questions.
[427] I am quite aware that the giving up of the islands was not the immediate result of his mission.
[428] That is to say, supposing that Isopel ever could have been happy with a lover
So laggard in love, though so dauntless in war
as George Borrow.
[429] As well as the Balzacian following, haud passibus aequis, above referred to.
[430] I do not know whether any other novelists continued the series of diversely coloured "doctors," as the fly-makers have done.
[431] He could "piffle" when he went out of it. The would-be satirical characterisation of two aristocrats, Madame d'Arlange and M. de Commarin, in the book shortly to be noticed, is the thinnest and most conventional of things, except, perhaps, the companion trap-to-catch-the-French-Philistine of anti-clericalism which also shows itself sometimes.
[432] Two people, thinking of moving house in London, went once to inspect an advertised abode in the Kensington district. They did not much like the street; they still less liked a very grim female who opened the door and showed them over the house; and there was nothing to reconcile them in the house itself. But, wishing to be polite, the lady of the couple, as they were leaving, addressed to the grim guardian some feeble compliment on something or other as being "nice." "P'raps," was the reply, "for them as likes the —— Road." It is unnecessary to say that the visitors went down the steps in a fashion for which we have no exact English term, but which is admirably expressed by the French verb dégringoler.
[433] The favouritism declined, and the history of its decline was anecdotised in a fashion somewhat gaulois, but quite harmless. "Uncle Beuve," to the astonishment of literary mankind, put the portrait of this "nephew" of his in his salon. After Daniel (I think) it was moved to the dining-room, and thence to his bedroom. Later it was missed even there, and was, or was said to be, relegated to un lieu plus intime encore. The trovatore of this probably remembered his Rabelais.