“Thy letter was put into my hands yesterday. This is the fifth answer I have commenced, and you will therefore see that I do not write without reflection. I know thy excellent heart, John, better than it is known to thyself. It has either led thee to the discovery of a secret of the last importance to thy fellow-creatures, or it has led thee cruelly astray. An experiment so noble and so praiseworthy ought not to be abandoned on account of a few momentary misgivings concerning the result. Do not stay thy eagle flight at the instant thou art soaring so near the sun! Should we both judge it for our mutual happiness, I can become thy wife at a future day. We are still young, and there is no urgency for an immediate union. In the mean time, I will endeavor to prepare myself to be the companion of a philanthropist by practising on thy theory, and, by expanding my own affections, render myself worthy to be the wife of one who has so large a stake in society, and who loves so many and so truly.
“Thine imitator and friend,
“Without change,
“ANNA ETHERINGTON.
“To Sir JOHN GOLDENCALF, Bart.
“P.S.—You may perceive that I am in a state of improvement, for I have just refused the hand of Lord M’Dee, because I found I loved all his neighbors quite as well as I loved the young peer himself.”
Ten thousand furies took possession of my soul, in the shape of so many demons of jealousy. Anna expanding her affections! Anna taking any other stake in society than that I made sure she would accept through me! Anna teaching herself to love more than one, and that one myself! The thought was madness. I did not believe in the sincerity of her refusal of Lord M’Dee. I ran for a copy of the Peerage (for since my own elevation in life I regularly bought both that work and the Baronetage), and turned to the page that contained his name. He was a Scottish viscount who had just been created a baron of the united kingdom, and his age was precisely that of my own. Here was a rival to excite distrust. By a singular contradiction in sentiments, the more I dreaded his power to injure me, the more I undervalued his means. While I fancied Anna was merely playing with me, and had in secret made up her mind to be a peeress, I had no doubt that the subject of her choice was both ill-favored and awkward, and had cheek-bones like a Tartar. While reading of the great antiquity of his family (which reached obscurity in the thirteenth century), I set it down as established that the first of his unknown predecessors was a bare-legged thief, and, at the very moment that I imagined Anna was smiling on him, and retracting her coquettish denial, I could have sworn that he spoke with an unintelligible border accent, and that he had red hair!
The torment of such pictures grew to be intolerable, and I rushed into the open air for relief. How long or whither I wandered I know not; but on the morning of the following day I found I was seated in a guinguette near the base of Montmartre, eagerly devouring a roll and refreshing myself with sour wine. When a little recovered from the shock of discovering myself in a situation so novel (for having no investment in guinguettes, I had not taken sufficient interest in these popular establishments ever to enter one before), I had leisure to look about and survey the company. Some fifty Frenchmen of the laboring classes were drinking on every side, and talking with a vehemence of gesticulation and a clamor that completely annihilated thought. This then, thought I, is a scene of popular happiness. These creatures are excellent fellows, enjoying themselves on liquor that has not paid the city duty, and perhaps I may seize upon some point that favors my system among spirits so frank and clamorous. Doubtless if any one among them is in possession of any important social secret it will not fail to escape him here. From meditations of this philosophical character I was suddenly aroused by a violent blow before me, accompanied with an exclamation in very tolerable English of the word,
“King!”
On the centre of the board which did the office of a table, and directly beneath my eyes, lay a clenched fist of fearful dimensions, that in color and protuberances bore a good deal of resemblance to a freshly unearthed Jerusalem artichoke. Its sinews seemed to be cracking with tension, and the whole knob was so expressive of intense pugnacity that my eyes involuntarily sought its owner’s face. I had unconsciously taken my seat directly opposite a man whose stature was nearly double that of the compact, bustling sputtering, and sturdy little fellows who were bawling on every side of us, and whose skinny lips, instead of joining in the noise, were so firmly compressed as to render the crevice of the mouth no more strongly marked than a wrinkle in the brow of a man of sixty. His complexion was naturally fair, but exposure had tanned the skin of his face to the color of the crackle of a roasted pig; those parts which a painter would be apt to term the “high lights” being indicated by touches of red, nearly as bright as fourth-proof brandy. His eyes were small, stern, fiery, and very gray; and just at the instant they met my admiring look they resembled two stray coals that by some means had got separated from the body of adjacent heat in the face. He had a prominent, well-shaped nose, athwart which the skin was stretched like leather in the process of being rubbed down on the currier’s bench, and his ropy black hair was carefully smoothed over his temples and brows, in a way to show that he was abroad on a holiday excursion.