“Nay, I met with them myself only yesterday,” said Lady Geraldine: “I was struck with the character of the Duchess de la Ferté, in which this kind of proud patronising ignorance is admirably painted from the life. It is really worth your while, my lord, to look at it. There’s the book on that little table; here is the passage. You see, this Duchess de la Ferté is showing off to a sister-duchess a poor girl of genius, like a puppet or an ape.
“‘Allons, mademoiselle, parlez—Madame, vous allez voir comme elle parle—Elle vit que j’hésitois à répondre, et pensa qu’il falloit m’aider comme une chanteuse à qui l’on indique ce qu’on désire d’entendre—Parlez un peu de religion, mademoiselle, vous direz ensuite autre chose.’
“This speech, Mr. Devereux tells me, has become quite proverbial in Paris,” continued Lady Geraldine; “and it is often quoted, when any one presumes in the Duchess de la Ferte’s style.”
“Ignorance, either in high or low life, is equally self-sufficient, I believe,” said I, exerting myself to illustrate her ladyship’s remarks. “A gentleman of my acquaintance lately went to buy some razors at Packwood’s. Mrs. Packwood alone was visible. Upon the gentleman’s complimenting her on the infinite variety of her husband’s ingenious and poetical advertisements, she replied, ‘La! sir, and do you think husband has time to write them there things his-self? Why, sir, we keeps a poet to do all that there work.’”
Though Lady Geraldine spoke only in general of amateur-patrons and of men of genius, yet I could not help fancying, from the warmth with which she expressed herself, and from her dwelling on the subject so long, that her feelings were peculiarly interested for some individual of this description. Thus I discovered that Lady Geraldine had a heart; and I suspected that her ladyship and Mr. Devereux had also made the same discovery. This suspicion was strengthened by a slight incident, which occurred the following evening.
Lady Geraldine and Cecil Devereux, as we were drinking coffee, were in a recessed window, while some of the company stood round them, amused by their animated conversation. They went on, repartee after repartee, as if inspired by each other’s spirits.
“You two,” said a little girl of six years old, who was playing in the window, “go on singing to one another like two nightingales; and this shall be your cage,” added she, drawing the drapery of the window-curtains across the recessed window. “You shall live always together in this cage: will you, pretty birds?”
“No, no; some birds cannot live in a cage, my dear,” cried Lady Geraldine, playfully struggling to get free, whilst the child held her prisoner.
“Mr. Devereux seems tolerably quiet and contented in his cage,” said the shrewd Mrs. O’Connor.
“I can’t get out! I can’t get out!” cried Devereux, in the melancholy tone of the starling in the Sentimental Journey.