“Mademoiselle, I am sorry to waken you; but my mistress thought you would not sleep, unless you read this note to-night.”
Emilie started up in her bed, and read the following note of four pages.
“Yes I will write, because I am ashamed to speak to you, my dear
Emilie. I beg your pardon for pulling the bell-cord so violently
from your hand last night—you must have thought me quite
ill-bred; and still more, I reproach myself for what I said about
hypocracy—You have certainly the sweetest and gentlest temper
imaginable—would to Heaven I had! But the strength of my feelings
absolutely runs away with me. It is the doom of persons of great
sensibility to be both unreasonable and unhappy; and often, alas!
to involve in their misery those for whom they have the most
enthusiastic affection. You see, my dear Emilie, the price you
must pay for being my friend; but you have strength of mind
joined to a feeling heart, and you will bear with my defects.
Dissimulation is not one of them. In spite of all my efforts, I
find it is impossible ever to conceal from you any of even my most
unreasonable fancies—your note, which is so characteristically
frank and artless, has opened my eyes to my own folly. I must show
you that, when I am in my senses, I do you justice. You deserve to
be treated with perfect openness; therefore, however humiliating
the explanation, I will confess to you the real cause of my
displeasure. When you spoke of the heroine of this foolish novel,
what you said was so applicable to some part of my own history
and character, that I could not help suspecting you had heard the
facts from a person with whom you spent some hours lately; and I
was much hurt by your alluding to them in such a severe and public
manner. You will ask me, how I could conceive you to be capable of
such unprovoked malevolence: and my answer is, ‘I cannot tell;’ I
can only say, such is the effect of the unfortunate susceptibility
of my heart, or, to speak more candidly, of my temper. I confess
I cannot, in these particulars, alter my nature. Blame me as much
as I blame myself; be as angry as you please, or as you can, my
gentle friend: but at last you must pity and forgive me.
“Now that all this affair is off my mind, I can sleep in peace:
and so, I hope, will you, my dear Emilie—Good night! If
friends never quarrelled, they would never taste the joys of
reconciliation. Believe me,
“Your ever sincere and affectionate
“A. SOMERS.”
No one tasted the joys of reconciliation more than Emilie; but, after reiterated experience, she was inclined to believe that they cannot balance the evils of quarrelling. Mrs. Somers was one of those, who “confess their faults, but never mend;” and who expect, for this gratuitous candour, more applause than others would claim for the real merit of reformation. So far did this lady carry her admiration of her own candour, that she was actually upon the point of quarrelling with Emilie again, the next morning, because she did not seem sufficiently sensible of the magnanimity with which she had confessed herself to be ill-tempered. These few specimens are sufficient to give an idea of this lady’s powers of tormenting; but, to form an adequate notion of their effect upon Emilie’s spirits, we must conceive the same sort of provocations to be repeated every day, for several months. Petty torments, incessantly repeated, exhaust the most determined patience.
All this time, Mad. de Coulanges went on very smoothly with Mrs. Somers; for she had not Emilie’s sensibility; and, notwithstanding her great quickness, a hundred things might pass, and did pass, before her eyes, without her seeing them. She examined no farther than the surface; and, provided that there was not any deficiency of those little attentions to which she had been accustomed, it never occurred to her that a friend could be more or less pleased: she did not understand or study physiognomy; a smile of the lips was, to her, always a sufficient token of approbation; and, whether it were merely conventional, or whether it came from the heart, she never troubled herself to inquire. Provided that she saw at dinner the usual couverts, and that she had a sufficient number of people to converse with, or rather to talk to, she was satisfied that every thing was right. All the variations in Mrs. Somers’ temper were unmarked by her, or went under the general head, vapeurs noirs. This species of ignorance, or confidence, produced the best effects; for as Mrs. Somers could not, without passing the obvious bounds of politeness, make Mad. de Coulanges sensible of her displeasure, and as she had the utmost respect for the countess’s opinion of her good breeding, she was, to a certain degree, compelled to command her temper. Mad. de Coulanges often, without knowing it, tried it terribly, by differing from her in taste and judgment, and by supporting her own side of the question with all the enthusiastic volubility of the French language. Sometimes the English and French music were compared—sometimes the English and French painters; and every time the theatre was mentioned, Mad. de Coulanges pronounced an eulogium on her favourite French actors, and triumphed over the comparison between the elegance of the French, and the grossièreté of the English taste for comedy.
“Good Heaven!” said she, “your fashionable comedies would be too absurd to make the lowest of our audiences at the Boulevards laugh; you have excluded sentiment and wit, and what have you in their place? Characters out of drawing and out of nature; grotesque figures, such as you see in a child’s magic lantern. Then you talk of English humour—I wish I could understand it; but I cannot be diverted with seeing a tailor turned gentleman pricking his father with a needle, or a man making grimaces over a jug of sour beer.”
Mrs. Somers, piqued perhaps by the justice of some of these observations, would dryly answer, that it was impossible for a foreigner to comprehend English humour—that she believed the French, in particular, were destitute of taste for humour.
Mad. de Coulanges insisted upon it, that the French have humour; and Molière furnished her with many admirable illustrations.
Emilie, in support of her mother, read a passage from that elegant writer, M. Suard[18], who has lately attacked, with much ability, the pretensions of the English to the exclusive possession of humour.
Mrs. Somers then changed her ground, and inveighed against French tragedy, and the unnatural tones and attitudes of the French tragic actors.