Against this mad precipitation he argued in the most earnest manner.
“If you were the first duke in England, Harrington,” said he, “with the finest estate, undipped, unencumbered, unentailed; if, consequently, you had nothing to do but to ask and have any woman for a wife; still I should advise you, if you meant to secure the lady’s heart as well as her hand, not to begin in this novice-like manner, by letting her see her power over you: neither woman nor man ever valued an easy conquest. No, trust me, keep your mind to yourself till the lady is dying to know it—keep your own counsel till the lady can no longer keep hers: when you are sure of her not being able to refuse you, then ask for her heart as humbly as you please.”
To the whole of this doctrine I could not, in honour, generosity, or delicacy accede. Of the wisdom of avoiding the danger of a refusal I was perfectly sensible; but, in declaring my attachment to Miss Montenero, I meant only to ask permission to address her. To win her heart I was well aware must be a work of time; but the first step was to deserve her esteem, and to begin by conducting myself towards her, and her father, with perfect sincerity and openness. The more I was convinced of my father’s inflexibility, the more desperate I knew my circumstances were, the more I was bound not to mislead by false appearances. They would naturally suppose that I should inherit my father’s fortune—I knew that I should not, if—
“So, then,” interrupted Mowbray, “with your perfect openness and sincerity, you will go to Mr. Montenero, and you will say, ‘Sir, that you are a Jew, I know; that you are as rich as a Jew, I hope; that you are a fool, I take for granted: at all events, I am a madman and a beggar, or about to be a beggar. My father, who is a good and a most obstinate Christian, swore last night by Jupiter Ammon, the only oath which he never breaks, that he will disinherit me if I marry a Jewess: therefore, I come this morning to ask you, sir, for your daughter, who is a Jewess, and as I am told, a great heiress—which last circumstance is, in my opinion, a great objection, but I shall overcome it in favour of your daughter, if you will be pleased to give her to me. Stay, sir, I beg your pardon, sir, excuse the hurry of the passions, which, probably, you have long since forgotten; the fact is, I do not mean to ask you for your daughter,—I came simply to ask your permission to fall in love with her, which I have already done without your permission; and I trust she has, on her part, done likewise; for if I had not a shrewd suspicion that your Jessica was ready, according to the custom of Jews’ daughters, to jump out of a two-pair of stairs window into her lover’s arms, madman as I am, I could not be such an idiot as to present myself before you, as I now do, sir, suing in forma pauperis for the pleasure of becoming your son-in-law. I must further have the honour to tell you, and with perfect sincerity and consideration let me inform you, sir, that my Christian father and mother having resolved never to admit a Jewish daughter-in-law to the honours of the maternal or paternal embrace, when your daughter shall do me the favour to become my wife, she need not quit your house or family, as she cannot be received into mine. Here, sir, I will rest my cause; but I might farther plead—‘”
“Plead no more for or against me, Mowbray,” interrupted I, angrily turning from him, for I could bear it no longer. Enthusiasm detests wit much, and humour more. Enthusiasm, fancying itself raised above the reach of ridicule, is always incensed when it feels that it is not safe from its shafts.
Mowbray changed his tone, and checking his laughter, said seriously, and with an air of affectionate sympathy, that, at the hazard of displeasing me, he had used the only means he had conceived to be effectual to prevent me from taking a step which he was convinced would be fatal.
I thanked him for his advice, but I had previously been too much piqued by his raillery to allow his reasons even their due weight: besides, I began to have a secret doubt of the sincerity of his friendship. In his turn, he was provoked by my inflexible adherence to my own opinion; and perhaps, suspecting my suspicion, he was the more readily displeased. He spoke with confidence, I thought with arrogance, as a man notoriously successful in the annals of gallantry, treating me, as I could not bear to be treated, like a novice.
“I flatter myself, no man is less a coxcomb with regard to women than I am,” Lord Mowbray modestly began; “but if I were inclined to boast, I believe it is pretty generally allowed in town, by all who know any thing of these things, that my practice in gallantry has been somewhat successful—perhaps undeservedly so; still, in these cases, the world judges by success: I may, therefore, be permitted to think that I know something of women. My advice consequently, I thought, might be of use; but, after all, perhaps I am wrong: often those who imagine that they know women best, know them least.”
I replied that I did not presume to vie with Lord Mowbray as a man of gallantry; but I should conceive that the same precepts, and the same arts, which ensured success with women of a certain class, might utterly fail with women of different habits and tastes. If the question were how to win such and such an actress (naming one who had sacrificed her reputation for Mowbray, and another, for whom he was sacrificing his fortune), I should, I said, implicitly follow his advice; but that, novice as I was in gallantry, I should venture to follow my own judgment as to the mode of pleasing such a woman as Miss Montenero.
“None but a novice,” Mowbray answered, laughing, “could think that there was any essential difference between woman and woman.” Every woman was at heart the same. Of this he was so much convinced, that though he had not, he said, any absurd confidence in his own peculiar powers of pleasing, he was persuaded, that if honour had not put the trial quite out of the question on his part, he could as easily have won the fair Jewess as any other of her sex.