The flowers hang in the sunshine, and blow in the breeze, free to the wasp as to the bee. The bee chooses to make his store of honey, that is sweet, and fragrant, and life-giving; the wasp chooses to make his from the same blossoms, but of a matter hard, and bitter, and useless. Shall we pity the wasp because, of his selfish passions, he selects the portion that shall be luscious only to his own lips, and spends his hours only in the thrusting-in of his sting? Is not such pity—wasted upon the wasp—an insult to the bee who toils so wearily to gather in for others; and who, because he stings not man, is by man maltreated? Now it seems to me, if I read them aright, that vicious women, and women that are of honesty and honour, are much akin to the wasp and to the bee.
My dear, a gentleman may forget his appointments, his love vows, and his political pledges; he may forget the nonsense he talked, the dances he engaged for, the women that worried him, the electors that bullied him, the wife that married him, and he may be a gentleman still; but there are two things he must never forget, for no gentleman ever does—and they are, to pay a debt that is a debt of honour, and to keep a promise to a creature that can't force him to keep it.
A genius? You must mistake. I have always heard that a genius is something that they beat to death first with sticks and stones, and set up on a great rock to worship afterwards. Now they make her very happy whilst she is alive. She cannot possibly be a genius.
I learned many wondrous things betwixt Epsom and Ascot. A brief space, indeed, yet one that to me seemed longer than the whole of my previous life, so crowded was it every hour with new and marvellous experiences. Worldly experiences, I mean. Intellectually, I am not sure that I acquired much.
Indeed, to a little brain teeming with memories of the Théâtres Beaumarchais, Voltaire, Molière, Feuillet, Sardou, Sandeau, &c., which I had heard read so continually at the Dower-House amongst the Fens, the views of dramatic literature held at the Coronet appeared of the most extraordinary character. They certainly had one merit—simplicity.
The verb "to steal" was the only one that a successful dramatic author appeared to be required to conjugate.