Aquilius.—To my mind, one of the most beautiful passages is the return of Jane Eyre, when she sees in the twilight her "master" and her lover solitary, and feeling his way with his hands, baring his sightless sorrow to the chill and drizzly night.
Curate.—But what think you of Madame de Malguet? In a different way, that is as unlike any other novel as Jane Eyre. This, too, is written to exhibit the character of woman under no ordinary circumstances.
Aquilius.—She reminds me of the Chevalier d'Eon, whose portrait I remember to have seen years ago in the Wonderful Magazine—half man, half woman. Madame de Malguet is perhaps an amalgamation of the Chevalier and Lady Hester Stanhope. These, after all, are not the beings to be exempt from the tender passion, but it is under the strongest vagaries. Love without courtship is the very romance of the passion; and such is there in the tale of Madame de Malguet. The scene is laid in a little town, and its immediate neighbourhood, in France; and though a "Tale of 1820," carries back its interest, and much of the detail of the story, to the horrors of the first French Revolution. There is consequently a wide field for diversity of character, and for conflict of opinions, and their effects, as shown upon every grade of social life; and it is very striking that the deepest rooted prejudices, ere the conclusion, change sides, and are fitted upon characters to whom, at the commencement, they seemed but little to belong. The inborn aristocratic feelings, alike with the republican habits, meet their check; and I suppose it was the intention of the author to show the weakness of both.
Curate.—I am not certain of that, for I think the innate is preserved even through the disguise of contrary habits. I know not which is the hero—the Buonapartean soldier or the English naval captain. There are some discussions on subjects of life interspersed, which show the author to be a man of a deeply reflecting mind, and endued with no little power of expressing what he thinks and what he feels.
Aquilius.—When I found fault with this wet blanket of happiness, the monumental termination of Mount Sorel, I did not so soon expect to meet with a repetition of this fault. I must pick a quarrel with the writer for unnecessarily putting his characters hors-de-combat. I think authors now-a-days need not be afraid of the fate of Cervantes—of having them taken off their hands, and made to play their parts upon any other stages than their own.
Lydia.—You seem, both of you, to forget the real moral of the story—that a person endowed with a little more than common sense, general kindness, amiability, and energy of character, may be more useful in the world than the most accomplished hero.
Curate.—You would have found him too a hero, if his actions had been within the sphere of heroism. I hope to meet with Mr Torrens again. He has very great powers, and his conceptions are original.
And now, Eusebius, having written you this account of our dialogue, and breathed country air, and witnessed happiness, I am, yours ever, and
"Precipue sanus, nisi cùm pituita molesta est."
Aquilius.