"In offering your advice to my wife, Mr. Nugent," said the rector, "you must permit me to remark that it would have had more practical force if it had been the advice of a married man. I beg to remind you——"
"You beg to remind me that it is the advice of a bachelor? Oh, come! that really won't do at this time of day. Doctor Johnson settled that argument at once and for ever, a century since. 'Sir!' (he said to somebody of your way of thinking) 'you may scold your carpenter, when he has made a bad table, though you can't make a table yourself.' I say to you—'Mr. Finch, you may point out a defect in a baby's petticoats, though you haven't got a baby yourself!' Doesn't that satisfy you? All right! Take another illustration. Look at your room here. I can see in the twinkling of an eye, that it's badly lit. You have only got one window—you ought to have two. Is it necessary to be a practical builder to discover that? Absurd! Are you satisfied now? No! Take another illustration. What's this printed paper, here, on the chimney-piece? Assessed Taxes. Ha! Assessed Taxes will do. You're not in the House of Commons; you're not Chancellor of the Exchequer—but haven't you an opinion of your own about taxation, in spite of that? Must you and I be in Parliament before we can presume to see that the feeble old British Constitution is at its last gasp——?"
"And the vigorous young Republic drawing its first breath of life!" I burst in; introducing the Pratolungo programme (as my way is) at every available opportunity.
Nugent Dubourg instantly wheeled round in my direction; and set me right on my subject, just as he had set the rector right on reading Hamlet, and Mrs. Finch right on clothing babies.
"Not a bit of it!" he pronounced positively. "The 'young Republic' is the ricketty child of the political family. Give him up, ma'am. You will never make a man of him."
I tried to assert myself as the rector had tried before me—with precisely the same result. I appealed indignantly to the authority of my illustrious husband.
"Doctor Pratolungo—" I began.
"Was an honest man," interposed Nugent Dubourg. "I am an advanced Liberal myself—I respect him. But he was quite wrong. All sincere republicans make the same mistake. They believe in the existence of public spirit in Europe. Amiable delusion! Public spirit is dead in Europe. Public spirit is the generous emotion of young nations, of new peoples. In selfish old Europe, private interest has taken its place. When your husband preached the republic, on what ground did he put it? On the ground that the republic was going to elevate the nation. Pooh! Ask me to accept the republic, on the ground that I elevate Myself—and, supposing you can prove it, I will listen to you. If you are ever to set republican institutions going, in the Old World—there is the only motive power that will do it!"
I was indignant at such sentiments. "My glorious husband—" I began again.
"Would have died rather than appeal to the meanest instincts of his fellow-creatures. Just so! There was his mistake. That's why he never could make anything of the republic. That's why the republic is the ricketty child of the political family. Quod erat demonstrandum," said Nugent Dubourg, finishing me off with a pleasant smile, and an easy indicative gesture of the hand which said, "Now I have settled these three people in succession, I am equally well satisfied with myself and with them!"