[140]: Amélia est la parfaite épouse anglaise, supérieure en cuisine, dévouée jusqu'à pardonner à son mari ses infidélités accidentelles, toujours grosse. «Dear Billy, though my understanding be much inferior to yours, etc.» Elle est modeste à l'excès, toujours rougissante et tendre. Bagillard lui ayant écrit des lettres d'amour, elle les jette: «I would not have such a letter in my possession for the universe; I thought my eyes contaminated with reading it.»
[141]: I declared that if I had the world I was ready to lay it at my Amelia's feet. And so, heaven knows, I would ten thousand worlds!
[142]: The disgraces of Gil Blas are for the most part such as rather excite mirth than compassion. He himself laughs at them, and his transitions from distress to happiness or, at least, ease, are so sudden that neither the reader has time to pity him, nor himself to be acquainted with affliction. This conduct.... prevents that generous indignation which ought to animate the reader against the sordid and vicious disposition of the world. I have attempted to represent modest merit struggling with every difficulty to which a friendless orphan is exposed from his own want of experience as well as from the selfishness, envy, malice, and base indifference of mankind.
[143]: Go, poor devil, get thee gone, why should I hurt thee? The world surely is wide enough to hold both thee and me.
[144]: Sterne, Goldsmith, Burke, Sheridan, Moore ont une nuance propre, qui vient de leur sang, ou de leur parenté proche ou lointaine, la nuance irlandaise. De même Hume, Robertson, Smollett, W. Scott, Burns, Beattie, Reid, D. Stewart, etc., ont la nuance écossaise. Dans la nuance irlandaise ou celte, on démêle un excès de chevalerie, de sensualité, d'expansion, bref un esprit moins bien équilibré, plus sympathique et moins pratique. Au contraire, l'Écossais est un Anglais un peu affiné ou un peu rétréci, parce qu'il a plus pâti et plus jeûné.
[145]: Nothing could exceed the neatness of my little enclosures, the elms and hedge-rows appearing with inexpressible beauty.... Our little habitation was situated at the foot of a sloping hill, sheltered with a beautiful underwood behind, and a prattling river before; on one side a meadow, on the other a green.... (It) consisted but of one story and was covered with thatch, which gave it an air of great snugness....
The walls on the inside were nicely white-washed. Though the same room served us for parlour and kitchen, that only made it the warmer. Besides as it was kept with the utmost neatness, the dishes, plates and coppers being well scoured and all disposed in bright rows on the shelves, the eye was agreeably relieved, and did not want richer furniture.
[146]: But let us have one bottle more, Deborah, my life, and Moses, give us a good song. What thanks do we not owe to heaven for thus bestowing tranquillity, health, and competence? I think myself happier now than the greatest monarch upon earth. He has no such fire-side, nor such pleasant faces about it.
[147]: I have no resentment now, and though he has taken from me what I held dearer than all his treasures, though he has wrung my heart (for I am sick almost to fainting, very sick, my fellow-prisoner), yet that shall never inspire me with vengeance.... If this submission can do him any pleasure, let him know that if I have done him any injury, I am sorry for it.... I should detest my own heart, if I saw either pride or resentment lurking there. On the contrary, as my oppressor has been once my parishioner, I hope one day to present him up an unpolluted soul at the eternal tribunal.
[148]: Sir, I perceive you are a vile Whig.