ed
Apollo not to speak till to-morrow.' To-day, she's in a feverish
gabble--or began the day with a burst of it; and now she's soft and
sensible. If you fancy a girl at her age being able to see, that it's a
woman's duty to herself and the world to be artistic--to perfect the
thing of beauty she is meant to be by nature!--and, seeing, too, that
Love is an instrument like any other thing, and that we must play on it
with considerate gentleness, and that tearing at it or dashing it to
earth, making it howl and quiver, is madness, and not love!--I assure you
she begins to see it! She does see it. She is going to wear a wreath of
black briony (preserved and set by Miss Ford, a person cunning in these
matters). She's going to the ball at Penarvon Castle, and will
look--supply your favourite slang word. A little more experience, and she
will have malice. She wants nothing but that to make her consummate.
Malice is the barb of beauty. She's just at present a trifle blunt. She
will knock over, but not transfix. I am anxious to watch the effect she
produces at Penarvon. Poor little woman! I paid a compliment to her eyes.
'I've got nothing else,' said she. Dine as well as you can while you are
in England. German cookery is an education for the sentiment of hogs. The
play of sour and sweet, and crowning of the whole with fat, shows a
people determined to go down in civilization, and try the business
backwards. Adieu, curst Croat! On the Wallachian border mayst thou gather
philosophy from meditation."

CHAPTER XLIV

Dexterously as Wilfrid has turned Tracy to his uses by means of the
foregoing correspondence, in doing so he had exposed himself to the
retributive poison administered by that cunning youth. And now the
Hippogriff seized him, and mounted with him into mid-air; not as when the
idle boy Ganymede was caught up to act as cup-bearer in celestial Courts,
but to plunge about on yielding vapours, with nothing near him save the
voice of his desire.

The Philosopher here peremptorily demands the pulpit. We are subject, he
says, to fantastic moods, and shall dry ready-minted phrases picture them
forth? As, for example, can the words 'delirium,' or 'frenzy,' convey an
image of Wilfrid's state, when his heart began to covet Emilia again, and
his sentiment not only interposed no obstacle, but trumpeted her charms
and fawned for her, and he thought her lost, remembered that she had been
his own, and was ready to do any madnes