the earliest
concession never saved you, nor did you ever afterwards escape the
consciousness that he was still hovering like a harpy over the
tablecloth, and ready to fall foul of you again. Let the subject be
what it might, you had only to make a remark in his presence, and
without his permission, to _insure_ its contradiction. "What a
needless annoyance in travelling it is for a family to be stopped by
douaniers, only to extort money for _not_ doing a duty which would be
absurd if _done_!" "Why, really I don't see that," &c. &c. "What a
plague it is to send your servant (a whole morning's work) from one
subaltern with a queer name, to another, for a lady's ticket to
witness any of the functions at the Sistine!" Well, it did appear to
him the simplest thing in the world; it was ten times more troublesome
to see any thing in London! "What a nuisance it is on quitting an
Italian city, to find the passport which has already given you so much
trouble only available for _three_ days, leaving you liable to be
stopped at the gate, if sickness or accident have made you transgress
even _by an hour_!" "Why, it is _your own fault_, it is _so easy_ to
get it _vised again_ overnight." All these impertinencies were only
[Greek: pidakos ex hieres olige libas]. Besides all this, Mr Snapley
was a miserable monopolizer of pompously advanced nothings. He would
not willingly suffer any other man's goose to feed upon the common--he
cared for nobody but himself, and every thing that was or he esteemed
to be _his_--his very joints were worked unlike those of another
man--he must have had a set of _adductors_ and _abductors_, of
_flexors_ and _extensors_, on purpose. He was stiff, priggish,
precise, when he addressed any gentleman with light hair and an
_English complexion_; but let him approach any foreign buttonhole with
a bit of riband in it, then worked he the muscles of his face into
most grotesque expression of interest or pleasure--(_Tunc immensa cavi
spirant mendacia folles!_)--and you had a famous display of grimace
and deferential civility, in bad French or worse Italian. We have seen
him sneering and leering as he made his way round a drawing-room at an
evening party, and bowing like a French perruquier to some absurd fool
of a foreigner; and we have seen him, a minute after, holding up his
head and cocking his chin in defiance, if an English voice approached.
When any of us ventured to criticise _any thing foreign_, he was up in