adow of worth about the man; he must have
been something more than a mere vapour--a thing of straw, or Jack in
office--before Fabian and Maria could have ventured sending him upon a
courting errand to Olivia. There was some consonancy (as he would say)
in the undertaking, or the jest would have been too bold even for that
house of misrule. There was "example for it," said Malvolio; "the lady
of the Strachy married the yeoman of the wardrobe." Possibly too he
might remember--for it must have happened about his time--an instance
of a Duchess of Malfy (a countrywoman of Olivia's, and her equal at
least) descending from her state to court her steward--

The misery of them that are born great!
They are forced to woo, because none dare woo them.

To be sure the lady was not very tenderly handled for it by her
brothers in the sequel, but their vengeance appears to have been
whetted rather by her presumption in re-marrying at all, (when they
had meditated the keeping of her fortune in their family) than by her
choice of an inferior, of Antonio's noble merits especially, for her
husband; and, besides, Olivia's brother was just dead. Malvolio was a
man of reading, and possibly reflected upon these lines, or something
like them in his own country poetry--

--Ceremony has made many fools.
It is as easy way unto a duchess
As to a hatted dame, if her love answer:
But that by timorous honours, pale respects,
Idle degrees of fear, men make their ways
Hard of themselves.

"'Tis but fortune, all is fortune. Maria once told me, she did affect
me; and I have heard herself come thus near, that, should she fancy,
it should be one of my complexion." If here was no encouragement, the
devil is in it. I wish we could get at the private history of all
this. Between the Countess herself, serious or dissembling--for one
hardly knows how to apprehend this fantastical great lady--and the
practices of that delicious little piece of mischief, Maria--

The lime twigs laid
By Machiavel the waiting maid--

the man might well be rapt into a fool's paradise.

Bensley threw over the part an air of Spanish loftiness. He looked,
spake, and moved like an old Castilian. He was starch, spruce,
opinionated, but his superstructure of pride seemed bottomed upon a
sense of worth. There was something in it beyond the coxcomb. It was
big and swelling, but you could not be sure that it was hollow. You
might wish to see it taken down, but y