|
||||||||
Isabel was not sure she saw, and she answered that she was very bad at following arguments. The Countess then declared that she herself detested arguments, but that this was her brothers tastehe would always discuss. For me, she said, one should like a thing or one shouldnt; one cant like everything, of course. But one shouldnt attempt to reason it outyou never know where it may lead you. There are some very good feelings that may have bad reasons, dont you know? And then there are very bad feelings, sometimes, that have good reasons. Dont you see what I mean? I dont care anything about reasons, but I know what I like. Ah, thats the great thing, said Isabel, smiling and suspecting that her acquaintance with this lightly- flitting personage would not lead to intellectual repose. If the Countess objected to argument Isabel at this moment had as little taste for it, and she put out her hand to Pansy with a pleasant sense that such a gesture committed her to nothing that would admit of a divergence of views. Gilbert Osmond apparently took a rather hopeless view of his sisters tone; he turned the conversation to another topic. He presently sat down on the other side of his daughter, who had shyly brushed Isabels fingers with her own; but he ended by drawing her out of her chair and making her stand between his knees, leaning against him while he passed his arm around her slimness. The child fixed her eyes on Isabel with a still, disinterested gaze which seemed void of an intention, yet conscious of an attraction. Mr Osmond talked of many things; Madame Merle had said he could be agreeable when he chose, and to-day, after a little, he appeared not only to have chosen but to have determined. Madame Merle and the Countess Gemini sat a little apart, conversing in the effortless manner of persons who knew each other well enough to take their ease; but every now and then Isabel heard the Countess, at something said by her companion, plunge into the latters lucidity as a poodle splashes after a thrown stick. It was as if Madame Merle were seeing how far she would go. Mr Osmond talked of Florence, of Italy, of the pleasure of living in that country and of the abatements to the pleasure. There were both satisfactions and drawbacks; the drawbacks were numerous; strangers were too apt to see such a world as all romantic. It met the case soothingly for the human, for the social failureby which he meant the people who couldnt realize, as they said, on their sensibility: they could keep it about them there, in their poverty, without ridicule, as you might keep an heirloom or an inconvenient entailed place that brought you in nothing. Thus there were advantages in living in the country which contained the greatest sum of beauty. Certain impressions you could get only there. Others, favourable to life, you never got, and you got some that were very bad. But from time to time you got one of a quality that made up for everything. Italy, all the same, had spoiled a great many people; he was even fatuous enough to believe at times that he himself might have been a better man if he had spent less of his life there. It made one idle and dilettantish and second- rate; it had no discipline for the character, didnt cultivate in you, otherwise expressed, the successful social and other cheek that flourished in Paris and London. Were sweetly provincial, said Mr Osmond, and Im perfectly aware that I myself am as rusty as a key that has no lock to fit it. It polishes me up a little to talk with younot that I venture to pretend I can turn that very complicated lock I suspect your intellect of being! But youll be going away before Ive seen you three times, and I shall perhaps never see you after that. Thats what it is to live in a country that people come to. When theyre disagreeable here its bad enough; when theyre agreeable its still worse. As soon as you like them theyre off again! Ive been deceived too often; Ive ceased to form attachments, to permit myself to feel attractions. You mean to stayto settle? That would be really comfortable. Ah yes, your aunts a sort of guarantee; I believe she may be depended on. Oh, shes an old Florentine; I mean literally an old one; not a modern outsider. Shes a contemporary of the Medici;3 she must have been present at the burning of Savonarola,4 and Im not sure she didnt throw a handful of chips into the flame. Her face is very much like some faces in the early pictures; little, dry, definite faces that must have had a good deal of expression, but almost always the same one. Indeed I can show you her portrait in a fresco of Ghirlandaios. I hope you dont object to my speaking that way of your aunt, eh? Ive an idea you dont. Perhaps you think thats even worse. I assure you theres no want of respect in it, to either of you. You know Im a particular admirer of Mrs Touchett. While Isabels host exerted himself to entertain her in this somewhat confidential fashion she looked occasionally at Madame Merle, who met her eyes with an inattentive smile in which, on this occasion, there was no infelicitous intimation that our heroine appeared to advantage. Madame Merle eventually |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
Copyright: All texts on Bibliomania are © Bibliomania.com Ltd, and may not be reproduced in any form without our written permission. See our FAQ for more details. | ||||||||