"Laugh it down, and what do you leave? In Miss Austen's time silly girls
ran to balls after militiamen, now, if they run to schools and charities
more for the curate's sake than they quite know, is not the alternative
better?"
"It is greater humbug," said Rachel. "But I knew you would not agree, at
least beforehand, it is appreciation that I want."
Never did Madame de Genlis make a cleverer hit than in the reading of
the Genius Phanor's tragedy in the Palace of Truth. Comically absurd
as the inconsistency is of transporting the lecture of a Parisian
academician into an enchanted palace, full of genii and fairies of the
remotest possible connexion with the Arab jinn, the whole is redeemed
by the truth to nature of the sole dupe in the Palace of Truth being the
author reading his own works. Ermine was thinking of him all the time.
She was under none of the constraint of Phanor's auditors, though she
carried a perpetual palace of truth about with her; she would not have
had either fears or compunctions in criticising, if she could. The paper
was in the essay style, between argument and sarcasm, something after
the model of the Invalid's Letters; but it was scarcely lightly touched
enough, the irony was wormwood, the gravity heavy and sententious, and
where there was a just thought or happy hit, it seemed to travel in a
road-waggon, and be lost in the rumbling of the wheels. Ermine did
not restrain a smile, half of amusement, half of relief, at the
self-antidote the paper contained; but the smile passed with the
authoress as a tribute to her satire.
"In this age," she said, "we must use those lighter weapons of wit, or
no one will attend."
"Perhaps," said Ermine, "if I approve your object, I should tell you you
don't use them lightly."
"Ah! but I know you don't approve it. You are not lay woman enough to be
impartial, and you belong to the age that was trying the experiment of
the hierarchy modified: I to that which has found it will not do. But at
least you understand my view; I have made out my case."
"Yes, I understand your view; but--"
"You don't sympathize. Of course not; but when it receives its full
weight from the printer's bands, you will see that it will tell. That
bit about the weak tea fumes I thought of afterwards, and I am afraid I
did not read it well."
"I remember it; but forgive me if I say first I think the whole is
rather too--too lengthy to take."
"Oh, that is only because manuscript takes long to read aloud. I counted
the words, so I can't be mistaken, at least I collated twenty lines,
and multiplied; and it is not so long as the Invalid's last letter about
systematic reading."