The Moonstone - Page 60/404

Mr. Franklin again--surely, you will say, Mr. Franklin stirred the

company up into making a pleasant evening of it?

Nothing of the sort! He had quite recovered himself, and he was in

wonderful force and spirits, Penelope having informed him, I suspect, of

Mr. Godfrey's reception in the rose-garden. But, talk as he might,

nine times out of ten he pitched on the wrong subject, or he addressed

himself to the wrong person; the end of it being that he offended some,

and puzzled all of them. That foreign training of his--those French and

German and Italian sides of him, to which I have already alluded--came

out, at my lady's hospitable board, in a most bewildering manner.

What do you think, for instance, of his discussing the lengths to which

a married woman might let her admiration go for a man who was not her

husband, and putting it in his clear-headed witty French way to the

maiden aunt of the Vicar of Frizinghall? What do you think, when he

shifted to the German side, of his telling the lord of the manor,

while that great authority on cattle was quoting his experience in the

breeding of bulls, that experience, properly understood counted for

nothing, and that the proper way to breed bulls was to look deep into

your own mind, evolve out of it the idea of a perfect bull, and produce

him? What do you say, when our county member, growing hot, at cheese

and salad time, about the spread of democracy in England, burst out as

follows: "If we once lose our ancient safeguards, Mr. Blake, I beg

to ask you, what have we got left?"--what do you say to Mr. Franklin

answering, from the Italian point of view: "We have got three things

left, sir--Love, Music, and Salad"? He not only terrified the company

with such outbreaks as these, but, when the English side of him turned

up in due course, he lost his foreign smoothness; and, getting on

the subject of the medical profession, said such downright things in

ridicule of doctors, that he actually put good-humoured little Mr. Candy

in a rage.

The dispute between them began in Mr. Franklin being led--I forget

how--to acknowledge that he had latterly slept very badly at night. Mr.

Candy thereupon told him that his nerves were all out of order and that

he ought to go through a course of medicine immediately. Mr. Franklin

replied that a course of medicine, and a course of groping in the dark,

meant, in his estimation, one and the same thing. Mr. Candy, hitting

back smartly, said that Mr Franklin himself was, constitutionally

speaking, groping in the dark after sleep, and that nothing but medicine

could help him to find it. Mr. Franklin, keeping the ball up on his

side, said he had often heard of the blind leading the blind, and now,

for the first time, he knew what it meant. In this way, they kept it

going briskly, cut and thrust, till they both of them got hot--Mr.

Candy, in particular, so completely losing his self-control, in defence

of his profession, that my lady was obliged to interfere, and forbid

the dispute to go on. This necessary act of authority put the last

extinguisher on the spirits of the company. The talk spurted up again

here and there, for a minute or two at a time; but there was a miserable

lack of life and sparkle in it. The Devil (or the Diamond) possessed

that dinner-party; and it was a relief to everybody when my mistress

rose, and gave the ladies the signal to leave the gentlemen over their

wine.