us in what she imagined to be French: 'Bienne, hommes! ca va
bienne?' I took the freedom to reply in the same lingo: Bienne,
femme! ca va couci-couci tout d'meme, la bourgeoise!' And at that,
when we had all laughed with a little more heartiness than was
entirely civil, 'I told you he was quite an oddity!' says she in
triumph. Needless to say, these passages were before I had
remarked the niece.

The aunt came on the day in question with a following rather more
than usually large, which she manoeuvred to and fro about the
market and lectured to at rather more than usual length, and with
rather less than her accustomed tact. I kept my eyes down, but
they were ever fixed in the same direction, quite in vain. The
aunt came and went, and pulled us out, and showed us off, like
caged monkeys; but the niece kept herself on the outskirts of the
crowd and on the opposite side of the courtyard, and departed at
last as she had come, without a sign. Closely as I had watched
her, I could not say her eyes had ever rested on me for an instant;
and my heart was overwhelmed with bitterness and blackness. I tore
out her detested image; I felt I was done with her for ever; I
laughed at myself savagely, because I had thought to please; when I
lay down at night sleep forsook me, and I lay, and rolled, and
gloated on her charms, and cursed her insensibility, for half the
night. How trivial I thought her! and how trivial her sex! A man
might be an angel or an Apollo, and a mustard-coloured coat would
wholly blind them to his merits. I was a prisoner, a slave, a
contemned and despicable being, the butt of her sniggering
countrymen. I would take the lesson: no proud daughter of my foes
should have the chance to mock at me again; none in the future
should have the chance to think I had looked at her with