Jealousy, we are told, once set on fire, burns without fuel; but I must
think that that is oftenest, if not always, the jealousy of a selfish
love. Or, rather--let me quote Senda, as she spoke the only other time she
ever touched upon the subject with us. Our fat neighbor had dragged it in
again as innocently as a young dog brings an old shoe into the parlor,
and, the Fontenettes being absent, she had the nerve and wisdom not to
avoid it. Said she:

"Some of us--not all--have great power to love. Some, not all, who have
sis power--to love--have also se power to trust. Me, I rasser be trustet
and not loved, san to be loved and not trustet."

"How about a little of each?" asked our neighbor.

"Oh! If se _nature_ iss little, sat iss, maybe, very vell--?" She spoke as
kindly as a mother to her babe, but he stole a slow glance here and there,
as though some one had shot him with a pea in church, and dropped the
theme.

Which I, too, will do when I have noted the one thing I had particularly
in mind to say, of Fontenette: that, as Senda remarked--for the above is
an abridgment--"I rasser see chalousie vissout cause, san cause vissout
chalousie;" and that even while I was witness of the profound ferocity of
his jealousy when roused, and more and more as time passed on, I was
impressed with its sweet reasonableness.



XI