The juxtaposition is but an emblem.
The sewing-girl, like Hood's shirtmaker, scarcely fears the
'phantom of grisly bone.' Poor Francine! where have you taken _your_
artisanne's cap to, I wonder? Are you left alone, all alone again, and
thinking of the pretty solitude you have left behind you at Carlsruhe?
Who uses those polished keys now?"
Hohenfels interrupted me, complaining that my monologue was
uninteresting and diffuse, and was interfering with the railway
time-table. But I finished it in the car: "And the railway! What has
a person of fixed and independent habits to do with railways but
to growl at them? Before I was tempted upon the railway by that
impertinent engineer at Noisy, I got up and sat down when I liked, ate
wholesome food at my own hours, and was contented at home. Confusion
to him who made me the victim of his engineering calculations!
Confusion to Grandstone and his nest of serpents at Epernay! Did they
not introduce me to Fortnoye, who has doubly destroyed my peace? Where
are the conspirators, that I may pulverize them with my maledictions?"
[Illustration: BRUSSELS.]
This question--which Hohenfels called peevish as he buried himself in
his book--was not answered until we had passed Verviers, Chaudfontaine
and Liege. I was aroused from a sulky slumber in the station at
Brussels by Hohenfels, who said, in his musical scolding way, like the
busy wheeze of a clicking music-box, "You may say what you like, with
your left-handed flatteries, in regard to Fortnoye, and you may praise
Ariadnes and widows to the end of the chapter.
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