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“What needs, O monarch! this invidious praise, Ourselves to lessen, while our sire you raise? Dare to be just, Atrides! and confess Our value equal, though our fury less. With fewer troops we storm’d the Theban wall, And happier saw the sevenfold city fall,[137] In impious acts the guilty father died; The sons subdued, for Heaven was on their side. Far more than heirs of all our parents’ fame, Our glories darken their diminish’d name.”

“You begin to comprehend me, do you?” cried he, turning towards her.

As we were walking down the end of the wharf towards the ship, Queequeg carrying his harpoon, Captain Peleg in his gruff voice loudly hailed us from his wigwam, saying he had not suspected my friend was a cannibal, and furthermore announcing that he let no cannibals on board that craft, unless they previously produced their papers.

“Nothing is more deceitful,” said Darcy, “than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast.”

“Miss Eliza Bennet,” said Miss Bingley, “despises cards. She is a great reader, and has no pleasure in anything else.”

“She seems a very pleasant young woman,” said Bingley.

“Nothing is more deceitful,” said Darcy, “than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast.”

“Miss Manette, then!”

“I did not know that you intended to walk,” said Miss Bingley, in some confusion, lest they had been overheard.

But Elizabeth, who had not the least inclination to remain with them, laughingly answered,--

“O son of Tydeus, cease! be wise and see How vast the difference of the gods and thee; Distance immense! between the powers that shine Above, eternal, deathless, and divine, And mortal man! a wretch of humble birth, A short-lived reptile in the dust of earth.”

“No, no; stay where you are”

Finding myself thus hard pushed, I replied. “I mean, sir, the same ancient Catholic Church to which you and I, and Captain Peleg there, and Queequeg here, and all of us, and every mother’s son and soul of us belong; the great and everlasting First Congregation of this whole worshipping world; we all belong to that; only some of us cherish some queer crotchets no ways touching the grand belief; in that we all join hands.”

Mrs. Bennet and her daughters then departed, and Elizabeth returned instantly to Jane, leaving her own and her relations’ behaviour to the remarks of the two ladies and Mr. Darcy; the latter of whom, however, could not be prevailed on to join in their censure of her, in spite of all Miss Bingley’s witticisms on fine eyes.

“You observed it, Mr. Darcy, I am sure,” said Miss Bingley; “and I am inclined to think that you would not wish to see your sister make such an exhibition.”

[Illustration]

Closing the door upon the landlady, I endeavored to prevail upon Queequeg to take a chair; but in vain. There he sat; and all he could do—for all my polite arts and blandishments—he would not move a peg, nor say a single word, nor even look at me, nor notice my presence in the slightest way.

[Copyright 1894 by George Allen.]]

“Upon my word, Caroline, I should think it more possible to get Pemberley by purchase than by imitation.”

“And what do you propose to do?” said Lord Henry at last.