“You do right? Indeed, no! You are much mistaken if you think so.Just be so good as to let me get to the fire, Mr.Hunsden; I have something to cook.” (An interval occupied in settling a casserole on the fire; then, while she stirred its contents:) “Right! as if it were right to crush any pleasurable sentiment that God has given to man, especially any sentiment that, like patriotism, spreads man’s selfishness in wider circles” (fire stirred, dish put down before it).
“Were you born in Switzerland?”
“I should think so, or else why should I call it my country?” “And where did you get your English features and figure?”
“I am English, too; half the blood in my veins is English; thus Ihave a right to a double power of patriotism, possessing an interest in two noble, free, and fortunate countries.”
“You had an English mother?”
“Yes, yes; and you, I suppose, had a mother from the moon or from Utopia, since not a nation in Europe has a claim on your interest?”
“On the contrary, I’m a universal patriot, if you couldunderstand me rightly: my country is the world.”
“Sympathies so widely diffused must be very shallow: will you have the goodness to come to table.Monsieur” (to me who appeared to be now absorbed in reading by moonlight)— “Monsieur, supper is served.”
This was said in quite a different voice to that in which she had been bandying phrases with Mr.Hunsden—not so short, graver and softer.
“Frances, what do you mean by preparing, supper? we had no intention of staying.”
“Ah, monsieur, but you have stayed, and supper is prepared; you have only the alternative of eating it.”
The meal was a foreign one, of course; it consisted in two smallbut tasty dishes of meat prepared with skill and served with nicety; a salad and “fromage fran?ais,” completed it.The business of eating interposed a brief truce between the belligerents, but no sooner was supper disposed of than they were at it again.The fresh subject of dispute ran on the spirit of religious intolerance which Mr.Hunsden affirmed to exist strongly in Switzerland, notwithstanding the professed attachment of the Swiss to freedom.Here Frances had greatly the worst of it, not only because she was unskilled to argue, but because her own real opinions on the point in question happened to coincide pretty nearly with Mr.Hunsden’s, and she only contradicted him out of opposition.At last she gave in, confessing that she thought as he thought, but bidding him take notice that she did not consider herself beaten.
“No more did the French at Waterloo,” said Hunsden.
“There is no comparison between the cases,” rejoined Frances;“mine was a sham fight.”
“Sham or real, it’s up with you.”
“No; though I have neither logic nor wealth of words, yet in a case where my opinion really differed from yours, I would adhere to it when I had not another word to say in its defence; you should be baffled by dumb determination.You speak of Waterloo; your Wellington ought to have been conquered there, according to Napoleon; but he persevered in spite of the laws of war, and was victorious in defiance of military tactics.I would do as he did.”
“I’ll be bound for it you would; probably you have some of thesame sort of stubborn stuff in you.
“I should be sorry if I had not; he and Tell were brothers, and I’d scorn the Swiss, man or woman, who had none of the much- enduring nature of our heroic William in his soul.”
“If Tell was like Wellington, he was an ass.”
“Does not ass mean baudet?” asked Frances, turning to me.“No, no,” replied I, “it means an esprit-fort; and now,” Icontinued, as I saw that fresh occasion of strife was brewing between these two, “it is high time to go.”
