“Disgusted with sport in that part of the country,
I returned to Brest the same day, and there, timidly
and with many precautions, I tried to find out something
about the little old man....
“‘Oh, I know!’ somebody replied
at last to my question; ’you are speaking of
the manor-house at Hervenidozse, where the old countess
lives, who dresses like a man and sleeps with her coachman.’
“And with a deep sigh of relief, and much to
the astonishment of my informant, I replied:
“‘Oh! so much the better!’”
Anyone who said, or even insinuated, that the Reverend
William Greenfield, Vicar of St. Sampson’s,
Tottenham, did not make his wife Anna perfectly happy,
would certainly have been very malicious. In their
twelve years of married life, he had honored her with
twelve children, and could anybody decently ask anything
more of a saintly man?
Saintly to heroism in truth! For his wife Anna,
who was endowed with invaluable virtues, which made
her a model among wives and a paragon among mothers,
had not been equally endowed physically, for, in one
word, she was hideous. Her hair, which was coarse
though it was thin, was the color of the national
half-and-half, but of thick half-and-half
which looked as if it had been already swallowed several
times, and her complexion, which was muddy and pimply,
looked as if it were covered with sand mixed with
brickdust. Her teeth, which were long and protruding,
seemed as if they were about to start out of their
sockets in order to escape from that mouth with scarcely
any lips, whose sulphurous breath had turned them
yellow. They were evidently suffering from bile.
Her china-blue eyes looked vaguely, one very much
to the right and the other very much to the left,
with a divergent and frightened squint; no doubt in
order that they might not see her nose, of which they
felt ashamed. And they were quite right!
Thin, soft, long, pendant, sallow, and ending in a
violet knob, it irresistibly reminded those who saw
it of something which cannot be mentioned except in
a medical treatise. Her body, through the inconceivable
irony of nature, was at the same time thin and flabby,
wooden and chubby, without having either the elegance
of slimness or the rounded gracefulness of stoutness.
It might have been taken for a body which had formerly
been adipose, but which had now grown thin, while
the covering had remained floating on the framework.
She was evidently nothing but skin and bones, but
then she had too many bones and too little skin.
It will be seen that the reverend gentleman had done
his duty, his whole duty, more than his duty, in sacrificing
a dozen times on this altar. Yes, a dozen times
bravely and loyally! A dozen times, and his wife
could not deny it nor dispute the number, because the
children were there to prove it. A dozen times,
and not one less!
