I am almost afraid to confess it, even to these secret pages. The
man has interested me, has attracted me, has forced me to like
him. In two short days he has made his way straight into my
favourable estimation, and how he has worked the miracle is more
than I can tell.
It absolutely startles me, now he is in my mind, to find how
plainly I see him!--how much more plainly than I see Sir Percival,
or Mr. Fairlie, or Walter Hartright, or any other absent person of
whom I think, with the one exception of Laura herself! I can hear
his voice, as if he was speaking at this moment. I know what his
conversation was yesterday, as well as if I was hearing it now.
How am I to describe him? There are peculiarities in his personal
appearance, his habits, and his amusements, which I should blame
in the boldest terms, or ridicule in the most merciless manner, if
I had seen them in another man. What is it that makes me unable
to blame them, or to ridicule them in HIM?
For example, he is immensely fat. Before this time I have always
especially disliked corpulent humanity. I have always maintained
that the popular notion of connecting excessive grossness of size
and excessive good-humour as inseparable allies was equivalent to
declaring, either that no people but amiable people ever get fat,
or that the accidental addition of so many pounds of flesh has a
directly favourable influence over the disposition of the person
on whose body they accumulate.
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