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He cuts down a tree, that she may peep through.

Then, from the Moon’s point of view, Wilsonople, a Silenus, is discerned in an arm-chair winking at a couple too plainly pouting their lips for a doubt of their intentions to be entertained.

A fourth letter arrived, bearing date of Paris. This one illustrated Wilsonople’s courtship of the Moon, and ended with his ‘saying,’ in his peculiar manner, ‘In spite of her paint I could not have conceived her age to be so enormous.’

How break off his engagement with the Lady Moon? Consent to none of her terms!

Little used as he was to read behind a veil, acuteness of suffering sharpened the General’s intelligence to a degree that sustained him in animated dialogue with each succeeding sketch, or poisoned arrow whirring at him from the moment his eyes rested on it; and here are a few samples:

‘Wilsonople informs the Moon that she is “sweetly pretty.”

‘He thanks her with “thanks” for a handsome piece of lunar green cheese.

‘He points to her, apparently telling some one, “my lady-friend.”

‘He sneezes “Bijou! bijou! bijou!”‘

They were trifles, but they attacked his habits of speech; and he began to grow more and more alarmingly absurd in each fresh caricature of his person.

He looked at himself as the malicious woman’s hand had shaped him. It was unjust; it was no resemblance–and yet it was! There was a corner of likeness left that leavened the lump; henceforth he must walk abroad with this distressing image of himself before his eyes, instead of the satisfactory reflex of the man who had, and was happy in thinking that he had, done mischief in his time. Such an end for a conquering man was too pathetic.

The General surprised himself talking to himself in something louder than a hum at neighbours’ dinner-tables. He looked about and noticed that people were silently watching him.

CHAPTER VII

Lady Camper’s return was the subject of speculation in the neighbourhood, for most people thought she would cease to persecute the General with her preposterous and unwarrantable pen-and-ink sketches when living so closely proximate; and how he would behave was the question. Those who made a hero of him were sure he would treat her with disdain. Others were uncertain. He had been so severely hit that it seemed possible he would not show much spirit.

He, for his part, had come to entertain such dread of the post, that Lady Camper’s return relieved him of his morning apprehensions; and he would have forgiven her, though he feared to see her, if only she had promised to leave him in peace for the future. He feared to see her, because of the too probable furnishing of fresh matter for her ladyship’s hand. Of course he could not avoid being seen by her, and that was a particular misery. A gentlemanly humility, or demureness of aspect, when seen, would, he hoped, disarm his enemy. It should, he thought. He had borne unheard-of things. No one of his friends and acquaintances knew, they could not know, what he had endured. It has caused him fits of stammering. It had destroyed the composure of his gait. Elizabeth had informed him that he talked to himself incessantly, and aloud. She, poor child, looked pale too. She was evidently anxious about him.

Young Rolles, whom he had met now and then, persisted in praising his aunt’s good heart. So, perhaps, having satiated her revenge, she might now be inclined for peace, on the terms of distant civility.

‘Yes! poor Elizabeth!’ sighed the General, in pity of the poor girl’s disappointment; ‘poor Elizabeth! she little guesses what her father has gone through. Poor child! I say, she hasn’t an idea of my sufferings.’

General Ople delivered his card at Lady Camper’s lodgegates and escaped to his residence in a state of prickly heat that required the brushing of his hair with hard brushes for several minutes to comfort and re-establish him.