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The nuns from the convent were present, down to the most humble lay Sister; but they were under great obligations to her mother, and their abbess was her father's sister. There were few other women except the old crones from the hospitals and nurseries, who were never absent when there was an opportunity to weep or to backbite.
But she had another fault, which, if possible, was still more odious, than any of those already mentioned viz. to revile and backbite those from whom she had received the greatest favours; for as she was too proud to own herself to be under obligations to any person, so to prevent others from taking notice of them, as she imagined to her disadvantage, she would represent every obligation she had received from her friends to be either of the most trifling consequence, or to have been bestowed from selfish and despicable motives.
All this while Michelangelo's enemies, headed by Nanni di Baccio Bigio, continued to calumniate and backbite. In the end they poisoned the mind of his old friend the Cardinal of Carpi.
But Roger de Backbite thinking to curry favor with the King by this piece of vulgarity, his Majesty fetched him a knock on the nose and a buffet on the ear, which, I warrant me, wakened Master Roger; to whom the King said, "Listen and be civil, slave; Wilfrid is singing about thee. Wilfrid, thy ballad is long, but it is to the purpose, and I have grown cool during thy homily.
Church members find time enough to visit one another, and meet together to tell some idle stories, to tattle about other men's matters, which do not concern them, and perhaps to backbite some of their brethren, and to prejudice the minds of persons against their teachers and their work, if they do not please them. And will not such meetings have bitterness in the end?
I never can think that harmless which hurts the peace of youth, draws tears from beauty, and gives many a pang to the innocent. "Lady S. Nay, you must allow that many people of sense and wit have this foible Sir Benjamin Backbite, for instance. "Mar. He may, but I confess I never can perceive wit where I see malice. "Lady S. Fie, Maria, you have the most unpolished way of thinking!
"You've done a heap of chawin' around about the Lorrigans, Scotty. Don't think I ain't heard it. Maybe it's your religion to backbite yore neighbors and say what you wouldn't dare to say to their face with a gun on you so we'd be equal. I've passed it up. I've considered the source and let it go.
Upon close inspection I was not mistaken. But could this sad thoughtful countenance be the same vacant face of folly which I had hailed so often under circumstances of gaiety; which I had never seen without a smile, or recognised but as the usher of mirth; that looked out so formally flat in Foppington, so frothily pert in Tattle, so impotently busy in Backbite; so blankly divested of all meaning, or resolutely expressive of none, in Acres, in Fribble, and a thousand agreeable impertinences?
Certainly, if I could help it, I would never marry a wife who wrote. The practice of letters is miserably harassing to the mind; and after an hour or two's work, all the more human portion of the author is extinct; he will bully, backbite, and speak daggers. Music, I hear, is not much better.
They might whisper and backbite they might point with unctuous hypocrisy at the terrible results of a marriage made solely to please herself, but none of them dared to speak before her face. It was, however, mortifying for her self-love to know that they dared speak behind her back. Francezka was, in some respects, a spoiled child of fortune.
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