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Returning from his walks on the Lido or wanderings through the little calli, he showed that unwise half-disdain, which an unenlightened masculine Herakles might have shown, for the blessedness of five o'clock tea. At dinner he was in his toilet what Mr Henry James calls the "member of society," never the poet whose necktie is a dithyramb. Good sense was his habit if not his foible.
"Never," with a coquettish side-glance; "I should like so much to go. I have a foible for the English in spite of that vilain petit Boulby. Who is it gave you the commission for me? Ha! I guess, le Capitaine Nelton." "No. What year, Madame, if not impertinent, were you at Aix-la- Chapelle?" "You mean Baden? I was there seven years ago, when I met le Capitaine Nelton, bel homme aux cheveux rouges."
The only foible that could be brought to the charge of honest Mogue, was a singular admiration for his own visage, which he never omitted to survey with remarkable complacency several times a day in a broken piece of looking, glass, which he kept for that especial purpose.
There cannot be juster objects of satire than such empirics, nor is there a foible more deserving of ridicule than the selfish timidity of the hypochondriac, who, ungrateful for the store of good health with which nature has endowed him, assumes the habitual precautions of an infirm patient.
This is the invariable effect of vanity. You cannot so disguise it, but that it will be detected, and cover you with disgrace. There is no foible more common than this, and there is none more supremely ridiculous. One boy happens to have rich parents, and he acts as though he supposed that there was some virtue in his father's money which pertained to him.
After all, it was nothing for an illiterate fool like you to take such a fancy into his head, and walk about with his chin in the air, aping the gait and dress and expression of his supposed model: even the Epirot king Pyrrhus, remarkable man that he was in other respects, had the same foible, and was persuaded by his flatterers that he was like Alexander, Alexander the Great, that is.
Supposing that our friend's character or conduct is justly attacked in our hearing upon some point, we should be careful to let the light and worth of the rest of his character in upon the company, so that they should go away with something of the impression that we have of him; instead of suffering them to dwell only upon this fault or foible that was commented upon, which was as nothing against him in our hearts mere fringe to the character, which we were accustomed to, and rather liked than otherwise, if the truth must be told.
Indeed, not to conceal a foible, which was more characteristic of the superstition of the age than of the man, Columbus himself entertained an idea of the kind, and assures the sovereigns, in his letter from Jamaica, that the people of Cariari and its vicinity are great enchanters, and he intimates, that the two Indian girls who had visited his ship had magic powder concealed about their persons.
Young Hazlewood, who knew his father's foible, answered, that the cause of his surprise did not lie where Sir Robert apprehended, but that he only wondered they should think of attacking a house where there were so many servants, and where a signal to the neighbouring tenants could call in such strong assistance; and added, that he doubted much whether the reputation of the family would not in some degree suffer from calling soldiers from their duty at the custom-house to protect them, as if they were not sufficiently strong to defend themselves upon any ordinary occasion.
A look of bewilderment crept into the faces of the group about the table. "But who in the world could have written it?" cried Sir Chichester in exasperation. "It was written over your name." "Mine?" The bewilderment in Millie Splay's face deepened into anxiety. She looked at her husband with a sudden sinking of her heart. Had his foible developed into a madness? Such things had been.
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