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Updated: May 22, 2025
I could select hundreds of phrases which Mr Meredith would probably call epigrams, and I would defy anyone to say they were wise, graceful or witty. I do not know any book more tedious than "Tragic Comedians," more pretentious, more blatant; it struts and screams, stupid in all its gaud and absurdity as a cockatoo. More than fifty pages I could not read.
Already they were cutting out the new waterproof cloth on the clean white table, and getting it ready for the approaching Iceland season. "You see, Mademoiselle Gaud, it's like this: every man wants two new suits." They explained to her how they set to work to make them, and to render their seams waterproof with tar, for they were for wet weather wear.
Gaud looked with involuntary persistency at an empty space upon the wall that seemed to yawn expectant. By a terrible impression she was pursued, the thought of a fresh slab which might soon, perhaps, be placed there, with another name which she did not even dare to think of in such a spot. She felt cold, and remained seated on the granite bench, her head reclining against the stone wall.
Thus did Gaud, coming in for news in the evening, find her; her hair dishevelled, her arms hanging down, and her head resting against the stone wall, with a falling jaw grinning, and the plaintive whimper of a little child; she scarcely could weep any more; these grandmothers, grown too old, have no tears left in their dried-up eyes. "My grandson is dead!"
Had she heard aright? She felt almost crushed under the immensity of what she thought she premised. All the while, old Yvonne, in her corner, pricked up her ears, feeling happiness approach. "We could make a splice on it a marriage, right off, Mademoiselle Gaud, if you are still of the same mind?" He listened here for her answer, which did not come. What could stop her from pronouncing that "yes?"
Now and again Gaud met passers-by, sea-folk, who could be seen a long way off, over the bare country, outlined and magnified against the high sea-line. Pilots or fishers, seeming to watch the great sea, in passing her wished her good-day. Broad sun-burnt faces were theirs, manly and determined under their easy caps.
Upon one polished forearm a bracelet was pressed, a gaud formed from one immense emerald cut in a fashion that forced one to doubt the existence of such a cutter in mortal form. About her neck a rope of exquisitely matched black pearls supported a single uncut emerald which might have been born in the same matrix with that on her arm.
Meeting him by chance, he seemed to avoid her, turning aside his look, which was always fleeting, by the way. She had often debated this with Sylvestre, who could not understand either. "But still, he's the lad for you to marry, Gaud," said Sylvestre, "if your father allowed ye. In the whole country round you'd not find his like.
So saying, she clung to him fondly, and drew him mechanically, for he had sunk into a revery, and heeded her not, into an adjoining chamber, in which he slept. The comforts even of the gentry, of men with the acres that Adam had sold, were then few and scanty. The nobles and the wealthy merchants, indeed, boasted many luxuries that excelled in gaud and pomp those of their equals now.
He, thinking of Gaud, his sole, darling wife, had battled with giant strength against this deathly rival, until he at last surrendered, with a deep death-cry like the roar of a dying bull, through a mouth already filled with water; and his arms were stretched apart and stiffened forever. All those he had invited in days of old were present at his wedding.
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