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The previous night in the cars I had found myself the only woman among some half dozen French military officers, who paid me the most polite attention. They were charmed that I made no objection to their cigarettes, talked with me on various topics, criticised McClellan as a general, and were enthusiastic on the subject of our country generally. About midnight they prepared a grand repast from their traveling-bags, to which they gave me a cordial invitation. I begged to contribute my mesquin supply of grapes and brioches, and the supper was a considerable event. Their canteens were filled with red wines, and one cup served the whole company. They drank my health and that of the President of the United States. Afterward we had vocal music, two of the officers being good singers. They sang Beranger's songs and the charming serenade from Lalla Rookh. I finally expressed a desire to hear the Marseillaise. This seemed to take them by surprise, but one of the singers, declaring that he had "rien
"That was mesquin," said his judges; "the poetry of painting required abstract trees, at metaphysical distance, not the various trees of nature, as they appear under positive accidents." On this Mr. Gatty had deluged them with words.
After China, where everything is mesquin, and apparently en decadence, it produces a great effect. I did not see a single beggar in the streets; and as in this ride of yesterday we took our own way, without giving any notice, we must have seen the streets in their usual guise. My poor, dear friends, the Japanese, object to everything and always give way.
Masquerades, plays, races at Newmarket, dances, duels, losses at cards Lady Fareham touched every subject, and expatiated on all; but she had usually more to tell of the country she had left than of that in which she was living. "Here everything is on such a small scale, si mesquin!" she wrote.
The Signora, on returning home from M. Louvier's, had certainly lamented much over the mesquin appearance of her old-fashioned Italian habiliments compared with the brilliant toilette of the gay Parisiennes; and Isaura quite woman enough to sympathize with woman in such womanly vanities proposed the next day to go with the Signora to one of the principal couturieres of Paris, and adapt the Signora's costume to the fashions of the place.
It combines two elements a diligent, searching, lawyer-like habit of cross-examination, laborious, complete and generally honest, which, when it is not spiteful or insolent, deserves all the praise it receives; but with it a sense of the probable, in dealing with the materials collected, and a straining after attempts to construct theories and to give a vivid reality to facts and relations, which are not always so admirable; which lead, in fact, sometimes to the height of paradox, or show mere incapacity to deal with the truth and depth of life, or make use of a poor and mean standard mesquin would be the French word in the interpretation of actions and aims.
The Signora, on returning home from M. Louvier's, had certainly lamented much over the mesquin appearance of her old-fashioned Italian habiliments compared with the brilliant toilette of the gay Parisiennes; and Isaura quite woman enough to sympathize with woman in such womanly vanities proposed the next day to go with the Signora to one of the principal couturieres of Paris, and adapt the Signora's costume to the fashions of the place.
Meanwhile, it was a comfort to one fresh from the cities of the Old World, and the short and stunted figures, the mesquin and scrofulous visages, which crowd our alleys and back wynds, to see everywhere health, strength, and goodly stature, especially among women.
That gave him an odd, mesquin expression, lying there with his mouth open and his yawning nostril, as if he wanted to sneeze. The room smelt stale and sour; the thick air gathered in a misty halo round the candle, and a fat shroud of tallow drooped over the edges of the candlestick. Maso dropped his long, clean knife; dropped on to his knees and wailed like a chained dog.
"I can tolerate wrong and weakness and everything else but that search for self and above all that pompous blowing of a horn before such empty things, such big sounding ambitions, that mock glory, that swelling in noble pride upon such fictitious hallucinations, that poor mesquin grandness. It is exasperating. I hate ambition to achieve. However, I suppose I am very foolish.
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