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When I came to myself, I began to consider that there must have been something no right in the provost's own letter on the subject, to cause such an uncourteous rebuff; so after condemning, in very strong terms, the member's most ungenteel style, in order to procure for myself a patient hearing, I warily proposed that the provost's application should be read, a copy thereof being kept, and I had soon a positive confirmation of my suspicion.
She had been unkind to him down there in the shrubbery awhile ago, she tells herself, and now she is telling him in silent, sweet little ways that she meant nothing nasty, nothing cold or uncourteous. Her husband, watching her, sees the glance, and grinds under it. He misunderstands it. As for Tom! Poor Tom! He, too, sees the pretty glance, and he, too, misunderstands it.
It would have been uncourteous on my part to resist any longer. He left the box and returned almost immediately with my friend Baletti, who told me that his mother was delighted to see me making such excellent acquaintances, and that she would expect to see me at dinner the next day. He whispered to me that my new acquaintance was M. de Beauchamp, Receiver-General of Taxes.
A lady may always accept such an offer of attention, thanking the gentleman for his politeness, and dismissing him by a courteous bow, which he must accept as an intimation that his services are no longer required. Smoking in the presence of ladies is uncourteous, even if there is no law against it in the car, stage, or boat.
A Doctor Smith related to me a circumstance which proves how different is the effect of a courteous and an uncourteous mode of speaking to a Frenchman; the Doctor had with him a friend who was a regular John Bull, and they wishing to know their way to some place, the latter stepped up to a butcher who was standing at his door and asked him in a very rough manner, and received an evasive reply; the Doctor then put the same question to the man but in a more polite form, the butcher replied, "If you will wait a minute, Sir, I will put on my coat and show you the way," which he did in the most good humoured manner, but remarked to the Doctor that every one in France liked to be treated as a fellow man, and not to be spoken to as if they were brutes.
"I wait, Sir Willmott, and will wait patiently, if it be necessary: but methinks your silence now is as uncourteous as your speech a brief while since." "It is because I feel for you, Mistress Cecil, feel for you acutely, that I thus hesitate.
Miss Stanbury was quite right if she meant to assert that Priscilla had owned as much to herself. "And because I think so, I am willing to forgive her part in the matter. To me, personally, she has always been rude, most uncourteous, and, and, and unlike a younger woman to an older one, and an aunt, and all that. I suppose it is because she hates me." "Oh, no, Aunt Stanbury!"
Drops of cold perspiration stood on my forehead. I said: 'Most respected Herr Professor, pray do not take it ill that I should have thought you were the watchman, in the dark. Oh, Heavens! call me whatever you choose; call me in the most uncourteous manner 'Tussmann, without the faintest adumbration of a title at all; or even 'My dear fellow! I will overlook anything.
"I sent to the admiral's for them," replied Vanslyperken. "Well then, be all ready to start at midnight. I shall come on board about a quarter of an hour before; you may go, sir." Vanslyperken quailed under the keen eye and stern look of Ramsay, and obeyed the uncourteous order in silence; still he thought of revenge as he walked back to the boat and re-embarked in the cutter.
"Alas," thought I, "the wisest men seldom have the loftiest genius, and perhaps happiness is granted rather to mediocrity of mind than to mediocrity of circumstance;" but I did not give so uncourteous a reply to my host an audible utterance; on the contrary, "I do not doubt," said I, as I rose to depart, "the wisdom of a choice which has brought you self-gratulation.
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