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The beauty of the child, coupled with her gentle and timid bearing, produced quite a sensation in the little country place: the Brigand, became a mere secondary consideration, and important only as part of the show of which she was the chief attraction, Grown-up folks began to be interested in the bright-eyed girl, and some score of little boys fell desperately in love, and constantly left inclosures of nuts and apples at the wax-work door.
Isabel rose, trembling and unnerved, but no longer shrinking, and followed Anabel into the nursery, where the child, looking like a little wax-work, lay in its crib. "She is dead!" said Anabel, in the same astonished indignant voice. "My baby!" She caught Isabel's arm and shook it violently. "It isn't true," she commanded. "Say it is not. How can it be? She spoke and laughed only two hours ago.
Them wax figgers of yours want washin'. There's Napoleon Bonyparte and Julius Caesar they must have a bath," with which coarse and brutal remark he imitated the shrill war-hoop of the western savige, and, assisted by his infamus coal-heavin companyins, he threw all my wax-work into the river, and let my wild bears loose to pray on a peaceful and inoffensive agricultooral community.
In an alcove was a figure, almost upright, that, in the first dazed seconds I took to be a wax-work, but immediately knew to be a dead woman. As I almost ran out I recalled that in Bavaria the dead are taken from the house within six hours, and are kept in a public mortuary for three days, or until all danger of premature interment is over.
The churches, coated with whitewash, are squalid, cold and depressing; and at first sight the row of images looks nothing more than a somewhat vulgar exhibition of wax-work. But presently, as I lingered, the very poverty of it all touched me; and forgetting the grotesqueness, I perceived that some of the saints in their elaborate dresses were quite charming and graceful.
And one Christmas holidays there was to be an unusually grand entertainment given by the children, which included a display of "Mrs Jarley's Wax-works." Nan would listen with absorbing interest to the discussion about who should represent the different characters in wax-work, and she was allowed to be present at the rehearsals, but there was no question of such a little thing taking a part.
I won't go so far as to say, that, as it is, I've seen wax-work quite like life, but I've certainly seen some life that was exactly like wax-work. 'Is it here, ma'am? asked Nell, whose curiosity was awakened by this description. 'Is what here, child? 'The wax-work, ma'am. 'Why, bless you, child, what are you thinking of?
Rather call no one safe, whether in good repute or evil, after he has been dead long enough to have his effigy done in historical wax-work. Only get the real clothes, that is, only be careful to envelop him in a sufficiently probable dressing of facts, and the public will be entirely satisfied. What's Hecuba to us, or we to Hecuba?
Fie on these dealers in poison, say I: can they not keep to the old honest way of cutting throats, without introducing such abominable innovations from Italy? I consider all these poisoning cases, compared with the legitimate style, as no better than wax-work by the side of sculpture, or a lithographic print by the side of a fine Volpato.
Notwithstanding these protections, she could get none but broken sleep by fits and starts all night, for fear of Quilp, who throughout her uneasy dreams was somehow connected with the wax-work, or was wax-work himself, or was Mrs Jarley and wax-work too, or was himself, Mrs Jarley, wax-work, and a barrel organ all in one, and yet not exactly any of them either.
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