The Adventures of Peregrine PickleSmollett, T. (Tobias)
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The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle
Smollett, T. (Tobias)
Adventure stories; Fiction; Picaresque literature
Her eyes gleamed with all the rage of indignation, which choked up her
utterance, and seemed to convulse her whole frame: she twisted her left
hand in his hair, and with the other buffeted him about the face till
the blood gushed from his nostrils and mouth; while he defended his
sister from the cruelty of Gam, who assaulted her from another quarter,
seeing his brother engaged. This attack lasted several minutes with
great violence, till at length Peregrine, finding himself in danger of
being overpowered if he should remain any longer on the defensive, laid
his brother on his back; then he disentangled his mother's hand from his
own hair, and, having pushed her gently out of the room, bolted the door
on the inside; finally, turning to Gam, he threw him out at the window,
among a parcel of hogs that fed under it. By this time Julia was almost
quite distracted with terror: she knew she had offended beyond all hope
of forgiveness, and from that moment considered herself as an exile from
her father's house: in vain did her brother strive to console her
with fresh protestations of love and protection; she counted herself
extremely miserable in being obliged to endure the eternal resentment
of a parent with whom she had hitherto lived; and dreaded the censure of
the world, which, from her mother's misrepresentation, she was sensible
would condemn her unheard. That she might not, however, neglect any
means in her power of averting this storm, she resolved to appease, if
possible, her mother's wrath with humiliation, and even appeal to the
influence of her father, weak as it was, before she would despair
of being forgiven. But the good lady spared her this unnecessary
application, by telling her, through the keyhole, that she must never
expect to come within her father's door again; for, from that hour, she
renounced her as unworthy of her affection and regard. Julia, weeping
bitterly, endeavoured to soften the rigour of this sentence by the most
submissive and reasonable remonstrances; but as, in her vindication, she
of necessity espoused her elder brother's cause, her endeavours, instead
of soothing, served only to exasperate her mother to a higher pitch of
indignation, which discharged itself in invectives against Peregrine,
whom she reviled with the epithets of a worthless, abandoned reprobate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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