The Wanderer; or, Female Difficulties (Volume 3 of 5)Burney, Fanny
History
The Wanderer; or, Female Difficulties (Volume 3 of 5)
Burney, Fanny
France -- History -- Revolution, 1789-1799 -- Refugees -- Fiction; Historical fiction; Refugees -- Fiction; War stories
With a view to draw Elinor from this agitating subject, she then
related, at full length, her meeting, in the church-yard, with the friend
whom she had so long vainly sought.
In a short time afterwards, feeling herself considerably advanced
towards a recovery, Elinor, impetuously, again sent for Juliet, to say,
'What is your plan? Tell it me sincerely! What is it you mean to do?'
Juliet answered, that her choice was small, and that her means were
almost null: but when she lamented the severe DIFFICULTIES of a FEMALE,
who, without fortune or protection, had her way to make in the world,
Elinor, with strong derision, called out, 'Debility and folly! Put aside
your prejudices, and forget that you are a dawdling woman, to remember
that you are an active human being, and your FEMALE DIFFICULTIES will
vanish into the vapour of which they are formed. Misery has taught me to
conquer mine! and I am now as ready to defy the world, as the world can
be ready to hold me up to ridicule. To make people wise, you must make
them indifferent; to give them courage, you must make them desperate.
'Tis then, only, that we throw aside affectation and hypocrisy, and act
from impulse.'
Laughing, now, though with bitterness, rather than gaiety, 'What does
the world say,' she cried, 'to find that I still live, after the pompous
funeral orations, declaimed by myself, upon my death? Does it suspect
that I found second thoughts best, and that I delayed my execution,
thinking, like the man in the song,
That for sure I could die whenever I would,
But that I could live but as long as I could?
'Well, ye that laugh, laugh on! for I, when not sick of myself, laugh
too! But, to escape mockery, we must all be guided one by another; all
do, and all say, the very same thing. Yet why? Are we alike in our
thoughts? Are we alike in our faces? No. Happily, however, that
soporiferous monotony is beginning to get obsolete. The sublimity of
Revolution has given a greater shake to the minds of men, than to the
kingdoms of the earth.'
After pausing, then, a few minutes, 'Ellis,' she cried, 'if you are
really embarrassed, why should you not go upon the stage? You know how
transcendently you act.'
'That which might seem passable in a private representation,' Juliet
answered, 'might, at a public theatre--'
'Pho, pho, you know perfectly well your powers. But you blight them, I
suppose, yourself, with anathemas, from excommunicating scruples? You
are amongst the cold, the heartless, the ungifted, who, to discredit
talents, and render them dangerous, leave their exercise to vice, by
making virtue fear to exert, or even patronize them?'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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