her the way to the hill-top she should be very grateful. Upon this assurance the visitor took his leave; after which Isabel fully expected her friend would scold her for having been so stupid. But to her surprise that lady, who indeed never fell into the mere matter-of-course, said to her in a few moments
“You were charming, my dear; you were just as one would have wished you. You’re never disappointing.”
A rebuke might possibly have been irritating, though it is much more probable that Isabel would have taken it in good part; but, strange to say, the words that Madame Merle actually used caused her the first feeling of displeasure she had known this ally to excite. “That’s more than I intended,” she answered coldly. “I’m under no obligation that I know of to charm Mr. Osmond.”
Madame Merle perceptibly flushed, but we know it was not her habit to retract. “My dear child, I didn’t speak for him, poor man; I spoke for yourself. It’s not of course a question as to his liking you; it matters little whether he likes you or not! But I thought you liked HIM.”
“I did,” said Isabel honestly. “But I don’t see what that matters either.”
“Everything that concerns you matters to me,” Madame Merle returned with her weary nobleness; “especially when at the same time another old friend’s concerned.”
Whatever Isabel’s obligations may have been to Mr. Osmond, it must be admitted that she found them sufficient to lead her to put to Ralph sundry questions about him. She thought Ralph’s judgements distorted by his trials, but she flattered herself she had learned to make allowance for that.
“Do I know him?” said her cousin. “Oh, yes, I ‘know’ him; not well, but on the whole enough. I’ve never cultivated his society, and he apparently has never found mine indispensable to his happiness. Who is he, what is he? He’s a vague, unexplained American who has been living these thirty years, or less, in Italy. Why do I call him unexplained? Only as a cover for my ignorance; I don’t know his antecedents, his family, his origin. For all I do know he may be a prince in disguise; he rather looks like one, by the way — like a prince who has abdicated in a fit of fastidiousness and has been in a state of disgust ever since. He used to live in Rome; but of late years he has taken up his abode here; I remember hearing him say that Rome has grown vulgar. He has a great dread of vulgarity; that’s his special line; he hasn’t any other that I know of. He lives on his income, which I suspect of not being vulgarly large. He’s a poor but honest gentleman that’s what he calls himself. He married young and lost his wife, and I believe he has a daughter. He also has a sister, who’s married to some small Count or other, of these parts; I remember meeting her of old. She’s nicer than he, I should think, but rather impossible. I remember there used to be some stories about her. I don’t think I recommend you to know her. But why don’t you ask Madame Merle about these people? She knows them all much better than I.”
“I ask you because I want your opinion as well as hers,” said Isabel.
“A fig for my opinion! If you fall in love with Mr. Osmond what will you care for that?”
“Not much, probably. But meanwhile it has a certain importance. The more information one has about one’s dangers the better.”
“I don’t agree to that — it may make them dangers. We know too much about people in these days; we hear too much. Our ears, our minds, our mouths, are stuffed with personalities. Don’t mind anything any one tells you about any one else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself.”
“That’s what I try to do,” said Isabel “but when you do that people call you conceited.”
“You’re not to mind them — that’s precisely my argument; not to mind what they say about yourself any more than what they say about your friend or your enemy.”
Isabel considered. “I think you’re right; but there are some things I can’t help minding: for instance when my friend’s attacked or when I myself am praised.”
“Of course you’re always at liberty to judge the critic. Judge people as critics, however,” Ralph added, “and you’ll condemn them all!”
“I shall see Mr. Osmond for myself,” said Isabel. “I’ve promised to pay him a visit.”
“To pay him a visit?”
“To go and see his view, his pictures, his daughter — I don’t know exactly what. Madame Merle’s to take me; she tells me a great many ladies call on him.”
“Ah, with Madame Merle you may go anywhere, de confiance,” said Ralph. “She knows none but the best people.”
Isabel said no more about Mr. Osmond, but she presently remarked to her cousin that she was not satisfied with his tone about Madame Merle. “It seems to me you insinuate things about her. I don’t know what you mean, but if you’ve any grounds for disliking her I think you should either mention them frankly or else say nothing at all.”
Ralph, however, resented this charge with more apparent earnestness than he commonly used. “I speak of Madame Merle exactly as I speak to her: with an even exaggerated respect.”
“Exaggerated, precisely. That’s what I complain of.”
“I do so because Madame Merle’s merits are exaggerated.”
“By whom, pray? By me? If so I do her a poor service.”
“No, no; by herself.”
“Ah, I protest!” Isabel earnestly cried. “If ever there was a woman who made small claims —!”
“You put your finger on it,” Ralph interrupted. “Her modesty’s exaggerated. She has no business with small claims — she has a perfect right to make large ones.”
“Her merits are large then. You contradict yourself.”
“Her merits are immense,” said Ralph. “She’s indescribably blameless; a pathless desert of virtue; the only woman I know who never gives one a chance.”
“A chance for what?”
“Well, say to call her a fool! She’s the only woman I know who has but that one little fault.”
Isabel turned away with impatience. “I don’t understand you; you’re too paradoxical for my plain mind.”
“Let me explain. When I say she exaggerates I don’t mean it in the vulgar sense — that she boasts, overstates, gives too fine an account of herself. I mean literally that she pushes the search for perfection too far — that her merits are in themselves overstrained. She’s too good, too kind, too clever, too learned, too accomplished, too everything. She’s too complete, in a word. I confess to you that she acts on my nerves and that I feel about her a good deal as that intensely human Athenian felt about Aristides the Just.”
Isabel looked hard at her cousin; but the mocking spirit, if it lurked in his words, failed on this occasion to peep from his face. “Do you wish Madame Merle to be banished?”
“By no means. She’s much too good company. I delight in Madame Merle,” said Ralph Touchett simply.
“You’re very odious, sir!” Isabel exclaimed. And then she asked him if he knew anything that was not to the honour of her brilliant friend.
