But thirst is not enjoyment, and a satiated thirst that we insist on over-satisfying to drown the recollection of past anguish, is baneful to the soul.  In Rome Cecilia’s vision of her track to Rome was of a run of fire over a heath.  She could scarcely feel common pleasure in Rome.  It seemed burnt out.

Flung back on herself, she was condemned to undergo the bitter torment she had flown from:  jealous love, and reproachful; and a shame in it like nothing she had yet experienced.  Previous pains were but Summer lightnings, passing shadows.  She could have believed in sorcery:  the man had eaten her heart!

A disposition to mocking humour, foreign to her nature, gave her the notion of being off her feet, in the claws of a fabulous bird.  It served to veil her dulness.  An ultra-English family in Rome, composed, shocking to relate, of a baronet banker and his wife, two faint-faced girls, and a young gentleman of our country, once perhaps a light-limbed boy, chose to be followed by their footman in the melancholy pomp of state livery.  Wherever she encountered them Cecilia talked Nevil Beauchamp.  Even Mr. Tuckham perceived it.  She was extremely uncharitable:  she extended her ungenerous criticism to the institution of the footman:  England, and the English, were lashed.

‘These people are caricatures,’ Tuckham said, in apology for poor England burlesqued abroad.  ’You must not generalize on them.  Footmen are footmen all the world over.  The cardinals have a fine set of footmen.’

’They are at home.  Those English sow contempt of us all over Europe.  We cannot but be despised.  One comes abroad foredoomed to share the sentiment.  This is your middle-class!  What society can they move in, that sanctions a vulgarity so perplexing?  They have the air of ornaments on a cottager’s parlour mantelpiece.’

Tuckham laughed.  ‘Something of that,’ he said.

‘Evidently they seek distinction, and they have it, of that kind,’ she continued.  ’It is not wonderful that we have so much satirical writing in England, with such objects of satire.  It may be as little wonderful that the satire has no effect.  Immense wealth and native obtuseness combine to disfigure us with this aspect of overripeness, not to say monstrosity.  I fall in love with the poor, and think they have a cause to be pleaded, when I look at those people.  We scoff at the vanity of the French, but it is a graceful vanity; pardonable compared with ours.’

‘I’ve read all that a hundred times,’ quoth Tuckham bluntly.

’So have I. I speak of it because I see it.  We scoff at the simplicity of the Germans.’

’The Germans live in simple fashion, because they’re poor.  French vanity’s pretty and amusing.  I don’t know whether it’s deep in them, for I doubt their depth; but I know it’s in their joints.  The first spring of a Frenchman comes of vanity.  That you can’t say of the English.  Peace to all! but I abhor cosmopolitanism.  No man has a firm foothold who pretends to it.  None despises the English in reality.  Don’t be misled, Miss Halkett.  We’re solid:  that is the main point.  The world feels our power, and has confidence in our good faith.  I ask for no more.’