tale.fyi

Daniel Deronda ▾
contents
  1. Foreword
  2. Book I
  3. I Men can do nothing without the make-believe of a beginning. Even science, the strict measurer, is obliged to start with a make-believe unit, and must fix on a point in the stars’ unceasing journey when his sidereal clock shall pretend that time is at Nought. His less accurate grandmother Poetry has always been understood to start in the middle; but on reflection it appears that her proceeding is not very different from his; since Science, too, reckons backward as well as forward, divides his unit into billions, and with his clock-finger at Nought really sets off in medias res. No retrospect will take us to the true beginning; and whether our prologue be in heaven or on earth, it is but a fraction of that all-presupposing fact with which our story sets out.
  4. II This man contrives a secret ’twixt us two, That he may quell me with his meeting eyes Like one who quells a lioness at bay.
  5. III “Let no flower of the spring pass by us; let us crown ourselves with rosebuds before they be withered.” Book of Wisdom
  6. IV Gorgibus … Je te dis que le mariage est une chose sainte et sacrée: et que c’est faire en honnêtes gens, que de débuter par là. Madelon Mon Dieu! que si tout le monde vous ressemblait, un roman serait bientôt fini! La belle chose que ce serait, si d’abord Cyrus épousait Mandane, et qu’Aronce de plain-pied fût marié à Clélie! … Laissez-nous faire à loisir le tissu de notre roman, et n’en pressez pas tant la conclusion. Molière. Les Précieuses Ridicules
  7. V Her wit Values itself so highly, that to her All matter else seems weak. Much Ado About Nothing
  8. VI Croyez-vous m’avoir humiliée pour m’avoir appris que la terre tourne autour du soleil? Je vous jure que je ne m’en estime pas moins. Fontenelle: Pluralité des Mondes
  9. VII Perigot As the bonny lasse passed bye, Willie Hey, ho, bonnilasse! P. She roode at me with glauncing eye, W. As clear as the crystal glasse. P. All as the sunny beame so bright, W. Hey, ho, the sunnebeame! P. Glaunceth from Phoebus’ face forthright, W. So love into thy heart did streame. Spenser: Shepard’s Calendar The kindliest symptom, yet the most alarming crisis in the ticklish state of youth; the nourisher and destroyer of hopeful wits; … the servitude above freedom; the gentle mind’s religion; the liberal superstition. Charles Lamb
  10. VIII “What name doth Joy most borrow When life is fair? ‘Tomorrow.’ “What name doth best fit Sorrow In young despair? ‘Tomorrow.’ ”
  11. IX “I’ll tell thee, Berthold, what men’s hopes are like: A silly child that, quivering with joy, Would cast its little mimic fishing-line Baited with loadstone for a bowl of toys In the salt ocean.”
  12. X 1st Gent. What woman should be? Sir, consult the taste Of marriageable men. This planet’s store In iron, cotton, wool, or chemicals— All matter rendered to our plastic skill, Is wrought in shapes responsive to demand; The market’s pulse makes index high or low, By rule sublime. Our daughters must be wives, And to the wives must be what men will choose; Men’s taste is woman’s test. You mark the phrase? ’Tis good, I think?—the sense well-winged and poised With t’s and s’s. 2nd Gent. Nay, but turn it round; Give us the test of taste. A fine menu— Is it today what Roman epicures Insisted that a gentleman must eat To earn the dignity of dining well?
  13. Book II
  14. XI The beginning of an acquaintance whether with persons or things is to get a definite outline for our ignorance.
  15. XII “O gentlemen, the time of life is short; To spend that shortness basely were too long, If life did ride upon a dial’s point, Still ending at the arrival of an hour.” Shakespeare: Henry IV
  16. XIII “Philistia, be thou glad of me!”
  17. XIV “I will not clothe myself in wreck—wear gems Sawed from cramped finger-bones of women drowned; Feel chilly vaporous hands of ireful ghosts Clutching my necklace: trick my maiden breast With orphans’ heritage. Let your dead love Marry its dead.”
  18. XV “Festina lente—celerity should be contempered with cunctation.” Sir Thomas Browne
  19. XVI Men, like planets, have both a visible and an invisible history. The astronomer threads the darkness with strict deduction, accounting so for every visible arc in the wanderer’s orbit; and the narrator of human actions, if he did his work with the same completeness, would have to thread the hidden pathways of feeling and thought which lead up to every moment of action, and to those moments of intense suffering which take the quality of action—like the cry of Prometheus, whose chained anguish seems a greater energy than the sea and sky he invokes and the deity he defies.
  20. XVII This is truth the poet sings, That a sorrow’s crown of sorrow is remembering happier things. Tennyson: Locksley Hall
  21. XVIII Life is a various mother: now she dons Her plumes and brilliants, climbs the marble stairs With head aloft, nor ever turns her eyes On lackeys who attend her; now she dwells Grim-clad, up darksome alleys, breathes hot gin, And screams in pauper riot. But to these She came a frugal matron, neat and deft, With cheerful morning thoughts and quick device To find the much in little.
  22. Book III
  23. XIX I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba, and say, “ ’Tis all barren”: and so it is: and so is all the world to him who will not cultivate the fruits it offers. Sterne: Sentimental Journey
  24. XX It will hardly be denied that even in this frail and corrupted world, we sometimes meet persons who, in their very mien and aspect, as well as in the whole habit of life, manifest such a signature and stamp of virtue, as to make our judgment of them a matter of intuition rather than the result of continued examination. Alexander Knox: quoted in Southey’s Life of Wesley
  25. XXI It is a common sentence that Knowledge is power; but who hath duly considered or set forth the power of Ignorance? Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down. Knowledge, through patient and frugal centuries, enlarges discovery and makes record of it; Ignorance, wanting its day’s dinner, lights a fire with the record, and gives a flavor to its one roast with the burned souls of many generations. Knowledge, instructing the sense, refining and multiplying needs, transforms itself into skill and makes life various with a new six days’ work; comes Ignorance drunk on the seventh, with a firkin of oil and a match and an easy “Let there not be,” and the many-colored creation is shriveled up in blackness. Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be; whereas Ignorance is a blind giant who, let him but wax unbound, would make it a sport to seize the pillars that hold up the long-wrought fabric of human good, and turn all the places of joy dark as a buried Babylon. And looking at life parcel-wise, in the growth of a single lot, who having a practiced vision may not see that ignorance of the true bond between events, and false conceit of means whereby sequences may be compelled—like that falsity of eyesight which overlooks the gradations of distance, seeing that which is afar off as if it were within a step or a grasp—precipitates the mistaken soul on destruction?
  26. XXII We please our fancy with ideal webs Of innovation, but our life meanwhile Is in the loom, where busy passion plies The shuttle to and fro, and gives our deeds The accustomed pattern.
  27. XXIII Among the heirs of Art, as is the division of the promised land, each has to win his portion by hard fighting: the bestowal is after the manner of prophecy, and is a title without possession. To carry the map of an ungotten estate in your pocket is a poor sort of copyhold. And in fancy to cast his shoe over Eden is little warrant that a man shall ever set the sole of his foot on an acre of his own there. The most obstinate beliefs that mortals entertain about themselves are such as they have no evidence for beyond a constant, spontaneous pulsing of their self-satisfaction—as it were a hidden seed of madness, a confidence that they can move the world without precise notion of standing-place or lever.
  28. XXIV I question things but do not find One that will answer to my mind: And all the world appears unkind. Wordsworth
  29. XXV How trace the why and wherefore in a mind reduced to the barrenness of a fastidious egoism, in which all direct desires are dulled, and have dwindled from motives into a vacillating expectation of motives: a mind made up of moods, where a fitful impulse springs here and there conspicuously rank amid the general weediness? ’Tis a condition apt to befall a life too much at large, unmoulded by the pressure of obligation. Nam deteriores omnes sumus licentiae, or, as a more familiar tongue might deliver it, “As you like” is a bad finger-post.
  30. XXVI He brings white asses laden with the freight Of Tyrian vessels, purple, gold and balm, To bribe my will: I’ll bid them chase him forth, Nor let him breathe the taint of his surmise On my secure resolve. Ay, ’tis secure: And therefore let him come to spread his freight. For firmness hath its appetite and craves The stronger lure, more strongly to resist; Would know the touch of gold to fling it off; Scent wine to feel its lip the soberer; Behold soft byssus, ivory, and plumes To say, “They’re fair, but I will none of them,” And flout Enticement in the very face.
  31. XXVII Desire has trimmed the sails, and Circumstance Brings but the breeze to fill them.
  32. Book IV
  33. XXVIII Il est plus aisé de connoître l’homme en général que de connoître un homme en particulier. La Rochefoucauld
  34. XXIX Surely whoever speaks to me in the right voice, him or her I shall follow. As the water follows the moon, silently, with fluid steps anywhere around the globe. Walt Whitman
  35. XXX No penitence and no confessional, No priest ordains it, yet they’re forced to sit Amid deep ashes of their vanished years.
  36. XXXI A wild dedication of yourselves To unpath’d waters, undreamed shores. Shakespeare
  37. XXXII In all ages it hath been a favorite text that a potent love hath the nature of an isolated fatality, whereto the mind’s opinions and wonted resolves are altogether alien; as, for example, Daphnis his frenzy, wherein it had little availed him to have been convinced of Heraclitus his doctrine; or the philtre-bred passion of Tristan, who, though he had been as deep as Duns Scotus, would have had his reasoning marred by that cup too much; or Romeo in his sudden taking for Juliet, wherein any objections he might have held against Ptolemy had made little difference to his discourse under the balcony. Yet all love is not such, even though potent; nay, this passion hath as large scope as any for allying itself with every operation of the soul: so that it shall acknowledge an effect from the imagined light of unproven firmaments, and have its scale set to the grander orbits of what hath been and shall be.
  38. XXXIII “No man,” says a Rabbi, by way of indisputable instance, “may turn the bones of his father and mother into spoons”—sure that his hearers felt the checks against that form of economy. The market for spoons has never expanded enough for anyone to say, “Why not?” and to argue that human progress lies in such an application of material. The only check to be alleged is a sentiment, which will coerce none who do not hold that sentiments are the better part of the world’s wealth.
  39. XXXIV Er ist geheissen Israel. Ihn hat verwandelt Hexenspruch in einen Hund. ⋮ Aber jeden Freitag Abend, In der Dämm’rungstunde, plötzlich Weicht der Zauber, und der Hund Wird aufs Neu’ ein menschlich Wesen. Heine: Prinzessin Sabbath
  40. Book V
  41. XXXV Were uneasiness of conscience measured by extent of crime, human history had been different, and one should look to see the contrivers of greedy wars and the mighty marauders of the money-market in one troop of self-lacerating penitents with the meaner robber and cutpurse and the murderer that doth his butchery in small with his own hand. No doubt wickedness hath its rewards to distribute; but who so wins in this devil’s game must needs be baser, more cruel, more brutal than the order of this planet will allow for the multitude born of woman, the most of these carrying a form of conscience—a fear which is the shadow of justice, a pity which is the shadow of love—that hindereth from the prize of serene wickedness, itself difficult of maintenance in our composite flesh.
  42. XXXVI Rien ne pèse tant qu’un secret Le porter loin est difficile aux dames: Et je sçais mesme sur ce fait Bon nombre d’hommes qui sont femmes. La Fontaine
  43. XXXVII Aspern Pardon, my lord—I speak for Sigismund. Fronsberg For him? Oh, ay—for him I always hold A pardon safe in bank, sure he will draw Sooner or later on me. What his need? Mad project broken? fine mechanic wings That would not fly? durance, assault on watch, Bill for Epernay, not a crust to eat? Aspern Oh, none of these, my lord; he has escaped From Circe’s herd, and seeks to win the love Of your fair ward Cecilia: but would win First your consent. You frown. Fronsberg Distinguish words. I said I held a pardon, not consent.
  44. XXXVIII There be who hold that the deeper tragedy were a Prometheus Bound not after but before he had well got the celestial fire into the narthex whereby it might be conveyed to mortals: thrust by the Kratos and Bia of instituted methods into a solitude of despised ideas, fastened in throbbing helplessness by the fatal pressure of poverty and disease—a solitude where many pass by, but none regard.
  45. XXXIX Vor den Wissenden sich stellen, Sicher ist’s in allen Fällen! Wenn du lange dich gequälet, Weiß er gleich, wo dir es fehlet. Auch auf Beifall darfst du hoffen; Denn er weiß, wo du’s getroffen. Goethe: West-östlicher Divan
  46. XL Within the soul a faculty abides, That with interpositions, which would hide And darken, so can deal, that they become Contingencies of pomp; and serve to exalt Her native brightness, as the ample moon, In the deep stillness of a summer even, Rising behind a thick and lofty grove, Burns, like an unconsuming fire of light, In the green trees; and, kindling on all sides Their leafy umbrage, turns the dusky veil Into a substance glorious as her own, Yea, with her own incorporated, by power Capacious and serene. Wordsworth: Excursion, Book IV
  47. Book VI
  48. XLI This, too is probable, according to that saying of Agathon: “It is a part of probability that many improbable things will happen.” Aristotle: Poetics
  49. XLII Wenn es eine Stufenleiter von Leiden giebt, so hat Israel die höchste Staffel erstiegen; wen die Dauer der Schmerzen und die Geduld, mit welcher sie ertragen werden, adeln, so nehmen es die Juden mit den Hochgeborenen aller Länder auf; wenn eine Literatur reich genannt wird, die wenige klassische Trauerspiele besitzt, welcher Platz gebührt dann einer Tragodie die anderthalb Jahrtausende wahrt, gedichtet und dargestellt von den Helden selber? Zunz: Die Synagogale Poesie des Mittelalters
  50. XLIII My spirit is too weak; mortality Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep, And each imagined pinnacle and steep Of godlike hardship tells me I must die Like a sick eagle looking at the sky. Keats
  51. XLIV Fairy folk a-listening Hear the seed sprout in the spring. And for music to their dance Hear the hedgerows wake from trance, Sap that trembles into buds Sending little rhythmic floods Of fairy sound in fairy ears. Thus all beauty that appears Has birth as sound to finer sense And lighter-clad intelligence.
  52. XLV Behold my lady’s carriage stop the way. With powdered lackey and with charming bay; She sweeps the matting, treads the crimson stair. Her arduous function solely “to be there.” Like Sirius rising o’er the silent sea. She hides her heart in lustre loftily.
  53. XLVI If anyone should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I feel it could no otherwise be expressed than by making answer, “Because it was he, because it was I.” There is, beyond what I am able to say, I know not what inexplicable power that brought on this union. Montaigne: On Friendship
  54. XLVII And you must love him ere to you He will seem worthy of your love. Wordsworth
  55. XLVIII ’Tis hard and ill-paid task to order all things beforehand by the rule of our own security, as is well hinted by Machiavelli concerning Caesar Borgia, who, saith he, had thought of all that might occur on his father’s death, and had provided against every evil chance save only one: it had never come into his mind that when his father died, his own death would quickly follow.
  56. XLIX Ever in his soul That larger justice which makes gratitude Triumphed above resentment. ’Tis the mark Of regal natures, with the wider life. And fuller capability of joy:— Not wits exultant in the strongest lens To show you goodness vanished into pulp Never worth “thank you”—they’re the devil’s friars, Vowed to be poor as he in love and trust, Yet must go begging of a world that keeps Some human property.
  57. Book VII
  58. L If some mortal, born too soon, Were laid away in some great trance—the ages Coming and going all the while—till dawned His true time’s advent; and could then record The words they spoke who kept watch by his bed, Then I might tell more of the breath so light Upon my eyelids, and the fingers warm Among my hair. Youth is confused; yet never So dull was I but, when that spirit passed, I turned to him, scarce consciously, as turns A water-snake when fairies cross his sleep. Browning: Paracelsus
  59. LI She held the spindle as she sat, Errina with the thick-coiled mat Of raven hair and deepest agate eyes, Gazing with a sad surprise At surging visions of her destiny— To spin the byssus drearily In insect-labor, while the throng Of gods and men wrought deeds that poets wrought in song.
  60. LII La même fermeté qui sert à résister à l’amour sert aussi à le rendre violent et durable; et les personnes faibles qui sont toujours agitées des passions n’en sont presque jamais véritablement remplies. La Rochefoucauld
  61. LIII “My desolation does begin to make A better life.” Shakespeare: Antony and Cleopatra
  62. LIV The unwilling brain Feigns often what it would not; and we trust Imagination with such fantasies As the tongue dares not fashion into words; Which have no words, their horror makes them dim To the mind’s eye. Shelley
  63. LV Ritorna a tua scienza Che vuol, quanto la cosa è più perfetta Più senta il bene, e cosi la doglienza. Dante
  64. LVI The pang, the curse with which they died, Had never passed away: I could not draw my eyes from theirs, Nor lift them up to pray. Coleridge
  65. LVII The unripe grape, the ripe, and the dried. All things are changes, not into nothing, but into that which is not at present. Marcus Aurelius “Deeds are the pulse of Time, his beating life, And righteous or unrighteous, being done, Must throb in after-throbs till Time itself Be laid in darkness, and the universe Quiver and breathe upon no mirror more.”
  66. Book VIII
  67. LVIII Much adoe there was, God wot; He wold love and she wold not. Nicholas Breton
  68. LIX I count myself in nothing else so happy As in a soul remembering my good friends. Shakespeare
  69. LX But I shall say no more of this at this time; for this is to be felt and not to be talked of; and they who never touched it with their fingers may secretly perhaps laugh at it in their hearts and be never the wiser. Jeremy Taylor The Roman Emperor in the legend put to death ten learned Israelites to avenge the sale of Joseph by his brethren. And there have always been enough of his kidney, whose piety lies in punishing who can see the justice of grudges but not of gratitude. For you shall never convince the stronger feeling that it hath not the stronger reason, or incline him who hath no love to believe that there is good ground for loving. As we may learn from the order of word-making, wherein love precedeth lovable.
  70. LXI Within the gentle heart Love shelters him, As birds within the green shade of the grove. Before the gentle heart, in Nature’s scheme, Love was not, nor the gentle heart ere Love. Guido Guinicelli (Rossetti’s Translation)
  71. LXII Das Glück ist eine leichte Dirne, Und weilt nicht gern am selben Ort; Sie streicht das Haar dir von der Stirne Und kusst dich rasch und flattert fort Frau Unglück hat im Gegentheile Dich liebefest an’s Herz gedrückt; Sie sagt, sie habe keine Eile, Setzt sich zu dir an’s Bett und strickt. Heine
  72. LXIII Moses, trotz seiner Befeindung der Kunst, dennoch selber ein großer Künstler war und den wahren Künstlergeist besaß. Nur war dieser Künstlergeist bei ihm, wie bei seinen ägyptischen Landsleuten, nur auf das Kolossale und Unverwüstliche gerichtet. Aber nicht wie die Ägypter formierte er seine Kunstwerke aus Backstein und Granit, sondern er baute Menschenpyramiden, er meisselte Menschenobelisken, er nahm einen armen Hirtenstamm und schuf daraus ein Volk, das ebenfalls den Jahrhunderten trotzen sollte … er schuf Israel! Heine: Gestandnisse
  73. LXIV Questa montagna è tale, Che sempre al cominciar di sotto è grave. E quanto uom più va su e men fa male. Dante: Il Purgatorio
  74. LXV O, welcome, pure-eyed Faith, white-handed Hope, Thou hovering angel, girt with golden wings! Milton
  75. LXVI One day still fierce ’mid many a day struck calm. Browning: The King and the Book
  76. LXVII The godhead in us wrings our noble deeds From our reluctant selves.
  77. LXVIII All thoughts, all passions, all delights, Whatever stirs this mortal frame, All are but ministers of Love, And feed his sacred flame. Coleridge
  78. LXIX The human nature unto which I felt That I belonged, and reverenced with love, Was not a punctual presence, but a spirit Diffused through time and space, with aid derived Of evidence from monuments, erect, Prostrate, or leaning toward their common rest In earth, the widely scattered wreck sublime Of vanished nations. Wordsworth: The Prelude
  79. LXX In the checkered area of human experience the seasons are all mingled as in the golden age: fruit and blossom hang together; in the same moment the sickle is reaping and the seed is sprinkled; one tends the green cluster and another treads the winepress. Nay, in each of our lives harvest and springtime are continually one, until Death himself gathers us and sows us anew in his invisible fields.
  80. Endnotes
English ▾

Daniel Deronda

George Eliot

free · 311,919 words · 31 h 48 m audiobook, read by Becky Miller for LibriVox · first published 1876

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To my dear husband
George Henry Lewes

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
⋮
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope.
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee—and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Foreword

Extracts from a Letter Written Oct. 29, 1876, to Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe

“As to the Jewish element in Deronda, I expected from first to last, in writing it, that it would create much stronger resistance and even repulsion than it has actually met with. But precisely because I felt that the usual attitude of Christians towards Jews is—I hardly know whether to say more impious or more stupid when viewed in the light of their professed principles, I therefore felt urged to treat Jews with such sympathy and understanding as my nature and knowledge could attain to. Moreover, not only towards the Jews, but towards all Oriental peoples with whom we English come in contact, a spirit of arrogance and contemptuous dictatorialness is observable which has become a national disgrace to us. There is nothing I should care more to do, if it were possible, than to rouse the imagination of men and women to a vision of human claims in those races of their fellowmen who most differ from them in customs and beliefs. But towards the Hebrews we Western people who have been reared in Christianity have a peculiar debt, and whether we acknowledge it or not, a peculiar thoroughness of fellowship in religious and moral sentiment. Can anything be more disgusting than to hear people called ‘educated’ making small jokes about eating ham, and showing themselves empty of any real knowledge as to the relation of their own social and religious life to the history of the people they think themselves witty in insulting? They hardly know that Christ was a Jew. And I find men, educated, supposing that Christ spoke Greek. To my feeling, this deadness to the history which has prepared half our world for us, this inability to find interest in any form of life that is not clad in the same coattails and flounces as our own, lies very close to the worst kind of irreligion. The best that can be said of it is that it is a sign of the intellectual narrowness—in plain English, the stupidity—which is still the average mark of our culture. Yes, I expected more aversion than I have found. But I was happily independent in material things, and felt no temptation to accommodate my writing to any standard except that of trying to do my best in what seemed to me most needful to be done; and I sum up with the writer of the Book of Maccabees: ‘If I have done well and as befits the subject, it is what I desired; and if I have done ill, it is what I could attain unto.’ ”

Let thy chief terror be of thine own soul:
There, ’mid the throng of hurrying desires
That trample on the dead to seize their spoil,
Lurks vengeance, footless, irresistible
As exhalations laden with slow death,
And o’er the fairest troop of captured joys
Breathes pallid pestilence.

Book I

The Spoiled Child

I

Men can do nothing without the make-believe of a beginning. Even science, the strict measurer, is obliged to start with a make-believe unit, and must fix on a point in the stars’ unceasing journey when his sidereal clock shall pretend that time is at Nought. His less accurate grandmother Poetry has always been understood to start in the middle; but on reflection it appears that her proceeding is not very different from his; since Science, too, reckons backward as well as forward, divides his unit into billions, and with his clock-finger at Nought really sets off in medias res. No retrospect will take us to the true beginning; and whether our prologue be in heaven or on earth, it is but a fraction of that all-presupposing fact with which our story sets out.

Was she beautiful or not beautiful? and what was the secret of form or expression which gave the dynamic quality to her glance? Was the good or the evil genius dominant in those beams? Probably the evil; else why was the effect that of unrest rather than of undisturbed charm? Why was the wish to look again felt as coercion and not as a longing in which the whole being consents?

She who raised these questions in Daniel Deronda’s mind was occupied in gambling: not in the open air under a southern sky, tossing coppers on a ruined wall, with rags about her limbs; but in one of those splendid resorts which the enlightenment of ages has prepared for the same species of pleasure at a heavy cost of gilt mouldings, dark-toned color and chubby nudities, all correspondingly heavy—forming a suitable condenser for human breath belonging, in great part, to the highest fashion, and not easily procurable to be breathed in elsewhere in the like proportion, at least by persons of little fashion.

It was near four o’clock on a September day, so that the atmosphere was well-brewed to a visible haze. There was deep stillness, broken only by a light rattle, a light chink, a small sweeping sound, and an occasional monotone in French, such as might be expected to issue from an ingeniously constructed automaton. Round two long tables were gathered two serried crowds of human beings, all save one having their faces and attention bent on the tables. The one exception was a melancholy little boy, with his knees and calves simply in their natural clothing of epidermis, but for the rest of his person in a fancy dress. He alone had his face turned toward the doorway, and fixing on it the blank gaze of a bedizened child stationed as a masquerading advertisement on the platform of an itinerant show, stood close behind a lady deeply engaged at the roulette-table.

About this table fifty or sixty persons were assembled, many in the outer rows, where there was occasionally a deposit of newcomers, being mere spectators, only that one of them, usually a woman, might now and then be observed putting down a five-franc with a simpering air, just to see what the passion of gambling really was. Those who were taking their pleasure at a higher strength, and were absorbed in play, showed very distant varieties of European type: Livonian and Spanish, Graeco-Italian and miscellaneous German, English aristocratic and English plebeian. Here certainly was a striking admission of human equality. The white bejewelled fingers of an English countess were very near touching a bony, yellow, crab-like hand stretching a bared wrist to clutch a heap of coin—a hand easy to sort with the square, gaunt face, deep-set eyes, grizzled eyebrows, and ill-combed scanty hair which seemed a slight metamorphosis of the vulture. And where else would her ladyship have graciously consented to sit by that dry-lipped feminine figure prematurely old, withered after short bloom like her artificial flowers, holding a shabby velvet reticule before her, and occasionally putting in her mouth the point with which she pricked her card? There too, very near the fair countess, was a respectable London tradesman, blonde and soft-handed, his sleek hair scrupulously parted behind and before, conscious of circulars addressed to the nobility and gentry, whose distinguished patronage enabled him to take his holidays fashionably, and to a certain extent in their distinguished company. Not his the gambler’s passion that nullifies appetite, but a well-fed leisure, which, in the intervals of winning money in business and spending it showily, sees no better resource than winning money in play and spending it yet more showily—reflecting always that Providence had never manifested any disapprobation of his amusement, and dispassionate enough to leave off if the sweetness of winning much and seeing others lose had turned to the sourness of losing much and seeing others win. For the vice of gambling lay in losing money at it. In his bearing there might be something of the tradesman, but in his pleasures he was fit to rank with the owners of the oldest titles. Standing close to his chair was a handsome Italian, calm, statuesque, reaching across him to place the first pile of napoleons from a new bagful just brought him by an envoy with a scrolled mustache. The pile was in half a minute pushed over to an old bewigged woman with eyeglasses pinching her nose. There was a slight gleam, a faint mumbling smile about the lips of the old woman; but the statuesque Italian remained impassive, and—probably secure in an infallible system which placed his foot on the neck of chance—immediately prepared a new pile. So did a man with the air of an emaciated beau or worn-out libertine, who looked at life through one eyeglass, and held out his hand tremulously when he asked for change. It could surely be no severity of system, but rather some dream of white crows, or the induction that the eighth of the month was lucky, which inspired the fierce yet tottering impulsiveness of his play.

But, while every single player differed markedly from every other, there was a certain uniform negativeness of expression which had the effect of a mask—as if they had all eaten of some root that for the time compelled the brains of each to the same narrow monotony of action.

Deronda’s first thought when his eyes fell on this scene of dull, gas-poisoned absorption, was that the gambling of Spanish shepherd-boys had seemed to him more enviable:—so far Rousseau might be justified in maintaining that art and science had done a poor service to mankind. But suddenly he felt the moment become dramatic. His attention was arrested by a young lady who, standing at an angle not far from him, was the last to whom his eyes traveled. She was bending and speaking English to a middle-aged lady seated at play beside her: but the next instant she returned to her play, and showed the full height of a graceful figure, with a face which might possibly be looked at without admiration, but could hardly be passed with indifference.

The inward debate which she raised in Deronda gave to his eyes a growing expression of scrutiny, tending farther and farther away from the glow of mingled undefined sensibilities forming admiration. At one moment they followed the movements of the figure, of the arms and hands, as this problematic sylph bent forward to deposit her stake with an air of firm choice; and the next they returned to the face which, at present unaffected by beholders, was directed steadily toward the game. The sylph was a winner; and as her taper fingers, delicately gloved in pale-gray, were adjusting the coins which had been pushed toward her in order to pass them back again to the winning point, she looked round her with a survey too markedly cold and neutral not to have in it a little of that nature which we call art concealing an inward exultation.

But in the course of that survey her eyes met Deronda’s, and instead of averting them as she would have desired to do, she was unpleasantly conscious that they were arrested—how long? The darting sense that he was measuring her and looking down on her as an inferior, that he was of different quality from the human dross around her, that he felt himself in a region outside and above her, and was examining her as a specimen of a lower order, roused a tingling resentment which stretched the moment with conflict. It did not bring the blood to her cheeks, but it sent it away from her lips. She controlled herself by the help of an inward defiance, and without other sign of emotion than this lip-paleness turned to her play. But Deronda’s gaze seemed to have acted as an evil eye. Her stake was gone. No matter; she had been winning ever since she took to roulette with a few napoleons at command, and had a considerable reserve. She had begun to believe in her luck, others had begun to believe in it: she had visions of being followed by a cortège who would worship her as a goddess of luck and watch her play as a directing augury. Such things had been known of male gamblers; why should not a woman have a like supremacy? Her friend and chaperon who had not wished her to play at first was beginning to approve, only administering the prudent advice to stop at the right moment and carry money back to England—advice to which Gwendolen had replied that she cared for the excitement of play, not the winnings. On that supposition the present moment ought to have made the flood-tide in her eager experience of gambling. Yet, when her next stake was swept away, she felt the orbits of her eyes getting hot, and the certainty she had (without looking) of that man still watching her was something like a pressure which begins to be torturing. The more reason to her why she should not flinch, but go on playing as if she were indifferent to loss or gain. Her friend touched her elbow and proposed that they should quit the table. For reply Gwendolen put ten louis on the same spot: she was in that mood of defiance in which the mind loses sight of any end beyond the satisfaction of enraged resistance; and with the puerile stupidity of a dominant impulse includes luck among its objects of defiance. Since she was not winning strikingly, the next best thing was to lose strikingly. She controlled her muscles, and showed no tremor of mouth or hands. Each time her stake was swept off she doubled it. Many were now watching her, but the sole observation she was conscious of was Deronda’s, who, though she never looked toward him, she was sure had not moved away. Such a drama takes no long while to play out: development and catastrophe can often be measured by nothing clumsier than the moment-hand. “Faites votre jeu, mesdames et messieurs,” said the automatic voice of destiny from between the mustache and imperial of the croupier: and Gwendolen’s arm was stretched to deposit her last poor heap of napoleons. “Le jeu ne va plus,” said destiny. And in five seconds Gwendolen turned from the table, but turned resolutely with her face toward Deronda and looked at him. There was a smile of irony in his eyes as their glances met; but it was at least better that he should have kept his attention fixed on her than that he disregarded her as one of an insect swarm who had no individual physiognomy. Besides, in spite of his superciliousness and irony, it was difficult to believe that he did not admire her spirit as well as her person: he was young, handsome, distinguished in appearance—not one of these ridiculous and dowdy Philistines who thought it incumbent on them to blight the gaming-table with a sour look of protest as they passed by it. The general conviction that we are admirable does not easily give way before a single negative; rather when any of Vanity’s large family, male or female, find their performance received coldly, they are apt to believe that a little more of it will win over the unaccountable dissident. In Gwendolen’s habits of mind it had been taken for granted that she knew what was admirable and that she herself was admired. This basis of her thinking had received a disagreeable concussion, and reeled a little, but was not easily to be overthrown.

In the evening the same room was more stiflingly heated, was brilliant with gas and with the costumes of ladies who floated their trains along it or were seated on the ottomans.

The Nereid in sea-green robes and silver ornaments, with a pale sea-green feather fastened in silver falling backward over her green hat and light brown hair, was Gwendolen Harleth. She was under the wing, or rather soared by the shoulder, of the lady who had sat by her at the roulette-table; and with them was a gentleman with a white mustache and clipped hair: solid-browed, stiff and German. They were walking about or standing to chat with acquaintances, and Gwendolen was much observed by the seated groups.

“A striking girl—that Miss Harleth—unlike others.”

“Yes, she has got herself up as a sort of serpent now—all green and silver, and winds her neck about a little more than usual.”

“Oh, she must always be doing something extraordinary. She is that kind of girl, I fancy. Do you think her pretty, Mr. Vandernoodt?”

“Very. A man might risk hanging for her—I mean a fool might.”

“You like a nez retroussé, then, and long narrow eyes?”

“When they go with such an ensemble.”

“The ensemble du serpent?”

“If you will. Woman was tempted by a serpent; why not man?”

“She is certainly very graceful; but she wants a tinge of color in her cheeks. It is a sort of Lamia beauty she has.”

“On the contrary, I think her complexion one of her chief charms. It is a warm paleness; it looks thoroughly healthy. And that delicate nose with its gradual little upward curve is distracting. And then her mouth—there never was a prettier mouth, the lips curled backward so finely, eh, Mackworth?”

“Think so? I cannot endure that sort of mouth. It looks so self-complacent, as if it knew its own beauty—the curves are too immovable. I like a mouth that trembles more.”

“For my part, I think her odious,” said a dowager. “It is wonderful what unpleasant girls get into vogue. Who are these Langens? Does anybody know them?”

“They are quite comme il faut. I have dined with them several times at the Russie. The baroness is English. Miss Harleth calls her cousin. The girl herself is thoroughly well-bred, and as clever as possible.”

“Dear me! and the baron?”

“A very good furniture picture.”

restoring your place…

fetching the rest…

More by George Eliot

  • Middlemarch
    You spend eight hundred pages in a provincial town where nothing huge happens, and somehow you end up caring desperately whether Dorothea will waste herself on the dried-up scholar Casaubon. Eliot understands why smart people make bad choices better than anyone.
  • Romola
    You have to settle into its dense Renaissance Florence, but Romola rewards you with a woman growing beyond her sheltered life while Tito Melema’s charm curdles and Savonarola’s certainty presses in. It’s morally serious, richly observed, and best when you want a slow, thoughtful read.
  • Silas Marner
    A lonely weaver counts his gold every night until it's stolen, and what wanders in to replace it changes him completely. Quiet and slow in the best way, and short enough that the sweetness never wears thin.

appears in

  • The BBC's 100 Greatest British Novels
  • The Guardian's 100 Greatest Novels (2003)

—

thank you for reading

Daniel Deronda by George Eliot. The text is in the US public domain, from the Standard Ebooks edition. Served from our own copy; read on their site for the full edition with images and typography.

Narrated by Becky Miller for LibriVox, also public domain.

First published in 1876.

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