370 PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OP 



years she would have condemned some of the utter- 

 ances of her earlier ones. As time passed she grew 

 more and more mellow and tender more and more 

 into the form and texture of the wife needed by Car- 

 lyle. Had she lived a little longer his self-reproaches 

 would never have been heard.* Let me, however, for- 

 sake surmises and return to facts. He had laid his 

 wife in Haddington Churchyard. The summer had 

 passed, and harsh, dark winter was approaching. To 



* There was a fund of tenderness and liberality in Mrs. Car 

 lyle; but her sarcasm could, on occasion, bite like nitric acid. 

 Like her husband, she could hit off a character or peculiarity 

 with a simple stroke of the tongue. Her stories sparkled with 

 wit and humour. It may be an old yarn, but she caused me to 

 shake with laughter by her inimitable way of telling the story of 

 an old French priest, who discoursed to his peasant congregation 

 on Samson's feat of tying the foxes' tails together, and sending 

 them with burning brands through the standing corn. The ruin 

 to agricultural produce was described so vividly, and with such 

 local and domestic applications, that the people burst into weep- 

 ing. Their sobs and tears reacted on the old priest himself. He 

 also fell to weeping, but tried to assuage the general grief by 

 calling out, "Ne pleurez pas, mes enfants. Ne pleurez pas; ce 

 n'est pas vrai ! " Her voice was exquisitely comic as she told this 

 story. The only intimation that I ever had of past unhappiness 

 on her part was given during an evening visit when I found her 

 alone. She then told me that some years previously she had 

 kept a journal, in which, to relieve her mind, she wrote down 

 her most secret thoughts and feelings. She condemned, as she 

 spoke to me, this habit of introspection. One day she had left 

 the book upon her desk, and on returning to her room, found 

 there a visitor actually looking into the journal. He probably 

 regarded it as a mere library book ; but her wrath and rage, on 

 finding sayings and sentiments intended for her eye alone, and 

 kept secret even from Carlyle, thus pried into, were uncontrolla- 

 ble. As she spoke to me her anger seemed to revive, and its 

 potency could not be doubted. When I quitted her, I carried 

 away the impression that her maturer judgment had caused her 

 to regard these journal entries as the foolish utterances of a too 

 sensitive past. 



