Where was I?
Oh yes. We finally get to learn Victoria's horrible story from her sister, the Marchioness... except we don't. Because the sister really doesn't know all that much, because Victoria writes her, "a solemn vow has passed [my] lips, never to disclose preceding events without permission--ask no questions." So we only get to hear bits.
And where we'd left off was the Marchioness learning Victoria is dead. (Except since this is flashback, we know she won't be or else Matilda wouldn't have met her so many years later. So the Marchioness learns her sister died in childbirth and grieves. Then....
"About six weeks after the dreadful information we had received, a letter came to me, directed in an unknown hand; I opened it-- judge what were my emotions in reading these words, deeply impressed upon my memory. "Your sister lives, though dead to all the world but you... you shall soon hear more, but more than one life depends upon your secrecy."Oh also that, "she perhaps might never see me more."
Such gothic perfection!!! Just the words, "might never see me more." Imprisoned ladies with secrets.
I don't know if these were gothic cliches before or after Parsons, but it's wonderful. Like the very beginning with the unnamed lady (Matilda) coming into a poor cottage in a storm and there happens to be a terrible haunted castle nearby.
But then the story stops because "you know all I know of this melancholy affair." Parsons will only divulge so many secrets at once.
At this point they reflect on Victoria's fate now and actually think of doing something to help her. In fact, "the Marquis can scarcely be restrained from exerting himself." But they decide to wait for more information on Victoria. (because the Count might decide, hey, you know that kidnapping? I should tell someone.--- yeah.) Though there is also the evil uncle count to contend with. He's headed for Paris and we wouldn't want to miss Matilda being terrorized by him, would we? So Matilda pulls a Joseph and waits around to be caught by the person she's running from, even though she knows she should run.
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| I love this one and will find any excuse to post it. |
But in the meantime... We finally have an eligible man for the heroine. (About time, Parsons!)
It is indeed the brother of her new friend, Adelaide De Bouville, and he is a count, but not evil! (Thus ruining the entire premise of my blog. Damn you, Parsons!!!!!) And we know he is not evil because of his countenance. Pretty people must be good, right? Matilda was "uncommonly struck by his appearance; she thought him (and with justice), the most amiable man she had ever seen."
He is everything he ought to be according to English standards but in a novel where he has to be French for story reasons. "He had all the elegance of French manners, without their frivolities, an exchellent understanding, and a desire of improving it induced him to visit England." Which is, of course, the mecca of learning and proper behavior.
He "returned a truly accomplished young man, with much good sense and polished manners, a strict integrity of heart, and the highest sense of duty and love for his mother and sister." It's a good thing he went to England. Without England he would have had no good qualities at all.
He, of course, falls in love with her immediately because she was "so easily understood in a short visit, from the frankness and naivety of her manners." She knows nothing of the world and is therefore all "unaffected sweetness" that "rendered it impossible to avoid bestowing that homage to which she made no claims." Etc, etc, etc, sweetness and light, etc, sweetness, etc, and light, etc.
Moral of the story: women with too much knowledge are dangerous and unattractive.
Better to find the dumb, uneducated ones.
So then he leaves and they get a letter from Joseph where he tells about the terrible fire and Bertha's death. At which point Marchioness utters the line in the title, and the Marquis almost decides to do something!!
"I shall never forgive myself for not interfering in this business years ago," he cries. (Or, you know, even interfering a couple of weeks ago when she was kidnapped.)
"I am determined, if no news arrives from her shortly, to enter a process against the Count, and oblige him to produce her."
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