"Granada, Granada, oh, when shall I see
My love in thy gardens, there waiting for me!"
From that night forward she had been restless and petulant and like one
watching and waiting. It seemed to her that she must fly from the life
which was choking her. It was all so petty and so small. People went
about sneaking into other people's homes like detectives; they turned
yellow and grew scrofulous from too much salt pork, green tea, native
tobacco, and the heat of feather beds. The making of a rag carpet was an
event, the birth of a baby every year till the woman was forty-five was a
commonplace; but the exit of a youth to a seminary to become a priest, or
the entrance to the novitiate of a young girl, were matters as important
as a battle to Napoleon the Great.
How had she gone through it all so long, she asked herself? The presence
of Jean Jacques had become almost unbearable when, the day done, he
retired to the feather bed which she loathed, though he would have looked
upon discarding it like the abdication of his social position. A feather
bed was a sign of social position; it was as much the dais to his honour
as is the woolsack to the Lord Chancellor in the House of Lords.
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