Here are two people almost identical in blood; pent up together on
one small island, so that their intercourse (one would have thought)
must be as close as that of prisoners who shared one cell of the
Bastille; the same in language and religion; and yet a few years of
quarrelsome isolation - a mere forenoon's tiff, as one may call it,
in comparison with the great historical cycles - has so separated
their thoughts and ways that not unions, not mutual dangers, nor
steamers, nor railways, nor all the king's horses and all the king's
men, seem able to obliterate the broad distinction. In the
trituration of another century or so the corners may disappear; but
in the meantime, in the year of grace 1871, I was as much in a new
country as if I had been walking out of the Hotel St. Antoine at
Antwerp.
I felt a little thrill of pleasure at my heart as I realised the
change, and strolled away up the street with my hands behind my back,
noting in a dull, sensual way how foreign, and yet how friendly, were
the slopes of the gables and the colour of the tiles, and even the
demeanour and voices of the gossips round about me.
Pages:
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143