Page:Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (IA memoirsofmargare01fullrich).pdf/48

46 She looked at the next,— same apparition! She then slowly passed her eyes down the whole line, and saw the same, with a suppressed smile distorting every countenance. Catching the design at once, she deliberately looked along her own side of the table, at every schoolmate in turn; every one had joined in the trick. The teachers strove to be grave, but she saw they enjoyed the joke. The servants could not suppress a titter.

‘When Warren Hastings stood at the bar of Westminster Hall, — when the Methodist preacher walked through a line of men, each of whom greeted him with a brickbat or rotten egg, — they had some preparation for the crisis, though it might be very difficult to meet it with an impassible brow. Our little girl was quite unprepared to find herself in the midst of a world which despised her, and triumphed in her disgrace.

‘She had ruled like a queen, in the midst of her companions; she had shed her animation through their lives, and loaded them with prodigal favors, nor once suspected that a popular favorite might not be loved. Now she felt that she had been but a dangerous plaything in the hands of those whose hearts she never had doubted.

‘Yet the occasion found her equal to it, for Mariana had the kind of spirit which, in a better cause, had made the Roman matron truly say of her death-wound, “It is not painful, Pœtus.” She did not blench, — she did not change countenance. She swallowed her dinner with apparent composure. She made remarks to those near her, as if she had no eyes.

‘The wrath of the foe, of course, rose higher, and the moment they were freed from the restraints of the din-