Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/285

 that thick paper, when fumigated in quarantine, as this must be, generally seemed to me to suffer more than thin; which is the fact. "Humph—ah! well, it is too late now to alter it; so it must go as it is." She then folded the cover with great exactitude; but, looking round her, she cried, "There, now, that black beast has not given me the seal!" (ding, ding). "Zezefôon, where's the seal?" Zezefôon was the only servant who was permitted to touch the seal, and she always had orders to put it away carefully, so that the other maids should not know where it was, for fear they should lend it to some rascal, (like Girius Gemmel, she would say,) who would put her signature to some forged letter or paper: and Zezefôon, as is customary with uneducated persons, hid it very often so carefully that she could not find it herself. After turning books and papers upside down, at last she produced it.

Whilst melting the wax in the candle, Lady Hester went on:—"Doctor, you never now can seal a letter decently: you once used to do it tolerably well, but now you have lost your memory and all your faculties, from talking nothing but rubbish and empty nonsense to those nasty women; and that's the reason why you never listen to anything one says, and answer 'yes,' and 'no,' without knowing to what."