Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/48

 Charles turned to me, and asked with great earnestness if I did not think General Moore was the better made man of the two, I answered, 'He is certainly very handsome.'—'Oh! but,' said Charles, 'Hester, if you were only to see him when he is bathing, his body is as perfect as his face.' I never even smiled, although inwardly I could not help smiling at his naïveté.

"I consider it a mark of vulgarity and of the association of bad ideas in people's minds when they make a handle of such equivoques in an ill-natured way, as you recollect Mr. T. did when he was at Alexandria. People of good breeding do not even smile, when, perhaps, low persons would suppose they might show a great deal of affected primosity. Only imagine the Due de Blacas to be announced;—what would my old servant, poor William Wiggins, have done? He would never have got out the word." Here Lady Hester set up laughing most heartily, and then she laughed, and laughed again. I think I never saw anything make her relax from her composure so much.

"As for what people in England say or have said about me, I don't care that for them," (snapping her fingers); "and whatever vulgar-minded people say or think of me has no more effect than if they were to spit at the sun. It only falls on their own nose, and all the harm they do is to themselves. They may spit