Page:Satire in the Victorian novel (IA satireinvictoria00russrich).pdf/233



John; nor could you have foreseen in the folds of its long nightgown the white surplice in which it was hereafter cruelly to exercise the souls of its parishioners, and strangely to non-plus its old-fashioned vicar by flourishing aloft in a pulpit the shirt-*like raiment which had never before waved higher than the reading-desk."

"Yet even then," she adds, "the rare but precious plant existed—three rods of Aaron blossomed within a circuit of twenty miles." Their clerical functions are summed up later by the gardener William:

"They're allus magnifying their office: it is a pity but their office could magnify them; but it does nought o' t' soart."

The autobiographical heroine of Villette recounts her experience of being subjected to persuasive priestly exhortation, and ironically repeats the phrases:

"I half realized myself in that condition also; passed under discipline, moulded, trained, inoculated, and so on."

She is enabled to resist, because,

"* * * there was a hollowness within, and a flourish around 'Holy Church' which tempted me but moderately."

She discusses at length a Papist pamphlet left on her desk for her perusal:

"The voice of that sly little book was a honeyed voice; its accents were all unction and balm. Here roared no utterance of Rome's thunders, no blasting of the breath of her displeasure. was to guide and win. She persecute? Oh dear no! not on any account! * * * It was a canting, sentimental, shallow little book, yet * * * I was amused with the gambols
 * * * Far be it from her to threaten or to coerce; her wish