Her waist, sir, and
my arm had once been commensurate: now not three of Homer's heroes
could embrace her. Her voice could once touch my heart-strings into
music; it brayed them now, between the millstones of the commonplace.
Figure to yourself a man of my sensibility condemned to live on these
terms!"
He paused, tightened his grasp on his knee, and pursued.
"You remember, sir, the story of the baker in Langius? He narrates
that a certain woman conceived a violent desire to bite the naked
shoulders of a baker who used to pass underneath her window with his
wares. So imperative did this longing become, that at length the
woman appealed to her husband, who (being a good-natured man, and
unwilling to disoblige her) hired the baker, for a certain price, to
come and be bitten. The man allowed her two bites, but denied a
third, being unable to contain himself for pain. The author goes on
to relate that, for want of this third bite, she bore one dead child,
and two living. My own case," continued the Reverend William, "was
somewhat similar. Lydia's unrelieved babble reacted upon her bulk,
and awoke in me an absorbing, fascinating desire to strike her.
I longed to see her quiver. I fought against the feeling, stifled
it, trod it down: it awoke again. It filled my thoughts, my dreams;
it gnawed me like a vulture. A hundred times while she sat
complacently turning her inane periods, I had to hug my fist to my
breast, lest it should leap out and strike her senseless.
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