Explore "Ernest Maltravers Book V" by Edward Bulwer-lytton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"It is the soul that sees. The outward eyes Present the object, but the mind descries; And thence delight, disgust, or cool indifference rise. "CRABBE.
WHEN Maltravers entered the enormous saloon, hung with damask, and decorated with the ponderous enrichments and furniture of the time of Louis XIV. (that most showy and barbarous of all tastes, which has nothing in it of the graceful, nothing of the picturesque, and which, nowadays, people who should know better imitate with a ludicrous servility), he found sixteen persons assembled. His host stepped up from a circle which surrounded him, and formally presented his new visitor to the rest. He was struck with the likeness which the sister of Valerie bore to Valerie herself; but it was a sobered and chastened likeness -- less handsome, less impressive. Mrs. George Herbert -- such was the name she now owned -- was a pretty, shrinking, timid girl, fond of her husband, and mightily awed by her father-in-law. Maltravers sat by her, and drew her into conversation.