[Gutenberg 13576] • The Poor Gentleman

The story of *The Poor Gentleman* is one of the series in which M. Conscience has delineated various grades of female character in positions of trial. In *The Village Innkeeper* he has shown the weaker traits of woman distracted between an inborn sense of propriety and a foolish ambition for high, life. In *The Conscript* his heroine displays the nobler virtues of uncorrupted humble life; and, with few characters, taken from the lowest walks, he shows the triumph of honest, straightforward earnestness and pertinacious courage, even when they are brought in conflict with authority. *The Poor Gentleman* closes the series; and, selecting a heroine from the educated classes of his country-people M. Conscience has demonstrated how superior a genuine woman becomes to all the mishaps of fortune, and how successfully she subdues that imaginary fate before which so many are seen to fall.

Excerpt 1:

Near the end of July, 1842, an open caleche might have been seen rolling along one of the three highways that lead from the frontiers of Holland toward Antwerp. Although the vehicle had evidently been cleaned with the utmost care, everything about it betokened decay. Its joints were open, discolored, and weather-beaten, and it swung from side to side on its springs like a rickety skeleton. Its patched leathers shone in the sunshine with the oil that had been used to freshen them, but the borrowed lustre could not hide the cracks and repairs with which they were defaced. The door-handles and other parts of the vehicle that were made of copper had been carefully polished, and the vestiges of silver-plating, still visible in the creases of the ornaments, denoted a former richness which had been almost entirely worn out by time and use. The caleche was drawn by a stout, heavy horse, whose short and lumbering gait intimated very clearly that he was oftener employed in the plough and cart than in carrying his owner toward the capital."

Excerpt 2:

As Monsieur De Vlierbeck entered Antwerp, where he knew he would be an object of notice, he assumed a jaunty, self-satisfied air. Anyone seeing him which might have deceived into believing him the happiest man on earth . . . even while he suffered from the profoundest agony.

He was, he feared, about to suffer abject humiliation. This would cut him to the very heart! But there was a being in the world whom he loved better than his life or honor -- his only child, his daughter. For her, how frequently had he sacrificed his pride -- how frequently had he suffered the pangs of martyrdom!