think Belle was improved in appearance by having submitted to the
ministry of Mrs. Petulengro's hand. Nature never intended Belle to
appear as a Gypsy; she had made her too proud and serious. A more proper
part for her was that of a heroine, a queenly heroine,--that of Theresa
of Hungary, for example; or, better still, that of Brynhilda the
Valkyrie, the beloved of Sigurd, the serpent-killer, who incurred the
curse of Odin, because, in the tumult of spears, she sided with the young
king, and doomed the old warrior to die, to whom Odin had promised
victory.

"Belle looked at me for a moment in silence; then turning to Mrs.
Petulengro, she said, 'You have had your will with me; are you
satisfied?' 'Quite so, madam,' said Mrs. Petulengro, 'and I hope you
will be so too, as soon as you have looked in the glass.' 'I have looked
in one already,' said Belle,' and the glass does not flatter.' . . ."

Here it is easy to notice how the uncolloquial and even ugly English does
not destroy the illusion of the scene, but entirely subserves it and
makes these two or three pages fine painter's work for richness and still
drama.

I have not forgotten the Man in Black, though I gladly would. Not that I
am any more in sympathy with his theology than Borrow's, if it is more
interesting and venerable. But in this priest, Borrow's method, always
instinctively intense if not exaggerated, falls to caricature. I have no
objection to caricature; when it is of a logical or incidental kind I
enjoy it, even in "The Romany Rye"; I enjoy, for example, the snoring
Wordsworthian, without any prejudice against Wordsworth. "The Catholic
Times" as late as 1900 was still angry with Borrow's "crass anti-Catholic
bigotry." I should have expected them to laugh consumedly at a priest, a