She listens, but how curiously! with a sort of partial comprehension
afloat upon her face, more of the guinea-pig than of the rabbit type.
The twain are sharply differentiated, and one of the objects of the
painter seems to have been to show us how far one human being may be
removed from another. The husband is painfully clear to himself, the
wife is happily unconscious of herself. Now everything in the picture
suggests order; the man's face tells a mind the same from day to day,
from year to year, the same passions, the same prayers; his apparel,
the wide-brimmed hat, the cloak falling in long straight folds, the
peaked shoon, are an habitual part of him. We see little of the room,
but every one remembers the chandelier hanging from the ceiling
reflected in the mirror opposite. These reflections have lasted for
three hundred years; they are the same to-day as the day they were
painted, and so is the man; he lives again, he is a type that Nature
never wearies of reproducing, for I suppose he is essential to life.
This sober Flemish interior expresses my mistress's character almost
as well as her own apartment used to do. I always experienced a chill,
a sense of formality, when the door was opened, and while I stood
waiting for her in the prim drawing-room.
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