John; nor could you have foreseen in the folds of its long nightgown the white surplice in which it was hereafter cruelly to exercise the souls of its parishioners, and strangely to non-plus its old-fashioned vicar by flourishing aloft in a pulpit the shirt-*like raiment which had never before waved higher than the reading-desk."
"Yet even then," she adds, "the rare but precious plant
existed—three rods of Aaron blossomed within a circuit
of twenty miles." Their clerical functions are summed up
later by the gardener William:[1]
"They're allus magnifying their office: it is a pity but their
office could magnify them; but it does nought o' t' soart."
The autobiographical heroine of Villette recounts her
experience of being subjected to persuasive priestly exhortation,
and ironically repeats the phrases:[2]
"I half realized myself in that condition also; passed under
discipline, moulded, trained, inoculated, and so on."
She is enabled to resist, because,
"* * * there was a hollowness within, and a flourish
around 'Holy Church' which tempted me but moderately."
She discusses at length a Papist pamphlet left on her
desk for her perusal:[3]
"The voice of that sly little book was a honeyed voice; its accents
were all unction and balm. Here roared no utterance of
Rome's thunders, no blasting of the breath of her displeasure.
- * * Far be it from her to threaten or to coerce; her wish
was to guide and win. She persecute? Oh dear no! not on any account! * * * It was a canting, sentimental, shallow little book, yet * * * I was amused with the gambols
