Pimpernel and Rosemary quotes

At times she felt as if she could not endure the situation any longer, as if she must tell one of them. Tell Elza or Maurus, or the children! Surely they should know!

There comes a time when a doctor, knowing that his patient cannot recover, is bound in all humanity to tell him.

Then surely it was Rosemary’s duty to say to them all: “You don’t know! You have not guessed! But you are doomed. Doomed! Philip and Anna to death! You Elza and Maurus to worse than death—limitless sorrow. Now you are just living on a volcano.

“We are made like that, we Hungarians.

We hold our lives cheap, I think, because throughout our history we have always had to sacrifice them for our country.

And also, I think, that we have a certain Oriental fatalism in us. Not the fatalism of the Muslim, who abdicates free will, but the faith of the Christian who believes that God ordains everything and that it is useless to fight His decrees.”

Elza had noticed nothing. Anna and Philip were still laughing and chattering, Maurus muttering curses. No one had noticed anything. Only for Rosemary had the world—her own beautiful world of truth and loyalty—come to an end.

Peter had lied. Peter was playing a double game.

It was no use arguing, no use hoping. The only thing to do was to go on groping in this mystery that deepened and deepened, until it became tangible, material like a thick, dark fog through which glided ghouls and demons who whispered and laughed.

M. de Kervoisin was also enjoying the anxieties to which his friend was a prey in his capacity of Governor of this unruly country.

There is something in a friend’s troubles that is not altogether displeasing to a philosopher.

And M. de Kervoisin was a philosopher. He had come over to give advice to his friend, and the role of adviser in a difficult situation was one which he knew how to fulfil with infinite discretion and supreme tact.

“Hate him?” Jasper retorted harshly. “

Does one hate a snake⁠—or a worm?

”

If Elza had been a religious woman she would not have suffered nearly so cruelly.

The pagan knows nothing of the comfort of prayer, of diving blindly from the rocks of care into the ocean of God’s love.

And Elza was only a pagan from whom the thin veneer of Christianity laid on in early life had been rubbed off long ago. She would not now be on her knees, murmuring with heaven-born resignation: “Lord, not my will, but thine be done!”

“

Evil in any form is best destroyed as quickly as possible.

”

“Not now?” he retorted. “

Any time, sweetheart, is kissing time!

And if you only knew how I ache with wanting your kiss!”

“Whereupon you, my dear friend, stepped in like an unwanted deus ex machina, and settled the business to your own satisfaction, if not to theirs.”

“I never was good at Latin,” Peter said, with his most engaging smile, “but we’ll leave it at that if you like.”

De Kervoisin was silent for a moment or two, his attention being seemingly riveted on the rings of smoke that rose from his cigarette.

He even could mention Peter’s name calmly; and a quaint old English saying came to Rosemary’s mind, ever her professional activities brought her in contact with extraordinary people.

“Nought so queer as folk!”

She almost said it aloud;

Would you hate him for that? Not you! If he has revolted you too much, you may punish him, but even so you’ll only smile: it is boy’s nature, you will say. Well, boy’s nature is man’s nature. Cruel, vicious!

Civilization has laid a veneer over us.

Some of us appear gentle and kind and good. Gentle? Yes! On the surface. Deep down in our souls, grown men as we are, we would still love to tease the cat, or to see a terrier worry a stoat.