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affability as the friend of Mr Gowan, and mentioned to him his idea of

commissioning Mr Gowan to transmit him to posterity. Blandois highly

extolling it, it occurred to Mr Dorrit that it might be agreeable to

Blandois to communicate to his friend the great opportunity reserved

for him. Blandois accepted the commission with his own free elegance of

manner, and swore he would discharge it before he was an hour older. On

his imparting the news to Gowan, that Master gave Mr Dorrit to the

Devil with great liberality some round dozen of times (for he resented

patronage almost as much as he resented the want of it), and was

inclined to quarrel with his friend for bringing him the message.

'It may be a defect in my mental vision, Blandois,' said he, 'but may I

die if I see what you have to do with this.'

'Death of my life,' replied Blandois, 'nor I neither, except that I

thought I was serving my friend.'

'By putting an upstart's hire in his pocket?' said Gowan, frowning.

'Do you mean that? Tell your other friend to get his head painted for

the sign of some public-house, and to get it done by a sign-painter. Who

am I, and who is he?'

'Professore,' returned the ambassador, 'and who is Blandois?'

Without appearing at all interested in the latter question, Gowan

angrily whistled Mr Dorrit away. But, next day, he resumed the subject

by saying in his off-hand manner and with a slighting laugh, 'Well,

Blandois, when shall we go to this Maecenas of yours?

We journeymen must take jobs when we can get them. When shall we go and

look after this job?' 'When you will,' said the injured Blandois, 'as

you please. What have I to do with it? What is it to me?'

'I can tell you what it is to me,' said Gowan. 'Bread and cheese. One

must eat! So come along, my Blandois.'

Mr Dorrit received them in the presence of his daughters and of Mr

Sparkler, who happened, by some surprising accident, to be calling

there. 'How are you, Sparkler?' said Gowan carelessly. 'When you have

to live by your mother wit, old boy, I hope you may get on better than I

do.'

Mr Dorrit then mentioned his proposal. 'Sir,' said Gowan, laughing,

after receiving it gracefully enough, 'I am new to the trade, and not

expert at its mysteries. I believe I ought to look at you in various

lights, tell you you are a capital subject, and consider when I shall be

sufficiently disengaged to devote myself with the necessary enthusiasm

to the fine picture I mean to make of you. I assure you,' and he laughed

again, 'I feel quite a traitor in the camp of those dear, gifted, good,

noble fellows, my brother artists, by not doing the hocus-pocus better.

But I have not been brought up to it, and it's too late to learn it.

Now, the fact is, I am a very bad painter, but not much worse than the

generality. If you are going to throw away a hundred guineas or so, I

am as poor as a poor relation of great people usually is, and I shall be

very much obliged to you, if you'll throw them away upon me. I'll do the

best I can for the money; and if the best should be bad, why even then,

you may probably have a bad picture with a small name to it, instead of

a bad picture with a large name to it.'

This tone, though not what he had expected, on the whole suited Mr

Dorrit remarkably well. It showed that the gentleman, highly connected,

and not a mere workman, would be under an obligation to him. He

expressed his satisfaction in placing himself in Mr Gowan's hands, and

trusted that he would have the pleasure, in their characters of private

gentlemen, of improving his acquaintance.

'You are very good,' said Gowan. 'I have not forsworn society since I

joined the brotherhood of the brush (the most delightful fellows on the

face of the earth), and am glad enough to smell the old fine gunpowder

now and then, though it did blow me into mid-air and my present calling.

You'll not think, Mr Dorrit,' and here he laughed again in the easiest

way, 'that I am lapsing into the freemasonry of the craft--for it's not

so; upon my life I can't help betraying it wherever I go, though, by

Jupiter, I love and honour the craft with all my might--if I propose a

stipulation as to time and place?'

Ha! Mr Dorrit could erect no--hum--suspicion of that kind on Mr Gowan's

frankness.

'Again you are very good,' said Gowan. 'Mr Dorrit, I hear you are going

to Rome. I am going to Rome, having friends there. Let me begin to do

you the injustice I have conspired to do you, there--not here. We shall

all be hurried during the rest of our stay here; and though there's not

a poorer man with whole elbows in Venice, than myself, I have not quite

got all the Amateur out of me yet--comprising the trade again, you

see!--and can't fall on to order, in a hurry, for the mere sake of the

sixpences.' These remarks were not less favourably received by Mr Dorrit

than their predecessors. They were the prelude to the first reception of

Mr and Mrs Gowan at dinner, and they skilfully placed Gowan on his usual

ground in the new family.

His wife, too, they placed on her usual ground. Miss Fanny understood,

with particular distinctness, that Mrs Gowan's good looks had cost her

husband very dear; that there had been a great disturbance about her

in the Barnacle family; and that the Dowager Mrs Gowan, nearly

heart-broken, had resolutely set her face against the marriage until

overpowered by her maternal feelings. Mrs General likewise clearly

understood that the attachment had occasioned much family grief and

dissension. Of honest Mr Meagles no mention was made; except that it

was natural enough that a person of that sort should wish to raise his

daughter out of his own obscurity, and that no one could blame him for

trying his best to do so.

Little Dorrit's interest in the fair subject of this easily accepted

belief was too earnest and watchful to fail in accurate observation. She

could see that it had its part in throwing upon Mrs Gowan the touch of a

shadow under which she lived, and she even had an instinctive knowledge

that there was not the least truth in it. But it had an influence in

placing obstacles in the way of her association with Mrs Gowan by making

the Prunes and Prism school excessively polite to her, but not very

intimate with her; and Little Dorrit, as an enforced sizar of that

college, was obliged to submit herself humbly to its ordinances.

Nevertheless, there was a sympathetic understanding already

established between the two, which would have carried them over

greater difficulties, and made a friendship out of a more restricted

intercourse. As though accidents were determined to be favourable to

it, they had a new assurance of congeniality in the aversion which each

perceived that the other felt towards Blandois of Paris; an aversion

amounting to the repugnance and horror of a natural antipathy towards an

odious creature of the reptile kind.

And there was a passive congeniality between them, besides this active

one. To both of them, Blandois behaved in exactly the same manner; and

to both of them his manner had uniformly something in it, which

they both knew to be different from his bearing towards others. The

difference was too minute in its expression to be perceived by others,

but they knew it to be there. A mere trick of his evil eyes, a mere turn

of his smooth white hand, a mere hair's-breadth of addition to the fall

of his nose and the rise of the moustache in the most frequent movement

of his face, conveyed to both of them, equally, a swagger personal to

themselves. It was as if he had said, 'I have a secret power in this

quarter. I know what I know.'

This had never been felt by them both in so great a degree, and never

by each so perfectly to the knowledge of the other, as on a day when he

came to Mr Dorrit's to take his leave before quitting Venice. Mrs

Gowan was herself there for the same purpose, and he came upon the

two together; the rest of the family being out. The two had not been

together five minutes, and the peculiar manner seemed to convey to them,

'You were going to talk about me. Ha! Behold me here to prevent it!'

'Gowan is coming here?' said Blandois, with a smile.

Mrs Gowan replied he was not coming.

'Not coming!' said Blandois. 'Permit your devoted servant, when you

leave here, to escort you home.'

'Thank you: I am not going home.'

'Not going home!' said Blandois. 'Then I am forlorn.'

That he might be; but he was not so forlorn as to roam away and leave

them together. He sat entertaining them with his finest compliments, and

his choicest conversation; but he conveyed to them, all the time, 'No,

no, no, dear ladies. Behold me here expressly to prevent it!'

He conveyed it to them with so much meaning, and he had such a

diabolical persistency in him, that at length, Mrs Gowan rose to depart.

On his offering his hand to Mrs Gowan to lead her down the staircase,

she retained Little Dorrit's hand in hers, with a cautious pressure, and

said, 'No, thank you. But, if you will please to see if my boatman is

there, I shall be obliged to you.'

It left him no choice but to go down before them. As he did so, hat in

hand, Mrs Gowan whispered:

'He killed the dog.'

'Does Mr Gowan know it?' Little Dorrit whispered.

'No one knows it. Don't look towards me; look towards him. He will turn

his face in a moment. No one knows it, but I am sure he did. You are?'

'I--I think so,' Little Dorrit answered.

'Henry likes him, and he will not think ill of him; he is so generous

and open himself. But you and I feel sure that we think of him as he

deserves. He argued with Henry that the dog had been already poisoned

when he changed so, and sprang at him. Henry believes it, but we do not.

I see he is listening, but can't hear.

Good-bye, my love! Good-bye!'

The last words were spoken aloud, as the vigilant Blandois stopped,

turned his head, and looked at them from the bottom of the staircase.

Assuredly he did look then, though he looked his politest, as if any

real philanthropist could have desired no better employment than to lash

a great stone to his neck, and drop him into the water flowing beyond

the dark arched gateway in which he stood. No such benefactor to mankind

being on the spot, he handed Mrs Gowan to her boat, and stood there

until it had shot out of the narrow view; when he handed himself into

his own boat and followed.

Little Dorrit had sometimes thought, and now thought again as she

retraced her steps up the staircase, that he had made his way too easily

into her father's house. But so many and such varieties of people did

the same, through Mr Dorrit's participation in his elder daughter's

society mania, that it was hardly an exceptional case. A perfect fury

for making acquaintances on whom to impress their riches and importance,

had seized the House of Dorrit.

It appeared on the whole, to Little Dorrit herself, that this same

society in which they lived, greatly resembled a superior sort of

Marshalsea. Numbers of people seemed to come abroad, pretty much

as people had come into the prison; through debt, through idleness,

relationship, curiosity, and general unfitness for getting on at home.

They were brought into these foreign towns in the custody of couriers

and local followers, just as the debtors had been brought into the

prison. They prowled about the churches and picture-galleries, much in

the old, dreary, prison-yard manner. They were usually going away again

to-morrow or next week, and rarely knew their own minds, and seldom did

what they said they would do, or went where they said they would go: in

all this again, very like the prison debtors. They paid high for poor

accommodation, and disparaged a place while they pretended to like it:

which was exactly the Marshalsea custom. They were envied when they went

away by people left behind, feigning not to want to go: and that again

was the Marshalsea habit invariably. A certain set of words and phrases,

as much belonging to tourists as the College and the Snuggery belonged

to the jail, was always in their mouths. They had precisely the same

incapacity for settling down to anything, as the prisoners used to have;

they rather deteriorated one another, as the prisoners used to do; and

they wore untidy dresses, and fell into a slouching way of life: still,

always like the people in the Marshalsea.

The period of the family's stay at Venice came, in its course, to an

end, and they moved, with their retinue, to Rome. Through a repetition

of the former Italian scenes, growing more dirty and more haggard as

they went on, and bringing them at length to where the very air was

diseased, they passed to their destination. A fine residence had been

taken for them on the Corso, and there they took up their abode, in a

city where everything seemed to be trying to stand still for ever on

the ruins of something else--except the water, which, following eternal

laws, tumbled and rolled from its glorious multitude of fountains.

Here it seemed to Little Dorrit that a change came over the Marshalsea

spirit of their society, and that Prunes and Prism got the upper hand.

Everybody was walking about St Peter's and the Vatican on somebody

else's cork legs, and straining every visible object through somebody

else's sieve. Nobody said what anything was, but everybody said what the

Mrs Generals, Mr Eustace, or somebody else said it was. The whole body

of travellers seemed to be a collection of voluntary human sacrifices,

bound hand and foot, and delivered over to Mr Eustace and his

attendants, to have the entrails of their intellects arranged according

to the taste of that sacred priesthood. Through the rugged remains

of temples and tombs and palaces and senate halls and theatres and