It left him
unsettled, with a legacy of idle time on his hands, and, in so doing,
it let out all the foreign sides of his character, one on the top of
another, like rats out of a bag.
Now as an Italian-Englishman, now as a German-Englishman, and now as a
French-Englishman, he drifted in and out of all the sitting-rooms in the
house, with nothing to talk of but Miss Rachel's treatment of him; and
with nobody to address himself to but me. I found him (for example) in
the library, sitting under the map of Modern Italy, and quite unaware of
any other method of meeting his troubles, except the method of talking
about them. "I have several worthy aspirations, Betteredge; but what am
I to do with them now? I am full of dormant good qualities, if Rachel
would only have helped me to bring them out!" He was so eloquent in
drawing the picture of his own neglected merits, and so pathetic in
lamenting over it when it was done, that I felt quite at my wits' end
how to console him, when it suddenly occurred to me that here was a case
for the wholesome application of a bit of ROBINSON CRUSOE. I hobbled out
to my own room, and hobbled back with that immortal book.
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