I am sure there was a case in the day before yesterday's
paper, extracted from one of the French newspapers, about a journeyman
shoemaker who was jealous of a young girl in an adjoining
village, because she wouldn't shut herself up in an air-tight
three-pair-of-stairs, and charcoal herself to death with him; and who
went and hid himself in a wood with a sharp-pointed knife, and rushed
out, as she was passing by with a few friends, and killed himself first,
and then all the friends, and then her--no, killed all the friends
first, and then herself, and then HIMself--which it is quite frightful
to think of. Somehow or other,' added Mrs Nickleby, after a momentary
pause, 'they always ARE journeyman shoemakers who do these things in
France, according to the papers. I don't know how it is--something in
the leather, I suppose.'
'But this man, who is not a shoemaker--what has he done, mother, what
has he said?' inquired Nicholas, fretted almost beyond endurance, but
looking nearly as resigned and patient as Mrs Nickleby herself. 'You
know, there is no language of vegetables, which converts a cucumber into
a formal declaration of attachment.
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