He was such a cold, self-righteous, solemn, pompous pedant, and withal such an a*s, so shallow, so empty, so null, Le Mesurier felt. His pose of mental superiority was so unwarranted, so odious. He betrayed in a hundred inflections of his voice, in perpetual supercilious upliftings of his eyebrows, the contempt he entertained for Lily’s husband, as for a mere eating, drinking, sport-loving animal, without culture, without fineness, without acquirements, but unfairly endowed by Fortune with large estates and a charming wife; a wife who, in other hands, with a wise and discerning helpmeet, might (to use one of Shergold’s own irritating catch-words), “have raised the pyramid of self-culture to the highest point.” Shergold imagined himself to be like Goethe, to resemble him physically, as well
