Sense and Sensibility, Volume the Third, Chapters Six and Seven

In which Elinor and Marianne arrive at the Palmers' residence, where Marianne takes dreadfully ill, everyone is very concerned and Colonel Brandon is dispatched to fetch Mrs. Dashwood; and in which there is a shocking twist!



Drama! Yes, we've come to the part that fans of the book have most likely been waiting for, where everything actually comes to a head, and we see that, while an excess of sensibility (here defined as feeling and expressing all emotions most intensely) can be dangerous, an excess of calmness and tranquility (or "sense") can sometimes lead to inaction when action may very much be needed. I wonder if any sort of lesson will be learned by either or both of the sisters?

Oh, crap. I have to use the "tedious moralizing" tag on myself, now.

4:46 - Showing her child to the housekeeper.

5:49 - The gardener's lamentations.

The only note I've got is at 15:07, where we hear about another card game. Mrs. Jennings insists that Colonel Brandon stay during Marianne's illness in order to keep her company while Elinor was sitting with Marianne, and "play at piquet of an evening," a pretense Mrs. Jennings thought necessary as to not separate Colonel Sad-eyes from Elinor, and which he was more than willing to accept so as not to be separated from Marianne. Well, piquet (in which the "t" is pronounced, because what are we, French?) is a trick-taking card game, like whist is (y'all remember whist, right?), but for only two players. It seems a bit complicated, involving a 32-card deck that had the 2-6 cards of each suit removed. Each player gets 12 cards, but then gets a chance to exchange up to five of them with cards from the remaining eight cards of the deck. Once both have exchanged, one declares what points they can make with their hand (like, "Point of four," meaning four of one suit). The other one then sees if they can beat it, and points are scored accordingly. You apparently want to do this without revealing too much of the specifics of what you actually have in your hand. Once this "declaration" phase is over and scored, they move into "play," which is fairly standard trick-taking: one lays down a card, the other lays down a card of the same suit. Whoever lays down the higher card wins the trick and scores. There are other ways to score as well, involving who does what first and who's dealing and such. Ultimately, whoever makes it to 100 points first wins.

Anyway, piquet was developed in France and was enormously popular there for a long time. It went in and out of fashion among Britain's upper crust for a couple of hundred years, until roughly a century ago when Bridge knocked it down into obscurity. And if you want to play it, there's an app for that. Because of course there is. Free on Android, and... $7.99 on iOS? Dang. You Apple folks are getting shafted in the archaic card game department.

28:55 - Opened a window-shutter.

If you would like to read along, the text can be found at Project Gutenberg, and high-res copies of the Thompson illustrations can be found in the British Library's Flickr stream. No reading ahead, though!