Hardy Takes the Measure of Troy — Far from the Madding Crowd

Before Troy is seen again, Hardy stops to take his measure, and the portrait is not flattering. Troy has no use for memory or hope. For him the past is yesterday and the future is to-morrow, never the day after, so he is never disappointed, and he does not miss what he has never had, which makes him seem to enjoy more than sober people do. He is fairly truthful to men, but to women he lies like a Cretan, which wins him a quick welcome in lively company, since the favour so gained is only a matter for the future to settle. His vices come by impulse and his virtues by cool thought, and the second are talked about more often than seen. He speaks fluently and without stopping, so that he can speak of love and think of dinner, or be eager to pay and mean to owe.

Hardy then turns to flattery, which every man knows works on women and almost none has tested. Troy has tested it. He has been heard to say that with womankind there are only two methods, flattery or cursing and swearing, and that if you treat them fairly you are a lost man.

A week or two after the shearing, Bathsheba, glad of Boldwood's absence, walks out to her hayfields. Among the gnarled forms of the men and the flexible forms of the women in their tilt bonnets, a bright scarlet spot comes out from behind a waggon and goes on loading hay as if it belonged there. It is the sergeant, who has come haymaking for pleasure, and nobody can deny that he does the mistress real knight-service by it. He sees her, sticks his pitchfork in the ground, picks up his cane and comes forward. Bathsheba blushes with half-angry embarrassment, and fixes her eyes and her feet on the straight line of her path.