Chapter XIV — Pride and Prejudice

The person who speaks in a powerful patron's voice often mistakes their approval for their own worth. After dinner Mr. Bennet scarcely speaks until the servants withdraw, then draws Mr. Collins out on Lady Catherine. Collins becomes solemnly eloquent about her affability, her approval of his sermons, Rosings invitations, a pool of quadrille, permission to visit relations, marriage advice, and even the shelves she suggested in his parsonage closets.

Mrs. Bennet asks about Rosings and the heiress Miss de Bourgh. Collins reports that Lady Catherine ranks her daughter's beauty above the handsomest of her sex, then flatters the sickly girl as born to be a duchess and boasts of the delicate compliments he sometimes arranges in advance. Mr. Bennet asks whether the flattery is spontaneous or studied; Collins insists it arises from the moment, though he likes to give prepared lines an unstudied air. Bennet is delighted: his cousin is as absurd as he hoped, and he glances at Elizabeth to share the joke.

By tea the dose has been enough. Mr. Bennet invites Collins to read to the ladies. Collins starts back from a circulating-library novel, protests that he never reads novels, and chooses Fordyce's Sermons. Lydia interrupts after three pages with militia gossip about Richard, Colonel Forster, and Mr. Denny. The eldest sisters bid her hold her tongue; Collins, offended, lectures young ladies on serious books, then offers himself at backgammon. Mrs. Bennet and her daughters apologize and ask him to resume; he assures them he bears Lydia no ill-will, sits with Mr. Bennet, and prepares for the game.