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Mon 15 Jul, 2013 09:57 pm
She had built herself a castle of hopes, and it had not been a castle in Spain, but a structure well on the probable side of the Pyrenees. There had been a solid foundation on which to build.Miss de Frey’s fortune was an assured and unhampered one, her liking for Comus had been an obvious fact; his courtship of her a serious reality.And now the shadow suddenly stood forth as the reality, and the castle of hopes was a ruin, a hideous mortification of dust and débris, with the skeleton outlines of its chambers still standing to make mockery of its discomfited architect.
Could someone please tell me what the bold part means? Thank you.
@lizfeehily,
It doesn't mean, "Put that bloody cigarette out!", purportedly HH Munro's last words before being killed by a sniper.
Quote:and it had not been a castle in Spain, but a structure well on the probable side of the Pyrenees
The other side of the Pyrenees to Spain is France.
@lizfeehily,
The expression "castles in Spain" is a colloquialism for unreasonable dreams, wishful thinking. As Lordy has pointed out, the reference to the Pyrenees is due to the fact that the Pyrenees mountain range is the border between Spain and France. So the passage means that Miss deFrey's hopes and dreams had not been all that unrealistic, were not "castles in Spain" but "on the probable side of the Pyrenees," i.e. realizable.
I just hate it when someone gives a plausible, nay, an accurate answer before i have the opportunity to say something silly and completely irrelevant.
@Lustig Andrei,
Quote:As Lordy has pointed out,
T'wasn't Lordy, M, it was LOL.
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