Emma by Jane Austen. Vol. 3. CHAPTER XVII. Mrs. Weston's friends were all made happy by her safety, and if the satisfaction of her well-doing could be increased to Emma, it was by knowing her to be the mother of a little girl. She had been decided in wishing for a Miss Weston. She would not acknowledge that it was with any view of making a match for her hereafter with either of Isabella's sons, but she was convinced that a daughter would suit both father and mother best. It would be a great comfort to Mr. Weston as he grew older, and even Mr. Weston might be growing older ten years hence, to have his fireside enlivened by the sports and the nonsense, the freaks and the fancies of a child never banished from home. And Mrs. Weston, no one could doubt that a daughter would be most to her, and it would be quite a pity that anyone who so well knew how to teach should not have their powers in exercise again. She has had the advantage, you know, of practicing on me, she continued, like la baronne d'Almaine on la comtesse d'Ostalis in Madame de Jean-Lise's Adelaide and Theodore, and we shall now see her own little Adelaide educated on a more perfect plan. That is, replied Mr. Knightley, she will indulge her even more than she did you, and believe that she does not indulge her at all. It will be the only difference. Poor child, cried Emma, at that rate what will become of her? Nothing very bad, the fate of thousands, she will be disagreeable in infancy and correct herself as she grows older. I am losing all my bitterness against spoiled children, my dearest Emma. I, who am owing all my happiness to you, would not it be horrible in gratitude in me to be severe on them? Emma laughed and replied, but I had the assistance of all your endeavours to counteract the indulgence of other people. I doubt whether my own sense would have corrected me without it. Do you? I have no doubt. Nature gave you understanding. Miss Taylor gave you principles. You must have done well. My interference was quite as likely to do harm as good. It was very natural for you to say what right has he to lecture me, and I am afraid very natural for you to feel that it was done in a disagreeable manner. I do not believe I did you any good. The good was all to myself by making you an object of the tenderest affection to me. I could not think about you so much without doting on you, false and all, and by dint of fancying so many errors have been in love with you ever since you were thirteen at least. I am sure you were of use to me, cried Emma. I was very often influenced rightly by you, oftener than I would own at the time. I am very sure you did me good. And if poor little Anna Weston is to be spoiled, it will be the greatest humanity in you to do as much for her as you have done for me, except falling in love with her when she is thirteen. How often, when you were a girl, have you said to me with one of your saucy looks, Mr. Knightley, I am going to do so and so. Papa says I may, or I have Miss Taylor's leave, something which you knew I did not approve. In such cases my interference was giving you two bad feelings instead of one. What an amiable creature I was! No wonder you should hold my speeches in such affectionate remembrance. Mr. Knightley, you always called me. Mr. Knightley, and from habit, it has not so very formal a sound. And yet it is formal. I want you to call me something else, but I do not know what. I remember once calling you George in one of my amiable fits about ten years ago. I did it because I thought it would offend you, but as you made no objection I never did it again. And cannot you call me George now? Impossible! I never can call you anything but Mr. Knightley. I will not promise, even to equal the elegant terceness of Mrs. Alton, by calling you Mr. K. But I will promise, she added presently, laughing and blushing, I will promise to call you once by your Christian name. I do not say when, but perhaps you may guess where, in the building in which N takes M for better for worse. Emma grieved that she could not be more openly just to one important service which his better sense would have rendered her, to the advice which would have saved her from the worst of all her womanly follies, her willful intimacy with Harriet Smith. But it was too tender a subject. She could not enter on it. Harriet was very seldom mentioned between them. This, on his side, might merely proceed from her not being thought of, but Emma was rather inclined to attribute it to delicacy and a suspicion from some appearances that their friendship were declining. She was aware herself that, parting under any other circumstances, they certainly should have corresponded more, and that her intelligence would not have rested, as it now almost wholly did, on Isabella's letters. He might observe that it was so. The pain of being obliged to practice concealment towards him was very little inferior to the pain of having made Harriet unhappy. Isabella sent quite as good an account of her visitor as could be expected. On her first arrival she had thought her out of spirits, which appeared perfectly natural as there was a dentist to be consulted. But since that business had been over, she did not appear to find Harriet different from what she had known her before. Isabella, to be sure, was no very quick observer, yet if Harriet had not been equal to playing with the children, it would not have escaped her. Emma's comforts and hopes were most agreeably carried on by Harriet's being to stay longer. Her fortnight was likely to be a month at least. Mr. and Mrs. John Knightley were to come down in August, and she was invited to remain till they could bring her back. John does not even mention your friend, said Mr. Knightley. Here is his answer if you like to see it. It was the answer to the communication of his intended marriage. Emma accepted it with a very eager hand, with an impatience all alive to know what he would say about it, and not at all checked by hearing that her friend was unmentioned. John enters like a brother into my happiness, continued Mr. Knightley, but he is no complimenter, and though I well know him to have, likewise, a most brotherly affection for you, he is so far from making flourishes that any other young woman might think him rather cool in her praise. But I am not afraid of your seeing what he writes. He writes like a sensible man, replied Emma, when she had read the letter. I honour his sincerity. It is very plain that he considers the good fortune of the engagement as all on my side, but that he is not without hope of my growing in time, as worthy of your affection as you think me already. Had he said anything to bear a different construction, I should not have believed him. My Emma, he means no such thing. He only means he and I should differ very little in our estimation of the two, interrupted she with a sort of serious smile, much less perhaps than he is aware of, if we could enter without ceremony or reserve on the subject. Emma, my dear Emma. Oh, she cried with more thorough gaiety. If you fancy your brother does not do me justice, only wait till my dear father is in the secret and hear his opinion. Depend upon it, he will be much farther from doing you justice. He will think all the happiness, all the advantage on your side of the question, all the merit on mine. I wish I may not sink into poor Emma with him at once. His tender compassion towards oppressed worth can go no father. Ah, he cried. I wish your father might be half as easily convinced as John will be of our having every right that equal worth can give to be happy together. I am amused by one part of John's letter. Did you notice it? Where he says that my information did not take him wholly by surprise, that he was rather an expectation of hearing something of the kind. If I understand your brother, he only means so far as you're having some thoughts of marrying. He had no idea of me. He seems perfectly unprepared for that. Yes, yes, but I am amused that he should have seen so far into my feelings. What has he been judging by? I am not conscious of any difference in my spirits or conversation that could prepare him at this time for my marrying any more than at another. But it was so, I suppose. I dare say there was a difference when I was staying with him the other day. I believe I did not play with the children quite so much as usual. I remember one evening the poor boy saying, Uncle seems always tired now. The time was coming when the news must spread farther and other person's reception of it tried. As soon as Mrs. Weston was sufficiently recovered to admit Mr. Woodhouse's visits, Emma having it in view that her gentle reasonings should be employed in the cause, resolved first to announce it at home and then at Randall's. But how to break it to her father at last? She had bound herself to do it in such an hour of Mr. Knightley's absence or when it came to the point her heart would have failed her and she must have put it off. But Mr. Knightley was to come at such a time and follow up the beginning she was to make. She was forced to speak and to speak cheerfully too. She must not make it a more decided subject of misery to him by a melancholy tone herself. She must not appear to think it a misfortune. With all the spirit she could command, she prepared him first for something strange and then in a few words said that if his consent and approbation could be obtained, which she trusted would be attended with no difficulty, since it was a plan to promote the happiness of all, she and Mr. Knightley meant to marry, by which means Hartfield would receive the constant addition of that person's company whom she knew he loved next to his daughters and Mrs. Weston best in the world. Poor man! It was at first a considerable shock to him and he tried earnestly to dissuade her from it. She was reminded more than once of having always said she would never marry and assured that it would be a great deal better for her to remain single and told of poor Isabella and poor Miss Taylor. But it would not do. Emma hung about him affectionately and smiled and said it must be so, and that he must not class her with Isabella and Mrs. Weston, whose marriages taking them from Hartfield had indeed made a melancholy change. But she was not going from Hartfield. She should be always there. She was introducing no change in their numbers or their comforts, but for the better. And she was very sure that he would be a great deal the happier for having Mr. Knightley always at hand when he were once got used to the idea. Did he not love Mr. Knightley very much? He would not deny that he did. She was sure. Whom did he ever want to consult on business but Mr. Knightley? Who was so useful to him? Who so ready to write his letters? Who so glad to assist him? Who so cheerful, so attentive, so attached to him? Would not he like to have him always on the spot? Yes, that was all very true. Mr. Knightley could not be there too often. He should be glad to see him every day. But they did see him every day as it was. Why could not they go on as they had done? Mr. Woodhouse could not be soon reconciled. But the worst was overcome. The idea was given. Time and continual repetition must do the rest. To Emma's entreaties and assurances succeeded Mr. Knightley's, whose fond praise of her gave the subject even a kind of welcome. And he was soon used to be talked to by each on every fair occasion. They had all the assistance which Isabella could give, by letters of the strongest approbation, and Mrs. Weston was ready on the first meeting to consider the subject in the most serviceable light. First as a settled and secondly as a good one. Well aware of the nearly equal importance of the two recommendations to Mr. Woodhouse's mind. It was agreed upon as what was to be, and everybody by whom he was used to be guided, assuring him that it would be for his happiness, and having some feelings himself which almost admitted it. He began to think that some time or other, in another year or two perhaps, it might not be so very bad if the marriage did take place. Mrs.  She had been extremely surprised, never more so than when Emma first opened the affair to her, but she saw in it only increase of happiness to all, and had no scruple in urging him to the utmost. She had such a regard for Mr. Knightley, as to think he deserved even her dearest Emma, and it was in every respect so proper, suitable and unexceptionable a connection, and in one respect, one point of the highest importance, so peculiarly eligible, so singularly fortunate, that now it seemed as if Emma could not safely have attached herself to any other creature, and that she had herself been the stupidest of beings in not having thought of it, and wished it long ago. How very few of those men in a rank of life to address Emma would have renounced their own home for Hartfield, and who but Mr. Knightley could know and bear with Mr. Woodhouse, so as to make such an arrangement desirable. The difficulty of disposing of poor Mr. Woodhouse had been always felt in her husband's plans and her own, for a marriage between Frank and Emma. How to settle the claims of Enscombe and Hartfield have been a continual impediment, less acknowledged by Mr. Weston than by herself, but even he had never been able to finish the subject better than by saying, Those matters will take care of themselves, the young people will find a way. But here there was nothing to be shifted off in a wild speculation on the future. It was all right, all open, all equal, no sacrifice on any side worth the name. It was a union of the highest promise of felicity in itself, and without one real rational difficulty to oppose or delay it. Mrs. Weston, with her baby on her knee, indulging in such reflections as these, was one of the happiest women in the world. If anything could increase her delight, it was perceiving that the baby would soon have outgrown its first set of caps. The news was universally a surprise wherever it spread, and Mr. Weston had his five minutes share of it. But five minutes were enough to familiarize the idea to his quickness of mind. He saw the advantages of the match, and rejoiced in them with all the constancy of his wife. But the wonder of it was very soon nothing, and by the end of an hour he was not far from believing that he had always foreseen it. It is to be a secret, I conclude, said he.  Only let me be told when I may speak out. I wonder whether Jane has any suspicion. He went to Highbury the next morning, and satisfied himself on that point. He told her the news. Was not she like a daughter, his eldest daughter? He must tell her. And, Miss Bates being present, it passed, of course, to Mrs. Cole, Mrs. Perry, and Mrs. Elton immediately afterwards. It was no more than the principles were prepared for. They had calculated from the time of its being known at Randalls how soon it would be over Highbury, and were thinking of themselves as the evening wonder in many a family circle with great sagacity. In general it was a very well approved match. Some might think him, and others might think her the most in luck. One set might recommend they're all removing to Donwell and leaving Hartfield for the John Knightleys, and another might predict disagreements among their servants. But yet, upon the whole, there was no serious objection raised, except in one habitation the vicarage. There the surprise was not softened by any satisfaction. Mr. Elton cared little about it, compared with his wife. He only hoped the young lady's pride would now be contented, and supposed she had always meant to catch Knightley if she could. And on the point of living at Hartfield could daringly exclaim, rather he than I. But Mrs. Elton was very much discomposed indeed. Poor Knightley! Poor fellow! Sad business for him! She was extremely concerned, for, though very eccentric, he had a thousand good qualities. How could he be so taken in? Did not think him at all in love, not in the least, poor Knightley. There would be an end of all pleasant intercourse with him. How happy he had been to come and dine with them whenever they asked him! But that would be all over now! Poor fellow! No more exploring parties to Donwell made for her! Oh, no! There would be a Mrs. Knightley to throw cold water on everything! Extremely disagreeable! But she was not at all sorry that she had abused the housekeeper the other day. Shocking plan living together! It would never do! She knew a family near Maple Grove who had tried it, and been obliged to separate before the end of the first quarter. End of Chapter 17. Recorded in Toronto, Ontario by Moira Fogarty. January 2010. Emma by Jane Austen. Volume 3, Chapter 18. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Moira Fogarty. Emma by Jane Austen. Volume 3, Chapter 18. Time passed on. A few more tomorrows and the party from London would be arriving. It was an alarming change, and Emma was thinking of it one morning as what must bring a great deal to agitate and grieve her, when Mr. Knightley came in and distressing thoughts were put by. After the first chat of pleasure he was silent, and then in a graver tone began with, I have something to tell you, Emma, some news. Good or bad, said she quickly, looking up in his face. I do not know which it ought to be called. Oh, good I am sure. I see it in your countenance. You are trying not to smile. I am afraid, said he, composing his features. I am very much afraid, my dear Emma, that you will not smile when you hear it. Indeed. But why so? I can hardly imagine anything which pleases or amuses you, should not please and amuse me too. There is one subject, he replied. I hope but one, on which we do not think alike.  Does nothing occur to you? Do not you recollect? Harriet Smith. Her cheeks flushed at the name, and she felt afraid of something, though she knew not what. Have you heard from her yourself this morning? cried he. You have, I believe, and know the whole. No, I have not. I know nothing. Pray tell me. You are prepared for the worst, I see, and very bad it is. Harriet Smith marries Robert Martin. Emma gave a start, which did not seem like being prepared, and her eyes in eager gaze said, No, this is impossible, but her lips were closed. It is so indeed, continued Mr. Knightley. I have it from Robert Martin himself. He left me not half an hour ago. She was still looking at him with the most speaking amazement. You like it, my Emma, as little as I feared. I wish our opinions were the same, but in time they will. Time, you may be sure, will make one or the other of us think differently, and in the meanwhile we need not talk much on the subject. You mistake me. You quite mistake me, she replied, exerting herself. It is not that such a circumstance would now make me unhappy, but I cannot believe it. It seems an impossibility. You cannot mean to say that Harriet Smith has accepted Robert Martin. You cannot mean that he has even proposed to her again, yet. You only mean that he intends it. I mean that he has done it, answered Mr. Knightley, with smiling but determined decision, and been accepted. Good God! she cried. Well. Then, having recourse to her workbasket, an excuse for leaning down her face and concealing all the exquisite feelings of delight and entertainment, which she knew she must be expressing, she added, Well, now tell me everything. Make this intelligible to me. How? Where? When? Let me know it all. I never was more surprised, but it does not make me unhappy, I assure you. How? How has it been possible? It is a very simple story. He went to town on business three days ago, and I got him to take charge of some papers which I was wanting to send to John. He delivered these papers to John at his chambers, and was asked by him to join their party the same evening to Astley's. They were going to take the two eldest boys to Astley's. The party was to be our brother and sister, Henry, John, and Miss Smith. My friend Robert could not resist. They called for him in their way, were all extremely amused, and my brother asked him to dime with them the next day, which he did, and in the course of that visit, as I understand, he found an opportunity of speaking to Harriet, and certainly did not speak in vain. She made him by her acceptance as happy even as he is deserving. He came down by yesterday's coach, and was with me this morning immediately after breakfast, to report his proceedings, first on my affairs, and then on his own. This is all that I can relate of the how, where, and when. Your friend Harriet will make a much longer history when you see her. She will give you all the minute particulars, which only woman's language can make interesting. In our communications we deal only in the great. However, I must say that Robert Martin's heart seemed for him, and to me, very overflowing, and that he did mention, without its being much to the purpose, that on quitting their box at Astley's, my brother took charge of Mrs. John Knightley, and little John, and he followed with Miss Smith and Henry, and that at one time they were in such a crowd as to make Miss Smith rather uneasy. He stopped. Emma dared not attempt any immediate reply. To speak, she was sure, would be to betray a most unreasonable degree of happiness. She must wait a moment, or he would think her mad. Her silence disturbed him, and after observing her a little while, he added, Emma, my love, you said that this circumstance would not now make you unhappy, but I am afraid it gives you more pain than you expected. His situation is an evil, but you must consider it as what satisfies your friend, and I will answer for your thinking better and better of him, as you know him more. His good sense and good principles would delight you. As far as the man is concerned, you could not wish your friend in better hands. His rank in society I would alter if I could, which is saying a great deal I assure you, Emma. You laugh at me about William Larkin's, but I could quite as ill spare Robert Martin. He wanted her to look up and smile, and having now brought herself not to smile too broadly, she did, cheerfully answering, You need not be at any pains to reconcile me to the match. I think Harriet is doing extremely well. Her connections may be worse than his. In respectability of character there can be no doubt that they are. I have been silent from surprise merely, excessive surprise. You cannot imagine how suddenly it has come on me, how peculiarly unprepared I was, for I had reason to believe her very lately more determined against him, much more than she was before. You ought to know your friend best, replied Mr. Knightley, but I should say she was a good-tempered, soft-hearted girl, not likely to be very, very determined against any young man who told her he loved her. Emma could not help laughing as she answered, upon my word, I believe you know her quite as well as I do. But Mr. Knightley, are you perfectly sure that she has absolutely and downright accepted him? I could suppose she might in time, but can she already? Did not you misunderstand him? You were both talking of other things, of business, shows of cattle or new drills, and might not you in the confusion of so many subjects mistake him? It was not Harriet's hand that he was certain of, it was the dimensions of some famous ox. The contrast between the countenance and air of Mr. Knightley and Robert Martin was at this moment so strong to Emma's feelings, and so strong was the recollection of all that had so recently passed on Harriet's side, so fresh the sound of those words, spoken with such emphasis, no, I hope I know better than to think of Robert Martin, that she was really expecting the intelligence to prove, in some measure, premature. It could not be otherwise. Do you dare say this? cried Mr. Knightley. Do you dare to suppose me so great a blockhead as not to know what a man is talking of? What do you deserve? Oh, I always deserve the best treatment, because I never put up with any other, and therefore you must give me a plain direct answer. Are you quite sure that you understand the terms on which Mr. Martin and Harriet now are? I am quite sure, he replied, speaking very distinctly, that he told me she had accepted him, and that there was no obscurity, nothing doubtful in the words he used, and I think I can give you a proof that it must be so. He asked my opinion as to what he was now to do. He knew of no one but Mrs. Goddard to whom he could apply for information of her relations or friends. Could I mention anything more fit to be done than to go to Mrs. Goddard? I assured him that I could not. Then he said he would endeavour to see her in the course of this day. I am perfectly satisfied, replied Emma with the brightest smiles, and most sincerely wish them happy. You are materially changed since we talked on this subject before. I hope so, for at that time I was a fool. And I am changed also, for I am now very willing to grant you all Harriet's good qualities. I have taken some pains for your sake, and for Robert Martin's sake, whom I have always had reason to believe as much in love with her as ever, to get acquainted with her. I have often talked to her a good deal. You must have seen that I did. Sometimes indeed I have thought you were half suspecting me of pleading poor Martin's cause, which was never the case. But from all my observations, I am convinced of her being an artless, amiable girl with very good notions, very seriously good principles, and placing her happiness in the affections and utility of domestic life. Much of this I have no doubt she may thank you for. Me! cried Emma, shaking her head. Ah, poor Harriet! She checked herself, however, and submitted quietly to a little more praise than she deserved. Their conversation was soon afterwards closed by the entrance of her father. She was not sorry. She wanted to be alone. Her mind was in a state of flutter and wonder, which made it impossible for her to be collected. She was in dancing, singing, exclaiming spirits, until she had moved about and talked to herself and laughed and reflected. She could be fit for nothing rational. Her father's business was to announce James's being gone out to put the horses to, preparatory to their now daily drive to Randalls, and she had, therefore, an immediate excuse for disappearing. The joy, the gratitude, the exquisite delight of her sensations may be imagined. The sole grievance and alloy thus removed in the prospect of Harriet's welfare, she was really in danger of becoming too happy for security. What had she to wish for? Nothing but to grow more worthy of him, whose intentions and judgment had been ever so superior to her own. Nothing but that the lessons of her past folly might teach her humility and circumspection in future, serious she was, very serious in her thankfulness, and in her resolutions, and yet there was no preventing a laugh, sometimes in the very midst of them.  Now there would be pleasure in her returning. Everything would be a pleasure. It would be a great pleasure to know Robert Martin. High in the rank of her most serious and heartfelt felicities, was the reflection that all necessity of concealment for Mr. Knightley would soon be over. The disguise, equivocation, mystery, so hateful to her to practice, might soon be over. She could now look forward to giving him that full and perfect confidence, which her disposition was most ready to welcome as a duty. In the gayest and happiest spirits she set forward with her father, not always listening, but always agreeing to what he said, and whether in speech or silence, conniving at the comfortable persuasion of his being obliged to go to Randall's every day, or poor Mrs. Weston would be disappointed. They arrived. Mrs. Weston was alone in the drawing-room, but hardly had they been told of the baby and Mr. Woodhouse receiving the thanks for coming, which he asked for when a glimpse was caught through the blind, of two figures passing near the window. It is Frank, and Miss Fairfax, said Mrs. Weston. I was just going to tell you of our agreeable surprise in seeing him arrive this morning. He stays till to-morrow, and Miss Fairfax has been persuaded to spend the day with us. They are coming in, I hope. In half a minute they were in the room. Emma was extremely glad to see him, but there was a degree of confusion, a number of embarrassing recollections on each side. They met readily and smiling, but with the consciousness which at first allowed little to be said, and having all sat down again there was for some time such a blank in the circle that Emma began to doubt whether the wish now indulged, which she had long felt of seeing Frank Churchill once more, and of seeing him with Jane, would yield its proportion of pleasure. When Mr. Weston joined the party, however, and when the baby was fetched, there was no longer a want of subject or animation, or of courage and opportunity for Frank Churchill to draw near her and say, I have to thank you, Miss Woodhouse, for a very kind, forgiving message in one of Mrs. Weston's letters. I hope time has not made you less willing to pardon. I hope you do not retract what you then said. No, indeed, cried Emma, most happy to begin. Not in the least. I am particularly glad to see and shake hands with you, and to give you joy in person. He thanked her with all his heart, and continued some time to speak with serious feeling of his gratitude and happiness. Is not she looking well? said he, turning his eyes towards Jane. Better than she ever used to do. You see how my father and Mrs. Weston dot upon her. But his spirits were soon rising again, and with laughing eyes after mentioning the expected return of the Campbells, he named the name of Dixon. Emma blushed, and forbade its being pronounced in her hearing. I can never think of it, she cried, without extreme shame. The shame, he answered, is all mine, or ought to be. But is it possible that you had no suspicion? I mean of late, early I know you had none. I never had this smallest, I assure you. That appears quite wonderful. I was once very near, and I wish I had. It would have been better. But though I was always doing wrong things, they were very bad wrong things, and as such did me no service. It would have been a much better transgression had I broken the bond of secrecy, and told you everything. It is not now worth a regret, said Emma. I have some hope, resumed he, of my uncles being persuaded to pay a visit at Randalls. He wants to be introduced to her. When the Campbells are returned, we shall meet them in London, and continue there, I trust, till we may carry her northward. But now I am at such a distance from her. Is not it hard, Miss Woodhouse, till this morning we have not once met since the day of reconciliation. Do not you pity me? Emma spoke her pity so very kindly, that with a sudden accession of gay thought he cried, ah, by the by, then sinking his voice and looking demure for the moment. I hope Mr. Knightley is well. He paused. She coloured and laughed. I know you saw my letter, and think you may remember my wish in your favour. Let me return your congratulations. I assure you that I have heard the news with the warmest interest and satisfaction. He is a man whom I cannot presume to praise. Emma was delighted, and only wanted him to go on in the same style, but his mind was the next moment in his own concerns, and with his own Jane, and his next words were, Did you ever see such a skin, such smoothness, such delicacy? And yet without being actually fair, one cannot call her fair. It is a most uncommon complexion, with her dark eyelashes and hair, a most distinguishing complexion. So peculiarly the lady in it, just colour enough for beauty. I have always admired her complexion, replied Emma archly, but do not I remember the time when you found fault with her for being so pale, when we first began to talk of her? Have you quite forgotten? Oh, no! What an impudent dog I was! How could I dare? But he laughed so heartily at the recollection that Emma could not help saying, I do suspect that in the midst of your perplexities at that time you had very great amusement in tricking us all. I am sure you had. I am sure it was a consolation to you. Oh, no, no, no! How can you suspect me of such a thing? I was the most miserable wretch. Not quite so miserable as to be insensible to mirth. I am sure it was a source of high entertainment to you, to feel that you were taking us all in. Perhaps I am the readier to suspect, because to tell you the truth, I think it might have been some amusement to myself in the same situation. I think there is a little likeness between us. He bowed. If not in our dispositions, she presently added, with a look of true sensibility. There is a likeness in our destiny, the destiny which bids fair to connect us with two characters so much superior to our own. True, true, he answered warmly. No, not true on your side. You can have no superior, but most true on mine.  Look at her. Is not she an angel in every gesture? Observe the turn of her throat. Observe her eyes as she is looking up at my father. You will be glad to hear, inclining his head and whispering seriously, that my uncle means to give her all my aunt's jewels. They are to be new set. I am resolved to have some in an ornament for the head. Will not it be beautiful in her dark hair? Very beautiful indeed, replied Emma, and she spoke so kindly that he gratefully burst out. How delighted I am to see you again, and to see you in such excellent looks. I would not have missed this meeting for the world. I should certainly have called it Hartfield had you failed to come. The others had been talking of the child, Mrs. Weston giving an account of a little alarm she had been under the evening before, from the infants appearing not quite well. She believed she had been foolish, but it had alarmed her, and she had been within half a minute of sending for Mr. Perry. Perhaps she ought to be ashamed, but Mr. Weston had been almost as uneasy as herself. In ten minutes, however, the child had been perfectly well again. This was her history, and particularly interesting it was to Mr. Woodhouse, who commended her very much for thinking of sending for Perry, and only regretted that she had not done it. She should always send for Perry if the child appeared in the slightest degree disordered were it only for a moment. She could not be too soon alarmed, nor send for Perry too often. It was a pity perhaps that he had not come last night, for, though the child seemed well now, very well considering, it would probably have been better if Perry had seen it. Frank Churchill caught the name. Perry said he to Emma, and trying as he spoke to catch Miss Fairfax's eye. My friend Mr. Perry! What are they saying about Mr. Perry? Has he been here this morning? And how does he travel now? Has he set up his carriage? Emma soon recollected and understood him, and while she joined in the laugh, it was evident from Jane's countenance that she too was really hearing him, though trying to seem deaf. Such an extraordinary dream of mine, he cried. I can never think of it without laughing. She hears us. She hears us, Miss Woodhouse. I see it in her cheek, her smile, her vain attempt to frown. Look at her. Do not you see that at this instant, the very passage of her own letter, which she sent me the report, is passing under her eye, that the whole blunder is spread before her, that she can attend to nothing else, though pretending to listen to the others. Jane was forced to smile completely for a moment, and the smile partly remained as she turned towards him and said in a conscious, low, yet steady voice, How you can bear such recollections is astonishing to me. They will sometimes obtrude, but how you can court them. He had a great deal to say in return, and very entertainingly, but Emma's feelings were chiefly with Jane in the argument, and on leaving Randalls, and falling naturally into a comparison of the two men, she felt that pleased as she had been to see Frank Churchill, and really regarding him as she did with friendship, she had never been more sensible of Mr. Knightley's high superiority of character. The happiness of this most happy day received its completion, and the animated contemplation of his worth which this comparison produced. End of Chapter 18. Recorded in Toronto, Ontario by Moira Fogarty. January 2010. Emma by Jane Austen. Volume 3, Chapter 19. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Moira Fogarty. Emma by Jane Austen. Volume 3, Chapter 19. If Emma had still, at intervals, an anxious feeling for Harriet, a momentary doubt of its being possible for her to be really cured of her attachment to Mr. Knightley, and really able to accept another man from unbiased inclination, it was not long that she had to suffer from the recurrence of any such uncertainty. A very few days brought the party from London, and she had no sooner an opportunity of being one hour alone with Harriet than she became perfectly satisfied, unaccountable as it was, that Robert Martin had thoroughly supplanted Mr. Knightley, and was now forming all her views of happiness. Harriet was a little distressed, did look a little foolish at first, but having once owned that she had been presumptuous and silly and self-deceived before, her pain and confusion seemed to die away with the words, and leave her without a care for the past, and with the fullest exaltation in the present and future. For, as to her friend's approbation, Emma had instantly removed every fear of that nature by meeting her with the most unqualified congratulations. Harriet was most happy to give every particular of the evening at Astley's and the dinner the next day. She could dwell on it all with the utmost delight. But what did such particulars explain? The fact was, as Emma could now acknowledge, that Harriet had always liked Robert Martin, and that his continuing to love her had been irresistible. Beyond this it must ever be unintelligible to Emma. The event, however, was most joyful, and every day was giving her fresh reason for thinking so. Harriet's parentage became known. She proved to be the daughter of a tradesman, rich enough to afford her the comfortable maintenance which had ever been hers, and decent enough to have always wished for concealment. Such was the blood of gentility which Emma had formerly been so ready to vouch for. It was likely to be, as untainted perhaps, as the blood of many a gentleman, but what a connection had she been preparing for Mr. Knightley, or for the Churchels, or even for Mr. Alton. The stain of illegitimacy, unbleached by nobility or wealth, would have been a stain indeed. No objection was raised on the father's side. The young man was treated liberally. It was all as it should be, and as Emma became acquainted with Robert Martin, who was now introduced at Hartfield, she fully acknowledged in him all the appearance of sense and worth which could bid fairest for her little friend. She had no doubt of Harriet's happiness with any good-tempered man, but with him and in the home he offered there would be the hope of more, of security, stability, and improvement. She would be placed in the midst of those who loved her and who had better sense than herself, retired enough for safety, and occupied enough for cheerfulness. She would be never led into temptation nor left for it to find her out. She would be respectable and happy, and Emma admitted her to be the luckiest creature in the world to have created so steady and persevering an affection in such a man, or if not quite the luckiest, to yield only to herself. Harriet, necessarily drawn away by her engagements with the Martins, was less and less at Hartfield, which was not to be regretted. The intimacy between her and Emma must sink, their friendship must change into a calmer sort of goodwill, and fortunately what ought to be and must be seemed already beginning, and in the most gradual, natural manner. Before the end of September Emma attended Harriet to church and saw her hand bestowed on Robert Martin with so complete a satisfaction as no remembrances even connected with Mr Elton as he stood before them could impair. Perhaps indeed at that time she scarcely saw Mr Elton, but as the clergyman whose blessing at the altar might next fall on herself. Robert Martin and Harriet Smith, the latest couple engaged of the three, were the first to be married. Jane Fairfax had already quitted Highbury and was restored to the comforts of her beloved home with the Campbells. The Mr. Churchills were also in town, and they were only waiting for November. The intermediate month was the one fixed on, as far as they dared by Emma and Mr. Knightley. They had determined that their marriage ought to be concluded while John and Isabella were still at Hartfield, to allow them the fortnight's absence in a tour to the seaside, which was the plan. John and Isabella and every other friend were agreed in improving it, but Mr. Woodhouse, how was Mr. Woodhouse to be induced to consent? He who had never yet alluded to their marriage but as a distant event. When first sounded on the subject, he was so miserable that they were almost hopeless. A second illusion indeed gave less pain. He began to think it was to be, and that he could not prevent it. A very promising step of the mind on its way to resignation. Still, however, he was not happy. Nay, he appeared so much otherwise that his daughter's courage failed. She could not bear to see him suffering, to know him fancying himself neglected, and though her understanding almost acquiesced in the assurance of both the Mr. Knightley's, that when once the event were over his distress would be soon over too, she hesitated, she could not proceed. In this state of suspense they were befriended, not by any sudden illumination of Mr. Woodhouse's mind, or any wonderful change of his nervous system, but by the operation of the same system in another way. Mrs. Weston's poultry house was robbed one night of all her turkeys, evidently by the ingenuity of man. Other poultry yards in the neighbourhood also suffered. Pilfering was house-breaking to Mr. Woodhouse's fears. He was very uneasy, and but for the sense of his son-in-law's protection would have been under wretched alarm every night of his life. The strength, resolution and presence of mind of the Mr. Knightley's commanded his fullest dependence. While either of them protected him and his, Hartfield was safe, but Mr. John Knightley must be in London again by the end of the first week in November. The result of this distress was, that with a much more voluntary, cheerful consent than his daughter had ever presumed to hope for at the moment, she was able to fix her wedding-day, and Mr. Elton was called on, within a month from the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Martin, to join the hands of Mr. Knightley and Mrs. Woodhouse. The wedding was very much like other weddings, where the parties have no taste for finery or parade, and Mrs. Elton, from the particulars detailed by her husband, thought it all extremely shabby and very inferior to her own. Very little white satin, very few lace veils, a most pitiful business, Selena would stare when she heard of it. But in spite of these deficiencies, the wishes, the hopes, the confidence, the predictions of the small band of true friends who witnessed the ceremony, were fully answered in the perfect happiness of the union.


My first game of Dune Spice Wars proved to me this title is a promising entry into the real-time strategy genre. While there's plenty yet to add before the game comes out to Verdiaxes, my first impressions are favourable, allowing me to expand. This game succeeds as both a Dune game and as a strategy. Actually, that's not entirely true. It doesn't yet succeed. Rather it shows promise of succeeding across these two criteria during this stage of the game's development. So let's talk about where it succeeds so far and where it needs plenty of work yet. Spice Wars does well as a Dune title on the strength of its atmosphere. Taking control of House Atreides for the first time, I have found myself the honour of a single ornitopter amid a vast map covered by a fog of war. Every new territory I uncovered promised both opportunity and danger. The early game masterfully creates a sense of Arrakis as it should be, a hostile planet full of great riches and great apparels, with invisible factions plotting your demise. The soundtrack definitely helps. It is a cross between Hans Zimmer's score of 2021's Dune film and a more synth-based soundtrack you'll meet across many sci-fi games, from Stellaris to Eve Online to Mass Effect. This strong sense of atmosphere across the early game lingers later on as well, thanks to the appearance of sandstorms and the intermittent displays of sandworms consuming spice harvesters or entire groups of soldiers. If you're not careful with your management. Where it flounders at present is with the lack of unique faction units for each faction, and in my personal opinion with hero units as well. The lack of them, that is. The world of Dune has epic, large-dened life fears who could be more than just advisors that offer one type of bonus over another, depending on your choice at the beginning of the game. Time will tell. Having such characters on the battlefield would certainly enhance the atmosphere of the world. That said, I could see the dangers of introducing hero units as going against the design principles of spice wars. I think now is a good time to move beyond the franchise and talk about this title as a strategy game. It is developed by Shiro Games, which came up with indie real-time strategy darling Northgard. I played a few hours of that and while I thought it was an absolute delight of a game, it didn't click with me enough to give it the hundreds upon hundreds of hours. It very evidently deserved. The way that the fog of war works, zones recalling board game hexes placed as you reveal them, each of them defined by one or two token features such as the spies or their minerals or pluscrete. All these are signature design choices of Shiro Games, recalling elements of their prior title. I cannot make a full comparison at present. Unless you're interested in me investigating both games in relation to one another further, in which case let me know below. An aspect of the gameplay, I only began to figure out news to greater extent towards the end of my first game is the espionage system. I'm not sure how viable it is, a sole strategic focus if your economy is not also happily churning along, but I can see that the developers are pushing towards making it a central part of the spice wars experience. Here too, the DNA of the Dune world enhances the experience. Herbert's novels are rich sources to draw inspiration from for political intrigue. Endgame espionage objectives such as the attempted assassination of one of the fashion's leaders come across as an ambitious attempt to deliver on the promise inherent to Dune. I haven't carried out one of these successfully yet, so I'll have to report my findings about them later. For my money, espionage seems to offer the player tools to reach their goals faster, whether those are defined through domination, political, or hegemonic victory. In the first case, you can use espionage to eventually unlock atomics, a big but no good act in the Dune universe, which will cost you considerable standing at the Lansrad. The Lansrad, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the universe, is the body that represents all the great houses of the Imperium, the system that confers bonuses and penalties to different factions, as well as worldwide bonuses or penalties to different developments of your faction, such as research-type bonuses or direct effects on different resources. It's reminiscent in look and feel to Civilization VI's World Congress. I'd even say it's a pretty close sibling to that one. Hegemonic points you get from a whole lot of different things. Quests, which need a whole lot more flavor text in my opinion, controlling unique planetary areas, number of areas controlled, taxes paid in spice, and so much more. The best part is that each faction has a mechanic that invites them to embrace a certain playstyle in order to get a higher score. Hegemonic points are a surefire way to win, and I was well on my way to that kind of victory, but it sure takes a while. By the time the late game came and I was still got 10,000 Hegemonic points away from victory, I had banked big every possible resource in the game. I simply built a massive army and destroyed my enemies one by one, without the least amount of trouble. I didn't even want to do away with the Fremen or the Guild, but sitting there and waiting to gain the one resource I needed to expand turned tedious. That's when I started playing with Espionage, but not even that saved my erstwhile allies over the next half hour. I ended up coming up with reasons to honorably end both of them. The Fremen had attacked my territory half a game earlier, so they had to go, naturally. And the Guild spokesman just implied he'd have his spice sabotage my spicing facilities. That will not do. And despite the stockpile of 5,000 spice I had, even if I cared about that kind of threat, they just have to go now too. Steamrolling is one big issue of the late game. And I don't seem alone in thinking so. Something has to be done about it. On the other side, the systems seem more solid than not. And fiddling across with the tech, military and economic aspects of the game are all genuinely enjoyable. Espionage was the system I engaged with the least during this first playthrough, but it is also one of the more original additions that the spice wars brings us. As far as my experience with it goes. This isn't the kind of RTS you can hop into for 20 to 30 minutes. Playing with house at 3d's on the middle difficulty took me about 45 hours. So starting a game demands a fine investment of time without swallowing up entire days or even weeks of your life. I might end games a little more quickly from this point on, I expect. But the first dip into a new strategy always demands extra attention and a methodical approach to tooltips and all manner of information. It's been great fun fiddling around with house at 3d's. I look forward to seeing how the other factions hold up over my next few ventures to Arrakis. How about you? Think you might try and conquer Arrakis for your faction? If you're interested in yet more videos about dune spice wars and my experience with the other factions, let me know in the comments down below. Thanks for watching, don't forget to subscribe, and if you'd like, sure give me a like button, press that one, anyway, wherever it is, and I will see you again next time. Bye!


Continue with Leonardo's second lecture. OK, thank you. So today, we will switch gears from the basic Lagrangian approach we had yesterday to this more abstract conformal booster viewpoint that I outlined in my colloquium yesterday. But to recap, let's remind ourselves of some basic notations. So these are my conventions for the n equal to 2 vector multiplet. And this is my convention for the n equal to 2 half hyper. And there is a alpha and alpha dot R spinor indices. I, that runs from 1 to 2, are SU2R indices. So you can see that the k genus of the vector multiplet form an SU2R doublet. You may wonder about the SU2R transformation properties here in the half hyper multiplet. They are a little bit hidden. And but essentially, it's the scale as that carried the SU2R representation. This is made most transparent if we graduate ourselves with the n equal to 2 full hyper, which is two copies of the half hyper. And then one would construct a doublet, which would be the combination of q and q tilde star. This complex conjugation is actually necessary to make manifest the transformation properties under SU2R. So in my notations, q and q tilde are both n equal 1 chiral multiplets. But in this n equal 1 notation, the SU2R transformation properties are a little bit hidden. And finally, I didn't spend much time on this yesterday. But in my conventions, the U1R assignment is minus 1 for the complex scalar in the vector multiplet. And it necessarily, it must be 0 for the complex scalar in the hyper multiplet. And these are conventions such that the super symmetry generators carry their, of course, SU2R doublet. You see this index i. And they carry r equal plus 1 half. And so since we go from phi to the lambda's with the q, this is r equal minus 1 half. And this is r equal to 0, whereas this would be r equal plus 1 half. Again, since I'm at it, let's also write once more symmetry algebra. And then, yes, in the discussion section, I took the opportunity to also introduce the S super conformal fermionic generators, which square onto the special conformal generators. So I don't have too much time to review this in enormous detail, but there is this name, 222 slash 2, again. If you want to learn about super algebras, Wikipedia is pretty great. Wikipedia entries are generally terrible for physics, but for a culture reason that I don't fully understand, mathematicians spend an enormous time editing Wikipedia. And so the mathematics and the Wikipedia are actually quite good. And so anyway, it doesn't matter. You can learn about it in Wikipedia, but the generators of the algebra are the momentum generators, the special conformal generator, the translation, the Lorentz generator, which I'm writing in by spinon notation. So this is 3 plus 3. And then there are the fermionic generator that I just wrote down. And finally, so there's q tilde s and s tilde.  OK, so that is a recap of conventions and basic algebraic facts. And from now on, I would like to switch to this more abstract conformal field theory viewpoint. So here we have elementary Lagrangian fields. And we are interested in, remember, we're interested in gauge theories. So actually, let me also review very briefly the story of n equal to 2 Lagrangian theories. The data are a choice of semi-simple gauge group, cannot contain one factor, and then a pseudo-real representation R of G, under which the half hypermultiple transform. And then the condition that the beta function mass vanish imposes restrictions on this data. And the only continuous data one is left with, if you insist, on conformality are the complexified gauge coupling for each of the simple factors of the gauge group. So in such a setup, we have elementary fields. The vector is in the adjoint. So this is in adjoint of G, whereas the half hyper means a representation R of G. And we are going to be interested in correlation functions of local gauge invariant operators. So is a local gauge invariant combination of the elementary fields. And so the local operators of the conformal field theory in this description are really made up of these elementary constituents. And that's the fallback option and intuition to which you can always go back to if you are confused by something. Just try to realize the abstract segment I'm going to make in terms of these fundamental ingredients. But the viewpoint I'm going to take is that these are the basic objects, and we do not necessarily need to think of each of these local operators, being a composite operator of something more fundamental. So as a way of transitioning, let's give examples of what these local operators are in a Lagrangian theory. And so we could be very concrete. We could take G to be SUN. And then we take R to be, well, we did a little hazard size yesterday with the vanishing of the beta function. We concluded that if we insist that the hypermultiply and the fundamental representation, we need to take NF fundamental with NF is equal to 2n. And so here is the full hypermultiply story. So I'm going to have q and q tilde, where q would be in the fundamental, and q tilde would be in the anti-fondamental of everything, really. So let's even fix indices. Let's a going from 1 to n be the gauge index. And so this would be an upper index a to the not the fundamental representation. And this would be a lower index a to the not the anti-fondamental representation. And in order to ensure vanishing of the 1-lubeta function, we need to take NF copy. So I'm going to add an additional index i that goes from 1 to NF, which is always equal to 2n, if you want conformality. And so these objects would be in the fundamental for SUN gauge. And this would be, well, really u and f, because they're also charged under the u1 flavored symmetry. OK. So that's our matter. And then our gauge fields, of course, would transform in the adjoint. So I could use a fundamental anti-fondamental notation where it's implicit that the trace vanishes or, alternatively, I could introduce an adjoint x and a that goes from 1 to n squared minus 1 and rewrite this object as a single adjoint. OK. So that's a simple example of a n equal to 2 super conformal field theory. And then we would construct local gauge invariant operators by contracting gauge indices. And so examples of these local OIs would be, for example, trace phi squared, trace phi to the k, et cetera, phi cube, et cetera. And or you could have objects that contain the q's. You could do q i, a, q tilde j, a, where the index a is contracted. You have always to contract your muscle contract gauging. So this object would carry some flavor representation in this i and j. OK. So we'll come back to this example to illustrate some of the features of what we do more abstractly. OK. Questions about this? OK. So I gave you yesterday a lightening review of the conformal booster philosophy. I really have to take for granted the basics of conformal field theory, such as, for example, the statement that in conformal field theory, there is an isomorphism between the space of states. So there is a Hilbert space of states h. And then there are local operators, like the ones I just described. And the space of local operators at a fixed point, which, for example, we could fix to be at the origin, is isomorphic to the space of the Hilbert space of states of the quantum theory. And how do you go back and forth? Well, you can construct a state by taking an operator and acting on it on the conformal invariant vacuum. That's clear enough. It's a little more subtle, but nevertheless possible. And one can make this rather precise to reconstruct uniquely the state starting from the operator. And intuitively, if you have a potential description, the way you are going to do it is to insert the operator at the origin, do a path integral, and then cut open the path integral on a sphere. Let's do this in four dimensions. So we use the deletion operator as our Hamiltonian. And so surfaces of constant radios, which are three spheres, are our special slices. And so in this quantization scheme, which is called radial quantization, we have to construct the wave functionals of the fields at this unit sphere. And if we insert an operator there, and we do a path integral, that defines a state. But the statement really can be made more axiomatic and more abstract without resorting to the path integral. And that is the state operator map in three minutes. OK, so I can perhaps leave those notations there. So it follows almost immediately from the assertion that there is a state operator map that you have a convergent operator proudness function, which I again briefly sketched in my talk yesterday. And the idea being that if you have two local operators, you can read off the state here, and then use the state operator map to construct a local operator back. And with a little bit of thinking, you can see that the convergent OP just follows from completeness of states in the Hilbert space. So these are all things that I'm going to pretty much assume. They are now very nice pedagogical views on the whole conformal. First of all, most of what I said is already in chapter two of the Sting Theory textbook by Polchinski, but a more modern presentation that applies to higher dimension can be found in many lecture notes. For example, I can recommend the ones by Slava Richkov, David Simmons, that thing. It's a well-established toy that I invite you to study. And so again, the idea is that we have this operator proudness function with some efficient functions here, which are fixed by conformal covariance. The sum runs over the entire set of local operator, which as I just said is isomorphic to the spec of states. And this expansion is absolutely convergent inside a correlation function till the insertion of the next operator. So if this is operator 1, this operator 2, and then I have some operator 3 here, you draw a big sphere, which does not encounter any additional insertions. And by the argument that I just sketched, you can replace these two operators by a single operator, say at the center of the sphere. OK? So clearly, we want to use as much as possible of the symmetries of the problem. And let's start with the pure conformal case. Already in the discussion section, I took advantage of you and already quickly sketched how the representation theory works. So I phrased the discussion yesterday at the level of states. And I asserted that the primary state is by definition a state which is annihilated by the special conformal generators. The operator version of the statement is the statement that the operator that corresponds to the state psi commutes with the operator at the origin commutes with the special conformal transformation. It's necessary to put this at the origin because if you're away from the origin, there is an orbital piece of the action of the special conformal generator, we will not bench. And then, given this definition, then we classify representations in terms of the conformal dimension delta, which I interchangeably also denote by the energy E, because I was just said that we quantize the theory in radial quantization. And then, let's treat it now to four dimensions by the two cartons of the Lorentz group. If we are in Euclidean space, we have SO4, which is the same thing as SU21 times SU22. And these are the two spins. Or, of course, the Lorentzian version is similar. You are familiar with, you can label Lorentz representations with two spins. So we are now this j, i, r, half integers. OK? And so what I really mean by the state is the highest weight state of the two SU2s. So it has definite conformal dimension. It's the highest weight state of the two SU2s. And it's definite carton quantum number under each of the SU2s. And then we will build the whole module by acting on this state with the arbitrary amount of raising operators, which are the p's, and arbitrary amounts of also the Lorentz raising generators, which would be, well, whatever, j minus 1, j minus 2, et cetera. So the action of p mu on operators is just by taking derivatives. And so this is just a restatement of the fact that the full conformal representation is built on a primary by taking arbitrary amount of derivatives and then rotating, in all possible ways, the Lorentz quantum numbers. OK, so for example, for a scalar operator of x, which, for example, the one that I had earlier, something like trace phi squared of x could be an example of that. We build the full module just by acting with derivatives in all possible ways. And states that have a non-zero number of derivative would be called conformal descendants of O. OK, so this operator I should put at the origin. And this is the full module. OK, so in general, for the generic choice of the quantum numbers of the operator, this module is irreducible. But, and this is a phenomenon that will become more involved in the super conformal case. So I want to give a five-minute discussion of the conformal case first. If you suitably tune these quantum numbers, the module becomes reducible. And then you get shorter representations if you impose suitable conditions. Another way of saying this is we are going to impose the condition of unitarity. So we want norms to be positive. And it turns out that if you tune the quantum number suitably, you will encounter that some of the descendants states have zero norm. And they are orthogonal to the entire module. And so in unitarity, if you are really instructed to mod out by these null states, and you get a shortened representation. So the unitarity bounds on conformal representations are that delta, or the same, which is really for me. So if I take the two spins to be both of them non-zero. So I'm going to sit down to four dimensions. And the two spins are both non-zero. Then unitarity imposes this condition. If one of them is zero, then unitarity imposes this condition. And of course, there is a completely analogous condition if this is true. And finally, if both spins are zero, unitarity imposes this condition. So the statement that I'm making is that, so how does this come about? These conditions come about by starting with a state of arbitrary them. Let's do the case with the spins are both non-zero. I start with the highest weight. And I act with p and start computing norms. And I must require that all the norms of the descent states are positive. The matrix of norms is positive definite. It turns out that this is only possible when this condition is obeyed. If you violate this condition, in fact, in this simple case, you will encounter a negative eigenvalue already at the first step. So if you start with an operator with spin of whatever it is of this type, and you act with the momentum, and you compute the norm, and impose that this is positive, this will instantly give you this condition. It's a simple exercise that you can do. How do you do it? Well, you just remember that in radial quantization, p dagger is equal to k. And so you can just compute this norm by the commutation relations of the, you were going to get pA, p dagger, which is the same as k. And so you can just compute this norm by commuting k and p using the commutation relation of the conformal algebra. And it's a simple exercise that you can do, and it will give you this unitarity bound. It also follows from this way of I introduce a unitarity bound that if the unitarity bound is saturated, you are in the critical case where there's a certain, OK, so this is, of course, a little bit schematic. So there are, this is a whole matrix, because there are choices of indices that you have to make. So it's the same that this matrix is positive semi-definite. And the statement that you are saturating the unitarity bound is the statement you're going to find, a certain linear combination of the states of this kind, which has zero norm. And one, if you go through this exercise, which I really invite you to do, I mean it's a little tricky, it's a little involved, but once in your life, you are going to discover that the combination that is acquiring zero norm is this one. It's a combination where we are contracting precisely one alpha and alpha dot index. Or, OK, so I'm trying to be too general. Let's do the simple case where we have a tensorial operator so that we can use vector indices running by spinor indices. So we have a tensor. Say, a symmetric list tensor. And then this condition is simply the condition that the divergence of this operator is zero. So you have discovered that there is a state in the module that has zero norm. And so since we're insisting that the representation should be unitary, we must mod out by it. And so this means that we're going to impose this as a relation obeyed by the operator. You recognize that this is simply the relation that says that this operator is a conserved current. So we now have a little interesting resulting that follows up from representation theory that if you know for a fact that the operator has this dimension, you immediately conclude that the operator has zero divergence. The cases that, of course, are of physical interest are, so let's do an example. So of course, simplest case is j mu. It's the same as j alpha alpha dot. So that means that j equal j, j1 equal j2 equal 1 half. And then the unitary bound tells me that e should be greater or equal than 3. And if e is equal to 3, then this is a conserved current, which is hopefully familiar for me. And the other currents are dimension 3. That's obvious at the classical level, but now the same here at the full-fledged quantum level. It's an if and only if the current remains conserved, it has dimension fixed to 3. And if it has dimension 3, it must be conserved. And the other, of course, case of paramount important would be the stress energy tensor. j mu nu or t alpha 1, alpha 2, alpha dot 1, alpha dot 2. This is j1 equal j2 equal to 1. And so the unitary bound tells me that for a spin to operator of this kind, he has to be greater or equal than 4. And if e is equal to 4, then this operator is conserved. Of course, you can consider objects with more indices. And those would be conserved currents of spin greater than 2. And it's a theorem derived under very general broad assumptions that the presence of highest spin conserved currents with a higher spin, I mean spin greater than 2, implies on abstract grounds that the theory is free. Or more precisely, it contains a subset that must be described by brief free fields. So you can entertain yourself, take your favorite free field theory, the theory of a free scalar in four dimensions. You can explicitly construct by linears of that scalar with sprinkle with various derivatives, which are conformal primaries, and that obey this conservation condition. And the statement is that there is a converts statement that if you find the conserved current of spin greater than 2, then you must identify a free subset in the theory. This is great from our general booster viewpoint because we understand free field theories perfectly. And so we shouldn't bother with them. And so we are going to impose, as a condition on the theories that we want to study, that there must be no conserved currents of spin greater than 2. And so we can impose from the get-go that we're just talking about interacting quantum field theory. So the point here is that if I think a theory abstractly in terms of this list of operators, in particular, in the list of conformal representation that the theory contains, I can detect whether it's free or not just by looking at the list. So the statement that the theory is free or not is a statement that I can immediately read off from the so-called conformal data. The conformal data would be the list of dimensions and the list of opaque coefficients, and in particular, just from dimensions and Lorentz quantum numbers and their opaque coefficients. Those are the conformal data that determine the theory completely. And it's a very simple statement about just looking at the representation that tells me that the theory is free or not. The other thing that we're going to impose is that the theory contains one, and precisely one, conserved current of spin 2, which will identify the stress energy tensor. This is, again, obvious in the Lagrangian viewpoint. You can just construct the stress tensor by your favorite procedure, either the nether procedure where then you have to improve it, or coupling it to a background metric, blah, blah, blah. It's clear that if you start with a Lagrangian, local Lagrangian, there's going to be a stress tensor. And it should also be clear that if the theory is interacting, the stress tensor is unique. In the free field limit, the theory actually has multiple conserved currents of spin 2 because each, let's say I have a theory of n scalar fields, each scalar field will have its own separate spin 2 conserved current. But the moment you turn on interaction, you genetically expect that most of these spin 2 objects acquire anomalous dimension. And remember my unitary theorem, the moment you have an anomalous dimension, you instantly lose conservation and vice versa. And in fact, if that's not the case, is as if you turn on interaction, you find still that a generic point in coupling space, you have two separate stress tensor. What that really means, that you're talking about a product theory. So we are going to restate attention into simple theories. There's a condition if you're analogous to, again, remember I had this analogy yesterday where it is a little bit as if we are trying to classify the algebra. And then clearly, sure, you can try the most general semi-simple case, but it's easier to impose from the get go that we're looking at a single reducible simple piece. And what about the spin 1 object? Well, the spin 1 object is, of course, is the hallmark that the theory has a global symmetry. That's, again, obvious from the Lagrangian viewpoint. If you have a global continuous symmetry, you use Nether's theorem to construct the conserved current. And we are going to assume on abstract grounds that that's always the case. That if, in some sense, this is part of our axiomatic definition, we're going to declare that we have a local conformal field theory if, first of all, it has a unique stress tensor. And second of all, if the view is invariant under a continuous group of global symmetries, there is an associated conserved current, which, of course, we have to transform in the adjoint of the flavored symmetry group. OK, so far, so good. This is the abstract version of Nether's theorem, which does not have a proof. Nobody really knows how to prove this fact from a reasonable set of axioms for local conformal field. You can do what Harle and Noguri do, which is, basically, formulate a framework where it's basically obvious that this is true. But a more conceptual understanding of this. In fact, it would be lovely to be able to prove that just the assumption of this to the local stress tensor implies that whenever the theory is invariant under a global continuous symmetry, then it has a conserved current. For us, this would be an assumption. OK, so I'm not going to do this in great detail, but it turns out that these are free fields. So we will not care about them. And then this is also a free field. Sorry, what I mean by this is, when you saturate this unitarity bounds, you find free fields. So a simple example for this would be a self-dual. The self-dual to form for the Maxwell field obeys this bound, because this is a self-dual form. So it has equal to 2. And then it has j, well, with the dots, j1 equal to 0, j2 equal to 1. And so it operates this bound. And it's just the same that there is a free Maxwell field, which, again, will not be of interest for us, because we are going to restrict our self-interacting field theories. And when you saturate this bound, of course, we are talking about a free scalar. A object which has equal to 1 in this condition is just a free scalar. And in this case, it's the only one where you need to work a little bit harder, because the null state that forces the unitarity bound happens at level 2. And so the condition that the representation will be unitary is a condition that box phi equal to 0, which is, of course, just a free question to ask. OK, so that's a lightening review of representation theory of the conformal group. It's rather simple, really. Most representations are generic. And then when you saturate one of these unitarity bounds, you need to remove just a little bit of null states, which is a single null states, and, of course, a little bit descendants. Clear enough? I just told you. And that's my main point, that I don't have to ever think in terms of elementary fields. I just look at the list of representations. And if a certain unitarity bound is obeyed, well, if the unitarities bound that correspond to free fields are obeyed, I'm going to say that there is a piece of the theory which is free. And I don't want to consider that. I mean, I can consider the case if I insist. Then it's going to be trivial. But since we don't want to get confused by free fields, we will just assume that no such representations appear. Now, it's the picture that was drawn yesterday of the space of the conformal manifold. So the statement that I'm making, a generic point of the conformal manifold, none of these free representations appear, but they might appear. And generically, they will appear at singular points. So yes, I had this conjecture that the conformal manifold of a general X2 theory arises by weak gauging in a certain limit of a gauge group.  So the free vector multiplet and several of its composites will obey some of those unitarity bound. And well, at this special point, you will have, in fact, multiple sustenance or higher spin conserved currents. But the beauty of this approach is that we can really now characterize, or if you want to define, what the special point are by stating that, well, what is the special point? It's this point where you have enhanced higher spin conserved currents, where you gain, in the limit, a higher spin conserved currents. OK, so that was fast, but any other questions? I'm not going to repeat the same story for the n equal to superalgebra. OK, sorry. Before I do that, let me mention a few other things that we can state in great generality. So some of the most robust universal conformal data would be obtained from the three-point function of the conserved currents, if any, and of the stress tensor. And so in particular, the two-point function of the stress tensor, I'm not going to write it as the tensorial structure, but in some normalization with the appropriate conventions is proportional. So first of all, the normalization of the stress tensor is canonically fixed, because you want the sense to be a generator of, in particular, translation. So you cannot mess up with the overall normalization of the stress tensor that's got given. And then given that normalization, the two-point function of the stress tensor is interesting, and that is the so-called C central charge. For a reason that will become appear shortly, I'm going to call this C4D. From the three-point function of the stress tensor, which is rather complicated, amid several different tensorial structures, you can again recover C, but you can also recover another combination, which is the A central charge. Alternative interpretation of these numbers is, by thinking in terms of coupling the theory to a background metric and looking at the conformal anomaly, looking at the vial anomaly for the trace of the stress energy tensor, which is, of course, 0 in the limit in R4, if you don't have any background metric, by assumption. That's a conformal field theory. But then it will, OK, so I'm going to get this wrong, but it's C times Euler plus, I think, is this plus other terms, which can be removed by local counter terms. So the A and C anomaly coefficients are important data of the conformal field theory, which you can read off, which are really among the set of conformal data, because I can read them off from the OP coefficients of the stress tensor. And famously, the A anomaly is the object which is monotonic under RG flow, whereas C is not. And then from the normalization of a non-Abelian current, I wrote this expression yesterday. I'm not going to write it again, but in certain conventions that, again, you cannot really mess around with the normalization non-Abelian current, because you need the conserved charges to obey the Lie algebra, which has fixed normalization. And then you can read off the level k, which is another basic datum of your conformal field theory. So now we do n equals 2. So now my super primary is annihilated by S and S tilde. And it's going to be labeled by, well, the same thing as before, and then by the eigenvalues of big R and little R. Conceivably, there could be additional labels under whatever global symmetry the theory may have. By definition of a global symmetry, whatever symmetry generated that commutes with the full super conformal algebra are going to declare that they are a global or flavored symmetry. So a priori, of course, that's a completely separate set of indices that you can tensor with this. Now, I don't have time to write down the whole list of shortening conditions because it's too much. But the story is similar in spirit. So again, the idea will be that you have a generic module that you obtain from the highest way state by acting in all possible ways with q, q tilde does that the anti-competence that gives you p's automatically. And then whatever other raising or lowering operator where we want to call them of the art symmetry of the Lorentz group you have. But for special values of the quantum numbers, you develop null states when you saturate some unitarity bound. And then the module is such that you must mod out by these null states and you get a short-time representation. Sorry, similar in spirit. And the shortening conditions now, before we just had momenta, which means derivative. So the shortening conditions for concept currents were just the divergence of the current is 0. Now, the form of the shortening condition will be the statement that some combination of the raising operator, which are the q's, annihilate the primary state. So this is something that may be familiar to many of you. It's a BPS-type condition. It's a statement that the state or the operator, if you use a state operator map, is invariant under some combination of the supercharges. OK, so we're going to have two distinct BPS-type conditions, which by a universally followed convention introduced by Dora and Oswald are called B-type and C-type. And the B-type shortening conditions are, so we have a state, OK, so the B-type shortening condition will be of the form that the full supercharge q alpha annihilates the state for both choices of the vile-spinner index alpha. And when this is true, this automatically implies that the corresponding Lorentz-Quantum numbers must be 0. So in other terms, this is a gadget that can contain alpha dot indices. And then I can impose q alpha equal to 0 for both choices of alpha, clear enough? Whereas the C-type is a condition where I'm going to contract the alpha index with an alpha index.  And clearly, this is a weaker condition because this is two condition and this is a single one because it's just the contracted version of the story. OK, by contraction, sorry, should be cleared. I'm just contracting the SU2 indices with an epsilon. OK, so I've done this for q, but clearly, they're the completely analog condition for q tilde. And then we have to remember that the q's and the q tilde's have SU2R indices. And so in their full glory, the shortening condition that you can have are b1, b2, b tilde 1, b tilde 2, c1, c2, c tilde 1, and c tilde 2. So the b1 condition with the condition that says the q1 alpha annihilates the state. And then necessarily, j1 equal to 0 and j2 equals arbitrary. Clearly, similarly for b2, this is just a statement about the choice of SU2R index. And then this is the complete analogous condition but for the q tilde. And in this case, j2 will have to be 0 and j1 is arbitrary, and et cetera. c1 would be the condition, let me put c up for 1, u1 alpha contracted with alpha equal to 0, et cetera. Hopefully, this is clear. Actually, there's a small subtlety. This is the version of the c condition if j1 is different from 0. But OK, I should have said this here. So this is the condition for j1 different from 0. There is an analogous version, the correct version of the c condition if j1 is equal to 0, it's the square of the q that will annihilate the state. It's a level 2 condition. And then this object has no alpha indices. OK? So of course, I'm not deriving any of these ones. I'm simply stating that these are the only possible null states that can appear when you start computing norms of the Sandman states. It's the generalization of the condition that the divergence of the current was 0. It's this more elaborate set of conditions that you can impose. The b conditions are twice as strong as the c conditions. And so in some part of the literature, the b condition would be called shortening conditions and the c condition would be called semi-shortening, but whatever. Exactly. And now, of course, the question is given that these are the possible special condition we can have, now we can mix and match. And now that's where the story really becomes a little bit baroque because you now can start taking various multiple conditions at the same time and that gives rise to a whole zoo of possible short and super conformal multipliers. But it's also clear, however, that not anything goes. Because we must be compatible with the, you know, I impose two conditions on the primary state. If I commute them or anticommute them, I must find something consistent. And so the anticommutation of multiple conditions I impose will further constrain the quantum number of my primary because, well, remember, for example, by assumption the s's annihilate the state. So if I impose a certain q annihilate the state, the anticommutator of q with s must also vanish. The commutator of q with s contains Lorentz and Archimetic quantum number. So that means that I will find relations with these quantum numbers. And if I, to greedy, and I start imposing too many of these conditions, I could discover that these conditions are not compatible. And so there's no solution where I try to impose all of them. A simple condition that should be immediately obvious, if I try to impose simultaneous B1 and B tilde 1, that means that I'm trying to say that something is simultaneous annihilated by q1 alpha and q tilde 1 alpha dot. But of course, q1 and q tilde 1, given that this is an upper index, this is a lower index, commute to the momentum. And so this implies that the states annihilate by momentum, but the only transition by a state in quantum filter is the vacuum. And so this implies that this is just a vacuum. So that's not interesting. So apart from the vacuum, there's no way I can impose these two conditions simultaneously. And so that's assuming that we have just one vacuum. OK, so what shall we do? So there's a whole story that I really cannot really summarize the next 10 minutes. But I will focus on the maximally symmetric conditions. So we have, remember, 16 supercharges, which is 8 q's or q tilde's plus 8s and s tilde's. These are automatically 0 on the primary. And so I will enumerate the shortening condition, which are various overlaps of those conditions, the result in 8 of the q's annihilating the state. This is what you may reasonably want to call a 1 half pps condition. Because the s's are automatically 0. But if half of the q's are annihilating the state, that's 1 half pps. And so what are those? So well, I told you you cannot do b1 and b tilde 1, but you surely can do b1 and b tilde 2. So that's a 1 half pps condition that would set q1 alpha or q tilde alpha dot equals to 0. And by playing the little game I mentioned earlier, commuting this q and q tilde's with the s's, et cetera, you learn that this implies, well, first of all, as part of the definition of the b condition, you know that j1 is equal to 0. Well, it's not the definition, but you see. So why is it that this object must have j1 equal to 0? Well, because if I commute q with s, which automatically annihilates psi, I will find the Lorentz generators for j1. And those must annihilate the state. So this must be a singlet under the SU21 subalgebra. So this must be a scalar. It has 0 u1r and a priori non-zero big r. And these are the famous, in some circles, b hat r. So they're completely specified by the only non-benishing r symmetry, which is r. And finally, the last condition, you find that e is equal to 2r. Then the other thing you can do is to impose b1 and b2 simultaneously. Well, let me not rewrite it, but this could lead to the condition that e, this is what you would call a. So I'm going to get my conventions a little wrong. But let me first put this as a b hat r. This is going to be an epsilon r or epsilon bar. So let me think for a second whether it's epsilon or epsilon bar. So this is, I think, is what I would like to call an epsilon bar multiplet.  And then there's the conjugate representation, which is the epsilon r, which will be this one. That would be negative. And these are all scalars. And finally, although these are not what you normally call one-half VPS, because they are a combination of semi-shortening conditions, you can get to impose simultaneously all the C type conditions. Half are strong, but if you impose all four of them, you get something consistent. I mean, I apologize, but this is a universal notation that did not invent. But these are called the C hat 0, j1, j2 multiplets. And they have a priori arbitrary j1 and j2. Big r is equal to little r. Sorry, big r is equal to 0. Little r is equal to j2 minus j1. And the dimension is j1 plus j2 plus 2. So these three types of multiplets are the one where you get to set 4 of the q's to 0 on the primary state. And now, very quickly, since this of course looks a little bit esoteric, if you haven't seen it before, let's do a sanity check and let's go back to our Lagrangian example and let's give examples of this type of multiplets. So let's start here because it's the easiest. So these are objects which have dimension equal to the little arc symmetry. And you can hopefully quickly convince yourself that if you do not want to waste, so the dimension has to be the smallest possible for given little arc symmetry. And the only gadget that satisfies that condition in our set of characters is the phi field. And so these objects, which are clearly must be purely made of phi's. So in our conventions, phi has negative little arcs. So these objects would be trace phi to the k, whereas this one would be trace phi bar to the k. It's clear that in a Lagrangian example, there cannot be anything else to debate this condition because the moment you sprinkle in another field, you violate this condition. These objects, on the other hand, are the object that minimize the dimension for given big r. And, well, I'm taking for granted, you know how to count dimensions. So the dimension of phi is 1. The dimension of the geshino is 3 half. The dimension of a is, again, 1. But of course, if you want to make a geshion variant, you have to look at the field strength, et cetera. And, again, the dimension of the scalar is 1 here and the dimension of the spinor is 3 half. And, well, the only way you can actually win this game is if you consider objects which are made of q and q tilde's. Because the q and the q tilde's are the objects which are in the doublet of SU2R. And so particularly if I look at the highest weight, the highest weight will have, well, dimension 1 and art symmetry 1 half. And so it obeys this condition that the dimension is twice the art symmetry. And so these objects here would be gauging variant combinations of q and q tilde. So, for example, earlier in our example, so we had the q, we had qA, qT. I think I gave this as one of the elementary examples of a composite operator made of the q. This object is gauging variant because the color indices are contracted. It carries some representation under the flavored symmetry, which is, in fact, the adjoining representation of u and f. And what are these objects? The first statement I'm going to make is that if J1, well, with the exception, the only multi will be relevant for us is the one where the J1 and J2 are 0. Because for higher values on J1 and J2, this multiplet will contain higher spin concept currents. Concept currents are spin greater than 2. So for J1 or J2 greater than 0, there are higher spin concept currents inside this multiplet, which, as we discussed, are the hallmark of a free theory. So we can find these type of multiplets in these degenerate limits. But genetically, we won't allow them. The lowest one is the one that contains a stress tensor. So this is the super conformal stress tensor multiplet in a line equal to 2 theory. This multiplet, OK, it starts. So let's quickly draw the structure of the multiplet. It starts with this, how should I call it? It starts with an object of dimension 2, which is uncharged under everything. And then you build the multiplet acting with supercharged at some firmness that I will not bother with. And then at dimension 3, you're going to encounter the currents for the arc symmetry, both for the U1R and the SU2R. And then at dimension 4, you're going to encounter the stress energy tensor. It's a famous fact in supersymmetry, in many cases, where the arc symmetry currents and stress tensor are part of the same multiplet. This is an illustration of that. You may be more familiar with the nico 1 story. In the nico 2 story, the bottom component of the sensor multiplet is an uncharged scalar of dimension 2. So in our Lagrangian example, this would be something like a trace of phi, phi dagger, some number that I'm not going to be able to remember, qq dagger plus q tilde, q tilde dagger, something like that. It's a dimension 2 guy, which is not holomorphic. OK, so again, we will assume the existence of one and only one multiplet of this kind and none of this kind for j. How am I doing with time? Done. OK, so anyway, we made some progress.


People visiting a makeshift Wagner memorial in the center of Moscow on August 27 said that the group founder Yevgeny Prigazin was a real hero after Russian authorities confirmed he was killed in a plane crash last Wednesday. Russia's aviation agency had previously published the names of the 10 people on board the private jet which crashed in the Tver region northwest of Moscow. They included Prigazin and Dmitry Utkin, his right-hand man who helped found the Wagner group. An investigative committee said on Sunday that the results of genetic tests had confirmed the identities of all 10 people who died in a plane crash. The private jet crashed two months to the day after Prigazin led an abortive mutiny against Russia's army top brass. I would not take myself as a subjective assessment of what happened, but I would say that such people remain in history as an example. Because this is a well-deserved hero of our country. He is waiting for his word, he is still alive. All mistakes are made. I did not believe for the first time that such a rather serious person is effective. The fact that he died was a serious moment. It was not easy to believe in it at once. And the reaction was very unambiguously. I think that the guys from Wagner are definitely the successor. I think that Yevgeny Prigozhin is also the successor. I think that he has the right successor. And I think that you will not give up your principles and will continue to go. These conversations that are now about some mistakes, some assessments, these are different. I think that all this will be forgotten and will be in the memory of people, the image of a hero and the image of a hero in which he gathered himself. And he and Dmitriy are the real heroes who probably have such a goal, but now nowhere. It will not only be forgotten.