# LXIV explained — Lavengro

> Chapter companion for Lavengro by George Borrow.

## What happens

The narrator walks with the stranger to his mansion, where they dine and the stranger recounts his family history and his lifelong struggle with excessive sensibility and compulsive behavior.

## Themes in this chapter

### Social Class and Gentility

The stranger's grandfather rises from trade to become a country gentleman, illustrating themes of social mobility and the pursuit of gentility.

### Honor and Morality

The stranger's compulsive touching and his shame about it highlight internal moral struggles and the conflict between impulse and reason.

## Character check-ins

### Lavengro

Accompanies the stranger to his mansion, dines with him, and listens to his life story.

### The Stranger

Hosts the narrator at his mansion, shares his family history and his personal struggles with sensibility and compulsive touching.

## Key lines

> I was born with excessive sensibility, and that has been my bane.

My heightened sensitivity has been the source of my suffering.

_The stranger identifies his innate sensibility as the root of his unhappiness._

> No one is fortunate unless he is happy, and it is impossible for a being constructed like myself to be happy for an hour, or even enjoy peace and tranquillity; most of our pleasures and pains are the effects of imagination, and wherever the sensibility is great, the imagination is great also.

Happiness is impossible for someone like me because my intense imagination turns pleasure into distress.

_The stranger explains how his imagination and sensibility prevent lasting happiness._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/lavengro_se/chapters/lxiv
- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/lavengro_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/lavengro_se/chapters