Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/212

 He had loved one who was as useless as the painted butterfly, as lovely and as idle as the lotus floating on its broad green leaves, rocked on the rippling water.

This creature, all strength, and daring, and continual effort, had for the moment, at least, no woman's charm for him as he saw her come home from her day's hard labour, bearing on her shoulders the faggot of sticks, or the sheave of bracken, and in her hand the fishing-nets, and the sickle or the hatchet. So might have looked any maiden of Tempe or of Calydon; so might have looked Theocritus' love when the Sicilian vales were lilac with the meadow mint, and rent by autumn gales.

As these she had looked to Maurice Sanctis. But Este, though he knew the pastoral poets by heart, did not see her with those eyes. For him her humble daily cares of him obscured her beauty, as in days of old it obscured for mortals the divinity of those gods who came amidst them, and drove their ploughshares and sat beside their hearths.

If he had known of Daniello Villamagna, with his face like a Veronese portrait, and his sinewy elastic frame, and stately yet