Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/234

250 after the short season of darkness, again heard her inward voices, and heard only them, whilst the flames rose and rose.

Zouaves march in brilliant eastern costume, backwards and forwards, in the streets and markets of Paris, reminding the beholder of the last victorious movements of the West against the East, of victories in Algeria and at Sebastopol. It is the new picturesque outward trait which I recognized in Paris.

There were two scenes, however, which I beheld there, which will live in my heart's memory,—the one of a heavenly, the other of earthly happiness. Then I saw the dear old pictures which I saw thirty years ago, but which I have preserved in memory, as if I had first seen them only yesterday. There I now saw a new one, and stood riveted in enraptured contemplation of the Ascension of the Virgin, by Murillo. I wished that I could bring the fallen women of the saloons of Prado and Valentino to this madonna, that they might fall down before her as repentant Magdalenes. I wished that all human beings could see this picture, and beholding it, comprehend how the highest purity and love lead to a happiness so great that no human heart on earth can comprehend, no tongue can express it. This picture of the Virgin breathes life, beauty, bliss. One seems to see the crimson of the cheek grow pale before the light of heaven, as the flush of morning pales before that of the sun. Raphael's madonnas are soulless and lifeless, compared with this of Murillo.

The second scene, I saw in a little attic up five flights of stairs. There lived a young newly-married