Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/234

 226 utterly devoid of all coquetry. Her bright hair, of that tint so familiar to us in Venetian pictures (yellow with a flame through it, like rare, burnished gold), was simply folded back from her broad forehead, and drooped low down on her neck. The dark eyes were deep set, and wide apart, and there was a peculiar slowness in their movements, which gave an air of thoughtfulness, perhaps almost of sternness, to their expression. She was pale, and there were lines on her forehead, and under her eyes, which told of long suffering. But though the upper part of the face looked worn, the mouth, with its beautiful, flexible lips of rich dewy red, and the radiant teeth, which shone luminous as she smiled, was as bright as in the freshest bloom of youth. It was certainly a striking countenance. Larger thoughts, nobler purposes, deeper feelings might be read in it, than in those of the triflers around. This discrepancy was felt by all, and resented by some. All saw there was a difference; the few only acknowledged this difference a distinction.

One evening, I was as usual at Madame de L’s. I had just entered, and was standing near Madame Rabenfels. She put out her hand to take an ice from the servant, and in so doing, some pressure of the crowd caused him to stumble, and upset the ices and tumblers into her lap. I rescued her from the broken glasses, but her dress seemed considerably damaged. She thanked me with her usual air of grave indifference, and rose to go. I offered her my arm. On reaching the entrance we found her carriage had not yet arrived. I proposed returning to the music-room. It was yet early, the clocks were only just striking twelve. She hesitated, and then with more impulsiveness than I had yet seen in her, said:

“I have an engagement, and must go; but I will draw my hood over my head, and I can easily walk the little distance. Good night,” and she offered to shake hands. I smiled, and told her she must have a strange opinion of me, if she imagined I would not request permission to accompany her.

“Thank you,” she answered gravely; “it is scarcely necessary, for in ten minutes I shall be at home; however, as you will.”

Coldly as the permission was granted, I availed myself of it and walked with her.

It was a beautiful night, and Paris proper, as it might be termed, sparkled in the distance, while the dark trees of the Champs Elysées looked shadowy and gloomy near us. The roll of carriages, and that indescribable noise which surges through the night in a great city like Paris, was very striking, contrasted with the distinct fall of our own footsteps. The silence and the darkness near us, the glitter and the reverberations beyond us, had a mysterious, ominous effect. We seemed walking in some weird and enchanted world, cut off and separated from the real one by those busy echoes, and those bands of light.

“Do you not think,” I remarked, “that those lamps, in their tortuous and undulating lines, look like the convolutions of some huge shining serpent, intent on barring our further progress?”

“More like the bright nails which are disposed in lines and curves on some vast black coffin spread out before us,” she answered, and we both smiled at our somewhat far-fetched and gloomy comparisons.

“I feel almost superstitious,” she continued, “when I look at these silent, shining witnesses of all the deeds of the night. The stars are too far above our sphere for us to claim their sympathy; but these are in the midst of all, and are a part of all, and yet are as completely removed from all, as the stars themselves.”

“Exactly so, and it is one of my pleasures to walk sometimes late at night, or rather early in the morning, here, and watch the distant lights, and wonder what scenes are being acted in the great drama of life before their steadfast, ruthless presence.”

“But here, we are both too near and too far from the great throbbing heart of the fair wicked city for true observation.”

“Why do you think so?”

“There is something so mournful and so depressing in being cut off, as it were, from the joys and sorrows of the multitude,” she answered, sadly, “that we cannot judge fairly when thus separated from them.”

“It is but like the lives of many of us,” I replied. “To some are given the wide sympathies, the broad lights of life; to others the silence and the shade, with only the echoes of one footstep sounding through their darkened existence.”

She paused abruptly. Whether she was satisfied on reflection that I meant no personal allusion in what I said, I know not; but, after a minute or two, she went on in a lighter tone:

“This late walk in evening dress reminds me of such happy days! When a young girl in Rome, I always returned on foot from any little evening gaieties to which I went. My brother, though much older than myself, humoured me in all my whims and fancies. We would hasten through the streets till we entered the little side door which opened upon the great court-yard, and then we raced to see which could reach first, the fountain, that tossed up its sparkles in the moonlight. How many sprays of the fern which hung over it have I held up in token of victory! for I used always to win then.” A lovely smile hovered for a moment over her lips.

“You are a Roman?”

“I am a Colonna,” she answered. There was a simple dignity in her tone which suited her well, and the picture her words had created of the two Italians, one so beautiful, and both in the bloom of youth,—of the sky of Rome with its intense moonlight,—of the fountain garlanded with fern, such as I had often seen in my wanderings in the old city, was charming.

Hitherto my conversations with her had been brief; the general tone of her serious and anti-mundane remarks had excited my profane discontent or my irreverent impatience, but now I was deeply interested. We had reached her house. She thanked me politely, bade me farewell kindly, and the door closed upon her.

I stood for a moment, in deep thought, when I felt my arm touched, and saw my friend Auguste Rochecalme.

“I congratulate you, mon cher.”