Page:The Bride of Lindorf.pdf/5

452 but it was the heart and the mind that gave their own nameless charm. The heart sent the flushed crimson to the cheek–the mind lighted up the clear white forehead, around which darkened the blackest hair: that deep black hair whose comparisons are all so gloomy, the poet likens it to midnight–to the shadow of the grave–to the tempest–to the raven’s wing. Brought from the south, our cold climes just serve to dash the passionate temperament which it indicates with the despondency and the reverie of our sad and misty skies. All women would have called him interesting–the woman who loved him would have called him beautiful. Had the word fascinating never been used before, it would have been invented for him. Like all of his susceptible organization, Ernest was very variable: sometimes the life of society, with every second word an epigram; at others, grave and absorbed–no stimulus, no flattery, could rouse him to animation. His intimate, his very few intimate friends, said that nothing could exceed his eloquence in graver converse: carried away by his feelings, how could he help being eloquent? He was made of all nature’s most dangerous ingredients: he thought deeply–he felt acutely; and for such this world has neither resting-place nor contentment.

The door of Ernest’s chamber suddenly opened, and its threshold was crossed by a step that certainly had never crossed it before. Stately and slow, as usual, the Countess von Hermanstadt just raised her robe with an air of utter disdain, as she swept by the heavy folios that lay scattered on the ground.

“What! not dressed yet, Ernest?–Certainly the Count von Hermanstadt is well employed, sitting there like a moonstruck dreamer. Pray, am I to have the distinguished honour of a poet or a painter, or,”–added she, pointing sneeringly to a volume of planetary signs that lay open at her feet–“or even an astrologer, as my son?”

Ernest coloured, and rose hastily from his seat. “I do so hate,” said he, “those crowds where no one cares for the other; where”—

“No one,” interrupted the Countess, “can be so great a simpleton as yourself. Who, in a crowd or elsewhere, will care about one whom they never see? What friends will you ever make in this little, miserable room? The Archduke Charles has twice inquired after you. I managed as well as I could; but I really have something else to do to-night than just to make excuses for you.”

“Ah! my mother, you cannot think how unfitted I am for the mock gaiety to-night. Let me stay where I am.”

“Nonsense!–Why, there has been your pretty cousin waiting, till I forbade it, to dance with you. I left her waltzing with Prince Louis.”

“The less need of me.”

“Nay, my dear child!” said his mother, in those caressing tones she well knew how to assume, “think what a slight it will be to our guests if you do not appear; and so many old friends of our house among them. I want assistance. Come, Ernest, would you be the only son in Vienna who would refuse his mother the slight favour of appearing at a ball which is given to introduce him to old friends, whom she at least loves and values?”

Ernest rose hastily and silently from his seat. “I will be there almost as soon as yourself,” exclaimed he; and indeed the countess had scarcely resumed her place at the upper end of the room, before she saw