Page:The Enchantress.pdf/33

30 Truly, night was made for sleep; since to its wakeful hours belongs an oppression unknown to the very dreariest hours of day. The stillness is so deep, the solitude so unbroken, the fever brought on by want of rest so weakens the nerves, that the imagination exercises despotic and unwholesome power, till, if the heart have a fear or a sorrow, up it arises in all the force and terror of gigantic exaggeration.

The Countess had long since dismissed her attendants; yet the pearls still braided her hair, which hung nearly to her feet, in two large plaits; and a white silk robe, carelessly fastened at the waist, shrouding her whole figure in its loose folds, gave her something of that ghost-like appearance with which our fancy invests the habitants of another world. And truly, with her pale cheek and melancholy eyes, she looked like a spirit wandering mournfully around the scene of former pleasures. Yet what luxury was there not gathered in that gorgeous room? The purple silk curtains excluded the night-dews, while they allowed the air to enter freighted with odours from the orange-trees on the terrace below. The nuns of the Convent of St. Valerie, so celebrated for their skill in embroidery, had exerted their finest art in transferring all the flowers of spring to the white velvet ottomans: you might have asked, which was real—the rose on the cushion or that which hung from the crystal vase? The jewels lavished on the toys scattered round, had been held a noble dower by the fairest maiden