Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 9.djvu/139

 Arria Marcella.

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��looked important, and quarrelled with their husbands, to the great amusement of the audience. All the characters entered and went out by three doors in the wall at the back, and communi- cating with the dressing-rooms of the actors. Stalino's house was at one cor- ner of the stage, and that of Alcesimus facing it. These scenes, though very well painted, were rather representa- tions of places than places themselves.

When the bridal train accompanying the false Casina entered, an immense burst of laughter greeted them, and thunders of applause shook the theatre ; but Octavio neither saw nor heard.

In the procession of women he saw a creature of marvellous beauty. From this moment the charming beings who had attracted his eye were eclipsed like the stars before Phoebe : all vanished, all disappeared, as in a dream \ a mist hid the people in front of him, and the voices of the actors seemed lost in the distance.

He had been struck as by an electric shock ; and, when the woman looked towards him, he felt as though his heart would leap out of his breast.

She was dark and pale. Her waving hair was black as night, and was raised slightly over the temples in the Greek style ; and under her beautiful brows there shone two wonderful eyes, dark and sombre, yet soft, filled with an in- definable expression. Her mouth, dis- dainfully arched at the corners, showed two beautiful red lips against the white of the mask : her neck had those per- fectly pure lines only seen now in statu- ary. Her arms were naked to the shoulder ; and over her proud breast there hung down her tunic of a rose mauve, falling in two folds which might have been chiselled in the marble of Phidias or Cleiomene.

��The sight of this perfect throat, with its pure lines, starded Octavio : ic seemed to him that this form would fit exactly into the mould he had seen at Naples, and a voice from his heart told him that this was the woman stifled by the cinders and ashes of Vesuvius at the villa of Arrius Diomedes. By what miracle came she there, living, taking part in the comedy? He sought for no explanation ; besides, how came he there himself? He accepted her pres- ence, as in a dream one submits to the intervention of dead persons, who act as though they were alive ; and his emotion would not permit him to reason. For him the wheel of time had left its rut. He found himself face to face with his dream, his vision, one of the most impossible of dreams, a child's wish. His life was filled with joy at a single blow.

While looking at this being, so cold yet so ardent, so dead and yet full of life, he felt that here before him was his first and last love, — his cup of supreme happiness was full. He saw the memory of all those with whom he had thought himself in love vanish like shadows, and his soul was free from every thing of the past.

Meanwhile, the beautiful Pompeiian, leaning her chin upon her hand, looked at Octavio, while pretending to be oc- cupied with the performance, with a soft, deep glance ; and this glance was piercing and burning as a ball of fire. Then she whispered in the ear of a girl seated at her side. The comedy was finished : the crowd left by the en- trances. Octavio, disdaining the kind olBces of Holconius, entered the first passageway that presented itself. Hardly had he reached the door when a hand was placed upon his shoulder, and a female voice said to him in a

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