Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 9.djvu/141

 Arria Majxella.

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��the theatre) ; and around her arm, like the asp around the arm of Cleopatra, was coiled several times a golden ser- pent, \A;ith eyes of precious stones.

A little table supported by griffins, incRisted with gold, silver, and ivory, was at the foot of the bed ; and upon it were confections in little plates of silver and gold. These plates were ornamented with precious paintings.

Every thing indicated that all was prepared for a husband or lover : fresh flowers .filled the air with their perfume, and vessels laden with wine were placed in urns heaped with snow.

Arria Marcella signed to Octavio to sit down beside her on the divan, and to partake of the repast. The young man, half crazed by surprise and love, took at hazard some mouthfuls from the plates which the small Asiatic slaves with white hair held up to him. Arria did not eat ; but she sipped continually from a vase of opal tint, filled with wine of a deep purple color. As she drank, a hardly perceptible rose tint spread itself over her pale face from her heart, which had not beaten for so many years. Meanwhile, her naked arm, which Octavio slightly touched in rais- ing his glass, was cold as marble.

" Oh ! when you stopped at Studij to contemplate the piece of hardened lava which preserved my form," said Arria Marcella, turning her long, deep glance upon Octavio, " and which caused your soul to ardently wish for me, I felt it in this world in which my soul floats invisible to human eyes. Faith made God, and love made woman. One is really dead, only when she is no longer loved. Your love has given me life : the powerful evocation of your heart has spanned the distance which separated us.

" In fact, nothing dies," she con-

��tinued ; " every thing exists forever : no power can destroy that which once exists. All action, all words, all forms, all thoughts, fall into the universal ocean of things, and make circles, which go on growing larger to the confines of eternity. Material forms disappear only for the gross eye ; and the spirits, which are detached, people the Infinite. Paris is still charming Helen in the unknown regions of space. Cleopatra's galley still spreads its silken sails upon the azure of an ideal Cyanus. Some pas- sionate and powerful natures have been able to call back the centuries appar- ently gone, and give life to people dead for all eternity. Faust had for his mis- tress the daughter of Tyndare, and has led her to his Gothic chateau at the bottom of the mysterious abyss of Hades. Octavio has now come to live an hour under the reign of Titus, and make love to Arria Marcella, daughter of Arrius Diomedes, at this moment lying near him upon an antique bed in a town destroyed for all the rest of the world."

" I was disgusted with all women," said Octavio, " and all things common, and it was for you whom I waited ; and this memento, preserved by the curi- osity of man, has by its secret magnet- ism put me in communication with your soul. I do not know whether you are a dream or a reality, a phantom or a woman ; whether, like Ixion, I press a cloud to my breast ; or whether I am the victim of sorcery : but I do know that you will be my first and my last love."

" May Eros, son of Aphrodite, hear your promise ! " said Arria, resting her head upon his shoulder with a passion- ate gesture. " Held me to your young breast ; breathe upon me with your hot, sweet breath : I am cold from being

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