"_Piccola, piccola! com e cortese_! another invitation from M. Louvier
for next Saturday,--conversazione." This was said in Italian by an
elderly lady bursting noisily into the room,--elderly, yet with a
youthful expression of face, owing perhaps to a pair of very vivacious
black eyes. She was dressed, after a somewhat slatternly fashion, in a
wrapper of crimson merino much the worse for wear, a blue handkerchief
twisted turban-like round her head, and her feet encased in list
slippers. The person to whom she addressed herself was a young lady with
dark hair, which, despite its evident repugnance, was restrained into
smooth glossy braids over the forehead, and at the crown of the small
graceful head into the simple knot which Horace has described as
"Spartan." Her dress contrasted the speaker's by an exquisite neatness.
We have seen her before as the lady in the pearl-coloured robe; but seen
now at home she looks much younger. She was one of those whom,
encountered in the streets or in society, one might guess to be married,
--probably a young bride; for thus seen there was about her an air of
dignity and of self-possession which suits well with the ideal of chaste
youthful matronage; and in the expression of the face there was a pensive
thoughtfulness beyond her years. But as she now sat by the open window
arranging flowers in a glass bowl, a book lying open on her lap, you
would never have said, "What a handsome woman!" you would have said,
"What a charming girl!" All about her was maidenly, innocent, and fresh.
The dignity of her bearing was lost in household ease, the pensiveness of
her expression in an untroubled serene sweetness.
Perhaps many of my readers may have known friends engaged in some
absorbing cause of thought, and who are in the habit when they go out,
especially if on solitary walks, to take that cause of thought with them.
The friend may be an orator meditating his speech, a poet his verses, a
lawyer a difficult case, a physician an intricate malady. If you have
such a friend, and you observe him thus away from his home, his face will
seem to you older and graver. He is absorbed in the care that weighs on
him. When you see him in a holiday moment at his own fireside, the care
is thrown aside; perhaps he mastered while abroad the difficulty that had
troubled him; he is cheerful, pleasant, sunny. This appears to be very
much the case with persons of genius. When in their own houses we
usually find them very playful and childlike. Most persons of real
genius, whatever they may seem out of doors, are very sweet-tempered at
home, and sweet temper is sympathizing and genial in the intercourse of
private life. Certainly, observing this girl as she now bends over the
flowers, it would be difficult to believe her to be the Isaura Cicogna
whose letters to Madame de Grantinesnil exhibit the doubts and struggles
of an unquiet, discontented, aspiring mind. Only in one or two passages
in those letters would you have guessed at the writer in the girl as we
now see her. It is in those passages where she expresses her love of
harmony, and her repugnance to contest: those were characteristics you
might have read in her face.
Certainly the girl is very lovely: what long dark eyelashes! what soft,
tender, dark-blue eyes! now that she looks up and smiles, what a
bewitching smile it is! by what sudden play of rippling dimples the smile
is enlivened and redoubled! Do you notice one feature? In very showy
beauties it is seldom noticed; but I, being in my way a physiognomist,
consider that it is always worth heeding as an index of character. It is
the ear. Remark how delicately it is formed in her: none of that
heaviness of lobe which is a sure sign of sluggish intellect and coarse
perception. Hers is the artist's ear. Note next those hands: how
beautifully shaped! small, but not doll-like hands,--ready and nimble,
firm and nervous hands, that could work for a helpmate. By no means very
white, still less red, but somewhat embrowned as by the sun, such as you
may see in girls reared in southern climes, and in her perhaps betokening
an impulsive character which had not accustomed itself, when at sport in
the open air, to the thraldom of gloves,--very impulsive people even in
cold climates seldom do.
In conveying to us by a few bold strokes an idea of the sensitive, quick-
moved, warm-blooded Henry II., the most impulsive of the Plantagenets,
his contemporary chronicler tells us that rather than imprison those
active hands of his, even in hawking-gloves, he would suffer his falcon
to fix its sharp claws into his wrist. No doubt there is a difference as
to what is befitting between a burly bellicose creature like Henry II.
and a delicate young lady like Isaura Cicogna; and one would not wish to
see those dainty wrists of hers seamed and scarred by a falcon's claws.
But a girl may not be less exquisitely feminine for slight heed of
artificial prettiness. Isaura had no need of pale bloodless hands to
seem one of Nature's highest grade of gentlewomen even to the most
fastidious eyes. About her there was a charm apart from her mere beauty,
and often disturbed instead of heightened by her mere intellect: it
consisted in a combination of exquisite artistic refinement, and of a
generosity of character by which refinement was animated into vigour and
warmth.
The room, which was devoted exclusively to Isaura, had in it much that
spoke of the occupant. That room, when first taken furnished, had a good
deal of the comfortless showiness which belongs to ordinary furnished
apartments in France, especially in the Parisian suburbs, chiefly let
for the summer: thin limp muslin curtains that decline to draw; stiff
mahogany chairs covered with yellow Utrecht velvet; a tall secretaire in
a dark corner; an oval buhl-table set in tawdry ormolu, islanded in the
centre of a poor but gaudy Scotch carpet; and but one other table of dull
walnut-wood, standing clothless before a sofa to match the chairs; the
eternal ormolu clock flanked by the two eternal ormolu candelabra on the
dreary mantelpiece. Some of this garniture had been removed, others
softened into cheeriness and comfort. The room somehow or other--thanks
partly to a very moderate expenditure in pretty twills with pretty
borders, gracefully simple table-covers, with one or two additional small
tables and easy-chairs, two simple vases filled with flowers; thanks
still more to a nameless skill in re-arrangement, and the disposal of the
slight knick-knacks and well-bound volumes, which, even in travelling,
women who have cultivated the pleasures of taste carry about them--had
been coaxed into that quiet harmony, that tone of consistent subdued
colour, which corresponded with the characteristics of the inmate. Most
people might have been puzzled where to place the piano, a semi-grand,
so as not to take up too much space in the little room; but where it was
placed it seemed so at home that you might have supposed the room had
been built for it.
There are two kinds of neatness,--one is too evident, and makes
everything about it seem trite and cold and stiff; and another kind of
neatness disappears from our sight in a satisfied sense of completeness,
--like some exquisite, simple, finished style of writing, an Addison's or
a St. Pierre's.
This last sort of neatness belonged to Isaura, and brought to mind the
well-known line of Catullus when on recrossing his threshold he invokes
its welcome,--a line thus not inelegantly translated by Leigh Hunt,
"Smile every dimple on the cheek of Home."
I entreat the reader's pardon for this long descriptive digression; but
Isaura is one of those characters which are called many-sided, and
therefore not very easy to comprehend. She gives us one side of her
character in her correspondence with Madame de Grantmesnil, and another
side of it in her own home with her Italian companion,--half nurse, half
chaperon.
"Monsieur Louvier is indeed very courteous," said Isaura, looking up from
the flowers with the dimpled smile we have noticed. "But I think, Madre,
that we should do well to stay at home on Saturday,--not peacefully, for
I owe you your revenge at Euchre."
"You can't mean it, Piecola!" exclaimed the Signora, in evident
consternation. "Stay at home!--why stay at home? Euchre is very well
when there is nothing else to do: but change is pleasant; le bon Dieu
likes it,
"'Ne caldo ne gelo
Resta mai in cielo.'
"And such beautiful ices one gets at M. Louvier's! Did you taste the
pistachio ice? What fine rooms, and so well lit up! I adore light. And
the ladies so beautifully dressed: one sees the fashions. Stay at home!
play at Euchre indeed! Piccola, you cannot be so cruel to yourself: you
are young."
"But, dear Madre, just consider; we are invited because we are considered
professional singers: your reputation as such is of course established,--
mine is not; but still I shall be asked to sing, as I was asked before;
and you know Dr. C. forbids me to do so except to a very small audience;
and it is so ungracious always to say 'No;' and besides, did you not
yourself say, when we came away last time from M. Louvier's, that it was
very dull, that you knew nobody, and that the ladies had such superb
toilets that you felt mortified--and--"
"Zitto! zitto! you talk idly, Piccola,--very idly. I was mortified then
in my old black Lyons silk; but have I not bought since then my beautiful
Greek jacket,--scarlet and gold lace? and why should I buy it if I am not
to show it?"
"But, dear Madre, the jacket is certainly very handsome, and will make an
effect in a little dinner at the Savarins or Mrs. Morley's; but in a
great formal reception like M. Louvier's will it not look--"
"Splendid!" interrupted the Signora.
"But _singolare_."
"So much the better; did not that great English Lady wear such a jacket,
and did not every one admire her, _piu tosto invidia the compassione_?"
Isaura sighed. Now the jacket of the Signora was a subject of
disquietude to her friend. It so happened that a young English lady of
the highest rank and the rarest beauty had appeared at M. Louvier's, and
indeed generally in the _beau monde_ of Paris, in a Greek jacket that
became her very much. The jacket had fascinated, at M. Louvier's, the
eyes of the Signora. But of this Isaura was unaware. The Signora, on
returning home from M. Louvier's, had certainly lamented much over the
_mesquin_ appearance of her old-fashioned Italian habiliments compared
with the brilliant toilette of the gay Parisiennes; and Isaura--quite
woman enough to sympathize with woman in such womanly vanities--proposed
the next day to go with the Signora to one of the principal couturieres
of Paris, and adapt the Signora's costume to the fashions of the place.
But the Signora having predetermined on a Greek jacket, and knowing
by instinct that Isaura would be disposed to thwart that splendid
predilection, had artfully suggested that it would be better to go
to the couturiere with Madame Savarin, as being a more experienced
adviser,--and the coupe only held two.
As Madame Savarin was about the same age as the Signora, and dressed as
became her years and in excellent taste, Isaura thought this an admirable
suggestion; and pressing into her chaperon's hand a _billet de banque_
sufficient to re-equip her _cap-a pie_, dismissed the subject from her
mind. But the Signora was much too cunning to submit her passion for the
Greek jacket to the discouraging comments of Madame Savarin.
Monopolizing the _coupe_, she became absolute mistress of the situation.
She went to no fashionable couturiere's. She went to a magasin that she
had seen advertised in the _Petites Afiches_ as supplying superb costumes
for fancy-balls and amateur performers in private theatricals. She
returned home triumphant, with a jacket still more dazzling to the eye
than that of the English lady.
When Isaura first beheld it, she drew back in a sort of superstitious
terror, as of a comet or other blazing portent.
"_Cosa stupenda_!" (stupendous thing!) She might well be dismayed when
the Signora proposed to appear thus attired in M. Louvier's salon. What
might be admired as coquetry of dress in a young beauty of rank so great
that even a vulgarity in her would be called distinguee, was certainly an
audacious challenge of ridicule in the elderly _ci-devant_ music-teacher.
But how could Isaura, how can any one of common humanity, say to a woman
resolved upon wearing a certain dress, "You are not young and handsome
enough for that?" Isaura could only murmur, "For many reasons I would
rather stay at home, dear Madre."
"Ah! I see you are ashamed of me," said the Signora, in softened tones:
"very natural. When the nightingale sings no more, she is only an ugly
brown bird;" and therewith the Signora Venosta seated herself
submissively, and began to cry.
On this Isaura sprang up, wound her arms round the Signora's neck,
soothed her with coaxing, kissed and petted her, and ended by saying, "Of
course we will go;" and, "but let me choose you another dress,--a dark-
green velvet trimmed with blonde: blonde becomes you so well."
"No, no: I hate green velvet; anybody can wear that. Piccola, I am not
clever like thee; I cannot amuse myself like thee with books. I am in a
foreign land. I have a poor head, but I have a big heart" (another burst
of tears); "and that big heart is set on my beautiful Greek jacket."
"Dearest Madre," said Isaura, half weeping too, "forgive me, you are
right. The Greek jacket is splendid; I shall be so pleased to see you
wear it: poor Madre! so pleased to think that in the foreign land you
are not without something that pleases you!"