All lives have their prose translation as well as their ideal meaning;
how seldom _this_ escapes in language worthy, while _that_ tells best
in words. I was a good deal exhausted for several days after I entered
the school, and saw very little except my own stuntedness and
deficiency in the mirror of contemplation. For Anastase took me to
himself awfully the first morning, all alone; examined me, tortured
me, made me blush and hesitate and groan; bade me be humble and
industrious; told me I was not so forward as I might be; drenched me
with medicinal advices that lowered my mental system; and, finally,
left me in possession of a minikin edition of what I had conceived
myself the day before, but which he deprived me of at present, if not
annihilated forever.
It was doubtless a very good thing to go back to the beginning, if he
intended to re-create me; but it happened that such transmutation
could not take place twice, and it had already occurred once. Still, I
was absolved from obvious discomfiture to the regenerator by my silent
adaptations to his behavior.
That which would assuredly become a penance to the physique in dark or
wintry weather, remained still a charming matutinal romance; namely,
that we all rose at four o'clock, except any one who might be
delicate, and that we practised a couple of hours before we got
anything to eat,--I mean formally, for, in fact, we almost all
smuggled into our compartments wherewithal to keep off the natural,
which might not amalgamate with the spiritual, constraining appetite.
Those early mornings were ineffaceably effective for me; I advanced
more according to my desires than I had ever advanced before, and I
laid up a significant store of cool, sequestered memories. I could,
however, scarcely realize my own existence under these circumstances,
until the questioner within me was subdued to "contemplation" by my
first "adventure."
I had been a week in durance, if not vile, very void, for I had seen
nothing of the Cerinthias nor of their interesting young advocate,
except at table,--though certainly on these latter occasions we
surfeited ourselves with talk that whetted my curiosity to a double
edge. On the first Sunday, however, I laid hold of him coming out of
church, when we had fulfilled our darling duties in the choir,--for
the choir of our little perfect temple, oak-shaded and sunlit, was
composed entirely of Cecilians, and I have not time in this place to
dilate upon its force and fulness. Delemann responded joyously to my
welcome; and when I asked him what was to be our task on Sunday, he
answered that the rest of the day was our own, and that if I pleased
we would go together and call upon that Maria and her little sister,
of whom I knew all that could be gained out of personal intercourse.
"Just what I wished," said I; "how exactly you guessed it!"
"Oh, but I wanted to go myself!" answered Franz, laughing, "for I have
an errand thither;" and together we quitted the church garden, with
its sheltering lime shadow, for the sultry pavement.
It cannot have been five minutes that we walked, before we came in
front of one of those narrowest and tallest of the droll abodes I was
pretty well used to now, since I had lived with Aronach. We went
upstairs, too, in like style to that of the old apprentice home, and
even as there, did not rest until nearly at the top. Delemann knocked
at a door, and, as if perfectly accustomed to do so, walked in without
delay. The room we entered was slightly furnished, but singularly in
keeping with each other were the few ornaments, unsurpassably
effective. Also a light clearness threw up and out each decoration
from the delicate hue of the walls and the mild fresco of their
borders, unlike anything I had yet seen, and startling, in spite of
the simplicity of the actual accommodations, from their excelling
taste. Upon brackets stood busts, three or four, and a single vase of
such form that it could only have been purchased in Italy. At the
window were a couch and reading-desk, also a table ready prepared with
some kind of noonday meal; and at the opposite end of the apartment
rose from the polished floor the stove itself, entirely concealed
under lime-branches and oak-leaves. The room, too, was not untenanted,
for upon the couch, though making no use whatever of the desk, lay a
gentleman, who was reading, nevertheless, a French newspaper. He was
very fine,--grand-looking, I thought; his dress appeared courtly, so
courtly was his greeting. "You have not come for me, I know," he
observed to Delemann, having seated us; "but the girls, having dined,
are gone to rest: we don't find it easy to dispense with our siesta.
You will surely eat first, for you must be hungry, and I am but just
come in." He was, in fact, waiting for the soup, which swiftly
followed us; and so we sat down together. Franz then produced a little
basket, which I had noticed him to carry very carefully as we came
along; but he did not open it, he placed it by his side upon the
table. It was covered, and the cover was tied down with green ribbon.
I was instantly smitten curious; but a great stay to my curiosity was
the deportment of our host. I had seen a good many musicians by this
time, and found them every one the alone civilized and polished of the
human race; but there were evidences of supremacy in a few that I
detected not even in the superior many. Some had enthralled me more
than this young Cerinthia for I now know he was young, though at that
time he appeared extremely my elder, and I could have believed him
even aged; but there was about him an unassuming nobility that bespoke
the highest of all educations,--that according to the preparations and
purposes of nature. He seemed to live rationally, and I believe he
did, though he was not to the immediate perception large-hearted. He
ate, himself, with the frugality of Ausonia, but pressed us with
cordial attention; and for me, I enjoyed my dinner immensely, though I
had not come there to eat. Franz did not talk to him about his
sisters, as I should have perhaps wished, and I dared not mention
them, for there was that in Cerinthia's hazy, lustrous eyes that made
me afraid to be as audacious as my disposition permitted. Presently,
while we were drinking to each other, I heard little steps in the
passage; and as I expected an apparition, I was not surprised when
there entered upon those light feet a little girl, who, the first
moment reminded me of Laura, but not the next, for her face was unlike
as my own. She was very young, indeed, but had a countenance unusually
formed, though the head was infantine,--like enough to our entertainer
to belong to him, like as to delicacy of extremities and emerald
darkness of eye. She wore a short white frock and two beautiful plaits
of thick bright hair kept and dressed like that of a princess. She
took no notice of me, but courtesyed to Delemann with an alien air
most strange to me, and then ran past him to her brother, whom she
freely caressed, at the same time, as it were, to hide her face. "Look
up! my shy Josephine," said he, "and make another courtesy to that
young gentleman, who is a great friend and connoisseur of the
Chevalier Seraphael." Josephine looked back at me from beneath her
heavy eyelashes, but still did not approach. Then I said, "How is your
sister, Miss Josephine? I am only a little friend of the
Chevalier,--she is the great one."
"I know," replied she, in a sage child's voice, then looking up at her
brother, "Maria is tired, and will not come in here, Joseph."
"She is lying down, then?"
"No, she is brushing her hair." We all laughed at this.
"But run to tell her that Franz Delemann is here, and Carl Auchester
with him; or if you cannot remember this name, Delemann's alone will
do."
"But she knows, for we heard them come in, and she said she should
stay in her room; but that if Mr. Delemann had a letter for her I
might carry it there."
"I don't know whether there is a letter in here, Josephine, but this
basket came for her."
"How pretty!" said Josephine; and she stretched her tiny hand, a smile
just shining over her face that reminded me of her beautiful sister. I
saw she was anxious to possess herself of it, but I could not resist
my own desire to be the bearer.
"Let me take it to her!" I exclaimed impulsively. Cerinthia looked up,
and Franz, too, surprised enough; but I did not care, I rose. "She can
send me back again, if she is angry," I pleaded; and Cerinthia fairly
laughed.
"Oh, you may go! She will not send you back, though I should certainly
be sent back if _I_ took such a liberty."
"Neither would she admit me," said Delemann.
"Why, you came last Sunday," put in little Josephine and then she
looked at me, with one little finger to her lip.
"Come too!"
So we went, she springing before me to a door which she left ajar as
she entered, while I discreetly remained outside.
"May he come, Maria?" I heard her say; and then I heard that other
voice.
"Who, dear little Josephine,--which of them?"
"The little boy."
"The little boy!" she gave a kind of bright cry, and herself came to
the door. She opened it, and standing yet there, said, with the
loveliest manner, "You will not quarrel with this little thing! But
forgive her, and pray come in. It was kind to come all the way up
those stairs, which are steep as the road to fame."
"Is that steep?" I asked, for her style instantly excited me to a
rallying mood.
"Some say so," she replied,--"those who seek it. But come and rest."
And she led me by her flower-soft finger-tips to a sofa, also in the
light, as in the room I had quitted, and bathed in airs that floated
above the gardens, and downwards from the heavens into that window
also open. A curtain was drawn across the alcove at the end, and
between us and its folds of green, standing out most gracefully, was a
beautiful harp; there were also more books than I had seen in a
sitting-room since I left my Davy, and I concluded they had been
retrieved from her lost father's library. But upon the whole room
there was an atmosphere thrown neither from the gleaming harp nor
illustrating volumes; and as my eyes rested upon her, after roving
everywhere else, I could only wonder I had ever looked away. Her very
dress was such as would have become no other, and was that which she
herself invested with its charm. She wore a dark-blue muslin, darker
than the summer heaven, but of the self-same hue; this robe was worn
loosely, was laced in front over a white bodice. Upon those folds was
flung a shawl of some dense rose-color and an oriental texture, and
again over that shady brilliance fell the long hair, velvet-soft, and
darker than the pine-trees in the twilight. The same unearthly hue
slept in the azure-emerald of her divinely moulded eyes, mild and
liquid as orbed stars, and just as superhuman. The hair, thus
loosened, swept over her shoulder into her lap. There was not upon its
stream the merest ripple,--it was straight as long; and had it not
been so fine, must have wearied with its weight a head so small as
hers.
"What magnificent hair you have!" said I.
"It seems I was determined to make of it a spectacle. If I had known
you were coming, I should have put it out of the way; but whenever I
am lazy or tired, I like to play with it. The Chevalier calls it my
rosary."
I was at home directly.
"The Chevalier! Oh! have you seen him since that day?"
"Four, five, six times."
"And I have not seen him once."
"You shall see him eight, nine, ten times. Never mind! He comes to see
me, you know, out of that kindness whose prettiest name is charity."
"Where is he now?" I inquired, impatient of that remark of hers.
"Now? I do not know. He has been away a fortnight, conducting
everywhere. Have you not heard?"
"No,--what?"
"Of the Mer de Glace overture and accompaniments?"
"I have not heard a word."
She took hold of her hair and stroked it impatiently; still, there was
such sweetness in her accent as made me doubt she was angry.
"I told Florimond to tell you. He always forgets those things!"
I looked up inquiringly; there was that in her eye which might be the
light of an unfallen tear.
"But I don't know who you mean."
"I am glad not. How silly I am! Oh, _madre mia_! this hot weather
softens the brain, I do believe,--I should never have done it in the
winter. And all this time I have been wondering what is that basket
upon which Josephine seems to have set her whole soul."
"It is for you," said Josephine.
"Oh," I exclaimed, "how careless I am! Yes, but I do not know who it
comes from. Franz brought it."
"Young Delemann? Oh, thank him, please! I know very well. Here, then,
_piccola, carina_! you shall have to open it. Where are the ivory
scissors?"
"Oh, how exquisite!" I cried; for I knew she meant those tiny fingers.
"Exquisite, is it? It is again from the Chevalier."
"Did he say so? I thought it like him; but you are so like him."
"I well, I believe you are right,--there is a kind of likeness."
She raised her eyes, so full of lustre, that I even longed for the
lids to fall. The brilliant smile, like the most ardent sunlight, had
spread over her whole face. I forgot her strange words in her
unimaginable expression, until she spoke again. All this while the
little one was untwisting the green bands which were passed over and
under the basket. At length the cover was lifted: there were seven or
eight immense peaches. I had thought there must be fruit within, from
the exhaling scent, but still I was surprised. There was no letter.
This disappointed me; but there were fresh leaves at the very bottom.
My chief companion took out these, and laid each peach upon a leaf:
her fingers shone against the downy blush. She presented me with one
after another. "Pray eat them, or as many as you can; I do not eat
fruit to-day, for it is too hot weather, and _she_ must not eat so
many." I instantly began to eat, and made efforts to do even more than
I ought. Josephine carried off her share on a doll's plate. Then her
sister rose and took in a birdcage from outside the window, where it
had hung, but I had not seen it. There was within it a small bird, and
dull enough it looked until she opened the door, when it fluttered to
the bars, hopped out, stood upon a peach, and then, espying me, flew
straight into her bosom. It lay there hidden for some minutes, and she
covered and quite concealed it with her lovely little hand. I said,--
"Is it afraid of me? Shall I go?"
"Oh dear no!" she replied; "it does like you, and is only shy. Do you
never wish to be hidden when you see those you like?"
"I never have yet, but I daresay I shall, now I come to think about
it."
"You certainly will. This silly little creature is not yet quite sure
of us; that is it."
"Where did it come from?"
"It came from under the rye-stacks. He--that is always the Chevalier,
you know--was walking through the rye-fields when the moon was up; the
reapers had all gone home. He heard a small cry withering under the
wheat, and stayed to listen. Most men would not have heard such a weak
cry; no man would have stayed to listen, except one, perhaps, besides.
He put aside all the loose ears, and he found under them--for it could
not move--this wretched lark, with its foot broken,--broken by the
sickle."
There was no quiver of voice or lip as she spoke. I mention this
merely because I am not fond of the mere sentiment almost all women
infuse into the sufferings of inferior creatures, while those with
loftier claims and pains are overlooked. She went on,--
"How do you think he took it up? He spread his handkerchief over the
stubble, and shelled a grain or two, which he placed within reach of
the lark upon the white table-cloth. The lark tried very hard, and
hopped with its best foot to reach the grains, then he drew the four
corners together, and brought it here to me. I thought it would die,
but it has not died; and now it knows me, and has no mind to go away."
"Does it know him?"
"Not only so, but for him alone will it sing. I let it fly one day
when its foot was well; but the next morning I found it outside the
window pecking at its cage-wires, and it said, 'Take me back again, if
you please.'"
"That is like the Chevalier too. But you _are_ like him; I suppose it
is being so much with him."
"And yet I never saw him till the first day I saw you, and you had
seen him long before. I think it must be dead, it is so still."
Hereupon she uncovered the lark's head; it peeped up, and slowly, with
sly scrutiny, hopped back to the peach and began to feed, driving in
its little bill. I wanted to know something now, and my curiosity in
those days had not so much as received a wholesome check, much less a
quietus; and therefore presumptuously demanded,--
"Who was the somebody, Fräulein Cerinthia, that might stop to listen
to a bird's cry besides the Chevalier. You stopped."
"And that is why you wished to know. I had better have said it in the
right place. Did anybody ever tell you you are audacious? It was
Florimond Anastase."
"My master!" and I clapped my hands.
"Mine, sir, if you please."
"But he teaches me the violin."
"And he does not teach me the violin, but is yet my master."
"How, why?"
"I belong to him, or shall."
"Do you mean that you are married to Anastase?"
"Not yet, or I should not be here."
"But you will be?"
"Yes,--that is, if nothing should happen to prevent our being
married."
"You like to be so, I suppose?"
She gazed up and smiled. Her eyes grew liquid as standing dew. "I will
not say you are again audacious, because you are so very innocent. I
do wish it."
"I said _like_, Fräulein Cerinthia."
"You can make a distinction too. Suppose I said, No."
"I should not believe you while you look so."
"And if I said, Yes, I daresay you would not believe me either. Dear
little Carl,--for I must call you little, you are so much less than
I,--do you really think I would marry, loving music as I do, unless I
really loved that which I was to marry more than music?"
So thrilling were her tones in these simple words, of such intensity
her deep glance, with its fringe all quivering now, that I was
alienated at once from her,--the child from the woman; yet could like
a child have wept too, when she bent her head and sobbed. "Could
anything be more beautiful?" I thought; and now, in pausing, my very
memory sobs, heavy laden with pathetic passion. For it was not exactly
sorrow, albeit a very woful bliss. She covered her eyes and gave way a
moment; then sweeping off the tears with one hand, she broke into a
smile. The shower ceased amidst the sunlight, but still the sunlight
served to fling a more peculiar meaning upon the rain-drops,--an iris
lustre beamed around her eyes. I can but recall that ineffable
expression, the April playing over the oriental mould.
"I might have known you would have spoken so, Fräulein Cerinthia," I
responded, at last roused to preternatural comprehension by her words;
"but so few people think in that way about those things."
"You are right, and agree with me, or at least you will one day. But
for that, all would be music here; we should have it all _our own
way_."
"You and the Chevalier. Do you know I had forgotten all about your
music till this very minute?"
"I am very happy to hear that, because it shows we are to be friends."
"We have the best authority to be so," I replied; "and it only seems
too good to be true. I am really, though, mad to hear you sing.
Delemann says there never was in Europe a voice like yours, and that
its only fault is it is so heavenly that it makes one discontented."
"That is one of the divinest mistakes ever made, Carlino."
"The Chevalier calls me Carlomein. I like you to say 'Carlino,' it is
so coaxing."
"You have served me with another of your high authorities, Maestrino.
The Chevalier says I have scarcely a voice at all; it is the way I
sing he likes."
"I did not think it possible. And yet, now I come to consider, I don't
think you look so much like a singer as another sort of musician."
She smiled a little, and looked into her lap, but did not reply. It
struck me that she was too intuitively modest to talk about herself.
But I could not help endeavoring to extort some comment, and I went
on.
"I think you look too much like a composer to be a singer also."
"Perhaps," she whispered.
I took courage. "Don't you mean to be a composer, Fräulein Cerinthia?"
"Carlino, yes. The Chevalier says that to act well is to compose."
"But then," I proceeded hastily, "my sister--at least Mr. Davy--at
least--you don't know who I mean, but it does not matter,--a gentleman
who is very musical told me and my sister that the original purpose of
the drama is defeated in England, and that instead of bringing the
good out of the beautiful, it produces the artificial out of the
false,--those were his very words; he was speaking of the _music_ of
operas, though, I do remember, and perhaps I made some mistake."
"I should think not."
"In England it is very strange, is it not, that good people, really
good people, think the opera a dreadful place to be seen in, and the
theatres worse? My sister used to say it was so very unnatural, and it
seems so."
"I have heard it is so in England,--and really, after all, I don't so
much wonder; and perhaps it is better for those good people you spoke
of to keep away. It is not so necessary for them to go as for us. And
this is it, as I have heard, and you will know how, when I have said
it to you. Music is the soul of the drama, for the highest drama is
the opera,--the highest possible is the soul, of course; and so the
music should be above the other forms, and they the ministers. But
most people put the music at the bottom, and think of it last in this
drama. If the music be high, all rise to it; and the higher it is, the
higher will all rise. So, the dramatic personification passes
naturally into that spiritual height, as the forms of those we love,
and their fleeting actions fraught with grace, dissolve into our
strong perception of the soul we in them love and long for. The lights
and shades of scenery cease to have any meaning in themselves, but
again are drawn upwards into the concentrated performing souls, and so
again pass upwards into the compass of that tonal paradise. But let
the music be degraded or weak, and down it will pull performers,
performance, and intention, crush the ideal, as persons without music
crush _our_ ideal,--have you not felt? All dramatic music is not thus
weak and bad, but much that they use most is vague as well as void. I
am repeating to you, Carlino, the very words of the Chevalier: do not
think they were my own."
"I did, then, think them very like his words, but I see your thoughts
too, for you would say the same. Is there no music to which you would
act, then?"
"Oh, yes! I would act to any music, not because I am vain, but because
I think I could help it upwards a little. Then there is a great deal
for us: we cannot quarrel over Mozart and Cimarosa, neither Gluck nor
Spohr; and there is one, but I need hardly name him, who wrote
'Fidelio.' And the Chevalier says if there needed a proof that the
highest acting is worthy of the highest music, the highest music of
the highest form or outward guise of love in its utmost loveliness,
that opera stands as such. And, further, that all the worst operas,
and ill-repute of them in the world, will not weigh against the
majesty and purity of Beethoven's own character in the opposing
scale."
"Oh! thank you for having such a memory."
"I have a memory in my memory for those things."
"Yes, I know. Does the Chevalier know you are to marry Anastase?"
"No."
I was surprised at this, though she said it so very simply; she looked
serene as that noonday sky, and very soon she went on to say:
"Florimond, my friend, is very young, though I look up to him as no
one else could believe. I am but fifteen, you know, and have yet been
nearly three years betrothed."
"Gracious! you were only a little girl."
"Not much less than now. I don't think you would ever have called me a
little girl, and Florimond says I shall never be a woman. I wished to
tell the Chevalier, thinking he would be so good as to congratulate
me, and hoping for such a blessing; but I have never found myself able
to bring it out of my lips. I always felt it withdraw, as if I had no
reason, and certainly I had no right, to confide my personal affairs
to him. Our intercourse is so different."
"Yes, I should think so. I wonder what you generally talk about."
"Never yet of anything but music."
"That is strange, because the Chevalier does not usually talk so,--but
of little things, common things he makes so bright; and Franz tells
me, and so did another of our boys, that he only talks of such small
affairs generally, and avoids music."
"So I hear from my brother. He talks to Josephine about her doll. He
did tell me once that with me alone he 'communed music.'"
"Again his words!"
She assented by her flying smile.
"He never plays to you, then?"
"Never to myself; but then, you see, I should never ask him."
"And he would not do it unless he were asked. I understand that. You
feel as I should about asking _you_."
"Me to sing?" she inquired in a tone beguiling, lingering, an echo of
_his_ voice ever sleepless in my brain, or that if sleeping, ever
awoke to music. I nodded.
"No," said she again, with quickness, "I will not wait to be asked."
As she spoke she arose, and those dark streams of hair fell off her
like some shadow from her spirit; she shone upon me in rising,--so
seemed her smile. "Oh!" I cried eagerly, and I caught, by some
impulse, the hem of her garment, "you are going to be so good!"
"If you let me be so," she replied, and drew away those folds, passing
to her harp. Her hand, suddenly thrown upon the wires, whose
resistance to embrace so sweet made all their music, caught the ear
of little Josephine, who had been playing very innocently, for a
prodigy, in the corner; and now she came slowly forwards, her doll in
her arms, and stood about a yard from the harp, again putting up one
finger to her lip, and giving me a glance across the intervening
space. She looked, as she so peered, both singular and interesting in
the blended curiosity and shyness that appertain to certain
childhoods; but it seemed to me at that moment as if she were a
strayed earthling into some picture of a scene in that unknown which
men call heaven. For the harp and the form which appeared now to have
grown to it--so inseparable are the elements of harmony, so
intuitively they blend in meeting--were not a sight to suggest
anything this side of death. All beauty is the gauge of immortality;
and as I wondered at her utter loveliness, I became calm as
immortality only permits and sanctions when on it our thoughts repose,
for it our affections languish. Her arms still rested behind and
before the strings as she tuned them; still her hair swept that cloud
upon the softness of her cheek, toned the melancholy arch of her brow:
but the deep rose-hues of her now drooping mantle, and the Italian
azure of her robe, did not retrieve the fancy to any earthly
apparition. They seemed but transparent and veil-like media through
which the whiteness of light found way in colors that sheathed an
unendurable naked lustre. I thought not in such words, but such
thoughts were indeed mine; and while I was yet gazing,--dreaming, I
should say, for I ever dream on beauty,--she played some long, low
chords, attenuated golden thwarting threads of sound, and began
forthwith to sing. She sang in German, and her song was a prayer for
rest,--a Sunday song, as little Josephine said afterwards to me. But
it might have been a lay of revenge, of war, or of woe, for all I
heard that the words conveyed, as I could not exist except in the
voice itself, or the spirit of which the voice was formed. I felt then
that it is not in voice, it is not in cunning instrument, that the
thing called music hides; it is the uncreate intelligence of tone that
genius breathes into the created elements of sound. This girl's or
angel's voice was not so sweet as intelligible, not so boundless as
intense. It went straight into the brain, it stirred the soul without
disturbing; the ear was unconscious as it entered that dim gallery,
and rushed through it to the inward sympathetic spirit. The quality of
the voice, too, as much pertained to that peculiar organization as
certain scents pertain to particular flowers. It was as in the open
air, not in the hothouse, that this foreign flower expanded, and
breathed to the sun and wind its secrets. It was what dilettanti call
a contralto voice, but such a contralto, too, that either Nature or
culture permitted the loftiest flights; the soprano touches were vivid
and vibrating as the topmost tones of my violin. While the fragrance
yet fanned my soul, the flower shut up. She ceased singing and came to
me.
"Do you like that little song? It is the Chevalier's."
"A Sunday song," observed Josephine, as I mentioned.
"A Sunday song!" I cried, and started. "I have not heard a word!"
"Oh!" she said, not regretfully, but with excitement, "you must then
hear it again; and Josephine shall sing it, that you may not think of
my voice instead of the song."
I had not time to remonstrate, nor had I the right. The child began
quite composedly, still holding her doll. She had a wonderful voice.
But what have I to do with voices? I mean style. Josephine's voice was
crude as a green whortleberry; its sadness was sour, its strength
harsh; though a voice shrill and small as the cricket's chirp, with
scarcely more music. But she sang divinely; she sang like a cherub
before the Great White Throne.
The manner was her sister's; the fragrance another, a peculiar
wood-like odor, as from moss and evanescent wild-flowers, if I may so
compare, as then it struck me. I listened to the words this while, to
the melody,--the rush of melodies; for in that composer's slightest
effect each part is a separate soul, the counterpoint a subtle, fiery
chain imprisoning the soul in bliss. Ineffable as was that
air,--ineffable as is every air of his,--I longed to be convinced it
had been put together by a _man_. I could not, and I cannot to this
hour, associate anything material with strains of his. When Josephine
concluded, I was about to beg for more; but the other left her harp,
and kissing her little care, brought her with herself to the couch
where she had quitted me. How strange was the sweetness, how sweet the
change in her manner now!
"How pale you look!" said she; "I shall give you some wine. I can feel
for you, if you are delicate in health, for I am so myself; and it is
so sad sometimes."
"No wine, please; I have had wine, and am never the better for it. I
believe I was born pale, and shall never look anything else."
"I like you pale, if it is not that you are delicate."
"I think I am pretty strong; I can work hard, and do."
"Do not!" she said, putting her loveliest hand on my hair, and
turning my face to hers, "do not, _lieber_, work hard,--not too hard."
"And why not? for I am sure you do."
"That is the very reason I would have you not do so. I _must_ work
hard."
"But if you are delicate, Fräulein Cerinthia?"
"God will take care of me; I try to serve him. None have to answer for
themselves as musicians." She suddenly ceased, passed one hand over
her face. She did not stir, but I heard her sigh; she arose, and
looked from the window; she sat down again, as if undecided.
"Can I do anything for you?" I asked.
"No, I want nothing; I am only thinking that it is very troublesome
the person who sent those fruits could not come instead of them. I
ought to have kept it from you, child as you are."
"Child, indeed! why, what are you yourself?"
"Young, very young," she replied, with some passion in her voice; "but
so much older than you are in every sense. I never remember when I did
not feel I had lived a long time."
I was struck by these words, for they often returned upon me
afterwards, and I rose to go, feeling something disturbed at having
wearied her; for she had not the same fresh bloom and unfatigued
brightness as when I entered. She did not detain me, though she said,
"Call me Maria, please; I should like it best,--we are both so young,
you know! We might have been brother and sister." And in this graceful
mood my memory carried her away.