Yes, celebrities are of rapid growth in the salons of Paris. Far more
solid than that of Rameau, far more brilliant than that of De Mauleon,
was the celebrity which Isaura had now acquired. She had been unable to
retain the pretty suburban villa at A------. The owner wanted to alter
and enlarge it for his own residence, and she had been persuaded by
Signora Venosta, who was always sighing for fresh salons to conquer,
to remove (towards the close of the previous year) to apartments in the
centre of the Parisian _beau monde_. Without formally professing to
receive, on one evening in the week her salon was open to those who had
eagerly sought her acquaintance--comprising many stars in the world of
fashion, as well as those in the world of art and letters. And as she
had now wholly abandoned the idea of the profession for which her voice
had been cultivated, she no longer shrank from the exercise of her
surpassing gift of song for the delight of private friends. Her
physician had withdrawn the interdict on such exercise. His skill,
aided by the rich vitality of her constitution, had triumphed over all
tendencies to the malady for which he had been consulted. To hear Isaura
Cicogna sing in her own house was a privilege sought and prized by many
who never read a word of her literary compositions. A good critic of a
book is rare; but good judges of a voice are numberless. Adding this
attraction of song to her youth, her beauty, her frank powers of
converse--an innocent sweetness of manner free from all conventional
affectation--and to the fresh novelty of a genius which inspired the
young with enthusiast and beguiled the old to indulgence, it was no
wonder that Isaura became a celebrity at Paris.
Perhaps it was a wonder that her head was not turned by the adulation
that surrounded her. But I believe, be it said with diffidence, that a
woman of mind so superior that the mind never pretends to efface the
heart, is less intoxicated with flattery than a man equally exposed to
it.
It is the strength of her heart that keeps her head sober. Isaura had
never yet overcome her first romance of love; as yet, amid all her
triumphs, there was not a day in which her thoughts did not wistfully,
mournfully, fly back to those blessed moments in which she felt her cheek
colour before a look, her heart beat at the sound of a footfall. Perhaps
if there had been the customary _finis_ to this young romance--the
lover's deliberate renunciation, his formal farewell--the girl's pride
would ere this have conquered her affection,--possibly--who knows?--
replaced it.
But, reader, be you male or female, have you ever known this sore trial
of affection and pride, that from some cause or other, to you mysterious,
the dear intercourse to which you had accustomed the secret life of your
life, abruptly ceases; you know that a something has come between you and
the beloved which you cannot distinguish, cannot measure, cannot guess,
and therefore cannot surmount; and you say to yourself at the dead of
solitary night, "Oh for an explanation! Oh for one meeting more! All
might be so easily set right; or if not, I should know the worst, and
knowing it, could conquer!"
This trial was Isaura's. There had been no explanation, no last farewell
between her and Graham. She divined--no woman lightly makes a mistake
there--that he loved her! She knew that this dread something had
intervened between her and him when he took leave of her before others so
many months ago; that this dread something still continued--what was it?
She was certain that it would vanish, could they but once meet again and
not before others. Oh for such a meeting!
She could not herself destroy hope. She could not marry another. She
would have no heart to give to another while he was free, while in doubt
if his heart was still her own. And thus her pride did not help her to
conquer her affection.
Of Graham Vane she heard occasionally. He had ceased to correspond with
Savarin; but among those who most frequented her salon were the Morleys.
Americans so well educated and so well placed as the Morleys knew
something about every Englishman of the social station of Graham Vane.
Isaura learned from them that Graham, after a tour on the Continent, had
returned to England at the commencement of the year, had been invited to
stand for Parliament, had refused, that his name was in the list
published by the Morning Post of the elite whose arrivals in London, or
whose presence at dinner-tables, is recorded as an event. That the
Athenaeum had mentioned a rumour that Graham Vane was the author of a
political pamphlet which, published anonymously, had made no
inconsiderable sensation. Isaura sent to England for that pamphlet: the
subject was somewhat dry, and the style, though clear and vigorous, was
scarcely of the eloquence which wins the admiration of women; and yet she
learned every word of it by heart.
We know how little she dreamed that the celebrity which she hailed as an
approach to him was daily making her more remote. The sweet labours she
undertook for that celebrity continued to be sweetened yet more by secret
associations with the absent one. How many of the passages most admired
could never have been written had he been never known!
And she blessed those labours the more that they upheld her from the
absolute feebleness of sickened reverie, beguiled her from the gnawing
torture of unsatisfied conjecture. She did comply with Madame de
Grantmesnil's command--did pass from the dusty beaten road of life into
green fields and along flowery river-banks, and did enjoy that ideal by-
world.
But still the one image which reigned over her human heart moved beside
her in the gardens of fairyland.