A green angel (I mean an angel ignorant of the
world) would probably suppose that the feeding of
these animal bodies of ours, if not done in secret, must
at least be the one act of human life separated entirely
from the more heavenly emotions. Yet the dinner is
a meal dear to lovers; and novelists and tale-tellers
choose the moments stolen from fork and plate for the
birth and interchange of the most delicious and tender
sentiments of our existence. Miss Hitchings, while
unconsciously shocking Monsieur Sanson by tilting
her soup-plate for the last spoonful of vermicelli, was
controlling the beating of a heart full of feminine and
delicate tenderness; and as the tutor was careful never
to direct his regards to the other end of the table (for
reasons of his own), Miss Henrietta laid the unction
to her soul that such indifference to the prettiest girl
who had ever honored them as a guest, proved the
strength of her own magnet, and put her more at ease
on the subject of Monsieur Sansou's admiration. He,
indeed, was committing the common fault of men
whose manners are naturally agreeable—playing that
passive and grateful game of courtesy and attention so
easy to the object of regard, and so delightful to woman,
who is never so blest as in bestowing. Besides,
he had an object in suppressing his voice to the lowest
audible pitch, and the rich and deep tone, sunk only to
escape the ear of another, sounded, to the watchful
and desiring sense of her to whom it was addressed,
like the very key-note and harmony of affection.

At a table so surrounded with secrets, conversation
flagged, of course. Mr. Hitchings thought it very
up-hill work to entertain Miss Hervey, whose heart
and senses were completely absorbed in the riddle of
Belaccueil's disguise and presence; Mr. Hervey, the
uncle, found old Mrs. Plantagenet rather absent, for
the smitten dame had eyes for every movement of
Monsieur Sansou; and the tutor himself, with his resentment
toward his host, and his suspicions of the
love of his daughter, his reviving passion for Miss
Hervey, and his designs on Mrs. Plantagenet, had
enough to render him as silent as the latter could wish,
and as apparently insensible to the attraction of the
fair stranger.

How little we know what is in the bosoms of those
around us! How natural it is, however, to feel and
act as if we knew—to account for all that appears on
the surface by the limited acquaintance we have with
circumstances and feelings—to resent an indifference
of which we know not the cause—to approve or condemn,
without allowance for chagrin, or despair, or
love, or hope, or distress—any of the deep undercurrents
for ever at work in the depths of human bosoms.
The young man at your side at a dinner-party may
have a duel on his hands for the morning, or a disgrace
imminent in credit or honor, or a refused heart or an
accepted one, newly crushed or newly made happy;
or (more common still, and less allowed for) he may
feel the first impression of disease, or the consequences
of an indigestion; and, for his agreeableness or
disagreeableness, you try to account by something in
yourself, some feeling toward yourself—as if you and
you only could affect his spirits or give a color to his
mood of manners. The old man's thought of death,
the mother's overwhelming interest in her child, the
woman's up-spring of emotion or love, are visiters to
the soul that come unbidden and out of time, and you
can neither feast nor mourn, secure against their interruption.
It would explain many a coldness, could
we look into the heart concealed from us. We should
often pity when we hate, love when we think we can
not even forgive, admire where we curl the lip with
scorn and indignation. To judge without reserve of
any human action is a culpable temerity, of all our
sins the most unfeeling and frequent.

I will deal frankly with you, dear reader. I have
arrived at a stage of my story which, of all the stages
of story-writing, I detest the most cordially. Poets
have written about the difficulty of beginning a story
(vide Byron)—Ca ne me coute pas; others of the ending.
That I do with facility, joy, and rejoicing. But
the love pathos of a story—the place where the reader
is expected to sigh, weep, or otherwise express his
emotion—that is the point, I confess, the most difficult
to write, and the most unsatisfactory when written.
“Pourquoy, Sir Knight?” Not because it is difficult
to write love-scenes—according to the received mode—
not that it is difficult to please those (a large majority)
who never truly loved, and whose ideas, therefore, of
love and its making, are transcendentalized out of all
truth and nature—not that it would be more labor to
do this than to copy a circular, or write a love-letter
for a modest swain (this last my besetting occupation)—
but because, just over the inkstand there peers a
face, sometimes of a man of forty, past the nonsense
of life, but oftener of some friend, a woman who has
loved, and this last more particularly knows that
true love is never readable or sensible—that if its language
be truly written, it is never in polished phrase
or musical cadence—that it is silly, but for its concealed
meaning, embarrassed and blind, but for the
interpreting and wakeful heart of one listener—that
love, in short, is the god of unintelligibility, mystery,
and adorable nonsense, and, of course, that which I
have written (if readable and sensible) is out of taste
and out of sympathy, and none but fancy-lovers and
enamored brains (not hearts) will approve or believe it.

D'Israeli the younger is one of the few men of genius
who, having seen truth without a veil, dare to reveal
the vision; and he has written Henrietta Temple—
the silliest yet truest love-book of modern time.
The critics (not an amative race) have given him a
benefit of the “besom” of ridicule, but D'Israeli, far
from being the effeminate intellect they would make
him, is one of the most original and intrepid men of
genius living, and whether the theme be “wine, woman,
or war,” he writes with fearless truth, piquancy,
and grace. Books on love, however, should be read
by lovers only, and pity it is, that there is not an ink
in chemistry, invisible save to the eye kindled with amatory
fire. But “to our muttons.”

It was not leap-year, but Monsieur Belaccueil, on
the day of the dinner-party at Hitchings park, was
made aware (I will not say by proposals, for ladies make

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known their inclinations in ways much less formidable)—
he was made aware, I say, that the hearts of three
of the party were within the flight of his arrow. Probably
his humble situation reversed the usual relative
position of the sexes in the minds of the dame and
damsels—and certainly there is no power woman exercises
so willingly as a usurpation of the masculine
privilege. I have stated my objection to detail the
dialogue between Miss Hitchings and her tutor at the
dinner-table. To be recorded faithfully, the clatter
of silver forks on China, the gurgle of wine, the interruptions
of the footmen with champagne and vegetables,
should all be literally interspersed—for to all the
broken sentences (so pathetic when properly punctuated—
vide Neal's novels) these were the sequels and
the accompaniments: “No, thank you!” and “If you
please,” and “May I fill your glass?”—have filled out,
to the perfect satisfaction of the lady, many an unfinished
sentence upon which depended the whole destiny
of her affections; and, as I said before, the truth
is not faithfully rendered when these interstices are
unsupplied.

It was dark when the ladies left the dinner-table,
followed by Monsieur Sansou, and, at the distance of
a few feet from the windows opening on the lawn, the
air was black and impenetrable. There were no stars
visible and no moon, but the clouds which were gathering
after a drought, seemed to hush the air with
their long expected approach, and it was one of those
soft, still, yet murky and fragrant nights when the
earth seems to breathe only—without light, sound, or
motion. What lover does not remember such a night?

Oppressed with the glaring lights and the company
of people she cared nothing about, Miss Hervey
stepped out upon the lawn, and with her face lifted as
if to draw deeper inhalations of the dew and freshness,
she strolled leisurely over the smooth carpet of grass.
At a slight turn to avoid a clump of shrubbery, she
encountered Belaccueil, who was apologizing and
about to pass her, when she called him by his name,
and passing her arm through his, led him on to the
extremity of the lawn. A wire fence arrested their
progress, and leaning against it, Miss Hervey inquired
into the cause of the disguise she had penetrated, and
softened and emboldened by the fragrant darkness,
said all that a woman might say of tenderness and encouragement.
Belaccueil's heart beat with pride and
gratified amour propre, but he confined himself to the
expression of this feeling, and leaving the subject open,
took advantage of Mrs. Plantagenet's call to Miss
Hervey from the window, to leave her and resume his
ramble through the grounds.

The supper tray had been brought in, and the party
were just taking their candles to separate, when the
tutor entered at the glass door and arrested the steps
of Mrs. Plantagenet. She set down her candle and
courtesied a good-night to the ladies (Mr. Hitchings had
gone to bed, for wine made him sleepy, and Mr. Hervey
always retired early—where he was bored), and
closing the windows, mixed a glass of negus for Monsieur
Sansou; and, herself pulling a sandwich to
pieces, deliberately, and it must be confessed, somewhat
patronisingly, invited the Frenchman to become
her lord. And after a conversation, which (la verite
avant tout) turned mainly on will and investments, the
window dame sailed blissfully to bed, and Belaccueil
wrote the following letter to his friend and adviser:—

“My dear St. Leger: Enclosed you have the
only surviving lock of my grizzled wig—sign and symbol
that my disguises are over and my object attained.
The wig burns at this instant in the grate, item my
hand-ruffles, item sundry embroidered cravats a la
vielle cour, item (this last not without some trouble at
my heart) a solitary love-token from Constantia Hervey.
One faded rose—given me at Pæstum, the day
before I was driven disgraced from her presence by
the interference of this insolent fool—one faded rose
has crisped and faded into smoke with the rest. And
so fled from the world the last hope of a warm and
passionate heart, which never gave up its destiny till
now—never felt that it was made in vain, guarded, refined,
cherished in vain, till that long-loved flower lay
in ashes. I am accustomed to strip emotion of its
drapery—determined to feel nothing but what is real—
yet this moment, turn it and strip it, and deny its illusions
as I will, is anguish. `Self-inflicted,' you smile
and say!

“You will marvel what stars will not come into
conjunction, when I tell you that Miss Hervey is at
this moment under the same roof with me and my
affianced bride, and you will marvel what good turn I
have done the devil, that he should, in one day, offer
me my enemy's daughter, my enemy's fortune (with
the drawback of an incumbrance), and the woman who
I thought had spurned me. After all, it is a devil's
gift—for in choosing that to which I am most impelled,
I crush hope, and inflict pain, and darken my own
heart for ever. I could not have done this once.
Manhood and poverty have embittered me.

“Miss Hitchings has chosen to fall in love with her
tutor. She is seventeen, a sweet blonde, with large,
suffused eyes, tender, innocent, and (without talent)
singularly earnest and confiding. I could be very
happy with such a woman, and it would have been a
very tolerable revenge (failing the other) to have stolen
her from her father. But he would have disinherited
and forgotten us, and I have had enough of poverty,
and can not afford to be forgotten—by my enemy.

“You never saw Miss Hervey. It is not much to
tell you she is the most beautiful woman I have met.
If she were not beautiful, her manners would win all
hearts. If her manners were less fascinating, her singular
talents would make her remarkable. She is not
appreciated, because her beauty blinds people to her
talents, and her manners make them forget her beauty.
She is something in the style of the Giorgione we
adored at Venice—a transparently dark beauty, with
unfathomable eyes and lashes that sweep her cheek;
her person tall and full, and her neck set on like Zenobia's.
Yet she is not a proud woman—I think she
is not. She is too natural and true to do anything
which looks like pride, save walk like an empress.
She says everything rightly—penetrates instantly to
the core of meaning—sings, dances, talks, with the
ease, confidence, grace, faultlessness, with which a
swallow flies. Perfection in all things is her nature.
I am jotting down her qualities now as they are allowed
by the world. I will not write of them like a
lover. Oh, my friend, with what plummet can you
fathom the depth of my resentments, when, for them,
I forego possession of this woman! She offered me,
two hours since, the unqualified control of her destiny!
She asked me with tremulous voice to forgive
her for the wrong done me in Italy. She dropped
that faultless and superb head on my bosom, and told
me that she loved me—and I never answered! The
serpent in my heart tied up my tongue, and with cold
thanks and fiend-like resistance to the bliss of even
once pressing her to my bosom, I left her. I do not
know myself when I remember that I have done this.
I am possessed—driven out—by some hard and bitter
spirit who neither acts nor speaks like me. Yet could
I not undo what I have done.

“To-morrow morning will disappear Monsieur Sansou
from Hitchings park, and, on the brief condition
of a brief ceremony, the law, the omnipotent law, will
deliver into my hands the lands, tenements, goods,
chattels, and liberty of my enemy—for even so deeply
has he sunk into the open pocket of Mrs. Plantagenet!
She holds mortgages on all he has, for money
advanced, and all that is hers will be mine, without
reserve. The roof I have been living in degradation

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under, will be to-morrow my own. The man who
called me an adventurer, who stood between me and
my love, who thrust me from my heaven without cause
or provocation—the meddling fool who boasts that he
saved a countrywoman from a French swindler (he
has recurred to it often in my presence), will be to-morrow
my dependant, beggar for shelter, suppliant
for his liberty and subsistence! Do you ask if
that outweighs the love of the woman I have lost?
Alas! yes.

“You are older, and have less taste for sentiment
even than I. I will not bore you with my crowd of
new feelings in this situation. My future wife is amiable
and good. She is also vain, unattractive, and old.
I shall be kind to her and endeavor that she shall not
be disenchanted, and if I can make her happy, it may
mollify my penance for the devil with which I am possessed.
Miss Hitchings will lose nothing by having
loved me, for she shall be the heiress of my wealth,
and her father—but I will not soil my heart by
thinking of an alleviation to his downfall.

“Farewell, mon ami. Congratulate and pity me.

In one of the most fashionable squares of London
lives, “in the season,” Monsieur Belaccueil, one of
the most hospitable foreigners in that great metropolis.
He is a pensive and rather melancholy-looking
man by day; but society, which he seems to seek like
an opiate to restless feeling, changes him to a gay
man, the most mirth-loving of Amphytrions. His
establishment is presided over by his wife, who, as his
society is mostly French, preserves a respectable silence,
but seems contented with her lot and proud of
her husband; while in Miss Plantagenet (ci-devant
Hitchings) his guests find his table's chief attraction—
one of the prettiest heiresses and most loveable girls in
London. How deeply Monsieur Belaccueil still rejoices
at his success in “getting to windward,” is matter of
problem. Certainly there is one chariot which passes
him in his solitary ride in the park, to which he bows
with a pang of unabating and miserable anguish. And
if the occupant of that plain chariot share at all in his
suffering, she has not the consolation to which he flies
in society—for a more secluded and lonely woman
lives not in the great solitude of London, than Constantia
Hervey.

The following story was told to the writer by a lady
in France—told during supper at a ball, and of course
only partially. The interstices have been supplied in
writing it, and the main thread of the narrative may
be relied on as fact. The names are fictitious:—

A beautiful girl of seventeen, in the convent-parlor
of Saint Agatha. She is dressed as a novice, and the
light breaks off from the curve of the raven hair put
away under the close-fitting cap—breaks off almost in
sparkles. For so it may—as an artist knows. Her
eyes are like hounds in the leash—fiery and eager.
And if, in those ever-parted and forward-pressing lips
there is a possibility of languid repose, the proof of it
lies in the future. They are sleepless and dreamless,
as yet, with a thirst unnamed and irrepressible, for the
passions of life. Her name is Zelie.

But we can not make the past into the present.
Change the tense—for Zelie is dead now, or we could
not record her strange story.

There was a ring at the convent door, and presently
entered Colonel Count Montalembert, true to his appointment.
He had written to the lady-abbess to
request an interview with the daughter of his comrade,
dead on the frozen track of the retreat from
Moscow. Flahault was to him, as his right hand to
his left, and as he covered up the stiffened body with
snow, he had sworn to devote his life to that child
whose name was last on the lips closed for ever. The
Count Montalembert was past fifty, and a constant
sufferer from his wounds; and his physicians had
warned him that death was not far off. His bearing
was still noble and soldierly, however, and his frank
and clear eye had lost little of its lustre.

“I wrote to you the particulars of your father's
death, my child,” said the colonel, after the abbess
had left them alone, at his request. “I could not
dwell on it again without more emotion than is well
for me. I must be brief even with what I have to say
to his daughter—for that, too, will move me overmuch.
You are very lovely, Zelie.”

“You are very kind!” answered the novice, blushing,
and dropping her long lashes upon her cheek.

“Very lovely, I say, and must love and be beloved.
It is a woman's destiny, and your destiny more than
most women's.”

The count gazed into the deep eyes of his eager
listener, and seemed embarrassed to know how to proceed.

“Hear me through,” he said, “before you form an
opinion of my motives. And first answer me a bold
question. Have you any attachment—have you ever
seen a man you could love and marry?”

“No!” murmured the blushing novice, after a moment's
hesitation.

“But you are likely to love, soon and rashly, once
free in the world—and that is one evil against which
I will make myself your shield. And there is another—
which I am only sorry that I need your permission
and aid in averting.”

Zelie looked up inquiringly.

“Poverty—the grave of love—the palsy of the
heart—the oblivion of beauty and grace! To avert
this from you, I have a sacrifice to demand at your
hands.”

Again the count stopped in embarrassment almost
painful, and Mademoiselle Montalembert with difficulty
suppressed her impatience.

“My physicians tell me,” he resumed, in a tone
lower and calmer, “that my lease of life is wearing
rapidly to a close. A year hence lies its utmost and
inevitable limit. Could you live in the world, without
love, for one year, Zelie?”

“Monsieur!” was her surprised exclamation.

“Then listen to my proposal. I have a fortune
while I live, large enough for your most ambitious
desires. But it is left to me with conditions which
forbid my conveying it through any link save marriage,
and to my widow only for life. To give it
you, I regret deeply for your sake to say, I must wed
you. You start—do not answer me now. I leave you
to revolve this in your mind till to-morrow. Remember
that I shall not trouble you long, and that the
name of Montalembert is as noble as your own, and
that you require a year, perhaps more than a year, to
recover from your first dizzy gaze upon the world. I

[figure description] Page 311.[end figure description]

shall put no restraint upon you. I have no wish but
to fulfil my duty to my dead comrade in arms, and to
die, knowing that you will well bestow your heart
when I am gone. Adieu!”

The count disappeared, and, with her clasped hands
pressed to her forehead, the novice paced the convent-parlor
until the refectory bell rang for dinner.

It was an evening of June, in the gardens of Versailles.
It was an evening of June, also, in the pesthouse
of St. Lazarus, and in the cell of the condemned
felon in St. Pelagie. Time, even in his holyday dress,
visits indiscriminately—the levelling caitiff! Have the
unhappy any business with June?

But the gardens of Versailles were beginning to
illuminate, and the sky faded, with a glory more festal
than sunlight, with the radiance of a myriad of
glittering lamps, embellishing even the trees and flowers
beyond the meaning of nature. The work of the
architect and the statuary at once stood idealized, and
draped in an atmosphere of fairy-land, and the most
beautiful woman of the imperial court became more
beautiful as she stepped into the glare of the alley of
fountains. And who should that be—the fairest flower
of French nobility—but the young Countess Montalembert,
just blooming through the close of her first
year of wedlock!

The Count Montalembert stepped with her from the
shade of the orange-grove, and, without her arm, fell
behind scarce perceptibly, that he might keep his eye
filled with the grace of her motion, without seeming
to worship her before the world. With every salient
flow of that cloud-like drapery onward—with every
twinkling step of those feet of airy lightness—the dark
eyelashes beneath the soldier's brow lifted and drooped
again, as if his pulse of life and vision were alone
governed by her swan-like motion. The count had
forgotten that he was to die. The year allotted to
him by his physicians had passed, and, far from falling
gradually to his doom, his figure had straightened, and
his step grown firm, and his cheek and lip and eye had
brightened with returning health. He had drank life
from love. The superb Zelie had proved grateful and
devoted, and at the chateau of Montalembert, in
southern France, she had seemed content to live with
him, and him only, the most assiduous of nurses in
all her glorious beauty. But though this was Paradise
to the count, his reason, not his heart, told him
it was imprisonment to her, and he had now been a
month at the sumptuous court of Napoleon, an attendant
upon a wife who was the star of the time—the
beloved of all the court's gay beholders.

As the Montalemberts strolled toward the chateau,
which was now emitting floods of light from its many
windows, a young soldier, with a slight mustache just
shading his Grecian lip, joined them from a side-path,
and claimed the hand of the countess for a waltz.
The mercurial music at the same instant fled through
the air, and under an exclamation at its thrilling
sweetness, the countess concealed from her husband
an emotion which the trembling of her slight hand
betrayed instantly to her partner. With a bow of affected
gayety to the count, she quickened her pace,
and in another moment stood blushing in the dazzling
ring of waltzers, the focus herself of all eyes open to
novelty and beauty.

De Mornay, the countess's partner, was but an ensign
in the imperial guard. He had but his sword.
Not likely to be called handsome, or to be looked
upon as attractive or dangerous by any but the most
penetrating of his own sex, he had that philtre, that
inexplicable something, which at once commended
him to woman. His air was all earnest. The suppressed
devotion of life and honor breathed in his
voice. He seemed ever hiding his heart with pain—
shamed with betrayed adoration—calm by the force of
a respect that rebuked passion. He professed no gal
lantries. He professed nothing. His eyes alone, large,
steadfast, imploring, conveyed language of love. An
hour of that absorbing regard—an apparently calm,
unimpassioned hour of the intercourse common to
those newly met—sufficed to awaken in the bosom of
the countess an interest alarming to himself, and dangerous
to her content as the wife of another. Strange
she thought it, that, as the low and deferential tones
of De Mornay fell on her ear, they seemed to expel
from her heart all she had hitherto treasured—ambition
for the splendors of the court, passion for admiration,
and even her gratitude for her husband. A
hut in the forest, with De Mornay only, was the Paradise
now most present to the dreams and fancy of the
proud wife of Montalembert.

As his wife left him, the count thrust his hand into
his breast with a gesture of controlled emotion, and
turned aside, as if to seek once more the retired covert
he had left. But his steps were faltering. At the
entrance of the alley he turned again, and walking
rapidly to the chateau, entered the saloon trembling
to the measured motion of the dancers.

Waiting for an opportunity to float into the giddy
ring, De Mornay stood with his arm around the waist
of the countess. Montalembert's face flushed, but he
stepped to a column which supported the orchestra,
and looked on unobserved. Her transparent cheek
was so near to the lips of her partner, that his breath
must warm it. Her hand was pressed—ay, by the
bend of her gloved wrist, pressed hard—upon the
shoulder of De Mornay. Her bosom throbbed perceptibly
in its jewelled vest. She leaned toward him
with a slight sway of her symmetrical waist, and
away, like two smoke wreaths uniting, away in voluptuous
harmony of movement, gazing into each other's
eyes, murmuring inaudibly to the crowd—lips, cheeks,
and eyes, in passionate neighborhood—away floated
the wife and friend of Montalembert in the authorized
commerce of the gay world. Their feet chased each
other, advancing, retreating, amid the velvet folds of
her dress. Her waist was drawn close to his side in
the more exciting passages of the music. Her luxuriant
tresses floated from her temples to his. She
curved her swan-like neck backward, and, with a look
of pleasure, which was not a smile, gave herself up to
the thrilling wedlock of music and motion, her eyes
half-drooped and bathed in the eager gaze of De
Mornay's. Montalembert's face was pallid and his
eye on fire. The cold sweat stood on his forehead.
He felt wronged, though the world saw all. With his
concealed hand he clenched his breast till he drew
blood. There was a pause in the music, and with a
sudden agony at the thought of receiving his wife
again from the hands of De Mornay, Montalembert
fled on to the open air.

An hour elapsed.

“I ask a Heaven for myself, it is true, but not much
for you to give!” said a voice approaching through
the shadowy alley of the garden.

The count lay on the ground with his forehead
pressed to the marble pedestal of a statue, and he
heard, with the voice, the rustling of a female dress,
and the rattling of a sabre-chain and spurs.

“But one ringlet, sacred to me,” continued the
voice, in a tone almost feminine with its pleading earnestness;
“not given to me, no, no!—that were a
child's desire!—but mine, though still playing on this
ivory shoulder, and still lying neatly beneath that veined
temple—mine with your knowledge only, and
caressed and cared for, morn and night, with the
thought that it is mine! Oh, Zelie! there is no
wrong to Montalembert in this! Keep it from his
touch! Let him not breathe upon it! Let not the
wind blow that one ringlet toward him! And when it
kisses your cheek, and plays with the envied breeze
upon your bosom—think—think of the soul of De

[figure description] Page 312.[end figure description]

Mornay, bound in it! Oh, God! why am I made
capable of love like this!”

There was no reply, and long ere Montalembert
had recovered from his amazement at these daring
words, the sound of their footsteps had died away.

Pass two years. It is enough to wait on Time in
the Present. In the Past and Future, the graybeard,
like other ministers out of place, must do without
usher and secretary.

It was a summer's noon on the Quai D'Orsay, of
Paris. The liveried lacqueys of the princely hotels
were lounging by the heavy gateways of stone, or
leaning over the massy parapet of the river. And,
true to his wont, the old soldier came with the noon,
creeping from the “Invalides,” to take his seat under
the carved lion of the Montalemberts. He had served
under the late count, and the memory of his house
was dear to the old veteran. The sabre-cut which had
disfigured his face, was received, he said, while fighting
between Montalembert and Flahault, and to see
the daughter of the one, and the gay heir of the
other's wife and fortune, he made a daily pilgrimage
to the Quai, and sat in the sun till the countess drove
out in her chariot.

By the will of the first husband of Zelie de Flahault,
the young De Mornay, to become her husband
and share her fortune, was compelled to take the
name and title of Count Montalembert, subject to the
imperial accord. Napoleon had given the rank unwillingly,
and as a mark of respect to the last will of
a brave man who had embellished the title—for the
eagle-eye of the Corsican read the soul of De Mornay
like an illuminated book, and knew the use he
would make of fortune and power.

In the quadrangle of the hotel Montalembert, there
were two carriage-landings, or two persons, and the
apartments were separated into two entirely distinct
establishments. In one suite the young count chose
to live at his pleasure, en garcon, and in the other the
mixed hospitalities of the house were given, and the
countess was there, and there only, at home. At this
moment the court was ringing with the merry laughter
of the count's convives, for he had a bachelor party
to breakfast, and the wine seemed, even at that early
hour of the day, to have taken the ascendant. The
carriages of the bacchanalians lined one side of the
court, and the modest chariot of the countess stood
alone at the door on the other; for it was near the
hour for promenade in the Champs Elysees.

It was an hour after noon when the countess descended.
She came slowly, drawing on her glove,
and the old soldier at the gate rose quickly to his feet,
and leaned forward to gaze on her. She had changed
since the death of her father's friend—the brave Montalembert,
to whom she owed her fortune. But she
was still eminently beautiful. Thought, perhaps sadness,
had dimmed to a sweet melancholy the bright
sparkle of her glance, and her mouth, no longer
fiercely spirited, was firm but gentle. Her curtains
of sable lashes moved languidly over her drooping
eye. She looked like one who was subdued in her
hopes, not in her courage, and like one who had shut
the door of her heart upon its unextinguishable fires
to let them burn on, but in secret. She was dressed
more proudly than gayly, and she wore upon her
breast one memorial of her first husband—his own
black cross that he had worn in battle, and in the few
happy days of his wedlock, and which he had sent her
from his death-bed.

At the moment the countess stepped from her
threshold, the door on the opposite side of the quadrangle
was thrown open, and, with a boisterous laugh,
the count sprang into his phaeton, calling to one of
his party to follow him. His companion shrank back
on seeing the countess, and in that moment's delay
the door of the carriage was closed and the coachman
ordered to drive on. The count's whip had waved
over his spirited horses, however, and as they stood
rearing and threatening to escape from their excited
master, his friend sprang to his side, the reins were
suddenly loosed, and with a plunge which threatened
to tear the harness from their backs, they leaped forward.
In the next moment, the horses of both vehicles
were drawn upon their haunches, half locked together
in the narrow gateway, and with a blow from the crutch
of the old veteran who rushed from the porter's lodge,
the phaeton was driven back against the wall, the pole
broken, and the count and his friend precipitated upon
the pavement. The liberated horses flew wildly
through the gate, and then followed a stillness like
that of midnight in the court—for on the pavement,
betrayed by her profusion of fair locks, loosened by
the fall, lay a woman in man's attire, the dissolute
companion of the count, in his daylight revel. Uninjured
himself, the count stood a moment, abashed
and motionless, but the old soldier, with folded arms
and the remnant of his broken crutch in his hand,
looked sternly on the scene, and as the servants started
from their stupor to raise the insensible woman,
the countess, reading her husband's impulse in his
looks, sprang from the open door of the chariot, and
interposed between him and his intended victim
With the high-born grace of noble, the soldierly in
invalid
accepted her protection, and followed her to her
chariot; and, ordered to drive to the Hospital of the
Invalides, the coachman once more turned slowly to
the gateway.

The night following, at the opera. Paris was on
the qui vive of expectation, for a new prima donna
was to make her debut before the emperor.

Paris was also on the qui vive for the upshot of a
certain matter of scandal. The eclaircissement at the
hotel Montalembert had been followed, it is said, by
open war between the count and countess; and, determined
to carry out his defiance, the dissolute husband
had declared to his associates that he would
produce at the opera, in a box opposite to his wife,
the same person whose appearance she had resented,
and in the same attire. It was presumed, by the
graver courtiers who had heard this, that the actors in
this brutal scene, if it should be carried out, would be
immediately arrested by the imperial guard.

The overture commenced to a crowded house, and
before it was half played, the presence of the count
and his companion, in a conspicuous box on the left
of the circle, drew the attention of every eye. The
Montalemberts were the one subject of conversation.
The sudden disappearance of the old count, his death
in a distant province, his will relative to his widow and
De Mornay—all the particulars of that curious inheritance
of wife and fortune, by written testament—were
passed from lip to lip.

There was a pause at the close of the overture.
The house was silent, occupied partly in looking at
the audacious count and his companion, partly in
watching for the entrance of the injured countess.

A sudden light illuminated the empty box, shed
from the lobby lamps upon the curtains at the opening
of the door, and the Countess Montalembert entered,
with every eye in that vast assembly bent
anxiously upon her. But how radiantly beautiful,
and how strangely dressed! Her toilet was that of
a bride. Orange-flowers were woven into her long
raven tresses, and her robe of spotless white was folded
across her bust with the simplicity of girlhood. A
white rose-bud breathed on her bosom, and bracelets
of pearls encircled her wrists of alabaster. And her
smile, as she took her seat and looked around upon
her friends—oh! that was bridal too!—unlike any
look known lately upon her face—joyous, radiant,
blissful, as the first hour of acknowledged love. Never
had Zelie de Flahault looked so triumphantly

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beautiful. The opera-glasses from every corner of the
house remained fixed upon her. A murmur arose
gradually, a murmur of admiration succeeding the
silent wonder of her first entrance; and but for the
sudden burst of music from the orchestra, heralding
the approach of the emperor, it would have risen into
a shout of spontaneous homage.

The emperor came in.

But who is there!—at the right hand of Napoleon—
smiled upon by the emperor, as the emperor seldom
smiled, decorated with the noblest orders of France—
a star on his breast?—Montalembert!

“Montalembert! Montalembert!” resounded from
a thousand voices.

Was he risen from the dead? Was this an apparition—
the indignant apparition of the first husband—
risen to rebuke the unmanly brutality of the second?
Would the countess start at the sight of him?

Look! she turns to the illuminated box of the emperor!
She smiles—with a radiant blush of joy and
happiness she smiles—she lifts that ungloved and
unjewelled hand, decorated only with a plain gold
ring, and waves it to the waved hand of Montalembert!—
the brave, true, romantic Montalembert. For,
with the quickness of French divination, the whole
story is understood by the audience. And there is
not a brain so dull as not to know, that the audacious
invalid veteran was the disguised count, watching over
the happiness of her whose destiny of love he had too
rashly undertaken to make cloudless—make cloudless
at the expense of a crushed heart, and a usurped hearth,
and a secret death and burial, if so much were necessary.

But he is a happy bridegroom now. And Adolphe
de Mornay is once more an untitled ensign—plucked
for ever from the chaste heart and bosom of the devoted
wife of Montalembert.

And Montalembert himself—whose springs of life
were fed only by love—died when that fountain of love
was broken; for his wife died in childbed one year
after his return to her, and he followed her in one day.
Never man was more loved than he. Surely never
man more deserved it.

“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting,
The soul that rises in us, our life's star,
Has had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar.”
—Wordsworth.

The death of a lady, in a foreign land, leaves me at
liberty to narrate the circumstances which follow.

A few words of previous explanation, however.

I am inclined to believe, from conversations on the
subject with many sensible persons, that there are few
men who have not had, at different intervals in their
lives, sudden emotions, currents of thought, affections
of mind and body, which, not only were wholly disconnected
with the course of life thus interrupted, but
seemed to belong to a wholly different being.

Perhaps I shall somewhere touch the reader's experience
by describing rather minutely, and in the first
person, some sensations of this kind not unusual to
myself.

Walking in a crowded street, for example, in perfect
health, with every faculty gayly alive, I suddenly lose
the sense of neighborhood. I see—I hear—but I
feel as if I had become invisible where I stand, and
was, at the same time, present and visible elsewhere.
I know everything that passes around me, but I seem
disconnected and (magnetically speaking) unlinked
from the human beings near. If spoken to at such a
moment, I answer with difficulty. The person who
speaks seems addressing me from a world to which I
no longer belong. At the same time, I have an irresistible
inner consciousness of being present in another
scene of every-day life—where there are streets, and
houses, and people—where I am looked on without
surprise as a familiar object—where I have cares,
fears, objects to attain—a different scene altogether,
and a different life, from the scene and life of which I
was a moment before conscious. I have a dull ache
at the back of my eyes for the minute or two that this
trance lasts, and then, slowly and reluctantly, my
absent soul seems creeping back, the magnetic links
of conscious neighborhood, one by one, re-attach, and
I resume my ordinary life, but with an irrepressible
feeling of sadness.

It is in vain that I try to fix these shadows as they
recede. I have struggled a thousand times in vain to
particularize and note down what I saw in the strange
city to which I was translated. The memory glides
from my grasp with preternatural evasiveness.

In a book called “The Man of Two Lives,” similar
sensations to these are made the basis of the story.
Indeed, till I saw that book, the fear of having my
sanity suspected sealed my lips on the subject.

I have still a reserve in my confession. I have
been conscious, since boyhood, of a mental peculiarity
which I fear to name while I doubt that it is possessed
by others than myself—which I should not allude to
now, but that it forms a strange link of identity
between me and another being to be mentioned in this
story.

I may say, also, without attaching any importance
to it, except as it bears upon this same identity, that,
of those things which I have no occasion to be taught,
or which I did, as the common phrase is, by intuition,
drawing was the easiest and most passionately followed
of my boyish pursuits.

With these preliminaries, and probably some similar
experience of his own, the reader may happily form
a woof on which to embroider the following circumstances.

Travelling through Styria, some years since, I
chanced to have, for a fellow-occupant of the coupé
of a diligence, a very courteous and well-bred person, a
gentleman of Gratz. As we rolled slowly along on the
banks of the Muer, approaching his native town, he
very kindly invited me to remain with him a day or
two, offering me, as an inducement, a presentation at
the soirée of a certain lady of consequence, who was
to receive, on the night of our arrival, and at whose
house I should see some fair specimens of the beauty
of Styria.

Accepted.

It was a lovely summer's night, when we strolled
through the principal street toward our gay destination,
and as I drew upon my friend's arm to stop him
while the military band of the fortress finished a delicious
waltz (they were playing in the public square),
he pointed out to me the spacious balconies of the

[figure description] Page 314.[end figure description]

countess's palace, whither we were going, crowded
with the well-dressed company, listening silently to
the same enchanting music. We entered, and after
an interchange of compliments with the hostess, I
availed myself of my friend's second introduction to
take a stand in one of the balconies beside the person I
was presented to, and under cover of her favor, to hear
out the unfinished music of the band.

As the evening darkened, the lights gleamed out
from the illuminated rooms more brightly, and most
of the guests deserted the balconies and joined the
gayer circles within. The music ceased at the beat
of the drum. My companion in the balcony was a
very quiet young lady, and, like myself, she seemed
subdued by the sweet harmonies we had listened to,
and willing to remain without the shadow of the curtain.
We were not alone there, however. A tall
lady, of very stately presence, and with the remains of
remarkable beauty, stood on the opposite side of the
balcony, and she, too, seemed to shrink from the glare
within, and cling to the dewy darkness of the summer
night.

After the cessation of the music, there was no
longer an excuse for intermittent conversation, and,
starting a subject which afforded rather freer scope, I
did my best to credit my friend's flattering introduction.
I had discoursed away for half an hour very
unreservedly, before I discovered that, with her hand
upon her side, in an attitude of repressed emotion, the
tall lady was earnestly listening to me. A third person
embarrasses even the most indifferent dialogue. The
conversation languished, and my companion rose and
took my arm for a promenade through the rooms.

Later in the evening, my friend came in search of
me to the supper-room.

“Mon ami!” he said, “a great honor has fallen out
of the sky for you. I am sent to bring you to the
beau reste of the handsomest woman of Styria—
Margaret, Baroness R—, whose chateau I pointed
out to you in the gold light of yesterday's sunset.
She wishes to know you—why I can not wholly divine—
for it is the first sign of ordinary feeling that she has
given in twenty years. But she seems agitated, and
sits alone in the countess's boudoir. Allons-y!”

As we made our way through the crowd, he hastily
sketched me an outline of the lady's history: “At
seventeen taken from a convent for a forced marriage
with the baron whose name she bears; at eighteen a
widow, and, for the first time, in love—the subject of
her passion a young artist of Vienna on his way to
Italy. The artist died at her chateau—they were to
have been married—she has ever since worn weeds
for him. And the remainder you must imagine—for
here we are!”

The baroness leaned with her elbow upon a small
table of or molu, and her position was so taken that I
seated myself necessarily in a strong light, while her
features were in shadow. Still, the light was sufficient
to show me the expression of her countenance.
She was a woman apparently about forty-five, of noble
physiognomy, and a peculiar fulness of the eyelid—
something like to which I thought I remembered to
have seen in a portrait of a young girl, many years
before. The resemblance troubled me somewhat.

“You will pardon me this freedom,” said the baroness
with forced composure, “when I tell you
that—a friend—whom I have mourned twenty-five
years—seems present to me when you speak.”

I was silent, for I knew not what to say. The baroness
shaded her eyes with her hand, and sat silent
for a few moments, gazing at me.

“You are not like him in a single feature,” she
resumed, “yet the expression of your face, strangely,
very strangely, is the same. He was darker—
slighter”—

“Of my age?” I inquired, to break my own silence.
For there was something in her voice which gave me
the sensation of a voice heard in a dream.

“Oh God! that voice! that voice!” she exclaimed
wildly, burying her face in her hands, and giving way
to a passionate burst of tears.

“Rodolph,” she resumed, recovering herself with
a strong effort, “Rodolph died with the promise on
his lips that death should not divide us. And I have
seen him! Not in dreams—not in revery—not at
times when my fancy could delude me. I have seen
him suddenly before me in the street—in Vienna—
here—at home at noonday—for minutes together,
gazing on me. It is more in latter years that I have
been visited by him; and a hope has latterly sprung
into being in my heart—I know not how—that in
person, palpable and breathing, I should again hold
converse with him—fold him living to my bosom.
Pardon me! You will think me mad!”

I might well pardon her; for, as she talked, a vague
sense of familiarity with her voice, a memory, powerful,
though indistinct, of having before dwelt on
those majestic features, an impulse of tearful passionateness
to rush to her embrace, well nigh overpowered
me. She turned to me again.

“You are an artist?” she said, inquiringly.

“No; though intended for one, I believe, by nature.”

“And you were born in the year —.”

“I was!”

With a scream she added the day of my birth, and
waiting an instant for my assent, dropped to the floor
and clung convulsively and weeping to my knees.

“Rodolph! Rodolph!” she murmured faintly, as
her long gray tresses fell over her shoulders, and her
head dropped insensible upon her breast.

Her cry had been heard, and several persons entered
the room. I rushed out of doors. I had need to be
in darkness and alone.

It was an hour after midnight when I re-entered my
hotel. A chasseur stood sentry at the door of my
apartment with a letter in his hand. He called me by
name, gave me his missive, and disappeared. It was
from the baroness, and ran thus:—

“You did not retire from me to sleep. This letter
will find you waking. And I must write, for my heart
and brain are overflowing.

“Shall I write to you as a stranger?—you whom I
have strained so often to my bosom—you whom I have
loved and still love with the utmost idolatry of mortal
passion—you who have once given me the soul that,
like a gem long lost, is found again, but in a newer
casket! Mine still—for did we not swear to love
for ever!

“But I am taking counsel of my own heart only.
You may still be unconvinced. You may think that
a few singular coincidences have driven me mad.
You may think that, though born in the same hour
that my Rodolph died, possessing the same voice, the
same countenance, the same gifts—though by irresistible
consciousness I know you to be him—my lost
lover returned in another body to life—you may still
think the evidence incomplete—you may, perhaps,
even now, be smiling in pity at my delusion. Indulge
me one moment.

“The Rodolph Isenberg whom I lost, possessed a
faculty of mind, which, if you are he, answers with the
voice of an angel to my appeal. In that soul resided,
and wherever it be, must now reside, the singular
power”

(The reader must be content with my omission of
this fragment of the letter. It contained a secret
never before clothed in language—a secret that will die
with me, unless betrayed by what indeed it may lead
to—madness! As I saw it in writing—defined accurately
and inevitably in the words of another—I felt as

[figure description] Page 315.[end figure description]

if the innermost chamber of my soul was suddenly
laid open to the day—I abandoned doubt—I answered
to the name by which she called me—I believed in the
previous existence of which my whole life, no less than
these extraordinary circumstances, had furnished me
with repeated evidence. But, to resume the letter.)

“And now that we know each other again—now
that I can call you by name, as in the past, and be
sure that your inmost consciousness must reply—
a new terror seizes me! Your soul comes back,
youthfully and newly clad, while mine, though of
unfading freshness and youthfulness within, shows to
your eye the same outer garment, grown dull with
mourning and faded with the wear of time. Am I
grown distasteful? Is it with the sight only of this
new body that you look upon me? Rodolph!—spirit
that was my devoted and passionate admirer! soul
that was sworn to me for ever!—am I—the same Margaret,
refound and recognised, grown repulsive? Oh
God! What a bitter answer would this be to my
prayers for your return to me!

“I will trust in Him whose benign goodness smiles
upon fidelity in love. I will prepare a fitter meeting
for two who parted as lovers. You shall not see me
again in the house of a stranger and in a mourning
attire. When this letter is written, I will depart at
once for the scene of our love. I hear my horses
already in the court-yard, and while you read this I
am speeding swiftly home. The bridal dress you were
secretly shown the day before death came between us,
is still freshly kept. The room where we sat—the
bowers by the stream—the walks where we projected
our sweet promise of a future—they shall all be made
ready. They shall be as they were! And I—oh
Rodolph, I shall be the same! My heart is not
grown old, Rodolph! Believe me, I am unchanged
in soul! And I will strive to be—I will strive to
look—God help me to look and be — as of
yore!

“Farewell now! I leave horses and servants to
wait on you till I send to bring you to me. Alas, for
any delay! but we will pass this life and all other
time together. We have seen that a vow of eternal
union may be kept—that death can not divide those
who will to love for ever! Farewell now!

“Margaret.”

Circumstances compelled me to read this letter
with but one feeling, exquisite pain! Love lasts till
death, but it is mortal! The affections, however
intense and faithful (I now know), are part of the
perishable coil, forgotten in the grave. With the
memory of this love of another life, haunting me
through my youth, and keeping its vow of visitation,
I had given the whole heart of my second youth to
another. Affianced to her, waited for by her, bound
to her by vows which death had not divided, I had but
one course to pursue. I left Gratz in an hour, never
to return.

A few days since I was walking alone in the
crowded thoroughfare of the city where I live. Suddenly
my sense of presence there fell off me. I
walked on, but my inward sight absorbed all my consciousness.
A room which was familiar to me shut
me in, and a bed hung in mourning became apparent.
In another instant a figure laid out in a winding-sheet,
and partially covered with a velvet pall, grew distinct
through the dimness, and in the low-laid head I recognised,
what a presentiment had already betrayed to
me, the features of Margaret, Baroness R—. It
will be still months before I can see the announcement
of her death. But she is dead.