The summer held to her lips a glass whose rosy
effervescence, whose fleeting foam, whose tingling spirit exhaled a
subtile madness of joy,--a draught whose lees were despair. So nearly
had she been destitute of emotion hitherto that she had scarcely a right
to be classed with humanity; now, indeed, she would win that right. Not
only her character, but her beauty, became another thing under all this
largess; one remembered the very Persian rose, in looking at her, and
thought of gardens amid whose clouds of rich perfume the nightingales
sang all night long; her manner, too, became strangely gracious, and a
sweetness lingered after her presence, delicate and fine as the drop of
honey in some flower's nectary. So she woke from her icy trance; but,
alas! what had wakened her?
The summer was passing. Every day the garden-scenes of Watteau became
vivid and real; every evening Venice was made possible, when shadowy
barks slipped down dusk tides, freighted with song and laughter, and
snatches of guitar-tinkling; and when some sudden torch, that for an
instant had summoned with its red fire all fierce lights and strong
glooms, dipped, hissed, and quenched below, and, a fantastic flotilla,
they passed on into the broad brilliance of a rising moon, all
Middle-Age mythology rose and wafted them back into the obscurity. It
was a life too fine for every day, fare too rich for health; they must
be exotics who did not wither in such hot-house air.
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