Letters of Two Brides

My smile emboldened him. The poor fellow looked blindly about for his

hat; he seemed determined not to find it, and I handed it to him with

perfect gravity. His eyes were wet with unshed tears. It was a mere

passing moment, yet a world of facts and ideas were contained in it.

We understood each other so well that, on a sudden, I held out my hand

for him to kiss.

Possibly this was equivalent to telling him that love might bridge the

interval between us. Well, I cannot tell what moved me to do it.

Griffith had her back turned as I proudly extended my little white

paw. I felt the fire of his lips, tempered by two big tears. Oh! my

love, I lay in my armchair, nerveless, dreamy. I was happy, and I

cannot explain to you how or why. What I felt only a poet could

express. My condescension, which fills me with shame now, seemed to me

then something to be proud of; he had fascinated me, that is my one

excuse. Friday.

This man is really very handsome. He talks admirably, and has

remarkable intellectual power. My dear, he is a very Bossuet in force

and persuasiveness when he explains the mechanism, not only of the

Spanish tongue, but also of human thought and of all language. His

mother tongue seems to be French. When I expressed surprise at this,

he replied that he came to France when quite a boy, following the King

of Spain to Valencay.

What has passed within this enigmatic being? He is no longer the same

man. He came, dressed quite simply, but just as any gentleman would

for a morning walk. He put forth all his eloquence, and flashed wit,

like rays from a beacon, all through the lesson. Like a man roused

from lethargy, he revealed to me a new world of thoughts. He told me

the story of some poor devil of a valet who gave up his life for a

single glance from a queen of Spain.

"What could he do but die?" I exclaimed.

This delighted him, and he looked at me in a way which was truly

alarming. In the evening I went to a ball at the Duchesse de Lenoncourt's. The

Prince de Talleyrand happened to be there; and I got M. de Vandenesse,

a charming young man, to ask him whether, among the guests at his

country-place in 1809, he remembered any one of the name of Henarez.

Vandenesse reported the Prince's reply, word for word, as follows:

"Henarez is the Moorish name of the Soria family, who are, they say,

descendants of the Abencerrages, converted to Christianity. The old

Duke and his two sons were with the King. The eldest, the present Duke

de Soria, has just had all his property, titles, and dignities

confiscated by King Ferdinand, who in this way avenges a long-standing

feud. The Duke made a huge mistake in consenting to form a

constitutional ministry with Valdez. Happily, he escaped from Cadiz

before the arrival of the Duc d'Angouleme, who, with the best will in

the world, could not have saved him from the King's wrath."