glorify ourselves, that we may be enabled to render back the glory to
him from whom we received it, and for whom we have kept it in trust,
only to tender it back with that rich and accumulated interest of the
heart, of which we would pay the uttermost farthing, if the payment
exacted the last vibration of its fibres,--the last drop of its blood.
No saint who ever viewed a miracle performed by himself with a holy and
self-annihilating abstraction from _seity_, has perhaps felt a purer
sentiment of perfect devotedness, than the female who, in her first
hours of love, offers, at the feet of her worshipped one, the brilliant
wreath of music, painting, and eloquence,--and only hopes, with an
unuttered sigh, that the rose of love will not be unnoticed in the
garland.
“Oh! how delicious it is to such a being (and such was Isidora) to touch
her harp amid crowds, and watch, when the noisy and tasteless bravoes
have ceased, for the heart-drawn sigh of _the one_, to whom alone her
soul, not her fingers, have played,--and whose single sigh is heard, and
heard alone, amid the plaudits of thousands! Yet how delicious to her to
whisper to herself, “I heard his sigh, but he has heard the applause!”
“And when she glides through the dance, and in touching, with easy and
accustomed grace, the hands of many, she feels there is but one hand
whose touch she can recognize; and, waiting for its thrilling and
life-like vibration, moves on like a statue, cold and graceful, till the
Pygmalion-touch warms her into woman, and the marble melts into flesh
under the hands of the resistless moulder. And her movements betray, at
that moment, the unwonted and half-unconscious impulses of that fair
image to which love had given life, and who luxuriated in the vivid and
newly-tried enjoyment of that animation which the passion of her lover
had breathed into her frame. And when the splendid portfolio is
displayed, or the richly-wrought tapestry expanded by outstretched arms,
and cavaliers gaze, and ladies envy, and every eye is busy in
examination, and every tongue loud in praise, just in the inverted
proportion of the ability of the one to scrutinize with accuracy, and
the other to applaud with taste--then to throw round the secret silent
glance, that searches for that eye whose light alone, to her intoxicated
gaze, contains all judgment, all taste, all feeling--for that lip whose
very censure would be dearer than the applause of a world!--To hear,
with soft and submissive tranquillity, censure and remark, praise and
comment, but to turn for ever the appealing look to one who alone can
understand, and whose swiftly-answering glance can alone reward
it!--This--this had been Isidora’s hope. Even in the isle where he first
saw her in the infancy of her intellect, she had felt the consciousness
of superior powers, which were then her solace, not her pride. Her value
for herself rose with her devotion to him. Her passion became her pride;
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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