Blanden still exercised the same entrancing magic over her as in those days of unguarded devotion; she had remained true to him since that time, little as it was his right or her duty thus to continue faithful. His image alone accompanied her through life; all emotions to which she must give expression upon the stage were for him. She confessed it to him, and he uttered no doubt of such assurances. Blanden's person would account for such passion; it was distinguished and possessed of a peculiar charm. An enthusiast, a dreamer, as he had been from his youth upwards, he seemed to be one still, when, with half-closed languid eyes, he buried himself in the rich stores of his mental life; but then they would suddenly flash and open, and gleam with passion and manly power. In all else he was in perfect harmony; his figure symmetrical, the well-bred smile upon his lips, full of intellectual superiority; his conversation, in earnest and in jest, combined sweetness and charm. As Desdemona to Othello's tales, Giulia listened to the descriptions of the adventures which Blanden had met with in distant lands and oceans, he raised her imagination far above the painted decorations of theatrical life; she was susceptible to all the grandeur and beauty of nature, to all intellectual struggles; only the unrest and bustle of her artist's calling prevented her giving herself up to those mental enjoyments for which she longed now more fervently than formerly. To her it would have appeared unutterable bliss to belong entirely to the man in company with whom she might revel in such enjoyments; to the man who offered her a refuge from the tempests of stage life. With what just pride she would have borne the name with which that noble scion represented a family so esteemed in the world! And yet--from out the past one shoal reared itself in her life: a shoal upon which all her proud dreams of a future should be wrecked. In sleepless nights she meditated how she could guide her ship round that reef; her senses became confused in the rapid flight of thought from one possibility to another, which, clutched convulsively, never granted a firm hold; sometimes she rose to the daring venture of defying those rocks and trying if the high storm-lashed billows of her life would not bear her over. Her experiences upon the stage became daily more unpleasant, the enthusiasm of her adherents more disputed by steady opposition. These were the results of Spiegeler's malicious condemnation.