The curse of gold

by Ann S. Stephens

Two or three chairs of various patterns stood under these pictures, and slender bronze statues, each holding a gilded branch for lights in its hand, poised themselves on either side of the window. In two of these branches, wax candles, half consumed, still remained, while others had burned low, leaving the sockets full of wax, now of a dull gray color.

As Catharine looked around, she felt the desolation of the change oppressive, and half-closed the shutters, thus preserving the partial gloom which seemed so congenial to the place.

Why was it that this scene of neglected splendor, this treasure of intellectual wealth, half buried in the past, fell so gloomily on her spirits? What was the room to her? And why was she there, except to ascertain what capacities of home comfort the place afforded for her unfortunate charge?

She could not answer these questions. Her heart beat heavily, and her eyes grew dim with a sort of foreboding terror, as she looked around. Yet a strange infatuation kept her in the room. She longed to know what the books contained, by whom they had been collected, and by whom read.

This curiosity at last overcame the pressure upon her nerves. She arose, and opening a fold of the shutters again, surveyed the room a second time. It was early sunrise, and she had a full hour before Elsie would awake, or the family be abroad.

As the light gradually flooded the room, she became self-possessed and more resolute. The superstitious sensation, that had at first swept her nerves, yielded to a feeling of imaginative curiosity. She opened one of the bookcases almost with a feeling that it had life, and could be pained with the sharp wrench which she was obliged to give the lock.

As I have said, the books were in various languages, and Catharine could read but two, her native tongue and French, which she had caught up almost without effort, by painful associations in early life with persons to whom that language was most familiar; but she took down the Italian, German, and Spanish authors, with that vague reverence which we always feel for a thing beyond our comprehension, and was seized with a quick thirst of the knowledge they contained.

Here was a new world for the young woman, a world of fresh sensations and never-ending variety. She had fallen unawares upon a mine of thought, unappropriated, beautiful thought, from which she might carry away new life, and not diminish the original stock by a single idea. Here was happiness! here was a solace for the baffled hopes and recoiling affections that had burdened her soul so long. She would no longer seek for joy among the living. The dead had left her the essence of their lives, and she would read their books, she would learn all these strange languages. She would live in the past lives of those who had become benefactors to humanity, by gathering the immortality which belongs to them from the past, for the benefit of generations yet to come.

With these aspirations, Catharine turned over the pages of an Italian poem, that she had taken from the shelves. The very strangeness of the words had its fascination. She panted to wrestle with her own ignorance, and overcome it with a single effort.

But a sound in the house awoke Catharine from this train of thought. She had duties to perform. Life was not given that it might be wasted in vague dreams and useless expectations. She closed the book, and wandered around the room, anxious to redeem it from its state of neglect, and yet reluctant to disturb the repose in which every object had rested so long.