“The weather here is fine now. I passed yesterday at Abazzia, and the place was looking well. I believe the Archduke will purchase it, and, though sorry on some accounts, I shall be glad on the whole.
“For Hodnig and Oppovich,
“Sara Oppovich.
“Of course, if Count Hunyadi will not transact business on his arrival, you will have to await his convenience. Perhaps the interval could be profitably passed in Transylvania, where, it is said, the oak-bark is both cheap and good. See to this, if opportunity serves. Bieli's book and maps are worth consulting.”
If I read this epistle once, I read it fifty times, but I will not pretend to say with what strange emotions. All the dry reference to business I could bear well enough, but the little passing sneer at what she called my ethnology piqued me painfully. Why should she have taken such pains to tell me that nothing that did not lend itself to gain could have any interest for her? or was it to say that these topics alone were what should be discussed between us? Was it to recall me to my station, to make me remember in what relation I stood to her, she wrote thus? These were not the nature I had read of in Balzac! the creatures all passion and soul and sentiment,—women whose atmosphere was positive enchantment, and whose least glance or word or gesture would inflame the heart to very madness; and yet was it net in Sara to become all this? Were those deep lustrous eyes, that looked away into space longingly, dreamfully, dazingly,—were they meant to pore over wearisome columns of dry arithmetic, or not rather to give back in recognition what they had got in rapture, and to look as they were looked into?
Was it, as a Jewess, that my speculations about race had offended her? Had I expressed myself carelessly or ill? I had often been struck by a smile she would give,—not scornful, nor slighting, but something that seemed to say, “These thoughts are not our thoughts, nor are these ways our ways!” but in her silent fashion she would make no remark, but be satisfied to shadow forth some half dissent by a mere trembling of the lip.
She had passed a day at Abazzia—of course, alone—wandering about that delicious spot, and doubtless recalling memories for any one of which I had given my life's blood. And would she not bestow a word—one word—on these? Why not say she as much as remembered me; that it was there we first met! Sure, so much might have been said, or at least hinted at, in all harmlessness! I had done nothing, written nothing, to bring rebuke upon me. I had taken no liberty; I had tried to make the dry detail of a business letter less wearisome by a little digression, not wholly out of apropos; that was all.
Was then the Hebrew heart bent sorely on gain? And yet what grand things did the love of these women inspire in olden times, and what splendid natures were theirs! How true and devoted, how self-sacrificing! Sara's beautiful face, in all its calm loveliness, rose before me as I thought these things, and I felt that I loved her more than ever.