And with that she raised her head, lofty in look and statue-like in hue, as Louis had described it.
"Behold the metamorphosis!" he said; "scarce imagined ere it is realized: a lowly nymph develops to an inaccessible goddess. But Henry must not be disappointed of his recitation, and Olympia will deign to oblige him. Let us begin."
"I have forgotten the very first line."
"Which I have not. My memory, if a slow, is a retentive one. I acquire deliberately both knowledge and liking. The acquisition grows into my brain, and the sentiment into my breast; and it is not as the rapid-springing produce which, having no root in itself, flourishes verdurous enough for a time, but too soon falls withered away. Attention, Henry! Miss Keeldar consents to favour you. 'Voyez ce cheval ardent et impétueux,' so it commences."
Miss Keeldar did consent to make the effort; but she soon stopped.
"Unless I heard the whole repeated I cannot continue it," she said.
"Yet it was quickly learned—'soon gained, soon gone,'" moralized the tutor. He recited the passage deliberately, accurately, with slow, impressive emphasis.
Shirley, by degrees, inclined her ear as he went on. Her face, before turned from him, returned towards him. When he ceased, she took the word up as if from his lips; she took his very tone; she seized his very accent; she delivered the periods as he had delivered them; she reproduced his manner, his pronunciation, his expression.
It was now her turn to petition.
"Recall 'Le Songe d'Athalie,'" she entreated, "and say it."