The doors opened and there entered a beautifully dressed lady, followed by an old gentleman of lofty bearing and aristocratic looks. The hostess rose to receive them, and led the lady within the circle. The other guests had all risen, and the host presented "Donna Emanuela Marchez, our friend Euchar's bride. Ron Rafaele Marchez."
"Yes," said Euchar, with the bliss of the happiness which he had achieved radiating from his eyes, and glowing in brilliant roses on his cheeks, "I have only now to tell you that he whom I spoke of to you as Edgar was none other than myself."
Victorine clasped the beautiful Emanuela in her arms, and pressed her warmly to her heart. They seemed to know each other already. But Ludwig, casting a glance of sorrow upon the group, said--
"All this was a part of the mutual interdependence of things."
The friends were pleased with Sylvester's tale, and were unanimous in thinking that Edgar's adventures in Spain during the War of Independence, although they might perhaps be considered to be interwoven in merely an episodical form, really constituted the kernel of the story, and that their happy effect was accounted for by their being founded upon actual historical facts.
"There is no doubt," said Lothair, "that matter which is absolutely historical possesses a certain peculiar quality which the inventive faculty, when it merely hovers about in empty space, with nothing to anchor upon, cannot attain to. In the same way the skilful introduction of truly historical customs, manners, habitudes and so forth, belonging to any race, or people, or to any particular class of people, gives to a work of fiction a life-like colouring which it is difficult otherwise to attain. But I insist upon their being introduced skilfully. For there is no doubt that it is not so easy to introduce historical facts--things which have actually happened--into a work of which the incidents belong to the domain of pure imagination, as many people think it is. And it requires a peculiar skilfulness, which everybody is not fortunate enough to possess. In the absence of it there appears merely a pale, distorted simulacrum of life, instead of the freshness of reality. I know works--particularly some by literary ladies--in which one feels, at every instant, how the writer has gone dipping the brush into the colour-box, bringing nothing out of it, after all, but a sort of jumble of strokes of different colours, just where what was wanted was a thoroughly life-like picture."
"I quite agree with you," said Lothair. "And, having just chanced to remember a particular novel, written by an otherwise fairly clever woman (which, notwithstanding all the dippings of her brush into the aforesaid paint-box, does not possess a single atom of real semblance of life, or of poetic truth, from one end of it to the other, so that one cannot remember it for a single moment), I merely wish to say that this particular skill in producing an effect of reality and historical truth, brilliantly distinguishes the works of a writer who has only rather recently become known to us. I mean Walter Scott. I have only read his 'Guy Mannering.' But ex ungue leonem. The 'exposition' of this tale is based upon Scotch manners and customs, and matters belonging peculiarly to the place in which the scene of it is laid. But, without any acquaintance with them, one is carried away by the vivid reality of the characters and incidents in an extraordinary degree, and the 'exposition' is to be termed so utterly masterly just because we are landed in medias res in a moment, as if by the wave of an enchanter's wand. Moreover, Scott has the power of drawing the figures of his pictures with a few touches, in such a way that they seem to come out of their frames, and move about before us in the most living fashion imaginable. Scott is a splendid phenomenon appearing in the literature of Great Britain. He is as vivid as Smollett, though far more classic and noble. But I think he is wanting in that brilliant lire of profound humour which coruscates in the writings of Sterne and Swift."
"I am just in your position, Ottmar," said Vincenz. "'Guy Mannering' is the only work of Scott's which I have read. But I was much struck by the originality of it, and the manner in which, in its methodical progress, it gradually unwinds itself like a clue of thread, gently and quietly, never breaking its firm-spun strands. My chief objection to it is, that (no doubt in faithfulness to British manners) the female characters are so tame and colourless, except that grand gipsy woman--although she is scarcely so much to be called a woman as a kind of spectral apparition. Both of the young ladies in 'Guy Mannering' remind me of the English coloured engravings, which are all exactly alike--id est, as pretty as they are meaningless and expressionless, and as to which one sees distinctly that the originals of them would never allow anything further than 'Yea, yea; nay, nay!' to cross those pretty little delicate lips of theirs, as anything more might lead unto evil. Hogarth's milkmaid is a prototype of all these creatures. Both of the girls in 'Guy Mannering' lack reality--the god-like vivifying breath of life."
"Might not one wish," said Theodore, "in the case of some of the female characters of one of our most talented writers (particularly in some of his earlier works) that they had a little more flesh and blood, since they are really all so very apt to melt into wreaths of mist when one looks at them closely? Nevertheless, let us love and honour both of those writers--the foreigner and our countryman, because of the true and glorious things which they have bestowed upon us."
"It is remarkable," said Sylvester, "that--unless I mistake--another great writer appeared on the other side of the channel, about the same time as Walter Scott, and has produced works of equal greatness and splendour, but in a different direction. I mean Lord Byron, who appears to me to be much more solid and powerful than Thomas Moore. His 'Siege of Corinth' is a masterpiece, fall of genius. His predominant tendency seems to be towards the gloomy, the mysterious and the terrible; and his 'Vampire' I have avoided reading, for the bare idea of a vampire makes my blood run cold. So far as I understand the matter, a vampire is an animated corpse which sucks the blood of the living."