Then another youth approached, and received more airily a silver token, with the same blue ribbon and songful welcome. Another and another, and at last the girls were called.
"See!" said my guide, "they have put the ladies last! That shall not be when I take the reins of the committee. Oh, for the Cecilian chivalry! what a taunting remembrance I will make it."
He was smiling, but I was surprised at the eagerness of his tones.
"Does it matter, sir?" said I.
"Signify? It signifies so much the more that it is a little thing, a little token. But it shall not grow; it shall not swell. See, see! look, Charles! what name was that?"
I had not heard it either, but the impetuosity in his tones was so peculiar that I was constrained to look up at him. His eye was dilated; a singular flash of light rather than flush of color glowed upon his face, as if glory from the noonday sun had poured itself through the impervious roof. But his gaze forbade my gaze, it was so fixed and piercing upon something at the end of the hall. Imperceptibly to myself I followed it. The first maiden who had approached the chair was now turning to re-pass into her place. She was clad, like the galleried ones, in white; but her whole aspect was unlike theirs, for instead of the slow step and lingering blush, her movement was a sort of flight, as if her feet were sandalled with the wind, back again among the crowd; and as she fled, you could only discern some strange gleam of unusual grace in a countenance drooping, but not bashfully, and veiled with waves, not ringlets, of hair more dark than pine-trees at midnight; also, it was impossible not to notice the angry putting back of one gloved hand, which crushed up the golden medal and an end of the azure ribbon, while the other was trailing upon the ground.
"She does not like it; she is proud, I suppose!" said I; and I laughed almost loud. "I thought you knew them all, sir?"
"No, Charles, I was never here before; but as I am to have something to do with what they do soon, I thought I had a right to come to-day."
"A right!" said I; "who else, if you had not the right, sir? But still I wonder how we got in so easily,—I mean I; for if you had not brought me, I could not, I suppose, have come."
"It is this," he answered smiling, and he touched his professor's cloak, or robe, which was now encircling his shoulders, and waved about him pliantly. "They all wear the same on entering these walls, at least who sit at the green table."