Cecilia: A Story of Modern Rome

by F. Marion Crawford

He felt that the young girl was watching him, and he ventured to look at her, with a little movement, as if he wished to be introduced. Again he felt the absolute certainty of having met her before, somewhere, very long ago—so long ago that she could not have been born then, and he must have been a small boy. Therefore what he felt was absurd.

"Cecilia," said the Countess, speaking to the girl, "this is Signor Lamberto Lamberti." "My daughter," she explained, as he bowed, "Cecilia Palladio."

"Most charming!" cried the Princess, "the son and the daughter of two old friends."

"Touching," echoed Monsieur Leroy. "Such a picture! There is true sentiment in it."

Lamberti did not hear, but Cecilia Palladio did, and a straight shadow, fine as a hair line, appeared for an instant, perpendicular between her brows, while she looked directly at the man before her. A moment later Lamberti was seated between her and her mother, and Monsieur Leroy had resumed the position he had left to welcome the newcomer, sitting on a very low cushioned stool almost at the Princess's feet.

In formal circumstances, a man who has been long in the army or navy can usually trust himself not to show astonishment or emotion, and after the first slight start of surprise, which only Monsieur Leroy had seen, Lamberti had behaved as if nothing out of the common way had happened to him. But he had felt as if he were in a dream, while healthily sure that he was awake; and now that he was more at ease, he began to examine the cause of his inward disturbance.

It was not only out of the question to suppose that he had ever before now met Cecilia Palladio, but he was quite certain that he had never seen any one who was at all like her.

If extinct types of men could be revived now and then, of those which the world once thought admirable and tried to copy, it would be interesting to see how many persons of taste would acknowledge any beauty in them. Cecilia Palladio had been eighteen years old early in the winter, and in the usual course of things would have made her appearance in society during the carnival season. The garden party for which her mother had now sent out invitations was to take the place of the dance which should have been given in January. Afterwards, when it was over, and everybody had seen her, some people said that she was perfectly beautiful, others declared that she was a freak of nature and would soon be hideous, but, meanwhile, was an interesting study; one young gentleman, addicted to art, said that her face belonged to the type seen in the Elgin marbles; a Sicilian lady said that her head was even more archaic than that, and resembled a fragment from the temples of Selinunte, preserved in the museum at Palermo; and the Russian ambassador, who was of unknown age, said that she was the perfect Psyche of Naples, brought to life, and that he wished he were Eros.

In southern Europe what is called the Greek type of beauty is often seen, and does not surprise any one. Many people think it cold and uninteresting. It was a small something in the arch of the brows, it was a very slight upward turn of the point of the nose, it was the small irregularity of the broader and less curving upper lip that gave to Cecilia Palladio's face the force and character that are so utterly wanting in the faces of the best Greek statues. The Greeks, by the time they had gained the perfect knowledge of the human body that produced the Hermes of Olympia, had made a conventional mask of the human face, and rarely ever tried to give it a little of the daring originality that stands out in the features of many a crudely archaic statue. The artist who made the Psyche attempted something of the kind, for the right side of the face differs from the left, as it generally does in living people. The right eyebrow is higher and more curved than the left one, which lends some archness to the expression, but its effect is destroyed by the tiresome perfection of the simpering mouth.

Cecilia Palladio was not like a Greek statue, but she looked as if she had come alive from an age in which the individual ranked above the many as a model, and in which nothing accidentally unfit for life could survive and nothing degenerate had begun to be. With the same general proportion, there was less symmetry in her face than in those of modern beauties, and there was more light, more feeling, more understanding. She was very fair, but her eyes were not blue; it would have been hard to define their colour, and sometimes there seemed to be golden lights in them. While she was standing, Lamberti had seen that she was almost as tall as himself, and therefore taller than most women; and she was slender, and moved like a very perfectly proportioned young wild animal, continuously, but without haste, till each motion was completed in rest. Most men and women really move in a succession of very short movements, entirely interrupted at more or less perceptible intervals. If our sight were perfect we should see that people walk, for instance, by a series of jerks so rapid as to be like the vibrations of a humming-bird's wings. Perhaps this is due to the unconscious exercise of the human will in every voluntary motion, for a man who moves in his sleep seems to move continuously like an animal, till he has changed his position and rests again.