Some years after, it was rumoured, to everybody's astonishment, that she had married a widower in a provincial town--she who belonged to the realms of Poesy!
Then there was another young girl, nineteen. Whereas the fairy maiden did not put herself out to pretend she troubled her head about the young men whom she fascinated with the rhythm of her movements or the radiation of her loveliness, was rather inclined to be short in her manner, a little staccato in her observations, too accustomed to admiration to attract worshippers to herself by courting them, too undeveloped and impersonal to consciously assert herself--this other girl was of quite another sort. She had no innate irresistibility, but was a shrewd and adaptable human girl. Her face did not attract by its beauty, though she was very much more beautiful than ugly, with a delicately hooked nose, a mouth full of promise, an expression of thoughtfulness and determination. When she appeared at a ball, men's eyes lingered on her neck, and even more on her white back, with its firm, smooth skin, and fine play of the muscles; for if she did not allow very much of her young bust to be seen, her dress at the back was cut down nearly to her belt. Her voice was a deep contralto, and she knew how to assume an expression of profound gravity and reflection. But she captivated most by her attentiveness. When a young man whom she wished to attract commenced a conversation with her, she never took her eyes from his, or rather she gazed into his, and showed such a rapt attention to his words, such an interest in his thoughts and his occupations, that after meeting her once he never forgot her again. Her coquetry did not consist of languishing glances, but of a pretended sympathy, that flattered and delighted its object.
IV.
These Danish girls were likely to appeal to a young man just returned from travels abroad, during which his emotions had been doubly stirred, for the first time, by feminine affection and by enthusiasm for a woman. They influenced me the more strongly because they were Danish, and because I, who loved everything Danish, from the language to the monuments, had, since the war, felt something lacking in everyone, man or woman, who was foreign to Denmark.
But in the midst of all these visitations of calf-love, and their vibrations among undefined sensations, I was pulled back with a jerk, as it were, to my earlier and deepest impression, that of the loveliness and exalted person of the young Spaniard. Letters from Paris furrowed my mind like steamers the waters of a lake, made it foam, and the waves run high, left long streaks across its wake. Not that Mlle. Mathilde sent letters to me herself, but her Italian lady and gentlemen friends wrote for her, apparently in her name, loudly lamenting my unreasonable departure, wishing and demanding my return, telling me how she missed me, sometimes how angry she was.
I was too poor to be able to return at once. I did what I could to procure money, wrote to those of my friends whom I thought could best afford it and on whom I relied most, but met with refusals, which made me think of the messages Timon of Athens received in response to similar requests. Then I staked in the lottery and did not win.
Urged from France to return, and under the high pressure of my own romantic imagination, it seemed clear to me all at once that I ought to unite my lot for good to that of this rare and beautiful woman, whom, it is true, I had never spoken to one minute alone, who, moreover, had scarcely anything in common with me, but who, just by the dissimilarity of her having been born of Spanish parents in Rio, and I of a Danish father and mother in Copenhagen, seemed destined by Fate for me, as I for her. The Palm and the Fir-tree had dreamed of one another, and could never meet; but men and women could, however far apart they might have been born. In the middle of the Summer of 1867 I was as though possessed by the thought that she and I ought to be united.
The simplest objection of all, namely, that I, who was scarcely able to support myself, could not possibly support a wife, seemed to me altogether subordinate. My motives were purely chivalric; I could not leave her in the lurch, as the miserable hero of Andersen's Only a Player did Noomi. And a vision of her compelling loveliness hovered before my eyes.
The whole of the month of July and part of the month of August I was on the rack, now passionately desiring a successful issue of my plans, now hoping just as ardently that they would be stranded through the opposition of the foreign family; for I was compelled to admit to myself that the beautiful Spaniard would be very unsuited to Copenhagen, would freeze there, mentally as well as literally. And I said to myself every day that supposing the war expected in Denmark were to break out again, and the young men were summoned to arms, the most insignificant little Danish girl would make me a better Valkyrie; all my feelings would be foreign to her, and possibly she would not even be able to learn Danish. Any other woman would understand more of my mind than she. And yet! Yet she was the only one for me.
Thus I was swayed by opposing wishes the whole of the long time during which the matter was pending and uncertain. I was so exhausted by suspense that I only kept up by taking cold baths twice a day and by brisk rides. The mere sight of a postman made my heart beat fast. The scorn heaped upon me in the Danish newspapers had a curious effect upon me under these circumstances; it seemed to me to be strangely far away, like blows at a person who is somewhere else.