“I should like incomparably to know what that obstacle could be?” said Constantius.
Astonishment fixed me to the spot. I was unable to move a step.
Constantius and Salome
The natural playfulness of the sweet and light-hearted girl became manifest, and she replied “that a philosopher ought to know all things without questioning.”
“But there is much in the world that defies philosophy, my fair Salome; and of all its problems, the most perplexing is the mind of woman!—of young, lovely, dangerous woman!”
“Now, Constantius, you abandon the philosopher and play the poet.”
“Yet without the poet’s imagination. No; I need picture no beauty from the clouds—no nymph from the fountains—no loveliness that haunts the trees, and breathes more than mortal melody on the ear. Salome! my muse is before me.”
“You are a Greek,” said she, after a slight interval, “and Greeks are privileged to talk—and to deceive.”
“Salome! I am a Greek no longer. What I shall yet be may depend upon the fairest artist that ever fashioned the human mind. But mine are not the words of inexperience. I am on this day five-and-twenty years old. My life has led me into all that is various in the intercourse of earth. I have seen woman in her beauty, in her talent, in her art, in her accomplishment; from the cottage to the throne—but I never felt her real power before.”