Yet even Austrian court etiquette was waived in favor of the child of plain Dr. Seraskier.
What men have I seen at her feet—how splendid, handsome, gallant, brilliant, chivalrous, lordly, and gay! And to all, from her, the same happy geniality—the same kindly, laughing, frolicsome, innocent gayety, with never a thought of self.
M. le Major was right—"elle avait toutes les intelligences de la tête et du coeur." And old and young, the best and the worst, seemed to love and respect her alike—and women as well as men—for her perfect sincerity, her sweet reasonableness.
And all this time I was plodding at my dull drawing-board in Pentonville, carrying out another's designs for a stable or a pauper's cottage, and not even achieving that poor task particularly well!
It would have driven me mad with humiliation and jealousy to see this past life of hers, but we saw it all hand in hand together—the magical circuit was established! And I knew, as I saw, how it all affected her, and marvelled at her simplicity in thinking all this pomp and splendor of so little consequence.
And I trembled to find that what space in her heart was not filled by the remembrance of her ever-beloved mother and the image of her father (one of the noblest and best of men) enshrined the ridiculous figure of a small boy in a white silk hat and an Eton jacket. And that small boy was I!
Then came a dreadful twelvemonth that I was fain to leave a blank—the twelvemonth during which her girlish fancy for her husband lasted—and then her life was mine again forever!
And my life!
The life of a convict is not, as a rule, a happy one; his bed is not generally thought a bed of roses.
Mine was!