All the old manners, dead and gone with dear grandmother's youth, are fresh again; and myriads of children trip along on red-heeled shoes, and agitate the large rosettes, and glittering ribbons, and bright wreaths of flowers which deck them out like tender heralds of the spring. And with them mingle all those maidens holding picture-decorated fans with which they flirt—this is the derivation of our modern word—and the gay gallants with their never-ending compliments and smiles. And so the pageant sweeps along with music, joy, and laughter, to the undiscovered land, hidden in mist, and entered by the gateway of oblivion.
You see all this in reverie, gentle reader—build your pretty old chateau to dream in, that is; and it swarms with figures—graceful and grotesque as those old high-backed carven chairs—slender and delicate as the chiselled wave which breaks in foam against the cornice. And then you wake, and find the flowers pressed in the old volume called the Past, all dry—your castle only a castle of your dreams. Poor castle made of cards, which a child's finger fillips down, or, like the frost palace on the window pane, faints and fails at a breath!
Your reverie is over: nothing bright can last, not even dreams; and so your figures are all gone, your fairy realm obliterated—nothing lives but the recollection of a shadow!
The reader is requested to identify our melancholy lover Jacques with the foregoing sentences; and forgive him in consideration of his unfortunate condition. Lovers, as every body knows, live dream-lives; and what we have written is not an inaccurate hint of what passed through the heart of Jacques as he went on beneath peach and cherry blossoms to his love.
Poor Jacques was falling more deeply in love with every passing day. That fate which seemed to deny him incessantly an opportunity to hear Belle-bouche's reply to his suit, had only inflamed his love. He uttered mournful sighs, and looked with melancholy pleasure at the thrushes who skipped nimbly through the boughs, and did their musical wooing under the great azure canopy. His arms hung down, his eyes were very dreamy, his lips were wreathed into a faint wistful smile. Poor Jacques!
As he drew near Shadynook, the sunshine seemed growing every moment brighter, and the flowers exhaled sweeter odors. The orchis, eglantine, sad crocus burned in blue and shone along the braes, to use the fine old Scottish word; and over him the blossoms shook and showered, and made the whole air heavy with perfume. As he approached the gate, set in the low flowery fence, Jacques sighed and smiled. Daphnis was near his Daphne—Strephon would soon meet Chloe.
He tied his horse to a sublunary rack—not a thing of fairy land and moonshine as he thought—and slowly took his way, across the flower-enamelled lawn, towards the old smiling mansion. Eager, longing, dreaming, Jacques held out his arms and listened for her voice.
He heard instead an invisible voice, which he soon, however, made out as belonging to an Ethiopian lady of the bedchamber; and this voice said:
"Miss Becca's done gone out, sir!"
And Jacques felt suddenly as if the sunshine all around had faded, and thick darkness followed. All the light and joy of smiling Shadynook was gone—she was not there!