It is a great consolation that when our poor prisoners cannot have the sun, they can at least have a moon of their own, a paradise of soft and trembling lights, ever changing, yet ever renewed, and giving to that sedentary life, that little variety which is absolutely needed by every creature.
The poor children who work in the mines, ask visitors, not for food, or sweetmeats, or money, or toys—all they ask for is the means of getting more light. And it is the same with our Ocean children, the Haliotides. Every day, blind though they be, they feel, and greedily welcome, the return of the light, receiving it, and contemplating it, with the whole of their transparent bodies; and when the light has departed, from without, they still preserve and nurse some portion of it within themselves. They watch, they wait, they hope for its return; their whole little soul consists of that hope, that watching, that eager desire, that incessant yearning. Who can doubt that the return of the glad light is as delightful to them as it is to us, nay, even more so than it is to us, who have the manifold distractions of so busy and varied a life?
Their whole lives pass in thinking, wishing, divining, hoping, or regretting; their great lover, the Sun. Never seeing him, they yet, in their own fashion, certainly comprehend that that warmth, that glorious light comes to them from without, and from a great centre, powerful, fecund and beneficent. And they love that great deeply felt, though never seen, central light, which caresses them, fills them with joy, floods them with life. Had they the power, they no doubt would rush to seek his rays. And, at least, attached as they are to their abode, they, like the Brahmin at the door of the Pagoda, silently offer him up their homage, at once meditative and thrilling. First flower of instructive worship. Already they love and pray, who say the little word which the Holy prefers to all prayer—that Oh! that heart utterance, which contents and pleases Heaven. When the Indian utters it at sunrise, he well knows that all that innocent world of mother of pearl, pearl, and humblest shells, utters it with him, from the depths of the seas.
I fully understand what the sight of the pearl suggests of feeling and fancy to the charmingly untutored heart, the woman heart, that dreams, and fancies, and is stirred by a sweet, and strange, and uncomprehended emotion. That pearl is not exactly a person, but neither, on the other hand, is it exactly a thing. What adorable whiteness; no, call it not mere whiteness, but candor, virginal candor; no, not virginal, but better still. For your young virgins, sweet and modest as they are, have always a slight dash of young tartness, and verdancy. No, the pearl's candor rather resembles that of the innocent young bride, so pure, yet so submissive to love.
No ambition to shine. Our pearl softens, almost suppresses, its lights. At first, you see only a dull white; it is only when you have taken a second and a closer glance that you discover its mysterious iris, its exquisitely glancing and pure light.
Where lived it? Ask the deep Ocean. On what? Ask the sunbeams; like some clear spirit it lived on love and light.
Great mystery! But our beautiful pearl herself explains it. We cannot look upon her without feeling that this creature, at once so lovely and so meek, must for a long time have lived in quietude, waiting and waited for, willing nothing and doing nothing, but the will of the beloved one.
The son of the sea put his beautiful dream into his shell, the shell into the mother of pearl, and she into the pearl, which is but a concentration of herself.
But the pearl we are told only comes to her mother in consequence of some wound, some continued suffering, which withdraws or absorbs all vulgar life into that divine poetry.
I have been told that the great ladies of the East, more delicate and tasteful than our vulgar rich, shun the diamond and allow their soft skin to be touched only by the pearl. And in truth, the brilliancy of the diamond is not in accord with the light of love. A necklace and a pair of bracelets of fine pearls are the harmonious and true decorations for woman; instead of diverting the glance of the lover, they move him, make tenderness more tender—say to him—"No noise—let us love!" The pearl seems amorous of woman, and woman of the pearl. The ladies of the North, when they have once put on pearl ornaments, never afterwards remove them, but carry them day and night concealed beneath their attire. On very rare occasions, if the rich fur cape, lined with white satin, chances to slip aside, we may catch a momentary glance of the happy ornament, the inseparable necklace. It reminds one of the silken tunic which the Odalisque wears close to her person, and loves so much that she will not part with it until it is worn and torn beyond all possibility of repair; believing it as she does to be a talisman, an infallible love charm.