While the king struggled with his passion, Barbarina had a far more dangerous enemy to contend with. Sentimentality is veiled in melancholy, in softened light and faded tints; but ennui has no eye, nor mind, nor heart for any thing. It is a fearful enemy! Barbarina was weary, oh, so weary! Was it perhaps impatience to appear again upon the stage which made the hours so leaden, so long drawn out? She lay the whole day stretched out upon her sofa, her eyes wide open, silent, and sighing, not responding to Marietta's loving words by a glance, or a movement of the eyelash. Marietta proposed to assemble her friends, but she affirmed that society was more wearisome than solitude.
At the end of three days, Barbarina sprang from her sofa and tried to walk. "It gives me no pain," said she, walking through the room.
"Yes. I remember, Arias said the same as she handed the dagger to her beloved," replied Marietta.
"But I have no beloved," said Barbarina; "no one loves me, no one understands this poor, glowing, agonized heart." As she said this, a flood of tears gushed from her eyes, and her form trembled with a storm of passion.
"Ah, Sorella, how can you say that—you who are so much loved, so highly prized?"
Barbarina smiled contemptuously, and shook her head. "Do you call that love? these empty words, this everlasting, unmeaning praise; this rapture about my beauty, my grace, and my skill, is this worship? Go, go, Marietta, you know it is not love, it is not worship. They amuse themselves with a rare and foreign flower, which is only beautiful because it has been dearly paid for; which is only wondered at while it is rare and strange. You know, not one of these men loves me for myself; they think only of my outward appearance. I am never more solitary than when they surround me, never feel so little beloved as when they swear that they love me boundlessly. O my God! must I shroud my heart, must I bury it under the snows of this cold north? O God, give me a heart for my heart, that can love as Barbarina loves!" She covered her face with her hands, and her tears flowed freely; she trembled and bowed from side to side, like a lily in a storm.
Marietta drew near, and laid her head upon her sister's shoulder; she did not try to comfort her: she knew there were griefs to which words of consolation were exasperation; she knew that passion must exhaust itself before it could be soothed. She comprehended the nobility and energy of Barbarina's nature; those bursts of tears were like clouds in the tropics; the storm must break, and then the sun would shine more gloriously. Marietta was right. In a short time her sister withdrew her hands from her face; her tears were quenched, and her eyes had their usual lustre.
"I am mad," she cried, "worse than mad! I ask of the north our southern blossoms. I demand that their ice shall become fire. Has not a landscape of snow and ice its grandeur and beauty—yes, its terrible beauty when inhabited by bears and wolves?"
"But woe betide us, when we meet these monsters!" said Marietta, entering readily into her sister's jest.
"Why woe betide us? Every danger and every monster can be overcome, if looked firmly in the face, but not too long, Marietta, not till your own eye trembles. Now, sister, enough of this; the rain is over, the sun shall shine. I am no longer ill, and will not be laid aside like a broken play-thing. I will be sound and healthy; I will flap my wings and float once more over the gay world."