For all the looks of blandishment which ever flung their spell from beauty’s eye, I would not have exchanged the glance which Glorvina at that moment cast on me. While the priest, who seemed to have been following up the train of thought awakened by our preceding observations, abruptly added, after a silence of some minutes—
“There is a species of metaphorical taste, if I may be allowed the expression, whose admiration for certain objects is not deducible from the established rules of beauty, order, or even truth; which should be the basis of our approbation; yet which ever brings with it a sensation of more lively pleasure; as for instance, a chromatic passion in music will awaken a thrill of delight which a simple chord could never effect.”
“Nor would the most self-evident truth,” said I, “awaken so vivid a sensation, as when we find some sentiment of the soul illustrated by some law or principle in science. To an axiom we announce our assent, but we lavish our most enthusiastic approbation when Rosseau tells us that ‘Les ames humaines veulent etre accomplies pour valoir toute leurs prix, et la force unie des ames comme celles des l’armes d’un aimant artificiel, est incomparablement plus grands que la somme de leurs force particulier.’”
As this quotation was meant all for Glorvina, I looked earnestly at her as I repeated it. A crimson torrent rushed to her cheek, and convinced me that she felt the full force of a sentiment so applicable to us both.
“And why,” said I, addressing her in a low voice, “was Rosseau excluded from the sacred coalition with Ossian, Collins, your twilight harp, and winter rose?”
Glorvina made no reply; but turned full on me her “eyes of dewy light.” Mine almost sunk beneath the melting ardour of their soul-beaming o o glance.
Oh! child of Nature! child of genius and of passion! why was I withheld from throwing myself at thy feet; from offering thee the homage of that soul thou hast awakened; from covering thy hands with my kisses, and bathing them with tears of such delicious emotion, as thou only hast power to inspire?
While we thus “buvames a longs traits le philtre de l’amour,” Father John gradually restored us to commonplace existence, by a commonplace conversation on the fineness of the weather, promising aspect of the season, &c., until the moon, as it rose sublimely above the summit of the mountain, called forth the melting tones of my Glorvina’s syren voice.
Casting up her eyes to that Heaven whence they seem to have caught their emanation, she said, “I do not wonder that unenlightened nations should worship the moon. Our ideas are so intimately connected with our senses, so ductilely transferable from cause to effect, that the abstract thought may readily subside in the sensible image which awakens it. When, in the awful stillness of a calm night, I fix my eyes on the mild and beautiful orb, the created has become the awakening medium of that adoration I offered to the Creator.”
“Yes,” said the priest, “I remember that even in your childhood, you used to fix your eyes on the moon, and gaze and wonder. I believe it would have been no difficult matter to have plunged you back into the heathenism of your ancestors, and to have made it one of the gods of your idolatry.”