Even the gaiety which the comic music of Italy is so well calculated to excite, is not of that vulgar description which does not speak to the imagination. At the very bottom of the mirth which it excites, will be found poetical sensations and an agreeable reverie, which mere verbal pleasantry never could inspire. Music is so fleeting a pleasure, that it glides away almost at the same time we feel it, in such a manner, that a melancholy impression is mingled with the gaiety which it excites; but when expressive of grief, it also gives birth to a sweet sentiment. The heart beats more quickly while listening to it, and the satisfaction caused by the regularity of the measure, by reminding us of the brevity of time, points out the necessity of enjoying it. You no longer feel any void, any silence, around you; life is filled; the blood flows quickly; you feel within you that motion which gives activity to life, and you have no fear of the external obstacles with which it is beset.
Music redoubles the ideas which we possess of the faculties of the soul; when listening to it we feel capable of the noblest efforts. Animated by music, we march to the field of death with enthusiasm. This divine art is happily incapable of expressing any base sentiment, any artifice, any falsehood. Calamity itself, in the language of music, is stript of its bitterness; it neither irritates the mind nor rends the heart. Music gently raises that weight which almost constantly oppresses the heart when we are formed for deep and serious affections; that weight which sometimes becomes confounded with the very sense of our existence, so habitual is the pain which it causes. It seems to us in listening to pure and delectable sounds, that we are about to seize the secret of the Creator, and penetrate the mystery of life. No language can express this impression, for language drags along slowly behind primitive impressions, as prose translators behind the footsteps of poets. It is only a look that can give some idea of it; the look of an object you love, long fixed upon you, and penetrating by degrees so deeply into your heart, that you are at length obliged to cast down your eyes to escape a happiness so intense, that, like the splendour of another life, it would consume the mortal being who should presume stedfastly to contemplate it.
The admirable exactness of two voices perfectly in harmony produces, in the duets of the great Italian masters, a melting delight which cannot be prolonged without pain. It is a state of pleasure too exquisite for human nature; and the soul then vibrates like an instrument which a too perfect harmony would break. Oswald had obstinately kept at a distance from Corinne during the first part of the concert; but when the duet began, with faintly-sounding voices, accompanied by wind instruments, whose sounds were more pure than the voices themselves, Corinne covered her face with her handkerchief, entirely absorbed in emotion; she wept, but without suffering—she loved, and was undisturbed by any fear. Undoubtedly the image of Oswald was present to her heart; but this image was mingled with the most noble enthusiasm, and a crowd of confused thoughts wandered over her soul: it would have been necessary to limit these thoughts in order to render them distinct. It is said that a prophet traversed seven different regions of heaven in a minute. He who could thus conceive all that an instant might contain, must surely have felt the sublime power of music by the side of the object he loved. Oswald felt this power, and his resentment became gradually appeased. The feelings of Corinne explained and justified everything; he gently approached her, and Corinne heard him breathing by her side in the most enchanting passage of this celestial music. It was too much—the most pathetic tragedy could not have excited in her heart so much sensation as this intimate sentiment of profound emotion which penetrated them both at the same time, and which each succeeding moment, each new sound, continually exalted. The words of a song have no concern in producing this emotion—they may indeed occasionally excite some passing reflection on love or death; but it is the indefinite charm of music which blends itself with every feeling of the soul; and each one thinks he finds in this melody, as in the pure and tranquil star of night, the image of what he wishes for on earth.
"Let us retire," said Corinne; "I feel ready to faint." "What ails you?" said Oswald, with uneasiness; "you grow pale. Come into the open air with me; come." They went out together. Corinne, leaning on the arm of Oswald, felt her strength revive from the consciousness of his support. They both approached a balcony, and Corinne, with profound emotion, said to her lover, "Dear Oswald, I am about to leave you for eight days." "What do you tell me?" interrupted he. "Every year," replied she, "at the approach of Holy Week, I go to pass some time in a convent, to prepare myself for the solemnity of Easter." Oswald advanced nothing in opposition to this intention; he knew that at this epoch, the greater part of the Roman ladies gave themselves up to the most rigid devotion, without however on that account troubling themselves very seriously about religion during the rest of the year; but he recollected that Corinne professed a different worship to his, and that they could not pray together. "Why are you not," cried he, "of the same religion as myself?" Having pronounced this wish, he stopped short. "Have not our hearts and minds the same country?" answered Corinne. "It is true," replied Oswald; "but I do not feel less painfully all that separates us." They were then joined by Corinne's friends; but this eight days' absence so oppressed his heart that he did not utter a word during the whole evening.
Chapter iii.
Oswald visited Corinne at an early hour, uneasy at what she had said to him. He was received by her maid, who gave him a note from her mistress informing him that she had entered the convent on that same morning, agreeably to the intention of which he had been apprised by her, and that she should not be able to see him until after Good Friday. She owned to him that she could not find courage to make known her intention of retiring so soon, in their conversation the evening before. This was an unexpected stroke to Oswald. That house, which the absence of Corinne now rendered so solitary, made the most painful impression upon his mind; he beheld her harp, her books, her drawings, all that habitually surrounded her; but she herself was no longer there. The recollection of his father's house struck him—he shuddered and, unable to support himself, sunk into a chair.
"In such a way as this," cried he, "I might learn her death! That mind, so animated, that heart, throbbing with life, that dazzling form, in all the freshness of vernal bloom, might be crushed by the thunderbolt of fate, and the tomb of youth would be silent as that of age. Ah! what an illusion is happiness! What a fleeting moment stolen from inflexible Time, ever watching for his prey! Corinne! Corinne! you must not leave me; it was the charm of your presence which deprived me of reflection; all was confusion in my thoughts, dazzled as I was by the happy moments which I passed with you. Now I am alone—now I am restored to myself, and all my wounds are opened afresh." He invoked Corinne with a kind of despair which could not be attributed to her short absence, but to the habitual anguish of his heart, which Corinne alone could assuage. Corinne's maid, hearing the groans of Oswald, entered the room and, touched with the manner in which he was affected by the absence of her mistress, said to him, "My lord, let me comfort you; I hope my dear lady will pardon me for betraying her secret. Come into my room, and you shall see your portrait." "My portrait!" cried he. "Yes; she has painted it from memory," replied Theresa (that was the name of Corinne's maid); "she has risen at five o'clock in the morning this week past, in order to finish it before she went to the convent."
Oswald saw this portrait, which was a striking likeness and most elegantly executed: this proof of the impression which he had made on Corinne penetrated him with the sweetest emotion. Opposite this portrait was a charming picture, representing the Blessed Virgin—and before this picture was the oratory of Corinne. This singular mixture of love and religion is common to the greater part of Italian women, attended with circumstances more extraordinary than in the apartment of Corinne; for free and unrestrained as was her life, the remembrance of Oswald was united in her mind with the purest hopes and purest sentiments; but to place thus the resemblance of a lover opposite an emblem of divinity, and to prepare for a retreat to a convent by consecrating a week to paint that resemblance, was a trait that characterised Italian women in general rather than Corinne in particular. Their kind of devotion supposes more imagination and sensibility than seriousness of mind and seventy of principles;—nothing could be more contrary to Oswald's religious ideas; yet how could he find fault with Corinne, at the very moment when he received so affecting a proof of her love?
He minutely surveyed this chamber, which he now entered for the first time: at the head of Corinne's bed he saw the portrait of an elderly man, whose physiognomy was not Italian; two bracelets were hanging near this portrait, one formed of dark and light hair twisted together; the other was of the most lovely flaxen, and what appeared a most remarkable effect of chance, perfectly resembled that of Lucilia Edgermond, which he had observed very attentively three years ago on account of its extreme beauty. Oswald contemplated these bracelets without uttering a word, for to interrogate Theresa he felt to be unworthy of him. But Theresa, fancying she guessed Oswald's thoughts, and wishing to remove from his mind every jealous suspicion, hastened to inform him that during eleven years that she had waited on Corinne, her mistress had always worn these bracelets, and that she knew they were composed of the hair of her father and mother, and that of her sister. "You have been eleven years with Corinne," said Lord Nelville; "you know then—" blushing, he suddenly checked himself, ashamed of the question he was about to put, and quitted the house immediately, to avoid saying another word.