He endeavoured to persuade her, but found that it only caused her more pain. After all, he reflected, it was natural enough that she, who had never been at any table save her own, should be appalled at the prospect of dining before a score of fine ladies and gentlemen.
He was sorry for her. He knew the rapidity with which his wife's caprices altered and her preferences evaporated. He had seen so many please her, for an hour, to weary her immeasurably whenever they afterwards presumed to recall to her the fact of their existence.
'Well, you shall do as you please in this house,' he said to her. 'Remain here, and I will tell them to bring your dinner to you.'
'Indeed—indeed I want nothing,' she protested; 'I could not eat.'
She was about to say to him much more than that; to say that the sun had set, the night had come, the hours were passing fast—but she could not find courage. After all, what was she?—a stupid, ignorant little sea-born savage in the eyes of all these people.
She remained where she was, silent, and miserable, yet watching with curious eyes the pageant so new to her of the lighted salons, the lovely ladies, the pretty procession that passed out of the drawing-rooms as they went to dinner. Could these be human beings who lived always like this? She wondered—she envied—and yet she longed for her own free life on the waves, under the olives, climbing with the goats, diving with the gannets, rocking in the orange-boughs with the thrush and the greenfinch. It was beautiful here, magical, marvellous, incredible; yet she wanted fresh air, she wanted free movement; like a mountain-born rose shut up in a hothouse, she felt suffocated in this sultry and perfumed air.
CHAPTER XII.
As Othmar had promised, a servant brought to her, served on silver and Japanese porcelain with damask, which she took to be satin, a repast of which the dishes succeeded each other in bewildering rapidity, and looked so ethereal and pretty that it seemed to her quite grievous to break them up and eat them. The fairies themselves might have feasted off these tempting viands, and her appetite, which was the robust one of youth, proved to her that it is possible to dine at noon and yet be ready to dine again at eight. She had satisfied her hunger, however, long before the full complement of the services had been brought to her, and the fruit and bonbons best pleased her childish tastes. She gained courage to leave her corner and come from beyond the palms and move timidly about the rooms, looking now at this picture, now at that statue, and ever confronted by her own likeness in the mirrors, and beholding it with impatience. She touched the flowers embroidered on the plush of the chairs, astonished that the blossoms were not real. She looked with wonder at the grand piano, marvelling that out of its painted panels and ivory keyboard such melodies as she had heard could have been drawn. She gazed at the figures on the Gobelin tapestries in entranced delight, and, with the unerring selection of a nature instinctively artistic, paused enraptured before the marble copy by Clésinger of the Vatican Hermes.
She who had never seen anything but Bonaventure and the fisher-people's cabins on the mainland, and the little dusky shops where the fruit was sold, was dazzled by the beauty of St. Pharamond within and without. Everything around her was strange and wonderful; the very flowers were unfamiliar; gorgeous blossoms to which she could give no names.