Which Jews might kiss and infidels adore."
I never knew the end of the romance in which I bore a small part. I never even knew of what whisperings camellias are capable. Had they been violets—or roses, or lilies of the valley—but big white camellias! I only know she recovered and that Dr. McNalty thanked me warmly for my small service. That is all.
CHAPTER XIII
Mr. Fillmore was a fine type of the kind of man Americans love to raise to the highest office in their gift. He had not been a mill boy, nor lived in a log-cabin, nor split rails (which was to his discredit), but he had been an apprentice to a wool-carder in Livingston County, New York. Afterward he had worked in a lawyer's office all day and studied at night. He had had no patron. He was essentially a self-made man. When, by the death of President Taylor, he became President of the United States, he fitted into the place as if he had made himself expressly for it.
According to Ampère, who observed us so narrowly in 1852, "M. Fillmore avait un cachet de simplicité digne et bienveillante, qui me semble faire de lui le type de ce que doit être un président Américain."
But nobody said any of those fine things about dear Mrs. Fillmore. The cachet de simplicité she certainly possessed, but she wore it with a difference. In a President it was admirable, in a beautiful woman it would have been adorable. It stamped plain, unhandsome, ungraceful Mrs. Fillmore as ordinary, commonplace. She was the soul of kindness. "She has no manner," said a woman of fashion. "She is absolutely simple. It is not good form to be so motherly to her guests. Why, what do you think she said to me at the last levee? 'You look pale and ill, my dear! Pray find a seat.' Think of that! Haven't I a right to look pale and ill, I wonder!"
"She meant to be kind," I ventured. "Should she have permitted you to faint on the floor?"
"Kind, indeed! It was her duty, if she thought me 'gone off in my looks,' to tell me how well I was looking! I should have been all right after that. As it was, I came straight home and went to bed."
I fairly revelled in the music I could now hear. From a famous musician, Mr. Palmer, I took lessons again. He was a notable character—a splendid musician, and a welcome guest at Mr. Corcoran's and other houses, where he amused the company with tricks of legerdemain. He afterward became the celebrated "Heller," the prince of legerdemain and clairvoyance. The elder Booth, Hackett, and Anna Cora Mowatt introduced me to the fascinations of the stage. Nothing to my mind had ever been, could ever be, finer than their Hamlet, Falstaff, and Parthenia. The Armstrongs gave me carte blanche to their box at the theatre, and I saw everything. I wonder if any one at the present day remembers the Ravel brothers and their matchless pantomimes! Mrs. Baird made a party, taking little Lucy to see "Jocko." Not a word was spoken in the play; not an eye was dry in the house.
One evening an agreeable Frenchman whom we knew joined us in our box, and seeking an opportunity, whispered to me, "Madame, will you grant me a favor? There—in the parquette, second from the front, voyez-vous? A lady en chapeau bleu?"