“This Mr. Nivernois is certainly a man of genius, but he is mad, stark mad—like Mazeppa’s steed—
Wild as the wild deer, and untaught,
With spur and bridle undefiled.
But he has blood and fortune. I sincerely wish you would take him in hand and tame him: he is worthy of your attention, and if properly brought under, would make a great addition to good society.”
The next day Nivernois was walking in the street and had his attention attracted by a sign-board, which gave notice of a gallery of pictures. Having nothing better to do, he went into it. The collection was a good one, and he spent some time in looking at different productions of the old masters. The feeling which chiefly occupied his mind was regret that genius so exalted as many of these artists possessed should have left no monument more durable than a perishing canvass, which would one day cause all that marvellous skill to be nothing but a name. His eye was presently drawn to a portrait of a young lady of singular beauty. The picture was a fresh one, and he thought that he had seen the features before, but where or when, he could not remember. The side of the figure was presented, with the face turned round over the shoulder towards the spectator. Her dress was blue; a laced veil was on her head, and in her hand a bouquet of flowers, around which was a band on which was the word “Love.”
“Beautiful creature!” said he aloud, as he gazed upon the portrait, “and whom do you love?”
“Thee,” faintly said a soft voice above him. He started and looked up. There was a gallery above, and upon it a door covered by a curtain. He saw the curtain move as if some one retreated rapidly through it, and he thought that he had caught a glimpse of a blue dress. He ran rapidly up to the gallery and through the curtained door, in hopes of discovering the speaker, perhaps the original of the portrait. He searched every apartment of the building, but in vain: no one was to be found. He returned to the picture and sat down before it.
“Love!” said he, “what is that? I never thought of it before.” The portrait hung near to an open door, through which the soft air of spring was bearing the enchanting odour of a bed of violets which grew in the garden: above was the rich softness of the blue sky. As he sat amid influences so soothing, and gazed upon the overpowering beauty of those splendid features, on which a hazy sunlight coming through a window in the roof, threw a more peculiar lustre there arose within the stern, constrained, and wholly intellectual being of this earnest, scheming man, the slow but strong movement of a passion which he never before had known. The rigid stress of mind, so long kept up—the high-wound force of feeling, so necessary, yet so painful—softened and melted away in the delicious mildness of sentiment that flowed in upon his nature. It wrestled, did that sentiment, with the cold hardness of that logical frame of being, as the still growing wind with the outer barriers of a thick forest, and gradually burst in and wandered where it pleased. The disdainful solitude of soul in which he had fortified himself against a hostile world, was changing into a spirit which fraternized with all the universe. It was the birth of sympathy within a bosom before entirely and fiercely personal.
“Where has it kept so long?—this soft, this delicate emotion?” said he. As the blue zephyr, born amidst the depths of the sky, raises and opens out the dried, mast-bound sail of some long-locked bark, and floats away the vessel into seas of unknown loveliness, so did this delicious sentiment expand and quicken that spirituality which had before lain senseless and collapsed. It diffused a joy and beauty like that of the golden sunshine gleaming into a clouded forest, flowing and flashing with an ever brightening splendor, rolling a yellow flowerage over the mind, vesting the trees in airy robes of silver, and spreading through the teeming woods a mysterious troop of shadows, the dusky-haired daughters of light. Like the refreshing rain upon the fevered earth, there fell upon his spirit a fragrant shower of soft hopes and immortal dreams. The rough and hardened bough was become a branch of leaves and fruits. He who had dwelt ever in the outwardness of thought, first entered the portals of the inner world of feeling: he who had been ever passionate only to DO, recognized a state in which to BE was bliss, to move was ecstacy.
Such is the passionate constitution of genius that its mental nature, “like a cloud, moves all together, if it move at all;” the moral being of men of that stamp, intense and entire, never conceives an idea of character or life, but it straightway throws forth all its energy to realize that idea in its imaginary completeness: impelled towards evil, they dash downwards with a frenzied force and reach a depth of degradation at which colder sinners are astounded: when but one aspiration dawns in their bosom, they spring up from the shores of that gulph, and soaring above the clouds, wave in the sparkling sun their fresh-plumed wings with not one feather moulted: they can mould all their thinkings in the form and pressure of pure logic; and again their feelings will be expanding in all the chastened feelings of luxurious sentiments. These changes make genius a puzzle to its companions, but delicious to itself.