“Madam,” said Mr. Nivernois, “I just met an eccentric friend of mine going out of the door, who I imagine must have made a most unauthorized entry into your house, in a fit of absence, and behaved in a very ridiculous manner, when in it. In fact, he requested me to offer on his behalf the fullest apology for his maniacal conduct, and to beg from your courtesy an act of oblivion. He is a harmless madman,—one of that numerous class who are suffered by their friends to go abroad without strait-jackets.”
“Any friend of yours,” said Mrs. Stanhope, “is extremely welcome to come into my house at all times; and even had the eccentricities of this gentleman been at all objectionable, we should have been more than compensated by the admirable display which he made upon the piano. As a pupil of Calebrenner’s, I consider myself something of a judge; and I never heard so rich a strain of harmony.”
“Why, as for that, I do not know that he differs materially from any one else. Everybody carries a Marengo, a Childe Harold, and a Sonnambula in his blood; the only difficulty is to get them out.”
“Pray, Mr. Nivernois,” said Mrs. Althorpe, with a certain look of a high bred woman, not unmixed with something of comic, “What is it you have under your arm.”
“Portable bliss,—the potentiality of a happiness beyond the dreams of one who is not a lover,—ecstasy in a roll,—perfect delight on canvass;” and he opened the picture and held it up.
Mrs. Althorpe made a sign to Mrs. Stanhope to be silent.
“Do you know whose portrait it is?” said Mrs. Althorpe.
“I cannot for my life discover.”
“Do you then so much wish to find the original?”
“A question, truly! I do.”