I stopped and looked, and was amused. The music was rude, but wild, and carried with it an abandon of feeling. I avow to you, it stole upon me, penetrating soul and body. How I wished I could, on the spot, throw off the coil which surrounded me and wander away with these children of the road!
While I stood preoccupied and abstracted, I was roused by a low voice pronouncing something,—I did not hear what,—and, coming to myself, I saw standing before me, with her tambourine outstretched, a young girl, fourteen or fifteen years old. She spoke again,—"S'il vous plait, Monsieur." Large, lustrous, beaming eyes were turned on me,—not boldly, not with assurance, neither altogether bashfully,—but honestly regarding me full in the face, questioning if, after being so attentive a spectator, I were willing to bestow something. It was strange I had not noticed this girl before. I had hardly perceived there were three in the company. Now that I did observe her, I kept looking so earnestly that I forgot to respond to her request. She was faultless in form and physical development,—absolutely and unequivocally faultless. Her face, though browned by constant exposure, was classically beautiful; the foot and hand very small and delicate. Heavens! how every fibre in my frame thrilled with an ecstatic emotion, as, for the first time in my life, I was brought under the influence of female charms! My head swam, my eyes grew dim,—I staggered. I think I should have fallen, had not the young girl herself seized my arm and supported me. This brought me to myself. I bestowed nothing on the strollers, but asked if they were coming to the village. They answered in the affirmative; and telling them to come and play at the inn where I was lodging, I hastily quitted the scene.
Do not think I am in the least exaggerating in this narrative. God knows, what I have to recount is sufficiently extraordinary. I hastened homeward, my soul in a tumult. On a sudden, the labor of a lifetime was destroyed, the opinions and convictions of a lifetime stultified and set at nought. And how?—by what? By a strolling, vagrant Savoyard. Rather by an exquisite specimen of God's handiwork in flesh and blood! And if God's handiwork, why might I not be roused and touched and thrilled and entranced? Something within boldly, in fact audaciously, put that question to me.
I slept none that night. I was haunted by that form and face. I essayed to be calm, and to compose myself to slumber. Impossible! For the moment was swept away my past, with its dreary, lifeless forms, its ghostly ceremonies, its masked shapes, its soulless, rayless, emotionless existence. To awake and find life has been one grand error,—to awake and know that youth and early manhood are gone, and that you have been cheated of your honest and legitimate enjoyments,—to feel that Pleasure might have wooed you gracefully when young, and when it would become you to sacrifice at her shrine,—gods and fiends! I gnashed my teeth in impotent rage,—I blasphemed,—I was mad!
The morning brought to me composure. While I was dressing, I heard the music of my Savoyards under the window. I did not trust myself to look out; but, after breakfasting, I went into the street to search for them.
I was not long unsuccessful, and was immediately recognized with a profusion of nods and grimaces by the man and a coarse smile by the woman, who prepared to set Mademoiselle Catherina instantly at work. The young girl took scarcely any notice of me. I bestowed some money on the couple, and bade them go to the nearest wine-shop and procure whatever they desired. They started off, quite willing, I thought, to leave me alone with the girl. I lost no time. Going close to her, I said,—
"You are not the child of these people?"
"Alas, no, Monsieur!—I have neither father nor mother."
"And no relations?"
"No relations, Monsieur."