"Yes, I remember."
"But one that loves your soul does not leave you, but continues constant after the flower of your beauty has faded, and all your admirers have retired."
I nodded, as much nonplussed as if she had been Socrates.
"That is a love worth having, is it not, which will continue, though the cheek be white and furrowed, and the eye dim?"
I nodded again, staring at her.
"And what is that worth," said she, stamping her foot, "which does not recognize a soul at all? If he ever encouraged me to improve,—if he ever read to me, or talked to me as he does to you, I might make something of myself! I am in earnest. I do want to be something,—to think, to learn, if I only knew how!"
Childish tears ran down her face as she spoke. Presently she went into her room and brought me a set of malachite, in exquisite cameo-cuttings. I took up a microscope, and began admiring and examining them, recognizing the subjects, which were taken from Raphael's History of Psyche.
"Beautiful! where did they come from?"
"William bought them of Lloyd, who had them long ago of the Emperor's jeweller. They had been ordered for Marie Louise."
"And why didn't she have them, pray?"