‘Oh! that I were a glove upon that hand!’
and so forth. Prompt me, Clement: I know Italian well, but very little English.”
These words were addressed to her by her cousin Felix Dornthal, who was in the garden with Clement, and had stopped beneath her balcony. The latter had his head cast down, but Felix, as usual, gazed at her with the admiration he had displayed from the very, first day—which was the only disagreeable and annoying thing she had known beneath her uncle’s roof. But then, she seldom saw Felix. The company that assembled two or three times a month in the professor’s drawing-room was not much to the taste of his nephew, and if he had come oftener since Fleurange’s arrival, he seldom had an opportunity of conversing with her, for she avoided him with a care in proportion to the increasing aversion she felt for him. Felix had, nevertheless, all the advantage a fine figure and the manners of the world confer, with sufficient knowledge on various subjects to appear well-informed, and coolness and assurance enough to direct a conversation so as to shine in it. It might, therefore, seem surprising that he inspired such a degree of antipathy, especially when, for the first time in his life, he seriously endeavored to produce the contrary impression.
Sympathy and antipathy are in part instinctive and uncontrollable, and sometimes they are wholly inexplicable. They are both experienced
without always knowing the cause, and sometimes, later, they are transformed and modified to such a degree as to efface the first impulse they inspired. Perhaps it would not be impossible to prove that upright souls are less rarely deceived in this respect than others. However it may be, and independent of this instinctive repulsion, the antipathy Fleurange felt was owing, among other good reasons, to the constant irony which was so strong an ingredient in Felix’s nature, as to wither every feeling of kindly impulse or flow of reason around him. Goodness found no attraction in his nature, and those who conversed with him almost ceased to believe in it themselves. He had not discernment enough to see that Fleurange was one of those persons who may be wounded by a compliment as well as by an insult, and more than one flash of her large eyes was necessary to make him comprehend it. And when he suddenly stopped, his silence excited anxiety to know the cause of his sudden preoccupation and what sombre cloud enwrapped him. Some insinuated with a nod of the head that M. Heinrich Dornthal’s only son should yield with more reserve to his love for play, and his father had repeatedly remonstrated with him on this point. But as, apart from his whims and irregularities, Felix had a remarkable capacity for commercial affairs, the banker was blindly indulgent to him, and often remarked that being “perfectly satisfied, and sure of his son in matters of serious import (meaning thereby his aptitude for business), he did not trouble himself much about the rest, and only patiently awaited the epoch when the marriage of his choice would lead him back to a more regular life.”
It should be added that, for several months, the health of the head
of the Dornthal family had, without his acknowledging it, been seriously declining. The greater part of the business formerly done by himself was now transacted by his son, and his confidence, or his weakness, in this respect, increased to a degree unsuspected by any but him who was its object. The banker occasionally felt, with a return of his former cautiousness, some anxiety on this point, but Felix knew how to reassure him by a few words, and he now felt only one desire, which grew stronger and stronger—to see his son married, and settled down to a life of greater conformity with the importance of the affairs he could transact so skilfully, and to which he had only to give his undivided attention. He could have wished him to choose one of his two cousins, but Felix did not find them to his taste, and often declared that it would not be within the walls of the Old Mansion he should find her to whom he would sacrifice his independence. But after Fleurange entered them he suddenly changed his tone, and his ill-concealed admiration now directed toward her all the banker’s matrimonial hopes respecting his son.
We left Felix beneath his cousin’s balcony, his riding-whip in hand: “Away with poetry, which is not in my line,” he soon said, “and deign to listen, fair cousin, to the petition I am about to address you in humble prose.”
Fleurange, still leaning on the balcony, replied: “I am listening.”
“See what a lovely spring day! My horse stands yonder: will you not have yours saddled, and allow me to ride in your company?”