THE TWO SISTERS.
BY MADAME JULIE DELAFAYE-BRÉHIER.
[Translated from the French.]
... On a peu de temps à l'être (belle,)
Et de temps à ne l'être plus!
Madame Deshoulières.
In a parlor furnished with much taste, and from the half-opened windows of which were seen the winding walks, and “alleys green,” of a park, filled with magnificent and shady trees, two young ladies were employing themselves in those delicate works, which have become the portion of our sex, and which, whilst they appear to occupy the fingers only, serve also to divert the mind in a pleasant manner, and even to give a greater facility to the current of thought. One of the females, either by chance or design, had placed herself opposite a mirror, where she could not lift her eyes from her work, without seeing herself reflected therein, adorned in all the brightness of a beauty of seventeen years, who might have served as a model to the sculptor, as a study to the painter. A rich profusion of black hair, in the tasteful adjustment of which, Art had so nicely seconded the gift of Nature, that it was scarcely possible to say to which its elegance was owing, set off the snowy whiteness of the neck and face; and I would add, (if I may once more be permitted to avail myself of the superannuated comparison,) that the freshest rose could alone compare its beauty with the carnation of her cheek and lip; to these charms were added, a form of the most graceful proportions; and, all that the youthful may borrow, with discernment, from the art of the toilette, had been employed to increase, still farther, beauty already so attractive.
Half concealed beneath the draperies of the window, near which she had placed herself to obtain a more favorable light, the other female pursued her occupation with undistracted attention; a certain gravity appeared in her dress, in her countenance, and in her physiognomy altogether. Her eyes were beautiful, but calmness was their chief expression; her smile was obliging, but momentary; the brilliant hues of youth, now evidently fading on her cheeks, less rounded than once they were, appeared but as the lightest shadings of a picture; sometimes, indeed, deepened by sudden and as transient emotion, like the colors which meteors throw on the clouds of the heavens in the evening storms of summer. The gauzes, the rubies, the jewels, with which the young adorn themselves, were not by her employed merely as ornaments; she availed herself of them, to conceal with taste, the outrages of years; for the weight of more than thirty years was already upon her; and the ingenious head dress with which she had surmounted her hair, served to hide, at the same time, some silvery tell-tales, which had dared thus prematurely, to mingle with her long tresses of blond.
“There's broken again! look at that detestable silk!” said the younger female, throwing her work on to a sofa; “I will not do another stitch to day.”
She rose, and approaching the mirror before her, amused herself by putting up afresh the curls of her hair.
“You want patience, Leopoldine,” answered her sister, looking on her affectionately, “and without that will accomplish nothing. You will require patience as well to conduct you through the world, as to enable you to finish a purse.”
“I know the rest, my sister,” replied the younger, smiling. “Do you forget that a certain person has charged himself with the duty of teaching me the lesson? Ten purses, like that which I am embroidering, would not put me out of patience so much as this silence of M. de Berville. Can you conceive what detains him thus?” added she, seating herself near her sister, “for, in fact, he loves me, that is certain, and nothing remains but for him to avow the fact to my aunt Dorothée.”
“This looks very like presumption,” my dear Leopoldine, pursued the elder sister, “and that is not good; what can it signify to you what he thinks! I hope your happiness does not depend on him.”