[CHAPTER VI.]
EMANCIPATION OF THE FLESH.
On the evening of this eventful day, Professor Herbert, before going to the Möllners', entered a splendid boudoir in a retired villa on the outskirts of the city. The entire room formed a tent of crimson damask shot with gold and gathered in huge folds to a rosette in the centre of the ceiling. Around the walls were ranged low Turkish divans of the same material. The floor was covered with crimson-plush rugs as thick and soft as mossy turf. Turkish pipes and costly weapons of all kinds,--shields, swords, pistols, and daggers,--adorned the walls. In the background of the apartment slender columns supported a canopy above a lounge, before which was spread a lion's skin, with the head carefully preserved. Upon the floor beside it stood an elegant apparatus for smoking opium. A riding-whip, the handle set with diamonds, lay upon a table of bronze and malachite. A Chinese salver, heaped with cigars, was upon a low stand beside the lounge. Upon a polished marble pedestal in the centre of the room stood a bronze of the Farnese bull, and to the right and left of the lounge were placed bronzes of the horse-tamers of the Monte Cavallo at Rome. The rich hangings of the walls were draped over candelabra holding lamps of ground glass.
The smoke of a cigar was circling in blue rings around the room, that was far more fit for a Turkish pasha than for a lady. And yet it was the abode of a lady, and it was the smoke from her cigar that encircled Herbert upon his entrance.
At first he only saw, resting on the lion's skin, two beautiful little feet in Russian slippers embroidered with pearls. The drapery of the canopy above the lounge concealed the rest of the figure. He advanced a few steps, and there, stretched comfortably upon the swelling cushions, reclined a woman beside whom all other works of nature were but journey-work,--such a woman as appears in the world now and then to cast utterly into the shade all that men have hitherto deemed beautiful. Herbert stood dazzled and blinded by the apparition before him. He was dressed in his new coat, and had an elegant cane in his hand, that was covered by a glove, upon which his wife had that morning employed her skill. But what was he, in all his elegance, by the side of this woman! He stood there dumb "in the consciousness of his nothingness." What could he be to her, or what could he give her? She was the woman of her race! She must mate with the man of her race, as the last giantess in the Nibelungen Lied could love only the last giant. Was he in his fine new coat this man of men,--the Siegfried to conquer this Brunhilda? Ah, he was but too conscious that he was nothing but a poor weakling, whose only strength lay in his passionate admiration of her!
"Aha, here comes our little Philister," said the fair Brunhilda in broken German with a yawn, holding out her soft hand to him and drawing him down upon the lounge beside her like a child. Herbert sank into the luxurious cushions, that almost met, like waves, above him. The position did not at all suit his stiff, erect bearing, which was entirely wanting in the graceful suppleness of the born aristocrat who lolls with ease upon silken cushions. Such a seat would become a man in loose flowing costume, with an opium-pipe between his lips, and ready when wearied to fall asleep with his head pillowed upon the lady's lap. Poor Herbert was not one of these favourites of Fortune. He sat there stiff and wooden as a broken-jointed doll,--his pointed knees emerging from his downy nest, and his tight-fitting clothes stretched almost to their destruction by his unusual posture. He timidly placed his hat upon the stand beside him, and envied it its loftier position.
"How now, my learned gentleman?" the lady began again. "What! dumb? What is the matter now?--what ails you?--domestic misery? Pardon! I mean conjugal bliss."
"That is my constant trouble, dearest countess," Herbert replied, "although its dust never cleaves to my wings when I am with you. It is not that that worries me to-day. My Penthesilea----"
The countess laughed loudly, and puffed out a cloud of smoke to the ceiling. "Here it comes! It is either his wife or his Penthesilea that teases him! I hope both may rest in eternal peace before long, for an unhappy husband and a tragedy are as much out of place in this boudoir as the fragrance of eau de Cologne or chamomile-tea--those horrid accompaniments of a sick-room!"
"And yet it was you, fairest countess, that inspired me to embalm in classic verse that bold Amazon of antiquity."