A Prince of Bohemia | Page 9

was fashionably dressed. I can paint his
portrait for you in a few words. He was the living image of Louis XIII.,
with the same white forehead and gracious outline of the temples, the
same olive skin (that Italian olive tint which turns white where the light
falls on it), the brown hair worn rather long, the black 'royale,' the grave
and melancholy expression, for La Palferine's character and exterior
were amazingly at variance.
"At the sound of the name, and the sight of its owner, something like a
quiver thrilled through Claudine. La Palferine saw the vibration, and
shot a glance at her out of the dark depths of almond-shaped eyes with
purpled lids, and those faint lines about them which tell of pleasures as
costly as painful fatigue. With those eyes upon her, she said--'Your
address?'
" 'What want of address!'
" 'Oh, pshaw!' she said, smiling. 'A bird on the bough?'

" 'Good-bye, madame, you are such a woman as I seek, but my fortune
is far from equaling my desire----'
"He bowed, and there and then left her. Two days later, by one of the
strange chances that can only happen in Paris, he had betaken himself
to a money-lending wardrobe dealer to sell such of his clothing as he
could spare. He was just receiving the price with an uneasy air, after
long chaffering, when the stranger lady passed and recognized him.
" 'Once for all,' cried he to the bewildered wardrobe dealer, 'I tell you I
am not going to take your trumpet!'
"He pointed to a huge, much-dinted musical instrument, hanging up
outside against a background of uniforms, civil and military. Then,
proudly and impetuously, he followed the lady.
"From that great day of the trumpet these two understood one another
to admiration. Charles Edward's ideas on the subject of love are as
sound as possible. According to him, a man cannot love twice, there is
but one love in his lifetime, but that love is a deep and shoreless sea. It
may break in upon him at any time, as the grace of God found St. Paul;
and a man may live sixty years and never know love. Perhaps, to quote
Heine's superb phrase, it is 'the secret malady of the heart' --a sense of
the Infinite that there is within us, together with the revelation of the
ideal Beauty in its visible form. This love, in short, comprehends both
the creature and creation. But so long as there is no question of this
great poetical conception, the loves that cannot last can only be taken
lightly, as if they were in a manner snatches of song compared with
Love the epic.
"To Charles Edward the adventure brought neither the thunderbolt
signal of love's coming, nor yet that gradual revelation of an inward
fairness which draws two natures by degrees more and more strongly
each to each. For there are but two ways of love--love at first sight,
doubtless akin to the Highland 'second-sight,' and that slow fusion of
two natures which realizes Plato's 'man-woman.' But if Charles Edward
did not love, he was loved to distraction. Claudine found love made
complete, body and soul; in her, in short, La Palferine awakened the
one passion of her life; while for him Claudine was only a most
charming mistress. The Devil himself, a most potent magician certainly,
with all hell at his back, could never have changed the natures of these
two unequal fires. I dare affirm that Claudine not unfrequently bored

Charles Edward.
" 'Stale fish and the woman you do not love are only fit to fling out of
the window after three days,' he used to say.
"In Bohemia there is little secrecy observed over these affairs. La
Palferine used to talk a good deal of Claudine; but, at the same time,
none of us saw her, nor so much as knew her name. For us Claudine
was almost a mythical personage. All of us acted in the same way,
reconciling the requirements of our common life with the rules of good
taste. Claudine, Hortense, the Baroness, the Bourgeoise, the Empress,
the Spaniard, the Lioness,--these were cryptic titles which permitted us
to pour out our joys, our cares, vexations, and hopes, and to
communicate our discoveries. Further, none of us went. It has been
shown, in Bohemia, that chance discovered the identity of the fair
unknown; and at once, as by tacit convention, not one of us spoke of
her again. This fact may show how far youth possesses a sense of true
delicacy. How admirably certain natures of a finer clay know the limit
line where jest must end, and all that host of things French covered by
the slang word /blague/, a word which will shortly be cast out of