Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 | Page 7

this hair. That is Lucrezia Borgian,
spun gold, and ought to take the world in its toils. I always wear these
thick, riotous curls round my temples and face; but the great braids
behind--oh, I'll uncoil them before my toilet is over.
Probably you felt all this before, but didn't know the secret of it. Now,
the traits being brought out, you perceive nothing wanting; the thing is
perfect, and you've a reason for it. Of course, with such an organization,
I'm not nervous. Nervous! I should as soon fancy a dish of cream
nervous. I am too rich for anything of the kind, permeated utterly with
a rare golden calm. Girls always suggest little similitudes to me: there's
that brunette beauty,--don't you taste mulled wine when you see her?
and thinking of yourself, did you ever feel green tea? and find me in a
crust of wild honey, the expressed essence of woods and flowers, with
its sweet satiety?--no, that's too cloying. I'm a deal more like
Mendelssohn's music,--what I know of it, for I can't distinguish
tunes,--you wouldn't suspect it,--but full harmonics delight me as they
do a wild beast; and so I'm like a certain adagio in B flat, that Papa
likes.
There now! you're perfectly shocked to hear me go on so about myself;
but you oughtn't to be. It isn't lawful for any one else, because praise is
intrusion; but if the rose please to open her heart to the moth, what then?
You know, too, I didn't make myself; it's no virtue to be so fair. Louise
couldn't speak so of herself: first place, because it wouldn't be true;
next place, she couldn't, if it were; and lastly, she made her beauty by
growing a soul in her eyes, I suppose,--what you call good. I'm not
good, of course; I wouldn't give a fig to be good. So it's not vanity. It's
on a far grander scale; a splendid selfishness,--authorized, too; and
papa and mamma brought me up to worship beauty,--and there's the
fifth commandment, you know.
Dear me! you think I'm never coming to the point. Well, here's this
rosary;--hand me the perfume-case first, please. Don't you love heavy
fragrances, faint with sweetness, ravishing juices of odor, heliotropes,

violets, water-lilies,--powerful attars and extracts, that snatch your soul
off your lips? Couldn't you live on rich scents, if they tried to starve
you? I could, or die on them: I don't know which would be best. There!
there's the amber rosary! You needn't speak; look at it!
Bah! is that all you've got to say? Why, observe the thing; turn it over;
hold it up to the window; count the beads,--long, oval, like some
seaweed bulbs, each an amulet. See the tint; it's very old; like clots of
sunshine,--aren't they? Now bring it near; see the carving, here
corrugated, there faceted, now sculptured into hideous, tiny, heathen
gods. You didn't notice that before! How difficult it must have been,
when amber is so friable! Here's one with a chessboard on his back, and
all his kings and queens and pawns slung round him. Here's another
with a torch, a flaming torch, its fire pouring out inverted. They are
grotesque enough;--but this, this is matchless: such a miniature woman,
one hand grasping the round rock behind, while she looks down into
some gulf, perhaps, beneath, and will let herself fall. Oh, you should
see her with a magnifying-glass! You want to think of calm, satisfying
death, a mere exhalation, a voluntary slipping into another element?
There it is for you. They are all gods and goddesses. They are all here
but one; I've lost one, the knot of all, the love of the thing. Well! wasn't
it queer for a Catholic girl to have at prayer? Don't you wonder where
she got it? Ah! but don't you wonder where I got it? I'll tell you.
Papa came in, one day, and with great mystery commenced unrolling,
and unrolling, and throwing tissue papers on the floor, and scraps of
colored wool; and Lu and I ran to him,--Lu stooping on her knees to
look up, I bending over his hands to look down. It was so mysterious! I
began to suspect it was diamonds for me, but knew I never could wear
them, and was dreadfully afraid that I was going to be tempted, when
slowly, bead by bead, came out this amber necklace. Lu fairly
screamed; as for me, I just drew breath after breath, without a word. Of
course they were for me;--I reached my hands for them.
"Oh, wait!" said papa. "Yone or Lu?"
"Now how absurd, papa!" I exclaimed. "Such things for Lu!"
"Why not?" asked Lu,--rather faintly now, for she knew I always
carried my point.
"The idea of you in amber,