Gaston de Latour | Page 7

for some great distinguishing passion, the peculiar genius of his age seeming already awake spontaneously within him. Here, at least, had been one of those grand passions, such as were needed to give life its true meaning and effect. Conscious of that rudeness in his home, and feeding a strong natural instinct for outward beauty hitherto on what was barely sufficient, he found for himself in this perfumed place the centre of a fanciful world, reaching out to who could tell what refined passages of existence in that great world beyond, of which the echoes seemed to light here amid the stillness. On his first visit one pensive afternoon, fitting the lately attained key in the lock, he seemed to have drawn upon himself, yet hardly to have disturbed, the meditations of its former occupant. A century of unhindered summers had taken the heat from its colours--the couches, the curtains half shading the windows, which the rain in the south- west wind just then touched so softly. That great passion of old had been also a dainty love, leaving [22] its impress everywhere in this magic apartment, on the musical instruments, the books lying where they might have fallen from the hands of the listless reader so long since, the fragrance which the lad's movement stirred around him. And there, on one of the windows, were the verses of King Charles, who had slept here, as in the most courtly resting-place of the house. On certain nights Gaston himself was not afraid to steal from his own bed to lie in it, though still too healthy a sleeper to be visited by the appropriate dreams he so greatly longed for.
A nature, instinctively religious, which would readily discover and give their full value to all such facts of experience as might be conformable thereto! But what would be the relation of this religious sensibility to sensibilities of another kind, now awaking in the young Gaston, as he mused in this dreamy place, surrounded by the books, the furniture, almost the very presence of the past, which had already found tongues to speak of a still living humanity-- somewhere, somewhere, in the world!--waiting for him in the distance, or perchance already on its way, to explain, by its own plenary beauty and power, why wine and roses and the languorous summer afternoons were so delightful. So far indeed, the imaginative heat, that might one day enter into dangerous rivalry with simple old- fashioned faith, was blent harmoniously with it. They [23] were hardly distinguishable elements of an amiable character, susceptible generally to the poetic side of things--two neighbourly apprehensions of a single ideal.
The great passions, the fervid sentiments, of which Gaston dreamed as the true realisation of life, have not always softened men's natures: they have been compatible with many cruelties, as in the lost spirits of that very age. They may overflow, on the other hand, in more equable natures, through the concurrence of happier circumstance, into that universal sympathy which lends a kind of amorous power to the homeliest charities. So it seemed likely to be with Gaston de Latour. Sorrow came along with beauty, a rival of its intricate omnipresence in life. In the sudden tremor of an aged voice, the handling of a forgotten toy, a childish drawing, in the tacit observance of a day, he became aware suddenly of the great stream of human tears falling always through the shadows of the world. For once the darling of old age actually more than responded in full to its tenderness. In the isolation of his life there had been little demand for sympathy on the part of those anywhere near his own age. So much the larger was the fund of superfluous affection which went forth, with a delicacy not less than their own, to meet the sympathies of the aged people who cherished him. In him, their old, almost forgotten sorrows bled anew.
[24] Variety of affection, in a household in which many relations had lived together, had brought variety of sorrow. But they were well- nigh healed now--those once so poignant griefs--the scars remaining only as deeper lines of natural expression. It was visible, to their surprise, that he penetrated the motive of the mass said so solemnly, in violet, on the Innocents' Day, and understood why they wept at the triumphant antiphons:--"My soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowler!"--thinking intently of the little tombs which had recorded carefully almost the minutes of children's lives, Elizabeth de Latour, Corn��lius de Latour, aged so many years, days, hours. Yes! the cold pavement under one's feet had once been molten lava. Surely the resources of sorrow were large in things! The fact must be duly marked and provided for, with due estimate of