The Cross of Berny | Page 7

attention.
My face must have reflected the disdainful quietude of my soul.
By contemplative communion with the mute, motionless colossal faces of Egypt's and Persia's monuments, I felt that unwittingly my countenance typified the cold imperturbable tranquillity of their granite brows.
That evening La Favorita was played at the opera. Charming work! full of grace, passion, love. Reaching the end of Le Pelletier street, my walk was blocked by a line of carriages coming down Provence street; not having the patience to wait the passage of this string of vehicles, nor being very dainty in my distinction between pavement and street, I followed in the wake of the carriages, and as they did not conceal the fa?ade of the opera at the end of the court, I saw it, and said "I will go in."
I took a box below, because my family-box had changed hands, hangings and keys at least five times in ten years, and seated myself in the background to avoid recognition, and leave undisturbed friends who would feel in duty bound to pay fashionable court to a traveller due ten years. I was not familiar with La Favorita, and my ear took in the new music slowly. Great scores require of the indolent auditor a long novitiate.
While I listened indolently to the orchestra and the singers, I examined the boxes with considerable interest, to discover what little revolutions a decade could bring about in the aristocratic personnel of the opera. A confused noise of words and some distinct sentences reached my ear from the neighboring boxes when the orchestra was silent. I listened involuntarily; the occupants were not talking secrets, their conversation was in the domain of idle chat, that divides with the libretto the attention of the habitues of the opera.
They said, "I could distinguish her in a thousand, I mistrust my sight a little, but my glass is infallible; it is certainly Mlle. de Bressuire--a superb figure, but she spoils her beauty by affectation."
"Your glass deceives you, my dear sir, we know Mlle. de Bressuire."
"Madame is right; it is not Mlle. That young lady at whom everybody is gazing, and who to-night is the favorite--excuse the pun--of the opera, is a Spaniard; I saw her at the Bois de Boulogne in M. Martinez de la Hosa's carriage. They told me her name, but I have forgotten. I never could remember names."
"Ladies," said a young man, who noisily entered the box, "we are at last enlightened. I have just questioned the box-keeper--she is a maid of honor to the Queen of Belgium."
"And her name?" demanded five voices.
"She has a Belgian name, unpronounceable by the box-keeper; something like Wallen, or Meulen."
"We are very much wiser."
From the general commotion it was easy to perceive that the same subject was being discussed by the whole house, and doubtless in the same terms; for people do not vary their formulas much on such occasions.
A strain of music recalled to the stage every eye that during the intermission had been fastened upon one woman. I confess that I felt some interest in the episode, but, owing to my habitual reserve, barely discovered by random and careless glances the young girl thus handed over to the curious glances of the fashionable world. She was in a box of the first tier, and the native grace of her attitude first riveted my attention. The cynosure of all eyes, she bore her triumph with the ease of a woman accustomed to admiration.
To appear unconscious she assumed with charming cleverness a pose of artistic contemplation. One would have said that she was really absorbed in the music, or that she was following the advice of the Tuscan poet:
"Bel ange, descendu d'un monde aérien, Laisse-toi regarder et ne regarde rien."
From my position I could only distinguish the outline of her figure, except by staring through my glasses, which I regard as a polite rudeness, but she seemed to merit the homage that all eyes looked and all voices sang.
Once she appeared in the full blaze of the gas as she leaned forward from her box, and it seemed as if an apparition by some theatro-optical delusion approached and dazzled me.
The rapt attention of the audience, the mellow tones of the singer, the orchestral accompaniment full of mysterious harmony, seemed to awaken the ineffable joy that love implants in the human heart. How much weakness there is in the strength of man!
To travel for years over oceans, through deserts, among all varieties of peoples and sects; shipwrecked, to cling with bleeding hands to sea-beaten rocks; to laugh at the storm and brave the tiger in his lair; to be bronzed in torrid climes; to subject one's digestion to the baleful influences of the salt seas; to study wisdom before the ruins of every portico where rhetoricians have for three thousand