Part 6 (2/2)

”You may imagine how my heart bled when I heard these words, and felt how true they were likely to be. I felt like a man who is grappling in a lake for the body of his drowned child.

”One evening, as we were wandering about at haphazard through one of the most crowded suburbs, my companion surprised me by asking me: 'Did Leonora have any talent for dancing?' When I told him that she had always been perfect in that art, he said, 'We ought to have thought of that before. How strange that I never thought of asking you before.' He was so taken up with his new idea that he did not deign to answer when I inquired what the art of dancing had to do with our search. He hailed a cab; we went back into the city. We stopped at one of those dancing-halls which were then less brilliant, perhaps, but certainly not less crowded than nowadays. 'Look around, if you can see Leonora anywhere! We searched the whole establishment; Leonora was not there.

'Then let us go on.' We drove to another dancing-hall, and, when our search was here also fruitless, to a third, and a fourth. All in vain.

I was so exhausted by the sad scenes I had witnessed, by the dust and the heat which filled these crowded rooms, by the efforts to find one certain person among so many, who were constantly changing from place to place, and by the excitement, the anxiety, and the very fear of finding what I was looking for, that I begged my companion to abandon the search, at least for to-night. 'Only one more locality,' he replied; 'I have on purpose left it for the last, because the probability of finding her there is strong enough, but also very painful.' 'How so?' 'The establishments which you have seen so far,'

replied the Frenchman, 'are after a fas.h.i.+on quite respectable in spite of what is going on there. The visitors are beyond measure reckless, arrogant, frivolous, but after all not exactly vicious. They are students with their ladies, clerks with their grisettes, well-to-do mechanics who want to have a frolic, in company with their girls. The society into which I am now going to introduce you is far more elegant, but not quite so harmless. It is a house frequented mainly by wild young men of rank from the aristocratic quarters of the town, who seek here compensation for the dullness of their own saloons, and by foreigners who come to Paris to ruin their health and to waste their fortune. The fair s.e.x is such as suits these people. You find here the most beautiful, but also the most corrupt of women, men-catchers, who drive to-day a four-in-hand, and die to-morrow in the hospital--mainly foreigners: Creoles, English, Italian, or German girls, who here find countrymen in numbers. Prepare yourself to look for her--I trust in vain--in this pandemonium.

”We reached the place. Broad marble steps led up. My heart beat violently; I could scarcely stand, for something within me told me that I had reached the goal of my wanderings; that the disfigured, swollen head of the dead body would the next moment rise from the black waters.

”We entered the brilliantly lighted hall. The orchestra played bacchantic music, and in bacchantic madness the dancers rushed by each other. The dazzling lights, the loud trumpets, the crowds, the heat, the narcotic fragrance of exotics, with which the room was adorned, and the fearful excitement under which I labored, took away my breath. I had to lean for a moment against a pillar, and closed my eyes in order to collect myself. As I was standing thus, faint and nearly falling, a voice fell upon my ear which stung me at the first note like an adder.

The ear is a faithful monitor; it never in all this life forgets a voice whose notes have once been sweet and dear to it. It had not deceived me.

”Close before me, so close that I could have touched her with my hand, stood a girl, talking fast to a handsome young man; she was tall and slender, had large, brown eyes, which shone with feverish brightness, and a face far too sharply accented, too much worn out by life for so young a person, but nevertheless still very beautiful--and this girl was Leonora.

”Strange! when I had first heard her voice my heart had trembled as at the moment when I stood at night before the house in Fichtenau, and the old woman called down to me that Leonora had eloped. But after the first spasm I felt calm, quite calm. The chord had been stretched too far, it had broke; it now uttered not a sound of joy or of grief. I looked down upon Leonora as coldly as if she were a picture on the wall. I heard every word she said to her partner, as we hear words just before we are going to faint--as if they had been spoken at the other end of the hall. I examined her from head to foot, even her costume, with the calm criticism of an artist. I noticed that she was rouged, and that her dark eyebrows and lashes were dyed still darker. I noticed that she wore her hair exactly in the same manner in which I had myself once arranged it, after an antique, and as she had ever after worn it as long as I knew her. I heard everything, I saw everything, and yet I heard and saw nothing; for I had no clear perception of what I saw and heard.

”My companion, who had looked all around the hall in the meantime, now returned to where I stood. 'I have not been able to find any one corresponding to your description,' he said. 'G.o.d be thanked! I breathe more freely; I should not have liked, for the world, to have found her whom we look for in this place. But, _mon Dieu_, what is the matter?

You look like a corpse!'

”'I have found her.'

”'Where?'

”'There!'

”He took his gla.s.s and examined Leonora for a few moments with most intense interest. She was still perfectly unconscious of those who were so near to her, and chatted and coquetted with her dancer.

”Then he shrugged his shoulders with pity and dropped his eye-gla.s.s.

His face had become very serious.

”'_Pauvre homme_!' he whispered to himself.

”The music was breaking forth louder than ever; a new figure began in the Francaise, and it was Leonora's turn. She had evidently made great progress in her art since the day when I had seen her last dance at a club-ball in Fichtenau. I can candidly say I have never before or afterwards seen anything more perfect. It was the enchanting gracefulness of a jet-d'eau swaying to and fro in the light breeze, and yet at the same time a pa.s.sionate rapture, such as we find nowhere else except perhaps among the Zingarellas of Spain or the Ghawazees of Egypt. At one moment it was the soft longing and yearning of gentle and subdued love, at the next moment it was the very soul of pa.s.sion, trembling in every nerve and vibrating in every muscle, but here as well as there, a beautiful rhythm of marvellously complicated and yet ever harmoniously united movements was never wanting. This dance was a song--a song of love--but not of German love, dreamy, fragrant with the perfume of blooming lime-trees and softened by the pale light of the moon, but of sensuous Oriental love, hot with the burning rays of a Southern sun, and breathing narcotic voluptuousness. And with all that, her features were calm, not a muscle moving, not a trace of that repulsive, stereotyped smile worn by so many far-famed artists. Only her eyes burnt with uncanny fire, which blazed up brighter with every step, with every motion. Her partner rather walked than danced all the steps required with much elegance, but with a lofty carelessness, as if he looked rather ridiculous in his own eyes while performing the ceremony, and this calm composure seemed to make the pa.s.sionate woman almost desperate, and determined to rouse him from his weary apathy by all the arts of which she was master. Perhaps this was really so; perhaps it only looked so--at all events this gave to the dance a rich dramatic interest, and afforded the by-standers a most attractive sight.

”'_Ah, la belle Allemande_!' cried an enthusiast near me.

”'_Grand Dieu, qu'elle est jolie!_' cried another; '_Brava! brava!_'

and he applauded energetically with both hands till all the by-standers followed his example. '_Brava! brava! Vive la reine Eleonore! Vive la belle Allemande!_'

”My friend seized my arm and drew me further back under the pillars near which we had been standing. 'Come!' he said. 'Where?' 'Away from here!' 'Never!' 'Why, it is impossible you can feel an interest in such a creature! What can you do with her? I tell you she is lost!

irreparably lost!' 'We will see that!' I murmured. The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders. 'You Germans are a strange people. But, at least follow my advice. Do not make a scene here; you would most likely have to fight half a dozen duels. Call upon the girl to-morrow, or whenever you choose. I will find out in a few minutes all about her residence, and whatever else you may want to know.'

”I saw that his was sensible advice. While he slipped away through the crowd, I threw myself into a chair and rested my head on my hands.

Those were terrible moments. My temples were beating, my limbs were trembling--and yet within me all was calm, deadly calm and quiet. And, Oswald, in those moments, while I sat there alone, my face hid in my hands, in silent, unspeakable sorrow, amid the noisy crowd; and while my idol, the beloved of my youth, the woman whom I had wors.h.i.+pped in my dark dungeon like a glorious saint, was dancing a few steps from me, after a wicked, voluptuous music, the voluptuous dance of Herodias--in those moments, Oswald, I bid an eternal farewell to happiness, to life.

It was then that the curtain which had so long concealed from me the Great Mystery suddenly parted in the middle, and I stood shuddering at the threshold, which I yet dared not cross, and which I only crossed many, many years afterwards, for then I had not yet drained the cup to the dregs.

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