Part 59 (2/2)
”Oh! Madame, I am not an inventor; I relate simply what took place as the Dryad related it to me”
”What did your Dryad, then, call these shepherdesses? You have a very treacherous memory, I fear This Dryad must have fallen out with the Goddess Mnemosyne”
”These shepherdesses, Madame? Pray remember that it is a crime to betray a woman's name”
”From which a woman absolves you, comte, on the condition that you will reveal the names of the shepherdesses”
”Their naly well!-they have not lost by the delay,” said Mada naain ht movement
”Nay, coht we not, sire, to have the portraits of the shepherdesses?”
The king, who expected this deteran to feel soerous an interrogator He thought, too, that Saint-Aignan, in drawing the portraits, would find aallusions which would be agreeable to the ears of one hisIt ith this hope and with this fear that Louis authorized Saint-Aignan to sketch the portraits of the shepherdesses, Phyllis, Amaryllis, and Galatea
”Very well, then; be it so,” said Saint-Aignan, like a an
Chapter LVII Conclusion of the Story of a Naiad and of a Dryad
”Phyllis,” said Saint-Aignan, with a glance of defiance at Montalais, such as a fencing-onist worthy of hiuard, ”Phyllis is neither fair nor dark, neither tall nor short, neither too grave nor too gay; though but a shepherdess, she is as witty as a princess, and as coquettish as thecan equal her excellent vision Her heart yearns for everything her gaze e, at onein pursuit of a butterfly, then rests itself upon the topmost branch of a tree, where it defies the bird-catchers either to come and seize it or to entrap it in their nets” The portrait bore such a strong resemblance to Montalais, that all eyes were directed towards her; she, however, with her head raised, and with a steady, un of an utter stranger
”Is that all, Monsieur de Saint-Aignan?” inquired the princess
”Oh! your royal highness, the portrait is but a mere sketch, and many more additions could be made, but I fear to weary your patience, or offend the modesty of the shepherdess, and I shall therefore pass on to her companion, Amaryllis”
”Very well,” said Madanan, we are all attention”
”Anan hastened to add, ”this advanced age does not reach twenty years”
Madehtly knitted her brows at the commencement of the description, unbent the abundance of beautiful hair, which she fastens in the manner of the Grecian statues; her walk is full of hty; she has the air, therefore, rather of a Goddess than athe Goddesses, she most resembles Diana the huntress; with this sole difference, however, that the cruel shepherdess, having stolen the quiver of young love, while poor Cupid was sleeping in a thicket of roses, instead of directing her arrows against the inhabitants of the forest, discharges theainst all poor shepherds who pass within reach of her bow and of her eyes”
”Oh! what a wicked shepherdess!” said Madame ”She may soes, as you say, so mercilessly on all sides”
”It is the hope of shepherds, one and all!” said Saint-Aignan
”And that of the shepherd Amyntas in particular, I suppose?” said Madanan, with the most modest air he could assume, ”that if he cherishes such a hope as that, no one has ever known anything about it, for he conceals it in the very depths of his heart” A flattering reeted this profession of faith on behalf of the shepherd
”And Galatea?” inquired Madame ”I am impatient to see a hand so skillful as yours continue the portrait where Virgil left it, and finish it before our eyes”
”Madanan, ”I ail Still, encouraged by your desire, I will do nan extended his foot and hand, and thus began:-”White as milk, she casts upon the breeze the perfuolden hues, as are the ears of corn One is tempted to inquire if she is not the beautiful Europa, who inspired Jupiter with a tender passion as she played with her coled meadows From her exquisite eyes, blue as azure heaven on the clearest suht, which reverie nurtures, and love dispenses When she frowns, or bends her looks towards the ground, the sun is veiled in token ofWhen she smiles, on the contrary, nature resumes her jollity, and the birds, for a brief s anan, in conclusion, ”is worthy of the admiration of the whole world; and if she should ever bestow her heart upon another, happy will that man be to whom she consecrates her first affections”
Madanan had drawn, as, indeed, had all the others, contented herself with accentuating her approbation of the e by occasional inclinations of her head; but it was impossible to say if these marks of assent were accorded to the ability of the narrator of the resemblance of the portrait The consequence, therefore, was, that as Madame did not openly exhibit any approbation, no one felt authorized to applaud, not even Monsieur, who secretly thought that Saint-Aignan dwelt too much upon the portraits of the shepherdesses, and had soly passed over the portraits of the shepherds The whole assenan, who had exhausted his rhetorical skill and his palette of artistic tints in sketching the portrait of Galatea, and who, after the favor hich his other descriptions had been received, already iined he could hear the loudest applause allotted to this last one, was hi and the rest of the company A moment's silence follohich was at last broken by Madame
”Well, sir,” she inquired, ”What is your , ished to relieve Saint-Aignan's e himself, replied, ”Why, Amaryllis, in my opinion, is beautiful”
”For irl, or rather a good-sort-of-fellow of a nyh followed, and this time the looks were so direct, that Montalais felt herself blushi+ng almost scarlet
”Well,” resu to each other?”
Saint-Aignan, however, whose vanity had been wounded, did not feel himself in a position to sustain an attack of new and refreshed troops, andto one another their little preferences”
”Nay, nay! Monsieur de Saint-Aignan, you are a perfect stream of pastoral poesy,” said Madame, with an amiable smile, which somewhat cohty peril, but that the absence of love is the heart's sentence of death”
”What was the conclusion they came to?” inquired Madame
”They caood! Did they lay down any conditions?”
”That of choice, siht even to add,-re,-that one of the shepherdesses, Amaryllis, I believe, was co, and yet she did not positively deny that she had allowed the ie in her heart”
”Was it Anan, entle and soft-eyed Galatea, immediately replied, that neither Amyntas, nor Alphesiboeus, nor tityrus, nor indeed any of the handsomest shepherds of the country, were to be compared to Tyrcis; that Tyrcis was as superior to all other men, as the oak to all other trees, as the lily in its majesty to all other flowers She drew even such a portrait of Tyrcis that Tyrcis hi,his rank as a shepherd Thus Tyrcis and Auished by Phyllis and Galatea; and thus had the secrets of two hearts revealed beneath the shades of evening, and amid the recesses of the woods Such, Madame, is what the Dryad related to me; she who knows all that takes place in the hollows of oaks and grassy dells; she who knows the loves of the birds, and all they wish to convey by their songs; she who understands, in fact, the language of the wind aold and es in the corolla of the wild-flowers; it was she who related the particulars to me, and I have repeated thenan, have you not?” said Mada trenan, ”and but too happy if I have been able to ahness for a few moments”
”Moments which have been too brief,” replied the princess; ”for you have related most adnan, you have been unfortunate enough to obtain your information from one Dryad only, I believe?”
”Yes, Madame, only from one, I confess”
”The fact was, that you passed by a little Naiad, who pretended to know nothing at all, and yet knew a great deal more than your Dryad, my dear coan to suspect that the story had a continuation
”Of course close beside the oak you are speaking of, which, if I am not mistaken, is called the royal oak-is it not so, Monsieur de Saint-Aignan?”
Saint-Aignan and the king exchanged glances