University of Virginia Library

8. VIII.

One morning shortly after the introduction of the
lovely quadroon into the fashionable world of Paris, a
noble looking and extremely handsome young man,
not more than twenty one years of age, was idly promenading
one of the less frequented streets of Paris,
when his attention was drawn to an elegant and well
appointed equipage that stopped just before him,
not far from the door of the cathedral.—Two ladies
descended from it and approached the church, to
which the obstruction of a line of carriages lining the
pavé prevented the coachman from coming closer.
One of them was an elegant shaped woman, who
moved with the slow and stately measure becoming
a queen. By her side moved a less stately figure, but
what was lost in dignity was made up in grace and
feminine delicacy. Her undulating movement, as she
gently stepped along, was the poetry of motion. Her
feet were the neatest, and prettiest, and smallest in
the world, and they left the pavement and lighted
upon it again with the lightness of a bird. The young
man quickened his pace and passed them. The face
that met his gaze, as he turned round at the door of
the church, was wonderfully fair. He thought he had
not seen its equal for that soft and dreamy loveliness
which is usually found in the climes of the south.
Her large black eyes, as she lifted them to the face of
the elegant young man, seemed to him like fountains
of love, with which her heart, like a deep well, was
full. The moulded bust, the rounded waist, the superbly
feminine figure, the shapely foot and hand, the
faultless neck and stag-like carriage of the fine head;

the indolent grace of every motion from the gliding
curve of each swimming step, to the fall of the fringed
lid, filled his soul with those delightful but indescribable
sensations which are the incipient workings of
youthful love. Aside from the charms of her person,
there was about her a something which strangely
drew his heart to hers. The emotion was mutual;
for, as she passed him to enter the cathedral, her eye
lingered on his face with singular interest.

The appearance of her companion was very little
less striking, though she must have been thirty-five
years of age. The full-blown rose was the emblem
of the one; the half-open bud of the other. From
their surprising resemblance to each other, they were
mother and daughter.

They advanced to a distant part of the cathedral,
and kneeled at different shrines. The young man,
who followed them into the church, approached the
shrine where the younger kneeled, and with a singular
union of boldness and timidity, and assuming a
look of playful submission that disarmed reproof ere
it rose to the lip, he knelt beside her. She started,
turned, and would have risen to move away from the
daring intruder, but the respectful yet tender expression
of his fine eyes, the elegance of his person, his
becoming humility, all pleaded in his favor. With his
hand laid on his heart, he awaited her decision. The
silent eloquence of his manner prevailed. She smiled,
dropped her eyes, and opened her missal. Her transparent
fingers trembled with agitation; the gilt leaves
fluttered, and the book fell from her hands. The
young stranger arrested it ere it reached the pavement;
and, opening it, returned it to her with his finger on
this passage:—

“Give ear unto me; my soul hangeth upon thee.
I will love thee all the days of my life. Incline thine
ear unto my calling.”

The maiden read it; raised her full dark eyes, and
smiled, while, with a mantling cheek, she placed a
finger carelessly on a passage. He caught it from her
hand, and read, with eyes that sparkled with delight,
the following verse:—

“I will dwell in thy tabernacle for ever; and my
trust shall be under the shadow of thy wings.”

He seized and pressed her hand to his heart, then to
his lips, and thus in one minute was consummated an
affection which contained all the elements of genuine
love; which some people think takes a year to grow,
when every body knows it is a plant that, like Jonah's
gourd, springs up in one night.

With the material before one, enough to fill two
volumes, it is difficult to write a mere sketch. We
must therefore, to keep within any bound, leave a
great deal of the filling up of our story to the imaginations
of our readers; to which, to begin with, we
shall leave the remainder of the scene in the Cathedral,
telling them, however, what doubtless they have
already guessed, that the elder lady was Emilie, the
quadroon, or as she was known in Paris, Madame
D'Avigny, and the younger daughter, the lovely and
widely famed Louise.