第111章

AGALMA

"At this juncture there arrived from Paris the woman to whom the great sorrow of my life is due.A fatalist might read in her appearance at this particular moment the signs of a prearranged doom.A few weeks later, and her arrival would have been harmless;I should have been shielded from all external influence by the absorbing force of love.But, alas! this was not to be.My fate had taken another direction.The woman had arrived whose shadow was to darken the rest of my existence.That woman was Agalma Liebenstein.

"How is it that the head which we can only see surrounded with a halo, or a shadow, when the splendors of achievement or the infamy of shame instruct our eyes, is by the uninstructed eye observed as wholly vulgar? We all profess to be physiognomists; how is it we are so lamentably mistaken in our judgments? Here was a woman in whom my ignorant eyes saw nothing at all remarkable except golden hair of unusual beauty.When I say golden, I am not speaking loosely.I do not mean red or flaxen hair, but hair actually resembling burnished gold more than anything else.Its ripples on her brow caught the light like a coronet.This was her one beauty, and it was superb.For the rest, her features were characterless.

Her figure was tall and full; not graceful, but sweepingly imposing.At first I noticed nothing about her except the braided splendor of her glorious hair."He rose, and went into his bedroom, from which he returned with a small trinket-box in his hand.This he laid open on the table, disclosing a long strand of exquisite fair hair lying on a cushion of dark-blue velvet.

"Look at that," he said."Might it not have been cut from an angel's head?""It is certainly wonderful."

"It must have been hair like this which crowned the infamous head of Lucrezia Borgia," he said, bitterly."She, too, had golden hair; but hers must have been of paler tint, like her nature."He resumed his seat, and, fixing his eyes upon the lock, continued:

"She was one of Ottilie's friends--dear friends, they called each other,--which meant that they kissed each other profusely, and told each other all their secrets, or as much as the lying nature of the sex permitted and suggested.It is, of course, impossible for me to disentangle my present knowledge from my past impressions so as to give you a clear description of what I then thought of Agalma.

Enough that, as a matter of fact, I distinctly remember not to have admired her, and to have told Ottilie so; and when Ottilie, in surprise at my insensibility, assured me that men were in general wonderfully charmed with her (though, for her part, she had never understood why), I answered, and answered sincerely, that it might be true with the less refined order of men, but men of taste would certainly be rather repelled from her.

"This opinion of mine, or some report of it, reached Agalma.

"It may have been the proximate cause of my sorrows.Without this stimulus to her vanity, she might have left me undisturbed.Idon't know.All I know is, that over many men Agalma exercised great influence, and that over me she exercised the spell of fascination.No other word will explain her influence; for it was not based on excellences such as the mind could recognize to be attractions; it was based on a mysterious personal power, something awful in its mysteriousness, as all demoniac powers are.One source of her influence over men I think I can explain: she at once captivated and repelled them.By artful appeals to their vanity, she made them interested in her and in her opinion of them, and yet kept herself inaccessible by a pride which was the more fascinating because it always seemed about to give way.Her instinct fastened upon the weak point in those she approached.This made her seductive to men, because she flattered their weak points; and hateful to women, because she flouted and disclosed their weak points.

"Her influence over me began in the following way.One day, at a picnic, having been led by her into a conversation respecting the relative inferiority of the feminine intellect, I was forced to speak rather more earnestly than usual, when suddenly she turned to me and exclaimed in a lower voice:

"'I am willing to credit anything you say; only pray don't continue talking to me so earnestly.'

"'Why not?' I asked, surprised.

"She looked at me with peculiar significance, but remained silent.

"'May I ask why not?' I asked.

"'Because, if you do, somebody may be jealous.' There was a laughing defiance in her eye as she spoke.

"'And pray, who has a right to be jealous of me?'

"'Oh! you know well enough.'

"It was true; I did know; and she knew that I knew it.To my shame be it said that I was weak enough to yield to an equivocation which I now see to have been disloyal, but which I then pretended to have been no more than delicacy to Ottilie.As, in point of fact, there had never been a word passed between us respecting our mutual feelings, I considered myself bound in honor to assume that there was nothing tacitly acknowledged.

"Piqued by her tone and look, I disavowed the existence of any claims upon my attention; and to prove the sincerity of my words, Ipersisted in addressing my attentions to her.Once or twice Ifancied I caught flying glances, in which some of the company criticised my conduct, and Ottilie also seemed to me unusually quiet.But her manner, though quiet, was untroubled and unchanged.

I talked less to her than usual, partly because I talked so much to Agalma, and partly because I felt that Agalma's eyes were on us.

But no shadow of 'temper' or reserve darkened our interchange of speech.

"On our way back, I know not what devil prompted me to ask Agalma whether she had really been in earnest in her former allusion to 'somebody.'

"'Yes,' she said, 'I was in earnest then.'

"'And now?'

"'Now I have doubts.I may have been misinformed.It's no concern of mine, anyway; but I had been given to understand.However, Iadmit that my own eyes have not confirmed what my ears heard.'