In Paradise. Paul Heyse
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would never have touched a brush!"
"Certainly; but instead of it a common kitchen-spoon and similar household utensils. Why do you look at me incredulously? Do you think I have been all my life a plain old maid? I, too, was once seventeen years old, and by no means ill-looking--naturally not to be compared to what is now sitting opposite me--not a regular feature in my whole pretty face, no form, no style, merely the ordinary beauté du diable. But, if one may trust certain evidences--though my archives of sonnets, ball-favors, and other delicate offerings of the sort are burned, to be sure--I was as neat and attractive a young person as thousands of others. I had plenty of mother wit, you could read in my eyes that I had a good heart, and, besides, I was by no means poor. Why should I have lacked suitors? No, my dear, I even had a choice; and although I do not now understand why I preferred one particular mortal to all others, I must have known well enough at the time. I dimly remember how wonderfully happy, joyous, and in love I was! If all had gone on in the beaten track, I should probably have always been as happy and as much in love--constancy is my chief fault--even if no longer so joyous. But this was not to be. My betrothed was drowned while bathing--just think of it, what an absurd misfortune! I was driven into a brain fever by the shock and grief; when I got up from it my little beauté du diable had gone to the diable. The next few years were spent as a widowed bride, in tears; and, when these gradually ceased to flow, I was a plain, prematurely-faded person, with a heart to be sure that had never yet fairly blossomed out, but about which no one troubled himself particularly. It was at that time also that we lost our little property, and I was obliged to take up with some pursuit or other; then it turned out to be good luck that even as a child at school I had wasted much time on drawing and painting. Do you believe, dear friend, that a virtue which one makes in this way out of a necessity--no matter how deserving it may be--can ever make a mortal thoroughly happy at heart?"
"Why not, when all kinds of happiness come with it, as has been the case with you? You visited Italy with that kind old lady about whom you told me such nice stories the other day; you can work at your art here in perfect freedom, without anxiety, thanks to the legacy of your motherly friend; you live in this beautiful city, in the society of friends and colleagues in art by whom you are respected--is all that nothing?"
"True, it is a great deal, and yet--I will whisper something in your ear--let it be entirely between ourselves, and if I did not love you so unreasonably that you might ask anything of me I would sooner bite off my tongue than confess it to any living mortal--if I should become, in the course of time, as celebrated as my namesake (whose pictures, it must be confessed, always appear to me to be very stupid), or even should in so far succeed as to become contented with myself as an artist, I would give up all this exceptional good fortune for an ordinary, humdrum happiness; a good husband, who need not even be a remarkable combination of excellences, and a few pretty children, who, for all I care, might be a little bit boisterous and naughty. There, now you know all about it, and you will laugh at me because I so naively confessed to you what we women generally hide like a sin."
"You would certainly have made a splendid housewife," said Julie, musingly. "You are so good, so warmhearted, so unselfish; you might have made a husband very happy. I--when I compare myself with you--but why shouldn't we call each other 'du?' I have had all sorts of unpleasant experiences with women friends with whom I have used that familiar form, and that is the reason I have been so slow about it with you--. Stop, stop, you must leave my head on my shoulders!--you are squeezing me to death--if I had only known it sooner! And who knows but what if you learn to know me better--."
The artist had thrown away palette and maulstick, and had, after her enthusiastic fashion, rushed upon the adored friend who had at last made this return for her worship.
"If I should know you a hundred years, I'll take care to love you a hundred times more dearly!" she cried, as, kneeling down before Julie, she folded her hands in her lap with a droll vivacity, and gazed reverentially through her spectacles at the beautiful face.
"No," said her friend earnestly, "you do not really know me yet. Have you any suspicion that by my own fault I have thrown away that happiness for which you long, because, even as my best friends said, I was heartless?"
"Nonsense!" cried Angelica. "You heartless? Then I am a crocodile and live on human flesh!"
Julie smiled.
"Were they right? Perhaps. I don't believe it myself. But you know it is such a universal fashion to show one's self 'full of heart,' to express feeling, sympathy, tenderness, even when one remains perfectly cold, that the Cordelias will always be at a disadvantage. Even when very young, and perhaps by inheritance from my father, who was a strict, and on the surface a severe, old soldier, not much given to demonstrations--even when a school-girl I felt a disgust for sweetness and suavity, for affected sentimentality and humility--for all that conventional amiability behind which the most cruel envy, the most icy egotism, lurk concealed. I could never take kindly to sentimental bosom-friendship, to compacts of the heart for life and death, that were suddenly broken up by a ball-room rivalry, an honest reproof, or even by pure ennui. My first experience in this respect was my last. And how much sincere liking, and fidelity, and unappreciated self-sacrifice I wasted on this child's play! From that time forth I knew how to take better care of myself. And, in truth, it was not difficult for me to keep guard over my heart. I lived with my old parents, who both appeared, on the surface, dry and pedantic; but who understood the art of making for themselves and me a rich, warm, and beautiful life, that gave my thoughts and feelings ample nourishment. I modeled myself after them, and spoke much the same language. I must indeed have borne myself rather strangely, when, in the society of young people, I expressed myself with regard to certain conventional feelings in scornful terms which might have been pardoned to an old soldier, but which did not become his daughter. I meant no harm with it all. On many occasions, when others were moved to tears or enthusiasm, I really experienced no sensation whatever, unless it were a feeling of discomfort. But as often as anything really touched me--beautiful music, a poem or some solemn impression of Nature, I became perfectly dumb, and could not join in the enthusiastic prattle that went on in the circle about me. Out of pure contempt for phrases, I assumed, in defiance of my real feelings, to be cool and critical, and had to bear being told that there was no getting on with me, that these secret joys must always remain closed to me, a girl without a heart. I smiled at this, and my smile confirmed these fine-strung souls in their belief in my lack of feeling. As it so happened that I found none of them all amiable enough to love in spite of these bad practices, I didn't care in the least for my isolation. I had fared thus with my own sex, and soon I was to find that I did not succeed much better with young men. I was not long in observing that the stronger sex merely had other, and by no means more amiable, weaknesses than we; above all, that they were much vainer, and so care most for those of us who are willing to do homage to their manly superiority. What is generally called maidenly modesty, womanly tenderness, and virginal feeling--is it not, in ninety cases out of a hundred, a craftily-planned artificial stratagem for making fools of these mighty lords of creation? Here they find what they want. Do they not meet in this pliant, yielding, dependent being the best supplement to their dominant natures, the most touching submission to their higher will, an accurately-toned echo of all their most excellent wishes and thoughts? Afterward, when the purpose of the pretty comedy has been attained, the mask is laid aside quickly enough; we good lambs show that we, too, have a will and a mind and a power of our own, and the beautiful delusion is rudely dissipated. As soon as I had come to clearly recognize this, I felt the bitterest disgust for it. Soon, however, I was forced to laugh, and to say to myself, this farce is as old as the world! If, notwithstanding this, the proud lords of creation still permit themselves to be deceived, they must, in one way or another, find some advantage in it. But I could not even then bring myself to join in the game, as I saw all the rest do. I cared nothing for the object which made these petty means holy to all the others. Merely to please the men in general? To do this I had no need to exert myself especially, for I resembled my mother, who had passed for a beauty. And to have won the love of a man it would have been necessary for him to have first taken my fancy, for him to have first become dangerous to me. But it never came to that. Really, I often thought, have you a heart, or have you none, since it feels nothing at all in the society of these gay officers, students, and artists, who are such good