IX.


The old doctor and his family had not the pride of heart that induced
me to respect her secret. At table our hosts, with the curiosity
natural to all those who live by strangers, would interpret every
circumstance, discuss every probability, and collect even the vaguest
notions concerning the stranger. I soon learned all that had transpired
respecting her, although I never interrogated and even studiously
avoided making her the subject of our discourse. In vain I sought to
turn the conversation into another channel; every day the same subject
recurred; men, women, children, bathers, and servants, the guides of
the mountains, and the boatmen on the lake, had all been equally struck
and charmed by her, although she spoke to no one. She was an object of
universal respect and admiration.

There are some beings who, by their dazzling radiance, draw all around
them into their sphere of attraction without desiring or even
perceiving it. It seems as though certain natures were like the suns of
some moral system, obliging the looks, thoughts, and hearts of their
satellites to gravitate around them. Their moral and physical beauty is
a spell, their fascination a chain, love is but their emanation. We
track their upward course from earth to heaven, and when they vanish in
their youth and beauty, all else seems dark to the eye that has been
blinded by their brilliancy. The vulgar, even, recognize these superior
beings by some mysterious sign. They admire without comprehending, as
the blind enjoy the sunshine, who have never seen the sun.