Nay, verily! In these absurd days she lighted up the whole world for
me. To sit in the same room with her was like the happiness of
perpetual holiday; when she asked me to run a message for her, or to do
any, the slightest, service for her, I felt as if a patent of nobility
were conferred on me. I kept my passion to myself, like a cake, and
nibbled it in private. Juliet was several years my senior, and had a
lover--was, in point of fact, actually engaged; and, in looking back, I
can remember I was too much in love to feel the slightest twinge of
jealousy. I remember also seeing Romeo for the first time, and
thinking him a greater man than Caesar or Napoleon. The worth I
credited him with, the cleverness, the goodness, the everything! He
awed me by his manner and bearing. He accepted that girl's love coolly
and as a matter of course: it put him no more about than a crown and
sceptre puts about a king. What I would have given my life to
possess--being only fourteen, it was not much to part with after
all--he wore lightly, as he wore his gloves or his cane. It did not
seem a bit too good for him. His self-possession appalled me. If I
had seen him take the sun out of the sky, and put it into his breeches'
pocket, I don't think I should have been in the least degree surprised.
Well, years after, when I had discarded my passion with my jacket, I
have assisted this middle-aged Romeo home from a roystering wine-party,
and heard him hiccup out his marital annoyances, with the strangest
remembrances of old times, and the strangest deductions therefrom. Did
that man with the idiotic laugh and the blurred utterance ever love?
Was he ever capable of loving? I protest I have my doubts. But where
are my young people? Gone! So it is always. We begin to moralise and
look wise, and Beauty, who is something of a coquette, and of an
exacting turn of mind, and likes attentions, gets disgusted with our
wisdom or our stupidity, and goes off in a huff. Let the baggage go!