| 535 | 536 | 537 | 538 | 539 |
| 1 | 236 | 472 | 708 | 944 |
|
A duchess!
"
More than a goddess," Ursus had said.
What a precipice! Even dreams dissolved before such a perpendicular
height to escalade.
Was he going to commit the folly of dreaming about the unknown beauty?
He debated with himself.
He recalled all that Ursus had said of high stations which are almost
royal. The philosopher's disquisitions, which had hitherto seemed so
useless, now became landmarks for his thoughts. A very thin layer of
forgetfulness often lies over our memory, through which at times we
catch a glimpse of all beneath it. His fancy ran on that august world,
the peerage, to which the lady belonged, and which was so inexorably
placed above the inferior world, the common people, of which he was one.
And was he even one of the people? Was not he, the mountebank, below the
lowest of the low? For the first time since he had arrived at the age of
reflection, he felt his heart vaguely contracted by a sense of his
baseness, and of that which we nowadays call abasement. The paintings
and the catalogues of Ursus, his lyrical inventories, his dithyrambics
of castles, parks, fountains, and colonnades, his catalogues of riches
and of power, revived in the memory of Gwynplaine in the relief of
reality mingled with mist. He was possessed with the image of this
537
Page
Quick Jump
|