and lastly, she made her
beauty by growing a soul in her eyes, I suppose,--what you call good.
I'm not good, of course; I wouldn't give a fig to be good. So
it's not vanity. It's on a far grander scale; a splendid
selfishness,--authorized, too; and papa and mamma brought me up to
worship beauty,--and there's the fifth commandment, you know.

Dear me! you think I'm never coming to the point. Well, here's this
rosary;--hand me the perfume-case first, please. Don't you love heavy
fragrances, faint with sweetness, ravishing juices of odor, heliotropes,
violets, water-lilies,--powerful attars and extracts, that snatch your
soul off your lips? Couldn't you live on rich scents, if they tried to
starve you? I could, or die on them: I don't know which would be best.
There! there's the amber rosary! You needn't speak; look at it!

Bah! is that all you've got to say? Why, observe the thing; turn it
over; hold it up to the window; count the beads,--long, oval, like some
seaweed bulbs, each an amulet. See the tint; it's very old; like clots
of sunshine,--aren't they? Now bring it near; see the carving, here
corrugated, there faceted, now sculptured into hideous, tiny, heathen
gods. You didn't notice that before! How difficult it must have been,
when amber is so friable! Here's one with a chessboard on his back, and
all his kings and queens and pawns slung round him. Here's another
with a torch, a flaming torch, its fire pouring out inverted. They are
grotesque enough;--but this, this is matchless: such a miniature woman,
one hand grasping the round rock behind, while she looks down into some
gulf, perhaps, beneath, and will let herself fall. Oh, you should see
_her_ with a magnifying-glass! You want to think of calm, satisfying
death, a mere exhalation, a voluntary slipping into another element?
There it is for you. They are all gods and goddesses. They are all here
but one; I've lost one, the knot of all, the love of the thing. Well!
wasn't it queer for a Catholic girl to have at prayer? Don't you wonder
where she got it? Ah! but don't you wonder where I got it? I'll tell
you.

Papa came in, one day, and with great mystery commenced unrolling,
and unrolling, and throwing tissue papers on the floor, and scraps of
colored wool; and Lu and I ran to him,--Lu stooping on her knees to look
up, I bending over his hands to look down. It was so mysterious! I began
to suspect it was diamonds for me, but knew I never could wear them, and