her, I did not see the old maid whom
we all pitied for a secret sorrow, but a woman whose nature was a
tropic, in which the sun shone, and birds sang, and flowers bloomed
forever. There were no regrets, no doubts and half wishes, but a calm
sweetness, a transparent peace. I saw her blush when that old lover
passed by, or paused to speak to her, but it was only the sign of
delicate feminine consciousness. She knew his love, and honored it,
although she could not understand it nor return it. I looked closely
at her, and I saw that although all the world had exclaimed at her
indifference to such homage, and had declared it was astonishing she
should lose so fine a match, she would only say simply and quietly--

"'If Shakespeare loved me and I did not love him, how could I marry
him?'

"Could I be misanthropical when I saw such fidelity, and dignity, and
simplicity?

"You may believe that I was especially curious to look at that old
lover of hers, through my glasses. He was no longer young, you know,
when I came, and his fame and fortune were secure. Certainly I have
heard of few men more beloved, and of none more worthy to be loved. He
had the easy manner of a man of the world, the sensitive grace of a
poet, and the charitable judgment of a wide traveller. He was
accounted the most successful and most unspoiled of men. Handsome,
brilliant, wise, tender, graceful, accomplished, rich, and famous, I
looked at him, without the spectacles, in surprise, and admiration,
and wondered how your neighbor over the way had been so entirely
untouched by his homage. I watched their intercourse in society, I saw
her gay smile, her cordial greeting; I marked his frank address, his
lofty courtesy. Their manner told no tales. The eager world was
balked, and I pulled out my spectacles.

"I had seen her, already, and now I saw him. He lived only in memory,
and his memory was a spacious and stately palace. But he did not
oftenest frequent the banqueting hall, where were endless hospitality
and feasting--nor did he loiter much in reception rooms, where a
throng of new visitors was forever swarming--nor did he feed his
vanity by haunting the apartment in which were stored the trophies of
his varied triumphs--nor dream much in the great gallery hung with
pictures of his travels. But from all these lofty halls of memory he
constantly escaped to a remote and solitary chamber, into which no one
had ever penetrated. But my fatal eyes, behind the