old trial of Alvan, and Alvan's oration in defence of himself for
a lawless act of devotion to the baroness; nothing less than the
successfully scheming to wrest by force from that lady's enemy a
document precious to her lawful interests. It was one of those cases
which have a really high gallant side as well as a bad; an excellent
case for rhetoric. Marko supplied the world's opinion of the affair,
bravely owning it to be not unfavourable. Her worthy relatives, the
Frau v. Crestow and husband, had very properly furnished a report to
the family of the memorable evening; and the hubbub over it, with the
epithets applied to Alvan, intimated how he would have been received
on a visit to demand her in marriage. There was no chance of her being
allowed to enter houses where this 'rageing demagogue and popular
buffoon' was a guest; his name was banished from her hearing, so she
was compelled to have recourse to Marko. Unable to take such services
without rewarding him, she fondled: it pained her to see him suffer.
Those who toss crumbs to their domestic favourites will now and then
be moved to toss meat, which is not so good for them, but the dumb
mendicant's delight in it is winning, and a little cannot hurt. Besides,
if any one had a claim on her it was the prince; and as he was always
adoring, never importunate, he restored her to the pedestal she had been
really rudely shaken from by that other who had caught her up suddenly
into the air, and dropped her! A hand abandoned to her slave rewarded
him immeasurably. A heightening of the reward almost took his life.
In the peacefulness of dealing with a submissive love that made her
queenly, the royal, which plucked her from throne to footstool, seemed
predatory and insolent. Thus, after that scene of 'first love,' in which
she had been actress, she became almost (with an inward thrill or two
for the recovering of him) reconciled to the not seeing of the noble
actor; for nothing could erase the scene--it was historic; and Alvan
would always be thought of as a delicious electricity. She and Marko
were together on the summer excursion of her people, and quite sisterly,
she could say, in her delicate scorn of his advantages and her emotions.
True gentlemen are imperfectly valued when they are under the shadow
of giants; but still Clotilde's experience of a giant's manners was
favourable to the liberty she could enjoy in a sisterly intimacy of this
kind, rather warmer than her word