sunland. Her splendid prose Alvan could do what
the sprig of poetry can but suggest. Never would malicious fairy in old
woman's form have offered Alvan a cup of milk to paralyze his bride's
imagination of him confronting perils. Yet, O shameful contrariety of
the fates! he who could, will not; he who would, is incapable. Let it
not be supposed that the desire of her bosom was to be run away with
in person. Her simple human nature wished for the hero to lift her
insensibly over the difficult opening chapter of the romance--through
'the forest,' or half imagined: that done, she felt bold enough to meet
the unimagined, which, as there was no picture of it to terrify her,
seemed an easy gallop into sunland.--Yes, but in the grasp of a great
prose giant, with the poetic departed! Naturally she turned to caress
the poetic while she had it beside her. And it was a wonder to observe
the young prince's heavenly sensitiveness to every variation of her
moods. He knew without hearing when she had next seen Alvan, though
it had not been to speak to him. He looked, and he knew. The liquid
darkness of his large eastern eyes cast a light that brought her heart
out: she confessed it, and she comforted him. The sweetest in the woman
caused her double-dealing.

Now she was aware that Alvan moved behind the screen concealing him. A
common friend of Alvan and her family talked to her of him. He was an
eminent professor, a middleaged, grave and honourable man, not ignorant
that her family entertained views opposed to the pretensions of such a
man as the demagogue and Jew. Nevertheless Alvan could persuade him to
abet the scheme for his meeting Clotilde; nay, to lead to it; ultimately
to allow his own house to be their place of meeting. Alvan achieved the
first of the steps unassisted. Whether or not his character stood
well with a man of the world, his force of character, backed by solid
attainments in addition to brilliant gifts, could win a reputable
citizen and erudite to support him. Rhetoric in a worthy cause has good
chances of carrying the gravest, and the cause might reasonably seem
excellent to the professor when one promising fair to be the political
genius of his time, but hitherto not the quietest of livers, could make
him believe that marriage with this girl would be his clear salvation.
The second step was undesignedly Clotilde's.

She was on the professor's arm at one of the great winter balls of
her conductor's brethren in