nceive and comprehend."

She shuddered at being alone, rang for her dressing-maid, and made an
elaborate toilet.

"Tell me how old I am. Do you not know?" she suddenly asked.

The dressing-maid was startled at the question, and not returning an
immediate answer, Bella continued:--

"I have never been young."

"O my gracious lady, you are still young, and you never looked better
than you do now."

"Do you think so?" said Bella, throwing back her head, for a voice
within her said: Why shouldest thou not be also young for once? Thou
art! Thou art what thou canst not help being; and let the world be what
it must be too.

Leaving the house, she went around the garden, seeming to herself to be
a captive. Unconsciously she went into the room on the ground-floor,
and as she stood near the unearthed antiquities, a voice within her
said:--

"What are all these? What are these vessels? Lava-ashes! all ashes!
What is all this antiquarian rummaging? What is the use of this picking
up of old buried trash, this perpetual thinking and talking about
humanity and progress? all foreign, dead, a conversation over a
death-bed; nothing but distraction, forgetfulness; no life, no hope, no
future; never towards the day, always towards the night,--the night of
the past, and the ideal of humanity. But I am not the past, I am not an
ideal of humanity. I am the to-day, I will be the today. Ah me, where
am I!" She went into the garden, and watched two butterflies hovering
hither and thither in the air, now alighting upon the flowers, now
coming together, separating again, and again uniting.

"This is life!" was the cry within her. "This is life! they grub up no
ancient relics, they live with no antiquities."

Then came a swallow darting down, seized one of the butterflies, and
vanished.

What is thy life to thee now, thou poor butterfly?

Below, over the Rhine, clouds of smoke from the steamboats were
floating in the air, and Bella thought:--

"If one could only thus fly away! What do we here? We heat with our
blood this dead earth, so that it may have some little life. Our
life-breath is nothing but a puff of vapor that mingles with thousands
of other vaporous films; this we call life, and it vanishes like the
thousands----"

The children of the laborers upon the estate, coming out of school,
saluted the gracious lady.

Bella stared at them. What becomes of these children? What is the use
of this fatuous renewing of humanity?