To love you so, only that I may be spurned and thrust aside, ignored,
forgotten. But to-morrow I will try again. I will take the opera to
the theatres, I will see the managers, I will even tell them about
myself and about Hortense--but it will be hard. They do not know me,
they do not know Hortense. They will laugh, they will say "You fool."
And I shall be helpless, I shall let them say it. They will never
listen to me, though I play my most beautiful phrase, for I am nobody.
And Hortense, the child with the royal air, Hortense, with her
imperial brow and her hair rolled over its cushion, Hortense, the
_Chatelaine_ of _Beau Sejour_, the delicate, haughty, pale and
impassioned daughter of a noble house, that Hortense, my Hortense,
is nobody!
Who in this great London will believe in me, who will care to know
about Hortense or about _Beau Sejour_? If they ask me, I shall say--
oh! proudly--not in Normandy nor in Alsace, but far away across a
great water dwells such a maiden in such a _chateau_. There by the
side of a northern river, ever rippling, ever sparkling in Summer,
hard, hard frozen in winter, stretches a vast estate. I remember its
impenetrable pinewood, its deep ravine; I see the _chateau_, long
and white and straggling, with the red tiled towers and the tall
French windows; I see the terrace where the hound must still sleep;
I see the square side tower with the black iron shutters; I see the
very window where Hortense has set her light; I see the floating
cribs on the river, I hear the boatmen singing--
Descendez a l'ombre,
Ma Jolie blonde.
And now I am dreaming surely! This is London, not _Beau Sejour_, and
Hortense is far away, and it is that cursed fellow in the street I
hear! The morrow comes on quickly. If I were to draw up that crooked
blind now I should see the first streaks of daylight. Who pinned
those other curtains together? That was well done, for I don't want
to see the daylight; and it comes in, you know, Hortense, when you
think it is shut out. Somebody calls it _fingers_, and that is just
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