A Woman-Hater [26]
seem to vary only on the surface. One looks too gentle and sweet to give any creature pain; I cherish her like a tender plant; she deceives me for the coarsest fellow she can find. Another comes the frank and candid dodge; she is so off-handed she shows me it is not worth her while to betray. She deceives me, like the other, and with as little discrimination. The next has a face of beaming innocence, and a limpid eye that looks like transparent candor; she gazes long and calmly in my face, as if her eye loved to dwell on me, gazes with the eye of a gazelle or a young hare, and the baby lips below outlie the hoariest male fox in the Old Jewry. But, to complete the delusion, all my sweethearts and wives are romantic and poetical skin-deep--or they would not attract me--and all turn out vulgar to the core. By their lovers alone can you ever know them. By the men they can't love, and the men they do love, you find these creatures that imitate sentiment so divinely are hard, prosaic, vulgar little things, thinly gilt and double varnished."
"They are much better than we are; but you don't know how to take them," said Severne, with the calm superiority of success.
"No," replied Vizard, dryly, "curse me if I do. Well, I did hope I had outgrown my mania, as I have done the toothache; for this time I had passed the fatal period, the three years. It is nearly four years now since I went through the established process--as fixed beforehand as the dyer's or the cotton-weaver's--adored her, trusted her blindly, suspected her, watched her, detected her, left her. By-the-by, she was my wife, the last; but that made no difference; she was neither better nor worse than the rest, and her methods and idiotic motives of deceit identical. Well, Ned, I was mistaken. Yesterday night I met my Fate once more."
"Where? In Frankfort?"
"No: at Homburg; at the opera. You must give me your word not to tell a soul."
"I pledge you my word of honor."
"Well, the lady who sung the part of Siebel."
"Siebel?" muttered Severne.
"Yes," said Vizard, dejectedly.
Severne fixed his eyes on his friend with a strange expression of confusion and curiosity, as if he could not take it all in. But he said nothing, only looked very hard all the time.
Vizard burst out, "'O miserae hominum mentes, O pectora caeca!' There I sat, in the stalls, a happy man comparatively, because my heart, though full of scars, was at peace, and my reason, after periodical abdications, had resumed its throne, for good; so I, weak mortal, fancied. Siebel appeared; tall, easy, dignified, and walking like a wave; modest, fair, noble, great, dreamy, and, above all, divinely sad; the soul of womanhood and music poured from her honey lips; she conquered all my senses: I felt something like a bolt of ice run down my back. I ought to have jumped up and fled the theater. I wish I had. But I never do. I am incurable. The charm deepened; and when she had sung 'Le Parlate d'Amor' as no mortal ever sung and looked it, she left the stage and carried my heart and soul away with her. What chance had I? Here shone all the beauties that adorn the body, all the virtues and graces that embellish the soul; they were wedded to poetry and ravishing music, and gave and took enchantment. I saw my paragon glide away, like a goddess, past the scenery, and I did not see her meet her lover at the next step--a fellow with a wash-leather face, greasy locks in a sausage roll, and his hair shaved off his forehead--and snatch a pot of porter from his hands, and drain it to the dregs, and say, 'It is all right, Harry: _that_ fetched 'em.' But I know, by experience, she did; so _sauve qui peut._ Dear friend and fellow-lunatic, for my sake and yours, leave Frankfort with me to-morrow."
Severne hung his head, and thought hard. Here was a new and wonderful turn. He felt all manner of strange things--a pang of jealousy, for one. He felt that, on every account, it would be wise to go, and, indeed, dangerous to stay. But a mania is a mania, and so he could not. "Look here, old fellow," he said, "if the
"They are much better than we are; but you don't know how to take them," said Severne, with the calm superiority of success.
"No," replied Vizard, dryly, "curse me if I do. Well, I did hope I had outgrown my mania, as I have done the toothache; for this time I had passed the fatal period, the three years. It is nearly four years now since I went through the established process--as fixed beforehand as the dyer's or the cotton-weaver's--adored her, trusted her blindly, suspected her, watched her, detected her, left her. By-the-by, she was my wife, the last; but that made no difference; she was neither better nor worse than the rest, and her methods and idiotic motives of deceit identical. Well, Ned, I was mistaken. Yesterday night I met my Fate once more."
"Where? In Frankfort?"
"No: at Homburg; at the opera. You must give me your word not to tell a soul."
"I pledge you my word of honor."
"Well, the lady who sung the part of Siebel."
"Siebel?" muttered Severne.
"Yes," said Vizard, dejectedly.
Severne fixed his eyes on his friend with a strange expression of confusion and curiosity, as if he could not take it all in. But he said nothing, only looked very hard all the time.
Vizard burst out, "'O miserae hominum mentes, O pectora caeca!' There I sat, in the stalls, a happy man comparatively, because my heart, though full of scars, was at peace, and my reason, after periodical abdications, had resumed its throne, for good; so I, weak mortal, fancied. Siebel appeared; tall, easy, dignified, and walking like a wave; modest, fair, noble, great, dreamy, and, above all, divinely sad; the soul of womanhood and music poured from her honey lips; she conquered all my senses: I felt something like a bolt of ice run down my back. I ought to have jumped up and fled the theater. I wish I had. But I never do. I am incurable. The charm deepened; and when she had sung 'Le Parlate d'Amor' as no mortal ever sung and looked it, she left the stage and carried my heart and soul away with her. What chance had I? Here shone all the beauties that adorn the body, all the virtues and graces that embellish the soul; they were wedded to poetry and ravishing music, and gave and took enchantment. I saw my paragon glide away, like a goddess, past the scenery, and I did not see her meet her lover at the next step--a fellow with a wash-leather face, greasy locks in a sausage roll, and his hair shaved off his forehead--and snatch a pot of porter from his hands, and drain it to the dregs, and say, 'It is all right, Harry: _that_ fetched 'em.' But I know, by experience, she did; so _sauve qui peut._ Dear friend and fellow-lunatic, for my sake and yours, leave Frankfort with me to-morrow."
Severne hung his head, and thought hard. Here was a new and wonderful turn. He felt all manner of strange things--a pang of jealousy, for one. He felt that, on every account, it would be wise to go, and, indeed, dangerous to stay. But a mania is a mania, and so he could not. "Look here, old fellow," he said, "if the