Desiree herself was slim enough and as yet only half
grown. She did not dance so well as Mathilde,
who moved through a quadrille with the air of a duchess,
and threw into a polonaise or mazurka a quiet grace
which was the envy and despair of her pupils.
Mathilde was patient with the slow and heavy of foot,
while Desiree told them bluntly that they were fat.
Nevertheless, they were afraid of Mathilde, and only
laughed at Desiree when she rushed angrily at them,
and, seizing them by the arms, danced them round the
room with the energy of despair.
Sebastian, who had an oddly judicial air, such as
men acquire who are in authority, held the balance
evenly between the sisters, and smiled apologetically
over his fiddle towards the victim of Desiree’s
impetuosity.
“Yes,” he would reply to watching mothers,
who tried to lead him to say that their daughter was
the best dancer in the school: “Yes, Mathilde
puts it into their heads, and Desiree shakes it down
to their feet.”
In all matters of the household Desiree played a similar
part. She was up early and still astir after
nine o’clock at night, when the other houses
in the Frauengasse were quiet, if there were work to
do.
“It is because she has no method,” said
Mathilde, who had herself a well-ordered mind, and
that quickness which never needs to hurry.
The moth will singe
her wings, and singed return,
Her love of light quenching
her fear of pain.
There are quite a number of people who get through
life without realizing their own insignificance.
Ninety-nine out of a hundred persons signify nothing,
and the hundredth is usually so absorbed in the message
which he has been sent into the world to deliver that
he loses sight of the messenger altogether.
By a merciful dispensation of Providence we are permitted
to bustle about in our immediate little circle like
the ant, running hither and thither with all the sublime
conceit of that insect. We pick up, as he does,
a burden which on close inspection will be found to
be absolutely valueless, something that somebody else
has thrown away. We hoist it over obstructions
while there is usually a short way round; we fret
and sweat and fume. Then we drop the burden and
rush off at a tangent to pick up another. We
write letters to our friends explaining to them what
we are about. We even indite diaries to be read
by goodness knows whom, explaining to ourselves what
we have been doing. Sometimes we find something
that really looks valuable, and rush to our particular
ant-heap with it while our neighbours pause and watch
us. But they really do not care; and if the
rumour of our discovery reach so far as the next ant-heap,
the bustlers there are almost indifferent, though a
few may feel a passing pang of jealousy. They
may perhaps remember our name, and will soon forget
what we discovered—which is Fame.
While we are falling over each other to attain this,
and dying to tell each other what it feels like when
we have it, or think we have it, let us pause for
a moment and think of an ant—who kept a
diary.
