But Rosine! My bewilderment there surpasses description.
I embraced five opportunities of passing her cabinet
that day, with a view to contemplating her charms,
and finding out the secret of their influence.
She was pretty, young, and wore a well-made dress.
All very good points, and, I suppose, amply sufficient
to account, in any philosophic mind, for any amount
of agony and distraction in a young man, like Dr.
John. Still, I could not help forming half a wish
that the said doctor were my brother; or at least
that he had a sister or a mother who would kindly
sermonize him. I say half a wish; I broke
it, and flung it away before it became a whole one,
discovering in good time its exquisite folly.
“Somebody,” I argued, “might as well
sermonize Madame about her young physician: and
what good would that do?”
I believe Madame sermonized herself. She did
not behave weakly, or make herself in any shape ridiculous.
It is true she had neither strong feelings to overcome,
nor tender feelings by which to be miserably pained.
It is true likewise that she had an important avocation,
a real business to fill her time, divert her thoughts,
and divide her interest. It is especially true
that she possessed a genuine good sense which is not
given to all women nor to all men; and by dint of
these combined advantages she behaved wisely—she
behaved well. Brava! once more, Madame Beck.
I saw you matched against an Apollyon of a predilection;
you fought a good fight, and you overcame!
CHAPTER XII.
THE CASKET.
Behind the house at the Rue Fossette there was a garden—large,
considering that it lay in the heart of a city, and
to my recollection at this day it seems pleasant:
but time, like distance, lends to certain scenes an
influence so softening; and where all is stone around,
blank wall and hot pavement, how precious seems one
shrub, how lovely an enclosed and planted spot of
ground!
There went a tradition that Madame Beck’s house
had in old days been a convent. That in years
gone by—how long gone by I cannot tell,
but I think some centuries—before the city
had over-spread this quarter, and when it was tilled
ground and avenue, and such deep and leafy seclusion
as ought to embosom a religious house-that something
had happened on this site which, rousing fear and
inflicting horror, had left to the place the inheritance
of a ghost-story. A vague tale went of a black
and white nun, sometimes, on some night or nights of
the year, seen in some part of this vicinage.
The ghost must have been built out some ages ago,
for there were houses all round now; but certain convent-relics,
in the shape of old and huge fruit-trees, yet consecrated
the spot; and, at the foot of one—a Methuselah
of a pear-tree, dead, all but a few boughs which
still faithfully renewed their perfumed snow in spring,
and their honey-sweet pendants in autumn—you
saw, in scraping away the mossy earth between the half-bared
