Moths by Ouida — page 254: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

O50 | MOTHS. internal nothingness! What a vapid and vacant wind-bag must be the man who collapses into a yawn!” ‘‘ Nevertheless you were very near one then,” said the Danish beauty, casting her Coppee aside on the sand. ‘*‘ Compliments aside, you are changed, do you know? You are serious, you are preoccupied.” At that moment his secretary brought him his letters. His ladies gave him permission to glance at them, for some were marked ‘‘urgent.” Among them was the letter of Madame de Sonnaz. He read it with surprise and some anger. It was a temptation; and the writer had known very well that it was so. | He would not have touched the roubles of the master of Svir, and would not willingly even have broken his bread, yet he would have given everything he possessed to go, to be under the same roof with the wife 35f Zouroff, to see, to hear, to charm, to influence her, to sing his songs for her ear alone. The rough gray northern ocean came booming over the sands, Correze sat silent and with a shadow on his face. Then he rose, wrote a line in a leaf of his note-book, and gave it to his secretary to have telegraphed at once to Ischl. The line said merely— ‘‘Mille remerciments. _ Tres-honore. Impossible d’accepter, a cause d’engagements. Tous mes hommages.” The sea rolled in with a grand sound, like a chant on a great organ. ‘*It is very bourgeois to do right,” thought Correze, ‘‘ but one must do it sometimes. Madame Jeanne is too quick: she plays her cards coarsely. All those Second-Empire women are con- spirators, but they conspire too hurriedly tv succeed. My beauti- ful edelweiss, do they think I should pluck you from your heights? Oh, the Goths! Madame,” he said, aloud, ‘‘do be merciful, and read me the harmoniesof Coppee again. You will not? That is revengeful. Perhaps I did not attend enough to his charming verses. There is another verse running in my head. Do you knowit? I think Sully-Prudhomme wrote it. It is one of those things so true that they hurt one, and one carries the burden of them about like a sad memory: ** Dans les verres epais du cabaret brutal, Le vin bleu coule a flots, et sans treve a la ronde, Dans le calice fin plus rarement abonde Un vin dont la clarte soit digne du cristal. *¢ ¥nfin, la coupe d’or du haut d’un piedestal Attend, vide toujours, bien que large et profonde, Un cru dont la noblesse a la sienne reponde: On tremble d’en souiller l’ouvrage et le metal.”’ ‘Have your letters made you think of that poem?” asked his companion. _ And where is the golden cup?” _, At the banquet of a debauchee who prefers | ‘Les verres epais du cabaret brutal.’ - ~ J t; , ty & AY : * i : 4 - * Sif ; tebe e| ; ‘ ; ; vhs Pa ate aM a “Tee, ary tse er iN . Pus Miho yy ta *.8 - - sae a AY. i. yr’ Aaa? bh 7 ae "me r 4 iu "yi ‘ \hy 7 Pty Ts" & he Whiray/% , WA _