She looked up, and smiling through her watery eyes,
which glittered like violets wet with dew, drew out her perfumed
handkerchief, and wiping them, said--
"I thank you, Mr. Constantine. You see by this irrepressible emotion
that I feel Goethe, and did not ask you a vain favor."
Thaddeus bowed, for he was at a loss to guess what kind of a reply
could be expected by so strange a creature.
She continued--
"You are a German, Mr. Constantine. Did you ever see Charlotte?"
"Never, madam."
"I am sorry for that; I should have liked to have heard what sort of
a beauty she was. But don't you think she behaved cruelly to Werter?
Perhaps you knew him?"
"No, madam; this lamentable story happened before I was born."
"How unhappy for him! I am sure you would have made the most charming
friends in the world! Have you a friend, Mr. Constantine."
The count looked at her with surprise. She laughed at the expression
of his countenance.
"I don't mean such friends as one's father, mother, sisters and
relations: most people have enough of them. I mean a tender,
confiding friend, to whom you unbosom all your secrets: who is your
other self--a second soul! In short, a creature in whose existence
you forget your own!"
Thaddeus followed with his eyes the heightened color of the fair
enthusiast, who, accompanying her rhapsody with action expressive as
her words, had to repeat her question, "Have you such a friend?"
before he found recollection to answer her in the negative.
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