II.
THE APPARITION.
Their first meeting had been a very strange one. The young naturalistwas a passionate admirer of the beauties of Nature, and was alwayslooking for grand effects. The year before, he had made a journey toNorway to visit the silent fiords, in which the sea was swallowed up;the mountains, whose snow-crowned summits lift their spotless brows farabove the clouds; and to make a special study of the auroraborealis,--that most magnificent exhibition of our planet's life. I hadaccompanied him on the journey. The sunsets over the deep, calm fiords,the rise of the splendid orb on the mountains, charmed his poetic andartistic soul with an indescribable emotion. We remained there more thana month, going through the picturesque region of the Scandinavian Alps.Now, Norway was the home of that child of the North who was to exert sostrong an influence over his unawakened heart. She was there, only a fewsteps away from him; and yet it was not until the very day we left thatChance, that god of the ancients, decided to bring them together.
The morning light was gilding the distant summits. The young Norwegiangirl's father had brought her to one of the mountains much frequented byexcursionists, like the Righi in Switzerland, to see the sunrise, whichthat day was of surpassing beauty. To better distinguish certain detailsof the landscape, Iclea had mounted a little hillock a few yards fartheraway, and was quite alone; when turning with her face from the sun toembrace the whole horizon, she saw her own image, her whole figure, noton the mountain nor the earth, but on the very sky itself. A luminousaureole framed her head and shoulders with a shining crown of glory, anda large aerial circle, faintly tinted with the colors of the rainbow,surrounded the mysterious apparition.
Astonished and touched by the singularity of the vision, and still underthe influence of the gorgeous sunrise, she did not at first notice thatanother face, that of a man, was by the side of her own,--the motionlesssilhouette of a traveller in contemplation before her, recalling thestatues of saints on their pedestals in churches. This masculine figureand her own were framed in by the same aerial circle. Suddenly sheperceived the strange profile in the air, and thought herself theplaything of a fantastic vision; she started back in her amazement witha gesture of surprise, almost of fear. Her image in the air reproducedthe same gesture, and she saw the traveller's wraith put his hand to hishat and take it off, as if he were bowing to the heavens, then lose theclearness of its outlines, and fade away at the same time as her ownfigure.
The transfiguration on Mount Tabor when the disciples of Jesus suddenlysaw their Master's image on the sky, accompanied by those of Moses andElias, could not have caused its witnesses any greater stupefaction thanthe innocent Norwegian girl felt before this _anthelion_, whose theoryis well known to all meteorologists.
This apparition fixed itself upon her mental retina like a marvellousdream. She called her father, who had remained a few steps away from thelittle mound; but when he reached her it had all disappeared. She askedhim to explain it; but he replied only by a doubt, almost a denial,of the truth of the phenomenon. The excellent man, formerly afield-officer, belonged to that category of distinguished sceptics whosimply deny everything of which they are ignorant or which they cannotexplain. It was all in vain that the lovely girl assured him that shehad seen her reflection in the sky, and also that of a man whom shejudged was young and good-looking; all in vain that she related thedetails of the apparition, and added that the figures were much largerthan life-size, like enormous silhouettes,--he declared authoritativelyand with considerable emphasis that it was what is called an opticalillusion, produced by the imagination when one has not slept well,particularly in youth.
But on the evening of that day, as we were going on board the steamer, Inoticed a young girl, with wind-tossed hair, who was looking at myfriend in open astonishment. She had her father's arm, and was standingon the wharf as motionless as Lot's wife turned into a pillar of salt. Isigned to my friend; but no sooner had he turned his head towards herthan I saw her face crimson with a sudden flush: she at once turnedaway, and fixed her eyes on the paddle-wheel, which was just beginningto move. I do not know whether Spero noticed her confusion. As a fact,we had seen nothing of that morning's aerial phenomenon, at least notwhile the young girl was near us, and she had been hidden from us by alittle clump of bushes; the magnificence of the sunrise had drawn usrather to the western side. However, he saluted Norway, which heregretted to leave, with the same gesture with which he had greeted therising sun, and the pretty stranger had taken the bow for herself.
Two months later, the Comte de K---- gave a large reception in honor ofthe recent successes of his compatriot, Christine Nilsson. The youngNorwegian girl and her father, who had come to Paris to pass a part ofthe winter, were among the guests, who had long known each other asfellow-countrymen, Norway and Sweden being sisters. We went there forthe first time, our invitation being due to the appearance of Spero'slatest book, which had already met with signal success. Iclea was adreamy, thoughtful girl, well informed, thanks to the sound educationgiven in Northern countries; she was eager to learn, and had read andre-read with curiosity the somewhat mystical book in which the newmetaphysician, dissatisfied with Pascal's "Thoughts," had laid bare hissoul's anxieties. Several months before, she had successfully passed the_brevet superieur_ examination; and having abandoned the study ofmedicine, which had at first attracted her, was beginning to look withsome curiosity into the recent investigations of psychologicalphysiology.
When M. George Spero was announced, she felt that an unknown friend,almost a confidant, had arrived. She started as if from an electricshock. He was not much of a society man. Timid, ill at ease in mixedassemblies, he did not care to dance, play, or converse, but preferredto stay apart in one corner of the room with some friends; quiteindifferent to the waltzes and quadrilles, but more attentive to severalmasterpieces of modern music feelingly played. The entire evening passedwithout his being near her, although he had noticed her, and in allthat brilliant ball had seen but her. Their eyes met many times. Atlast, about two o'clock in the morning, when the company was lessformal, he ventured to approach her, without speaking, however. It wasshe who first spoke to him, to express a doubt about the conclusion ofhis last book.
Flattered, but still more surprised to learn that those metaphysicalpages had had so young a reader, and a lady too, the author repliedrather awkwardly that those investigations were somewhat uninterestingfor a woman. She answered that women, and even young girls, were notexclusively absorbed in frivolity; that she knew several whooccasionally worked, thought, endeavored, and studied. She spoke with agood deal of spirit, defending women against the contempt of certainscientists of the other sex, and maintained their intellectual equality.She had no trouble in winning a cause to which her listener was by nomeans hostile.
The new book--whose success had been immediate and brilliant,notwithstanding the gravity of its subject--had surrounded GeorgeSpero's name with an actual halo of fame, and the brilliant writer waswarmly welcomed in every drawing-room. The two young people hadexchanged but a few words when they found themselves the general objectof attention, and were forced to reply to different questions, whichinterrupted their interview. One of the most eminent critics of the dayhad recently devoted a long article to the new work, and the subject ofthe book became at once the topic of general conversation. Iclea took nopart in it; but she felt--and women are not often mistaken--that thehero had noticed her, that her thought was already linked to his by aninvisible thread, and that while he replied to the more or lesscommon-place questions thrust upon him, his mind was not wholly on theconversation. This first little triumph was enough, she cared for noother; and moreover she had recognized in his profile both themysterious silhouette in the aerial apparition and the young stranger onthe steamer at Christiania.
In that first interview he had not hesitated to express his enthusiasticadmiration for the marvellous scenery in Norway, and to tell her abouthis visit there. She was eager for a word, some sort of an allusion tothe aerial phe
nomenon which had made so great an impression upon her,and could not understand his silence in regard to it. Not havingobserved the _anthelion_ when she was reflected upon it, he had not beenparticularly surprised at an occurrence which he had already studiedbefore and under better conditions,--from the car of a balloon; andhaving seen nothing specially noticeable, had nothing to say about it.The occurrence at the steamboat landing too had entirely passed from hismemory; so that although the fair beauty of the young girl did not seementirely unfamiliar to him, yet he had no recollection of having met herbefore. As for me, I had recognized her at once. He talked about thelakes, rivers, fiords, and mountains of Norway; learned from her thather mother had died very young from heart-disease, that her fatherpreferred living in Paris to anywhere else, and that it was probable sheshould not visit her native land except at rare intervals for thefuture.
A remarkable identity of ideas and tastes, a ready and mutual sympathy,a reciprocal respect, soon made them friends. Brought up and educatedwith English ideas, she enjoyed that independence of mind and freedom ofaction which Frenchwomen never know until after marriage; she felthampered by none of the social conventionalities which with us aresupposed to protect innocence and virtue. Two friends of her own age hadeven come to Paris to finish their musical education. They were livingtogether in the very heart of Babylon in perfect safety, never evensuspecting the dangers by which Paris is said to be beset. The younggirl received George Spero's visits as her father would have receivedthem himself; and in a few weeks the congeniality in their tastes anddispositions had united them in the same studies, the same researches,often in the very same thoughts. Almost every afternoon he went, drawnby a secret attraction, from the Latin quarter along the borders of theSeine as far as the Trocadero, and passed several hours with Icleaeither in the library, on the garden-terrace, or walking in the wood.
The first impression aroused by the apparition on the sky had remainedin Iclea's mind. She looked up to the young savant, if not as a god orhero, at least as a man far superior to his contemporaries. The perusalof his works strengthened this feeling and increased it; she felt morethan admiration, she had an actual veneration for him. When she knewhim personally, the great man did not descend from his pedestal. Shefound him so high, so excellent in his works, his inquiries, hisstudies, and at the same time so simple, so sincere, so good-natured, soindulgent to all, and (seizing any pretext for hearing him talkedabout), she was sometimes forced to listen to such unjust criticismsupon him from rivals, that she began to have an almost maternal feelingfor him. Does the sentiment of protecting affection exist in every younggirl's heart? Perhaps. But assuredly she loved him thus at first. I havealready said that the basis of this thinker's character was somewhatmelancholy,--that melancholy of the soul of which Pascal speaks, andwhich is like homesickness for heaven. In fact, he was ever seeking tosolve the eternal question, Hamlet's "To be, or not to be?" Sometimes hewould be sad, downcast. But by a singular contrast, when his unhappythoughts had worn themselves out, so to speak, in vain research, and hisexhausted brain had lost the power of further vibration, a kind ofrepose came to him,--he recovered his ordinary quiet; the circulation ofhis red blood stimulated his organic life; philosophy disappeared,leaving him like a simple child, amused at trifles; and having almostfeminine tastes, delighting in flowers, perfumes, music, revery, heappeared sometimes astonishingly light-hearted.