LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume VII, Issue 787, 29 December 1876, Page 3

LITERATURE.

IN A RAILWAY CARRIAGE. (From the World,) ( Concluded.) I at once suspected that she was a foreigner. She spoke with extreme refinement of phrase, and her words were chosen with much elegance ; she had no accent whatever, and yet there was a small some thing in the timbre of her voice which was not exactly French. At first she articulated her sentences with so much apathy, and indeed with so visible a strain, that I feared our conversation would not last; but as she finished a peach which she had added to her menu, and began to wipe her fingers, her joyless eyes fell upon the book beside her, and they lighted up a little as she said to me, ‘lam reading Lacordaire’s “Life of Ste. Marie Madeleine.” What a poem ! Do you know it ? ’ Not only did I know it, but once, in Provence, I had been to the mountain of the Sainte Baume, where Mary Magdalen passed the later years of her life, and to St. Maximum, where she was buried. We had therefore an immediate topic of discourse, and it led us so far that she grew almost animated on it. Indeed, she clearly made an effort to shake away her consuming dejection, and went on from subject to subject. From Lacordaire she got to Montalembert, to religious art, to art in general, to astronomy and politics, to foreign literatures (she seemed to speak all the languages of Europe), to Assyrian inscriptions, geology, and the Icelandic Sagas. She treated every subject with equal brilliancy and equal ease; she gave me the impression that she knew everything; but though she frequently showed signs of the deepest earnestness, and even sometimes of enthusiasm, she was unable to sustain the struggle for many minutes at a time ; she went on bravely talking, but she relapsed continually into desolation. It was clear that there was a great black mark on her life, that she was pursued by some relentless preoccupation which she was powerless to banish except for short passing moments. She had not that sweetest of the charms of woman—a sunny smile, but yet she appeared to me more and more to be the most admirable creature I had ever seen. In her instants of excitement the blood rushed suddenly to her transparent cheeks, and rendered her for a few seconds radiantly brilliant. Her attitudes and her movements were stately, broken-hearted, or impassioned turn by turn. There was about her an intermixture of impressive grandeur, enduring sorrow, and overwhelming seductiveness. My astonishment at her intellect became as great as my wonder at her person, and my respectful sympathy for her grew almost deeper than either. I noticed early in the talk that, though she responded freely to everything I said about books and thoughts and things, she never followed up the allusions which, in the hope of finding out who she was I constantly made to persons and to places. She avoided all my attempts to extract from her a reply about people she might know or houses she might have visited. And this resolute unconsciousness of persons was not limited to others; she applied it to herself as well. She treated herself as if she were some one else. It was plain that she had not the faintest idea of the effect which ahe was producing on me, of the dominating influence which she was exercising. I gazed at her with a perpetually augmenting admiration, which, with all my efforts, I could not entirely conceal; I followed, with an ardour that I did not seek to hide, the outbreaks of her eloquence and the brightness of her farreaching thought; but there she sat, as utterly unwitting and unknowing as if I were looking out of window at the railings of the line, or listening to the whistle of the engine. And yet the finished elegance of the details of her dress supplied a seeming proof that she did know she was a woman. I kept on leading the conversation, tentatively, into constantly changing directions, in the hope that she would let fall some unguarded word which would aid me afterwards in the attempt to discover her name. But it was all useless; she eluded every snare I set, and I was getting so near my destination that I began to despair altogether of finding out a thread to guide me. I felt, though, that it would be an object in life to know her, and that such a woman must lift up every one who has the privilege of approaching her. s fiTliis was myjstate when, as we got close’to Melun, I spoke, by the merest accident, of Venice. I saw instantly that I had touched an echoing chord at last, for she made no answer, turned her eyes away, and, pale as she was, became paler still. If I was really to endeavour to detect some clue to her, the moment had come to see whether this was one. But I hesitated and faltered, for I could not doubt, from the expression of her face, that I had caused her some special pain. I felt repentant and ashamed. I sought vainly for a phrase that would enable me to try to turn to a new subject, but none came; I sat stupidly silent, with a despairing face in front of me. To my astonishment she spoke. In a low changed voice, dreamily, without looking at me, as if she were talking to herself or to an unseen listener, she murmured, ‘Venice? Yes—Venice! Venice leaves memories to us all. It is a place that can put a stamp on a life, that can impart a direction to an existence, that can throw a glory or a shadow over a heart.’ And then, after a pause, she added in the same strange tone, ‘ The shadow of Venice has from all time fallen heavily on those who have come within its range.’ At that moment the train stopped. I never felt so helplessly idiotic. I longed wildly to say something, no matter what, before I got out. But my tongue was dried up; it stuck to the roof of my mouth. All that I could do was to bow down to my knees as I left her. I think 1 dimly heard her say, * Adieu, monsieur; ’ and then a porter banged the door, and I was alone on the platform staring at the dsparting train which was carrying her on to Paris. What can have happened to her at Venice ? Shall I ever see her again.