Moths by Ouida — page 240: what you’re looking at

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

— Ps 236 MOPHS. to go across thence into the beautiful valley of Ens and descend next day into the Maindling Pass between the Salzkammergut and Styria. He was still at a great elevation, still amidst snow and ice, and the Rauris lay below him like a green billowy ‘sea. There was some edelweiss in his path, and he stooped and plucked a little piece and put it in his wallet. ‘© Oh, ice-flower, you are not colder than my heart,” he said to himself, ‘‘But it is best to go; best for her. I will dedicate my- self to you, ice-flower, and of the roses I will have no more; no, and no more of the ‘lilies and languor.’ Edelweiss, you shall live with me and be my amulet. You wiil wither and shrivel and be nothing, but you will remind me-of my vow, and, if others will rage, letthem. To the ice-fluwer I will be true as far as a man in his weakness can be. Will that denial be love? In the old chivalrous days they read it so. They kept their faith though they never saw their lady’s face. The Duchesse Jeanne would laugh—and others too.” And he went down over the rugged stony slope, with the snow deep on either side, and the green ice glistening at his feet, and the woods of the Rauris lifting themselves up from the clouds and the gray air below; and there on Dachstein, where never note of nightingale was heard since the world was made, this nightingale, that ladies loved and that roses entangled in their thorns, sang wearily to himself the song of Heine—the song of the palm-tree and the pine. CHAPTER XX.. THE days went on, and the duchess made them gay enough, being one of those persons who cannot live without excitement, and who make it a germinate wherever they are. Carried in her chaise-a-porteurs, playing chemin de fer on her balcony, waltzing at the little dances of the Imperial court, making excursions in the pine woods or down the lakes, she surrounded herself with officers and courtiers, and created around her that atmosphere of diversion, revelry, and intrigue without which a woman of our world can no more live than a mocking-bird without a globe of water. But all the while she never relaxed in a vigilant ob- servation of her companion; and the departure of Correze baffled and annoyed her. She had had a suspicion, and it had gone out in smoke. She had spent much ingenuity in contriving to bring Vere to the Salzkammergut, and after having disbursed much in discovering _ the projects for the summer sojourns of Correze; and with his departure all her carefully-built house of cards fell to pieces. She did not understand it; she was completely bewildered, as he had intended her to be, by the airy indifference of his message to her companion, and his failure to return from the glaciers into the valley. She regretted that she had troubled herself to be buried for a month in this green tomb among the hills; but it was im- possible to change her imprisonment now. They had begun the routine of the waters, and she had to solace herself as best she might with the Imperial courtesies, and with sending little notes _ y com G 900 CS (0)