Moths by Ouida — page 371: what you’re looking at

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

MOTHS. 86% It was the opera of ‘‘ Romeo e Giulictta.” e knew its music as a child knows its cradle-song, He played, acted, and sang, from one end to the other of the Jong acts, perfectly, but without any consciousness of what he did ‘*T am the mechanical nightingale,” he thought, bitterly: the erowded opera-house swam before his eyes, ‘*Are you ill, Correze?” murmured the great songstress who was his Juliet. ‘*T am cold,” he answered her. It seemed to him asif the cold of those bitter plains, which were the prison of Vere, and seni be her tomb, had entered his blood and frozen his very eart. When he went to his carriage the streets were lined with the throngs of a city that loved him. They pressed to see him, they shouted his name, they flung bouquets of flowers on to him; he was their Roi Soleil, their prince of song. H* wondered was he mad, or were they? His voice felt strangled in his throat; he saw nothing of the lighted streets and the joyous multitudes, he saw only the piteous eyes of the woman he loved as she had said * to him: ‘‘Be my angel—not my tempter!” ‘‘T cannot be her angel,” he said to himself. ‘‘But I will try and save her from devils.” Tn all his life before he had never been at a loss. He had never known before what doubt meant, or ‘¢ What hell it is in waiting to abide.”’ Tis victories had all been facile, his loves had all been swift and smooth, his career had been a via triumphalis without shaduw, he had been happy always, he had had romance in his lite, but no rief, no loss, no regret, he had been the spoiled child ot fate and of the world. Now the fatal tenderness, that unavailing regret, which had been no darker than a summer cloud when he had passed away from the shores of Calvados, leaving the child Vere Herbert in her mother’s hands, had spread over all his present and hung over all the horizon of his future, in a sunless gloom that nothing would ever break or lighten. And he was powerless! , If he could have acted in any way he would have been con- soled. The elasticity and valor of his temperament would have leaped up to action like a bright sword from the scabbard, But he could do nothing. The woman he adored might perish slowly ef those nameless maladies which kill the body through the mind; and he could do nothing. He would not tempt her, and he could not avenge her. | He who knew the world so intimately, who had seen a million times a laugh, a hint, a word, destroy the honor of a name, knew well that he would but harm her more by any defense of her innocence, any protest against the tyranny of her husband. gThough he gave his life to defend her fair fame, the world would only laugh. cComicboo Sj com