Isa Blagden

“ At that supreme moment of sorrow there could be no feigning. No sister ever kissed her brother, no mother ever pressed her lips to the pale brow of her son, with more pure or more holy affection. She then looked round the room once more, and left it without a word.
I supported her in silence into the carriage. She sank back, and I could hear her weeping convulsively. I have never witnessed such tears: they were mingled with such sobs, such faint cries, such deep sad sighs. The heart must have been well nigh broken from which such a manifestation of grief could proceed. ”

“ Beauty in the North is spread among a whole population, and there is a general sense of it, from the beautiful white and pink complexions and blue eyes which perpetually attract us; but in Italy there is, as it were, a concentration of beauty in one favoured individual. Out of a mass of swarthy skins, dull hair, and dead black eyes, one human being steps forward with all the dark transformed into light, with features clearly cut as a statue’s, and with an amber glory shining through the bronze cheek which transfigures that kind of skin into the rarest and most attractive beauty. ”

“ The dying girl is so young, has such a saint-like patience impressed on her childlike brow and composed mouth, that the tenderest pity is mingled with our admiration.
In the other fresco there is the same girlish sweetness, but hushed to solemn peace: the bright eyes are closed, the gentle hands clasped, and “umile in tanta gloria” she lies unheeding all the pomps of the funeral show, deaf to the grief and affection lavished on the frail body she has left, received, sheltered, safe with God! ”

“ My love for Ida seemed to be increased by my love for her father; my love for Rupert flowed into and exalted my love for his child. I was the companion of both, and towards both I felt a mother’s yearning. It was the purest, sweetest, most unselfish feeling of my life. With what joy I found the gift in myself, the capacity for such a love. A man who possesses what he has supposed hitherto to be a barren estate, when he sees the first glimmering of the ore which proclaims a gold mine, may have a similar feeling. ”

“ His views of life and the world jarred upon me. He and my husband talked in a manner that was entirely incomprehensible to me. All private ties or duties were ignored. Life was to be used for public and political purposes only; state intrigues were the aim of existence—expediency its principle. A dreadful loneliness seemed to grow around me. I began to feel like the child whose fairy gifts all withered in her grasp. A husband, a brother, a gay and brilliant circle of which I was the centre,—and yet I was alone.
“We went to Vienna about eighteen months after my marriage. ”

“ Such an influx of affection as I drew, first from Ida and then from her father, was a boon which to me, who had led hitherto so isolated and unloved a life, seemed inestimable. I was lifted at once into a region of warmth and light out of frozen darkness. The injudicious affections of women are often blamed. Blindness, and a moral perversity of choice, are imputed to us, when our love is fixed on an unworthy object. This may be true in the sense of love proper; there, a personal instinct ought to adjust the moral balance, but in a maternal or sisterly love the rule fails. ”

“ I know one thing, certainly, that if I were to die this instant, and meet Rupert face to face, before God, my affection towards him would need no purifying change. There is a consolation to me in this thought. Would I could feel as clearly innocent towards others. From the beginning my life has been wrong. I have been pure in thought and deed, and yet how erring. Submission to the will of God, patience in bearing trials which had been inflicted upon me, resignation, were all wanting. We can never be truly happy, till we learn to be content with unhappiness. ”

“ I saw her erect, superb, defiant; she stood before him like a flame, thrilling with an indignation which words seemed powerless to express.
“Santa, you are mad.”
“Not yet, Giovanni; I shall be driven so perhaps.”
“A woman owes submission, obedience, humility to her husband.”
“Her husband owes protection, love, fidelity to her. There is no tampering with these reciprocal duties. Think not I would make his broken faith an excuse, had I broken mine. Thank God, the evil of others has not produced evil in me—but how could I yield when I was commanded to sin? ”

“ Though my intelligence had always seen the faults in Rupert’s self, my heart had refused to acknowledge or realise them in Ida’s father. We are told we should trace in the lineaments of the present sinner the future seraph—those lineaments which exist in all, however faintly the outline may be preserved. I had certainly done this with him. I might compare the operation of my love for Ida on my estimate of Rupert’s character to the effect of a stereoscope on a photograph—of itself, a cold flat portrait, but when we look through the glasses, we see the same picture rounded into living beauty. ”

“ God help us! when, in the future world, we see what we have done, when the hearts we have wounded, and perhaps maddened, by our unkindness, are laid bare to us!
“I had not been dragged, however, through all this suffering without some fruit to my soul. I had too often gone over the fateful past not to have it written out as in a map before me—where I had erred—where I had been to blame; and if weak human nature revolted and said, ‘Not from thy hand, Rupert, not from thy hand should come the punishment—spare me for thy child’s sake!’ my contrite and broken heart said, ‘Oh, God! ”

“ It was still the early dawn of an autumn day in September, 1860, as our party drove out on the Florentine road away from Siena towards San Gimignano. A moist coldness was in the air, and the heights about Siena were only just visible through the dense veil of vapour which filled the valleys. The broad smooth road rejoiced the hearts of the horses, who trotted along with great animation, and the jingle of their bells accompanied our conversation like music. As we advanced the country gradually assumed a less prosperous aspect. ”

“ Had not the same mother borne us, you should repent the longest day you live the words you have said to-night.”
“Will you deny that Rupert Rabenfels is in Paris, and that you must see him before you go?”
Again she sank down on her seat, overcome, vanquished by that fatal name. “Oh!” she murmured, “to think that one human being can so torture another.” There was a pause, then she spoke in a hollow, broken voice—“I must end this, I feel it is killing me. Yes, Rupert is in Paris—I must see him once more.” ”

“ From the peculiar position of Florence, almost surrounded as it is by heights, half an hour’s ascent up any of the excellent roads which radiate from the city, gives one the advantage of purer air, and a view almost unparalleled from its beauty and interesting associations. From every side, Fiesole, San Miniato, Montuy, Bellosguardo, from each and all, one can look down upon that fair city of which Charles V. said: “It is too pleasant for week-day life; it must be reserved for holydays and festivals.”
My villa is on the declivity of the hill of Bellosguardo. ”

“ She was the most accomplished coquette in the world, with a soft suggestive manner which every man could interpret as he liked best. She was not deceitful, but she had that sympathetic organisation, and that strong inherent love of pleasing, which gave her power to invest herself, at the moment, with the character which was most attractive to the one whom she wished to please. I heard a great deal of her from Rupert; he and her husband were first cousins, and though I was directly opposed to her in character and manner, conceived a great admiration for her. ”

“ Gradually I saw Madame Rabenfels’ countenance soften and relax from the set, stern expression it had assumed on my entrance. She gave me her hand.
“I thank you,” she said, “from my heart for these kind words. I feel you are my friend. I am only sorry that this poor woman’s unthinking affection for me should have detained you so long. I will now say farewell; but I owe to you, I owe to myself, some explanations of this scene; you shall have it. I will write to you. All women when accused assert they are more sinned against than sinning. ”

“ To sin is always to suffer; but, alas! to suffer is not always to sin.”
Her eyes fell on the casket on the table: it was a small triptych. On the left-hand leaf was the Virgin and Child; on the right hand the Virgin by the Cross; in the centre an Assumption. There was a vague resemblance in the figure of the Virgin to the woman beside me. I was to be reminded of this still more a little later.
I left her. I had a fierce longing to carry on the struggle which was warring in my heart of hearts, in solitude. If it were defeat, if it were victory, I was best alone. ”

“ All were delighted; and I received as my reward the most submissive and flattering homage from the stately and dignified man, who was certainly then the most powerful personage at Rome. All my young friends envied me, and vied with each other in assuring me I was the happiest girl in the world. I was bewildered by the rapidity of the preparations for my marriage, and kept in a constant state of excitement. My brother never left me; he was kinder to me than ever. There was but one dissentient voice—that of an aunt—a sister of my father’s, the abbess of the Convent of ‘Le Vive Sepolte’ in Rome. ”

“ I was still kneeling on the cushion at my aunt’s feet. She leant forward in her high carved oak chair, holding my hands and looking into my face. Deep under her brows gleamed her dark eyes, piercing yet sad. The story of a repressed life could be read there. A restless eagerness lay coiled in their depths; but round the pale, discoloured lips there was a great sweetness and repose, and the forehead though very wan was majestic in its calm. ”

“ Had she only deprived me of Rupert, I could have joyfully forgiven her, but with Rupert I lost my Ida!
“I am speaking of all these things, however, with the lucidity which after-experience gave me. At the time—though I had a confused and mystic apprehension of evil—I had moments and hours of exquisite happiness. No human beings can develop themselves without being the happier for it. Growth is the most felicitous condition of humanity. ”

“ Every good, every evil hour, before it passes away, digs its own grave, and prepares its own mourner. I will remember you always, and it is well for me I have known you. I have had a greater faith in the unselfishness of human nature since. But I must now close this record of faults, errors, and sufferings. ”

“ She bade me farewell—her hand lingered in mine for a moment, it was as cold as ice.
As I slowly descended the stairs, I saw a woman seated on one of the steps, apparently in a convulsion of grief. It was the maid Annunziata. She started up as I approached her.
“My good sir, why did you leave them? He will kill her with his violence: she is so good—an angel—and to be tribolata così—un vero martirio—they are all devils, all of them—husband, brother, Rupert, all of them.” ”

“ In Paris there is so much to cure one of morbid self-contemplation. To make the best of my fate—to endure it in its length and breadth of privation—was my study. No resentment lived in my heart but regret, self-reproach, and self-condemnation. Towards Rupert my feelings were as little personally hostile as the patient’s towards the instrument, by which he suffers amputation. To him it had been given to act the Nemesis towards me, but the faults that deserved that Nemesis were mine, not his.
“My life was spent in writing, reading, serving the cause to which I had bound myself. ”

“ There was a pause on each landing-place as if there was a difficulty in getting further. Suddenly, there was a longer one. I thought I had been mistaken in my apprehension, deceived in my yearning. I then heard a fall. I rushed up two flights, and there, at my feet, I saw a woman had fallen. It was Santa. She had fainted. I carried her down stairs, and knocked gently at the porter’s door. Grumblingly he opened it; a bribe stopped his questions. I sent him for a fiacre and placed Madame Rabenfels on a miserable chair, the only one in the room. We were alone. ”

“ Rupert sighed. Did he, remorseless as he was, feel a little conscience-striken at this cold-blooded villany? It matters little; he listened to these infamous words, and acted as if they expressed his own sentiments.
“‘To say the truth,’ went on his friend, ‘Madame Rabenfels is a woman I dislike. She is antagonistic to me in every way. Some persons praise her simplicity and intelligence. I could never discover anything in her but a certain hardness and force of character and will, which I supremely dislike in a woman. ”

“ Poor women, we complain of your frivolity, and if we meet with one who appears to possess some depth of character or reality of purpose, she becomes more surely a victim from those very qualities.
“This is no longer the age for tragedy,” said Auguste; “life has become a comedy, a sentimental comedy if you will, but there are no parts now for your Heloisas or your Saint Theresas.” ”

“ Without a word as to the supernatural adjuncts of the legend, it must be allowed that there is something touching in the consecration of this youthful goodness: a young girl’s memory floating down the tide of time, till we in the nineteenth century, strangers and wayfarers, come to render our heartfelt homage to the art which has immortalised her, and to be affected by the history of her innocent, suffering, and pious life. ”

“ The development of the chest, the muscular strength of the limbs, the fulness of life in the whole figure, are forcibly expressed, but without exaggeration. The muscles do not stand out like ropes around a fleshless torso; there is athletic strength, the perfection of trained manhood, but no gauntness or unsightliness; sound elastic flesh clothes sinews powerful as steel. The hand which holds the sword has closed on it with the rigidity of death. The passage from life to death is portrayed with great fidelity. ”

“ I suppose no woman in the world has cared less for pleasing for pleasing’s sake than I. Kindness I could give to all, but I was too pre-occupied to lay myself out for the sake of winning attention. The only beings one can please without seeking to please are children; their unconscious instinct always directs them unfailingly to those who really love them. All children liked me. Ida loved me with all the warmth of her little heart. ”

“ The smooth, hard, flat surface, which so many sculptors seem to think expressive of beauty, is a falsehood. To learn to see, and seeing to copy, the undulations and indentations of the human body which prove that blood and life are beneath the skin, is the secret of art. ”

“ So do we all bear a love in our hearts, or on our bosoms (let us call it what we will, love, friendship, motherly, or sisterly love) , a pure, childlike, immortal love, born, as we deem it, for the most god-like destiny; and, alas! how often do we not also stand by, and see it, when full grown to man’s estate, crucified, dying, dead? ”