Mila

“ If a few men and women had been made wretched for life, and people who loved one another devotedly had been parted for ever, and suspicion and hatred had crept into the place of trust and tenderness in certain households, Madame Mila could not help that, any more than one can help other people being splashed with mud when one drives down a lane in bad weather. And nobody ever thought Madame Mila could do any harm; pretty, good-natured, loquacious, little Madame Mila, running about with her little rosebuds at fancy fairs, and saying so sweetly, "Pour nos pauvres—pour nos chers pauvres!" ”

“ Madame Mila on occasion had helped or hindered circumstance amongst her friends and enemies with many ingenious little devices and lucky little anonymous notes, and other innocent shifts and stratagems. It was no use being in the world at all unless you interfered with the way it went; to be a mere puppet in the hands of Fate, with the strings of accident dangling to and fro, seemed to her clever little brains quite unworthy the intelligence of woman. ”

“ Ah! it is solitude of the heart above all else which is killing me, because my heart is even harder to please than my senses. You know how I bore myself with Mila this morning, do you not? She is beautiful, surely, and neither in character nor in mind is she one of the common herd. If I had chosen to love her, and if I had felt for a single moment that I did love her, she would have loved me, she would have been mine all her life. But with her I thought only of you. You are the one whom I love, and you are the only woman I have ever loved, although I have been the lover of many women! ”

“ Lady Hilda looked up from the S. Ursula, which she was finishing:
"My dear Mila!—you know perfectly well how I detest that kind of thing. Teresa's songs, drag seats, and eager efforts to imitate the worst kind of women!—go to it, if it amuse you; but, with all gratitude, allow me to decline."
"How disagreeable you are!" said Madame Mila, pettishly. "One must do something with oneself all these long days: if it were Palestrina, I suppose you would go." ”

“ Madame Mila, as her friends always called her, was as pretty a little woman as could be imagined, who enamelled herself to such perfection that she had a face of fifteen, on the most fashionable and wonderfully costumed of bodies; she was very fond of her cousin Hilda, because she could borrow so much money of her, and she had come to Floralia this winter because in Paris there was a rumour that she had cheated at cards—false, of course, but still odious. ”

“ Madame Mila looked at her with irritation; no one likes to be despised, and she knew that her cousin did very nearly despise her, and all the ways and means of enjoyment in which her heart delighted.
Lady Hilda, tranquilly painting there, annoyed her inexpressibly. Why should any woman be above the box-seats of drags and all their concomitant attractions? ”

“ Isn't it always so with natural causes? The only one that one does not divine is always the simplest. Ah! if Mila knew what danger she is playing with, and what pain she might spare me by telling me the truth! I will press her so to-morrow that she will tell me everything!"
While Michel reflected thus, the crystal water murmured in its narrow basin, wherein quivered the spectre of the moon. ”

“ You might live in a palace, if you chose, but you disguise yourself for political reasons which I ought not to know, and do not wish to. I have an idea that you will be King of Sicily some day. Ah! how I would like to be a man and fight for your cause! for you will bring about the happiness of your people, I am sure of it!"
Mila's jesting extravagance caused a momentary madness in the brigand's audacious brain. He had a touch of vertigo, and felt almost the same emotion as if she had guessed the truth instead of dreaming a dream. ”

“ Mila concluded that Michel was aware that Magnani persisted in loving another woman, although the young artisan had refused to take back the princess's ring, and had begged Mila to keep it as a pledge of his esteem and respect. On that same evening, the evening that he had escorted her home from the Della Serra palace while Michel remained behind with his mother, Magnani, intoxicated by her beauty, her wit and her social success, had spoken to her so warmly that what he said was almost a declaration of love. Mila had had the strength of will to refrain from encouraging him openly. ”

“ That is what all you people call love; I am content enough to have no knowledge of it———"
"Good gracious, Hilda!" said Madame Mila, with wide-open eyes of absolute amazement; "you talk as if you were one of the angry husbands in a comedy of Feuillet or Dumas. I don't think you know anything about it at all; how should you? You only admire yourself, and like art and all that kind of thing, and are as cold as ice to everybody. ”

“ But Fra Angelo's face maintained its cold, sad expression.
"You do not consider me worthy to be Mila's husband," continued the modest Magnani. "It is true that I am not, padre; but if you knew how firmly I have resolved to become worthy!"
"My friend," rejoined the monk, "the day on which you should become Mila's husband, if you love each other fervently and sincerely, would be the happiest day in Pier-Angelo's life and mine; for we monks know that a man must love with his whole soul the spouse to whom he gives his life, whether that spouse be the family or the church. ”

“ For Madame Mila herself, perched on one of the very topmost rungs of the ladder of the world's greatness, and able therefore to take a bird's-eye view therefrom of everything, was very shrewd in her way, and knew that society never was known yet to quarrel with the owner of fifty thousand a-year. ”

“ Madame Mila really cried about it, and felt ready to promise any amount of repentance if she could get those sixty thousand francs this Lent.
"And to think of me running myself off my feet in that muslin apron collecting for the poor!" she thought, with a sense that heaven behaved very ill to her in return for her charities. "I suppose I must ask Hilda," she reflected; "she always does give when you ask her—if that man don't prevent her now." ”

“ Let me go, I tell you, or I will shriek."
"Mila," said the unknown, throwing back his hood, "I am no stranger to you, although it is not long since we became acquainted. We have relations together which it is not in your power to break off, and which it is your duty not to refuse to recognize. The life, fortune, and honor of those who are dearest to you on earth rest on my zeal and my loyalty. I have something to say to you; give me your jug, so that if anyone is watching it will not seem unnatural that you should have stopped here a moment with me." ”

“ Signora Mila, must your father kneel too?"
"Father," replied Mila, flushing with pleasure, pride and vexation, all at once, "listen to me, instead of laughing at me, for I must keep my dignity intact! A woman has nothing more precious than her dignity, and no man, not even a father, ever understands what justification we have for being sensitive. I do not choose to be loved by halves, I do not choose to serve as a makeshift and a balm for a partly healed passion. I know that Master Magnani has long been in love with a beautiful unknown, and I am afraid that he is still, a little. ”

“ Madame Mila thought that a woman so forgetting herself deserved even a worse fate than the boarding-house. Madame Mila, who was quite content that her husband should make a fool of himself about Blanche Souris, or anybody else, so long as he walked arm-in-arm now and then with Des Gommeux, and called him "mon cher,"—was indeed in every iota the true Femme Galante of the 19th century. ”

“ It did not occur to her to hold the mule back; she was too deeply absorbed in her meditations. Persons of pure heart and tranquil mind must have noticed that, when they communicate their mental disposition to perturbed and agitated minds, their own serenity is diminished in proportion. They give only at the price of running in debt themselves to some extent; for confidence is a matter of exchange, and there is no heart so richly endowed and so powerful that it does not risk something in gratifying its beneficent impulses.
Gradually, however, pretty Mila's terror changed to joy. ”

“ Madame Mila was in the most radiant spirits; she had won five hundred napoleons the night before, and had them all to adventure over again to-night.
"Do come with us, Hilda," she urged. "You do nothing but go those stupid long drives by yourself; it is very bad for you; and it will be charming to-day; Salvareo has such taste; it is really quite romantic to sit upon those anemones, and have the goats come and stare at you; and he always does things so well, and his cook is so good. ”

“ Madame Mila paused frightened; for the first time in all her life Lady Hilda, leaning against the strong north wind, had lost her consciousness and had fainted.
"How very strange people are," thought Madame Mila, when an hour later her cousin had recovered herself, and had attributed her weakness to the chloral at night and the scent of her oil paints. "If she cared for him like that, why didn't she keep him when she had got him?—she might have hung him to her skirt like her châtelaine; nobody would ever have said anything ”

“ Hush, and I will go away. Come, come, my lovely angel," he added, in a caressing tone, "don't be afraid of the friend of your family; before long perhaps you will thank him for having disturbed your sleep."
And, being unable to resist an insane impulse of coquetry, of a sort that often caused him suddenly to forget his resolutions and his cautious instincts, he threw back his hood and disclosed his beautiful features, made still more beautiful by a sweet and winning smile. The innocent Mila thought that she had had a vision. ”

“ Observing Mila's fervent adoration of that relic of her brother, she had ordered a locket just like her own, and had given it to her.
But how impossible are the probabilities of life to a mind of eighteen years! Michel thought it much more probable that he had been loved unseen ”

“ I shall die of shame and disgust."
"Farewell, Mila," said the bandit, pretending to rise. "I see that you are a woman like other women, after all, a weak, vain creature, who thinks only of saving herself, utterly heedless of the calumnies and blows that may fall upon the heads which should be most sacred to her!"
"No, no, I am not like that!" she replied proudly. "I will sacrifice my life in this experiment; as for my honor, I shall find a way to die before it is stained."
"Good, good, my brave girl! Now you are talking as Fra Angelo's niece should talk. ”

“ Mila, inspired by that species of divination which love gives to women, even to those who have had no experience and have read but little, said to herself—and justly—that Magnani, being stimulated in his passion by suffering and absence of hope, would be alarmed and repelled at the idea of love being offered to him unasked—a too-ready, alluring love ”

“ Mila, being left alone, was very near fainting; she staggered to the door and bolted it; then she knelt on the floor beside her bed, hid her face in her hands, and remained there absorbed by her suffering. But she had ceased to weep, and grief gave place to an excitement instinct with strenuous and ardent aspirations. Pier-Angelo's optimism, that faith in destiny which is a sort of superstition in stout hearts, awoke within her. She rose, rearranged her hair, looked in her mirror, and said aloud, as she resumed her work:
"I don't know why, nor when, nor how, but he shall love me ”

“ He had neither the unhealthy thinness nor the absurd obesity of most of his brethren. His chestnut-colored frock was neat and clean, and he wore it with a majestic air. He won Michel's confidence at the first glance; but it angered the young man to see Mila almost throw her arms about the Capuchin's neck, and take his beard in her two little hands, laughing and pretending that she proposed to kiss him whether he would or not.
"Come, come, little one, softly, softly," said the monk, pushing her away with fatherly gentleness. "No matter if I am your uncle, a monk musn't be kissed." ”

“ No: I shall be tired. Wait till the evening. You are coming to Mila."
The words were a denial; but on her lips there was sweetness, and in her eyes a soft emotion as she moved onward and downward to the carriage.
He was not dissatisfied nor dismayed. As he drew the furs over her gold-laden skirts, his head bore lower and lower, and his lips touched her hand and her arm.
"The sun is up. I never am so late as this," she said, as though she did not feel those kisses ”

“ Miladi was sitting by the small casement window, in one of her pretty silken gowns, long laid by. There was a dainty rose flush on her cheek, but the hand she held out was much thinner than of yore, when in the place of knuckles there were dimples.
"Where have you been all these days when I have not seen you, little maid? Come here and kiss me, and wish me joy, as they do in old France. For I am going to take your favorite as a husband, and you are to be our little daughter." ”

“ Miladi was often ennuied, now that she was never really well, and the sight and voice of a young man cheered her inexplicably.
"Every one knows her. She is the most fearless thing."
"I remember her when she was very little. How tall she has grown. A very pretty girl."
"Youth always has a prettiness. It is the roundness and coloring. I often long to go back and have it all over again. I should remain in France. I do not see what there is in this bleak country to charm one." ”