Rozinante

“ Choose not a fair face with an empty purse, but say as most women use to say:
Si nihil attuleris, ibis Homere foras.
Why, Rosalynde! can such base thoughts harbor in such high beauties? can the degree of a princess, the daughter of Gerismond harbor such servile conceits, as to prize gold more than honor, or to measure a gentleman by his wealth, not by his virtues? No, Rosalynde, blush at thy base resolution, and say, if thou lovest, 'either Rosader or none!' And why? because Rosader is both beautiful and virtuous. ”

“ We met—for our misery—for our guilt, we met.—From that moment, I resolved never to abandon her—religion, virtue, morality, every feeling was borne away by the re-appearance of the object of my adoration; and before the interview was over, I again dared to breathe vows of fidelity to one who had devoted herself to her God. "This cannot be, Henrique," said Rosina; "we must meet no more; reflect, and you will be convinced of its impropriety. No dispensation from the vow will be permitted by my parents—all hopes of union in this world are over—Oh! may we meet in heaven!" ”

“ Follow thou her steps, Rosalynde, and the rather, for that thou art an exile, and banished from the court; whose distress, and it is appeased with patience, so it would be renewed with amorous passions. Have mind on thy forepassed fortunes; fear the worst, and entangle not thyself with present fancies, lest loving in haste, thou repent thee at leisure. Ah, but yet, Rosalynde, it is Rosader that courts thee; one who as he is beautiful, so he is virtuous, and harboreth in his mind as many good qualities as his face is shadowed with gracious favors ”

“ ROSALYNDE'S PASSION "Infortunate Rosalynde, whose misfortunes are more than thy years, and whose passions are greater than thy patience! The blossoms of thy youth are mixed with the frosts of envy, and the hope of thy ensuing fruits perish in the bud. Thy father is by Torismond banished from the crown, and thou, the unhappy daughter of a king, detained captive, living as disquieted in thy thoughts as thy father discontented in his exile. Ah Rosalynde, what cares wait upon a crown! what griefs are incident to dignity! what sorrows haunt royal palaces! ”

“ CHRISTIAN:
I!
ROXANE:
Who’s that?
CHRISTIAN:
Christian!
ROXANE (disdainfully) :
Oh! you?
CHRISTIAN:
I would speak with you.
CYRANO (under the balcony—to Christian) :
Good. Speak soft and low.
ROXANE:
No, you speak stupidly!
CHRISTIAN:
Oh, pity me!
ROXANE:
No! you love me no more!
CHRISTIAN (prompted by Cyrano) :
You say—Great Heaven!
I love no more?—when—I—love more and more!
ROXANE (who was about to shut the casement, pausing) :
Hold! ’tis a trifle better! ay, a trifle!
CHRISTIAN (same play) :
Love grew apace, rocked by the anxious beating. . . ”

“ They held a long argument on this head, in which Rozella made use of many a fallacy to prove her point; but the princess, as she had not yet departed from Truth, nor failed in her duty, could not be imposed upon. Rozella, seeing every attempt to persuade her was in vain, turned all her past discourse into a jest; said she had only a mind to try her; and was overjoyed to find her so steady in the cause of truth and virtue. The princess resumed her usual cheerfulness and good humour. Rozella sung her a song in praise of constancy of mind ”

“ Old Lawless maintained complete silence as to his past; and as Rosita’s mother formed part of that doubtful darkness when he, and his child, and his stock in trade installed themselves at Lawrence, he had never been heard to refer to her. That she had belonged to some mixed breed, part Spanish, part Indian, was, however, written on each feature of her daughter’s body and mind—if Rosita could be said to have a mind.
'Every woman, savage or civilized, will love some day to her own sorrow,' her father had declared, with a cynical laugh. 'But Rosita’s future is tolerably safe. ”

“ ROSALYNDE PASSIONATE ALONE "Ah, Rosalynde, how the Fates have set down in their synod to make thee unhappy: for when Fortune hath done her worst, then Love comes in to begin a new tragedy: she seeks to lodge her son in thine eyes, and to kindle her fires in thy bosom. Beware, fond girl, he is an unruly guest to harbor; for cutting in by entreats, he will not be thrust out by force, and her fires are fed with such fuel, as no water is able to quench. ”

“ Rossini came in the interval betwixt the acts to tell the Rosina of the night, at that moment surrounded by a crowd of admirers, that he had left Malibran in tears in her box, in despair at ever attaining such a purity of tone and such a perfection of execution as she had displayed. This was a sincere tribute of admiration, and not of envy, on the part of that lamented vocalist; whose real character, being impressed with the eccentricity which too often besets genius, few could understand, and whose warmth of heart and imagination made her too often the victim of cold-blooded worldliness. ”

“ Rosina burst into tears: “All—all, Henrique, except an approving conscience, without which I feel that I cannot live. I love you—love you dearly—dote upon you, Henrique: you cannot doubt it after all that has occurred: but now that the delirium of passion has subsided, conscience has been busy—too busy, for it has embittered all; and I feel that happiness is flown for ever. ”

“ Why then doth my Rosalynde grieve at the frown of Torismond, who by offering her a prejudice proffers her a greater pleasure? and more, mad lass, to be melancholy, when thou hast with thee Alinda, a friend who will be a faithful copartner of all thy misfortunes, who hath left her father to follow thee, and chooseth rather to brook all extremities than to forsake thy presence. What, Rosalynde,
Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris.
Cheerly, woman: as we have been bed-fellows in royalty, we will be fellow-mates in poverty: I will ever be thy Alinda, and thou shalt ever rest to me Rosalynde ”

“ They always had enough black bread to eat, and wooden shoes or sabots to wear, and a pig to fatten, so the neighbours thought them quite rich; and what was still better, they thought themselves rich also.
Rozennik was a pretty girl, who knew how to make the best of everything, and she could, if she wished, have chosen a husband from the young men of Plouhinec, but she cared for none of them except Bernèz, whom she had played with all her life, and Bernèz, though he worked hard, was so very very poor that Marzinne told him roughly he must look elsewhere for a wife. ”

“ ALINDA'S COMFORT TO PERPLEXED ROSALYNDE "Why, how now, Rosalynde, dismayed with a frown of contrary fortune? Have I not oft heard thee say, that high minds were discovered in fortune's contempt, and heroical scene in the depth of extremities? Thou wert wont to tell others that complained of distress, that the sweetest salve for misery was patience, and the only medicine for want that precious implaister of content. Being such a good physician to others, wilt thou not minister receipts to thyself? ”

“ And Frederick reminded her of her lovers, giving their names and circumstantial details. Rosanette drew back, all the colour fading from her face.
"You are astonished at this. You thought I was blind because I shut my eyes. Now I have had enough of it. We do not die through the treacheries of a woman of your sort. When they become too monstrous we get out of the way. To inflict punishment on account of them would be only to degrade oneself."
She twisted her arms about.
"My God, who can it be that has changed him?"
"Nobody but yourself."
"And all this for Madame Arnoux!" ”

“ When the sun shines as bright as it does to-day, out of a sky that is as blue in the cold, and when it lies with a great sheet of light on the square flag-stones of the Piazza S. Domenico, Rosina’s face is as the sunlight itself that can be friendly even in an air so hard as this is with Tramontana. And it is merriment that pays, that wins [22] the loved jest from lowly swains, the soft compliment from gracious signori, that sells the camellias, and adds many a mite on to a bargain! Who cares for a pathetic face and a wistful gaze? ”

“ If this had been a common case of thieving, I should have given Rosanna the benefit of the doubt just as freely as I should have given it to any of the other servants in the house. Our experience of the Reformatory woman is, that when tried in service—and when kindly and judiciously treated—they prove themselves in the majority of cases to be honestly penitent, and honestly worthy of the pains taken with them. ”

“ For all the youth of the town knows Rosina who sits all day in the portico of the Palazzo Spinola, via Carlo Felice! It is not for nothing that she has that tall and massive figure, those heavy coils of bright, black hair with the broad waves, that smooth skin with the faint fresh colour, those even rows of white teeth that appear so often when the merry smile parts her rosy lips! She knows how to use all the fair gifts of nature, and best of all how to make use of two saucy black eyes in the trade which she plies daily so well—for who sells so many flowers as Rosina? ”

“ Rosanna who has now exchanged that name for the more lofty one of Ida of Werdenberg—You start?—You believe what I tell you to be impossible?—Nay, Count, with all my heart! Number me (if you like it) among those, who wish to impede you in the gratification of your new amours: it would be ill-breeding in me to force upon you the conviction of a truth, to which you are evidently so unwilling to give credit!”—
The crafty Friar rose, as if about to quit the apartment. ”

“ I would fain—seeing you thus espouse my cause, Roxane—believe it a proof
of love!
ROXANE:
’Tis a proof of love!
DE GUICHE (showing some sealed papers) :
Here are the marching orders; they will be sent instantly to each company—
except—
(He detaches one) :
—This one! ’Tis that of the Cadets.
(He puts it in his pocket) :
This I keep.
(Laughing) :
Ha! ha! ha! Cyrano! His love of battle!. . .So you can play tricks on
people?. . .you, of all ladies!
ROXANE:
Sometimes!
DE GUICHE (coming close to her) :
Oh! how I love you!—to distraction! Listen! ”

“ So thy Rosalynde may be most amiable and yet unkind; full of favor and yet froward, coy without wit, and disdainful without reason."
"O Shepherd," quoth Rosader, "knewest thou her personage, graced with the excellence of all perfection, being a harbor wherein the graces shroud their virtues, thou wouldest not breathe out such blasphemy against the beauteous Rosalynde. She is a diamond, bright but not hard, yet of most chaste operation; a pearl so orient, [1] that it can be stained with no blemish; a rose without prickles, and a princess absolute as well in beauty as in virtue. ”

“ Is it not enough to make me hate that world, that it soon must rob me of your society? and alas! who knows, whether you will return from that wild tumult, which I only know by description, with sentiments as kind and as honest and true an heart, as you will bear away with you!”—
Poor Rosanna was bathed in tears, while she made these representations. She had had dreams, and omens, and forebodings, which promised nothing good, 332and which her lover soon banished by means, which every lover (the false as well as the true) equally practises on similar occasions. But Erwin was true as the truest ”

“ Rosanna indeed mostly saw her in a sort of immodest glare of such, the chief being doubtless the wonder, never assuaged, of how any circle of the supposed amenities could go on "putting up" with her. The present was as a fact perhaps the first time our young woman had seen her in the light of a danger to herself. If society, or what they called such, had to reckon with her and accepted the charge, that was society's own affair—it appeared on the whole to understand its interest; but why should she, Rosanna Gaw, recognise a complication she had done nothing ever to provoke? ”

“ Nearly every quarter of an hour Rosanette drew aside the curtains in order to take a look at her child. She saw him in imagination, a few months hence, beginning to walk; then at college, in the middle of the recreation-ground, playing a game of base; then at twenty years a full-grown young man; and all these pictures conjured up by her brain created for [298] her, as it were, the son she would have lost, had he only lived, the excess of her grief intensifying in her the maternal instinct.
Frederick, sitting motionless in another armchair, was thinking of Madame Arnoux. ”

“ When you come to my age, you will find sitting down on the slope of a beach a much longer job than you think it now. By the time I was settled, Rosanna had dried her own eyes with a very inferior handkerchief to mine—cheap cambric. She looked very quiet, and very wretched; but she sat down by me like a good girl, when I told her. When you want to comfort a woman by the shortest way, take her on your knee. I thought of this golden rule. But there! Rosanna wasn’t Nancy, and that’s the truth of it! ”

“ The Princess, hearing her speak of Rozella in that manner, had no suspicion of her being one of that false girl’s deluding companions; but rather thought that she was a fellow-sufferer with herself; and therefore, without any consideration of the bounds prescribed, she hastened to relieve her, and even thought that she should have great pleasure in telling her mother, that she had saved a poor young shepherdess from Rozella’s malice, and restored her to her fond parents. ”