“Bel ange, descendu d’un monde aerien,
  Laisse-toi regarder et ne regarde rien.”

From my position I could only distinguish the outline of her figure, except by staring through my glasses, which I regard as a polite rudeness, but she seemed to merit the homage that all eyes looked and all voices sang.

Once she appeared in the full blaze of the gas as she leaned forward from her box, and it seemed as if an apparition by some theatro-optical delusion approached and dazzled me.

The rapt attention of the audience, the mellow tones of the singer, the orchestral accompaniment full of mysterious harmony, seemed to awaken the ineffable joy that love implants in the human heart.  How much weakness there is in the strength of man!

To travel for years over oceans, through deserts, among all varieties of peoples and sects; shipwrecked, to cling with bleeding hands to sea-beaten rocks; to laugh at the storm and brave the tiger in his lair; to be bronzed in torrid climes; to subject one’s digestion to the baleful influences of the salt seas; to study wisdom before the ruins of every portico where rhetoricians have for three thousand years paraphrased in ten tongues the words of Solomon, “All is vanity;” to return to one’s native shores a used-up man, persuaded of the emptiness of all things save the overhanging firmament and the never-fading stars; to scatter the fancies of too credulous youth by a contemptuous smile, or a lesson of bitter experience, and yet, while boasting a victory over all human fallacies and weaknesses, to be enslaved by the melody of a song, the smile of a woman.

Life is full of hidden mysteries.  I looked upon the stranger’s face with a sense of danger, so antagonistic to my previous tranquillity that I felt humiliated.

By the side of the beautiful unknown, I saw a large fan open and shut with a certain affectation, but not until its tenth movement did I glance at its possessor.  She was my nearest relative, the Duchess de Langeac.

The situation now began to be interesting.  In a moment the interlude would procure for me a position to be envied by every one in the house.  At the end of the act I left my box and made a rapid tour of the lobby before presenting myself.  The Duchess dispelled my embarrassment by a cordial welcome.  Women have a keen and supernatural perception about everything concerning love, that is alarming.

The Duchess carelessly pronounced Mlle. de Chateaudun’s name and mine, as if to be rid of the ceremonies of introduction as soon as possible, and touching a sofa with the end of her fan, said: 

“My dear Roger, it is quite evident that you have come from everywhere except from the civilized world.  I bowed to you twenty times, and you declined me the honor of a recognition.  Absorbed in the music, I suppose.  La Favorita is not performed among the savages, so they remain savages.  How do you like our barytone?  He has sung his aria with delicious feeling.”