"A rival! a rival!" said Anne, as if awaking from a dream; "but she does not love him, and he shall love me, for I will have it so! Oh yes! I swear that he shall love me, and that I will kill Benvenuto!"
Standing alone beside my window,
One morning as the day was breaking,
I saw at my left hand Aurora
To Phœbus pointing out his daily road;
And on the other hand my sweetheart combing
Her golden locks; I saw her beaming eyes
That shone so lovingly upon me,
That I was fain to cry aloud:
"Immortal Gods! return to your abodes celestial,
Her loveliness doth put yours to the blush."
[6]"Je dis beau, c'est bon que je devrais dire."
XIV
WHEREIN IT IS PROVEN THAT SORROW IS THE
GROUNDWORK OF THE LIFE OF MAN
We ask pardon for the bitter misanthropy of this title. It is the fact that the present chapter will exhibit scarcely any other coherent principle than sorrow, and therein will resemble life. The reflection is not new, as a celebrated character in comic opera would say, but it is consoling, in that it will perhaps he accepted as an apology by the reader, whom we are about to lead, even as Virgil led Dante, from despair to despair.
No offence is intended either to the reader or to Virgil.
Our friends, in very truth, at the moment at which we have now arrived, mere all, beginning with Benvenuto and ending with Jacques Aubry, plunged in melancholy, and we are about to see them gradually engulfed in the dark rising tide of sorrow.
We left Benvenuto exceedingly anxious concerning Ascanio's condition. On his return to the Grand-Nesle, he thought but little of the wrath of Madame d'Etampes, I promise you. His sole preoccupation was his dear invalid. So it was that his joy knew no hounds when the door opened to give admission to a litter, and Ascanio, leaping lightly to the ground, grasped his hand, and assured him that he was no worse than in the morning. But Benvenuto's brow quickly grew dark at the apprentice's first words, and he listened with an expression of peculiar dissatisfaction while the younger man said:—