designated the poet Wordsworth, whom he could not abide,—"and the best thing he ever said, by Jove!"
"And did you never see her again?" I inquired.
"Once, only," he answered,—"eight or nine years afterwards, a year or two before she died. It was at Venice, and in Norma. She was different, and yet not changed for the worse. There was an indescribable look of sadness out of her eyes, that touched one oddly and fixed itself in the memory. But she was something apart and by herself, and stamped herself on one's mind as Rachel did in Camille or Phèdre. It was true genius, and no imitation, that made both of them what they were. But she actually had the physical beauty which Rachel only compelled you to think she had by the force of her genius and consummate dramatic skill, while she was on the scene before you."
"But do you rank M——— with Rachel as a dramatic artist?" I asked.
"I cannot tell," he answered; "but if she had not the studied perfection of Rachel, which was always the same and could not be altered without harm, she had at least a capacity of impulsive self-adaptation about her which made her for the time the character she personated,—not always the same, but such as the woman she represented might have been in the shifting phases of the passion that possessed her. And to think that she died at eight-and-twenty! What might not ten years more have made her!"
"It is odd," I observed, "that her fame should be forever connected with the name she got by her first unlucky marriage in New York. For it was unlucky enough, I believe,—was it not?"
"You may say that," responded the Consul, "without fear of denial or qualification. It was disgraceful in its beginning and in its ending. It was a swindle on a large scale; and poor Maria G——— was the one who suffered the most by the operation."
"I have always heard," said I, "that old G——— was cheated out of the price for which he had sold his daughter, and that M. M——— got his wife on false pretences."
"Not altogether so," returned the Consul. "I happen to know all about that matter from the best authority. She was obtained on false pretences, to be sure, but it was not G——— that suffered by them. M. M———, moreover, never paid the price agreed upon, and yet G——— got it for all that."
"Indeed!" I exclaimed, "it must have been a neat operation. I cannot exactly see how the thing was done; but I have no doubt a tale hangs thereby, and a good one. Is it tellable?"
"I see no reason why not," said the Consul; "the sufferer made no secret of it, and I know of no reason why I should. Mynheer Van Holland told me the story himself, in Amsterdam, in the year 'Thirty-five."
"And who was he?" I inquired, "and what had he to do with it?"
"I'll tell you," responded the Consul, filling his glass and passing the bottle, "if you will have the goodness to shut the window behind you and ring for candles; for it gets chilly here among the mountains as soon as the sun is down."
I beg your pardon,—did you make a remark?—Oh, what mountains? You must really pardon me; I cannot give you such a clue as that to the identity of my dear Consul, just now, for excellent and sufficient reasons. But if you have paid your money for the sight of this Number, you may take your choice of all the mountain ranges on the continent, from the Rocky to the White, and settle him just where you like. Only you must leave a gap to the westward, through which the river—also anonymous for the present distress—breaks its way, and which gives him half an hour's more sunshine than he would otherwise be entitled to, and slope the fields down to its margin near a mile off, with their native timber thinned so skilfully as to have the effect of the best landscape-gardening. It is a grand and lovely
