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with other young persons of quality, to dancing-school in
Christen Skeel’s great parlor, where an old Mecklenburger
taught them steps and figures and a gracious carriage
according to the latest Spanish mode. She learned to play on
the lute, and was perfected in French; for Mistress Rigitze
had her own plans.
Marie was happy. As a young prince who has been held
captive is taken straight from the gloomy prison and harsh
jailer to be lifted to the throne by an exultant people, to
feel the golden emblem of power and glory pressed firmly
upon his curls, and see all bowing before him in smiling
homage, so she had stepped from her quiet chamber into
the world, and all had hailed her as a queen indeed, all had
bowed, smiling, before the might of her beauty.
There is a flower called the pearl hyacinth; as that is
blue so were her eyes in color, but their lustre was that of
the falling dewdrop, and they were deep as a sapphire
resting in shadow. They could fall as softly as sweet music that
dies, and glance up exultant as a fanfare. Wistful—ay, as
the stars pale at daybreak with a veiled, tremulous light,
so was her look when it was wistful. It could rest with such
smiling intimacy that many a man felt it like a voice in a
dream, far away but insistent, calling his name, but when
it darkened with grief it was full of such hopeless woe that
one could almost hear the heavy dripping of blood.
Such was the impression she made, and she knew it,
but not wholly. Had she been older and fully conscious of
her beauty, it might have turned her to stone. She might
have come to look upon it as a jewel to be kept burnished
and in a rich setting, that it might be the desire of all; she
might have suffered admiration coldly and quietly. Yet it
was not so. Her beauty was so much older than herself
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