Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida | Page 4

the old stone Hermes, and to go
down the width of the mighty steps into the gay piazza, alive with bells
tolling, and crowds laughing, and drums abeat, and the flutter of
carnival banners in the wind; and to get away from it all with a full
heart, and ascend to see the sun set from the terrace of the Medici, or
the Pamfili, or the Borghese woods, and watch the flame-like clouds
stream homewards behind S. Peter's, and the pines of Monte Mario
grow black against the west, till the pale green of evening spreads itself
above them, and the stars arise; and then, with a prayer--be your faith
what it will--a prayer to the Unknown God, to go down again through
the violet-scented air and the dreamful twilight, and so, with
unspeakable thankfulness, simply because you live, and this is
Rome--so homeward.
* * *
The strong instinctive veracity in her weighed the measure of her days,
and gave them their right name. She was content, her life was full of
the sweetness and strength of the arts, and of the peace of noble
occupation and endeavour. But some true instinct in her taught her that
this is peace, but is not more than peace. Happiness comes but from the
beating of one heart upon another.
* * *
There was a high wall near, covered with peach-trees, and topped with
wistaria and valerian, and the handsome wild caperplant; and against
the wall stood rows of tall golden sunflowers late in their blooming; the
sun they seldom could see for the wall, and it was pathetic always to
me, as the day wore on, to watch the poor stately amber heads turn
straining to greet their god, and only meeting the stones and the
cobwebs, and the peach-leaves of their inexorable barrier.
They were so like us!--straining after the light, and only finding bricks

and gossamer and wasps'-nests! But the sunflowers never made
mistakes as we do: they never took the broken edge of a glass bottle or
the glimmer of a stable lanthorn for the glory of Helios, and comforted
themselves with it--as we can do.
* * *
Dear, where we love much we always forgive, because we ourselves
are nothing, and what we love is all.
* * *
There is something in the silence of an empty room that sometimes has
a terrible eloquence: it is like the look of coming death in the eyes of a
dumb animal; it beggars words and makes them needless.
* * *
When you have said to yourself that you will kill any one, the world
only seems to hold yourself and him, and God--who will see the justice
done.
* * *
What is it that love does to a woman?--without it she only sleeps; with
it, alone, she lives.
* * *
A great love is an absolute isolation, and an absolute absorption.
Nothing lives or moves or breathes, save one life: for one life alone the
sun rises and sets, the seasons revolve, the clouds bear rain, and the
stars ride on high; the multitudes around cease to exist, or seem but
ghostly shades; of all the sounds of earth there is but one voice audible;
all past ages have been but the herald of one soul; all eternity can be but
its heritage alone.
* * *

Is Nature kind or cruel? Who can tell?
The cyclone comes, or the earthquake; the great wave rises and
swallows the cities and the villages, and goes back whence it came; the
earth yawns, and devours the pretty towns and the sleeping children,
the gardens where the lovers were sitting, and the churches where
women prayed, and then the morass dries up and the gulf unites again.
Men build afresh, and the grass grows, and the trees, and all the
flowering seasons come back as of old. But the dead are dead: nothing
changes that!
As it is with the earth, so it is with our life; our own poor, short, little
life, that is all we can really call our own.
Calamities shatter, and despair engulfs it; and yet after a time the
chasm seems to close; the storm wave seems to roll back; the leaves
and the grass return; and we make new dwellings. That is, the daily
ways of living are resumed, and the common tricks of our speech and
act are as they used to be before disaster came upon us. Then wise
people say, he or she has "got over it." Alas, alas! the drowned children
will not come back to us; the love that was struck down, the prayer that
was silenced, the altar that was ruined, the garden that was ravished,
they are all gone for ever,--for ever, for ever! Yet