"Hawthorne, Nathaniel - Lady Eleanores Mantle" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawthorne Nathaniel)

moment. Yet the spectators were so smitten with her beauty, and so
essential did pride seem to the existence of such a creature, that
they gave a simultaneous acclamation of applause.

"Who is this insolent young fellow?" inquired Captain Langford, who
still remained beside Doctor Clarke. "If he be in his senses, his
impertinence demands the bastinado. If mad, Lady Eleanore should be
secured from further inconvenience, by his confinement."

"His name is Jervase Helwyse," answered the Doctor; "a youth of
no birth or fortune, or other advantages, save the mind and soul
that nature gave him; and being secretary to our colonial agent in
London, it was his misfortune to meet this Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe.
He loved her- and her scorn has driven him mad."

"He was mad so to aspire," observed the English officer.

"It may be so," said Doctor Clarke, frowning as he spoke. "But I
tell you, sir, I could well-nigh doubt the justice of the Heaven above
us if no signal humiliation overtake this lady, who now treads so
haughtily into yonder mansion. She seeks to place herself above the
sympathies of our common nature, which envelops all human souls.
See, if that nature do not assert its claim over her in some mode that
shall bring her level with the lowest!"

"Never!" cried Captain Langford indignantly- "neither in life,
nor when they lay her with her ancestors."

Not many days afterwards the Governor gave a ball in honor of
Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe. The principal gentry of the colony
received invitations, which were distributed to their residences,
far and near, by messengers on horseback, bearing missives sealed with
all the formality of official dispatches. In obedience to the summons,
there was a general gathering of rank, wealth, and beauty; and the
wide door of the Province House had seldom given admittance to more
numerous and honorable guests than on the evening of Lady Eleanore's
ball. Without much extravagance of eulogy, the spectacle might even be
termed splendid; for, according to the fashion of the times, the
ladies shone in rich silks and satins, outspread over
wide-projecting hoops; and the gentlemen glittered in gold embroidery,
laid unsparingly upon the purple, or scarlet, or sky-blue velvet,
which was the material of their coats and waistcoats. The latter
article of dress was of great importance, since it enveloped the
wearer's body nearly to the knees, and was perhaps bedizened with
the amount of his whole year's income, in golden flowers and
foliage. The altered taste of the present day- a taste symbolic of a
deep change in the whole system of society- would look upon almost any
of those gorgeous figures as ridiculous; although that evening the
guests sought their reflections in the pierglasses, and rejoiced to
catch their own glitter amid the glittering crowd. What a pity that