Emerson, whom, by the way, I am
delighted, if rather surprised, to see here?'
"'Ah,' said Catullus, 'you are a new-comer among us. Poets will be
poets, and no sooner have they attained their desire, and dwelt in the
company of their earthly Ideals, than they feel strangely, yet
irresistibly drawn to Another. So it was in life, so it will ever be. No
Ideal can survive a daily companionship, and fortunate is the poet who
did not marry his first love!'
"'As far as that goes,' I answered, 'most of you were highly favoured;
indeed, I do not remember any poet whose Ideal was his wife, or whose
first love led him to the altar.'
"'I was not a marrying man myself,' answered the Veronese; 'few of us
were. Myself, Horace, Virgil--we were all bachelors.'
"'And Lesbia!'
"I said this in a low voice, for Laura was weaving bay into a chaplet,
and inattentive to our conversation.
"'Poor Lesbia!' said Catullus, with a suppressed sigh. 'How I misjudged
that girl! How cruel, how causeless were my reproaches,' and wildly
rending his curled locks and laurel crown, he fled into a thicket, whence
there soon arose the melancholy notes of the Ausonian lyre.'
"'He is incorrigible,' said Laura, very coldly; and she deliberately
began to tear and toss away the fragments of the chaplet she had been
weaving. 'I shall never break him of that habit of versifying. But they
are all alike.
Pages:
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226