I tried to convince her that what she deemed a treasure was a mere pittance, which a week or two would exhaust; that I was no prince, nor had I a kingly father; “and last of all,” said I, “I am not in pursuit of a princess. But I 'll tell you what I am in search of, Catinka,--one trusting, faithful, loving heart; one that will so unite itself to mine as to have no joys or sorrows or cares but mine; one content to go wherever I go, live however I live, and no matter what my faults may be, or how meanly others think of me, will ever regard me with eyes of love and devotion.”
I had held her hand while I uttered this, gazing up into her eyes with ecstasy, for I saw how their liquid depth appeared to move as though about to overflow, when at last she spoke, and said,--
“Poor child!” thought I, “she cannot understand one word I have been saying. Listen to me, Catinka,” said I, with a slow utterance. “Would you give me your heart for all this treasure?”
“_Si_,” said she, again; but I fancied with less of energy than before.
“And when it was spent and gone, and nothing remaining of it, what would you do?”
“Send you to gather more, _mio caro_,” said she, pressing my hand to her lips, as though in earnest of the blandishments she would bestow upon me.
Now, I cannot affect to say that all this was very reassuring. This poor simple child of the mountains showed a spirit as sordid and as calculating as though she were baptized in May Fair. It was a terrible shock to me to see this; a dire overthrow to a very fine edifice that I was just putting the roof on! “Would Kate Herbert have made me such a speech?” thought I. “Would she have declared herself so venal and so worldly?--and why not? May it not be, perhaps, simply that a mere question of good-breeding, the usages of a polite world, might have made all the difference, and that she would have felt what poor Catinka felt and owned to? If this were true, the advantages were all on the side of sincerity. With honesty as the basis, what may not one build up of character? Where there is candor there are at least no disappointments. This poor simple child, untutored in the wiles of a scheming world, where all is false, unreal, and deceptive, has the courage to say that her heart can be bought. She is ready in her innocence, too, to sell it, just as the Indians sell a great territory for a few glass beads or bright buttons. And why should not I make the acquisition in the very spirit of a new settler? It was I discovered this lone island of the sea; it was I first landed on this unknown shore; why not claim a sovereignty so cheaply established?” I put the question arithmetically before me: Given, a young girl, totally new to life and its seductions, deeply impressed with the value of wealth, to find the measure of venality in a well-brought-up young lady, educated at Clapham, and finished at Boulogne-sur-Mer. I expressed it thus: D-y=T+a?, or an unknown quantity.
