ause she was blind_, he
had kissed. He is afterwards introduced, at Venice, to a young lady,
(Maria) who bears a striking resemblance to this blind girl. She is, in
fact, the same person, restored to sight, though he is not aware of it.
Maria loves the Improvisatore; he says, he believes that his affection
is _not_ love. He quits Venice--he returns--he is ill. Then follows one
of those miserable scenes which novelists will inflict upon us--of
dream, or delirium--what you will,--and, in this state, he fancies Maria
is dead; he finds then that he really loved; and, in his sleep or
trance, he expresses aloud his affection. His declaration is overheard
by Maria and her sister, who are watching over his couch. He wakes, and
Maria is there, alive before him. In his sleep he has become aware of
the true condition of his own heart; nay, he has leapt the Rubicon,--he
has declared it. He becomes a married man.

Now, in the confused and contradictory account of Antonio's passion, we
see a truth which the author drew from his own nature and experience,--a
truth which, if he had fully appreciated, or had manfully adhered to,
would have enabled him to draw a striking, consistent, and original
portrait. In such natures as Andersen's, there is often found a modesty
more than a woman's, combined with a vivid feeling of beauty, and a
yearning for affection. Modesty is no exclusive property of the female
sex, and there may be so much of it in a youth as to be the impediment,
perhaps the unconscious impediment, to all the natural outpouring of his
heart. The coyness of the virgin, the suitor, by his prayers and wooing,
does all he can to overcome; but here the coyness is in the suitor
himself. He has to overcome it by himself, and he cannot. He hardly
knows the sort of enemy he has to conquer. Every woman seems to him
enclosed in a bell-glass, fine as gossamer, but he cannot break it. He
feels himself drawn, but he cannot approach. His heart is yearning; yet
he says to himself, no, I do not love. A looker-on calls him inconstant,
uncertain, capricious. He is not so; he is bound by viewless fetters,
nor does he know where to strike the chain that is coiled around him.

Such was the truth, we apprehend, such the character, that Andersen had
indistinctly in view. He drew from himself, but he had not previously
analysed that self. It is, therefore, not so much a false as a confused
and imperfect representation that he has given, which the read