careless manner, but with that involuntary and subdued
emotion which accompanies the remembrance of our early delights, he
would sometimes remark that he first understood the whole meaning of
the feeling which is contained in the melodies and rhythms of national
dances, upon the days in which he saw these exquisite fairies at some
magic fete, adorned with that brilliant coquetry which sparkles like
electric fire, and flashing from heart to heart, heightens love, blinds
it, or robs it of all hope. And when the muslins of India, which the
Greeks would have said were woven of air, were replaced by the heavier
folds of Venetian velvet, and the perfumed roses and sculptured petals
of the hot-house camellias gave way to the gorgeous bouquets of the
jewel caskets; it often seemed to him that however good the orchestra
might be, the dancers glided less rapidly over the floor, that their
laugh was less sonorous, their eye less luminous, than upon those
evenings in which the dance had been suddenly improvised, because he
had succeeded in electrifying his audience through the magic of his
performance. If he electrified them, it was because he repeated, truly
in hieroglyphic tones, but yet easily understood by the initiated, the
secret whispers which his delicate ear had caught from the reserved yet
impassioned hearts, which indeed resemble the Fraxinella, that plant so
full of burning and vivid life, that its flowers are always surrounded
by a gas as subtle as inflammable. He had seen celestial visions
glitter, and illusory phantoms fade in this sublimated air; he had
divined the meaning of the swarms of passions which are forever buzzing
in it; he knew how these hurtling emotions fluttered through the
reckless human soul; how, notwithstanding their ceaseless agitation and
excitement, they could intermingle, interweave, intercept each other,
without once disturbing the exquisite proportions of external grace,
the imposing and classic charm of manner. It was thus that he learned to
prize so highly the noble and measured manners which preserve delicacy
from insipidity; petty cares from wearisome trifling; conventionalism
from tyranny; good taste from coldness; and which never permit the
passions to resemble, as is often the case where such careful culture
does not rule, those stony and calcareous vegetables whose hard and
brittle growth takes a name of such sad contrast: flowers of iron (FLOS
FERRI).

His early introduction into thi