Aurora the Magnificent (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: One day Gerald began to hurry. He had had enough of it. The portrait was finished in a few hours. The ladies were not permitted to see it. They were made to wait until it was varnished and framed in one of the great, bright Florentine frames of which they were so fond. Gerald, while they took their first long, rapt look, stood at one side, with a smile like a faun's when a faun is Mephistophelian. Aurora, clasping her hands in a delight that could find no words to express it, made a sound like the coo of a dove. Estelle echoed this exclamation, but her charmed surprise did not ring so true, if any one had been watchful enough to seize the shade of difference. Because, not having been made to give a promise, she had from time to time taken a look privately at the painting during its progress. Aurora had known of this and been sorely tempted to do the same, but had resisted the temptation, afraid of Gerald's bad opinion. "My soul!" she murmured, really much moved. Of course she knew that the portrait flattered her; but she felt as Lauras and Leonoras and Lucastas no doubt felt when their poets celebrated them under ideal forms in which their friends and families may have had trouble to recognize them. The pride of having inspired an immortal masterpiece must have stirred their hearts to gratitude toward the gifted beings able to see them disencumbered from their faults, and fix them for the contemplation of their own eyes and their neighbors' as they had been at the best moment of their brightest hour. In the days when La Grande Mademoiselle was painted as Minerva, Aurora's portrait might have been called "Mrs. Hawthorne as Venus." The expression of her face Aurora, clasing her hamls in a delight that could find no words to express it, made a sound like the coo ...