No doubt Madame Blumenthal was a clever
woman. It is a good German custom at Homburg to spend the hour preceding
dinner in listening to the orchestra in the Kurgarten; Mozart and
Beethoven, for organisms in which the interfusion of soul and sense is
peculiarly mysterious, are a vigorous stimulus to the appetite. Pickering
and I conformed, as we had done the day before, to the fashion, and when
we were seated under the trees, he began to expatiate on his friend's
merits.
"I don't know whether she is eccentric or not," he said; "to me every one
seems eccentric, and it's not for me, yet a while, to measure people by
my narrow precedents. I never saw a gaming table in my life before, and
supposed that a gambler was of necessity some dusky villain with an evil
eye. In Germany, says Madame Blumenthal, people play at roulette as they
play at billiards, and her own venerable mother originally taught her the
rules of the game. It is a recognised source of subsistence for decent
people with small means. But I confess Madame Blumenthal might do worse
things than play at roulette, and yet make them harmonious and beautiful.
I have never been in the habit of thinking positive beauty the most
excellent thing in a woman. I have always said to myself that if my
heart were ever to be captured it would be by a sort of general grace--a
sweetness of motion and tone--on which one could count for soothing
impressions, as one counts on a musical instrument that is perfectly in
tune.
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