He opened secret drawers, which
exhaled an ungodly perfume, very faint, almost imperceptible, like a
faded, ghostly odour, yet which excited the nerves in a peculiar way, and
somewhat quickened the pulsation of the heart. These were the archives
of the history of his own heart. There lay in piles packages of letters,
methodically tied with coloured ribbons, withered flowers, whose leaves
fell from the corona if touched ever so lightly, faded bows, torn laces,
which still seemed to palpitate under the rude grasp of a hand rummaging
among them, paper German favours, from which the gloss and gilding had
peeled, other shapeless, disconnected bits of tinsel which were
incomprehensible unless one knew the memory associated with them, and
among the strange, motley chaos, the most personal mementoes: women's
hair smooth, curled, braided, long, and short, arranged by a true eye,
with scandalously cool composure, upon a pale lilac varnished board, in a
wonderful scale of colours, from the highest pitch, the fair locks of the
Englishwoman, resembling a delicate halo, through almost imperceptible
gradations to the deep, shining blue-black of the Sicilian, and portraits
in every form which fashion has devised during the last twenty-five
years, and from which the eternal feminine looked, lured, and smiled in a
hundred charming embodiments.
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