They were a noble pair, and beautiful, as noble—well-matched—she, light as the summer cloud and airy as its zephyr and graceful as the vine that waves at every breath—he vigorous and tall as the young oak before the blight of eld has gnarled one giant limb or scathed one wreath of its dark foliage.
Delicate, fair, and slender and tall beyond the middle height of woman with a waist ‘shaped to love’s wish’ and every graceful outline full of rich rounded symmetry, young Julia was a thing to dream of as the inhabitant of some far bright Elysian, rather than to behold as an inmate of the rude heartless world. It seemed as though it were a sin that the sun’s ardent kiss should visit her transparent cheek too warmly, that any breath but that of the softest summer gale should wanton in the luxuriant ringlets of her long silky auburn hair—her eyes were blue and clear as the bosom of some pure moonlit fountain, and there was in them a wild, yet not unquiet gaze, half languor and half tenderness. She was indeed a creature but little fitted to battle with the cares and sorrows of this pilgrimage, and as she leaned on the stalwart arm of her warrior lover, hanging upon him as if confident in his vast strength and relying absolutely on his protection, and fixing the soft yearning gaze of those blue eyes full on his broad brow and expressive lineaments, no one could doubt that she had chosen well the partner who should support and guide her through this vale of tears and sin and sorrow.
But who thought then of tears—who ever dreamed of sorrow? The day had been passed happily—alas! how happily!—in innocent and pure festivity—the blythe dance on the velvet greensward, the joyous ramble amid the trelliced vines, the shadowy cypresses, the laurelled mazes of the garden; with lyre and lute and song, and rich peals of the mellow flute and melancholy horn blent with the livelier clashing of the cymbals, waking at intervals the far and slumbering echoes of the dark wilderness beyond the Danube. Oh! had they but known what ears were listening to their mirthful music, what eyes were gloating with the fierce lust of barbarous anticipation on their fair forms and radiant faces, what hearts were panting amid the dense and tangled forests for the approaching nightfall—how would their careless mirth have been converted into despair and dread and anguish, their languishing and graceful gait into precipitate and breathless flight—those blythe light hearted beings!