STORY FIRST.
Flower o’ the Peach.
We’ve some splendid old point-lace in our family, yellow and fragrant, loose-meshed. It isn’t every one has point at all; and of those who have, it isn’t every one can afford to wear it. I can. Why? Oh, because it’s in character. Besides, I admire point any way,—it’s so becoming; and then, you see, this amber! Now what is in finer unison, this old point-lace, all tags and tangle and fibrous and bewildering, and this amber, to which Heaven knows how many centuries, maybe, with all their changes, brought perpetual particles of increase? I like yellow things, you see.
To begin at the beginning. My name, you’re aware, is Giorgione Willoughby. Queer name for a girl! Yes; but before papa sowed his wild oats, he was one afternoon in Fiesole, looking over Florence nestled below, when some whim took him to go into a church there, a quiet place, full of twilight and one great picture, nobody within but a girl and her little slave,—the one watching her mistress, the other saying dreadfully devout prayers on an amber rosary, and of course she didn’t see him, or didn’t appear to. After he got there, he wondered what on earth he came for, it was so dark and poky, and he began to feel uncomfortably,—when all of a sudden a great ray of sunset dashed through the window, and drowned the place in the splendor of the illumined painting. Papa adores rich colors; and he might have been satiated here, except that such things make you want more. It was a Venus;— no, though, it couldn’t have been a Venus in a church, could it? Well, then, a Magdalen, I guess, or a Madonna, or something. I fancy the man painted for himself, and christened for others. So, when I was born, some years afterward, papa, gratefully remembering this dazzling little vignette of his youth, was absurd enough to christen me Giorgione. That’s how I came by my identity ; but the folks all call me Yone,—a baby name.
I’m a blonde, you know,—none of your silver-washed things. I wouldn’t give a fico for a girl with flaxen hair; she might as well be a wax doll, and have her eyes moved by a wire; besides, they’ve no souls. I imagine they were remnants at our creation, and somehow scrambled together, and managed to get up a little life among themselves; but it’s good for nothing, and everybody sees through the pretence. They’re glass chips, and brittle shavings, slender pinkish scrids,—no name for them; but just you say blonde, soft and slow and rolling,—it brings up a brilliant, golden vitality, all manner of white and torrid magnificences, and you see me! I’ve watched little bugs—gold rose-chafers—lie steeping in the sun, till every atom of them must have been searched with the warm radiance, and have felt, that, when they reached that point, I was just like them, golden all through,—not dyed, but created. Sunbeams like to follow me, I think. Now, when I stand in one before this glass, infiltrated with the rich tinge, don’t I look like the spirit of it just stepped out for inspection? I seem to myself like the complete incarnation of light, full, bounteous, overflowing, and I wonder at and adore anything so beautiful; and the reflection grows finer and deeper while I gaze, till I dare not do so any longer. So, without more words, I’m.a golden blonde. You see me now: not too tall,—five feet four; not slight, or I couldn’t have such perfect roundings, such flexible moulding. Here’s nothing of the spiny Diana and Pallas, but Clytie or Isis speaks in such delicious curves. It don’t look like flesh and blood, does it? Can you possibly imagine it will ever change? Oh!
