His will, as useless to him now as a sword of indifferently
tempered steel, hung as if at the side of an inebriated or paralysed
man.
One evening, at the Dolcebuonos', when he had outstayed the rest of the
guests in the drawing-room, full of flowers and still vibrating with a
_Cachoucha_ of Raff's, he had spoken of love to Bianca. He did it almost
without thinking, attracted instinctively by the reflected charm of her
being a friend of Elena's. Maybe too, that the little germ of sympathy
sown in his heart by her kindly championship at the dinner in the Doria
palace was now bearing fruit. Who can say by what mysterious process
some contact--whether spiritual or material--- between a man and a woman
may generate and nourish in them a sentiment which, latent and
unsuspected for long, may suddenly wake to life through unforeseen
circumstances? It is the same phenomenon so often encountered in our
mental world, when the germ of an idea or a shadowy fancy suddenly
reappears before us after a long interval of unconscious development as
a finished picture, a complex thought. The same law governs all the
varying activities of our being; and the activities of which we are
conscious form but a small part of the whole.
Donna Bianca Dolcebuono was the ideal type of Florentine beauty, such as
Ghirlandajo has given us in the portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni at Santa
Maria Novella.
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