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- II.
Pierre was the only son of an affluent, and haughty widow; a lady who
externally furnished a singular example of the preservative and
beautifying influences of unfluctuating rank, health, and wealth, when
joined to a fine mind of medium culture, uncankered by any inconsolable
grief, and never worn by sordid cares. In mature age, the rose still
miraculously clung to her cheek; litheness had not yet completely
uncoiled itself from her waist, nor smoothness unscrolled itself from
her brow, nor diamondness departed from her eyes. So that when lit up
and bediademed by ball-room lights, Mrs. Glendinning still eclipsed far
younger charms, and had she chosen to encourage them, would have been
followed by a train of infatuated suitors, little less young than her
own son Pierre.
But a reverential and devoted son seemed lover enough for this widow
Bloom; and besides all this, Pierre when namelessly annoyed, and
sometimes even jealously transported by the too ardent admiration of the
handsome youths, who now and then, caught in unintended snares, seemed
to entertain some insane hopes of wedding this unattainable being;
Pierre had more than once, with a playful malice, openly sworn, that the
man--gray-beard, or beardless--who should dare to propose marriage to
his mother, that man would by some peremptory unrevealed agency
immediately disappear from the earth.
This romantic filial love of Pierre seemed fully returned by the
triumphant maternal pride of the widow, who in the clear-cut lineaments
and noble air of the son, saw her own graces strangely translated into
the opposite sex. There was a striking personal resemblance between
them; and as the mother seemed to have long stood still in her beauty,
heedless of the passing years; so Pierre seemed to meet her half-way,
and by a splendid precocity of form and feature, almost advanced himself
to that mature stand-point in Time, where his pedestaled mother so long
had stood. In the playfulness of their unclouded love, and with that
strange license which a perfect confidence and mutual understanding at
all points, had long bred between them, they were wont to call each
other brother and sister. Both in public and private this was their
usage; nor when thrown among strangers, was this mode of address ever
suspected for a sportful assumption; since the amaranthiness of Mrs.
Glendinning fully sustained this youthful pretension.--Thus freely and
lightsomely for mother and son flowed on the pure joined current of
life. But as yet the fair river had not borne its waves to those
sideways repelling rocks, where it was thenceforth destined to be
forever divided into two unmixing streams.
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