We must no longer digress, although upon a most important and most
interesting topic, but proceed to inform our readers what they must
already have anticipated, that Zillah had little inclination towards the
husband procured for her by her injudicious friends. The Rabbi thought
it altogether a suitable match, particularly as Ichabod could trace his
descent from the tribe of Levi, and was of undoubted wealth, and,
according to belief, unspotted reputation; but Zillah cared little for
reputation, she knew not its value--little for wealth, for the finest
and rarest jewels of the world sparkled in gorgeous variety upon her
person, so that she moved more like a rainbow than a living
woman--little, very little for the tribe of Levi, and less than all for
Ichabod. His black eyes she likened to burnt cinders; she saw no beauty
in a beard striped and mottled with grey, although it was perfumed with
the sweets of Araby, and oiled with as pure and undefiled an unction as
that which flowed from the horn of the ancient Samuel upon the head of
the youthful David. His stateliness provoked her mirth--his deafness her
impatience; and when she compared him with the joyous cavaliers, the
brilliant and captivating men who graced the court of the gay and
luxurious Louis, for whose gallant plumes and glittering armour she so
often watched through her half-closed lattice, she turned from the
husband they would have given with a disgust that was utterly
insupportable.
Her father had prevailed upon the family with whom she lived to remove
to Paris during his residence in England, which had been prolonged from
day to day, in compliance with the desire of the Protector. He was
anxious that his child should be instructed in such elegant arts as
those in which the ladies of France and England excelled--not
remembering that, in a young, forward, and ill-educated woman, the
dangerous desire of display succeeds the acquirement of accomplishments
as surely and as regularly as day follows night.
Thus, shut up in one of the most gloomy hotels in Paris--conveyed in a
close carriage once or twice a week to the Bois de Boulogne, or the
gardens of Versailles--fearing to express delight, lest she should be
reproved for levity--or desire for any thing, lest it should be the very
thing she would not be permitted to possess--the proud, warm,
frank-hearted Jewess became gradually metamorphosed into the cunning,
passionate, deceptive intriguante, only waiting for an opportunity
to deceive her guardians, and obtain that which, from being so
strictly forbidden, she concluded must be the greatest possible
enjoyment--freedom of word and action. Alas! if we may use a homely
phrase, many are the victims to strait-lacing, both of stays and
conscience!