As the child flies to the
nurse with the story of its first toy; as the girl resorts to the sister
with the confession of her first love; as the poet hurries to the friend
with the plan of his first composition; so did Antonina seek the
attention of Hermanric with the first outward revealings enjoyed by her
faculties and the first acknowledgment of her emotions liberated from
her heart.
The longer the Goth listened to her, the more perfect became the
enchantment of her words, half struggling into poetry, and her voice
half gliding into music. As her low, still, varying tones wound
smoothly into his ear, his thoughts suddenly and intuitively reverted to
her formerly expressed remembrances of her lost lute, inciting him to
ask her, with new interest and animation, of the manner of her
acquisition of that knowledge of song, which she had already assured him
that she possessed.
'I have learned many odes of many poets,' said she, quickly and
confusedly avoiding the mention of Vetranio, which a direct answer to
Hermanric's question must have produced, 'but I remember none perfectly,
save those whose theme is of spirits and of other worlds, and of the
invisible beauty that we think of but cannot see.
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