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Updated: June 29, 2025
It suits me not to explain what was the analogy that I saw or imagined between Zenobia's situation and mine; nor, I believe, will the reader detect this one secret, hidden beneath many a revelation which perhaps concerned me less.
I used to see, or fancy, indications that he was not altogether obtuse to Zenobia's influence as a woman. No doubt, however, he had a still more exquisite enjoyment of Priscilla's silent sympathy with his purposes, so unalloyed with criticism, and therefore more grateful than any intellectual approbation, which always involves a possible reserve of latent censure.
Whatever stain Zenobia had was caught from him; nor does it seldom happen that a character of admirable qualities loses its better life because the atmosphere that should sustain it is rendered poisonous by such breath as this man mingled with Zenobia's. Yet his reflections possessed their share of truth.
I have given no credit to the rumor, yet as all stories of this kind are a mixture of truth and error, so in this case I can conceive easily that it has some foundation in reality, and I am led to believe from it that the sufferings of the Queen have been great. How indeed could they be otherwise! A feebler spirit than Zenobia's, and a feebler frame would necessarily have been destroyed.
So I descended to the sitting-room, and finding nobody there, proceeded to the barn, whence I had already heard Zenobia's voice, and along with it a girlish laugh which was not so certainly recognizable. Arriving at the spot, it a little surprised me to discover that these merry outbreaks came from Priscilla. The two had been a-maying together.
It was a woeful thought, that a woman of Zenobia's diversified capacity should have fancied herself irretrievably defeated on the broad battlefield of life, and with no refuge, save to fall on her own sword, merely because Love had gone against her.
Fame speaks loudly of her beauty and her wit, and more loudly still of her young wisdom, and influence with the Queen. Her spirit is the counterpart of Zenobia's. She is, notwithstanding her long Roman nurture, a Palmyrene of the truest stamp. And ever since there have been these rumors of a war with Rome' 'What sayst thou? What is that? War with Rome? Did I hear aright? 'Verily thou didst.
In Zenobia's whole person, beholding her more closely, I saw a riotous agitation; the almost delirious disquietude of a great struggle, at the close of which the vanquished one felt her strength and courage still mighty within her, and longed to renew the contest. My sensations were as if I had come upon a battlefield before the smoke was as yet cleared away.
Zenobia's husband declared to himself that he never dined so well, though he gave his chef 500 pounds a year, and old Lord Pomeroy, who had not yet admitted French wines to his own table, seemed quite abashed with the number of his wine-glasses and their various colours, and, as he tasted one succulent dish after another, felt a proud satisfaction in having introduced to public life so distinguished a man as William Ferrars.
The money was the primary object, and if that could be got without bloodshed which seems to me a useless crime it would be quite as effective. Of course, if there was resistance or retaliation, it might be necessary to kill him." He had unconsciously fallen into his old didactic and dogmatic habit of speech, and perhaps, under the spur of Zenobia's eyes, he had given it some natural emphasis.
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