Explore "Rienzi" by Edward Bulwer-lytton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
As the Cyprian gazed on the image in which he had embodied a youth of / dreams, what time the living hues flushed slowly beneath the marble, -- so / gazed the young and passionate Adrian upon the form reclined before him, / re-awakening gradually to life. And, if the beauty of that face were / not of the loftiest or the most dazzling order, if its soft and quiet / character might be outshone by many, of loveliness less really perfect, / yet never was there a countenance that, to some eyes, would have seemed / more charming, and never one in which more eloquently was wrought that / ineffable and virgin expression which Italian art seeks for in its / models, -- in which modesty is the outward, and tenderness the latent, / expression; the bloom of youth, both of form and heart, ere the first / frail and delicate freshness of either is brushed away: and when even / love itself, the only unquiet visitant that should be known at such an / age, is but a sentiment, and not a passion!
"Benedetta! " murmured Irene, at length opening her eyes, unconsciously, / upon him who knelt beside her, -- eyes of that uncertain, that most liquid / hue, on which you might gaze for years and never learn the secret of the / colour, so changed it with the dilating pupil, -- darkening in the shade, / and brightening into azure in the light: