souls of
very different ranks in life. On the one hand is the grief of the
peasant maid at not being able to make herself fair enough to win the
cavalier's fancy; on the other the smothered sighs of the serf, when
along his furrow he sees passing, on a white horse, too exquisite a
glory, the beautiful, the majestic Lady of the Castle. So in the East
arises the mournful idyll of the impossible loves of the Rose and the
Nightingale. Nevertheless, there is one great difference: the bird and
the flower are both beautiful; nay, are alike in their beauty. But
here the humbler being, doomed to a place so far below, avows to
himself that he is ugly and monstrous. But amidst his wailing he feels
in himself a power greater than the East can know. With the will of a
hero, through the very greatness of his desire, he breaks out of his
idle coverings. He loves so much, this monster, that he is loved, and,
in return, through that love grows beautiful.

An infinite tenderness pervades it all. This soul enchanted thinks not
of itself alone. It busies itself in saving all nature and all society
as well. Victims of every kind, the child beaten by its step-mother,
the youngest sister slighted, ill-used by her elders, are the surest
objects of its liking. Even to the Lady of the Castle does its
compassion extend; it mourns her fallen into the hands of so fierce a
lord as Blue-Beard. It yearns with pity towards the beasts; it seeks
to console them for being still in the shape of animals. Let them be
patient, and their day will come. Some day their prisoned souls shall
put on wings, shall be free, lovely, and beloved. This is the other
side of _Ass's Skin_ and such like stories. There especially we are
sure of finding a woman's heart. The rude labourer in the fields may
be hard enough to his beasts, but to the woman they are no beasts. She
regards them with the feeling of a child. To her fancy all is human,
all is soul: the whole world becomes ennobled. It is a beautiful
enchantment. Humble as she is, and ugly as she thinks herself, she
has given all her beauty, all her grace to the surrounding universe.

* * * * *

Is she, then, so ugly, this little peasant-wife, whose dreaming fancy
feeds on things like these? I tell you she keeps house, she spins and
minds the flock, she visits the forest to gather a little wood. As yet
she has neither the hard work nor the ugly looks of the countrywoman
as afterwards fa