e very
painful trials," &c., &c. Such vague and cold words did not discourage
the lady; she drew her chair nearer, thinking he would hear her better:
"Ah! Sir, how shall I tell you? Ah! how can you understand so heavy a
calamity?" She would have made a dead man weep.

Did you ever see the heart-rending sight of the poor pointer, that has
been wounded by a shot, writhing at his master's feet, and licking his
hands, as if praying to him to help him? The comparison will appear,
perhaps, strange to those who have not seen the reality. However, at
that moment, I felt it in my heart. That woman, mortally wounded, yet
so gentle in her grief, seemed to be writhing at the feet of the
priest, and to entreat his compassion.

I looked at that priest: he was vulgar and unfeeling, such as we see so
often, neither wicked nor good; there was nothing to indicate a heart
of iron, but he was as if made of wood. I saw plainly that no one word
of all which his ear had received had entered his soul. One sense was
wanting. But why torment a blind man by speaking to him of colours?
He answers vaguely; occasionally he may guess pretty nearly; but how
can it be helped? he cannot see.

And do not think that the feelings of the heart can be guessed at more
easily. A man without wife or child might study the mysterious working
of a family in books and the world for ten thousand years, without ever
knowing one word about them. Look at these men; it is neither time,
opportunity, nor facility that they lack to acquire knowledge; they
pass their lives with women who tell them more than they tell their
husbands; they know and yet they are ignorant: they know all a woman's
acts and thoughts, but they are ignorant precisely of what is the best
and most intimate part of her character, and the very essence of her
being. They hardly understand her as a lover (of God or man), still
less as a wife, and not at all as a mother. Nothing is more painful
than to see them sitting down awkwardly by the side of a woman to
caress her child: their manner towards it is that of flatterers or
courtiers--anything but that of a father.

What I pity most in the man condemned to celibacy is not only the
privation of the sweetest joys of the heart, but that a thousand
objects of the natural and moral world are, and ever will be, a dead
letter to him. Many have thought, by living apart, to dedicate their
lives to science; but the reverse is the case: in such a