misfortunes which have befallen
our Order, I feel myself a thousand times more ready for action, more
authoritative, more strong and more daring, at the head of our mute
and black-robed militia, who only think and wish, or move and obey,
mechanically, according to my will. On a sign they scatter over the
surface of the globe, gliding stealthily into households under the guise
of confessing the wife or teaching the children, into family affairs
by hearing the dying avowals,--up to the throne through the quaking
conscience of a credulous crowned coward;--aye, even to the chair of
the Pope himself, living manifesto of the Godhead though he is, by the
services rendered him or imposed by him. Is not this secret rule, made
to kindle or glut the wildest ambition, as it reaches from the cradle to
the grave, from the laborer's hovel to the royal palace, from palace
to the papal chair? What career in all the world presents such splendid
openings? what unutterable scorn ought I not feel for the bright
butterfly life of early days, when we made so many envy us? Don't you
remember, Herminia?" he added, with a bitter smile.
"You are right, perfectly right, Frederick!" replied the princess
quickly. "How little soever we may reflect, with what contempt do we not
think upon the past! I, like you, often compare it with the present;
and then what satisfaction I feel at having followed your counsels! For,
indeed, without you, I should have played the miserable and ridiculous
part which a woman always plays in her decline from having been
beautiful and surrounded by admirers. What could I have done at this
hour? I should have vainly striven to retain around me a selfish and
ungrateful world of gross and shameful men, who court women only
that they may turn them to the service of their passions, or to the
gratification of their vanity. It is true that there would have remained
to me the resource of what is called keeping an agreeable house for all
others,--yes, in order to entertain them, be visited by a crowd of
the indifferent, to afford opportunities of meeting to amorous young
couples, who, following each other from parlor to parlor, come not
to your house but for the purpose of being together; a very pretty
pleasure, truly, that of harboring those blooming, laughing, amorous
youths, who look upon the luxury and brilliancy with which one surrounds
them, as if they were their due upon bonds to minister to their
pleasure, and to their imp
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