alm delight wherein the pain
of effort disappears in the content of achievement. Thus in life, as in
art, it is through discipline that we arrive at freedom, and duty only
completes itself when all motives, all actions, are attuned into one
harmonious whole, and it is not striven for as duty, but enjoyed as
happiness. M. Savarin treated this theory with the mockery with which
the French wit is ever apt to treat what it terms German mysticism.
According to him, duty must always be a hard and difficult struggle; and
he said laughingly, 'Whenever a man says, "I have done my duty," it is
with a long face and a mournful sigh.'

"Ah, how devoutly I listened to the Englishman! how harshly the
Frenchman's irony jarred upon my ears! And yet now, in the duty that
life imposes on me, to fulfil which I strain every power vouchsafed to
my nature, and seek to crush down every impulse that rebels, where is
the promised calm, where any approach to the content of achievement?
Contemplating the way before me, the Beautiful even of Art has vanished.
I see but cloud and desert. Can this which I assume to be duty really be
so? Ah, is it not sin even to ask my heart that question?

"Madame Rameau is very angry with her son for his neglect both of his
parents and of me. I have had to take his part against her. I would not
have him lose their love. Poor Gustave! But when Madame Rameau suddenly
said to-day: 'I erred in seeking the union between thee and Gustave.
Retract thy promise; in doing so thou wilt be justified,'--oh, the
strange joy that flashed upon me as she spoke. Am I justified? Am I? Oh,
if that Englishman had never crossed my path! Oh, if I had never
loved! or if in the last time we met he had not asked for my love,
and confessed his own! Then, I think, I could honestly reconcile my
conscience with my longings, and say to Gustave, 'We do not suit each
other; be we both released!' But now-is it that Gustave is really
changed from what he was, when in despondence at my own lot, and in
pitying belief that I might brighten and exalt his, I plighted my troth
to him? or is it not rather that the choice I thus voluntarily made
became so intolerable a thought the moment I knew I was beloved and
sought by another; and from that moment I lost the strength I had
before,--strength to silence the voice at my own heart? What! is it
the image of that other one which is persuading me to be false?--to
exaggerate the failings, to be blind to the me