ing thrown on its own resources. Yet all this was for
society. Her courtly air, inherited from an ancestry of princes; her
manners, which retained the piquant animation of her own country,
combined with the graver elegance of high life in ours; that
incomparable taste in dress, which seems the inheritance of French
beauty; and the sparkling happiness of language, scarcely less the gift
of her native soil, made her conspicuous from the first moment of her
introduction to the circle of the Castle.

But it was in our quiet and lonely hours that I saw the still more
captivating aspects of her nature; when neither the splendid Countess de
Tourville, nor the woman of brilliant conversation was before me, but an
innocent and loving girl--no Armida, no dazzling mistress of the spells
which intoxicate the heart by bewildering the mind; but a sweet and
guileless creature in the first bloom of being, full of nature, full of
simplicity, full of truth. How often, in those days of calm delight,
have I seen her fine eyes suddenly fill with tears of thankful joy, her
cheek glow with fond gratitude, her heart labour with the unutterable
language of secure and sacred love! What hours can be placed in
comparison with such hours of wedded confidence! It was then that I
first became acquainted with the nature of the female heart. I then
first knew the treasures which the spirit of woman may contain--the hope
against hope, the generous faith, the unfailing constancy, the deep
affection. How often, when glancing round our superb apartments, crowded
with all the glittering and costly equipment of almost royal life, she
would clasp my hand, and touchingly contrast them with the solitude of
the cell, or the anxieties of the life of trial "from which I alone had
rescued her!" How often, when we sat together, uninterrupted by the
world, at our sumptuous table, would she, half sportively and half in
melancholy, contrast it with the life of flight and fear which she had
so lately led, with the rude repast snatched in forests and swamps, in
the midst of civil war, with desolation round her and despair in
prospect, imprisoned, in the power of a tyrant, and, at every step,
approaching nearer to the place of a cruel death! Then a look would
thank me more than all the eloquence in the world. Then I saw her eyes
brighten, and her cheek bloom with new lustre and beauty unknown before,
until I could have almost fallen at her feet and worshipped. I felt the