most precious
compositions; while she, on her part, controlled a convent, entertained
travellers from all parts of the world, and diffused a boundless
charity,--for it does not seem that she had parted with the means of
benefiting both the poor and the rich.

Nor was this life at Bethlehem without its charms. That beautiful and
fertile town,--as it then seems to have been,--shaded with sycamores and
olives, luxurious with grapes and figs, abounding in wells of the purest
water, enriched with the splendid church that Helena had built, and
consecrated by so many associations, from David to the destruction of
Jerusalem, was no dull retreat, and presented far more attractions than
did the vale of Port Royal, where Saint Cyran and Arnauld discoursed
with the Mere Angelique on the greatness and misery of man; or the sunny
slopes of Cluny, where Peter the Venerable sheltered and consoled the
persecuted Abelard. No man can be dull when his faculties are stimulated
to their utmost stretch, if he does live in a cell; but many a man is
bored and _ennuied_ in a palace, when he abandons himself to luxury and
frivolities. It is not to animals, but to angels, that the higher
life is given.

Nor during those eighteen years which Paula passed in Bethlehem, or the
previous sixteen years at Rome, did ever a scandal rise or a base
suspicion exist in reference to the friendship which has made her
immortal. There was nothing in it of that Platonic sentimentality which
marked the mediaeval courts of love; nor was it like the chivalrous
idolatry of flesh and blood bestowed on queens of beauty at a
tournament or tilt; nor was it poetic adoration kindled by the
contemplation of ideal excellence, such as Dante saw in his lamented and
departed Beatrice; nor was it mere intellectual admiration which bright
and enthusiastic women sometimes feel for those who dazzle their brains,
or who enjoy a great _eclat_; still less was it that impassioned ardor,
that wild infatuation, that tempestuous frenzy, that dire unrest, that
mad conflict between sense and reason, that sad forgetfulness sometimes
of fame and duty, that reckless defiance of the future, that selfish,
exacting, ungovernable, transient impulse which ignores God and law and
punishment, treading happiness and heaven beneath the feet,--such as
doomed the greatest genius of the Middle Ages to agonies more bitter
than scorpions' stings, and shame that made the light of heaven a
burden; to futile