rself with a laugh in many humble ways; she promised me a discretion
equal to any test, and even asked that I would merely suffer her to
love me. "Your friend always, your mistress when you will," she said. At
last, after an evening when she had made herself so beautiful that she
was certain to have excited my desires, she came to me. The scandal
resounded through England, where the aristocracy was horrified like
heaven itself at the fall of its highest angel. Lady Dudley abandoned
her place in the British empyrean, gave up her wealth, and endeavored to
eclipse by her sacrifices _her_ whose virtue had been the cause of this
great disaster. She took delight, like the devil on the pinnacle of the
temple, in showing me all the riches of her passionate kingdom.

Read me, I pray you, with indulgence. The matter concerns one of the
most interesting problems of human life,--a crisis to which most men
are subjected, and which I desire to explain, if only to place a warning
light upon the reef. This beautiful woman, so slender, so fragile, this
milk-white creature, so yielding, so submissive, so gentle, her brow so
endearing, the hair that crowns it so fair and fine, this tender woman,
whose brilliancy is phosphorescent and fugitive, has, in truth, an
iron nature. No horse, no matter how fiery he may be, can conquer her
vigorous wrist, or strive against that hand so soft in appearance, but
never tired. She has the foot of a doe, a thin, muscular little foot,
indescribably graceful in outline. She is so strong that she fears
no struggle; men cannot follow her on horseback; she would win a
steeple-chase against a centaur; she can bring down a stag without
stopping her horse. Her body never perspires; it inhales the fire of the
atmosphere, and lives in water under pain of not living at all. Her
love is African; her desires are like the whirlwinds of the desert--the
desert, whose torrid expanse is in her eyes, the azure, love-laden
desert, with its changeless skies, its cool and starry nights. What a
contrast to Clochegourde! the east and the west! the one drawing into
her every drop of moisture for her own nourishment, the other exuding
her soul, wrapping her dear ones in her luminous atmosphere; the one
quick and slender; the other slow and massive.

Have you ever reflected on the actual meaning of the manners and
customs and morals of England? Is it not the deification of matter? a
well-defined, carefully considered Epicureanism,