pose as a task. Despising the
insipid and common pleasure of merely being able to please, they demand
that the being whom they love shall be capable of exacting their esteem.
This romantic temperament sometimes retains them long in hesitation
between the world and the cloister. Indeed, there are few among them who
at some moment of their lives have not seriously and bitterly thought of
taking refuge within the walls of a convent.

Where such women reign as sovereigns, what feverish words, what hopes,
what despair, what entrancing fascinations must occur in the mazes of
the Mazourka; the Mazourka, whose every cadence vibrates in the ear of
the Polish lady as the echo of a vanished passion, or the whisper of a
tender declaration. Which among them has ever danced through a Mazourka,
whose cheeks burned not more from the excitement of emotion than from
mere physical fatigue? What unexpected and endearing ties have been
formed in the long tete-a-tete, in the very midst of crowds, with the
sounds of music, which generally recalled the name of some hero or some
proud historical remembrance attached to the words, floating around,
while thus the associations of love and heroism became forever attached
to the words and melodies! What ardent vows have been exchanged; what
wild and despairing farewells been breathed! How many brief attachments
have been linked and as suddenly unlinked, between those who had never
met before, who were never, never to meet again--and yet, to whom
forgetfulness had become forever impossible! What hopeless love may have
been revealed during the moments so rare upon this earth; when beauty
is more highly esteemed than riches, a noble bearing of more consequence
than rank! What dark destinies forever severed by the tyranny of rank
and wealth may have been, in these fleeting moments of meeting, again
united, happy in the glitter of passing triumph, reveling in concealed
and unsuspected joy! What interviews, commenced in indifference,
prolonged in jest, interrupted with emotion, renewed with the secret
consciousness of mutual understanding, (in all that concerns subtle
intuition Slavic finesse and delicacy especially excel,) have terminated
in the deepest attachments! What holy confidences have been exchanged in
the spirit of that generous frankness which circulates from unknown
to unknown, when the noble are delivered from the tyranny of forced
conventionalisms! What words deceitfully bland, what vows, wha