en
who would have been charming if they had fallen under the forming
influence of greater minds, are balked of their lives.

Here was Mme. de Bargeton, for instance, smiting the lyre for every
trifle, and publishing her emotions indiscriminately to her circle. As
a matter of fact, when sensations appeal to an audience of one, it is
better to keep them to ourselves. A sunset certainly is a glorious
poem; but if a woman describes it, in high-sounding words, for the
benefit of matter-of-fact people, is she not ridiculous? There are
pleasures which can only be felt to the full when two souls meet, poet
and poet, heart and heart. She had a trick of using high-sounding
phrases, interlarded with exaggerated expressions, the kind of stuff
ingeniously nicknamed _tartines_ by the French journalist, who furnishes
a daily supply of the commodity for a public that daily performs the
difficult feat of swallowing it. She squandered superlatives
recklessly in her talk, and the smallest things took giant
proportions. It was at this period of her career that she began to
type-ize, individualize, synthesize, dramatize, superiorize, analyze,
poetize, angelize, neologize, tragedify, prosify, and colossify--you
must violate the laws of language to find words to express the
new-fangled whimsies in which even women here and there indulge. The
heat of her language communicated itself to the brain, and the
dithyrambs on her lips were spoken out of the abundance of her heart.
She palpitated, swooned, and went into ecstasies over anything and
everything, over the devotion of a sister of Charity, and the
execution of the brothers Fauchet, over M. d'Arlincourt's _Ipsiboe_,
Lewis' _Anaconda_, or the escape of La Valette, or the presence of mind
of a lady friend who put burglars to flight by imitating a man's
voice. Everything was heroic, extraordinary, strange, wonderful, and
divine. She would work herself into a state of excitement,
indignation, or depression; she soared to heaven, and sank again,
gazed at the sky, or looked to earth; her eyes were always filled with
tears. She wore herself out with chronic admiration, and wasted her
strength on curious dislikes. Her mind ran on the Pasha of Janina; she
would have liked to try conclusions with him in his seraglio, and had
a great notion of being sewn in a sack and thrown into the water. She
envied that blue-stocking of the desert, Lady Hester Stanhope; she
longed to be a sister of Saint Camilla and