uld not act as you say, even
if the opportunity occurred. When we are grappling with a single one of
our faculties we fancy the others annihilated; but let some extraneous
shock arouse them, and we realize that our soul draws its life from
several sources at the same time. You are not insensible to fame,
Bernard; and if Edmee invited you to abandon it you would perceive
that it was dearer to you than you thought. You have ardent republican
convictions, and Edmee herself was the first to inspire you with them.
What, then, would you think of her, and, indeed, what sort of woman
would she be, if she said to you to-day, 'There is something more
important than the religion I preached to you and the gods I revealed;
something more august and more sacred, and that is my own good
pleasure'? Bernard, your love is full of contradictory desires.
Inconsistency, moreover, is the mark of all human loves. Men imagine
that a woman can have no separate existence of her own, and that she
must always be wrapped up in them; and yet the only woman they love
deeply is she whose character seems to raise her above the weakness
and indolence of her sex. You see how all the settlers in this country
dispose of the beauty of their slaves, but they have no love for them,
however beautiful they may be; and if by chance they become genuinely
attached to one of them, their first care is to set her free. Until then
they do not think that they are dealing with a human being. A spirit
of independence, the conception of virtue, a love of duty, all these
privileges of lofty souls are essential, therefore, in the woman who
is to be one's companion through life; and the more your mistress gives
proof of strength and patience, the more you cherish her, in spite of
what you may have to suffer. You must learn, then, to distinguish love
from desire; desire wishes to break through the very impediments by
which it is attracted, and it dies amid the ruins of the virtue it has
vanquished; love wishes to live, and in order to do that, it would fain
see the object of its worship long defended by that wall of adamant
whose strength and splendour mean true worth and true beauty."

In this way would Arthur explain to me the mysterious springs of my
passion, and throw the light of his wisdom upon the stormy abyss of my
soul. Sometimes he used to add:

"If Heaven had granted me the woman I have now and then dreamed of, I
think I should have succeeded in making a noble and