fe led by the Faubourg
Saint-Germain under the Restoration, to which, if there is any truth in
the above reflections, they failed to give stability, the most perfect
type of the aristocratic caste in its weakness and strength, its
greatness and littleness, might have been found for a brief space in a
young married woman who belonged to it. This was a woman artificially
educated, but in reality ignorant; a woman whose instincts and feelings
were lofty while the thought which should have controlled them was
wanting. She squandered the wealth of her nature in obedience to social
conventions; she was ready to brave society, yet she hesitated till her
scruples degenerated into artifice. With more wilfulness than real force
of character, impressionable rather than enthusiastic, gifted with more
brain than heart; she was supremely a woman, supremely a coquette,
and above all things a Parisienne, loving a brilliant life and gaiety,
reflecting never, or too late; imprudent to the verge of poetry, and
humble in the depths of her heart, in spite of her charming insolence.
Like some straight-growing reed, she made a show of independence; yet,
like the reed, she was ready to bend to a strong hand. She talked much
of religion, and had it not at heart, though she was prepared to find in
it a solution of her life. How explain a creature so complex? Capable
of heroism, yet sinking unconsciously from heroic heights to utter a
spiteful word; young and sweet-natured, not so much old at heart as
aged by the maxims of those about her; versed in a selfish philosophy in
which she was all unpractised, she had all the vices of a courtier, all
the nobleness of developing womanhood. She trusted nothing and no one,
yet there were times when she quitted her sceptical attitude for a
submissive credulity.

How should any portrait be anything but incomplete of her, in whom the
play of swiftly-changing colour made discord only to produce a poetic
confusion? For in her there shone a divine brightness, a radiance of
youth that blended all her bewildering characteristics in a certain
completeness and unity informed by her charm. Nothing was feigned. The
passion or semi-passion, the ineffectual high aspirations, the actual
pettiness, the coolness of sentiment and warmth of impulse, were all
spontaneous and unaffected, and as much the outcome of her own position
as of the position of the aristocracy to which she belonged. She was
wholly self-contained; she p