ledge stands
still, taste is corrupted like stagnant water, and passion dwindles,
frittered away upon the infinitely small objects which it strives to
exalt. Herein lies the secret of the avarice and tittle-tattle that
poison provincial life. The contagion of narrow-mindedness and meanness
affects the noblest natures; and in such ways as these, men born to be
great, and women 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 wor