Nevertheless, in your great soul you feel the need of
worshipping. When a man is at your knees, you cannot put yourself at
his. You can't advance in that way, as Voltaire might say. The little
duke has too many genuflections in his moral being and the poet has
too few,--indeed, I might say, none at all. Ha, I have guessed the
mischief in your smiles when you talk to the grand equerry, and when
he talks to you and you answer him. You would never be unhappy with
the duke, and everybody will approve your choice, if you do choose
him; but you will never love him. The ice of egotism, and the burning
heat of ecstasy both produce indifference in the heart of every woman.
It is evident to my mind that no such perpetual worship will give you
the infinite delights which you are dreaming of in marriage,--in some
marriage where obedience will be your pride, where noble little
sacrifices can be made and hidden, where the heart is full of
anxieties without a cause, and successes are awaited with eager hope,
where each new chance for magnanimity is hailed with joy, where souls
are comprehended to their inmost recesses, and where the woman
protects with her love the man who protects her.
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