After sowing broadcast with full
hands and harvesting nothing, this woman was still virgin in soul, but
irritated by a multitude of baffled desires. Weary of a struggle
without an adversary, she had reached in her despair to the point of
preferring good to evil, if it came in the form of enjoyment; evil to
good, if it offered her some poetic emotion; misery to mediocrity, as
something nobler and higher; the gloomy and mysterious future of
present death to a life without hopes or even without sufferings.
Never in any heart was so much powder heaped ready for the spark,
never were so many riches for love to feed on; no daughter of Eve was
ever moulded, with a greater mixture of gold in her clay. Francine,
like an angel of earth, watched over this being whose perfections she
adored, believing that she obeyed a celestial mandate in striving to
bring that spirit back among the choir of seraphim whence it was
banished for the sin of pride.
"There is the clock-tower of Alencon," said the horseman, riding up to
the carriage.
"I see it," replied the young lady, in a cold tone.
"Ah, well," he said, turning away with all the signs of servile
submission, in spite of his disappointment.
"Go faster," said the lady to the postilion. "There is no longer any
danger; go at a fast trot, or even a gallop, if you can; we are almost
into Alencon.
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