He had lived very modestly until the end, and appeared to spend nothing;
and he only kept one old servant, who spoke to him in the Basque
dialect.

That chaste philosopher, who had all his life long feared women's snares
and wiles, who had looked upon love as a luxury made only for the rich
and idle, which unsettles the brain and interferes with acuteness of
thought, had allowed himself to be caught like an ordinary man, late in
life, when his hair was white and his forehead deeply wrinkled.

It was not, however, as happens in the visions of solitary ascetics,
some strange queen or female magician, with stars in her eyes and
witchery in her voice, some loose woman who held up the symbolical lamp
immodestly, to light up her radiant nudity, and the pink and white
bouquet of her sweet-smelling skin, some woman in search of voluptuous
pleasures, whose lascivious appeals it is impossible for any man to
listen to, without being excited to the very depths of his being.
Neither a princess out of some fairy tale, nor a frail beauty who was an
expert in the art of reviving the ardor of old men, and of leading them
astray, nor a woman who was disgusted with her ideals, that always
turned out to be alike, and who dreamt of awakening the heart of one of
those men who suffer, who have afforded so much alleviation to human
misery, who seemed to be surrounded by a halo, and who never knew
anything but the true, the beautiful and the good.

It was only a little girl of twenty, who was as pretty as a wild flower,
who had a ringing laugh, white teeth, and a mind that was as spotless as
a new mirror, in which no figure has been reflected as yet.