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A Woman of Thirty by Honoré de Balzac
page 117 of 251 (46%)
to sear. The divine Sower's seed could not take root in such a soil,
and His gentle voice was drowned by the clamorous outcry of self-pity.
Yet the good man returned again and again with an apostle's earnest
persistence, brought back by a hope of leading so noble and proud a
soul to God; until the day when he made the discovery that the
Marquise only cared to talk with him because it was sweet to speak of
him who was no more. He would not lower his ministry by condoning her
passion, and confined the conversation more and more to generalities
and commonplaces.

Spring came, and with the spring the Marquise found distraction from
her deep melancholy. She busied herself for lack of other occupation
with her estate, making improvements for amusement.

In October she left the old chateau. In the life of leisure at
Saint-Lange she had recovered from her grief and grown fair and fresh.
Her grief had been violent at first in its course, as the quoit hurled
forth with all the player's strength, and like the quoit after many
oscillations, each feebler than the last, it had slackened into
melancholy. Melancholy is made up of a succession of such
oscillations, the first touching upon despair, the last on the border
between pain and pleasure; in youth, it is the twilight of dawn; in
age, the dusk of night.

As the Marquise drove through the village in her traveling carriage,
she met the cure on his way back from the church. She bowed in
response to his farewell greeting, but it was with lowered eyes and
averted face. She did not wish to see him again. The village cure had
judged this poor Diana of Ephesus only too well.

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