the egoism which must take the bloom from her heart and break her in
to the life of the world.

This harsh and sorry teaching is the usual outcome of our early
sorrows. For the first, and perhaps for the last time in her life, the
Marquise d'Aiglemont was in very truth suffering. And, indeed, would
it not be an error to suppose that the same sentiment can be
reproduced in us? Once develop the power to feel, is it not always
there in the depths of our nature? The accidents of life may lull or
awaken it, but there it is, of necessity modifying the self, its
abiding place. Hence, every sensation should have its great day once
and for all, its first day of storm, be it long or short. Hence,
likewise, pain, the most abiding of our sensations, could be keenly
felt only at its first irruption, its intensity diminishing with every
subsequent paroxysm, either because we grow accustomed to these
crises, or perhaps because a natural instinct of self-preservation
asserts itself, and opposes to the destroying force of anguish an
equal but passive force of inertia.

Yet of all kinds of suffering, to which does the name of anguish
belong? For the loss of parents, Nature has in a manner prepared us;
physical suffering, again, is an evil which passes over us and is
gone; it lays no hold upon the soul; if it persists, it ceases to be
an evil, it is death. The young mother loses her firstborn, but wedded
love ere long gives her a successor. This grief, too, is transient.
After all, these, and many other troubles like unto them, are in some
sort wounds and bruises; they do not sap the springs of vitality, and
only a succession of such blows can crush in us the instinct that
seeks happiness. Great pain, therefore, pain that arises to anguish,
should be suffering so deadly, that past, present, and future are