brothers and sisters were not of an age to contest her lead. The temper
of the period was revolutionary in society by reflection of the state of
politics, and juniors were sturdy democrats, letting their elders know
that they had come to their inheritance, while the elders, confused by
the impudent topsy-turvy, put on the gaping mask (not unfamiliar to
history) of the disestablished conservative, whose astounded state
paralyzes his wrath.

Clotilde maintained a decent measure in the liberty she claimed, and it
was exercised in wildness of dialogue rather than in capricious
behaviour. If her flowing tongue was imperfectly controlled, it was
because she discoursed by preference to men upon our various affairs and
tangles, and they encouraged her with the tickled wonder which bids the
bold advance yet farther into bogland. Becoming the renowned original of
her society, wherever it might be, in Germany, Italy, Southern France,
she grew chillily sensible of the solitude decreed for their heritage to
our loftiest souls. Her Indian Bacchus, as a learned professor supplied
Prince Marko's title for her, was a pet, not a companion. She to him was
what she sought for in another. As much as she pitied herself for not
lighting on the predestined man, she pitied him for having met the woman,
so that her tenderness for both inspired many signs of warm affection,
not very unlike the thing it moaned secretly the not being. For she
could not but distinguish a more poignant sorrow in the seeing of the
object we yearn to vainly than in vainly yearning to one unseen.
Dressed, to delight him, in Prince Marko's colours, the care she bestowed
on her dressing was for the one absent, the shrouded comer: so she
pleased the prince to be pleasing to her soul's lord, and this, owing to
an appearance of satisfactory deception that it bore, led to her thinking
guiltily. We may ask it: an eagle is expected, and how is he to declare
his eagleship save by breaking through our mean conventional systems,