persuade a friend to put away bilious visions. 'Of the two, if you two
are divisible, we could better dispense with him. She'll slip him, she's
an eel. I have seen eels twine on a prong of the fork that prods them;
but she's an actress, a slippery one through and through, with no real
embrace in her, not even a common muscular contraction. Of every camp!
as you say. She was not worth carrying off. I consented to try it to
quiet him. He sets no bounds to his own devotion to friendship, and we
must take pattern by him. It's a mad love.'

'A Titan's love!' the baroness exclaimed, groaning. 'The woman!--no
matter how or at what cost! I can admire that primal barbarism of a
great man's passion, which counts for nothing the stains and accidents
fraught with extinction for it to meaner men. It reads ill, it sounds
badly, but there is grand stuff in it. See the royalty of the man, for
whom no degradation of the woman can be, so long as it brings her to him!
He--that great he--covers all. He burns her to ashes, and takes the
flame--the pure spirit of her--to himself. Were men like him!--they
would have less to pardon. We must, as I have ever said, be morally on
alpine elevations to comprehend Alvan; he is Mont Blanc above his
fellows. Do not ask him to be considerate of her. She has planted him
in a storm, and the bigger the mountain, the more savage, monstrous,
cruel--yes, but she blew up the tourmente! That girl is the author of
his madness. It is the snake's nature of the girl which distracts him;
she is in his blood. Had she come to me, I would have helped her to cure
him; or had you succeeded in carrying her off, I would have stood by
their union; or were she a different creature, and not the shifty thing
she is, I could desire him to win her. A peasant girl, a workman's
daughter, a tradesman's, a professional singer, actress, artist--I would
have given my hand to one of these in good faith, thankful to her! As it
is, I have acted in obedience to his wishes, without idle remonstrances--