part I have been playing in them. And yet I would not willingly forfeit
the exalted admiration of Louise for my constancy: as little willingly as
I would have imperilled her purity. I cling to the past as to something
in which I have deserved well, though I am scarcely satisfied with it.
According to our English notions I know my name. English notions,
however, are not to be accepted in all matters, any more than the flat
declaration of a fact will develop it in alt its bearings. When our
English society shall have advanced to a high civilization, it will be
less expansive in denouncing the higher stupidities. Among us, much of
the social judgement of Bodge upon the relations of men to women is the
stereotyped opinion of the land. There is the dictum here for a man who
adores a woman who is possessed by a husband. If he has long adored her,
and known himself to be preferred by her in innocency of heart; if he has
solved the problem of being her bosom's lord, without basely seeking to
degrade her to being his mistress; the epithets to characterise him in
our vernacular will probably be all the less flattering. Politically we
are the most self-conscious people upon earth, and socially the frankest
animals. The terrorism of our social laws is eminently serviceable,
for without it such frank animals as we are might run into bad excesses.
I judge rather by the abstract evidence than by the examples our fair
matrons give to astounded foreigners when abroad.

Louise writes that her husband is paralysed. The Marquis de Mazardouin
is at last tasting of his mortality. I bear in mind the day when he
married her. She says that he has taken to priestly counsel, and, like
a woman, she praises him for that. It is the one thing which I have not
done to please her. She anticipates his decease. Should she be free--
what then? My heart does not beat the faster for the thought. There are
twenty years upon it, and they make a great load. But I have a desire
that she should come over to us. The old folly might rescue me from the