reverie and profounder sensibility who turns _away_ from the world as
hateful and insufficient, that engages _my_ interest: whereas Catalina
was the very model of the class fitted for facing this world, and who
express their love to it by fighting with it and kicking it from year
to year. But, always, what is best in its kind one admires, even though
the kind be disagreeable. Kate's advantages for her _role_ in this life
lay in four things, viz., in a well-built person, and a particularly
strong wrist; 2d, in a heart that nothing could appal; 3d, in a
sagacious head, never drawn aside from the _hoc age_ [from the instant
question of life] by any weakness of imagination; 4th, in a tolerably
thick skin--not literally, for she was fair and blooming, and decidedly
handsome, having such a skin as became a young woman of family in
northernmost Spain. But her sensibilities were obtuse as regarded
_some_ modes of delicacy, _some_ modes of equity, _some_ modes of the
world's opinion, and _all_ modes whatever of personal hardship. Lay a
stress on that word _some_--for, as to delicacy, she never lost sight
of the kind which peculiarly concerns her sex. Long afterwards she told
the Pope himself, when confessing without disguise her sad and infinite
wanderings to the paternal old man (and I feel convinced of her
veracity), that in this respect, even then, at middle age, she was as
pure as is a child. And, as to equity, it was only that she substituted
the equity of camps for the polished (but often more iniquitous) equity
of courts and towns. As to the third item--the world's opinion--I don't
know that you need lay a stress on _some_; for, generally speaking,
_all_ that the world did, said, or thought, was alike contemptible in
her eyes, in which, perhaps, she was not so _very_ far wrong. I must
add, though at the cost of interrupting the story by two or three more
sentences, that Catalina had also a fifth advantage, which sounds
humbly, but is really of use in a world, where even to fold and seal a
letter adroitly is not the least of accomplishments. She was a _handy_