intellect. He should return to France, and then--why, then, the ladder
was on the walls of Fortune and the foot planted on the step! As he
spoke, confidently and sanguinely, with the verve and assurance of an
able man who sees clear the path to his goal, as he sketched with rapid
precision the nature of his prospects and his hopes, all that subtle
wisdom which had before often seemed but vague and general, took
practical shape and interest, thus applied to the actual circumstances of
men; the spirit of intrigue, which seemed mean when employed on mean
things, swelled into statesmanship and masterly genius to the listener
when she saw it linked with the large objects of masculine ambition.
Insensibly, therefore, her attention became earnest, her mind aroused.
The vision of a field, afar from the scenes of her humiliation and
despair,--a field for energy, stratagem, and contest,--invited her
restless intelligence. As Dalibard had profoundly calculated, there was
no new channel for her affections,--the source was dried up, and the
parched sands heaped over it; but while the heart lay dormant, the mind
rose sleepless, chafed, and perturbed. Through the mind, he indirectly
addressed and subtly wooed her.

"Such," he said, as he rose to take leave, "such is the career to which I
could depart with joy if I did not depart alone!"

"Alone!" that word, more than once that day, Lucretia repeated to
herself--"alone!" And what career was left to her?--she, too, alone!

In certain stages of great grief our natures yearn for excitement. This
has made some men gamblers; it has made even women drunkards,--it had
effect over the serene calm and would-be divinity of the poet-sage. When
his son dies, Goethe does not mourn, he plunges into the absorption of a
study uncultivated before. But in the great contest of life, in the