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 CHAPTER XLIX

POOR EMERALD

Of all passions that tear and worry at the human heart, jealousy seems to be not only the most painful but the most contradictory. Anger, desire, avarice, revenge, all these propose to themselves a certain end, in the accomplishment of which there is doubtless an evil satisfaction for the moment, however closely remorse may tread on the heels of indulgence, but jealousy, conscious only of its own bitterness, knows not even what to hope or what to fear. It hates itself, though its torture is purely selfish; it hates another whom all the while it madly loves. It is proud, yet stoops to meanness—cruel, yet quivers with the pain it inflicts, desperate while cowardly, pitiless though sensitive, obstinate and unstable, a mass of incongruities, and a purgatory from which there is neither present purification nor prospective escape.

It may please a woman to feel that she can make her lover jealous, it may even please her, in her feminine relish for dominion, to mark the painful effect of her power; but if it were possible to love and be wise, he would know that he had better hold his hand in the fire without wincing, than let her discover the force of the engine with which she can thus place him on the rack. Some women are generous enough not to inflict a torture so readily at command, but even these take credit for their forbearance, and assume, in consequence, a position of authority, which is sometimes fatal to the male interest in such a partnership. The sweetest kisses to a woman are those she gives on tiptoe. A man, at least such a one as is best worth winning, cares