Page:Letters of Mlle. de Lespinasse.djvu/54

Rh Gmbert's imfaithfulness — which, her passion condones — it kills her.

Mile, de Lespinasse possessed the mysterious gift of charm, a gift that cannot be explained or analyzed, a spiritual gift, not dependent on beauty or physical attraction, and one which many women exercise equally over men and women. The word " exercise," however, is not applicable to it, for it is an unconscious faculty, a gift bestowed on women which they themselves are unable to explain ; some of its elements are easily defined, — such as self -unconsciousness, perception of the souls of others, — but as a whole the gift is mysterious. Mile, de Lespinasse had it in an eminent degree until the period of her fatal passion. Plainly it was a part of the tie between herself and M. de Mora, and she never lost it with her circle of friends so long as she lived, nor after her death. The story of d'Alembert's attachment to her is as full of pain as her own, and even more pathetic. His was the passion of friendship, if not of love ; and it is difficult to acquit her of indifference to his feelings, and even of cruelty, especially in the bequest of her correspondence with M. de Mora, to be read and destroyed by him at her death. Even Marmontel, so faithful to her himself, says : " Mile, de Lespinasse was no longer the same with d'Alembert ; not only did he have to bear her coldness, but often her fretful humours full of gloom and bitterness." She admits this herself, and gives as its excuse (which Sainte-Beuve recognizes) that her soul was wrung with remorse for the deception she was practising upon him. A true excuse no doubt, and one with which we ought to credit her ; but the sorrow and the distress to him were none the less, and the shock when he discovered the truth after her death was not the more bearable. No, his passion stands beside hers in this sad story, and we cannot help comparing them. Hers has the sturm und drang of