Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/383

Rh of her mind or disposition; arises from physical or nervous weakness; arises from the influence of the good and evil fairies in her soul. Her good heart has also some share in the irregularity of her conduct, because, when she sees that she has grieved him, or been the occasion of his suffering, she endeavors to atone for it, and it is just as certain that this better state of mind will not long continue; because the magic power which governs her so wills it; that let her be in what sort of temper she may—dark or light—she is agreeable and fascinating to him, and he is by that means attracted to her. She cannot be otherwise, even if she would. I have several times warned and lectured her in a motherly way, and have been quite overcome by her amiability, candor, and humility. She is as amiable, as she is unusually gifted, and I have ended by thinking that she may be more in the right than I am, when she asserts that she is not suitable for Hercules, nor is Hercules suitable for her. He is prose, pure and noble prose, but prose nevertheless; she is poetry, noble also and pure, but with ever-varying transition to wild fancy, which renders her unjust towards the peculiar beauty of the prose. Love alone, and a new birth through love, could lead her, like the Princess Elsa, in Elsa-dale, to become the servant of the practical aims, which the well-being of mankind requires. In order to be interested in the silk-spinning in the Waldenses valleys, to take part in popular schools, &c., she must love the Waldensian, and that she cannot do, I see plainly, and with that he must be content. She has honestly endeavored to do so, but it did not succeed, and it is no fault of