Page:Margaret Fuller by Howe, Julia Ward, Ed. (1883).djvu/26

Rh This state of things probably became unbearable. Its cause was inquired into, and soon found. A tribunal was held, and before the whole school assembled, Margaret was accused of calumny and falsehood, and, alas! convicted of the same.

"At first she defended herself with self-possession and eloquence. But when she found that she could no more resist the truth, she suddenly threw herself down, dashing her head with all her force against the iron hearth, on which a fire was burning, and was taken up senseless."

All present were of course greatly alarmed at this crisis, which was followed, on the part of Margaret, by days of hopeless and apathetic melancholy. During these she would neither speak nor eat, but remained in a sort of stupor,—the result of conflicting emotions. In the pain which she now felt, her former resentment against her school-mates disappeared. She saw only her own offence, and saw it without hope of being able to pass beyond it.

In this emergency, when neither the sorrow of her young companions nor the entreaties of her teachers seemed to touch her, a single friend was able to reach the seat of Margaret's distemper, and to turn the currents of her life once more into a healthful channel.

This lady, a teacher in the school, had always felt a special interest in Margaret, whose character somewhat puzzled her. With the tact of true affection, she drew the young girl from the contemplation of her own failure, by narrating to her the circumstances which, through fault of hers, had made her own life one of sorrow and of sacrifice.

Margaret herself, with a discernment beyond her