Page:Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (IA memoirsofmargare01fullrich).pdf/285

Rh time that they would have been more generous than the Olympians. But when we have learned the high lesson to deserve, — that boon of manhood, — we see they esteemed us too much, to give what we had not earned.’

The following passages from her journal and her letters are sufficiently descriptive, each in its way, of her strong affections.

‘At Mr. G.'s we looked over prints, the whole evening, in peace. Nothing fixed my attention so much as a large engraving of Madame Recamier in her boudoir. I have so often thought over the intimacy between her and Madame De Stael.

‘It is so true that a woman may be in love with a woman, and a man with a man. I like to be sure of it, for it is the same love which angels feel, where —

‘It is regulated by the same law as that of love between persons of different sexes; only it is purely intellectual and spiritual. Its law is the desire of the spirit to realize a whole, which makes it seek in another being what it finds not in itself. Thus the beautiful seek the strong, and the strong the beautiful; the mute seeks the eloquent, &c.; the butterfly settles always on the dark flower. Why did Socrates love Alcibiades? Why did Körner love Schneider? How natural is the love of Wallenstein for Max; that of De Stael for De Recamier; mine for ——. I loved ——, for a time, with as much passion as I was then strong enough to feel. Her face was always gleaming before