Some remain proudly faithful to a heart which
death tore from them; martyrs of love, they learn the secrets of
womanhood only though their souls. Others obey some family pride
(which in our days, and to our shame, decreases steadily); these
devote themselves to the welfare of a brother, or to orphan nephews;
they are mothers while remaining virgins. Such old maids attain to the
highest heroism of their sex by consecrating all feminine feelings to
the help of sorrow. They idealize womanhood by renouncing the rewards
of woman's destiny, accepting its pains. They live surrounded by the
splendour of their devotion, and men respectfully bow the head before
their faded features. Mademoiselle de Sombreuil was neither wife nor
maid; she was and ever will be a living poem. Mademoiselle Salomon de
Villenoix belonged to the race of these heroic beings. Her devotion
was religiously sublime, inasmuch as it won her no glory after being,
for years, a daily agony. Beautiful and young, she loved and was
beloved; her lover lost his reason. For five years she gave herself,
with love's devotion, to the mere mechanical well-being of that
unhappy man, whose madness she so penetrated that she never believed
him mad. She was simple in manner, frank in speech, and her pallid
face was not lacking in strength and character, though its features
were regular. She never spoke of the events of her life. But at times
a sudden quiver passed over her as she listened to the story of some
sad or dreadful incident, thus betraying the emotions that great
sufferings had developed within her.
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