women like a veritable conflagration. They are more merciless, more bloodthirsty than men — witness the frightful memories of the French Revolution, and the inveterate hatred displayed in our late civil war. On the other hand, when exalted by generous sentiments they become sublime, and leave men far behind them. Artemisia and Lucretia are types without masculine analogues. Man is absolutely incapable of love so disinterested and ardent as that of Heloise.*[1]
It is a woman, Magdalen, who personifies repentance: another, Theresa, who personifies devotion; another Joan of Arc, who personifies political enthusiasm. Woman carries sentiments and passions to their utmost limits, precisely because of the facility with which she yields to novel influences. There is something fugacious and indeterminate in her physical organization; something intangible, which adds to her means of seduction by provoking the desires. The sentiment of modesty, inherent in her nature, operates in the same wa}', by surrounding her, as it were, with a sort of misty veil.
The cohesion of her parts is less, and her whole body softer and more flexible. Her skin, "the limiting organ of the individual," is thinner, smoother, less compact, more elastic, and is destitute of those little hairs which
- ↑ * It is time to rescue the history of this unfortunate love from the injustice of the popular version. One thing is certain, the unwillingness of Heloise to be married, her preference to remain the mistress of Abelard, and her denial of the marriage relation equally arose from purely disinterested love. She feared, simply, to injure his genius, to retard his development, to extinguish "that brilliant torch which God had lighted for the world." Hence her first letter: Si uxoris nomen sanctius ac validius videret, dulcius mihi semper extitet amicae vocabulum; aut si non indigneris, concubinae vel scorti.
