And Paul and I, who are young, must take care of him where he will be
least humbled.

I was over-pampered in Mont-Louis and Paris. I like easy living,
carriages, long-tailed gowns, jewels, trained servants, music, and
spectacles on the stage; a park and wide lands all my own; seclusion
from people who do not interest me; idleness in enjoyment.

I am the devil of vanity. Annabel has not half the points I have. When
the men are around her I laugh to think I shall be fine and firm as a
statue when she is a mass of wrinkles and a wisp of fuzz. When she is a
mass of wrinkles and a wisp of fuzz she will be riper and tenderer
inside. But will the men see that? No. They will be off after a fresher
Annabel. So much for men. On the other hand, I had but a few months of
luxury, and may count on the hardness that comes of endurance; for I was
an exile from childhood. There is strength in doing the right thing. If
there were no God, if Christ had never died on the cross, I should have
to do the right thing because it is right.

Why should we lay up grievances against one another? They must
disappear, and they only burn our hearts.

Sometimes I put my arms around Ernestine, and rest her old head against
me. She revolts. People incline to doubt the superiority of a person who
will associate with them. But the closer our poverty rubs us the more
Ernestine insists upon class differences.

There should be a colossal mother going about the world to turn men over
her lap and give them the slipper. They pine for it.

Am I helping forward the general good, or am I only suffering Nature's
punishment?

A woman can fasten the bonds of habit on a man, giving him food from her
table, hourly strengthening his care for her. By merely putting herself
before him every day she makes him think of her. What chance has an
exiled woman against the fearful odds of daily life?

Yet sometimes I think I can wait a thousand years. In sun and snow, in
wind and dust, a woman waits. If she stretched her hand and said "Come,"
who could despise her so much as she would despise herself?

What is so cruel as a man? Hour after hour, day after day, year after
year, he presses the iron spike of silence in.

Coward!--to let me suffer such anguish!

Is it because I kissed you? That was the highest act of my life! I
groped down the black stairs of the Tuileries blinded by light. Why are
the natural things called wrong, and the unnatural ones just?

Is it be