in concert with my oppressed countrymen, am
going in for a platform agitation to restore the Rights of Men."

Upon this there was a lively battle of words between the spouses, in
which, I must own, I thought the lady was decidedly worsted.

No, Eulalie, I see nothing in these schemes for altering our
relations towards the other sex which would improve our condition. The
inequalities we suffer are not imposed by law,--not even by convention:
they are imposed by nature.

Eulalie, you have had an experience unknown to me: you have loved. In
that day did you,--you, round whom poets and sages and statesmen gather,
listening to your words as to an oracle,--did you feel that your pride
of genius had gone out from you, that your ambition lived in whom you
loved, that his smile was more to you than the applause of a world?

I feel as if love in a woman must destroy her rights of equality, that
it gives to her a sovereign even in one who would be inferior to herself
if her love did not glorify and crown him. Ah! if I could but merge this
terrible egotism which oppresses me, into the being of some one who is
what I would wish to be were I man! I would not ask him to achieve
fame. Enough if I felt that he was worthy of it, and happier methinks
to console him when he failed than to triumph with him when he won. Tell
me, have you felt this? When you loved did you stoop as to a slave, or
did you bow down as to a master?

FROM MADAME DE GRANTMESNIL TO ISAURA CICOGNA.

Chere enfant,--All your four letters have reached me the same day. In
one of my sudden whims I set off with a few friends on a rapid tour
along the Riviera to Genoa, thence to Turin on to Milan. Not knowing
where we should rest even for a day, my letters were not forwarded.

I came back to Nice yesterday, consoled for all fatigues in having
insured that accuracy in description of localities which my work
necessitates.

You are, my poor child, in that revolutionary crisis through which
genius passes in youth before it knows its own self, and longs vaguely
to do or to be a something other than it has done or has been before.
For, not to be unjust to your own powers, genius you have,--that inborn
undefinable essence, including talent, and yet distinct from it. Genius
you have, but genius unconcentrated, undisciplined. I see, though you
are too diffident to say so openly, that you shrink from the fame of
singer, because, fevered by your reading, you would fain aspire