rudiments of education; but she was as
learned as her brothers, and quicker in her wits. She had the vivacity
which a healthy life secures. Nor was she beautiful, according to our
standard. She was a ruddy, cheerful, active, healthy woman, accustomed
to exercise in the open air,--to field-sports and horseback journeys.
Still less was she what we call fashionable, for the word was not known;
nor was she a woman of society, for, as we have said, there was no
society in a feudal castle. What we call society was born in cities,
where women reign by force of mind and elegant courtesies and grace of
manners,--where woman is an ornament as well as a power, without
drudgeries and almost without cares, as at the courts of the
Bourbon princes.

Yet I am not certain but that the foundation of courtly elegance and
dignity was laid in the baronial home, when woman began her reign as the
equal of her wedded lord, when she commanded reverence for her
courtesies and friendships, and when her society was valued so highly by
aristocratic knights. In the castle she became genial and kind and
sympathetic,--although haughty to inferiors and hard on the peasantry.
She was ever religious. Religious duties took up no small part of her
time. Christianity raised her more than all other influences combined.
You never read of an infidel woman when chivalry flourished, any more
than of a "strong-minded" woman. The feudal woman never left her sphere,
even amid the pleasures of the chase or the tilt. Her gentle and
domestic virtues remained with her to the end, and were the most
prized. Woman was worshipped because she was a woman, not because she
resembled a man. Benevolence and compassion and simplicity were her
cardinal virtues. Though her sports were masculine, her character was
feminine. She yielded to man in matters of reason and intellect, but he
yielded to her in the virtues of the heart and the radiance of the soul.
She associated with man without seductive spectacles or demoralizing
excitements, and retained her influence by securing his respect. In
antiquity, there was no respect for the sex, even when Aspasia
enthralled Pericles by the fascinations of blended intellect and beauty;
but there was respect in the feudal ages, when women were unlettered and
unpolished. And this respect was alike the basis of friendship and the
key to power. It was not elegance of manners, nor intellectual culture,
nor physical beauty which elevated the women