these leading characteristics of love, you take into
account the dislikes and the affinities which result from the diversity
of organisms, and which sooner or later break all ties between those who
have not fully tried each other; if you add to this the mistakes arising
from the hopes of those who live more particularly either by their
minds, or by their hearts, or by action, who either think, or feel, or
act, and whose tendency is misunderstood in the close association in
which two persons, equal counterparts, find themselves, you will have
great indulgence for sorrows to which the world is pitiless. Well, Lady
Dudley gratified the instincts, organs, appetites, the vices and virtues
of the subtile matter of which we are made; she was the mistress of the
body; Madame de Mortsauf was the wife of the soul. The love which
the mistress satisfies has its limits; matter is finite, its inherent
qualities have an ascertained force, it is capable of saturation; often
I felt a void even in Paris, near Lady Dudley. Infinitude is the region
of the heart, love had no limits at Clochegourde. I loved Lady Dudley
passionately; and certainly, though the animal in her was magnificent,
she was also superior in mind; her sparkling and satirical conversation
had a wide range. But I adored Henriette. At night I wept with
happiness, in the morning with remorse.

Some women have the art to hide their jealousy under a tone of angelic
kindness; they are, like Lady Dudley, over thirty years of age. Such
women know how to feel and how to calculate; they press out the juices
of to-day and think of the future also; they can stifle a moan, often a
natural one, with the will of a huntsman who pays no heed to a wound
in the ardor of the chase. Without ever speaking of Madame de Mortsauf,
Arabella endeavored to kill her in my soul, where she ever found her,
her own passion increasing with the consciousness of that invincible
love. Intending to triumph by comparisons which would turn to her
advantage, she was never suspicious, or complaining, or inquisitive, as
are most young women; but, like a lioness who has seized her prey
and carries it to her lair to devour, she watched that nothing should
disturb her feast, and guarded me like a rebellious captive. I wrote to
Henriette under her very eyes, but she never read a line of my letters;
she never sought in any way to know to whom they were addressed. I had
my liberty; she seemed to say to herself, "If I l