er that she, dissatisfied with an Adonis, and more than a match for
a famous conqueror, was a woman of decisive and independent, perhaps
unexampled, force of character. Her idea of a spiritual superiority that
could soar over those two men, the bad and the good--the bad because
of his vileness, the good because of his frailness--whispered to her of
deserving, possibly of attracting, the best of men: the best, that is,
in the woman's view of us--the strongest, the great eagle of men, lord
of earth and air.

One who will dominate me, she thought.

Now when a young lady of lively intelligence and taking charm has
brought her mind to believe that she possesses force of character, she
persuades the rest of the world easily to agree with her, and so long as
her pretensions are not directly opposed to their habits of thought, her
parents will be the loudest in proclaiming it, fortifying so the maid's
presumption, which is ready to take root in any shadow of subserviency.
Her father was a gouty general of infantry in the diplomatic service,
disinclined to unnecessary disputes, out of consideration for his
vehement irritability when roused. Her mother had been one of the
beauties of her set, and was preserving an attenuated reign, through
the conversational arts, to save herself from fading into the wall. Her
brothers and sisters were not of an age to contest her lead. The temper
of the period was revolutionary in society by reflection of the state of
politics, and juniors were sturdy democrats, letting their elders know
that they had come to their inheritance, while the elders, confused
by the impudent topsy-turvy, put on the gaping mask (not unfamiliar
to history) of the disestablished conservative, whose astounded state
paralyzes his wrath.

Clotilde maintained a decent measure in the liberty she claimed, and
it was exercised in wildness of dialogue rather than in capricious
behaviour. If her flowing tongue was imperfectly controlled, it was
because she discoursed by preference to men upon our various affairs and
tangles, and they encouraged her with the tickled wonder which bids the
bold advance yet farther into bogland. Becoming the renowned original of
her society, wherever it might be, in Germany, Italy, Southern France,
she grew chillily sensible of the solitude decreed for their heritage to
our loftiest souls. Her Indian Bacchus, as a learned professor supplied
Prince Marko's title for her, was a pet, not a companion.