s you say. She was not worth carrying off. I consented to try it to
quiet him. He sets no bounds to his own devotion to friendship, and we
must take pattern by him. It's a mad love.'

'A Titan's love!' the baroness exclaimed, groaning. 'The woman!--no
matter how or at what cost! I can admire that primal barbarism of a
great man's passion, which counts for nothing the stains and accidents
fraught with extinction for it to meaner men. It reads ill, it sounds
badly, but there is grand stuff in it. See the royalty of the man, for
whom no degradation of the woman can be, so long as it brings her to
him! He--that great he--covers all. He burns her to ashes, and takes
the flame--the pure spirit of her--to himself. Were men like him!--they
would have less to pardon. We must, as I have ever said, be morally
on alpine elevations to comprehend Alvan; he is Mont Blanc above his
fellows. Do not ask him to be considerate of her. She has planted him
in a storm, and the bigger the mountain, the more savage, monstrous,
cruel--yes, but she blew up the tourmente! That girl is the author of
his madness. It is the snake's nature of the girl which distracts him;
she is in his blood. Had she come to me, I would have helped her to cure
him; or had you succeeded in carrying her off, I would have stood by
their union; or were she a different creature, and not the shifty thing
she is, I could desire him to win her. A peasant girl, a workman's
daughter, a tradesman's, a professional singer, actress, artist--I would
have given my hand to one of these in good faith, thankful to her! As
it is, I have acted in obedience to his wishes, without idle
remonstrances--I know him too well; and with as much cordiality as I
could put into an evil service. She will drag him down, down, Tresten!'

'They are not joined yet,' said the colonel.

'She has him by the worst half of him. Her correspondence with me--her
letter to excuse her insolence, which she does like a prim chit--throws
a light on the girl she is. She will set him aiming at power to trick
her out in the decorations. She will not keep him to his labours to
consolidate the power. She will pervert the aesthetic in him, through
her hold on his material nature, his vanity, his luxuriousness. She is
one of the young women who begin timidly, and when they see that they
enjoy comparative impunity, grow intrepid in dissipation, and that
palling, they are ravenously ambitious. She will drive him at his mark