ing for some chance
(where chance was none) of happiness, or were dreaming for a moment of
escaping the inevitable. Why, then, _did_ she contend? Knowing that she
would reap nothing from answering her persecutors, why did she not retire
by silence from the superfluous contest? It was because her quick and eager
loyalty to truth would not suffer her to see it darkened by frauds, which
_she_ could expose, but others, even of candid listeners, perhaps, could
not; it was through that imperishable grandeur of soul, which taught her
to submit meekly and without a struggle to her punishment, but taught
her _not_ to submit--no, not for a moment--to calumny as to facts, or to
misconstruction as to motives. Besides, there were secretaries all around
the court taking down her words. That was meant for no good to _her_. But
the end does not always correspond to the meaning. And Joanna might say to
herself--these words that will be used against me to-morrow and the next
day, perhaps in some nobler generation may rise again for my justification.
Yes, Joanna, they _are_ rising even now in Paris, and for more than
justification.

Woman, sister--there are some things which you do not execute as well as
your brother, man; no, nor ever will. Pardon me if I doubt whether you will
ever produce a great poet from your choirs, or a Mozart, or a Phidias, or a
Michael Angelo, or a great philosopher, or a great scholar. By which last
is meant--not one who depends simply on an infinite memory, but also on an
infinite and electrical power of combination; bringing together from the
four winds, like the angel of the resurrection, what else were dust from
dead men's bones, into the unity of breathing life. If you _can_ create
yourselves into any of these great creators, why have you not? Do not ask
me to say otherwise; because if you do, you will lead me into temptation.
For I swore early in life never to utter a falsehood, and, above all, a
sycophantic falsehood; and, in the false homage of the modern press towards
women, there is horrible sycophancy. It is as hollow, most of it, and it is
as fleeting as is the love that lurks in _uxoriousness_. Yet, if a woman
asks me to tell a faleshood, I have long made up my mind--that on moral
considerations I _will_, and _ought_ to do so, whether it be for any
purpose of glory to _her_, or of screening her foibles (for she _does_
commit a few), or of humbly, as a vassal, paying a peppercorn rent to her
august pr