bosom-friendship, to compacts of the heart for life and death, that
were suddenly broken up by a ball-room rivalry, an honest reproof, or
even by pure _ennui_. My first experience in this respect was my
last. And how much sincere liking, and fidelity, and unappreciated
self-sacrifice I wasted on this child's play! From that time forth I
knew how to take better care of myself. And, in truth, it was not
difficult for me to keep guard over my heart. I lived with my old
parents, who both appeared, on the surface, dry and pedantic; but who
understood the art of making for themselves and me a rich, warm, and
beautiful life, that gave my thoughts and feelings ample nourishment. I
modeled myself after them, and spoke much the same language. I must
indeed have borne myself rather strangely, when, in the society of
young people, I expressed myself with regard to certain conventional
feelings in scornful terms which might have been pardoned to an old
soldier, but which did not become his daughter. I meant no harm with it
all. On many occasions, when others were moved to tears or enthusiasm,
I really experienced no sensation whatever, unless it were a feeling of
discomfort. But as often as anything really touched me--beautiful
music, a poem or some solemn impression of Nature, I became perfectly
dumb, and could not join in the enthusiastic prattle that went on in
the circle about me. Out of pure contempt for phrases, I assumed, in
defiance of my real feelings, to be cool and critical, and had to bear
being told that there was no getting on with me, that these secret joys
must always remain closed to me, a girl without a heart. I smiled at
this, and my smile confirmed these fine-strung souls in their belief in
my lack of feeling. As it so happened that I found none of them all
amiable enough to love in spite of these bad practices, I didn't care
in the least for my isolation. I had fared thus with my own sex, and
soon I was to find that I did not succeed much better with young men. I
was not long in observing that the stronger sex merely had other, and
by no means more amiable, weaknesses than we; above all, that they were
much vainer, and so care most for those of us who are willing to do
homage to their manly superiority. What is generally called maidenly
modesty, womanly tenderness, and virginal feeling--is it not, in ninety
cases out of a hundred, a craftily-planned artificial stratagem for
making fools of these mighty lords of cr