having an opinion of his own
Pride supplies some
sufferers with necessary courage
Seemed to enjoy themselves,
or made believe they did
This unending warfare
we call love
Unwilling to leave him
to the repose he needed
By THERESE BENTZON (MME. BLANC)
BITTER DISILLUSION
Some people in this world who turn round and round
in a daily circle of small things, like squirrels
in a cage, have no idea of the pleasure a young creature,
conscious of courage, has in trying its strength; this
struggle with fortune loses its charm as it grows longer
and longer and more and more difficult, but at the
beginning it is an almost certain remedy for sorrow.
To her resolve to make head against misfortune Jacqueline
owed the fact that she did not fall into those morbid
reveries which might have converted her passing fancy
for a man who was simply a male flirt into the importance
of a lost love. Is there any human being conscious
of energy, and with faith in his or her own powers,
who has not wished to know something of adversity
in order to rise to the occasion and confront it?
To say nothing of the pleasure there is in eating brown
bread, when one has been fed only on cake, or of the
satisfaction that a child feels when, after strict
discipline, he is left to do as he likes, to say nothing
of the pleasure ladies boarding in nunneries are sure
to feel on reentering the world, at recovering their
liberty, Jacqueline by nature loved independence,
and she was attracted by the novelty of her situation
as larks are attracted by a mirror. She was curious
to know what life held for her in reserve, and she
was extremely anxious to repair the error she had
committed in giving way to a feeling of which she was
now ashamed. What could do this better than hard
work? To owe everything to herself, to her talents,
to her efforts, to her industry, such was Jacqueline’s
ideal of her future life.
She had, before this, crowned her brilliant reputation
in the ‘cours’ of M. Regis by passing
her preliminary examination at the Sorbonne; she was
confident of attaining the highest degree—the
‘brevet superieur’, and while pursuing
her own studies she hoped to give lessons in music
and in foreign languages, etc. Thus assured
of making her own living, she could afford to despise
the discreditable happiness of Madame de Nailles, who,
she had no doubt, would shortly become Madame Marien;
also the crooked ways in which M. de Cymier might
pursue his fortune-hunting. She said to herself
that she should never marry; that she had other objects
of interest; that marriage was for those who had nothing
better before them; and the world appeared to her
under a new aspect, a sphere of useful activity full
of possibilities, of infinite variety, and abounding
in interests. Marriage might be all very well
for rich girls, who unhappily were objects of value
to be bought and sold; her semi-poverty gave her the
right to break the chains that hampered the career
of other well-born women—she would make
her own way in the world like a man.
