Scarcely twenty yet, all unwarned of the world of power and passion that lay slumbering in her girl’s heart, led in the meshes of custom and society to utter vows and take responsibilities of whose nature she was no more apprised than is a slumbering babe, and now at last fully awake, feeling the whole power of that mysterious and awful force which we call love, yet shuddering to call it by its name, but by its light beginning to understand all she is capable of, and all that marriage should have been to her!  She struggles feebly and confusedly with her fate, still clinging to the name of duty, and baptizing as friendship this strange new feeling which makes her tremble through all her being.  How can she dream of danger in such a feeling, when it seems to her the awakening of all that is highest and noblest within her?  She remembers when she thought of nothing beyond an opera-ticket or a new dress; and now she feels that there might be to her a friend for whose sake she would try to be noble and great and good,—­for whom all self-denial, all high endeavor, all difficult virtue would become possible,—­who would be to her life, inspiration, order, beauty.

She sees him as woman always sees the man she loves,—­noble, great, and good;—­for when did a loving woman ever believe a man otherwise?—­too noble, too great, too high, too good, she thinks, for her,—­poor, trivial, ignorant coquette,—­poor, childish, trifling Virginie!  Has he not commanded armies? she thinks,—­is he not eloquent in the senate? and yet, what interest he has taken in her, a poor, unformed, ignorant creature!—­she never tried to improve herself till since she knew him.  And he is so considerate, too,—­so respectful, so thoughtful and kind, so manly and honorable, and has such a tender friendship for her, such a brotherly and fatherly solicitude! and yet, if she is haughty or imperious or severe, how humbled and grieved he looks!  How strange that she could have power over such a man!

It is one of the saddest truths of this sad mystery of life, that woman is, often, never so much an angel as just the moment before she falls into an unsounded depth of perdition.  And what shall we say of the man who leads her on as an experiment,—­who amuses himself with taking woman after woman up these dazzling, delusive heights, knowing, as he certainly must, where they lead?

We have been told, in extenuation of the course of Aaron Burr, that he was not a man of gross passions or of coarse indulgence, but, in the most consummate and refined sense, a man of gallantry.  This, then, is the descriptive name which polite society has invented for the man who does this thing!

Of old, it was thought that one who administered poison in the sacramental bread and wine had touched the very height of impious sacrilege; but this crime is white, by the side of his who poisons God’s eternal sacrament of love and destroys a woman’s soul through her noblest and purest affections.