Events rapidly ripened; ideas and things were crowded into her life:  she had no infancy.  At twenty-two years of age she had maturity of thought with the grace and softness of youth.  She wrote like Rousseau, and spoke like Mirabeau.  Capable of bold conceptions and complicated designs, she could contain in her bosom at the same time a lofty idea and a deep feeling.  Like the women of old Rome who agitated the republic by the impulses of their hearts, or who exalted or depressed the empire with their love, she sought to mingle her feelings with her politics, and desired that the elevation of her genius should elevate him she loved.  Her sex precluded her from that open action which public position, the tribune, or the army only accord to men in public governments; and thus she compulsorily remained unseen in the events she guided.  To be the hidden destiny of some great man, to act through and by him, to grow with his greatness, be eminent in his name, was the sole ambition permitted to her—­an ambition tender and devoted, which seduces a woman whilst it suffices to her disinterested genius.  She could only be the mind and inspiration of some political man; she sought such a one, and in her delusion believed she had found him.

XX.

There was then in Paris a young general officer of illustrious race, excessively handsome, and with a mind full of attraction, varied in its powers and brilliant in its display.  Although he bore the name of one of the most distinguished families at court, there was a cloud over his birth.  Royal blood ran in his veins, and his features recalled those of Louis XV.  The affection of Mesdames the aunts of Louis XVI. for this youth, educated under their eyes, attached to their persons, and who rose by their influence to the highest employments in the court and army, gave credit to many mysterious rumours.

This young man was the count Louis de Narbonne.  Sprung from this origin, brought up in this court, a courtier by birth; spoiled by the hands of these females, only remarkable for his good looks, his levities, and his hasty wit; it was not to be expected that such a person was imbued with that ardent faith which casts a man headlong into the centre of revolutions, or the stoical energy which produces and controls them.  He saw in the people only a sovereign, more exacting and more capricious than any others, towards whom it was necessary to display more skill to seduce, more policy to manage them.  He believed himself sufficiently plastic for the task, and resolved to attempt it.  Without a lofty imagination, he yet had ambition and courage, and he viewed the position of affairs as a drama, similar to the Fronde[8], in which skilful actors could enlarge their hopes in proportion to the facts, and direct the catastrophe.  He had not sufficient penetration to see, that in a revolution there is but one serious actor—­enthusiasm; and he had none.  He stammered out the words of a revolutionary tongue—­he assumed the costume, but had not the spirit of the times.