“Yes, I was warned by her that the last impiety is to fear; and the worst penalty of adversity to suspect. I was warned by her that the chief danger in civil revolution is to forget green meadows and bright skies in fields of blood and clouds of smoke; and that those who shrink from looking fully and kindly even upon those who may be the reptiles of their race, are less wise than the poor prisoner in the Bastile who made friendship with his spider instead of trying to flee from it.” “And she observed her own warning, Marie. How her murderers quailed before her open gaze!” “Ah, yes! In her prison, she brought home to her the materials of happiness; and with them neither dread nor suspicion can co-exist. She brought back into her own bosom the wild flowers which she had worn there in her childhood; and the creations of her father, the artist; and the speculations of her husband, the philosopher; and opened up again the springs of the intellect, which may gush from the hardest dungeon walls; and wakened up the voice of her mother to thrill the very heart of silence; and dismissed one obedient faculty at morn to travel with the sun, and ride at eve down his last slanting ray with tidings of how embryo man is working his way into light and freedom; and summoned another obedient faculty at midnight to paint upon the darkness the image of regenerated man, with his eye fixed upon science, and his hand supporting his fellow man, and his foot treading down the painted trifles and deformed usurpations of the world that is passing away. Having gazed upon this, what were any spectres of darkness to her,— whether the scowls of traitors, or an axe hanging by a hair?” “Would that all who desire that women should have kindliness, and domestic thoughtfulness, and cheerfulness, and grace, knew your friend as you knew her, Marie!” “Then would they learn from what quarter of the moral heavens these endowments may be fetched by human aspiration. Would they behold kindliness and lightness of spirit? They must give the consciousness of being able to bestow, instead of the mere craving to receive, the support which intellect must yield to intellect, if heart is to answer to heart. Would they have homely thoughtfulness? They must not obstruct that full intellectual light in which small things dress themselves in their most shining beauty, as the little fly that looks dark beneath a candle shows itself burnished at noon. Let men but lay open the universe for the spirit of woman to exercise itself in, and they may chance to see again with what grace a woman about to die can beseech the favour to suffer more than her companions.”