France -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Marriage -- Fiction; Women -- France -- Fiction
all of another life, of another world, where the laws of the brutal will
not have passed over the heads of the peaceably inclined; where
resistance and flight will not be crimes; where man can escape man as
the gazelle escapes the panther; where the chain of the law will not be
stretched about him to force him to throw himself under his enemy's
feet; and where the voice of prejudice will not be raised in his
distress to insult his sufferings and to say to him: 'You shall be
deemed cowardly and base because you did not bend the knee and crawl.'
"No, do not talk to me about God, you of all men, Raymon; do not invoke
His name to send me into exile and reduce me to silence. In submitting
as I do I yield to the power of men. If I listened to the voice which
God has placed in the depths of my heart, and to the noble instinct of a
bold and strong nature, which perhaps is the genuine conscience, I
should fly to the desert, I should learn to do without help, protection
and love: I should go and live for myself in the heart of our beautiful
mountains: I should forget the tyrants, the unjust and the ungrateful.
But alas! man cannot do without his fellowman, and even Ralph cannot
live alone.
"Adieu, Raymon! may you be happy without me! I forgive you for the harm
you have done me. Talk of me sometimes to your mother, the best woman I
have ever known. Understand that there is neither anger nor vengeance in
my heart against you; my grief is worthy of the love I had for you.
"INDIANA."
The unfortunate creature was over-boastful. This profound and calm
sorrow was due simply to a sense of what her own dignity demanded when
she addressed Raymon; but, when she was alone, she gave way freely to
its consuming violence. Sometimes, however, a vague gleam of hope shone
in her troubled eyes. Perhaps she never lost the last vestige of
confidence in Raymon's love, despite the cruel lessons of experience,
despite the distressing thoughts which placed before her mind every day
his indifference and indolence when his interests or his pleasures were
not concerned. It is my belief that, if Indiana could have persuaded
herself to face the bald truth, she would not have dragged out her
hopeless, ruined life so long.
Woman is naturally foolish; it is as if Heaven, to counterbalance the
eminent superiority over us men which she owes to her delicacy of
perception, had implanted a blind vanity, an idiotic credulity in her
heart. It may be that one need only be an adept in the art of bestowing
praise and flattering the self-esteem, to obtain dominion over that
subtle, supple and perspicacious being. Sometimes the men who are most
incapable of obtaining any sort of ascendancy over other men, obtain an
unbounded ascendancy over the minds of women. Flattery is the yoke that
bends those ardent but frivolous heads so low. Woe to him who undertakes
to be frank and outspoken in love! he will have Ralph's fate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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