right hand, and in his left nothing but the restless instinct for truth,
though with the condition of forever and ever erring, and should say to
me, Choose! I would bow reverently to his left hand, and say, Father,
give! Pure truth is for Thee alone!"
II.
EXTREMES.
In man, it has been said, there will be a layer of fierce hyena, or of
timid deer, running through the nature in the most uncertain and
tortuous manner. Nero is sensitive to poetry and music, but not to human
suffering: Marcus Aurelius is tolerant and good to all men but
Christians. The Tlascalans of Mexico loved, and even worshiped, flowers;
but they were cruel to excess, and sacrificed human victims with savage
delight. The body of the sacrificed captive, we are told by Prescott,
was delivered to the warrior who had taken him in battle, and by him,
after being dressed, was served up in an entertainment to his friends.
This was not the coarse repast of famished cannibals, but a banquet
teeming with delicious beverages and delicate viands, prepared with art,
and attended by both sexes, who conducted themselves with all the
decorum of civilized life. The Aztec priests were more wild and
ferocious than the soldiery, their hair was long and matted, and their
garments were stained with human blood. The good and the evil lie close
together; the virtues and the vices alternate; so is human power
accumulated; alternately the metals and the rags; a terrible Voltaic
pile. In the well-bred animal the claw is nicely cushioned; the old Adam
is presentable. Overhear a beautiful young woman swear, and meet her an
hour afterward, all smiles and loveliness, in the drawing-room. Speak
with unreserved kindness of one lady to another,--both of them very
lovely creatures, so far as you know,--and receive in reply, "Don't!
She, of all persons I know, is the only one I hate to hear praised."
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu said of the Duchess of Marlborough, "We
continue to see one another like two persons who are resolved to hate
with civility." "It goes far to reconcile me to being a woman," she said
on another occasion, "when I reflect that I am thus in no danger of ever
marrying one." Madame de Maintenon and Madame de Montespan met in
public, talked with vivacity, and, to those who judged only by
appearances, seemed excellent friends. Once when they had to make a
journey in the same carriage, Madame de Montespan said, "Let us talk as
if there were no difference between us, but on condition that we resume
our disputes when we return." Pietro Della Valle says that when the Ecce
Homo was exposed during the sermon in the Jesuit church at Goa, the
women used to beat their servants, if they did not cry enough to please
them. Saint-Simon relates of the Marechale de la Ferte and her sister,
both beautiful women, but very dissolute, that upon one occasion they
heard a sermon on penitence which terrified them. "My sister," one said
on their return, "it was all true; we must do penance or we are lost.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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