"When she merely enters the room, I am what the French call
_herisse_," said a man of petty feelings and worldly character of
such a woman, whose depth of eye and powerful motion announced the
conductor of the mysterious fluid.
Woe to such a woman who finds herself linked to such a man in bonds
too close! It is the crudest of errors. He will detest her with all
the bitterness of wounded self-love. He will take the whole prejudice
of manhood upon himself, and, to the utmost of his power, imprison and
torture her by its imperious rigors.
Yet, allow room enough, and the electric fluid will be found to
invigorate and embellish, not destroy life. Such women are the great
actresses, the songsters. Such traits we read in a late searching,
though too French, analysis of the character of Mademoiselle Rachel,
by a modern, La Rochefeucault. The Greeks thus represent the muses;
they have not the golden serenity of Apollo; they are overflowed with
thought; there is something tragic in their air. Such are the Sibyls
of Gueroino; the eye is overfull of expression, dilated and lustrous;
it seems to have drawn the whole being into it.
Sickness is the frequent result of this overcharged existence.
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