Will there never be a being to combine a man's mind and a
woman's heart, and who yet finds life too rich to weep over? Never?
When I read in _"Leon Leoni"_ the account of the jeweller's
daughter's life with her mother, passed in dressing, and learning to
be looked at when dressed, _"avec un front impassible,"_ it
reminded me of ---- and her mother. What a heroine she would be for
Sand! She has the same fearless softness with Juliet, and a sportive
_naivete_ a mixture of bird and kitten, unknown to the dupe of
Leoni.
If I were a man, and wished a wife, as many do, merely as an ornament,
a silken toy, I would take ---- as soon as any I know. Her fantastic,
impassioned and mutable nature would yield an inexhaustible amusement.
She is capable of the most romantic actions,--wild as the falcon,
voluptuous as the tuberose; yet she has not in her the elements of
romance, like a deeper or less susceptible nature. My cold and
reasoning ----, with her one love lying, perhaps never to be unfolded,
beneath such sheaths of pride and reserve, would make a far better
heroine.
---- and her mother differ from Juliet and _her_ mother by the
impulse a single strong character gave them.
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