He
recognised in her a spirit pre-eminently proud, a cold heart, a
profound submissiveness to the usages of the world, and a
youthful loyalty. Under the eyes of great relations, with the
light of a prudish and bigoted Court turned full upon the
Duchess, his honour was safe.
So the Duke calmly did as the _grands seigneurs_ of the eighteenth
century did before him, and left a young wife of two-and-twenty
to her own devices. He had deeply offended that wife, and in her
nature there was one appalling characteristic--she would never
forgive an offence when woman's vanity and self-love, with all
that was best in her nature perhaps, had been slighted, wounded
in secret. Insult and injury in the face of the world a woman
loves to forget; there is a way open to her of showing herself
great; she is a woman in her forgiveness; but a secret offence
women never pardon; for secret baseness, as for hidden virtues
and hidden love, they have no kindness.
This was Mme la Duchesse de Langeais' real position, unknown to
the world. She herself did not reflect upon it. It was the time
of the rejoicings over the Duc de Berri's marriage. The Court
and the Faubourg roused itself from its listlessness and reserve.
This was the real beginning of that unheard-of splendour which
the Government of the Restoration carried too far. At that time
the Duchess, whether for reasons of her own, or from vanity,
never appeared in public without a following of women equally
distinguished by name and fortune.
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