Louise

“ In short, what did Marie Louise lack in the beginning of 1812? She had a husband, at the height of his fame and glory, who gave her more affection, regard, and consideration than any one else in the world. She was the mother of a superb child, whom every one admired. Around her she saw respect on every face. For maid-of-honor she had a real friend, a woman whom she would herself have chosen, so highly did she value her character and manners. Her household consisted of the flower of the French aristocracy. ”

“ Louise, trembling with emotion, with difficulty restrained her tears, while the doctor, recommending her, by a sign, to remain silent, watched attentively the smallest movements of the lapidary's countenance. He, leaning toward his daughter, began to turn pale; he passed both his hands over his forehead, covered with sweat; then, taking a step toward her, he wished to speak, but his voice died upon his lips, his paleness increased, and he looked around him with surprise, as if he were just awaking from a dream. ”

“ Ah, Louise, it is a great blessing when husband and wife, parents and children, cherish an entire confidence in each other! It is so beautiful, so glorious, to be able to say everything to each other in love! ”

“ I loved you so deeply, that I now no longer see, think of, care for, anything, either in this world or in the next."
"Raoul—dear Raoul! spare me, I implore you!" cried La Valliere. "Oh! if I had but known."
"It is too late, Louise; you love, you are happy in your affection; I read your happiness through your tears—behind the tears which the loyalty of your nature makes you shed; I feel the sighs which your affection breathes forth. Louise, Louise, you have made me the most abjectly wretched man living; leave me, I entreat you. Adieu! Adieu!" ”

“ For you, Louise, love is but the reflex of Felipe's passion; the life which I shed upon my little ones will come back to me in ever-growing fulness. The plenty of your golden harvest will pass; mine, though late, will be but the more enduring, for each hour will see it renewed. Love may be the fairest gem which Society has filched from Nature; but what is motherhood save Nature in her most gladsome mood? A smile has dried my tears. Love makes my Louis happy, but marriage has made me a mother, and who shall say I am not happy also? ”

“ Louise sighed wearily and held up a pleading hand.
"Don't ask me such a question—please, mother," she entreated. "You don't know how the subject revolts me."
"But, my dear," her mother persisted, "what is it that you have against Mr. Jesse? I am entitled to know."
"I am not sufficiently interested in the man to have anything against him," replied Louise. "Is it not enough that I loathe him?"
"No, Louise, it is not enough," pronounced her mother, plainly ready for argument on the subject. "You are too young a woman to be forming prejudices or leaping to conclusions. ”

“ Such were the reflections of Marie Louise as she was leaving France. The moment she touched German soil, all the ideas, impressions, feelings of her girlhood, came back to her, and naturally enough; for were there not many instances in the last war, of German women, married to Frenchmen, who rejoiced in the German successes, and of French women, married to Germans, who deplored them? Marriage is but an incident; one's nature is determined at one's birth. In Austria, Marie Louise found again the same sympathy and affection that she had left there. ”

“ What! must nature and society alike be in bondage to your caprice? You are the old Louise; you have never acquired the qualities which ought to be a woman's; self-willed and unreasonable as a girl, you introduce withal into your love the keenest and most mercenary of calculations! Are you sure that, after all, the price you ask for your toilets is not too high? All these precautions are to my mind very suggestive of mistrust.
Oh, dear Louise, if only you knew the sweetness of a mother's efforts to discipline herself in kindness and gentleness to all about her! ”

“ Rest in peace, dear Louise, for you will always be Louise to me, even in heaven, which I shall never reach, for I have killed my brother and belong to the race of Cain; I do not pity thee, for thou hast clasped in thy arms the dream of thy heart. Thou hast been happy; and happiness is a crime punishable on earth by death, as is genius and divinity.
You will forgive me! for I caught a glimpse of the angel through the woman. I also sought my ideal and found it. O beautiful loving being! why did your faith fail you, why did you doubt the love you inspired! Alas! I thought you a faithless coquette ”

“ If any woman had excuse for seeking elsewhere the love she could not find in her husband it was Louise of Albany. There were dames in plenty in Rome (where they were now living) who, not content with devoted husbands, had their cisibeos to play the lover to them; but Louise sought no such questionable escape from her unhappiness. Her books and the clever men who thronged her salon were all the solace she asked; and under temptation such as few women of that country and day would have resisted, she carried the shield of a blameless life. ”

“ Perhaps it was an honor for Louise to have chosen me from among a hundred others, for to her a pansy was the dearest, the daintiest and most coquettish of all the flowers that bloom and die. But, though I felt the honor, I would a thousand times rather have lived to lift my petals to the breezes in my native land without glory and without pain; or better still, death on Louise’s breast, with her smiles and caresses, was preferable to honor and glory in a stranger’s land. I say this was preferable, but how foolish I am; we pansies have no preference. ”

“ Louise is perfection in her charm, her grace, her good sense, her wit, and her tenderness. She has retained to the last that perfect tact for which she has been so famous, and she lavishes on us the treasures of her brilliant mind, which made her one of the queens of Paris.
"I should like to look well even in my coffin," she said with her matchless smile, as she lay down on the bed where she was to linger for a fortnight.
Her room has nothing of the sick-chamber in it; medicines, ointments, the whole apparatus of nursing, is carefully concealed. ”

“ Louise lives under the same roof with me, my mother treats her in the most gracious manner, like an equal. And, indeed, one would be deceived by her; she seems more at her ease here than at Madame Taverneau's, and what would be a restraint on a woman of her class, on the contrary gives her more liberty. Her manners have become charming, and I often ask myself if she is not the daughter of one of Madame de Meilhan's friends. With wonderful tact she immediately put herself in unison with her surroundings; women alone can quickly become acclimated in a higher sphere. ”

“ Then she caught Louise's expression. "What's the matter?"
"But it's the Bible!" cried Louise horrified.
Clare sat down again and began to laugh pleasantly.
"What am I to do with you, Louise? Are you five or fifty? You want to discuss Meredith with me— (not that I shall let you, my child—don't think I approve of all this reading—I did it myself at your age, you see) and five minutes later you look at me round-eyed because I've forgotten my Joshua or my Judges! Kings? I beg your pardon; Kings be it! Never mind, Louise. Tell me about the Witch of Endor." ”

“ At the first rehearsal Louise did not disappoint her. She was neither stiff nor self-conscious, and her acting, which proved to be entirely instinctive, carried conviction. Though Clare worked from the head, she could appreciate the more primitive method, but even then, the character as portrayed by Louise amazed her. The deliberate pathos, the cloying charm, did not seem to exist for Louise. She played as in an ecstasy of terror. The text, Clare knew, could permit the reading, and the conception interested her; but the temptation to criticise, alter and improve, was natural. ”

“ I love Louise Merrick! I love her so well that without her the world and its mockeries can go to the devil! There's nothing worth living for but Louise—Louise. She's going to be my wife, Diana—by fair means or foul I swear to make her my wife. ”

“ Louise did not answer a syllable; a sigh filled her heart almost to bursting, but she stifled it.
“You exercise a great control over yourself,” said the king to Louise, who smiled upon him with a melancholy expression. “Exert the strength you have in loving fondly,” he continued, “and I will bless Heaven for having bestowed it on you.”
La Valliere still remained silent, but raised her eyes, brimful of affection, toward the king. ”

“ Louise understood it.
"I rob!" she exclaimed; and her cheeks suffused with generous indignation, her tone and gesture, reassured her father.
"I knew it well enough!" he exclaimed. "You see, M. le Commissaire, she denies it; and I swear to you, that she never told me a lie in her life; and everybody that knows her will say the same thing as I do. She lie! Oh, no, she is too proud to do that! And, then, the bill has been paid by our benefactor. ”

“ Louise looked up at her shyly, dwelling on her answer as if it gave her exquisite pleasure.
"Because—because you knew I was alone, and you hated me to be miserable on Christmas Day."
"You?" Clare's eyebrows lifted for a second, but a glance into the child's candid eyes dispelled the vague suspicion.... Louise and conceit were incompatible. She listened with a touch of compunction to the innocent answer.
"Not me specially, of course. Any one who was down. Only it happened to be me. I think you can't help being good to people: you're made that way." Her eyes were full of wondering admiration. ”

“ Louise, Princess of Stolberg-Gedern, and ex-Canoness of Mons, was, if we may judge by the crayon portrait and the miniature done about that time, much more of a child than most women of nineteen. A clever and accomplished young lady, but, one would say, with, as yet, more intelligence and acquired pretty little habits and ideas than character; a childish woman of the world, a bright, light handful of thistle-bloom. ”

“ Then he said, in a low and broken voice, "No! no! a dream—where am I? impossible—a dream—it is not she." Then, seeing the gold scattered on the floor, "And this gold—I do not remember—am I awake? My head turns—I dare not look—I am ashamed: it is not Louise."
"Come!" said the doctor, in a loud voice. "Father, recognize me! I am
Louise, your daughter!" cried she, bursting into tears, and throwing
herself into his arms; at the same moment, Madame Morel, Rigolette, Madame
George, Germain, and the Pipelets entered the apartment. ”

“ She guessed that his suspicions of La Valliere were aroused, and that, in order to leave himself time for his convictions to undergo a change, so as not to ruin Louise utterly, he was determined to pursue a certain straightforward line of conduct. She could read so much real greatness of character, and such true generosity of disposition in her lover, that her heart really warmed with affection towards him, whose passion for her was so pure and delicate. ”

“ Louise. I cannot. I simply cannot. It is your happiness that I am thinking of. The intrusion of my life would spoil everything. Everybody will blame you.
Vennema. My child, I have long ago put behind me what the world says.
Louise [suddenly] . And William? What about William? What about him when I go back? No, I can't do it. I cannot leave him.
Vennema. What about your mother, Louise? She is waiting for you. She will be at the window to-night, waiting and peering out. Your chair is ready for you and she herself will open the door to greet you, to take you to her heart again. ”

“ Its lips have a sweetness beyond words, and their pressure is at once a pain and a delight, a delight which by every excess becomes pain, or a pain which culminates in delight. The sensation which rises from it, and which penetrates to the very core of my life, baffles all description. It seems a sort of centre whence a myriad joy-bearing rays gladden the heart and soul. To bear a child is nothing; to nourish it is birth renewed every hour.
Oh! Louise, there is no caress of lover with half the power of those little pink hands, as they stray about, seeking whereby to lay hold on life. ”

“ And Louise? She only knew that she enjoyed the society of the young doctor, just as her father and Mrs. Pennypoker appeared to enjoy it; but, all unconsciously to herself, her young life was rounding out with a new, sweet meaning; and the womanhood opening before her was daily gaining fresh inspiration and purpose, from the influence of the true, earnest manhood of their frequent guest. ”

“ Louise I told the affair mildly, as it might have made too great an impression on her otherwise. She always feels so much for you and loves you so much, that she was rejoiced beyond measure that you escaped so well and took the thing with so much courage. That you have shown great fortitude is not to be doubted, and will make a very great and good impression. I see that the general feeling is excellent, but what a melancholy thing to see a young man, without provocation, capable of such a diabolical act! ”

“ Louise was lovely in life and her monument shows her lovely in death. She rests in the chamber, where trials can no longer touch her, until on the day of resurrection her decayed body shall be awakened from the tomb to a more beautiful life. More enduring even than marble is the memory which she has left behind in our hearts. She gave to her people and the whole German fatherland an example of piety, purity, singleness of heart, and true, womanly virtues ”