Her lovely face beams forth from the dust-covered
and dingy canvas with beauty, sportiveness, and pensive grace. Poor
charming woman! Had she not met that wandering boy on the highway; had
she not opened to him her house and heart, his sensitive and suffering
genius might have been extinguished in the mire. The meeting seemed
like the effect of chance, but it was predestination meeting the great
man under the form of his first love. That woman saved him; she
cultivated him; she excited him in solitude, in liberty, and in love,
as the houris of the East through pleasure raise up martyrs in their
young votaries. She gave him his dreamy imagination, his almost
feminine soul, his tender accents, his passion for nature. Her pensive
fancy imparted to him enthusiasm,--the enthusiasm of women, of young
men, of lovers, of all the poor, the oppressed, the unhappy of his day.
She gave him the world, and he proved ungrateful.... She gave him fame,
and he bequeathed opprobrium.... But posterity should be grateful to
them, and forgive a weakness that gave us the prophet of liberty.
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