Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 49, November, 1861 | Page 6

The act once consummated,
Maurice gave himself up to some hours of bitter suffering, made
inevitable by what he considered a grave act of disobedience against

the best of mothers. His conscience, however, on the whole, justified
him. He had obeyed the Scripture precept, forsaking the old for the
inevitable new relation, and surrounding her who was really his wife
with the immunities of civil recognition. The marriage was concealed
for some months from his mother,--who at a subsequent period left no
stone unturned to prove its nullity. The religious ceremony, which
Catholicism considers as the indissoluble tie, had not yet been
performed, and Mme. Dupin hoped to prove some informality in the
civil rite. In this, however, she did not succeed, and after long
resistance, and ill-concealed displeasure, she concluded by
acknowledging the unwelcome alliance. It was the little Aurore herself
whose unconscious hand severed the Gordian knot of the family
difficulties. Introduced by a stratagem into her grandmother's presence,
and seated in her lap as the child of a stranger, the family traits were
suddenly recognized, and the little one (eight months old) effected a
change of heart which neither lawyer nor priest could have induced. St.
Childhood is fortunately always in the world, working ever these
miracles of reconciliation.
George speaks with admirable candor of the inevitable relations
between these two women. She does full justice to the legitimacy of the
grandmother's objections to the marriage, and her fears for its result,
which were founded much more on moral than on social considerations.
At the same time she nobly asserts her mother's claim to rehabilitation
through a passionate and disinterested attachment, a faithful devotion to
the duties of marriage and maternity, and a widowhood whose sorrow
ended only with her life. She says,--"The doctrine of redemption is the
symbol of the principle of expiation and of rehabilitation"; but she
adds,--"Our society recognizes this principle in religious theory, but not
in practice; it is too great, too beautiful for us." She says
farther,--"There still exists a pretended aristocracy of virtue, which,
proud of its privileges, does not admit that the errors of youth are
susceptible of atonement. This condemnation is the more absurd,
because, for what is called the World, it is hypocritical. It is not only
women of really irreproachable life, nor matrons truly respected, who
are called upon to decide upon the merits of their misled sisters. It is
not the company of the excellent of the earth who make opinion. That
is all a dream. The great majority of women of the world is really a

majority of lost women." We must understand these remarks as
applying to French society, in respect even of which we are not inclined
to admit their truth. Yet there is a certain justice in the inference that
women are often most severely condemned by those who are no better
than themselves; and this insincerity of uncharity is far more to be
dreaded than the over-zeal of virtuous hearts, which oftenest helps and
heals where it has been obliged to wound.
At the risk of unduly multiplying quotations, we will quote here what
George says of her mother in this, the flower of her days. At a later day,
the ill-regulated character suffered and made others suffer with its own
discords, which education and moral training had done nothing to
reconcile. The manly support, too, of the nobler nature was wanting,
and the best half of her future and its possibilities was buried in the
untimely grave of her husband. Here is what she was when she was at
her best:--
"My mother never felt herself either humiliated or honored by the
company of people who might have considered themselves her
superiors. She ridiculed keenly the pride of fools, the vanity of
_parvenus_, and, feeling herself of the people to her very finger-ends,
she thought herself more noble than all the patricians and aristocrats of
the earth. She was wont to say that those of her race had redder blood
and larger veins than others,--which I incline to believe; for, if moral
and physical energy constitute in reality the excellence of races, we
cannot deny that this energy is compelled to diminish in those who lose
the habit of labor and the courage of endurance. This aphorism is
certainly not without exception, and we may add that excess of labor
and of endurance enervates the organization as much as the excess of
luxury and idleness. But it is certain, in general, that life rises from the
bottom of society, and loses itself in measure as it rises to the top, like
the sap in plants.
"My mother was not one of those bold intrigantes whose secret passion
is to struggle against the prejudices of their time, and who think to
make themselves