my guardian became to me as the one
object of my existence.

It was no love-passion; he was far too old
for that, and I comparatively too young, at
least too childish. It was one of those insane,
rapturous adorations which young maidens
sometimes conceive, mingling a little of the
tenderness of the woman with the ecstatic
enthusiasm of the devotee. There is hardly a
prophet or leader noted in the world's history
who has not been followed and worshipped
by many such women.

So was my guardian, Anastasius— not his
true name, but it sufficed then and will
now.

Many may recognise him as a known leader
in the French political and moral world— as
one who, by the mere force of intellect,
wielded the most irresistible and silently
complete power of any man I ever knew, in every
circle into which he came; women he won by
his polished gentleness, — men, by his equally
polished strength. He would have turned a
compliment and signed a death-warrant, with
the same exquisitely calm grace. Nothing
was to him too great or too small. I have
known him, on his way to advise that the
President's soldiers should sweep a cannonade
down the thronged street— stop to
pick up a strayed canary-bird, stroke its
broken wing, and confide it with beautiful
tenderness to his bosom.

O how tender! — how mild!  — how pitiful! —
could he be!

When I say I loved him, I use for want of
a better, a word which ill expresses that feeling.
It was — Heaven forgive me if I err in
using the similitude— the sort of feeling the
Shunamite woman might have had for Elisha,
Religion added to its intensity; for I was
brought up a devout Catholic; and he, whatever
his private dogmas might have been, adhered
strictly to the forms of the same church.
He was unmarried, and most people supposed
him to belong to that order called — Heaven
knows how unlike Him from whom they
assume their name — the Society of Jesus.

We lived thus — I entirely worshipping, he
guiding, fondling, watching, and ruling by
turns, for two whole years. I was mistress of
a large fortune, and, though not beautiful,
had, I believe, a tolerable intellect, and a
keen wit which he used to play with, as a
boy plays with fireworks, amusing himself
with their glitter — sometimes directing them
against others, and smiling as they flashed or
scorched — knowing that against himself they
were utterly powerless and harmless. Knowing,
too, perhaps, that were it otherwise, he
had only to tread them out under foot, and
step aside from the ashes, with the same
unmoved, easy smile.

I never knew — nor know I to this day,
whether I was dear to him or not. Useful I
was, I think, and pleasant, I believe. Possibly
he liked me a little  — as the potter likes his
clay, and the skilful mechanician likes his
tools — until the clay hardened, and the fine
tools refused to obey the master's hand.

I was the brilliant West Indian heiress. I
did not marry. Why should I? At my
house — at least it was called mine — all sorts
and societies met, carrying on their separate
games; the quiet, soft hand of M. Anastasius
playing his game — in, and under, and through
them all. Mingled with this grand game of
the world was a lesser one  — to which he
turned sometimes, just for amusement, and
because he could not cease from his métier — a
simple, easy, domestic game, of which the
battledore was that said white hand, and the
shuttlecock my foolish child's heart.

Thus much have I dilated on him, and my
own life in the years when all its strong,
wild current flowed towards him; that, in
what followed when the tide turned, no one
may accuse me of fickleness, or causeless
aversion, or insane terror of one who after all
was only man, " whose breath is in his
nostrils."

At seventeen I was wholly passive in his
hands; he was my sole arbiter of right and
wrong  — my conscience — almost my God. As
my character matured, and, in a few things, I
began to judge for myself, we had occasional
slight differences  — begun, on my part, in shy
humility, continued  with vague doubt, but
always ending in penitence and tears. Since
one or other erred, of course it must be I.
These differences were wholly on abstract
points of truth or justice.

It was his taking me to the ball at the
Tuileries, which was given after Louis
Napoleon Bonaparte had seized the Orleans
property, and it was my watching my cousin's
conduct there, which made me first question,
in a trembling terrified way — like one
who catches a glimpse of the miracle-making
priest's hands behind the robe of the worshipped
idol — whether, great as M. Anastasius
was as a political ruler, as a man of
the world, as a faithful member of the Society
of Jesus, he was altogether so great when
viewed beside any one of those whose doctrines
he disseminated, whose faith he professed.

He had allowed me the New Testament,
and I had been reading it a good deal lately.
I placed him, my spiritual guide, first in
venerating love, then, with a curious marvelling
comparison, beside the fishermen of
Galilee, beside— reverently be it spoken —
beside the Divine Christ.

There was a certain difference.

The next time we came to any argument —
always on abstract questions, — for my mere
individual will never had any scruple in
resigning to his — instead of yielding and
atoning, I ceased the contest, and brought it
afterwards privately to the one infallible rule
of right and wrong.

The difference grew.

Gradually, I began to take my cousin's
wisdom — perhaps, even his virtues— with