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Strange temperament! The more I think of it, the more it appears to me as an instance of the dangers of virtue, or at least of what we understand by the word. Does it not look as though, in the charts of our characters, the virtues are the ultimate goals which can be reached only by the way of our faults? Each virtue stands like a golden statue in the centre of a cross-roads. We can hardly know every side of it unless we have beheld it from the various paths that lead to it. It shines in a different manner at the end of each road.
Rose never became conscious of her good qualities, because she possessed them too naturally; and she remained poor in the midst of all the riches which she was unable to discern.
Oh, if only she had been less wise and had had that ardour, that flame which feeds on all that is thrown upon it to extinguish it; if she had had that inordinate prodigality which teaches us by making us commit a thousand acts of folly; if, in short, she had had faults, vices, impulses of curiosity, how different her fate would have been! The equilibrium of a person's character may be compared with that of a pair of scales; and it is safe to say that, by weighing more heavily upon one of these, our defects raise our good qualities to their highest level.