"I can renounce such love," said Sara, "as will not love me with my faults. Nature gave me strong feelings and inclinations, and I cannot bring them into subjection."
"You will not, Sara," was the reply.
"I cannot! and it may be that I will not," said she, "submit myself to the subjugation and taming which has been allotted as the share of the woman. Why should I? I feel strength in myself to break up a new path for myself. I will lead a fresh and an independent life! I will live a bright artiste-life, free from the trammels and the Lilliputian considerations of domestic life. I will be free! I will not, as now, be watched and suspected, and be under a state of espionage! I will be free from the displeasure and blame which now dog my footsteps! This treatment it is, mother, which has determined my resolution."
"If," answered the mother, in a tremulous voice, and deeply affected by Sara's words and tone, "I have erred towards you—and I may have done so—I know well that it has not been from temper, or out of want of tenderness towards you. I have spoken to and warned you from the best conviction; I have sincerely endeavoured and desired that which is best for you, and this you will some time or other come to see even better than now.[14] You will perhaps come to see that it would have been good for you if you had lent a more willing ear to my maternal counsellings; will perhaps come to deplore that you rewarded the love I cherished for you with reproaches and bitterness!"
"Then let me go!" said Sara, with gentler voice; "we do not accord well together. I embitter your life, and you make—perhaps you cannot make mine happy. Let me go with him who will love me with all my faults, who can and will open a freer scope to my powers and talents than I have hitherto had."
"Ah, Sara," returned Elise, "will you obtain in this freer field a better happiness than can be afforded you by a domestic circle, by the tenderness of true friends, and a happy domestic life?"
"Are you then so happy, my mother?" interrupted Sara with an ironical smile, and a searching glance; "are you then so happy in this circle, and this domestic life, which you praise so highly, that you thus repeat what has been said on the subject from the beginning of the world. Those perpetual cares in which you have passed your days, those trifling cares and thoughts for every-day necessities, which are so opposite to your own nature, are they then so pleasant, so captivating? Have you not renounced many of your beautiful gifts—your pleasure in literature and music—nay, in short, what is the most lovely part of life, in order to bury yourself in concealment and oblivion, and there, like the silkworm, to spin your own sepulchre of the threads which another will wind off? You bow your own will continually before that of another; your innocent pleasures you sacrifice daily either to him or to others: are you so very happy amid all these renunciations?"
The Judge rose up passionately; went several times up and down the room, and placed himself at last directly opposite to Sara, leaning his back to the stove, and listening attentively for the answer of his wife.
"Yes, Sara, I am happy!" answered she, with an energy very unusual in her; "yes, I am happy! Whenever I make any sacrifice, I receive a rich return. And if there be moments when I feel painfully any renunciation which I have made, there are others, and far more of them, in which I congratulate myself on all that I have won. I am become improved through the husband whom God has given to me; through my children, through my duties, through the desires and the wants which I have overcome at his side—yes, Sara, above all things, through him, his affection, his excellence, am I improved, and feel myself happier every day. Love, Sara, love changes sacrifice into pleasure, and makes renunciation sweet! I thank God for my lot, and only wish that I were worthier of it!"
"It may be!" said Sara, proudly; "every one has his own sphere. But the tame happiness of the dove suits not the eagle!"