The Minister's Wooing

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

For the first time, in his society, she became aware of the charm of a polished and cultivated mind; able, with exquisite tact, to adapt itself to hers; to draw forth her inquiries; to excite her tastes; to stimulate her observation. A new world awoke around her—the world of literature, of taste, of art, of sentiment. She felt somehow as if she had gained the growth of years in a few months. She felt within herself the stirring of dim aspiration—the uprising of a new power of self-devotion and self sacrifice; a trance of hero worship; a cloud of high ideal images; the lighting up, in short, of all that God has laid ready to be enkindled in woman’s nature when the time comes to sanctify her as the pure priestess of a domestic temple.

But, alas! it was kindled by one who did it only for an experiment; because he felt an artistic pleasure in the beautiful light and heat which had burned a soul away.

Burr was one of those men, willing to play with any charming woman the game of those navigators who give to simple natives glass beads and feathers in return for gold and diamonds; to accept from a woman her heart’s blood in return for such odds, ends, and clippings as he could afford her from the serious ambitions of life.

Look in with us one moment, now that the party is over, and the busy hum of voices and blaze of lights have died down to midnight silence and darkness. We make you clairvoyant; and you may look through the walls of this stately old mansion, still known as that where Rochambeau held his headquarters, into this room, where two wax candles are burning on a toilette-table before an old-fashioned mirror.

The slumbrous folds of the curtains are drawn with stately gloom around a high bed, where Colonel de Frontignac has been for many hours quietly asleep. But opposite, resting with one elbow on the toilette-table, her long black hair hanging down over her night-dress, and the brush hanging listlessly in her hand, sits Virginie, looking fixedly into the dreamy depths of the mirror.

Scarcely twenty yet; all unwarned of the world of power and passion that lay slumbering in her girl’s heart; led, in the meshes of custom and society, to utter vows and take responsibilities of whose nature she was no more apprised than is a slumbering babe, and now at last fully awake, feeling the whole power of that mysterious and awful force which we call love, yet shuddering to call it by its name; yet by its light beginning to understand all she is capable of, and all that marriage should have been to her!

She struggles feebly and confusedly with her fate, still clinging to the name of duty, and baptizing as friendship the strange new feeling which makes her tremble through all her being. How can she dream of danger in such a feeling, when it seems to her the awakening of all that is highest and noblest within her? She remembers when she thought of nothing beyond an opera ticket or a new dress; and now she feels that there might be to her a friend for whose sake she would try to be noble and great and good; for whom all self-denial, all high endeavour, all difficult virtue, would become possible; who would be to her life, inspiration, order, beauty.

She sees him, as woman always sees the one she loves—noble, great, and good; for when did a loving woman ever believe a man otherwise? too noble, too great, too high, too good, she thinks for her, poor, trivial, ignorant coquette—poor, trifling, childish Virginie! Has he not commanded armies? she thinks; is he not eloquent in the senate? and yet, what interest he has taken in her, a poor, unformed, ignorant creature! She never tried to improve herself till since she knew him: and he is so considerate too; so respectful; so thoughtful and kind; so manly and honourable; and has such a tender friendship for her; such a brotherly, fatherly solicitude. And yet, if she is haughty, or imperious, or severe, how humbled and grieved he looks! How strange that she could have power over such a man!

It is one of the saddest truths of this sad mystery of life, that woman is often never so much an angel as just the moment before she falls into the bottomless depths of perdition; and what shall we say of the man who leads her up to this spot as an experiment? who amuses himself with taking woman after woman up these dazzling, delusive heights, knowing, as he certainly must, where they lead?

We have been told, in extenuation of the course of Aaron Burr, that he was not a man of gross passions or of coarse indulgence, but in the most consummate and refined sense a man of gallantry: this, then, is the descriptive name which polite society has invented for the man who does this thing.