"Oh, Frau Staatsräthin, if the world is what you describe it to me, I would rather remain above it, in a colder but purer sphere."
"I should have thought the sphere in which you were not safe from the assaults of angry peasants hardly a desirable one. I, at least, should prefer the modest discharge of domestic duties in the circle of home. But tastes differ."
Ernestine shrank from these words. "Truth is born in heaven, but stoned upon the earth. Those who wish to bring it into the world must have the courage of martyrs. These are such old commonplaces that one can hardly give utterance to them without their seeming trite. Those who recognize truth must speak it, and the happiness of possessing it outweighs with me the misery that I may incur in speaking it."
"Forgive me, but these are phrases that utterly fail to cast any halo around such a disgraceful occurrence as that of yesterday."
"Frau Staatsräthin!" cried Ernestine, flushing up.
"Be calm, my dear child, I am speaking like a mother to you. What can you gain by casting discredit by your conduct, beforehand, upon the truths that you wish to assert? Who will place any confidence in the understanding and learning of a woman who does not understand how to guard herself from ridicule? Pray listen to me calmly, for I speak as he would who would give his life for you every hour of the day. I would empty my heart to you, that no shadow may exist between us. The world is thus pitiless towards everything in the conduct of a woman that provokes remark, because our ideas of propriety have assigned her a modest retirement in the home circle, and it sees, in the bold attempt to emancipate herself from such universally received ideas, a want of womanly modesty and sense of honour, which, it thinks, cannot be too severely punished. Publicity is a thorny path. At every step aside from her vocation, although never so carefully taken, a woman meets with briers and nettles that wound her unprotected feet but are carelessly trodden down by a man. And even although she succeeds in weaving for herself a crown in this unlovely domain, it is, as one of our poets justly says, 'a crown of thorns.'"
Ernestine was looking fixedly upon the ground. The Staatsräthin could not guess her thoughts. Suddenly she raised her head proudly. "And if it be a crown of thorns, I will press it upon my brow. It is dearer to me than the fleeting roses of commonplace happiness, or the pinched head-gear of a German housewife!"
The Staatsräthin looked up to heaven, as though praying for patience. Then she replied with an evident effort at self-control, "I grant you that the lot of woman might be, and should be, better than it is. But we cannot improve it by struggling against it, but by enduring it with the dignity which will win us esteem, while our struggles can only expose us to the ridicule that always attends unsuccessful effort."
"Frau Staatsräthin, I hope to turn ridicule into fear."
"And if you should succeed, what will it avail you? Which is the happier, to have people shun you in fear, or to be surrounded by a loving circle for whom you have suffered?"