Chapter 12

To know no more
Is woman's happiest knowledge, and her praise.

Milton.

Our heroine was a woman in the best meaning of that endearing, and, we
might add, comprehensive word. Sensitive, reserved, and at times even
timid, on points that did not call for the exercise of higher qualities,
she was firm in her principles, constant as she was fond in her
affections, and self-devoted when duty and inclination united to induce
the concession, to a degree that placed the idea of sacrifice out of the
question. On the other hand, the liability to receive lively impressions,
a distinctive feature of her sex, and the aptitude to attach importance to
the usages by which she was surrounded, and which is necessarily greatest
in those who lead secluded and inactive lives, rendered it additionally
difficult for her mind to escape from the trammels of opinion, and to
think with indifference of circumstances which all near her treated with
high respect, or to which they attached a stigma allied to disgust. Had
the case been reversed, had Sigismund been noble, and Adelheid a
headsman's child, it is probable the young man might have found the means
to indulge his passion without making too great a sacrifice of his pride.
By transporting his wife to his castle, conferring his own established
name, separating her from all that was unpleasant and degrading in the
connexion, and finding occupation for his own mind in the multiplied and
engrossing employments of his station, he would have diminished motives
for contemplating, and consequently for lamenting, the objectionable
features of the alliance he had made. These are the advantages which
nature and the laws of society give to man over the weaker but the truer
sex: and yet how few would have had sufficient generosity to make even the
sacrifice of feeling which such a course required! On the other hand,
Adelheid would be compelled to part with the ancient and distinguished
appellation of her family, to adopt one which was deemed infamous in the
canton, or, if some politic expedient were found to avert this first
disgrace, it would unavoidably be of a nature to attract, rather than to
avert, the attention of all who knew the facts, from the humiliating
character of his origin. She had no habitual relief against the constant
action of her thoughts, for the sphere of woman narrows the affections in
such a way as to render them most dependent on the little accidents of
domestic life; she could not close her doors against communication with
the kinsmen of her husband, should it be his pleasure to command or his
feeling to desire it; and it would become obligatory on her to listen to
the still but never-ceasing voice of duty, and to forget, at his request,
that she had ever been