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Among such works, Des Esseintes had had the curiosity to read those of Madame Swetchine, the Russian, whose house in Paris was the rendezvous of the most fervent Catholics.
That one who withholds it, who seeks not friends, is fighting against herself, is lonely and dreary, notwithstanding the fact that she has great capabilities; for one of the most essential elements of her nature is being starved. The mightiest cannot stand alone. Mme. Swetchine, Marian Evans, Mme. De Stael felt, even more than most women, the absolute need of a friend.
"It was to be your surprise, and now I've spoiled it." "Nothing can spoil the pleasure of it," he returned. Prue stationed herself at the window, as when she was a little girl, to watch for Marjorie. She was still the blue bird with the golden crest. "We are often prophets to others only because we are our own historians." Madame Swetchine.
Among some of the most agreeable people we have met are some Russians and Poles. Madame Swetchine, a Russian, is one of the cleverest women I ever heard converse.
They are both from letters addressed to one of the most distinguished correspondents of his later years, Madame de Swetchine. "There are, it seems to me, two distinct divisions in morals, one as important as the other in the eyes of God, but in which in our days his ministers instruct us with very unequal ardor.
A dangerous polemist because of his ambuscades, a shrewd logician, executing flanking movements and attacking unexpectedly, the Comte de Falloux had also written striking, penetrating pages on the death of Madame Swetchine, whose tracts he had collected and whom he revered as a saint.
And the scourge of heresy wherewith the Church in Germany was scourged to its ultimate salvation in the sixteenth century, lies now a thing of nought, effete and all but lifeless, while the Bride of Christ has renewed her youth like the eagle. Lacordaire once wrote in a letter to Madame Swetchine these remarkable words concerning the disciples of St.
We have seen Josephine in her springtime, in her summer; it remains for us to describe only the autumn of this wonderful and melancholy career. This last study will be profoundly sad. "In the season which despoils nature," said Madame Swetchine, "there is no breeze, no puff of air so light that it fails to detach the leaf from the tree that bore it.
Swetchine, whose prejudices against her were so strong that for a long time she did not wish to meet her, confessed herself at once a captive to her "penetrating and indefinable charm." Though she did not always escape the shafts of malice, no better tribute could be offered to the graces of her character than the indulgence with which she was regarded by the most severely judging of her own sex.
In more recent times Catholicism itself has modified the rigidity of its teachings in favor of the religion of sentiment, as it has been called, inaugurated by Chateaubriand, and which is that attractive form seen in the writings of Madame Swetchine and the La Ferronnais. These elevated souls throw a charm around the immolation of self, which the egotism of the Protestant rarely matches.
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