Her Royal Lover: A Novel — page 347: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

HER ROYAL LOVER. 339 called her to him, as if to clasp her to this heart which had loved and suffered so much, calmed a little this unhappy creature whose life was nothing more than a painful Calvary. A frightful sob es- caped from her panting bosom, her head fell heavily in her emaciated hands, and thus absorbed in her despair, she remained a long time, feeling neither the cold which was increasing nor the fog which was descending. Alas! when misfortune crushes us under its icy claw, it is in vain we struggle, endeavoring to re- habilitate ourselves, we must either bend or suc- cumb under the burden. Besides, what is there to be done against the malignity of the world, so — prompt to exercise its judgments, whether true or false, but so slow to retract them. Is it not better to wait for time, that great justifier of the oppressed and the oppressors? But not a thought, not a com- plaint, not a murmur, came to touch this proud and delicate soul, the magnanimous creature had mod- esty of her martyrdom, of her profound abandon- ment. When indignant and suffering from the wounds of. life, from the hissing of vipers infuriated against her. she felt rebellion invading her rankling heart, she came quickly to conceal her grief in the tears silently shed in the refuge of her narrow cell. But was she really so unhappy? Since the visit of the man of God a great quietude, a profound peace inundated her soul; she felt that if life and man- kind had cruelly struck her she remained none the less worthy, none the less respectable, by the noble- ness and resignation with which she had passed through all the phases of her tribulations. Her conscience, that judge which nothing can corrupt, did it not tell her that it is as much a glory to die Eomichbooks