And the season, which was the most heavenly period of the spring, added
stings to this yearning. That was one of her maladies--_nostalgia_,
as medicine calls it; the other was weariness and exhaustion from daily
combats with malice. She saw that everybody hated her and thirsted for
her blood; nay, many kind-hearted creatures that would have pitied her
profoundly, as regarded all political charges, had their natural
feelings warped by the belief that she had dealings with fiendish
powers. She knew she was to die; that was _not_ the misery! the
misery was that this consummation could not be reached without so much
intermediate strife, as if she were contending for some chance (where
chance was none) of happiness, or were dreaming for a moment of
escaping the inevitable. Why, then, _did_ she contend? Knowing that
she would reap nothing from answering her persecutors, why did she not
retire by silence from the superfluous contest? It was because her
quick and eager loyalty to truth would not suffer her to see it
darkened by frauds which _she_ could expose, but others, even of
candid listeners, perhaps, could not; it was through that imperishable
grandeur of soul which taught her to submit meekly and without a
struggle to her punishment, but taught her _not_ to submit--no, not
for a moment--to calumny as to facts, or to misconstruction as to
motives.
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