To sacrifice love and happiness,
even for a time, to etiquette, seemed to him to be trifling with the
substance of great things for the shadow of petty things; and he said
so: sometimes sadly, sometimes almost bitterly.
So Josephine was a beleagured fortress, attacked with one will, and
defended by troops, one-third of which were hot on the side of the
besiegers.
When singleness attacks division, you know the result beforehand. Why
then should I spin words? I will not trace so ill-matched a contest step
by step, sentence by sentence: let me rather hasten to relate the one
peculiarity that arose out of this trite contest, where, under the names
of Camille and Josephine, the two great sexes may be seen acting the
whole world-wide distich,--
"It's a man's part to try,
And a woman's to deny [for a while?]."
Finding her own resolutions oozing away, Josephine caught at another
person.
She said to Camille before Rose,--
"Even if I could bring myself to snatch at happiness in this indelicate
way--scarce a month after, oh!" And there ended the lady's sentence.
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