A tender wife, a loving daughter, and a loyal friend,--shall we not
here lay down upon the grave of Marie de Lamballe our reverential
tribute, our little chaplet of _immortelles_, in the name of all good
women, wives, and daughters?
"_Elle etait mieux femme que les autres._"[A] To us that apparently
indefinite, exquisitely definite sentence most fitly marks the
distinction between the subjects of the two preceding papers and the
subject of the present. It is a transition from the stately figure of
a marble Agrippina to the breathing, feeling woman at your side; it is
the transition from the statuesque Rachelesque heroines of a David to
the "small sweet idyl" of a Greuze. And, we confess it, we were not
wholly at ease with those tragic, majestic figures. We shuddered at
the dagger and the bowl which suited them so well. We marveled at
their bloodless serenity, their superhuman self-sufficiency; inly we
questioned if they breathed and felt. Or was their circulation a
matter of machinery--a mere dead-beat escapement? We longed for the
_sexe prononce_ of Rivarol--we longed for the showman's "female
woman!" We respected and we studied, but we did not love them. With
Madame de Lamballe the case is otherwise. Not grand like this one, not
heroic like that one, "_elle est mieux femme que les autres_."
She at least is woman--after a fairer fashion--after a truer type. Not
intellectually strong like Manon Philipon, not Spartan-souled like
Marie de Corday, she has still a rare intelligence, a courage of
affection. She has that _clairvoyance_ of the heart which supersedes
all the stimulants of mottoes from Reynel or maxims from Rousseau; she
has that "angel instinct" which is a juster lawgiver than Justinian.
It was thought praise to say of the Girondist lady that she was a
greater man than her husband; it is praise to say of this queen's
friend that she was more woman than Madame Roland. Not so grand, not
so great, we like the princess best. _Elle est mieux femme que les
autres._
[A] She was more woman than the others.