our own. If he is to be my bridegroom and lord, cries Brunhilda,[1] he must first be able to pass through fire and water. I will serve at the banquet, says the Walkyrie, but only him who, in the trial of deadly combat, has shown himself a hero.
If women are to be bond-maids, let it be to men superior to women in fortitude, in aspiration, in moral power, in refined sense of beauty! You who give yourselves “to be supported,” or because “one must love something,” are they who make the lot of the sex such that mothers are sad when daughters are born.
It marks the state of feeling on this subject that it was mentioned, as a bitter censure on a woman who had influence over those younger than herself. “She makes those girls want to see heroes?”
“And will that hurt them?”
“Certainly; how can you ask? They will find none, and so they will never be married.”
“Get married” is the usual phrase, and the one that correctly indicates the thought, but the speakers, on this occasion, were persons too outwardly refined to use it. They were ashamed of the word, but not of the thing. Madame Necker, however, sees good possible in celibacy.
Indeed, I know not how the subject could be better illustrated, than by separating the wheat from the chaff in Madame Neckar's book; place them in two heaps and then summon the reader to choose; giving him first a near-sighted glass to examine the two; it might be a Christian, an astronomical, or an artistic
- ↑ See the Nibelungen Lays.
