It is the woman nature, whether it be found with male or female physical form, that is capable of selfless love and an unswerving fidelity to divine ideals. This it is to be like God. Therefore is she the ever-virgin mother of whom regenerate man is to be born. Therefore do the temporal sufferings of her wifehood constitute the birth-pangs of her motherhood; and though her husband be Cain, as her child he may become a Saviour.

In this sharp contrast afforded by Fedora and Pauline, light and darkness, warmth and cold strive the one with the other. A word of wonderful suggestiveness is spoken by Raphael as he tells his story to his friend and companion at the banquet. "Women without souls have nothing mellow in their gestures." Do we not see at once the artificiality of the society devotee which chills, nay, freezes, the spontaneous naturalness of the soul, and congeals all true sentiment? -- an artificiality that is accepted, even demanded, in place of sincerity, by the requirements of "good society"?

Balzac has but emphasized what we with a clear vision may see -- the frozen soul of the woman who makes society the object of her devotion. Nothing that is perfectly sincere and natural can be left to her. Her very love for her husband and children will be touched with the same frost and become inseparable from expediency. Every thought of them will tinctured with the social ambition that will color and