One trouble alone disturbed her peace of mind upon that delightful

journey. Alan entered their names at all the hotels where they

stopped as "Mr. and Mrs. Alan Merrick of London." That deception,

as Herminia held it, cost her many qualms of conscience; but Alan,

with masculine common-sense, was firm upon the point that no other

description was practically possible; and Herminia yielded with a

sign to his greater worldly wisdom. She had yet to learn the

lesson which sooner or later comes home to all the small minority

who care a pin about righteousness, that in a world like our own,

it is impossible for the righteous always to act consistently up to

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their most sacred convictions.

At Milan, they stopped long enough to snatch a glimpse of the

cathedral, and to take a hasty walk through the pictured glories of

the Brera. A vague suspicion began to cross Herminia's mind, as she

gazed at the girlish Madonna of the Sposalizio, that perhaps she

wasn't quite as well adapted to love Italy as Switzerland. Nature

she understood; was art yet a closed book to her? If so, she would

be sorry; for Alan, in whom the artistic sense was largely

developed, loved his Italy dearly; and it would be a real cause of

regret to her if she fell short in any way of Alan's expectations.

Moreover, at table d'hote that evening, a slight episode occurred

which roused to the full once more poor Herminia's tender

conscience. Talk had somehow turned on Shelley's Italian wanderings;

and a benevolent-looking clergyman opposite, with that vacantly

well-meaning smile, peculiar to a certain type of country rector,

was apologizing in what he took to be a broad and generous spirit of

divine, toleration for the great moral teacher's supposed lapses

from the normal rule of tight living. Much, the benevolent-looking

gentleman opined, with beaming spectacles, must be forgiven to men

of genius. Their temptations no doubt are far keener than with most

of us. An eager imagination--a vivid sense of beauty--quick

readiness to be moved by the sight of physical or moral

loveliness--these were palliations, the old clergyman held, of much

that seemed wrong and contradictory to our eyes in the lives of so

many great men and women.

At sound of such immoral and unworthy teaching, Herminia's ardent

soul rose up in revolt within her. "Oh, no," she cried eagerly,

leaning across the table as she spoke. "I can't allow that plea.

It's degrading to Shelley, and to all true appreciation of the

duties of genius. Not less but more than most of us is the genius

bound to act up with all his might to the highest moral law, to be

the prophet and interpreter of the highest moral excellence. To

whom much is given, of him much shall be required. Just because

the man or woman of genius stands raised on a pedestal so far above

the mass have we the right to expect that he or she should point us

the way, should go before us as pioneer, should be more careful of

the truth, more disdainful of the wrong, down to the smallest

particular, than the ordinary person. There are poor souls born

into this world so petty and narrow and wanting in originality that

one can only expect them to tread the beaten track, be it ever so

cruel and wicked and mistaken. But from a Shelley or a George

Eliot, we expect greater things, and we have a right to expect

them. That's why I can never quite forgive George Eliot--who knew

the truth, and found freedom for herself, and practised it in her

life--for upholding in her books the conventional lies, the

conventional prejudices; and that's why I can never admire Shelley

enough, who, in an age of slavery, refused to abjure or to deny his

freedom, but acted unto death to the full height of his principles."




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