Maiden Voyages Read Online Free Page B

and emotion excites responsive sympathy, and the harmonized soul sinks into melancholy, or rises to extasy, just as the chords are touched, like the aeolian harp agitated by the changing wind. But how dangerous is it to foster these sentiments in such an imperfect state of existence; and how difficult to eradicate them when an affection for mankind, a passion for an individual, is but the unfolding of that love which embraces all that is great and beautiful.
    When a warm heart has received strong impressions, they are not to be effaced. Emotions become sentiments; and the imagination renders even transient sensations permanent, by fondly retracing them. I cannot, without a thrill of delight, recollect views I have seen, which are not to be forgotten, nor looks I have felt in every nerve which I shall never more meet. The grave has closed over a dear friend, the friend of my youth; still she is present with me, and I hear her soft voice warbling as I stray over the heath. Fate has separated me from another, the fire of whose eyes, tempered by infantine tenderness, still warms my breast; even when gazing on these tremendous cliffs, sublime emotions absorb my soul. And, smile not, if I add, that the rosy tint of morning remindsme of a suffusion, which will never more charm my senses, unless it reappears on the cheeks of my child. Her sweet blushes I may yet hide in my bosom, and she is still too young to ask why starts the tear, so near akin to pleasure and pain?
    I cannot write any more at present. Tomorrow we will talk of Tønsberg.

FLORA TRISTAN
    (1803–1844)
    The life of the reformer Flora Tristan was rescued from obscurity in 1925 when her unfinished journal
, Tour de France,
an account of her campaign for workers’ rights in French industrial towns, was published. The woman who would be grandmother to artist Paul Gauguin was a charismatic leader whose early death from typhoid fever put an end to her work in France to create a universal workers’ union that would facilitate equal rights for women. Tristan’s trip alone to Peru in 1833 (to stake a claim to her family’s fortune), which she wrote about in
Peregrinations of a Pariah,
marked the beginning of her political awakening. But her reformist zeal was most profoundly reflected in her outrage with laws pertaining to the sanctity of marriage: at a time when divorce was illegal in France, she left her husband, André Chazal, in 1825, resumed her maiden name, and then battled fiercely for more than a decade over custody of their two children. The landmark battle ended when the courts declared the couple legally separated after Chazal shot Tristan in the back; she recovered and Chazal served seventeen years in jail
.
from
PEREGRINATIONS OF A PARIAH
    When you go from Arequipa to Islay you have the sun behind you and the wind in front, so you suffer far less from the heat than you do when going from Islay to Arequipa. I stood up to the journey very well; besides, my health had improved and I felt better able to endure its rigours this time. At midnight we arrived at the inn and I threw myself fully dressed upon my bed while supper was being prepared. Mr. Smith had a miraculous talent for making light of difficulties, and now he saw toeverything—food, muleteers, animals—with remarkable speed and tact. Thanks to him we had a very good supper, after which we all stayed up talking, for none of us could sleep. At three in the morning we set out once more; the cold was so bitter that I wore three ponchos. When dawn appeared I was overcome with an irresistible desire for sleep and begged Mr. Smith to let me rest for just half an hour; I threw myself upon the ground and without giving the servant time to put down a mat for me I fell into so deep a sleep that nobody dared attempt to make me more comfortable. They let me sleep for an hour and I felt all the better for it; we were by then in the open pampa, so I mounted the horse and crossed the vast expanse at a gallop, in fact