human
You notice there is no view, or next to none, said Ford,
gpt
They were as rare then, it seems, as they are now, said Mrs. Winthrop.
human
But to-day we go more than twenty miles; we go to Europe.
gpt
She did the same--that is, what was the same in her day; she went to Germany. There she found two rather agreeable men--Goethe and Schiller. Having found them, she proceeded to talk to them. They confessed to each other, long afterwards, the deep relief they felt when that gifted woman departed.
human
Ah, well, all she wanted, all she was seeking, was sympathy.
gpt
She should have waited until it came to her.
human
But if it never came?
gpt
It would--if she had not been so eager and voracious. The truth is, Corinne was an inordinate egotist. She expected all minds to defer to her superiority, while at the very moment she was engaged in extracting from them any poor little knowledge or ideas they might possess which could serve her own purposes. All her books were talked into existence; she talked them before she wrote them. It was her custom, at the dinner-table here at Coppet, to introduce the subject upon which she was engaged, and all her guests were expected, indeed forced, to discuss it with her in all its bearings, to listen to all she herself had to say, and never to depart from the given line by the slightest digression until she gave the signal. The next morning, closeted in her own room, she wrote out the results of all this, and it became a chapter.
human
She was a woman of genius, all the same,
gpt
A woman of genius! And what is the very term but a stigma? No woman is so proclaimed by the great brazen tongue of the Public unless she has thrown away her birthright of womanly seclusion for the miserable mess of pottage called 'fame.'
human
The seclusion of a convent? or a prison?
gpt
Neither. Of a home.
human
You perhaps commend obedience, also?
gpt
In one way--yes.
human
I'm glad to know there are other ways.
gpt
I shall be very obedient to the woman I love in several of those other ways,
human
It is a pity there is no portrait here of Madame Récamier, she remarked.
gpt
That you might have admired.
human
The 'incomparable Juliette' was at least not literary. But in another way she was as much before the public as though she had been what you call a woman of genius. It may be said, indeed, that she had genius--a genius for attracting admiration.
gpt
You are hard to please.
human
Not at all; I ask only the simple and retiring womanly graces. But anything retiring was hard to find in the eighteenth century.
gpt
You dislike literary women very much,