On the other hand, the liability to receive lively impressions,
a distinctive feature of her sex, and the aptitude to attach importance to
the usages by which she was surrounded, and which is necessarily greatest
in those who lead secluded and inactive lives, rendered it additionally
difficult for her mind to escape from the trammels of opinion, and to
think with indifference of circumstances which all near her treated with
high respect, or to which they attached a stigma allied to disgust. Had
the case been reversed, had Sigismund been noble, and Adelheid a
headsman's child, it is probable the young man might have found the means
to indulge his passion without making too great a sacrifice of his pride.
By transporting his wife to his castle, conferring his own established
name, separating her from all that was unpleasant and degrading in the
connexion, and finding occupation for his own mind in the multiplied and
engrossing employments of his station, he would have diminished motives
for contemplating, and consequently for lamenting, the objectionable
features of the alliance he had made.
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