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A BIOGRAPHY
281
As to courage,—that is, moral courage,— Sönya
considered that, if tried as her friend had been, she would
prove to have just as great an amount of it.
The life this friend, Madame J-, now lived—when
all the storms and the trouble of her past life were
over for the moment—seemed to Sönya the ideal of
happiness. Recently married to a man who adored
her; surrounded by a sympathizing and admiring
circle of friends in whose sight she was a queen; the
mistress of a hospitable mansion open to all friends;
living in Paris in the very midst of the intellectual
movement of the time, and inspired by a mission in
which she intensely believed, Madame J-was, in
Sonya’s opinion, in a position of supreme and ideal
happiness.
In this circle, so sympathetic to her feelings, Sönya
became open-hearted. I had never seen her so
communicative, except when in private conversation. She
spoke openly of her dissatisfaction with life; of her
sterile triumphs in science. She said she would
willingly exchange all the celebrity she had won, all the
triumphs of her intellect, for the lot of the most
insignificant woman who lived in her proper circle—a
circle of which she was the center, and in which she
was beloved.
But Sönya noticed with some bitterness that no one
believed her statement. All her friends thought her
more ambitious than affectionate or sensitive, and they
laughed at her words as though she were but
indulging in one of her paradoxes.
The Norwegian author, Jonas Lie, was the only
person who understood Sönya fully. Once, in a little
speech he made, he showed his comprehension of her
so plainly that she was moved to tears. It was on
one of the pleasantest of our Paris days. We were
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