Middlemarch
George Eliot ElecBook Classics
9
PRELUDE
ho that cares much to know the history of man, and
how the mysterious mixture behaves under the varying
experiments of Time, has not dwelt, at least briefly, on
the life of Saint Theresa, has not smiled with some gentleness at
the thought of the little girl walking forth one morning hand-inhand
with her still smaller brother, to go and seek martyrdom in
the country of the Moors? Out they toddled from rugged Avila,
wide-eyed and helpless-looking as two fawns, but with human
hearts, already beating to a national idea; until domestic reality
met them in the shape of uncles, and turned them back from their
great resolve. That child-pilgrimage was a fit beginning. Theresa’s
passionate, ideal nature demanded an epic life: what were manyvolumed
romances of chivalry and the social conquests of a
brilliant girl to her? Her flame quickly burned up that light fuel;
and, fed from within, soared after some illimitable satisfaction,
some object which would never justify weariness, which would
reconcile self-despair with the rapturous consciousness of life
beyond self. She found her epos in the reform of a religious order.