Coningsby or the New Generation

There was to be a first appearance on the stage of Lord Monmouth's / theatre to-night, the expectation of which created considerable interest / in the party, and was one of the principal subjects of conversation at / dinner. Villebecque, the manager of the troop, had married the actress / Stella, once celebrated for her genius and her beauty; a woman who had / none of the vices of her craft, for, though she was a fallen angel, / there were what her countrymen style extenuating circumstances in / her declension. With the whole world at her feet, she had remained / unsullied. Wealth and its enjoyments could not tempt her, although / she was unable to refuse her heart to one whom she deemed worthy of / possessing it. She found her fate in an Englishman, who was the father / of her only child, a daughter. She thought she had met in him a hero, a / demi-god, a being of deep passion and original and creative mind; but / he was only a voluptuary, full of violence instead of feeling, and / eccentric, because he had great means with which he could gratify / extravagant whims. Stella found she had made the great and irretrievable / mistake. She had exchanged devotion for a passionate and evanescent / fancy, prompted at first by vanity, and daily dissipating under the / influence of custom and new objects. Though not stainless in conduct, / Stella was pure in spirit. She required that devotion which she had / yielded; and she separated herself from the being to whom she had made / the most precious sacrifice. He offered her the consoling compensation / of a settlement, which she refused; and she returned with a broken / spirit to that profession of which she was still the ornament and the / pride.

The animating principle of her career was her daughter, whom she / educated with a solicitude which the most virtuous mother could not / surpass. To preserve her from the stage, and to secure for her an / independence, were the objects of her mother's life; but nature / whispered to her, that the days of that life were already numbered. / The exertions of her profession had alarmingly developed an inherent / tendency to pulmonary disease. Anxious that her child should not be left / without some protector, Stella yielded to the repeated solicitations / of one who from the first had been her silent admirer, and she married / Villebecque, a clever actor, and an enterprising man who meant to be / something more. Their union was not of long duration, though it was / happy on the side of Villebecque, and serene on that of his wife. Stella / was recalled from this world, where she had known much triumph and more / suffering; and where she had exercised many virtues, which elsewhere, / though not here, may perhaps be accepted as some palliation of one great / error.