If I had any influence with you, I would simply use it to soften your judgment of me in causing you this disappointment: to represent to you that I have lived the half of a long term of life, and have never before set my own will against yours.

I cannot say that I have been able to conform myself, in heart and spirit, to your rules; I cannot say that I believe my forty years have been profitable or pleasant to myself, or any one; but I have habitually submitted, and I only ask you to remember it.' Woe to the suppliant, if such a one there were or ever had been, who had any concession to look for in the inexorable face at the cabinet.

Woe to the defaulter whose appeal lay to the tribunal where those severe eyes presided.

Great need had the rigid woman of her mystical religion, veiled in gloom and darkness, with lightnings of cursing, vengeance, and destruction, flashing through the sable clouds.

Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, was a prayer too poor in spirit for her.