A ewe and her new-born lambs in Cadbury, Somerset.
I MAY, perhaps be thought to owe an apology to my readers in that I have asked their sympathy for a woman who had so sinned as to have placed her beyond the general sympathy of the world at large.
But as I have told her story that sympathy has grown upon myself till I have learned to forgive her, and to feel that I too could have regarded her as a friend. Of her future life I will not venture to say anything. But no lesson is truer than that which teaches us to believe that God does temper the wind to the shorn lamb.*
To how many has it not seemed, at some one period of their lives, that all was over for them, and that to them in their afflictions there was nothing left but to die! And yet they have lived to laugh again, to feel that the air was warm and the earth fair, and that God in giving them ever-springing hope had given everything.
* ‘God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb’ (i.e. God is especially gentle towards those who are very vulnerable) is a proverb originally from French, but popularised in the English language by Laurence Sterne (1713-1768) in his novel A Sentimental Journey (1768).
Précis
Trollope admits that his leading character, Lady Mary, is seriously flawed, and that some readers might feel she is not appropriate as a heroine. But he also believes that her story invites sympathy and forgiveness, and reminds us that God himself is gentle towards those who have come to repentance through suffering. (52 / 60 words)
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