She enters life with no thorough education behind her, no serious aim before her, with a strong craving for happiness, and a poetic turn--predestined, therefore, to live in illusions. When she finds herself surrounded by admirers she gives herself up to dizzy enjoyment of this gratification, and begins to regard herself as a superior being. As long as she preserves outward fidelity to her husband she lives in the illusion that she is the heroine of duty. When she becomes unfaithful, she chooses a new model, and is transformed in her own estimation into another ideal, the ideal fair sinner. She writes of the ladies of Geneva, that they have neither the charm of virtue nor "the charm of sin." This latter she herself acquired. She continued to be ideal in so far as it is ideal to be the first of one's own species, unique. On this supposition of her own ideality is founded her belief that it was she who brought happiness (orders and titles) to her husband.
All illusion consists in a wrong association of cause and effect--religious illusion like the rest. But religious illusion is a double illusion; the individual subject to it does not trace the effect to its cause, but to a vague origin, the centre of existence--illusion number one--and in the centre of existence he places, not, as he imagines, the Deity, but himself--illusion number two. The beautiful wife believes that her husband receives his decorations direct from God, but also that she herself is the cause of God's bestowing them. She is the real cause, God is the means by which she works. She continues to lead her gay life as long as it continues to provide her with illusions. But a clever woman, with highly-strung nerves, tires in the long run of such a life, tires of the new admirer's jealousy of his predecessor, and of fooling herself and another for, say, the tenth time with the words: "You are the only man I have ever loved." After this life has lost its illusions, and existence for the time being its charm, the possibility of a new illusion presents itself. Madame de Krüdener regards the apoplectic shock which killed her lover in the same light as St. Augustine, Pascal, and Luther regarded similar occurrences. It is a hint, a warning to her. The happy shoemaker tells her of his certainty of being one of the elect of God. When she learns the secret of his happiness, she resolves that she too will be one of the elect.