Aglae

Aglae attends the young woman who will become Madame de Montevesso, the one sent with a message when her mistress locks herself away, and the one who follows when she escapes the house to summon a wealthy general and offer him a marriage of pure gratitude. Her terror during that escapade is the ordinary human reaction against which her mistress's exalted self-sacrifice stands out in stark relief. She matters as the witness who makes the courtship's strangeness visible, a small figure whose fright measures how far her mistress has stepped outside the conventions of her world.