Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 49, November, 1861 | Page 7

greater by clinging, at the risk of a thousand affronts,
to the false greatness of the world. She was far too proud to expose
herself even to coldness. Her attitude was so reserved that she passed
for a timid person; but if one attempted to encourage her by airs of
protection, she became more than reserved, she showed herself cold

and taciturn. With people who inspired her with respect, she was
amiable and charming; but her real disposition was gay, petulant, active,
and, above all, opposed to constraint. Great dinners, long _soirées_,
commonplace visits, balls themselves, were odious to her. She was the
woman of the fireside or of the rapid and frolicking walk; but in her
interior, as in her goings abroad, intimacy, confidence, relations of
entire sincerity, absolute freedom in her habits and the employment of
her time, were indispensable to her. She, therefore, always lived in a
retired manner, more anxious to avoid unpleasant acquaintances than
eager to make advantageous ones. Such, too, was the foundation of my
father's character, and in this respect never was couple better assorted.
They were never happy out of their little household. And they have
bequeathed me this secret _sauvagerie_, which has always rendered the
[fashionable] world insupportable to me, and home indispensable."
In referring back to these volumes, we are led into continual loiterings
by the way. The style of our heroine is so magical, that we are
constantly tempted to let her tell her own story, and to give to the gems
of hers which we insert in these pages the slightest possible setting of
our own. But it is not our business to anticipate for any one a reading
from which no student of modern literature, or, indeed, of modern mind,
will excuse himself. We must give only so much as shall make it sure
that others will seek more at the fountain-head; but for this purpose we
must turn less to the book, and trust for our narration to a sufficiently
recent perusal still vividly remembered.
Aurore could scarcely have passed out of her third year when she
accompanied her mother to Madrid, where her father was already in
attendance upon Murat. She remembers their quarters in the palace,
magnificently furnished, and the half-broken toys of the royal children,
whose destruction she was allowed to complete. To please his
commander-in-chief, her father caused her to assume a miniature
uniform, like those of the Prince's aide-de-camps, whose splendid
discomfort she still recalls. This would seem a sort of prophecy of that
assuming of male attire in later years which was to constitute a capital
circumstance in her life. The return from the Peninsula was weary and
painful to the mother and child, and made more so by the disgust with
which the Spanish roadside bill-of-fare inspired the more civilized
French stomach. They were forced to make a part of the journey in

wagons with the common soldiery and camp-retainers, and Aurore in
this manner took the itch, to her mother's great mortification. Arrived at
Nohant, however, the care of Deschartres, joined to a self-imposed
_régime_ of green lemons, which the little girl devoured, skins, seeds,
and all, soon healed the ignominious eruption. Here the whole family
passed some months of happy repose, too soon interrupted by the
tragical death of Maurice. He had brought back from Spain a
formidable horse, which he had christened the terrible Leopardo, and
which, brave cavalier as he was, he never mounted without a certain
indefinable misgiving. He often said, "I ride him badly, because I am
afraid of him, and he knows it." Dining with some friends in the
neighborhood, one day, he was late in returning. His wife and mother
passed the evening together, the first jealous and displeased at his
protracted absence, the second occupied in calming the irritation and
rebuking the suspicions of her companion. The wife at last yielded, and
retired to rest. But the mother's heart, more anxious, watched and
watched. Towards midnight, a slight confusion in the house augmented
her alarm. She started at once, alone and thinly dressed, to go and meet
her son. The night was dark and rainy; the terrible Leopardo had
fulfilled the prophetic forebodings of his rider. The poor lady, brought
up in habits of extreme inactivity, had taken but two walks in all her
life. The first had been to surprise her son at Passy, when released from
the Revolutionary prison. The second was to meet and escort back his
lifeless body, found senseless by the roadside.
We have done now with Aurore's ancestry, and must occupy our
remaining pages with accounts of herself. Much time is given by her to
the record of her early childhood, and the explanation of its various
phases. She loves children; it is perhaps for this