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

reason that she dwells
longest on this period of her life, describing its minutest incidents with
all the poetry that is in her. One would think that her childhood seemed
to her that actual flower of her life which it is to few in their own
consciousness. Despite the loss of her father, and the vexed relations
between her mother and grandmother which followed his death, her
infancy was joyous and companionable, passed mostly with the country
surroundings and out-door influences which act so magically on the
young. It soon became evident that she was to be confided chiefly to
her grandmother's care; and this, which was at first a fear, soon came to

be a sorrow. Still her mother was often with her, and her time was
divided between the plays of her village-friends and the dreams of
romantic incident which early formed the main feature of her inner life.
Already at a very early age her mother used to say to those who
laughed at the little romancer,--"Let her alone; it is only when she is
making her novels between four chairs that I can work in peace." This
habit of mind grew with her growth. Her very dolls played grandiose
parts in her child-drama. The paper on the wall became animated to her
at night, and in her dreams she witnessed strange adventures between
its Satyrs and Bacchantes. Soon she imagined for herself a sort of
angel-companion, whose name was Corambé. His presence grew to be
more real to her than reality itself, and in her quiet moments she wove
out the mythology of his existence, as Bhavadgheetas and Mahabraatus
have been dreamed. In process of time, she built, or rather entwisted,
for him a little shrine in the woods. All pretty things the child could
gather were brought together there, to give him pleasure. But one day
the foot of a little playmate profaned this sanctuary, and Aurore sought
it no more, while still Corambé was with her everywhere.
Although she seems to have always suffered from her mother's
inequalities of temper, yet for many years she clung to her, and to the
thought of her, with jealous affection. The great difference of age
which separated her from her grandmother inspired fear, and the grand
manners and careful breeding of the elder lady increased this effect.
When left with her, the child fell into a state of melancholy, with
passionate reactions against the chilling, penetrating influence, which
yet, having reason on its side, was destined to subdue her. "Her
chamber, dark and perfumed, gave me the headache, and fits of
spasmodic yawning. When she said to me, '_Amuse yourself quietly_,'
it seemed to me as if she shut me up in a great box with her." What
sympathetic remembrances must this phrase evoke in all who
remember the _gêne_ of similar constraints! George draws from this
inferences of the wisdom of Nature in confiding the duties of maternity
to young creatures, whose pulses have not yet lost the impatient leap of
early pleasure and energy, and to whom repose and reflection have not
yet become the primal necessities of life. This want of the nearness and
sympathy of age she was to experience more, as, by the consent of both
parties, her education was to be conducted under the superintendence of

her grandmother, from whom the mother derived her pension, and
whose estate the child was to inherit. The separation from her mother,
gradually effected, was the great sorrow of her childhood. She revolted
from it sometimes openly, sometimes in secret; and the project of
escaping and joining her mother in Paris, where, with her half-sister
Caroline, they would support themselves by needle-work, was soon
formed and long cherished. For the expenses of this intended journey,
the child carefully gathered and kept her little treasures, a coral comb, a
ring with a tiny brilliant, etc., etc. In contemplating these, she consoled
many a heartache; as who is there of us who has not often effectually
beguiled ennui and privation by dreams of joys that never were to have
any other reality? The mother seems to have entered into this plan only
for the moment; it soon escaped her remembrance altogether, and the
little girl waited and waited to be sent for, till finally the whole vision
faded into a dream.
Deschartres, the tutor of Maurice, and of Hippolyte, his illegitimate son,
became also the instructor of the little Aurore. With all her passion for
out-door life, she felt always, she tells us, an invincible necessity of
mental cultivation, and perpetually astonished those who had charge of
her by her ardor alike in work and in play. Her grandmother soon found
that the child was never ill, so long as sufficient freedom of exercise
was permitted; so she was