The Ball at Sceaux | Page 9

a
partner's indiscreet tongue. Her colorless face and alabaster brow were
like the limpid surface of a lake, which by turns is rippled by the
impulse of a breeze and recovers its glad serenity when the air is still.
More than one young man, a victim to her scorn, accused her of acting
a part; but she justified herself by inspiring her detractors with the
desire to please her, and then subjecting them to all her most

contemptuous caprice. Among the young girls of fashion, not one knew
better than she how to assume an air of reserve when a man of talent
was introduced to her, or how to display the insulting politeness which
treats an equal as an inferior, and to pour out her impertinence on all
who tried to hold their heads on a level with hers. Wherever she went
she seemed to be accepting homage rather than compliments, and even
in a princess her airs and manner would have transformed the chair on
which she sat into an imperial throne.
Monsieur de Fontaine discovered too late how utterly the education of
the daughter he loved had been ruined by the tender devotion of the
whole family. The admiration which the world is at first ready to
bestow on a young girl, but for which, sooner or later, it takes its
revenge, had added to Emilie's pride, and increased her self- confidence.
Universal subservience had developed in her the selfishness natural to
spoilt children, who, like kings, make a plaything of everything that
comes to hand. As yet the graces of youth and the charms of talent hid
these faults from every eye; faults all the more odious in a woman,
since she can only please by self- sacrifice and unselfishness; but
nothing escapes the eye of a good father, and Monsieur de Fontaine
often tried to explain to his daughter the more important pages of the
mysterious book of life. Vain effort! He had to lament his daughter's
capricious indocility and ironical shrewdness too often to persevere in a
task so difficult as that of correcting an ill-disposed nature. He
contented himself with giving her from time to time some gentle and
kind advice; but he had the sorrow of seeing his tenderest words slide
from his daughter's heart as if it were of marble. A father's eyes are
slow to be unsealed, and it needed more than one experience before the
old Royalist perceived that his daughter's rare caresses were bestowed
on him with an air of condescension. She was like young children, who
seem to say to their mother, "Make haste to kiss me, that I may go to
play." In short, Emilie vouchsafed to be fond of her parents. But often,
by those sudden whims, which seem inexplicable in young girls, she
kept aloof and scarcely ever appeared; she complained of having to
share her father's and mother's heart with too many people; she was
jealous of every one, even of her brothers and sisters. Then, after
creating a desert about her, the strange girl accused all nature of her
unreal solitude and her wilful griefs. Strong in the experience of her

twenty years, she blamed fate, because, not knowing that the
mainspring of happiness is in ourselves, she demanded it of the
circumstances of life. She would have fled to the ends of the earth to
escape a marriage such as those of her two sisters, and nevertheless her
heart was full of horrible jealousy at seeing them married, rich, and
happy. In short, she sometimes led her mother--who was as much a
victim to her vagaries as Monsieur de Fontaine--to suspect that she had
a touch of madness.
But such aberrations are quite inexplicable; nothing is commoner than
this unconfessed pride developed in the heart of young girls belonging
to families high in the social scale, and gifted by nature with great
beauty. They are almost all convinced that their mothers, now forty or
fifty years of age, can neither sympathize with their young souls, nor
conceive of their imaginings. They fancy that most mothers, jealous of
their girls, want to dress them in their own way with the premeditated
purpose of eclipsing them or robbing them of admiration. Hence, often,
secret tears and dumb revolt against supposed tyranny. In the midst of
these woes, which become very real though built on an imaginary basis,
they have also a mania for composing a scheme of life, while casting
for themselves a brilliant horoscope; their magic consists in taking their
dreams for reality; secretly, in their long meditations, they resolve to
give their heart and hand to none but the man possessing this or the
other qualification; and they paint in fancy a model to which, whether
or no, the future lover must correspond.