"'I will take her with her Deschartres before the justice of the peace,'
said my mother. 'I will make her take oath by Christ, by the Gospel!'

"'No, Madame,' said the lawyer, 'you will go no further in this matter;
and as for you, Mademoiselle, I beg your pardon for the annoyance I have
given you. Charged with your interests, I felt obliged to do so.'"

Eternal shame to those who make use of any authority to force the
secrets of a generous heart, cutting off from it every alternative but
that of a loathed deceit, or still more hateful, and scarcely less
guilty, betrayal!

Aurore now found herself in the hands of a woman of the people, ennobled
for a time by beauty and a true affection, but sinking, her good
inspiration gone, into the bitterest ill-temper and most vulgar
uncharity. Detesting her superiors in rank and position, she soon
managed to cut off Aurore from all intercourse with her father's family,
and thus to frustrate every prospect of her marriage in the sphere for
which she had been so carefully educated. She was even forbidden to
visit her old friends at the convent, and was eventually placed by her
mother with a family nearly unknown to both, whose pity had been excited
by her friendless condition and unhappy countenance. Aurore's mother
seems to us, _du reste_, the perfect type of a Parisian lorette, the
sort of woman so keenly attractive with the bloom of youth and the
eloquence of passion,--but when these have passed their day, the most
detestable of mistresses, the most undesirable of companions. Men of all
ranks and ages acknowledge their attraction, endure their tyranny, and
curse the misery it inflicts. Marriage and competency had protected this
one from the deteriorations which almost inevitably await those of