her class, but they could not save her from the natural process of an
undisciplined mind, an ungoverned temper, and a caprice verging on
insanity. This self-torment of caprice could be assuaged only by
constant change of circumstance and surroundings; her only resource was
to metamorphose things about her as often and as rapidly as possible.
She changed her lodgings, her furniture, her clothes, retrimmed her
bonnets continually, always finding them worse than before. Finally, she
grew weary of her black hair, and wore a blond periwig, which disgusting
her in turn, she finished by appearing in a different head of hair every
day in the week.

Aurore's new friends proved congenial to her, and the influence of their
happy family-life dispersed, she says, her last dreams of the beatitudes
of the convent. It was in their company that she first met the man
destined to become her husband. Most of us would like to know the
impression he made upon her at first sight. We will give it in her own
words.

"We were eating ices at Tortoni's, after the theatre, when my mother
Angèle [her new friend] said to her husband,--'See, there is Casimir.'

"A slender young man, rather elegant, with a gay aspect and military
bearing, came to shake hands with them. He seated himself by Madame
Angèle, and asked her in a low voice who I was.

"'It is my daughter,' she replied.

"'Then,' whispered he, 'she is my wife. You know that you have promised
me the hand of your eldest daughter. I thought it would have been
Wilfrid; but as this one seems of an age more suitable to mine, I accept