zest of youth. She read voraciously--religion, poetry, philosophy.
She was an excellent musician, playing the piano and the harp.
Once, in a spirit of unconscious egotism, she wrote to her
confessor:

Do you think that my philosophical studies are compatible with
Christian humility?

The shrewd ecclesiastic answered, with a touch of wholesome irony:

I doubt, my daughter, whether your philosophical studies are
profound enough to warrant intellectual pride.

This stung the girl, and led her to think a little less of her own
abilities; but perhaps it made her books distasteful to her. For a
while she seems to have almost forgotten her sex. She began to
dress as a boy, and took to smoking large quantities of tobacco.
Her natural brother, who was an officer in the army, came down to
Nohant and taught her to ride--to ride like a boy, seated astride.
She went about without any chaperon, and flirted with the young
men of the neighborhood. The prim manners of the place made her
subject to a certain amount of scandal, and the village priest
chided her in language that was far from tactful. In return she
refused any longer to attend his church.

Thus she was living when her grandmother died, in 1821, leaving to
Aurore her entire fortune of five hundred thousand francs. As the
girl was still but seventeen, she was placed under the
guardianship of the nearest relative on her father's side--a
gentleman of rank. When the will was read, Aurore's mother made a