When
I was a child, my parents lived at the Hotel de Chalusse, in the
Faubourg Saint Germain, a perfect palace, surrounded by one of
those immense gardens, which are no longer seen in Paris--a real
park, shaded with century-old trees. Certainly everything that
money could procure, or vanity desire, was within my reach; and
yet my youth was wretchedly unhappy. I scarcely knew my father,
who was devoured by ambition, and had thrown himself body and soul
into the vortex of politics. Either my mother did not love me, or
thought it beneath her dignity to make any display of sensibility;
but at all events her reserve had raised a wall of ice between
herself and me. As for my brother he was too much engrossed in
pleasure to think of a mere child. So I lived quite alone, too
proud to accept the love and friendship of my inferiors--abandoned
to the dangerous inspirations of solitude, and with no other
consolation than my books--books which had been chosen for me by
my mother's confessor, and which were calculated to fill my
imagination with visionary and romantic fancies. The only
conversation I heard dealt with the means of leaving all the
family fortune to my brother, so that he might uphold the splendor
of the name, and with the necessity of marrying me to some
superannuated nobleman who would take me without a dowry, or of
compelling me to enter one of those aristocratic convents, which
are the refuge, and often the prison, of poor girls of noble
birth.
Pages:
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362