anxious, watched and watched. Towards midnight, a slight confusion in
the house augmented her alarm. She started at once, alone and thinly
dressed, to go and meet her son. The night was dark and rainy; the
terrible Leopardo had fulfilled the prophetic forebodings of his rider.
The poor lady, brought up in habits of extreme inactivity, had taken but
two walks in all her life. The first had been to surprise her son at
Passy, when released from the Revolutionary prison. The second was to
meet and escort back his lifeless body, found senseless by the roadside.

We have done now with Aurore's ancestry, and must occupy our remaining
pages with accounts of herself. Much time is given by her to the record
of her early childhood, and the explanation of its various phases. She
loves children; it is perhaps for this reason that she dwells longest on
this period of her life, describing its minutest incidents with all the
poetry that is in her. One would think that her childhood seemed to
her that actual flower of her life which it is to few in their own
consciousness. Despite the loss of her father, and the vexed relations
between her mother and grandmother which followed his death, her
infancy was joyous and companionable, passed mostly with the country
surroundings and out-door influences which act so magically on the
young. It soon became evident that she was to be confided chiefly to her
grandmother's care; and this, which was at first a fear, soon came to be
a sorrow. Still her mother was often with her, and her time was divided
between the plays of her village-friends and the dreams of romantic
incident which early formed the main feature of her inner life. Already
at a very early age her mother used to say to those who laughed at the
little romancer,--"Let her alone; it is only when she is making her
novels between four chairs that I can work in peace." This habit of
mind grew with her growth. Her very dolls played grandiose parts in her
child-drama. The paper on the wall became animated to her at night, and