who had always treated her as a boy, encouraged her independence. It
was at his instigation that she dressed in masculine attire to go out
shooting. People began to talk about her "eccentricities" at Landerneau,
and the gossip continued as far as La Chatre. Added to this,
Aurore began to study osteology with a young man who lived in the
neighbourhood, and it was said that this young man, Stephane Ajasson de
Grandsaigne, gave her lessons in her own room. This was the climax.

We have a curious testimony as regards the state of the young girl's
mind at this epoch. A review, entitled _Le Voile de pourpre_, published
recently, in its first number, a letter from Aurore to her mother, dated
November 18, 1821. Her mother had evidently written to her on hearing
the gossip about her, and had probably enlarged upon it.

"You reproach me, mother, with neither having timidity, modesty,
nor charm," she writes, "or at least you suppose that I have these
qualities, but that I refrain from showing them, and you are quite
certain that I have no outward decency nor decorum. You ought to know me
before judging me in this way. You would then be able to form an opinion
about my conduct. Grandmother is here, and, ill though she is, she
watches over me carefully and lovingly, and she would not fail to
correct me if she considered that I had the manners of a dragoon or of a
hussar."

She considered that she had no need of any one to guide or protect her,
and no need of leading-strings.

"I am seventeen," she says, "and I know my way about."

If this Monsieur de Grandsaigne had ventured to take any liberty with