great hopes upon her forlorn condition, but unfaithful husbands do not
always make guilty wives. The reverse is rather more frequently the case,
so little is this poor world submitted to the rules of logic. In short,
Madame de Trecoeur, after her husband's death was left forlorn, exhausted,
and broken down, but spotless.

From this melancholy union, a daughter had been born, named Julia, and
whom her father, notwithstanding all Clotilde's efforts of resistance, had
spoilt to excess. Monsieur de Trecoeur's idolatry for his daughter was
well-known, and the world, with its habitual weakness of judgment, forgave
him readily his scandalous existence in consideration of that merit, which
is not always a great one. It is not, indeed, a very difficult matter to
love one's children; it is sufficient for that not to be a monster. The
love that one has for them is not in itself a virtue; it is a passion
which, like all others, may be good or bad, as one is its master or its
slave. It may even be thought that there is no passion which may be more
than this one, pregnant with good or with evil.

Julia seemed splendidly gifted; but her ardent and precocious disposition
had been developed, thanks to the paternal education, as in the primeval
forest, wholly at random. She was small in person, dark and pale, lithe
and slender, with large blue eyes full of fire, unruly black hair, and
superbly arched eyebrows. Her habitual air was reserved and haughty;
nevertheless she laid aside, at home, these majestic appearances to frolic
on the carpet. She played games of her own invention. She translated her
history lessons into little dramas interspersed with speeches to the
people, dialogues, music, and particularly chariot-races. In spite of her
serious countenance, she could be very funny at times, and made cruel fun
of those she did not like.