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Aurore Dupin was now fifteen, and so far, though somewhat peculiarly situated, she and her life had presented no very extraordinary features, nor promise of the same. Her energies had flowed into a variety of channels, and manifestly clever and accustomed to take the lead though she might be, no one, least of all herself, seems to have thought of regarding her as a wonder.
As I had not preferred anybody to them, and had separated myself from their society to live free and independent, they had always received me in a friendly manner, and I was always certain of being well received by Madam Dupin.
But I was obliged to pass through Besancon, a fortified town, and consequently subject to the same inconvenience. I took it into my head to turn about and to go to Salins, under the pretense of going to see M. de Marian, the nephew of M. Dupin, who had an employment at the salt-works, and formerly had given me many invitations to his house.
She gives the "de" to everybody, to Monsieur Dupin senior, to Monsieur Lafayette; she flings it right and left and humiliates many. This woman spends her life in striving to know and do "the right thing"; but, for her sins, she lives in the Marais, and her husband is a lawyer, a lawyer before the Royal courts, however. "Madame Firmiani, monsieur? I do not know her."
"In 1747," says Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in his "Confessions," "we went to spend the autumn in Tou- raine, at the Chateau, of Chenonceaux, a royal resi- dence upon the Cher, built by Henry II. for Diana of Poitiers, whose initials are still to be seen there, and now in possession of M. Dupin, the farmer-general.
At the time of which I speak, having perhaps fatigued myself too much in the filthy work of the cursed receiver-general's office, I fell into a worse state than ever, and remained five or six weeks in my bed in the most melancholy state imaginable. Madam Dupin sent me the celebrated Morand who, notwithstanding his address and the delicacy of his touch, made me suffer the greatest torments.
I wrote this page, which I reproduce here, because it is a life-like portrayal a sort of direct photograph: "Louis Bonaparte has invented something which he calls a 'Consultative Committee, and which he commissions to draw up the postscript of his crimes. "Léon Foucher refuses to be in it; Montalember hesitates; Baroche accepts. "Falloux despises Dupin.
M. Dupin renders to Louis Bonaparte the service of being in his place the meanest of men. To continue this dismal history. The Representatives of the Right, in their first bewilderment caused by the coup d'état, hastened in large numbers to M. Daru, who was Vice-President of the Assembly, and at the same time one of the Presidents of the Pyramid Club.
Madam Darby, the eldest of the three; the friend, the only sincere friend of the Prince of Conti; an adorable woman, as well by her sweetness and the goodness of her charming character, as by her agreeable wit and incessant cheerfulness. Lastly, Madam Dupin, more beautiful than either of her sisters, and the only one who has not been reproached with some levity of conduct.
The result is seen in imitative manners, affected culture, and a mixture of timorous self-consciousness within and noisy self-assertion without, which completes the most distasteful scene that any collected spirit can witness. Rousseau was, as has been said, the secretary of Madame Dupin and her stepson Francueil.
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