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Updated: June 27, 2025
Aurore's devotion was not likely to be a frigid recognition of doctrine, nor to consist in the minute care of an infinitesimal soul, whose salvation could be of small avail to any save its possessor. Her religion could only be a sympathetic and contagious flame, running from soul to soul, as beacon-fires catch at night and illuminate a whole tract of country.
Agricola, it appeared, had commissioned him to buy the most beautiful lady's maid that in his extended journeyings he might be able to find; he wanted to make her a gift to his niece, Honoré's sister. The Kentuckian saw the demand met in Aurore's playmate. M. De Grapion would not sell her. The Kentuckian accepted the proposition on the spot and it was by and by carried out.
The spring found them back at Nohant, and the summer of 1825 was marked by a tour to the Pyrenees, undertaken in concert with some old school-fellows of Aurore's, two sisters, who with their father were starting for Cauterets. The pleasure of girlish friendships renewed gave double charm to the trip, and her delight in the mountain scenery knew no bounds.
As the girl was still but seventeen, she was placed under the guardianship of the nearest relative on her father's side a gentleman of rank. When the will was read, Aurore's mother made a violent protest, and caused a most unpleasant scene. "I am the natural guardian of my child," she cried. "No one can take away my rights!"
The year comprising these studies and this new freedom ended sadly with the death of her grandmother. And now, her real protectress being removed, the discords of life broke in upon her, and asserted themselves. Scarcely was the beloved form cold, when Aurore's mother arrived, to wake the echoes of the chateau with wild abuse of its late mistress.
The educational doctrines of Rousseau had then brought into fashion a régime of open-air exercise and freedom for the young, such as we commonly associate with English, rather than French, child-life; and Aurore's early years when domestic hostilities and nursery tyrannies, from which, like most sensitive children, she suffered inordinately, were suspended were passed in the careless, healthy fashion approved in this country.
It was a mariage de raison founded, as she and he believed, on mutual friendliness; in reality on a total and fatal ignorance of each other's characters, and probably, on Aurore's side, of her own as well. She was only just eighteen, and had a wretched home. The match was sanctioned by their parents, respectively.
Without passion, then, or tender affection on either side, but with a tolerable harmony of views for the moment, and after long and causeless opposition on the part of Aurore's mother, this marriage took place. Aurore was but eighteen; her bridegroom was of suitable age.
Aurore's diligence in her studies was marred by the secret intention, long cherished, of escaping to her mother, and adopting with her her former profession of dress-maker. Having one day answered reproof with a petulant assertion of her desire to rejoin her mother at all hazards, the grandmother determined to put an end to such projects by a severe measure.
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