l plenty which had been the joy of her first years. Just as in her
childhood she had never been thwarted in the satisfaction of her playful
desires, so now, at fourteen, she was still obeyed when she rushed into
the whirl of fashion.

Thus, accustomed by degrees to the enjoyment of money, elegance of
dress, of gilded drawing-rooms and fine carriages, became as necessary
to her as the compliments of flattery, sincere or false, and the
festivities and vanities of court life. Like most spoiled children,
she tyrannized over those who loved her, and kept her blandishments for
those who were indifferent. Her faults grew with her growth, and her
parents were to gather the bitter fruits of this disastrous education.
At the age of nineteen Emilie de Fontaine had not yet been pleased to
make a choice from among the many young men whom her father's politics
brought to his entertainments. Though so young, she asserted in society
all the freedom of mind that a married woman can enjoy. Her beauty was
so remarkable that, for her, to appear in a room was to be its queen;
but, like sovereigns, she had no friends, though she was everywhere the
object of attentions to which a finer nature than hers might perhaps
have succumbed. Not a man, not even an old man, had it in him to
contradict the opinions of a young girl whose lightest look could
rekindle love in the coldest heart.

She had been educated with a care which her sisters had not enjoyed;
painted pretty well, spoke Italian and English, and played the piano
brilliantly; her voice, trained by the best masters, had a ring in it
which made her singing irresistibly charming. Clever, and intimate with
every branch of literature, she might have made folks believe that,
as Mascarille says, people of quality come into the world knowing
everything. She could argue fluently on Italian or Flemish painting, on
the Middle Ages or the Renaissance; pronounced at haphazard on books new
or old, and could expose the defects of a work with a cruelly graceful
wit. The simplest thing she said was accepted by an admiring crowd as a
fetfah of the Sultan by the Turks. She thus dazzled shallow persons; as
to deeper minds, her natural tact enabled her to discern them, and for
them she put forth so much fascination that, under cover of her charms,
she escaped their scrutiny. This enchanting veneer covered a careless
heart; the opinion--common to many young girls--that no one else dwelt
in a sphere so lofty as