desire of being noble in spirit and of achieving great exploits. Thus,
when other children of her age were playing with their dolls, she was
dreaming of the prostration of nobles and of the overthrow of
thrones--of liberty, and fraternity, and equality among mankind.
Strange dreams for a child, but still more strange in their
fulfillment.

The infidelity of her father and the piety of her mother contended,
like counter currents of the ocean, in her bosom. Her active intellect
and love of freedom sympathized with the speculations of the so-called
philosopher. Her amiable and affectionate disposition and her pensive
meditations led her to seek repose in the sublime conceptions and in
the soul-soothing consolations of the Christian. Her parents were
deeply interested in her education, and were desirous of giving her
every advantage for securing the highest attainments. The education of
young ladies, at that time, in France, was conducted almost
exclusively by nuns in convents. The idea of the silence and solitude
of the cloister inspired the highly-imaginative girl with a blaze of
enthusiasm. Fondly as she loved her home, she was impatient for the
hour to arrive when, with heroic self-sacrifice, she could withdraw
from the world and its pleasures, and devote her whole soul to
devotion, to meditation, and to study. Her mother's spirit of religion
was exerting a powerful influence over her, and one evening she fell
at her feet, and, bursting into tears, besought that she might be
sent to a convent to prepare to receive her first Christian communion
in a suitable frame of mind.

The convent of the sisterhood of the Congregation in Paris was
selected for Jane. In the review of her life which she subsequently
wrote while immured in the dungeons of the Conciergerie, she says, in
relation to this event, "While pressing my dear mother in my arms, at
the moment of parting with her for the first time in my life, I
thought my heart would have broken; but I was acting in obedience to
the voice of God, and I passed the threshold of the cloister,
tearfully offering up to him the greatest sacrifice I was capable of
making. This was on the 7th of May, 1765, when I was eleven years and
two months old. In the gloom of a prison, in the midst of political
storms which ravage my country, and sweep away all that is dear to me,
how shall I recall to my mind, and how describe the rapture and
tranquillity I enjoyed at this period of my life? W