indignant and
degraded, and was exceedingly impatient to escape from the humiliating
visit. Conscious that she was, in spirit, in no respect inferior to
the maidens of Greece and Rome who had so engrossed her admiration,
she as instinctively recoiled from the arrogance of the haughty
occupant of the parlor as she had repelled the affected equality of
the servants in the hall.

A short time after this she was taken to pass a week at the luxurious
abodes of Maria Antoinette. Versailles was in itself a city of palaces
and of courtiers, where all that could dazzle the eye in regal pomp
and princely voluptuousness was concentered. Most girls of her age
would have been enchanted and bewildered by this display of royal
grandeur. Jane was permitted to witness, and partially to share, all
the pomp of luxuriously-spread tables, and presentations, and court
balls, and illuminations, and the gilded equipages of embassadors and
princes. But this maiden, just emerging from the period of childhood
and the seclusion of the cloister, undazzled by all this brilliance,
looked sadly on the scene with the condemning eye of a philosopher.
The servility of the courtiers excited her contempt. She contrasted
the boundless profusion and extravagance which filled these palaces
with the absence of comfort in the dwellings of the over-taxed poor,
and pondered deeply the value of that regal despotism, which starved
the millions to pander to the dissolute indulgence of the few. Her
personal pride was also severely stung by perceiving that her own
attractions, mental and physical, were entirely overlooked by the
crowds which were bowing before the shrines of rank and power. She
soon became weary of the painful spectacle. Disgusted with the
frivolity of the living, she sought solace for her wounded feelings in
companionship with the illustrious dead. She chose the gardens for her
resort, and, lingering around the statues which embellished these
scenes of almost fairy enchantment, surrendered herself to the luxury
of those oft-indulged dreams, which lured her thoughts away from the
trivialities around her to heroic character and brilliant exploits.

"How do you enjoy your visit, my daughter?" inquired her mother.

"I shall be glad when it is ended," was the characteristic reply,
"else, in a few more days, I shall so detest all the persons I see
that I shall not know what to do with my hatred."

"Why, what harm have these persons done you, my child?