laborious in all the duties of her age and place. A closer sympathy now
drew her to the nuns, with several of whom she formed happy and intimate
relations. The convent life became for the time her ideal of existence,
and she formed the plan, so common among young girls educated in this
manner, of taking the veil herself, when such a step should become
possible. This hidden purpose she carried with her, when, at the age of
sixteen, she quitted the convent with bitter regret, fearing the strange
world, fearing a conventional marriage, and looking back to the pleasant
restraints of tutelage, whose thorn hedges are always in blossom when we
view them from the dusty ways and traffic of real, responsible life.

Aurore exchanged her convent for a life of equal retirement; for her
grandmother, fearing lest the pietistic influences to which she had been
subjected should awake too dominant a chord in the passionate nature of
her pupil, brought her to Nohant at once, where, for a few days, she
realized the delight of a greater freedom from rule and surveillance. It
was pleasant for once, she says, to sleep into _la grasse matinee_, to
wear a bright gingham instead of her dress of purple serge, and to comb
her hair without being reminded that it was indecent for a young girl to
uncover her temples. The projects of marriage which had alarmed her were
abandoned for the present, and she was left to enjoy, unmolested, the
pleasure of finding again the friends and playmates of her youth. It
soon appeared, however, that the convent education had left many a
_lacune_, and the grandmother felt that the result of the three years'
claustration in nowise corresponded to its expense. Aurore set
herself to work to fill up, in secret, the many blanks left by her
preceptresses,--wishing, as she says, to conceal, as far as she could,
their want of faith or of thoroughness. She sat at her books half the
night, being gifted, according to her own account, with a marvellous
power of sacrificing sleep to any other necessity. At this time she
learned to ride on horseback, her first exploit being to tame a colt of
four years, the after-companion of many a wild scramble, who grew old
and died in her service. Her grandmother becoming soon after disabled by
a paralytic stroke, the alternation of this new exercise enabled Aurore
to bear the fatigues of the sick-room without serious inconvenience. Of
this period of her life our heroine speaks as follows:--