"Had my destiny caused me to pass immediately from my grandmother's
control to that of a husband, or of a convent, it is possible that,
subjected always to influences already accepted, I should never have
been myself. But it was decided by Fate that at the age of seventeen
years I should experience a suspension of external authority, and that I
should belong wholly to myself for nearly a year, to become, for good or
evil, what I was to be for nearly all the rest of my life."

Passing much of her time at the bedside of the invalid, now incapable of
giving any further direction to the young life so dear to her, Aurore
plunged into many studies which opened to her new worlds of thought
and observation. She read Chateaubriand with delight. The "Genie du
Christianisme" proved to her rather an intellectual than a religious
stimulant, and under its impulse she proceeded, as she says, to
encounter without ceremony the French and other authors most quoted
at that time, to wit: Locke, Bacon, Montesquieu, Leibnitz, Pascal, La
Bruyere, Pope, Milton, Dante, and others not below these in difficulty.
She studied them in a crude and hurried manner; but that wonderful
alembic of youth, with its fiery heat of ardor, enabled her to compose
these far and hastily gathered ingredients into a certain homogeneity of
knowledge. "The brain was young," she says, "the memory always fugitive;
but the sentiment was quick, and the will ever tense." From these
pursuits, interrupted by the cares of nursing, she broke loose only to
mount her favorite Colette, and accompany Deschartres in his hunting
expeditions. She attempted also to acquire some knowledge of Natural
History, Mineralogy, and so on; but science was always less congenial to
her than literature, and of Leibnitz, the "Theodicee" is the only work
of which she speaks with any familiarity. For convenience in riding and
hunting, she adopted, on occasion, the dress of a boy, a blouse,
cap, and trousers, to the great scandal of the neighborhood, already
indisposed towards her by reason of her eccentric reputation; since, as
one can imagine, a small French province is the last place in the world
where a young girl can display the lone-star banner of individuality
with impunity.

Aurore had promised her aged relative that she would not read Voltaire
before the age of thirty; but her literary wanderings soon brought her
across the path of Rousseau.

The French make the reading of the "Nouvelle He