ther did not go to bed the night
before, or hired the girls to awake me early. My father's conversation
at such times was always of divine matters, which afforded me the
highest delight, and I preferred that subject to any other. I also
loved the poor, and was charitable, even while I was so very faulty.
How strange may this seem to some, and how hard to reconcile things so
very opposite.

CHAPTER 6

Afterward we came to Paris where my vanity increased. No course was
spared to make me appear to advantage. I was forward enough to show
myself and expose my pride, in making a parade of this vain beauty. I
wanted to be loved of everyone and to love none. Several apparently
advantageous offers of marriage were made for me; but God unwilling to
have me lost did not permit matters to succeed. My father still found
difficulties, which my all-wise Creator raised for my salvation. Had I
married any of these persons, I should have been much exposed, and my
vanity would have had means to extend itself.

There was one person who had asked for me in marriage for several
years. My father, for family reasons, had always refused him. His
manners were opposite to my vanity. A fear lest I should leave my
country, together with the affluent circumstances of this gentleman,
induced my father, in spite of both his own and my mother's reluctance,
to promise me to him. This was done without consulting me. They made me
sign the marriage articles without letting me know what they were. I
was well pleased with the thoughts of marriage, flattering myself with
a hope of being thereby set at full liberty, and delivered from the
ill-treatment of my mother which I drew upon myself. God ordered it far
otherwise. The condition which I found myself in afterward, frustrated
my hopes.

Pleasing as marriage was to my thoughts, I was all the time, after my
being promised, and even long after my marriage, in extreme confusion,
which arose from two causes. First, my natural modesty, which I did not
lose. I had much reserve toward men. The other, my vanity. Though the
husband provided was a more advantageous match than I merited, yet I
did not think him such. The figure which the others made, who had
offered to me before, was vastly more engaging. Their rank would have
placed me in view. Whatever did not flatter my vanity, was to me
insupportable. Yet this very vanity was, I think, of some advantage; it
hindered me from falling into such things as