d that whatever was
possessing it she must instinctively weave into a romance. Thus in
writing her history-epitome she must improve on the original, when too
dry, by exercising her fancy in the description of places and
personages. The actual political events of that period were of the most
exciting character; Napoleon's Russian campaign, abdication, retreat to
Elba, the Hundred Days, Waterloo, the Restoration, following each other
in swift succession. Old Madame Dupin was an anti-Bonapartist, but
Aurore had caught from her mother something of the popular infatuation
for the emperor, and her fancy would create him over again, as he might
have been had his energies been properly directed. Her day-dreams were
often so vivid as to effect her senses with all the force of realities.

Such a visionary life might have been most dangerous and mentally
enervating had her organization been less robust, and the tendency to
reverie not been matched by lively external perception and plentiful
physical activity. As it was, if at one moment she was in a cloud-land
of her own, or poring over the stories of the Iliad, the classic
mythologies, or Tasso's _Gerusalemme_, the next would see her scouring
the fields with Ursule and Hippolyte, playing practical jokes on the
tutor, and extemporizing wild out-of-door games and dances with her
village companions.

Of serious religious education she received none at all. Here, again,
the authorities were divided. Her mother was pious in a primitive way,
though holding aloof from priestly influences. The grandmother, a
disciple of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and of Voltaire, had renounced the
Catholic creed, and was what was then called a Deist. But beyond
discouraging a belief in miraculous agencies she preserved a neutrality
with her ward on the subject, and Aurore was left free to drift as her
nature should decide. Instinctively she felt more drawn toward her
mother's unreasoning, emotional faith than toward a system of
philosophic, critical inquiry. But on both sides what was offered her to
worship was too indefinite to satisfy her strong religious instincts.
Once more she filled in the blank with her imagination, which was
forthwith called upon to picture a being who should represent all
perfections, human and divine; something that her heart could love, as
well as her intelligence approve.

This ideal figure, for whom she devised the name _Corambe_, was to
combine all the spiritual qualities of