was cultured enough to have been in entire sympathy with her exquisite grandmother.  It was no longer possible for her to have the old passionate affection and indulgence for her mother, especially as she felt that she had hitherto been deserted by her.  She saw her mother now just as she was, a light woman belonging to the people, a woman who could not resign herself to growing old.  If only Sophie-Victoire had been of a tranquil disposition!  She was most restless, on the contrary, wanting to change her abode and change her restaurant every day.  She would quarrel with people one day, make it up the next; wear a different-shaped hat every day, and change the colour of her hair continually.  She was always in a state of agitation.  She loved police news and thrilling stories; read the Sherlock Holmes of those days until the middle of the night.  She dreamed of such stories, and the following day went on living in an atmosphere of crime.  When she had an attack of indigestion, she always imagined that she had been poisoned.  When a visitor arrived, she thought it must be a burglar.  She was most sarcastic about Aurore’s “fine education” and her literary aspirations.  Her hatred of the dead grandmother was as strong as ever.  She was constantly insulting her memory, and in her fits of anger said unheard-of things.  Aurore’s silence was her only reply to these storms, and this exasperated her mother.  She declared that she would correct her daughter’s “sly ways.”  Aurore began to wonder with terror whether her mother’s mind were not beginning to give way.  The situation finally became intolerable.

Sophie-Victoire took her daughter to spend two or three days with some friends of hers, and then left her there.  They lived in the country at Plessis-Picard, near Melun.  Aurore was delighted to find a vast park with thickets in which there were roebucks bounding about.  She loved the deep glades and the water with the green reflections of old willow trees.  Monsieur James Duplessis and his wife, Angele, were excellent people, and they adopted Aurore for the time being.  They already had five daughters, so that one more did not make much difference.  They frequented a few families in the neighbourhood, and there was plenty of gaiety among the young people.  The Duplessis took Aurore sometimes to Paris and to the theatre.

“One evening,” we are told in the Histoire de ma vie, “we were having some ices at Tortoni’s after the theatre, when suddenly my mother Angele said to her husband, ‘Why, there’s Casimir!’ A young man, slender and rather elegant, with a gay expression and a military look, came and shook hands, and answered all the questions he was asked about his father, Colonel Dudevant, who was evidently very much respected and loved by the family.”

This was the first meeting, the first appearance of Casimir in the story, and this was how he entered into the life of Aurore.