INTRODUCTION. V

As time softened the grief for Maurice's death, tbe elder and the younger Mme. Dupin grew farther and farther apart. Wlien Aurora was about fourteen there came a crisis. Touched by some injustice on the part of her grandmother, Aurora made up her mind to give up in future ail that could separate her from her plebeian mother. She would renounce the property she was to inherit, the good manners her grandmother was trying to instil, the lessons with her tutor.

The revolt was so serions that Mme. Dupin decided to send her to the English couvent in Paris, where she had spent some years in her girlhood, and which was a famous school for young ladies.

The new life soon interested Aurora, and the respite from family strife was a relief. For two years she was a leader in ail the sports and ail the mischievous pranks in this large school. She took spécial pleasure in acting in the plays that were allowed and even encouraged by the nuns ; and to the end of her life never ceased taking part in, or directing, theatricals.

In the last year of her couvent life, she became suddenly filled with enthusiasm for religion, and gave herself up to dévotion and prayer. In one of her novels she retraces the émotions of this period of her life. This fervor did not last.

She returned to Nohant; her grandmother had become very feeble, and Aurora almost lived at her bedside for the ten months that she still lingered. Her only récréation was riding on horseback.

In thèse lonely rides she had ample time for méditation, and, conscious that her éducation had so far been very desultory, she decided to give herself up to more persistent and regular study. She threw herself into philosophy and metaphysics. Then she wearied of thèse and turned to the moralists and the poets.