When left with her, the child fell into a state of melancholy, with
passionate reactions against the chilling, penetrating influence,
which yet, having reason on its side, was destined to subdue her. "Her
chamber, dark and perfumed, gave me the headache, and fits of spasmodic
yawning. When she said to me, '_Amuse yourself quietly_,' it seemed
to me as if she shut me up in a great box with her." What sympathetic
remembrances must this phrase evoke in all who remember the _gene_ of
similar constraints! George draws from this inferences of the wisdom of
Nature in confiding the duties of maternity to young creatures, whose
pulses have not yet lost the impatient leap of early pleasure and
energy, and to whom repose and reflection have not yet become the primal
necessities of life. This want of the nearness and sympathy of age
she was to experience more, as, by the consent of both parties,
her education was to be conducted under the superintendence of her
grandmother, from whom the mother derived her pension, and whose estate
the child was to inherit. The separation from her mother, gradually
effected, was the great sorrow of her childhood. She revolted from it
sometimes openly, sometimes in secret; and the project of escaping and
joining her mother in Paris, where, with her half-sister Caroline,
they would support themselves by needle-work, was soon formed and
long cherished.
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