At the age of twelve,
a social necessity compelled her to go through the form of confession
and the first communion. Her grandmother was divided between the
convictions of her own liberalism, and the desire not to place her
cherished charge in direct opposition to the imperious demands of a
Catholic community. The laxity of the period allowed the compromise to
be managed in a merely formal and superficial manner. The grandmother
tried to give the rite a certain significance, at the same time
imploring the child "not to suppose that she was about to _eat her
Creator_." The confessor asked none of those questions which our author
simply qualifies as infamous, and, with a very mild course of catechism
and slight dose of devotion, that Rubicon of maturity was passed. Not
far beyond it waited a terrible trial, perhaps as great a sorrow as the
whole life was to bring. Aurore's diligence in her studies was marred
by the secret intention, long cherished, of escaping to her mother, and
adopting with her her former profession of dress-maker. Having one day
answered reproof with a petulant assertion of her desire to rejoin her
mother at all hazards, the grandmother determined to put an end to such
projects by a severe measure.
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