Finally, my poor grandmother let fall the fatal word. My mother
was a lost woman, and I a blind child rushing towards a precipice."
The horror of this disclosure did not work the miracle anticipated.
Aurore submitted indeed outwardly, but a spell of hardness and
hopelessness was drawn around her young heart, which neither tears nor
tenderness could break. The blow struck at the very roots of life and
hope in her. Self-respect was wounded in its core. If the mother who
bore her was vile, then she was vile also. All object in life seemed
gone. She tried to live from day to day without interest, without hope.
From her dark thoughts she found refuge only in extravagant gayety,
which brought physical weariness, but no repose of mind. She, who
had been on the whole a docile, manageable child, became so riotous,
unreasonable, and insupportable, that the only alternative of utter
waste of character seemed to be the discipline and seclusion of
the convent. She was accordingly taken to Paris, and received as a
_pensionnaire_ in the Convent des Anglaises, which had been, in the
Revolution, her grandmother's prison. To Aurore it was rather a place of
refuge than a place of detention. The chords of life had been cruelly
jarred in her bosom, and the discords in her character thence resulting
agonized her more than they displeased others.
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