For convenience in riding and
hunting, she adopted, on occasion, the dress of a boy, a blouse,
cap, and trousers, to the great scandal of the neighborhood, already
indisposed towards her by reason of her eccentric reputation; since, as
one can imagine, a small French province is the last place in the world
where a young girl can display the lone-star banner of individuality
with impunity.
Aurore had promised her aged relative that she would not read Voltaire
before the age of thirty; but her literary wanderings soon brought her
across the path of Rousseau.
The French make the reading of the "Nouvelle Heloise" one of the epochs
in the life of woman. According to its motto, "The mother will not
allow the daughter to read it," this critical act is by common consent
adjourned till after marriage, when, we suppose, it appears something in
the light of a Bill of Rights, a coming to the knowledge of what women
can do, if they will. But as all Julie's _divagations_ occur before
marriage, and as her subsequent life becomes a model of Puritanic duty
and piety, one does not understand the applicability of her example to
French life, in which this progress is reversed. In this, as in all
works of true genius, people of the most opposite ways of thinking
take what is congenial to themselves,--the ardent and passionate fling
themselves on the swollen stream of Saint Preux's stormy love, the
older and colder justify Julie's repentance, and the slow but certain
rehabilitation of her character.
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