From this moment, Aurore gave herself up to the passion of devotion, which, in natures like hers, is often the first to unclose.  There are all sorts of religious experiences,—­some poor and shallow, some rich and deep, with every variety of shade between.  But wherever Love is capable of being heroic, Religion will also find room to work its larger miracles.  Aurore’s devotion was not likely to be a frigid recognition of doctrine, nor to consist in the minute care of an infinitesimal soul, whose salvation could be of small avail to any save its possessor.  Her religion could only be a sympathetic and contagious flame, running from soul to soul, as beacon-fires catch at night and illuminate a whole tract of country.  From this time she became patient, thorough, and laborious in all the duties of her age and place.  A closer sympathy now drew her to the nuns, with several of whom she formed happy and intimate relations.  The convent life became for the time her ideal of existence, and she formed the plan, so common among young girls educated in this manner, of taking the veil herself, when such a step should become possible.  This hidden purpose she carried with her, when, at the age of sixteen, she quitted the convent with bitter regret, fearing the strange world, fearing a conventional marriage, and looking back to the pleasant restraints of tutelage, whose thorn hedges are always in blossom when we view them from the dusty ways and traffic of real, responsible life.

Aurore exchanged her convent for a life of equal retirement; for her grandmother, fearing lest the pietistic influences to which she had been subjected should awake too dominant a chord in the passionate nature of her pupil, brought her to Nohant at once, where, for a few days, she realized the delight of a greater freedom from rule and surveillance.  It was pleasant for once, she says, to sleep into la grasse matinee, to wear a bright gingham instead of her dress of purple serge, and to comb her hair without being reminded that it was indecent for a young girl to uncover her temples.  The projects of marriage which had alarmed her were abandoned for the present, and she was left to enjoy, unmolested, the pleasure of finding again the friends and playmates of her youth.  It soon appeared, however, that the convent education had left many a lacune, and the grandmother felt that the result of the three years’ claustration in nowise corresponded to its expense.  Aurore set herself to work to fill up, in secret, the many blanks left by her preceptresses,—­wishing, as she says, to conceal, as far as she could, their want of faith or of thoroughness.  She sat at her books half the night, being gifted, according to her own account, with a marvellous power of sacrificing sleep to any other necessity.  At this time she learned to ride on horseback, her first exploit being to tame a colt of four years, the after-companion of many a wild scramble, who grew old and died in her service.  Her grandmother becoming soon after disabled by a paralytic stroke, the alternation of this new exercise enabled Aurore to bear the fatigues of the sick-room without serious inconvenience.  Of this period of her life our heroine speaks as follows:—­