As long as Maurice Dupin lived, Aurore was always with her parents in their little Parisian dwelling.  Maurice Dupin was a brilliant officer, and very brave and jovial.  In 1808, Aurore went to him in Madrid, where he was Murat’s aide-de-camp.  She lived in the palace of the Prince of Peace, that vast palace which Murat filled with the splendour of his costumes and the groans caused by his suffering.  Like Victor Hugo, who went to the same place at about the same time and under similar conditions, Aurore may have brought back with her: 

     de ses courses lointaines
     Comme un vaguefaisceau de lueurs incertaines.

This does not seem probable, though.  The return was painful, as they came back worried and ill, and were glad to take refuge at Nohant.  They were just beginning to organize their life when Maurice Dupin died suddenly, from an accident when riding, leaving his mother and his wife together.

From this time forth, Aurore was more often with her grandmother at Nohant than with her mother in Paris.  Her grandmother undertook the care of her education.  Her half-brother, Hippolyte Chatiron, and she received lessons from M. Deschartres, who had educated Maurice Dupin.  He was steward and tutor combined, a very authoritative man, arrogant and a great pedant.  He was affectionate, though, and extremely devoted.  He was both detestable and touching at the same time, and had a warm heart hidden under a rough exterior.  Nohant was in the heart of Berry, and this meant the country and Nature.  For Aurore Dupin Nature proved to be an incomparable educator.

There was only one marked trait in the child’s character up to this date, and that was a great tendency to reverie.  For long hours she would remain alone, motionless, gazing into space.  People were anxious about her when they saw her looking so stupid, but her mother invariably said:  “Do not be alarmed.  She is always ruminating about something.”  Country life, while providing her with fresh air and plenty of exercise, so that her health was magnificent, gave fresh food and another turn to her reveries.  Ten years earlier Alphonse de Lamartine had been sent to the country at Milly, and allowed to frequent the little peasant children of the place.  Aurore Dupin’s existence was now very much the same as that of Lamartine.  Nohant is situated in the centre of the Black Valley.  The ground is dark and rich; there are narrow, shady paths.  It is not a hilly country, and there are wide, peaceful horizons.  At all hours of the day and at all seasons of the year, Aurore wandered along the Berry roads with her little playfellows, the farmers’ children.  There was Marie who tended the flock, Solange who collected leaves, and Liset and Plaisir who minded the pigs.  She always knew in what meadow or in what place she would find them.  She played with them amongst the hay, climbed the trees and dabbled in the water.  She minded the flock with them, and in winter, when