She had apparently caught, as many children do, some echoes of the domestic woes.  Doubtless her quick intellect appreciated her father’s wrong-doings; but her father—­that handsome gentleman, so witty, generous, and wild—­she worshiped him; she was proud to be his daughter; she palpitated with joy when he clasped her to his heart.  She could neither judge him nor blame him; he was a superior being.  She contented herself with pitying and consoling, as best she could, that gentle and charming creature who was her mother, and who suffered.

Within the circle of Madame de Trecoeur’s acquaintances, Julia simply passed for a little plague.  The dear madames, as she called them, who formed the ornament of her mother’s Thursdays, related with bitterness to each other the scenes of comical imitation with which the child followed their entrance and their departure.  The men considered themselves fortunate when they did not carry off a bit of paper or silk on the back of their coats.  All this amused Monsieur de Trecoeur extremely.  When his daughter performed with half a dozen chairs some of those Olympian races that knocked every piano in the neighborhood out of tune—­

“Julia!” he would exclaim, “you don’t make noise enough.  Smash a vase.”

And a vase she did smash; whereupon her father kissed her with enthusiasm.

This method of education assumed a graver character as the child grew older.  Her father’s affection became shaded with a species of gallantry.  He took her with him to the Bois, to the races, to the theater.  She had not a fancy that he did not anticipate and gratify.  At thirteen years of age, she had her horse, her groom, and a carriage bearing her monogram.  Already ill, and having perhaps a presentiment of his death, the unfortunate man overwhelmed that beloved daughter with the tokens of his baleful affection.  He was thus blunting all her tastes by too precocious satiety, as if he had intended to leave her no taste save for the forbidden fruit.

Julia wept over him with furious transports, and preserved for his memory a fervid worship.  She had a private room which she filled with the portraits of her father and with a thousand personal souvenirs, around which she kept up flowers.

Madame de Trecoeur, like the greater number of young girls who marry their cousins, had married very young.  She was left a widow at twenty-eight, and her mother, the Baroness de Pers, who was still living, and who was even of the liveliest, was not long in suggesting discreetly to her the propriety of a second marriage.  After having exhausted the practical and, in fact, quite sensible reasons that seemed to urge that course, the baroness then came down to the sentimental reasons: