Madame de Lucan’s relations with her daughter since her marriage had been of a singular character.  She came almost daily to visit her, and always received the liveliest manifestations of affection at her hands; but on two points, and those the most sensitive, the young girl had remained inflexible; she had never consented either to return to the maternal roof, nor to see her mother’s husband.

She had even remained for a long time without making the slightest allusion to Clotilde’s altered situation, which she affected to ignore.  One day, at last, feeling the intolerable torture of such a reserve, she made up her mind, and fixing her flashing eyes upon her mother: 

“Well, are you happy at last?” she said.

“How can I be,” said Clotilde, “since you hate the man I love?”

“I hate no one,” replied Julia, dryly.  “How is your husband?”

From that moment she inquired regularly after Monsieur de Lucan in a tone of polite indifference; but she never uttered without hesitation and evident discomfort the name of the man who had taken her father’s place.

In the meantime she had reached her sixteenth year.  Her mother’s promise had been formal.  Julia was henceforth free to follow her vocation, and she was preparing for it with an impatient ardor that edified the good ladies of the convent.  Madame de Lucan expressing, one morning, in the presence of her mother and her husband the anxiety that oppressed her heart during these last days of respite: 

“As to me, my daughter,” said the baroness, “I must confess that I am urging with all my wishes and prayers the moment which you seem to dread.  The life you have been leading since your marriage has nothing human about it; but what forms its principal torment, is the constant struggle which you have to sustain against that child’s obstinacy.  Well, when she has become a nun, there will no longer be any struggle; the situation will be clearer; and note that you will not be in reality any more separated than you are now, since the house is not a cloister; I would just as lief it were, myself; but it is not.  And then, why oppose a vocation which I really look upon as providential?  In the interest of the child herself, you should congratulate yourself upon the resolution she has taken; I appeal to your husband to say if that is not so.  Come, let me ask you, my dear sir, what could be expected of such an organization, if she were once let loose upon the world?  Why! she would be a dangerous character for society!  You know what a head she has! a volcano!  And pray observe, my friend, that at this present moment she is a perfect odalisk.  You have not seen her for some time; you cannot imagine how she has developed.  I, who enjoy the treat of seeing her twice a week, can positively assure you that she is a perfect odalisk, and besides, divinely dressed.  In fact, she is so well made! you might throw a window-curtain over her with a pitch-fork, and she would look as if she were just coming out of Worth’s!  There, ask Pierre what he thinks about it, he who has the honor of being admitted to her good graces!”