Marguerite Bimont (her mother’s name) had brought her husband a calm beauty, and a mind very superior to her destiny, but angelic piety and resignation armed her equally against ambition and despair.  The mother of seven children, who had all died in the birth, she concentrated in her only child all the love of her soul.  Yet this very love guarded her from any weakness in the education of her daughter.  She preserved the nice balance of her heart and her mind; of her imagination and her reason.  The mould in which she formed this youthful mind was graceful; but it was of brass.  It might have been said that she foresaw the destinies of her child, and infused into the mind of the young girl that masculine spirit which forms heroes and inspires martyrs.

Nature lent herself admirably to the task, and had endowed her pupil with an understanding even superior to her dazzling beauty.  This beauty of her earlier years, of which she has herself traced the principal features with infinite ingenuousness in the more sprightly pages of her memoirs, was far from having gained the energy, the melancholy, and the majesty which she subsequently acquired from repressed love, high thought, and misfortune.

A tall and supple figure, flat shoulders, a prominent bust, raised by a free and strong respiration, a modest and most becoming demeanour, that carriage of the neck which bespeaks intrepidity, black and soft hair, blue eyes, which appeared brown in the depth of their reflection, a look which like her soul passed rapidly from tenderness to energy, the nose of a Grecian statue, a rather large mouth, opened by a smile as well as speech, splendid teeth, a turned and well rounded chin gave to the oval of her features that voluptuous and feminine grace without which even beauty does not elicit love, a skin marbled with the animation of life, and veined by blood which the least impression sent mounting to her cheeks, a tone of voice which borrowed its vibrations from the deepest fibres of her heart, and which was deeply modulated to its finest movements (a precious gift, for the tone of the voice, which is the channel of emotion in a woman, is the medium of persuasion in the orator, and by both these titles nature owed her the charm of voice, and had bestowed it on her freely).  Such at eighteen years of age was the portrait of this young girl, whom obscurity long kept in the shade, as if to prepare for life or death a soul more strong, and a victim more perfect.

III.

Her understanding lightened this beauteous frame-work with a precocious and flashing intelligence, which was already inspiration.  She acquired, as it were, the most difficult accomplishments even from looking into their very elements.  What is taught to her age and sex was not sufficient for her.  The masculine education of men was a want and sport to her.  Her powerful mind had need of all the means of thought for its due exercise.  Theology,