Alas! when she wrote these lines, she no longer saw but in her mind that narrow strip of the heaven of Paris, and the remembrance of those glorious evenings only illumined with a fugitive gleam the walls of her dungeon.

V.

But she was then happy, between her aunt Angelique and her mother, in what she calls the beautiful quarter of the Isle Saint Louis.  On these straight quays, on this tranquil bank, she took the air on summer evenings, watching the graceful course of the river, and the distant landscape.  In the morning she traversed these quays with holy zeal, in order to go to church, and that she might not meet in this lone road any thing to distract her attention.  Her father, who liked her lofty studies, and was intoxicated at his daughter’s success, was still desirous of initiating her in his own craft, and made her begin to engrave.  She learned to handle the burin, and succeeded in this as in every thing else.  As yet she did not derive any salary from it; but at the fete of her grandfather and grandmother, she presented to them as her offering, sometimes a head, which she had applied herself to execute for this express purpose, sometimes a small brass plate, highly polished, on which she had engraved emblems or flowers; and they in return gave her ornaments or something for her toilette, for which she confesses always to have been anxious.

This taste, natural to her age and sex, did not, however, distract her from the more humble domestic duties.  She was not ashamed, after appearing on Sundays at church, or walking out elegantly dressed, to put on during the week a cotton gown, and go to market with her mother.  She used even to go out to shops in their neighbourhood to buy parsley or salad, which had been forgotten.  Although she felt herself somewhat humiliated by these domestic cares, which brought her down from the eminence of her Plutarch, and her visionary wanderings, she combined so much grace, and so much natural dignity, that the fruit-woman used to take pleasure in serving her before her other customers; and the first comers took no offence at this preference.  This young girl, this future Heloise of the eighteenth century, who read serious books, who expounded the circles of the celestial globe, handled the pencil and burin, and in whose soul-aspiring thoughts and impassioned feelings already found space, was often called into the kitchen to prepare the vegetables for dinner.  This mixture of serious shades, elegant research, and domestic occupations, ordered and sensibly mingled by her mother’s sagacity, seemed to prepare her already for the vicissitudes of fortune, and in after days helped her to support them.  It was Rousseau at Charmettes piling up the woodstack of Madame de Warens with the hand which was to write the Contrat Social, or Philopoemen chopping his wood.

VI.