“Would you like to come to Paris, too?” said I to her.

“Oh, yes!  But mamma must come too, as she would die without me.”

“What would you do if I told you to go?” said the mother.

“I would obey you, mamma, but how could I exist away from you?”

Thereupon my little daughter pretended to cry.  I say pretended, as it was quite evident that the child did not mean what she said, and I am sure that her mother knew it as well as I.

It was really a melancholy thing to see the effects of a bad education on this young child, to whom nature had given intelligence and feeling.  I took the mother on one side, and said that if she had intended to make actors of her children she had succeeded to admiration; but if she wished them to become useful members of society her system had failed lamentably, as they were in a fair way to become monsters of deceit.  I continued making her the most pointed remonstrances until, in spite of her efforts to control herself, she burst into tears.  However, she soon recovered her composure, and begged me to stay at the Hague a day longer, but I told her it was out of the question, and left the room.  I came in again a few minutes after, and Sophie came up to me and said, in a loving little voice,

“If you are really my friend, you will give me some proof of your friendship.”

“And what proof do you want, my dear?”

“I want you to come and sup with me to-morrow.”

“I can’t, Sophie dear, for I have just said no to your mother, and she would be offended if I granted you what I had refused her.”

“Oh, no! she wouldn’t; it was she who told me to ask you just now.”

I naturally began to laugh, but on her mother calling the girl a little fool, and the brother adding that he had never committed such an indiscretion, the poor child began to tremble all over, and looked abashed.  I reassured her as best I could, not caring whether what I said displeased her mother or not, and I endeavoured to instill into her principles of a very different nature to those in which she had been reared, while she listened with an eagerness which proved that her heart was still ready to learn the right way.  Little by little her face cleared, and I saw that I had made an impression, and though I could not flatter myself that any good I might do her would be lasting in its effects as long as she remained under the bad influence of her mother, I promised to come and sup with her next evening, “but on the condition,” I said, “that you give me a plain meal, and one bottle of chambertin only, for you are not too well off.”

“I know that, but mamma says that you pay for everything.”

This reply made me go off into a roar of laughter; and in spite of her vexation the mother was obliged to follow my example.  The poor woman, hardened by the life she led, took the child’s simplicity for stupidity, but I saw in her a rough diamond which only wanted polishing.