having an opinion of his own
     Pride supplies some sufferers with necessary courage
     Seemed to enjoy themselves, or made believe they did
     This unending warfare we call love
     Unwilling to leave him to the repose he needed

JACQUELINE

By Therese Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)

BOOK 3.

CHAPTER XIV

BITTER DISILLUSION

Some people in this world who turn round and round in a daily circle of small things, like squirrels in a cage, have no idea of the pleasure a young creature, conscious of courage, has in trying its strength; this struggle with fortune loses its charm as it grows longer and longer and more and more difficult, but at the beginning it is an almost certain remedy for sorrow.

To her resolve to make head against misfortune Jacqueline owed the fact that she did not fall into those morbid reveries which might have converted her passing fancy for a man who was simply a male flirt into the importance of a lost love.  Is there any human being conscious of energy, and with faith in his or her own powers, who has not wished to know something of adversity in order to rise to the occasion and confront it?  To say nothing of the pleasure there is in eating brown bread, when one has been fed only on cake, or of the satisfaction that a child feels when, after strict discipline, he is left to do as he likes, to say nothing of the pleasure ladies boarding in nunneries are sure to feel on reentering the world, at recovering their liberty, Jacqueline by nature loved independence, and she was attracted by the novelty of her situation as larks are attracted by a mirror.  She was curious to know what life held for her in reserve, and she was extremely anxious to repair the error she had committed in giving way to a feeling of which she was now ashamed.  What could do this better than hard work?  To owe everything to herself, to her talents, to her efforts, to her industry, such was Jacqueline’s ideal of her future life.

She had, before this, crowned her brilliant reputation in the ‘cours’ of M. Regis by passing her preliminary examination at the Sorbonne; she was confident of attaining the highest degree—­the ‘brevet superieur’, and while pursuing her own studies she hoped to give lessons in music and in foreign languages, etc.  Thus assured of making her own living, she could afford to despise the discreditable happiness of Madame de Nailles, who, she had no doubt, would shortly become Madame Marien; also the crooked ways in which M. de Cymier might pursue his fortune-hunting.  She said to herself that she should never marry; that she had other objects of interest; that marriage was for those who had nothing better before them; and the world appeared to her under a new aspect, a sphere of useful activity full of possibilities, of infinite variety, and abounding in interests.  Marriage might be all very well for rich girls, who unhappily were objects of value to be bought and sold; her semi-poverty gave her the right to break the chains that hampered the career of other well-born women—­she would make her own way in the world like a man.