This life was adapted to her nature.  She fed her imagination in a perfectly healthy fashion; and, living so much out of doors, she acquired that sound physique which she retained all through her life.

When she was thirteen, her grandmother sent the girl to a convent school in Paris.  One might suppose that the sudden change from the open woods and fields to the primness of a religious home would have been a great shock to her, and that with her disposition she might have broken out into wild ways that would have shocked the nuns.  But, here, as elsewhere, she showed her wonderful adaptability.  It even seemed as if she were likely to become what the French call a devote.  She gave herself up to mythical thoughts, and expressed a desire of taking the veil.  Her confessor, however, was a keen student of human nature, and he perceived that she was too young to decide upon the renunciation of earthly things.  Moreover, her grandmother, who had no intention that Aurore should become a nun, hastened to Paris and carried her back to Nohant.

The girl was now sixteen, and her complicated nature began to make itself apparent.  There was no one to control her, because her grandmother was confined to her own room.  And so Aurore Dupin, now in superb health, rushed into every sort of diversion with all the zest of youth.  She read voraciously—­religion, poetry, philosophy.  She was an excellent musician, playing the piano and the harp.  Once, in a spirit of unconscious egotism, she wrote to her confessor: 

Do you think that my philosophical studies are compatible with Christian humility?

The shrewd ecclesiastic answered, with a touch of wholesome irony: 

I doubt, my daughter, whether your philosophical studies are profound enough to warrant intellectual pride.

This stung the girl, and led her to think a little less of her own abilities; but perhaps it made her books distasteful to her.  For a while she seems to have almost forgotten her sex.  She began to dress as a boy, and took to smoking large quantities of tobacco.  Her natural brother, who was an officer in the army, came down to Nohant and taught her to ride—­to ride like a boy, seated astride.  She went about without any chaperon, and flirted with the young men of the neighborhood.  The prim manners of the place made her subject to a certain amount of scandal, and the village priest chided her in language that was far from tactful.  In return she refused any longer to attend his church.

Thus she was living when her grandmother died, in 1821, leaving to Aurore her entire fortune of five hundred thousand francs.  As the girl was still but seventeen, she was placed under the guardianship of the nearest relative on her father’s side—­a gentleman of rank.  When the will was read, Aurore’s mother made a violent protest, and caused a most unpleasant scene.

“I am the natural guardian of my child,” she cried.  “No one can take away my rights!”