“Gravem Pelidae stomachum cedere nescii.” 
          Horace, lib. i. ode vi.

Sophy’s religion is reasonable and simple, with few doctrines and fewer observances; or rather as she knows no course of conduct but the right her whole life is devoted to the service of God and to doing good.  In all her parents’ teaching of religion she has been trained to a reverent submission; they have often said, “My little girl, this is too hard for you; your husband will teach you when you are grown up.”  Instead of long sermons about piety, they have been content to preach by their example, and this example is engraved on her heart.

Sophy loves virtue; this love has come to be her ruling passion; she loves virtue because there is nothing fairer in itself, she loves it because it is a woman’s glory and because a virtuous woman is little lower than the angels; she loves virtue as the only road to real happiness, because she sees nothing but poverty, neglect, unhappiness, shame, and disgrace in the life of a bad woman; she loves virtue because it is dear to her revered father and to her tender and worthy mother; they are not content to be happy in their own virtue, they desire hers; and she finds her chief happiness in the hope of making them happy.  All these feelings inspire an enthusiasm which stirs her heart and keeps all its budding passions in subjection to this noble enthusiasm.  Sophy will be chaste and good till her dying day; she has vowed it in her secret heart, and not before she knew how hard it would be to keep her vow; she made this vow at a time when she would have revoked it had she been the slave of her senses.

Sophy is not so fortunate as to be a charming French woman, cold-hearted and vain, who would rather attract attention than give pleasure, who seeks amusement rather than delight.  She suffers from a consuming desire for love; it even disturbs and troubles her heart in the midst of festivities; she has lost her former liveliness, and her taste for merry games; far from being afraid of the tedium of solitude she desires it.  Her thoughts go out to him who will make solitude sweet to her.  She finds strangers tedious, she wants a lover, not a circle of admirers.  She would rather give pleasure to one good man than be a general favourite, or win that applause of society which lasts but a day and to-morrow is turned to scorn.

A woman’s judgment develops sooner than a man’s; being on the defensive from her childhood up, and intrusted with a treasure so hard to keep, she is earlier acquainted with good and evil.  Sophy is precocious by temperament in everything, and her judgment is more formed than that of most girls of her age.  There is nothing strange in that, maturity is not always reached at the same age.

Sophy has been taught the duties and rights of her own sex and of ours.  She knows men’s faults and women’s vices; she also knows their corresponding good qualities and virtues, and has them by heart.  No one can have a higher ideal of a virtuous woman, but she would rather think of a virtuous man, a man of true worth; she knows that she is made for such a man, that she is worthy of him, that she can make him as happy as he will make her; she is sure she will know him when she sees him; the difficulty is to find him.