Various - The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 49, November, 1861

Aurore wandered at first about the convent with only a vague feeling of loneliness. The young girls, French and English, who composed its classes, surveyed her in the beginning with distrust. Soon the youngest and wildest set, called Diables , accorded her affiliation, and in their company she managed to increase tolerably the anxieties and troubles of the under-mistresses.

She was early initiated into the great secret , the traditionary legend of the convent. This pointed at the existence, in some subterranean dungeon, of a wretched prisoner, or perhaps of several, cut off from liberty and light; and to deliver the victim became the object of a hundred wild expeditions, by day and by night, through the uninhabited rooms and extensive vaults of the ancient edifice. The little ladies hoarded with care their candle-ends,—they tumbled up and down ruinous staircases, listened for groans and complaints, tried to undermine walls and partitions, fortunately with little success. The victim was never found, but her story was bequeathed from class to class, and her deliverance was always the object and excuse of the Diables .

After much time wasted in these pursuits, attended by a mediocre progress in the ordinary course of study and what the French call leçons d'agrément , and we accomplishments, a critical moment came for Aurore. She was weary of frolic and mischief,—she had tormented the nuns to her heart's content. She knew not what new comedy to invent. She thought of putting ink in the holy water,—it had been done already; of hanging the parrot of the under-mistress,—but they had given her so many frights, there would be nothing new in that. She saw, one evening, the door of the little chapel open;—its quiet, its exquisite cleanliness and simplicity attracted her. She had followed thither to mock at the awkward motions of a little hunch-backed sister at her devotions,—but once within she forgot this object. A veiled nun was kneeling in her stall at prayer,—a single lamp feebly illuminated the white walls,—a star looked in at her through the dim window. The nun slowly rose and departed. Aurore was left alone. A calm, such as she had never known, took possession of her,—a sudden light seemed to envelop her,—she heard the mystical sentence vouchsafed to Saint Augustin: " Toile, lege! " Turning to see who whispered it, she found herself alone.

"I cherished no vain illusion. I did not believe in a miraculous voice. I understood perfectly the sort of hallucination into which I had fallen. I was neither elated nor frightened at it. Only, I felt that Faith was taking possession of me, as I had wished, through the heart. I was so grateful, in such delight, that a torrent of tears inundated my face. 'Yes, yes, the veil is torn!' I said, 'I see the light of heaven! I will go! But, before all, let me render thanks. To whom? how? What is thy name?' said I to the unknown God who called me to him. 'How shall I pray to thee? What language worthy of thee and capable of expressing its love can my soul speak to thee? I know not; but thou readest my heart,—thou seest that I love thee!'"

From this moment, Aurore gave herself up to the passion of devotion, which, in natures like hers, is often the first to unclose. There are all sorts of religious experiences,—some poor and shallow, some rich and deep, with every variety of shade between. But wherever Love is capable of being heroic, Religion will also find room to work its larger miracles. Aurore's devotion was not likely to be a frigid recognition of doctrine, nor to consist in the minute care of an infinitesimal soul, whose salvation could be of small avail to any save its possessor. Her religion could only be a sympathetic and contagious flame, running from soul to soul, as beacon-fires catch at night and illuminate a whole tract of country. From this time she became patient, thorough, and laborious in all the duties of her age and place. A closer sympathy now drew her to the nuns, with several of whom she formed happy and intimate relations. The convent life became for the time her ideal of existence, and she formed the plan, so common among young girls educated in this manner, of taking the veil herself, when such a step should become possible. This hidden purpose she carried with her, when, at the age of sixteen, she quitted the convent with bitter regret, fearing the strange world, fearing a conventional marriage, and looking back to the pleasant restraints of tutelage, whose thorn hedges are always in blossom when we view them from the dusty ways and traffic of real, responsible life.

Aurore exchanged her convent for a life of equal retirement; for her grandmother, fearing lest the pietistic influences to which she had been subjected should awake too dominant a chord in the passionate nature of her pupil, brought her to Nohant at once, where, for a few days, she realized the delight of a greater freedom from rule and surveillance. It was pleasant for once, she says, to sleep into la grasse matinée , to wear a bright gingham instead of her dress of purple serge, and to comb her hair without being reminded that it was indecent for a young girl to uncover her temples. The projects of marriage which had alarmed her were abandoned for the present, and she was left to enjoy, unmolested, the pleasure of finding again the friends and playmates of her youth. It soon appeared, however, that the convent education had left many a lacune , and the grandmother felt that the result of the three years' claustration in nowise corresponded to its expense. Aurore set herself to work to fill up, in secret, the many blanks left by her preceptresses,—wishing, as she says, to conceal, as far as she could, their want of faith or of thoroughness. She sat at her books half the night, being gifted, according to her own account, with a marvellous power of sacrificing sleep to any other necessity. At this time she learned to ride on horseback, her first exploit being to tame a colt of four years, the after-companion of many a wild scramble, who grew old and died in her service. Her grandmother becoming soon after disabled by a paralytic stroke, the alternation of this new exercise enabled Aurore to bear the fatigues of the sick-room without serious inconvenience. Of this period of her life our heroine speaks as follows:—

"Had my destiny caused me to pass immediately from my grandmother's control to that of a husband, or of a convent, it is possible that, subjected always to influences already accepted, I should never have been myself. But it was decided by Fate that at the age of seventeen years I should experience a suspension of external authority, and that I should belong wholly to myself for nearly a year, to become, for good or evil, what I was to be for nearly all the rest of my life."

Passing much of her time at the bedside of the invalid, now incapable of giving any further direction to the young life so dear to her, Aurore plunged into many studies which opened to her new worlds of thought and observation. She read Châteaubriand with delight. The "Genie du Christianisme" proved to her rather an intellectual than a religious stimulant, and under its impulse she proceeded, as she says, to encounter without ceremony the French and other authors most quoted at that time, to wit: Locke, Bacon, Montesquieu, Leibnitz, Pascal, La Bruyère, Pope, Milton, Dante, and others not below these in difficulty. She studied them in a crude and hurried manner; but that wonderful alembic of youth, with its fiery heat of ardor, enabled her to compose these far and hastily gathered ingredients into a certain homogeneity of knowledge. "The brain was young," she says, "the memory always fugitive; but the sentiment was quick, and the will ever tense." From these pursuits, interrupted by the cares of nursing, she broke loose only to mount her favorite Colette, and accompany Deschartres in his hunting expeditions. She attempted also to acquire some knowledge of Natural History, Mineralogy, and so on; but science was always less congenial to her than literature, and of Leibnitz, the "Théodicée" is the only work of which she speaks with any familiarity. For convenience in riding and hunting, she adopted, on occasion, the dress of a boy, a blouse, cap, and trousers, to the great scandal of the neighborhood, already indisposed towards her by reason of her eccentric reputation; since, as one can imagine, a small French province is the last place in the world where a young girl can display the lone-star banner of individuality with impunity.