before all things was effect. It was absolutely
essential that people should talk about her, that she should be playing
a part, or standing on a pedestal. Assuredly, if she had a fault, it
was not excess of modesty. She regarded herself as the flower of her
sex, a superior woman, made to be loved, flattered, and adored. She
speaks of her charms with the precision of a doctor and the enthusiasm
of a poet. Not one of her perfections escapes her. It is through a
magnifying-glass and before a mirror that she studies and admires
herself. She discovers that a society in which a woman so remarkable
and so attractive is not thoroughly well known, must be badly
organized. Middle-class by birth, and aristocratic by instinct, she
represents what one might then have called the new social strata. A
secret voice told her that the day was to come when she would make
herself feared by the powerful of the earth, those giants with feet of
clay who, at the beginning of her {50} career, were still looked at
kneeling. Banished by fate from the theatre where the human
tragi-comedy is played, she said to herself: "I too will have a part
one of these days." In the earliest stage of her existence there was
in her a confused medley of uneasiness and ambition, of spite and
anger. She had a horror of the slightly disdainful protection of
people of quality. She conceived an aversion for persons like that
Demoiselle d'Hannaches, "big, awkward, dry, and yellow," infatuated
with her nobility, annoying everybody with her titles, and yet, in
spite of her ignorance, her stiff manners, her old-fashioned dress and
her follies, well received everywhere on account of her birth.

Slowly, but steadily, the future amazon of the Revolution prepared
herself for the combat. The books which she read and re-read
incessantly were the arsenal whence she drew her weapons. One of those
presentiments which do not deceive, promised her a stormy but
illustrious destiny. More Roman than French, more pagan than
Christian, she longed for glory like that of the heroines of Plutarch,
her favorite author. In the humble dwelling of her father, situated at
the corner of the Pont-Neuf and the Quai des Orfevres, she caught a
glimpse of horizons as wide as her thoughts. "From the upper part of
our house," she says, "a great expanse offered itself to my dreamy and
romantic imagination. How often from my north window have I
contemplated with emotion the deserts of t