riends who visited her mother. She could not belong
to both worlds. She must decide once for all whether she would be a
woman of rank or a woman entirely separated from the circle that had
been her father's.

One must respect the girl for making the choice she did. Understanding
the situation absolutely, she chose her mother; and perhaps one would
not have had her do otherwise. Yet in the long run it was bound to be a
mistake. Aurore was clever, refined, well read, and had had the training
of a fashionable convent school. The mother was ignorant and coarse, as
was inevitable, with one who before her marriage had been half shop-girl
and half courtesan. The two could not live long together, and hence it
was not unnatural that Aurore Dupin should marry, to enter upon a new
career.

Her fortune was a fairly large one for the times, and yet not large
enough to attract men who were quite her equals. Presently, however, it
brought to her a sort of country squire, named Casimir Dudevant. He was
the illegitimate son of the Baron Dudevant. He had been in the army,
and had studied law; but he possessed no intellectual tastes. He was
outwardly eligible; but he was of a coarse type--a man who, with passing
years, would be likely to take to drink and vicious amusements, and in
serious life cared only for his cattle, his horses, and his hunting. He
had, however, a sort of jollity about him which appealed to this girl of
eighteen; and so a marriage was arranged. Aurore Dupin became his wife
in 1822, and he secured the control of her fortune.

The first few years after her marriage were not unhappy. She had a son,
Maurice Dudevant, and a daughter, Solange, and she loved them both. But
it was impossible that she should continue vegetating mentally upon
a farm with a husband who was a fool, a drunkard, and a miser. He
deteriorated; his wife grew more and more clever. Dudevant resented
this. It made him uncomfortable. Other persons spoke of her talk as
brilliant. He bluntly told her that it was silly, and that she must stop
it. When she did not stop it, he boxed her ears. This caused a breach
between the pair which was never healed. Dudevant drank more and more
heavily, and jeered at his wife because she was "always looking for noon
at fourteen o'clock." He had always flirted with the country girls; but
now he openly consorted with his wife's chambermaid.

Mme. Dudevant, on her side, would have nothing more to do with this
rustic rake.