ed by her mother's sagacity,
seemed to prepare her already for the vicissitudes of fortune, and in
after days helped her to support them. It was Rousseau at Charmettes
piling up the woodstack of Madame de Warens with the hand which was to
write the _Contrat Social_, or Philopoemen chopping his wood.

VI.

From the retirement of such secluded life, she sometimes perceived the
higher world which shone above her. The lights which displayed to her
this great world offended, more than they dazzled, her sight. The pride
of this aristocratic society, which saw without valuing her, weighed on
her sensitive mind--a society in which her position was not assigned to
her, seemed badly framed. It was less envy than justice that revolted in
her. Superior beings have their places marked out by nature, and every
thing that keeps them from occupying them, seems to them an usurpation.
They find society frequently the reverse of nature, and take their
revenge by despising it: from this arises the hatred of genius against
power. Genius dreams of an order of things, in which the ranks should be
marked out by nature and virtue; whilst in reality they are almost
always derived from birth--that blind allotment of fate. There are few
great minds which do not feel in their earliest progress the persecution
of fortune, and who do not begin by an internal revolt against society.
They are only quieted by their own discouragement. Some are resigned
from a more lofty feeling to the place which God assigns to them. To put
up with the world humbly is still more beautiful than to control it.
This is the very acme of virtue. Religion leads to it in a day;
philosophy only conducts to it by a lengthened life, misery, or death.
These are days when the most elevated place in the world is a scaffold.

VII.

The young maiden once conducted by her grandmother to an aristocratic
house, of which her humble parents were _free_, was deeply hurt at the
tone of condescending superiority with which her grandmother and herself
were treated. "My pride took alarm," she writes, "my blood boiled more
than usual, and I blushed violently. I no longer inquired of myself why
this lady was seated on a sofa, and my grandmother on a low stool; but
my feelings led to such reflection, and I saw the end of the visit with
satisfaction as if a weight was taken off my mind."

Another time she was taken to pass eight days at Versailles, in the
palace of that king and queen whos