to see him before me at this moment. In his chestnut-brown
frock-coat he looked like a red herring wrapped up in the cover of a
pamphlet, and he held himself as erect as an Easter candle. But I was
fond of my father, and at heart he was right enough. Perhaps we never
hate severity when it has its source in greatness of character and pure
morals, and is skilfully tempered with kindness. My father, it is true,
never left me a moment to myself, and only when I was twenty years
old gave me so much as ten francs of my own, ten knavish prodigals
of francs, such a hoard as I had long vainly desired, which set me
a-dreaming of unutterable felicity; yet, for all that he sought to
procure relaxations for me. When he had promised me a treat beforehand,
he would take me to Les Boufoons, or to a concert or ball, where I hoped
to find a mistress.... A mistress! that meant independence. But bashful
and timid as I was, knowing nobody, and ignorant of the dialect of
drawing-rooms, I always came back as awkward as ever, and swelling with
unsatisfied desires, to be put in harness like a troop horse next day
by my father, and to return with morning to my advocate, the Palais de
Justice, and the law. To have swerved from the straight course which my
father had mapped out for me, would have drawn down his wrath upon me;
at my first delinquency, he threatened to ship me off as a cabin-boy
to the Antilles. A dreadful shiver ran through me if I had ventured to
spend a couple of hours in some pleasure party.

"Imagine the most wandering imagination and passionate temperament, the
tenderest soul and most artistic nature, dwelling continually in the
presence of the most flint-hearted, atrabilious, and frigid man on
earth; think of me as a young girl married to a skeleton, and you will
understand the life whose curious scenes can only be a hearsay tale to
you; the plans for running away that perished at the sight of my father,
the despair soothed by slumber, the dark broodings charmed away by
music. I breathed my sorrows forth in melodies. Beethoven or Mozart
would keep my confidences sacred. Nowadays, I smile at recollections of
the scruples which burdened my conscience at that epoch of innocence and
virtue.

"If I set foot in a restaurant, I gave myself up for lost; my fancy
led me to look on a cafe as a disreputable haunt, where men lost their
characters and embarrassed their fortunes; as for engaging in play, I
had not the money to risk. Oh, i