-to any reading, in fact, which satisfied her
love of adventure. She would envy at times the condition of a
postilion, and the sight of a travelling carriage would set her
dreaming for hours.

She was fourteen years old before she would consent to wear petticoats.
About the same time her parents placed her education in charge of a
young professor, who, recognizing the high qualities of her
ill-regulated character, set himself to work to develop and mature them.
He was so devoted to his pupil, that she on her part became anxious to
anticipate his wishes, and never felt so happy as when he was satisfied
with her efforts. In truth it was the old story of Hymen and Iphigenia
reversed. Her wayward and wilful nature was subdued by the influence of
love; and at the cost of not a few tears, she renounced her childish
caprices in order to please him, and occupied herself with the pursuits
she had previously regarded so contemptuously. She took up even the most
thoroughly feminine avocations, and learned to sew, and knit, and cook.
Meanwhile, she was wholly ignorant of the nature of the feeling which
had transformed the romp into a discreet and retiring maiden, until, at
the age of seventeen, an unexpected incident awakened her to it. A Greek
merchant sought her hand; her parents refused him on the score of her
youth. "Hitherto," she writes, "I had had no presentiment of the violent
passion which can make one either the happiest or unhappiest of women.
When my mother informed me of the proposal, and I learned that I was
destined to love one man and belong to him only, the impressions I had
until then all unconsciously experienced, assumed a definite form, and
I discovered that I could love no person except the guide of my youth."
As he was not less passionately attached to her, he hastened to make a
proposal, to which her parents objected on the ground of his want of
fortune. The young girl openly avowed that she would never marry any
other, and adhered tenaciously to her opposition. But after a while the
young man felt it to be his duty to respect the decision of her parents,
and his correspondence with his pupil ceased. The little romance,
according to Madame Ida Pfeiffer, ended as follows:--

"Three long years passed without our meeting, and without any change
taking place in my feelings. One day, when I was out walking with a
friend of my mother, I accidentally met my old master; both of us
involuntarily halted, but for a lo