with her little girl to join
him. The hazards and hardships of the expedition, long mountain drives
and wild scenery, strange fare and strange sights, could not fail
vividly to impress the child, whose imagination from her cradle was
extraordinarily active. Her mother ere this had discovered that Aurore,
then little more than a baby, and pent up within four chairs to keep her
out of harm's way, would make herself perfectly happy, plucking at the
basket-work and babbling endless fairy tales to herself, confused and
diluted versions of the first fictions narrated to her. A picturesque
line in a nursery song was enough to bring before her a world of
charming wonders; the figures, birds, and flowers on a Sevres china
candelabrum would call up enchanting landscapes; and the sound of a
flageolet played from some distant attic start a train of melodious
fancies and throw her into musical raptures. Her daily experiences,
after reaching Madrid with her mother, continued to be novel and
exciting in the extreme. The palace of the Prince de la Paix, where
Murat and his suite had their quarters, was to her the realization of
the wonder-land of Perrault and d'Aulnoy; Murat, the veritable Prince
Fanfarinet. She was presented to him in a fancy court-dress, devised for
the occasion by her mother, an exact imitation of her father's uniform
in miniature, with spurs, sword, and boots, all complete. The Prince
was amused by the jest, and took a fancy to the child, calling her his
little _aide-de-camp_. After a residence of several weeks in this abode,
whose splendor was alloyed by not a little discomfort and squalor, the
return-journey had to be accomplished in the height of summer, amid
every sort of risk; past reeking battle-fields, camps, sacked and
half-burnt villages and beleaguered cities. Captain Dupin succeeded,
however, in escorting his family safely back into France again, the
party halting to recruit awhile under his mother's roof.

Nohant, a spot that has become as famous through its associations as
Abbotsford, lies about three miles from the little town of La Chatre, in
the department of the Indre, part of the old province of Berry. The
manor is a plain gray house with steep mansard roofs, of the time of
Louis XVI. It stands just apart from the road, shaded by trees, beside a
pleasure ground of no vast extent, but with its large flower-garden and
little wood allowed to spread at nature's bidding, quite in the English
style. Beh