The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1883-07-07

call UP enchanting landscapes and the sound
of a flageolet played from some distant attic
start train of melodious fancies and throw
her into musical raptures. The palace of the
Prince de la Paix, in Madrid, where Murat
and his suite had their quarters, was to her
the realization of the wonderland of Per-
rault and d'Aulnoy; Murat, the veritable
Prince Fanfalinet. She was presented to him
in a fancy court-dress, devised for the occa-
sion by her mother, an exact imitation OF her
fathers uniform in miniature, with spurs,
sword and boots, all complete. The Prince
was amused by the Jest and took fancy to
the child calling her his little aide-de-camp.
Upon the death of Aurore's father con-
test sprang up between her patrician grand
mother and bourgeois mother over the pos
session of the child, the contest finally turn
ing in favor of the former. She therefore
found home at Nahant while her mother
took up her abode in Paris. Until she was
ten years of age she was permitted to make
periodical visits to Paris and always enter
tanned tender attachment for her mother,
although the grandmother sought to estrange
her. AT ten her trips to Paris were discon-
tinued, and she wes given over to the hands
of tutor named Deschartres, to be drilled
into something like what sha should be, &C.
cupying the position in life she did. But she
always entertained the supremest contempt
for the wrinkled countesses with their elab-
crate toilettes and ceremonious man
ners, the abbes with their fash
in
innumerable snuff-boxes, and the accomplish
ment-lessons notably those in dancing and
department. Already at ten years old she
had pronounced the LOT of a scullery-maid
enviable compared to that of an old mar
quise.
Of serious religious education she had re-
ceived none at all. Her mother was pious
in primitive way, though holding aloof
from prestly influences. The grandmother,
disciple of Jean Jacques Rousseau and of
Voltaire, had renowned the Catholic creed,
and was what was then called Deist. In
stinctively she felt more drawn toward her
mothers unreasoning, emotional faith than
toward a system of philosophic, critical in
quiry. With these imperfect exam
pies before her, she supplied
an ideal figure or god, for whom
she devised the name Corambe, in which
we're combined all the spiritual qualities of
the Christian ideal with the earthly grace
and beauty of the NEUROLOGICAL deities of
Greece For very many years she cherished
this fantasy, finding there the scope she
sought for her aspirations after superhuman
excellence. 1t is hardly too much to say
that the Christianity which had been ex-
pressly left out in her teaching she had in
vented for herself. She erected a woodland
altar in the recesses of a thicket to this mag
mary object of her alteration, and it is a char
acteristic trait that the sacrifices she chose to
offer there were the release of birds and but
terfies that had been taken prisoners-as
symbolcal oblation most welcome to divin-
ity whose essential attributes were infinite
mercy and love.
At thirteen she was sent to an English con-
vent in Paris, and she there spent more than
two years, an untroubled time she has
spoken of as in many respects the happiest
of her life. The school there had two parties
the sages, or good girls, and the diables,
their opposite. Among the latter Aurore
copscientiously enrolled herself and became
leader in their escapades, acquiring the
soubriquet of "Madcap." These outbreaks
led to nothing more henious than playing
off tricks on tyrannical mistress, or max
ing raids on the forbidden ground of the
Kitchen garden. But the charm which held
together the confraternity of diables was a
grand, long-cherished design, to which their
best energy and ingenuity were devoted-a
secret, high-sounding enterprise, set forth
as 1.-THE deliverance of the victim" A ira
dition existed among them that cap
tive was kept languishing miserably
in some remote cell, and they
had set themselves the task of discovering
and llberating this hapless wretch. But in
course of time, Aurore experienced some
thing like formal conversion "whereupon
her deserted companions derisively changed
her title from "Madcap" to 'Sainte Aurore."
At this time she seriously contemplated be-
coming nun. The sisters, however, in view
of her inexperience and youthfulness, gave
her no encouragement while her confessor
Able Premord, Jesuit and man of the
world, did all he could to dissuade her. In
the early spring of 1920 she was removed
from the convent, knowing but little. if any,
more practically than when she entered it.