This taste, natural to her age and sex, did not, however, distract her from the more humble domestic duties. She was not ashamed, after appearing on Sundays at church, or walking out elegantly dressed, to put on during the week a cotton gown, and go to market with her mother. She used even to go out to shops in their neighbourhood to buy parsley or salad, which had been forgotten. Although she felt herself somewhat humiliated by these domestic cares, which brought her down from the eminence of her Plutarch, and her visionary wanderings, she combined so much grace, and so much natural dignity, that the fruit-woman used to take pleasure in serving her before her other customers; and the first comers took no offence at this preference. This young girl, this future Héloïse of the eighteenth century, who read serious books, who expounded the circles of the celestial globe, handled the pencil and burin, and in whose soul-aspiring thoughts and impassioned feelings already found space, was often called into the kitchen to prepare the vegetables for dinner. This mixture of serious shades, elegant research, and domestic occupations, ordered and sensibly mingled 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 Philopœmen 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 whose throne she was one day to sap. Lodged in the attics with one of the female domestics of the Château, she was a close observer of this royal luxury, which she believed was paid for by the misery of the people, and that grandeur of things founded on the servility of courtiers. The lavishly spread tables, the walks, the play, presentations—all passed before her eyes in the pomp and vanity of the world. These ceremonious details of power were repugnant to her mind, which fed on philosophy, truth, liberty, and the virtue of the olden time. The obscure names, the humble attire, of the relatives who took her to see all this, only procured for her mere passing looks and a few words, which meant more protection than favour. The feeling that her youth, beauty, and merit, were unperceived by this crowd, who only adored favour or etiquette, oppressed her mind. The philosophy, natural pride, imagination, and fixedness of her soul were all wounded during this sojourn. "I preferred," she says, "the statues in the gardens to the personages of the palace." And her mother inquiring if she were pleased with her visit—"Yes," was her reply, "if it be soon ended; for else, in a few more days I shall so much detest all the persons I see, that I should not know what to do with my hatred." "What harm have they done you?" inquired her mother. "To make me feel injustice, and look upon absurdity." As she contemplated these splendours of the despotism of Louis XIV., which were drooping into corruption, she thought of Athens, but forgot the death of Socrates, the exile of Aristides, the condemnation of Phocion. "I did not then foresee," she writes, in melancholy mood, as she pens these lines—"that destiny reserved me to be the witness of crimes such as those of which they were the victims, and to participate in the glory of their martyrs, after having professed their principles."
Thus, the imagination, character, and studies of this girl prepared her, unknown to herself, for the republic. Her religion alone, then so powerful over her, restrained her within the bounds of that resignation which submits the thoughts to the will of God. But philosophy became her creed, and this creed formed a portion of her politics. The emancipation of the people united itself in her mind with the emancipation of ideas. She believed, by overturning thrones, that she was working for man; and, by overthrowing altars, that she was labouring for God. Such is the confession which she herself made of her change.
VIII.
However, the young girl had already attracted many suitors for her hand. Her father wished to marry her in the class to which he himself belonged. He loved, esteemed commerce, because he considered it the source of wealth. His daughter despised it because it was, in her eyes, the source of avarice and the food of cupidity. Men in this condition of life were repugnant to her. She desired in a husband ideas and feelings sympathising with her own. Her ideal was a soul and not a fortune. "Brought up from my infancy in connexion with the great men of all ages, familiar with lofty ideas and illustrious examples—had I lived with Plato, with all the philosophers, all the poets, all the politicians of antiquity, merely to unite myself with a shopkeeper, who would neither appreciate nor feel any thing as I did?"
She who wrote these lines was at that moment demanded in marriage of her parents by a rich butcher of the neighbourhood. She refused every offer. "I will not descend from the world of my noble chimeras," she replied to the incessant remonstrances of her father; "what I want is not a position but a mind. I will die single rather than prostitute my own mind in an union with a being with whom I have no sympathies."