It seemed as if the devil had whispered to this good woman the idea that would most terrify me. I do not remember ever experiencing such a terror as she caused me. The lamp, with its glittering reflector, instantly took on fantastic proportions, and I saw myself already shut in this crystal prison consumed by the flame which the Punch in petticoats made to burst forth at her pleasure. I ran towards my mother uttering piercing cries. I heard the old woman laugh, and the grating sound of the lamp as she remounted gave me a nervous shiver.
At bottom Aurore’s nature was a happy one, and if it encountered in the real world the terrors of childhood, it found in the ideal world of fiction its supreme delights. Before she learned to read (about four) she had managed to stock her small brain with an odd jumble of supernatural imagery, the outcome of fairy stories recited to her, and of picture-books setting forth incidents from classical mythology and the lives of the saints; and she soon began to make artistic use of this motley material. Her mother, she tells us, used to shut her within four straw chairs in order to keep her from playing with the fire. She would then amuse herself by pulling out the straws with her hands (she always felt the need of occupying her hands) and composing in a loud voice interminable stories. They were of course modelled on the familiar fairy-tale pattern. The principal characters were a good fairy, a good prince, and a beautiful princess. There were but few wicked beings, and never great misfortunes. ‘All arranged itself under the influence of a thought, smiling and optimistic as childhood.’ These stories, carried on day after day, were the subject of amusing comment. ‘Well, Aurore,’ the aunt used to ask, ‘hasn’t your prince got out of the forest yet?’
To Aurore’s ardent imagination, play, as the story of the doll suggests, was more than the half-hearted make-believe it often is with duller children. She was able to immerse her whole consciousness in the scene, the occupation imagined, so as to lose all account of her actual surroundings. One evening, at dusk, she and her cousin were playing at chasing one another from tree to tree, for which the bed-curtains did duty. The room had disappeared for these little day-dreamers; they were really in a gloomy country at the oncoming of night and when they were called to dinner they heard nothing. Aurore’s mother had finally to carry her to the table, and she could ever after recall the astonishment she felt on seeing the light, the table, and other real objects about her.
Even at this tender age the child came into contact with the large mysterious outer world. At her aunt’s home at Chaillot there was a garden, the one garden she knew, a small square plot, seeming a vast region to Aurore, shut in by walls. At the bottom of this garden, on a green terrace, she and her cousin used to play at fighting battles.
One day we were interrupted in our games by a great commotion outside. There were cries of ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ marchings with quick step, and then retirings, the cries continuing all the while. The emperor was, in fact, passing at some distance, and we heard the tread of the horses and the emotion of the crowd. We could not look over the walls, but the whole thing seemed very beautiful to my fancy, and we cried with all our strength, ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ transported by a sympathetic enthusiasm.
She first saw the Emperor in 1807, from the good Pierret’s shoulders, where, being a conspicuous object, she attracted Napoleon’s quick eye. ‘I was, as it were, magnetised for a moment by that clear look, so hard for an instant, and suddenly so benevolent and so sweet.’
The political storm that was then raging on the sea of Europe made itself felt even in the far-off and seemingly sheltered creek of Aurore’s small life. Her father was aide-de-camp to Murat at Madrid, and in 1808 the mother resolved to betake herself to him with her child. It was a singular experience for a girl just completing her fourth year, and the narrative of it is romantic enough. Her imagination was strangely affected by the sight of the great mountains, which seemed to shut them in and to forbid their moving forwards or backwards. Yet she felt no fear at the postillion’s malicious fictions about brigands which quite horrified her mother. In Madrid they found themselves quartered in a large and magnificent palace. The unaccustomed space and splendour at first troubled the child. She was tormented by the huge pictures from which big heads seemed to come out and follow her, and she was further alarmed by a low mirror which gave her the first sight of her whole figure and made her feel how big she was.
Murat was not over well pleased at the arrival of his aide-de-camp’s wife and child, so an attempt was made to propitiate him by decking the little maid in a gay and coquettish uniform. The child, who was no coquette, seems to have cared but little for this performance, though she soon began to find amusement in her new sumptuous dwelling.
As soon as I found myself alone in this large room I placed myself before the low glass, and I tried some theatrical poses. Then I took my white rabbit, and tried to force it to do likewise; or rather I pretended to offer it as a sacrifice to the gods, using a footstool as altar.... I had not the least feeling of coquetry; my pleasure came from the make-believe that I was playing in a quartette scene in which were two little girls and two rabbits. The rabbit and I addressed, in pantomime, salutations, threats, and prayers to the personages of the mirror, and we danced the bolero with them.
It was at Madrid that she first made acquaintance with one of Nature’s most fascinating mysteries, the echo.