She read everything that fell into her hands, no selection being made for her, and refused to allow herself to be led by any one, or for any reason whatever.
As soon as she was thirteen she announced to her grandmother that her education was finished. She left the boarding-school, where during five years she had learned very little, and devoted herself entirely and for the rest of her life to the reading of novels.
Witty, full of life, brilliant, and even sometimes a little impish, my grandmother had red hair at a time when “carrotty”-coloured hair had but little success. She had superb teeth, a delicate nose with sensitive nostrils, bright green eyes, and her very white complexion was marked with tiny yellow spots, all of which gave her the physiognomy of an odd-looking yet very attractive girl.
Romantic, as had been her mother and her grandmothers, she wished to choose her own husband, and she had not found him when she was fifteen. In spite of the sad fate of her mother, who had died in childbirth, being married too young, Pélagie was in despair at remaining a maid so long.
Mlle. Lenormant’s predictions had given birth throughout France to a crowd of fortune-tellers, and my grandmother consulted one, who told her: “You will marry a stranger to this town.”
This did not astonish her, for she knew all those who could aspire to her hand, and there was not one among them who answered to all that her imagination sought in a husband. Not a single young man of Chauny of good family had as yet had any romantic adventure.
She took good care not to confide her impatience to her three half-sisters, their father having declared that Pélagie should not marry before she was twenty-one. He wished to keep in his own hands the administration of his first wife’s fortune as long as possible for the benefit of the three daughters born of his second marriage.
These, moreover, continually said that Pélagie was too eccentric to be marriageable. The eldest, Sophie, was only fourteen months younger than Pélagie, but ten years older in common-sense and knowledge.
Pélagie made a voyage to Noyon with her grandmother to look for a husband. She lived for a month in a handsome old house on the Cathedral Square, owned by an aged relative who would have liked to make a second marriage with her grandmother. The love-affair of these old people amused her, but she did not find the husband for whom she was seeking, and—she left as she came.
But one fine day a young surgeon arrived at Chauny in quest of practice.