“Yes, certainly, Madame Brunnen forbade me to read this book; but that is no reason, mamma, why you should take it away from me. It is to be hoped you will not play the stern tyrant against your poor Camilla.”
“I wish to know what you are reading, Camilla.”
“Well, then, Voltaire’s ‘Pucelle d’ Orleans,’ and I assure you, mamma, I am extremely pleased with it.”
“Madame Brunnen was right to forbid you to read this book, and I also forbid it.”
“And if I refuse to obey, mamma?”
“I will force you to obedience,” cried her mother, sternly.
“Did any one succeed in forcing you to obey your mother?” said Camilla, in a transport of rage. “Did your mother give her consent to your elopement with the garden-boy? You chose your own path in life, and I will choose mine. I will no longer bear to be treated as a child—I am thirteen years old; you were not older when you had the affair with the garden-boy, and were forced to confide yourself to my father. Why do you wish in treat me as a little child, and keep me in leading-strings, when I am a grown-up girl?”
“You are no grown-up girl, Camilla,” cried her mother; “if you were, you would not dare to speak to your mother as you have done: you would know that it was unseemly, and that, above all other things, you should show reverence and obedience to your mother. No, Camilla, God be thanked! you are but a foolish child, and therefore I forgive you.”
Louise drew near her daughter and tried to clasp her tenderly in her arms, but Camilla struggled roughly against it.
“You shall not call me a child,” said she, rudely. “I will no longer bear it! it angers me! and if you repeat it, mamma, I will declare to every one that I am sixteen years old!”