One day in June, news arrived of the sudden death of my father. It was communicated to my mother, by the messenger who brought it, without precaution. That night, one hour after, I was ushered into an orphaned existence and my mother took her departure from the world. Think of me, Adèle, thus thrown a waif upon the shore of life. Yet, though born in the shadow of a great sorrow, sunlight struck across my path.
The faithful bonne, who had taken care of my mother in her infancy and had never left her, now took charge of me. She watched over me faithfully and filled up my childhood with affectionate attention and innocent pastime. My uncle, the Count, who had never been married, loved, petted, and indulged me in every wish. When I grew old enough, he secured a governess well qualified to teach and discipline me. Under her care, with the aid of masters in Latin, music, and drawing, from Amiens, I went through the course of instruction considered necessary for young ladies at that time.
I was at your age my Adèle when I first met your father. He was not the bronzed and careworn man you see him now. Ah! no. He was young and gay, with a falcon glance and, black wreathing locks hanging over his white, smooth brow. His father was of noble blood, and sympathized warmly with the dethroned Bourbons. He was no lover of the great Consul. The political troubles in France had operated in ways greatly to impoverish his house.
He owned and occupied only the remnant of what had been a large estate, adjoining that of the Count de Rossillon.
While acquiring his education, your father, except at occasional intervals, was six years from home, and it so happened that I never met him in my childhood. Indeed, the families were not on terms of intimacy. On his return from the University, I first saw him. Eh! bien! It is the same old story that you have heard and read of, in your books, my Adèle. We became acquainted, I will not stop now, to tell you how, and soon learned to love each other. Time passed on, and at last your father sought the consent of my uncle, to our marriage. But he put aside the proposition with anger and scorn. He thought that Claude Dubois was neither distinguished nor rich enough to match his niece. In his heart, he had reserved me for some conspicuous position in the great circle at Paris, while I had given myself to an obscure youth in Picardy.
Your father was too honorable to ask me to marry him without the consent of the Count, and too proud to take me in his poverty. So one day, after his stormy interview with my uncle, he came to me and said he was going away to endeavor to get fame, or wealth, to bestow upon me and make himself more worthy in the eyes of the Count de Rossillon. Yet he wished to release me from any feeling of obligation to him, as, he said, I was too young and had too little acquaintance with life and society to know fully my own heart. It would not be right, he thought, to bind me to himself by any promise. I told him my affection for him would never change, but acquiesced in his arrangements with a sad and foreboding heart. In a few weeks, he embarked for India.
Then my uncle roused himself from the inertia of his quiet habits and made arrangements for a journey through France and Italy, which he said I was to take with him.
I received the announcement with indifference, being wholly occupied with grief at the bitter separation from your father. The change however proved salutary, and, in a week after our departure, I felt hope once more dawning in my heart.