“Ah! how much I have to reproach myself for. I go to extremes in everything. In the world I am too worldly, in retirement too austere. Present surroundings have too sensible an effect. I am not well. I offer my sufferings to God. I pray a little. I read a good deal. I am extremely impressed by the shortness of life, and the necessity of preparing for eternity. I often endeavor to be fully penetrated with what I remember to have once written--that this life must be regarded as a purgatory, and whatever sufferings the good God sends I should look upon as sweet in comparison with what I merit.
“What makes me tremble is the establishment of my six children, and all the difficulties I foresee in this respect. But this anticipated trouble is wrong; for, after the assistance of God in so many circumstances, I ought to expect it still more in this the great object of my life.”
In fact, she succeeds wonderfully in disposing of her daughters _à la Française_, and, to our American eyes, they are wonderfully docile, but perhaps edifyingly so. Her lovely daughters all marry gentlemen who are so fortunate as to have the particle _de_ to their names--a thing of vast moment with the French gentry.
One of them, Césarine, a dazzling beauty of the Italian style and said to have a lively resemblance to Raphael’s Fornarina, has her little romance, which her mother favors, but the fates frown adversely in the person of _la famille_, to wit, the formidable uncles and aunts. How poor Madame de Lamartine ever got such a jury to agree on the sentence of any suitor is no small proof of her talent for diplomacy. In this case the objection was for pecuniary reasons only, for the _de_ was not wanting--“de misérables raisons de société,” says the mother, who adds: “They would not be very rich, but I could keep them at home. I am obliged to conceal from my husband’s family my inclination for this marriage; but, if I did not oppose them sometimes, I should never get my children married.”
In this instance she was at last forced to yield, and tell the aspirant, but not without tears, that Césarine could not marry him. “The family is obstinate in its refusal. I am in despair. The young man still hopes against all hope.” Luckily--at least luckily for the family peace--Césarine, though sad, is touchingly submissive--the lovers are separated for ever. The chivalric Alphonse tells his sister not to do violence to her feelings--that he will take her part against the whole set; but the gentle maiden declares--we persist in believing, in our fondness for a bit of sentiment, that she made a virtue of necessity in view of those Gorgons and chimeras dire--declares her attachment rather a feeling of gratitude for the love that had been given her, and that she is ready to marry without repugnance the estimable man destined to replace the one she has lost!