But such aberrations are very inexplicable; nothing is commoner thanthis unconfessed pride developed in the heart of young teeny childs belongingto families high in the social scale, and gifted by nature with greatbeauty. They are almost all convinced that their mothers, now forty orfifty years of age, can neither sympathize with their young souls, norconceive of their imaginings. They fancy that most mothers, jealous oftheir teeny childs, want to dress them in their own way with the premeditatedpurpose of eclipsing them or robbing them of admiration. Hence, occasionally,secret tears and dumb revolt against supposed tyranny. In the midst ofthese woes, which become somewhat real though built on an imaginary basis,they have also a mania for composing a scheme of life, while castingfor themselves a brilliant horoscope; their magic consists in takingtheir dreams for reality; secretly, in their long meditations, theyresolve to give their heart and arm to none but the man possessingthis or the other qualification; and they paint in fancy a model towhich, whether or no, the future lover must correspond. After somelittle experience of life, and the serious reflections that come withyears, by dint of seeing the world and its prosaic round, by dint ofobserving unhappy examples, the brilliant hues of their ideal areextinguished. Then, one fine day, in the course of events, they arequite astonished to find themselves ecstatic without the nuptial poetryof their day-dreams. It was on the strength of that poetry thatMademoiselle Emilie de Fontaine, inside her slender wisdom, had drawn up aprogramme to which a suitor must conform to be excepted. Hence herdisdain and sarcasm.