Brought up in a gloomy house in the Marais,by a woman of narrow mind,a "devote"who,being sustained by a sense of duty (sacred phrase!),had fulfilled her tasks as a mother religiously,Marie-Angelique and Marie Eugenie de Granville reached the period of their marriage--the first at eighteen,the second at twenty years of age--without ever leaving the domestic zone where the rigid maternal eye controlled them.Up to that time they had never been to a play;the churches of Paris were their theatre.Their education in their mother's house had been as rigorous as it would have been in a convent.From infancy they had slept in a room adjoining that of the Comtesse de Granville,the door of which stood always open.The time not occupied by the care of their persons,their religious duties and the studies considered necessary for well-bred young ladies,was spent in needlework done for the poor,or in walks like those an Englishwoman allows herself on Sunday,saying,apparently,"Not so fast,or we shall seem to be amusing ourselves."Their education did not go beyond the limits imposed by confessors,who were chosen by their mother from the strictest and least tolerant of the Jansenist priests.Never were girls delivered over to their husbands more absolutely pure and virgin than they;their mother seemed to consider that point,essential as indeed it is,the accomplishment of all her duties toward earth and heaven.These two poor creatures had never,before their marriage,read a tale,or heard of a romance;their very drawings were of figures whose anatomy would have been masterpieces of the impossible to Cuvier,designed to feminize the Farnese Hercules himself.An old maid taught them drawing.A worthy priest instructed them in grammar,the French language,history,geography,and the very little arithmetic it was thought necessary in their rank for women to know.Their reading,selected from authorized books,such as the "Lettres Edifiantes,"and Noel's "Lecons de Litterature,"was done aloud in the evening;but always in presence of their mother's confessor,for even in those books there did sometimes occur passages which,without wise comments,might have roused their imagination.Fenelon's "Telemaque"was thought dangerous.
The Comtesse de Granville loved her daughters sufficiently to wish to make them angels after the pattern of Marie Alacoque,but the poor girls themselves would have preferred a less virtuous and more amiable mother.This education bore its natural fruits.Religion,imposed as a yoke and presented under its sternest aspect,wearied with formal practice these innocent young hearts,treated as sinful.It repressed their feelings,and was never precious to them,although it struck its roots deep down into their natures.Under such training the two Maries would either have become mere imbeciles,or they must necessarily have longed for independence.Thus it came to pass that they looked to marriage as soon as they saw anything of life and were able to compare a few ideas.Of their own tender graces and their personal value they were absolutely ignorant.They were ignorant,too,of their own innocence;how,then,could they know life?Without weapons to meet misfortune,without experience to appreciate happiness,they found no comfort in the maternal jail,all their joys were in each other.Their tender confidences at night in whispers,or a few short sentences exchanged if their mother left them for a moment,contained more ideas than the words themselves expressed.Often a glance,concealed from other eyes,by which they conveyed to each other their emotions,was like a poem of bitter melancholy.The sight of a cloudless sky,the fragrance of flowers,a turn in the garden,arm in arm,--these were their joys.The finishing of a piece of embroidery was to them a source of enjoyment.
Their mother's social circle,far from opening resources to their hearts or stimulating their minds,only darkened their ideas and depressed them;it was made up of rigid old women,withered and graceless,whose conversation turned on the differences which distinguished various preachers and confessors,on their own petty indispositions,on religious events insignificant even to the "Quotidienne"or "l'Ami de la Religion."As for the men who appeared in the Comtesse de Granville's salon,they extinguished any possible torch of love,so cold and sadly resigned were their faces.They were all of an age when mankind is sulky and fretful,and natural sensibilities are chiefly exercised at table and on the things relating to personal comfort.Religious egotism had long dried up those hearts devoted to narrow duties and entrenched behind pious practices.Silent games of cards occupied the whole evening,and the two young girls under the ban of that Sanhedrim enforced by maternal severity,came to hate the dispiriting personages about them with their hollow eyes and scowling faces.
On the gloom of this life one sole figure of a man,that of a music-master,stood vigorously forth.The confessors had decided that music was a Christian art,born of the Catholic Church and developed within her.The two Maries were therefore permitted to study music.Aspinster in spectacles,who taught singing and the piano in a neighboring convent,wearied them with exercises;but when the eldest girl was ten years old,the Comte de Granville insisted on the importance of giving her a master.Madame de Granville gave all the value of conjugal obedience to this needed concession,--it is part of a devote's character to make a merit of doing her duty.
