She always led a retired life, more anxious to keep aloof from tiresome acquaintance than to seek such as might be advantageous. That was just the foundation of my father's character; and in this respect never was there a better-assorted couple. They could never be happy except in their own little _menage_. Everywhere out of it they had to stifle their melancholy yawns, and they have transmitted to me that secret shyness which has always made the gay world intolerable, and home a necessity to me." In a modest _bourgeois_ habitation in the Rue Meslay, afterwards transferred to the Rue Grange-Bateliere, Aurore Dupin's infancy passed tranquilly away, under the wing of her warmly affectionate mother who, though utterly illiterate, showed intuitive tact and skill in fostering the child's intelligence. "Mine," says her daughter, "made no resistance; but was never beforehand with anything, and might have been very much behindhand if left to itself." Aurore was not four years old when adventures began for her in earnest. In the spring of 1808, her father was at Madrid, in attendance upon Murat; and Madame Maurice Dupin, becoming impatient of prolonged separation from her husband, started off with her little girl to join him. The hazards and hardships of the expedition, long mountain drives and wild scenery, strange fare and strange sights, could not fail vividly to impress the child, whose imagination from her cradle was extraordinarily active. Her mother ere this had discovered that Aurore, then little more than a baby, and pent up within four chairs to keep her out of harm's way, would make herself perfectly happy, plucking at the basket-work and babbling endless fairy tales to herself, confused and diluted versions of the first fictions narrated to her. A picturesque line in a nursery song was enough to bring before her a world of charming wonders; the figures, birds, and flowers on a Sevres china candelabrum would call up enchanting landscapes; and the sound of a flageolet played from some distant attic start a train of melodious fancies and throw her into musical raptures. Her daily experiences, after reaching Madrid with her mother, continued to be novel and exciting in the extreme. The palace of the Prince de la Paix, where Murat and his suite had their quarters, was to her the realization of the wonder-land of Perrault and d'Aulnoy; Murat, the veritable Prince Fanfarinet. She was presented to him in a fancy court-dress, devised for the occasion by her mother, an exact imitation of her father's uniform in miniature, with spurs, sword, and boots, all complete. The Prince was amused by the jest, and took a fancy to the child, calling her his little _aide-de-camp_. After a residence of several weeks in this abode, whose splendor was alloyed by not a little discomfort and squalor, the return-journey had to be accomplished in the height of summer, amid every sort of risk; past reeking battle-fields, camps, sacked and