“Now, my Juliette, you will do exactly as you like. You will learn what you wish, or you will, if you prefer it, learn nothing at all. But there is one thing in which I do ask you to take an interest: that is housekeeping. I will give you complete charge of our house for six months. You shall be its mistress to order and to spend. I shall merely advise you. As you are fond of the appointing, the arrangement, the decoration of a home, you will have full scope for the development of your taste. If you would like lessons in cooking and sewing, you have only to say so. I want to persuade you, too, that an art, and above all arts, music, embellishes life. The new organist is a remarkably good teacher. The piano bores you, but I wish you to cultivate your voice. And then I have another wish: I want you to try the violin. But, I repeat, you shall do as you like in everything.”[20] To these diplomatic suggestions Juliette was graciously pleased to reply— “Grandmother, I shall be delighted to keep house; it will be very interesting. I will certainly learn the violin. That will be quite out of the common: and I will cultivate my voice.” How the Seron household fared during the _régime_ of this young lady of twelve Juliette has not told us. But that her grandmother’s somewhat bold experiment was in the end eminently successful is attested by the fact that throughout her long life Mme. Adam has been renowned as a first-rate _maîtresse de maison_; and that this reputation is fully justified is the experience of all those who, like the present writer, have partaken of her lavish hospitality. As for the rest of her studies, Mme. Seron had been well advised to leave it to her granddaughter to decide as to whether she would continue them. Juliette was far too ambitious to be content with her very meagre knowledge. And it was at her own suggestion that her father was asked to draw up a time-table for his daughter. A professor from the boys’ school opposite was engaged to give her lessons; and Dr. Lambert himself, when he came to Chauny, superintended her studies. He read her Racine, and persuaded her to copy daily five pages from the pen of that great French classic. The doctor, as we have said, was himself a pure classicist. He used to say to his daughter, “Be a Grecian, Juliette, if you desire initiation into the worship of the eternally beautiful, into all that raises man above the age in which he lives.”[21] In order to accustom his daughter to what he called the admirable sonority of _notre langue initiatrice_ he read her passages from Homer in the Greek original. He dictated to her word by word translations of whole chapters of the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_. In these lessons, in his own reading and in his talks with Juliette, Dr. Lambert found consolation for his bitter political disillusionment. “Books,” he would say, “are our greatest solace, when everything else is taken from us they remain.”[22]