Despatched from Paris to the pure air of St. Ouen, and ordered to do nothing but enjoy herself, the young girl quickly recovered her vivacity, and developed a charming joyousness. This new mood of hers, while gradually estranging her from her mother, drew her closer to her father. M. Necker, who detested literary women, had looked with but scanty favor on his daughter’s passion for writing, and it is probable that, as long as she was exclusively under Madame Necker’s rule, he did not feel for her more than the commonplace sort of affection which a busy and serious-minded father bestows on a little girl. During her childhood Germaine herself lavished all her warmest affection on her mother, being apparently drawn to her by the subtle attraction which a very deep and reserved nature exercises on an excitable one. Madame Necker, pale, subdued in manner, restrained in gesture, surrounded with respectful adorers, revered by her husband, and flattered by her friends, seems to have filled her observant, imaginative little daughter with a feeling bordering on awe. Very sensitive, yet very submissive, and quite incapable of resentment, Germaine threw herself with characteristic passionate ardor into the task of winning her mother’s praise. How complacently Madame Necker must have accepted the homage implied in these efforts, it is easy to imagine. A little contempt for the child’s impetuosity helped to give her the firmness necessary for moulding, according to her own notions, the nature so plastic, yet so vital, thus placed within her grasp. A good, nay, a noble woman, yet essentially a self-righteous one, she could comprehend perfection in nothing that did not, to a certain degree, resemble herself. _Her_ ideas, _her_ principles, _her_ will, were, she conceived, to shape and fashion, restrain and re-create, this thing of fire and intellect, this creature all spirit, instinct and insight, that she named her child. Germaine, predestined all her life to struggle, to consume herself to ashes—like the Arabian princess who fought with the _djinn_—succumbed for the time to her mother’s will, by the annihilation of everything that was inalienably _herself_. The spell lasted as long as the tyranny which had created it; but once freed from the thraldom, wandering with her young cousin through the avenues of St. Ouen, drinking in the freshness of the shadowy glades, and acting innocent little dramas, Germaine became more natural and, in her mother’s eyes, more commonplace. Madame Necker lost interest in her, drew frigidly away from her, and even began to feel some jealousy of the new-born affection between the father and child.