As a light on her character hardly too much can be made of this stage in her development. It is more than likely that the teaching was begun at Sophie's own demand, and by the use she made of the opportunities given her you may measure the strength of her ambition. Here was no rich man's doxy lazily seeking a veneer of culture, enough to gloss the rough patches of speech and idea betraying humble origin. This fisherman's child, workhouse girl, ancilla of the bordels, with the thin smattering of the three R's she had acquired in the poor institution, set herself, with a wholehearted concentration which a Newnham 'swot' might envy, to master modern languages, with Greek, Latin, and music. At the end of three years she was a good linguist, could play and sing well enough to entertain and not bore the most intelligent in the company the Duc kept, and to pass in that company--the French emigre set in London--as a person of equal education. If, as it is said, Sophie, while she could read and write French faultlessly, never could speak it without an English accent, it is to be remembered that the flexibility of tongue and mind needed for native-sounding speech in French (or any other language) is so exceptional as to be practically non-existent among her compatriots to this day. The fault scarcely belittles her achievement. As well blame a one-legged man for hopping when trying to run. Consider the life Sophie had led, the sort of people with whom she had associated, and that temptation towards laissez-faire which conquers all but the rarest woman in the mode of life in which she was existing, and judge of the constancy of purpose that kept that little nose so steadfastly in Plutarch and Xenophon. If in the year 1812 the Duc began to allow his little Sophie about L800 a year in francs as pin-money he was no more generous than Sophie deserved. The Duc was very rich, despite the fact that his father, the old Prince de Conde, was still alive, and so, of course, was enjoying the income from the family estates. There is no room here to follow more than the barest outline of the Duc de Bourbon's history. Fully stated, it would be the history of France. He was a son of the Prince de Conde who collected that futile army beyond the borders of France in the royalist cause in the Revolution. Louis-Henri was wounded in the left arm while serving there, so badly wounded that the hand was practically useless. He came to England, where he lived until 1814, when he went back to France to make his unsuccessful attempt to raise the Vendee. Then he went to Spain. At this time he intended breaking with Sophie, but when he got back to Paris in 1815 he found the lady waiting for him. It took Sophie some eighteen months to bring his Highness up to scratch again. During this time the Duc had another English fancy, a Miss Harris, whose reign in favour, however, did not withstand the manoeuvring of Sophie.