We arrived in Paris at last, and I found myself dazzled by the splendid buildings and the grand equipages which met my eyes on every hand. The streets, it was true, were quite as dirty as London, but there was no fog or coal smoke to obscure the air or blacken the house fronts. My aunt was in the best of spirits at being once more in her dear native city, but I could not help thinking my uncle rather grave and preoccupied. As to Father Martien, he was always the same under every circumstance, and I have no doubt would have preserved the same calm countenance whether he were watching the agonies of a heretic on the wheel, or being himself served with the same sauce by the Iroquois. My uncle had a fine hotel in a fashionable situation, and as a courier had been sent before us we found everything ready for our reception. I was assigned a small room which looked into a court, and had no exit but through my aunt's reception-room. It was prettily furnished enough, but I took a dislike to it from the first, because it reminded me of my little turret-room at the Tour d'Antin, which I would have preferred of all things to forget. I had looked forward to Paris as a scene of gaiety and splendor far beyond anything I had ever seen, and so it was, but I very soon found that the gaiety and splendor were not for me. It was not that my aunt meant to be unkind; on the contrary, at that time she was amiability itself, but in France a young lady of good family lives before her marriage in a state of as much seclusion as if she were in a convent. In fact, almost every French young lady is placed in a convent at a very early age, from which she only emerges to be married to the man not of her own, but of her parents' choice, whom she perhaps never saw more than twice and never a moment alone, till she was married to him. I could not complain of being treated as other girls were, but I must confess I found the life a very dull one. My aunt lost no time in securing for me the services of a music and a dancing master, and she often took me out with her in the coach, but I had no companions of my own age. I was not at all well. I had been accustomed to a great deal of exercise all my life, and that in the fresh air, and the state of excitement in which I had been kept for such a length of time began to tell on me.