This etext was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of thefile for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making anentire meal of them. D.W.]
JACQUELINE
By THERESE BENTZON (MME. BLANC)
BOOK 3.
CHAPTER XIV
BITTER DISILLUSION
Some people in this world who turn round and round in a daily circle ofsmall things, like squirrels in a cage, have no idea of the pleasure ayoung creature, conscious of courage, has in trying its strength; thisstruggle with fortune loses its charm as it grows longer and longer andmore and more difficult, but at the beginning it is an almost certainremedy for sorrow.
To her resolve to make head against misfortune Jacqueline owed the factthat she did not fall into those morbid reveries which might haveconverted her passing fancy for a man who was simply a male flirt intothe importance of a lost love. Is there any human being conscious ofenergy, and with faith in his or her own powers, who has not wished toknow something of adversity in order to rise to the occasion and confrontit? To say nothing of the pleasure there is in eating brown bread, whenone has been fed only on cake, or of the satisfaction that a child feelswhen, after strict discipline, he is left to do as he likes, to saynothing of the pleasure ladies boarding in nunneries are sure to feel onreentering the world, at recovering their liberty, Jacqueline by natureloved independence, and she was attracted by the novelty of her situationas larks are attracted by a mirror. She was curious to know what lifeheld for her in reserve, and she was extremely anxious to repair theerror she had committed in giving way to a feeling of which she was nowashamed. What could do this better than hard work? To owe everything toherself, to her talents, to her efforts, to her industry, such wasJacqueline's ideal of her future life.
She had, before this, crowned her brilliant reputation in the 'cours' ofM. Regis by passing her preliminary examination at the Sorbonne; she wasconfident of attaining the highest degree—the 'brevet superieur', andwhile pursuing her own studies she hoped to give lessons in music and inforeign languages, etc. Thus assured of making her own living, she couldafford to despise the discreditable happiness of Madame de Nailles, who,she had no doubt, would shortly become Madame Marien; also the crookedways in which M. de Cymier might pursue his fortune-hunting. She said toherself that she should never marry; that she had other objects ofinterest; that marriage was for those who had nothing better before them;and the world appeared to her under a new aspect, a sphere of usefulactivity full of possibilities, of infinite variety, and abounding ininterests. Marriage might be all very well for rich girls, who unhappilywere objects of value to be bought and sold; her semi-poverty gave herthe right to break the chains that hampered the career of other well-bornwomen—she would make her own way in the world like a man.
Thus, at eighteen, youth is ready to set sail in a light skiff on a roughsea, having laid in a good store of imagination and of courage, ofchildlike ignorance and self-esteem.
No doubt she would meet with some difficulties; that thought did butexcite her ardor. No doubt Madame de Nailles would try to keep her withher, and Jacqueline had provided herself beforehand with some double-edged remarks by way of weapons, which she intended to use according tocircumstances. But all these pr