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 me to enter a convent without I wished myself to do so, and an entreaty for his protection to be continued to me.

"He directly hastened to me, and used every method in his power to sooth my sorrows; he repeated his assurances of continued kindness, and declared from that period I should reside with him till I had a proper habitation of my own to go to.

"I accordingly accompanied him to Paris; and here, in all probability, the sadness of my heart might soon have been diverted by the novelty of every thing I saw, had I met with any of that tenderness I had always been accustomed to; but the most chilling coldness, or else the most contemptuous disdain, was the treatment I received from my aunt and her family. My uncle, in order to try and prevent my mind from dwelling on it, insisted on my being taken to all the places they frequented; but this, instead of alleviating, rather aggravated my misery, for my aunt soon took it into her head that I was a rival to her daughters. A year I dragged on in a state of wretchedness, which no language