Page:Maria Felicia.pdf/11

 teacher (who hated everything that was Bohemian) discovered the manuscript and angrily forbade her to utter “such dangerous things;” and even her father was almost afraid to continue his teachings. Poor Johanna durst not openly rebel, but she wept and dreamed and hoped. Many a solitary hour she spent in a lumber-room, where, with a clothes-basket for her writing-stand, she forgot her misery in childish literary efforts. When she was about thirteen years of age, her teacher discovered these manuscripts also, which made him angrier than before. Sharing in the horror with which the majority of respectable people at that time regarded George Sand, he said that Johanna was in danger of “falling into the same pit;” and this so alarmed her mother that she permitted her to study only French and music, and to read no higher literature than children’s books. When she had attained the age of sixteen, her irrepressible patriotism again tried to find expression. She began the careful study of Bohemian, and when some aristocratic young men at a ball