She contented herself with pitying and consoling, as best she could, that gentle and charming creature who was her mother, and who suffered.
Within the circle of Madame de Trecoeur's acquaintances, Julia simply passed for a little plague.

The dear madames, as she called them, who formed the ornament of her mother's Thursdays, related with bitterness to each other the scenes of comical imitation with which the child followed their entrance and their departure.

The men considered themselves fortunate when they did not carry off a bit of paper or silk on the back of their coats.

All this amused Monsieur de Trecoeur extremely.

When his daughter performed with half a dozen chairs some of those Olympian races that knocked every piano in the neighborhood out of tune-- "Julia!" he would exclaim, "you don't make noise enough.