Indeed, their and my sisters' kindness made them find pleasure in arranging all for me in the best and most comfortable manner; and when I left the paternal roof for my own new home, it was with tears of real pain.

Yet I had too clearly studied my own character and position to be undecided.
It was a day in April, my thirtieth birthday, when, accompanied by my own family, I went to take possession of my new, small, but pretty dwelling.

Two young father-and-motherless girls, not quite without means, followed me to my new habitation.

They were to become my children, I their mother.
I never shall forget the first morning of my waking in my new abode.

At this very moment it is as if I saw how the day dawned in the chamber; how all the objects gradually assumed, as it seemed to me, an unaccustomed definiteness.