She was amused at everything and she enjoyed everything. With her keen sensitiveness, she revelled in the charm of Paris, and she thoroughly appreciated its scenery.

"Paris," she wrote, "with its vaporous evenings, its pink clouds above the roofs, and the beautiful willows of such a delicate green around the bronze statue of our old Henry, and then, too, the dear little slate-coloured pigeons that make their nests in the old masks of the Pont Neuf . . ."[9]

[9] Unpublished letters of Dr. Emile Regnault.

She loved the Paris sky, so strange-looking, so rich in colouring, so variable.[10]

She became unjust with regard to Berry. "As for that part of the world which I used to love so dearly and where I used to dream my dreams," she wrote, "I was there at the age of fifteen, when I was very foolish, and at the age of seventeen, when I was dreamy and disturbed in my mind. It has lost its charm for me now."[11]

She loved it again later on, certainly, but just at this time she was over-excited with the joy of her newly-found liberty. It was that really which made her so joyful and which intoxicated her. "I do not want society, excitement, theatres, or dress; what I want is freedom," she wrote to her mother. In another letter she says: "I am absolutely independent. I go to La Chatre, to Rome. I start out at ten o'clock or at midnight. I please myself entirely in all this."[12]

[12] _Correspondance_: To her mother, May 31, 1831.

She was free, and she fancied she was happy. Her happiness at that epoch meant Jules Sandeau.