Ch. 3: Alicia's Diary

CHAPTER I.--SHE MISSES HER SISTER

July 7.--I wander about the house in a mood of unutterable sadness, for
my dear sister Caroline has left home to-day with my mother, and I shall
not see them again for several weeks. They have accepted a long-standing
invitation to visit some old friends of ours, the Marlets, who live at
Versailles for cheapness--my mother thinking that it will be for the good
of Caroline to see a little of France and Paris. But I don't quite like
her going. I fear she may lose some of that childlike simplicity and
gentleness which so characterize her, and have been nourished by the
seclusion of our life here. Her solicitude about her pony before
starting was quite touching, and she made me promise to visit it daily,
and see that it came to no harm.

Caroline gone abroad, and I left here! It is the reverse of an ordinary
situation, for good or ill-luck has mostly ordained that I should be the
absent one. Mother will be quite tired out by the young enthusiasm of
Caroline. She will demand to be taken everywhere--to Paris continually,
of course; to all the stock shrines of history's devotees; to palaces and
prisons; to kings' tombs and queens' tombs; to cemeteries and picture-
galleries, and royal hunting forests. My poor mother, having gone over
most of this ground many times before, will perhaps not find the
perambulation so exhilarating as will Caroline herself. I wish I could
have gone with them. I would not have minded having my legs walked off
to please Caroline. But this regret is absurd: I could not, of course,
leave my father with not a soul in the house to attend to the calls of
the parishioners or to pour out his tea.

July 15.--A letter from Caroline to-day. It is very strange that she
tells me nothing which I expected her to tell--only trivial details. She
seems dazzled by the brilliancy of Paris--which no doubt appears still
more brilliant to her from the fact of her only being able to obtain
occasional glimpses of it. She would see that Paris, too, has a seamy
side if you live there. I was not aware that the Marlets knew so many
people. If, as mother has said, they went to reside at Versailles for
reasons of economy, they will not effect much in that direction while
they make a practice of entertaining all the acquaintances who happen to
be in their neighbourhood. They do not confine their hospitalities to
English people, either. I wonder who this M. de la Feste is, in whom
Caroline says my mother is so much interested.

July 18.--Another letter from Caroline. I have learnt from this epistle,
that M. Charles de la Feste is 'only one of the many friends of the
Marlets'; that though a Frenchman by birth, and now again temporarily at
Versailles, he has lived in