CÉCILE

It is not yet five o’clock; I am not to see Mamma until seven: there is plenty of time to write, if I only had something to tell! But they have not yet breathed a word. And were it not for all the obvious preparations and all the women who keep coming in to do things for me, I should believe no one had the least notion of marrying me, and that it was simply another piece of our dear Joséphine’s nonsense. But Mamma has told me so often that a young lady should stay in the convent until she marries that, now she has taken me out, I think Joséphine must be right.

(Letter I, Cécile Volanges to Sophie Carnay)