It has never left me till this hour, and I can assure you that it has sustained me in many embarrassments.

Financial, some of them; I don't mind confessing it! I have raised money on that girl's face! I 've taken her to the Jews and bade her put up her veil, and asked if the mother of that young lady was not safe! She, of course, was too young to understand me.

And yet, as a child, you would have said she knew what was in store for her; before she could read, she had the manners, the tastes, the instincts of a little princess.

She would have nothing to do with shabby things or shabby people; if she stained one of her frocks, she was seized with a kind of frenzy and tore it to pieces.
At Nice, at Baden, at Brighton, wherever we stayed, she used to be sent for by all the great people to play with their children.

She has played at kissing-games with people who now stand on the steps of thrones! I have gone so far as to think at times that those childish kisses were a sign--a symbol--a portent.