Chapter I: Go to a Wedding

A few months later, in the summer, I went to Blérancourt with my grandfather to a wedding. I had already seen a great number, Arthémise having a passion for looking at brides, but I had never participated in person at the ceremony.

A friend of my mother, Camille--I cannot recall her family name--was going to marry Monsieur Ambroise Godin, under-director of the manufacture of glass of Saint-Gobain, the head office of which was at Chauny. My grandfather was to be her witness, and grandmother took the trouble to explain to me that the witness to a marriage acted in place of the bride’s father, Camille having lost her own.

My joy at going to the wedding expressed itself in all manner of freaks and excessive selfishness. I neither showed nor felt the least sorrow at leaving grandmother and Arthémise. However, my absence was to be only for four days.

My grandfather, since my “campaign of Caumenchon,” as he called it, had conceived such a passion for me that he stayed for long hours together in the house, even after meals. In the evening, when I so wished it, I would also keep him at home. His friends at the club could not believe their eyes.

“He is his granddaughter’s slave,” would they say, and he would repeat: “Yes, I am my granddaughter’s slave.”

He was so tall, so big, so noisy, he talked so much that I would stare at him from his feet upward, my head raised, always laughing, and I would only play “at making faces” with him, while I often played with grandmother “at being good.”

He could not contain himself with joy at going away quite alone with me.

“It is my turn to carry her off,” said he on the day of our departure.

They tied me with two silk handkerchiefs in grandfather’s cabriolet, and they stuffed behind my back, at my sides, and under my feet a number of packages well sewn together by Arthémise, in which, folded and packed carefully, were my linen, my gowns, and everything that I might need. They did not make use of valises or trunks at that time at grandmother’s.

I can still remember my three white frocks with their coloured ribbon sashes, which had to be ironed when we arrived and which my mother showed to her friends at Blérancourt, who came to see me and to make my acquaintance. I had held my handsome Leghorn straw hat, ornamented with white ribbons, in a box in my hands and had never let it go once in spite of the jolts of the famous “execrable” road.

Having left at eight o’clock in the morning to drive three leagues, we did not arrive until two o’clock in the afternoon. One cannot fancy what the road was, going through meadows and alongside of a river which continually overflowed.

How many times since have I passed over that road, where one ran the risk of actual danger, and where the ruts were so deep that people were frequently upset.

My grandfather kept up my courage, for I did not hide my fears, by saying that Cocotte was a very good horse, the carriage strong, and that he knew how to drive very well.

My father kissed me many times when I arrived, and directly after breakfast took me by the hand to see all his friends. We went to the château where the Varniers lived and where I found a dear little girl of my own age, with whom I often later played at the house of her neighbour, the chemist Descaines, “nephew of some one whom I shall teach you to know and to love later,” said my father, “but remember his name now--Saint-Just.”

“Saint-Just,” I repeated.

I can perfectly recall the effort I made to please my father’s friends at Blérancourt, and how, after having gone in quest of compliments about me, he brought back a great number to my grandfather and mother.

“How charming she is, how good she was, and how she talks!” he said.

My mother had unsewed Arthémise’s packages and she ironed my frocks herself. I took part in the ironing and the hanging up, and I asked innumerable questions about the wedding.

On the morrow, the great day, all the guests gathered at the bride’s house near the church. The weather was superb. They went on foot, two by two, in a long file, the bride leading with my grandfather, of whom they said: “What a handsome man he is who is acting as father.”

I leaned out from the rank and dragged my mother’s hand so as to see better, and, perhaps, to be better seen, for there was a row of people along the length of the cortége.

The gentleman who gave his arm to my mother was very handsome and he laughed to see her continually dragged out of file by me.

All Blérancourt was there to see the fine wedding pass by, and several times I heard, not without pleasure, little boys and girls and even grown persons say:

“Look, look, it’s Monsieur Lambert’s little Juliette. How prettily she is dressed.”

Some one added:

“Monsieur Lambert is not here. He never goes to churches.”

I asked mamma why they said that. She drew me brusquely towards her and did not answer.

We reached the church. I heard the music of the organ and was going to enter, when my mother, after having spoken in a low voice to an old lady with a cap and dressed in black, who was not of the wedding party, said to her:

“Two ceremonies will tire her too much, please keep her for me and amuse her in the curé’s garden. Give her some flowers, don’t let her soil her frock, and I will come for her myself.”

I protested, I struggled, I wanted to be all the time at the wedding, but the old lady took me in her arms, passed through the crowd, opened a door, shut it, and put me down, laughing.

“You will amuse yourself a great deal more here than at the church, my darling,” she said to me; “see the lovely garden and the beautiful flowers, they are all for you.”

She put a cushion on the doorstep, and gave me some nasturtium flowers to suck. There was near the stalk a little bud that I found of a sweet taste. I see myself still on the doorstep of Monsieur the Curé’s garden, pointing out to his servant the flowers I wanted, which she went and pulled for me.

I think I forgot the wedding a little describing to her my large garden at my grandmother’s, speaking of my plums and apricot tree, of my strawberries and raspberries, when suddenly my mother appeared, very pale and excited.

“Quick, quick, come!” she said to me.

“To the wedding, mamma?”

“Yes, to the wedding.”

I entered the church. The bride was near the door with the groom, all the wedding party gathered around them. They drew me to a corner where there was a large stone vase full of water, like one in our garden at Chauny. I saw that everybody was looking at me.

The curé was near the vase, the bride and groom approached, my mother took me in her arms.

“Mamma, what are they going to do to me?” I asked, rather frightened.

“Be good, my Juliette, be very good, I beseech of you,” she replied in a very troubled voice, “they are going to baptise you.”

“No, no, not baptise me,” I cried in tears.

The bride said smiling to me: “You are going to cease being a vile heretic and enter the Catholic Church.”

I saw my grandfather and I cried out to him, thinking the vase full of water was the Catholic Church.

“Grandfather, come and prevent them from throwing me into the Catholic Church.”

My grandfather not only remained insensible to my appeal, but looked at me very severely.

“Be still,” said the curé to me, “or I will open your head and put the oil and salt in it.”

These threatening words put the finishing touch to my despair, and I cried and struggled all through the ceremony of my baptism. Finally grandfather came and took me from my mother’s arms.

“Juliette, you are a big girl,” he said, “listen to me. I am very pleased you are baptised, your grandmother will be so happy. You were a poor little unbaptised child, we did not know it. Your father forbade you being baptised. He doesn’t like churches.”

“Yes, grandfather, I heard people say so just now.”

“So, you understand, he is not like everybody else; it is a pity he is a heathen. Your mother had great courage in making you a Christian without his knowledge. He will be furious, and I shall not be sorry to be at Chauny. Oh! my darling, my darling, may the Supreme Being protect you!”

My grandmother made me say my prayers night and morning. She often spoke to me of God, but my grandfather never spoke except of the Supreme Being; I had known for a long time that the Supreme Being was God.

There was a table for children at the wedding. It was very amusing. At the end of the repast some persons rose from their seats and they talked and talked without any one stopping or answering them; then there were some others who sang, and then my grandfather said things which made everybody laugh, and we little ones laughed also.

And then finally papa read out something in a loud voice. One of the children said it was like a fable, and they repeated several times at the large table that “it was fine, very fine!”

Papa looked pleased. They danced to the music of a large orchestra, and I danced also, turning around as much as I could. A child older than I called me Camille Ambrosine. My father was near me at the moment, amused at seeing me enjoy myself so much.

“Why do you call her Camille Ambrosine?” asked my father. “Her name is Juliette.”

“I know it, Monsieur Lambert. Her name is Juliette Camille Ambrosine. Juliette is her every day name, Camille is her godmother’s, Ambrosine her godfather’s. I say so, because they baptised her after the wedding. I was there. It is droll, because she is very old to be baptised.”

My father shook me so violently that I screamed with fright. My grandfather and grandmother ran up to us and there was another “family drama.”

My father cried out insulting things to the bride and groom. But they did not get angry. They only laughed. My father ended by taking my mother by one hand and me by the other, and leading us back to the house, grandfather coming behind us.

My mother wept, grandfather did not say a word, my father kept repeating:

“You wish that my daughter should not be my daughter.”

A poor woman entered.

“Quick, come quickly, Monsieur Lambert,” she cried, “my husband Mathieu, the thatcher, you know him, has fallen off Monsieur Dutailly’s roof and is almost dead.”

My father and grandfather left suddenly together.

My mother undressed me, made up the packages and sewed them together, and put me to bed very early.

The next morning, while my father was still sleeping, because he had watched by Mathieu, the thatcher, all night, mamma tied me with my silk handkerchiefs in the cabriolet, together with my packages, the box with my handsome white hat, and without my going to the wedding festivities the next or the third day, without my being able to wear my two other pretty frocks, grandfather took me back to Chauny.

As I left, my mother told me to be sure to tell grandmother that in spite of my father’s anger she would never regret what she had done for me, and that she ought long ago to have confessed that I had never been baptised.

Grandmother was astonished to see us returning so soon.

“What is the matter? what is the matter?” she cried.

Grandfather related all the story to her, and I can hear now her exclamations:

“She had never been baptised, never baptised! My son-in-law is a dangerous madman with his democratic, socialistic ideas, without God, good heavens! Such ideas mean the end of religion, of the family circle, of the right of property, of the world!”

I still have this long phrase with all its terms ringing in my ears, from “My son-in-law is a dangerous madman,” because it never ceased for years to keep alive my grandmother’s political griefs against my father.

VIII

“FAMILY DRAMAS”

The terms Jacobite, Republican, Socialist, the names of Robespierre, of Saint-Just, of Louis Blanc, of Pierre Leroux, of Proudhon, and of Ledru-Rollin, pronounced over and over again with terror by my grandparents and with a manner of adoration by my father, engraved themselves upon my memory and still more in my thoughts. The “My son-in-law is a madman” began the anthem and the “without God, good heavens!” ended it; the middle part was varied according to circumstances, but the same terms, the same words were interwoven together.

My father, who was extremely eloquent, very well read, and full of knowledge, delighted and charmed my grandmother, provided he spoke neither of politics nor of religion. Being very fond of Greek, no one could relate the Hellenic legends better than himself. While still quite a small child, whenever I saw him I would make him repeat to me the stories of old Homer, and I got to know them as well as little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella.

My father was a poet, and his verses were always classical, at least those were which he read to my grandmother, but we knew, and I, like a parrot, would repeat indignantly that he also wrote _red_ verses!

How was it that my relatives were mad enough to talk politics every time they met? My grandmother was a governmental Orléanist, my grandfather a most passionate Imperialist, and it was amusing to hear him say with his lisping accent: “The emperor!” My father declared himself a Jacobite.

No one can imagine the scenes which took place between them. I can well remember my fright at the first I witnessed; I screamed and sobbed, but none of them heard me. One day (I was about four or five years old) I climbed upon the table and put one foot in a dish and with the other I rattled the glasses and plates. The discussion, or rather the quarrel, ceased immediately as by a miracle, my grandfather, grandmother, and father being convulsed with laughter.

My mother alone, of whom I stood greatly in awe, snatched me off the table roughly and was going to whip me, but in an instant I was taken from her by three people, and from that day I concluded I was very foolish to be afraid of her, as the others would always protect me from her severity.

The years went by without bringing any great changes in our habits. I had become used to the “family dramas” all the more easily because, by common accord, I was not included in their sulks, and had no part in their quarrels.

I was about six years old when my grandfather, my grandmother, and my father each tried in turn to convert me to his or her own ideas. I am not exaggerating. It is true that when six and a half years old I was in the second division of the second class of my school, that I knew many things of the kind one can accumulate in the memory, which was in my case an exceptional gift. Added to this, my grandmother and my father crammed me with everything with which it is possible to fill an unhappy child’s mind.

I remember that often of an evening, after dinner, while my grandfather and grandmother were playing their game of “Imperiale,” which they always did before my grandfather went to his club, I would prepare my books and papers as grandmother _desired_, for since my flight to Caumenchon she had never given me an order. As soon as grandfather had gone I would work with her until I fell asleep over my books.

Seeing this preparation, grandfather would always say: “Now, phenomenon, walk to your execution, pile up your instruments of torture, and don’t forget a single one!” And, going away, he would add: “They will kill the child, they will kill her!”

When by chance grandfather blamed any act of grandmother’s he never addressed himself directly to her. The pronouns _they_ or _one_ allowed him to appear unattacked if she cut him with one of her words, sharp as a whip-lash, and to reply without answering her personally.

Whenever my grandparents were angry with each other these pronouns, _they_ or _one_, were of the greatest use. They spoke _at_, not _to_, each other, and so avoided an open quarrel. They would say, for instance, during one of their sulks, which would sometimes last for several days:

Grandmother: “Will _one_ be at home at such an hour?”

Grandfather: “_One_ will do _one’s_ best to accomplish it.”

At table: “Does any one wish for some beef?”

At play: _One_ has this or that.

While I, much annoyed at all this, would say _one_ to both of them.

Then, suddenly, without any one knowing why, or, perhaps because the quarrel had lasted long enough, the familiar names were spoken again: Pélagie, Pierre, Juliette; a general kissing followed, and all was over without a word of explanation.

Heavens! how dramatic, and, in turn, how funny were my dear grandparents.

As I have already said, each member of the family tried to convert me to his or her own ideas.

Grandmother would try to prove by French history that the greatness of France was due to our kings, who had suppressed the “great feudal lords.”

She detested every form of feudal and autocratic systems. She loved the “First Communes,” the “Tiers-Etat,” the “Bourgeoisie,” the moderate ones in everything--“the middle course,” as she would say. She made me, at a very early age, prefer Louis XI. to Louis XII., the “Father of his People,” and Louis XIII. to Henry IV., on account of Richelieu, who had overthrown the great vassals. What the kings had done for the people interested her as little as the people themselves, for whom she professed the greatest contempt. The people, the lower classes, were simply to her “those who worked at gross things, and could have no idea of anything refined.”

For these opinions, expressed at school, I was often severely remonstrated with by the teachers, and looked upon with indignation by my companions.

I professed my grandmother’s ideas as if they were my own, and I upheld them without saying whence they came. This came from a double feeling of pride--for I gloried in thinking differently from my little schoolmates--and also, I recall, in order not to compromise my grandmother, or, rather, to avoid having her opinions either discussed or blamed. I spoke of her with a passionate admiration, which, willingly or unwillingly, people were obliged to submit to, under penalty of blows. I strongly denied that any other little girl could have a mother or grandmother comparable to mine. They could do what they liked with me by saying that from Chauny to Paris there was not another mother or grandmother who loved their daughter and granddaughter as I was loved. Then my generosity knew no bounds, and would flow abundantly over the flatterers; usually this generosity consisted in the offering of certain sugar-plums made of apples and cherries, red and yellow, which were delicious, and of which I bought a daily supply from a grocer on my way to school, thereby obliging him to renew his stock at least twice a week.

These sugar-plums became later a source of reproach to me, for through them I established my dominion over the girls I liked best, probably the most greedy ones, and really corrupted them. But my domination, it is true, was also built on more honourable foundations; for, although I directed the games, and although my companions obeyed me at recreations, it was not solely on account of the sugar-plums, quickly eaten up, but because I was always inventing new games. Being both tall and strong also helped me to head the ranks. It was dangerous to measure forces with me.

My budget of political opinions was consequently thus made up: Worship of Louis XI., “the Father of the Communes,” as grandmother called him; worship of Louis XIII., who had cut all the feudal towers in two; worship of Louis Philippe, “the Liberal King.”

Grandfather seized every occasion to try to convince me that the Emperor had carried the glory of France on the wings of Fame to the uttermost ends of the earth, that the whirling of his sword (he would make the movement with his two large arms, one after the other, inversely, which delighted me) had terrified not only the beheaders of “Lambert’s Jacobite Revolution” (this a shaft at my father), but had conquered the sovereigns of Europe as far as Africa and Asia.

How often I heard this speech! But, unfortunately for grandfather, it used to convulse grandmother and me with laughter.

“I have had the honour in person of serving the Emperor, and neither of you can say as much,” he would add with superb dignity (rising if he happened to be seated), “and I will not allow a word, a single word, to be spoken which might impair a hair’s-breadth his immortal, his eternal memory.”

Grandfather knew all of Béranger’s songs, especially and exclusively those that exalted his Emperor; but he made an exception of the “Old Vagabond,” which saddened him, and brought back the memory of his own misery--“the misery of my youth,” he would say--and his philosophy during that time.

I have already said what a colossally big man grandfather was, and that he drank copiously. Towards evening, speaking of the Emperor and the campaigns he had followed at Lützen and elsewhere, he usually made a mistake in the final triumphant phrase. There I had him.

“Take care, grandfather, not to upset your fine phrase.”

He would begin it, and, invariably being troubled by my interruption, would end it in an emphatic manner impossible to describe, and with an outburst of inimitable pride:

“And when Larrey needed me no longer, I fought on my own account, joining the Grenadiers’ Guards, and I was always the _last_ to fight and the _first_ to run.”

Then I would clap my hands and cry: “Bravo, grandfather!” and he would understand by that that he had made a mistake.

IX

LEARNING TO BE BRAVE

If my grandmother, who was not a learned person, and who acquired much knowledge in educating me, wished to make me learned, my grandfather, who as a general rule was lacking in courage, wished me to become a brave woman.

Early on Sunday mornings, before going to high mass with my schoolmates, he would take me with him to the Hospital. I was a friend of Sister Victoire, who used to aid my grandfather in his dressing of wounds and his operations. Both of them were forming me to look on human misery, they said.

I often assisted at small operations, and grandfather promised that when, by my good behaviour, I was worthy of it, I should be present at more important ones.

He showed me what he called “fine” wounds. Sister Victoire often taught me, especially if she were dressing a child’s wound, how to roll and place a bandage. When I was seven years old I knew a good many things about surgery, and could be of some help to Sister Victoire and grandfather. I could prepare an arm for bleeding; I learned how to bleed, myself, and how to bandage an arm after the operation, and this was most important, for, in those days, bleeding was an important part of medical practice.

During the summer grandfather would often bleed people in the courtyard of our house, near the garden, under a lilac tree of which I was very fond, and whose perfume when in flower intoxicated me. It was not a shrub but a real tree, affording shade.

People used to come and, without giving any explanation or asking for a consultation, say simply: “I have come to be bled,” and they were bled on the spot.

I was sent to fetch the lancet, basin, and bandages. I held the basin, and, when the operation was over, I dug a hole at the foot of my lilac tree, and poured in the blood. Perhaps that was the reason why it was so beautiful, and why the flowers were so plentiful and sweet.

Grandmother could not look at a drop of blood. Had she been obliged to witness a simple bleeding, she would have fainted.

Grandfather would keep saying all the while to her: “I am making a brave woman of your grandchild. She, at least, is not afraid of a few drops of blood. The only thing she needs now is to love war, renown, and the Emperor.”

“And to be as brave as you are,” grandmother would add. “I am afraid of the sight of blood,” she said, “but if France were again invaded, I feel that I should fear neither Prussians nor English.”

Although grandmother would laugh at grandfather’s want of courage, she was very pleased that I was not afraid at the sight of blood, and she often thanked him for having kept me from this weakness. My schoolmates thought more highly of me for my courage, and sugar-plums had, in this instance, nothing to do with their estimation of me.

In the little school-world, and even in the town, some traits of my courage were told; among others this rather ghastly one:

A notary of Chauny had some time before committed suicide, and his body had been given to my grandfather, who had asked for it. He had a very fine skeleton made from it, which was kept in the garret, and was called “the notary.” Arthémise was dreadfully afraid of it. I knew the “notary” very well, being always prowling about the garret to hunt for the place where grandfather hid his money, which I always found. I was passionately fond of this special kind of hunting. When I had found the money, I changed the hiding-place, and would tease grandfather for days by not letting him know where I had hidden it, and defying him to find any hiding-place that would be secret from me.

When at last I told him where the money was, I deducted, according to the sum, a small percentage for my sugar-plums.

I used then to tell grandmother (when grandfather did not tell her himself, for there was never the slightest discussion about money matters between them), I used to tell her the adventure, which would greatly amuse her.

“Only,” she would say, “do not take any money from what you find. I do not think it is nice. Whenever you want money for your sugar-plums, ask me for it.”

“No,” I replied, “with grandfather I earn it.” And I really thought I had earned the money by all the trouble I had taken.

I always fancied that the “notary,” whose horrid history I learned only long afterwards, helped me to find grandfather’s money, and consequently I considered the skeleton my friend. So it did not strike me as unusual when, one summer evening, while some neighbours were enjoying the cool air with us in our moonlit garden, my grandfather should have told me to go and fetch the “notary” from the garret, which, by the way, he would not have done himself.

Grandmother nodded approvingly, delighted at the idea that I was about to do something extraordinary, which would the next day electrify the town. She looked at me with her bright eyes and her red-gold hair shining in the moonlight. She was dressed in white, her favourite colour for herself and for me, and wore a large bunch of lilacs I had pinned on her bosom.

“Shall I go?” I asked her in a low tone. “They will be frightened--they do not know what the ‘notary’ is.”

“Yes, go,” she said, laughing.

I went up to the garret to fetch the “notary.”

He was very large, and I was very small. I put his head under my left arm, and with my right hand took hold of the banister. The moon was shining through the window. I can still hear the noise his bones made as they rattled on the stairs behind me.

I entered the garden, and threw the “notary” on grandfather’s knees. There was a general scream. The children shrieked, and hid their heads in their mothers’ laps. The mothers cried: “Oh! what a horrible thing! It is frightful! Monsieur Seron, take it away!”

Grandfather enjoyed the joke, and laughed with all his might. One woman fainted, and, while grandmother was throwing water on her face, he took the “notary” and placed it at the foot of the stairs. He did not dare to take it up himself.

We found this out afterwards, because Arthémise, coming into the room which I shared with grandmother, when we had gone to bed, cried out:

“Madame, Mam’zelle, the ‘notary’ has got downstairs alone. He is at the foot of the staircase!”

Grandfather was obliged to get up and put it back in the garret, but he made Arthémise go with him carrying a light.

My grandfather--who would believe it?--had very poetical tastes and was fond of pigeons. We had hundreds of them, and he had made me share his passion for these pets, and every day after breakfast he and I would feed them. They flew all about us, just as later in life I have seen them do on the Piazza di San Marco at Venice. We slipped on large linen blouses with hoods, and the pigeons would cover us entirely, head and shoulders, arms and hands. They clung to us and picked at us. The flutter of their wings and their cooing delighted me, and seemed like music. When we moved, they followed us with their pretty, mincing steps.

Grandfather and I were very fond of our pigeons, but grandmother, finding that they multiplied too fast, had the young ones taken from their nests, while we were absent, by a man who sold them, which grieved us very much. I heard of it through a little schoolmate, whose mother had bought some, and who told me one day that she had eaten some of my pigeons.

I scolded grandmother, who asked me if I would rather have eaten them myself.

“Most certainly not!”

Grandfather calmed me by saying that we could not possibly keep all that were born, and that grandmother did quite right, provided she would only take the young ones, and leave us the fathers and mothers. She promised this, and kept her word, and the old ones became more and more tame.

X

A THREE WEEKS’ VISIT

On October 4th, when I was eight years old, my father obtained grandmother’s approval to take me to Blérancourt for a three weeks’ visit, until All Saints’ Day, for she felt sure of having directed my ideas according to her way of thinking by that time. We had never before been separated for so long, and were much grieved--I less than I thought I should be, and she more than I feared.

My father loved me so tenderly, so passionately, he took so much trouble with a few words, spoken here and there, to make his ideas interesting to me; he treated me so like a woman, desiring, I could feel, to overcome the repugnance with which my grandmother had inspired me concerning his democratic, Jacobite, free-masonic, anti-religious opinions--“without God, oh, heavens!”--which, like a spoiled child, I had often expressed to him, that this journey with him seemed to me a most serious thing. I fancied that his companionship during the next three weeks would do more toward drawing me to him, and taking me from grandmother, than absence itself.

“Jean Louis,” said my grandmother to him, after kissing him warmly, as he got into the carriage where I was already seated, “bring her back to me the same as I give her to you. You owe it to me!”

We were starting. My father answered, laughing:

“I do not promise any such thing.”

I heard grandmother cry out:

“Juliette, stay!”

A strong cut of the whip started the horse.

I did not turn back my head, but burst into tears. My father did not attempt to console me, as my grandmother would have done. She could never bear to see me cry.

He kissed me violently, repeating: “My daughter, my child, my own--at last, at last!”

* * * * *

My mother welcomed me in her usual cold manner. My father’s growing passion for me, to which he now freely abandoned himself, grandmother’s absence removing all restraint, seemed to her exaggerated.

“It would seem as if your child were a divinity on earth,” she said to him one day before me.

“Better than that; she is my daughter!” answered my father, and added, laughing: “I should not be far amiss in thinking her a daughter of Olympus.”

My mother detested witty sayings, which she classed in the same category with teasings, and this pun on her name did not please her. Ever since my father’s sojourn at Brussels, she called him nothing but Monsieur Lamber, although she still used the familiar _thou_.

“Oh! Monsieur Lamber, your speech is in very bad taste,” she answered.

On the contrary, it seemed to me very clear, and I often laughingly repeated it to father when he was instructing me about Greece. He had found my mind open to antique subjects, and I would say to him:

“Am I not the daughter of Olympus?”

My father would always take me with him on foot, on his visits round about to his patients. He taught me to drive his rather spirited horse, and we would drive in his two-seated carriage over good or bad roads to see the rich and the poor, especially the latter.

I told him of my studies in history, and of grandmother’s opinions, which I shared.

“See, child,” he said to me, “you and your grandmother have every reason to admire Louis XI. and Louis XIII., because you both think that under their reigns the nobles were cast down; whereas, they only changed their own condition _vis-à-vis_ to royalty. They became courtiers; they were domesticated by the kings, but they remained much as they were towards the bourgeoisie and the people; they kept the same distance between themselves and their inferiors as the sovereigns had kept with them. Before the Revolution equality did not exist anywhere. That alone began the great work. Let me tell you of Saint-Just, whom, of all the makers of the Revolution, I understand the best. He is to me a friend known and lost. I will take you to see his sister, and you will see how sweet and charming she is. You will amuse her. She speaks so affectionately of her brother that he, my Saint-Just, will cease to be to you the beheader and monster that your grandparents have represented.”

“Oh! papa, I shall never be, like you, the friend of that dreadful Saint-Just, or that horrible Robespierre--never!”

“Don’t be too sure. You have as yet heard only one side of the question. You hate all injustice, you love the poor and the humble people; you will therefore absolve those who have emancipated them, even at the cost of violence. You see, there is no moderation in politics. They are like a swing,” he said with a smile. “You are thrown twice up to the extreme heights, and you pass the middle line only once out of three times.”

“Well, papa, I am for the middle place--the middle, above all. Like grandmother, I hate extremes.”

“Juliette, you are not serious?”

“But, papa, you began while smiling in your talk about the swing.”

“Well, I am sorry, and I wish to tell you, once for all, that the great Revolution itself has not done sufficient work.”

“Oh! papa, for shame!”

“No. Listen to me. The nobles had oppressed the people--you know in what manner, you know all about it, for you speak as one well informed. Your grandmother and you judge the ‘great ones,’ as they should be judged. But that is not everything; you must not stop on the road. Since the nobles have been cast down, other oppressors have sprung up, just as hard, just as tyrannical, to the poor and humble ones as the former were, and these are neither as valiant nor as fine as were the feudal lords, the knights of chivalry. The ‘great ones’ of to-day belong to the upper bourgeoise class. We require a second Louis XI., a second Richelieu, and another Revolution, to destroy this new feudal system. We have found the new formula, my child, to open, at last, the reign of absolute justice, and we shall achieve it by a Republic, and by the principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity. There will be no colossal fortunes on one side and complete misery on the other. Suffering and justice will be equitably distributed.”

“That will be a magnificent time, papa, but will it ever come to pass?”

I had been so often told that my father was an absurd and dangerous dreamer that I was doubtful of the perspicacity of his judgment; and still his words sank into my heart, because I found them generous and tender towards the unhappy ones of the earth.

It is easy to explain the fascination such simple theories would have for a child’s mind. Such conversation made a deep impression. My father was of the type of those who were called later on “the old beards of 1848.” An idealist, without any notion of the probabilities of reality, my father thought that his political conceptions were absolute truths. As sentimental and as romantic as was my grandmother, he fostered illusions about political life resembling those which she fostered about individual life.

However, some of his conceptions seemed sublime to me in my childhood.

My father gave a place to nature in all that he said to me, for he sermonised me continually. The doctrine of Christ, which had given the formulas of liberty, equality, and fraternity, was mingled in his mind with an exuberant, poetical paganism, and this amalgamation furnished his discourses with pompous arguments on charity, on the laws of social sacrifice, and on the divine attributes of human heroism. My childish imagination, already initiated in researches for what grandmother called “superior things,” was dazzled and fascinated by degrees.

My father’s professional ability served marvellously well in placing all things of which he spoke within my mind’s reach. He simplified questions to such a degree that he succeeded in leading me to converse with him, and in making me feel that he took an extreme pleasure in our conversations.

This made me very proud. He was prudent in all that he said to me: “I do not say this to influence you; you are still too young for me to enforce any ideas upon you; I will teach you later,” etc., etc. I listened to admirable sonorous phrases, but could not judge of the gaps in their practical demonstrations, or of the possibility of the application of his ideas. I was touched by his devotedness to the suffering classes, of whom he often spoke.

I had, however, an instinctive feeling that the violence of my father’s character, of which he gave too frequent proofs, might make him, like his friend Saint-Just, cruel towards the fortunate ones of this world, as his good heart made him kind to the unhappy. And I wished to know whether I had guessed rightly. It was a hidden place in his heart to discover.

“I agree, after all, that your Saint-Just loved the humble and poor as much as you do,” I said to my father one day, “but you cannot prove to me that he was not cruel, that he did not kill.”

He answered:

“Action changes a man’s nature; you must judge Saint-Just from his intentions.”

“Hell is paved with them, papa,” I said.

I had discovered what I wished to know.

“In spite of what your grandmother says,” he added, “I do not love Robespierre, because he was born a Jacobin. One should not be born a Jacobin. A person may become one, but it is necessary first of all to have been a humanitarian. Ferocity is permissible only to defend one’s principles, or one’s country when it is in danger. In order to legitimatise it, there must be provocation.”

He had told me about the leaves of the sensitive plant, and, when he said something which displeased me, I would reply:

“Enough, papa, I fold myself up!” Then he would call me sensitive, and we would cease talking.

Sometimes it seemed to me that he actually probed in my brain as with a red-hot poker, as grandmother, also, too often did. I felt great pain in my temples, and would say:

“I can’t listen to you any longer. I feel ill.”

My father took a great journal, _La Democratie Pacifique_ of Victor Considérant, to which he was one of the first subscribers. My grandmother did not read newspapers. She heard the news from grandfather, who read the _Gazettes_ at his club. I thought my father admirable because he read four great pages every day, and knew at Blérancourt everything that was taking place in the whole world.

Later, in recalling what I had suffered in my childhood and the first years of my youth, I remembered that at that time it seemed to me that the “walls” of my brain were too light to support the pressure of the mass of ideas which my father and grandmother strove alternately to force between them. I felt these “walls” tremble at times and threaten to fall in.

I often played with the chemist’s daughter, Emilienne Decaisne, great-niece of Saint-Just. I thought her kind and charming, but my father said she was not sufficiently proud of her great-uncle. He often made his friend Decaisne angry--“the too lukewarm nephew of Saint-Just,” as he called him.

I went one day to see Saint-Just’s sister, Madame Decaisne, the chemist’s mother, and Emilienne’s grandmother. She lived at the extreme end of that beautiful quarter of Blérancourt called the Marais, where the lines of plane-trees perfumed the place in the spring, and where the ruins of the Louis XIV. château are so fine. Madame Decaisne inhabited a well-preserved house of the eighteenth century, looking on a garden, surrounded by high walls.

She was a very old lady of extreme elegance, tall and slight, dressed in the antique fashion. She made pretty curtsies, and raised her gown with her two hands very gracefully when she walked in the garden, and, as my father said, seemed always about to dance the minuet.

In her large drawing-room, furnished with Louis XV. and Louis XVI. furniture, which my grandmother had taught me to discern and to admire, and which my father thought old-fashioned and horrible, as he cared only for modern furniture--the furniture of “progress” made of mahogany and ebony--Madame Decaisne seemed to me like an apparition.

There lived with her in her house (although her son did not like it, my father told me before we went in) an old friend, the Chevalier de Saint-Louis, dressed also in old-time fashion, who was called simply “Monsieur le Chevalier.”

Madame Decaisne and the Chevalier had both remained thorough Royalists and Legitimists, detesting the “Egalité branch,” but faithful to the memory of Saint-Just, of whom the Chevalier had been the friend. “In spite of the crimes they had made him commit,” said Madame Decaisne, “she and the Chevalier had not ceased to love him.”

The Chevalier amused me very much because he glided and skipped over the waxed floors, and kissed Madame Decaisne’s hand when he left her only for an instant. He spoke of Saint-Just with affection.

“Monsieur le Chevalier,” my father said, “is it not true that Saint-Just still strikes you as having been, above all, a humanitarian and a poet?”

“Yes,” he replied, and added: “Besides, he, who was so intelligent, so superior, so full of hope for the great future, expiated his errors by his death. One should have seen him in the political storm to be able to understand how so good and so noble, but too fanatical, a man could at certain moments have thought that ‘blood was necessary.’”

The “necessary blood” remained in my mind after I heard the Chevalier use the phrase.

I spoke to grandmother about it on my return to Chauny, and she was not as indignant as I supposed she would be.

“When the kings protected the people from the nobles, they caused necessary blood to be shed,” she said to me, “and the kings grew greater in spite of their crimes. If the men of the Revolution had shed only the enemy’s blood at the frontiers, and that of traitors--of which there were a few like the Messieurs de Sainte-Aldegonde, who during the invasion called the invaders of France, ‘Our friends, the enemies’--if, I say, the men of the Revolution had not killed for the desire of so doing, they would have been absolved, but they sacrificed innocent persons to their ferocity, and they will never be forgiven. Your father is one of those who, like Saint-Just, wishes to purify society more and more, after having shed ‘necessary blood.’ He is one of those humanitarian Jacobins, people more cruel than the wickedest, who think they have the right to be implacable under the pretext that they have been tender-hearted in their youth.”

But, to return to Saint-Just’s sister: She took a fancy to me. Living with my grandparents, whom I still considered young, I adored old people. Madame Decaisne one day read to me some of Saint-Just’s poetry. It was about a little shepherd leading his flock to pasture, and the unhappiness of roses because they had thorns. She threw so much feeling into the reading that I shed tears, and thereby won her heart and that of the Chevalier.

XI

A PAINFUL RETURN HOME

The three weeks passed so quickly that I had written very seldom to my grandmother, not daring to speak to her about the conversations with my father, or of the impression they had made upon me. I said to myself it would be better to make my confession slowly. In like manner, as my father had enlightened me with regard to his ideas, I would enlighten my grandmother concerning mine. Moreover, I had not been converted. Saint-Just’s ferocity was absolved, for reasons I could not quite remember; my father, so good, so benevolent, was capable of becoming cruel after “provocation”--I remembered that word--all this aroused a great revolt in me, and overthrew my first enthusiasm.

There had been several “family dramas” on my account. I occupied too large a place in my father’s life, and my mother could not overcome that unfortunate jealousy which caused us all so much sorrow.

My father loved her passionately for her beauty, which should have given her every right to believe herself loved; I looked at her with admiration, and bestowed upon her a sort of worship; and my grandparents were very proud of her. But she had spoiled our mutual affection by her coldness, and destroyed our confidence in her love for us, because she constantly doubted our love; none of our assurances would convince her, whereas a careless word, spoken by chance, without any real intention of wounding her, became to her a proof of all she imagined, and then she became so unjust it made one believe she was hard-hearted. Whereas, in truth, her undeserved, cutting reproaches, her insinuations, her accusations, were only a sort of despair at not being able to force us to love her as she wished to be loved, and at not having won a larger amount of our affection precisely on account of that conduct which made us love her less.

My father wished to take me back to my grandmother himself. She opposed his wish, and it was she who accompanied me home. The pain she caused me during that short journey recalled to me my first day at school.

We were both mounted on the same donkey, and had not gone very far on our route when, the animal becoming fatigued, my mother got down. She talked as she walked along, while I, very proud, held the reins and did not wish to think of anything else.

My mother questioned me in a wearisome and annoying manner about my grandmother’s love for me. She made me impatient, and, not being accustomed to control myself, I answered two or three times:

“Mamma, I beg of you, leave me alone; you torment me more than the priest at confession.”

“Has your grandmother ever told you she would find a husband for you and give you a great deal of money--a _dot_?” she asked me suddenly after a silence.

Having got up early, with my head drowsy, and having been tormented for half an hour, I answered unfortunately:

“Yes, grandmother will give me as large a _dot_ as she can. Are you satisfied?”

My mother struck the donkey, which was also half asleep. I was jolted so unexpectedly that I fell off on the opposite side from my mother on a heap of stones.

The shock stunned me. I was blinded by blood. I called “Mamma!” and found she was no longer by me. I got up, took my handkerchief and tried to collect the blood on my forehead; my flowing tears enabled me to open my eyes. I looked for her, but a turn in the road prevented me from seeing how far away she might be. She had disappeared in order to punish me. I thought she had abandoned me, alone and bleeding.

I started to run as fast as I could. My mother was waiting for me. The sight of the blood which covered my face, and which came from a wound under my hair near my temple, and which grandfather said in the evening might have killed me, did not touch her heart. She raised me from the ground by my belt without getting off the donkey, which she had remounted, placed me on her lap without saying a word, holding me tightly with her left arm while she drove the donkey with her right hand, tapping its head with the reins.

I was very uncomfortably seated, and suffered much from my position, but I did not complain. I thought only of getting home, of seeing my grandmother, whom I would never leave again.

I did not cease sobbing, and the people who met us could not understand my evident despair nor my mother’s impassibility.

My grandmother, informed of my coming, was at the window with Arthémise. They ran to the door on seeing us. When my grandmother saw the state I was in, she took me into the drawing-room, overcome with grief. She could not kiss me, there was so much clotted blood on my face.

She had begun to question me, anxiously, when my mother, who had taken the donkey to the stable followed by Arthémise, came like a bomb into the drawing-room, and began again the eternal “family drama” so angrily that the quarrel became more and more passionate. Finally I, crying in despair, was taken with a nose-bleeding, which my handkerchief, already saturated with blood, could not stanch, and I was literally covered with blood.

I could understand nothing of my mother’s and grandmother’s explanations, they were so mixed up, and, besides, my head was aching so badly.

I had certainly done wrong to say what I had said, and I felt myself miserably guilty, but because of the thoughtless words of a child, did I deserve to be left in such a state?

“So,” said my mother, “you have promised to give Juliette as large a _dot_ as you can, and, doubtless, your fortune also? Am I, then, absolutely nothing to you? Do you disown me, your own daughter? I don’t care a fig for your money, but the humiliation of being treated thus by you is something I will not bear.”

When I think of my distress during those not-to-be-forgotten minutes, I still feel the effect of it, so convulsed was I in all my being, and so keenly did I realise my mother’s cruel jealousy.

My grandfather appeared at one door, Arthémise at the other. He looked at me, listened for a moment, and understood what was taking place. I threw myself in his arms, crying, my face bloated, swollen, and bleeding, in such a misery of abandonment and feeling so forsaken that my grandfather’s heart was convulsed with pain.

“You are, each of you, madder, more wicked, more ferocious than the other,” he cried, in a furious voice. “Your quarrels, your suspicions, your idiotic, imbecile explanations crush every atom of maternal feeling in your hearts. You will kill the child, do you hear? you will kill her! Olympe, do you not remember that your son died of convulsions after one of your quarrels? Look, both of you, at your only child. Don’t you feel any pity for her, shrews that you are? And then you will dare say to me that you love Juliette! I have half a mind to take her from you both, and to fly with her to the ends of the world. Just look at her!”

And grandfather, who was fond of dramatic scenes himself, placed me standing on a chair. My sobs redoubled, and I must have been pitiful to see, for my mother and grandmother threw themselves upon me, frightened. Grandfather pushed them aside, and put me in Arthémise’s arms, who again began her song: “It is murder!”

This phrase made me remember, with singular clearness, my adventure at school, and I cried out to grandmother:

“This time I will never forgive you!” My lips trembled, my throat was on fire, and I was shivering.

While grandfather washed me, grandmother made up the fire, weeping. When I was warmed and calmed, my grandfather, with an anger and hardness I had never seen him show before, flew at my mother, seized her by the wrists, and, shaking her, said:

“It is not enough that her father and grandmother should over-excite this child’s brain enough to make it burst, but you must go and give her such a cerebral commotion that it is enough to make her crazy.”

And as my mother, in excusing herself, began again to accuse me----

“Hold your tongue, and take care!” cried grandfather, in a threatening voice. “I thought until to-day that you resembled my poor mother, too passive and too ‘browsing.’ Don’t recall my father to me by your ferocious hard-heartedness! If you go on like this, I will make you kneel and ask your daughter’s pardon.”

“You are breaking my wrists,” she said, “let go of me. I have the right----”

I thought then that grandfather was going to beat her. His voice became so terrible that I saw my grandmother tremble.

“Do you repent of the wrong you have done to your daughter?”

“Yes!” she said, falling on a chair, overcome by her father, whom alone she feared, and who was never violent, never showed firmness except to her.

Poor mother! she suffered, herself, to such a degree from her morbid passion of jealousy that, when she was stricken with paralysis and confided her mental tortures to us, we heartily forgave her for those fits of anger.

XII

A VISIT TO MY GREAT-AUNTS

I was ailing all winter. I had attacks of intermittent fever, followed by the measles, with delirium.

My father and mother came in turn to help my grandparents take care of me. For a week they all feared not only for my life, but for my sanity--fears which re-established for a while perfect accord between them.

My father, talking one day at my bedside to grandmother, who was accusing her daughter of being responsible for my illness, said:

“It seems to me, mother, that you, too, deserve reproach in this respect, from what my father-in-law tells me. As to Olympe, I assure you she is more unhappy from her suspicions than those whom she suspects. Her jealousy is not her own fault; it is a malady. If you will look at her during her fits of anger, you will see that she has already certain tremblings of her head, too characteristic, alas! Do not forget that her paternal grandfather died of paralysis, which is, perhaps, the explanation of her unconscious cruelties. You must take care of Olympe, mother, rather than blame her. I, also, have a great defect in being too violent, and it comes to me from an affection of my heart, an inheritance from my father.”

My father expressed these words so gently, so sadly, that I at once forgave my mother, with whom I had until that moment still been angry, and I was most unhappy to hear that my father had a disease of the heart.

During my delirium my grandfather had no difficulty in discovering the cause of the tension of my little brain, overheated by the struggle to understand the contradictions between my father’s and grandmother’s ideas. I was endeavouring with all my might to make the ideas agree, and could not succeed, which tormented me. In my fever I did nothing but talk of politics and socialism.

“She must escape from both of you for a time,” he said to my father and grandmother, “and I am going to accept her great-aunt’s invitation to her.”

My grandmother’s half-sisters, Sophie, Constance, and Anastasie, lived with her mother at a country-seat in the environs of Soissons, at Chivres. They led a monastic life, having, all three, refused to marry.

Since their father’s death they had, no one knew why, desired to know me, and this seemed all the more extraordinary to my grandparents because they had never taken any interest in my mother.

A friend of my grandmother’s having spoken to them about me, they said to this friend that if grandmother desired me to be their heiress, instead of one of their mother’s cousins, to whom they were somewhat attached, she must let me go and visit them alone every year during the vacation season, in July and August.

My grandfather said to himself that such a complete separation from my father and grandmother would put my brain “out to grass,” as he expressed it, and would do me immense good. He induced grandmother to write to her friend that she would send me at that time to visit my great-aunts.

The prospect did not please me at first. I was so weary, so weak, that I asked only to be allowed to dream, lying in the large drawing-room beside grandmother, who read or embroidered without speaking to me.

My brain was hard at work during my convalescence. It appeared to me that I was making a great journey in life, and that I discovered many new and serious things every day.

I had taken no interest in money affairs until then, except for the purchase of my sugar-plums. But was it not money which had been the cause of the great quarrel on my return from Blérancourt? Was money, therefore, a very great, very important thing? And now, again, I heard it spoken of _apropos_ of these aunts for whom my grandparents cared so little, and of whom they thought so ill.

This money, which had made my mother so cruel to me, was now going to make my grandparents more kind to my great-aunts.

I discussed these questions very naïvely with myself, although my mind was wide awake with regard to other things; but there was never any question of money affairs between my grandfather and grandmother. My grandfather kept his own accounts with his patients; my grandmother took care of her own fortune.

I questioned grandmother about the necessity of my being my aunts’ heiress, asking her why she considered it so important that I should have money.

“It is not for the money itself,” grandmother answered, “that your grandfather and I desire that you should be your aunts’ heiress, but for a certain satisfaction it would give us, and because it would be creditable to them. You know, for I have told you so several times, that my father kept my mother’s _dot_, and that he was obstinate in making the keeping of it a condition of my marriage. If my half-sisters desire to repair the wrong they have done me, I approve their conduct; if my stepmother, now very old, wishes to die without remorse, I understand it. That is why I desire that you should play a part in this scheme of reconciliation, more worthy of our family than the unworthy machinations of former times. It is not a question of money, but of a triumph for your grandfather and myself, should your aunts make you their heiress. You see, Juliette, there is nothing more noble than to repair one’s wrong by a righteous act. Try to help in bringing it about.”

I had a mission. I was going to aid in the triumph of justice, and in that of my grandparents. I was still very weak, incapable of any great effort, for a fever brought on by growing pains hindered the progress of my convalescence; but the great rôle of ambassadress extraordinary--“something like a diplomatic work of Monsieur de Talleyrand,” said grandfather, not mockingly, but solemnly--that was worth thinking of.

I had, besides, some experience to guide me. How many times had I not reconciled my grandfather and grandmother, as well as my parents at Blérancourt, or all of them together? While still very small, I had often played the part of arbiter. I gave my personal opinion on all matters and in all discussions.

I should probably have been insupportable had not my grandparents, both of whom were very gay and witty, kept up a spirit of fun between us which banished all gravity, even in questions of quarrels, instead of preserving a tone of stiff, solemn, and stately importance, so that, when I succeeded in hushing up a quarrel between them, it was usually because I had made them laugh.

My father, also, submitted to this course of action on my part, but it exasperated my mother, who would always say:

“I will never admit that a joke should get the better of a grief.”

Might it not be probable that my great-aunts would resemble my mother in character? Ah! in that case I would resign my mission very quickly, so much the worse for the inheritance! I would write at once to be taken home.

“My sisters cannot be dull,” grandmother said to me. “Having remained unmarried, they certainly must have kept their original characters.”

The great day for my departure for Chivres arrived. What an excitement, to be going to pass two months away from my father and grandmother, and with old people whom I had never seen, and on whom I must make a favourable impression, “or else suffer the humiliation of being sent home,” said grandfather.

I was going to be shut up in a sort of cloister. My three great-aunts, their mother, and a servant whom they had had for twenty-five years, lived alone in an old house, situated in an enormous domain surrounded by high hedges and walls. This was the description my great-aunts’ friend gave to us of “the convent.”

My grandfather was to take me, with my packages sewed up by Arthémise, as far as two leagues beyond Coucy-le-Château. Grandmother told me to look well at “the monstrous feudal towers of Coucy.” Marguerite, my aunts’ servant, would await us at the village, her native place, at her mother’s house on the Square opposite a cross. She would meet me there with my aunts’ donkey. I was to dine at her mother’s cottage, after which we would leave Coucy, taking cross-roads, and would arrive at Chivres late at night.

I had been much sermonised by grandmother before I left, and on our way grandfather continually joked me about my “mission _à la Talleyrand_.”

“Your old aunts must die of ennui,” he said to me; “you will amuse them, and they won’t return the compliment, if I remember them rightly. Sophie will teach you Latin, she knows it very well; you will use some of it with Marguerite in the kitchen, perhaps also with the donkey, and you must bring back to me what remains of it. Mind you don’t forget, for I have great need of it.”

Grandfather left his carriage at the entrance of the village, at the only inn of the place, and as we walked along he continued his jokes.

I laughed so at all the nonsense he said to me that, when I saw Marguerite and the donkey to which I was to talk Latin, I forgot to cry.

Grandfather kissed me quickly, more overcome than myself. After giving Marguerite instructions concerning my health, and the care to be taken of me, he handed her a complimentary note for my aunts, and then flew off so rapidly towards the entrance of the village where he had put up his carriage, that when I turned, after caressing the donkey, I saw no sign of him.

We were to have gone to the inn, on leaving the village, to get my packages to put on the donkey, which had a basket hung on his saddle, but a servant from the inn brought them to us.

My heart was a little heavy at this sudden separation, but my stomach was very empty, and I ate with a good appetite for the first time in many weeks.

Marguerite’s mother had announced my passage to the whole country-side; all the urchins of the place were grouped around the cross. I smiled at the little girls and boys, who followed me into the house to see the “young Miss” who looked like a little “Parisienne.”

My way of speaking, which had no Picardy accent, struck them all. Neither my grandfather, who was from Compiègne, nor my grandmother, which was more extraordinary still, had the least _patois_ accent.

The little chits gathered around the long oaken table at which I was eating, and made me talk by asking questions. I had brought with me some sugar-plums, a necessary cargo for a great journey to an unknown country. I distributed my sugar-plums with the greatest success. I drank to the health of the troop, who had cried: “Vive! the young Miss!” and, a little intoxicated with the bracing air, I half remember having made a speech to the young people, a very moral one, concluding by saying one could never love one’s grandfather and grandmother enough, or one’s father and mother.

“Why is it that you don’t say first that we should love our mother and father?” asked one of the little peasants.

“Oh! that’s as you like,” I answered, thinking it would require too many explanations to be understood.

Marguerite, who took a fancy to me at once, had her share in my success. The “young Miss” already belonged to her.

I mounted Roussot, who intoned at his departure a song so odd for a donkey, with such a ludicrous search for harmony, that I began to imitate him, which encouraged him to continue.

My new friends, the children, burst out laughing. They followed me for a long way, and, on the thresholds of the houses and huts, which became farther and farther apart, their mothers saluted me, waving their hands, wishing Marguerite and her “young Miss” a good journey.

I tasted the sweets of popularity. It was due to my sugar-plums, to my Parisian accent, and to my perfect imitation of the donkey’s bray.

Marguerite made me think of Arthémise. She was full of admiration for everything I did, for all that I said. She answered all my questions with the desire to please me, she said.

Roussot found me a light weight. He trotted along briskly, while Marguerite, holding the bridle, walked beside us with long strides. I thought the sunset was beautiful; it shone over an immense plain, inundating it with its rays, and its reflection illuminated the sky long after it had set.

We journeyed on under the brilliant stars, not along a straight road, for we took many turnings, which by degrees brought us near to Chivres.

The rolling country was so pretty that it pleased me exceedingly, and I should have liked to gather all the flowers which a bright moon showed me along the sides of the road.

“There are flowers in plenty in the close, Mam’zelle Juliette,” said Marguerite. “There are bachelors’ buttons and poppies in the wheat, and daisies around the wash-house; you shall pick as many as you like. You are not so cityfied, after all, if you love the beautiful things in the fields.”

XIII