Chapter I: Make New Friends

My three aunts and my grandmother’s stepmother, whom I afterwards called great-grandmother, appeared before me, standing together on the steps, as soon as the front door was opened. For a moment I stood aghast, for my grandmother’s three sisters, unlike her, who always wore such handsome gowns, were dressed as peasants, just like their maid Marguerite, in cotton jackets, cotton skirts gathered full around the hips, cotton kerchiefs, large grey linen-aprons with pockets, and they wore caps on their heads!

The youngest of them, aunt Anastasie, cried out, “Good-evening, niece! and welcome here!” in a clear, gay voice, and with the pretty accent of Soissons, the native place of her mother, who had returned thither with her husband, and from whom she had inherited it, doubtless. Marguerite took me off the donkey. My two other aunts and my “great-grandmother” had such high-bred manners that I concluded they must have disguised themselves to amuse me.

I went indoors, while Roussot was led off to the stable, braying loudly, I accompanying his song, which sent my aunts into fits of laughter.

The ice was broken; I had my supper, I chattered, and then fell asleep. It was about eleven o’clock at night.

At noon the next day I was still sleeping, and aunt Anastasie became frightened, and awakened me. They had been waiting an hour for breakfast.

Marguerite appeared, a parcel of clothes in her arms, and said to me:

“Now, Mam’zelle Juliette, you must dress as a peasant. We will put all your fine clothes away in a cupboard, and then you can enjoy yourself without fear of spoiling anything.”

So I tried on jackets and skirts belonging to aunt Anastasie, who was the most coquettish of the three! And such coquettishness! Coarse print gowns, faded, and washed out; and the old-fashioned patterns of them all, and the way they were cut! I was at last equipped in a horrible fashion. The skirt, being too long, was pulled over the waist-band, and bulged out all around my waist; the apron, rolled up in the same way, came nearly up to my chin. I pulled the sleeves up above my elbows. My cap I pushed back as they wear them in Bordeaux, so that it just rested on my long, braided hair.

It was too funny! I nearly fell over from a chair on which I had climbed to look at myself in a mirror. I screamed with laughter, for it is impossible to describe how absurdly I looked thus transformed. Grandmother would have cried out in holy horror--she who was scandalised if my dress was a little soiled, or my hair “_à la quatre-six-deux_,” as she would say.

I entered the dining-room with complete success. I did not know where to place my elbows, because the rolls of my skirt quite covered my hips. I was forced to raise my shoulders, and great-grandmother, after much laughter, declared that, when breakfast was over, the hem of the skirt must be cut off and the skirt made shorter, and all the rolls taken away, as they deformed my shoulders, and might make me a hunchback.

“I will look droll as much as you like, dear, adorably rustic aunts, but not hunchback,” said I.

I was less of a child than these five women, including Marguerite, who ate at the same table with us. They were interested in little nothings; my manner of talking, my funny ways, my assurance and important air were taken in earnest whenever any “great questions” were discussed. My aunts were delighted to feel their minds in constant movement under my impulsion.

Monsieur de Talleyrand had found his equal, and I thought how in my turn I could chaff grandfather.

After breakfast I went out into the garden with aunt Constance, and no sooner was I on the steps than I saw Roussot coming along for his daily piece of bread, his “tit-bit,” as we used to say. As soon as he saw me he began to bray, and I answered. Outside the gate we heard the village children laughing at Roussot’s extraordinary music, answered by another song.

I went to visit the donkey-stable, Roussot following. He seemed quite at home in it, walking about and showing us around. Then I went to the poultry-yard, and saw the cow and her little calf, the rabbits, the ducks, the fruit-storehouse, the cellar, and the large garden. It was so large that it took me a long while to look, one by one, at all the fruit-trees, laden with fruit, and to discover at the end a nice little covered wash-house, in which I promised myself I would often dabble.

I came back after a while, and little aunt Anastasie--she alone in my mind deserved this endearing epithet--showed me the lovely flowers she had made during the winter to trim the altar, which was always raised in the garden, on Corpus Christi Day, and was admired by the whole country-side. The large gate was opened wide only on that day.

Aunt Sophie showed me her room, which she always cleaned herself, and into which not one of the household, still less an outsider, not even Marguerite, was ever admitted.

To see me in aunt Sophie’s room seemed an extraordinary and astonishing event, and the whole bee-hive was in commotion. Marguerite told me afterwards of the sensation created by my hour’s stay in aunt Sophie’s room.

Her room was much more elegantly furnished than our rooms at Chauny, only the walls were simply whitewashed. Opposite each other stood two old chests of drawers with fine, highly polished brass ornaments; on the other side of the room stood a very handsome bed of carved wood, without curtains, but covered with a pale-green coverlet embroidered in fine wools, the design of which formed large bouquets of shaded roses, surrounded with dark-green foliage, which pleased me so much that when I left she made me a present of it.

The two large windows were draped with small pink and green muslin curtains, trimmed with guipure, and sliding on rods. There were books on shelves and on the chests of drawers, and on a very handsome consol table were several vases filled with field-flowers, so artistically arranged that I at once said to aunt Sophie:

“You will teach me, won’t you, how to make these lovely bouquets of field-flowers?”

A large tree in the garden outside threw a cool shade in the room; near one window stood a table, on which were scattered, in graceful disorder, books, papers, a bowl of flowers; and everything, in fact, that was needful to study, to read, and to write in quiet, and amid pretty surroundings.

I thought of grandfather’s speech:

“Your aunt Sophie will teach you Latin, which you can afterwards translate to Marguerite, to the donkey,” etc.

“Is it true, auntie, that you read Latin books?” I asked.

“Oh! yes.”

“Does it amuse you?”

“Very much.”

“I would like to see one.”

She showed me a pretty little old book with gilt edges, which enchanted me, and told me that it was Virgil’s “Bucolics.” She read me a passage and translated it, and I said to her:

“Why, it is just like the stories of old Homer, which papa tells so well. In the seventh canto of the Odyssey, old Homer, in speaking of the four-acre garden of Alcynous, enumerates the fine trees which yield such beautiful fruit, and which Ulysses so admires. Your Virgil is like my Homer, but he is not so old.”

Aunt Sophie kissed me.

“Why! do you know Homer? Do you love him, and like to talk of him?”

“Certainly, I do, aunt Sophie; that and the history of our France are my favourite studies. Whenever papa comes to Chauny he recites to me a new canto of the ‘Iliad,’ or the ‘Odyssey.’ I make him begin over again those I like the best. You can question me, aunt Sophie; I know the names of all the gods and the heroes of Greece. Ancient Greece and ancient Gaul are my two passions. But I shall not like your Latin. I hate the Romans, whose greatest man was Cæsar; he put out the eyes of our Vercingetorix; the Romans pillaged Greece and then----”

“We shall get on very well, Juliette,” said aunt Sophie, “and I will teach you to love Virgil, who is the most Greek of the Latin poets. I will teach you, as he has taught me, to love Nature, and to find pleasure in a country life. I will repeat to you the cantos of the ‘Æneïd,’ as your father has told you those of Homer.”

“But, aunt Sophie, I am not so ignorant as you suppose. Papa has taught me to know and to love Nature. I will love it with you, but not with your Latins. I cannot bear them.”

During the next few days the chief thought of my great-grandmother, of aunt Constance, and aunt Anastasie, was to know what aunt Sophie had said to me, and what her room was like. Marguerite even questioned me.

On leaving her room, aunt Sophie had followed me into the dining-room; then, having taken her mother into the drawing-room, which was up a few steps, and seated her near the large window, out of which she could see the field and her daughters at their work, she gave her a trumpet to call us in case of need, and then said to us all:

“To work!”

A skirt, shortened by aunt Constance, was put on me, and each of us, with a sickle in our hands, proceeded to cut fresh grass and clover for the cow and for Roussot.

My aunts showed me how to use my sickle, and I was really not too awkward. Marguerite made small heaps of the grass we cut, and carried them to the stable in a little low-wheeled cart, which she drew herself.

They made me wear my cap more forward, and I overheard my aunts, who were already dear to me, discussing a book which they were in turn reading aloud in the evenings. It seemed to number many volumes, for they had been reading it for the last eight months, and still it was not yet finished. I asked aunt Constance the name of the book, and she told me that it was “The History of the Italian Republics,” by Sismondi.

My aunts spoke so clearly of things, in such simple language, their ideas, clearly and precisely expressed, were so easily comprehensible to me that I became much interested in their conversations.

I can see them now, on their knees, cutting clover, and judging of facts, of actions, of ideas of men in a way that kept my curiosity on the alert. The conversation was about Savonarola, a sonorous name that at once struck my memory, and of his mad attempts to transform society. Many of Savonarola’s ideas resembled my father’s, but I did not dare to say so, nor to uphold any principles contrary to those which my aunts seemed to defend. I might, perhaps, do so at some later time. I could already have said my say in this conversation had I wished, and I was inwardly grateful to my father for having opened my mind to the comprehension of politics.

So, while cutting away at my clover, I thought what true ladies, clever and cultivated, were my aunts under their peasant garb. They looked as if they wore a disguise, but the expression of their faces, their way of speaking, and all their gestures, were distinguished and elegant.

“We are boring this child; she is cutting the clover as hard as she can so as not to fall asleep,” said Anastasie.

“You are mistaken, auntie,” I answered, “I am listening. Papa wants to make a Republican of me, grandmother is determined that I shall be a Royalist, and grandfather tries all the time to make me love his Emperor. So I am delighted to hear about the Italian Republics. I learn things I never knew before, and I love to be instructed.”

Aunt Constance was the only one who would not use the “thee” and “thou” to me. She was very witty and quizzical, her eyes and lips expressed great fun, and she pretended in a laughing way to have an exaggerated respect for my very youthful self.

“You are a young lady like few others, I must confess,” said aunt Constance, suddenly laying her sickle down by her side.

Marguerite came past them and said that sufficient clover was cut. My aunts and I went to the foot of a tree, and when we were all seated side by side in the shade, I answered aunt Constance in the same tone she had taken:

“I am, indeed, a young lady like few others, and this is not the end of my being so. I promise you, auntie, that I do not mean to stop half-way.”

“What do you mean by that?” asked aunt Sophie.

“You can easily understand,” I answered, in a serious, grave, mysterious tone--for I felt that I must initiate my dear great-aunts in my secret thoughts, that they were worthy of my confidence, and that I could repeat to them what my grandmother was always saying to me--“you can easily understand that I am not going to live all my life at Chauny, that I shall go to Paris and become a woman unlike everyone else.”

“Are you going to be a celebrity, dear?” asked aunt Sophie.

“How long a time do you propose to take before you render your family illustrious?” asked aunt Constance.

“Forty years,” I replied.

Aunt Constance and aunt Anastasie burst out laughing at my answer.

Marguerite, leaning on her little cart, was listening, open-mouthed. “It is just possible that it may be,” she said.

“Well, Juliette, I promise you I will live to see it,” said aunt Sophie, solemnly and seriously.[B]

XIV

SOME NEW IMPRESSIONS GAINED

I spent two full months at Chivres. I learned from Marguerite and aunt Constance all about the care to be given to animals, all about fruit-trees from aunt Anastasie, who also taught me how to make very pretty artificial flowers.

One of the most enjoyable hours in the day was the hour when aunt Sophie would give me a lesson in her room.

I used to sit in a pretty arm-chair, painted white and covered with some fresh pink and green material. Aunt Sophie was embroiderer, upholsterer, painter, carpenter, and locksmith all in one, and it was she who had painted and covered her arm-chairs, having first embroidered the material. We sat in similar arm-chairs, without our caps, which we took off; we chatted by the pretty table covered with books and papers, and it was I now who made the lovely nosegays of field-flowers.

Aunt Sophie placed before me a large sheet of paper, and gave me a pencil, and, every quarter of an hour, that is, four or five times during the lesson, she would say: “Sum up in a few words what you have just heard.”

It is to aunt Sophie that I owe my tendency to condense, to simplify, and to store in my memory a very closely packed supply of knowledge.

She would talk to me, too, of the Paganism of modern times and of the danger of its encroaching upon divine things. She would read me a short Latin sentence, repeating the words several times, and making me say them over mechanically; then she would explain them one by one, making of them living images, so that I was delighted with the poetical interpretations. I understood everything that she explained to me. “Juliette,” she would say, “let us look at what we can see in things, and seek for what is not visible.”

“Oh! auntie, let us look at once for what is not seen. I can find out for myself, even away from you, what is visible.”

Aunt Sophie explained to me that life exists in everything, even in what are called inanimate things. Every object had for her its own peculiar voice or sound. She taught me to distinguish, with my eyes closed, the difference between the sound of wood and of metal. She had a crystal slab on which she placed balls of various substances, and with a little hammer she would play the strangest airs.

“If things can so speak to us,” she would say, “I am convinced that flowers look at us. They all have faces which express something, and most of them have perfumes which penetrate to our very souls. We can the more easily understand what is called the spirit within us, by smelling the perfume of a flower. I will explain that to you more fully a few years hence.”

Ah! the fairy-like, well-remembered hours I spent every morning with my aunt!

I was talking to her one day about the wind and she said: “I do not like it.”

“Why?”

“Because the voice of the wind is made up of borrowed sounds which it gathers on its way. Wind annoys me, makes me sad or puts me to sleep just like those authors who borrow ideas from others.”

I feel that I am badly expressing all that my aunt Sophie told me, that I speak less clearly and less originally than she. I was only eight years old and yet I understood all she said. She must have made herself much clearer than I can. I lived with aunt Sophie a life of dreams and a life of action at the same time. Every action accomplished by me when near her, seemed to have a fuller significance. If I watered a plant I seemed to be caring for it, and delivering it from the horrible pains of thirst; if I cut clover with a sickle, I seemed to be receiving a present from the earth, and felt that I must be grateful; if I plucked a ripe pear, I was easing the overloaded tree, which seemed to lean and offer it to me, and still did not let it drop. If I killed any harmful insect, I fancied I was doing, in person, the work of Hercules, and could hear around me a kind and approving murmur.

When Roussot and I sang our duet we were really having a musical discourse.

I could not stay indoors. The rain-drops, big and little, called me out.

Since my illness, a very strange thing had taken place in my young brain. I fancied that I had just been born or had been born over again. All that grandmother, who hated Nature, and thought it cruel and false, had taught me--which teaching had been already greatly counteracted by my father’s influence--had so entirely disappeared from my mind that I could not conceive how it had ever existed there.

All that grandmother believed in on this earth was love. “The passion of loving alone brings us near to superhuman truths,” she said. “All things that can be reasoned about, and proved, and weighed, come from what is inert and material, and ought therefore to have no place in our souls. It is a kind of knowledge that may be left, like cumbersome luggage, by the side of the road, that leads us to the Beyond.”

Grandmother seemed to me at that time really to be the incarnation of what people said of her--“romantic.” I loved her just the same as before; I paid her in my heart the same tribute of affection I owed her, and which she deserved, but I was much more attracted by the minds of my father and of aunt Sophie, and felt great curiosity about them. I loved Nature as aunt Sophie loved it, and I was interested in the past history of Nature according to the Greek and Latin poets, and I suffered with my father for the misery of mankind, for the wretchedness of the poor and the unfortunate in life.

“Aunt Sophie,” I asked her once, “why is it that all that you show me which is so divine in Nature, hides from me that God who is so great and so far off, and whom grandmother taught me to adore? Why is it that I care no longer for the sufferings of ‘misunderstood souls’”--this was one of grandmother’s sayings--“and that I care a great deal more for the welfare of poor miserable wretches?”

“It is just because God is so great and so far off that you are too little to understand Him,” answered aunt Sophie. “When you are as old as I am”--she was forty-six and grandmother a little over forty-eight--“everything will find its place in your understanding, especially if the basis of what you know is built on a sure foundation. You must be able to touch with your feet the ground you walk on. Mother Goose certainly said that before I did. You must love intensely all that lives while you live. I am a child of Nature; I live in it and for it. Your father loves mankind, and wishes it to be happy, because he, himself, is so human.”

At Blérancourt I had adopted the habit of writing down in a little book a summary of the conversations I had with my father. Aunt Constance, having found the book in one of my pockets, was always teasing me about the depth of my reflections. I let her laugh, but, when in possession of my “Notes of Blérancourt” again, I added to them my “Notes of Chivres,” and the serious thoughts exchanged with aunt Sophie.

I kept this little book, written in small handwriting which only I could read, until I came to Paris, when, to my great regret, it was lost, but the sense of what was therein written has never left my memory.

XV

THE END OF MY HOLIDAY

Marguerite was appointed to show me the environs of Chivres. I put on my pretty frock, and for a week, the harvest being over, seated on my friend Roussot’s back, I roamed over the lovely valley through which runs the river Aisne. I saw the whole country between Soissons and Chivres, and around Chivres itself.

Marguerite took me to see the Dolmens, the Druid stones, of which aunt Sophie had told me the history and legends. On the evening when I returned from my visit to the Dolmens, I refused to wear my peasant clothes, and appeared at table in a white frock, with a wreath of mistletoe and laurel-leaves on my head, dressed as a Druid priestess of my Gauls.

Grandmother and my father did not write to me for fear of tiring me. Had they known that aunt Sophie was teaching me Latin and other things beyond my age, they would have grieved at having been parted from me for so long a time and for no benefit to my health, as they would have thought.

Now, I was in perfect health because I worked in the fields for hours every day; because I went to bed and got up early, and because I slept alone in a large room, where a distant window, protected by a screen, was left open all night; whereas at Chauny I slept in grandmother’s room, and she had the habit of reading in her bed, by the light of a great lamp, which she often forgot to blow out, and which many times smoked all night.

I had recovered all my strength; my recent “growing” fever had left no trace whatever, except a slight increase added to my height. I looked fully ten years old, and was exceedingly pleased at the fact.

I was almost perfectly happy. To the success of my mission this pleasure was added: that, although I had been sent to please my aunts, it was they who had pleased me.

My mind was more at work during the time I spent with my beloved relatives than at any other moment of my life, insomuch that I asked questions on every subject, and that I pondered over all the “whys and wherefores,” and all the answers given me. What a happy holiday, and what perfect rest as well!

Ah! if only grandmother and my father were living at Chivres with my aunts and great-grandmother and Marguerite, not forgetting Roussot, the cow and the calf, etc., etc., I should then be perfectly happy!

I was certainly very fond of grandfather, and my mother’s beauty, as I looked at her, effaced any trace of unjust scoldings and of the sadness I felt at seeing her so frequently pain both my father and grandmother; but I could not but think that my mother and grandfather could very well live at Chauny quite contentedly, while my four aunts, my great-grandmother, Marguerite, father, grandmother and I would be so unspeakably happy living at Chivres.

The time for departure, however, drew near. I had only a few days left. Grandfather had written (grandmother not being as yet in harmony with her sisters) that he would come for me on the following Monday, at the same place where he had given me into Marguerite’s care. This was Friday.

Neither my aunts nor myself dreamt of prolonging my stay. We felt that it might compromise the possibility of any future visits.

At my age, a year seemed a century. With their gentle philosophy and their equal tempers, my aunts told me that July and August would come quickly around again, and that now that they knew me, they could both think of and talk of me.

“You will leave us with perhaps more pain than we shall feel at losing you, Juliette,” said my teasing aunt Constance, when I was lamenting our separation, “but you will as certainly sooner forget the pleasure of our society than we shall forget the pleasure of yours.”

“You are naughty,” I answered. “You know very well it is just the other way. Have I left off thinking of my father and grandmother, and wishing they were here? I have, perhaps, talked of them too much; well, that is how I shall talk of you.”

Tears were shed at my departure, and aunt Constance was not the least sad of them all; but I was too grieved to bring it up to her notice.

Aunt Sophie had prepared some short exercises which she made me promise to go over for a quarter of an hour every day. On every Sunday I was to know seven new Latin words, without forgetting a single one of those learned before. I was to return to Chivres with two hundred and fifty Latin words in my mind, placing them as I chose, as all the first Latin words aunt Sophie had taught me were words in common use.

The day I showed my father the exercises prepared for me by my aunt, he exclaimed:

“Why! this is a bright thought! Your seven words put together have a general meaning. They form a little story, and each word is necessary in daily life.”

“Good-bye, good-bye, dear aunts!” I waved kisses to them until I was out of sight, for, a fact commented on by the whole of Chivres, my three aunts and great-grandmother were standing outside the big gate, so as to watch me as far as the end of the village.

Marguerite was crying and blowing her nose; Roussot most certainly understood the situation, for he held his head low and made a noise resembling a moan.

I tried to console Marguerite by talking fast, but did not succeed.

“There’s nothing to be done, Mamzelle Juliette, you are going away, and I can think of nothing else. The only thing that will help me to bear it until next summer, when you are coming back, is that now that the ladies have told me that the money is to be yours, I shall work harder and economise more than ever.”

I again found myself in full popularity on entering Marguerite’s village. The whole band of children was waiting for me.

Alas! I had no more sugar-plums. Why, yes, I had! my dear grandfather had brought me a large parcel of them. His joy at seeing me look so full of health quite touched Marguerite. I thanked the dear woman for all her care of me, and begged her so warmly to assure my aunts of all my gratitude, that she said:

“Perhaps, after all, you do love us as much as we love you.”

And she added, turning to my grandfather: “you will take great care of her, Monsieur?”

From Marguerite’s tone, when she said these words, you might have supposed that it was she and my aunts who were giving me to grandfather, and not he who was taking me home.

After we had eaten some luncheon at Marguerite’s home, I kissed and kissed the old servant, I kissed Roussot, who I thought moaned more sadly under my embrace, and jumped into grandfather’s carriage.

I turned around to look back as long as I could. Marguerite waved her arms, the children shouted: “Come back soon!” and Roussot went on braying.

XVI

AT HOME AGAIN

“Well?” asked grandfather, as we drove away, “has everything really gone off well? Have you made a conquest of your aunts and great-grandmother? They dote on you, don’t they? Answer! they really dote on you?”

“Grandfather, they love me dearly; they really do. And I love them; you can’t think how nice and amusing they are, and good and tender, and not solemn a bit.”

“But do you think they realised what a wonderful niece we sent them?”

I remained unembarrassed, being accustomed from my earliest days to the broadest compliments. I answered simply:

“Yes, grandfather, they found your granddaughter wonderful.”

“You must tell us everything in detail. Your grandmother and I wish to know all that happened hour by hour, day by day, word for word, all, in fact, and even what you thought.”

“And dreamed?” I asked. “What an effort of memory I shall have to make!”

“We have been so lonely. Your father came once a week to talk you over with your grandmother.”

“And did the usual ‘family drama’ happen every time?”

“Of course, but it always ended happily, because when your father rose to take leave, either your grandmother or I would always say: ‘Dear me! how we must love that little woman, to be always quarrelling about her,’ and then we all said good-bye with a laugh.”

“I shall have to take seriously in hand the matter of reconciling my grandmother’s and my father’s ideas concerning me,” I answered so gravely that grandfather began to laugh mockingly.

“Nonsense!” said he, moving so suddenly that he dropped the reins. When he had picked them up, I grew angry.

“Who reconciled my aunts and my grandmother, if you please? Was it not I?”

“Beg pardon, my Emperor!” answered grandfather cracking his whip, “I forgot that we are all only simple soldiers.”

Then a rain of amusing jokes began. I was seized with grandfather’s contagious gaiety. He laughed so heartily and unaffectedly at his own jests, that no one could help laughing with him.

Both my father and mother had come from Blérancourt to welcome me on the evening of my return; all were loud in admiration of my tanned face and hands, and were delighted to see me plumper, as well as much taller and stronger.

My mother, I suppose, was pleased, although she did not show it in her manner. I perceived that in her presence I should have to reduce considerably the report of the success of my mission, and I took good care not to repeat Marguerite’s saying: “Now that the ladies have told me that the money is to be yours, I shall have more courage to work and economise.” I knew from experience that it was best in any conversation with my mother to leave out the money and legacy question. Marguerite’s saying had touched me only in so much as it proved her love and devotion for me.

The moon shone clear, and as the weather was very dry, my father and mother did not fear the fog on Manicamp Common, so they started for home that same evening after dinner, having arrived much earlier than I.

The story of my transformation into a peasant the day after my arrival at Chivres, of the way my aunts worked out of doors, greatly amused my relatives during dinner. It was supposed then they had remained cockneys, for at Chauny they were always called “the fine ladies.”

“They really used to be most affected,” said grandmother. “They took no interest in household matters and would spend their time in the drawing-room, reading, doing fancy-work, and quarrelling among themselves.”

Just then I made a most unlucky speech which very nearly provoked the inevitable “drama.”

“Well,” I said, “I am glad to say that they have improved in every way. They take part in all that goes on, and I never heard a single quarrel or dispute during my two months’ stay; it was a change for me.”

“You are really very amiable to us,” replied my mother in a sharp tone. “If it was you who brought about this miracle, you can repeat it here,” said grandmother, who had no idea of losing her temper.

“Why, Juliette, how can you have such excessive, scandalous, dreadful, criminal audacity as to dare to imply that you have ever heard a single quarrel or witnessed a single dispute in your family either at Chauny or Blérancourt? In truth, you baby, your health is only skin deep; you are still suffering. Go to bed, my child, go to bed.”

You should have heard grandfather say all this in his shrill, lisping voice. He was perfectly serious and solemn, and irresistibly funny.

“I was wrong, I was wrong, a hundred times wrong, Sir Grandfather,” I answered, “I humbly beg pardon, I repeat. I collapse!”

I imitated grandfather’s tone so perfectly that even my mother smiled.

When my parents had left, grandmother instead of questioning me as I had expected, said kindly:

“Go and rest, darling, Arthémise will put you to bed, while we have our game of _Imperiale_. To-morrow, and the following days, you shall tell us all you have said, all you have done and seen.”

And so it was, for days and days I talked of nothing but Chivres. Grandmother was quite surprised that I should have so enjoyed myself in a place where she would have been bored to death.

During the last remaining month of my holidays I was much oftener in our large garden than in the drawing-room reading stories with grandmother.

A gardener was in the habit of coming three times a week, and, guided by Arthémise, he arranged the garden as he pleased. It was I now who looked after all the crops, and from that time he obeyed my orders. I had some autumn sowing done, and I began to read books telling about the culture of vegetables and the raising of fruit. The garden was admirably stocked with both. I chose one of the empty rooms for a fruit-store and had some shelves put up by the carpenter. Grandmother took no interest in these things; so she let me do as I chose with the gardener and Arthémise. During the whole of that winter we had ripe fruit on the table every day, and my grandparents were much pleased.

I suffered greatly in not having a room to myself and being obliged to share grandmother’s. I tried to keep it neat and clean, but grandmother upset it as soon as it was tidy. She cared nothing for the elegance of the frame, although she was so particular about the portrait, that is, herself.

When I was kept indoors by rain or bad weather, I tried to put a little order into the arrangement of the house. I ransacked certain drawers and cupboards, and left them more orderly than they had ever been before. To the rag-bag with all the rubbish! to the poor all that we could no longer use! Neither grandfather nor grandmother made any objections, for they were convinced that my active life at Chivres had benefited me much, and that, provided I could create for myself a field of physical activity, they could all the better, and with scarcely any danger, set my head to work.

My grandparents’ house underwent a complete change in a fortnight. Fresh air, which was never allowed to enter the hermetically closed rooms, now blew in abundantly, and even broke a few windows. Arthémise and I scrubbed and rubbed and beat from top to bottom. I discovered in the garret some old vases and china, rather soiled by our dear pigeons, which I filled with prettily arranged flowers, and placed about the rooms.

Grandmother at last took some interest in the beautifying of our house. She would sometimes help us--not to clean, for that would have spoiled her beautiful hands, but to arrange.

She opened a cupboard for me on the first floor, and we found it full of beautiful gowns of dead grandmothers. Out of these I made table and bureau covers, to which grandmother added embroidery.

Grandfather enjoyed this luxury. The house seemed much more attractive to him. I owed it to his influence that grandmother allowed me to have a room to myself on the first floor, next to Arthémise. A communicating door was made between the two rooms.

I selected from the garret, which was full of furniture, the pieces that I liked. I stole from grandfather a pretty Louis XV. chiffonier, in which I had always kept my dolls and their clothes. So far as I was able, I copied the arrangement of aunt Sophie’s room.

I discovered a large table on which I set out my school books and papers, and many times grandmother left her beloved drawing-room and brought her embroidery to my room while she gave me my lesson.

I would sometimes send her away, saying, “Grandmother, I want to collect my thoughts.”

This made her smile and she would sometimes tease me by staying; at other times she would go, saying to herself that, after all, for a child to think, even of nothing as it were, was still thinking, and that in my father’s mind and her own, their chief desire, as they had said when I was away, was to create in me an individuality, even supposing that individuality might be contrary to their own ideals.

These desires of thinking out my thoughts seldom occurred, however, and I was at that time so active and full of play that grandmother was not at all distressed at my occasional love of solitude.

My dreams were explained later on when I began to write poetry.

Thus my dual character was formed. I have always remained very full of life when with other people; yet at times I am eager for solitude.

XVII