Chapter I: Begin My Literary Work

I do not know whether it was from my aunt Sophie’s influence, or my contact with nature, living amid it, or whether it was the slow, clever training of my mind by my father, that made my brain swarm with poetical, mythological, and classical images. I dreamed in turn of Homer and of Virgil, whom I called his great-nephew, in order to give him the same degree of relationship to Homer as that which I possessed towards aunt Sophie.

In September and October of that year, after I had returned to Chauny, I thought I had become a poet. I wrote rhymes about everything I saw: the sun, the moon, the heavens, birds, flowers, fruit, and even about the vegetables in my large garden at Chauny, in which I lived all day during the last months of my vacation.

I confided with trembling my first “poem” to grandmother, and she criticised it with deep emotion. I criticised it myself later with extreme humiliation and contrition. I was already a well-instructed girl, and I might have done far better, but my grandparents found this poetry so beautiful that they read and re-read it to all comers, and grandfather took it with him to his club.

The idea of writing some day most certainly came to me at this time, for I did not cease to cover paper with verses and prose from that day.

I said to myself what was a curious thing for a girl of my age to think: that one must feel deep emotion in order to write and to move others, and I sought all manner of pretexts to arouse my emotions.

There was at the end of our large garden, at the foot of a very high wall, a plot of currant-bushes, too much in the shade to yield much fruit; so they were allowed to grow at will, mixed with raspberry bushes and brambles.

I had a circular place made for me in this underwood. I carried some garden chairs and a table to it, and I called this corner “my temple of verdure.” No one but myself was allowed to enjoy it. I lived there, during my vacations, from breakfast to dinner-time, dreaming, when the weather permitted, and, above all, telling myself stories in which I took extreme delight.

I put so much emotion into my voice that it made my heart ache. I would often cry bitterly over the unhappiness, the sufferings, the vicissitudes of the misery I invented.

I can hear myself even to-day, and see myself sitting amongst my brambles, with the shadow of the high wall falling upon me, and beginning my story in this wise:

“There was once upon a time a poor little boy,”--or little girl, or a poor animal, chosen from among those I loved the best, whom I made most unhappy on account of this or that, and my sorrow for them always increased, for I had no pity, either for my own feelings or for those of my heroes. Their sufferings became so poignant that I sobbed. How many victims I invented! The distant noise of the garden gate, announcing Arthémise coming to call me to dinner, alone decided me to make my victims happy, especially if they had been obliged to suffer privations. I could not have gone to the table and carried with me the anguish of letting them die of hunger!

After some days of this sorrowful exercise, I selected the story which seemed to me the most touching and dramatic; I put it into rhyme or wrote it in prose on a large sheet of paper in my best handwriting to read to grandmother.

On Sundays, as soon as vespers were over, I shut myself up in my room and composed a review of the week’s events. This composition was a bargain between my grandparents and myself. They gave me a cake made of puff-paste called frangipane, which I loved, and which grandfather went to get himself at the confectioner’s at dinner-time, so as to have it hot, and cooked to the right degree. I regaled my dear “ancestors”--this was the new name I bestowed upon them--with my writings, and they regaled me with frangipane, cut into three parts.

Ah! if I had never had other hearers and readers save my grandparents, how much criticism would have been spared me, and how much enthusiastic success I would have had! No public, no admirers were ever so convinced as they that they were listening to _chefs d’œuvres_.

My friend Charles, the professor, often invited to our table on Sundays, was obliged to proffer his share of praise. He did so most willingly, for his affection for me blinded him. How many times did I hear him say:

“There is something of worth in what that child writes; she will make her mark.”

My grandmother drank in my praise as if it were the nectar of the gods.

Was my friend Charles half sincere? I believed so, but another person, a newcomer, who soon took possession of all our hearts, was surely and entirely so.

His name was Monsieur Blondeau. He was a State Recorder, and had taken an apartment on the ground floor of our house, on the opposite side of the hall from us, which looked out on our blossoming courtyard and the street at once. His apartment comprised an office, a drawing-room, bedroom, and kitchen, and on the first story a room for his old servant, who served him as maid-of-all-work.

Blondeau--I never called him Monsieur from the first week after his arrival--was an old bachelor, very ugly, his face all seamed and scarred, because when he was a child this same old servant had let him fall out of a high window on a heap of stones; but his kindness, his constant desire to devote himself to others and to be useful to them, to love them, and to make himself beloved, made him adorable.

I soon gave him the title of friend, and, as he was tired of _table d’hôte_ life, and, as his old servant, whom he had brought with him from Lons-le-Saulnier, was capable only of cooking his breakfast passably well, I obtained grandmother’s permission to have him dine with us every evening, knowing it was his dream and ambition. He was another one fanatically devoted to me--rather let me say, one of my slaves.

Although he had much work to do, having no clerk, I enlisted him to aid me in doing my arithmetic exercises and in copying out my week’s compositions. He read admirably, far better than grandmother, and he became my habitual reader.

It would not have been strange had I been persuaded by all these flattering opinions that my talents, which Blondeau said “grew as fast as grass,” surpassed those of all known prodigies.

Even my father, who was a lettered man, and whose good taste should have enlightened him concerning his daughter’s lucubrations, considered my writings marvellous.

But my mother, with her usual lack of indulgence, rendered me the service of sobering me regarding all this praise. She put things in their proper place, even exaggerating them in a contrary sense. She declared that what I wrote was inept, and that they would make me a mediocre person by fostering in me a phenomenal pride.

I alone was not vexed with her. She helped me to criticise myself, although sometimes I thought her criticisms as excessive as the admiration of my flatterers was exaggerated.

Having a sufficient company at home on Sundays, my friend Charles included, I determined to put my weekly reviews into dialogues. Each one of us read his personal pages in turn, or we replied to one another.

When I think of all I made my grandparents and Blondeau read and say, I am abashed. Moreover, everyone kept the name I had given him, and the character of the rôle assigned to him, throughout the evening. They allowed themselves to be questioned by me, and answered “attentively,” as my friend Charles said. Had they at least been amused with this child’s play, it would have been tolerable, but on the contrary, they were obliged to rediscuss the weekly discussions, the wherefores of the most subtle questions I had laid before myself, which must often have been rare nonsense and silliness.

My heart is full of gratitude and tenderness for my four sufferers, and, as these recollections bring them before me, perhaps I love them to-day even more than I did at that time.

XX

LOUIS NAPOLEON’S FLIGHT FROM PRISON

My godmother Camille, of whom I was very fond, and whom I used to visit every Thursday at the glass manufactory at Saint-Gobain--not to amuse myself, but to talk with her, for she conversed with me on serious subjects--had left Chauny two years previously, but she came every two or three months to pass a week with us. She lived at Ham, where my godfather was the manager of a sugar-refinery. She was very intimate with Prince Louis Napoleon, and my grandfather joked with her frequently about the honour of having inspired a Napoleon--and, he doubted not, a future Emperor--with “a sentiment” for her, and he went, moreover, himself to assure the Pretender about his hope of seeing him an Emperor some day.

It annoyed my grandfather to hear that this Bonaparte was called a socialist. But he declared that it could not be--it was a calumny.

My godmother repeated to my grandfather something that the “Prince” had said to her before he wrote it, and which she thought admirable:

“With the name I bear, I must have either the gloom of a prison-cell, or the light of power.”

“We shall have him one day for Emperor,” said my grandfather. It was from his lips that I heard for the first time: “We shall have Napoleon,” which was so often repeated later.

“But the Republic is his ideal,” said my godmother, who knew by heart everything that Louis Napoleon wrote. “He does not know whether France is ‘republican or not, but he will aid the people, if he is called to power, to find a governmental form embodying the principles of the Revolution.’ Those are his exact words,” said my godmother. She added: “He formulates his ambition thus:

“‘I wish to group around my name the partisans of the People’s Sovereignty.’”

“You are crazy about your Prince, Camille,” answered my grandmother, “and you see him with the prestige of all you feel for his misfortunes--as a prisoner, coupled with the greatness of his name. But was there ever a more ridiculous pretender? Remember his rash attempt at Boulogne, with his three-cornered hat, the sword of Austerlitz, and the tamed eagle. He is grotesque.”

If my father came while Camille was with us he was much amused at my grandfather’s exasperation when he and Camille would declare that Louis Napoleon was more of a socialist than themselves, for had he not written:

“What I wish is to give to thirty-five millions of Frenchmen the education, the moral training, the competency which, until now, has been the appanage only of the minority.”

“The proof that he is a socialist,” added my father, “is that one of our party, Elie Sorin, swears by him; he is always saying to me: ‘Louis Napoleon is not a Pretender in our eyes, but a member of our party, a soldier under our flag. The Napoleon of to-day, a captive, personifies the grief of the people, in irons like himself.’”

Sometimes my grandfather, after having been angry, laughed at this kind of talk.

“He is a sly fellow,” he replied. “He is making fools of you all. A Bonaparte is made to be an Emperor, you will see, and we shall have Napoleon!”

My godmother adored my grandmother, and she should have been her daughter instead of my mother. They wrote to each other every week and sympathised on all subjects. My grandmother, apropos of Camille, put on mysterious airs even in my presence. They were constantly whispering secrets together, especially since my godmother lived at Ham.

One day I unintentionally surprised them with a boot placed on grandmother’s work-table, at which they were gazing with tender eyes. They looked so droll contemplating this boot that I could not help asking to what fairy prince this precious thing had belonged?

My godmother answered:

“To Prince Louis.”

“Did you steal it from him, godmother, to keep as a relic?”

“He gave it to me.”

“His boot?”

“Yes.”

“For what?”

“For a bouquet-holder.”

I burst out laughing.

“But look, dear scoffer, how small it is. Can you not understand that he is vain of it?”

“Ah! no, to send a bouquet in his boot is not good manners. Has he worn it, or is it new?”

“He has worn it, of course. If he had not, it would be a boot like any other boot. But he has worn it, Juliette, he has worn it!”

And my godmother reassumed the admiring air she had worn when I entered the drawing-room.

“Really, godmother, I must tell you that you seem to me to be a little crazy!”

One day our Camille arrived suddenly from Ham in a state of extraordinary agitation.

She threw herself on grandmother’s neck, where she remained a long while, sobbing. She whispered in her friend’s ear, who uttered many exclamations, many “Ohs!” and “Ahs!” intermingled with: “Camille, how happy you must be!” alternating with “Camille, how unhappy you are!”

Blondeau and I were present at this scene, of which, of course, we understood absolutely nothing.

My grandfather arrived. There were the same whisperings in his ear, the same exclamations, the same embraces, and again: “Camille, how happy you must be! Camille, how unhappy you are!”

“May the Supreme Being be blessed!” suddenly exclaimed my grandfather, in a solemn tone, for he never invoked the Supreme Being except on stormy days, when the thunder recalled the noise of cannon.

Something phenomenal was certainly happening. Not being curious, I had great respect for secrets, especially as my family kept few from me. I did not try to discover this secret, therefore, but I could not help thinking that some important person had been saved after great peril, and, strangely, that my godmother was at once happy and unhappy about it.

After dinner I said to Blondeau:

“Does this mystery interest you? Are you trying to understand something about it?”

“I understand it perfectly,” he replied.

“What is it?”

“_Parbleu!_ it is that the Prince, who is cracked about your crazy godmother” (Blondeau was an Orléanist, of my grandfather’s way of thinking), “has escaped from prison. I think she has helped him in his flight, and that, as she adores him and is now separated from him, she must feel, as your grandparents say, at once very happy and very unhappy; that is all the mystery.”

The next morning at breakfast they foolishly continued to keep up their mysterious airs before me; so I said to my godmother, Blondeau not being present:

“Why do you try to hide what everyone knows,--that Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte has escaped from his prison at Ham?”

“How can it be known already? When was it discovered?” exclaimed my godmother. “He had just escaped when I left yesterday afternoon, and they could not have known it before evening.”

“Tell me the beginning of the story, godmother,” said I, “since I know the end.”

She hesitated.

My grandmother, happy at having a chance to relate an adventure, asked Camille if she would allow her to tell it to me.

Godmother made a sign of assent.

“Well, imagine that Prince Louis pretended to be ill, and to have need of taking a purge, and shut himself up in his room.”

“Oh! grandmother, that is not poetical,” I interrupted.

“Be quiet! you must think of the end pursued and achieved. Well, then, as some workmen for several days had been going in and coming out of the citadel making repairs, he cut his beard and disguised himself as a carpenter, and passed out before the guard with a plank of wood on his shoulder.”

“Grandmother, don’t you think it rather commonplace for a prince to disguise himself as a carpenter?”

“I think it very clever of him to have got the better of his jailers, in spite of all their surveillance. Doctor Conneau, who had been set free several months previously, arranged and prepared it all, aided by Camille. Yesterday he drove out of the town in a tilbury with your godmother, who got out and hid herself at a certain point, and gave her place to the prince, who had doffed his workman’s clothes; and with well-prepared relays, Doctor Conneau and the Prince reached the frontier. Meanwhile your godmother came to us in a carriage she had hired at a village, after having walked a long way.”

Was the Prince saved? No one knew as yet, since no one except Blondeau, who knew nothing about it, had spoken of it. However, at dinner, Blondeau absolved me of my untruth, by announcing that he had heard that morning of the Prince’s successful escape.

“All the same,” he added, as I had previously said, “to disguise one’s self as a carpenter is not irreproachable good form.”

“A Napoleon elevates every one of his acts. A Bonaparte could not remain the prisoner of an Orléans,” replied my grandfather. “He has escaped. That is everything.”

“The romantic part of it,” added my grandmother, “lies in the fact that he has escaped from his jailers, that his prison doors, so strongly barred, have been opened by a stratagem that no one foresaw nor discovered. It is those who imprisoned him--I regret to say it--who have been tricked and made ridiculous. I love King Louis Philippe, as Camille knows, more than this Bonaparte, who seems to me in his character of pretender a plotter and an intriguer. But as a man, from all Camille has told me of him, I confess he is charming; and as he was her friend, I think she did right in aiding him in his flight. If I had been in her place I would not have hesitated either.”

My godmother remained with us for a fortnight, but was not consoled for the absence of her Prince, for I saw her weeping more than once.

XXI

MY FIRST GREAT SORROW

Nothing in particular happened to occupy or disturb my life until the winter of 1847. Things repeated themselves monotonously. The collisions between my relatives were multiplied, the divergence between their reciprocal opinions became more and more intensified. My grandmother became somewhat embittered, and occasionally blamed her dear King Louis Philippe; my grandfather declared himself more certain of the future triumph of his Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. He was a member of several Bonapartist committees. My father thought he was nearer to his democratic-socialist republic; my aunts mourned more and more over the imbecility of the people in believing in those who deceived them; over political immorality, and the madness of all parties.

I had at that time one of the most violent, most despairing revolts, and one of the most inconsolable sorrows of my life.

The winter was particularly cold. My large garden was filled with snow, but I had discovered that it still possessed beauty. My grandmother, who felt the cold severely, did not move from her room, which opened into the drawing-room, or from the drawing-room itself. She kept up a large wood fire in it, which she excelled in making.

Grandfather often said to her that she proved the untruth of the proverb which said that “one must be in love or be a philosopher to know how to make a good fire.” “Now, you are neither the one nor the other,” he added one day.

Grandmother replied:

“I am a philosopher because I bear with you, and am not angry with you in spite of all you have made me endure. I am no longer in love with you, but is it not because my passion for my husband was destroyed at a very early hour that I remain in love with love, and that I console or distract myself in reading of the romantic happiness or unhappiness of others?”

Blondeau loved the snow as much as I. Well-shod with Strasburg woollen socks and thick _sabots_, we would go after breakfast to make enormous heaps of snow in which we would dig galleries, or else we would mould figures with it. The trees, the plants, the borderings of box, the walled-fruit, were prettier one than the other, under their snowy garments.

Along the high wall, overtopping the trees of my temple of verdure, at the end of the garden, whose branches were all powdered with brilliant hoar-frost shining on a carpet looking like white wool, huge stalactites hung, superb and glittering. It was a fairy scene when at sunset these stalactites would light up, shining under the last rays of the sun, when drops like diamonds would hang on the extreme end of their delicate points.

“Blondeau, my dear Blondeau, look at this, look at that, how pretty, how beautiful, how splendid and brilliant it is!” I would cry.

My admiration was inexhaustible as was Blondeau’s pleasure at listening to me and seeing me so delighted, so merrily happy.

But one day in this same snowy and fairy-like garden, where everything was so dear and precious to me, Blondeau seized me by the hand and began to walk rapidly. Although I asked him what it meant, he did not answer me.

“Let us walk around the garden,” he replied to all my questions.

“Walk around it, Blondeau! We have already done so four times, and you want to begin again. Ah! no, indeed! you must tell me what is the matter with you.”

He was so agitated I was afraid he had become mad, and I was worried more than can be imagined. My heart stood still to see him like this and I could neither breathe nor walk. I drew my hand suddenly from his, and, planting myself before him, I said:

“Speak to me, Blondeau, for I think you are crazy.”

“I wish I were,” he replied, despairingly, “so as not to make you suffer the dreadful sorrow I am going to cause you. Ah! your grandmother has given me a nice errand to perform. I was too stupid, truly, to take upon myself the duty of telling you such news. I wish I were a hundred feet underground.”

“Well, what is it, Blondeau? You are killing me!”

He seized my hand again and went around the garden almost running, then he stopped suddenly, having at last found the courage to say to me:

“Juliette, my darling child, you know that Madame Dufey has sold her boarding-school to the Demoiselles André, your mother’s friends, who knew them in the hamlet that was burned down in the first days of your parents’ marriage--the hamlet where your grandfather’s uncle lived.”

“Yes, I know, and those ladies are very nice. I have seen them. They told me they cherished a very dear memory of my mother, and would be happy to extend their faithful affection to her daughter. I thought the phrase very pretty and have remembered it. What sorrow do you think I can feel from them?”

Instructed by my grandmother, Blondeau had certainly prepared a long speech, but, carried away by haste after all his hesitations, he said to me in a brutal way:

“Well, your grandmother has sold the garden to the Demoiselles André to build a boarding-school in it.”

“What garden?”

“This one, ours, hers, yours!”

“You are telling an untruth!”

“Alas, I am not. Your grandmother did not dare to tell you until the contract was signed; she knew that you would beg her not to do it, and would prevent her; now the thing is irrevocable. Everything was finished this morning.”

“It is abominable. I wish to keep my trees, my temple of verdure, my brambles. I don’t want--I don’t want them to be taken from me! Blondeau, buy back my garden, you have money. We will make a house in it for our two selves; you, at least, cannot abandon me.”

And I threw myself in his arms, weeping.

It seemed to me that all my trees raised their branches heavenward, and that they wept with me under the sunshine.

What! my vines, with their bunches of muscat grapes, of which I was so fond; what! my immense apricot tree, which I had had measured and which was the largest one in Chauny, and which people came to see, with its five yards of breadth and ten yards of height; what! my box, which I had cut myself into balls and borders; was all this to be pulled up, cut, destroyed?

“Blondeau, why has grandmother caused me this great grief, for which I shall never be consoled?”

“Because she could never find such a chance again, and it is for your _dot_.”

Then I burst forth.

“Oh! yes, again for money--that money which makes the misery of my life. It is like the inheritance for which mamma would have let me die! Grandmother is going to kill me that I may have a _dot_!”

This time it was I who provoked the “family drama,” and what a drama it was! I showed myself on this occasion the passionate child of my violent-tempered father. My anger and my hardness towards my grandmother made her suffer terribly.

I shut myself up in my room for more than a fortnight. Arthémise brought me my meals. I would open my door only to her. Neither Blondeau, grandfather, nor my friend Charles were allowed to enter. My grandmother did not even dare to come upstairs. I wrote her every day a letter filled with cruel reproaches, to which she had not the courage to reply.

Her great fear was that my father would arrive and that I would wish to leave her forever. However, to tranquillize her on that score, there was a serious quarrel pending between herself and my father at that time, the latter having wished to borrow money from her to pay the debts of his soldier-brother, who led a wild life; and as she had refused, they had not seen each other for two months.

I thought of Blérancourt, where the garden was small, to be sure, but was separated from other gardens only by hedges, where I should have my father, who I certainly loved as much as grandmother; but my mother’s coldness, compared with grandfather’s exuberance and gaiety, frightened me. And then at Blérancourt there was no Blondeau nor friend Charles. Besides, I knew very well that, although my mother was jealous of grandfather’s affection for me, she would blame me for abandoning her, would say I was ungrateful, and, moreover, I could not think of explaining to her grandmother’s reason for selling the garden and her anxiety regarding my _dot_.

These reflections following one another in my mind, at times made me indulgent toward grandmother, but, as soon as I thought of the destruction of my garden, I suffered so acutely that I listened no longer to justice.

I thought also of asking my aunts to take me, of writing to Marguerite to come with Roussot some night, when I would give her _rendezvous_ in the little street _des Juifs_ on which our garden opened, so that she could steal me away; but I had the secret instinct that if my aunts were very happy to have me two months in the year, at the time when they lived out of doors, my turbulence, my superabundance of gaiety, of life, my passion for movement, would tire them during a whole year through.

After all, there were only my grandparents, Blondeau, my friend Charles, and Arthémise to love and really understand me, and--I added to myself--to put up with me.

I had missed going to school for two weeks.

Grandmother said I was ill and it was believed, because no one saw me about.

However, grandmother finally invoked the aid of the dean, whom I liked very much, because he wished me to make my first communion when I was ten and a half years old, and not to wait another year. He feared my father’s influence over me, which fact, of course, they did not tell me, so I was very flattered to be the youngest and the most remarked in the catechism class. I was as tall as the tallest girls in it.

Grandmother told the dean the truth about my passionate love of my garden, of my extreme delight in nature, and of her sudden resolve to sell the garden on account of the exceptional price she received, and for the benefit of my _dot_, etc., etc.

The dean came and knocked at my door, but I did not open it, in spite of the touching appeal he made to me. I heard grandmother sobbing outside. From that moment my heart was softened and my rancour fled, but a bad feeling of pride prevented me from calling them back. I repented, however, and when Arthémise came to bring me some ink for which I had asked, I opened my door and found myself face to face with the dean.

The moment for an amiable solution had come, but in order to save my dignity I pretended to let myself be overcome by the dean’s arguments, and to be influenced by his threats not to receive me any longer at the catechism class and to delay my first communion until the following year, in 1848.

“Come,” he said to me, “and ask your grandmother’s pardon.”

“No, your reverence, do not exact that I should ask pardon. I cannot do it. I am too unhappy to think that my grandmother has sold my garden, and that I have lost it forever. Besides, it is not necessary. You will see that my grandmother will be only too glad to kiss me.”

Grandmother was waiting for me in the drawing-room, knowing that the dean had gone into my room and having learned from Arthémise that I had listened to him and had yielded.

That night, at dinner, they had a festival in my honour without saying anything to me about my misbehaviour. It was not the time to scold me. I was not at all consoled for the loss of my garden, for my flowers and fruit, for all its greenery, or even for its snow.

I did not see the first flowers blossom, I did not gather them for grandmother’s table, nor for the little white vase in which I was wont to arrange artistically the first Bengal roses.

As soon as the fine weather came, and during all that spring, the workmen were pulling down the rampart behind the high garden-wall, and everything fell in together. They cut a new street, on which the large principal door of the school was to open. The buildings were to be raised only twenty yards from our courtyard; the green wooden lattice was at once replaced by an ugly wall.

All the noise of the demolition of the garden broke my heart. During the night, the moaning of the wind made me think that I heard the death-sighs of my trees.

One Thursday afternoon, when I was playing sadly in the courtyard, I heard a sharp cry, a whistling, and a sort of tearing apart. Something was certainly being torn up and was resisting and groaning with all its power. I felt it must be the death-torture of my apricot tree. Formerly, at this time of the year the sap would rise to the smallest twigs on its branches, and I could see its first buds. Now they were torturing it.

This uprooting of my apricot tree revived all my sorrow. Behind that odious wall its agony was taking place.

I imagined that I could see devastation ending its cruel work. They were digging up the last vestiges of the life of my trees--their roots--and they were levelling the ground. I suffered from it all so much that I was nearly ill.

XXII

MY FIRST RAILWAY JOURNEY

The reconciliation between my father and my grandmother was brought about by a friend of my uncle Amédée (an uncle whom none of us at Chauny knew, because he never left Africa). This friend had paid my uncle’s debts in time to prevent his being obliged to resign his commission as an officer.

It was my grandfather’s opinion that uncle Amédée was much too fond of amusement, although very brave and intelligent. In saying this, however, he hastened to add:

“Campaign life impairs the most rigid private virtue.”

“As it impaired yours,” said grandmother.

And Blondeau ended the conversation by saying:

“Peace be with those who are no more!”

One day when we were not expecting him, my father arrived, looking very happy, and said to grandmother before me:

“Will you give me Juliette? I wish to take her on a long journey.”

“From Chauny to Blérancourt?”

“No, no, much farther.”

“Where, dear Jean Louis?”

“To Amiens, Abbeville, and Verton. I will show her the sea, which I wish to behold myself, for I have never seen it. And better still, we shall travel to it on the railway.”

“Ah, no! Not in the railway coaches!” cried my grandmother. “I am afraid of those monstrosities, for they say that every day, every time people get into them, there are accidents--persons killed and wounded. Juliette is not yet old enough to guarantee herself from danger by making her will. But how has this great plan come about?”

“You remember, dear mother, that young workman, Liénard, who was so wonderfully intelligent, in whom I was so interested, and whom I had educated to be an engineer?”

“Yes, yes, and that was one of your good works. To elevate a poor man from a low position, is meritorious and useful, in a different manner from that of torturing one’s mind to discover a way to ruin the middle classes, and to make poverty universal.”

“Do you hear that, Jean Louis?” said my father, laughing.

“Well,” he continued, “Liénard has made his way brilliantly. He is now the head of a division of the Boulogne-sur-Mer railway. He has six hundred employés and workmen under him to-day, and he wishes me to see him in the exercise of a function of which he is proud, and which he owes to me. He has invited me to pass a fortnight, together with Juliette, at Verton. Madame Liénard is devoted to our daughter, whom she always comes to see when she knows she is at Blérancourt, doesn’t she, Juliette?”

“Grandmother,” I replied, “if you will permit it, I should be delighted to take a long journey with papa. It is my dream to travel. I am very fond of Madame Liénard.” And stooping down to her ear, I added: “And besides, grandmother, it will distract me from my great sorrow.”

“Yes, Juliette, I think so, too,” she answered. “Your father must leave you with me for two weeks to prepare your wardrobe, for I wish you to have everything you may need, and then you shall go to see the sea.”

When my father had left, grandmother said to me: “I must obtain a dispensation from the curé so that you may leave the catechism class without having your first communion delayed in consequence. But I think there will be no difficulty about it.”

The entire town of Chauny was interested in this journey. My grandfather told how it had come about to all who wished to hear it. At school I was much questioned, and in the same degree that I had been humiliated at having the girls say to me: “It seems that your grandmother has sold your famous garden which you thought as fine as a kingdom,” just so proud was I in thinking of all the interesting things that I should have to relate to my little friends on my return.

The journey from Paris to Amiens was, of course, by diligence.

We stopped an entire day at Saint-Quentin to see my relatives, the Raincourts, to whom I talked of my dear aunts and my grandmother, and who were happy to know that their cousins were reconciled.

At Amiens we stopped again to see other Raincourts. I visited the cathedral, and the impression I received of its power and grandeur remains with me still. My cousins took us to the opera. They played _Charles VI_. I was somewhat bewildered at the immensity of the amphitheatre, but I remember the scenes represented, the ballet, and, above all, the extraordinary noise of the mad applause of the entire audience when they sang the air, “No, no, never in France, never shall England reign!”

Like all good Picardines, I detested the English, and I clapped my hands with as much enthusiasm as the other spectators, at the three repetitions of “No, no, never in France!”

I had a headache for three days from the effects of that evening. The sound of the orchestra had bruised my temples.

I saw a railway for the first time at Amiens. Young people of eleven of the present day cannot imagine what it was then to a girl ten and a half years old, to hear the ear-splitting whistle, the groaning of the machine, to get into high, fragile-looking boxes, to see the smoke, the blackness of the machinist and his aid, looking, I thought, like devils. I was very much frightened.

Liénard came to meet us at Amiens, and, thanks to him, we had a coach to ourselves. My father was obliged to scold me, for I became very pale as the train started. Contrary to my usual habit, I was silent for a long time, not curious and asking no questions.

I held on with both hands to the seat, so little did I feel secure with the odd movement. But after a time I grew bolder, and kneeling on the seat I tried to look out of the window to see the houses and trees flying behind us so quickly.

“Juliette!” Liénard cried to me, “don’t lean out in that way. This morning, under the tunnel which we are going to enter, a lady did what you were doing and she had her head cut off by a cross train.”

I threw myself back in the seat, and when we entered the tunnel a great chill shook me. I thought I saw the body of the headless lady thrown into the coach!

Decidedly, I preferred diligences to railways.

XXIII

MY FIRST GLIMPSE OF THE SEA

At Abbeville we found another relative, the daughter of our cousin at Amiens. In ten minutes I was the best of friends with her two children, and I would have liked to continue playing with them there, or to take them with me to Verton, to the house of Madame Liénard, who had no children.

The railway between Abbeville and Verton was not yet completed. At Verton was the branch that our friend Liénard was finishing. I said good-bye to my cousins, very sadly, as I got into the carriage, but I forgot them immediately, as my mind was distracted by the route over which we were travelling. I breathed for the first time the tonic air of the sea, and it intoxicated me. My father was in ecstasies over everything, and I took a noisy share in his delight.

Verton, the object of our great journey, had been described to us by our friend Liénard.

“Verton is situated,” he said, “between Montreuil, built on an eminence, and the hamlet of Berck, which is on the downs quite near the seashore, and it is the prettiest village in Pas-de-Calais. Along its straight, well-laid-out, sloping streets, which the rain cannot soak into, are dainty houses, rivalling one another in cleanliness and brightness. Berck is a miserable place, inhabited solely by poor fisher folk, but I am sure the railway will make it eventually a popular seaside resort, and I have bought land there which certainly will become very valuable. You should buy some, Lambert, for Juliette’s _dot_.”

“Good Heavens! With what could I buy land?” said father, laughing.

“Why, your mother-in-law has just sold----”

“Be quiet, Liénard,” I cried, “don’t speak of my _dot_, you make me unhappy. Let me forget it.”

My father and Liénard, puzzled at my words, wished to know what they meant. They obtained only this answer:

“I don’t want any _dot_! I don’t want any!”

“You have commendable principles,” said father. “A girl should not be forced to give money in order to be married.”

Suddenly Liénard exclaimed:

“There is the sea!”

Papa and I looked, holding each other’s hands. It was a superb day, but a high wind came from the sea, which seemed borne in by the rising tide.

The seemingly endless, swelling flood we gazed upon advanced towards us, the waves looking like swaying monsters, ever growing larger. The foam alone reached us; the sea was held back by the immovable shore.

“I made you take this great journey so that you should see this as soon as possible,” said Liénard, delighted at our wonderment. “Well, Juliette, you, who are astonished at nothing, what do you say of it?”

I had no desire to speak. Enormous waves, with movements like serpents, broke into snowy foam on the beach, at first with a colossal crash, striking the pebbles, then with a soft roaring of the water as it rushed over the round stones.

The sea was so immense, it extended so far beneath the sky, that I asked myself how it was that all that mass of heavy water did not capsize the earth; but I realised that it was infantile to think this, and that I must not say it aloud, because then I should probably receive a very simple answer which would prove my stupidity or my ignorance. I had never thought of the sea as a phenomenal thing. I had not imagined it very large, but now it appeared to me immense and limitless. I was lost in contemplating it, dominated by it to such a degree that I could not express the astonishment I felt.

“Papa,” I said, as we were leaving the sea, “I seem to see the shaggy manes of Neptune’s horses on the crests of the waves.”

“And I am thinking of Homer all the while,” father answered me.

We left the seashore, talking of it on our way, and at last we saw Verton, with the old castle overlooking it. We entered the village, where the people, curious at our coming, were on their doorsteps. Liénard was the most important person of the place, excepting the owner of the castle, who lived on the second story.

“The Comte de Lafontaine, my landlord,” Liénard said to my father, “is a former cavalry officer. I do not know a more charming man. To be sure, he is not a republican, like you and myself, my dear Lambert, but with that exception, he is perfect.”

Liénard was my father’s devoted pupil, and followed his teaching in everything.

The castle was reached by the principal street of Verton, as one came from Abbeville--a street which ended directly at the park gates, the largest one of which was surmounted with the heraldic escutcheon of the Lafontaine family. The inscription on the escutcheon interested my father so much, and was the subject of such a long discussion between himself and Liénard that I found it in my notes of travel which I kept for grandmother.

Oh! they were very succinct notes, of which I can give an example:

“Verton, on a hill--gay little houses--old castle overlooking it--two stories--written above principal door in a circle--_Tel fiert qui ne tue pas_. Very, very large park and a farm, where I amuse myself all the time.”

With my memory to aid me, and the long, oft-repeated recitals of the events of my journey, the impressions of that time were deeply engraved in my mind, enabling me now to recall the details of this experience with all the more facility because one of Liénard’s employés, placed with him by my father, still lives, and, through him I have been able to verify the accuracy of my recollections.

The park belonging to the castle seemed to me very large, and I amused myself, with my different friends in the household, by walking and playing in it for hours.

The castle of Verton is situated on the highest point of the park, and fronts the sea. The view from the second story is admirable. At night one can see the lighthouse of Berck. I never went to bed without looking at the great lantern lighting up the sea.

Madame Liénard did everything to please me, and spoiled me as if I belonged to her. The Comte de Lafontaine inspired me with sudden affection, for he took me seriously and wished to be my friend. I made several morning rendezvous with him in the park, and confided to him the great secret of my life--my inconsolable sorrow at the loss of my large garden. I talked to him of my trees with tears in my eyes; he seemed touched, and I remember how grateful I was to him when he answered:

“Love _my_ trees a little during your stay here, as if they were your own.”

I had loved Monsieur Lafontaine’s trees before he said this. They were the brothers of my own trees. When I shut my eyes in certain paths, I seemed to see my lost ones. They grew warm and shone in the sun like mine; they made the same noise in the wind. How very unhappy I was, to be sure, to have my great garden no longer!

The cows, the sheep, the horses and dogs of the farm interested me greatly. I wanted them all to grow fond of me, to know and love me. I was, as a child, as desirous to please animals as people. There were several donkeys, but they did not bray like Roussot, and they disdained my advances, devoted as they were to the farm children.

Our first long excursion was to Berck. After having left the Abbeville road and entered that of Berck, we saw scarcely any more cultivated fields. It looked to me like the desert, as I imagined it. There were hillocks of shifting sand, amid which were very small hamlets. Berck came last, and was the most lamentable of all. The village was composed of miserable huts, inhabited by poor sailor-fishermen, whom Liénard called “primitive men,” and who lived solely by the product of their fishing. These huts, spread out at distances, were in a forlorn condition and falling to pieces.

One thing struck me at Berck: the market, like that at Blérancourt, where the weavers of the neighbourhood brought for sale the rolls of linen they had woven.

My father thought the beach of Berck magnificent, and he said that hospital refuges could certainly be built there, for the gentle and regular slope of the sands down to the sea would be an excellent place for children to play.

“The people of the place, although very rude and ignorant, are good and are hard workers,” Liénard said. “They are excellent workmen. We are blessed and loved as benefactors in all the region--except at Montreuil, because we bring more wealth here. They curse us,” he continued, “at Montreuil, the principal town of the country, for the making of the railway will deprive it of its animation. Crossed by the Calais route, as it is now, all the traffic passes through it; but before six months have passed, nothing will go that way, neither travellers nor merchandise. Its triple line of fortifications alone will remain, isolating it more than ever.”

XXIV