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
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.