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.