The next day and the days which followed, Renée had the most delicious
waking moments, when the light which was just breaking, the morning of
the earth and sky, mingled--in the dawn of her thoughts--with the
morning of her life. Her first memories came back to her with the first
songs outdoors. The young birds woke up in their nests, awakening her
childhood.
Supported and indeed almost carried by her father, she insisted on
seeing everything again--the garden, the fruit-trees on the walls, the
meadow in front of the house, the shady canals, the pool with its wide
sheet of still water. She remembered all the trees and the garden paths
again, and they seemed to her like the things one gradually recalls of a
dream. Her feet found the way along paths which she used to know and
which were now grown over with trees. The ruins seemed as many years
older to her as she was older since she had last seen them. She
remembered certain places on the grass where she had seen the shadow of
her frock when as a child she had been running there. She found the
spot where she had buried a little dog. It was a white one, named
_Nicolas Bijou_. She had loved it dearly, and she could remember her
father carrying it about in the kitchen garden after it had been washed.
There were hundreds of souvenirs, too, for her in the house. Certain
corners in the rooms had the same effect on her as toys that have been
stored away in a garret, and that one comes across years after. She
loved to hear the sound of the mournful old weather-cock on the
house-top, which had always soothed her fears and lulled her to sleep as
a child.
She appeared to rouse up and to revive. The change, her natal air, and
these souvenirs seemed to do her good. This improvement lasted some
weeks.
One morning, her father, who was with her in the garden, was watching
her. She was amusing herself with cutting away the old roses in a clump
of white rose-bushes. The sunshine made its way through the straw of her
large hat, and the brilliancy of the light and the softness of the shade
rested on her thin little face. She moved about gaily and briskly from
one rose-tree to another, and the thorns caught hold of her dress as
though they wanted to play with her. At every clip of her scissors, from
a branch covered with small, open roses, with pink hearts all full of
life, there fell a dead earth-coloured rose which looked to M. Mauperin
like the corpse of a flower.
All at once, leaving everything, Renée flung herself into her father's
arms.
"Oh, papa, how I do love you!" she said, bursting into tears.