Cakes! Cakes! My good hot cakes! The old cake woman had resumed her
nightly tour, and again we heard her rapid footsteps and her shrill
refrain. Always at the same hour, with the regularity of an automaton,
she went by our house. And the long winter recommenced in the same
manner as had the preceding ones, and as were similarly to begin the
following two or three years.
Our neighbors, the D-----s, accompanied by Lucette, always came at eight
o'clock Sunday evenings, and another neighbor visited us also upon
this same evening. These latter brought with them their little daughter
Marguerite, who gradually insinuated herself into my affections.
That year Marguerite and I brought the Sunday winter evenings, over
which the thought of the tasks of the morrow brooded sadly, to a close
with an entirely new amusement. After the tea, when I felt that the
party was about to break up, I would hurry little Marguerite into the
dining-room, and there we rushed madly about the round table and tried
to catch or tag each other,--we played furiously. It goes without saying
that she was usually caught immediately and tagged very often, and I
scarcely ever; it therefore fell out that it was almost always her turn
to chase me, and she did it desperately. We struck the table with our
bodies, and yelled, and carried on our play with the greatest imaginable
uproar. We succeeded in turning up the rugs, in disarranging the
chairs, and in making havoc of everything. We soon tired of our play,
however,--the truth is I was too old to care greatly for such frolics.
I had scarcely any feeling save one of melancholy in spite of the wild
sport I indulged in, for over me hovered the chilling thought that in
the morning the usual round of dry and laborious lessons would begin.
My furious revel was simply a way of prolonging that day of truce, of
making it count to its very last moment; it was an attempt to divert
my thoughts by making plenty of noise. It was also my way of hurling a
defiance at those tasks that I had left undone. My negligence troubled
my conscience and disturbed my sleep, and caused me finally to look
over, hastily and feverishly, by the feeble light of a candle, or by the
cold gray light of early dawn, the neglected lessons, before the coming
of the despised hour in which I betook myself to school.
There was always a little consternation in the parlor when the sounds
of our merriment reached those gathered there; it must have been
particularly distressing to our parents to hear that we were amusing
ourselves otherwise than with our duet sonatas, and to find that we
preferred noise and discord to the “Pretty Shepherdess.”
And for at least two winters, at about half-past ten every Sunday
evening, we indulged in that romp around the dining-table. My school
was of little value to me, and the tasks imposed of even less benefit;
I always went to work reluctantly and in the wrong spirit, and that
lessened and extinguished my power and stupefied me. I had the same
unfortunate experience when I came in contact with school-mates of my
own age, my equals; their roughness disgusted me, and I repulsed all
the efforts they made to be friendly. . . . I never saw them except in
class, under the master's rod as it were; I had already become a little
being too peculiar and set in my ways to be modified greatly by contact
with them, and I therefore held aloof, and my eccentricities accentuated
themselves.
Almost all of them were older and more developed than I; they also
were more crafty and more sophisticated; in consequence there sprung up
amongst them a feeling of contempt and enmity for me that I repaid with
disdain, for I felt sure that they were incapable of comprehending or
following the flights of my imagination.
With the very youthful peasants in the mountains, and the fishermen's
children on the Island, I had never been haughty; we had understood each
other after the fashion of children who are primitive and therefore fond
of childish play; and upon such occasions I had associated with them as
if they were my equals. But I was arrogant in my behavior to the boys at
school, and they had good reason to consider me whimsical and priggish.
It took me many years to conquer that arrogance, to act simply and like
other people in the world; and especially it was difficult for me to
realize that one is not necessarily superior to his fellows because he
is (to his own misfortune often) prince and conjurer in the realm of
fancy.