Bring me, please, dear, the second . . . no, the third drawer of my
chiffonier.
It is mamma who is speaking; she is busying herself with the drawers
of the chiffonier which every day, for many years, she had asked me
to bring to her,--sometimes she pretends to need them merely for the
purpose of pleasing me by requiring my services. It was one of the
things that I was able to do for her when I was very little: to carry
to her one or another of those tiny drawers. It was an honored custom in
our household for a long time.
At the time of my life of which I am now writing it was in the evening,
at dusk, after my return from school, that I busied myself carrying
the little chiffonier drawers. I usually found mamma seated in her
accustomed place near the window chatting or embroidering, her work
basket was before her, and the bureau, whose different compartments
she required from time to time, was situated some distance away, in an
anteroom.
The Louis XVth chiffonier was very much revered, for it had belonged to
great-grandmothers. In it there were some very old and very tiny painted
boxes which had doubtless been handled every day by one or another of
our ancestresses. It goes without saying that I knew all the secrets of
these compartments that were kept in such exquisite order; there was
a special place for silks that was classified by being put into ribbon
bags; one for needles, another for braid, and still another for little
hooks. And these things were still arranged, I have no doubt, as they
had been in our grandmother's days, whose saintly activity my mother
imitated.
To bring the drawers of the chiffonier to mamma was the joy and pride
of my childhood, and there has been no change in my feelings for those
little compartments since that time. They have always inspired me with
the most tender respect; they are blended with the image of my
mother and they recall to me her beautiful, skillful hands, ever busy
manufacturing some pretty, useful article,--even to her last piece of
embroidery which was a handkerchief for me.
In my seventeenth year, when we met great reverses--at that troubled
time of which I will not speak here, but only mention because I have
already, in preceding chapters, touched upon the matter--we had to face,
for several months, the dreadful possibility of being obliged to part
with our old home and all the precious things that it contained. At that
time when I passed in review all the beloved memories and habits and
mementoes that I would need to break with, one of my most agonizing
thoughts was: “Never more will I be able to come and go in the
ante-chamber where the chiffonier stands, nor never again be able to
carry its precious little drawers to mamma.”
And her very old-fashioned work-basket that I had begged her not to
discard, although it was much worn, with its little articles, needle
books, receptacles for thimbles and screws for holding the embroidery
frames! The thought that a time must surely come when the well-beloved
hands that daily touch these things will touch them no more, fills me
with so much sorrow that I am bereft of all courage and I struggle in
vain against invading sad emotions. Let me hope that as long as I live
it may remain as it is, that for so long it will be guarded with the
sacredness of a relic; but to whom can I bequeath this heirloom with
the assurance that it will be cherished? What will become of those poor
little trifles that are so precious to me?
That work-basket belonging to my mother, and the little drawers of the
old chiffonier are, I doubt not, the things that I will part with most
regretfully when the time comes for me to go into the world.
Truly all of this is very puerile and childish, and I am ashamed of
it;--and yet I am almost weeping as I write it.