us on all our travels. Ghislaine sang in a ravishing fashion, and Yves accompanied her on the clavecin that stood in the petit salon, mingling the grave accents of his baritone with her clear soprano. When I first heard them I was almost stupefied by the experience, cuddling down into bonne maman's arms, my head sunk between her cheek and shoulder, but listening with such absorption and with such evident appreciation that bonne maman loved me more than ever for the community of taste thus revealed between us.

I must often have tired her. I was a noisy, active child, and sometimes when I sat on her knee and prattled incessantly in my shrill, childish voice, she would pass her hand over her forehead and say: "Not so loud, darling; not so loud. You pierce my ear-drums; and you know that le bon Dieu has said that one must never speak without first turning one's tongue seven times round in one's mouth." At this I would gaze wide-eyed at bonne maman and try involuntarily to turn my tongue seven times, an exercise at which I have never been successful. I may add in parenthesis that I have often regretted it. Another amusing adage I heard at the same time from Gertrude. If a child made a face, it was told to take care lest the wind should turn, and the face remain like that forever. I was much troubled by this idea on one occasion when maman and Ghislaine had been to a fancy dress ball. Ghislaine told me next day about the dances and dresses. Maman had danced a minuet dressed in a Pompadour costume, and she herself had gone as a deviless, with a scarlet-and-black dress and little golden horns in her black hair. I felt this to have been a very dangerous proceeding, for if le bon Dieu had noticed Ghislaine's travesty, He might have made the wind turn, and she would then have remained a deviless and been forced to live in hell for all eternity.

A pretty custom at that time and in that place was that the young matrons who went to such balls and dinner-parties were expected to bring little silk bags in which they carried home to their children the left-over sweetmeats of the dessert; so that we children enjoyed these entertainments as much as Ghislaine and maman.

Ghislaine taught me my letters from a colored alphabet in the petit salon, showing an angelic patience despite my yawns and whimperings. My memories of the alphabet are drolly intermingled with various objects in the petit salon that from the earliest age charmed my attention. One of these was an immense tortoise-shell mounted on a tripod, and another a vast Chinese umbrella of pale yellow satin, with silk and crystal fringes, that, suspended from the ceiling in front of the long windows that gave on the garden, was filled with flowers. This had been an ingenious contrivance of my father's, and bonne maman found it as bewitching as I did, never failing to say to visitors, after the first greetings had passed: "Do you see my Chinese umbrella?" When I had learned seven letters bonne maman gave me four red dragées de baptême,—the sugar-almonds that are scattered at christenings,—and promised me as many more for each new attainment. Thus sustained, I was able to master the alphabet and to pass by slow degrees to Æsop's Fables, with pictures and a yellow cover. It was later on that Ghislaine began to coach me in all the départements of France and their capitals. Maman lent a hand in this and instituted a method that was singularly successful. I still laugh in remembering how at any time of the day, before guests, at meals, or while we were at play, she might suddenly call out to us, "Gers!" for instance, to which one must instantly reply "Auch." Or else it was "Gironde!" and the reply, "Bordeaux," must follow without hesitation. If I replied correctly, I was given fifty centimes; if incorrectly, I received a slap. I used to dream of the départements and their capitals at night. One rainy day I was playing in the petit salon, lying at full length on the floor and making a castle of blocks, when maman, coming suddenly out of the library, a great tray of books in her arms, cried out to me as she came, walking very quickly, "Gare!" ["Take care!"] Without moving and without looking up, I replied obediently, "Nîmes" (the capital of Gard), and an avalanche of books descended upon me, poor maman and her tray coming down with a dreadful clatter. Maman was not hurt, but very much afraid that I was.

When she found us both, except for a few bruises, safe and sound, she went off into a peal of laughter, and I followed suit, much relieved; for I had imagined for one moment that I had made a mistake in my answer, and I found the punishment too severe.

"You are sure I have not hurt you, darling?" said maman, kissing me; and I replied with truth:

"No, Maman; but I should have preferred the gifle." On that day, instead of fifty centimes, I received a franc for consolation.

It was not until my brother's tutor came to us, when I was eight or nine years old, that I ever had any teacher but Ghislaine.

Poor Ghislaine! Hers was a rather sad story. She had great beauty, thick, black hair, white skin, her small prominent nose full of distinction, but one strange peculiarity: there were no nails on her long, pointed fingers. This, while not ugly, startled one in noticing her hands. As I have said, she had been left penniless, and it was difficult in France, then as now, to find a husband for a jeune fille sans dot. Ghislaine only begged that he should be a gentleman. But after bonne maman's death, when we had gone to live in Paris, Ghislaine was left behind with my aunt's family, and they finally arranged a marriage for her with a notary. My mother was much distressed by this prosaic match. She had for a time cherished the romantic project of a marriage between Ghislaine and Yves, who, besides being an artist, was the best of men, sincere, devoted, and delicate.

"Ghislaine taught me my letters"

For a descendant of du Guesclin the coiffeur's son would, however, have been as inappropriate as was the notary. The latter, too, was an excellent man, and Ghislaine was not unhappy with him.

CHAPTER II

ELIANE

An important event in my child life was the birth of my sister Eliane. I remember coming in from the garden one day with a little basket full of cockchafers that I had found, and running to show them to maman. She was lying in her large bed, with its four carved bedposts and high canopy, and, smiling faintly, she said: "Oh, no, my little girl; take them away. They will creep and fly over everything." I was, however, so much disappointed at this reception of my gift that maman, bending from her pillows, selected a specially beautiful green cockchafer and said that that one, at all events, she would keep. When next morning I was told that I had a little sister, old Gertrude, in answer to my eager, astonished questions, informed me that it was the cockchafer who, fed on milk, had become very large during the night and had given birth to a baby cockchafer, which it had presented to my mother. This story of the cockchafer became a