La Grenadiere | Page 7

the two brothers were otherwise dressed alike, and looked alike.
No one could see them without feeling touched by the way in which

Louis took care of Marie. There was an almost fatherly look in the
older boy's eyes; and Marie, child though he was, seemed to be full of
gratitude to Louis. They were like two buds, scarcely separated from
the stem that bore them, swayed by the same breeze, lying in the same
ray of sunlight; but the one was a brightly colored flower, the other
somewhat bleached and pale. At a glance, a word, an inflection in their
mother's voice, they grew heedful, turned to look at her and listened,
and did at once what they were bidden, or asked, or recommended to do.
Mme. Willemsens had so accustomed them to understand her wishes
and desires, that the three seemed to have their thoughts in common.
When they went for a walk, and the children, absorbed in their play, ran
away to gather a flower or to look at some insect, she watched them
with such deep tenderness in her eyes, that the most indifferent
passer-by would feel moved, and stop and smile at the children, and
give the mother a glance of friendly greeting. Who would not have
admired the dainty neatness of their dress, their sweet, childish voices,
the grace of their movements, the promise in their faces, the innate
something that told of careful training from the cradle? They seemed as
if they had never shed tears nor wailed like other children. Their mother
knew, as it were, by electrically swift intuition, the desires and the
pains which she anticipated and relieved. She seemed to dread a
complaint from one of them more than the loss of her soul. Everything
in her children did honor to their mother's training. Their threefold life,
seemingly one life, called up vague, fond thoughts; it was like a vision
of the dreamed-of bliss of a better world. And the three, so attuned to
each other, lived in truth such a life as one might picture for them at
first sight--the ordered, simple, and regular life best suited for a child's
education.
Both children rose an hour after daybreak and repeated a short prayer, a
habit learned in their babyhood. For seven years the sincere petition
had been put up every morning on their mother's bed, and begun and
ended by a kiss. Then the two brothers went through their morning
toilet as scrupulously as any pretty woman; doubtless they had been
trained in habits of minute attention to the person, so necessary to
health of body and mind, habits in some sort conducive to a sense of
wellbeing. Conscientiously they went through their duties, so afraid
were they lest their mother should say when she kissed them at

breakfast-time, "My darling children, where can you have been to have
such black finger-nails already?" Then the two went out into the garden
and shook off the dreams of the night in the morning air and dew, until
sweeping and dusting operations were completed, and they could learn
their lessons in the sitting-room until their mother joined them. But
although it was understood that they must not go to their mother's room
before a certain hour, they peeped in at the door continually; and these
morning inroads, made in defiance of the original compact, were
delicious moments for all three. Marie sprang upon the bed to put his
arms around his idolized mother, and Louis, kneeling by the pillow,
took her hand in his. Then came inquiries, anxious as a lover's,
followed by angelic laughter, passionate childish kisses, eloquent
silences, lisping words, and the little ones' stories interrupted and
resumed by a kiss, stories seldom finished, though the listener's interest
never failed.
"Have you been industrious?" their mother would ask, but in tones so
sweet and so kindly that she seemed ready to pity laziness as a
misfortune, and to glance through tears at the child who was satisfied
with himself.
She knew that the thought of pleasing her put energy into the children's
work; and they knew that their mother lived for them, and that all her
thoughts and her time were given to them. A wonderful instinct, neither
selfishness nor reason, perhaps the first innocent beginnings of
sentiment teaches children to know whether or not they are the first and
sole thought, to find out those who love to think of them and for them.
If you really love children, the dear little ones, with open hearts and
unerring sense of justice, are marvelously ready to respond to love.
Their love knows passion and jealousy and the most gracious delicacy
of feeling; they find the tenderest words of expression; they trust
you--put an entire belief in you. Perhaps there are