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her away. Ah, how she loved hats! But she had
handsome ways, for all that, when she said, 'Come along with us,
Josephine!' So I brought you up, I did, and sacrificed everything...."
Overcome by the mention of the past, Mame's speech and action both
cease. She chokes and wags her head and wipes her face with her
sleeve.
I risk saying, gently, "Yes, I know it well."
A sigh is my answer. She lights the fire. The coal sends out a cushion
of smoke, which expands and rolls up the stove, falls back, and piles its
muslin on the floor. Mame manipulates the stove with her feet in the
cloudy deposit; and the hazy white hair which escapes from her black
cap is also like smoke.
Then she seeks her handkerchief and pats her pockets to get the velvet
coal-dust off her fingers. Now, with her back turned, she is moving
casseroles about. "Monsieur Crillon's father," she says, "old Dominic,
had come from County Cher to settle down here in '66 or '67. He's a
sensible man, seeing he's a town councilor. (We must tell him nicely to
take his buckets away from our door.) Monsieur Bonéas is very rich,
and he speaks so well, in spite of his bad neck. You must show yourself
off to all these gentlemen. You're genteel, and you're already getting a
hundred and eighty francs a month, and it's vexing that you haven't got
some sign to show that you're on the commercial side, and not a
workman, when you're going in and out of the factory."
"That can be seen easily enough."
"I'd rather you had a badge."

Breathing damply and forcefully, she sniffs harder and quicker, and
looks here and there for her handkerchief; she prowls with the lamp. As
my eyes follow her, the room awakens more and more. My groping
gaze discovers the tiled floor, the conference of chairs backed side by
side against the wall, the motionless pallor of the window in the
background above the low and swollen bed, which is like a heap of
earth and plaster, the clothes lying on the floor like mole-hills, the
protruding edges of tables and shelves, pots, bottles, kettles and
hanging clouts, and that lock with the cotton-wool in its ear.
"I like orderliness so much," says Mame as she tacks and worms her
way through this accumulation of things, all covered with a downy
layer of dust like the corners of pastel pictures.
According to habit, I stretch out my legs and put my feet on the stool,
which long use has polished and glorified till it looks new. My face
turns this way and that towards the lean phantom of my aunt, and I lull
myself with the sounds of her stirring and her endless murmur.
And now, suddenly, she has come near to me. She is wearing her jacket
of gray and white stripes which hangs from her acute shoulders, she
puts her arm around my neck, and trembles as she says, "You can
mount high, you can, with the gifts that you have. Some day, perhaps,
you will go and tell men everywhere the truth of things. That has
happened. There have been men who were in the right, above
everybody. Why shouldn't you be one of them, my lad, you one of these
great apostles!"
And with her head gently nodding, and her face still tear-stained, she
looks afar, and sees the streets attentive to my eloquence!
* * * * * *
Hardly has this strange imagining in the bosom of our kitchen passed
away when Mame adds, with her eyes on mine, "My lad, mind you,
never look higher than yourself. You are already something of a
home-bird; you have already serious and elderly habits. That's good.
Never try to be different from others."

"No danger of that, Mame."
No, there is no danger of that. I should like to remain as I am.
Something holds me to the surroundings of my infancy and childhood,
and I should like them to be eternal. No doubt I hope for much from
life. I hope, I have hopes, as every one has. I do not even know all that I
hope for, but I should not like too great changes. In my heart I should
not like anything which changed the position of the stove, of the tap, of
the chestnut wardrobe, nor the form of my evening rest, which
faithfully returns.
* * * * * *
The fire alight, my aunt warms up the stew, stirring it with the wooden
spoon. Sometimes there spurts from the stove a mournful flame, which
seems to illumine her with tatters of light.
I get up to look at the stew. The thick brown gravy is purring. I can