My Double Life | Page 7

as a god," and I used to look at him with pride. I did not know him well, as I saw him so rarely, but I loved him for his seductive voice and his slow, gentle gestures. He commanded a certain respect, and I noticed that even my exuberant aunt calmed down in his presence.
I had recovered, and Dr. Monod, who was attending me, said that I could now be moved without any fear of ill effects.
We had been waiting for my mother, but she was ill at Haarlem. My aunt offered to accompany us if my father would take me to the convent, but he refused, and I can hear him now with his gentle voice saying:
"No; her mother will take her to the convent. I have written to the Faures, and the child is to stay there a fortnight."
My aunt was about to protest, but my father replied:
"It's quieter there, my dear Rosine, and the child needs tranquillity more than anything else."
I went that very evening to my aunt Faure's. I did not care much for her, as she was cold and affected, but I adored my uncle. He was so gentle and so calm, and there was an infinite charm in his smile. His son was as turbulent as I was myself, adventurous and rather hare-brained, so that we always liked being together. His sister, an adorable, Greuze-like girl, was reserved, and always afraid of soiling her frocks and even her pinafores. The poor child married Baron Cerise, and died during her confinement, in the very flower of youth and beauty, because her timidity, her reserve, and narrow education had made her refuse to see a doctor when the intervention of a medical man was absolutely necessary. I was very fond of her, and her death was a great grief to me. At present I never see the faintest ray of moonlight without its evoking a pale vision of her.
I stayed three weeks at my uncle's, roaming about with my cousin and spending hours lying down flat, fishing for cray-fish in the little stream that ran through the park. This park was immense, and surrounded by a wide ditch. How many times I used to have bets with my cousins that I would jump that ditch! The bet was sometimes three sheets of paper, or five pins, or perhaps my two pancakes, for we used to have pancakes every Tuesday. And after the bet I jumped, more often than not falling into the ditch and splashing about in the green water, screaming because I was afraid of the frogs, and yelling with terror when my cousins pretended to rush away.
When I returned to the house my aunt was always watching anxiously at the top of the stone steps for our arrival. What a lecture I had, and what a cold look.
"Go upstairs and change your clothes, Mademoiselle," she would say, "and then stay in your room. Your dinner will be sent to you there without any dessert."
As I passed the big glass in the hall I caught sight of myself, looking like a rotten tree stump, and I saw my cousin making signs, by putting his hand to his mouth, that he would bring me some dessert.
His sister used to go to his mother, who fondled her and seemed to say, "Thank Heaven you are not like that little Bohemian!" This was my aunt's stinging epithet for me in moments of anger. I used to go up to my room with a heavy heart, thoroughly ashamed and vexed, vowing to myself that I would never again jump the ditch, but on reaching my room I used to find the gardener's daughter there, a big, awkward, merry girl, who used to wait on me.
"Oh, how comic Mademoiselle looks like that!" she would say, laughing so heartily that I was proud of looking comic, and I decided that when I jumped the ditch again I would get weeds and mud all over me. When I had undressed and washed I used to put on a flannel gown and wait in my room until my dinner came. Soup was sent up, and then meat, bread, and water. I detested meat then, just as I do now, and threw it out of the window after cutting off the fat, which I put on the rim of my plate, as my aunt used to come up unexpectedly.
"Have you eaten your dinner, Mademoiselle?" she would ask.
"Yes, Aunt," I replied.
"Are you still hungry?"
"No, Aunt."
"Write out 'Our Father' and the 'Creed' three times, you little heathen." This was because I had not been baptized. A quarter of an hour later my uncle would come upstairs.
"Have you had enough dinner?" he would ask.
"Yes, Uncle," I replied.
"Did you eat your meat?"
"No; I threw it out of the