Recollections of My Childhood and Youth | Page 6

he explain to the other boys that his parents will
not trust him with the little one yet, and so send for them both at the
same time! Now there shall be an end to it; he will not go to the King's
Gardens with the nurse again.
It is the housemaid, once more, come to ask if he will not beg pardon
now. In vain. Everything has been tried with him, scolding, and even a
box on the ear; but he has not been humbled. Now he stands here; he
will not give in.
But this time his kind mother has not let the girl come empty-handed.
His meal is passed through the bars and he eats it. It is so much the
easier to hold out. And some hours later he is brought down and put to
bed without having apologised.
Before I had so painfully become aware of the ignominy of going with
the maid to the King's Gardens, I had been exceedingly fond of the
place. What gardens they were for hide and seek, and puss in the corner!
What splendid alleys for playing Paradise, with Heaven and Hell! To
say nothing of playing at horses! A long piece of tape was passed over
and under the shoulders of two playfellows, and you drove them with a
tight rein and a whip in your hand. And if it were fun in the old days
when I only had tape for reins, it was ever so much greater fun now that
I had had a present from my father of splendid broad reins of striped
wool, with bells, that you could hear from far enough when the pair
came tearing down the wide avenues.
I was fond of the gardens, which were large and at that time much
larger than they are now; and of the trees, which were many, at that
time many more than now. And every part of the park had its own

attraction. The Hercules pavilion was mysterious; Hercules with the
lion, instructive and powerful. A pity that it had become such a
disgrace to go there!
I had not known it before. One day, not so long ago, I had felt
particularly happy there. I had been able for a long time to read
correctly in my reading-book and write on my slate. But one day Mr.
Voltelen had said to me: "You ought to learn to read writing." And
from that moment forth my ambition was set upon reading writing, an
idea which had never occurred to me before. When my tutor first
showed me writing, it had looked to me much as cuneiform inscriptions
and hieroglyphics would do to ordinary grown-up people, but by
degrees I managed to recognize the letters I was accustomed to in this
their freer, more frivolous disguise, running into one another and with
their regularity broken up. In the first main avenue of the King's
Gardens I had paced up and down, in my hand the thin exercise-book,
folded over in the middle,--the first book of writing I had ever
seen,--and had already spelt out the title, "Little Red Riding-Hood."
The story was certainly not very long; still, it filled several of the
narrow pages, and it was exciting to spell out the subject, for it was
new to me. In triumphant delight at having conquered some difficulties
and being on the verge of conquering others, I kept stopping in front of
a strange nurse-girl, showed her the book, and asked: "Can you read
writing?"
Twenty-three years later I paced up and down the same avenue as a
young man, once more with a book of manuscript, that I was reading,
in my hand. I was fixing my first lecture in my mind, and I repeated it
over and over again to myself until I knew it almost by heart, only to
discover, to my disquiet, a few minutes later, that I had forgotten the
whole, and that was bad enough; for what I wished to say in my lecture
were things that I had very much at heart.
The King's Garden continued to occupy its place in my life. Later on,
for so many years, when Spring and Summer passed by and I was tied
to the town, and pined for trees and the scent of flowers, I used to go to
the park, cross it obliquely to the beds near the beautiful copper
beeches, by the entrance from the ramparts, where there were always
flowers, well cared for and sweet scented. I caressed them with my
eyes, and inhaled their perfume leaning forward over the railings.

But just now I preferred to be shut up in the wood-loft to being fetched
by the nurse from school to the Gardens. It was horrid, too, to be